Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - The Money Problem No One Understands - Natalie Brunell

Episode Date: February 10, 2026

Natalie Brunell is a prominent figure in the Bitcoin world as a top-rated podcast host, educator, media commentator, and author of 'Bitcoin Is For Everyone: Why our financial system is broken and Bitcoin is the solution.' Her podcast, 'Coin Stories,' offers in-depth discussions on Bitcoin, its impact on global economics, and technology trends. Natalie's interviews go beyond finance, highlighting the human stories behind the headlines and the pursuit of the American Dream in the digital age. Whether you understand Bitcoin or not, consider getting a copy of her book Bitcoin is for Everyone Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge, a global alternative investment firm, and founder and chairman of SALT, a global thought leadership forum and venture studio. He is the host of the podcast Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci. A graduate of Tufts University and Harvard Law School, he lives in Manhasset, Long Island. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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If you own assets, you're going to be okay. But if you're a working class family, like the one you grew up in and the one I grew up in, what are they doing to the money and how are they stealing my time and my energy? When you inflate the currency, ultimately, you are stealing people's time. That's something that can't be done in Bitcoin. It's something that allows all of us to access a level playing field. In the current game, the rules are a bit rigged, right? Especially for the people that have the most, the people that already have assets. If you've got assets, if you're close to the money printer, you benefit.

The rules are rigged in your favor. Everyone else is kind of fighting for the scraps. And that's why people feel so frustrated and so left behind. Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. Joining us today is a dear friend Natalie Brunel. She's a speaker, a podcaster, a Bitcoin educator. She's the host of the Coin Stories podcast,

which I've been a guest on, I think twice, Natalie. So thank you for that. But she has written an incredible. I have it right here. And as I pointed out to Natalie, it's in my favorite stack behind me here, where I like to market my friend's books. But this book is called Bitcoin is for everyone. Why our financial system is broken. And Bitcoin is the solution. So, Natalie, first of all, this is an incredibly readable book. I'm going to encourage everybody to go out and buy this book because in a couple hundred pages, I think you just tell a rollicking story about Bitcoin.

And before we went on the air, you and are lamenting Bitcoin's price activity last year. But we both know that Bitcoin does what Bitcoin does, right? Natalie, there's nothing we can do about it, right? It just is what it is, right? That's right. It's so great to see you, Anthony. Thank you for having me. Thank you for the positive endorsement on the book.

And, yeah, you know, this is an opportunity, right? I mean, cheaper Satoshis that we can scoop up before it heads back to a new all-time high. This book is deeply personal. It is warm. You go into your personal story, and I sort of want to start there. I want to start with Natalie Brunel. I want to start with your Odyssey to where you are today. You know, how you grew up, you know, some things happened in your life that led you to be

this great libertarian that you are and Bitcoin or et cetera. Well, I think you and I have a lot in common. We come from very hardworking blue-collar immigrant parents, and that's really my backstory. I watched my parents work so hard. They were born under communism in Poland, and their dream was to come here to the United States to pursue the American dream. They asked for nothing in return but just a chance. And I watched them work really so, so, so hard, six days a week, you know, getting up at

three o'clock in the morning outside of Chicago, scraping the snow off the car to head into work just to make their children's lives better and to offer an opportunity for their kids to get a good education. And that really made a huge impression on me. I wanted to work hard. I knew that education was going to be the vehicle for me to succeed. But I grew up not understanding the financial system. You know, I got all the good grades in school because I had to.

But I never learned how banking works, who issues money, the history of money. And I didn't get to learn all of that until I went down the Bitcoin rabbit hole. And that's when things changed for me, right? I started to connect all the dots. and I realized why so many people today are struggling and feeling like they're working harder for less. And I saw it as this amazing solution for economic empowerment for the average person who, again, like, feels like they're working hard, they're playing by all the rules, but they haven't been able to catch up in terms of wealth creation and being able to provide for their families

in a way that was much easier a couple generations ago. I want to start there, actually, because you're almost anticipating my question. I felt like you said something. I haven't been able to completely put my finger on it yet, but you said something in the book. I'll sort of articulate it like this. There's something deeply wrong with the economy. Everybody feels it.

You go out on the road. You talk to people. You talk to people in your family. You talk to people in your neighborhood. Something is off. We almost can't catch a breath. You know, I went into a comic book store last night. I'll show you the comic.

I have a hit. And this was a comic that was produced in 1976, and it was $1, it was $1. And I was a 12-year-old boy in 1976. This is before you were born, girl. So don't get all ages on me, okay? But I want to show it to you, okay? Because it's illustrative of what you talk about in the book. So this comic book I purchased at the Forbidden Planet, it is a reprint of a book I bought

50 years ago. I want you to look at the price there. Do you see the price? 1999. Okay. So it's the exact same comic. Yeah. I purchased it for $1 at the local newspaper stand in my neighborhood.

I bought it for 1999. It said differently if you're worth $100 million today and you divide it by 20, it's the equivalent of $5 million U.S. dollars way back in 1976 when I bought this. If you own assets, Natalie Brunel, you're going to be okay. But if you're a working class family, like the one you grew up in and the one I grew up, in what are they doing of the money and how are they stealing my time and my energy? So go into that if you don't mind because when I read your book, I was in the store last night. I went to interview Natalie. He said I could buy this comic and illustrate this problem. But go ahead. I'm sorry.

Yeah, well, that's one of the things that I tried to spotlight in the book that we all do sense that something is wrong. But a lot of us have turned unfortunately to partisan politics and placing the blame on different people or different groups. But I challenge you through the book to look deeper because it really is the financial system. And to your point, that comic book didn't change. Time has passed. And the thing that has changed is the purchasing power of the dollar. It's that the dollar that's grown that much weaker. And what's causing that. I think that's what people don't realize. And right now, because of social media, it's really powerful to see, especially young people, put, you know, those price tags and the differences online showing like, hey, Kevin McAllister and home alone

got to take home this big, big, you know, grocery store basket for 20 bucks. And today the same one would cost 100. Like, why is that? Why is that? And I think everyone places blame on the wrong things, right? Everyone just goes to, oh, well, it's greet. Oh, it's just the corporations. Oh, it's this political party. And they want more centralization and more government to come in and fix it. But my argument in the book is that we really can't fix it until we address the core problem, which is our money, which is constantly inflated. And we need to, to your point, we need to acquire hard assets, ones that can't easily be diluted and debased, and ones that maintain and grow our purchasing power so that the average person doesn't feel like they're drowning.

Because to your point, I mean, if you're making, even if you're making raises in your income, you're actually probably experiencing deflation when it comes to your wages because of how much money they've printed and inflated away your purchasing power, which now you understand, right, the populist calls for, hey, I need a higher minimum wage, I need more this, I need more that. It's because your dollar doesn't go as far as you need it to. And a couple generations ago, you can point to things that were so much cheaper and people could afford on just one income, a middle class income. And it isn't fair.

And I agree with people that something needs to be done. But instead of dividing ourselves and fighting among each other, why don't we just address the financial system and embrace a tool like Bitcoin that's available to everyone? It's so well said. You know, you're making a claim in the book, which I agree with. And again, I'm summarizing. But you're basically saying in the book, it isn't, the root problem isn't necessarily politics or policy or even greed. It's money itself. in simple terms, you say, and you know, our friend Lynn Alden agrees with you, the money is

broken. Yes. So what do you mean by that statement? The money is broken. The money is broken because you can't save in our money, right? You have to invest. You have to accumulate assets. That's the only way that you're going to maintain or grow your purchasing power.

But the reason for that is because our money supply keeps growing. So every individual unit is worth less and less. That's where your purchasing power is destroyed. But unfortunately, one thing we know is that they have to keep. printing in order to pay off our debt and maintain this massive tab that we've created, we have to keep printing money. So the average person is suddenly on a treadmill, right? One of the reasons I wrote the book is to help educate people that, first of all, you can't save in currency. It's just a melting ice cube. So you need to acquire hard assets. Bitcoin being, in my opinion, the best one, the most accessible

one, the one that is truly for everyone. But at the same time, I think it just puts a spotlight on something, the incentive system within a broken financial system, right? Because it does have some political aspects and policies that were put in place with the best of intentions. Like, for example, in the 90s, they passed legislation, which was meant to combat the wealth gap between the executives and the workers. And so they made executive compensation over a million dollars not tax deductible, right? But where did the compensation flow to? Stocks, because lobbyists came in and said, well, stock compensation doesn't count for that. So now all of the executives are making a killing with their stock portfolios and the money printing flows into assets. And now you have an even

bigger wealth gap between the executive and the worker. So great intention, wanting to close the wealth gap, but the outcome is 10 times worse. And so that's where I feel like people, again, they kind of like group off into these different political parties and groups and they get all upset with each other. But if we come together and address the root problem, which is the fact that we live in a money printer society and we need a shift into something parallel that doesn't rely on money printing and debt, that's when we can empower the most amount of people and create a situation where there's more opportunity. The outcomes won't be equal, but they will be more fair because they'll be based on things like merit and competition and a truly free market, which I argue we have

not have. Okay. I think it's very well said. I want to take it another step, though. I'm a 62-year-old guy. I don't understand it. It's too technical. It seems like a bunch of financial blather, a string of codes on the internet. How could that be worth anything? Yeah, I mean, I think that new technologies are always... I can't even play act. I can't even play act that, by the way, because you know I didn't believe anything I just said, but go ahead. Well, totally. I know. Give it to me. Give it to me, Natalie. Well, one thing that I love to is, I mean, Bitcoin has been embraced by people of all ages. I know boomers and people that are, you know, in their 90s that are obsessed with Bitcoin. So first of all, that's why I titled that Bitcoin is for everyone. Second of all, okay, so let's say you come from a different generation. Technology is not your thing. But you can probably acknowledge that technology in it of itself can be transformative. It can change our lives in ways that we don't even anticipate. The biggest transformation in the last 20, 25 years has been the internet, right? And one thing that I share in the book is we all probably remember those early days in the, let's say, 1990s when the internet was just

emerging. And I was watching my favorite news show at the time, Today Show. And they're sitting around going, what's the at sign? What's this dot com thing? They all dismissed it as sort of a passing fad. Barely anyone's going to use this. And now we all have these computers in our hands. We can access more information than royalty could a hundred years ago. And we are basically conducting all of our lives online. We're buying everything online. All the business has gone online. And really, all of our dollars are now electronic dollars, right? So I think that we just have to be open-minded when we come across a new technology. As you take time to learn about something and embrace it, you see that it's maybe not as intimidating as scary as you originally thought. And I think that we can look back

at history and see that so many transformative technologies were first dismissed or criticized that ended up being the way of life in just a couple of years from there. And you, you know, you sort of answer this question in the book. You state the question and then you answer it. I want you to give our viewers and listeners the answer. It's mainly benefited the early adopters who are already wealthy. So therefore, why is it for everyone? Well, actually, I see Bitcoin as something that over time is a much more egalitarian system than our current one, because if you zoom out and you look at our Fiat society, for example, wealth concentrates overtime. If you look at Bitcoin, Bitcoins distribute more and more over time. So, of course, if you're early to a technology, if you're early to say Amazon or Google, you have a tremendous benefit, an asymmetric opportunity. But my argument in the book is, A, we are still early.

This is a $2 trillion asset class headed for $100 trillion or more. So you're very, very early right now. But also, I mean, this is something that is going to take decades of time, transform all of our lives. And I think that we are only at the beginning stages where, I mean, this is something that I think over years, it's going to be hard to have just one Bitcoin. We've got like tens of millions of millionaires, but only 21 million Bitcoin. So not everyone can have just one Bitcoin.

There is enough for everyone. I think in the future we'll denominate things in Satoshi's. I think more and more people will use it as the payment protocol that it was designed to be. But right now, especially here in the West, it is this powerful store of value. And I do not see it as something that concentrates wealth or creates a system of halves and have-nots the way that the Fiat system does because of its inherent incentives. Okay. Very well said. Let's keep going, if you don't mind.

you write that it's not just an asset, but it's a moral and structural alternative. What do you mean by that? Yeah, so I really think that when you have a system of money where no one has a special advantage, where no one can click a button and print new units in the way that we have in our current system, that inherently is a more moral system because you can't steal someone's time. When you inflate the currency, ultimately, you are stealing people's time. that's something that can't be done in Bitcoin. It's something that allows all of us to access a level playing field. Think of it as, you know, people equate life to a game. Well, in the current game, the rules are a bit rigged, right? Especially for the people that have the most, the people that already have assets. I make an analogy to monopoly in the book where if you've got assets, if you're, you know, kind of close to the money printer, you benefit. The rules are rigged in you. You're, you know, your favor. Everyone else is kind of fighting for the scraps. And that's why people feel so frustrated and so left behind. Bitcoin introduces a new game, a new game of rules that are fair for everyone.

No one, no matter how wealthy they are, how powerful they are, no one has a special advantage that can game the system and manipulate it so that they all of a sudden can print more units and benefit from Bitcoin. That's what I think we need to create a new sort of base layer, a base layer of capital so that we can build on top of it and create an economy globally that's interconnected that offers the most opportunity for all of us to kind of compete and innovate. Right now, because of the way our system is set up, it really does benefit the incumbents and those that are already wealthy, established, the ones that have access to capital, can leverage it. And the little guys kind of left out and they can't compete. But the thing that's going to drive prices

down is competition, is people coming in with their ideas, innovating, and being able to actually have a seat at the table. And I do think that Bitcoin will offer that. Look, it's not a fix that will happen overnight. This is a long journey. We're, again, two trillion dollars in, and we've got, you know, probably 100 million people investing in Bitcoin. But this is something that I think will be a global technology embraced by billions of people on its way to being worth hundreds of trillions of dollars, and I think it will force prices to be lower. I mean, if you price things in Bitcoin, you're already seeing it. You are living in a more deflationary world. Homes are getting more affordable. Cars are getting more affordable. Your trips getting more affordable. That's the

world I really want to see, especially for young people who have felt like they're drowning, really. You know, they graduate from school. They're indebted and they don't know what to do because the idea of owning a house or having equity in anything seems so out of reach. And that that's not what the American dream stands for. You know, you make such a compelling order to me. I almost don't even want to interrupt with questions. You know, I want you to keep going. But one of the things, when I closed your book, I said, okay, we've got to get the message out there.

You're basically saying the system is rigged and unfair. I agree with it. Bitcoin can't be rigged and therefore really cannot be unfair. It's open. It's neutral. It's scarce. It's global. Okay.

it's a trust minimizer, right? Because you're de facto trusting the defense centralized system. So how do I get past, though? I'm an investor. I've got a lot of young viewers and listeners as well as old viewers and listeners, but how do I get past the volatility? Everyone brings it up to me, Natalie. So tell me what you say.

Yeah, so, I mean, I think that it makes for a great diversifier if you're just starting out in a portfolio. And if you look at the performance and you model out, different portfolios, which there are several tools online that can do that. You see that some risk is good, right? Some volatility is good because you can create better returns for a portfolio while minimizing the overall risk. So Bitcoin is great for that. It has outsized returns. And yes, it's volatile. But if you even just add a sprinkle of it into a portfolio that's maybe a little bit more traditional, it will catapult its performance by a couple percentage points at least

without adding a lot of volatility or risk. And that's where I think if you're a traditional investor, that's where you can kind of start. But just like so many of us, when I started in Bitcoin, I wasn't ready to put my whole life savings into it. I didn't feel comfortable. I assumed, you know, I might be missing something. It's digital. It could be hacked. What year did you start now? What year? 2017. 17. Yeah. So I rode that thing up from, you know, a couple grand to 20, thousand and watched it crash back to 3,000, which was a lot to stomach. But there were so many people who I respected who had such conviction. And I thought that's what I must be missing, because if

these people can stick through these massive runs and the downturns, then I must be missing something thinking it's so overly risky. And that's what I learned over the years. Yes, it's volatile, but that volatility has come with returns that have averaged 50 to 60 percent when everything else. I mean, you're just kind of hoping to get the return of the S&P 500. And then when you pile on what I show in the book, the M2 money supply, you kind of cross-reference the two. You see that, hey, you aren't even making those great returns because you're just sort of treading water with how much they've expanded the monetary base. So you think you're doing great investing in these stocks or the 60-40 portfolio, but are you? And that's something that I also challenge you with in the book because Bitcoin can get you these outsized returns. And yes, every couple of years, you have a downturn. We had one last year. But again, opportunity to scoop up some Bitcoin a little bit cheaper and wait for that next all-time high. This is that long-term savings technology that you look at with a longer time horizon and you don't trade in and out. Yeah. So, you know, I will, first of all, I agree with everything you just said, but I think that the other very important point on all this is that the U.S. dollar, and this is not me, this is true flation, Natalie. The U.S. dollar has lost 32% of its value since January 2020. We're talking about six years. You took a third out of the dollar, right? That's the Superman versus Spider-Man illustration I just provided. So you do need an alternative. People need to see.

seek that. Older people have turned to gold. You and I both know that, right? When do you think there'll be that crossover point where the younger people are actually older and they're the ones that are really more, you're correct that every age bandwidth has embraced Bitcoin, but I feel like your generation has embraced it more than mine. And so when does that crossover happen? Yeah, I think it'll be slow. I think everything happens slower than the average investor wants. right? But my generation, the millennials and the ones coming after, they are more for for digital assets, obviously. They are Bitcoin proponents, they're Bitcoin holders, and they prefer something like Bitcoin over to something physical like gold. Now that said, I don't want to, you know,

I don't want to say that gold is a terrible investment because it's not. It's done incredibly well, especially compared to Bitcoin in the last year. And I think it's because on a global level, people are looking at this need for a debasement trade or a debasement hedge because they know they're going to have to print all this money, especially to finance the deficits, the reshoring, the energy needs and infrastructure that we're going to be building. And so I think that gold has been that go-to hard money for centuries. It's sort of the thing we're going to revert back to. But my argument and one that I sort of try to make in the book by showing the monetary history with the gold standard is gold was, gold was wonderful until the fatal flaw kind of took over, which is that its physical nature makes it so difficult to scale that the incentive is ultimately to paper over it.

And at first, you don't take on too much risk. But then centuries later, you have a system where you have bank reserves that are like, you know, 3% compared to what they owe people. And that's not a sustainable system because you have a bunch of paper claims and nothing backing them. You have nothing finite that actually backs our money anymore. And that's where I think things got out of control because now we just print and there's no way to trust. I mean, that's why so many countries have lost trust in us because they know we're going to destroy the purchasing power and the real value of the treasuries that have underpin the system for so long now. So gold is great. And I would be the biggest gold bug if Bitcoin did and exist.

But now we have this digital form of property, this digital gold that we can rely on for ultimately. ultimately a digital economy that's globally connected. You cannot send your gold bar across the world and have it settle in a matter of an hour. You can do that with Bitcoin. That's important. Because again, if we take a step back, ultimately gold's just going to be papered over again and we can't trust it. Okay, very well said. So if you've watched this program, we take your book and we come down to five words. And then what I do is I ask the author, I'm going to say the word. I more or less plucked it from your book. And you're going to give me a sentence or two. on the work. But before we do that, I want some predictions, Natalie Brunel. We're going to happen in

2006. I think that Bitcoin will have a year that surprises us to the upside. I think we'll hit a new all-time high. And I think that a lot of that will be led by more institutional adoption. Okay. All right. I'm going to pin you on a number. So let's go to my first word. I say the word inequality. You say what? Once not fixable. and now something we can address with Bitcoin. Okay. How about I say the word freedom? Something that we need to fight for because it's ultimately fragile

and something that Bitcoin represents. What about trust? Something that has been broken down at institutions and in the media and we can rebuild through a more fair system. Right. You know, what I think of trust is that humans need systems. We need systematic outside of our control systems that we can trust because we can't really trust ourselves. We've learned that over 5,000 years.

I say the word money. You say what? Well, I say empowerment. I say something that allows you to dream big, but ultimately also not the most important thing in the world. What's the most important thing of the world, Natalie Brunel? I think connection, love and purpose. I think that one thing that I found with Bitcoin, if I can go on a little tangent, is when you're struggling financially, I think it tends to bring out the worst sides in us because we tend to become very short-term minded in survival mode,

right? Paycheck to paycheck. How am I going to do this? How am I going to do that? Can I accomplish my goals. When you can drop that away, when you feel more secure financially, you can dream big. So the money aspect, yes, it's important. But take that to the next step. You're motivated to reach for more. You're motivated to give back. You're motivated to be of service. You feel rewarded for the work you're putting in. I think that that aspect is what's missing right now. People are feeling like they're working hard, but not getting much for it. And they're disconnecting from each other. and they're becoming more depressed, they're becoming more tribal, and they're really like just thinking of the next kind of month to year rather than over the next 10 years what they can build.

And so I hope that by fixing the money, we ultimately fix our souls in a way to be able to kind of cooperate better, to be the best version of ourselves, to build families, build the companies and things that we really want to create because money does empower you. But at the end of the day, it's really about what we build and how we can serve one another that matters the most and stands the test of time. You're really good at this, Natalie. You're really good at this. We've got the last word. Okay, I'm going to give you the last word. I say the word Bitcoin. You say what? Hope. It's funny because when I hear the word money, I hear inflation. And when I hear Bitcoin, I also hear in my ears hope. I see Bitcoin as something that can reset the table for

everybody. And to your point about this discussion and this book, if it resets the table, it does provide hope for everybody that there'll be a fair shake in the system for the value that they're providing in the society. So the title of the book is Bitcoin is for everyone. It's by Natalie Brumel. She is the host of a podcast called The Corn. Story's podcast, which is a phenomenal podcast. You can get to that podcast wherever podcasts are. What's your Twitter handle and Instagram handle so people can follow you, Nat. At Nat Brunel on X and Natalie Brunel on Instagram, please look for the blue check marks because there are a lot of impersonators out there. I never ask you for money. So please just make sure it's verified accounts.

All right, good. That's all very well said. Listen, the book is amazing. You deserve a lot of kudos for it. And let me show what I'm doing before we hang up here. Putting it back in my favorite books going right back here. Okay. So that when people tune into my podcast, they can see it, Nat. Well, thank you. And you wrote a great Bitcoin book. And one of my favorite memories from our last conversation, Anthony, was when we talked about your conversation with Michael Saylor and how much you recommended for Bitcoin and how ultimately you don't need 50 great ideas. You just need one great idea. So I know that sometimes people see my content and they think, Oh, you know, it's just about Bitcoin, but I do think that Bitcoin is this unique, special

once-in-a-lifetime transformative technology. And everyone's portfolio is their business, but everyone's got to have at least a little bit of Bitcoin because it can change your life. It changed mine. I went from having no hope in where the world was going as a reporter covering the madness and the political division to having more hope than I could ever imagine about the future that we're going to build and the amount of abundance and opportunities. that will exist when we have a more fair monetary system.

Incredibly well said, and you're not just about Bitcoin. There's so much in the messaging in your podcast and in your personal story and also in this phenomenal book. Thank you. Hopefully I'll see you soon. Yes, in New York. Thank you. All right.

God bless.