But why would you hold a central bank backed by nothing fiat note that is guaranteed to lose value
over time? Why would anybody do that? Like none of this surprises me because I've come to appreciate
just how evil people can be and it's way worse than most people would ever acknowledge. It's
very clear and obvious that Epstein was interested in trying to co-opt Bitcoin and Bitcoiners and
Bitcoin companies. Bitcoin is a journey and just because you pick up the Bitcoin standard and you
finally read it and you're like, wow, this makes a lot of sense, doesn't mean suddenly that your
eyes have been open to all of the things I've learned over the last four years. The governments,
I think, in the world have figured this out, whether intentionally or just as a byproduct of
how things have happened over time, that it's the people that are the most desperate,
that are the most easy to manipulate.
way podcast thank you for tuning in today on the show i have adam somek a good friend of mine
awesome guy building the space we cover uh the epstein files price action treasury co's why he
finds one of strategies products particularly interesting cover a lot of ground and he gives
a very very good unpopular opinion at the end so stay tuned for that i think you're going to
really enjoy this conversation hey everyone like i said in the intro i have adam here adam
welcome back to the bitcoin way podcast thank you michael appreciate you having me it's always
always a pleasure to be a part of this it's always this one's always fun we get to catch up a lot more
often these days than we used to so it's been a lot of fun uh getting to have you uh on banter
on our spaces a lot of different things so dude i i'm really prepared for this because i think we
have a lot of things we could potentially talk about where do you want to start the conversation
well this is always easy um so for anyone that doesn't know michael and i talk quite a bit
offline. So we're always good for a rant and a ramble, but, um, you know, we definitely want to
keep things entertaining and on topic, but my, uh, uh, I think what I want to do is kind of maybe
just start with some recent events and expand on, on where we are. Um, the most obvious one,
I think that the people are, are interested in is, is the price and that's fair. Uh, as of right now,
the price is low as far as, you know, recent history. People are feeling it. It's not low for
Bitcoin, right? Bitcoin's still up significantly, you know, and it's more extended history. But
over the last few years, it's feeling like quite bearish. And so obviously we have a lot playing
into that that we can see. But then there's also just the stuff that we can't see. And that's kind
of more of where I like to put most of my understanding in, you know, what Bitcoin does.
And that is just simply that the price action is a reflection of a lot of factors that play
into it that aren't necessarily, you know, one like event that happens, for example.
So obviously we have the Epstein files that have apparently been released.
and you know my belief on that is that you know there's some truth to them if not all true I don't
know if they were released in its entirety my current position is kind of I saw actually a
video of Simon Dixon on BTC sessions and he goes through that in detail from his perspective and I
I agree with most of what he says.
And that's mostly that, you know, the Epstein stuff is, well, it used to be a conspiracy theory that Epstein was connected to this giant, you know, ring of deep state Mossad stuff.
And it turns out that in the Epstein files themselves, it points directly to that.
So no longer a conspiracy theory.
We are, you know, vindicated. But my point is, is that's, of course, what I agree with at this point. And the official narrative is like, it's so bad. Like, how do you not agree with it? You know, like they implicated themselves. And it's so vile and disgusting that it has to be true. Right. I don't know. Maybe I'm not even thinking that.
But I think I think the big the the thing that most people fail to appreciate is the depth of potential human depravity.
Like none of this surprises me because I've come to appreciate just how evil people can be.
And it's way worse than most people would ever acknowledge or or buy into.
And I think we're I think I have a feeling we're scratching the surface in the Epstein files from what we've seen so far.
And I don't know how conspiratorial I am about, I mean, I'm not afraid to be conspiratorial because we've proven to be right so many times the last, you know, six years.
But I have a feeling these were not, because I've said for the longest time, we're never going to see the Epstein files.
And so I think we're still seeing just a hint of really the depth of them. But I have a feeling it was coordinated in some way to send a message to people, to someone or maybe to many people who aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing and have been blackmailed or what have you.
And it's like, hey, we really will produce some of this. And the next wave is going to be worse if you don't do X, Y or Z. So that's kind of where I tend to fall.
I think that's exactly right. Obviously, there's in my from my perspective, there's no way for me to know how much whether or not that that's fully true. But the incentives point us in that direction. And, you know, I think it was Simon Dixon. His point was, you know, they they showed us exactly what they wanted us to see. Right. That's what they released. They released what they wanted us to see. And I think that's a good way to put it.
I don't know if there's necessarily a plan to release more, but I think this ties into a lot of events that happen.
I would probably even throw, you know, the Charlie Kirk assassination in there and that it was a message.
Right. To some degree, I don't think that it was a lone, you know, crazy, you know, ideologically confused person.
I think that, you know, personally, I think that the incentives point to a much more involved event.
I think that this was connected much higher.
There are a lot of reasons for that.
That's just my take, my philosophy based off of the evidence that I've seen and the research that I've done.
Unfortunately, I spent way too much time on that.
But yeah, it's just it's all really sad and and very gross and evil and disgusting.
But I think that, you know, there's certainly maybe not like a singular binary like type of group, but that there is a group of people out there that we often refer to as like, you know, the elite or I don't have different words for them.
They're just they're just the pedophile class to me, you know, so that, you know, they control our money.
They control our media, our news.
They control our companies.
And I think that it's even seeped into Bitcoin, too.
So I think that's kind of sad.
But there's a lot of ties.
I mean, we could even see from the Epstein files that it's very clear and obvious that Epstein was interested in trying to co-opt Bitcoin and Bitcoiners and Bitcoin companies.
So it's not to say that it has been, just that the documents very clearly point to the fact that that was part of the goal.
And so what's the kind of price action?
You started with price action and jumped to Epstein.
Do you think there's a tie between the two?
I actually do.
And I don't think it's logical, which tells me that it's very temporary.
I think this is like the latest Fuddice flavor.
And they found something, I think, that works.
And I say this because my Normie friends and family, I kid you not,
they're reaching out to me asking me if I believe that Epstein is Satoshi.
like this is literally the current thing and that is that jeffrey epstein is satoshi nakamoto
which is absolutely crazy like if you know anything about bitcoin at all it's very clear
that he's not and that's and it's fine if you're not to that point yet but my point is it's like
it's it's so incredibly outrageous to say that jeffrey epstein is satoshi and we don't know who
it is and sure, you know, whatever it could be, you know, let's just assume it is, even if it was,
it doesn't matter. It's a protocol. Um, but Jeffrey Epstein, whoever Satoshi Nakamoto is,
was very clearly a very humble person. Um, I would even go as far as to say there was,
you know, I, I don't know if I necessarily like using this word because of some of the
connotation, but there's a lot of altruism there just in the sense that it was self, you know,
self-sacrifice for a lot of things that he did for humanity. Um, and, uh, I mean, he, he took no
recognition. Um, he didn't take any of the, the wealth or the fame that could have come along with
that. Neither of those things, I don't believe Jeffrey Epstein could have done, which are,
you know, those, those, those two qualities and are very unique, uh, to humans, you know,
people are naturally boastful and selfish and prideful. And, uh, I think that, you know, it's,
it's very, that's a very clear indicator of who is not Satoshi, in my opinion. Um, that's a good
litmus test. So if it's somebody who wants to take credit for things and is, you know, addicted
to money, fame, uh, popularity, you know, whatever, um, that is very, a very clear indicator that we
are not talking about satoshi yeah yeah well the first of the price so the price dipped post epstein
release but it was dipping before that do you like i tend to think there's manipulation happening
i agree and i i would just say that just to be clear everything together i think sorry michael
there's a there's a delay in our connection i think um what i was going to say is uh to tie
everything together i think there is a coordinated attack happening right now um i think it started
with some, you know, the World War three, you know, scares, it started with the government
shutdown.
Right.
And then we had, you know, a lot of stuff geopolitically, the threats, you know, uh, in the world
we had, you know, attacks that had happened.
Um, we had the Iran stuff, which is still going today.
Um, and then, you know, uh, we had of course the Epstein stuff.
So there's a lot of stuff that was directed to, you know, let me just say a lot of stuff that directly affected the Bitcoin economics.
And then more recently, specifically Bitcoin, rather than just the global economy.
I think the Bitcoin thing, I think this is intentionally directed FUD, fear, uncertainty and doubt, directed specific to Bitcoin in the Epstein files.
I think that was part of the intent.
Like I said, they released what they wanted us to see,
and they included everything that they could
about the activity around Bitcoin.
And that's fine.
It's unfortunate anybody has gotten involved with Epstein.
But I saw on the news the other day,
forgive me for not knowing who this person is,
but there's some high-profile individual that was kidnapped.
Did you hear about this?
No.
some lady from some talk show on
Normieland
broadcast stations, whatever
her mother was abducted, I guess
and again, I'm sorry, I don't know all the details, but high profile
individual's mother was kidnapped or adult-napped
whatever, they were abducted and the
the ransom is in Bitcoin. And it seems interesting to me. I mean, it's not interesting. It's like
a very clear red flag to me. But every time that they bring up this abduction,
they are almost required by their overlords to mention that the ransom is being held
in Bitcoin.
Yeah.
So,
yeah,
I mean,
that,
the reason why I say that's a red flag is I,
I actually made a post about this,
but Bitcoin is by far the worst way to hold somebody for ransom because it's a
100% public ledger.
And anybody of this high profile who's tried to do something like this has been
traced.
Bitcoin's not,
Bitcoin on layer one is not very private.
It's very easy to trace people on Bitcoin at some point.
You know, there is some amount of,
I would say, pseudonymity in Bitcoin on layer one
that you can preserve if you're really good
at that sort of thing and you know what you're doing.
But layer one is extremely not private
when it comes to anything else.
I mean, take ransom and bananas for all I care, but just don't do it in Bitcoin if you want to get away with the crime.
So my thoughts are it's not going to go through the payment.
Nobody's going to get paid in Bitcoin because if they did, we'd all track it.
And would they be found out in a matter of hours?
It's just, I think, anti-Bitcoin propaganda is what this is.
This is just meant to slander Bitcoin.
so i i put that in the same category of all these other things and i'm looking at these everything
that's happening as a whole and that's why i come to the conclusion that there is a coordinated attack
right now on bitcoin um yeah i think it's yeah i yeah no i i think it it only makes sense
that said what i what i will say is that we are still sufficiently early in bitcoin that
when when the world looks to be in turmoil as it has with Venezuela, Iran, the Epstein fight,
all of these things happening, there are very few people who run to Bitcoin as a safe haven
today, the way that they run to something like gold. Right. And there are, you know,
relatively large numbers of people who are somewhat tourists of Bitcoin, who leave Bitcoin when when
the world looks to be in turmoil. And so while we understand that Bitcoin is the safe haven
from a fiat denominated price perspective, it doesn't look like it when you've got casual
Bitcoin holders selling amidst turmoil and no new people running into Bitcoin, but instead
running into things like gold. When we reach sufficient adoption, when education reaches
you know a broader cohort of people then suddenly i think in these times of you know war and all of
the things that we see in the world today then i think bitcoin just flies right but what do you
think one percent of the world understands bitcoin in some fundamental way maybe less
you know it's it stands to reason in my mind that we are going to see sell-offs however the the
extent of the dumping that we've seen, I think is, is evident, uh, as evidence of, I don't know,
wall street manipulation, nation state manipulation. I don't know. It could be a lot of things. Um,
certainly with margin calls, people have to sell off their Bitcoin to meet margin calls right now.
So when the price dips a little bit, it might dip a lot more because of that. There are really a lot
of variables, some of them probably nefarious actors and others just, you know, basic economics.
yeah the leverage stuff isn't new um you know we've been dealing with this for a long time uh
margin trading but but the downside effects can be the same in in any era of lending and there's
probably more of it going on there are more lending platforms and things like that yeah i
mean to me to me that seems like at least it's going to have some effect on the price when people
have to sell off to me you know to make their margin call oh yeah i was going to have downward
pressure. Definitely wasn't disagreeing with you. I think that that's a, I mean, this, this is why
we see all this volatility in Bitcoin. And until people learn, you know, not to play with fire,
they're going to keep getting burned. Um, and unfortunately people just, I mean, not everybody,
but a lot of people never learned the people like, you know, these are the tourists that you were,
you were taught referencing a moment ago. They come in, they treat Bitcoin like a speculative
asset. And then they just trade the chart. They trade the fundamentals, whatever they're trading
it, right? Some of them start to, you know, get more and more out on the risk curve. And they,
you know, try to make their money back, or they want to make a quick buck. And they're
increasing their risk profile by taking on additional leverage. And the way that that
looks today is a lot of people are getting Bitcoin backed loans, right? Because they're popular
these days. And that is a form of leverage, right? Especially if you're using it to buy more Bitcoin,
which I've actually done. I did it once just as a test. I wanted to see, you know, the process,
what it was like. I used the strike Bitcoin backed loan because a lot of people ask me about it.
And so I did it a very, you know, the minimal amount that I could do. And, you know, it ended up being a terrible idea because, you know, I did that when it was $110,000. Everybody thought it was going to $200,000. And here we are.
So I think that, you know, I would just say I've never recommended that the general person go out and get a Bitcoin backed loan.
Like for most people, I would say don't like just don't do that.
There are way more risks than most people understand for, you know, if you really know what you're doing and you can manage your risk appropriately.
And this is something that you have a lot of experience in and you're not going to listen to me anyway.
And that's fine. But the general the general person thinks that Bitcoin backed loans are some like silver bullet. They're not. You're giving up a lot of your a lot of the value of what Bitcoin was created to provide is is being given up to some a third party. You have counterparty risk now, most of which you don't even understand or recognize, most of which is not even public knowledge. Right.
So it's way riskier than most people realize.
Not to mention on top of that, it's a terrible deal.
It's a fully collateral.
I mean these days most popular Bitcoin backed loans are fully collateralized and you paying extremely high interest rates compared to essentially any type of a loan You could go get a standard fiat loan from your bank that
has zero collateral attached to it, meaning that the bank is taking all of the risk
and get an interest rate much lower than what you're getting in the open market for Bitcoin.
And I understand. That's just the rates that exist. And that's what Jack Mahler has said
many times, and that's fine. I'm not taking any jabs at him or strike or whatever. I've actually
said many times that the interest rates on Bitcoin-backed loans need to be way higher
because the people that are taking that risk understand what the alternative is, which is
Bitcoin. And the rest of the system is collapsing. And the rest of the system is propped up through
different types of government subsidies and bailout structures.
Right. So, yeah, my point in the past has been if if the company that is offering you a Bitcoin back loan is giving you a rate lower than their than their inflation.
Right. Not necessarily the CPI talking about the real their real inflation inflation rate, then they are losing.
Right. And they can't that that model is not sustainable. And I've I've typically said the range needs to be somewhere between like 10 and 15 percent.
So if you're getting a Bitcoin back loan lower than 10%, you're playing with fire and you are probably going to get burned because that's not a sustainable model if the real inflation is higher than that because that business will be going out of business.
You also mentioned, you know, the price cycles and, you know, how people see Bitcoin.
There are, like you mentioned, the tourists that come in.
I think these are like the people that come in for their first taste.
this is probably, you know, I like to, I believe, I still believe in cycle theory, by the way. So
I'll say, you know, when I say cycles, I'm just referring to the four-year Bitcoin cycle.
I think those still exist. And I think that as of right now, I'm, I'm, I'm becoming vindicated,
vindicated on that. A lot of people would say, you know, we're in a super cycle. We're not going
to see, you know, a bear market. It's kind of looking a little bear market to me right now.
So I don't know. We'll see. I'm still optimistic, but and I'm definitely not selling. Right. I don't I'm never I'm never going to go back to Bitcoin. Bitcoin is my money. I'm all in on Bitcoin and I'm never going to change that. But my point is, there are also the other people who have seen this happen before.
Obviously, Bitcoiners that have been around for a while, that it's not our first rodeo, you know, it's very clear to see.
But also like the people that are maybe not necessarily, they haven't been holding for super long.
Maybe this is still their first cycle that they've held.
But these are people that have been watching Bitcoin for multiple cycles.
and so if you haven't really seen Bitcoin for a full four-year cycle
it's really easy to look at this through the lens of how you see everything else that's speculative
because you're seeing Bitcoin as a speculation
but the signal to me in all this noise is
I'm getting a lot of conversations
I'm having a lot of conversations with people that
haven't been, I would say, sufficiently orange-pilled or people that are new that are telling me that they are buying the dip.
And I think that that's really cool because they're telling me every dollar that Bitcoin goes down, they're buying more Bitcoin.
And these are people that in the past wouldn't touch Bitcoin.
And they've dipped their toe in at this point.
And, you know, these are these are like the what I would call, you know, last over the last cycle, they were no coiners this cycle.
They're buying the dip. And that's what that's what I'm seeing, like in my circle.
And so obviously, I know there are a lot of a lot of people that are, you know, scared of the current current price action.
And they are just jumping ship because they think it's going to just keep going lower.
literally they know that bitcoin is going to infinity and uh they probably can't time the
market yeah i i so i pulled up i don't have the original tweet but i have a few screenshots so
someone said that yesterday they had six years of bitcoin stacking get liquidated monthly interest
was over a thousand dollars not worth the cost to maintain through a bear market so he's starting
over someone else replied to that said uh i wrote three and a half million down to a hundred k
on a combo of Bitcoin, MSTR, and long calls on both.
It's horrible living to fight another day though.
Someone said,
sold about 90% of my stock portfolio yesterday.
New Bitcoin loan liquidation price is 61K.
I mean, like went from about 450K
to now about 175K.
80 of that 175 is locked up in a loan
that I'm constantly having to add collateral to.
I don't think,
I did not think the bull run would end in October
and did not anticipate falling to these levels as fast sucks but nothing we can do and so i guess
here's kind of my my observation on like the loans first of all philosophically i think you're feeding
the fiat engine like i think you're you're playing fiat games second while the qualifier here is that
you're an adult and you get to make your own decision and that the companies aren't necessarily
responsible for the fact that you're bad at risk management. But practically, most people are bad
at risk management, or they just don't understand that so many factors are beyond their control.
I did not see price, you know, fiat denominated price dipping into the $60,000 range.
It could go lower. I have no idea where it's going. But it doesn't matter because I've chosen
because I cannot make that assessment with any level of certainty. And I have no idea what Wall
Street or nation states are going to do. I have no idea what the next FUD is going to be. I don't
know if Quantum is, you know, or Epstein being Satoshi, what would like how much that FUD is
going to affect price action. I'm just not playing that game. Philosophically, I can't like, I just
feel completely unaligned with anyone who is opting to shill those products. But practically,
it just doesn't make sense to me. My goal is to have more sats, not more dollars. And
what these lending products are is a, an engine for producing dollars for your disposal. And
I just, I have no interest. And so when, you know, yeah, the terms are clear, uh, you're an adult,
right. But like, that doesn't make it smart for most people. I think kind of the point you're
making, if you're a professional investor, you understand what you're getting into. You're,
you're ready to get, you know, margin called when Bitcoin dips to $40,000 or whatever it could end
up going like, okay, good for you. You're not going to listen to, you know, you or I anyway,
for the average person, like, I don't know. I'm just tired of hearing these ads everywhere. And,
you know, like, Hey, you're an adult, you can make this decision. And it's like,
just don't put people in that position in my mind. You know, it's, it's a shitty product.
And I wish people would generally just kind of leave it alone.
I agree. I'm actually, if anybody's curious, what I do, you know, what my stance is, is I believe that the best way to go about benefiting from Bitcoin is to replace the money that you use with a better form of money.
Get rid of fiat and replace it with Bitcoin. And that means, yes, that means spending Bitcoin. Right. And people have a hard time with that.
And I think that's okay. I think it's okay to take that huge process and condense it into small incremental steps. I didn't do it. It took me years to get to the point where I am, where I see Bitcoin as my base money now. But most people, it takes some time.
And so I think that it's okay to just to say both. I think it's okay to say the eventual long-term goal is to use Bitcoin as money. And I think that there are ways that you can make steps to get there.
And if somebody says, you know, they're not ready to replace all of their fiat with Bitcoin, that's probably not a good thing to push them because they're going to do the same thing that these other people are doing.
They're going to freak out when the price dips price, you know, one Bitcoin equals one Bitcoin.
But when the dollar exchange rate dips, they freak out and then they jump ship.
And then those people end up not coming back until the Bitcoin price is much, much higher, which ends up damaging, you know, the their their view of Bitcoin.
So I see some of these like fiat instrument steps as useful tools.
And by the way, I'm not necessarily saying that you should get a Bitcoin back loan.
That is not what I'm saying.
But there are other ways.
I was having a conversation with somebody last night about he told me that he wants to move on to a Bitcoin standard.
And the way he wants to do it is he wants to receive his deposit, direct deposit from his employer into Bitcoin.
And so he's going to get he's basically buying all of the Bitcoin that he can with the fiat as he gets paid.
and then he's going to use credit cards
to pay for the things that he used to in his life
and then pay off those credit card bills with his Bitcoin.
And I think that is a great first step.
I don't think that is the end goal.
And you said it earlier that it feeds the fiat machine
because it really does.
We have a saying called fix the money, fix the world.
and we say this because we have to fix the base money
in order to fix the problems that the broken money caused
and Bitcoin can only do this if you're using Bitcoin
in a particular way
you have to use Bitcoin using Bitcoin itself
and not through a third party
self-custodial Bitcoin is the only way
that this fix the money, fix the world happens
otherwise if you're using any of the systems that we've already talked about with these
fiat rails so to speak it doesn't move us that much closer to fixing the world and changing the
money so but it is a good first step because psychologically what i was talking about i think
that's a good a good call for a lot of people who are new and using you know credit cards for example
You'll have to make your own decision on whether or not you believe in doing that.
Credit cards are obviously their own form of risk.
But my point is, I think that's a good step because telling somebody to go, you know, zero fiat is very, very difficult.
I mean, even I'm not, quote unquote, completely zero fiat.
Like I use I still use FI. I still have bills that I have to pay in fiat.
I still pay my taxes, admittedly.
You know, that's an unfortunate circumstance, but, you know, I still do.
So, yeah, I think I would never give somebody the advice to not pay their taxes.
But if you do fall into that category, I have full sympathy for you and you're fighting a good fight.
I appreciate what you do, but that's not me.
I will not publicly ever endorse not paying taxes.
It's just a dumb thing to do, and it's a good way to put a target on your back.
So not something I wouldn't mind me doing.
But the truth is bigger than the facts on some of this stuff, right?
Like the reality is, yeah, I've got fiat bills to pay.
I haven't orange-pilled every local producer of goods and services that I'd like to.
And so I obviously have that obligation. I think the more important thing is, to your point, I mean, I think this is really the kicker.
Like Bitcoin is a journey. And just because you pick up the Bitcoin standard and you finally read it and you're like, wow, this makes a lot of sense,
doesn't mean suddenly that your eyes have been open to all of the things I've learned over the last four years.
and I am 100% positive.
Like I'm still finding ways to lower my time preference
in my daily life.
Four years from now,
I'm gonna probably be in a very different place
in terms of conviction, not just about Bitcoin,
but about a lot of things.
And I think, yeah, I think to expect everyone
to read a book, listen to a podcast
and suddenly be as orange-billed as we are
makes no sense.
That said, where I get frustrated at times
is the relative lack of curiosity.
And again, I'm sympathetic
because four years ago, that was me.
Like, you know, I was doing all the normie stuff
and it was just a matter of curiosity.
I think what's maybe most frustrating
is in 10 years,
how many people in my life
are going to be kicking themselves.
And they're like,
I knew a guy who talked about Bitcoin,
told me I should study Bitcoin,
worked for a Bitcoin company,
hosted a bitcoin podcast like most people don't have someone like that in their life they might
have like a guy who's casually in bitcoin maybe it's got some xrp and ethereum but like most people
don't have someone who's like guys this is what's going on in the world you need to buy bitcoin
and most of them are just you know sitting on the sidelines doing their fiat thing and
it's frustrating because i'm gonna i don't want to have like a told you so moment and i'm not
never going to rub it in their nose or anything.
I'm just not that type of person,
but man,
I'm going to feel like it,
you know?
So some people,
some people might say Bitcoin,
as I told you so money.
Yeah.
I mean,
they're going to have fun staying poor.
I'm just not going to say that to their face.
Yeah.
I,
I think the way,
the way that I like to frame it is this is my advice.
And this is,
this advice would apply to,
general people. So I think that, you know, earlier I talked about, you know, the recommendations
about Bitcoin backed loans, right? I don't recommend that to the general population. This
is one that I do recommend, right? So if you're just, if you don't have a strategy, you don't
necessarily know what you're doing, maybe you're new. This is what I recommend doing. I recommend
And switching your money to Bitcoin, providing value to the economy and society around you in a way that allows you to reap a reward, turn that reward into Bitcoin, hold Bitcoin, save more than you spend, and then spend in Bitcoin when you can.
And when you can't, sell it for fiat.
A lot of people have a hard time with that last part. And I think that that is just some like, I don't know, zealotry. Right. I think that we're like against, I mean, obviously, if you're a Puritan, I consider myself a Puritan, a Bitcoin Puritan. You know, I think that you should sell your Bitcoin for fiat as little as possible. And I think that's a great attitude and perspective to have.
To say that you shouldn't ever do it, though, I think that's going to cause more pain for people than help.
And so once you get over the fact that you realize you can sell your Bitcoin for fiat and not feel bad about it, it opens up a lot more freedom for you.
Because now you're not worried about holding dollars anymore.
And holding dollars is really dumb.
mathematically, on paper, even ethically speaking, like holding dollars,
you can't make too many good arguments to hold dollars. I mean, dollars are one of the better
fiat currencies out there in the world. And so this same logic would apply to every other
fiat currency as well. But why would you hold a central bank backed by nothing fiat note that
is guaranteed to lose value over time. Why would anybody do that? So that's why I say upgrade your
money, hold your money in Bitcoin. You can still use, you know, dollars in the fiat system as a
tool. There's nothing wrong with selling a little bit of Bitcoin to go buy groceries. When the
reason is because all of your money's in Bitcoin. Now, people listen to me say something like that,
And they think what I'm telling them to do is sell off their Bitcoin indefinitely. That is not what I'm saying. I'm not saying only buy Bitcoin once and then sell that stack until it goes to zero. That's the absolute opposite of what I'm saying. Always have more Bitcoin than you did the week or the month before.
Right. Continually increase the amount of Bitcoin that you have, which that comes into the part of where I said provide value to the world. Right. You need to maybe work a job or be self-employed, do something so that you can get more Bitcoin over time. And then with those profits, you know, you pay your bills, you live your life, you buy the things you need and you make sure that you have more Bitcoin at the end of the month. You do all of those things. You will be wildly successful. That is my opinion.
um yeah and that's i agree the thing you got to keep in mind is the only thing more scarce than
bitcoin is time and so i could probably find a grocery store within a thousand miles of me
that i could pay for all of my groceries in bitcoin the practical reality is i've got a
family i've got work to do i i can't drive a thousand miles to go to a grocery store
you know even though i could pay in bitcoin so i'm going to have to exchange some of my bitcoin
for fiat in order to buy my next bag of groceries. What you can do though, is within your community,
within your personal life, try to find ways. Like right now, I've talked about this before,
I'm trying to orange billing my church. I'm trying to start them off on a Bitcoin treasure,
get them accepting tithes and offerings in Bitcoin. My goal this summer is when the farmer's market
that happens five minutes from my house opens up, everyone who I, maybe all of them, but certainly
the people who I buy from, I'm going to walk around and try to orange pill all of them. I'm
already in process on one of my, uh, my big suppliers of, uh, eggs and meat and that, um,
you know, raw goat milk, that gal down the road from me, like I'm paying her in Bitcoin. Um,
and so just finding ways, like who are the people in your life who you are, you know,
want to be purchasing from that you can influence to, to accept Bitcoin, like do that. So that way
You don't have to sell your Bitcoin for fiat because that, you know, that's suboptimal.
Yeah.
But yeah, I'm with you in the meantime, even as a Puritan, we still live in a fiat world
just because I'm operating on Bitcoin standard doesn't mean the rest of the world wants to
play ball.
So do what is reasonable.
But I guess my encouragement is do everything you just said.
Just don't get lazy.
Try to orange pill your church.
Try to orange pill your local farmer.
Try to orange pill, you know, the people who you're interacting with, your barber, you
know, whoever.
and at least give them an opportunity to understand that you can study this thing I can pay you in better money And if they opt out and it easy to switch to someone else great
If it's, you know, 500 miles or a thousand miles away, you're probably not going to do
that, understandably.
But just do what is within reason, I guess.
And don't be complacent.
I agree.
A lot of a lot of I run into a lot of people that fall into the category that, you know,
They bought Bitcoin and they heard somebody tell them to buy Bitcoin and never sell it.
And so they're at the stage where it's still a speculation to them.
And that's what that is.
If you're buying Bitcoin as an investment and you're holding it, you're not doing anything else with it except waiting for the price to go up.
You were speculating.
And that's fine.
That's how I got into Bitcoin.
um but those a lot of those same people would also say that it's you know too hard to spend
bitcoin even if they wanted to and it's that's just lazy um i i think it's also adam it's also
dumb investing because there is no company behind bitcoin that you're betting on if you don't
understand the fundamentals of bitcoin buying it doesn't make any sense buying tesla stock because
you think elon musk is going to innovate and and you're going to see a fiat return makes a hell of
lot more sense than buying bitcoin like yeah you're literally buying magic internet money if
you haven't taken time to study bitcoin as far as you're concerned it's just this thing that happens
to go up in value by chance right when you understand bitcoin that's when you realize
you're not investing you're just saving in better money like buying bitcoin is stupid if you think
it's an investment i mean you're gonna you're gonna benefit from that stupidity sure but you're
also going to have not have the conviction and you're going to sell high because and you're going
to think you won because you got more fiat and it's like totally missed the point yeah i agree
and that's fine you know when i first bought bitcoin i was a stupid investor i bought bitcoin
and i didn't really fully know why i bought bitcoin right i mean i had an idea i thought
it was cool i knew a little bit about the technology but i didn't fully completely wrap
my head around all of it which is fine i learned a lot along the way but just like me a lot of
people find themselves in a similar situation where they buy Bitcoin and the price goes up or
somebody they know about Bitcoin and the price went up and, you know, they see, you know, all
these fiat gains that they made. And what that does is it, it, it requires you to ask the question,
why, why does Bitcoin go up in dollar terms? And is it going up in dollar terms, which is
probably the more appropriate framing, framing that we often get to the point to, and that it
It is really just you're measuring against a currency that's collapsing and dying.
And so, you know, I think that I do.
I love that point you made.
If you're buying Bitcoin and you don't know what it is, you're buying it as a speculation and you're like holding it on an exchange and you you have no idea of the value and the benefit of self custody or the peer to peer nature of transacting in a decentralized fashion, then you don't even know what you have.
like you're buying something you're taking all of the value out of the thing that you're buying
and you're trying to apply that same logic into a system that removes and strips out all of that
value so in fairness in fairness the average person buying the s&p 500 has never read a
quarterly port of any company that they're invested in so like i would argue that most
the vast majority of quote-unquote investors are stupid so it's not that like buying bitcoin is less
stupid because at least if past performance is no indication of future performance however
bitcoin has done so much better than the s&p over the last 17 years that if you're going to be dumb
and just assume that something's going to go up forever because it used to bitcoin is a smarter
investment than the s&p 500 however with you know the s&p or with an individual stock you can at
least take a you can say i don't know anything about tesla except elon musk seems like a really
smart guy. I think Tesla is going up over the next decade. Like that's still smarter than
investing in Bitcoin, investing in Bitcoin. If you literally know nothing about Bitcoin,
because at least you're making that determination based on a guy who you have confidence in.
So if you're listening to this, by the way, if anyone listening, first of all, I'd love to hear
your comments on this, but, uh, but I'm, I'm not, I'm not suggesting you don't buy Bitcoin. I'm
saying understand when you buy bitcoin what it is because you're not going to have you're going
to have lettuce hands when we finally do go to 200k you're going to say great i've you know tripled
my investment and now i'm going to sell it and now you've got a bunch of fiat and in 10 years
you're going to be kicking yourself because no one wants your fiat anymore they want your bitcoin
like that's that's how you're going to have to exchange at some point in the future yeah i think
that yeah you're not going to be able there will be a day where the majority of people holding
bitcoin are going to realize that they don't want to hold fiat anymore and when that day comes
you know it's going to be a lot more difficult to acquire bitcoin like right now we can take these
notes that are that have so much proof of work stripped out of them you know dollars you know
you can acquire dollars in this world pretty easily.
A lot of people acquire dollars with zero proof of work.
They use proof of war and proof of printing and they just,
you know,
they leech off of the government basically.
You know,
a good example of that is these Minnesota,
Minnesota and daycares,
right?
You can just spin up a daycare in Minnesota and get tons and tons of free
dollars from the government.
You know, lots of people did this and millions of people all over the world are leeching from this system. You can't do that in Bitcoin. Right. So all this is doing is you're comparing two different systems. And I like to look at the analogy of buckets of water. Right. So you have two buckets of water. One of these buckets doesn't have a bunch of holes in it.
and one of them does.
And so the one that does have holes in it,
you got to keep taking new buckets of water
and filling it up.
And you're losing all this water
because it's got cracks and holes in it.
But the one bucket that doesn't have the holes in it,
that just stays full, right?
When you add to it,
the bucket level,
the water level just rises, right?
And it stays, it's a container.
It's like a battery,
as some people might say.
But it preserves its value
rather than continually loses it
through these subsidies and, you know, leachers and whatever, you know, that welfare is, is,
is an anomaly.
Welfare isn't something that the government should have the power to do.
Right.
By the way, I believe in like the, the, the concept of welfare, but I think it should
be through the church.
I think the church has a responsibility to take care of the poor and the needy, not the
government.
And I think that that's, you know, an important distinction that I have in my own life is I see, you know, people basically becoming dependent on the government. And, you know, that is taking that is taking a lot away from what the church has done historically.
And now, you know, churches are doing much and much less of that.
You know, it's still occurring.
But churches, from what, in my experience, a lot of that focus has been, you know, focused outside of the United States now.
Because, you know, in the United States, people that are poor and needy, they just mooch off of the government.
They don't really need churches anymore.
And I think that that's kind of sad because at one point, the poor and the needy were the most desperate.
And they were the ones that were, you know, coming to the church to seek help.
And they were receiving that help from people that, you know, truly loved and cared about their communities.
And we lost that.
And also could analyze the nature of the person in need.
Yeah.
Like the government just sends you a check and they know nothing about you.
And, you know, at a localized level, and this is why I'm effectively an anarcho-capitalist, is at a localized level,
you can make that determination as an individual, as a smaller institution like a church.
Obviously, I agree with you, but even individuals making these individual determinations to help
people, I think is where it happens most effectively. The struggle, if you're an
institution trying to help people now, is that all of the people who are voluntarily contributing
are being coercively taken from by government at 25, 30, 40 percent. And so they have a lot
less capacity to give either directly or through institutions that they trust. And, uh, and you,
you, to your point, you'd like, you end up with, and this is the, this is the irony and people are
like, well, you need the government to do this. And it's like, is your impression that, that
government welfare has been utopia for people in need? Like, is, is that what you think is that
there just aren't poor people? There aren't homeless people. There aren't people who are
going hungry. Like how many billions of dollars a year are going to these things. And it's half,
half of that billion, you know, those billions a year are staying with government bureaucrats.
Like you lose so much in overhead. It's completely inefficient. And honestly,
they don't really care at the end of the day. Like they don't know these people. They're not
in their community. It's just, it's a vote buying scheme, you know, and it's a dependency scheme.
It's a power play. It, it, uh, is a, it's a good little, um, uh, I don't know, a little way to get
people addicted to the system. And it's a positive feedback loop, right? Because you become,
you reach a state of desperation, which leads to dependency. And I think about this,
it's kind of funny. I think about my chickens. And when I haven't fed them in a while,
they're my best friends. I walk out there, they're all over me. They're, you know,
They're like my little pets. They love me when they're hungry and they haven't had food.
And then after I fed them, they couldn't care less about me.
Like, I'm just, you know, this guy that's a problem to them.
But then as soon as they get hungry again, guess what? They love me again.
And so the governments, I think, in the world have figured this out, whether intentionally or just as a byproduct of, you know, how things have happened over time.
that it's the people that are the most desperate,
that are the most easy to manipulate.
And yeah, it's kind of sad.
I think it's also important to note
that the government doesn't have anything to give people.
They can only take.
The government can't give.
The government can only steal.
And so what welfare is,
it's just theft from somebody else.
That's all this is.
With Bitcoin, you can't do that, right?
You can't just print more Bitcoin
to dilute the value of everybody else on the network.
You have to find a way to get that Bitcoin first.
And the government could do that.
The government could provide value.
The government could operate in a budget surplus.
It's possible.
It's never going to happen.
But it is possible that there are departments in the government
that take in revenue.
And I think there's probably even some individual departments that might even make money.
I believe that the U.S. Postal Service is self-funded.
Is that not true?
No, I don't think so, man.
I think they had like a $9 billion loss a year or two ago.
Well, I don't know.
I know that.
Oh, dude, all you got to do is look at their cert.
Man, if I see a package notification coming from USPS and it's like, hey, it'll be there next week.
I'm like, yeah, I'll see it next month if it shows up.
I don't think they're making money.
Yeah, that is a good point.
If they were truly, that is another connection and problem to make, another connection to make with a similar problem.
And that is that a lot of these heavily dependent institutions and I would, I mean, you can call them companies if you want.
But these monopolies that are essentially government funded and they are subsidized by the government, there's a lot less incentive for them to actually deliver.
And very literally with the U.S. Postal Service, you know, what happens if you receive a package late?
Are you going to go to their competitor?
I mean, sure, there's, of course, private options, too. You've got FedEx and UPS, whatever. But USPS has a very unique position in this country, and they don't necessarily have direct competitors. So they're not going to go out of business if you don't use them. That's the point that I'm trying to make. If a company can't go out of business from making bad decisions, we have a very big problem in our economy.
yeah i agree so i'm gonna i'm gonna take us another direction here i apologize for this
unclean break uh but i want to talk a little bit about uh treasury co's and specifically
well okay let's start with could you give sort of your broad perspective on treasury co's and
then i want you to there's one particular product within the treasury co genre that you've talked
about. And I told you, I was like, dude, you need to explain this to me because I just couldn't care
less about any of this stuff. And you're like, no, dude, there's one thing that actually makes
a difference for Bitcoin. What's your broad perspective? And then talk about STRC.
Sure. Okay. So my broad perspective on Bitcoin treasury companies,
my philosophy is that everybody is going to realize that they need Bitcoin. That applies to
individuals, it applies to private companies, it applies to public companies, it applies to
nation states. Everybody eventually is going to realize that they need more Bitcoin.
And that's just, this is just a manifestation of that. Public companies have come to the conclusion
that holding Bitcoin is better than holding dollars, which I think is great. I think that
there are certain reasons why people would find a lot of interest in Bitcoin treasury companies.
I am one of those people. I happen to have a 401k that allows me to buy stocks of these companies and I can't buy Bitcoin in that 401k. So there are financial products out there, a lot of retirement products.
There are certain funds out there where people are allocating capital to particular businesses for other people.
There are a lot of instruments in the world that can buy Bitcoin treasury company stock and cannot buy Bitcoin.
And I think that a lot of Bitcoiners, that's missed on a lot of Bitcoiners simply because they may not have one of those products.
to put things into perspective for you.
My employer gives me free money for using a 401k, right?
So if I didn't use that 401k
and I just took all of my money
and put it into Bitcoin that way,
I would be leaving money on the table,
which philosophically,
maybe there's an argument to be made
for not doing the 401k route
and then just putting it all into Bitcoin.
And I get that.
Like I've thought about that many times and I might still still just forego the 401k, the free fiat money.
Right. It's it's the the allure of that, you know, free money that kind of hooks you.
But so that that's why I have that's why I own stock in these Bitcoin publicly traded Bitcoin treasury companies.
And that's just because I can buy them with that money and I can't buy Bitcoin.
There's a lot of money out there that is in a similar situation where they could buy something like strategy, but they cannot buy real self-custody Bitcoin without significant penalties or some of them can't do it at all.
And that's why they exist.
I think that they're going to continue to exist and provide value to the world through a Bitcoin perspective so long as that remains true.
Now, what that doesn't mean is that I don't think anybody should go out and buy these Bitcoin treasury company stocks over Bitcoin if you have the ability to do that.
Again, there's a very specific use case for these, and I don't recommend anybody choose them over real Bitcoin.
Back to some of the things we were saying earlier, it's really kind of dumb.
It's a dumb investment to buy the thing in such a way that doesn't allow you to use it in the way that actually creates the value of why it's valuable in the first place.
Just buy the real thing.
Buy real Bitcoin.
You can use the real Bitcoin as real Bitcoin.
You can't use stock in your portfolio to go buy goods and services in the real world in a way that is permissionless and decentralized.
Can't be stopped.
Can't be censored.
Doesn't.
you know, necessarily nobody can print more of it, so to speak. You know, obviously,
strategy themselves, they print a lot of stock, right? That's part of their strategy.
No pun intended, but they print a lot of stock. And so that's my general perspective. I think
they're useful in a certain capacity. And no, I don't recommend buying any of these, any stock
over buying real Bitcoin. Bitcoin is number one. And I don't think that there's really necessarily
any reason to have to buy anything else to make it.
So just buy Bitcoin, real Bitcoin, hold it in self-custody.
If you don't have one of these retirement products
or a reason why you can't buy Bitcoin,
you should be buying Bitcoin.
The more specific subject on STRC,
why is that important?
You want to explain briefly what it is,
like how it functions?
Yeah. All right.
So STRC is a perpetual preferred stock.
It behaves essentially like a bond, right?
And by that, it just, it's, I want to even simplify it even further.
Think of this as a savings account at your bank, right?
You take your dollars and you give your dollars to the bank and they pay you a small interest
rate to hold your dollars for you, right?
It used to be that they would like invest that money and, you know, they would, you know, pay you off of the profits of that money that they were loaning out.
Now with, you know, fractional reserve banking or zero fractional reserve banking, it's all fugazi anyway.
But the point still stands.
Most people are familiar with the fact that they can open a savings account with their bank account and they will pay them a small interest rate with the money that they hold in that account.
That is essentially how STRC works.
You take your fiat, you go put it in this quote unquote bank account, which is STRC,
and they pay you an interest rate.
Now this interest rate is insane, right?
I mean it is orders of magnitude more than you would find anywhere else with a similar type of product So for example like a standard savings bank account is like you know tenths of a percentage right So you like you know
maybe, maybe 10, maybe 10, maybe 30 basis points of interest rate savings on your savings account.
You're making almost nothing. So you put a hundred dollars into your account, you might make 30 cents
in a year, right? That's, that's what you're looking at for a standard bank account. Now
there are something, there are things called high, uh, high yield savings accounts, um, uh,
HYSAs, which pay more, um, but they have a lot more restrictions. So limited number of withdrawals,
for example, um, you know, they're not as, as liquid. They're kind of somewhere in between
like a savings account and a CD certified deposit. So you're, you're, you're not necessarily using it
in a very liquid fashion. Now that is another reason, another way that STRC differs. You can,
it's, you know, it's, it's essentially fully liquid. So you can put your money in and get
your money out of the quote unquote bank example that we're using here essentially at any time.
Now, it does have its own face value.
And so the underlying product can fluctuate in price.
It's not supposed to.
It's designed to stay at a constant price.
But just keep in mind, there is a risk there.
If you're using it as a bank account, if you put $100 in, you're not guaranteed to get $100 out.
So just keep that in mind that there is that risk.
But that's kind of how I see these products from a general high-level view.
It's a savings account that pays you a really, really good interest rate.
So that's what it is.
Now, why is this cool and important to Bitcoin?
And why do I think that Bitcoiners shouldn't necessarily be too worried about it?
I actually, I wrote an article about this a few weeks ago, just kind of explaining like,
you know, you don't necessarily need to understand STRC for it to still be awesome.
You don't need to own it.
I don't own any.
And, you know, I think it's a great product. I don't own any. Why don't I own any? Well, I understand that. I understand what gives us TRC value. Right. And that is the fact that Bitcoin is going to be more performative than STRC yield. Right.
So if STRC is going up right now, I think they set it at 11.25%.
So at the time of us recording this, if you put $100 in, you get $110.
Sorry, $100.
What is it?
Well, if you put $100 in, you make $11.
You make $11.25.
Thank you.
Yeah.
So I've got a young baby and I didn't get much sleep last night.
So I'm doing math half asleep right now.
So if you put $100 in, you get $11.25 at the end of the year.
Now it's paid monthly.
And so you get your 1 12th of that every single month.
So you're making almost $1 a month if you have $100.
That's how that product works.
now why why is this important and also subsequently why should bitcoiners not care well in the article
i kind of go through break down how it works and i explain uh ultimately if you understand
that the value is derived from bitcoin which is growing at a faster rate than the yield you would
just buy that thing because they figured it out right strategy figured out that uh bitcoin is the
better thing to hold and that is how it's generating the revenue for strc so if strc
provides 11.25 bitcoin has to provide more than that or the whole thing fails right which is you
know that's on the table right that's possible very unlikely but it you know could happen so
it's worth saying over what time horizon what's the you know what i mean because like right now
it's like the last what six months it's not generating a lot bitcoin isn't you know up
11%? Just long term, right? So just looking at... So does Saylor's backstop of Bitcoin enable
like a long runway for them to continue providing 11% fiat requirement?
Yeah. So strategy in general is backed by a lot of different things. The first line of defense
that they regularly use is their ATM.
And that means, that stands for at the market.
That literally just means that they print shares
of their own stock, right?
So if they have to pay for things,
for example, they have to pay STRC holders
their dividend.
The first way that they're going to do that
is they're going to go to their MSTR common stock
and they're going to print it.
And then they're going to pay people from that.
And that has, you know, a lot of life in it.
and trades over a 1X MNAB right now,
which just basically means that there's more Bitcoin backing MSTR
than the value of MSTR market cap.
That's a whole other subject.
I don't want to get down that too far,
but just understand that their first line of defense
is they can always sell MSTR,
and they could and would have to sell it all the way to zero
before they defaulted, right?
So if you buy STRC, STRETCH, I know there's a lot of acronyms here, so I apologize.
If you buy STRETCH, which is this product we're talking about where it's kind of like a savings account,
you're going to get your dividend pretty much no matter what until MSTR goes to zero.
Because that's one of their backstops.
They just use the ATM to fund the dividends.
The other thing that they have is they, of course, have now a cash reserve, USD cash reserve. That's dollars. And they're using that, you know, as, you know, almost like a form of collateral for the people that are buying stretch, just so that they have the ability to continue to facilitate those dividend payments.
And then they also have, of course, their Bitcoin, which encompasses more than enough to cover all of these things as well. So they have like three very solid backstops that are well like well more collateralized than what I would see or perceive as any other bond in the market.
I think it's, in my personal opinion, buying stretch, even through the lens of viewing it as a bond, I think has less risk than buying a government bond right now, which is typically preserved to be the lowest risk bond product.
So I think stretch in general, if you're buying a bond product, stretch in my mind is the lowest risk way to do it, even over government debt.
Again, government debt is typically been seen as like the risk free rate, basically.
And you're able to get, you know, more than double your of your yield from buying stretch than you could with the government.
And there's, in my opinion, not much of an advantage at all to buying government debt, to buying treasuries over Stretch.
And so we're talking in a language that a lot of Bitcoiners don't care about.
They don't speak.
And that's fine.
Like, if you're a Bitcoiner and you understand the value of Bitcoin, Stretch has very value to you, in my opinion, very little value to you to hold.
Because you're going to get 11.25%, right?
Big whoop.
You can hold Bitcoin over the long term. You're going to get way more than that. Right. On average, you know, we're probably talking somewhere at least I would say conservatively 25 percent, maybe upwards to 70 or 80 percent over the long.
So, so, so Adam, would you say like, if you're, if you're a hardcore Bitcoiner, but you're retired and you've like, you've got all your savings, all your, you know, quote unquote investments, your savings in Bitcoin, but you're like, I need, I need fiat cashflow because when Bitcoin dips, I can't pay my bills or whatever, but like I can earn 11% using stretch to like, to continue to fund my life.
And like you can sell or spend your, you know, as we sort of described what would be preferable, spend your Bitcoin, replace it.
But like the replacing it, you don't have income anymore.
You're 75 years old.
You replace it with some of that yield from from something like stretch.
Is that kind of like a use case, I guess, that you're suggesting?
Absolutely.
And that's actually in the article that I wrote as well.
You know, where are the exceptions here?
you know, that's probably the biggest one is if, you know, if you don't see yourself
able to weather a four-year Bitcoin cycle, you know, maybe you are elderly, you know,
you're retired, you don't have a ton of time left, you don't want to deal with the volatility
of a four-year Bitcoin cycle. That's a good reason. You know, maybe you're terminally ill.
another good reason. You can count on that yield, that dividend. These are some great examples of
who may be interested in buying Stretch. Now, if you're here to fix the money,
if you're here for the decentralized, permissionless, trustless protocol that allows us to interact
with each other without permission from other people, you don't get any of that with Stretch.
it's very financialized. It's very fiat. You know, it's not, it's not doing anything to progress the
world away from the fractional reserve central banking system, which is one of the main reasons
why I'm here. Right. I think that there's a lot of, a lot of wrong done in the world that could
be fixed from getting out of our banking system that's controlled by, by the Epstein industrial
complex, right? We talked about that. So there's a lot of very close ties between a lot of that,
a lot of those same groups of people and the central bankers. So yeah, that's my point.
You know, if you're a Bitcoiner, don't be too focused on this sort of thing, but also don't
hate on it too much because I want to explain the benefits of stretch of it existing and how that
mechanism works. I'll try not to get too far into the weeds and I'll try to be fairly brief,
but essentially the way it works is there's what's called a par value. All right. That par value for
stretch is $100. That just means that if the product trades at $100, it is at par. That's
like the number that is set that all the other math is based off of. And so 11.25% is the yield
at par. Now, if you buy the product when it's lower than $100, meaning below par, you actually
get more than 11.25% in a dividend. It's more than that because it's whatever the difference is
between the current price and the par value, whatever that difference is. And so I don't know
what that would be called the effective yield. So if you go to strategy.com, you can go through all
their different products. You go to the one that says stretch and you see a category that says
effective yield, that's actually what you're going to get paid if you buy stretch right now.
Okay. So it's important to note that the interest rate that is set by strategy is based off of $100.
And that's also where this kind of comes into play and this whole strategy of why this is such a big
deal. Because once they hit $100, they start issuing ATM for stretch. Okay. So they're printing
shares. And when you go buy new shares, you're not necessarily always buying new shares from
somebody that is selling you stretch in the open market. What you're actually a lot of times doing
is buying stretch directly from strategy that is newly printed shares. What does that do? Well,
that allows them to get a lot of dollars for a product that they're able to essentially almost
create for free. Now there's, you know, there is some benefit to some of the things they do.
and they're adding mechanisms that I believe provide value.
But they take those dollars that they're getting
and they're buying Bitcoin with it,
which is strengthening their balance sheet even more.
And so it is a type of a positive feedback loop.
It's often referred to as a flywheel
just because it preserves its energy so well
because they're taking the capital that they're raising for these products
and they're buying a money that is much better
than the other money that other people are using.
And so that is one of the reasons
why strategies had so much success
and formerly micro strategy.
So this is cool because once it hits $100,
every dollar that goes into stretch
is going to replace,
essentially replace the structure,
the monetary structure that we've talked about
that I'm here to replace, right?
whether or not this is it's very clear this isn't like an overt goal but ultimately what this is is
it's it's now putting the banks back on their heels because now they're they're you know they're
at notice that if they are not able to provide a competitive product which they're not then they're
going to basically lose all their all their power to strategy so now strategy is offering people a
product that the banks were able to offer, but giving it to them in a much better way that pays
way more yield, right? So the banks are offering 30 basis points. Michael Saylor is offering 11.25%.
You know, so that's where the magic happens. That's why I think it's a big deal. Now,
who buys Stretch? You know, these are institutions. Again, we kind of went back to who buys,
you know, Bitcoin treasure company stocks, it doesn't have to be you. And I don't necessarily
recommend anybody buy Stretch if they can buy Bitcoin. That's my recommendation, especially if
you're young enough to weather, you know, a cycle or two, you're going to end up way further ahead,
as long as you don't have to sell it within the next four to eight years, just buy Bitcoin.
But there are a lot of people who can't buy Bitcoin. And there are a lot of people who have
to buy bonds, for example, that might be able to buy stretch now because they need a fixed rate.
And so now they can buy stretch and all that money goes into buying Bitcoin. And so that's
good for number go up. Right. Again, it comes back to the, you know, what is the value of Bitcoin?
It doesn't do much other than, you know, number go up, but number go up is a pretty big deal.
That's how a lot of people come into Bitcoin. And so that's where I say it's good for Bitcoin in the
sense that it's helping with number go up. It's not much more than that. It's pretty surface level.
But, you know, I think that anybody buying Bitcoin and injecting Bitcoin into the fiat system as a Trojan horse, you know, they're on my team.
All righty. Well, dude, I got to run here soon. So I got to ask you our last question.
Yeah, which is obviously the one I ask at the end of every episode.
What's an unpopular opinion you have? You get bonus points if it offends some Bitcoiners.
Dang, man, I'm on the spot now. Unpopular.
I should have reminded you.
What's an unpopular opinion you have?
Piss off some Bitcoiners.
My unpopular opinion is that I think, you know,
we're going to stir some, ruffle some feathers here,
but let's just, let's make it spicy for the end here.
So core versus knots, right?
Everybody thinks that there's a dichotomy.
You got to pick one or the other.
My opinion is, you know, let's not be too quick to pick either.
My belief is I believe that we should ossify Bitcoin.
I think that we should do everything that we can to not change it.
No upgrades to Bitcoin.
Bitcoin's working just fine.
We don't need any upgrades, period.
None. Zero.
And until there is an upgrade that is actually needed,
we don't need to proactively change Bitcoin.
So my point to that is people are like,
well, what if they're starting to do quantum attacks on Bitcoin?
Well, then guess what?
You can fork and you can do a quantum fork, quantum resistant fork.
And that's fine.
Like that's how Bitcoin is going to work.
But for us on the network, like for right now, from what I can see,
there's not a good enough reason to risk injecting new code into Bitcoin
that outweighs our potential for fixing the money and fixing the world.
That's what we need to be focused on.
What we have right now works. What we've had for many years works. I think that a lot of the upgrades that have happened over the last few years, they weren't necessary to fix the money. So that's my stance. I think we should ossify. I don't think we should keep changing Bitcoin. Both the knots and the core camp, they want to continually change and upgrade Bitcoin. And that's something I'm fundamentally against.
you're not going to find any arguments here but i think you will make some people mad so everyone
get in the comments tell adam what you think all righty man tell people where they can find you by
by the way thank you so much for coming on always fun chatting uh usually our chats are a little less
formal but this is uh fun to get together and just kind of go through everything so tell people where
they can find you learn about manna anything else yeah thank you thank you so much for having me
on the platform uh i love the bitcoin way by the way shout out to them these guys uh i'm not paid
to say this, they've never paid me single sat. And that's the truth, but I love the Bitcoin way.
Um, and they've helped a lot of people. Um, and they're great to talk to for anybody along their
path, whether you're like just starting out or even for fairly advanced people. Um, I've had
people tell me that they've reached out at the Bitcoin way just to check their strategy is
sufficient and that it works. And, uh, they've gotten a lot of value out of that too. So good
job for everything you guys are doing over there, Michael. Really appreciate you guys.
As far as me, I'm at Adam Semecka on X, Twitter.
Manna is a project that I'm working on.
It is a self-custodial payment solution for Bitcoiners.
And if you're interested in using Bitcoin as a medium of exchange currency, check out Manna.
Love it, man.
Well, thank you so much for the time, Adam.
We'll catch up again soon.
Thanks, Michael.
Have a good one.
Bye.
Cheers, brother.
And that's a wrap.
Again, hope you enjoyed my conversation with Adam.
Go check out Manna.
Go give him a follow on X.
Check out all the work that he's doing.
Great guy doing some incredible things.
And of course, if you need help taking your Bitcoin into proper 100% self-custody, go to thebitcoinway.com slash podcast.
We can explain how it works, why we philosophically do what we do.
We can also help you with online privacy, setting up a privacy phone.
We've got a plan B residency option.
We can help you set up a solo mining rig in your home.
All of the things you need to be a sovereign individual.
Again, that's thebitcoinway.com slash podcast.
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