Bankless - 104 - Why Everything Is Weird | Kyla Scanlon

Episode Date: February 7, 2022

Everything is weird right now, and Kyla Scanlon is here to tell us why. Kyla is an independent, Gen Z friendly, new age content creator with a fantastic newsletter and youtube channel. In addition, she is the BanklessHQ TikTok correspondent, dropping weekly recaps of the crypto world. Stepping outside the crypto bubble, there is craziness in the real world. We explore whether inflation is destroying the economy, social unrest, why younger generations are unhappy, and everything happening IRL right now. Are we approaching war with Russia? Is globalization reversing? Can supply chains be fixed? Hang out with us as Kyla distills these complicated topics into well researched, thoughtful commentary. ------ ✨ DEBRIEF ✨ | Ryan & David's Unfiltered Thoughts on the Episode https://shows.banklesshq.com/p/debrief-kyla  ------ 📣 ZERION | Trade Across 7 Networks and 500+ protocols https://bankless.cc/Zerion  ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER:          https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/  🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST:                 http://podcast.banklesshq.com/  ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS:  ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum  🍵 MATCHA | SMART ORDER ROUTING https://bankless.cc/Matcha  🚀 SLINGSHOT | LAYER 2 SOCIAL TRADING https://bankless.cc/Slingshot  🏦 GEMINI | TURN FIAT INTO CRYPTO https://bankless.cc/Gemini  🦁 BRAVE | THE BROWSER NATIVE WALLET https://bankless.cc/Brave  🦄 UNISWAP | DECENTRALIZED FUNDING https://bankless.cc/UniGrants  ------ Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 5:30 Kyla Scanlon 8:13 Inflation & Supply Chains  13:58 The Fed 18:15 Labor Markets 24:47 Social Unrest & Revolution 30:16 The Russia Ukraine Thing 35:14 What Modern War Looks Like 39:22 China & Getting Swifted 42:17 Energy Markets 52:35 Globalization 57:30 Narratives Shape Everything 1:01:47 Crypto in General 1:07:20 Line Goes Up Criticism 1:14:02 Green Energy Investment 1:19:53 Is Gen Z Screwed? 1:25:04 Meaning & Creating 1:31:40 Closing & Disclaimers ------ Resources: Kyla on Twitter: https://twitter.com/kylascan?s=20  Kyla's Website: https://kylascanlon.com/  Bankless TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@banklesshq?lang=en  Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: https://www.amazon.com/Changing-World-Order-Nations-Succeed/dp/1982160276  Ukraine Meme: https://twitter.com/Ukraine/status/1468206078940823554?s=20&t=QrBDbm0rG-kp0eNDS2l-SA  -----  Music by Pick Patek - My Mind Is A Barrel (feat. Raindrop Relly & Charles Hussle) - https://thmatc.co/?l=3CCE88F3  ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures 

Welcome to bankless, where we explore the frontier of internet money and internet finance. This is how to get started, how to get better, and how to front run the opportunity. This is Ryan Sean Adams. I'm here with David Hoffman, and we're here to help you become more bankless. Guys, hot episode today. Everything is weird right now, and we don't know why. That's the theme of today's episode. We're going to get outsider crypto bubble and talk about all the weirdness going on in the real world, stuff like, Is inflation going to destroy our economy? Why younger generations, particularly labor, are so unhappy. War with Russia?

Is that about to happen? Can supply chains be fixed? Is globalization reversing and how younger generations navigate and eventually clean up this mess? David, we've got the perfect guest to talk about this. Kyla Scanlon is here with us. Talk about this episode a little bit. What can folks expect? Yeah, there's been just, first off, I've been following Kyla's YouTube channel and it's been a great way to, she's extremely well researched, extremely well knowledgeable. And you can definitely tell that she has a passion for this. And so while I'm in crypto-twitter's sphere, reading crypto stuff, watching crypto YouTube, sometimes I forget about the rest of the world. But Kyla's YouTube channel is how I stay synced with the rest of the world. And there's so much going on. There's so much going on outside of crypto. It's actually weird to say that. You listed some of the subjects. And I think it's just worth it because crypto,

is growing up, it is maturing, it is finding itself embedded in more and more and more parts of the real world. And the real world is starting to impact crypto more and more and more. And so all these topics that you just listed out are things that are peripheral to crypto that impact us, regardless if we are in like high in the sky, crypto utopia. Like it turns out, no, the potential war with Russia and Ukraine, that actually does impact crypto markets. Like, turns out we are at that point in history. And so Kyle is in crazy awesome ability to just distill well, like very complicated topics into well-researched, just commentary. We're going to just burn through all the topics that are relevant right now that are really going

to be, I think, really big topics also moving forward for the rest of the decade. Yeah, absolutely. Everything is so interconnected. And now crypto is playing a role. But we've got to get back to the physical in this episode. Out of the Metaverse, poker head out of the Metaverse and just check on things. So we're going to do a drive-by of all of those items, kind of a what you need to know. in 2022, including I think Kyla's got some fantastic advice for the would-be investor, the would-be journeyer who skews on the younger side and is trying to stay educated and up to speed on all of these things. So we're going to get to that. Of course, as always, make sure you like and subscribe to

this episode wherever you're listening to it. Leave us a review on Apple iTunes as well. It helps get us to the top of the charts. We're going to get to the conversation in just a moment. But before we do, we want to tell you about these fantastic tools for going bank lists from our sponsors. When you shop for plane tickets, you probably use kayak, Expedia, or Google to compare ticket prices. So why would you limit yourself to just one exchange when you trade crypto? When you make your trades, you want to make sure you're getting the best possible price on your

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Do you have something of value that you think you want to contribute to the Uniswap ecosystem? No matter how big or small your idea is, you can apply for a unique grant at uniswapgrant.org and help steer Uniswap in the direction that you think it should go. Thank you, Uniswap, for sponsoring bankless. Slinghot is a decentralized trading platform that combines the performance and ease of a centralized exchange with the openness and transparency of DFI, creating the world's most powerful trading platform. Slinghot aggregates liquidity from all of DFI in order to find the best price on thousands of crypto assets. Every token on Slingtot comes with a price chart and trade logs to give you insights into the market's activity in real time.

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She knows a lot about a lot of things. She's an independent content creator with brilliant and often very entertaining ideas on macro, monetary policy, energy markets. You might also know her from the official bankless TikTok. She is our official TikTok correspondent. She writes a substack, has YouTube videos, just an insane amount.

of information. We're going to talk about how weird the 2020s have been so far and how this year is shaping up to be a very strange, odd, weird year. Kyla, welcome to Bankless. It's great to have you. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Excited to be here. Well, let's get into that weird vibe. And maybe in order to do that, we need to get into kind of a Kyla vibe, a way of thinking. So you give this fantastic intro on all of the content that you produce on all of your YouTube videos. Could you give us that intro? Sure. Yeah. So hey, everyone. My name is Kyla. Welcome to my channel, we're talking about the stock market and the economy amongst other things.

That's what we're going to do. We're going to talk about the stock market and the economy amongst other things, hopefully hitting some topics that are top of mind right now in the weirdness category. So inflation, labor markets, supply chain. Oh my God, are we going to get in a war with Russia? Is that about to happen? European energy crisis, that might be some of the fallout. We've got political instability in the U.S. The Fed keeps printing money. What does all of this mean for crypto? how do things shape up? We're going to talk about all of these things in the next hour or so. But let's set the context here, Kyla. So it feels like things are weird right now. How weird are

they? Like scale of 1 to 10 from a weirdness perspective. Can they get any weirder? And how are we looking historically? Well, yeah. I mean, I guess weirdness is relative, right? So I would say that there's been a lot of times in history that things have been weird. But right now there's just a lot of different weird things going on across a lot of different channels. So like the geopolitical tensions, inflation, sort of some of the innovative stuff that's happening in crypto, like all these different things or all these different forces are putting a lot of pressure on everything, creating a lot of weirdness. So I would say it's like maybe a seven out of ten. A seven. So we could things could get weirder. Yeah, they could definitely get a lot weirder. Oh my God. And I think

part of the question is like, will they get weirder? Maybe we'll we'll talk about towards the end. Let's start with the topic that's on everyone's mind recently. So 7% inflation in December in the U.S. I'm not sure what it was in January if we have those numbers yet, but 7% is a lot. I've never seen that in my lifetime. Can we talk about inflation for a minute? Is inflation going to destroy the U.S. economy? No, I don't think so. So it'll depend on how sticky the inflation is. So if it is actually transitory, the Federal Reserve has started to respond to the inflation. They sort of realize that it's gotten a little bit high. So they're going to put the breaks on the economy, slow things down. But I think inflation is just really a function of coming

out of the other side of the pandemic. So you have supply chains that are just fundamentally broken. Then you have labor wage problems. So a little bit of wage inflation going on. And then you just have also monetary stimulus, fiscal stimulus, and that provided a little bit of floor to the consumer. And then all of a sudden, the stock market, et cetera, all those became speculative goods. And so there's just a lot of upwards movement and prices everywhere, creating a lot of pressure, yeah, an inflationary pressure as well. One of the weird things about inflation, I think, is that we can't really, and it come to consensus about where it's coming from.

Like, obviously, the Stimmy checks are a big source of inflation, but also we have all this pent up demand because everyone was stuck at home for so long. And then in the combination of, like, well, COVID actually isn't over yet, and we still have a lot of missing labor out of the economy mixed with all this like pent up demand and a lot of people who are very price insensitive as in a lot of their assets went up during COVID. And so they don't really care about what the prices are about things. So they buy them anyways. And that creates a lot of just inflation. Do you have any opinions about what is the biggest or the bigger sources of inflation and why this conversation is so big right now? Yeah. I mean, I personally think it's the supply chains.

I think those are just really hard to fix. And it ties into everything sort of that you just mentioned. So if consumers are demanding a lot of goods and supply chains can't supply those goods, you're going to have prices increase. Like producers or like whatever, you know, they're going to pass those prices right off to the consumer. And then with the labor wage issues, so like if you don't have enough people, either driving trucks, working at ports, et cetera, like making the supply chains function, working at factories, like that's not good either.

So I think that's part of the problem is supply chains are a big issue. And then also, I think Pint up consumer demand is a big issue. We've sort of seen that begin to wean back a little bit. So consumers are just a little bit nervous. We saw a huge print and GDP growth this last quarter, but we're probably going to see a little bit of compression this upcoming quarter just because Omnacron. But I think that the economy is trying to figure out if it's actually good or not.

And supply chains are putting pressure on that and, you know, ultimately inflation also. So use the term transitory inflation earlier, Kyla. Is that your belief? Do you think inflation is transitory? I guess if it's supply chain caused, that might mean that it is transitory. But this is a great debate that's going on right now. Is it transitory or is this much more pernicious? Yeah, I mean, that's the question, right? So the Fed sort of backed out of saying transitory. So Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve, they were like, inflation is going to be transitory. It's going to go away. It's really these supply chains like everything's going to be fine eventually

and everything's good. But it turns out that inflation was not as transitory. as they thought there was even more price pressure than they thought there would be. So I think it'll just depend on how supply chains recover. It'll really depend on the labor market and it will depend on this element of globalization. Like have we sort of made this just in time inventory, Amazonian expectation stuff a little bit too fragile? Like have we kind of backed ourselves into a situation where inflation is inevitable just because of the functioning that we have? I want to unpack that line because we're probably going to recircle to it later too. Just in Time supply chain. Can you define that for the listeners?

Yeah. So basically everything comes just in time, as the name suggests. So like if you're building a truck, like wheels would come and everything has to come at the exact time. So like you don't have any, any like movement. So you don't have any way that things can come slower or faster. You would have to have it just at that exact moment. If it comes later, then the whole entire supply chain gets messed up. So if you're building a car and a wheels come a couple days later, all of a sudden your whole production time. is, you know, five, six weeks longer just because those wheels didn't come on the exact day that they were meant to. So everything is very, very dependent on this exact time that it needs to show up or else the whole dominoes begin to tip, yeah. And this has been the paradigm that our supply chains have operated under pre-COVID. And I think the TLD was a very well-oiled, very efficient, very sleek machine, but it was also really fragile. And you throw one small little pandemic in it, and then all of a sudden all the supply chains kind of break down. There's like a link here between this just in time supply chain paradigm and inflation, right?

Because this is the way that our supply chains have been set up. It was almost like a catalyst for the expression of pent up demand to translate into increased prices. Would you say that's all true? Yeah. I mean, I think that globalization is great, right? Because you can have comparative advantage in the other countries that are maybe better at producing some things, can produce those things. It ends up being a little bit cheaper for everybody at the end. But it also, you know, creates a lot of friction or it can and creates a lot of bad things that can happen as we saw with the pandemic.

So I think we'll have more to talk about on the supply chain side. But let's stay on the topic of inflation for a little bit more. So 40 year high, 7% right now. How confident are you that the Fed's response, which is, you know, maybe stopping quantitative easing and maybe getting into a quantitative tightening type of phase where they're discharging their balance sheet? and also raising interest rates, how confident are you that they're pursuing the right strategy and this will, like, curtail inflation? Yeah. I mean, that's a really interesting question, just because this is something that comes up a lot.

It's like, well, does raising rates actually fix supply chains if that is the issue of inflation? Like, you can't raise rates and be like, all right, everybody, like, supply chains are fixed, like trucks are running again. People are happy. That's just not how it works. So I think that's the big issue. And really the main goal with sort of this contractionary monetary policy would be so it makes money less liquid. So you're not as incentivized to like speculate. And so money that would go towards more speculative assets would go more towards people going back to work maybe because they don't have the freedom to kind of sit at home or whatever. So that's really the big goal with contractionary monetary policy is to funnel resources in a different way and to make it so there's less slack in the economy as well. So I think the big question will be like how quickly does the Fed do this? Obviously, the stock market, crypto was not super happy when the Fed announced that there

was going to be potentially like raising rates. And now the question is, well, they raise rates by 50 basis points in March. And that would be quite fast. Like that would be an element of shock to the economy, I think. And then when do they start rolling assets off the balance sheet or when did they start actually like selling assets off the balance sheet? Because the taper will end in March. So there's just a lot that will come.

to a pin if there is some monetary policy and we'll see how effective it is and if it actually sort of fixes the problems that we're seeing. So, Kyla, how do you think this all plays out? Like, there are a lot of different possibilities, I suppose. One is that the Fed doesn't take the intervention or another is that they do take the intervention. Inflation goes down. It could go up. The Fed could do something and just take credit for inflation going down. There could be political implications resulting from all of this. So how do you think 2020 plays out for us. Oh, yeah.

I mean, inflation is already a political hot potato. We have midterms coming up. And that has been a topic of discussion. Hold the Fed raise and have all these senators potentially bad that the stock market's going down or the economy is not doing well because the Fed's raising interest rates, but also the Fed has to do something because all these politicians are getting mad that inflation is hurting their constituents. So I think that the Fed is really a tough job.

And I know that's like maybe not the best thing to say. because it is their job, but sort of predicting how the market is going to respond, how people are going to respond, it's very much game theory. And it's really difficult because they have their toolkit. But one of the issues with their toolkit is that rates are already like basically near zero. And they've been near zero for a really long time. The last time that the Fed did a tightening cycle was back in 2016 to 2018. And they eventually had to end that tightening cycle in 2019 because of something that happened with the repo market. And because the market was like, we just don't want this from you right now. Fed. And so I think the Fed can do everything that they want. But if the market begins to get spooked, sort of how we saw back in September of 2019, like all of that could go away. So the Fed has to pay

attention to inflation. But it's kind of like the elephant in the room that they have to pay attention to how the market and the bond market specifically responds as well. One thing I think the Fed is juggling is there's also just a changing taste for labor in the world. And so like the Fed has one responsibility, which is to keep prices stable. That is not happening in this present moment. This is what inflation is. But also, like, there's just a lot of just changing desire to do specific types of labor, to do specific types of jobs. How does the consumer interest in labor? How has that impacted the feds like calculus? Or is it at all? Yeah. I mean, so labor markets are broadly recovered. So we've seen unemployment go down quite a bit. We've seen labor force participation rate

go up a little bit. People are mostly moving in between jobs. So we have seen a little bit of contraction in the number of educators. We've obviously seen shortages of truckers, other very important parts of the supply chain jobs sort of going away or moving to a different subsegment of the economy because it's kind of like, well, why would you do a job that is relatively underappreciated? So I think that the Fed has to take that into consideration where you're right, like the labor market is sort of taking on a different composition. And so the metrics might be good. Like unemployment might be low, but that doesn't mean that the labor market itself is strong in terms of how it's composed.

So I think that that's something that they pay attention to. But once again, they're sort of handcuffed with their toolkit. Like they can't, you know, raise rates. You know, raise rates, everybody go drive a truck. Like, that's just not how it works. So I think that they're, once again, it's a limit that they have. And this can't be the Fed's like problem to solve, right? Like the Fed can't incur like incentives for people to go become truckers and fix the supply chains.

So how do we solve that problem? Do you have an opinion on that? Yeah. I mean, so part of the problem with supply chains right now is policy. So at Long Beach Port, you can only stack, I think this, maybe this changed, but it was you can only stack like two containers. And then all the other containers had to stay out on the ships. So there's a lot of broken policy around the supply chains.

And there's a lot of weird policy around labor markets, like whether that be, you know, who can work, how they can work, when they can work, like that sort of stuff. So I think a lot of it just boils down into broken policy. And that's not really the Fed's job to manage. Obviously, that's politicians. That's like a whole different kind of forms. But I think just improved policy in making things more efficient and less archaic is super important. So even though some of the metrics are showing like recovery in labor markets, it also feels like, and this might be, more sentiment driven, but like as I'm reading the sentiment, it feels like labor is just very

unhappy right now. Like people are pissed off. I don't know if you track, you know, a subreddit community, like R slash anti-work, but this has like 1.6 million individuals. You know, there's a lot of pro-labor populist sentiment around we're not getting paid enough. Like, we work too hard. We're in these shitty dead-end jobs and have no prospects of promotion or upward mobility. This is like, I think a little foreign to you those who are in crypto because sometimes people in crypto like David and myself, we can seem like we're, you know, too bullish, too excited about crypto. And that's because we look at crypto and we see limitless opportunities. But I think people outside of crypto have to look at the rest of the market and be like,

well, things are pretty stagnant. So how does that factor in this increasing discontent in labor markets? Like wages aren't rising. Capital assets are, but wages aren't. And everyone's upset with the jobs that they have. No, it's really unfortunate. And I think about this quite a bit because it goes back into that labor force composition where people are sort of forced into these nine to five jobs. Like there's just this massive discontent, as you're saying, around jobs and the jobs that you're working and feeling like it shouldn't have to be this way and why is it this way. And I think this is actually interesting because this is where like anti work and sort of like that freedom of, you know, fire movement, etc. They sort of have an overlap with crypto that I don't think. gets talked about enough. There's this desire for freedom. And freedom is ultimately like a function of choice and a function of money, which is sort of what crypto is about. Like you get to

choose, you, you get to like choose how your money is controlled or you get to control it yourself. So I think that there's a lot of overlap there. But I just think that a lot of people feel upset with the like the capitalist system for just being so inefficient and for not taking care of them. Like we did see a little bit of uptick in wage growth, but not nearly enough to combat inflation. Like people, you know, you're getting your savings eaten for coming out of the other side of a pandemic. It just feels like you're not taking care of. And I think there's a lot of frustration around that. And because of social media, like you were saying with Reddit, people are able to actually aggregate and talk about this stuff and really try and figure it out. But I don't

know if there's a good answer, you know. Well, so labor feels increasingly left behind. They can't afford like rent and groceries and the prospect of inflation. Their wages aren't increasing. Like who got a 7% raise over the last year? And, you know, that's what the real cost of everything has increased. And my question is, Kyla, how do you think this gets resolved? Is there some political answer to this? Is the market going to create an answer to this? Like, hey, now we have to compete for our, you know, employees and for labor. And so wages go up and are unions an answer to this? How does this all get resolved? Yeah. I mean, have seen increases in wages. So a lot of companies are offering a lot more. They're offering

signing bonuses. They're offering like, you know, $20, $25 an hour for jobs that were probably previously minimum wage, you know, $12, $15 an hour. So you do see companies becoming a little bit more competitive. But like with regards to how it gets solved, I just think there has to be a different value prop for labor. Like, we probably need to figure out health care. We probably need to figure out retirement stuff. Like we just need to sort of treat people a little bit better and not treat them like robots. And maybe automation. I think automation is honestly an answer to some of this where we can have more efficiencies if we just automate things and maybe like rely less on humans. But that's a whole different host of requirements. But yeah, I think the biggest thing is

we just have to sort of take care of people better, you know, but that's expensive. So. Crazy, crazy thought. That got too much money. Taking care of people, that's not too much money. So there's something I'm concerned about is like we saw the supply chain really break down the cost of like used cars, for example. Use cars are through the roof. That's actually now recently bled into new cars. New cars are going above their sticker price. Also housing prices are like on like growing up 15 to 20% on a yearly basis over the last year or so. And like just a lot of just really important stuff is being priced out of labor. And meanwhile, exactly what Ryan was saying, there's like this growing discontent with labor in of itself. People just have this attitude of disenfranchisement, which is like not really all of the same pieces that you want to put all into the same spot at the same time. Like that's kind of like the ground, the foundations of like a revolution. Are you concerned about this trajectory over like the long term over the rest of the decade? In terms of a revolution or just in terms of?

In terms of just like, yeah, social unrest, I think. we've seen, we've had the social unrest conversation all throughout basically since 2008, and it just seems to continue. And it kind of seems to start to impact politics and impact just how we organize around our issues. How do you see social unrest playing into the rest of the decade? I mean, I think that there's just a lot of frustration probably isn't even an appropriate word to describe, I think, how people feel. I see it with a lot of my friends. Like, I feel an element of it, right? So like the idea of ever having a house feels very foreign and just feels very far away and a lot of wealth that is trapped in older populations and it's like, will that ever

trickle down or will it go away? So I think with regards to this idea of a revolution, it does feel like things are sort of at a tipping point. We've had a little peace for a really long time to a certain extent. Like we haven't had, you know, the government dissolve or anything like that. And that's a big statement, but the government's been. in place since 1776 and, you know, we're still this, we're still following the Constitution, which was written back then. And I think that there is just a lot of room for rethinking policy and rethinking how we, we shake law and rethinking how even, like, everything that we do right now. So like going back to this nine to five, 40 hours a week, that's a byproduct of the industrial

revolution, right? Even kids, like how they go to school and getting, you know, in between, between classes with the bell. That's the industrial revolution. So we still have very archaic systems, but our technology is so advanced. So I think there's a lot of cognitive dissonance where it's like, well, I can do everything on my computer and access like amazing things from my computer, but I still have to do, like I still have to count inventory and do all this stuff. So I think that there's just a lot of room for policy to catch up to technology. I don't know if that'll take place in the form of revolution, maybe. But yeah, that's what I would say. I guess it's important to note that like revolutions don't have to be violent. Sometimes there can be nonviolent revolutions. Sometimes there can be a technology revolutions that change the shape of things. Sometimes. That said, do you ever read any Ray Dalio, Kyla?

Sometimes. Okay. So he is scary sometimes. Like when I read Dalio, I'm reading his newest new world order principles for a new world order book. And he's basically like, this is not Dalio's language, but the DLDR is, hey, we've had a good run. And every 50 to 100 years, there's some sort of, you know, in any empire of which America is an empire using his furbiage, there's a civil war or there's a, you know, nation state war, just a large external facing war. And just because that hasn't happened in our lifetime doesn't mean anything because it happens every 50 to 100 years. And like in this decade that we're into the 1930s, right? And he's like rise of populism, wealth in a quality, weird things going on with Fed monetary policy, and then he sees like the rise of China and other, you know, factors at play where it's a rising nation state versus an existing

legacy empire is what he might say the U.S. is. So in that backdrop, it's kind of like terrifying. It's kind of scary. Like, I don't want to live through the late 1930s and 1940s. Do you ever think about that or, you know, I don't want to bring the podcast down to that level, but it's been on my mind recently. Yeah, I mean, what's going on with Russia and Ukraine has made me a little bit nervous. I don't know if that's going to be, war is not going to be fought like it was back in the 1930s, 1940s, like it's just not. But I do think there's a lot of just geopolitical tension. And I don't know if that, you know, what Dalia is sort of highlighting is essentially cycles. So that will sort of cycle in a war, we'll cycle into unrest, we'll cycle into peace. That's kind of how. And

humans have existed pretty much forever. But I don't know if it works in, you know, 50 to 100 years, if that's incrementally how it is. But I do think there's, to highlight that, I do think there's pressure out there that is concerning, yeah. Well, you brought up exactly where we want to go next, which is unpacking this whole Russia-Ukraine thing. We got out of Afghanistan just a few months ago. So it's about time that we get into another war. That's kind of what we do. Are we about to go to war with Russia? Like, what's going on over there? give us the TLDR and then we'll unpack it a little bit more? Putin has it in his head that he is St. Vladimir 2.0. He wrote this paper called on the history of Russia and Ukraine that essentially

he was like Ukraine is Russia's and we want it back now and we're going to go take it back. Ukraine belongs to Russia. And so that's kind of how Putin is thinking about things. And then also Putin does not like NATO. So the North American Treaty Organization, Putin does not like that. And he feels like NATO is sort of encircling Russia, which it isn't. But his main goal is to prevent NATO from spreading more, and he does not want Ukraine to join NATO at all, because that would not be good. That would mean it's, you know, Western assimilation. It's all these different things that he just simply doesn't want to have happen. So that's really the big two forces is this idea that Ukraine and Russia are sort of historical

brethren, I guess, and then also that NATO is encircling Russia in Putin's eyes. Well, what does Ukraine want? Is there a consensus as the people of Ukraine and the government of Ukraine as to whether, have they picked aside? So what's been going on there is quite interesting. So the leader of Ukraine, you know, for the past couple weeks, who's like, you know, this isn't happening. Like Russia doesn't want to invade Ukraine. Like, it's totally fine. Everything's good over here. Don't worry. They're just like piling tanks on the border, but no big deal at all. And but recently he's came out and he's like, okay, the United, like, we're going to have help from the United States. from NATO, if Russia does choose to invade. They also called Russia Humpty Dumpty, which means that, like, you know, they're going to fall off the wall, like eggs breaking kind of deal, like it's disturbing the peace. So I think that the sentiment has, and this was very recently, so the sentiment has shifted a little bit in terms of how they're feeling. What's really unfortunate is Ukrainians have kind of lived with Russia poking the bear to say the least quite a bit. The Ukrainian Twitter account,

out memes describing the situation, which is like... This is the national Twitter account for Ukraine? Yeah. They're in the meme business? Yeah. Yeah. Weird timeline. We are such a weird timeline.

Yeah. I tweeted at them. I was like, oh man, the people writing history books about this era. Like, I can't even imagine. But yeah, they'll tweet like, like, one of them was the redhead meme or the red, the guy who has a red face and he's in deep pain, like that meme. This dress kid meme with a bulging temple? No, it's a different one, but I'm not describing it correctly.

It's like a sketch. We'll put it on screen with the editors, yeah. Yeah, but it's that one. And then they're like stress levels living next to Russia and his whole face is red. So that's kind of how they're dealing with stuff is through memeification, which makes sense considering everything is a meme these days, including the stock market. That's so funny. What is Putin actually doing?

You said he's lining up tanks along the border. What is the actual, like, actions that Putin has been taking? Yeah, I mean, they're just sort of aggressive. Like, they put blood fields near them, so, like, blood supplies just in case things got violent near Ukraine. They've been doing sort of, like, night-op stuff, just moving. It's mostly unmanned vehicles near Ukraine, which is good. Like, once you start putting people in vehicles, that's when you essentially mean business. So it's really just been a lot of posturing.

a lot of kind of sneaking around, I guess. But it hasn't been that sneaky. There's been a couple of things with flights. So the airspace has been either restricted over the United Kingdom a couple of times over Sweden, because Sweden kind of got ripped into it as well. All the countries over there. Everyone's worked into it, of course, because geopolitical relations, right? But yeah, so there's just been a lot of movement that is unusual.

So, Kyla, if there is conflict, right, this won't be this sort of conflict that we saw. previous eras, right? Things are totally different. Even like Ukraine is, its communication is now in the 21st century internet native communication, which is like we're trying to win hearts and minds through meme warfare. And that's different. But like how could a conflict play out? There's lots of possibilities, of course. But are we talking like, you know, if things ramped up, things escalated, there was some sort of Russian invasion of Ukraine. What happens next? Is this like cyber warfare? territory? Do we have some sort of war of attrition, as we've seen in previous eras? How do you think

a 21st century conflict like this plays out? I don't know. Like, it'll be not as, it won't be people in trances like it was in World War I. But I think it was earlier in January, Russia did implement a big cyber attack on Ukraine. So I think that sort of stuff is definitely in the cards. I think potentially different types of missiles, not necessarily nukes. Like nuclear weapons would be sort of like last resort for Russia, that would be game over. But I do think you'll see like tactical things sort of like that. I don't exactly know what it would look like. I know that there's a lot of pressure that Russia is feeling from the United States and from NATO. The United States is like, hey, if you do this like economic sanctions, because Russia annex Crimea back in 2014,

which wasn't that cool, right? Like don't annex other countries. And, that really hurt their economy. And so the big question, it's almost an element of game theory. So with regards to like how it's being fought, I'm not sure. But the outcomes of it are going to be interesting because the United States could put swift sanctions on Russia, which would essentially shut down their banking system and make it very hard for Russia to transact with other countries. And that would be very, very bad for Russia's economy. And we would see 2014 Russia economy, but worse. So I think there's going to be cost to whatever element of warfare. does end up playing out, but I'm not sure exactly how it would play out.

One angle that I think this is going to be new if it does come to conflict is how much damage can Russia do without triggering economic sanctions? And that's kind of like a line that they are probably looking to toe. And that comes on the heels of them doing a fantastic job managing the narrative around the United States election in 2016 and also 2020. And just really being able to use internet like Syon. just like kind of figuring out like a part of the warfare, part of the warfare game is no longer guns and tanks, but it's internet-based narratives, internet-based memes, in combination with

actual cyber attacks. I can't remember if this actually happened or if this was just discussed about a potential happening. But like, I think at one point in time, Russia was able to get into the energy grid of a certain spot of Ukraine and turn it off. And it took a while for them to turn it back on. And like during the Russian winter, the Ukrainian winter, that actually is a big deal because, like, you need the heat. And so, like, there's these routes of conflict that are unlocked because of just the internet digital age that we live in where Russia can attack Ukraine from afar and then also use narrative obfuscation campaigns. So it's like, oh, no, we didn't do that. Like, that wasn't us at all. And now it's like this whole narrative, like, can you attack a country while hiding it from the

rest of the internet? Yeah. Well, that's actually super important. So one of the things, that Russia is kind of, I think, waiting on or there's speculation around that they're waiting on is to have to defend themselves against Ukraine. So Ukraine would throw the first stone. And if they're able to do that, that's a way that they don't trigger sanctions because it's defensive, right? It's not offensive. So I think there's all these different, to your point about mind games, like all these different mind games that they are playing and trying to figure out which one works the best in which one will hurt Russia the least and also get Russia to where it wants to be. But right now negotiations are going really poorly with the United States and NATO.

So I'm not sure what will end up happening. Speaking of the game theory of all of this, has China yet weighed in on this? Because it seems like that is definitely an important part of the puzzle here. Is it Russia versus sort of the world? Or does Russia have some soft allies in the mixed? over its action in Ukraine. Yeah, so China actually spoke out a little bit. They were basically like we don't agree with Moscow

and sort of the allegations that they're making against Ukraine, which was pretty much unheard of of China, sort of taking that stance. But Putin is going to the opening day ceremony of the Olympics. So I'm not sure. I think that if Russia does get swifted in terms of sanctions, Russia and China are going to be able to develop, they have sort of an internal,

not internal banking system between them, but Russia has sort of a backup banking system that China could go with. So it'll just depend on how China, what they see best. But right now they're really worried about the Olympics. They don't want to mess anything up with the Olympics, yeah. So you use that term swifted. Does that mean economic sanctions? Is that another?

Because the swift, of course, is sort of a traditional banking money transmissions. Is that what people call it when somebody gets sanctioned and locked out of the national banking system? They get swifted? That's what I say. I'm not sure. That's probably not technically correct. I love that. I mean, that's what happens, right? Does he get swifted?

What's interesting here is like when a country gets swifted, like I wonder what this means for, you know, crypto, crypto adoption. And like, it's interesting that some of this would adoption could happen, I guess, from the West perspective with rogue nation states. If a country gets locked out of the traditional banking system, maybe that spurs some sort of crypto adoption. Is that a thing that's likely to happen? or do you think crypto is still too early for that sort of thing?

And, you know, Rogue Nation states kind of prefer to control the banking system, the alternate banking system that they use. Yeah, I think their alternative payment system would step up before that. But potentially, Putin came out recently and against the will of the Russian central bank and it was like, hey, crypto mining can happen here in Russia. So anything's possible. But I think for them, it's really about controlling the narrative and Bitcoin and Ethereum, et cetera.

Like that's sort of the opposite of what you're meant to do with it. So I don't think that would be something that they would want to use. So, well, on the topic of getting swifted, another big variable that we need to pay attention to is the energy markets in Europe and its relationship with Russia, because Europe depends pretty heavily on Russia for energy. And if Russia gets cut off from the rest of the economy, does that mess things up with like the state of the European energy markets? Can you kind of download us on what's going on in Europe with relation to the energy markets? how Russia and all these sanctions fit in. Yeah, it's super bad. It's really messy over there. Well, so Europe was kind of like, we're going to do renewable energy and that's all. We don't need to have any exposure to fossil fuels because renewable energy will get us through. And that was not the case

at all. Like, you have to have some sort of energy security in the form of fossil fuels just because renewables aren't ready to take on in Europe yet. It's just not there. And they underinvested to a certain extent as well. So Russia is about one-third. of Europe's gas supply, which is a lot. And what ended up happening is that they just didn't funnel as much gas to Europe this best go-round because they were like, well, you know, it's not really part of the contract. Like there's, we just aren't going to do that for you right now. And so gas prices in Europe have been super high sort of because of that contraction, but also because of just not having the energy security because they were so reliant on.

renewables and this idea of renewables. So they've had to rely on natural gas. They've had to rely on coal, like Sweden reopened a coal-producing plant or an oil-producing plant. They've had to revert back to fossil fuels. And there's a lot of reliance on Russia because if it gets really cold in Europe, which luckily the weather has been very mild, but if it gets really cold in Europe and all of a sudden Russia's like, hey, no gas for you, that's going to be blackouts. That's going to be a lot of really unhappy people in really, really high energy prices. And so that's kind of the situation is that, and I think one of the reasons that this whole Russia-Ukraine situation is so interesting is because of what's going on in Europe. And the United States has stepped up and they're like,

oh, don't worry. Like, well, help you get natural gas. Like, don't worry about it. But the issue is there's just not enough natural gas to go around. So like Russia has this production that does go to Europe, but there isn't like Qatar is going to potentially step in to help Europe just in case something does happen with Russia, but Qatar is going to have to divert resources away from Asia who also needs natural gas. Like people need energy. It's a common denominator and everything to Europe. And Qatar is like, hey, don't worry, we're going to start producing more one day.

That's why you need to take out long-term contracts with us, Europe. But Europe's like, no, we really want renewables only. And so it's this whole like green energy policy, green energy. investment problem and it has ended up with over reliance on Russia and just a sheer lack of energy security, which is not, it's just not good. If you don't have energy security, like, you just, you don't have anything. Is this just like an unfortunate byproduct of the Russian, Ukraine, potential conflict? Or is this actually like a front and center stage, like Russia is really leaning into the fact that Europe depends on them and they're really leveraging that with their ability to

get into Ukraine without some sort of like pushback because they have their their grips around Europe's energy markets. Like is this a side conversation or is this like a front and center stage conversation? So it's a little bit of both. So what's really interesting is Russia has been very dependent. Like Europe has been able to rely on them through the Soviet Union, through the fall of the Soviet Union, like stuff that was really intense. Like Russia was always like, here's your gas, like no worries at all. But now all of a sudden it's not that case. And so Germany wanted to open a pipeline between Russia and Germany called Norm Street 2. And that ended up getting shut down because of the whole Russia-Ukraine situation, which Russia was not happy about because that would

have been money for them. So I think that there's an element of this narrative that Russia is aware of how reliant Europe is on them for energy, but Russia is also reliant on them in terms of revenue, right? And it creates kind of a weird dynamic where if Russia all of a sudden can't export energy to Europe. It's not like they can just go pass that natural gas off to everybody. Like, there's infrastructure in place. And you can't just go up in the infrastructure and begin to divert it to other places unless you have infrastructure in place. So I think that it's sort of like something that people talk about a little bit, especially Nord Stream 2. But I think it's also very front and center. It's been a big, big deal with the White House and the Biden administration

to make sure that Europe will have stable energy supplies. So I think people are aware of the dynamic, yeah. So you've said that the United States has said to Europe, like, yo, Europe, like if Russia does any shenanigans, we got you. Do we even have the ability to do that? Like, we're on different sides of an entire ocean. Like, we can't just teleport over oil to Europe. Like, do we have the means to be able to help Europe if it came down to it?

To a certain extent, yeah, natural gas is a little bit hard to transport because of the infrastructure that needs be in place. And one of the things that Europe didn't want because of the renewable energy focus was import terminals from the United States for natural gas. So there is a little bit of a plan around that. But the issue goes back to this idea of underproduction where if it gets really cold in the United States, which it might over the next coming months, you know, there isn't an excess of natural supply here. Like we're already going back to coal because of the blizzard that happened in the Northeast. We're reverting back to coal on that grid. So I think it is just a lot of energy.

everywhere because going back to something that we talked about even earlier, this idea of globalization, like, okay, everything's going to be fine. It's okay that we get energy sources from all over, that it's not. So I think the United States ultimately probably will be able to help, but it'll be not as easy as maybe they think it is or something, yeah. The Gemini exchange has been my exchange of choice ever since I got into crypto. I used Gemini to both buy the dips and also manage my regular automatic money. monthly purchases of my preferred crypto asset. On Gemini, you'll find over 50 different cryptos, including many of the top defy and Metaverse tokens like Wi-Fi and Axi Infinity.

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that these very powerful nations are dependent on some. else in order to have that supply. And really, like, semiconductors are as critical as oil, right? Like, it's almost comparable and how important they are to everything that goes on. And so part of this conversation is going on is that, you know, we were super, super globalized. And maybe it was the pandemic. Maybe it was more than that. Like, maybe it's just Russia also doing things. But there seems to be a theme in 2020 of these great powers realizing that they are really captured in some element by other powers. How do you see this playing that dynamic? Is there other, like, things that are also like that dynamic going on?

And how do you see that playing out over the decade? How are we responding to this? Yeah, I mean, semiconductors are definitely number one because that's in literally everything for no apparent reason, like toothbrushes, coffee machine. Like, just like stuff that doesn't need a semiconductor has a semiconductor, has a semiconductor in it. A coffee mug has a semiconductor in it. Yeah, exactly. It's like, okay. That is ridiculous, David.

Yeah. It shouldn't be allowed to exist, sir. Yeah. But that's part of the reason that there's pressures. coffee mokes up semiconductors. So yeah, I mean, I think that that's a big worry is that we've relied on just like whether be TSM. And there's like one Dutch company called ASML that makes this one machine for semiconductors. And they're the only company in the world that makes this machine. And they were hit by a fire. Their factory was hit by a fire. And luckily, like production was

okay. But imagine if it hadn't been okay. Like what would have happened to semiconductors? And they're very expensive machines to make. And so I think Intel is going to develop a factory here in the United States to begin to build out semiconductors. But all this stuff takes time to build. And that's one of the issues with energy markets as well is like, you know, you can want. And I, to sort of clarify, I'm a huge green energy advocate. I think it's terrible. I don't really like coal or oil, but we're reliance on it to a certain extent. Like, you have to be reasonable about this stuff. And so I think that the United States with semiconductors, it was like, oh, everything will always be perfect and we won't have to worry about this, but then you do have to worry about it. Same thing with energy.

It's, you know, everything will be perfect until it's not. Like, things are working until they don't as kind of deal. So I think energy semiconductors, I'm a little bit worried about water access. I'm a little bit worried about. What about water access? Just in like how it's going to play out. I think we have enough of it, but California, you know, making it more expensive to get water funneled into your home yet again. So I think it's just going to be, I don't think a lot of people discuss enough just how reliant we are on raw materials.

Like with semiconductors and sort of like even the shift to electric vehicles, like you'd need raw materials. You need lithium, et cetera. And all this stuff is extracted from the earth. And that also takes labor. and that takes people willing to do that. And we just have a very globalized society that is, I think, pretty reliant on everything working. And I think the pandemic showed the fragility of that.

So, but not to be like a fearmonger. Like, I think we're going to have water. But I just think that there's increasing concern about access and about capacity and about being able to actually utilize the resources. What's interesting about this trend, and maybe we could talk more broadly about it, is like it feels like the last 50 years, a lot of the economic prosperity and GDP growth from around the world has been as a result of globalization, like kind of this just-in-time system that we've created where all of the economies are integrated and there's this kind

of specialization. That's how we've driven so much prosperity. At least maybe some of that, a lot of that hasn't trickled down to labor. But, definitely from a capital asset appreciation. And I guess the question is, do we see maybe the trend starting to reverse? We're realizing that some of these systems are a bit more fragile than we thought. We're realizing that they'll become increasingly fragile if there's some geopolitical chaos and there's some turmoil between the countries. Is there going to be a pullback on globalization? Do you think, Kyla? And if there is, what are the economic repercussions of that? Yeah, I mean, I think you're already starting to see protectionist policy happen.

the United States. So shifting manufacturing back here, a lot of calls to sort of make America do semiconductors be a little bit more responsible about their own energy resources. Like the fact that we're able to, that we were able to frack for oil and stuff, it was super important in terms of like having energy independence. So I think that there's going to potentially be countries sort of becoming a little bit less globalized just because of the worries around that. But then that creates a certain element of price pressures because all of a sudden, you know, you're not getting things produced super cheap and shipped super cheap. So I do think there will be a pullback on a global economy. I think it has a time. I think it's still going to be very

important. But I do think that there's going to be potentially a rotation away from it. Does that cause increase in inflation as well? Or is that like a deflationary pressure in some way? Does that cause some sort of like stalling of economic GDP growth if we're reversing. seeing this incredible economic force, which is globalization? Does it sort of revert, I guess, and cause us to grow less fast or even stagnate? Yeah, I mean, it would, just like in terms of numbers, if we rotate manufacturing back to the United States, it would probably be a little bit more expensive at first just because of the wage situation over here versus other countries. And I think that could be more expensive. I think it takes time to build out those different

factories to build out different things. And that's good from an investment perspective for GDP. But I do think that there is the potential for things that are made domestically to sometimes be more expensive. I'm not saying that's all the time, but it's just not the same dynamic. So will that lead to inflation maybe? Will it sort of even out over time? Maybe. I do think it will create an element of pressure at first, though, which isn't a bad thing. I wonder if this globalization idea or like, you know, advocates of globalization might say this interconnected economy between all of the nation states is actually like a cause to hope for peace. I remember like years ago reading about this idea called like the Golden Arches Theory, which is the idea that no two countries

with a McDonald's in them have ever gone to war. I don't know if that has held up over time, but the idea is like economically interdependent countries that have some sort of, you know, shared culture and they have a middle class that has developed the level of acquiring a taste for McDonald's, they don't have the desire to go to war as much. I don't know if this is just sort of like a happy utopia preached by advocates of globalization or if that carries, but I'm wondering if you think globalization, the fact that Europe needs Russia's energy resources and Russia needs Europe's consumer buying pressure for those energy resources, if that keeps us a little bit from the brink of war. Do you think that's healthy, this interdependence in some ways as well?

Yeah, I mean, I think that's been a huge reason that, you know, Europe used to go to war all the time with themselves, so that they don't do that anymore. So I think it helps the interdependence. But I also think there's the political aspect of it, too, where some people just want to make a point, you know, political leaders. So it'll just depend on human psychology to a certain extent. I think it helps because everything is so intertwined, but at the end of the day, humans are still humans. Kela, you speak a lot about how narratives rule the world. And we've touched a little bit on that with how Russia needs to control the narrative in order to get what it wants. But you've also done some fantastic content on things like dogecoin versus real life and crypto narratives versus like actual real things that move the needle.

and especially as the Federal Reserve is playing this game theory game of how does it control inflation, it does it with narratives. Can you just unpack for our listeners, the way that you've seen narratives really shaping this decade that we're living in right now? Oh, yeah. I mean, I think narratives are pretty much everything. Like, that's essentially what monetary policy is, is a shift in the narrative. So raising rates, it works to the extent that it's raising rates.

Like, it does create a little bit of pressure. But it's also like, hey, we think that the economy is too, hot right now and so should you. And we're going to make it less hot and get ready for that. And I think that that's what the goal of the Federal Reserve is. And I think crypto also has, you know, their own narrative around innovation in sort of like building a better future. But then there's also this interpretation of different narratives. So how people interpret the Federal Reserve is super important. So people are like, well, we don't really care that you're raising rates. Whatever, we're going to keep on in speculating. However it be, maybe that tool isn't as

effective as it used to be. And then with crypto, like if people interpret the narrative as has become a little bit louder recently with a recent YouTube video called The Plan Goes Up, how people interpret that narrative and tie it into their own interpretation of crypto could potentially impact how crypto is perceived moving forward. So it's really all about perception and understanding. And narrative is a huge part of that and just how you develop a narrative around different things. You pay attention to so many different things. And you also pay attention, you deeply understand crypto in ways that have helped me understand crypto better. And then I also watch your YouTube videos and you're paying attention to much more things other than crypto,

which as a crypto person, I take offense to because how can you understand crypto and not be full-time crypto? So my question to you is, why are you not full-time crypto? Why has crypto not brought you all the way in like it brought in me and Ryan? Oh, okay. I'm not sure. I'm really fast. fascinated by macro. Like, I think macroeconomics is so important in what the Fed does. Like, we've seen it over the past month. Like, what they say is, for better or worse, super important. And I'm really fascinated by, like, all these different threads that are, they're so interwoven, but we, like, don't talk about them. So everybody thinks that everything is happening in one silo over here, one silo over there. The stock market is doing this, but crypto is doing that. But actually,

they're interconnected because crypto kind of trades like a tech stock because of all the institutional dollars, VC dollars that have flowed in there because of the, you know, the aversion that's kind of been adopted in there because of institutional dollars. And then the risk aversion in the stock market because of what the Fed is going to do. And then the Fed is doing what they're going to do because of supply chains. And supply chains are geopolitics. And so there's really all these big narratives around there. I try to understand crypto as much as I can because I think it's super important. And I think sort of like I think a theme of this conversation today has been around how do we make the world a better place. And I don't think there's anything out there like

crypto that has an answer. Like, I think crypto is, like, one of the only things that's like, hey, we're going to not just complain about this stuff. And not saying that people complain, but we're not just going to just talk about it, but we're actually going to take action. So I think that's just important to moving the needle forward. But everything else is also very interesting to me. So that's why, yeah. Is there part of you, Kyla, that's like skeptical about crypto? So like David and I, you know, bankless, we're permables crypto, right? And it's like, sometimes the air of that is we get so caught up in the, metaverse that we forget that the physical also matters. Like all of the stuff we just talked about,

you know, energy crisis and like, you know, inflation and labor markets and all of these things, like the physical reality of the world definitely plays in. And sometimes, you know, people in crypto and their bubble get stuck in this utopia. But what's your take on crypto high level? What aspects of it are kind of overhyped and a bit more utopia? And like, I guess maybe I'm asking you to ground us a little bit, Kyla. Like, where do you think this stuff could go wrong? Where do you think that new crypto permables are a little bit off on the asset class? So I think that there are, so there's a couple different pockets in crypto, right?

Like there are really good pockets that are focused on innovation, but then there's also the Ponzi schemes, Ponzi games, I suppose, scams, that sort of stuff. And this, so the way that I see it, it kind of hinted at this a little bit earlier. I've been working on a thesis around this recently, but there's people who hate crypto. Like, they hate crypto on Twitter. They get very angry at NFT people. And it's really, it's not good. But the NFT people get angry back at them.

And I think that there's a Venn diagram of people who want freedom. So like whether it be anti-work people or the fire people or socialist and then crypto. And then there's an overlap where they want freedom and they want money and they want control. But both groups are kind of talking past each other. And I think there's really good aspects of crypto like creating. ownership, being able to control your own narrative, you know, having a community. But when you zoom out and somebody who is from the out group is looking at the end group of crypto, they see things like hyper-financialization. They see things like in-group versus out-group, like not feeling

potentially welcome into the community. They see the scams and pondsies versus, you know, creating your own ownership narrative or creating financial freedom. And I think that's sort of the issue, is that you have a lot of people who maybe want this element of freedom, but the way that crypto is perceived, going back to that concept of narratives, it doesn't quite click for them in the way that I think crypto would want it to click for them. And this is all like me just observing, like lurking in every corner of the internet. But to the extent in my skeptical on crypto, I think that there's, like, what it has done is so important because it's really opened up the conversation around like what is possible.

And I think there's a lot of improvement in what it's done over the past couple of years. But I think there's also a lot of big questions that are answered. Like, you know, Ethereum transactions probably can't be as expensive as they are forever. And I know that it gets scaling layer two stuff is going to help with that. But how do you actually get people onboarded? And that's also a big problem with financial markets, just in general, is like people don't understand the stock market. And one of the things about human nature is if you don't understand something, you're probably going to throw rocks at it. because we're like, well, why would I ever understand this?

Because I don't get it, so why would I ever want to? And so I think that's a big problem with crypto is how it's perceived. Sorry, that was really good. Oh, good. I've been working on, like, an essay around this. I even have, like, pictures and stuff where I've just been, like, drawing this out because the line goes up, the line go up YouTube video, like, the reception. to that, like 3.8 million people saw it. And the comments were all like, yeah, man,

like, you're so right. This is awesome. Even though some things that he said were just factually inaccurate, I think. And then also if you listen to the rebuttals of it, people were like, yeah, you had some good points. And I think there just needs to be more open dialogue around, hey, like, we're improving these things. And we realize that every time that you turn around and somebody's getting rug pulled or, you know, a felon is leading a big crypto project, Like maybe that's not awesome. So I think there's just a lot of room for that. Can we talk about that just really quick?

Because you've referenced line go up a couple of times. And, you know, my context. So I haven't watched the full line goes up video, but this is sort of an NFT skeptics take on NFTs. And it's a very critical, someone would say hypercritical, someone would say misleading or focusing on all of the bad and not relaying any of the good take on crypto. But some of it is maybe.

criticism that folks in the crypto industry should start to consider. But I guess emblematic of a massive crypto backlash, right? It's like, I don't know if people are tired of getting others flashing these expensive NFTs, tired of some of the scams, thinking that this is just yet another capitalist game. So when David and I talk to you, the people in the Venn diagram, so the people who want more freedom, which is sort of our tribe, and we use crypto terms, sometimes that just falls on deaf ears completely because they already have a preconceived notion of what crypto is. But can you talk a little bit about that line goes up video? Did I miss anything there? Why is this conversation so interesting to you at this point in time? Oh, I mean, I think it's

just because right now it's the psychies. Like 3.8 million people saw that. That's huge. Just a lot of people sort of talking about crypto, watching things about crypto. And I was most surprised by their response to it where it was like, yeah, dude, this is like what I've been feeling and this is what I've been seeing. And crypto has really put a lot of pressure on different industries, like distributed research system industries. So I think what line goes up, it just pointed out some things that a lot of people were maybe thinking about crypto where it was like, and I think the biggest thing, and into

your point around like, why are crypto terms so abrasive to people sometimes? It can seem really tough because we, like earlier we were talking about the, labor dynamic, like, hey, I'm not super happy. And I'm sad in my nine to five, 40 hour week job and I don't see a hopeful future. And then if you turn around and you see, this is just how it is. If you turn around and you see somebody buying a picture of a monkey for, you know, half a million dollars, a million dollars, it feels bad. Like, it just feels bad. Yeah. And so I think that's, that goes back to this idea of perception. And he pointed a lot of that out where, you know, it is hyper financialization. And people are, this is a problem with

Web 2, where people are just sick of being the product. You know, if you're not paying, you're the product. And crypto, I think to a certain extent, has accidentally maybe encapsulated some of that because everything is hyper financialized. How do you tokenize your friendships? How do you tokenize a lot of, and it's good, right? Because you get to benefit from financial upside. But people see that And they're like, man, everybody's just trying to scrape every last dollar from my soul. And I already sold my soul to Facebook.com. So I think that's the big issue. And mine goes up, like I said, a lot of factual inaccuracies.

But it did a good job at underlining, I think, how a lot of people are perceiving the space at the moment. What do you think crypto people can do to respond to that? I think it's just, and I've seen actually quite a bit of it on Twitter, which has been really good. just like, hey, you know, we kind of get it that a lot of speculation isn't maybe super healthy. And speculation is ultimately a function of market calibration. Like, you have to have it to a certain extent. The stock market has it. Housing market definitely has it.

But I think there just needs to be more conversation around, it's not saying, you know, that crypto is not doing this right now, but I don't know how it takes place. But we do see some of the problems and we are working to improve it. And we understand that some of the stuff might be confusing. and it's kind of like, well, what does this actually do for me? And I think this is a problem that a couple of like education dollars or maybe working on solving is how do you onboard people into the space. But it's really about, I think, application.

And this is what a lot of people miss is like you can explain blockchain to people forever. But if you don't tell them how blockchain can help them understand maybe like real estate transactions or help them organize like their own payments or however. it happens for them, that doesn't help. And so I think a lot of people feel excluded from the narrative. So a lot of the work would have to be on not telling people in GMI, right? Like, that's pretty abrasive, but rather like, hey, like, we'll figure it out. And I do think people do that to sort of, yeah, everything exists in the extremes of distribution when you talk about it, but it's ultimately the middle of the distribution where things happen, you know. I think it's just only natural to see all these

NFT, ape buying people go from, you know, wherever they were prior to crypto to being multi-millionaires inside of a single year and have that not create some sort of pushback. Like with every action has an equal and opposite reaction and definitely some sort of, I didn't benefit from that. Therefore, I don't like it. Energy is definitely going around. And it's really up to the crypto people to take that in stride and continue to build more and more things that actually do help people more and more and more ways. And it's just a matter of everyone has their own NFT that they like.

Maybe it's not Aves. Maybe it's not Cryptopunks. Maybe it's not whatever's. But one day, there'll be something for them. And it's just a matter of like lowering the barriers to entry and allowing for more and more use cases that impact more and more people where they actually needed to be felt.

So maybe it's just a waiting game. Kyla, when I watch your YouTube video, the game I play is like, all right, how long am I going to be watching this video before she starts talking about green energy investment? And so I kind of want to give you the floor and just let you rant about your very frequent rant about the relationship between green energy infrastructure and green energy investment. And start contrast to NFTs where NFTs are only digital pixels. We also, we're now on the other side of the spectrum, which is actual real innovation, boots on the ground infrastructure. Why do we need green energy investment?

Yeah, I've actually gotten DM support where it's like, hey, you didn't mention this in your previous video. Are you okay? Yeah, so this goes back to the whole conversation around Europe and sort of like this idea that you can sort of just transfer over to renewable energy only and everything's going to be totally cool and okay and you're not going to be reliant on a political superpower that wants to go to war with a neighboring country. So I think, and you see this in the United States too, and it's just, it's so frustrating to me. And I try to remove bias from my work, but it is like personally frustrating to me because we're, starting to increase coal production again, which I'm just like, what the heck? Like, why are we back at this point? We shouldn't be here anymore. And it's primarily because we were like, oh, we don't need to really invest in green energy. It's going to be okay. We'll just transition and figure it out as

we go, because energy is not that important, right? And so I think that's the biggest problem is that people feel like they can develop these green energy policies. And if you don't invest in green energy, it ends up becoming a loop where you're trying to transition to green energy, but you can't transition to green energy because you don't have anything to really transition to. So you're still reliant on fossil fuels, but you've underinvested in fossil fuels and you've underproduced fossil fuels. So everything is more expensive now because of that. And energy drove a lot of the inflation that we saw over the past couple years, two years, I guess, now where it's really expensive. And so you're trying to shift away from something that you can't shift away from yet. And so you really just have to have a more, I guess, like, systematic approach to it.

And to sort of caveat my own points and to play devil's advocate, there has been green energy investment to a certain extent. But the policy that's developing around this and the ESGification of everything is not great. So ESG is this mandate in finance, environmental social governance, where you have to invest in companies that are doing good for the environment, whatever that looks like. And oftentimes it's like buying carbon. credits or something like that. And you end up, like, and it's not good or bad, but oil companies kind of end up usually getting hurt by that narrative unless they can like say that they're

going to do green energy stuff too. And we're still really reliant on oil. So I guess like I'm sort talking in circles, but the biggest thing is that we're trying to transition to this idea of green energy and we're developing policy around it. But because of underproduction and underinvestment and because of ESGification and greenwashing of everything, we can't really make the transition properly because you still have to have energy security, which still comes in the form of fossil fuels. So you can't make a full transition because, number one, there hasn't been the proper investment. Number two, there hasn't been the proper security. So we just end up kind of in this really terrible loop.

Is the problem that people just like in general, maybe this is a generalized problem that I feel like I see is just no one's thinking about long-term problems anymore. It's just like all short-term. It's like two-year election cycles. It's like how do we, you know, get out of this short-term dilemma. And like, no one is thinking cross-generational. This is why I think a lot of millennials and Gen Z feel so left behind. It's because we feel like older generations who have the political power, who have the capital,

just don't care about the future generations. They don't care about long-term decisions. Is this part of the reason we're not investing in green energy, do you think? Oh, yeah, I think to a certain extent. And then it gets into, like, the politics of lobbying, too, and who's paying what and how they're paying whatever. But I think it's expensive, right? And it's timely.

It's a time investment in order to transition to green energy. And politicians, to your point around these two-year investment cycles, they don't have time to sort of promise these things. They need to have immediate results. And that comes from making policy, right? But not necessarily doing the steps that they need around infrastructure for that policy. So I think there's just a lot of frustration around maybe the current administration, the current generation of the boomers leaders they're just making things a little bit tough

it's going to be a tough world to inherit because of the energy problems and I do think that net net it will probably be okay but the fact that we're reverting back to coal like coal really and everybody's just like oh dang whoops how is this happening and it's like I think a lot of people feel even and I've been a little bit emotional about it but I think a lot of people feel even more emotional than I do depressing where it's like you look around you you and the world is just way different. Like you can't own a home like the way that your parents or your grandparents were able to, you know, having a family is super expensive. Having any sort of stability is just more difficult because of the way that the system is designed. So David and I are,

you know, millennials. I'm more the kind of the elder millennial side of things. And you know, David's one of the younger millennials. And Kyla, you're a Gen Z. And I've got to ask the question, like, is Gen Z screwed? Like, I thought millennials were screwed. But like, given the backdrop of this entire episode is Gen Z screwed? And what is your advice for somebody listening who, you know, skews a little bit younger, like in their 20s? How do they prepare themselves? What do they do with this information other than feel helpless, which I feel like a lot of us feel when we look at the scope of problems that are hitting us right now, all of the weirdness that's going on? What do we do about this? I mean, I don't think they're screwed, but I'm pretty

impressed with how Jinzi sort of conducts themselves. I think that there's a lot of desire for change, and they're willing to sort of go out there and make that change happen. So I think it'll just be having your voice heard, and that's a whole different situation. But in terms of preparing, I think the biggest thing is just learning, like figuring out what's going on around you, like you can't run away from this stuff. And you don't need to know, like, the in-depth situation on the Russia-Ukraine energy problem. But I think it's just good to be aware of this stuff, because then like the way that things happen is through politics, right? Like it's just how it is.

It's a conduit of things and it's just how society moves. So you have to understand what's going on around you in order to make the right decisions around different policymakers or even to advocate for different policy decisions. So I think just, you know, educating yourself around the world and understanding like why things happen, understanding the basics of supply and demand. Like it's really surprising how. many people don't understand why prices go up. And I think that's not good.

And I think it's a flaw of the system that we don't teach people, hey, this is why things are more expensive, rather than just having people sort of freak out around, oh my gosh, like now my bread is $5 a loaf. Like that's really expensive. But I think it boils down to education. I think it boils down to advocacy and then sort of having these conversations on buying or in person with people who think similarly to you.

because, you know, you're going to be so much stronger in a group to make these things done. Yeah. So that's what I say. Read. How do you think the zoomers of the world will be impacted by what's gone on in the last few years? Because the millennials really have 2008 as kind of the thing that really stamped, impressed upon them, how the world works. And what I've noticed when I've talked to other millennials, even younger than me and zoomers in the cryptospace, they don't have the same like, oh, 2008 really impacted me. vibe that me and Ryan do. Zumers seem to be coming into this investing world, watching Dogecoin

pump to a dollar, TikTokers try and pump Dogecoin to a dollar. Inflation happened as a result of a pandemic, the GME debacle, and the housing prices go through the roof. This is going to be, in my mind, the 2008 equivalent for Zoomers. How do you see Zoomers just like coping with this and managing this with this and responding to this very odd paradigm that we exist inside of? Yeah, I mean, so I was young during in 2008, but I just remember the impact it had on my family, but a lot of people are either too young to remember that, or maybe we weren't impacted the same way. But I think, and I'm an older zoomer, I guess, but a lot of people do still have that in the back of their minds. But this time around, it's not, it's a little bit different. Like, it's not these, it's still an element of bad

decisions by the banks, but this is just a speculative bubble. And I really worry around this sort of like lottery mindset, this, this gambling mindset that I see. permeating people where it's like, oh, all I have to do is just go into Dogecoin and make my money and then I can retire and I'm good to go. So I think that there's this idea that if you just find the right investment, if you just find the right thing to speculate on, that all of a sudden your financial future will be set. And that the common denominator there is that people have a desire for, you know, a stable financial future. But I worry that the risk taking is really high and the risk appetite is really high.

Like the number of people that I know that went all in on Dogecoin is too high, in my opinion. So that's what I worry about is this idea of like market never go down. A lot of people were pretty beat up during this last January cycle. And that was nothing, you know, compared to a true bear market. So I think that's the biggest thing is people expect something from the market, so that the market doesn't need to deliver to them. this is definitely a critique that David and I have and, you know, we sort of see it manifest in this nihilism, this like meme stock, meme crypto nihilism, which is basically like money doesn't matter, stocks don't matter, number go up, nothing matters, therefore I might as well buy Doge. Like there's no such thing as fundamentals for NASA. And by the way, if we all buy Doge together or like insert whatever, your favorite crypto meme here, if we all do it together, then we win. And we can beat back the evil banks and the adversaries.

And that's how we rebuild. And like to me, they won't even go as far as that's how we rebuild. I don't think they're naive enough to think that the world is going to like be rebuilt on Dogecoin. But that's how we're going to get wealthy and take back control and get that freedom that I think everyone's looking for. They are like, wouldn't it be funny if it was though? What if we did rebuild with Dogecoin? Like how funny would that be? Yeah.

They're a little bit serious. Okay, so like, how do you think that ends? Because like, that's why with bankless, we're somewhat focused, like obsessed, I would say, with getting past the nihilism, talking about fundamentals, talking about longer term structures that crypto is building. How do we get our generations? Because it's not just Gen Z, it's millennials as well, it's younger, we're all looking for this freedom. How do we get them past this nihilistic phase and into, I think, a brighter future where it's like, oh, hey, our generations are now responsible for the institutions of tomorrow because the old ones aren't working, so we better build the new ones pretty damn well. No one else will. How do we get to

that point? So I think this actually zooms out to like a whole different issue where we have a crisis of like passion. People don't know what they care about. So they find religion and things like GME, AMCE, Doshcoin, because there's community there, there's belief there. People, you know, seem to care about them there in the community forums. And I think that you have to help people discover what they care about, which is like such a big ask, right? And I don't know exactly what that looks like. But I think in order to make people truly care, you have to help them realize that there's

things that they need to kind of care about. And whether that be like art or realizing that art is something that you can pursue, like you don't have to have straight A's and, you know, do math plates. even though Mathletes is great, I think that there's just a big disconnect between what people feel like they can pursue and do and what they actually do, if that makes sense. So I think with GME and AMC, a lot of that was boiling down into sort of an anti-establishment. Like, the system sucks. So we're going to buy this stock and that'll show them. But that was also for people finding a meaning.

So I think they just have to find meaning, whether that be like building a new crypto protocol or something like that. I think there's a lot of room for that sort of stuff. So how do you unlock the next level of the economy and help people with access, opportunity, et cetera? But it's just helping them realize that there's more out there than just betting. Kyla, I do think meaning is wrapped up in all of these conversations, you know, so much, maybe so much more than people like to admit. Let's talk about this.

So you've talked a few times about being an educator, being a content creator, right? And you are a content creator on TikTok. that's a medium that David and I haven't really gotten into. Can you talk a little bit about your experience, like creating content, helping people understand these financial systems and the structures that govern them, the structure of money? Because sometimes I look at things like TikTok, and I'm like, oh my God, TikTok is just making us all more dumb. And then I see your content. I'm like, well, there's a way to do it without us all getting dumber because your content actually makes people smarter.

But how do you do it? And do you think, like, even our social media systems are structured against us? The algorithms don't reward, like, intelligent, in-depth content. They just reward whatever, you know, flavor of the moment, whatever the flavor of the moment is. Monkeys and typewriters. Yeah, are they all making us dumber, Kyle? And, like, how do you leverage these systems, I guess, as an educator? So, like, I kind of made content accidentally.

Like, I never thought that this would be. I'm very grateful it's my life, but never thought it'd be my life. But the reason I started making content was I started, I started, around the time of GME AMC last year. I've been writing a blog around Options Trading forever, but this was like, I was like, time to get on TikTok because there was a lot of questionable information. And I think the biggest thing with social media is it's a tool, right?

And so like, you can throw the hammer backwards at the wall and be like, man, this hammer doesn't work, but you can also throw it at a nail and be like, okay, it's actually going to nail something in the wall. Like the tool does work. It just depends on the content that you choose to make. And unfortunately, to your point around algorithms, like algorithms definitely favor more, like you see it on Twitter all the time, like just stuff that gets people in flame, deafen up in arms. But there's a big need for education in the stock market and in crypto

and around the macroeconomy. So going back to what I was talking about earlier, like a lot of people just want to know what's going on and they want to know about it, not from a really in-depth, like very technical research paper around what the stock market is, but they just want to know the highlights. And the more that you can give people the highlights, the more exposure that they have to different things, the more it'll start. click. So if you like just listen to stock market reels or crypto reels, not reals, as in Instagram Reels, but just like crypto news clips every day, like you're going to start to pick up on different things. And I think that's the biggest thing with social media is this element of

exposure. So if you're able to get people to tune in every day for a news update or tune in to a YouTube video about geopolitics, that's going to be super valuable for them. So that's how I think about it is its exposure. It's helping people process what's going on around them. right now in tying in an element of education to that. That's sort of how I designed my socials, yeah. Kyla, to close things off, I think everyone is kind of gearing up for a very chaotic 2020s, the whole entire decade. And really, the stage has been set with a lot of the stuff that we've talked about in this episode so far. But one of my favorite lines from Game of Thrones is that chaos is a ladder, implying that chaos provides opportunity to people that learn how to best

navigate that chaos. Do you have any advice or recommendations for individuals, but then also as society? How can we win as both individuals and as a society in the 2020 decade? There's a lot of polarization right now, like a lot of people just getting angry at things. And I get it. There's a lot of dissatisfaction. But I think the more that we can try to understand each other and see where the other person is coming from, the other group is coming from, the more valuable that will be. So that's what I would say to society is just try to understand each other better, which is so easy, right? And in terms of individuals, I think like really education, and this is once again a bias that I have, but education is literally the most powerful tool that

there is. Like, the more that you know about the world, the more prepared you're going to be for certain things, the more that you're going to understand what's going on around you. And that really helps to combat, I think, maybe nervousness or anxiety around the future. Because like, there's an element of the stuff that you just can't control, right? Like, I can't stop Russia from invading Ukraine. And it makes me kind of sad that I can't, but I can make content around it. And other people can make content around it and consume information around it. And I think the more that you're able to learn, the more powerful that that is going to be for your own decision-making process. And the more that more educated people are, I think the better society is. And that goes into the first

point around understanding people more, the more educated that you are around different topics, the more you can understand people more. So that's what I would say, yeah. Kyla, that is a perfect place to end because I think people who are tuned into the bankless podcast are making the effort to get educated. And so we're definitely glad they're with us and we're glad you're with us on this episode.

Thank you for unpacking all of these issues with us. We hope you come back sometime soon. Guys, a fantastic episode with Kyla here. Just some action items for you. A few other ways to tap into. that education, get that knowledge. Knowledge is power, of course. You can subscribe to Kyla's substack. We will include a link in the show notes if you like bankless on all things. Crypto. Kyla's substack provides the rest of everything you need to know about the economy,

geopolitics and finance. Also, subscribe to her on YouTube. Lastly, subscribe to the bankless TikTok because Kyla is featured there on a weekly basis. She takes the roll-ups that David and I do and somehow compresses it to about two minutes. It's insane. I don't understand this TikTok content compression algorithm that she runs it through, but she does. And it's a fantastic way. If you miss a roll-up, you can get caught up to speed on that by following bankless on TikTok. I can't believe I just promoted TikTok, David, on bankless, but that's what we're doing. We're using it as a tool, as Kyla said. Of course, risks and disclaimers, everyone, defy is risky. Crypto is risky. Look, life is risky, as we learned today. You could definitely

lose what you put in, but we're headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.