The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast - Bitcoin News With a Canadian Spin - Tariff War HEATS Up, The Bitcoin Bond Company, A Man on the Subway Did WHAT?! | CBP 211 Pt 2

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

FRIENDS AND ENEMIESIn this episode of CBP, we're diving into the latest developments in the world of Bitcoin and financial innovation. The tariff war is heating up, but what does this mean for the future of finance and the adoption of bitcoin? We're also exploring the concept of Bitcoin bonds, including The Bitcoin Bond Company, and what this could mean for the industry. Meanwhile, a surprising incident on the subway has left many scratching their heads. Join us as we break down the latest news today, macro trends, and market tools that you need to know about. From BTC analysis to Canadian Election hype, we're covering it all. Tune in for the latest bitcoin news today, macroeconomics, and insights into the world of Bitcoin.#bitcoin #btc #crypto #digitalassets #financialinnovation #carney #trump #poilievre #CanadianElection #CanadianPolitics #EconomicsJoin us for some QUALITY Bitcoin and economics talk, with a Canadian focus, every Monday at 7 PM EST. From a couple of Canucks who like to talk about how Bitcoin will impact Canada. As always, none of the info is financial advice. Website: ⁠www.CanadianBitcoiners.com⁠Discord: https://discord.com/invite/YgPJVbGCZX A part of the CBP Media Network: ⁠www.twitter.com/CBPMediaNetworkThis show is sponsored by: easyDNS - ⁠⁠www.easydns.com⁠⁠ EasyDNS is the best spot for Anycast DNS, domain name registrations, web and email services. They are fast, reliable and privacy focused. You can even pay for your services with Bitcoin! Apply coupon code 'CBPMEDIA' for 50% off initial purchase Bull Bitcoin - ⁠⁠https://mission.bullbitcoin.com/cbp⁠⁠ The CBP recommends Bull Bitcoin for all your BTC needs. There's never been a quicker, simpler, way to acquire Bitcoin. Use the link above for $20 bones, and take advantage of all Bull Bitcoin has to offer.

Mantra cock. Yeah boomer asking about footballs. I actually have one here. I bought a GST off Amazon that I'm gonna break in for the other channel and sell I'm becoming an expert in mudding and preparing footballs and it's been so much fun It's so rewarding to like bring a football to a game and have people be like, oh man that ball What a nice color what a nice feel and it's never been thrown before it's like the first time it's ever seeing any action i'm getting very good at it which has been a lot of fun what's the the brand above that is the pst or hst this the gst is the wilson like standard it's funny this is a little off the beaten path but for people on video you'll know that you know college balls have this white stripe on them and the cfl ball has the full stripe. And so it's, for seniors, the poor lighting years ago, Wilson

patented this tech where this stripe now, how do I get this thing to focus on the stripe? I got to cover my face. This stripe now is actually made of a different leather. So it's stickier than the rest of the ball. And as someone who's throwing as a quarterback now, I will tell you that when you're pulling on the ball and the tip of the ball, the big thing that will hurt you in a league where there's no pass protection, you have to basically get the laces right away, is that these two

fingers are kind of hard to place once you get the lace, but the stripe keeps you from really sliding too far. So this is really nice. Wilson patented this a long time ago. The patent has since expired, but they're innovating over there. And actually- How long was the patent valid for and I think it was out for about seven years. So I think they did it in 2014 and finished in 21. The CFL, this is inside baseball, the CFL, I have a ball at the house here.

That's not widely released, but it has the stitched in stripe all the way around. And the CFL rejected using that ball a few years ago, the Toronto Argos where they're supposed to be the test team and rejected it and didn't like it. And I can't, if you're a quarterback, I can't imagine you don't want to at least try a ball like that. I no longer use a ball with that stripe because I just find that I like other silhouettes better. But when I was first starting out, that was really important to me. Well, maybe it's to come up with their plans of deflating balls and shit, right? Now you're introducing a new ball.

You can't get access to me. Well, maybe it's screwing with their plans of deflating balls and shit, right? Now you're introducing a new ball. You can't get access to it. The other thing too is like, you know, you got to think about the receivers and running backs. Do the running backs want a ball that feels differently in their hand taking a hand off? Like how do they gauge? Especially in different weather, hot, cold, rainy, snow, like for sure, for sure. So many different variables. It's also harder to break in a ball like this because you have to be careful on that part of the ball.

Right? So if you're a CFL team who's doing, you know, presumably let's say you do 20 balls a week or something, or 10 balls a week, you got to get them right. And the thing about the, the leather on these balls, this is way into the weeds now, but I find that if you don't condition the white stripes, it affects the balance of the ball. The ball ends up spinning a little differently because the rest of the leather has absorbed a little bit of product and the stripes haven't.

And it makes it kind of wobble in the air a little bit differently. It's harder to kind of get a good rotation rate on it. And so, you know, whatever. I still think my favorite ball, GST is a beauty ball for like 120 bucks on Amazon. You can get it, especially one with like a, a like a blemish a cosmetic blemish the best ball that I think if you're gonna really try and play Probably the Wilson F 2000 is the best ball the CIS ball Yeah, it's the pro is a pro be one of the football world. Yeah, I think so everybody that's worth the waiters They're playing with that one

Anyway, that's yeah a little off the beaten path, but there you go. All right, we'll start off with Joey. This might be a fucking story of the year. There's some bangers in here. Some absolute and in more ways than one, by the way, the bangers. So I don't know where you want to start. Well, this, this fucking story, I'm telling you this potentially a story. I can't believe this could be topped. Right? The headline was, please seek men who say they violated a corpse on the train. How many things are going on in that headline? Oh, there's a lot, baby.

There's a lot because for our train, for those who are wondering, that's a subway line in the city of New York. Right. And so the gist of the story is some guy was taking a subway last Wednesday and unfortunately he passed away while taking he died. It's unclear how he died, but you know, the stuff that happened afterwards, Joey, it's the stuff of absolute fucking legend. I just have to fucking stop the nightmares. No, it could be that too. So the deceased, he boarded the train around 8pm local time and he must've died shortly

there afterwards because it appeared somebody else boarded the train and started rummaging through his body around 11pm. Right. Right. Like I died. Right. Because everybody knows only the fucking rich people take the our train. And we day nights and write like in such health that they may die while on the train. That's the guy whose wallet you want to go for. The guy. Not only was this guy that they fucking rob him right this guy? But I I can't believe this because the the rush of blood Of robbing him that must have went to other parts of his body because what transpired after He started to fucking have sex with the dead guy

It's like so first he robbed him of his valuables, right? If I so first he robbed him of his valuables, right? And then he robbed him of laying claim that his anus is only a one-way street exit only so he went through this and He was captured on surveillance right and they say that if you go find a guy he's a guy with a goatee black backpack wearing a yellow hooded shirt shirt La Dodgers baseball cap and presumably he has a smile in his face walking out. But then after leaving, right after leaving and doing his business, the fucking corpse was robbed the second time. The fucking corpse or the fucked corpse? The

fucked course. Oh God. All right. By this time there's nothing else that his dignity was gone. Everything was gone from this to. so I don't know what the fuck This is what we're coming to we're some fucking guy. Unfortunately dies in the train Gets robbed gets fucked and then gets robbed again. This is when we come this Story of the fucking year main. This is this is like peak. This is peak new york, right? It's no not mookie bets mookie bets. Where is he now? Is he in Boston? Yeah, he was in Boston, but they traded his L.A. Yeah. Yeah. Now Mookie wouldn't do that. Listen, so the thing here, New York always in the news, OK, for its attention to illegal immigrants. It's Eric Adams has been he's he's converted now because he's tired of the shit. Yeah.

And they tried to like extort the guy basically for taking a flight or something, but that's not here nor there. We probably talked about it in the past. Honestly, the stuff we've covered on this show, I'm sure we've talked about our buddy Eric open invite Eric, by the way, and come on CBP anytime you want. Election night, bring them on. Yeah. We'll add them to the panel. So they're worried about all this stuff. And this is the kind of story that when people say New York is crumbling,

they're pointing to stuff like this. A corpse is on a train, okay? There should never be a way that a corpse makes it through like a circuit of the metro. Like there should be somebody from the metro police walking the train every loop, every hour, every whatever on some interval to make sure that number one, there's no like bodily fluids anywhere or like dirty conditions. And you know, presumably number two, lend and make sure there's no deceased people. People die all the time.

You know, it's a, it's a subway. There's thousands of people, tens of thousands of people riding these trains every day and someone might die on one of the trains. You know, it's just the numbers game. So there's no one doing that in this case for long enough that a guy who decides he needs to rob this poor guy corpse. Robs and fucks the body. Like what goes your mind? No one sees the body's kind of warm.

Okay. And like, by the way, someone must have seen the guy with his dick out because They know what the guy looked like It was cameras. Okay. Okay, but did the camera see the corpse? like this is what I'm talking about like there's some disconnect here between like what they care about what they don't care about and Then even though they have the cameras with the corpse and the guy fucking the corpse They don't see either one and then a second guy comes around and robs the the like the

deflowered corpse it's unbelievable that's the story of the year man yeah like remember that show freaky stories it happened to a friend of a friend of mine like that's the kind of people you would that seems like this kind of story like I feel like I should be hearing this from two cartoon bugs, you know? Like it's just, it's so unbelievably disgusting and vulgar and just like decline of civilization type stuff. If I had to pick a place, before I said where it took place, if you had to say- I would say New York. It would be one of two places for me, Chicago and New York.

Yeah. That's really we talk about. And by the way, like when Len gets the stories, I doubt very much he's typing in Grok like give me the five most ridiculous stories from the shows. They just keep coming. They just keep coming. It's a never ending party over there in Chicago, New York. Or it's also people send them to me as well. So I also yeah, I see them sometimes in the discord there, but yeah, it's, it's, listen, that's the kind of welcome to the big city kid, you know, it ain't sex in the city, New York anymore.

I'll tell you that. I don't think Carrie and the girls would be able to cope with what we're seeing in New York on a daily basis. Imagine riding the subway after hearing that story. Why would you even go into a subway station? Like why? Well, I am increasingly, by the way, my, my hottest latest take, I am increasingly against any kind of public transit.

Like it feels it's a different world over there. Yeah. You can't drive a car. It feels to me like I don't, um, you know what? I'm not even going to say it because it's just so harsh, but I just, it's just dumb. All these things could be solved by just, you know, for like forcing social economic districts or something. Like I hate to say it, but you just, you're never going to see this in certain places.

And the only reason you see it on the subway is because you got people who like, Oh, it's three bucks a ride. Like, in this case, you got a free ride. Is the guy who's robbing and fucking the corpse, like such a high quality economic unit that we have to give that guy transportation on the cheap? Or should he be like stuck in the neighborhood that he's in with other people of his socioeconomic level?

Like it's hard for me to make the case for the former, but it's easy for me to see the case for the latter. Have you ridden the Go? You must have. Oh yeah, I ride the Go once in a while. We've ridden it together. So on there, it's a different way of traveling because it's more expensive, right? So it's attracting a different clientele.

So in terms of like the experience, right? So that is public transportation, but it is a higher cost public transportation. And as such, the experience is far, far greater. Yeah, I joked on the show before. Like all these places, all these services need either higher fees or address code. And you could solve a lot of problems like that. Honestly, I hate to say it, but that's really what it boils down to. And the, the more like show me a city that doesn't have a very intricate

transit network that also has some crazy crime problems. Like I really do think there's something there's something, there's a correlation there. I don't know exactly what it is, but I think there's a correlation there. Yeah, what about them? They got a metro over there. Yeah. They have crime, I think is limited because who the heck could do crime? You're just going to get sent to the gulag. Yeah, but by the time you're finished, you know, pulling your dick out to fuck the corpse of police are on top of you, you know, like that, but in America they don't have that. Anyway, whatever.

This is an insane story. And I've obviously said some things that are kind of hard to agree with, but I, I honestly, the more, the older I get and now having a kid, the less patients I have for the bottom quintile and you know what it is all the time now it's just more and more and more. And it's just like that, that chunk of the pie is like growing almost. It feels like it's just, it's accelerated. The fact what was important to you before is no longer important to you now. And what is important to you now was not important to you before.

And it's just accelerating the fact of that. Like it's just because you are changing as a, as a person, that it's a human being as an individual. So maybe, yeah. Do you want to talk, talk about the tariffs Trump did and what the transpired this path? Because it was nuts that the, that what happened with the Dow Jones, what happened with the markets as a whole fucking bonds. Like yeah, he's losing control.

It looks like I thought that the all in podcast was pretty good. A good barometer for the sort of political elite left versus the. Trump slash mega right. The right being represented on that show by Chamath and sacks and the left being represented by Larry Summers and Ezra Klein. Summers was Treasury Secretary and Ezra Klein is like, you know, famous sort of media voice on the left, intolerable to listen to, but does add value to the conversation, I think. I don't know what the gold tariffs are, but I know two things, okay? And again, there's people out there who will say

he's losing control, like you said, bond market this, stock market that, blah, blah, blah. He's never, you know, he's not gonna bring manufacturing back. No one knows what his goals are. When you're in a situation like this, again, this is my view, okay? I could be wrong, but I really think these are like

sort of table stakes or something like this the situation is fluid so yes you never know what's gonna come in terms of responses demands blah blah blah and announcing the target destroys your leverage in the negotiation so you're also not gonna know exactly what the end goal is some people say it's's manufacturing. Some people say it's China. Some people say it's getting rates down. I think all those things are nice to haves along the way to a bigger goal or smaller goal. I don't know. But the idea that like he's losing control, I'm not sure. I believe that the stock market is still trading at 30 times PE, forward PE. The Dow Jones, you know, yeah, it had a tough day, but what is it over the last three years? The S&P had a tough day. What is it over the last three years?

Gold, you know, has a tough day, drops under 3,200. What is it in the last three years? There's a feeling of entitlement from the investor class and I think also suddenly from Main Street who now after decades of Bernie Sanders style, you know, burn the Wall Street tycoons is suddenly concerned about the value of the S&P like fuck off. Okay. There's no proof that this is a lost cause, that they're on the right track, that they're off the track. No one knows.

And people pretending to know just are annoying at this point. You know, um, he's doing stuff that's within his power as a president. They're doing stuff that's different because the other point I don't think you can really argue against is the stuff that they were doing in the past is no longer working. So it's, it's really not, it's not like a difficult thing to get your head around and pretending that you understand that it's off the rails, pretending that you don't understand what's happening.

Like, just watch and see. No one can predict the future. No one knows what's going on in that war room. But to say guys like Besant and Lutnik and some of the other guys in the room there are incompetent or don't have a handle on this. If they don't have a handle on it, then who has a handle on it? You know, what is the more competent person you could put in there from the commentator class who thinks they have a handle on it? There isn't one. So, you know, I'm just watching and waiting. Let's see. Let's see how all this stuff turns out.

Isn't it like for people that are heavily tied to the markets as a whole, doesn't it kind of scary for them to see this wild ride? Well, here's the thing, right? Okay, I agree with this, but who are these people heavily tied to the markets? I would imagine the people that are older, that have exposures to see bonds, have exposure to see the Nasdaq and shit like that, right? And those are the ones that we're looking at it like and I mentioned it in the Bitcoin Side of the show and I asked you how worried were you like you're like whatever you didn't really bat an eye And I'm the same way because we are not only a different point in our life But our exposure to Bitcoin gives us a different perspective on things

Mm-hmm And then they said the only thing that really matters to me right now is as long as I have more Bitcoin tomorrow than I do Today, but a lot of these folks out there that have the exposure to the the markets like that. They don't have that I'm not trying to justify That that they should be in a you know that they should be doing this But what I'm trying to say is they're kind of upset they're worried, but I think with all this to be said The problem that really exists, I don't know if it could ever be tackled. And that is the trade imbalance, the money that can, because this tariff, this whole tariff idea

should have at least fixed that a little bit, right? I mean, will it? I don't know. I don't think so. And that's a problem. How do you know the problem is the trade imbalance? I don't know. I don't think so. And that's a problem. How do you know the problem is the trade imbalance? As long as there's a significantly more money going out than coming in, that works well. No, no, no, no. How do you know the problem they're trying to solve is the trade imbalance? What is, I mean, I'm assuming tariffs is probably trying to solve that as long as a few other things as well. Right. And that's what like, I'm not trying to say this is the problem, but this is a huge problem that exists. And I don't know if it could ever be fixed.

Yeah, I don't know. And as long as you have no idea, as long as you have this situation. And it's OK if you have the situation for a day, a month, a year or so forth. But when you have it for decades and it's going to be like this for decades moving forward. You're just sending money to another country. We watched China in the past 20 something years build tens of thousands of kilometers of subways. We barely build one stop over here. They have brand new airports. We have crumbling airports, high speed trains. Where are they are high-speed trains? You know what I'm trying to say like there's stuff that was built off money that was

Generated here when I say here in North America Yeah, United States and has gone there to spend and build up infrastructure over there It's wish it was saved and spent over here because that's all part of it the imbalance you you're buying goods from there And then they sell it back. Yeah, sorry, they buying goods from there and then they sell it back. Yeah. Sorry. They buying goods from there and then, you know, I mean, you're sending them money and they send us just processed goods is bullshit. I don't know how to fix that.

I don't know either. There's an article today I'm trying to find that I can't right now, but I think it was the FT. The FT had two articles over the last week or so. One framed for Americans and one framed for Europeans. And it's interesting, like in terms of like the media representation of this stuff, again, you know, I'm sort of coming to the conclusion that the media is just stupid and wants clicks. And most people that read the press are generally like kind of dumb.

The media frames this for America as, you know, now America is not going to have any Chinese goods to buy and they're going to have, they're not going to have all those options and that's bad for the American consumer. And then on the European side, it says why the American tariffs will mean that Europe is going to be flooded with Chinese goods and why that may be a problem. Like it's all just conjecture framing nonsense, nonsense. What's happened to the US dollar in the past week? I don't know. I can't believe this is the case.

It's down. So the Canadian dollar hits 72 cents. It's weakening. Yes. It's a weakening US dollar right now, which is another thing that's on their alleged list of goals. I really have no idea. But it might be and they're accomplishing it.

But now like fuck Canada 72 cents This is gonna help out guys like Mark Carney who are empowered because they look what we've done We've strengthened the Canadian dollars really but really it's actually just the Americans like the Americans control the currency market They get it's obvious, right? So You're a one for Canadian every Canadian dollar strength story is actually just a US dollar weakness story because every country is experiencing something similar. And then the 10 years, it went fucking bonkers. Yeah, but it's under control now. For a couple of days it was.

And then that's that's a sign. That's why I'm wondering, like, what the hell's going on? I don't know. And I mean, for me, I don't even know what the hell's going on. That's why I buy Bitcoin. For dumb people like me because it's easier for me just to exchange my Canadian dollars for Bitcoin and just hold the keys and I'm good. I don't have to put much thought into it. Very little input and I get a lot out of it. Yeah I mean it's the asset that matters I think in all this. I mean imagine what the Bitcoin price would have been with all this happening five years

ago. You know you would have seen a what 50% drop minimum uncertainty whatever right. It would have been significant here you know we're already off quite a bit I will admit but it's not really getting hammered the way you would expect it or you would have expected it two years ago, which is nice. Joey, I want to just talk about, and I did some research this past week and I was shocked at something. What's a metric that we use in Canada that we talk about in the show that defines or helps define a country that is doing well?

Like we talk about a metric. GDP per capita probably, right? Yeah, that's exactly it. Or gross fixed capital formation maybe would be another one. So I'm going to focus on the GDP per capita because that's because you know per person that's it's a very good metric. But did you know that in the past nine, no, 11 years, 10 years, 10 years, 10 years since the liberals have been in power. The GDP per capita, it's been nothing spectacular, right? Yeah. The previous administration, take a look at the GDP per capita from when Harper became prime minister to when he stopped becoming prime minister from 2006 to 2015.

Take a look at that gain and compare that same gain from 2015 from the liberal started to now. Yeah. Very flat, isn't it? They're very similar. Okay. Here's the thing though. The, the, the Harper years match the U S for the same time period.

Correct. And then 2015 they decoupled. That's the big problem. Correct. Not that they're low nominally, that comparatively they are falling off a cliff. That's the issue. But in terms of the growth, it's been like just pretty much the same. I'm just looking at that. Where the growth kind of stopped, if you go back further, GDP per capita is

when Paul Martin stopped becoming prime minister. That's when things started to flatten out. So the narrative of like the GDP per capita growing significantly under the previous regime, it's not the case. Yeah it didn't. Maybe comparatively to the United States. Like Rich Diaz made a great point about this on Looney Hour that you know because they had, who did they have on there? John Manley and somebody else. I forget. Oh! Yeah, John Manley, former deputy prime minister and fuck, I got to look it up here. Give me a second.

He was the finance minister too, wasn't he? Am I wrong? I forget. I forget. Yeah. John, John Manley and he was a prime minister. David Hurley. Yeah.

After Martin, he was, he was a finance minister. So they had them on the show and those two geezers tried to make the case, not that you just tried to make it, but basically that if you look at the Stephen Harper years, things were not great those years either. And Rich correctly points out, which by the way, we've pointed out on this show too, over the last year, that the problem with GDP per capita is not that it's flat for 20 years, it's that it was lockstep with the US that was also having trouble for a decade and a half, or a little bit more than a decade,

I guess, and then dropped off in 2015 when Trudeau took over, the Liberals took over, and hasn't recovered, and has since continued to fall against other countries that are in the OECD, for example, or in the G20, for example, or whatever, right? Other petrodollar countries, you name it, whatever your metric is comparatively, we are having a much harder time than we were before 2015. That's the big deal. And so, you know, I think there's a group of people manly among them who obviously knows better and just assumes that the Looney hour guys weren't prepared. Uh, you know, the tries to make this case that things were not great. Like again, always, always, always the attempts from these people to point to data in a vacuum and say that this is the only thing that matters and ignore

obvious comparisons, obvious relativity, obvious blah, blah, blah. It's it's embarrassing and it's, it shows. And I, I messaged, uh, Keith and Rich and Steve, I said, Hey, blah, blah, blah. It's embarrassing and it shows, and I messaged Keith and Rich and Steve, I said, hey, you know what, that was a great show. Those guys were dismissive of you three, they were unprepared for the interview, they were poo-pooing you and talking down to you when you came with what I thought was really good data

and level-headed arguments, and if they were on our show, Len, I would've lost my fucking mind. You should listen to it. the interview starts at about 31 minutes and it gets heated almost right away and It doesn't doesn't slow down It's a really really good 40 minutes or so with those two guys and it just shows you like it's a great example of the difference Between what the political elite think is reality and what the reality is in the data. This is the problem that Canada is having there's a vibes reality is in the data. This is the problem that Canada is having. There's a vibes economy and then a real economy and more and more people are moving from

the vibes economy to the real economy and seeing that things are not all they're cut out to be. I don't think those are those are not debatable points I don't think anymore. I think that just want to point out that things weren't all that great under the Harper regime as well. That's it's all I was trying to... They weren't. Nothing like I'm not right now. There's this narrative, right? And there's this like the almost romantic notion of the way things used to be. They weren't great, but like the question, were they better? Right. Comparatively. Yes. Because the GDP per capita was slightly better,

but I use the word slightly in there, right. And where it really stopped change, like where the drop-off started and it flatlined for a couple of decades almost is after Martin left. This is why I said start thinking about GFI too and start thinking about foreign investment. Those are the other two metrics that I look at that Rich mentions on the show. And these are, you can find these anywhere. World Bank has this data, Wikipedia has this data, like it's all over the place. It's not like Bloomberg terminal level stuff. It's easy to read and it's an indicator of a country's economic strength and health. And in all three cases,

we are like lower and lower and lower every year, which is just like, it's obvious as to why. So, you know, the low hanging fruit on this one is like the Canadian dollar strengthening in the past little while, the past week. And that's going to, it's a, it's a very strong political tool that could be used in a campaign. And I'm wondering how that, how Cardian could use this. It's funny. We both agree. It's a strong political tool, but we also both agree that it's a lie to say that it's

a Canadian story. Yes. A hundred percent. And even like the population is just so dumb that they did that's gonna be used like that. Well to quote it a little bit further earlier this month we had the carbon tax removed from... And by the way, and by the way okay like the Canadian population is so fucking stupid that they will tell you at dinner tables and parties that Trump is destroying his currency destroying his economy blah blah blah

But then when you tell them that the Canadian dollar strength is actually just an American story. They say no, it's a Carney story It's a Carney doing the right thing. We're like retarded zero Stuff experience with I don't I don't my Thankfully like the people I talked to are not that dumb but there are people who are that dumb out there for 100% I'm lucky that my you know, my mother-in-law was a banker. My father-in-law, you know, understands stuff like this. My mother and father, my friends, but that's not everyone's situation. And certainly then in the professional sphere, there's going to be more conversations that

are like that. Then like the one we just had about the DXY and US dollar weakness as opposed to Canadian dollar strength. Because all that, that's a hard conversation to have in 30 seconds. The TikTok enjoyers won't get that. Right. Uh huh. And that's a real problem.

And another thing about TikTok. Maybe simply Bitcoin can tell us how it's a Canadian dollar story. I'm sure they got 30 seconds to fucking do a story on that. And see how. This trillion dollar giant is down to 72, like, to 72. And you got to put the thumbnail. Like someone's got to be on fire in the picture. I mean, today holding the Singapore dollar. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. If I find somebody with a picture like that, I'm clicking that. So if anybody just out there, if somebody's click your videos, if it's a Singapore dollar, it's a

given. But the tick tock thing, almost immediately there's been a bunch of videos that are going on TikTok talking about how the expensive goods, the luxury goods are made in China. And have you seen this? Have you heard about this, Joey? I've seen some of the videos. It's funny. Like, and who's controlling this? Who's controlling the knob over there for the narrative that's coming to TikTok as a

CCP? Yeah. Are you familiar at all with the way these things are manufactured? I remember when I was working at a pawn shop, we used to get guys coming in and selling us what they would call dark factory products. Wait, wait, wait. Yeah, yeah. But I can't believe people are even naive enough to think that this shit was never made

over there. Oh, Len. We just talked about the Canadian electorate. What do you think? Come on. Yeah. Everything is fucking dark factory. Bangladesh, Singapore, China. Yeah. Dark factory products used to be... We would get Beats Studio

over earphones all the time and we never sold them because we tried not to sell counterfeit stuff. But there was a case to be made that these headphones were better than the Beats that Future Shop at the time was selling because they just didn't care that much about like packaging and the box, the box was a little bit blurry and the centering on the labeling was off and they called it dark factories because they apparently did this when the factory was on quote unquote downtime and just shipped, you know, a lower quality product with the same electronics otherwise that can't be sold in the department store, but could't be sold in the department store,

but could certainly be sold off the back of a truck or certainly be sold. And when we pulled those headphones apart, we couldn't find any differences in the tech. So for people who don't realize this yet, I mean, certainly you've like gone on DHGate or AliExpress in the last 10 years and seen like knockoff Nikes, knockoff sports jerseys. I don't know what else. There's knockoff everything, knockoff sunglasses, you name it. Like it's nothing there is real. And it's all manufactured overseas. What did you think? It was like a special factory where they're manufacturing your bag, but not the knockoff bag that looks exactly the same? Come on, you can't be that dumb.

100%. Or maybe they are that dumb, right? Maybe they're that dumb No, they certainly but where do they should come from? They always come from some other place. We don't have manufacturing Here right. It says we're so service based and What's the long what's the longevity for that? There's you know, it's gonna have to collapse You can't strictly rely on services forever. Eventually something has to give So we're buying shit that's just been coming from a factory has been repackaged. It's one gets the Pro V one one gets the Kirkland and it's pretty much the same ball. No, not entirely. But there's some truth to that like the Kirkland balls are very good and you get in for a

fraction of the cost. But really like why pay for the brand name? There's a thing. Loyalty, the brand name just bankrupts the customer or something like that. Because if you're just loyal to one particular brand, right? Fuck it. Learn to shop, learn to find deals, learn to get something else. Totally. Learn to open up a factory in Shenzhen. Make your own stuff. Easy. Vietnam I like. Oh like oh nice you've been looking yeah yeah how many square feet 20 000 square feet what are we making you think toilet paper oh interesting okay yeah that's actually that's made domestically you can't fight

that yeah we'll make dollar bills why don't we make knockoff block clocks? No The quality in that is it's it's hard to fucking it is it is elite I'll be honest that uh, I knocked it off the shelf a couple of times and then it's it's it's kind of protected There's a pillow down there because I I just have it just in case Yeah, because in case but it's still like it hit the pillow and it like Survived like, you know, yeah, like it like it's quality, but either way, there's this video that somebody posted on X and it's only a 24 second video, but it's showing in Vancouver, minimum wage job fair. And you could pretty much, yeah.

Hundreds of people, maybe thousands lined up. The job market is tough. Canadian dollars up though Len, 72 cents. Canada strong, lined up. The job market is tough. Canadian dollars up though, Len. 72 cents. Canada strong, elbows up. You know, in hockey, that's typically, it's frowned upon. Not typically it is, right? You're going to the box or worse if you have your elbows up in hockey, right?

Anyways, play clean. Minimum wage jobs, the competition's gotta be through the absolute roof. And remember, just four short years ago, a little bit less than four short years ago, there was a shortage in so many fields out there. We couldn't hire enough people. And now a lot has changed in a very short period of time. And if you saw like, just look at how things have gotten rotten in that short period of

time, it could get even more rotten in the same amount period of time moving forward. So it could get a heck of a lot worse. There was a violation in Vancouver by the way, last week. Did you see that? For provincial, right? For municipal. Somebody quit their job? I think so. And Mayor Ken Sim had a preferred candidate, friend of the show, Kenny. And I think his preferred candidate lost the guy who won. What is he? Is a declared communist.

So interesting stuff going on in Vancouver. I feel for mayor Sim. I hope he could rally the troops before the election cycle starts for the city proper. I can't imagine that's going to make things better, but you know, it's something to keep an eye on I guess is The background of this person that one is this somebody that has lineage to The far east maybe I don't I'm wondering I don't think so. Hey, you know what though? I'm not sure

I don't I don't remember the name so it could be I don't want okay. I don't know where the other curious Yeah, but that job fair video just goes to show you how bullshit things are going on over there. But that's like one, just snippet of how things are going. I did a quick search on food banks this week and I got a story from the community care food bank in St. Catharines in Thorold. And yeah, so this year, the first quarter, the demand is up 12% For the first quarter 2025 12% and they say this is interesting food bank demand Went down only once between 20 20 sorry 2017 and 2024 only one instance did food Sorry the food bank demand go down that was during the poke exactly that when people were receiving $2,000 serve checks each month

other than that The demand for the food bank continually goes up and 12% over one quarter That is a lot and they're saying they're bracing for Impacts due to US tariffs. I'm wondering how that's gonna impact the food bank but if food gets more expensive and as people have less money to spend on food and donate food to the food bank. It's going to be bad. The dollar thing, people are not, they don't understand that. And like not to make this a political topic, food banks are a terrible thing that people

have to use. But if it doesn't matter who wins the election, okay, if we don't as a country focus on resource extraction, the loonie's in trouble. And if the loonie goes down, your life is going to get harder. No matter if you got Bitcoin or don't have Bitcoin, no matter if you got real estate or don't have real estate, your life is going to get harder. If the loonie goes down to 50 cents. And I don't think a lot of people are ready for that, honestly, the feeling of that, how

that especially the older crowd, the, you know, 55 and up who've basically been immune to any of this, right? They have a house, they don't have a mortgage, they, you know, are going to go on trips twice a year or whatever. Like they've been insulated pretty, pretty, more or less the entire time, right? Since this like, oh wait, and and and and following so that's gonna hurt a lot of people the fixed income crowd and we've talked on the show about how stuff like ODSP doesn't cover nearly the amount of money you need to live a decent life in Ontario or probably other

provinces as well you know and they're they're kin programs how's it gonna look if the dollar goes down another 30% right? It's not going to eat. You don't know. You don't know real pain. As like I said on the show before a trade war with the United States is not buying Canadian ketchup. Okay.

And putting clever quotes under Wayne Gretzky wines. It's not being able to eat. I thought we number of calories you do. How do we vilify Gretzky? Well, yeah, that's not being able to eat. I thought we number of calories you do. We vilified Gresky. Well, yes, what I mean, we did like they're putting like stupid quotes underneath these wines now, like, it tastes like Trader or whatever, right? Like the notes of Trader notes of groveling, whatever they put there instead of like,

you know, are we now celebrating that Ovechkin the Russian? So did you see the CBC versus the Canadian? Did you see the CBC coverage of this? Versus Gresky, the Canadian? Did you see the CBC coverage of this? No. CBC made it political. You should go check it out. It's like, you know, Russia, blah, blah, blah. It's just so lowbrow, man.

So wait, wait, wait. For that moment, Gresky was okay? Yeah, I guess. I don't know. Right? Like what the fuck? Because he got passed. Can we talk a bit about just the debates? Because we are not going to see people before the debates happen this Wednesday and Thursday.

The topics for the debates were announced then. I'm going to pull it up here just because I want to get this right. But I found this before the show and didn't tell you about it, though I should have. Let me pull it up. I'll put a link to the tweet in in the chat too for people because you should look at this and you should ask yourself why this is. In the two debates, so the debates are run by elections, this is an elections group that was started by the liberals in 2018 and decides on topics and dates and all these things and

leadership and formatting. Famously, there was like a complete box job during the 2018 debates where there were five moderators including by the way, Evan Solomon, who was a moderator at that time for the debates. So just, you know, continued incest between CBC, the Liberal Party, and the candidates. I'm going to pull this up and we'll have a quick look here together. Here are the debate topics for the, I don't know, boost it. For the- Boost it! No, for the French debate.

It's cost of living. You got to zoom in, Joey. It's going to be hard for people to see. Can you? Okay. I'll zoom in. I'll zoom in I'll zoom in I

can't just right-click and save it or something or I'll just I'll read it out. Okay, the the French language debate is covering cost of living energy and climate the trade war Identity and sovereignty and immigration and foreign affairs I would argue that every single one of those things is a top five issue for the broader electorate. Every single one of them. Only in the French debate. Meanwhile, in the English debate, you get cost of living, energy and climate, leading in a crisis. Interesting. Public safety and security. Interesting. And tariffs and threats to Canada. That's the English language debate. Now you tell

me which one of those is gonna be easier on Mark Carney and by how much of a Delta it's gonna be easier. His command of the French language is gonna make it even worse too. No, but the English the English debate is gonna be so much easier for... No, no I'm trying to say like not only is he gonna struggle with the topics but his command of the French language It's gonna make a double. Yeah hard on him. And you know what the best part is No, we're gonna hear. Yeah. Yep. No one's gonna be watching and the CBC like As I said, my mother-in-law is here now and I was saying to her before dinner that cuz she's asked me about the election

And I said, I don't, I don't really know who's going to win, but I see a lot of things that make me think there's a lot of work going into making Carney look good leading up to this election. The polling over sampling, the NDP candidate turned pollster who's asking door knockers to collect data instead of actually getting answers from people on the phone, the debate schedule and debate topics, the language split, like you name it. And I'll give you an example of how it's being slanted toward the guy running for the liberals.

And I'm not saying it's on purpose, but the more it happens, the more you have to assume that there's some intention behind it. And it's hard for me to look at that debate schedule and say, yeah, this is fair. It's not fair. It's very clearly not fair. And it's, it's frustrating as a Canadian, you're paying for that. You know, it's the election commission is paid for by you and me. It's the tune of millions of dollars every year by the sounds of it. They collect a lot of money. And you know, by the way, I should mention too that part of the effort when it comes to data collection, you know, liberal party, liberal party, you know, political parties have access to like your charitable donations, your interests in terms of

like just kind of data floating out there around about you. So when they call you, they're they call you, they're not calling you necessarily because of your postal code or your gender or your age. They may be calling you based on what's called a persuasion profile that they've got this information from. I just heard this on Michael Geist podcast today. And so there's someone on there talking about the data that's collected by political parties and how it's rather unsavory and unethical.

And so when they call people to get these numbers for the polls, it's not just because of your postal codes, you know, L8R or whatever your postal code is. It's because they think they can get an answer out of you. That is a certain answer that will reflect well for the candidate that they prefer. I am a hundred percent certain of this. And the idea that this goes on and no one knows about it and you pay for it, because as you mentioned before Len, what does official party status gets you?

It gets you a lot of little perks, right? Among them, probably something to do with money for polling, right? You get some, some amount of money. And you got more staff. Yeah, whatever. Right. So that stuff could be deployed in many different ways. All this stuff is flywheeling toward an outcome that makes me think there is a

real effort to make Carney look good. And I don't know if it's happening or not, but it's worth thinking about at least when you look at the polls, look at the data, and then look at stuff like campaign turnouts. Did you see the CBC article talking about the campaign turnouts? Did you see this article? What's it say? It was saying that the number of people that are advertised there are both attending the liberals and the conservatives are false. They're falsely increased. And in fact, they went to what are they using cell phone data? They go as far as to getting the CBC does this, right? They fucking hand counted the heads.

Amazing. Cut the funding in that fucking place. Just cut the fucking funding already. Every fucking day it's something else. So one of them, they're saying that it was attended in Edmonton, 15,000 people. They showed the picture to 15,000 people. They drew dots on the heads and they said, here's a comparison of a Winnipeg Jets game with has 15,000 people.

It's great stuff. But yeah, this is all interesting. Well, I'll see you on Wednesday with Heather. We'll be back. I'm going to watch the French language debate and see how I feel about it. And I recommend that other people do the same. Tell your friends there's translation available online. You can go to YouTube and get the English feed from the French. Yeah, they always translated it. But no one knows

that. That's the thing. No one knows. Like you ask people if they're watching the French language debate, why I don't speak French. Like no, because the topics are different and it's translated. You should be watching both. And I'll be watching that Thursday. I'll be watching the English language debate. And then Monday, Len, we will talk about what happened. And until then, I guess. No, two Mondays from now is the actual election. We'll be talking about the debates. Yeah, because two weeks from now is the big day, April 28th. And I believe on top of that, this Friday, I could be wrong, but I believe that advanced polling starts this Friday.

Maybe. So you could go out and cast your ballot. I'm voting for Bitcoin. I don't know about you. I'm writing my own name in. Go Bitcoin. That's it. Anyway, take care everybody. We'll see you next time. See you later.