BTC Sessions - WHY ARE WE BULLISH? Natalie Brunell, Aaron Segal, Lauren Sieckmann, Dan Held ep191

Episode Date: July 31, 2021

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Wasabi wallet and fairly private. What's going on, everybody? Welcome to the show. Another Friday, another episode of Why Are We Bullish? We've got a killer panel today. I'm very excited for everybody that's joining me, and we will get some intros in a moment. Now, as always, this is live.

Anything can happen, so I defer to my good friend Bill here. We'll do it live. Okay. We'll do it live. Do it live. I can, I'll write it. and we'll do it live. The fucking thing sucks.

Now, if you are indeed watching live, please do smash that like button. Give this a share. Let's get a ton of eyeballs in here and enjoy our bullish Friday. I'm looking at the chart right now. I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your daily session. All right. Now, before we bring in our panel, let's take a look at where we are in the market right now.

I'm here on the newly revamped bitbo.io dashboard. We're sitting at $41,260 per coin. A single U.S. dollar will pick you up 2,424 sats. Stack them while you can, friends. I do live on Bitcoin, so I sometimes get the fun part of getting paid and then seeing it go upwards. Unfortunately, this morning I had some bills to pay. So, you know, that hurt because I think I paid them when it was sitting in the 38s. So to immediately see it go up by like 5%.

That's fun. But such is life. That's part of it. Part of being a bitcoiner and living on Bitcoin. And hey, I think in the long run, I'm better off. But we're going to keep going here. Of course, 89.39% of all Bitcoin have been mined in terms of fees. it's looking like still, even with the price increase,

you're looking at three sats per byte to get into the next block, and if you're willing to wait effectively any period of time, one sat per byte will do you. That's not going to last forever. So if you've got some shit to do, maybe open some lightning channels, move stuff around, get stuff in cold storage,

just keep that in mind. Now, before we bring in everybody, of course, shout out to sponsor the show, lend.a.o, you can use your Bitcoin for a variety of different things here. If you're in a pinch and you do need dollars and you don't want to sell your Bitcoin. You can always use one of their Bitcoin back loans, deposit Bitcoin. You get dollars in your bank account within 24 hours.

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I do have a full tutorial on it. And finally, if you're backing up any important Bitcoin wallet, get it in, steel piece of paper is not always the best fire damage water damage you might even accidentally throw the damn thing out if you're not paying attention so uh bill foddle over at privacy pros will give you some peace of mind there and with that let's get this off my screen and let's get the important people up here we've got aaron we've got nathan we've got natalie and we've got dan welcome all to the show i'm going to let you guys introduce yourselves and if you're watching live we've already got 130 something people in here watching live so smash that like button

give this a share. And let's start with Aaron. Dude, can you just introduce yourself, let people know who you are, what you do? Sure. Thanks for having me on Ben. Nice to be to all of you guys. So real quick background is I work in the nasty legacy finance industry. I work as an I'm an investor in a hedge fund, I'm a hedge fund that invest in stress and distressed corporate debt. I've kind of been all through the gambit within within that world. I've been a hedge fund investor for probably around 17 years now. Macro credit, macro equities, basically every asset class derivatives and things like that. And I came into Bitcoin a couple years ago via the digital gold kind of route that grabbed me in and I've kind of gotten deeper and

deeper down the rabbit hole ever since. And that's a quick story. I'm an advisor and contributor at Bitcoin Magazine. I write articles there and I'm enjoying the fun environment. Look forward to chatting with all you guys. There's been some good articles that you've dropped. And I listened to you on a podcast with, oh God, now it's going to escape me who you were chatting with. John Valas, I believe. And that one really got my my wheel's turning. So thank you for the content you've been doing and for that podcast in particular. We're going to keep it moving down the line. Lauren, can you let everybody know who you are, what you do? Yeah. So I played beach volleyball at USC. I'm majored in biology and minored in marketing.

I had a big interest in exercise science and nutrition and I ended up playing professionally for a few years. I had a lot of health problems that I was battling since I was 18. ended up deciding that I wasn't going to be able to depend on sports long term. So I ended up starting my own health and fitness business, did that for a while, ended up doing a, I had a YouTube channel for that, and then I took acting classes. I had a manager that got me into that. So I dove into film and I ended up falling in love with it,

but I got into more the producing and the writing side. And so how I got into Bitcoin was about mid-2019, when I was trying to start screenwriting, my doing, dad said, you know, you should write a screenplay about Bitcoin. And my initial response, I was like, there's no way. I mean, I said, that sounds completely boring. How would I ever write a screenplay about Bitcoin? So that's when I dove down the rabbit hole. And at first, I was drawn in from Satoshi's story, but, you know, then I found the value in Bitcoin and what it can do for the world. So I'm fairly new still. And I learn from people like you guys every day. But I just love

what, you know, you can be in Bitcoin for 10 months or 10 years and you can bring value somewhere. in your own unique way. So I'm just really happy to be here. Awesome. Well, welcome. And I hope you reconsider the screenplay because I want to see it. Dan, welcome. How are you, man?

Let people know who you are, what you do. Yeah, thanks for having me on. Background on me, early crypto guy, built a couple different companies in the space, sold a few of them. Currently work at Cracken as director of growth marketing. In my free time and kind of for fun is where I talk about Bitcoin. So you might have seen me on different podcasts, YouTube. or on Twitter. I love Bitcoin and I talk about it all the time. I think I've said the word

Bitcoin and about as many possible variations and reassemblies and different types of sentence structures than most of the people have. So yeah, I hugely bullish on Bitcoin. Really excited to dig in today on why I'm bullish, but thanks for having me. Awesome. Glad to have you. And finally, Natalie, thank you for coming on this show. Can you please let people know who you are and what you do? Yeah, thanks so much for having me. My name is Natalie Brunel and I host the coin stories podcast, which is kind of like the rock and roll hall of fame, I would say, of big Bitcoiners. Dan was kind enough to be one of my guests. And I basically interview some of the biggest voices in Bitcoin about their origin stories, their backgrounds, their career paths,

and their philosophy on Bitcoin and why they are bullish on it. I have been a journalist for more than 10 years. I also teach at USC. I'm an adjunct professor there. And yeah, I love Bitcoin. Awesome. Well, this sounds like a Fantastic panel for Why Are We Bullish? And if you're watching for the first time and you don't know what the premise of the show is, super easy. We go by the three hours here. Number one, somebody's going to give a reason why they're feeling bullish. Then all together, we're going to riff on that reason.

And then we're going to rotate to the next person until we get all the way through. Super easy. Your reason can be really anything your little heart desires. So I'm going to get us started off with my reason for being bullish. And my reason for being bullish this week is the. borderless nature of Bitcoin. And the reason I'm bullish around that aspect of Bitcoin, particularly this week, particularly the last 48 hours, is we've seen just a flurry of activity on Twitter freaking out about

potential onerous regulations coming down in the states in and around self-custody and things like that. And the thing about Bitcoin is, again, it's totally borderless. And so while certain jurisdictions may make it very, very difficult for their constituents to use Bitcoin, it's such that there's always going to be a jurisdiction somewhere that will not be as bad. And one of the books that really kind of set me down this path of kind of this digital realm where it doesn't matter where you are is, and I've got it right here, the sovereign individual. And so they discuss the concept in a digital world with digital money and the ability to work anywhere,

you're going to start to see a lot more jurisdictional arbitrage where people simply go where they're treated best and work from wherever they are and transact with whoever they like from anywhere in the globe. And I really love that concept and I've started kind of diving into other books that will help me. One other one that I'm starting to chip away at is called The nomad capitalist. And it's, well, the buy line here is how to reclaim your freedom with offshore bank accounts, dual citizenship, foreign companies, and overseas investments. Or as I apply it with Bitcoin. And then finally, a book that I'm very excited to dive into from another Bitcoin podcast, or Daniel Prince, he wrote a book. Now, this is more about just enjoying life and traveling and doing what you

like, but it's one called Choose Life. So if you want to support another Bitcoin podcaster who wrote a book, check out Daniel Prince and Choose Life. So yeah, that's kind of my reason for being bullish that that regardless of what individual jurisdictions do, Bitcoin, to paraphrase Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park, Bitcoin finds a way. So it's, it's going to keep going to, even if it's temporarily shitty for some people to deal with, it will persevere. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to open up to the floor. If anybody has comments, thoughts on that,

previous experiences that may relate. So feel free guys. I'll take stab at it since I'm next in line here, even though it's really hard to go to really go after Jeff Goldblum quotes like that. So, you know, it's funny that that was your kind of bullish avenue for the week. It's kind of, you basically stole my idea. So now on the fly, I'm going to have to think of. a new one. But, you know, the sovereign individual angle, we can go down so many rabbit holes with that.

I mean, that really speaks to the ethos of Bitcoin at its deepest core, most core level of sovereign individual, like you mentioned, is an amazing book. I think you're seeing that, and I think it really ties well to anti-fragility, which maybe I'm focused on anti-fragility right now. And the process of writing something about that with regard to kind of the financialization of the markets and how that will kind of lead down a path towards inevitable greater and greater centralization. And the only exogenous avenue to extricate ourselves from that is a decentralized manner. And essentially, sovereign individualism is decentralization at kind of a personal level. And so everything that we're seeing right now, all of these themes, like you said, this potential infrastructure bill that's been proposed, of course, the Liz Warren comments, which kind of tie into the environment that we're in right now and the populist kind of manner in which a lot of politicians are kind of trying to strike at anything that delegitimizes the government. And then even going back, like I guess it was last week, the B word event.

I can't remember. You know, the weeks all kind of meld into one now. Maybe that was just three days ago. But, you know, Bitcoin time. But, you know, even that can tie in because that, you know, we're talking about how energy can decentralize and scale. I know there's a lot of within the Bitcoin community, there's a lot of various ideologies with regards to energy consumption and renewables.

And given the kind of. dirty history, no pun intended of renewables in government subsidies, I think there's a lot of people who tend to view the renewable angle with a little bit of skepticism. I don't think the B word itself did much to allay those concerns, but I think if you listen to the individual participants that were involved in that outside of maybe Elon, but maybe listen to his actions in the company and what he's actually investing in, the billions he's investing in, which is, you know, battery power and, you know, Bitcoin, as a money battery is something that allows everything that you're referring to. It allows us to decentralize and be jurisdiction agnostic. I think a lot of people misunderstand, they think just Bitcoin, within this energy discussion, they think, okay, Bitcoin's its money, battery. It allows us to store excess energy when the grid load exceeds a certain amount or when

supply is needed, it can delode back onto the grid. But much more important than that is to the way energy is it's the first time you had a source of demand for energy that was completely geo agnostic. You know, throughout human history, we've scaled behavior in economic activity around other desires. You know, if you're trying to build a business in a particular locale, you, of course, will look for cheapest sources of energy that you may need to consume, but you have other

factors that play into your business decisions that may make you. you not geographically agnostic. And it may make you essentially inelastic to those jurisdictional changes. Bitcoin is not. I mean, we just had, what was it, 30, 40%, depending on the estimate of hash power, leave the network. And sure, price decline, but in the grand scheme of history, that will be, you know, a little bubble.

You know, that will be basically something you won't even be able to notice, you know, in the grand scheme. but this was something that was a massive attack. And so in terms of the anti-fugility and the ability, like you said, to move jurisdictions seamlessly is something that I think, as much as we all talk about it, I think we all underappreciated it until it actually happened. So I think you're hitting the nail and head right now. And that's what, you know, people, I've seen some people point to the B word as the catalyst for the short squeeze. And, you know, we can talk, I'm sure, about the short squeeze and some of the on-chain metrics later down. But I don't know if the B-word was the catalyst.

from just the accumulation of anti-fragility that couldn't take it any lower. Like it was really that failure to break 30,000 that that kind of reversed us. And it was just the capitulation of all the inability to drive the price lower. So that was my little mini rant for the moment, but I love to hear everyone else's thoughts. I love it. Anybody else, feel free to dive in either on anything that Aaron added here or even just in general. Do you think that the regulators even understand what they're trying to regulate? Because it seems kind of like they don't.

I can go next just because I'm down the line. You know, I think it's funny because months ago, Bitcoin was a scam. And now all of a sudden, it's a threat. You know, now at least they're recognizing it as property. So I think they know. And I think they know that we're not shadowy faceless figures. I think they're, I think sovereign individuals are a threat to them. and this is how they're going to paint their narrative to counteract that.

So I think they know. But it's definitely a threat for them. And I think this is how they're going to go about doing it. They're going to keep creating FUD. And every time I think that Bitcoin's been able to prove its resiliency. So I think it's all positive. Are you saying that you are indeed a shadowy supercoder form? I guess I am.

If I'm here, I guess that means I am. I think so. I think we all might be. Dan, I don't know. What are your feelings on on kind of this? Like, how bad would it have to get for people to actually think about jurisdictional arbitrage? Oh, you're muted. Sorry, probably a prohibitive tax regime. I would, you know, if you start to get really, really prohibitive, like 70% 80% taxes, I think people start to look at moving. I, you know, I think about it in this function of like, you've got 100% tax rate, 100% tax rate of. slavery. And so we all exist in a semi-slavery state of our output is taxed, usually without our permission. And so you either pay that, pay that or go to prison. So it's like, it's literally sort of

a mob sort of feeling there. At what point do people break? I think that's totally subjective for any type of person. Like a lot of people have already kind of broken and moved to different countries, like renounce their U.S. citizenship, or they moved to Puerto Rico. I've moved to Austin from California, which is a small amount of sort of that arbitrage because Texas is a much more open society when it comes to earning money and keeping it. Now, I can't escape federal. If you want to escape federal, you go to Puerto Rico. If you want to escape all of that, then you go renounce your citizenship. So, you know, I made the decision at a certain point that paying California taxes plus federal taxes was too much. I just felt I couldn't bear it anymore. And we're seeing a lot of other

people make that decision as well. But, you know, at what rate will federal start to put people, ultimately people vote with their pocketbook. If you make it really, really cost prohibitive in terms of taxation, I think that's what really moves people. How about you, Natalie? What are you feeling on this, you know, the general sentiment around, there's always some boogeyman around the corner, but the the cracking down regulatory wise right now seems to be a hot one. Like, are you feeling it? Yeah, absolutely. And I'll hit a couple of those points. I mean, I think that this just highlights the importance of really getting the narrative out. And I love that, you know, people like Pomp are getting out there and just saying, hey, Elizabeth, come on my show.

Let me educate you about this. And it's great to see some politicians that have really taken the time to understand the space, like the mayor of Miami or Senator Lammis. So I think, you know, it's just about education. And that goes from the top down. The people who, you know, are the workers in this country need to learn more about their financial and monetary systems. and we just don't have an easy place to go for that information. Thank God now we do have YouTube and podcasts and you know you have to seek the information out because you're not necessarily getting it in school and then you know you have to put pressure on the representatives at that point.

And it's funny to me that you know some people think that Bitcoin is either left or right and if you really understand it you know that that's that's not the case. When it comes to the topic of being borderless I think it's so interesting because the pandemic has just shifted our whole a economy on a global scale where you could literally work from anywhere, right? Like people aren't necessarily going back to their offices. You can be remote. And Bitcoin represents this like truly first neutral global currency where imagine if you

could transact with anyone, you know, on the globe with a single unit of account that everyone recognizes. And it just reminds me of something from Safedine's book, you know, the Bitcoin standard where he talked about just the size of the foreign exchange market and how it's like many times higher than our GDP on like a daily basis and it produces no product. So I just think, you know, Bitcoin's really great in a lot of ways and it's just about getting the message and the education out. Yeah, I definitely agree there. It's it seems that oftentimes the regulators and people kind of sitting in those positions may not fully understand or grasp what they're

trying to regulate. I mean, they get it in a sense. And, And it's funny, like one of the people that Bitcoiners love to hate the most, Brad Sherman, probably actually gets it the most because he's like, this removes our ability to have control over the currency. And not that he used these exact words, but debase at will. And it kind of lowers our pecking order in the grand scheme of the entire globe. So, you know, some get it. It's just they get it too much. Look, I mean, there's no way this old-ass politician who's 80 years old and they can barely eat their fucking applesauce. There's no way that they actually understand anything about like how cell phones work, how money works, how any of it works, how cars work, how airplanes work.

But they choose to regulate all of those industries and thousands of more, like thousands of more industries, food. FDA. I mean, there's an alphabet soup for literally every possible thing you can, you can regulate, you know, for agencies that have been created to regulate certain things. Yeah, certainly I think the answer is a resounding. Of course they don't understand it. Most of them barely understand the existing monetary regime, much less Bitcoin and how that intersects with it. But I do think your point about Sherman is right.

He gets it, but he gets it so well that all the other ancient people, all these other ancient, you know, these politicians sitting there, they think of him as a lunatic because he's so right. And they're like, but that's impossible. There's no way Bitcoin could ever threaten the U.S. dollar. So then Sherman, even though he's most correct, kind of looks like a lunatic to them. Yeah. Yeah.

It's an interesting point, too, how we're sitting here. And we keep being attacked by individuals who are representatives of these attack vectors. You know, of course, Elon was the first one in this most recent series of events. And now we have Liz Warren, which is not shocking. And I was having this debate with some people at Bitcoin magazine as to how to approach something, how to retort. you know, if letters should be sent in to Liz Warren, if she should be debunked and made a fool of, and really gone after directly. And, you know, and I kind of feel like a lot of people have made that attempt with Elon, and that went nowhere,

you know, maybe more because of his personality and his kind of unique, you know, lack of willingness to explore new ideas. But in just the ego angle there. But someone like Liz Warren and so many, or Brad Sherman or so many others, I mean, essentially most politics have become populist politics now. And all populist politician cares. They don't really have an ideology. I don't think Liz Warren, you know, you could argue that Bernie Sanders or someone along similar lines. And I'm in no means trying to get political here, actually. I actually totally agree with Natalie's comment about the apolitical aspect of Bitcoin.

I mean, Bitcoin at its core is. is, you know, as a slight aside here, Bitcoin at its core is slightly anarchist in its ideology, right? I mean, we're very anarchist, depending on how you want to go. But what's interesting about anarchy is that, and it takes a bad rap, it has a weird connotation with it to a lot of people, but there are anarchists that are extreme left-wing, you know, who escaped communism and are kind of socialist anarchists. And then there's like extreme right-wing anarchy. And whenever you have two opposing ideologies that somehow agree on something, thing, there's usually some truth to it.

And so I think that speaks to a lot of the inherent truth of Bitcoin. And we can disagree about all sorts of things. So I'm not trying to get political with this comment. All I'm saying is politician both sides of the aisle are extremely populist now. And the best way to deal with the populist is to take away their input, you know, the food that they have. They feed off of votes. They feed off of constituency. And all you say, so rather than attacking Liz Warren, like,

Like Dan just said, she's never going to get it. Who cares what Liz Warren thinks? I mean, we all, I'll be surprised that Liz Warren said what she said. I think on your recent podcast, Ben, you were talking about, you played a soundbite where she was talking about wealth. Like, and how crypto is really just why, you know, why are we taxing crypto? Because we should be taxing wealth. And crypto is just a form of wealth. I mean, it was so vague and just assonine.

And it had no, like, it had no, you know, no meat on the bone that, like, it's to go after her. is a waste of our time, in my humble opinion, and that instead we need to be going after all of their constituents. And then they will naturally fade into the, you know, fade into the ether, like, you know, that back to the future photo where like, you know, Marty McPly's family just gradually fades away. Like, they will just kind of go away. No one will care about them anymore because they're not speaking to, not speaking to their market. Yeah, I think that that's going to be the challenge, though, because, you know, today, it seems like the people that are going to get reelected are the ones that are promising you the money in your pocket, right? So like more and more stimulus. And as we

see like the elections coming up, that's going to be an issue is like it seems like the people don't get that the more the more free money, the more your money's defaced and the more that assets will be inflated. And I think it's just so fascinating that kind of juxtaposition of yeah, give me the free money. And in some way you kind of need it, right? How else do you survive in this kind of this global pandemic that no one could have predicted? But as we see that happening, we have, you know, sky high, NASDAQ and S&P prices, but everyone's getting poorer. And it's just super sad because when the elections come up, I think that's what's going to drive more of that division that we've been seeing even in the last couple years.

Yeah, yeah, I would echo that. One other thing that I'd like to tag on in light of all of this is that there's a lot of tools out there that can effectively make a lot of this moot if you choose to go down that route. I did a little thread when there was some EU FUD earlier this week I basically said if you're afraid that you might not be able to hold your Bitcoin, tell them to go fuck themselves

in a few easy steps. And I added like try out Bisk, run a node, use free open source software, try coin join if you like, set up a lightning node and do channels, try out liquid for confidential transactions. There's a lot of tools that I don't even think that they're fully aware of exist yet, and Bitcoiners, if they choose to, can try and reclaim a little bit of sovereignty there as well, as well as the potential of jurisdictional arbitrage.

But I feel like I've taken too much of your time on my reason here. So I'm going to keep it rolling. If you're watching right now, smash that like button, give this a share, and we're going to keep going down the line. I'm going to toss it to Aaron here. And, dude, I'm going to get your reason for being bullish this week. You're muted. There you go.

Yeah, so like I said before, that was, you kind of, you kind of stole my idea then. But, you know, one area that I'd love to hear everyone's views on is a little bit kind of market related. And not so much because I care about all the little intricacies of price movement on a weekly or monthly basis. And we all are enjoying this kind of mini pump that we've seen. But I'm kind of also interested, you know, we've seen a lot of, I don't know who amongst us kind of tracks the on-chain. about what kind of interested me this week about the rally and about the nature of this proposed kind of short squeeze narrative that people are advocating was the way in which people were liberated. I know the size of the liquidations weren't extraordinary from a historical perspective.

I think there were really only a third of like the average liquidation size that we've seen over the last kind of two or three years in any one instance. But it was more this, this, this, this kind of migration we're seeing a way from from derivatives being collateralized by the underlying crypto asset instead being collateralized by stable coins and i think it's a very healthy development and that's kind of why it's a source of my bull just beyond the actual price move because it can work this development can work both ways i mean i think what we in hindsight at least saw at the at the at the top at around 65,000, amongst numerous other kind of market behavior like the GBT trade and the arbitrage that was going on there, creating, kind of soaking up all

of this kind of liquid supply that was going into this black hole of the trust. You also had the derivatives market that was collateralized by Bitcoin. So it was like hyper, you know, it was hyper leverage because you're using leverage upon a leveraged volatile asset, right? And so when Bitcoin was going up, you could maintain more leverage and everything felt so good. And then, of course, when things, you know, fell, you had a post-margin because the underlying asset really fell in value and it kind of cascaded, right? I believe that's a potential theory. I mean, it's hard to know for sure that that transpired. But I think we could all agree that that happened to at least some extent. And then now we've seen on the short side,

when people kind of started piling in bearishly, they were doing so not by using Bitcoin as collateral. So they had none of the underlying asset. I mean, if you think about, you know, maybe it's because I come from the financial markets. And I've seen this level of what we call re-hypublication where you have an asset. If you have a photo account, Fidelity account, you have a Schwab account, you probably sign something in fine print that allows these banks to borrow your assets and relend them. And then those banks that they're relending them can relend them again. I mean, it's basically what we saw with Lehman Brothers, where they had a small pile of assets

that were being basically cross-pollinated and relent among each other. And it magnified and interlinked the exposure, the counterparty risk. And with Bitcoin, there's, it's very, very different. I mean, yes, financialization can happen. And some of that silliness can happen. It's just very hard to sustain it because you have this underlying ledger that is auditable in a way that we've never had a financial asset be auditable, not even gold. And that was one of the biggest downfalls of gold is gold became centralized.

Gold became, you know, turned into a claim. And so I think what happened over the last week is a long-winded way of saying that all the attempts to kind of collateralize Bitcoin, they've worked, they can work over the short term, and they can work again over the short term. But I think the underlying chain data and the underlying aspect of not actually having the asset in your possession makes it very difficult for that financialization and for that kind of turning Bitcoin into a claim and kind of layering it into something where it really kind of dilutes its power is very difficult to sustain. And that to me is a really bullish demonstration that we went this week.

It seems like it's different to treat things like we used to in a fiat world. When there's no actual lender of last resort, anybody that's dealing in those types of things where you're using Bitcoin as collateral, well, they basically got to make sure that they cover their asses with like being overcollarial. for all that kind of stuff. And there's still risk of liquidation. Like I think it's been so widely available in the past year and a half, two years now, just in terms of allowing people to easily get kind of Bitcoin back loans and stuff like that, where they don't realize that a certain drawdown will actually, you know,

trigger the need to add more collateral. A lot of people just aren't familiar with how quickly that can happen. And I think that's, you know, that definitely contributes to some of those cascades happening. But I'll open it up for everybody else to comment here. Yeah, I think in terms of the structural integrity of the trading infrastructure, I think we've never been in a stronger spot. There's lots of venues out there. There's lots of liquidity across in the market. I mean, when we look at spot futures and options volume, I mean, there's an actual options market now.

I believe in 17, we just had kind of a glimmer of one with Ledger X and Darry. But now terribut is very, very liquid. So I think there's a, I think a robustness of the market is really key here, where 2017 and 2013 didn't have that at all. I mean, this was a rickety system. 2013, we still had Cox representing a majority of volume. And that was like run on basically his laptop. So like to see Bitcoin come from that.

And then in 2017, you know, crack in Coinbase and all the major exchanges would have a lot of downtime issues to see them all mature in the year 2021 to handle, you know, onboarding millions of customers or tens of millions of customers and being able to handle these really intense price movements, I think is very testament to the fact that Bitcoin is ready for a mainstream bull run, a bull run that can handle institutional size orders coming in and out and having that sort of infrastructure. If anybody else, Lauren or Natalie, if you want to jump in on, I mean, have you personally known anybody that maybe got a little bit too deep on a loan and didn't realize what was what was

going to be required of them or have you dabbled in any of this stuff yourself? No, but I definitely knew people that, you know, bought at the 55 to 60 range, which was kind of funny because I had been telling them all along about Bitcoin when it was, you know, but prior to the to the new year when it was still, I don't even think it had reached, you know, the 30s and they were like, no, no, I'm not ready. and, you know, I've tried their money for and, you know, buying it and then probably selling off when it hit like 30. But I just think I think this is like a moment of excitement, right? Like we never really went far below 30,000.

It held that support level now. Maybe we can have a support level at 40,000. And I just think it's really exciting that Bitcoin was able to survive this like cash power, the narratives that have been spewed over the last couple of months. And I think we're poised for just kind of a, you know, a nice new bull run for this year. I don't think it necessarily ever ended. I think the correction is longer than a lot of people predicted. That's what some of my guests have been saying on the podcast.

And obviously there's a lot of things contributing to it. But we're seeing more institutions. We're seeing more headlines that are friendly to it. You know, Elon Musk revealing the SpaceX investment, all that. I just think we're in a really nice position here. I'm very optimistic. I'd like to plus one, Natalie's. comment. The bull run never ended. A lot of people are going, oh, well, the bull runs over. I'm like,

I've been around a long time. We're not done with the bull run yet. And this very much feels like 2013. 2013 had two mini bull runs. So we went from $10 to 60 down to 100, then 100 to 200. And so this feels very similar to that. There's this really torturous sideways chop, though, that we're in right now, where the price just kind of meanders up and down for a while. And people are fearful and the people that are fearful sell their coins in this sort of period over over a few months they sell their coins after bitcoin hit certain levels like 40k we'll see it the same at 50k and probably at 60k and then after all the weak hands have been shaken out then there's no more sellers and then the price just runs as demand increases there's less and less sellers and the price

skyrocket so i think we see you know it's more of a description of of human psychology and behavior. That's where I think Bitcoin is so interesting because there's no cash flow statement, right? There's no, you know, it's purely a network effect. And it's, it's about the network effect of belief. And when you see the price, it's, you know, nothing about Bitcoin last year has changed, right? And Bitcoin printed $3,400 of Bitcoin in the peak of despair in March 2020. And that was purely just people being fearful. Nothing about Bitcoin changed at all. And to see it, And now we see it printed at these, you know, in increments of 10,000s. And now our mind is like, oh, 10,000 is super cheap.

And I think to Natalie's point, I've seen this happen with my friends all the time, too, where they're like, oh, Bitcoin's dead right, you know, when it dips. And they don't want to buy then. And as soon as it pumps, when it becomes, you know, three times as high as it was before, they're like, oh, I got to get in right now. So, yeah, it just, Bitcoin exposes, like, pure human fear and greed. And it's just super interesting to watch. I think it's also important that this kind of reminds us to pull back, right, and to go kind of macro and see it from the long term, the logarithmic price chart.

Because truly, if you're looking at it every single day or these couple of months, then you look at it as very volatile. But when you pull back and look at it from that four-year time horizon or even longer, everyone, no one has lost money on Bitcoin. Everyone's made money on Bitcoin. You put your money somewhere else, you lost, or you didn't keep up with inflation or something. And, you know, so I think that people need to stop worrying about the, you know, the fluxions on a yearly basis as opposed to just looking at the chart. It speaks for itself. Like, Lynn Alden said that on my podcast. And it's so true.

Yeah, I mean, I just want to echo a couple things that both of you guys just said that I think are so true. I mean, I personally agree with both of you guys. The echoes of 2013 seem more prevalent than the echoes of 2017. We all know the old adage, the history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. But there are a lot of things that are different this cycle. But what is interesting, you know, if you look at certain metrics, like that most of the metrics that would show kind of a blow off top, like are nowhere close to where they were in 2013 or 2017. And they look a lot more like the double pump kind of both in the summer of 2013 and in the summer of 2017. though 2017 was to the lesser degree.

And if you espoused the view that we over-extended kind of what I was referencing before, which is this GBT trade, obviously just the amount of money that was pouring into transfer payments that went to individuals that kind of allowed things to pop and allowed, you know, something like Dogecoin to even exist. You know, that phenomenon I don't think would have existed in a different macro landscape. And what's interesting, by the way, to that way, to that way. point is now we're seeing Bitcoin dominance reexert itself. We're back, I think, above 50% as of this evening. So, it's a learning process for all of those people as well. And it's fine. You can have different

views about shit coins and everything, but they are an entry ticket for a lot of people. And once you have the entry ticket, at least you have skin in the game. And then you learn your lessons like any free market participant. But I think what's interesting, if you kind of frame it as in, When we peaked at 60,000, if you look at kind of the cadence of that logarithmic graph, and if you look at stock to flow models and things like that, we did get a little, you know, it's easy to say this in hindsight, of course, but we did get a little extended for where we should have been at that point in the cycle. And all of those things like the derivatives market, like the options in the deribate market that you're referring to, Dan, that are different this time than they were, they may be allowed things to overextend.

So if you say barring that would probably top out for that for that, for that, mid-cycle P closer to like 47,000, 50,000, then you would look at this pullback is very much within the realm of a normal mid-cycle bullback of like 40, 35, 40%, which is super volatile. But again, that volatility that you guys were just speaking to is so vital. I mean, the volatility is what is, A, it shakes out weak hands and it forces a weak hand to do some work, it forces you down the rabbit hole. I mean, it's a, it's a forcing function, the volatility. And it's also a symptom of health.

You know, like healthy systems exhibit volatility. Lauren, you were talking a lot about, you know, being involved in kind of, it sounds like you have a kind of have a physical health and fitness kind of background. And within the realm of human health and biology, being exposed to stressors is an important evolutionary and biological, you know, step function. So, you know, we're just not used to this in that kind of administered world. Like I invest in the credit market where real yields are negative. Like it's insane. It's an in that, that's what you get from a non-volatility. You get things that don't make logical sense.

So the volatility is, of course, I think we all know here, but it's always a healthy reminder just to think back in hindsight of all the volatility that happened, this 50% move, created a lot of good things, you know, created this exodus of mining out of China. created. All of those things that have now made the market in a healthier place than it was just two months ago are result of a 50% pulldown. So I think it's great. Lauren, you have diamond hands, of course. I imagine you've been DCA and holding that, obviously. Yeah. Well, I was going to say something, but it's very prevalent in sports as well. Like, I mean, throughout my whole career in sports, I've had so many moments where things were horrible.

I was injured. I was back to, you know, back to rock bottom. And then all of a sudden I worked harder. I became stronger. I became better. And I think that's kind of like what we're going through is all these things are stepping stones to becoming a very strong network. Not that, I mean, it already is strong, but this is what we have to go through and it proves our resiliency. And this is why shit coins do not work. And but, you know, that's just my my analogy is, I guess, as far as sports go. But yeah, it's all, it's all in the process of building strength. So I think it's all great. Making it anti-fragile. I like it. Yep. Let's keep it rolling. And Lauren, since we're just with you, we're going to keep rolling with your reason for being bullish.

Meanwhile, if people are in the chat, of course, keep those chat messages coming. I'll bring them up as they come up and are relevant to the conversation. And of course, smash that like button. Give it a share. And Lauren, what has you feeling bullish this week? All right. So I guess my reason for being bullish is, I guess a big narrative shift around Bitcoin that I've seen. in the film industry. So as I mentioned, I was writing a screenplay about Bitcoin and eventually came to the conclusion that a documentary would be more appropriate for the time. You can produce a documentary a lot quicker than you can, a feature film. So I started pitching this idea, this concept that I wrote out to a bunch of producers. And so the first responses I got were there's no way anybody is going to make a Bitcoin documentary with you. The audience,

the target audience will be a small group of nerds. You know, everybody knows that this is stupid. So I just kept pitching it and I kept, I have a friend that I taught his daughter volleyball. And he's a really good documentary producer. I stood on him for probably five months. I kept pitching it to him and I kept saying, I'm telling you this is brilliant. Like we have to make this documentary. So eventually around March this year, he came around and we're producing this documentary together. And we've been working on it.

So that was huge. And I'm really bullish about this documentary. but I guess in the past month, I've been throughout this process of making this documentary, I've spoken with a lot of people in Hollywood. And when I tell them I'm making a Bitcoin documentary, and now the response has changed and their eyes light up. They're like, Bitcoin. I mean, I've been trying to get into it, but I don't know where to start.

And so I've been telling them, you know, what books to read and what podcasts listen to. So I think it's awesome that I feel like there's a really big narrative shift and people are really starting to see the value and they want to learn. And it is just a matter of people are overwhelmed and they don't know where to start. And, you know, I was in that same boat a year and a half ago. I had no idea where to start. It's overwhelming when you first look into it. And I think that's why a lot of people, they take the easier route because they don't want to put in the work and they'll judge it and they'll call it, you know, a group of shadowy figures.

And they'll make up things like that. You know, that's where the fud comes. They don't want to put in the work to learn. So, but yeah, I've seen a huge narrative ship, and I think it's really bullish. I love it. I love what Lauren said because it's like you get to learn about so many things. Dan, you tweeted something about this, right? Like if you learn about Bitcoin, that means, oh, you're going down the path of like the history of money, economics, the monetary system.

It exposes you to all these different skill sets and areas of expertise. And it's so awesome that you have to have that interest and you have to start learning and going down the rabbit hole because it's so nuanced. I think that's why it's so hard for some people to understand it because you do. You have to start peeling back the later. on fractional reserve banking, quantitative easing, you know, what is inflation? Why is it good? Why is it bad? So, yeah, I just want to echo what Lawrence said. Yeah, it's, it's both a brilliant sort of discovery, right? Like you wake up to this reality and you're like, wait a second. And now that I'm questioning the nature of my money, you start to question everything else.

It's also a little bit torturous because you're the only one who's woken up out of your, typically out of your family, friends, and lovers. So you're sitting there and you're the, the one at Thanksgiving or you're the one on the date, you know, talking about Bitcoin. So I definitely, when you go against the grain, when you, you know, the only way to beat the market is you're betting that everyone else is wrong. You're betting that everyone else in the world has mispriced this asset and you're long in the assets. You're buying it.

You're going to hold it. Bitcoin is the same thing. And Bitcoin going from $10 when I first got into it to now, basically 99.99.99% of the world thought I was insane. Right. So you, you have awoken. but you're one of the few people who've like woken up and come to this realization. And it's a little bit of a stressful process because you want to tell everyone because you're like,

I found this thing, this beautiful thing, this thing that you should know about. And it's critically important for your health and wealth. And people are like, you're crazy. Now, I think what's kind of interesting now is that like, so in marketing there's a terminology called multi-touch attribution. So there's a last touch attribution where, for example, if I spend money on ads, and the sign-up at Cracken came from a Facebook ad, I attribute that ad, the Facebook ad, to the acquisition of that customer.

Now, there's another type of attribution method called multi-touch, which means, well, that Facebook user probably saw a Google search ad and probably saw another ad, and then eventually that last ad is the one that converted them. With Bitcoin, it's more of a multi-touch sort of feel to it. Like, people hear about Bitcoin in 13 and 17, and they're like, it's a scam, it's weird, I don't like it. But after it's been around this long, people are like, okay, now I should finally learn about it.

And I think that's the stage we're in now where people have gotten so much repeat exposure. They're like, okay, this is a real thing. I should spend time to learn about it. And the educational content is so phenomenal. You know, Natalie's got great content, BTC sessions. I think every time I see you in person, I'm like, I always tell BTC sessions. He's one of my favorite YouTubers. And so, like, there's so much content.

There's books, podcasts, YouTube videos. We've got tone days in the chat as well. Blogs, et cetera. When I got into it, there wasn't even CoinDesk. People hung out on Bitcoin Talk forums. So I think, you know, the ability for us to orange pill people has never been stronger. And I think that's a really exciting moment where it means that Bitcoin may go from, you know, right now I think, what was it, a hundred million Americans own Bitcoin or something crazy

like that? Bitcoin could go from that to like 200 million in at the snap of the finger versus before I think it was a much smaller process. I also want to echo everything that's being said here. And Dan, what you said about the education factor of people that are just getting in. Something that I haven't seen until this cycle is people coming in and right off the bat going straight to Bitcoin only. And I think that's because of the amazing content that has been kind of put together over the past, you know, for six years, something like that where it was very before it was kind of a free for all.

I was like, you come in and it's just like, oh, there's there's Bitcoin and then maybe that's expensive and there's all these other coins. And there was no refutation of that idea. And now there's so much. There's so many people putting out stuff saying like, listen, this is what's different. This is why it stands out from the crowd. This is why it's the only one that really has all of this laundry list of things that you need to achieve a global censorship resistance sound money that can't be fucked with. And the narrative is consistent across that Bitcoin content and it's all over the place

with everything else. And so when you see consistency with versus this just like. like throw it out the wall and see what the fuck happens. I think people gravitate towards the, the sound ideas coming out of the Bitcoin camp. Yeah, I think that's a great point that you just mentioned about the, the kind of maximalist tendency of a lot of newcomers in this cycle. And I think beyond just the education aspect,

you know, like you said, there's this like basically water hose of information that people can access now. And, but beyond that, too, it's the macro backdrop because the best way into Bitcoin is asking that question, Lauren, I think you mentioned that. It's like, and Natalie, you touched upon that too, which is you started asking the question, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, what is money? Like, and, you know, for me, that was my, that was my angle in because I've been thinking

about that my career, you know, for 10 years as a macro investor. And but even that, even as a professional, I had gotten so indoctrinated by Keynesian economics, by, even just Keynesian economics. That's really in the back. No one's actually walking around Wall Street saying, I'm a Canadian economist. But like, but it, you know, it pervades the, you know, the entire educational process that, you know, the game, the initial Caneans thought the, you know, their predecessor, I mean, their successors and so on and so forth. So what's so different about this cycle is that it occurred simultaneous to this historic chain monetary policy or this, you know, historic, historic, historic, acceleration of a pre-existing change in monetary policy that I think really to anyone who started paying attention and started going down that rabbit hole and they see all the all coins, they see all the different glittery objects in the room that can attract your attention, but this is a second, this is really about money. This is about, and then, you know, because I love, I love the analogy of, I don't know if any of you guys

have seen that David Foster Wallace, he wrote a book called Infinite Jest. And then he did this amazing commencement speech. I forget what university it was for. But in the commencement speech, he was talking to all these kind of graduates and asking them to be kind of questioning individuals. You know, they just got this education. He's literally standing in the university. And he's telling him kind of like under the table with all the professors and all the academics in the room, the education you just got is kind of bullshit. And now you have to like enter the real world.

And in order to survive in the real world, you need to really just be curious and ask questions. And the thing about, and he uses the analogy of, and he, I believe he titled the commencement speech, what is water? And the analogy is an old, I think it's like an old Japanese proverb of two fish swimming around the ocean, two little young fish swimming around the ocean. And an older fish passes by and says, how's the water, boys? And then they just kind of look at each other, very confused. And they go, like, what the fuck is water? You know, and because they've been swimming in it their whole lives and they don't even stop. to ask that question. And that's what money is. And that's what the monetary system is. And so,

the, you know, the process of going down that rabbit hole of being orange-pilled, then, you know, that gets you to start, you know, noticing the water that you're floating in. And I think you combine that with a macro backdrop. And it was just, you know, a powder keg for people to kind of really have that aha moment. I love what you said, Aaron, because it makes me think about how big is like this life raft, right? So before it, we all just felt like we were probably in this, we kept kicking the can down the road in terms of our economic policies, right? More quantitative ease and we've always, we've been having it for for a while now. And it's almost like this is just the way it is. You have to put your money in assets. You have to put your money in real estate and everything's

just getting more expensive. And there's no solution. And I think that's why the people that don't get Bitcoin, it's because they know there's a problem. Like, I think everyone in America can recognize there's a problem, which is why we're so divided politically. It's like the system's rigged or like, it's, why is everything getting more expensive? I can't afford school. I can't afford this. Something's wrong. But now it's like Bitcoin's the solution, right? Like it's hope. That's why I think Bitcoin is such a positive community. And it's like so exciting because we're like, hey, this is the answer potentially. And this is why we want to teach you about it. And I think that one, And then it causes you to question things like, what is money?

And it's just, I think that's what's so exciting. And it makes me think about why I'm bullish, because I think about the inflation right now. And just this week, you know, Powell recognizing that, oh, yeah, it's probably not as transitory as we thought is probably a little bit more persistent. And that's why I'm bullish. Because yeah, some, they're going to run away from them. But if they taper, it's going to crash.

I'm going to have to print even more. So we're in this like cycle that we can't get out of. And we have this beacon of hope and most people don't get it yet. Yeah, definitely agree that the world has woken up and they've gone, wait a second, something's wrong. And where they've placed that wrong is sort of, I think, misconstrued, right? Like it's the wealthy that have been painted in this bad light or its companies, it's capitalism has been painted this way. And Bitcoiners, I think, are trying to bridge those two narratives and tie them together

because Bitcoin is that solution for this problem, because people haven't realized it yet. I think AMC and all those meme stonks were kind of a representation of a very rebellious spirit. I mean, essentially it was the plebs overtaking the big hedge funds, you know, and short squeezing them. And while it was a very silly thing to do with those stocks, those are not good stocks on. The reason why they were so shorted is that their business models are pretty bad. But that spirit of rebellion, I think, you know, should be tied to Bitcoin. And that's what Bitcoin ultimately represents sort of this irreverent rebellion.

where we say, we don't agree with the rules that you've said because these rules are bullshit. And we've chosen to opt out. So how do we get people to come to realize that Bitcoin is that? I think that's what each one of us try to do with our, we're each part of Bitcoin's marketing team, right? I am, you guys are. And we all have our different narratives that we use to pull people in. And I think it's this really beautiful process that is why Bitcoin, I'm so bullish about Bitcoin is each person who falls down the in gets orange pill and falls down the rabbit hole, they become a new marketer for Bitcoin.

So I think it's going to, you know, I don't think anyone's crack the code yet there of like tying those two together. But in terms of that kind of like everyone's angst about the economy, I think we all talk about that. But no one has had like a big breakthrough moment where they've really made Bitcoin understandable and wanted by the masses or like the masses identified Bitcoin as the solution. We all keep saying that it is, but they still haven't come to that conclusion. And so someone has to craft that story that finally bridges that gap. I just want to give a shout out to a couple of the comments that we got in here. Of course, shady quarter supporter, Bitcoin is the triumph of reason over cronyism. But one earlier that I can't find it back in the chat because it's too far up, but I have a screenshot.

And it says, this is Zorn 101 said, you take the orange pill today or the orange suppository tomorrow. choose wisely. So yeah, I think that's comment of the day. So thank you, Zorn, for that one. Solid, solid contribution to the conversation here. We're going to keep it rolling. That was an excellent reason. And we're going to toss it to Dan here.

Dude, what has you feeling bullish this week? I would say Bitcoin, you know, the price floor of 30K held pretty strong. I think that was, if we had seen us approach 20K, I think that would have been like, I mean, look, I'm going to hoddle no matter what. But in terms of just seeing like a very strong bull run, if it had gone down to like 20K, I think that would have been very bearish. It would have been a little bit more of a dismal, you know, Q2, Q3.

But the fact that 30K was like a good floor, we bounced back. A lot of the narratives have sort of worked themselves out. The China Fud is over. There's no more Chinese miners. So like we kill China Fud. That's pretty awesome. ChinaFut is what killed the 2013 Bull Ruff. run, by the way. I just wrote in the Held Report, I just wrote, uh, 2013 versus 2021 comparison.

And I actually forgot that China banning Bitcoin was the top of the 13 market. I feel like it's the top of every market. It's like China bans Bitcoin again. Well, China can't, they can't ban what they've already banned. So finally the China fudge is defeated. Elon Musk is somewhat, people don't care anymore what he has to say. So he's not really moving the market. Um, the energy flood, I think is a continual one that we will have to fight. But I don't think there's any massive headwinds right now that are like the narrative is so negative that it's going to impact investment flows into Bitcoin. So I'd say narrative-wise, we're in a good spot. I think a lot of those negative narratives, it's always funny when the price dips and the negative narratives come to the surface

and become more prevalent. And when Bitcoin goes to the moon, it doesn't matter how bearish, the news is the market doesn't care. It's such an interesting, so interesting to see how people react to the market. But we've, yeah, all those negative narratives, I think, have kind of work themselves out. You know, even right now, there's like a very threatening bill going in front of the U.S. Congress, and Bitcoin markets don't seem to care. So that, that to me kind signals like a sentiment shift that people are very much, you know, bare market, oh, sorry, bull market back on is sort of the vibe. So I think that's exciting. And so, yeah, I think it's one, Bitcoin defended certain price floors.

Bitcoin's prices only has a floor because we all aggregate, in aggregate belief that believe that it's worth X, Y, or Z. So it held that floor and it also, I think, like we're starting to see the sentiment change. So to me, there's been a lot of examples of that happening over the last couple of weeks. So, yeah, that's why I'm bullish. I mean, there's a million other reasons why I'm bullish. But if we're going to choose one for this live stream, I think that would be why I'm most bullish right now in this kind of local, this like month.

I loved seeing all of that fud just kind of get destroyed. Like the worst case scenario in everybody's minds basically happened. And now it can't happen again. It's just gone. And it was also funny seeing the, you know, on one hand, it was too much, like all of the mining in China is bad. And then that got banned. And somehow the new narrative was that was bad. So it's like you take your pick.

Whatever it happens to be, it's always bad. until it's good. So, you know, it fits into that the meme, like, actually, this is good for Bitcoin. Everything's good for Bitcoin. And in the end, we were talking about anti-fragility earlier. And it just contributes to that. Throw everything you got at us, because the more that Bitcoin encounters, the more it figures out how to route around those obstacles. So, yeah, I guess bring it on.

What's everybody else think? Yeah, I mean, I remember my my first boss actually is this guy named Marty's why. And he was like kind of a legendary investor back in the day. He actually coined the phrase, don't fight the Fed, which has just gotten more and more true over the years. But he also, I remember used to tell us, don't watch the news, watch the reaction to the news or something. I'm paraphrasing. But that's basically what you just said, Dan, you know, which is that when the market stops, going down on bad news or when any any market, any asset, any anything really kind of

stops reacting to some negative fud. That's when you know it's essentially all priced in. So yeah, I mean, I totally agree with the conclusion in terms of whether or not we're capable of seeing more fud, new fud appear. Of course we will and that's not what Dan said that it's not going to happen. I'd be curious. I, you know, I'm a little more skeptical that that the battle with China is fully over. I would feel more comfortable about that if we knew why they were doing what they were doing. I still don't think anyone knows, and this is a common instance with China with foreign investors, it's like it's a little bit of a black box in terms of trying to really grasp. I mean, even Chinese investors that I listen to don't ever seem to

have a great handle on what's going on. And maybe we give them too much credit. You know, I think there's a tendency in the West to believe that China is always playing 4D chess, excuse me, 40 chess and thinking, you know, 20 years ahead. And while that's probably more so the case than it is with Western policymakers, there's still, it's still, you know, let's remember communist regime. And at the core, the incentive is to make your superiors within the Politburo, within the CCP, happy, you know, is to, you know, they're given metrics, lower local politicians and leaders are given metrics to meet.

And as we all know, when you make a measure, a standardized part of a policy that becomes the target, not the means. And so, you know, I do think there's a lot of that going on in China. And I still struggle. There's so many other things that China's doing too right now, beyond the China Bank of mining. And, you know, they really clamp down on their tech sector, right? started with Alibaba, about a year and a half ago.

And Alibaba's total assets between and financial and Alibaba got down 50%. Like they've just destroyed Jack Ma. Like, and they're doing it with Tencent to some degree. And they're doing it with D-D now. And I don't know if I find, and then now you have this issue with Evergrand, which is this big property developer. And the real estate market is a huge part of the Chinese economy. It's around 30% of the Chinese economy in aggregate, including actual direct real estate development,

residential ownership and then all the industries that kind of feed it now like i believe that company has like i don't know i'm going to probably butcher the number but i think it's like a 250 billion dollars worth of dollar denominated debt and um and they're basically about to go under and they bailed them out in 2015 but it looks like they're not going to do that this time so the chinese government is doing things a little differently you know they're making these decisions i'd love to hear everyone's thoughts as to why they ban my you know my theory kind of of is that this is all about centralizing capital, controlled capital. They have the D-step that's going to launch next year, their digital currency, so the digital

version of the one. And that's going to be very interesting to follow. But I think beyond just trying to prepare for that, they're also really just trying to tighten their noose around their ability to control capital. Most of these tech companies are listed in the U.S., London, and in Hong Kong. And essentially they're forcing them back onto the mainland. So not to get too off topic here, but I just think China is always this kind of devious adversary. And when you have an adversary, you really want to know their motives.

And since we don't always know China's motives, I'm unwilling to take them out of the equation yet. And I do think that there's going to be some left hook that they're probably going to fire out of it down the road. But I agree that for now, I mean, that huge. I mean, China mining, Dan, I know you've been in this longer than anyone in this room. So like, you've heard all of that fud. I actually had a friend, colleague who got, you know, who's kind of one of those people who

were kind of probably shaken out of the, shaken out of the market in this, in last sell off because they were a new buyer. They got involved in the 50s. I think we're talking about those kind of buyers, Natalie. And then, and he kept texting me, you know, along the way as he was buying some. He's like, wait, I'm hearing that, you know, 70% of all of mining is in China. Isn't that like the worst thing ever, you know, are they take over and just kind of confiscate all the, all of the hash power? And then when this event happened, he started texting me the same stuff.

He's like, he's like, oh, my God, like all, you know, all these mining powers is leaving China. I'm like, I literally just reforted it in his prior text. And so I agree that there's this inconsistency. And that's what, that's what volatility does. It makes people irrational sometimes. You just kind of lose sight of what's going on. But yeah, I think holding 30,000 was great. Obviously, we all do.

But so I agree with the general conclusion. I was going to touch on the maybe some of the impetus for the crackdown on mining. I mean, when you think about it, China obviously does not like the idea of capital flight. And when you're a miner using effectively, you purchase all of your rigs and you set up your infrastructure. And then you've effectively, rather than going through an exchange where that's like a choke point, you're effectively, you know, you're getting your payment in a newly issued currency from the moment it is issued, at which point it is 100% mobile anywhere in the global. And so, you know, they can sink, even if you just wanted to sink capital into the miners just to eventually get, like, be straight across the board and just get your initial investment back over time just to get it out of the country, even if it was a bit of a loss, you know, buying that infrastructure, being able to mine and then being able to freely move that money, it could be attractive. some people, I imagine. I think you're 100% right.

That's my theory too. My theory is it was capital controls. Bining had kind of a phenomenal aspect of creating an off ramp for capital flows out of R&B. And so I think you're totally right that that was, you know, if I had a guess, that was their main, the main right now. Awesome. Well, I'm going to round out this part of the conversation and we're going to get in. into our final reason for being bullish. Now, if you're in here watching, of course,

keep those comments coming. Tone have a good night out. I think he's heading out for a night with some other Bitcoiners. But we're going to move to our final reason. Everybody in here, smash that like button. Give it a share. And Natalie, you are up. What has you feeling bullish this week?

Yeah, so I kind of mentioned it earlier. But really, it was just the narrative on inflation sort of changing and veering more towards reality here. and, you know, the Fed sort of recognizing that it might be more persistent than they originally expected. And I think it makes me bullish because, look, I mean, the stock market is at all-time record highs. And, you know, at some point, I think that they're going to have to try to come in and taper or pull some money off the balance sheet. And unfortunately, we've outlawed recessions and depression. So that's just going to mean more money printing. And now we're just

on that kind of, you know, fast-moving train careening out of, out of control towards a cliff. And I think it's just such a value proposition for Bitcoin. So, you know, and I don't know you guys' thoughts on this and whether you follow the stock market. And obviously, in some of the stock has been really correlated with Bitcoin price. And but I follow this strategist. His name is David Contrarian. I don't know if you guys know him. He's like a macro strategist on Wall Street.

and he has been just spot on with predicting prices over the course of the pandemic, like calling out, whether it was lumber, oil, silver. And he has been predicting this like deflationary bust that ushers in the worst depression since, you know, 1930. And it was fascinating. I interviewed him, not for my podcast, but just my YouTube channel. And he's so, he says that, you know, at some point, you just, you can't keep doing this. And at some point, they're going to have to taper.

And the market's going to have to somehow correct itself, and we're going to have to yank some of that liquidity out. But if that happens, it's going to be just something we don't, we've never seen in our lifetimes. And it's so fascinating in hearing that prediction and some others as well. I think Robert Kiyosaki is also predicting a historic crash. We allow to have for going to need to print even more. And once you supercharge that print,

now we're potentially going into hyperinflation. And again, it's like, yes, the value of everything is going up, up, but the value of your dollar is going down. And I think, again, when you denominate things in Bitcoin and you see those charts, it's just, it's just amazing and mind-boggling. And it's so clear that I think more people would be driven towards this digital asset as a result of that. Did anybody on this topic, did anybody see that like cluster fuck of a chat from Jerome Powell

where he was talking about inflation and how, you know, exactly what he meant by transitory? He was like, well, the inflation is probably going to go up like a bunch, but then it won't, in terms of year after year, it won't continue going up exactly as much. And when I think of the term transitory in terms of inflation, I tend to think it becomes more expensive and then it pulls back to like a normal price level. But he's effectively saying, well, we may have a period of much higher inflation than we anticipated. and then those prices, whatever they go up each year after year, that's the new price. It's not like it comes back down. That's just the new fucking price for whatever you're buying. And then eventually we hope that it goes back to the regular targeted 2% per year.

So like tack on whatever percentage it ends up being like their stated CPI, you know, 5%, 8%, 10%, whatever it ends up being. Plus, on top of that, they're not tracking actual asset inflation and important things that people want. But then the hope is that it returns to a quote unquote normal level of inflation. So, like, it was such a strange way of saying it. But, yeah, they're basically saying, like, prices are going to go up more and then they're just going to keep going up but less. Yeah, I mean, he basically was using a technicality, which is that inflation, when people talk about CPI are talking about a rate. You know, they're talking about a rate of growth of something.

So he's not wrong, like he may not be wrong technically in what he's saying. But it's interesting what you're saying and what Natalie is saying, because you're talking about two different types of inflation. So Natalie is talking about all this asset inflation, all this financial asset inflation that's going on. And the CPI, in theory, is supposed to measure consumer goods and services inflation. And yeah, I mean, what he's talking about and he's downplaying something that's exponential. I mean, that's how exponential functions work is that something grows a certain rate.

It now hits a new base. And it may not go at the same rate, but as long as it's growing off that ever-growing base, it grows exponentially in terms of its aggregate amount. And that's how inflation can be so insidious, even 2%. Even a 2% inflation, you're destroying 30% value in like 15 years. You know, it's like, but you're doing it in a much, you know, quieter way that people don't see on a day-to-day basis. What we're seeing now is that that inflation is really, the rate of inflation has really spiked. So he's kind of hiding behind that little technicality.

But to tie what you just said and what Natalie just said it together is that, you know, I for one actually don't believe that we can have a market crash. Basically because it's just it would be too damaging. Like it's so, so if, if consumers. Consumer goods just kind of inflate to a certain level and can never pull back. People use the famous Chipotle example. Chipotle raises the price of burrito. They're not going to decrease the price of a burrito. You start paying $5 or a burrito.

You're paying $4. They're not going to say like two years, hey guys, we're going to give you your $4 burrito back. The stock market's kind of becoming the same thing. It's now become a one-way street because of the amount of debt that we have. So you have this kind of inflating financial asset. you know, realm two that can't go back, you know, that can't self-correct and can't mean revert. I mean, there may be a short-term crash, but it will be met by policy unlike we've seen

you. We'll see, you know, full-fledged MMT. We'll see full-fledged kind of UBI. And I'm actually that's working on a piece that kind of talks about this. And this is how this is really a centralizing force because if you start to use financial assets, which we've started to do as a tool to generate wealth, when there's no other kind of new capital creation, you're taking just the existing capital stock and you're just inflating it as a way of, and you're trying to make more people investors. You're trying to make the everyday person. Robin Hood, they just went public, what, yesterday, the day before, and they announced something that was kind of funny to me, which is that you can now invest your pocket chain.

in fraction, even like fractionally invest in stocks. So like rather than buying a cup of coffee and buying that Chipotle burrito, maybe you just, you know, spend that extra three, three bucks and buy like a fractional share of AMC stock, you know, and this is UBI. This is this is universal, you know, transfer payments essentially because the stock market is administered. So I think you're both kind of hitting the same concept in a different way and it's really disturbing. And unfortunately, I don't think, you know, Natalie, you said this at the very beginning of the show, which is that when we're trying to talk about how to deal with populist politicians, which is that, you know, it's hard to fight someone who's just giving people free money. And they're also giving people

a magnificent stock market and a magnificent real estate market. And people, you know, are happy. People are full and satiated. And, you know, people don't revolt. People revolt when there's a famine. People don't revolt when like their belly is full. So, um, so I do think like we're a ways off from that mass adoption of Bitcoin for that very fact. And I think it will take, I will think it'll take that next whatever that next shooter drop is and whenever it happens for for more and more people to see what's really going on. Hey Lauren, did you get any, uh, those sweet Stimmies and and stack sats with those? Of course, right?

I'm actually, that's how I got my brother orange pill. is I had them put a stimmy's in Bitcoin. Oh, brilliant. And when did those drop? Because, like, that was, I'm in Canada, so it was different here. Like, the people getting, like, basically monthly payments here. You guys got, like, a pittance compared to, we went full bur. You guys were, like, half burr.

Well, you still went full ber, but it went more to the people at the top than the plebs. So when did the stimulus checks land there? There were a few, right? Yeah, there was a few. There was one last year, I think a bigger one last year and then a couple this year. Did he smack? Yeah, he did. Was swan. Okay, perfect. Fantastic. Well, that's good to hear. Yeah, it's crazy watching the shifting kind of narrative in relation to inflation as well, how it's gone from there is no inflation to there's transitory inflation to now it's basically like, There's going to be inflation, but inflation's good. Yeah.

You try to see those articles. It's crazy. Yeah. Inflation is good, yeah. Yeah. What was the one? I think it was CNBC. It was like the silver lining of high inflation is higher wages. Like neglecting to mention that the wages will not keep up with the inflation of what you're buying.

It's so fascinating because it kind of touches on what you said, Aaron, too. But when I interviewed Saipadine for my podcast and he was really going into like the Fiat standard, which is his next book and he really digs into kind of the government debt system, he's talking about how, you know, politicians, that's the one thing that they'll never do is save opportunity cost of what they're pledging to give to you. So yeah, we'll give you more checks and all that and everybody's happy. But in the mean, you know, in the background, like the societies eroding and all these problems are magnifying and nobody's really pointing the finger.

at the right place. And everyone's secretly looking for a solution. And they don't know about like the one that kind of exists. Yeah. So are we getting Wymar? Yeah, the same story of like a one more scale. Yeah, the Weimar. Yeah, the one of the one more.

The early years of the Weimar felt very good. So, you know, that's been accounted, you know, by a lot of historians. It's just like, everything felt good. Prices were going up assets were doing great. I mean, in the early 1970s, everything felt good. So I'm not saying we're getting Weimar. And I actually think it's very different from the 1970s, too. but um but you know conceptually like when things start to feel when everyone starts to feel really good

that's when you need to be nervous yeah yeah because i mean again like people getting effectively getting some free money dumping it into robin hood and and like 10xing their gains on on on you know doge coin or or amc or game stop like that's some that's some that's some why mart shit right there. Like that's, that's something that isn't, isn't the norm, I would say. Yeah, I mean, there's only one way out of this. They're going to print. They're going to print a lot. I mean, there's no, there's no politician in the world on the right or the left that's going to say, let's cut the budget. No one. You can literally print money and buy votes. I mean, that's what they're doing. They're buying votes. That's how it's always been. That's why you shouldn't

have a government, you shouldn't have government and money intertwined because this is always what happens. So the only option is to print. There is no other. Like when you do like a black Scholes model of potential outcomes, I see only one and that they'll print and print and print. So, you know, and that's why I hold Bitcoin. That's why I'm bullish on Bitcoin is Bitcoin has $21 million. And fiat is literally infinity. And so, you know, when we look at this, it's such an obvious premise now.

Like this is so obvious to all of us this whole time. But most people don't think about the economy. ever. In fact, they find it very uncomfortable. That's why they have financial advisors. It's actually more of a cowardly thing to do. What they're doing is they're they're coward because they never want to learn about it because it's too scary. And so they offload that and their entire investment risk to this random person that doesn't know anything else, doesn't know any more than they would know if they just read a few books. So, you know, I think that Bitcoin kind of forces you to, you know, think for yourself. And that's where private key management

It's such like a core component of that that financial sovereignty is about ownership. And it's about it's about being mature and owning your mistakes and owning your failures and owning your success versus in the fiat world where we can just kind of offloaded to other people or blame politicians or blame the economy or blame someone else. And there's just a loss of ownership there. And so that's what I really love about Bitcoin is it's, you know, full sovereignty and ownership are all intertwined. And it brings people back to being, you know, fully fully being. responsible for their actions again. So I think, you know, there's never been a more bullish time for Bitcoin in terms of money printer gober. I mean, 2008 financial crisis is what kind of, that's what brought Bitcoin into existence. I think Satoshi would have been blown away by the money printing in

2020. I mean, Bitcoin is the best bet ever in human history. And then you have this moment, this macro backdrop. And it's like, holy shit. I mean, you've got the biggest, money printing that's ever occurred. Like when we look at debt to GDP ratios of different countries, it's the it's the highest debt to GDP ratio in all recorded history of like 400 year old countries like like England, like modern day England. They looked in it's like 400 years of financial data ever since they started to issue, you know, pound bonds. So you look at this and you're like there's only one way out. A really good analysis was done by Jim Reed at Deutsche Bank. So it was called a journey.

into the unknown long-term asset management study where he looked through all recorded financial history that he could find. And we have never been in a moment like this ever. So you want to know why I'm bullish about Bitcoin. It's because of these factors. It's this is, Bitcoin is the antidote to the worst experiment ever created with monetary policy, which we're in the middle of. And the last year has been, I think, a huge validation that we need Bitcoin. Yeah. I mean, the U.S. is effectively $28 trillion in debt plus another $120 trillion of, of programs that they're going to have to pay out, whatever Medicaid,

all of those different things that they're going to have to pay out. And they're currently, you guys are currently running at a $3 trillion yearly deficit is kind of the projections, I think, is what they're looking at. Didn't Biden, he wanted to do like a $6 trillion yearly deficit, didn't he? Well, by the, you know,

maybe in the next decade, the word quadrillion might be thrown around. Like, how crazy is that to even think about? Like, what is a trillion now, right? Like, remember when trillion was a crazy value? You're like, holy shit. A trillion dollars? So my brother-in-law just got,

you were talking about the stimis. The Stimmies aren't over, by the way. The SBA is still handing out the Small Business Association, still handing out a new wave of payments. Like, we may see, you know, crazy asset prices again later this summer because of some of those people are I mean these are 30 year loans but they're ridiculously low rates there's no auditing of how they get spent I mean so you could just go buy a house by a house with it you can buy more stuff and things like that so I mean but I was talking to my brother-in-law

about this I'm like yeah what's the number and you know he was sending me some data and I was like it's probably only like 20 billion and then I realized how crazy that sounded that I said only 20 billion because billions don't matter anymore it's like if it's not a trillion I don't care by the way it happens to be close to a billion at this point. So there you go. Well, yeah, we look at debt and, you know, I'm thinking about buying a place. I've only rented my entire life. Of course, I'm not going to spend any of my Bitcoin. But so I'm like, oh, well, what if I got a mortgage? The rates are crazy low. I mean, it's like two and a half, three percent. And I'm like, wait a second, isn't inflation at five? So like, who's lending me this money? They have a negative real return.

The markets just don't make any sense. I mean, it's just totally. We've lost signal at all. The market is completely lost. It's natural equalizing dynamic and signal because the Fed has come in so heavy handed. These central banks have come in so heavy handed that everything is distorted. I'm like, wait, someone is willing to lose money to give me money. I'm basically getting a free loan. It's kind of nuts.

So the world's crazy. Yeah. This is why we Bitcoin everybody. I have really enjoyed. this conversation. I think I'm conscious of time. I know we've gone like an hour and a half here and I've really appreciated and enjoyed every moment spending it my Friday with you guys, favorite part of my week consistently. So what I'm going to do really quick down the line. One last time again, tell people who you are and where they can find you would be fantastic.

So Aaron, you're up first. Who are you again? And where can people find you? Sure. My name is Aaron. The best way to find me is on Twitter at Ludi Magister, L-U-D-I-M-A-G-I-S-T-R. Perfect. And Lauren, how about you? My name is Lauren. And the best way you can find me is probably on Twitter. And my name is just Lauren Seekman.

Perfect. Awesome. And I do, by the way, I do have everybody's Twitter handles in the show notes. So you can find them there as well. Sorry, did I cut you off, Lauren? Nope, you're good. Okay. Dan, yourself.

Oh. And un-mure. Man, I'm feeling like a boomer here with the mute button. You can find me on YouTube. I've got a YouTube channel where I cover some of these topics that I've talked about today in depth. So just search Dan Held. You'll find me on YouTube.

If you like shorter form content, you like Twitter, I'm Dan Held on Twitter. Perfect. And Natalie, take it away. Yeah, on Twitter, I'm at Nat Brunel. And please download my podcast, Coin Stories. You can find it on any podcast platform. I'm also on YouTube.

as it's like d'all, Sailor, Safe Dene, next week, Preston Pish. So it's really, really fun show. Nice. Love Preston. I'll have to listen to that one. Guys, thank you so much for being here.

As always, you're always welcome back. And, yeah, have a great weekend, everybody. I'm going to cut your audio and video and do my outro, but thank you guys. Cheers, y'all.

All right, everybody, thank you for being here. Thank you for spending your Friday with me. Again, always my favorite part of the week. I get to chill with awesome Bitcoiners and just chat Bitcoin. Who doesn't like that? As always, please do hit, like, subscribe, and share all of those things. Help so much.

You have no idea. It really helps get more eyeballs on this content, rather. Of course, if you want to help with the show in another way, you can hit up the previously mentioned sponsors down below. That was Ledden, Bit Buy, BitRefill, Keystone, and Bill Fottle over at PrivacyPros. And if you really liked what you saw, you can always drop me a Bitcoin tip at my strike page. That is strike. Dot me slash BTC sessions. You go there.

You type in any amount you like. You hit the tip button. And it'll bring you a lightning invoice or if you click to the right, you'll see a regular Bitcoin QR code. Super handy, super easy to use. And thank you to those of you that have been dropping some stats there. I've seen a few things come in this week and very generous of you. Thank you guys so much. as always have a wonderful day or evening wherever you may be we'll be back at it next week

though i am en route to greece on wednesday so schedule is going to be a little bit different moving forward but there will still be videos i'm still going to be doing why are we bullish on location from wherever i happen to be in greece and maybe i'm going to have some european guess because in terms of in terms of timelines and time zones rather a little bit easier to get some of the Europeans on. So maybe we'll get some different guests on. Anyways, guys, thank you so much for watching and or listening if you're on the pod. I'll see you guys next time for your daily session.