BTC Sessions - US Iran Failure, Bitcoin Bear Market Over, Yield Curve Control | Doomberg & Lavish

Episode Date: June 16, 2026

Mentor Sessions Ep. 077: US Iran Failure, Bitcoin Bear Market Over & Yield Curve Control | Doomberg & James LavishThe Iran ceasefire just reshuffled global energy, dollar dominance, and Bitcoin's role as sound money — James Doomberg breaks down what it actually means for your portfolio in 2026.In this episode, Nathan sits down with James Doomberg — one of the sharpest macro and energy analysts in the space — to unpack the cascade of events reshaping markets right now. You'll learn why the Iran ceasefire is a bigger geopolitical pivot than most investors realize, how the SpaceX IPO may function as a financial suppression tool for retail capital, and why Doomberg believes energy markets are sending misleading signals driven by Chinese demand dynamics and a global overbuild. You'll also see exactly why Bitcoin and gold are rising in tandem — and why Doomberg argues monetary debasement makes that trend structural, not cyclical. Finally, you'll understand what yield curve control would mean for bond holders and why the K-shaped economy is deepening in ways that make sound money more critical than ever.• Sovereign Sessions — AI, Privacy, and Bitcoin education: http://youtube.com/@SovereignSessions?sub_confirmation=1⏱️ Timestamps:00:00 Bitcoin Bear Market is Over00:10 The Iran War Outcome00:26 China Flexes Oil Power00:35 K-Shaped Economy & Credit Card Defaults00:43 Yield Curve Control & Money Printing00:52 SpaceX as Financial Suppression01:09 Intro & Context06:25 US Achieved None of Its Objectives in Iran07:34 Gold & Bitcoin Bullish After Iran08:17 Bear Market in Bitcoin is Over09:40 A Profound & Historic Outcome10:20 US Dollar Dominance is Cracking11:10 Freezing Russian Assets Was a Catastrophic Mistake14:28 Bitcoin Bear Market is Over (Revisited)15:38 All Roads Lead to Yield Curve Control17:45 Multipolar World & Weaker Dollar19:29 Massive Money Printing is Coming24:26 Gold & Bitcoin Will Rip Higher26:32 SpaceX Ponzi as Financial Suppression32:07 The Lottery Effect & Tax Receipts37:20 K-Shaped Economy is Getting Worse46:27 Cantillon Effect Explained50:14 Oil is Going Way Lower54:39 What to Watch Next (Fed, Japan, Ukraine)🔗 Links & Resources:→ Doomberg Substack: https://doomberg.substack.com→ https://x.com/DoombergT→ James Lavish Newsletter (The Informationist): https://jameslavish.substack.com→ https://x.com/jameslavish📌 Previous Episodes: Tom Luongo & Nolan Bauerle → https://youtu.be/XGPaWFavFqk⚡ POWERED by Abundant Mines: Fully managed Bitcoin mining. Learn more at https://qrco.de/bgYKPB🔒 Lockdown your Bitcoin with the BEST gear on the market from Coinkite. Get the 5% Off the COLDCARD visit: https://qrco.de/bfiDBV💡BOOK Private Sessions with Nathan, Gary, or Ben at Bitcoin Mentor: Master self-custody, hardware, multisig, Lightning, privacy, and more. 👉 Visit btcmentor.io Follow Us on X:• BTC Sessions: @BTCsessions• Nathan: @theBTCmentor• Gary: @GaryLeeNY#Bitcoin #BTC #BTCSessions #BitcoinMacro #Doomberg #JamesLavish #Iran #YieldCurveControl #KShapedEconomy #DollarHegemony #SpaceX #MoneyPrinting #Geopolitics #BitcoinBottom #MultipolarWorld #FinancialSuppression #OilCrash #GoldAndBitcoin #CantillonEffect #CreditCardDebt #BitcoinPrediction #MacroEconomics #IranCeasefire #EnergyMarkets

I am pretty convinced that the bear market of Bitcoin is over it. It has been in a bare market for months. I think it's found its bottom. Let's start with the Iran war. It's wildly bullish for gold and Bitcoin because it is a turning point in the history of the last 50 years of U.S. dollar military-backed hegem. In the last few days, the Iranians were consulting the Chinese and the Russians. China just flexed somewhere between three and four million barrels per day of oil tolerance in a way that the market had no idea existed. The lower demographic, they are now defaulting at a rate that's rivaling the 2008 great financial

crisis. All roads lead to yield curve control. Ultimately, they'll be buying that debt and allow that the inflation to run hot. Golden and Bitcoin will rip. This is where SpaceX comes in. It's probably a little tinfoil, a little woo-woo, a little out there. Quick team, I'm not going to ask you to like or subscribe, but if you do want to help the show continue at no cost, just share it with one other person who you think will enjoy it. All right, so for today, we have returning macro heavyweights, James Lavish and Dumeberg. And these guys cover everything,

and I do mean everything to help you navigate these crazy times. We discussed how the U.S. acceptance of the Iran Agreement was a profound historical shift, the looming debt rollover crisis that's accelerating towards us, and the missing piece that explains the unusual behavior we've seen in the energy markets. Plus, Duneberg shares a conspiratorial take on SpaceX you've never heard before. All right, good morning. James Duneberg. Thanks so much for coming back on the show. Very excited to have this conversation. We've got a lot to unpack since last time. We got the Iran ceasefire, the SpaceX IPO. Markets are rallying. Oil dropped below 80. But what really caught my attention this morning, actually, was just how narrative-driven everything feels right now. So Pakistan came out and announced like a written deal on Thursday. We had the SpaceX IPO there on Friday. And then on Sunday, we had like the deals completed from Trump at the 250th anniversary on his birthday, on Flag Day. Like all choreographed. It generally feels like something out of a screenplay.

So, James, starting with you, markets are back off to the races and Bitcoin seems to be responding. Do you think we are genuinely in safe territory now, or are we just writing out a narrative high in optimism before fundamentals reassert? That's a good question. I think, you know, it's not surprising that a deal was struck this weekend on the anniversary and all, like you just laid out. We're headed into, I mean, we're deep in, you know, the front end. of now everybody preparing for this midterm election. So I fully expected a deal to be done before the, you know, we got into the campaign season, which we are entering. I know the summer slow, but that's when everything gears up. And Trump is well aware that this is a big issue

for reelection, for a lot of his, you know, for a lot of the Republicans. So to hold majority, he's, he's going to have to win a lot of seats, or keep a lot of seats. So is it surprising? No, it's not. And then, of course, he had Friday, the, like you said, the SpaceX hype and it's real. The hype is real. It's crazy. We can talk through that. I'm not surprised that Bitcoin is recovering. You know, it's acted as a risk asset for a long time here. And it has been in a bare market for months and months. here. And so it doesn't surprise me at all. I feel like it had bottomed out, barring any, any sort of Black Swan event or negative economic event, a geopolitical event, I think it's found its bottom. I do expect it to continue to trade sideways here for a while. That would, it would

surprise me if it breaks right back up into the high 80s and low 90s. But I'm, it doesn't, it doesn't phase me at all. The volatility in this name, where this in this asset has been pretty steady for a long time. So that all kind of sets up for where we are today, which is the first week that we're going to hear from Kevin Warsh. And that's something we should probably talk about because that to me is something that the market's a little bit on pins and needles on. And they're trying to figure out you've got the Fed Fund's futures that are still pricing in nearly a full cut. I mean, nearly a full raise by December and I think that this this week and these meetings and they're not going to do anything with

rates. I don't think he's going to come out and be hard line either way, but people are going to be listening very closely to what words he uses, how he changes that the boiler plate press release that they put out every single meeting, what words they change, how they adjust them, and then really what his overall tone is. And that's going to be a very important indicator for the bond market. And as we all know, the bond market is driving all of this along with the energy markets. And so this is an important week geopolitically and politically. And then just from the Fed side, it's going to give us an indication of where he sits at this moment. And we can talk through what we really what we really believe is going to come out of that.

Wonderful. Doenberg, your thoughts, your initial thoughts? Yeah, where to begin. So much to discuss and also lots of stuff that we're working through that we haven't published or would never publish, but still things that I'm thinking about. You know, let's start with the Iran War. Look, I think as time goes by and historians truly assess what happened here. And the spin and politics are sort of put to the side.

achieve none of its objectives in this excursion against Iran. If you go back and we have gone back and watch the video that the president released from Marilago on the 1st of March and you compare the stated objectives and justification for the war and where we are now, profoundly different outcome than the president had been led to believe or assumed or was otherwise convinced against his better judgment however you want to frame it. This is a stunning result. And kudos to the president for taking the yell, even though that's not how it's being shaped.

But I do think if you start with that as a foundational input into your mental model, it's wildly bullish for gold and Bitcoin and all the U.S. dollar alternatives because it is a turning point in the history of the last 50 years of U.S. dollar military-backed Tejama. A mid-tier power before the war absorbed everything that the U.S. and Israel could throw at it, and it has emerged, arguably, as the stronger side in this war. It's just, you can't deny that. And so why were Bitcoin and gold trading sort of negative correlations? with peace because there were some very bad tail risk outcomes on the board that this ceasefire hopefully takes off the board.

And you're seeing gold run today. You're seeing Bitcoin run today. You're seeing oil collapse today. We could talk about that. We have a peace coming out tomorrow, by the way, which we think is a profound outcome from this war, which I'm happy to get into about how China has just proven to the world that it has harmonized hydrocarbon fungibility. And this is a really, really insightful thing that has happened.

Our first foray into drawing some conclusions from it comes out tomorrow. So I know that I've covered a lot of ground, but I would say that if you pushed me, the bear market and Bitcoin is over. Absent of restart of the war, there's profound things happening, historic things happening, decades-long trends reversing. You compare what went down in this war to what happened in Desert Storm. Right? And so now you have, by the way, over the weekend in the Financial Times,

China boldly announcing grand expansion plans for Embridge, which is its one-based alternative to Swift. Iran is being compensated. The reason why Iran has been pushing for the freedom to charge fees in the Strait of War Moos is not about the money. It's about forcing Iran off the sanctions list. You can't pay Iran without violating sanctions, right? So, like, these are spoils of war that Iran is demanding.

And I would close by noting that in the last few days, as Iran and the U.S. were pretending as though they were still debating the MOU, the Iranians were consult. the Chinese and the Russians. And the role that the Russians and the Chinese have played at all of this is not to be understated, even though it is underreported. So lots, just really historic stuff. I mean, I don't want to, one of the things we've really prided ourselves on is not indulging in hyperbole for clicks during this war. And I'm not trying to be hyperbolic now, but it is a profound outcome. And I think sometimes in the heat of the headlines and the spin and the don't be a panicking on Twitter and, you know, Trump is great and UFC and, you know, 250 Trump's birthday. I get it.

But something really important just happened and it's important, I think, not the loose side of that. It's very interesting. Before we get into energies, I'm just curious, James, if you share any of that sentiment, if you do view the outcome of this war as kind of at least a major signpost regards to U.S. dollar dominance around the world. Yeah. No, it's a really good point. You can't, and that's true, you can't underestimate the, the involvement of other massive geopolitical interests in, in this war.

I mean, you can't understate that. So, or you can't overstate that. So, look, we, we talked about, I think last time is one of the, one of the, one of the, largest missteps, I think, that we've had with our sanctions in recent times and in modern times, one of the largest, if not the largest misstep we've had was freezing Russian assets and kicking them off swift at the start of the Ukraine war. That was just a catastrophic mistake by the Biden administration. And it put the Treasury in a really difficult position. And so, you know, with us borrowing more than, spending more than $2 trillion than we take in on our, you know,

so we're running a $2 trillion deficit annually. We need as many buyers of U.S. charges that we can get. And like Duneberg just said, removing sanctions is, that's a major, major win for the other side. So like we expected, Trump had to have something to save face, you know. And so the straight is open. Oil is dropping. That means that inflation will be coming down. As we all know, oil and energy is the number one component in every single good

and service that's sold around the world. And so it's a great talking point for them. But the reality is I can't get into what his head was or who was in the room when they decided to attack Iran. What I can surmise is that he had such great swift resolution in Venezuela that his hubris, his hubris allowed him to believe that they would just swoop in, wipe off the current regime, replace him with the new regime, and go about the new world order. And that clearly didn't happen.

They have plenty of successors in place to battle that. Getting citizens to revolt is not an easy task when you've got a regime that's willing to kill its own citizens to stay in power. That's not. So I think it was just underestimated just how strong Iran would be and how difficult it would be to strong on them into them into going down past that we want them to go down. And so it's not surprising at all. How much does this matter?

Well, I think we are witnessing a faction, you know, the fractioning. The world is beginning to fracture. and we need as many buyers of treasuries as we can possibly get. And this hasn't helped it, in my opinion, in any way, shape, or form. And so we're going to continue to have to implement ways to get around that. And I would be interested to hear Duneberg's take on all that. So the next logical, so far, I agree with that. And I just pulled up the Bitcoin chart today because it, I, I just,

I took it off my launch pad a couple of months ago. And I see that it's up. Just can't look at it. Just don't look at it. No, it's just I had, you know, for a variety of other reasons, I didn't have space for it. But I am pretty convinced that the bear market of Bitcoin is over. And look, I mean, we have plenty of Bitcoin maxis as subscribers. And, you know, as I said last time, I'm a no-corner.

But it doesn't mean that I don't call it as I see it. And here's why. So let's follow through James's logic the next step. So in a multipolar world, the U.S. needs the dollar to be wildly less strong than it is now in order to reconstitute its manufacturing base. And we'll talk about a long shot sort of interpretation of the SpaceX IPO, which we would probably never write about. But I'll share with you guys a little later, and I think it's all related to this. but and the new Fed share yada yada it all roads lead to yield curve control in some point and so in a world where they're going to save the bond market and let the currency slide because the Pentagon needs a

week of dollar anyway it's wildly bullish for gold and Bitcoin and the other sort of for land and real things tangible things you know inflation in the end when push comes to shove, they're going to print. And so when I see Bitcoin at 67,000 today, that's the market telling you something. At the bottom of this bare market, not trading advice, I don't own any Bitcoin and blah, blah, blah, blah. I do think that if we're right, we're entering a phase where even the neocons in Washington have to admit that outsourcing the industrial base to China has led to a diminished military dominance over the rest of the world.

This was just proven to all but the most partisan of observers in the Middle East. And the first step is to admit you have a problem. The second step is to begin fixing it and to fix it. You can't have the U.S. dollar where it is. You can't be reliant on China. All the things that were in place that allowed China to grind away. with our help and encouragement at the sort of Western military industrial complex needs to be undone, which is why I think this war in Iran was so foolish to begin with.

The proper strategy was what Trump started with, which is concentrate on the Western hemisphere, get control of the energy assets, become a global energy superpower, bring in the tariffs, undo the mistakes of the Biden administration. Iran compounded. all of those mistakes wildly. And so with the time that Trump has left in office, assuming the midterms are in a complete catastrophe, get back on that original track. And so in a multipolar world, what does multipolarity means? It means the U.S. dollar is far weaker than it is.

It means there's a place for gold in the settlement of imbalances of international trade. It means gold for oil is back on instead of gold for treasuries. And in that world, Bitcoin, you know, God bless Michael Saylor, maybe he got saved by the bell here. James, I'm curious your thoughts on that, but I also wanted to add there to, is there anything particularly that you're seeing or interpreting from the bond market? Because I was just looking at the 10-year treasury, and it seems like we did get basically a drop in yields following the Thursday announcement and the Sunday announcement as well, too. But it's kind of trickling back up.

Like, I would have anticipated yields maybe to come back more, but perhaps I'm thinking in the wrong direction. Yeah, no. Look, like I said, the war is, it's huge and the impact from energy prices, massive. But you have this meeting this week that the Fed is meeting Tuesday, Wednesday, we're going to hear from the new Fed chair. And so the bond market is a little bit uneasy. Like, where is he going to come out? Is he going to be hawkish like a lot of people have expected him to be because of his past sentiment? Is he going to just cave to Trump's demands and be doveish right out of the gates, which some people believe, I don't believe that's true. And so the bond market's kind of on the fence here, in my opinion, trying to figure out exactly where he's going to start. Now, why does that matter?

It matters because of exactly what Duneberg just said, which is they're at all, roads lead to some sort of yield curve control, more printing of dollars. There's just, it's just math. It's the math is the, you can't change it. You can't change the math. Unless we wake up and somehow balance the budget, get to surplus without impacting Social Security and other services detrimentally, which good luck with that miracle. You are, you are in a world where there is going to be.

expansion of the money supply in the United States. There's just no way around it. And so what, what are the implications of the Fed's actions? Well, you could see today, like I said before, the Fed Fund's futures are pricing in a 93% probability of a cut, a full cut by January, 80% probability by- I'm sorry, hike. I apologize. I just have a cut in my head for so long that I can't get it out. They've got a hike priced in there for one full hike priced in there for January and 80% probability of a hike by December. So if he comes out Dovish, here's the issue. He comes out Dovish and you hear these politicians say, this is really important for the listeners.

This is critical to understand. When you hear politicians and you hear Trump come out and say, we need to lower rates, we need to lower rates. It's got to help the consumer. It's got to help the consumer. Lower rates on the Fed funds is not going to immediately help the consumer. Let's just be clear about this. If you've got some cash sitting in a money market account, you're going to receive less interest on that cash. The moment they lower rates, it's not going to help.

The second thing is, if they lower rates into a strong economy and the investing based, the bond investors and equity investors, they interpret that as inflationary. The 10-year yield will go up. And the 10-year yield is what every single consumer product that is based on debt is based on. that debt in credit card loans, car loans, auto loans, mortgage securities, mortgage loans, helox, personal lines of credit, everything is priced off of that 10 year. And it's priced around the world. So that's the benchmark treasury of the world. And it's the benchmark treasury of the consumer.

So what you're watching is the investors are trying to figure out, are we stepping into a continued inflationary environment, even though price of oil is coming down and you've got the yields on the 10 year coming down because of this so-called resolution. Let's pretend that it is really done. Then the question is, okay, are we still in a world where inflation is going to continue heat up? you've seen the you've seen the graph of the 70s inflation and up against current inflationary environment from 2020 until now and they're they're moving lock step not the same amount of yield but the same gravity of it you can see exactly where that has been and that's what it's in investors minds they're worried that are we getting into another 80 style reinflationary

environment where you're going to need yields higher on the long end of the curve in order to be compensated for that risk, for the duration risk, and you'll get an actual real yield on your investment that will outpace inflation, which gets all the way back to the original point that Duneberg just said. And that means yield curve control, which ultimately means printing more money and more inflation. And so that means that the U.S. government, the Treasury, will refuse to pay a real yield on debt. Why would they do that? They would do that because it debases the dollar.

It brings down the value of it in the future, which means that they can pay down that debt, all of the debt that's rolling over every single year. It's about $12 trillion now, $13 trillion when you include all interest. that's going to come due in the next year, that they've got to roll back over. And so, and they can't go out on the curve on that. So they're going to continue to push down that yield curve so they can turn out some debt at some point. But at this point, they're going to be, ultimately, they'll be buying that debt to keep those yields down and to continue this debasement and allow that the inflation to run hot. That's just, that's what I see down the future.

in that future and in that world, gold and Bitcoin will rip. They will go much higher than they are today. So let me connect two things James just said, because I think it's important. Yes, the 10-year is, in fact, a global benchmark for a lot of very important things. But also, because of an inability to auction sufficient quantities of long-term debt to satisfy, by the ever-growing budget deficit, you're seeing started with Yellen and continued with Bessent, despite Besson's criticism of Yellen for doing it prior to ascending into the chair, that the U.S. government is shortening the duration of the debt outstanding by issuing short-term paper. And when the Fed, quote, cuts rates or increases rates, the Fed is increasing

or cutting rates on the short end of that curve. And that is now becoming a larger and larger direct bill to Congress in the form of increased interest charges as this, yeah, there you go, as this paper is being shortened and shortened in duration. And so that's where we're skipping a step, where the Fed tries to pretend like it could hike rates, And then, you know, next thing you know, you have to do yield curve control because you just have too much debt rolling over. Now, this is where SpaceX comes in.

Are we ready? Just want to let you guys know quickly that if you're looking for the Bitcoin tutorials, along with a whole bunch of other freedom tech tutorials, so things like self-hosted data, secure communications, locally run AI, those are all migrating over to new channel Sovereign Sessions launching in August. You can find the link in the description down below. It's not the podcast stuff. It's not the live stuff. It's not the talking head stuff. It's strictly just the educational content, the tutorial content.

So if you're into that, if you want that sort of thing, find the link in the description down below. Make sure you subscribe and check it out. All right, let's get back into it. I'm so curious. Go for it. Before you did, just to let people know what we showed here is that, like, this is the amount, these are the treasuries that are maturing.

Yeah. This year. And next year. And next year. And so, You can see just how much Yellen and Besant have been basically playing chicken with the Fed saying, we're not going to term out the debt. We're going to just keep issuing T bills, issuing T bills to manage that deficit.

So, but yeah, let's go on to a space. Yeah. So let me give you like a wild, again, it's a type of lateral thinking that we do. And we're not going to write about it, but I'll share it with you guys on the podcast. Ponzi has financial suppression. So what do I mean by that? If I was facing a wall of short-term paper that needed to be rolled over, I'd be interested in juicing tax receipts.

And so let's just imagine we invent a company and tell the world it's worth $2 trillion. I'm speaking in extreme. to make the point, sort of a classic lateral thinking tactic. Like, let's just go to infinity. So we're just going to tell everybody this company's worth $2 trillion. And there's a whole bunch of well-heeled VC investors in it, special purpose vehicles in it.

And they're all in at vanishingly small tax bases. So that which was marked at $100 billion a year ago, $200 billion a year ago, we're just going to say it's worth $2 trillion. Now, as the IPO rolls out and the insider starts selling, well, every transition of a share from an insider to a 401k or a retail investor or a global investor creates a taxable event, capital gain. Let's just say for round numbers that the increase in tax receipts from this IPO this year will be three. 300 billion. It's not that crazy. A trillion rolls over. You have, I mean, if you're sitting on 50 million dollars of SpaceX stock and you invested a million many years ago, what are you doing? You're selling. Going to buy me some treasures, right? And you're going to pay taxes along the way.

And so, okay, one IPO is 15% of the bogey. Now we have open AI coming. We have Anthropics. coming. So if you just create paper gains and force retirees and convince retailers to buy it at ridiculously high prices, all the people doing the selling are going to be sharing that with Uncle Sam. That was sort of our aha moment this weekend as we gave this a deep think, which is maybe it's not as bad. So when we're talking earlier, you know, there's no way around it. Well, there is a way around it, which is to trick people that something's worth 10 trillion, have three trillion of it come in the form of receivables, and we wipe out some of that, that, and also stable coin issuance and all the other things

that we're seeing as sort of a soft form of financial suppression. There's the part of the story where you just go and take it from people's 401k accounts, you know, that that's one way, but the other way is you indirectly take it by dropping bags on them to speak bluntly. and it's probably a little tinfoil, a little woo-woo, a little out there. But it kind of makes sense. If SpaceX immediately is included in the ND, you know, the NDX 100. Yeah. And there's plenty of shares that would have to be bought there.

I don't know exactly with the exact calculation or if you've done it. I think it's a lot of shares. It doesn't even matter because like with every unlock, you're creating new. taxable events for people dumping. Like, it's up today, you're stuffing it back into 401Ks and IRAs through the ETS that follow

the NASDAQ 100 or the SMP eventually when they do get a profit. Forget SpaceX. Let's just take that as a hypothetical and broaden it. If I wanted to indulge in financial suppression, I would want to do it in a way that made it seem like you were selling

dream. It's basically a lottery. This is essentially lottery taken to an extreme level, right? And so there is a path where you make a bunch of people rich. You close the deficit and the, you know what, is spread over a much wider unsuspecting audience, which is a classic definition of financial suppression. So there's things going on that are hard to explain. For example, like, for example, like SpaceX, SpaceX up 25 bucks say, what's that?

$300 trillion in market cap in a day. Just goes to show you how wild the stock market is, right? Like that a company that does a couple of deck of billion dollars in revenue is swinging in value of $300 billion based on, you know, what everyone agrees are unrealistic, sci-fi-type, you know, musings of a relatively odd man. and so what's going on? There's a deeper meaning, you know. That's our long shot view. Sorry, that was stupid.

I just had to jump in there because that was, no, but that was part of this whole thing that was driving me a little bit crazy with the initial launch. Like, I'm not saying that Elon's not great. We're not getting cool stuff out of this. And man, the comments,

if you start to question it a little bit, they were really coming up to be pretty hard for not understanding, but I was looking at SpaceX in terms of, from what I could find, that the Starlink is actually profitable and bringing in about 11 plus billion per year, but the space side of it

and the AI side of it, are both losing money. And I think you're only like 18 point something billion there in total. So I'm like, it's great. But going back to even the initial question that we kicked off the conversation with, it seems like it feels very, this is terrible, it feels very ICO. It feels very like NFTs in a way that like we have this grand vision for where this is going

and we're basing the valuation on that. But it's pure hype and narrative. Like there actually isn't the product's not to market yet. In our mental model, none of that matters. All that matters is people have to believe. it. And so like, you know, save all the comments. Not that anyone's going to get this deep into the podcast if they're looking to rag on you in the comments. But like all you need is literally enough people to believe, right? Because you know, the point of the exercise,

the purpose of a system is what it does is it creates an enormous amount of tax receipts with very low friction. Who's complaining? Right. And that's a good point. I mean, even if you get to, Goldman has almost a, a half a trillion dollar estimated revenue by 2030, I think. And so, you know, I mean, 25 times growth between now and then or whatever it is. And, you know, I mean, so. Lead underwriter, we should say. Let's just pretend that they hit in all cylinders.

And they, and they hit that. That you still need to believe, I think it's like eight times revenue for it to, for, for, you get a double from here. You still need that. So you've got it. This is price of utter perfection, right? And then now you when you say that though, Duneberg, it brings up the thought again. Now you have another little thought process and you look at polymarket and Kalshi and you think about, well, there's so much money in betting now. people spend they spend more money on betting than they have on music movies and books this year which is just insane and you think about that but every single time one of those

bets is settled that's a taxable event and you have to put your you have to put your ID on there you have to be you know it's a KYC on those on those apps I know because I got on to polymarket and I can't even I can't even not that I bet in the in the polymarket markets I got enough going on but just to see how they work I know that you can't bet here in Nevada and on sports or politics because they're that you're you're blocked out from the casino whatever however they politic that so but you have a settlement on every single one of these trades if you bought the Knicks and you won, that's settled. That's a taxable event.

And so it's not like where you buy SpaceX, you sit on it for five years. Yeah, you've got a taxable gain. But there's no way to sit on a taxable event there. There's no way to sit on a taxable event unless you've got a very long contract that you're betting in. So it's free. Yeah, there's no parlias. You know, no long-term parlase.

Right. There's no long-term parli. So this is now, now you're starting to think like Dumburg, James. So if you have a giant hole and you need to plug it, right? And you don't want to raise taxes on people. You just, you do things like this. You make, you know, nihilism is a great way to have people part with their money. So in that world, you know, I want to own things like Bitcoin and gold.

Yeah, it's financial repression. And either way, even if you, even if. you do wear the tinfoil hat and you believe that, which it's not really that far of a put, but let's just say that you believe that there are ways that we're creating large taxable gains that that really what do these, what do they do? Well, they end up exacerbating the K-shaped economy. They end up exacerbating that separation of wealth. It's just, it's just what it is. And So all paths, again, to lead to some sort of debasement and printing and or that financial repression and exacerbation of separation of wealth.

She just says something I want to emphasize because this is actually sometimes why we're often or sometimes misunderstood. When we use the word mental model and we exercise in lateral thinking, the most important skill of lateral thinking is not concerning yourself as to whether or not the axiom is correct or not, just whether it works. So axiom is that Ponzi as suppression. And again, I'm not calling SpaceX and Ponzi. I'm using that phrase more generally. Create something, give it far more value than it's worth, and then have people speculate on it and collect the taxes. That's what would mean by that label. It doesn't actually have to be true as long as it continues to predict.

So in that mental model where all bets are off, you can gamble, you can do things, you can speculate, you could make exaggerated claims as a CEO about what you're going to do, you're not going to face the consequences, the SEC is going to be defanked. All those things are consistent with the need to generate nihilistic type capital gains to tax. And so whether or not we're right is irrelevant is the model currently. operative. Like, and in our view, we'll see how open AI does. We'll see how Anthropic does. One counter to that, for example, was S&P not including SpaceX in shortly after the APO. That was, that ran counter to our mental model. And so, okay, that's, that's a cut against it. If we get a few more cut against it, we just discard it. And so thinking in that way is what leads us to make the occasional long shot prediction,

but it also means we're not afraid to be wrong and we just move on when we are. I want to just double tap on that for a second too because that really hit me this idea of lottery and like how profitable lotteries are for state tax revenue. I just looked it up quickly here.

The U.S. state lotteries bring in 30 billion in tax revenue. If you need more tax receipts coming in, it's a very nefarious and you're right, kind of nihilistic and I don't know, there's something very dark about we're going to get people to gamble

and speculate their money back into the U.S. coffers or started to pull it in in tax receipts. James, I want to quickly touch on, and I do want to make sure we get to energy and doemberg your outlook on energy markets as well, but I want to quickly touch on the K-shaped economy. Since the last time we spoke, is it still kind of going ahead full steam, or are we seeing any further breakdown on either of those K-shaped legs? No, I think it's going full steam that what you're seeing is the continued, the lower demographic is taking on more and more credit card

debt in particular, and they are now defaulting at a rate that's rivaling the 2008 great financial crisis. And so the lower demographic is struggling. And I know it because I can see it from some friends and friends of friends who are just, they're just wage earners just trying to get by. And it's been a difficult period for them to keep up with the inflation. Why is that? It's not just that their wages, the wages supposedly are keeping up according to economists,

but they lag so severely, number one. And number two, they're keeping up with maybe CPI measures that are faulty. And in real life, you can't buy insurance at the rate that we talked about this last time, car insurance, health insurance, any house insurance. You can't buy that insurance at a rate that according to CPI. So just those are big things. Daycare costs so you can have a dual income family. So anyways, but we're seeing that the New York Fed just put out their

latest quarter. Remember, this is severely lagging too. These numbers are so lagging. You can see that the consumer's not doing great on average if you just slice it down the middle. On the face of it, you go to restaurants, they're full. You go to try to buy a Nix ticket. They were what? How much were they in the $10,000 for a ticket to go to a basketball game?

Like something insane. So, but by and large, when you go to these restaurants, you're not seeing young kids in there. You're not seeing kids with, you know, young families in there. You're seeing boomers. You're seeing older people. You're seeing people who have assets they're drawing from who have made out in this economy. I'm not blaming these people that benefited from the system that they bought into. Gen X, I think, Duneberg, you're Gen X too. We were sold this system that says you go find a company, work for the company, work for them for 20, 30, 40, 50 years. You're going to have a pension, a 401k. and you'll retire, you'll have a great life at 65 and on, you'll be taken care of.

Well, that completely collapsed in our generation. And unfortunately, some of us made out okay on the way along, but millennials got utterly destroyed in this whole machine. They got ground in and said, you go to college, you take out the debt, you get a job, you stay with the company, you make sure you're loyal, and they'll take care of you. And lo and behold, pensions got scrapped, 401Ks or some of them, a lot of them are off the table. And so you're staying in there and you have to switch jobs four, five, six times just to keep up. And now your wife is working.

You've got daycare. So that's a long way of saying that, no, I don't. I think that the lower demographic is struggling more today than the last time we talked. So let's take SpaceX. I saw numbers. Who knows what the numbers are, 10,000 paper millionaires. Let's pick the number, right? Early employees, look, I saw in the private world offerings for SpaceX maybe a half a dozen times in my career in our private life, you know.

Hey, I'm a friend of Elon and I've got this SPV and I'm going to do a two and 20 and, you know, I'm going to get you into SpaceX at, you know, 30 bucks a share now. It's, you know, 190 today, whatever. There's a whole pyramid, pun intended, of very well-off, well, by definition, to have participated in SpaceX prior to the IPO and to have not been an employee required you to be a sophisticated investor. What's the phrase? Yeah, an accredited investor. And have the contacts to get to. Sure. And so you've created, you've taken all of these accredited investors who are by definition

worth more than a million dollars. And on the right side of the K that James was talking about. And now there's 10,000 of them that just collected seven-figure checks. Some of them eight and some of them nine-figure checks. And they're paying taxes on that, you know, back to the point earlier. So that is the people getting in now, like James said, right? if you're buying it now at 2.2 trillion valuation or whatever it is today. I mean, maybe it does get to $4 trillion, but the big huge money, the, you know, multiple,

multiple 10xers 30x, 40x, 100x. They're made. Yeah. That's made. And that it's not made by Joe six pack. I mean, I'm sorry. I'm only laughing because it's so cynical to pretend otherwise. That's right.

And that's so that just exacerbates it too. Right. And so, but and here's, and here's the, here's the report from the Fed right here. You can see it that these delinquencies on student loans, of course, nobody's paying their student loan. They're just, they're delinquent on those. And then here's your credit cards. And there's a 90-day delinquency on credit cards.

Who's on credit cards? Like, Duber, you use a credit card because you want points. You pay it off every month, like I do, you know? Do you spy it on me or something? So, you know, I mean, that's what, that's what you do. You get the points, but you pay it off. These are not being paid off. James, I have a confession.

Yeah, please. I'm a points millionaire. Yeah, see? I think I'm a points billionaire. No, I'm just joking. Which is, the points are worth nothing now. They just keep. And you can see the amount of debt that's just up and to the right here.

So it's a problem and it's not getting better. And that's an interesting take on that, though. But like you said, and that's the cantalon effect that we talked about. The canton effect is that if you're the he who is closest to the money spigot is the one who makes out the best. And how do you get close to the money spigot? Well, you can become a congressman or a senator. You can be close to Fed officials. You could know people and be very close to banks.

Who are those people? Hedge funds, investors, large investors, high net worth investors. investors and who do they how do they how are they close to the money spigot well it's kind of like what duneberg just said is that you get the call on SpaceX on day one that hey we're going to raise a first round a seed round a friends and family round and you're going to be included on this and lo and behold a year two years three years four years later your million dollars becomes 500 million And it's like, well, well done. So, but who can do that?

You have to be an accredited investor and you have to know people. You have to be close to those sources. And that's, that's the essence of a can't-tallin effect right there. Coin kite has been in the game for years, creating hands down the best and most secure hardware when it comes to securing your Bitcoin. The cold card Q is an absolute powerhouse and my daily driver and it's ideal for newcomers and advanced users alike. The tab signer gives you a low-cost, user-friendly option

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And Open Eye and Elon have this feud. So maybe Elon's, I saw some speculation that Elon is beating those guys to market. And then, you know, going to pull up the, pull up the moat and make life difficult for them. But, I mean, broadly speaking, as this sort of repression mental model that I described earlier, you'd need more than just SpaceX. SpaceX is just the exception that proves a role. that it's possible. It makes sense for the Department of War and for the DOD, the Department of War to

declare investments in these companies as a matter of national security. It would make sense. Yeah. So we'll see. But yeah, I know it's if we always cover so much territory here.

We pack a lot into it and, you know, just changing gears and making sure we get that one other little aspect in here. Dumbarie, I wanted to get your outlook in terms of oil. I mean, like the last time we talked, we really hinted it. We discussed how like everybody would have called for higher W2II prices, but it never happened. Now we're on the other side. We're seeing it come down.

I saw it drop below 80 for a second there. Instincts would be that we would continue to see oil kind of fall, but I'm very cautious to make any sort of calls on energy right now. So I'm curious what you're thinking is. Oil is going way lower from here, assuming that, you know, the war doesn't break out again and the assets in Middle East aren't destroyed. And the really profound thing. A bunch of profound stuff. So we're publishing this piece tomorrow. I'm not sure when this podcast will publish.

Tomorrow. All right. So as this comes out, we'll have already published a piece in the morning called flex capacitor. And China just flexed somewhere between three and four million barrels per day of oil tolerance in a way that the market had no idea existed. What do I mean by that? It has so overbuilt coal to chemicals, LNG import terminals. refining the petrochemical space that it could just decide it was going to stop buying three million barrels a day of oil for a hundred days and not flinch.

And if China has indeed imparted upon the crude oil market, three million barrels a day of fungibility, the arbitrage in the oil space is going to close much lower. What do I mean by that? Absent crude oil, if you just look across the rest of the hydrocarbon complex, natural gas is trading for $18 a barrel oil equivalent in the U.S. in effectively infinite supply. Natural gas liquids are trading for $30, $40 a barrel. There's an awful lot of oil and gas in the world. We know where to find it.

You have Guyana, Vacamerta, Venezuela. We're doing a big doomzuma on Vacomerta, Argentina here probably next week. if you can't get to 125, 150,200 with this fact set, what do you need to get there? And if everyone knows it's never going there, why do you need to own it?

And so, you know, there's this whole argument online, which is the opening story to our piece, and kudos to our friend Jack Johnson over at MarketPyms. The argument was, you know, price as truth versus price manipulated. Those were the two camps.

And by we were wildly surprised at the relative docility of oil after the war broke up. But we took the pause and said the market is telling us something different. We're wrong. Let's go find out why. And price is truth. And we do believe price was truth. And price has been vindicated. So the big story that came out over the weekend was a Roytus report, a bombshell underreported

on Friday, that the real bogey wasn't 15 million barrels a day by the closure of the street. it was more like five or six. And if it was more like five or six because the oil market knows how to cheat and China turned its nose at four and didn't flinch, all of a sudden the fact that the strategic petroleum reserves and the other IAE actions closed the loop and oil stayed at 90 bucks a barrel makes a lot of sense in hindsight. And all the people trapped in oil now think it was going to 150 because of all of this hyperbole on Twitter that we've all seen.

boy, I mean, I've been around when oil traded minus 30. And when oil was training at minus 30, you would never have convinced someone it would trade over 100 again. Well, we saw that, you know, once the trade opens, if this is truly peace. And all this is predicated on, you know, a full-blown war doesn't rekindle and, you know, those assets aren't destroyed. You're going to see, look out below. on oil. And China has really, without anyone kind of noticing, has done what we've been predicting would eventually get done in the economy, which is a massive wave of engine switching that closes the hydrocarbon arbitrage. And those engines need not be in cars, but they can also be in factories.

And, you know, if China can swing three to four million barrels of the day, they just done it. They just proved it. And boy, that's pretty consequential. So that's what's coming out tomorrow. I'm sure we're going to make a lot of friends in the Besset Manipulated oil price down crowd. But we have to call it as we see it. Nope, fair enough. James, I want to get your thoughts just on energy markets there. And then also, before we reconvene next time, what should people be on the look at? What should people be paying attention to in the weeks going forward? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, look, I can't dispute what, what, uh, do Berg's take is on oil. He's much, much deeper in the analysis and geopolitical analysis on that.

So I can't really add anything intelligent to what he said. So, but yeah, what are we looking at? I mean, really, like we said, the most important thing this week, right on the on the docket is the is the next Fed meeting. And Kevin Worses, his temperature, which is the whole world. is the whole world is looking at this and they're trying to figure out which direction is he going to go. And so that is a really big important moment in time. Also, the Bank of Japan, they meet on what, the 15th and 16th. Is that right, Duneberg? And so we got to see where they're willing to allow these rates to go. And where they're allowing the yen to go. That's another. an important data point. It's important because Japan for so long has been the spigot of basically

free money for risk assets around the world. And so that regime has changed and it's changing kind of rapidly. So it's been interesting to watch. We also have, I think we have a 20-year auction, which I don't really care about the 20-year that much. It's kind of inconsequential in total but it is a momentary stress test to see where things are shaking out. I think they should honestly just retire the 20 years. It's a nonsense bond. But it is for this moment, it'll be important to kind of see. And finally, just where is SpaceX, where does that end up trading here in the near term?

and just how wildly optimistic are people going to get and unrealistic maybe because as we're talking here, it's now trading at $185 up 15%, which is just, I mean, it's mind-numbing to say the least. Look, no investment advice coming for me on this one, like Duneberg said, basically the market you can stay irrational a lot longer than you can stay liquid is the saying. And this is one of those. I wouldn't short it. I'd be very careful with it. But it's trading just a $2.4 trillion market cap. It is now the six largest company in the world. So pretty wild. A lot of capital gains tax just waiting to be harvested there, James. There's a ton. Doonberg, anything you want to add for things that we should be watching in between the next podcast? I would keep an eye on Russia, Ukraine,

now that Iran is on the down slope of interest and risk. We shall see. Even Trump said, now that Iran is over, I'm going to focus my attention again on the war in Ukraine. I'm not sure what he meant by that. But there are two ways to interpret that statement. You know, there's this, even the mention of Japan earlier, you know, one of the things that we're kind of tinkering with

for a future doom zoom is sort of, World War III as the continuation of World War II, if you just look at what's going on now, right? I mean, Germany rearming, Japan, rearming, Russia and China getting together saying, wait a minute. So not on Cork, that cana warms just laid into the podcast. But we'd keep an eye on Ukraine in addition to the things that James mentioned, which I think are absolutely on point as well. And great to be back with you guys again. It's always fun. It's been a blast. Well, on Cork and next time, Duneberg, where can everybody go to follow you and your work? Yeah, you can go to Doomberg.com.

We have our subscription there, our pro tier there, our classics read aloud, sister publication. And also, if you have any hate mail for this, you just send it straight to Nathan. I'm sure he'll forward it along and we'll just send it to the auto delete folder. But yeah, that's where you find everything. Dumberg.com, James, Nathan,

great to be with you guys. Best of luck with Bitcoin. May my prediction that the bear market has overcome true for you guys. I love it. And James, where can everybody go to follow your work? Yeah. So you can likewise, just like Duneberg, I'm also on Substack,

and you can find me at James lavish.com. And we have our premium tiers or two. I have a roundtable I just launched. So for people who want to get a quarterly call with me in a small group setting, that's something we're doing now. And then, of course, if you are interested in Bitcoin investing and you are an accredited investor, you can just go to Bitcoinopportunity. Fund, and we're happy to jump on the phone with you

and try to see if it's something that would be appropriate for you to be an unlimited partner there. So, but I'm always on Twitter. Duneberg, you know, you got off, but there's, it's a, there's a lot of noise on there. I still use it for inbound open source intelligence gathering. Smart. Yeah, it's a lot of noise. And I'm sure you're sifting through it like I am daily.

It's just there's so much noise. Literally a chapter in the book we're writing on how to open your aperture for information and then categorize it. Brilliant. Excellent. So yeah, so it's great to be with both of you guys and look forward to the next time. These are great conversations. We kind of cover a lot of ground that's unique that we don't touch on and other podcasts I'm on. So it's good. You know the world is heading down a dark path.

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