We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - BTC010: Bitcoin & Layered Money w/ Nik Bhatia (Bitcoin Podcast)
Episode Date: January 27, 2021IN THIS EPISODE, YOU'LL LEARN: The history of Florentine Mint and how it changed European banking A background on double entry book keeping Counterparty risk and how it impacts markets The importa...nce of Disciplinary Constraint in banking Thoughts on the Velocity of Money Thoughts on the governments' ability to shut down Bitcoin What would make Nik change his mind about Bitcoin Nik's thoughts on Bitcoin regulation What would a yield curve look like with Bitcoin Thoughts on the new administration Nik's thoughts on the lightning network BOOKS AND RESOURCES Join the exclusive TIP Mastermind Community to engage in meaningful stock investing discussions with Stig, Clay, and the other community members. Nik Bhatia's new book, Layered Money Nik's Twitter Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) here. SPONSORS Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors: Bluehost Fintool PrizePicks Vanta Onramp SimpleMining Fundrise TurboTax Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm
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You're listening to TIP.
Hey, everyone. Welcome to our Wednesday release of the podcast where we're talking about Bitcoin.
Today's guest is Nick Batia.
Nick is a CFA charter holder who's in a junk professor of finance at the University of
Southern California's Marshall School of Business.
Prior to teaching, Nick worked the U.S. Treasury's trading desk for a large institutional
asset manager and has extensive experience in the market with interest rates and futures.
Nick recently published the book, Layered Money.
I was an enormous fan of this book, and so I'm really excited to be able to bring him on to the show to explore some of the thoughts and ideas that he presented there.
So without further delay, here's my interview with Nick.
You're listening to Bitcoin Fundamentals by the Investors Podcast Network.
Now for your host, Preston Pish.
All right.
Hey, everyone, welcome to the show.
I got Nick Batia here with me.
And Nick, I'm just going to start off by saying, read your book.
I absolutely loved this book.
And I know people that might follow me on Twitter can see that I've been talking about it.
You crushed this thing.
And it is laid out in such a thoughtful way.
It's concise where it needs to be concise.
You go into detail.
You provide so much historical context for how we arrived at where we're at.
I was learning a ton through this book.
Bravo.
That's all I can say.
And welcome to the show.
Thanks a lot for having me, Preston.
And thanks for your kind words about the book.
So, Nick, this is where I want to start because anybody who's written a book knows that if you
want to learn a subject, just start writing a book about it. And there's a lot of learning for the
author that takes place when you're writing a book. So the thing I want to start off with is
when you're writing your book, layered money, what was the thing that when you look back
at that experience that you're saying, wow, that's not maybe something that I expected to
uncover or something that you just really kind of remember about the experience that you
kind of like had an aha moment or something like that?
Well, I've wanted to write a book about Bitcoin for about two years now, two to three
years.
But the aha moment came when I read an economic professor's paper.
The papers titled The Inherent Hierarchy of Money by Professor Perry Merling, he's an economics
professor at Boston University. And when I read his paper, I realized that Bitcoin was going to be
the first layer of money in the future in the same vein as this paper that this professor
had written. And in that paper, gold was in the framework, the first layer of money. And the paper
was a theoretical framework for how money works and how a credit money system works. And I just saw
Bitcoin in that role. And I had already concluded that Bitcoin was digital gold and I knew that
the book would require a history of gold itself. But when I saw Bitcoin at the top of the
hierarchy of money in the future, that was the moment when layered money started to come together.
is a story. That was at the end of 2019, so just over a year ago.
Here's the part that I loved about this, is you go into just this financial history
and really explain how just currencies evolved on top of this. And you talk about how this
layer of money starts getting stacked on top of gold. The first thing that really kind of
piqued my interest when I was reading through, you start talking about the Florentine Mint.
And this is back in 1252.
Just explain this story, a little bit of context, the history of it, what it meant to Europe as this was taking place, and just give us a little bit of a history lesson on this.
The interesting thing is that at the time, the Florentine mint, creating the gold floren coin, meant nothing because hundreds and thousands of governments and empires and kings had created coins before that point.
Gold coins came to be about 700 years before Christ.
So 1900 years have passed before the Florentine meant created the gold form.
What was remarkable about the Florin was that it went unchanged in purity and weight, spanning four centuries for over 300 years.
Which is mind-blowing.
I mean, the thing that wasn't debased for centuries, to me, is nuts.
So when you were reading about this, what caused that to last for so long? Because nowhere throughout history, we've seen something that wasn't debased for three centuries.
I think it came to the form of government. So it was in a post-feudal society. And these city republics across northern Italy, Florence, Venice, Genoa, Pisa, they all have.
had mints. And they all had coins that lasted quite a while. So it wasn't even specific to Florence.
Florence was just the one that got the network effect, as in our modern terms. It's the one that
got the network effect across Europe. But I do believe that, you know, from what I read and
the history of Renaissance Florence, you know, is that it was this post-feudal society that
allowed this Republican form of government to lead to this type of stability.
So let's talk about the second layer on top of the Florentine Mintz gold coin.
Talk to us about how some of this arrived. I know you talk in the book you talk about physical
transfer risk and how some of this started to develop into the reasons why this second layer of
money or currency was built on top of this.
At this time, you really had the idea of a global economy forming, where cities across
Europe were prosperous, northern Africa, into the Middle East, and all connected by the Mediterranean.
And they started trading with each other year round.
And this type of year-round trade led to a need for deferred settlement, where you didn't
have to exchange coins every time to the last cent, every fair. By fair, I mean the trading events
that happen across the continent seasonally. And so if you didn't need to or want to settle
in coins every time a transaction took place, and you know, remember, we're in the 13th century
here, deferred settlement was a way to escape that risk of transferring coins or carrying a lot of
And deferred settlement basically means I'll pay you back next time and write it on a piece of paper and sign your name on it and sign each other's name.
And it's a financial agreement.
And so that type of situation was, you know, what I call it the second layer of money because it's a promise to pay the first layer of money, which are gold and silver coins.
So during this period of time, you also talk about how businesses, maybe not.
individuals when they transact, but businesses when they would transact started to use these gold coins
in particular because they were so valuable. They were basically a week's worth of wage or whatever
back then because they were so valuable. They started to be the unit of account for businesses
and how they were managing their books. So talk to us a little bit about this idea and what this
meant for this period of time in particular.
Right. So the advancement in denominating everything in Floren was that in, you know, before the Floren stability, when you had a world of coins changing purities all the time, nobody had a common language in terms of how to account. They would account in gold and silver, but they didn't have an exact measurement that they all agreed on. The Floren gave them that.
when I say them, I'm talking about the European continent as a whole, because who cares from a
global economy's perspective if everybody in a town is using the same accounting language, right?
But if you want to do it on a global scale and think in dollars today, how everybody thinks
in dollars around the world, it's the benchmark, it's the measuring stick for the world.
And I think Bitcoin is going to become that.
And it's already on its way.
But back then, the Florin being the coin or the measurement, the unit of account, the
denomination that everybody rallied around, it was the first time that had ever happened in our modern history.
And that was a revolution in itself.
And I think spurred a lot of economic activity because everybody was.
speaking the same language for the first time.
So to extract a little bit more of some of your writing here, you wrote and you get into
double entry accounting.
There's a quote from your book, you say, within the double entry accounting system where
the secrets of how bankers could create money not by minting a coin, but from their balance sheet.
What are you getting at here?
This is the idea that when bankers issue a loan, they're actually creating money into the system
that didn't exist before.
they do that because when they create that loan, there's not necessarily a precious metal
that is backing that money coming into existence.
And so in order for a government to create money, back then they had to mint coins,
but bankers could issue debt to each other, credits, credit money, and not reserve it with any
metal whatsoever.
And so that's what I mean by, you know, it comes from their back.
They just write it into existence.
And Milton Freeman also called it the bookkeeper's pen, which we talk about in the book
as well.
But all liabilities of a bank, dollars are just forms of liabilities from the bank, and it comes
from the bookkeeper's pen.
You know, one of the ideas that you talk about right after this idea is counterparty risk.
Instead of talking about counterparty risk in the historical sense, I'd
be more curious to hear some of your thoughts on what we saw back in the March, April
time frame of 2020, just call it nine to 10 months ago, and how counterparty risk played such
an enormous part in that liquidity squeeze that we saw. Get into all the nuances of this
for people. The problem with our current financial system is the interbank counterparty risk,
where banks don't trust each other when things get tough because they all are expecting the Fed
and the central banks to come in and save the situation.
So when things get difficult, they all pull back from each other.
And that is actually now the natural state of our financial system.
And I do believe that that's due to this moral hazard that the Fed has created by responding
to every situation with unlimited bailouts.
And it's not to fault them explicitly because they have no other choice.
The system is broken and the banks don't trust each other.
And that is the core problem with the financial system.
And so when things got crazy in March, April of last year, when the pandemic started,
the banks, what they do is that they don't lend to each other in the wholesale money market.
market anymore. They don't engage in repo lending to each other, meaning that even U.S.
Treasury collateral doesn't warrant a loan from your neighbor, and, you know, your banking
neighbor. And that is a problem. That's why the Fed had to step in and basically create a repo
facility in which they basically said, all Treasury collateral across the world, and they included
foreign institutions later in this. Everybody with a treasury can get cash from us if you need it.
I mean, that's a band-aid on the system that you can never rip off. That is why I refer to the Fed as
the lender of only resort. They're the only game in town because there is no liquidity otherwise.
So as you were describing that, I flipped to page 72 in your book. And something that I love
that you did here is you showed this the layers of money throughout time and how they've evolved
and how they've changed and how they're being used today. So when you were talking about the
Treasury repo, I'm looking at this chart on page 72 where you're talking about the US dollar
system today. And I can see right where that fits into the layer of quote unquote currency
or money that we that we're using. So when we look at this counterparty risk and we look at what
played out back 10 months ago. You saw gold, and I should probably say paper gold, sell off,
not dramatically, but it's sold off, just like everything else sold off. And so, but I think what
everyone's not seeing is they're not seeing the dollar and every other fiat currency get bid
relative to everything else that got sold off. No one talks about that. But that's effectively
what's playing out because of all this counterpart. Everything is a counterparty risk to these
monetary baseline Fiat units that we're talking about, correct?
Yes, and that's why United States treasuries are, the interest rates are so low on them
because the demand is theoretically the entire supply of money that exists at any time.
This is something that I didn't really get into in the book because, you know,
trying to talk about the direction of interest rates and why interest rates are so low doesn't
really fit into the story of Bitcoin, but it's actually crucial to understand this.
It comes down to two worlds. You have the safe world and everything else. And we know from the international
statistics that the approximate size of dollar denominated debt across the world is,
is well over 200 trillion.
So let's call it 300 for the simple math.
And let's round the treasury supply to 30 trillion,
where it'll be any minute now.
So you have 30 trillion in safe and 300 trillion in everything else.
You know, if you understand like at the margin demand for treasuries,
because if you think of the 30 trillion supply,
let's say 25 of it are locked up in very strong hands.
So the marginal availability of these treasuries is not that big relative to the size of money in the world.
And this is what everybody needs in order to settle their counterparty risk.
It's not what everybody needs.
It's the only thing you can physically own to assure yourself of dollars tomorrow.
Yeah.
And that is the nature of our credit money system where most forms of money,
are forms of credit. If it's not the credit of the United States Treasury, it can't be fully
trusted. And that dynamic means that when anything goes sour, rates absolutely plummet in the
United States, meaning the Treasury prices skyrocket because the demand is, it overwhelms the
available supply. And that is despite the fiscal profligacy or however you want to call it of the
United States government, dependent of the fact that they spend so much money.
Would you say that it's safe to characterize what's happening as counterparty risk globally
is going up, but maybe even accelerating at this point?
Yes, that's a fair characterization.
It is accelerating because the Fed is incrementally backstopping everything.
So now that you don't have a treasury, a natural treasury market for repo anymore, that the Fed is the implicit backstop there, you're removing the risk that anything fails.
And so why trust a counterparty when the going gets tough because you have the Fed there?
And that's the dynamic that is accelerating. I would argue too.
So there's a term you used in your book that I just really liked, and I like the way that you went about this. And the term is disciplinary constraint. And when we think about this, what you really get into with this term is fractional reserve banking. Can you give us a background on fractional reserve banking? Because this is what got us to this point. And I think when I talk to a lot of people, they look at what's happening around the world right now and they immediately want to blame the
politician that's currently in office or the one that was in office the term before.
And I think it's just so narrow-sighted as to what's really driving what we're seeing today.
And I suspect that it happened decades ago that got us into this place.
I think you agree with me because we chatted a little bit before we started here.
So can you talk to us about this term disciplinary constraint and then particularly talk about
how it played out from the 1940s into the 1970s and 80s here in the whole world, not just in the
U.S., but globally.
So disciplinary constraint is another term that comes from the inherent hierarchy of money paper.
And what Professor Merlin talks about is that disciplinary constraint is how much you have reserved
against how much you're issuing in terms of money.
So if a bank has a million dollars worth of gold in the vault and issues $10 million worth of deposit money, that's a 10 to 1 or a 10% fractional reserve situation.
People can understand this in Tether terms because it's such a hot topic right now.
If Tether had $10 U.S. dollars in their treasury, but they've issued $100 worth of Tether tokens,
That would be the exact same scenario that you just described, correct?
That's right.
So we see that when the fractional reserve banking evolved, that gold was it exercised discipline
on how much money a bank could create.
Because in the end, if there's a bank run, they have to be able to satisfy enough people's
deposits or demand for redemption, that enough confidence could exist for that entity.
Now, I do believe that fractional reserve banking is a natural evolution because people want
credit and people treat credit as money.
That's the way that I saw when I was researching that that's kind of how it unfolded.
Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors.
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All right.
Back to the show.
Well, and you also laid it out in your book, Nick, that once the governments inserted
themselves into that second and first layer, that this was a natural progression because
it's a form of taxation.
And if they can just print more in order to supply whatever that base quote unquote money is,
it's so much easier for them to do these types of things.
But whenever it was all localized and you provide this in your book as well, when gold
coins were privately minted and distributed and were going way back in history, you didn't
necessarily see these activities because it was all about trial.
You saw it in some regards, but then in others, you didn't.
They lasted for decades where particular mints were trusted because they had 100% backing
on whatever paper they were issuing on its behalf.
Yeah.
And in the book, I talk about this idea of privileged lending.
When the government inserted themselves between the first and second layer of money,
they lent money to themselves in a privileged manner and benefited from that money they lent to
themselves being on par with all the other gold-backed money that was out there circulating.
And that's the taxation that you're talking about because what you're doing is you're altering
the denomination by inserting your own privilege into it. And that was a precedent that was set
with the Bank of Amsterdam and the Dutch East India Trading Company and the city of Amsterdam
them itself, the city and the company inserted themselves into this privileged situation where
the money that they issued to themselves was on par with gold-backed money of the people
of the Netherlands at the time. And that precedent led to the Bank of England doing the same
thing when they wanted to finance a war at the end of the 1600s. And that is how to
how when the Fed owns U.S. treasuries, that's what's happening as well. It's a form of privileged
lending that originated from the Bank of Amsterdam. So take us to Bretton Woods and then
describe what played out from the 1940s up until 1971 based on this idea of fractional
reserve banking. In 1944, the Bretton Woods Agreement dictated that the U.S. dollar was now
So currency of global settlement, and only the dollar would have convertibility to gold.
And all other currencies around the world would have a base price in dollars.
And that would be the relationship between currencies, the dollar, and gold.
And the dollar supply was not in check in any way.
So the amount of dollars that were issued after 1944, the supply kept growing and growing and growing.
But the price of gold in terms of dollars was unchanged because the redemption pressure on the United States didn't really exist.
But it was bubbling up because we had basically a liberalization of how many dollars existed.
that were lent by banks into existence. So that's why we need to understand the layers of money
all the way out to three layers to really understand this model. On the third layer of money are
commercial banking deposits. This is the money that you and I use, right? Our money that we keep
is a form of deposit money. It's not a central bank issued money that people keep, right? And so,
So the supply of this third layer of money grew and grew and grew, but never challenged up to the first layer during, let's say, the 50s and the beginning of the 60s.
But then during the 1960s, it started to catch up and the redemption started coming for the gold because the dollars were so plentiful that people challenged that price.
And they said, I'd rather have the gold.
I'm calling your bluff.
But the government of the United States didn't have the ability to control that supply growth.
They weren't the ones that were doing it.
It was the banks because the banks issue money to the world.
And so when that rush up the pyramid of money, the layers happened in the late 1960s.
and governments around the world demanded the gold instead of the commercial banking dollars
that they had issued from wherever they were issued from.
That's what broke the gold peg.
And that's what broke the disciplinary constraint forever on money.
And discipline transferred from a precious metal to a consortium of central banks around the world.
And now discipline only exists in their minds.
There is no physical discipline in the form of gold where the whole, you know, this whole
framework of money originated from.
And so the period between 1944, Bretton Woods and 1971, I like to think of it as 68,
71 and 73, because 68, the gold pool broke.
71 was the closing the gold window in 73 was when the official Bretton Woods agreement ended and currencies free-floated against each other.
And the relationship between gold and the dollar and currencies was ended forever.
So that period from 68 to 73 was set up by basically this third layer of money growing at no explicit,
fault of the issuer of the dollar itself.
You know, when you look back in history and you go into 1964, right before you're coming
off this gold standard, the president back then was Lyndon B. Johnson.
And he was giving a speech of the great American society and how perfect everything was in
America at this point in time. And when you look at what was actually taking place that
receded this from the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944, 20 years later when Johnson's making
this speech about the Great Society, and you look at this fractional reserve banking,
kept adjusting this money multiplier. So you were talking about $10 actually being in the bank
versus the hundred that's lent out. Well, three or four years later, now it's only $5 that
needs to be in the bank for every hundred that's lent out. And then it went to three, and then it went
to, and then it went to, you know, when you keep adjusting that money multiplier, you're debasing
against that gold backing that's there. And for me, when you read a history book and you
read about this period of time, there's no mention of the monetary history and the things
that were taking place in order to create this perception of this being just miraculously
achieved without there being some type of monetary manipulation that was actually taking place
in the background slowly, not quickly. It didn't happen over a one-year period of time. It happened
over decades. And when it happens over decades, it's really hard to see it. I really appreciate
you kind of going into some of those details and providing that. And when I look at the historical
stuff that goes along with what you're saying, it's just fascinating to me.
It's a credit money system and the expansion in everything was done on a fractional and as you mentioned, a more fractional, meaning a less reserved type of way.
And we are still in the echoes of that expansion.
I don't think that has ended yet or that it ended back then or that 1971 or 73 were necessarily any break in that.
it just kind of accelerated and that's the system that we are in today.
So talk about that period.
So we all know that interest rates started going up from the time you come off the gold standard into the early 80s, interest rates peaked in 81.
And then they've been progressively going down for 40 years since.
Yes, because at that point, the realization that treasuries were the best way to store the dollars,
because gold was gone from the financial system and gold was gone from backing the dollar itself,
then treasuries became the asset du jour.
And that is why rates have trended lower for 40 years because it's a progressive realization
that it's the only way to store dollar safely.
And it was the new gold.
So for much of that period of time, only in the last 10 years have they really moved away
from just adjusting the federal funds rate.
But talk to us a little bit about what was the Fed in particular doing during this period of time
from the early 1980s up until the 2008, 2009? How were they manipulating or adjusting?
What lever were they pulling in this treasury market in order to keep the rates moving
lower and lower? Because from my understanding, it was just the federal funds rate.
It was just at the far left of the duration curve that they were stepping into. And then the
rest of the yield curve was following the lead of what they were doing with the federal funds rate.
Was there anything more to it than that from your perspective?
To be honest, Preston, I don't think that question has a great answer because it's hard to know
whether monetary policy drives the rates of treasuries down or that treasury rates fell because
of other reasons and that federal funds tracked it because of a natural,
demand for money around a certain given interest rate or price money throughout time. So it's a
tough one. It seems like whenever there would be a big credit event, like a business cycle,
you know, the business cycle, seven to eight years long, and you have this big credit event,
and the central banks would step in and they immediately drop the federal funds rate lower,
but it was always lower than it was at the previous business cycle. And it seemed like it never
was able to fully recover higher without there being yet another big credit event is how I saw
it, or at least the way that I'm seeing the charts.
Yeah, and I would say that that's fair because the Fed being the leverage tool in the
money market or the actor in the money market, if they keep making money cheaper, they always
kick the can down the road of this natural counterparty risk and this prospect of default in the
system. So to make money cheaper is always the easiest route. That's the easiest path. And that's
part of the reason that you see that trend. So you talk a lot in your book about the velocity of money.
First, talk to us about just what that is for a person who's maybe not familiar with the term.
and then talk about the trend that we've seen with the velocity of money here more recently.
Yeah, so money velocity, I introduce it in a very broad way where I say, you know,
imagine yourself in the 13th, 14th century using coins every day versus being able to defer a settlement
with a piece of paper.
And if the piece of paper itself was treated as cash, then the ease of using paper versus coins meant that money could transfer from hand to hand more quickly than it could before.
And so that's what money velocity means more broadly.
It's how quickly does money change hands?
How quickly do people transact with each other?
Is it once a quarter or are they able to transact every day because money moves more quickly?
And having thousands of different coins at one time, all in the same place, is a disaster for money velocity.
But deferred settlement and trustworthy bankers that just issue notes that say, I'll pay you tomorrow, or I promise to pay you tomorrow, make things move a lot more quickly.
And so money velocity accelerated with the advent of paper money of promissory notes during the 16th century in Antwer.
But today, money velocity has a more economic and a more quantitative definition where it's actually measured by central banks and their statistics to calculate it.
And we see that money velocity is slowing and it still does refer to the turnover of money in the system.
And we see that slowing because I do believe this broken interbank trust.
And we don't see the lending because money velocity really comes down to how quickly are banks lending money.
And the lending is slowing because like you said, counterparty trust is eroding every day it gets worse than the day before.
And so that causes money velocity to slow.
So I think that's one of the reasons we see that in the official statistics.
So when we look at velocity of money and we look at this idea that Bitcoin could be potentially
stepping in and playing a much larger role moving forward, how does that impact the velocity
of money based on what you just said?
Bitcoin is a settlement later.
It's a form of final settlement.
And because of its decentralized nature, this form of final settlement can happen every 10 minutes, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
And that is quick enough to build an entire financial system on it.
That moves a lot quicker down the layers.
because today, settlement on second and third layers takes a long time.
It takes days to send money across borders and several transactions.
But in a world with Bitcoin as the final form of settlement, and we see this with the Lightning
network, you can actually have second layer transactions that are instant at any value.
And so it's really powerful.
And it starts with Bitcoin as a settlement tool.
It's because the final settlement is so easy to do that we can have lower layers of money
that just move at light speed.
I'm curious what you think of this idea.
So when I think of the velocity of money and the terms that I think economists want
people to think, they want it to be this metric for measuring.
If I pay you a dollar for whatever good or service, how quickly then are you able to go
out and spend the dollar somewhere else. And when I think about what's taking place today where so much
of the world's equity is in the hands of the few, those people that hold all that equity,
there's only so many boats they can go out and buy and so many mansions they can go out and
buy in order to allow that transaction and that currency to be put into somebody else's hands
in order for it to go somewhere else. Most of the currency today, it seems like it's all just
being capitalized into higher and higher asset prices, which is just sucking this velocity
of money from taking place.
So if there's this huge movement to Bitcoin, where it becomes this new form of money,
and now you have people that have tremendous wealth in this new currency, they're going to
want to go out and buy equities, and they're going to want to go out and buy things that
are generating some type of free cash flow, which then recapitalizes that entire equity in
debt market completely. To me, that seems like that reorganization and that shuffling would
actually greatly accelerate the velocity of money as everything kind of gets reorganized
and people are willing to depart with their Bitcoin in order to own equity and assets that are
kicking off free cash flows. Would you agree with that or do you think that it's an extreme thought?
I'm kind of curious to hear some of your thoughts. I do agree with that and I do believe that the
Acceleration of Bitcoin as a World Reserve currency happens only if those investors demand their returns
denominated in Bitcoin. And if they make the companies they're investing in denominate their
balance sheets in Bitcoin, it will ensure that the returns, the dividends will be paid back
in Bitcoin. And so, you know, several years down the road, I hate to speculate on how long
that'll take, but that does seem to be a natural progression, assuming a much larger market
cap of Bitcoin in the future.
So this is probably the most popular question I get asked on Twitter.
What would make you change your mind about Bitcoin or what are some of the things that
would be a red flag for you?
Yeah.
So, I mean, shot 256 underpins Bitcoin, right?
So that's one of the basic things is if there's some problem with the cryptography that is brought to our attention.
Because that's the thing that keeps Bitcoin secure.
And so the cryptography would be something that changes my mind if we learn collectively.
And I have no computer science expertise whatsoever.
So I have to use my own discretion.
And I understand that shot 256 is a secure hashing algorithm.
rhythm that keeps Bitcoin functioning in a way that nobody can tamper with it.
And so that is my best understanding of how Bitcoin works.
And if there's a problem with that, then we'd have to take a look.
So my favorite saying as a trader and I use it as an adjunct professor is that price is
truth.
It's my favorite quote in the world because the price tells you everything you need to
know.
Now, what is the problem with Bitcoin today?
The price says that nothing is the problem.
The price says that Bitcoin is a growing asset that is an emerging technology that is
seeing adoption around the world in an exponential sort of way.
I mean, the price says that everything is good.
If the price of Bitcoin went to below $1,000, that would be a cause for alarm,
because that means something is really wrong with it.
And I don't know what would cause that.
But the price will tell you, I promise you that if the price of Bitcoin goes below $1,000
in the next 12 months, there's something seriously wrong with Bitcoin.
The price will tell you that.
But 80% price corrections are well within the historical context of Bitcoin.
So maybe I crashed down to $5,000 wouldn't really alarm me necessarily because we've seen
it before in Bitcoin several times.
So maybe it's a little bit of a cop-out, but there's not anything right now that's threatening
Bitcoin's rise dictated by what the price is telling us.
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How do you think about the regulatory front? Because that's probably if what's your biggest risk and
then they always like to throw out, well, how's the government going to regulate this?
Aren't you concerned about that? What are some of your thoughts on that? Well, I think that the
United States government, which is the most powerful influential regulatory government in the world still,
is wildly accepting of Bitcoin and full embrace.
The proof is in the pudding.
They treat it like a property at the IRS.
So it's like on par with gold to the IRS.
It's regulated as a virtual commodity by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission.
It is now the latest office of the control of the currency ruling on these independent node
verification networks, this long new acronym that they have, they basically said that banks can use
Bitcoin now to transfer money to each other as long as they follow the law. So it's a wild
endorsement from the United States government left, right, and center. And anybody that thinks
that the government is going to ban Bitcoin is not paying attention whatsoever to what's going on
in the regulatory landscape. I mean, it's embracing.
embrace, embrace at every step of the way because the government realizes that, number one,
Bitcoin is a form of speech because it's a form of cryptography. And number two, that there is
nobody you can send a letter to subpoena in Bitcoin. And therefore, it's an independent concept
and cannot be constrained. They realize this. So other governments will echo this type of thing.
and governments like China and other sort of more authoritarian governments, dictatorships,
those types of things, they will ban Bitcoin and probably do so effectively because
the people are scared that they'll get murdered or jailed if they break the law.
So to me, it's almost a tired argument because you're not actually reading what the government
is saying at all.
So let's play out a scenario where I think the pressure for the government to intervene is going to get more dramatic.
So let's say the price runs to $200,000 and it does it in a pretty aggressive way.
And let's say it does it by the end of this year that we're in right now at 2021.
Now you start to have people in the fixed income space, which I know you're extremely well versed on.
They're looking at this and saying, oh, God, if this thing becomes the new money and this thing
a reflection of where interest rates are going to be based, this thing that I'm holding
in fiat currency becomes totally impaired, worthless. And they start selling off in the debt market,
or the debt market starts to sell off. Central banks have to step in and aggressively provide
a backstop by yield curve control. They're already doing it. They're already talking about it.
but they can see the amount of orders that are coming in in a drastically aggressive way,
and they're providing a backstop and a buy for all of that.
They can see the flows of all these cash that they're basically inserting into the system,
and where it's flowing, it's flowing into Bitcoin exchanges.
At this point, if I'm a central banker and I'm seeing this,
I'm saying the whole system's about the collapse and it's about the change.
do they come together as a collective entity and try to step in and regulate it at that point?
Because everything that you said, Nick, I completely agree with.
100%.
All the laws and regulations that they're putting forth tells you that they're actually being
accommodative with it.
But when I think about where things start to get a little concerning and a little bit more
on edge is pretty much the scenario that I just described.
So how do you think through that?
Is that something that they could even do?
Do you think global or the main nation states could come together and implement something
collectively?
What are your thoughts around some of that?
I don't think that nations will come together and hammer this thing down to the ground
from a regulatory perspective.
But you do bring up a very interesting scenario.
And the game theory is fascinating what that type of situation will look like.
And it probably will maybe here, maybe in another country.
And it actually makes me excited to see what happens because I do feel that Bitcoin will find a way.
It always does.
And watching Bitcoin find a way when the governments get most aggressive is going to be
breathtaking to watch.
just like how the decentralized network gets around the government's...
Let me ask you this.
If you're a strategic advisor, let's say you're working at the Treasury and you've got the ear
of Janet Yellen, what would you be advising her if this scenario that I just described
was playing out and Lagarde and everybody else in the world is saying, we need to come to
the table, we need to have a meeting right now collectively.
what would you be advising from a strategic standpoint for the country that you represent?
How would you be playing that?
Because I know how I'd be playing it.
I want to hear how you'd be playing it.
I think what you have to do is exactly what the OCC, the United States Treasury, just did.
They legalized the use of Bitcoin as the rails of the financial system for clearance.
and I would double down and make United States the home of Bitcoin the most friendly
and allow a world of dual denomination where banks can right away start running parallel
balance sheets in dollars and Bitcoin so that they can get comfortable and ready for
the transition to a world with a more neutral money like Bitcoin.
So I think you and I would be doing the same thing, which is accumulating a
as much of this as I can, as quietly as I can, but going to the conversations to hear what
everyone else is doing, but not being committal to anything, not being committed to anything
because you're making an assessment on how everyone else is about to act and hear what they're
about to do. It's kind of a situation where if you go to, and this is the ultimate prisoner's
dilemma, if you trust everyone at the table and you've got to trust everyone at the table that
they're going to ban it or they're going to act in a way that is collectively in all of their
interest to ban it, right? Or if one person or two or three, and I said person, but nations,
if a few of them don't go along with this and they're actually printing and buying Bitcoin
and putting it on their treasury, the whole thing doesn't work. Because over time, those few that
are adopting this are going to have the hardest soundest money and it's going to work out very well
for them in the long run over a very long period of time. So do you buy that? Do you think that thinking
is on board with how you would see it playing out? Or is it a coin toss between the first scenario
where they all come to table and they all agree to? No, somebody and again, by person, I mean nation,
somebody is already going to be extremely long Bitcoin. Yeah. Either in the Treasury or from a
regulatory perspective or the taxpay corporations within its borders are all killing it in the
Bitcoin world, charging Bitcoin for their goods and services, denominating their balance sheets
in Bitcoin. So somebody is going to be long at that point, so long that they'll say,
no, we're not going to rid Bitcoin from our country. Or better yet, drag your feet and act like
you're going to do something, but just be non-committal and drag out another meeting all while
you're stacking it on your domestic balance sheet. There's an incentive to drag your feet and act
like you're not doing anything, but in reality, you are. And I think that Bitcoin's natural
four-year cyclicality where it has this boom and bust cycle that seems to keep repeating itself
now where it looks like we're in the third one and it's no longer a coincidence. Each time the
price crashes, it brings the heat off. And so I hope we get the crash before the heat gets too
hot. And I think it will. And it keeps growing bigger and bigger each time. And I think it's a
foregone conclusion now that governments won't come together and ban Bitcoin. I just think that
will never happen.
It's interesting that you say that because think about how much entrenchment has happened
from 2017 to where we're at now from a technology standpoint.
Like how much technology that's happening with lightning, you're looking at debit cards,
credit cards that have Bitcoin rewards baked into every single transaction a person makes.
I know personally, every transaction I make, Bitcoin is involved in every single transaction
I make today right now through this reward, through fold, and any other type of debit credit card
that offers these rewards. So when I hear you say what you just said, what you're really saying
is you hope that we go through another cycle because you think it's going to only make the case
for Bitcoin to be that much stronger as the winner in the long run versus if it really
starts going parabolic on this run, you think that that potentially poses more.
regulatory risk. Am I saying that or am I taking words out of your mouth?
No, that is it. And I don't even think that it's possible for anything to go straight parabolic
and it wouldn't be a good thing either. But the way that Bitcoin grows is like a heartbeat.
It pumps and then it pumps again. And each time it pumps, it leaves something in its wake.
And that seems to be the natural evolution.
Bitcoin is alive.
It really is this organism.
And there are people out there, writers like Robert Breedlove and others that they talk about Bitcoin in this really like majestic way for the human species and how empowering it is.
And I love all their writing.
And I can't really echo what they say.
And I recommend reading and comparing Bitcoin.
to mushrooms and comparing Bitcoin to the number zero and, you know, these powerful ideas of what
Bitcoin is. And just the way that it grows and the way that it beats like a heart and it goes
like an organism just evolving, it has all these natural defense mechanisms. It has this immunity.
And maybe probably this boom and bust cycle is part of its immune system that lets it not
It adopted too fast, not get the government's too angry.
It's an amazing thing to watch some technology like this.
I was very young when the internet started, and so I didn't get to see that unfold and
understand the power, but I get to see it this time, and it's really cool.
So let's fast forward.
Let's say that Bitcoin's successful.
What does a yield curve look like in the future?
I think it'll mirror other upward sloping yield curves.
The theory behind an upward sloping yield curve partly derives from this idea of a
liquidity premium in which you demand a higher interest rate for locking your money up
for a longer period of time.
So liquidity premiums and positively sloping yield curves are,
What I feel, and I think financial theory also says, is the natural state where if I'm going to lend you Bitcoin for a day, I'll charge you 10 basis points.
But if I'm going to lend it to you for five years, I'm going to charge you 15 percent or something like that.
The shape of the yield curve, how steep it is, I think it's very, very premature to start speculating about that stuff.
I played around with yield curves and Bitcoin, and it's not a great exercise because there aren't
that many data points, and there isn't that much liquidity at each data coin. So making sense of
the shape of today's Bitcoin yield curve, it's not a very useful exercise to me. Neither is speculating
what it will look like in the future in terms of where the rates will be. But upward sloping,
Yes, maturities all the way from one minute to 100 years, probably.
And watching those instruments develop will be very important for a transfer of denomination
from fiat currencies to the world of Bitcoin.
And we don't really see that happening today in any size, where we have fixed income
instruments denominated in Bitcoin and a like a securitized,
yield curve, meaning a yield curve with instruments that are treated like securities with a high
degree of transparency, liquidity, none of that stuff really exists in Bitcoin yet.
It's more of maybe a next five years building out that true capital market.
But the more native, small, natural money markets like Lightning Network, or there's a market
for liquidity dedicated to this pool of capital that routes payments, that's already starting.
And the size isn't really there to attract what we think of as capital market size.
But the ideas are there, they're starting.
And those type of native Bitcoin ideas will be foundational in how we think about Bitcoin
denominated interest rates and risk.
When you look at the derivatives market today for Bitcoin specifically, it seems like the spreads
that a person could farm, the yields that a person could farm by going long and short at the same
time and just kind of capturing that spread for an immediate return, it seems like it's really
wide and that you don't have a lot of participants stepping in from traditional finance
in order to just capture this spread that's, you know, I'm calling it risk-free. I'm sure there's
some minor, small risk that's being incurred through the short custodial period that's taking
place. But for all intensive purposes, it seems like a massive yield that could be captured
that, you know, your traditional Wall Streeters aren't taken advantage of. How are you seeing that?
So arbitrage exists for the people that are willing to make that bet. You know, my favorite
example of arbitrage are the buyout arbitrage yours, where a company gets bought for $35,
the stock rallies to $34.75. A hedge fund comes in, buys all the shares, and makes a quarter when
the buyout closes. And that arbitrage opportunity is there. They take it. And, you know,
there are people that are willing to make that market and take that risk. Well, the same degree of
ease of closing that arbitrage isn't there for enough people to be comfortable with yet.
And that's why the spread is as wide as it is because the comfort in executing or let's just say
the confidence that you can close on the arbitrage opportunity isn't well developed yet.
And that will happen with time and with enough participants that trust each other and are willing to move money quickly.
And it also has to do, Preston, with jurisdictional arbitrage.
So one of the things that foreign exchange traders will do is they'll trade different currencies with different banks in order to make a spread because certain banks are in one country and the other.
and there's just a way to capitalize on that.
Bitcoin exchanges are very cloudy in their jurisdictions.
And that comfort of the arbitrageurs with the jurisdictional mysteries, it prevents
closing that spread.
So it'll take time.
Interesting.
What are your thoughts on Central Bank Digital Current?
What purpose are they going to serve moving forward?
And then also your thoughts on tether.
I think the CBDCs will be used for helicopter money.
What do I mean by that?
Today, in the United States, if the government wants to stimulate the economy by giving money to people,
they can write checks and send them to people as they did in 2020.
If the Fed wants to stimulate the economy, they cannot do so directly to people.
They have to create monetary stimulus that goes into the banking system,
hoping that the banking system then issues money and loans money to the public,
and hope that their monetary stimulus ends up helping the employment situation and so forth.
The term helicopter money comes from, again, Milton Friedman, who gave an example of the Fed getting crates of dollars up into a fleet of helicopters and dropping them over the populace in order to stimulate the economy.
Because the Fed can't give money to people unless they drop it from helicopters.
But a CBDC allows them to do this.
So it's the digital helicopter.
And they will happen for this reason.
And so that's the way I see them unfolding.
But they won't tell you that until right at the end or right after they're like,
oh, by the way, we're going to use it to give you money.
Or, hey, check your wallet.
You have a thousand Fed coins.
So that'll take some time to unfold.
But that is my prediction.
How about the timeline on the central bank digital currencies?
Because to me, it seems like we are years out from them having some type of technical
solution in place. And then how does everyone get their wallet? How do you get a digital wallet in order
for them to do something like this? It seems to me like the logistics around getting the whole thing
set up and in place is just years away from that. I think it's a lot quicker than you think.
So China will be live by next year. Okay. The European Central Bank will by the end of this year have
a plan for their live version. So ECB will have a live test going on next year, 2022.
Australia, Reserve Bank of Australia, Bank of Canada, and Bank of England will all be in that
kind of live testing by next year as well. A Reserve Bank of Australia is already in their
testing base. So they're using a technology and doing some testing. The Fed will be last of
all these major countries, for sure, they'll be last.
They'll get FOMO'd into it.
But they'll be able to do it really quickly because they'll copy what the ECB and the Bank
of England does and they'll adjust it for themselves.
Now, the wallet question is a super simple answer.
Bank of America, JPMorgan, will have a wallet product where you can store your Fed
coins.
And they're already working on that stuff.
it'll be very easy for them to do on day one. You won't even notice it. Like your cash will be,
or your helicopter money will just be in your JP Morgan chase. It'll look and feel just like
somebody just made it direct. It'll look like it'll feel like your checking account or it'll
feel like your Bitcoin wallet on your smartphone. Now, is there a way for that? I know Lynn Alden
has suggested that that's going to be their method for control. Like if you're trying to spend that
coin outside of the United States, maybe it won't work. If you try to send it to a Bitcoin
exchange, maybe it won't transfer. What do you think about the programmability of the tokens
that they're going to be issuing? To be determined, my book recommends that the central banks
treat their digital currencies with as much freedom attached to them as they are willing to
seed. That is the recommendation. How close they will get to that. It will vary widely across
countries, let's just say, first of all. And secondly, I do believe that some will emerge that let you
use it pretty freely. And I can't predict all of that stuff. All I can do is advocate that in the
future air toward the side of freedom. We can be sure that certain countries will not do that.
The DCEP, the DeSep project from the People's Bank of China, this digital renminbi, is not going to be a freedom currency.
It's not going to have any, you know, it's going to be monitored.
Every transaction is going to be logged and monitored by the government.
And I think it's probably going to be naive to say that every government won't do that.
But whether or not you monitor it is not the issue, whether or not you restrict it and how much you restrict the use of it, I think will be interesting.
And some central banks will allow people to use it.
Tether.
Tether is probably three-quarters reserved by dollars and trades at par and has been criticized for years as not being fully reserved, but still trades pretty close to par.
and its importance has dwindled over the years.
So it's kind of a non-issue to me now.
Where are you getting your figure for three-quarter reserved?
And then is there another quarter that they have on reserve that isn't dollars?
Talk to us about that.
There was a report a few years ago, and you'll have to backcheck me on it.
But there was a report where they came out.
Some research had said, we think that there's about 72% reserve,
based on what we've discovered.
I think that number is from a couple years ago.
So don't quote me on it.
But my point being, I think Tether is probably mostly reserved, and they might have a shortfall,
but the price is par.
So, I mean, what's the big deal?
Like bank deposits trade at par to other bank deposits, regardless of how fractional reserve
each one of them is.
And there are other fully reserved stable coins out there.
that are developing and underway and have market liquidity.
And the market has demanded them and they exist.
And so I think that Tether is,
its importance is really dwindled in the grand scheme of things.
So your argument is even if there is funny business happening there,
let's just say it's not three-fourths, it's way lower.
There's all these other stable coins that exchanges have
coin base or Crackin or you name it.
also have fully backed stable coins and they would just take up the market share of Tether.
Is that the argument?
Yeah.
Well, think about it like this.
If Coinbase failed tomorrow, the price of Bitcoin would go down significantly and then it would
recover.
Same argument.
And then it would recover.
Yeah.
And so if Tether went down tomorrow, the price of Bitcoin would probably go down.
Yeah.
And maybe 25%.
but then it would recover because that's all in a day's work for Bitcoin.
I love it.
Come on, tether stuff.
It's like there's so many ways to poke holes at Bitcoin,
but one stable coin is just not the way anymore,
and one government ban is not the way anymore either.
Last question for you.
Gary Ginsler coming in as the SEC chairman.
What are your thoughts on what that means?
No opinion, Preston, honestly.
Spoken like a smart gentleman right there.
Okay.
The name of the book is layered money.
This is by Nick.
I'm telling you guys, when I was done reading this, I thought, you know, this is the best
book that I've read since I read Jeff Booth's book about a year ago.
And this is just laid out so well.
Man, I cannot encourage you enough to go out there and check out this book.
Nick, you did a fabulous job with this.
Thank you for coming on the show. Give people a handoff or they can learn more about you.
Thank you so much, Preston, for having me. You guys can find the book on Amazon,
layered money, Amazon worldwide, Barnes & Noble, the retailers that are selling it as well.
You can find me at layeredmoney.com. You can find the book there too. And you can find me
on Twitter at Time Value of BTC. Thanks for coming on, Nick.
Thanks, Preston.
Hey, so thanks for everybody listening to the show. If you enjoy,
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