BTC Sessions - Canada’s 0.1% Economic Nightmare Warns USA: Bitcoin’s Safe Haven! | Rich Dias

Episode Date: October 7, 2025

Mentor Sessions Ep. 033: Richard Dias on US vs Canadian Economy, Marco Outlook, Fiscal Problems, and implications for Bitcoin. Is the Canada economy on the brink of collapse amid US economy divergence, currency debasement, and stagnant productivity growth in Canada? In this eye-opening Bitcoin interview on BTC Sessions, global macro strategist Richard Dias from IceCap Asset Management and co-host of The Loonie Hours reveals the harsh realities facing the Canada economy versus the thriving US economy. Discover why economic divergence between Canada and US is widening due to reckless fiscal policy in Canada, failed productivity growth strategies, and anti-energy policies crippling natural resources. Richard breaks down currency debasement trends, the real estate market in Canada teetering on instability, skyrocketing gold prices as a red flag for global instability, and how Bitcoin as money offers a hedge against fiat failures. This episode delivers unfiltered macro wisdom. Don't miss why Richard sees more pain ahead for Canada, why it serves as a warning to the US, and how Bitcoin fits into the solution—watch now!Chapters:00:00:00 Intro Teaser: Economic Warnings & Bitcoin Outlook00:01:27 Hockey Banter: Why No Canadian Stanley Cup Wins00:03:33 US vs Canada: Point of Economic Divergence00:04:23 Macro Outlook: US Dynamics vs Canada Struggles00:07:06 Canada's Policy Failures: Energy & Organization00:08:40 Inter-Provincial Trade Barriers Explained00:12:13 Recession Risks: US Mixed Signals vs Canada Reality00:13:56 Public Sector Employment & Productivity Crisis00:18:23 Why Canada Has Been in Recession for Years00:22:11 Historical Roots of Canada's Fragmentation00:23:31 Unleashing Productivity: Natural Resources & Manufacturing00:31:14 Fiscal Policy Canada: Parliamentary Budget Officer Scolding00:40:00 Currency Debasement: Loonie at All-Time Lows00:44:08 Protecting Wealth: Why Bitcoin Matters00:54:49 Real Estate Market Canada & Gold Prices Concerns00:55:54 Bitcoin as Money: Survival & Early Use CaseAbout Richard DiasGlobal Strategist at IceCap Asset Management, co-host of The Loonie Hours podcast, and host of IceCap Canadian Market WrapX.com: @richard_diasCFAPodcast: The Loonie Hour - https://thelooniehour.ca/IceCap YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@IceCapAssetManagementWebsite: icecapassetmanagement.com💰 Supported by @BowValleyCU — Tired of big banks? Join Bow Valley Credit Union, run by freedom and sound money advocates, as Canada's only traditional institution directly integrating Bitcoin for seamless, no-hassle transfers, no rehypothecation, self-custody withdrawals, insurance, auditability, and ideal corporate balance sheet integration. If you or your business is in Alberta, switch today! 👉https://qrco.de/bgGaIQ😏 "Supported" by @PantiesBitcoin — Gentlemen, Panties for Bitcoin has you covered! A Bitcoiner brand for Bitcoiners, run by a HODLer family. Gift your lady top-quality underwear with BTC—surprise her with style & orange-pill her into the Bitcoin economy! 👉 https://qrco.de/bgEYRO⚡ POWERED by @Sazmining — the easiest way to mine Bitcoin and take control of your financial future. ⛏️You own the rig 🌍 It runs on clean energy 🔐 You get cheap Bitcoin BELOW Exchange Cost Start stacking wild sats today: 👉 https://qrco.de/bg8Jwq 📚 FREE Bitcoin Book Giveaway: New to Bitcoin? Get Magic Internet Money by Jesse Berger FREE! 👉 Click: bitcoinmentororange.com/magic-internet-money 💡BOOK Private Sessions with Bitcoin Mentor: Master self-custody, hardware, multisig, Lightning, privacy, and more. 👉 Visit bitcoinmentor.io Follow Us on X:• BTC Sessions: @BTCsessions• Nathan: @theBTCmentor• Gary: @GaryLeeNYCCheck out the previous episode with Grant Cardone: https://youtu.be/HP1limYb7bE #canadaeconomy #useconomy #bitcoininterview #currencydebasement #productivitygrowthcanada #realestatemarketcanada #goldprices #fiscalpolicycanada #bitcoin #btcsessions #btc #crypto #looniehour

Productivity growth on a compound annual basis over 10 years is 0.1%. That is an unmitigated disaster. The relative distance between Canada and the United States will get wider before it gets closer. My view, I think we've already had a major currency to basement. Canada's currency is basically at like a 10 or 15 year low, sorry, all time low basically versus the Swiss franc. I'm not saying that that's going to happen here, but I'm just saying it should absolutely be a major, major red flag.

In my view, which is good for Bitcoin. If there's anything in this world that people want to pull it down, pull down, it would be Bitcoin. And the fact that it has survived such intense scrutiny, that alone, to me, is fascinating in like a very positive way. Meet Rich Diaz, global macro strategist at ice cap asset management and razor sharp co-host of the Looney Hour, always wielding hard-hitting stats. In this episode, Rich breaks down the economic outlook for Canada and the U.S. and why they're rapidly diverging. So in 2015-16, the U.S.'s GDP per capita continued to rise. And Canada's basically flatline.

Which reckless policies are destroying the money? They're going to run inflation hot, so currency is going to go down. And battle-tested strategies to protect yourself. Read between the lines, I think you have your answer. Plus, Rich drops a surprise story of how he used Bitcoin as money well over a decade ago. If you know, you know. The reason I bought a Bitcoin was to transact in the Bitcoin. All right, Richard, thank you very much for joining us today.

We have a big audience here, Americans and Canadians. and since Nathan and I represent each of the two countries, I thought we'd start off talking about a bit of a comparison because the USA and Canada have diverged economically in recent years. So I'd like to know if you could tell me why a Canadian team hasn't won the Stanley Cup since 1993. Oh my God. This is very important and something I think about a lot. I think part of it is luck, I'd say.

I think part of it is, you know, squandering, talent in the form of not finding a bloody goalie for Connor McDavid. I think a little bit has to do with taxes. I think people make way too much of that. Not to get into the weeds, but you know, you're only taxed in the city that you play or the jurisdiction you play. And so the actual tax base is much

lower. Plus there's all kinds of accounting trickery that rich people get to abuse that I think is overlooked. But I think mostly it's just luck. I think that's you know, that's the, and also, let's be honest, we had it for the Canadians, like Montreal Canadians won five years in a row, Edmonton four years out of five, you know, you know, but yeah. We had a good run 30 years ago. I love that you actually gave me a serious answer to this. Thank you so much. I take hockey very seriously, bro. I know, I know you're a Habs fan, right? Yes, sadly.

Well, not sadly. We're going to do it well this year, I think. I think so. And Patrick Waugh, MVP, 1993. I was like really a little bit too young to fully appreciate it. But I had really a lot of the reason I love the Habs is the is the lore that my father would like, my father was an immigrant to Canada and, you know, what do you do when you come here? It used to be that you would just like get fully engaged into the hockey culture. And he did. He just ate it, you know. And he fell in love with Ken Dryden, who was, who just recently died, who was like a scholar and an athlete, which really appealed to my dad and obviously Gila Fleur. And so that's really where it comes from.

I love it. Thank you, Rich. Thank you for your fantastic answer on the two. I actually never considered the tax implications as well, too. Because I was thinking like it's capped in terms of amounts, so it's going to be the same across the board, but there's tons of other things that are necessarily feeding into it. Continuing with that idea, kind of U.S. versus Canada, to Gary's point, we really seem to have diverged maybe the last decade,

last 15 years or so. Their GDP growth is outshining us right now. And particularly, I was looking on a per capita basis. It was 85,000 USD per capita for GDP in the U.S. compared to 58 in Canada. So we're poorer comparatively. Our household debt is much higher. And then even I saw Steve threw up a chart of investment in industrial machinery and equipment. They're continuing to invest in their industrial base where we actually have declined quite a bit here.

So even just to start us off, that 30,000 foot view, what is your current kind of macro outlet for the U.S.? And then how does that differ from what you view for Canada at the moment? Sure. So just to give you a little bit of background, You know, Canada's always been a bit poorer. So it's not, so the gap between them being richer or poorer, to me, that's not necessarily an issue. It's a function of history.

It's a function of all kinds of different things. And your number that you're thinking about is really important and sorry for the context. But from 1994 to 2015, the rates of change in GDP per capita were lockstep. So even though Canada was a bit poorer, we grew in line with America. So that's good, right? So it's okay being poor as long as your growth is consistent. And then that was through cycles as well. So during recession, blah, blah, blah, recovery.

And we basically massively diverge in 2015, 2016. And that's where it's been a really kind of glaring issue. And so in 2015-16, the U.K., sorry, the U.S.'s GDP per capita continued to rise, and Canada's basically flatlined. And it's effectively, effectively been flat ever since. In fact, if you compare 38 countries in the OECD, Canada has the second worst growth of all those countries per capita in real terms, only beating out Luxembourg, which is like not really a country. No offense. All the listeners from Luxembourg.

And so that's like an scathing indictment on our industrial policy. In my view, our fiscal, our government's decisions to allocate and otherwise try to crush other industries and then as well and my view also that the monetary policy is absolutely to blame. You know, what do we go from here? I think the U.S. is just an extremely dynamic, large and extremely dynamic country. I think we often make the mistake of thinking about it as some homogenous blob, both from a political perspective as well as an industrial perspective. I mean, they have all kinds of different pockets of intense and really strong industrial activity. As well as sort of the financial hub of New York, you know, they've got the tech in the West.

They've got intense agricultural stuff in the middle. You know, they have budding new areas of economic growth in Florida as everybody's sort of escaping, you know, the commies of the north. I'm joking. I know quite a few that have moved to Florida now. It's surprising. That's a real thing, by the way. They're going to Florida. Yeah.

There's some really intense charts on the U.S. Central Bank websites that demonstrate that. And then you've got places that people don't think of as high-tech industrial hubs like Texas, which are extremely rich and do all kinds of very, very high-tech manufacturing. In Canada, you know, we've had basically a government that hates the most important export that we do in Canada. so that's energy, oil and gas specifically. So hockey players? Excuse me, and hockey players.

And so we've had a complete opposite in Canada. You know, we've, the thing about the U.S. is that it's, I would say it's just by, but besides being dynamic, there's so much state power. And then in Canada, we have disparate, it's weird. I don't think we're organized in the same way. And one of the ways that we can really expose how disorganized we are is the fact that there were up until about five minutes ago, massive interprovincial, intra-provincial trade barriers was seen as somehow okay. And so for people who may not know, there was basically a 2019

IMF paper that showed that the intra-provincial tariffs were equivalent to 21%. It was different for each province, but it basically ranged from 24 or whatever to 18, and so the average was 21. And then that same province, let's say Ontario and some equivalent state that was next four, was three percent. And until, you know, Donald Trump basically started trolling Justin Trudeau, no one seemed to care about that. But that is fundamental to how we act as a country. And I think is one of the reasons among many why we've been really left behind. Then I could go on to energy and et cetera, but maybe I've lost the plot of your question. No, it's quite interesting.

I'm actually, just to tease that out quickly before I kind of go further into the subject, is what is the rationale or justification for having trade barriers between provinces? Because it seems completely like shooting yourself in your foot to me, but maybe I'm just too much of a libertarian anarchist. I mean, I don't really know. Yeah. I think a lot of these things are sort of legacy issues from the way that Canada was formed. So like, you know, in the United States, you had the revolution, U.S. versus,

then you had the manifest destiny. which is a bit of a joke, but it is kind of interesting where you had new, the 13 colonies, and they tacked on more stuff and tacked on. In Canada, you know, you had British colony,

British Columbia in the West. You know, you had upper and lower Canada, as it was called. And in many real senses, they were sort of individuals that were sort of connected with by John A. McDonald

via the Canadian Pacific Railway. And the Federation, rather than sort of the United States, is I think really at the heart of why all these things are issues. I think also, you know, sometimes it's sometimes things that are grandfathered in are good. And I think sometimes things that are grandfathered in are bad. And there's been never really any impetus or political will or courage to like attack head on the real sort of, sort of straightjacket that we are from an economic perspective.

I think there's also just boring answers like unions. and, you know, political, you know, political clientelism, if that's a word, where people are just captured and have no real incentive. In fact, they are incentivized to keep the game going. You know what I mean? Like, why shouldn't a nurse be able to work in all the provinces or does it really make sense that we have a securities, like in the U.S., for example, in my world, there's something like, you know, you have a securities and exchange commission, the United States.

In Canada, we have 10 equity market regular. Sorry, yeah, capital market regulators. They're provincial? I didn't realize that. That's stupid. Long, long, long ago, should somebody, someone should have said, okay, kids, like, first of all, our equity market's not that big. Second of all, we really should just have one regulator for, I don't know, some stock

on a market somewhere. And then, of course, there's the language question, which I think is always an issue in Quebec, which is, in my view, just used, no one actually wants to separate what want to do is they want to use the separation question as a hammer to extract concessions from the rest of the country, just like Alberta will with oil eventually, if they haven't already started. And so I think you've got all these different things. And often, and then the reality is, is we, frankly, become complacence because we live above one of the biggest empires to ever exist. And that's what the U.S. is an empire, just like China is an empire or whatever.

And so we've never really had to deal with these questions until right now. And frankly, I don't think the leadership in our country is really primed to address any of that stuff. But I think that's one of the reasons. I don't know. Sorry, that was a bit sort of a rambling question because I don't think I fully know the answer. That's very interesting. You almost get the sense of like it's regulatory capture and just old vestigial parts from a country that was kind of hazardly, hemhazardly kind of glued together. I'm curious in a view.

So if you go specifically kind of to just even the short to medium term outlook for both economies, I feel like there's still trouble on the horizon, but perhaps I'm just spending way too much time in like financial Twitter and Bitcoin Twitter. Do you foresee any sort of major recession in either country and will their kind of outlook differ in some way? Like it's possible that Canada goes down a bad path right now, but the U.S. is totally fine. And I did also want to just toss in there with another piece of information. In your view, this is one thing that has my attention, in your view, how much of the public sector importance, employment in Canada as compared to the U.S. Factors into both the reason we're not maybe as productive and also why people are maybe

invested in the existing system. So I'll answer the last question first. Yes. So Canada's public sector employment is 21.7% of total employment, which is a 30 year high. This is at the exact same time as non-business sector productivity as at a 10-year low. There's other ways to split out your quote-unquote public sector employment. there's something called public administration. If you look at the labor force survey data that splits everything out.

So public administration is people who literally work as bureaucrats effectively because in Canada, education would be considered held public sector and whatever. And so let's say healthcare. And that is also at a 30-od year high. So 1995 or anyway, whatever. It's a long, long time. And so in my view, that is 100% of part. sorry 100% of not excuse me that is one major reason why we're having issues in the public sector

and why people continue to vote people you know show me an incentive and I'll show your results obviously you're not going to vote for the party that's going to fire you from your cushy job with a full pension and that you don't have to go to the office and don't work on and on and on me those to me it's patently obvious um respect to the u.s is recession I think people you know people are always calling for recession and I think number fundamentally I think people who are bearish, sorry, let me step back. In my industry, in the world of a global strategy,

in a world of speaking to investors, in the world of speaking to clients, normally the people who are bearish sound smarter. Okay, full stop. This has been true for 20, as long as I've been working in this business. If you went to somebody in 2015 and said,

I think the tech industry is going to massively outperform for 10 years, everybody's like, oh, that guy's an idiot. And then if you'd said, oh, tech industry is over, valued. It's good. There's a blowup coming. Everybody's like, that guy is very thoughtful. So I think that's as like a starting point, we need to appreciate that. Now, is the U.S. going to sort of head into a recession? I think the answer is in some industries, I think they already are. But as a whole, it's that remains unclear. And why do I say some industries? You know, if you look at the

National Association of Home Builders Index, it's as low as it was during the COVID trough. Wild. So that's an index for basically confidence and mark and home building activity. If you look at, you know, so that's one. If you look trucking and freight, that that series is off. If you look at, you know, if you look at delinquency rates for credit cards for low income people, that's at basically an all-time high. If you look at the split between highway earners and low-income earners, that's low. You know, the confidence about finding new job, that's starting to worry people.

There's the jobs, you know, survey. That's also starting to worry people. You've had declines in year-on-year employment growth in Nevada, which is sort of a bellwether state because it's, you know, it's a hyper-luxury good to go blow your money on, you know, like expensive entertainment, et cetera. If you look at certain house prices and certain jurisdictions, fine. So that's all sort of the negative.

But if you look at the other parts, you know, you look at PMI services, so purchasing manager index service. for services. That's doing okay. The Atlanta Fed, so there's 12 federal reserve branches. One of them is in Atlanta. They do lots of modeling. Really good stuff. These people are apolitical. And you look at the GDP now forecast, right, which is based on the most recent available data. That number is starting to is rising. Yeah, I saw that. I think I saw as high as like three something. So this is the problem with, I think, just saying the U.S. is in going into recession. It's like, Okay, sure, I could

I could rattle off, you know, 10 things that look horrible, but there's a bunch of other stuff that doesn't look horrible. You're right, there is no real debt. You know, the reality is that the top 10% of income earners in the United States account for 50% of all the retail spending.

And what do rich people own? They own homes, which are largely either paid for or were refinanced at 3% or they own stocks and equity. And what's the equity market doing? The equity markets at all time highs. And so if rich people are going to continue to spend, it's tough to see where you're going to have a collapse in consumption, consumption 75% of the U.S. GDP.

And then the other part of GDP is often investment. So what is that investment in capital goods, industrial machinery and equipment, you know, intellectual property products, you know, literally non-residential structures and housing and all that shit. And it's, again, it's unclear where you're going to have like this severe collapse in economic activity come from. And so that's the part. You know, it's easy to be doom and gloom. But when you like start to look at the sort of the granularity that I believe in an economy as complex as the United States deserves, it starts to get a little bit harder to just say, oh, they're screwed. It's over blah, blah, blah. Not to mention you have a federal reserve that's under pressure.

to continue to cut rates, which is easy monetary policy. And on the cherry on top is you have a federal government that's running a massive, massive budget deficit, which is at the margin good for growth. Whether you agree or disagree is, in my view, relevant, it is supportive of growth. And so that's why when people say all of the U.S. is in a recession, I was like, okay, sure, but I think it deserves much more nuance. I think for Canada, if I can go on. Yes, please.

Yeah, for Canada, I think we've been in a recession for years. I think we've, and then for all of the same reasons the U.S. is not. We have no investment in anything other than industrial, sorry, intellectual property products. All the other sort of CAPEX stuff is down. We have rising unemployment rate in the United States and falling participation rates in the, like, unlike the U.S., where participation rates are lower, but they're steady. You know, we have, we have, at that,

GDP per capita number. All of our, we have zero productivity growth. So like all of the GDP growth that we've seen over the last three or four years has basically been a function of literally just adding warm bodies to our economy. Our, um, our productivity growth on a compound annual basis over 10 years is 0.1%. That is an unmitigated disaster. Um, we basically imported low skilled, low wage immigrants. And whereas we used to have extremely difficult and solid immigration policy, which was high, but good. We scrapped that for political reasons. I will never fully appreciate.

And, you know, we now import, well, it's changed a little bit now, but for the last few years, I mean, we tripled our population growth via immigration of, in my view, the wrong labor mix. And by the way, that's the language that the Bank of Canada used. And so Canada is in a world of hurt. I mean, that's, you know, and then, and so, I think that, and then we refuse to do the most obvious best thing to alleviate of that pressure, which is to lean into our natural resources.

And so that's why I think the comparative, I think the relative distance between Canada and the United States will get wider before it gets closer. Are you sick at the Fiat-funded fast fashion that falls apart quicker than the dollar? You know, the cheap stuff made to drain your wallet one inferior product at a time. Stop it. There's a better way. Panties for Bitcoin is a family-oriented company built by Bitcoin. for Bitcoiners and held to that unbreakable Bitcoin standard.

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This isn't paper Bitcoin, withdraw to self-custody at any time. Insured and auditable, it's perfect for adding Bitcoin to your corporate balance sheet. If you or your business is in Alberta, switch to your Bitcoin refuge at bow valleyCU.com. Scan the QR code or click the link below. Beautiful. I have so many more questions, but Gary, let me stop hogging the mic and let you jump in there. No, not at all. You've taught me so much about Canada that I didn't even know when you talked about. I didn't realize there were these trade barriers between provinces. I had no clue. I guess I had a very different idea of Canada's history because like you mentioned here in the United States, we don't have that between states.

And the United States was formed as these separate states. It used to be called these United States emphasizing the differences between states. And then they wrote the Constitution. they're like, we're going to do this interstate commerce clause. You can't tax across borders anymore. So, you know, we're done with that. And of course, side note, that's now used to justify everything. Like, oh, if you grow a tomato plant in your backyard that somehow indirectly impacts

your state commerce, the federal government can regulate your tomato plant. So that's a whole other issue. But we said, hey, we're not going to have taxes between states anymore. So that I was under the impression that the idea of these separate states was a much stronger phenomenon in the USA than in Canada. But I guess I'm wrong. These provinces have their own very much identity and like, all right, we're going to be separate from you guys. I'm learning something here.

So big picture, we're saying that Canada doesn't have productivity growth. You're talking about all these industries in the United States. What would you say is an area of Canada? For our Canadian listeners here, some people don't often directly talk to them here. What's an area of Canada that is just ripe for a productivity explosion, but it's just being held back? And I ask that because I feel like there's so many people in. Canada. They're smart, industrious. Some of the funniest people I know are Canadian. It seems like you guys should just be banging and you're not. Where could this growth be unleashed and how could it be

unleashed? I think too, in my view, the screamingly, most insanely obvious things are a natural resource sector. So oil and anything you can pull out of the ground. Crucially, including the processing of that stuff, which is a hugely highly, hugely highly value added. component and then manufacturing. So let's start with manufacturing first. Canada used to be one of the best, oh no, yeah, one of the top five competitive, yeah, like when they rank competitiveness

of your manufacturing industry, Canada used to be in the top five. We have since completely fallen off. We're in the, I think we're 22 or 25 or whatever. That's a subjective ranking, but, you know, but think about how crazy it is. So out of the 160-odd countries that we count, Canada used to be top five.

now we're in the like middling 20s. And that decline is meaningful because there's less people in it. And what's important is that, you know, it's iterative. So if you, if you, by, you know, you never get things back. So when you lose a manufacturing industry is, is quite painful. Whether there's if you continue manufacturing, those manufacturers get better and better. And then there's compounding stuff to that. So that's the manufacturing thing.

Like this idea that you can, your country as, as, as, that has such cheap energy, which is a huge input to lots and lots of manufacturing, and that is so big should not stress and have an industrial policy that helps and caters to manufacturing, it has been a big mistake. And that's something I've gotten wrong in the past. Had you asked me 15 years ago, I would have said, ah, doesn't really matter. You know, I've definitely come around on that. I'm not saying, like, manufacturing, like, you know, trinkets, you know, and stuff that you buy

it, like, dollar am. I mean, like, you know, everything from chemicals, which is considered manufacturing to, you know, cars and, you know, like there's a lot of high-tech, like satellites. I don't know what, you know what, you know what I mean? There's like loads and loads of very important manufacturing stuff that has, is very intense in respect to science and engineering, research and developing. It's not just, you know, we're not just pressing out like, you know, rubber duckies here. You know what I mean? These are, this is very, very important. And you'll see other countries that have had in the past done really, really well with respect to growth, having good jobs, etc.

Germany, when it didn't, when it wasn't captured by stupid climate policy, Japan's of the world. China obviously thinks that manufacturing is extremely important. US has never really gotten rid of it despite, you know, the best efforts of some people, etc. And then the natural resources sector to me is just it's so, it is insane and kind of obvious that people, from a a certain political party are willing to sacrifice the well-being of Canadians in order to meet some arbitrary climate goal. And I hope you guys don't get, you know, shadow banned on YouTube for this. But that's ultimately what has happened. And I'm so, so happy that the Overton window has changed. That's a phrase I learned just a couple months ago. So I'm overusing it. Oh, okay. Nice.

But yeah, like, you know, Canada has the third largest reserves in the world. You know, we have, we only consume about two million barrels of oil a day, we produce about five. That's with, by the way, almost zero new investment into that space. The break-even rate of a barrel of oil sand used to be 75 bucks in 2015 or 2010 or whatever. Now it's like $27. Oh, wow. Just think about how crazy it is. Then there's all this like then there's the natural gas piece, which is incredible, right?

One of the reasons the United States has been able to sustain its manufacturing sector is because they've been able to basically produce lots and lots of cheap energy in the form of natural gas, which is what you basically need effectively. They're coal or natural gas, but they're one for one, more or less a one for one substitute. But they've been able to, thanks to Barack Obama and fracking and whatever, you know, you've basically been able to distribute loads of cheap natural gas, which has basically been able to keep these energy-intensive manufacturing businesses alive. I submit to you Germany, which has been the total opposite.

energy prices went through the roof and manufacturing has basically collapsed. Certainly energy intensive manufacturing is collapsed in Germany. And then the other piece that Canada has is we have virtually every single rare earth and critical mineral. I always get those two screwed up. And then the key thing is not enough to just pull it out of the ground. We need to be able to process it, which is extremely dirty. Canada genuinely cares about the environment, so that's a good thing.

But it's also extremely energy intensive. Well, we have an abundance of base load energy in the form of good nuclear, good hydro, good natural gas. And coal is like whatever. We don't use that anymore. But so we have the things that you need, you need to produce the products that people desperately want. But we have a government that is dead set on not allowing any, like any industrial growth. Like they've made it very clear in the form of repeated legislation, the changes to the Impact Assessment Act. 2019, the C-60, sorry, C-48, the anti-tanker thing, obviously all the pipelines that they've

sort of kibosh, you know, then there's C-69. I mean, there's a bill in books that basically doesn't allow an oil company to say that natural gas has 50% less emissions than coal, because apparently that's against the climate gods and what, I mean, it's it's bananas, right? So like, but you have that on and on and on. And you, it's, you know, the problem people think, It's not just one thing. It's if you layer on more and more regulation, and then you have America literally next door, which has an open capital account.

So if you were some rich guy in Toronto and you're like, oh, I want to invest in a business. You just like go to your bank, beep, boop, boop, and your money's in New York. And then you're investing in a natural gas pipeline that's going, that's filling up industrial manufacturing warehouse. Or what I mean? Like, you're Canada, this, like,

you can have horrific policies, but in a world of the, the free movement of capital, which it more or less is, you're competing against these other countries that aren't as stupid. And so what do you end up having? You have a massive, massive outflow of direct capital investment. And that's exactly what's happened. We've had the record direct investment outflow out of Canada to mostly the United States. And it's not a man. And the joke is we also have record foreign direct investment. But our outflows are significantly opacing the inflows.

And so you're just, you've built a world where no one wants to build anything. You have zero help from the government. In fact, they're actively going against you. In part, that's related to the fact that lots of people work for the government. And so you have a,

you have a, you know, even a society of rent seekers that's destroying the people who do things. I don't know if you ever read Anne Rand's book, you know, um, Atlas Shrug, which is very,

way too long, but is still really good. And it speaks a lot about the contrast between the people who do and the people who basically extract things from the people who do. In Canada, we're reaching a precipice, right? Because you can't have sustained collapses in GDP growth per capita and not have societal issues and not have crime go up and not have inflation be a problem and basically effectively run out of people's money. And we're nearing that.

event horizon, I think. I'm going to take that opportunity, actually, to jump right on. We recently had the parliamentary budget officer basically scolding the government about their spending policies. Can you give us a little bit of information? What your take? I'm sure you saw the clip. I'm curious your take on what's going on there, what happened, and the kind of fiscal

outlook for Canada in particular as it relates to that. Because I largely agree. And the thing that I found, I find kind of unfortunate, I'm not sure if you ever read like Neil Howellswork in the fourth turning. Yeah, right. It's also too long. I agree with everything basically that you just laid out there. And especially after the last election with Mark Carney, there's not, it seems like there's not enough discomfort on the individual level

to get them to reassess their base assumptions and maybe take us in a different direction, which means I'm looking at Canada having more pain on the horizon until we figure out that we've got to change. It really is almost like a mental shift of what we are. and what we do with our resources. So anything on kind of that, how bad things might actually get, and then the recent parliamentary budget, budget officer.

Sure. So I agree with you right off the top. I think Canada will, because Canadians will need, I'm sorry to say, this is very bad, I'm very patriotic. Canada will need to suffer more pain

before we realize that what we're doing is wrong. You know, I think of it as a drug addict. You know, you get into, you go to jail, you cheat on your girlfriend,

you get locked out of your apartment. That's not enough. You know, you run out, you go bankrupt. that's not enough. Eventually someone throws you in jail and then you have, you know what I mean? I'm exaggerating. Maybe it's a stupid analogy. But Canada hasn't bottomed out yet. Ironically, the reason I think we almost never will bottom out is because we produce so much oil,

which sustains our current account balance, which allows us to basically muck about in other areas. We're like a trust fund baby. We are like literally, Canada is a trust fund baby that instead of like going to college and becoming a doctor and then, you know, whatever, and then contributing back to the world, we spend all of our winters in the Alps doing below and our summers in Miami, you know, whatever. And so you go bankrupt, that's not enough. And then you have, you know what I mean? I mean, bottomed out yet. We have the potential to do so much more. But that's what I'm saying. Like, you know, I grew up, I went to, I grew up around a lot of rich kids and there's good rich kids that they're bad rich kids. There's ones who have a

chip on their shoulder really want to contribute and ones that are basically loaf about and don't do anything. And unfortunately, Canada has been, well, both in, in, you know, the long history, but in the recent history, we've been really sort of the bad one. But back to the, so your point about not feeling enough pain is absolutely right. The parliamentary budget officer thing is really fascinating. So for the American listeners

who may not know, Canada has something called the PBO, which is the parliamentary budget officer. That was modeled off of something you may know, which is the congressional budget officer. And they obviously produce forecasts that are meant to be apolitical, independent, and I genuinely

believe that in both countries, there are a huge amount of people, nerds who genuinely care about being a political and independent. And I think one of the things I don't like about the current administration is his attack on those types of people. There are people out there who just want to get the numbers right and don't really care about the politics. And I believe genuinely that that's true in Canada and I believe it to be true in the United States.

Of course, there's always bad actors, etc. But on the whole, and so this gentleman came out, he's the interim guy, by the way. They fired the other one because he didn't play ball, which I think is also not good. So we have that in common as countries. And he came out and basically said the words like stupefying and shocking. And what's really interesting is that this is a summary of the fiscal outlook. So we're actually, this is sort of, he's, he's sort of prepping people for what's going to happen. He doesn't have the full view of, you know, of the data.

This is based on clearly the data, the sort of the material, non-pocket. public information that they have. And it's also, the other thing, so for example, it doesn't include defense spending because we're not, so that's a, it's if it's going to be 5%, which is total bullshit, it's never going to get that number. But if it's going to be hugely important, then, you know, that wasn't included. And the other thing that's really important is these guys never predict recessions, which is fine.

I don't believe that they should. It's not in their business to predict when, if the economy is going to slow down or whatever. Well, I was going to say these models are always static. They're not dynamic models. And if you, and I defend that. People say, oh, you know, they'd never predict or say, I'm like, you're getting into the business of predicting recessions. That's like a whole other.

Agreed. Listen, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, what was going to happen. And then he would model the fiscal. Of course. Yeah. So that's in defense of that. So, but you, but you're, but the point remains that this whole forecast is based on sort of real GDP growth of 1.2% at 2025. Okay. 1.3 in 20206. Okay. Who knows what's going to have for

27. I'm looking at it now. That's why I sound like I know the number. And then the key thing, it was the unemployment rate. So that, that I was like, okay, this, I mean, that was great. So 7.2 in 2025. It's already 7.1 and the year's over, basically. And then it's 6.4 in 26 and I was like, I'll take the over on that. And so the reason that's fundamental to the question is that even in that scenario, which I would argue is a benign economic outlook, bad, but relatively benign, you have a situation where we have, you know, 60 odd billion a year, 65 billion a year for the next whatever. And that are debt number. So, and he used the words unsustainable, stupefying. What was the other one? He said. Shocking.

very concerning, I think was he's a direct quote. He said, people should be barely concerned. And for a gentleman who I, again, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he really just wants to get the numbers right. And I don't think he's political or else I don't think he would have worked that job for whatever 17 years or however long he's worked it. That's insane. Like we should. This is House on Fire stuff.

And it reminds me of, sorry, one more thing. And it reminds me of in March of 2024, the deputy governor of the Bank of Canada. wrote a speech called Time to Break the Glass. Oh, I've screwed up the name of the speech. But anyways, it was basically like, yeah, time to break the glass, you know, understanding Canada's productivity or something like that. Shit, I should know the name of the speech. But March 2024, Google it.

It's Carolyn Rogers, who's a big crush of mine if you paid attention to doing the hour. I'm going to look her up now. Look it up, Gary. And she wrote a speech, basically, that Canada was in a productivity emergency. And that we needed to change. We need a better labor mix. We need more investment. we need to improve competition,

we need to explore her natural resources. She lays out the things that are wrong in Canada. And when people in those positions, whether it's an auditor general, whether it's a central banker, whether it's this guy who's the parliament budget officer, when they use words like emergency and unsustainable,

fucking hell, man. We've got to listen to them, right? Because they're not in the business of you and me and, you know, No offense, but like, you know, it's not Tucker Carlson who's trying to get clicks and ratings. These people are ultimately quite boring and... Vanilla, milk toast. And so when...

And so when these people use that language, and I just think we should be extremely sensitive to not only the actual numbers, but the language in which they use. Imagine mining Bitcoin, cheaper than buying on an exchange with direct payouts hitting your wallet like clockwork. Saz mining makes it real. You own the rig. No gimmicks. It's your asset pumping up Bitcoin every single day. No markup on hardware or electricity. They get paid when you get paid. Fully aligning incentives. Mining Bitcoin below exchange cost is a great way to DCA your stack. It's so simple, anyone can do it. No tech skills required. You get white glove support and education,

a rig performance guarantee. Plus, it's powered by 100% carbon-free energy prioritizing renewables. Ready to take control of your Bitcoin future? Visit SaaSmining.com by scanning the QR code or clicking the link in the description down below to book a free consult and start mining today. Agreed. I have a lot of questions, but Gary, do you want to jump in there? Imagine mining Bitcoin, cheaper than buying on an exchange. She's great, man. She's great. Let's get Carolyn Rogers on. That would be fantastic. Even just, Rich, would it be, like, am I hyperbolic in thinking that, like, obviously things are dynamic and people will change and respond. And again, as pressures or things get worse, people were reacting kind of kind, right?

But like, if we were just to take this out linearly, would that mean? Because it was rising debt to to GDP. Would that, would that eventually just, just, to like currency collapse. Like if nothing changed, but I'm well aware that things will change, people will react. It's already happening.

Canada's, in my view, I think we've already had a major currency to basement. You know, if you look at basically, let's say, so the U.S.

and Canadian dollar generally, that's sorry, that Luni, that Luni Canadian dollar and the U.S. dollar exchange rate basically just tracks like

some part of the yield curve. And people will argue with me with this, but the chart's very clear. it basically just tracks the five-year yield curve, which includes some kind of term premium, a little bit of growth, a little bit of inflation,

and then obviously the decisions or not of the monetary policy. And so if that spread gets wider, it's bad for the currency, it's more narrow, it's better for the currency, whichever way you plot it. I have lots of charts.

So people come at me, I'm happy to share them. And then relative to other, relative to other current countries, it can be, as a collective, it's often determined by the price of oil, which is our most important exports. 30% of our exports.

It's a massive, massive accretive and sustainable inflow of hard currency. But what we're seeing is Canada's currency is basically at like a 10 or 15 year low against, sorry, all-time low, basically, versus the Swiss franc. It's like a 10-or-whatever low, 10-year low against the pound, euro, yeah.

I mean, sorry, the only, sorry, yeah, not because the yen is basically systematically devalue their currency of the last 10 years. But like, across, Loads of major currencies are the Canadian dollar continues to weaken. And it makes sense, you know, like we have outflows. We have zero productivity. Our current, you know, we have continued to attack on debt.

You know, so and then, and all, the real risk to further declines in our currency is if foreign investors basically bail, start to bail. Right? Because that's the other end. That's like, there's the capital account. Sorry, there's the, there's the current account, which. is exports of goods and services, and then sort of inflows or outflows of, you know, like literally dividend payments or whatever. And there's the capital account which sort of funds that inflow or outflow. So the U.S. has a major, major current account deficit, but it has a major

financial capital account inflow. People want to buy Apple stock, right? As a stupid example. In Canada, you know, we've had relatively stable current account. So there's no way. oil outflow because of oil, thank God. But the problem is that loads of foreigners own our bonds. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think it's like 42%. I think it's like the highest it's been in a long, long time.

So I'm looking at it right now. Yeah, so a record exposure to non-residential investors. So shares of outstanding bonds is 42%. Sorry, I'm cheating because I'm looking at the chart. But that's crazy. And that's basically the highest it's been since 1990, which is where the data starts. And so back to your point about whether it's unsustainable.

Like, if foreign investors start to say, man, these guys are, I've lost the plot. Not only do they not want to exploit the natural resources, not only do they want to not want to deal with these systemic constraints to industry and growth. They're now going to spend with reckless abandon with no real plan as to how to get this back on track. And that's what the guy says, by the way. You know, what if they start selling our bonds? And if they start selling our bonds, then trust me, the currency can fall much, much, much

further and our, you know, our oil won't be able to do enough heavy lifting to save us. So, Richard, I have to ask, you know, you've talked about before how you still haven't hit rock bottom yet. You know, unfortunately has to get a lot worse for Canadians before it can get better before you'll have some fundamental systemic change with the state, the, the, the, the, rains they put on production, trade, taxes, regulatory barriers. And while we wait for that rock bottom, to hit, people can't find a way to produce and increase their wealth. Given that we're probably not going to have those changes for a while, what can the average Canadian do to maintain and increase their wealth? And why is the answer Bitcoin?

So that's a leading question. And as a regulated financial service company, I will refrain from answering that directly. But I will say that what we should expect is continued more bullshit from the federal government. So they're going to continue to spend money they don't have. And in my view, the Central Bank of Canada will facilitate that reckless behavior. And so if you can, if you read between the lines, I think you have your answer. Quickly on that point, too, we haven't seen the budget yet, which comes up for Canada, November 4th.

Do you have any thoughts on where you expect that to be? It's basically just like, what's the deficit going to be? I think it'll be. Well, right now they're projecting 65 or whatever. I think it'll be in the 70s. Oh, geez, yeah. Okay. Which is like 50 year odd, almost the, you know, 60 or 70% higher than when that lady,

Christopher, you know, quit in disgust because she refused to present a budget deficit because she was, it was hollowing out the coffers and, you know, the future generations would be saddled with this debt and blah, blah, blah. And then she turned around and then joined Mark Carney's, you know, team. and then like, but anyway, I don't know. I try not to get into that. They're all parasites. I don't want to get me.

Got it right. Yeah. I don't want to get, I don't want to get myself into a lather. But back to your point about the Bitcoin thing, I just think the, the screwed up thing is like, only relatively wealthy people can buy assets to defend their purchasing power. So for as much as we might encourage people to buy this or buy that, the reality is as a, of, a big chunk of our society has no extra income.

And so even if they wanted to do what you suggest, Gary, it's not clear that they have anything left over after they've paid for like rent, the utilities, food, the kids' school or soccer practice and gasoline or whatever. And that's what's so fucked up about having a wholesale devaluing of your currency. Right? Because I don't think necessarily that gold is more. expensive or that houses are more expensive or that Bitcoin is more expensive. I think that the value of the currency is worth less. And so if you have a person who's making good money, who's a lawyer or a

doctor's got an extra $20,000 a year, 50 or 100, whatever it is at the end of the year to kick kick into an asset or then sure, I get it. You want to defend your purchasing power, whatever. But the problem is is that so much of our society is not in that position. And they depend, in my view, on central bankers and the government to be prudent with their purchasing power of the currency, to maintain inflation at least below, ideally, the wage growth. And that's what's so fucked up about what someone like, you know, our Lord and Savior Mark Carney is doing, and is that, and then his, in my view, his enabler, Tiff Macklin, which is by running massive budget deficits, you're not going to, I refuse to believe any of it will, well, I'm dubious as to the improvements

of productivity you will get from it. They're going to run inflation hot. So currency is going to go down. They're going to run inflation hot. They're going to cut in, they have cut short-term interest rates below inflation and negative real interest rates, in my view, which is good for Bitcoin, but anyway, you know what I mean? And so you have a situation where you're going to have continued debasement of the currency

and a person who's in a position to defend their purchasing power, great. God love them. Like, by contos, as they say in Portuguese, go with God, you know. But everybody else, and there's a lot of us, or not us, but everybody else, they're going to be screwed. They have no option. And that's why I rail against these kinds of policies, because it sounds great. You know, we're going to keep this product.

We're going to keep this service. No one ever has to, you know, but there are meaningful, longer term impacts. to this recklessness and profligacy that I think it is difficult for people to sort of conceptualize. And that's why I think you ultimately need more pain. You need unemployment rates to get higher and for people to go, whoa, this is not okay. Whereas right now we're in this like weird sweet spot where people are still blaming Donald Trump for all of Canada's problems. But that's demonstrably not true.

Like, yeah, he's a jerk. You probably shouldn't have tweeted that we're going to be the 51st date. I get it. but all like all these systemic problems were here long before he showed up and if he were to be vaporized tomorrow they would and turn around and tweeted that we love Canada's sovereignty Justin Trudeau is my best friend I love Canada none of the problems would disappear and so that's this issue we're in the and then so that's the problem I think Canada really has like we're blaming the wrong people for the problems we're getting and until we sort of look inward it's going to get worse, in my view. Note, Bitcoin mentor does not advocate that Donald Trump or anybody else be vaporized. I meant as a philosophy, like, I meant if he like starts tweeting that he like loves Canada and he'll, you know what I mean, and all the tariffs are going to go down. Okay, sure, you might have a pop in investment, right?

It's not going to deal with the trade bearers. It's not going to deal with productivity growth. It's not going to deal with public sector employment being at 30 year high. It's not going to deal with the tax take, by the way. about that. The federal tax take as a percentage of GDP is the highest has been in 30 years. It's not going to deal with productivity growth, which was an emergency before Donald Trump even got elected, right? March of 2020, March of 2024, when my love Carolyn Rogers wrote that speech was before Donald Trump got elected and she was saying it was a productivity emergency. So none

of those that things, you know, will be taken care of and that's the issue I think we're really, really going to have. No, I completely agree. I was going to say, but I do disagree with the one point. I think Donald Trump did tweet out or post on truth social that he absolutely loves Mark Carney. That might improve the situation because if he starts loving Mark Carney and Tiff, they might be ousted pretty damn fast. Okay, touche. You got me there. You got me there. But I do want to push back slightly on a point you made, which I agree with to an extent where you said, you know, a lot of people are living paycheck to paycheck. and they can't afford to put money aside. And I'm sitting here and I'm doing fine. Like I don't have that worry.

So I don't want to sound dismissive of it. But at the same time, I have a good friend of mine who does live paycheck to paycheck. He works over in Home Depot, really good guy, long-term friend. And he is managing to put away, you know, 10, 20 bucks a week.

Okay. Putting it into Bitcoin and just saving. Is it going to make a difference in his life in the next year or five years or even 10 years? Maybe 10. But juries out. But if you are young enough where you can plan long term, yeah, I think it would make a difference. And I think, you know, since this is a Bitcoin show, I do want to touch on it briefly. One of the things I encounter with people a lot is that people still are under the impression that Bitcoin's $110,000. Where am I going to come up with $110,000? And obviously, you don't need

to buy a whole Bitcoin. You can just here. Here's $5 I can put into it. And I do think most people can afford to put five or $10.00. Yeah, maybe you might go without eating out that night. And it's easy for me to say because I'm in a situation where I can eat out anytime I want, even though I don't. It's not my thing. But there's certain sacrifices. People in third world countries are able to put a little tiny bit away even to some degree. Again, I don't want to sound dismissive. There's a lot of people in really rough shape where they, it's not, again, it's not going to make a difference in their life in the next year or five years or whatever. But in long term, thinking about yourself, 10, 15 years from now, future generations. Yeah, it could make a difference.

I think you're, you're right to, you're right. I didn't mean to be so sort of cavalier. in my language. I think you're right in the sense that you should always be saving. And I think people who are in the lower socioeconomic probably need that to hear that the most, that there is an opportunity, that there is hope, that they don't, it's not that they should just give up. And so I apologize. You're right. I'm happy to, you check me on that. Well, good. As long as you apologize, fine. He's Canadian. Of course he was going to. Of course. And it's funny you were saying about before, you know, your Canadian budget office person who was just like, this is, What was the language he used?

Dude, he literally used the word. He has it stupefying, right? Stupefying. And what's funny is he even checked himself in French. Because he's like, all the, all these committee presentations are dubbed, obviously, which is because we have two official languages, which is, by the way, something I think is great. And he's like, he just looked over because, you know, there's the people you're speaking to, which is in front.

And then there's like the translators on the right or left. And he's like, I just want to make sure we got the translation correct. Nadian budget office. Because in French, in French, c d'ermin. say, say that I meant mo. It's the same words, stupid fian,

he's like, I think you got it right. Because I was going to say for somebody who is just trying to be, I don't mean it in the pejorative sense, a bureaucrat, trying to just get the numbers right, who's also Canadian.

I'm, you might as, he might as have just been saying, the sky is falling, the second coming is here, the seas are boiling, if a Canadian is going to use a word like stupefying. Like,

forget. Use the word. And what's, of course, what's ironic, I mean, I don't know, you guys don't have this,

or maybe you do. I don't know. like our whole media class is captured. Like, you know the joke that Donald Trump said, like, oh, you know, he could go down on Fifth Avenue and do whatever it is to somebody. You know, in Canada, the liberal party could do whatever they want and the CBC would still would like just, they're sick of, it's an out, it's an out. it's an out.

It's an out. It's an out. It's an absolute outrage. But it is true. And so when he came out and said that, they're just like, they're downplaying. they're like, oh, you didn't really mean, you know, this is my interpretation. But they're like, oh, they didn't really mean unsustainable. He meant like, unsustainable, you know what I mean?

I'm just like, they're doing so much heavy lifting instead of just admitting that we are going down the wrong track and that it's time to at least be a little bit more reflective in what's going on and why. It was amazing. No, I completely agree. And right to that point, well, think about all the like ethics violations and like scandals that came up under Trudeau and they just skate right on by them. Like the media is completely captured in Canada.

I think that's also one of the reasons that you see a difference, kind of an outlook or even philosophy on how to deal with the situation or even the truth of the situation is because the media in Canada is so absolutely captured. I want to pivot for just a little second, too. We did touch on Bitcoin. I want to talk a little bit more about your thoughts on Bitcoin, but kind of sound money as a whole. And to Gary's earlier point, at least one of the, if we can convince,

because really right now, savers are losers. If you're saving in Canadian dollars, you're just getting wiped out every year, right? And that's the really, really harsh reality of it. But to go back to a savings mindset, whether you were to use gold or real estate or even stocks and equity or Bitcoin, if you get yourself that sort of savings mindset with something that will least retain its purchasing power, that can have really good long-term benefits and just the way it changes your behavior and moves you forward. So I want to get the touch on.

We're going to do Bitcoin for sure. But even just first and foremost, I think the most recent ice cap market recap touched on real estate. What is the state of the state of the state? real estate marketing. We did hint at things not great in the U.S. I think it's worst potentially in Canada. And then gold is ripping at all-time highs, which actually has me concerned,

because I usually view gold as almost like an insurance policy rather than an inflation hedge. So dealing with our classic sound money camp, thoughts on where real estate currently is, gold and Bitcoin. Yeah. So Bitcoin, I have views on it.

I think it's cool. I think it's amazing technology. I think I just don't, I think the thing I don't want to do is I don't want to like opine on something that I just don't fully understand. I think that where I've really sort of come to admire it in a sense is how, you know, if there's anything in this world that people want to pull it down, pull down, it would be Bitcoin.

And the fact that it has survived such intense scrutiny, that alone to me is cause for like, not joy, but like that is fascinating in like a very positive way. And the reason I bring that up is because the next piece is gold. and I think you're right. So if you watch like gold and Bitcoin, obviously there's different, the delta is slightly different, but they have generally moved in tandem. And I think it's a function of this sound money principle.

I think you're 100% to be right to be worried about the speed, direction, and sustainability of so far anyway, of the gold rally. I think that is not a good thing. Like, it's a good thing if you own it. But like as an existential view, if you like a liberal democracy. democracy with some flavoring of capitalism, that is not a, that is an indictment on what's going on at the policy level. Yep.

Full stop. I've read a lot of economic history books and I'm obsessed with history full stop. You have moves in any currency or, sorry, not currency, but anything like, you know, anything like that, whether it's seashells in, I don't know, fucking, the Mayan emperor, empire or whatever, you know what I mean? Like any kind you, anytime you have moves in, here's a better example. The move of silver during, you know, the Spanish Empire in the 1500s. Silver was relatively stable as a currency. And then all of a sudden it started to fall precipitously because obviously they started to extract shitloads of silver from Peru and Venezuela and all these other places. And so that that move would have been like, whoa, hold on a second.

There's something. And then within a couple, within a hundred years or so, I'm sure there's other things involved. But basically Spain's empire was bust. And so I'm not saying that that's going to happen here, but I'm just saying it should absolutely be a major, major red flag. With respect to the housing market in Canada, I think the problem we often do is we think of Canada's housing or any country's housing, excuse me, as some homogenous blob. And that's just not true, right? So as a stupid example, you know, rent in Austin Tech, I just know because Austin, Texas is something I always keep an eye on. My friend lives there. So I'm sort of predisposed to look at that market.

But rents have been falling for years. It's because there's lots of people going, lots of rich people going there, but also they have an extremely liberal construction policy. And so you basically, within five minutes, you can basically dig a hole and build a house and whatever. And as a function of that, you know, rental prices have been falling for years and years and years and years. And been relatively stable relative to income. And so it's difficult to look at and then, you know, homogenous. It's nice to look at like the headline house price number or index, excuse me, but often you're missing sort of the force for the trees. And so in Canada, that's a perfect example. So there's jurisdictions like, you know,

Quebec, God love Quebec City. I don't know if you guys, you guys aren't familiar. There's all kinds of separatist bullshit that hangs over us in Canada. But the fact that Quebec City and Montreal has, I've seen house prices rise. It was remarkable, right? Like people still quite, but it's true. It's happening. Whereas Toronto, Kitchener, Waterloo, all these like sort of secondary cities and tertiary cities have had significant declines in house prices, especially if you adjust for inflation, 40%, 50%. And so that's the thing we're seeing in Canada. You have to be sort of careful about lumping it all in together.

What kind of risk does it have for the banking? Because I would imagine that with the big six banks that the majority of their asset side of the balance sheet is mortgages. Yeah, it is. It is. So that's like the million dollar question. And this is, there are two, I think very two different camps for this argument. Lots of the other stuff.

I'm like 100% sure I'm right about. This is one where I think is very tricky to get your head around. So there's like secondary. There's like primary lenders, you know, the big six banks. And then there's all the whole suite of secondary lenders. The argument is that, you know, if Canada's housing prices in those specific areas continue to fall. So Toronto, there's a huge, huge problem with condos. All these dog-cray condos were.

built with impunity, they turn off the taps of immigration, and now these things that we're selling at some ridiculous price with huge forecast, good performers, et cetera. That's all sort of, the floor is falling out from under those people. And the argument is these big six banks having an enormous amount of exposure to those credits that are basically going to come bad. They're going to go bad. the issue is I think that it's more about the secondary lender space and the degree to which those bigger markets like I don't know I don't know the answer I think that that's that's the that's the question is when we're going to find out so there's one argument which says the big six lenders are just extremely well capitalized they have a really good risk policies they don't lend to this

more speculative stuff and to some degree that's very true there's there is a lot of home equity in lots of housing that people have, right? And then that same argument is like, oh, it's really the secondary lenders. And that we're seeing extreme amount of pain. And I think we're seeing much, much worse. You're already seeing gating. So what does that mean? It means like you, I invest in Gary's fund.

Gary invest in all the speculative real estate stuff. Then I want to, I'm worried about that market. I say, Gary, can I please have my money back? Gary goes, I'd love to, but we're having a liquidity crunch. I can only give it to you in six months from now. The problem is when you have like 20 people, sorry, pick on you, Gary. The problem is when you have 20 people do that all at the same time, you can have a redemption, effectively a crisis of redemption or you, and then they lock up,

right? So they need money to keep the business going. So they say, sorry, there was too many Richards out there. We're locking up our redemption for the next year or six months or whatever. It's effectively a, it's effectively a bank run. Yeah, exactly. That's a good way to think about it. And then, and then the other side of the argument is that the big sick banks are in it also. So they're just, they're hiding it. And so I, the truth is, I don't know where I sit on those arguments. I think they're very compelling on both sides. And frankly, I don't know enough about it.

But, but we're going to find out because it always, it always comes out. It will eventually always come out. No, 100%. Gary, I do have some more I want to get into, but before, did you have something you want to jump in with there? No, I know. Richard, I'd love to have you here all day. I know we're on a bit of a time crunch, Nathan. It's all right.

I'm good. I don't know what you guys about. No, no, no, no. I mean, you're just, let me do, uh, I got, okay, at least I got a little bit more for you. So, Rich, you and I are both going to be at the Canadian Bitcoin conference coming up here on the 16th to the 18th, looking forward to it. Because we're likely going to have a bit of a Tratify audience coming in and listen to this as well, too. They might share some of the questions or maybe knowledge gaps that you have around Bitcoin. So I might not be able to, Gary and I might not be able to, but just out of curiosity, is there anything regarding Bitcoin that's maybe still a bit of a black box or unknown for you that we can answer.

Do you have any questions about it? And you very well might not. No, I do. I think my questions are mostly around like the, I mean, this is going to expose a profound ignorance on my part. But judging you. Go ahead. My questions are really about like how do I like, what's like the, like the eat, like how do I do it? You know, like I have a story for you.

In 2011, I'm so glad you asked. Can I come show you in Montreal? Sure. That'd be great. Like how do I, like right now if I wanted to buy like, I don't know, some nominal amount of Bitcoin. Like, because I went in 20, the reason this is important is that you guys are like this story. In 2011, I actually was living in London. and I had just moved there.

And having never grown up in London, I was, let's say, it was difficult for me to acquire certain types of products that otherwise would be easy if you grew up in a city, if you know what I mean. Yes. So I actually bought. I bought a... So believe it or not, I actually owned a Bitcoin in 2011.

Oh my God, you Silk Road, mother. Now you're getting, you've, you've hit it. it. So I, but what do you do with the reason I wasn't, the reason I bought a Bitcoin was to transact in the Bitcoin. And so people saying, oh, you're so stupid. I was like, no, the whole point of Bitcoin is to transact in this thing. And so I went through the whole process, got a, got a wallet, bought the Bitcoin and exchanged that Bitcoin for goods and services via some nefarious website. And it worked out great. And it was fantastic. And then like 10 years later, I'm like looking around

and I lit Bitcoin was like $100 or whatever it was in 20. I don't know what number, but it was fair. And so I mean, I hope my boss isn't getting me in trouble, but I basically smoked $100,000 worth of weed in like one city. It's what I'm trying to tell everybody. You and a lot of very rich people right now. Yeah. And so the thing is, you know, people say,

all that was stupid. You should have never sold it. I was like, I don't know, man. Like it spoke like to me, the point of a currency is not to just hold it in perpetuity to never, ever transact in it. that maybe it has changed but I don't know and so but when I did it back then it seemed like a lot easier now then I got involved with wallets and I had a physical wallet but then that became confusing and so that's all this to say is a I'm an idiot for smoking that much um Bitcoin not at all

and B that's the thing I have I think the the most trouble with is just like getting started how does one if tomorrow I have a hundred dollars I don't want to buy whatever how do I do that well 100% because i mean it's like for you at least one side of this equation is easy but i often say that it's it's it's everything that you don't know about money combined with everything that you don't know about computer science and so for a lot of people's like drinking from a fire hose and and to the point of where it was before to where it is now a lot of the a lot of what all used to be in the bitcoin client software has become specialized and it branched off and can not have divided out and you have specific devices or specific like minors and nodes and it's all become

different pieces. But in terms of if someone was just getting started today, if someone was just getting started today, you can do it all very easily with your phone or your computer and just using what's called a hot wallet. It's just going to be a wallet. And they've got a ton of them that are great and super user friendly, but not necessarily the best from like an educational standpoint, because they're going to obfuscate a lot to the background. But you could grab something like Aqua Wallet off the Apple or Android Google App Store right now. You can head over to Bitcoin well in Canada or bull Bitcoin. In the U.S. you could have upriver.

So I basically just got to find an exchange, which is going to act like basically you would think any sort of Robin Hood or any sort of exchange would work. And you've got to transfer in Fiat. And from the receiver side, like sending an email, receiving an email is even easier than sending one. Your wallet will provide you with an address. You just got to give whoever sending you Bitcoin that address,

and that's it. And of course, BTC Sessions Channel, we've got thousands of tutorials here for everyone to check out BTCSessions.ca slash learn for that kind of beginner intermediate and advanced. But it's one of those things, like I'm sure you would even have this with your experience back in the day,

buying goods and services from websites, that it's kind of like teaching someone how to work on a car as well too. It's a little bit easier to actually get under the hood. I can lecture here and I can show you. But if you're curious about Bitcoin, just, yeah, just sign up for one of the exchanges. We've got some great ones that are non-custodial in Canada.

You can do, it can be like a fun Sunday project. You can go through one tutorial on just a mobile hot walk, from BTC sessions and you could have 100 bucks in Bitcoin that day, said and done, right? And from there, sorry to ask you a dumb question. Yeah. Can I do that like if I have a Canadian bank account? 100%. 100%.

So for us, Rich, it actually gets really easy because we can use e-transfer as well too. So in terms of moving it to the exchange, you can e-transfer the exchange, then give them the put in the buy order for Bitcoin and give them the address, your Bitcoin wallet address that you want to send to. and I will happily sit down with you and get you set up while I'm in Montreal. I'll wait. I'll wait. I'll do it with you on the 18th or whatever.

It's 16th. Okay. Beautiful. I will hold you to that. We will get you set up and onboarded and a bit. You're going to, I think you're absolutely going to love it. So both Gary and I have the podcast and the kind of content side,

but we also work as consultants and educators directly in the space. And by the way, I'm seeing a ton of real estate investors from Ontario right now. That has been my bread and butter of a lot of my clients. But I can't wait to, I hope that I get to be there for this. Without revealing information, I have worked with people that work in,

we'll just say the banking industry, that you would not expect to necessarily be interested in Bitcoin. And the moment that they saw the trans, basically like doing their own wire transfer on a Sunday at 10 a.m. Final settlement, they could move any amount of value that they wanted to. Their immediate response was, this is going to kill the banking industry.

Like they were blown away that you could have a final settlement in that short of time of your own control 24-7. And I hope that maybe you'll have maybe some of those little kind of like aha moments as we're going through the setup. So that's the part I think is really, we interviewed him. So on the Looney Hour, forgive the plug, we interviewed a guy called Michael Nicolettos, who's like a really, really sharp cat. And he's like all over the whole stable coin universe. And he's basically, he echoed what you were saying. So he's just a really smart hedge fund global macro guy. And he's like all over the stable coin thing.

And that was hit like one of his main points was that has changed sort of the, it's going to put a lot of pressure on the banking sector. But I would just warn, I would just warn you, banks are nothing if not survivors. Agreed. I think we will have like the worst possible way. Of course. Yep. And to the point, your interview with Michael Fonnie, one of the things that stood

out to me in that interview that he missed. And again, he's not a technology, is not necessarily deep in the space too, which we don't have to go into the details. But stable coins, you can even do them on the Bitcoin Lightning Rails, which is unbelievably fast. And it means that rather than relying on a different chain

that is less secure and less decentralized, you can actually have stable coins on top of Bitcoin rails as well, which is the most decentralized, the most secure network. I have no idea what you just said to me. But it sounds really smart. Basically, his case, for stable coins, those can actually exist in the Bitcoin network as well too, which means everything

kind of funnels towards it. Okay, sure. I do want to, I do want to in a brief moment piggyback on something Nathan said because, you know, we're talking about using it as money. And initially, Bitcoin is supposed to be peer to peer. I mean, that's how it was created. So Nathan gave you the option of, you know, going to bull Bitcoin or any of the other exchanges and putting your money, getting an address, sending it to you, totally great, go for it. But if you want, If you know somebody with Bitcoin who's willing to sell you his Bitcoin, you could go to that person, hand him some cash or her. And that person will send you the Bitcoin to the little address that you have on your wallet. Nathan mentioned Aqua.

There was blue wallet. There are very simple, easy apps to set up. You just punch a couple keys and all of a sudden you have your address there. It couldn't be simpler. The first Bitcoins I bought, not Bitcoins, but the first bit of Bitcoin I bought way back in the day. I bought peer to peer. I bought from somebody. I didn't go through a central exchange.

So that's doable. And to one other thing you said, the idea of using currency, you should be used to buy and sell exchange, not just to hold it. I totally get it. You said you're somebody who's very much into history. Have you yet read Safe Fidina Moose's The Bitcoin Standard? No, I probably should, though. It's a fantastic book. It's called the Bitcoin Standard. I'm going to give him a plug here. I'm a huge fan. And despite the name, he doesn't even get into talking about Bitcoin until about three quarters of the way through. The book essentially is just a history of money. What makes something money? Why, as you said earlier, do you some cultures decide that beads are going to be money or seashells or lambskin or pieces of cloth or silver or giant rocks or whatever. How does organically come about? And one of the arguments that

safe made is that money before it gets to a medium of exchange, it first has to be a store value. It first has to get to a point where people put more and more energy wealth into it where it becomes so big essentially that you don't feel like, oh, if I hold on to it, it's going to still skyrocket in future years. You have to sort of reach that equilibrium point where holding it is just as good as spending it. And then it turns into that medium exchange and ultimately unit of account. But we're nowhere close to that yet. So while it, while it's commendable that people do want to use it as a medium exchange, and of course, Ben, BTC sessions is very big about circular Bitcoin economies and using this medium exchange, it's probably not going to get to that

point nationally or globally until we kind of get it up to that that amount where people say, all right, it is so expensive now. It is worth so much that I don't need to put money in and feel like, well, if I spend it, I'm losing out on the 20% gain. I can have two years in now. So that's a bit of a ways away. But that's how money grows, any money. And it's a great book to read if you ever have a chance. I will read it. I literally just clicked and bought it. I have a thought experiment question for you. Yeah. If tomorrow like globally, central bankers and fiscal and governments basically decided, you know what, being super reckless is a bad idea.

We are going to raise interest rates and we're going to run balanced budgets. Do you think that would be good or bad for the price of Bitcoin? In the short term, I think very bad. Okay, cool. But let me now ask me if I think that's going to happen. No, no. No, it's not going to happen. And I think I could speak for Nathan as well and Ben and everybody else for organization.

We wish. We wish that would happen. Yes. I mean, it would probably hurt my investment in Bitcoin, sure. But if that meant a better, more fair world for everybody where you don't have all this malinvestment and politicians, bureaucrats are responsible in keeping the value of these fiat monies stable, you know, which is not constantly losing value all the time because they just print it. That would be a wonderful world to live in. It's never going to happen. Not this century, maybe.

I would argue never because the human incentive would never allow it. Politicians need to stay in business. Enough blood in the streets and people tend to run. Maybe. I just don't think it would last. I think you might get like maybe a generational period where people, you know, get back to sound money again. But it doesn't last.

I'm sorry to say, I don't think maybe I'm wrong. Nathan, I'll leave it to you. No, I think it's, I think it's highly cyclical. I think that the reason people like my mom are so intense about inflation is because she grew up in it. Yeah. I mean, my mom was born in 1950. She was 30 in 1980. you know, she doesn't tolerate, I mean, now she's a boomer with assets, so she doesn't give a shit about inflation.

But you know what I'm saying? Like, whereas like our generation, we're watching the debasement of our currency live. You can bet your bottom dollar. We care about inflation. And so whereas, you know, so I think it's highly, highly cyclical. But I, but in general, I tend to. I'm very sympathetic with your view. And that's why I ask the question, right? Because if you ask me rich, do I think that they're going to have a comfort of Jesus moment in the next, I don't know, 10 years. year? No, absolutely not. No. Until there's a war, which is some kind of global conflict or some real and listen, I'm not a war monger.

I just think these are sort of inevitability if you look at history. Unfortunately. You know, until there's some real schism that like full scale changes of psychology people have with respect to their government and their responsibility to keep money sound,

you know, I think it won't change, which make So without making the case, I made the case. Beautiful. That is the perfect place to wrap it. Rich, tell me where everybody can go to check you out, check out the looney hour, all that fun stuff. Sure. So we got the looney hour podcast that comes out every Friday.

And that's just me, Keith Dicker, and our host, Steve Sureski. We've got the ice cap Canadian market wrap. And that's a weekly vignette, short, maybe not fun, but definitely informative. and to the point, certainly. And that's sponsored by my company, which is Ice Cap Asset Management, which is more of sort of an old style, asset management business for, you know,

and we've done super, super well. We're doing really well because we speak to people plainly about a lot of the concerns that you raise on your show. And we try very hard to sort of do the old way or old school way of preserving capital. And there are numerous ways to preserve capital in our space, they just take a little bit more imagination than what you might find at a normal bank or normal asset manager.

Hey, you. Yes, you watching the Bitcoin price movements and the latest exciting news. It's awesome to stay informed, but the real power of Bitcoin comes from taking control. Don't just watch, take action. Head over to btcessions.ca.ca slash learn for free step-by-step tutorials that guide you through every major skill you need to know, plus full video playlist for deeper dives on any topic you like. And if you're ready for the ultimate fast track, scroll to the bottom and check out Bitcoin Mentor.io for premium one-on-one experience with my team of Bitcoin experts to ensure you get it right the first time. Don't wait, secure your Bitcoin future today. Hit the link in the show notes

or scan the QR code on the screen. so with Rich Diaz, please do like and subscribe and check out the previous episode with billionaire Grant Cardone on the future of Bitcoin and real estate.