The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast - Bitcoin News With a Canadian Spin - The West is Fracturing - And Canada is in the Middle

Episode Date: February 22, 2026

Doomberg joins The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast for a wide-ranging and hard-hitting conversation on geopolitics, power alignment, energy, and what it all means for markets and Bitcoin.In this episode, we break down the growing tensions between Canada and the United States, the influence of the UK and European financial interests, and whether the West is showing signs of internal fracture. As global power structures shift, where does Canada stand — and what are the consequences for energy dominance, monetary policy, and Bitcoin?🔥 In this episode:Canada’s position between the U.S., UK, and broader Western alliancesWhy energy remains the foundation of geopolitical powerThe structural pressures building inside the Western blocWhat markets are missing about the current macro environmentBitcoin as a signal — not just an assetThis conversation connects geopolitics, capital flows, monetary systems, and the strategic direction of North America in a rapidly changing world.———🇨🇦 THE CANADIAN BITCOINERS PODCASTNew episodes weekly. Conversations with the sharpest minds in Bitcoin, macro, and finance — from a Canadian lens.🔔 Subscribe & hit the bell so you never miss an episode!👍 If you enjoyed this conversation, smash the like button — it helps the algorithm show this to more people.💬 Drop a comment below — where do you think Canada is heading?———📲 Follow us:@CanadianBTCPod on XCanadianBitcoiners.com———⚠️ Disclaimer: This podcast is for entertainment and educational purposes only. Nothing discussed should be considered financial advice. Always do your own research.#Bitcoin #Doomberg #CanadianBitcoiners #Geopolitics #Macro #Energy #Finance #Canada #USA #UK #BTC #Markets

Canadian propaganda controlled by the British. Very well-timed and interesting glowing profiles of Mark Carney, starting to appear in various Canadian semi-government-controlled outlets. Leaders are saying it's time to open up China. You know, American energy dominance. You could just throw the word North American in front of that. And then we view the Alberta Separatist movement constitutional crisis as sort of a toggle that is being used to continue to keep a lid on Karni.

Beach and Davos was like the only world leader to basically call out Trump. Luke planted in our minds many years ago this concept of understanding the U.S. as being in a civil war between, let's call it CIA Wall Street versus the Pentagon. On the level of a sovereign, in terms of energy trade, for example, there's really not much anyone can do over here. Here's what I honestly think will happen. Friends and enemies, the CBP welcomes back at Doomburn. for this episode of the show.

We have a very wide-ranging discussion, covered a lot of ground, talking about Alberta, separatism, independence. Their sovereignty push, also the push for sovereignty by Ottawa versus America and Washington and what it means right now to be living next to Trump's USA.

We also talk about Mark Carney's rise to power, what's next in terms of his plans for our country and the broader global order. His speech in doubt, and much more on that front. Also, we covered AI, something I haven't heard Duneberg talk too much about, but he had a lot to say about that. It was a really fun part of the discussion. And then, of course, some Bitcoin talk near the end of the show, which you will love. Don't forget to leave a like on the video. It helps us a lot. Subscribe to the channel for more content. We have another

banger interview coming next week that I won't spoil, but it's with a name that you will know for sure. Keep an eye on for that. And in the meantime, enjoy this episode of the Canadian Bitcoiners podcast with Duneberg. is my great pleasure to welcome back to the podcast, the green chicken, the, I came up with this name a little while ago, the profit of the poultry, Doomberg. It's great to see you, sir. How are you doing? How are things over there? How's the team? You know, Joey, doing great things for having me back on. You know, I was thinking this morning, I got Canadians and I got Bitcoiners. I mean, what a combination. What a day. I mean, it's going to be a great day today. Great way

to start today. Yeah, I'm very excited to have you. We're talking before the show. the sort of new, I don't want to say new, but renewed obsession that many Bitcoiners, especially up here in Canada, have with the current state of affairs in Washington, the current state of affairs in Alberta, vis-a-vis Ottawa, among other things. So I want to hop right in. You deserve a lot of credit for the last, you know, I mean, for the last five years, really, but the last year and change since Carney became a potential candidate for leadership of the Liberal Party, you haven't been wrong about almost anything going on.

border. It's true. I don't have to say that. My guests are often eating a bit of humble pie when they come on the show because, you know, as any prognosticator will tell you. And as you know, you're not right about everything all the time. But, you know, you've been wrong about very little. Maybe some of the details on the margins. But it's been pretty much a, you know, a pound for pound the best set of prognostications anywhere. I want to ask you, you know, number one, where do you see Canada in terms of its relationship with Carney now? given that it was non-existent. Only, you know, it's February 26, 14 months ago, basically non-existent. Where do you see the relationship with Canada and Carnegie now? I think it's probably best to level set how we think about such things. Sure. Because if I just dive into the answer, it's probably not going to make a lot of sense and might seem like it's out of left field.

We pride ourselves on being good lateral thinkers. And for those that are unfamiliar with the practice, to think laterally, you need two things. You need a set of axioms that you just assume are true, that you then use for brainstorming sessions. But the second thing that you need, which is the hard part for most people, is you need to have zero emotional attachment

to the correctness of that axiom, or those axioms. They just need to work. And if you practice lateral thinking enough, it sort of just comes second nature. second nature. But that's the hard part for most people. Like they start with whether their foundational assumptions are right, literally, morally, whatever. And then they work from there. And if they have an axiom that they don't think is right or can't believe is right or don't

understand why it might be right, they just can't use it as a as an opening salvo for brainstorming. And in December of 2024, we put out a piece that led us down, the journey of Canadian politics. We're interested in Canadian politics. Of course, Canadian politics is interesting, but we're interested in Canadian politics because of Alberta, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan and the resource base that's out there because we're a energy newsletter. So we developed an axiom, what we call a mental model, based on some pattern recognition of understanding how Canadian propaganda works. We came up with an axiom that Donald Trump wants Mark Carney to be elected Prime Minister of Canada.

That was the first axiom. And then the second axiom was the entire conspiracy was oriented around unsticking Alberta's energy. So back then, we wrote a piece called Alberta Clipper, which sort of announced this mental model to our subscribers. Now, you should know that we have lots of mental models that we never publish, either because they may not be working or we don't think our audience is ready to hear them, or our audience might not be interested in the, but we went out with Alberta Clipper in December of 2004 before Mark Carney was even a contract that you could bet on on Polly Market.

And using those two axioms for lateral thinking brainstorming, we came up with the thought that Mark Carney would swiftly replace Justin Trudeau as Prime Minister. and that contrary to the hopes and beliefs and dreams of Canadian conservatives, and we have plenty of them as subscribers, he would be a far more formidable candidate in a general election than was thought. At the time, Pierre was, and I never say his last name because I always jungle its pronunciation, but Pierre was at like 94% on Polly Market for winning the next election, and we're like, there's just no way. And so we put that out.

That kind of surprised people. For our American audience, it was kind of an introduction to Canadian politics. So they kind of enjoyed it. But our Canadian audience either really enjoyed it or got angry with us, which is interesting in its own right. Anyway, how did we come up with that axiom? Well, Mark Carney is a globalist delight. You know, Harvard.

Goldman Sachs, Bank of England. I mean, could you be more globalist than Bank of England? And Canadian propaganda is controlled by the British. We noticed a bunch of very well-timed and interesting glowing profiles of Mark Carney starting to appear in various Canadian semi-government-controlled outlets.

And then when you trace back Mark Carney's history, of course, there's an overlap with Trump. Carney was the chair of Brookfield asset management, just a tidy trillion dollars under management and obviously heavily involved in the real estate business, a lot of overlap in New York and who knows New York real estate more than Trump. And then we came up with a hypothesis that this whole Governor Trudeau, 504th state talk, was meant to demean and diminish Trudeau to make room for Carney, which happened. And then in a follow-up piece in April, we said the fix is in, and that's where we expanded upon the fact that Canada needed a faux constitutional crisis in order to finally be rid of itself of the global warming mental disease, I guess we would call it.

And so last thing I'll say, I know this is a bit of a long answer, but Carney, in our view, was always the Richard Nixon going to China. Now, only Nixon could have opened up China because he was a staunch anti-communist. And whenever you stare down a big cultural moment that you've built up, you need the hardest of the hardcore insider in order to undo it. Because if Pierre had been in charge of signing an MOU at Alberta, you'd see environmentalist rioting in the streets. But Carney can do it because he has a resume that is utterly consistent with the movement. And boy, if one of the tribes' leaders,

saying it's time to open up China. Perhaps one should take a pause and not go to the street and stop letting one's hair on fire. And so Carney was always the one to unstick Alberta's energy. For whatever reason, we don't need to understand why it has been suddenly decided that Alberta's energy needs to be unstuck. We just came to that conclusion by pattern recognition. You know, American energy dominance, you could just throw the word North American in front that and it makes a lot of sense. And then we view the Alberta separatist movement constitutional

crisis as sort of a toggle that is being used to continue to keep a lid on reactionary environmentalist left overreacting to what Carnegie is doing. Look, look, orange man, bad, and we have this constitutional crisis. Yes, climate change is a big deal, but this is Canada we're talking about. So that's the operating mental model that allowed us to predict what we have done. And so we'll see. And then, you know, last thing, last thing I'll say is that if you're going to be an effective lateral thinker, when your mental model stopped working, you have to discard them. This one has not yet stopped working, so we keep it.

Okay. There's a few threads I want to pull on there. Let's start with the separatist movement, and it's, you know, we'll call it its usefulness to Carney, to the liberal government, and to some of this other, some of these other movements that are starting around the country, typically, you know, or I should say principally, we'll talk about energy. But one of the things we've seen come to light over the last few weeks, I'm sure you read Blacklocks or know someone who reads Blacklocks. Obviously, there's been close to a million or three quarters of a million national election ballots and other equipment ordered by Sussex

over the last few weeks. There seems to me to be a push for, a continued, as you mentioned there, you know, support networking Canada versus Orange Man Bad. It's my opinion that we're going to have an election here in Canada in the next four or five months under the dual specter of the continued Trump, you know, loom and now also the Alberta separation ghoul that's starting to brew. Do you have a view on whether or not these two things can continue long enough for Carney to win what will probably wind up being a dynastic majority, both because he will completely erase any hopes that the conservatives had. I think ill-conceived of hopes at this point, honestly,

that Pierre-Pol-Leab would remain the leader and be competent and be a potential PM, but also because, you know, by wiping out that party, the NDP is already very financially distressed and barely popular at all, except with a few pinkos here up north. You're looking at probably an 8 to 12-year liberal government, maybe two terms under Carney and one under someone who's in his cabinet or someone not yet to be discovered. Do you have a view on this and do you think that an election in Canada changes the direction of the country if in fact the Carney liberals do get a huge supermajority?

Yeah. So that solves a couple problems. One is the pivot from 94% conservatives to ultra-slim functional governing, I wouldn't even call it a majority that Carney currently had. was about as far as they could push it. And that has left Carney with less degrees of freedom, insulation from the left wing of the Liberal Party than he probably needs to truly unstick Alberta's energy. But the other thing it does is this NDP firewall of resistance

in British Columbia needs to be dealt with. We wrote a piece on British Columbia in politics, a couple of months ago, you know, you can't get Alberta's energy to China without British Columbia being on board. And so I know it's the provincial NDP in British Columbia, but a good whipping at the national level is probably not going to hurt the cause. And so, yeah, I think your intuition is probably right. And it's probably time for an election. I think Carney's, you know, speech at Davos was meant to be the opening gambit of that election campaign. You know, look at, look, if you think about Canadian culture, and again, I know this is weird that an American-based newsletter spends a lot of time thinking about it.

Chicken, chicken, by the way. You just want to remember that. That's what we say, yeah. But we have some Canadian expertise on our team. what unites Canadian culture more than the overbearing cultural domination threat of U.S., the U.S. culture. And you couldn't script a more overbearing, ogre, ugly American bear than Donald Trump, right? And so Carney's speech in Davos was like the only world leader to basically call out Trump. That's what that speech was. Hey, the old system worked. It was very cynical speech, by the way.

Hey, the old system worked great for us. We knew it was a giant lie and a fraud to the rest of the world, but it worked great for us. And now that Orange Man Bad has turned the laser on the middle countries that were allied and slipped streaming behind the U.S. gravy train. Now we need a new deal. And I, Mark Carney, and the one to leave, look, it was an incredibly articulate speech, pitched perfectly to the right audience at the right time. But I think a stronger majority and a fatal weakening of the NDP whose utility has long ago served its purpose is probably the next evolution in this grand plan. And then a stronger Carney can negotiate a better deal with Alberta. Alberta gets most of what it wants. We can all go back to focusing on Quebec

and worrying about whether Quebec will leave and Alberta's hydrocarbons will flow to the world and North American energy dominance takes a giant step forward. You know, after that Davos speech, I think a few days later, he returned to Laurentia, we'll call it. I can't remember if he gave the speech in Ottawa or Ontario or, sorry, excuse me, Ontario or Quebec, but he gave an nationally televised basically pep rally shortly after. Did you know that? Yeah. And so like, you know, a lot of the stuff he said at Davos was echoed for a more domestic audience. It was a lot more focused on Canada and unity and things of this nature. And I think you're, you know, you're spot on. I really do believe that he's going to try and centralize

power in a way that no liberal government is able to do since 2015, basically. And at that time, you may have, you know, I think a lot of people probably have, um, fond memories if you're on the left of that 2015 Trudeau election, but never did he have the cunning intellect and I think the connections of Carney, right? Even in the party, it's really going to be fun to see what this guy can do. And I'm, you know, I'm not a liberal voter, but to pretend that Pollyev is the better politician or the more fitting politician, I think, is a fool's error. And we said that a lot in our program as well. I, you know, I only need to see the same TikTok five times

to know that this man's not agile enough to lead a country during this whether it's fabricated or not. Well, you have to understand of course that he was never meant to. Yeah.

And I think he's played his part quite well actually. You know, we in the piece the fix is in, again, not to get too cynical, but we like to joke that the strongest evidence that something was predictable is to have predicted it. We had a caption

and a piece with Daniel Smith in April of 2025 called, you know, Best Actress in a Drama, like she's playing her bit too. The Energy of Alberta will get unstuck, and everything else sort of flows from that. And I think this brings up one of the core reasons why Duneberg has been successful, and one of the great mysteries that we find is how so few analysts begin with energy as their sort of overarching foundation through which to view the world

because if you do, it doesn't explain everything, but it explains a lot. It allowed us to predict Venezuela long in advance too. We wrote a piece in December of 2023 called the New World's Oil, where we cataloged, you know, from the tip of the South American continent all the way up to the Arctic,

just how much, oil and gas could be developed if the U.S. began to focus on the Western Hemisphere. And here we are with the Dunrow Doctrine, you know, less than two and a half years later? Do you think that what is the best way to phrase this question? The separatist impulse seems to still be alive and well in Alberta, regardless of whether people are playing a part in, you know, a sort of grand play. But I'm curious, you know, there will, it seems to me that there's some. fairly high likelihood there's going to be a referendum this year. You know, the number of signatures required decreased by Premier Smith. And so now you really do have this, you know,

inertia behind a vote at the provincial level about whether or not Alberta should remain. I'm going to phrase the question in two parts. Number one, do you think a referendum in Alberta is likely this year, given sort of the procedural, you know, whatever limitations of those signature gathering folks? Or, I should say secondly, What percentage of people need to vote leave for the U.S. to view Alberta as weak enough to start engaging with them as a separate state? I realize this may be maybe a little outside of what your sort of core belief is. But to me, one of the things that's, you know, I think often overlooked is you can have as many referendums, votes as you like. but if the U.S. decides that they want to engage with you on the level of a sovereign

in terms of energy trade, for example, there's really not much anyone can do over here. Deva, if you want any of this stuff, let me know what you think. Yeah, I have much more simple, simple view than that. If you want an example of how worthless referendums are, just go look at the history of the formation and now the current operation of the European Union and compare what Brussels is doing versus what the various sovereign populations in Europe were promised or were sold during the referendums. Here's what I honestly think will happen. All of this talk about referendum. And by the way, the individuals in Alberta who are separatists, who want to leave, want a better

deal. These are all authentic, justifiable feelings from the Eastern Canadian exploitation of Western Canada, which has gone on for centuries. I mean, let's just call it what it is. Saskatchewan should be one of the wealthiest places on Earth, for example. Another piece that we wrote called Tempting Target. One of the only people to write about that, by the way. Yeah. As a side note, you know, those pieces of that are you know, those pieces of the same thing. tend out to convert a lot of new subscribers, but we're still glad we wrote them. So, here's what I believe is going to happen if I just extend the mental model for it. There'll be a lot of talk about referendum, and it might even be called.

So what's the, okay, here's how we think. What is the ideal outcome for whatever the Oracle is that controls Canada? The ideal outcome is a referendum is held that is thoroughly defeated. after Alberta's energy is unstuck. So, if you're going to be that cynical, then we are, referendum signature threshold is crossed.

By the way, in the meantime, Kearney's re-elected with this huge majority and has the power to do what he wants. Just before the election, a fantastic deal is signed with Alberta for Albertans. And the energy is sucked out of the referendum balloon two months before the vote is held, and it fails, you know, 27 to 72 and 1% of the people didn't know how to vote.

And that's the end of Alberta separatism. And Alberta's energy is unstuck. And the people who control Canada can set about the task of comfortably controlling Canada again. Yeah, I don't disagree with any of that. It's been a fun thought exercise over the last year. or so dating back to when Premier Smith enlisted, geez, what was it, it was an accounting firm run by Bill Moreno. And it was actually Morneux-Chapell for a time, but it was renamed and, you know,

them talking about how much their pension would go up if, you know, pensions would go up and tax cuts and whatnot would be available if they were to separate. And of course, the equalization payment monster is just a freak show at this point that no one outside of Alberta seems to admit is a problem. Let's talk a bit about the Don Row doctrine that Trump's sort of sudden urge for hemispheric control. I shouldn't say sudden urge because this really has been their faux poe for a long time. Whether or not they've chosen to act on some of these threats over the last 40 years is a different story. I admit that.

I think a lot of people are missing sort of the forest for the trees yet again because there's just so much catnip now in front of them, especially the older voters, with regard to what Donald Trump is doing. saying, thinking, feeling, who is he calling a pig in the press core this week? And no one's really thinking much about some of the bigger picture stuff. And I'm guilty that too. I have to be honest from time of time. I do get wrapped up in a good quote. But do you think that there is now this, there is going to be this longer term push for hemispheric dominance past Donald Trump?

Because it seems to me that what's happened is there is really a scramble for territory, for energy, for shipping lanes, even as some of those things seem. to be experiencing, you know, a modernization and diminishing returns. I'll give you an example. You know, recently there was a presentation given by, I think, Lockheed Martin, where their new weapons tech doesn't make shipping lanes required as far as patrol, but rather a danger as far as patrol because, you know, you sort of become sitting duck if you have certain fleets in those areas. And so this is a changing, it's a changing game. But it seems to me that, regardless of who the president was at the moment, this would be sort of an invariable outcome

because the requirement exists regardless of who's in the White House. Do I have that right? Do you have a separate set of thoughts on that? Yeah. Steele yourself for another long answer. So funny, you should mention force for the trees in your preamble because that's the name of Luke Roman's business. And he writes a great weekly newsletter called Tree Rings, which I happily pay to subscribe to. And Luke planted in our minds many years ago this concept of understanding the U.S. as being in a civil war between,

let's call it CIA Wall Street versus the Pentagon. And the CIA Wall Street side of the U.S. is all for outsourcing, financialization, enrichment of the oligarch class, Silicon Valley, quarterly earnings, give away all the manufacturing base, got the U.S. And if you could view Trump as sort of

pentagons counter to that, hey, we need steel factories in Pittsburgh because we can't build ships in Philadelphia without steel. If you have that as sort of an overarching mental model, then suddenly Trump's return to power could be viewed as sort of the next battle in that Civil War,

2020 election being the CIA and Wall Street's counterpunch. to the Trump movement, Russia hoax, Russia Gate hoax being a counterpunch to that, you know, Joe cadaver as president for four years, as laughable as that was. Anyway,

in that model, the Pentagon has been aware of and is now alarmed at its utter dependency on China and cannot sustain U.S. global, unipolar hegemony, understands that, needs to beat a temporary retreat,

gather resources in its neighborhood, and reinvigorate U.S. manufacturing if it has any hope of being a peer power to China, let alone a globally dominant power ever again in the future. And so it is through that lens that we have been predicting what's going on in the Western Hemisphere. and in that sort of operating construct, the Western Hemisphere being the new backyard of the U.S. Pentagon military industrial complex

makes a lot more sense. Venezuela, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Canada, Mexico, Canada, Greenland. And when you integrate the resource base and frankly in some of those countries, the relatively cost-efficient labor base, you then see the foundations for a competition with China that is viable. And even taking it a step further, the one vulnerability that China has that the U.S. is omnipowerful in is oil, gas, hydrocarbon. carbon fuels outside of coal, which means disrupting Iran is in the interest of that project,

because Iran is a provider of oil to China, and sanctioning Russia's tanker fleet, boarding it, disrupting it, shooting it, because Russia is the largest provider of oil to China. Those things start to make holistic sense. And so the fact that Orange Man Bad is being blamed for all of this is convenient in a way. But we think for now the Pentagon wing of the U.S. Civil War is on the ascent. And you could even get into the whole Epstein stuff through this lens as well, which I'd probably rather not. but you get where I'm going, right? So on sticking Alberta's energy and reinvigorating Venezuela and bailing out Malay because of Vacamerta,

I'm sure very few of your listeners have ever heard of Vacamerta, but it's been on our radar for a while. All of this sort of then makes holistic sense through credit for credit is to Luke Gromond's inspiration for us to develop that as a mental model. You mentioned a number of different things on the energy front there. The other security issue that I keep on hearing, and I hate to bring this up because I do feel like it's a bit overplayed and a bit overhyped, is AI. And I think if you view security, if you view AI as a security issue because I can spend my time making pictures of like Duneberg with a horse body at any time a day, any time of night, I think you're missing, again, to go back to. to Luke's title there, you're missing the forest for the trees. I think this is more about chips, especially at the wafer level and the availability of such things as far as other applications that may be critical for defense.

I haven't heard you talk about AI in some time in your public appearances, unless I missed one that maybe you covered it in. But I'd be curious, given that you do have a pretty solid focus on energy and its relationship to geopolitics. Where do you come down on something like AI and its relationship to geopolitics? Yeah. Yeah, if you thought I was going to be, let's say, cynical about AI, you're mistaken. So, in full disclosure, we're pretty deeply involved in AI in our private lives.

Founding investors in an AI startup, I chair the board of one. It's nothing. Not nothing. It's great. But it's not anything you would know. But I only mention that full disclosure, but also because through that participation, which has been, you know, a couple of years in the making, we've had a bird's eye view,

potential title of an upcoming Dumberg book, by the way, to what's been going on. And I could tell you that it's extraordinary what's going on. You can't undersell it. Sorry, you can't oversell it. People have no idea what's coming. the doubling time. When I first read Ray Kurzweil's book,

The Singularity's Near, I'm sure you read it. We're aware of it. I read it in the mid-2000s when it came out. You know, and you read the first chapter, and you put the book down, and you say, whoa. And there's a phrase in that book, and I'm sure I'm going to butcher it, but it has stuck with me forever. And the phrase was,

the doubling time of technology is decreasing rapidly. And soon the doubling time will be a day. In other words, the pace of technological growth will double every day, which was his sort of definition of the singularity. And the doubling time of AI power has gone from years to months to weeks just in the past 12 months. And what we're seeing now at the true cutting edge is shocking, scary, disconcerting, and rapidly collapses to the foundational question of what does it even mean to be human anymore. And so far from, you know, poo-pooing what's going on, I count me on the alarmist way.

of AI observers? Help me understand a thesis that I am in the middle of preparing and sort of half-baked, but you speak a lot about the de-dollarization and the printing, maybe not in those terms, but terms that everyone can understand and see in their lives. One of the things I've thought about a lot in the last few weeks, because I happened, although I did make a crack there to bring in the topic, I'm with you.

I recently sprung for a, you know, pro-level, max-level, whatever you call it, clot account and I am, you know, I'm shocked by how good it is. And this is sort of a retail product at this point, right? I have not dove it into co-work or code or anything like that, but running a media outlet and doing some other work for some other media outlets, I can see that there's so much firepower here. And I want to ask you about this idea I have about the tech contillion effect. And what I mean by that is it seems to me like early adopters of this technology, you know, I don't know if early adoption are people who adopt now or for the early majority maybe in that curve. But it seems to me that if you don't adopt this in your work, in your private life,

in your business, the speed at which you will be left behind is adjacent to the speed at which insiders are able to take advantage of the contillion effect to buy resources and assets on the cheap and leave the rest of the world behind downstream of the money printing spigot. it's concerning to me on the side of national security because as that gap grows, the likelihood that a population becomes destabilized because their quality of life is not necessarily worse, but is so much worse than people just one echelon above them in the social hierarchy. It seems to me to be greater than zero percent chance. Do you guys give that any thoughts?

You must, I'm sure. Look, look, look. We are an incredibly small team. and we've incorporated AI into a fair bit of what we do. With the overarching objective that our brand will always be authentically human, even though we choose to identify as a green chicken, because we do believe, just as a side note, that one of the inevitable consequences of what is transpiring

is that that which is authentically human is about to soar in value as it becomes harder and harder to discern what is authentically human. and we can talk about that. But the speed with which we operate compared to large, slow, dumb companies is amazing. Watching

the Washington Post lay off 300 of orders and we're thinking, what in the flying F do these 300 people do? Like, I don't Well, the interesting thing is our team comes from industry, and five years ago, which was 5,000 years ago in AI terms, there weren't many people, there weren't many people talking about energy in the content creator world that have significant industrial experience, mostly

because they're stuck in industry behind public affairs teams and investor relations teams. That was the Duneberg Market and Efficiency that we exploited. And when we talk to our friends who are stuck at those companies, we might as well be speaking Chinese. I mean, they have no freaking idea of what's coming. And like, it's very difficult to wrap your brain around it once you've been exposed in the way that you have. By the way, side note, that Sam Bankman Fried is in jail is stunning. I mean, the guy was a seed investor in an atropic, albeit with illegally, you know, misdirected customer funds.

Yeah. Those people would be wildly rich today. Yeah. And he's in jail. Yeah. I mean, it's just incredible. He's got to be the most tragic. Obviously, it deserves to be in jail, but I'm still saying, like, you get what I'm saying, right?

Anyway, I don't want to get too sidetracked. Like, yeah. There's a corporation with thousands of people in it who do nothing but press buttons. I mean, that is just going away. Yeah. Like rapidly, violently. And it won't be, there won't be anything that they could do about it. I can tell you again.

And even just when you're blown away, Anthropic and Open AI drop two world beating models on the same day. I know. That are like five times better than what you were just blown away by. Yeah, yeah. And so my point is, like, if the doubling time is truly weeks, and it is, we have reached the singularity. Ray Kurzweil was right. Now, by the time those people get disrupted, the technology will have improved. So, like, again, it's very difficult to predict what's coming.

I just know being close to the front of it, like you were probably around the same area. I'm not a machine learning expert but I know people who are I did stay at a holiday in Express last night the vast majority of people have no freaking idea and you know how this feels it feels like I remember because I'm you know internet aware

and was a heavy Twitter user back in the day pre-Dunberg and I remember being what now in hindsight was clearly a psychops watching videos of Chinese people dropping dead from COVID and I remember being in Home Depot stocking up on supplies wondering where the crowd was like we were ahead of the game can't believe I'm allowed to buy all these calories so cheap

kind of feels like that like I go to their grocery store and people are walking around looking at fruit as though which one they buy is going to matter in two months. I don't know. Maybe I'm being a little too. That's just how I feel. I'm sure you understand. I think you're closer to correct than incorrect, though.

I mean, the idea is always the same when it comes to new technologies. At least it's been the same for a long time, right? there's some laggards who are unwilling to adopt because they see their business model being upset. Washington Post is a great example, right? They don't want to see more AI reporting because, let's face it, at the top of Washington Post, especially in the newsroom, they're just reporters too. They're not necessarily, you know, skilled bureaucrats or skilled business people or skilled anything, to put it bluntly.

They're there because they advance through that ecosystem and through that network. and those skills that put them in the seat with the glass walls no longer really apply to their work. That's one reason that people lag. The bigger reason for AI is obviously completely different. If you suddenly reach 20% unemployment over the course of 18 or 24 months, as you mentioned there, white collar is completely unprepared for this. Blue collar workers have been cycling in and out of different trades and different tasks and different all sorts of stuff since time immemorial.

But this is the first time that something will come for, the white collar worker. And the white collar worker, again, to be blunt, I just don't think the cut of their jib is the same. I put myself in this category too, by the way. I'm a white collar guy. And I can't imagine that I will suddenly become adept, you know, laying beads, you know, in an industrial setting, it seems to me to be unlikely. And I think that governments are thinking about this the wrong way. They're thinking about this, at least ostensibly, this is what the public facing, you know, opinion is. We can't do this because power it would be too expensive because powering it would make your life unreasonably expensive.

But really what they should be saying is we actually need to be getting as rich as possible as a nation, as a sovereign, before this takes over because it's not a matter of if it's a matter of one. Yeah, lots to unpack. First thing I would say is this is something I've given a lot of thought to. How right was Mike Rowe? Yeah. I mean, could you be more right than that guy?

Nailed it. You got to get him on staff. You got to get them. Honestly. Like this guy was way ahead of his time. I mean, the great irony, of course, is that the blue-collar worker is the hardest thing to replace. Yeah. Now, China's working on it.

And the overlap between Chinese robotics and Chinese AI technology development is a whole other scary thread. And a great counter to what backwards-looking analysts think is their, quote, demographics problem. you don't really have a demographics problem if you dominate robots. But yeah, Mike Rowe, wow. Not that. People who are younger than me may not even know who he is. Oh, yeah. 87.

A lot of my listeners are in their 20s. You got to look this guy up. He's not just the guy that you suddenly started seeing on Twitter. He's been around for a long time. Well, there's a show called Dirty Jobs. That's right. Mike Rowe has been pounding the table that effectively what he has been saying without even saying it is that Western nations have been embarked upon

a journey of elite overproduction. And boy, what bad timing because the hordes of people being churned out of elite universities to do elite things that are just not required anymore is going to be a rude awakening. And again, can you outrun that horde even if you're aware of it like we are. One time will tell. But yeah, like get a trade. This is sort of, you know, especially in the energy business because that's what you need to run the machines. So I digress.

Yeah. Let's talk about. Yeah, you had other things in there that I forgot. Please. I mean, you have called by more. No, no, you remind me what they are because I was so unqualified by micro's ultimate. I'm one of the greatest calls of all time. I mean, we've covered, we've probably covered those things through the micro lens.

Look, at the end of the day, the fact of the matter is white collar workers are going to have to adjust in a way they've never had to adjust before. And they're adjusting at a time when, you know, it's interesting. This is sort of a Bitcoin adjacent, de-dollarization adjacent topic. But one of the things in Canada that I think people don't understand is that the number of Canadian citizens and now PRs, TFWs, LMI workers who have come here and are basically living on the government T. That number, if you include everything and not just people who collect a paycheck every two weeks for a job that they do and you include stuff like welfare, you include stuff like social services or other government funded. programs, that number is like 60%. And so if you start to add to that a 20% unemployment rate, there's just no way that benefits can keep up. They haven't been keeping up for a long time, but the people who've been receiving them are sort of forced into minority status because

they're not affluent. They don't have connections. They don't know how to go through the system to have their voice heard. The white color people are a little different in that regard. Not that I want to see how that turns out, but there is a, you know, a deep, dark part of me that. that thinks it would be interesting to observe how that population handles being displaced from employment and displaced from the upper echelons of their friend group or their neighborhood or whatever. It's never happened before. It has never happened before. And I think it's like it can't be more than 24 months away. Well, I think the current state is kind of a weird form of UBI.

Up here or just in general? Just in general. Yeah. But yeah, especially up there. but, you know, universal basic income for those young ins who are listening. Yeah, again, what I said earlier, it's all very rapidly, forget all the cultural hot spots and things that, you know, it all very rapidly reduces down to what does it mean to be human going forward, which is why, again, we think that which is uniquely human is set to soar

in value and technologies that can differentiate between uniquely human. than AI, or it'll also be extremely valuable, and that's an input into our own private market investing. I don't know. Again, like when we're in such uncharted territories, like, and again, this might all sound very bizarre to people that had not had their awakening with AI yet, that they're just listening to you and I talk about it,

as though everyone else has had the same shared experience that we've had. But like in a year, this conversation is not going to seem as crazy as it does today. I can assure you. So I just don't know. Like I can't wrap my, we tried. You can't wrap our brains around the friction of the transition that's coming.

Except when we do interact with big companies now and occasionally we have to, I'll give you some inside baseball. We are thinking about writing a book. You know, we agent and big publishing house and all that stuff. And just interacting with that whole machine. behind legacy book writing and publishing has been eye-opening. Very nice people, you know, and we'll soon be partners with us, nothing but great things to say about the individuals,

but the context of what happens day-to-day, how work actually happens, it's just so foreign. And we're just, again, we're not at the cutting edge. Yeah, again, I wish that's something smarter or insightful to say, but I just don't know. You've been plenty insightful so far, and you can make up for this folly by being insightful for the last little bit here. We're going to talk about de-dollarization. This has to be one of your favorite topics. You know, last time I had you on, I think you still use this line, obviously, but for people who weren't listening back then, you know, the tagline for you guys, but you have many, but one of them is doom is your business and business is booming.

And, you know, the reason I think in no small part is because currencies, fiat currencies, that should be specific, are failing. I'm not going to ask you about Bitcoin. I talk plenty about Bitcoin. You know, if you want to talk about it, you bring it up in your response. But I talk plenty about Bitcoin, and I think that people who listen to the show, especially as the listener base has grown, you know, over the last few years, there's a lot of people who are now enjoying the fruits of their Bitcoin investment from 2017 and 18.

and they find themselves well capitalized. And I dare say that they're looking for opportunities in other asset classes or looking for opportunities in other trends. And while I do count myself among them, it's not to say that Bitcoin doesn't have a place long term. All this to ask. D-dollarization has a trend clearly accelerating. Everyone points to this chart, you know, the gold reserves, outpacing treasuries

and there's many, you know, charts that are akin to that one, showing that many sovereigns are thinking about ways to get out of dollars as their chief asset. In your view, is this destined to continue or is this part of a cyclical trend away from dollars because of what happened during the Russian invasion, the monetization of that debt, there may be continued monetization of some of that debt to build, I was going to say build back better. Maybe I'll just say it to build Ukraine back better at the end of this war. Or is this something that we can expect to continue in perpetuity, not necessarily as a shot at U.S. hegemony, but rather just as these governments saying, look, it's just not a sure thing to be in any fiat currency anymore, including our own. How are you guys thinking about that now and maybe give me a look at what you think the future might look like?

Sure. I think some of the language you use could be corrected for precision that would be insight into what we think is actually going on. We don't consider it de-dollarization per se. But you use a bunch of words interchangeably that have meaning. So currency, for example. Let's take a step back. It is our operating view that there is no money. money today. There is no instrument that satisfies the three criteria of money. Money is a minimum of exchange, first and foremost. It is a unit of account, which is kind of the easiest thing that money does. And it is a store of value. The U.S. dollar, the euro, the Canadian dollar, the Japanese yen, the British pound. These aren't money today because they failed the store value test. Bitcoin and gold are not money today because they failed a medium of exchange test.

Yes, at the margin you can spend some Bitcoin to make a point on Twitter, but you can't fill your car with Bitcoin or pay for eggs with Bitcoin. You need Canadian dollars where you are for that. And I need American dollars where I am for that. And the entire Fiat edifice of the late 20th, early 21st century was anchored in the U.S. dollar backed by gold until the 19 seconds. And so the depegging of the dollar from gold was really the depegging of all global currencies from gold, because all global currencies interact with the U.S. dollar in order to affect international trade. And so what we're actually seeing is the inevitable slow rolling collapse of global fiat currencies,

because there is no money today and a competition to determine what the future money will be once the unsustainable debt is wiped away and restructured in some very dangerous fourth-jurning type transition and so gold because of its history because of its physicality and because of the fact that it's nobody's credit, is re-emerging to borrow again, a phrase we learned from Luke Roman, as the neutral reserve asset for the settlement of imbalances in international trade.

So it is a unit of account and a store of value in the context of global central banking. This is why we think World War III started in 2014 and really kicked off when Putin started selling U.S. treasuries and replaced it with gold in 2016. And China opened up the Shanghai Gold Exchange to international investors for redemption in 2016, because that was the beginning of the end

of the Western-based Fiat financial system that had ruled the world since the end of the World Second World War, but had begun its irreversible decline when Nixon deepag the dollar from gold in the 19th. And so, for example, one of the happy coincidences that we don't think is a coincidence at all, but kind of lays bare what's actually been going on

is the fact that the uplift in Russia's gold reserves have now offset the freezing of its fiat reserves, almost one for one, and we don't think that that is a coincidence. So when the U.S., which all sort of unipower superpowers do, try to sort of squeeze onto power at the bitter end here. When the U.S. started sanctioning first North Korea, then Iran, and then the big one,

the Russian reserves in 2022, that destroyed the neutrality of U.S. and Western debt as reserve assets. Nobody can argue that U.S. treasuries are neutral in the way that Bitcoin or gold is neutral. And so you need a replacement for U.S. debt as a neutral reserve. asset for the settlement of imbalances at international trade. And whether a currency arises that is also backed by a hard asset, you know, bricks dollars with 40% backed by gold and the rest being a basket of the currencies of all of the participants, for example, remains to be seen.

But the debasement trade, not the de-dollarization trade is what's really going on because, you know, The DXY is stable. So if, I mean, relatively, like it oscillates between what, 90 and 110, the DXY is not a measure of U.S. dollar strength. It is a measure of how a basket of basically very similar fiat currencies trade against each other, which is not super relevant. What's relevant is how does that basket look in terms of barrels of boil, number of Bitcoin's ounces of gold. And so we're seeing the Western-based Fiat system debase rapidly. it is unhealthy that gold goes from 3,000 to 5,600 in less than a year. But that's kind of Weimar type stuff.

Gold is not getting more valuable people. The number of ounces of gold a dollar can buy is shrinking. And so that's our worldview. We exist in the Fiat world. So we earn money in Fiat. We charge U.S. dollars for subscriptions to Duneberg, which you can sign up for at duneberg. We save by buying real assets, of which gold is one allocation, land, collectibles, other real stuff.

And then we invest privately where we can affect the outcome. That's our strategy for insulating ourselves against the upcoming of people. So you think we are in a period of significant out people that happen to agree with you, although there are a number of people in the macrospace who think fourth turning is like too strong a term somehow. I think it's probably the right term to use me. the different phases of a fourth turning, we may be able to discuss, but there's almost no doubt we're in one between institutional failures and all the stuff you just mentioned. I'll get you out

here on this question. Sure. How much do you think, or does your team think about Bitcoin in their analysis of the debasement trade, the upheaval trade, the sort of broad worldview that you have? I'm assuming, you know, I'll make an assumption here, although it's unwise to do so. When you start, started in 2020, 2021, you know, early on, you probably didn't think about it at all. And why should you? Are you still thinking this way? Or have you increased the, the bandwidth that you give to this asset? Look, our relationship with Bitcoin predates 2020.

We have a fair number of Bitcoin evangelists as subscribers. And I think that's because the overlap and the Venn diagram of reasons one would own Bitcoin and one won't own gold. are actually far greater than our sort of hardcore conservative gold bugs would admit. I made personally an equity investment in a crypto startup. I know crypto is like offensive to Bitcoin. Back in 2017 we've written about this and it was really a jarring experience. my 25 grand seed investment went from 0 to 15 million to zero, well 25 grand to 15 million to zero in the span of six months.

And that was a real eye-opening experience that caused me to get serious about trying to understand what was going on in the space. I mean, I know that sounds like a fantastical story, but it's true. And so I've always had a healthy respect for the reasons why people would want to own Bitcoin. I have some potentially cynical interpretations of stable coins and Tether in particular and how that is leveraging the enthusiasm around Bitcoin for perverse reasons, which is probably too much for today.

But the aspects about Bitcoin that I've always found curious, objected to, is the nature of the evangelism. and how that sometimes is taken too far. You know, when Bitcoin goes up, I still see people on Twitter making fun of Doomberg as though I care. I have lots of friends who own Bitcoin. I like my friends. If my friends get wealthier, how is that a bad day for me? You know, like I've never owned Bitcoin.

I understand why people do. I could care less if it goes to a million or 10 million. I mean, I suppose if it goes to 10 million, there's other issues that I, I need to be aware of. So I would care. But not in the OS, I missed out. I mean, I have a prudent financial development plan for me and my family and my business partners and my friends. And we execute that with discipline and that served us very well.

I live a great, really well, just a blessed life. I wake up every day, thankful for what I get to do for a living. And so I don't live and die by every kick of the price of Bitcoin. So that's the only aspect of the Bitcoin phenomenon that I sort of have some objection slash aversion to is the winner take-all evangelism that I sometimes see. But most Bitcoin maximalists aren't, well, most Bitcoin aficionados aren't maximalists. And you can be very enthusiastic about Bitcoin and not be a maximalist. I never understood the maximalism aspect of it.

I love gold. I'm not a gold maximalist. I own some land too and some Rolexes, you know, because I like watches and I know them. And I know which ones to buy and when. I think it doesn't mean that everyone listening has to go out and buy gold eagles or I think they're an idiot. So anyway, I digress. But that's sort of my overarching view. I know some people that are actually like tether OGs in my private life.

I've got a pretty good network of people that I've gotten to accumulate over time. And I've been Bitcoin aware since the teens for sure. The first screenshot of the price of Bitcoin that I have on my iPad, I think, was like $135. Ooh. Right, never owned it. What an idiot. Have fun staying poor, chicken. Yeah, have fun staying for it.

believe me, I've been poor. I've been the current state that I have managed to scratch out for myself as far superior to before. Anyway, I digress. I know that's a bit of a tangent. That's a good answer. It's important to be balanced. And one of the things, you know, I've taken some heat for on this program over the years

is my eventual, because I wasn't always this way. You know, when I was in my 20s, is a different story. And now that I'm more mature and a father and all these different things, you know, balance is important and being measured in your, you know, in your speech is important. And one of the things that you will find is that as the asset grows, I mean, you've certainly found this, I'm sure, but my advice to Bitcoiners is if they're asking me is as the asset grows, you know, you, you speak ill of people and cut people off and cut people down and exclude people on the basis of their preferred asset at your own peril. These people are very bright. And as the asset grows and

expands and garners more interest from traditional financial circles and collector circles, there's a wealth of knowledge there for you. And if you don't pursue it when it comes your way for free, you will live to regret that. That is something that you will for sure live to regret, even if you don't really see it in the moment and you'd rather just drop a HFSP on somebody on Twitter. It's unwise to do so. Yeah, look, the point of owning something is to, is to enrich yourself, right? I mean, or to protect your wealth. And as my friend Tony Greer likes to say,

if you won't sell into strength, when will you sell? Which I was warning the silver bugs on various podcast appearances over the past few weeks. Hey, you know, you've been long silver since 30 and it's got a one now in front of me. I mean, high five with one hand and make a sale with the other. So anyway, I digress. by that I think we're saying the same thing.

Look, Joey, it's been fantastic. Yeah, I really appreciate that. Tell people where they can find you. I'll note that your website is actually now blocked by my ISP. I have to connect to a VPN to reach Doomburg.com. It's a signpost, some kind of signpost there. That sounds like a you problem, not a me problem. Doomberg.com or newsletter.com.

Maybe that'll circumvent your, I don't know what you need such a thorough VPN for. What are you up to back there, Joe? I don't know. I don't know. But, yeah, dumberg.com, our sister project is there as well, Classics Read Aloud, speaking about developing something that is authentically human. One of the co-founders of Duneberg and its editor-in-chief is very passionate about great literature, and we produced this great sister publication called Classics Red Aloud.

A lot of overlap with Dumburg, a lot more than it might seem at first blush. But you can find all of our work there. you know we've grown this project too far beyond what we thought was possible five years ago and so when i say feel blessed to get to do this every day i couldn't be more sincere thanks for the time joe always appreciate it looking forward to the next appearance and to all of our canadian subscribers and our bitcoiner subscribers we really appreciate your business and if you enjoyed what you've heard today give us a chance sign up for the emails and maybe even jump over the paywall if something can taxes you.

Absolutely. Thanks for listening, everyone, and we'll see you next time.