The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Will Pass $200K | Max Keiser, The Keiser Report

Episode Date: May 27, 2021

Following an onslaught of coordinated FUD attempting to pull Bitcoin and the crypto market to its knees, Max Keiser stood up to separate fact from fiction. Looking at these facts, he has no doubt that this wave of FUD will pass and adopting a Bitcoin standard is the most effective path out of imminent global financial ruin. Bitcoin, Keiser believes, will still achieve a $30T market cap and surpass $200K this year, even while the world continues to doubt it.   In this episode, Max Keiser explores: - Elon Musk’s narcissist behavior - The intellectual’s intellect - Bitcoin derangement syndrome - Central bank bloodshed - 20% inflation rates - Adopting the Bitcoin Standard - The collapse of America - The truth behind Tether - The first Bitcoin VC fund - Zimbabwe and Venezuela - Hyperbitcoinization --- Nexo Try Nexo’s full-suite, instant crypto banking service, featuring: savings accounts with up to 12% interest on crypto, stablecoins & fiat; flexible crypto-backed credit lines at just 5.9% APR; an exchange with 75+ crypto and fiat pairs and best-price guarantee. All this and more wrapped up in a single Nexo Wallet. Start banking at https://thewolfofallstreets.link/nexo or download the app on Google Play or the App Store. --- Cosmos Visit https://thewolfofallstreets.link/cosmos to learn about the Cosmos Hub and how the $ATOM can connect every blockchain. Cosmos is the port city connecting chains like Bitcoin and Ethereum to ensure your liquidity on any chain can be used anywhere.  Find new staking opportunities, applications, or build your own parachain at https://thewolfofallstreets.link/cosmos  --- If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with your colleagues & friends, rate, review, and subscribe. This podcast is presented by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at: https://www.blockworks.co ーーー Join the Wolf Den newsletter: ►►https://www.getrevue.co/profile/TheWolfDen/members

This episode is brought to you by Nexo and Cosmos. Stay tuned for more information about both later in the episode. What is up, everybody? I'm Scott Melker, and this is the Wolf of All Streets podcast. Today's guest has a voice and persona built for the airwaves. Max Keiser is an American broadcaster and filmmaker known for hosting the famous Keiser Report. Max is unabashedly all in on Bitcoin,

is not afraid to talk about it to his millions of fans around the world. He's known for his hot takes, humor, and high Bitcoin IQ. So I can't wait to dive into this conversation, find out what he's thinking about the current market, the potential of Bitcoin, and anything else we managed to find our way into discussing. Max, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Yeah. Hey, Scott. Thanks for having me on. I like the idea that I'm built for coming on the show today. Yeah. Hey, Scott. Thanks for having me on. I like the idea that I'm built for media. Maybe I am. Yeah, I believe you've proven that by now. So once again, before we get into the questions, you're listening to the Wolf of Wall Street's podcast, which airs twice a week. I talk to your favorite personalities in the worlds of Bitcoin, finance, trading, art,

music, sports, and politics. This podcast is powered by Blockworks. You can visit blockworks.co for access to the highest quality information in the space. And you can check out everything else I have going on at thewolfofallstreets.io. Now to get into today's episode, Max, I have to ask you, and you know it's coming, what the hell is going on with Elon Musk? Well, you know, you don't change Bitcoin. Bitcoin changes you. And he's unwilling to be changed. Right. So he's a narcissist, I guess you could say. And he likes to have everything about him. And Bitcoin, of course, is decentralized. There is no leader. And it seems to reject narcissists. And we've seen a lot of narcissists fail

on the altar of Bitcoin. You had Nassim Taleb, Elon Musk, Paul Krugman over at the New York Times. You know, the list goes on and on. Mark Cuban to a large degree. So their egos and their narcissism prevent them from fully embracing Bitcoin. And they embrace shit coins, you know, thinking that this will somehow be the way to go. And it doesn't work. Do you think that he's really embracing Doge or do you think that it's a joke to him?

Well I think that he saw Michael Saylor, I got my Michael Saylor shirt on today, over there at Micro Strategies, really redefine the corporate treasury in America and around the world and what the corporate treasury is all about and very articulately go on mainstream media and talk about money printing and inflation and the responsibility of a CEO to their shareholders in terms of their cash reserves and why buying back your own stock is probably a bad idea and why buying Bitcoin is an excellent idea. So he immediately became almost a renaissance figure. And then there's Elon, you know, who got a lot of attention for his rockets and his cars and things.

And he got jealous and he's like, my God, this guy is stealing some of my spotlight. So how can I steal some of that back? So he goes into this little known joke coin meme coin and uh gets a lot of attention doing it moves the price around a lot and i think it's just a function again of his narcissism i think he's guided by his narcissism mostly is what what guides him he's obviously very smart in terms of his technical prowess and his engineering skills, but it's very narrow intelligence. He doesn't have a broad base intelligence. He doesn't know anything about money or philosophy, anthropology, sociology, technology in the broader sense, history, right? He's a geek, you know, and a very, very specific type of geek, a self-admitted Asperger's

sufferer. so you know that he's on the autism spectrum to some degree so that brings some baggage to to the conversation and um so now he finds himself hated and a a figure of intense hatred not only from the bitcoin community but even from the altcoin community i i think is looking at him curiously um corporate america doesn't really like this guy the stc has been after him for a long time because allegedly he's been breaking a lot of laws and i i liken him a bit to john mcafee who's another technology guy who decided to get into coins he's now sitting in a prison in spain you know is this where elon's going to end up you know if he keeps going the way he's going that's that's where he's gonna end up but don't

we think that he's one buy or one tweet again from going back from zero to hero i mean the guys made the trip from hero to zero and back more times than anyone i can recount in this amount of time but you know one more tesla announcement of buying Bitcoin and he'll be the hero of the community once again. No, I think he lost the community. I look at Jack Mallers, who's one of the brightest, newest, youngest, sharpest guys out there with InStrike and Zap. And he wrote a very passionate thread on Twitter explaining why essentially he's out. You know, he's never coming back to camp Elon ever again. And he feels betrayed. And he thinks he called him out and did so in a way that, unlike some of us, myself included, I can tend to become somewhat scatological in my tweets and not terribly articulate.

But nevertheless, with this Jack Mallers, who's running a company, and he wrote a brilliant piece. I think he speaks for a generation. So I think Elon lost one or two generations. He lost the millennials. He lost the Gen Zs. They're not coming back. Yeah, it does seem like a lot of people

are pointing to SNL as sort of peak Elon Musk. Like you could probably chart it like you could Bitcoin. That would be the blow off top for him. And I think that it's an apt comparison, but also I do have my eyes open and think that he could come back with at least the mainstream or that part of the community pretty quickly if price went up $10,000 because of another Tesla purchase like it did the first time. Yeah, I mean, you can't rule it out. But I just I don't I've seen this before. And the people who, excuse me, the people who really disengage in acrimonious ways, and they really don't really come back. I can't think of any examples, really.

Maybe I gave it some thought to think of an example. I can't think of anyone who's been this overtly stupid and then worked their way back, really. I can't think of an example. I don't think he's going to be the example either. Yeah, Taleb, you mentioned before, he called me an idiot recently, which I thought was a huge compliment

and a badge of honor to be in that club. But he was a much more surprising turn, I think, because it seemed that his ethos and beliefs lined up exceptionally well for Bitcoin and that he turned on a dime. Yeah, once again, it's narcissism so um he is someone who's extremely confident in his intellectual abilities who goes to twitter and publicly dresses down other public intellectuals and academics regularly and calls them idiots and things like that and publicly and considers himself to be really the intellectual's intellect that he is really running the show. And again, you don't change Bitcoin. Bitcoin changes you. If you're unwilling to change and a narcissist is unwilling to do so,

then you start to go down the path of having Bitcoin derangement syndrome, where your inability to change warps you and you become a pariah in the community and a laughingstock. I mean, he wrote the foreword to Seyfeddin Amusta's book, The Bitcoin Standard, and yet he doesn't seem to really spend five minutes on Bitcoin at all. He doesn't really know anything about it. All the arguments from these people are always completely horrible. You know, one of the things Bitcoin suffers from is a lack of credible detractors. You know, we need better critics. You know, these critics of Bitcoin are all horrible.

They all quote the same FUD from five, six, seven years ago. And, you know, none of them make any good credible points. And they all kind of blow up some simultaneously in similar ways yeah it's always very clearly emotional when it happens i mean it's unbelievable you just look at peter schiff right uh you know who's been the greatest bottom signal effectively for every uh move on bitcoin that we've seen he has a knack for coming at the bottom of a crash yeah you know he always says he says that um a bitcoin is not a store of value right so what he's saying is that only you know peter schiff determines what the market

should consider a store of value correct not the market right he's putting himself above the market he says i know the market is is has determined that bitcoin is a store of value but i peter schiff have not determined that it is a store of value and therefore i peter schiff i'm now claiming the market is wrong so again narcissism only a narcissist would come out and publicly say that I'm smarter than the market. And so he's been wrong since a dollar. He's been wrong for 10 years since I told him about it at a dollar, $10, $100, $1,000. He's come back with the exact same argument. I, Peter Schiff, do not deem this worthy of my attention.

And so as a result, he's underperformed Bitcoin by 99.9% for 10 years. Every single one of his clients has underperformed Bitcoin. They're all losing money priced in Bitcoin. And he's got to be the worst money manager of the past decade. I can't think of a worse money manager with the worst numbers than Peter Schiff. Yeah. And like you said, the statement doesn't make much sense if the numbers don't back it. We have all the data in the world to show who's been right and who's been wrong.

And the market really does decide. Well, it's amazing where somebody who claims to be a libertarian would also claim that the market in this case is wrong and that they're right. That's what you that's what you hear from a statist yep somebody who's a statist will say we don't believe price signals are correct we don't believe market signals are correct we believe that the state is correct and our ability to control and manage and fix prices and rig prices is correct so when it comes to bitcoin peter schiff is a statist he's essentially a Marxist. But then when he steps out of Bitcoin, he claims to be a libertarian. So again, one of the traits of a narcissist is this kind of moral flexibility that

suits the situation, whatever it is. There is no actual moral grounding. He has no principles. He has no ethics. He just, whatever the situation is, however he can assert that he is at the center of it. He'll he'll pick and choose from whatever ideology is that needs to add credibility to his claim that only he knows what's going on. And as you point out, the numbers have shown that he's been dead wrong for 10 years, but yet he keeps going down this path. It is amazingly fun to watch his son attack him on Twitter for the exact same things that you're saying, but I guess we don't need to spend too much more time on Peter Schiff. I'm curious, we talk about obviously the idea of a store of value. He obviously believes it's gold. We believe that it's Bitcoin. How do you respond to the arguments that the volatility that we're

seeing in the market as of now? I mean, people don't know when we're recording, but it's down 35% from the top today. Does volatility affect the argument that Bitcoin is a great store of value? I don't really look at the price. I look more at the hash rate. And the hash rate over the past 10 years has been in a very predictable, solid bull market. And it just reached new all time highs recently. And that's really the nexus of the Bitcoin protocol. Price is not really, it's the least important data point on Bitcoin. The important data points are hash rate, halvings, difficulty adjustment, the emission schedule every 10 minutes. Those are important data points.

Price only reflects on the dollar. Because when you're pricing Bitcoin in dollars, you're making a comment on the dollar, not Bitcoin. One Bitcoin equals one Bitcoin. That's never changed. But if you price it in dollars and you say, oh, it's a reflection on the volatility of the US dollar. Because unlike fiat money or gold, Bitcoin is free to trade.

So it's trading and it's showing volatility in the dollar. So Bitcoin price down, we see dollar strength. Bitcoin price up, we see dollar weakness. Over the past 10 years, the U.S. dollar is in a hyperinflationary collapse against Bitcoin. They punctuated by the occasional strength in the dollar. So the dollar might go up on any given day. And so priced in Bitcoin, you see the price down. But that's just a reflection of the dollar. That's nothing to do with Bitcoin. The Bitcoin's path is toward global Bitcoin adoption,

hyper-Bitcoinization. Market cap will be at $10 trillion, $20 trillion, $30 trillion. And that path is set. There's nothing that can derail it. And any given dollar price on any given day is not really important. You make a really interesting point. I've been on the side of the correlation debate as Bitcoin is a beautifully uncorrelated asset from all other asset classes.

And that has not been a very popular opinion because occasionally stocks move and Bitcoin seems to move with it. And everybody obviously panics and says that we're just another market. But you did make the argument, obviously, that Bitcoin is inversely correlated to the dollar at times. And that is what we see with metals and stocks to a greater degree as well. Do you think that Bitcoin is completely an uncorrelated asset from these other asset classes in general, and that maybe that's

temporary when we do see those movements or it's coincidental? How do you view Bitcoin with regard to those other assets? Right. I would say uncorrelated is generally what I think. Bitcoin is on a vector that it's on its own. It's a new asset class. It was the discovery of a new asset class back in 2009 when it was first kind of dropped on on the web and um the correlation or the reverse correlation of the dollar i think is the only thing really that is interesting because the us dollar is a world reserve currency and bitcoin is competing to become world reserve currency so the king right right now is the us dollar and bitcoin's attacking the king so that's that's where those two come together and sometimes that that's the end result is Bitcoin replaces the dollar

and replaces fiat money and replaces central banks. So that's where it's going. But on something that's compounding at a rate of 200% a year for 10 years, it's not correlated to anything. Right. It's a vertical rocket going straight up, and it's going to pass some clouds on the way. Then it'll pass a mountaintop. It'll pass a star. It'll pass, escape the galaxy.

It doesn't mean it's correlated to any of those things. It's on its own vector. You know, it's heading on a vector out of this of any, as Michael Saylor would say, all your models are broken. Right. There are no models suitable to evaluate Bitcoin. I think it's absolutely true. You said that Bitcoin is attacking the king being the United States dollar, but we all know that it's not the only one attacking the king.

And you touched on central banks. We have central bank digital currencies being developed worldwide, especially in China, who has unabashedly said, listen, we want the dollar not to be the reserve currency and our probably best shot at that is a digital yuan. So how do you think that those play into this sort of 3D chess now

instead of 2D chess of Bitcoin versus the dollar? Right, well, the central bank digital currencies are just fiat money, centralized fiat money. So they don't compete with Bitcoin. They compete with other fiat money, centralized fiat money. So they don't compete with Bitcoin. They compete with other fiat money. Centralized fiat money. And what happens is, what will happen is that one major country will say, you know what, we're just going to add Bitcoin to our reserves. The same way MicroStrategy added Bitcoin to their balance sheet, one of the major countries, central banks of the world will say we're going to start adding Bitcoin.

And then it'll make all these central bank digital currencies look even worse than they already look. It'll make fiat money look worse than it already looks. And it'll make gold look worse than it already looks. So

there's no threat from central bank digital currency because it's just centralized fiat money. It's not different than currently what we have now. We have US dollars, mostly electronic, right? There's very little actual paper floating around. It's a central bank digital currency. I invented a digital currency back in 1996 that I got a US patent on 5950176 and it's a virtual currency and it's a virtual trading system and it's also virtual securities and it was the first patented commercial prediction market so I mean I know this whole industry very well. And I can tell you that a central bank digital currency is nothing, has no problems, no threat to Bitcoin.

It's worse. I mean, it's a central bank sweat dream, right? It's complete and utter control of the money supply. So, I mean, if anything, it should drive more people towards Bitcoin, I would believe. Well, it's gonna be easier to do, let's say, MMT, Modern Monetary Theory, or UBI.

So in the States, you already have basically UBI. People are getting a monthly check from the government, and they're not going to apply for jobs, because they're getting twice the minimum wage by not working. So that's UBI. So we're already on UBI. OK, so now we know what what happens when you do ubi oh you get inflation and uh so in other words for every dollar increase you get in your ubi

you're gonna have to pay more than a dollar for that basket of goods at the grocery store so now you're losing again you're gonna lose and lose and. You cannot print your way into having prosperity. I mean, if that were so, then Zimbabwe would be the richest country in the world or Venezuela would be incredibly rich. But they're not. They're incredibly poor because they think they can print money to create wealth. It doesn't work that way. Sorry. Do you think that those countries are a preview of what could happen in the, I guess, quote unquote, first world when we finally see hyperinflation? Because in those places, Bitcoin is actually being put to the test and winning, right? I mean, we see hyperinflation and nobody really talks about it, but people are surviving because

of Bitcoin and even some other cryptocurrencies. But I mean, it's changing people's lives on a daily basis who don't have access to other money. Right. So as Paul Krugman at the New York Times says, the dollar is backed by men with guns. So the Pentagon, these are the guns that back up the US dollar that eats up something like $1.5 dollars of our taxes. Approximately 50 percent of all tax dollars goes to the people with the guns to back the dollar. So what happens is at some point with inflation kicking in, it's going to be impossible to print enough money to keep the pentagon up and running so now when you when you

don't have the guns to back your paper currency you go into a hyperinflationary collapse and i think we're going to see that in the next year or two um the american empire is just stretched too thin you know we got too many military bases in too many countries we start too many wars and uh like it a lot of empires before us whether it's the roman empire or you can name a bunch of empires you know it's really hard to maintain an empire it gets really expensive and then the value of your money depreciates and then your empire collapses so the us empire is set to collapse um it's probably good for the millennials in gen z because they get to rebuild the country in their the way they want it and probably with a bitcoin standard or should definitely be with

a bitcoin standard so the millennials will inherit the the country at some point with a bit and using a bitcoin standard but do you see a you know full-on mad max dystopian future i haven't heard that many people say hey it's gonna happen in a year or two you know there's obviously a lot of arguments that uh it will it will live and breathe for for much longer but what does the future look like when that happens and not everybody has bitcoin well you already see it happening in some cities like chicago um new york is becoming very violent once again as when i was living in new y in the 70s, we had 3,000 murders a year, and that was the high. Now it's creeping up again.

I think they're on track to maybe 1,000 murders this year. And you have, of course, the city of San Francisco went into complete breakdown. Seattle collapsed, lawless, Mad Max world. You already have in some cities. So on the margins, it's already happening. And you had 90,000 people die from opiate overdose last year. That's a death of despair that's caused by money printing. That's right at the doorstep of the central bank. That's J-PAL, Janet Yellen, effectively killed 90 000 people with their money printing last year and you know they continue to print money they're going to kill

another 100 500 000 where where where will it end where will the blood shed end for the central banks at what point at what point do they do they stop murdering americans a million two million when's it gonna end guys it's time to wake up and go earn some money. One of the most exciting use cases of crypto is both to earn yield and take low interest credit loans, especially since your actual bank is giving you Nathan Nada, nothing in interest. Nexo is leading the charge in this arena with 360 degree crypto banking services. If you're just looking to park your crypto, do nothing, earn some interest, you can make up to 12% a year by doing nothing. If you're in the market for a loan, they have them for as little

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You need to absolutely check them out at thewolfofallstreets.link slash Cosmos, C-O-S-M-O-S, and see everything they have going on. Trust me, I'm not an advocate of the central bank. I'm just curious. They're obviously printing because we live in a naturally deflationary world. have going on. Justin Donald Trust me, I'm not an advocate of the central bank. I'm just curious. They're obviously printing because we live in a naturally deflationary world. Technology is deflationary. At some point, people are not going to have jobs no matter what happens, and they're trying

to print their way out of that. But at this point, what could a central bank do, in your opinion, to fix this? David Morgan Well, I wouldn't agree necessarily with that characterization. So the reason they're not printing money to overcome a deflationary technological world, they're printing money to bail out Wall Street. And Wall Street takes that money

that's given to them for free to speculate on more businesses. And as those businesses blow up, they get bailed out some more. That's why they print money. If you had a Bitcoin standard, you would have a lot more individual sovereignty and you'd have a lot more organic GDP growth based on production and manufacturing and genuine growth. So that's not, they're not fulfilling,

they're not solving a problem by printing money. They're causing a problem by printing money. And there's only two ways forward. As you point out, as we know what's happening right now, they're printing more money to keep bailing out the banks that are stealing the money that they are printed. The only other option is to do what Paul Volcker did back in the 70s and raise interest rates to 20%. And it would force all the crooks like Jamie Dimon and other Wall Street banks would have to

go bankrupt immediately. And then that would make room for new banks and new business opportunities and people who are not crooks to come in and start businesses. So if we're going to live in a central bank world, then you need to actually use the tools of the central bank the way that they were designed. And right now, and really for the last 15 years, the central bank should have been raising rates for 15 years now, or until such time as you weeded out the bad actors, you weeded out the crooks, you weeded out the people, the banking system that was hoarding the cash and not lending it out. We know that they weren't lending it out because if you look at the money velocity number, it's near zero. So so the fed all the fed has to do is say you

know what this money velocity is trending to zero we need to raise rates to get rid of these banks that are hoarding the cash and refusing to lend it out and that okay we'll protect the depositors but those banks have got to go they've got to go you know jamie dimon has got to go he's he's really a terrible terrible impediment to the america's future uh and then let creative destruction kick in let capitalism kick in let price discovery kick in let's let's do it the way america does it we don't want to do it the way venezuela does it we don't want to do it the way argentina does it i not not nice i understand it i didn't know that we were aspiring to be New Argentina, but it looks like

that's what we're trying to do. Yeah, I guess the fear, not of the central bank, myself or any human, is that that transition would be extremely painful, but obviously necessary. You know, that sort of allowing it to naturally happen.

Sadly, both directions now seem like there has to be a lot of pain. More printing, a lot of pain. Switching completely to that other environment, a lot of pain. Yeah, it's painful one way or the other. Absolutely. I would agree with that. There is no, I guess the conclusion here is that there is no pain-free resolution. We're beyond the pale in terms of there's a solution that is pragmatic and maybe a bit difficult, but is going to end up with a sounder economic footing that that's now no longer available you know the convexity issue

in the bond market is now beyond repair in other words uh any in increase in interest rates by even one tenth of one percent would cause instant death to you know a large percentage of the economy so there's no there is no pain-free way. We're now going to have to face the music, as Chuck Prince said when he was at Citibank during the 2008 crisis, right? And in 2008 would have been a great time, actually, under Barack Obama. Barack Obama could have, instead of bailing out the creditors, he could have bailed out the debtors, which is something that's been done for thousands of years. Instead, for the very uniquely, maybe the first time ever in a major crisis, he bailed

out the creditors. The banks that fraudulently made those loans, he gave them, he made them whole and gave them 10 times more credit. And then they went and did the exact same thing. So now we're living through the 2008 crisis part two, thanks to Barack Obama, Tim Geithner, Eric Holder, his attorney general. He said that banks are above the law. It's called the Holder Doctrine. He said we can't prosecute banks, even though we find them guilty of fraud, manipulation, malfeasance. We cannot prosecute because they're systemically important to the system of the economy.

So America died in 2008, but we haven't buried it yet i think in 2021 we may bury it but it's it's really barack obama killed america and eric holder tim geithner uh hank paulson uh robert rubin maybe wasn't involved so much um larry summers right those guys much. Larry Summers, right? Those guys took America out back and put two caps in the back of the head. Bang, bang, dead. Thanks, guys. Now, millennials are going to have to rebuild it from scratch. It's going to be tough, sure. But it'll be an adventure. Right. What gets me is that we always hear the age-old criticism of Bitcoin that it's only for criminals and drug dealers and money laundering, and then the exact same banks you're talking about have already been caught doing billions

of dollars worth of money laundering, including JP Morgan not that long ago, and they pay their fine and move along. So why would it even be a criticism if Bitcoin was used for money laundering if that's par for the course from the actual banks. Yeah, I think the problem that banks have in terms of Bitcoin and money laundering is that it's not good for money laundering. You know, the Bitcoin, if you look at all the criminal activity a year ago or so, you could say Bitcoin was involved in something like 1.3% of it. And over the course of the year, it dropped, that number's dropped to less than three quarters of 1%. Because it's actually terrible to use Bitcoin in criminal activity. Because it's an open ledger that's transparent that law enforcement can see what's

going on. So it's actually a bad. So I think when Jamie Dimon criticizes Bitcoin, he's saying, you know, the problem I have Bitcoin is that I can't use it to perform all the criminal activity that is the basis for my enterprise here at J.P. Morgan. That's why he doesn't like Bitcoin. He much prefers the fiat money world and his cozy relationship with regulators where he can keep 90 cents of every dollar he steals. That's what he likes. If you want to challenge that system, he's going to not like it. He's not going to like Bitcoin. That's what he likes. If you want to challenge that system, he's going to not like it. He's not going to like Bitcoin. That's what he's really saying.

That makes sense. So let's assume that this hyperinflationary environment does come to pass in the next year or two. What can we do as people with a microphone in this market to make sure that as many people get and buy Bitcoin as possible before that happens? Right. Well, the sad news is that a lot of people simply won't buy it. And, you know, like the story of Noah and the Ark, they're going to drown.

But, you know, here's the thing, Scott, you know, when you're in an airplane and there's a sudden problem, they always tell you when the air mask drops, put it on your own face first. And then if you have kids or whatever, try to help your kids. So when, when this thing collapses, you know, you have to make sure that you, Scott and me, Max have enough Bitcoin. And then we may be in a position to help people without Bitcoin, but we're never going to be able to convince people without Bitcoin who don't want to be convinced to get Bitcoin before before the problem. And so we shouldn't really worry about them. We should just worry about getting Bitcoin ourselves and getting as much Bitcoin as we possibly can. And then when it hits the fan, you know, then you're in a position to help somebody.

But if you if somebody who doesn't want help, there's nothing you can do. It would be a waste of time in Bitcoin to get somebody to try to come to Bitcoin if they're not ready for it and they never will be ready for it before the dollar goes into a huge collapse. So just keep stacking sats and then when the thing blows up, you'll be in a position to help somebody. Bill Barhyde made a very similar argument

when I had him on the show from Abra. He basically said, it's going to obviously be the fortunate few that have it, but then there's going to be a natural trickle down when they actually have to spend it and use it in that future where the dollar is worthless. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's basically, yeah, that's basically saying the same thing. And, um, yeah, that's, that's, that's basically true. I don't, you know, people say that, you know, I'm looking at

Twitter these days and they're like, oh, you toxic maximalists are turning people off to Bitcoin. And you know, it's not really the way to look at the situation. I think you have to,

that would be like saying there's, there's, there's somebody shows up and tells a room full of folks that there's a bomb in the other room and it's going to blow up in 20 seconds and we all need to get out right away. And there's somebody in the audience is saying, why are you such a toxic anti-bomb person? Like, I'm not a toxic anti-bomb person. I'm telling you, this thing's gonna blow up and you need to leave right now why are you being so toxic i haven't finished my chicken salad right i'm like go ahead okay stay stay and uh it's been nice knowing you yeah what's interesting is you were way ahead of this i I mean, you know, there's a lot of I didn't start till 2016. So I'm by no stretch an OG. I got it, I would say late people had told me about me earlier 1996 and through the end of that decade was, of course, the Internet boom. And there were a few digital currencies that were emerging on the Internet.

The one I invented was one of them. And so I was aware of a few things. Number one, I was aware that a digital currency could be wildly popular because the one I invented was used on the Hollywood Stock Exchange, and the Hollywood Stock Exchange became, within a year, wildly popular.

It was the most actively traded exchange in the world. We very quickly scaled up, had half a million users or so, which is pretty hard to do in that internet environment at that time. internet wasn't really as developed and um so i knew that people would have respond to a digital currency in exactly the same way they would respond to any other currency they they took that you take possession of it and your your psychology toward it is exactly the same you know people and there's a lot of examples

of gaming currencies like the Linden dollar and Second Life. And I mean, there are people who live in these environments and it's a game. It was a gaming environment there. There the differentiation between the gaming environment and the non gaming environment disappears, World of Witchcraft, of course. So I knew that that was the story and i also was trying to bring the hollywood dollar into the real world you know we we maintained a fixed exchange rate of a million to one and so people would come to the hollywood stock exchange

and they'd make a few million and then they could go to ebay and we would guarantee that we'd buy back their their dollars at a fixed rate of a million to one so there was a crossing over into outside of the gaming world and uh so then when i was introduced to bitcoin in 2011 i immediately saw that it could exist already outside of the gaming world i mean it could exist in the wild it could it could compete with that with the dollar and as such you know it could be huge and so we started talking about it started buying it i started investing in bitcoin startups in 2013. so i have really the first bitcoin dedicated venture capital fund heberg Capital, that we started in 2013, which is an actual fund. I know Roger Ver says he made the first venture capital investments, which as an individual,

I guess he did. But right around the same time, we created an actual VC fund called Heisenberg Capital, and we invested in BitPay and Kraken and Shapeshift and Bitso, which is now just got a huge value. So Kraken's worth probably 10, 15 billion dollars now. I think initially it was worth five million dollars. And I'd worked on Wall Street for many years, so I knew the finance side of the business. And it's also I recognize Bitcoin as a new asset class. So having been a Wall Street professional for many years, my first question was, what is this?

Is it a stock? Is it a bond? Is it a currency? Is it a commodity? And then I realized that it's really none of those and it's all of those. So it's a brand new asset class. And then you look at the world of money management

and the money management world is one where money managers have a fiduciary responsibility to own assets and they have to own for example pension funds have to own certain treasury bonds and they have to have certain yield instruments and and so as a fiduciary responsibility at some point there's going to be a requirement for institutions and corporations and endowments to own bitcoin um so therefore the total addressable market is 100 trillion dollars so at that time the total market cap of bitcoin was 20 million so So you're figuring, well, 20 million into 100 trillion, the price can only go up from here, I would think. So that's started my journey. Makes sense. You talk about pension funds,

obviously, endowments. That's sort of the huge wall of money. You were thinking about it 10 years ago. I think they're on the cusp now of being here. Do you think that they'll gain exposure to the underlying asset? They'll actually buy Bitcoin? Or do you think that the ETF will be the tool that they'll use for exposure? Well, there's no reason why they can't own the Bitcoin underneath. Because you have not a lot of custodial services or you'll have insurance products. So you'll have various ways to to allow for that to happen it's a bit tricky i guess uh in wyoming caitlin long

has done incredible work in dealing with this issue about how institutions can effectively take possession of keys but but still maintain their responsibilities, fiduciary responsibilities. So there's a lot of work being done to allow for that to happen. And Wyoming is an interesting case. I mean, in the United States, of course, the question is, well, what if the country bans it? Well, what we're seeing on the state level is the opposite. Wyoming is now becoming a Bitcoin state and they want to, and they're not, it's similar to what happened in the marijuana laws, right? So marijuana is illegal on the federal level, but on various states, it's legal. And the more states, it becomes legal. And then eventually the federal law will change. You will have a

pro, you know, marijuana federal law will come into place. I think with Bitcoin similarly, you got Wyoming now, city of Miami, potentially the state of Florida would become a Bitcoin-friendly state, Texas, Bitcoin-friendly. So at some point, the momentum is, well, then we're just on the federal level. We're going to make Bitcoin, open it up.

And the country should do that because what I call the global hash war, if the US doesn't start to hoard and mine Bitcoin for itself as a sovereign entity, it's going to really be left behind because these other countries potentially could overtake it and become much better off having Bitcoin on their balance sheet.

It could be China, Russia, Iran, for three examples of countries that could end up putting Bitcoin on their strategic reserves and then having really strong currencies and really putting even more pressure on the dollar. I think the U.S. really is taking enormous risks by weaponizing the U.S. dollar and using it to sanction countries the way that they do, because now these countries are saying, well, you know what, maybe we'll just forsake the dollar and develop our own swift global payments network and we'll start hoarding Bitcoin.

And then we'll see where that goes. Last time I talked to Caitlin Long, I made the exact same argument. I said it reminded me so much of the marijuana industry when you would hear about, you know, states opening it, but people couldn't deposit their money. They'd be driving around, you know, armored vehicles with cash because they were afraid to put the money into a federal bank, not knowing what might happen. So like with that in mind and how we've seen that evolve, do you still think that the United States regulators or the government is a major threat to Bitcoin or that there are other existential or real threats that could stop this thing? Right. On the state level,

I think that it's more likely that they capitulate and they realize that they need to own Bitcoin or they have faced an existential threat. Again, you don't change Bitcoin, Bitcoin changes you. So the US needs to get right with Satoshi or it's going to find itself really in a dire situation in the global economy.

And I think that enough, we got Cynthia Lummis who's in Wyoming as well, right? So she's in the Senate and she's an active voice for Bitcoin, pro Bitcoin. She understands it deeply. She's going to be at the, she's a key speaker at the Miami event coming up on June 4th. And so I think Sainer, I think so. I think, I think the momentum of the founding documents of the country, the constitution, bill of rights, declaration of independence, there's still enough of that in the minds of, of Washington to, to realize that that's who we are yeah i i don't want to i'm not cynical to the degree that i believe that we're going to just go become marxist without any fight

whatsoever i think there's enough you know um intellectual capacity and and and go forward gung-ho you know in in bias bias to these true Americans who understand why America works, that we'll get there. We'll get to Bitcoin. I have to be optimistic about that. Caitlin also had an incredible thread over the last couple of days about the Tether. I don't know if you read it, but talking about the backing of Tether because they finally obviously came out and said what they were backed by. And while everybody seems to be concerned with Elon Musk and that narrative, it seems she was very concerned with Tether being backed by cash equivalents rather than cash and maybe that they weren't the highest quality. Do you think that there's any threat as a result of that behavior by tether no um yeah well first of all caitlyn long is probably the most accredited financial background person in bitcoin like she is

a ninja warrior in terms of her credentials her wall street credentials it's really no one even comes close i mean michael saylor is good on the tech side and he's a smart guy but she's actually she's like level one ninja warrior in terms of her background and what she where she comes from and how she she she's incredibly bright and skilled and incredible but but i think that the uh the tether story remember the tether story is coming from a place of a black box where nobody knew anything. And it was absolutely unknown. They couldn't find an auditor. And, you know, I've been around for 10 years and I've seen so much like the mount gox situation is a pretty big you know moment in bitcoin history where

you know you're dealing for so many years or um bitmex you know um arthur hayes's exchange you know the um the what was going on there for so long was really unacceptable right Right. So, so you, you were in a phase now where people are, we're becoming more professional. So, so tether is now open the kimono a bit, so to speak, and it shows what the reserves are and okay. They're not great, but it's, you know, from my perspective, we're still moving forward. You know, even two years ago, it could have been hamster shit on their balance sheet.

We wouldn't have any idea. At least now we kind of have an idea what's going on. And they're positioned to improve those reserves. And they're in a position to move. And I think it destroys a lot of the FUD coming from people like Nourielini or Jim Rickards, who always just says tether, tether, tether. You know, and now we know more specifically what's going on there. And I mean, to Caitlin's point, I mean, she's saying, look, the mark to market this reserve and you apply it to institutions that own this asset and now they've got to adjust for this risk which means they've got to sell off you know pair their position you know or offset it in some way maybe you know marry it with some triple a rated treasury bonds or something you

know they've got to act they've got to take. They've got to move on this information. Okay. She's right. Yeah, they do. But is it some kind of existential threat? No. I see it the opposite. I see it as the path toward more visibility on what's been happening in these dark corners.

I mean, the whole Bitcoin industry emerged from the shadows, going all the way back to the Silk Road days, right? I mean, it was literally underground black market stuff. And now you've got the endowment of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton looking at it. Blackrack's looking at it. It's come a long way. So this is part of the journey. Mark Yusko said basically the same thing last I spoke to him. He said, listen, I've always been a joke that I'm always on the side of the bad guys. Because if you're in emerging tech of any sort, that's where it always starts. Internet, porn, Bitcoin, drug dealers, whatever it is, that's just how these things generally evolve.

It's not a point against. It's just, like you said, a natural part of the evolution. And now we're seeing those things come out of the shadows and become, you know, clean. Yeah, the marginal players in society would embrace new technology. So payment systems in the early days were used by sex workers or porn sites, et cetera. As you point out, this is the story of technology. So going back to the VCR days, VCR cassettes, there was a lot of porn. Porn industry was the first to get into VCRs. The streaming business now, I think Pornhub certainly dominates in that industry. And as and Eve, isn't it a metaphor for they had sex? And isn't that what, isn't that just a ruse to sell more Bibles? So it's, it's always been used to get

your product out there. And then it has other applications. It's interesting, the tether sort of evolution that you discussed reminds me a lot of what we're seeing in the ridiculous Bitcoin energy debate. You know, that it sort of started in the coal mines and dirty energy, but now obviously anyone who has looked into it for more than five seconds knows that it's, you know, leftover energy primarily being used and a switch towards renewables. So basically as the asset has evolved, serious people have taken a look at the energy problem and it's something that's being fixed. So do you think that there is any sort of electricity or energy problem with Bitcoin that's on its way in the right direction? Or do you think that it's complete FUD and it's not an

issue at all? Here's my take. And I think I'm the only one that's really taking it with this take you know i think bitcoin would cut the 160 000 terawatt hours of energy used right now on earth by half because under a bitcoin standard you get rid of central banks you get rid of fiat money you get rid of the pentagon right so these are all huge users of energy under a bitcoin standard energy use on planet Earth gets cut in half. So it's it's it's not only the greenest industry, but it's it's an imperative that we go on a Bitcoin standard because that's the quickest way to cut carbon emissions by 50 percent on planet Earth is to go on to a Bitcoin standard. And that's my take. I mean, if you want to look at it more generally, yeah, I mean, the Bitcoin energy usage is 30% renewables or higher, and it tends to get toward more renewables. The current energy footprint of bitcoin is um 150 terawatt hours versus 160 000 so it's about one-tenth of

one percent of global energy goes into bitcoin at the moment right um so but i think that we can cut global energy usage in half if we go to a bitcoin standard so that's that's a message that needs to get out there to the progressives out there who are concerned about the environment, as they rightfully should. They should embrace Bitcoin immediately to cut carbon emissions in half on planet Earth. Do you think that there's a chance that we'll see a premium for green Bitcoin that's been proven mined with renewables or with a lower carbon footprint? No. No, I don't. It's because the bigger, larger issue of how Bitcoin cuts global emissions, potentially by half, by simply going to a Bitcoin standard,

that narrative will take precedence. So no one's going to, they're going to be like, well, this particular coin is traveling through this particular wallet at this particular time. We can spend some energy looking at that, or we can just go to a Bitcoin standard and cut all emissions by half. That makes sense.

Is there anything that could shake your conviction in Bitcoin? I know we've already talked about it before. It's certainly not price. Is there anything that could change your mind? No, I think that, you know, the thing is that humans could become extinct and Bitcoin is still going to keep going. So true. So it's up to us to embrace Bitcoin before we kill ourselves as a species. Before Bitcoin, it was, I would say the timeline for human extinction was maybe 50 years. Now with Bitcoin now in the mix, we have a chance to live and survive as humans. If we don't try to change Bitcoin, but let Bitcoin change us. If we allow that to happen, then we're going to survive as a species. If we don't, then we'll become extinct. And, you know, Bitcoin will still be hashing. It'll still be grabbing energy from the sun. The difficulty adjustment will find the sweet

spot where it keeps going and it'll just keep going, you know, and, but nobody, no humans will be around to experience it. That makes sense. I love the Michael Saylor shirt, which we touched on before. He's sort of definitely set a high bar for institutional adoption, right? I mean, the guy is as all in as you can imagine with a corporation raising debt, a billion dollars worth of debt more than once. Do you think that that's a path we can expect to see from other corporations? Or do you think that we'll get a whole lot more Elon Musks who somewhat view it as, you know, a treasury asset, but also a profitable asset, and maybe one that they'd be willing to part with if the situation arose well the um you know with with elon musk first of all his stock

was outperforming bitcoin so he's kind of in a unique situation tesla stock has been a skyrocket so that gives him an interesting position in corporate america probably unique in that respect, in that his actual underlying company stock was outperforming this asset that's been compounding at 200% a year. So I think he's really an anomaly and you can't really use him as a benchmark. So then, okay, let's look at the market as a whole. You have the problem as Michael Saylor articulates it is one of loss of purchasing power on your cash reserves which he estimates to be approximately 15 percent a year due to the m m1 money supply other money supply money printing expanding at approximately 15% a year or more. So a couple of things. First of all, what's the main competitor to Bitcoin in corporate America?

It's borrowing money to buy back your own stock. That's how executives make money in America today. They don't manufacture, they don't produce, they don't hire people and give them living wages. They borrow from the Fed at 0% and buy back their own stock. And so their executive stock options go from $1 to $20. So their compensation is $50, $60, $70 million or $100 million or $200 million. So that's how they engineer that, by gaming the system, by gaming the central bank.

And the central bank is in on the con because they claim that there's no inflation. So we can't raise interest rates, even though it's provable and demonstrable that there is a lots of inflation and they should be raising interest rates. But because they are working together with these corporations and banks to keep rates low, they must say that there's no inflation. Or in fact, they even say there's deflation. So Michael Saylor called time on this. He called them out. He said, wait a minute, I could borrow money to buy back my own stock, but I think that these central banks are printing us into ruination. So what I'm going to do is I'm

going to take that borrowed money, I'm going to take the cash in my balance sheet, and I'm going to borrow at less than 1%. And I'm going to buy this asset that is a bulwark against the inflation, it's going to go up, it's already it's moving up 200% a year. But at a minimum, it's going to outperform inflation by a substantial margin. And so then that is something that every CFO in the country and in the world now cannot ignore because otherwise they open themselves up to shareholder lawsuits. So he's thrown down the gauntlet. And now every CFO and every CEO and every board member of every public company now has to take that on board by law. It's not something they can decide not to do. They have a legal responsibility. And then when you put pencil to paper and you work through the math, they're going to say, wait a minute, you know, this is actually true. We should actually be doing this or we're going to be sued out of existence by our

shareholders. So they, of course, would like to delay making that choice for as long as they can, because it's a change of thinking and people are resistant to change. So that's why you see a lot of propaganda. So mainstream media, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, MSNBC, CNN, the BBC, there's a lot of propaganda. There's a lot of FUD out there about Bitcoin and the environment but that's completely false it's pure propaganda

Bitcoin and dirty and the use in illicit activity that's completely provably false you know but this is they're very used to getting their way with propaganda remember the Iraq war was was sold on this idea of weapons of mass destruction. And, you know, a little vial of talcum powder, you know, shaken at the UN and saying, look, this is really deadly stuff I'm holding here. You know, I just poured it out of my Johnson & Johnson baby powder. But trust me, it's really dangerous. So propaganda really is impactful these days because of the control of media by just a very, very few players. And those few players are beholden to the money printers. So it's tough for corporations to go against it.

And, you know, I think that's what the whole Elon Musk on Saturday Night Live was about. You know, Mike, Lorne Michaels, who's the producer, he's very tight, obviously, with Comcast. And Comcast is a major corporate conglomerate and monopolist in America. And NBC News and MSNBC News that they own are major propaganda players. And here's a guy who we think will distract attention from Bitcoin, which we see as an existential threat. So let's put this guy who's awkward, let's put it that way, in front of millions of people talking about a shitcoin. you know we will buy some time you know maybe we'll buy some time and but time's up you know if you read you know Jack Mahler's thread or some of these other threads you realize time is up there they've run out of they're reaching into the trick bag and they're

finding nothing in the trick bag they've run out of tricks. So when corporate America really runs out of room to finagle and to escape the Bitcoin reality, they've got to make the move. They've got to make the move. price target for 2021 is still $220,000 per Bitcoin. It's an aggressive price target, but I think it's based on US dollar running into severe trouble and institutions realizing that inflation is in fact not transitory. It's secular, it's structural, it's here for the long haul. And if you're not protecting yourself, you're gonna be wiped out. And as Paul Tudor Jones said about Bitcoin, it's the fastest horse in the race when he's talking comparing it to gold, for example. And so you get this wave, a tsunami of cash

comes back into Bitcoin. Actually, my team took all of the wild predictions about six months ago from, you know, 3000 up to a million for the cycle top, because, you know, obviously the individuals generally are pretty bad at making predictions, but groups, when you average them out, do very well. And it was about $235,000 was the average. Really?

Yeah. So I don't find that to be actually that aggressive. I think that that's probably, you know, if you believe in the parable of the ox and that people, you know, all make a guess together that they'll come close, that's right where it lands. The wisdom of crowds. That's right. And not of individuals. I know we're up against it here with time. Any parting thoughts, anything else you'd like to leave us with? No.

Good. Perfect. Well, we did well to end it that way. So where can everybody keep up with you and follow you after this? Well, our YouTube channel, Orange Pill, that's youtube.com forward slash Orange Pill, is really becoming super popular. Max and Stacey, we do two shows a week and it's a lot of fun. Then we have our telegram group, t.me forward slash Orange Pill, which has about 24,000 people in it. They're all maximalists. Then we have our Twitter accounts,

Max Keiser or Stacey Herbert. But I think the Orange Pill YouTube channel is really something people get a lot of enjoyment at. So we release one every Sunday morning and people really, you know, kick back and watch the show because it's informative. Plus it's funny. You know, I do a lot of crazy stuff just to keep, keep the pace going. And, and you know, it's, it's a fun, fun time, fun time for everyone, Scott,

bring the whole family. I'm one of those people that watches it. So I can attest to the fact that it's very entertaining and also informative. So I appreciate that. Although I haven't brought my six-year-old and two-year-old yet. Oh, right, right, right. Well, we have, I mean, like Jack Mahler was watching Kaiser

Report when he was like 12 years old. So we literally have educated a whole generation of Bitcoiners over the years. Well, I hope my kids are the next generation. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this. I really do appreciate it.

And I hope everybody gets tremendous value from it. All right, Scott. Thanks. Thank you.