TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #594: They’ll Crash Stocks To Save Bonds with Gary Brode
Episode Date: March 7, 2025Marty sits down with Gary Brode to discuss the economic strategies being employed by the Trump administration. Gary on Twitter: https://x.com/Gary_Brode Deep Knowledge Investing: https://deepkno...wledgeinvesting.com/ 0:00 - Intro 0:36 - The problem with bonds 7:08 - Tariffs and short term pain 10:16 - Art of the Deal 19:50 - Fold & Bitkey 21:33 - Europe is anti-freedom 25:51 - Cutting spending 37:54 - Unchained Announcement 38:25 - KPIs for a better direction 43:03 - Populism 50:32 - How will bitcoin react? 58:36 - Bitcoin credit 1:06:29 - Understand today or be surprised tomorrow Shoutout to our sponsors: Fold https://tftc.io/fold Bitkey https://bitkey.world/ Unchained https://unchained.com/tftc/ Join the TFTC Movement: Main YT Channel https://www.youtube.com/c/TFTC21/videos Clips YT Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUQcW3jxfQfEUS8kqR5pJtQ Website https://tftc.io/ Twitter https://twitter.com/tftc21 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/tftc.io/ Nostr https://primal.net/tftc Follow Marty Bent: Twitter https://twitter.com/martybent Nostr https://primal.net/martybent Newsletter https://tftc.io/martys-bent/ Podcast https://www.tftc.io/tag/podcasts/
Transcript
Discussion (0)
You've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free.
When 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.
Gary Broda, it's great to have you on TFTC finally.
We've done a couple episodes in years past on the Last Trade podcast, but this is your first time on TFTC.
Welcome to TFTC.
Thanks, Marty. I appreciate you having me.
Like I said, I'm very happy that you're on the show today, considering everything that is going on in markets.
bond yields blowing out in europe and japan equities markets falling here in the united
states like i said i only had a minute to check i imagine they're down everywhere and you just
wrote a piece last night talking about this expression that's become more popular over the
last couple months which is they're going to crash the stock market to save the bond market and
that has been a growing narrative and it seems like it's at least today the last two days it
has been playing out that way? Yeah, that's definitely happening. And you're right. It's
an expression a lot of people are using. But what I'm finding is a lot of people who aren't
professional investors, like they're sort of nodding along, but they don't really know what
it means. And I think it's worth it to explain to people that there are two things that have
happened that they should be aware of. One is all of last year, you know, there was a lot of focus
on government interest payments, which last year crossed a trillion dollars. Now our interest
payments are roughly the size of our defense budget, if that gives you a sense. And it's
also worth pointing out that, and this is my pro-Bitcoin, anti-fiat piece here, but we are
in a situation right now where we are printing dollars today to pay the interest on dollars we
printed last year. That is the definition of a Ponzi scheme, right? And that's where we are.
The second thing that contributed to the problem was Janet Yellen, who I think was a terrible
Secretary of the Treasury, decided to make a political play with the duration of our
treasury securities. And that's just a fancy finance way of saying that what she did
was when she refinanced our debt that was maturing over the last year, she went with
shorter durations. So 10-year securities or five-year securities got refinanced for six
months or one year. And that leads to a couple of problems, right? One is if you refinance 10-year
paper with 10-year paper, then that money only needs to be refinanced once every decade. But if
you do it with one-year paper, then you have to refinance it 10 times in a decade. And what that
did was it led to larger and larger treasury auctions. And we had really large tails last
year. Again, just a fancy way of saying the demand was much lower than what market rates would have
suggested. And so the reason Yellen did this is by issuing fewer five and 10-year securities,
what she wanted to do was decrease the supply of that. That increases the price, which in turn
lowers the yield. And what she was trying to do, which you'd want to do if your party were running
for reelection, would be reduce the costs of corporate borrowing and mortgage borrowing.
Now, it didn't work because everybody understood that we were in Ponzi scheme territory, and it was hugely ineffective. But here's the problem that we have. And we were just working on this yesterday. One of our new interns, Cash and Crow, did a terrific graph yesterday showing that we've got $28 trillion of treasury securities outstanding.
$5 trillion of that has to be refinanced in the next six months, $7 trillion in the next 12 months.
So new Treasury Secretary Scott Bessonet has a gigantic problem. How do we refinance all of that?
And if he tries to do that all at once, we're going to have a problem because that interest
expense is going to overwhelm us. And there's a not so crazy path to us having $1.5, $1.6 trillion
of interest expense by year end. And that would be a gigantic problem for the budget, right? I mean,
that's, you know, we're now talking about increases in interest expense in line with,
you know, good optimistic projections of what Doge could cut. And so we'd have a budget problem,
and that leads to more inflation. And so what the administration is trying to do right now
is they're desperately trying to reduce bond yields, and they don't care. They will crash
the stock market to push money out of high risk equities and toward the perceived safe haven
of bonds. And I don't think U.S. Treasury securities are a safe haven because inflation
will eat away the purchasing power that you're going to be paid back in of the currency you're
going to be paid back in. But they need to get the yields down. And so what we're seeing is
they're trying to push people out of the equity markets and into the bond market. More demand for
bonds, means lower yields for bonds, means better financing costs for the U.S. government.
And the thing that I think is really interesting, it is in his first term, President Trump used the
stock market as a kind of a report card to say, look, I've done a great job managing the economy.
The stock market is up. To give you a sense of the level of urgency here, they're taking actions
that they know are going to make stocks go down, right? And for a guy who really likes to use the
stock market as a report card, President Trump is basically saying, you know, send it down right
now, right? Kill stocks, crash stocks right now. We'll deal with the rest later. But we need to
refinance this. So I think that's a big chunk of what we've seen, you know, through all of this
week. And it also is, I think, one of the reasons why the communication on tariffs has been so
chaotic, right? The fact that the tariff talks change on a daily basis, right? We're going to
tariff Canada and Mexico. We're going to delay for a month. We're going to tariff Canada and
Mexico. Maybe we'll give a break on some things, maybe not other things, right? There's all of
this uncertainty and the stock market hates uncertainty. The bond market loves it. So I
think that's part of what's going on, right? They're trying to push money from one set of
instruments to another because it's a desperate situation it really is and they've had some
success obviously the 10-year yield has come down i believe by 20 basis points for the last
six weeks or so wasn't it yeah it was it was 4.8 just uh like a month or two i think two months ago
and it's now down under 4.3 so that's a meaningful decrease yeah and to your point about trump's
first administration really using the stock market as a kpi it was i don't know if you picked up on
this during the state of the union address but i was pretty shocked and i didn't see too many
people commenting on it maybe he said something outside of the state of the union that made it so
it wasn't worth commenting on but it was the first time i've heard him sort of choreographing a
disturbance in the market he was talking about tariffs in the context of tariffs and he said
there may be a little disturbance in the markets because of this, but we'll get through it. It was
the first time I've ever seen him publicly admit to economic weakness on the horizon in America
while he's president. Yeah, I agree with that. And this is something he mentioned very early
in his first week or two when he started talking about tariffs. He did say, you know, you should
expect there's going to be some short-term pain here. And he's right. And I'm actually glad to
hear him speaking honestly and preparing people for what's going to come. The other thing is,
look, I think I've seen some really good, honest arguments, both for and against tariffs.
The thing that I don't like is a lot of people talking about this stuff are very myopic, right?
They only want to make their point, which I understand, but they should acknowledge the
complexity of the issue. So, you know, for example, all the people who are saying, you know,
look, this is effectively a tax increase. This is going to lead to more inflation.
They have valid points. But look at what's happened in the last week, right? We've seen
announcements of $500 billion of PP&E being built by Apple, more than $100 billion by Taiwan
Semiconductor. I forget who it was. One of the automakers just moved production from Mexico to
the US. You know, that's a lot of jobs. That's a lot of economic growth. That's a lot of fixing
something that has crushed our middle class and our blue collar workers for decades as
so much of this work has been outsourced. And these are also things that will increase domestic
supply, you know. And so that's one of the reasons why, you know, the first time around
with tariffs, we didn't necessarily see a huge amount of inflation. Now, there were other things
going on at the time and a lot of the tariffs weren't fully implemented and didn't, you know,
there was a lot going on. But the point of all this is I'd like to see people acknowledge the
complexity of it. And if you want to talk about how tariffs are, you know, another tax, how they'll
lead to more inflation, fine. Those are valid points. But then also acknowledge that we're
going to be looking at more jobs and an increase in domestic supply that will alleviate some of
that price pressure. So I just think it's more complicated than a lot of the pundits are making
it seemed, because they're more talking their book than trying to explain what's happening.
And I give President Trump credit for saying, I believe these tariffs will improve the economy,
and I want to reshore manufacturing. But he's flat out saying, we're going to take some short
term pain. And at least he's being honest about it. I love that too. And I said this before
he was inaugurated, looking at the rhetoric on the campaign trail, particularly around
tariffs his favorite word it's going to be your favorite word tariffs um that was i think i wrote
a newsletter about it in december like i hope that he is extra communicative with the market about
there is going to be some short-term pain i'm very happy to see him following through on that
and on the topic of tariffs not only people thinking myopically about potential inflationary
pressures which as you mentioned are certainly there but you have to take the whole picture
into frame here, and not only the reshoring of jobs, but I think the most startling thing to me
was learning about how much other countries are already tariffing our goods. And it's sort of
a reciprocal reaction to what countries in Europe and Canada and all over the world have done to
U.S. goods. It was something I was unaware of up until this administration.
him. Marty, I'm so glad you brought that up because I think it's a really important point.
A lot of people are mistakenly saying, well, he's just raising tariffs or saying these tariffs hurt
us. And people are understandably responding, okay, wait a minute, but these other countries
are tariffing us. And the response is, well, if they're doing something stupid, we don't have to
do anything stupid either. And it's kind of like when you were six, your mom said, if all your
friends jumped off a bridge, would you do that too? Except like you were pointing out, reality
is much more complicated and much more nuanced. So if we use a hypothetical example where one
country has 20% tariffs on our goods and we have no tariffs on theirs, and then we do, as you said,
implement reciprocal tariffs, and we say, okay, now we're going to put 20% tariffs on your goods.
That incentivizes them to say, well, what if we cut our tariffs? Oh, then we can cut ours. And
if they say, what if we cut further? Then we can cut ours further. And so you end up in a bad
situation when you let other people dictate the terms and have one-sided non-reciprocal
relationships. By forcing reciprocal relationships, people are saying, oh my God, now there are going
to be more tariffs. Not necessarily. By using reciprocal tariffs and indicating you raise
yours, we're going to raise. You lower, we'll lower with you. We're giving these other countries
an incentive to say, well, wait a minute. We don't like that you're going to have tariffs on us. If
we lower ours okay we'll lower too and so there is a path to everybody de-escalating and putting
the u.s in a relatively better position than we were in before these policies were pursued
and all the people throwing their hands in the air and complaining about this particularly about
the way trump is approaching these tariff negotiations it's it's almost as if nobody
understands he wrote the book art of the deal and they don't understand the way he approaches
negotiation generally and when he was a businessman in the private sector now as president of the
united states the fact that people haven't picked up on his whole shtick which is i'm just going to
anchor i'm going to come out of the gate and anchor it's something so extreme that it sounds
insane and everybody throws their hands up and inevitably like you're saying people get to the
table, they have a negotiation, and they meet at a spot that was likely exactly where Trump
wanted to meet in the first place. And the fact that you can't really rely on the media pundits
to be truthful about this tactic and try to present an accurate picture to the American
people. But I think broadly, the American populace needs to begin to really internalize that this is
a tactic that he literally wrote a book about. Yeah. I, I think your point is phenomenal,
right? The, the using the, the dire extreme rhetoric and threats to get to, you know,
to get people to panic into being where he wants them to be. The other thing is, uh, about a month
ago, I wrote a series of articles, um, on how to interpret Trump's tariff talks. And one of
the things that I wrote over and over and over again is he frequently doesn't want tariffs.
He wants to use the threat of tariffs to get cooperation on non-economic issues, right?
And so, you know, one of the things I wrote a month ago is he's talking about tariffs on Europe.
Now, reciprocal tariffs are fine. They should not have tariffs on their allies where we don't.
We should have a level playing field with them. But more than that, I think, you know,
he uses the threat of tariffs with Europe to push them to pay their NATO defense bill.
And they have been underspending on defense because we've had their backs for forever.
It's been a long, long term problem. And so, you know, we're in a situation like,
why are German bonds dropping this week? Right. The reason German bonds are dropping is because
the German government came out and they said, we're going to exclude increases in defense
spending from our budget process. They're basically saying we're going to spend more
on defense and not count it, you know, under our budget cap. And what that tells you is they've
been underspending on defense and overspending on social welfare programs. And we've effectively
been footing the bill for that. So for President Trump to use the threat of tariffs to get
Europe to live up to their agreements, you know, I think is really good gamesmanship.
and people are getting upset about it but why right if you know they're saying why is why is
he taking sides against our allies my question is why are our allies not living up to their
agreements with us yeah it's it's a big mask off moment for to your point the way our allies
have treated us over the course of decades to your point people are reacting to what's going
on now and not questioning how we got to this position in the first place it's it's viewed and
portrayed by the media as the united states getting really hyper aggressive and combative
with their allies and it's perceived as america trying to be the bully but it's like no actually
we've been somewhat getting bullied for for decades and we're just trying to really settle
the score in the schoolyard right now, get back to even and begin driving accountability as we look
at how high our national debt has gotten, how high our defense spending is, our interest expense
on the debt is, and saying, this is unsustainable for us. It's time for you all to get your act
together and stop depending on the American ATM. Yeah, I think that's important. And there are a
people making the argument that we should have closed up NATO 35 years ago, a little under that,
when the Berlin Wall came down. And that's not a bad argument. NATO was established to prevent
Soviet expansion into Western Europe. But once they gave that up, it's not clear to me what
what we're trying to accomplish right now no not at all the and i think it's been it's been a crazy
first six weeks in office the meeting with selensky uh and trump and vance obviously it's
very famous right now and the the posturing that was going on there and that's another
i think shocking moment for the american media and broader populace who sort of fall prey to the
the propaganda that we've been subjected to for many years literally being aghast at the prospect
of a president and a vice president standing up and saying you're not going to bully us in the
oval office like please come back when you're when you're down to negotiate like a legitimate
adult and then obviously with what's going on with russia and ukraine it's extremely
polarizing and triggering for people. But I think any objective observer who's seen
what's going on over there over the last three years has to recognize that there's no
good end to this unless you try to get both parties to the table to negotiate on something.
Well, and that's one of the things that concerns me. Because every time President Trump says,
look, I want to sit down with Vladimir Putin and talk this out, people get hysterical and they say,
oh, he's courting dictators. All right, well, here's the deal. There's a war going on.
How are you going to stop that war without talking to the other side?
It doesn't mean he's courting dictators or that he's saying the US and Russia are going to be
best friends and we're going to eject NATO. That's not what's happening. But if you want
to stop a war and i think this war needs to stop i don't know how extending it benefits anybody
um how do you do that without talking to the other side without sitting down and saying
where do we have areas of agreement where do we have areas of overlap how do we come to a point
where we can have people stop killing each other and us funding it like there's no part of this
It's good for anybody.
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i think europe's reaction to all this has been very unsettling for me personally i don't know
if you follow the the journalist michael tracy but he's over in europe right now he posted a
tweet this morning uh he literally can't read the tweets of rt and some other outlet from russia
because they're blocked in europe like europe is turning into this
uh free speech hating sort of communist economic union that is really again unsettling and
unnerving as an american looking at what is supposed to be our greatest ally in terms of
the coalition of countries over in europe and they're turning into a completely despotic
sort of dystopian hellscape and honestly a lot of people may get pissed from saying this like
i don't know if i want to back the leaders over there and their political posturing and the way
they're looking to approach this i'm almost at the point where it's like europe you seem very
confused and going down the wrong path like i don't want to support um the the goals and the
solutions that they're putting out there. And that's very, again, uh, polarizing in today's
world. Yeah. It's, I mean, it is interesting that people are hysterically screaming that
president Trump wants to sit down and talk to Putin and they're saying he's courting dictators,
but they're supporting as our allies, people who are
jelling their citizens for sharing memes on social media. Like, you know, listen, I get why
you don't like what these people are saying or writing or posting. But stopping them from doing
that and putting people in jail over social media posts, it's just, you know, that's the kind of
thing dictators do. That's not what you expect from a Western liberal democracy. And so, as you
just pointed out, they're pursuing policies that are not consistent with those of Western liberal
democracies. And it's not just the memes on social media. It's not just Europe. A couple of years
ago, we saw what Trudeau did with the Canadian truckers. These were people who were protesting
for bodily autonomy. And for the people listening to this, maybe you were pro-vax, maybe you were
anti-vax, maybe you took it, maybe you didn't. But these people didn't want to. And they didn't
want to be forced to. And they don't want to lose their jobs. And that, to me, seems like a sensible
choice that people should be allowed to make for themselves. It is a personal choice whether you
wanted to take that shot or not. And, you know, what was very concerning is they had a peaceful
protest and the government froze their bank accounts. And, you know, so when people have
said, you know, well, why do we need Bitcoin? Because the government can't freeze your Bitcoin
account, right? Because you own that, you own those assets. And so, you know, what we're really
seeing are examples of creeping tyranny through tons and tons of these Western liberal democracies.
And what I'm seeing on the other side of that is an increasing push toward capitalism in Asia
and toward individual freedom in South America, right? So we're seeing in places like Argentina
and El Salvador. In South America, these are people who are saying, we want more freedom,
we want more economic autonomy, and they're getting it. And their crime rate in some of
these places are dropping, the inflation rate is dropping. You see what's happening to the places
that are pursuing autocratic policies, which is what we had referred to as our first world
allies and Western liberal democracies and, you know, other parts of the world, which we had viewed
as, you know, maybe banana republics or, you know, formerly communist countries, they're embracing
freedom in a way that, you know, that Europe should be. Completely agree. And bringing this
back to American economic policy, I think it's been pretty clear to people, or at least I'm
running with the assumption that trump was handed a flaming bag of trash and to manufacture the
quote-unquote soft landing that's been talked about for many years maybe you have to recognize
number one that it won't be a soft land landing as trump has been sort of choreographing over the
last couple of months and on top of that you got to thread the needle domestically with
your economic policy and what you're doing with tariffs but you have all these external
variables at play like as we were mentioning before we hit record you have uk bond market
hitting levels we haven't seen since liz trust was in office for a couple of weeks you have
the japanese yield curve exploding as well how thinking from an american perspective how do we
navigate what we're trying to do here as all this is happening externally and on top of all that
we've seen an incredible amount of gold flood into the u.s borders as well yeah so in these
landmines are these what the ultimate goal of our policies is in a way yeah so by the way in
addition to having huge bitcoin positions i i own a lot of gold as well uh and you know we're
certainly seeing that. Here's the lens that I'm using to think about this. I think it's really
important. I've been talking for a couple of years about us being in a bifurcated economy.
So for a small part of the population, this economy is working great. For a large part of
the population, inflation is just eroding their standard of living. And so I think it's really
important to separate the real economy from the fake economy. And I can send you a chart on this.
We put this in last week's Five Things to Know. But government increase in debt last quarter
exceeded the increase in GDP. And that was the case for the quarter before that and the quarter
before that. And so what that tells you is that our GDP growth is not real. It is based on increases
in government spending. It's all debt fueled. It's a Potemkin economy. We've created the illusion
of a good economy simply by pouring fiat dollars at the issue and dealing with the inflation
on the other end of it. And so there's an old Keynesian or MMT, which stands for modern
monetary theory saw that, you know, you can create economic stimulus by, you know, we'll
grab a group of people, we'll pay them a trillion dollars to dig holes, we'll pay these people a
trillion dollars to fill in holes. We've created nothing of value, but we have two trillion dollars
of stimulus for the economy. Isn't that great? And jobs, right? And that's how Washington DC
thinks about things. That's how Keynesians think about things. You know, I think, tell me if it
It was Paul Krugman who was talking about, well, we could just pay people to spit at
the moon, right?
Like stimulus is stimulus.
And my point on all of this is, no, we have a Potemkin economy.
And if the increase in government debt is greater than the increase in your GDP, what
that means is that your productive private sector is shrinking while government waste,
theft, money laundering, and other malfeasance is increasing.
And, you know, what we're finding out is that the levels of fraud and theft are off the
charts high, beyond what even, you know, small government advocates like myself even thought.
Like, it's worse than even I thought, and I've been pessimistic on this for decades.
And so here's what's going to happen, Marty.
Let's say Doge has some success, right?
They're not going to get to $2 trillion a year.
That's not going to happen.
But could they get to half a trillion, a trillion dollars over the next years?
I don't know.
Maybe, you know.
And so on one hand, what people are saying is, wait a minute, that's going to have two
effects.
We're going to crash GDP, which is true.
The accounting for GDP will decrease.
But I will remind everybody, nobody's losing goods and services as a result of that, right?
Government theft or paying people to dig ditches and paying other people to fill in
ditches, wasteful spending, money laundering does not produce economic activity. It's simply
inflation causing stimulus that gives us the illusion of GDP growth. This is like the economic
version of spinal taps, ours go to 11, right? What is it that matters? Your actual, like the
sound that you're getting or how you label that sound, right? The economy that you have or how
you label it. And so if Doge manages to cut government spending by a meaningful amount,
realize that even though we're cutting wasteful programs, even though we're cutting things that
produce no economic benefit for Americans, the way we account for that in GDP will crash.
The other thing that will happen is we will see a gigantic increase in unemployment claims
and an increase in the unemployment rate and we're starting to see that right in dc have you seen
marty have you seen those uh charts with a number of homes for sale and then combine that with a
number of people who are googling uh the increase in defense yeah and extradition right like if
you're selling your home and googling criminal defense extradition and uh you know offshore
offshore money funds or whatever maybe this is stuff we should be cutting right like these are
is that is that economic analysis no but you know maybe we should be thinking about if this is the
reaction maybe we're poking in the right place so you know here's the question marty would you
take action if it meant we cut government theft wasteful spending not actual money going to
veterans or Medicare or Medicaid, not the actual real government services. If we cut waste,
but doing so led to a lower GDP print and a higher unemployment print, even though those jobs didn't
have economic value for American citizens, would you do that? I would. President Trump has made it
clear he would, but people should be aware that the numbers coming out, the way we're like, it's
again, it's our, ours go to 11 moment. The way we keep score on these things is going to look
really bad when all of this gets implemented. Yes, I agree with you. I would, I would take
it as well. And I would argue this is the most incredible thing that could happen to,
I think individuals like ourselves who have a particular view on the world, particularly post
2008 is that the qe and the stimulus that we've seen over the last 17 years now at this point
many people have been beating the drum like we need to stop doing this it's creating these asset
bubbles enabling a wealth transfer like there has to come a point where we take the hard medicine
and reset the economy which will come with some economic turmoil and maybe stock markets decline
correct maybe something happens in the bond market and for the longest time that the there's been
an inability to do that because it's somewhat socially or psychologically untenable for some
reason or another but now with doge and the incredible amount of overt fraud that is being
on earth i think you have a catalyst and an environment where people are throwing their
hands up like screw it destroy the system i don't care if gdp is down three percent for
three quarters in a row like actually i feel like the it's never something i've been hoping would
happen over the last 15 years we finally have again a catalyst to to effectuate that type of
necessary resetting of the system and taking our hard medicine yeah and honestly like you know is
our economy we might have a bad gdp print but can we survive cutting off uh social security
payments for people who are more than 150 years old i would think so i mean you know maybe we can
manage that you know it's this is theft and there were systems in place to ensure that nobody
questioned it you know that that nobody got marked as dead um this stuff we can fix that without
actual damage to the economy. And going to this issue, I think it's really important
explaining to people the difference between this is reality and this is how we keep score.
On a personal note, I had something happen a number of years back where I was refinancing
the mortgage on my house. And the bank came to me and they said, we can't refinance you.
I said, why? They said, your income was negative. I said, no, it wasn't.
Well, it turns out what had happened was I was running a hedge fund at the time, and I had invested a huge amount of my own capital in the hedge fund. So when I got my K1, it shows investing inflows into a private partnership as negative cash flow for me. And I said, guys, that's not negative income. That was me investing. And they said, well, but it shows up as negative income.
I said, so what do I need to do? They said, well, if you were to withdraw the money and recognize that value, then we would qualify you. I said, let me get this straight. I took a huge amount of money and instead of spending it, I invested in it. I invested it. And that makes you think that I'm a credit risk.
but if i were to withdraw that money and spend it on uh you know private air travel and candy
you would then view me as a more attractive uh credit and you would give me a mortgage then they
say yeah it's always i don't i don't make the rules i know it sounds insane but yeah this is
just the way it works no no they didn't they didn't even do the yeah i know it sounds insane
like they're like no these are the rules this is how it works and and i had to point out to them
So you're going to punish me for not spending and investing, and you would reward me for
not investing and spending.
And again, I can't emphasize this enough.
This is why Bitcoin is important.
These kinds of incentives in traditional finance.
And by the way, this is where the world is going with CBDCs, right?
Central Bank Digital Currencies.
they're trying to push people to spend money they're trying to push people to not invest
they're trying to push everybody into a debt-fueled consumption servitude right and it's it's horrible
and the incentives to invest are bad and they're you know they would get worse if they tell you
your money is going to expire right use it or lose it and this is this is horrible stuff and
the thing that's really great about Bitcoin is it encourages people to take a longer view,
a longer time horizon. And I think that's really important for society and for actual economic
growth. There are huge advantages to hard money over programmed money.
for future generations your financial advisor accountant or attorney might not be up to speed
on bitcoin so invite them join too register now at unchained.com slash tftc that's unchained.com
slash tftc march 17th be there and before we dive into your views on bitcoin moving forward as it
reacts to everything going on in the world staying on this necessity for the broader public to
recognize that GDP going down is actually a good thing because you're eliminating this waste and
fraud that exists within the government in the United States. Yes, unemployment may go up, GDP
may go down. What are sort of metrics, indicators, sectors that people should be paying attention to
that you believe would signal that things are getting back on the right path, maybe as GDP
is going down, unemployment's going up? What are the KPIs that maybe the government or the media
will not service that you think people should be looking at to gauge whether or not taking the hard
medicine is actually successful in some way? Yeah, I think if you take government spending
out of GDP, it's not perfect, but it does give you a decent proxy for what the private market
economy is doing. And that's the productive part of the economy. That's where we produce goods and
services. So, you know, I think that's an interesting way to do it. You know, you can
look at non-government payroll. Like it's one thing that's really important. Over the last four
years, we've seen all of these really positive employment prints, except, you know, Marty,
there's been zero growth in full-time employment since 2019, right? And so those employment
metrics, you know, they double count part-time jobs. So if somebody had a full-time job and they
lose that full-time job, and then they get two or three part-time jobs, that counts as two or three,
you know, employment numbers. And so, you know, when you look at that, you have to figure,
wait a minute, you know, are people employed more? Do we have more people employed or the same
people just working more to make ends meet? Right. And so I think, you know, if you look at
full-time employment, private market employment, like since 2019, the only growth we've had
has been in government and sectors of employment that are largely funded by government like
healthcare, right? It's all government spending that's doing this. And so I think if you look at
GDP, less government spending, if you look at employment, less government employment,
again, not perfect numbers, but they'll give you directional proxies for the performance of the
private market economy. And the thing that I would do if I were the Trump administration is I would
be out in front of this explaining it to people. And it's really difficult to explain, but what I
would do is say, hey, you know, here's the United States, here's our fiscal situation. And then I
would literally have a slide with a guy dressed like the Hamburglar, right? Holding the bag with
money and the mask, right? And the striped shirt and the hat and say, if we give this guy a trillion
dollars and he steals it, under the current system, you will, you American people, you will
pay for that trillion dollars through inflation, and we, the government, will record a trillion
dollars of GDP increase. Now, if we get rid of our Hamburglar thieving guy, if we just get rid of him
and get rid of that trillion dollars of theft, you won't have to pay for that. It will reduce
future inflation. But hey, everyone, I just want you to know, you're going to see in that
hypothetical example, a trillion dollar decrease in GDP. Now, I'm going to ask you, someone tell
me, if we put a stop to people stealing from us, is our economy in worse shape? And I was like,
no, no, of course not. Okay, great. So when you see the decrease in GDP, nobody panic. Now,
will Wall Street go along with that? Probably not. But I don't think that's the constituency
he needs to talk to here. I think he needs to talk to the American people and say,
some of the pain you're going to experience is real and temporary, hopefully. And some of what
you're going to see are hysterical newspaper headlines telling you the economy is horrible.
Here's how to interpret it. We're going to give you our way of looking at it. And then just compare
our analysis with the analysis that you see in the mainstream media, and then decide for yourself
who has it right. Yeah. Again, being extra communicative is going to be crucial to
threading this needle. And you brought up Wall Street. Wall Street will be very interesting
to follow throughout all this because, of course, they've been major benefactors of
this theft, this expansion of the debt, this expansion of the monetary base. And how does
Wall Street adjust to this tectonic shift in policy if the Trump administration stays true to
it? You know, Marty, one of the things we're going to be talking about at Deep Knowledge
investing. We're going to be starting a new weekly show called DKI Foundations. And we're
going to be talking to people about investing basics and also for young people, helping them
understand career paths and finance things to do. And one of the episodes where we haven't recorded
it yet, but we're really excited to record is I want to explain to young people how the policies
that they've typically supported actually don't help them, but end up helping wealthy
established people.
And I want them to see how, like in my case, I made inflation work for me.
I refinanced my mortgage in November of 2021.
That timing was not a mistake, right?
And I leveraged up, I got the biggest mortgage I could possibly get, and I locked it in for
30 years, 10 years interest only.
So every month I pay the bank the same amount, but here's my question for you, Marty.
what happens to the purchasing power of that same check i write every month
goes down increasing it goes down right what do you think like the the money that i pay them
that fixed amount that i'm going to pay them 25 years from now 24 years from now what's it worth
and what are they going to buy with that a candy bar a loaf of bread pack of gum right they're not
going to be able to buy one bitcoin for it and so you know i was able to take that money leverage
into property, which has done really well, own stocks, own Bitcoin, own gold. Hey, I have a
credit score that starts with an eight. So I took on debt that's denominated in debased fiat,
constantly in fiat dollars that are declining in purchasing power every month. And I bought
hard assets. That works for me. But now look at what happens to people who don't have those kinds
of resources, right? People got their stimmies and they were really excited. Who doesn't like
getting a $1,600 check from the government? But then what we saw were people, their monthly
expenses went up by a hundred dollars or $200. So would you take $1,600 today in exchange for like
$2,000 of annual increase in your costs? Like, of course you wouldn't do it. And so people got
excited, like free money. The government loves us. No, you're paying for your stimmies. You're
just paying for them at higher prices at the fuel pump, or when you have to buy a car or, you know,
get, uh, buy a house or groceries, you know, these are your electric bill. Like this is where
these things are, are playing out. Um, and a lot of people don't understand that. And so we're
going to film a whole episode explaining to people how these inflationary policies, how these free
money giveaways, end up hurting the people they are supposedly designed to help, and end up being
great for the millionaires and billionaires that we're all told are horrible people and shouldn't
benefit from anything. All of these policies, I saw something the other day, someone said,
we can reliably count on Washington, D.C., whatever they name a bill or a program,
the program will do the opposite of what it says it's going to do.
yeah the inflation reduction act that's that may be the best i was thinking about yeah it's like
between that or the patriot act it's uh yeah right yeah i mean so that we're gonna we're
gonna print money hand out free money and that's going to reduce inflation no it will do the
opposite yeah it's uh that that's the other thing like is there enough momentum right now to get us
to the other side where people are able to look back with clear eyes open mind open heart and say
that was wrong we need to we're going to do this phase shift this tectonic shift in policy and
understanding how the economy works and stick with it or is this an ephemeral one admin
adjustment that gets readjusted if four years from now unfortunately and i hope i'm wrong
But I think we're just buying ourselves time. I mean, even going back 250 years ago, the founders of the United States understood the danger of populism. They intentionally set up a system to try to prevent for as long as possible the ability of people to vote for more benefits from others.
um and you know somebody might say oh you know you're so mean-spirited you hate the poor no i
don't the policies that we have that supposedly help the poor don't they hurt the poor they help
the wealthy right these it's but people you know they're addicted to free stuff and the idea that
you can get something for free and you know these things they're very hard to control um especially
once these ideas have taken part, taken hold in a population, it's what we've seen in Argentina
for decades, right? We would have these like Peronist excesses. And then, you know, every
15 years or so, the citizens of Argentina would say, you know what, we need to get serious. We
have to reduce inflation. We have to get government spending under control. And they would vote in
a government to change things. And as the government would start to change things and reduce
the free giveaways, people say, no, no, no, we want you to fix the economy, but don't reduce
the giveaways that come to me. Okay, well, that's the problem with the economy, right? And everybody
wanted the problem fixed, but nobody wanted to give up their free STEMIs or their no work jobs
or their unproductive jobs. So, you know, these things are, they're issues and it's really hard
to get control of it once these ideas are in a population. And, you know, it was a hundred years
ago, Argentina was the wealthiest nation on the planet. And then a hundred years of nonsense. And,
you know, again, every 15 years they say, okay, let's clean it up, but don't take any of my stuff.
You know, we saw this, by the way, in Europe last week, I saw a poll that the vast majority
of Europeans thought that more should be done to help Ukraine, but the majority in every country
thought that money and those resources should come from other countries, not theirs. Okay,
great. But you know, it's the whole, somebody should do something, by somebody I mean you,
and leave everything the same for me. That doesn't work.
no accountability is important again that poll explains a lot of the reaction that
the trump administration got to that zielinski meeting last week
and and i mean on this point how do you see bitcoin playing moving forward how do you see
reacting to all this obviously we've got equities dumping right now trump's um choreographing some
short-term turbulence who knows how short-term that is maybe it is very short-term and the fed
is forced to step in print money and make it rip we've seen its intraday probably not a lot of
signal in it but there was some inverse movement between the price of bitcoin equities markets over
the last day or two does bitcoin emerge as a perceived safe haven asset during all this is
it already perceived that way in your mind um yeah that's at large enough scale yeah it's a
really interesting question um if i were a bitcoin bear and i'm not but let's you know let's flesh
out the argument let's flesh out the argument against right let's be honest about it if the
trump administration has any success doing what they're trying to do in terms of getting the
budget deficit down, reducing or eliminating wasteful spending. All of those things make
the dollar better. And that's one of the reasons why we're seeing a decrease in bond yields right
now. That's why the 10 years dropped 50 basis points over the last month or two. And so those
are things that would strengthen the real value of the dollar, the purchasing power of the dollar.
And again, I delineate between people who talk about the dollar where they look at Dixie,
right?
DXY, the dollar index, that's versus other currencies.
So when people talk about a strong dollar, when traders talk about a strong dollar, they're
typically talking about versus other currencies.
If you're a foreign exchange trader, yeah, the dollar is strong.
When I talk about a strong dollar, I'm thinking about purchasing power.
And so, you know, things that reduce wasteful government spending are generally good for
the purchasing power of the dollar. And that is not necessarily bullish for the dollar price of
Bitcoin. With that said, acknowledging the other side of it, I've got a two-part thesis on Bitcoin.
One is increased institutional adoption. And that is exactly what we've seen. People have forgotten
It was less than a year ago that the SEC approved the largest, the Bitcoin ETFs, the exchange
traded funds, which had the largest adoption, the fastest adoption in history.
Those things just added billions and billions of dollars of capital within a really short
time.
That was less than a year ago.
And people are still just starting to figure out, pension funds are starting to figure
out how big a part of our portfolio should this be. We should have, you know, like, and whether,
honestly, Marty, whether it's 50 basis points, 1%, 2%, does it matter? That's trillions of dollars
of pension funds out there. Family offices are just starting to figure this out. You know,
one of the things we looked at, this is a few years back, but at the time there were 44 million
US dollar millionaires in the world. Now that number would be higher today.
21 million Bitcoin with a bunch of them lost irretrievably. Literally, if every millionaire
in the world wanted to own one Bitcoin, they can't do it. There aren't enough. This is a
level of scarcity we've never seen before. And we're at a point where millionaires won't be
able to be whole coiners. So I think that's really important. We're starting to see state
governments. Marty, how many state governments are voting on Bitcoin? And some, you know,
the skeptics might say, yeah, but they haven't approved it yet. Okay. But you have dozens of
states looking at this and looking at adding it to their pension funds. Like at some point,
one of them is going to do it. The other thing is, I think the things that the Trump administration
is doing are positive for the dollar, but I don't think Doge is going to cut $2 trillion.
dollars. I don't think our budget deficit is going to zero. I think we're going to see
continued increases in debt, maybe at a slower rate than we would have seen had Kamala Harris
won the election, but it's still going to increase. And the thing that nobody wants to think about
are our off-balance sheet liabilities, right? Those are things like Medicare, Medicaid,
Social Security, pensions, Obamacare, all of that stuff, those are obligations that we've incurred
but haven't saved for. For people who find that confusing, just imagine this for a minute.
Imagine that your family, you have a new baby today. Congratulations. Assuming that you want
the best for your kid, you may be thinking, wow, all right, in 18 years, I want to be able to
send this kid to school, send this kid to college. You know, what are we looking at? You know, today
that could easily be a quarter of a million dollars. 18 years from now,
it's going to be a whole lot more, right? And so do you start saving now or do you wait 18 years
and say, oh crap, what do we do? Let's start borrowing. Well, guess what? The off-balance
sheet liabilities of the US government are over $200 trillion. We can't borrow that. We can't
create that. You know, when people talk about make the millionaires and billionaires pay their
fair share, it's great rhetoric, but there's no level of taxation that gets you to $200 trillion.
Add to that, you know, what is it? What's the debt now? $37, $38 trillion?
Around that.
The point, add all this up, we're very close to a quarter of a quadrillion dollars
in debt i think we may be there i think yeah i think off balance sheet's like 219
trillion right last i checked so we're there so a quarter of a quadrillion dollars there is no
level of taxation that like our economy can't produce that like what's our economy right now
like 30 trillion a year i mean we you know we'd have to have nobody consume anything for you know
what is that nine years eight nine years to get that like and that's so nobody gets to consume
anything no food no like you got to be kidding me this is not possible and so you know i think we
are unfortunately in full-blown ponzi i think the things that that president trump and elon musk are
doing um will have positive effects if they succeed and i hope they do in cutting wasteful
spending. But I just think long term, there's a reason every fiat currency in history has gone to
zero. You know, for the recent Bitcoin white paper that we put out, the re-release, you know,
we had taken a look. There's 775 fiat currencies in history. They've all gone to zero. And someone
might say, well, wait a minute, you know, what about the British pound that's been around for
350 years. Yeah. And it's lost more than 99% of its value in that time. At what point do we call
it a failure? The US dollar, it's been around for almost 250 years and it's lost 96, 97% of its
value since 1800. And most of that since the establishment of the Federal Reserve just over
100 years ago. If we were to invest in equities and lose 19 out of $20 or 24 out of $25 we'd
invested, we'd call it a failure. So as long as there's just more of this going on, there's a
reason Bitcoin's my largest position. Yeah. It is overall. And it's funny, in the moment,
I've caught myself doing this, you're very excited about Doge and the intentions and
the actions are admirable and we should be eliminating waste and overt theft as much
as possible despite the overarching debt situation that exists but you have to like you said a
quarter of a quadrillion dollars in on balance sheet and off balance sheet debt that the u.s
owes to future americans it is yeah it's not going to happen you know that uh something
recognizing this inevitable uh outcome which is a complete debasement of the dollar
where i sit as a bitcoiner not only personally investing in it but running a venture fund trying
to fund companies that can help fix this problem as we transition to a new monetary standard i
think there's a high likelihood it could be bitcoin at some point in the next couple of decades
it's how do you how do you bridge the gap and lessen the blow of this inevitable blow up and
And that's one thing I'm interested to get your thoughts on is this idea of beginning the problem that exists not only at the government level, but even in the private sector is that you have a bunch of debt, particularly shitty debt with bad collateral.
And so beginning to inject Bitcoin into the credit system, start with the private credit system, obviously, US government's talking about a Bitcoin strategic reserve, so you get it into the public sector there.
but like literally creating products that we have a company in the portfolio called battery and they
just did their first underwriting of a big commercial real estate property in philadelphia
where they provided them dollars via loan to refinance their 10-year commercial real estate
loan took some of the proceeds to pay off that mortgage some to do some renovations on the
building and then some put in bitcoin that's held in the loan structure and the borrower and the
lender based off of how long the borrower stays in the loan share on the upside appreciation of
bitcoin so i think point of this long-winded rant by me is really to put it out there for
bitcoiners and anybody who's looking at this problem and feeling extremely overwhelmed
it is a massive problem it is an objective ponzi scheme that should be recognized by everybody but
should begin to think creatively of how you recapitalize the system with assets like Bitcoin,
particularly refinancing bad debt and injecting Bitcoin as collateral.
Yeah, they're going to need to do something. And they really have two options.
One is the stealth default, where we just have, once the baby boomers retire,
you know they're going to be a huge drain on the social social security system and they you know
they can say well we worked for years we paid into the system okay great but the money isn't there
so you know it's it's not a matter of deserve or need it's a matter of you know like like
the example i always use marty um you know let's say you and i place a bet on a basketball game
today, right? And we bet a billion dollars and you win the bet, right? You're right. I'm wrong.
You win. Here's my question. Are you a billionaire? No, because I can't pay it. And you could go to
court and you could say, we had a contract. I won. And the court could say, we agree with you,
Marty. Okay, Gary, pay him. I don't have it. Like there's no universe where you're a billionaire
because your claim is on an entity that can't deliver on the promises that were made.
And so that's where we are right now.
And so we've got two options.
One is the stealth default, where we just print so many dollars that people are paid
what they're owed, but they're paid in dollars that are worthless, right?
We basically inflate our way not only of the national debt, but out of our off-balance
sheet liabilities. And, you know, imagine, you know, getting a social security payment and,
you know, saying, okay, well, great, you can buy a pack of gum now. You know, that would be the
stealth default. The overt default, which would be politically very hard, somebody would have to
agree to be, you know, all of Congress would have to agree they're one term and it'd be a one term
president. But basically what we need to do is restructure our social safety net.
there's just no universe where the math works right now. And if you think about it,
the original purpose of social security is people would retire at like 62 and they would typically
live for one or two years. So they paid into the system for about 40 or 50 years, not about 40
years, sorry. They paid into the system for about 40 years and then they lived off of it for one or
two. And that math worked, especially when you had a growing workforce. But now here's where we
are. People are largely unproductive for the first quarter century of their lives. Well, okay. You
know, we can't expect a five-year-old to be productive or a 10-year-old. And, you know,
do we want all the 18-year-olds out in the world? You know, some of them probably should go to
school if we want doctors and engineers, right? And then, you know, they graduate from school
and they get a good job, but it takes a little while to become productive. Like, okay, I see
that. It's not crazy to expect somebody to get through a quarter century before being
effective or productive. All right. That makes sense. But the problem we have is on the other
end, people now want to retire at, you know, say 62, but they're living to 85 or 87 or 90. And
now there's another quarter century on the other side of that. And so, you know, it's really easy
for people to say, well, you know, tax the rich, okay, great. But there is no math where a society,
where it works for a society to pay people or where you have people who are unproductive for
half a century of their lives. That math doesn't work. And so we need to rethink
our social safety net. And again, people will say that I'm mean, I'm cruel. No, that's not it.
The system we have is unstable. It is unsustainable. If we want these programs to
exist, we cannot count on the system to support people for half a century of being unproductive.
We just can't do that. That math doesn't work. And so if you want these programs,
if you care about these people, if you want these programs to be solvent and sustainable,
we need to rethink it. And a program that was originally designed to support people for a year
to is now being used for two to three plus decades. And we need to figure out something
to do with that. But that would be an overt default. Now, not a bond market default. I'm
not saying that we're going to default on treasuries and tell everybody, no, you're not
getting your money. I'm not talking about like an Argentina or Greece style default. I'm talking
about going to the our own citizens where we have obligations to them and saying listen we cannot
meet these obligations we need to restructure just like you know at marty have you dealt with
bankruptcy you like you go to your creditors and you say you can try to enforce this but i don't
have the money we need to restructure this is why i love speaking with you gary because i think the
way you articulate things is very easy to understand just that whole explanation of social
security 50 years of unproductive living um 20 half of that being financed via these social
spending programs when you lay it out like that i hope it would be obvious to anybody with more
than two brain cells that it sort of adds up the math simply doesn't work i agree i think i'm not
i have empathy and for for a lot of people in these situations but at some point you have to
recognize this this is completely unsustainable and it's going to collapse unless you have a
restructuring and a lot of people don't want to have that conversation but it's have it or have
it forced on you by being surprised one day by waking up and just not getting your check yeah i
i think that's marty that's the key point right we can either have this conversation now or you
can be surprised tomorrow. And at some level, I think Americans intuitively understand. And you're
like, you're very kind to say, you know, that I gave a really clear explanation and thank you for
that. It is something that we strive for. Like, how do we take complicated ideas and present them
so they're understandable by people who don't have a finance background, who aren't reading
30-page government economic reports, right? And that's really important. And thank you for that.
I would also just add that on some level, Americans understand that. I'm sure you've
seen the polls before. Young people are more convinced that there are UFOs and aliens flying
around the planet right now than they are that social security will exist. Right now, there are
more people who believe in astrology than who believe in social security. On some level,
people do understand that this is not a sustainable issue, that changes need to be
made. Because if you're at the point where, you know, I'm a Capricorn or I think there are UFOs
is more meaningful in your life than, you know, your retirement plan, then people are understanding
it on some visceral level. Yeah. And not only coming to
coming to an understanding that this is unsustainable but to like have the conversation
as quickly as possible because i think it's imperative particularly for young people to
keep as much money as possible so that they can then go out and be productive in the economy
hopefully create businesses create value to help kickstart a recovery from this mass hysteria that
we've been living under for the better part of a century with the government programs like i think
it's just as important to have the conversation with the younger people about getting the money
back in their pockets so they can go be productive as it is having the conversation with those in
retirement about the reality of the situation. You know, Marty, in so many cases, especially
when they're young people, imagine going to them and saying, hey, everyone, just so you know,
these social safety net programs that we've told you about, they're all bankrupt. You can't count
on them. But before you panic, before you get upset, here's what to do. Like you're early in
your careers, you have decades to save and invest. And so every month take a hundred dollars and put
it in, you know, an equity index, a mutual fund, Bitcoin. And, you know, they might say, well,
I'm just starting out. Rent is expensive. Okay. Do $50 a month. You know, well, I, you know,
dinner out with friends. Okay. Do $25 a month. Just do something, get in the habit of putting
aside a certain amount of money every month. And, you know, I saw something great on, on X the other
day, it was something like, uh, you know, poor people spend and then invest what's left wealthy
people invest and then spend what's left, you know, and it's, it's easy. Listen, it's easier
for wealthy people to say, okay, well, I'm going to put money aside, right? For them, it's not $25
or $50. But the point of the post was, it's a way of thinking about things, right? Is your first
priority to spend and then see if you have something left? Or is your first priority to put
something aside and then live off of what's left? And, you know, like if they can't do $1,000 a
month or a hundred dollars a month. So do $25 a month, $25 a month by, by a few sets, right?
Just a little bit at a time and you build it. And you know, at some point they will get that
first raise that first promotion. Well, so take 50% of your raise and spend it and enjoy it and
take 50% of your raise and invest that and do that every month. And just dollar cost average
your way into building wealth over a long period of time get rich slowly it'll work and for any
young listeners out there i know our demo trend's a little bit older even older than me but there
are some gen zers out there that's how i started 25 a month and not only and you mentioned it
earlier gary like bitcoin really changes your time preference and gets you to think long term
so you start out doing 25 a paycheck whatever it may be you get a raise you do a little bit more
you sit in bitcoin long enough you see its price appreciation its increase in purchasing power
and then you have some sort of mind mindset shift in your mind where you're like okay i'm gonna
figure out how to get more of this and spend less and you find yourself spending less and prioritizing
saving for the future so just not even the point of starting with 25 a paycheck is not
even to build the savings. I think it's equally as important to do that so that you realize
what it feels like, particularly when you're doing it with Bitcoin, to recognize an incredible
growth in the purchasing power of what you're investing in. And then that does something
psychologically that incentivizes you to save more. You know, Marty, I'm so glad you framed
it that way. I've got a personal story to share with you. I'm sure you've seen it. The meme that
has been all over X, where, you know, like it's a picture of a bit or a drawing of a Bitcoin maxi
at home. It's basically like a guy sitting either on the floor or one chair, right? And like,
there might be a TV, you know, it's like everything's gone into Bitcoin, right? And the
point is, I'm a Bitcoin maxi and who really needs all these material things, right? And so, you know,
I live in Westport, Connecticut. The homes here are beautiful. It's nice where I live.
But a couple of years ago, I went surfing in rural Nicaragua. I was in Maderas. It's the
middle of nowhere, although the beach is beautiful and the waves are great. I was staying at this
place that used to be a really nice resort. I'd seen the pictures and it looked terrific.
And I was staying there for three weeks. And I walked in and my room was very, very Spartan. We're talking about cement floor, brick walls, like a light bulb hanging from the ceiling. There is a wooden desk and a very severe 90 degree wooden chair there.
And my first thought was, you know, I was disappointed for about 10 seconds and I thought
this looks like the kind of room they would give a monk in the 1500s, right?
Like this is where I'm going to be for weeks.
And I was disappointed for about 10 seconds.
Then I thought to myself, wait a minute, this is fantastic.
I'm going to be like a monk from the 1500s, right?
And right then I said, okay, so here's what I'm going to do. For the next three weeks, I'm going to go to bed early, wake up early. I'm going to read, write, work, exercise, and sleep. I'm going to journal, meditate, right?
I made my life very small and I lived happily there for a few weeks and I would wake up at
4.30 in the morning. I would work till the market closed at two. I would go surfing till four. I
would shower. I'd walk a mile to go get dinner, you know, on these dirt roads. I'd work through
dinner and I would come back and I would be in bed, you know, I'd meditate. I would journal.
i'd write um maybe do a little more work i'd be in bed by eight o'clock asleep by 8 30 do it all
again and it was a just a very small spartan life but i was happy and it's just a reminder
we don't need that much you really don't care i think that's a perfect place to end this i don't
think i can top that thank you so much for coming on thanks for having me peace and love freaks
Thank you.
