BTC Sessions - What Is Happening With Bitcoin Price — Should You Be Worried? (Why I’m NOT) | Odell, Swann, Quittem

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

Bitcoin’s price has been volatile to the downside — but should you actually be worried? Are we officially in a bear market? Matt Odell, Guy Swann, and Brandon Quittem break down what’s really going on behind the scenes and why panic is the wrong move. Join BTC Sessions for this level-headed analysis every Bitcoiner needs right now.FOLLOW TODAY’S PANELISTS:https://x.com/Bquittemhttps://x.com/TheGuySwannprimal.net/odellFOLLOW BTC SESSIONS on X/Nostr: x.com/[e-mail] private one-on-one sessions with BITCOIN MENTOR! Learn self custody, hardware, multisig, lightning, privacy, running a node, and plenty more - all from a team of top notch educators that I've personally vetted.https://bitcoinmentor.io/—------------------------------SHOW SPONSORS:BITCOIN WELL - BUY BITCOINhttps://qrco.de/bfiDC6COINKITE/COLDCARD (5% discount):https://qrco.de/bfiDBVABUNDANT MINES:https://qrco.de/bgYKPBAQUA WALLEThttps://qrco.de/bfiD8gNUNCHUK HONEYBADGER INHERITANCEhttps://qrco.de/bfiDARHODLHODL NO KYC P2P EXCHANGEhttps://hodlhodl.com/join/BTCSESSIONDEBIFI LOANShttps://qrco.de/bfiDCp#btc #bitcoin #crypto

Bitcoin has dropped $16,000 in the past week, nearly 18%. And if you're new, you're probably panicking. If you've been here before, you might be getting exhausted. So what factors are tanking Bitcoin? Should you be worried? What should you be doing right now? I've got some compelling numbers sitting here that may help you decide what to do next. And so tonight on why are we bullish,

We've got an old-fashioned bare market hangout with some of my favorite Bitcoin vets. We've got Guy Swan, Matt O'Dell, and Brandon Quidim. Drop a like on the video. Stay tuned. It's going to be a good time. I'm Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your bullish session. All right.

Let's welcome to the stage. Odell, Guy Swan, Brandon Quitam, gentlemen. Thanks for being here. It does feel like a bit of a family reunion. How you guys been? Doing all right? That good? Doing all right.

Doing all right. I've been busy as shit, man. Yeah, there's always plenty to do when your net worth is slipping through your fingers. And you're calling into question your very existence. I'm talking about that. I live in Minneapolis, so things are boring. So you're just, you're living the dream. Oh, you got everything covered.

Well, gents, I mean, we're here to be bullish. That's the name of the show. And so I just want to give some perspective first to the viewers. I know there's going to be some people here. Maybe haven't been even through a full kind of up and down cycle. And they're like, what in the hell is going on? So a lot of newcomers don't know that if you miss the 10 best days in a year for Bitcoin's price, you basically erase all of the gains.

You're screwed. So people trying to time in and out of the market really get raked over the coals. So I was curious how bad it was if you do that. And I went and I ran the numbers. And so I wanted to show you guys how bad it actually gets. So I went through, I started at 2016. and said, okay, past decade, what does it look like? And so I did year by year, you know, what was the regular annual return and what was the annual return minus the best 10 days?

And it's pretty abysmal. Now, 2017 was insane. The exception. Yeah, it was the exception. I love you said you crunched the numbers and then you just had the computer. So I crunched the numbers by typing a sentence into chat. Yeah, so pretty much, again, like, yeah, you'd get the occasional down year where it felt pretty crappy, like down 74%, or down 64%, but it was mostly looking pretty good.

Whereas if you miss the best 10 days, you know, you were pretty much down all the time with a few very slight exceptions. Yeah. 2023 up 153 percent but if you miss the best 10 days seven yeah i mean it's probably even it's probably even worse than that because let's be honest if you for the majority of us if we try to trade we don't just miss the best 10 days we we sell low and buy high so we catch even worse than we catch the 100 worst days yeah that's true that's true so i want to show you um i was like okay Okay, well, 2017 is pretty insane.

And that 235 has got to be doing you a bit of a favor. So I was like, what if we start from 2018? So you start in the bear market and then you just drop a thousand bucks and you just hold on for the ride for eight years. And so with that, you sit there from 2018 to 2025, a thousand bucks. By the end, you've got $13,810. Okay. That's pretty solid. So what happens if you miss the best 10 days of every year, you would have $1.36.

You lost 99.86% of everything. You got wiped out. You got just... That's amazing. And then... That is amazing. Well, in the first year, you lost 90%. Yes.

You're at a hundred bucks. Let's go back and let's include 2017. and see what that looks like. And I don't want to, okay, so $1,000 for a decade there turned into $203.5 grand. So you did amazing. What happened if you missed the best 10 days? You did have the 250% on 2017.

So instead of $203,000, you would have $8.48. So the less year. The market is better than timing the market. Yeah. If you're sitting there, you're panicking and you're like, fuck, should I sell right now and sit out the bear market and when I see it start to shoot up, buy back in, there's your answer.

Just look at that. Sit on your thumb and do nothing. It is the hardest thing to do, but just sit there, guys. Like, chill. I don't know what else to say. It's not easy, but it is simple. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly.

So, jents, I wanted to start the show with that to kind of set the frame for some of the newbies in the room. But we're just going to dive into it. I know it's fun being bullish in days like these or weeks like these. But I want to find out why you guys are still bulls. But I do want to start by dropping a little tidbit on the audience. And that is that this is, man, Odell said right before the show, man, it really is a bear market. This is the second last episode of Why Are We Bullish? So we got...

We're not bullish anymore. We're still going to be here. There's going to be a show. But we got something special, Bruin. There's a change up in format. And there's going to be some familiar faces. that are part of it. And so you're going to have to tune in on February 18th to see what the new thing is.

So swing by and do that. Guy Swan. It's the title. Bullish, we are. Change up. And I do want to congratulate Swan. Guy, you've been fighting tooth and nail to make sure you are always the most visited, frequented guest here on Why Are We Bullish.

And so you will round out the entire run of Why Are We Bullish. We Bullish with a massive 15 episodes on here. So you have been crowned grand champion of Why Are We Bullish? Congratulations. Oh, yeah. Thank you. Where do I, where do I receive my award? Yeah.

Well, once I can afford something, I'll get something. But with that honor, you get to. Give me an FTA. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I hear those are really affordable. just make a bunch of those. They're free.

You get the honors this evening. I'm going to give you first go at why you're bullish. So I'm going to give you the main stage guy. Why are you still bullish? Are you still bullish? No, no. So one of the things I really think that, so we kind of went through like a little idly like Pee cycle.

And so you can almost. call it a cycle because we had enough and we've got it out got it down to go with it um but i really think we're kind of in the phase where you know one of the things i've noticed with all that i've been through i don't know what four five full bear market cycles now i don't know a bunch and um one of the things i've always noticed is that there's an enormous amount of building in the bear market and then you finally get to see all these tools release and start being used and kind to start seeing their network effects like in the in the run up basically in in the next or kind of towards the end of the bear market they start getting released and they start to see a little bit of

momentum and then they get a lot of excitement during the hype cycle we really kind of skip that step we didn't really have that yet we have an enormous amount of building we have enormous amount of like testing of new tools and new things being implemented but we we're still like I think we're in a longer infrastructure stage. And I also kind of think that the four year cycle is over. The idea of this like constant like predictable cycle, it got really predictable. The pattern became obvious. And then we opened up into an enormous amount of liquidity.

I just think that means the pattern's dead. And so and I think that's why we have this really kind of like messy price environment is a, we opened up into a lot of liquidity. And so if you see like the five to seven year UTXOs, UTXO set, there are a lot of people clean in house. There are a lot of people. And five to seven years is that perfect time in which there were probably very, very wealthy people getting into Bitcoin who were looking at this more as a portfolio strategy

as like a risky thing that has a high possible return. And that was the first time that I heard about like billionaires being like, you know, the Mexican billionaire or whatever. And like people were actually getting in. So if they're putting in 5% of their portfolio and they don't have the liquidity to actually get out, then Bitcoin does a 10x and then another 10x during that time. You know, we're looking at like 2018 era. Then suddenly it's in traditional markets.

You have the ETFs. You have $3 billion worth of liquidity a day. Well, that's when you rebalance your portfolio because your 5% high risk just became 80% or 90% of your portfolio. And now you need to offload and you need to bring it back down the 10%. or 15, you know, whatever it is that you feel safe doing. And I kind of think that's what, that's the era that we're in. And I think it not only broke the pattern, but everybody was expecting 20, 25 to be the big, big ass green candle because that's what it is in the four year pattern.

And everybody hedged to that way and they leveraged that way. And when it didn't happen, those, they were forced selling pressure. And so now we're having this little, I genuinely kind of think we're going to have this little, we're going to also have a piddly little like, like, oh, we're in bear market and it's going to suck for three years again. No, I think it's going to be kind of like a short term. And it's, it's going to, it's going to kick people in the nuts in the reverse direction. Um, and then we're going to be sideways for a little bit. And then we're going to start seeing substantial growth or strong growth again.

And, uh, well, well, I think it's going to, it always starts slow, right? But also, I think it's giving us the time to actually release our infrastructure tools. like the things that we are building. And I think the next major run actually won't just be a random hype cycle. It will be when like Bitcoin has touched like 1% or 2% of like 10 different industries. Like it's like slowly starting to make its place and all this stuff. But it's never actually disrupted anything. It's never actually disrupted an industry.

Like BitTorrent like effed the copyright industry and totally effed the broadcast industry. And it wasn't until that happened that, like, you were really, the internet was really shaking things up. Bitcoin has not had its day yet. It has not touched the first thing. But here's the thing is that as soon as it starts making a move to disrupt a single industry with a single use case, like a specific way that Bitcoin is being used to accomplish something that other tools can't provide. Then the next thing that it can actually be a part of or the next thing that it can actually disrupt, is easy.

Like, you know, like, it's like you can't, social media was never going to disrupt the internet until you had a smartphone. Like until you had something in your hands that could really connect everybody at all times. And similarly, you have to have the infrastructure in place. Simply, the onboarding to Bitcoin has not been good enough to actually make Bitcoin disrupt anything

because the barrier to even begin to be in the industry is too high. And those, I think people, have discounted how much we've incrementally knocked it down and knocked it down and knocked it down and knocked it down and when we have another cycle it's going to start it's it's going to start a disruption cycle and it can cask and money is the everything app it doesn't there's nothing that it doesn't touch and there's nothing that it won't disrupt and once it once it goes in one place it can make it can make a move in the second one twice as easy and in the third one 80 percent easier than that um and I think we start looking at very, very long cycles and very, very large transitions that just stretch out.

And I'm looking at what that tool is going to be or what that potential is going to be. And I'm kind of jazzed. Do you have an inclination? Like, do you have like a, oh, maybe. I hope it's going to be a pair drive, but I don't know. I'm trying to build a thing too. So, but I'm almost like, and I got my pizzas at the door. I haven't yet.

10 o'clock in the morning, so I'll be right back. Get me an important delivery, man. What do you mean by pizzas, guy? Yeah. Pizza? Steak. Steak with chief. No, I'll be right back.

Brandon, I'll toss. Do you any thoughts on what guy had to say here? Yeah, I wish he was here to defend himself, but. but I'm not buying it. In my opinion, friction of onboarding has almost nothing to do with it or penetration in industry has almost nothing to do with it. I think the reality here is that volatility is Bitcoin's product from day one. We can sugarcoat it all we want,

but until now, it's greed and volatility that drives adoption. And over the last, call it year, 18 months, whatever we call that window, Bitcoin was not the volatility king. Bitcoin was taking second third fiddle to AI, gold and silver catching a bid, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Personally, the amount of Normie inbound was all-time low this cycle. Every other cycle, hundreds. Like I walk through 100 plus every cycle. I think I maybe got 510 this year.

I also wasn't trying to start, so maybe that plays a role. But I don't think so. I think by and large, volatility's out. buyers are out, Bitcoin's boring, et cetera. There's not that many people that want to learn about monetary theory or the basement or this or that. People are heads down. They're screaming on the internet.

Yeah, so that's my take. And Guy, I shut down your ideas. I think it's volatility gone and your ideas are nice, but I think they're minority. I mean, that's why you're bearish, but why are you bullish? I was just responding to Guy. Oh, we're just supposed to respond to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's pretty bearish.

Well, I think volatility is down. That's what I was meaning about, like, stretching it out. How much? Agree. That's why we're not seeing a big cycle. If volatility is down and AI and metals are the new shiny object, the buyers aren't getting engaged. That's why.

Yeah, we're past the orange pill people into, like, buying Bitcoin. Like, you're 100% right. It's not the shiny thing anymore. That's why I think it specifically, like, moves that do have, like, strong growth will only come from an application. But how much, how much of that is because of the volatility, like, the volatility almost being extracted by, like, the Bitcoin stocks? Like, this cycle was dominated by the micro strategies, right? Yeah. And if you, like, if you think about it, too, it's like, Like you look at like sentiment, I haven't felt sentiment like this. I've been in Bitcoin for way too long.

And the sentiment is really, really bad right now. And then you look at the Bitcoin price chart. And we're not even down 50% yet. And but then you look at Naka's price chart or Metaplanet's price chart and you start to realize, you know, why sentiment might be that way. And I heard the L word get brought up leverage. well people were leverage on leverage right like meta planet itself is a leverage play and then people were borrowing in their charles swab accounts or whatever um against that leverage play and doubling up on it um so a lot of the volatility went there and then as a result bitcoin seems less attractive right

if you're a poor person trying to find your next big break you're not going to play bitcoin because you don't think you can get a hundred x on it and then as a result it fucks over the treasury company so they kind of ended up you know it was a negative feedback loop that hurt themselves in a lot of ways i think this this is the first cycle where i've heard again because a lot of people are just so nihilistic in general like the in normy land it's like i'm never going to get ahead the only way that i could possibly make it is like hitting the lottery or some sort of like extreme but bitcoin is not like you're like you're like you're like you're not like you like Like you were saying, not volatile enough to be that gamble.

It's like I need I need something else. It's not, it's no longer compelling. They're like, oh, if it were to double, like, what the hell does that do for me? I can only afford to put in like a few hundred bucks at a time maybe. And like I'm, you know, what, what does that help? And so like people don't see it as as a rescue plan or anything like that. The meme template of, you know, you have six months to figure shit out, otherwise you're stuck in the permanent underclass.

Like every good meme is based in reality. And that's the vibe I get from a lot of people right now. You're either completely checked out or you think as high time preference as it possible. It's not purely high time preference, right? Because you're kind of thinking long term, you're like, I'm going to be stuck in the permanent underclass. But it's like, I got to get shit done today. It has to happen in the next six months, otherwise I'm fucked. That's not true, but that's the feeling people have.

Yeah, that's fair. A couple of quick points, sentiment, Mac, right off of your point there. I agree sentiment's bad, but how much can we attribute this to the fact that we have Noster and Twitter, Elon changed the algorithm. So when I go do my daily check the Bitcoin chatter, I see a really small percentage of people talking about it and how much of that is just our perception of is sentiment bad that's that's just a question i don't know the answer um the other thing on sentiment is expectations right we're not down to the depths but everyone thought we were going way higher and we didn't and so that delta always

causes more pain um any response there met otherwise you got one more treasury to be fair first of all yeah i mean like i think the four-year cycles are broken ish and i've been a four-year cycles are brokenish and i've been a year cycle guy, but just from the top being, you know, very anticlimactic, especially if you prices in gold, like we just didn't have the bull run that you typically have in a quote unquote four year cycle in the past. Now, we are having this bear at around the same time, and we had our run up around the same time that we see in the previous four year cycles, but we just didn't get the top we'd get. Now, I would say that this is my, um, this is my, If you count two cycles in 2013, 2017 run, 2020, 21 run, and this run, that's five, four or five cycles depending.

Like 2013 really did feel like two cycles. But anyway, my point is every time we hit a top, I thought we were going higher. And I think most people do. So I would discount that piece. Yes, everyone got caught flat footed in the 126 range when we topped. But no matter where we topped, 90% people were going to get flat-footed on it, regardless. I will say, like, look, I think to me, and I could be wrong, but to me, Bitcoin has always been a safe haven asset, right?

And I was always like, when will the world wake up to Bitcoin being on a hedge on poor governance and corruption and whatnot? And that's what we're seeing play out right now in macro land. But when you sell people a stock in their portfolio, it's just strictly not a safe haven asset. When all the excitement is about Bitcoin treasury companies or even Ibit, then of course you're thinking of it as like a high risk tech stock. You're not thinking of it as a safe haven because it's not a safe haven. And I think that's where we, you know, that's where at least this macro cycle, this liquidity cycle,

like Bitcoin got left behind in a lot of ways because any, new money that came in just didn't think of it that way and they're trading it like it's high risk and maybe they're right at least right now but don't you think new people always come in to make money and then hopefully they learn the values and then they take self-custody and then they see it as a safe haven i don't know because when i got in it was like wiki leaks and uh uh the banks uh wall street like uh what is it called occupy Wall Street and WikiLeaks and Snowden. And it was like very much like an anti-institution play.

And then I think a lot of people got in in the 2020 range like COVID response, all that shit, truckers and Bitcoin was against that. And then this cycle, we just like, I agree with that. No one got no one got intro to Bitcoin in that direction. It was just open up your swab, open up your swab account and buy this hotel company that's stacking Bitcoin. Yeah, a couple on that one. So I also meet up in Minneapolis.

Matt said he would come, so as he doesn't come. We'll deal with that later. It's true. Meetup in the country. It's the best room. It's the best whiskey. So a lot to like. But a little anecdote, last December, I get a text from some dude in our group like,

hey, dude, Punter Jeff's coming to Minneapolis. You got to get him to speak. And I'm like, okay, who's that? And he's like, you don't know Punter Jeff? You got to get him. And I was like, all right, I trust the guy. Fine. Book the speaker.

It's annoying to book. speakers every month for six and a half years, book them. I show up to the room and I see the biggest meetup I've ever hosted and I don't even know half the people in there. And I'm like, what, did they sell a room to some corporate event? Who are all these people? And then I realized that there are hordes of treasury company fans and they filled the room, haven't seen them since. And yeah, after kind of combing the room, talking to people, whatever, a whole bunch of people made a shitload of money on micro strategy. And they didn't know the, they knew a little bit about Bitcoin and maybe half of them had some Bitcoin.

But it was definitely micro strategy first. And so that's one point on your side there, Matt, that they sucked out the juice. On the other hand, though, was there really enough volume going into those things? You know what I mean? Like on a cycle scale, how much retail money, let's say, or not retail money went into those. And does that actually chop the legs off to cycle? I mean, there was enough to buy like what is like up like 300,000 Bitcoin last like two, three years or something like that. You know, I think one of the pieces that I caught a lot of people off guard is like at least narrative wise.

The the idea was that, oh, it's institutions buying these things and it's net new people. It's like people that wouldn't buy Bitcoin otherwise. But I don't think that was the case. I mean, I don't I don't know how we could ever calculate it. But my gut says that the majority of volume that went into micro strategy, that went into micro strategy, Metaplanet, all of these guys, right, was people that would have bought Bitcoin otherwise. And then instead, they bought the stock.

I agree. And then the stock has like a delay before it buys Bitcoin. It's not quite the same thing. Like, strictly speaking, like, if what you care about is like market dynamics and structure, it would probably be strictly better for those to all be individual stackers that are stacking, ideally to self-custody, but even if they're not stacking to self-custody, I think you'd have more upward by pressure and you'd have a more stable foundation in the market structure.

I agree. And all the people who got rinsed on those, their tails between their legs. So are they going to be buying this year if they just got rinsed last year? They have no money. That's right. And also in general, retail average. average Americans don't have any investable income. Right.

They're a lot of poor people. But like since COVID, we've created a new high watermark or new low water mark for prices on everything. So normies are squeezed hard. Also, that's why we see socialism, tax the rich, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That's all a byproduct in my opinion of the economic inequality. There's no American dream. So people look for solutions.

Just like every other time in history, we end up in the same situation. anyways yeah i mean a couple things here um yeah i mean you're right people don't have disposable income to be really putting anywhere i'm looking at it's even in in canada it's it's really bad right now in terms of cost of living like you guys have it bad but you know canadian house prices are effectively double what yours is. And all of Canada, in terms of like take-home income versus expenses, all of that, we are poorer than your poorest state, the entirety of Canada. Even like our provinces that are doing the best are poorer than your poorest state.

Like, it's pretty dire. I think there was a stat recently that one in four people in Canada, in Canada is using the food bank in some way, shape, or form. Like, it's horrific. And, yeah, things are going sideways. Now, on the other side of that, as it pertains to O'Dell, what you were saying, and we didn't get the introduction of, like, Bitcoin is being used for this reason, like a self-sovereignty type reason.

So Alberta is currently collecting signatures to trigger a referendum vote to separate from Canada. I went to an event week and a half ago. It was packed. Massive. They're popping up all over the province. The way it works is they need to collect enough signatures to represent 10% of the population. populace that voted in the last election, which is 177,000 signatures. They are easily going to attain that. When they do, they have till May that will basically trigger the fact that we need to then

vote on the topic of whether we stay in Canada. That would likely, our premier has said that will probably be in the fall if it happens. The interesting thing is the group that has been rallying. for this and kind of setting this up, they released kind of an economic plan that I wasn't privy to addressing like, well, how do we deal with, you know, the, how do we deal with all of these different economic factors? Like, what happens to pensions? What happens to this, that, and the other thing? Well, in the document on page 22 of like 40 something pages, they outline, well, what would we do for currency and what would like the Alberta dollar look like and uh they're very explicit in

talking about how they didn't want a fiat currency and how they wanted to back it with a combination of gold oil and bitcoin and so I've been caught I was like who who the fuck wrote this and I'm like contacting like who is this and the talk I went to the the couple of the main people on stage one Jeff Rath one is a guy named Mitch who's who basically spearheaded the the signatures and the collection of everything um both of them on stage are talking about like you know when you go to the grocery store and you can't afford stuff anymore it's not that things are more expensive it's that your dollar is able to purchase less and so they're like tuning into the why of why everybody's so screwed uh but

What myself and Nathan and a number of people on the team here that are actually in Alberta are doing is we're linking up with all the people for the Alberta separatist movement saying, listen, we all saw what happened with the trucker protests. The second that Canada didn't like something that was a peaceful protest, they started shutting down bank accounts. They started cutting people off financially. And even though it wasn't perfect, Bitcoin was the only thing. that actually got into the hands of truckers. Everything else got confiscated. So we've been going around setting people up with wallets and hardware and showing them Noster and starting to kind of say like, listen, if Canada would do that to protesters in the

Capitol, what do you think they're going to do when it push really comes to shove and it looks like they're going to lose a province? It's not going to be nice. And so what happens then? And so, yeah, we're actively kind of, and maybe that becomes putting up some defense. Yeah, it's like, it's like. Well, Canada doesn't have a military, right? I think West Emmett and Mall has more, has more submarines than our military.

Is it true that your armed forces ride moose into combat? Yeah, always. If they're not even trained, they'll pick them out of the forest and just get it. Angry forest moose. Dude, don't fuck with moose. No. For sure. Those things are dinosaurs.

You've seen how big this year? They'll fuck you up. Yeah, exactly. So that's my little insert of there may be some interesting Bitcoin-related shit later this year. But we shall see. We shall see. That's something to be bullish about, though. Max Payne equals people look for solutions.

Right now they're finding socialism. But if we do a better job, maybe they'll find Bitcoin. Exactly. Exactly. Okay, so, jens, I'll put a bow on this one. We're going to do a rotation. Odell, I'm going to have you up next. I'm going to say a quick little shout out. Thanks to sponsor the show.

We'll be one minute and then we'll be right back. Everybody, if you're enjoying the combo, please do drop a like. And we'll see you guys in just a sec here. Bitcoin Well is the best place to be buying and selling Bitcoin in Canada and the US. And now with Bitcoin Well Infinite, it's also the best place. to be making large buys at their OTC desk of over $50,000. Their white glove service gives you fast transactions, no slippage, and the lowest fees. You can scan the QR code on the screen or simply head to Bitcoinwell.com slash BTC sessions to sign up today.

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I mean, I guess if it's a trade, it's not like I'd have to deal with Minnesota. I was trolling, I was trolling Brandon in our chat that we would trade Minnesota for Alberta, but I didn't mean it. Yeah. I mean, you send us all your oil and gas workers from Alberta, and we'll send you all of our Somalian entrepreneurs. Put them in Ontario, please. Every one of our daycares to help out. There you go. Our birth rates weigh down.

We do not need that many daycares. We don't need as many either. They don't even, they don't even, there are any kids there. It doesn't matter. All right, gents. Odell, you are up. I'm going to be giving you the same question that everybody gets. Why are you, if you are bullish?

If you are bullish. I mean, look, you picked a very bearish day to have the show, which is always the best. It's always the best case scenario. And it's an honor and a privilege to be on the second to the last one. But look, I think, First and foremost, Bitcoin, as far as the macro situation goes, Bitcoin was made for this moment. This is why Bitcoin exists.

People are losing hope. They don't see opportunity. Governments, big tech, working together often are, you know, closing in on us and taking away our opportunity and sovereignty to live our lives. And Bitcoin was made for this moment. I think the gold and silver runs specifically show that there is a lot of concern on the macro side. I think anyone who thinks there's not enough money to add purchasing power to Bitcoin, add price to Bitcoin, is out of their fucking mind when you see how gold has run, just straight up. But I will take my moment to focus on one specific use case and trend that I'm watching right now. And that's, I've been really, I've been just diving deep into this clawed bot,

Maltbot, open claw, viral trend that everyone's like getting excited about. And it's pretty fucking crazy. Like this idea of having basically like your own little personal soulless computer slave that does all these things for you. Can you give me the tour of VR on what that was? Like I, because I saw it pop up, but I don't know the full story of what those green caps were. It's very simple open source tooling that that open source tooling you have locally, right? And so you can give it all this different information.

All of that stays local to you. So you have like your little robot butler that's in your house running from, you know, ideally like a home server. A lot of people are buying Mac minis. I think it's a lot of what the vision of like a start nine has been since the beginning. And then you are able to connect it to a bunch of different aspects of your life, all different types of accounts. And then the back end is whatever LLM you want to use. So you can use like the top tier big tech LLMs.

Obviously they're going to get a bunch of your information if you're pinging them. But if you have a souped up local computer, you can also use a local LLM or you're self-hosting like an open source model. But the cool part here is like basically the agent is the UI, right? So then people, a lot of people are connecting to telegram. I use signal specifically for myself, but you connected to like your chat of choice. I message, signal, telegram, Slack, Discord. And then you're communicating with it via text or voice notes. Like I really like doing voice notes.

You like send it a voice note, like do this thing for me. And there's an interesting aspect here. First of all, the agent, right, the robot, the soulless robot, the solace robot's slave is the UI, right? The UI, like the idea of point and click is it's, it maybe it's not over yet, but it will be over. It's not going to be point and click. It's going to be your talking to your robot assistant and it's going to do things. So you're going to book flights and set up, you know, business reports and shit like that. Do your taxes. But then the second and, and what's cool about this is for the longest time, right, you have, you know, different services and stuff will offer

APIs, that's the easiest way for robots to communicate with each other, for software to communicate with each other. But what's interesting here is it's kind of like Elon's vision of like the first set of robots need to be humanoid because otherwise we need to retrofit all the warehouses. Like this model is really interesting because you don't actually need an API. It's better if you have API keys for what you want to use it with. But you can also just be like, log into this service. Log into Delta.

Here's my username and password and book my fucking flight. And Delta doesn't have to actually change anything on their side. for the agent to actually use this thing. But on that note, to get the full usefulness out of it, there's all the, like, there's blockers everywhere. It's like you're like constantly trying to gain access to this service. And then it's like, are you a robot? And it's like, it is a robot.

Oh, how do I get around that or like, oh, we need to K.YC you. So add your credit card information to do this, do that. And this is where open protocols like Bitcoin really, really fucking shine. So what I think is going to happen on that front is I think, think we're moving there and we're moving there at an accelerated pace. And I think probably what's going to happen is big tech specifically is going to try and pigeonhole stable coins into it, USD tokens into it all. Like it's just strictly better. Like you're not going to the whole credit card scheme is just fucking insane in a robot world. It just does not work. And they'll

move to stable coins first. You know, there's a bunch of rent seeking that can be done on top of stable coins. Tether is one of the most valuable. companies in the world by just holding treasuries and not giving that interest back to users. And users don't ask for the interest because they're providing significant utility to them. So we'll start with stable coins. All the big tech, we already see all the big tech companies all releasing their own stable coins or like partnering with Circle, the American stable coin, even though Tethers absolutely dominating them.

And then eventually, I think it moves to Bitcoin because what happens is that's still centralized. It'll get frozen. There'll be all these different bureaucratic bullshit that they're going to have to deal with because it's centralized. And Bitcoin was made for that moment. And I think, you know, if I'm going to go full bullish, like I don't think this is just bullish for Bitcoin. Like there's a path here where all of a sudden all sorts of freedom oriented software, right? Guy was talking about pair drive. Obviously, I've been heavily focused on Noster, become the actual lower friction way.

of people using these tools. Like they actually, the most bullish outcome would be if people using Freedom Tech have an advantage over those that don't. Because historically, it's been the exact opposite. And specifically in this AI wave up until now, it has been the opposite. It's like if you sign up to Chad TPT, do a full docs and upload all your life to it and just let Sam Altman see all of your data, like you have an advantage over. the human that doesn't do that. At least you have a short-term advantage over the human that

doesn't do that. And if that's the case, then you're not going to see that many people adopt their freedom tools. But if the freedom tools give you more capability and less friction and they're easier to use, then people will use them and they'll get freedom as a side effect. And I, I'm not saying it's the most likely outcome, but it's it's more likely in my mind than it's ever been in the past like it's it's kind of like a paradigm shift type of moment that I last the last time I really felt that was when I found Bitcoin in the first place I love that that's super interesting I'm wondering so I find that I have so little time to dive into the AI side of things that I feel hideously unaware of even what tools are available to me so like

It, you know, have you guys been dicking around with this already? Like, what's the lowest hanging fruit? What should I be trying on? I have, uh, I got my bot right now is, uh, trading on Ellen markets. Is it? Which is probably going to be a horrible idea, but, uh, he's in a competition with Marty's bot. Marty's bot's currently winning right now. But like, I, that like, like, obviously like Ellen markets is centralized, right?

But they have no K.C and they use Bitcoin as a standard. And then all of a sudden, you mix all, these pieces together and that's where I to me like the light really starts to go off. I connected mine to ppq.a.i they have an API and I connected mine to that one today and gave it a budget and with PPQ it's run by a Matt Allborg and they take lightning and you can connect to basically any model that you want. So I basically said like, know, here's your budget. And one of the first things we did, I was like, why don't you go pick out like a good image

model and or maybe even just try a bunch of different ones. Try to make sure you spend less than like a buck 50, you know, maybe $2 or whatever up there. But get me a good profile image for you. And it was like, oh, this is great. I'm going to play around with this a lot. There's so many tools here. And I was like, he was like, what kind of thing do you want? And he gave me like five different examples of like style or whatever.

I was like, just give me four examples, five examples of every one of them. Just literally just go to town, have fun and see what happens. And like I got like 24 examples for like profile images. And then I just picked one. And, uh, but I managed to get this up and running while I was at plan B. I got the computer before I left. And then I was rust desking in to like try to get everything set up. Um, but it's like, it's crazy useful.

like immediately I'm super disorganized when it comes to like calendar and email and like that sort of stuff and the reason I got you don't have to get a Mac Mini but like I want to isolate this thing because it's like it's got pseudo access it's got you know like you can just give it full reign of a computer and like it's a bit of a security nightmare just a little bit of a security nightmare um and so I'm making it all of its own accounts I'm pushing the email to it because I already read a story about somebody who accidentally deleted their entire email because they like RM dash RF like in like a command. And so like it doesn't have right access to anything.

It just has read access to all of its stuff and I just push it stuff, which actually makes it really useful to PerDrive because I can just push files and that sort of stuff to it too. And which by the way, Odell, PerDrive uses Noster. So Noster is the idea. Yeah, I know. Well, I saw the slide at least. Okay, okay. That's right.

Yeah, yeah. It uses Noster for identity, which makes a lot of sense to me. It makes it so much easier. I mean, we don't have to build stuff. Yeah, just the piece like, so what chat app are you using to communicate with your little robot slave? Telegram right now. Yeah, so that piece, right? I, it was so difficult to set up with Signal because signals a centralized service.

that is trying to keep robots out of it from using it. I had to create a burner phone number. There's a whole issue, right? Now, to me, there's just like a perfect use case for something like Keith. Right? It's like peer to peer to my robot. I don't have to, it whole punch handles everything.

You don't have to deal with it. So there's like all these different little pieces. Me and Jarvis are building a thing. Yeah, there's all these different little pieces where freedom tech actually is the easier option. Right? I mean, Telegram would probably be an exception here because it's actually exceedingly easy to set up telegram with it.

It's basically spyware and people shouldn't be using it. But there's all these different opportunities where freedom tech actually makes the tool much more powerful. And there's a piece here too, which I mean, I think should be pretty obvious to people. But like you can't use similar scientific with this. Like you have to actually use Bitcoin. This is a perfect example of a use case of Bitcoin that you cannot sell on Schwab. Like you have to actually go and figure out how to use real Bitcoin and spend it. Yeah.

I love that. Follow up for you, Matt. So the argument is the agents will use Bitcoin long term. I think that makes sense. And there's no K.YC. There's no friction. Yeah. Like whatever.

I think that makes sense. It feels like the advantage you were pointing at there. And let me know if you agree is you can just send dollars or Bitcoin out of your agent's account over Lightning Network. and the merchant receives Bitcoin. Yeah. Or the merchant receives dollars, meaning you don't have to do any push merchant adoption online.

The agent can ship dollars all over through Lightning Network, a lot of strike or whatever. Is that the argument, essentially? Yeah, but it's also not just robot to robot. Like, if I need to pay my robot for something or if he needs to give me the proceeds of something, like it needs to be Bitcoin. Like, you can't use a credit card for it.

You could use USD tokens for it. And that's probably where we'll see the first integrates. Yeah. But I think eventually like Bitcoin is, you know, Bitcoin fixes the third party risk that is, you know, at the core of the issue with USD tokens. And I think at scale we'll start to see, you know, that become more obvious in terms of seizures and freezing and uptime. You know, Bitcoin doesn't have the uptime issue.

I hope so, but defending big tech here, I think they have a strong hand because let's say it's USC, they're going to make that experience very easy to use inside their little box. Right. So for the median American, the only thing they need to use their agent for is out of the box through Stripe or whatever, right? And I think I think Bitcoin still ends up for the gray market. But the problem is, I think I think that could be the case if we lived in an environment where there was no regulatory burden. But I think the question, you know, and then you kind of have like free market banking

with a U.S. Treasury-backed free market banking. But I don't think regulators can keep their hands off of it. Like what happens when? I think we don't have that much time before regulation cracks down hard on stable coins. Yeah, exactly. Your robot has $5,000 in it and it gets frozen. You remember the early days of when we got involved with Bitcoin, And like the best advertisements was PayPal closing merchant accounts.

And that has taken a little bit of a backseat. Like they've been a little bit less aggressive about it, I think, recently because they've gone more in like the surveillance size. Like, oh, we'll track every $600 payment of Venmo. But I mean, I see it all the time. Like I, we live in a Venmo society now, right? We live in a Zell and Venmo based society. And, you know, I was trying to pay. a contractor who wanted

Zell and like Zell has a $2,000 limit through whatever my bank partnership is. It's like that is just especially in a high inflation environment. It's like not useful for a productive person. And like I Going to the grocery store. Yeah. The robot's going to be managing

tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars. And I just don't see regulators allowing that to happen in the controlled system. Like I just don't think that's going to be the play. But if it is, that would also be great, you know, for society. Like, if you could make an easy centralized $100,000 payment, that would get your funds frozen, that would be great. I just don't think that's going to be the So, I mean, as it pertains to all these systems, like, if what I'm getting at is,

will people be running this stuff themselves, though, like in terms of if there is any sort of centralized point that can be clamped down upon, like if you're using an AI, related service and you're not running your Mac Mini and you're not doing that like are there points what are I guess what are the most likely points of saying no you're not allowed to even accept this type of payment as as a business as an entity like is that type of stuff where they clamp down is that the pinch point related question can't you just have your agent you can I give my agent my credit card number and then they just you can you can Yeah.

But like, I just think the setup is not set up for robots. And if anything, it's trying to do the opposite. They're like constantly trying to stop robots from using their shit. I just think it's going to, yeah, maybe that's the first step. The first step is like, here's the problem with that. If I get the robot my Delta thing and it's just going to, it can just book flights with my saved credit card. And then what happens with fraud and chargebacks and all that shit? Like, how do you handle that decision?

I was about to say, is when you have AI bots and people are like able to send credit card payments or debit card payments like very quickly and AI is trying to do this at an insane pace to just like manage things. Like the the frog goes up so because you're you're letting bots in. You're letting bots in and this is what they have to stop. and the fraud's getting worse at like a couple of percent every single year. And like we're in like, I think it was like last year's like $8 billion or some psycho number of just like chargebacks and fraud payments. And that is only going to get worse. And when everybody's using agents, like you can't get paid. You can't, you can't a normal person like me, like if I was providing a service, I can't get paid credit cards and debit cards sustainably with like my boss.

Like that's just never going to happen. Um, and you fat finger at once. You say, I didn't say buy three tickets. I said buy 300 tickets. Whoops. Right. Yeah. And then just, and then just what do I, how would I personally deal with chargebacks?

You know, I'm going to have a business account like and I'm going to have, I'm going to have to, you know, do a honey book or whatever service or stripe or something like that. And then I got like all these fees and this setup and stuff. Or I could literally just download. be like Jarvis install Breeze SDK and and just like have an address you know like I'm not I've done all those other things and I'm still just not going to do it you know I mean like it and not not to mention that the cost and burden of sorting it out if I did because I think it was I can't remember who it was um oh my god but he was doing a point of sale thing and he was integrating Bitcoin or whatnot.

And he hadn't even thought it. He talked about it and sold like, oh yeah, and there's no chargebacks and all this stuff. But they have like this big system and this management thing where they deal with like something like 10% of their like payments and stuff. They have a whole apparatus for dealing with chargebacks and like fraud payments. And then he just had this moment where he just like stopped when he was like really deep into this.

And he was like the whole. whole side of like our Bitcoin and Lightning like this just doesn't even exist. Like we've built an entire structure of a system to deal with this on the Fiat side. And it's a nightmare and it still costs us a fortune always because we get paid. And 18 days later, 18 days later it's taken back. And and he was like. No, I know. I know.

Yeah. It just, it's so wild. And when. It's just, it's just. not sustainable. It's just not sustainable. It hasn't been for a long time. And when you can have when I my Jarvis can do a capture, you know, uh, and I think that's going to cascade against them. I just, I think the percentage of it just keeps going up and up. And like all our information is out there too. And it's going to be so much easier to harvest. Um, like the friction is just

going to be astronomical. Strike one comment there if I can then strike put out their annual report like what do we about what are our problems. Number one is payment fraud. That's true. I don't know if it's our number one problem at swan, but we have a whole team dedicated dealing with this at swan, charge back on accident or a hundred people from an Eastern European country create swan accounts, six, they season them for six months, act like normal users, then a hundred people get activated immediately and they all charge back and we don't find out for 30 days, you know. And so massive costs, right but i don't know if you can like what does that mean that means that the businesses who have to

deal with charge back increase their prices you know what i mean so i don't think it stops dollars or credit or whatever like deferred settlement payments on AI rails they just find a way to build that cost into it right and i'm on team final settlement with bitcoin no question but i'm just thinking from the masses point of view. And I think a company like Stripe could just make them the, they'll be the API back end for your chat bot and they'll have approved vendors, which they're already building. And so money moves final settlement in the Stripe network. If you go out of Stripe Network, then you're using ACH, but everything's cleared inside the

Stripe Network, right? I mean, to be clear, like, I think that's where we start. Yeah. And I think USD tokens get mixed in as we go further down the adoption curve. But to be clear here, like, yeah, I mean, there's going to be millions, if not billions of people that use, like, the cucked, controlled version of what we're talking about here. But if you want your robot to have superpowers, then you're going to send them a Bitcoin transaction. And you're going to say, go pay for the services that you need and get this shit done. and make no mistakes, and I don't want to deal with it.

You're going to deal with all of that. And then when you have proceeds, you're going to send me back the proceeds of Bitcoin, and we're not going to deal with any of the traditional banking system. And that person will have an advantage over those who don't do that. And that is a flip of the script, because historically, those of us have chose the freedom-oriented path have had a disadvantage in a lot of situations. Yeah. And I think also when you actually have the capability to use, like, freedom-oriented

technology where you're not paying for a platform fee and you can just accept you can just accept Bitcoin directly, Bitcoin and Lightning, and you know, you're on Noster or whatever. Like that friction, Brandon, just like you said, that friction is going to increase. The chargebacks are going to increase and the prices are going to increase. And then at the exact same time as the general price is going to increase. So our platform fees for having to do more KYC for having to scan everybody's stupid face. So it's going to take them 20 minutes to make an account and then wait two days for approval just to get through the door and start. And then they're also going to have everything is going to be more expensive on the on the inside. And they're only going to be able to go to

approved vendors and stuff. But when you're 14 and you want to do something cool on the internet and you just want to, you just want to make it work or whatever. Like what happens when when the competitor is on an open network and it and it is a bootstra it's a feedback process obviously like it takes a lot of time you own board people into the crappy like controlled but then they get a little touch of bitcoin um and then what's the price when you don't have the platform fee when you don't have the charge back risk when you can just set it up in seconds you just you just have an address you just have a have a public key that somebody can pay to um and how quickly when there doesn't have to be success for very many people in that world to be really really enticing about joining it

um and we are definitely in a space where things move incredibly quickly claw bot odell has one marty has one i have one this shit's like three weeks old It's changed its name three times, you know? Like it's literally, it's like three or four weeks old. And it's like we're hit a million or more of people who have implemented and done this. And Ryan Gentry was sitting with him in the, we ended up taking our Uber to the plan B together. We just bumped in each other at the airport. And we were talking about exactly that because I was in the middle of setting it up when when I was chatting with him.

And he was like, dude, this might be like, because you, you implement. implement you give it these skills or whatever is like this could probably be like I want to see somebody do this and maybe we'll do this of like managing lightning and bitcoin like with the with the agent is like to develop a skill is it like well you don't have to think about this stuff like here's here's the key we do a remote sign that you sign the stuff you just approve it and nothing happens without your signature you can configure gateway to not even allow communication with about a signature. And then otherwise it manages, it does liquidity. You just don't even think about the rest of it. It's going to simplify the interactions with things because your like software is probably going to become ethereal. Like it's not even going to become static software. Like software, like you'll, you'll use a different piece of software in the afternoon than you used in the morning just because you're modifying it as you use it. And Max was just on the show and he's, that probably the normal like number of people who are using a particular piece of

software will be one because a modifying software will become so easy and so ubiquitous that it won't it won't matter and that also suggests a massive push towards protocols because protocols will be the only things that are consistent enough to build software that changes every day on top of guy where do we get started do what where do I get started I need to I need to start playing around so like with people in the chat that are like, I don't, like, where do I even begin? What would you, what would you seed them with? You know, where?

I would test it out. I would test it out first with, like, you can run this on a raspberry pie. Like, well, I don't know. Maybe a little bit of a beefier computer, like just like a decent old laptop or something. Just treat it like a Bitcoin node, right? And then plug it into a centralized service. Plug it into Anthropic or I like Claude a lot because Claude has, a lot of personality.

And then download it. It's open claw now. It's like lobster is the icon. So that's its new name from a couple of days ago. And download it and install it. I had a couple of little minor headaches or whatever. And I think it was actually just because I had a new computer for it. And start playing around with it.

And just see if you can get it into. your workflow. Like if you can, like I said, create all of it's on accounts, set it up, go through. As soon as you get something with it working, you can just ask it how to do the rest of the stuff. That's what I did. And you literally like, you hit hurdles and you're like, well, fix it. Just fix the thing for me. And then it just goes and thinks for a while. And it's like, I think I fixed it. And then you tested it as like, you didn't fix it. Fix it now. It's crazy. But, but yeah, basically that. And then start, my favorite thing already, like immediately is it's already managing my calendar.

It's already managing my to-do list. And it's already managing like my ideal list. And I'm going to, because I can just have it organized stuff in projects that I have ongoing. And the way it deals with memories is constantly referencing like this tree of like relevance so that it's always talking to you in context of things that you've already been working on. I don't know how that scales, but supposedly it scales very, very big. And, but it's been really great in that. And in addition, is that, like, being, just being having to organize stuff and give it any sort of, like, I screenshot conversations from every different

venue or avenue or whatever than I'm doing of like, where's this or don't you don't forget. I screenshot it. You sent me the tech to the Twitter message about why are we bullish? I totally forgot about this. I screenshoted that conversation and dropped it in and said, please add this to the calendar and it added to calendar. And so like the capability of beginning to do to get used to it and think. about what it means to have an agent, like I now give it tasks before I go to sleep.

So to dig into stuff and I ask it for like a morning briefing. What am I missing? You know, what what should I be focusing on? What, what am I about to get a message back on like guy, where's this? You haven't talked in like five days. I thought we were going to do blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's it is a different kind of AI. It is a different kind of. It is a different kind of of AI. It's one of the first, like, real applications of AI that feels like it's the next level. And it's pretty wild. Yeah, I see, I just want to throw it out there because I see Winston hacks in the comments.

Like, just be very careful and deliberate about what information you give it and what accounts you give it access to. Like, you're giving this opaque software that is, that has super user access, a access to a bunch of things. So just be very careful. It's very early. It's very new. I just think this is a taste of what's to come. And I just want to just before we move on, like, it's not just the Bitcoin payments

side, which I think they, I think Bitcoin payments are perfect for this. And it's the first time that we really had a use case where Bitcoin payments are perfect, with very little tradeoffs there for it. But also like all the U.X issues, like, like Ben, like you're, you dedicated your life to to giving people two-hour tutorials on how to use Bitcoin tools. Like, we are going to be at the point where you can say, you know, set up a Fetiment instance, you know, and give me the configuration files and stuff. You don't watch these guys.

Yeah, the easy, yeah, it's going to, it's going to transcribe your video and then figure it out of fucking do it. But, especially in the beginning, but like, that's kind of crazy. Like the lightning node piece is the very, it seems like very near future. you know, you say set up a lightning node, tell me how I connected to Zeus on my phone. Yeah. And it'll give you step by step like, okay, here's how to set it up. It's like, okay.

I might just do it tomorrow to make sure my liquidity is good. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah, I'm pretty stoked. I'm, I got to get playing around. But yes, I will as guy, you said, set up segregated accounts and all that kind of stuff. I got to get it. I think I'm going to segregate it.

I think I'm going to isolate her in my network, too, just like tell. the Mac address that it can't talk to other devices on the network. There's a lot of edge cases where it could be a fucking disaster. Yeah. Especially with like everybody like exposing their API. Like don't give it. Don't send it to Maltbook or any of that crap. Oh my God.

Just keep it. It works great. It's just like connected to your cloud account right there in your home on your computer. Don't go wild connected with every damn thing in the world. You see this story? Just having a computer. Just having a computer and using software.

It's wild. someone gave there was a story out there that someone gave root iMessage access to his main I message to his bot and it just started responding to his wife his wife just flipped out on him

and like that's a perfect example like you don't really be careful what you give it access yeah yeah all of a sudden his wife is actually happy in the marriage bot starts caring you're such a good listener

amazing All right. So gentlemen, I'm going to switch gears. Brandon, we still need to find out why you are bullish or not. But I'm going to say one last quick shout out to sponsors. We'll be back in just a moment. Also, I just wanted to say on the side, you can sure tell it's for sure a bear market because the comment section is spicy. It doesn't matter what is said. It's like there's some dude apparently with 50 years of market experience. Bitcoin has no use case. and silver only. There's people that like, apparently O'Dell, you may be a court hard. I guess there's all kinds of, all kinds of stuff, bunch of people, these guys have no idea about Bitcoin price. This is the Bitcoin I love.

Everybody hates everything, Bitcoin. But everybody's still here. Everybody's trying to time in the chat to yell at each other. So it's, we're definitely, we've made it gentlemen, we've made it. We'll be back in just a month. moment. Looking for a simple and secure way to manage your Bitcoin on mobile, Aqua Wallet has you covered. It's user-friendly and puts you in full control of your Bitcoin with secure self-custody. Aqua also supports lightning and liquid network, making fast, cheap Bitcoin payments and asset

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or simply scan the QR code on the screen. All right, back in. Mr. Quidam, the floor shall be yours, and we want to find out why you, if you still are, are bullish. All right, guys, here we go. So set up. Am I bullish? I don't know if I'm bullish. Let's set it up. We're in the fourth turning right now.

Give a quick background there. It's the crisis period. I'm not going to go deep, but go read my essay. Go listen to 9,000 podcasts on the topic. But the TLDR is looking over American history over, let's say, 500 years. The authors noticed a pattern every 80 to 90 years, roughly. We go through a crisis period. Institutions decay, lose trust in the system.

Economic equality hits all the time high. Young people look for alternatives. Right. We all feel this. Previous forturning World War II before that Civil War, before that Revolutionary War, I think it's pretty obvious. We're in the depths of that right now. hopefully we don't end up in total war, but we're batting a thousand so far.

Not great. So how am I bullish on this? Feels like we're approaching the climax of the fourth turning. Timing, tough to say, I mean, several years, I would say, within five years, maybe within two years. And I've got a three and a half-year-old son upstairs who just got home from swimming lessons. And I would be really happy if in 10 and 15 years, he's, becomes an adult in a much better world. And so let's dig in just a little deeper here.

In my opinion, the current path of America right now is entirely unsustainable. Everything's fucked. And so how do we get out of that? We have to experience more pain. Why? Because humans don't act until the last possible moment when the pain hits all time high. And then we hurry up and rewrite the rules, redo the institutions. And so I think that's the only way to improve things is to go through it. Insert Warren Churchill quote, if you like. But I am bullish that America will get their shit together again because we've done it before. And I think there is, there's greener pastures on the other side here. Fawn historical anecdote in 1787 after the constitutional convention in Philly, Benjamin Franklin walks out and some reporter or someone was like,

what happened? How did it go? And, you know, what did you guys make? And he said, a republic if you can keep it right so that's ogy american values ben franklin had the wisdom to say we created a republic with a power structure that we believe will last but the if you keep it part that's the key here which means it will degrade over time and it requires us to go through hard times to hopefully reinvigorate the o g american values now it's not guaranteed um there's a world where we slip into a dystopian techno state a la china i've got more faith in american than that but there is a chance and what does it mean like it means we have to create we have to literally reimagine what the american republic will be what is the fourth implementation before of this thing is it won't be the same

but we can take what we've learned modernize it blah blah blah and see how close we can get to that and so i'm hoping for something like a return to property rights separation of powers, federalism, we actually care about markets, get all the pedophiles out, actually make stuff in America. Woodchipper first. Woodchipper first, first defense, 100% compliance woodchippers on every block. And also less foreign interventionalism, right? That's all American Empire stuff.

Doesn't do anything good for us. And yeah, there's a lot of presidents in America, especially the OG. who said foreign affairs should be about setting up safety here and economics. And I think that's the right direction. Localize regionally, we can get everything we need from regional partners, no more credit card wars, only economic arrangements. And I think that's a good world. And I also think that there's nothing more American than Apple Pie and Bitcoin.

And so I think Bitcoin plays a role here, that the values are essentially American values, OG American values. And I do believe that we will figure this out eventually. And that could be something like OG American values, Bitcoin at the center of global finance, hopefully return to strong families and literal fundamentals. It's preaching the choir in the Bitcoin world there. But you had all that stuff up. I'm bullish.

Timeline pretty long. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. But your mention of Benjamin Franklin makes me think of the MaidX that I've got behind me on the wall here. It's one of my favorites. Mr. Franklin there, ready to defend that Republic. So anyway, showed up MaidX. But, yeah, I mean, it definitely feels it's hard for turning vibes right now.

Like, it's just every day, you look at the news and you're like, holy geez. And it's really difficult to talk to anyone with any degree of nuance on anything. You get shouted out of a, like, I mean, I was at, maybe I won't ghost like super detailed, but I was at, I was at like a social gathering. And there's a person that I typically thought of as very well spoken. you know, very, usually the person that I would consider it to be the most reasonable, willing to have a good debate, but also will try to settle the argument with his best efforts in terms of presenting a better case for something.

And I watched him shout somebody out of the room for having a different opinion. I literally kicked somebody out of the fucking house. it was pretty wild and it completely changed my opinion on that person but like I think it's just a sign of the times and uh I think was it Bitcoin related or just just no this was like politics related but like really mundane kind of in my opinion mundane politics and yeah I think I personally am exhausted about that kind of stuff it's just it's so tiring um I'm really sick of the on both ends of the political spectrum the the constant bickering but again it's very kind of reflective of where we're sitting i think but solid boy if anybody uh watching hasn't read

the fourth turning it's pretty interesting for sure so mandibles then bitcoin standard yes all of those i think look i mean i think brandon's timelines are probably about right like it's going to we're not it's not peak yet i think marty on uh my show rabbitel recap called peak clown world in like 2021 um and i think calling peak right now would probably and i don't i'm not saying brandon's calling peak right now but i think it would be equivalent to calling it in 2021 like i think it gets unfortunately significantly worse before it gets better i hope that's not the case um but that's how i'm pegging it right now yeah let's go back to the 30s for a second. So essentially the same parallel, same period of the fourth turning as we are

and now, it was popular for young people to say, wait a minute, capitalism doesn't work. Look what happened. We got to find an alternative. And so all the coastal elites, as we call them now, they were all socialists, communists. And it was a popular thing then, right? They brought marginal tax rates like to 90%, deficit spending, all this stuff that's previously unimaginable. It all comes out. And And on your point, Ben, I feel that social division massively. Everyone does. There's no way to avoid that. And I think that's a natural consequence of the forth-turning conditions because we finally

look around and say, everything's fucked. And we have to do something about it. And in order to do hard things, you have to band together and make sacrifice. And along that path, you end up saying, well, if you're not with us, you're against us. And we dig our heels in. And we all believe it's existential. So it should just be political philosophy differences in who gives a shit. You're my neighbor.

You can borrow my leaf blower. But instead, he's got a sign in his front yard that I disagree with or vice versa. And that feels like my enemy. And so. The wilder thing, though, which I don't think anyone really knows how it plays out, is like how social media and digital connectiveness changes all of that. this and amplifies it. I mean, people like, you used to get into, you know, maybe like if you look at historical

references, like you'd get into a fight with someone at work or maybe at the local church or the local grocery store or something. Now people are like trying to get teachers fired that like live in a different country than them. So it's a pretty wild combination. And in a lot of ways, it accelerates things. in a lot of ways it exaggerates things. It makes things more severe.

So it should be interesting to see how that plays out. I don't pretend to know how that plays out. But I think everyone is discounting it because we just haven't been in that situation before. Yeah. I think just when you think about it in the context of like where we are politically, like the reason you're at your neighbor's throat

is because everybody's aware of it whether or not like like your political the political world is what determines whether or not you succeed or fail is that it becomes in control of everything whether or not you have health care whether or not you have like a good income whether or not you're the owner of a daycare that serves zero children and makes millions of dollars or you're paying 30% in taxes and barely squeezing by and paying $5,000 a month in child care while you're both working your ass off and you don't even get to raise your kids. it like like and when that becomes the center of every major decision it does feel like you have to kill your neighbor for things to get better because the political system is either making or destroying

your life um and like it's weird we're definitely there we're definitely there and unfortunately that means the violence probably gets worse did i i i posted. I don't know why. I had opened for some godforsaken reason. I had clicked on Facebook in the first time and I don't know how long. And it opened and I saw like a bunch of like broad stroke. If you if you if you vote this way or whatever, you are the following thing. And so I was like, you know, it would be nice. If somebody said a thing. that wasn't a if you're this person i hate you and so i just said i said something to the tune of like you know i prefer these policies but also i think it's totally okay if you prefer these other policies i can

absolutely still be friends with you and the first comment was this unhinged tirade of like what a fucking asshole i was it was just it went on and i was like oh my god love it would of get no more facebook ever it was it was wild that place is crazy oh it is crazy it's weird how all the social medias have their own personality facebook is literal nuts like facebook is like my my old social circles yeah i i go on there i'm like oh this is all pre-bitcoin people and uh and it shows what's the mass psychosis thing like that is that is facebook but facebook is the mass psychosis corner of the social media world yeah yeah my although my ex feed now also is is pepper because the the albera thing is spicy and so there's you know

everybody i you know i i would be super happy to leave um i i big on more local governance i think it makes, you know, it more accurately reflects the population, the, you know, more granular you get. Less efficient, but more representative of the people there. And other people are just like, you bunch of fucking Nazi bigoted. Like, it's just, you're the worst person ever if you just aren't a fan of a large, overreaching federal government. It's pretty wild. So, yeah, I'm feeling it. All right, I got to comment on Matt's, I think, really strong point on the fact that we're all online being a difference.

It's absolutely true. Everyone is sucked in. We're all doom scrolling. And, you know, the differences on either side are exaggerated then. And then we're all fighting this imaginary boss, which is the most extreme video on your X feed. And then you say, well, everyone on the other team is that. And so, yeah, we're all wrapped up in it. Okay.

Let's throw some other data here before I wraps up. Roughly 30% of Americans that were polled in whatever poll believe that they should secede from the federal government. 25 to 30% of Americans, as if I think last year, believe that violence is okay to push your politics. Trust in institutions, all time low since we've ever measured it over 100 years. One more. This one's for you guys. What percentage of marriages in 2024, I think it was 2024, were between. a Democrat and a Republican.

Less than one. It's got to be single digits somewhere. You guys are too smart. Yeah, 4%. Holy shit. That's actually surprising. We're going to be 25 members go out. Surprisingly high. I'm optimistic now. I just could not imagine it was.

Now Guy is mathing out how far from the fourth turning, from the climax we truly are. Oh, man, we got like seven years left at least. Yeah. But honestly, you add all that up and then you look at the battlegrounds being drawn in Minneapolis and other states and Mondania and wealth tax. It's not hard to draw even, not even an exponential line, draw a straight line forward. Fast forward 24 months from now.

Yeah. Like, it's a Tinderbox here. And all the desperation among the majority of people, if your backs against the wall, you do crazy stuff. So yeah, not into it. Yeah. Wild. Well, gentlemen, I'm conscious of time.

Also, I've got some dadding to do. I've got a daughter with a hip-hop class that I get to go and watch tonight. So, yeah. So in line with the whole what do you do during? a bare market, stuff like that, right? You enjoy your family. You do things that are interesting, build your skill set, and you stay put, you keep on, you know, as O'Dell coined, stack hats, stay humble, all the good things. But, you know, don't dwell online, have a fun life, have good relationships, and make yourself a better person as you can. But outside of that,

gentlemen i'll go around really quick uh anything you want to finish with and anything you want to point people towards uh that may be a value to them so brandon i'll start with you you know ben i think you stole my wrap up from the last time i was on i'm going to go check my notes afterwards almost verbatim so i don't have much else to add but ben is right um our central nervous system our Mitsu is not designed for these conditions. So if you feel bad, stop all that. Go back to the fundamentals. Turn off the internet. No more doom scrolling. Friends, family, positive relationships, eat healthy, sleep, sunshine. Like, that's all you need. And your life will be immeasurably better if you just focus on that. And so nothing else to add Ben other than cosign. Amazing. Odell,

how about yourself? First of all, I just want to say, like, it's kind of crazy the amount of shit we've all been through together. And it's cool that we're all like going through this like father chapter in our lives at the same time. It's an honor and a privilege. It feels like a blessing. I'm very grateful for that. But look, guys, just don't get shaken out. It's a story as old as Bitcoin.

Focus on what matters. relationships, family, friends, first, almost. But focus on what matters, improve your skills. Skills make a man. Responsibility makes a man. Improve your skills. Learn how to use real Bitcoin. It's easy.

It's way easier than you think it is. And stack as much as fucking possible. Don't take your foot off the fucking gas. This is where it matters the most. And with chaos comes opportunity. So I seize it. Hell yeah. Mr. Swan, to conclude your 15th appearance on why are we bullish, do you have any parting words for us?

Oh, pressure. Not going to do something good. So I would say don't forget what Bitcoin is and how important and large it will have to be to accomplish. what it's designed to accomplish. You know, especially in the context of like, you know, volatility, like gold is almost three X since the beginning of 2024. And that shit is a $35 trillion market cap right now. Bitcoin is 1.5.

Like, we still have a long way to go. And gold is not where Bitcoin stops if Bitcoin is what Bitcoin is, what we think Bitcoin is. And I think we're going through a, there's so much political turmoil, there's so much uncertainty, people run to trust, people run to familiar. And Bitcoin is not familiar and it's also not the shiny new thing right now. So this, I think, is just an awkward teenager stage for Bitcoin and we're still trying to realize this infrastructure. We're still trying to make all of its tools work for all the people. They were having a huge technological shift. There's shiny new things to look at somewhere else.

And we've opened up into a lot of new liquidity, and people have been exiting a five to seven year position because it's done really well. And so we are just in a weird spot with Bitcoin. And it always feels like hell when you get to these little zones. I've done this a lot of times now in Bitcoin. and I remember multiple times in the worst of the worst when things felt awful, I made the wrong decision. I sold some. I remember there was one time where I got caught in a really bad spot and I thought I was going

to be able to turn back around and buy it back and I didn't. And I ended up having to sell like a Bitcoin and a half at $16,000 just before it turned around like that the dumpiest of the dump zone. And I completely missed my ability to get the equity out, but I thought I was going to buy back in. And it hurts so bad. It hurts so bad to think that I could have just, I could have just held on for another couple of months, not been so, I have to do it right now.

And to remember that how you feel is not the reality. You know, how you feel is the result. It's the, it's the lagging indicator, not the leading. And also, I would. not only with Brandon's thing is like go out and you know be outside be with your kids um but I'll say another thing is build vibe coding is so much fun I genuinely think vibe coding has solved my social media addiction because I just want to build stuff I sat down last night in the bed and was like waiting to I was like trying to watch a little bit of something before

bed or like maybe I was going to scroll through social media and I did both for just like five or eight minutes I was just like looking and I was just like this sucks this sucks I want to I want to do something I was still like amped up and end up vibe coding for like three and a half hours until like one o'clock in the morning um like we are in a time where you have the capability to build stuff easier than we have ever been able to build we have so much groundwork with the protocols that other people have built so that you can just front end a front-in Lego block a bunch of crap together, where the security and a lot of the other heart,

heavy lifting has already been done. And you can just make things that you want. You can just make things that you wish existed. And there's no better time than high uncertainty, loss and trust in the establishment, political turmoil, crazy things. Everything's up in the air to be building something. that you think is really cool.

And plug some Bitcoin into it and see what happens. Because I think we're gonna brute force our way to a better world. Nice. I like that. That should be a T-shirt. Brute force your way to a better world. Amazing.

Gentlemen, huge thank you. Everyone, please do go check out these gentlemen. Odell over on Nostra. Although bought Odell is back on X, So make sure you give him a follow too. Sound advice, always coming out of that account. But yeah, go check out all these guys. And, of course, thank you guys for being here.

And yeah, thanks for being part of the second to last. Why are we bullish? Again, make sure you guys tune in on the 18th to see what's going to be in its stead. Odell, Brandon, Guy Swan. Thank you guys so much. Have a great evening. Thank you. Later, boss.

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