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Hey, hey, welcome back to the Bitcoin Matrix. I'm your host, Cedric Youngelman. Quick thing before

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we jump in. The Bitcoin Matrix is completely independent and self-supported. No corporate

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sponsors pulling the strings. Just you guys. Best way to support us is Fountain App. Five bucks a

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month. You get every episode a full day before anyone else ad free. You can also send sats on

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strike or hit me on PayPal, Venmo, Cash App. All the links are in the show notes. You guys are the

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reason the Bitcoin matrix exists, and I appreciate you. If your seed phrase is on a piece of paper

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right now, we got to fix that. Paper burns, fades, falls apart, and that's a big reason why 30% of

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no loose parts. This is how I secure my keys. Go to stampseed.com, code matrix, 15% off. Do it now

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while sats are cheap and you're thinking clearly. My wife and I have been drinking aura cacao every

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afternoon instead of coffee. Sustained energy, real mental clarity, and no crash. It sounds woo

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woo, but the science is legit. It's all about circulation and blood flow to the brain. We're

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hooked. Link in the show notes for 10% off. I use OnChain for their collaborative custody

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multi-sig vaults for secure Bitcoin storage. Plus, they offer loans and IRAs. Get 10% off

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at OnChain.com forward slash matrix with code matrix10. My family and I are going to Camp

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Nakamoto this June 18 to 21st for Bitcoin summer camp on a private island in Lake Winnipesaukee,

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New Hampshire. Lobster clam bake, steak, live music, beer, wine, campfires, Bitcoin education,

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the whole family's invited. Tickets are limited because the island literally only holds so many

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people. If you want to come hang out with us, use code matrix at checkout for 15% off. I'd love to

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see you there. Check the links in the show notes. Roberto Rios, aka Peruvian Bull, is back on the

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Bitcoin matrix for his third appearance, and he didn't come to play it safe. Fresh off breaking

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news the morning of recording, we kick things off with the Jane Street manipulation lawsuit

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and what it might mean for Bitcoin price action. We cover the terrifying thesis of the great taking,

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why you may not actually own the stocks in your brokerage account, China's secret gold

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accumulation strategy and what it signals about the dollar's future, the slow-motion collapse of

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Japan's bond market, and how silver is finally breaking free from decades of paper price

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suppression. We close with something that hits close to home. AI is coming for white-collar jobs

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the same way China came for blue-collar ones, and nobody's ready. And now, let's enter the Bitcoin

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matrix with one of the sharpest macro minds in the Bitcoin space, Roberto Rios, aka Peruvian Bull.

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This one covers a lot of ground fast.

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What is real?

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How do you define real?

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You can't jump into cash.

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Cash is trash.

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What do you do?

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You get out.

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Roberto, welcome back to the Bitcoin Matrix for the third time.

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How are you?

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I'm very well.

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How are you, Cedric?

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I'm doing great. You know, I mean, the world's turbulent, I feel like, but I'm trying to hang in there. It's sunny outside. But, you know, a lot going on. And I kind of want to hear your take. We'll get to some bigger macro issues. But the latest thing in the news is Jane Street. It is brand new. So I don't know how much you've dug into this, but it seems to affect or it seems to resonate with me around maybe GameStop.

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There is some history here with them being a big player in the ETFs, IBIT, MSTR.

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So what is your hot take right off the cuff?

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Sure.

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So, I mean, a lot of the conspiracy theorists in Bitcoin have been postulating that Jane Street specifically is one of the trading funds that has been – and market makers that have been manipulating paper Bitcoin for years.

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And we didn't really have confirmation of that until I would say basically this morning.

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A lawsuit was filed by Terraform Labs, which is the company that essentially created TerraLuna.

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And in this lawsuit, the plaintiff alleges that Jane Street was trading on inside information

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and that they had sources inside Terraform Labs that were feeding them, you know,

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like material non-public information right before major events.

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And so, for example, I've just glanced at, you know, the filing.

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And one of the instances they claim is, you know, Terraform Labs moved a couple hundred million dollars worth of crypto and Jane Street copied the move within a few minutes, which is something that they should not have, you know, had knowledge of.

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Right. And the lawsuit also alleges essentially that Jane Street helped to orchestrate the collapse of Terra Luna.

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And that obviously led to the broader crypto collapse in 2022.

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Celsius, Thierry's Capital, all these firms were weakened by the collapse of Terra Luna and of UST.

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And so the market has been responding really interesting this morning in an interesting way

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because not only has this news come out and Jane Street kind of gone quiet on this,

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Bitcoin has started to rally very, very strongly this morning.

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And we've seen also there's been what they call the 10 a.m. slam

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where every single morning around 10 a.m.

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there's a huge drop in the Bitcoin price.

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It trades lower almost all day.

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It usually closes lower.

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It's been doing that for the last, you know,

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three or four months as we started to enter this bear market.

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But that stopped today.

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The 10 a.m. slam didn't come.

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And Bitcoin has been trending up.

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I just saw it broke 68,000.

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So we're up $2,000 or $3,000 in just the last few hours.

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And so that's pretty interesting to me

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to see, you know, kind of the conspiracy theorists

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in Bitcoin proved right again that potentially, and there's some evidence to support this,

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that Jane Street was using its market-making capabilities to manipulate Bitcoin lower.

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Wow. I mean, I heard they made $10 billion in a quarter, which I think is more than like sort

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of Goldman Sachs or a lot of big banks making a year. They got kicked out of India, I guess,

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for manipulating their stock market. You bring out the terror and, well, didn't SBF come out of

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jane street he did he did i believe he was a senior trader there before he left to start ftx

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but i think he started ftx around 2020 or 2019 or something like that yeah and we talk about price

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action too much in the short term but bitcoin is up to about 69k it hit 69.5 already this morning

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it's around around 69k now and uh kind of i'm jane street has been aggressively accumulating

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MSTR over the past few months, according to Satoxics.

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In fact, the quantitative trading giant increased its stake by 473% and now owns 7.3% of strategy's

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outstanding shares.

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Let that sink in.

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But this same firm, many believe, has played a major role in suppressing Bitcoin's price

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through derivatives and liquidity aims, keeping spot down while accumulating behind the scenes.

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And now there's the major manipulation lawsuits in the spotlight.

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So and then, yeah, Bitcoin explodes higher today when this news breaks.

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Very, very interesting.

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And it just reminds me of the GameStop situation.

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Now I think MicroStrategy is the most shorts in the system.

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Oh, it does.

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Most shorted company in the entire system, I believe, right now.

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That's also what I started reading yesterday.

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And Jane Street handles BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF as well.

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IBIT, yeah.

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Yeah, and they're also one of the largest holders of IBIT, obviously,

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being custodian. Yeah, no, the echoes to GameStop are very similar here. And a lot of people think

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that if Jane Street buys MSTR, that's a bullish sign. I don't actually think it's a bullish sign,

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right? Obviously, they're the MSTR bulls and MSTR bears, they can have their opinion.

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But when a trading firm or a market maker takes a position like that, it's usually just hedging.

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So Citadel, Gabe Plotkin's firm, all these hedge funds have taken positions in GameStop,

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But they'd also taken massive short positions. And so one of the ways you can facilitate naked shorting, for example, and this could be true with Bitcoin, is you take a nominal long position on your books and then you take an off-the-books short position.

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or you take a large short position and you start rolling it.

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And the way you roll those FTDs, those obligations to deliver,

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is you use the share as basically like a placeholder, a hot potato.

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And every month you have, let's say, 100,000 shares you're supposed to be holding on your balance sheet.

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And so you just rotate the shares as they're needed to fulfill obligations,

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but then never actually deliver the underlying shares.

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And so in this case, the same would be true for Bitcoin or the same would be true for MSTR.

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If they're shorting MSTR, which they very well could be, right, they could be using the long position as a way to hedge that short.

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And they could be using the long position to basically delay failure to delivers and to stop a squeeze from happening.

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So maybe what is your reflections on stocks, investing in equities, particularly, and again, it's not financial advice, but like, and I say this from like, if you're interested in a company, like let's say GameStop,

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Do you think like allocating, building a position, do you think there's true price discovery around these securities or that value could kind of be obtained by getting in, you know, getting a position at a low price, whatever you determine that to be, and that these companies have future value?

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Or is it so hard to play in this arena because, you know, the front trading that Robinhood feeds the Citadel before you, you know, the order flow, the FTDs, the naked shorts.

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I mean, is it just stay away from all of this?

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Are you intrigued by it?

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I would say I still own equities.

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I don't trade very often.

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But when I do make trades, I sometimes do it in equities.

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But I understand that equities are not a free and fair market in the way that we think, right?

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GameStop exposed that, but prior companies before GameStop like CMKM Diamonds or Global

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Links also had the same issue of naked shorting.

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And the naked shorting issue is especially prevalent for microcaps, so extremely small

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companies and companies that are mainly held by retail investors.

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Because a retail investor is seven times more likely to receive a fail to deliver than an

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institution, right?

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Because an institution has a trading desk, they have lawyers, right?

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They have a corporate board.

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They have many more ways to litigate if they're given fail-to-delivers consistently for their shares versus a retail investor who probably won't even know that they're getting a fail-to-deliver, essentially a phantom share.

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But as many Bitcoiners know, our fiat system is very broken.

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The money is fake.

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And the shares are fake too in some instances.

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You know, Global Links was a case in 2005 where an investor is a small real estate company based out of Nevada.

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It was listed publicly, and it had been shorted to the ground essentially by several large hedge funds.

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And one investor, Robert Simpson, in 2005 bought all 50 million outstanding shares, you know, for less than a penny each.

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And the next day, 150 million shares traded.

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So Robert Simpson filed a complaint with the SEC.

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He brought a case before a district court judge saying, this is impossible.

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I bought every single share that exists.

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I bought the entire market cap of this dying company, and it's still trading.

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How is that possible?

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And that led the SEC to make some reforms.

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Reg Show came out in late August, was approved by Congress.

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There was obviously the short restriction, short sales list that basically says if a

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company is shorted more than, you know, what I think is like seven or nine trading days in a row

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as more than 2% of its volume or 5% of its volume, then it gets put on this short sale restriction

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list and it can't be short sold for like a week or two after. And so those were like some band-aids

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they try to put into the system to remediate this problem. But the fundamental issue hasn't changed,

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right? There is a single SQL ledger that basically has held at the DTCC that basically has all the

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share counts for all the companies. But this editor, just like this ledger, just like the,

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you know, goal at Fort Knox or, you know, the money at the Fed is not audited. So, you know,

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a company could have 100 million shares that they've authorized and issued like MicroStrategy

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or, you know, GameStop or something, but there could actually be 400 million shares trading

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or 400 million shares owned by, you know, retail investors, institutions, sovereign wealth funds,

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hedge funds, private family offices, everybody, right? So when you buy a stock, you just have to

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understand that you may be buying a phantom chair. Now, does that mean it won't go up ever?

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No. Does that mean, you know, it's a bad idea to invest in SPY? No, not necessarily. But it just

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means that especially when you're dealing with microcaps and especially when you're dealing with

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retail-held companies, manipulation is there and it's rampant. And so if you want to avoid that,

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I've always said that the best thing to do is buy buy Bitcoin and self custody it because then you know for sure you actually have what you own

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Right, so you mentioned the DTCC and they could freeze your shares

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It could make a shorting happens and derivatives manipulate everything just mentioned your shares aren really there What what is the great taking walk us through what that means to you and what that might mean to regular people Sure So actually I got recommended that

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book by a friend who's a fellow Bitcoiner. It's a great book by David Rogers Webb. It's essentially

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laying out the thesis of the GameStop saga and of Naked, Short and Greedy, which is another book

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written by Dr. Suzanne Trimbath. But the thesis of the book is that there has been this apparatus

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is set up first in the United States, but then globally to disintermediate your ownership of

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all financial assets and to put them into collateralized trust vehicles that can be

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used to essentially like restart the system in case of a catastrophic failure. So again,

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the example would be, right, when you buy a stock or when you buy a bond or when you buy

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almost any derivative, you are granted what is called beneficial ownership. Now, beneficial

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ownership means you get the benefits to owning something, but you actually don't hold the title.

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So a good way to think about it in the real world would be like buying, getting a car lease.

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Like, yes, you know, you have the car lease, you can drive the car around, you can do what you want

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with it, but you actually don't hold the title. The title is held with the dealer. And what that

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means is that in a, you know, in a liquidation scenario, in a bankruptcy, you do not have

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ownership rights to the same extent that an actual owner does, a title holder, right? And in this

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book, The Great Taking, David Rogers Webb lays out how not only in the US has this taken place,

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has this shift from actual title ownership to beneficial ownership happened, but it's been

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happening globally. So he points out in Europe, there's been regulatory changes that have pushed

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basically like pension funds, private 401ks or retirement funds, private wealth funds,

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all to be having their assets held on exchange

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and the assets are owned by the exchange

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and you are granted only beneficial ownership

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and not actual title ownership.

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And there's clauses in these documents.

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I think he pointed out one that was really, really bleak

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from Sweden that showed that in a liquidation scenario,

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all assets are held by the bank, the broker, or the exchange.

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They're not held by you.

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And you essentially are like an unsecured creditor

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to your own assets, right?

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This isn't like I went to the bank and I'm like, oh, I'm going to give the bank a 10% unsecured loan because I'm a sophisticated investor and I understand the risk.

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No, this is you going and buying stocks.

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You buy Apple.

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You buy Amazon.

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You think you own it.

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You think it's yours.

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And then there's a financial collapse.

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The system breaks.

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You go to E-Trade or Fidelity or Vanguard and you say, hey, I would like to have my shares.

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And they say, well, that's nice, but you only own the benefits of the shares.

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They're actually, the title is actually held by us.

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And because we're in liquidation, you know, we have to go through proper bankruptcy proceedings.

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So you're not going to get anything.

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You're an unsecured creditor.

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And that was pretty sobering for me to read because I already knew the problem was bad in the United States.

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But to see that basically across the Western world, in Australia, in Sweden, in Germany, in the UK, in France,

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that this push towards beneficial ownership and collateralization of all financial assets has been happening behind the scenes,

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which has only served to make our system weaker and more fragile and obviously more fraudulent than ever before.

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Okay. Well, okay. So this is obviously globalized. I don't know when this was rolled out, but is the DTCC,

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like how much do they custody in terms of all of this? And are they the beneficial owner?

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Like are they 90% of the world's assets like stocks or bonds, munis?

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Not the world, but the DTCC holds over 97% of all stocks in the United States.

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And they facilitate about a quadrillion dollars of trades a year.

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And as far as I know, they hold over a trillion dollars in wealth.

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And so, or sorry, not a trillion dollars.

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They hold over a hundred trillion dollars in total wealth.

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The beneficial owner is usually the entity that you bought through.

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So it would be like if I bought through Vanguard, Vanguard would be the beneficial owner, right?

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And they would be the holder of the asset.

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And I would just be the – or sorry, they would be the title holder.

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I would be the beneficial owner.

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So I would only get the benefits of the asset.

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They would hold the actual title.

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And the title is custodied by the – the actual shares are custodied by the DTCC.

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I wonder how that plays out if there is a massive liquidation event, assets are devalued 50 plus percent, maybe 80, 90 percent.

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So let's say you had a stock that was worth $10 or let's use the example of a dollar.

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A stock was worth a dollar.

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Now it's worth 10 cents.

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What is the centralization of all those shares?

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What does that result in for all that?

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I guess the asset owners, the vanguards, the Black Rocks, the exchanges.

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How does that play out?

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I mean, obviously, you're already devalued tremendous.

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That's what I'm saying.

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Like, I guess you can't then ride the wave back if there's a recovery.

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Yeah, from the great taking, you know, the book basically lays out that especially across Europe, what's happened is asset owners, retail asset owners become beneficial owners.

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And then they become basically unsecured creditors.

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And unsecured creditors in a liquidation scenario are the lowest priority, meaning they get paid out last.

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So, you know, first to get paid out would be the large institutions.

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So again, let's use a thought experiment.

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Say Vanguard collapses tomorrow and say it collapses because of a run on the stock market

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and stock markets have fallen, you know, stocks have fallen 80%, 90%, something crazy, right?

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Black Monday times four.

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When Vanguard liquidates, right, they have...

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They have all the proceeds.

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They have obligations to, you know, let's say their bank,

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They have obligations to their trade executing partner, like if it's Citadel or Virtu or Robinhood or Susquehanna.

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And then they have secured lines of credit from other banks.

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They have unsecured lines of credit from other institutions.

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And then they would go to the institutions that hold shares with them, and then they'd go to you.

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And so you're like number five or number six on the liquidation stack, which means, again, if they went through a whole bankruptcy,

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they you would get paid out not only you would your shares be worth 10 cents you'd get paid out

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probably one or two cents on the dollar and that was the entire point of the great taking is that

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it's it's like a transfer of wealth from the people to the institutions in the case of a of

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the worst case scenario right which is when exactly when everybody needs their wealth and what do you

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think of the odds like obviously this has been put in place do you think this is sort of a centralized

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concerted effort or just large actors, just this is emergent, you know, independent philosophy that

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they all just kind of came to is like, this is the best way to defend ourselves. And what kind

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of odds do you put on like something like this happening in the next, I don't know, is it,

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should we look at it at a hundred years or 10 years? I mean, none of us have ever seen anything

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like this, you know, in our lifetimes. Yeah, no, it's, it's pretty, it's pretty terrifying.

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I would say now it is a bad case scenario.

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And is it possible?

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Yes.

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Is it likely?

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Probably not.

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And the reason why is because even though they've, you know, the institutions have built in this escape hatch, right, this jet eject button, they don't actually want the system to collapse that far.

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They don't want to have people lose that much trust.

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The way they survive is by continually taking fees, management fees, insurance spreads, premiums, lending and borrowing at a lower rate and lending at a higher rate.

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They want to have this gravy train continue.

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And so they don't really have an incentive to crash the system knowingly.

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They have an incentive to extract as much as they can out of the system, but they don't want it to crash.

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And moreover, the Federal Reserve, right, the global central banks, they all will print money in a crisis generally to stave off a deflationary collapse because what they're most afraid of is deflation because deflation essentially means all debts come due.

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They start to go default.

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They start to default.

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And since money is debt, money starts to be destroyed, and the banking system starts to collapse because it's fractionally reserved as well, right?

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And that spells their doom, right?

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That spells the loss of their golden goose.

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So I think that even if there is a very big crisis, nine times out of 10, they would probably

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intervene and print as much money as needed.

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And you could even see QE for stocks, right?

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The Bank of Japan has already been doing this.

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They were printing yen to buy basically REITs.

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They're printing yen to buy corporate bond ETFs, even corporate stock ETFs to try to push

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the Nikkei up.

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You know, they call that QQE.

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But that kind of action could be taken by central bank.

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Now, again, does it guarantee that they will do that? No. And so I would say there's a very small chance that if there is a stock market collapse that you could see something like the great taking. But I would put that as a, you know, less than 1% scenario. Most likely is they will just continue naked short. They will continue to extract money and rent from you via spreads and management fees and performance fees.

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and their closed-end funds, their open-end funds,

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all these different ways they have of extracting money from you.

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And so you just need to know that it's a rigged game

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and that if you're investing your money in stocks,

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that there is a small chance that you could lose everything

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and the institutions could seize it.

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And to answer your other question, I don't think,

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like a lot of people will say that this is like a nefarious,

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you know, globalist plot to steal everyone's assets.

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And maybe that's the case, but I actually would take the under on that.

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I think that most of the time, these institutions are only trying to act in their self-interest, right?

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There's that line from the 2008 movie, The Big Short.

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You can explain a lot of this with stupidity and greed, not malevolence.

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Like the institutions, they don't necessarily – they're not necessarily thinking, yes, we're going to steal all retail assets.

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We're going to take every single stock and bond and derivative that they own.

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They're thinking, dude, I want to protect my ass in case of bankruptcy.

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And I have my own assets, right?

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I can get lines of credit.

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I can get collateral from other people.

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But, hey, there's all these people who are holding money with me.

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Why don't we lobby to change the laws so that if they're holding money with me, their money is viewed as my money in a bankruptcy collapse, in a bankruptcy scenario, and that their assets are viewed as my assets?

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That just helps me.

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So that kind of economic logic can be extrapolated throughout the economy, throughout the financial system.

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and you can see how Vanguard, State Street, BlackRock, all these firms would push to have

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these changes, but not necessarily because they're thinking about stealing your money

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and completely taking everything from you, but just because they want to protect their own ass.

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No, that makes a lot of sense. All right. I appreciate that perspective. So you've written

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extensively about the collateral problems and the failures to deliver. For people who don't live in

321
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the plumbing of the financial system, what are the kinds of things that are breaking,

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like or could break?

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Well, GameStop showed that, I think, very clearly.

324
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And the recent silver surge also showed that, right?

325
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Essentially, what we saw in January and early February was what I would view as a massive

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short squeeze on the silver market, right?

327
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The paper silver market has for years been extremely over levered, some estimates 200

328
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to one 300 to one against actual physical silver and i actually spot checked this i went and looked

329
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at the comex's own website and they estimate that around 102 to 104 000 of contracts of silver of

330
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cme silver futures trade every day now the average contract size or the standard contract size is

331
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5 000 ounces so that correlates to 500 million ounces of paper silver traded a day now global

332
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mining production, not American, right, because COMEX is based in America, but global mining

333
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production is 2.2 million ounces a day. So they're trading every day 220 times the amount of global

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silver production. In other words, one day of COMEX trading equates to seven to eight months

335
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of global silver actual production. And so this massive paper market allows them to manipulate

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the price, push price where they want it, wipe out longs, wipe out enemy shorts if they want to

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cause a small squeeze, and essentially manage the sticker price of silver for years. And silver is

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where this is really, silver and gold have been manipulated historically for decades, right? It's

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been known and talked about in finance circles for a long time. But I think people are just now

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waking up to the fact that it happens in stocks as well, right? Like I mentioned earlier, just

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it's much more concentrated in the smaller microcap and retail held stocks. Bigger stocks

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like Tesla or Amazon that are held by institutions, much lower likelihood of manipulation. And also,

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it's just harder to manipulate those because they're much bigger markets. But yeah, this problem

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is endemic to the financial system. When you have a single third party that's a centralized

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custodian that you have to trust, right, which is the antithesis of every Bitcoiner, I want to

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verify, not trust.

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For them you have to trust and you can verify And so because of that they able to do these shenanigans they able to do these games and get away with it for so long And the regulators right are asleep at the wheel

348
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We've known that since 2008.

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And so they aren't making any indication of shutting down this manipulation anytime soon.

350
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I remember I was driving down to Bitcoin Day Naples in January,

351
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and I got tuned into, you know, your radio station locally changes.

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changes and so in the naples area this local radio station was a metal store owner who you know

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traded in gold and silver and other things and was i guess every day just kind of having this talk

354
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radio about the metals market he was really knowledgeable and informative and kind of

355
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learning about all the the delivery times in gold and silver so you send it off to where they refine

356
00:28:29,104 --> 00:28:33,484
it maybe they have long waiting lists right now so they can't refine it for weeks they want to pay

357
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20, 30% below spot because of their, they don't know what it's going to cost, what it's going to

358
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be worth when they get it to refine it or get it in production. And then just all the risks around,

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like, you know, you bring in your silver and they have to drill a hole into it to see if it's real.

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And, you know, it's great if you have coins, but it's not so great if you maybe have silverware,

361
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especially if it's silver plated, all these issues in these markets. Do you think, but,

362
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I'm reading how Mexico is the biggest silver producer on earth.

363
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I didn't realize this.

364
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And I guess silver was declared a critical mineral for the first time in history.

365
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So silver is really important to AI and missile production.

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And 50% of U.S. silver imports come from Mexico.

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Do you think the dramatic rise in silver price, the volatility, all this is related to sort of monetary change?

368
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or really sort of production and industrialization and, you know, strategic national reserves of

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certain minerals? I think it's the latter. And I wrote a piece back in September of 2025,

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titled Silver Slumber. And in that piece, I basically made the case that, you know,

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gold and silver are fundamentally different metals, right? Gold is what I would call primarily

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a monetary metal with industrial uses as like a side case. And then silver is primarily an

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industrial metal with some monetary uses. And silver, the reason why it's not as great for

374
00:30:03,744 --> 00:30:10,944
monetary purposes is that there's many reasons. One, it does oxidize, right? It does turn green

375
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with time. It corrodes. It's much more plentiful in the earth's crust. And so it's not as valuable,

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doesn't hold this value as well. Sometimes there can be years where the silver supply increases by

377
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five or even 10%. So the actual annual inflation rate can be quite high, especially if you find a

378
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lot of new deposits. And silver also has a ton of industrial uses. It's the most electrically

379
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conductive element on the periodic table. It is used, like you said, in electronics and appliances

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that range from Tomahawk missiles, which use, no one really knows how many, but between 100 to

381
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300 ounces of silver. It's used in advanced ship radars. It's used in battle destroyers on the

382
00:30:56,884 --> 00:31:02,784
water, and it's used in submarines underneath. It's used in satellite systems, right? And most

383
00:31:02,784 --> 00:31:07,464
importantly, or maybe for our purposes, it's used in the solar panel production process.

384
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And as of 2025, a new type of cell came out called the TopCon cell, which replaces the older

385
00:31:14,544 --> 00:31:21,204
PERC technology. And it's much more efficient in terms of its actual solar production, but it also

386
00:31:21,204 --> 00:31:25,864
uses about 85% more silver because it has to use silver on the front and the back end of the cell

387
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in order to capture all of the sun's energy, right, for each unit of cell that is contained.

388
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And so what that means is that silver has become more and more and more important in the

389
00:31:41,404 --> 00:31:46,264
electrification, the EV push, and especially with this AI data center, you know, build out in the

390
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race for almost like AGI, right? And the US currently, you're right, is a small producer of

391
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silver. We have almost no refineries domestically. Mexico is a large producer, and China is also a

392
00:32:00,024 --> 00:32:06,844
huge producer. But China, starting January 1st, announced export restrictions on all small and

393
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mid-sized silver exporters. So they didn't outright ban the export of silver, but they made

394
00:32:12,304 --> 00:32:17,704
it much, much harder for small and mid-sized companies to meet export requirements. They have

395
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to have a $30 million line of credit. They have to hold multiple accounts in multiple countries.

396
00:32:22,104 --> 00:32:27,024
They have to have subsidiaries, right? They have to have a complex team and they have to fill out

397
00:32:27,024 --> 00:32:33,764
like over a dozen regulatory forms and paperwork. And so for most small silver exporters in China,

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that's just not feasible. So that means that essentially 90% of Chinese silver is now going

399
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to stay domestically within the country. And they also obviously have an export ban on gold,

400
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essentially. So they're producing a ton of gold, they're producing a ton of silver,

401
00:32:47,324 --> 00:32:50,264
and they're only buying and importing it. They're not letting any of it leave.

402
00:32:50,864 --> 00:32:55,964
And the bigger problem for the US is that China holds almost a monopoly on global silver refining.

403
00:32:56,464 --> 00:33:03,004
They are responsible for around 70% to 80% of global silver refining capacity. And they also

404
00:33:03,004 --> 00:33:11,744
are responsible for 85% of solar wafer production, 98% of solar cell production, 90% of total solar

405
00:33:11,744 --> 00:33:16,884
panel production. And so when you look at those figures, you realize like China has built this

406
00:33:16,884 --> 00:33:22,824
hegemony, right, this monopoly on the silver supply chain. And if the US wants to catch up

407
00:33:22,824 --> 00:33:27,444
and be able to compete with them, especially, you know, in the AI race, they need to be able,

408
00:33:27,764 --> 00:33:31,744
or we need to be able to refine silver domestically and not rely on their refining,

409
00:33:31,744 --> 00:33:37,204
right because this silver ore is not very useful until it's refined to a very high purity grade

410
00:33:37,204 --> 00:33:42,824
that can be used in electronics so i view it as i do think there's a monetary component i do think

411
00:33:42,824 --> 00:33:48,464
faith is breaking down the financial system but the speed of the silver move is very telling right

412
00:33:48,464 --> 00:33:57,444
it went from like 45 in october to 120 by late january that's not you know a monetary shift with

413
00:33:57,444 --> 00:34:03,404
global nation states slowly easing into the silver market, that's a squeeze on the system.

414
00:34:03,584 --> 00:34:09,644
That's due to over leveraging on paper shorts, naked shorting, buying coming from retail,

415
00:34:09,824 --> 00:34:15,564
buying coming from institutions, and obviously like, you know, electrification, EV vehicle

416
00:34:15,564 --> 00:34:20,684
manufacturers and AI data centers buying up tons and tons of silver in order to produce the

417
00:34:20,684 --> 00:34:25,864
electronics that they need to make. So I view it more as that kind of a squeeze. But I do think

418
00:34:25,864 --> 00:34:30,784
it's telling especially for the bitcoiners to see not only silver but gold rally strongly in

419
00:34:30,784 --> 00:34:35,484
these last like four or five months because i think that this is a sign that faith is continuing

420
00:34:35,484 --> 00:34:41,264
to break down in our fiat monetary system and we are going to see another leg up in bitcoin

421
00:34:41,264 --> 00:34:45,744
eventually and i think it will be a violent move higher you know bitcoin is even more scarce than

422
00:34:45,744 --> 00:34:50,204
either of those two so and it's a better monetary instrument so i think that that's it's a

423
00:34:50,204 --> 00:34:54,244
foreshadowing of what what's to come for for bitcoiners yeah and we can touch on that in a

424
00:34:54,244 --> 00:34:58,664
second, but do you think China is being honest about how much gold and silver they have?

425
00:34:58,864 --> 00:35:06,124
Oh, absolutely not. No. China officially states that they have around 2,200 tons of gold reserves

426
00:35:06,124 --> 00:35:11,844
in their central bank, the PBOC. But there's been some really good analysis done by Yan Nguyen-Wenhouse

427
00:35:11,844 --> 00:35:19,504
of the Gold Observer. And he tracked that the World Gold Council reports several hundred tons

428
00:35:19,504 --> 00:35:28,084
of gold purchased every year that is assigned to what it calls unknown entities.

429
00:35:28,924 --> 00:35:32,704
And we're talking, right, this is worth billions and billions of dollars.

430
00:35:33,324 --> 00:35:42,924
So 80, 100, 200, 300 tons of purchases of gold can't be done by even a wealthy individual easily.

431
00:35:42,924 --> 00:35:44,584
It has to be done by a nation state.

432
00:35:44,744 --> 00:35:46,824
It has to be done by a sovereign wealth fund.

433
00:35:46,904 --> 00:35:48,024
It has to be done by a central bank.

434
00:35:48,024 --> 00:35:53,784
and from his tracking of the movements through the Swiss banks and the London banks,

435
00:35:53,784 --> 00:35:59,384
it looks like it's China buying through Chinese hedge funds and importing the gold to China

436
00:35:59,384 --> 00:36:04,944
and basically storing it covertly under the auspices of the PBOC.

437
00:36:05,584 --> 00:36:11,784
So I think their actual gold holdings are probably around 5,000 or 6,000 tons as a central bank

438
00:36:11,784 --> 00:36:17,804
and China as a country probably holds around 30,000 to 35,000 tons of gold totally.

439
00:36:18,024 --> 00:36:22,884
which by the way, that puts their total gold holdings higher than all Western central banks

440
00:36:22,884 --> 00:36:28,424
combined. And they've been doing this for about the last 10, 15 years, you know, since the early

441
00:36:28,424 --> 00:36:33,964
2010s, but they really accelerated in the past five or six years ever since COVID-19. And so I

442
00:36:33,964 --> 00:36:38,164
think this is a part of their strategy to diversify away from the US dollar, diversify away from

443
00:36:38,164 --> 00:36:44,164
treasuries and try to get a store value that is much more strong and resilient than a US treasury

444
00:36:44,164 --> 00:36:49,504
bond. If you're still trusting in exchange to hold your Bitcoin, have you learned nothing?

445
00:36:49,944 --> 00:36:55,544
Self-custody is non-negotiable, and that means your seed phrase needs to survive whatever life

446
00:36:55,544 --> 00:37:01,024
throws at it. And even if you've already moved your coins off in exchange, is your backup actually

447
00:37:01,024 --> 00:37:06,424
secure? Now is the time to lock that down while you're calm and thinking clearly. Don't wait until

448
00:37:06,424 --> 00:37:12,224
the price rips again and you're too nervous to touch anything. Get your setup right while the

449
00:37:12,224 --> 00:37:17,504
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450
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451
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452
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453
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454
00:37:42,884 --> 00:37:47,644
way. Well, those numbers you share, I mean, I've just went on Grok. And so the United States,

455
00:37:47,924 --> 00:37:53,864
according to Grok, has 8,100 tons. Germany's number two with like 3,400. And China's number

456
00:37:53,864 --> 00:38:00,724
six with, let's say, 2,300. I'm assuming maybe every country then sort of not being,

457
00:38:00,724 --> 00:38:07,384
And what would I mean, would you say each country has a non zero probability of not being totally honest about their tonnage?

458
00:38:07,904 --> 00:38:08,844
Yes, I'd say so.

459
00:38:08,844 --> 00:38:14,304
But China would be much more likely because they're trying to play a geopolitical chess game against the United States.

460
00:38:14,544 --> 00:38:19,364
Right. Germany or France, like they have there's less reason for them to try to fib the numbers.

461
00:38:19,364 --> 00:38:32,364
China specifically doesn't want the West to know the extent to which it's been, you know, removing itself from the U.S. dollar and the U.S. treasury and moving into a gold-based or at least a gold-reserved system.

462
00:38:32,544 --> 00:38:38,804
So it's sort of a stealth move in the sense that they don't want to show their hand how hard they're pushing.

463
00:38:39,164 --> 00:38:40,424
What other layers are to it?

464
00:38:40,444 --> 00:38:43,884
I mean, like, the United States has never repriced the gold on the balance sheet.

465
00:38:43,884 --> 00:38:49,684
You know, China's accumulating gold at a massive rate and lying about how massive a rate.

466
00:38:49,804 --> 00:38:51,524
Like, these games are so interesting to me.

467
00:38:51,604 --> 00:38:55,804
Like, what kind of a gamesmanship or advantages do they actually bring?

468
00:38:56,044 --> 00:38:56,904
And I'm not saying they don't.

469
00:38:56,984 --> 00:38:59,724
I'm just, I'm so curious what, you know, your thoughts are.

470
00:38:59,904 --> 00:39:10,264
But my other thought is, you know, is it possible that China is moving to gold when it would make a lot more sense to move to Bitcoin in terms, like, 100 years from now?

471
00:39:10,264 --> 00:39:14,544
And I feel like this would be like moving to silver 100 years ago instead of gold.

472
00:39:14,784 --> 00:39:17,704
I would say that, you know, obviously I think Bitcoin is a smarter move.

473
00:39:17,964 --> 00:39:29,544
But for a country like China, which is basically like a statist, you know, communist, almost dictatorship, right, with a single entity controlling basically the entire country.

474
00:39:29,984 --> 00:39:34,484
That's also mostly run by, just like in the US, it's mostly run by boomers, right, by older people.

475
00:39:34,664 --> 00:39:38,124
They don't necessarily understand the value proposition that Bitcoin provides.

476
00:39:38,124 --> 00:39:42,444
They don't understand what Bitcoin is and they're scared of giving up control.

477
00:39:43,444 --> 00:39:50,004
And in basically the most repressive, one of the most repressive and control freak societies there is, right?

478
00:39:50,064 --> 00:39:52,264
China is the author of the credit score system.

479
00:39:52,744 --> 00:40:07,464
They've been developing AI tools that can track individuals across, you know, entire provinces, across the entire country using camera footage and using gate recognition software, tracking, you know, how people walk, using facial recognition, you know, everything like that.

480
00:40:07,464 --> 00:40:12,604
And so for them to give up control of the monetary system is a terrifying prospect.

481
00:40:13,084 --> 00:40:23,584
And so gold is a great middle ground, right, between the pure fiat games that can be played with U.S. Treasury market or with U.S. stocks or with just holding, you know, playing U.S. dollars.

482
00:40:24,044 --> 00:40:32,124
And the other extreme of owning Bitcoin and, you know, Bitcoinifying your entire economy and making everybody use Bitcoin as a medium of exchange.

483
00:40:32,444 --> 00:40:34,544
So I think it's just a middle ground.

484
00:40:34,544 --> 00:40:47,944
As for why they are hiding this, why they're playing this game, I think it's because China wants fundamentally to become almost like a self-sustaining regional hegemon.

485
00:40:48,244 --> 00:41:00,524
They don't necessarily want to control the world, but their One Belt, One Road initiative, which, by the way, they authorized around $228 billion of new investments in 2025.

486
00:41:00,524 --> 00:41:03,764
It's like a 45% increase from the year before.

487
00:41:04,384 --> 00:41:08,624
They've done like $30 billion last year in mining linked loans in Africa.

488
00:41:08,924 --> 00:41:13,904
They've been expanding aggressively because what they need for their massive population base,

489
00:41:14,064 --> 00:41:20,484
you know, 1.2 billion people, is resource acquisition and cheap resources,

490
00:41:20,824 --> 00:41:24,144
as plentiful and as easy to import as they can get.

491
00:41:24,584 --> 00:41:27,824
And so if they can put their tendrils into Africa, into Central Asia,

492
00:41:27,824 --> 00:41:29,684
even into Eastern Europe

493
00:41:29,684 --> 00:41:32,424
if they can get ports, if they can get mines

494
00:41:32,424 --> 00:41:34,424
if they can get forests, if they can get

495
00:41:34,424 --> 00:41:44,826
oil fields then they can extract those resources and bring them home domestically for their own uses right And China I think with their action at the South China Sea and their

496
00:41:44,826 --> 00:41:51,086
harassment of Vietnamese or, you know, Malaysian and Filipino and Japanese fishing vessels are

497
00:41:51,086 --> 00:41:54,386
proving to be antagonistic towards their neighbors, right? They kind of want to be

498
00:41:54,386 --> 00:42:01,126
the regional bully that everyone has to bow down to and listen to, rather than, you know, just a,

499
00:42:01,126 --> 00:42:05,766
just another country on the list. That's really fascinating stuff. And so anything you have to

500
00:42:05,766 --> 00:42:10,586
share in China, we'll, you know, maybe we kind of dip there. But do you think the move in gold

501
00:42:10,586 --> 00:42:19,826
and silver and maybe in 2025, Bitcoin kind of penetrated more of the retail market? You know,

502
00:42:19,826 --> 00:42:23,826
it's one thing to kind of, you know, you can make lots of arguments for why Bitcoin goes up in value.

503
00:42:23,826 --> 00:42:27,826
And I don't think any of them necessarily are like laws of physics, right? But a lot of times

504
00:42:27,826 --> 00:42:31,806
people might dismiss Bitcoin, but the people who dismiss Bitcoin, it's hard to dismiss gold

505
00:42:31,806 --> 00:42:36,806
and silver. And part of the argument around gold was that that is a true inflation hedge. That's

506
00:42:36,806 --> 00:42:44,746
going to be steady, Eddie. It's not going to be really major up or major down. And gold has been

507
00:42:44,746 --> 00:42:49,806
on a tear. So it's silver. I mean, does that sort of break the mold or the mindset that people who

508
00:42:49,806 --> 00:42:56,946
say gold is safe, Bitcoin I don't trust? Now gold's moved up massively. Does that kind of

509
00:42:56,946 --> 00:43:01,266
changed things for people? Do you think? Do you think it's broken through to more people?

510
00:43:01,726 --> 00:43:06,286
I think it has. But I think, you know, it's ironic because a lot of a lot of the gold bugs were

511
00:43:06,286 --> 00:43:11,326
saying, oh, you know, hey, Bitcoin can never be used as money. It's too volatile. Like, how could

512
00:43:11,326 --> 00:43:18,026
you how dare you guys joke about Bitcoin being a monetary medium when it falls 10% a day? Well,

513
00:43:18,026 --> 00:43:25,726
Well, just a few Fridays ago, we had a trading session where silver fell 28 percent.

514
00:43:25,726 --> 00:43:27,326
Gold fell 15 percent.

515
00:43:27,326 --> 00:43:32,266
Gold went from 5,500 down to below 5,000 within hours.

516
00:43:32,266 --> 00:43:33,266
Right.

517
00:43:33,266 --> 00:43:39,426
The total market cap of both gold and silver swung by seven trillion dollars in an afternoon.

518
00:43:39,426 --> 00:43:42,266
That's bigger than the GDP of the United Kingdom.

519
00:43:42,266 --> 00:43:43,266
Right.

520
00:43:43,266 --> 00:43:49,406
So anyone telling you that a monetary instrument cannot be volatile is a liar, right?

521
00:43:49,646 --> 00:43:55,366
And they're also wrong about how monetary instruments work, especially within a fiat system, right?

522
00:43:55,366 --> 00:44:01,046
When you're pricing something in denominating currency units that are manipulatable, that are falsifiable, that are printable.

523
00:44:01,046 --> 00:44:08,686
I think the bigger sea change is the recognition that gold is finally starting to break free of its paper manipulation.

524
00:44:09,426 --> 00:44:11,886
I wrote about this in April of 2024.

525
00:44:11,886 --> 00:44:24,546
I had a thread that basically made the claim and made the point that China was starting to reprice the Western precious metals market through something called the Shanghai Gold Exchange.

526
00:44:24,966 --> 00:44:37,386
Now, this was an entity that they opened in 2014 in order to facilitate physical gold and silver trading, which is a far cry from the Western paper-denominated markets like COMEX or LBMA.

527
00:44:37,386 --> 00:44:43,106
Like I stated earlier, COMEX is something like 220 to 1 paper to physical levered.

528
00:44:43,906 --> 00:44:45,226
LBMA is probably worse.

529
00:44:45,306 --> 00:44:47,366
I've seen research putting it around 300 to 1.

530
00:44:47,646 --> 00:44:52,666
Their fraction reserve, around 99% of trades settle in cash and not in physical.

531
00:44:53,186 --> 00:44:59,166
And even the trades that do settle in physical usually are just moving into different safety deposit boxes.

532
00:44:59,166 --> 00:45:04,186
right not actual safe deposit boxes but they're moving they're moving within the same warehouse

533
00:45:04,186 --> 00:45:09,506
just to a different area of the warehouse and being you know marked as owned by this entity

534
00:45:09,506 --> 00:45:16,686
or that entity very rarely is our you know is that metal actually withdrawn from the from the

535
00:45:16,686 --> 00:45:21,886
exchange and actually delivered outside to someone outside of it but china's been been you know

536
00:45:21,886 --> 00:45:26,046
creating and building up this shanghai gold exchange they've been making gold linked loans

537
00:45:26,046 --> 00:45:28,366
They've been investing in mining projects.

538
00:45:28,526 --> 00:45:34,306
They've been trying to import more and more gold and silver, buffer up their reserves, like I said, for the last few years.

539
00:45:34,466 --> 00:45:49,406
And especially in 2022 and 2023, an interesting, I would say, like, you know, arbitrage opened up because the Shanghai Gold Exchange, due to internal Chinese domestic economic pressures, started to trade at a premium to Western markets.

540
00:45:49,406 --> 00:45:54,126
So I was tracking this in the summer of 23 and then through the spring of 2024

541
00:45:54,126 --> 00:46:01,786
Gold started to trade at first a $10 then a 20 then a 50 then a hundred dollar premium to the Western counterpart

542
00:46:01,786 --> 00:46:06,286
And what that meant is that now suddenly an arbitrage could be made

543
00:46:06,286 --> 00:46:11,186
You could you know a trade a trader could go and say I'm going to go buy gold at

544
00:46:11,186 --> 00:46:14,866
2,500 an ounce, you know in COMEX, which is in Chicago

545
00:46:14,866 --> 00:46:20,346
I'm going to take delivery and I'm going to sell it for $2,600 an ounce in China.

546
00:46:20,586 --> 00:46:21,986
And I pocket $100 an ounce.

547
00:46:22,406 --> 00:46:26,666
And if you multiply that by thousands of ounces or hundreds of thousands of ounces and you

548
00:46:26,666 --> 00:46:32,186
have whole planes flying gold from Chicago to Shanghai, you can make a lot of money.

549
00:46:33,106 --> 00:46:39,146
And throughout 2024 and 2025, that trade, that arbitrage, that spread opened up wider

550
00:46:39,146 --> 00:46:40,286
and wider and wider.

551
00:46:40,286 --> 00:46:45,986
And then finally in 2025, that same spread opened up in silver as well.

552
00:46:46,426 --> 00:46:58,446
And so I was writing on Twitter, I was writing on Substack that this now means that the same price, the same function that's been pulling gold prices in the West finally up after years of paper manipulation.

553
00:46:58,806 --> 00:47:03,786
Because now there's an actual physical buyer in size, which is China and arbitrage traders.

554
00:47:03,786 --> 00:47:08,406
Now that same system is working in the silver market as well.

555
00:47:08,406 --> 00:47:10,146
And it actually became more extreme.

556
00:47:10,866 --> 00:47:27,146
We've seen silver premiums in Shanghai be $20, even $30 intraday an ounce over the Western market, which means, again, a trader can go take only 1,000 ounces of silver, which is a very small amount, and they can make $30,000.

557
00:47:28,286 --> 00:47:33,866
If they import several hundred thousand ounces, they can make millions or tens of millions of dollars in profit.

558
00:47:33,866 --> 00:47:38,646
And it's essentially a free trade as long as you get the contract set up correctly on both sides and you hedge it.

559
00:47:38,926 --> 00:47:44,926
So that has been pulling these markets up and pulling everyone towards physical silver.

560
00:47:45,126 --> 00:47:51,946
As to why China is specifically buying all this physical gold and silver, it's because of this domestic economic pressure, right?

561
00:47:52,426 --> 00:47:58,766
In 2023, they started to have a, I would call it a slow motion 2008 style real estate collapse.

562
00:47:58,766 --> 00:48:02,226
You saw Evergrande file for bankruptcy in August of that year.

563
00:48:02,226 --> 00:48:12,366
By January of 2024, Evergrande was in liquidation hearings and sovereign or foreign bondholders in Evergrande were denied access to their funds.

564
00:48:13,106 --> 00:48:21,526
Country Garden, the other, you know, the second largest developer in China, also went into default on several of their dollar based loans.

565
00:48:21,866 --> 00:48:25,026
There's about two or three dozen other smaller developers that are having problems.

566
00:48:25,106 --> 00:48:28,686
There are shadow banks and shadow trusts that have been lending into the real estate market.

567
00:48:28,766 --> 00:48:29,466
They've started collapsing.

568
00:48:30,026 --> 00:48:37,606
There's around 40 million unbuilt and pre-built homes in China, which is more than the housing stock of the entire country of Germany.

569
00:48:38,046 --> 00:48:49,706
And so that real estate sector has been so levered and so hyped up that now that it's starting to collapse, everyone is trying to pull their money out and put their money in something useful.

570
00:48:50,606 --> 00:48:53,806
So what are their options for the average Chinese investor?

571
00:48:53,806 --> 00:48:55,966
Well, bonds are negative yielding.

572
00:48:56,166 --> 00:48:57,606
That's not really going to make you any money.

573
00:48:57,606 --> 00:49:04,886
Stocks, the Chinese stock market has been manipulated and filled with scams and scandals for years, right?

574
00:49:04,966 --> 00:49:06,326
And China has a closed capital account.

575
00:49:06,426 --> 00:49:09,126
It's very hard for money to flow in and out of China.

576
00:49:09,606 --> 00:49:11,826
So what's the next available option?

577
00:49:12,106 --> 00:49:13,106
Well, Bitcoin's banned.

578
00:49:13,386 --> 00:49:14,346
Bitcoin mining is banned.

579
00:49:14,786 --> 00:49:15,846
So what do they do?

580
00:49:16,286 --> 00:49:17,366
They go and they buy gold.

581
00:49:17,606 --> 00:49:18,586
They go and they buy silver.

582
00:49:18,806 --> 00:49:24,006
And so for the last few years, that rush towards gold and silver in China domestically has accelerated.

583
00:49:24,006 --> 00:49:30,466
And it's gotten to the point where even the domestic financial system has taken the side of the retail investor.

584
00:49:30,786 --> 00:49:49,086
VBL told me on a podcast back in October of 2025 that starting in January of 2025, Chinese financial firms allowed gold to be used as collateral for yuan-based loans as long as the gold was held in a safety deposit box at the bank.

585
00:49:49,186 --> 00:49:51,326
And it was at par, right?

586
00:49:51,326 --> 00:50:06,546
So if you have $1,000 worth or let's say 1,000 yuan worth of gold, you bring it in, they assay it, they analyze it, they make sure it's real gold, they put it in the safety deposit box, and now you can get a line of credit on that gold as collateral at a low interest rate.

587
00:50:06,946 --> 00:50:19,606
So they're essentially financializing gold within their domestic financial system, which is helping the retail narrative to push towards gold and silver and get the people out of real estate, bad equities, and bad bonds.

588
00:50:19,606 --> 00:50:23,806
That's really interesting, the financialization of gold there through or the collateralization.

589
00:50:24,026 --> 00:50:28,366
I try to think about watching gold run in such dramatic fashion.

590
00:50:28,686 --> 00:50:31,606
As a Bitcoiner, I don't have ill will towards gold.

591
00:50:31,786 --> 00:50:32,446
I love gold.

592
00:50:32,766 --> 00:50:34,166
It's got some really great qualities.

593
00:50:34,646 --> 00:50:38,746
I don't think it's as great for me or as great for the world or humanity as Bitcoin.

594
00:50:39,466 --> 00:50:41,106
But I have nothing against gold.

595
00:50:41,246 --> 00:50:46,666
In fact, I don't think it was more, maybe a year ago, I bought a gold coin at Costco.

596
00:50:46,666 --> 00:50:53,746
And it was just kind of a way to get closer with the metal, just see it, hold it, know what an ounce looks like.

597
00:50:54,466 --> 00:50:57,506
And some skin in the game to maybe, I wanted to track the price of gold.

598
00:50:57,626 --> 00:51:01,146
I was starting to get interested in the debasement trade, hearing about it.

599
00:51:01,166 --> 00:51:06,526
And I wanted to have a way to kind of like connect why I'm looking at this price more often.

600
00:51:06,926 --> 00:51:09,186
And like I said, there's that physical quality of gold.

601
00:51:09,246 --> 00:51:09,806
It's really interesting.

602
00:51:10,266 --> 00:51:12,266
But you think, but then gold moves dramatically.

603
00:51:12,266 --> 00:51:16,386
and as Bitcoiners, people who might DCA into Bitcoin

604
00:51:16,386 --> 00:51:20,246
or maybe go in hard, whatever it might be,

605
00:51:20,346 --> 00:51:22,906
you start thinking about like, is this a safe harbor?

606
00:51:23,066 --> 00:51:24,946
Can I scale into metals?

607
00:51:25,206 --> 00:51:27,046
And I think it's possible on paper,

608
00:51:27,046 --> 00:51:29,046
but you have tremendous counterparty risk.

609
00:51:29,046 --> 00:51:31,226
But even I think about maybe somebody who says,

610
00:51:31,566 --> 00:51:33,826
you know, I had a friend who,

611
00:51:34,646 --> 00:51:37,386
the same thing with, you know, Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008,

612
00:51:37,386 --> 00:51:39,266
got really nervous about the world economy

613
00:51:39,266 --> 00:51:40,766
and was looking for a safe harbor

614
00:51:40,766 --> 00:51:41,886
or something they could do.

615
00:51:42,266 --> 00:51:45,106
and bought like a bunch of platinum.

616
00:51:45,526 --> 00:51:46,366
And when I say a bunch of platinum,

617
00:51:46,426 --> 00:51:48,526
you're talking about like five, 10 ounces of platinum,

618
00:51:48,626 --> 00:51:49,526
something like this, right?

619
00:51:49,846 --> 00:51:52,626
And platinum went up dramatically this year

620
00:51:52,626 --> 00:51:55,246
and also had a lot of volatility.

621
00:51:55,386 --> 00:51:58,246
I think it crashed that day around 38% or 28%.

622
00:51:58,246 --> 00:51:59,986
But you think about like I bought a thousand

623
00:51:59,986 --> 00:52:03,726
or $2,000 worth of platinum and 10Xs,

624
00:52:03,786 --> 00:52:06,526
and now they have a 20 brick of platinum in their house.

625
00:52:06,586 --> 00:52:07,306
What do they do?

626
00:52:07,386 --> 00:52:10,026
Do they buy a safe, more metal,

627
00:52:10,026 --> 00:52:12,086
cheaper metal to put around the platinum

628
00:52:12,086 --> 00:52:17,266
them, how do they carry it around? Or, you know, if they want to sell it, if you go on the day that

629
00:52:17,266 --> 00:52:22,446
it drops 28% and then the dealer wants to give you 30% less than spot, I mean, you're talking about

630
00:52:22,446 --> 00:52:27,546
round tripping a lot of value there, a lot of volatility. So it's really hard for me to think

631
00:52:27,546 --> 00:52:32,486
about maybe how people use that as a defensive measure. But I want to talk about Japan, China's

632
00:52:32,486 --> 00:52:38,606
neighbor, and, you know, their economy has been zombified for decades, negative rates and yield

633
00:52:38,606 --> 00:52:43,406
curve control. What's happening with the yen right now and why should maybe, you know,

634
00:52:43,466 --> 00:52:49,806
Westerners care about Japan's monetary policy? So Japan is basically the linchpin of the global

635
00:52:49,806 --> 00:52:56,526
bond market, right? For, like I said, for 30 years, they've essentially had 0% rates and they've had

636
00:52:56,526 --> 00:53:02,346
QE since 2001. They've had QQE since 2013. They've had yield curve control since 2016.

637
00:53:03,126 --> 00:53:07,426
And what that has meant is that the average Japanese retail investor and the average Japanese

638
00:53:07,426 --> 00:53:14,626
institution has been incredibly, you know, yield starved. And so without any form of yield

639
00:53:14,626 --> 00:53:19,866
domestically and without any growth in their domestic stock market, the Japanese waited abroad

640
00:53:19,866 --> 00:53:28,286
and tried to find yield anywhere. So, you know, French bonds, British guilds, right, American

641
00:53:28,286 --> 00:53:35,506
treasuries, they bought everything. And they were essentially the global funder of the last 20 years,

642
00:53:35,506 --> 00:53:42,066
30 years of sovereign largesse, of sovereign fiscal responsibility. They were the ones driving

643
00:53:42,066 --> 00:53:47,446
yields down across the board. And they have essentially created this, what I call like,

644
00:53:47,546 --> 00:53:54,006
you know, a financial doomsday machine where the lower rates begot more debt, which begat more

645
00:53:54,006 --> 00:54:01,766
lower rates and more debt and lower rates. And that was all fine and dandy up until 2022, March,

646
00:54:01,766 --> 00:54:06,466
when the Fed started hiking. And specifically in June and July, when the Fed accelerated their

647
00:54:06,466 --> 00:54:12,846
hiking schedule and began bringing rates up to where they sit now, well, before they started

648
00:54:12,846 --> 00:54:18,906
cutting, but up to 5%. And the spread between the yields that could be achieved in Japan and the

649
00:54:18,906 --> 00:54:24,246
yields that you could earn in the US started to explode, right? Because Japan was pinned in 2022

650
00:54:24,246 --> 00:54:29,326
at that time at the zero bound. And so carry traders started to wade into the market in mass,

651
00:54:29,326 --> 00:54:34,606
basically shorting the yen because they'd borrow it, they'd sell yen, so functionally short,

652
00:54:34,766 --> 00:54:38,866
and they'd buy dollars and then they'd use those dollars to invest in US treasuries, right? And if

653
00:54:38,866 --> 00:54:45,506
you hedge the currency side of the trade, that's just free 5% money. And if you lever that 10 times,

654
00:54:45,586 --> 00:54:51,126
20 times, 30 times as a hedge fund, you can make literally millions of dollars, tens of millions,

655
00:54:51,306 --> 00:54:57,326
hundreds of millions of dollars a year just on arbitraging yields, on arbitraging the difference

656
00:54:57,326 --> 00:55:04,926
and interest rates. So that happened for all of 2022, 2023. The yen blew out from one-tenth of

657
00:55:04,926 --> 00:55:10,606
the dollar to 150, then 160. And the Bank of Japan began this intervention program where,

658
00:55:10,726 --> 00:55:15,846
you know, they would see the yen start to approach the 160 handle. That was their red line.

659
00:55:15,846 --> 00:55:22,366
They would come into the market with 20 or $30 billion of cash. They'd slam the market all at

660
00:55:22,366 --> 00:55:25,866
once within an hour with 10, 20 billion,

661
00:55:25,866 --> 00:55:30,186
they'd whipsaw the yen back down to 150 or back down to 148.

662
00:55:30,186 --> 00:55:32,766
And they'd blow out a bunch of yen shorts.

663
00:55:32,808 --> 00:55:40,388
And then they would wait, and then the next few weeks, the yen charts would kind of sneak back in again and push the yen back up.

664
00:55:41,048 --> 00:55:45,088
And so the yen, because of this, has been structurally weak for the last three years.

665
00:55:45,728 --> 00:55:56,868
Now, we were kind of in a stalemate up until, I would say, mid-2025, late 2025, because the Bank of Japan had done some things like they removed yield curve control.

666
00:55:57,388 --> 00:55:59,768
They hiked out of the zero bound, right?

667
00:55:59,768 --> 00:56:03,688
They're only at 0.75% as their Fed funds rate.

668
00:56:03,968 --> 00:56:04,868
So it's still very low.

669
00:56:05,388 --> 00:56:10,928
But they tried to hike nominally out of the negative interest rate zone, and they stopped QE or they stopped yield growth control.

670
00:56:11,128 --> 00:56:13,748
They were still doing QE up until 2025.

671
00:56:14,068 --> 00:56:23,388
Then they started doing balance sheet tapering to try to stave off not only the devaluation of the yen, but also the domestic inflation that had spiked up.

672
00:56:23,388 --> 00:56:31,108
because Japan has seen for the last 48 consecutive months, right, basically consistent CPI inflation

673
00:56:31,108 --> 00:56:37,028
above 2.2%, which is their central bank target. So four years basically of high inflation.

674
00:56:37,828 --> 00:56:41,728
So they had taken off the bands of yield control. They'd done all these other things. They stopped

675
00:56:41,728 --> 00:56:46,208
the interventions. And they thought that just letting some of the steam off, you know, letting

676
00:56:46,208 --> 00:56:51,968
some of the pressure off the 0% interest rates would help to alleviate the yen. Now, that was

677
00:56:51,968 --> 00:56:59,068
working up until October 2025, because on the 19th of that month, Senai Takeichi gets elected to

678
00:56:59,068 --> 00:57:04,608
prime minister. And she's the first female prime minister in Japan. She's also one of the most

679
00:57:04,608 --> 00:57:10,348
fiscally aggressive. She's essentially a devoted acolyte of the late Shinzo Abe and his Abenomics

680
00:57:10,348 --> 00:57:18,868
playbook. And what he had promoted was, you know, extensive fiscal spending, extensive borrowing,

681
00:57:18,868 --> 00:57:25,988
high amounts of tax cuts of just stimulative fiscal dominance. And she wants to do the same

682
00:57:25,988 --> 00:57:33,548
playbook, essentially, again, with inflation at 2% and the debt at 260% and a much worse

683
00:57:33,548 --> 00:57:41,768
economic situation than existed 10 or 15 years ago. So as she started to enact her policies,

684
00:57:42,068 --> 00:57:47,728
she was cutting the—there's an 8% consumption tax in Japan, which is mainly held by,

685
00:57:47,728 --> 00:57:52,948
you call it retail or average everyday people, blue collar, white collar people. They pay this

686
00:57:52,948 --> 00:57:58,648
8% consumption tax on food and beverages. She wants to cut that completely, which is a huge

687
00:57:58,648 --> 00:58:02,888
source of revenue for the government. She wants to cut broad corporate tax rates across the board.

688
00:58:03,328 --> 00:58:08,888
She wants to get rid of numerous other tax incentives that they've built across their

689
00:58:08,888 --> 00:58:12,948
economy. And then she wants to enact more spending. So one of her goals is to bring

690
00:58:12,948 --> 00:58:18,988
military spending back to 2% of GDP, and then also to reform, I think it's Section 8 of the

691
00:58:18,988 --> 00:58:24,728
Constitution, of the Japanese Constitution, which forbids it to hold a strong domestic military

692
00:58:24,728 --> 00:58:31,908
force. So if she's able to do that, it means that fiscal spending will skyrocket, fiscal incomes

693
00:58:31,908 --> 00:58:38,768
will fall, and overall, the budget will blow out. The supplementary budget proposed in November was

694
00:58:38,768 --> 00:58:44,208
21 trillion yen which was the highest ever the overall budget was 112 trillion yen also the

695
00:58:44,208 --> 00:58:59,242
highest ever for a fiscal year 2026 and the bond market started to revolt So from November to January we saw bond yields explode across the yield curve from everything from the two year up to the 40

696
00:58:59,242 --> 00:59:07,342
year. And then on January 20th, things accelerated even more because Senai Takeichi basically had

697
00:59:07,342 --> 00:59:13,262
hinted in the previous week on the 13th that she was going to hold a snap election and dissolve the

698
00:59:13,262 --> 00:59:18,402
lower house of parliament and essentially try to push through this you know these set of reforms

699
00:59:18,402 --> 00:59:22,882
at any means necessary and she actually staked her reputation on it right if this bill if the

700
00:59:22,882 --> 00:59:29,382
snap election didn't pass and she didn't win uh a super majority she would resign which is what she

701
00:59:29,382 --> 00:59:35,942
had claimed on on tv and so june or january 20th comes around there's a failed essentially a failed

702
00:59:35,942 --> 00:59:41,982
bond auction for the 20 year the 30 year spikes by like you know 30 basis points the 40 year spikes

703
00:59:41,982 --> 00:59:43,802
by 40 basis points within a few days.

704
00:59:43,922 --> 00:59:45,762
The third year is flirting with 4%.

705
00:59:45,762 --> 00:59:48,122
The 40 year goes over 4.2%,

706
00:59:48,122 --> 00:59:49,482
which is the highest it's ever been

707
00:59:49,482 --> 00:59:52,762
since it was introduced back in like, you know, 1999.

708
00:59:53,262 --> 00:59:56,142
And the entire bond market is going to revolt.

709
00:59:56,442 --> 00:59:58,322
But Sanaya Takeichi doesn't care

710
00:59:58,322 --> 01:00:01,542
because her whole goal is pushing, you know,

711
01:00:01,802 --> 01:00:04,242
Japanese fiscal dominance, pushing more spending

712
01:00:04,242 --> 01:00:07,022
and stimulating the economy out of this 0% interest rate.

713
01:00:07,542 --> 01:00:09,002
So that's where we sit right now.

714
01:00:09,122 --> 01:00:11,422
Now, both the bond market and the yen

715
01:00:11,422 --> 01:00:17,162
have kind of retraced a little bit since that chaos of late January. But I think Japan is still

716
01:00:17,162 --> 01:00:23,242
in for quite the ride because the fiscal picture there is very, very grim. I wonder what that

717
01:00:23,242 --> 01:00:27,122
portends for, you know, maybe America. I mean, they've been able to just kick the can down the

718
01:00:27,122 --> 01:00:32,542
road for so long. Luke Groman posted something that stuck with me. He said the denial around AI

719
01:00:32,542 --> 01:00:37,782
disrupting white collar jobs sounds exactly like what Rust Belt union guys were saying in the early

720
01:00:37,782 --> 01:00:43,382
2000s about China disrupting blue collar work. We know how that played out. Middle aged whites

721
01:00:43,382 --> 01:00:49,642
killed themselves via drugs, alcohol and suicide at rates comparable to 1990s Russia. Lost jobs,

722
01:00:49,822 --> 01:00:54,602
lost factories, lost meaning. Do you think white collar America is ready for what's coming?

723
01:00:54,942 --> 01:00:59,882
Are we about to repeat sort of that devastation at scale with AI? I think we will. And you know,

724
01:00:59,882 --> 01:01:03,462
it's kind of sobering, right? Because I've been I've been actually doing some research. I'm going

725
01:01:03,462 --> 01:01:09,282
to write another research piece here actually in the next few days about uh claude and about

726
01:01:09,282 --> 01:01:14,602
anthropic and their you know they're essentially their quest to take down the uh incumbent white

727
01:01:14,602 --> 01:01:22,282
collar big tech companies just this week we saw on monday claude came out with a blog post stating

728
01:01:22,282 --> 01:01:27,362
that they had been training a version of their you know newest claude model opus 4.6 their most

729
01:01:27,362 --> 01:01:35,382
powerful model on COBOL optimization. Now COBOL is this ancient programming language from the 1950s.

730
01:01:35,442 --> 01:01:39,562
I actually had to use it a little bit when I worked at my first internship and it's used as

731
01:01:39,562 --> 01:01:44,662
the backend for the vast majority of financial institutions across the United States and

732
01:01:44,662 --> 01:01:51,522
basically across the Western world. 95% of ATMs use COBOL as their backend code base.

733
01:01:51,522 --> 01:01:58,182
Most airports, a lot of restaurant payment order windows use it.

734
01:01:58,522 --> 01:02:14,316
A lot of legacy credit card systems right It very ubiquitous across especially the financial economy And IBM specifically has been taking a role in basically monopolizing COBOL code optimization and updating of databases

735
01:02:14,596 --> 01:02:17,016
So they have the best engineers in the world.

736
01:02:17,156 --> 01:02:18,596
They have the most amount of COBOL engineers.

737
01:02:18,956 --> 01:02:27,916
And if you're a bank, if you're an institution, if you're a restaurant chain, if you're a payment processor and you need some COBOL experts, you go talk to IBM.

738
01:02:27,916 --> 01:02:38,656
Well, they just announced that their newest model, Opus 4.6, can do in weeks would used to take a team of engineers years to do.

739
01:02:39,396 --> 01:02:44,256
And what that means is that a large section of IBM's business is now out the drain.

740
01:02:44,496 --> 01:02:47,496
So IBM stock fell 13% on Monday.

741
01:02:48,096 --> 01:02:52,276
And just a few days prior to that, on Friday, they had done the same thing to cybersecurity.

742
01:02:52,276 --> 01:03:11,816
They announced that they had created an instance of cloud that could scan entire databases and code bases for vulnerabilities and create checklists and priority lists of what problems to fix and what vulnerabilities could be existing and basically obviating the need for cybersecurity companies like CloudFare or Okta.

743
01:03:12,676 --> 01:03:20,256
And so I think as we move forward, right, we're going to see more and more and more of these disruptions take place.

744
01:03:20,256 --> 01:03:23,176
It's unfortunate, but it's just the way that technology is trending.

745
01:03:23,596 --> 01:03:28,176
Most white-collar repetitive cognitive work is going to go away.

746
01:03:29,236 --> 01:03:31,776
And I don't say that lightly.

747
01:03:32,076 --> 01:03:36,696
I say that with almost a sense of sadness because there's a lot of people that are going to be hurt by that.

748
01:03:36,776 --> 01:03:38,596
We're going to have to figure out how the economy is going to work.

749
01:03:39,196 --> 01:03:41,496
But there's also going to be a lot of opportunity, right?

750
01:03:41,496 --> 01:03:46,016
The benefit with these models is that now an entire startup can be built with just one or two people.

751
01:03:46,016 --> 01:04:01,256
You know, entire systems that were now were previously too expensive to update or too expensive to change or too expensive to move are now easy to, you know, to update and develop and, you know, create apps for.

752
01:04:01,736 --> 01:04:04,116
So it's just going to be a huge sea change.

753
01:04:04,116 --> 01:04:16,436
And I'm not sure if you read that Satrini article, but that was even, you know, another nail in the coffin to prove and hammer home the point that AI is truly going to revolutionize, I think, especially the white collar and service based economy.

754
01:04:16,796 --> 01:04:22,916
Yeah, I mean, I could see the unicorns or the Amazons, the Googles of the future having a tremendous, tremendously less workforce.

755
01:04:23,096 --> 01:04:28,436
I mean, you might not need a department for HR and compliance if your Claude can do this for you.

756
01:04:28,436 --> 01:04:38,436
I just wonder how many new kinds of jobs and endeavors will be created, you know, and how much human intellectual intellect will be needed to manage these systems, machines, agents, etc.

757
01:04:38,656 --> 01:04:42,136
And, you know, maybe there'll be major upheaval and transformation.

758
01:04:42,316 --> 01:04:51,776
And maybe some people who become obsolete or their tasks or roles or jobs become obsolete, maybe they're not the ones who are lucky enough to learn the new skills.

759
01:04:51,776 --> 01:04:58,036
I'm just not sure we have sort of annihilation and devastation or, you know, or maybe we do.

760
01:04:58,036 --> 01:05:04,196
It was remains to be seen does seem though to me like massive sea change that you only

761
01:05:04,196 --> 01:05:08,736
see when the internet comes around or the phone or the fax machine, these kinds of things.

762
01:05:08,736 --> 01:05:10,596
So, yeah, this has been.

763
01:05:11,476 --> 01:05:13,036
I would say it's even bigger than that, right?

764
01:05:13,036 --> 01:05:28,270
Because the internet took away yellow pages and Blockbuster but it gave us Netflix and Google right It replaced companies that were very slow and inefficient with more efficient companies but that still employed tens of thousands of people created tons of jobs

765
01:05:28,710 --> 01:05:30,590
paid all these people good salaries.

766
01:05:31,450 --> 01:05:33,710
And, you know, there's a lot of downstream effects

767
01:05:33,710 --> 01:05:34,550
that people don't realize

768
01:05:34,550 --> 01:05:36,290
that come from white collar work, right?

769
01:05:36,450 --> 01:05:38,170
Not only do those white collar workers,

770
01:05:38,690 --> 01:05:40,930
which are, you know, half the economy

771
01:05:40,930 --> 01:05:42,130
in terms of the workforce,

772
01:05:42,250 --> 01:05:45,330
but they constitute 75% of discretionary income spending.

773
01:05:45,610 --> 01:05:47,490
They're also the majority of the tax base.

774
01:05:47,650 --> 01:05:52,610
Right. The U.S. government, they tax people essentially based on time.

775
01:05:52,990 --> 01:05:58,990
So the income tax, the payroll tax, right, all these things are tax or time based tax systems.

776
01:05:59,150 --> 01:06:08,530
And if people have to work less or if less, if fewer people are working, then that means that the tax revenues for the government are going to start collapsing.

777
01:06:08,530 --> 01:06:23,430
And not only that, but the overall revenues of every anecdotal and tangential business, the bars, the restaurants, the clubs, the car wash, the automotive shop, all of them are going to see declines in revenues.

778
01:06:23,630 --> 01:06:32,490
Because now instead of Amazon employing 20,000 software engineers to maintain its massive code base, it employs 500.

779
01:06:32,990 --> 01:06:34,910
And they just use Claude to do everything.

780
01:06:34,910 --> 01:06:39,810
You know, you can just you can leverage people's time much more efficiently now.

781
01:06:40,210 --> 01:06:45,670
So I think people aren't ready for this level of disruption, but I'm not sure what can be done to stop it.

782
01:06:45,930 --> 01:06:50,270
Yeah, I mean, it's the extrapolation the way you can speculate.

783
01:06:50,430 --> 01:06:54,370
What do they do when they roll out like cloud education and you don't need teachers anymore?

784
01:06:54,490 --> 01:06:58,010
And whether you're homeschooling, you just hope at school and like you just log into your prompt.

785
01:06:58,010 --> 01:06:59,890
And it's like we looked at your tests.

786
01:06:59,990 --> 01:07:01,730
We looked at where you are in science.

787
01:07:01,730 --> 01:07:03,070
This is what you need to cover today.

788
01:07:03,370 --> 01:07:04,230
Here's the video.

789
01:07:04,230 --> 01:07:08,930
Here's the link. Here's the study questions, the exams on Friday. Check back in with me in two days.

790
01:07:09,070 --> 01:07:14,830
That'll be fascinating. This conversation has been awesome. As usual, Peruvian Bull, Roberto,

791
01:07:15,450 --> 01:07:19,050
I have to have you back on more often. I'll leave it to you for any parting words,

792
01:07:19,110 --> 01:07:20,850
let people know where they can find you and your work.

793
01:07:21,230 --> 01:07:28,010
Sure. So you can find me on Twitter at Peruvian underscore Bull. I'm also on Noster. I have the

794
01:07:28,010 --> 01:07:34,770
end pub link in my extended bio i have a sub stack called dollar endgame.substack.com and then i also

795
01:07:34,770 --> 01:07:39,110
just started the youtube channel back in november called peruvian bull that i'm trying to grow so if

796
01:07:39,110 --> 01:07:43,530
you're interested in macroeconomics uh content if you're interested in finance if you're interested

797
01:07:43,530 --> 01:07:47,890
in you know gold silver bitcoin any of these subjects uh go give me a follow there and check

798
01:07:47,890 --> 01:07:52,570
out some of my videos so cool we'll include all those uh links in the show notes thank you so much

799
01:07:52,570 --> 01:07:57,130
it has been so dope sweet thanks for having me on cedric this is great thanks for tuning in to this

800
01:07:57,130 --> 01:08:02,110
episode of the Bitcoin Matrix. If you enjoyed the conversation, don't forget to like, subscribe,

801
01:08:02,390 --> 01:08:06,710
and drop a comment below with any questions or thoughts you may have. We'd love to hear from you.

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You can support the show by checking out our sponsors and affiliate links in the description.

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It helps keep bringing you great content while connecting you with awesome products that I

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believe in. Share this episode with your friends, family, or anyone curious about Bitcoin. And let's

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keep growing this community together. Stay curious, keep stacking, and I'll catch you in the next one.

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Thank you.