We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - BTC080: Macro and Bitcoin Education w/ Greg Foss, James Lavish, Jason Sansone, & Sebastian Bunney (Bitcoin Podcast)

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to TIP. Hey, everyone. Welcome to this week's episode of the Bitcoin Fundamentals podcast. On today's show, it is broken down into two different segments. In the first segment, I have finance veterans, Greg Foss and James Lavish to cover macro, surge in credit default swaps, oil and energy prices, still bidding. And what that means, Bitcoin, the broader stock market indexes, and plenty more. Then in the second half of the show, I talk about the looking glass education platform with

Starting point is 00:00:29 Dr. Jason Sansoni and Sebastian Bunny. Both of the conversations are action-packed and full of actionable information. So sit right back and I hope you guys enjoyed this conversation as much as I had recording. So with that, let's roll the intro. 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. Like I said in the introduction. I'm here with this team. We're going to be talking macro. We're going to be talking about the looking glass education platform. Gents, there is, it seems like every day just gets crazier. It seems like every day you read something else in the news and you're just like, there's no way. There's absolutely no way. So my first question for the

Starting point is 00:01:28 group here is, what are some stats that you have, that have recently popped up on your radar or a chart or a news article or anything that just made your eyebrows go up and you see? said, my God, what is this? Go ahead, Greg. I know what you're going to say. No, no, no. I want the other, no, I want the other fellows to get their time. Preston, thanks for having me for, I think this is the fourth time.

Starting point is 00:01:54 So people don't need to hear from me. So go ahead, fellas. And I have an idea right there, but it's not going to be the first point of discussion. James, take it away. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, one of the things I've been watching, we've been talking about, actually with Luke Gromond, we've talked about it a little bit, is the problem with the Central Bank of Japan,

Starting point is 00:02:13 you know, and the Japanese yen and where that's going right now. You know, we talked about yield curve control with the United States and the Fed, and just to jump right in, yield curve control, right? So to back up for your listeners a little bit, you know, the yield curve normally looks like it's in a normal distribution of a yield curve, which is just the plotting of all the yields of the Treasury. in a government. So you'll have the three month, you have the six month, one year, two year, 10 year, all the way down to 30 year. In a normal distribution, a normal chart, it will actually

Starting point is 00:02:49 curve upwards, right? So further you go out, the higher the rates go. It's just a normal distribution for people in their time preference. If I'm going to loan you money for a longer period of time, I'm going to want a larger return for that, right? So, but anyways, the problem that we've come up upon and we just saw the yen fall out of bed the last couple of months, you know, and it has just gotten destroyed. And so people are asking, why is that happening? What's going on? Well, we talk about the Fed, possibly asserting yield curve control down the line, meaning that

Starting point is 00:03:24 they're trying to keep the yield at a certain rate. Well, in Japan, they've declared they are absolutely going to buy every single 10-year treasury and keep that rate at a quarter of a percent. 25 basis points, they will buy every single treasury. And so the problem is that leaves all these institutions, all these investors who are selling those bonds with yen that they don't want to be holding yen, so they've got to sell the yen. And the obvious return, the obvious other side of that trade will be the U.S. dollar. So you've seen the yen just collapsed from the U.S. dollar as they sell those treasuries,

Starting point is 00:04:02 the Bank of Japan buys them, and then the investor sells the yen. And so we're in a situation now where I think the yen is in deep trouble. And it depends on what they do going forward, but they're holding over a trillion dollars, $1.3 or $1.4 trillion of U.S. treasuries and another $1.3 or $1.4 trillion of U.S. denominated assets. So to shore up the yen, they may be selling those, which in turn will affect our market and our treasuries. So it's just something that I'm kind of watching and seeing how it plays out, but Greg and I talked about it last week and just watching some of these treasuries rolling off

Starting point is 00:04:45 the Bank of Japan sheets. And it's something out there that surprised me that it's happened so rapidly. When I'm looking at the chart for the yen, you're seeing lows relative to the dollar that you haven't seen in literally 22 years on that exchange. Now, one of the things that I find strange because Greg has taught me to look at the CDS. When I look at the CDS and how much a lot of these CDS have moved around the world over the last six months, the Japanese CDS is actually not nearly as bad as most other locations. So why would that, that doesn't make any sense to me? The credit markets move slowly and incremental change is what's, you know, you always have to look at the velocity and then the acceleration, right? Preston, you're a physics guy. And you know that it's

Starting point is 00:05:38 actually more often the second derivative than the first derivative that matters. But let's be honest. We are not in a contagion event for a G7 nation yet. Okay. So Japan, I'm going to group all the ECBs together, the USA, we, Canada, which is the outlier, is the one we have to worry about relative to a G7 nation that doesn't have historical support for the stability of its currency. All I'm trying to say is, let's remember there's G7 credit default swaps and G7 Fiats, and then there's 150 other countries that really need Bitcoin, that really suffer. offer the challenges of managing a central bank and a debt burden in a quote unquote junk sovereign. And what would be a junk sovereign?

Starting point is 00:06:40 Well, Argentina, which is a G20 country, has failed four times in my career, Preston, four times, which is to say they've never had a 30-year bond that's actually matured. Isn't that amazing? The Argentine government will issue a 30-year bond, and it has never matured in my 40 years of managing risk, a 30-year bond from Argentina has never matured, yet they keep issuing it. And then we'll take a G-11 country like Turkey, which is on the precipice right now. I don't want it to endure more pain for the citizens of Turkey, but the odds are it's going to get worse. I'm not laughing about it. I'm just like, that's the way, you know, momentum and acceleration is your enemy when you are in a

Starting point is 00:07:29 deck spiral, right? You know, you can never attain escape velocity if the acceleration is sucking you into that vortex. And I guess, you know, Japan will deal with their demons in due course. this is the first, James points out a first break in it, but it's not going to be, in my opinion, unlikely to be the event that pushes it right over the cliff versus what does Japan really do indirectly makes other countries worse. And they don't understand this, but it actually, okay, I can't swear. So something slows downhill, okay?

Starting point is 00:08:13 You know, it just flows downhill. And you have to remember that's what happens. When you lose confidence in the top dominoes, maybe that dominole wobbles a little bit, but it's like a butterfly's wings, right? The butterfly starts up here, but the damage stops, starts way downhill. And look at the general movement of yield spreads in credit default swaps on sovereign debt, and it's a widening of spreads. And the acceleration of the top rated credits is actually the same as that of the bottom rated credits, but the bottom rated credits is more visible because you're starting with a greater elasticity, if you will.

Starting point is 00:08:59 I don't want to get too granular here, but you already did, Greg. Okay. So for a surgeon, it's like, pass me the butcher knife instead of the scalpel. Okay, bang, you know, you're done. We're taking a limb off, okay? We're not even going to try and do that. We're going to cut the limb right off. And, you know, it's tough, right, guys? Credit is an asymmetric bet to the downside.

Starting point is 00:09:25 Like, nothing good happens in credit. It's a horrible business to manage. If you really do well, you get your money back. And if you do really badly, you'll lose everything. How's that for a great? So that's why there's an expression, Preston. equity holders are optimists. Trees grow to the moon. You know, absolutely, the growth is going to go on forever. And bondholders are pessimists. And there's, the reality is somewhere in between those two. Japan is not the problem right now. And I'm going to tell you exactly why. It has a current account surplus. It is a country that exports that is diametrically opposed to the United States, which has a current account. deficit because it imports. The trade balance of the JGBs or the of Japan has allowed it to run up

Starting point is 00:10:21 a deficit that the USA could never support purely because the USA has a current account deficit. To your point, though, Greg, a couple of things that you were saying in there. So first of all, I love it because your first and second order derivative comment was the initial reason why I reached out to you, right? And we, we don't need to get into the origin story. But the whole point was, you're telling everybody this is 11th grade math. I don't, I don't remember covering that in 11th grade. I remember covering in like third semester of college calculus. And then, and then my all time favorite Greg Foss quote was, you know, it's, it's a Taylor series. I mean, hello, everybody knows what a Taylor series is. Nobody knows what a Taylor series is,

Starting point is 00:11:05 great. Literally nobody. So the point is, though, is that when you talk about velocity and acceleration and you relate that into the bond market, I mean, that's difficult for financial outsiders like myself or like Seb to kind of grasp. And I think that's one of the points here that we're trying to make with regard to translating this message because your points well taken. And now that I've heard it 15 times, it makes sense. But for most people, that's right over, right over. their head. Interestingly, even back to what James had said, too, I'm interested in the same thing with the yen, but I'm watching or asking the question of what does that do to the yuan? I mean, when suddenly their neighbor is more competitive exporting goods, right? What does China do? Because

Starting point is 00:11:52 suddenly their exports are less are less attractive to the rest of the world, and that's going to cause some issues there. So I'm kind of interested in the geopolitical fallout of the drop in the the value of the yen. But I think that it's important to also bring up the fact that we have all of these moving parts right now, but the problem is, are we even being given clarity as to what is happening? And so we can look at, say, CPI, if we think about interest rates and we look at CPI, the problem is a lot of this stuff is controlled by a centralized body. And so we're not even getting accuracy as to what the true interest rate is on debt.

Starting point is 00:12:28 And so interest rates, if we think about them in their simplest form, their credit risk. So, naturally, as the economy starts to be fiscally irresponsible, as we start to see a rise in malinvestment, interest rates should naturally write. If we can suppress interest rates, then nobody really knows what's actually going on. And this is the same for what Greg was saying when it comes to like the credit ratings for countries. If you've got a AAA like Canada, triple or double A, but when you look at it, CDS, it is far higher. The CDS is telling you something that these ratings are not accurate. They're not actually telling us the truth of the matter. And so I think Going back to the whole Bitcoin decentralization, centralization, when you have a centralized body

Starting point is 00:13:06 controlling a metric which is meant to dictate risk in the markets, are we getting an accurate representation of what is going on? Greg, so the last time you and I talked about the CDS, the credit default swaps, I pulled up the website here, and it's on world government bonds.com, and then under sovereign CDS, you can see the rates and how they've changed over the last month, over the last six months. And I mean, there are, this is aggressively different than the last time you and I talked about this. I'm just going to throw out some numbers for people. Denmark, 45% increase in the last six months.

Starting point is 00:13:45 Austria, 27%, Norway, 21%, Germany, 47%. Sweden, 61%. New Zealand, 70%. Australia, 74%. Portugal, 66%. Spain, 58%. These are not, these numbers that we're throwing out are not normal increases in CDS for standard normal functioning economies or global economy. Correct. Except, except the world is all linked on what's called a volatility metric.

Starting point is 00:14:21 And as equity volatility increases, there is a natural hedging dynamic. that causes credit spreads globally to increase. Okay, that is just a time-tested metric that measures risk. Okay, go ahead. Greg, don't, wouldn't you say that that's more, that global collective tightening of this and this price blowing out is a function of how strong the dollar is and how interconnected it is to everything in the economy? A hundred percent.

Starting point is 00:14:55 I mean, one of the things when the DXY increases and the strength. of the US dollar. There's a time tested a formula that says emerging markets blow up. And so let's take that to a second level effect. What if you are a country that sells a lot of product to emerging market economies? Your economy itself is going to be indirectly impacted by trade flows that you can't sell your products to these. So everything is connected, Preston, It's, you know it. Volatility is a measure of risk. And there is no market that escapes it.

Starting point is 00:15:36 Why? Well, because you have hedge funds in the world that ensure that pain in one market is translated to another market. Because if it's not, they're going to make sure they are out there invoking pain on that other market so that it all settles out in the risk washing machine. There will never be a market that is isolated from a. risk off event or a withdrawal of liquidity from the system. It flows downwards, as I said before, it'll start in high yield debt. It'll move to emerging market debt because the high yield traders

Starting point is 00:16:12 always watch what CDS is in emerging markets. If high yield spreads are blowing out, they will buy protection on emerging market debt because that correlation. And it all flows downwards, eventually to the higher rated sovereigns, because again, if a lower rated sovereign is blowing out, someone will say, guess what, I'm going to sell protection, meaning I'm going to sell insurance on the lower rated sovereign and buy insurance on the higher rated sovereign and play the delta or the basis spread between the two. You may think this is like some sort of Star Wars movie. It's not.

Starting point is 00:16:49 This is how trading desks work. They do it in big size. It's very, very hidden to their retail investor. They will never see what's going on. But that's not what the retail investor gets to see. This is where big money operates. This is where there's billion dollar trades over the counter, the Goldman Sachs of the world lining up against AIG or with AIG against BlackRock.

Starting point is 00:17:16 And this is how risk is mitigated or transformed. throughout the market. It's actually pretty fun. That being said, it is like an elastic band. There is nothing that escapes. There is no way that any credit market would stay stagnant in the event of a NASDAQ market down 30%. Okay. That's all you have to know. The NASDAQ is down 30%, equity volatility is above 30% annualized, credit default swap spreads are widening because there are guys that can create vol out of a sovereign credit default swap spread and sell it back to those other markets. It's just a game of whack-a-mole. I think you bring up such a good point, which is if you distill that down for the average wage earner, what's important to note is that

Starting point is 00:18:10 at the moment when we see Bitcoin declining as it has been the last little while, it's It's not that Bitcoin's value proposition has changed. It is not that Bitcoin has lost anything in the eyes of Bitcoiners and people that see the potential of Bitcoin. Because what happens is if you overlay Bitcoin's chart with the NASDAQ, the S&P 500, what you realize is that it is only declining because we've seen all of these institutions and big money start to exit Bitcoin. It's got nothing to do with its value proposition.

Starting point is 00:18:36 And not just exit, but also using it as a very sloppy or quasi-hedge for their risk on assets, right? So they're shorting it ahead of, they know that they need some sort of protection. And if they don't want to just short cues, they're using Bitcoin to hedge that next move lower. And it's, we all agree here. I know all of us agree that that's that's not really the point of Bitcoin. That's not, it's the, it's a purest form of money that's ever being created. But until you get investors truly understanding this broadly and deeply, it's going to to continue to happen. You know, it's got to form a separate asset class completely in order to be used properly by those institutions. And honestly, there has to be some price discovery

Starting point is 00:19:27 and faces ripped off for that to happen. And it will. It will happen at some point. It's just a question of when. So, but that's, I think that's a great point, Sam. And to your point, James, I mean, I think the average, the average retail and sub, the average retail investor has no idea that this goes on behind the scenes, none. And so it's always amazing to me when Bitcoin trades down $1,000 or whatever, and it correlates with the SPX and everybody on Twitter is like, oh my God, when is it going to, when is it going to, you know, delink for anything. It doesn't happen. It doesn't happen overnight. But again, back to the point of people don't have a basic understanding of how markets work. And when that happens, they're forced.

Starting point is 00:20:14 to essentially make poor decisions, whether it's with their own money or with their emotions or whatever, because they don't see what's actually going on. And so that's, I think, part of the issue in why there's such a need for education for retail investors and even wage earners, really, it's not just you don't have to be an investor to actually understand what's going on, because when you read the headlines and you try to follow the narratives that the mainstream media it paints, it's complete falsity, completely false. And it leads people very, very astray and they're very confused. So, Preston, one of the things that, you know, you mentioned what I saw lately that blew my mind, I'm going to turn it back to a legacy investor who is a top four global account, and that's

Starting point is 00:21:05 fidelity. They have come out with a number of research reports that I think will be seminal investment reports that will change the digital asset community. One of the most important ones is they examine digital assets and the conclusion basically is there's only one digital asset that hedges the Fiat Ponzi and that's Bitcoin. So there's Bitcoin that stands alone as a hedge against the Fiat Ponzi and then they describe it less rudely than I will. And you need to read that report because you will see that they are laying the groundwork for offering digital assets to their clients and they are a top four account in the world. And if the other three of the four top four accounts in the world, the vanguards, the black rocks of the world, do not offer

Starting point is 00:21:59 digital assets to their clients. And fidelity is. And the clients want that silo. They're not going to stick with the other two that aren't offering them. The other two may offer them and not believe in them and we'll wait and see whether their clients actually allocate assets to it or not, but it's a very important report for an asset that's only 13 years old, okay? I need people to understand. This is not like high yield bonds that are 30 years old. This is Bitcoin and digital assets that are just over 10 years old. Now, the more important... Just to get just, just to give context to that, to what you're saying, Greg, is the Fidelity, Vanguard, Black Rock, State Street, Morgan State. When you add up those five firms, you're talking about $30 trillion

Starting point is 00:22:53 of assets under management. So Fidelity coming out with this report is massive. They're over $4 trillion. So sorry. No, no. It's perfect. Yeah. Yeah. And so look, let's do the math on the run here then. So they own 30 trillion or they manage 30 trillion dollars of assets. And let's say they advise their clients to put a 5% allocation in there. So 30 trillion times 5% is 1.5 trillion. That's a tripling of the value of Bitcoin relative to its current market price. And it will actually go much higher because it's not like you can purchase that much just on the run. But I wanted to point out, Preston, if I may, the bigger issue that I saw from Fidelity that went under the radar by and large. And that's the comparison of the adoption rate of Bitcoin relative to two

Starting point is 00:23:50 other technologies that have happened in my lifetime. One is the internet and the other is cell phone adoption. And in both cases, Bitcoin is beating the adoption of that. And Greg Foss may have a price target for Bitcoin. And no one in the world cares except that Fidelity has by and large the same price target as I do based on different metrics, okay? But this is Fidelity. This is a $4 trillion asset manager. The most assets I ever managed in my life was $5 billion. Okay. These guys are thousands of times bigger than I ever was. But your, your hostility. Okay.

Starting point is 00:24:35 Well, at the end of the day, I also swear a lot and they don't. And they keep their clients and I lose all of mine. But at the, so remember the price target that goes from here, though, guys. They're calling for multiple million dollar price targets in Bitcoin. Not with 100% certainty. But man, oh man, if I'm listening to Scott Miner in one year and I'm listening to Fidelity in the other year, I'm going with Fidelity. I'm sorry, Scott.

Starting point is 00:25:03 You might change your price target like you change your shorts, okay? But at the end of the day, you're a knucklehead. You are not allowed to change your price target without stating the probability of it going in either direction. Okay. I know that your price target includes both sides of the bell curve. The MSN is going to pick up whichever one they want to pick up on a daily basis, but you can't just suck and blow at the same time. You have to give probabilities on both sides of the curve.

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Starting point is 00:29:53 loved was this one from Yuri and Timmer from Fidelity. He's their global macro director. And he showed what I'm interpreting as the last credit cycle. So before you had the COVID meltdown, the subsequent central banking response to the tune of 11.3 trillion globally was how much was added onto the top four central banks. You saw the reflation across all these different asset classes. And then you saw it fizzle out, you saw the units, the Fiat units in the system start to contract, and you see all of those different sectors start to contract. And in that chart, you can see the performance of a cycle. You know, you're an engineer. I'm an engineer. What's the hurts? What are the, what's the magnitude of the wave, right, when I'm looking at it? And so for me, this chart was just

Starting point is 00:30:47 so representative of, that's a cycle right there. These cycles are. getting faster, the frequency of them are getting faster, they're having more magnitude as this thing's trying to express itself into the new financial system that everybody seems to be talking about now. You mentioned that before. If you said that we're falling into a new financial system pre-COVID, everyone would have rolled their eyes and just laughed at you. Now it's kind of like, yeah, you're right. We are moving to a new financial system. In this chart, I think it's really important to, because people will look at this. People will buy Bitcoin six months ago and they'll say, it's down. It's down 50%. You guys are crazy. And my immediate response back to that person is, how are you snapping your timeline of what you're

Starting point is 00:31:35 considering a cycle? Before the, before things started getting so crazy with central bank intervention, I would have told a person, you know, for Bitcoin for me, if pick any four-year period of time, and I think that's representative of the performance of Bitcoin. Now, I think I would probably say, what's one full credit cycle that are happening very quickly now? It seems like they're happening on like a two-year time frame. And they used to be like six to seven-year credit cycles. Yeah, 10 years even. But these things are picking up pace.

Starting point is 00:32:07 This thing's fallen apart. It's very clear that all the Fiat units in the system are drying up because they're broken promises, broken paper promises. And it's all becoming, it's coming down to whether you actually have. hard commodities that everybody's demanding and they're trying to trade in their paper promises for it. So as we look at this, I think it's going to be really interesting to see when the Fed capitulates, when these central banks eventually have to step in. And we all know they have to. And they go for the reflation. It's going to be really interesting to see that I would love to see Urien's chart. And I think most people know which chart I'm referring to. And if not, we'll have a link to it in the show notes.

Starting point is 00:32:45 It's going to be really interesting to see what percent all of those are at compared to the previous bottom because you can see where they're at from top to top, which is one cycle. I'm very curious to see where they're at from bottom to bottom when we complete that portion of the cycle just to see what percent. And clearly Bitcoin's still outperforming all those other sectors on its chart. Can I say? Can I say one thing? I need to say this because as an engineer, you're assuming there is a next cycle. what if and this is this is the problem right there will be a time when the cycle doesn't repeat well i think well so great if i was going to argue with you like we're already seeing the

Starting point is 00:33:26 contraction of it so if they stepped in tomorrow well for me tomorrow would be the bottom of it and i would take the measurement from i hear you 100% except what if we have a lawyer in the world's most important risk share that decides to push to an extreme they're he's never managed risk before and he's stretching that rubber band further than it ever has. Yeah. And that rubber band doesn't come back. What if there is no Fed put? Remember, everyone's counting on a Fed put. And this is an article that Seb and I wrote why I love Bitcoin so much. It's actually a put on the Fed put. In other words, it means you own insurance that the Fed is either are not going to invoke the Fed put or more worrisome. And this is the one that worries me.

Starting point is 00:34:15 The markets call their bluff and they say, I'm not doing this again. Because every single Fed put, you do your cycle and correctly, you're saying, this is how it was. And now it gets, it gets shorter and sharper. And they're like, I don't want to do this anymore. It's like the Luna collapse. Okay. The Luna collapse is exactly what could happen to Fiat currencies. Because Aluna is basically Fiat on a digital blockchain and centralized by a bunch of buffoons. Okay. So exactly like central banking. And don't overthink the fact that there will be a time when the Fed put is no longer the savior.

Starting point is 00:34:59 I don't want that to be the case, Preston, but you need to own insurance for when that could. And I'd say could happen. Well, I think – well, I was just going to mention one thing quickly. Well, two things. So first off, if you ever listen to Lacey Hunt, he talks about how there's basically three drivers in the economy. There's basically land. So it's just kind of our natural resources.

Starting point is 00:35:22 There's labor. It is our productivity, it's our demographics, it's how hard we work. And then there is our capital. And so that is the banks, that is the monetary policy that is the central banks. Now, we tend to always focus on the issues we are facing from a monetary policy perspective. And I think that Greg puts it so well where, if we look at Canada for a second, Canada has 422% debt to GDP. Now, for those who don't know GDP, just think of it as a country's income.

Starting point is 00:35:49 So that means we've got 4.2 times debt to the income of Canada. Now, if we've got 4.2 times debt to the income of Canada and the interest rate, a conservative interest rate on all of that debt is, say, 3%. That basically means that we're looking at 12.66% required growth just to pay the interest on this debt, let alone, like, start to pay down the debt. And if we look actually over the last hundred years of Canada, our average GDP growth has been 0.76%. We are a long way off, a long, long way off ever paying down any of our debt. And so that's one point. But the other point is, if we look at this, you aren't asked at the start any, like, interesting, like, wild facts that

Starting point is 00:36:32 you've kind of noticed. One thing that I read the other day is the People's Bank of China has come out and said, because of the one-child policy, in the next 45 years, China's population is going to half. If we look at the US, the US has a 0.35% growth rate in population, that is since the 1900s, that's the lowest it's ever been. And Canada is going to see a 60% growth in 65 and older versus a 10% growth in everyone under. That means that suddenly all of these people that were spending into the economy, all our spending is going to stop. That money is going to dry up because these people are going to have to save for retirement. So not only are we facing a massive debt burden, but suddenly all this money is going to be sucked from the financial markets,

Starting point is 00:37:13 sucked from the natural spending into the economy. And I think we've got a massive, massive issue. And this kind of goes back to Greg's point. Are we seeing a paradigm shift? Are we seeing a change because we're coming to the end of the tether? Now, it may not be in the next four years, maybe in 10 years. We don't really know. But we're facing some major, major issues. And at the moment, the only response, the only response government really have is to print more money to try and mask the issues. And that's the thing is that, you know, while this is all going on in the background, your average person out there who doesn't know a thing about the economy, right, who just

Starting point is 00:37:48 reads headlines, turns on 60 minutes one night. And here's Neil Keshekarri from the Fed in St. Louis saying, we can print infinite money. And so, of course, if you're hearing that, you're thinking, well, well, that's fine. The Federal Reserve's got my back. We're covered. We're good. That's the problem I have with it, right? It's this narrative that's based upon effectively a whole book of lies.

Starting point is 00:38:17 And unfortunately, we live in a world in which the truth is obfuscated from people who are none the wiser. And, you know, this is an example. It's like, I'm sitting here. My daughter's going in the middle school next year. And we're looking at the courses she can take. You know, she gets some electives. Not that she needs to take advanced economics and, you know, Austrian economic theory as a sixth grader. Obviously not.

Starting point is 00:38:44 But my point is, there are no courses on financial literacy. None. She can take a course where she gets to sew something. Well, that's real useful. You know, appreciate that. At least she'll get to sew a pillow for her bed. But yet she'll go through her entire high school career and potentially college career with knowing zero about the way the financial world works.

Starting point is 00:39:08 And I'm not putting on a tin foil hat here. I'm not a big conspiracy theorist. But I have to ask if there's a certain amount of that that's by design, right? Because if I was running the type of system that the federal government's running or governments around the world, central banks around the world, if I was running that system, I don't think I'd want to tell anybody the truth either. Amen to that. Hey, one more question on this macro, and then I want to dive into some of the looking

Starting point is 00:39:35 glass conversation that we were planning on talking about. James, you started this off with the yield curve control, and I'm with you. I think that this is such a driving force to all of this that we're currently experiencing right now. And what I think people that aren't familiar with currency markets might not realize is if you have Japan doing these actions and they are a major, massive and size central bank, and they're debasing their currency and making it that week, they're making the dollar that much stronger and they're making all that dollar denominated debt that's prevalent throughout the world that much harder to repay for all the people that deal in currencies, right? So you've got this driving force that's happening in Japan. and some people were asking me about yield curve control because I've been talking about it a lot here in 2022.

Starting point is 00:40:26 And what I haven't really kind of talked about is I think the U.S. is probably going to be the last country to really implement yield curve control. Yes. And so when you're looking at it from a global lens, it doesn't surprise me that Japan's first. They've, you know, they tapped into zero percent interest rates and got here first. So when you're looking at another G7 or major central banker on the world, where do you see the next? Because once you go yield curve control, I don't know that you can necessarily come off of that. So who's next?

Starting point is 00:41:00 And then what does that do to the dollar? Does that just keep, are we in this fight where the dollar just keeps getting bid until the U.S. has to yield curve control at the very end? And then it's just game over at that point. Your guess is as good as my impression. But I think the next major one that we're all thinking about and watching is the ECB. I mean, they're just now going to be raising rates, right? Yeah. The summer.

Starting point is 00:41:26 They're at zero. I mean, just now. They're negative. Right. And that's the thing is they've had negative rates for so long, you know? It's just, it's unbelievable how they've strangled their economy, but not their economy. They've strangled their investors with this debt. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:41:44 They don't realize because, you know, pension funds in Europe, they have a mandate. They have to buy the debt. So they've been able to do it for all this time. So I think that they're, we've heard the central banker say it over and over again. We just heard Powell say it. I said this morning on a Twitter space is that he admitted the Fed is reactionary. They're not looking at being ahead of the curve. They're reacting to the information they have.

Starting point is 00:42:11 And the information they have is months old. And it's off of information that is so slow to move. I mean, like, they're so far behind the curve. So imagine how far behind the curve the ECB is. And that's so I think that my opinion is that they're the next big one to actually I agree with you. Greg, what do you think? I can't argue with that because, you know, if it wasn't for the Germany, you remember

Starting point is 00:42:39 when in 2012 that the acronym Pigs, right? So Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain, all of those guys would be gone right now, except that they are under the protection of Germany. And the European Central Bank that Draghi famously said, we will do whatever it takes. I remember that. I remember that. And that was a crazy thing. But can I take a step back in one stat that I wanted to point out that, so I was in South Dakota

Starting point is 00:43:06 this weekend. Heck, what a great state, all right. And I was there with Eric Yakes. Do you know Eric Preston? The seventh property book? Yeah. I haven't read it yet. But Eric gave a presentation that I was very impressed with.

Starting point is 00:43:21 And the stat that he said that stuck with me is that U.S. treasury bonds have gone from representing 72% of global reserves down to 59% of global reserves. And people can say, oh, people will always buy our debt. perhaps true, but you got to look at the trend, right? And the trend is your friend or it's not your friend. So that 13% decrease in the representation of U.S. Treasury bonds on the global balance sheets of central banks is a trend. Is it accelerating? Well, actually it is accelerating, but I don't want to go into that level. What I want to point out is Japan has been a net seller of U.S. Treasury bonds because their interest rate parity calculation does not allow them

Starting point is 00:44:12 to hedge the currency back to U.S. does not allow them to hedge U.S. Treasury holdings using the cross rate for the yen versus the dollar back to yen at an efficient rate. Okay. So it's more easy. Can we translate what you said there just for a second? No, no, no, no, because we don't need to do it right now. The point is this. I love what you're trying to do, Jason, but don't overthink this. 72% down to 59% is the number I want people to focus on.

Starting point is 00:44:49 Japan is a net seller. We don't have to explain why they are. They are just a net seller. As you go down, who has to pick up that slack? That's quantitative printing by the Federal Reserve. That is why we have QE infinity. One more shout out to our beautiful Bitcoin community and the work that Luke Groman has done on this subject.

Starting point is 00:45:14 Okay, Preston? Yeah. I was on a worldwide tour. I felt like a rock band. I was in Dallas, not because I'm a rock band, just because I'm lucky enough to listen. And I was at the Mark Moss conference with James Lavish in Dallas. the presentation that blew me away was Luke Roman's analysis that absolutely rocked the world from a math perspective. As you know, I love mathematics. He basically leads, he basically tells

Starting point is 00:45:43 us why it is mathematically impossible for the USA not to continue printing money forever. He laid it out as beautifully as I could. But the big picture for people, Jason, for social. surgeons and people that like big numbers, 72% down to 59% and it's going lower people because that's the way math works. So, yes, there's a lot to unpack there, I think. And what you're talking about is with the yields on sovereign debt so low on the U.S. treasuries, when you have to then buy a contract to hedge your foreign exchange exposure, your yield either goes to minimis or it becomes negative.

Starting point is 00:46:28 What you're speaking about as it relates to the yen and foreign nations buying our debt, right? When the yields are so low, you can't hedge the currency risk because it becomes a negative yield. I'll throw one that is not in the calculations of most economists, and that is the fact that the USA can freeze reserves of foreign nations that are holding U.S. treasures if they don't like the way those foreign nations are. are behaving. So like, well, to your point. Or block or block payments. Oh, exactly. That's what I mean. So there you go. The Russia's going to default. Exactly. Exactly. These are all things. And in Luke's big point, which which completely brilliant and everybody should should read Luke Roman. But his point is the world does not want the rest of the world does not want to use US treasuries as their reserve assets for obvious reasons, right? The least of which is they can be

Starting point is 00:47:25 sanctioned. They're holding a debasing asset that over time will lose purchasing power. I mean, there's all these reasons, right, geopolitical and financial and nature. And so, you know, to your point, the world's been dishearting of U.S. treasuries for quite some time. And what is, you know, like you're saying, 72% to 59%, where does that end up? It ends up with fully reserved debt on our own balance sheet. Let's take a quick. Brick and hear from today's sponsors. No, it's not your imagination. Risk and regulation are ramping up, and customers now expect proof of security just to do business.

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Starting point is 00:51:15 income community is they can do the math. They're looking at the trend and they're saying, I can do that math too of where this looks like this is going. And you're having an awakening. And they're starting to, they're starting to piece it together and they're starting to say, this is looking like a really ugly baby from a global perspective of all the fixed income on the planet when they're looking at these inflation prints that are not going away. And they don't appear like they're going to get any better anytime soon. And then when they're looking at the reaction that they're expecting out of every central banker on the planet, they're saying, my God, if that was their last response and they're probably going to have to double down

Starting point is 00:51:56 on whatever that last response was, I can only imagine what it is I'm holding right now. Right. The next response is that they, you know, they have to, they don't have a choice. They are going to have to decide to allow the natural inflation rate to gravitate upwards to the 3 and a half to 4.5%. They just don't have a, they're not going to be able to keep it at 2%. So where does it go from there? Right? Because now if it's at the natural is at 4 or 5%, then where does it go from there? So a couple cycles from now, it could be- People thinking that this is like 1981, I think are grossly mistaken. Preston, can I ask a question from the financial outsider perspective? Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:52:37 Which I think is on a lot of people's minds because we talk about this concept of the whole system unraveling and the fixed income market, you know, really getting impaired. For the three financial insiders on the call, if you wouldn't mind kind of laying out, what kind of a timeline is this? Because my impression on Twitter is people think it's going to happen next Wednesday, right? And then when it doesn't happen, they're like, well, that's it. You know, Greg and I, I think see this a little bit differently. I'm kind of curious how James sees it. So I think it's a faster timeline. Greg seems to think it's a little going to be a little bit slower and kind of work its way out. But let's hear what James thinks.

Starting point is 00:53:16 I think it's going to be, I don't think it's as fast as people. And maybe it's because I'm hopeful that it's not because if it's if it's super fast, it's going to be cataclysmic, right? It's going to be an ugly unwinding. But James, that's mixing what you hope versus what you think is most probable. I know. And you have to keep emotion out of investment. Yeah. Right. Preston. Yeah. So. So honestly, just looking at it and people, you know, you would expect things to happen a lot faster than they normally do, especially with currencies. And you heard what Greg was saying before.

Starting point is 00:53:54 Debt markets move super slow. Like everything's moving in slow motion. And what we're seeing surprises us because we're paying attention. There are a lot of people who, this isn't even on their radar, you know. They have no idea how quickly rates have moved in, you know, in respect. and especially at the riskier tail end of it. So I think you're going to get, my opinion is this year, we're going to step up rates. We're going to step up a few more times, you know, 50 bibs, another quarter, another

Starting point is 00:54:26 quarter. And then they're going to step back. And I think that the market is going to tank because, like I said, I think that Powell is going to, he's going to be reactionary. And then by the fourth quarter or first quarter next year, they're going to pivot. I don't think it's going to happen, you know, in this summer. I think they'll pivot probably sometime next year. Well, then you go back to the quantitative easing or you start stepping rates back down,

Starting point is 00:54:56 whatever it is, right? 2023, 2024 will start moving rates back down. But then you get right back in the same situation again, and it happens again. So I don't think it's going to be, you know, but they'll get away with it a few times. And you're going to have to have some major currencies collapse before you have the impacts of the dollar milkshake, which is just swallowing all the other currencies. It's going to take a while. So I don't think it's going to be a two to five year process.

Starting point is 00:55:26 I think it's going to be, you know, a decade or longer personally. So if you see the supply chains hold together, and this is my personal, If you see the supply chain's able to kind of hold things together and they're able to massage these CPI numbers so that they stay under double digits, and you don't see people freaking out because they're not getting baby formula and things like that. I think the longer term adjudication of all these markets can play out. I don't necessarily think that that's the most probable. Of course, from what I hope happens, you know, whatever Greg or James tells you, I hope it takes longer than whatever they say.

Starting point is 00:56:07 And respectfully, respectfully, we don't want it to happen, right? We actually want it to take as long as possible so we can build this parallel system. But then I also have to call out the elephant in the room. Americans don't generally need to worry about this relative to other countries because America is so privileged. And it's really the other countries that we have to think about as well. when the U.S. dollars strengthening torpedoes third world lesser developed countries, those are the countries that get punished.

Starting point is 00:56:40 This is what Ray Dalio, I'm sorry to interrupt you. This is what Ray Dalio just literally tweeted out today was basically your comment, which you just said. So yeah, but that's the truth, right? I mean, America lives in a, from a perspective of privilege. And it's true. That's why they are the strongest economy, the world's strongest military. they have the petro dollar, which allows them to print oil, but that could all end.

Starting point is 00:57:05 I don't want it to. I need to be really clear. If Canada is to survive, which I really hope Canada survives, it needs the USA to survive. The USA does not need Canada to survive, though. That is the reality of the, it'll hurt the USA that one of their largest trading partners goes belly up, but it is not imperative that Canada survives in order for the U.S. fiat currency to survive. I'm working hard in Canada to ensure a soft landing, if you will, or a buffering in any outcome. All paths lead to Bitcoin. It's that simple. And let's not

Starting point is 00:57:43 overthink it. This is insurance. And we talked about, you know, the correlation with other risk assets. There will be a rude awakening to the world when they realize that your most beautiful insurance product with no counterparty risk is actually something you've been shorting to try and hold it down like a beach ball underwater because your NASDAQ long tech position is underwater. It's going to be hilarious, sort of, but there's going to be pain on the street. The bigger picture, though, Preston, I want to bring it back. Firstly, we don't want the US dollar to fail. Secondly, there will be every single other Fiat currency in the world will fail before the US dollar does. So, you know, it's a push pole.

Starting point is 00:58:28 Well, I think it's also important to note that Bitcoin is going to benefit the economy even before we see kind of this potential fiat collapse if it ever happens, because I think what ends up happening is as Bitcoin grows, we have a fallback. If people have a fallback, a trustless, permissionless fallback, it keeps governments honest because over time, naturally, as Bitcoin grows, people can invest in Bitcoin or they can hold their savings in the local currency. If people feel as if their government is being dishonest, is misaligned or is following their own self-incentives, what naturally happens is they're going to see people flood back into Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:59:03 Bitcoin's price is going to rise, pulling power away from government. Whereas governments that are offering favorable terms and managing their fee currency effectively, naturally, their population isn't going to exit to Bitcoin as fast. And so I think Bitcoin is going to benefit the global economy, not just from like an individual perspective, but I think that it keeps people honest, it keeps governments honest, it keeps integrity be with governments as well. And to your point, just to give a shout out to an event that's going on this week that I was lucky enough to attend last year, which is the Oslo Freedom Forum.

Starting point is 00:59:33 So Alex Gladstein's event with the Human Rights Foundation, you talk about groups of people that understand Bitcoin immediately. It's these groups in emerging markets and lesser developed countries that do have authoritarian regimes in place and they need financial sovereignty. Like to Greg's point, us here in North America, I mean, we, this is a, this is like a video game to people, right? Oh, yeah, let's watch big. It's not very funny when you literally see the value of your entire life savings get cut in half overnight. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:00:08 You know, and so to your point, Seth, I think you're exactly right. People are going to choose to save in a different currency. And, you know, we had, what, 44 different countries visiting El Salvador this last week? Is that right? Is it 44? I mean, and Greg, you and I were talking about this earlier today. It's not like all of them are going to go home and just say, oh, that was fun. You're going to have some of them working to adopt Bitcoin.

Starting point is 01:00:33 Yeah. And there's a template. As a template, exactly. And so while you've got the form going on in Oslo, you've got the form going on in Switzerland at the same exact time, it's just classic, you know. It is almost comical that Dallas is going out the exact same time, right? So, but that's, it's a perfect demonstration and visual that two systems are diametrically opposed.

Starting point is 01:01:01 And one of one of the system needs the other to not work, but it's trying to figure out how to get that to not work. Yet, we all know, you can do whatever you want. It's not going away. It's here to stay. And so it would be better if you're one of those 44 countries that visit El Salvador. if you embrace it and start working it into your system. I like Sebastian's point because in a way, he was indirectly saying to us,

Starting point is 01:01:30 it doesn't matter if it happens faster or slower. The system is there to catch whatever the transition point is, the system is in place and ready to catch that. Hey, guys, I want to transition over and talk about the looking glass education platform. So, my, oh my, this thing is, this is a. amazing. This is, for people that are wanting to look this up, we're going to have links to it in the show notes. It's called lookingglasseducation.com. You guys' mission here is to educate people and empower individuals to take control their financial future. Tell us the story of how

Starting point is 01:02:09 this got stood up because you got free courses on here. People can learn from the ground up. If you're listening to this and it just sounds like a bunch of financial jargon, that's part of the story here of why they built this platform. So, Jason, go ahead and take it away and tell people, was it Greg speaking in an alien language that was the emphasis for this? It was literally Greg saying, you know, it's easy. It's just first and second order derivatives. And I'm listening to this podcast with you, Preston, thinking, nobody knows what that means, Greg. And I'm sure that I shouldn't know what it means. And it really sounds like important, but I don't understand. So I reached out to Greg on Twitter and I de-emned him and I said, you know, excuse me, sir, could you please suggest

Starting point is 01:02:52 somewhere I could go to try to make some sense of the fixed income markets that you're talking about? And so he sends me his four part paper. It's like 40 pages long and I'm thinking, oh, this is perfect. I'll just read this paper. I'll be good to go. I understood less after this article was sent. I mean, he's got stuff in there that's jargon, that, you know, he's talking about mark to market and insolvency. Nobody understands this. stuff, right? Yeah. And so I reached back out to him and I said, would you mind setting up a Zoom call with me because I'm at a loss, but I think there's a significant need in the community at large to actually make sense of this stuff, right? And so that's how the whole idea was born.

Starting point is 01:03:36 And luckily, Greg is, Greg has many talents and he's a fantastic human being. And one of them is he connects everybody. That's true. That's true. It is, right? Yeah. You can't even walk through the Bitcoin conference atrium, and you can't make it five feet without him stopping, you know, to talk to three different people.

Starting point is 01:03:57 So he was able to connect all of us up. And we've kind of taken this mission head on, which is the meet people where they're at on their journey, everywhere from I don't even understand what the word fiat means, to all the way up to people who are kind of at intermediate. media, retail investor understanding, but just want to learn a bit more. I love it. So you guys, you transcribed the article or you made sense of it and put it in terms that any person could understand.

Starting point is 01:04:28 Talk to us about that process. Yeah, I translated the article into plain English that most people could understand. And of course, I write this and we get it published in Bitcoin magazine, and anybody can look it up in the magazine if they'd like. So I write this article with Greg. I'm really proud of it. And I send it to Seb and Daz, one of the other guys on our crew. And they say, yeah, this isn't 101 level stuff, Jason.

Starting point is 01:04:55 This is like 301 as opposed to 601. And to their point, they were right. And so, you know, I want to send it over to Seb now because Seb has been an absolute godsend for our organization. He's 29 years old. And trust me, he is far wide. and more mature than I was when I was 29. And he was able to create the kind of introductory foundational course with DAZ, one of our partners

Starting point is 01:05:25 from Australia. So you know what? I appreciate the comment. I feel like it's the book's talking. I'm just absorbing too much information. But I think what really, I have to say, like I want to reiterate that comment about Greg. Like Greg is this magnet in the space and it just blows me away at his connections in the people that he knows. And so initially, Jason reached out to Greg. And then Greg reached out to

Starting point is 01:05:49 another guy called DAZ. And then those guys reached out to me. My background is kind of, I'm a man by-constructor and I've always loved coaching and educating people. And I find a fascination in trying to distill complex subjects down into their simplest form. And from that, after years of teaching backcountry, working as a man-and-by-constructor, all over the world, I was just like, man, I just feel like I can make a difference. And I love making a difference in the in someone someone's life. But I think I can make a difference on a larger scale in this love for teaching. And so I took this passion for teaching and tried to write about the financial markets. And if I'm to be 100% honest, Preston, I have to say, like, you, I've been watching your

Starting point is 01:06:29 podcast for coming on probably five or six years. Like it was completely, I used to be a massive Warren Buffett value investor. And I just fell deep down the rabbit hole. And I ended up writing an article called when more isn't better, inflation in the 21st century, discussing the issues that we're facing with inflation for the average investor. And then it brings it and ties it all back to Bitcoin. Greg read that article and shared it. And then from then, that's kind of where the group kind of formed. And we really recognize, like, more than anything, like for most of us, and I'm sure I speak for most of these guys, like, if Bitcoin's price goes up, that's amazing. But that's not why we're in it. We're in it because at the moment, there is a tear in our social

Starting point is 01:07:09 fabric and we need to fix the social fabric more than anything. And so we really recognize as a group the importance of educating those who need it most. And so our focus is making sure that our product is free to those who need it most and kind of that end user. And so at the moment, we're focused on really trying to release high quality, jargon-free, concise, simplified content that really teaches people about the macro space. Because we also recognize that there's tons of amazing, amazing companies in the space and individuals in this space that are sharing Bitcoin content for Bitcoiners. But we recognize that Bitcoin, Bitcoin is intimidating. And Bitcoin does have the maxi market, whether you agree with it or not,

Starting point is 01:07:55 but the problem is to the average user, that scares a lot of people off. And so we really focus on, through our content, we really focus on trying to teach people how our world works and the macro environment. Why do we have inflation? What is inflation? Why have we got the debt burden that we have, what are the byproducts to this? Wealth, inequality, consumption, environmental destruction. And then we believe that if you teach people how the world works, Bitcoin is naturally the orange light that draws you in. So we don't need to push Bitcoin as Bitcoin Maxis.

Starting point is 01:08:24 We just need to explain how the world works and people will naturally get sucked into Bitcoin because it's the natural logical step as to what can fix a lot of the issues that we face in our economy. And you know, but the way that it's laid out, you guys laid it out so well. I mean, I didn't have, I didn't do this part. You guys did this part. It's incredible that it's a simple course and you step through it module by module and it builds on itself.

Starting point is 01:08:48 It makes it so easy to do. You could do a course for just a few minutes or, you know, a module for a few minutes or you could burn through it over a weekend, whatever it is. You could take, you could just dive in and go deeper and deeper through those different modules and in the definitions of some of the things that they talk about or we put in there. and dive even deeper into subjects that are within there if you want. But they did an amazing job. And this is free.

Starting point is 01:09:15 For people listening, this is all free. There's nothing you've got to pay for. This is something that if you're listening to this conversation, you're wanting to get a good foundation, go to the website. Just click on Start Course and start taking the course. It's free. I was going to mention one quick thing.

Starting point is 01:09:34 Just for a little bit of clarity, for those that just listen to kind of what James was saying, I think it's important to note, like, kind of what is our offering at the moment? At the moment, like we have, if you go to our website, we kind of have two offerings. We have the course, which is for the average Joe, the wage, the person who is trying to explore the issues we face. And they don't even know where to start. And so the course, it steps through, what is money to start? Well, it's time and energy. And then we explain all of this stuff about what money is. Now, once someone understands what money is, we go through the evolution of money. How do we get to where we are today? So we go through

Starting point is 01:10:06 through barter, we go through gold, we go through paperbacked gold, and then we get eventually to Fiat, we even include central bank digital currencies. And then from there, that sets the basis for understanding our inflation and debt issues. And then it looks at, well, what are our options with this? We've got gold. We've got bonds. We've got equities. We've got Bitcoin. What are the pros and cons to each of these? Because we really, we want people to understand that we're not just pushing this multi-level marketing Ponzi. Like, when you understand the issues we're facing, Bitcoin makes logical sense and for everything we've talked about in the macro side of things. So that's the course side of things.

Starting point is 01:10:41 And then we have the deep dives. And the deep dives, we have James is absolutely phenomenal. If you're looking for more of a newsletter, he's got the informationist. And so we post up James's informationist newsletter. And those are kind of their deep dives into specific little subjects and that each week. And then we also have Greg and I's article. We've got Jason's article with Greg. We've got other contributors as well.

Starting point is 01:11:03 And these are more specific articles on a topic. that someone has gone deep into. And at the moment, we're also working on a Bitcoin-specific course, like, how does Bitcoin work? What is miners? Well, who are the nodes? What are the Bips, Bitcoin improvement proposals, things like that? And then we're also, our biggest goal right now is we recognize, and this is an issue throughout the whole space. We recognize if we want Bitcoin to become mainstream and benefit the world, we need to get in front of the people that don't know about Bitcoin. They don't even know that we have issues in the economy. They don't even know know the questions to ask.

Starting point is 01:11:33 And so we're really focused right now on building out our course into educational curriculum for schools. And so we're partnering with people in Madeira, we're partnering with people in Columbia and El Salvador. And we're really trying to focus on pushing education because if we can get into the schools, that's where we can start to change the next generation. So they know how to stand up when there are issues in the economy and they know how to protect themselves and their families for the issues that we currently face.

Starting point is 01:11:59 I think you're precisely right and eloquent as ever. And I think what our core thesis is that really adoption is a function of education, right? It's a function of once you see these things and you actually understand the way the world works, as Seb was saying, your conclusion will be Bitcoin, right? We don't have to actually jam that down your throat. It just becomes a natural progression of how you understand things. And the other group that we're kind of focused on as well is everybody's been in this situation, right? You're at a dinner party or you're out hanging with your friends, whatever.

Starting point is 01:12:37 And somebody who doesn't know anything about Bitcoin asks you because they've heard that you are interested in this, you know, internet money, whatever. And I always think of kind of that Mike Tyson quote, which is everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the face, right? So you say, yeah, that Bitcoin's great. It's an inflation hedge. And then your buddy says, well, what's an inflation hedge? I don't know, right? I mean, the fact is if you have some understanding of how this works,

Starting point is 01:13:01 even at a basic level and you can speak intelligently about it for five minutes, three minutes even. And you can describe what the Federal Reserve is and what inflation is and what fiat is and what, right, if you can actually have an intelligent conversation, suddenly your message is heard by that person and they think, well, okay, there may be something to this. It's not just some BS digital asset that people trade. and have fun with, right? So it's kind of aimed at all those groups of people as a way to really

Starting point is 01:13:32 ultimately spread the adoption of Bitcoin from a grassroots organic level. So guys, we have a very generous audience. And for some of them, they're going to go through the course. They're going to learn a ton. And for others, they already know a lot of this stuff, and they're hearing your story and they're saying, what can I do to help? And so what would help you guys the most. And if the answer is donations, if the answer is we need people from other countries to volunteer, if we need, whatever that is, feel very free to be blunt about it. Because I think most people listening to the show are just very straightforward type individuals. And if you say that X is what I need, they're going to reach out to you and they're going to give you X.

Starting point is 01:14:23 So what is that? You know, like, we fully recognize that like when it comes to donations, we're setting up a donation section to the page. But more than anything, like we've really, really recognized that the educational space is so convoluted globally. And so whether you're in the states, whether you're an individual state of the states, whether you're in Canada, whether you're in a developing country, we really, any guidance whatsoever, or if anyone has any feedback when it comes to helping us reach out to school boards, how to structure. this educational content, because more than anything, if we can get into the schools, we can target thousands, tens of thousands of people. We're no longer targeting an article with a few hundred, a few thousand people. Like, this is going to change face of, as I mentioned earlier, kind of the social fabric. And so I think it is so important if we really appreciate any help

Starting point is 01:15:12 whatsoever, any insight into education, any insight into the educational space. And on top of that, on our website, if you take the course, if you read any of our deep dives, we are always open to feedback because in the end, we want to make sure that like the looking glass is as beneficial as we can be to the general populace because more than anything, we believe that Bitcoin can make a difference in this world and it is such a powerful technology and we just need people to understand the issues that we're facing in our economy. Preston, though, one thing that I need to point out, and this is, you know, a reflection of me when I say this, we don't need any more fat old white guys though, right?

Starting point is 01:15:50 We need, and we have graciously, I shouldn't say graciously, luckily met a young lady from Columbia, Dalia Pratt, who is involved in the education system in El Salvador. And it's called My First Bitcoin. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that initiative in El Salvador, me, Premier Bitcoin. And they are trying to build a school system. And they're seeing results already. They're succeeding in getting the kids off the streets or at least giving them an alternative to going when they're 15 and 16 years old to work with the gangs. And I'm really proud to say that our platform has donated already $40,000 U.S. dollars to the education system in El Salvador. And it's because of having a conduit like Dahlia, who we trust.

Starting point is 01:16:41 She's part of our team. She's obviously Spanish speaking, very, very, very. advantageous for us to have boots on the ground and we're proud to say that those donations that anybody funneled through us, perhaps we could be a conduit to furthering the efforts because their budget is bigger than $40,000. It's quite substantial, but you know, Buceli starts a program down there, but it's like everything. It comes at you in a tidal wave and then they don't think about, well, how are we going to actually implement this in the schools?

Starting point is 01:17:17 Because if they don't have school, physical school houses to teach the students, then it falls on deaf ears a little bit. So we're really proud to be part of that. And a shout out to Dalia and, you know, her desire reaching out to us. So we can't be all things to all people. But one of the things that I was really proud to be, I actually was a reader of a high school kids thesis in Florida that was on Bitcoin. And I was a 45 minute dissertation of his thesis. And Seb took it upon himself and said, this is such a great thesis. We're going to publish it on our website as well, right?

Starting point is 01:17:56 So it comes at you in all different ways, Preston. It's a thing of beauty. I often say that the Bitcoin community, having worked on Wall Street where 99.9% of the people are takers, It's so great to be involved in a Bitcoin community where 85% of them are givers. And the other 15 that aren't quite givers, they're not nearly as bad as the Wall Street takers. They might be a little toxic and all this. But it's a great community, really proud to tell you that, you know, that Seb has taken

Starting point is 01:18:28 this and is running it with it with DAZ. These are two young kids that are going to change the world because they have time to change the world, right? And, you know, what a great thing that you guys were flattering when you said I'm a connector. I'm not a connector. Well, maybe I am. But here's what I would say. If I'm the smartest guy in the room, we're in big trouble, right?

Starting point is 01:18:47 I like to surround myself with people in the wrong room. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love to surround myself with people that are really smart and really motivated in different ways. And that's what this group brings to the table. Yeah. Reagan, I told you this before that the world is a place right now. now where good human beings are in short supply. And you are a good human being and you have really pushed this initiative because you saw

Starting point is 01:19:12 the value in it. I would just add two more things, Preston, as far as other people, what they can do to help. One of the things we're going to be working on is putting together this concept of a community educator toolkit, right? So kind of a turnkey solution. If you go on and you want to print out whether it's study guides or a curated list of resources or some really basic educational material. Put together a Bitcoin meetup group in your community, right?

Starting point is 01:19:39 Sit down with 10 people, 20 people and start explaining this stuff. Every little bit counts because that type of thing just expands the understanding and the adoption curve exponentially. And then the only other thing I would say is that also on our radar is we're trying to put together some in-person instruction courses. is like a one size or scratch that. Like for folks who are kind of on the intermediate stage of the spectrum of understanding this, right, they have a vague familiarity with, let's say, fixed income markets and equity markets and global macro, but they're really looking to actually figure this stuff out in a granular fashion.

Starting point is 01:20:23 We're working towards putting together some in-person courses that people could attend, probably piggybacking on some of the other large conferences that occur kind of on an annualized basis. And so we're going to need help from some folks like you Preston in bouncing ideas of curriculum and structure of those courses off because trying to put these large macro pieces into a schematic that fits together for people really is the key here. We need to provide a structural framework that people can understand how part A fits with part B. and connects the Part C, right? That's what's missing. And so, you know, we're going to look to people like yourself and connections with Lin Aldens and Luke Gromans and whatnot to really help

Starting point is 01:21:10 us translate this to financial outsiders and retail investors. Well, I think there's one more thing that's just want to highlight out of this and it's not actually due of looking glass. But it's more, I just think the more time you spend in this space, the more you realize that if you look at the Fiat system, the Fiat system is this centralized coercive product. It's coercing people to use their product and there's only a handful of people at the top that control this product. When you look at Bitcoin and you look at this passion-based decentralized project, there are people, millions of people, including all of us, that have left our jobs or are dedicating immense amount of time out of our free time and passion

Starting point is 01:21:50 for this thing because we want to truly just help. And this is where I believe that in the end, the truthful prevail. We're going to have a rocky road in between. But I think in the short term, I think that when you've got millions of people globally that are here just to help because they want to try and do something for the betterment of society in the economy, that is just phenomenal. When you look at the coercive system, it does not incentivize that. It incentivize everyone for themselves and everyone just trying to build as much of a safety net as they can because the economy is kind of collapsing. It's all the white blood cells eating the parasites, right, Jason? 100%. Exactly. And here we go into COVID. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:22:28 Guys, this was a blast. We're going to have links to all of this in the show notes. I'm going to have links to all your Twitter feed. So if people do want to reach out to you directly, they can do that. If you go to the lookingglass education.com website, which we're going to have a link to. If you go to the bottom, if you scroll down to the bottom, there's a tab or a button there that says contact us. So if anybody's listening to this and they want to provide resourcing or just kind of answer

Starting point is 01:22:57 their call to action, there's. that they were highlighting at the end of the show, please, I tell you, go to the website, reach out to these guys, help them out. When you see the website, you're going to see how quality this thing is and how awesome their courses. And for people just listening to this and saying, wow, I don't really know all that stuff that I heard at the beginning, but I would really like to try to understand it. Go to the website.

Starting point is 01:23:20 It will help you understand it. They have this thing all laid out. The architecture is awesome. I'm excited to hear that you guys are even looking to expand that architecture. and how people can learn to kind of wrap their heads over this behemoth of information that's out there that you really have to wrap your head around to fully grasp what it is we're truly talking about here. I'm very excited about this platform. I'm very excited about this interview. And thank you guys so much for making time to come on the show today.

Starting point is 01:23:50 No, and I think more than anything, I just want to say, and I know you've probably been told it a thousand times, but Preston, I think the energy and what you guys do, with this podcast and your other podcasts, you guys have educated millions of people. You guys are one of the biggest, biggest people in the like influences in the space. And I, as well as many others, including DAZ on this, we really, really value everything you bring to the community. Thank you. Absolutely.

Starting point is 01:24:15 I can tell you I didn't buy any Bitcoin until I had never even thought to look into it until you split off and started doing the Bitcoin podcast. And you had that first episode with Breedlove. And I was like, okay, this is kind of a big deal. This is different than the only other exposure I'd had was 50 cent got paid in Bitcoin for some rap concert he gave eight years prior. And I thought, I don't know that I want to be involved in Bitcoin. And that's the challenge, right? That's why the education is so important because there's so many tangents people can take in this space and so much noise and confusion that it's,

Starting point is 01:24:58 It's really, truly hard to keep it all straight. And who do you trust? And guys, it's crazy. Yeah, but here's the truth, right? If they taught this stuff in high school, no one would ever deposit their money in the banking system. No. And they couldn't continue, you know, the fee at Ponzi, if you will. Now, again, I don't want this Ponzi to fail.

Starting point is 01:25:21 It is a reality, though, and it will fail over time. what we're teaching is combined hundreds of years of experience, you know, James and myself, you know, together we have, you know, 60 years of experience managing money and managing risk. That's a lot of experience. It's, you know, God bless the maxis that are 24 years old, but the math doesn't work. If you're only 24, unless you've been managing money since you were negative years old, James and I have more experience than you, right? And, And we can bring this to the platform, not because we're smarter. Okay, that's not what we're saying.

Starting point is 01:26:00 Please understand. We're not saying we're smarter. What we are trying to say is this, these are some considerations you will not get from local education because they do not want you to understand this. And that's, again, a part of our giving community, not just this platform, but our giving. Seb Bunny is 29 years old. Jason said he's got way more character than Jason had when he was 29. I'm going to go out on a limb and say he's got way more character than I'll ever have in my life.

Starting point is 01:26:33 And I'm 58. So this is what I want to put. I want to back the horses that are going to win the race. And I think James says the same thing, right? We are pretty simple people. We know what we know and we know what we don't know. And God forbid I should ever try and put together a website. That would be the end of any education platform I was able to.

Starting point is 01:26:53 to put together. But there you go. You get the young kids. You bring this together. It creates momentum. And I will say if it wasn't clear enough, our friend Dasbea in Northern Australia, who is a huge contributor to our platform. And, you know, with all due respect to my other partners, probably the second most important person on the platform behind Seb. Preston, he basically said that he needed me to kiss you on stage to convey my, his love for you. So I'm kissing you publicly on behalf of Das Bay. Okay, buddy. You guys are embarrassing me here.

Starting point is 01:27:26 No, don't be embarrassed because you have to take praise where praise is due. And he's a guy that has taken it. He said the very same thing. He would not be where he is if it wasn't for listening to your education process. So on behalf of Das and Greg Foss from Canada, an Aussie and a Canadian and then Seb who's a transplanted Canadian but of Aussie origin or Kiwi origin, And thank you, buddy. I mean, this is good.

Starting point is 01:27:52 This will get out there in front of the people. That's all we want to do. Because it's going to be translated into Portuguese, because it's going to be translated into Spanish, we know that all the downloads that have already happened after a few short months, we know that the momentum is there and that we have a quality product. Guys, thank you for that. You didn't have to say that. Hey, this was a blast.

Starting point is 01:28:15 All right, buddy. Thank you, Jen. Awesome. Good night. Good night, everyone. Great work. Great work, boys. If you guys enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow the show on whatever podcast application

Starting point is 01:28:25 you use. Just search for We Study Billionaires. The Bitcoin-specific shows come out every Wednesday, and I'd love to have you as a regular listener. If you enjoyed the show or you learned something new or you found it valuable, if you can leave a review, we would really appreciate that. And it's something that helps others find the interview in the search algorithm. So anything you can do to help out with a review, we would just greatly appreciate.

Starting point is 01:28:49 And with that, thanks for listening, and I'll catch you again next week. Thank you for listening to TIP. To access our show notes, courses, or forums, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decisions, consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by the Investors Podcast Network. Written permissions must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.

We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - BTC080: Macro and Bitcoin Education w/ Greg Foss, James Lavish, Jason Sansone, & Sebastian Bunney (Bitcoin Podcast)

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