We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - BTC097: Central Bank Digital Currencies Vs Bitcoin w/ Sam Callahan (Bitcoin Podcast)

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to TIP. Hey everyone, welcome to this Wednesday's release of the Bitcoin Fundamentals podcast. So on today's show, we have a really important topic and thoughtful guest with Sam Callahan. Sam walks us through what central bank digital currencies are, how central banks are likely to implement them, why he thinks they are a threat to individual rights and freedoms, why Bitcoin offers an important alternative and counterbalance among many other important ideas and concepts. If you feel like online censorship is becoming a really big deal, just think what that might mean if it comes to your money. So without further delay, here's my chat with Sam Callahan.

Starting point is 00:00:42 You're listening to Bitcoin Fundamentals by the Investors Podcast Network. Now for your host, Preston Pish. Hey everyone, like I said at the introduction, I'm here with Sam Callahan. And Sam, boy, it's nice to have you back on the show. you always have such amazing things to share and you're always out there writing and doing research. So I'm excited to see what you got for us. But welcome back to the show. Thanks, Preston.

Starting point is 00:01:17 Happy to be here, man. Always a pleasure to talk to you. So I want to start off. You had a recent post that was a pretty big thread on the WEF front page of their website. And for people that aren't familiar, the WEF is the World Economic Forum. On their homepage, they were talking about the Ethereum merge. front and center and really kind of talking it up. And you had this, I don't know how many tweets long laying out all this research and analysis and like the history of the Wef and their

Starting point is 00:01:48 involvement in talking about digital assets, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the whole mix. Walk us through your thoughts and what it is you were trying to lay out. Yeah. Well, the reason I wrote the thread was because obviously it was an interesting timing when the merge happened, and then immediately they already had an article ready to go on the World Economic Forum, and they plastered it on the front page. And Bitcoiners were appropriately kind of annoyed by that and kind of called it out as a weird thing because World Economic Forum, it's kind of the opposite of what Bitcoin represents. And they're basically Shilling Heath on their front page. But some Ethereum proponents kind of talked and said, you know, you guys are cherry picking. They also have written

Starting point is 00:02:33 pieces about Bitcoin. And I just thought that was hilarious because I, I knew they had written pieces about Bitcoin over the last several years, but they just haven't been positive like this one about proof of stake in Ethereum. And so what I did was I went back to, you know, way back to all the times that they've ever written about anything about digital assets and basically collected them, read them, and basically laid it out to show that there's been a concerted effort from the World Economic Forum to discredit proof of work,

Starting point is 00:03:01 to attack Bitcoin, and then promote alternative cryptocurrencies that are, easier to co-opt and easier to control. And so really what this comes down to is the merge, you know, they changed from proof of work to proof of stake. And when they do that, it leads to increased risks of cartel formations, of ability to pool capital together and influence the rules of the protocol of the, you know, the consensus mechanism. And so it leads to centralization and increased censorship risks compared to proof of work. And so, you know, underlying all of this is the World Economic Forum can't really control Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:03:41 You know, nobody can control Bitcoin. That's kind of the whole point. It's decentralized. And the poorest vagabon and the richest tycoon have equal rights in the Bitcoin Protocol. But in proof of stake, money is power. And World Economic Forum has a ton of resources and power and fiat. And they could just buy a bunch of Ethereum now. And they would have a ton of stake and they would be able to theoretically alter the rules of the protocol if they desired, if they built a cartel with a bunch of other stakers. You know, that risk exists now. It's not to say that it's happening right now, but it exists.

Starting point is 00:04:20 So when I look through all this past publications from the World Economic Forum, it's hilarious, honestly. It's built back in 2017, their first Bitcoin article, it's titled, in 2020, Bitcoin will consume more power than the world does today. And obviously it's still up there, which is funny because they've been known to delete articles. But if you just like, my lights are on right now. It's 2022. So it's obviously not right. And Bitcoin has been shown to only use a fraction of the world, you know, less than 1% of the world's energy usage is right now and it's 2020. So it's obviously false. And so that gives you a sense of the expertise level of these people when it comes to Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:05:01 And yet they're writing about it. And so you go on to the next couple of, articles they've written in about 2018. Similarly, they spread misinformation about Bitcoin's energy use. One is from the Dig Economist, which is a central banker who has this very flawed model for measuring Bitcoin's carbon footprint that gets cited by all these central bankers, but it's wrong. For instance, Ben Goggin or something over at BitFarms, he wrote this article that kind of showed that when China banned Bitcoin and hash rate was cut in half, that model actually went up. And so that's how wrong it is, right?

Starting point is 00:05:36 So like literally half of Bitcoin's hash rate went offline when China banned it. And that model went up. And so he's the one who wrote this other article or kind of had a bunch of quotes in it. And he criticized Bitcoin's energy use. Say it's going to eat the world's energy just like the last article. And then speaks about the coal problem because at the time China had a lot of the hash rate. So China bans it. And now that problem doesn't exist.

Starting point is 00:05:58 So that's still up there. But that does not even relevant today, right? And then they kind of go on a break and they don't do anything because Bitcoin's price goes down. They probably thought it was dead like everyone else during 2018, 2019. But then they come back with a vengeance in 2020 with their pro proof of stake propaganda and anti-proof of work. And this is when they start shelling Ethereum and their move to proof of stake and the merge. And they start talking about how it reduces energy consumption by 99.5%, which is flawed thinking. And then they kind of explain why.

Starting point is 00:06:31 So explain why you think that's flawed thinking, just to kind of interrupt you there on that. Yeah, well, the electricity, it doesn't disappear and those miners are still mining. And actually, a lot of them moved over to Ethereum Classic. And so it's not reducing, you know, the energy consumption of the world by moving to proof of stake and the merge. It's actually just moved over to an old Ethereum blockchain. So it's really just Ethereum going to Ethereum. It's still happening. And so it's not like this just like completely turned off and these miners walked away.

Starting point is 00:07:00 So it's just kind of flawed thinking to think that, you know, this is reducing the world's energy consumption. I even had like my governor of my state, he tweeted out like, congratulations, Vitalik on the move to proof of work and reducing energy, the world's energy consumption by 0.02% or something by moving to proof. And I was like, that's so flawed. It's still happening. You can literally see it. They just moved over to a different blockchain. So that's kind of what I mean. It's just kind of flawed thinking.

Starting point is 00:07:26 But the most interesting piece of the World Economic Forum on Bitcoin that I found was called Unifying Cryptocurrency ESG efforts to boost cryptocurrency adoption. And it's there that they basically lay out their plans to ban together their resources at the World Economic Forum and use the resources to attack proof of work, both economically, politically, socially. And they lay out their plans right there, right in the open. So they create this accelerator called the crypto impact and sustainability, Accelerator. It's called Sisa. And some of the members of this are Andresen Hawroowitz,

Starting point is 00:08:01 which is the richest VC crypto VC fund out there to give you a sense of what they think about Bitcoin in their state of crypto report they put out for 2022. Bitcoin is the largest cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is not mentioned in a single time in the report. It's literally not in the report. And it's the number one cryptocurrency by basically every measure. So that's what Andresa Horowitz thinks about Bitcoin, and they invest in all of these other cryptocurrencies, so they're incentivized for Bitcoin to lose market share. So essentially, they're one of the members. You have Selo, you have chain analysis, which is a crypto surveillance company. You have CoinDesk who also benefits from the other cryptocurrencies, because think about all the stories that they get from all the hacks and

Starting point is 00:08:46 all the scams. They literally incentivize to support these other cryptocurrencies because Bitcoin's pretty stable. I don't know they'd get a lot of stories written out. I remember where Barry sat back on the 2017, you know, Fork Wars on Bitcoin, who's, you know, one of the main people at Coin Desk. So kind of interesting to see him continue to battle it. Yeah. So that's a digital currency group, I think, owns coins. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:09:14 For sure. And then you got Goldman Sachs. There's another one who also has not been that flattering to Bitcoin over the years. And then you have Ripple and Stellar, which are pretty much. some of, in my opinion, some of the biggest scams in the space. So they're all working together in this accelerator and pooling their capital and resources together. And they're all incentivized in their own ways for proof of work to fail. And what they're going to do is they're going to use ESG as a shield to justify their efforts. And they even talk about how they're

Starting point is 00:09:46 going to do it. And they talk about projects they're going to support and alternative currencies they're going to support. But then they talk about leadership and they say, we're going to create impact opportunities to seize and secure commitments to our leading efforts. And that just really rubbed me the wrong way because nobody elected these guys. Like, I didn't make them my leader, you know, and they say that they're going to seize and secure commitments based on their leading efforts like they know it's best for the world. And they'll use forceful tactics to do it. That's basically what they lay out there. And what they're going to do is they're going to crush Bitcoin. And the reason is not ESG. That's the key point here. The reason is because they would have

Starting point is 00:10:26 no control or power in this monetary system. And so when you go through this, you just see a concerted effort to discredit Bitcoin and proof of work. And then it shifts over to supporting proof of stake in Ethereum because I believe that they can better co-op that system. And when they say that, they won't say that out loud, but they'll say that it's because of the energy usage. Right. And so That was where that came from. And I just think it's interesting. I always go through these things because they lay it out right on their website and you can just track it if you just go back far enough and find these articles.

Starting point is 00:11:01 It's all about control. The whole thing is about control. And I guess the ultimate irony for me is, especially on Twitter, you see people that just kind of stand behind these really artificial narratives of Maxi or don't you like the environment and these people that are just chirping these narratives on their behalf as the few puppeteers are kind of sitting at the top, orchestrating everything in order to keep pulling the strings. So I'm going to go into a much deeper dive on proof of stake and how it functions and how it does blocks with Jason Lowry next week where he's going to, he's coming out swinging and I think he's going to have some very in-depth argument. around how it functions, why it provides all the control into the hands of a few, and how it's consolidating and centralizing forces only trend towards further centralization in the future.

Starting point is 00:12:01 And it's going to be pretty comprehensive. So I guess I'll cover that with him more on the technical side. But I really want to have these articles that you're talking about. I guess I can share the thread that you're talking about here because it lays out each one of these articles. It does a great job kind of providing the resources that you're talking about. talking about, and I'll have that in the show notes for people if they want to check it out and give it at more detail.

Starting point is 00:12:23 Let's go to central bank digital currencies. Because when we look at this merge, we look at the centralizing authority that now exists to control the direction of ETH, which is the biggest stable coin token provider out there by a lot, at least today, to think that through the validation process, transactions can be included or not included based off of some of these validators and people that are running these validators, the few people that are running these validators, it becomes very concerning when you look at the central bank digital currencies. Walk us through your framework of how you think about these things, in general, where you see it going in a five-year

Starting point is 00:13:12 timetable, how are governments going to issue their central bank digital currencies? Because I suspect you are of the opinion that they are going to do this. What it means from a privacy standpoint, just take us through all of it, Sam. Yeah. Look, like, I started studying central bank digital currencies years ago. I've tried to read a lot of what the central banks have put out in terms of their research from the Bank of Canada to Bank of England, Bank of International Settlements, IMF, National Bureau of Economic Research, Fed. I've just kind of read a lot about it. And initially, the reason I did that was because I saw it as the number one threat to freedom out there. I see it as a potential tool of surveillance and a tool that could infringe on

Starting point is 00:14:00 privacy, like you said, as well as lead to violations of human rights. And so I started to look into it very, very deeply. The more I looked into it, the less and less concern I'd be came about them because I think there's a ton of risks that lay at the feet of those who issue it, aka the central banks. So a lot of people focus on the privacy. And for good reason, it could potentially create like an Orwellian kind of future where they would be able to track all of our financial transactions. They would be able to see everything that we do, who we transact with, and they would use that metadata to kind of paint a picture of who we are as a person. And so already 80% of central banks use big data.

Starting point is 00:14:46 And they use that for their economic research and to inform policy decisions. And so they're already using data and they just want more of it. So what data they don't have is if I just gave you a $20 bill, Preston, and then, you know, they don't have that data. And so they want to have everything. And what that would do, it would allow them to basically do whatever they want in terms of changing monetary policy to more social policy or to push social agenda if they wanted to. And I don't know if you saw this thread. It was like Darren Feinstein.

Starting point is 00:15:17 He posted this thread. And he laid it out so perfectly. He was just like, purchase denied. Like you've consumed your quota of meat for the month. You know, come back in 72 hours. Or you didn't vote. Purchase denied. You have to go back and do your voting polls. Or purchase denied, you made a, you know, offensive social media post. And so that's the kind of thing that could be enabled with a central bank digital currency. And not only that, but it could really remove the need for cash in society. And cash is one of the only ways that we transact with any kind of anonymity today. And so they were trying to remove cash. And people will say that they aren't and they'll say they'll say they aren't. So in all their papers, they say, hey, this will complement cash.

Starting point is 00:16:03 But when you keep reading all their papers, they basically assume that it'll be a cashless society. They always include one line that says, don't worry, this will complement cash. And then the entire rest of the tone of the paper assumes that there won't be cash. And even their models that they run, they assume there won't be cash in the models. You know, and when they say, oh, we'll keep cash, well, going cashless isn't just happen. It's a policy decision. And so they're assuming that in some time in the future, there will be a policy decision that will remove cash completely. And if that's the case, then it basically entraps everybody into the system and nobody will be able to get out, except there's Bitcoin. But, you know, if Bitcoin didn't exist, they wouldn't be able to get out of the system.

Starting point is 00:16:48 And so they can do all kinds of things. They can do negative interest rates that they want. They could do targeted stimulus checks. They could do expired stimulus checks. So to stimulate spending, they say, hey, you got to use this in 30 days or you're not getting it. We literally just saw that this week with China, right? Right? Yeah. No, exactly. Yeah. Where they, where supposedly it was cash, you know, their digital CBDC yuan, and it had a duration or a time limit that you had to spend it by.

Starting point is 00:17:18 Exactly. Like China's been doing this since 2014, so they're a little head of the curve. We also saw an example of, you know, how this could go because China has a social credit system. And there was kind of banking protests happening throughout China. And when, there was protests about it. They also have these health codes associated with the COVID lockdowns. So if you're healthy, you're green and if you're not, you're red. And what they did for the protesters, you can't access trains. You can't access public transportation if you have COVID, if you have like a red health code or whatever. And for these people trying to just protest the banks and get on the trains to join the

Starting point is 00:17:57 protest, suddenly their health code turned red. And so they couldn't access the transportation. And so that's the kind of power. that these central bank digital currencies would grant these governments as well as central banks. And the thing is they actually think that this is better. They think that they want the data because they're a public institution. And so they think people are worried about private companies and fintech companies having all the data because they can use it for profitable purposes, you know, selling advertisements and stuff like that.

Starting point is 00:18:27 But they assume that they're like benevolent and everyone trusts them because they're a public institution and there's no reason for them to use the data for profits, so we should have all the data. But we know that governments abuse data and have been spying on its citizens for the last 10 years since the Patriot Act. I mean, we know this because of Edward Snowden and what he exposed.

Starting point is 00:18:50 And so to think that this won't be used nefariously against the people, I think, is very naive. And so that's kind of like the privacy component of this. But what I want to focus on, is I think that this will actually be the nail in the coffin for essential bank credibility. And I think it's because they'll completely botch this if they try to go ahead with the central bank digital currency. And they have no idea what will happen to the global financial system when to introduce a brand new asset with these characteristics and what it will do

Starting point is 00:19:23 to the banking industry, what it will do to the capital flows. And we can get into that right now, but I don't know if I want to do. No, I do want to go that direction. I think that I think that that's the logical next step. Keep going. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. All right. I want you guys to imagine spending three days in Oslo at the height of the summer. You've got long days of daylight, incredible food, floating saunas on the Oslo Fjord, and every conversation you have is with people who are actually shaping the future. That's what the Oslo Freedom Forum is. From June 1st through the 3rd, 2026, the Oslo Freedom Forum is entering its 18th year, bringing together activists, technologists, journalists, investors, and builders from all over the

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Starting point is 00:23:20 support. Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify, and start hearing sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash WSB. Go to Shopify.com slash WSB. That's Shopify.com slash WSB. All right. Back to the show. Yeah, well, the first, the major, major problem is it would basically disintermediate the commercial banking system. And so what a CBDC is and the way, like there's just two examples, you can have a token-based CBDC, which would be just like a, you know, a stable coin, private stable coin, but it would be issued by a central bank and it would have anonymity built into it. And there's like an account-based CBDC, which mimics of banking, like a commercial banking deposits. Now, central banks have all

Starting point is 00:24:15 consider both, and they just shoot out the token one because they don't want anonymity. They want to track everything. So there's only one central bank I know of still considering that, the Bank of Canada, but every single one has decided, no, we're going to do the account-based one. And so the account-based one is really unique because basically it would have the liquidity profile of a digital cash, but it would also offer interests like a bomb. And so that asset has never existed before. So it would be a brand new asset. And so what they're worried about is that people would remove deposits out of commercial banks and put it into the CBDC accounts because it's technically safer because it's issued by central bank. So it's like risk free. You don't have the counterparty risk

Starting point is 00:25:00 of like a commercial bank. It's the central bank, you know, so you can trust it. So they're worried that it's going to drain commercial banks of deposits. And the reason this is important is you know, commercial bank deposits are liabilities on its balance sheet and they're backed by assets. Typically consists of bonds, loans, other financial assets. If a CBDC is introduced, some households and businesses who hold bank deposits are going to exchange them for CBDCs. And that'll be just like if they took out bank notes at an ATM. And then you reduce the assets and liabilities of the bank and you shrink the bank's balance sheet in that process. And when you do that, you know, you are basically making it so they're shrinking the balance sheet.

Starting point is 00:25:46 They're going to lose those deposits. And then it's going to make them more hesitant to lend out because they're not going to have that funding to lend out and do their banking practices. And so you have these like dynamics where when you lose the deposits in the commercial banking system, it's going to increase the cost of funding for these banks. It's going to eat into their profit margins. and then they're going to raise interest rates to try to kind of make up for that. That will result in lower lending in the economy, decrease economic activity and potential bad situation where the banks are really struggling with their profits because basically the CBDC is sucking out all of their business.

Starting point is 00:26:24 It's basically it's like a suck. So that's what they mean by like a commercial bank disintermediation. And so it can really into financial instability. And so they're worried about this. All these central banks, they're really worried about this. And their ideas for trying to overcome this problem are really poor. Like they basically, they want to have price caps of $3,000 on the CBDC accounts. And that's a problem because, you know, if you're a firm or an individual, you know,

Starting point is 00:26:53 every time you're going to vary in size and needs in terms of what you want to transact with. So like in terms of the amount. So it could undermine the actual usefulness of the CBDC for industry and commerce if there's like this fixed. cap on what you can hold in the account. So it makes no sense. And then there are other idea is to penalize the people who hold more than the 3,000 cap limit with negative interest rates. And that's such like a slashing mechanism. So it's very like a proof of stake where you're basically slashing people who aren't following the rules of the system and taking their money for them. And then their last thing, this is the funniest one, was when they drain the money out of the commercial banking system,

Starting point is 00:27:33 one of their solutions is to basically offset it with a liquidity providing operation via the central bank and expand their balance sheet. So they're going to introduce this asset for whatever reason that disintermediates the commercial banking system. And then their plan is to basically plug it by printing more money and bailing out the banks that they just basically took their business. And so it makes absolutely zero sense to me why they would take these risks to issue the central bank. digital currency. And so during a, this even gets worse during a bank run. So if there's like any kind of uncertainty or worry about the commercial banks, now that you have this option where you could run to a central bank digital currency account, it can lead to bank runs, like an increased risk of bank runs because you have this new risk free asset backed by the central bank that doesn't

Starting point is 00:28:25 have the counterparty risk commercial banks. And so this has actually happened throughout history back in the 1930s, there was the French Great Depression, there was savers who held their savings at banks, but they weren't backed by the government. But there were these government-backed savings institutions that were regulated similar to what a CBDC would be. And what happened was there was a substantial bank run. And it was worse because there was this disparity between the one was regulated,

Starting point is 00:28:56 one was backed by a safe issuer, and the other was a commercial bank. And what it happened was it was a terrible time where there was a complete bank run in France because there's these two kind of deposits with different safety kind of assurances. And so it could lead to bank runs. It can lead to bank disintermediation. And the central banks are just continually to go along with these plans, even though these risks are extremely real. And it's very uncertain what would even happen if they went along with it.

Starting point is 00:29:27 So that's only one thing, but I'll let you kind of... Well, so you're bringing up these risks. I agree with you. I think they do understand that these risks exist if they implement one of these things. And so as I'm thinking through that, I'm also kind of thinking, are they going to be completely inept in their decision making because there's so much analysis by paralysis happening at their level where they just can't even make a decision because they understand all these risks. And in the meantime, does that just allow the rest of the system to continue to implode in

Starting point is 00:30:03 real time as they're continuing to chew over all of this analysis by paralysis? Yeah, I mean, there's so many things to consider. And you're right. I mean, it seems like a massive waste of resources and time that they're spending on researching these things. That seems to be looking for a problem. It's a solution looking for a problem. They actually read a lot like ICO white papers from 2017, where they come up with all these problems and then they think they're smart enough to outdesign them. I get like deja vu reading them. The other thing is that the security risks of having all of the data in a centralized place. Oh, disasters. All the data. Yeah. So, you have these like vulnerabilities that could be exploited of the entire national financial system.

Starting point is 00:30:48 And so, you know, you have sensitive data on an unprecedented scale. I think they're scared to death of that. Yeah, they should be. Yeah, they should be. They're not good. Central banks are not good. There's been a history of hacks all over the place. The Federal Reserve alone detected 50 cyber breaches from 2011 to 2015. And just this last July, this kind of went under the radar.

Starting point is 00:31:10 But there was a huge Chinese espionage effort that got exposed in July for the last decade. They have been infiltrating the Federal Reserve. and the Senate Committee on Homeland Security blamed the Federal Reserve for weak data protection. And they were a victim of a decades-long espionage effort, right? And so the Federal Reserve was unable to detect. They didn't have the policies and procedures in place. And even though they knew there was ties for these people to China, they continue to let them have access to confidential information. And so that happened just in July.

Starting point is 00:31:46 And these are the people that were supposed to give all of the, the data to, it's absolutely insane to me. And so you're going to have this potential of significantly increased centralization by storing all this data on a single ledger. And it just becomes a honeypot for cyber criminals to come after. And like, why wouldn't they come after it? You can literally attack the very money of a country. And then just like when Russia invaded Ukraine, anonymous hacked the Russian Central Bank in weeks after. Like, they made it look easily. They released 28 gigabytes gigabytes of data and 35,000 confidential files, just like that. I was not aware of that.

Starting point is 00:32:24 Yeah, I mean, like, so, yeah, it's crazy. So that's, the security is just another thing. So you're banking, this intermediation, you got the security. The other thing is a currency substitution. So, like, dollarization is a big problem in emerging markets, right? So, like, if Turkey right now is struggling to implement monetary policy as their lira is inflating at a rapid pace because everyone's, all their citizens aren't holding liars. They're holding dollars.

Starting point is 00:32:54 And so they can't effectively implement their monetary policy. When you have a central bank digital currency that can cross borders very easily, it could basically infringe on the monetary sovereignty of any kind of country, any country in the world. And so if there was a CBDC, like the IMF actually talks about this with Bitcoin and private stable coins. they call it cryptization, where you have parallel money happening in economies, and it can really cause financial instability and problem for the central bank,

Starting point is 00:33:23 especially central banks that have high inflation, and they've been proven to be incompetent where their citizens want to leave their currency, makes it really hard for them. But the exact same thing can happen with the central bank digital currency. And it can lead to basically one currency taking over, especially when you have these changes in arbitrage, arbitrage opportunities between interest rates of these central bank digital currencies because they are going to have interest rates attached to them. And so it leads to interconnectiveness,

Starting point is 00:33:53 leads to increased spillover effects that could happen when you have more interconnectness because these CBDCs can be easily transferred. And so again, it leads to increased risk of financial instability because of these currency substitution risks. And then let me just keep going. List them all. I'm writing them all down here. Just keep going. The other one's legal. these central banks don't even have the legal rights to issue these central bank digital currencies. I'm not a lawyer, but I read a couple papers written by lawyers. And they say, like, do central bank laws authorize the creation of central bank liabilities

Starting point is 00:34:29 and the issuance of currency to the public and digital form? And like, no, they don't. And so you have 107 central banks currently looking into central bank digital currencies. That's 95% of GDP. only 23% of them maybe have laws that would allow them to issue them. And so, you know, obviously that can change, but that's going to take time. Like, you got to change the monetary laws. And some of it's, like, you get to, it's constitutional and stuff like that.

Starting point is 00:34:58 So that's the other thing. And the other thing's execution. Like, how do you- Oh, amen on that one? Yeah. How do you assume that there's going to be demand for the essential bank digital currencies? Nobody seems to want them. These central bankers are writing all this research and papers and nobody wants them. Like what kind of, I haven't met very many citizens that are really pumped about the central bank digital currency.

Starting point is 00:35:21 And not only that, you got to build all the infrastructure, you know, hardware, you know, how do you just storage? You build a wallet. What's the wallet look like? How do you distribute this like so that it's financially inclusive for older individuals who have a hard time with technology or rural individuals who don't have the access to it? And so there's all these kind of questions that come in. to mind. And my favorite's the ECB because they say, we are consulting the public. And it's great. We have great responses. And they did two public consultation periods. The first one was 8,000 responses. I didn't get to look at them because I didn't know about it at the time,

Starting point is 00:35:57 but I read their report and they were like, it was a great, great, you know, there was so many of them. There's so much interest in this. It's great. Privacy is their main concern. And they said, we're going to keep going with it. So then they had another consultation period. And this time I was aware of it happening. And you can actually, there was 18,000 responses in the second one. And I read 14,000 of these individual responses. I translated them.

Starting point is 00:36:22 Of course you did, Sam. Of course you did. They're funny. They're like, they're what you'd expect. They're not even, they're like, no, you do not want this. This is a terrible idea. We do not want to give you this power. This is going to be a human's rights.

Starting point is 00:36:37 basically I'm just paraphrasing all of them because I'd say 98% of that of those feedback comments were just that. And then if you go to the speeches that like Christine Lagarde and Fabio Panetta who's the head of the Crypto Task Force for

Starting point is 00:36:53 the Euro system, they still are saying right now that oh it's a great you know it's such great demand for it they're basically gaslighting and saying that the amount of comments means that there's good interest with demand. Even though the comments themselves are like, no, like we do not want this. So there's a demand for these things.

Starting point is 00:37:13 And so that's the difference with Bitcoin, right? Like Bitcoin's demand is grassroots because it's an actual good product that people want, whereas this is just like they would have to be top down and enforced. They've actually, they've said, how are we going to get the commercial banks to do this, you know, to help us spread this when it's going to disintermediate them and take their business. They basically have to, they're trying to incentivize by printing money and giving money to the banks to help them push CBDC adoption. That's like one of their plans. And so all of these things together, you're just like, good luck. Like, good luck trying to get this out. Even if you can get it out, the odds of it actually working out are so slim. And then I think

Starting point is 00:37:57 it's going to end a disaster. I think they're going to mess it up. I think there's a huge reputational risk on these credit banks whose credibility are completely in the gutter right now. I mean, they're literally never lower. And I think it might be the final nail in the coffin. And all Bitcoin has to do is function at this point, you know? Like, it just has to keep doing its thing because it makes sense to me. It's their hubris. They're going to shoot themselves by thinking that they can get away with the central bank digital currency. And that would be so perfect for these central banks who think they're so smart that they can get away with this. and then it just turns out to be a disaster.

Starting point is 00:38:34 And then once everything falls, Bitcoin, TikTok, next block, it'll just be working perfectly. And maybe they'll understand why it's a good idea then after they try to go through all the central bank digital currency nonsense. So that's my central bank. This is why I love talking to you because you know what? You do the work. You do the proof of work.

Starting point is 00:38:55 You read all of this stuff in nitty-gritty detail to formulate a, what I think is an objective opinion. I'm sure people who want CBDCs, which there's probably five out there in the world, you know, they've got their own opinions. But like, you have done the work to understand this. When I'm hearing all this, the thing that I just keep thinking, though, is so what is their course of action to bring this about? Because I think there's going to be some that do try it. And when I think about that execution risk that you brought up, I think that's a huge one. And it's like, how are they going to go about this? Because they know they know they don't have the technical chops in-house to do this. So they have to outsource it to some type of company.

Starting point is 00:39:43 They have to either go to a coin that already exists and basically nationalize it or take it over. or maybe they just start running all their own validators and they control at the protocol level and they can reorg transactions any way they want. Or maybe it's a combination of multiple of those. Yeah, I mean, I could see them. I've always said like, you know, some of these really regulated private stable coins, it might make sense for them to just buy them. And basically it's happened before the Fed has bought.

Starting point is 00:40:17 I can't remember what. Yeah. It's actually like acquired technology from the private sector before. So I could definitely see that happening. Is that most plausible? Yeah, I think so. I think it's definitely a plausible outcome.

Starting point is 00:40:31 The problem is, man, like, all of the central banks are doing this, right? And there is a first mover advantage. It's the currency substitution problem that I talked about. Yeah. This is why the ECBs so fast with this. They're faster than anybody. They've got the most freezers last two years.

Starting point is 00:40:48 And you know why? Because they had negative interest rate. If somebody else, like the dollar, a CBDC that could provide a higher rate of interest and could cross borders instantly, they would be at risk because they had literally negative interest rates. And they basically say this in some of their models and some of their papers. And so they're going after it. And so once these governments and central banks set a course of action and get really obsessed with something, it's so difficult for them and costly. to stop. Like it just seems like they've kind of on this road where it's like a prisoner's where one central bank's going to do it. So then they feel like they can't fall behind. So they have to go after it themselves. And even though it's not a good idea, we're going to keep doing it. And so I think it is going to happen. I just don't think it's a good idea. And isn't it, it's so easy to see why China's going after it because the banks are state-owned. So there's not a risk of this nerve mitigation, you know, and there's stringent capital controls in place. So the currency substitution stuff isn't as bad either. And they already don't have any privacy, so they don't really care

Starting point is 00:41:55 about that. And so it's like everyone sees China doing it and thinks, oh, we should do it too. But China doesn't really have the same risks because of, you know, what they are all about. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think, I think this is definitely happening. It's funny, I do do all the free for work. I do read on all this, but I was talking to Jeff Booth the other day. And he was like, I was like, do you ever think about central bank digital currencies? And he said something like, I haven't thought one iota about central bank. I was always like, ooh, that's never a good one, Jeff hasn't thought about it at all. And I was like, why?

Starting point is 00:42:30 And he's like, well, they're doomed to fail. And I'm thinking about all these things that I just mentioned. And he's like, no, it's because it's essential planning. And I was like, it's censorship. Yeah. Yeah, but it's also like they think that the problem is they don't have the right tools to like essentially plan. And they need a central bank digital currency where they can more control. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:42:53 Targeted monetary policy, targeted taxes, all these things. They're like, this is it. Now things are going to get smoother. Like these business, these boom, bus cycles are going to be reduced. But they don't realize the actual flaw is central planning itself. And so even if they get everything right, even if they do everything right, it's still doomed to fail because it's just underlying everything is this idea that central planning works. And so that's the last- First principles.

Starting point is 00:43:20 First principles. So like, again, I'm just, I'm not, I used to be worried about social bank digital currencies. Now, I think it might be the biggest boon for Bitcoin in the end. Yeah, yeah. It happened. Let's take a quick break 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 00:47:13 failure. Hey, so you do, this is what I love about talking to you see. You do a lot of research. One of the things that you've recently been studying is just the history of the European Central Bank, the euro, walk us through, first of all, why? Why did you go about in this research? And then talk to us about some of the stuff that you uncovered and things that you found interesting. Yeah, I started researching this a few months ago. Honestly, I just, I looked at the euro and European situation. And this is kind of before like the energy crisis really got bad. But I saw it as like a really weak link in the global financial system. And I wanted to understand more about the and how it works for my research in the Bank of International Settlements.

Starting point is 00:47:58 I knew that it started with them, the idea of European monetary union, started with the Bank of International Settlements. And then when I started researching it, I guess I didn't think it would be, it was way more complicated than I thought it was going to be. It's essentially a political creature. It's not economic. And to understand the euro is to understand entire European politics of the last 40 years.

Starting point is 00:48:26 And so I was like, oh, man. So then I started reading all these books. And it was really fascinating because I realized, like, this thing's kind of doomed to fail. And in fact, all monetary unions in history have always failed. It's just a matter of time because in times of crisis, monetary rules get thrown out the window. And eventually these governments adhere to their own self-interest.

Starting point is 00:48:48 And that's just what happens every single time. And when the euro is being created, I mean, economists, major economists, at the time were warning about how stupid it was, essentially. Millen Friedman, you know, he basically said it's so silly to have monetary union where you have disparate economies, different fiscal, you know, policies, tax policies, everything. And so he's like, this is not going to work.

Starting point is 00:49:13 Eventually it's going to fall apart. But since it was a political reason for doing it, and the reason why is it's more like U.S. hegemony was kind of coming up and they thought that this would help compete because there's 340 million people under the Euro, 330 million United States. They thought it would just be grouping together and make them more powerful.

Starting point is 00:49:35 They were worried because Germany had just, like, united after the fall of the Berlin Wall, they were worried that they would have too much power. And so they wanted to band together to kind of make sure that something, you know, Germany getting a bunch of power again isn't really what they wanted. So they wanted to kind of unite France

Starting point is 00:49:54 in Germany under a monetary union. And so they said, like, this is what we're going to do. Like, this is, and the economist said, this isn't a good idea. And they're like, well, we're going to do it anyway. And so politicians kind of thought they knew best. And then the real reason why I looked into the European monetary union and the euro is because I saw a ton of similarities between the European debt crisis of the early 2010 in terms of what's going on right now with Italy and the peripheral countries and the

Starting point is 00:50:22 debt problems and what the ECB is trying to do right now, which I think is like riding two horses, one ass essentially, as they try to fight inflation and try to keep these yields down to prevent some kind of major default from happening. And the difference of team back then and now is back then it was Greece, which was pretty small country. This time it's Italy, which is the third biggest economy in Europe. And the consequences are much more dire. something bad happens right now. And then the other major difference is the inflation. And that really constrains the central bank. But by studying the European debt crisis of the early 2010, you kind of see what the playbook that they used was and that they're doing the exact same thing.

Starting point is 00:51:08 Now just kind of in hyperdrive and now with inflation to complicate things. And so that's kind of why I dug into it. And it was really interesting. And my TLDR is that, wow, the ECB is in a really, really hard spot right now. It's kind of putting it mildly. Mildly, yeah. Well, going back to the complexity that we were talking about earlier, it applies itself there. Culturally, you have different dynamics at play within each one of these countries.

Starting point is 00:51:41 The whole, you know, at the crux of it, Lynn Alden does such a great job talking about the implications of net exporters versus net importers and how that's kind of at the, the keystone of everything that's playing out in the world right now. And when you look at Europe and you look at how many countries are actually net exporters, especially right now, it's like zero. But in a normal functioning economy, Germany is the only net exporter amongst them. I think there's maybe one or two more. I think maybe Denmark's one and maybe one other. And so that dynamic is a huge stress point for the currency itself as they're trying to defend its value on the global stage and how they're trying to defend it versus countries that are just total net consumers.

Starting point is 00:52:31 And it just puts this political, you know, headbutting in place. And I think what we're looking at right now with the whole energy thing now taking front stage with, you know, obviously with Russia cutting off the supplies to them and then all their energy policies over the past decade that have led them to not having a stable grid and having independence on that front. I think it's just, it's like taking a magnifying glass and then putting another magnifying glass over top of that and just shining it straight down on the area. It's very concerning. I can only imagine what this winter is going to bring. I obviously don't, and as you don't either want any type of difficulty for anybody around the world. But as I'm looking at the situation, it is very dire. It is not

Starting point is 00:53:20 looking good. And I think it's something that is going to have a ripple effect into the rest of the world as we just go into the next two quarters. I just, I can't even imagine what this is going to bring and what it means. And then you just overlay, not to go too long here, but then you just overlay where we're at with the credit markets and how they're literally have been paid. And how they're been pegged down to zero, just jam-packed like a spring down to zero percent since the financial crisis, right? And now all of a sudden, everybody stops trusting each other and you got this energy thing playing out, which is going to just keep these inflation prints sky high. And when you're looking at that disparity and that negative spread between inflation, which is your reality

Starting point is 00:54:08 and where these yields are at in their credit markets, it's a checkmate type of situation. I had this question at the end of the show, but I'm going to just ask it right now. Are we in the end game? Is this the global end game that everybody's been talking about since the global financial crisis? Because I know where I stand and I don't want to answer because I don't want to bias or anything like that. I think you already know what my answer is, but I want to hear what your answer is. I mean, I was just talking to my roommates about this. It just seems like there's one thing after the other that are just kind of combining right now to create this perfect storm. I mean, the Japan news today about the valuation of the yen, you know, the fact that all the how fast the Fed is raising rates right now and the pressure that it's putting on the European Central Bank as well as the VOJ and their currencies, it's kind of scary, man. All these currencies are losing value. It's such a rapid. rate right now. And then you got the debt on top of everything. And that's why it gets so

Starting point is 00:55:10 annoyed at like the Fed presser the other day and not a single question about the debt levels. And they talk about keeping these rates high. And I'm like, good luck. You know, like you got zombie companies in the United States. And then you got all of these other sovereigns around the world with debt levels up to the ears. How are you going to keep rates up at these levels for too long? How is nobody asking about the debt spiral? How are they not asking about it? about this. Do they not get an invite if they're that type of person that's going to actually ask a hard question? Or like, what's happening in these pressers? How is it not coming up? How is it these layup questions? I think that they, yeah, they would risk their jobs.

Starting point is 00:55:51 But, you know, at some point, somebody's got to do it. You know, like somebody's got to sacrifice themselves and ask these questions because it's ridiculous, honestly. Somebody's got to ask the hard questions to these central bankers. But unfortunately, I think you're right. I think once they ask one hard question, they're kind of, they're out. And that's, they bring in somebody else who's going to just ask the right questions. But you know, one thing that I would say in terms of this the endgame right now, I think there is this like underappreciated possibility of coordination. And actually one, central bank coordination as well as government coordination is, I think that's what we're kind of hearing today from U.S. officials and Japan officials about, you know, maybe we'll see some

Starting point is 00:56:32 kind of coordination there. I know Ben Bernacki said that they can buy foreign sovereign bonds if they need to. It's in their charter, whatever. And so you could be this situation where the Fed becomes the lender of last resort for the world. It just becomes more centralized. That could be the next ultimate bubble. So who's paying for that with their buying power? Right? If the U.S. is stepping in to save other countries at this point to defend the global system, right? Like, we're incentivized to do that, but we're also, there's somebody that has to pay a price. There has to be an expense. You can't, you know, the aviator in me comes out.

Starting point is 00:57:16 You can't have lift without corresponding drag on the airfoil, right? Did you see that? There was like this video of like some Clinton symposium and they were talking about like, where are they going to get the money for these ESG? And then the... Oh, my God, dude. We'll find it. We found 17 trillion for COVID.

Starting point is 00:57:35 Trillion. Trillion. That's what I think about that question, man. They just don't even think about that. She was serious as a heart attack. We're talking about one of the guests that was on the stage. She made a comment that, like, so where are they going to get the funding for all these ESG net zero by 2050 things that everybody's talking about?

Starting point is 00:57:57 And her comment was, well, we found $17 trillion to pay for COVID. We just got to do something like that. So, like, yeah, I don't think we're, like, led by serious people and they don't seem to think about these things. But again, like, so one of the things I've been studying is the Plaza Accord of 85. And everyone always says, like, oh, can that happen? And it gets brought up every so often. I read this tweet from this currency guy.

Starting point is 00:58:25 And he was like, yeah. This was like three years ago. This tweet was written, but it said, like, yeah, everyone always brings up the plaza accord and inflation. And both never happened. So, and then I'm just thinking, like, well, inflation's here. What are the possibilities we have another plaza accord? For those who don't know, it's where G5 nations got together and coordinated to devalue the dollar. And there's different theories about why the U.S. wanted to do that.

Starting point is 00:58:50 But all I'm saying is that there's a possibility that there is some, like, coordinated effort. and there was one answer from Jay Powell at the presser, where unless you know about the Bank for National Settlements in Switzerland, he basically said, he said, well, every month we go and we talk to other central banks behind closed doors and we talk to them and coordinate, cooperate with each other and try to align their policies. And so that was like one, I've never heard him talk about that in a presser. And so that's the one thing I say.

Starting point is 00:59:21 Obviously things look dire. we might be in the end game. I don't know. Can they kind of keep this going with some kind of coordinated effort? Maybe. That's good. What I would say to that. Well, and so let's say, let's run the scenario that next month, we just start to see disgusting numbers in the economy. We're going through, it's very clear we're then going through a recession. And you're seeing just all the economic energy being sucked out of the system. You see, instead of these inflation prints, let's just say that you starts the seed deflationary prints, kind of manifest themselves in short order. They have to step in. They have to step in in some

Starting point is 01:00:02 type of meaningful way because for something like that to happen, something is very substantial has to break down. It's not like you're going to get that type of quick response without it being just something just massive seismic shift in the functioning order of the global economy. So they're going to have to step in. They're going to have to do something because you're going to just have unbound impairment and credit markets for that shift or for that recession to set in in such an abrupt way. So they have to come with just another fire hose COVID level response and probably bigger. And I just don't know how you hold it together. And I don't know how you would expect the bond market to, because think about it, prior to COVID, they couldn't find inflation

Starting point is 01:00:55 if they tried. It was like, it was like this mythical creature. Now all of a sudden, everybody saw what happens when you expand broad money, the M2. And so if they step in with the fire hose and all this printing, like that bond market's going to be looking at and saying, oh my God, if the last go around was expanded by this amount and it gave us these numbers and the inflation, gauge, like whatever this next round is, it's going to be that and maybe more. And I think you just see credit yields explode. And then, I mean, even today, like, I, the crazy. I mean, the volatility the last couple of days. Yield. It's crazy. It's been crazy. So that's why, like, right now, you know, it seems like possible, like this whole yen thing and couple that with,

Starting point is 01:01:48 what's going on in Europe. Like, it's, those two things, it just seems like they could combine together and cause that, that response that we're talking about. And when that happens, because I still don't think they connect the dots between what happened in terms of their fiscal and monetary policies. I don't know if they've actually, they still blame it. They have to. They have to.

Starting point is 01:02:12 Yes. I mean, inflation was complex with the pandemic. And there was definitely supply side issues. are causing it. But I think they just still think that most of it is like that. That was the cause of it. It wasn't the full. It wasn't the stimulus.

Starting point is 01:02:29 I think there's still people that I think that we can just print money and not have these problems, the MMT crowd and stuff like that. Regardless of what they think, I know the credit markets are sniffing it out and they're totally seeing it. Well, the interesting thing is, again, Europe right now, you got the ECB. who was kind of forced to start to raise rates because every other central bank was raising rates and the euro was tanking as a result,

Starting point is 01:02:57 as well as there's fear of recession, which is another reason why there's downward pressure on the euro. But all the other central banks were raising. So then Christine Logarad comes out and says, yeah, we're going to raise rates. Italian bond spreads spike just for the mention of it, right? Which leads them to announce a unlimited buying,

Starting point is 01:03:17 the bond buying tool, just like Mario Draghi. I honestly, I just don't know what the ECB is doing. Like, they are screwed because of the fundamental design flaws of the euro, the fact that all these other governments could spend money, and they have no control over them, and they're still trying to find inflation. And you can't really blame these governments for spending money because of these energy crisis, but they're doing it, right?

Starting point is 01:03:41 Yeah. And I'm trying to keep track of all of these governments. The UK, you know, 180 billion, 6% of GDP. Germany is printed 95 billion euros. Sweden and Finland have like bailed out, given liquidity facilities to utility companies worth 33 billion euros. Switzerland has bailed out energy companies. Austria's 500 euros a year to 2024 for all. That's two or three or four billion euros.

Starting point is 01:04:12 Greece just announced something. Netherlands just announced something. I mean, they're all printing, and they're trying to bring in inflation. So I just picture Christine Lagarde's like... They're trying to bring in inflation. I love that. That was what she was supposed to do.

Starting point is 01:04:25 And so you, you know, have you seen like Vegas vacation, like Chevy Chase? Have you seen that movie? Yeah. Yeah, so there's a scene where he's going through Hoover Dam and he's like, he's walking and then he like books out a pebble off the wall of the rock

Starting point is 01:04:40 and then a spring starts and he stuck his bubble gum in it. and that's what I picture it's like Lagarde's sticking her bubble gun in it and then another leak springs and then she's got her finger on it and that's like the inflation and then she's like rolling over German bonds to buy Italian bonds

Starting point is 01:04:56 trying to keep that in check and then she's like over her shoulder she's just like I got an unlimited tool too everything's going to be okay it is it's crazy it's ridiculous I mean like

Starting point is 01:05:08 so when I look at that and I just and I see that I just don't see, I see these central banks are all going to go the same route eventually. Like, they haven't had these, like, really dire energy crisis that had justified these printing right now. But I just see it, it all leads to the same place. And if people think that it can be, if people think it can be contained regionally, I think they're kidding themselves. They don't understand how

Starting point is 01:05:33 interconnected the world is. Like, it's not like it's just going to happen in Europe, and it's not going to spread to other parts of the planet. Like, the world is so interconnected at this point. And through commerce and trade, like you're not able to just contain it in one spot and think that it's crazy talk. This is the last question I got for you because you're a very astute observer of your environment. What is the one, what is one of the most important things happening right now that you think a lot of people are missing or not paying attention to? I just immediately go to Bitcoin. Beyond the obvious.

Starting point is 01:06:19 Beyond the obvious for people in the community, yeah. No, but like specifically with Bitcoin, you know, I've held through, you know, 2018, 80% drawdown. I've seen this before. And there's a lot of similarities between the fair markets. And I think what people are missing is that the amount of building going on is incredible during the air markets.

Starting point is 01:06:38 And it sets the stage for the next bull runs. And, I mean, you just have news after news after news every week and I write about it. And it's like, wow, like if this happened in the middle of the bear market, in the bull market, price would have jumped like 10K on this news, like whether it's, you know, fidelity, you know, offering 34 million brokerage accounts access to Bitcoin or the NASDAQ just came out and said they're offering a custodious solution. Or even like things like Ledger having their devices in 900 Best Buy stores across the country. I'm like, all of these things, they just happen. And then at the same time, the fundamentals, like, hash rate just hitting an all-time high.

Starting point is 01:07:17 Uptime still 99.9%. You know, the security of the network's never been higher. Long-term holders, as at an all-time high. So the conviction, the base of convicted hoddlers is growing and never been higher and is holding more Bitcoin than ever before. And that sets the stage for the next bull market. So, you know, people get just so hung up on the price. But where I'm looking, it's just like the exact same thing of 2018 and 2019, where I was like, hold on.

Starting point is 01:07:43 All of these things seem so bullish from a health of the network and growth of the ecosystem. And the only thing that's lying is the price right now. And then you look at the rest of the world that we're talking about, all this stuff. That's the chaos right here. The chaos is the traditional financial system. Bitcoin is beating like a steady heart just block after block. And that's like the change in mindset there is all this volatility is a result of the credit pay system that we've had. And Bitcoin's just there doing what it does. And it's going to be

Starting point is 01:08:18 there. You know, right now everyone's, you know, every normal person, they're all talking about inflation now. Like, Bitcoin's been talking about inflation way too long. But now everyone's talking about it. And they're in their house and they smell smoke and they're sniffing. And they're at the point they're sniffing and being like, do you smell something? Like, but when the fire, when things on fire, they're going to look out the window for an escape, and Bitcoin's going to be there on the ground, like a trampoline, and it's going to function perfectly,

Starting point is 01:08:45 and it's just going to be there for them. And that's all it has to do is just exist as this unsustainable other system kind of eats itself or collapses under itself. And so that's what I'll say people are missing right now. It's just get off the price chart and start kind of looking at the fundamentals and not to like pump Bitcoin or anything,

Starting point is 01:09:04 but that's literally what I think people are missing right now. That's why we call the show Bitcoin Fundamentals. Sam, thank you so much for coming on the show and making time and just always bring in so much knowledge with you. Give people a handoff where they can find you. I know you're active on Twitter, but also if there's any articles that you've recently written that you want to highlight, we'll have them in the show notes. Just give people a handoff. Yeah, so I write for our Swan Private. Swan Private's just, I work for Swan.

Starting point is 01:09:31 I don't know. I'm an analyst at Swan. It's a Bitcoin Financial Services Company. And I work for our Swamp Private where I do a lot of the research. And Swamp Private's just high net worth individuals. They come to Bitcoin and they're just like, I need somebody to hold my hand. And so we get like a dedicated rep. They have different needs than a retail client.

Starting point is 01:09:47 So we help them with all kinds of things like trust, business, whatever they need. And then they receive research. So you can DM me if you want that research report. I write it every month with Tomer. And there's always like contributions from Lynn Alden and a lot of great contributors every single month. So you can get me there. the blog on swan.com. So Swan Signal, I just had a new piece up there.

Starting point is 01:10:09 It's called Bitcoin and the U.S. growth problem, why Bitcoin and economic growth are the only reasonable ways out of this debt problem. So you can check that out. It just published today. And then I'm on Twitter. So Sam Kala, S-A-M-C-A-L-H. You can get inside of my mind if you want to, give me a follow. But yeah, that's where I spend a lot of my time talking to all these other great bitcoinsers

Starting point is 01:10:34 and thinkers who are thinking about these hard problems that we face and maybe we can find some solutions. We will definitely have links to that. We'll have links to Swan. Sam, thanks so much for making time. This was really fun. Hey, man. Thanks for having me on.

Starting point is 01:10:49 Big fan of the show. I learn a lot from you. So thanks so much. If you guys enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow the show on whatever podcast application you use. Just search for We Study Billionaires. The Bitcoin specific shows come out every Wednesday. love to have you as a regular listener. If you enjoyed the show or you learned something new or you found

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