Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #395 Decentralized Finance w/ Natalie Brunell

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

Welcoming guest Natalie Brunell, host of the podcast 'Coin Stories.' The episode delves into Bitcoin, its implications for money and financial systems, and its potential solutions for future economic stability. Natalie shares her backstory of moving from Poland to the US, the influence of her parents' work ethic, her journey in journalism, and how the financial crisis motivated her shift towards understanding Bitcoin. They discuss the importance of decentralized finance and the impact of inflation and deflation on the economy. Natalie emphasizes the significance of self-custody for Bitcoin, the distorted value of real estate, and how Bitcoin offers a deflationary alternative to current financial systems. The conversation also touches on the challenges and promises of technological advancements like AI, and the importance of fixing the underlying financial system. Additionally, they discuss President Trump's pardon of Ross Ulbricht, big banks' increasing interest in Bitcoin, and the excitement around potential pro-Bitcoin policies under new leadership. Natalie advocates for self-education on Bitcoin and shares resources for beginners.   Connect with Natalie here: Coin Stories Instagram Talking Bitcoin   Our Sponsors: With Happy Hippo, you're getting a product that's been sterilized of pathogens, tested for impurities and heavy metals, and sold with a guarantee. Go to happyhippo.com/kkp and use Code KKP for 15% off the entire store Looking for Shilajit? Head over to blacklotusshilajit.com and enter code KKP to receive 15% off your orderD EARN in gold and silver. Click link below for a great discount! monetary-metals.com/kkp If there’s ONE MINERAL you should be worried about not getting enough of... it’s MAGNESIUM. Head to http://www.bioptimizers.com/kingsbu now and use code KINGSBU10 to claim your 10% discount. Full Temple Reset is happening soon and it will be a life changing experience. Join us! Connect with Kyle: I'm back on Instagram, come say hey @kylekingsbu Twitter: @kingsbu Fit For Service Academy App: Fit For Service App Our Farm Initiative: @gardenersofeden.earth Odysee: odysee.com/@KyleKingsburypod Youtube: Kyle Kingbury Podcast Kyle's Website: www.kingsbu.com - Gardeners of Eden site If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe & leave a 5-star review with your thoughts!

Welcome back to the podcast, everybody. We've got episode 395 with guest Natalie Brunel. I first heard Natalie maybe a year back. Somebody had sent me one of her episodes from her podcast, Coin Stories, which is phenomenal. It dives deeply into Bitcoin, money, how fucked we are, to be perfectly honest, from many great experts and what to do about that. Most importantly, what can we do about this going forward? What are the solutions at hand? And I've really appreciated such a weighing conversation

and the fact that she is able to navigate it so gracefully and has so many great tips for people and so many great guests. I talked about a couple of the podcasts I really appreciated on this episode. We'll link to those podcasts of hers in the show notes. So be on the lookout for those. It's a great place to start with. I loved them. I actually want to get one of the guys, Jeff Booth, I think, if I'm remembering his name correctly, The Price of Tomorrow. We discussed his book and the podcast they did together. But yeah, I loved getting Natalie's backstory. We shared a lot in common, being on the Bernie train back in the day, the Occupy Wall Street, and just how much that shifted over the last 10, 20 years has really been, it's been a wild ride. But in talking about health and wellness and talking

about, you know, as Jack Cruz says, decentralized health, and really our ability to navigate our own waters and understand what is health, what is sovereignty, what are these things, finance is always going to be a part of that because it's interwoven with it. Finance is tied to our health. Finance is tied to our well-being. It is tied to our sovereignty or lack thereof. And this is where the Bitcoin picture really becomes clear and evident to me. And I plan on having more people like Robert Breedlove, who's been on the podcast. I'll link to that one. I think we did that maybe a year ago here at the farm before our house was built.

But I want more guests like that. Justin Rezvani, I want more guests like that. So if you've got great people in the space you want to link me up with, shoot me a note on Instagram and do it in one of my posts because I rarely check my DMs. But anyways, let's get to the episode here with Natalie.

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All right, without further ado, Natalie Brunel. Natalie, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for having me. I have, I've had friends send me your podcasts over the years and, uh, actually not over the years, but over the, over this past year, I've had a couple sent my way, loved them and thought, you know what? I had to get her on the show. Cause I really enjoyed my podcast with Robert Breedlove and, uh, I've had Dr. Jack Cruz on the podcast. Haven't had a ton of Bitcoin related podcasts, but I think now more than ever, perhaps it's appropriate to have the conversation. And we talked about some of the parallels between decentralized health, decentralized food,

and of course, decentralized finance. So I'd love to unpack all that. And we will. But first, tell me, what got you into what you're into now? What was life like growing up and what took you on your path? I don't know how far you want me to go back, but I was born in Poland. My parents grew up under communism and it was their dream to come to the United States. And they were finally able to do that when my mom was 38, my dad was 41. And I really give them so much credit because it's not easy to start over when you don't know a language and you're basically giving up everything that you know that's familiar to try to pursue an opportunity and you have no clue how it's all going to turn out.

But they were really attracted to the idea of the American dream and what our country stood for, that you can come from any background and work really hard and achieve your dreams and take care of your family. So that's what drove them out there. I was five years old. We moved to the suburbs of Chicago. And growing up, I just saw them work so, so, so hard. My mom chose a suburb where we were among probably the poorest families. All my friends had these massive homes that I would go to and I would come back and my parents slept on a little sofa in our living room. And I just admired their work ethic and how much they sacrificed for us.

And for me, that really, that planted a lot of ambition in me because I just, I wanted to work hard and achieve something so that I could ultimately help my parents and so that I never had to have a situation like that with my own children when I had them someday. And I went off to college and I wanted to become a journalist. Of course, my parents wanted me to be a lawyer or a doctor, but for some reason, I was just captivated by journalism and media, and I thought I could make a mark. When I was in college, the great financial crisis hit, and they lost everything. They had to file for bankruptcy.

Basically, they had a mortgage that all of a sudden went under, and that was even harder for me to witness because now they were a little bit older and it's not easy to start over at that age. And so I was just entering into my journalism career when I was watching the fallout from the great financial crisis. And that planted another seed because I just was so motivated to hold the powerful accountable. I felt like there was this great injustice. I felt like the American dream had been hijacked and it was a scam. And so I wanted to be an investigative journalist. And that's what I largely pursued. I wanted to uncover stories of public corruption.

But at the time, I didn't understand money or how our financial system worked or the fact that at the core was this manipulation and centralization of our money. And so I blamed it on so many things that I see people blame it on today. I wanted to tax the rich. I was a Bernie Sanders supporter. I sympathized with Occupy Wall Street and all of that. And again, I needed to humble myself and I did not learn about money until I found Bitcoin. And that's what started the journey. And then my life kind of transformed and took another path because I thought that the best way that I can make an impact is helping other people understand Bitcoin and our financial system. And so that's what I focus my show on. That's so cool. Yeah. And we'll link to your

show. There's actually a couple I really liked. I want to talk to you about here in a minute, but I want to unpack some of the larger topics here, but you had a great one. I just finished with Jeff Booth, a phenomenal author, great, great podcast. And then the Colonel, I'm trying to forget his name. He's been on the show. Colonel McGregor. Yeah. Yeah. Just a great, great episodes. They're so cool. So I'll link to forget his name. He's been on the show. Colonel McGregor, yeah. Yeah, just a great, great episodes. They're so cool. So I'll link to those in the show notes so people can jump in and get into your show,

which is phenomenal. For me, with finance, I really didn't unpack a lot. I was in the same camp. I remember watching the other guys. I don't know if you've seen that movie, the comedy with Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg. And at the end of it, they break down what a Ponzi scheme is.

And there's all, since I've watched it multiple times and understand it differently now, like that movie Low Key is dropping hints the entire time on how this shit works. And I was like, whoa, like they talked about Enron,

all of it just unfolds. And at the end, when the credits are rolling, they explain it in very simple terms. And I was like, I'm really surprised, you know, this got out, got actually put out in the public on like a major stage. But yeah, I first got into, gee, what was his name? The guy who wrote, I think he's still alive right now. The Creature at Jekyll Island.

Yes. I started seeing videos of him circulating kind of right around the pandemic and, you know, coming from a health and wellness background, there was so many red flags for me. Nobody's talking about sunlight. Nobody's talking about vitamin D products. I could go on and on for hours about the things they weren't discussing and natural remedies from zinc to vitamin C and movement and metabolic health and the whole nine. So my spider sense was tingling like red hot right from the beginning. But I saw some early videos of him circulating when he was a professor at Berkeley and they were black and white videos. And he was talking about the American Communist Manifesto and how this was like born

here, you know, not born here, obviously, but seated here a long time ago and possibly potentially seated during the psychedelic revolution. If you talk to a guy like Robert Forte, that was done by design as well. And so like the whole Bernie movement, I thought, man, hook, line and sinker for that. You know, initially I was like, damn, I played right into that. But getting into, you know, really diving into the meat and potatoes of the creature at Jekyll Island, I started to kind of understand, you know, Henry Ford's quote, if the American public knew, actually knew about finance, it'd be a revolution tomorrow, right? I was like, damn, all right, I kind of get this now. But I didn't fully understand that until getting into Bitcoin

and seeing, you know, really what that is. And the conversation that you had with Jeff was so amazing because he really unpacked, you know, the point of a natural system and the fact that we've never experienced this. It's like we have nothing to reference this against, right? Like what Bitcoin represents, what the future represents. There's no way for us to kind of overlay this onto our current system because it's completely the opposite, correct? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we basically live under this spell of inflation and we never question it, unfortunately. And our academic's book, it's like the information is there if you want to go seek it. But it is a little bit discouraging to know that these books have come out. I mean, Creature from Jekyll Island has been reprinted many, many times and the majority of people still don't understand it. And there

are people that are shining a spotlight on the real, the corruption that is at the heart of our system. And the majority of people turn a blind eye to it. And I think that one of it, it's actually pointed out by the author in some of the fallacies that he shines a light on. It's like we as humans, I think we don't want to assume the worst in people. We want to believe in their best intentions. But at the end of the day,

people are very selfish. And if an action is going to protect their well-being and those immediately close to them and they're entrenched in that system, they have to protect it really at all costs, regardless of what the outcome is for the greater population and everyone else. And that's really what that book reveals is just how it doesn't really matter what the intentions are. You could cause great harm to a lot of people and they don't even understand how they're being harmed. And so they're almost voting for the policies that continue to hurt them the most. And so I'm just really grateful for that journey because I think, again, I had like little seeds planted that I think primed me for appreciating

Bitcoin because of my parents growing up under communism. So they instilled me with a healthy level of skepticism when it came to government and media and all of that. But you grow up here and you think, oh, America is this amazing nation and they're looking out for us. If they're in a position of power, these elected officials, they're looking out for us. If they're in a position of power, these elected officials, they're looking out for us. And these agencies like the FDA, they have our best interest at heart. And when you peel back and you follow the money, you realize, oh, wow, this is actually rotten at its core. And we really need to take responsibility and protect ourselves, really. All right, guys, quick break to tell you about happyhippo.com slash KKP. With Happy Hippo, you're getting a product that's been sterilized to pathogens,

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So many questions I used to have are now being answered. You know, like if you can't, if every, if all the food, you know, 90% of the food in the supermarket is crap and it's going to poison you on some level over time, however slight, right? Like Froot Loops aren't the devil, but yeah, there's shit in there that if you eat that for the rest of your life, you're going to have problems. Like, there's no question about that. And I almost want to leave Froot Loops out of the equation, but because it's such a hot topic now with Bobby, um, with Bobby, it's ridiculous.

Part of me is like, if we're having a conversation about why you shouldn't feed your kids Fruit Loops, we shouldn't be having the conversation to begin with. And at the same time, that's what's freaking available. And it's made so much cheaper than everything else. It's made cheaper than everything. I understand why people are where they are. And also there is a way out of that. You know, there's a way out of that from a physical sense, from a health and wellness sense, there is, you know, true health, in my opinion, doesn't require one of my, one of my mentors, Paul check, he wrote the last four doctors you'll ever need. If you follow Dr. Movement, Dr. Diet, Dr. Happy and Dr. Quiet, you don't need another doctor. You know, like my kids, my kids don't have a pediatrician. They've been to the doctor twice.

They're five and 10 years old. If we need something, we call it in. It's really that simple. We have our health and we don't need a damn thing beyond that. So I think the personal sovereignty of that is reachable. And I think Bitcoin is the answer to that from a financial standpoint. Yeah, absolutely. And there's so much to unpack there. It's crazy how much the public here in the United States does not question the information coming out of the most powerful agencies. And I have really, I mean, just real world examples of this from my young, my upbringing in Chicago where, again, I had a set of parents from the old world who were raised differently and were a lot more skeptical. When fads happen,

like for example, fat-free, I would go over to my friends' houses and they would eat such different foods, including things like fat-free items, fat-free chips, fat-free dressings, all that. And I would come back home. I would report to my mom or I would mention it in the grocery store. And she immediately was like, absolutely not. That is completely unhealthy. There's chemicals, da, da, da, da, da. And I thought my mom was just so behind on the times. And I didn't realize she was actually really based and protecting me. I thought, oh my gosh. But if you questioned it, and sometimes my mom would question, let's say, the parents of my friends, they would say, well, the doctor recommends this.

The doctor says this is healthy. The doctor prescribed this. The doctor – and there's so much trust placed in people who may or may not be paid to give you that type of prescription. And there is, again, so much corruption in basically our food and our medical systems that I think people don't – it's like they don't want to believe it or something. So they just take everything at face value and they listen to the commercials that are telling you to buy a certain medication or ask your doctor for it. And I think that's terrible. And I'm glad that with the decentralization of media and the internet and alternative voices coming out

that aren't paid off by these companies, they're finally able to maybe help people see the light and see the truth. Because it is really sad that so many people still believe what the agencies and what the doctors say. Yeah. Something I actually loved during the pandemic cycle, you know, the first two years, three years of it was when they would show the screen side-by-sides of word for word on every news station, you know, across America, Canada, all over the place, Amazon is doing their best to ensure safety. You know, and it's like, and it's a script that they're all reading word for word. Doesn't matter who the news anchor is at the same time, different time.

They're all saying the exact same thing somehow. And I remember thinking about that, like why everything was sponsored by Pfizer, the Super Bowl, all of it. There are so many things that were sponsored that way. And somebody had come on Fox News and mentioned George Soros and the news anchor knew that's one of our sponsors for whatever medicine. I think he has a stock in Moderna. So at the time it was like, oh no, no, no, we can't talk about him. And there's a clip of that too. And I was like, how's no one catching this? How come this is something that's like,

how is this not just all over everywhere? you know? Yeah. Yeah, the incentive structure has really been corrupted in media, and it's very, very sad. And I witnessed that. I mean, I saw how the sausage is made in the news world. And I will admit that in the last couple of years that I was a reporter, it was hard. It was hard during the pandemic because sometimes I wasn't able to showcase sides or interviews that I really wanted to. I had stories squashed and they couldn't air or I couldn't pursue a certain angle. And that's really unfortunate that top down these agendas really permeate. And then a journalist that's just trying to be neutral and do their job and be an actual journalist and investigate is kind of handicapped from being able

to do that. And so I found myself in some newsrooms, there would be a small group of us who would kind of disagree with the overall messaging and we would communicate to ourselves that we wish we could change it, but the apparatus is, you know, it overpowered us and we couldn't, otherwise we risked losing our jobs. So it was very freeing when I was actually able to leave the mainstream media world in many ways, because I could say what I wanted, cover what I wanted, interview who I wanted. And, and I didn't have to feel like I was compromising some of my values, which sometimes I felt like I was. And I definitely, I mean, I had stories censored and this didn't happen in necessarily one newsroom, but multiple newsrooms. Even if I had

great producers or bosses, someone along the way prevented a story from being aired. And that's not journalism, right? That is PR. So it's, yeah, we've got a lot of work to do to make media more trustworthy. Well, thankfully, we're building in systems side by side that can rival that. I think that's such a huge one. And hopefully those systems stay alive. I've got a month of my buddies, Justin Razvani, has been working on, you know, building on the blockchain itself, a way to communicate and a way to pay each other. And a really cool thing that hopefully pans out. But just thinking of that, you know, there's the things that we have that we can utilize during the pandemic were being squashed.

You know, like we were being silenced. They were silencing not just people like us. They were silencing professors at Stanford, Think Tank. You know, I remember Alex Jones says like one of the world's leading think tanks gets taken off YouTube. That Think Tank was at Stanford. It wasn't some obscure website. And they were finding that, hey, the data, the reports on what this looks like in Santa Clara County is not what's actually being reported and that most people are fine. And that just got wiped off immediately.

I say that because I think I do have good hope that through, you know, whatever the internet becomes and through Bitcoin and the potential that it brings, that there is a chance to really solidify our freedom on the internet, our freedom of speech, and our freedom to communicate freely amongst each other with the truth and how we see it. Yeah. That's what I really think we need. We need to address the fundamental issue, which I think all leads back to money. I really do. When you have destroyed really the price of money and you have manipulated capital, which is at the core of our ability to grow and develop and innovate, then everything gets distorted after that. And I think

this is why the working class has ended up becoming so disenfranchised. And again, it's like they're voting in the people who are promising them the thing that hurts them the most because they're asking basically for a handout. And we really need to fix the money. We need to fix the base layer of our economy and how we all interact. Because if you have the power to control and manipulate money, you wield the most powerful force, I think, in the world that penetrates every home and every person from any background. Like if you can manipulate our money and make it lose value, then you control all of us. And so that's why I'm so passionate about this because I think there needs to be this awakening and this movement of advocacy. Because I do believe that if a lot of people are empowered,

there is power in numbers. And I think we saw that in the last election. When there is a huge movement that says we demand change and we want something different, it can produce change and action. So I think that it would be great if everyone became empowered and more educated on our broken financial system so that they would choose the people that are actually going to help us fix this. Because right now they're picking a lot of people who are benefiting from this system of broken money. I like that. Well, I have to ask you about inflation and deflation. You had Booth break it down perfectly and you can start on either side of it. But I just for people that have

no basic concept of how much money has been printed in the last four years. And I think, again, that's a hard thing to reference because of the vastness is we haven't felt the effects of that yet. Those effects are in wait. And then Colonel McGregor talked about, you know, the next big print that needs to take place. And that's like, it's what we already, it's what we already printed and what's already circulating right now. We're talking about printing more money at an insane rate. Break this down for us because it's something that we all experience now. I spend $5,000 a month on food for my family of four. And I farm. So some of that food I'm creating myself. Now I could create a hell of a lot more. And that's what we're working

towards in the next two years that I that has been way less than that a grocery store. But we're not going out to eat. And I'm not buying filet mignon. I'm buying grass fed hamburger, occasionally with some chicken, those kind of things. And so, you know, we're not living large with the with the food bill. And yet the food bill is 60 grand a year. You know, it's more than a lot of people made. Even when I was young, 60 grand a year was considered a high salary, you know, and I'm 43 now, like, like I make way more than that. I'm just pissing it away on food and all sorts of other things because of the cost of living. You know, this is really destroying the livelihood of people. This is why even folks with two incomes can't afford what just a generation ago you could afford on one income. And that has really devastating effects on families, on society, on morality, on health, on all of it. So let's talk about inflation and deflation. And if your viewers and listeners have not read Price of Tomorrow, I highly recommend it. It's a Bitcoin book, but it's not. It really doesn't talk about Bitcoin, but yet the whole thing, it's like

screaming that this is what we need. We need Bitcoin as the solution. But let's start with deflation because that's how Jeff Booth, the author, likes to talk about it. So in a free market, the free market is deflationary, meaning that technological progress should flow to us in the form of lower prices. As technology improves, things should get cheaper. And that sort of makes sense, right? It's pretty intuitive. And we've seen that happen over our lifetimes. The first cell phones started out and they were massive bricks and they cost a lot of money. And the next iteration was smaller and lighter and cheaper and so on and so forth. So technology is supposed to enable us to do more for less. It's supposed to make things cheaper. And we celebrate when certain things get cheaper, right? We all want our grocery bills to come down.

We want our date night dinner bills to come down. But yet we want our home values to continue to go up. We want the value of stocks to go up. We want our retirement accounts to go up. These forces are inherently contradictory, right? So we want deflation in some aspects, but we're terrified of it in other aspects like our home values. Well, we basically prevent technological progress to flow to us in the form of cheaper prices because our whole entire system is based on credit. It is based on inflation. So we manipulate the supply of money at its core, the base layer of our entire economy. We print more and more money and that causes

prices to rise. Why? Because inflation at the core, it's not just the increase in the money supply, but it's a lot more money chasing fewer goods. So abundance and money bring scarcity in goods and services. Now flip it around, right? Scarcity in money should then bring abundance in goods and services. So I think that the spell that we are under where we assume that inflation is the only way things can be, oh, we need it for growth. That's actually incorrect at its core. And that's really Jeff's premise.

And that's what Bitcoiners are trying to help people educate on, that we should actually question why is our society based on inflation? Because inflation at the core is theft. Why does my money have to lose value at a faster and faster rate every single year for there to be growth in the economy? That makes absolutely no sense. And in that system, there are certain people and groups who benefit. If you're closest to the money printer and you're closest to the apparatus that can actually manipulate the money supply, you're going to benefit the most. That's what's called the Cantillon effect.

That's why you see mega corporations and monopolies forming. That's why we have big pharma, big agriculture, big tech, big food. They benefit from the fact that the money supply is increased, interest rates are artificially lowered, and they can then expand their businesses in an easier way than the average Joe and the average person in the working class. So this really, again, it distorts our entire view of money in general and of value. We no longer have fair competition and capitalism. We have a distorted system of crony capitalism where political forces and those at the top benefit tremendously and want to continue this inflationary system. And people at the bottom are getting continually disenfranchised and the pressure is placed on

them to produce and provide even more, even though they feel like they're on a treadmill. So these two forces, again, are inherently incompatible. And if we move ourselves peacefully to hard money, a form of scarce money that cannot be manipulated, that no one can control, that it's completely decentralized and all of us can verify like Bitcoin, it should actually allow us to produce more value and create more abundance than we've ever created as a global society and mankind. So the promise and opportunity of Bitcoin is a very exciting one because it will unleash the innovation and the promise and the potential of entrepreneurs around the world. And it will

allow us to do more for less. It will allow the deflationary world to kick in where prices just get cheaper and you accrue value, if that makes sense. Yeah. I love that. And it also makes me, it's a great answer to the point that he brings up on AI. A lot of people are concerned with AI for job loss and AI for a whole host of reasons, but that's a separate conversation. But in terms of the economics of that, if we allowed that to bring the cost of goods and services down, if we allowed it to make life easier and productivity to increase and didn't have this obstacle forcing it in the opposite direction, we would really see the true benefit of technology in and of itself in every in every way possible. All right, guys, quick break. Did you know that

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K-I-N-G-S-B-U, all caps, one zero, during checkout to save 10%. And if you subscribe, not only will you get amazing discounts and free gifts, you will make sure your monthly supply is guaranteed. We're so resistant to new technologies, and yet we've seen how they can ultimately transform everything for the better, even if people are a little bit wary of them at the beginning. This happened with electricity. This happened with early automobiles. This happened with airplane technology. And this happened with the internet, which we have all lived through. I think none of us would have expected in the early 90s for the internet to completely transform how we

communicate and how we engage in commerce. And yet here we are, and we're buying most things online, and everything is digital. We're hardly interacting with cash. We're sending value across the world with one another. And we're Zooming with people that are in a completely different country. I mean, we wouldn't have expected that. And yet these types of forces are deflationary and do allow for more production to happen at every level of society. And these are very, very beneficial technologies. And so Bitcoin is going to do that. But when it comes to our money and our financial interactions. And so that's why I'm really, really excited about it. Absolutely. Talk about the housing piece, because this is a cool one. Colonel McGregor talked about that, you know, in terms of like why he sold, you know, his assets and how those don't do well in a financial collapse. But

talk about the concepts that we have, because I own a house in Austin, you know, and was thrilled when the price went up. like, and it was one of those areas that skyrocketed, you know, coming from the Silicon Valley where I was born and raised, I was used to seeing, you know, ridiculous rate increases and things like that. And it didn't affect me until I needed to move out of my mom's house. And it was 2500 bucks a month to rent a shitty one bedroom apartment in San Jose, not in a good area. And I think I can't remember who was him or Jeff, but they brought up the fact that, that a Sears home in their 1900s or 1920s, you could buy a whole home for 2,500 bucks. That's insane to me. Right. But to break down

some of these concepts on housing, because I think it's really important. And this is something that many people think or have thought of in the past as a way to invest. If you can't keep your cash cash, let me put it into something like land and something of value that can hold over time. And that may not necessarily be the case with our current system. Yes. So I think that this is really, really important because so many of my generation, so many

people in the millennial age group and also Gen Z, they feel so left behind. A core tenet of the American dream is being able to own a home. And fewer and fewer people are able to do that with the cost of not just homes, but also the taxes that go along with them and remodeling and all of that. We've turned homes into savings accounts, savings vehicles. We have monetized real estate. It goes beyond the scope of the utility of, oh, this is the roof over my head that I enjoy with my family and we grow old. It is literally most people's savings account and retirement account. It's the value that they accrue in their home. And this also, I think, distorts things because again, so the money is abundant and it flows into more scarce goods. So homes are one of the asset classes that this newly printed money

has funneled into. So people who have homes, they can leverage that. They benefit tremendously from it. And obviously we've seen, especially over the last decade, how interest rates could be artificially lowered to very, very low levels, incentivizing people, again, to go into debt to acquire homes. But now we have, again, a new generation that's coming up and how the heck are they supposed to afford these homes? Even on good salaries with their bachelor's and master's degrees, my friends can't afford the average home in any of these cities. If they couple up or maybe they have three incomes, they can maybe start to afford it. But for the average person, it's starting to feel

more and more out of reach. But if you flip it and you price these homes in Bitcoin, they're actually getting cheaper, which is crazy. So a home that used to cost thousands of Bitcoin just a couple of years ago now is in the single digits when it comes to Bitcoin. This actually makes it more affordable for people who are saving in Bitcoin to eventually be able to own a home, to not have to rent and not feel like they're planting any roots. And again, this is a personal preference, right? Not everyone wants to own a home.

But that is something that's important to me. And I've largely felt left out of the housing market because of the fiat bubble that we've created where we print more and more money. And now a home that was built in like 1990 that needs all this work is $2 million when the people, the couple that bought it in the 90s maybe paid 200k. I mean, it's crazy. And I think that this, once again, it's like another aspect of society that's distorted because the price of the home doesn't match the value of the home. And I think that this, once again, it's like another aspect of society that's distorted because the price of the home doesn't match the value of the home. And I think if we moved, if we shifted to a world of hard money and we moved to something like Bitcoin, the prices would start to reflect the value, the utility value of these goods

and services. And again, homes are only getting cheaper if you save in Bitcoin, but homes are going to continue to get more expensive in fiat because they're going to have to keep printing money. Yeah. I'm thinking about that. Just in that, it's one point that I really liked, I think Colonel McGregor made was that he doesn't like to think because he holds, right? And that's, you can tell like, if they're in, they're holding, they're not just day traders, you know, that are waiting to sell once the price goes up. And I respect the hell out of that. I like that.

He treats gold, cash, and Bitcoin the same. Those are the way he saves. And he had actually good reasons for saving cash considering, you know, like if the bank shut down and that's the only thing that's accepted. From a prepper standpoint, which I'd like to call myself on a small level, that makes sense. You know, it makes sense to being able to get a loaf of bread or some gas or something of that nature. But the idea that you hold, you know, the idea that this isn't meant to be sold. And he had another idea that he, he said he doesn't like to back or maybe it was Jeff that doesn't like to back it with or to hold it for value in dollars. Right. Because dollars make believe, right?

So I really appreciated that. But we know through the story of Bitcoin that its value will always increase until maybe it caps at some point when it's fully mined. But that's going to be like our grandkids, great grandkids that see that, correct? Right, yeah. So the last Bitcoin is going to be mined in 2040,

but that's not, the last Bitcoin is going to be mined in 2040, but the last Bitcoin won't actually be mined for many decades leading up to 2040 because again, the schedule, I mean, you're mining fractions of a Bitcoin at that point in time because Bitcoin is disinflationary and with every halving, that block subsidy gets reduced more and more. So right now you get 3.125 per block that's mined, but in the future you're going to get only fractions of a Bitcoin. So that last Bitcoin will take a very long time actually to mine, which is crazy to think about. We won't be around, but I hope that the world is a much more productive, abundant, positive one than what we're living in. And that kind of makes me think of sort of my background, again, like the American dream. I feel like the American dream is such a

positive ideal and it's one full of hope and opportunity and this sort of like this gritty mentality of you can literally make anything happen. It's not going to be easy. It's actually going to be hard. You have to put in the work, but you can make it happen. It doesn't matter where you come from. It doesn't matter if you were poor. It doesn't matter where you were born. It doesn't matter what you look like. You can make something happen if you just work hard and dream big enough. And we've lost a lot of that. I feel like we're at a place where hopefully we're turning the ship around, but we entered a time of decline where people don't have hope in the future. That was actually, I mean, Larry Fink, who's now a big Bitcoin believer, he did an interview last year in 2024 where he said the most concerning statistic to him was the lack of hope in America, especially in young people.

That they look to the future and they don't think it's going to be better than how they were raised or what their parents had. And it was like the first time that we saw a future that was worse than what we were given when we were young. And so I think that Bitcoin gives us hope that we can actually make it far better. And the tree that we're planting now, the seeds that we're planting that will turn into the tree, we won't get to enjoy all the shade. We won't get to necessarily live on the Bitcoin standard that our ancestors, our great-grandchildren, our descendants will live under. But what a world that could be. I really do believe that. We've lived with broken money for far too long. We got close to a better system and capitalism under the gold standard, but that was still far from perfect. And largely because fractional reserve banking has just been a thing

for so long. And I would love to see a world where the money is fixed and cannot be manipulated. I can't even imagine what we could create as humans if we lived in that world. Yeah. I would love to live in that world as well. And hopefully, even just partly. I don't know if you've read this book. It's kind of in the flow of the things we've been discussing today. It's called Power for the People by Baklav Havel. Small book, really cool guy. He was imprisoned in, I think, Czech Republic or Czechoslovakia and then got out and became the president and was in prison for four years. And he said the reason they were able to withstand the socialist invasion from, I think, Stalin at the time was because they built parallel systems.

They had parallel systems in place. Right. And I see that through regenerative agriculture. I see it through bartering with friends who have, you-acre farm and I need a dog and he needs a ram and there we go and there's no taxes taken out fact that we were so outraged about a tiny tax that we had a revolution over it. And now like half of what we earn is being taken. So almost half the year you're working just to give that money to the government. And yet everyone's very complacent and it's like, well, it's just like the way it is. It's for roads and schools. It's like, are you really getting the value? I mean, do you really want to work 40% of the year just to hand that to people that are the worst allocators of capital ever, ever? Who likes, you know, day trade on the side and make a ton of

money themselves and you're paying their salaries? I just think we need to wake up a little bit and be a little bit more active and return the sovereignty and the power to the individual. I think anything that encourages a productive economy and a productive working class is the best possible thing. And that is not overtaxing. That is not overregulating. That is not overreaching. That's not coming in and invading people's lives the way big government has. And so we really need to change that. Talk about some of the promise that you see, you know, coming on the, on the horizon here. We talked a little bit about Bobby Kennedy making his way in through the Maha Alliance. I've been a big supporter of Bobby's loved, you know,

was begging for the book, the real Anthony Fauci before it was written. So I was just very excited, you know, and, and since then, you know, we've had him here at the farm. We've done fundraisers with my brother, Aubrey Marcus has put together quite a bit of stuff for him. And Del Bigtree is a good friend, Mickey Willis, the whole lot. But I see potential there. What are some of the potentials that you've seen already since Trump's inauguration that benefit people that are in the space for Bitcoin? Well, it's just great to know that we have the first pro-Bitcoin president in the White

House. We have an administration that is going to advocate for this industry and for more freedom. And I'm really grateful that we've already heard promises that the right to self-custody and mining, all of that will be protected because it's so core to Bitcoin. I remain cautiously optimistic because I think it takes a lot of work to understand Bitcoin. And one thing I admire about RFK Jr. is I could really tell in his speech at the Bitcoin conference last year, he's done his homework. He's put in the time and he really understands Bitcoin at its core. Whereas I feel like a lot of people who are in positions of power currently or even advising those in power, they still don't get it. They still largely conflate Bitcoin with other things

in the space and that concerns me. It really does because Bitcoin is the only form of technology that I see that actually addresses our core problem of not being able to save and having this manipulated capital at the base layer. So I hope that RFK's message actually gets across more. I hope that more people take the time to really understand Bitcoin and prioritize this because otherwise, a lot of the times I feel like people come into power maybe with great intentions, but they're addressing the symptoms and they're not necessarily doing the thing that will help us most, which is again, fixing the money. Fix the money. I keep saying that and I know it goes over people's heads if they don't understand Bitcoin or our banking system, but we have to fix the money. Everything else that stems from that will be better if we fix the money first. Otherwise, we're just coming in and trying to regulate and ban this.

And at the core, if our money is broken, all of these things will continue to be problems. So I don't want to slap a Band-Aid on things. I want to actually address the fundamental issue so that we can change incentives, so that we can change outcomes, because incentives are at the core. And if we have corrupt incentives, we're going to have corrupt outcomes. Quick break to tell you guys about Black Lotus Shilajit. Tired of the same old low quality Shilajit? Black Lotus Shilajit is here to revolutionize your wellness routine. They're committed to purity, transparency, and affordability. Their unique process method, their unique processing method uses only water and sunlight,

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Choose Black Lotus Shilajit. It's time to experience the true power of nature. Head over to blacklotussheelajeet.com and enter code KKP to receive 15% off your entire order. I love this company. They have some phenomenal honey that is built in with the Sheila Jeet. I take a small spoon of that, throw it in my coffee or my tea. It is incredible. It mixes easily. They've also got some of the sappy stuff that is just wow, holy shit, rocket fuel. I genuinely feel a lot more energy, clean energy when I take a really good Sheila Jeet and Black Lotus is the best that I've ever had. Check it out, blacklotussheelajeet.com and remember code KKP at checkout. Yeah, I like that a lot. I think of, you know, how free would we be if and when we have the opportunity to spend and utilize it freely? Thinking of El Salvador and big proponents of Bitcoin like Dr. Jack Cruz moved there and he

helped write their medical constitution. He's in tight with the president. That makes sense to me. It makes sense to being able to be in a place where I can spend this and utilize it and go anywhere and just utilize Bitcoin. It seems awesome. And hopefully that's something that we see very quickly here, the greater acceptance of that. And oddly enough, even though it's a part of the problem, it will take at least adoption from big banks and things like that in order for us to transact regularly with it. Most of those companies won't touch it. So hearing some of the bigger banks are interested now, I think in one of your reports, you talked about Bank of America and things like that. What are your thoughts there? Because that could come with pros and cons.

Yeah, it certainly does. I mean, obviously, we have the too big to fail banks right now, for better or for worse. We've consolidated banking more and more over the decades, again, because the money's broken and that leads to centralization and consolidation. But it was inevitable. I mean, the banks obviously are going to want to have exposure to Bitcoin. They were largely prevented from doing so from everything from the accounting rules that have since been changed, SAB 121. There still are some regulatory issues. They're not all going to just miraculously pile in. But the hurdles are getting removed one by one, including the most recent being SAB 121, which was the SEC bulletin that prohibited banks from essentially custodying Bitcoin.

And so, yes, they're going to want in because they can make money off of it. And they know there's going to be increased demand. And the retail audience wants Bitcoin, wants exposure, but they want it in a way that's as convenient as possible. And most people don't want to change banks. In the book, The Real Crash by Peter Schiff, I love Peter Schiff, even though he hates Bitcoin. He talks about this very, very poignant truth, which is that most people do more homework on an electronic that they purchase than what bank they put their entire life savings in. Why? Because the government has de-risked banks. The taxpayer is going to always bail them out, and you're insured for up to a certain amount. And so you throw caution to the wind, and you're

like, oh, this bank's safe. But meanwhile, in the background, they're doing everything to essentially help the destruction of the purchasing power of your money because they continually, through fractional reserve banking, they lend out, they create more money at their level. So yeah, banks are going to get into Bitcoin, but I believe in self-custody. So I think that everyone should learn how to take self-custody, be fully self-sovereign. I think that they will also release solutions like borrowing against your Bitcoin, using Bitcoin as pristine collateral. So of course, we're going to see them enter it. But yes, it's convenient, but maybe take a little extra time and learn about self-custody. I like that. I was actually just going to say, I don't want to keep you a ton longer. I got more of a comment where I want to talk about the Silk Road guy, which is fantastic

news. That was where I first got into Bitcoin was because of the Silk Road. So I want to comment on that. But explain for people who, everyone's heard about Bitcoin, but if you're not certain, what is, when you talk about central bank digital currency and I know that Trump's going to put it away, it's just going to fucking rebrand. It's still going to exist, right? Bitcoin is the answer to that, right? It's the answer to many things. Talk about self-custody and the fact that we even have this as an option. Yeah. Yeah, this is largely misunderstood by Bitcoin, especially by newcomers, because we've never had a digital bear instrument that you can actually take self-custody. I mean, for example, when you buy

shares of Apple stock, right now you can't take self-custody of that Apple stock. There has to be an intermediary and there are certain hours that they're open and closed. But with Bitcoin, it's very different. It is a protocol. It's a network. So Bitcoin is not just a network, but it's also that digital asset. And that asset you can actually take into your own custody and no one else has access to it. And no one can inflate the supply. No one can manipulate it. No one can confiscate it from you. So I think self-custody is really, really important. It's not difficult. It's not overly technical. I think it's just intimidating to people because, again, they think, oh, no, this is very new and it's digital. And what if I'm hacked? All of that. But cold storage and self-custody is actually very, very simple.

If you can put a file on a hard drive, you can put Bitcoin into self-custody. I mean, that's not a perfect analogy. But essentially, I mean, if you're as technical as being able to just put a file on a hard drive, trust me, you can take self-custody of your Bitcoin. And then, of course, you just want to be really secure about it and put it into a safe place, maybe set up what's called a multi-signature collaborative custody situation where you have a couple of keys needed in order to open the Bitcoin, not just one, so that you decentralize the risk. And I just really advocate for this because, again, this is the one asset in the world where there is no intermediary needed. There is no bank. There is no central bank, no government that's needed in order for

you to engage with this network. And you can take self-custody of your asset and take it with you anywhere in the entire world. If, God forbid, the worst case scenario happened and you were in an oppressive regime or, you know, war were to break, I mean, you could literally flee with your entire net worth memorized in your head, which we've never had something like that. And I think it empowers the individual at a core level. And we're at a point in technology where we can enable that, which is really, really exciting. Yeah, that's phenomenal. Well, talk a bit about, you know, the pardon that happened here. I mean,

there was the number of pardons that happened when Biden left that were head scratchers, Fauci on the list. I'm excited to hear that there are other ways the states can pursue him, and I hope he is fucking pursued. But that's also a side topic. It's interesting. Usually, pardons happen at the end of a presidency. But talk about is Ross Ulbrich. What was his name? Yes, Ross Ulbrich. This was a promise that Trump made to the Bitcoin community. This is something that he made public while he was campaigning and in Bitcoin Nashville. And this is something that both the Bitcoin community, as well as I believe the Libertarian Party have been fighting for. And they were wanting Ross to be freed on day one.

Ross was serving two life sentences without the possibility of parole. And as you mentioned, Silk Road. Silk Road is a very controversial marketplace. That is why he was put into prison. And the Silk Road sold everything from art and t-shirts and merchandise all the way to illicit things like drugs. And so did a crime take place? I mean, yes. Obviously, the Silk Road facilitated illegal, nefarious activities. But is a two-life sentences without the possibility of parole in a maximum security prison the right punishment? A lot of people argued no. And Ross is seen as someone who has always been a proponent of radical freedom, of a true free market where people can engage with one another in whatever way they want to. And he believed in Bitcoin. That was really the currency of choice for the

Silk Road. And so a lot of people have been advocating for him to be released because he has served time. It was a very, very harsh sentence. I mean, people that have done far worse have had less serious sentences than he received. But obviously still, I want to acknowledge it is obviously controversial. I mean, people, I had someone reach out talking about how they lost a child because that child purchased fentanyl or what they thought was something else. It turned out to be fentanyl on the Silk Road, right? So this riles up a lot of emotion and I can see why people are on both sides of this. But at the end of the day, this is something that I think that we should celebrate in terms of just you can advocate for something and action can happen. And President

Trump kept his promise, which means I hope that he will keep his promise on other things. Yeah, I love that. I think the book, there was a great book written about Ross. I think it's called American Kingpin or American Gangster or something like that. I'll find the exact name and link to it in the show notes. And very, very, just an awesome book. You get to learn so much about him and the moniker, the Dread Pirate Roberts and all the stuff. He was a brilliant, brilliant person. All crimes aside, just an absolute brilliant person. So I was rooting for that as well. Well, and the FBI, some of the FBI folks that were on that case that were charged with investigating him, they were later caught for stealing some of the FBI folks that were on that case that were charged with investigating him, they were later caught for stealing some of the Silk Road Bitcoin. So I mean, it's just,

you know, it's so fascinating when you dig into these cases and sometimes the false information that's presented and then you realize that's, oh, that's not actually true. But it gets in your head, right? The court of public opinion suddenly thinks the case is about something else. But if you look at the hardcore evidence, I think that most people would agree that that sentence was far too harsh. No doubt. Well, you do such a great job educating people on all this. I really appreciate your podcast because I, like most people, don't really know the whole story on Bitcoin. I couldn't explain blockchain very well at all, really. But I love being able to learn from somebody such as yourself. You have great guests on your podcast. How would you instruct people? Where do you start? If you're your average person, you've got index funds, you've got a retirement, you've got X, Y, and Z,

where do you start? Yeah. Well, the great thing is you can start small and you can start with whatever format of education you're most attracted to. I love that right now because of decentralized media, the fact that we have podcasts and YouTube channels and books. It's really, you know, choose your own adventure. There are fantastic books out there, including The Price of Tomorrow and The Bitcoin Standard. I'm actually coming out with my first Bitcoin book this year, which I'm really excited about. Podcasts, if you want to listen by audio, mine is one of them.

Coin stories. There are YouTube channels. There are online courses. There are so many ways to learn and engage. And then when it comes to Bitcoin, the best way to really appreciate it is to interact with it. Download a wallet. Whether you buy a little bit of Bitcoin or have someone send you

a little bit of Bitcoin, once you see how frictionless it is and how really, truly revolutionary it is as a technology that doesn't need banks or central authorities to confirm transactions, you start to appreciate how amazing this is, how much good it will do for the world at large and people in developing nations and people who don't have access to banks and banking accounts and checking accounts. It's just a really, really exciting time. And you'll want to start with at least 1% allocation. It will grow. And then you can decide from there. Most of us are in more than 50% of our net worth is in Bitcoin. But I do think it takes a little time to appreciate that

and to be able to withstand the volatility. Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on, Natalie. I can't wait to share this podcast with everybody. And we'll do it again once your book launches. I'd love to have you back after I read your book. That'd be awesome. Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

It was my pleasure. Full Temple Reset, baby. March 12th through the 16th. It's right here at the farm with me, my boy, Eric Godsey boy Eric Godsey. I'd say it's the first summit of the year, but Malibu was kind of the first summit of the year, even though it was the last summit of last year and the last summit of how we had things done before. But guess what? This is what we're doing every year. I want to fast with you guys. Every year, I want to take a small group of people who want to transform themselves rapidly in five days, come face-to-face in a small group, hit sauna, ice bath, fast every single day,

get the mobility practices that have changed my life via Dr. Kelly Sturette and Aaron Alexander, and work that magic day in and day out until we transform our bodies, our minds, and our spirits. Eric Godsey is here to work on the psyche with psychology as well as symbology, dream analysis and interpretation, teaching you how to dive deep into your own dreams, which also parallels well with psychedelics, if I'm not mistaken. And then we have a sound healing with Tina Rodriguez, one of the greatest in all the Austin area, to reset our spirit. After that, we have a phenomenal feast. We break bread together and we return to our bodies happy, whole, and anew. Check it out at fitforservice.com and look up Full Temple Reset.

We'll have it all linked in the show notes there. And I hope to see you here March 12th through the 16th.