What Bitcoin Did - BITCOIN BONDS & THE FIAT PONZI w/ Preston Pysh & Nico Lechuga

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

Preston Pysh is an investor, GP at Ego Death Capital and host of The Investor’s Podcast & Nico Lechuga is Founding Partner at Ego Death Capital. In this episode, we discuss Bitcoin-backed bonds, the role of Bitcoin in corporate finance, and whether the U.S. or nation-states will adopt Bitcoin as a strategic reserve. We also get into game theory behind sovereign wealth funds, companies following MicroStrategy’s playbook, and the broader implications of financial markets being forced to adapt to Bitcoin as well as the impact of U.S. deficit spending, whether fiscal austerity is even possible under a fiat system, and what Bitcoin's rise means for global monetary policy. MASSIVE THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS: IREN: https://www.iren.com/ RIVER: https://river.com/wbd CASA: https://casa.io/ LEDGER: https://www.ledger.com/

The Fiat system globally is a Ponzi scheme. It is based on rolling debt and expanding monetary units. If you don't expand the monetary units, what happens to the price of everything? It collapses, it's deflationary, it goes down. They can't have that. That can't happen in this system the way it's constructed in design. Don't get me wrong. I'm all about making the government more efficient in the way that they operate.

Are they spending with fraud, waste, abuse? bet they are. Can we implement austerity measures and start playing by the rules in a global game that everybody's incentivized to cheat as best they can? No. Do you think we should start on why baseball, sorry, why cricket

is better than baseball? You should have seen him in Australian Eco. Preston was like top off sweating. I think I was the only person in Australia paler than Preston. Playing cricket, he's an athlete too. Oh, he's competitive. He was good. Like for someone who's never played cricket before, Preston's good.

I'll tell you who was good, was Peter. He was a great hitter. He was cranking it. Random Preston facts, right? Like Preston, it's like a scratch golfer when he's like actually played. Not anymore. And Preston was the top of his class boxing at West Point. Really?

Or the weight class. Well, this is why we nearly got in a fight at Silas. I'm leaving this in, by the way. So Nico, we were at sailors and, like, just stood on the dance floor. And Preston was, Preston was like, I could beat you in a fight. I was like, let's have it then. Come on, Preston. No, the boxing thing's a joke.

Because, I mean, I only had three bouts, three bouts. And it was super lightweight back then. Or I was lightweight back then. So there's nothing impressive about it. He's very modest. Yeah, don't sell yourself, sure. Yeah. And you're a scratch golfer, but.

You don't even like golf. Not. No, I'm not. I was like two and a half decades ago, three decades ago, but not anymore. Why don't you like golf? Because I, because of total self-responsibility, there's nobody to blame. It's not just because you'll spend all your time on the golf course. That's what, you know what?

That's why I really don't like the game anymore. It's an absolute time suck. It is such a time suck. You know how I figured this out? Preston tweeted a picture. of a Kirkland golf set, basically being like, you want to be a badass?

Grab this golf set and go out there and just smoke people. And then I'm like, oh, wait. And I'm reading in the comments and somebody makes an assigne comment and press and,

of course, responds back of like how he could golf. And I was like, this is random pressing facts. It's amazing. There you go. The secret is those Kirkland golf clubs are actually really good. Well,

it's the same, from what I understand, it's the same factory. I think making titleists, right? Yeah. It's not like it's, I thought it was Taylor's,

Ames, but maybe it is Tyler. We're going way off the deep end here. Yeah. But so, let's just get started. So one of the things that I wanted to start with Preston, it's kind of a follow-on from the last conversation we had on what Bitcoin did with Luke Groman on these Bitcoin back bonds. You kind of gave, that was the first time I'd really heard that.

And then since then, Brian, is it Estes? How did you say his surname? Brian Astus. Yeah, he's come out with a two-page white paper on these Bitcoin back bonds. So do you want to give us the rundown of what they are and how they're going to fit into potentially the kind of treasury market? Yeah. So Brian Estes, Perry Ann Boring, and I think David Bailey, and there might be maybe a couple more. We're the ones that really kind of drafted this.

I'm pretty sure they've gotten in front of quite a few people within government to take a look at it. So let's start by just doing a real basic education on like what is a bond. Because I think this is really important for people to even like broach this subject. So when when you issue a bond, let's say I wanted to issue Danny a bond. I'm trying to raise money, right? Let's say I issue a bond for $100. I need $100. So I sell Danny a bond.

And I say there's a 5% coupon on the bond and it's 10 years. So what I do is I take this. flip a paper, I sell it to Danny. He gives me $100 a cash right now. And it's important to highlight the fact that the terms of this deal is all in Fiat. Okay. He's going to get dollar fiat back throughout the life of this bond. And he's not getting anything other than Fiat cash. And I just raised $100 worth of Fiat cash in the initiation of this bond. Okay. So, If the coupon's 5% and the face value is 100, these are some of the terms or these are some of the terminology that's associated with this. So I pay him $5 every year in addition to the hundred that I've got to pay him back at the end of the 10 years.

So if we're talking about inflation, a bond because it's denominated in Fiat and nothing else is completely impacted by any time. type of inflationary impacts, right? So let's say that inflation was 5%. Okay. That 5% that he's getting every year in coupon payments from me is just completely eroded away because of the devaluation of the fiat that all this is denominated in. And then at the end, I give them the $100 back. Just a little like side note. The reason these are called coupons is because when you would buy a bond back in the day, there was these little, like, coupons that you would literally rip off of the bond book, okay, and you would mail it, like Danny would mail me this coupon and then I would say, oh, okay, I owe Danny this 5%, and I would write, you know, him the $5 and send it to him for that

coupon then he mailed to me. And then at the end, it's the face value of the entire bond book. So he mails me that, and it's $100, and then I pay that $100 back. It's super simple, okay? So this idea of a Bitcoin back bond is very simple just like this. Okay. So let's let's walk through it with a 1% backing of Bitcoin. So I raise $100 and Danny knows that not only is he going to get the Fiat back at the face value of 100, but he's also going to get 1% of that face value back in Bitcoin at the time that we initiated. So I want to raise $100. I want to raise $100 with this Bitcoin back bond that's 1% backed. Danny gives me his hundred bucks. I immediately go and I buy one dollars worth of Bitcoin with the hundred that I just raised. I continue to squat on that Bitcoin for 10 years.

I keep paying him 5% in cash, Fiat cash, every year. And then at the end of the 10 years, I have to come up with the $99 from somewhere. Okay. And I have to pay him that back. And I also give him the $1 of Bitcoin that I bought 10 years prior that's been sitting in Bitcoin that whole time and I deliver him that Bitcoin. Okay. That's what a Bitcoin-back bond is. So now let's think about it. If Bitcoin, which is priced today at $100,000, let's say over that 10-year period goes to a million, now you really have, in Fiat terms, $10 worth of Bitcoin that has protected a lot of that debasement

that I would fully expect happened over that 10-year period of time in Fiat terms. And so for him, this becomes a protection measure against inflationary impacts. And, you know, if there's one thing that I think the world, and you can see since COVID, the bond market has just been devastated, absolutely wrecked in the valuation of what these bonds are worth, because everybody's starting the price in, the inflation, and the inflation, looking at the fiscal deficit, not only in the U.S., but every other country around the world, and they're saying all this fixed income bonds are denominated in dollars, and I'm going to be crammed down my throat the face value of these bonds whenever they mature. And so for the last

year, when you look at Janet Yellen and the Biden administration, you know what they did for the $7 trillion that they issued over the past year? It was all short duration issuance. They couldn't put 20, 30, 10 years on the bond. They had to put one year on the bond because if they put, well, nobody would buy it. There would be no buyer or better yet. So going back to our example, if I went to you and I said, hey, Danny, I'm raising $100 with this bond issuance, give me the $100. What happens is as soon as I put that on the market to sell it, because it's got so much duration on it, it's got 10, 20, 30 years of duration on it. There's no buyers.

And so what do you have to do when there's no buyers? You have to drop the price. So what does that look like? I say, all right, Danny, I don't need the full hundred. You'll get 100 on the face value in 10 years from now. But I'll sell it to you for 70 bucks right now. And I only raise 70 bucks as opposed to the 100 that I was trying to raise. And the hundred that I got to pay back after 10 years.

Right. So they knew if they took it to auction, the auction was just going to be disastrous because they have to put so much inventory on on the market. So what do they do? They just drop the duration and be like, well, you're not going to be impacted by inflation because it's only one year, you know, duration. And so they were able to raise the amount. And I think, honestly, I think they were scared to put anything with long duration on the market because they knew the option was going to be a total train wreck. Right. So this is this is the challenge. So how do you, So if you put it on the market for that, think through the yield.

So people like see the yields going higher and higher. So how are the yields going higher and higher? Because if you buy the bond for $70 and the face value on it is $100 after 10 years, the coupon gets reassessed. It's still a 5% coupon. But when you account for the 30 extra dollars you get at the end of the 10 years, and you combine that with the yield that's, coming out of a 5% coupon, the real coupon that you're getting, and I could pull up a calculator

and do the math, but let's just use like generic numbers here. It would be like you got a 9% yield. Okay, you as the buyer. But me as the issuer, it's like I'm paying the super high interest rate because nobody's willing to buy the value, the face value on it. And so this is how bond, this is really basic bond math, but to understand why a Bitcoin back bond is so important, you have to understand these basics because look at, look at micro strategy, okay, with their convertible debt deals. Why were these the best performing bonds on the planet since he's been, all of them that he's been issuing? They're like the best performing fixed income bonds on the market. Now, these are convertible, which gets a little bit more complicated, but for simplicity

purposes for the listener, this is what they have to understand is because there's a relationship to Bitcoin, the underpinning of Bitcoin to it, there's this enormous amount of demand because people are looking at Bitcoin's performance over the last decade and they're saying, if there's even a small piece of that associated with a fixed income bond, that's accustomed to being completely denominated in Fiat, I want whatever that is, because it's going to probably protect me from the inflationary effects that impact all fixed income instruments that are denominated in fiat. This is a really big idea. This is a really big deal. So when we're looking at the fiscal deficit of the United States, and we already know the deficits

around like $2 trillion, which means they are going in debt by $2 trillion more next year than what they already are, which is $36 trillion. That's the growth rate of this debt. So Elon's coming in, and he's trying to hit, he's trying to reduce that by a trillion, okay? But where is the largest growth rate in this, in this deficit? Where is it coming from? It's coming from interest payments on the issuance of new debt because these yields are blowing out because you can't issue anything with duration. Okay, so how do you get that under control? What Bitcoin did is brought to you by our lead sponsor and massive legends, Iron, the largest NASDAQ listed Bitcoin miner, using 100% renewable energy.

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Obviously, like, all the treasury issuance has been on the short end recently. Why is that a problem? And why are short-duration treasuries more like, like an inflationary than long duration. Well, because you're just straight up monetizing the debt, right? Like it's the same as cash. Whereas if you can issue something with duration for 30 years, you're first of all pushing that risk to somebody else that, that you don't have to pay that right now,

especially if you can do it at like nothing percent interest rates, which is what this whole world was accustomed to going into COVID. But the price that's often paid when you, roll debt is what you're really doing is you're shortening the duration, shorting the duration, shorting the duration until you get to a point where it's like you're just all you can issue it is overnight money and you're just straight up monetizing the debt at that point. You're just realizing it all into more fiat units into the system as opposed to masking it as like this asset and it getting bid like it did for 30 years.

No, 40, 40 years, sorry. that's why it got bid for 40 years because as they were rolling it, it was masking the printing by stripping away the duration and the appetite for anything with duration. So in these Bitcoin back bonds, one thing that I'm unclear on is like,

where does the Bitcoin go for the 10 or 30 years duration? Well, so like in the example that I provided, it was, I have to buy that. Like, that would be part of the contract to make these desirable. So it goes into like an escrow. Yeah, it goes into an escrow. This is why I think Bitcoin is way better than gold is because you could time lock multi-sig the custody.

So think about this. If part of the terms and conditions are that I'll take 1% of what's raised in the bond and I immediately buy Bitcoin within 30 days or whatever the terms stipulate, right? And I locked that into a multi-sig time-locked account that the time, like, it would be, it would require two of two signatures to move it before the 10 years, meaning you and I both have to agree that we've got to move the Bitcoin to you, okay, which isn't going to happen, right? But you want that in there in case the two of us come together and we, we want to renegotiate terms and we come to an agreement. So that's why you'd have two of two earlier than 10 years.

Then after 10 years, by a time lock, because you can do this with Bitcoin, you can't do this with a gold vault, okay? After 10 years, it becomes one of two signatures to move the Bitcoin. Okay. And that one of two could be designated to just your key and not mine. Right? I could actually lock myself out of the vault. after 10 years to guarantee that I can't steal the funds or retain the funds.

Good luck doing that with a gold vault where I'm custodying it the whole time. And if you wanted to sell the bond before the duration is up, I assume you then just have to swap a key out. Then it would be a two of two signature, I guess. Yeah. Which is another example of like why you would need two of two key signature prior to that. Because if you wanted to sell the bond to somebody else, then there you go.

Do you think there's any chance that this actually gets implemented in any, in any meaningful way? Well, I think at the U.S. federal level, I think that that is like such a moonshot idea, first of all. But this idea could be implemented at a local level, like anywhere in the world, right? Like you got small governments and you got big governments and you got people that are out there that can hear this idea and say, well, geez, well, I sell munis, right? I sell municipal bonds in whatever jurisdiction I'm at. I could do something like this. And I'm telling you, whoever does

this at a government level, like, it's going to be mind-blowing to watch the results, because I think the, I think the auction is going to be not only insane, but here's the, here's the advantage for the people doing this. They're lowering their interest rate because it's going to be so oversubscribed, just like micro strategies issuing convertible debt deals, guess what their interest rate is? It's zero percent. It's zero percent, right? So they just have to pay the face value back. And for their convertibility, they can just transmute it into common stock, which the price

there is paid through the debasement of the common shareholders, which is fine. So I think that I think any municipality that's looking at this, I think that they're going to find especially ones that have a large debt burden or interest rate burden to fund themselves. Like, hey, here's a great idea that just you need somebody to execute it. And I think that the results would be astounding. Astounding. I think the appetite for this is through the root. Because here's the thing a lot of people will miss as well.

There's so many trillions of dollars in the world from money managers, fixed income, money managers that have a mandate to own fixed income. Yeah. Okay. So this is a product that they can buy that, like, meets their prospectus of having to buy fixed income. And if you don't think they want to put even a small portion of this in their portfolio, I think you're out of your mind.

I think they'd be tripping over themselves to put this in their portfolio. And what kind of Bitcoin kickage do you think they'd need to put on these long valuation bonds, like hardly anything. I mean, you could, you could, you could argue that you're de-risking it by putting a smaller percent in there for them, like for them to buy it. Right. But I think what they would, what the issuers might find is if I issued something at 10% backed by Bitcoin, that the interest rate that they're going to pay in this, the

oversubscription and the interest on it, the interest from like the buyer side, like people interested in buying it is just going to be freaking gangbusters. So like, if you sit, if you're a com troll or somewhere or whatever and you're like sitting in one of these seats to like exercise something like this, like, God, that'd be fun. It'd be really fun. It's really interesting this president, this point that you're making on like at a state level. I think we're seeing this with the strategic reserve of like the strategic reserves at a state level. And I think your point of like figuring it out is kind of fun to, to watch, you would only need a few of these issuances before you could really create almost a

sensitivity analysis of like, where does this bond the initial interest rate have to be in order to versus like how much Bitcoin is backing this? And it would be pretty fascinating and how quickly like the market would demand that and figure it out. The thing if, you know, if Roman, if Luke Roman was here, he would tell you the shot heard around the world was when the, when the US took back the trillion dollars of buying power from Russia, from the treasury market, right? They exercise the excalibur of the U.S., which is its treasury market and its swift payment system and all that. And they basically just said, that's not yours anymore. Even though you made all that money, it's not yours anymore. He would tell you that's like the shot hurt around the world.

And something like this that takes the control out of the issuer and is actually just a fair terms of terms and conditions for both parties is a total game changer. Anybody who's an honest broker is going to look at them be like, that's exactly what I want. The funny thing with that is, and it's a little bit like the Strategic Reserve, in that the countries that I think would probably stand to benefit from this the most are the people like Russia, China, even like North Korea, it's the sort of pariah states. And it seems, to me at least, that the U.S. has almost the most to lose because of the U.S. dollar. Do you think they're thinking like that?

So there's a really famous book called Only the Paranoid Survive. This was one of Steve Jobs' favorite books. And I mean, the premise of the book is either you can cannibalize yourself or you can have somebody else come in and do it for you. And right now, what I would tell anybody from anywhere in the world that's listening to this is, yeah, the U.S. has benefited from dollar dominance, period. But technology inserts itself and dematerializes competitive advantages. Typically, we're used to seeing this just like at a company to company level. But what you're seeing playing out right now is a technology, a decentralized technology that is dematerializing the state's advantage to exercise the printing press. And if you're a

country that just wants to lean into the old way of doing something and not recognize this decentralized technology and move towards that and cannibalize yourself because when we're looking at the game theory on this, the worst outcome is to fight it as opposed to embrace it. And like that would be my message to especially to U.S. policymakers is you can fight this as much as you want. But in my humble opinion, like all you're doing. is shooting yourself in the foot even worse by fighting it as opposed to embracing it as early as possible. So, but you have to understand what's playing out. You have to understand the game theory. You have to

understand that you are being dematerialized by this decentralized protocol. And if you don't understand that, your gut reaction to fight it is going to lead you down the wrong path. Yeah. So that, that is the really interesting thing on the strategic reserve idea to me is that like, and I kind of want both your takes on this. Let's start with you, Niko. Do you think that the strategic reserve is a threat to the U.S. dollar? I think not having the strategic reserve is like the biggest threat to the U.S. dollar. I think the presence point of like the incorporation in some way, shape or form to Bitcoin, whether it's bond issuances or like a company that is starting to aggregate Bitcoin in the way of like,

we have strategic reserves of rare earth metals or certain elements that we see as crucial to national security. And we've had that for all of time. I think what we're realizing is this thing can solve a lot of problems that the U.S. currently has. And if the U.S. wants to continue to be dominant on the world stage and not have a slow and then rapid kind of destruction, that you have to embrace change. And part of this change is Bitcoin. I think what we're seeing, Denny, and this was your point on like Russia, North Korea,

some of these other prior states, Iran. Is those, and this is my kind of like thing with some of the companies in the space too, is those people that feel pain the most are generally the ones to recognize like a solution to mitigate or that pain. And historically, like the U.S. financial system has worked really, really well for people in the United States and companies and at a state level. But I think what we're finding right now with the current economic position is there has to be something that changes. I think that we're all pretty excited about the strategic reserve. I think Preston's point earlier on and the bond issuance is pretty key here of to do it at a federal level is going to require congressional approval. To do it at a state level, there's less barriers.

And so I'd almost look to see certain states that start to do that earlier on. Yeah, that's interesting because the Bitcoin backed bonds, again, to me as a like a layman, signify even more dollar weakness than the strategic reserve. Well, I think that this is the big concern with it is if the U.S. comes out, especially at the federal level and says, we're backing, you know, they could do it as a test. They could do, you know, five different issuance all within like a short time frame. And one of them is backed by Bitcoin and the other one's art. But my concern is, is the demand for the one that has the Bitcoin backing is going to clearly make a demonstration on its low, it's producing a lower interest rate. based off of what it's purchased at and how it's reducing the amount that's having to be paid back. And that is going to be like a shot heard around the world,

especially if the U.S. is the one first to do it. And what does that do from a game theory, global game theory on Bitcoin? I think it accelerates it in a massive way. And so then like, well, at what pace? I don't know. I have no idea to the strategic reserve thing. If they come out and say, oh, yeah, we got a strategic reserve. We want to acquire a million Bitcoin or whatever time frame. Like, I think that's a shot hurt around the world. And, you know, what does that do to fiat currencies? I think it's, oh, man, I think it starts to get pretty crazy really fast. And I think that if there would be a counterpoint to doing this, it would probably be. something like that. And, you know, so then let's talk about what, what does that mean from a game theory standpoint? Well, if you're in charge, you want to start acquiring this stuff as much

as you possibly can, but you want to do it in a discrete way that nobody realizes that you're acquiring as much of it as you possibly can. So that might be what we see come first, and then it just like all flips to to this idea of a Bitcoin back bond. But I think where you, I really do think where you're going to see this play out first is at a local level or a really small government level, they're going to start doing stuff like this. And even that's going to be hard to keep the lid on it because I think the performance is going to speak for itself really quickly. Does it kind of come down to the question of what's more important for the US to try and strategically save, whether it's the dollar or the treasury market? Yeah, I think so. And you

think the answer to that is the treasury market? Well, you're saying which of those two options would make it more discreet by issuing a Bitcoin bond or doing like a, I mean, the sovereign wealth fund things also at play here, which we hadn't even discussed, which, you know, you got, yeah, give us the lowdown on that as well. I mean, Lutnik's going to, he seems like he's going to light this thing up. I think the part with this is easier reserve that I, if I think about it from like the game theory that you guys are talking about and the signaling of like dollar weakness, I think that the way that you would try and message it, and it's really interesting, like, how most of our, like, brains work.

Like, you hear which you want to hear. So I think that if you were to message to those outside of Bitcoin that you're aggregating Bitcoin or you're creating a strategic reserve of Bitcoin in the same way you have a strategic reserve of oil or tantalum or plutonium or uranium. And these are all things in the best interest of the U.S.'s, like, world dominance of things that we need to have, then make. Maybe that gets by or ammo. But I think that the, the, if we just step back and you're looking at the forest from

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That's L-E-D-G-R.com. So on the sovereign wealth side of things, that's what you're going to be. that's always been like obviously Norway have a huge sovereign wealth fund. The Gulf States, which are all like kingdoms, have a sovereign wealth fund. Do you think if the US do implement one, first of all, where will the money come from? And secondly, do you think that's a positive? Yeah, I mean, first of all, when you look at a sovereign wealth fund, it should be for excess, not for countries that run a two trillion dollar deficits every year. But going back to another point that Luke likes to make, which is the greatest export the U.S. has ever had as its U.S. Treasury

market. So, you know, we can print and we can offset whatever we want by expanding the sheer number of Fiat units in the system and then just continuing to expand them to offset, you know, what's, but and I, and I, it pains me to say that because as a person who just likes to play by the rules and do the right thing. That's that's not something that is really kind of quote unquote fair from a global standpoint to the other countries that maybe aren't operating off of, you know, a currency that is the World Reserve currency. But I think that that's probably from a game theory standpoint, the smartest thing to do

for the U.S. If they're just looking at their own personal interests as a country. help me out with the question again, Danny, I got a little sidetracked. I guess the big part of the question is why the money comes from for the sovereign wealth. Yeah. Yeah. I think it comes from that. Another would just be if we look at the TikTok thing.

So Trump, TikTok was banned. And then he comes in and says, no, it's not going to be banned, but I want half of the ownership of it. Right. Which this gets in the whole, a whole other, you know, governance standpoint. Can't should the government, should the government have control of half of a company, you know, there's, boy, you could debate this for for eons. But in that scenario, that might be like the perfect, if you were going to push all the governance stuff aside and say that, okay, well, then that would be, might be the best way to hold on to. Now, you open a whole can of worms with respect to conflicts of interest and things like that when you're holding private equity or publicly traded equity. in a sovereign wealth fund, especially when you start getting into the pharmaceutical stuff. Good Lord, I could only imagine the breakdown and incentives there.

Like, look at this COVID shot. And I mean, you even heard Lutnik kind of mutter that when they were starting the sovereign wealth fund. And I was kind of like, oh, dear God. I didn't even hate that. What did he say? Yeah. You know, as Trump was there signing the executive order for this thing, he said something to the effect, and I'm going to get this way wrong,

But it was kind of like, yeah, wouldn't it be nice to kind of have the ability to own something before the government goes in and buys like all these shots to basically own the equity of the companies that are going to get approved for this kind of thing in advance in a sovereign wealth fund? And I'm just like, dear God, that's really scary from an incentive standpoint. So, yeah, there's a lot in there that I think you could argue a whole bunch of different directions. Do you think we could see a weird thing where we get both a Bitcoin strategic reserve and we have Bitcoin in a sovereign wealth fund? Yeah, why not? Yeah, I think so. Like, I think to Nico's point that he was talking about a little bit earlier with like what is a strategic reserve typically for, it's more for like commodities and trying to be able to offset and balance supply and demand issues so that there's not these massive price. Like, this is the intention.

I'm not saying that this is how it works for execution. The intention of like why you have one of these things is to basically act as a dampener to supplying demand in strategic and important commodities. That's typically why they're used. So, you know, why would the U.S., and that gets a little scary, right? Because like, let's say the price of Bitcoin's ripping and the intention is to dampen whatever those effects are by either buying or selling. And, you know, it might not be used in that manner.

It might be more used just to acquire as much of it as they can for a strategic purpose. But yeah, I think when you look at like the naming convention of these these quote unquote tools, that's, you know, the intentions. I think one of the other points on this that's like really interesting that we're seeing like play out right now is like Bitcoin on companies balance sheets that have nothing to do with Bitcoin. And you're starting to see this permeate. we're seeing certain deals right now that are that are within the market that companies looking to be acquired that are public companies by private companies with the intention of making those basically Bitcoin accumulation vehicles or aggregating a bunch of money spacking into another company and simply running the same playbook.

I think depending on how that continues to play out with the mix of like private and then going public marketplace will start to serve as almost a testing ground for some of these other things. Because what's happening is like if you're in a state position right now, you're watching that play out and you're looking at how the market is behaving towards that thing, that thing that is Bitcoin. I think that that type of proof over and over again, and I'm not saying that's good or bad or otherwise, but we can look at like the macro situation. It's pretty fascinating to see. I think that that's where it comes into, let's test some of these other things.

And when you see these white paper come out on like Bitcoin Backbonds or Strategic Reserve and the game theory behind that, until we actually run the playbook on it, we don't really know what that looks like. But we do have the beginning of the examples of what does that look like in a public space when a company acquires Bitcoin

and how the market treats that company. It's pretty fascinating. That's one of the things that I'm, I've said this before, but I'm both short-term bullish and more medium-term bearish on, is the idea of, like, lots of companies basically copying the micro strategies to playbook. Because what I can imagine happening is we see a lot of companies come in, try and be sailor, and they're just not sailor. And they'll probably get unfavorable terms on their debt.

And then what happens next bear market? Is that something you're watching closely, Niko? So one of the things that we're looking at, I think that this is fascinating. And I think that we have to be very careful of Michael Saylor's like one in eight billion. Do we have eight billion people in the world? And he's been able to execute this strategy flawlessly. And he has a company, he has an actual company today that makes profits. And he's able to transmute those profits into Bitcoin.

I think we have to be really, really careful of the incentive structure with some of these companies that otherwise, and Michael Strategy should be a public company. There's no way around this like it should exist as a public company. I think one of the things that we have to look at is how does the market behave and how does the market view companies that probably don't have either A as strong of financials as previous public companies that would be issued in the past would have or the other part of it, how does the market behave like when you have a business that's been floundering and flat and that business starts to acquire Bitcoin, like longer term. I would be really, really curious on that.

That's what I think I'm personally really excited about. And I think you're going to start to see in the next, like IPO cycle in the back half of this year, next 2026, is companies in Bitcoin that are Bitcoin companies that make profits. And those profits are in Bitcoin. So you kind of have this high growth tech company that is also cash flowing Bitcoin. I think, think that type of company has very little risk of failing. And I think that the market sentiment towards that type of company would be really, really favorable. Now, again, this is all just theoretical at this point. But you're starting to see that the buds of those type of companies in private markets, and I'm really excited to see one of those go public. And what does that look

like? Yeah, the intent of your question, I think, is wrapped around. If we get too many, quote-unquote, Michael Saylor type companies in the future moving forward that that's going to create a bunch of sell pressure if they can't basically retain their profitability or manage their position size appropriately when they fall on hard times. And that's going to have an influx of coins that are sold into the market. Is that kind of like where you're going with the question? Yeah. Yeah. So one of the things that I think is unique about the way micro strategy has done it is anytime that they need to make some type of coupon payment or par value payment in the future or they're just raising cash and buying it in the Bitcoin. They've done it by expanding the number of equity tokens,

their stock, onto the market. And so it's not that they have to come up with cash or that their profits have to be generating cash in order to provide this back into the market or that they have to sell Bitcoin in order to come up with the cash to pay it back to the market. And so when you look at the structure of how they've done it, it's very intelligent. It's very smart because they can just continue to expand. Now, the overall value of the stock might go down. And that might be painful for people holding the company because they just keep issuing more shares to offset some of these decisions.

But I think that they're able to retain a lot of the Bitcoin without having to cough them up and sell them to make. good on on a lot of these, the structure of all these things that they're issuing. So as long as companies are coming in and they're strong from an operation standpoint and they're they're structuring these products in a similar way, you know, it might not actually turn into a bunch of cell pressure. But again, it comes down to the intelligence of the people running the companies and how overzealous some of them are going to get over their ability to retain, you know, competitive of moat and free cash flows in the business.

Yeah, because the thing with my, like, don't get me wrong, I don't think micro strategy you're going to struggle here. But is there going to be enough appetite in the market for other companies to come out and issue zero percent? Compared to today, I think the appetite hasn't even been remotely addressed with what's been issued. But will that become an issue down the road, five, 10, 15 years? Absolutely.

Will it, will it reduce their ability to make yield against the nav? Like this is the metric that I, you know, I'm running around saying the new earnings per share. This is this is like Michael, this is how he reports his results, which is I added another, you know, 10,000 Bitcoin to my balance sheet. And before I had 400,000, therefore that is this yield. Like that's the new earnings per share. Is he going to be able to stack that high of a yield in those terms that I just described if everybody else is out there doing this? No. I also think the environment is going to get much competitive.

So like, pressing you at this point of the operators of the company, like this is, this is one of the things that I think is going to play out in the years, the years that come of. I think the environment right now is like there's so few companies that are actually doing this that this comes into the amount of appetite that there is versus the amount of interest. I think that what becomes really interesting is like, well, now let's say we have 100 companies that are doing this. And you're looking at the financial health of each one of the.

of those companies, the executive teams at each one of those companies. And now you're getting to weigh that with the amount of Bitcoin that they have and the business cycle. I think that's going to be interesting from like my standpoint. And then the other part of it is like, well, what do the businesses do? So I think that as we see businesses in Bitcoin that start to get the financial metrics to actually go public, those are going to be really intriguing because they're the few businesses that people are actually like either giving them Bitcoin and that becomes part of like what they're cash flowing or part of the operation, they're splitting the Bitcoin that the user is getting. And they don't then have to go into a brokerage and buy it. I don't know how any of that's

going to play out, but it's pretty fascinating to watch. Back to your question, Nico, from a little earlier actually. I'm kind of jumping around a bit here. But what do you think the makeup of the company's trying to copy the micro strategy's playbook will be? Do you think it will be, smaller companies, or do you think we will see people like Apple and Meta actually make a real play in this in the kind of next five years? This is a really interesting question. So like Preston and I and everybody else at the fund see this a lot. And it comes into just investing in Bitcoin.

The problem that you see, and you saw this with micro strategy, or not Microsoft, when it was brought to a shareholder vote. Yeah. And that's a different scenario. But let's take a company that's smaller than that. but still more sizable than what we're seeing play out right now. The people that have to buy in at a board level are generally, they're highly paid and there's only a few hundred of them in the world that do those jobs.

And if that means that with something like this, there's not much upside for them. They're not going to get the yield of like what is being generated. And they're because of that more risk-prone or risk-averse, excuse me, risk-averse. what you see on the other side is with the companies that are much smaller, the companies that we're seeing to date that are spacking into the space or private buying a public company, those companies generally have a few operators that are bought into this strategy and they're more risk prone.

And I think that because of the, until that changes where the conversation becomes a threat of, well, you're not doing this thing. you're not engaging with Bitcoin. So your shares are not being bought by the market or in the debt issuance. No one is buying your debt. Until that conversation changes, the larger companies that operate, in my opinion,

in a more risk-averse environment for their own jobs preservation will be the last adopters. But why is the incentive not there? If they're sat on tons of cash and they're either doing buybacks or dividends or whatever they do, why not instead of doing that by some Bitcoin, even if it's a tiny percent? I would just say their mindset on these boards because these positions are great, right?

Like they get the prestige of sitting on the board. They don't have to really kind of deeply understand something to hit a grand slam. Putting Bitcoin on the balance sheet is kind of a grand slam idea. Because they haven't done their hundred hours of homework on it, right? So they're looking at this thing. And it's like, yeah, the performance has been crazy, but what if it gets hacked? What if it, like all the really amateur hour, like I've spent 15 minutes looking at this type arguments is what they're armed with. And so they don't need to hit a grand slam at the risk of striking out.

All they need to do at the, at the worst is just get hit by the pitch. Like, as long as they can get the first base or get walked or whatever, they're going to continue to sit in that seat. And that's, you know, like a very low risk with, with. with for them high upside, which is I retain my board seat. It's just the mindset. And then you got to think of it too is it's not just one that you got to convince. You got to convince like a majority of the board in a lot of these decisions. And so for these big companies, they're just like, well, we don't have to do that.

We're Apple. We're sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars in cash and cash equivalents that are giving us, you know, pretty high return yield with 5% by having, you know, one month money on the books, which is giving us a higher yield than long duration stuff. And they're just like, we don't really need to do much here with this treasury. Like, uh, what can we do operationally? Oh, the self driving car. Oh, yeah, it sucked.

Okay. What can we do? You know, can we fix Siri? Well, I, clearly they're not doing that because that thing seems to get work. Um, I don't know, but they're very risk of adverse like Niko's saying. So it's a function of just how weak. a week and how much they just don't have to hit a home run. I think this point is great, right?

Like, it is based on outbats. And if we use this analogy, like, it is not even based on. We need to get some cricket analogies going here. Yeah, yeah, I would love to get some cricket. If you think about the board members, right, the, the, you guys hit this all the time of the, the cycles of Bitcoin, the compounded annual growth rate of Bitcoin, these guys think in like quarterly, like their mindset is in a quarterly basis. What's going to happen in the next three months?

What can I do over the next three months to not rock the boat too much? How can I maintain for a board seat like half million dollar to few million dollar position to show up four times a year? And so it's just the incentive structures off. I mean, we see this in a private space with companies that are not even public about investing in this space. Like we could get buy in from a company that's mature from a private standpoint. So you're talking about a multi-billion dollar, tens of billions of dollars operation.

We might get three of their seven board members to buy in. Here's something else. And it's definitely not for the money. Like if they get paid a million dollars to sit on this board, they can care less about that because they're already over the top wealthy, these people that sit in these of these large companies. It's the prestige of sitting on the board. So now think if that's the real incentive for them to sit on this board is the prestige of sitting on the board.

And there's other factors. I'm just kind of using this as one like kind of way to look at it. There's be nothing more embarrassing than to be the person that brings this to the board as an idea and it goes south on them. And they're, they kind of go down on the books as the one who was relieved from the board because they were the crazy person with the with the Bitcoin idea. That's just risk to their to their ego. It's risk to like they just don't think like this.

But at some point, that's going to be someone and they won't go down as like, is like the idea that brought a Bitcoin, they'll be the genius to blow a Bitcoin. This is why the whole micro strategy thing is really getting interesting, right? Because as we go through the next four years, I think it's just going to get so demonstrative, so insanely demonstrative that this company

that is outperforming in video that only makes, call it $100 million a year. And just so people know, that's like chump change compared to some of these other companies in what they make. But yet this company continued to outperform them year over year, you're going to get to a breaking point where people are like, okay, clearly I'm missing something.

Clearly I'm missing something. I'm surprised we've not actually got there sooner. Were you disappointed with the Microsoft board meeting? Sorry, the Microsoft board meeting. The fact that they gave Saylor three minutes to absolutely speed run a presentation. I didn't know what to expect, but yeah, I mean, it was, I mean, giving him three minutes was almost like a slap in the face. But he got it and, you know, I actually loved the presentation that he gave.

It was like, you know, I equated to like AI, the amount of compression that happened in that presentation was astronomical and like whether you want to be, whether you've invested the energy in time to decompress the file that he put out there is kind of the part that really makes me smirk. Because, you know, you got to put a lot of energy and a lot of time into being able to even understand what he was saying. but let me tell you, there was a lot there. So he put it there. We didn't invent right afterwards. And what Press is talking about, he decompressed that three minutes. It took 30 minutes.

So at 10x position down, it took 30 minutes to get through those three minutes. And I wasn't even close. It was amazing. Yeah, it was amazing. But I think the other part of this, Danny, is like, we're here. I think we're here.

And like, that's, to me, that's so exciting. Like, you're in the room, you're getting to have the conversation. You might already, be set up to fail. But like someone is giving you a little bit of airspace to listen. And that's so different from even just a couple years ago. And that to me is very exciting.

And I think that there are different people at a government level, at a company level, um, that are looking for ways to distinguish themselves. And because of that, we're going to still get a little bit of this conversation and slowly like the dam breaks. Yeah, totally. It's a massive sea change in the last few years. I want to change gears a little bit and talk about Doge,

because I know Preston's been on a rant about this. But let's start with you, Nico. What's your just overarching view on the whole Doge thing right now? I think there's a lot of government inefficiency. I haven't spent any degree of time in government and definitely not even close to what Preston's done with the federal government. So I think there's a lot of government efficiency. see, I think like someone actually like being able to to look at this is is interesting from my

standpoint. It is interesting to me that that someone that's not a US citizen is getting access to a lot of things that are probably pretty sensitive from like that standpoint. I don't really have like a super, super educated opinion on it. So I'll kind of like yield from there and let you guys talk it through and can jump it. We can defer to Preston here then. So what do you think the chances of them actually taking $2 trillion off the budget are? Oh, I think two trillions a lot.

I think that's a, that's a lot. Could he get to maybe a trillion? I think he might be able to get to a trillion. But the thing that I think is even maybe more missed on all of this is this idea that they have to keep expanding the Fiat units in the system, right? Like if they do these cuts and they're pulling it back, like as far as the monetary units in the system, which are defiant. inflationary, who's going to add them? Because you can't have the prices of all this property go down, right? Because what does that mean for your top line on your on your revenue for taxes? Because when you look at the correlation of that, let me tell you, it's very profound. You know, if you had a down market in this S&P 500, the tax receipts in that following year are way off and way down and that deficit's going to continue to blow out. And so I would, I would first of all frame this. because I think this is the more important talking point, and then we'll talk to the Doge piece, which is the Fiat system globally is a Ponzi scheme. It is based on rolling debt and expanding

monetary units. If you don't expand the monetary units, what happens to the price of everything? It collapses. It's deflationary. It goes down. Okay. And that's the one thing they can't have is the value of a person's house. Let's say it's $500,000. They can't have that person. house go down the $300,000 next year, and then they're forced to move for a job or whatever, and they realize a $200,000 loss. They can't have that. That can't happen in this system the way it's constructed in design. So if you have to keep expanding the monetary units and you go in here and you're saying, well,

and, you know, I did a show with you and Peter where we used this monopoly board example. And this is a perfect way to frame this. So let's say we have multiple monopoly tables. And if you remember the rules is let's say there's four different tables. There's four people at each of these four tables for 16 people playing a game. If you are able to buy the property and the scarce desirable equity on the board of another table, you can take your currency on table one and go over to table two and buy the equity off of table two's board. what you find is in this scheme of this collective global game is that there's an intense incentive

to print as much money as possible faster than the other boards because then those players can go to the other boards and buy the equity and so what you're what you're suggesting through austerity which is what doge is attempting to do which is austerity majors and become more don't get me wrong I'm all about making the government more efficient in the way that they operate Are they spending with fraud, waste, and abuse? You bet they are, right? And that needs to be fixed, okay? So that's important for me to state.

But going back to this scheme, this global scheme, Fiat scheme, the incentive is to print to that local board and then allow those players to go to the other board to scoop up the scarce desirable equity that's producing free cash flows as fast as I can faster than everybody else. So when we look at this, can we become, can we implement austerity measures and start playing by the rules in a global game that everybody's incentivized to cheat as best they can? No. Because if you're the only, now, if every player, let's say there was a collective agreement that all four players on all four boards, so 16 players come together.

I say, from here on out, there's no more expanding the Fiat units. And there was a way, there was some way through mathematics, to enforce that they can't expand the monetary units. What happens to the incentive of the players? All of a sudden, they want to start reducing the local government. They want them to be more efficient. They don't want to pay higher taxes. They want to start solving deficits, local deficits on the boards.

But you have to be dealing with a sound money, that is the is now the network effect and is more dominant than than the Fiat. Okay, system. So you're saying until we have a Bitcoin standard, we can't do this. Yes. Yes. That's exactly what I'm saying. And so what I'm saying is when you look at the size of the Fiat market relative to Bitcoin,

Bitcoin's a pittance in buying power term. Okay. So you've got to play the corrupt game better than everybody else is playing the corrupt game until you're at parity or Bitcoin is bigger than the buying power of the other game. And it's important to say buying power because if you look at the number of units, it's always going to confuse people. But if you look at the buying power of the two different systems, when the fair system has as much buying power as the corrupted system is when you're going

to really see incentives for austerity to start to work. But until then, it's you, hey, so I'm looking at, so now to answer your Doge question, because I think that that's really, really important for people to understand the gain, right? You have to understand the gain. You might not like the gain, but that's the game. So now let's talk about Doge and its ability to reduce the deficit. So, you know, they've got, call it $7 trillion of spending and they've got like $5 trillion of money coming in the door for call it a $2 trillion deficit. And Elon's saying, I'm going to take a trillion out of that $2 trillion, which means you're still growing the debt.

by a trillion, even if Musk is successful in what he's saying he could probably do at his best. You're still expanding the debt by a trillion. And what I'm saying is the world's already accustomed, especially U.S. citizens are accustomed to that trillion entering the system somehow, some way that he's going to remove out of the game here. And so what are they going to do? Isn't it ironic? I find this hilarious. Musk today, I just read this on X. wants to send a $5,000 check to everybody. I saw this. Offset.

So this goes to the point I made when I made the Doge video and what I said right from the beginning is you might save all this money. But if you're going to play this game, you're going to have to still print it somewhere. It's a matter of where are you going to send it after you print it? That's really kind of the question. Well, it seems he's going to mail out the checks and it's going to be very much like the COVID stimulus. And what happened during COVID stimulus? You saw the price of everyday items, call it a steak, call it, you know, the stuff that everybody, when you have a $1,200 stimulus check in your pocket that you never have, you're just going in more debt every month. So to have this, this quote unquote, windfall of $1,200 hit your bank account, what do people do?

They go out and they, for once, they get some relief to go get the one thing that they've wanted all. And so what does that do? Well, it impacts supply chains. It impacts the prices of everyday items. Now, all this printing that they were doing from like 2008 up until COVID, how were they inserting all this printing? They were doing it through QE. They were doing it through bidding bonds, which were then having an impact on equity.

So basically, it was making the properties on the monopoly board go up in value, and people weren't collecting more when they went around go. But now what Musk is saying is, well, now we're going to, going to give a little bit more money when you go around Go, but we're probably still going to do QE type things. You're all right there, Danny? I just kept talking. Oh my God, I swallows some water badly. But so is it not better, though, that that money instead of goes to like the corrupt government goes to the people? I think so, but yes. So the answer is yes. If you're going to, if you're going to print a bunch of money, collectively like what's best? Well, what's best is it everybody gets a cut of that

printing. If you print a trillion and you have a billion people, like write the check to all those people, right, equally, that's a fairer system. But what you're, but what's the impact is, is because of how everything's been constructed. You're just going to watch prices rip on everyday items, your CPI bucket. And then they're just going to change the, the weights of the CPI bucket and make it seem like it's not a lot of inflation, right? That's what the government's going to do in response. But is it better for everyday citizens to, if you're going to debase, is that a fairer system than pumping it in the QE and the people who already hold the assets basically get richer and everybody else pays for it? Yes.

But you're going to, that's, what's funny what I found online is when I say this, people are like, Preston's for UBI. No, I'm just for like, if you're going to cheat at the game, which we have to cheat, like everybody's got to play this game. The whole game is rigged to cheat. It's a Ponzi scheme, okay? How do you play that Ponzi scheme the fairest way? I guess it's UBI.

I don't know, right? Yeah. I guess it is. If they're printing a trillion dollars either way, why is a trillion dollars to the people more inflationary than it is, however it's being spent right now? Because when you're printing and doing QE, all they're doing is they're printing a bunch of money and they're buying fixed income bonds

off the market and they're saying it'll be. trickle down effects. Like that money will fall from the heavens down to every last person at the bottom of the pyramid. But what really happens is the people at the top who own those assets, they get this cash infusion and they're like, all right, well, there's less fixed income. Let me go look at the equity market. Okay, well, it's priced here.

I'm just going to buy this stock with this cash that I got from this fixed income that I had. Right. And so then the equity markets get bid. and it gets more valuable. And that's why you're seeing PEs at, you know, 30 plus on publicly traded markets. And that's where it went. It went into asset.

Going to the Monopoly board, right? If we're going to do QE as an example, what QE is is the banker saying, all right, well, I got to get some more cash in the game here. So, Nico, you're basically squatting on all the properties. I'm going to buy those properties off of you. I'm going to give you all this cash. And now we got some more cash in the game. What's Nika going to do? He's going to go to the remaining little bit of equity that the other three players have.

And he's going to say, I'll buy that. I'll buy this. And I don't care what price I pay. You can make the price is super high. I'll pay that price. And he just scoops up any asset that's generating free cash flows because as he goes around the board, he just makes more and more money. You on the other hand had to give up the one thing that you had that was like somewhat

protecting you from, you know, going insolvent. And you had to sell it. He was giving you a sweetheart deal in the moment. You had to take it. That's QE. Whereas UBI is everybody goes around and we're going to insert it as you go around the board every time. And we're not going to play this QE game. But that was the weapon of choice for government after 2008 for a decade straight.

And they're going to probably have to do some form of this now, too. Like these $5,000 checks are a pittance compared. to like how much they're going to print and do this way I just described via QE. Danny, you had the question, though, of like, why does the, why do the $5,000 checks cause more of the CPI inflation than, um, than the typical way of this? I think what we've seen is that, uh, when this does happen during the stimulus checks, like people don't save that, they end up buying, uh, the thing that they've been waiting to buy. Uh, I have a friend, really good friend. Uh, he has,

a high-end knife company and his knives started $350 and go up to $15,000. During the period of those stimulus checks, he did more business than he's ever done his life. They've been conditioned to spend, right? Because whether they know why or not, that's, we don't even need to address that. They just know that a dollar today is 99 cents tomorrow. They understand that deeply in their core, whether they would admit it or not, who knows, but they've been conditioned that that's reality. And so when you get a hot dollar in your pocket and you're normally losing more money next month,

like you are conditioned to spend and consume as fast as you can. I'm just conscious of time because I've got a house off in like 20 minutes, Preston, but you have some child that you want to run through with those. Do you want to, should I pull them up? You know what? The only one that really bring up is the first one that I sent you because it kind of just is a graphic of this deficit, Doge conversation that we were having.

And it just does a really great job kind of laying out like what it looks like as far as the expenses versus what's coming in the door and what the deficit is. And then what Doge is trying to tackle, which is about half of the deficit. Yeah, there you go. So you can see this on, you know, anybody watching the YouTube version, you can see all the expenses over there on the right hand side. Just call it $7 trillion. And then what they're bringing in.

is the five. Right before, literally right before we started this call, I saw some article on Zero Hedge saying that Trump is looking at reducing taxes by $4.5 trillion to like incentivize corporations. And like you just look at this. Then you look at the left side there, which is, you know, five trillion in receipts. And you're saying, well, like, well, how in the world does that work? Like, how does that? How does that work? And again, this article literally came out five minutes before we doubt. And so who knows how like authentic any of that is.

But it's interesting because everybody's talking about how they're going to be more efficient. They're going to save money. And I'm sure that they're catching a, I honestly believe they're catching a lot of fraud, especially when it comes to like free speech stuff, which is interesting because Elon owns X. And so he's like going after that hardcore. So, you know, there's that whole piece. But I don't know. I'm just kind of looking at all of this and kind of smirking and saying they got to still play

this Ponzi scheme. They still got to play this game, whether you like the game or not, they're going to play it. And if they don't, it's going to be devastating for financial markets. And if there's one thing that I think Trump takes a lot of pride in, it's that he can make the stock market bid according to like. his first administration. So the only way you can do that is by expanding the monetary units and you can do that through tax cuts. You can do that through all sorts of, you know, ways. But I suspect he's

going to do it and he's going to do it, you know, pretty aggressively. So we'll, we'll sit here. We're not even, we're not even on the 30th day of this administration. It's crazy, isn't it? It's been, it feels like it's been six months. And so like, hang on. I think it's only going to get more turbulent and wild and like I, I just think you can't even imagine what we're going to hear within the next six months. So despite all of the Dojanit initiatives, you think we're going to get a big print again. Yeah, they got they got to put the units into the system somehow. They have to have the liquidity in the city. Well, here, okay, go to the, go to the third slide there, which speaks to the global M2.

And so, yep, right there. Just click that. And so when you look at this, this trough, this is global M2. So it's not just the U.S. It's all the M2s from all the major countries. And then it's all put into dollar terms. And you can see this is, this is the growing supply of Fiat units around the globe. And what I find fascinating is that big run up that you see there from 2020 to like 2022,

that was the COVID stimulus pump that happened. And you can see it's been really quite flat. since 2022. You got a little bit of a run-up going to September of 2024. You can see that little bit of run-up there at the end. And if you go to the last slide, I think I zoomed in on that particular part of the last like year. Yeah, here you go, or the last four years. You can see the big run-up in COVID. And then you can see it's pretty flat. You can see here in, from basically June of 2024 till September, you had globally a lot of liquidity that was added into the system. Hmm, wonder what was happening then.

Maybe there was an election happening then. But then all of a sudden, after the election happened, you see a lot of the liquidity come out of the system. And if you think about the Bitcoin price action, you saw a lot of price action leading up to the election slightly after the election. And then it's been pretty flat since. So these are important things to look at. These are important things to think about.

And at the end of the day, they're either putting liquidity into the system or out of the system. And, you know, markets will react accordingly. So that's what I'd leave you. I was speaking to Jeff Ross a few weeks ago. And he was talking about like the liquidity cycles. And he thinks they're far more important in terms of Bitcoin price than the harbing or anything like that. And where are we in the sort of liquidity cycle right now? Well, I mean, I think you're seeing it right there.

I think that based on like the lines that are drawn there, I think that they're going to have to add a bunch of liquidity here in the coming year at some point. I don't know how much further they can breach that lower line. It doesn't seem like that the markets like to breach it very often looking at the last decade, right? So I don't know how much that can persist before things get really painful. Well, heck, go to slide two. This is a these slides ended up being perfect, Danny. Okay, I knew they would.

Slide two, you know, like, what does this tell you, right? Look at the credit card hits a record 1.2 trillion. This was a CNBC chart that I just saw posted today on X. So that's a depressing job. How much more can, you know, your everyday person handle before it gets a little too much for them to kind of handle from a liquidity standpoint and solvency standpoint? So I don't have a good answer for you, but I suspect that something's going to have to be done this year where they're going to have to add a bunch of liquidity. If I had a DXY, the dollar, the dollar looks like it's from a technical standpoint. I'm not a big technical analysis person.

From a technical standpoint, it looks like it's about to rip. And like that would be devastating from a global liquidity standpoint. That has to be offset. It has to be offset by the U.S. expanding monetary units with swap lines. or something, I don't know. It's funny that, like, amongst all this, I don't know if you saw Elon Musk talking relatively recently saying we're going to get to a point where you can walk down the

supermarket shell like aisles and prices aren't going up. He thinks he's going to beat inflation. Do you think he really thinks that or do you think he's just pandering? I don't know. Is he going to mail the $5,000 check to everybody? Because if he does, I don't think he's going to beat inflation. I can't see it, to be honest. But this has been great.

Thank you very much, both of you. Anything you want to close out on Nico before we go? I think it's an incredible time to be in the space. We're having a lot of fun. Thank you so much for having us on. You know where to reach Preston and I. If you guys have any type of interest in anything that we do, you can reach us at Ego Death Capital on the website.

Thanks, Danny, so much for doing this. It's an absolute pleasure to speak to you. No, this has been great. I really appreciate you both. Preston, anywhere you want to send anyone? Oh yeah, I've got a podcast. It's in the we study billionaires feed. Just a little podcast.

Eco Death Capital on Twitter or X or whatever we want to call it. But love having these conversations with you, Danny, and hopefully we can do it again. No, this is great. Well, we'll see you in Bedford. Are you going to come to Bedford, Nico? I should come to Bedford. You've got to come back. We can line up some more cricket.

Honestly, you should try and come. It's a lot of fun. Yo, we do need to have some cricket there. That would be fun. On the football day, I'm sure we could before the football starts. Oh, that's fun. I'm in.