TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #757: The Treasury Is Failing You with Vince Lanci

Episode Date: June 13, 2026

Marty sits down with Vince Lanci to discuss his new book As Good as Gold, why the global financial system actually runs on collateral rather than currency, and how a quiet, controlled transition is underway from U.S. Treasuries to gold, Bitcoin, and a multipolar collateral framework. Vince on X: https://x.com/Sorenthek As Good As Gold: https://vblgoldfix.substack.com/p/as-good-as-gold-the-return-of-real STACK SATS hat: https://tftcmerch.io/ Our newsletter: https://www.tftc.io/bitcoin-brief/ TFTC Elite (Ad-free & Discord): https://www.tftc.io/#/portal/signup/ Discord: https://discord.gg/yHGkvYxdqT Opportunity Cost Extension: https://www.opportunitycost.app/ Shoutout to our sponsors: Bitkey https://bitkey.world/ Aven https://www.aven.com/bitcoin CrowdHealth https://www.joincrowdhealth.com/tftc Unchained https://unchained.com/tftc/ Salt of the Earth: https://drinksote.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/ Newsletter tftc.io/bitcoin-brief/ 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/

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. Vince, take two.

Here we are three days after the first attempt at recording this, but you had some power issues. Yes. Thank you, Marty. Take two. Take two indeed. Yeah. So we had a couple blackouts in the area. One was from the storm and one was from before the storm. hey early i was texting you early june blackouts not a good not a good uh not a good sign before summer even kicks off that's right i think they're going to put a data center in the starbucks next door to me legitimately or is that uh no that's bullshit but that would be funny why not starbucks become a data center everybody's become a data center that's the uh blockchain to your name

and see your stock price rise yeah but we're not here to talk about all that we're here to talk about uh your new book which is called as good as gold the return to real money and you were really beginning to get going um during the first uh first take of this episode on friday when we just started with the concept of collateral versus currency you believe the the system runs yeah collateral not currency and how you have these different uh properties of money and you're explaining how gold was the store of value medium exchange and unit of account for a long time but they began to slowly but surely and methodically detach each um each property from gold specifically specifically medium exchange and unit that's right the collateral

approach yeah um why the collateral approach behind the book most books talk about um money they talk about currencies. They talk about central banks or interest rates. What I wanted to do was focus on the thing underneath all those collateral. The thing that's underneath all those is trust. But absent the trust, you've got to go with collateral. So the insight that drove the book is that every monetary system in history ultimately depends on what society trusts enough to pledge against debt. And this is definitely in the Bitcoin camp. For centuries, that asset was gold, right? So in the modern era, it became U.S. Treasury securities. And the book explains how that transition occurred and why it mattered. And then the transition occurred starting with

Bretton Woods, which is what we were talking about. Yeah, you see, the question, I think you asked me a question. You said, what gave me the idea to write it? I think that's what you asked me. And the answer is about four years ago, I was writing some of the questions from the lines of questions for the Frank Giostra, Michael Saylor debate on Bitcoin. I was involved in writing some of the lines of questions for that. And during that, I gave myself a very deep education on the three definitions of money, which any Bitcoin person knows what they are, you know, meaning of exchange, store of value, and unit of account. And during that, I did a little history search. And it was current events with the Bitcoin debate going on back then. But I did a little

history search. And the history search said, well, before Bretton Woods, gold was all three. Money was all three, store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account. And then when Bretton Woods started, they went off the gold standard, even though that we all allegedly still had our gold, and the dollar became the medium of exchange. So the gold is still the store of value, right? They peeled off medium of exchange, and they peeled off unit of account. And then in 71, when Nixon blew up Bretton Woods, we went off for gold altogether. So if you look at the three definitions of money, and you hear the debate about the dollar is going to be dethroned, I don't think it is going to be dethroned. And I don't give a shit.

You know, I mean, I don't care about, you know, whatever theory you have about the milkshake boys or whatever other dairy confection that we're using to describe the dollar. But but to be fair to that, to that concept, they're not going to stop using dollars. They're going to start using stable coin dollars or digital dollars, you know, and and that's where things like gold and and actually down the road. I think maybe Bitcoin will have a chance to be the collateral that's used for these transactions. Anyway, so collateral, the central argument of the book is that we're living through a collateral transition, not necessarily a currency transition. So most people debate whether the dollar will remain dominant. I think the more important question is what assets the world trusts as collateral because we don't trust people anymore. So if confidence in treasury

securities changes at the margin, the system doesn't disappear, but it may evolve toward a more diversified collateral framework where gold plays a bigger role, where even silver plays a role. And down the road, I think Trojan horse willing, Bitcoin would play a role. Yeah. And I think this is being validated in real time too. And we were discussing this briefly. On Friday, but I think we should expand on it. I mean, the ECB came out and confirmed that gold is overtaking treasuries as the world's top reserve assets, the top collateral asset with gold at 27% of reserves and treasuries is 22%. It's funny how they do that.

The ECB all of a sudden is telling us something that we've known for about a year now. But why are they doing that all of a sudden? I think the ECB is shitting themselves because they're worried about stablecoin dollars coming in. I mean, I'm looking at it as an ulterior, like a Tom Luongo ulterior motive, like they're talking the dollar down. That's what the ECB is doing. And they're telling the truth. But the fact that they're underlining it now, why would you underline it now? I mean, well, I'm sure you've seen Christine Lagarde's comments on stable coins, too. So I think she and Ursula von der Leyen, they both come out and explicitly said U.S. dollar stablecoin expansion into markets outside the U.S. is bad for the euro.

And they've got this really big push to get the digital euro. They don't want a euro stablecoin backed by some private issue or like Tether or Circle. They want to get their digital euro to market, which will be a creation of the European Central Bank and I assume the European Union or European Parliament as well. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they are definitely shitting themselves, for lack of a better word, because, you know, whether you think it's going to work or not, it is a valid idea. If you if you give people a choice and they have a wallet and in that wallet, that literal wallet, they have a stable coin or euro, they might use a stable coin. Because, I mean, an example that I use with someone else was, let's say you wanted to buy something in Europe and you were you were going into your wallet and you're going to use a digital euro. Well, if you're using digital euro and you wanted to buy something that might be questionable, maybe they won't let you buy it. Maybe they'll put the kibosh on it or I mean, using the Bitcoin example.

OK, I'm standing inside Europe and I pull out my wallet to buy Bitcoin. And when I do that, it goes through the European Central Bank. They know I have Bitcoin. It's it's it's been vetted or who knows what they can do with it. Meanwhile, if I get in my car and drive, you know, five miles outside of the border. I can just buy it with a stable coin and not have any problems. So it's not going to be good for them either way. No, I think they're scared to show this for a reason. And I think they need very fine control over everything happening within their monetary system because they're losing control of their economies to a certain extent.

I don't think they've innovated. And obviously, ESG mandates have really hollowed out the strong energy base, which has hollowed out the manufacturing base, particularly in Germany. And they're looking at social and cohesion because of the migration crisis that is bubbling, particularly in the UK and all across Europe, really. And I think they see the social tensions rising and they really want to clamp down on speech and use some money as well. Yeah, I mean, they have to close the doors and windows that they can while they keep everything under control. But it's all precipitated by them during COVID. During COVID, they let German manufacturing leave. They encouraged it to leave. They started preaching this WEF. What's the word they used? Not net zero, something worse. Basically, anti-capitalism. I forget what it was. Stakeholder capitalism. Yeah, exactly. And then they let all the immigrants in, which I'm not saying that I agree with it. I don't agree with it. But I do understand what the motivation was. I just think it's a horrible motivation. And I think they're just causing, you know, they're going to cause a culture clash, which means that basically everything the government does is, and I'm speaking as a libertarian in this matter, everything the government does is cause a problem.

and then they sell you the solution or it gives them an excuse to have more of a power grab. We're going to let a million immigrants in and then we're going to take away free speech because we don't want the immigrants to be bothered. Meanwhile, they're all running around with machete swords. I mean, I'm not like a militant on this stuff, but it's ridiculous. It's too much. It's observable, I think is the most politically correct way to say it, right? It's observable. Yeah. Don't tell me not to believe my lion eyes. But bringing this back to collateral and really sort of tying the knot on this and going back to what the ecb admitted that gold

is has overtaken treasuries as collateral and again i think really driving on the juxtaposition of currency and collateral because what we're talking about u.s dollar dominance but what's really underlying that dominance is what people use for collateral which is treasuries right right and so really trying to paint the picture of how the currency and the collateral uh in the existing incumbent fiat system work and how you imagine that transition yeah i that's you're going to the you're like you're like that's the next book right i mean if if if let's say i have my way and everyone's going to be using dollars uh but no one's going to be using treasuries or not using as many treasuries uh what is going to happen then well what's going to happen is

that the collateral will be whatever you transfer into dollars. So I'm going to have my stable coin, my stable coin dollar, and I'll have some of my portfolio in gold collateral, some of my portfolio in Bitcoin collateral, some of my portfolio in treasury collateral. And maybe that's what it is. But I don't. It's just the end of treasury dominance. The dollar can still dominate. But, you know, I mean, I don't think currency really matters. I mean, that's that's a very naive thing to say. But I mean, when you look at the history of currency, currency can be the most... I mean, look, what did the United States government do during that time after Bretton Woods? They successfully fused the currency to the store of value. They said the

treasury is the dollar. The treasury is the dollar. And so gold's not in the picture anymore. And so that worked for 50 years. Now it's like, well, the treasury isn't the dollar. We're still going to use dollars, but we're not going to use treasuries for collateral. What are we going to use? And I think people talk about this multipolar concept, you know, multipolar currencies. It's really multipolar collateral. It's like, what are you going to guarantee? Like, I'm going to trade dollars with you. And you're going to say, well, Vince, what's backing your dollars up? And I'm like, well, I've got Bitcoin. I've got Ethereum. I've got gold. I've got silver. I got a basket. well when you're describing in that way i'm thinking of i mean i'm

35 just turned 35 i've been hyper aware and following the developments in the global financial system since 2008 i went and studied economics at college worked at a fund obviously bitcoin a lot of the tangential topics that i follow are related to geopolitical and macro economic developments over the years and i think particularly in the let's say in the bitcoin space in the hard money space in the more free market minded space people have been screaming that you're going to have this sovereign debt melt up we're going to have this calamitous sort of blow up of sovereign debt markets and we're just going to have a reset button but i think what you're putting forth is it seems like they're prepping the the transition to be more sort of structural

methodical and less chaotic is that what you think is happening quietly behind the scenes with this yeah i think i think i think that's that's exactly it i mean i i think they've seen how they screwed up before and they're going to do a controlled takedown we're doing a uh i've used the analogy of an engine swap. Like the economy is a car driving down the road and they recognize that the current engine that they have isn't working anymore. And so they need to swap engines and put a new engine in. But meanwhile, they can't stop the car. So they're telling everybody everything is fine while they're tinkering under the hood, going at 80 miles an hour, trying to swap the engine. So it's a controlled takedown. It's probably a better way to look at it. But the

The engine analogy, I think it works. It works for me. But the controlled takedown is what you're describing. I think that's absolutely what's going on now. They know it's coming. I mean, look, they put out a paper in 2000 saying that they need to increase immigration into Europe. Like that paper is out there. I read that. I'm like, OK. So they plan for this. They're planning for everything. I mean, they may not be good at it, but they are planning for everything. I agree. You're right. Right. That's that's Alex Schoen's propaganda. You're you're the U.N. wrote that paper, but we're not allowed to talk about what they call it. The great a great replacement theory is what you're pushing right now. That's right. That's right. Yeah. I mean, I read the whole paper. It was it was it was interesting because they had a list of basically three things that they wanted to do to deal with it. And the reason that they wanted the immigration with a great replacement was because they didn't have enough working people to carry the Ponzi scheme. And but meanwhile, they're not encouraging anyone to have kids.

So. So we're just importing immigrants, which, OK, fine, if they want to be there and they want to be there for the right reason, that's fine. But they didn't. They just want to be there to stir up some shit, it would seem. But that's one thing. So the replacement people replace people with immigrants, raise the retirement age. Retirement age is going to go up to, I think it's like 62 at the earliest in the U.S. That's going to go up to 70, maybe 75. And it's not going to happen all at once. But one day you and I are going to wake up and we're going to say, oh, look at that. The retirement age is 70 now and they will have changed it.

You're definitely going to do everything to slow down retirees. Silicon Valley is working hard to extend lives. We're going to all live to be 150. So it's just natural that. That's right. You retire at 70. I was thinking about that. it's uh then i think the the uh the the darker point is i guess well if you're in canada they

start selling suicide boots so did you hear the story about the guy tim hortons the other week no there was some guy canadian sitting outside like a tim hortons and some like social worker noticed he was in uh in a bad mood apparently had irritable bowel syndrome and he talked he talked to this canadian uh i guess social worker or doctor connected to the state in the parking lot and they decided then there that he he was probably um it's probably time for him to participate in the maid program and and euthanize himself and did it like the next day wait this is true yes a guy is sitting in a parking lot it's approached by a state-sponsored doctor and awesome self within days yeah you got to give me the link to that that's crazy let me see if i

can pull it up real quick i mean i mean you know for later i'll send it to my subscribers just because it's just so bizarre i'd have to send it to them yeah and of course it's important right which makes sense yeah right um but back to the reason we're talking here how does the plumbing come in all this like repo markets rehypothecation you're making the analogy of the engine the economy is this engine that's running we have to change it on the go while we're going 80 miles an hour and i feel like a lot of the critical um parts that are necessary for that engine exist in in these markets that are very opaque or maybe not opaque but very hard to understand for the layman? And what is their particular interaction and relationship to collateral?

And how does that evolve over time? Right. The repo markets, the rehypothecation, you know, the short version is that most people think the global financial system runs on money, but my argument is actually runs on collateral. And the book traces how we got here, which is what you're talking about, right? We went from a world where gold was the ultimate settlement asset to a world where treasury bonds became the backbone of global finance. I walk readers through the evolution of that system and explain concepts like repo markets, dollar recycling, every hypothecation in a way that non-specialists can understand. But the second half of the book asks the question, what happens when confidence in

that collateral begins to change? But the repo, these are all the things that were structured or created post-Great Financial Crisis, or not post-Great Financial Crisis, Post Bretton Woods to facilitate the treasury market being the backstop of everything. Repo, you don't have to sell your treasuries. You can just give them to us and we'll give you cash for them. So things like that. The plumbing has been set up to support the treasury market. And now we need a new plumbing system to support this multipolar collateral world that we're

entering into. Well, and this is something that we discussed, I think, when you first came on, because I had you on last fall to discuss um the the gold on warrant at the shanghai gold exchange and that like we went walked through that and basically setting up all the gold vaults in the different countries across uh the like southeast asia and parts of eastern europe right in the middle east and now that you're explaining that about the repo mark it seems like that's the parallel or repo? It is the parallel. That's a great connection to make. It is the parallel. The parallel is that if you want to repo treasuries, you press a button. And for those who don't

understand what a repo is, repo is basically throwing your collateral into the pawn shop and then getting cash for it. So that's repurchasing. And then the rehypothecation, which everyone is familiar with in gold and Bitcoin is getting familiar with now as well with the manufacturing of futures, keep the price of an asset suppressed. But when you tie it to the vaults, I mean, look, one of the things that the dollar has going for it that gold does not, at least not yet, not legally, even though it is, is something called HQLA, which is high quality liquid asset, which is a label. And that label says if something is liquid enough, we give it that label. And if it's that liquid, then it's also eligible for repo.

So as long as gold in the West is not HQLA, whatever that label means, you can't use it for repo. And if you use it for repo, you'd be competing with treasuries. So they don't want to do that. So going back to the China thing, what China and the BRICS have done is they said, well, we want gold to be HQLA. We want gold to be repoable. And we're going to physically set up vaults to that effect. So one of the negotiations was with Saudi Arabia. The Chinese said, listen, we want you to use yen. I mean, you want. And the Saudis said, sure, but we don't want it. We don't trust your currency. We want to convert it into gold. So China said, fine. And then they said, well, what if we want to use the gold for collateral

for something else? You guys have our gold. And China said, fine, keep the gold in a vault in your country. And so they started creating this network of vaults. And so now everyone's got control of their own gold. They can use it as collateral and they can borrow money against it and they can build infrastructure and highways. I mean, that's kind of what's been going on in Africa, what Dorsey was trying to do with Bitcoin, you know, get people to use it as an infrastructure rebuilding tool in Africa. But the Middle East is doing that with gold now. So they're basically saying, they're basically saying to a country like Ghana, you've got a lot of gold, you don't have any roads or highways. If you put the gold in your vault, and that vault's part of our network,

then we'll let you borrow against it, repo against that gold to build highways. Now, trick of it is the chinese love this because they're going to be hiring chinese companies to rebuild the highways so basically that's how china's manufacturing gets legs in the uh belton road initiative that's pretty powerful stuff that's the new uh the new plumbing it is and uh do you think the us recognizes this and is trying to counteract it i think scott betson Actually, it's probably good that your power went out on Friday because I believe later that day Scott Besson was on the Hill and Tim Scott was asking him questions about the state of digital asset policy. And Scott Besson, unprovoked, said the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve Act is very high priority. It's moving slowly, but they're trying to act methodical and make sure they get everything right.

Yeah, I mean, I think when it comes to Bitcoin itself, I think what I really think is in the future, in the future, you're going to have whatever currency you want to use, yuan, yen, euros, dollars, and what backs that currency is going to be Bitcoin. what gives your currency its value. So I'm not talking about a gold standard or anything like that or a Bitcoin standard. But I am saying that if I have stable coins, Genius Act, and what's the new name, the new act called? Clarity Act. Clarity Act, the Clarity Act. Yeah, the banks are already rebelling against it. The banks are a little bit nervous about it now. So I think Besant is familiar with it. And I think there's a clock There's a clock on the dollar's dominance that's starting to run out. And they know that they need to use whatever tool they can get, whether that be Bitcoin, whether that be gold.

I mean, I don't think they want to use gold, but they have to use gold eventually. but if they can get stable coins and bitcoin in the in the uh in the stable to get this going then what they'll do is they'll they'll put dollars in everyone's hands in stable coin fashion and so that's going to be good for bitcoin eventually yeah now as we're thinking about it's like how scarce are these like how how big is this for the golden and bitcoin markets in terms of future price appreciation i don't have an answer for that but i do know i mean we do know that we both know that tether has been buying gold as well as bitcoin now and i can't think that they're doing it just because

they're speculating you know and i'm not sure they don't have the business yet you know for for gold stable coins but they certainly have the gold now so i mean there is they're buying as much as they have a gold stable coin what they have a gold stable coin they do but i mean they're not they're not it's not all deployed i'm just saying that they have all this gold and they're not buying it as a spec so they're hedged they're properly run i mean that's what's going to happen i'm going to be in europe one day and uh i'm going to buy a bottle of uh wine and i'm going to pull out my wallet my wallet's going to be a u.s stable coin and i'll pay with a u.s stable coin and my stable coin will be my U.S. dollar stable coin will be backed by whatever I use for

collateral. And that's it. Or maybe I'll use it in, you know, if you're in China, you'll be using, you know, yuan, but it won't be stable coin, it'll be digital yuan. So, I mean, they're trying to fight that off. But I agree. I agree. Besant is, I mean, I'm a fan of him. I mean, he's, he's, he can be off the reservation sometimes. But I'm a fan of him in that he's at least bringing digital along the way it should be brought along because we recognize now

that digital is not the enemy of the dollar. Digital is going to be the thing that makes the dollar survive. At least I think. So, Freaks, this work was brought to you by our good friends at BitKey. As things happen, things get lost. You need to replace your phone.

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collateral system on the go is that overall beneficial for humans for humanity for let's just use the u.s perspective for u.s citizens or is it going to lead to a finer ability to control prices and the financial system and extend that to speech and talking about stable coins or central bank digital currencies or both stable both stable coins because i'm also thinking that's like there's three paths cbdc central banks control it you get your allowance can't buy meat all that good stuff right right stable coins privately issued backed now by treasuries but in your view in the future will be backed by a portfolio of collateral different collateral um bitcoin gold treasuries whatever it may be um more free market than central bank digital

currencies however as we've seen in the straighter reviews over the last month like still essentially controlled yes they run on um peer-to-peer distributed blockchains however they are centrally issued by a third party in many cases tether and if the u.s government comes to tether and says hey we got word that this actor that we don't like has has a bunch of tether we need you to hit the button to freeze the tether in that account so you still have the functionality of a cbdc um with the stable coins however it's just got a friendlier free market private yeah there's there's the there's the illusion of separation of church and state you know like oh jp morgan is it going to do what the government wants uh they're not going to stop

me from buying you know beer with my stable coin maybe the government's going to say well you're right maybe we're not and jp morgan won't stop us but jp morgan will raise the minimums jp morgan like there's going to be this the the companies will comply with the state i agree with you it just won't be as ham-fisted or ham-handed or obvious but if you're big enough and you're on their radar they'll come and get you we've already seen it as you said well do you see a third path where you uh you lean into bitcoin specifically which can't be controlled um and you use it as a You use all aspects of the properties of money that we described earlier, the store of value, medium of exchange, unit of account, and where it becomes. Look, I mean, I'm a gold person and my education on Bitcoin, little of it that I own.

tells me that, you know, if you look at money a certain way and you are willing to operate money a certain way, then Bitcoin is a better a better solution for all of that. So that would be your third way. But what I what I'm woefully ignorant of is or what I'm not ignorant of is how the government will control on ramps and off ramps and kind of capture. That's what governments do. They just capture. So there's always going to be the sovereign individual who gets to use Bitcoin outside of the system. But for most of humanity, it's going to be captured. Well, it comes in like waves, right?

Like sine waves. And that's what I'm trying to discern. like are we getting like peak government capture and does the power of the state collapse in and of itself via a sovereign debt crisis via social uprising where people are upset with the epstein class they've had enough and they truly stand up to the federal government which is taxing us at a rate of like 25x more than what the british empire was taxing the the colonies at before they inside of the right the revolution and i see your point the uh because if they do corral more power and like can like they already have a lot of power it's like what is the

what is the point of diminishing marginal returns on trying to acquire and exert that power and like when is it collapsing you're talking about the philosophy behind revolution yeah that's what you're talking about so i have to go now i don't want to get arrested no but no i've been reading about some of that from, uh, there's an old, um, uh, well, I don't want to go down a rabbit hole, but let me just say what, what, what she said. Her name is Hannah Arendt. She said that, um, she said that with comments on power and violence, she made the comment that, um, that, uh, governments, when they lose the respect and the authority of their people, they will seek to overreach uh by squeezing too hard and that's when you get your revolution

so when you said that i'm like it sounds like you're reading hannah arendt uh she was uh well anyway whoever she was she was a philosopher and uh and she was describing basically that the government and the people is always a battle between centralization on one hand and decentralization on the other. Or you can look at it as controlled by the state and libertarianism. But that's the way it always goes.

And so as the states, and this plays right into the Bitcoin stuff, as the state's power weakens from new technologies that fragment its central power, it will try and squeeze harder, like censorship. that's an example i'm trying to squeeze harder uh inappropriately and uh uh eventually what

happens is they either win or lose but they if they win they lose anyway because that's where you get your revolution so to bring it back to bitcoin did you ever see that show uh mr robot yes okay so mr robot was about a crisis i mean part of the show was about a crisis And I remember watching that going, well, they tried to install their own version of a corporate Bitcoin. It was e-money, e-coin, whatever it was, the evil empire money. But that's what's going to happen. I mean, I believe that for evolution, the evolution of money will have revolutions in it. And one of those revolutions will be a crisis like Mr. Robot, where people have to find something that's better.

I mean, better than gold. And I say that because who's going to be using gold? Who's going to be using a gold stable coin to go buy a ham and cheese on raw? I mean, that's just not happening. You know, so Bitcoin is well suited for that. The question is, what causes mass adoption? And usually it's a crisis. we need a crisis for someone to say oh shit i gotta do something different people don't change their habits unless they have to so no i want to be clear i'm not calling for revolution i'm just running through the the illogical thought experiment i don't think you are the uh it does make you wonder like you're looking at i mean you're looking out you know western

quote-unquote democracies and seeing the the fists get get tighter around the people i mean i think it's more exacerbated in europe now particularly the uk ireland parts of germany yeah particularly with anti-immigrant sentiment really clamping down and that whole um debacle or not debacle tragedy um in in england over the last few weeks for that no white kid was killed and the cops handcuffed him because um his murderer claimed that the kid was being racist to him and they Let them die on the street and people are getting pissed off. And if you're tweeting about it, the UK law enforcement is going to come knock on your door and give you a stern warning. And eventually they'll throw you in jail for a couple of months.

What do you think was going to happen? I mean, I mean, this is why I'm so scared of how stupid governments are, you know, to bring back the point of they'll overreach when they start to lose the respect of the people around them. how how stupid do you have to be to not see that letting in millions of people is not going to cause a culture clash and enforcing these rules and having morons enforce them i'm like beside myself with how how do they my conclusion is either they're dumb and most of them are dumb or the ones that aren't dumb say i don't care just just hammer the square peg into the round hole until it fits i don't care what you do to the edges of the of the peg it's going to happen so that's where you get your your v your your v for vendetta revolution yeah i mean then here in

the states i mean we're not at that level anywhere near that level i would say yeah and i think speech is still relatively free but then you have like other aspects of it like we have a wartime footing and yes there is a war going on it's like world war ii and footing where the trump administration is going out and buying large pieces of equity and critical businesses so you have like this quasi-nationalization of some industries across the country too and that that's a little creepy to me that's creepy for me that's creepy because in the beginning you're like i'm long that stock that's good and after like six months like wait a minute that's up you know because then they can tell them what to do oh they're they're rewarding

a contract for them yay and you're like wait a minute that's not good that's not good for us that's state controlled you know i had read something uh four years ago actually taught my students this and it's playing out just as it was predicted back then that it was the conversation was the world is going towards centralized authoritarian governments because they're losing control technologically of people so they're overreaching that whole overreaching concept and it said it started in china and and the the guy says well i mean i said basically the u.s went into china and said if they accept capitalism they'll accept democracy and china said we like capitalism we use that and then they had tiananmen square and we're not

accepting democracy. Screw that. So instead of us exporting democracy to China, China is now exporting authoritarian despotic rule to Europe. That's what's happening in Europe. And we've got to keep it on that side of the Atlantic. But I think there's a problem. All right, freaks, you know me, you know, I don't take sponsor money from products I wouldn't use myself. So listen up. The Avon Bitcoin Visa card is one of the most interesting things I've seen in the Bitcoin lending space in a long time. Here's the deal. You can get a line of credit up to a million dollars backed by your Bitcoin without selling a single sat. No gains, no annual fees, no minimum draws, and your Bitcoin is custodied by BitGo, which is one of the most

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bitcoin without giving up control go to unchained.com and use the code tftc10 at checkout to get 10 off your new bitcoin multi-sig volt that's tftc10 at unchained.com i think the ai race is accelerating its inclusion in american policy right because the ai race has been deemed existential by the current administration and i think like directionally like it is correct it's a big it's a big pie and there's very severe consequences for not winning uh the ai battle and it is existential to an extent but i think the free market we should let the entrepreneurs go do it the government trying to put their hand um on the the scale and really put money and get equity positions in these companies and you can squint and see the regulatory moats beginning to be

drafted and some dark rooms on the hill and license regimes coming uh and i think the ai race is an example of that authoritarianism beginning to creep in the u.s um from china because china is the number one competitor that we have in that specific race and i think a lot of people in the u.s government and even in the tech sector have basically thrown their hands up and say hey we have to be more like china to beat china in this particular race right that started under biden i remember him saying something to that effect he's like you know uh democracy we've had it too easy we need to we need to turn the aircraft in the water or something like that aircraft carrier in the water but yeah i get it we're we're we're centralizing authority

to be able to compete with a central authority. So in a sense, democracy is messy and we can't afford to be messy right now. And so we're signing on for corporatism or fascism or whatever it is. But it's dangerous. It's funny. I've been rereading Democracy, the God that Failed. And I think Hoppe made some really good poignant points in that book. I didn't hear the last part.

You said your voice is a little low. I said I've been rereading Democracy, the God that Failed. And I think Hoppe has some really interesting points in that book. I never read that. What's the central point? It's essentially a thought experiment. He's comparing democracies to monarchy. And he says in the introduction, I don't think monarchy is the ideal form of government.

But we're going to walk through the thought experiment of comparing democracies to monarchies. And I'm going to highlight why monarchies are superior. the core thesis basically revolves around monarchs have in a legitimate equity stake like they're landowners they own a lot of the productive capital within their domain and they have a duty to their domain and monarchies particularly hereditary monarchies where you pass down through the family um you have the ability to think with a low time preference because your reputation and ultimately your head is dependent on you um stewarding that capital and allocating it efficiently make sure that the people living within your domain are relatively

well off and productive whereas with a democracy you don't have that ability because you have politicians cycling through every four eight however many years and they don't have the same sort of dedication to the capital that they're stewarding and that they can always hand the bag on to somebody else right right you can you can in a democracy a politician only has to worry about the short term because the long term takes care of itself the invisible hand will take care of it well it's not taking care of it anymore you definitely have some problems that need to be addressed that's interesting so so the monarch the monarch has skin in the game And so it's in his best interest to run it right for the despot or the dictator.

And I don't mean that in a negative way, the person who's in charge. It's kind of like the Batman movie. Here's an analogy for you. The Batman movie, when they're sitting at the table, the Joker one, we're sitting at the table and, and, um, Oh, what's his name? The guy who ends up being two-faced. He says, um, Harvey Dent, Harvey Dent. He says, well, back in Roman times, when there was crisis, they would make someone a Caesar and that person would run the show until they

got the crisis taken care of. And then they go into holy. Well then either you live long enough to, to be hated or, or, uh, or, or, or get killed by your people or something like that. But that's the idea. we need it we need a leader right now the question is you know it's who is the leader we need a cincinnatus uh somebody who uh who will come from from the farmland get everything in order and go back to his humble farm uh your people are saying that's your season cincinnatus is your season that's right uh the uh it is crazy times and it's just it can be discombobulating at times but i i and be interested to get your thoughts on this i know um you're a gold guy but that's

the one thing that gives me confidence or maybe not confidence but relative calm it's like i know what bitcoin is i know what i own i know how who can and cannot control who i know cannot be controlled um rather trivially and i think that sort of rule set and that anchor it gives me a lot of peace of mind it's like okay worst comes to worst i can allocate in this asset that is out of the control of the central banks or the states and i'm relatively inoculated i think gold can't make as strong an argument for it but it's pretty strong Yeah, I understand. If you fully believe the premise that Bitcoin can't be co-opted, and from everything I've seen, that's true, then eventually there'll be an opportunity for it, and it will slip in and become money. do I feel that way about gold? I largely feel that way about gold. My concern about something

like gold is I think that it can be co-opted in a sense where it could be the on ramps and off ramps can be restricted. You know, if I'm if I'm if I'm using a stable coin or I'm not going to go again, I'm not going to go to a deli and buy a ham and cheese or rye, you know, with with a gram of gold. Similarly, I think Bitcoin, the on-ramps and off-ramps within our society or the U.S. society can be compromised. And you can survive on that. You're not going to have that taken from you. But would you be able to use it? I mean, these are obvious questions I'm asking and everyone asks, the question is, the more the government overreaches, I'm thinking about Bitcoin here specifically, gold too, but Bitcoin, the more the government overreaches,

the more they create their own competition because there's going to be a black market. There's going to be an alternative way to do things. And that's where Bitcoin comes in. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How are they going to try and control Bitcoin? You mentioned futures launching.

Well, they're doing that now. I mean, I don't think it's a high priority right now, but I think, well, with gold, when they created the futures market for gold, that tamped it down and they created the futures market in 2017 for Bitcoin and that tamped it down. In fact, it made it crash back then. I contend that that's what happened. And now they have it in an ETF and they love ETFs. And so, yeah, you may think you own Bitcoin, but you own the wrapper that goes around the Bitcoin that BlackRock is rehypothecating with someone else. I mean, so they're going to keep it down.

I would say they're going to do everything that they've been doing with gold, but I'll say this in a positive light. Even with gold, it doesn't work anymore. And if it doesn't work with gold anymore and Bitcoin is better, if you think Bitcoin is better, I'm not debating that, then they're not going to keep Bitcoin down forever as well. That's the bottom line. I mean, China basically said to the U.S., gold is more valuable than treasuries. And that's where this all comes back to the ECB making that announcement. So if they can't control gold, then, you know, maybe they can't control Bitcoin either. They can only slow it down.

They can't stop it. That's what I think. Yeah. So what is the latest with gold markets? We're trading at 4.325 right now, down from about 5, whipped up to 5.5. are we just in a consolidation i mean the last time you came on you were talking about silver was running too hot it was crazy yeah we were there's probably going to be a cool off and yeah that did play out and so what what is happening in the precious metals complex right

now well um the gold market is everybody's talking about the gold market at the mainstream media level everyone's talking about the gold market is oh dollar diversification central banks are buying but that's known now that's in the market so we need another catalyst for gold to get a leg higher and that catalyst will probably something that comes out of besant's mouth maybe a revaluation i mean i'm not saying that's going to happen but people are starting to talk about it a lot more maybe a gold bond that's being talked about again but what's going going on in the gold market right now is for two, two and a half years, we, gold bugs, had the luxury of a market that didn't care about the dollar, of a market that didn't care about rates,

of a market that didn't care about anything except they wanted the gold. We want the gold. We're going to buy the gold. Why? Because we don't want treasuries anymore. Now, for whatever reason, gold is now being priced in dollars again. Gold is being priced compared to rates again. If oil goes up, people are not buying gold because they think the Fed's going to raise rates. So it's not inflation. People talk about inflation being the reason that gold's dropping. That's not true. The reason gold's dropping is because the marketplace thinks the Fed's going to fight inflation this time.

And I don't think it will. So I'm buying the dip pretty soon. When you say fight inflation, you mean effectively fight inflation? Well, not effectively. I mean, wave a magic wand at it by raising rates. I mean, the last time the Fed fought inflation was in 2022. And I'll give you an example. I'll give you an example that's parallel.

We're talking about the Middle East war, the Iran war, and we're talking about dollar strength undermining gold's viability. Well, I'll give you a story from 2022. In 2022, the Ukraine war started and gold spiked near all-time highs. that was in february then in march the fed announced they were going to raise rates and gold marched for six months five months april may june july august september red candles in a row bitcoin took it on chin then too and that was them effectively fighting inflation but remember you know

Powell said he wanted to get it back to 2%. We're almost at 4% now. So your question is, are they going to genuinely fight inflation? No, they're just going to wave a magic wand at it. They always err on the side of tolerating inflation as opposed to recession. And that's what they're going to do. Yeah. If you look at the latest PPI, that was well over expectations. that's usually a leading indicator you look at oil i mean it's trading right below 90 right now but i chris martinson on last week and that was one of his uh one of his points was like you can make the argument that that uh oil is relatively depressed because we're draining sprs globally and once you can't drain those anymore we're going to feel the real um supply chain

disruption shock which should that's true and higher and he had a i think he had a deadline of like june 15th or july 15th one of the two the for a resolution in iran if you don't get a resolution by then it's going to get really bad well you know chris is a great guy i love i love i've spoken with him many times one of the things about the spr drainage is it's it's and this is not going to take away from his point is it's not really a drainage. They take it out in the front and then the oil company that gets the oil has to pay it back a year later. So all we're doing is kicking the can. We're printing oil. We're kicking the can down the road like we do with everything else. And so this will come back to bite us in the ass.

SPRs in the long run never really work. In the short run, they manage expectations and we'll see what happens after the midterm when he stops that there are two other events now i'm a little i'm a little a lot older than you so i lived through the 70s uh as a kid a little kid i didn't know what was going on but i was living through it and during the 70s there were two things that happened at the same time um that our history is kind of repeating itself we had in philadelphia in 1976 philadelphia was the city for the all-star game and i grew up in south philly and every day during that year 1976 philadelphia was the cleanest city on earth you could have eaten off the streets everybody was working everybody was was everything was clean

The point is, the federal government pulled out all the stops to make Philadelphia look good for the bicentennial. 1977, the inflation started. And that's what's happening now. Now, we are doing what's called the semi-quincentennial, 250-year celebration. That's going to be inflationary. That's going to be inflationary. We're holding a party, and that's going to spend money. And on top of that, what's worse than 76 is we have the FIFA World Cup.

FIFA World Cup is inflationary. Like there's no way they can control inflation without crushing the stock market. And they will not crush the stock market. So to Chris's point, yeah, oil is not going back down. If it's going down today, it's going up tomorrow. We've got the FIFA World Cup starting and that's in mid-June. We've got this semi-quincentennial celebration. We're going to be pulling out all the stops and printing $250 bills.

So this is not going to be, this inflation is not controllable. I don't think it's controllable. The only thing that can control it is if everybody were to deploy AI overnight and get everyone fired so you have automated baristas. Well, if you have automated baristas, then you have unemployment at 10%. So they're trying to go back to that, to the controlled takedown. They're trying to thread a needle. They're trying to change an engine in a car. They're like, we have to tolerate inflation just like they are in Europe.

They have to tolerate inflation in Europe because they need to build their own defenses. I agree with Chris. I don't see how it could get any better. But it reminded me of 1976 when I was a kid. I remember turning to my dad, just to give you an idea how naive I was. I was at the All-Star game. My father took me to the All-Star game in 76. and everything was, the streets were so clean. I mean, as a little kid, I was like, wow, this is

great. And I turned to my dad and I said, dad, I was like 10 years old. I was like, dad, does this mean Philadelphia is going to be the capital of the country again? He said, he said, no, next year, we're all going to be broke. And he was right. And he was right. That's it. My father's business shut down three years later after that. Really? What kind of business was it? it was that we made pasta and pizza it was a complete italian walk place we local neighborhood pasta pizza spaghetti ravioli italian like an italian deli yeah i can't find it um but i'm looking for the chart of inflation from i believe 2020 overlaid with the 1970s echo inflation and And we're tracking pretty tightly with that right now.

Yeah, yeah. In fact, we're tracking, I think the last time I looked at it, depending on whose chart you're looking at, we're at 1975, which means we get another year of good stuff. And then inflation upticks since 1977 to 79, all over again. But it's a great chart. It's going to be coming back and being very popular soon, I think. well and it makes you wonder like how can we react to it i mean obviously at volcker in the 70s who's

able to jack rates up to 18 but we can't stomach that with the interest expense like what are we gonna do i don't i don't know maybe maybe a war maybe we do have a kinetic you know world war type of situation where somebody just loses it and it happens but if we we can't raise rates I guess, I guess maybe we deploy the robots, you know, deploy the AI robots. Yeah. I mean, that's, I think we're very much aligned on that thought is like the, the, the thread of the needle comes in, comes with many different variables that need to line up. And one of them is a somewhat controlled productivity miracle via AI and the agentic digital workforce

than in the robotic physical workforce. And that's right. I mean, we're not going to do it. We're not going to. We don't want unemployment to go too high, so we're not going to do it. Meanwhile, in China, they're kicking our ass in robots and AI. In my opinion, AI is more of a physical thing than a large language model, a learning language model. I think the robots, when the robots are deployed, that's like Europe is importing immigrants to solve their lack of work. China is building robots to solve their lack of work. Now, I'm not pro-China, I'm not bullish China, but their solution is to embrace the AI, and I guess give everyone UBI over there.

Our solution is going to have to be the same thing. AI brings UBI. If you deploy AI, then you create UBI, which is basically inflation. So I don't know how we get around it. yeah and i mean you see i was actually talking about this on a show this morning like the horseshoe theory playing out you have bernie sanders calling for the u.s to get a 50 stake in the ai hyperscalers so that they can roll those revenues to the federal government and then donald trump saying something similar as well trump's a democrat

he's an old actually he's not a democrat what he is is he's an old school corporatist And old school corporatists are like, they hate government, but he wasn't president. They hate government, but they're always looking to get a deal with the government. That's the old school corporatist. That's the Rockefeller. That's the JP Morgan types. So I hate the government. I hate the government.

And they're always cutting a deal with the government. So now you got the your horseshoe concept of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Policy wise, they're the same person. As it pertains to the book and the content of the book, what what should we tell the audience that we haven't covered already? Well, I think a lot of people want to know who the book is for, because it's not it's not it's not it's not a thick book. You can read it in one day, one sitting. The book is written for people who know something important is changing in the monetary system, but can't quite explain what it is.

So you don't need a finance degree. I explain repo markets, reserve assets, collateral chains, and plain English. The goal is to help readers understand the plumbing that sits behind the headlines. I mean, look, if there's one takeaway I want someone to get from this after they read that book is that money gets all the attention, but collateral does all the work. That's it. you don't hear people talking about collateral as much as they're talking about money.

Too many syllables because you don't carry, you don't carry around the collateral of gold or treasury in your pocket. You carry around a dollar bill. Money is easier to say money has all the marketing. It does money. Cash rules, everything around me, cream,

dollar bill. Y'all I'm not, I'm not very brushed up on my Wu-Tang clan, but the, uh, that's one thing that, um, my Bitcoin journey, uh, fortunately has, um, educated me about its collateral, um, in the system, how it works. And I completely agree with you where everybody's focused on currency. Well, that's the charter situation. There's, I mean,

I don't want to go down a rabbit hole, but you know, uh, I forget the guy's name. But when you look at banking from the way bankers look at it, there really is no collateral. It's really a unit of account and medium of exchange. And the collateral is trust. So if you can remove the need for trust, you don't need a shiny metal object. You don't need a treasury. You have the unit of account become the store of value.

And so that is the concept behind Bitcoin, where the network is the money. so i understand it yeah it's a beautiful thing vince thank you for uh for your time we'll link to the book in the show notes and i will uh make sure to find the uh the tim hortons man who was convinced to uh to euthanize himself so you can share with your readers because i think it's a message to get out there thank you there's insanity everywhere thanks for having me on marty good to see you again always a pleasure sir peace and love freaks thank you for listening to this episode of tftc if you've made it this far i imagine you got some value out of the episode if so please share it far and wide with your friends and family we're looking to get the

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