BTC Sessions - Who Really Controls the Iran War | Krainer & Dixon

Episode Date: May 7, 2026

Mentor Sessions Ep. 068: Who Really Controls When the Iran War Ends, Why the World Will Be Unrecognizable in Just 3-5 Years, and How Trump Is Long Bitcoin While Asset Stripping America | Alex Krainer & Simon DixonThe Iran conflict isn't just a military standoff — it's a financial and geopolitical operation with specific power players steering the outcome. Alex Krainer and Simon Dixon name them. In this conversation, Alex Krainer and Simon Dixon break down the hidden architecture behind the Iran war in 2026 — who controls its escalation, who benefits from its continuation, and why the official narrative misses the real story. You'll learn which financial and geopolitical factions have the most to gain from prolonged conflict, why the war's end date is not determined by military outcomes, and how this connects to the broader global monetary reset both guests have been tracking for years. You'll also see why Simon Dixon argues this is fundamentally a financial operation dressed as a military one — and what that means for Bitcoin as a neutral reserve asset in a world fracturing along these fault lines. ⏱️ Timestamps:0:00 – Intro 1:07 – Who ultimately controls when the Iran war ends 1:37 – Alex Krainer frames the conflict's true nature 9:59 – The financial powers driving the Iran operation 11:16 – Simon Dixon on the monetary reset connection 22:24 – Which faction benefits most from prolonged conflict 29:33 – Why the media narrative misses the real story 35:26 – The Iran timeline nobody is discussing in 2026 55:56 – What escalation means for Bitcoin and hard assets 1:07:10 – How this conflict ends — and who decides 1:26:48 – Final takes from Krainer and Dixon🔗 Links & Resources:• Alex Krainer on X: https://x.com/NakedHedgie• Simon Dixon on X: https://x.com/SimonDixonTwitt Bitcoin + Privacy + Security: https://btcmentor.io/untouchable-bitcoiner/Bitcoin Survival Workshop: https://btcmentor.io/bitcoin-survival-workshop-2026/📌 Previous Episodes: Mike Green and Jeffrey Tucker → https://youtu.be/kACxpQdbab4⚡ 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: @GaryLeeNYC#Bitcoin #BTC #BTCSessions #AlexKrainer #SimonDixon #IranWar #BitcoinGeopolitics #MonetaryReset #BitcoinHardAsset #GlobalConflict2026 #Geopolitics #BRICS #Petrodollar #FinancialReset #DeDollarization #IranConflict #Macro #BitcoinNews

Who ultimately controls when the war in Iran actually ends? I understand the current conflict as a conflict between two systems of governance. On the one side, you have the Western colonial powers. On the other side, you have everybody else. War doesn't end until one side is completely defeated. I see theatrics. I see coordinated demolition of strategic targets. Everything he's saying is MAGA is a strategic weakening of the dollar in a managed transition,

just like the British Empire did. Trump doesn't work for America. Look at his backers. He's long Bitcoin and short dollar. He's just asset stripping. And if it takes assassinating the president, they'll assassinate the president. No problem.

You've all got three to five years until we enter a world that we can't recognize. All right, good morning, gentlemen. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today. Very excited to have this conversation because there seems to be a lot of overlap in your worldviews, particularly with regards to the war in Iran. Things like financial,

motivation and deception, economic pain for Europe, and this shift to a multipolar world. So I really want to dive in and explore the nuanced differences in what you guys are seeing. To begin, Alex, who or what ultimately controls when and on what terms the war in Iran actually ends? Oh, that's a lot of questions. Well, Nathan, I don't really know. I mean, I understand the current conflict as a conflict between two systems. of governance. And on the one side, you have the Western colonial powers, basically. And on the other side, you have everybody else, including the domestic populations of those colonial powers.

I think it's part, the dynamics of events as they enroll, partly it's a question of opportunity and then even financial risks. You know, that often, dictates the timing of wars and similar emergencies. Example, my understanding, and this is according to WHO whistleblower, was that the pandemic that we had a few years ago was planned for 2050. Then they brought it forward to 2030, then they launched it in 2020. Why did they launch it at 2020? Because in 2019, we had the Repogedden crisis.

We had the repo crisis. The central bankers that met in Jackson Hole in September of 2019, it all came out looking pasty pale, and they understood that something was disintegrating in the financial system. So they needed a massive emergency that would create, a new normal that would distract people, burden them with new problems, while they basically launched the largest bank bailout ever in the history of the Milky Way galaxy. So that's the pressures. There's also opportunities if they perceive some place, some region, you know,

or a nation as being in a crisis, their government is made. maybe wobbly, you know, good target for destabilization, that they might move on that dynamic. And the rest is, I think, responding to events as they occur. I think that with respect to war against Iran, I think maybe it was Israeli priorities, more narrowly Netanyahu's priorities. You know, he can't, his government can't go on. That whole country can't go on without wars. And so Trump brought some kind of a piece

that was meant to hold between Israel and Gaza and by extension Lebanon. The United States took a much more active role in Syria, so, you know, Israel couldn't just willy-nilly go and bomb and do whatever they wanted when they wanted it. So they needed a new front. And I think that Israel has been a target for the last 25 years, at least, you know, at least from what we know from Wesley Clark. And so now may have seemed like a good time. Trump also has the midterm elections as a priority. So a very quick, effective war and a victory in the Middle East.

would have presumably served him well. Of course, didn't end up going that way. But basically, those are, I think, the consideration at the political level. At a higher level, I think, that the war doesn't end until one side is completely defeated in this clash of two systems of governance. So we now have, let's say, the Western Empire, which is on the one side of that fault line, opposed to three major powers, which is Russia, Iran and China. And I think that once you understand the dynamic of what makes this neocolonial imperialistic system of governance tick, you realize that they never stop. They cannot stop. Their system requires fresh new collateral all the time. And so the conquest must go on and the conquest means,

you know, conquest of new colonies basically. And that means that they have to remove obstacles to their hegemony. And the obstacle is any regional power that can, you know, declare their own sphere of influence and say, no, thank you. We will not succumb to your dictat. We will defend our sphere of influence and we will not allow you to come into it. So then it has to be eliminated. And, you know, it doesn't matter if the wars are completely stupid. If there's a 100% probability that the war will be lost, the war will still happen. Best example is this war against Iran.

Just about everybody knew that it was not winnable. This is why, you know, Wesley Clark, when he made his famous speech about taking down seven countries in five years, That was, the time frame for that was within 2006, which means that Iran, who was on the list of those seven countries, was due for a regime change within 2006. Here we are 20 years later. Attack on Iran didn't happen until Trump, unfortunately. And so I think it's, altogether, it's unpredictable. What we can predict is probably that the wars will continue. interesting so just before i go to you simon just to clarify um Alex in your view then is this more like

we're looking at a a chaotic situation where everyone is reacting because the nature of the system requires it to go and seek more collateral to continue these wars that it's not really driven by some sort of underlying will say plans or motivations it's just the incentive structures of the existing system well yeah it's the incentive structure you know and then what we get is the narrative so uh you know saddam hussein had weapons of destruction, terrible danger, had to be eliminated. Mama Gaddafi was a madman killing his own people, had to be eliminated. Bashar al-Assad was a madman, killing his own people, had to be eliminated.

If you go back farther, Salvador, yeah, there was a communist, you know, there was a risk of domino effect in South America, had to be eliminated. So those are the narratives, and now in Iran is the nuclear program or is the ballistic programs or is the women's rights or whatever. Those are narratives that are calculated to generate consent for war or at the very least acquiescence. So the large segment of the public says, like, yeah, yeah, these Iranians are terrible people. So, you know, we don't want war, but world will be a better place if we eliminated and bring democracy and freedom to the Iranian people.

And so that's how it rolls, but it continues to roll. And every time they pick a target and decide to go to war and take them down, they also contrive these narratives that will. And then, you know, sadly, a lot of people still fall for them. You know, the debate is about, you know, like the nuclear program and women's rights and all of this. And some people just clearly buy it. And, you know, then when the next war, we're wrong.

rolls around, they'll buy the next narrative, whatever it happens to be. Beautiful. And last quick question, too, just I want to make sure to get clarification on it. You mentioned COVID in the pandemic, and that was a response to we had the repo crisis and kind of financial, constraints and problems in the financial plumbing. Was there a financial issue that led to the launch of the war in Iran currently, or was it purely just they saw the opportunity and they made the move? Yeah, well, I think so, even though it, you know, the banker are very careful not to reveal their problems.

You know, everything is always awesome. They always pass their stress tests with flying colors and so forth. But we do know that both the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve have started again, participated in the repo markets, which means that the system is broken. Basically, that's what it means. It means that at least one or more of the large financial institutions in the systems, in the system are broken. And unless the government steps in,

that is, unless the federal, the central bank steps in as the buyer of last resort in the, in the repo markets, the system might crash, it might freeze up. It might completely interrupt the payment systems.

And you get, you get an economic crash. And we know that the Bank of England stepped into the repo markets in the summer of, I'm going to say, 2024, but may have been 2025, and that the Fed has also started actively participating in the repo markets. And, you know, Europeans have their own mechanisms, but the same thing,

the central bank, the ECB is very, very busy buying corporate debt and government sovereign debt. beautiful Simon there's lots to unpack there your response my friend yeah so what I try to do is I look at two major two major routes in trying to understand a war one of them is the Black Op operations so there are operations around the world that are designed to facilitate weapons trafficking drug trafficking humans trafficking sex trafficking, and everything that we consider degenerate in the world. They don't exist without financial sponsorship and state sponsorship.

They all require that to exist. Now, those are the black ops. And then we have the legitimate markets or the disclosed markets, which are the ones that we can see in financial statements, whether it be a country's GDP, a country's stock market, bond market, currency markets. and those you get disclosures. And so for me, when I look at what you get around the world,

is I try and figure out what are the Black Hop operation routes that need to exist. What are the country operations? And it changes based upon whether you nationalize your resources or you privatize your resources. And depending on what degree you get, There is nation-states that try and keep their resources, and there are countries that try and privatize their resources. And once you privatize your resources, you end up controlled by both the bond market, the stock market, and currency markets are used in order to try and get your resources. So when I look around the world, and I look at, for example, right now, as we currently speak, just zooming in on one thing, we are led to believe that we are in an escalation,

between UAE and Iran. Now, we know that UAE is 100% dependent in terms of its military upon partnerships and those were mainly Western lines. But we also know that UAE is a vital node in the Black Hawk trafficking routes of Iran. And so when you look at those and place those two together, you realize that UAE is the second largest trade partner

of Iran behind China and you understand that there are certain constructs that need to exist that mean that UAE and Iran could never get in a war because India needs its oil

the only way to get its oil is to take certain markets like the petro dollar where the dollar is then converted into gold in order to get into a black op operation and the biggest gold markets are UAE, Hong Kong,

you know, Singapore, Switzerland, and you look across these and you realize they're all plugged together in a coordinated way that doesn't match the narrative that we're often fed. And so if you look at what's happening right now, we're being told that a country, UAE, which has $270 billion

of disclosed dollar reserves, as well as $1.5 trillion of US equities and various investments around the world that are really diverse across multiple layers. We're only told in the public because the media is Israeli or American bias. Actually, UAE is a puppet of Israel. But if you look on the other side of that, it normalizes with Israel while providing the sanctioned circumvention operation. for Iran. At the same time, it hosts European COP 30, like, climate change agenda,

while one of the Emirates, you know, one of the states being a massive oil producer in OPEC. At the same time, it will host, you know, Russian military operations at the same time as having defense contracts with the U.S. military industrial complex. Whenever I see that, you get a biased version of reality. But what has UAE actually done? Well, despite the fact that it doesn't need dollars, it has no shortage of dollars. It's managed to take the fact that it owns significant equity in the most important growth sector in the U.S., artificial intelligence, and make it put itself in a position where the U.S. cannot have UAE sell its bonds or sell its bonds or sell it,

its equities because it would crash the stock market and it would crash the bond market that would have yields which are currently at 5% on the 30 year treasury yield in the US. That is the point at which mortgages go to 7%, which is the point at which the Fed needs to step in and start purchasing bonds in order to control those yields. Now, who's buying those bonds? Well, the Gulf countries are meant to be buying them through the petro dollar. China's meant to be buying them. You can force Japan to buy them through the Japan carry trade,

but they're just hedge funds that are speculating in Cayman Island structures. And you can do the same with the Euro dollar. So what are we witnessing right now? We're effectively witnessing the deconstruction of everything that led to the forced foreign purchase or bonds at the same time as all those central banks buying gold. and those gold markets facilitate the black off markets, which is the drug trafficking routes, the sex trafficking routes, the human, all those things. And that requires UAE to exist.

And it plugs together many of the BRICS countries, as well as the consumption of drugs, which is in the West. And so when I look at these things, there is a theatrical human consumption element. There's the black ops. and then there's the financial markets. What else did they do? So what did Scott percent say? They said, in order for you not to sell the equity that would crash the AI trade and the stock market

and have ripple effects on the credit markets and everything else, and in order for you not to blow out our yields above 5%, we'll give you an FX credit swap line. That's an exclusive club. The only people that get that are the Bank of Japan, the Bank of England, the Swiss Central Bank,

the Canadian Central Bank and the European Central Bank. Now it goes to UAE. And then the other Gulf countries want some. And then suddenly we hear that they're leaving OPEC. Now, what's the story we're told? UAE is in financial distress. Well, I look at the numbers and I look at the UAE ETF, and I see a significant increase in BlackRock's position

and significant increase in institutional investors that are purchasing all the retail sales right now, and the retail is the narrative. UAE's about to collapse. I also see gold markets that are trading a discount for Bitcoin, which means people are leaving UAE, and they're exchanging their gold, physical gold, for Bitcoin, which means that they're doing that at a discount,

which effectively you're having a distressed acquisition of UAE assets by what I call the financial industrial, complex. The same is happening within Israel and the same is happening within Iran. So the U.S. military is being used to strategically create a bill-back better model within Iran, which is who's going to fund the reconstruction of Iran? Well, there's going to be part of it which are based upon existing power structure, IRGC, an IRGC that's normalized with China and China wants them normalized with the Gulf countries, because the Gulf countries are also going to invest. That's part of their next budget.

And they also want the old black hot powers, you know, the financial industrial complex. If you think about it, in terms of legacy empires, Iran was more aligned with British Petroleum, the British Empire, but Saudi and the various other constructs were more aligned with Saudi Aramco and the American Empire. And so the Western financial industrial complex, which is now one thing, the British and American Empire, which has been really vassalized into BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard, J.B. Morgan, and various other interests. They want a piece as well. But who else wants a piece? China.

China is selling its U.S. treasuries to invest in its Belt and Road initiative. And so it's been building the alternative payment rails. If you look at it, UAE created the Embridge project, which was a Bank for International Settlement, Switzerland project. UAE has now inherited that project. What does it tie together? It ties together Thailand, UAE, Hong Kong, China and Saudi Arabia via a network of Central Bank digital currencies, which all connect without SWIFT. So now you've got your Federal Reserve swap line,

you've got your Embridge Networker Central Bank digital currencies, you've got your gold-to-oil black-hop operations and a banking system which facilitates sanctioned circumvention. Then you leave OPEC. What is OPEC? OPEC was the other half of the Petro Dollar. OPEC was the other half of the Petro dollar. OPEC was.

effectively a mechanism for creating treasury demand by pricing gold in, by pricing oil in dollars and reinvesting it in treasuries. Now central banks and these Gulf countries are no longer doing that. They're not buying bonds, they're buying equity. They're buying ownership state in America. They're not lending it to the US government. So OPEC no longer had a need. But what did, what was constructed before this, leading up to this, bricks.

And BRICS had energy agreements. You know, it didn't have a single currency because it knew that that was a European Union SIOP in order to control the currency. So instead, it created economic trade agreements. And prior to that, it had energy agreements that replace OPEC. And so now you've got a construct of how to actually control the petro you want and the petro dollar, but spread that. across Saudi Arabia, who was in charge before, UAE and Iran.

And when you really look at it, China normalized between Saudi Arabia and Iran. So when I look at this war, I see theatrics. I see coordinated demolition of strategic targets that is designed to create an energy crisis, is designed to create a repricing event of 50 different commodities, and it is designed to create the new construct between the petro-yuan and petro dollar and change the order. And Iran's in it, the Gulf countries are in it,

China's in it, and the financial industrial complex are in it. But what is the legacy world that's being destroyed? Zionism as a narrative for the Greater Israel Project. That is being destroyed systematically through media in the West, Tucker Carlson, Candice Owen, various other things. It's being destroyed within America. Now it's just mainstream. The Israel killed JFK, Israel Mossade 9-11, you know, that all these different things.

They're just mainstream narratives now. They're saying, did he kill Charlie Kirk? You know, this is not controversial. This is what the youth talk about in America now. And they stole the bomb and all that stuff. And at the same time, Iran has been rebranded through its Lego videos, where now it is connecting with the youth of America saying, that's an Epstein class.

And Epstein is connected to Israel. So you've had this incredible rebranding exercise that's taken Iran as people believing that it's like some ISIS head chopping, international, funder of terrorism, that is a complete prior state to the taking down of the Epstein class. That is setting Iran up for a post-dollar, you know, hegemon world order

because Iran has two to four million barrels that is currently selling at a discount to China. And if China normalizes and we end up with sanction relief, that changes everything. Because it's not just sanction relief, It's how will that oil be priced? How is it going to enter into the market? UAE has left OPEC and they want to increase their production.

What about Russia? So when I look at the war right now, I see who's benefiting. A group of companies within America which are significantly benefiting. The Americans are getting destroyed. They're paying higher energy prices. They're getting inflation. They're selling their assets. assets because they're on the verge of bankruptcy. They're in a financial crisis. The wealthy

people that only assets, massive concentration of wealth, just like COVID, just like Alex said, just like tariffs. And so we're getting a massive concentration of wealth up to that world economic forum agenda. And then you look at who are the oil companies that are benefiting. Well, from the Venezuela operation, you see that the one that's going to be refining this incredibly hard oil is actually a 100% subsidiary of Saudi Aramco. You also see that who's getting all the LNG contracts? Golden Pass. Who's Golden Pass? 70% owned by Qatar Energy and 30% owned by Exxon. UAE is getting FX swap lines. So you can see a coordinated action where Iran's going to

get its sanction relief. As it releases that oil on the market, is it going to be priced in Chinese yuan? Is it going to be priced in dollars? Who's going to rebuild? Who's going to rebuild the, who's going to invest? And there is an economic negotiation, which is behind, and it has been all along, I think, for the last five years, around about the time that Alex said, we had this COVID operation and we had this repo market stress. I think this is a long-term negotiation that never stopped. And there are certain allies or there's certain factions within Iran that want to resist against that. Because if you really think about it right now, and this will be my final point, the military industrial complex benefited from the forever

war in the Middle East. The financial industrial complex benefits from rebuild and regional stability because it has new allies. The financial industrial complex is aligned with China's Belt and Road Initiative, the Gulf Sovereign Wealth Funds, Norwegian Energy Investments, Singapore, they have aligned and they want a construct that is more decentralized to control the petro-Ewan and petro dollar. And everyone's getting their roles. And what we're seeing right now is all the different proxies that Iran used to or allies, whatever you want to call. I think they are no longer being supported because the ports are being divvied up.

UAE is getting some, Turkey is getting some, Saudi is getting some, and you can see that. The Houthis entered into agreement with Saudi Arabia. The Somaliland was recognized by Israel to protect UAE's ports. The Somalia has got Turkey's assets. and then you've got the Strait of Hormuz and Lebanon as the final two parts.

So you create two different tracks. One for creating a global reset, which benefits the top in the West. And then a negotiation that comes out at the end of this that resolves this and sets the new order. And then the Lebanon track is a separate track. Because effectively, Iran is no longer supporting Hezbollah and you leave Israel and Hezbollah to go have it out. And eventually, all of the privatization and purchasing of all the state assets in Israel has been happening at a record pace. The ports are owned by India. The management is owned by China. The banks and the ETFs are starting to hit record highs while

the currency is going up. That means transnational capital is acquiring and privatizing Israeli assets. This is the purchase and privatization of Israel into the Gulf construct, which will be normalized with Iran, and it's being done via China, and China and the financial industrial complex are setting the world order. So that's how I look at it when you follow the financial plays. If you follow the media, you think we're about to enter World War II and Israel's about to do the Sampson option. UAE is about to collapse, and the world's about to come to an end because US is trying to dominate the world and be what it was in the old order. Alex, I'm sure you have a lot of thoughts or maybe some comments on that.

There's a lot to unpack. Yeah, well, I see a lot of the elements that Simon laid out. I acknowledge that it's very, very complex. But I have a question for Simon. Simon, do you see like an actual fault line that somebody is opposed to somebody or is this many different groups vying for power and influence? Do you see like a clear fault line of between two sides or do you see it more like a war of many against many? Yeah, internal struggles that are not necessarily aligned at the state level. So to say

UAE, Iran, America is a complete misrepresentation of how power works now. When I see America, I see a private corporation. And those private corporation have private interest, the financial industrial complex, military industrial complex, and now the technology industrial complex with AI and everything. When I see Iran, I see strategic tension between Israel and Iran for 40 years, with a narrative of two weeks away from a nuclear bomb, death to America, death to Israel, defenders of the resistance against imperial power. Now, a lot of that is real, but at the higher levels of self-interest, there are benefits, there are parts of the IRGC that benefit from that strategic tension.

There are power structures within Israel that support the military, that effectively are the military-industrial complex. They're an essential node in that construct. And so as long as Iran and the IRGC and Israel have a narrative of death to America, death to Israel, two weeks away from a nuke, Iran's about to try and kill the Jews and take us over, they've surrounded us with proxies, that makes a lot of money for self-interest within various factions of IRGC, the military industrial complex in Israel and the U.S. military industrial complex

whose whole economy is about printing money however it comes to dump debt on the American people and push it into the U.S. stock market. War is GDP for America. Being able to increase a national budget from a trillion to a trillion and a half is GDP, a stock market stimulus check. And so when you can separate

that America doesn't work from the Americans, America works for the private corporate interest, that Iran has different factions of power. You can see that I think China is aligned with a new IRGC, which I think is represented by Arachi, and a reformist government that is represented by Prasemist. I always say that name. When you look at those two, that is the future, I think, and you need a reformist government. and you need a war that doesn't lead to regional chaos like Assyria. It takes out the people that aren't on board with this plan.

And it leads to an acceptable way of not dumping the allies, but effectively integrating the different allies into the actual nation state. So this is a return to the armies joining the nation state. You know, the Houthis integrated into Yemen, Hezbollah integrated into Lebanon, the Iraqi groups integrated into Iraq, the HTS integrated into Syria, and a return to the state. And I think Iran is allowing that to happen at the Ayatollah level. And I think there was a transition over because you have to have the IRGC maintained, but you can't make it look like. Like there was, you know, you can't have regional stability of 90 million people with all these factions and the craziness without having something like this. And so there is real. The deaths are real. The power struggle is real. But it's not nation state versus nation state. It is factions of power that are aligned across different countries fighting other factions of power that are aligned across different countries. That's how I see it. When I first got into Bitcoin, I was overwhelmed.

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By the end, you don't just hope your Bitcoin is safe. You know it is. If you're ready for that level confidence, then head to btcmentor.io and book a call with us today. Alex, was there anything in Simon's analysis that you disagree with or still seems like maybe perhaps too convenient. Simon's, I think, view, is very well structured and also very well organized. It really necessarily account for chaos nearly as much.

Is there anything in there that you want to push back on or causes you pause? Well, you know, I would agree with most of the elements that Simon laid out, maybe all of them, in fact. But, you know, how you connect those dots can vary, you know. So I definitely see a fault line and a conflict between two. systems. And then obviously, you know, in every, conflicts are not clean. There's going to be not just overlap. There's going to be different interests cooperating with their counterparts on the other side of the fault line. And I mean, I've seen this firsthand during the war in in former Yugoslavia, you know.

We were fighting the Serbian side, but at the same time, we were trading with them, you know, even to the point where we had a request for ammunition from the Serbs. So we were, you know, one against the other, and they ran out of artillery shells, and they knew we had them. And so they called up and they said, can we buy some artillery shells from you? And our guy said, duh, of course not. You're going to shell us. And they were like, no, no, no, no.

We promise, we're not going to shell you. We're going to shell the Muslims. And so the Croatian thought, like, okay, well, you know, we can make some money here. So they sold them the shells. And they kept their word. They sheld the Muslims. They didn't shell us. I mean, this is firsthand experience, you know.

Wow. And so this kind of shit happens a lot and out of necessity, you know. But then there's also, how do you call it, intelligence and counterintelligence operations. You know, you can't, modern war, you can't fight it as an autarchy be completely closed out. You need to understand the enemy's operations. You need to understand how their, you know, powers laid out where the weak points are. You can only do that by infiltrating their side, right? For an example, one of the opposition groups to Iran is the M-E-K,

Mujahideen-L-something, I forget. Anyway, they're funded by Western intelligence agencies, U.S. State Department, CIA, and so forth. So if Iranians wanted to infiltrate M-E-K, they would have to not just, you know send volunteers to work for the m-e-k they would have to probably transfer a lot of money to places like london new york and so forth pose as wealthy iranian businessmen make probably large donations to the m-ek get into their you know so uh obviously that accounts for the ties between iran and the uae because you know uae has been set up as a as a pretty much a

money laundering hub. And so obviously Iranians saw a lot of benefit from being there, being present, and making good use for themselves out of that. That doesn't mean that they are on board with them or that they're allies. So for that reason, it's difficult to connect dots in the whole mess. But I think that if we analyze the situation on the basis of, let's say, long cycle history lessons, when you realize why the West is even in the Middle East, what is the reason how they got there, what they've been doing to maintain hegemony, that the state of Israel itself was set up as a bridgehead into the Middle East to keep the whole place destabilized. and that Iran has been trying to fight for their independence for the last 120 years

that they've been harassed by European colonial powers. That you realize that the fault line is there and it's real. The fact that there's like neurons and dendrites reaching from one side into the other and vice versa doesn't necessarily mean that these are strong alliances, that there are real alliances. They're opportunistic contacts and temporary arrangements that serve some higher power. And then making money itself is lower on the list of priorities. For example, when in World War II, Western bankers and corporations were investing very heavily into the Nazi Germany. there was a lot of controversy because some of these investments didn't really make sense

because they weren't going to make any money. So people, you know, shareholders in some of these corporations were asking, why are you investing so heavily in Germany? What's the point? The country is a mess. Hitler is a dangerous lunatic. He's going to start war. This is all going to be for naught.

And then the answer was, we are pursuing higher. order priorities. So whether we make money or lose money on these investments in the conventional way is secondary, we are after, we have a bigger agenda than that. But nevertheless, the big agenda that wasn't disclosed was again the same thing, the same battle that we're seeing now, weaponizing Germany to take down Russia or Soviet Union at the time, in the same way that we've had Ukraine weaponized to take down Russia in the same way that Israel has been weaponized to keep the whole region there in chaos. And now this coalition of the willing U.S., Israel, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, they tried to pull in Azerbaijan and the Kurds. All this

has been weaponized to take down the Iranian leadership. And then one thing that I don't know if I disagree with Simon, but I just have other sources of information where, you know, the divergence between the, let's call reformers in Iran and IRGC is not really real or it's not so substantial that you have actually two factions vying for power inside Iran, at least at the moment since 28 February, the society has pretty much coalesced and united on one side of this conflict. And so I still think that it's the same conflict based on the British geopolitics where the ultimate objective is the empire's hegemony over Eurasian landmass. And this has been explicitly laid out for over a century now by people like Halford Mackinder, by

Bigny Berzzynski, it's still being, you know, under first Trump, during Trump's first term in office in 2019, you had undersecretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs West Mitchell, and he was the underlingo of Victoria Newland. Who is exactly, he made a presentation to the, I think it was state Senate committee for foreign affairs or the state department, I forget. Anyway, he framed his presentation exactly in those terms. We are working to defend and retain hegemony over Eurasia. and we're working very closely with our ally United Kingdom to achieve those objectives. Said it explicitly, I think that presentation is still somewhere on the State Department's website somewhere.

I have a copy. So this didn't go away. So it's like a consistent agenda that hasn't really changed in over 100 years. And so everything that we see today in the shorter term could be opportunistic arrangements between sides. Nevertheless, the fault line exists, and the fault line is empire versus everybody else. Simon, your response? Yeah, I completely agree. It's definitely not a perfect science.

And once you get into it, you realize that there are, even just saying Iran. You know, is very silly because there's so many different factions of power. It's kind of like saying US and trying to think of all the different interests within US. And so, yeah, the word is pragmatism. I think people find it hard to believe that you can trade and be at war with someone at the same time. But the reality is that you can be enemies and friends in very different areas all at the same time. And in fact, it's a requirement of geopolitics to do that. And that's why I kind of go beyond the cartoon character of friends and enemies.

You have to trade with people that you are enemies of. It doesn't mean you like them. It doesn't mean you wouldn't want something bad to happen to them. It's just the reality of realpolitik, I guess they call it. What I think has happened today is that America and British empires have factored down into these complexes. And so when I look at, for example, Kiyosama, I don't see somebody that works for the British people. I see somebody that needs to create an acceptable narrative to justify why the Bank of England should print money when people are star. choosing between eating and heating and homeless and completely trying to figure out how to survive.

But why we should spend $3 billion to send to Ukraine knowing there's mass corruption and that it will go back into spending on U.S. military companies and it will stimulate the U.S. stock market. then at the same time, why did we have, you know, a German, you know, why did Germany switch off its nuclear energy? It's not because it's working for the German people. It's because it works for a power structure above the nation, state, and government. And so you can see that, and it's very, very clear and obvious that none of the government, you know, none of the leaders in Europe, with the exception. of a few, like we're starting to see interesting stuff happening in Italy, I'd say. You know, some interesting stuff of all resistance.

But really, what are we actually seeing in the world right now? We're seeing record profits within America for oil and energy companies. That's 1% of GDP. 60% of GDP is consumption. That 60% are wrecked from these higher prices and this crisis. but it's supporting that 1% of GDP. And you get a stimulus check for military companies and you get an environment that will justify

a bigger money printing than we saw in COVID. And what is it going to go into is pretty obvious to me. There is a national security threat that due to these high energy prices, China might win the AI arms race. And therefore, we need to bail out these high-cost data center infrastructure and create lots of jobs for all of the U.S. manufacturing

in order to build out all of these data centers while effectively those staff replace themselves with AI and robotics. That's going to justify the money printing, the stock market stimulus, and that's a handover to this technocratic global government. That's on a global scale. Like that whole, who's going to host the data centers,

who's going to control the AI? AI. And there's an inbuilt rugpole in it as well, which is China knows that they are producing AI at a fraction of the cost. Just like China knows that it's got all the gold in Shanghai and the Western powers have paper gold and derivatives his contracts that aren't backed by gold. China already has a structural rugpole built in, which is derivative contracts for the financial industrial complex. We got this asymmetric warfare that all of that expense. expensive equipment that makes shit ton of money for corrupt military companies is now actually asymmetric because you've got cheap drones and you've got the different, you know, mechanisms of projecting power. That's a disruption in the military industrial complex, disruption in the financial industrial complex through derivatives, and also it can do AI at a fraction of the cost. But what's China doing?

It's not building AI in order to sell a subscription service. It's building AI in order to increase the efficiency of their manufacturing. manufacturing base. And so it can at any stage rugpole all of that infrastructure investment. And so knowing that the financial industrial complex knows this, they had to partner with transnational capital. They could no longer make decisions on their own. So they could no longer say, Israel, you disrupt the region, we create more forever wars,

you do the greater Israel project, we destroy the region. No, because why? because America is now energy independent. They don't need the petro dollar. They don't have the petro dollar anymore. They're now an energy exporter, and now you haven't got the other side of buying those treasuries. That's dead.

So what do you do? Well, the golf funds are selling all that energy, and who are they selling it too? Well, China's propping it all up. So China now influences all the Pawsa Capital, and the Pawsa Capital are hitting the stage where all of the American people are contributing to their pension is creating a structural bid,

but it requires the sovereign wealth fund in order to invest in all of this infrastructure because the private credit markets are blowing up. And the Gulf countries immediately, what did they say, we can't invest in that AI infrastructure, give us better terms, build more data centers here. China said, well, we need, you know, so you can see all of these things.

So the West does not work for the Imperial West anymore. The Imperial West is playing a global game. And that's what globalism was, effectively. It was have China as the manufacturing base. Plug all of the different alternative payment rails into SIPs. 115 countries have been integrated. Create alternatives to SWIFT, stable coin central bank digital currencies. And rinse, asset strip, all of the final assets.

out of the American people, dump all of the record debt on them, create wealth inequality on a scale we've never seen before, transfer all the wealth up to the financial industrial complex that are managing all the assets, and they can't afford shit. They're not even having children. They've got the highest suicide race now. The top 10 reason for death in America is suicide.

Women are choosing only fans as their career in order to survive. Men are addicted to cryptocurrency gambling and prediction markets betting on the next chip coin as their only career option. So we're literally, they're turning the West into the Valmar Republic. Their assets stripping all of the wealth and they recognize Africa's got the birth rates. We'll just replace all of them with AI and robotics. But we need Southeast Asia who are having, so what do we do? We create a crisis that means that we get as much, we can deploy a much. of our capital around the world, align with bricks, align with GCC, align with SCZ, align with

ASEAN, but we want our little foothold. So we'll turn UAE into our foothold into the GZZ, we'll turn into our foothold into bricks, we'll rinse the currency, drop as much debt as possible, we'll create conditions where if the military exits the Middle East eventually after a deal's done, they can just have the police and surveillance state in and civil unrest in the West. We'll allow the Russian war continue for another three, four years. We'll get another trillion dollars out of that. We'll regime change Hungary. Hungary was the last unanimity vote in European Union

that was effectively being bribed by Russia and Israel. Now they can unlock that $350 billion. Russia ends up with the whole of Ukraine. BlackRock gets the other half of it. We get some rare earth minerals. and we rebuild a new military industrial complex in Germany. We launch a central bank digital currency. We just asset strip the whole thing.

And we bring all the colonial techniques that we can no longer do in the East. We can no longer do in the Middle East because now we're investing. That's the investment landscape. That's the regional stability landscape. We bring it all home. We do color revolutions. We do privatized prisons. We radicalize people

or further to the left and to the right. We build a police and surveillance state. We monetize open and closed borders. We get paid for every deportation. We get paid for every imprisonment. We get paid through Palantir. Let's make that the government. Let's do AI.

Let's do social credit scores. Let's do stable coins, programmable money. They're taking all the tactics that they used to do and they're bringing them back home. And I think that culminates in the fact that Trump and Xi Jinping are about to meet. And that world order that looks like US is dominating has just turned into the privatized financial industrial complex

that is aligned with a global vision on both the technology side and financial side. And so that partners with bricks. And so they do want the dollar to weaken. They do want alternative commodity-back currencies to out-pavon the dollar. They do want foreign stock. markets to get more and more investment after this final war. And this final war is the global

reset in order to renegotiate force-major all the contracts and get them at higher prices to just completely wipe out the middle class and the poor class in various regions. And that's why I think they need this to go on a little bit longer. I don't think this is a US dominating. I think this is the US. And Trump doesn't work for America. Look at his backers. I know everyone focuses on APEC and Israel. Israel is just a division of the military that is now being repackaged into finance and technology in this new vision. But what is the who's Trump paid by? He was paid by Elon, technical industrial complex. He was paid by the banking melon dynasty, financial industrial complex. Mary Maidleston connected to Israel military industrial complex. That's the order.

You can see who he's servicing a technocratic surveillance state, a strategic weakening of the dollar in order to enter into this multipolar world. What is deconstructing the deep state is taking down everything that backed the dollar. USAID, back the dollar. United Nations, back the dollar. The petro dollar, back the dollar. The euro dollar. Back the dollar. The Pan carry trade, back the dollar. Everything he's saying is MAGA is a strategic weakening of the dollar in a managed transition, just like the British Empire did when they handed over from the Bank of England to the Federal Reserve. This time it's global.

Alex, do you have any thoughts or response to all that there as well, too? I kind of want to get your take on whether or not a deal is possible. Simon has put forth the idea that we have the China Summit coming out. We might get an actual deal and it being publicly announced around then. Do you think a deal, the end of the war, in that kind of short term, is possible? And then I'd also love your comments on whether or not Trump ever was serving national interest or if he was always serving these different complexes. When you say deal, you mean deal between United States and China?

More or less an end to the war in Iran. That is negotiation is facilitated by China. I'm not even sure, Nathan. Okay, so you see, I was among those people who, until just a few days before the war actually broke out, 28th February, I was certain that it wouldn't happen, or maybe that we would have some kind of a fake war scenario, some kind of a polite exchange of bombs and missiles, and then, okay, now we've achieved our objectives, let's get to the next thing. And the reason why I thought so was because the war didn't make any kind of a normal sense at all. It was the downside risk for the United States and for Trump in particular politically was enormous. The upside, I don't even know what the upside was. I mean, I understand the upside from Israel's point of view.

And I understand the upside potentially from British point of view. But I didn't, you know, I thought that this just so completely insane. saying, of course they're not going to attack Iran. But they did, right? And so we could have a deal that might fall apart. You know, like the kind of deal like the peace in Gaza and the Board of Peace, that probably is just going to remain a deal on paper. So that kind of a deal we might have.

But the incentives that have led to this war are not going to go away. And people who have those incentives are not going to stop pushing for the war. war. And the thing that kind of confuses me about Trump is that, you know, somebody like Tucker Carlson, well, specifically Tucker Carlson, about 10 days, two weeks ago, recorded one of his monologues and he was saying how he talked to Trump many, many times over the last 10 years about Iran. And he said that Trump and I agreed fully, completely, that this was an insane idea. And that Trump was perfectly aware of the risks. And Trump, many times during his campaigns in between, even before he ran, he was always saying that war on Iran would be insane,

that, you know, he was expecting that somebody would maybe do it out of personal political motivations, but that it would be a disaster for the United States. So all of that kind of lined up to create an impression that Trump was primarily concerned with U.S. interests. And that, you know, it's not just Iran. It's that Trump was campaigning. on something that, to me, was a perfect signal, but nobody was asking for it. You know, like the electorate wasn't asking for this, but Trump was saying, join me for a fight against global financial oligarchy. Maybe not in those exact words, but very close to the point that message wasn't ambiguous at all.

American people were not asking for a fight against global financial oligarchy because they're not necessarily aware that that's who the enemy is. So the fact that Trump was saying this openly and in public to me was a very, very important signal. And then, you know, when I mentioned the clash between two systems of governance, there's a, you know, political layer, but there's also the economic foundation of it. And the economic foundation of that clash is, on the one hand, you have the British system of free trade.

and on the other one you have the so-called American system of political economy, which are two very, very different economic systems, right? The British free trade system entails free movement of goods and capital with minimal restrictions around the world, and then the owners of capital just basically allocated to where they can generate highest returns, which means that countries compete for capital by basically lowering their standards, their requirements, and so forth. You know, where the labor costs least, where environmental constraints are the least political risks are the lowest and so forth. So it's kind of like a system of race to the bottom where the more you strip down your country, the more attractive.

it becomes to financial capital. And then you get, you know, investments, quote unquote. And then you have the American system of political economy, which is called like that because it was pioneered by Alexander Hamilton, who was the first, I think Treasury Secretary, but maybe something more like Minister of Economics under George Washington's government. And basically what it entailed is closing off the economy, economic system with protective barriers, like tariffs, and then supporting your domestic industries

and businesses. So that your domestic market is their market where they can, you know, sell their goods and services to and have a protected market. You know, if I'm an entrepreneur and I start a company that makes like, widgets that cost me 10 bucks a widget to make and I want to sell it for 15 bucks a widget. I have a business. I can hire people, right? I can invest that money into my community, improving my business, refining innovation, making better widgets in the next time, in the next generation, right? I can send young people to university, pay their scholarships. They'll come back.

they'll come with all kinds of knowledge that are going to take that whole thing forward. So in this American system of political economy, the capital that is generated remains in that economy and it satisfies the requirements of that economy for innovation, for competitiveness, for basically satisfying people's needs, you know, to have good jobs, to have well-paying jobs, to have a nice, safe environment, good education for their children, good health care, quality, transportation, communication systems and culture, you know, on and on and on. With the British system of free trade, basically, you have countries that are stripped to the bones, and all the capital ultimately accrues to the big financial centers like London, Paris, Wall Street,

and so forth. So anyway, back to Trump. Trump was talking about this explicitly. Again, one of those things that nobody asked for, but he was pushing it. And then, you know, this year in January, he sent, he came to Davos with a 300 strong delegation. And they were all talking about this exact thing. A secretary of the, of trade, Jameson Greer, gave a speech to the crowd in Davos, where he explicitly mentions the American system, explicitly mentions Alexander Hamilton, Henry Carey, who was maybe the first who, he was the economic advisor to Abraham Lincoln. And in, I think, 1861, he published a book called The Harmony of Interest, where he contrasts these two systems.

It says, one system does this. It has these effects. The other system does this. So all of this was mentioned explicitly to the who's who of the globalist at Davos, which was practically a declaration of war of one system against the other. You know, Trump with his American system versus the globalists. And he wasn't saying like, we're going to kill you all that kind of war. He was saying, Scott Besant was saying it.

This other guy, what's his face? I forget. Howard Lucknick was saying it explicitly. Globalization failed. And they were saying it failed. So come join us. Build the American system. Build prosperity.

Build higher standards for the people and so forth. They were saying, your system failed. Join us in building this other system. Again, something that the American electorate didn't really ask for, but obviously some factions of the American leadership knew that that's the answer. So they came to Davos and they explicitly made this declaration. And then they pretty much repeated the same message the following month at the Munich Security Conference. So at that point, and now we're talking days before the outbreak of war in Iran, up until that point, It seemed solid and certain that Trump was affecting a very radical course correction in the

U.S. policy, particularly the economic policy, that the British system of free trade was being jettisoned in favor of the American system. It was explicitly declared. And then, and then remember, again, Tucker Carlson and many, many other people were very strongly convinced that Trump was not going to go to war against Iran because he understood the risks. He understood there was no benefits. And then he goes. On 28 February, he goes. And he goes to war against Iran.

And now it seems that he's actually done a 360-degree course correction. So now the question is, why? How did this happen? Was he a closeted Zionist? who hit his game for a few decades, and then came out and said, like, aha, now I have you, now I'm going to do what I always wanted to do. I'm going to make the Middle East safe for Israel. Or did somebody somehow get to him?

I don't know the answer to that question, but it's very clear that those incentives that pushed the United States into war and pushed Trump to pull the trigger are so enormously powerful that they will never stop. And if it takes assassinating the president, they'll assassinate the president, no problem. So my, you know, the question in my head is, did they tell him, okay, enough fooling around? If you don't go along with us, we're going to start killing the members of your family.

I don't know, but I have to assume that that's a possibility. On the other hand, the way Trump has conducted himself since 28 February, makes it look like he fully owns it proudly, unapologetically, and he's doing this out of his own convictions. So that to me, I don't know how to square that. I don't know how to explain that, but there it is. It's there. So you asked me the question about Trump. This is my non-answer because I don't know what the answer is. has been in the game for years

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And every machine is insured at full replacement value. Everything is hosted in the U.S., powered by hydro, and mining equipment may qualify for 100% your-one bonus depreciation. Learn more at abundantmines.com slash sessions. Simon, do you have anything you want to add? Yeah, it's such an important question. So this is how I see it. Most people think that Israel's in charge.

I think that's a deliberate story. Israel, no doubt about it, is connected to the deep state, Massad, CIA, MI6, those networks. But who do they work for? They effectively work for the military industrial complex. and who does the military industrial complex. They now work for the financial industrial complex. So capital wins, right?

So they are just a node of military. So if you are working on a, you know, and it has a plausible deniability built into it because, I mean, APAC is the 14 biggest lobby, but much bigger lobbies and military lobbies, tech lobbies, insurance lobbies, pharmaceutical lobbies. Israel is just a mechanism for the mafia,

side of the Black Op operations, using Israel in order to profit with a great story that's about religion. They pretend they're radical Zionists and all that stuff, but they're all just cashing it. They're all just making shit tons of money, recruiting an army, and they've got a lovely story, you're here to save the Jews, join the army, join the IDF and engage in ethnic cleansing, create carnage, and our stock price goes up for all of our military stocks, our rebuild contracts, financial stocks, our police and surveillance state, we get the Palestinian laboratory to test our illegal technology. But the whole world, whenever we need to divorce from that, we've got the whole story that is Jeffrey Epstein blackmail operations. You know, we've got the whole story that

America's buy into because we know one day we need to separate ourselves. This isn't, you know, we need to say, us Americans, we would never have done that. It was because of APEC. We would never have done that is because Jeffrey Epstein blackmailed us. You don't say it explicitly, but you use the media like Tucker Carlson and Candice Owen and Nick Fuentes and everyone to perpetuate that story so that when you need the clean break, Americans are, you preserve the brand with the American people and say it was Israel. It wasn't us. We're not like the British Empire. That was them. and the Brits and the Rothschilds, they created it. It's not us. It's them.

You know, so you have, when you need the divorce, you got the Brits, the Israelis, the Apex, the Epstein's. We only did any of this, not because we were stealing money from the American people. You're not broke and stuck with debt. And all of the wealth is concentrated in a few Black Rock institutions. That wasn't because of us. that's not how our system works it's not it's because we're taking on the system

you know it's it's so they built in that story to the American Empire just like the British had a story when it transitioned to the Fed and all that stuff then you ask okay what are Trump's incentives

let's really look at it firstly you have to ignore everything he says nothing he says is real it's just narrative everything so if he's at Davos and he brings 300 people people, he's constructing 300 deals with a committee of 300. We like the number 300 or whatever you want to call it.

That makes him a shit ton of money and makes the people that back him and his lobbies a shit ton of money. But everyone at Davos is saying the public consumption story. But he's just deal making. And so everything he said is the opposite of what he was doing. He was working with the World Economic Forum. All of the people that pay him are the World Economic Forum knows. Whether it be technology, military, financial, big oil, big tech, big pharma, all that stuff. They're crushing it.

They're getting all of this money printing. They're getting the beneficiary of the $39 trillion debt. They're getting all of the businesses going bankrupt. They're getting wealth extraction up to transnational. global institutions, and global institutions are crushing it from Trump's policy. So what does Trump do? He works for Wef. What else does he work for? His own family interest. I mean, he has tripled his net worth with just the cryptocurrency scams that I know intimately, because I understand the flow of money in crypto, as Nathan does. Just from the crypto scamming,

He's made $5.9 billion that Americans have lost. That wasn't less create value together. That was, I scammed you, you've lost all your money and we made all the money. Like pure scams. And you can see that, like the Democrats are going to have a field day with it. This is not partisan. Please understand. I've not got Trump derangement syndrome.

I've got Biden derangement syndrome. Trump derangement syndrome, Vant derangement syndrome, Clinton, Obama, it's all the same shit. They all work for the same agenda. I'm not partisan in any way, shape, or form. And you have to get beyond that. So this isn't about criticizing Trump. I'll do the same with Biden.

So his job was just to make shit ton of money, as is every president. And he has made a lot of money. And it was always Steve Whitkoff, who was envoy for the Middle East, that was facilitating the trade between all of his investments in the Gulf. People talk about Jared Kushner being an agent of Mossad. Of course, he's connected to the Israel connection.

But what is Israel doing? Israel is privatizing, removing power from the nation state, and handing it over to shareholders. I could go through deal after deal after deal, privatizing energy, privatizing banking, Apple's buying AI and cybersecurity. The Gulf countries are investing in all of this stuff. And what's the mechanism for Trump getting paid? Affinity Capital Partners. Managed by Jared Kushner, people stop there.

Who put the money in? Saudi, UAE, Kuwait. So you've got, and then people say, oh, are they doing that for Israel? Because they're owned by Israel. It's a distraction. The whole Israel story is a plausible deniability. Don't get me wrong. They are criminals.

What's happening in Israel is, but that is American crimes, that is British crimes. And they get their whole Greater Israel project and they get to siphon off lots of wealth and they get to recruit an army. But there's not Israel that controls the empire. It's the empire is owned by Wef power. And the same power that controls Israel, controls UK, controls America, controls Europe. controls Australia, controls Canada, controls the collective west of privatized, securitized and financialized capital. It's all one big thing there. And Israel's not immune to that. They're not generating nation state power. They don't have a sovereign wealth fund. It's like tiny.

They're privatizing their assets, which is transfer of wealth from the nation state to private corporate interest. The ETF is going up. You know, BlackRock, State Street, Van Gogh. The Gulf Sovereign Wealth on the Norwegian, China, Singapore, they own all that shit. And so let's look at Trump's policies from the beginning. First thing he did, Doge. We know anybody that understands finance and the Federal Reserve System knows you can't pay down the debt. If you pay down the debt, you eliminate the dollar, you kill the empire, you create a global depression. So why did they pretend they were paying down the debt?

You can't pay down the debt, and they know that because it was a data collection exercise for Palantir and Elon's social credit scores. What else did he do next? So, okay, we can't pay down the debt, but we got all the data. Private, private, public partnership, scraped all the data. Now we got the best AI. Now we got the best social credit scores. Now we got X, the financial industrial complex, co-invested with the Gulf Sovereign World Funds in X, and he got a massive leveraged investment.

So it was really the financial industrial complex that gave him X, and now it becomes the covert regime change and all the different operations that Deep State used to do, via X, build our social credit score. What was the next thing he did? He did tariffs. Tariffs, if anybody researched it, was a tax on American small business,

it was bankruptcy of small business in both the export-dependent countries and the import-dependent countries. America, by having world-reserved currency, by definition, has a ginormous twin deficit. It has a trade deficit and a fiscal deficit. Otherwise, you can't have world-reserve currency. If you rebuild the manufacturing base of America, you have to weaken the dollar and lose world-reserve currency. That's why China became the manufacturing base. So that was a lie as well. You can't build the manufacturing base. And what did it do?

Well, it concentrated wealth upwards, just like COVID, just like global financial crisis, just like every disaster. And then everyone got a refund anyway. So it increased the national debt ginomously. This wasn't ignorance. This was policy. So you had Doge, technical industrial complex.

You had tariffs, financial industrial complex. Then what happened next? All right, we'll take down the deep state. We'll expose and we'll release the Epstein files. Now, the whole world said, after tariffs, we're all supporting. Bricks was the net beneficiary of the tariff policy. Everyone went to China. Everything got renegotiated.

transnational capital did incredibly well. Their assets under administration went up and up and up. What did the Epstein files do? It basically made a mockery and provided the narrative that Iran is using right now. We're taking on the Epstein class. Your politicians are corrupt. The evangelical Zionists, you now need to tell your children why you support paedophiles in supporting Israel.

You know, it literally destroyed the narrative of the empire of the World Reserve currency. Everybody now looks at America and starts, the youth of America look at supporting Iran. That was impossible before Trump. There are youth in America saying, I like Iran's Lego videos. I want Iran to take out the Zionists to save America. Like, how crazy is the concept? So that is the deep state is the dollar. It is the system that props up the American Empire.

So what else did he do? Then you got the war with Iran. And the war with Iran was a global reset. It was the repricing. It was the destroy all, make all Americans sell their assets, keep this going for as long as possible, concentrate Europe into a central bank digital currency, implement Genius Act, Clarity Act, which was an extension of Patriot Act,

create the programmable money, police and surveillance state in America, manufacture civil unrest, create extreme left and right divide, make everyone mentally ill, crazy, expose everything, everyone starts questioning everything, no one's got trust in the system, the American dream is dead, like everything came from that. And who made money? It wasn't Americans that made money. It was big oil, big energy.

It was his golf investments. What is the border piece? He wants a Trump tower across Saudi Arabia, Qatar, one in Gaza. What we're building in Gaza is the technocratic surveillance state that he's building through freedom cities. And no, this carries on with J.D. Vant.

J.D. Vance is being groomed as the one that will create the peace in the end, as is Arachi. And there will be a deal with Iran, is my prediction. And it will lead to sanction relief. And in October, there will be a regime change in Israel. And the new president of Israel or prime minister or whatever you call it will create a Palestinian state and will be gold-funded. And all those billion dollars in the Boulder Peace, it will all be the Gulf countries that pay for it. because they're going to own Palestine, they're going to own Israel, they're going to invest in the rebuild with Iran, there will be regional stability.

And it's not because Trump is trying to create peace, it's because Trump was paid via affinity capital to do what the Gulf countries want and make everyone think that it's Israel that's in charge. That's what's happening right now if you follow the money or you follow the media or you listen to what they're saying. And remember, Israel derives its power from you believing that Israel rules the world. They got all of us to be the propagandists.

They don't rule the world. They're not that powerful. They're just connected to a mafia that goes back to the U.S. stock market and that larger, greater power. And so we've literally been propagandizing for Israel, because they want us to believe that they rule the world. Just like they created the propaganda of anti-Semitism because they wanted all the Jews to be shit-scared, so they joined the army and engage in ethnic cleansing.

They created and manufactured anti-Semitism in order to grow their population in order to build out this technocrat. And it was all based upon providing value to the US military in the Forever Wars. America was never trying to win wars. They were just trying to profit from distress. they were asset stripping the American people all along, just like the Bank of England bankrupted the UK government and the UK people,

and then eventually created a war in order to transfer the same structure to the Federal Reserve, and now they bankrupted the American people, and they transferred all the assets up, and those people are global in nature. Trump is just a frontman, he's middle management. He's not in charge, and nor is Netanyahu. Alex, before I kind of want to dive into what your kind of market outlook is right now, more importantly, how people can maybe protect themselves during what seems like all this basic shitstorm going on at the moment. Was there anything with regards to Simon's comments on Trump that you wanted to push back on or get clarification on or any thoughts that you wanted to share?

I would agree with very close to everything that Simon just said. I don't have the same interpretation of all of those elements. Like, for example, if you say that he went to, Davos to make deals and that the whole narrative was was just the smoke screen that it was not genuine or was not sincere. I have to ask myself why then? Because Davos is open for dealing. If you go to Davos to make deals, you can make them. You don't need a false narrative to follow along. And then, you know, if we look at history... I'll give a quick answer. I don't know. Yeah, go ahead, please.

A really quick one. Because Trump is asset stripping the West for the West, and his job is to create a narrative that's acceptable to the American people. They need to think that he's going to make America great again. America's about to get really bad, really shit and a lot worse, just like Europe, just like UK. Shit's going to get really bad in the West. And they need to believe that Trump's taking on the establishment,

because that's why they installed him, because he's got the cult following to deliver that. Okay. But, you know, the story about the American system is not, it's not like a mainstream narrative in the United States. It's not like the people understand clearly what the difference is. You, to even know to talk about this, you would have to know what it is.

And most Americans don't. So why would you choose that narrative? I'll tell you while it's reflective in right now, like just a quick back and forth. I'll try and do quick answers as a conversation. But the vast majority of Americans right now think that they're kicking ass because they're getting all the oil in the world. They don't even know that they're paying higher prices while a couple of companies benefit. They think they've got like a national sovereign wealth fund like Saudi or something like that or Iran. They can't tell the difference.

They actually think they're kicking ass when they're being bankrupted and paying higher prices just so a few companies can make rack or profits. And they think that's going to help America. Okay. But then if we go back to history, the American system is a real thing and it has been implemented in the past. In fact, of eight presidents who were assassinated or died under suspicious circumstances, circumstances while in office, all eight wanted to implement the American system.

And some of them did, in fact. So it's a real thing, and some people really paid with their life for it. So why would we be so sure that this couldn't be the case today, that some people close to the levers of powers aren't saying globalization failed, we need to change tack, we need to, we need a course correction to our policy. Yeah, this is where I think there is a genuine struggle. So I think the military industrial complex represents that faction of nationalistic American prop up the petro dollar through war power.

But the financial industrial complex is global in nature. There's just transnational capital. Maybe you could say associated with legacy British like Rothschild power or whatever you want to say. But the military was captured by financial when they went public. All of the American power is public companies. Those public companies are collateralized debt obligations for financial powers. And so finance rules the gate. And so military, I would say, is the legacy power. Let's make America great again. Let's prop up the dollar. Let's take Venezuelan oil. And Let's kick ass.

Let's protect the petro dollar. Trump ain't protecting the petro dollar. The petro dollars being destroyed. And that represents the legacy power, which is, you know, the, so the nationalistic side is military. The global side is financial. And everything that Trump's done has helped financial power. But you see, implementing the American system would very largely weaken.

the military industrial conflicts and reduce their revenues. It would shrink it. That would be a predictable effect of implementing the American system. So I don't see them pushing for the implementation of the American system. Why would they? Say that one more time. I don't think I understood it. The effect of implementing the American system would shrink the military industrial complex.

It would vastly reduce their revenues. and it would shrink the whole sector. It would become much less relevant and much less powerful. So why would they be pushing for it? Okay, so let me make sure I understand this. When you say the American system, I assume you're referring to like the constitution. Is that what you mean?

No, no, no. I'm talking about the economic system, which is a different... You see, we've been fed the completely nonsensical false dichotomy of left and right, you know, like free, free market capitalism versus socialism and communism. The real dichotomy is between the national system of political economy versus unrestricted free trade.

Okay, national system of political... So would you summarize that as nationalism versus globalism? Is that a simplistic way of saying it? Yes, you could. You could simplify that way. as an economic nationalism versus globalism. But the effect is that an economic system recycles capital within domestically. And it ends up reducing the polarization of wealth.

It ends up boosting the industrialization of the country. it ends up boosting small and medium-sized businesses rather than mega corporations. And it reduces the defense requirement because you're really actually focusing on the defense of your nation rather than having 800 military bases everywhere around the world because you no longer need to police the potential APRI regime where you are extract. their resources and enslaving their populations. So there the military industrial complex becomes almost irrelevant because defense goes to a smaller army and to national defense units. So it wouldn't, in that scenario, it wouldn't make sense for military industrial complex to actually promote the American system. Got you.

Yeah. So the way that I look at it is, so let me. Let's go right back to the formation, right? America was founded the same way Israel was founded, settler colonialism and genocide by Europeans, let's face it. And then you had a declaration of independence, which allegedly was about tax, but was also about banking. And then you had the installation of three attempts at central banking.

You had the first central bank, the second central bank, the assassinations, as you said, that went with it. And then you finally had the Federal Reserve System, and then you had World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, and then the formation of the military industrial complex. During the Vietnamese War, America defaulted and went bankrupt. And so we transitioned to the Petro Dollar, where they had to assassinate King Faisal in Saudi Arabia. And then we had Safari Club, the war on terror, 9-11, and everything we've had since then, and all the wars. So to me, that's like a simplistic version of American history. Now, the Constitution was set up to protect from the tyranny of government.

But what it didn't capture was the tyranny of companies owning the government through lobby. And so in its sense, it was always a lie because the elites that set up the Constitution were the equivalent of the corporate class back then. And so they set up the Constitution to protect them from government so the business interest would prevail. Now, when the government later got captured, it was systematically done by a central banking, which some could represent legacy British model, Bank of England, that type of stuff. And so the American system was the fight for the abolishment of the central bank. but they lost in 1913, and now they've got $40 trillion a debt

and a war ever since. World War I effectively never ended. And so there was no, they lost in 1913. And we have had the British imperial system in America ever since. And what did they do? They set up the IMF, the World Bank, after World War II. they defaulted on the gold standard.

They bankrupted the U.S. government. They rolled over the debt. They did Cold War, Korean War, Vietnamese War, you know, fake war on terror, all the stuff that was manufactured. So there was no, you know, the battle was lost in 1913. And now it is represented by BlackRock State Street and Vanguard, who were the neo-equipped. of the British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company with a more decentralized structure that's owned by transnational capital. So America's not a sovereign state.

It doesn't exist. There is no fight unless you can take out BlackRock the Fed and everyone that tried to do that, whether it's Ron Paul or anyone realized, oh shit, you crash the dollar if you take on the Fed. And you can't back it by gold because the dollar is a debt-based. Ponzi scheme. So unless someone's going to take on

the dollar, but they're not. What are they doing? They're just launching stable coins which are backed by debt, which is the same system, but transitioning to something that looks more like China. And so now America's looking more like China rather than, and China's looking more like America,

but you've got corporate control and CCP control. And those are the two factions of power. You've got the corporate control and the CCP. If you want to simplify the world down, those are the two factions of power. Alex, does that address your question? Well, yeah, but the question of central bank isn't, the American system does use a central bank.

It relies on a central bank, in fact. And Alexander Hamilton was fighting for a central bank. So one of the three central banks that you mentioned was in fact as intended for the American system. And so it doesn't necessarily exclude from central bank for equation. It just changes the way capital is allocated and then doesn't allow capital to just flee to wherever whenever they choose. It's a structural Ponzi scheme.

So the result you have today is guaranteed from central banking. So long as money is based on debt, it's always going to be a Ponzi scheme. There's no getting around that. But you know, money isn't national wealth. If you look at China today, where it is today and where it was

30 years ago, 40 years ago, it was the poorest country in the world. The money can die. It doesn't matter, but they've built infrastructure. They've developed technologies. You can replace the money with new money. It's just tokens. So the fact that the money system is a Ponzi scheme. If it's based on debt, it's going to be a Ponzi scheme. And it's always going to be based on debt to some extent because you need to create capital to fund future development that's going to pay off in the future so it doesn't pay off today. So you're saying, we're going to issue these bonds today. It's going to be debt on our balance sheet.

But we know that what we're investing in is going to pay off. It's going to improve life here and so forth. And you can use the money until it dies, but you raised your country from being a freaking colony to being a world-leading industrialized nation where people live decent lives, have good jobs, career prospects, education, and all of these things. What's the key difference between PBCA and the Federal Reserve, is that PBAC is what America was in the beginning, state banking for the benefit of the local community. State banking, that's exactly correct.

Yeah. And I, you know, this is one, this is another element why I thought that Trump was genuine and for real, because he was talking about nationalizing the Fed. And then between him and Scott Besant and Steve Miron, they actually, no, not even between Trump, but like between Scott Besson and Steve Miron, they already envisioned creating dual circulation. So shutting off the domestic dollar in the domestic dollar economy. And so that's the Chinese model where you have domestically circulated Raminbi and then

you have the Chinese yuan that circulates globally as a country. a trade settlement currency. This makes all the sense in the world because that's how China was the only nation during the 1997 financial crisis in East Asia that didn't have a financial crisis because they were not exposed to it because their domestic economy was protected. It was closed off. It was they quarantined off the outside exogenous shock. So that's what my understanding.

that the Trump administration wanted to do the same. And I think that they still want to do that. What is he actually doing? That's the important part. What is he actually doing? He's privatizing it through stable coins. He's long Bitcoin and short dollar. And he's increasing the national debt.

He's rolling over the same system. He promised an order of the gold, which is effectively double bookkeep on the Treasury and the Fed. Yeah. He's just asset stripping. You're right. And I agree that they fumbled it. I think that they're...

What I mean to say is my understanding of what they want to achieve is the right solution. But what if it's just... But the way they're doing it, the way Trump is doing it, is completely... wrong. So he's

you're right, he's privatizing it, he's using it for his own ends. He's trying to take advantage of this and he's going to end up derailing the whole thing. That's what I see. But creating a dual situation. I don't think it's

incompetence. I think it's just what he was installed to do and a president is installed to serve the globalist agenda and the World Economic Forum. And he was like that from day one. And their job is to lie to you and just create an acceptable narrative that makes you think that they're going to do something else.

But the president's not in charge. Why would you create a lie that only maybe one percent of the public actually understands? I mean, you know, a good lie would be something that most people would be something that most people are going to make America great. Oh, sorry. I was speaking over you. I meant to say, a good lie would be something that at least half of your population understands. You know, you could just beat up on the Democrats.

or something, you know. Well, yeah, he does. But what were his lies? He said, Doge, we're going to pay down the national debt, lie. Tariffs is going to rebuild the manufacturing base, lie. Epstein Files is about exposing, no, that's about making America weaker again. And we're not going to go to war. We're going to, you know, Iran is about nuclear weapons.

Everything, you could either believe that he came with good intention, or in fact, if you look at all his investments. and everything happened before he was installed, all of his investments were lined up to get incredibly wealthy off everything that happened. And that was before he became in power. And then who was he paid for to become in power? It was he served their agenda. So to me, the whole narrative that Trump's a failure or Trump's stupid or Trump's a clown,

he served exactly who he was meant to serve. And he's done a great job for global financials. financial capital. Well, I see that. And I completely understand why you might think that. But then why would they be trying to put him in prison for freaking eight years? I mean, they've been... How do you blackmail somebody?

How do you compromise someone? How do you ensure they do what you want to do? The fact is, if you get away with it, if you actually go down, then there's a problem. But if you get away with it, then they got you. But you know, the... the judicial process, if you take somebody to court and you lose, you've implicitly exonerated them, so then they're not really compromised, quite the opposite. Yeah, I personally believe that Senate is bought, Congress is bought, judicial is serves greater power.

Like, I just don't believe in any of the system. It's 100% captured. And yeah, you get, you know, there is an element of theatrics of the illusion, but left and right is the same. There's a uny party. The lobby controls and the structural federal reserve system, the bond markets, the debt capital markets, and the equity capital markets are designed for wealth extraction and concentration up. No president's going to change that.

Their job is to just get rich while they do what the lobby paid them to do. Well, but, you know, if we had genuine reformers in the past, what, what? Like who? Like William McKinley, like Abraham Lincoln, like George Washington, Alexander Hamilton. We've read their cartoon story, but have you read their real story? No, you can look at the economic development of what actually happened under their watch and afterwards. You know, if a nation goes from a patchwork of 13 colonies of the British Empire to being the leading economic superpower in the space of 50 years, well, that's the effect of certain policies.

And those policies were actually very, very vigorously opposed by the British Empire. And then you had Germany under Friedrich Least from 1873 until World War I. What about since the Fed? Let's go to something that bears reality today. Like in the last, I guess people would say that JFK was the last one. Well, JFK didn't get very far with it, but he did. Yeah. Yeah. But then you can go to China.

China has had this economic renaissance basically copying and adapting the American system to Chinese conditions. So did Russia. And I'm talking about explicit. You'll have policy papers. The Russians read Henry Carey. They understood the American system. They read Friedrich Least. this is a conscious choice and you can see the effects.

So, you know, to reduce it all to, they're all working for the same centers of powers and they're all doing this to enrich themselves, you have to ignore what actually happens on the ground that certain countries do rise from total dependence and poverty and backwardness to become major powers, China, Germany, the United States,

Japan, South Korea. Well, I mean, Japan, South Korea are just nodes of the Bank of Japan and there's like, I wouldn't say they're free. But if you look at the example of Russia, you know, took on the oligarchial system, kept nationalized oil, and says, no, that mass privatization represented by Putin, you know, was, the hybrid model. And what is the hybrid model? It's keep your resources, have a central bank that serves the people

rather than global transnational capital, and then have free trade and hard money. If you look back at it, that's what pulled. If you look at the golden age of Islam at the same time as the dark ages of Europe, those were, and if you look at Adam Smith, what were the original, like,

what did Adam Smith do? He took the model from the golden age of Islam and then said, let's take out the invisible hand, which was meant to be God, and which is meant to represent ethics, and then replaced it with, it's the market, the invisible hand is the market, the pricing mechanism, and let's take out all the ethics. And that was why he was on the Bank of England, though, and that was effectively the formation of the indoctrinated economics textbooks that created this whole capitalism dichotomy that we all know

transnational capital was funding Nazi fascism, was created the Federal Reserve and funded the Bolshevik Revolution to create the Soviet Union and communism. And we know that that were the same, you know, the same strategic tension, ideologies in order to be able

to profit from war. And we know that there's genuine resistance against it. But at the higher level of power is the president, really the president? I doubt it. I don't think so. I think they work for who paid them to be the president.

In which country? Oh, I mean, in China, I believe that there is, the CCP is not controlled by corporate interest. Everyone will have their own power structure, oligarchy, and, you know, various other things. But in terms of Western, the president has always served the corporate interest or the president is the corporate interest. And that's, it always has been.

Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. Beautiful. That was just, sorry, Simon, go ahead. I was not going to interrupt that back and forth. Did you have something you wanted to add there? No, I think it's, yeah, you know, I really enjoyed the conversation, Alex. And like, yeah, it's deeply philosophical and then we bring it back to current events. And there's a lot there.

There's a lot there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. No, no, excellent discussion. I very much enjoyed it myself as well. And, you know, like as I explained to a friend of mine recently, I don't, you know, Anything we think, anything we believe is probably 50-50, whether it's true or not. Either it is or it isn't. But I think just the very fact of having these discussions, I think we all walk away a little bit smarter for it.

And I think that ultimately, you know, I'm a great believer in the wisdom of crowds. If people are exposed to true information, ultimately the collective will reach the best, conclusions. So I think that our job is basically to have the discussions to do the research. And then, you know, time will tell whether we were right or whether we were wrong. Agreed. There is one more thing that I absolutely must discuss with you guys if that's all right. And Alex, I'll start with you on this one too. During this transition to a multiple world, while the chaos currently going on that we kind of all see and I'll agree on, how do you think people can or should protect themselves, protect their assets,

protect their well-being. What sort of things do you think are actionable for us that are not at the top levels of these power structures? Well, basically, you're facing two choices. Either you have to be very compliant and obedient and hope that you'll be the last one to be devoured by the system, or you have to try to take as much money as you can outside of the system, meaning banking system. What I've noticed is that in the West, the unbanking or debanking has become quite a thing. And a lot of people get debanked, sanctioned, you know, completely frozen out of their assets and unable to receive money, pay bills, work, which destroys not only them, it destroys their families. And usually providing material support to a sanctioned person is prosecuted.

criminally. So people are not allowed to help you. So if I'm sanctioned and you give me a hundred bucks, you could go to prison for that. So, you know, I've seen this happen to a number of people. And apparently the real numbers are very large. Like in Europe, it's probably more than 2,000 people who have been sanctioned. And in the United States, I don't know, you would think there's a handful of people like Nick Fuentes and so forth. But there was that interview that between Joe Rogan and the Netscape guy, Mark Andreasen. Andreas, yeah, Mark Andreessen. Mark Andreessen, yeah.

And he said that they sanctioned 30 founders of tech companies in the United States just to make them not develop their stuff that might compete with, you know, steak monopolies. So all these cases have something in common. They are being sanctioned by freezing their bank accounts, which means that your bank account is the shackles. That's the cage you're in. And we're in it practically by consent because we voluntarily keep our money in our banks. And okay, today they're making it difficult to get your money out,

but you still can at least to an extent. So that means that to protect yourself, you have to take out as much money out of the banks as possible. Then you have to try to convert it into assets that are going to maybe be better store of value like gold and silver. To my mind, you know, maybe Bitcoin is a solution, but I'm agnostic on that. A piece of land, you know, place where you live,

some real assets. And then the next thing I would recommend is to really get to know your neighbors and make sure you're well networked locally because if we have like an Armageddon type of economic crisis and everything breaks down and there's no medicines in the pharmacy, there's no stuff in the supermarket. You will be much, much more resilient if you know your local community, if you know who can help you with all. Because, you know, there are people with skills and abilities that can help you find solutions to your problems for next to nothing. And you can, you probably have skills and abilities that can help other people in the community solve their problems. And so a community is much, much more resilient than a collection of atomized individuals who

completely depend on the system, you know, on Walmarts and big pharmacies and so forth. Anyway, so that's two things. I would take as much money as possible out of the banking system. I would get to know my neighbors. And then make black markets great again because, you know, when the state wants to be too restrictive and put too much shackles on us, black markets emerge. And black markets are practically a magnet not only for consumers because you'll find a great variety of stuff there.

They're also a magnet for entrepreneurs because there's no taxes, there's no state red tape. And then, you know, if you go to countries like Argentina or Venezuela, practically half the GDP is transacted on the black markets. And so people work it out, you know, outside of the system, but they work out their problems. And so they live. They survive and they live. Rather than, you know, if everything is inside of a state and banking matrix and you completely depend on that system, well, they can condition your ability to live with whatever they choose.

You know, they can say you can have no more than one child. You have to be vaccinated every six months. you're not allowed to say these things. You're not allowed to drive more than a, use more than one tank of gas per month. You're not allowed to have more than 100 grams of meat per month or weak or whatever. So that's the matrix. That's the system. And your shackles is your bank account, basically.

And then getting money out of that is your get out of jail free card. I think Simon and I would both completely agree with that sentiment that's removing your money, and purchasing power outside the existing system and building community. We're doing it here in Calgary as well, too. We have our own little Bitcoin market. And I make sure that I have contacts for produce, for beef, for everything I can need, HVAC guy, plumber, electrician, carpenter, all I can hire and pay directly in Bitcoin. And so because if I can, Alice, I'll take this opportunity.

I know that neither Simon or I is going to change your mind right here and now, but I'd love to at least try and address some of the issues. I think we completely agree on that. Your agnosticism towards Bitcoin, is there something in particular? or what's kind of the reasoning for that? And then Simon, I'd love to get you to address it. Okay. So I was completely sold on Bitcoin, let's say, 2015, 2016.

Okay. Here's where I have doubts, because now in Europe, they've made it that, you know, if you buy Bitcoin, somehow you need to be registered. So the authorities know. And then if you want to convert it back to the currency, you know, you're already screwed. And so, you know, Bitcoin depends on any cryptocurrency depends on the existence of the internet and all these ledgers. And that can all be penetrated and controlled by the authorities.

So it's not, I don't have any issue with the technology itself. I think it's a phenomenal revolutionary technology. I think it can advance the causes of humanity immensely. So I'm not agnostic in that sense. The reason why I turned agnostic is because I'm no longer certain that this is safe because they know it's there, right? And I just recently read of the case in France where once they impose this requirement for exchanges to provide information.

about their clients to the state. There has been something like 40 kidnappings. Yeah, they had an insider that was giving away the information. Exactly. So, you know, the criminals knew who they could shake down. This is, you know, so this is a, this is a risk. This is a real risk. Whereas, you know, stuff that you stash away in your mattress, maybe only you know about.

And so it's a, it's still a risk, you know, we're never going to get away from risk, but at least the information is tightly held. I know it. Maybe my kids know it. Maybe my parents know it, right? But it's not out there. Do you know what I mean? Yes. Simon, would you like to address some of that or have any comments? Yeah, sure. So it's something I thought deeply about and so would Nathan. And everyone, And there is solutions to all of those problems. And there'll be a video on BTC sessions, I'm sure, of how to solve any of those problems, because they're all solvable. But once you, which I completely agree, community is absolutely the path forward.

So community bank rather than large bank, spending local, investing local, everyone around you needs money. You'd rather your money go to people around you because it will help there. rather than someone on the other side of the world. And then sometimes you need people over the other side of the world. So why not connect a local, direct-to-farmer community? Really think about where you're buying from and how you can create these parallel systems and connect them, without all the big things in the middle.

And community banking is absolutely the solution in terms of the money you need at the bank. But yeah, the on-ramps and off-ramps are highly regulated. And so if you have a community bank and you have a local relationship with them, and you can put your money in and out and go to a crypto or a Bitcoin exchange, you can either do that via a decentralized network

where people go from bank to bank and you go direct to Bitcoin and all of those networks exist. BTC sessions will probably have videos on all of these different things. And then when you withdraw it, yes, you have to follow all the laws. And so they will do KYC, but that's the same with your gold, your shares, your real estate, everything you've ever purchased is subject to the same kind of laws and regulations. And so is it better or worse is really the question.

And so what you can do is you can take it out. And it's completely legal to anonymize that into a self-custody wallet and put it through a, a coin join, there'll be videos on all of these things, which allow you to own the asset, take it wherever you want, and if your government gets tyrannical, you can take it with you, but yeah, you have to follow the law. So if your local tax rules say that you have to disclose it, then you can say how much Bitcoin you have in complying with those rules, but you don't need to disclose necessarily the wallet addresses, and if you do, you can coin join them and anonymize them. And this is all completely legal.

There's nothing illegal there. So I just say, follow the law, and Bitcoin does solve a lot of those problems. But yeah, they want your Bitcoin. So what they'd much rather you do is own it via a Bitcoin Treasury company and buy a BlackRock ETF instead of Bitcoin because they want to hold your Bitcoin so you will own nothing and be happy. And they give you an IOU version of Bitcoin. And right now, Coinbase.

is just announced that they're laying off 14% of their staff because they're turning the whole thing into AI. So we're going down this world. There is no avoiding this AI trade and this global trade. I think you've got to lean into it. You've got to become productive. You've got a few years to come up with a plan. And what are the two things you actually need to do?

You need to localize as much as possible, earn as much from the fact that what is really happening, everything's moving to robotics and automation and that kind of means you've got to be more productive rather than getting outside it there's no avoiding it you're just going to become unproductive or you're building it you're building the data centers

you're doing the real engineering you're doing the plumbing and I think you've all got three to five years until we enter a world that we can't recognize so you need to make as much money as possible put it in a local bank and then you need a flow for taking it out of the bank which is the Bitcoin in self-custody

or gold in self-custody. What most people do when they do gold is they give it to Switzerland or they give it to Singapore and they end up with a paper IOU version of gold or a or a BlackRock ETF version of gold. That's not gold.

And you will find that out. So then you end up at Bitcoin and then you just need to learn the skills of everything you said is true but there's ways around it completely legally and to maintain privacy and remember that all the crypto, all the stable coins, all the tokenized real world assets,

they're all a scam. They've all got freeze functions. They took them from Iran and they can take them to you. No, no, I agree with all that. The only thing is you can do all that illegally, but if somebody kidnaps your kids and says, yeah, I'd like you to share those 12 words with me,

then what's legal and what's not legal is no longer relevant, you know. It's the same for like having bars of gold or any bare instrument really in your direct possession. There are... That's true. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We just did a workshop even on like particularly planning for a, if you had a home invasion or you're under duress,

what you can do in those sort of situations. But to your point, like the biggest issue that we have with Bitcoin is the KYC at the very beginning. getting the AML, KYC laws that have us force over the information. Somebody's got it. Because the best defense to get that against that sort of situation is that no one knows that you have it. And to Simon's point, we do have things like peer-to-peer exchanges.

We do have things like for our privacy tools like coin join and wasabi as well as things like the liquid and lightning there. And then the other one, too, with directly going back to the Fiat rails, that's why for us here in Alberta, it was so key that we start to build out our network of people that are willing to exchange goods or services in Bitcoin. because that means if I'm ever completely kicked off the Fiat rails, I can still get beef. I can still get a few things that I need. But you're right.

Those are all things that need to be addressed. And I think also that kind of as we're shifting to this multipolar world and things get a little bit chaotic, the ability to memorize 12 words and port that worth with you, port your net worth with you anywhere in the world, go across any border borders, become completely meaningless. I think that censorship resistance and that portability actually becomes the main value proposition in the next five years. But I'm glad that you were able to share those, Alex, and we had a chance to at least try and address some of them. Which, by the way, if you ever want, if you're coming back to Cornerstone at some point, I would be happy to show you all of these things, even just so you have the option, should shit really hit the fan. But gentlemen, this was a phenomenal conversation. I got a ton out of it. I know the audience will as well too.

Alex, can you please tell everybody where they can go to follow your work, find more, all that good stuff. So, yeah, I'm active on X. My handle is at Naked Hedgy. I have two publications on substack. One is a daily market newsletter called I System Trend Following. And the other one is my personal publication called Alex Krainner Substack. And I reactivated my YouTube channel this year. It's called I think it's called just Alex Kramer.

There's also an Alex Kramer official, but that's a fake AI account. That's not me. Yeah. That one was looking around for some videos. Like that one's running live feeds all the time. It's not real folks. And then Simon, of course, where can everybody go? to follow your work.

Yeah, so I go live following the money every single week on YouTube. As a discipline, I try and take tech, tech, Bitcoin, all the scams that are happening in crypto, macro and geopolitics. And I kind of as a discipline, do like these crazy three, four hour is more for me. And I kind of in live, allow people to listen in on how I think. And then I look at it and say, did I get this wrong? Did I get that right? And kind of adjust the analysis.

So I do that every Friday on YouTube, Simon Dixon. And then I take it to Simon Dixon.com and get AI to make like a five minute summary and a 20 minute summary for those that can't listen to the three, four hours. And I put all those on Simon Dixon.com in a blog post. And then whenever stuff happens in real time, I join Spaces and I'm on X at Simon Dixon. Twitter. And that's how I spend most of my time at the moment. And I try and just triangulate my information with as many smart people like Alex and do interviews and podcasts with BTC session. So I really appreciate you setting this up. And I really enjoyed everything you had to say,

Alex. Thank you, Simon. Likewise. It was great. I really enjoyed it. Thanks, Nathan, for arranging this and from my side, warm greetings to everybody watching and listening. Hey guys, thanks for watching the video. Just wanted to quickly let you know we're going to be doing our annual Bitcoin Survival Workshop covering how to privately use and acquire Bitcoin June 28th in Banff. You can scan the QR code or check the link in the description to learn more. We'd love to have you there. If you enjoyed this episode with Alex and Simon, please do like and subscribe and check out

the previous episode with Jeffrey A. Tucker and Michael Green or the recent live stream.