Welcome in to This Week in Bitcoin, episode 103.
My name is Chris, ChrisLAS.com, JupiterBroadcasting.com.
Well, confusing military policy, games around the Fed, and a lot more have the world selling
dollars.
Some of them are buying Bitcoin.
You might say Bitcoin's recent price strength is as much about the dollar's perceived decline
in energy prices.
Well, they're also putting the squeeze on the dollar system.
The fact is we're nine weeks into a four-week war that we supposedly won eight weeks ago,
with proclamations being made every Sunday on the regular right before the markets open
in Asia.
And the longer this goes on, the more people are starting to worry about the impact this
is going to have on the future.
And this right here is economics professor Steve Keen, and you can tell he's rather concerned.
What's happening right now, I spoke with five people who are financial markets experts in a
Twitter forum some couple of weeks back, and I finally got bored and left the damn thing
because not one of them talked anything about the physical manufacturing processes behind what's
happening in the strait. And when you destroy helium production, when you destroy fertilizer
throughput. When you lock all those resources up, the production system has to fall over.
So this is going to be a financial crisis caused by damage to the production system,
which is the opposite of the usual situation, the financial system.
You know, it's interesting. We've kind of heard that about the Ukraine war too,
but it is something people are worried about, but even more so than, you know,
things like fertilizer is energy prices.
20% of the world's energy supply flows through the Strait of Hormuz. That's oil,
that's liquefied natural gas, it's refined products,
goes to Europe and Asia primarily,
and both of those regions are seeing the impact
of having that much cut off.
The U.S. can't make up all of that supply.
This is the CEO of Chevron, Mike Wirth.
Inventories in the system are being drawn down,
and the supply situation is tightening,
and that's a concern.
And, you know, you think about the U.S.
and where we stand when it comes to production,
that, of course, has insulated the U.S. consumer
to some degree from some of the higher prices that we're seeing in Asia, that we're seeing
in Europe.
And I just wonder from where you're sitting, how long you think that will continue to be
the case?
Or, you know, is the U.S. heading towards a situation where consumers are going to see
the same sort of prices that we're starting to see in Asia?
I think the real thing is the U.S. is not going to see supply outages.
We're starting to see risks of supply outages in some of these economies.
In Europe, you're seeing flights canceled and schedules re-optimized because jet fuel
is getting very, very tight in Europe.
We've seen a number of economies in Asia
that have instituted policies to reduce demand
because they're concerned about running out of supply.
Uh-oh, that doesn't sound very good.
But don't worry.
Treasury Secretary Scott Besant says it's transitory.
Again, we are cognizant that this short-term blip up in prices
is affecting the American people.
But I am also confident on the other side of this,
prices are going to come down very quickly.
You know, the conflict will end. If we look at the stock market, what does the stock market see right now? The stock market is looking through this. Corporate earnings are good. Employment is good. And this gasoline, this temporary aberration will be over in a matter of weeks or a month.
temporary aberration will be over in weeks or a month.
We'll see how accurate that was.
That seems like a big roll of the dice.
And they're going to have to get things kind of put together
rather quickly to make that work.
I mean, it's a big roll of the dice.
Anything that starts to shave off GDP is also a problem
just because of the debt.
And the debt to GDP ratio just looks a lot worse when that happens.
It's a really big gamble.
And we'll come back to this later in the update section,
but I want to move on because energy and raw materials, that's one part of what's going on
right now. But here in the States, back here in the good old U.S. of A, we have ourselves a bit
of drama unfolding. And that is the games going around the Fed. It's pretty bad timing when you've
got a conflict that's showing the world and everyone watching the limits of the dollar
system and the U.S. military.
That really matters because the games around the Fed chair also are impacting the, I guess
what you could say, the reputation, the faith of the dollar system.
And what really has people talking is last week while I was recording, Jerome Powell was
having his press conference and he announced that he would be staying on the board.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Appreciate the kind words about the press.
Often doesn't come from the podium in different places, but appreciate that.
Can you talk about what has gone into your decision to remain on the board?
What kind of criteria are you weighing and how long might you stay?
Thank you.
Sure.
So, you know, my concern is really about the series of legal attacks on the Fed, which
threaten our ability to conduct monetary policy without considering political factors.
Now, I have to think that if Jay Powell really wanted to minimize the impact on the Fed,
he would just quietly go away and this lawsuit would probably be dropped.
This does seem to me a little, all right, you want to F around and find out?
Well, this is what you're going to get.
I'm going to stick around.
And seems a little bit like games to me.
All in the name of protecting the independence.
And I want to note here, this has nothing whatever to do with verbal criticism by elected officials.
No, of course not.
I've never suggested that such verbal criticism is a problem and neither has anyone else here.
No, because he's just a man and his ego is not a factor at all.
I don't know what you're thinking, guys.
he is just but a humble servant of the people, but the sanctity of the institution.
But these legal actions by the administration are unprecedented in our 113-year history,
and there are ongoing threats of additional such actions. I worry that these attacks
are battering the institution and putting at risk the thing that really matters to the public.
You know, the people are so much worse off since he took this position. I'm not saying he did it
intentionally. But to sit up there and talk about like this institution as if it has been some
pristine central bank that has served the people is such a load of horse manure. It's such a load.
Which is the ability to conduct monetary policy without taking into consideration political
factors. Yeah, no. No, of course, if you look at all the times he cut rates, they happen to look
very political. But besides that, it is so important for our economy, for the people that we serve,
that they can depend over time on a central bank that stealing your time and energy.
operates that way free of political influence. Yeah, no, of course. Yeah, of course, because
there's no way that the Fed is just inherently a political organization. No, they're totally
independent. It's part of the absolute foundation of this amazing economy that we have. It's just
one of the many reasons why the U.S. economy is the envy of the world. That piece of
institutional architecture separates successful countries from unsuccessful countries. It is
extremely important, not for the people who work at the Fed at any given time, but for the people
that we serve, that the Fed remain able to conduct monetary policy in a way that doesn't
get pulled into politics, trying to help or hurt any particular politician or political party.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. And then when asked to follow up on it.
What would you say to the criticism that by remaining on the board, you're actually taking
a political act and denying President Trump the majority of the board, which as president,
he would have if you left? I don't see that at all. As I mentioned.
Not a factor at all.
You know, I'm literally staying because of the actions that have been taken.
I had long planned to be retiring.
Oh, yeah.
But you see, the nation needs Jay Powell to keep working.
They need Jay Powell to stay as a governor to make sure he can keep voting against the
current administration.
Now, I think the entire idea of the central bank is a farce, because if you look at all
the other central banks around the world, they all work hand in glove with their government.
you know, when they're undergoing certain economic activities or military activities.
The central bank's always there.
And, you know, the things that have happened really in the last three months have, I think,
left me no choice but to stay until I see them through at least that long.
You see, these kinds of things, they do undercut credibility of the institution,
which I'm all here for, but it freaks people out.
And, you know, he talks about precedent and the unusual nature of it.
But what he's doing is also rather unusual.
Secretary, we look forward to the Kevin Warsh era at the Fed.
I know you've been a big supporter. Unfortunately, today, ungentlemanly, Jay Powell.
Kudlow is such a bootlegger.
Has decided to stay on as a governor. It's only the second time in 113 years.
I don't know why. You know, let's just say, why did he have to do it?
Why not just leave it up to Kevin Warsh for a new era?
Well, Larry, I want to come back to the Warsh bed.
But I will say it's highly unusual what former chair, soon to be former Chair Powell did.
And Larry, to be clear, the last time that a Fed chair stayed on the board, it was at the request of the president.
And one thing I can promise you is President Trump did not request for Jay Powell to stay.
I think it's highly unusual for someone who says he's an institutionalist and cares about norms at the Fed.
This is a violation of all Federal Reserve norms.
And I've got to tell you also, Larry, I think it is an insult to Kevin Warsh, Mickey Bowman and Chris Waller to think that these other Republican nominees do not care about the institution of the Fed and that he alone can maintain the integrity of the Fed.
I think they're a little annoyed.
What do you think?
Well, we got Besson on the line here.
This is another thing that I think is, to me, it seems like the biggest ad against stablecoins in the world right now.
You're actually, in some cases, seizing assets, are you not?
That's right, Larry.
We were able to grab about $350 million, the crypto assets, and then on top of another $100 that we had recently gotten.
So we're almost at half a billion there.
and we are freezing bank accounts everywhere.
More importantly, we are making people less willing to deal with the regime.
It's just to me, it seems like that's an advertisement against stablecoins.
Go ahead, use a stablecoin, and then we'll just seize it.
I don't know.
It doesn't seem like a very good pitch,
although the usage of stablecoins does seem to be on the rise.
But back to the Fed, you see, Kevin Warsh has quite the problem
because not only is he going to have J-Pow breathing over his shoulder
and, of course, voting, no doubt, in the dissent,
But if Warsh, when he gets in, lowers rates, that will also undercut the credibility of the Fed.
Now, again, as Bitcoiners, this is just basically pop the popcorn, stack the sats and watch the show.
But it is something to note the rock and a hard place that they're in now.
They have reached a certain inevitability of their position.
We are expecting Kevin Warsh to be confirmed and the next Fed chair by potentially the next Fed meeting.
Would it be a mistake for him to cut interest rates in this environment?
And this here is Ray Dahlia.
Yeah, in my opinion, it certainly would.
Why? Because of oil prices?
Well, because of the issues that are here in terms of a more immediate inflation,
farther from the target in terms of inflation target,
and also the credibility that everybody's going to look at how he behaves in terms of monetary policy.
So if you were to take and ask that question to almost anybody who's objective, they would say, certainly you would not cut interest rates now.
OK, you will lose your credibility.
The Federal Reserve would lose its credibility, particularly now, almost at any time.
And if you what I guess the part that I haven't made implicitly clear but should be obvious is that if the Reserve, if the Federal Reserve, if the central bank, if the House of Dollars loses its credibility, the dollar loses its credibility.
The reserve status begins to get chipped away at.
These things have second and third order effects.
And so I would say, but beyond that, it's not the right way to have monetary policy, given all things considered.
He should wait till when?
Well, you have a dual mandate, right?
You're in a stagflationary period.
We're in a stagflationary period.
You think we are?
We are certainly in the stagflationary period.
Now, how that transpires has a lot of parts to it, but we're certainly in a...
And if you look at monetary policies by other countries, you're not going to see them cutting.
OK so whatever your benchmarks are you not going to be inclined to cut the monetary policies not with today information Well that why Warsh has been trial ballooning the idea of AI being inherently deflationary and it being a special time with all of that blah blah blah blah blah
But the reality is that there is really no recovery path here because this is going to
be spun in multiple different ways.
And you could tell because some of the banker politicians are coming out.
And this here is the former World Bank president.
And he's just put it out there like even it doesn't matter who runs the Fed.
The economics of it don't make sense.
Yeah, it's worrisome.
You know, the Fed basically has become now just a giant hedge fund.
It's lost a trillion dollars, you know, and counting.
It's going to be a gigantic loss.
What it does is borrows money at 5.4% from banks and then dumps it into government bonds.
So think what that trade does.
That causes the government to think that it's better off than it is.
And so that encouraged the government to be short when rates were zero.
So why did the government borrow so much in T-bills?
Well, because the Fed was buying the bonds and it made it look like yields were going
to stay low for, remember the low for long phrase.
So we've got these multiple problems that are going on and it endangers the dollar.
So that's the basic case.
Instead of the Fed having such large balances, wouldn't the private sector be starting
businesses and risking capital and bringing returns and adding to growth. Wouldn't all that
money be better if it wasn't with the Fed? That's right. And we're depending on private equity.
So as the banks get squeezed out, because they're lending so much to the Fed,
you know, it's literally... This is the problem right here. And this is why the fiat system
is doomed for savings. I'm going to back it up because what you have to understand is as the debt
grows and the need to buy more government debt grows, that money comes from somewhere, right?
They're sucking it out of other places, loans that could have gone to other places.
That money be better if it wasn't with the Fed.
That's right. And we're depending on private equity. So as the banks get squeezed out,
because they're lending so much to the Fed, you know, it's literally a floating rate loan
from banks to the Federal Reserve so it can buy government bonds. So if that were freed up,
That would allow the banks to at least consider a small business loan, an inventory loan, the kinds of things that help the economy grow.
I mean, they can print fiat, but they have to manage their risk books.
They have to keep that stuff.
The accounting has to work still, so they can only do so much lending.
And this is on a global basis.
It's not just the Fed.
It's all the major central banks doing the same thing, meaning taking money from the economy in order to buy government bonds.
We need to be clear on that. I heard the previous segment, they talk about money printing. There isn't any money printing on it. It's just money borrowing and they pay top dollar for it. The Fed pays 5.4 to banks and 5.3 to money market funds. So to the Fidelity and Vanguard and so on.
It's just so, so baked in.
and this is why it truly is a historically perfect moment for a digitally scarce asset
for a terminally online generation this is our moment when countries get to this problem it's a
it's called a sovereign debt crisis this is lauren sliphard there's really only one way out and
that's inflation and so the money is going bad it's going bad at an increasing rate and that's
why we're all Bitcoiners, because we now have a perfect form of money that cannot be diluted.
And as Jesse Myers pointed out, this is a once in humanity kind of event. I mean,
we're going to talk about this as there's going to be pre-Bitcoin and post-Bitcoin.
That's how big a deal this is. And most people don't even get it. It's stunning. I mean, it's
like the fact that I can buy Bitcoin at $85,000, I feel like a kid in a candy store. I'm just trying
to figure out, you know, do I really want to sell a kidney? I mean, probably not. But I mean,
It's just an unbelievable opportunity.
He's thinking about it.
Although, you know who is thinking about selling?
This week, Michael Saylor started talking about potentially selling in order to pay some of their dividends.
The never sell your Bitcoin guy is now talking about why it makes sense to sell his Bitcoin.
And this is Saylor during this week's, what is it called?
Finance, you know, financial call.
I'm drawing a blank on the call.
But, you know, for the shareholders.
Jeez, I'm sorry.
I'm drawing a blank on the shareholder meeting.
There we go. I got it, you guys. I did it. So again, the most important point here is
there are occasionally some short narratives. People would say things like, well, you know,
if they sell the Bitcoin, that's bad for the business or it proves the business doesn't work
or something. But, you know, we look at it as if you're a real estate development company and you
bought land for $10,000 an acre and you sold it at $100,000 an acre and then you bought more land
with the profit, or if you sold $100,000 an acre
to pay some interest expense on debt
that you use to buy more land,
nobody would say that that's bad
for the price of real estate.
And no one would say that that proves
business doesn't work.
Real estate development companies literally exist
to buy land cheap and sell it expensively.
We're like a Bitcoin development company.
We buy it cheap.
We sell it dear.
Where do the dividends come from?
capital gains fund credit dividends right that is the essence of the business we invest in digital
capital bitcoin the capital gains from the investment fund the credit dividends they will
do it in perpetuity if you if the capital appreciates at that break-even rate and it turns
out that sometimes we will sell a bitcoin derivative because it's in the best interest of
the company but it's not necessary this chart really illustrates that you can strip the business
down to something very simple you buy bitcoin with credit you let it appreciate and then you
sell bitcoin to pay the dividend and as long as you're you're issuing credit and access of the
the break-even point, then this business works and grows forever.
Okay, so I've got to ask. It's quite the reversal from the never sell strategy.
So how do you feel about this? What do you have to say? Boost in and let me know. Is this
a practical strategy pivot to squash the Ponzi scheme claims? Or is it a total bait and switch
and a total warning sign for Bitcoiners of where Saylor might go? I mean, this is probably the
largest possible reversal he could make in his position. And if he can reverse this,
what else can he reverse? So what say you? Boost in, let me know, and support the show.
What you think about Saylor's strategy and his willingness now to sell his Bitcoin.
You can support the show just by doing what you do.
If you want to buy sats on River, use my link in the show notes.
It's one of the best ways to stack sats in the U.S.
The Bitcoin Well, it's an amazing automatic self-custody Bitcoin platform.
They don't host the wallet. You do. It's all self-custody.
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You got sats on Lightning.
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It's the Fold Card.
It comes with a debit card and a banking account, essentially, and all of that.
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Now, if it's time to get access to your Bitcoin value without selling it, check out Salt Lending.
I like their liquidation protection.
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And they seem to have pretty reasonable rates.
Salt Lending, you can use the link in my show notes for any of those to support the show just by doing what you do.
Stay a while and listen.
Well, we have some boost to support the show.
And we'll start with our baller booster this week.
And that is Whomever Whiz.
There, I got it.
Yeah.
Whomever Whiz.
You are our baller booster with 32,768 sats.
Hey, rich lobster.
Oh, this is great.
I published my first value for value track, an unreleased banger back from 2004.
I was a lot younger, but the word still seemed like something that would come out of my mouth today.
It's a theme that continues from the music I used to make to the things that still interest and inspire me,
like podcasting, Bitcoin, Linux, and the right to repair, DIY, etc.
Keep it up, Chris.
Love the show.
More to come later when I'm feeling inspired.
So I'll put a link to his song in the show notes called Pick It Up.
I like the sound of it.
A little preview of it right here.
Kind of a spaceship sound.
So I'll put a link to pick it up in the show notes from our baller booster, Whomever Whiz, this week.
Thank you, Whomever. Appreciate that.
And Paranoid Coder comes in with 4,000 sats.
This old duck still got it.
No message, just the value.
Coming in hot with the booze.
Thank you very much. Appreciate that.
We've got Chaka coming in. Chaka coming in.
I always get it wrong with 6,666 sats.
Oh, my God. This drawer is filled with brood.
Which was a whole bunch of ducks.
I would just say, I'd like more technical content.
What's new, what can be connected to what, and how to set up a company to accept Bitcoin.
You know, that's probably a different podcast.
Not a bad podcast, but not a bad idea.
This is more news-focused.
But I do like the idea of that kind of focus.
Probably would be good for a YouTube channel, too.
Listening to 99, I hear you're having troubles with ditching the show.
Since I'm new in the last few months and not listening so much,
I think it would be nice to give in your thoughts on the loudspeaker.
I'm getting a negative and angry vibe from Twib.
Really?
I think it's probably because of the news.
I mean, you think about the macro stories we're covering.
Not exactly the same vibe as what we cover on Love.
And you say to add value, you say node up.
And at the same time, you say you don't want to make a guide.
In episode 99, it goes on so far
that Kiwi Bitcoin guide promotes himself.
I think that a consequence of you taking action,
of not taking action or taking action on a guide
to set up a node would get more nodes
than the words node up.
Give us use cases.
Yeah, I agree to a degree.
I think you're kind of misunderstanding the show.
If I came on this week in Bitcoin and I spent 30 minutes doing a node tutorial, I would lose 80% of the audience.
Yeah, you have to understand people expect this to be a news podcast.
And so that's why I try to do it in a special.
But even then, sort of our least listened to episode in the last couple of months, right?
So what does that tell you?
In fact, a lot of people boosted and said they just skipped it because it wasn't on topic.
so you have to appreciate there is a dynamic and a kind of a lane for each show and what you're
kind of asking for is a different show but maybe it would be a good one for you to do i don't know
if i had unlimited time and and there was a clear path to making it sustainable i'd probably consider
it thank you for the boost mac jollers comes in with 19 500 sats woo
Thank you for the pure signal in Bitcoin.
I'd be thrilled to subscribe if you'd commit to so many episodes, been worried you'd throw the towel in.
Gonna boost more.
Yeah, we're going.
You know, I think we picked up Steam with 99 to 100.
I'm here.
I'm here today, even when sick.
Under the weather, I am here.
Because I love you guys.
Thank you for the boost.
Gene Bean's here with a row of ducks.
I spent some time chatting with AI tonight,
And I think you may have a proposal for a member feed setup you'll like that.
I can you can get bonus content more.
We're going to refine a little more and then post an article.
Hopefully the idea pans out.
You know, really, it's a for us, Gene.
It's a it's a technical issue is I need a reliable way to generate a specific hidden RSS feed that I can supply to the memberful platform that mirrors the special features that go on the fountain platform.
That thing does not exist.
I will have to build that thing
and that's just a matter of, I don't
I mean, I could take a week off
If I took a week off from the show, I could probably do it
Thank you for the boost, and I'd love to hear what you got, Gene
Debitcoiners comes in
.eu with 10,000
sats, woo! That's gotta be like
10 gold blooms
10 gold blooms out of a possible 10 gold blooms
Double celebration, 102 episode, and the best Dutch price chart
Up and running for 15 years, keep up the good work
at, I'll put a link in it to
Debitcoiners.eu
Pulling it up right now
I do like it.
Oh, except for I'm getting an SSL error.
Oh, no.
I'll accept the risk.
I trust you.
Oh, I have seen this before.
I have seen this before Yeah that great That is great Thank you Debit Appreciate it Joey DD is also here with 10 sats
Twib all the way. Thank you, sir. Appreciate the value, Joey.
Turd in the bunch. Punchbowl is here with 2,000 sats.
Lowell at Novograt stumbling through his statement like an LM using tokens trying to pick word by
word in an attempt to not describe a Ponzi-like strategy. Dilute the investors to benefit existing
investors. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. That was embarrassing, wasn't it? OB is here with six. Thank you for the
boost. OB is here with 16,000 sats. Wow. Big strike news. Yeah. Well, it's not. So I decided
not to put the strike news in the show yet because it's not actually final. But Tether,
Strike's largest shareholder, has proposed a merger of 21 and Strike and also Tether's mining
business, which was, I guess, extracted from Swan Bitcoin, if you remember that whole drama.
So that's all very interesting.
And I'll definitely be watching where it goes.
And I think we all kind of saw that one coming when Jack announced 21.
Yes.
Hi.
You know, they needed to have something that shows value in production.
I don't know.
I just I'm not too surprised to hear the announcement.
But it isn't actually final yet.
It is not final yet.
Hey, Adversary 17 is back.
Let's hear it.
Good buddy.
And he's coming in with 17,908 sats.
Well, I don't really like government or companies having a bunch of the supply either.
But if we as plebs start the dictating who can buy Bitcoin, then we're just becoming the very people that Bitcoin was designed to combat in the first place.
Wise adversaries. Wise.
Oh, man. Again, I appreciate the feedback on the clip audit, too.
That's nice.
Eric, thank you for the boost.
Eric PP is here with 3,333 sats.
Well, I'll be dipped.
No message, just the value.
Appreciate that.
And Philip is back with 5,333 sats.
Thank you for helping us help you help us all.
No message, just value.
Thank you, Philip.
You're doing very well.
It's nice to hear from you.
Bitcoin is for everyone.
May 22nd through the 23rd.
Boost in with 5,121 sats.
Just pump the brakes right there.
I think there's a message in there.
Why you got to put numbers and letters together?
Why can't you just go yourself?
Hey, Chris, would love to have you join us in Portland, Oregon for Bitcoin is everyone for everyone on May 22nd through the 23rd.
Friday is Bitcoin pizza day.
Hands on workshop at the Kennedy School.
Saturday is the main conference at the Revolution Hall.
Use the code this week in Bitcoin for a 21 percent off discount.
Well, I'll be dipped.
Nice.
Bitcoin is for everyone dot com.
I will look into that.
Would very much like to be able to make it.
Do you have a press pass?
You know, do you have press passes?
I'm just saying.
That's a spicy meatball.
Bitcoin is for everyone.com.
And again, it'll be May 22nd through the 23rd in Portland, Oregon.
If you think you might make it, let me know, because I'm thinking I'm going to try to make it.
Thank you for the invite.
That's really great.
I hope they do have a press pass.
This is the way.
And on comes in with 2,267 cents.
I am programmed in multiple techniques.
Boosting to show my appreciation for your coverage of the news.
Well, thank you.
I do appreciate that value.
Ace Ackerman's back with a row of duckies.
2,222 sats.
Big bank adoption of Bitcoin is inevitable.
Part of the process and the trade-off that has to be accepted.
I think you're right, Ace.
Thank you.
Brother Mike's also here with a row of duckies.
you're doing a good job well thank you brother mike you are also doing a good job and thank you
for helping us all thank you for helping us help you help us all really do appreciate that now if
i could if i could hit the button and it would uh i have this for you superior ability breeds
superior ambition i do love that one when does he say that what episode does he say that i can't
even i mean i've seen like every episode of star trek and i have i cannot remember that clip but
Clearly he's on the bridge, so that should narrow it down.
Live long and prosper.
Thank you, Brother Mike.
Nakamoto 6102 is here with 3,500 sats.
Thanks for the value.
Well, thank you for the value.
Kiwi Bitcoin Guide's back with 4,567 sats.
All systems are functional.
Amongst all the suit coiners and politicians, there was some good content at the Bitcoin conference.
Announcements from Block, Strike, and LightSpark were all positive for Bitcoin as money.
Did you see Paolo from Tether's talk?
some really cool storytelling
and then he talked about their work
on the hole punch and keep stack
a real peer-to-peer protocol
take a look and let us know what you think
I will I'll look it up
I did not see it
I do kind of tune out
some of the tether stuff
I will be honest with you
so I will go back and look for that
Hodler comes in with 2,103 sats
I don't understand what the heck is going on here
I'm not the biggest fan of the name digital asset
but you may be right
I'm not sure crypto can shake off the scammy connotation
but it's kind of happened before, like what happened with the internet and email when things
started out and cell phones and pagers. As a young lad that had a pager and a cell phone,
because I was a nerd, my teachers were very suspicious, right? Because it was very odd
back then. Unless I'm dating myself, but cell phones and pagers were the domain of doctors
and drug dealers. And so they were all very concerned that Chris had a pager.
I just wanted the ladies to get a hold of me
That's all it was
You know, send me a code and I'll call you back
Thanks Hodler, appreciate the boost
I'm looking through, thank you everybody who also
Boost below the 2,000 sat cutoff
Are on air, I did want to pull one
Forward this week just because it's so great
Strange love of music, our value
For value artist last week
Boosted in 1,000 sats
I like you, you're a hot ticket
Thanks so much for including our latest song
What You Mean To Me in your latest episode
We are truly amazed and humbled by how much this latest release has been played across the valueverse.
Stay humble and stack good songs.
I love it.
Yep.
Yeah.
I like it a lot.
Thank you very much for that.
Thank you, everybody who boosted the show below the 2000s that cut off and those of you stream sets.
In fact, 29 of you stream stats and stacked a nice, healthy 54,715 sets for this here episode.
Thank you very much.
Did you buy that from a certified vendor?
When you combine that with our boosters, this episode stacked 228,861 sats.
Not going to blow the doors off in terms of payroll this week, but you know what keeps the show going.
And I'm grateful for that.
If you'd like to boost the show, you can do it with Fountain FM.
It makes it really easy with fiat or sats these days.
And that's probably the majority of the way people boost.
You can also load yourself up with Albi and you can boost from a plethora of apps, including Fountain and the podcast index.
It's nice to be able to boost from the web sometime.
but Fountain's definitely the number one choice in our audience
and they're just going from strength to strength these days
and you also get all the podcasting
2.0 features like transcripts
you get immediate updates
when it goes live, it's like boom
in your app within seconds when I publish an episode
you get the podcasting 2.0 chapters
and when the show does a live event
it'll show up in your feed as well
there's a bunch of other great features in there
thank you everybody for supporting episode 103
of This Week in Big Land
All right, let's get to some updates.
What do you say?
Well, we did it.
We did it, you guys.
Woo!
We are the best.
USA!
We did it.
The U.S. debt has exceeded the country's GDP for the first time.
The United States has hit a grim financial milestone.
For the first time since World War II, our national debt is now larger than our entire annual economic output.
Now, I think you could kind of quibble about how this is measured, you know, but it is still remarkable because I don't know if you do this, but World War II is kind of a big deal.
Public debt climbed to $31.27 trillion by the end of April.
And that is compared to the U.S. gross domestic product, which is $0.05 trillion less.
So they are currently projecting, which this is the Congressional Budget Office.
And the way they project is just a continuous line.
So they just take what's happening now and they just sort of project it upwards on a continuous trajectory.
It doesn't account for random conflicts, energy crisis, recessions, any kind of money printing that might have to take place, you know, private markets blowing up in, you know, inequity.
It doesn't it doesn't it doesn't count for any of that stuff.
So this is a very piss poor estimate.
It is, unfortunately, a best case scenario.
They don't position it that way, but it is actually a best case scenario because it assumes that everything's just going to be fine until the year 2035.
Like we're going to ride out from 2026 to actually 2036.
So like the next 10 years, nothing's going to go wrong.
There's not going to be anything that causes disruption to the financial market or to the U.S. government where they'll have to put on more debt.
So they're projecting that the U.S. national debt will likely, at its continuous at its continuous trend, hit fifty three trillion dollars by 2036.
Fifty three trillion. But if anything goes wrong between 2026 and 2036, it's probably going to be more than fifty three trillion dollars.
Now, the numbers are from a nonprofit think tank based in Washington, D.C.
I want to bring in CBS News Business.
Yeah, we'll stop there. I just thought that was quite the milestone. Now, the other thing that caught my attention doesn't quite fit in, but you know it's going to annoy and impact Bitcoiners is sounds like perhaps a new suit coin is in the works. This is my term, right? Did I just come up with that? Probably not. But a suit coin is what I'm going to call the coins that the banks produce to just sell financial derivatives. And BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, he sees a potential for a new suit coin.
The United States has short power. We're short compute. We're short chips. And there are going to be shortages in all three. Memory, four things. I actually believe a new asset class will be buying futures of compute. We just don't have enough compute power right now.
A new asset class will be buying futures of compute.
Ooh, that'll be interesting.
Think that'll be on Salooner?
What do you think?
And then I also caught this next clip that just is absolutely terrifying.
And I've heard Trump make comments about this before, in that he's pretty happy with the way things are going energy price-wise, because he thought it was going to be, like, way worse.
And so, overall, pretty good.
They're learning to buy.
They're changing their habits.
So when I did this, I thought the market would go down 25%.
And I thought that was a great deal if it did.
If it went down 25%, I was satisfied.
Because we cannot let these people have a nuclear weapon.
They'll use it.
We can't.
I also thought oil would go up to 200, 250, maybe 300.
And I know it would be short term.
But I thought it would go.
I look today, it's like at 102.
and that's a very small price to pay for getting rid of a nuclear weapon from people that are
really mentally deranged. Yeah. Yeah, we'll see if he feels that way during the midterms. But so I
just was doing a little research, $300 gas, you know, for a barrel of oil, roughly about 4x current
prices, even if that only lasted for two weeks, which so far we're eight weeks into this, but just
assuming that things went well and only lasted for two weeks, there would be massive shockwaves,
felt almost immediately throughout the global economy.
First of all, gas prices at home in the U.S.
would go up overnight.
$8 to $10, you'd be $10 a gallon in California immediately.
Of course, heating oil and natural gas prices
would also surge in sympathy.
And consumer spending would be completely cratered
because almost all available funds
would be going to covering energy costs and energy bills.
It would shave off GDP,
putting our debt-to-GDP ratio even worse,
even if it was just for two weeks.
Just two weeks.
and there would be lasting damage
through locked and forward contracts.
Consumer confidence would be
absolutely in the crapper
and there would be politics fallout
that would just absolutely be a sweep
for the Democrats in the midterms.
So if, if, I just can't believe
Trump would be willing to do that.
I think he's boasting.
He has to be boasting.
I'd like to know what you think.
And then before we wrap up
the update segment,
because this is kind of
a shorter episode this week
because it's a lot of macro stuff.
And I know you guys, we don't need to, you know, we don't need to overdo it.
But I just wanted to play one of my favorite J-Pow clips of all time.
I should probably save it for when he's actually no longer the chair.
But I have it now, and I just have to play this moment.
Just love it.
We expect growth to moderate in coming quarters Of course J by refusing to trade climate change like this is a risk that we are putting in us So climate change protesters break in
during the International Monetary Fund
24th Annual Research Conference
when Jay Powell is up on stage.
Thank you very much.
Yep.
Thank you.
Just close the fucking door.
Close the door.
I love that moment.
Just close the door.
What's your problem here?
Just close the door.
It's the best moment Jay Powell will ever have up on stage.
And I'm here for it.
I'm just so here for it.
All right, I have, I don't know if you've noticed,
I have never played a clip of Eric Trump on the show.
I don't really, you know, I don't really, doesn't really seem newsworthy.
However, American Bitcoin is putting in the proof of work.
They are growing while other Bitcoin mining companies are pivoting to AI.
American Bitcoin is focusing on Bitcoin mining.
And there was the Bitcoin conference.
And it seems like they're very much all in.
And I wanted to play this because, well, the conviction seems, it seems believable to me.
And I'd like to know your take.
Well, let me hop in here, guys.
You know, the compression of Bitcoin is unbelievable.
You know, I think I was the first guy on a stage like this wearing a suit, maybe in this industry.
And that was about, you know, three years ago advocating for this industry.
And now every single day you see what they're doing.
You see what Charles Schwab is doing.
You see what JP Morgan is doing.
I mean, you know, you literally had Jamie Dimon two years ago that was laughing at Bitcoin, not believing in the asset.
Now, all of a sudden, using JP Morgan Chase, you can go out.
you can borrow against your Bitcoin holdings to get home mortgages. You have Charles Schwab that's
about to, you've seen all the announcement that they've made, but they're about to custody
Bitcoin for the first time. This is the low cost provider of all wealth management in the country
with 30 million bank accounts. And they're going all in. You see what they've done at BlackRock.
You see what they're doing with all the ETFs that you just mentioned, the most successful
ETFs in history. In history, every single one of them that launches has become an incredible
success. Now, all of a sudden, they're adding on top of that. They're adding yield strategies
on top of that. Then you look at what Michael Saylor's doing, and he's a dear friend and doing
a phenomenal job. You look at what Simon and Metaplanet's doing, doing a phenomenal job. You
look at what 21 Capital is doing. Guys, they are buying and they are not selling. You look at what
I'm doing at American Bitcoin mining. We are we are mining and we are not selling. We believe in
the asset. You look at all the companies, how they're growing their Bitcoin treasuries. You
look at private companies like the Trump Organization, how we're treasuring Bitcoin
because we believe in it as an asset class. We are compressing Bitcoin. There is a limited supply
and that limited supply, as much as we like to throw around 21 million, it's not 21 million.
People have lost it. But beyond that, people are not selling it. People are holding it.
Bitcoin is becoming sticky and it's no longer, you know, the DeFi crowd who are incredible,
the young kids who really believed in digital assets and were buying Bitcoin when it was $10
and $50 and $100. Now you have the biggest institutional accounts. You have governments,
you have the United States government that holds 300,000 Bitcoin and will not sell it.
You have the Middle East that is using energy from cities that they don't need to cool in the
have to cool in the middle of summer because it's hot as hell. Guess what they're using all that
extra capacity for? To mine Bitcoin. Guys, it is compressing and it is compressing hard. And
honestly, I was saying this backstage. We were talking a little while. I'm more confident in
Bitcoin today at the number that it's at today than I was in Bitcoin when it was 125,000. Because
honestly, what Bitcoin's done in the last six months relative to what Bitcoin's done in the
the previous three years is transformational.
I mean, this rush is only getting going
and we are in the greatest period,
I think, in the history of crypto.
And just hold on, guys.
Hold on.
It's coming.
I'm wrapping up at block height 948,184.
The current Bitcoin price, the U.S. dollar, is $181,510.
That makes our sats per dollar 1,227 satoshis to one U.S. dollar.
That's the number I like.
That is a 35.4% decline from our all-time high 211 days ago.
Whoa.
We have a retarget date of May 15th with an estimated difficulty change upward of 1.2%.
Slight downward on the reachable Bitcoin nodes at 23,866 this week, but still not too bad.
And you've got, whoa, look at this.
Huh, three stats of eBite right now for fees.
Whoa, it's getting expensive out there.
Better pass BIP 110 fast.
All right, we are down 0.1% on 24 hours.
We are up 7.3% on the last seven days.
And we are up 16.8% in the last 30 days.
That makes our year down only 13% right now.
How about that?
Man, look at all this.
Things are moving on the Bitcoin network right now.
People are taking advantage of the low transaction fees.
And more mining capacity is coming online.
The network's strong.
This week in Bitcoin.show, that's where the links are at.
This was episode 103.
My goal is to give you a show that doesn't get distracted too much,
at least not too much, by the emotions around what's happening,
but just focuses on the signal.
Something for you, your friends, your family, your future, your business,
whatever it might be.
So let me know how I did with the boost.
Let me know what you think about Sailor now selling his Bitcoin, all of that.
Any thoughts you've had during the production, of course, also, if there was a story in Bitcoin that you thought I missed this week that should have been covered, boost in and I'll try to incorporate it in the next episode.
I'm always happy to do that as well.
Now, you know, I'm going to leave you with a value for value track.
And what I've got this week is a little different than what I normally play.
This is the intro by Death of Rock and Roll.
I'll see you back here next week.
If you boost during the track,
95% of the sats will go to the artist.
Thank you for joining me.
guitar solo
We'll be right back.
guitar solo
I'm rock and roll
Get down, get down
I know I've taken things
I did not need
It's so blatantly obvious
I've adapted to the life
Turned me thin and gray
I can't watch a dirty thing
You're gonna want the one that's the truth
And I did it in the name of pleasure in me
What they grow like you
To feed upon the lights of you
The waves go out, the waves go in
The undertow separates them
You gotta know by now which way you're going
Run, motherfucker
Run
Run, motherfucker
You better run
You see the light, you're delivering
Way too fast for the other
Pick up the pace, grind your faith
No, no, no, no, no.
Burn, motherfucker.
Out, out.
You're gonna burn, motherfucker.
You burn out.
You see the light that you're living for the flame.
Move back.
Pick up the pace.
Put the blinds on your face.
Raise your glass to that.
We took a half to five
When I get old and back
There ain't no going back
Go running through the middle of the sea
Black and gray, don't let you need
Touching jacks through the door
Can't let the motherfucking turn some more
I've been doing this a long, long time
Couple tunnels that's running up my mind
You all along what I'm getting
Look at me, I'm a fucking wreck
Way too fast
Now you're done, motherfucker