WW: Hey guys, you're listening to Unlimited Hangout. I'm your
host Whitney Webb. It's been roughly a week since the second
largest bank failure in US history and the collapse of SVB
or the Silicon Valley Bank has spurred the collapse of
Signature Bank, and silvergate Bank as well as the downgrading
of the outlook for the entire US banking sector. Now, it seems
the crisis is spreading the Europe with Credit Suisse shares
tumbling earlier this week sparking concerns that another
major financial crisis is set to explode in relatively short
order. How did we get here and what can we expect? Today, we
will be exploring the role of the Federal Reserve and the
broader situation with cryptocurrencies that played a
role in SVBs demise. We'll also be taking a look at the aspects
of this case that suggests there's something much bigger at
play, such as the role of Palantir, co founder and venture
capitalist Peter Thiel and stoking the SVB collapse, and
some of the connections shared by the already collapsed and
currently most troubled banks and the tions. Two major US
government overtures regarding cryptocurrency regulation.
Joining me today to unpack this complete mess are Marty bent and
Mike Krieger. Marty is the founder of t ftc.io. A media
company focused on Bitcoin beauty and freedom in the
digital age. He is also a partner at 1031, a leading
investment platform focused exclusively on investing in the
Bitcoin ecosystem, and he also hosts the Tales from the Crypt
or the T FTC podcast. Mike formerly worked on Wall Street
as an oil and gas general commodities analysis and equity
research and leader on a trading desk. He left in disgust over
the state of the industry and started the website Liberty
blitzkrieg. Though he doesn't blog as much anymore, Mike still
shares his insights regularly on social media. So great to have
you guys back on how are you doing?
Unknown: Doing great, thanks for me doing well. It's
been a crazy week.
WW: Yeah, totally. So the last time you both were here was on
Episode 43, where we covered the collapse of FTX. And all the
resulting scandals from that. And since we last spoke, there's
been a lot going on in the crypto space. And most much of
it hasn't been very positive for crypto at all. And some of the,
of course, is linked one way to or another from the fall to the
fallout resulting from FTX. So some of these more recent events
I'm referring to here are ultimately part of the story of
Silicon Valley Banks collapse but preceded that collapse. So
I'm talking specifically about some events that cause trouble
for the USDC stable coin, the company that issues that stable
coin, which is circle, as well as some issues at Silver gate
bank. So let's start there.
MB: I mean, we can start with silver gate bank, because I've
had personal experience. I mean, I have worked at a
WW: Sure. Well, definitely before SVB collapsed, right,
there was some stuff going on with silvergate. That was
relatively, you know, noteworthy and seems like it definitely
ties in to the events that resulted in SVBs collapse. So
why don't we just start with them?
Unknown: Yes, it's Silvergate. So in the quote unquote, crypto
sphere, I focus mainly on Bitcoin. But the overall crypto
sphere was banking, a lot of companies were banking with
Silvergate was one of the first banks to stick their neck out
and say, hey, we'll, we'll spin up some bank accounts for any
companies that are dealing with cryptocurrencies. So a lot of
companies in the industry flooded Silvergate and put a lot
of deposits there. One of those companies was FTX, which we
discussed in the previous episode, when FTX collapse that
obviously exposed like a big hole and silver gates company,
they have this counterparty FTX that people thought had billions
of dollars. But it turned out that that money didn't really
exist at the end of the day, they squandered it. And so that
that set off a contagion event for silver gate, particularly
where a lot of companies in the space started pulling out their
deposits and moving it to other banks like Silicon Valley Bank
and signature, which we'll talk about later. But throughout the
summer Silvergate had had a run on the bank and actually to give
Silvergate some credit, they had their bank set up where they had
a lot of liquid reserves, so they were able to actually
weather a bank run of $8 billion of all these cryptocurrency
companies pulling their deposits out of Silvergate and sending it
to other banks. But then, eventually, the flood became too
much about a month ago, three, three to four weeks ago, and
Silvergate had to shut down. It was a common day. ation of
depositors pulling their their money out. And then you had
short sellers like Marco Hotez. And then you had a politician
like Elizabeth Warren, really beating the drum on social
media, that Silvergate was insolvent, and that people
should pull their money out. So essentially, Everybody pulled
their money out. But the interesting thing Silvergate Is
they were able to process all the withdrawals from their bank,
even after they were officially shut down by the FDIC. So they
were actually a very well capitalized bank.
WW: Yeah, better than a lot of, you know, major, other banks
that aren't involved in crypto can see, yeah,
MK: let me just jump in here too, and add a little bit of
additional information. So what well, my understanding is
actually, as Marty was saying, silvergate was, you know, kind
of like, hung on impressively for a while, even even though it
was connected with Alameda and FTX. And obviously, the
politicians came after it, there's a few other pieces. One
is that there was investigations, you know, like,
I think from the DOJ, certainly there were in Korea, you know,
sort of serious criminal investigations, and then that
was leaked. And so that caused more problems as well. But it
seems to from my understanding, it seems that the final nail in
the coffin, interestingly enough, was a prepayment of an F
h lb loan, which was reasonably recently I think they they
actually had, I think, a $4 billion dollar loan from the
fhlb. And then they suddenly decided to repay that and in the
process of repaying a 4 billion loan, they had to sell the
assets, right. So this is similar to what happened to
Silicon Valley Bank, you have all these unrealized losses on
their balance sheets with which every bank has, but there was a
realized loss was triggered when they pre paid the fhlb loan. And
that was the end of it, you know, once they had to realize
the losses, and then it just everything accelerated. So that
the weird thing about this, and we can tie this into signature
later because that's a big mystery. Still, you know, I've
not seen a good explanation for exactly why signature was
effectively nationalized. But silvergate is weird, too,
because it also has one of these sort of nonsensical timelines,
which is no, but the fhlb is claiming that they did not
trigger a prepayment and silver gates not saying anything about
that. So nobody knows why silver gate felt the need to actually
prepay or pay that loan, which was the final nail in the
coffin. So that's weird. Very weird. Very weird. Yeah. So
WW: I want to bring up something really quick, related to this.
So Marty, you mentioned Elizabeth Warren. So I think
thanks to her and some of this other investigations from the
government that were related to the fallout from FTX, because of
the FT FTX, having accounts that silvergate They were targeting
silvergate But you know, as other people, including myself
in ED Berger have reported, there was this very suspect bank
that's very small, in Washington state called Farmington, its
Farmington state bank that had recently rebranded as Moonstone
bank, and FTX had a lot of suspects, specifically, Alameda
had a lot of suspect activity there. And that hasn't been
scrutinized at all right. And so that kind of suggests that there
was a particular interest in scrutinizing, silvergate
relative to other US based institutions that were tied up
with FTX. And it's interesting when you look at what's happened
since what we're specifically talking about here now with
silvergate, how, you know, with signature gone, and silvergate
gone, and that doesn't really leave very many pro crypto,
quote unquote, banks in the US anymore, because as I understand
it, the only other bank in that sphere until relatively recently
was like metropolitan bank or something. And they announced
that they were going to get into their work with crypto earlier
this year because of regulatory pressure from the SEC. So
Unknown: yeah, so So let me let me put put this out there now.
And we'll, we'll get into it more later. But this is one of
the things that I didn't recognize at first, but the more
I read into it, the more it becomes clear why silvergate and
signature in particular is so important here. For one thing,
when people sort of read about this in the mainstream, you
know, media or just anywhere really, what you keep hearing is
like signature and silvergate where crypto banks, right, they
were the main crypto banks and it's true that a lot of the
companies would hold their their cash there, like let's say
Coinbase circle, I think circle was also a Silicon Valley Bank,
but you know, a lot of the industry would have their bank
accounts there. But I actually you know, but but but crypto,
you know, crypto companies, Bitcoin companies, you know,
there are banking relationships with large banks, right, the
mega banks, so it's not like they're not involved. I think
what separates silver gate and signature and why They were
targeted, actually have to do with this the send in network,
but silvergate and Signet at signature. So Sen is the silver
gate exchange network. And these two things were crucial to the
functioning of a, like 24/7 Fiat to stable coin market. As you
know, like if you've ever used a US Bank or any bank, if you want
to try to do something over the weekend, good luck, you know,
how are you going to send a wire? How are you going to send,
you know, dollars from one place to another, using the banking
institutions are closed, right? It's outside of ours, but but
the crypto ecosystem operates 24/7. And so if you're running
stable coins, and you know, you need that liquidity from USD
Fiat into the stable coin, for that, for that market to
function 24/7, you need a 24/7 capacity to to make those things
happen. And so that's what that's what silvergate was doing
with set. And therefore, I think that that is clearly why they
were targeted. And in signature was also doing a similar thing.
And so that this This, to me, it was the main reason because if
you think about it, a stable a USD stable coin, that's able to
function all the time. And effectively, if it could do it,
if it can effectively be sort of seen as a 24/7 USD instrument.
That's kind of a cbdc. But being run privately. And so if you're
going to actually try to roll out a CB DC run by the Fed, you
can't have a functioning, I guess, competitor, you could
say. Right, that's, that's not in their control.
WW: Yeah, I think that's a really good point. Because for
those that don't know, the Federal Reserve is trying to
launch its own round the clock Payment and Settlement service,
which is called fed now. Right? So maybe they, you know, this,
this seems like kind of a convenient way to maybe get rid
of some of the competition to pave the way for CBDCs, which
seems to be sort of a bigger theme, I think, out of this
whole discussion about how cbdc Central Bank digital currencies,
tie into everything. But yeah, it's definitely very convenient
than that these networks of, you know, critical networks of
crypto infrastructure have essentially been decimated,
right? Or at least they'll be bought up by some big Wall
Street bank, right? Because
Unknown: think about it if you can, if you're already kind of
sending USD Daya stable coin, that's, like considered legit
all the time around the world whenever you want. Then what do
you need a cbdc? That sort of thing? Exactly. I think that's
why I think that's why this was all done. And that's also why
they're saying the FDIC is now saying that whoever buys
signatures, assets, or the bank itself has to get rid of the
crypto part that's completely weird and arbitrary, unless
that's the whole point.
WW: Well, as we'll talk about later, there's some people
arguing that the shutdown of signatory bank itself was
arbitrary. So there's a lot of, you know, weird stuff going on
with that bank in particular. So, before we move on to the
next thing, anything you'd like to add Marty, to the discussion
about sin, and some of these these payment networks,
Unknown: I mean, they were, they were very crucial for the
industry. So sin was silver gates, and then signatures with
Signet, and essentially, I mean, Bitcoin trades 24/7 365. So
obviously, people are buying Bitcoin on the weekends if the
price is moving, or if they simply just want to buy bitcoin,
on a whim. And so these exchanges and companies being
able to send money between each other over the weekend was was a
crucial function that that silvergate and signature
provided the industry, obviously, yes, stable coins.
We're using it to but even for Bitcoin exchanges that need to
move funds between each other, it was a big value add as well.
So this is being taken out, certainly hurt the industry to
to a large extent.
WW: All right. Well, let's move on to talking about how these,
the SVB collapse may have been influenced by the Federal
Reserve and more specifically, some of the Fed's monetary
policy during COVID. So there were apparently some not so
great bets made by SVB, during the, you know, the COVID-19
crisis and all of that, and then there's the issue about the Feds
recent efforts to combat inflation and tightening and all
of that. So, what are your guys's thoughts about the, the
role the Federal Reserve played if, if any, and what we're
seeing or what we've seen over the past couple of weeks,
Unknown: I think, I think the Feds policy over the last three
and a half years is the main driver of this systemic banking
contagion that seems to be playing out not only here in the
United States, but also in Europe. So during COVID, march
2020, when the economy the global economy shut down, the
Fed, drove interest rates down to zero and printed trillions of
dollars and kept interest rates low and kept printing for about
a year and a half. And then essentially, what happened is
you had all these banks load up their capital reserves with
particular instruments and Silicon Valley Banks case, they
bought a lot of mortgage backed securities, which were the crux
of the banking crisis of 2008. Essentially, when Silicon Valley
Bank bought these mortgage backed securities, put them on
the balance sheet, they did that with the assumption that the Fed
was likely to keep interest rates low for an extended period
of time. So essentially, what happened is when the Fed started
raising rates last year, and pulling dollars out of the
system, Silicon Valley Bank, found itself in a very
vulnerable position where they had a, what's called a duration
mismatch, they had a lot of these MBS is on their book,
which are longer dated. And as the Fed began pulling dollars
out of the system and Silicon Valley Banks, customers began
withdrawing funds that really affected that portion of their
balance sheet. And so when the Fed raises rates, the price of
the underlying bonds, or debt instruments has an inverse
correlation. So the Fed raises rates very fast, very rapidly
and pulls dollars out of the system, the debt instruments,
the price of those instruments typically falls as rates go up.
And so what we found was Silicon Valley Bank, had these MBS is on
their balance sheet, and they were losing value over time. And
so it was essentially just a ticking time bomb, as the Fed
has kept raising rates and kept pulling dollars out of the
system, the value of that capital on their balance sheet
was decreasing. And this is happening to every bank, not
just Silicon Valley Bank. It's not just mortgage backed
securities, it's treasuries as well. So a lot of banks, instead
of buying mortgage backed securities or buying treasuries
find themselves in the same situation. So essentially, what
happened last week is the bomb went off, the value of the
reserves and their balance sheet fell to such a point that as
people began withdrawing cash from Silicon Valley Bank,
probably stemming from fears of silvergate going down, and their
customers wanting to diversify a bit, they were forced to sell
their mortgage backed securities and realize losses as well. And
then that created the cascading event where they were selling
these instruments, in just the act of selling was driving the
price down even further. And as people were withdrawing money,
the value of that part of their balance sheet basically
collapsed. And then on top of that, it was really hard to sell
mortgage backed securities that are a bit more illiquid than
something like treasuries. And so you had a run on that back,
and that was exacerbated by the VC industry, in that part of the
country, basically, going to their portfolio companies, Peter
Thiel, most notably from founders fun emailing the
portfolio companies, and urging them to take their money out of
Silicon Valley Bank last week, and that word got out and
created a massive run on the bank, and who got out there
within
48 hours. Yeah, and, you know, let me sort of added a different
perspective here, too. So anyone that's been in the, you know,
financial industry or watches markets or anything like that,
will know that there's, you know, sort of an understanding
that when the Fed embarks on a aggressive interest rate hike
cycle, that they break something, right, and they
usually break something big. And that's sort of the joke. So you
know, when the Fed starts raising and keeps raising,
everyone's every sort of market participant is just sitting
there waiting for like, the dead bodies to start rising to the
surface, because it always happens, right? In this case, in
particular, you really knew it was going to happen because the
cycle of the lowest interest rates and QE in history was so
extended. I mean, it was really about a decade that so much
craziness, right so much insane behavior, one of which would be
you know, buying, you know, bonds at the or let's say even
treasury bonds at the highest price in a 40 year, or actually
was What a year yeah, 40 year bull market, you know, you know,
with leverage, potentially in some cases. So there's a lot of
bodies to float to the surface when the Fed raises rates that's
high. And I think everyone needs to remember what happened back
in 2008. And 2009. You know, it wasn't just the, you know, the
crisis in the bailouts, there was a huge power consolidation
that happened afterwards. Because when you, when the Fed
creates a scenario where people are sick, or the system itself
is struggling, and on the verge of failure, the Fed convinced
the Fed and the government can then step in and play favorites,
you know, and say, Okay, well, you can die and you can live and
you can get trillions, and then you can buy everything up.
Right. And that's exactly what happened after 2008. I mean,
what happened after 2008, the Fed became much more powerful. I
mean, effectively, the Fed can do anything at this point, I
don't think there's anything the Fed couldn't do if the crisis
was scary enough at this point, you know, and they would just be
able to do it, and Congress would just say, please, please
save us, right. You know, kind of during COVID, they were doing
crazy things there too, right? Even more crazy. Right? So, so
that's the world we're in now. And that was because of 2008.
Prior to that, that there was this was not the case, you know,
and so I remember very clearly, back then there was there was so
much uproar over things that now the that people just assume as
part of the regular fed duties, that was completely
unprecedented back then. So the amount of power that the Fed,
consolidated, post 2008 was massive, the amount of power
that the big banks consolidated, was massive and is massive.
Beyond that, with the housing market, things happened in the
housing market, post 2008, that really changed the fundamentals
of how the housing market worked, for example, and I went
really, I mean, this was, this was a period of my life where I
was just so enraged, raged about what I was seeing this now
normal stuff, right. So you know, Americans were getting
kicked out of their homes left and right, as everyone remember,
right. They were foreclosed on, nobody was saving them, right.
They were just getting kicked to the curb losing their homes,
because oh, they were, you know, they were reckless, right. Like,
as if they were the ones that created the systemic problems.
And then guess what happened up two years later, you had
Blackstone in particular, but others as well, using the
extraordinarily cheap financing that the Fed was was pumping out
there. And they had access to through a subsidiary called
invitation homes. And they were buying up all of the houses that
Americans got kicked out of, and then renting it back to them. So
I want to make sure that everyone understands here that
when the Fed breaks stuff in a big way, which they're in the
process of doing, that is always an opportunity for power
consolidation. And that's exactly what I think is going to
happen, or at least going to be attempted.
WW: Yeah, a friend of mine actually sent me a graphic that
he'd seen on on Twitter, that was pretty, a really good
graphical representation of how exactly how much the banks, the
big Wall Street banks have consolidated themselves in the
past few decades. I mean, we'll put it in the show notes, it's
pretty quiet, it's pretty crazy to look at because it's, um, you
know, what started off, you know, 20 years ago is like 10.
Banks is like three banks now. And when you have this kind of
stuff, like you're talking about, and what we're seeing
right now, it's pretty much inevitable that who, you know,
Will some one of these big bigger banks are going to be the
ones that buy up a lot of what's left of SVB or signature? I
don't know. I mean, it's obviously in consolidation, I
think is definitely in the works. And that just tends to be
what happens during any financial crisis, you know,
wealth goes up, and the people on the bottom get screwed over
and over again. So it doesn't really seem like things
happening now or any different than they've been they've been
in the past but
Unknown: not in the really pernicious thing is that the Fed
really breaks things in both directions with their monetary
policy. So when they're when they're lowering rates and
printing money, because COVID lockdowns like they basically
broke supply chains and pricing mechanisms of the world. That's
why inflation flew 2021 and 2022. So like, not only do they
break things when they raise rates really aggressively, but
it's true for they're doing policy decisions in the other
direction when they're lowering rates, like the Fed is really a
pernicious factor throughout our economy that is either really
screwing you by adding fuel to the inflation fire, or
conversely, the other way, was creating a liquidity crisis that
that leads to all this consolidation that that you just
described.
WW: Yeah, well, I mean, we're at over 100 years of the Fed. So I
think it's pretty fair to say the data is in and it doesn't
work, make it go Uh,
Unknown: yeah. And also and also, you know, one of the
things I was writing about when I was writing more frequently
was this concept of financial feudalism. And what you know,
for example, during that period of time, this is just one
example of many, but during the period of time when we had the
0% rates, and you know, especially large financial
institutions and people that have access to capital markets,
or the Fed could essentially borrow nothing, you know, what
was your credit card? Right, you know, was it zero? What was it
two? Was it three? Was it four? Was it 5%? No, it was, you know,
19%, you know, and so, you know, there's this, there's this,
again, it's important to understand that within that
system of the Fed, right, you know, making things too easy
pumping liquidity, and then breaking things. A key component
to the power consolidation and wealth consolidation is the fact
that there there are people and entities that are favored, right
throughout systemically favored. And then And then everyone else
who does not have the ability to access and leverage those low
rates. In fact, the only, and I think I discussed this on a pod
with mighty ones. But the only way the app the average person
or you know, a Normie, has has had the ability to essentially
leverage in a big way like the banks do. And hedge funds do is
buying homes. Actually, that's, that's always been the one way,
because when you buy a home and you take a big mortgage, that's
what you're doing. So that other than that, though, I mean, that
the average person is paying high rates not, they're not
borrowing at zero and just like buying the baskets.
WW: All right, well, how about we move on then to the collapse
of Silicon Valley Bank itself, and how that sort of played out
and then take a look at Signature Bank, since we haven't
really talked about them too much yet. So as most people
probably know, by now, at least people that have looked into
this, a lot, at least, the official narrative thus far is
that a lot of what happened with Silicon Valley Bank was
allegedly triggered by a threat of a downgrade by the credit
rating, a rating agency Moody's, and then Goldman Sachs steps in
so I guess we'll go from there to talk about some of the stuff
that led to the collapse of this bank.
Unknown: I mean, sure, so So I'll start there. From my from
my understanding of the timeline, and this is
interesting to sort of plays into what we've been discussing,
but what really got it going was a Moody's call to I believe
Silicon Valley Bank executives saying, you know, you're on our,
you know, you're about to be downgraded, essentially. And if
you remember, again, the 2008 2009 period, you will
recall that the ratings agencies played a huge role in in saying
that all these junk mortgage securities were triple A, and of
course, they were worthless, right. And so the rating
agencies are still around, and they're still, you know, doing
things sort of in a crony or arbitrary way. But in any event,
with that call Silicon Valley Bank then realized that they
needed to do something and part of doing something there was
trying to shore up their capital. And so that's when they
began trying to raise money, and also sell assets. And again,
back to what happened with silvergate. When they had when
they essentially had to prepay the or they decided to prepay
the fhlb loan. This is when Silicon Valley Banks started
realizing losses. And when you realize losses, then you know,
you can't, you have to then take action, more action. So it's
sort of like this downward spiral. Once you once you
realize a loss, then you then you're gonna have more problems,
you have to raise money, and then nobody wants to give you
money. And then there's, and then you have the bank run
thing. But the really interesting thing there is that
is the role that Peter Thiel seemed to play in that in the
sense that he really, I mean, once he came out were once it
became public that he was telling all the, you know, the
Founders Fund to pull all of their money from SBB. That was
it. I mean, that was the end of the back. And so by, by
effectively doing that Silicon Valley Bank was was murdered.
You know, and so that's the timeline as I understand it. And
yeah, it's it's bizarre, you know, and again, look, Moody's
can do that to anyone. And that's the scary thing, you
know, Moody's can sort of go but would they do it to JP Morgan?
You know what I mean? Like, would they dare do it to JP
Morgan? Probably not. But they're going around now looking
at other regional banks. You sent that article about that? I
think they're looking at like Zion bank and a bunch of others.
WW: Yeah. Oh, America. There's a few. I think it's six. Total
first republic is another one.
Unknown: Exactly. And so the moment you do that, you're
sparking something. So, you know, what role is Moody's
playing in this? You know, to what extent is it intentional or
is it not, you know, again, I go back to the fact that, you know,
would would would it be allowed even? Even if, let's say one of
the biggest bet like a JP Morgan or something? What if they had
similar issues? Would Moody's be allowed politically to actually
make that phone call? Or that downgrade? You know, if and if
not, that's exactly how you consolidate everything.
And literally, as we're talking right now, first republic, she
just mentioned their their shares were halted, ever live
limit down as soon as the market open today? So it seems like
there it is, is taking that back under as we speak. Right.
Right. So So again, I mean, it's, it's to get this is what I
think people need to understand. It's like to get the ball
rolling on a total bank run is not that difficult. And so it
feels to me as if it's being allowed, you know, sort of, it's
sort of being encouraged, perhaps even, you know, to on
these on these non Cisco systemically important banks,
right, the too big to fails. You know, and so
I was just gonna say that's, it's I mean, we've really seen
this, again, being somewhat close to companies that are,
they're scrambling for bank accounts. In the wake of all
these bank runs and failures. JP Morgan, Bank of America, Wells
Fargo are benefiting massively people are flooding to those
banks to open accounts, move their deposits there as quickly
as possible.
Right, because, right, exactly, because of what we said, which
is that they're too big to fail. And essentially, in bed with the
state completely. I mean, they're just, they're just the
same thing effectively. Oh, and so I looked at the article you
sent with me and yeah, so so that was in the title first
republic. Moody's puts first Republican five US banks on
downgrade launch Western alliance, America. Yeah. So I
mean, there you go. I mean, this is this is how you it again, if
they were thinking about doing this to JP Morgan, you probably
get a phone call, Moody's would get a phone call, and they would
be told don't do it. So they're clearly I think, probably being
encouraged to do this. You know, and then for what, for what
ends?
Yes, second bank on that list, Western alliance, their trades
were just halted as well for volatility. So it seems like
that going on?
Because yeah, it's ongoing. It's ongoing. It seems like a
snowball that's intentionally being allowed to happen.
WW: So let's talk about you mentioned, Peter Thiel, a little
bit ago. So let's talk about him and his role, because even have
mainstream media, at least financial journalist sort of
talking about his role. So you have Dave Troy, mainstream media
investigative journalist, I think he said something like SVB
did not properly hedge its risks against two threats. The first
of those risks being concentration of influence by
Peter Thiel. So is he I guess, referring to the influence of
Thiel on startups that we're banking at SVB. Specifically,
Unknown: I think that is certainly the case. But I would
also add, it's not on the individual companies within
founders funds portfolio, but just in the valley. More
generally, I think people in the venture space look at Peter
Thiel, and put him on a pedestal and if he's doing something,
they're probably they're a bunch of sheep in the crowd. So if
Peter signals something, they're probably going to follow him. So
it's not as natural as founders funds, portfolio companies, but
just the valley or generally as well.
WW: Right. Okay. So what's interesting to me about this,
you have some companies like one of the fintech startup called
Brax. That's backed by teal and another PayPal guy was able to
get billions of dollars out of Silicon Valley Bank the day
before it collapsed. Yeah, which is kind of, I guess, spurred by
to telling people to get their money out to an extent. But it's
interesting to me just because Brexit is tied up with other
people around sort of this Pay Pal sphere, sometimes people
call it the PayPal Mafia. So in that particular company, Brexit
is backed by teal and another. Think Pay Pal, not co founder,
but one of the early CEOs when teal and musk were both there.
And then you have that particular company Brax teaming
up with open AI, which is chat GP T's parent company, created
to create advanced AI powered tools for CFOs and their teams.
So basically turning chat GPT into, you know, something that
can be used to probably get rid of a lot of jobs in the finance
sector. Because you know, what I've been talking about in some
of my recent workouts that GBT is poised to you know, they're
talking about how it's passing bar exams that can replace
lawyers. It'll replace mainstream media journalists so
interesting to see some of those connections there and also Musk
himself Golf was talking about, who by the way has a sorry, I
guess I forgot to mention that Musk has a stake I think or
helped co found open AI chat TPTs parent company and in as
part of the same Pay Pal Nexus he was going to set he was open
to the idea of buying Silicon Valley Bank to turn Twitter into
a digital bank. Kind of interesting, huh?
Unknown: Yeah, that that was that was a strange comment. He
also made a comment though, yesterday. I think it was about
chat. GPT Did you Did you Did y'all see that? That was kind of
strange, because someone was saying, you know, open AI went
from being open to not open. And it went from being a nonprofit
to like, apparently, very interested in profits. And Musk
said something about that. He was like, Oh, how I gave 100
million, just a nonprofit. And now all of a sudden, it's not,
you know, not nonprofit, like, what happened there? Is that
legal? So yeah. Right. So yeah, Marty, do you want to add
anything there? Because I don't really have too much to say on
that.
Yeah, I was, like opening eyes like a really weird story.
Because like you mentioned, it started as nonprofit, I think
Elon pumped a bunch of cash into it, because he was really afraid
of AI and said, Alright, if we're, if we're going to go
after AI, we want it to be in a nonprofit way. So it's more open
source to an extent, but Sam Altman, who is the CEO of open
AI, I think at one point, he realized the potential profits
that can be driven from this technology and decided, You know
what, we're not going to be nonprofit anymore. We're gonna
make this a profit driven business. From what? From what I
understand it's Earth. Elon, irks me, Elon a bit. But one
interesting thing to know with open AI, and its founder, Sam
Altman, he's also the founder of world coined, which is an
attempt to create like a cbdc. Like, global digital currency,
WW: why they the guy scanning people's faces for irises money,
Unknown: they're still doing it. They're attacking. Yeah, they
are attacking, I would use the word attacking. They're down in
Africa, scanning people's irises on loading them onto their
wallet right now.
WW: Yeah, remember? Thanks.
Unknown: Yeah, yeah, I think I actually I didn't even know that
was still going on. That's scary. I'll have to look into
that. But yeah, totally. I think that was the I think the
marketing ploy was that if you scan your iris, they'll give you
some free world. Yeah. Like it was like, Can you imagine how
little they think of people? Right?
WW: Yeah, well, I mean, chat GPT. I mean, they pretty much
have a bunch of people thinking they're playing with some cool
toy, but they're basically training this AI algorithm to
take all their jobs away. And now they've released this big
upgrade of it, because you know, millions of users training this
algorithm for them for free. And then they can license it or team
up with companies like this to back Brax company, right? And
then use all that data that people are freely giving them to
come in and do a whole bunch of, you know, stuff that's
automating more and more jobs. Yeah, so I have a lot to say
about chat. GPT, but I don't want to get too off topic. So to
go back to Peter Thiel for a second. So you guys, I'm sure
remember that a couple years ago Peter Thiel made a really
unusual comment about Bitcoin and crypto. He added on a panel
with Mike Pompeo, who was either Secretary of State or CIA
director at the time, I can't remember which one. He
essentially said that, you know, even though he claimed he
prefaced the statement by saying that he was pro crypto and a
Bitcoin maximalist, he claimed that Bitcoin may also be a
Chinese financial weapon. And this is interesting in the
context of what we talked about a little bit ago, like people
like Elizabeth Warren, for example, and a lot of other
prominent Democrats and also Republicans as well are making
the claim that cryptocurrency and specifically Bitcoin are
national security threats.
Unknown: Yeah. So so so that that was I remember when that
happened, and I went kind of a little, a little crazy on
Twitter, because it was so it was so infuriating to me. To see
him say that, yeah, that was spring of 2021. You know, let me
just kind of dissect that a little bit. Now, Peter Thiel for
all of his, what we what we may not like about him is a very
intelligent individual. Right? He's not stupid, right? Sure.
Right. And so he knows exactly what his words mean. And he
knows what he's saying. It's not difficult. Now, if you're going
to come out there and say that Bitcoin could be a Chinese
weapon against the United States. While you're standing
next to Mike Pompeo. That is a very destructive narrative.
Totally putting out there. Yeah. And so he knows that there's no
way he doesn't know. He doesn't know that. And so he's sort of
seeding that narrative. And that is a pure, you know, national
security Deep State talking point period, and he's also a
guy who you If he claims to believe in freedom, you know, to
spin Bitcoin in such a way when he knows full well that China
has not been encouraging to Bitcoin, you know, has been has
been in many steps of cracking down on Yeah, exactly. It's not
like China has been, yeah, let's, let's let's let's really
advance the cause of Bitcoin I've been, it's been quite the
opposite, in fact, so for him to say that it's just completely
dishonest. So that's a red flag right there. And also, if you
actually believe in freedom, you know, as Marty is basically
dedicated his life to linking Bitcoin with with freedom and
American values, which I completely agree with that view,
to to denigrate Bitcoin, in this sort of a way when he clearly
understands that it does embody, in so many ways, the ethos of
the Republic of the United States, is a huge red flag. And
so, you know, for me, I feel like Peter Thiel is always
talking out of both sides of his mouth, I feel like he, whether
he's doing it on purpose or not, is is is unknown, but I will say
that he is, he's too often completely contradicting
himself. And he portrays himself in one way. But then, but then
says things that are completely antithetical to what he's
saying. So a very strange character, for sure. Obviously,
I know Whitney has done a lot of work on on him, and of course,
Palantir and all that stuff in his ties to the national
security state. But yeah, this was a weird comment, and I'll
never forget it, you know, unless he unless he clears that
up. I mean, that was a very concerning, and, in my opinion,
huge red flag and destructive narrative to be sitting out
there, which is also completely false. Yeah,
WW: I mean, it's weird, because he made that statement. And a
year later, he's at the Bitcoin magazine conference, talking
about how great bitcoin is after a year before, like a Chinese
financial weapon, and he definitely is a contradictory
guy. So I think he definitely wants to posture a lot to the
pro freedom crowd. So you know, he'll portray himself, for
example, as a Bitcoin Maxy, and then go and call it a Chinese
financial weapon, he'll call himself a libertarian. And he's
only built the most like damaging software for freedom in
the hands of every single US intelligence agency that's used
a profile of you know, thought crime and is an integral part of
this war on domestic terror. And you even had people saying on on
websites like Seeking Alpha, that Peter Thiel should use
Palantir to rein in Bitcoin, after he made these comments,
and that is not someone who is libertarian at all. But you
know, he likes to posture as that for whatever reason. And I
think it's a calculated PR move not unlike Elon Musk trying to
cater to a very specific audience, you know, through what
he puts out publicly, his tweets, his memes, and all of
that, while at the same time, it seems like his actions a lot of
time he's playing a different game. Yeah,
Unknown: it's we I mean, definitely Peter Peter Thiel
definitely seems like the person who's saying he's one thing, and
then every action he takes seems to not confirm anything he says
about himself. Very bizarre guy.
Yeah, it's, it's very perplexing. It's like, he's one
of the hardest people to read, from my perspective, because
like, is he trying to take a superposition where I'll talk
out of both sides of his mouth, and put money in both directions
for freedom with Bitcoin and pro dystopian hellscape with
companies like Palantir I don't know if he's,
WW: and also the companies he backs are Founders Fund, like
Anduril, which is run by Palmer Luckey, the guy that made Oculus
Rift, left Facebook created an era which is a startup
basically, for US national security. And it's all about
creating basically a surveillance apparatus on the US
Mexican border, ostensibly to stop illegal immigration, but it
will also keep people from going from the US to Mexico, Mexico,
not just keep people from going to Mexico to the US, right? And
that's all surveillance drones weaponized drones and these, you
know, surveillance towers. I mean, it's basically the SAR on
tower. You know, these guys love they're like, Lord of the Rings,
you know, references and all that stuff. But it's, I don't
know, he's also put a lot of money in companies like carbine
911, which is all tied up with the Epstein network. I've talked
about them before, and they're basically steadily taking over
the entire United States 911 emergency services call system
right now. And part of that is actually thanks to legislation
put through by Congress last year. So anyway, I'll be
circling back to that at some point, hopefully soon. But
there's a you know, Founders Fund is invested in all sorts of
Orwellian hellish stuff, so I don't know it's really hard for
me to see these guys is as Pro freedom Huh, anyway,
Unknown: windy, I just want one last thing. Oh, that like,
something that I've thought about a little bit is, you know
if they're gonna roll if a big attempt to roll out of cbdc is
coming, which I think we all believe is, you know, How useful
would it be to have the big players in Silicon Valley and
banking to effectively rally around it. And so I wonder if
part of what's going on here with Silicon Valley Bank is now
now the valley feels indebted in some way, perhaps to the, to the
state, and maybe more likely to be amenable for participatory
and, you know, some sort of panopticon digital currency. I'm
just I'm guessing that the the first step along the way to a
cbdc will be somehow and I'm not sure exactly how but somehow
promoted as a public private partnership, right.
WW: I was just gonna say that. Yeah, I think there's gonna be
some sort of public private pre cbdc Potentially rolled out
alongside it, maybe following sort of like that, um, the spur
coin model in Russia through Sberbank, Russia's largest bank,
it's run by Herman Graf, who's all tied up with the World
Economic Forum. But it's technically not a cbdc. Right.
But it's already widely in use. And it's basically a public
private thing. Yeah. But public,
Unknown: a public private cbdc is the only way they can do it.
There's no way the government should actually, like break the
software that produces a cbdc. They couldn't even produce a
website for healthcare.gov. They're going to need, yeah,
they're going to need the tech firms to build it for them.
Right. Right. And so is this is this related to Silicon Valley
Bank in some way? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's one of these
weird things where we kind of have to see how it plays out.
But I do, I do think, and this is why I really wanted to come
on and be part of this is that we need to be talking about it
now. Because the reason COVID The COVID SIOP was so effective,
you know, and it's sigh off the me for a few months completely.
And I'm pretty ashamed of that. But I found a learn my lesson
was that it was so kind of it was it was just, it was so much
at once out of nowhere, that something I personally wasn't
really thinking about. And so yeah, we need to be talking
about the stuff ahead of time, even though we don't know
exactly what they're up to.
WW: Yeah, totally. Well, on that note, really quick, if there's
some sort of public private partnership, right, it may not
necessarily have to be overtly one, because we got to keep in
mind, too, if you're talking about Silicon Valley,
specifically, and specifically, the Big Five tech companies,
almost, I'm pretty sure all of them at this point, are US
government contractors, specifically military and or
intelligence contractors. I mean, there's several that are
both. So, you know, they could easily be pulled in to build the
infrastructure, and it could still be essentially framed as,
you know, an entirely Public Sector Project. Right. So,
Unknown: yeah, I think the way it's going to play out is this
banking crisis is going to continue to go on banks are
gonna fail, and they're gonna hit the head where they say,
alright, the banks don't work anymore. We're nationalizing
them, the Fed is going to control all the deposits. And
here's your cbdc wallet. One of the tech firms helped us build
it, download it, right, you access your money now? Well,
WW: before we get there, let's go back and talk about a couple
of things that have already happened before we get to the
point of discussing where things stand now and how things are
likely to play out from here on out. So we haven't quite talked
about Signature Bank yet, but we've alluded to it and there's
been claims that it's shut down was completely arbitrary. This
is coming from crypto venture capitalists, Nick Carter on
Twitter. But there's other people that have made this
claim. And Carter's claims specifically come from Barney
Frank, who is the guy from the Frank Dodd, you know, Banking
Act stuff, post 2008. And he was apparently added to signature
banks board, I believe, in 2015. And he essentially said that
Signature Bank didn't really have to be shut down when it was
shut down. So the question is, why was it shut down? What's the
timeline here? What doesn't make sense and what's really going
on? So whoever wants to start on packing that be? Go right ahead.
Unknown: It was really weird because signature was shut down
on a Sunday. Last Sunday, after Silicon Valley Bank went down to
the fact that was closed on a weekend it didn't even have the
potential to open up on Monday and begin servicing withdrawals.
If that is what was happening was was a bit odd. Another thing
with the shutdown, is that what it was a bit different than
Silicon Valley Bank where the FDIC came in and said, Alright,
we're taking over on Sunday, the New York Department Financial
Services stepped in and said Secretary are shutting down
before market open on Monday. And as Barney Frank mentioned
earlier this week, he was pretty confident that the bank was
liquid enough, this service withdrawals, so it was a bit odd
that the NY DFS stepped in and shut them down out of nowhere.
Yeah, and it was interesting, too. So when I was first, trying
to research what happened, I was just looking up Signature Bank,
right, and try to read as much as I could about any article
about it. And it was really bizarre, because every article
was saying the same thing, which was nothing, you know, there
were just like, New York Department of Financial Services
decided to shut down Signature Bank. That's it, you know, there
was no timeline, there was no rationale. And so the only thing
that sticks out here is signature. Again, back to
silvergate. I remember, as we discussed earlier, had to send
network which was crucial to providing liquidity and the
ability to get in and out of exchanges and Fiat to stable
coins and all that stuff. And so the other one was Signet. And so
it appears to me clearly, that the intention with getting rid
of signature was to get rid of Cigna, as well, and, and then
make that sort of ecosystem struggle. Now, again, like New
York Department of Financial Services, as Marty mentioned,
like New York is, of course, the most dirty place when it comes
to stuff like this, because it's the you know, it's the it's the
womb of too big to fail, right, it's a womb of like Wall Street.
And so you know, that that that state, that city is going to
protect that at all costs. And so that was, you know, that,
that that strange in itself. But But I think, yeah, and and the
fact that I mentioned earlier that they're now saying the
FDIC, apparently is saying that anyone who buys signature has to
close down the crypto activities. Well, why? Like,
what is going on here? So yeah, it makes no sense. I mean, the
signature, I'm open to other ideas here, but I didn't even
see anything about assets as so for example, as we discussed
earlier, Silicon Valley Bank and silvergate, were both triggered
into selling assets, which created realized losses, for a
variety of reasons. I don't I haven't read that about
signature, perhaps they did, but I didn't read that. And so,
again, I'm waiting for someone to explain to me, what what
exactly triggered Signature Bank what what made it different.
There's the end of the day, it's, it's, in my mind, and it's
impossible, that the two, the two banks that ran these
networks, Sen. And Signet, just are two of the three that ended
up dead.
From like, the asset side of things for signature,
particularly you think, if they have one of the two senators who
wrote the bill that defined the type of capital requirements for
these banks was sitting on the board, he he'd actually be very
astute to making sure that the bank that he was associated with
was, was capitalized the correct way. Yeah, it was. It was all
very, very weird how it happened. The fact that it
happened on a Sunday sort of out of nowhere, very out.
WW: Well, here's one possibility. I think maybe well,
so the the bailout of Silicon Valley Bank, which I want to
talk about next, I think the way they got around the loophole
they used to offer that bailout was about systemic risk, right.
So in order to argue for systemic risks, they'd have to
be like, well, systemic means other banks are in danger of
failing. So I don't know that could have been sort of the
claim that we think Signature Bank is going to be the next to
fail. And this is part of our response tied up with the SVB
bailout. I mean, maybe I'm wrong on that. But yeah, but
Unknown: think about think about what you just said, right? I
mean, even if they said that, that's just crazy, right? I
mean,
WW: I know, but it's the justification. Yeah. But it's
the public justification, right? And in this space, there's a lot
of pre emptive stuff going on, like I was, I just did a video
the other day about the web partnership against cybercrime,
and they're talking about, you know, going after Bitcoin,
because of ransomware and all this stuff, and that they needed
to pre preemptively go after networks that might engage in
some sort of cyber, financial cyber crime. You know, I mean,
they love pre emptive stuff, whether it's financial stuff, or
the war on domestic terrorism or whatever. I mean, pre crime is
quickly becoming a major facet of United States government
policy. So
Unknown: well think about it to that with signature. If they had
waited 24 hours probably the there'd be no even rationale to
do anything because Yeah, don't write facilities and right. So
it's like, they were like, Let's kill this and then announce a
huge bailout. Right? That was weird, too.
Yeah. Contradictory in many ways, like, because they wound
up bailing out Silicon Valley Bank depositors. And if they
really were worried about contagion risk, like, why would
they shut down signature bank that just signals that banks
have a similar profile or at similar risk, and so you would
have a run on those banks, as well. Like, if they really
wanted to stem contagion, they would have every incentive to
make it seem like signatures are very well capitalized. try their
hardest to keep it open.
WW: But maybe if they wanted to close it right to target
signatures, they're like, well, we can wrap this up as part of
this collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and make it look like our
shuttering of this is linked to that.
Unknown: Right. That's, that's what they did. Yeah.
WW: There's the other thing, too, about how Signature Bank
was facing some major criminal probes, apparently, before it
was shuttered.
Unknown: I saw I saw that I mean, I guess, I guess you could
just say, again, you know, if you if you want to kill a bank,
all you have to do is say, Hey, we're looking into you, right? I
mean, I think they do this to people just Dennison sometimes
do these days, you know, when they can just destroy you. Yeah,
WW: they did this, like we just talked about to silvergate as
well, like, Oh, we're gonna target you because of FTX and
signature as a we're gonna target you because we think
people are using your crypto business or your exposure to
crypto to for money laundering schemes.
Unknown: Right, which at the end of the day, it seems like they
were just looking for an excuse to get rid of these two
networks. Yeah, you know, for a variety of reasons.
WW: Yeah, I think that's true. Because every time like, you
know, the feds come in and accuse someone of money
laundering. I mean, it's kind of silly, because the national
security state launders a ton of money, and the big banks launder
tons of money for drug cartels, and whatever. And people like
Katherine Austin Fitz, have pointed out that if you know,
the drug trade stop tomorrow, a lot of these big banks would
collapse, because they're dependent on, you know, you
know, the money laundering of a lot of those illicit funds,
whether for, you know, cartels or intelligence agencies or
whatever, like, when they actually decide to prosecute
these kinds of financial crimes, there's usually not always but
you know, sometimes there's an ulterior motive. And I think
that's quite probable here, especially when you consider
that some of this legislation in the works like Elizabeth
Warren's legislation that argues that crypto is a national
security threat. It's about terror, financing, terrorism and
money laundering are part of the justifications for that right.
But it's not like getting rid of crypto is going to stop money
laundering, money laundering, of course, preceded Kryptos
existence by many decades. So it's not like it'll go away,
even if crypto magically disappears right
Unknown: now in the in the overarching narrative, but I
think that's something really important that we have to dig
into and really see in the minds of the masses is that the
biggest perpetrators of money laundering and criminal activity
are the big banks and the government's stop people using
Bitcoin. Yeah, this goes
back. And this also goes back to the whole thing where, you know,
we're not allowed to have privacy, but they need to have
ultimate privacy. You know, we're not anything, but but they
can do everything in the shadows. And so yeah, I mean, so
if everybody, if everybody sort of transactions are known and
tracked, then whoever is in power can say, oh, it's sort of
a good blackmail thing, too. Because you can, you can just,
you know, what everyone's doing. And then you can go up to
someone and say, Hey, by the way, you know, did you do this
two years ago, and blah, blah, blah? And then okay, well, you
can either play with us, or you can go to jail, you know? And so
it's like, yeah, it's a great this,
WW: this idea of financial blackmail has been going on for
a long time. In my book and volume one I actually wrote
about how Armand Hammer the guy that ran Occidental Petroleum
was trying to acquire a major US Bank, because so many
congressmen had open accounts there for the purposes
explicitly of what he called financial blackmail. Yeah. So
you know, if there were people thinking about doing this in the
early 80s, you know, I'm sure it's happened by now. Right. So
Unknown: I think the only the only positive thing I guess I
could say about it is like, what they seem to be thinks they can
do is take all of these things that have been going on,
effectively since the beginning of time, right? I mean, sexual
blackmail, financial blackmail, all that stuff is you could
probably find instances of that in every culture that's beyond
you know, or city that's beyond a few 1000 people because it's
just what humans kind of do. But um, or psycho humans do. But
what what what they see what they seem to be think they can
do is just like, completely own it, you know, just just just
have it on a level that is so institutionalized and dominant,
that it encompasses everything and there's no sort of black
market or way Go rumor freedom. And and I guess to me that it's
such a brazen goal, that I sort of think it's doomed to fail.
But But yeah, it's certainly what they want. I mean, they're
going just for everything. Well, before
WW: we leave signature, I just wanted to say that there's a
news A new report out today that claims. Well, it cites the New
York financial regulator that shut it down their rationale for
shutting down Signature Bank, they have now said it was,
quote, a significant crisis of confidence in the bank's
leadership and quote, yeah, it means nothing. That doesn't mean
Yeah, I know, they can say that leadership wasn't going to get
rid of their crypto. So we're going to shut you down. And
whoever buys the bank has to give up all the crypto business.
Unknown: It's just like, we don't like you. Like the CEO,
Bob.
WW: Yeah. If you didn't think that the government is organized
crime, especially in New York State, and I would urge you to
reconsider. Wild that's crazy.
Unknown: It's egregious. It's disgusting.
WW: Well, what will come of it? Let's see. Well, how about we
talk about the bailout then? So what has the Biden
administration said about the Silicon Valley Bank bailout? How
has that changed the situation? And how are taxpayers on the
hook? Even though the Biden administration says they're not?
And what can we expect regarding inflation?
Unknown: So we're diving into the actual mechanics of the
bailout, I think, what the Treasury in conjunction with the
Federal Reserve, and the FDIC said was essentially, hey, we
will buy your debt instruments at par value. So as we mentioned
earlier, a lot of what caused this contagion event in the
banking sector was the Fed raised rates and drove down the
value of the debt instruments that are holding on the books.
And they're still, if mark to market, they would be
significantly depressed. And so the bailout was essentially, the
Fed stepping in and saying, Hey, even though these bonds are
worth 85 cents on the dollar, we'll buy them at $1 from you,
and we'll hold them on our books. And at some point in the
future, you can you can buy them back in full when when the
markets settle, and the banking system becomes more stable. So
essentially, QE five is started. It is they won't they won't
explicitly say this, but it is quantitative easing, where the
Fed steps in buys depressed assets at par value, it's a bit
different than past QE, where they're guaranteeing par value.
But that's essentially what happened.
Yeah, so So one thing I would just add there, I think that the
specifics are that they're not actually buying the assets, but
they're they're Qalat. Like they're taking them as
collateral at par. And then giving the the institutions the
money, right. So like they're giving them par value. But it's
like, technically not a purchase, right? Yeah. Yeah. So
so that's the, I guess the difference between QE But
effectively, it's the same, because because the banks have
access to money at par value for assets that clearly are not
trading at par value, which is incredible. Like, think think
about again, like 10 years ago, I would have just been nonstop
riding poppies after floppies losing my head, because it was
so insane. But it's like, people don't even blink an eye now.
Whereas that would be the equivalent of let's say,
Whitney, has her portfolio at Schwab. And, you know, two
months ago, she bought all the high flying tech stocks. And
then they crashed 50%. And now oh, you know, I'm 50% less
wealthy. And then then the Fed comes in and says, Oh, don't
worry with me. We're gonna pretend that didn't happen. And
we're gonna just go back two months ago, and to the value
they were at, and we'll just lend you money based on that.
And you're going to be fine, right? wouldn't wouldn't that be
nice? Right? I mean, it's, it's, it's effectively, it's
effectively pausing reality for banks, so that they can get
money and be liquid. And so you can argue that you can argue if
you want that that's important at this moment, but the bigger
but the bigger point is that? How do you ever get out of stuff
like this? Right? I mean, once exactly what started in 2008.
Once you go down a path like this, you cannot go back. I
mean, you really can't. And the Fed was trying to prove that it
could kind of go back to normal by raising rates, but look, look
what happens. They raise rates a bunch, and now they're doing
crazy stuff again, right, right away. Right. And so and so, you
know, the taxpayer angle, though is interesting, because, you
know, JP Morgan this morning is saying that the amount of
liquidity that could flow into banks could be up to 2 trillion.
And what their that 2 trillion estimate is coming from, they
basically took the assets of Have the bonds of maybe the
treasury bonds? I'm not sure exactly which fixed income
securities have non non too big to fail banks only, and said,
How much do they hold on their balance sheets? And I think
their numbers 2 trillion. So JP Morgan's is effectively saying
that 2 trillion could just be pumped into banks. If they if
they if they want to use this facility very quickly. So just
think about that. I mean, just to say that, I mean, yeah, the
taxpayer is not not only on the hook, like civilization is
saying like, this is so much bigger than the taxpayer. This
is this is, is again, this is just another, another, I guess,
salvo in like, a coup, you know, effectively, it's just, it's
just a coup.
WW: I heard someone describe it as private privatizing gains,
but socializing losses,
Unknown: yes, yes, yes, it's certainly, I mean, it's all
function. I mean, to put it most simply, there's too much debt
and not enough dollars. And when the Fed raises rates and pulls
dollars out of the market, like the interest expenses on the
debt that exist, become impossible to pay, it's just a
function of how the Federal Reserve operates. And how the
fiat monetary system operates, we've created too much debt, and
the fit, there are not enough dollars to service, the interest
on the debt level and the principal on the debt as well.
So like, functionally, the Fed has to do more dollars, print
more dollars to begin trying to service the debt. And so what's
really interesting, we go back to 2008. And then you fast
forward to 20 22,008, fed steps and prints a bunch of money,
lowers rates, and then 2016 2017 begins to reverse that policy,
then we get to 2020. It was actually before 2020, September
2019, we're going to reap a market spasm, which was, which
was driven by Fed policy, trying to pull dollars out of the
system, something broke. And then coincidentally, it's
pointing 20, COVID happened, and they were able to lower rates
print a bunch of money, that fast forward to today, just
three years later, a year and a half after they started raising
rates and pulling dollars out of the system. It's broke again. So
I think what I'm trying to highlight here is just the
depression of the time between Fed policy decisions, it's
something breaking, it's accelerating. Right rapid pace.
And so right now, the Fed is like if we thought the amount of
money that the Fed printed in 2020 was insane, the amount of
money that they're gonna have to print after this breakdown of
the banking system was going to be unfathomable, or at the print
trillions and trillions of dollars, and that is just going
to exacerbate inflation terribly. I mean, this the Fed
really didn't want to be put in a position right now to lower
rates because inflation is still high report.
WW: Yeah, but Blackrock is saying that they think the Fed
is going to keep tightening. And that's interesting, because of
the Blackrock and at the end of 2019. Basically, convinced the
Fed to alter its monetary policy, the going direct reset
or going direct policy. So I don't really know what that
means. But maybe Blackrock has reason to believe, you know,
reasons, we don't know what they are exactly, you know, something
they know that we don't know, that leads them to expect that
the Fed is going to keep tightening,
Unknown: one commentary I saw sort of after the bailout on
Sunday, someone was saying that this could allow the Fed to keep
raising rates while keeping banks operating, right. So like,
the banks don't have to necessarily face reality. But
they'll still, and therefore they could sort of keep
functioning. But we could keep raising rates for everyone else,
and kind of keep keep messing with the economy. But I guess,
but my but my feet, and that is an interesting theory. And I
think, I think if they do continue to raise rates, we need
to take that more seriously. But I will on a on a just a sort of
personal level. If I had to be if I was a betting man, I would
say now that they're pretty much done. And the reason I say that
is because with the the drop in two year Treasury rates, it's
the fastest drop in the last, I think, this week since 1987. So
the two year Treasury yield was has dropped 100 basis points or
1%. Three days, right. And what that what that signals and
historically tends to always signal is that the market is
saying you're there's no way you're raising rates and in
fact, you're gonna compete and that's what people are betting,
you know, essentially hundreds of billions of dollars on that,
that. And my my conclusion would be, that's probably correct that
the market is accurate on that.
Yeah, The banking crisis is becoming abundantly clear this
not isolated to the United States. It's spreading to Europe
and affecting the global economy. I think they're going
to have to lower its Yeah.
WW: So you have what we talked about earlier, you have six
other banks, I think all based in the US on downgrade watch.
And then you have this the stuff going on with Credit Suisse
right now, which has led many to argue that the contagion here is
spreading into Europe. But there's a couple of interesting
things to know about Credit Suisse. So you know, how we were
talking about not that long ago, like signature was being
investigated, silver gate was being investigated. And I think
it was silver gate that was having problems and was going to
delay, among other things. The filing of their annual report.
And Credit Suisse actually had a lot of those same problems. So
from March 2, there were there was a news headline, Credit
Suisse breach, spills, personal and foe of high net worth
clients all over the place. And then I think, not long after
that Credit Suisse delays, and a report after late call from the
SEC. So there seems to be. And the subtext of that from CNN is
Credit Suisse just can't catch a break. Right. And this is what
they had, you know, their current, those poor guys. Yeah.
So anyway, that's interesting, right? Because now, Credit
Suisse obviously having a lot of problems. And there's claim, you
know, now that like the Swiss central bank is may have to step
in, and all this stuff to rescue it. And obviously, there's
there's some problems there. But it's just interesting that it
seems like they were having problems before and maybe, you
know, if they think they couldn't weather that storm,
they see an opportunity to sort of blame something else for
their woes. Any thoughts on that?
Unknown: I mean, Credit Suisse has been in a vulnerable
position, even before this week, I think they had a mass exodus
of deposits last year, and they were they were already
critically weak. And I think a lot of people on Wall Street are
looking at Credit Suisse and just waiting for it to die. It
seems like this banking crisis spreading from the US to Europe
is just going to be the final nail in the coffin for Credit
Suisse. And I do believe that the Swiss National Bank stepped
in overnight to provide $54 billion loan to Credit Suisse.
But it seems like as US markets open today that they're
beginning to price. The probability of a Credit Suisse
failure, almost it's almost a certainty now of how their
credit default swaps are trading.
Yeah. So so yeah. As Marty said, I mean, Credit Suisse has been
dying for like decades, kind of like, it's a long time.
WW: Yeah, but so have a lot of other banks in Europe, right. So
if Credit Suisse falls, what does that mean for other banks
and deep shit, like Deutsche Bank?
Unknown: Right, right. And stuff? Yeah, yeah, no, I think,
well, here's the here's the key thing. And why Credit Suisse is
just a whole different can of worms from what we've been
discussing, but also could lead into the same kind of path that
we've seen with the cbdc. Because so credits or credits
with I mean, what they would have to do, there is it's
unimaginable to my mind, you know, how Credit Suisse is, you
know, their assets and what they owe, and the counterparties is
linked to everything else, you know, I mean, it would be, it
would be, it would be, you know, crazy cascades if something was,
you know, happen there. So, of course, the Swiss National Bank,
I think did, as Marty said, stepped in with 50 billion or
something last night. But, you know, to me, I want to go back
to the big point, which is, this system is obviously not
sustainable for any long period of time. Because every time you
do these giant bailouts or liquidity injections, all you're
doing is just kind of keeping it afloat without addressing any of
the underlying issues, like, the balance sheet issues are not
being solved, none of this stuff is being solved, but they're
just keeping everything sort of floating up with liquidity. And
what that does then is, which is what we've seen over the last 10
years, you just build up more, right? You build up more debt,
you build up more of a bigger balance sheet, you end up with a
bigger problem down the road. And my personal view, is that
the powers that be completely understand this, I mean, they
they know, this is why there's talking about a great reset,
right? Because they know a reset is coming. And so what they're
trying to do is they want to reset it themselves. Instead of
allowing the public or even you know, legislative bodies like
Congress to have a role in resetting it, they they want to
essentially preempt that process and, and create their own reset
in their minds. And then once the time is right, you know,
just just push it all in there. And so that's, that's, you know
where I think this is going, you know, and I think that we need
to really be open to the possibility of anything because
to actually attempt the reset in the way they want it, you do
need a lot of fear, and you need a lot of people being hurt. And
so sort of like the panic that we saw over the weekend, but But
times 10. And that's what I think we're gonna see in the
next year.
WW: All right, so one question I have regarding regarding all of
this. So if the crisis is systemic, which it seems that it
is, and it seems that this is gearing up to be something on
par, if not worse than the 2008 financial crisis. What about
bail ins, right? So after 2008, you know, the Dodd Frank thing
comes out and it's like, oh, no bailouts, but it did allow bail
ins to happen, right? Or at least that legislation allows
for bail ins to happen and bail ins as opposed to bail out. So
bail outs is taxpayer money bailing out the bank, but bail
ends is when banks use depositor money to sort themselves out,
right. So what do you think, is the likelihood of seeing some of
that if things worsen?
Unknown: I think it's pretty high, I would not be surprised
at all, and we begin to see this. In other parts of the
world. I mean, Lebanon, probably, most notably in the
last couple of years, they've they've done Baylands, where
they got put their central bank and their banking system got put
in such a situation that we said, hey, anything over
200,000? Let me Lebanese pounds, we're going to confiscate and
SARS now. And the situation is not much different here in the
United States or in Europe. So I think everything is on the
table, they're going to print money. And I would certainly not
be surprised that do balance on top of that as well.
Yeah, I think. So that would be a huge, I think Cyprus had the
balance, right? They were the only example I can kind of think
of, and then then Bitcoin actually rallied a ton right
after that. I remember. If they do Baylands, right, which again,
is where you depositors take a haircut on their accounts, which
is the exact opposite of what just happened over the weekend.
In my opinion, that would be part of the cycle effectively,
right? I mean, to to have bail ins would be such a scare
mongering thing to people, because, you know, in a tweet I
wrote a couple of days ago, I said, three things are needed to
facilitate the rollout of CBDCs. And the first one I said, is
make holding money and banks feel completely unsafe. And so a
bail in would definitely do that, you know, it would it
would make people understand that their money is not saved.
And that can be haircut at any moment. And therefore, clamor
for a solution. And of course, you know, people like myself
already have our solution, you know, in Bitcoin, but you know,
your average person is going to, is going to is going to say, or
even business would say, you know, oh, I need a solution
quick. And there you go, you know, a cbdc could be that
solution, just hold your money, you know, in this in this cbdc.
And it says, it's not, you know, it's not being loaned out. It's
not being leveraged, it's just right here, it's for you at all
times. And it's completely safe and guaranteed. And I think you
need some sort of fear point like that. And maybe, maybe
balance is a trigger, I don't know, there could be a lot of
triggers. But that's a potential one.
And I think balance actually interesting in the context CBDCs
could be like a normalization tactic, because with the cbdc,
we're seeing it in China already. Like, it wouldn't
necessarily be a bail in but it would, it would be like a
normalization of the money and your wallet has an expiration
date, where you can have your cbdc wallet, and the Fed will
AirDrop money into it. They'll say, Hey, you have two weeks to
spend this and you can only spend it on this, that and the
other goods on this list. Which is like an interesting nudging.
That could happen as well.
Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, they've been talking about
this forever, which is, which is like essentially forcing people
to spend money, which which is exactly what that will do. They
just AirDrop you money that you have to spend in a month. I
mean, we just like rats in an experiment. Totally.
WW: So um, as we wrap up here, I want to there was one thing I
wanted to talk about, too, regarding how all of this has
been affecting stablecoins, specifically USDC and their
issuer circle. So there was a lot of concern about circle
because of they I think they were one of the most exposed
companies after the collapse of Silicon Valley. bank. And now of
course, you know, not necessarily so and apparently,
they've decided to have reserves. Now at being why
Mellon, which is funny to me because they're really dirty
bank and pop up in my books a lot so I don't know I'm when you
look at how a lot of the other big stable coins like tether,
for example, they have their banks that Deltec that Bahamian
bank that was super tied up with FTX and is like insanely shady
themselves. It just kind of sticks out to me that a lot of
these stable coins seem to have their reserves at some of the, I
don't know, most suspect banks possible. But it also, you know,
it seems like there's an effort to sort of clamp down to an
extent on stable coins, or at least get them tied up with, you
know, certain banks that are friendly to some of these
unfortunate agendas that we've been discussing today. So, do
you guys have any thoughts about how all of this has been
affecting stable coins and sort of the politics between stable
coins and a likely cbdc launch?
Unknown: I think, as Michael explained earlier in this
discussion, like the USD stable coins is somewhat of a systemic
risk. But if you look at the other side of the coin, they
could see it as an incredible opportunity as well, where they
can co opt circle, consolidate them into banks that they fully
control, and then somewhat takeover circle and control it
very, just fully control it, I think, if I were to put my chips
on the table and bet on who becomes the private entity in
the public private, the cooperation for CB DC circuit
would be high on that list. So I think what we're seeing now is
sort of like a coring of circle into these systemically
important banks. And at some point in the future, the
government or the Federal Reserve could step in and say,
Hey, we're gonna need you to create this CB DC pilot for us.
Yeah, that's, that's a
really good point. So to expand on that I agree with with
everything you said. So if you think about it, and this goes
back to my point earlier, which is that there is a decentralized
sort of organic way you could reset, which is what I think
there's a lot of bitcoins is a huge part of that, for example,
right? I mean, that's exactly kind of what Bitcoin is here to
do. And then there's the WEF, and others who are taking it
upon themselves to reset us into what they want. So there's like
these two competing forces that are that are battling
effectively right now. Um, and so the stable coin ecosystem,
I'm starting to view as crucial in this in this battle, because
thus far you've had, and I'm including, you know, sort of the
network Sen and Signet in this as well, right, you have sort of
a wild west a little bit of a system that's developed over the
last few years with around stable coins and around these
24/7 networks, right, that, that facilitate the cryptocurrency
ecosystem. And that's more or less been a sort, you could put
it into this sort of decentralized, organic resetting
of things. But I think now the USG and the Fed see that as
having gone too far, let's say, right, like, this is this is
this is to organic, right, it's to kind of out of our control.
And so I think Marty made a really good point. And that this
could be right now, we could be seeing the very beginning stages
of, of the government and the Fed starting to sort of CO opt
these, and they may have already been, you know, like, circle, I
agree. I mean, circle has always kind of been like, it's kind of
like red flag to me. Always. Right. But like, even more so.
And so this, this goes back to what we discussed earlier, which
is that there could be this transition point where a CV, you
know, you get to see certain cbdc Let's I'm sorry, a certain
stable coin, let's say it's USDC. That would be the top
contender, in my view as well, that becomes sort of state
sanctioned in a way right, so circle may be all of a sudden in
six months is all at JPMorgan, right? And JP Morgan is doing
circle and this USDC and it's all integrated like that, and
then they can just allow it to run that way for a while. And it
could sort of effectively be like a proto cbdc That's kind of
ostensibly run privately, but then in a future crisis. Right.
They could they could create a crisis with that and say, Okay,
no, no, now we need to take it fully under our own control.
Right. And that's, that's one I think pathway for this to
happen.
WW: Oh, man. Well, one thing that comes to mind based Don't
Want You just said you know how we were talking about our I
mentioned earlier, you know why they were targeting silvergate
After FTX but not Farmington state bank, or Moonstone is it
was renamed to be. They had just partnered with a company. That's
very interesting. And one of the main guys on it is the guy that
claimed to invent CBDCs was, you know, and that was helping lead,
you know, this particular tiny bank in the middle of nowhere in
Washington state that had all this, this cash come in, from
Alameda research, they were leading some of their digital
transformation and, you know, financial services stuff. So,
you know, maybe, maybe that's what saved them some of their
ties to cbdc Architects, or something like that. It honestly
would not surprise me at this point. All right, well, anything
else you guys would like to add in? Before we wrap up here, I
definitely want to let people listening know, you know, what
they can tangibly expect in the coming weeks and months. And,
you know, maybe some solutions for people that are worried
about having their money in banks and things like that.
Unknown: I mean, I think Michael and I would both agree that
times are tired, the Fed and the US government are on their
heels, and they're going to try to cattle herd citizens into the
cbdc future where they have full control, I guess is why I focus
all my energy and time on Bitcoin. As I view, the future
is pretty binary, we either get the dystopian hellscape of
CBDCs, or we're going to truly grassroots the emergent monetary
system built on Bitcoin. So anybody listening? who is
thinking of how to protect themselves against the cbdc?
Future? I would highly recommend that you begin educating
yourself about Bitcoin and once you're sufficiently educated and
confident that you believe Bitcoin makes sense, and is
something worthwhile. Acquire Bitcoin, but most importantly,
don't normally get bitcoin, do not hold it on an exchange.
Bitcoin has native properties that allow you to control it in
a wallet that that only you can access, and no government or
company can stop you from accessing it. So it's, if you're
getting into Bitcoin, it's not important, only important that
you buy it, but that you actually possess it as well. You
do not want to hold your Bitcoin on exchanges, because that will
be a pressure point that the government will use, I believe
in the future, they will shut down these on and off ramps, so
it is very crucial. While we have the time to do so that
people acquire Bitcoin and get it into wallets that they
control. Because at some point in the future, the government or
the Federal Reserve can flip a switch and make it very hard to
get bitcoin.
Yeah, yeah. From that, from my point of view. I think that I
think that, you know, as Marty said, right, it's a binary and I
think that's right. So, you know, you you have to
understand, I think everyone needs to understand that, you
know, if we're going to have a more decentralized, let's say,
networked world, with more freedom, versus the, you know,
very rigidly hierarchical centralized, you know, sort of
panopticon world, which the West was, had many, many in the
United States one as well, intelligence agencies in
particular, let's say, you know, there's a responsibility that
comes with the former right, the networked decentralized world
with freedom, there's a lot of responsibility that comes along
with that. And I think that's one of the key things that Marty
was saying about Bitcoin. I mean, there's to do Bitcoin
properly, you know, you really, there's, there's a degree of
responsibility needs to take, and be willing to take that. And
so people need to also be responsible for their emotions.
And this is like the primary trigger, like if we go the wrong
way, I firmly believe that it's because too many people were not
responsible for their own emotions, and are allowing fear
and just programming to get the better of them, which allows
these things to push forward. And, you know, so be ready
because that is what's going to be triggered your your fear
response, you know, your, your, your just natural reaction. And
of course, like the media, you know, like, like these
mainstream media, like, seriously, there should be a
warning on every single broadcast and CNN because it is
so poisonous to your mind. It is such programming. I think, I
think the best advice I could give is, when some new thing
happens, that's big and scary, you know, try to just chill out
for a second. You know, take a step back, you know, don't just
react because I think, particularly, you know, people
like us to that. We have social media presences that are
reasonably large. You feel the need to kind of Have a
conclusion or have a response or have a reaction kind of quickly.
And I've found at least personally that the best path is
to not do that. Because let it settle out a little bit like see
what's, how did it how does the system react? You know, how's
the public reacting? Why are we being triggered in this way. And
so that would be my my advice would just be, really guard your
mind, really guard your emotions, because that is what
that is what's being very intentionally triggered with,
with, with every sign up to bring us to that state we all
want to be.
WW: Yeah, I think that's a really good point. I'm actually
I've talked to some people from Argentina, because, you know, I
live in Chile. And, you know, they had a full blown economic
collapse, you know, about 20 years ago. And what I heard from
them, you know, is the, the best thing you can do in that kind of
situation is have is not given to the panic, and the fear,
because that's going to lead you to make impulsive decisions you
may otherwise have not made, and it's, you're definitely going to
be better off if you can keep your cool when things get insane
in the economy, and you know, it's not just going to be
Argentina, this time, we're just going to be like a certain
sector of the US economy, like all the stuff is woven together.
So you know, if too much stuff starts to go, you know, we can
definitely see what will happen. But I also want to give advice
to some people who aren't necessarily, you know, in crypto
or interested in crypto because not all of my audience is. So
what would you say? What do you guys say to people who, you
know, have accounts at some of the big banks like JP Morgan,
Wells, Fargo, etc? You know, Is there money safe there? Should
they think about putting it elsewhere? And if so, where I
mean,
Unknown: all the big banks are insolvent, they're insolvent
essentially, the only way they're going to survive moving
forward is the Fed printing money, or launching a cbdc. Like
the banking system, the way it's erected with fractional reserve
banking, and money printing at the Federal Reserve is doomed
for failure. I mean, personally, I would only keep as much money
in the bank as you're willing to lose. I am again, again, I truly
believe and I know, it's a touchy topic, and people get
very emotional about it. And that's why I urge people to
educate themselves about it, I'm not going to tell anybody to
just go buy bitcoin, right now, like ape into it, educate
yourself about it. If you spend the time to learn about it, I
think that you'll come to a logical conclusion that it makes
a lot more sense than the incumbent banking system. Me
personally, I hold most of my savings in Bitcoin and not in
the banking system. That's what I recommend in terms of like an
alternative to the big banks, I really don't think there are
many there systemically important. They're the only ones
that will get bailed out every time a crisis arises. Maybe a
small community bank, but as we're seeing with this regional
banking crisis playing out right now, maybe they're not even
safe. It is really weird times in the market for money, because
the Federal Reserve has completely destroyed the dollar
in any confidence we could have in it moving forward.
Yeah, so So from my perspective, and you're kind of asking that
to two guys that probably haven't had a banking
significant bank accounts for years. You know, after 2008,
nine, I mean, I immediately I haven't touched it too big to
fail personally, you know, since you know, and, and I've had
whatever money I need in the bank, effectively is just what
I, you know, I'll put money in there to pay bills, you know, as
I need to do that, or what I need for other things, but yeah,
I just been, you know, I tried to stick stay away from the
banking system for over a decade. So, you know, I'm not
the best guy to ask about, like, how to navigate the banking
system, because I try to stay away from it. But if I don't, if
I'm not going to talk about like, you know, Bitcoin or even
some precious metals, what I would suggest then, what I would
do, like if someone said to me, you know, gun to your head, you
can't buy bitcoin, you can't buy any precious metals. You know,
those are not your options. So what are you going to do? You
got a bunch of money in the banks. What I would probably do
is I would look around and I would say, Okay, how do I make
my life more resilient? You know, like, what is it gonna
take do I do I start to grow garden? Do I add this to my
landscape? Do I get chickens like we did, you know, you know,
what, do I stock up on
WW: stuff? You know, your money in real stuff? keep you alive.
It's usually what I tell people. Yeah,
Unknown: exactly. So So for example, let me give you an
example. And I haven't done this because for a variety of
reasons, although it's always in the back of my mind. Okay. So
clearly, there's going to be some serious tensions between
the US and China you know, and if Do you think it's, you know,
bad now, you haven't seen anything. And probably, at some
point, and I don't know what that point will be, it could be
in 2027 I have no idea. But at some point, you know, the the
products that are made in China are just going to somehow not
find their way here anymore. You know, and that's a lot of stuff.
So, you know, you know, so So what sort of, you know, what
sort of things you know, do you need, you know, what sort of
things will be important to your resilience? You know, over the
coming years out, there's, there's, of course, food is an
important one energy is another one, you know, shut, you know,
shut having your shelter your sort of security? I mean, do you
need? Do you need certain batteries? Do you need, you
know, things like that. So, if you're, if you're not, if you're
not wanting to, like, put your money into alternative, let's
say, financial assets, I would definitely be investing in
having things that you know, you're going to use anyway,
right? Like, don't stockpile stuff that you're not going to
use, but if you know that you're going to use this, this and that
over the next three years, why not just have a habit now, you
know, if you've got the money to burn in the bank, and you're
scared of that, you know, the other the other thing that, you
know, this is what my wife and I have been, we've been totally
dedicating 2023 so far to this. And it's been going really well.
It's been busy, but you know, skills, right? Learning skills
that you don't have, that you think would be helpful? And so I
would, I would, I would encourage everyone out there to
think about that, like, where do you feel like you're lacking. So
for me, personally, there have been a few areas, one of them is
just my inability, really to DIY, and make things in the
physical world at all, you know, I grew up in New York City where
like, nobody knows how to do anything, you just call the
frickin superintendent, like, come fix everything. So for me,
I felt very, I felt very vulnerable in that regard. So
you know, I'm taking a woodworking class, for example,
in the carpentry, trying to learn how to do that stuff. And
it's a massive learning curve, like it's, it reminds me of
Bitcoins, just like drinking from a firehose,
WW: that's necessary. So yeah, that's even before these crises,
no one, people in the US were just completely losing. And on a
generational level, the ability to produce any of their own
stuff, like the knowledge base is going away. And that has to
come back for the US to have any sort of self sufficiency going
forward. Right? Yeah.
Unknown: So we'd like our kids, we're also we're very focused on
that kind of stuff. Like, like, my kid, my oldest son is doing
woodworking classes, too. So it's up to us, you know, like,
you know, don't just be this again, I think, for a while I
even I did this too, I just buy bitcoin and sit around. Okay,
well, when is the world gonna kind of blow up, right? But, but
but really, you know, every single moment, you know, every
single don't waste your time, I guess is my point. Like there is
there, every single one of us has a gap, right? Like, yeah,
and we probably know what it is. You're just like, I wish I was
better at this right? Or I wish I kind of will just just go get
better at it. Right? Go learn it.
WW: Yeah, you don't want to be caught totally unprepared with
what's coming. Because I mean, I think it's pretty clear that you
know, if this gets ultra super mega crazy, and people are just
left penniless, you know, the Feds gonna write and be like,
Oh, well, you know, here's your subsidy or whatever. Or here's
some money, you know, from the government that keep you alive,
but it's only in cbdc form. And it's programmable money. So you
can only use it on the things we say you can use it on and bam.
Unknown: Exactly. And like even making, you know, local
connections, we started buying gocce Rocco cheese from a
neighbor, you know, I could walk to, you know, in the last two
months, it's been great. We want it's the best, the best cheese
I've ever had in my life, like little things like that. Just
just just just, you know, there are things everybody can do in
that regard.
Yeah, that's, that's something that's been. There's been a big
movement within Bitcoin, like with this in mind, which is the
concept of going out and shaking your ranchers hands, maybe you
can Ranch, maybe you can't farm. But what you can do is get in
your car and drive to your local ranch or your local farm, shake
that farmer's hand and figure out how you can support them. So
if you're, if you're not going to be able, if you don't think
you're gonna be able to be self sufficient, and building a farm
or ranch to supply your own food. There are people around
you that are and they need to be supported. Just building
community and connections locally is extremely important.
Please, Yep, totally agree.
WW: All right, well, sounds like we're all pretty much on the
same page there and obviously we'll be seeing how the
situation plays out over the next few weeks and mindset these
issues obviously are not going to go away. So with that being
said, so people that are interested in listening to this
podcast, how can they follow you guys whether on social media
elsewhere?
Unknown: Yeah, if you want to follow me on usually hang out on
Twitter at Marty bent. And I have a website t ftc.io. You can
find my newsletter. There are right about Bitcoin and freedom
in the digital age and then the podcast as well. T FTC and
rabbit hole recap.
Yeah, from my end, I'm mostly publicly facing on Twitter at
Liberty, blitz BL ITC Liberty Blitz. Yeah, my website Liberty
blitzkrieg, though if I don't really write on it anymore, but
there's a ton of stuff there. I mean, if you want to just search
any any word you think is interesting, you're gonna find a
lot of articles I wrote almost daily for nearly a decade. So
I'm sure I'll write again at some point in my life, but just
not Not at the moment. So yeah, I'm pretty much public facing on
Twitter, and that's effectively.
WW: Okay, well, super. Well. Thanks so much, guys, for coming
back on to talk about even more financial craziness. I'm sure
I'll have you guys back probably sooner rather than later,
depending on how all of this plays out. Thanks so much to
everyone for listening, especially people who support
this podcast. A big thanks to you all for keeping this going.
And yeah, we'll catch you on the next episode. Thanks so much.
Thank you