The Pomp Podcast - Can Bitcoin Fix America’s Financial System? | Natalie Brunell

Episode Date: December 1, 2025

Natalie Brunell is one of the leading voices in bitcoin, widely respected for helping millions understand the asset and the broader macro landscape. In this conversation, we break down why Bitcoin’s price has stalled, how it stacks up against gold, the biggest misconceptions critics still get wrong, stablecoins, Wall Street’s growing role, and whether Satoshi’s identity even matters. Natalie also shares insights from her book Bitcoin Is For Everyone and why she believes bitcoin’s long-term outlook remains as strong as ever.======================Bitizenship gives Bitcoin-forward investors a fast, compliant path to EU residency. Our Bitcoin Dolce Visa lets you invest in a 100% Bitcoin-aligned startup and qualify for Italy’s Golden Visa with one strategy. Claim your free strategy call at https://www.bitizenship.com/pomp.======================BitcoinIRA: Buy, sell, and swap 80+ cryptocurrencies in your retirement account. Take 3 minutes to open your account & get connected to a team of IRA specialists that will guide you through every step of the process. Go to https://bitcoinira.com/pomp/ to earn up to $1,000 in rewards.======================DeFi Development Corp. (Nasdaq: DFDV) is pioneering a new category in crypto investing with the first Solana-focused Digital Asset Treasury. DFDV offers public market exposure to Solana’s growth, yield, and onchain innovation, offering investors a leveraged way to participate in a trillion-dollar opportunity. Learn more about why Solana and why DFDV at ⁠SolanaTo10K.com⁠.======================Timestamps: 0:00 – Intro2:09 – Inflation & the U.S. affordability crisis5:12 – Bitcoin vs. Gold6:27 – Wall Street’s role in bitcoin and nation-state adoption10:59 – Bitcoin as payments vs. store of value12:56 – Stablecoins relationship to bitcoin16:52 – Censorship, de-banking & financial freedom21:16 – Banks & bitcoin reserves22:42 – Media coverage of bitcoin and how to fix broken incentives27:36 – “Bitcoin Is For Everyone”33:20 – How to measure inflation35:47 – The money printer mountain37:26 – Who is Satoshi? Does it matter?38:45 – Selling the book and closing remarks

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Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people.

So let's get into today's episode. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. As you get further downstream to the average worker, they have seen the costs go up before they are making a meaningful amount more in their wages in order to afford it. And so I try to break down again, the Cantillon effect and why

that has contributed to so much wealth concentration. When you are empowered with that information, again, you feel like, oh, now I can do something about it. And that's why the cost of living has been going up so much more than my wages. And now I have to figure out a way to protect myself, protect my purchasing power, and acquire an asset that cannot be debased and printed by someone. What's going on, guys? Today, we've got a great episode with Natalie Brunel. Natalie is one of the largest voices in all of Bitcoin. She has helped literally thousands and thousands and thousands of people better understand the asset and understand the market. In this conversation, we talk about what's going on with Bitcoin. Why is the price not going up?

How does it compare to gold? And then we get into some questions that the critics always have. How do stable coins affect Bitcoin? Should we be worried about adoption? Do we like that Wall Street is here or not? Does it matter who Satoshi is? And many other questions that you've probably not only thought of, but talk to your friends or your critics about Bitcoin. Natalie is here to explain it all. And then we get into her book, Bitcoin is for Everyone. It's a fantastic read that I highly suggest you go and get. Here's my latest conversation with Natalie Brunel. All right, Natalie, I thought a great place to start the conversation is there's an affordability crisis underway in America. It seems like everything is too expensive and no one can

actually get the things that they want. What's going on here? What's driving this? Inflation, in a word. In fact, a lot of people don't know that haven't gotten my book yet, but the first half of Bitcoin is for everyone isn't even about Bitcoin. It's about how broken our financial system is and how inflation really works, how a constantly expanding money supply in our debt-based economy destroys our purchasing power and why it's so important for people to acquire assets, something they don't teach us in school. So at the end of the day, that's what it is. We have to continue running these massive multi-trillion dollar fiscal deficits. We have to keep printing to keep the whole system afloat. And that's destroying the dollars that you're

working so hard to earn. So I want people to empower themselves. Anyone can learn this. And I think the most accessible asset for people around the world is Bitcoin. Now, what was really interesting to me is when Trump was coming into office, I got really excited because we finally had a president and administration that they were taking it seriously. We're going to go and we're going to stop spending money. We're going to use Doge and cut out a bunch of, you know, I think they used waste, abuse and fraud. Sounded great. On top of that, they were going to be much more responsible in terms of increasing the national debt. And for a minute there, it was actually like, hey, they may do this. They may pull this

off very quickly. It became obvious that it doesn't seem like it matters. It doesn't matter who the president is. It doesn't matter if Republicans or Democrats are in office. We just structurally can't not print money. Is that your general read? Or is there something that you think either this administration or future administrations could do to actually rectify the problem? No, I think you hit it on the head. It's unfortunate that no matter who is in office, and we keep ping-ponging back and forth between red and blue and red and blue, the quality of life continues to deteriorate for the average person in terms of what they can actually afford. And we go further and further into debt. And when you zoom out and you look at

the statistics, that's what you see. It doesn't matter who's in office. Congress has to keep spending money. And even with amazing programs like Doge, we can't seem to tighten our belts. It's really unfortunate because so many of us wanted to see more transparency, wanted to see some of the spending actually cut, especially the wasteful spending that we learned about through the Doge program. And yet here we are. And I believe in October, we hit like a record deficit in just the month of October. So we're spending more than ever. And it's just a reality that we're going to have to keep printing money. We have so many obligations that we have to finance in addition to the interest expense, which has only ballooned in the last few years. So again, the

best way for the average person to protect themselves is to start acquiring assets because assets benefit from inflation. They benefit from money printing. And the most accessible again is Bitcoin. I want everyone to start thinking really seriously about how they're going to plan for their future in a world of constant debasement. It's like the one thing we can rely on death taxes and the debasement of our currency. Now, the debasement trade has become very popular on Wall Street this year. We've seen gold go up somewhere around 50 percent. Bitcoin is flat to down. And I think there's a lot of people who are surprised that gold's outperformance over the last year or so. At the same rate, if you go back to 2020 and look over the last five

or six years, you see Bitcoin being up like 400% and gold not doing nearly as well. And so how do you think about the relationship between these two assets? Obviously, you know, Peter Schiff's big gold bug, you're a big Bitcoiner. Who's right? Or maybe both of you, right? I think over the long run, Bitcoin will outperform. And that's what we have seen. So we might be wrong in the short term. And it has been disappointing that Bitcoin hasn't done as well, as many of us were hoping or forecasted that it would do in 2025. But I would prefer to be wrong in the short run and right in the long run. And that's what I think we are with Bitcoin. It has outperformed almost every other asset over the last five, 10 years. And I'm not here

to trade the market or try to time it in order to win over a four-week or six-month cycle. I want to be right for the next 100 years. I want to pick the winner that is going to protect me from the currency to basement, protect my family, allow me to plan for retirement, for having a family. And that's what I think Bitcoin offers the ordinary person. Now, I have your book here, Bitcoin is for Everyone, a keyword being everyone. I hear a lot of people who say, hey, look, it's amazing that Larry Fink and BlackRock or other large financial institutions want to come into Bitcoin. They provide things like the ETF or maybe the structured notes. That is increasing access and adoption for very large pools of

capital. But on the other hand, I hear people complaining that this is not what Bitcoin was built for. Bitcoin was built to be outside of the system, to be a check or a balance on kind of this undisciplined monetary and fiscal policy. And so how do you look at the adoption of Bitcoin by the exact same system that maybe was created to solve a problem for it? Well, Bitcoin is an open permissionless network that anyone can use. You can't prohibit institutions from coming in. So I think it was inevitable. And I'm happy that for over 10 years, average individuals were able to front run Wall Street. And I think there's still a really good opportunity, an asymmetric opportunity for ordinary families around the

country to be able to do that because we sit at just a $2 trillion asset class. In fact, I think we're even lower than $2 trillion now with the price dip. And we're staring in the face of asset classes worth hundreds of trillions of dollars that I think Bitcoin is going to continue to eat into. And I'm personally an advocate of self-custody. I think you should own Bitcoin. You can truly be your own bank and you can take Bitcoin with you anywhere. You can memorize the seed phrase in your mind in the case of a worst case scenario. But I do think a lot of people choose convenience and they want to have access to Bitcoin through these traditional wrappers like ETFs and other products that Wall Street is providing people so that they can

actually start to accumulate Bitcoin. And we also have to remember that some institutions have mandates where they can't purchase spot Bitcoin. They can only get exposure via debt instruments or equities. And so there are companies that are offering those products. And I think that Bitcoin will outperform when it's attached to things like credit instruments, which Michael Saylor has been doing an incredible job putting out there, as well as Bitcoin treasury companies who have a focus on a solid balance sheet, as well as products that people really need. And I think, again, Bitcoin will outperform over the long run. Now, one of the other areas that we've seen adoption is nation states have been buying a lot of gold, China in particular.

But there's other nation states that are realizing this kind of debasement trade. Maybe there is some multipolar kind of world aspirations. And so they would like to get away from the U.S. dollar and potential sanctions risk, etc. We have not seen Bitcoin really kind of arrive when it comes to the largest countries in the world in their central bank reserves. The U.S. has this strategic Bitcoin reserve. Obviously, countries like El Salvador and others have done certain things. But what do you think it'll take to get these central banks of maybe the G20 to start to actually put Bitcoin in their reserves and not just have gold?

You know, that's a really interesting question. I think it's going to be a slow moving train. These types of paradigm shifts don't happen overnight. I recently had Jeff Park on the show who hypothesized that we're going to see shifts at the nation state level, at least when it comes to the G7 nations, when there's some sort of coordination that the United States isn't going to say do it alone, but might do it coordinated with maybe its allies, countries like Japan or the European Union. And so I think that that might be an interesting marker to watch for because the U.S. has been ahead of the curve on this,

establishing the strategic Bitcoin reserve and evaluating ways that it can acquire Bitcoin in a budget neutral way. I know a lot of people have been disappointed that it hasn't bought Bitcoin yet. But again, I think we're moving in the right direction. So much progress has been made. I think none of us would have expected this type of administration to be so friendly to Bitcoin when we just had one that was extremely hostile to the entire industry. And I think right now, central banks are buying what they know, which is gold. They're almost stepping back in time. And we've seen record amounts of gold buying, not just from central banks, but also from companies like Tether, which is, I think, outpurchased central banks in buying gold this

year. But people, again, are reverting to that debasement trade because they know the US government, which controls money around the world with the Federal Reserve controlling interest rates, we are going to continue to print. And the US has weaponized the dollar. And so it's natural that other countries are going to look for alternatives that can't be controlled and manipulated by the US. So gold is the first one they're turning to. I think eventually it will be Bitcoin. But I think we've got some time before that all develops. If I go and I sit down with critics of Bitcoin, one of the questions that they'll always ask is, hey, you know, the white paper, it's electronic peer-to-peer cash. I thought you were going to be able to buy a coffee with

your Bitcoin. I don't see people doing that. Although maybe the technology is there, what is it going to take to get the consumer behavior to actually start to switch? How do you think about Bitcoin being used for payments and not just as a store of value? I think it's a really interesting question. The great thing about Bitcoin is that it empowers both tools, right? It's a powerful store of value, especially over the long run, but it can also be used as a medium of exchange peer-to-peer and settle instantly, especially on secondary layers. And that's where I think the focus should be is that Bitcoin is evolving in layers. The base layer is that digital gold, the ultimate savings technology. It's very secure, backed by energy and the most powerful

computing network in the world, but it is a little bit slower in order to ensure that security. So what do we do? We layer on top of it with things like the Lightning Network, which empowers those lightning fast and efficient payments. And I think more and more people will use Bitcoin as a medium of exchange, especially if merchants are encouraging for people to actually spend their Bitcoin. If they say things like, hey, we not only accept it, but maybe we'll give you a discount because the merchants are going to be incentivized to accumulate Bitcoin. But I don't think that the biggest problem around the world is what money am I going to use in order to buy my coffee? The problem is, why can't I save in my form of money

that I earn? Why can't I save for the long run? And that's the fundamental thing that I focus on in Bitcoin is for everyone is the store of value use case. And I think in the future, we will increasingly have Bitcoin used as a medium of exchange and increase the velocity of Bitcoin. And probably people will be using it in apps where they see fiat currency on the front end, But Bitcoin is sort of used in the rails in the background. And that's in development now. And I think over the next 10, 20 years, a lot of progress will be made. Another avenue that I hear the critics talk about a lot is stable coins.

And I think that everyone can look and say stable coins are probably the second product coming out of this entire industry that has product market fit. There's a lot of promises, a lot of shiny things, but really it's been Bitcoin and now stable coins. And with those stable coins, I think on one hand, Tether in particular was built to allow capital to more easily get into Bitcoin. We also now see, though, that people are using stable coins for payments around the world. And so the critics would argue that stable coins are taking away from Bitcoin as a medium of exchange. How do you look at the role of stable coins in

relationship to Bitcoin? And is it a net positive or are there some challenges and headwinds there? Well, I think it's a little bit of both. I mean, I think that stable coins are a great on-ramp, but going back to what I mentioned earlier, you want to spend your depreciating currency and save in your appreciating asset, which is Bitcoin. So I think that's one of the reasons why people tend to spend stable coins. Now, here in the US, I'm going to admit I've never used a stable coin. I have not found a use case for it in my own life and business activities. But when I talk to people who are overseas, stable coins have been a lifeline and they view it as a currency that they really want to exchange their fiat for to use as a checking account. And maybe,

hopefully they save in Bitcoin. But I think stable coins are poised to grow. I know that the administration has some wild forecasts in terms of just how many trillions of dollars are going to be flooding into the stable coin industry. And I think part of that is they're trying to find ways to both manufacture demand for our US treasuries, as well as kind of sterilize the yields and the reserves. And I think they're going to find a way to do that using stable coins in some capacity. And we have seen an increase in stable coin payments being used, at least among banks. So I think the industry is poised to grow. But again, it's essentially, you know, a dollar or whatever fiat currency as the as the mechanism, as the backing. So you know that they're going to

print more. So the thing you want to save in is Bitcoin and maybe you spend your stable coins. Today's episode is brought to you by Bitizenship. Italy now has one of the most compelling residency pathways in Europe. And Bitizenship just built the Bitcoin native way to access it. It's called the Bitcoin Dolce Visa. With a 250K equity investment into Bitizenship Italia, a Milan-based Bitcoin startup, you can qualify for Italy's investor visa with Bitcoin exposure. Here's the best part. The visa gets approved first, and you invest only after authorization. The company runs a Bitcoin-aligned treasury, non-custodial L2 staking, and offers 24-month redemption windows. Go to bitizenship.com slash pomp and book a free strategy call today.

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Search for Bitcoin IRA in the App Store or visit BitcoinIRA.com slash Pomp, and you can join 200,000 Americans on their journey to upgrade their retirement. That's BitcoinIRA.com slash Pomp to upgrade your retirement today. Now, another aspect of Bitcoin that I think becomes pretty interesting is we have seen tons of people around the world in especially developing countries say, hey, Bitcoin is this thing that is much better than my local currency, right? The local banking system doesn't work. I don't even have a bank account. Somebody's trying to take my money, all these different use cases as to why people go to Bitcoin. The thought process historically

has been that here in the United States, people are going to be a little bit slower to realize the value of Bitcoin because the US dollar kind of traditional banking system does work. You go to the ATM, you can get your money out. Yeah, sure, the hours of operations, but you can send wires and do things like that. I now see a lot of people talking about Operation Chokepoint 2.0 or 3.0. I see people talking about being debanked. And that's one of the reasons they became interested in Bitcoin. How do you see the United States' role in this, and especially maybe some of the things that are breaking down in the system or the targeting of people that's really driving Bitcoin adoption? It's really interesting. I try to break some of that down in Bitcoin is

for everyone. And the fact that we rely so much on these intermediaries and these gatekeepers that we essentially have to ask for permission to use our own money. And even though it seems far-fetched, we have seen people in the US, including people in our space, the Bitcoin space, as well as the administration, get debanked for whatever their views are, whatever their businesses are. And that's not right because that, I think, violates a person's property rights. Their ability to actually financially transact is so core to our freedom. So I think as governments And as institutions and banks become more hostile to the individual, it only puts a spotlight on the benefits and the amazing tool that is Bitcoin as a tool for freedom.

And of course, we do hear so many of these powerful stories overseas where people are facing far worse currency crises and inflation, much worse than the US, which is why I think Alex Gladstein kind of has the best quote. It's like, check your financial privilege. Yes, we have radical inequality that's growing here and wealth concentration and people frustrated. But if you look overseas, people that haven't had the dollar as the lifeline that it has been here, they've been really, really struggling and having their resources essentially just drained away from them.

And sometimes they wake up in the morning and their currency has been debased by 50 or 100 percent. And they have no control over it. It's by leaders that they don't even elect. So I think the more that we shine a spotlight on how Bitcoin is a tool for freedom for people all around the world, the more I think people will wake up to the fact that now we can finally be our own bank and start to save in a politically neutral technology that's open to everyone, no matter how much they're worth. One of the interesting things that I've seen with some of these things like Cash App recently just came out with the ability to use some of the infrastructure. And one of the beauties of the Bitcoin network, I think that Jack Mallers and Strike and a couple of other folks over time have started to talk about this, is that neutral network that you're talking about is open source. And so if I'm a cash app and I plug into the system, and let's say that Venmo or PayPal or Strike or anybody else plugs into that same system, now users can actually send money from, let's say, Venmo to cash app users.

And you get this kind of clearing infrastructure that creates some sort of set standard. What is the ramifications of stuff like that? Like, we've always lived in kind of a siloed world where it was a walled garden and it was all about, you know, what's the moat? But it does feel like Bitcoin kind of taking the sledgehammer to that and opening things up and saying, actually, maybe there's power in joining a network or plugging into a broader thing than just the thing that you've built. I think it's so exciting. And I think we're going to continue to see more killer apps that, again, make it very easy for people to interact with Bitcoin, sometimes in ways where they don't even realize they're using Bitcoin at all. And I think this reminds me of really the Internet and the transformation of decentralized information and media in our lives, which so many of us took for granted. We didn't know how much it would really impact our day-to-day activities and how we conduct

business. And look, I mean, 20 years later, here we are and everything's in our phones and we're interacting digitally pretty much the entire time. And I think that Bitcoin is going to transform how we conduct our finances and our business even more. And I think it's great that eventually every bank will have a Bitcoin component to it and every app will in some way have Bitcoin underlying it. Do you think that every one of the banks, let's take the major incumbent banks, do you think they eventually have Bitcoin on their balance sheet and they look at this as a reserve type asset? Or is this something where it's more of, hey, it's great collateral to lend against, it's great to sell Bitcoin related products to our customers, but it's more so like we're giving our customers what they want versus we're using it internally for the value proposition ourselves?

I do think that eventually, at least a small portion of the balance sheet will be reserved for Bitcoin as a form of true digital capital. I mean, right now, the capital requirements for banks, I don't know if you saw the latest quiet bank rule change that happened. I covered it in the news block. But again, they're basically changing the leverage ratio so that the banks can hold more what? Risk off treasury assets, which are supposedly the risk-free asset that underpins the whole

system. but we see how much risk they actually carry. They carry a tremendous amount of duration risk in the form of inflation. You will never get your real value back. And they do increasingly hold some default risk. If you look at the credit default swaps and the numbers there, I mean, people are getting a little bit nervous about our macro situation, especially given the fact that in a few years, social security is going to be pretty much insolvent. So I think people really need to take this seriously. I think that banks eventually will be incentivized to hold Bitcoin, just like every company. But let's make sure all the families are holding Bitcoin. We

still have a great opportunity to front run all these institutions, I think. Now, you've got a very interesting background. You are a Emmy award winning journalist. I don't think you can say former because once you are an Emmy award winning journalist, I think you just get to claim that for the rest of your life. But you understand how like the mainstream media and the legacy media really operates. But now you are one of the biggest voices and proponents of Bitcoin in the world. How do you look at the coverage of Bitcoin by the media and maybe some the things they get right and also some of the things they get wrong. Yeah, it's been a little bit of both. I mean, I definitely think it's improving and I try to focus on the positives,

but we still have a long way to go. I felt so alone when I was covering Bitcoin and trying to report on it. And when I did report on it, I felt like I wasn't doing Bitcoin justice because I had to present all of the FUD as if it was legitimate. And I was learning that it really wasn't. Bitcoin doesn't use too much energy and it isn't for criminals and it isn't too volatile. So I think we just need to work on education. And I break things down always based on incentives. If you look at all of these structures, these institutions, and how much trust has been lost in them, what are their incentives? And where are they getting their own information? And where are their paychecks coming from? And I think you'll see that sometimes the incentives are so broken

that they are incentivized not to cover Bitcoin and not to give light to something that might might threaten their business models. And one thing that I learned when I was a journalist is that a lot of networks are really an extension of the government. And I really want to put a point on that because my family comes from communist Poland, where my mom knew that the media was propaganda. She knew that it was basically regurgitating anything that the government agencies wanted. But here we're supposed to have a separation. It's supposed to be that additional branch that is a watchdog looking at the government, making sure that it's held to account, especially when it does something wrong. But what I learned when I was working in

news is that a lot of the news agencies just report whatever government agencies are saying as fact, as opposed to really questioning it and posed to serving as true watchdogs. So I have felt like I am serving truth more and in a more free way by educating on Bitcoin than I ever did in media. How do we fix that, right? Is it that as the media organizations, they're worried that they're not going to have access anymore, and so they just don't want to question things? They don't know how to. They don't have the skill set or experience in terms of understanding some of the nuance. What are the perverse incentives or things that are creating this problem, and then what are the potential solutions? Yeah, I mean, it's a great question.

I do think it ultimately starts with education because this is the same issue in academia, which is why so many academics don't question essentially the government's role. They don't question the monetary system. Everything comes from this ultimate root of like Keynesian economics where the government is this benevolent hand that kind of needs to impact some things in order for good to come about, for the public good to come about. But we see that actually it does sometimes more harm than good. And what is the public good really if we don't protect the individual and sovereignty and individual freedoms like freedom of speech, property rights. And that's what Bitcoin really ultimately secures and represents. So I think it starts with education.

And I think we just need a strike at the heart of the corruption, which is really fixing the money, which is why I think that Bitcoin is the ultimate public good, because you are creating a new base layer of economic activity that's based on incentives of truth and merit and competition, as opposed to who has access to the money printer and who are the insiders that are politically connected. Today's episode is brought to you by DeFi Development Corp. Global wealth today exceeds $500 trillion, yet crypto still represents less than 1% of that total.

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opportunity and why DFDV is the best way to capitalize on it, visit dfdv.com. That's dfdv.com. Now, Bitcoin is for everyone. That title is very powerful. I've told the story before, but a couple of years ago, I was looking at some of our data for the various platforms on social media and videos and audio. And we had something like 96% men. And I said, well, that's a lot of men. Um, maybe we should, uh, you know, have an expansion purely driven by economic incentive and business. Let's go and increase our audience base. Like there's an entire other half of the population that doesn't seem to be consuming the content. What could we do to go and appeal to these people? And we tried really hard for like two or three years. And we went from 96 to I think

94%. A huge win, right? And we were just like, man, we cannot move this. And there was a point in time where I was like, is it us? Is it the references that we make? Is it something about the way that we view the world? Or is it what we're talking about or whatever? At some point, I started to see you put together these, I think it's women in Bitcoin. Usually there are these breakfasts that it blows me away. I think not only in terms of the friendships and the fun that people seem to be having, but just like the size of growth of that community over the last couple of years. And so again, coming back to a book written, Bitcoin is for everyone. How do you start to talk about Bitcoin with people who either don't think that they're normally really

interested in finance, or maybe there's women who are interested in, they say, I don't see a lot of women that are creating, you know, content on the internet about this, or somebody who's in a friend group who's like, none of my friends are into this. So maybe I shouldn't be into this. Like there's a lot of groups. It's not just, you know, male and female that you kind of look at and you say, hey, how do we go and actually spread the word or educate people about this thing? What have you found that's been effective in that arena? Yeah, I love this topic. I mean, I think you just have to meet people where they are. And people tend to want to listen to voices who they can relate to. So I'm someone who,

when I consume content, I really like to consume content by other women. But Bitcoin didn't have a lot of that. So I learned a tremendous amount, but I felt like there is a need for more female voices to inspire others to get in and make them feel like, hey, this is approachable, this is relatable, and this is something that I can embrace as well. And that's what I've tried to do with the Women of Bitcoin brunches and events, which have really become decentralized. One of the coolest things is when I see people hosting them in cities and countries around the world, which has been really exciting.

But ours has grown from 100 women at the Bitcoin conference in 2022 to hopefully this year, we're going to beat the record of 500 women in our fifth year, which is really exciting. And I do want to share an anecdote that I think a lot of people don't know. But one of the things that gave me courage to actually leave my journalism career was when you reached out to me and you wanted to address this market. And we did a Women of Bitcoin course. And it was, again, for the purpose of getting women involved and making them feel like they are represented. And so I thank you for that. Because I was sitting in my news job thinking like, how do I contribute more? How do I get more involved? And between the

podcast and feeling like I could really be an educator, that I think gave me a lot of courage to get out there and serve as a voice and serve as a platform that people can learn from and watch and grow together. Well, I think you're doing a fantastic job. I didn't have anything to do with any of that. I was just trying to figure out how to solve a problem, but you're the one who solved it, not me. All right. So you got this book, Bitcoin is for Everyone. Why our financial system is broken and Bitcoin is the solution. This is a real thing right here. The real book, you know, like it's got real words in it. Um, and you know, sometimes people, they get the like copies, but there's no words on it and they just use it as a prop. There's a real one. I've read it already.

Um, I think it's fantastic. Uh, but there's something that I don't think people probably ask you about, uh, cause I'll talk about the title or what's in the book or, you know, all the different chapters, but at the top of the book on the, um, cover, you have economic empowerment, transformative wealth. Those four words are right here at the top of this book. And I thought that was interesting because economic empowerment, I think people understand, right? This whole idea of being able to actually be in control, being able to direct your own funds. There's a rise of like the independent investor. Transformative wealth, though, is something that runs very counterculture to what we're seeing happen across society right now.

Gambling apps are getting more popular. People are trying to, you know, 100x in two days. And just like this very kind of short-term mindset, talk a little bit about transformative wealth and why is it so important that that's two of the four words that are on the top of the cover of the book? Yeah, I'm so glad you asked. I think that a tremendous amount of wealth has been created, especially as technology grows and progresses and more people have access to technology than they ever did.

But the wealth creation has really been concentrated in just a few hands. and people have felt really frustrated and even resentful at that because they have been productive and they're working hard and they have more side hustles than ever and they're trying to just play by the rules that they were told when they were young

and yet they're not able to succeed in the way that I think many people imagined. And so that's one thing that I think Bitcoin offers you, but it's not just financial. It's also about buying back your time because the wealthiest people have control over their time. They can make choices about what they do, what they don't do, what they say yes to, what they say no to. And Bitcoin, I think, offers you

that. It's transformative wealth in a financial way. Yes, of course, you have access to it and you have a seat at the table. But on top of that, it's wealth in so many other ways. The wealth that you build in relationships. I mean, I've met the most incredible, inspiring people in this space and the wealth you get when you can finally buy back your time and make your dreams come true outside of learning about Bitcoin. Now, you've got three different charts or graphics you know, I'm like a picture person. I got young kids. I like looking at the pictures that are in the book. One is you've got the M2 money supply and it basically looks like exponential growth. And then you have the exact same thing for inflation. It's not quite as

exponential, but it's pretty much up into the right. How do you measure inflation? Is the CPI the best measurement? Is it just the rate of change to M2 money supply? Like how do you start to think about, okay, I'm trying to measure what is the return that I'm getting by holding Bitcoin versus dollars versus stocks versus, you know, some other asset. What is that kind of framework for you? Yeah. So this is what I thought was so important to break down for the average person, because again, we do not learn this in school. There are essentially two types of inflation. We're told inflation is basically the CPI, the consumer price index, which tracks a basket of goods and has averaged somewhere around 2% every single year. But when we zoom out and we look at

the cost of the things that we need to fill the basket of the so-called American dream, we see that it has increased by way more than 2% a year. And if you look at just the last four years, when we printed all that money in response to the pandemic, I mean, things have gone up 40, 50, 100, or even more percent. And those are things that we need, healthcare, housing costs, groceries. So what I like to point people to is let's look at monetary inflation. How much are they actually expanding the money supply by. And that has averaged out to about 7% to 8% per year. So if you're not getting a raise of 7% to 8% to 10%, you're basically treading water, if not drowning. And I think that once people are empowered with that information, they can start to think not

only differently about their financial situation and money, but also what they're going to do about it. And again, the best way to survive this system that is built on inflation, because we're a credit based economy is to acquire assets. And the most accessible asset that I think the average person can start to accumulate just little by little is Bitcoin. I think it's also easier than trying to time the market with stocks, try to figure out stock picking. I know you love to do it and you've been great at it, but the average person sometimes doesn't want to do dozens of hours of research into every single company. They kind of want to just close their eyes, set it and forget it. And Bitcoin makes saving simple again. And so I try to break down the truth about inflation

and how assets have risen and the cost of living has risen versus wages and income. Now, you've got this graphic. I saw this. I laughed out loud. The Money Printer Mountain. You know this one, right? Yeah. Describe the Money Printer Mountain. And for those who can't see, large corporations at Wall Street are at the top of the mountain. Lowest income are at the bottom. What's going on here? Yeah, it's essentially painting a picture of the cancel on effect. The fact that When there is a source of money printing, which is essentially our central bank, which is connected to the big banks that we all know and many of us trust for our day-to-day banking, those are the insiders at the top of the system. Those get access to freshly printed units first, and a lot of that money pools, again, in assets first before it ever hits wages.

So as you get further downstream to the average worker, they have seen the costs go up before they are making a meaningful amount more in their wages in order to afford it. And so I try to break down, again, the Cantillon effect and why that has contributed to so much wealth concentration and contributed to just a few people basically at the very top being able to access and leverage their access to the money printer in order to gain a tremendous amount of wealth at the expense of everyone else who gets taxed in the form of inflation. And I think that when you are empowered with that information, again, you feel like, oh, now I can do something about it. And that's why the cost of living has been going up so much more

than my wages. And now I have to figure out a way to protect myself, protect my purchasing power, and acquire an asset that cannot be debased and printed by someone. Now, the last thing I want to ask you about is Deep buried on page 222, which is in the acknowledgement section. Listen, I read the book. I went over every single sentence in this book. You have a line that says, thank you to Satoshi, whoever you may be. You have uplifted humanity through the gift that is Bitcoin. Who do you think Satoshi is? Does it matter? It doesn't matter who Satoshi is. Of course, it's always fun to go on a mystery hunt. And as an investigative journalist, I've certainly felt the call to try to figure it out until I realized that it really doesn't matter. And what I love is that with Bitcoin detached from any person or organization or nation state, it isn't subject to what we do with everything in our lives, right? And everything in the media, it's like pick something apart and find the scandal and find the one thing we disagree with. It is truly a neutral monetary network accessible to everyone. It doesn't matter who created because it's open source and any of us can verify it.

And I think that it is just one of the most selfless things that Satoshi could have done is just give it away without seeking profit or recognition or fame. And I like Bitcoin created that way as opposed to the opposite where we know the creator. All right, Natalie, you don't know this, but we have a track record on this show of moving books. Anthony Scaramucci was the first victim. He one time came on this show and he said, anyone who wants a free copy of my book, go ahead.

Here's my email address. That was the dumbest thing that man could have ever done. He got thousands of emails. They were mailing out books literally for months afterwards. So you're not giving out free books, but you're doing something better. You're giving out information. Hey, if you're in the audience, listen,

you got to help me out here. I can't lose my reputation as being able to help people sell books. This is a great book. It's called Bitcoin is for Everyone. Why our financial system is broken and Bitcoin is the solution. Natalie did a fantastic job.

If you like pictures, there's pictures. If you like words, there's lots of those too. I really enjoyed this. Look, I've been doing this a long time. There's things I learned in this book. So I think that this is for literally everybody, whether you're somebody who's just starting out or somebody who has been doing it a while.

I appreciate you writing it. And if you're watching, Bitcoin is for everyone right now. I never tell you guys to ever stop the podcast or the video. Right now is a good time. Hit pause, go search on Amazon or Google and put in Bitcoin is for everyone. Natalie Brunel, hit the buy button, come back, say thank you, and we'll go from there.

But I appreciate it, Natalie, very much. and please keep doing what you're doing. You're helping a lot of people and you always got fans here and everyone at our office. Well, thank you. I feel the same way. I appreciate how much of an inspiration

you've been to so many people in this space, not just in Bitcoin, but in business and technology in general and just making people feel like we are moving in such a positive place toward abundance. So this book is really about that. It's about empowerment.

I hope everyone checks it out. It makes a great holiday gift and your book is fantastic as well, Anthony. So thanks for having me. You got it.