NOTHING STOPS THIS TRAIN: FISCAL DOMINANCE & BITCOIN | Lyn Alden & Sam Callahan (THE Bitcoin Podcast) - THE Bitcoin Podcast

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Bitcoin's like a mirror for these reckless government spending programs and monetary properties kind of allow it to do that

(00:06):
given its scarcity and its fixed supply and all these things that allows it to be really tied and correlated to the liquidity.
And so I just think and given the how young it is and how it's still growing and it's still early in its adoption cycle,
that's why there's so much potential opportunity because not only do I feel like it's kind of built for these times and the value proposition is very strong,
it's also very young and so that allows it to have significant potential price appreciation as adoption continues to grow all around the globe.

(00:34):
Because we mentioned the US a lot, but the US is like in a better position than all these other countries around the world.
And so Bitcoin is needed even more so in these emerging markets with even more unstable fiscal situations and currencies.
So yeah, I mean, obviously I'm bullish on Bitcoin, but I really think that it's kind of like it's made for the times.

(00:56):
Obviously there are multiple assets that can benefit Bitcoin.
I think we would generally agree is like the best way to do it because you know,
you get the absolute scarcity mixed with the fact that it's a young asset.
If it was just looking at relative scarcity, we would say, OK, gold is growing by 1.5% a year,
Bitcoin is growing at less than 1% and long term grows at zero.

(01:16):
So should we expect Bitcoin to up from gold by 1% a year?
No, because we have a total adjustable market in mind for what Bitcoin could be or at least a range.
And we think that a 2 trillion dollar market cap is so small relative to what it could reach.
So in addition to merely protecting against a basement, which is kind of a gold's doing,
it's actually growing into whatever it's going to become.

(01:40):
So I think that's the bullish thesis.
I expect both from the scarcity of dynamics and then the fact that it's the leading liquid secure cryptocurrency.
And better than gold in many ways is better than the bond market in many ways.
It's as more people learn about it, the rational thing is for them some subset of them to want to buy it.
Then I generally view is yes, that's structurally bullish for Bitcoin.

(02:06):
Greetings and salutations, my fellow plebs.
My name is Walker and this is the Bitcoin podcast.
The Bitcoin time chain is 880410 and the value of one Bitcoin is still one Bitcoin.
Today, my guests are Lynn Alden and Sam Callahan.
We discussed their latest report, Full Steam Ahead, All Abored Fiscal Dominance,

(02:27):
Bitcoin Strategic Reserves, Corporate Bitcoin Strategies,
why it's also the best move for individuals, and a whole lot more.
This conversation was streamed live on Noster, which is the only place where I live stream the show.
So if you want to watch the Bitcoin podcast live, head over to primal.net slash Walker and primal.net slash TIT coin.

(02:48):
And if you're not on Noster yet, what the heck are you waiting for?
Before we dive in, just one quick favor.
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(03:08):
Without further ado, let's get into this Bitcoin talk with Lynn Alden and Sam Callahan.
Lynn, Sam, welcome.
Glad to have you both on here at once.
You've both been on here separately, but great to have you both for one big pow wow here.

(03:30):
Happy to be back.
Yeah, same.
Walker, Lynn, how's it going?
Life's good and interesting.
What a time to be alive.
Ross is free.
I was just saying that was, I think that's one of the most wholesome and joyous pictures I've ever seen of him walking out of that prison,
holding that little plant that he was growing in his cell.

(03:53):
It just like, I had it just struck right at the core of me.
I don't know about you guys.
Definitely positive to see.
I think, especially because they were concerned about not coming from day one, technically, so the fact that it came so strongly the second day is a really positive sign.
Yeah.
I mean, it was just, it brought a lot of hope.

(04:15):
I was pretty emotional when I saw it, honestly.
I mean, I know that maybe if people are looking in on this and aren't familiar with the case, they're like, why is Bitcoin so excited about this guy who set up this marketplace and there was a list of activity and yada, yada, yada.
Like, why do they care so much when he actually dig into the case about kind of the injustice that was done to him and the fact that he was serving double life sentences without the possibility of parole in a maximum security prison,

(04:43):
like surrounded by really bad, bad criminals.
I always just felt really bad for him.
And so to see him free now, and I'm just kind of excited to see what he's going to do.
You know, he's obviously a bright guy and now he has a second chance at life.
So I think it's very hopeful and it just made me think that Bitcoiners can actually influence things and bring about change.

(05:05):
So yeah, I thought it was great.
Yeah. I think a key thing that I, if anyone asked me is the injustice of it was the fact that they used it as an example, basically, the fact that the sentence was so disproportionate to comparable things.
And the US government kind of has that tendency, which is, for the most part, it's one of the better places in terms of rule of law.

(05:27):
But occasionally when something spooks them in some way, they really go all out and kind of bypass certain things, you know, whether it's Ross,
whether it's, you know, how aggressive they were toward Assad, including with their, you know, other countries that they're allied with.
There is a pretty good amount of injustices that happen and they're usually marginal cases, but those end up getting a lot of press because they're kind of pivotal, pivotal issues.

(05:58):
Yeah. I mean, saying they threw the book at him would, I think, be an understatement.
And what still makes me sad is I've seen, you see so many people out there and perhaps this is just, I don't know if it's a fault of the news or of people themselves not taking the time to actually look into the case.
Excuse me. But just the classic, like, well, he hired all these hit men.

(06:23):
Sorry, the frog is back. But like the, these things where you're like, well, did you look at the case? They didn't actually prosecute him for that.
There were all these different layers of entrapment happening.
Like you can guarantee that if that was a prosecutable charge, they would have prosecuted him for it.
But, you know, there's been so much over the years in the media, even the FBI tweeting like right before the new year, I think,

(06:45):
just some reminder to everybody that this drug, you know, we put away this drug kingpin who built this horrible marketplace.
And it's like, it's just so sad to see, to see people take a knee-jerk reaction to this specifically because they don't like Trump.
And it's like, you're free to like Trump or not like Trump. But that shouldn't have any bearing on whether or not you view this case through an objective lens.

(07:08):
And, you know, I guess there's, there's no fixing for that. I guess that's just human tribal nature. I don't know.
It was a good sign, a good signal that he did follow through on a promise.
Like he made a lot of promises to Bitcoiners.
So perhaps this means that he's pretty serious about some of these other ones that I know Bitcoiners are focused on and excited about the potential of a strategic Bitcoin stockpile or reserve, whatever he called it.

(07:35):
He followed through with this promise. So I think there's some patience that's needed amongst Bitcoiners.
I think there's a lot of built-in expectations right now that they want this to be done now.
But there's going to be a lot of different areas that this administration needs to focus on.
And we're going to be talking about the debt.
I mean, the incoming Treasury Secretary Scott Besant has a lot on his plate right when he gets into office with the amount of debt that needs to be refinanced.

(08:02):
I think it's $6.7 trillion as well as there's a debt ceiling coming up again.
So we got that whole fiasco hit headlines once again.
And so, you know, I think this, the fact that he freed Ross shows that he followed through on a promise and there's potential that he'll follow through on these other promises that he made to Bitcoiners.

(08:23):
But we should maybe, you know, practice some patience because there's a lot that's about to hit the fan.
So yeah, I want to say that.
Yeah, low time preference.
Occasionally goes out the window when heightened emotions are involved, I think.
But, you know, maybe that's a, I, OK, so I want to, I really want to get into with both of you today is this awesome report that you put out.

(08:49):
And there's a ton of just really great information in there and kind of like our current trajectory,
some, you know, discussion of whether anything stops this train.
There's a lot of great information about Doge and all these other kind of things that are really in the news and being talked about constantly at the moment.

(09:10):
Before we dive into that, though, just Sam, because you brought it up on the kind of strategic Bitcoin reserve side,
I am curious of both of your thoughts at kind of a high level and maybe this can sort of bleed into where we're at from a fiscal standpoint.
But do you see this strategic reserve as being something that's ultimately a boon to the dollar that it's something that gives somehow,

(09:37):
let's say more stability to the dollar.
Obviously, we're not talking about backing the dollar with Bitcoin.
This is a reserve.
But I've been kind of going back and forth on this of whether this is something that ends up prolonging the dollar's life,
ultimately strengthening the dollar, or if by the US government doing this,
it's an implicit admission that even the government realizes that, you know, we need to do something drastic and that perhaps they don't even have that much faith in the dollar.

(10:04):
How do you both think about that as we're kind of getting into this really wild new era of actually talking about this?
Like it is right in the middle of the Overton window.
Like this is part of the public discourse now.
Ladies first.
I think there's more layers to this than often gets talked about.

(10:25):
So ironically, one of the ways that a country weakens its currency when they think it's too strong is to accumulate reserves,
which they can then use later to defend their currency should they consider it too weak.
And I've written a lot about how the current structure of the dollar system,
you know, prolonging the strength of the dollar actually has some disadvantages.

(10:50):
That the way that it currently works in order to maintain this big saleable current that the whole world uses,
it means the whole world, they all demand dollars, so they all have to get dollars.
And how do they get dollars?
For the most part, the US runs a structural trade deficit and pours dollars out into the world.
And a lot of that is self-correcting in the sense that because the whole world needs dollars, there's a lot of demand for dollars.

(11:18):
Above and beyond normal things that currencies trade on, which is like industry, differentials, trade balances, things like that.
So in addition to all those forces, the dollar has this extra layer of demand that other currencies don't have and which sounds great.
Except for the fact that the cost of that is that basically the dollar is perpetually overvalued based on a lot of these things.

(11:41):
And so our import power is really strong.
Our export power for lower margin goods is fairly weak.
And when you run that playbook for decades, and a lot of it is like a self-reinforcing playbook, then the downsides of that start to become politically front and center.
So the reshoring and the hollowing out of the industrial base, whether you look at if you're the DOD and you're looking at it from a national security angle, that's an issue.

(12:05):
Or if you just live in Rust Belt, which has really shifted in politics lately and it is responsible for some of the political changes we're seeing, the rise in populism.
It's because of that hollowing out.
So on one hand, having the dollar positioned how it is, lets the government run bigger depths than they otherwise would.

(12:27):
Like right now, Brazil's having an issue because of their fiscal situation, even though their deficit as a shared GDP is roughly what the US is.
But they don't have this like entrenched, inflexible forward demand for their currency.
So they're facing kind of immediate consequences for it.
The US really gets to delay those consequences, keeps the train going for a very long time, which if you're the government you'd like, and you can sanction almost any country in the world.

(12:54):
So those are like the benefits from the global being the global reserve currency issuer.
But the cost is you're exporting your industrial base to basically maintain it.
That's kind of the ongoing cost of doing it.
And during the Cold War, probably the trade off was worth it.
But now in the current time, as the imbalances have accumulated, the other things are front and center.

(13:16):
So the average American says, I don't care if America can sanction country XYZ.
I want my manufacturing job back.
Right. So the downsides are getting interesting.
So ironically, a Bitcoin reserve is one of the ways that the US could start to balance out the dollar relative to other currencies is to say, we're going to accumulate a lot of Bitcoin.

(13:39):
Should we later need to backstop our dollar?
We have that option now.
But while you're accumulating it, depending on the method of accumulation, that can actually be dollar weakening, ironically, which is in the grand scheme of things, one powerful moving part in this whole trade issue.
So I think there's more layers than people often talk about.

(14:01):
Just a quick follow up on that, Sam, before you jump in.
In terms of the mechanism by which they would acquire this Bitcoin being a weakening factor for the dollar, I presume you're talking about if they are going to inject a bunch of dollar liquidity, if they're going to print dollars and use that to acquire new Bitcoin.
Yeah. If you merely say the Bitcoin we already have, we're going to put into a little stockpile, that's not going to meaningfully affect things.

(14:28):
Then there's different mechanisms.
You can revalue, there's a wonkish mechanism that they have in the Fed handbook that they can revalue their existing gold holdings and fill up the Treasury General account with that mechanism, which they can then spend.
Or you could just do change the assets that the Federal Reserve can acquire so they can do open market operations on gold.

(14:53):
You could say that they can now do open market operations on Bitcoin and yeah, you could essentially print dollars to buy whether it's foreign, it could be standard things like foreign bonds, gold, or in this case, Bitcoin.
When you see a lot of countries with these really big current account surpluses like Singapore, Switzerland, or say that the UAE that's pegging their currency but is running a big current account surplus, often they'll suppress their currency from getting stronger by printing their currency to buy a bunch of foreign reserves.

(15:28):
So instead of the accumulated surpluses strengthening their whole currency base, and instead accumulates basically the sovereign level, the downside of that is that the workers there don't get as much of the benefit of the surpluses that they're getting.
A lot of that accumulates at the sovereign level.
So if you take from an anti-status argument, that's not great, but we're looking at how kind of currency differentials work, that is a mechanism that they can turn to and other countries often turn to, the US doesn't.

(16:01):
Sam, what about you? How are you looking at this?
Well, I agree with everything Lynn said. It's interesting because Stephen Mirren, he was just picked as the lead of the Council of Economic Advisers by Trump, he wrote a really good paper about kind of the use of tariffs and the problem that Lynn describes with the overvaluation of the dollar and having to run these twin deficits and how they're going to try to implement tariffs to basically try to decrease the value of the dollar relative to other currencies.

(16:34):
And so they know it's a problem, so it's going to be interesting how they use these different tools.
And certainly, I think Bitcoin strategic reserve could help that.
And then I'm curious, Lynn, over long periods of time, if you just think about also a factor in a country's currency is just their health of their finances, the health of the balance sheet, right?

(16:56):
And so if we believe that Bitcoin is a good reserve asset that's going to appreciate in value over time, if the United States kind of bought a significant amount of Bitcoin and became a leader and they benefited more than other countries due to the price appreciation over decades and that improved the health of their fiscal situation, do you think that could do the opposite or it could actually strengthen the dollar relative to other currencies, fiat currencies over the long period of time?

(17:26):
I think it could. I think the funny thing about that approach is you probably get both sides of the benefit. So if you print dollars to buy Bitcoin now, you probably help with the trade, the reshoring that they're trying to do.
And you accumulate Bitcoin. And then over decades, if it appreciates, that can, that gives you a lot of options should you face crises in the future.

(17:50):
And then in addition, once Bitcoin is big and liquid enough, one of the ways to solve this dilemma between being the world reserve currency and being hollowed out is to in some way no longer be the reserve currency, not that you want to seed that to another power, but that ideally you want to seed that to a neutral reserve asset.

(18:12):
So gold got replaced because gold itself is too slow. And whereas Bitcoin has a chance of coming back into the system is that because you basically have a settlement network and a reserve asset combined.
But at a $2 trillion market cap, it can't serve that role yet. So if you accumulate it now, and then decades later, it's much bigger, and more countries now actually decide, hey, there's this settlement network reserve asset that we can hold.

(18:42):
And that starts to kind of work itself into the system, then the US is well positioned with a really big chunk of that. So, you know, people often ask me like, should the US do it, it depends who you're at, like, from one standpoint, I want sovereigns to accumulate at last, and have people accumulate at first.
But I would rephrase that to say whoever I'm advising, the answer is yes, you should accumulate Bitcoin. If you're trying to maximize the thing that you're advising, whether it's a family, whether it's a company, whether it's a sovereign, the answer is yes, try to accumulate Bitcoin and hold it for

(19:15):
decades, because that will affect your balance sheet and your future value, literally whether you're a company, family, or in this case, a whole country, for which the balance sheet does matter. Like part of what makes, say, Singapore attractive to invest in is that they have a ton of reserves that they could use to defend their currency should they need to.
And there's lots of other countries like that. So that's certainly a variable that matters in terms of, you know, currency long term.

(19:44):
Yeah, Japan's another example, right? Exactly.
It's going to be super interesting to see how this plays out. And I mean, it seems that the way, at least us Bitcoiners who are inside our own little bubble, of course, but are talking about this, SBR is that this is, you know, kind of a, it's a when not a niff.

(20:05):
And I think that that is likely the case at this point, there seems to be quite a lot of pressure to do this. Now, I kind of don't think it's going to be via executive order that you would establish this. I think it probably makes more sense and has more legitimacy.
If he run, you know, supports one of the bills like Senator Lummes's that is meant to establish this and it goes through Congress and, you know, has all those checks and balances in place so that, you know, you can hopefully get a nice bipartisan coalition to support this thing.

(20:35):
But either way, it's going to be, it's going to be a very interesting year. So I'm, I'm here for it.
I wanted to, so because I could, you know, pontificate about the SBR possibilities all day, but I do want to get into the meat of this report that you both put together. So titled full steam ahead, all aboard fiscal dominance, a great train as the cover image of it, of course.

(21:00):
And I think a lot of these concepts, like, Lynn, if it wasn't for you, I would not have what I think now is still a woefully under informed position, but much more informed than I used to be about these things.
There's a tendency to want to simplify a lot of the things that we see to talk in very, you know, kind of catchy ways about money printing and all these different things.

(21:24):
But this fiscal dominance piece, I think is really fascinating because it's another piece of this puzzle that helps make a lot more sense out of where we are, where we're going and what actual tools the government, the central bankers, the, you know, the Treasury Department has to make changes.
So can we just start out at like a very basic level with just like, what is fiscal dominance, like just so that people like really set the stage for anybody who is hearing this and, you know, thinking, I don't entirely know what that means.

(21:55):
Sam, do you want to take that? Or do you want me to jump in?
I can take that. So I mean, fiscal dominance, there's different definitions that have been proposed for what it is. And we mentioned two in the report. And the first one was by a guy named Daniel Ford.
And it's basically an economic condition where once countries debt and deficit levels get significantly high, basically monetary policy becomes ineffective at controlling inflation.

(22:23):
So like persistently high interest rates in that environment just increase the deficits even more, which exacerbates inflationary pressures.
Now we propose a secondary definition that's a little bit more simple. It's just when fiscal dominance is when fiscal deficits and government spending, so to speak, becomes more significant in driving economic activity than like the private sector.

(22:44):
So like commercial bank lending, non-bank lending, these things typically, along with monetary policy, drive economic activity.
But in a period of fiscal dominance, the fiscal deficits and the government spending just kind of overpower those factors.
And so things like interest rates rising and the Fed doing these policies don't really have an effect anymore on things like inflation.

(23:09):
And so it becomes like a dominant presence and it drives asset prices, it drives economic activity.
And it's why, like for instance, a lot of people thought that when the Fed hiked interest rates back a couple years ago, they thought things were just going to crash, right?
I mean, there's a lot of like fear and Armageddon type doom post about how it's going to cause a terrible crisis and the debt levels were so large that it's going to cause this huge debt crisis and contagion.

(23:38):
But it didn't really transpire. And it's because they're kind of ineffective right now because the fiscal policy didn't rain things in and it just kept spending and spending and running these massive deficits that it kind of kept the economy kind of floating, at least parts of the economy.
And it also kept asset prices elevated.
And so I think right now it's important to understand how fiscal policy is the dominant player now and the Fed can do things like interest rates hikes and cuts, but it's not going to change much if there's not significant changes on the government spending side of things.

(24:15):
And then I'll let Lynn kind of add anything she wants, but that's the gist of the definition.
It blows my mind that there are Bitcoiners out there who are not on Noster yet. Seriously, what are you doing? Just like you shouldn't need to ask permission to use your money, you shouldn't need to ask permission to speak freely.
But unfortunately, that's exactly what you're doing if you're still stuck on centralized social media platforms on Noster.

(24:39):
You can't be censored. You can't be banned and you can't be deboosted for saying words Elon doesn't like.
And the vibes are just better. There's nowhere else you can end up having a casual conversation with the likes of Jack Dorsey or Lynn Alden.
Noster also has Bitcoin payments built in, so when you post a meme, a hot take, or a photo of your stake, people will zap you Bitcoin to show you they like it.

(25:03):
You can find me on Noster by going to primal.net slash Walker and you can check out this podcast on Noster at primal.net slash TIT coin.
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(25:34):
So, come join the largest Bitcoin circular economy in the world and start zapping sats on Noster.
One thing I would add is that this is pretty actionable. One of the biggest successes I've had with investing, and I've had a bunch of downsides and wrong things too, but one of the biggest things I've gotten right is the fiscal side.
So, in addition to getting Bitcoin on my radar, the other big thing was basically getting the fiscal situation right because that's what allowed me to expect inflation to come.

(26:07):
And then, after some turbulence in 2022, it was what I started expecting to see, okay, we're actually inflecting upward again in terms of economic growth and basically asset prices.
I often like to say that I'm so bearish on bullish, which is basically you're through the event horizon. It's kind of what fiscal dominance is, like you're through the event horizon, and so some of the things start working in a different way.

(26:32):
And the example that I often give is, so back in the 70s, when they had structurally high inflation, the majority of that was from bank lending.
So, the rate of bank loan creation was pretty significant. Now, there was a deficit overlaid on top of that, but that was a smaller factor.
And then, of course, there were factors like oil shortages that would actually translate that into, instead of just going to asset prices, to actually go to consumer price increases.

(27:03):
But basically, you had above target money supply growth during that period, and the majority of it was from money supply growth.
And at the late stage of the 70s, early 80s, the federal debt, the GDP was something like 30%, which is historically low.
And so, when the Fed comes in and sees this situation, when Volcker comes in, they say, well, if we jack up interest rates super high, we will slow down borrowing demand, slow down overall, you know, fractures or bank money creation.

(27:36):
And that should contain inflation. Now, as a side effect of that, it will increase the deficit because it will increase interest expense for the government and potentially hurt their tax revenue.
But because bank loan creation is bigger than the deficit, the slowdown effect on bank lending will probably be larger than the blowout in the deficit.

(27:58):
And that's what ended up being the case. So you kind of put the brakes on the economy, put the brakes on money supply growth.
If you fast forward to today, when depending on how you measure it, you have over 100% or over 120% debt to GDP.
And bank lending is kind of sluggish and a lot of it's demographic. So back in the 70s, the baby boomer generation was entering their home buying gears.

(28:19):
So that's a big factor for why there's so much lending happening.
Now, we have, you know, somewhat slower population growth and then a lot of the wealth is concentrated toward the top.
So there's not a very rapid, you know, household formation.
And so you have generally slower lending happening, but instead there's more money creation in the 2020s coming from monetized fiscal deficits.

(28:44):
And when you, if you apply the Volcker playbook and you say, well, there's too much money creation, let's jack up interest rates.
Well, like lending is not that rapid to begin with. So you're not going to slow it down that much.
And to the extent that you do slow it down, you're also going to blow out the fiscal deficit by ironically an even bigger number
than you're slowing down bank lending. So you don't really curtail monetary aggregates as much as one would think,

(29:12):
because the government, the deficit is mostly industry rate insensitive. And if anything higher rates increase deficit.
And so that's why monetary almost all the feds tools are based on either controlling the speed of bank lending
or affecting industry like currency differentials with other countries. And they still have the second one, like, you know,

(29:35):
making the dollar attractive versus other currencies, so you don't get like a capital flight.
But they, but their ability to kind of, you know, affect bank lending is like they're only affecting the second or third smallest,
like the second or third biggest variable in money supply growth. They're no longer affecting the biggest one, which is deficits.
So that's kind of what it means to be stuck in fiscal dominance.
And they're actually making it worse, right? Yeah, you know, they're making the number one thing worse when they raise the interest rates,

(30:02):
the interest expense just blows out. So the interest expense is now was larger than the defense spending for the first time, right?
And so that's the big difference between the late 70s and early 80s. And now it's the sheer size of the debt and the interest expense that comes from that.
And so I think one of the things that really made me better understand this too is how interest expense is like the government has to pay these bondholders,

(30:28):
you know, the households, the money market funds, banks, pension funds, corporations that buy these treasury bonds if interest rates go up to 5%,
the government has to pay those bondholders and those interest payments can be thought of income for those bondholders and that income flows into the economy,
flows into asset prices, it injects liquidity into the economy, so creates demand and counters the Fed's tightening efforts.

(30:52):
So they're trying to turn things down in terms of economic activity. They're trying to put breaks on the bank lending,
but now you have these bondholders getting larger and larger interest payments, and that's like liquidity for them to basically put into asset prices and do whatever they want.
And so that's kind of this flywheel that I made, this graphic that's like higher interest rates, leads to higher interest expense, refinancing costs, larger fiscal deficits,

(31:16):
more money printing, more inflationary pressures, more higher interest rates, and it just kind of is this cycle.
And so that's fiscal dominance. And so it's just important to understand when you think about the investment environment right now because people I think typically respond to monetary policy,
but that's really not the driving force anymore. It's really what's going on on the fiscal side of things.

(31:41):
And that's kind of the mind-blowing thing right now is that just like the graph I had previously that you had put in the report and then this one as well,
you look at the interest expense and it should be kind of shocking to people.
Like when it's surpassing our defense spending, that's something we spend a lot on, right?

(32:05):
And this is literally just interest on our debt.
And what maybe, Lynn, something just to touch on that you had said earlier a little bit, just about the fact that, okay, in an era of fiscal dominance,
when you're trying to raise interest rates to presumably kind of tamp down inflation a little bit because people are up in arms about it,

(32:28):
you end up creating an even worse fiscal situation.
So at that point then, what is the Fed to do? Because they're kind of between a rock and a hard place.
I'm not trying to give them, take away any onus from them.
It's their job as our esteemed central bankers to figure it out, but like, is there even any tool that they have during the current type of paradigm that we have?

(32:53):
If we're in this fiscal dominance period, as you suggest, are there even any tools that they can use to be able to affect any sort of positive change?
Not super well.
And the tools they do have come with cost.
So it's not that their tools are completely ineffective.
It's that some of the downsides of the tools start to outweigh the positives.
And so like when they jack up interest rates, they do slow down some bank lending.

(33:19):
So that tool still works similarly.
But the problem is that it's only affecting a smaller part of the economy.
And then unfortunately, the way it's structured is it kind of amplifies the K shaped economy that we have, which is basically a two speed economy.
So if you're younger and looking to buy a home, the Fed has now made that a lot harder.
Whereas if you're wealthy and you either have like just you own your home outright or you've locked in a fixed rate mortgage and have no intention of leaving anytime soon.

(33:48):
And you have plenty of like money markets and bonds and assets, then you're doing great.
And you're not going to stop doing great anytime soon.
And if you're Google, like if you're one of these major mag seven, especially the ones that are really profitable, they've got a huge like cash equivalent hoard and then pretty low debt or whatever debt they do have is like like Apple.
Like locked in at like low fixed rates.

(34:11):
So anytime you you increase interest rates, you give them a raise and then they can plow it in more share buybacks.
And so you're only really slowing down like the most vulnerable part of the economy.
So you're you're kind of, you know, around the margin, it is tampering inflation, but it's also blowing out inflation in other areas.

(34:34):
By extension, you know, kind of the the kind of the cruelest thing that the Fed can do indirectly is make it another country's problem.
So kind of the dark side of Volcker and the whole kind of 70s, 80s era was we jack up the dollar.
We basically banker up Latin America because they all had dollar dummy debts.

(34:55):
If you look at their oil consumption, they flat line for like like global oil consumption flat lined because we basically impoverish certain dollars on many countries.
We like we like kind of got them addicted to dollars and a part of that's their own policies, but we encouraged a lot of debt accumulation and then we really hardened the dollar crush them.

(35:17):
They consume less energy.
That helps fix the energy imbalance.
Right.
So that's brutal.
And to some extent we're doing a slightly softer version of that now.
Now countries are generally better positioned for it because they have more reserves going back to the prior point of why it's why they accumulate reserves during, you know, when their currency is reasonably strong so they can defend it when it's when it's, you know, under pressure.

(35:40):
But, you know, by basically keeping the dollar so strong now, the policy to the Fed's policies, they are putting pressure again on Latin America, not not to the extent as before.
They're putting pressure on like, you know, Turkey, they're putting pressure, you know, to some extent, like throughout much of Africa, really, they are putting a lot of that pressure and that is actually kind of lowering their consumption and therefore alleviating inflationary concerns brutally.

(36:08):
And that works for a period of time.
So they're kind of playing that the hand that they have, I think the one, I think the one thing they could be playing differently and better is adoring the heart of the pandemic lockdowns.
Powell came out and said, we need more fiscal spending.
He said, our tools can't like alleviate things enough.

(36:29):
We need more fiscal, which is a rare thing for a central banker to do.
They did it.
They probably would have done it even if he didn't say it, but they did it.
But now that we're on the other side of that, of course, he's not saying, hey, we had too much fiscal, we need to slow it down.
He's not being very blunt about that.
So I think they could be more transparent and basically say, look, our targets are very hard to achieve when you're running 7% of GDP deficits.

(36:56):
And they're not, I don't think they're doing that enough.
And they're not really acknowledging where inflation is coming from enough and why their tools are somewhat indirect.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think one thing, Powell, like what in a brief moment of honesty, I think it was maybe like Q3 2024.

(37:17):
He was asked a question in one of the pressers about, you know, what do you think about basically the, you know, the government's spending situation?
He kind of just often, it was like, well, it's, you know, it's unsustainable.
But that was about as detailed as he went into it.
Like there was a brief acknowledgement and then it was kind of like, okay, yeah, on to the next question.
But I mean, it's, they must know that they have these problems, right?

(37:42):
Like they're, you know, they're not completely incompetent.
They must realize that they're kind of using a very blunt instrument that doesn't appear to work.
And I mean, if obviously inflation was not transitory, I mean, which was just a terrible way to describe it because for the average person,
like they don't realize that the Fed is talking about the rate of inflation, right?

(38:05):
They're thinking like, well, everything just keeps getting more expensive forever.
How is that transitory?
But I mean, do you think, do we end up entering an era where the Fed just kind of gives up on trying to bring inflation down to their kind of arbitrary 2% target and says,
well, you know what, now it's an arbitrary 3% target, like just to give, so then they say, oh, look, we, you know, mission accomplished.

(38:29):
We did it.
Like we brought it down to our new target.
Is that something that you foresee happening?
Yeah, I mean, personally, I think there's a lot of speculation there, but there's been a lot of chatter.
And you see these like ideas start to get mentioned by some prominent economists who have really large platforms just saying, well, actually, you know, 3% would be okay.

(38:55):
You started seeing that like two years ago.
And so now you're seeing that it's really hard for them to get it down to all that level.
Like it's kind of right now, it's like 2.5%, 3%.
And you even saw headlines like central bankers declaring victory on inflation when really they didn't reach that 2% target that they really always want to get to.
Right.

(39:16):
And so like, yeah, I think you're going to start seeing that.
But it's also like, as we all know here on this call, I mean, that's just one part of the spectrum of inflation.
That's kind of what Lynn was mentioning earlier.
I mean, it doesn't stop asset price inflation, which just leads to that like K shape recovery.
So even if the CPI drops, it's just like the goods and services, but the inflation is just kind of shifting elsewhere to this asset prices, which worsens like, you know, the wealth concentration and things like that.

(39:42):
And so I think I don't know if they're going to give up, but they may be just kind of change, you know, their language a little bit and say like, hey, this is fine.
And then once it kind of gets down there eventually, they'll say like, hey, mission accomplished.
It really doesn't matter though, it's really not the accurate way to measure inflation, in my opinion, as we all know, I mean, you just look at monetary inflation, asset price inflation, CPI is just like one little piece of the puzzle that they'd like to focus on.

(40:11):
And we know that it's manipulated and the methodology has changed and things like that.
So, you know, I think they'll probably try to do something like that.
But really what it comes down to is what this whole piece is about is that it's kind of out of their control, what the main inflationary drivers are today, which is not them, which is honestly, I would kind of push back a little bit because I think

(40:33):
Roman Powell has been pretty, for a central bank chairman, for a Fed chairman to say what he said about the fiscal side, he's actually been kind of vocal compared to other Fed chairmen because usually they don't like to say anything, but he has said multiple times that the fiscal situation is unsustainable.
It wasn't just that one interview. And I think they realized like if that nothing changes on that side of the things, there's nothing we can really do to meet our price stability targets because, you know, we could do everything we can on our side, but if they keep running $2 trillion deficits, then really inflationary pressures are going to persist.

(41:13):
Yeah. And going back to your earlier question, so the 2% inflation target is actually fairly recent. Like the Fed adopted it in like 2012 or something, and it kind of stretches back to like New Zealand's decision and like the 90s to define it.
And it's like a fairly like recent phenomenon. And then there's different interpretations like it's 2% the ceiling, or is 2% a symmetric target where if you're under 2%, like we have all these ironic quotes now from the 2010s of central bankers saying inflation is too low, we want to get higher.

(41:45):
And it's like, well, you got quite a lot of that, you know, in the years that followed. And so they're sometimes able to like change their definition or they say, well, now we want a symmetric target around 2%.
And then, you know, they can move the goalpost by saying, well, we want to get back down to 2%, but you know, these things take time. And it's like, well, you know, they're not projecting it to get there by the end of 2025.

(42:08):
So it's like, when exactly are you projecting it to get down to your target? And Powell's also said at one point that like oil, like oil spikes are kind of outside of their purview, which is correct.
So should there be some sort of later like energy related thing that makes inflation sticky, they can kind of define that as outside of their framework, which I would do too, because it's not the central bankers job to make sure energy is flowing.

(42:39):
And then they can only slow it down to me and so much to try to, you know, fight that. And then the only thing about the fiscal comments with Powell is that policymakers will often say that something's unsustainable.
But it's kind of like another way of saying it's not their current problem. And what I haven't heard is Powell link the fiscal to inflation enough, or at least at least as an ongoing concern to basically say that not like sustainable in the sense that like, you know, our quote unquote kids and grandkids are going to pay for it.

(43:11):
But like unsustainable is in I'm trying to reach the 2% target on my watch. And this is the most actively, like difficult variable for me to do that right now. That's that's the part that I haven't really seen him vocal about.
And, you know, in the future, you can have goalposts change and say, well, you know, national security, you know, this event happened. And so, you know, that's why we're going to really raise target to 3% or, you know, we want to tamp down inflation but not at the cost of XYZ.

(43:43):
So these all these goalposts can change over time.
Right. Well, I'm curious too, because in Trump's kind of initial speech, one of the things that he said that obviously, you know, jumped out of me along a made a quite a long list of things that he wants to do but I don't remember his exact words but it was to the effect of, you know, basically defeat inflation, you know, and and he's also declaring a national energy

(44:11):
currency and you know, we're going to drill baby drill and we're going to lower not just energy prices but other prices and you know, talking about in inflation these kind of you know blunt ways and obviously energy is a huge factor right it's you know, everything takes energy to make.
But I'm just curious how you guys see that playing out because I think Lynn you're mentioning, you know, that energy prices have been, you know, fairly, you know, they haven't gone wild right and I mean obviously they can come down more but I mean, do you think that this is actually a meaningful way to be able to

(44:47):
reduce inflation or do you think I mean is is he also referencing you talked also about you know the Department of government efficiency as well and being able to reduce some of the government spending.
But but are these reasonable ways to actually be able to tackle a problem that is clearly quite sticky and also just kind of seems to be embedded in our system at this point.

(45:11):
I think focusing on energy is meaningful in the sense that it reduces the probability of future inflation spikes from energy.
So it's not that that doesn't matter I mean keeping the energy flowing is one of the biggest components of inflation, especially consumer price inflation.
And other factors like the deficit is a big deal and that's why you know the incoming secretary treasury secretary Scott Besant has the 333 plan which is like increase oil production by 3 million barrels, have 3% GDP growth and get the deficit down to 3% of GDP.

(45:50):
Now, while it's a noble goal, the question is it is it achievable going back to the Doge question. And I would say that with the Republican Party's own campaign promises.
It's very hard to be achievable because you know their 2024 platform is no custom Medicare or Social Security and not raising the retirement age.

(46:12):
Obviously intersex expense is challenging to manage especially if you're not the central bank is not really supposed to be your purview DoD.
There's a lot of fat that can be cut there.
But every dollar there is going to get pushed back by Congress so that's going to be a battle.
And basically the areas that are cuttable are smaller than are often advertised.

(46:36):
A lot of times programs they want to show the good things but then minimize the cost that are going to come with it.
And I think this is like another thing is like basically saying we're going to cut the deficit but it's not really going to affect you.
It's like one or two things happen either they make massive cuts to things that are very unpopular cut which I think is very unlikely.
Or they get a lot of little optical wins. You know you cut a billion dollars just save some trout in like you know like Alaska which you know I like the environment as much as the next person.

(47:07):
But you get the idea that there's a laundry list of little things like that.
And they say look at all these like optical wins we're getting but it takes like a hundred of those to save a hundred billion dollars in like a two train dollar deficit.
Right. So I think at the end of the day they're going to have a lot of optical wins and the deficit is still going to be much bigger than they target.

(47:30):
Yeah I mean look I think focusing on increasing domestic like oil production and improving the supply more broadly is a good thing.
It's better than focusing on like grocery stores price gouging.
It's a little bit more productive I think to do that.
But as Lynn said I mean like the deficit is such a large component here and that's kind of what we shared was you know nothing stops us train in terms of why they're they're structural in nature.

(48:01):
And so it's just important to understand you know what we mean by structural in nature.
It's basically that this is baked into the cake with demographics and how much our entitlement programs are set to grow as our population ages and they become eligible for these benefits that they were promised.
Right. So that Social Security Medicare these costs just continue to increase every single year that a greater percentage of the population becomes eligible for those benefits.

(48:30):
And you know if they're not going to change these things because as we mentioned that 61% of the spending last year were these mandatory programs and it takes congressional piece of legislation to change them to change the age requirements.
And as Lynn mentioned the GOP specifically says one of their promises is that we're not going to touch Social Security Medicare.

(48:53):
But then the CBO comes out and they say 87% of the spending over the next I don't know if it was two decades.
Yeah next decade 80% of the nominal spending growth is going to come from these entitlement programs and the interest expense.
And so you know if you don't touch them then you're looking at a very small slice of the fiscal the deficit to actually make any kind of dent in terms of the spending.

(49:22):
So in terms of to make a dent in the deficit you're looking at 26% of the spending that's basically discretionary spending.
And then half of that is defense.
And as Lynn said I mean it's just going to be so much pushback I look out of the world about the geopolitical tensions.
And it just seems very hard to think that they're going to cut defense spending right now because of just the tensions that are all over the world.

(49:47):
And like there's so much pushback from Congress whenever you mentioned cutting defense spending and actually you look at the CBO's projections and they're expecting those to continue to rise over time.
And so if we take that out then we're looking at only 14% of the spending that was non defense discretionary.
And that's really where that's like the prime target for any kind of cutting and that's only $948 billion.

(50:10):
And so it's like way off this like $2 trillion goal that Elon Musk had.
And now you can try to cut inefficiencies and maybe deregulation kind of helps and maybe you have a productivity boom that could help things.
But in terms of just like the doge cuts I mean I find it very hard to think that we're going to make any kind of meaningful debt in the deficit without changing any of these entitlement programs.

(50:40):
And this is what Stanley Druckenmiller warns about as well.
And then there's this other factor which is the financialization of the economy and how tied tax receipts are to asset prices.
And so if we cut a lot of spending and the deficit shrink and as we've mentioned that's been a key driver of asset price inflation.

(51:02):
And you would think that if they cut that then that's going to have the opposite effects so then tax receipts are going to fall.
And so that's actually going to like blow out the deficit because you're basically dropping the revenues at a time when you decrease the spending so they offset each other.
And so that's when you're really in a hard place because it's like even if you did make a meaningful dent in the deficit spending then you're just going to drop those revenues and it's just going to result in a wider deficits or as wide of deficits because that drop in revenue is going to offset the spending cuts.

(51:33):
And so that's kind of a unique situation in the United States and it's why like when you compare it to other countries like in Canada or Germany who has had more like austerity programs where they were able to be successful.
It's because they had you know a difference where their whole economy wasn't financialized and tied to asset prices.
And so they were actually able to be successful with their austerity measures but with the United States it's a unique problem where even if we were able to be successful making a dent.

(52:02):
It's just it adds to this.
You know we basically need an overhaul of our tax system as well that untangles the tax receipts from asset prices somehow as well as totally revamp the entitlement programs to make any kind of meaningful difference and that takes congressional legislation in a very highly polarized political environment.

(52:28):
And you know I just when you look at that you're just like how is this going to work and and that's why you know nothing stops this train.
That's basically.
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(53:25):
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It really it's it's the meme that keeps on keeps on chugging.

(53:48):
I was going to say keeps on giving but chugging felt like a more appropriate in that case.
I mean but but this is the kind of like the mind blowing thing like if once one internalizes that nothing stops this train.
Where do we actually go from here like what does this look like over the course of you know the next couple years or the next decade.

(54:11):
It you know if nothing stops this train but this train is unsustainable.
We just run out of track and the train keeps running off a cliff like where does this actually leave us in the coming years.
So I think not in the next decade do we run into major things that would block it.

(54:33):
I think we'll have dramas along the way but basically there's 13 trillion in foreign debt denominated in dollars all that represents a flexible demand for dollars.
So I think that's more than that and look at derivatives and other kind of opaque areas.
And you have a pretty broad economy pretty diversified economy.

(54:57):
And so they they have more runway than most other countries or any other country really.
You know like I mentioned Brazil they're running into issues because they have a similar you know with their new with their current administration they have a they blew out their deficit.
It just it got as big as the U.S. deficit on a relative basis.
And when you're Brazil that's a problem because there's not really a lot of inflexible foreign demand for your currency.

(55:22):
So capital pulls out your currency weekends inflation goes up and you have an actual fairly acute problem.
Whereas the U.S. kind of the way I look at it is that the downside of the report and the downside of the whole nothing stops this train thesis that I've been hammering is that this is a far harder problem to fix.
Then almost anyone thinks multiple layers of challenges a whole gourd did not this extremely difficult to unravel in any administration let alone two or three administrations.

(55:54):
The upside is that I also don't expect doom anytime soon in the sense that the U.S. currency just goes completely haywire and collapses or you get complete blowout in in the U.S.
The whole financial system kind of is in shambles within that time frame either because the structural stuff is kind of geared toward running hot but not running into like doom in that time frame.

(56:25):
Another way I would describe it is that before you go into doom you got to go through emerging emerging market phase right and the U.S. isn't even an emerging market phase yet.
So when they start running out of track it'll look more and more like an emerging market which is still there's still track there.
And so they have to mess up pretty bad to have a true crisis and instead I think that we're going to see a long period of inflation running kind of hot.

(56:53):
The better productivity growth you get.
So if you get tons of AI to offset the money printing then it translates into asset price inflation and kind of K shaped disproportionate economic benefits where some people on the wrong side of the deficit.
So some people receiving deficits are doing great.
Other people are not receiving the deficits but they're paying for the higher cost of the deficits with higher interest rates and higher borrowing costs and they're getting all the downside of the deficits because they're not on the right side of it.

(57:20):
And so you still have all those. Those are all real problems. And yet it's not like doomsday scenario.
Now if you look at the long arc of time so in the mid 2030s the Social Security Trust Fund is estimated to run out.
So you could get a meaningful cut in benefits which would be a political crisis or you could keep the printing flowing from there.

(57:44):
So along the way like the UK had a bond crisis and their central bank had to step in and backstop their bonds.
We've seen similar less dramatic things in the US like the Fed had to go back to increasing their balance sheet in September 2019 because the repo market blew out and repo was primary financing vehicle for treasuries like a lot of hedge funds were using repo to buy treasury so it would have eventually hit our bond market.

(58:12):
And so we can have little dramas like that where you get little tastes of looking like a banana republic or a little tastes of the emerging market vacation of developed countries in least in terms of their currency dynamics.
But the track still goes for quite a while and I think that where we go in the meantime is Bitcoin and other hard assets to do damage control for ourselves and our loved ones as this very difficult train just kind of keeps going and things kind of run hot and it has invested implications.

(58:48):
So all the people that are always expecting disinflation are always Uber bearish just keep getting caught off sides by fiscal dominance that just keeps running things hotter than they expect.
So the error tends to be to the upside rather than the downside in that sense doesn't mean you can't have bad years and you know a little disinflationary burst here and there.

(59:09):
But you know it's just something to really be aware of as an investor as a business owner as you know whatever your role is is it's just something to understand that that's kind of the background we're in now.
Sam is there anything you wanted to add to that.
Yeah I think you just look forward and what you should expect is persistent inflationary pressures persistently hide fiscal deficits.

(59:34):
And so they're going to have to figure out ways to finance those deficits. And so we never really talked about this but like who's going to buy the debt.
That comes into a question as well because especially on the long end of the yield curve you know they have to find the demand and the foreign investors have been declining in terms of the percentage of ownership of treasuries over the last decade.

(59:56):
I think from 46 percent to 30 percent and most of it's been picked up from households and domestic institutions and banks.
And there's things that they can do like change the reserve requirements for the banks to try to create more demand like kind of artificially.
But they have to make sure that that doesn't get out of control that the interest costs don't explode because then it will really get the deficits to blow out if we lose control the long end of the yield curve.

(01:00:25):
And so what we're looking at here is like who's going to buy it.
And so personally I think what's going to happen is we're going to get back to QE. I think the Fed's going to step in and what happens then is that that actually increases the money supply.
And so increasing the money supply you should expect more currency to basement more asset price inflation and things like that because I think the Federal Reserve is going to have to step back in eventually at some point over the next decade to stop to add some demand.

(01:00:54):
To the long end of the yield curve to help finance these deficits that as we mentioned are structural in nature it's going to be very difficult to change them.
And so you should expect currency to basement increase of the money supply more asset price inflation all those things that we talked about you should just expect that to continue and the economy might run hot.
And so in that situation obviously Bitcoin hard assets real estate equities I think will all kind of perform well at least sectors of the equity market and people need to really protect themselves.

(01:01:28):
And you know I think other nations have it a lot harder.
I mean Lynn mentioned the UK guilt crisis but also the ECB I mean what's going on right now even they have this like instrument called the TPI that they announced in 2022.
And it's because they're trying to fight inflation and trying to raise interest rates but all these countries have different levels of debt and they're also blowing other deficits and it's just like the early 2020 10s where you had the Greek financial crisis that crisis.

(01:01:58):
But now it's France which is one of the largest economies in the EU that's really under stress right now.
And there was a notable headline that said like will the ECB come in and save France's bond market if they need to. And the answer is yes.
Because I think they have to. And that's fiscal dominance because even if the central bank doesn't want to they risk something much much worse happening and they're trying to combat inflation they're trying to raise interest rates but they're going to have to stop turn around and start buying French bonds.

(01:02:31):
I don't know what they're called exactly. They're called bonds. French bonds but they have to turn around and start buying them because because of the fiscal situation is just out of control over there.
And so that's fiscal dominance. And so I look around the globe and the United States as Lynn mentioned is actually has all these different benefits.
The debt denominator on currency. The demand for the dollar across the world. How diverse our economy is all these things will allow the US to be fine.

(01:02:57):
It's the rest of the world that I think isn't a lot worse shape.
So yeah. You know when you look out that hopefully there is no significant crisis that happens. As we know the CBO has their projections which we use in this report for our you know fiscal deficit projections for the next 10 years.

(01:03:18):
But those assume that there's not going to be any kind of major crisis and lately we've been every decade or so we seem to have some kind of once in a lifetime crisis.
And so something like that happens then that might change the game or if there's kind of major external war that happens.
But outside of that then I agree with I agree with Lynn completely. I think we just run hot persistent inflation persistent deficits more currency debasement increase of the money supply.

(01:03:45):
And that's why hard assets Bitcoin is a way to protect yourself.
One thing that you guys brought up in this report which I thought was just maybe interesting to kind of call attention to is the is the situation in in Turkey as it relates to kind of debt to GDP and just obviously Turkey for those that don't know like it is running extremely red hot inflation

(01:04:12):
and even obviously the government reported numbers as we all know it's the same as in the U.S. they they do not capture the real rate of exchange.
But can you guys talk about the situation in Turkey a little bit and why you thought that was an illustrative example.
The reason I think that was worth including is because some investors I think don't take into account their recursive elements here.

(01:04:35):
So the fact that a fiscal deficit is a type of stimulus and obviously comes with the cost of debasement. But that's a type of stimulus.
And so we're looking at nominal GDP that can like disguise the nature of the problem.
And I initially saw this when I was like you know before inflation started to take off back in literally like 2020 when I was saying this was going to be inflationary.

(01:04:59):
I would there'd be very respected analysts saying you know when I'm making all the 1940s comparisons back then I was making a lot of these like look this is this is not 2008.
This is not a great depression. This is like 1940s kind of fiscal massive monetized fiscal deficits. People would say well look I mean the Fed only bought you know treasuries equal to this much of GDP.
And it's like well did you look to see what GDP did because it doubled in a very short period of time because there were so many monetized fiscal deficits.

(01:05:27):
It's like it's like fueling itself. So the funny thing is sometimes the Treasury releases like very long run reports for what debt to GDP could look like.
And they eventually project very high debt to GDP ratios. I actually would probably take the under on those which is probably surprising coming from me.
Not because I expect them to slow down the deficit but that I expect nominal GDP to probably surprise you the upside because of the debasement and the recursive nature of these.

(01:05:55):
And so the reason the Turkey example is relevant is that throughout this whole or deal that they're having this whole inflation over the past you know three plus years this current burst of inflation.
Their debt to GDP figures are down and their deficit to GDP figures look very controlled. You're saying well we're only running this percent.

(01:06:17):
It's like well but the problem is you're running such big deficits that it's pouring out an economy fueling inflation fueling nominal GDP growth and therefore masking the size of those deficits.
And I think the US is going to be a similar situation which is that you know the deficit is barring a crisis generally stay in a single digit range.

(01:06:42):
So maybe if they're really hawkish on Doge they get down to 6% of GDP. If things get a little hot maybe it's 8% of GDP whatever the number ends up being.
It doesn't go to some crazy number but you have both nominal GDP growing pretty quickly with some of that is inflation.
And then you have the ongoing deficits that are getting bigger every year but not necessarily growing compared to GDP.

(01:07:07):
And so some of the analysts only look at that the GDP can disguise the magnitude of the problem and you have to sometimes take a step back and look at the nominal numbers.
Because especially when you're looking at you know investing in hard assets versus other assets you really want to look at the nominal's.
And when you're looking at say are bonds worth investing in one of the rules of thumb is what is the rate on the 10 year versus expected nominal GDP growth.

(01:07:34):
And those types of metrics that you know I just think not a lot not as many professionals as should be are looking at those or realizing some of the recursive natures of those unless some of them are investors in emerging markets so they're more acquainted with it or other dynamics.

(01:07:55):
Sam anything you want to toss on top of that.
I think the example is just it's it's kind of crazy to look at because you just look at the charts of nominal GDP growth and the inflation rate of Turkey.
And then the fact that the debt GDP dropped when those just go through the roof shows you how that metric can mask what's actually happening.

(01:08:18):
I mean it just I put the red line there just said that was like a sign that hey that's when the deficits start to become unstable.
And then you just look at the red line at each of these charts and you're like OK yes that GDP went down.
But wow look at the inflation look at the nominal GDP.
So so many people focus on the numerator when that GDP but they don't focus on the denominator and the effects that the fiscal deficits can have on the denominator.

(01:08:46):
And so you know when you think about that GDP and we kind of ran the numbers.
It would actually like showed like even with the interest rate policies at different levels.
You know if the nominal GDP continues to grow fast then you might not see those metrics actually blow out as Lynn mentioned because of that factor.
But it won't like when you look under the hood that doesn't mean that inflation won't be persistently high nominal debt won't continue to accumulate a rapid rapid rates.

(01:09:17):
It almost gives the illusion that there's like some kind of fiscal stability going on.
And so just important to keep that in mind when you're looking at some of these charts.
Yeah. The same thing is true for Argentina.
If you look at Argentina over the past say 10 years when they've had you know that this whole inflationary period there you know if you look at like say trading economics and look at their like budget deficit.

(01:09:41):
It's generally been under 9% per year usually less and yet you have the crazy numbers and that's because they have the same issues Turkey whereas like the not like if you compare nominally in Argentine currency how big is the deficit versus how it was a year or two ago enormously bigger.
But so is nominal GDP.

(01:10:02):
So is everything else.
And so the percentage of GDP numbers look like you know they don't look good but they don't look like Zimbabwe.
But then it's like if you wouldn't you wouldn't look at that alone and think you know these people are hitting like 100% inflation right.
But when you look it takes looking at the nominal numbers as well to see.

(01:10:25):
And so the US I think is going to be running on you know not to say that we're going to be like Turkey or Argentina but it's like we're going to be like Turkey or Argentina light which is that directionally it's not just you know the percent numbers that run that are that are worth looking at
is the nominal numbers is how things grow like in absolute terms over any given you know one year period or especially any like five year rolling period you know how sustained are these nominal figures growing because you know if you can if Bitcoin is growing at this amount and gold is growing at this amount and the

(01:11:00):
the Treasury's market or the dollar market are growing at this amount those nominal numbers are important to be aware of because they actually affect how much capital is like needs financing how much capital is flowing out and multiplying versus other scarce or things that are not doing that.
That kind of harkens back to the last report that you both worked on together which was Bitcoin is a barometer for global liquidity right that that's basically the best way we have to measure what global liquidity is doing because it's the most tied to it.

(01:11:34):
And in this case it's like you're measuring with an absolutely scarce asset like gold would be a pretty good measure as well but you know inferior to Bitcoin in that sense because there's still you know pretty there's consistent inflation the supply of gold but still very low inflation of it right
But I mean so is that from both of your perspectives and you're you're looking at this obviously we're all three Bitcoiners here that's that's no secret but I mean you know what's kind of the message in terms of like we're entering a really weird period it seems also like just thinking of the

(01:12:08):
Trump presidency we know that Trump he likes doves more than he likes Hawks let's just say he's going to want the stock market to run hot he views that very much as a measuring stick for how he looks at you know how well are we doing so presumably we're going to have more
dovish policy I would assume in the next couple couple of years and with that we're going to see a lot of asset price inflation. I mean it seems to me that like all roads lead to Bitcoin at this time at least I mean you can still probably perform pretty well in other things

(01:12:44):
nominally but if you're measuring that against Bitcoin your gains aren't going to look as good as they do if your money is in Bitcoin I mean is there any like you know is there any counter argument you I guess see to that at this point where you're like maybe there's a chance
Bitcoin doesn't perform as well as people think it will

(01:13:09):
I mean personally I just think Bitcoin is kind of made for the times or something right now I mean I just look at the deficits and the fiscal situation I've always said like one of the
bearish cases for Bitcoin is like fiscal austerity or like responsible government spending
and so like yeah like a doge coming in and a really competent Treasury secretary who understands these dynamics you know I would be like that's kind of bearish for Bitcoin but then you look at like the structural nature of these deficits and there are problems that the

(01:13:43):
deficits accumulated over many decades and I'm like even these well intentioned programs and you know the smarter people can't really fix this and so that leads me down to Bitcoin again and so they're going to have to increase liquidity they're going to have to come in
and monetize these deficits and so when I look at Bitcoin it's like that's the purpose of Bitcoin I mean we talked about this on our last show at Bitcoin's like a mirror for these reckless government spending programs and it's the monetary properties

(01:14:16):
kind of allow it to do that given it's scarcity and it's fixed supply and all these things that allows it to be really tied and correlated to the liquidity and so I just think and given the how young it is and how it's still growing and it's still
early in its adoption cycle that's why there's so much potential opportunity because not only do I feel like it's kind of built for these times and the value proposition is very strong it's also very young and so that allows it to have significant potential price

(01:14:46):
appreciation as adoption continues to grow all around the globe because we mentioned the US a lot but the US is like in a better position than all these other countries around the world and so Bitcoin is needed even more so in these emerging markets with even more unstable
fiscal situations and currencies and so yeah I mean obviously I'm bullish on Bitcoin but I really think that it's kind of like it's made for the times or something.

(01:15:19):
Yeah it's good for turning money. Yeah I think obviously there are multiple assets that can benefit Bitcoin I think we would generally agree is like the best way to do it because you get the absolute scarcity mixed with the fact that it's a young asset.
And if it was just looking at relative scarcity we would say okay gold's growing by 1.5% a year Bitcoin's growing at less than 1% and long term grows to zero so should we expect Bitcoin up from gold by you know 1% a year.

(01:15:51):
No because we have a total adjustable market in mind for what Bitcoin could be or at least a range and we think that a two trillion dollar market cap is so small relative to what it could reach so in addition to merely protecting against a basement which kind of a gold's doing
it's actually growing into whatever it's going to become so I think that's the bullish thesis and one way I kind of look at any investment is through the lens of market share and dilution so if you're a holder of the dollar network there's different instruments to do it.

(01:16:25):
You could hold a bank account that pays you zero a bank account in a smaller bank that pays you maybe 3% could be holding T bills getting a little bit more and you have to compare that to like the structural growth rate of the dollar supply or all monetary aggregate
so dollars plus say you know treasuries for example you can you can map it multiple ways and you always ask is my share of the network if I just hold so we're factoring out my new income because we're just talking about investing or saving you know what percentage of the network do I have now and in five years

(01:16:58):
well I have like less of the network just by holding and collecting any sort of payments I might be owed versus not and so if you hold dollars and the money supply grows 7% a year and you get paid 4% a year you're going to end up with a smaller share of the
dollar network over a given five year period and same thing with true is gold except your your debasit rate is something like 1.5% per year but then you also have to ask is the thing you're holding increasing its like

(01:17:32):
like market share compared to other things so for example someone could hold IBM stock and they're buying back shares so you're holding a deflationary asset which sounds good but then IBM's getting its lunch eating by all these other tech companies
and so the market share of relevant tech for any one IBM shares decreasing so when I go back to Bitcoin the main question I look at okay what are the what are the monetary dynamics of the network so we see the very low inflation rate and the hard cap and all that

(01:18:03):
then the next question is is it the best of what it does and will it continue to capture market share in its in its like industry or even adjacent markets and I view yes so as long as I see nothing on the horizon that I view as disruptive to that trajectory
then I expect both from the scarcity dynamics and then the fact that it's the leading you know liquid secure cryptocurrency and then it you know it's better than gold many ways it's better than the bond market many ways it's as more people learn about it the rational thing is for them some subset of them to

(01:18:38):
want to buy it then I generally view as yes that that's structurally bullish for Bitcoin and the only time I might be more cautious on it is if it's you know we get us crazy for a spike you can look at different metrics like market value to cost basis or something
and then I say well okay now I think it's it's going to go higher but maybe maybe it's going to take a two year break or something right so there are certain moments I could be more cautious but you know as long as I think the structural things are in place I'm bullish

(01:19:08):
yeah the delusion piece is really important I think of it like the coma test like if I were to go in a coma for 10 years or 20 years you know how much will I be deluded as a percentage of the total supply of the network or the currency or the asset
it's one of the reasons like that's what separates Bitcoin from other cryptocurrencies is because I don't think there's that many assurances that you know that the supply won't be changed on you if I was in a coma for 10 years and that's just what the the history of those other cryptocurrencies are they change often

(01:19:42):
and that's why Bitcoin is very decentralized it's it's difficult to change because of that decentralization and so if I were to bet on one to go into a coma for 10 years where I'm not going to be deluded and I'm going to maintain the percentage of the total supply it's going to be Bitcoin
and so that that delusion component is so important and then you know what Lynn was talking about with the basically a competitive mode you know I think it comes out that Bitcoin's network effect and and all these things we talk about about why Bitcoin kind of is prone to keep winning into the future

(01:20:16):
and so yeah I agree I mean I think those two things are incredibly important to think about whenever you're making any kind of investment and I don't think a lot of people think about that stuff I think I think Bitcoiners think about delusion a lot but I don't think a lot of investors do
you know this is a slight tangent but it's really interesting you know just speaking of the Bitcoin standing kind of starkly against the rest of the quote crypto world like I mean you can't be very certain or certain at all that for example Trump or Melania aren't going to dilute their

(01:20:52):
Trump or Melania meme tokens that's I wouldn't want to hold that in a coma you know but even the I think an interesting dynamic that I see playing out in this cycle right now is kind of this I don't want to say like Bitcoin stock meme
I don't know what to call it but like you're seeing more and more companies start to announce that they're they are buying Bitcoin for their corporate treasuries like you see you know micro strategy obviously that's it's practically a household name at this point because of what

(01:21:24):
the sales are done but you're seeing all sorts of like really little ones pop up that you know again they don't have anything to do with with Bitcoin but they're saying hmm wow whenever a company puts Bitcoin in its balance sheet their stock seems to get a lot more volume and seems to do pretty well
I'm just kind of wondering if that's like the that's gonna supersede meme coins in this cycle or if we're still just gonna have all sorts of meme coin degeneracy I don't know how do you both see this playing out in terms of it's now obvious that and

(01:21:58):
I think that's the point where I'm not been hiding it he's been very clear about this that this is his strategy this is what he's doing he's trying to you know crew as much Bitcoin as he can and people are starting to notice small fish right now but who knows maybe some bigger
fish along the way but do you see this kind of picking up pace or do you think at this point okay there's a few companies doing it you get a trickle of them here and there but it's still going to be more of the exception than the rule as far as corporate strategy at least in this cycle

(01:22:32):
I think that we're seeing this trend really pick up speed and I think there's a lot of factors of why I mean I think the education level around Bitcoin has increased I think the FASB accounting rule changes kind of help bring down the barriers for these corporations
I think the macro picture I think people are just more aware of what's going on and then I think we have a proof of concept I think micro strategy can't look at that stock price and just ask yourself what the heck's going on over there right and so I think all those factors combined I think you are seeing this trend I mean every single week

(01:23:05):
you see a new company now there are it's like why is a company actually doing this is an interesting question because there's some I feel like that are almost doing out of desperation and they just want to pump their stock I think a lot of them even just announced treasury strategies hoping to just get a little bump in their stock because some of them
are just like a million dollar strategy and then they haven't followed through with it yet but then some really appeared to understand it and are kind of following in the footsteps like the similar scientific to the world or I think cooler technology is another one that's come on the scene that he really seems to understand that this is a

(01:23:41):
good way to preserve the wealth of his company and as a reserve asset compared to his other options and the other thing that's like why Bitcoin is really good is is for these corporations is that regulatory component where they can't own more than 40% of their balance sheet
and any kind of security without reclassifying as an investment company and Bitcoin as a commodity I mean they don't have to worry about that and then it goes down to the dilution what Lin was talking about I mean these corporations have to think about their dilution and you think about all the different options like corporations buying gold

(01:24:17):
I mean not only would that be a complete headache to try to move buoy on the back and forth and all the physical problems that come with gold but also you're going to get diluted over time and then treasuries we talked about all the fiscal problems that are coming we know that
there's going to be trillions and trillions of dollars of fiscal deficits that need to be financed to borrowing and that's applies just going to keep going up so you're going to get diluted there cash obviously is not a good place to be in a persistent inflationary environment

(01:24:48):
and so there's Bitcoin digital in nature hard scarce it's a good reserve asset and so I think all these barriers are coming down and I'm just kind of waiting for a large corporation to follow suit I think you can't really plan for these things I think you're still going to see it more on the margins with these smaller companies
but I mean for instance like meta has been on my it's been on my mind for over a year now because you just look at the voting rights of Zuck and it's kind of rare for somebody to have the control of a company that size it's one of the reasons why

(01:25:23):
the sailor was able to execute a Bitcoin treasury strategy like he did and and suck really could if he wanted to and I look at Zuck and this like weird transformation that we're seeing with him and I'm like it kind of seems like he he's gone down the
well just anecdotally looking at him he named a goat Bitcoin you know I just I look at meta and I'm like okay that could possibly happen you know because every single one of these corporations face the same problem and they have a ton of cash and now you're

(01:25:55):
like shareholder activism start to come up with Bitcoiners can really like oh you can just like if you're a shareholder for a certain amount of time and hold a certain amount of shares you can just like propose these things and then the Bitcoin community so loud that they could actually
like create a little bit of a ruckus normally these proposals just get like tossed out but now you have like social media making it uproar about it I just think you're going to see more and more and more of that over time

(01:26:22):
I agree with all those points I would make a couple other observations that in any given big company there are Bitcoiners like at the vice president level you know they'll like there's a lot of people like that in companies and it kind of doesn't matter until the majority right so like if you have
like nine board of directors like four of them like Bitcoin it doesn't really matter to hit five unless the CEO or the one that just personal voting rights is the is the one that gets it so if it's fidelity or my strategy you can be super early because it's top down

(01:26:54):
whereas bottom up inherently takes a long time but then it kind of it's like gradually and then suddenly and you know I still think it's going to be a minority of companies the cycle to do it out of the course of thousands that exist but they are they are
popping up more frequently now I think the accounting chains were a big deal I think another thing is just seeing another cycle so a point that I made before is that when someone sees like three cycles not not that there's been three cycles but that they've seen three cycles that actually matters

(01:27:26):
and for a lot of people the first cycle they saw was 2017 and then you know because most people have not actually looked at the logarithmic chart or the of Bitcoin or they discount some of the earlier small cycles as irrelevant but the 2017 cycle the
2020 slash 2021 cycle and now the current cycle is kind of three cycles of higher highs and higher lows that are all on all in public really if you just discount those earlier cycles and there's only so many times you can kind of say well that's a bubble and then it's dead oh that's another bubble but that's only because of COVID money printing

(01:28:00):
and then it's like oh wait it's back again despite you know high interest rates you can only dismiss so many times before you say well maybe I got to reassess so that's another factor that's kind of mainstreaming it and then I did a piece
of work and I called it a new look at what I call it a new look at corporate treasury strategy and I analyzed kind of why this is relevant and among assets the corporations can hold there's kind of a hard cutoff which is anything that you expect to

(01:28:34):
underperform your equity you can't really hold in scale like obviously you hold cash you know it's going to underperform your equity because you need some cash but you can't just like unlimited stockpile gold because gold historically underperforms
and then you have to kind of cross the threshold of like what is what is like an asset that is you know equal or exceed your own equity that's not another company's security and Bitcoin is kind of the only thing at scale that has a shot at that so it's not an accident that

(01:29:18):
is that's the asset of choice that these companies are turning to so only thing big liquid enough not a security and then actually has attributes that make it a good treasury asset at least for part of your holdings obviously the volatility
precludes it being too big if you're running if you're trying to run a certain way you have to have cash as well but yeah you know it's powerful that's what that's why Elon sold I think the position size got him I think he just said

(01:29:47):
like I had operating costs I had to sell so I think you might have just like bought too much but the other thing like when you read these like smaller companies press announcements they mentioned like the regulatory environment change of the last six months or so
a lot of them talk about the ETF approvals a lot of them talk about the new administration being supportive and so that definitely moved the needle as well maybe got people interested and then the infrastructure as well I mean compared to last cycle I think just in general there's more options for these corporations

(01:30:24):
the infrastructure is matured in the industry in terms of the custody solutions and trading and you know maybe maybe we weren't ready for it last cycle I mean Michael sailor and micro strategy kind of pioneered it I bet they would say that the services and the vendors and everything are a little bit better than when they started in 2020 and so that's probably going to help kind of push that trend along as well

(01:30:48):
just on the kind of regulatory side of things.
I think you're going to be going to one is this something that you're both kind of looking at right now in terms of, let's say, another big sea change, let's say in this regulatory landscape.

(01:31:19):
I think in general, like some of the stuff going on at the FDIC in the lawsuits with the Coinbase and you know some of these things need to change on a regulatory front, even like the Federal Reserve, basically banned these banks from custody and Bitcoin and digital assets but I think all those things are going to change
and just like complete pushback now and the pendulum swinging the other way really hard. And when you have these large banks they've been wanting to get exposure to digital assets they've been wanting to build products and services around Bitcoin, and they couldn't they wouldn't they weren't

(01:31:53):
allowed to from the OCC, the FDIC, the Fed and the SEC and just think about I mean obviously you know I agree with self custody, hold your own keys and all that stuff. There's going to be a huge spectrum of ways to get exposure to Bitcoin and some people don't want to do that.
And there's going to be all different types of products and services in terms of lending and borrowing against your Bitcoin and Bitcoin back rewards cards and like that already exists to certain startups today but it's going to exist from all of these large financial institutions

(01:32:27):
and just think about like how much further along adoption would be if you could just buy Bitcoin in your bank account. I remember NIDIG was like building this technology out two or three years ago and they were announcing it and they were on podcasts and they were talking about hey we're going to have
basically in every single large bank you're just going to have a you know Bitcoin where you can just buy and sell in there and now we're seeing from these FDIC letters that it was just completely halted right and I think think about how far A we've come despite these hurdles and now that these

(01:33:01):
hurdles are gone think about how quickly the adoption could continue to rise. So like I think the reversal of SAB 121 is probably going to happen very very very soon. I think it's just a rule that was slapped on it can just get slapped off pretty easily.
And I think some of these other hurdles in terms of operation in chokepoint 2.0 and some like the FDIC, OCC and the Fed. I think large banks are going to get into Bitcoin in a large way and hearing that in Davos all these interviews I mean every single large bank CEO is talking about this stuff.

(01:33:30):
And I think they all have plans to get in.
I agree. Nothing to add. I think it's I think that's all super bullish and the only thing that I'm not I'm not very bullish on is the US government stands on privacy.
Yeah, anytime soon. And I would like to see taxes removed on smaller amounts of Bitcoin transactions to improve kind of the flow of you know, Nostar and Lightning and in general that whole space.

(01:34:03):
So I wouldn't hold my breath on that. But I think all the big capital stuff probably pretty favorable and including you know, like institutional scale Bitcoin collateralized lending which might blow one of them up.
But you know, I think that's all going to be part of the process of growing.
Yeah, I thought I thought night eggs news around the using the funds from the reinsurance business they have to help lower the price of and make that whole lending Bitcoin lending market more efficient lower the borrowing costs.

(01:34:35):
You know that those kind of developments I think those are significant and you know night egg I mean other banks can do that stuff too and so I think you're just going to see a more efficient Bitcoin lending market develop and agree with lens point on privacy.
The the the minute the minimists exemption for for Bitcoin I mean that was in the Lummis Gillibrand bill that I don't think went anywhere. But maybe they'll include that because I think that's important as well.

(01:35:03):
I always thought that like Bitcoin should be considered a foreign currency because of El Salvador technically right.
I think so one can only hope that my tax purposes it's like it makes sense to me.
We'll see I mean it.
The future is full of surprises right and I want to be conscious of both of your time here because I just draw as we we just ran to 90 minutes but it flew by drinking from the fire hose of both of your knowledges.

(01:35:32):
You either of you want to leave people with or maybe anything from the the report that we didn't cover that you wanted to touch on briefly or anything like that.
Cool.
I think we covered a lot.
I think a walk walk walker got into Mistborn.
I did.

(01:35:53):
That's pretty cool.
I'll give a shout out.
I'll give my last shout out to Mistborn then.
I just I devoured all all three in the first trilogy. I just finished actually last night the first book of the Stormlight Archive way of Kings which was about 1300 pages.
It was quite a quite a long one went through it faster than I thought I would.
Now I've just started the second one.

(01:36:15):
It's a problem though because I'm not sleeping enough now Lynn.
This is this is what you've done to me.
I like it literally car little text me and just be like you should probably go to bed.
It's like one in the morning like you need to be up in a couple hours.
I just I just showed Miss I just showed Miss Ford.
I didn't show Stormlight.
That's how I get overwhelmed with like how many books there are by this author like and that's why I miss for I always say Mistborn because it's a trilogy and it's self contained and sure there's like later stuff you can read and other verse and the other stuff in the universe.

(01:36:46):
But the trilogy is self contained.
I love that.
I was waiting for like.
I was saving it for like a long trip on a beach or something.
But maybe I just got to get into that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
My last flight back from from Europe I was planning to get some shut eye on the plane home and ended up just like ordering coffees and beers the entire time and just reading Mistborn the entire way like didn't look at anything else.

(01:37:13):
I'm going to Mistborn pill the whole Bitcoin space.
All right.
So I mean what's so great about it.
That's what is it the writing.
Is it the story.
What initially led me to read it over a decade ago was that it was known for having a very interesting magic system which is and this is kind of the author's specialty is to kind of make magic systems that are like hard magic which is to say there's like rules it's almost like alternative

(01:37:41):
physics and characters are then problem solving within that set of alternative physics.
And then it's just a pretty cool plot with a pretty cool story and stuff.
And the fact that it's self contained is you know it's kind of dark but in a cool way.
I just think it's cool.
Bitcoin is Alice also it's like anti establishment you know you're going like instead of like defeat like stopping the Dark Lord from you know rising it's like the plot is the Dark Lord already one and we're going to go like steal from like it's like a kind of yeah it flips up on its head so who doesn't like taking down the Dark Lord.

(01:38:19):
That's good.
It is great.
I will second the fact that the magic system within it is just really creative but like firmly tied to the physical world also so like it just it makes a lot of sense like you don't have to suspend too much disbelief somehow even though you are dealing with magic so I will I will second lens endorsement and apologize in advance for anyone who also stays up too late or doesn't sleep on planes but it is well worth it.

(01:38:48):
I apologize to Natalie.
She would like it too I think.
I think so.
Well, well Lynn Sam really appreciate both of your times.
I'll link the your no stir and X and then also this report for anyone who wants to go through a lot of really great graphs and there I showed a couple of them.
But there's a heck of a lot more.

(01:39:10):
Thank you both for constantly putting out just incredibly high signal content.
And yeah, until next time and maybe your next report you'll hop hop on again we'll have to see we'll make it a tradition but appreciate all the work you guys do.
Thank you.
Thanks Walker.
All right.
And thanks to everyone on the live stream all of your sets are going to be saved catalogued and donated to Ross when he joins no stir.

(01:39:35):
So thank you all.
And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin talk episode of the Bitcoin podcast.
You are a Bitcoin only company interested in sponsoring the Bitcoin podcast head to Bitcoin podcast dot net slash sponsor or send an email to hello at Bitcoin podcast dot net.

(01:40:00):
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(01:40:24):
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NOTHING STOPS THIS TRAIN: FISCAL DOMINANCE & BITCOIN | Lyn Alden & Sam Callahan (THE Bitcoin Podcast)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}NOTHING STOPS THIS TRAIN: FISCAL DOMINANCE & BITCOIN | Lyn Alden & Sam Callahan (THE Bitcoin Podcast)