TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #337: Q1 2022 Monetary Base Update with Matthew Mežinskis

Episode Date: June 8, 2022

Join Marty as he sits back down with Matthew Mežinskis of Porkopolis Economics to discuss the Q1 2022 monetary base update. Follow Matthew Mežinskis on Twitter Read everything discussed at: Porkopol...is Economics Shoutout to our sponsors: Unchained Capital Braiins HodlHodl Upstream Data

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 what's up freaks it's your boy marty here to introduce this rip of tftc sat back down with our good friend maddie zinxius from porkopolis economics and the crypto voices podcast we do this podcast quarterly matthew updates the global monetary base and then we talk about it that's what we did today touched on a bunch of other interesting topics including the possibility of a free banking system emerging on top of Bitcoin. The prospects of a deflationary price
Starting point is 00:00:35 environment and how that will affect the economy. Maybe you'll have to work less in the future. This is a good thing. I think you guys are going to enjoy it. Long rip, great rip. It was brought to you by our good friends at Unchained Capital. They're right down the offices here from the Bitcoin Commons where I am in Austin, Texas. And they have an IRA product.
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Starting point is 00:01:56 Schedule your consultation today at unchained.com slash IRA. Tell them that TFTC sent you. This rip was also brought to you by good friends at Brains. Brains. Brains is doing incredible things. They're bringing you Brains OS Plus firmware, which is going to allow you to produce more hashes with your ASICs. If you have an ASIC that is compatible with Brains OS Plus firmware,
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Starting point is 00:03:16 what are you doing go check them out brains.com b-r-a-i-i-n-s.com so it was also brought to you by good friends at hodl hodl who will be hosting the baltic honey badger conference in riga latvia later this year i just recorded with matthew mazingtius who lives in riga latvia he will be there uh this is one of the most high signal conferences in the world it's september 3rd and 4th in riga there will be outside satellite events going on throughout the whole week they just announced yesterday that jack mallers will be speaking i will be there i believe michael sailor is going to be there i might have misspoke but i think he's going to be there go to baltic honey badger.com to get your tickets today and then go check out everything huddle huddle has
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Starting point is 00:06:04 It's built in a passive heat recirculation for cold weather. They have soundproofing attachments to make sure that you're being a good namer. So you can go check this out at www, everything they have going. If you're a home miner, if you want to mine at home, you want to get those no KYC, no AML Bitcoin and control your ASIC at your house. They have the black box. If you're upstream oil and gas, they have their hash huts. Again, it can scale up to 90 kilowatts. I'm a very happy hash hut customer. I'm not using a 90, excuse me, a 900 kilowatt hut, but I am very happy with my hut. Again, the uptime has been impeccable.
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Starting point is 00:07:38 So again, Upstream Data, Steve Barber, godfather of natural gas mining, Hashut, incredible product. I'm a user myself. Haven't got my black box yet. Can't wait to get it though. I will get one eventually. Enjoy the strip, freaks. You've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free.
Starting point is 00:08:03 If you talk about a Fed just gone nuts. All the central banks going nuts. So it's all acting like safe haven. I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor. I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin. If you're not paying attention, you probably should be. Here we are.
Starting point is 00:08:30 A week later than expected, you were under the weather. But another quarter has passed. And we meet yet again to give the world an update on the global monetary base. Matthew Mazinkshas, how the hell are you doing? Marty, my friend. Doing well, man. Doing well. Summer is here.
Starting point is 00:08:48 No clouds in the Baltics. And yeah, doing fine. Much better this week. And glad to be back at it. I haven't done a pod in a while. I haven't done an update on the monetary base in a while. So always good to be back here with you, my friend. well and very much looking forward to the chat well the pleasure is always mine you've updated
Starting point is 00:09:10 your your camera setup here it's it's very crisp glad to hear that what are you using uh this is a sony a7s3 okay it's quite a good one it's quite a good one it's not the uh it's not the a1 or anything the most top top of the line but it's definitely it's a solid versatile video and point-and-shoot camera, but it's obviously much better for video. It's very solid. You're coming in crisp. I'm a little
Starting point is 00:09:45 jealous right now. We need to update our cameras here in the studio, Logan, just to let you know. What do you guys have rolling? We just got some cannons. Some cannons! Cannons are fine. They're fine. I mean, there's video here. People can see me.
Starting point is 00:10:01 Yeah. Not as crisp as you, though. logan let's pull up uh we're gonna start this on a light-handed note here light-hearted note we do deserve the the bear market here this is what something that you wanted to start with we had the the winklevoss twins and their their band mars junction they they posted a uh a mic check i thought they were going to have original music it seems like their cover band are playing some police here in this warm-up. Logan, let's play the tape. Alright, that's all I can take.
Starting point is 00:10:44 That's all I can take. Turn it off. Stop it. That falsetto, man. That falsetto that I think it's Tyler was going for. And Tyler...
Starting point is 00:11:00 What's the other brother's name? Cameron. Cameron. He's just playing power chords. I mean, he did have a solo at the end of this, but just pure power chords. You're on the East Coast, my friend. Well, no, sorry.
Starting point is 00:11:13 I'm sorry. You're not on the East Coast. I'm not on the East Coast. You were on the East Coast. You're closer to this than me. I want to know, are people going to this? You're here to the ground here.
Starting point is 00:11:24 What's the word in the grapevine? I don't know. I don't know what the word is. The word is, I heard they sold the show out, and while they were playing the show, Jim and I got social engineered, and some of their IRA products got ganged, some of the coin in their IRA products. So maybe the brothers Winklevoss should be focusing on their core business instead of this. That actually happened? I think so, yeah. I think I saw something of that nature on Twitter the other day. yeah well
Starting point is 00:12:00 there's something to be said about you know if you just hit so many home runs in your young career as these bright young gentlemen have done I guess at some point you just gotta
Starting point is 00:12:16 gotta try something new do something a little different they went for it man they went for it they went for it I mean And they, I don't know if they still hold, but at least at one point, they publicly announced that they wanted to hold 1% of the total Bitcoin supply, 210,000 Bitcoin. No, I believe they still do. I'm sure that would have been a whale alert long ago if those coins had moved.
Starting point is 00:12:43 But I'm fairly sure that they did a Shamir secret share, I believe, across all the main banks in the United States with their keys, as far as I know. is that overkill uh it's well it's a bit interesting in that you would put your keys all into a bank um that's one thing of course there's redundancy there and it's i i guess it's not major banks i heard this in regional banks mid-level banks they had all around but in different safe deposit boxes and of course if one gets compromised they can go to many many more yeah Mars Junction has 1% of the total Bitcoin supply
Starting point is 00:13:28 Mars Junction I hope I get that rich one day where I can just pay people to come listen to me sing it sounded like the actual police record was playing they were just like singing along with it
Starting point is 00:13:46 and it sounded like they just don't care anymore yeah no we're doing right there so do we deserve this bear market are we officially in a bear market would you say that was a great uh tweet there sorry uh autism capital autism capital yeah but um no i don't worry about that stuff man i don't worry about it uh your listeners shouldn't worry about it no investment advice right but um you know this is why i track things like the monetary base enjoy it have fun with it try to see where we really stand uh in the monetary world and the rest will come to us i think yeah and so this is why we meet here once a quarter to talk
Starting point is 00:14:36 about the now porkopolis economics uh quarterly monetary base update uh bitcoin has fallen two spots to the ninth largest monetary base with gold and silver included uh in that monetary base calculation they were bitcoin was number seven after q4 2021 obviously we were hovering around all-time highs in the middle of that quarter so it makes sense that if we fall about 50 percent that bitcoin would get knocked down a couple notches but before we get into the details of the quarter-on-quarter changes in the monetary base, you were just in Oslo, right? So I think
Starting point is 00:15:19 we're not giving investment advice here. Bitcoin is a tool that empowers individuals the world over. What was your experience like in Oslo, and were you educating people about the monetary properties of Bitcoin there? I was, yeah, a little bit, best I could.
Starting point is 00:15:35 We had a nice CBDC panel. A few people, Odell was hosting that, Janine was on that. who actually I just interviewed yesterday. She'll be on the pod. And it was just really simple, short, could have been much, much longer as always.
Starting point is 00:15:54 I like to talk about this stuff, but it was only 20 minutes. So it's very, very, very, very, very basic. But yeah, the topic was CBDCs, the dangers of CBDCs. And CBDCs are sort of all the... The tyranny that comes with them. Well, yeah.
Starting point is 00:16:22 And they're being quoted a lot. Apparently, there are some 100 central banks that are interested, fascinated by the idea of a CBDC. So we just wanted to talk about what that really meant, where that fit into the actual money supply, what that actual money supply looked like if CBDCs are going to be a thing anytime soon or not. I gave some opinions on that, which we can talk about in a second.
Starting point is 00:16:52 And yeah, just some of the dangers that come with them because this would be something that would be on a central bank level, something that they can turn on or off at whim. And people should be aware of that if they think this is going to be some tool for financial salvation or financial freedom or financial uh uh what's you know efficiency especially if you are a dissident or someone who's trying to work yourself out of an oppressive regime uh to help people that are suffering from human rights abuses across the planet um so kudos to gladstein for making it happen i was i was very
Starting point is 00:17:28 actually happy to you know be a part of that as he said it was you know the first cbdc panel at a humans right conference so that was cool um you know but this this stuff is you know uh bill browder who is has always interesting things to say about russia uh he you know billionaire investor from uh that was in russia in the 90s after the collapse of the soviet union he was not at the human rights conference that he usually was because davos was a little bit later this year um he was funny and uh he said he gave a video address and he was like um you know they say that the oslo freedom forum is like the davos for human rights unfortunately i have to be at the davos for anti-human rights while i while uh while i'm missing you there and and uh you know and
Starting point is 00:18:22 that's that's true he was in the real davos which was you know he's always getting more and more of of a shit show every year um so you know he was there he was he gave a message um that just talked again about everything that he's doing to try to stop oppression uh around the world with his magnitsky act which we don't have to get too into there's definitely some things there that i wouldn't agree with as a libertarian but as far as you know putting a stop to just these crazy the kleptocrats and dictators that want to come to western countries to you know sit on their yachts or send their kids to school in western schools and you know enjoy all of the nice things about the western world which they claim to hate in their home countries which they rule with an iron fist
Starting point is 00:19:10 um actually i think that's quite well a well intentioned i think uh it's not going to do anything to like stop the war in ukraine for example but i do think that we as like a society whether you're in france germany spain italy wherever you know if you want crooks and and backwards dictators to come to your shores and have their kids go to your school and uh and all the rest um you know you can let that happen that's been going on now for decades uh but i think we're we are at an inflection point where uh people are standing up at least in europe and they're saying like look just no more this is way too backwards it's way too uh paradoxical that you're having these people come in and just enjoying everything that we have to offer in
Starting point is 00:20:01 places that by and large respect human rights um you know we might not agree with everything the system does but by and large these places agree uh you know western they have western values like you know if you're not going to adhere to that in your own country and then we don't want here So I do think that visa control, passport control, residency control, you know, it harkens back to things like immigration issues that you'd have in the U.S. for different reasons. There's good arguments on both sides with borders and immigration and stuff libertarians take. But regardless, specifically what's going on in Europe, specifically with these kleptocrats in North Africa or the Mideast or in Russia just coming and hanging out in Cannes or in the Italian Riviera or in Monaco, that's just got to stop. Do I think that's going to be done in a completely transparent and great way that's right for all the taxpayers? Probably not. But I do think, like, this is pretty interesting stuff that's happening with politicians having to directly answer to their constituents and saying, like, why are you allowing this to happen again and again and again?
Starting point is 00:21:14 Where just these absolute crooks and kleptocrats are just hanging out, you know, enjoying the fruits of our labor, enjoying our sunshine. And then they just go back and they're just murdering people, raping people, all the rest back in their home country. So it's interesting. it's interesting the discussions i know you have at a place like uh oslo freedom forum yeah there's hypocrisy on all sides i mean like you said we have it here in the united states i mean the big one of the big news items of the last couple weeks has been nancy pelosi's husband uh caught got uh wrapped up in a dui charge in northern california got a little too tipsy in wine country driving around napavala piss drunk uh apparently he hit
Starting point is 00:22:03 a car or was involved in an accident who knows who hit who uh but there's rumors going around that that dui charge is going to get swept under the rug um so you have the pelosis nancy being one of the most powerful politicians in the united states uh actively insider trading against the american public during the day and then driving around piss drunk at night with impunity um there's a spectrum to this obviously they're not raping and pillaging individual americans but and there's this two-tiered system that that exists throughout the power structure of our world 100 100 on that side i mean when you look at that when beating 90 of the market and you know her visa connections were clear and all these other things i mean it's
Starting point is 00:22:51 it's embarrassing um so yeah no i mean i i don't think there's an easy answer to any of this i mean as a as a libertarian as a classical liberal as someone who's uh fan of you know freedom as a bitcoiner uh we just got to keep doing what we're doing educate talk about the good things you know they tutor our morals yeah and i think i think you know i think things we're definitely in a new we're definitely in an inflection point new world here after ukraine it's huge i wanted to ask you we talked about it a little bit last show i know you have a lot of guests and listeners who probably disagree with our views in eastern europe but uh did you get did you get positive feedback you get negative feedback mixture both so you were on after you were the immediate episode after we
Starting point is 00:23:49 had the dude who writes a serious report uh he's an english gentleman and he he gave the basically what the case that there was a lot of uh instigation from the west encroaching on um on russia's borders with nato um uh what am i looking for bases and all that and he gave the instigators perspective on that and then you came and gave the the european perspective and obviously so there's mixed reviews my conclusion after having those back-to-back episodes um and the reaction to those is all fucked like we just said like there's there's a spectrum to this obviously uh putin the putin regime is on one extreme of the spectrum and as i articulated the last time we spoke like i'm not happy at all with the leaders that we have here
Starting point is 00:24:56 in the united states and in the west and their provocations and i think people like yourself myself most importantly ukrainian russian citizens just get fucking thrown in the middle of these proxy wars that at the end of the day individual russians individual ukrainians individual americans latvians um just want to raise their families live a good life and and live an honest life and we're thrust into these geopolitical dick measuring contests between psychopathic kleptocrats again that exist on both sides of the aisle
Starting point is 00:25:36 I do think that's why we focus on Bitcoin because it helps us get away from these people from all angles so yeah mixed reviews a lot of people really appreciated your perspective I appreciate your
Starting point is 00:25:53 perspective because I again like we discussed last time you were on I am that American is pissed off at his government for I would like to apply a Ron Paul foreign policy here in the United States where it's like, hey, leave everybody else alone and just focus on fixing our problems here in the United States, which are pretty material and seem to be mounting day by day. I think meddling in other people's affairs is just making us worse off in the long run. yeah yeah i mean we don't have to rehash the ukraine thing but i can say first of all completely agree i mean i'm a classical liberal libertarian here in eastern europe you know on
Starting point is 00:26:41 one of the fronts of russia and belarus and all the problems um so i've thought about this a long time i've had a lot of friends over here and i think i said it i said on most shows or interviews like europeans classical libero-europeans they have very different views than my typical example is the texas libertarian which you know now you're out of jersey you're out of new york you're in texas uh you have that that view which i understand very well um you know don't even need to describe it everybody should know when i say texas libertarian what that means so good uh it's totally good and i think that um there's no problem keeping with your principles staying consistent and you know as a libertarian from a small country that's suffered from those proxy
Starting point is 00:27:29 wars from those occupations uh indirectly you know my family is uh of immediate latvian descent grew up in the states went back afterwards and now you know shit's happening again uh this is all like super real for us and not just me being a foreign latvian everybody knows it here people's grandparents shipped to siberia whatever we had all this shit we've gone through all of it so the fact that it's going on again that they're trying to do some imperialism again like we're just going to stand up for it but that doesn't mean that you know if you know i see interesting things happening in a libertarian party in the united states um you know with the mises caucus like that doesn't mean that uh people can't uh rise up gain of gain uh followers and people
Starting point is 00:28:15 that believe in their ideas and change policy and i'll be fine with it i mean the united states once we leave nato i'd be fine with it uh we have enough power and will and strength here now uh i think to defend ourselves which is very very good um and as for the argument which i don't know who this gentleman is that you're talking about i didn't i didn't see the episode or anything but uh if i presume it was the art of the typical argument about nato encroachment um i don't want to rehash all that but should be obvious now after a few months it's very interesting what's happening in europe in northern europe um in particular you have sweden and finland who are ready to join nato after literally you know sweden 200 years of a
Starting point is 00:29:07 neutral foreign policy. Finland famously avoided occupation, unlike the Baltics, which did not avoid it. They avoided Soviet occupation, won the Winter War, stood for peace. They still suffered greatly. I mean, if they had taken the deal that Stalin offered them, they would have theoretically lost less land and lost less troops. But you never know if Soviets would have invaded later. So they actually stuck up for themselves. They rose up and gave the Russians an unbelievable fight in the winter war uh to start a world war two and they were kind of neutral as well had this sort of was a term they don't really like this fin inlandization which was basically a completely neutral and also slightly communistic view uh where you really
Starting point is 00:29:53 accepted communists and soviet views as something that maybe should be thought about and researched and everything so a little bit communist defense uh just because they had to be they had to be where they were in their history like their geographic location and everything yeah they're on the eastern border of russia correct the western border western border yes western border border yeah thousands of yeah but you know thousands of miles thousands of miles of border with russia and so i will debate anybody about this i have no problem debating the nato expansion thing i think i said it on the last show with you as well like you know this aggressive nato expansion where this you know thumb in the eye of the russians the baltics were the last ones to
Starting point is 00:30:37 come in really the last like big countries or countries that were like kind of close to soviet type occupations yeah there was like croatia and north macedonia came in later but the baltics and poland and um you know hungary these types of nations they came in which i hungry a little it earlier but baltics and and uh czech republic slovakia they came in in 2004 like that is a long time ago that's plenty of time for putin to think if it was really nato that caused him to somehow invade a sovereign country and you know people that were like young infantry men and women now were barely a twinkle in their father's eye when the baltics came into nato so this is nothing new this is nothing that caught him off guard and back to the elephant in the room here the amazing thing
Starting point is 00:31:28 of the last three months it's like finland and sweden they're going to join i mean turkey their turkey is going to yield to them and that they want to join everybody wants this sovereignty they have agency to choose their own security like they don't want to deal with this shit it's modern you know this is 21st century 2022 this is you know this is this is real for them this is europe we want freedom we want normalcy we want free trade and all the rest um but you just can't be going in and causing you know rapes pillaging and murdering sending you know washers and dryers back to east russia uh just because you want them and just because you want to dominate ukraine point being it's obvious it's not about nato if it's about nato if this nato is such a
Starting point is 00:32:16 big deal for putin why isn't he going and invading finland right now finland's joining nato stop him go in go go make a provocation a nato country cannot join if it has a provocation with another country so do it putin should go in cause you know as he as the soviets did during world war to cause you know dress up a border guard in uh in russian uh in russian clothes uh say that that border guard was shot um and you know and then that's a provocation for you know for entering or starting something start a provocation absolutely that like why not do it and the answer is obviously he's not going to do it because it was never about nato it was never about this western encroachment it's about putin being a crazy kleptocrat who wants to dominate
Starting point is 00:33:04 ukraine and he wants to dominate uh this former soviet space that he knows is still relatively corrupt and that he can you know take their oil and resources and all the rest and their wheat and their grain so i mean it's you know but anyway the the point is i would be totally fine if the americans got out of nato and i think a modern classical liberal position would be you know have them get out of nato have local alliances only you know i mean but we we need the alliances like the baltics need it um poland you know hungary's got their issues with their with orban he's a bit he's a bit crazy these days but you know the czechs the slovaks uh romanians bulgarians croatians all these people they want normal lives and now you include the scandics
Starting point is 00:33:56 into that like they're they're not ever going back to the days of world war ii so i'm actually very heartened to see the alliance get stronger from that side as someone who holds you know a Latvian passport as someone who's a European also with an American background also as an American um I'm totally fine if the Americans would like leave the alliance uh I would also say good good luck making that happen politically as we know uh there's too many crazy interests that are going to try to assert themselves and it's very that's a whole nother issue which is bad it's absolutely bad um but you know yeah that's my whole maybe it's wishful thinking but i i really i mean there's so many factors here and so many moving variables of play number one being like
Starting point is 00:34:47 you make the argument that europe and the west sort of shifted leverage in putin's favor with idiotic energy policy over the last two decades like there's i would like to see like as maybe i don't ever i don't know if maybe i am libertarian i've never described myself i don't like to throw a label on myself i do think maybe this is libertarian i'm just maybe i'm just being like a hard-o trying not to put a label on it but i do believe free markets can liberate the world that's why i focus on bitcoin predominantly here in this media platform that i have and i don't think free markets particularly in energy were able to flourish throughout europe over the last two decades and that shifted a lot of leverage into putin's hands as he has control
Starting point is 00:35:39 the fuel source of western europe and i think one can make a very strong case that the invasion of ukraine would have been significantly less likely if if putin didn't have that that chess piece to play of having all the leverage over europe's energy sources um it's obviously the the invasion has created a energy and food crisis um or exacerbated an energy and food crisis uh to a point where um people are having to buy gas and oil and rubles and they're they're having to pretend like they're not doing that by buying russian petroleum products from from india or go into the middle of the sea and buy it i i think again i i think we need to liberate markets from these central planners whether they be in russia and ukraine the rest of europe here in
Starting point is 00:36:38 the united states and just let let us peaceful citizens interact with each other and conduct commerce with each other um i don't like just personally i don't like the the ginning up of more um saber rattling on the war front in terms of alliances and focusing on a solution via force with strengthening nato and stuff like that i think what europe should do what the united states should do is realize that they made very strategic very large strategic errors particularly via energy policy that has shifted leverage into putin's hands and instead of trying to brute force and exacerbate an already terrible situation of war and potentially push the world in the world war three like western leaders should be a bit introspective and uh own up to
Starting point is 00:37:39 the mistakes they made on a policy from a policy perspective and try to fix that um to hopefully mitigate um any potential escalation of physical conflict moving forward but it doesn't seem like that's happening at all and the western government seemed to be doubling and tripling down on idiotic energy policy so that's where i stand right now yeah it's hard to um it's hard to not see politicians not taking the mantle here beating their chest showing this effect sort of intellectualism and this faux leadership like uh unfortunately this is what politics is sort of geared to right like should be typically dealing with these big outside issues but unfortunately you've fucked everything up uh over the last 20 years as you've alluded to all of
Starting point is 00:38:40 these different things from energy to uh to labor to commerce whatever and um and now this war gives politicians an excuse to do more bad things so i understand it i mean you know it gives it gives someone like trudeau who literally just imposed financial armageddon and martial law with citizens like the next week to go to europe and act like he was some champion for freedom uh because he sent you know ukraine some some vests or whatever so um it's not it's not an easy solution but it is also you know it's not a view that i take and whatever we can move on to the to actually i'm talking about something more concrete like the well i think this provides a segue yeah yeah i think it does but i but it's also an opinion of mine basically and that you
Starting point is 00:39:39 know if you go back to this idea of just okay europe europe has always suffered from wars and infighting and all the rest um we're not at a place where we have like uh private insurance private defense contracts we're all rich enough to have our own sovereign flag you know eight billion sovereign flags not just 200 we don't have to outsource things like you know we're not in the position where we don't have to outsource things like military and political decisions for you know things that we don't want to partake in so we're very very far from that whatever that utopia might mean and i know we never get to a utopia but we're never we're very very you know it's 100 years thousand years we're very very far from it today so focus on what you can that's
Starting point is 00:40:24 concrete that's bitcoin now regarding the political stuff i would just say um yeah i'd just be you know i would implore because i know probably i i assume as you said it's mixed reviews but i would assume a lot of your listeners are these libertarians who why would they care at all what's happening in europe and whatnot and i fair enough i mean i no problem with that i would just say you know try to be sensitive to people that are suffering um it's not it's not the united states's fault what vladimir putin is doing it's just it's just not and um you know i can provide books and links and all sorts of things to talk about this 20 year thing but from the beginning from the beginning they had started this uh the election in 2000 was basically set up for him to
Starting point is 00:41:07 win and there was been there's been no legal election ever since by an independent fact checker and all this is the rep so the democracy stuff in 2022 is just it might not be working in the united states as we want it definitely not working in russia yeah i think i mean i think you'd have to be an idiot not to concede that fact yeah so it's it's you know we're a we're a long way so that's that's about it really yeah you also think the interesting question would be like say united states get that gets that right say we get a proper scaling down of government right i mean how likely is that i hope it is not sure but let's say we get a reasonable not crisis-induced uh libertarian party mises caucus uh just explodes in popularity they say
Starting point is 00:41:52 we get a moderate reasonable scaling back of military u.s troops in germany come home lots of things happen where the united states uh shores up its troops literally and its budget you know economically great question would be at what point does the united states ever come back if their european friends uh screw things up again or a group of european friends such as you know or enemies such as russia russians just coming in and doing the bad things that they're doing uh it's it's an interesting question you know because i i don't think it's needed at the moment like i said i i think the libertarian thing to do the classical liberal thing to do uh thomas jefferson said i'll trade with everyone alliance with no one he also started the whiskey tax and
Starting point is 00:42:44 did a lot of other bad things uh you know if we're if if you really think that you can get to that ideal that classical liberal idea that american idea whatever that is great uh i just wonder how how that how the american society would react if europe falls apart again and we probably will with something it's not going to be as bad as the nazis but look i mean we had had to come in as an alliance uh to stop uh for the nazis you know history history could have been a lot different if we'd even gone farther i mean again i'm speaking from an eastern we suffered both from the nazis and from the soviets so you know don't forget like churchill wanted to go all the way to moscow but uh but they uh they decided that it was it was not worth the cost and um
Starting point is 00:43:38 russia's never been this i mean we russia suffers from a hundred year problem of communism just moronic stupid people that uh thought that they were being righteous and legitimate and they just they tore down generations of people so that's going to continue like I said I would absolutely be glad if Americans could shore up their resources and
Starting point is 00:44:05 go home and clean up but I don't know it's weird it's weird there's going to be it all comes back to energy like energy is the base of human action literally
Starting point is 00:44:19 if you want to get to the the bare minimum like you spend energy to go hunt and eat like that is the basis of human action and i like we like what the fuck happened in 1971 for some reason we went off the gold standard and idiotic energy policy began to follow from that and i don't i don't think europe is going to be in a good position until they again show some introspection and realize that their energy policy has put them in a very precarious and vulnerable situation it doesn't seem like i mean germany the economic powerhouse of europe seems to be doubling and tripling down shutting down nuclear power plants in favor of unreliable wind um and like and that's the other
Starting point is 00:45:12 things i've been having a lot of conversation i went on a libertarian focus podcast the other week. And even though I'm very happy to see that the Mises caucus has taken over the libertarian party and jolted some life into the libertarian movement and actually brought some power to that perspective in the political landscape here in the United States. Again, I don't think we solved this by getting a libertarian in office. I don't think we solved this by getting a Republican or a Democrat in office or voting our way through this. I do believe the Heikean view
Starting point is 00:45:47 of we're not going to, I think you need to fix the money to fix the world and you don't fix the money until you take it out of the hands of the government. So even though there's great things going on in the Libertarian Party,
Starting point is 00:45:57 I think it's a losing battle in the long run because they're just going to be thrust into the administrative state that is pretty, it doesn't care who is in power. And in that hierarchical structure at any given point in time, the administrative state just views those politicians as a facade for the public to look at and interact with. where that's, again, why we focus on Bitcoin,
Starting point is 00:46:26 because you actually take the most important tool that humans use, money, out of the hands of the government so that you can then begin to take steps towards fixing these structural, systemic problems that exist throughout our global economy. And then that's why, like, a libertarian podcast went on. It was like, stop, like, debating Democrats, Republicans, and other libertarians
Starting point is 00:46:51 about making policy changes go fucking build the world that you want to see and Bitcoin provides us the opportunity to do that what was the response? it was open to it that's the thing most people don't understand
Starting point is 00:47:07 that Bitcoin is this open source global distributed network that you can plug into and fortify at any point that you decide to Um, and I, I think there's, um, I think I did have a bit of a breakthrough there where it's like, let's stop going to Vegas and trying to gin up support and create solidarity within the libertarian party so that you can then go up against the Democrats and Republican on the national stage. just like don't even play that game just come play this game that's completely separate from
Starting point is 00:47:41 that system which is bitcoin and you'll find that the obviously the most positive externality of that is you get better money which allows you to facilitate more peaceful and direct economic activity and then you have the positive externalities that fall from that which one of the first and most profound externalities is the the impact on energy it makes energy particularly stranded a waste energy more profitable which allows you to bring more abundant energy to the world which over time yes we're not going to solve this problem overnight uh will will lead to less conflict because people have the bare necessities that they need to to fulfill the lower end of maslow's hierarchy of needs and so when it comes to trying to fix this problem via washington or
Starting point is 00:48:31 via the eu or trying to shake putin or take putin out or whatever like i think it's all noise at the end of the day and doesn't actually have us making steps in the right direction whereas bitcoin uh is that mechanism through which we can begin to carve a path in the right direction amen brother completely agree with you yeah and i'm i'm actually very glad as well that any uh libertarian uh libertarian sort of thinker or even ron paul people that might be asked by professional news agencies to come on their shows or even their youtube channel that none of them will go on rt anymore so that's good for about the whole 2010s they were all getting on rt because rt was loving their views against the big bad u.s government oh my god you guys have
Starting point is 00:49:24 no idea what you're doing please stop it well and now people see what are you know rt is no different than npr with those people claim that they hate so much so my god come on tftc or we'll have a level-headed uh conversations about this because it is there's you know one of the favorite buzzwords of the show is nuance there's so much nuance to this and it's not something that can be fixed overnight but that's why again i like to focus on bitcoin because i believe could be wrong i don't think i am but i believe it provides us with the best mechanism to separate ourselves from that geopolitical proxy war that that humanity is suffering from 100 100 it is interesting i mean like you know david friedman called it the hard problem and uh i never used to dwell on defense
Starting point is 00:50:20 uh the issue of national defense and again we just don't have this eight billion sovereign flags private defense free market a very low cost energy sort of world that we want yet so where we are right now it it it does yield different reactions and perspectives from many classical liberals or people or bitcoiners or whoever and uh i i know that you know again i know this is a very u.s based audience but you're gonna hear many different views on defense from european classical liberals european bitcoiners and i got i got friends from the swedish macy's institute that are sending me like swedish video like swedish propaganda videos of their military with like the swedish like glory music viking music and stuff you used to tell me that everybody else
Starting point is 00:51:15 was the biggest statist of the world and now you're sending me this stuff and they're like well in this case i understand you know it's that's one thing i worry about though is like the fog of war i grew up in ohio man i never thought about you know the things that my the people that came before me had to deal with in europe i never had to experience it of course we protested it and tried to understand that stuff in the late 80s to get uh to get freedom for eastern europe but now that it's coming back that that freedom is in flux and threatened again directly for poor ukrainians who never quite got out of it you know baltic's got away thank god as fast as they could from any sphere of influence which apparently some people in the u.s think we
Starting point is 00:52:03 should we should have under putin but again i don't want to get back sucked into that rabbit hole but uh you know i just never had to think about it until now and now you when you're here you know you have your family here your daughter here your uh you know extent some extended family think about what might happen if you would stay and fight if you would go um we've had these discussions for years and years but when it actually comes down to it and you see the just the horrid horrid uh conditions that they're dealing with in ukraine it definitely makes you think and like i said there's it's not just me it's not just people in the baltics i mean you know swedes fins everybody's thinking about it differently now over here so it's it's a very
Starting point is 00:52:47 different conversation uh than you probably have if you just keep it within you know thoughts on ukraine from afar with a bunch of i'm not i'm not trying to sound pejorative but with a bunch of tech libertarians I mean you're gonna get different views you're gonna get
Starting point is 00:53:05 vast views so I wish we had it man I really do I wish we had that that world but I'm
Starting point is 00:53:13 I'm all for Bitcoin getting us where we need to be but right now here in 2022 it's it's
Starting point is 00:53:21 it's definitely thought provoking if not much worse than where you live yeah yeah it's all fucked man i mean i mean curse you got the chinese proverb slash curse may you live in interesting times and
Starting point is 00:53:38 as time goes on the times only get more interesting and where we find ourselves today transitioning into the digital age and this hyper-connected world that we live in and the i mean humanity trying to come to grips with the pace of growth i believe is the pace of change maybe not even necessarily growth in and of itself is forcing us to attempt to rewire our brains rather quickly which as animals
Starting point is 00:54:07 as chemical beings as animals it's hard to come to grips with that pace of change and make clear cogent assertive decisions
Starting point is 00:54:22 but I think we'll get there again that's why we focus on bitcoin it's not going to fix everything overnight but i again believe it allows us to take steps in the right direction i'm taking the first baby steps that hopefully will lead to um something that makes the world a better place for your daughter my son my child that i thought was going to arrive last week but seems to be a bit stubborn um you gotta make these these small steps so that they can they can run to bring a cheesy uh saying or they're gonna make a good bitcoiner with that stubbornness it's important yes yes it is
Starting point is 00:55:07 important well i mentioned about the world just yet i mentioned a segue earlier and what i wanted to segue to is revert back to what we were discussing earlier which is cbdc's and so viewed as a segue because with all this going on and obviously we have economic sanctions against russia and the financial global community seems to be bifurcating and the davos class seems to think that cbdcs are a good way to prevent kinetic warfare or use cbdcs to punish people in the physical world and what's going to happen if CBDCs do come to market. I'm a bit skeptical. I don't think the administrative state has the technical capabilities to actually bring it to fruition. Obviously, there is a counter example to that in China and their social credit system
Starting point is 00:56:06 and everything they have going on there. But how would CBDCs, let's run down the thought experiment of them being successful how would they affect what you do on a quarter by quarter basis with your monetary base update yeah good question totally agree with you and uh if we can go to it's wait uh i know we got to talk through this for the radio for the pod but tweet 15 tweet 15 first of all you remember I think it was
Starting point is 00:56:52 I gotta write this stuff down I always say but every episode it was your I think it was your pod where I first started to talk about it one of the first interviews we did maybe the first interview we did 2018 uh was it started 2019 i'm not sure um where i think it was 2018 uh i said then i continue to
Starting point is 00:57:18 say now i'm extremely skeptical about cbdc's i don't think they work economically i don't think they uh like you just said could work technically you have massive risk factors there you think about all the threat mitigation that bitcoiners go through like you think the state is going to be able to handle that to be able to hold that candle even close to that um so i've always been skeptical about the technical sort of uh adoption of cbdc's and on top of that you got something that's much better yeah i know we're bitcoiners here but you got something that's much better and easier to use in the form of stable coins and stable coins are gonna be a thing they're gonna try to regulate first that's what i said like four years ago in our first interview
Starting point is 00:58:03 and that's what's happening so cbdc's are uh still very much a technical marketed sort of thought experiment worldwide worldwide now it's yeah it's 100 central banks are researching it all the rest china started it with the beijing olympics all the rest um let's let's let's go through a few things here with this slide so this is the good old global monetary base. Everything in the world, whether you have an account, whether you have a stable coin, anything but Bitcoin or a dollar bill that you hold in your pocket or a euro or a yen, everything is fiduciary media, which means it's not money that settles immediately, ultimately the core of the financial system. Everything but
Starting point is 00:58:55 Bitcoin, gold, silver, traditionally, historically. And today, base money being those notes that the central bank prints. Also, they print some money for, a lot of money, for the banking system. Those are called the bank reserves. Those two things together in the current modern financial system, that is the monetary base. That's the ultimate settlement. That's how the system settles. That's how banks settle with one another.
Starting point is 00:59:22 That's with each other. that's how uh you and i settle with our proverbial coffee shop when we buy that coffee the system's the the transaction is done fully final if we hand over a note that is legal tender uh printed from the government so that's what this slide is i gotta work on the contrast obviously read uh but this one is there's two you can see two different blobs there obviously growing like crazy and the actual amount that they grow is about 13 percent per year since 1970 so that's one that's about one percent a month compounded gets you to 13 percent a year not 12 so one percent a month uh compounded since 1970 gets you some from something that was you know a couple hundred
Starting point is 01:00:13 billion dollars equivalent and i'm not talking just dollars here this is worldwide figure this 50 central banks a couple hundred a billion dollars in 1970 to 30 trillion dollars today and that's a lot of money okay this is this is cash money this isn't elon musk borrowing on his tesla shares to buy twitter uh leveraging something you called fiduciary media everything is fiduciary media except for base money this is actual money cash money it's a lot of money all $30,000 billion, $30,000 billion of actual money. Now, not all dollars. Some is yen, some is euros, some is yuan, Korean won, Argentinian pesos, Brazilian real, and all the rest.
Starting point is 01:01:02 That's on this chart, all right? This is the printing press of the central bank. This is base money. We've talked about it now for many, many quarters. This is actually the 16th update. So the fourth full year doing this, uh, happy to show this to everybody because this is it. BIS is going to show you this.
Starting point is 01:01:20 IMF is not going to show you this. This is the one, right? This is the proverbial printing press of the central bank. So the wholesale money is the, is the bank reserves, right? That's basically how the fed really gets money into the system, uh, or any central bank. Okay. that's when they're buying typically government bonds and uh when they buy those bonds they take them out of the system but they buy them with money that they just created to get into the
Starting point is 01:01:47 system so that's how they increase the money supply uh on a on a quick way on a fast way on a high powered way it's called high powered money so that's the light shaded area those are bank reserves or wholesale money none of that is going to be cbdc it already works it's electronic does banks the big banks probably control 75 to 80 percent of the monetary base anyway of those bank reserves just think about that you're talking about a handful of banks i know this is a fact for the u.s and i presume it's a fact for you but i don't know for sure because i don't publish at least i haven't seen the data but all of that white uh lighter shaded area right so it's like 21 trillion dollar equivalent 21 trillion dollars 21 000 billion
Starting point is 01:02:30 dollars worth of base money all right which is the core of the financial system it's how banks settle with each other um that is controlled by a handful of banks in each country okay in each market in each currency market so why would you need a cbdc for that it already works it's not like everybody knows their federal reserve board governor at the big bank jamie diamond gives you know anybody from the new york fed a call anybody from the federal reserve board in washington dc a call it's not a problem like it's not a mystery who these people are they all are working you know this is something that Rothbard has been writing about many people write about it's been going on for decades and decades like that's not the issue so that CBDCs are not going there it's
Starting point is 01:03:14 not going to be wholesale bank money currency that we're talking about we're talking about CBDCs we're talking about the darker shaded area on that chart which at present is about 9.2 trillion dollars a lot of money nine thousand two hundred billion dollar equivalent of cash so that's the actual cash like the physical cash money all around the world floating around and under mattresses and in safes and in grocery tills and all the rest that's that's money in the system that's what they want to be the cbdc all right so whatever bloomberg talks about whatever cbc talks about whatever the Federal Reserve or the Bank of England talks about.
Starting point is 01:03:57 They're just blowing smoke up your ass. They have no idea actually how much money is in the monetary base. So here it is. This is the answer. It's a lot of money. And I said this at the Oswald Freedom Forum as well. I ask you a simple question, Marty. Do you think
Starting point is 01:04:13 for both of those items, is that chart is it going up or is it going down? Is it going up in a gentle direction? Is it going up quick, fast? Which way is the going someone describe it as hockey stick growth yes yes so number is going up there all right this is what this is the only thing that they know how to do and cash is a huge part of society like you don't have to wax and wane too much on this but on this particular point but like you just
Starting point is 01:04:43 so here's the thing actually odell did a poll it's typical we knew we knew that the poll would be taken basically asking okay so how many people are you actually using physical cash today and it was the vast majority a few vast excuse me minority a few people in that room raised their hand when he asked that question and i understand that but the thing is they're not representative of the globe and they're not representative of just billions of people that would be destroyed if you tried to just overnight shut down the system go to some mysterious cbdc based on your phone system of money it's not going to happen anytime soon it's not going to happen the numbers are out of control in the favor of paper money and paper currency and no matter how much they're
Starting point is 01:05:38 trying to regulate it shut it down we were in norway of all places i mean norway is famously over the last 15 years trying to be the cashless society. Of course, they can because they have about $220,000 worth of pension funds sitting in every citizen's account. $220,000 per citizen is about the pension fund size of Norway. It's about $1.3 trillion. That's on the Norwegian Central Bank's balance sheet. So they actually have a very, very small monetary base in Norway.
Starting point is 01:06:09 It's actually the smallest of all 50 that I calculate, typically. Sometimes it fluctuates, but it's the smallest. But they have a huge line item of real assets, unlike you and me, who I'm not even getting any Social Security. But you, Marty, you're not either. I mean, there's no money that's in the pension funds or any unfunded liability account of the United States government. so when people say like your the social security is bankrupt in in the u.s it doesn't mean that they're taking in less money than they're earning in taxes they are and they have been cash flow negative since 2011 but what it means is is that the money's gone like the the money when people
Starting point is 01:06:55 say that social security is bankrupt it actually has been already lent out to another branch of government military agriculture department whatever and it's been spent so any money that would need to come back into this i can't even remember the number right now actually of what the social security unfunded liability figure is our pension fund our quote-unquote pension fund united states it's trillions of dollars i think it's between like seven and nine trillion or something like that yeah trillions of dollars and that's not there it's literally money that has to be taxed twice it's just sitting there it's like the government owes that money uh to itself so that the social security department is owed that money from say the military or from some
Starting point is 01:07:40 other branch of the government but it's not there either right they only make money and the government makes a shit ton of money every year in taxes right it's like four trillion dollars i think maybe more now might be a couple year old figure actually but trillions and trillions of dollars it's the biggest organization in the world that collects money forcefully or not forcefully from anybody. Okay. It's massive, but it goes out right away. Immediately. Social security has been not cashflow positive since 2011. So why do I bring all that up? Uh, basically even a place like Norway where, um, or I should say, ironically, a place like Norway is the only country in the world that really has a strong pension fund. That's like actually has hard at
Starting point is 01:08:23 They have hard assets in there. They have oil assets in there. They have a decent amount of gold on their balance sheet. They have actual assets for their constituents, for the citizens. That doesn't exist in the United States. It doesn't exist in many, many Western European countries. and sort of doesn't exist anywhere else in these kleptocratic countries so there's not actually money there uh having a digital currency would um and so here's here's the here's the rub of why this isn't going to work economically uh the banking system needs deposits to work okay we Let's not talk about whether it's a fraud or not lending money in the banking system. The banking system needs deposits to be profitable. If banks don't have deposits, they can't loan those deposits out and make money on the interest. It's just not going to work.
Starting point is 01:09:25 The idea of CBDC is we remove physical cash from society. That physical cash, which is on the central bank's balance sheet right now, on the central bank's balance sheet is $9 trillion globally. that would then switch to this sort of these digital currencies that could be much more controlled they would argue efficient but really it means controlled sensible turn on turn off tell you if you've had too much alcohol uh plug into every vendor's uh every vendor's digital currency account so basically there's no cash that's sitting in a grocery till there's no cash that's sitting in safes or under beds we get rid of that also we can control interest rates that
Starting point is 01:10:01 way but you know let's not worry about that everything is is controlled at the central bank level it sounds like a communist you know manifesto it sounds like a communist dream and it is but there's no way especially in the deep markets of europe and the united states there's no way it would work because what it would do and all the papers acknowledge this by the way all the papers on cbdc's by central banks they all acknowledge that it's a tremendous challenge or drag on the financial system's profitability if you were to have deposits leave the banking system just like hey you know i got i got paypal i got venmo i got my banking app whatever it might work might not work might not be that good but you know at least i have that right that's what
Starting point is 01:10:47 the average person is saying i'm fine with it but if you come in as the central government and say hey we got a central bank account for you it's gonna be much better uh use it i can in fact we're making you use it uh that that money does go away from the banks it means that the deposits that hold with your banks it goes away so that's a massive drag on the financial system which is why it's never going to work in mass in capitalist societies the only society it might work in right now with any legs is china because obviously the communists they don't care about their people they're they want to control their people and anyway it's an extremely digitized payment processing system with uh with uh tencent and alipay so um that's the only one which maybe
Starting point is 01:11:39 they can make it work because anyway they have all these communist style resources and they don't have a fully private banking system uh so that's where we'll probably and everybody knows that's where we are seeing some innovation, let's say, in CBDCs. Yeah, CBDCs, to put it another way, as succinctly as possible, they just cut out the commercial banking system, which is what allows you to go take out loans and take risk and get access to capital markets
Starting point is 01:12:12 to go operate as an entrepreneur, as a capitalistic entrepreneur throughout the economy. So if you're going to replace that deposit system with a direct connection to the central banking system and use that as near access to the monetary system alone, it completely cuts out all those services that the commercial banking system provides the world. exactly and they know this they know this is written i mean this is the discussions they're having this is the crucial discussions but they're blowing a lot of smoke you know it makes news stories and make bloomberg's nbc all the stuff the numbers show that it's never going to work that way first of all cash is way too hard to take out of the system i mean so many people suffer india tried to do it by the way in 2016 they took out two bills two types of bills
Starting point is 01:13:03 i can't remember which ones uh because like a 500 rupee bill and yeah something like that right and they wanted better digitization serial serialized bills uh sort of things that you can digitally check easier with those bills that's what they wanted to do is control measure right completely messed up the indian economy for a few months it was down from i don't remember the exact numbers but it was way down uh collapsed the money supply in like half in a few months and now three years later it's like triple so they didn't keep it down it didn't help sort of banks sort it was still there's still physical notes they replaced it with but it didn't like help banks sort of get a better judge of who needed the bills where the
Starting point is 01:13:51 bills were going that was the idea okay it might have helped a little bit but it's not like they kept the money supply down it's three times more than it was in 2016 the indian rupee in physical currency so it's just not going to happen it's not going to happen the numbers don't make any sense for cbdc both on the physical currency side actually mattering for a society transacting which society which is mostly needs to just needs to do that daily trade you know in and out of physical cash like you know maybe in certain western places we don't have to do that we can afford to just wait a little bit use paypal venmo or you know eventually we're going to use lightning things like that it's just there's no way that the vast majority of the world is going to handle
Starting point is 01:14:40 anything like this cbdc and and here ties it back now to what i was talking about with the uh with the unfunded liabilities the pension funds all these other things the state can't manage any of those assets and central bank won't help it either so there's no way that like that that money will have to be will probably be issued and then uh in return they'll buy more bonds because of it right because that's what that's the only way you balance the central bank balance sheet is you you issue something you print it out of thin air and then you take something out of the market which is typically a government bond we can actually uh talk about why they do that and why it affects interest rates but just in pure mechanical form that's what happens so they can't
Starting point is 01:15:21 manage any of that stuff they can't manage pension funds they can't manage like you think the bank is going to be you know just like the state bank the central bank is just going to be some new innovative amazing manager of a pension but the only country that can do this is norway and that's because of the oil it's because the history is because the amount of population the geography all sorts of things it's scalable in norway it's not scalable here in the united States or... Not in the United States. Not in Europe wide. Did you see that interview? You saw that
Starting point is 01:15:50 interview with Christine Lagarde. Amazing. In due course. In due course. In due course. I used to think she was smoother in these interviews. She was speechless. Well, let's give credit to the moderator of that town hall meeting.
Starting point is 01:16:05 He put her feet to the fire. Yeah. Who was that guy, by the way? Some Dutch guy. I don't know. That was solid. That was solid. She was a speech. She could not explain how that balance sheet is going to be normalized, how it's going to come down. And as we all know, because we actually follow this stuff, and I'm sure any listener to the show knows, it's never coming back down. It's never going to be normalized. This is the new normal, and it's going to keep being the new normal. Inflation, inflation, inflation. That's how it works. Well, another good segue, you were saying we can explain how the Fed creates interest rates. So people say, all right, the Fed will come out and they want to raise rates 50 bps. They don't just go into a computer and say, all right, now the Fed funds rate is 50 bps.
Starting point is 01:16:54 You were mentioning with the creation of money and the purchase or selling and taking money out of the system of bonds, they interest rate target. So they attempt to either create, if they're lowering rates and they want to target a lower rate, they'll create money and then they'll buy these treasury bonds from the commercial banking system and attempt to get the Fed funds rate at that level. They don't set it, they target it, and then they use the creation of new money and the purchasing of assets to get to that rate. Is that a correct explanation? Absolutely. And I always take it one level deeper, I say, why did they do this in the first place? Why are they buying government bonds? Why don't they buy gold or real estate? They used to buy gold, but why don't they buy
Starting point is 01:17:38 real estate? Why don't they buy corporate debt? Now, they're starting to do that now, but let's put that aside still. Why don't they buy stocks? They could. They could buy anything they wanted. The reason, let's just take it to the deepest level. Why does the central bank buy government bonds the reason is is because they are a buyer that if other if did not exist if that buyer did not otherwise exist the price of their related company of their sister government the price of their government's debt would be higher it'd be higher it's a hard thing to understand sometimes interest rates have an inverse relate uh the price of debt has an inverse relationship with interest rates right so the interest rate is lower the price is higher it's more expensive
Starting point is 01:18:30 okay but if the price is is uh lower the interest rate is higher or if the interest rate is higher the price is lower the value is lower so what they are doing why does the central bank buy government debt it props up the price because typically they go down right they don't go up it's only done once in the 1980s blah blah took interest rates 20 percent typically the rates go lower and lower and lower typically what does that mean it means the price of the debt is going up means it's higher than it otherwise would have been if that buyer of government bonds was not in the marketplace so that's really like the core of central banking right there that goes back to british times like the sovereign being bailed out by the banks uh and monopolizing the banks
Starting point is 01:19:17 what the bank of england first modern central bank it's just to prop up the government it's to prop up government it's to make government debt more expensive than it otherwise would be in a free market and that typically means higher price means a lower interest rate so i hear about lowering rates lower lower lower it's not about like gearing up at its core it's not about you know gearing the economy up and making rates cheaper for all of us so we can get the economy back on track and all that it's it's just to make government debt more expensive than otherwise would be what another way to put that is to make it look better than it is like so to artificially give it what the market would deem a higher uh rating in terms of like triple a double a triple
Starting point is 01:20:02 b yeah precisely to be a buyer of last resort to be a uh to be a buyer that just would not exist in the absence of that monopoly. You'd have a competitive market, a free market. You'd have more arbitrage situations. You'd have more call-outs of bad organizations, like you do on a local level. Because remember, still local governments can still go bankrupt, and they do.
Starting point is 01:20:29 State governments can still go bankrupt, and they do. The federal government never goes bankrupt because it's always supported by the Federal Reserve. And that's the same as any other modern economy is supported by its central bank. But really what it means is it's core. It doesn't mean economic growth. It doesn't mean full employment.
Starting point is 01:20:45 It doesn't mean low inflation. It means at its core, the reason they buy government bonds is to give it, precisely as you said, Marty, to give it, to just make it look better than it otherwise would.
Starting point is 01:20:56 That's why they buy it. There's no other reason for it. It's not, that's the core. That's the core of the reason. And that's what their balance sheet looks like. So that's what you're going to start to see with more easy easily printed digital money would be you would issue it and then as you issue that
Starting point is 01:21:19 you would buy more government debt so it'd be an even easier way to do that but of course all it comes out with all the orwellian things as well bells and whistles that we all know would happen but there's just no way man there's no way they're going to pull it off um the pressure is huge it's massive yeah so it's amazing how much they're talking about it uh i know it sounds like i'm dealing in free real estate here i'm not putting money on it or whatever but i've said it for years i don't see it happening uh in the united states in particular the dollar has too much to lose as far as uh just where it is right now it's certainly not needed at a bank level right so i'm not that well the banks hate the idea of it right because they get cut out
Starting point is 01:22:11 of the whole situation yeah it's it's in all the papers no no no it's not a everybody knows it they all know that it's challenged deep down like they know that that they can't make this thing profitable for the banks if we were in a monopolized communist Orwellian type of a situation where you have CBDC on a
Starting point is 01:22:35 central banking platform a central banking app yeah imagine the app the Federal Reserve will create did you see the I mean for all the shit we get the Federal Reserve I do love the St. Louis
Starting point is 01:22:51 Federal Reserve database but did you see the article they came out with this week comparing the price of a carton of eggs as measured in dollars versus Bitcoin they tried to dunk on Bitcoin they did
Starting point is 01:23:06 the time frame was January 21st or excuse me January 2021 through April of this year and they tried to dunk on Bitcoin because Bitcoin obviously was volatile with the price movements but if you look at the overall inflation rate of a dozen eggs as measured in sats it was something like 44 and the dollar inflation
Starting point is 01:23:27 rate over that same time frame was 77 and they were like look at all this fluctuating volatility in bitcoin but it's like at the end of the day you had a higher inflation rate and then they allowed you to to zoom out on the chart all the way back to january 2015 if you did that the price of eggs in bitcoin fell by 99 and it rose by 19 dollars so they seem a bit confused and in their messaging and attempts to attack Bitcoin. Looking at it right now. Moronic. I mean,
Starting point is 01:23:58 there's no hope for these guys. There's no hope. I mean, the only way that they keep it on as they get on is because of that monopoly privilege. That's all that comes down to it. That's all there is to it. So a lot has changed in the central banking system
Starting point is 01:24:15 since we last met. Obviously, we've had interest rate targeting, the federal reserve targeting a higher interest rate we had quantitative tightening begin within the last couple weeks here and obviously that's having a massive effect on the monetary and banking system and there's we had a negative gdp print in q1 of this year it seems like with all the data that's been rolling in month on month since that gdp print came in it's looking likely that we'll have another negative gdb print here in q2 2022 inflation still rising you have the fed trying to tame that inflation what number one is the fed doing from a monetary policy
Starting point is 01:24:59 perspective how would you describe the mechanisms of what they're doing and number two how would you describe the predicament they're in in terms of gdp falling inflation staying elevated and um seeming like it's not going to come down anytime soon and the decisions they have to make later this summer or into the fall well you saw was it bullard uh before a week or so ago uh who um one of the governors who after they were talking about okay we're going to have to, uh, eventually hike even more, uh, again, you know, take some base money out of the system in order to increase interest rates. We're going to have to do that, uh, a little bit more this year, uh, that will help to curb inflation fears might not curve actually inflation
Starting point is 01:25:56 price inflation, but it might curb inflation fears. And that's what we might have to do. and then bowler just said like a week or two ago it's like oh yeah but after that we'll we can start talking about another cut again they're already talking about a cut while they're talking about increases so uh it's both sides of their mouth as always and i don't actually have any more uh you know i'm not ready to make any other predictions you know as i am like with the broad stuff about the trends of base money other than that but i will say uh it should always be we should always be very clear about what this price inflation stuff means and in my opinion it means absolutely nothing uh just like this article you just pointed out about the eggs which i'm looking
Starting point is 01:26:41 at which is hilarious in bitcoin terms um you gotta like john williams status shadow stats i know you probably say it a lot on your show marty but um i will never i finally get into a point by the way where i'm going to start doing some youtube videos and i have a good charting engine that's coming and i have a lot of good data that i've collected over the years just like this monetary based stuff and i really try to dig into a lot of these money supplies what it means what's the actual growth i might compare to gdp and other things the population and all the rest uh but i say all that just just to point out that i will never ever in a billion years have a cpi index in one of these charts. Never. And I just don't think it's worth the time of anybody to
Starting point is 01:27:28 try to decipher it either. I mean, if you're going to read something from the Fed, it's going to be gobbledygook that's absolutely going to support their position. And if you even try to see, like, I remember talking about one of these times how just hilarious how there was like a Bloomberg article that tried to decipher the two different types of inflation like had tried to tie them together because there's like one that's from the bls and one from the fed they're they're quoted differently they're defined differently of course any sort of you know be proper be proper on our terms here right so the austrian traditional definition is an increase in the stock of money that's what i track with monetary base the
Starting point is 01:28:06 traditional inflation this stuff which really they've been really going hard since like the 90s that's when we started doing the price inflation targets and stuff this stuff is just made up i I mean, it's literally filet mignon and Cornish hens in your hedonic of your meat one quarter, and then it's ground chuck the next. I mean, they're just changing the hedonics, the underlying variables of these systems. And it's just a simple index. It's free real estate. No one can check these things.
Starting point is 01:28:42 It's not open source. no one has any idea what these things mean and john williams himself has said and he continues to say that it's double it's it's at least double the real inflation the real price inflation rate of goods has to be at least double but i would even take it a step further and just not say don't waste your time with the stuff because it's much more informative to look at real asset growth look at look at the price of gold look at the stock of gold uh look at the stock of the monetary base if you want to look at gdp that's another one that's like very iffy fine look at gdp but don't go much further than that like look at stock prices uh actual stock prices that you can verify
Starting point is 01:29:22 with an index on an exchange that's traded and we know it's traded okay those can change in definition for sure but it's a free market that like is a relatively free market right so those are relatively strong price signals yes yes look at the bitcoin price look at the stock of bitcoins. Those are the things that really always interest me. And I just think it's noise, man. I mean, how many times have... You and I talked about this, or you and I'm sure plenty of guests. And it's not the right definition. We've lost that battle, unfortunately. I always try to say money inflation versus price inflation. I try to be specific. I forget plenty of times, but it's just not the right definition it's but but i think we've lost that battle inflation is
Starting point is 01:30:10 typically defined as the central bank defines it which is a general increase in the price level but the problem is you just can't define that cannot define that and if they define it they're going to define it to their whim not to yours yeah who was the off street was it mises who said inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomena that was friedman friedman yeah yeah yeah so what he meant was price inflation is always in everywhere a monetary growth inflation phenomenon which is what i like to follow and what i'm trying to calculate in that monetary base those numbers that i was telling about that 13 percent per year compounded figure that's monetary inflation that's monetary inflation that always in everywhere will cause price inflation
Starting point is 01:30:56 Yeah. I don't want to be that guy, but I want to bring it up. Obviously, we have attempts at quantitative tightening right now and a lowering of the monetary base. The nature of credit markets specifically is going to curb the Federal Reserve and other central banks around the world's ability to do that for a prolonged period of time. considering the supply chain problems that exist throughout the world creating very very dire supply side problems for people to get
Starting point is 01:31:37 essential resources and the fact that new central banks are at the revert course and begin expanding the monetary base even more because as you've
Starting point is 01:31:47 described it's their only way out does the word hyperinflation begin to seep into your mind impossible to predict that's why I said I don't want to be that guy
Starting point is 01:32:00 but there's a social aspect to it too so if you think of Bullard, Jerome Powell the Federal Reserve Board here Christine Lagarde over in Europe it's like there's
Starting point is 01:32:16 cracks in the social aspect of central banking that are beginning to show at town hall meeting in the Netherlands which Christine Lagarde was nervously laughing and just hand-waving the ECB's future movements to unwind that balance sheet away. And then we have Jerome Powell here
Starting point is 01:32:40 saying that he's dead set on curbing price inflation here in the United States via interest rate policy. And it's going to become glaringly obvious, I think, at some point later this year that even though they attempted to curb that price inflation with aggressive interest rate hikes relative to what the Fed has done in recent decades, that's going to prove to be ineffective
Starting point is 01:33:09 to curb the runaway prices in food and energy specifically. And at that point, does the public go, oh, shit, these people don't have any control over this? And then does the social aspect of hyperinflation begin to creep into the situation where people begin to panic and part ways with their dollars and euros as quickly as possible to get the assets they need to survive? yep i think that positive feedback loop is inherent in any system it certainly is inherent in a banking system uh would not be inherent in a 100 fully reserved banking system although i'm not an advocate for that or care i guess one way or another it could could work in a bitcoin world might not work in a bitcoin world uh i'm a fan of free market systems right where you have the
Starting point is 01:34:02 market forces which are going to if one bank decides to aggressively lend or be aggressive in their behaviors other banks would quickly keep that bank in check and other assets on them whether it's gold in the vaults bitcoin uh you know in the wallets if they can um so that would be the ideal system i guess for me what i'd say is and with this system that positive feedback loop is massive because you have this government that we've talked about the central bank relationship between the government where anytime that there is a crack they the solution is paper over it literally and figuratively so you know again i'm always hesitant to say that there comes a point but you are right uh that that would exactly be the scenario it's a positive feedback loop
Starting point is 01:34:54 that feedback loop is exacerbated under this monopolized system more than it would be under any free banking system, more than it would be under any Bitcoin system. It's certainly more macro as well. So if you had a free banking system where one town decided to go crazy on real estate, that would typically be an isolated thing, or at least, yeah, it would typically be an isolated thing. It's the idea for free market banking system. Here, it's global. As we talked about the reserves, all this stuff, when you're talking about the interest rates, all that money that flows in and out, it's flowing out of just a few banks. It's like a handful of banks, less than 10, say for 75 to 80% of those reserves. So it's extremely centralized. It's extremely
Starting point is 01:35:46 top down and those are all recipes for monetary disaster if that positive feedback loop begins it's just it's just again look at the numbers look at the trends look at the trajectory those things i know you're not a like a doom and gloomer here and i'm not either like we are optimistic about bitcoin here and i do think bitcoin is going to play a role which we can get to um but it is it is very dangerous what i will say as well what i wanted to say about this point is for all the problems europe has with wars and all the rest you know the germans in particular they know the dangers of hyperinflation like they really know it like to their core um and and that is partly a saving grace i think of europe of the eurozone system you know gold is
Starting point is 01:36:40 actually a mandated part of your eurozone system uh there isn't uh there are different sort of the different things that that europe has that the united states doesn't there's a bit more checks um of course not good comments uh which are not not not positively worsened comments not confidence inducing at all yeah not confidence inducing from the leader of said bank um nor really good legislation pieces have been coming out lately uh so those yeah there's a lot of negatives in the in the negative column even though i do think that as a whole the people do understand in europe uh really how bad things could get so you would think that they would try to hold their leaders a bit more accountable to that but um you know again i i just this is
Starting point is 01:37:34 something i cannot make a prediction on i don't know the time no one knows for sure no one can predict hyperinflation that is something that is uh it's a it's a monster that can just come at any time it's happened hundreds of times in the last 30 years yeah it's a social event horizon right again there's obviously the mechanical expansion of the monetary base that comes into play but it's talked about a lot on this show because i mentioned it as much as possible but many people in the mainstream and in the outside world completely discount the social aspect of hyperinflation there's it's a it's a confidence game as well and it is absolutely a confidence game because of that monopoly like if you didn't have that you wouldn't have this
Starting point is 01:38:27 it's shenanigans data and everything else you just wouldn't it's not something inherent to free markets right like we don't have to worry about this in any other product why do we worry about it with our banking product it's from that side it's just so I know
Starting point is 01:38:44 I know I'm speaking to the choir here I know that I am please dear listener I know that I'm speaking to the choir well I don't think so because because I agree with you I'm actually partial towards how Finney's view of Bitcoin's future where you have a free banking system that is built on top of
Starting point is 01:39:00 a Bitcoin standard where I think a lot of listeners are believers in fully reserved Bitcoin backed global banking system. But I do think there's going to be a
Starting point is 01:39:16 free banking system built on Bitcoin is enabled. And it's actually something I wanted to bring up with you because you were in Oslo and having talked to Odell about the experience there and what people were talking about. Chami and Mintz were a big discussion there, and I think as a Bitcoiner
Starting point is 01:39:34 looking at what Eric Siria and Obi and Justin Moon are building with the Fediment protocol, that provides a mechanism that could have a free banking system flourish on top of Bitcoin. Yeah, well, I mean the mechanism
Starting point is 01:39:51 of Lightning in general is is i want to call it fiduciary there's a quote it's actually literally just talking about with rodolfo uh recently this week see if i can find it i'll pull it up here for you but um i have this quote say from peter from like 2018 on lightning in general which applies to this um i'll pull it up but but basically the idea is that yeah first of all first of all broad point i don't even i would even you know be more agnostic as you said like i totally think that that finnian view could happen totally think that it could happen with this uh with this system of balances that uh that can be transported bitcoin-based balances that can be transported outside of the
Starting point is 01:40:44 main chain under different rules different circumstances different users different use cases um absolutely a believer that that could happen and if that does happen uh it would be a unique new type of money that had never been seen before because i do think that the it's not quite accurate to call the to call lightning a fiduciary system it's also not quite accurate to call it um it's not it's it's certainly not the rules of bitcoin so peter todd i can't even find it right But Peter Todd said in 2018, quote, I still have safe clothes, basically said it's a middle ground state where it's not quite a claim. It's also not quite under your control, the balance. It's possible if the sender really, really wanted to attempt, although he would be penalized, it's possible that he could maybe succeed in reclaiming the payment.
Starting point is 01:41:39 That was sort of the, he was, it was a threat about senders reclaiming. That was the discussion. It was four years ago. but um that idea applies to all this stuff uh that can that can be built on top and i i think it's a good it's a good description uh all right so your deposit account your bank account a stable coin which we haven't talked about yet all of those things are fiduciary media they are managed by a third party all that fiduciary media means it's a money and it's fine to call it money no problem like paypal venmo just call it money whatever you wish go crazy all of that stuff
Starting point is 01:42:18 is fiduciary media it is man is media that is managed by a third party on your behalf to settle some are better than others some can do quicker than others but it's not base money okay so base money is those dollars base money is gold base money is bitcoin this system is very interesting i think that could happen all of these systems on on lightning and um it's not i would i would not go so far yet to say that it's fiduciary media but it's something it's it's probably something different it's probably something new and unique and it's a payment that would not have existed before and if you wanted if you really wanted to get back to base money if you're worried for some reason first of all you don't need to have
Starting point is 01:43:02 even have many funds on there at all and if you wanted to get back to base money bitcoin it would take a matter of seconds to minutes to do so which is unlike anything that you can have in the current financial system so so this is a good shit this is a good change in your mind sorry is this a good change in your mind or good evolution absolutely yeah i know i mean so again to be fully agnostic which i really am as far as how a free market banking system could go i'm not an advocate for having a free market system that's definitely like fractional reserve and you have people that argue about this stuff like you might have a free market system you might have a narrow banking system you might have a fractional reserve system you might have a fully
Starting point is 01:43:44 reserved system the the rub is none of that's going to happen anymore and it's been dead for 100 years because of central banking so it's really just mental masturbation at this point anyway that's why i don't like these fractional reserve arguments with austrians i know you're not going there and i agree with you 100 with the way that you put it with with the finnian view but it's just mental masturbation it's never going to go anywhere uh it's a dead it's a dead idea um because we have these central banks that are fully in control and fully monopolize the system only way is that hayekian sly roundabout way where we can get around the state money and that's obviously bitcoin the next step uh do we go back to like this fully anarchic free market system
Starting point is 01:44:31 i don't know what do you think i don't think anytime soon so it's again it's built on top of bitcoin it's something in parallel that probably is more free market might be black might use that word black market but it's it's a system that's in parallel for a while yeah i mean i think the mechanism is certainly there to produce that anarchic system you just described yeah it does do the social tendencies of the market
Starting point is 01:45:00 lead us there that's the question do people want that who knows the beauty is like we're having these tools built that
Starting point is 01:45:10 will allow people to go explore those options if they so wish I think it's like the discussion you know I mean it's like
Starting point is 01:45:18 this is deep deep we're talking about deep deep security deep levels of freedom gatekeepers you know it was a gary north quote i loved a while back gary north
Starting point is 01:45:30 rest in peace who just hated bitcoin he thought it was a total ponzi scheme libertarian i don't know if listeners might have read him interesting writing but uh he said in one of his speeches which is not a unique really thing to him but talking about academia and ivy league and banking and all this stuff it's just like all the gatekeepers are still here, but the walls are down, you know, so the gatekeepers are going to hang around, but you can literally walk around them, you know, into, into, into the, the, into the castle, into home or went to wherever you want to go. I mean, they're, the walls are down.
Starting point is 01:46:13 So that's really cool. Um, it's absolutely not going to change. Doesn't matter. Like Loomis regulations, uh, legislation doesn't matter to me. I don't think about it and worry about it. i think this is something we really need to if obviously bitcoiners like to talk we're in a more narrative is very important but i think in terms of educating individuals outside the bitcoin bubble and or earnestly trying to explore bitcoin as a solution is to highlight what you just did
Starting point is 01:46:50 is that the walls are down and again like like i was expounding on this libertarian focus podcast a couple weeks ago like we don't need to play within this mechanism anymore this this administrative state like we can the walls are down and go walk around them and do it over here it's just again getting a lot of social talk in this podcast like just getting it through people's thick skulls that you have the ability to take this particular action and focus your attention and your work and your life force here as opposed to trying to fight an upstream battle with an impossible battle that you're never going to win
Starting point is 01:47:27 with the administrative state. It's just trying, how do we? And maybe it's not the responsibility of Bitcoiners, individuals like you and I who believe that this is the right way to go how do we convince more people or do we have the ability to convince them maybe people just need to come to this realization on their own and it's not in vain i don't think you know we i don't i wouldn't call it a responsibility but i would call it a privilege i mean it's not in vain to do this stuff for sure yeah yeah i always love these
Starting point is 01:48:09 conversations should we get back to like the monetary base what should we highlight q120 21 do you like the info
Starting point is 01:48:17 i do i do i like the new design overhaul matt and i were talking on last week's rhr he's very happy that you're rebranding the porcopolis economics
Starting point is 01:48:32 over crypto voices he always tries to tell me this i'm like Dude, you know that I don't care at all. I appreciate your enthusiasm there, but long before it was a crime to label something crypto, I just still don't care.
Starting point is 01:48:54 But it's still there. The podcast is still called Crypto Voices. I mean, it's a sister brand still there. Much to it, I guess. So, like I mentioned earlier in the conversation, Q4 2021 to Q1 2022 Bitcoin fell
Starting point is 01:49:13 from the 7th spot in the world monetary base standings to the 9th spot can we look at 18 18
Starting point is 01:49:30 yes sir it's a very divergent chart there what's going on here yeah so this this is oh yeah it's a bar chart for this uh for this forum uh but let me just describe it i would encourage listeners to check it out but this is a this is i think it's called a tornado chart so on the left you have gdp per capita of all of these countries and it's not all countries right so you have the eurozone is one block you know you can think the united kingdom i guess there's one block there's many countries in that but it's it's the uh it's the currency
Starting point is 01:50:08 blocks right on the on the left and the right uh gdp on the left and the black gdp per capita and on the right is monetary base per capita monetary base per capita and as number one uh as we talked about there um is norway so the monetary base is minuscule like i don't know if you can barely see it yeah that's 1600 you know i'm just gonna say dollars no understand when i say that it's not dollars norwegian kroner it's danish kroner all the rest so 16 1600 equivalent per person in norway okay and again that's cash that's norwegian kroner per person all right but they have that 1.2 1.3 trillion dollar sovereign wealth pension fund sitting on their balance sheet as well so they don't there's many reasons why they can go for this sort of cashless society and they can try
Starting point is 01:51:01 to do this virtue signaling and all the rest the esg and all the rest it's you know this is this scandic way right i highly doubt that they would do that if they didn't have this ridiculous pension fund that has if you look at any other uh any other bar there to the right this would be dwarfed okay switzerland is number two by the way it's 94 000 per person but obviously swiss franc is a huge currency. It's traded everywhere. It's traded in China. I mean, Swiss francs is a huge currency. So obviously, Swiss francs are not all in Switzerland. Neither are the dollars. But still, it's a way to look at it. $94,000 per person in Switzerland. Norway has $1,600. But if you look at that pension fund again, it's $220,000 per person in Norway. It's just insane. It's remarkable
Starting point is 01:51:51 that they've done that all the rest but you got to think about these things when you start thinking about like what is gonna what a cbdc is gonna look like in uh in all of these countries i mean it's just there's no good asset that you know those central banks can try to manage and work uh hold something together nor is just very very unique all they're going to do is as we've talked about ad nauseum here is they're going to buy government bonds make the government look better than it would otherwise look if the central bank wasn't there and put money into the system and take the bonds out of the system therefore increasing the price lowering the rate lowering the yield lowering the interest rate so norway is a very unique beast very interesting beast there
Starting point is 01:52:35 uh very small uh base money per capita compared to uh like the wealth of its of its people the size of its economy, which is the largest economy per capita in the world. So one of, I should say, I don't know if there's maybe a European union one and I'm going EU wide there or Eurozone wide. So anyway, sorry, another tangent. Um, so, so you have that there, you have the USA is about $18,000 per person is the monetary base, $18,000. Just think about that. That's not $18,000 in your bank account that's eighteen thousand dollars the cash absolute cash money um of course the us dollar is global currency the world's quote reserve currency other central banks like to hold dollars all the rest so there's many many dollars that are outside of the united states but
Starting point is 01:53:30 you know that's a lot of money that's a lot of money per person that is uh that is printed and you know a country of 330 million people yeah I will I will leave it up to the listener
Starting point is 01:53:47 to think if that money is like you know if that's indicative of how the average person feels that you know if they
Starting point is 01:53:52 if they feel that like they have the resources to merit you know that much money well I mean
Starting point is 01:54:00 I'm sure you've heard the stat that gets thrown around often your average American I believe 60% probably more now I would imagine today compared to when
Starting point is 01:54:13 the stat was popular a few years ago 60% of your American citizens couldn't afford a $400 emergency expense without going into debt. No savings, yeah. So I doubt if you were to poll your average American
Starting point is 01:54:30 man on the streets, they would feel that $18,000 is indicative of yeah it's massive it's massive i mean why why would you have this money other than to be sitting as base money somewhere close to your control i mean i guess what you know so money should be right just that think about think about that eighteen thousand dollars and yes i understand the number's probably lower because uh because it's an international huge portion of those dollars hundred dollar bills are more outside the u.s and inside the u.s i
Starting point is 01:55:03 understand but nonetheless nonetheless i mean that's that's uh yeah that's just i mean even if it's off by a factor of 10 your average american still be like yeah yeah yeah four hundred dollar expense yeah 10 that's a good way to put it jesus so and then another one obviously which is interesting which is crazy is japan uh a little bit down the list as far as the economy goes um and then put that number in the uh description there but it's i don't know 10 uh oh okay actually the economy is huge gross right it's like the third biggest economy in the world uh if you count eurozone is one block it's the third biggest economy i believe and third or fourth and but per capita way down all right this is interesting because japan is famously
Starting point is 01:55:57 been printing money for 30 years to get themselves out of the Nikkei bust. And $45,000 equivalent yen per person in Japan. Very rich country, very expensive country. I'm not sure.
Starting point is 01:56:16 Very terrible demographic situation over there right now. I'd like to talk to some Japanese as well to feel how they feel about that. Again, base money, you should at least have a pretty good portion of that in your coffers in your private coffers ready for as you said emergency expenses for your family for heirlooms passing things on for your nest egg savings it's a hell of a lot of money
Starting point is 01:56:42 and all that money is in japan by the way that yen is not like unless you speak japanese you're not doing business in japan right so it's 45 000 worth of yen that they have per capita it's a massive balance sheet, as you've asked me about before. Sometimes it's been number one in these quarterly updates. They're printing money. They've done it for 30 years. They continue. Again, why would we expect anything to be different
Starting point is 01:57:07 as time goes on? I think it's an interesting one. You can't expect anything because, again, like you've described, the mechanisms of the way this monopolized monetary system and this wedding of the central
Starting point is 01:57:27 banking system and the governments that are printing all this debt, mechanically this can't be unwound. Mathematically, mechanically, no way. Not possible. What do you think about so we talk a lot about inflation
Starting point is 01:57:43 in the current system, the modern system and a lot of people wonder about a Bitcoin system if it would have deflationary effects. What do you think about about that as time goes on i mean i believe i uh i believe that and i think jeff booth price of tomorrow the point he makes in that book is very enlightening where we've had especially in the tech sector in terms of software and iphones and computers and the productivity increases that
Starting point is 01:58:20 they've brought us and their relative price compared to decades ago we've had extreme price deflation in those areas despite the monetary expansion that the world has experienced over the course of that time in parallel um and obviously we've had stock real estate inflation to healthcare, education, whatever, to counteract that deflationary pressures in the technology sector. I don't see why moving to a sounder monetary system or a sound monetary system
Starting point is 01:58:57 wouldn't bring those deflationary pressures to those parts of the economy as well. I mean, I'm a believer that stocks, real estate, education, healthcare are being artificially propped up prices, at least, of those services and goods because of the monetary expansion. Could be simple understanding. Maybe there's more nuance that I'm not seeing, but just...
Starting point is 01:59:27 No, agreed. It's absolutely going to be the case. It was the case in the classical gold standard. Prices generally fell over a few hundred years. um you know in the u.s pre like worldwide classical gold standard but in the u.s uh in particular but other countries as well with these types of gold back uh gold based dollar or pound uh norwegian kroner based systems so prices did gently fall and it would be i think very good to get back to that but you always get this uh weird concern from
Starting point is 02:00:06 people that that would like somehow be a bad thing if we had definitely falling prices i mean it's bad for it just forces lenders to be more risk averse with because it's bad for lenders at the end of the day right no yeah so yeah well it's bad it's potentially bad for borrowers actually um so now like now would be a good time obviously with inflation if you could get money by bitcoin right you take a loan that would be great thing because you don't have to pay that uh loan back in this fixed lower i mix that up it's bad for borrowers so like if you're going to borrow money you got to be sure that what you're going to bring to market is going to outpace that deflationary pressure does booth think that um i don't know it's opinion on
Starting point is 02:00:57 I'm wondering if you know because some people think that there won't be lending in this type of market or it can't work do you know his opinion? I can't speak for Jeff I don't know his exact opinion on that
Starting point is 02:01:14 but again if you play this I think it's interesting because like one of another objection let's say uh i think it's related but it's i think it's easily solvable as like some you know uh like these free bankers right like selgen white as far as i know they would think that if you get into a deflationary uh price a price deflationary uh system and you don't
Starting point is 02:01:50 don't necessarily have other inflating factors to counteract that and you did have inflating factors in the gold systems right because gold unlike bitcoin was not fixed it's still it is fixed in the ground but it still increases you know every year yeah miners would go out mine to go out and mine asteroids whatever you know alchemy i think is i think actually i know for sure i remember talking about this with adam back like gold has been created it's extremely expensive to do it but gold has been created in a lab so it can be done regardless you can create gold if you want um you can you know you can mine more gold you can get gold so there's an inflationary pressure population all the other things they wonder if it becomes too awkward
Starting point is 02:02:39 if it if if deflationary pressures uh uh still counteract that and then you get to the point where your labor uh would like what would you do like you know do you have to give price cuts to profitable good companies and my opinion to that is absolutely wrong way to look at it you'd fix it on the supply side wouldn't you i think you'd be even simpler you just let them work shorter hours like in the like today it's okay work the same or harder and we'll give you wage increase in a currency that's inflating and the other scenario it's like we're all being more productive and better go into your life i'll pay the same work less i think that's a simple answer to that but um i haven't heard any if anybody's actually addressed it that way but i definitely
Starting point is 02:03:36 think that um that's the goal right it's like we want a machine not in a dystopian ai way but we want machines we want technology to help us it's obvious that that's happening in the current tech world even amidst this inflationary monetary inflationary pressure and price inflationary pressure um but in a deflationary or a no inflationary environment of bitcoin you would just have the ability to have the same output have the same growth you still have population growth still have all the rest but you just work just work less so less people reading more books toiling in the land sounds like a great
Starting point is 02:04:14 future yeah I don't know what others are thinking about that but I think that's the case and I do think that you still have lending but like you said it would just be more risk averse
Starting point is 02:04:32 borrowers you'd have to be much more careful as a borrower imagine the business yeah businesses would switch to like a bootstrap model which is easier in today's day and age in the digital world. It's
Starting point is 02:04:48 significantly easier to bootstrap a company and provide utility to the world. Obviously with capital intensive hard asset endeavors it's not the same case but much harder to bootstrap. Yeah bootstrapping as in using
Starting point is 02:05:05 other service providers to get started in your endeavor. Yeah, or just running as lean as possible until you get traction using cash flows and profits to reinvest instead of going out and getting debt. Yeah. I think it's great, man. I mean, all of these things are fantastic. We got to keep promoting free banking. We got to keep promoting free markets.
Starting point is 02:05:36 It's not going to happen. We know this. the hard problem of defense is hard the hard problem of central banks is hard to get around but that's a good way to put it like you said
Starting point is 02:05:50 just keep educating the fact that the walls are down and then that's where I think the hope lies and end it on a white pill on a hopeful note we can do it
Starting point is 02:06:08 You can do it today. You're listening out there. Download a Bitcoin wallet. If you're a merchant, the tools that allow you to receive dollars and auto-convert all those dollars
Starting point is 02:06:20 or a portion of those dollars into Bitcoin that will allow you to accumulate capital over time so that maybe you have to work less in the future. It's here today.
Starting point is 02:06:31 You can take advantage of it. It's at your fingertips. Software. Open source. You can download it. Begin using it. It's a decision. It's a mental decision of recognizing, like we said,
Starting point is 02:06:44 that the walls are down around the administrative state and central banking system and the parasitic federal governments around the world. Again, I will echo, I don't think we're going to fix our problems by trying to play within that administrative state. I think we have to build systems in parallel that are completely disconnected from these hierarchies that have led us to these dire situations. And Bitcoin, I think, is the most potent tool and mechanism that allows us to do that. So that's why I focus on it.
Starting point is 02:07:23 And I have quarterly conversations with great individuals like Matthew to just keep drilling, drilling, drilling. Me more. Guess what? Base cash. Base cash. Keep that in mind. this is hey anybody listening out there
Starting point is 02:07:39 this is a propaganda channel I'm propagandizing sound money and built on a free and open source software I will be open with that I am driving propaganda fix the money fix the world Bitcoin fixes this I'm gonna go up
Starting point is 02:07:55 Bitcoin is free to money these are my propaganda slogans I will the way CBDC is are never going to work the money supply doesn't show that they're going any way to doing a cbdc it's not going to help the banking system you can unplug from all that and have basic basic cash which you can what was it the iroquois that was going 11 generations how far were they seven generations seven generation thinking yes i heard that from you
Starting point is 02:08:24 that's a great point uh completely rewire your brain for those things because that's how it was done in the past gold and silver basic cash shells beads things before that never really reached full basic cash but that's same idea you need something oh one more thing sorry it's tangents again one more you need it you need it for two reasons one is that heirloom xabo wrote about that a lot in shelling out one is the heirloom one is passing it on that's why you need basic cash you can do that with fine art you can do that with property you got to get a fiduciary involved with property right you got to get the legal system stuff who knows if that property is going to hold value plus it could become a liability for you
Starting point is 02:09:04 depending on the maintenance management all the rest so it's an heirloom that's what shells and beads and all the rest were used for primitive basic monies to gold silver not a bitcoin absolutely it's an heirloom that's a main point like that's why you do it that's it's for heirs it's for passing on your savings to future generations and then the next is if you have um any concern with your trading partner on a non-local level so if you're going outside of your home where you're not going to see this person ever again outside of your home area right so if you're you know the west indies or something trading spices like you're never going to see these people again at best next season you got to get the gold you got to settle on
Starting point is 02:09:46 more even if you're 80 settled in goods 20 settled on margin with gold or silver like that's why you have this type of cash and uh those are like the real real reasons and those things still apply today so bitcoin can get you that international trade with people that you're never going to see again unbelievably fast utxos renewed destroyed and renewed again every 10 minutes it's really remarkable there's no other money like it in the world so keep all those things in mind that's why i'm doing the base money stuff it's it really is like like golden silver and thank you for doing the base money stuff i think it's important work and i do you said this is four years in now i think if you keep up with this porkopolis porkopolis economics is going to be one of the
Starting point is 02:10:39 go-to economic data repositories on the internet because people need this good information like we've said many times throughout the years that we've been recording these episodes quarterly, nobody's getting this information. Nobody's gathering this data except for you. And I think the quality of the data is such that more and more individuals will realize that it is quality data and more eyes are going to be driven to it. And it will be used to drive home the argument that Bitcoin is better money and the central banking fiat monetary system that dominates the world today is failing and making the world materially worse off so as i do thank you come on i have to thank you much appreciated love what you're doing as well always happy to be
Starting point is 02:11:29 on look forward to the next one i mean it's already end of june so it's gonna be uh it's gonna be coming again but then you gotta wait a month the central banks take forever all the rest well yeah so that's what i was gonna it does take time to do this but it would be cool if central banks make it possible to like release these numbers like the same day like gdp and inflation or no way no way that korea still hasn't given me uh march yet so they're all different and at the end of the day you do want like i thought about doing it like kind of as a running thing i could give you right now in june i could give you like a lot of stuff from march i could also give you u.s through may korea would only be through february but the better way is just to
Starting point is 02:12:19 wait that full month when you know china doesn't come out for a month better way is just wait a month and then freeze it at most all of them end of march of course the bitcoin data i pulled to the present like i pulled to you know whenever the block yeah yeah and gold silver as well a little bit into the nitty gritty of the methodology we're at block 739,910 right now I saw it
Starting point is 02:12:46 the day ahead actually it was May 4th for a while for the next halving it was May 3rd now on the block clock I saw interesting because we've had a downward difficulty adjustment looks like we should have one today actually it should be relatively flat
Starting point is 02:13:00 as well I didn't obviously look into it or anything but I'm surprised about it alright well it is approaching evening or probably is the evening now where you are it is indeed thunderstorm rolling
Starting point is 02:13:17 and summer storm well you go enjoy the evening with your family I've enjoyed this conversation all the best to you absolutely enjoyed it all the best to you you have a major life event coming Matt super happy for you massive awesome
Starting point is 02:13:32 enjoy it best to the wife best to the fam thank you sir I'm preparing for very little sleep over the next couple six weeks
Starting point is 02:13:42 I mean I'm still adjusting with one and woo you got you got your work cut out for you yeah it should be fun
Starting point is 02:13:51 luckily my wife's mother in town so she's gonna help out the first couple weeks so let's shout out to my mother-in-law thank you for coming to help
Starting point is 02:13:59 100% all right we'll do this again next quarter peace and love freaks

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