Bitcoin Today Recast 3/27/26

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So that's always good, dark. Oh, go ahead, Punture.

No, no, I just, I made a decent sized purchase since 65, 8.

So pretty happy with that. Um, but anyway, we'll, we'll say how dark, how you doing, dark?

Top of the day. So you guys, how's it going?

You're doing your push ups for, for later?

No push ups today. Um, what's it going to have hours, two and a half hours you in Maryland?

Yeah, that's like hunting cow with a hammer. Um, no push ups needed.

But look, man, you know, what we're witnessing is a feature of the system.

It's not a bug. This is an absolute catastrophe.

We found ourselves in a position where we are completely dependent on the Ayatola

to save the global bond markets. Imagine doing that.

Imagine getting yourself into a position where you need the Ayatola of Iran to save

your bond markets. Good grief.

Well, I want, I wanted to talk today and, and kind of have a broad topic of, you know,

what, what's happening now? And I know like a lot of people get upset like, this isn't Bitcoin.

Yes, it is, guys, this is the transition into a decentralized, secure, uh, global, monetary, um, settlement

system that the world desperately needs now outside of the US dollar rails.

If you haven't figured it out yet, the world doesn't want to use dollars anymore.

Just look at our two year and our five year, the other day with these huge tails.

Like the whole system, as it was constructed and as it worked for our lifetimes,

was contingent upon people wanting and trusting our debt.

And for many reasons that we talked about and buying our debt, right, as the neutral reserve.

But when you weaponize it or when you debase it continuously, and we've talked about that with the Russian

Ukraine and just basically stealing their 260 billion or whatever the number was, the world is kind

of frozen at that point.

And they're like, we got to get out of this system.

But because there's so much inertia around that system, it takes time.

And there's got to be a system to go to and bricks was coming up with their ideas around it.

But the, but the fact of the matter is the system that will work is right in front of us.

And we've seen it for a really long time.

And that is Bitcoin.

But it's taking the world a minute to figure it out.

And you've got all this strife that I think is leading us to, you know, I've said this before, when,

when, when the shit hits the fan, the only plans that get implemented are the ones that are already on the table.

And Bitcoin has got what, 17 years now in its, it's relatively, you know, young as an asset.

But it is the, it is the solution to the problem.

A neutral reserve currency that's borderless, that's instantaneous final settlement.

It's here.

And it's a store of value that I believe is moving to a medium of exchange.

And that ultimately will be a unit of accounts.

And, and something, you know, if you get a chance to see it, I'll put it in the nest.

Mark Moss, I think, did an amazing job with Peter Schiff yesterday.

Just dismantling this whole idea that the gold for the longest time served that purpose.

But because it's centralized and because humans are flawed and they can't help but kind of loop the system.

And they did that by way of fiat kind of exposing one of gold's

fatal flaws, which is, it's, it's, it's ability to be final settlement in any reasonable time.

And because of all the physicality of gold that Peter seems to think is a benefit.

But it's actually a detractor to gold as a, as a global settlement system.

It doesn't work anymore.

And we're going into, you know, I implore you to watch it.

It's about two hours.

And he just completely dismantles Peter Schiff.

But in doing so, he talks very clearly about the move to a digital age,

where AIs and, and AI agents are going to be able to transact and why they won't use stable coins.

And why they, they're going to gravitate toward Bitcoin.

And it's already happening.

But people just, there's just so much inertia in people understanding that.

But it's playing out in front of you.

And the fact that Bitcoin has dropped down to 65,000 doesn't fricking matter.

It's just a volatility that's baked into the system and that naturally comes with the transition,

a monetary, a global monetary transition that this kind of stuff's going to happen.

So if you're sitting there worrying about 65,000 Bitcoin,

instead of buying as much as you possibly can, I think you're missing the bigger picture.

I'll stop there.

But that's what I wanted to talk about.

Where are we now?

And how do we transition into this next system?

That's a fantastic topic.

Let's quickly say hi to Jordan and Texas and Alan and everyone.

And then let's get into it.

Thanks for setting that up, Punture.

That's very rich.

Good morning, everyone.

How's it going?

Trying to buy as much Bitcoin as I can right now.

Focus on the business and spring.

So I got to get my summer bought back.

Hopefully everyone's doing good.

Texas.

Yeah, good morning, everybody.

I'm actually in route to do what everybody says when things are bad,

which is go put my feet in the grass and play around a golf and see if I can get some

wins in the skins game today on how many birdies I can get.

Or maybe a few Eagles.

So we'll see how that goes.

But I too this morning, first thing is, you know, I was using some trade

fire accounts, some retirement or any other things in the accounts I deal with.

So my favorite trade this morning when it wasn't buying actual, you know,

BTC was buying a bunch of call options.

Is that about I bet priced at 37?

I used leaps since we know volatility as a function and those are options highly

leveraged.

So I picked a leaps way out.

So I picked June of 20, 28, but priced, you know, right here at the 65,

eight to 66, 200.

And I do agree that, you know, the good news of all this chaos is that it's

forcing issues all over the world, country by country and family by family to

really take a close hard look at what's going on, how things are unfolding.

I think when you watch people get blocked from accessing their own capital,

or watching it getting hyperinflated away, there's there's nothing more

important than when normies or newbies have to, you know, go to a bank and

can access their money or someone that might be a little higher in that

worth that had money into private credit markets and they thought, okay,

I'm going to have this diversified asset class.

And bingo, I can't get access because they're going to pay out 45 cents of what

I requested.

It's just one thing after another after another.

And then you just overlay, okay, I can't really sell real estate to get cash.

I can't really sell cars quickly to get cash.

The whole stablecoin thing is a mess.

I think that all this chaos is actually going to be net useful for all of the

evangelism that we push.

But I do think we're going to get some max pain when you screw around

and do stupid geopolitical things, then you get to find out.

And now we're finding out how the market responds, the bond market responds.

And more importantly, I think it's bringing more people to suddenly realize,

okay, I may have missed the big run up in Bitcoin, but now I have an entry.

And the other big thing that I'm focusing on today is, okay, I think the

200A moving average is somewhere around moved up to like, you know, high

50s, like 59K.

So maybe we slide down and touch that, especially over the weekend after the

market closes.

And we see if, you know, they're going to stupidly put boots on the ground in a

ran, have some sacrificial lambs of the 82nd airborne.

So they can try to strum up support, you know, from the US that we need to do

something.

But I'm hopeful that calmer heads prevail.

And we'll just get a good buying opportunity and move forward.

Well, hopefully it's just temporary, but we're only going to be

sliding until Dennis Porter makes his big announcement.

I think the markets are just waiting for that big announcement.

How about you, Texas?

I've been waiting for so long.

Good morning.

I want the big announcement.

We all to give the people what they want.

Yeah, you know, it seems like we're entering the crescendo phase.

I think we're maybe at the beginning of that.

And we got a period who knows how long it'll be of

some fireworks going off.

And who knows what that means short term for price action.

It doesn't really matter in the long run.

So just enjoy the ride, enjoy your entries.

I like that point that it's a great entry for people that have been looking at

this thing for a while, kind of understand it.

You can kind of help us room in and, and yeah, I think we're in a good spot.

But happy, happy to be a lot of Texas.

The great entry that you and I believe it is is completely lost upon somebody

who doesn't understand Bitcoin.

They see it going down and they get scared.

They don't see it as an opportunity.

They see it as confirmation of their bias that Bitcoin is nothing, you know,

to quote Peter Schiff.

It's nothing 100% right?

So that's what it does, though.

That's what the asset class does.

It rinses the weak hands, the people that don't understand it are going to get

flushed out.

It happens every single time.

So I let you know, the remnant is always stronger.

So I think this is just kind of one of those moments where you're going to get

some flushes, change of hands and maybe that new cohort that is going to be the

virus here is going to be stronger until they, they also see a big downturn.

But it does.

Yeah, well, I think the buyers are the stronger hands.

I mean, you say what you will about an MST or strategy and they're different vehicles.

They're they're pretty strong hands.

And I think as you get more of what I will say institutional buying, you're just

going to those, those, those are the stronger hands.

Now, I don't think that the ETFs are necessarily strong hands.

And you've seen that with people selling, you know, panic selling when the,

when the price goes down.

But I'd like to talk about what we see as kind of the, the road signs that this,

this system is collapsing in front of us.

Um, you know, obviously this worn Iran, where, where, you know,

Iran can simply choke off one third of the world's oil supply,

but all the derivatives of oil that are coming out of the Middle East.

Helium is another one that's critical in, in chip manufacturing,

fertilizer, all, all these things.

And kind of what are the things we're seeing that are road signs that tell us the system

is breaking and the system is breaking right in front of our face.

And many people can't see it.

They just kind of have this, you know, I went on a really long, uh,

text exchange with some friends who are really bright guys, Wall Street guys.

And they're just like, you're, you're not, you don't understand.

You got to diversify.

And this is a great entry into stocks.

And I just like guys, this, our lives have not seen a monetary shift,

a monetary order shift.

So we're unfamiliar with this territory and I'm telling you that's what we're going through.

And you're telling me keep doing the same thing that you've always done.

And, and the, and the bias that they have because by the dip has been for their

entire investing lives, the quote unquote, right thing to do.

So it's incredibly hard to break them out of that mindset and try to see the bigger

picture. As I think we see it, um, I don't know, dark.

What do you, what are your thoughts on some of these road signs that this is

broken? Yeah, let me just jump in there on one quick note.

Yeah, I'm sure everybody's seen, we all know about the private credit breakdown,

but there is a $400 million gate that came down in UBS and their, um,

probably that's a big road sign.

So, you know, just not just private credit, but now we've got the banks involved.

This is starting to feel like go away from the roadside, turn it over to dark.

Why don't we talk to Ted?

Why don't you talk about what that is, uh, and how it's different than private

credit and how this is probably a contagion that despite everyone being assured

that it wasn't going to spread outside of private credit, it is.

Sure. Um, private credit is, uh, it's a rich man's game.

It's very sophisticated private equity, you know, there's all kinds of gates,

not usually accredited investors, but it's usually kind of a tear up that is

involved in private credit, which that's where the Leon Blacks of the world,

the KKRs, the blue owls made all their money through, you know,

basically a system design, it's, but it's a system engineered.

It's financial engineering real estate is a much more tangible everyday

person's game because they think of it in terms of.

Hey, Ted, sorry, sorry.

What was the fatal flaw in the private credit that you see?

Can you explain that a little bit?

What, why is that breaking now?

Yeah, but I, what I see, and I'm not an expert in the field, but it's that they

were basically just swapping hands with their own paper, like when they would,

they would write it up and they're internally their insurance platforms would,

would buy it at a different price and they just sit there and, you know,

one of the things about the private market is it's illiquid, but it's not like

the public markets where you can see the price of oil from a minute to minute

or something like that.

There is no, when there is no buyer, they just then claim that their insurance

arm would say, oh, yeah, I know it's worth X and that they would keep it on their

sheet. So it would be an inflated price very different than a market to market.

So it's like, it's the way that gap accounting works.

That there's like three different, you know, there's three different buckets that

banks put their mark to market and there's held the maturity and then there's

like, investible or something in between.

So the private credit was nothing but smokes and mirrors and they're basically

getting called out on it.

Right.

They were great.

Would they were quote unquote, marking their own homework, right?

They were saying that their assets were held at Parga Headdark.

Yeah.

So I see a slightly differently.

Very similar to a 0809 where you had rating agencies being paid by the very

issuers of the credit that was going bad and the rating agencies would,

would, you know, mark this stuff triple A based on, you know, different

conditions and they were in bed with the issuers.

You have the exact same scenario playing out today.

There's a group of companies out there that are called valuation agents

and the private credit companies hire their valuation agent, the valuation agent

then marks the private credit paper for the issuer.

And the issue now is just kind of like lay this out and I'm going to have to

hop off real quick for a call, but the, the private credit will, the private

credit issuer will issue a loan to, let's say, a software company.

The software company gets to a point where they don't have cash to make a payment

on the loan.

So then they, they switch over to a, what's called a pick or a payment in kind.

So they're not repaying the loan with money.

The repaying the loan with equity was shares in the software company.

The valuation agent looks at that and says, okay, well, that works for me

and they mark the stuff at par.

Even though the loan's not being repaid anymore, you're getting back equity

in a company that doesn't have the cash flow to pay off its loans.

And somehow that's deemed to be acceptable.

So it's the exact same game.

It's like, we didn't learn anything from 0809 that the same incentive structures

are in place.

You get to pay the guy who values your assets.

It's a scam.

It's a Ponzi scheme.

It's, it's a feature of the system.

It's not a bug.

This is how fiat games work.

It's, it's a complete fraud.

And, and by the way, thinking that this is contained to private credit is

laughable.

This is going to spread to private equity.

So if private credits 1.8 trillion, private equity is probably 11, 12 trillion

dollars.

And it's the exact same game.

This is, this is just laughable.

It's so predictable.

It's so foreseeable.

You know, again, the dooms are going to be proven right.

It's just like whatever, you know, call me a doomer.

I just tell the truth.

What's funny about that actually is that, you know, when you really look at the

source of the latest private credit problem at UBS, it's kind of ironic, right?

Because credit Swiss blew up.

UBS was basically whether you want to call it forced, incented or pushed to

maintain the Swiss banking illusion.

It basically didn't want to have a foreign, you know, party end up the owner of

the failed credit Swiss.

But then, you know, use all the regulatory agencies after that merger do some

crazy things, which basically said, Hey, we know you have all these really toxic

bad assets across private credit, even derivatives and everything in between.

But we're not even going to force you to market to market because we know

then you also immediately be insolvent and you would go to zero.

And what they keep playing games with is even worse.

It's the fiat thing on steroids times derivatives because all these

banks have these toxic assets.

They've never been resolved.

And they just keep kicking the can forward and then they even change the rules

on the fly so that nobody has to recognize the true value.

And then meanwhile, what you said very correctly is they're using the same kind

of rating systems to act like toxic garbage is somehow, you know, investment

grade and dark.

I know we're going to lose you here just just why why does private credit

distress leak over to private equity that then leaks over to real estate?

And that can you just talk to that a little bit?

Look, you know, I see carries up on stage.

We've been talking now for the better part of a year that when you start

hearing the term counterparty, that's when you have to be concerned.

Well, we're there, right?

We're at the counterparty part of the party.

And look, that you know, it leaks over because this is how the systems

designed again, this is not a bug in the system.

This is a feature.

This is how fiat money is designed.

The only way that you can continue the Ponzi scheme is to print substantially

more of it and you need the excuse to do so.

So crisis is a feature of the system.

And just like note that it was 0809, then it was 2020.

Now it's going to be 2026.

And each subsequent print is half the time from the from the previous print.

So the next one's going to be 2029, right?

Like it just can't at some point the whole thing detonates.

And we're probably pretty close to that point.

Do you think that they can I understand the having of the time between crises?

I just don't know that we can because the world's not buying our debt or the

the buyer of our debt is of such low quality at this point.

And at some point it's going to become us.

The Fed's going to buy back its own, you know, its own Cheetos.

Do you think we can paper over it again?

Or we'd be on that then horizon?

Yeah, I think we paper it over.

But again, the problem being that the average American is up against it.

So how much more inflation can you handle before you have societal unrest

than the whole thing just on wines?

Aren't these a lot of these a liquid, aren't a lot of these a liquid assets that have

been marked to par forever sitting in

pensions,

I'm sure in terms of pensions, right?

Yeah, I'm saying.

Yeah, it's everywhere.

Go ahead, Gary.

I'm going to have to help off.

Yeah, no, it's everywhere, man.

Like commercial commercial commercial real estate.

That's not marked a market.

Look, um, and it's not going to be

no chance they'll make any of that mark to market.

And you probably actually want that right now, okay?

I mean, they were built like this.

You wouldn't want to just go change it.

Commercial real estate shouldn't have a mark really,

because I mean, there's very different assets.

I mean, marks are really deep, volume

markets that, you know, you can get in and out.

You can't.

I just, you know, I just think there's things that are

never going to have a mark the way we're thinking about it.

And then when you do have an environment where you have to

mark your books, it puts the commodity player under a lot of

rest to rest or stress that the commercial real estate guys

don't have, but, you know, I think the most important thing

here is the tension gets more and more on the user.

And we get to civil unrest.

That is the point we need to get to.

Like, we're saying that's a bad thing.

I think it's actually probably a good thing where people

just wake up and finally say, hey, fuck off.

This is literally the parasite is taking too much

from the host.

But I think, I think I agree.

I think we will paper this down again.

It'll probably be the last time we can do it.

And it's going to be a tremendous amount of money.

I mean, if we printed 40, how much do we print in 2020?

Whatever we printed in 2020, 2021, it's going to,

it'll be at least, I would think, 50% more, maybe double.

Question is when, when do they start?

Hey, Gary, and what would that do to interest rates?

Quite frankly, I'm not sure I know.

Before we explore those questions,

I love how puncher opened this up.

Can you talk about some of the road signs that you see,

like tangible, tangible road signs out there

that look like we're starting to roll?

What is rolling?

You mean, roll over?

Yeah, like it's, in my opinion,

example, we actually, yeah.

I think we are rolling over.

I mean, we just had gold do something

that hadn't done 1,000 years.

Yeah, I think we're rolling.

I mean, I don't know how you could get,

like this weekend, I mean, a lot of wealth

is being determined by, hey, what's going to happen this weekend?

This weekend's important in the next 20 days.

The thing, you know, to me, the problem is,

this is, it's a good, good analogy you use.

Hey, when do we roll over?

This is a rock that's been rolling down this mountain.

Like, it's picking up speed now,

and it's picking up volume.

If you just think about that as an analogy,

a small little rock, you know, turns into a giant mass.

The good thing is, the damage is everywhere.

So that's why I think you will have a reset.

But they're gonna be losers, dude, you're up.

I mean, we're watching Europe go bankrupt.

Like, like, I think Europe is going to be fairly uninhabitable.

I mean, I know that sounds very hyperbolic,

but like, they don't have anything except problems and regulations.

So maybe the brunt of all is just gets pushed down

into the European sector, and we do really well.

That could, in fact, be the case,

America could do exceptionally well here.

I would prefer not to have so much chaos.

So anyway, those are my view.

I don't know, so I don't know on the roll.

I do think that if we look, if 30% of the helium

has truly been disrupted, we're gonna have inflation.

Like, we're gonna have a food problem.

That's what we're gonna have.

We're gonna have a food problem.

People should actually probably go back up with a chicken,

put it in their backyard,

it'd be the best return on investment.

It yields forever and ever, and it costs very little.

If you really, I mean, it's probably a better investment

than Bitcoin.

But, and I don't mean to sound dumb.

We will make it through this,

but, and listen, I'm reminded,

because I'm older than most of the people here,

I'm reminded of the stories my parents told me

about their parents when they went through the depression.

One thing I noticed is they never talked about

how bad everything was.

In fact, they talked about getting together

with communities in a way that we don't,

we no longer even think about doing it.

And I don't, like I remember some great stories

they told me about picnics and people getting together

and people sharing and people helping each other.

You know, all you see is the food lines and pictures,

but the truth is, in every recession I've been through,

it did nothing to my life,

other than I didn't have as much liquidity

as I would have liked.

That's it, okay?

Most of the people on here aren't even involved

in the stock market.

So we get all wound up about it,

and it is important, right?

What's gonna be important though is,

hey, when California is paying $10 a gallon,

Europeans are already paying,

I don't even, $15, $20 a gallon of gasoline.

Do you see that blackout last night in OC?

Was that a real thing?

Yeah, this shit's happened.

Like, there's fires all over America

that nobody's talking about, okay?

Like Nebraska's half a million fucking acres to gone.

That's farmland folks, okay?

That is farmland.

So to me, there's just so many weird things going on

all at one time.

And whether they are, you know, Epstein related

or not, it doesn't matter why, this shit's happening.

Why do you think we have to search for this information?

Like, it's not even, I don't think OC

being in a complete brownout last night.

Yeah, it didn't even make the news.

These fires don't even make the news.

Is this just a purposeful censorship campaign?

Not to say anything of the information coming out of Iran.

Like, is Israel really getting bombed into oblivion

or are they not?

Like, the information flow is so obstructed

and it's got to be on purpose.

Yeah, we have less transparency today,

I think, about world situation than we did

when Dan Rather was doing the news.

When Ted Turner was working with the CIA, seriously,

we don't have very much.

I mean, you just got to scrape and look for it all.

And so a lot of weird shit going on.

But I think there's also going to be a massive amount

of opportunities and look, then I'm going to end with this.

But if ever Bitcoin, to me, we have 12 to 18 months.

If Bitcoin doesn't do exceptionally well,

I most likely will move away from this trade

in the next 18 months because to me,

this is why I bought Bitcoin.

Exactly what's happening on the world stage

is why I came here.

And it's why I converted my goal

and it's why I converted silver.

And why I don't have 37 fucking houses.

I don't know why anybody would have more than one home.

And I'm not saying it would be a total failure

if it didn't do something exceptional.

Just for me, there's plenty of opportunities

to invest in this future world.

I love the Bitcoin thesis, but I really believe

that it has to, this is what it was built for, man.

And I'm actually giving it an extra six months

because I think you're going to see this over the next 12

because I personally am impressed with how it's doing.

Yes.

Fucking really impressed.

Now, I don't like the sailors, the only buyer,

by only I just mean, wow, it's a lot.

But if it doesn't do exceptionally well,

why would we be here?

Bitcoin didn't exceed a hundred grand in a year.

Like really?

Really?

What if Gary, what if there's higher powers

that don't want Bitcoin's thesis or parts of it to play out?

Like you can, they can only hold.

They can only hold, look, they're so busy holding crude down

and FX down and this down and that down.

They're having to jump.

They're 37 different balloons.

They got to push down below the water.

Trying to do a global asset.

They really are having a problem doing oil, okay?

You're seeing all these disconnects all over the place.

So this is not good for investment, okay?

This kind of environment is horrific

and one thing that our institution knows today,

they know that our government does know

this is not a great investment thesis.

Not sure they can do anything about it.

I don't know, maybe they're just fucking incompetent.

But again, puncher, hey, if it's so hard to get information,

why wouldn't Bitcoin be a great trade?

Well, I think there's a lot of inertia.

First of all, it's a new asset.

Most people other than us, really know about it.

Nobody's interested in this.

Right.

Bitcoiners have overstated our penetration, okay?

We're a small dick in a massive, massive cavern.

Come on.

Maybe we'll make more money.

That's what led Saylor to stretch.

Yeah, exactly man.

Exactly.

He got tired of waiting for the thesis,

but not only just tired just looking at like, all right.

What's gonna be long term best?

And I know there's different opinions

and I still, it's not my realm,

but I think, you know,

what British Hottel was saying a while ago,

really resonated just that he got tired of waiting

for this thesis to play out

where people were gonna seek out sovereign money.

And it just was like, fuck it.

Just give him 11% fuck it.

Yeah, I agree.

I got it to your point.

It's a, we're a very small community,

but we do have this solution.

Number two, I think we underestimate the ability

of this monetary system to manipulate price.

You see it in oil, you see it in silver,

you see it in a lot of commodities.

They're trying to kind of put fingers in the dike

and prevent panic,

but there's only so much that they can manipulate the paper

where at some point it just cuts loose

and runs away from them.

I agree, 18 months is probably a good timeline,

but it always takes, you know,

markets can stay irrational longer

and you can stay invested or solvent

or however you wanna say that.

And then finally, I do think it's the crisis

that's gonna bring people to the realization

just like it did probably in the Middle East

where people were selling their gold

and trying to get some Bitcoin

and we saw a little bit of a pop there,

just like it did in Ukraine in 2022.

And the only way you could get money

to somebody in Ukraine was Bitcoin.

And that was four years ago.

So I think the crisis that is at our doorstep

should potentially be that trigger event

that really makes Bitcoin rip

when it's the only game in town

where you can kind of survive to get to the next system.

And then you throw on top of that AI

and agents transacting in Bitcoin,

which is the only thing that makes sense.

All these things are just kind of coalescing

and we're just frustrated that it hasn't happened yet.

Yeah, this is, I still have faith

in the midterm euphoria scenario.

Again, all conflicts settled, asset prices rip higher,

everything rips, but definitely wouldn't bank on that.

But I still think when you look at who's in a position

to set this up and again, it's getting really tiring.

I know folks are kind of exhausted

and I think that's by design, you know, again,

we're still far out in many ways from midterms.

Just as far as a voter's short-term memory is concerned,

like most people, you know,

the echo chambers all talking about midterms,

but your everyday person gives zero flocks.

They don't have, they don't have anything thinking about it.

And you know, the things,

if assets going up is a key part

of having a better chance at midterms

for Trump and company,

it has to go through November.

So I still have faith that that's,

not saying they're gonna be successful,

but that's on their playbook.

But Tom, you gotta see, this narrative control,

which is exactly what Trump's doing.

You know, I'm gonna give him seven days.

All right, let's make it 10.

Now we're gonna make it two weeks.

And Iran's like F-U, F-U.

Every time the 10 year gets anywhere near 4.5,

Trump changes the narrative.

And the world, there's a credibility deficit now.

These continuously changing narratives,

and Iran's still saying F-U every single time,

it's almost direct correlation between the 10 year,

getting the 4.5, and Trump changing his narrative.

And every time he does,

it just loses its effectiveness.

And I think he's in way out over his skis with this now.

I think there's a lot of buying time, theatrics,

and it's like the movie Braveheart,

where they're holding with the spears

as the Calvary's approaching.

They're gonna push it to the absolute brink

of being able to pull the trigger for midterms,

because again, their runway is so small, in my opinion.

And so all these things that you're talking about,

look, I totally understand, they get forgotten

as long as the gas prices come down,

as long as the grocery costs come down,

people's homes, value goes up, rates come down,

conflicts get settled, whether truly settled,

or just there's a facade of them being a peace deal

just to buy time.

You know, like you said, finding good information

is really tough.

All this stuff gets forgotten November,

if the pieces come together.

No one cares.

Or what is pulling the trigger down?

Like just packing up and leaving the Middle East

and go, you guys figured out, we're self-sufficient

in the Western hemisphere, I don't know.

Whatever it takes to create a facade of good, you know,

prosperous times that's actually feelable

by your everyday voter.

So again, like you could have a nuclear cloud going off

in the distance if the gas prices are down,

people they're like, great, I don't know,

I don't see the problem.

Yeah, but I'm just saying I think that the ability

to bring back this prosperous facade prior to the midterms

is slipping away.

And every time they try to exit, they can't.

And it's all hinges upon a little piece of narrow waterway,

you know, 7,000 miles away,

and we thought we could control it and we can't.

And that is the kind of the sticking point here.

We can't craft that narrative unless that thing gets resolved

and we can't resolve it.

And I think the issue is, to your point about,

when you get the boy who cried over and over and over

the concept of every true social tweet

is gonna effectively move the markets dramatically,

up dramatically down.

I mean, I'm all waiting like you today

for the same exact thing.

Noise until the market closes.

And then as soon as the market closes,

some very sort of hostile, confrontational, escalatory

set of actions are going to kick off.

That's gonna go through the weekend with all sorts of,

you know, Bitcoin will be one of the few markets

open, so I expect some more pressure.

And that's why I keep focusing on the 59 as a base,

if you will, where that 200 day moving average sits to bounce.

And then right before, you know,

we get into Sunday, Sunday night and before, you know,

futures open and we're getting ready for the markets

to kick off again next Monday.

Magically, de-escalation happens and we use another narrative

to try to play this game.

And I think the game that I'm watching closest

is actually in the prediction markets

to see what appears to be lots of insider oriented buys

and bets on boots on the ground

and all sorts of other things that have to be done

by March 31st as we're coming right up to it.

So I think the prediction markets are probably

gonna be more useful this weekend

to see where people are deploying money

for what amounts to insider trading.

And ultimately in the mid and long term,

that won't affect the Bitcoin piece.

But I think the boy who cried wolf syndrome,

they could dig themselves into such a hole

that they're gonna have to do the big print

to try to force asset prices up

to try to have any semblance of hope

for what happens in the midterm

because even 3x Trump voters all over the place

are like, this has been betrayal.

You did everything in the opposite of what you said you would do

and then you escalated it

and no one's accountable for anything

and the amount of looting of the country is at unprecedented level.

That's the tangent right there, right?

There's people making billions of dollars

in five seconds on one of these trades

who obviously have insider information

and everybody knows that it will never be looked into.

They are looting the treasury

and it seems like in many ways

like the foxes inside the hen house with this administration

and that's not what I voted for.

Amen.

I see we lost Tomor

because Tomor doesn't like to talk about this stuff

but again, I see it inextricably linked to Bitcoin

and where we're gonna go in the future

and I don't know, Gary spot on

and I don't know if you're seeing but like in Australia

and in India, they're running to gas stations.

There's riots in these gas stations.

They're running out

and they're also running out of food

and I don't wanna be like

let's talk a little bit about the differences

between O8 and O9 now.

Back then, you know, you can help me here

because your military history is far better than mine

but I think we had like regional sort of local conflicts

like Taliban and Afghanistan

or something going on in Iraq at a small scale

but we're now talking about dependence

on a geographical location

that it appears we're gonna be very difficult time

getting control of.

And if you look back in O8,

oil certainly came off during the GFC.

If that doesn't happen this time,

it just inflames everything, right?

Or, I mean, can you and Gary run with that

and kind of play through what you think

are the most likely scenarios here?

I mean, I'll turn it over to Gary

but yes, those were like things that we could manage

to the extent that we manage them

and it seems like in retrospect we did

and they were very purposeful

and they were funded by whoever.

CIA or the powers that be to create these local conflicts.

This one is different

and this one is none of those conflicts had

the type of commodity risk at all

that we now see with oil

and all the derivatives of oil

that are coming out of a very narrow pass in the Middle East.

So I just don't think this was very well thought out

I think Donald Trump, you know,

I think it's pretty obvious he got buoyed into this

by the statements you've passed together for me

they're JD Vance or Marco Rubio or Besent

and now we're the kid who kicked the hornets nest

and you know, in the past we could always kind of,

you know, stabilize it whenever we wanted to

and this thing was a big, big, big mistake in my opinion.

You got any thoughts, Gary?

Well, what's really the question?

I'm not sure I fully understand this.

How does this landscape, i.e.

Straits for Moose, stiffer from what we faced in 0809?

Well, we weren't blowing up battleships

in the middle of the ocean.

I think it's 0809, it's just a real estate deal,

it's an energy deal, man.

It's fertilizer, nitrogen, diesel, jet fuel.

I mean, I think the TSA thing is a complete hoax.

They don't, American Airlines does not want to be

fucking traveling today.

They're getting their ass kicked.

So this is a punch talked about Australia, right?

And the economists aren't gonna sell it this way

but if you can't buy a gallon of gasoline

or a liter of gasoline to run your car,

that is demand destruction, okay?

And you can either not have the supply

or price it at $15, $20.

We're gonna see demand destruction.

I don't know how we can.

That means you're gonna see GDP dip.

I mean, cause these are big industries

that they're magnificent.

Oh, by the way, I don't know if anybody noticed

but in the last three hours,

gold and silver have gone up the entire market cap of Bitcoin.

And four hours.

This is why I say in the next 12 to 18 months,

Bitcoin should really shine.

Gold and silver, just in four hours,

maybe not even that have moved the entire market cap

of Bitcoin, $1.3 trillion.

That's amazing now.

And we've never seen, this is how it's different, okay?

We, this has been building now.

We saw NVIDIA do something last year.

We've never seen equity do.

And now we have two or three companies,

you know, moving 20 and 30% up and down.

Microsoft's down 30 or 40%, right?

I don't know exactly the number,

but they got charged.

Meta loss, how much did Meta lose yesterday?

And, you know, I think they should have lost more, dude.

Like, what other CEO do you know

that can blow through $90 billion on a fucking idea?

It's unbelievable.

So, you know, I don't think this is anywhere compared to OA.

This should be more like COVID, like total COVID.

This is a total COVID thing.

And that's why I like, wow, man,

Bitcoin's doing really interestingly well.

COVID, I filled up my range over $36 during COVID

and realized it would be the cheapest I would ever

spend on gasoline for the rest of my life.

It's probably going to cost me now $100.

That's a big change for a lot of people.

Yeah, I want to draw everybody's attention

to something I put in the nest.

So, there's an economist who I've been following

is very, very good.

His name's Louis Vincent Gava, I think his last name is.

And his assertion is that the financial architecture

of the post-war war two are arrested upon three assumptions.

Number one, that the US is a benevolent hedgeman

with embedded interest in maintaining global trading order.

I don't think that's the case anymore.

Number two, that the US controls the world's ceilings.

Well, obviously that's not true anymore.

Despite the magnitude and the skill of our Navy,

we cannot control the straights of hormones.

And that's obvious.

And then number three, US treasuries

could always be transformed into commodities

at a moment's notice.

Again, nobody's buying those treasuries

or at least many fewer people are

and the world is de-dollarizing.

So those three kind of legs of the stool

on which the entire system functioned

are now all broken.

And I'm open to hear anybody and he goes on

and it's a very, very good article.

It's pretty lengthy read,

but it's, I think it's spot on.

Now he's not a big corner,

but I think as far as his macro thesis goes,

I think he is dead on.

And curious what anybody's thoughts are on that.

Bunch, can you outline those three legs again?

I just caught treasuries buying as the third.

Yeah, number one, that the US is a benevolent hedgeman

with an embedded interest in maintaining global trading order.

I don't think that the actions of the past

two weeks bear that out anymore, right?

Like Trump's kind of like, we don't give a shit anymore.

And this might be purposeful or it just might be a mistake,

but that's not the case right now.

Number two, that we control the world's sea lanes

with our Navy.

Well, we don't.

We just flat out don't.

And exhibit A is the traits of our moves.

Despite our best effort and despite our overwhelming firepower,

we can't control it, period.

And then the last one is that US treasuries

could always be transformed into commodities

at a moment's notice.

And that's not the case now either.

Or if it is, they're selling.

I mean, Japan's going to have to start massive selling.

And that's going to spike rates.

And that's going to unwind, you know, Japan and others.

That's going to unwind that whole system.

So those three things on which the whole system functioned

are now broken.

Yeah, you're not going to get a lot of pushback for me

on all three of them.

I mean, that just falls straight down, right?

Because I agree with you.

All three are broken.

I don't have any further color on that,

but I was really interested in something Gary said.

And he said, this is more like COVID than 0809.

Gary, can you take that a little further

like as far as the comparison to COVID

and why it's not like 0809?

Well, I mean, look one, we're openly at war.

Not sure why we are, but we're openly

at war all over the place.

That's a big difference.

You are having massive supply interruptions.

OK, like, I don't think I've ever seen so many supply shocks

that are literally interventions by governments

or private bodies.

These are not, this is not normal inflation.

I mean, I know a lot of the finance guys

talk about, you know, print dollars, print dollars,

inflation, inflation.

But I would build the case most of the inflation

that's happened over the last four years

was about supply shocks that were political hand grenades

or nukes.

And one example would be the pipeline Nord Stream 1

that was blown up.

I mean, man, there's just so many,

like all these tariffs were supply shock.

The Vensavuela supply shock.

You got, now we have helium being disrupted,

oil being disrupted, LNG being disrupted.

We have a plant on fire near Beaumont, Texas

that serves half the freaking diesel in the US.

Just all happened to happen at the same time.

Nobody's talking about Epstein.

And I'm not trying to turn this into an Epstein thing.

But you got to wonder what's all this crazy noise about.

And that's why I think this weekend, I don't know.

It just seems like it may not be any different

like, I mean, let's be clear, okay?

We've someone orchestrated the manufacturer poisoning

over half the population.

There's gonna be more, by the way,

that is going to be the largest demand destruction

this planet's ever seen.

Like we have not seen the end of people dying.

I think it actually accelerates.

So it's similar to me that people need to look 32%

of the energy of each household is convenience, okay?

So people can turn up their air conditioning

and not run it so much.

They can turn their lights off.

This is really what we need to do

because we waste a huge amount of energy.

But 32 to 40% of all the energy I use is purely convenience.

Hot baths, long baths, steam rooms, electric load

that doesn't turn off.

I don't close my computers.

I mean, it's waste.

So I would not be, the cool thing about energy

is people are very sensitive to it.

And they respond very, very quickly.

The logistics, I think the good news is going through COVID

and then I'll shut up

because you guys gotta be tired of hearing me talk.

The cool thing about COVID that I don't think anybody

thought through at least the freaks that did it

was that it actually gave us a four-year conditioning plan

to get prepped.

It was a prepper fucking beautiful program for preppers.

And by preppers, I mean, every corporation in the world

had to figure out how to get through logistics,

how to move their shit to homes, personal homes,

how to get people computers, nobody's going to the office.

Oh, by the way, anybody that thought the offices

were going to come back in action ever,

like my brother, wrong, and ever coming back, okay?

So we have a commercial real estate trillion dollars, dude.

What are you going to do with all this commercial real estate?

I mean, the best use of it's going to be, you know,

put lights in it and do a indoor farm, seriously,

an indoor farm because like, there's all AI, you know,

you're not going to put AI in these big buildings.

So that market's not going to correct.

See, this is why Bitcoin's got to be a great trade here, man.

Diamonds no longer have any value

because you can copy and make them even better.

That cartel is being broken.

I think long term, this is going to be really good

for the world, but right now it's going to suck.

I gotta say, I think it's going to suck.

But I think long term, this is probably good

because they're going to drill the fuck out of everything.

If there's a, and I think there's going to be new technology.

See, I'm still not convinced this isn't about a new technology

that's getting ready to be released.

And it's very clear to a few people

that eight people need to control all the energy

on the planet because there's not going to be a lot of margin.

What do you think that might be, Gary?

See, I could see, oh, dude, I think we already have detected.

I think we have technology that is, look, think about it.

I am telling you, I waste 40% of the energy.

So, see, they price it cheap, so I use it.

If they priced it correctly, every person in here

look, energy in the United States is too cheap.

I can prove it right now for one big coin, okay?

Not one person in this room

turned off their laptop computer last night.

Not one, okay, okay, they'll be the weirdo out there

to do it, but I mean, it's not just, it's your PC,

your TV is still connected, so you get remote access

immediately.

All of that shit is taking energy, Matt, megawatts of energy.

So, that's why I think it'll be good

because we're gonna, like, I wanna go to the store

and be able to buy a steak that's a steak, not poison.

That's insulation, okay?

There's something wrong with the supply chain

or the money might be the supply chain.

We might be blaming too much on the money

and the supply chain's fucked up.

Anyway, I've talked too much, Matt, thank you.

Thank you.

Let's turn it over to it.

I don't think we've heard from Plab Bitcoin today

or can't rant, Plab, you wanna join here?

Plab or two?

Thank you.

Plab going once, twice.

Hey, guys, sorry to reuse.

I had a question for Darkseid,

but it's not here, maybe Puncher can respond to this.

So let's say, so my question is about like Fiat currencies.

So let's say other countries, sorry,

let's say US and Europe are printing

and inflating their currency, right?

So two questions, my first question is,

are other countries like Switzerland

incentivized to print also

and to go negative on interest rates and the VS, why?

I mean, why not do that and let their currency,

the Swiss franc gain purchasing power?

To what end, Plab, what would be the reason

that you would see benefit from

devaluing your currency against the dollar?

No, exactly, there's no benefit, right, to inflating.

You're only hurting your own people

holding the Swiss franc.

So that's my question.

Would the government be incentivized to print

and inflate just like everyone else or not?

And let others inflate and lose their purchasing power,

whereas the Swiss franc could gain purchasing power?

Well, I think that ties into the euro dollar system,

most contracts, most jobs, most settlement

is all done in US dollars, right?

So I don't know the inner workings of the Swiss central bank.

So I don't think I could give you a good answer on that.

Other than to say,

I don't see a way that the dollar printer doesn't come on.

They're trying not to do it.

They're trying to force though it.

Maybe they're trying to get their Fed chairman in here,

I think is in May, but maybe the Fed chairman

that they selected isn't the dove

that they were banding about in the beginning.

This new guy seems to be quite a hawk.

So I go back and forth between thinking,

is this on purpose a real taste for the Fed and central banking

in general?

I mean, Andrew Jackson is his favorite president.

And he's talked quite a bit in the past about tearing down

the central banking system.

Is this on purpose?

Or is it just a cascade of bad decisions

that are leading us to a very difficult situation?

I don't know the answer to that.

I can't get inside the guy's mind.

There's no clarity on that

and with direction they're headed.

From their outward statements,

you can't glean a whole lot.

And a lot of people come up here and say,

oh, you gotta trust the plan.

They're playing five DHS

and they're gonna take down the bank of England

and all the powers that be.

And I don't know,

it's hard to piece it all together.

There's great uncertainty

and I don't have a good answer for you.

So, Plab, you had a second question as well.

You wanna throw that out?

No, those are the both of them.

Regarding the incentive

and the second question was the reason for it.

So, that's answered everything.

Thank you.

There's a reason dark side kick my ass in March Madness

and it's because he's way smarter than me on these issues.

So, for me honest, yeah,

I was listening to a podcast of his like a week ago

and he said something along those lines.

So, that's why I wanted to target a special to him.

But, no worries.

He'll be back up.

I know exactly what phone call he's on.

He'll be back up in here in a short while.

We'll ask him, Plab.

Chase, thank you.

Karam, you wanna hop up?

You got your hand up and then we'll jump over to BitBlocka.

Thanks, Mitchell.

Thanks for bringing me up.

You know, love you, Gary, for whatever you just sound like

in terms of actually looking at opportunities

and it's good for the humanity and everything.

I mean, that's what the entrepreneur is,

basically, you know, like in the bad times

you always find an opportunity.

You know, given the current scenario,

like obviously it's unprecedented

and that's why we keep it.

Like, you know, this human kind of inclination

to find the relativity to the previous events

in the history and that's why we keep bringing

on this 2008 and COVID and as far as back,

going back as great recession.

But I just want your input on that

and if anybody else wants to actually chip in,

you know, during the08, basically the whole world

actually came together and not the whole world,

let's say, Western world and said,

well, the solution could be the quantitative easing

and, you know, not one country's gonna be printing the money

pretty much like everyone is gonna be printing the money.

And do you see or any of you see that happening

post-war scenario that, yes, I understand this perspective

that there's gonna be a demand destruction

and there's gonna be supply chain issues and everything.

But for the entire, just at the beginning of post-war,

would that be a solution that quantitative easing kicks

and like in 2008?

Back to you.

Karana, it is a feature of the system.

Not a bug, the system is mechanized

to continually print debt.

And at some point, it gets unsustainable

and then you have like a reset,

which is what I think we're heading for.

But I, you know, dark was on earlier and he said,

yeah, they're gonna monetize this yet again.

Sorry about that.

Does everybody else get a bank trying to call them

to give them the loan every five seconds?

Only you, Puncher.

I mean, anyway.

So I just think, look, that is the way the system is built.

It's built on ever increasing monetization

to cover up the problems that weren't solved the last time.

And it happens in an increasing amount of debt

that has to be printed and an increasing frequency

in when it has to be printed.

And that is theft.

There's no two ways about it.

If Terence and I both have a dollar

and Chad prints another one,

he just stole one third of our worth.

And that is the system.

And most people don't understand

that that is a theft that happens

in order to continue to keep

and to extract wealth from the average person.

When one man can print dollars

and another man has to work for it,

it's a flawed system.

So are they gonna do it again?

You bet.

Is it gonna work?

I don't think so.

Because whether you look at the average American citizen

or world citizen who's up against inflation

whose life is getting worse, not better,

we're at the point where I think

doing these things, these traditional things

and remanetizing the system

and nothing gets fixed structurally

leads, starting to get to the point

where it's gonna lead to social unrest

around the world and wars.

And a looting of the treasury

and just naked theft.

And that is not a sustainable system.

So are they gonna do it?

Yeah, because when the only tool you have is a hammer

all your problems look like nails

and they only have one tool in their thing

and that is to print money ultimately

to cover over the sins of the decline in the system.

The system in itself is broken.

So Panchay, I totally agree on that particular point,

but unless the alternate power

or the alternate system actually appears,

the problem is that China and the Japan

and other whatever the countries who actually

have the U.S. Treasury,

they are not ready to offload those.

I mean, this is not gonna be actually alternate.

They're gonna play the same game for longest period of time

because that's probably the safest bet for them

for the time being.

So unless geopolitical scenario actually dictates that

that now is the time to come up with the alternate system,

that's gonna, the cycle gonna keeps on repeating itself.

So that's the bridge.

The bricks were attempting an alternate system, right?

They understand that their dollar-denominated debt

is basically not money good.

But China is, so China thinks in terms of generations,

we think in terms in the West,

anyway, of the next five minutes.

So their incentive structure is better than ours.

The average, you know, the middle class in China

is growing and prospering and becoming more prosperous.

The middle class in the West

and in the United States in particular is getting worse.

So the need for them to pivot from where we are right now,

I would say a waiting game is in their best interest.

But I don't think that's what breaks the system.

I don't think, I look, Japan is gonna have to start selling

U.S. Treasuries.

They're just gonna have to.

And that might lead to others trying to sell their treasuries

in which case the interest rate to incent anybody

to buy our treasuries is gonna have to go up.

In which case, we can't pay our debt in the United States.

And that's when the system comes down.

Bit blanca, go ahead.

Hey, yeah, I think there's a couple of things going on.

One, I think the dominant viewpoint right now

is it's obviously geopolitics, right?

Like we're way down the line in a major war here

that's just here and up.

I would say this, I think a lot of people rag on Fiat,

but I think the reason Fiat came about

was because if you had a nation state

that went on a Fiat standard and they could sell debt,

they could front run a hard money regime

and build military capacity

and destroy a hard money country overnight.

So I think what you're seeing here with this Fiat system

is an expansion of military capacity

to support these nation state,

nation state, you know, sovereignty.

I think that's why we're at a Fiat standard.

Hard money countries can get front run destroyed

and older wealth so on.

And I'll say this too,

like I think there's a very interesting bridge here

with Bitcoin between the military capabilities

of a hard of a Fiat regime

and the energy backed real world physics

of a Bitcoin sovereign money.

And I also think too that Bitcoin gives you the ability

to receive borderless value.

So if you put Bitcoin in the context

of a military operation and a big war,

there's a lot going on here

that I think that we're going to discover

in the not too distant future.

I'll leave it there.

Jordan, what, how you doing, sir?

You got anything to add?

Punch, can we go back to something that Jordan,

come on up if you're there, but how's it going?

Sorry, I'm working a little bit and just listening in.

When I can.

Oh, no worries, man.

It's good to hear your voice.

It's been a while.

Yeah, I miss you guys.

I'm excited for Bitcoin Vegas.

So you're heading out, awesome.

You live in Vegas, right?

I'm in Utah, right?

I'm in Utah.

Yeah, I just drove nine hours last time

to see Lauren to have him ditch me.

Right as I show up.

Hey, you're self-employed.

Let's get this going with you and Karan

about the entrepreneur finding opportunities in this malaise.

What do you guys see as far as opportunity sets

that are out there that are evolving

that you're excited about as entrepreneurs?

Oh, man.

I mean, so I'm in roofing.

I own a roofing business.

And the winter is nice for us

because we do a lot of our work in the fall.

We do a lot of insurance recovery.

And so what happens is the insurance takes a little bit

to pay out on all the roofs that we do

leading up to winter.

And then Utah's kind of tough.

So we don't do a whole lot of installs in the winter.

This one was pretty chill, so we did.

But we collect a lot of that insurance money

right after the winter.

And so right now, I mean, this is a perfect timing for us

where Bitcoin's at right now.

I'm just trying to dump as much as I can in

and get all of our guys that are out selling

and all our teams to get on board with it.

So it's been good for us.

This price is awesome.

I was just on my roof, Jordan, last weekend

with a can of Henry's 208 trying to extend my roof

after $100,000 bid.

I was like, nope, a can of Henry's 208 is going to sell the job.

If it's wind downwards, if you repair it,

the insurance makes a big fit about it.

And they say, oh, you tried to repair it.

So we're not going to approve it.

So I tell everyone, don't repair it.

Just wait until it's, you've got some damage

that the adjuster can come out and notice

he chalks it all up and they approve the whole thing.

It's better if you don't do those repairs,

which is counterintuitive a little bit.

And honest roofer, damn few.

Nice work, Jordan.

Yeah, we're good.

Hey, we got Robert here.

I always like to pick Robert's frame.

Robert, I was saying earlier that it's oddly coincidental

that every time the 10 year gets near 4.5,

Trump changes his tune on an immediate pivot.

Am I hallucinating here?

What do you think?

No, that appears to be the level at least now,

but it's not really working.

Or it's working less than it was.

Each taco is having kind of more and more minimal impact,

which I think is definitely notable makes sense, right?

Like people don't want to be taken for rides.

So you only kind of give them so many attempts

to whip you around until you finally just say,

effort, and it appears, play correlations.

Yeah, it appears we're kind of getting a bit of that.

Maybe the start of kind of a washout.

VIX, yeah, VIX up about 30,

implied correlations, 33.

Yeah, so.

Can you explain those kind of metrics to the average person?

VIX is, it's implied volatility,

but people call it like the fear gauge.

That measures the amount of volatility

that the market is pricing in or expecting

over the next 30 days for SPY.

And yeah, implied correlations that tell you

how much is a given move going to be across the board,

every single Apple, Google, Meta, Nvidia,

they're all getting sold versus just one name here

there is getting hammered.

So yeah, implied correlations, when that spikes,

you can expect everything is down.

Gold actually is not today,

but pretty much everything else looks like.

To what do you attribute other than just standard volatility,

the moving gold into a lesser extent silver today?

Any ideas on it?

I think it's just a relief rally.

I mean, if you look, gold is down quite a bit

from the high, yeah, 18%.

So yeah, I think it's just kind of a relief rally.

You had gotten a pretty major move in gold,

probably due to the GCC countries

trying to defend their their their dollar peg.

So yeah, so that's probably probably if I had a guess,

more just a relief rally,

but if you get implied correlations and VIX kind of go

and even higher from here,

you might get even more de-leveraging.

Because it was a very popular trade for the past,

I don't know, year, right?

So in a correlation to one kind of event,

you get everything down.

Even if it's performed quite well,

the firms have a value at risk model

and that model tells them you gotta de-grose everything.

And so you'll see gold down,

even sometimes, I mean, bonds right now, it's different

because there's an inflation fear,

which I think is probably pretty misplaced.

I think that the move on the other end

is gonna be what really matters for Bob.

The deflationary trend, you mean?

Yeah, the demand destruction.

I think that that's really what is gonna move, you know?

I mean, we do have rates up like 10 year up from the war,

we're up about 50 bips.

So yeah, it's not nothing.

And if you look at the move index,

which is treasury market volatility,

that's pretty significantly.

So you definitely have a lot of volatility in the bond market,

which is never good, you know?

The last time we had the move up here was liberation day.

So, yeah.

Well, you have, so Karam had a question earlier about,

you know, in08, all the printing presses came on essentially

as a result of trying to, for lack of a better term,

paper over the system and keep propagating the system

as it currently stands.

That's obviously inflationary, too many currency units

chasing too few goods.

What would you say is the counteracting,

it's almost like the unstoppable force

against the immobile object, right?

Inflation on the one hand, deflation on the other hand,

and they've been in a stasis for my whole lifetime, essentially,

to a large degree.

Why, what are the top three things that you think

are gonna push us into a deflationary spiral

and that deflation is gonna win out over inflation over time?

Well, physics, right?

Depending on the math, you know,

you're talking a oil supply shock kind of on par

with the demand shock of COVID.

What that means, you know,

if 20 million barrels per day worth of oil is gone,

just not getting to Asia, Europe, America,

what that means is demand or consumption of oil

must fall by that amount.

Now, what is the price that you need on oil to get that tap?

It is, you know, it's probably like 200 plus,

250 on Brent,

according to the short run he lost,

this is the zero point one.

You're probably talking, you know,

250 on Brent, to get, I mean,

think about what price would be required to get you

to decrease your economic activity by 20%.

Because that's basically the amount of disruption

to the supply.

So you're talking a very, very high price.

To what do you attribute,

to what do you attribute the ability,

I don't know what is keeping oil, you know,

sub 100 over the last two weeks,

what do you attribute that to?

WTI is not gonna be as impacted as Brent.

So, you know, that's definitely a dynamic.

What are the differences between the two,

if you could tell me?

WTI is the American benchmark for crude,

and then you have Brent,

which is the kind of global benchmark, you know, Asia, Europe.

So, yeah, that, that,

you're gonna get a divergence,

do the fact that we actually are energy independent, you know,

and if need be, we could restrict export here,

the oil and refined products.

So, yeah, that's, you're probably gonna get a widening

of that, you know, that difference between Brent and WTI,

that will probably continue to widen in expectation,

you know, if it goes on, in expectation of export controls

and that kind of thing, you'll probably get that

continue to widen.

And yeah, just, you know, market thinking

that this is gonna be a short-term,

I mean, if you look at the Ford curve,

I haven't looked today,

but the Ford curve on oil is pretty wild.

So, here in, at the end of the year,

for WTI, it's pricing in 75.

Right now, we're at 98, you know, so.

Well, I don't think people,

I don't think it's gonna be over quickly, right?

Yeah.

So, a lot of people, in my limited understanding

of the oil market, I'm sure Gary and others

know a lot more about this, but the type of oil

that is used, say WTI in the US, we're not,

we're not necessarily mechanized to use that, right?

Which explains why we went into Venezuela, I think.

You know, we're mechanized to a large extent

on the heavier type of oil that's coming out of the ground,

whereas WTI is other economies are mechanized toward that.

Is that a true statement?

Yeah, there are different grades of crude oil,

and that is true.

So, I forget if it's heavy sour,

Gary would know the actual grade data,

but yeah, but the type of oil that we actually bring out

of the ground, not entirely,

but the majority of it,

is kind of the wrong grade for our refineries.

So, that's why Venezuelan oil

is actually kind of more important,

because that is what our refineries are set up

to handle that in the Canadian oil.

So, yeah, so there, you know, oil is oil,

but there are all these different kind of regional issues.

There are different grades of oil.

There's, you know, it can get more complicated,

for example, here in California,

we rely on imports from Asia for like 30% of our refined products.

So, you know, California could get way more hammered

than Missouri, right, or Texas,

or Louisiana, or something like that.

So, yeah, so it's not kind of just like a one-for-one kind of thing

where, you know, we're in that exporter,

and so, all across America,

everything is gonna be just fine.

It's not really like that.

And also, you know, there's a feed through

from higher oil, right?

If that Brent WTI spread, if that continues to widen,

you're gonna get, you know, increased impact

on Europe, Asia, whoever may be,

everyone outside of America.

Well, that doesn't relieve us of stress, right?

Like, they need to fund that energy bill somehow.

Well, how do they come up with the dollars, right?

Petro dollar, they need dollars to buy the oil

and oil's priced in dollars.

How do they come up with the dollars to buy the oil,

which, by the way, is going vertical, right?

Well, they sell US treasuries.

They sell, and I think that that is part of what we're seeing

with rates.

I think that form selling is probably gonna show up

in, what, three months from now when we get the tick data,

you know, that's my guess, is that we'll see,

you know, foreign selling.

I mean, if you go back to 2022, I'd put a post,

I think it's actually my top post on my profile.

I think it's like $650 billion of US treasuries got sold,

1.3 trillion in US stock, right, during 2022,

that was kind of the last time we got an oil price shock,

and yeah, foreigners sold US dollar denominator assets

to raise dollars to come up with to pay for their, you know,

their higher oil bill and energy, right, diesel, gas,

whatever, maybe.

Hey, Robert, well, we've got you up here, Peron.

Do you want to hop in and ask a question here for Robert?

Yeah, I just wanted to comment on this

a quantitative easing thing.

I mean, you know, the problem, Rob, you can comment on that.

Basically, I don't have a problem with that.

What Ponsure was saying that in terms of actually printing

more money, just for entire and I think that's the only

solution they have, like that's the only solution they have

of their sleeve, but the problem is that, you know,

where you're going to spend it, how are you going to do it?

And we have seen in COVID that, you know,

they started handing out checks and that's where the problem is.

The moment you actually do that, you give this

is spending power to the actual consumer, but not looking

at the bigger picture.

What we see in O8 for this or the comparison was that,

you know, take care of the payrolls for the SMEs,

like especially in Europe, so they can actually survive.

So that was during the COVID, but what I saw was on O8

that, you know, especially, especially, I think Obama

took a major to see in that, you know, if we're going to do

that, then we're going to spend this money on the actual

infrastructure, which is breaking apart anyway.

So the moment you actually funneled the money

in the right way, it creates this, you know, activity,

which is going to be actually paying off in a long term,

although at that time, probably the infrastructure didn't

need it, but they started building bridges and roads

and paving the roads and all that.

But that brought in those, you know,

that workforce or a human resource, which can ultimately

get paid off because of it.

And the companies couldn't afford to actually do that,

because obviously the supply chain issue and all that.

But this held the economic cycle to actually keep on going.

So the problem is that the countries do not spend

that whatever the extra money they have printed

in a right way.

So if it's been positioned properly,

it could be a way to move forward.

What's your take on it back to you?

Yeah, that's kind of been my view going back to the end

of the 24, which was, you know,

if Trump really wanted to make America great,

really wanted to reshore, you could do kind of what we did

after 2008 with QE.

You could merge fiscal, monetary and trade

and industrial policy, kind of all under one umbrella,

like by the way, Japan, like by the way, China, right?

Where look, I understand that it'll upset, you know,

the free market absolutist, but, you know,

I've dug very deep into economic data

over the past 50 to 100 years.

And the two economies that really kind of crushed it

were both China and Japan.

And what was in common when they were so kind of strong

and building these great economies?

It was that they merged those, you know,

all under one umbrella.

And so, you know, I think we could see that

and, you know, what it could look like is, you know,

QE, right, infrastructure bond to fund, you know,

whatever, airport, manufacturing,

whatever it may be, right,

pick your infrastructure, ports, shipbuilding,

all these kind of critical industry,

you could get, you know, the Fed monetizing,

putting those bonds onto its balance sheet,

printing money to buy the bonds, to do it, right?

But yeah, but QE kind of targeted at actual,

you know, real productive kind of thing,

rather than financial return,

or financial asset return,

which is kind of what we saw after O.A.

Bitblanca.

Robert, isn't that where we already are right now?

Are we just turning that corner?

I mean, that's kind of what I'm saying.

Um, I want to, I want to say that,

I mean, we, we haven't really,

I mean, yeah, we're going in that direction, yeah, for sure.

But we haven't really seen like,

I mean, we still had Kevin Warsch, right?

Trump's pick for Fed.

I saw it headline earlier today that his,

his nomination is basically kind of at a standstill

because of Tillis, I think Tom Tillis,

Senator that's but her about Powell

and gonna hold up to the confirmation.

So, yeah, you know, like,

I think they want to move in that direction,

but like, it'll be difficult.

And, you know, like, it'll be,

it'll require kind of a whole revolution at the Fed.

It'll be a radically different Fed than what we see today.

And, you know, you kind of had like,

the groundwork for that being laid over the past year,

kind of with all the talk of Powell out and whatnot.

You had, you know, Rick Reader,

Mal Pass at the World Bank or the former World Bank president.

You had these kind of people, you know, important,

very important people talking about the need

to kind of reshape the Fed,

which, you know, I think, I think would be a good thing.

I understand that corners generally hate the Fed

as a concept, right?

But the Fed's not going away, you know,

I try to be pragmatic.

Fed's not going away.

Would I rather have a Fed like we had after 08, right?

That is doing QE3, you know, like 10 years after

the U.S. came out of the 08 financial crisis,

you know, just to boost the stock market and financial returns.

No, I don't like that Fed, you know,

buying two million, two trillion dollars

of mortgage-backed securities to pump that.

Like, no, I don't like that Fed.

But, you know, a Fed that is trying

to not only industrial policy, right?

But like we have heard increasing talk of a Fed

that is trying to kind of prioritize mainstream, right?

So you could see, you know, kind of thing

where they're printing money to buy small business loans

for investment in, you know, AI or what, you know,

pick a thing, right?

Main Street, right?

Small and medium sized businesses,

you could see the Fed try to start kind of monetizing that.

Which again, you know, like that's way better

than what we had the past 20, 30 years.

You know, would I be totally upset?

You know, if we saw, you know,

that kind of thing, absolutely not.

Like I think that's step in the right direction for sure.

It does seem like the, you know,

if you look at the data center build out,

I mean, the data center build out

is has surpassed commercial real estate by a large margin.

And I just, I wonder if that's the jobs program

that's already here, you know,

staring at some workplace.

Blanca, the energy required for this

and kind of the nimbiannitude across the country.

And again, a lot of these data centers

were going to be built in the GCC.

I don't know if you can rely on that anymore.

And if you were going to shift and build them here,

you'd pretty much have to build a power plant near it

to, to quell that political hurdle.

And you know, and, and, and punch or two,

they, they, a lot of our data centers were reliant

on pledges of investment from the GCC,

which by the way, their current account,

you know, was, was quite strong, right?

When they were able to export oil, natural gas,

aluminum, whatever it may be.

But now, you know, in the midst of a street of war

moves being closed, you know, regional war

where Ron, just like 20 minutes ago, you know,

put out a thing we're going to be attacking infrastructure.

I think it was steel factories, right?

Like in that environment, their,

their current account surplus goes to money heaven, right?

And then what happens by definition

is that outbound capital, right?

As a direct result of running a current account surplus,

that outbound capital, which a lot of it

have been pledged for a, for, for domestic, you know,

US data center build out, it all goes away.

So I think that, and, and, uh,

Muhammad L area and wrote a piece like,

I mean, I've been talking about the sense of start of the war.

He just wrote a piece on it in the financial times, you know,

I think people are, are starting to wake up

to that kind of second or third order effect,

which is the one sector of the US economy

that's been propping everything up, you know,

is reliant on number one, like you mentioned, a ton of energy.

And then number two, a ton of investment.

I mean, trillions of dollars are going to be required

to build these, these out.

And, you know, a lot of that was pledged from GCC and, you know,

their current accounts are not looking too hot.

Tiko.

Yeah, good stuff, Robert.

I wanted to ask you something based on,

I put something in the pill.

It was basically a farm that started out producing

1,500 pounds of forage per acre.

And today, five years later,

it's producing 10,000 pounds of forage per acre.

And the reason why it's doing that

is based on the model that is being applied.

So it's a stewardship issue.

If you see something as simple as,

per acre measurement of output,

that type of multiple,

talk to me about that being a deflationary force

with respect to feedstock.

Yeah, I mean, I think it'll be everything.

I think that, you know, we kind of, sorry, puncher,

kind of got to rail from your question,

but that, you know, I think when we're looking at the war,

right, and that is an oil,

and that is kind of everything.

There will be deflation just by definition of physics, right?

Energy is everything.

And if that energy goes poof,

well, so too does the economic activity

that was required, you know,

that the energy was required for.

It did not mean that AI and robotics

just kind of went away, right?

Like those are still very deflationary kind of force

that I think we're going to see kind of, you know,

have an effect all over.

I mean, yesterday you had Amazon or Bezos

announced a like $20 billion or $100 billion fund

for industrial,

robotic and AI adoption, right?

So I think you're going to see it, you know,

agriculture, you're going to see it in manufacturing,

you know, the very little we actually have, right?

I think that that force really did not go away.

And look, the bond market had kind of woken up to that.

If you look at and you look at rates

and when they started to move lower,

relative to kind of when all that, you know,

AI fear started to percolate,

I was, you know, the same time.

And so, you know, now with higher oil,

that's kind of yesterday's last month's kind of news, right?

And we're kind of over it.

But I think that, you know,

it didn't really just go away.

It's going to be here.

It's going to be forcing productivity gain.

I mean, we already are seeing the productivity.

If you look over the past two to three quarters,

we have had really, really high productivity prints

that are all surprising to the upside, right?

That gets revised multiple times by the government, right?

They put it out three, three different times.

And each time for each of the past two,

no, three quarters going back to Q2 of last year,

each print is coming out higher and higher and higher and higher.

So, yeah, so it's definitely a force that is going to drive down prices

and drive down.

Look, productivity generally is good, right?

When people talk about productivity on its own,

yeah, it's a great thing.

The problem is, is who benefits from the productivity gains?

And we know, you know, you can pull out, you know,

what the fuck happened in 1971?

I've put out version of it.

You know, if you look at real wages,

even using the government's own inflation index,

which we know is, you know, severely under counts inflation.

Even using that, you compare real wages to productivity.

And there was a huge divergence and real wages have basically gone nowhere,

whereas productivity has gone sky high.

And, you know, corporate profits,

you know, corporations benefited their profits as a share GDP of growth.

Their profits have grown two times faster than GDP over the past 10,

15, 20 years, where, you know, the average American,

yeah, we might get like lower cost TV, right, from China.

Because don't forget, productivity or deflation,

as Luke Roman, I think, you know,

puts, puts always tries to put a point on.

A deflationary force with a China shock and globalization.

And so, you know, I think that, I think that it's not, you know,

totally kind of dissimilar from what we saw during globalization,

from call it 1980s up until now.

That was hugely deflationary.

And there were a lot of productivity gains.

But again, who benefited?

You know, we got cheaper TVs.

But, you know, corporations,

they're profit soared two times faster than GDP.

Let's say hello to Matt and then over to Tico and Bitcoin and I know Matt,

how's it going?

Hey, it's going on everyone going well going good.

Yeah, I think a lot of,

a lot of points that Robert just made.

I think that's why energy has just been,

anything energy has just been up only whether you're talking the mega caps,

like Exxon and Chevron down to the mediums and the small caps that are,

you know, maybe they have one foot in the AI data center,

build out and another foot in a profiting off of the rising cost of oil abroad,

which makes it cheaper and more attractive here at home.

So, you know, last year,

last year you threw a dart at anything AI and you probably made money.

In January from my 2026 predictions,

I thought this year would be the age of this year would be the year of energy.

Obviously, I had no idea about Venezuela and certainly no idea about Iran,

but some of the points you guys made earlier,

energy just seems like the limiting factor for so many different narratives.

Now you throw in a lack of supply across the globe.

Yeah, this, everything energy trade has so much more room to run.

You can't print oil.

That's right.

Tico.

And you can't transport it for free, either.

So, even if the US steps up and fills the gap,

like it's more, it's more expensive coming from the other side of the planet.

Tico than Bitcoin ain't on.

Yeah, to Robert's point about that productivity,

that to me looks more about distribution than creation.

And that's an important component, especially at the farm level,

because the 10,000 pounds per acre that I was referring to,

the cost of goods in that person's P&L report, they went down, not up.

And that's a very important point, because in order to get that kind of multiple

of output in the existing conventional system,

you need to put more into it versus the model that's being applied now

is actually closed loop in circular.

Therefore, they're reducing their risks and their cost associated with the supply chain

at the farm level, which means they get to keep more money for themselves

versus perhaps the intermediaries the government to take it.

And this is important with respect to Bitcoin, because what Bitcoin does is

it actually allows the individual or the creator, the producer of the product or the service

to retain more of that distribution.

And while retaining more of that distribution, it gives them more freedom and sovereignty

to determine how they distribute their own wealth versus third-partying out that

to some kind of institution that's highly dependent on very concentrated feedstocks.

And on.

Yeah, I think I may have been missing part of the beginning of the conversation

about deflationary forces, but as agriculture is concerned,

anytime there is a supply chain disruption or there's a conflict,

you just have to look at kind of like Ukraine war period.

Agriculture gets hit really hard.

It takes a while to recover and food prices go up.

I mean, all of the inputs to agriculture, like we mentioned yesterday, are petroleum products.

So if you put any sort of pinch in that supply chain, what's going to happen is the farmers

are simply going to not farm those crops and just take their crop insurance,

which means they're basically collecting less money and letting the crop just get destroyed,

which means it doesn't get distributed and there's a shortage of supply of that product

that the consumer has to pay higher prices for.

And then as far as AI is concerned, we're a long time away of actually seeing

some real applications commercially for AI and agriculture at this point.

Just to kind of frame things, there's a great article by Maxine Skillemont,

who works for Fira, which is the French international,

but in French words, basically it's a robotics association that puts on a conference every year.

And he's kind of identifying the different tech verticals in agriculture

and their level of adoption currently, and just kind of giving a picture of where agriculture is currently at.

In the most progressive adoption for technology, which is California,

we're basically seeing people adopt GPS.

That's like the state of the art right now.

Everyone else is playing around as first adopters on autonomy and big data models,

the digital twin thing, and it's not deployable yet.

It's just basically pilots.

So I don't think we're going to see any deflationary forces from AI for a long time.

Not to be blackpilling, it's just kind of where the industry is right now.

Yeah, but I think there are going to be early adopters who are going to have a disproportionate advantage

for being an early adopter.

And I think that's going to be a catalyst for moving these things.

I mean, I'm involved with a company right now in an industry that's just,

it's going to be very disruptive.

And we have something that we've shown to potential customers

and they're doing backflips over it.

But it's going to eliminate a lot of middle management jobs that did this kind of grunt work.

And I hate to be cryptic about describing it, but it's just going to be,

if we're correct, it's going to be quickly adopted, quicker than I think people might think.

I mean, obviously I can't speak to that specifics without an example,

but I mean, from my experience working with the growers,

they're kind of at that digitalization of the farm part of bug.

You know, healthcare went through that and they were really successful,

but doing something like agriculture where you're trying to digitize the whole farm is really difficult

because you're trying to map, it's a map territory problem.

So like complex system versus complicated systems.

One is very chaotic, one is predictable, and it's deterministic,

and you can't map one onto the other.

So when you're talking about like farm information management systems,

where you're trying to track all the shifts on the farm,

all the applications that pesticide for reporting for compliance,

regulatory reasons, you're trying to track your fuel usage,

you're trying to track all your inputs,

and you're trying to connect it to your ERP.

Like, it's a nightmare because a lot of what happens is word of mouth or text message

or on little documents that then get take a screen cap of and sent to someone else on,

you know, WhatsApp. So it's very disconnected.

And then when you're talking about out in the field,

you don't have internet access except for spotty spots here and there.

If you're under the canopy half the year, you really don't have good reception.

So that kind of last mile problem that the drone people were trying to fix

is the same problem that the agriculture people are trying to fix.

So if it's some sort of in-office product,

I could see what you're talking about,

but when you're talking about deflationary forces,

you got to think about inputs and labor because that's where most of the cost really is.

So I'm curious to hear more about what your product is though.

Yeah, I come out of liberty to say,

but it's a, I'll just say it's in the legal profession.

So you might, you're probably right on that,

the complex system versus a kind of a non-complex system.

But let me just tell you how deflation is hitting.

So I'm in franchise business.

So I own a bunch of different multi-unit franchises.

The deflationary is not going to really come from AI,

although I'm implementing AI in one of my businesses.

And it's going to be helpful, but it's a low labor business to start with.

So it's just going to reduce the workload for my staff.

But what is deflationary is my ability to open up more units