BTC Sessions - WHY ARE WE BULLISH? Bitcoin ATH, Culture Permeates The Mainstream ep128

Episode Date: December 18, 2020

Why Are We Bullish for Friday December 18th Follow the panel on twitter! https://twitter.com/FossGregfoss https://twitter.com/ck_SNARKs https://twitter.com/pierre_rochard https://twitter.com/TheCryptoconomy SUPPORT THE SHOW: LEDN Bitcoin backed loans –  get $25 free https://bit.ly/397rlLN Get Wasabi wallet for Bitcoin privacy https://wasabiwallet.io/ Cobo Vault: secure your Bitcoin! https://bit.ly/2GgMFlH BillFodl: get your wallet backups in solid steel. https://privacypros.io/ Bitrefill: use Bitcoin to purchase gift cards https://www.bitrefill.com/buy/?code=O04UMic9 LIGHTNING tips: https://tippin.me/@BTCsessions Telegram channel: https://t.me/btc_sessions

Wasabi wallet and fairly private. Welcome, everyone. Very excited for today. This is Why Are We Bullish for December 18th, 2020. We have a killer panel. We got to talking about a lot of stuff that has us bullish in Bitcoin this week. A lot about Bitcoin culture and how it seems to be infiltrating the legacy financial system and the culture at large. A lot of fun. brought back some faces from last week. I know we had some technical difficulties there,

so we wanted to give everybody their two cents or their two sets. And a new face joins us this week as well. But again, very, very excited. I hope you guys enjoy. I am Ben with the BTC sessions, and this is your daily session. Now over here on the Bitbo.io dashboard, we are sitting at 22,750-some-odd-oddd per Bitcoin for one US dollar, you can pick up 4,395 Satoshis. That is on the way down. May not be up. You may not be able to get over 4,000 for very long.

Now, as far as fees go, if you want to get your transaction into the next block, you're going to be looking at a fee of around 151 Satoshes per bite. So that can be high. if you're a little bit more patient, an hour is looking like 69 sats per byte and anything beyond that, possibly you might be able to sneak in with one sat per byte, but don't bank on it again

if there's an influx of transactions you could be waiting a while. So those are kind of your benchmarks. Now, currently 88.45% of all Bitcoin has been mined. Once again, that's going to be hitting 90% by the end of 2021. And, yeah, all of these things have me feeling bullish Before we dive into the panel, of course, shout out to the sponsors of the show, leaden.io, where you can use your Bitcoin for a variety of different services.

Of course, they've got their Bitcoin back loans. They've saved my butt a few times. So if you're in a pinch and you need your hands on dollars, but you don't want to sell your Bitcoin because that's taxable and you're worried about buying back at a higher price. That could be for you. They've also got Bitcoin and USDC savings accounts with interest rates of up to 11.7% annually paid monthly. And they've got their B2X offering. He uses the same loan mechanism to instantly buy more Bitcoin and effectively double your Bitcoin on the spot.

If you want to check these guys out, link down below. If you click the link and opt to get either of their loan products, they'll give you $25 for free into your savings account. Now, we've also got Kobo Vault. This is one of my regularly used hardware wallets. I love the thing because it's 100% air-gapped. You never plug it into anything connected to the internet. Everything is done securely offline via QR code. And that also entails having a secure element.

The firmware is open source. So I recommend checking out their Bitcoin-only firmware for even greater security. And it works. It's interoperable with all my favorite wallets. Bitcoin Core, Electrum, Wasabi on desktop, Blue Wallet on mobile, on a ton of great multi-sig solutions as well, including Blue Wallet just launch multi-sig.

So be sure to check that out. Link down below for reference, I'm using the Vault Pro, which has the fingerprint scanner and the rechargeable battery. Now, I of course am all in on Bitcoin. I live on Bitcoin. I earn Bitcoin, and I obviously have to live and eat and get gas and shop and do all those things. And I can do that through Bit refill because they have every imaginable gift card you could

possibly need to get your shopping done. So be sure to check to Bitrefill.com. And while you're shopping there, you actually earn Bitcoin bag. You earn sats back as you shop. Couldn't be easier. They take Bitcoin on chain and they do lightning for those cheap, fast transactions. So be sure to check them out.

Finally, whenever you're backing up any wallet, including something like your cobo, you can write it down on a piece of paper or if you're worried about that because, again, susceptible to fire, flood, throwing it out just by Hexton. You might want to back up your seed in solid steel. So you can do that with something like the bill foddle

over on privacyprose. dot i.o again, install a solid slab of steel with little tiles that you slide in for each seed phrase word. You lock the thing up, fireproof, waterproof, and you proof because you're way less likely to throw out a piece of steel than any piece of paper. Be sure to check them out. Links down below. With that, let's dive into the panel. Here we go. All right, welcome to the show, everybody. Welcome panel members. I'm very excited for this episode of Why Are We Bullish. Again, killer panel. We did have a little bit of technical difficulties last week, so we tried to round up as many people as possible from last week as we could. We have CK. taken the spot of Mauricio.

He was a little tied up this week, but super excited to have CK. Guy Swann, Pierre Richard, Greg Foss, all on the show. I'll let you guys do a quick little intro of yourselves down the line. Let's just quickly start with Greg. Can you just let everybody know who you are, what you do? Sir, hi, guys. I am a Canadian who's practiced or traded in the credit markets for 30 years on both Bay Street in Canada and Wall Street in New York. I've worked on both the buy side and the sell side. The buy side being a number of credit focused.

funds. So I bring a credit focus to my distrust of the Fiat monetary system. And I believe that Bitcoin Twitter is perhaps one of the best resources of knowledge that I was unaware of until about six months ago. So I'm a newbie and I really appreciate being included in this. So thank you. Awesome. Great to have you, Greg. Let's jump to Pierre, let everybody know who you are. Sure, Pierre Oshard. I'm the lead Bitcoin strategist at Cracken, although the views here are my own, not those of Cracken.

And I have been very interested in Bitcoin from a monetary perspective, first because I really come from an Austrian economics background, and then also interested in it from a technology perspective. perspective. I love computers and software and open source. So thanks for having me on and I look forward to today's conversation. Awesome, awesome. Let's jump to a guy, let everybody know who you are. What's up? I am a guy Swan, the guy who's read more about Bitcoin than anybody else you know. and a host of two podcasts now. We got Bitcoin Audible,

which has been running for three years and some change now. And actually just read CK's piece yesterday on the show, got it out at like midnight. And then also Shitcoin Insider, which is the newer show. I've been in Bitcoin for a really long time. I actually was reading Pierre and Bitstein stuff, ages ago when they were first posting it. Big Austrian econ, econ nerd, all the good stuff, all the good stuff.

Awesome. Well, stoked to have you back. And I guess, without further ado, CK, let everybody know who you are. What's up, CK, I had things up at Bitcoin Magazine and just absolutely honored to be on this panel with all of these legends. And I've learned a lot about Bitcoin from every single one of you. And yeah, just excited to talk about why I'm feeling bullish. It's a lot to be bullish about. Yeah, there's a ton to be bullish about.

So, yeah, I mean, obviously we've blown past previous all-time highs this week. Lots of fun celebration, vindication, lack of humbleness, distinct lack of humbleness on Bitcoin, Twitter. That's okay. I think it's warranted after, you know, the last three years. So, yeah, we're just going to riff on some reasons why we're bullish. I'm going to throw one out there first, let you guys kind of see what you think about it. One of the things that had me most bullish was a segment on Bloomberg TV this week. And they had Scott Minard or Minard, or I'm not sure how to say the last name, but from Guggenheim.

And they've put, they've been looking at putting up to. I believe 10% of their fund into Bitcoin. Wait, what fund? Sorry, I didn't see this. This is Guggenheim Global. Interesting. Yeah. So they're looking at, and they've said that they're looking at moving into Bitcoin,

but he was doing a segment on Bloomberg TV. And during the segment, as he was saying, well, we started this process when Bitcoin was around $10,000. But I mean, obviously with the recent price, movements, it makes our job a little bit more difficult. However, we looked and are valuing Bitcoin, we think it has a fair value of $400,000. And as he was saying that, the Fed chairman, Jerome Powell, was doing a live press conference on the Fed's forward trajectory of what they're going to be doing. and the host of Bloomberg TV at the time was like,

the Fed Sherman's going on now, but we're going to delay that because I want to hear more about how you frame a $400,000 Bitcoin. They literally pushed off and off to the side, the Fed to talk about Bitcoin. And I think it's just this beautiful, I mean, metaphor, not even a metaphor, it's just you're seeing the attention shift

from the old to the new. You're seeing people pay more attention to this incredible revolution of money and say, yeah, the Fed's going to do what it's going to do. You know, it's still important, but you can see that the tides are shifting. And I think it's beautiful. I love that somebody would say, yeah, the Fed chairman, we'll get to that in a minute. Let's chat some more Bitcoin. So I don't know, did anybody here see that segment? And if so, what did you think about? But I'll let whoever wants to dive in first. Maybe, yeah, whoever wants it. I'll jump in.

Yeah, so I watched it. It was super bullish. It was one of those that you just drop into all your normie friend investor groups where you're just like, hey, you remember what I said, 200,000 by next year? Well, Guggenheim says 400,000. You know, in terms of, I think the observation about the public being more interested in Bitcoin price appreciation and the investing. public, the investing media in particular, than even the Fed. It makes sense because, you know,

the Fed is all about pushing and kind of controlling the narrative. And they've been in overdrive. And the longer that they have to kind of be in this overdrive mode, the dollar and dollar they get. And then here's Bitcoin, just smashing all-time highs. And you're, you're just seeing like bullish sign after bullish sign. It makes better TV. It gets more clicks like Bitcoin converts better. Conversion technology. Go ahead, Greg. I saw it as well.

I actually someone texted a screenshot of a Bloomberg, the Bloomberg trading monitor to me from New York and saw it. And then I reviewed it on replay. But here's what I know. First of all, Guggenheim is an incredibly well-respected fund on the street. The neat thing is when you put that type of price target on something, you never put a time on it either, right? You either do a time or a price, but you never do both. So let's just assume it's not going to happen quickly. But my view would be any price in the current trading levels is a bit of a rounding error to the most optimistic.

and in my view, a likely outcome, but certainly an optimistic price forecast. So don't get bogged down by the fact that they started the analysis at 10,000 and now it's at 20,000. Okay. It's still a rounding error in the big picture. And this is what everyone has to remember. It's got to be orders of magnitude higher than this. So don't get fancy. And there's a bond trading expression.

Don't get too smart by a half. And what that means is, let's say bonds are trading at 40 to a half, okay? 40 bid, 40 and a half offer. And you know they're going to 85. You just know what you've done your analysis, but you try and get fancy and you try and buy it on the bid side. So you join the bid. And all of a sudden someone else lifts the 40 and a half offer or 40 and half offer goes,

well, fill or kill and no one lifts them. And then all of a sudden the next offer comes in at 42 and it's 40, 42, and you miss the trade at 40 and a half and then someone else lives 42 and you say oh i'm i'm going to let it settle out and before you know what he's trading at 50 and you knew it was going 85 and you could have bought it at 40 and a half but you got too smart by half do not get too smart by half when you're trading bitcoin we know the optimistic scenarios so you know if 400 000 is their number which i do not disagree with uh put it in the context don't don't uh overthink this smash by yeah smash by uh guy pierre whoever wants to jump in yeah uh i thought it was great that

he he kind of had this valuation metric of like just look at how what percentage of GDP is gold okay and then let's just go from there and once you start working with numbers of that order of magnitude you're going to come up with ridiculous valuations like 400 000 and it's all very very reasonable, right? And so that's why it's so hard to stay humble, right? We're talking about a new global monetary system. It's one of the biggest changes to the economy that has occurred since the beginning of time. So it's great that they're seeing it the same way. It kind of validates that we're not crazy because these are very reasonable people who have to be very cautious about what they say, right?

And they get lots of media training and they don't just spat off like I do. And so it shows that there's really a lot of intellectual horsepower behind Bitcoin at this point. And that the skeptics, right, the Mark Cubans of the world, they're getting lonelier and lonelier and lonelier. And before you know, it'll just be Peter Schiff retweeting Mark Cuban and Mark Cuban retweeting Peter Schiff and everyone else just ratioing them. You know, they'll have like 5,000 replies and two likes. And it'll be really sad to see. But, you know, it was their decision to make. So I'll just leave it at that.

Yeah. What do you say to that? I don't know. Let's find out. Guy, you take it away. Yeah. I think this is kind of a, this is a snapshot. This is a small model of what we're going to see over the next year.

Is that if you aren't talking and focused on Bitcoin, you're going to be irrelevant. You're going to be pushed down the ladder as to when we let people know what's going on. because just with number go-up technology, like it's going to be the most, it's going to just break so many Overton windows as to people seeing like what is even possible. And they're going to,

it's not going to make sense for so many people who've been dismissing it for a long time. They're going to like, how could this thing possibly be doing this? And I think 2021 is probably going to be the most important year. in Bitcoin from a how does what do people see it as a perspective I think this run is going to be the one that established

where essentially it's so impossible to ignore that everyone will have to make a stance that everyone will have to say I am yes I am ignoring it or I am no for Bitcoin and that includes governments and regulators and everything We will figure out, I think, for the next decade, which jurisdictions or regimes are Bitcoin friendly and which ones are Bitcoin hostile. And basically things will start to move in, like we'll set all the groundwork for the next 10 years. And I think 2021 is going to be epic.

And kind of, you know, a little bit of fate in there, 21, you know, can't hurt. I love it. Yeah, I think 2021 will make and or break reputations and economies even. So it should be an interesting one. Dude, one thing that I just found out that was crazy. I just saw this posted on Twitter this morning was that, oh, is Jack. Jack retweeted it. was that Nigeria is now the second largest Bitcoin, like Bitcoin economy, like usage and ownership of Bitcoin within the country behind the U.S. That's absolutely insane. And to think about like particularly, yeah, like a smaller country or whatever like that, that's usually not on the world stage and not talked about often to, you know, something like that,

like, God, that could just explode on the global stage. Just make them such a meaningful capital allocator. Like what we saw with China in the past 20 years, you could see with something like Nigeria or some other African country, like just at the speed the technology moves and the speed that Bitcoin could appreciate if they have significant holdings and a significant economic base, like they could basically shrink what China did in the speed. the last 20 as far as becoming important on the global stage into a year, into two years, you know? That's just crazy to think about like, you know, the dynamics of who we should be listening to are going to be in complete turmoil this year. They're just going to be all over the damn place. It's poetic. It's amazing because the same kind of inversion that you see with individuals that got into Bitcoin early being able to outpace the institutions that are getting in

now and those institutions being able to outpace nation states in the future because those nation states won't be able to buy enough Bitcoin to match what micro strategy was able to put away. And then beyond that, when the first nation states that get in may be able to surpass nation states that wait the longest and have the most red tape to do so, it's it's crazy. The ones that were ousted from the global economy the most, like, you know, good luck being able to pay with your credit card if you're from Nigeria, but those those detriments have become potential strengths now. So it's it's really cool to see. Anyway, so I think let's dive into another reason for being bullish. So I'm going to maybe pass it

over to, I'm going to pass it to Guy this time to get to get us rolling on the next one. So, Guy, what has you feeling bullish this week? The culture is, the Bitcoin culture is kind of impossible to ignore. I've been amazed more recently, particularly when, and you know, Greg made a comment about this just a little bit ago, about how much knowledge there is in the Bitcoin space, particularly about finance and money. monetary history, like detailing out the real principles and just kind of a really, I mean, it's literally a treasure trove of information. It is a whole community of people who are talking and analyzing things that the legacy economy is a lot trying to ignore, like trying not to talk

about or, you know, holding on to desperately ignorant views of the past and not updating for the obvious new situation that we are in in the last decade or two. But they're using our framing. Like when Bitcoin comes up, they call the dollar Fiat. Five years ago, nobody said that word. Nobody said that word. But that's now what it's called. It is Bitcoin.

And then there is Fiat. Even the people who don't like it, even the people who are against it, except our framing for how they argue it. And they say stacking sats. They say hoddle. There's shit coin is in the congressional history, you know, like the power of that culture and of being profoundly unapologetic about it. And to basically be at the same time a huge, a resource, a kind of a, a stash of knowledge, if you will, on all of these topics when they are now the most

important topics that we should all be paying attention to. I think that feedback is going to be crazy. And, you know, like when CNBC is talking about stack and sats and whenever people are talking about what's good money and what's bad, government money isn't, you know, the nation's strong money. It's just Fiat. It's our words. And that's just pretty epic to me. Like, I think that's a huge, huge, bullish suggestion. And it shows that they're kind of on the defensive. Like, they, like, they're coming into something that they clearly are trying to find out about. So they're, you know, wary to kind of bring their framing into it. And I also think that that's going to be, like anybody who is necessarily against it, like the Peter Schiffs, the Mark Cubans,

the Amy Casters, like all these people that are just bashing it like crazy, they're necessarily on the defensive. Like they are, they kind of feel desperate because they have to say something when the price goes up and they're going to stay on the defensive. They're going to stay on their heels this whole time. the Bitcoin price is just going up and it's going to make them have to excuse why they think something that clearly is kind of silly, that reality is showing the exact opposite as the truth. So they're always going to have to justify themselves and we can just sit back and watch

everybody being forced to pay attention to it. I love it. CK, you're pretty entrenched in the whole Bitcoin culture being at Bitcoin magazine and doing your podcast and everything. Is it interesting to you seeing the mainstream latch on to the culture that has been built here over the past number of years? I mean, I've been saying for a long time that Bitcoin is a household name. So I think that Bitcoin's been a part of the culture. And I agree with Guy. As soon as people started saying Fiat, that's when Bitcoin won. I have to give a shout out to folks like Pierre for kind of being initial proponents and pushing that

kind of thought pattern forward. And yeah, I mean, I have my own why I'm bullish that is kind of along this line. So I'll pass it off to the other two panel lists to give their takes on the Bitcoin culture. Pierre, Pierre, let's dive into you first. Just especially it's unique for you being at Cracken, given that you're coming from. And you have like, you're you have some history and kind of traditional, I guess, finance. But then you're diving into, you've been in the the Bitcoin space for a long time now. And now with crack and getting a banking charter, it's like this injection of Bitcoin culture into traditional finance. So you probably have a unique perspective on this. Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, thank you, CK. But really,

the folks who deserve credit here are people like Murray Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises that I learned from. I probably wouldn't throw around. the word fiat if it wasn't for this guys. And there's many others as well. Shout out, Hizu Suhirto de Soto de Soto. Shout out, York Guido Holzman, Carl Manger, the real OGs, you know, the ones who knew what money was without having to see Bitcoin, which is really impressive because a lot of people, they're not going to understand Bitcoin.

Sorry, they're not going to understand money until they understand Bitcoin. And so it's really interesting in that regard. So in terms of traditional finance and Bitcoin, I really see the key difference between these two different cultures is that traditional finance has number go down technology and Bitcoin has number go up technology. And so it's often challenging for them to see things. So in traditional finance, they have sayings like cash is trash, cash drag on your portfolio.

So the opposite in the Bitcoin world is hoddle, right? Hodel your cash. You know, don't go out and invest or consume. That's bad. So it really, you know, it's just, it turns it on its head. And the other part of it too is, you know, Fiat culture is actually relatively recent, right? Like it's an invention of the 20th century by and large.

Before the 20th century, we had gold culture. And gold culture is much closer to Bitcoin culture. In gold culture, they say, a fool in his money are quickly parted, right? In Fiat culture, they say, you're foolish for holding money. and that a wise man goes out and gambles on Wall Street. But yeah, I really see it as kind of, we're going back to gold culture,

but we're actually going beyond that. Like we're going to, you know, gold was deflationary, Bitcoin is hyper deflationary. So in terms of pushing a culture towards saving and towards long-term thinking, we're going in a lot-term thinking, We're going into uncharted territory. We've never seen a civilization based on this degree

of number go up technology. And so I'm very excited. We're seeing like glimpses of it, right? We're like the tip of the iceberg. But as each day goes by, as each block goes by, we see the Bitcoin culture just getting stronger and stronger permeating and cleansing this fiat degeneracy all around us. I love what you're saying there, just given that it's, the culture will force people to

actually contribute the most possible, to be as efficient with their time as possible. Like, fiat currency has completely devalued people's time because the work that you do is it creates the fiat that you gain and that gets devalued so quickly and it's so worthless. Again, by proxy, your time is effectively melting away. It's worthless. Whereas this, just to get a piece of those sats, just to get some of those sats, what are you going to do to have somebody actually part with their sats? What could you possibly contribute that somebody would find it valuable enough to part with their sats and the amount of efficiency and great products and experiences and things that people may create to entice people to maybe part with some of their sats,

I'm very excited to see that effect on our culture. I'm amused when I hear people say, oh, Bitcoiners are bad because they don't spend their Bitcoin and they're not creating a circular economy. and those people are selling mediocre products and services. And so I'm just left from scratching my head and wondering, well, maybe you should reflect on the low quality of what you're offering instead of trying to blame other people for your failure as a business. Also, are they accepting dollars? Because if they are, then that's what they're going to get first. Anyways, I'll pass it to Greg.

Greg, how are you feeling? And you're coming in from a newbie perspective on Bitcoin Twitter. So you just had this onslaught of Bitcoin culture in this past six months since you've joined the fray. Has it been overwhelming? How have you taken it? First of all, it's been incredibly eye-opening. Again, the knowledge base is truly phenomenal. I want to point out that, you know, as Pierre said, you know, if you get, if you've held gold in the past for many of the same reasons that you distrust be it,

It should be an easy transition to a better form of gold. And this brings up Peter Schiff, who one of my first true Twitter wars was with Peter. Because I sent, I got his son to admit that he owned a Bitcoin wallet. And I wasn't sure if I was being trolled or not. And I said, I can't believe this is true. Okay, Spencer, you actually own a wallet? Okay, I'm going to send you some Bitcoin. I'm going to show you that you're for real.

And then Peter goes on air and says, my son's an idiot. Excuse me, excuse me. He says, my son's only 18 years old. He doesn't understand that he's being an idiot. What's your excuse, meaning Fox? And I go, Peter, I play probabilities. My whole career is about playing probabilities. Nobody can be 100% certain about anything, okay?

yet Peter is 100% certain in his tweets that Bitcoin is overvalued and it's a bubble. Well, listen, people who are wrong and continue to be wrong soon become not just irrelevant, but insolvent. If you manage money by not admitting your mistakes and making adjustments for it, you will be out of business. So very simply, I laid out to Peter, I said, and I use Raoul Paul, I said, if Bitcoin has a 5% chance of going to a million dollars a coin as per Raoul, and a 95% chance of a zero, the expected value of that binary distributions for you guys who are statistically inclined is basically 95 times zero is zero and a million times five. percent is 50,000. Well, you're supposed to buy Bitcoin based on that binary distribution. Now, in reality, it's a continuous distribution. Long story short, if you're not, if you're 100 percent certain that something is worth zero with the asymmetric return distribution that Bitcoin has, it's so much more risky than actually owning a little bit and hedging against all the

things you already believe it. Because Peter already believes in gold. for all the properties that we don't believe in Fiat. Okay. So very simply, risk management, ladies and gentlemen, never be 100% certain about anything. There was a famous hockey coach in Canada by the name of Scotty Bowman. And he has a great quote. He says, there's nothing so uncertain as a sure thing.

I think that's a really good way to lead your life, all right? You got to hedge yourself. You got to make sure that you have, exposure to asymmetric trades because those trades define careers. This is the best asymmetric trade I've seen in 30 years. If you're overlooking this, Mark Cuban, you have not done your mathematics or you failed math. All good. Lots of people fail math. Or your ego is getting in the way. Correct. I will say that it is relatively certain that Peter Schiff is a great contrarian indicator.

Oh, he's the perfect. He's the perfect. He's my top TA indicator. So let's take a moment to reflect on this framed tweet that I got. I got it framed in gold. This was January 6th of 2020. And from Peter Schiff, for those Bitcoin bugs excited about Bitcoin's 4% rally in 2020, Think about this.

Gold is also up by about the same percentage of this year, only with significantly less downside risk. If this is the best rally Bitcoin can muster, how would it ever hit 50K, let alone one million? I'm so glad I framed this. Let's pass it off to Pierre. Pierre, what has you feeling bullish this week? Yeah. Well, first I just want to say about gold is that, like, I used to be a gold. bug. Actually, I was a silver bug. I was stacking silver because I was poor. It still am poor.

And the thing about that they would say is, oh, you know, you can always buy a good men's suit for one ounce of gold. And so gold maintains its purchasing power over the years. And that, to me, is like, okay, that's great. But what if it increased in value? What if you could buy two suits, right? And that's what that's what Bitcoin enables with the halvings and the difficulty adjustments. So what has me bullish is, you know, we, I'll talk politics, right? We saw that Wyoming elected a new senator, Senator-elect Cynthia-elect Cynthia-elect Cynthia-Lumice. And that has me very bullish because I think that while Bitcoin, obviously, and its fundamentals, you know, we emphasize that it's censorship resistant,

it's seizure resistant, it's permissionless. But that's all fine and well, but people will point out that, yes, that's great, but if exchanges and if Bitcoiners start getting targeted by the government, it makes life harder, right? And it's the same thing with drugs, you know, like you can still buy drugs today, right? even though they're completely illegal everywhere in the US, I'm talking about like, let's say meth, right? That it makes life dangerous for you as a drug user, right?

And intentionally so, like they just want to make it hard for people to do this. And so we do want Bitcoin to continue to be legal in the United States, but everywhere in the world as well. And we want people to have freedom, right? So it's great that Bitcoin has these properties to it that really makes it on its own enable freedom. But we also want Bitcoin to live in a world and in a context that also has lots of freedom. So it's great that we have representatives going to Congress now who understand Bitcoin and will be able to explain it to their colleagues in Congress so that they seek. that Bitcoin is actually of the people for the people by the people, just like the government

itself. And that when Manitian is, you know, going into hysterics about Bitcoin and saying that Bitcoin is going to collapse, you know, that he's kind of being unrealistic. And he's not actually understanding Bitcoin's reliability and that it's going to stick around. regardless of what Manitian thinks about it. And so I also, I really do believe that all of the Bitcoin skeptics will come around to Bitcoin. I think that we'll eventually see Minutian, you know, repent. And he will say, you know, I was wrong about all of this stuff and that he's really excited and bullish on Bitcoin. I think that'll happen now, whether it happens next year or tomorrow or,

or in 10 years or in 20 years, that's up to Stephen, right? That's his decision to make. But I think it will happen. And that that has me bullish as well, that all of these naysayers, we know they're going to come around. We don't have to worry about that, right? Because it's inevitable in that sense because we understand Bitcoin's fundamentals. But also that they're watching these price charts as well, right? It hurts them when they see green candles.

They feel pain. They feel cognitive dissonance. They question their faith in Fiat. You know, so I'm confident that as the price keeps going up, that people will continue to question their cult of Fiat. Yeah. Let's pass it to Guy. head guy um so there's there's something in that uh particularly in kind of how like finance has always been kind of this um i guess back to the culture idea is a kind of cultured wall guard walled garden

um and uh kind of in the same way that uh you know Hollywood and media production was a walled garden publishing was a wall's garden and then the internet came along and kind of stomped all over that um and uh you know finance in particular and economics is is painfully boring from kind of the legacy side of things and almost purposefully so like it's kind of set up to be obscure um it's not about trying to explain it and like you know spread it to everyone else is kind of a culture that tends to make things hard to understand on purpose. And kind of like, you know, academia in a sense is that like, let's just make sure that we're better than the other people and that, you know, we know something that they just can't

understand. And I think that's just kind of become, because the greater the gap and the more politicization of a market or an industry, that that's just kind of of the natural result over an extended period of time. And Bitcoin is like the exact opposite of that. It's like super fun. It's exciting. It does like the community and the culture does everything it can to just make it simpler to understand for anybody.

And it kind of feels like when cable television and Hollywood was having to deal with the existence of YouTube. And it was outright dismissed. just outright dismissed at the beginning. It was a stupid toy where jokers would just make useless one-minute home videos and post it on YouTube. Nobody was going to watch that. And a few years later, those one-minute videos are getting billions of views. And it's perfectly inclusive.

Anybody can just jump on there and make a video. There's no walled garden. There's no you can't come. join my club. It brought something that had once been isolated to this elite, to this kind of special group of experts that nobody else could touch. And suddenly it is just in one move, it's just open to the entire world. And demographics that never were able to access or even play in that space now get to show their perspective on it and get to bring fun to it and turn it into something interesting and dynamic that's multifaceted rather than like closed off.

And, you know, and then it turns into, you know, you can just cheaply throw together some home video and half the damn world sees it. And I kind of think this is what's happening in Bitcoin. This is what's happening in finance and investing because of this. And then all also programming in the financial sense. Like programming has always been like the beauty of like having some 13 year old code up of or 18 year old or whatever it is code up a social media thing just on some random idea and then it becoming one of the largest companies in the world. And so many different things like just any one person can just come up with one clever idea and build it on their own and just utterly change the dynamics of how we interact. how we do business, I think that's going to be, I think that's going to actually be exaggerated when we think about Bitcoin and finance because there's also been this huge regulatory hurdle prior to this.

And now not only is it an open platform for programming and creating all of these tools that any kid who knows how to program can use, but also you don't have to get a license for a non-custructure. audio service. You don't, you don't have to, you don't have to call up a regulator or get permission when you're using something like a shadow chain because you never have the funds. And I just think, I think it's just going to, I think it's just going to explode for so many reasons. That's like one on top of a stack of a hundred, honestly. CK. or Greg, do you want to jump in? Let me jump in because both Guy and Pierre inspired ideas from me. So, first guy I think what you're talking about is bitcoin's open source nature and that's what

YouTube did is it open source content production and unlock the power of the crowd in terms of iteration and creation and that's what bitcoin does and that's you know you could look at the greater permissionless cryptosphere as you know plugging into the permissionless finance that bitcoin enabled So I'm extremely bullish on that. And, you know, permissionlessness is one of the most powerful effects in the entire world. It is so incredibly powerful in terms of creation and propagation, et cetera. So if you're not aligned with that, you're going to get wrecked. And I think this is where Pierre kind of chimed in where he's saying that, you know, this is going to be a fantastic wealth distribution. Everyone will have to come around to money in the reality of money.

And I mean, this is a great way to align people from the old world, the toxic world, the reputation, climbing world, to the equity world, the Bitcoin world. And I'm excited to see justice be served in some degree. And I'm excited for the equity future. Awesome. Greg, if you want to jump in. I won't be long. I think you guys have a lot of really cool points. I will say, look, from a Wall Street and a Bay Street to perspective, wealth preservation is absolutely a key focus. Okay, once again, wealth preservation.

Well, if your Fiat is losing 15% a year because of printing, you lose a lot of your freedoms. So you guys summed it up. This is my moment. I want to pitch this book that I just read, okay? This is my buddy. Actually, I've never even met him. A fellow Canadian. And then I'm a Jesse Berger. And it's a book about Bitcoin. It's about 127 pages long of absolute beauty. Oh, look at you, man. It's it's so cool. Audio coming soon. Well, here's the neat thing, right? It's, it just tells a lot of things very, very succinctly. So I want to, I'll leave it there. Freedom, yes, freedom of choice, wealth preservation. These are all. that that's what the United States was built on. I'm a proud Canadian, but I'd be the first one to admit that, you know,

Canada is the luckiest country in the world to share the longest undefended border in the world with the richest nation in the world. I went to school in the U.S. I understand the different, you know, the different cultures of both countries. Let me tell you, though, that Canadians are getting this as well. We have a really cool politician up here by the name of Pierre Olinov, okay? They're trying to get you, Pierre Rashard, and Pierre Paulinev, via Bitcoin Twitter to talk, all right? He's a member of the opposition party.

He gets it. He understands math. He's putting people on the spot in the House of Commons. It's very cool. Now, this is Bitcoin Twitter culture permeating the Canadian House of Commons. So I don't want to make too big a deal of it because, you know, after all, Canada is only about the size of the state of California. in terms of GDP and population and all that. But I look forward to adding more later when I can talk about why I'm bullish about

Bitcoin. That's awesome. I would pay good money for a Pierre and Pierre pod. I'll do it for free. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. I think Pierre is watching those clips of, you know, I need a number.

give me a number what's the number do you know what numbers are it's just it's just uh and and the insanity is is that he never gets an answer never they don't they can't straight anything anything anything it's insane you watching watching those back and forth so just just please simply give me a number a figure anything and it's never there it's then i need to say this i said it on when we had our uh our podcast together When I first started in financing Canada in 1988 at Canada's largest financial institution, I just come back from the U.S. Business School. I was going to light the world on fire.

I was working for the head office of the Royal Bank of Canada. And one of my first projects was the Brady bonds for Mexican debt at Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady. long story short, the Royal Bank of Canada was insolvent in 1988. Canada's largest bank was insolvent. I don't think too many people understood that in the day. I'm certain because it was the same case for all the money-centered banks in the US. City Bank at the time, Bankers trust, a lot of these banks have merged. But at the end of the day, it was a problem of global banking being in

in Solvin in 1988. People don't understand the risks in the banking system. It's backed up by the Fed or the put, the implied put, it too big to fail. And listen, they don't know the numbers because people don't even understand banking and the true leverage that's in banking. So the risks in the system are huge.

Pierre gets it. Pierre, excuse me, Paulineuve, Pierre Richard certainly gets it. Pierre Paulinev gets it. Chris, Ms. Friedland probably doesn't get it because, you know, she's never traded credit in her life. She doesn't understand that it's all about confidence in a system. And as soon as that confidence wanes, it goes down very quickly. Yeah, one of the things in one of the videos with Pierre recently was the one where he was talking to, oh, it's like, you know, their Zoom version of their hearings or whatnot.

He was talking to their, I think it was their central bank. I forget her name. But he was asking such a straight question. It's like one of those things, just asking a number. And she went into this tirade about how he was undermining the confidence in the central bank of Canada and all this stuff. And I can't believe you. This like emotional like, oh, you're just. just your whole position and your intent is wrong.

And he's like, I'm asking for a number. And she just never answered. She just ran the clock down. Like, it's like, how do you think that you can't answer easy questions? How the hell do we expect that you can actually get something done when you can't deal with the simplest question about what it is that you do? It just is mind blowing. Can I add us that? And again, this is not to scare anybody. I don't want hate mail.

At the end of the day, Canada's rated AAA by S&P, and the United States is actually only rated AA plus. So on that basis, Canada is supposedly a better credit than the U.S. But there's truth in markets. So rating agencies are subjective. There's truth in markets. The credit default swap market for sovereign credits, prices, default insurance on the United States. States at about 14 basis points, which is a AAA rate, even though it's rated below AAA. And it prices Canada at about 35 basis points, which is a single A rate. Okay. Canada is being priced in global markets as a single A credit. So forget what these subjective credit rating agencies say.

Always look to markets for truth. I bet you dollars to donuts, you could ask 90, sorry, you could ask a thousand Canadian politicians what credit default swap insurance is to begin with and they wouldn't know. And then ask them, what does Canada trade at? And they'd be like, oh, it's not a trade at zero because we're never going to go. We're never going to default. Oh, yeah. Well, then why is someone paying 36 basis points a year to protect five year default on the nation of Canada?

It unravels quickly, you guys. And Turkey, as in about, you know, a good benchmark, is at 350 basis points. And at one point traded probably at 25 basis points as well. Okay. Don't want to confuse anyone here, but always look to markets for truth. Yeah. And I would also, I would also just throw in there that you refer to them as subjective rating agencies.

I would just say the safer word is fraudulent. we all went through 2008. You know, we know what AAA rating means. It means insolvent. Because that was the case in the housing crisis. Everything was rated AAA just before it blew up, just before major banks were out of business, just before they needed trillions of dollars in bailouts.

They said everything was fine and this is worth gold. And obviously it was a bunch of crap. Awesome. I'm going to, I'm going to, because CK's got a short timeline. So we'll get to his reason for being bullish first. And then CK, if you do need to drop out a few minutes early, that's, that's cool. But take it away, buddy. Yeah, well, I'm glad that we're talking about confidence because that's my reason for being bullish is Bitcoiners seem to be the only confident people in the entire world right now. And the world is actually noticing it. It is actually unbelievable. You know, every coronavirus, totalian government action masks, everyone is, you know, kind of walking around with their tail between their legs. And, you know, they don't understand why the stock market is going up.

Stocks have never been so expensive. Money printer has never been going burr harder. Deflation has never been more prevalent. And, you know, we're seeing massive lines for, you know, food. distribution, massive unemployment. You know, the world is in shock. And then here are Bitcoiners, just marching around saying, we were right. This thing's going to the moon.

And the world, you know, but, but it's like truly like Matt, Matt, Matt Odell says, Sats are my safe haven. But like, Sats are the only safe haven in the whole world right now. And I think, I think society is slowly realizing that. I'd echo that. It's crazy when I talk to my normie friends and everybody's kind of like pretty down and out and not feeling so hot this year. It's been a rough year for a lot of people.

And all the Bitcoiners that I talk to, they're like, yeah, fuck yeah. Good year. It's crazy. I don't know. It's weird. I think that leads to, I think that point has a lot to do with what's so powerful about the Bitcoin culture is that conviction can't. not be ignored. You know, when somebody walks into a room of where nobody thinks that,

you know, their opinion matters or whatever or looks down on them and then they can stand up and be like, yeah, you're all wrong. You're just all wrong. Like, that cannot be ignored. And there is a majority of that room always that will step back and wait to see what happens before they find out who to defer to. You know, confidence is the most important spreader of information because people necessary, like everybody is in a constant state of, I don't really know what the hell's going on. I'm just trying to look like I know what's going on.

So when somebody walks into a room with incredible conviction, that they response to that. They see that and they begin to accept that, maybe there's something here that I need to be listening to. And I feel like that is what's happened is Bitcoiners, like after you really dig into it, the conviction just compounds on itself. And then you get an NGU cycle and makes it even stronger. And then Bitcoiners are the ones that are walking into the room of the global stage being like, yeah, I know what the hell's going on. We told you, motherfuckers, what was going on and what was going to happen. And,

and look, here we are, here we are. I'll explain the whole thing to you. Come hang out with us. And I think that's just, I think that's kind of an element to why the culture is so powerful and why it's so unbelievably hard to ignore. Are your conviction levels these days, Pierre?

They're strong. You know, they only get stronger. Conviction go up technology. So, yeah, Yeah, I think the conviction is important. And I would contrast it to, in the Fiat world, they have these memes like the full faith and credit of the United States Treasury. You know, they've got a lot of conviction in their BS.

And then on the money, they'll put, in God, we, trust, right? And then you have jokers like Mark Cuban go on Twitter and say, oh, I don't take Bitcoin seriously because it's like a religion. And I'm like, dude, Mark, look in the mirror. Pull out your wallet. Look at your money. Go through the memes in your head. You're, you're in a cult and you don't even realize. And so I do think that the Fiat shills, they also have conviction, It's just that they are following a false profit, right? Whereas we have the truth on our side. I would push back that their conviction sucks.

And they're exposed. They have nothing behind them. Like look at their attitude versus look at Bitcoiners attitude. You're right. They're very insecure. They don't want us to try to verify anything. And my doppelganger in Canada up here, you know, really exposed. to this, but so did Ron Paul with his audit the Fed bill.

They know that their system is filled with corruption and incompetence. And we see the U.S. Treasury Department getting hacked by hackers. And then we see the United States nuclear weapons information systems were also compromised. Right. Those should be the most secure things in the world because they can destroy the world. And they were poned by foreign towers. Yeah, exactly. And so these fiat shills, they have zero credibility. And so it's it's not surprising to kind of see them. I remember Minutian being asked on national television, isn't there money laundering with U.S. dollars? And he said, no, there's no money laundering going on with US dollars. That was a lie. There's trillions of dollars being laundered. So they are liars and they don't have the truth on their side.

And so, CK is right that they just can't have the same level of conviction that Bitcoiners have. You know, they live in, first of all, they live in fear that, you know, the wrong documents will leak. They know they have skeletons in the closet. We saw it with Panama Papers. You know, we'll see it happen again. And they just, they need to come around and they need to just accept that the system they built is evil and that it's time for them to turn to good. All right. Let's pass it to Greg here. And I know that CK may have to drop out at any minute, but this will be the last kind of response to CK's topic. And then, Greg, when you want to shift to your own, then that's all good. But how do you see kind of the divergence of the

confidence and conviction of Bitcoiners versus the seeming beginning to be kind of defensiveness of fiat culture and shills? How are you feeling? This is really a. A great question. So I love the conviction. I will say, look, I've been, I've been searching for a solution to the Fiat quandary for 30 years. I really have since, you know, 1988 when I was working, as I said, and I realized that this whole banking system relies on the ability to print money, especially now on a mathematical basis, a debt-to-GDP spiral. I can walk you through the credit metrics. It's impossible. that Fiat does not debase when you're in a debt to GDP death spiral. And that's where we are because we have accumulated so much debt. I'll just say the conviction is, I love the conviction. I love the, there's a did Bitcoin die today Twitter account and the answer is always no. And every day that it exists, it becomes stronger and it becomes more of a reality in people's lives.

And also the word Fiat. I love that you guys brought this up. You know, Fiat, so few people five years ago understood what a Fiat was, including in the finance business, by the way, okay? And then when you dig down and you peel a few layers of the onion, there's nothing to be convicted about or have conviction about because there's really nothing there. It is potentially a true, you know, something that's just a balloon that keeps on growing that the confidence, someone showed that thing, Bitcoin is the pin.

Bitcoin is the pin that pops that balloon. So, CK, if you have to drop, here's very quickly, here's my, why I am bullish. So coming from the, I'm going to come at it from two levels. One is a pole level, okay? The pull level is money that's coming into this system from the likes of Google. And, you know, one of the responses to a Guvenheim tweet was from a guy at Bridgewater who said, he lost me when we did fundamental analysis, which is sort of neat because Bridgewater has, you know, been on the cusp. They like gold, but they certainly don't seem to like Bitcoin. I will point out, did Bridgewater's whole platform of risk parity, which is trading the volatility of stocks against the volatility.

of bonds and using bonds as a hedge against capital losses in the stock market gets blown out of the water itself because interest rates have gone from 18% down to zero, okay? There is no capital gains left in bonds when bonds yield zero. There's really arguably no capital gains in bonds to begin with. All you do is take an interest rate of 14% and trade it in for an interest rate of 10% and you think you've got capital gains. What you've really done is cashed in your coupon. Long story short, there's a wall of money that's stuck in fixed income on Wall Street or all around the world right now that just has nowhere to go.

Okay. For 40 years, interest rates have gone on a one way direction down. And now there's a wall of money that needs to find a new asset class. So that's the poll. They're going to come in. They need to get in. They understand risk management. The push side of it, which I as a Canadian am really bullish about, is energy.

Okay. And I firmly believe the energy will one day be priced in Bitcoin. Okay. Oil, pretty simple. Saudi Arabia and Russia don't like holding U.S. Treasury reserves as the global reserve currency. Okay. U.S. treasury holdings, rather, and the global reserve currency. So logical, Bitcoin is digital energy.

As Michael Saylor says, I get it. Electricity should be priced in Bitcoin, natural gas, which powers electricity, and then oil. And that will be the push, okay? And once that happens, there's a real large chance that Bitcoin supplants the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency, in my opinion. Not a 0% I'm 100% certain, no. But also, there's no way that that's not a possibility. So I want to point out some pretty neat numbers from some very smart people. First of all, Jeffrey Gunlock, not a Bitcoin fan.

He was on with one of Canada's great economists, great-ish economist. His name is David Rosenberg. David Rosenberg also yesterday said Bitcoin's a Ponzi. I disagree with Rosie on that. I don't think he understands Bitcoin. Clearly when he said Bitcoin doesn't have a fixed supply, he was indicating his lack of understanding of Bitcoin. but he also said gold has a known supply, which is also not true because did you know there's 20 million tons of gold in seawater, right?

I mean, it's not economical to mine that right now, but imagine if someone figures that out, which is not outside the realm of possibility. So the 2% growth rate in gold on a global basis, it's, you know, it could go to certainly larger than 2% if you're able to mine seawater. let's actually look in the here and now. Jeffrey Gunlock, okay, was talking to Rosie, and he goes, I'm not a Bitcoin fan, but here's the truth, I hate treasuries. Now, he's a treasury guy. I hate U.S. treasuries. Wow, that's pretty interesting, Jeff.

What else do you have to know? I know that the U.S. has $157 billion, sorry, trillion-dollar unfunded liability, pension liabilities. 157 trillion, okay? Think of that number in the context of the US GDP. Think of that number in the context of what it means people counting on Medicare and Medicaid. It's impossible for them to actually realize that number. And then take what if Bitcoin was 20% of the unfunded U.S. liability. So let's just pull that number up.

20%. Well, 20% of 157 trillion, I guess is around 30 trillion. 30 trillion, divide by 21 million, and all of a sudden you're talking real numbers for the price of Bitcoin. Okay. These are what people need to understand the combination of debt and unfunded liabilities versus a reserve asset. It's only math apia. It has to balance. It is, it has to balance.

Okay, guys. And so I'm bullish because I think there's a push-pull relationship. As a Canadian involved in the energy sector, which I am, I'm very bullish on the future of Bitcoin being priced in Bitcoin. It's a natural evolution. Okay. And Canada has a ton of stranded natural gas assets, a ton of natural reserves in oil and gas. I don't know if you guys know that our oil sands are actually larger than Saudi Arabia's

reserves. Holy Christ. These are huge numbers, all right? And these are things that could change as much as Nigeria is going to change, you know, by being, I want Canada to, you know, no disrespect to Nigeria. I sort of want Canada, though, to move up. We'll probably always be safe. It's a race. It's a race. It's we're not getting a whole lot of respect. And when you guys get, I shouldn't say not getting a whole lot of respect. We got some really, really, really smart guys in Canada. But econ guy, Rosie, he's not doing Canadians any favor. He's been so wrong in the stock market. I don't know why anyone would listen to him on a whole lot of other things.

But at the end of the day, I have respect for the man. I just wish that he would say, gosh, Canada can really move themselves and really change our very bleak outlook in the oil and gas sector in Western Canada. So, you know, these are things that move. It takes time. So push, pull. Very bullish. I love mathematics.

Maybe not that good at it, but I'll tell you what, math is a solution. Whereas subjectivity, one of the reasons the guy I loved engineering in undergrad was because if I got the answer right, that's it. No one tells me I get, you know, oh, I liked your answer, but guess what? I'm going to give you half marks anyway. It's not like you're reading an English essay and you didn't like the way I explained something. There's the answer. Bang. Bitcoin is math and code.

It is truth. very simple right there do not argue with math and code you know there's something really cool that was actually brings back to something you said kind of at the beginning of that was uh um like what's the conviction or whatever um we were kind of talking about how the government doesn't have any conviction or people don't have conviction in fiat the more they really dig down into it um and that's because the more you actually understand it and dig down into it you're realize the fundamental thing that you're supposed to do at the very bottom of this is trust the government. And it's like, that's about as empty as it gets, particularly in this day and age.

Everybody's like, oh, well, that's completely and wholly unreliable. And Bitcoin is, at the end of the day, trust the proof. And that's a whole lot easier to do. Greg has me concerned that Satoshis are not small enough of a unit. And we're just going to zoom past dollar parity. And people will say, Bitcoin doesn't work, because one Satoshi is worth a house. So how are we going to, so I guess we'll have to figure out an engineering solution there

sooner than we expect, perhaps, if Greg's math is correct, which it sounds entirely plausible to me. Yeah. Just say it's not a 0% chance. How about that? It's never a zero or 100%. Okay. Guys, play probabilities. It's simple. It's like playing blackjack. All right. You play probabilities. Only two things are certain. Death and taxes. Yes. Actually, here's the neat thing. If you listen to the modern monetary theorists, well, no, taxes aren't actually necessary, right? I mean, have you ever seen more poor mathematicians? in your whole life? It's just modern math. There you go. There's a high probability

and a high level of certainty that this conversation has made me even more bullish. So gentlemen, I know CK had to drop out a little bit early, but we loved having them on. Greg, Guy, Pierre,

thank you so much for the insanely bullish chat. I hope everybody enjoyed this. And gentlemen, I hope to see you again. I'd love to have you. back. Thank you guys so much for watching and or listening depending where you are. If you're on YouTube, please do hit like, subscribe, and share all of those things really, really do help. I can't stress it enough. The more you do them, the more this content gets

pushed in front of more eyeballs and we defeat that evil Google algorithm that keeps us out of the front page. Yeah, again, I've got to thank you guys that have been doing it so much already. Now, if you want to help out the show in another way, you can hit up the sponsor. as I mentioned before down below, that was Ledden, Cobo, Bit Refill, and Privacy Pros, aka the Bill Fottle. And if you really loved what you saw, you can always hit me up with a Bitcoin Lightning Network tip at my tippin.me page, t-i-p-p-p-in.m-me slash ad BTC Sessions. By the way, if you want to follow anybody on the panel today, the links to their Twitter accounts are in the show notes.

With that, I'm out. Have yourselves a wonderful day, a wonderful evening, wherever you may be and I will see you next time for your daily session.