What Bitcoin Did - Jack Mallers: Why I Left Twenty One

Episode Date: July 30, 2026

“The company that I co-founded and wanted to build and the company Twenty One was becoming were no longer the same.” Jack Mallers is back on the show for his first interview since stepping down as CEO of Twenty One Capital. Jack explains why he walked away from the Bitcoin treasury company he built with Tether and took public on the New York Stock Exchange. We discuss where his vision began to diverge from the board’s, why merging Strike into Twenty One was never part of the original plan, and the expectations he regrets setting. We also get into the AI capex bubble and why he thinks it will end in money printing, whether the Magnificent Seven are becoming too big to fail, why gold ran while Bitcoin didn’t, whether China is quietly mining Bitcoin, and why Jack believes Bitcoin’s next bull market will finally be a real one. THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS: LEDN SWAN ANCHORWATCH BLOCKWARE BITKEY CAPE FOLLOW: Danny Knowles: https://x.com/_DannyKnowles Jack Mallers: https://x.com/jackmallers

I love Bitcoin. I don't love that. I don't do business for the sake of business. I didn't go to business school. I'm not a Silicon Valley guy. I love Bitcoin. If what the company became and the direction the board wants to take it in was initially the decision made at founding, I would have never started it and I would have never been a part of it. Once you stay the course and you see the other side, you realize like things that you mistake for punishments are really just gifts. The world had to teach me a lot if I wanted to be. become the man that I am now. And how else would I have acquired what I needed to acquire if it wasn't then and if it wasn't that? I want to build what I believe in. I want to build for people that believe in the things that I do. I want to build for Bitcoins. I want to build a company that I want to work for. I want to build products that I would actually use.

Ready to go, man. Nice. How are you doing? I'm good. I'm good. Things have changed a bit since last Last time we recorded, you just made the announcement at the conference. Everything, like when I saw the news that you were leaving 21, I was very surprised.

I was actually at Odell's house. I was the first one awake that morning. He walked in. I was like, holy shit, Jack's left 21. Tell the story. What happened? So the company that I co-founded and wanted to build and the company 21 was becoming, we're no longer the same. And I felt it was the right thing to do for a lot of reasons to exit the business.

So I stepped down as a CEO. And 21 still goes on. It's still a business. It's still listed on the New York Stock Exchange. And nothing about the company has changed except for who leads it, which is obviously a big change. And, yeah, I mean, listen, it was disappointing. I own the fact that I started a thing and set expectations. for said thing and I didn't achieve it.

And that part is very disappointing and it sucks. But I also know is the right thing to do, which we can get into. And I feel good about the decision that I made. And I also wrote an essay that hilariously, I wasn't allowed to publish it because I was still a public company officer. So I published it only recently after I publicly stepped down. But part of that essay is centered around this idea of what punishments are not gifts. which I think is very bare market-esque of Bitcoin. Bitcoin to me is the money of integrity and humility.

And through the seasons that Bitcoin experiences, I've experienced seasons as well. And this is my latest winter. And although it's been painful and I own all of the unfortunate outcomes as the CEO, I think there are many gifts embedded in this. And I feel good. And it obviously doesn't change how I think about Bitcoin. But I'm happy to talk about Bitcoin. you, now I can say whatever I want. So I'm having to tell you anything you want. Obviously, I don't want to talk on behalf of a company that I am no longer employed by and work on. So even if I was allowed to do that, just the man I am, I would not do that. It's their company. And those guys are still my friends. And I still think they can go on and crush it.

But anything about the founding and any of the stories, like ask me whatever you want. It's funny because you're saying you weren't able to release that article because you're still the CEO of public company. When me and O'Dell were talking about it on the podcast, which was really awkward, by the way, because we're essentially talking about you, who's a friend of both of ours, while you're not there,

it's kind of a hard thing to bro. I'd much rather have, you know, the harder conversation with you directly. Sure. But one of the things I said is, like, the thing that I'm most excited about in a selfish way is that, like, I feel like Jack's back.

Yeah. Like, I feel like this is Jack Unshackled again. I feel like I'm back. Which is awesome. So let's go through, like, where did the divergences between your vision for the company and the board's vision,

for the company start? What were the problems that you encountered? So I think when we founded it, and we is Tether and I, and Tether means really Junkarlo and Pollo. Pollo, everybody knows the CEO. Junkarlo is the founder of Tether. And this probably shouldn't become a Tether podcast, but people say Brock Pierce co-founded Tether. And there's like some vague truths to that, but like the actual founder of the stable coin and the actual founder of Tether and the chairman of the business is Giancarlo. And so Giancarlo and Paolo and I, and, you know, the rest of the Tether team is great. But I would say, like, those are the core conversations of, like, creating this thing and

what it would look like, what it would be called. Like, I branded 21. I came up with the name. I registered the ticker. Like, all of that stuff. That was the group. And that group, and we still do share this unified vision of, well, on one side of a spectrum. You have a coin base or a Robin Hood. These are classic fintechs that have customers and they have

products and they produce cash flow, right? The cost to run the business is less than the revenue that they produce. They have profit and that gets investors excited. The business is worth a lot. The business is growing. However, their conviction in Bitcoin is either small or non-existent. They don't hold a lot of Bitcoin on the balance sheet, if at all, relative to other assets. Their focus in how they ship products, where they focus their lobbying attention in Washington, D.C., everything about the company. Like, I think Coinbase, I don't think it's false to say that they care more about Ethereum than Bitcoin historically. So that's one side is you've got good businesses with cash flow and growth, like historically what an investor would look for. You value these businesses on

discounted cash flow or some future. Okay. The other side of the spectrum are what became treasury companies, which I would say the opposite. These are businesses that don't have customers, don't have cash flow, don't have products at all, purposefully so, but do have conviction in Bitcoin. That is what they sell. They sell like, not only do I believe in Bitcoin, I believe so much I'm going to lever myself to believe in it. And I want to be the biggest believer in it. And when you buy this equity, it means you believe in it more than anybody else. And these are like two polar opposing things. And Tether and I, and specifically, Giancarlo Apollo and I, had come from, I mean, we've all been in Bitcoin for a very long time. And so we've been through the like, when Silk Road

went bus, when Monkawks went down, when Coinbase was a Bitcoin company and became a shitcoin company. And then Binance was going to be the Bitcoin company for the world. Then FtX was going to be the Bitcoin company for the world. And then Giancarlo created Tether. And Tether was after he created Biffinax. But we had to experience the industry for a long time. We were like, surely, we can create something that lives in this synergetic middle. Where we've been able to create cash generating businesses, businesses that have been successful, meaning we produce more profits than we have costs,

but we believe in Bitcoin. And we believe Bitcoin is the innovation. It should be the sole focus. And I've gotten there through strike. They've gotten there through their businesses. And that was the vision. Can we create a public equity that was both? And I think eventually how we got there

and how we were going to achieve that changed. Like, for example, I'll say this. If what the company became and the direction the board wants to take it in was initially the decision made at founding, I would have never started it and I would have never been a part of it. And, you know, some other things that the public pride

doesn't know is like, you know, strike being a part of 21 was never, part of the initial discussion. In fact, I'll never forget sitting in one of what I would consider like the founding meetings and saying like, I just got to a point where I was lucky enough and worked hard enough to have a thing that works and strike. And like, I don't consider myself one of these like serial entrepreneurs. Like, I don't want to do this again. Like I did. You've done it. Yeah. I don't I don't build companies because like I love it and like I love like sleep on your friend's couch, and, like, drawing on the chalkboard. I don't love that. I love Bitcoin. I don't

love that. I don't do business for the sake of business. I didn't go to business school. I'm not a Silicon Valley guy. I love Bitcoin, and I love promoting Bitcoin. And so I had a very blunt conversation of like, I have this other thing. And they're like, you know, you should be the CEO of both. And like, we'll support that. And so eventually, obviously, that changed. And why that changed, the market evolved. Like, when we started it, Bitcoin was in the middle. And, and, and, you know, and becoming of a bull run. By the time we listed on the New York Stock Exchange, like strategy had changed the definition of MNAV.

Like treasury companies were distressed. Bitcoin is falling off a cliff. So things change, markets change. I mean, SoftBank was on the board. SoftBank stepped down from the board. The board changed.

And so things changed. But that's okay. That's okay. Like, these guys are great guys. They're real bitcointers. And at the end of the day, 21 was never mine.

which is very unfortunate because I think I set expectations in a way that I need to own of like I laid out my vision what I wanted us to do and ultimately I wasn't able to see that through which I feel awful about and I own but I had no governing control to do what I wanted to do it was ultimately up to the board and one day the board and I started to diverge a bit on how we were going to achieve the initial vision based on the world changing. And it doesn't make anyone a villain, I guess, if that makes sense. I genuinely mean that. It is unfortunate, but 21 has what it needs to be successful.

I mean, what did we achieve? We built the second largest treasury, which there's some foot around that of like, we never actually bought Bitcoin. It was all contributed by Tether. That's not true. We bought almost a billion and a half dollars worth of Bitcoin. And we listed in the process. in the public capital markets, which...

Not easy to do. No, I remember having a conversation with my fiancé. I was like, I mean, I really... I mean, this stuff is hard, man. I feel like I let people down, and I own that. And I was talking to her about it, and she didn't know Adam Bax by name and the company he was trying to start,

but she was like, hey, you guys actually stacked a bunch of Bitcoin and listed it in the public markets, and the 21 board has what they need to be a successful company. Like, at least, you know, the transaction didn't get canceled. And I'm not, you know, Adam knows I love him. I'm not in any way discrediting or speaking. I don't know what happened there. But yeah, I mean, we did a thing.

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WBD. It's funny you say the thing about strike merging with 21 was never part of the plan at the start because you said that to me. When we first at the show after I took over the podcast, it was just after you'd announced the launch of 21. And you said that. And I believed you. And then when you made the announcement that they were going to merge, I was like, oh, was I being naive because you were the CEO of a public company like these things you just can't say. But that really was never part of the plan originally. Yeah, it was never part. In fact, what I would consider, consider like the founding meeting. And that's the thing. I've known these guys for a very long time and obviously still do. But there was one specific time we all met up. And yeah, I made the point.

I was like, you know, the strike thing to me, I don't, and we can talk with us, I don't need to be like the biggest or the bestest or own the most bitcoins, you know, obviously. This isn't a ego race with Michael Saylor. It's something about Sailor. It's, it's, and this is what I talk about in the essay, Bitcoin is the great humbler. It is the death of ego. It is the money of humility and integrity. And, you know, when I think about, like, the Mount Rushmore for me is like Satoshi Nakamoto. That is the greatest, like, display of build something great for the sake of what it represents and what it can do. not for what it can make you and what it brings you. And so I try and embody that level of integrity and honesty. And so, yeah, like I am okay with just being a bitcoiner and orange-pilling people and building, you know, I like building my company that I build products that I want to use.

I build a business that I would want to work for. And I'm okay with that. I don't need more than that. And I had that conversation. And the result was, like, well, there's many people that run two businesses. And we have plenty of ways to support your ability to do that. And so, like, I just made it a known thing. But yeah, it was not part of it.

And obviously, at some point, that changed. And I would say that the, I mean, listen, investors in the market was pushing that on the board, saying like, you know, the market wants to see Jack's efforts consolidate into a public equity. People want to buy Bitcoin. They want to buy Jack. They wanted to buy Tether. And having these things kind of spread apart and what's what. And when Jack makes a product announcement, is he talking about the thing that I just invested in or is he talking about another thing? And so to be clear, I'm not implying there was some like sneaky plan. I think things evolved. And then the board and specifically Tether thought that that was a good idea.

And they wrote that blog post. And then the Bitcoin conference was me opining on the blog post and sharing where the visions overlapped. But I was obviously, I was very careful. And like if we could make it work at the time, there was a lot that wasn't figured out. And obviously the world now knows that we couldn't figure it out. We couldn't make everybody happy. And yeah, that's why, I mean, above all else,

I'm not a, I, again, I own the outcomes. I have, one of the reasons I wasn't, I wouldn't say dubious about doing the show, but I don't want people to perceive my words as like asking for sympathy or asking for acceptance or being like, okay, now I understand your side of the story. So like, I forgive you. So I'm asking for. like I deserve to be held accountable for decisions I made that I, in hindsight, would have made differently and for outcomes or rather lack of outcomes. So I would say, you know, I'm not trying to justify

anything. It is what it is. But I hold myself to, I'm not afraid to be wrong. I'm not afraid to be wrong. I'm not afraid to fail in public. I'm not afraid to prioritize. Integrored. and truth and principles over money and fame. And I think it's important. And I think it was important for me to learn that through experience and be tested to the fire. Because you say things, like, some things aren't for sale, right? Or, like, you know, principles over everything. Or, like, this is what it means to be a bit coiner.

And then you're offered, like, an unlimited amount of money and Wall Street and stuff. And it's like, you know, are you who you say you are? And I mean, that experience was invaluable as well for me. So I don't think you should think of this as like, it doesn't come across as asking for forgiveness, but people love you. Like people want to know what the story was and what happened. Yeah. I think it's important that you do tell your side of the story and let people judge it however they want. Totally.

I just am sensitive to like, you know, we have a culture internally at strike. So this is something that I've enforced on myself and people in my life and that work with me for years, which is I don't believe in pointing fingers and delegating blame. And what I tell my employees is say, if you come to me and I say, hey, what's going on? Why did X, Y, and Z happen? And you come to me and you say, well, it was that guy. I tell everyone, don't do that. Because what you just told me is that guy determines the outcomes.

that guy determines fate, that guy is truly responsible. So then I'm going to ask, why are you here? You must not be that important. And this gets into a deeper philosophical idea of like, to be sovereign is to own your destiny. To point at somebody else or to say, well, you know, if the Bitcoin price didn't go down, or if only the board did this,

or if only timing was differently, then by proxy, I'm saying, the outcomes of my life, my success, my future, my contributions, the relationships I hold with the public market or with Bitcoiners or with my customers isn't truly up to me. I feel like that's a very weak position to hold. And so I only come from it from a stance of, I own my outcomes. The buck stops here. My high school coach had a very lasting impression on me, high school basketball.

And he said, you know, a great leader gives credit when we win. When we win, it's all about the players and the plays you guys made and the hustle you showed on defense. When we lose, it's my fault. And that's ownership. That's integrity. That's leadership. And so that's what I mean. You know, like I think it's really important to say, like hand up.

Like I tried a thing. I did it in public. And it didn't go the way I wanted. And I know that impacts people. And I know people are going to want an excellent. explanation and I know people are going to want me to own it and say sorry. And I do. I do not point fingers. I do not cast blame. I never have. I never will. I don't believe in that. So is that part of the problem in that strike? Like you're the dictator essentially, right? Like,

whatever you say goes. And then with 21, you're working under a board and it doesn't like, you can say the book stops with you, but does it actually? Like, do you have enough control to do what you want to do? Yeah, no, 20. I mean, 21 in strike are not apples to apples comparisons because yeah, 21, I could not make decisions on my own. And, you know, to an extent, right? Like, I named the thing, but if the board disagreed with my name, then yeah, I wouldn't have been able. So there was no unequivocal whatever Jack, the direction Jack needs to take. And so that's, you know, why we would have a very clear vision and very clear steps that we wanted to take, but we seemingly couldn't get it done and couldn't get execution across the line.

And that's because at the end of the day, there was a disagreement. And I mean, obviously, I won't go too much into the whole SoftBank chapter, but obviously there was disagreement there too at some point. And so at the top, you need to have unified vision. People need to be working in lockstep. And that's ultimately, too, when I realize, I say, if this isn't something that I set out to build and want to build and believe in building, that I shouldn't lead it.

And I don't even have the fiber and the bones in my body to do that. So yeah, with strike, I mean, I am the founder, the CEO, the chairman, all of the useless titles that are casted. Like, I'm all of them. when I want to do something, we do it. When I want to stop doing something, we don't. And if you're not okay with that, then you're fired. And that's how it goes. Bitcoin is very decentralized.

Strike is not. And that's why strike, I think, ships at an incredible pace, achieves what it can, is very unified in what it's here to do, what its plans are, when it needs critical decisions. Like, we know how to make them. So yeah, it's just very different, very different, companies. From your like public comments, I was getting the impression and tell me if this is wrong because it could totally be wrong. True. But I was getting the impression that you were not very

into the sort of more pure play Bitcoin treasury company for lack of a better word. Yeah. And that like the idea of just issuing perpetual preferred equity wasn't going to be something that maybe you wanted to do. Was that part of this sort of disagreement with the direction of the company that caused this? Because I understand the drive to want to do something like that when you sat on so much Bitcoin and like I know Stretch and Sater have been having a tough time, but I'm sure they're going to be successful products. So I mentioned earlier, I don't know when we hit record, but I think I'd mentioned earlier, I don't want to talk on behalf of 21. One, because I probably am not allowed to. I know I'm no longer interested in asking lawyers because I don't have to,

but I know I'm probably not allowed to, but the other is because I shouldn't. I don't run. So what has the day in the life of working at 21 today? What decisions did they make? What's their roadmap? I wasn't there. And so that's just being a dick. If I were to sit here and try and convince you, it's not my business. It's not my responsibility.

And there are great people there. And like I said, these are my friends. And I believe in them. Just because we have a disagreement on you can look at an opportunity and arrive at different ways to attack it and build toward it. It doesn't make someone a bad person. And so I feel as a man, I should respect their right to build their right to build their thing. Because at the end of the day, it clearly was not my thing. It's their thing. And they should build it. So I'm not going to speak on what they're going to do. I don't know. Maybe they changed all of their

minds again today. And I have no idea. I do think, though, I finally get to say that the questions that I had for Michael Saylor and the related industry that felt they were, you know, needed to answer the questions I was asking had nothing to do with me being the CEO of 21. Like at all, I still have those questions. In fact, I think in hindsight, they were good questions because the definitions have changed and STRC did dislocate from 100. And that doesn't make these products bad. It doesn't make Michael bad. But it makes my questions were reasonable. And yeah, no, you're accurate in, and say I still don't totally understand a lot of that space. And I'd be hard pressed for someone to tell me that they do because it feels very much like engineering the plane while you're flying

it, which is fine. That's business, that's startup, that's problem solving. I think when people say, like, I've planned the next five years, no, you haven't. You haven't. It's such a meaningless exercise. And so that's, all of that is fine. But also, like, as a bit coiner, I'm going to, we can, we can acknowledge, you know, these things. And so, yeah, I mean, the strategy has changed a bunch, the metrics have changed a bunch, the guidance has changed. I mean, everything's been changing. And so having questions, I still don't totally understand how it's going to work, how it's going to play out, how sustainable, all of it is. But whatever.

I'm also like not like king of the jungle and the smartest person ever. So, you know, I can miss things. As someone who's also been on the receiving end of the Twitter treasury company mob for asking questions, I think your questions were valid. Like, I think we should be able to ask questions. you should ask everything. What would you do differently? I know that's very easy with sort of 2020 hindsight to pick at the moments,

but is there any one thing that sticks out that you wish you'd not done? I think the level of expectation that I set publicly in hindsight should have been much more measured.

I'd never experienced Wall Street. I had never been a part of a board where I ultimately couldn't act decisively when I felt convicted. I had never been part of a public company. And so I think, you know, I think fundamentally that optimists define the future. I think it's so artistic almost that going long something pays way more than going short something. You can never make more than a, you know, 100% going short or whatever, right? Like you can, you get paid way more for being an optimist. People that believe see the glass half full, you know, are passionate and full of energy about the future are the ones that define it and build it rather than the

So it's, you know, it's part of my personality. It's part of being a leader. But in hindsight, I think I was, I did not do the best job at managing expectations when it became this web between shareholders and the board. And because our, my ability to take conversations about a unified vision and dispel them into expectations and conviction to the public only to realize that following through on that was harder than it has historically been in my career at strike. I regret that. I did not mean to set an expectation about what this thing was going to become while I was leading it without

fully appreciating what it was going to take for me to follow through on that. And that's where I own that because I know that people believe in me, believed in me, and specifically as the leader of this thing. And probably, and I know just from being on the internet and seeing the comments, like feel let down in that way, that they heard me say things and set expectations and didn't see the follow through there and feel as if I was misleading or if I, yeah. So that's probably the biggest one. And of course, like throughout the whole thing, there's tinier ones. But that's probably the biggest one. Because we did. I mean, we did. accomplished stuff and we were on our way. And 21 can still go on to accomplish great things and be

something meaningful for Bitcoin and return a lot of investment capital for shareholders. But my lack of ability to achieve what I said I would and what I wanted to while I was there, you know, in hindsight, I would have been, I would have managed that differently. So it's very hard for I think probably almost everyone listening to, imagine the pressure that you were under while you did this. Like, I have no context of it. I have no idea what it's like working on Wall Street. Like, this is a new thing for you as well, right?

I'm sure you've learned a ton about yourself, about business. But does any part of your regret ever doing it? No. I don't believe. I also don't believe in that. I don't believe, you know, I'll tell you a story about the last bear market in 2022. So for people that don't know in 2022, this was the Bitcoin conference that directly followed the El Salvador announcement that I made.

There's lots of pressure, expectations, and strike was a tiny little child baby. I think we released like a beta in the app store in 2021, right? So pre-revenue. And mind you, after El Salvador and Bitcoin was in this craze bull run. Like the bull run, I'm putting it in air quotes for the podcast listeners that we experienced in 2020. 25 to me was not real. We didn't, we didn't hit all time highs in gold terms. It was not an actual, like, 2021 was the last bull run in my mind. And I was surrounded by professional athletes, superstar artists, the top VC firms, and everyone was inviting me to parties and giving me

investment capital. I had no idea that I needed to like generate revenue. turn a profit someday. I literally, I was a kid and I thought that all I had to do was champion Bitcoin and like build stuff that like was popular and people I thought were downloading it, but I didn't even know and run around and like make sure that like the orange pill message was getting through. And like I don't like don't vCs fund the payroll. I had no idea. And we had worked on some partnerships that were in the very early stages with some merchant vendors. And I got out on the Bitcoin conference and I laid out the vision that I had and how we were going to, through these partnerships, get Bitcoin accepted pretty much throughout the United

States. Now, fast forward, the Fed hiked rates faster than they ever had. The bull market turned into a bare market. Every vendor partnerships, R&D crypto department got fired. Our partnerships fell through. none of it ever met the market and strike almost failed because all of the VC money that was like around and like here take this take this like disappeared and like you didn't have any revenue you didn't have anything and that was the one of the most painful times in my life feel abandoned

you feel used you feel angry you feel depressed and like lots of fingerpointed like why well why this person tell me this or why did this person convince me the world work that way? And it was that moment where I acquired some of the most valuable lessons I've ever acquired in my life, like about ego, about who I am as a man, what I care about, what strike should be, about business, about everything. Now, strike turns out to be a very successful thing, very profitable now, big company. Now, what I tell myself and what I tell my employees all the time is how expensive were the lessons that I acquired in that moment? Think about that in hindsight. And that goes back to what I wrote in the essay, what punishments are not gifts? Because I acquired a wealth of knowledge,

experience, really, really painful but valuable tutorial of how to build a things, who to trust, how to set up strike. I acquired that, Danny. I didn't lose a limb. I didn't lose my parents. I didn't lose my business. I didn't lose my friends. I didn't lose any bitcoins. I just took a couple really tough punches to the ego and needed to adopt a decent amount of humility and just emotional pain. And so, I don't know, that chapter of my life was, and it was very hard. Like, oh, Jack is a hype marketing, overpromising, you know, all of the things. And, you know, some of those things hurt because you start to question, like, is that true? but then once you

once you stay the course and you see the other side you realize like things that you mistake for punishments are really just gifts the world had to teach me a lot if I wanted to become the man that I am now and how else would I have acquired

what I needed to acquire if it wasn't then and if it wasn't that I could have it could have been a lot worse or I could have never acquired it at all yeah you only get those lessons from putting yourself out there

yeah and you You have to pay for the lessons. This goes to Bitcoin Austrian theory of like, there's no free lunch. You can't print the money out of thin air. You can't print the lessons out of thin air. What's the tuition fee? What's the cost of the education?

And so anyway, you know, I want to be a good man. I want to be a good eventually husband and dad and colleague and Bitcoiner. So I don't regret any of these things. think people spend too much time, honestly, being depressed in wallowing about the past. You can't change the past. And so I do not regret it. You know, what punishments are not gifts? My intentions were real. What we built was real. I mean, it's not like, you know, oh, just kidding. The Bitcoin's not there. Yeah. It's there. It's a stock listed on the New York Stock Exchange. It gets quarterly audits by public markets. Like, it's a very legit thing.

And I tried to do a thing. And the universe needed me to learn a lot about myself and about being a bit coiner and about being a man and integrity and humility and ego. And so I appreciate the lessons. And I'm very fortunate and grateful that they didn't cost me my relationship with my fiancé or my health. So I don't know if that resonates at all. Totally. I just don't believe in, yeah, regretting any part of the past. Like, what punishments are not gifts?

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So when I first heard about this news, like I said, I was at Odell's house and he had a call with you that day. And when he got off the call, I was like, how is he? Because I had no idea how he would be taking this news. Because I think one of the reasons that people like you so much in the Bitcoin world is because you are very authentic. You do wear your emotion on a sleeve. I was like, how is he going to be handling this? And O'Dowell was just like, he seems great. Do you feel like a weight of your shoulders, like you're ready to go again on, you know,

well, obviously keep going on strike, but just move forward. Yes. Because I have me and I have Bitcoin. And that's all that, like, you don't want to say that's all that mattered because, of course, like, it kills me that, I started this thing, which is my baby in some ways.

Like, I created the logo and I branded it and I, like, registered the domain name. Like, when I was transferring myself out of the business, like, I realized I still personally owned the domain. You know, you forget to, like, transfer it to corporate accounts. I'm like, man. So, of course, this is not how I wanted my chapter with the business to end. But obviously when I was presented with whatever it was going to be, money and fame and access and all the stuff,

I found myself saying no before I can even reason it out and fully understand it. I just had like a physical almost like repulsive reaction to leading something and promoting something. And the other thing too is like I just, Danny, I would not be able to look you in the eye or look my employees in the eye or look bitcoins in the eye or my customers in the eye or my investors in the eye if I knew they weren't ultimately entrusting in me. And so, yeah, I have me and I have strike and I have Bitcoin. And in many ways, that's all not only I've ever needed, but all Bitcoiners have ever wanted out of me. It was another really endearing and valuable experiences, the emails and the text

and the notes I've been getting, both before and after the resignation was public, of just like who a lot of people view me as in the community, of just someone who would never sell out, who would never compromise on their ideals and their principles, who people entrust to hold the integrity of Bitcoin as a leader and as a CEO and as a person. And yeah. So I feel I'm very excited to be able to do things my way. And that's the other thing, too. I don't know how big strike can be. I think, I mean, for a business that, what, five, six years old, depending on where you count, I'm thrilled. I mean, we've got, we're in 50% off highs and we've got over $100 million of Bitcoin. So what? We make a new all-time high. I've got probably less than, and 100 employees, a quarter billion dollars on the balance sheet. We produce cash flow, and we're still, I mean, growing, as Bitcoin grows will grow. Like, I'm thrilled with that.

But are we going to own the most Bitcoin? Are we going to be the cover of magazines? Maybe one day. I don't know. I'm bullish. Like, I'd like to think Strike will continue to grow into a valuable institution within the revolution that is Bitcoin. But I guess it will be a side effect of what actually matters, which is like, I want to build what I believe in. I want to build for people that believe in the things that I do. I want to build for bitcoiners. I want to build a company that I want to work for. I want to build products that I would actually use.

And that's what, nothing, that's okay. And if strike is just like a hobbyist business, you know, as long as we're able to pay our own bills, like, I'm cool with that. You know, like, here's another thing. It does $250 million on the balance sheet count as a hobbyist business. I don't think so. No, no. But, you know, I was talking to my fiancé again, who, by the way, like superstar, people

ever run into her at conferences. She deserves a lot of credit for helping me weather all this stuff. That's my partner. And I was talking to her. And I was just obviously sad and angry and ranting. And I'm like, you know, people say. say, oh, it's early in Bitcoin, you know, we're only at like 1% of global adoption. I was telling her, that's not true.

Like, we're not even at one per. If the world is 8. 85 million. Yeah, 85 million people have a vague relative understanding of Bitcoin. Nope. Not even no, not even close. And I would wage to say, we're not even at 8.5 million. I'm not even sure we're at 850,000.

See, I had this conversation with Checkmate a long time ago. I think you, I don't know if it was on a podcast or we just. chatting. I think it's a way lower number than people think. And it really is very hard. It depends how you define what someone who understands Bitcoin is. Yeah. But if you, like, if you just use the sort of the metrics that you can see, I think there's 25, something like 25 million addresses with more than $100 of Bitcoin. And as you know, like people will own, if you've been DCAing for five years at more than $100 a month, you'll own more than $60 of them yourself. So I think if you count owning self-custy Bitcoin as understanding Bitcoin is probably

like less than $5 million. Oh, yeah, for sure. Well, yeah, and it depends on your definition, right? Like some people will say, well, you know, this person's got proxied, proxy, proxy, proxied, proxied exposure in their proxied 401k that's proxied by the black rock ETF or whatever. And so they technically have exposure. But that's not how I would consider adoption. I find that frankly meaningless because if some money manager flips a switch, now now of a sudden they're unadopted. I consider it adopted. You understand what money is. You understand why it's valuable. You understand what this whole thing is supposed to do, even vaguely. And whether you want to own the ETF or real Bitcoin, that part's irrelevant. But it's adopted in a way that's

meaningful and that like you get it. And anyways, I'm ranting and complaining to my fiance and she makes this point of like, well, why don't you do something about it? And it was one of those moments where I was like, you're right. Because she's like, well, it doesn't sound like Coinbase is educating people in the way that you want. And it doesn't sound like, you know, these treasury companies are educating people in the way that you want. So like, why don't you do it? I'm like, well, you know, like, you know, that's on Wall Street and, you know, the business. And she's like, but why do you care? Like, that doesn't seem like that's what it's about and what you're about and what, like,

this means to you. And to all the people, because it was a very endearing, so right in the middle of, like, a lot of this. I was going through, like, a decently tough time. We were touring wedding venues, my fiance and I. So it was really, like, a weird time, right? Because in my professional life, I'm like, oh, my goodness, I shouldn't be leading this thing that has diverged from what I wanted to be.

build. But then you go on a wedding tour and you're like, this is where I say I do and this is where my family is going to start and like, you know, hey, you want a glass of champagne? I'm like, I guess. I mean, I sure, I feel guilty drinking this. And we kept, it was, it was almost, it had to have been like fate or something. Every day, multiple times, people come running up. Say, are you Jack? Yeah. Sorry. I'm, you know, I don't. want to take away from my fiance. She had enough of the Bitcoin stuff. She wants to get married. And like, I know, I just, I need to tell you, you're the reason I understand Bitcoin. And, or you're the reason my dad finally got it. Or the keynote you gave in Prague was like,

enough for me to like fully commit and like believe that we, there's a way out and that, or, or I don't feel alone. Like, you distilling these ideas makes me realize that it's not me. I'm not a weirdo, I'm not fucked up. The world's fucked up. And that, like, there's a community of people that are working on it and that I could join that just by DCAing a little bit. And this was happening multiple times a day. And my fiance was sitting there watching it. And she was just like, dude, like, you have it right here. And, like, if one percent of the world is going to, like, come to understand what this is all about, like, you do that. And who care? Like, strike makes money. And it's successful and like doesn't need to be the biggest and the wall streetest and the whateverist

like that is where you seem like happy and passionate and motivated and that's also like what people have grown to appreciate out of you like i don't think people need you to be this like you know thing and by the way i didn't start 21 to become like a wall street conglomerate but anyway like that was like a really like touring that wedding venues. And I'm very grateful for all the Bitcoiners that stopped and said hi and said those encouraging things. Because yeah, my fiance was like, dude, I think you can orange bill 1% of the world. Like if anyone's going to do it, like who's going to do it? Like you should spend some of your time like instead of, you know, corporate cogging. So anywho, she's totally right as well.

Like it wasn't you that got me into Bitcoin. But I do remember there's a couple of talks you've done conferences, especially the one you did at Madeira about the time chain, that made me reconsider the way that Bitcoin works and rethink it. Like, you are brilliant. I think that's a very good thing to have on Team Bitcoin. Yeah, you know, it's funny. So another revelation is I did the Bitcoin conference where I talked about, you know, Tether posts this blog post. And like I said, I'm directionally aligned with the vision of like creating this Bitcoin thing. And if strike needs to be a part of it, let's figure that out. And I talked about that and was supportive of the board and tether and, hey, let's go try and meet and figure that out.

People hated it, right? People hated the talk. It's not what they think they're going to get from you. Exactly. So, but you got to understand, Danny, I, I'm not a character. I'm not an actor. Like, what, I've got to be as close to, like, what you see is what you actually, like, there's no difference between the screen and, like, in real life. That's what I was saying earlier about the authenticity. That's why people love you. Yeah.

And I think it's not even authenticity. I think it's also integrity. Yep. It's being able to like look, you know, whatever, Wall Street or whatever in the eye and say, you know, like, you point a gun at me. I tell you, shoot it. Shoot it. I'm not like, I'm not moving a muscle.

I think it's integrity too. But anyway, about the keynote, my most, like the keynotes people love the most. are not about my businesses or me. It's about Bitcoin. And it's this revelation of like, people want me to orange pill folks, and people want me to build tools for bitquiners. And that's where I've found like a life glitch

of purpose and passion and like something I could do forever. And that's, I guess, why I'm absolutely full of energy and full of enthusiasm, despite just, like, getting my ass kicked and getting punched in the mouth, like, pretty bad and failing publicly in a fairly embarrassing way is because, like, these revelations of like, I shouldn't do keynotes about, and obviously some of my employees are investors are like, no, no, no, you should talk about a strike. And of course, like, probably people, hopefully people support me over time by using our products. But yeah, that's. of like people saying like I don't want you to talk about 21 or what I want you to talk about Bitcoin and hope and this revolution and want you to like lead in a way and that's something that you can do in like that most other business owners even within the Bitcoin space can't like every every keynote now is about a company at these big conferences there's very few that are actually about Bitcoin and it used to only be about Bitcoin really

But if you put the CEO of Robin Hood, I don't know, on stage at the Bitcoin conference, he can't talk about Bitcoin like you can. That's a huge advantage you have. Yeah, I could. It's a very counterintuitive business strategy is like, don't do any marketing. Don't talk about yourself at all. Do write for the mission and for the vision and for everyone else. And then, you know, hopefully it's reciprocated back by people supporting you through product, through using your products. Like you could buy Bitcoin a million in places. Why would you buy it here? Well, you know, we have good fees and free withdrawals and all the good stuff, but also, like, you resonate with who I am and who we are. It's a counterintuitive

idea, and I have no idea if it's, like, scientifically sound, and if that's going to work. But the point is, like, I'm okay. There was people doing all the Twitter clipping where they clip your videos out of context and post it for views and everyone gets in a fight. And there's a clip, that goes viral constantly, which is like, I said we wanted to own the most Bitcoin in the world, which is, of course, who doesn't? I do. Who doesn't, right? But it should be known, I don't need to. I don't need to. The Bitcoins don't generate yield. They don't give you any more power over the protocol. They sit there. And I'm not saying that, you know, I would, less is more in Bitcoin. It's certainly not the case, especially as something finitely scarce. More is more is more. But the point is

I don't need that. And that was like one of the very painful things of my ego is like, well, I see opportunities. I have big business partners. I can list a public equity and I can, I can, I can. And it was like the ego has to die once more. And the integrity and the humility has to be proven. Because it's one thing to say, I'm not for sale and my principles aren't for sale, my voice isn't for sale, but it's another for someone to put a check in front of your face and say like, well, actually? And then for me to really feel what it means for bitcoinsers around the world to feel inspired and feel connected to me and what I represent and then, you know, to have the, you know, and to really like be tested to the fire in that way. It's different. And I learned all of that. I was very excited.

Like, part of where I'm going to be spending more my time is content of just like, yeah, I don't think Coinbase is going to do a lot of like specific orange pilling. Like, why? And I don't know if me creating tons of really well produced videos and like commercials on what is money, Austrian theory, free markets. I don't know if that's going to make me a lot of money or make me a lot of sats per share. I don't know, but I don't care, you know. And I mean, yeah, Satoshi, Hal, you know, like, they didn't either.

So, I don't know. Teach their own, but. I think that's awesome. I just have one last question on the 21 stuff. Sure. And then I've got a ton of other things I want to talk to you about. we could go as long as you want. So I know your dad has been a mentor to you

throughout your entire sort of business career. For anyone doesn't know, he's also like an OG bitcoiner. He's quite to the point, I think, would be fair. I'd be really curious if he gave you any advice through this. I was thinking about it on the way over. Oh, my goodness. I mean, what's funny is my dad sold his first business for, I mean, I'm not going to

overly docks and share my family's history, but for like the revenue that strike generates in like a, so like a minuscule number relative to where this Bitcoin stuff has taken us. Like people view my father or my family because of some wiki page that they found as like this all dominant banking empire. I mean, strike, you know,

like I said, generates more revenue. than the total value of my dad's company in a short amount of time. And my dad's, like, it's all Bitcoin. Like, which is early to Bitcoin, very lucky, good timing. And it's funny because my dad, the first time someone wanted to acquire strike was in 2021. I don't know if I've ever told this story, but I call my dad. And I said, well, dude, this is like an amount of money. I never thought, like, what the hell?

Should I sign it? And he told me, yeah. Like, duh. Are you crazy? And I ended up not, obviously, and for similar reasons. But then he's always said, you know, my son has more ambition in his pinky than I do in 10 times of my bodies. My son is out of his fucking mind. He's a crazy lunatic.

He's like going to build a revolution and stand on principles and integrity. And like, I mean, I would have sold strike years ago. So I think there's that part of my dad, which I just find kind of funny. He's more of a traitor than, but the part of my dad that I've taken with me that is incredibly meaningful in the advice and my experiences is the integrity and what it means to be a man and a good person. Like he, when I had conversations with him about it, he said, the difference between a good man and a great man, an honorable man, an integral man, is doing the right thing no matter how

hard it is because people don't appreciate that doing the right thing is not for lack of understanding what is right. You know what is right. You know that eating the chicken is better for you than eating the donut. You know that going to the gym is better than sitting on the couch. You know these things within you. But the question is, what level of commitment do you have to doing what's right despite how difficult it may be. And he was just very supportive of like, you know in your heart what's right. Don't convince yourself that it's more complicated than that. And you're a great man. And I've raised you to be a great man. And the difficult part, but the worthy part, is committing to doing it despite how challenging it may be, failing in public, taking the criticism,

not being able to tell the full story, dealing with the consequences of mistakes. Like, that's the hard part. The easier part might have been taking a bunch of money and taking a bunch of access and stuff. And, you know, the company might work. It might not. It might be aligned with me.

It might not. But, you know, beggars can't be choosers. And it's like, that was probably easier. Sometimes the easy thing to do is to avoid the hard thing. And so that, you know, despite, it's funny, like he can't believe the level of ambition and where my career has gone, but still at the core is just where I get my integrity from and humility and kind of just like a, I'm fearless and not afraid to fail and own it and stuff.

Like that comes from him. That's awesome. Is there anything else on the 21 before we move on, on the 21 thing? You tell me, man. I mean, I've asked all the things that were major questions for me. I didn't know if there's anything else that you kind of almost wanted to get off your chest, though. I think so. I mean, you know, I'll just reiterate, like 21 slow company, and we built a thing.

And the thing has 43,514 Bitcoin. And it's listed on the New York Stock Exchange. So access to capital markets is a huge advantage. having that much Bitcoin is a huge advantage. And I think the company can go on and be great. And I believe in the people that are on the board. And I believe in Giancarlo and Tether. And so I don't know.

I just, you know, sometimes I see people say, like, you rug pulled to me. And I get it. I'm not saying that like I'm not disowning outcomes and I'm not pointing fingers. But like, it's still a company and it can go on and do great things. The announcement was more that I'm not the right person to lead it anymore because of the divergence between the company's beliefs and my beliefs.

And lessons have been learned, albeit painfully. And I'm very grateful to be in the position I am now. I'm very excited to do Bitcoin my way and create more content. and I'm back. Let's go. You ready for the gear shift of all gear shifts? Yeah. Can we talk about markets?

Yes. So I've done a few shows over the last week that have, I feel like they've crystallized what I think is going to happen next. That's going to potentially age like milk. But especially a conversation had with Luke Groman yesterday, and that show will actually go out after this one. Nice. But we were talking about the AI CAPX boom,

and if that's sort of reaching its endpoint, We were talking about how it's kind of almost a sprinkling of 2001 and 2008 at the same time. And I've got this sort of thought in my head that does the AI capex slow down, at the same time as sort of China open weight models sort of take over and potentially become very, very competitive with the frontier labs. And what situation does that then put the US government in? And it seems like the obvious answer is they then regulate the Chinese companies. they probably have to print a ton of money

if these AI Frontier Labs seem too big to fail. And is that where we get sort of the next big print? Probably. Like I would assume, to me it's very simple. Like, why does anyone borrow money in the first place? Well, you're pulling forward to your future. That's what borrowing money and incurring debt is you're taking future productivity and you're spending it today. So you're taking future time,

energy, effort, labor, all of the money things I go on about. And you're spending it now and you're doing so because you think you can actually, you know, arrive at that future state with more than in it if you didn't. So you have to pay that debt back. You have to produce profits. And you have all of these companies that have borrowed a tremendous amount of money with no seemingly obvious way of paying it back. And so you keep seeing the can being kicked from, well, we're going to borrow from your classic venture capitalists, like SoftBank, and then we're going to borrow from Oracle. And then Oracle's creditworthiness looks awful. And so they've now kicked it to InVIDIA, which happened this week. I don't know if you and Luke had an opportunity to talk about that.

I mean, InVedia backstopping $250 billion of an Open AI buildout in Ohio is outrageous. That's 135% of their retained earnings. I mean, that's an astronomically high number and their stock got hit for that and then you would assume that this is going to continually get kicked up to ultimately who's paying for financing something that may not be productive enough to make everyone whole for it. And the part that I assume you talked about Luke with China is, well, if Open AI, for example, they're the, they're the, most, it's, the economics around Open AI, the amount they've borrowed, the lack of, the lack. of their path to profitability is like the cleanest target to talk about. But it's for all of, I mean,

anthropic as well. But if you borrow a billion dollars, assuming you're going to have X amount market share, be able to charge X amount, and then China comes out and it's, you know, a hundred times cheaper and about as good, well, then your creditworthiness and your ability to pay back really takes a hit. And so it's become abundantly clear that this cost is going to have to be realized by somebody that it's not clear that there hasn't been malinvestment and there isn't going to be losses that have to be realized. And this is at the scale of trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars. Now, when it comes to politics, according to the Trump administration, they claim that AI is a race that we must win strategically against China. They also have declared it a national security

threat if we don't win. So across the like political sphere of elevating this to supreme importance, they've used all of them, you know, strategic, national security thread, you know. And it is the economy. War, right. I mean, it also is representative of all of the GDP growth, right? And so if that were to slow down, all of the job creation, all the reindustrialization that's going on. And so, yeah, you now you have a very classic political question, unfortunately.

Seemingly someone has to lose is where this looks like it's going. It doesn't look like everyone that borrowed money. going to be able to pay it back. The productivity was as planned. And it's not that AI isn't awesome. I think AI is great. It's here to stay. It's that wait a second, did anyone realize that China was going to have open source, like near free competitors to a business that needs to somehow make whole on like trillions of dollars that says they don't view profitability until like 2035? Like did anyone like so someone has to lose. there's been malinvestment. And ultimately, it sounds like it's going to be a question of the government and the

central bank, like, who's going to lose? Are you going to let? And the other problem is all of the MAG 7, like all of these big tech companies are now looped into this. They've gone from extremely cash flow positive cash generating businesses to businesses that carry debt that are no longer participating in stock buyback. So you've got the most heavily weighted S&P 500 in the U.S. capital markets, which is the United States savings account. So if you let the AI trade in large part unwind and fail,

then the invidias and the Googles and the metas and stuff will take a big hit. They take a big hit. Then U.S. wealth takes a big hit. And so it's a question of like who is allowed to fail. And if no one's allowed to fail, well, then yeah, then you have to paper it over with printed capital. So do you think they are already too big to fail? no one's too big to fail again these are these are these are political like we have invented like man-made conditions to allow ourselves to decide who's too big to fail yeah like in the most basic form of like pure free markets in austrian theory there's no one too big to fail you fail it's like a form of darwinism the giraffe with a neck not long enough to eat died yep that's that's not a good or bad

that's the natural thing, that's evolutionary, that's science. And so if you borrow a bunch of money and spend said money with an inability to pay it back, your future is not up to you. People need to understand a business's biggest competitor always is their costs. You're only competing against your costs because your right to wake up and continue to run your business is if you're earning more than it costs you to run it, period. And so if you're not in that position, your future is not up to you. you, it's up to Oracle, it's up to now NVIDIA, and eventually it'll be up to the U.S.

government. So these are all man-made constructs that are recent. So do I think that the U.S. government will let them fail? No, I don't. I think that we will print the money. But, yeah, that is increasingly where this is all headed. And I think what Luke is probably getting at and that this is more like 2008 than 2000, you know, people say, oh, this is the dot-com bubble and this online. But the dot-com bubble was. over-exuberance about the future of technology and the internet, meaning the equities were just valued too much. We were too excited and too rewarding of what these businesses could produce in the near-term future. And the value of the equities just had to come down. The problem with

AI companies is they're not software companies. They're like real estate companies almost. You know, when you see Google go from producing ungodly amounts of cash and taking that cash and plowing it into the equity, like, that's what gets you these crazy premiums is because the largest purchaser of the stock is the printing billions of dollars where their costs are relatively fixed and they're able to still grow. Now all of a sudden, Google's riddled with debt and they're like issuing ATM equity. They're like diluting the equity to finance this stuff. So that's not over-exuberance of equity based on the future. That's like, wait, that's more like 2008 real estate market of, so I assume that was the Luke conversation.

Yeah, that was basically it. And the thing that Luke said, obviously in a healthy market, he was saying, if you're too big, well, get smaller is the answer. But it's whether the U.S. government will let them get smaller because of those national security implications as well as the fact that they're driving all the economy, GDP growth. Yeah. I mean, I agree with all of that. And it's also, you know, again, the problem is if you're too big, get smaller, sure, but after you've borrowed so much, get smaller is not an option. You have to produce the productivity necessary to pay that back. I mean, you want to take

an example. What about the $40 trillion of debt the United States is in? Well, should the United States just get smaller? That's not an option. They have to find the growth necessary to pay that back. And it will be some combination of hopefully productivity through innovation in America combined with debasement of the debt. Like, you know, now how is that? Is that split 50-50 or is it split 199? It will probably be lots of inflation and, you know, deficit monetization. But, yeah, I don't know if they can get smaller, both because the U.S. government probably wouldn't want that competitively, but also because, again, like, someone has to, you got to. And the way that these companies do it is they're refinancing based on their equity.

So, and I assume, you know, so one of the issues is what they keep doing is they take on a bunch of financial obligations. They borrow a bunch of money. We're building all these data centers. We're doing all this shit. And then they raise a private venture capital round that values the equity up, which then allows them to refinance everything because their equity capital is now worth more. like Open AI goes from being worth $8 billion to $80 billion to $800 billion, and then you can continue to refinance that.

But then my suspicion of why these businesses halted going public is because, you know, who's not as giving and as easy as the public markets. The public markets are going to be like, oh, we'll give you this markup. We believe in the roadmap. Send the deck to my email. The public markets are a bit more ruthless, and they also involve foreign capital. and if there's a war, sometimes things trade down for things that are outside of your control.

And if these companies lose the equity value and that starts to drop, then they lose the ability to refinance it. I mean, Open AI already is not credit worthy enough to borrow from a bank. This is why they need Nvidia to step in. There's effectively a bank is saying, we don't believe in your ability to backstop all of this. We need someone who's far more creditworthy to be able to step in and say, no, no, no, if shit hits a fan, I'll handle it. So, yeah, it's a mess.

I do not think it's going to end well. I think there's been malinvestment. And I also do not think the United States can ban Chinese models either. I know that you said you think that's what they might do. I do not think that. I don't know if it is what they'll do, but there's been talk of it. Like people have been talking about where the regulation is going to be the way to get through this. But the interesting thing is if it does come down to the Treasury Department and the Fed to kind of backstop these major companies,

it's going to be the most politically unpopular decision ever. Like people already hate the data centers. They hate, they're very scared of AI. And like if you look back at 2008, it's like we print money or you all lose your houses. Like that was relatively politically palatable, I think. COVID, it's like no one really knew what was happening. It kind of makes sense in the moment. But this one doesn't.

And I don't know if it will to most of the Americans. But I'm not sure anything has been politically popular for a long time. time. That's fair. I think trust in government and institutions, according to recent polling, is still under 30% and declining. So I don't think the people believe in what big corporations and government has been telling them for a while. I don't think that AI is like piercing through a layer of trust that was we had before chatGVT hit the app stores. I don't think that's the case. I mean, what's going on in New York is, you know, equally as polarizing, but just on the opposite side of this spectrum. Totally.

So, yeah, I think the system is, you know, crumbling upon itself. I would recommend everyone read a book called The End Times by Peter Turchin. Luke recommended the same book on the show. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's a, he's a really fascinating guy. he basically takes science and math and tries to make sense of history. And so he looks at the fall of empires and, you know, cyclical behavior in human history of like the Roman Empire grows, achieves great things, and eventually collapse.

And oh, there's Chinese empires that had similar behavior. Like, is there any mathematical correlation there that we can identify in future project to try and understand mistakes that we shouldn't make? And the two core KPIs that he comes up with for an empire that would, you know, is in potential decline, is a decline of wage growth. So, you know, things are going up in price and you're not getting compensated. So there's a divergence between the price of things and how much you're getting compensated in real terms, right? So the decline of growth of wages. And then the other is what he calls elite overproduction, where,

You are producing more elite aspires, potential elites, which I consider, you know, you go to a coastal university, you want to be a lawyer, you want to be the president, you want to be a hedge fund manager. You know, like, that's what it means now to afford the American dream. You cannot be a blue collar welder. You cannot be a handmade manufacturer. So all of those jobs, you know, because of the printed money

and the globalism are now elsewhere. So in order to make a life for yourself in this country, You have to be a coastal elitist. And the problem is there's just not enough room for everybody. And he makes this point that, well, when you think of revolutionaries, you assume, well, it's the poor that must be taken out the pitchforks or pointing the guns at people and threatening to shoot up and protesting. And that's actually not true. You know, the poorest, you know, the homeless people in Chicago are not, like, didn't put a bullet into Charlie Kirk. It was a university-educated kid.

And it's elite aspirants that realize there's not enough room for them. And the combination of those two, this guy identifies as a leading indicator for an empire in decline is where the real wages can't keep up with the prices of the goods and services, and there's too many elites aspiring and not enough room for them. And that's when you get revolutionary forth-turning tendencies. So that's what I think is happening. Yeah, I mean, I think it's just from looking around, it feels like that's what's happening. Yeah.

Do you think, like we talk about in Bitcoin all the time, this sort of death of fiat currency, the death of the dollar, do you think it's happening? Because like essentially what you're saying is malinvestment's got us here. And if the Fed and the Treasury do step in and try and prop these too big to fail AI companies up, it's like malinvestment on malinvestment. And when does that spiral end? Like, do you think this is the not the start of the end, but we're in the end times of this? It could be, but, you know, you got to define end. What's end to you? End is hyperinflation of the currency.

Like, like no dollar. at all. Maybe not no dollar at all, but like huge, huge levels of inflation. I think, I don't know exactly how you define the end, but I think you'll know the end when you see it. Yeah. So that, but I think that's kind of the issue with this conversation is that, you know, was COVID the end of fiat? It feels like a lot of these may be the start of the end. Right, right. But like, COVID could have been. I mean, we had double digit inflation in the United States, and you saw incredible amounts of asset inflation. So, I mean, you could make the argument that, like, yeah, I mean, know the end when you see it.

But, you know, it's the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent type of thing. It feels like a tower that, to your point, has already been tipped over and is falling. But the fall could take what amount of time and when is it technically fallen, like when it's already, like, elevated off the ground, but not totally on the cement. So I don't know, but yeah, I agree with the, I do think that treasuries, like sovereign debt as the reserve asset of the world, that's changing today, already has been. Like central banks have not added on net to this sovereign paper, U.S. sovereign paper in like a decade, and they've been buying gold, and now gold balances have exceeded, you know, these paper fiat currency balances.

And so I think that, I think we're seeing a repricing of the world. People are repricing down fiat paper claims. And that has been happening. And I do agree with you that that'll. And so that looks like a significantly higher gold, a significantly higher Bitcoin, significantly higher assets. But, you know, is, so I mean the dollar is ending? I don't know.

It just depends on your definition. The dollar has ended for me a long time ago. I don't use it much, if ever. So it depends. I'm a bit of a hypocrite for saying this, because if you had told me 10 years ago when I first got into Bitcoin, that the price would be $65,000,

I wouldn't have believed you. But at the same time, I look at what's going on, and I'm like, how is Bitcoin this cheap right now? And you said earlier in the show, you were like, we didn't really have a bull market. You don't think we had a bull market in 2025. Like, what's happening?

Why do you think we are still here? Because, to me, Bitcoin, it's the only free market we have left, truly free. And so for that reason, to steal a Lou Groman line, it's like the last functioning smoke alarm of Fiat liquidity. So it somehow is the only thing that's able to tell us the truth, or at least it tells us the truth in real time. Everything else seems to lag.

And so to me, Bitcoin is just expressing the dire straits that Fiat is in. It's effectively telling me, So if it's a Fiat liquidity smoke alarm, what it's telling me is there's not enough liquidity in the system to support all of this. So all these people have borrowed all this money and there's not enough productivity to make everybody whole. And so that's what it's saying, which I think is a very honest view. Like when Bitcoin started to fall in the beginning of this year and took a tumble and everyone's like, well, gold's still up and equity is so up, well, just give it a second. Give it a few months because these things, you know, they don't trade on weekends, they're circuit breaker.

There's central planning and intervention. I mean, the essay that I wrote was about how Bitcoin is so free that it, you know, however bad you think fair markets can get, they will get worse. And however good you think bull markets can get, they will get better because it is the most natural way for you to experience the world as it actually is because there's no one in the middle editing your version of reality. Everything else around us is like a sanded down version where like the sharp edges are rounded off. And so everything else gets towards what Bitcoin has been expressing for some time is there's just not enough fiat for this thing to work.

And so whether that means people are going to fail or the U.S. government's going to have to, and the central bank is going to have to create more fiat to make it work, that's all Bitcoin has been continuously expressing. And you get these, you know, weird moments where after Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, you know, Janet Yellen did some very clever financing in, you know, draining the reverse repo. facility and that gave Bitcoin some legs to have what we would consider the 2020, what was that three to 2025 run. But I don't think that there's been a full business cycle. I mean, rates have remained high. Monetary policy has remained tight. Even now Kevin Warsh has remained what he claims to be a hawk. We might have a cut this week. And so monetary policy since that 2021 era has been tight. I mean, the Fed has drastically reduced its balance. the business cycle has been fairly depressed.

And I think Bitcoin is telling you that, like, very honestly. And until they start providing the liquidity that is necessary to make the system whole, Bitcoin won't run. It makes total sense. But does Bitcoin need the central bank to start cutting rates for it to run? Like, when does it break out of this sort of tech trade that it's become? I'm not sure. I mean, I don't, you know, when people get frustrated by the correlation to tech, I don't know.

I've always viewed Bitcoin as some combination of technology plus fiat liquidity. It is a technology. It is software that solved a previously impossible computer science problem. So it is innovative. It's disruptive. It is dematerializing existing industries and creating new ones. And so in that respect, it is technology, and you can try and price future growth based on activity. And you mentioned addresses that hold certain amounts and all of that stuff.

And then the other combination is it is a reflection of fiat liquidity. Like in many respects, Bitcoin is priced on the expectation of future fiat. And so when the expectation of future fiat, like if Warsh comes out and says, I'm cutting interest rates by 300 basis points, like Bitcoin's going to fly because the expectation of future credit and fiat in the system is drastically rising. and so then there's Bitcoin as well. And so it's some weird combination of that. And people get very frustrated.

It's like, no, it's just like a tech stock. I don't think so. Oh, it's just like gold. I don't know about that. So will it ever like fully decouple? I don't know. I don't know why it should need to. I think your question is,

when will Bitcoin act more risk off as opposed to risk on? Well, it feels like it should be both. Right. What does that mean? Always go up. Yeah, which is like, you know, why isn't Bitcoin always going up? Well, you know, you can answer that question.

And the other thing, too, that I think is fascinating is I've gone through the mental exercise, which is probably helpful for others, which is, well, why aren't central banks and governments adopting Bitcoin today in size? And I ask, well, why didn't, could they have adopted it on the first block? Like the very first 50 Bitcoin that were mined, could the United States? would the United States have started to like sovereignly hold, you know, a real treasury in that? And the answer is no, because it was, it didn't have the skeletal build to support liquidity and trade that big because the next block was another 50 bitcoins.

And so you would have gotten debased heavily because you would have gone from I own 50 out of 50 to I own 50 out of 100. I've been, that's serious inflation. That's 100% inflation. And so the early Bitcoin supply was extremely inflationary, and it incentivized a tremendous amount of speculation. You know, Satoshi begged speculators to come and speculate on Bitcoin. He begged them because he's basically, you know, cutting the issuance in half and basically saying, if you want to get in early on this thing, you only have so much time.

You can't wait to see if it works, because then you're, too late. And he built this curve on purpose. But it was so inflationary in the beginning that like no large, you know, the government can't buy. I mean, China's trade surplus was a trillion dollars last year. That's like the size of the entire Bitcoin market. So it also has this interesting, like, it's not a problem, but it has this. It's skeletal frame can only support so much mass as well. It's a great thing. It means that the people who are cleaning toilets and selling backlava got to get Bitcoin early. Correct.

Correct. Shout out Mandraig. Shout out Mandrake. But, Danny, it's such a prescient point that needs to be understood. Somehow, Satoshi engineered the thing to make sure that it got distributed to the people. And people say, well, it's because he leaked it on a mailing list. Probably true. Well, it's because it was anarchist, libertarian, cypherpunk leaning.

Probably true. But it also is almost like scientific. Because you could not have aped into this thing early on. It was far too inflationary. It was far too volatile. The float of the thing was not large enough. Float meaning how much liquid supply was actually active because I can't get in and out with any real liquidity

until it was far more mature. Strategy, as we know it today, could not have existed when Saylor first wrote Bitcoin off. It just couldn't have because of the skeletal frame. So the only people that functionally could have spent time understanding it and adopting it were the individual. It almost was forcefully a bottoms up movement by design, which I don't know how much of that was purposeful.

We never will. But it's an unbelievable achievement to somehow build something that is, how do you fairly distribute new money without knowing anyone's name, without having them registered anywhere central, and do it in a way where it becomes bottoms up and individually owned so much so that, you know, now that it's a trillion dollar asset, it's fairly impossible to corner the market. or to take it over. So yeah, I think Bitcoin, you know, like I got into Bitcoin before sailors, sailors getting into Bitcoin before governments.

And I think that's a good thing. And I think it's by design. And so why isn't Bitcoin up only hyper-bitconization? It's like, well, there's almost like physical limitations to, you know, like if you're a central bank, someone asked me on my podcast during the live Q&A yesterday, said, well, why doesn't the United States, China's buying a lot of gold, record amounts of gold. They're clearly remonitizing gold. And if they're our enemy, why don't we sell all of our gold, crash the gold price, and buy a bunch of Bitcoins.

I was like, well, Bitcoin's only worth the trillion dollars. So like, if Bitcoin's going to become a $50 trillion asset in the United States is going to own $49 trillion of it, and then sell it to who? And to themselves, it's like, it's going to be adopted in this very like methodical way. that's the really key point. It's like, we don't know if that was on purpose or if that was an accident of the design, but we do know it's the only reason it's still here and it's still interesting. Correct. If it didn't have that supply schedule, it just wouldn't be. If Satoshi went to Goldman Sachs and said, hey, I solved the Byzantine General's problem, I'd like to IPO it on the New York Stock Exchange, Bitcoin would have failed. So it is a miracle. And the innovation of using proof of work

to say, you know, the current, because everyone is purchasing Bitcoin, whether with fiat currency on strike or in Mother Nature's currency, which is energy. But you have to do real work in the real world to get Bitcoins. No one's ever gotten them for free. Apart from when they had the, what were they called the faucets. Sure. But that was someone else donating their real world work in the real world. But the point is like Bitcoin has a very strict policy that like you have to expend real work that someone else values in order to obtain this thing. And the currency Satoshi used to fairly distribute Bitcoin is I'll take energy in exchange for newly minted coins. And it's not he'll take energy. The network will take energy and use energy in exchange for

newly minted coins. And it's such an ingenious idea of that's how I'll decide who gets it. Not by their skin color, not by their eye color, not by their hair color, but by whoever's able to harness the cheapest energy and channel it to the network. And then to have the insight on top of that, What if everyone figures it out and starts channeling a bunch of energy to the network? Or what if people get disenthused and take the energy off of the network? How do we give it a consistent heartbeat? Because if the thing starts beating too fast, it's going to have a heart attack. If it doesn't beat enough, it's going to die because lack of blood flow.

So how does it beat just enough every 10 minutes on average? And to layer on the difficulty adjustment on top of that, and so that Bitcoin has a predictable heartbeat that everyone can, rely on and the heart is going to be a certain amount of time in the early days, which will bring a certain crowd and bring the individual and not necessarily have the physical frame for the institutions and the sovereigns to be able to actually monetize it. And only 20 years later, it's a remarkable achievement is probably one of the most impressive things I've ever seen. Yeah, I don't know about you, but it still blows my mind the way that it was designed.

And again, you have to just assume that everything was intentional because it's work. But to think this far ahead and the game theory of the whole thing, it's insane. And going back to the first part of this episode, which is a different world, 21 and stuff. But like, that's what inspires me is like Satoshi didn't, there was no ego involved. There's no statue of Satoshi's not on Time magazine. He didn't take the bitcoins that he mined early. Yeah, the guy just wanted. But that didn't represent lack of ambition.

just because, right? But the guy, yeah, he cared deeply about building and crafting something that worked and solved a very specific problem. And it was good enough to last long enough to then bleed into solving like many other problems. But I don't think Satoshi had the ambition of fix the money, fix the world, or had the foresight to figure out that Bitcoin would also inspire people to stop eating carbs. I don't think he had that foresight. I think he was like, well, hold on a second.

The core issue with money as it exists today are the central parties that are required. And in order for me to fix that and have a money that doesn't have that reliance, I got to solve the Byzantine generals problem. And it's just, okay, well, if I put that, that, okay, I think I solved it. What do you guys think? And it was just caring about the craft, the lack of ego and the level of humility and integrity that that took is so inspired. and to engineer something so well that's so focused and so simple and so honest

that it's able to scale and last as long as it did and grow into solving so many other things. So Bitcoin's won in so many ways, but getting back to something we said earlier about the number of people who are all holding self-custody Bitcoin, do you think there's been a slight failure there? Because we have ETF adoption, we have institutional adoption, there's a nation state that has Bitcoin on the balance sheet, but only let's guess, five million people holding on chain Bitcoin. Is that a failure? No. I don't think so. You know, like when I was saying Bitcoin adoption, I'm thinking people have a vague understanding or some remote understanding of what it is and why it's different, why it's important. I would say

a lot of the ETF holders have that. Like I would say Larry Fink has that. A lot of the fund managers that I meet that get exposure via the ETF have that. And that's to me what matters because it's the conscious, you know, people say, I'm in it for the technology. I'm not in it for the price. That's what I'm in it for both. Right. But, you know, your question, it doesn't imply that, but it alludes to this culture of like, what's, what's ETF adoption if it isn't, you know, someone holding their own keys? Like, we're in it for the tech. We're in it for the revolution. We're not in it for, you know, for the number go up. And I, my response to that is, the number go up is the only metric that matters in

Bitcoin because it tells us how much of the world is storing their cash balance, their time, energy effort, how much of the world is monetizing Bitcoin. That's the only thing that matters. When the price goes up, Bitcoin is getting more adopted. When the price goes down, Bitcoin is getting less adopted because people are storing less of their effort in less of their future in this thing. And so to me, that's what matters. And if people can, people are, because every single day, you have to make a monetary decision.

People don't appreciate that. Every single day, I wake up and I say, okay, I'm storing my future and the work I've done in the past in Bitcoin. Do I still want to do that? And I make a conscious decision. Yeah, I do. I almost re-employ Bitcoin to be my money and weapon of choice to provide for my future and protect the work I've done in the past every day.

I wake up, I go, yep, this is still the right choice. And so the fact that people are making those decisions at the margin via the ETF, via these instruments, that's fine. Of course, I think that there's counterparty risk implied in that. And then the most pure expression of Bitcoin is owning it in cold storage, buying the physical, I'm not comfortable, you know, holding it with the state or with, you know, a fund or whatever. But to me, adoption is making that kind of,

decision at the margins of, okay, I could do treasuries, I could do dollars, I could do invidia stock, nah, I'm going to do Bitcoin. And that's, we're monetizing a thing in real time. To me, that's adoption, you know? Yeah, makes sense. And why do you think that gold had a bull run last year when we didn't? Because you would expect the two to move in tandem. And every bull run, we've broken new all-time highs versus gold? Because I think that, uh, China is the answer. I think that gold is being reintroduced into the financial system as a reserve asset.

And I think a lot of that was East and China. And I don't know if who was buying gold in size was competing. Gold was competing with Bitcoin. I don't know if Bitcoin was an option. I view it as they were rejecting the notion of sovereign debt and treasuries and remonitizing a neutral thing. But I don't think Bitcoin was actually competing for that monetary use case.

It's just not big enough. And so that is my honest answer. Because going back to what we were talking about, Bitcoin implied in it is individual in retail adoption. implied in it is small, medium-sized businesses, and now institutions and treasury company adoption and stuff, there is not a sovereign bid yet. And so the fact that so many central banks and China and everyone was,

you know, if you look at the growth of the Chinese international payment system, I think that's it, CIPES, skyrocketing. And like people are settling trade in their currency, but their currency is like effectively gold-backed at this point. because they're taking all of their trade surplus, and they're just recycling it into gold. And so you're seeing this remonetization, this reintroduction, and the U.S. government is actually exporting non-monetary gold

to help settle trade deficits. And so I think gold is, I think it's good, well, it's good for Bitcoin because it's promotional of the long-term thesis that sovereign debt and paper claims are worthless. Right. And, but it just was a different bid. It was a different bid.

The, the, the liquidity hasn't flowed all the way down yet. It's this kind of case-shaped thing. And you think that's just, again, we're too small? Yeah. Well, so it's, I would say it's just a practical question of, okay, China wants to, so let's say China's bought trillions of dollars of gold over the last few years. Like, how would they have, let's say they wanted to do it. Like, how?

But are you surprised they didn't even do even 1% in Bitcoin? No, but who's to say they didn't? True. I think they are. If I were a sovereign and I knew that I couldn't take trillion-dollar trade surplus and smash-by, you know what I would do? Start mining. Mining.

You know what they're doing? Mining. Yeah. I think they are. I wouldn't be convinced that they're not. But that's the amazing part is like it's all fair. Like, I'm DCAing, China's mining. Like, they, I don't think they can smash by a trillion.

And Bitcoin will build this like skeletal frame with time that can be supportive of that level of liquidity. I think we're getting there very, very soon because, you know, what's so important is the halvings, cutting the inflation rate. Now the stock to flow of Bitcoin is better than gold. So I would say Bitcoin has achieved the skeletal frame. and now it needs a higher floating price. The most attractive thing about a gold or about a Bitcoin is it's like a zero-yielding bond but can go infinitely high in price.

A bond can only go so high because then the yield hits zero, right? And vice versa, governments won't let bond go so low because the yield hits too high for them to afford. So Bitcoin is like it's zero yielding, but it's infinite price. And that's kind of like the escape hatch of all of the needed money printing and liquidity. Like, where's it going to go? People say, oh, they need to debase the dollar.

The dollar needs to get weaker. Sure, but against what? Probably if the currency of choice to debase the dollar against is the Chinese currency to help rebalance this trade. But think of it this way, Danny. If China ran this trillion-dollar trade surplus, let's say, or whatever, based on the amount of, and they didn't pour it all into gold, obviously. But let's say, you know, based on the amount of gold,

China has been importing and purchasing as a sovereign. And they ran a surplus of a trillion. And I think that was globally. I don't know how much of that was US specific. What would the price of gold had to have been for the trade to be neutral? Does that make sense where they ran such as, so the amount of imported gold,

well, the way you can balance the trade is very simple. If gold was $25,000 in ounce, China didn't run a surplus at all. trade was neutral. And that's like a very mind shift, interesting way to think about it as, oh, that's what it would mean to base the dollar dramatically and rebalance the world's trade. The answer to all of this, like I can solve the United States problem in five seconds. Don't be the world reserve currency. What comes with that is an artificially strong currency and artificially strong U.S. assets because people have innate demand for your money.

just because they need it for trade, they need it for settlement, they need it to repay debts. So the U.S. currency is far too strong. So implied in rebalancing trade and everything that everyone's talking about is gold 25,000, Bitcoin, whatever, one million, but it's this idea of what's something that can float in price and absorb all of this liquidity and all of this debasement. It's not treasuries. That's why I think gold got a bid. Just the world's repricing fiat.

paper claims lower and everything else higher. And Bitcoin will catch his bit eventually. Do you think next ball market, whenever that might be, we'll have a proper ball market? Yes, I do. Let's go. What, that's a, that's a, you know, the next bull market will be a bull market, of course. I mean, a proper bull market, like we used to have. Yeah, I do. I do. I, you know, I think I'm not sure what this worst guy's going to do. The market is claiming that he's going to cut. now based on... Oh, they... I thought they were still...

Excuse me. Hike. You're right. I'm sorry. That he's going to hike. And the math just doesn't work. It's very likely politics related of

I think the Fed board is putting a lot of pressure on him according to Trump. And he needs to look independent. But he, that's very unsustainable for a variety of reasons. And he'll likely blow someone up by doing that. But cutting is not an option.

either because of what seems to be sticky, fairly persistent inflation. So, yeah, I mean, someone has to lose. The loss has to be realized. Standing still is not an option. Like, one of the most beautiful things about the game of chess is you're not allowed to pass, you know. You got to make you move. Yeah, we call it Zugswong, is every move's a bad move. You wish you could say, I'm not going to move, but you got to move. And so I assume that they'll print the money and keep the empire alive. But we'll see.

Thank God, Bitcoin exists. Jack, this has been awesome. Yeah, good. I'm really genuinely excited to see what you do next. Jack's back. I'm back. I think it's going to be awesome. Thank you, ma'am.

Yeah, thanks, dude.