What Bitcoin Did - QE, LIQUIDITY, BONDS & BITCOIN w/ Nik Bhatia

Episode Date: March 28, 2025

Nik Bhatia is the author of Layered Money and The Bitcoin Age. In this episode, we discuss the structure and evolution of the modern financial system, how banks run the world and why understanding liquidity is essential to grasping Bitcoin’s place in the world. We also get into the Eurodollar system, the coming end of quantitative tightening, the behavioural vs mechanical impact of QE, and how the credit system could coexist with Bitcoin. THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS: IREN: https://www.iren.com/ RIVER: https://river.com/wbd CASA: https://casa.io/ LEDGER: https://www.ledger.com/ ANCHORWATCH: https://www.anchorwatch.com/ FOLLOW: Danny Knowles: https://x.com/_DannyKnowles or https://primal.net/danny Nik Bhatia: https://x.com/timevalueofbtc

potentially 600 trillion in real estate. A lot of that money is going to find its way into Bitcoin as a store of value. Bitcoin will go to a million dollars and well beyond in that process, and people will get very empowered if they own it. I want to give people that. What Bitcoin did is brought to you by our lead sponsor, a massive legend, Iron, the largest Nasdaik listed Bitcoin miner using 100% renewable energy. Iron are not just power in the Bitcoin network,

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Thank you, the relaunch. We're all very proud of you. Thank you. Yeah, no, it's excellent. and I was just talking to, do you know Ben Cousins at ZBD? I really like Ben. He's saying something cool up in London at the moment.

I don't know if that's public, but now it is. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we've been talking about it. Ben is a long, long-time friend of mine way before Bitcoin. And he was just telling me that Pete's really landing from the British, perspective. Totally. So I'm excited for Peter.

I can't experience it myself because I'm not a listener, you know, to his show. But I'm a, you know, big supporter of his. And I love him. I'm sending him something. Actually, here, I'm sending him a copy. Yeah. Yeah, he's done really well to like find a new audience so quickly. Because I think like in the Venn diagram of listeners, there's probably very few,

especially like American bitcoins that would now care about. like the UK politics stuff he's doing, but he's found a new audience really quick, and he's absolutely crushing it. Love it. He's the political Joe Rogan in the UK now. That's exactly what Ben said. And so it's the,

the message is getting through, I think. Totally. And the stuff he's doing in Bedford is really cool. I was speaking to him last night, and I don't want to say anything that he's not saying publicly yet, but he's making some real traction there. I think we're going to do a show. I'm going to do a show with him in Bedford

when I'm back for cheat code, which will be fun anyway, just to get him back on. I'm going to wind him up so much. But I can get into all the stuff he's doing in Bedford, because it's very cool. Yeah, I've been following some of the police stuff, and it's excellent.

Love to see it. Well, anyway, congratulations on your new book, Nick. You've dropped it. I know you've been working on this for a long time. I think the first time I heard about this, I think was when you were over in Sydney a couple years ago. You said, I'm about to start working on a new book and two years later or whatever is here. It starts as reading, Danny.

So when we met, I was still in this reading phase and you read so that you can assemble the parts of the story. And that's really that process. And yes, I'm very, very proud to have published now my second book, Bitcoin 8. and it's really my story about Bitcoin, my Bitcoin origin story and my diagnosis of Bitcoin. So I definitely want to get into the book. We're going to do that a little bit later. But first, I need to pick your brains on the macro side of things. Because the Fed came out pretty recently with, I think quite a big announcement that they're going to slow down QT. I don't know if that's kind of on the pathway to bringing back QE, but maybe we'll get into that.

But do you want to explain what they actually are doing now, what they've said, going to do? Is it from April 1st? Is that right? Yes. So they are slowing the pace of runoff from 25 billion cap in securities to 5 billion. And in that way, they're starting to stabilize the balance sheet. So a 5 billion runoff is really not that much. It's basically them saying that QT is coming to an end, essentially. It does pave the way for further. expansion, but that's not what they're doing right now. And, you know, we can unpack that as much as you want. Yeah, I want to unpack that. So what is it that the Fed are kind of seeing that are making them make this decision? So the Fed has two, they have two levers now, Danny. That's what this is all

about. They have the price of money and they have the quantity of base money. The price of money is something that they drive with this Fed funds window, but really what it has become is actually a corridor or a window for repo rates. Repo rates are what underpin the financing of the entire system. So Fed, we can even break down the types of money market rates. So, you know, let's talk about Fed funds versus deposits versus repo, for a second. Now, Fed funds is the rate that the Fed moves when they, you know, move rates. But they're not actually moving a single rate. They're moving ceilings and floors. And in that way, they drive the

market between those rates. But Fed funds, which is the market for banks borrowing reserves from each other, that market for reserves is a market that is not used for the core functioning of the financial system. Okay, I needed to explain that. What does that mean? What are reserves for, Danny? That's really what this is about. Well, it's funny that you say that.

Let me just, I'm sorry, I'm interrupting you here, but I want to tell you why that's quite funny. Recently I had Jeff Snyder on the show who thinks reserves basically mean nothing. I then had Parker Lewis on the show who kind of rebutted that and said, no, this is money creation. So maybe in this, I would like to hear your take on that as well. Okay. Reserves, when they create them is money creation. I would agree with that. They don't mean the price on reserves themselves is not necessarily relevant, but reserves are important for the system. Okay. Reserves are used when banks settled between themselves in the onshore dollar system.

So if you're a bank and you have a big customer, that customer buys another company, let's say. And they do it from a current deposit. So that's not, you know, that's an oversimplification of how it works. But let's say this bank, this customer has $100 million at a bank and decides to buy a company with it. Now, when they wire the money out to the owner of that company that they're acquiring, that owner that just cashed out on his startup banks at Bank B, right? Not this first bank. And so Bank B calls Bank A and says, hey, your client just sent my client. a hundred million, settle up.

And if these banks are both onshore banks, one bank might send reserves at the Fed to that other bank. That's one way that that transaction can settle. Now, in the real economy, money is moving back and forth every day from banks to other banks. And so a lot of it nets out, and these days there's not a lot of reserve that need to be borrowed from a neighboring bank to settle a transaction.

That's why reserves aren't necessarily relevant. However, the quantity of them does matter because reserves are a pool that is used to fund the repo market. If banks have reserves and there is a repo rate that is slightly more attractive

then the Fed Funds rate, they might take it out of, or not even the Fed Funds rate, I should say the interest on reserve balances. So that's one of the corridor rates, it's one of the policy rates that they actually move. They don't move Fed funds, right? They move the standing repo rate,

the reverse repo rate, the interest on reserve balances rate. So when they move the interest on reserve balances rate, rate up and down, what they're doing is they're basically telling banks this is how much you get overnight on this quantity of reserves. But in the repo market, there might be a pickup, right? A yield pickup. So the money leaves and goes to the repo market. Well, what happens around the calendar? The spread of repo to that interest on reserve balances rate is getting wider and wider and wider. that means that there is scarce reserves

because if you're a bank and you see a five basis point pickup in repo but you don't do it why don't you do it? Because you don't want to leave you don't want to part ways with your reserves. And the reason they wouldn't want to part ways with the reserves is because they just don't have enough of them

they don't have enough collateral to do that. It's not about collateral. It's about in a situation where your customers send money out and you're actually called for reserves. If you don't have enough, you have to go to, you know, you potentially have to go, if you can't get them in Fed funds, because the banks sniff out, then you go to the Fed, then you have to admit to the market that you've gone to the discount window or something and then you're in trouble and then money goes and it's

snowball. So it's really a reputation issue where nobody wants to be caught without enough reserves. So they basically have a scarce reserve mindset instead of an abundant reserve mindset. And if you go back, if you read and if you listen to Powell's press conferences, he's always talking about the scarcity of reserves and the repo market around the calendar. That's what we're talking about here. It's because if the repo market is not funded, the whole system seizes. Now, the Fed has a good band-aid on it, the standing repo facility, which it put after September 2019 repo crisis, it took them a while. But that has never been tested,

and they want to make sure that they're not running up against a repo crisis. So you have to stop scarcity of resorts. mindset, which is starting to appear, like I said, not every night, but on the calendar now when it really matters, which is, you know, month end and quarter end when these banks have to disclose their positions and basically strike their books. And so it has to be as tidy as they can and they have to make sure that every position is funded appropriately. And so each funding transaction then becomes immensely important for the bank as you get to the quarter end. And that's why on the day of quarter end, these repo rates spike because those with reserves

know that those reserves are scarce. They won't get lent out unless the rate is attractive and you really, really need them tonight. You need them tonight more than you need them any other night. So I'm going to charge you for it. It means there's a scarcity of reserves. That's what the Fed has responded to. And so by reducing the rate that they're reducing their balance sheet with reducing this quantitative tightening, like how does that fix that reserve issue? Okay. So and remember that we said the Fed has two tools. One is interest rates and the other is the balance sheet. Notice how we're not talking about interest rates at all. That's almost a separate conversation here. So I want to acknowledge that too. So when the Fed is winding down their balance sheet and they're letting

treasuries mature from their balance sheet, the liability, that's the asset going down. The liability that goes down can can vary. And in in the over the past couple years, it has a lot of the times come from the Treasury general account. or reverse repo, which had $2 trillion. Yeah, I want to bring up that chart because that's gone from $2 trillion to nearly zero, right? Right. Now reverse repo is nearly empty. And that means that where are the funds going to come from to fund the treasury purchases that the Fed is not doing?

And that's going to end up being essentially money in the system that was not in, reverse repo. The reverse repo money was what was funding all of that balance sheet runoff. Which is why you see this drawdown so much. Now it has to come from reserves. There's no other place it can come from. And in that process of shrinking reserves, you're only making the scarcity of reserves around the calendar worse. So it's a very actually a simple thing that they're doing is that they're trying to make sure reserves don't go down anymore because the calendar has shown us that they can't really afford to do that much longer. This episode is brought to you by Anchor Watch. The thing that keeps me up at night is the idea of a

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It's an amazing newsletter, it's pure signal, And you can subscribe for free at financial freedom report.org. And so is this like laying a pathway to getting back towards QE? Or is this, does it not necessarily signify that? It's 100% a pathway, but it doesn't, it's not the signal that it's coming. But what we do know is that the Fed only cares, it's really, it's really in the weeds, but the Fed only cares about what is the level. at which reserves are now scarce.

And once it hits that, in theory, they should be growing reserves at the rate of GDP. Okay. Just as a baseline. So my next prediction for the, for the QE is that it's going to be a GDP targeting sort of, you know, a profile of debt that's added to the system every year in accordance with, you know, GDP expansion. And in that way, the Fed will have some reserve expansion. And that way, they'll stop testing the scarcity of reserves and potentially start building

an abundance of reserves, but an appropriate one to them, right? Appropriate to them. To whom really just to them? And so you think potentially this year they might look at doing QE, but to increase reserves are like 2.5% or whatever GDP is. This year, honestly, they could keep this pace going because those calendar issues that I'm pointing out to you are enough to get them to slow from 25 to 5,

but not enough to get them to expand them. So the Fed loves to be very slow moving. So I don't want to just say that, oh, by the end of this year, I think they'll be an expansion. They love to be slow moving. I thought that they would taper QE. They have actually already, but I thought they would do it more before this point,

but they've been able to, you know, extend, extend, and they might be able to extend more. Remember, we haven't talked about Jamie Diamond yet. J.P. Morgan has the largest quantity of reserves in the system. Okay. So they literally don't need to stop QT, just knowing that Diamond will be on standby for some of the stuff. Okay? If his bank is on standby to lend reserves up to a certain amount and, you know, maybe a verbal agreement. So what I'm trying to say is there are large pools of reserves that can. help out the system and that scarcity happens at the margin.

That's what we learned from September 2019. It's not that, oh my God, there's a scarcity. It's that the marginal player can't find it and it can create a crisis and these runs on the repo market that the Fed wants to avoid because what it signals is that their corridor doesn't work, right? But they've never, like I said, they've never tested that ceiling, that standing repo facility, which is a new ceiling for them. They've never, and that's another reason they can keep going, because they have the

standing repo facility now. So they can keep going and they just say, hey, if that marginal player needs it, we have a facility for them. Boom. We can keep going on the QT. So it can, it can last for much longer, Danny. Okay, so even if we ignore timeframes and we don't say this happens this year, if you think that at some point it gets to the point where we're expanding the bank reserves by 2.5%

or whatever GDP is, is that then sustainable? Because in Bitcoin, a lot of people talk about like QE Infinity and how they're just going to have to print more money than we've ever seen before. Do you think they can actually sustain at a much lower level? No, it's actually not sustainable. and it's very unlikely that they are able to just get away with that. So what we didn't talk about is actually the more likely, I shouldn't say more likely. A likely scenario is that there's a repo crisis at the margin. Several players have to come use the standing repo facility, even then marginal players price way up.

where the repo rates are in the market. And the Fed says, wait, reserves were way too scarce. Let's go back to expanding them at 5%, 10% a month or whatever it is to build that buffer of abundance and then we can taper it off. So they don't want to undershoot. And if they get into a bind that they probably over respond. And that's really what we are trained to, that's what we're trained to think that the Fed is going to do. But the Fed has operated in a tightening environment for a few years now.

And so now the burden is on us, really, to see, you know, the Fed become easy again. And it's really not on the Fed because right now they, you know, while they have been cutting rates, they've, you know, been slow to do so. And they want to make sure that they're still, you know, not letting inflation run wild. So they're doing their best dance. But what I think as Bitcoiners, what they really care about is does the system depend on expansion and expansion of the system. And that's when, you know, I think that Snyder is right in that the Fed creating reserves doesn't actually make its way into asset prices.

It's other conditions that get into asset prices. And reserve expansion, that kind of thing, that can be, obviously QE is a motivation for it and can be highly it can be highly inflationary for asset prices as the behavioral aspect kicks in

but conditions for expansion of the credit money system with a Fed still being relatively tight are those are even more

those are even better situations for Bitcoin. And what I mean by that is if the private sector is creating new money for new projects and growing the economy

without any expansion of the Fed's balance sheet, remember reserves are just for interbank settlement, but they don't restrict there's no reserve requirement anymore. So there's no restriction of how much

the banking system can expand based on reserves. So reserves can stay flat. They can even decline a little bit. But the whole system can grow more money in the system, more projects, more profits, more income, and more money available to buy assets like Bitcoin, real estate, all that credit creation machine. It does not depend on the Fed expanding.

It actually just depends on an absence of inflation and restriction. And the Fed is trying to back off. They're trying to get fed rates down into three and a half percent range. And so, you know, you skip ahead to my macro outlook. It's highly positive without any QE on the horizon because the conditions for expansion in the system, I believe, are there. So when Jeff Snyder says that the Fed is really just a signal and when they say they're going to do QE, that makes people go out and take on more risks like credit creation happens. Do you agree with them there that it's just the signal, not actually the QE that's driving that?

It is the behavioral aspect, but the injection of reserves into the system from purchasing treasuries. right, relieves a pressure off of the private market to buy treasuries. Okay. So by itself, there is a raw pass-through of positive liquidity dynamics for other asset prices. Sorry, asset classes. Now, also, we have to understand that for the banking system, QE is just an asset swap. So it doesn't increase the size of the banking system. And which is my point in the first place, which is that the banking system growing is what can

drive asset prices higher as credit creation is a function of basically good projects. If there are things to invest in, the whole system can grow to accommodate it. That keeps the conditions for Bitcoin expansion very, very good. that's what we're doing at the Bitcoin layer is our metric literally measures the size of the banking system and a much greater portion of it is the private sector versus the central bank. The central bank is part of it,

but it's only a small part of it. It's the private sector that really moves money and can create money. The Fed, when it does QE, it's an asset swap for the bank, so they lose a treasury and they gain a reserve, then they might go back and just buy the treasury again, you know, or buy something else.

So it's not that, it's not that stimulative from that perspective, but it's good for the behavioral side, but I actually think the mechanical side of replacing treasuries, you know, from the private sector, is the liquidity channel itself. So I'm more in the big, mechanical side of things, then the behavioral, although behavior is a huge part of what the Fed does.

Yes. Okay. I do want to get into the Bitcoin side of this. And I know this is really deep in the weeds, but I need to ask this question, because I'm curious. So I'm trying to unpack what you're saying there. So when you say this kind of relieves the pressure, is that really on the primary dealers? Because they're mandated to participate in the bond auctions, right? So if they, they're not, okay.

But if they, no, you know, you're, no, you're right. It's not, this is not about the primary dealers. The primary dealers are just the pass through, right? They're just the, they, they attract repo funding to go into the auction and bid on securities and then traffic those securities. But the securities ends up in private hands. Okay. Investors, pension funds, you know, asset managers. bond funds. And so those people are the, that, that group is who owns the bonds, right? Obviously,

banks are part of that too. But we're talking about investors, really. If investors have to own treasuries that the Fed doesn't own, then that crowds out investment for private markets. I see. That's what's what happens in Cuba. But in QT, sorry, but in QE, the treasuries that are held by the private hands, that's what we call it, private hands, they get taken away by the Fed. So now there's money in private hands that's free for other stuff. So it can go back and buy treasuries, but it's also free to buy other stuff. And behaviorally, in a time of QE, it does tend to go to other stuff, right? because treasuries go into actually in the early QE days,

treasuries went into, you know, bare markets or up, you know, up patterns and interest rates as investors really got confident and said, well, I don't want any of my treasuries. I'm going to go invest in risk. And that's the behavioral channel. So both the mechanical channel and the behavioral channel are, legitimate, but it's a mistake to ignore the mechanical side because this replacement of, it's nothing to do with the primary dealers, Danny. They are just the inventory management

arm of this financial industry. What happens at the primary dealer level is important signal for the health of the whole system and how it's operating, but they're not much the detourable. of that aspect. They, however, heavily rely on the repo market, so they need a good repo market, but their funding in the repo market really comes from money market funds. It comes from existing cash pools that are out there in the system, again, not fed dependent and less volatile, to be honest with you. It's highly sticky money that they use to fund these, this inventory,

activity. Okay. So let's get into what this actually means for Bitcoin, because when the Fed announced they were going to slow down QT, Bitcoin did really well on the day. It's obviously not performed particularly well in 2025 so far. But looking further out, what do you think all of this will mean for Bitcoin? It's all about our understanding of liquidity now. So when we talk about the Bitcoin price, we have the Bitcoin supply and demand side. right, which is its own, that's its own science, and that's going to evolve in its own way. And we can unpack that too. But from a liquidity side, Bitcoin is tied in with the risk apparatus of the world's investment,

you know, the world's investment capital, meaning that good conditions means good for Bitcoin, bad conditions means bad for Bitcoin, just as a good. it does for stocks. We've proven this to ourselves empirically at TBL, so I am more confident talking within this framework that Bitcoin supply and demand is going to have its own dynamics, especially when it comes to supply in a rising price world. What type of supply comes to the market if Bitcoin gets to 100, 120, 150? That is an exercise that we're not talking about at all here, right? I'm just talking about the liquidity conditions that are also present for stocks. Those conditions, I believe, are very supportive to Bitcoin because they depend on the size

of the private banking system as well as the central banking system, but more the private banking system, which depends on confidence in economic growth, which I believe is present. the fact that the economy is still in expansion by every single measure, labor market is still adding wages and adding jobs. All of these things are present despite a federal fund's rate of 4% and that rate is likely to come down at the margin. That means the economy is able to sustain itself at these levels of interest rate. That's a good thing by itself.

and our metric is also dependent on muted bond volatility, which means treasury prices that are not that volatile, and treasury prices that influence market makers to sell options on the treasury market. And the only reason that participants would sell options on the treasury market is if they're not scared, rates are going to spike dramatically. what could cause rates to spike dramatically a wave of inflation. So right now, the inflation worry in the market is essentially nil based off of a few things. I mean, we can go. The most important one is inflation break-evens of treasury yields, right?

So we know that treasury yields, nominal treasury yields at 4% in the 10-year part of the, sorry, four and a third percent in 10 year are about two and a quarter percent from inflation expectations and about 2 percent from real rates, which are observable in the tips market. And so the inflation break-even component of treasury yields has basically trended down and down over the past few months and flat over the last couple years. So there is no worry about inflation in the treasury market. Thus, treasury volatility is low, that we measure that by the move index. Low treasury volatility is the number one precursor to good risk asset prices.

The number one. The dollar is second, but move is number one. And if you can predict where move is going to be, you understand the condition for risk assets. We believe move is tame. It will stay there because the threat of inflation is not on the horizon, and that should support Bitcoin prices. And what will finally catch the Bitcoin price, the supply and demand dynamics within Bitcoin itself will catch it when they catch it,

but the conditions are there for expansion. They're not where they were in 22 when rates were being hiked and move with sky rocketing, as was the dollar, because rates were going higher, all terrible conditions for Bitcoin. None of those conditions are present today. That's really interesting that the bond market signaling they're not expecting inflation, because when I speak to most of the macro people, whether it's like Lynn Alder and I was speaking to Luke Groman recently, I think they're probably expecting inflation to come back to some degree in the next few years. Do you think the Treasury market's pricing that correctly? So to what degree is inflation going to come

back. I think that's the important thing. Inflation is currently between two and three, right? So does it go back between three and four, or between four and five, or between five and six? So I would argue that if it would to go back between five and six, that that would be a disaster for the bond market, an epic disaster for the bond market. The bond market is the only signal that I use, Danny, to give me where. the market is worried about inflation because that is the expression of the market saying, this is what I demand to be compensated for inflation. So today it's about four and a third percent in tens.

That's down slightly from levels that were close to 5 percent over the last year or two. It happened a couple times where treasury yields got almost that high and did get above 5 percent in certain parts of the curve for sure. That was the point at which investors were really worried about inflation. So that's the reference point. So if you're far away from the highs, it means that the worry, you're far away from the worries. You're looking up at the worries. And so that's where the market is today. It's looking up at 5% and saying, nobody is demanding that. And 5% is very bad. I mean, it's

proven to be bad over the last couple years. This is not, that's not a safe level. And because it introduces a lot of bond volatility, market makers stepping back saying, I'm not going to sell you options on higher rates because I don't know where they're going. That is fear. So I am a market-driven analyst.

I am looking at the market and what it says, and it said inflation is a big worry. It did that in 22. And in 23, it actually told you that the worry is rolling over. But there was so much worry existing in parts of the market. It kept volatility elevated and kept, it basically kept this force in the market that prevented buyers from coming in until the yields got closer to 5%. That is fear. So it seems, it might seem silly to make such a big deal out of four and a third

percent versus 5 percent on tens, but that's what I do. I have to do that and I have to look at the trend. And I do see yields slightly rolling over. It means that the inflation worry is slightly declining, not slightly increasing. So, and what do we do? We watch yields. So if yields get back above four and a half percent, then you have to change your tune a little bit, right? So every 17 basis points matters, but that is the nature of my practice. So you agree with the bond market then. You're taking that as a signal that we're not going to see higher than, say, 5% inflation in the coming 10 years. And actually, just an interesting, like, historical comparison. Did the bond market's price in the volatility in 21, 22?

So the bond market was way ahead of the inflation readings that triggered the Fed to get rates up to 5%. So that's, you know, when we look at the two-year yield or the 10-year yield versus Fed funds, it was way up ahead. So in 21, basically at the end of 21, Treasury started to sell. off because investors realize this is not, this is not a good situation for us. We need to get out of the market. So it sniffed out inflation way before the Fed did, way before the Fed started hiking rates. And by the way, it responds to releases. So like the second that CPI started to hit that three, four, five, the bond market was

gone. It was like you couldn't sell it fast enough. So the answer to your question is yes, the bond market leads. It's the best tell. And it's not that it's what I base it on. It's that that is, like I said, it's my practice. That's all that you have as an investor to gauge what the market believes is you have inflation break-evens.

You have inflation swaps. You have interest rate differentials. And you have like the five-year, five-year, which is also. an inflation swap. So you just have market-based evidence of where inflation is. And by the way, we have a curve and then you can deconstruct the curve. So you know it's not like what's the inflation expectation for five years. It's what's the expectation between year eight and year nine? We have every single one of those numbers in the market. Right. And so the market says inflation, you know, two to three percent, you know, as far as the I can see.

And so that's the context that we just have to operate in. Now, I'm also not saying that inflation can't go up over the next 10 years. There's no way I can know. So I'm actually even telling you that what I can see is that the conditions are really good for the economy to expand and the private sector to accommodate. that expansion over the next 12 to 24 months. But at that point, the economy might be so strong it's triggering an inflation out there that that warrants a response from policymakers to actually raise rates and restrict. So I don't play the 10-year prediction game on inflation because

it will cycle up and down. That is everything. So my practice is looking probably much more short term than people that are looking at 10-year inflation because, well, I see a credit cycle that's much more responsive than, you know, over that time horizon, I would say. Okay, so this is all obviously bullish Bitcoin in the short term. One thing you said before that I think is interesting is that Bitcoin trades like a risk asset, which we all know it just does. Like it's super correlated to the NASDAQ. But what we have seen this year is, got.

has done really well, whereas Bitcoin's not. Do you think Bitcoin will get to a point where it doesn't trade like a risk asset anymore? And when do you think that kind of like decorrelation will happen? Yeah, so gold doesn't really trade like a risk asset. So Bitcoin and stocks trade like each other. And gold is performing very well this year not because of positive liquidity conditions. It's doing so because of monetary changes. and, you know, to be very frank, geopolitical changes.

Yeah. You know, China, wink, wink, China, right? It's like the gold market is responding to China fundamentals, like physical movement, right? And I'm definitely not the best person to, because it's outside my window of analysis is the physical movement of gold or even the gold market itself. but I do know the correlations and that gold is not trading well this year because of things that should have made Bitcoin and stocks trade well. So I want to just say that first. When will Bitcoin trade more like gold?

I don't know. I think maybe it might be a very long time, but I don't think that Bitcoin escapes a liquidity bid. I don't envision that, right? So it might lower its correlation to stocks or the two might trade inversely, you know, oddly enough where one might go up and the other might go down just like treasuries. Sometimes Bitcoin goes up when yields go up and it goes down when yields go up, right?

And so that's all very interesting stuff. And it does change over time. We go through, we call them regime shifts in correlation. TBL. So we go through these little regime shifts in which, you know, correlations are one way, and then they snap the other way. And so we see Bitcoin playing different roles sometimes positively correlated with Treasury sometimes negatively, most of the time moving with stocks, sometimes not having any, they're not like ticking together means that the algos that were trading both of them together have been turned off. Those are interesting things to notice.

but I don't see Bitcoin losing this liquidity bid. And stocks obviously don't lose that. They're dependent on that. That's the nature of the system now. The whole, Danny, you know, I want to summarize my framework for people. I used to teach, I teach fixed income at USC. So I teach the bond market. And I used to teach my students for the first few years that a good investment framework is using PMIs to tell us.

us where we are in the economic cycle. So if the economy is doing well, you're in expansion, you should be overweight risk. And then if inflation gets too hot and the Fed is moving to tighten, that means that you're probably going to fall off in the economy and you should go to a less risky portfolio. And in that binary way, we have a framework for investing. But it's ending in terms of That's not the way that I believe it should be described anymore. The markets go up and down based off flow. Money creation. That is a school of thought that has been with us since the days of Solomon Brothers in the 80s.

The original basically creators of this practice of measuring flow. measuring money creation and watching money move and then following and then seeing that asset prices respond to movement and money. And so it's a 40-year school of thought that I'm finally catching up to where I've understood it in an inherent way on a lot of, now I'm trying to understand it in a highly quantitative way and a very advanced way and eventually write a book on it. So that's where I'm going in my research career. I want to describe flow.

I want to describe liquidity in a way. That's what we are doing with TBL liquidity. We're trying to do this in front of people where we don't just think, oh, one day it's going to just go and become a gold correlation. That's not actually how we're thinking about it at all. It is a liquidity-based asset, and liquidity is everything. So we are students of flow. So that's really interesting that the frameworks that used to teach kind of broke. What was it that changed in the market that broke that?

I think it's becoming a researcher, right? So I went from a bond desk to a classroom. Then I wrote a book. Then I started a research firm. Touching the data myself, that was it. I mean, you know, getting a macro bond subscription, getting data myself working with a fantastic quantitative analyst in Augustine Carosco at the Bitcoin layer, we're able to do stuff that I've never been able to do.

I have the numbers now. So it really came down to that, right, being able to see it myself. So we're primary source people. That's what macro bond allows us to do. We get data feeds from every source out there directly, basically. MacroBond is simply the aggregator and charting tool, a fantastic one, but an aggregator for us. So it is our own interaction with the data, Danny, that has done it. And being a markets-based person and, you know, coming from the bond desk, it was always price first.

And you're just kind of like responding to price only. but without a real framework on where it's coming from. And, you know, that's probably just the nature of me being a young person and, you know, a rookie. And but then, you know, now that I'm not on a bond desk, I have the time to do research. That's my livelihood now is research. And I want to do it the correct way. So we're going to work our ass off to do it, not, you know, just go with the papers that

read, you know, from Fidelity that are like, a business cycle approach to asset allocation. Okay, that is maybe, that's maybe a good starting point and it's not even irrelevant. It's actually still highly relevant, but it's not, it's not where it's at for me. I want to be better. And the numbers have to speak for themselves. So that's, that's what I've been working on. This episode is also brought to you by Ledger. If you're serious about protecting your Bitcoin,

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That's L-E-D-G-R.com. episode is brought to you by CASA, the leading Bitcoin self-custody solution. I've been using CASA since 2019 and I can't recommend them enough. CASA have options for all Bitcoiners from a two of three multi-sig to a three of five and a private client option for absolute best in class security. CASA also do inheritance which I very recently set up and it really couldn't be easier. My inheritance plan has gone from a vague treasure map for my wife to a rock solid security plan that I have total confidence in. To find out more about CASA, go to CASA.com. which is c-a-s-a-o. I also want to tell you about cheatcode. On April the 11th to the 13th, we're

going to be back in Bedford and we have an amazing lineup of speakers including XPM Liz Truss, Preston Pish, Alex Gladstein, Nat Brunel, James Lavish and so many more. We then have a football day where we'll hopefully see Rail Bedford win the league again. Last year was amazing. This year is going to be better, but tickets will sell out for this. So if you want to come, head over tochicode.com.com UK and grab a ticket. Okay, so if everything is now kind of lining up really well for Bitcoin this year, how high do you think it can go? What do you think this year will look like for Bitcoin?

Yeah, you know, I think with realized price getting to 50, 60K, which it easily can, Bitcoin can easily go above 200. So what I'm telling my readers is that you should be thinking about 200 as a likely scenario so you don't get caught off guard. Right? That doesn't mean we'll hit it, but it is totally in context of current price, where realized price is heading, on-chain activity, new allocation into Bitcoin from ETF vehicles, the trend in ETFAUM, the stickiness of that money, corporate allocation trends. all of these things suggest that

the demand side of Bitcoin is healthy and where is the supply side capped? Well, if you just go with a historical multiple of realized price, you get to 200 without breaking any

past cycle model. And if the US starts stacking Bitcoin in a serious way with DSBR and maybe the Cynthia Lummus bill, we'll see what happens there, do you think that then blows out even further. It's so far still out of my base case. And I'm not saying I don't believe a bill will pass. And I even think that it can. And I'm hoping that it does. I think it needs it needs more of a it needs more of a direction alongside

the current strategies laid out by the executive branch. So those two things need to merge and that still has yet to be seen. So, you know, I hope to see that process, you know, play out. The USA buying Bitcoin, it's, I don't think it's priced in to the market at all because I think people are maybe similar to me in that they don't see it as a next 12-month thing so they can't like make a decision based off of that today.

They have to make a decision off of other things, right, which are not SBR-related. Yeah, it's way more onto the speculative side. But I mean, if I was to guess, I think the US will start stacking Bitcoin this year. I think so too. I really do. It's not that I don't. It's that I can't. We're limited by our own brains.

I cannot process it yet. Yeah. I cannot process it yet, even though the prospect of it is there. Until it's real. Yeah, it's not until it's real, but until I just believe the White House has a lot more to do first. And it's not even I believe. I've been reading, watching, and listening to Besant a lot, a lot. This guy is incredibly informative and he leaves only breadcrumbs that you have to then

thought exercise out. And Bitcoin is, it's not out of his top 10, but it's not necessarily in his top three. He's trying to get the oil price down. If you really listen to him, he's trying to get the oil price down and rates lower and basically encourage the concept of Doe and then encourage tariffs to reorient the American dream around other values, not cheap Chinese goods. Do you see how many things are before Bitcoin on that list? And as an American, I see the validity in approaching those things before the Bitcoin thing to be very, very frank with you. And so that's why I can't process it yet,

because I'm actually watching leadership, do what they're doing, say things that make me want to study that and research that. So right now, it's why they're doing the tariffs, how they execute them, and, you know, whether they actually follow through on all of them or just, you know, end up, you know, cutting people breaks like they did, you know, like they did in the first term. So I think that is more captivating me. And for that reason, it's hard for me to speculate on the SBR yet. Yeah, that seems fair. I do want to get into the book, but you brought up, Besson, and I do, there's one kind of key question for you as the bond guy. He said that he wants to start issuing longer duration bonds, but then he kind of didn't. What do you expect to happen there?

Yeah, it's funny. Everybody is super curious about this question, which fascinates me, actually, that people really want to know when they're going to issue more long and reduce the dependence on bills and short because I think everybody understands the historical context that an overdependence on short funding is not healthy for a government. They should term out, especially with low rates. So I understand the reason for the question. I don't think that they care and I don't think that there's any motive for them to necessarily do anything remotely drastic because Besson understands liquidity from my perspective in that more 30-year bonds in private hands crowds out investment because it's more duration risk.

That is a one-to-one thing that he must understand. I mean, I believe that he does. So why would he want to as the actual answer? Why would he want to other than to save? maybe some face for the U.S. government. So that's how I'm approaching it. And the answer will be somewhere in the middle, where eventually the conditions are good enough

to start terming some of it out to make sure that they're not hitting the market. So I want to present both sides of it to say that it's not a wrong question. He probably will do it. But I'm certain that it's not something that he is trying to do until he gets like the first few things that we've talked about

Get inflation down. Bring the whole yield curve down first, Danny. That is way more important to Besson. Then he can term it out because then you lock in 30 year yields at three something, you know, potentially, right? And instead of four something. And so why do it today? Get inflation down.

Get oil prices down. Get rates down. Then do other things later. That's also why it's not at front of my mind. I think he just has so many other things. The government and their agenda has a lot of other things that they've promised that they have to execute in order to actually reorient the approach to a successful economy. But as like the idiot in the room here, is the answer to why would you do that, not because it does help reduce inflation,

because the longer duration are less money like than the T bills? I mean, it's about funding, right? And so when the government goes to fund three, four, five trillion dollars a year in the bond market on a rolling basis, that exposes them to today's rates. So they can get into a bind where they're paying way more interest than, you know, they budgeted for three years ago, right? But if they have fixed, you know, interest payments over the course of the next 10, 20, and 30 years, they have more certainty of how they have to, you know, basically raise revenue to pay

for that, you know, future interest rate expense. So I think that's more of the channel that I'm thinking about. But you're welcome to ask a follow-up if I miss something there. No, no, that makes sense. All right, let's get into the book. The Bitcoin Age is here. Why did you write this? Because you obviously wrote layered money. What was the reason you wanted to come back and do another Bitcoin book? Yes. So here's the book. It's called Bitcoin Age. It's been out just a couple weeks. It's on Amazon and many other places. And the audiobook is in production, Danny.

So we're very excited about that. Nice. Who's doing that? Is it Guy Swan again? No, it's somebody that we've hired internally. And we're very, very excited to share that with people. Nice. So I want to talk about, you know, layered money.

You mentioned layered money. Layered money was my approach as a new, you know, fixed income professor, someone to T Bitcoin through a financial academic lens. And in order to do that, we had to set up the hierarchy of money, which is a concept that doesn't need Bitcoin. It needs gold, though, because gold is the only type of money that does not have a liability associated with it.

And so there's this whole academic framework that already existed called monetary hierarchy that was perfect for describing Bitcoin. as this digital gold. Why do people call it digital gold? It's actually highly academic. And here's the framework for it. It's called monetary hierarchy, and I rebranded it as layered money, right?

So that was what layered money was. And I still think, not even think, I still teach layered money because I teach monetary hierarchy and layered money together now. So I put the balance sheets on the board, and then I draw one, two, and three so that people can see first layer, second layer, and third layer.

And it clicks for people sometimes more quickly than just the balance sheet approach, which is the monetary hierarchy side of things. So that's what layered money was. Bitcoin Age is my story about Bitcoin's origin. It's absolutely revolutionary power and role in our society. truly revolutionary role in our society, empowering role in our society, and how it will coexist with the current credit system

into the future. And so I think it's a unique book in that it combines a history of banking, a history of the internet, a history of cryptography, some really fascinating stories from all three of those that I had a ton of fun researching. And then I speculate why Bitcoin will coexist with the dollar system, not work to blanket replace it. It will replace a lot of things as they exist today.

For example, real estate as a store of value is one of the things that I go after. And I say, this is where Bitcoin can really replace the current dynamic. Right. But I say it doesn't replace the stock market broadly. It can replace some of the demand for stocks as a monetary vehicle, but it presents this credit system as something that the world is dependent on and that is controlled by banks, which have set up a system that keeps them alive forever and growing forever.

So I don't see that system going away, and I talk about its origin as well. So it's a little bit more than an elevator pitch, but that's a little bit about my book. So let's kick it off with the Star Wars analogy, because I love that you started it there. Do you want to explain that? And then I've got some questions about the credit system that we live in now. Yes, so this is a scene from The Phantom Menace. This is episode one early in the film before Quigon and Obi-Wan Kenobi meet. Anakin Skywalker is a child for the first time.

So they land on his desert planet and they need a part for their spaceship and they go into town and they meet a merchant that has the part. Anakin is the young boy that works in the store as a slave and the Jedi says, you know, okay, you know, you have this part, I need this part. And the mechanic says, well, how are you going to pay for it? and the Jedi says I have 20,000 Republic credits. In the movie, he uses the name of their currency. And the mechanic said,

Republic credits are no good here. I need something more real. And then the Jedi tries to Jedi mind-trick him. And, you know, waving his hand and said, credits are just fine. And he said, what are you some sort of Jedi? Mind-tricks don't work on me, only money. And it was, it's, it's a scene I've loved for a long time.

And perhaps longer than I have been a bit coiner, I'm going to be honest with you. I don't actually know when I fell in love with this scene because I've been a sound money person for longer than I've been a bit coiner, right? The, that the lead in was actually, um, maybe seven years. So, and I know I've watched that film many times during that period. So probably I've loved this scene before I've been a bit coiner. but it so perfectly encapsulates what people fall for every day when they just accept their direct deposits. Now, people understand inherently, Danny, that those deposits are not going to hold value over time,

so they should go and buy stocks or real estate. But a lot of people can't, and so they just succumb to deposits or credit money. It's not backed by gold anymore. They don't have access to gold as to protect themselves again. the decay of deposits. Deposits grow in quantity every year, every quarter, every year. And when they contract, they are by policy demanded to expand to, you know, fix the crisis. And that's the system under which we live today. And that system disadvantages people. They need to see that credits themselves are a mind trick.

Accept it at your own risk. Accept it as temporary money. But don't accept it as truth. Don't accept it as money. Don't just take it as money. And that there was a lesson in Star Wars that we could open with to perhaps make it more relatable to people,

that they understand that this mechanic, he didn't accept credits. He wanted something more real. and why didn't he accept credits? So I tell the story of dollar credits and today's global banking dollar and that origin story. So the Fed's been Jedi mind-tricking those for decades. It's not the Fed. It's not the Fed.

And that's part of it, right? It's not the Fed by themselves. It's the banks that have used the Fed as their agent, as their agent. and we put this on banks in this book. It's not on the Fed. The Fed is the banks created the Fed. That's the story that we tell. If people are familiar with the creature from Jekyll Island,

I give you a mini history of that in Chapter 2. The bankers themselves created the Fed to protect themselves. So it's not the Fed that has been Jedi Minor. tricking us. It is the global banking cartel. Okay. So in the book, you kind of explain the history of the credit base system from the banks to the Fed to like the Eurodollar system. Do you want to go through that? And one of the questions I had there is, was the Eurodollar system

like the turbo charge on this? It is a great question. The Eurodollar system has us fascinated. It was the turbocharge on the United States dollar losing its sovereignty. So the U.S. dollar is now a banking instrument that the U.S. itself is a more of a responder to the situation than really having much control. And that is a function of the euro dollar system, which is alive and well today.

and really allows a lot of dollar activity to flourish around the world and supports the U.S. as the world reserve currency. And because it supports the U.S. as the world reserve currency, that same thing was true in 1960 when the Fed traveled to Europe to study it for the first time. And they came back with that conclusion. And so I tell that story in the book. I think it's very important to understand that it's more about the U.S. dollar

having something to do with the U.S. or that the U.S. is in control, or that there's any mirage that the U.S. is in control. The dollar is controlled by banks. The issuance of dollars is controlled by banks. The quantity of dollars in the system, therefore flow is controlled and mandated by banks. When the Fed comes in and does QE,

All they're doing is trying to prevent the contraction happening in banks, right? And so it's the Fed is just a respondent to banks. And so how did the system evolve? Really credits were promises to pay gold for hundreds and hundreds of years. It conditioned people to this mine trick where I'll accept the credit because it's a promise to pay gold. Okay. But then that broke, right? And it didn't just break in 71.

It started to break in 1931, with the Bank of England going off of their gold standard. And so basically, when they did that, they said they devalued against gold, right? So it's not that they stopped paying in gold. It's that they devalued gold, right? When the U.S. did their gold seizure in 1933 and their devaluation, you know, right after, it's not that France and Spain couldn't exchange their paper money

for gold in the 1960s. It was that they didn't get the same price that they would have in 1930, right? And so that whole mind trick, it faded over the course of 40 years, but then it went away in 19... The gold backing itself

went away in 1971. That unleashed more expansion of the system and within only a couple years. 1974, we had the financial crisis that made banks come together in Basel, not in, you know, the United States or not even in London, to come together in Switzerland and say,

we need a set of rules for ourselves because nobody is watching us. Nobody is watching us. So who is in charge, Danny? That's what we have to think. And I actually declare that the sixth step in my journey to this credit system dominance was completed in 1975 with this first Basel Concordat. Because that was when all the governments of the world got together and said, we're going to backstop the euro dollar system. And the euro dollar system had basically gotten an international backstop, including the U.S., including the U.S.

So that was the arrival. And I used to, I really, for a long time, used to think that this 2007 central bank swap line was this big magic moment infinite. And it still is, December 2007, responding to the euro dollar crisis that's started in August 2007. And that's one of the things I got to give a hat tip to Jeff Snyder. You mentioned him a couple times. His work on August 2007 is, I mean, it's something that it means a lot to me, right, in my process about learning all these things.

You know, and the papers are there. I've read the Fed papers about that time. I used to think that this December 2007 moment was the thing that made the Fed backstop the world central banks and all the euro dollar system and the but doing the deeper research i actually do realize it occurred much much earlier and i believe that the bank house uh herstadt crisis in 74 and the basal the first you know predecessor of the basle accords in 1975 those those were actually the key moments and my hat tip there is to josh younger who is i don't know even know where he works anymore. He's been a few places, but while he was doing this research,

he was at the New York Fed. Before that, he was at J.P. Morgan heading up interest rate derivative strategy. And he and I engaged when I was on the bond desk, so he would come to L.A. when we have meetings, an absolutely brilliant guy. Before J.P. Morgan, he was a literal rocket scientist. So PhD in astrophysics, I believe, or something like that. And so hat tip to Josh Younger also for his research on he has a paper called The Hidden Monetary State that he published last year. And it's a culmination of his work at the Fed. So I think people might be interested in that if they want a deeper dive.

Yeah, I'd like to get him on the podcast. So when you say before, who's in charge? Who is in charge? Is it just like a cabal of bankers? It's a great question. So what I do know, Danny, is that the banks have captured the system. Right? And so I can witness that by seeing how they, how central banks and governments,

central banks and governments responded to the 2008 crisis. Silicon Valley, we have different periods of time where we have pin, we have these pinpoints of evidence to who is actually captured the rules of the game. And the, you know, who controls the banks is, you know, for, for your other guests. You know, it's, it's, it's something that I think all curious people do. They, you know, I think they research. I probably did more. of that research when I was a younger person than I do today, or I'm focused more on the mechanics of the system. I still listen to and read people that write about who is running the world.

It is permanently fascinating to me, and something that is near and dear to my heart, and something that I, you know, I love to participate in, but it's outside of my research framework. But you don't think that's like the Bank of International Settlement or the IMF. No, no, because no, definitely not. Because the Bank for International Settlements is simply an agent of the banks and the IMF is as well, actually. When you watch what happens in bailouts, who are the stakeholders and who is actually getting bailed out, it's basically the bondholders and the underwriters, which are banks.

It's always the underwriters. So it's always the banks. So they're all agents of the banks. 1944 IMF created at Bretton Woods, right? And the architects were trying to create a system that actually the architects were trying to create a system that upheld the dollar as the World Reserve currency and people to be able to exchange their currencies for dollars and and, uh, you know, establish that system. But that system was built upon

an enormous mind trick that was diagnosed very early on by Robert Triffin, which is a concept I know that you guys have covered, you know, that's Triffon's paradox. Everyone, let's just say everyone knew it,

that the whole thing itself was based off of this credit system that might not last, right? That peg might not last, but we're going to go ahead and build all these institutions around it anyway. So, no, IMF, just an agent as well. Okay.

So one of the most interesting things in the book to me, a lot of Bitcoiners think that we're going to move to like a Bitcoin standard, the credit system will disappear. And you don't obviously think that's true. You think these two are going to coexist. So why is that? So let me also just say this. I envision a scenario when I close my eyes, I'm walking through a duty-free shop in an international airport,

and there's Bitcoin prices as well as a dollar price or a local price. I totally envision that, and I'm all for it. I love that vision, and I think that Bitcoiners around the world that are building toward the vision of transacting a Bitcoin, making a Bitcoin standard, I think it's, I think it's Bitcoin. It's part of Bitcoin. So I don't have an alternative take to that. I don't even want a different world than that. What I'm saying is that the dollar standard and the credit system standard, it comes down to one thing.

Okay? I give you this example in the book. If you have a couple that's earning and they have a good job and they go to a bank and they say, I want to buy a house now, but I don't have the money to buy a house. And the bank says, sure, I'll create my money. money out of thin air so you can buy the house because you have income in the future and you'll be able to pay me back. The system has expanded because of a credit worthy hardworking couple. Explain to me when and where in our history that goes away. Well, this is, I don't know if it was

you that said this to me, but it may have been that credit isn't something that you, that you can, like, credit is something you walk into a bank with. It's not something a bank gives you. Like, the creditworthiness is something you carry with you all the things. time. And I think that's really interesting. That's absolutely correct. You are the source of the money creation when you go to demand the loan. So tell me when people are going to stop going to the bank and saying, I want a house today because I can afford it tomorrow. Tell me when people are going to stop demanding that loan. They want to trade their earning tomorrow for a house today. They want to live in a house. They want to buy a car today. They want to drive it today. They don't have.

have the money today, but they want to drive it. They want to drive it to work. So the bank bridges that the bank bridges time for people. It literally bridges time. You can go into the future, show them all the money you'll make, come back into today, buy a house, they've created the money out of thin air. That's how the world works. Tell me when that stops. Well, I don't know when it stops, but does it change under a Bitcoin standard? Because like, if we have a sound money standard, does the amount of credit change? Sure. Absolutely the amount of sound money can change because you'll still, you know, probably go into fractional sort of fractional system. But maybe like, let's say there's a credit, a fractional credit Bitcoin, right? There's like an alt coin that's

credit Bitcoin. And there's a price between. This is, by the way, I wanted all of this in the book, but I had to stick to the message. Let's say there's a CBTC, which is a credit Bitcoin and a BTC. There's a price, right? And so one trades at 93 cents, 92 cents, 94 cents. And there's an understanding of maybe how many CBTC are out there in the system. And in that hopeful, you know, maybe transparency, there's a price that is derived based off of, you know, a credit Bitcoin and a real Bitcoin. And if you have credit Bitcoin, you don't have

real Bitcoin. And you'd have to buy real Bitcoin and you can't get it for one to one. You'd have to pay up for it because there's a time value of, not even a time value. There's a credit component here. There's a credit risk to owning CBTC because it's not real Bitcoin, because there's only 21 million Bitcoin. I envision that. I envision that. And CBTC then in that scenario can be created out of thin air maybe by the stakeholders. And then maybe you'll get more lending and a Bitcoin standard will develop in that currency. And that maybe that world develops over the course of 20, 30, 50 years and the dollar credit system fades away into a funeral or oblivion or, you know, a small portion of the global

economy and we will be under a Bitcoin standard. So I see it, Danny. It's not like I don't see it, right? But I have to write, I have to write the book that I can write. And so I don't know that. I don't know any of that, right? What do I feel like I know? I feel that three to six, I call it 300 trillion in the book, but potentially 600 trillion in real estate, that a lot of that money is going to find its way into Bitcoin as a store of value. Bitcoin will go to a million dollars and well beyond in that process, and people will get very empowered if they own it. I want to give people that. So I have to keep the message what I can keep it. And that's just me being honest with you. I have a great platform in the Bitcoin layer. We can do anything we want.

We can write about anything we want. I can write more books in the future. Is a Bitcoin standard with this CBTC versus Bitcoin at 93 cents and replacing the dollar in the next 10 years. There is not a chance in hell that that's the next 10 year scenario. Next 50 years? Sure. Absolutely, absolutely possible. But who am I? you know, who am I to go out and make that? And, you know, it goes with your 10-year inflation prediction question also. Like, I have to live, I have to live in my zone. I'm a teacher also.

So I have students. I have to teach them something. I can't dream 50 years in the future. They need a job next month. You know, I have to teach them to the best of my ability to. And I hope to do that, you know, with my books. Well, I love it. I've only skimmed through the manuscript you sent me.

I need to get my hands on a physical copy. I'll be in LA actually in April, so maybe I'll come and buy one off you in person. Okay, you know, you have to, you have to text me when you're coming, okay? I will do. But thank you so much for the time, Nick. Where do you want to send anyone before we close out? She'll your book and the Bitcoin layer and give everyone the links. Sure.

So go buy the book at your favorite place to buy books. For most people, it's Amazon. The audiobook is on the way. But please go buy the physical copy or the e-book anywhere you buy them. For me and the Bitcoin Layer, what we're doing also links to the book, links to our YouTube audio, and what we write at The Bitcoin Layer for our pros. At ThebitcoinLayer.com, you can find absolutely everything that we do at thebitcoinlayer.com. Love it. Thank you for the time, Nick.

And hopefully I'll see in a few weeks in L.A. then. Cheers, Danny. Thank you. Thank you.