The Wolf Of All Streets - Death Of The Us Dollar? (BRICS Summit 2023) | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: August 23, 2023

Crypto Town Hall is a daily Twitter Spaces hosted by Scott Melker, Ran Neuner & Mario Nawfal. Every day we discuss the latest news in the crypto and bring the biggest names in the crypto space to share their opinions. ►►OKX Sign up for an OKX Trading Account then deposit & trade to unlock mystery box rewards of up to $60,000!  👉 https://www.okx.com/join/SCOTTMELKER  ►►THE DAILY CLOSE BRAND NEW NEWSLETTER! INSTITUTIONAL GRADE INDICATORS AND DATA DELIVERED DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX, EVERY DAY AT THE DAILY CLOSE. TRADE LIKE THE BIG BOYS. 👉 https://www.thedailyclose.io/   ►►NORD VPN  GET EXCLUSIVE NORDVPN DEAL - 40% DISCOUNT! IT’S RISK-FREE WITH NORD’S 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE. PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY! 👉 https://nordvpn.com/WolfOfAllStreets   ►►COINROUTES TRADE SPOT & DERIVATIVES ACROSS CEFI AND DEFI USING YOUR OWN ACCOUNTS WITH THIS ADVANCED ALGORITHMIC PLATFORM. SAVE TONS OF MONEY ON TRADING FEES LIKE THE PROS! 👉 http://bit.ly/3ZXeYKd  ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEK DAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/   Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker   Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io   Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe   Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c   #Bitcoin #Crypto #Trading The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor. Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to "Buy," "Sell," or "Hold" an investment.

Mario, Scott, how are you guys doing tonight? You just stole Mario's job. Yeah, I know. He sort of delegated that to me tonight. He said he's trying to train people to be more like him. How's that going for you? It's not easy, man. Honestly, being Mario is really difficult.

A lot of people just want to crap on me because I'm a big Mario fan. See, Mario wasn't ready now so now you and I have to talk. Ran's here. Good morning, Ran. Oh shit, the whole time I feel like an idiot. I'm just talking. Michael took your job. He just jumped up and said,

yo, like you do. No, he didn't really say yo, but you know. Yeah, I came on because my Bluetooth wasn't working. I came on. You guys are just sitting there chatting. I'm like, fuck, okay. I'm not needed anymore. And then I realized I started saying Mario, but he's talking.

So I started getting weirded out. So I started speaking and I'm muted. And I got even further weirded out because here I am being ignored. I'm like, am I dead and seeing things from the outside? Let me send out the invites. Now you know how it feels to be your co-host all the time. I'm happy to mute and not talk. It would be a pleasure of mine.

Let me send out the invites before we talk about why XRP will be the reserve card. When I saw Bricks, I'm like, you know what? I'm going to take a screenshot of this and send it to dr dinesh and see what he's up to he's on a flight yeah he's on a flight you did it so he can't interrupt i like that because he would get yeah i'm trying to get i'm trying to get um stock talk and uh jay special sits they would uh you know that kind of lose their shit when it comes to bricks and making sure that we all know

it's a nothing burger. Which I'm getting less and less. I was convinced, but I'm getting less and less convinced. I don't think it's a nothing burger, Mario. I mean, to be honest. I'm glad you're being honest. So, Scott, do you want to kick it off with Ranz here as well? But just a market update,

especially the thing I sent you in the group. What was it? You know, me and technical analysis are not friends. Yeah, it was the fact that Bitcoin is currently trading below both the daily and weekly 200 moving averages, which is only the second time in history. The first time was the 3AC liquidations last June, basically. It is, I guess, meaningful, right? Because it means that major supports have broken on two meaningful timeframes. But I will say, and this is something we've talked about in the past, the 200 MA on the weekly had effectively never been broken before

that 3AC. So saying it's the second time, it's only the fourth time it's really been tested. So it's not the most compelling of data. But the last time before 3AC that it had, quote unquote, broken was really just a long wick down in March 2020, of course, with COVID. And then it was immediately back up above it the next week. And between 3AC and basically FTX, we spent months and months and months below the 200 MA on the weekly, which had never happened. A lot of people just view it as a mean reversion. So now it is resistance technically up ahead in

the 27,000s. Whether that's a big deal or not, hard to tell. But as I said, rarely below on the 200 and more often on the daily, but has never, except for that one time, been below both. And both of them broke in that one five minutes of liquidations that happened last week in that aggressive sell-off. Yeah, but considering it's only happened a couple of times, it doesn't mean much. There's not much history behind it. That's right.

I think it's one of those things, once again, where we try to assign meaning either technically or fundamentally or via news of a move that just happened and uh we'll see you know uh it could be those other times in history when it was tested we did you know close slightly below it for a week and then we're back above a week later so i guess we'll see what happens uh you know next week and we could start talking about it if it remains down i think below okay and anything else just a quick market update, anything else worth noting? I mean, I think- I know that's the ETF decision. Bitcoin is flat. We have a potential ETF,

not an ETF decision technically, but a grayscale decision with the courts at 1045 or as soon as 1045 or 11 this morning. But of course, we've been on spaces already three times awaiting that decision and had to get punted. So- Could it get delayed again? I'll remain skeptical on that one. But that could certainly come in the future. Yeah, I think the bigger news, I mean, if you're looking at markets in general, you know, stocks, whether some are starting to say maybe they've bottomed on this little correction. But if you're looking at 10 year treasury yields, absolutely continuing to break out to new highs. So a lot to there's just a lot to be, I think, worried about right now and skeptical about.

And then the inevitable conversation then is, you know, is Bitcoin uncorrelated or has it recorrelated in some way to that? But Ran, you just said you think the Grayscale decision is a nothing burger. Can you go deeper into why you think that? Because what's the decision going to be the decision is going to be you cannot decline the etf for this reason and then grayscale would have to refile and then they got 240 days again for the s for the sc for the sec to make a decision and that's i mean you know so even if they win it's not like you win and you now have to give them an ETF.

It's win and you can't decline them for this reason. Therefore, Grayscale must reapply and wait 240 days. Yeah, I agree with that. I think the two biggest stories today, I think the 10-year treasury yield is quite scary. Because, you know, if you're thinking about the banking system and you're thinking about the mismatch in durations of assets and liabilities similar to silicon valley bank you know when at these levels of of debt most the banks are actually insolvent you know they won't mark it up in their balance sheets because they don't need to but most the banks are actually

insolvent um and that's that, very, very scary, I think. And if interest rates continue to go up, it becomes scarier and scarier. And then I think the other bit of news is this BRICS summit. Now, I don't think that BRICS is going to, today, de-dollarize, but I think that it is a bunch of very, very, very strong nations, faster-growing nations in the G7, nations with less debt on their balance sheet as a result less debt to GDP ratios

so technically stronger balance sheet nations technically coming together and talking about de-dollarization as one of the things. And I think, look, I don't think anything is going to happen today or tomorrow and maybe

not even in the next five years but it is a move in the right direction in my opinion yeah before we dive deeper into bricks because obviously that's the main topic today i just want to circle back on what you were talking about with grayscale since we could see that in 20 minutes i 100 agree with you that it's a nothing burger for grayscale i because um a like you said they can just get rejected on different terms. Listen, there's people who think that the SEC could use this as a reason to retroactively delist futures ETFs by the same thing. But why I think it's meaningful at least is that the SEC has been dealt a number of, whether you believe it to be true or not, perceived losses from the legal system. I

think they're just taking a beating from the legal system at the moment. Pushback here, there was pushback in the Voyager bankruptcy. Obviously, a lot of people perceive Ripple as a loss for the SEC. And so I think the more the SEC loses, the less appetite they will have for litigation. And so right now, I think it's just generally good news to see the SEC taking a beating. So a lot of people are cheering for that loss at the moment. I just think that, you know, I've said kind of quite a bit now that the SEC has largely pushed too far in the wrong direction. The pendulum has just swung really far. And they start to get major pushback now, I think, both from legislators and from the wrong direction. The pendulum has just swung really far and they started to get major pushback now,

I think both from legislators and from the American people. And so I just like that it might diminish their appetite for more litigation. And Rand, we can hear you typing. Go ahead. Do you think that the SEC really care about going into more litigation?

I mean, they're using government money to protect investors. I don't really think they give a shit about- I think the perception is important. I mean, the SEC has this reputation of never losing and they're just taking a beating from the crypto industry, which was supposed to be the easiest kill for them, I think. And I think that it's just more importantly,

I think if it starts to become politically unpopular to continue this anti-crypto army narrative, that maybe at least we can just get a bit of a lull here to get some decent legislation without more of these massive regulation by enforcement actions. I think they're just overextended. I mean, they're fighting still Ripple. They're fighting Coinbase, fighting Binance. They do not have infinite resources.

Oh, yeah, they do. Come on. They can have as many resources as they want. I was just going to say, Scott, I think you're spot on. I think one of the things they are doing, though, is government agencies tend to over-regulate because it's always easier to step back. And so when you're facing a very novel type of risk or a new market, the easiest thing to do is to overregulate, evaluate the risk, and then step back. It's a lot harder to constrain after a new technology or new sector has taken off.

And so what I would expect for the SEC and any other government agency to do is to say, OK, well, let's evaluate the true risk that we're seeing from any of these new technologies. Obviously, having BlackRock and other funds back them is a different thing. But I agree with you. I think, you know what, I mean, yes, they've taken some hard hits, but it's not the first time they've lost. I mean, they lost against Elon a few times. I mean, they take the the the hit and they move on but yeah i agree with you i think it's just a lot easier for the back off i think they're looking for the risks they're looking for where the real risks are and when they find them they're going to start uh deregulating in areas they don't think there's a lot of risk yeah i think probably two other things that are worth

talking about today um the bnb liquidation level has now come and gone. BNB is trading at 207. There's a lot of speculation that this protocol that was hacked and has a liquidation level is – well, no speculation, but you can actually see the selling starting to happen. A lot of people are quite negative on BNB. I think it may be an opportunity because a lot of people are equating bnb with ftx now i think you know the difference between binance and ftx is you know i don't think that finance is taking has debt uh leverage debt against their token so i think that that may be uh something and then the last thing i want to talk about today at some point is i've changed my tune on friends.tech yeah so i So I came in here very bullish yesterday about it. It's trash. Then yesterday,

I tried to use it after the show. And to be honest, that app is unusable. It is trash. The other thing which really irked me is I realized the revenue model and the revenue model is very simple. When they sell a Scott Melker share, you're not buying it from Rand who owns a Scott Melker share. They're issuing it from them. Yes. So they're using influencers to raise capital for themselves. They're using the clout of influencers and the egos of influencers to raise more money and they're giving the influencers a five percent fee for helping them raise the increasing supply and increasing supply each time yeah on a sale so i realized that actually i was their marketing department and my ego was their marketing department and then i made an announcement that

that that that i think it's a scam and then i mean it's not a scam it's just i don't think it's obviously transparent it has zero value also it has zero value i mean you can't go in there you can't got ryan what do i do because i just sold my entire crypto portfolio to buy you two yesterday and now you're telling me it's i'm not gonna tell you anything apparently that would make me a security i fudded myself i fudded myself i fudded myself so i i mean as soon as i as i tweeted about that my share price dropped so i actually i landed up fighting myself during spaces yesterday and like i wasn't like tracking i went after and i think i dumped i apparently dumped myself 55 or 60 percent during spaces because i was so outright dismissive of it. By the way, we have breaking news here.

Can you be short? Really quick, Michael. In a very shocking news update, we will have no decision today on Grayscale versus the SEC. I know you guys were anticipating that today was going to be the day, but it turns out the government is not fast or efficient. So we will not be seeing that today so that we can knock that narrative off the docket until tomorrow so ran i watched your show where you were talking about the friends thing i was like a mad scramble to to get onto it because you're bullish first of all told me i'd update my operating system on my phone that took an hour

then i finally downloaded the app then i had to get an invite so i finally found an invite then i got in found the thing was unusable so i had the same yeah not only that but what shocked me rand marty um is that there's no terms and conditions there's no privacy policy it's really complex you have to obviously like skirt the app store to get this thing on your home page because apple is never going to list some stupid shit like this. Sorry for my usage of French. But why do we call that French, by the way, when we say bad words? I don't I think the only thing that was French. Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, but but what's crazy to me is that I didn't realize I told you guys in the morning yesterday, I was like, I'm going to you

guys said, please sign up. Do your due diligence. I don't realize. I told you guys in the morning yesterday, I was like, I'm going to, you guys said, please sign up, do your due diligence. I don't want you to have another Scott Melker comes in and screams into the void about things that are dumb that he hasn't even tried himself. Right. And so I did it. I didn't realize that the minute I effectively signed up or that anyone signs up, they have then tokenized themselves and the bots go immediately to work trading you.

I thought I could just like passively hang out in the background and and check it out and see what was going on there but you become effectively their revenue model the second you even sign up no matter who you are yeah the interesting things are i think it's a fantastic proof of concept i hope they patented it because somebody's going to jump on that fast somebody's going to take that i don't think so because i think that uh what can you patent a ton of unregistered securities that have no value. So, yeah, they don't. What about the woman who was complaining, though, Scott and Ryan? I mean, Rand, sorry, Rand.

You guys are the ones who know. There was someone that came out with a major tweet saying that this is a data leak and this is a major privacy violation. That's a bit of a misnomer because it's on a public blockchain. Yeah, I was sort of laughing. Effectively, somebody scraped the data. I don't think that you can call it a leak, but it does show you that there are privacy concerns. And if you don't use the right wallet, that this can be tied back.

And as we discussed yesterday, even if you do it with a new wallet and all those things, eventually, if you decide to take that ETH out, it will be connected to a wallet probably that you have. So if, you know, Mario and I kind of laughed. I'm sure Ran would, too. Everybody knows all of our addresses anyways. So maybe not a huge issue for us because we have people up our ass looking for that 24-7. But, yeah, it's a privacy concern.

I think the bigger issue then also is that you apparently have given, effectively, Frentech permission to post to your Twitter by connecting your account. Good times. How did you end up – so my audio is back. I can finally hear again. How did you end up with Frentech instead of Bricks? What happened? What went wrong?

Oh, no. Yeah, Ran said he wanted to talk about it real quick because he decided that it was an outright scam. And, of course, that gave me the opportunity to tell him that quick because he decided that it was an outright scam. And of course, that gave me the opportunity to tell him that I agree with him that it's an outright scam. Hold on, Rand. You missed it, Mario. Don't circle back. I already bought them on Mario.

No, no, Mario. Mario, the reason why I said it's a scam is because when they sell a share, they're just minting a new share of yours. And when they do, you get 5% trading fee, but 90% goes basically to the project. So it's basically a way to raise capital using the influencers' egos.

And I realize that, I mean, that's what they're doing. I don't think they've been that straight up about it. Yeah, it's a shady business model. Maybe Marty's right that there's some proof of concept there for social tokens,

but I think we've seen those take a beating. Also, nothing's for free, right? So when you're getting that kind of amount of Ethereum for pretty much nothing, there's probably some scam behind it. But anyway. Sure. I think we should move to bricks. Go ahead, Marty. Sorry. Quick update. Looks like Binance just nearly lost the port at 206.

So I'm watching that very carefully. BNB. Yeah, BNB. Oh, sorry. God. lost the port at 206 um so i'm watching that very carefully bnb yeah i'm sorry god i was gonna ask really quickly your guys's feelings i mean uh the s&p and the market movement today was generally driven by um uh nvidia and tesla i'm wondering your thoughts you know i mean is the ai rally over obviously nvidia really pushed the uh you know the s&p up today and tesla finally broke their uh thing was like their longest uh losing streak of uh 2023 um your thoughts on that before we get over to bricks just curious tomorrow tomorrow is the nvidia results and by my calculation you know they have to deliver what the market's expecting. What the market's expecting is $11 billion in revenue and $2.07 per share.

They better deliver that. And if they don't deliver that, then I think this NASDAQ can take a dump. Crazy dump. Yeah, I think the market really topped weeks ago and it's still going to be continuing down. But maybe we should pivot to the BRIC summit here. I think it's going up, Scott.

I think we're going to see all-time highs this year on the NASDAQ. Oh, I don't doubt that we'll see all-time highs this year, just like I don't doubt that it's possible we see 40,000-ish Bitcoin. I just think that with treasuries breaking out and things being what they are at the moment, that we could see some more downside. That's all. So let's talk BRIC i i know we have uh mixed opinions here um mario pointed out the fact that he was in camp nothing burger and now is in camp

maybe something burger but not yet in something burger camp uh i'm i'm pretty aggressively on the nothing burger side but i would love to give you the... Let me give you some numbers. Let me give you some numbers. G7 GDP, 44.9 trillion. BRICS GDP, 27.5 trillion before they allow in any new members. Amongst the new members that want to join our country like Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Nigeria, Morocco, Kuwait, Egypt, Venezuela, Argentina. Now, if you look at the growth rate of the BRICS nations since 2000 versus the non-BRICS nations,

the BRICS nations since 2000, at least 4x the growth of the of the um the g7 if you look at the debt to gdp ratios of the g7 versus the brics countries the brics countries have less than one third of the debt to gdp on their balance sheets so hey ran can we just say quickly for the listeners that bricks hello michael just like two seconds uh just for the for the um to add on to Ran's numbers. Can you hear me, Ran? Just to make sure the audio is still working. Yeah, to add on to Ran's numbers and why I just don't think it's a nothing burger. So you talked about the GDP. The percentage of the world GDP of BRICS is 54%. That's with purchasing power parity. BRICS has a 50% of the world population. China and Russia are also two of the three biggest nuclear arms. They have the top three biggest stockpiles of nuclear arms.

Number one is Russia. Number three is China. So top one and top three. And then if Saudi joins, then BRICS will also have two of the three largest oil producers. So just adding more numbers to what Ryan is saying. Anything else we're missing, Scott? Oil is the biggest component of global trade in the world. Just for the, by the way,

if you think about the biggest factor to global trade in the world is oil. And if you look at the oil producing nations, which of course is led by Saudi, if they join BRICS and they decide that they're settling oil transactions and currencies other than the dollar, that's the biggest. That means no, but they can. I mean, if they've already started as experiments and they could continue to do it. Now, you can say good luck now.

I don't think the world's going to change in the next one or two years. But I think if you look 10 years down the line, it's a real threat to the dollar. I think that's potentially fair. Why I'm dismissive of it is because I don't really believe the BRICS is a thing. You can have a conversation about the success of emerging markets without saying that it's a consolidated effort that will concede. Do you believe that the G7 is a thing? It's a long established thing that's in control. So, yes, I do believe the G7 is a thing? It's a long established thing that's in control. So yes, I do believe the G7 is a thing.

But listen, I don't believe that BRICS, first of all… You can't say the relationship between China and India is the same as the relationship between Western Europe and the US. India is already as a part of BRICS that they would potentially back out because they don't want China to have control of BRICS and would not be comfortable necessarily de-dollarizing. My issue here with BRICS is, A, you're talking about a loose gathering of people with a single thing that's self-interested, which is to get off the dollar, but no actual ties to one another in any other meaningful way. And a bunch, not all of them, but a bunch of dictatorial led potentially communist countries with leaders that are only worried about themselves who are not going to work together long term. I mean, the notion that like the Putins of the world are going to just, you know, submit control to a group of nations in the same way that like

a G7 does just doesn't make sense to me so i think when i say good luck a like try going off the dollar they talk about trading the yuan the one is pegged to the dollar so that's complete and utter nonsense watch what happens if the yuan does not uh peg to the dollar but you're saying but are you are you saying how trying to get off the dollar alone is not a good enough reason for those alliances. Yeah, that's a single common – that's right. I think that's a single – if the only point of BRICS is to be anti-United States, it's not going to work, right? The G7 has tons of common interest beyond just control of the dollar, per se.

To underscore Scott's point, I think one thing we forget about is the term BRICS actually comes from something from the early 2000s. There was a Goldman Sachs economist who just put a funny little acronym together. And now 20 years later, we're talking about them as a sort of a unit. I think we'll see a much more, first off, slow. I think Brian was talking about it. I mean, it's going to take years and years to develop. But I do think that there are obviously changes coming in the world. I mean, in the recent BRICS summit, there's reports that, you know, basically people are pointing to China.

Right. So I mean, being hosted by South Africa, Putin didn't come, which was good for them because they didn't have to abide by any sort of mandates internationally to arrest him. But, yeah, in the back halls, people are talking about, you know, yeah, China, China, China. And I think someone mentioned about India's sort of reluctance to sort of embrace that. They call Africa China's second continent. Eugene, can I ask you two questions? First, the first question is related to BRICS. The second one is how it relates to crypto.

So the first question, can you define the difference between the partnership that G7 have versus BRICS? And so that's the first point. And then the second point, why does this all matter when it comes to crypto? Because BRICS, and maybe you can touch on BRICS being not backed by gold, but referenced to the price of gold and whether that plays any role in de-dollarization,

what that means for Bitcoin. And before Eugene goes, to add to that question, there was this moment a few years ago when there was conjecture that BRICS would come together and form it, that their currency would be a cryptocurrency that they would utilize, not necessarily a CBDC, but some sort of common backed by gold cryptocurrency that they would use as their reserve. Go ahead, Eugene. Yeah, sure. Yes. Super fascinating questions and commentary. I think the interesting thing about why they're different, the first thing is,

if something's been established for a long time, so there's this kind of, actually it's a well-studied academic research talking about if you have something that runs for a long period of time, that they'd be forward-looking, just statistically, just pure statistically, how much they're going to last going forward is more likely, obviously,

there's fundamental details in that. It's almost like technical analysis, right? this is what people talk about with religions right so you know you've had religion for a long time and then how much longer it will you should expect to go forward um you know books etc certain books um i think the thing about or the question about i'll say it like this when you have like the nouveau riche right like you know you have somebody who's just kind of on their way up and they're trying to get into certain clubs uh you know let's say they're trying to go to the local country club it's not like you know there's a full transition necessarily revolution it's like people are trying to get into the country club right and g7 happens to be the country club and you got you know indian

china and some others that have great fundamentals uh south africa i think i think i think struggles in some ways i think there's other african nations we look to that are uh that have a lot better uh just overall fundamentals but that's a different uh you know go forward fundamentals i mean but we can talk about that part later you know and how it relates to crypto i mean of course the idea of course the the part that people like about crypto is the idea that perhaps it can be the decentralized thing they can replace the dollar in the long run the problem is it's uh you know what do they say it's like you know, what do they say? It's like, you know, Europe is a museum, you know, Japan is a nursing home, you know, and China is a dictatorship. And then Bitcoin is an experiment. And so that's the that's the issue with it. But I think if you see that Bitcoin were to become base money, right, Bitcoin or some

of the cryptocurrency were to become base money instead of being, you know, being twenty five thousand a coin, it should be, you know, being twenty five thousand a coin. It should be, you know, half a million plus per coin. Right. If you were to just be like, you know, let alone being gold. Right. So gold is what, 10 trillion. You know, that's been around for thousands upon thousands of years as store value. I think you would see that, you know, I think that that's the idea around crypto that some people, certainly I have some thoughts and beliefs around this, that it could be the basis for the next reserve currency in the way in which we all trade. Well, on that same question, what would this all mean for Bitcoin?

Because in your bio, you call Bitcoin as a virtual gold. I called it that in 2014. So you've been, you know, that narrative, you've been talking about it for a long time. Does the BRICS discussion and being the price of the BRICS currency if it ends up launching, being referenced to gold, does that have any impact on Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies at all? What's interesting, China's making its Hong Kong trade. Sorry, I was going to go to Willem, Eugene, sorry.

Oh, sorry about that. Yeah, go for it. All good, man, all good. Yeah, well, that's a great question. I think the most important thing from this point of view, you know, the start of the BRICS, this has all to do with geopolitics. It's more about geopolitics than it's about what will happen from a monetary point of view. And of course, we've seen since the start of the war in Ukraine,

we've seen 140 countries not willing to join the Western sanctions against Russia. So there's something uniting these countries. And if you look at the map all countries in the middle America, Latin America, Africa, Middle East and most of Asia didn't join the Western sanctions so they are fed up with the West, they're fed up with our double standards, they're fed up with our hypocrisy so this is a huge geopolitical change. And of course, we can ask all these questions. What will happen to the dollar?

What will be the effect on the Western economies? But one thing is certain, for all people ignoring this BRICS revolution, or actually I'm working on a new book, it's called The BRICS Reset. Well, you can ignore this, but when you have over 7 billion people living in countries not willing to follow the West anymore,

that's something you can't ignore. If you keep ignoring that, you're just an arrogant. But there's been, but Willem, the term the great reset or the resetting this, resetting that has been used decade after decade. And the US dollar still has 60% of the world currency. No, that's wrong. I wrote the big reset in 2013. Nobody was talking reset in 2013.

People ask me, what do you mean with the big reset it nobody was talking about it's just the last few years that everyone is talking reset and we see resets everywhere maybe you're familiar with the book by neil howe the fourth turning that every 18 years you have this change in in systems you have this change in the mood of the world, one could say. And we entered this phase in which so many things will change. And the problem is when you're in the forest, you're surrounded by the trees. You don't see the forest anymore. You don't see the size of

the forest and that's what happens now we're all in the market we're looking at crypto we're all looking at gold and you don't see the big picture but the the reset is already here guys i live in you but what does so so william so when i'm sorry to interrupt you so so what does that mean so linking it back to bitcoin if this continues continues, if de-dollarization continues, if what happened in Ukraine and how the US just froze Russia's US dollar reserves and the fee that created the weaponization of the US dollar is playing a key role in potentially the BRICS currency and all this movement against the US dollar being a reserve currency. So if that does continue, it sounds bullish to Bitcoin. We're talking about gold, the price being referenced to gold, potentially some currencies or more countries hoarding more gold. Could Bitcoin start to take a bigger piece of that pie? No, no, no. You asked the wrong question. And I understand you want to know what will happen to Bitcoin because you are all invested in Bitcoin,

like I am invested in Bitcoin. But it's not about Bitcoin. It's not the right question. What will happen? The BRICS will try to de-dollarize. They already started. I live in Europe. We need Russian oil and gas.

We don't get Russian oil and gas we don't get russian oil and gas anymore why because putin said you we will we will still deliver oil and gas to you but you have to pay in rubles in gold or in bitcoin well the western countries denied that request and then you know putin didn't want to send over his energy anymore and then us blew up nordstrom but what will happen to the what will be the result of this huge fight between the brics alliance and and the western alliance there will be more competition for the dollar we will see more de-dollarization that This will put pressure on the international monetary system, especially on the Western system.

I think this will be very beneficial to gold and commodities. Read everything Zoltan Pozar has written about this. He's the former Credit Suisse analyst. He was right. He called this the start of Bretton Woods 3.0, a move to a new monetary system coming from the East, centered around gold and commodities. And since Bitcoin is digital gold,

that's how I coined it in 2014. Since Bitcoin is digital gold, I think Bitcoin will also benefit. But the BRICS won't start using Bitcoin as a currency, but Bitcoin is just an alternative currency being used, you know, to, to flee.

So it will benefit, it will benefit from the narrative and Nick, I want to go to you. I want to go to David, then you to you, Nick, but it will essentially benefit from the narrative of a, of a,

of a reserve asset. That's not the US dollar. So I want to go to David. David, I have a feeling you'll make the counter argument to this. I could be wrong. I'd love to get your take before going to Nick. Yeah, I'll go ahead and make the argument to Brix and anybody else that wants to go ahead and fight with the US dollar. Go ahead and bring it.

Any chance to, David, any chance to, before you say go ahead and bring it. Any chance to, David, any chance to, before you say go ahead and bring it, and I saw your photo all bruised up in the face a few days ago, so when you say this, I kind of take it seriously. Do you mind, William, I'm going to mute your mic, William, just because you got, I think you're eating, so you got background noise.

David, is there any chance you can improve your mic before I'm muting again? I'm going to do it. Give me a second, I'll give it a try. Yeah, sure, no worries at all. I think you're taking off the bluetooth i appreciate it by the way scott did you see david's picture from a few days ago i should probably send it but i'm currently scrolling his uh yeah i'll add you a picture of your face beat up i bro he was completely destroyed his face i don't know what he did he says he fell i don't know he says he, but it sounds like shit to me.

Fell on his fist. David, are you there? We're going to go to Nick. Hold on a second. Perfect. Your mic is perfect. Yeah, beautiful. Okay.

I'm going to get the photo now. First of all, the picture, thankfully, is a couple of weeks ago. It's a couple of weeks old now. And it was a terrible cycling accident. Awful. I do a lot of weeks ago. It's a couple of weeks old now. And it was a terrible cycling accident. Awful. I do a lot of cycling. And I kissed the car at about 20 miles an hour. I don't know how fast the car was going. Had a concussion, blacked out and woke up three and a half hours later in the emergency room. Thankfully, my wife was next to me. And I'm all oh my god this photo uh but it was uh it was insane i've never had an accident like this in any of it and i remember nothing right i was totally

black yeah and you sent me and you sent me you said oh there i found it now and you sent me that photo oh my god he sent it to me as a reply to a tweet or something i don't know what the tweet is but i kind of the tweet i'll tell you what the tweet was. The tweet was about the Zuckerberg versus Musk fight. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. That was a while ago. I said I already fought. I'm out.

So in any – Yeah, I remember. So back to the bricks. You said bring it on. Can you elaborate? I said bring it on. Okay. First of all, I'm all for everybody going ahead and wanting their independence.

And sure, go for it. I think, you know, look, I'm a patriot in terms of the United States. I believe this country, I am a U.S. citizen. I believe the country, you know, provides the greatest opportunities there are out there. And our currency has been the strongest, you know, for a very long time now, you know, solid 100 years, I'd say. And I think it will go ahead and continue because of the checks and balances that we have going on in this country. I don't think, you know, the cast of characters that make up the bricks can agree on anything except for hating the United States, maybe. And that's okay. And again, bring it. I think,

I think, by the way, the competition will be good for the United States because it'll it'll require the U.S. to coalesce around a vision and aim of the strategy. And frankly, we're missing that right now in our Congress and frankly, you know, amongst the electorate of the United States. So I think in terms of look, I put finance first and foremost, before politics, before lots of other things, I'm paid to go ahead and make people money. And that's what I do on a day in day out basis, try to make people money. And I think that if we were to go ahead and get some competition versus the US dollar that was serious, I think US markets would go ahead and organize themselves in a meaningful way.

I think Congress would. I think the citizens of the United States would. And I think it would be good at the end of the day to get our shit together here in the US because there's a lot that's messed up. And we would need to go out and fight against it. So linking it back, I appreciate the counter take to the discussion, but I want to link it back, Nick,

to your thoughts on what that means for Bitcoin and kind of focus more on crypto in general. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me. And yeah, I do believe that Bitcoin will be part of the world reserve currency allocation going forward, but it's more in an asset sort of way.

It's not necessarily in a currency usage way, the way that the dollar is used. So I want to separate the argument about de-dollarization and BRICS a little bit. I think they're actually different issues here, where both exist at the same time, in that the BRICS have a huge portion of global GDP, and they are going toward and want to do more trade outside of the dollar system. That is definitely the case. And even with the great point about China and India not necessarily being very friendly and wanting to be some part of some unified body. I think that that was an excellent point there. But even despite that, you have this block of countries that wants to do more trade outside of the dollar. But with that being said, the dollar isn't strictly a U.S. geopolitical tool. It's actually mostly a banking tool. And so who controls the dollar? The credit creation system in the dollar

is done by banks. And it's both done onshore and offshore. So we haven't even mentioned the euro dollar system, which is the offshore dollar system, that system that exists around the world. That's the decision of banks. That's not a geopolitical strategy by the US, the US military, or the G7 even. That is a banking instrument and one that has evolved over the last seven, you know, seven decades or so. And that isn't going away. And it's not transforming into any Euro CNY system, meaning an offshore Chinese one system that's developing around the world in that banks are doing credit creation offshore in one or some imaginary bricks currency that's maybe backed by gold or some commodity basket so i take a big challenge with that the bricks is going to

form a unified currency of any sort or even go toward the Chinese one away from the dollar. But that's a different issue than whether geopolitically these countries are aiming to do more trade outside of the dollar system. And the math is that close to 90% of all global FX transactions have the dollar on one side of it. And that again, it's not a geopolitical thing. That is a banking phenomenon that is multi decades in the works. And so that system isn't just going away quickly. It's not going to be replaced by Bitcoin from a currency system standpoint. And it's not going to be replaced anytime soon by China's currency or a BRICS currency or a gold-backed BRICS currency.

That is not going to happen. So Bitcoin will continue to attract value as a store of value, as an apolitical currency, as a digital gold, but it won't become this dollar system that we see today with repo, the collateralized borrowing, the plumbing system, all the things that make the dollar so entrenched, that is not going to be rebuilt by the bricks.

And it's not quickly going to be rebuilt by Bitcoin. Bitcoin will attract value because it's an apolitical asset. But Nick, what I'm confused is that the narrative makes a lot of sense. The Ukraine war happens, the US weaponizes the dollar, and there's a faster shift. Again, the BRICS currency has been in the works for almost two decades, like 17 years. But it's accelerated since the Ukraine war. So the narrative makes sense. And the Bitcoin is still there. Bitcoin is still solid. And it's getting more and more adoption. So my question to you is a very difficult one to answer. Why isn't reality, why aren't prices, because prices reflect reality, at least in my opinion, they reflect reality to a

certain extent. Why aren't prices, why isn't the US dollar taking a hit? Why is it still doing so well? Why is Bitcoin not hitting new all-time highs despite this narrative, despite what happened with the Ukraine war, despite this whole discussion about the de-dollarization? What more is it going to take? How many more years? Or is it ever going to happen?

It's more than an echo chamber. It's about relative risk. And so when you compare the dollar, what are you comparing it to you're comparing it to other currencies which in today's system this banking system all currencies are derivative of the dollar it's the other side of the fx transaction from the bank's perspective that makes the price so all currencies are derivative of the dollar so in risky situations capital will flee toward the dollar. And I know that treasury rates are going up as the prices are going down.

But global bonds are mostly coming down also. So in a system where treasury prices are going down significantly, the dollar isn't losing value relative to other currencies. Why is that? It's a relative risk game. And why isn't Bitcoin value relative to other currencies. Why is that? It's a relative risk gain. And why isn't Bitcoin going to the moon? Because first of all, Bitcoin cycles, we see that it does cycle every four years or so. And it is in the tail end of a bear market here. And so it doesn't have the wind behind its sail. And the real rates in United States at 2% at multi-decade highs

is choking off what other people are willing to invest in on a relative basis, where they look at 2% real rates in the United States, and they look at other risk adjusted returns. And they're, they're saying that it's not worth it. And all of these things are supporting the price of the dollar relative to other currencies. So, Nick, before going to Marci, one more question. If you're looking at Bitcoin being a digital alternative to gold or digital gold, why is gold so close to all-time highs where Bitcoin is half what it was at all-time highs? Well, gold is actually at a similar level to when it reached during the fear great you know fear during the great financial crisis where it hit about 2000 so gold is actually even though it's close to all-time highs it hasn't gone anywhere during

the life of bitcoin bitcoin is as old as that last gold all- high. So it's not necessarily a great comparison apples to apples there. But but but but Bitcoin, listen, Bitcoin does experience 75 percent plus drawdowns every four, three to four years. And we are still coming off the back of that. So, you know, it's impossible to know when Bitcoin is going to rise relative to its cycle. But I think that the potential growth in Bitcoin relative to gold is astronomical. I mean, I think most people in here see it as an asymmetric sort of situation when comparing Bitcoin to gold. And so even though it's way off of its all time highs, it doesn't mean that it can't exceed them. And Marti, I'd love to give you the mic because I know you tried to jump in earlier before going to Michael and Eugene.

Yeah, guys, I mean, first of all, I travel the world and you have to understand everywhere you go, you're going to get a different opinion on BRICS. In the US, you're going to get a strong defense of the dollar. And, yeah, it'll never happen. And go ahead, try it, buddy. And if you go to anywhere else in the world, then it's the opposite story. It's like we've got to get off the dollar. And you hear the reasons why. So I think, once again, the vacuum chamber and the narratives are very different. From the South African perspective, I'm very fortunate to have an uncle who works with Ramaphosa.

So I have direct input on why South Africa joined BRICS and why they want BRICS. You have to understand, firstly, that this is about China and Russia, guys. It's a China and Russia-led movement. The goal of BRICS is to remove the euro and petrodollar. People aren't aware that the euro and petrodollar are a derivative of the dollar, an extension of the US central bank banking system, basically just ledgering every single transaction globally through the US central bank, and then settling it later in foreign currency or commodities or whatever. But charging tremendous interest that's extremely inefficient, and they weaponize it. And I don't think Americans are aware of how weaponized that system is. These are countries that need these

commodities to stay alive, like the gentleman mentioned earlier. So you have to look at BRICS as a replacement for the euro and the petrodollar system. It's not looking to replace retail payments, currencies, localized commercial payments. Those will all be handled by local currencies and CBDCs and every country will do it differently. BRICS is intended to try to de-dollarize for international trade and settlement. And that's pretty much a strategic initiative by China and Russia. And I can get into it in depth. I can tell you exactly why I believe Bitcoin will be chosen for the international settlements and trade for BRICS

with valid arguments. I don't think anybody's even aware because the US media won't tell you, but yesterday, this is yesterday, Elvira Nabila of the Bank of Russia, she's the chief of the Bank of Russia, made the following statement. Russia plans to mine Bitcoin for cross-border deals that was months ago okay no but it's still

no but still pretty interesting hold on hold on but what are you what do you make but mike i'll go back to but what do you make out of this, Scott, since you know about it already? Yeah, I mean, I don't think that that's any indication that BRICS is going to do it. I think it's wise of them to theoretically make it a central bank asset. But it was more the original announcement was that they were going to effectively take over. There's a lot of mining in Russia. And to some degree, this might be kind of taking over that mining with the government. But yeah, it was big news a few months ago that basically went unnoticed, as Marty aptly put it, in the United States or purposely underreported, I think is a better assessment of that, that their central bank will effectively be mining it. And they've already said that they would allow the usage of bitcoin for cross-border payments and things like that

but i think like you can't make a huge deal out of it because it's just them testing little things that could potentially slowly over time get them off the dollar but yeah that was not news yesterday for sure with the perspective from the south african government um the biggest problem that the world has with the u.s right now is pretty obvious and that is that they have orchestrated an infinite money printer um the problem with an infinite money printer is you can create an undefeatable military and we know that so using an infinite money printer they've created undefeatable military which now gives them the right to weaponize the dollar, to impose sanctions, moral and ethical punishments, the ESG impositions, etc. Control SWIFT, which everyone knows SWIFT is used for all international payments and settlements.

But guys, this seems like such a long way away. I think everything we're discussing now, I just don't see... Mario, it's all pending, imminent global margin calls. Also, Americans are not aware of this. But you can go watch someone like Heresy Finance YouTube. There's a lot of people right now putting in this content. The Euro and Petrodollar system are at risk for a massive global margin call with the rising –

Let me go to Michael and David again, Margie, just to kind of balance it out. Michael, I know there's a lot been said here. I'd love you to jump in. You've had your hand up for a while, and then we'll go to David. So I think we really need to just take a step back for a second. I know a lot of the audience probably doesn't even know what BRICS is. So BRICS is a group of nations, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, that would like to create a payment clearing system and potentially a reserve currency or a store of value to transact in. So there's two distinct issues that are occurring here. One is

a way to transfer value. So SWIFT was mentioned. SWIFT is the de facto international standard to move value. And the three major operating centers for SWIFT are based in the Netherlands, they're based in Virginia and the United States, andT are based in the Netherlands. They're based in Virginia in the United States, and they're based in Switzerland. There's also a sort of operations center in Hong Kong. But generally speaking, they're controlled by allied countries. And so there's two issues. One of them is a lot easier to solve than the other. The easier one to solve is replacing dollar clearing or providing a mechanism to move dollars without using SWIFT. So the United States has traditionally weaponized SWIFT. It's a lot harder to weaponize dollars.

I mean, you have dollars in your pocket. If you can move them, it's really hard to say, well, those dollars are not valid. But what the United States has traditionally done is weaponized the payment platform to move dollars or move any currency, for that matter, which is SWIFT. And so for me, the first thing that BRICS is trying to accomplish is say, hey, you know what, we can't replace the reserve currency or we can't replace the de facto store of value. But what we can eat, what we can more easily do, and this is still not easy, but more easily do is replace the actual mechanism to move those dollars, i.e. dollar clearing. So it's a lot easier to say, OK, well, instead of going through Swift and saying that I just moved a million dollars to Mario,

I can use my own network to do that, which would the bricks network i mean and of course um you know russia has a network that they're trying to put up um as well later down the road i think there'd be the idea of okay well after we have an idea after we have a way to transact value and i think the dollar will still maintain the de facto standard value for quite some time because you have to realize there's very intricate and very complex relationships with commodities, FX rates, contracts that are 20 years out that are delineated in U.S. dollars. This isn't an easy thing to do. But what you can do is change how do you actually transact those dollars so phase one for me is okay eliminate swift in bricks mind and use do dollar clearing through an alternative network like bricks phase two would be okay after we've proven that we can transact value outside of swift then we look at an alternative

reserve currency be it a a bricks manufacturer currency be it a BRICS manufactured currency, be it a commodity or a hodgepodge of Ethereum and Bitcoin and something else. But that's way down the road. And so there was commentary here like, OK, well, why is the dollar maintaining its prominence or why are people still buying the dollar? And it's prominence or why are people still buying the dollar? And it's twofold. It's not just because of the flight to equality, which the gentleman alluded to before. Flight to equality occurs when there's global unrest. The United States dollar has always been the de facto flight to equality. But it's also because most of the governments are not engaged in as hawkish-like behavior as the United States. And you may say, oh, well, the United States, you know, they're only gone 25 bips up. Well, go look at China, who is probably going to have to cut

interest rates or even potentially go zero or negative to get people to promote stimulus. And so I just wanted to take that step back because I think a lot of people like, oh, well, BRICS is a currency. Yes, it could become one. But I think the biggest issue and the biggest thing that's trying to be addressed is the weaponization of dollar clearing, not of dollars. Yes, the point was made that, yes, the United States can print dollars. We've got our hands up. We can jump in. I put my hand up. Yeah, me too, me too.

Michael, put our hands up if you don't mind. If anybody wants to look up the definition of mansplaining, we just got mansplained. Yeah, no, sorry. I'm just trying to keep it simple because I don't think a lot of people understand the complexities behind this. Sorry for all you guys that are super sophisticated.

I think Scott, I think he muted you, Scott. I think he muted you. Oh, yeah. Sorry, I'm back. I'm back. He's using his host powers. And now we're just messing with you michael um scott did you have a question because you still have your hand

up or do you want to go to no i know i just wanted to put my hand up because i thought it was funny we should go digital go ahead buddy digital hold on michael can digital speak you know i just want to sort of a rampage but i oh good oh good we're messing with you but don't don't take it too seriously go ahead to joe okay thanks for having me i appreciate it guys uh i just want to pull back to the macro because i thought scott said something early on that made a lot of sense to me is it's really uh a hard notion to imagine that some of these countries like China and inside of BRICS will want to give up some of their personal power to work together as a unit. So there's a lot of work that needs to be done there. But if I could, I just want to go macro because I do believe it is a separate issue between BRICS and the de-dollarization.

If we just take a second, you know, this isn't the first time we've seen de-dollarization for the USD. You go back to 1984 and the Plaza Accord, there was a de-dollarization that happened in 1984. What was it? What happened in 1984? I'm actually curious. It was called the Plaza Accord. It was actually the de-dollarization. It was actually the dollar being reduced and devalued. And that was done at the Plaza Accord. That's where it got its name. So this is not the first time that we've seen that happen. Sorry, can I ask a dumb question, Digital? Sure. Because the Plaza Accord is France, West Germany, Japan, the UK, and the US to depreciate the US dollar in relation to the French franc. So the US was involved in intentionally depreciating the value of the dollar relative to other currencies, including the – that was in 1885 – Japan, Germany, and France, and the British sterling as well. What triggered that?

Because this one, the U.S. is complicit in this, different to now where this country is doing it without the U.S.'s consent, without the U.S.'s involvement. Well, I think that's my larger point is that I think it's a bit of a misnomer to think that the U.S. is not complicit in this. I think if you look at the situation at hand, how is it that we're it's a bit of a misnomer to think that the U.S. is not complicit in this. I think if you look at the situation at hand, how is it that we're all in a Twitter space and we realize there's a problem, but the U.S. government doesn't? You know, I think just because you're not hearing from a podium that the U.S. is recognizing the problem doesn't mean that they don't understand that there is one. If I could just bring ourself current to where we are today, you look at the

macro problem. What is the problem? It's obvious that countries don't want to continue using the U.S. dollar because of the implications of how it hurts them through trade and usage. But if you go to the notion of understanding what Brian Brooks, the former office of comptroller of currency, just said days ago, the U.S. in the last 20 years, the years, the US dollar has slipped from 73% dominance to 58% dominance. And we're fastly and rapidly approaching a cliff. But we have room at that 58% dominance to be able to absorb any shock that we need to the system to make the transition to whatever we're going to do. So now you have a couple issues at hand. If you look at the issues at hand, what you're looking at is you're looking at the dollar went from the 70s or before the 70s on a gold standard, then ditched it and Kissinger put us on the petrodollar

agreement. Well, who's looking at potentially joining BRICS? It's Saudi Arabia, which honors the petro agreement, which gives the US dollar its elevated status as a global reserve currency. If that begins to go away, and Saudi Arabia joins BRICS, I'm not saying it's going to happen in 24 hours. What I'm suggesting is, is you will see a paradigm shift take place if they join BRICS, because you can't serve two masters. What does Saudi Arabia get for honoring the petrodollar agreement? They get military protection. So if they begin to trade in other currencies, it is an actual physical acknowledgement that they're no longer participating in that agreement to the way it

was structured. So then you have to ask yourself, what will be the next opportunity for the United States to shore up the US dollarS. dollar underneath of it? Because at the end of the day, whether you're in BRICS or whether you're somewhere else in the world, you are holding the best asset in your portfolio, and it's still U.S. Treasury bonds. And bonds are the backbone to the monetary system. So we are at a point that I believe a transition has to happen. The question is, is what will be the next thing to replace the petrodollar agreement to shore up the status of the US dollar so it can continue to function and exist the way it does without dealing with the spillover shocks of many dollars coming back home through the dollar valuation. I appreciate you guys. Thank you. That's right. Can someone, Ido, maybe you can answer this one before going to David. David, sorry to take too long to go to you.

Just want to get Ido's thoughts on this point. If you look at the BRICS nations, let's look at China, Russia, India, Brazil, South Africa. What's their stance on Bitcoin? Because I know China, everyone knows what China's stance is. It's not the best, but it's improving. Russia is relatively cautious. India is not too positive either. Brazil and South Africa

are probably the more positive ones, but they're the smaller members of BRICS. Just curious on whether that means anything. Ido? It's for me, Mike. Sorry, I was a bit confused. Can I go ahead? Yeah, you can, yeah, Edward. Oh, thank you. Well, I'm located in Europe, guys, and I think I was paying attention for this discussion before when many people were saying that it was considered a conspiracy theory that we're going to have a global reset. And just like many conspiracy theorists were right

in the last, let's say, 12, 24 months, I think there has been a time, and let me make this very clear, I don't want anyone to be shocked with what I'm saying here, but if you go back in time, like 5, 10 years ago, and you go and do some research on the global reset, it comes out as a conspiracy theory.

And actually, right now you have entities like the World Economic Forum who are actually putting out videos for everyone to see. So I do believe there will be actually a reset. And we have, for example, Rose Rios, who she has signed the $100 bill. Well, Rose Rios said that there will be some sort of event that will be painful. And there will be also a shock for the global economy. And I think a lot of people are not paying attention because before in 2019, the World Economic Forum has made an event which was called 201.

And for anyone who's interested, you can actually do some research about it but they just predicted a whole scenario of what's going to play out in the global economy and what i want to bring out for this is that the same entity which is the global economic forum they have now made a new event similar to 201 which is called the cyber polygon and they are actually predicting a global cyber attack and i would like to discuss with you guys how do you guys think this can how's how about how you know how edward how are we talking about cyber attack now i don't know how that relates to crypto well i i will come to crypto if you allow me to finish my point i'm just coming to say here that this could be the trigger event that might be the great beginning for the great reset.

That's the point I'm trying to make. And that's all related to BRICS. Okay. And can you define? So I'm glad you made that point. How do you define the great reset? I think that comes out as an economical reset. And one of the aspects that might be playing a role is that we could see the US dollar as a currency losing its hegemony,

as we were talking before. Okay. And then the US economy, obviously, the BRICS partnership getting stronger, the BRICS potentially coming up with a replacement. The point I'm trying to make here is that what I see here is that these events are now on steroids. What we used to say was a theory 10, 20 years ago. Now there's a macro scenario that's going to speed up

the process of digitalization. We can have some trigger, just like we had the pandemic, COVID-19, something completely unexpected coming and changed the global economy. We can see the same thing happening, for example, with a global cyber attack and that can actually be the trigger for events like the dollarization. That's a great topic. Yeah, now with you and then what happens if that does happen? What happens to crypto then if the great reset happens um obviously the the the the everyone's looking for new reserve assets other than the us us dollar and us uh us assets would crypto would bitcoin be one of those potential alternatives in

your opinion uh i do believe i don't want to point out any specific coin either it's if it is the last year that's just yeah it a Bitcoin, I think. Yeah, yeah. Well, I have the Bitcoin logo on my profile picture because I lost a bet. Okay, okay. What was your bet? What was the bet that you lost? My bet was that XRP would actually hit $10 after the SEC lawsuit was over.

Actually, it's not fully over yet, but we got a major decision that's not a security, so I actually had to comply and change the picture for the good. But well, I'm not against Bitcoin, I'm just an XRP enthusiast. But it's not the topic of what I say now, I was just wanting to discuss with you guys, because I think we're all here bringing puzzles, it's like a big puzzle, and we're trying to figure it out how it's going to play. I don't have the answer for everything. I'm just pointing out that I do believe there will be a global event that can change the way that the countries are making the transactions within cross-border payments, for example. It's also a huge topic.

David, go ahead. Can I just really quickly just finish? I'll finish my and I'll shut up. But I want to directly address your question, which is, yes, I think Bitcoin will be the de facto standard if BRICS were to adopt something. And here's why. And just really quickly, and then I will not say anything else because I know I've been man-sweating way too much. But here's the thing. The whole goal is to get off of a currency backed by one government, right?

And so if you were to use any currency or any sort of synthetic currency generated by this organization called BRICS, it would be controlled by some political standard. There's only one cryptocurrency that probably has sufficient market capitalization and sufficient market efficiencies to actually withstand, and don't get me wrong, Bitcoin's still manipulated, but withstand sort of government intervention and be a store of value for transacting massive quantities of payments, and that is Bitcoin. If you're trying to get rid of the dollar, you don't want to go invent another currency that's controlled by a political entity. You want to use something that is a store of value, that's easily transactable, that has a proof of value, that can be on a ledger and auditable. And so for me, if and when the BRICS countries are looking to find a new store of value, Bitcoin to me is the

obvious solution. I mean, it's the only other solution other than potentially gold or silver or some of the precious metal. But again, if you're using those precious metals, how do you move them around? Well, now you're talking about using third parties again. The whole purpose of this is to get off of those traditional asset exchanges. And so for me, Bitcoin is the obvious answer to transact large sums of value in a transparent way with the least manipulation possible. Yes, it's still manipulable, but as the market cap increases and as Bitcoin price continues to appreciate, it'll be harder and harder and harder for countries to intervene and influence it.

So we've made a lot of speakers. And David, this is where I need you to jump in because a lot of everyone's making an argument like the de-dollarization is a thing. It's just a matter of when. Now, obviously, when is it in 100 years and in 10 years gets a bit tricky. But I think everyone's talk is going to be in our lifetime. And BRICS is one solid contender. In general, that's a good thing is one solid contender in general that's a good thing for bitcoin and potentially crypto in general as a store of value and david can you

tell us why and then eugene i'll give you the mic to kind of give us final thoughts but david can you tell us why this is all potentially just another facade of of uh hope that won't materialize right so let me jump in i know i mentioned this on at least two spaces before, but it's worth reminding people and speaking to the audience. It's not on some of the other stuff is that, you know, we could talk in theory here about what the pros and cons are and certainly all the forces that are at work in the macro economy for something like this to happen. But there's one case in point going on right now, which is in Argentina. Argentina has not been a particularly close friend of the United States. As a matter of fact, they recently took a very large line of credit from China in order to

go ahead and help them bridge the payment that they needed to make to the IMF in terms of their debt deal with the IMF. They recently held their primary elections. The leading candidate out of the primaries is a libertarian by the name of Javier Millet. He came from nowhere. He ended up with 33% of the overall vote. Big surprise. huge libertarian huge uh supporter of bitcoin not part of his platform is to go ahead and use bitcoin as legal tender in the country however uh big supporter of bitcoin but he also wants to go ahead and dollarize yes u.s dollarize his economy he wants to abolish his central bank. He wants to go ahead and get rid of the Argentine peso and essentially become, you know, for all intents and purposes, a USD

country and effectively get rid of his entire financial or monetary system in his country. And he sees this as being, you know, the best way towards success for his country in the future, because the dollar is worldwide recognized, it has stability, and his country could go ahead and focus on the things that they are rich in, which is, you know, a lot of resources, soy, oil and gas, and be able to go ahead and chart a future for his country and for its citizens. So the case in point here is that, yes, you can go ahead and write off Argentina as being – it's certainly not as small as El Salvador, right? It is a large economy. The majority of the citizens live in Buenos Aires province, incredibly large land mass,

and meaningful in the overall sense of Latin America. If this guy – and there's no assur assurance that this guy is going to win the election, but he won the primaries handily as a matter of fact. So this is a point of a country that's – So essentially a country that doesn't like the U.S. is still dollarizing its own currencies. Like, even if you don't like the US, even despite what the US did with them weaponizing the US dollar, we just have no choice at the moment. I know the percent of the reserve currency has dropped, but it's still 60 whatever percent. So, David, I think this is the point you're making. And I kind of do want to wrap up the show and kind of asking one question to Eugene

and Marty, if you don't mind, David, I'll let you wrap up as a last comment as well on that same question. Eugene, the question to you is obviously any comments you have, but also in general, everything we've discussed today and in previous shows, your thoughts on the markets. So you'll thought that we started the show talking about how Bitcoin for the third time ever is below this average and that average 200 day average average, whatever, 200-weekly average, whatever Scott said. And everyone's suddenly pessimistic now. I want to get your thoughts on the markets. And while Eugene's doing that, tomorrow we have one of my favorite sponsors we've had for a long time.

You should check out the pinned tweet to get a – it's not a sponsor, sorry. We're partnering with a company. It's more than a sponsor. You should check out the pinned tweet to get a – it's not a sponsor, sorry. We're partnering with a company. It's more than a sponsor. Check out the pinned tweet. A company called DLP. This allows you to decide whether to make your transactions on the blockchain public or not, which kind of linked to our initial conversation of the quote-unquote leak from Fintech. So if you want to check out that company, highly recommend it. Yeah, I think also – yeah, just to be clear, because we're kind of passionate about it, tomorrow the whole

topic is likely going to be privacy. We're working on that, which I think is really important. It's good timing, especially with the whole Frentech thing. Yeah. Are we talking about VLP now? I can talk about that now. Michael, one second, buddy. I just saw that Solana, there's a protocol

on Solana. I was just sharing it in the group. Now I don't have it in front of me that just allowed basically private swaps. So we are seeing this interesting movement towards more privacy, which I think is really important to adopt, which is what you were talking about above. I've been looking into it pretty deeply. It's part of Tomi. They're doing really, just really interesting things with creating basically a private decentralized internet. But this allows you with DOP to basically, if you send a transaction, everybody knows that once you send a crypto transaction, it's supposed to be good for criminals, right? But once you send it, somebody can look at your address and see everything you've ever done, right? And this

allows you effectively to push a button and abstract that away completely so that they can't access your past data when you send a transaction back and forth. I mean, very simple conceptually, but massively important for anyone who transacts on blockchain. So that's why we've chosen to kind of like start discussing them, just all very passionate about it. And like I said, that's going to really lead us to do this as a topic tomorrow, because I mean, I one, just believe that this privacy aspect is extremely important, especially in a world where we're moving towards central bank digital currencies. We know that big tech is farming all of our data. We're, you know, we got World Mobile out here scanning eyeballs for shit coins.

I mean, it's a train wreck. So I think that anyone who's moving more in the direction of privacy is worth our time to discuss. Yeah. So do you call it World Mobile? You call it something else, no? No, I'm talking about Sam Altman. Yeah, yeah. Did I say World Mobile?

Yeah, World Mobile. World Mobile is one of our sponsors. World Mobile is awesome. Talk about World Coin. Yeah, yeah. So funny enough, we're talking about privacy before going to Eugene and Marty to wrap things up for us.

And David, you're talking about privacy. I thought privacy was overrated and dead until I got fucked pretty badly by not caring about privacy. So I'm pretty keen for tomorrow's episode. But yeah, Eugene, going back to the question,

obviously wrapping up any thoughts you had, but also just a general thoughts on the market. Anyone just crying right now thinking that the Rands Raging Bull market is dead, which obviously is too early to say that, but people are feeling that. Yeah, definitely. I think this is a very important topic to be discussing. And I'd say the overall thing to consider is one thing is somebody mentioned, I think it was Nick mentioned crypto plumbing, the plumbing of the current financial system based in swift from decades ago a lot of people have talked about it but i mean even talking about the sponsor for tomorrow about privacy and the innovations happening just in the crypto space the plumbing is so great right it's almost like we have this

amazing plumbing but no no use cases yet or at least no no uh you know sort of uh globalized use cases on a mass scale um but our plumbing is fantastic. So I think it's like, would you rather bet on Swift and ACH, you know, on a go forward multi-decade basis? Or would you rather, you know, have an innovative, you know, tech-based approach to, you know, the global financial system? I think for most of us,

the answer is probably the latter, as long as you can get stability, obviously. Right now, the problem is stability and reliability on the crypto plumbing system. But not the plumbing itself, but actually the way that people are using the plumbing, right, for scams and all sorts of other things. So I think that's a positive thing. And the interesting thing is maybe it's not even Bitcoin. Maybe it's a different one.

You know, maybe it's a different L1. It could be the lightning L2 on Bitcoins or even Bitcoin ordinals, you know, is itself is talking is sort of innovating, you know, on the core Bitcoin L1 itself. So I'm just saying that I think that that's something that I would rather bet on. And DeFi, you know, someone's mentioning about credit creation. Well, DeFi is tons of credit creation on DeFi and it's secure. And it's, you know, basically, you know, as long as you don't have hacks and things like that, it basically is secure in a way that, you know, general, you know, sort of other ways of lending or not, right? Look at the fractional reserve banking system and the issues we've had with SVB, etc. So what, you know, general, you know, sort of other ways of lending or not, right? Look at the fractional reserve bank system and the issues we've had with SVB, etc. So what, you know,

you asked the question earlier, Mario, what will it take to change the reserve currency? And I think people, Ray Daly and others have looked at this right over hundreds of years. I mean, he's not the only one. But I mean, basically, the reserve currency is the last domino to fall. And this is looking at like the Dutch Gilder, a reserve currency in the past, the Habsburg, Spain's, you know, dominance as a reserve currency and looking at the British pound and now, of course, the US dollar. And you have, you know, your military centers falling, your economic capital falling, your innovation technology falling way before your reserve currency, your reserve FX status. So the answer is probably decades at the very least, if not longer

for the US dollar reserve currency to fall. And you would probably expect to see a major war. And Ukraine is obviously a terrible war. You probably see a much, much bigger war before you see the U.S. dollar falling as a reserve currency status. I mean, that's just I mean, if you believe in history. Right. I mean, of course, history rhymes, doesn't repeat. So perhaps we'll see a different world. Yeah, I think we all agree it's inevitable.

Right. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. I thought you were done. we all agree it's inevitable right sorry i didn't mean to interrupt i thought you're done i'm just saying we all agree it is inevitable it's the time frame that uh matters right is it uh if it's 400 years it's not that relevant for our conversation is it going to be is it going to be in my lifetime or scott's lifetime so my lifetime in 400 years scott's lifetime in the next 20 years that i forgot you're going to live forever because you're exactly mario's ai so he'll be around for a long time and i'll be well i'll be ai bots you know sometime in the indeterminate future but mario will be controlling the ai because he's freezing himself right now as we speak to live for seven thousand let's get the final thoughts marty david uh final thoughts on the topic. Yeah, I just want to touch on the Bitcoin situation.

I don't see a big problem. I'm a big believer in the Fibonacci 0.5 median rule. And from the bottom, it's 16,000. To the top, it's touching 32,000, halfway 24,000. So if we're anywhere above 24,000, we're still bullish. Anyway, moving on. Let me finish off what I started there. So there are two points to the

BRICS discussions going on over the next two days. Let's be very clear that currently there's only a few in BRICS. We can talk about that. But there's 20 applications and 40 after that. If you look at BRICS right now, let me just get some a little note here. We're looking at 41.5 of the global population currently is in the BRICS nations. That's without the 20 new applicants and the 40 applicants after that. If those are all accepted, that's 81% of the world's population will be under BRICS. So just take note of that. The two topics they're going to discuss in BRICS will be a BRICS payment system and a BRICS currency.

We've already discussed with the other gentleman also reiterated, the payment system is the most important in order to get off swift as soon as possible. And Russia and China have already started using alternatives and in my opinion, it's already decided that it will be Bitcoin. I know it's going to be controversial. I'm not from

the US. Outside of the US it's already been established that that is what is going to be happening. So if you look at Russia and China's initiatives in Bitcoin and understand the polarization within the US news as well from the public as to what's actually going on in Bitcoin, you understand that the US-19 miner in the global hash rate. 86%. So, Chinese control the hardware that mines 86% and validates 86% of the network. That's not a coincidence.

Also understand that Russia just opened up a huge nuclear facility in the northern part of Russia together with Rosatom, the major utility provider, and BitRiver. If you're aware, BitRiver is their big mining, Bitcoin mining operation. They now have 1.5 gigawatts of mining capacity opening up. The US's total is 2.75. Put that together with China, they already are bigger than the US in terms of gigawatts. That's not the country that's miners. The United States is not mining Bitcoin. It's complete false equivalency. I'm sorry. These are private companies in the United States that are mining Bitcoin. The United States government does not control that. It's not the United States versus these other countries in that regard.

What are they mining on in the US? Excuse me? What hardware are they using in the US to mine Bitcoin? Why does that matter? So the payment system in 2010, they started Bricks Interbank Corporation Mechanism. So it's actually been going for 13 years, this research project. And they actually built a system you can go to. It's called BricksPay.com. It's very rudimentary.

But as we said, that's going to take over from Swift. They are exploring other options. XRP is definitely part of it. If you understand that all the alternatives that exist for swift are fed wire which is fed now the u.s fed wire is only domestic just to be clear i'm a i'm a hundred percent scott what do you think i would love it that bricks is hot trash and it's not a thing that we'd never ever ever are talking about it again ever xrp xrRP, XRP, XRP. Definitely in the discussion for the BRICS payment system, along with Fedwire.

Good luck, BRICS. Good luck, BRICS. Have fun. Have fun staying poor, BRICS. Sorry? BRICS is a joke. I'm 100% convinced if there's a real conversation that XRP is going to be the global world reserve currency as a function of BRICS, then we have gone.

We all might as well go sell ourselves for scraps on Frentech. We're going to be using TrueSocial to move value is what I'm thinking. I'm talking about the talking points in the presentation at BRICS today. Do you want to know or not, Scott? I guess. Okay. We'll just keep quiet for a second. Okay. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. uh i guess okay we'll just keep quiet for a second okay bye bye bye bye see you later bye sorry guys on that on that point i'm gonna i'm just gonna buying the us dollar as we speak

oh man that reminds me of the space we had about NFTs where everyone is so bleak. And they're talking about NFTs like they're dead and they moved on. And then I see you come out of nowhere and say, Mario. It's like you started the space saying, fuck NFTs and PFPs. And then the space is ending like, Mario, I'm aping in this shit. And then today I see you got aping in the US dollar. But, guys. I just thought that somebody bought somebody bought uh swept like 20

bathing uh board apes i said bathing it swept 20 board apes for like a million dollars yesterday swept the floor with 20 of them and i laughed i said i remember when one cost a million dollars that was me by the way the floor the floor the floor and nfts got got screwed by the way Look, I think we've talked enough about BRICS. I don't think we'll be talking about BRICS for a really long time. We'll talk about BRICS when the reserve currency or the BRICS currency, whatever you want to call it, is, let's say, 30%. So in my lifetime, not Scott's. We'll talk about it again.

Well, I'm here and we're going to use rice. You hear about that at all, rice? Okay, Danish. All right, guys. I think this is it for today. Tomorrow, we'll be talking about privacy and we're going to have our partner come on stage, a DOP, sorry, DOP, not D-O-P.

So I'm going to be talking privacy on the blockchain. I think that's it for today. I'm ending on a positive note and I'm glad Scott's in a good mood. Thanks, everyone. Hey, Mario, can we just give a shout out again to CoinX from the other day? By the way, they reached out to me. I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't do it.

I wouldn't do it. You're pushing a lot of buttons today, Michael. He also just fell off stage coincidentally. It was just the stage was short and there was an end to it and he fell off. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, everyone.