Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 7/30/25: Mayor Pete Refuses To Accept Zohran Win, Crypto Dire Warning, Sydney Sweeney Jeans Ad

Episode Date: July 30, 2025

Krystal and Emily discuss Mayor Pete refuses to accept Zohran win, crypto whistleblower dire warning on crash, Sydney Sweeney 'jeans' ad.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com,

become a member today and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad free and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. Let's go ahead and get to Zoran and let's start off with a clip of Pete Buttigieg talking about why he thinks that Zoran won. And Pete says, you know, his policy, like that really, that really wasn't the thing. I think people are reading too much into this whole like free bus thing. Let's take a listen to Pete explaining his version of why Zoran was so successful. I think a lot of people are focused on the leftism, the ideological leftism, that I think we shouldn't be so surprised that prevailed in a New York

Democratic Party primary. But I think if my party wants to learn lessons from Mamdani's success that are portable to a place like Michigan where I live. It's less about the ideology and more about the message discipline of focusing on what people care about and the tactical wisdom of getting out there and talking to everybody. You nailed it. And I love, I've seen several different versions of this, where it's like the assessment is, oh, well, he's young, he's charismatic, he was talking about cost of living. They say it in this very amorphous way,

like the specifics of his proposals didn't matter. And, or it's, oh, he understood social media and he knew how to make videos. Anything to keep from grappling with the fact that a central part of his appeal are his specific policies, including by the way, his support for Palestinian rights. The data is just totally clear at this point that he didn't win in spite of his willingness to stand on business of being an anti-Zionist. He won in part because that was such an appealing position to take in the context, especially

of a Democratic primary. I mean, he's the millennial, like he's who a lot of establishment Democrats see as like the ambassador, the party's next best ambassador to millennials and to millennial men because he's young and a man. But he's not, it's actually kind of interesting, this made me think about this when it comes to Buddha Judge for the first time in the sense that he doesn't capture any of the mood of millennials for sure or of people, again, under the age of 40 roughly in the

country. And you'd think that Democrats would understand that about him. He's able to talk like a normal Midwestern dude when he's on with Andrew Schultz or different podcast hosts, but he definitely doesn it doesn't at all reflect. Mamdani is also a cheerful candidate, right? I think Saagars pointed this out. Like a guy's always smiling wherever he goes, even though he's speaking to the miseries

of younger Americans, millennials, Generation Z. But Buddha Judge is not somebody who comes across as really understanding that and really, like do you know what I'm saying? Like that's not what he speaks to. He sort of like seems to gloss over a lot of that. And I think this clip is a pretty good example of him saying, well, New York City is deep

blue. It was a vibes election. It's true Cuomo was a bad candidate and all of that, but Mamdani is powerful for Democrats precisely because he kind of understands the precariousness of the situation that the 24-year-old man finds himself in, in very particular ways that you don't really hear Buttigieg talking about at all. Well Democrats took this lesson from the Trump election of basically like we need to go on podcasts. Yeah right right right right right. Right? But they didn't realize that it's not just

you need to go on podcasts. Exactly. It's like you need to be able to say something when you're on those podcasts that is going to have appeal. You need to flame the dem establishment because that is what Trump did with the Republican establishment. That's what JD Vance does with the Republican establishment. Whether or not you thinkance does with the Republican establishment. Whether or not you think they believe it, that's why Joe Rogan likes them. Yeah, and I mean, again, Israel is really central here. And I'm sorry to keep picking on Senator Slotkin

because I actually really appreciate her coming on our show. But, you know, I think I asked her like, what did you want? Why did you want to talk to us? And she basically said like, well, my staff pitched us and pitched me on it. And, you want to talk to us? And she basically said like, well, my staff pitches and pitch me on it. And you know, we all have this sense of basically we need to get out into independent media.

But if you don't understand the audiences there and what they need to hear from a politician in order for them to trust you and for you to have any credibility with them at all, like you can go on every podcast in the world and it's not gonna help you one bit whatsoever. And- Like if Kamala Harris had gone on Rogan, yeah.

Right, and you know, I really do think, like I've become quite convinced that the sort of price of entry into credibility in those spaces on the democratic side is being like having any sort of soul and conscience around Palestinian life. And, you know, if we look at here, we've got a bunch of interesting poll numbers with regard to Zoran, we can put C2 up on the screen. This one reflects what the top contributors to his success

in the race ultimately were. And number one, his plans to lower costs. That's great. 89% said that was really important to me. Number two, his plans to tax the wealthy and stand up to corporations. Now that's part of why Pete wants to say, oh no, no, no, it didn't have anything to do with his policy positions because he's interested in a maintenance of the status quo. But number three on that list is his support for Palestinian rights. 62% of people said that was important to me and only 12% said it wasn't, that it wasn't important to them at all in terms of how they voted. So Zoran didn't try to make Palestinian rights

central to his campaign, but his opponents decided to make that a central question in the campaign. And there's just no doubt that they did him a tremendous favor by, you know, trying to smear him as an anti-Semite and constantly talking about, you know, would he go to Israel and where does he stand on this? That was a huge boon to him in this primary. I think the numbers are quite clear at this point. And we've also got polling, Emily, about where he stands for the general election. If this polling is to believe, be believed. And I don't see any reason why it shouldn't, given that, you know, the heavily democratic makeup

of the city of New York. Zoran looks set to coast to victory, whether or not all of his current opponents stay in the race or not. Let's put C3 up on the screen. You can see all of the different demographic groups that he is strongest with. This is in a five-way vote.

I mean, just look at this list. So young Asians, he's winning 89% of them. Men, 18 to 34, a key demographic group the Democrats did not do so hot with in the general election. He's winning 85% of them. Young women, 79% overall, ages 25 to 34, 79%. You can just go down this list. A couple more that I just want to highlight here.

Jews age 18 to 44, he is winning 67% of young Jewish voters. Overall Jewish voters. Okay. of young Jewish voters, overall Jewish voters, okay, 43%, which is much larger by, you know, by double digits. That's a lot of antisemitic Jews. Exactly. But that he wins the plurality of Jews and it's not close. It's by double digits.

So, you know, we really need to put to bed this idea that he constantly is getting her, oh, you have work to do with the Jewish community and really need to put to bed this idea that he constantly is getting her eye, oh, you have work to do with the Jewish community and you need to talk to them and you're going to make Jews unsafe, blah, blah, blah. Well, somebody needs to ask Andrew Cuomo why Jewish voters apparently don't trust him and why he's got so much work to do apparently with the Jewish community since he is losing now to Zoran among those groups. And according to Cuomo's numbers, lost Jewish voters in the primary,

majority of them according to Cuomo, voted for Zoran in the primary as well. So, frankly, it's anti-Semitic to project onto Jewish voters that they all have this one monolithic view that they are all on board with Israel committing a genocide in the Gaza Strip. And then this is a top priority and top issue for them is like how many times

you're gonna visit Israel and how much you love Benjamin Netanyahu. This is just thoroughly debunked and honestly a disgusting view of the electorate. Can we just put the graphic up on the screen one more time, sorry, there's one that caught my eye that I wanted to point out, the last one. Check out Curtis Leewell there, Crystal.

45% of Staten Island. Yeah. White Catholics, Staten Island. White Union household is interesting. And white non-college, that's his strength. Absolutely crushing it. Odd Staten Island. Sorry, I had to point that one out as soon as I saw it.

Yeah. Well, I also think this chart is so important because it just completely exposes the lie of the idea that, Oh, Zoran's just winning like affluent white socialists in Brooklyn. That's a good point. Like, look at this list. You know, it's, it's overwhelming. He's winning black women 51% of all of the, you know, the caricature of where his appeal is,

is very much debunked by this chart showing where he's strongest, which is basically everywhere. Yeah, 43% of non-college. Yeah, I think 100 to 199 household income, that's 53%, 50 to 99, he's at 53% of household income. So I think that is a really good point as well. Crystal, sample sizes, I will say, in that poll are pretty small.

It even says down on the screen, results should be treated as directional. But we'll see more in the days to come. And certainly, some of this matches up with what we saw from results after the primary. Let's go ahead and put C4 on the screen. This is, I think it's actually even from the same poll, isn't it Crystal? The data for progress. This is New York

City Democratic primary voters believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. All likely voters, that is at 78% and only 13% say no, 9% say don't know. So if you are interested in why Cuomo's approach during the primary failed dramatically, this poll makes that pretty clear. Yeah, and we've got another one in the same vein about Netanyahu. So it's Zoran's position, which I fully support,

that if Netanyahu comes to New York City, he should be arrested because there is an outstanding international criminal court arrest warrant against him for being an alleged war criminal. I don't think it's alleged, but whatever. Yeah, New York voters are on board with that too. 63% of Democratic primary voters were like, yes, actually you should arrest Benjamin Netanyahu.

And only 20% say no, the other 16% say they are not sure. Just to give you a sense of on what solid ground he was on with all of his positions, which again, his opponents really made central to the race. He made cost of living central to the campaign he was running, but his opponents were bound and determined to put these issues at the center of the race and only I think aided him in securing a crushing

primary victory. But don't worry, Emily, his adversaries have not given up. We can put C5 up on the screen. We have a new billionaire to multimillionaire effort to try to defeat Zoran in the general election. You've got a new anti-mom Donnie Super PAC forming, a hedge funder and Trump voter pledge 500,000 of his own cash. If you want to join his zoom call on how to stop Zoran, you will need to pay at least $25,000 is the price of admission to this must be the greatest zoom call of all time. But in this, you know, in this polling that just came out, even if all the, uh, even if

everybody drops out except Cuomo, who appears to be his strongest head to head, uh, opponent in the general election, you still have in this polls on winning by 12 points, which coincidentally is exactly what he won the primary by as well. So, um, you know, it's just utterly absurd at this point and really disgusting that Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries can't bother to endorse the Democratic nominee who has much higher favorability ratings that either one of them do in New York. Actually the only candidate, the only politician who has higher approval rating in New York than Zoran is AOC.

And they think that, yeah, I mean, they just because they're worried about their donors, and they don't like his position on Israel, they refuse to endorse the Democratic nominee. And you know, I think it is only hastening the decline and exposing the hypocrisy and the distance between democratic leadership and where the democratic base is at this point. So I believe on Dami, it was the last thing I'll say is on his way back from Uganda. And there has been some talk in MAGA circles that the administration should detain him on his way back. That's something we have seen happen in a couple of cases over the first six months of the Trump administration

to people who have been critical of US foreign policy, particularly when it comes to Israel. So that's just something to watch today, Crystal. I don't know if that was on your radar, but I'm pretty sure that's been discussed. So we'll keep everybody updated with any news we hear on that. Well, it would both be obviously outrageous and grotesque if they did that and also just a massive boost to Zoran and his campaign.

It would be beyond. It would be so like politically foolish of them to do. So anyway, we will see. Let's move on to crypto. Crystal Republicans making a big push to just boost the crypto industry before heading out in August recess. Nothing more important to do. So we will be joined by Peter Ryan shortly. to just boost the crypto industry before heading out on August recess, nothing more important to do.

So we will be joined by Peter Ryan shortly. Just like great shoes, great books take you places through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robay and this is Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, the new podcast from Hello Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts.

Every week I sit down with your favorite book lovers, authors, celebrities, book talkers, and more to explore the stories that shape us, on the page and off. I've been reading every Reese's Book Club pick, deep diving book talk theories, and obsessing over book to screen casts for years. And now I get to talk to the people making the magic. So if you've ever fallen in love with a fictional character or cried at the last chapter or passed a book to a friend saying you have to read this, this podcast is for you. Listen to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts.

The Stuff You Should Know guys have made their own summer playlists of their must-listen podcasts on movies. It's me, Josh, and I'd like to welcome you to the Stuff You Should Know summer movie playlist. What screams summer more than a nice, darkened, air-conditioned theater in a 421 of Therapy for Black Girls, I sit down with Dr. Afiya Mbili-Shaka to explore how our hair connects to our identity, mental health, and the ways we heal.

Because I think hair is a complex language system, right? In terms of it can tell how old you are, your marital status, where you're from, your spiritual belief. But I think with social media, there's like a hyper fixation and observation of our hair, right? That this is sometimes the first thing someone sees when we make a post or a reel, it's how our hair is styled. You talk about the important role hairstylists play in our communities, the pressure to always look put together and how breaking up with perfection can actually free us.

Plus, if you're someone who gets anxious about flying, don't miss session 418 with Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett, where we dive into managing flight anxiety. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, we're happy to be joined now by Peter Ryan. He's the CEO and founder of Ryan Research.

And he has been on a bit of a journey when it comes to crypto. Peter has been in the space. He's gonna tell us all about this for a long time. Came to Sauer on crypto, wrote an excellent essay. This is the first element we can go ahead and put up on the screen for Compact Magazine recently

that I cannot recommend to people enough, especially if you're sort of crypto curious. There's a lot of great explainer details in this piece, and it's just a really, really helpful kind of glimpse inside of the industry that goes into granular detail. So, Peter, thank you so much for being here. We appreciate it. Also has a fantastic headline there,

Money by Vile Means. Yes, thanks for having me. For the Shakespeare buffs out there, that's where that line is from. Yes, yes, of course. So tell us a little bit and people can read more about this in the essay, but you have such an interesting background in the crypto space. And right now, Republicans, this is the so-called news hook that we want to talk about, made a big push with the Genius Act before they headed out for August research

Recess and people right now are kind of trying to figure out what it means For the industry the industry was pretty supportive of the Genius Act, although there was some controversy about it But it regulates stable coins. So Peter we'll get into all of that. Let's start with Your background as somebody who was initially in the thrall of crypto's promise to decentralize the monetary system and came to sour on it. What was that process like for you? Yeah, so I got into Bitcoin in 2013. It was some of the early crazy days.

It really attracted me because I was sort was part of this generation of the Ron Paul movement and its response to the financial crisis that occurred in 2008. Bitcoin seemed like this great way to marry the private sector with all these Austrian economic beliefs. That's how it was sold and many of the early Bitcoiners were these idealists. As time went on and I started to work in depth inside the industry, I met a lot of the big players, I saw different historical events transpire that would reveal some of the inner workings of how this market operated. From there, after being employed as a research analyst with CoinDesk, I started

to doubt some of these idealistic tenants. And then in about 2019, I really came full circle and saw a lot of what was sold in 2013 to me just did not cut the mustard. It wasn't true. History proved it was not true. And so ever since then, I've been an independent consultant talking about my skepticism on Bitcoin, on crypto in general, and more recently, the very specific and unique role of stablecoins in the government's policy. Cate Blanchett I want to get more to stablecoins

because that's a very important piece and ties into the quote unquote genius act that just passed. But you wrote in your piece, when Bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency was invented, it was promoted as a financial technology that would empower individuals and wrest power away from the state and centralized elites. Just a decade and a half later, those same elites, including the Trump administration and bipartisan majorities in Congress, have embraced cryptocurrencies. But this is because rather than lifting up ordinary citizens, crypto has become a new means of expanding elite power and wealth. Can you elaborate some on that for us, Peter?

Sure. So what you have to understand is that the reason the government is attracted to crypto and Bitcoin right now is because it helps government. That's sort of a pretty obvious point, but a lot of people aren't so clear on that. Peter, can you speak to as well? It helps government and helps big business, right? Exactly. So a way to sum this up is that the cryptocurrency system with all these coins with stable coins at the heart of it, they

are a shadow central bank system conducting shadow money printing to do shadow debt monetization and shadow quantitative easing. That's the shortest way I can describe it. What that means is essentially there is all this paper value being generated in the crypto markets. And as that paper value keeps going up, as that asset inflation keeps going up, that allows the froth to spill over and very specifically start buying US debt as the rest of the world enters its multi-polar phase and stops buying US debt. So this is why stable coins, where they need to be backed by US debt in order to operate, are now a bigger holder of US debt than countries like Germany.

And then as we get into the private sector, all of this froth that's coming out is actually starting to enter the private sector, enter equities. And that's going to create a knock-on effect that's going to start pushing that up. So basically, the crypto sector wins, the government wins, and the traditional incumbent corporate elites win through this big triangular system. So this obviously leads us to the question of how you have still so many true believers in the crypto space

People who haven't been on the journey but started from the point aid that you started on And are still there Who continue I did see some criticism of genius and some of the other? Legislation that's been considered by Republicans in particular from that kind of true believer crowd who are worried about central bank digital currency and all of that. But you have people, I think of the Winklevoss guys who are like libertarian-ish and maybe they're not the best example because they aren't like from that libertarian-ish. And maybe they're not the best example because they aren't from that libertarian, crunchy

world that came out of the Ron Paul 2012 movement in particular. But there are true believers still in the space who continue to believe that crypto is a net benefit when it comes to decentralization and when it comes to undermining globalism and all of that. So can you tell us more about why people you think, people you've spent time around are still kind of clinging to that in the face of what just seems so obvious to be a centralization effort and maybe even also if you're aware of some fissures in the movement as well that you could fill us in on? Sure.

So this is where the technology, the sense of mechanics, innovation, anything like that, is really not what's causing those true believers to stay in the Bitcoin camp. I think it's more exactly that. It's belief. I think Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek economist, put it best when he talked about how classical liberalism and neoliberalism centered the market as this divinity. And then as he's written more recently in his new conception of that, which is like techno-lordism, he says that's transition from the market to the algorithm, to the code,

and that's the new divinity. I think that's what's going on here, that people are trying to externalize what is ultimately a democratic process to shape society in the way that the majority of voters would like it to be. Instead of doing that the hard and very direct way, it's this sense of externalizing the problem into these things. Well, the market will fix it or the algorithm will fix it. I think that is really inherently baked into the Bitcoin thesis.

That's why people can't really break out of that. I'd like for you to talk a little bit more about that because I'm fascinated by, it is almost like a religious devotion. You know, there's like a cult like aspect to people who are those like died in the world true believers and you were one of those people. So I'm curious, you know, it's very hard when someone has sort of like this, you know, this ideal, this ideology, they've committed themselves to they've, you know, like committed to it personally, there may be financial

aspects, assets at stake, et cetera. What was the first piece of information that for you was like, wait a second, that started you on the trajectory away from thinking that this was some sort of solution and that it would actually empower people and is serving in exactly the opposite capacity. Sure. So one way that this divinity of the code starts to come into play is how people always talk about Bitcoin's a hard asset. It has a fixed supply. It's 21 million coins, it's capped. It's like gold. So people always talk about that. But no one really asked the follow-up question. And so I started to ask some of these follow-up questions, which in the end, seem very simple. But it's like, why is that the case? Please

demonstrate how that maintains the case. Because gold is something you have to dig out of the ground. that maintains the case because gold is something you have to dig out of the ground but Bitcoin is a software and as anybody could tell you humans write software. Humans also have to update software. Yeah, and so once you start thinking that then you immediately start to go well who are these humans? Like does anyone care like who these people operating this huge asset in our economy now that's becoming so interdependent? No one seems to really want to broadcast that examination.

If I were to just show you a little stat here, would it be surprising that only 42 software developers have written 90% of Bitcoin's code? And there's about five software developers, give or take on the year, that have sort of administrative privileges on top of Bitcoin's code. And we can monitor these people, we can identify them, we can see what they're chatting about, but no one wants to sort of comment on this. But if we start to look into it, then we can see, oh, well, this property of fixed supply is only a subjective whim of this something that looks to me like almost a central bank committee of software developers deciding what their monetary policy is on Bitcoin.

So you could say maybe they choose the fixed supply and that's good monetary policy, but it does not change the fact that there is centralization going on there. And also globalization, which lends itself to centralization in a high tech age. And this is, Peter, one of the questions I always have for people in the crypto space because I'm not you know, somebody who's like super super Deep in the details. I'm not like major investor. I'm not doing code I'm not doing any of that stuff, but I have never understood how structurally Crypto can exist with any regulation

how structurally crypto can exist with any regulation in a way that is utopian, or I don't mean that in a pejorative sense, in a way that's true to the spirit that I'm totally sympathetic to and supportive of, of decentralization. So when I see someone like Cynthia Lummis, Republican senator, has been very, very supportive of crypto over the years, going to these conferences and being met and lauded and praised by people in that space. I just am curious, structurally, if we steel man this, is there actually a way in a fantasy hypothetical scenario where crypto could exist in the year of our Lord 2025, in the 21st century, in a way that is not, with any regulation, in a way that maintains the spirit of decentralization? Because that to me just seems impossible on its face, but I don't know. Is it possible to regulate crypto and also have

crypto be this decentralizing force? I don't get it. this decentralizing force. Just, I don't get it. So there's a theoretical argument that academics can have on the core concept of peer-to-peer technology. Now, when you look at the academic literature and the case studies involved, usually small scale peer-to-peer technology works,

but the challenge is when you scale it, this is where the problems of centralization come in. Now, when you combine that with money and saturating people's financial transactions, incorporating into state institutions like the Treasury and so forth, that's even a harder problem to try to figure out. So, and even in the structural ways that Bitcoin's designed, a lot of people say that, oh, well, it's censorship resistant, it's decentralized,

you can just transact and send money anywhere you want. But there are middlemen in Bitcoin, the miners in Bitcoin, those really power hungry server farms out there. Those are the middlemen in Bitcoin, the miners in Bitcoin, those really power hungry server farms out there. Those are the middlemen of Bitcoin, and they're the ones that get your transactions and decide if they're going to process them on the blockchain or not. We've already have documented examples of these miners complying with the treasury's

OFAC standards to sanction and blacklist certain Bitcoin addresses. There's even more advanced ways to do that that are too long to get into. But this is where we've already been through the looking glass here. A company like Mara has championed this idea of being compliant with the OFAC standards in the mining industry and goes on to say, their CEO, I believe, that the way for the US to increase its share of Bitcoin miners is that the US-based Bitcoin miners need to be more compliant to OFAC. So it really gets into this catch-22 that as the US grows its Bitcoin industry and wider crypto industry, it keeps diminishing those ideals of

decentralization. So I would say it's a very hard nut to crack, but where we get into now with this legislation coming forward and how we've accepted that crypto is now a normal part of our economy, where I look at that, it's not innovation. It's not a new product or server that's really adding value. What's going on is we have two financial systems, two financial infrastructures. One is the traditional one with all the regulations. And that would have been a real fight to try to deregulate that. But why go through the pain of doing that

when you can just open up a parallel system with all the deregulation, and then when you combine them in aggregate, the net is that you have a more deregulated financial system. So that's really the trick going on here. Well, and that leads to my final question, which is, are we looking at some sort of a crypto bubble bursting and taxpayers being on the hook for a big crypto bailout, given that there is no longer a separate ecosystem.

This is completely mainstreamed within our financial institutions. The President of the United States obviously himself benefiting to the tune of millions, if not billions of dollars from the crypto industry. So, I mean, does that seem to you like where we're headed? It is very likely. I have suggested that this strategy of pumping up the crypto markets has a short-term logic to it. But like all bubbles, all bubbles have a short-term logic. They go up. That's the nature of bubbles. So no one can ever predict the exact time when a bubble will pop, but it seems like once we get outside of the five to 10-year horizon, that's where the wheels come off. Let's compare this to the housing bubble. There was at least an argument, there was a physical house. There was a rationale to why

the value could keep going up and why there was fundamental value underlying it. With this, we almost have a parity where these are completely digital, fictitious casino tokens practically. And they're making up more and more nominal value. And when these things pop, there's nothing underlying it. And so what ends up happening is we just start piling more and more risk into this type of asset class and making it collateralized to traditional transactions that we do in the economy. If you start looking into how mortgages are starting to accept these as collateral and so forth, and other ways.

And so once that keeps getting saturated, now this asset class, which is, no one would think it's crazy for this thing to go down 50% in a day. Even with the stable coins that are supposed to be the safest thing there, traditionally, we've seen a lot of allegations that they don't actually back their coins with one-to-one reserves, which is what they say they are doing. The New York AG actually said this in 2019 about one of the major stable coins. She said they lied. She said that they did not have the reserves they said.

Their lawyers had to admit it, and they ultimately settled with the New York AG. And so this has all been documented. We have cases where the market has found this out, has broken the peg on the stablecoins. We have legal sources that have proven this the case, like the New York AG. We just have our other historical examples of crypto going pop. The fact that it's going to be bigger than all past bubbles of crypto in the past doesn't really negate the fact that there is no underlying value, this stuff is very risky, there are multiple vectors where this thing could have a problem, whether on the technical side,

there could just be a bug that sends everything down. So very, very unsavory prospects. Yeah, I mean the value, to the extent that there is values of it being peer to peer and decentralized, and that goes away. And so I guess my last question for you, Peter, as we're wrapping this up is, do you think there will be more people, because you know people in this space,

and I know many people in this space, and people that I really like, and totally sympathetic to, like Ron Paul type people, do you think there will be people in this space that come away with your perspective soon? Do you think maybe we're in like a height in the contradictions phase, post-genius act and regulation that might be coming

from this Republican administration, where others start to get really worried? Or do you think everything is so attractive and appealing right now that it's just going to be peddled to the metal for the next year or so? Yeah, I think it's hard to distract people from the gloss of a bubble. There's certainly going to be momentum piling in now with this legislation. There's a lot of business institutions that want to incorporate this, get old people to put their retirement in it, get young people that are busy sports gambling to do more crypto gambling. So there's momentum here.

But I think in terms of the early Bitcoiners, a lot of them would actually be sympathetic to my point of view, even though they might not go all the way that I have. I'll reference one individual. He's the editor in chief of Bitcoin Magazine, Mark Goodwin. He wrote the book, The Bitcoin Dollar. We generally agree about 80% to 90% on all of these problems and criticisms. I would say right there, if the editor-in-chief of Bitcoin

magazine, who's like a real hardcore Bitcoiner, has these very similar opinions and sympathetic to the way I see it, that's probably saying something. As another little citation here, when I released this compact article, the founder of the Peer to Peer Foundation, which included a forum, which actually was the place Satoshi Nakamoto first announced his white paper introducing Bitcoin to the world, the founder of that actually endorsed my compact article saying this was actually very legitimate and valid criticisms. So I would say with those two sympathizers from the early days, it's hard to make a claim that this is that outside the norm. But there's a lot of people, newer faces, and maybe people with more dollar signs in their eyes, not so much Bitcoin signs, that are looking forward to

this current bubble momentum. Fascinating. Peter Ryan of Ryan Research, thank you for taking the time to talk to us about this piece. Thank you for writing the piece. We hope to have you back. Appreciate it. Great to be here. Thank you.

Just like great shoes, great books take you places, through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robay, and this is Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, the new podcast from Hello Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts. Every week I sit down with your favorite book lovers, authors, celebrities, book talkers, and more to explore the stories that shape us, on the page and off. I've been reading every Reese's Book Club pick,

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The Stuff You Should Know guys have made their own summer playlists of their must-listen podcasts on movies. It's me, Josh, and I'd like to welcome you to the Stuff You Should Know summer movie playlist. What screams summer more than a nice darkened, air-conditioned theater and a great movie playing right in front of you? Episodes on James Bond, special effects, stunt men and women, disaster films, even movies that change filmmaking, and many more.

Listen to The Stuff You Should Know summer movie playlist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Your entire identity has been fabricated. Your beloved brother goes missing without a trace. You discover the depths of your mother's illness, the way it has echoed and reverberated throughout your life, impacting your very legacy. Hi, I'm Dani Shapiro, and these are just a few of the profound and powerful stories I'll be mining on our twelfth season of Family Secrets. With over 37 million downloads, we continue to be moved and inspired by our guests and

their courageously told stories. I can't wait to share 10 powerful new episodes with you, stories of tangled-up identities, concealed truths, and the way in which family secrets almost always need to be told. I hope you'll join me and my extraordinary guests for this new season of Family Secrets. Listen to Family Secrets, season 12, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

So, Emily, much anticipated section of our show here. Sydney Sweeney is the new face of American Eagle, the sort of iconic mall brand. And her ad campaign has sparked quite a bit of discussion and controversy on the internet that we wanted to dig into. So first let's take a look at the ad that was the most controversial. Jeans are passed down from parents to offspring,

often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color. My jeans are blue. Cindy's twinny has very jeans. So you see what they did there with the hereditary jeans and blue jeans. At the end of the ad ends with her saying, like, see what I did there? Yeah, exactly, yeah, as if we didn't get it.

So a lot of people are looking at this, myself included, going, this feels a little, like, eugenics adjacent. And, you know, the whole, like, the gene talk, the blue eyes in particular, it's got a real sort of master race vibe. And of course, many people, I'm sure yourself included, be like, you're ridiculous and you have derangement syndrome, et cetera. But my case to you, Emily, would be, I'm not saying that American Eagle is like a bunch

of secret or open fascists and Nazis. They are capitalists though. And they're looking at the culture. They realize that paid advertisements really don't do a whole hell of a lot of good at this point if they don't come with eyeballs and attention and controversy. So this is the thing to touch on, to play with and the moment to get a reaction, which they got.

And so that's my, I mean, it's not even, I think this is just like correct and accurate that they knew this would spark this sort of discussion and controversy. They gave just enough of a nod to like sort of eugenics, race IQ kind of type of content to have plausible deniability. And then they delighted in the fervor and the attention around the ad campaign based on sort of touching on that, you know, like, correctly taboo subject. So it's hard to, it's very hard to ignore

when they're panning the camera and saying that Sydney Sweeney in the script is saying that her jeans are blue and they have it on her blue eyes. I think, Crystal, my case would be that you are overestimating the competence of people in the advertising industry and an American eagle who might have, let's say, cynically said it would be a real boost to our Sidney Sweeney ad campaign to do a little wink and nod to white supremacy in the gene marketing campaign that will generate all kinds of media hype by doing like a wink

wink white supremacy like undertone to the Sydney Sweeney ad. So I think what this speaks to is, well first of all, I don't think Sydney Sweeney ad. So I think what this speaks to is, well, first of all, I don't think Sydney Sweeney's people, if they saw this as being anywhere in the vein of white supremacy, although she's sort of become this interesting flashpoint. And it's sort of like people are polarizing politically around the question of Sydney Sweeney, whereas people on the left are saying

she's like a clear canary in the coal mine for the rise of fascism. And people on the right are saying she's like a clear canary in the coal mine for the rise of fascism. And people on the right are saying, some people on the far, far fringe right are saying, yes, exactly, this is why we love Sydney Sweeney. And the people on the right are saying, what the hell are you talking about? She's just super good looking

and wearing an all-American brand, which is where I think I fall into. But I don't think if this was intentional, Sidney Sweeney's people got taken for a ride. I have a hard time believing that somebody like Sidney Sweeney would intentionally be part of a covert white supremacy campaign to generate clicks. And I just genuinely don't think there's any,

like I get what you're saying about the buzz that you can generate by doing a sort of like intentional Kendall Jenner Pepsi situation. But I also don't think that it would be to any brand, they would say the cost benefit analysis of being limped in with literal eugenicists and white supremacy. Well, their stock is up. I mean, I think the flaw in your analysis is that it ignores how sort of mainstreamed this stuff has become.

I mean, you've literally got, you have a, you know, an all white town being founded in Arkansas as we speak, where they explicitly say it's whites only and we believe we have freedom of association and so we can keep black and brown people out. We have Stephen Miller. But there's still the fringe. Stephen Miller's not the fringe.

Stephen Miller is not the fringe. Who is running vast portfolio in the government, including very eugenics inspired immigration policy. Although he's Jewish. And who Trump himself says like, this guy is basically a white nationalist. I mean, that's who you know, that's, that's who he is. I think it's pretty hard to deny that's who he is. And then you've got,

you know, this isn't emblematic of like every young Republican, but you have this very increasingly like empowered and influential fringe that, you know, are in like the Graper movement and are the type of people who went on Jubilee and proudly like declared himself a fascist and whatever. You have the New York Times getting scoops from this race IQ, online race IQ dude. So this is quite mainstreamed in the culture. And for me, it hearkens back a little bit to the, obviously neither of us were alive at this time,

but the way that Madison Avenue glommed on to the like 60s counterculture movement and appropriated that to sell Coke and mainstream brands, et cetera. And so, you know, I don't think it takes a rocket scientist for a cynical ad exec who's just out there looking, okay, how can we get attention to our brand and sell some blue jeans to go, well, this is the thing that's out there in the culture right now.

This is the thing that's like the transgressive hot button to push, to stoke controversy. And I just don't know why else you're talking about genetics in a blue gene ad, if you're not intentionally trying to push that button. And to the point about Sydney herself, I don't know. I mean, I don't have any like particular grudge about against Sydney Sweeney. I know there was like a lot of discussion about her boobs on SNL or something that I never really totally understood. But we can put, you know, one of the people who was involved in this ad campaign posted delighted in the success of the campaign. She says specifically during a zoom call with Sydney, we asked the question, how far do you want to push it without hesitation? She smirked and said, let's push it. I'm game our response challenge accepted. So in any case, you know, I don't think it's like crazy

to imagine that she also was like, yeah, sure. Let's play into this controversy and create a lot of attention for ourselves. And it'll be great for me, it'll be great for the company, the stock price is up, et cetera. So that's to me pretty clearly what's going on here. And as someone who is very opposed to eugenics and very disturbed by its mainstreaming and how increasingly like openly accepted and discussed, et cetera. Like I'm not sure what the right way is to react to something like this that does, in

my view, intentionally try to like play with those themes because what they wanted is the attention and the controversy. But then are you just supposed to like not say anything when these sorts of things and themes are being mainstreamed in the culture? It's to me, it's like a catch-22. So I interpreted the Sydney Sweeney has great genes LinkedIn post. We're really going deep on this.

That we just had up on the screen. This would be my counterpoint. I interpreted that as Sydney Sweeney's sort of controversy for a long time has been whether or not she's mid, which is be my counterpoint. I interpreted that as Sidney Sweeney's sort of controversy for a long time has been whether or not she's mid, which is just a ridiculous controversy. She is beautiful. But that's been the thing about Sidney Sweeney

that everyone's like, oh, she's mid. People don't even like her because she has, fill in the blank. And that's where the entire appeal of Sidney Sweeney is wrapped up in. And so I think what they're talking about when they say they're kind of going down, the camera's panning down, Sidney Sweeney's full body, is her saying, like, that's why they're talking about jeans in a J-E-A-N-S ad is like, Sidney Sweeney is actually pretty hot, and Sidney

Sweeney is willing to take you up on this conversation about whether or not she's mid, and she's willing to just kind of bear it all, even if she's clad in jeans. So that's my interpretation of what they say they're being quote unquote cheeky about in the ad, is that. I still think that a mainstream brand

wanting to be affiliated with white supremacy or eugenicism, as much as I do share your concerns about seeing people like Nick Fuentes go massively viral and have whatever poll he has with Gen Z, as much as I genuinely share those concerns and also share the concerns about eugenicism when you look at what's happened, and this is probably something that we disagree on, but if you look at what's happened in places like Iceland, for example, where they use new testing technology on unborn kids and basically get rid of Down syndrome.

I actually think that eugenics is a serious question that confronts us as a society right now. But I mean, yeah, I don't disagree with that. I share that. I still just think it's far-fetched that a mainstream American brand would want to eagerly affiliate itself, even if it's just to create buzz with white supremacy or eugenics or neo-Nazism. As some people have said, they have the eagle in the brand.

And to, you know, be talking intentionally about Aryan jeans in an ad goes right along with the quote, American eagle in their title and logo. I just think it's over. I didn't take it that far. I didn't take it that far, OK? Just to be clear, that didn't even occur to me. But now I'm going to think about it.

No. No. I mean, look, paid advertising campaigns don't really get you very far these days because people can click off. You can fast forward through your watch and thing. I mean, it's just like very hard to get people to pay attention to your brand. So what better to get you attention

than a beautiful woman plus a little race IQ controversy with plausible deniability? Like they're never going to go, oh, yeah, we were like flirting with you, Jenna. They're never going to say that, but their stock price went up because of that controversy. I think their stock price went up because Sydney Sweeney's ad is alluring. Why is anyone talking about Sydney Sweeney's ad? It's only because, I mean, you know, yes, she is at star power, et cetera. But the reason it got so much attention is because of exactly this controversy,

which these are not stupid people. Like, I don't know. They kind of are. They know what they were doing with those them. Come on. They knew. I don't know. I mean, I still just think that even your explanation too, by the way, that this is like a rebuttal to the idea that she's mid the way she's, if that's really, which I, I think that's a stretch. But if that's really her argument is like, no, I'm not mid because I'm of good genetic stock. Like even that is disturbing. It's weird. Yeah. Like that's what, like,

I just think it's, it's so weird and I'm done. Yeah. I mean, it's not weird if you realize that what they're doing is intentionally touching on something that is, again, justifiably, like, forbidden and, you know, has been for a long time pushed down the mainstream and is now like back being mainstreamed. If you look at public polling, like across the board, the American people are very anti-racist, maybe not in the Kennedy sense,, but race relations in the United States have come remarkably far, and it's not as though the American public,

while there are some people on the fringes that may be energized by Fuentes and whomever else, it doesn't behoove a major brand. You don't have to even be a smart marketing executive. But it is behoving them. They are behoved. But I don't think people are watching the ad. But your point is that they're being behooved

by the controversy created by the ad. And it's not that American Eagle supports eugenics and white supremacy. No, it's that they got attention. That no publicity is bad publicity. I mean, this is the secret of Donald Trump's success and his realization that like, I mean, he even said this about like Doug Burgum

when he picked him for secretary of the interior. He was like, yeah, he just doesn't, you know, he's not controversial enough, so he can't get attention. This is the attention economy. The way to get attention isn't to just like, you know, have another ad with a beautiful woman, woman, there are a million other ads that have other similar, like beautiful stars. The way to get attention is to spark a conversation. We're not covering the Beyonce Levi's ad, are we? No, we're covering this one because they played with Ray Science and eugenics and that's why

we're talking about it. I think they played with, I think intentionally they played with, this is where we disagree. I think they played with the entire pun was about Sydney Sweeney being hot or not. And that's when they say they're going, she said she wants to go far. It's that. And I think it was like obviously a very strange ad but their stock is going up because people like the ad likes Sydney Sweeney in the jeans they looked great and American Eagle is ascendant because they have a young star like Sydney Sweeney repping them it used to be by the

way Dawson's Creek I think they they outfitted everybody on Dawson's Creek. Oh, did they really? Yeah, I'm pretty sure for a while they did. But anyway, they have a history of sort of partnering with, I mean, for a young brand like that. We're not going to agree on this, Crystal. Well, just my last piece, as I will say, even your explanation to me is very eugenics-y,

that you would be like, I am hot because I come from the right genetic stock. But that is, I mean, like, people are hot because of their genes. I don't even like that either. But like, people, to be fair, like, it's, like, the science of whether or not people are attractive to other people comes down to facial symmetry, which is genetic.

I mean, I don't like any, like, I hope we don't start tinkering with genetics in this way. But you're like, it's a weird thing to say. It is. Like, it's a weird thing to say. It is. It's a weird thing to say. Absolutely. It's like, no, I can prove genetically that I'm a detractive person.

That I'm not mid. Because that is. Doesn't make sense, though. But I actually think that helps my argument. Because on social media, there have been deep, deep analyses done on Sydney Sweeney's like facial symmetry over the years so yeah I mean I like people have literally been debating this which is completely insane maybe that's our next debate is

Sydney Sweeney mid but maybe we agree on that we don't even have to debate it. I don't think we agree, she's not mid like I'm actually disgusted by this it's like such a common thing not just with Sydney Sweeney of taking some like absolutely flawlessly gorgeous woman and then picking one photo of her where like she's not at her best and being like, she, I don't even get it. She's so mid. It's like, you know, fuck off. Like she's a beautiful woman. Like just stop, just stop. And it's always like some guy who looks terrible, you know, and is like overweight and could never have a prayer of being with this woman who's posting this sort of shit. So, yeah, that that particular conversation, whether it's Sydney Sweeney or many other beautiful women is kind of disgusting to me.

This is what happens when Ryan goes on vacation for a week. Take over the show with the debate about, you know, who would have been really excited for this debate? Sager would have loved this. Well I did debate with Sager off air on this. Of course he thinks my view is ridiculous but he's wrong. There you go. In many cases. Many such cases. We can continue this conversation on Friday of course. Sager will be back in with Crystal tomorrow. Thanks everyone for tuning in. As a reminder, if you wanna get those interviews

like the great conversation that Sagar and Crystal had with Senator Alyssa Slotkin yesterday, headlines all over the world, you can become a member. And if you wanna help support the work that makes those interviews possible, you can become a member over at breakingpoints.com. ["The Greatest Showman"] Just like great shoes, great books take you places. Through unforgettable love stories

and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robay, and this is Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, the new podcast from Hello Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts, where we dive into the stories that shape us, on the page and off. Each week I'm joined by authors, celebs, book talk stars, and more for conversations that will make you laugh, cry,

and add way too many books to your TBR pile. Listen to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Stuff You Should Know guys have made their own summer playlists of their must-listen podcasts on movies. It's me, Josh, and I'd like to welcome you to the Stuff You Should Know Summer Movie playlist.

What screams summer more than a nice darkened, air-conditioned theater and a great movie playing right in front of you? Episodes on James Bond, special effects, stunt men and women, disaster films, even movies that change filmmaking, and many more. Listen to the Stuff You Should Know Summer Movie playlist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So what happened at Chappaquiddick? Well, it really depends on who you talk to. There are many versions of what happened in 1969

when a young Ted Kennedy drove a car into a pond. And left a woman behind to drown. Chappaquiddick is a story of a tragic death and how the Kennedy machine took control. Every week, we go behind the headlines and beyond the drama of America's royal family. Listen to United States of Kennedy on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.