The Wolf Of All Streets - “Bitcoin Dead” searches surge. Bottom signal? #Cryptotownhall

Episode Date: February 19, 2026

In this Crypto Town Hall episode, the conversation opens with frustration over X account recovery issues and evolves into a deep discussion on Bitcoin's current stagnation around $66K–$68K, extreme fear signals (Google "Bitcoin to zero" searches at 2022 highs), and repeated "Bitcoin is dead" narratives. Guests explore institutional rotation, miner profitability in low-energy setups, the need for proof-of-human signals amid rising AI content, and why volatility, uncertainty, and global events (including potential Iran conflict) often precede major bottoms and recoveries. Despite industry maturation pains, scams, politicization, and bearish sentiment, the tone remains grounded in long-term optimism, scarcity-driven value, and the enduring store-of-value thesis.

And so trying to get things started, can anyone hear me? Because I never heard music this morning. Yeah, we got you, ma'am. Oh, okay. Well, it's just you and me so far, Adam, but I think some other people are coming up. Give us the update on getting the account back, man. How's that going for you? Well, I got my sixth rejection yesterday, so I filed again this morning.

I mean, you know, the funny thing is, is, I mean, you would think, I mean, I've asked Mario if you could reach out for me. I mean, we have the ghost of Mario up here. It is absolutely amazing. You know, someone who I actually see incredible potential in this app to do multiple things just beyond spaces and, you know, videos and content and news. But there's literally zero probability that that will work if they don't up their support game. I mean, zero. I mean, I honestly don't understand how.

Usually there is, I mean, I saw you tweet it out and people were commenting and, you know, tagging support. And I found that actually does work in the past, but maybe the system's just so overloaded now that they don't really pay attention to the kind of social signals. But boy, it would seem like this should be an AI thing where if enough real accounts tweet that, hey, you got hacked, it's like it just pops to a person. You know what I mean? I don't know. All it would take is any human being. I mean, that's the weird part is that, you know, we go through, I mean, anyone who does this goes through ID verification, right? So you present your driver's license and a selfie like we do with crypto,

although in crypto, I'm pretty confident they keep it. And then they do it again if you're a creator, so you have all that, and they can compare the two accounts. But it's not in my case, it's even easier because there's a just absolute crap ton of video content in this space, for example, where voice signals could be, you know, AI could certainly verify. You don't need a human being, but you do need judgment. The good news is that you're not going to care about your account

in about two weeks to four weeks because it's only going to be AI on this platform that's regenerative in creating its own AI and all the content and there'll be nothing to engage with from humans anyways. Well, you know, the funny part about that, Scott, is this is kind of proving why that's possible. I mean, you know, literally it's the lack of judgment. I mean, AI can often, in fact, pretty well determine what's other AI. And so can some people. And it's easier for AI than people. But if what you want, is actual citizen journalism and people engaging, humans engaging, then proof of human is going to be absolutely the killer app for media companies. Yeah, which people are working on, but you take away, even with the proof of human, you're going to be spammed by so much non-human content. Well, no, but I mean, you could, but then once you have proof of human as it works, then the setting is, I only want to interact with human content.

And if a human posted AI thing, but it's gated by the human being, that's okay. I mean, I don't care. I mean, it's like, it's like, you know, if you're writing something and you use AI to polish the language, that's very different than tell AI, hey, write something. Right. You mean, and so it's, but at the end of the day, if it's a human is posting and humans posting, I mean, the problem that we're having is there's bots that basically just say the same shit over and over and over again, right? Of course, there's some humans who do the same thing. So, which is exactly. I mean, and they're getting better.

I mean, let's be honest, right? I mean, we think about, I don't know, in 21 when you kind of got all these bots with, you know, just trying to shell coins and shit like that. But they're way better now. It's sometimes difficult. You know, the usual filter, which I used to filter was they didn't follow me, right? So I was just muting all these ones that weren't following me and just commenting. But I think they've learned that game. They've gotten smarter.

They'll follow you for a time. comment like legit what looks like legit real comments you know to try and build up their own standing I don't know I think we're lost man I think there's just there's almost no way to get around it they're learning so quickly now

that it's it's like Scott said it's just going to be all AI maybe in a couple weeks you can tell when you get a comment and I mean it's not so much that I can tell when I get a comment that it's AI I can it's more like I'll be like oh shit that's a human and I'm going to follow them back. Like, it's just the way that,

unless so with, you know, an email or something that's been written where you know what the purpose was already, because it's sort of just like, oh, what was the point of you even writing that if you're a human? You know, you just get a sense, you get a gut sense of what's a robot and what's a person. I think we get better at that over time.

And we are getting, you know, they're better at masking it, but there's this, to be a good, I'm going to say, like becoming neo in the matrix and I can tell the difference. Bro, you can say, are you really getting better? Because maybe I'm just retarded. Yeah, I'm getting worse. I'm not getting better, man.

I feel like I'm losing. It's almost over for me. I need help. Maybe this is something we need to teach. Maybe there's an education or like some sort of maybe the AIs can make us. I'll ask them. Yeah, I mean, I think at least lawyer like maybe it'll be the gap between the for you tab and the following tab.

Like, I don't look at for you anyways because it's complete slop, but like that's going to become complete AI slop, right? I mean, for you, there's no slop time. Determining. Right, but I'm saying if you go to following, at least you can like unfollow those people or

it shouldn't be fed to you at all. Yeah, there will have to be these signals will matter more and it'll become harder. Like if your job that's reverse it, right? If your job was to become undetectable, AI. I would be pretty nervous as well about, you know, how that's going to go in the long term

because we're going to form these signals that will make it harder to mimic us, I think. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. If you believe Jason Lowry, this is an important case, use case for Bitcoin. So, you know, that's, you know. Bitcoin or more, I think more specifically the proof of human that we talked about. Like, I don't think it has to be on the Bitcoin network. That's a very Bitcoin maxi kind of idea as if it's the only solution to everything. Of course.

But there are plenty of crypto and non-crypto platforms that are working on proof of human. I know humanity protocol is one of them and a lot of others. But that regardless, having some provable way that you're human when you sign up, clearly that does not exist on Twitter period or X, right? I mean, how do these AI accounts even get accounts, start engaging and imagine when they are just actual agents and not just like, the same slot. Like people are going to just.

Yes. But what doesn't make any sense is when you want to become verified as a creator, you have to provide an actual idea and a selfie. Well, how does a frigging AI do that? I don't know. Seems possible. Well, I mean, seriously. I mean, it's like it shouldn't be very hard to, you know, classify.

Maybe you have two different classifications, AI creator and human creator. and then you give people the ability to say, I don't want to listen to AI, or have a different channel, says, okay, let's see what the AIs are saying. Any of those are possible. I mean, I don't know. It would be, if you think about how you want to design this platform,

and if you think about the profit motive of Elon and what's his name, Nikita, I don't know, the guy who runs the product, I mean, one would think if you're trying to create an everything platform, you need humans, and you want to, to make it human-centric, right? It's just, it doesn't mean you can't have AI to supplement, but it's, if you listen to anything Elon had tweets, in fact, this morning he was talking about it,

you know, about how robots and AI will enhance, you know, quality of life, yeah, yeah, yeah, yada. Well, that's only true if you could distinguish between them. Does anyone who disagrees with that? I mean, I don't know. Well, I mean, there's just four of us, so we can talk about whatever we want to. In the old days, Dave, right?

I mean, old days like a year or two ago, the whole idea was they didn't want to shut down the bots because it increased the numbers of, you know, quote unquote, people on the platform users, right? So that was the old argument. And I think that still kind of holds. They still want, you know, this a very, a lot of, you know, users. And we're just recognizing now that probably, you know, I don't know. What is it? Six out of 10 users are AI now. I don't even know.

It feels like that right now. It's hard. It's hard to tell. I mean, honestly, the only ones that you know are humans are sometimes the dumbest questions that you get or the or the most true questions you get. So people actually asking, I don't understand this. Could you explain it? Those people, you have to believe that's human. I mean, maybe bots are getting smarter and come out with dumb shit, but you know, but there's not, but there's no, you know, ignorance is not a crime and stupidity that's a crime, right? You know, it's perfectly fine. I mean, I am ignorant. about so many different things, it's insane. I mean, I'm finding myself, I don't know how, I don't know about you guys, but I ask Grock and of course when you do that, you have to ask in multiple different ways just to make sure that, you know, whatever. But I go to AI to ask and double check things that I think to be true or that I thought I understood so many times a day now.

It's crazy. And so, you know, I think that's helping. You know, I think that I say less stupid stuff that I might have otherwise said. Of course, you know, can't filter. everything but you know it is whatever but i mean like the topic of today's thing bitcoin dead you know i did wrote i literally did a video on this the was it yesterday or the other day i can't remember but you if you if you search and you actually overlay and i did this the chart of when we see peaks in bitcoin dead bitcoin going to zero it is almost perfect in terms of bottoms but

i mean it's a literally almost perfect correlation to bottoms and if i knew how to put post something to to the nest. Someone's got to explain this to me someday because I don't see the buttons. I don't know where to do it. They changed it. Yeah, they kind of changed it. How do you do it? Because the video... I'm looking at an example right now, yeah, or just send it to me and I'll do it and then I'll show you once I do it. Right. But, you know, so the, I did a video last night by when everyone is afraid. And one of the things that I showed in there is exactly this. But here's the interesting part. When Bitcoin dead Bitcoin go to zero surges.

It's not like it's the bottom of the V bottom. In fact, in most of the cases, when that has surged, yes, it has been right around the bottom. Sometimes it's gone a little bit lower first, but, you know, nothing, not nearly as much as it's already moved. But within, you know, some period of time of that process, weeks in a couple, in one cases, you know, maybe a month and a half, that's when the most, the largest bull runs took off. And in none of those cases was there really an obvious catalyst. It was like, okay, well, it got faded out and people got tired and started moving higher, which kind of jives with my base case for Bitcoin right now. You know, I would love to see that same chart aligned with all other assets.

I talked about it on my show this morning, but I remember the Tesla is going to zero because Elon Musk smoked weed on Joe Rogan, and it was the best time ever to buy Tesla. No, I think the best time to buy a Tesla just for the emotional satisfaction of it is when Tim Walts was dancing on stage about how Tesla had dropped out. That too. It just did pretty...

Yeah, I just remember at the time I bought and I was kind of public when people were like, you're nuts, it's going to zero, you know, my favorite signal. And it was like 180 bucks pre-split on the way down and it was the dead bottom within, you know, like $3 or something. Yeah. But, I mean, the funny thing is, is... and I've been thinking about this, is the exact reason given by all the people dancing on the grave of Bitcoin

as we're sitting at $66,000 is the exact reason they gave when Bitcoin was, they were dancing on the grave with Bitcoin at first at 30 and then at $16,000 in 22 or when it got to $8,000 and then dropped as far as like $3,000 or $4,000 in 1819 is the same thing they were saying when Bitcoin failed the first, second, and third time at $1,000. And it all boils down to a really simple point, which is Peter Schiff's ultimate, whether he actually believes it on, I don't know. But the ultimate point, which is nothing virtual or that doesn't have a physical manifestation could ever have intrinsic value. Which is, by the way, one of the dumbest arguments used. It kind of proves how old you are, although not all of us old people. are that dumb because we all know there's tons of things out there with totally virtually,

that are completely virtual. Dollars being one of them, yeah, there's these strips of paper that nobody uses anymore, but they're virtual. It's just that the government says they're worth something, and so it's worth something because the government puts their faith and credit behind it. And that works out really well for most of the world where the credit ratings of governments are in the toilets, but yet there's still value, and it trades and it moves up and down. And if you ever played a video game or deal with everything. I mean, the notion that something has to have a physical manifestation to have value is just wrong. And that is ultimately what almost every one of these posts have in common. Virtually every single person who says this, whether the most obvious, the hankies,

the shifts, or whatever, it doesn't matter. I mean, you know, you could go through. If you look at these Bitcoin is worth zero posts, that's what they all have. In logic, there's a word for that. It's called begging the question. It's like you assume it has zero value, so therefore it has zero value. It's a really great argument, but that is literally what these things are about. Yeah, I tend to agree. And just to be, I think it would the search was Bitcoin going to zero, correct? Is that basically an all-time high? So I think that some of the signal there, when you think about it, I would be interested to see how that compares with other Bitcoin bare market related searches. Like, should I buy Bitcoin now? Is Bitcoin going down further?

because Bitcoin going to zero is a very extreme and specific search, right? Yeah. So it's like when you've reached the isn't going to zero to me, once again, that's peak stupidity. Right. Or just peak fear. Right. I would love to see the other relatively similar search queries that are not as hyperbolic. Yeah.

I mean, yes. I mean, I specifically look for Bitcoin dead, but I think going to zero, you're right. I mean, that is, it's like, you're. even I've gotten there. So it's, you do a math. We just use pure math. Okay,

what's the value of Bitcoin? Right? You, you have multiple paths. Path one, which is the one that people who invest in it believe in, is Bitcoin will eventually represent real value in the monetary system and be the denominator. The way that fiat is today,

the way that gold used to be. That's the ultimate case. That's the, you know, sailor, if you get the hyperbolic estimates, which come because you expect, you know, some version of hyperinflation and fiat currencies. The more tame, but, you know, but still ridiculously optimistic based on the market is Larry Fink and what he

says and what Paul Tudor Jones says and a lot of other people say, which is, well, Bitcoin is going to become pari Pesu with gold in terms of the monetary value of gold. And, you know, I went through the exercise this morning of trying to get and see if I got a good answer. Yeah, I'm trying to get the monetary value of gold bit out of Grok to try to see what he says. I mean, but generally, most people believe it's somewhere around 80% of gold's market cap is pure monetary value. And so you get to numbers in Bitcoin where effectively the market is pricing the odds of Bitcoin achieving that now at somewhere well below 5%, somewhere between 3 and 5%. and ask yourself the question, what has changed over a year ago, two years ago, three years ago,

when people thought that those were really good odds. And I think they're actually better odds. You know, that's the question, Scott. I mean, I don't know, do you get that a lot? Yeah, constantly. I mean, so I'm adding Gary up here. We're finally getting some speakers. I was hoping we were just going to hear you talk for an hour.

I mean, but, you know, look, there was some posts this morning. And, you know, Bruce is the best person to talk about this as you're here of OG saying, yeah, well, I hate Trump and Trump is is parroting Bitcoin, so therefore it's going to go bad. Or I hate this politics or I don't like the way that this is happening. And that's fine inside the crypto community. That's almost certainly true that there are people who are disillusioned. But the real question is, is the network effect and has the value, you know, has it slid to the point where relative to the store of value, you know, narrative that it's gone and it's dead and that that's really the question right i mean i you know

it's that's why i was asking you bruce the other day about the satoshi roundtable and and a lot of the people who are ogy in the space i mean it feels like you have z on one side and a bunch of other people on the other i mean there is some definite o gs over the last year including me i think you know i've probably never been so bearish i mean i'm just not as excited about it anymore. I, you know, I got in here to change the world and it's become a bunch of corporate slop, you know, and it's, you know, in the early days, you used to go to a Bitcoin event, and it was like the smartest people you ever met. Now you go, and it's some of the dumbest people you ever met. I mean, it's a bunch of people with, you know, charts and graphs talking about

the Clarity Act, you know, it's like. That's a really specific question. Yeah. If someone said to you, okay, we're going to going to have there is going to be a new asset that is going to become a measuring stick that will by the virtue of its absolute scarcity make it eventually but not immediately eventually impossible for governments to print money without consequence is supporting that and helping that achieve that goal worth it now that is not the same as replace the monetary system but i don't know i mean The premise is that the scare, you said that the scarcity will ensure it. You know, I don't, I don't think the scarcity is enough.

It's really important to measuring. Really it is because governments get away with all sorts of stuff unless, like people keep making the statement today. You're seeing more and more people saying, well, gold is sniffing out. Obviously, gold does a sniff anything. But, you know, but the, but Greenspan, believe it or not, used to before he became Federal Reserve Chair or maybe in his first year. he used to watch the price of gold like a hawk literally thinking on the notion that if gold got too high

that was proof that they were fucking up and then eventually he and everybody else said okay this is pointless we don't care anymore uh the question is if you get to a point where countries have to worry about their price of their currency vis-a-vis bitcoin it has that effect that that's really the question and really is and i'm asking it as a question because long-term philosophy that is what a a lot of people who are investing in Bitcoin thinking, okay, that will be a really good thing because this free money society that we're in where you could just print other people's money is exactly why we have a lot of the shit that we have. I mean, you know, it's just it's what we could go through the pathology, but I think we're

all discussed it these days. Yeah. You know, I think that there's merit to that. I just wonder if people will care enough. I don't see what country that's going to be, others than El Salvador maybe, and they don't have any economic might. I think it's it's become less interesting you know I travel a lot I talk to people you know some of the biggest investors in the world the big sovereign funds in the Middle East and stuff

and you know there's just very little interest I mean it's I don't know why I don't know where this new wave of interest will come from and I don't think people see it as a serious asset like that and I can't really blame them because you know if you go in and you ask you something yeah sorry because that that that's actually a bit surprising like there was two news stories today. I think Abu Dhabi UAE mined 450 million in Bitcoin so far, and there's been no outflows from that,

so they're holding it. And then there was, I guess, the UAE, somebody in the UAE government said, you know, store value intending to accumulate it. So how does that jive with kind of what you're hearing it? You know, I think we get the impression that there's still a lot of interest. Yeah, there's some of it. I mean,

there's, you know, the Abu Dhabi story is not really new. You know, they've had a lot of coins for a long time and they've been mining. They have basically free energy because of their nuclear power, ironically not because of the oil. Oil doesn't hurt though. And so they can mine. And I think if Bitcoin is above $7 or something, they might as well mine because they have free energy. And so yeah, there's some interest. I mean, it's not like it's totally dead. I mean, there's certainly like the sailor narrative. And there's, you know, there's a lot of people. I'm just wondering if there's going to be a new wave of interest.

you know, I'm not really sure what the catalyst will be. And I don't know, I mean, like I've said before, you know, people go through different times of life. You know, a lot of us who are earlier at a different phase in life now, you know, I mean, I'm, I don't know. I mean, personally, I'm just not as excited about it anymore. I wish I was. And I love, I try and to have people tell me, you know, tell me something bullish to put me in a better mood because I still hold a lot. Bruce, you know, I find with myself, and I think we all find it that, maybe our own sentiment or changes in feelings can also be a signal like of like maybe you know you'll

it's just kind of the bottom for you and you'll come back around you know i've definitely felt that like i'm my best counter uh indicator for i sold a little bit like a week and a half ago when it was right at the very very low 64 and then like like within four hours of me selling it when we had a 10 grand candle and i've done that before that's what i'm saying exactly is like one of the You panic cells that I had. I'll probably never forget it. It was like one of my worst days in crypto was, I think, the day after, day before Thanksgiving in 2017, and I had a huge tax bill.

And I was worried that my Bitcoin, that my, especially I had other coins at the time, too, like, I said, oh, my God, because if you remember that time, that was like a brutal, brutal, bare market. And I'm like, holy crap, it's going to go so low. I can't even freaking afford to pay my taxes. Because what happens is, if you. you have $10,000 and engage, you know, if you buy Bitcoin at $1,000, it goes to $10,000, you sell it $10,000. Well, guess what? You owe $1,500 in taxes. And then if it goes back down to

$900, you can literally end up behind, not being able to pay the taxes on what you have. A lot of people suffered that. That happened all the time. And it happened in the dot-com era. I think it was the CFO of Yahoo ended up with like a $300 million tax liability and they only had like a net worth of like 10 million. So, so I, I was like, oh, man, I can't risk. I'm not going to lose all my money and risk, you know, getting beat down by not having enough money to pay my taxes. So I, so I, because I remember it distinctly because it was the Thanksgiving kind of

holiday. I think it was the Friday after. And I, like, I could walk to my office in the, in the, I was living downtown at the time. And I, like, trudged over to my lonely office and got my gear together and did what I needed to do to do a trade. and it was dismal. And then, you know, of course, that ended up being kind of a, you know, a little bit of a panic cell because, you know, it came back.

And, you know, I was feeling like that, like whatever it was 10 days ago. And I kind of feel that now. I hope that's a bottom sign. You know, there is always, you know, someday it will go down. And someday it will be gone. You know, someday it will be like it's going to go down and not, now, man, it might be in 50 or 75 years, you know, let's hope. But it could be tomorrow, you know.

I mean, you could have a global war. and I'm worried about Iran because I think that you could see a 10 to 30% drop just because that's what happens. Historically, Bitcoin recoversed. My best trade ever was the COVID-Tirony trade. I knew that that wasn't going to fundamentally change Bitcoin. And I said, oh, the whole world is going to go, you know, stupid. and I sold like, I don't remember 20,000 or something, it immediately dropped once all the lockdowns came in.

I bought right back. I was able to almost double my stack. So that was like one of my best trades. I don't usually do those kind of trades, but I was just so convinced I'm like, this is not fundamental. Like this is not going to end the world. Like, it's just not. Now, Iran worries me more because I see a potential 10 to 30 percent draw down if we have

war tomorrow or over the weekend or whenever. And then it's like it's putting more pressure on what is already kind of pressured. Some of the weakness, some of these treasury companies might go belly up, some of the leverage strategies will unwind. And then you could see us slide down to, you know, 22,000 or something. And then meanwhile, now if gold then continues to break out and people say, oh my gosh, there's global war, I need a flight to safety, and then gold goes to 9,000 or something, then it's kind of like, oh, wait a minute, did Bitcoin do what it was supposed to do? Why am I interested in this? Everybody's focused on war, and that will dominate 99% of the news coverage for a year or more.

So that could be bearish. And then people say, like, well, I don't know, maybe this didn't, wasn't all that. And it could be might not recover, or it could be used to recover. You know, I don't know. So, Bruce, I did some digging this morning on war. And while I am, this is not, please, dear God, there are 3,000 people here, do not say that I am a warmonger, saber rattling. I do not believe we should indulge in regime change or any of that shit. So, no, I'm not saying that, but just pure numbers.

The numbers are that risk assets do shitty while war is under threat and do actually quite well once war breaks out. And it doesn't matter which kind of war it is, whether it's the Granada invasions over in a day. That's because markets hate uncertainty and once the war starts, you have certainty. Right. So it's, and if Bitcoin is trading as a risk asset, which as much as I don't think it should in a sense, it does. You know, and you could, it's like as any poker player knows, you don't play the cards that you wish to have. You play the cards that you actually have been dealt. And so if in fact there is an action in Iran, which I frankly think this is this is more, you know, Trump bluster. I mean, we went into Venezuela and no one even knew we were thinking about it.

It was in Bing, Bang, Boom, Done. I don't think that he telegraphs his moves like this. You know, but whatever. We'll see. What the hell do I know? But the fact is, is if you think there'll be a 10 to 20% drawdown because of going in, it totally depends. I suppose if they went in and it was a complete failure and it became a new Afghanistan, which seems highly unlikely given the state of the population.

But if it does that, yeah, sure, right. you know, if you end up with these ridiculous forever wars that continue to go. I mean, I will tell you, just so to be clear, at the time of the Gulf War, and I don't mean the first one, I mean the second one, the junior one. I thought it was the dumbest thing we could possibly ever do for a host of reasons, sadly, most of which have played out. This one depends on information I don't have. It's really about the population of Iran.

But the truth is that war tends to be better for. for risk assets, then you might think historically it's actually been quite good. And while that's counterintuitive, it's just worth knowing that. So the move would be to sell now weight of the war, if you think there's going to be war and then buy back, just like they'd be similar to my COVID trade. Yeah. I got to always say COVID tyranny trade because there was never, COVID was a very bad flu, and I don't lighten that because lots of people die from flu.

But COVID didn't affect anything. It was worse than that. COVID was had we actually known the truth, it would have even not been that bad of a flu. Yeah, yeah. No, it was, it was, I think it was far worse than COVID, but because they didn't understand. And I, I'm sorry for this diversion. But had we known it was gain of function research, had we known what it was about, had Fauci been forced to actually say the truth as opposed to lie continuously, they would have immediately.

they would have immediately known how important antihistamines were and immunosuppressants and other sort of things. The whole thing that it got politicized with Ivermectin, all that stuff, we know that if you get COVID now, how to treat it, right? And no one dies from it anymore. Yeah, there's long COVID. And yes, there's certain people who are suffering. But that's true with every flu. It's true with every virus. It's always tail people who are.

But COVID was, like, I had friends die. Right. you know, and we and one of my, my sister-in-law almost died. She's one of the few people who survived being on a ventilator. And you remember how we were told ventilators are the most important thing we can get and we can't get them because. Oh, yeah. There's an article about me in the New Yorker about, about, it's called the McGivers trying

to source ventilators because like a naive fool, I heard that, oh, everybody's going to die if they don't get a ventilator and there's not enough ventilators. And I said, well, I'm going to solve that. So I got a bunch of experts and money together. and I said, I'm going to solve it. And then very quickly, I found out that it was a total lie, and that Como owned a stake in a company, or cronies owned a stake in a company,

they were buying ventilators for $500,000, stockpiling them, selling them back for $20,000. And there was no shortage. And it was all just a big myth. And then I find out that the things aren't even effective. And then I find out that they actually are horrible, and the people put on the ventilators had a, basically, you have a far,

far, far higher chance of dying. The only reason I went to let you and I go down this rabbit hole is because every time someone says, I have at peak, you said it, by the way, Scott, I'm at peak distrust of the government because of what's going on with this space was downloaded via spacesdown.com. Visit to download your spaces today. About the Epstein files and the redactions, honestly, you can't go lower than my peak distrust of the government because of what happened with COVID and the lack of accountability for all the people who made these horrible decisions.

So, yeah, I'm certainly right with you in terms of distrust of governments, but I'm not sure this is worse. I think this is just more infuriating because I think a better example. Yeah, well, there's probably going to do whatever the dumbest thing is. And that's what concerns me. But yeah, I mean, good. Maybe that's, you know, obviously in the backdrop of potentially, you know, many, many lives lost, it's a horrible, horrible thing.

but, you know, maybe, you know, from a pure economic standpoint, you know, if there is war, we'll have a quick, a quick rebound. You know, and you could, you could, I could see, I could see, I could see us having war and Bitcoin going from 65 to 35 and then bottoming out at 29 or 27 and then we're going right back up to 75 in a matter of a couple weeks. That's kind of exactly what happened with, uh, exactly why you don't trade it, Bruce, you know. Yeah, I know. But I'm tired of the stress, man. Not you. I mean, the people, you know, like that. I'm 350 years old in Bitcoin years.

And I just want to enjoy my life and not have this freaking stress for so long. And it's funny, Bruce, I think people who have been around a long time, I'm only, you know, late 2016 vintage. So I'm speaking from conversations and not from experience. But you guys have been through so much. Like, this is just another iteration. of a whole lot of stress, right? I mean, if you were here, like, imagine for someone like you, I imagine, like, going through Mount Cox or going through, you know,

if you had money with FTX or Voyager or Celsius or Prime Trust or any of these, right? How many times have you, beyond even the emotion of thinking it might be over or wondering, you know, if the narrative is changing, had literal, like, zero-day events happened to you and your staff? that you had to somehow navigate and protect yourself from. I know an OG, and he wrote a public post like a few years back, and he's like, I'm selling half, you can make fun of me or whatever. He goes, I'm 66 years old.

He's like, what the heck am I going to do? I got to enjoy this money at some point. And so he publicly announced that he was selling a big chunk of his stack, like half of his whole mass of coins. And I mean, what else do you do? Like, you know, time is the one thing that everybody's going to have hitting them. And especially if you've done really well, like you have a great trade. You never want to let a great trade turn into a bad trade.

You know, luckily the early people on Bitcoin have a long ways to go before that that would happen. But it would also be crazy to, you know, you can't take it to the grave. You know, you might as well spend some and, you know, move some around or something. It kind of goes back to the He'll take his to the grave. He'll burn it. You know, he did say that. Remember that?

What a crazy thing that would be, a gift to every Bitcoin holder. I mean, wow, that would be something. Yeah, I mean, his stack is pretty big at this point. Although, I guess he would be very hard to burn at public companies. But he has his own hold. It's a thousand or so personal. Yeah. It's the identical, by the way, for people who don't know this,

It's the identical equivalent of taking the same. So if he has 100,000 personal Bitcoin and burns it, it's the identical equivalent of taking that 100,000 Bitcoin and sending it to every single holder proportionate to what they own. That's the exact economic equivalent. So basically a gift, a true gift to Bitcoiners. Yeah, except for without a taxable consequence. Right. Which is.

What did you say his personal stack was, Dave? I thought it was his personal stack, not including the- Probably is. I just wonder how big that is. I probably like 17 to 20,000 coins was personal stack, but that there was also a, obviously he has a significant amount of MSTR stock, which makes his net worth being significantly bigger than that. But, you know, what the hell do I know?

I mean, that's what I saw in this platform. It could have been a bot, as we were talking about before. You know, but it's interesting. So, Gora, you're up here. I mean, you've been in this market. at a while. You know, we were just talking about how Bitcoin zero search is at an all-time high, and there's more posts about it as well. And that has generally been a pretty... Really, are there people who do that? What?

Are there people who really search Bitcoin Zero? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, the same thing is true for Bitcoin dead or death of Bitcoin. I mean, you know, it's like we've seen this before. It's, it has been a ridiculously reliable indicator. But of course, you know, how statistically significant is it? But it does seem to be there. I'm just curious, you know, what your thoughts are. And I thought, yeah, I thought the worst news was, you know, Michael Burry made two predictions. One was Palantir short and the other was Bitcoin short.

And so he's doing well with both so far. And that's doing rounds because, you know, everybody knows him because of the movie and his and his shorts are famous. And of course, you know, we all want to, not all, but all Bitcoiners want to shit on his face. But so far, he's going right. So I thought that would be the scariest factor around the Bitcoin pricing. But I'm sorry, I'm not qualified to take a jab at the Bitcoin dead search. I never thought that would be a reality.

Yeah. I mean, all I'll say about Michael Burry is that it's funny. People forget that, but by a factor of. weeks he could have blown up before the trade. I mean, I actually was in the same trade as him. I was exactly in the same trade as him on the, you know, in the big short. I was short MBNA and all the, a lot of the firms that were involved in the stuff, Fannie and Freddie, et cetera. And so I'm really well aware of why he was saying what he was doing. And frankly, I don't care remember if I was following him or various others that said it at the time. But his, his,

rationale on Bitcoin is literally the exact opposite of his rationale the other ways. So, but that's besides the point. I don't care. It boils down to his rationale on Bitcoin is the same as Peter Schiff's, is the same as Rabini's or Steve Hankees. It's like, well, it can't have any real value. And so since it has no real value by definition, it's going to go to zero. Okay. Well, you know. Yeah, I think the best opinion around Bitcoin and such volatility would probably come from people like Bruce or probably, I don't know, maybe not. Bruce, do you often check the price of Bitcoin, does it even matter? I think you've seen one more cycle or two more cycles than me.

Yeah, I got a block clock in my office I'm looking at right now. And yeah, I check it. I don't check it that much. I go whole days and a few days sometimes without checking it. And somebody will tell me. You know, and then I, you know, about 300 times a day I search is Bitcoin dead. I ask Jet. The third string ranking.

Are we cooked? Are we cooked? I don't know. No, I do get a little petnicky sometimes. You know, I'm very, I think, I think this manifests differently in different trading, but I think anybody's been in Bitcoin a long time. And most good investors are very, very, very risk averse. I mean, they may take risks, or I should say risk aware.

You know, you have to understand risk, but I obsess about risk. Risk is the whole, by the way, risk is the whole game for investing. That's the whole thing. That's everything. And you looked at really sophisticated people like Mark and Schroly or something like that. All it's all they talk about is risk. And really, really complex trades, big trades, big P.E. deals. It's all about who has the risk and where do you put it?

How do you put it on people? Big institutional trades like Dave did. You know, it's all risk is everything. So I obsess about risk, personal risk, security risk, safety risk, safety risk, food risk. You know, I went into super panic mode. We were talking about the COVID-tiering. I went into super panic mode because I'm like, oh, we're going to have walking dead. I better go and get, I got a year's worth of supplies for 20 people.

And I got gates and, you know, ways to protect ourselves. And I got, you know, food and security cameras and stuff like that. You know, because I'm just like, I'm planning for the worst all the time. Any room I go into, I'm planning for the worst. Any trade I go into, I'm planning for the worst. So in that obsession, you know, and I'll take risks. I mean, I've taken huge, huge risk. One of my best friend from grade school, he says, when I was talking to him about running for Senate, I said, should I do it?

Should I not? He says, you know, Bruce, you've made your entire life by doing crazy risks all the time again and again and again. So I do take a lot of risks, but I also obsess. So because of that, I'm always thinking Opsack. I'm like, oh, do we have communist CCP spy running Bitcoin code? Do we have devs compromise? So speaking with that, Bruce, is there, do you think, so you talk about running Bitcoin code, do you think that the, what is your thought about the assertion that Epstein

corrupted Bitcoin and therefore it's Pito coin and all the other crap that's. Yeah, no, that's crap. That's crap. Because I ran the Bitcoin Foundation. So I'm aware, I'm very, very aware of this deal that was done. It had nothing, absolutely nothing to do with Epstein. That's why the guy, Joy Ito, wrote a note to him saying he was, you know, Epstein was a donor to MIT. MIT had a group called Media Lab.

Media Lab had a group called Digital Currants, later known as Digital Currency Initiative. At the time, it was just Media Lab. Epstein donated money. The guy ran at Joy Ito wrote a letter to his benefactor saying, hey, great work that is happening with your donations. Here's what we did. And that's very, very, very, very typical. Every nonprofit does that, particularly when people make six figure plus donations. So Epstein didn't even know about it until he was told after the fact.

And the idea that he, and they had the same deal that these developers. So what happened is those developers were paid by our organization, Bitcoin Foundation, which I donated to, a whole bunch of other people donated to. I worked as a volunteer. And we would pay these developers. In the early days, the first developer, Gavin Andreessen, the first paid one, people were like, oh, it would be cool if this guy could work on Bitcoin full time and leave his regular job and just work on Bitcoin. Let's all pass the hat around and raise, you know, a few thousand Bitcoin so he can buy himself a sandwich.

And so that's how it started. And then Bitcoin Foundation went through ups and downs. They ended up burning a lot of money, some bad decisions, some just whatever stuff. and then I came in unfortunately after all of that all that huge treasury of thousands of Bitcoin had been spent and I came in as a volunteer

and we still paid those developers but just before I came in the foundation had kind of run out of money and couldn't really afford those devs and the devs knew that they saw the writing on the wall and one of them had a connection at MIT and MIT has all the money in the world so they're like yeah we'll hire you guys

we don't care you can just sit around mess with Bitcoin all day. That's like absolutely trivial to us. It's, you know, 450 grand or something like that for three developers. So Bitcoin, so so MIT said, yeah, we'll pay it. They ended up doing it through this media lab. And that, that's the only connection. And then they had it, so they had a deal with the foundation that said, the foundation didn't tell them what I, when I used to run the foundation before that, people would say, oh, you're telling Bitcoin, you're telling the developers what to do. For one thing, that's not how the developers work. They would never take those orders. And they also had

agreement that said that you wouldn't you wouldn't do that so these developers are like cream of the crop people especially at the time like anybody would have hired them they could have plenty of bitcoin they could have done anything they wanted they're not going to go and like oh i'm going to go and do what mit says no they're going to go and work on the way that they work the story it's complete bullshit yeah it's it's total bullshit there's all consis of i i mean i'm a big conspiracy truther you know yeah there's a lot of you were unique but that's not That's that's, that's just, it's a total, total, total nothing burger. I mean, you know, the fact that the prime minister of Israel had installed cameras in Epstein's

house. I mean, that seems to be true. Mario just retweeted that the other day. I mean, that's a pretty big deal. There's a lot of, you know, the fact that like, which, it depends which prime minister. Yeah. There's a lot of flawed. You and I disagree on, on the generic issue, but there are lots of bad people in governments and

it must, it must have been cutter, right? You need to do that. Cutter, Cutter must have like you that. But anyway, there's a lot of shading this about. And there's things that I'm concerned about Bitcoin. I used to be a critic of some of the development efforts because, you know, one step. Compromising developers alone is not enough to compromise Bitcoin. You still got to get minors and nodes to agree.

But it is one minor step in the process. So if you do compromise development, that doesn't mean you control Bitcoin, but it means it's a little bit of a step. You still, you know, you need to kind of do all, all of these things. And it's non-trivial. That's a great segue. That's a great segue. We've got a couple of other guests up here. And I think the one topic that needs to be, I'd like to get everyone's opinion on, is,

is your thesis for investing in Bitcoin dead? Is, or is it as strong as ever? And this is, this is just a great opportunity to, you know, where people have been bailing for Epstein reasons and quantum reasons and whatever. And we have George and we have Kelly, who definitely have a good. opinions on this topic. I'm curious, what would either of you gentlemen think about the fact that so many people are coming out of the woodwork to talk about Bitcoin dying again?

I'll jump in. For me, I couldn't be more bullish. It just feels like a rhyme and repeat with different. I mean, everybody's seen the metric that came out recently, the world uncertainty index. But at the same time, it's like in some ways, it's like that's spiking and it's scaring people. and we saw how uncertain the world was during COVID and what has Bitcoin's price done since. Now, despite the price,

what has also happened on the fundamental infrastructure layer of Bitcoin, sovereign bodies, the institutional more than 10x in growth in terms of players that are getting involved in addition to how much they're stacking the pipes, the legislation, some of it is a bit frustrating. It feels slow as hell. It feels like even with the clarity,

stuff, you know, that it's likely going to get pushed again. But, you know, when you look at the reshaping of the global monetary layer or at least an avenue for a different monetary layer that's being stacked in the way it is, it's moving light speed. We're all, all of us that are on here are either listening to content daily or talking like I am, like you are Dave and Bruce Minton, Gary Cardone, George, good to see you again. So we're locked in to what feels like a very slow timeline because we're so aware of the minutia of everything that's going on. I couldn't be more bullish, especially with the report that you guys were just talking about, about the Google searches at all-time high for Bitcoin going to zero.

It's like at this point, you know, three and a half cycles in, I feel, I laugh at myself when I take the bait of being worried whatsoever. The only worry is how patient can you be? everybody was so excited and Bruce talks about this a lot and he's kind of set me straight a few times with some of the things that he said, which I really appreciate is we got a little bit hoodwinked on how excited we were for institutions to get involved. Like seven years ago, 10 years ago, I remember this was the thing outside the system. And then somehow in the last year and half, everybody's wondering, do black rock sell today? Did they buy today? What's fidelity doing? Oh my God, Vanguard's on board. And I think we're, we're, we're, we're, we're,

having our attention diverted and diluted into things that don't matter and then focusing on those and not realizing the things that do matter. Bitcoin is still outside the system, but the system is trying to take advantage of it as well because it's such a great asset. The question is, what are you doing for yourself and how patient can you be? Because we're seeing the institution stack like mad. We're seeing the government bodies get involved. So I'm more bullish and ever.

But on the near term, I'm a little patient, but more bullish than ever over the next few years. I mean, look, I don't care more bullish. The real question is, is a binary. Do you think the probability of Bitcoin growing into a global store of value that roughly approximates gold or potentially eats gold's lunch, et cetera, is a higher or lower probability today than it was a year ago and or five years? years ago. And if the answer to that question is yes, then that that informs your strategy. If the answer to that question is no, then that also informs your strategy. And if you can believe, you know, just the the emboldenedness of those who think the answer to that is definitively

no, they're, they are much louder today than they've ever been, because that's the tone that I was going at. I mean, that is different than the tone that Gary has said many times, which is the Bitcoin community can't get it its own way. It's going to languish here for a while until a new narrative takes over. This has to run its course, all of which is a perfectly rational way of looking at the world, by the way, not arguing. I mean, I don't actually agree, but I totally appreciate the viewpoint and think that it makes sense. Well, to Gary's point, I agree with them in the subnitch of social media and crypto-Twitter.

I think the large majority of, if you looked across the globe, the large majority of people the whole Bitcoin are not participating in Twitter spaces and posting on X and stuff like that. There's just weird sort of bully mentality of the way I'm holding it is better. And while I do think, you know, self-custody is the way to go, I'm not going to hate on my 104-year-old grandfather for wanting an ETF versus self-custody. You know, I'm just excited. I'm excited that he has some exposure, even though it's a proxy exposure in terms of being better than being, I don't want to say being better than.

taking over some of the market share of, you know, as a store of value, I think in my mind, that's an unquestionable truth that's going to take place. The question is the timeline. But yeah, great points there, Dave. So George, you know, you're up here. You obviously have been involved. People talk about mining and they talk about all this stuff. What do you make of the constant, well, recent constant, you know, statement that miners are all a non-pride, they're obviously not all, miners are completely non-profitable and that presages the death of bitcoin now i understand that that's completely ridiculous narrative given difficulty adjustment etc but i thought you would have a unique perspective on this or are you behind the mic there yeah hi guys uh

uh use uh on the space this wanted to chime and yeah i've been in space for uh also 350 years and um you know i've seen this cycle and it's always uh amusing every sort of uh way there was discussion for, you know, Bitcoin dead and, you know, it's going to zero and this and that and all these clouds keep appearing. And frankly speaking, you know, there is a concept of diversification, but there's also a concept kind of to have your basket and to watch it very carefully and knowing what you own. And I've kind of always been proponent of that, maybe sort of my upbringing in COVID-Georgia. where you know the life savings of my parents doctors were evaporating in rates and hyperinflation kind of similar with some of the folks in argentina and zuma as well i went to wences and i became alka which basically were the first folks that i met up on my journey in 2012 and complete

distrust towards the central governments and central banks and you know these distrust have even gotten sort of more suspicious over the year so uh i just want to The ratio ever that do not worry about the sort of short-term gyrations, you know, do not try to time the market. I've yet to, I've probably funded dozens and dozens of geniuses that have promised that, you know, they would trade around Bitcoin and they would end up sort of a coming back with more Bitcoins. They all failed. None of them produced positive return in Bitcoin terms. Trading around Bitcoin is the dumbest thing you can do. It hasn't worked.

But directionally, you know, you just like look in terms of what's happening globally. Look in terms of this, you know, stupid idiotic warts that are being unleashed. Look at what's happening in terms of whether it's Republican government or Democratic government in the United States, you know, they're spending and spending. and more capital and money being printed and FIA's being debased. So regardless of what's going on, it's a directional bet. So, you know, know what you own, go for it long term and, you know, there will be volatility, but don't get shaken up.

And it's very interesting, David, in this sort of a cycle, kind of the, it's always a thought, you know, it's always been, you know, there was an energy thought and, you know, there was this kind of criminal money fought and you know then there was sort of this thought around you know you know block force obviously we've had going on in terms of in the fork and sort of a explosion of the network and and the quantum was kind of lingering on and off and sort of it came back and my sense it's just like a very coordinated attack in terms of to shake out you know, bunch of sort of retail and bunch of folks that haven't done their due diligence, that haven't done their homework. And, you know, this is kind of a very well-coordinated attack,

brought out of thin air that if you look down in terms of basics, in terms of quantum, quantum, resistance cryptography, a conversation with Dave Chalm at, you know, Bruce's event quite lengthy. And we're sort of 10, 15 years away, but it's a well-coordinated attack to shake out and get coins. And interestingly, you know, three, four years ago, we had this setup with Mike on, you know, on combating energy thought. And I reached out to Mike and said, hey, listen, maybe something we do on the quantum plot. And it has been sort of a lukewarm on day. So I don't want to be a conspiracy, but, you know, he's a super smart. guy so maybe this is a way for him to acquire cheap coins because you know he like all the

OGs know where this is headed and it's a great opportunity to load up and sort of a ride the way so guys keep on huddling don't worry everything will be fine Bitcoin will surpass gold Bitcoin will be you know in terms of capitalization it's gonna be magnitude of gold and, you know, know what you own and, you know, enjoy the ride. That's my sort of advice. Yeah, it sounds a lot like I posted a video last night about buying when others are afraid on this account. By the way, the one personal thing I will say is quite a few of the people listening think you're following me, but you're following my old account that I finally got to reach out from premium support, but supposedly a human will see what happens. But this account

is one that a lot of people aren't following. So if you're not, please click on that. And also follow all the other speakers here who we drag up here to talk. So I think everyone who's willing to give their time and talk deserves a follow. So please, please do so. And people to know who George is who just spoke. George is the biggest minor in the history of Bitcoin and one of the truest OGs in space. So it's great to have that alpha.

That's just the message I needed. I was just about to dump everything, George. So I appreciate you, brother. Bruce, thank you, my friend. Come on, Bruce. I'm here in Switzerland, we just had dinner with Paolo, another OG of Tether. And we're kind of joking at what's going on. And we're just sort of smiling.

You know, it's just like ridiculous. But listen, it's, I mean, we huddled it $150 that when things were collapsing. And, you know, this bear market of, you know, 60,000 or 30,000 or whatever. And to answer your question, there are minors that are actually very profitable. So cipher mining, iris energy, they're all set up with the three cents in a great state of Texas where their cost of mining Bitcoin is about $28, $29,000. That's a beauty of mining. You know, if you set up in a low energy location and you have efficient mining gear, then, you know, when the prices go down, you know, you gain market share and further driving costs. So if you have

an efficient setup, you're fine. And, you know, in times like this where your model gets tested and their, you know, cube-rate companies that have set up in a low energy, which, you know, they're doing quite well right now is, you know, not an 80% gross margin, but, you know, close to 40-50%, which, you know, I'll take it. Yeah. I'll take it only given some. I said it to tee up. It was a softball question because there's so many people who look at.

George, but I think the 28,000 wouldn't really work at the difficulty levels and the rate at which machines would grow. So are you sure that 28,000 delivery cost is still exactly the same with the new generation machines? Well, it depends on the machine, right? And depend on the setup that you have. And obviously, the cost where they release those machines, which will acquire them. So it varied across the industry. But, you know, people talk about, you know, new machines and, you know, that plays the role.

But you got to understand, you know, when we first came up with our A6 in 2013, I think the jumping efficiency was 4x, but now the jumping efficiency is maybe, you know, 25%, 30%, so we got to look at the cost per dollar, you know, that's very important. But the Holy Grail, which I'd seen, you know, I mean, we built out probably 1,200 megawatts in eight countries and, you know, my piece of advice, the Holy Grail has always been cost of energy. And if you can secure a low cost energy and we've been able to do it in, you know, in Texas at sort of a substrate sense, that has been, you know, foundational layer. And, you know, if you have built your model of mining on the kind of rock of Gibraltar, so to speak,

then you, you know, you can be successful long term. If you don't, you know, you don't. So, you know, I'm of the same age. I saw the whole story of Bitfury, not whole, but the Bitfury story. been built and the reason I jumped into Ethereum first thing when I saw Ethereum was because I was tired of you know switching from S2s to S3s to S7s and what not at that time I was mining in Venachie Washington State and so was Dave Carlson uh huh was Dave Carlson there no no no they were they were parallels they came in a bit later my partner who was a US um tactical um soldier

X knew that place, had access to hydropower energy. No point discussing that long one, but point is we were mining at 1.8 because it was a variable charge setup. And even then, like you said, the device launch, the ASIC launches would sort of disrupt the entire mechanics, the entire dynamics. You know, 2015 to 16, you would probably switch machines twice already in a year from from S-1s to S-3s. And then by 2016, he were already at S-7s,

and, you know, God knows what, parallel provider. So I think, yes, the 4-X dynamics are gone, and, you know, 25% and 30% are in, but so is the price, right? The price used to do 2x to 4x a year at that time. And now it doesn't. So I don't, but I'm just like, anyways,

bottom line, I am surprised. somebody in the world still has, you know, 28,000 to 35,000 delivery dynamics? That's insane. I'll tell you even more. I mean, if you sort of have access to, you know, ridiculously low, I mean, I think one of the things like, you know, you know, you can see in Venezuela in Iran, basically cost of energy is close to zeros, right? So they've been shipping, you know, the old, you know, S-9s and even, you know, even later because you have all the equipment. amortizing, the cost of energy is close to zero, you know, you're basically minting cash. And that's been the cave.

So if you can push down the cost of energy, you know, to two cents, one cents and even lower, then, you know, you can bring out sort of, you know, the old equipment and, you know, they will be printing points for you, right? So energy is the key bottom line. You know, the equipment's coming over. But energy is the foundation. And I've seen many folks get burnt on that, being excited in good times, sort of a building out of putting something at.

five cents and tolerating, but you know, in times like this, which you have right now, you just get wiped out. I mean, you just have to close your shop and mockball everything. And, you know, those that have positive setup, you know, they're, you know, they're doing quite well, relatively speaking. 100%. 100%. All right, guys, listen, pleasure to, you know, jam with you.

Just stay true to the cause. And, you know, if you, if you ever have any doubt just to go back, read the white paper. and you know, you realize not what you own and everything will be fine. I'll see you at one million, guys. Everything will be fine. Thanks, George. And watch 10-year charts. Don't forget that.

I think that is a great place to end it because we are at time. So we will see you all again tomorrow morning and enjoy the rest of your day. I'm sure it'll be lots of fun like it's been over the last week because here we are big. We're still within a $2,000 range for the last week, which is kind of crazy. But I will say this, volatility has a funny way of changing its regime. And we'll see what happens. Ciao, chow, everyone.