Crypto & the SVB Banking Crisis with Marty Bent & Michael Krieger

Episode Transcript
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WW (00:15):
Hey guys, you're listening to Unlimited Hangout. I'm your
host Whitney Webb. It's beenroughly a week since the second
largest bank failure in UShistory and the collapse of SVB
or the Silicon Valley Bank hasspurred the collapse of
Signature Bank, and silvergateBank as well as the downgrading
of the outlook for the entire USbanking sector. Now, it seems
the crisis is spreading theEurope with Credit Suisse shares

(00:38):
tumbling earlier this weeksparking concerns that another
major financial crisis is set toexplode in relatively short
order. How did we get here andwhat can we expect? Today, we
will be exploring the role ofthe Federal Reserve and the
broader situation withcryptocurrencies that played a
role in SVBs demise. We'll alsobe taking a look at the aspects

(00:58):
of this case that suggeststhere's something much bigger at
play, such as the role ofPalantir, co founder and venture
capitalist Peter Thiel andstoking the SVB collapse, and
some of the connections sharedby the already collapsed and
currently most troubled banksand the tions. Two major US
government overtures regardingcryptocurrency regulation.
Joining me today to unpack thiscomplete mess are Marty bent and

(01:20):
Mike Krieger. Marty is thefounder of t ftc.io. A media
company focused on Bitcoinbeauty and freedom in the
digital age. He is also apartner at 1031, a leading
investment platform focusedexclusively on investing in the
Bitcoin ecosystem, and he alsohosts the Tales from the Crypt
or the T FTC podcast. Mikeformerly worked on Wall Street

(01:41):
as an oil and gas generalcommodities analysis and equity
research and leader on a tradingdesk. He left in disgust over
the state of the industry andstarted the website Liberty
blitzkrieg. Though he doesn'tblog as much anymore, Mike still
shares his insights regularly onsocial media. So great to have
you guys back on how are youdoing?

Unknown (01:58):
Doing great, thanks for me doing well. It's
been a crazy week.

WW (02:02):
Yeah, totally. So the last time you both were here was on
Episode 43, where we covered thecollapse of FTX. And all the
resulting scandals from that.And since we last spoke, there's
been a lot going on in thecrypto space. And most much of
it hasn't been very positive forcrypto at all. And some of the,
of course, is linked one way toor another from the fall to the

(02:22):
fallout resulting from FTX. Sosome of these more recent events
I'm referring to here areultimately part of the story of
Silicon Valley Banks collapsebut preceded that collapse. So
I'm talking specifically aboutsome events that cause trouble
for the USDC stable coin, thecompany that issues that stable

(02:45):
coin, which is circle, as wellas some issues at Silver gate
bank. So let's start there.

MB (02:51):
I mean, we can start with silver gate bank, because I've
had personal experience. I mean,I have worked at a

WW (03:01):
Sure. Well, definitely before SVB collapsed, right,
there was some stuff going onwith silvergate. That was
relatively, you know, noteworthyand seems like it definitely
ties in to the events thatresulted in SVBs collapse. So
why don't we just start with them?

Unknown (03:17):
Yes, it's Silvergate. So in the quote unquote, crypto
sphere, I focus mainly onBitcoin. But the overall crypto
sphere was banking, a lot ofcompanies were banking with
Silvergate was one of the firstbanks to stick their neck out
and say, hey, we'll, we'll spinup some bank accounts for any
companies that are dealing withcryptocurrencies. So a lot of

(03:41):
companies in the industryflooded Silvergate and put a lot
of deposits there. One of thosecompanies was FTX, which we
discussed in the previousepisode, when FTX collapse that
obviously exposed like a bighole and silver gates company,
they have this counterparty FTXthat people thought had billions

(04:01):
of dollars. But it turned outthat that money didn't really
exist at the end of the day,they squandered it. And so that
that set off a contagion eventfor silver gate, particularly
where a lot of companies in thespace started pulling out their
deposits and moving it to otherbanks like Silicon Valley Bank

(04:22):
and signature, which we'll talkabout later. But throughout the
summer Silvergate had had a runon the bank and actually to give
Silvergate some credit, they hadtheir bank set up where they had
a lot of liquid reserves, sothey were able to actually
weather a bank run of $8 billionof all these cryptocurrency

(04:42):
companies pulling their depositsout of Silvergate and sending it
to other banks. But then,eventually, the flood became too
much about a month ago, three,three to four weeks ago, and
Silvergate had to shut down. Itwas a common day. ation of
depositors pulling their theirmoney out. And then you had

(05:03):
short sellers like Marco Hotez.And then you had a politician
like Elizabeth Warren, reallybeating the drum on social
media, that Silvergate wasinsolvent, and that people
should pull their money out. Soessentially, Everybody pulled
their money out. But theinteresting thing Silvergate Is
they were able to process allthe withdrawals from their bank,

(05:26):
even after they were officiallyshut down by the FDIC. So they
were actually a very wellcapitalized bank.

WW (05:34):
Yeah, better than a lot of, you know, major, other banks
that aren't involved in cryptocan see, yeah,

MK (05:41):
let me just jump in here too, and add a little bit of
additional information. So whatwell, my understanding is
actually, as Marty was saying,silvergate was, you know, kind
of like, hung on impressivelyfor a while, even even though it
was connected with Alameda andFTX. And obviously, the
politicians came after it,there's a few other pieces. One

(06:02):
is that there wasinvestigations, you know, like,
I think from the DOJ, certainlythere were in Korea, you know,
sort of serious criminalinvestigations, and then that
was leaked. And so that causedmore problems as well. But it
seems to from my understanding,it seems that the final nail in
the coffin, interestinglyenough, was a prepayment of an F

(06:22):
h lb loan, which was reasonablyrecently I think they they
actually had, I think, a $4billion dollar loan from the
fhlb. And then they suddenlydecided to repay that and in the
process of repaying a 4 billionloan, they had to sell the
assets, right. So this issimilar to what happened to
Silicon Valley Bank, you haveall these unrealized losses on

(06:43):
their balance sheets with whichevery bank has, but there was a
realized loss was triggered whenthey pre paid the fhlb loan. And
that was the end of it, youknow, once they had to realize
the losses, and then it justeverything accelerated. So that
the weird thing about this, andwe can tie this into signature
later because that's a bigmystery. Still, you know, I've

(07:04):
not seen a good explanation forexactly why signature was
effectively nationalized. Butsilvergate is weird, too,
because it also has one of thesesort of nonsensical timelines,
which is no, but the fhlb isclaiming that they did not
trigger a prepayment and silvergates not saying anything about

(07:25):
that. So nobody knows why silvergate felt the need to actually
prepay or pay that loan, whichwas the final nail in the
coffin. So that's weird. Veryweird. Very weird. Yeah. So

WW (07:36):
I want to bring up something really quick, related to this.
So Marty, you mentionedElizabeth Warren. So I think
thanks to her and some of thisother investigations from the
government that were related tothe fallout from FTX, because of
the FT FTX, having accounts thatsilvergate They were targeting
silvergate But you know, asother people, including myself

(07:58):
in ED Berger have reported,there was this very suspect bank
that's very small, in Washingtonstate called Farmington, its
Farmington state bank that hadrecently rebranded as Moonstone
bank, and FTX had a lot ofsuspects, specifically, Alameda
had a lot of suspect activitythere. And that hasn't been

(08:19):
scrutinized at all right. And sothat kind of suggests that there
was a particular interest inscrutinizing, silvergate
relative to other US basedinstitutions that were tied up
with FTX. And it's interestingwhen you look at what's happened
since what we're specificallytalking about here now with
silvergate, how, you know, withsignature gone, and silvergate

(08:40):
gone, and that doesn't reallyleave very many pro crypto,
quote unquote, banks in the USanymore, because as I understand
it, the only other bank in thatsphere until relatively recently
was like metropolitan bank orsomething. And they announced
that they were going to get intotheir work with crypto earlier
this year because of regulatorypressure from the SEC. So

Unknown (09:04):
yeah, so So let me let me put put this out there now.
And we'll, we'll get into itmore later. But this is one of
the things that I didn'trecognize at first, but the more
I read into it, the more itbecomes clear why silvergate and
signature in particular is soimportant here. For one thing,
when people sort of read aboutthis in the mainstream, you

(09:25):
know, media or just anywherereally, what you keep hearing is
like signature and silvergatewhere crypto banks, right, they
were the main crypto banks andit's true that a lot of the
companies would hold their theircash there, like let's say
Coinbase circle, I think circlewas also a Silicon Valley Bank,
but you know, a lot of theindustry would have their bank
accounts there. But I actuallyyou know, but but but crypto,

(09:47):
you know, crypto companies,Bitcoin companies, you know,
there are banking relationshipswith large banks, right, the
mega banks, so it's not likethey're not involved. I think
what separates silver gate andsignature and why They were
targeted, actually have to dowith this the send in network,
but silvergate and Signet atsignature. So Sen is the silver

(10:08):
gate exchange network. And thesetwo things were crucial to the
functioning of a, like 24/7 Fiatto stable coin market. As you
know, like if you've ever used aUS Bank or any bank, if you want
to try to do something over theweekend, good luck, you know,
how are you going to send awire? How are you going to send,
you know, dollars from one placeto another, using the banking

(10:31):
institutions are closed, right?It's outside of ours, but but
the crypto ecosystem operates24/7. And so if you're running
stable coins, and you know, youneed that liquidity from USD
Fiat into the stable coin, forthat, for that market to
function 24/7, you need a 24/7capacity to to make those things

(10:53):
happen. And so that's whatthat's what silvergate was doing
with set. And therefore, I thinkthat that is clearly why they
were targeted. And in signaturewas also doing a similar thing.
And so that this This, to me, itwas the main reason because if
you think about it, a stable aUSD stable coin, that's able to

(11:16):
function all the time. Andeffectively, if it could do it,
if it can effectively be sort ofseen as a 24/7 USD instrument.
That's kind of a cbdc. But beingrun privately. And so if you're
going to actually try to rollout a CB DC run by the Fed, you

(11:37):
can't have a functioning, Iguess, competitor, you could
say. Right, that's, that's notin their control.

WW (11:45):
Yeah, I think that's a really good point. Because for
those that don't know, theFederal Reserve is trying to
launch its own round the clockPayment and Settlement service,
which is called fed now. Right?So maybe they, you know, this,
this seems like kind of aconvenient way to maybe get rid
of some of the competition topave the way for CBDCs, which

(12:07):
seems to be sort of a biggertheme, I think, out of this
whole discussion about how cbdcCentral Bank digital currencies,
tie into everything. But yeah,it's definitely very convenient
than that these networks of, youknow, critical networks of
crypto infrastructure haveessentially been decimated,

(12:27):
right? Or at least they'll bebought up by some big Wall
Street bank, right? Because

Unknown (12:33):
think about it if you can, if you're already kind of
sending USD Daya stable coin,that's, like considered legit
all the time around the worldwhenever you want. Then what do
you need a cbdc? That sort ofthing? Exactly. I think that's
why I think that's why this wasall done. And that's also why

(12:53):
they're saying the FDIC is nowsaying that whoever buys
signatures, assets, or the bankitself has to get rid of the
crypto part that's completelyweird and arbitrary, unless
that's the whole point.

WW (13:06):
Well, as we'll talk about later, there's some people
arguing that the shutdown ofsignatory bank itself was
arbitrary. So there's a lot of,you know, weird stuff going on
with that bank in particular.So, before we move on to the
next thing, anything you'd liketo add Marty, to the discussion
about sin, and some of thesethese payment networks,

Unknown (13:24):
I mean, they were, they were very crucial for the
industry. So sin was silvergates, and then signatures with
Signet, and essentially, I mean,Bitcoin trades 24/7 365. So
obviously, people are buyingBitcoin on the weekends if the
price is moving, or if theysimply just want to buy bitcoin,
on a whim. And so theseexchanges and companies being

(13:46):
able to send money between eachother over the weekend was was a
crucial function that thatsilvergate and signature
provided the industry,obviously, yes, stable coins.
We're using it to but even forBitcoin exchanges that need to
move funds between each other,it was a big value add as well.

(14:07):
So this is being taken out,certainly hurt the industry to
to a large extent.

WW (14:14):
All right. Well, let's move on to talking about how these,
the SVB collapse may have beeninfluenced by the Federal
Reserve and more specifically,some of the Fed's monetary
policy during COVID. So therewere apparently some not so
great bets made by SVB, duringthe, you know, the COVID-19
crisis and all of that, and thenthere's the issue about the Feds

(14:37):
recent efforts to combatinflation and tightening and all
of that. So, what are yourguys's thoughts about the, the
role the Federal Reserve playedif, if any, and what we're
seeing or what we've seen overthe past couple of weeks,

Unknown (14:52):
I think, I think the Feds policy over the last three
and a half years is the maindriver of this systemic banking
contagion that seems to beplaying out not only here in the
United States, but also inEurope. So during COVID, march
2020, when the economy theglobal economy shut down, the
Fed, drove interest rates downto zero and printed trillions of

(15:15):
dollars and kept interest rateslow and kept printing for about
a year and a half. And thenessentially, what happened is
you had all these banks load uptheir capital reserves with
particular instruments andSilicon Valley Banks case, they
bought a lot of mortgage backedsecurities, which were the crux

(15:35):
of the banking crisis of 2008.Essentially, when Silicon Valley
Bank bought these mortgagebacked securities, put them on
the balance sheet, they did thatwith the assumption that the Fed
was likely to keep interestrates low for an extended period

(15:55):
of time. So essentially, whathappened is when the Fed started
raising rates last year, andpulling dollars out of the
system, Silicon Valley Bank,found itself in a very
vulnerable position where theyhad a, what's called a duration
mismatch, they had a lot ofthese MBS is on their book,

(16:17):
which are longer dated. And asthe Fed began pulling dollars
out of the system and SiliconValley Banks, customers began
withdrawing funds that reallyaffected that portion of their
balance sheet. And so when theFed raises rates, the price of

(16:39):
the underlying bonds, or debtinstruments has an inverse
correlation. So the Fed raisesrates very fast, very rapidly
and pulls dollars out of thesystem, the debt instruments,
the price of those instrumentstypically falls as rates go up.
And so what we found was SiliconValley Bank, had these MBS is on

(17:01):
their balance sheet, and theywere losing value over time. And
so it was essentially just aticking time bomb, as the Fed
has kept raising rates and keptpulling dollars out of the
system, the value of thatcapital on their balance sheet
was decreasing. And this ishappening to every bank, not
just Silicon Valley Bank. It'snot just mortgage backed

(17:22):
securities, it's treasuries aswell. So a lot of banks, instead
of buying mortgage backedsecurities or buying treasuries
find themselves in the samesituation. So essentially, what
happened last week is the bombwent off, the value of the
reserves and their balance sheetfell to such a point that as
people began withdrawing cashfrom Silicon Valley Bank,

(17:44):
probably stemming from fears ofsilvergate going down, and their
customers wanting to diversify abit, they were forced to sell
their mortgage backed securitiesand realize losses as well. And
then that created the cascadingevent where they were selling
these instruments, in just theact of selling was driving the
price down even further. And aspeople were withdrawing money,

(18:07):
the value of that part of theirbalance sheet basically
collapsed. And then on top ofthat, it was really hard to sell
mortgage backed securities thatare a bit more illiquid than
something like treasuries. Andso you had a run on that back,
and that was exacerbated by theVC industry, in that part of the

(18:27):
country, basically, going totheir portfolio companies, Peter
Thiel, most notably fromfounders fun emailing the
portfolio companies, and urgingthem to take their money out of
Silicon Valley Bank last week,and that word got out and
created a massive run on thebank, and who got out there

(18:48):
within
48 hours. Yeah, and, you know,let me sort of added a different
perspective here, too. So anyonethat's been in the, you know,
financial industry or watchesmarkets or anything like that,
will know that there's, youknow, sort of an understanding
that when the Fed embarks on aaggressive interest rate hike

(19:12):
cycle, that they breaksomething, right, and they
usually break something big. Andthat's sort of the joke. So you
know, when the Fed startsraising and keeps raising,
everyone's every sort of marketparticipant is just sitting
there waiting for like, the deadbodies to start rising to the
surface, because it alwayshappens, right? In this case, in
particular, you really knew itwas going to happen because the

(19:34):
cycle of the lowest interestrates and QE in history was so
extended. I mean, it was reallyabout a decade that so much
craziness, right so much insanebehavior, one of which would be
you know, buying, you know,bonds at the or let's say even
treasury bonds at the highestprice in a 40 year, or actually

(19:59):
was What a year yeah, 40 yearbull market, you know, you know,
with leverage, potentially insome cases. So there's a lot of
bodies to float to the surfacewhen the Fed raises rates that's
high. And I think everyone needsto remember what happened back
in 2008. And 2009. You know, itwasn't just the, you know, the
crisis in the bailouts, therewas a huge power consolidation

(20:21):
that happened afterwards.Because when you, when the Fed
creates a scenario where peopleare sick, or the system itself
is struggling, and on the vergeof failure, the Fed convinced
the Fed and the government canthen step in and play favorites,
you know, and say, Okay, well,you can die and you can live and

(20:42):
you can get trillions, and thenyou can buy everything up.
Right. And that's exactly whathappened after 2008. I mean,
what happened after 2008, theFed became much more powerful. I
mean, effectively, the Fed cando anything at this point, I
don't think there's anything theFed couldn't do if the crisis
was scary enough at this point,you know, and they would just be
able to do it, and Congresswould just say, please, please

(21:03):
save us, right. You know, kindof during COVID, they were doing
crazy things there too, right?Even more crazy. Right? So, so
that's the world we're in now.And that was because of 2008.
Prior to that, that there wasthis was not the case, you know,
and so I remember very clearly,back then there was there was so
much uproar over things that nowthe that people just assume as

(21:24):
part of the regular fed duties,that was completely
unprecedented back then. So theamount of power that the Fed,
consolidated, post 2008 wasmassive, the amount of power
that the big banks consolidated,was massive and is massive.
Beyond that, with the housingmarket, things happened in the
housing market, post 2008, thatreally changed the fundamentals

(21:47):
of how the housing marketworked, for example, and I went
really, I mean, this was, thiswas a period of my life where I
was just so enraged, raged aboutwhat I was seeing this now
normal stuff, right. So youknow, Americans were getting
kicked out of their homes leftand right, as everyone remember,
right. They were foreclosed on,nobody was saving them, right.
They were just getting kicked tothe curb losing their homes,

(22:07):
because oh, they were, you know,they were reckless, right. Like,
as if they were the ones thatcreated the systemic problems.
And then guess what happened uptwo years later, you had
Blackstone in particular, butothers as well, using the
extraordinarily cheap financingthat the Fed was was pumping out
there. And they had access tothrough a subsidiary called

(22:28):
invitation homes. And they werebuying up all of the houses that
Americans got kicked out of, andthen renting it back to them. So
I want to make sure thateveryone understands here that
when the Fed breaks stuff in abig way, which they're in the
process of doing, that is alwaysan opportunity for power
consolidation. And that'sexactly what I think is going to

(22:51):
happen, or at least going to beattempted.

WW (22:53):
Yeah, a friend of mine actually sent me a graphic that
he'd seen on on Twitter, thatwas pretty, a really good
graphical representation of howexactly how much the banks, the
big Wall Street banks haveconsolidated themselves in the
past few decades. I mean, we'llput it in the show notes, it's
pretty quiet, it's pretty crazyto look at because it's, um, you

(23:15):
know, what started off, youknow, 20 years ago is like 10.
Banks is like three banks now.And when you have this kind of
stuff, like you're talkingabout, and what we're seeing
right now, it's pretty muchinevitable that who, you know,
Will some one of these bigbigger banks are going to be the
ones that buy up a lot of what'sleft of SVB or signature? I

(23:37):
don't know. I mean, it'sobviously in consolidation, I
think is definitely in theworks. And that just tends to be
what happens during anyfinancial crisis, you know,
wealth goes up, and the peopleon the bottom get screwed over
and over again. So it doesn'treally seem like things
happening now or any differentthan they've been they've been
in the past but

Unknown (23:56):
not in the really pernicious thing is that the Fed
really breaks things in bothdirections with their monetary
policy. So when they're whenthey're lowering rates and
printing money, because COVIDlockdowns like they basically
broke supply chains and pricingmechanisms of the world. That's
why inflation flew 2021 and2022. So like, not only do they

(24:22):
break things when they raiserates really aggressively, but
it's true for they're doingpolicy decisions in the other
direction when they're loweringrates, like the Fed is really a
pernicious factor throughout oureconomy that is either really
screwing you by adding fuel tothe inflation fire, or

(24:45):
conversely, the other way, wascreating a liquidity crisis that
that leads to all thisconsolidation that that you just
described.

WW (24:52):
Yeah, well, I mean, we're at over 100 years of the Fed. So I
think it's pretty fair to saythe data is in and it doesn't
work, make it go Uh,

Unknown (25:00):
yeah. And also and also, you know, one of the
things I was writing about whenI was writing more frequently
was this concept of financialfeudalism. And what you know,
for example, during that periodof time, this is just one
example of many, but during theperiod of time when we had the
0% rates, and you know,especially large financial
institutions and people thathave access to capital markets,

(25:23):
or the Fed could essentiallyborrow nothing, you know, what
was your credit card? Right, youknow, was it zero? What was it
two? Was it three? Was it four?Was it 5%? No, it was, you know,
19%, you know, and so, you know,there's this, there's this,
again, it's important tounderstand that within that
system of the Fed, right, youknow, making things too easy

(25:46):
pumping liquidity, and thenbreaking things. A key component
to the power consolidation andwealth consolidation is the fact
that there there are people andentities that are favored, right
throughout systemically favored.And then And then everyone else
who does not have the ability toaccess and leverage those low

(26:09):
rates. In fact, the only, and Ithink I discussed this on a pod
with mighty ones. But the onlyway the app the average person
or you know, a Normie, has hashad the ability to essentially
leverage in a big way like thebanks do. And hedge funds do is
buying homes. Actually, that's,that's always been the one way,
because when you buy a home andyou take a big mortgage, that's

(26:29):
what you're doing. So that otherthan that, though, I mean, that
the average person is payinghigh rates not, they're not
borrowing at zero and just likebuying the baskets.

WW (26:41):
All right, well, how about we move on then to the collapse
of Silicon Valley Bank itself,and how that sort of played out
and then take a look atSignature Bank, since we haven't
really talked about them toomuch yet. So as most people
probably know, by now, at leastpeople that have looked into
this, a lot, at least, theofficial narrative thus far is

(27:02):
that a lot of what happened withSilicon Valley Bank was
allegedly triggered by a threatof a downgrade by the credit
rating, a rating agency Moody's,and then Goldman Sachs steps in
so I guess we'll go from thereto talk about some of the stuff
that led to the collapse of thisbank.

Unknown (27:22):
I mean, sure, so So I'll start there. From my from
my understanding of thetimeline, and this is
interesting to sort of playsinto what we've been discussing,
but what really got it going wasa Moody's call to I believe
Silicon Valley Bank executivessaying, you know, you're on our,
you know, you're about to bedowngraded, essentially. And if

(27:45):
you remember, again, the2008 2009 period, you will
recall that the ratings agenciesplayed a huge role in in saying
that all these junk mortgagesecurities were triple A, and of
course, they were worthless,right. And so the rating
agencies are still around, andthey're still, you know, doing

(28:05):
things sort of in a crony orarbitrary way. But in any event,
with that call Silicon ValleyBank then realized that they
needed to do something and partof doing something there was
trying to shore up theircapital. And so that's when they
began trying to raise money, andalso sell assets. And again,
back to what happened withsilvergate. When they had when

(28:27):
they essentially had to prepaythe or they decided to prepay
the fhlb loan. This is whenSilicon Valley Banks started
realizing losses. And when yourealize losses, then you know,
you can't, you have to then takeaction, more action. So it's
sort of like this downwardspiral. Once you once you
realize a loss, then you thenyou're gonna have more problems,

(28:47):
you have to raise money, andthen nobody wants to give you
money. And then there's, andthen you have the bank run
thing. But the reallyinteresting thing there is that
is the role that Peter Thielseemed to play in that in the
sense that he really, I mean,once he came out were once it
became public that he wastelling all the, you know, the
Founders Fund to pull all oftheir money from SBB. That was

(29:08):
it. I mean, that was the end ofthe back. And so by, by
effectively doing that SiliconValley Bank was was murdered.
You know, and so that's thetimeline as I understand it. And
yeah, it's it's bizarre, youknow, and again, look, Moody's
can do that to anyone. Andthat's the scary thing, you
know, Moody's can sort of go butwould they do it to JP Morgan?

(29:30):
You know what I mean? Like,would they dare do it to JP
Morgan? Probably not. Butthey're going around now looking
at other regional banks. Yousent that article about that? I
think they're looking at likeZion bank and a bunch of others.

WW (29:43):
Yeah. Oh, America. There's a few. I think it's six. Total
first republic is another one.

Unknown (29:49):
Exactly. And so the moment you do that, you're
sparking something. So, youknow, what role is Moody's
playing in this? You know, towhat extent is it intentional or
is it not, you know, again, I goback to the fact that, you know,
would would would it be allowedeven? Even if, let's say one of
the biggest bet like a JP Morganor something? What if they had

(30:09):
similar issues? Would Moody's beallowed politically to actually
make that phone call? Or thatdowngrade? You know, if and if
not, that's exactly how youconsolidate everything.
And literally, as we're talkingright now, first republic, she
just mentioned their theirshares were halted, ever live
limit down as soon as the marketopen today? So it seems like

(30:34):
there it is, is taking that backunder as we speak. Right.
Right. So So again, I mean,it's, it's to get this is what I
think people need to understand.It's like to get the ball
rolling on a total bank run isnot that difficult. And so it
feels to me as if it's beingallowed, you know, sort of, it's

(30:56):
sort of being encouraged,perhaps even, you know, to on
these on these non Ciscosystemically important banks,
right, the too big to fails. Youknow, and so
I was just gonna say that's,it's I mean, we've really seen
this, again, being somewhatclose to companies that are,

(31:17):
they're scrambling for bankaccounts. In the wake of all
these bank runs and failures. JPMorgan, Bank of America, Wells
Fargo are benefiting massivelypeople are flooding to those
banks to open accounts, movetheir deposits there as quickly
as possible.
Right, because, right, exactly,because of what we said, which
is that they're too big to fail.And essentially, in bed with the

(31:40):
state completely. I mean,they're just, they're just the
same thing effectively. Oh, andso I looked at the article you
sent with me and yeah, so sothat was in the title first
republic. Moody's puts firstRepublican five US banks on
downgrade launch Westernalliance, America. Yeah. So I
mean, there you go. I mean, thisis this is how you it again, if

(32:01):
they were thinking about doingthis to JP Morgan, you probably
get a phone call, Moody's wouldget a phone call, and they would
be told don't do it. So they'reclearly I think, probably being
encouraged to do this. You know,and then for what, for what
ends?
Yes, second bank on that list,Western alliance, their trades
were just halted as well forvolatility. So it seems like
that going on?
Because yeah, it's ongoing. It'songoing. It seems like a

(32:26):
snowball that's intentionallybeing allowed to happen.

WW (32:30):
So let's talk about you mentioned, Peter Thiel, a little
bit ago. So let's talk about himand his role, because even have
mainstream media, at leastfinancial journalist sort of
talking about his role. So youhave Dave Troy, mainstream media
investigative journalist, Ithink he said something like SVB

(32:51):
did not properly hedge its risksagainst two threats. The first
of those risks beingconcentration of influence by
Peter Thiel. So is he I guess,referring to the influence of
Thiel on startups that we'rebanking at SVB. Specifically,

Unknown (33:07):
I think that is certainly the case. But I would
also add, it's not on theindividual companies within
founders funds portfolio, butjust in the valley. More
generally, I think people in theventure space look at Peter
Thiel, and put him on a pedestaland if he's doing something,
they're probably they're a bunchof sheep in the crowd. So if

(33:29):
Peter signals something, they'reprobably going to follow him. So
it's not as natural as foundersfunds, portfolio companies, but
just the valley or generally aswell.

WW (33:39):
Right. Okay. So what's interesting to me about this,
you have some companies like oneof the fintech startup called
Brax. That's backed by teal andanother PayPal guy was able to
get billions of dollars out ofSilicon Valley Bank the day
before it collapsed. Yeah, whichis kind of, I guess, spurred by

(33:59):
to telling people to get theirmoney out to an extent. But it's
interesting to me just becauseBrexit is tied up with other
people around sort of this PayPal sphere, sometimes people
call it the PayPal Mafia. So inthat particular company, Brexit
is backed by teal and another.Think Pay Pal, not co founder,
but one of the early CEOs whenteal and musk were both there.

(34:21):
And then you have thatparticular company Brax teaming
up with open AI, which is chatGP T's parent company, created
to create advanced AI poweredtools for CFOs and their teams.
So basically turning chat GPTinto, you know, something that
can be used to probably get ridof a lot of jobs in the finance

(34:45):
sector. Because you know, whatI've been talking about in some
of my recent workouts that GBTis poised to you know, they're
talking about how it's passingbar exams that can replace
lawyers. It'll replacemainstream media journalists so
interesting to see some of thoseconnections there and also Musk
himself Golf was talking about,who by the way has a sorry, I
guess I forgot to mention thatMusk has a stake I think or

(35:07):
helped co found open AI chatTPTs parent company and in as
part of the same Pay Pal Nexushe was going to set he was open
to the idea of buying SiliconValley Bank to turn Twitter into
a digital bank. Kind ofinteresting, huh?

Unknown (35:23):
Yeah, that that was that was a strange comment. He
also made a comment though,yesterday. I think it was about
chat. GPT Did you Did you Didy'all see that? That was kind of
strange, because someone wassaying, you know, open AI went
from being open to not open. Andit went from being a nonprofit
to like, apparently, veryinterested in profits. And Musk

(35:43):
said something about that. Hewas like, Oh, how I gave 100
million, just a nonprofit. Andnow all of a sudden, it's not,
you know, not nonprofit, like,what happened there? Is that
legal? So yeah. Right. So yeah,Marty, do you want to add
anything there? Because I don'treally have too much to say on
that.
Yeah, I was, like opening eyeslike a really weird story.
Because like you mentioned, itstarted as nonprofit, I think

(36:03):
Elon pumped a bunch of cash intoit, because he was really afraid
of AI and said, Alright, ifwe're, if we're going to go
after AI, we want it to be in anonprofit way. So it's more open
source to an extent, but SamAltman, who is the CEO of open
AI, I think at one point, herealized the potential profits

(36:24):
that can be driven from thistechnology and decided, You know
what, we're not going to benonprofit anymore. We're gonna
make this a profit drivenbusiness. From what? From what I
understand it's Earth. Elon,irks me, Elon a bit. But one
interesting thing to know withopen AI, and its founder, Sam
Altman, he's also the founder ofworld coined, which is an

(36:47):
attempt to create like a cbdc.Like, global digital currency,

WW (36:51):
why they the guy scanning people's faces for irises money,

Unknown (36:57):
they're still doing it. They're attacking. Yeah, they
are attacking, I would use theword attacking. They're down in
Africa, scanning people's iriseson loading them onto their
wallet right now.

WW (37:07):
Yeah, remember? Thanks.

Unknown (37:08):
Yeah, yeah, I think I actually I didn't even know that
was still going on. That'sscary. I'll have to look into
that. But yeah, totally. I thinkthat was the I think the
marketing ploy was that if youscan your iris, they'll give you
some free world. Yeah. Like itwas like, Can you imagine how
little they think of people?Right?

WW (37:26):
Yeah, well, I mean, chat GPT. I mean, they pretty much
have a bunch of people thinkingthey're playing with some cool
toy, but they're basicallytraining this AI algorithm to
take all their jobs away. Andnow they've released this big
upgrade of it, because you know,millions of users training this
algorithm for them for free. Andthen they can license it or team

(37:46):
up with companies like this toback Brax company, right? And
then use all that data thatpeople are freely giving them to
come in and do a whole bunch of,you know, stuff that's
automating more and more jobs.Yeah, so I have a lot to say
about chat. GPT, but I don'twant to get too off topic. So to
go back to Peter Thiel for asecond. So you guys, I'm sure

(38:09):
remember that a couple years agoPeter Thiel made a really
unusual comment about Bitcoinand crypto. He added on a panel
with Mike Pompeo, who was eitherSecretary of State or CIA
director at the time, I can'tremember which one. He
essentially said that, you know,even though he claimed he
prefaced the statement by sayingthat he was pro crypto and a

(38:33):
Bitcoin maximalist, he claimedthat Bitcoin may also be a
Chinese financial weapon. Andthis is interesting in the
context of what we talked abouta little bit ago, like people
like Elizabeth Warren, forexample, and a lot of other
prominent Democrats and alsoRepublicans as well are making
the claim that cryptocurrencyand specifically Bitcoin are

(38:53):
national security threats.

Unknown (38:55):
Yeah. So so so that that was I remember when that
happened, and I went kind of alittle, a little crazy on
Twitter, because it was so itwas so infuriating to me. To see
him say that, yeah, that wasspring of 2021. You know, let me
just kind of dissect that alittle bit. Now, Peter Thiel for
all of his, what we what we maynot like about him is a very

(39:19):
intelligent individual. Right?He's not stupid, right? Sure.
Right. And so he knows exactlywhat his words mean. And he
knows what he's saying. It's notdifficult. Now, if you're going
to come out there and say thatBitcoin could be a Chinese
weapon against the UnitedStates. While you're standing
next to Mike Pompeo. That is avery destructive narrative.

(39:43):
Totally putting out there. Yeah.And so he knows that there's no
way he doesn't know. He doesn'tknow that. And so he's sort of
seeding that narrative. And thatis a pure, you know, national
security Deep State talkingpoint period, and he's also a
guy who you If he claims tobelieve in freedom, you know, to

(40:03):
spin Bitcoin in such a way whenhe knows full well that China
has not been encouraging toBitcoin, you know, has been has
been in many steps of crackingdown on Yeah, exactly. It's not
like China has been, yeah,let's, let's let's let's really
advance the cause of BitcoinI've been, it's been quite the
opposite, in fact, so for him tosay that it's just completely

(40:23):
dishonest. So that's a red flagright there. And also, if you
actually believe in freedom, youknow, as Marty is basically
dedicated his life to linkingBitcoin with with freedom and
American values, which Icompletely agree with that view,
to to denigrate Bitcoin, in thissort of a way when he clearly

(40:45):
understands that it does embody,in so many ways, the ethos of
the Republic of the UnitedStates, is a huge red flag. And
so, you know, for me, I feellike Peter Thiel is always
talking out of both sides of hismouth, I feel like he, whether
he's doing it on purpose or not,is is is unknown, but I will say

(41:08):
that he is, he's too oftencompletely contradicting
himself. And he portrays himselfin one way. But then, but then
says things that are completelyantithetical to what he's
saying. So a very strangecharacter, for sure. Obviously,
I know Whitney has done a lot ofwork on on him, and of course,

(41:29):
Palantir and all that stuff inhis ties to the national
security state. But yeah, thiswas a weird comment, and I'll
never forget it, you know,unless he unless he clears that
up. I mean, that was a veryconcerning, and, in my opinion,
huge red flag and destructivenarrative to be sitting out
there, which is also completelyfalse. Yeah,

WW (41:49):
I mean, it's weird, because he made that statement. And a
year later, he's at the Bitcoinmagazine conference, talking
about how great bitcoin is aftera year before, like a Chinese
financial weapon, and hedefinitely is a contradictory
guy. So I think he definitelywants to posture a lot to the
pro freedom crowd. So you know,he'll portray himself, for
example, as a Bitcoin Maxy, andthen go and call it a Chinese

(42:11):
financial weapon, he'll callhimself a libertarian. And he's
only built the most likedamaging software for freedom in
the hands of every single USintelligence agency that's used
a profile of you know, thoughtcrime and is an integral part of
this war on domestic terror. Andyou even had people saying on on
websites like Seeking Alpha,that Peter Thiel should use

(42:34):
Palantir to rein in Bitcoin,after he made these comments,
and that is not someone who islibertarian at all. But you
know, he likes to posture asthat for whatever reason. And I
think it's a calculated PR movenot unlike Elon Musk trying to
cater to a very specificaudience, you know, through what

(42:55):
he puts out publicly, histweets, his memes, and all of
that, while at the same time, itseems like his actions a lot of
time he's playing a differentgame. Yeah,

Unknown (43:03):
it's we I mean, definitely Peter Peter Thiel
definitely seems like the personwho's saying he's one thing, and
then every action he takes seemsto not confirm anything he says
about himself. Very bizarre guy.
Yeah, it's, it's veryperplexing. It's like, he's one
of the hardest people to read,from my perspective, because

(43:24):
like, is he trying to take asuperposition where I'll talk
out of both sides of his mouth,and put money in both directions
for freedom with Bitcoin and prodystopian hellscape with
companies like Palantir I don'tknow if he's,

WW (43:38):
and also the companies he backs are Founders Fund, like
Anduril, which is run by PalmerLuckey, the guy that made Oculus
Rift, left Facebook created anera which is a startup
basically, for US nationalsecurity. And it's all about
creating basically asurveillance apparatus on the US
Mexican border, ostensibly tostop illegal immigration, but it

(44:01):
will also keep people from goingfrom the US to Mexico, Mexico,
not just keep people from goingto Mexico to the US, right? And
that's all surveillance dronesweaponized drones and these, you
know, surveillance towers. Imean, it's basically the SAR on
tower. You know, these guys lovethey're like, Lord of the Rings,
you know, references and allthat stuff. But it's, I don't

(44:23):
know, he's also put a lot ofmoney in companies like carbine
911, which is all tied up withthe Epstein network. I've talked
about them before, and they'rebasically steadily taking over
the entire United States 911emergency services call system
right now. And part of that isactually thanks to legislation
put through by Congress lastyear. So anyway, I'll be

(44:44):
circling back to that at somepoint, hopefully soon. But
there's a you know, FoundersFund is invested in all sorts of
Orwellian hellish stuff, so Idon't know it's really hard for
me to see these guys is as Profreedom Huh, anyway,

Unknown (45:01):
windy, I just want one last thing. Oh, that like,
something that I've thoughtabout a little bit is, you know
if they're gonna roll if a bigattempt to roll out of cbdc is
coming, which I think we allbelieve is, you know, How useful
would it be to have the bigplayers in Silicon Valley and
banking to effectively rallyaround it. And so I wonder if

(45:23):
part of what's going on herewith Silicon Valley Bank is now
now the valley feels indebted insome way, perhaps to the, to the
state, and maybe more likely tobe amenable for participatory
and, you know, some sort ofpanopticon digital currency. I'm

(45:45):
just I'm guessing that the thefirst step along the way to a
cbdc will be somehow and I'm notsure exactly how but somehow
promoted as a public privatepartnership, right.

WW (45:56):
I was just gonna say that. Yeah, I think there's gonna be
some sort of public private precbdc Potentially rolled out
alongside it, maybe followingsort of like that, um, the spur
coin model in Russia throughSberbank, Russia's largest bank,
it's run by Herman Graf, who'sall tied up with the World
Economic Forum. But it'stechnically not a cbdc. Right.
But it's already widely in use.And it's basically a public

(46:19):
private thing. Yeah. But public,

Unknown (46:21):
a public private cbdc is the only way they can do it.
There's no way the governmentshould actually, like break the
software that produces a cbdc.They couldn't even produce a
website for healthcare.gov.They're going to need, yeah,
they're going to need the techfirms to build it for them.
Right. Right. And so is this isthis related to Silicon Valley

(46:44):
Bank in some way? Yeah, I don'tknow. I mean, it's one of these
weird things where we kind ofhave to see how it plays out.
But I do, I do think, and thisis why I really wanted to come
on and be part of this is thatwe need to be talking about it
now. Because the reason COVIDThe COVID SIOP was so effective,
you know, and it's sigh off theme for a few months completely.

(47:04):
And I'm pretty ashamed of that.But I found a learn my lesson
was that it was so kind of itwas it was just, it was so much
at once out of nowhere, thatsomething I personally wasn't
really thinking about. And soyeah, we need to be talking
about the stuff ahead of time,even though we don't know
exactly what they're up to.

WW (47:25):
Yeah, totally. Well, on that note, really quick, if there's
some sort of public privatepartnership, right, it may not
necessarily have to be overtlyone, because we got to keep in
mind, too, if you're talkingabout Silicon Valley,
specifically, and specifically,the Big Five tech companies,
almost, I'm pretty sure all ofthem at this point, are US
government contractors,specifically military and or

(47:48):
intelligence contractors. Imean, there's several that are
both. So, you know, they couldeasily be pulled in to build the
infrastructure, and it couldstill be essentially framed as,
you know, an entirely PublicSector Project. Right. So,

Unknown (48:02):
yeah, I think the way it's going to play out is this
banking crisis is going tocontinue to go on banks are
gonna fail, and they're gonnahit the head where they say,
alright, the banks don't workanymore. We're nationalizing
them, the Fed is going tocontrol all the deposits. And
here's your cbdc wallet. One ofthe tech firms helped us build

(48:22):
it, download it, right, youaccess your money now? Well,

WW (48:24):
before we get there, let's go back and talk about a couple
of things that have alreadyhappened before we get to the
point of discussing where thingsstand now and how things are
likely to play out from here onout. So we haven't quite talked
about Signature Bank yet, butwe've alluded to it and there's
been claims that it's shut downwas completely arbitrary. This
is coming from crypto venturecapitalists, Nick Carter on

(48:46):
Twitter. But there's otherpeople that have made this
claim. And Carter's claimsspecifically come from Barney
Frank, who is the guy from theFrank Dodd, you know, Banking
Act stuff, post 2008. And he wasapparently added to signature
banks board, I believe, in 2015.And he essentially said that

(49:09):
Signature Bank didn't reallyhave to be shut down when it was
shut down. So the question is,why was it shut down? What's the
timeline here? What doesn't makesense and what's really going
on? So whoever wants to start onpacking that be? Go right ahead.

Unknown (49:24):
It was really weird because signature was shut down
on a Sunday. Last Sunday, afterSilicon Valley Bank went down to
the fact that was closed on aweekend it didn't even have the
potential to open up on Mondayand begin servicing withdrawals.
If that is what was happeningwas was a bit odd. Another thing

(49:47):
with the shutdown, is that whatit was a bit different than
Silicon Valley Bank where theFDIC came in and said, Alright,
we're taking over on Sunday, theNew York Department Financial
Services stepped in and saidSecretary are shutting down
before market open on Monday.And as Barney Frank mentioned

(50:09):
earlier this week, he was prettyconfident that the bank was
liquid enough, this servicewithdrawals, so it was a bit odd
that the NY DFS stepped in andshut them down out of nowhere.
Yeah, and it was interesting,too. So when I was first, trying
to research what happened, I wasjust looking up Signature Bank,
right, and try to read as muchas I could about any article

(50:31):
about it. And it was reallybizarre, because every article
was saying the same thing, whichwas nothing, you know, there
were just like, New YorkDepartment of Financial Services
decided to shut down SignatureBank. That's it, you know, there
was no timeline, there was norationale. And so the only thing
that sticks out here issignature. Again, back to

(50:54):
silvergate. I remember, as wediscussed earlier, had to send
network which was crucial toproviding liquidity and the
ability to get in and out ofexchanges and Fiat to stable
coins and all that stuff. And sothe other one was Signet. And so
it appears to me clearly, thatthe intention with getting rid
of signature was to get rid ofCigna, as well, and, and then

(51:19):
make that sort of ecosystemstruggle. Now, again, like New
York Department of FinancialServices, as Marty mentioned,
like New York is, of course, themost dirty place when it comes
to stuff like this, because it'sthe you know, it's the it's the
womb of too big to fail, right,it's a womb of like Wall Street.
And so you know, that that thatstate, that city is going to

(51:42):
protect that at all costs. Andso that was, you know, that,
that that strange in itself. ButBut I think, yeah, and and the
fact that I mentioned earlierthat they're now saying the
FDIC, apparently is saying thatanyone who buys signature has to
close down the cryptoactivities. Well, why? Like,
what is going on here? So yeah,it makes no sense. I mean, the

(52:04):
signature, I'm open to otherideas here, but I didn't even
see anything about assets as sofor example, as we discussed
earlier, Silicon Valley Bank andsilvergate, were both triggered
into selling assets, whichcreated realized losses, for a
variety of reasons. I don't Ihaven't read that about
signature, perhaps they did, butI didn't read that. And so,

(52:27):
again, I'm waiting for someoneto explain to me, what what
exactly triggered Signature Bankwhat what made it different.
There's the end of the day,it's, it's, in my mind, and it's
impossible, that the two, thetwo banks that ran these
networks, Sen. And Signet, justare two of the three that ended

(52:49):
up dead.
From like, the asset side ofthings for signature,
particularly you think, if theyhave one of the two senators who
wrote the bill that defined thetype of capital requirements for
these banks was sitting on theboard, he he'd actually be very
astute to making sure that thebank that he was associated with

(53:11):
was, was capitalized the correctway. Yeah, it was. It was all
very, very weird how ithappened. The fact that it
happened on a Sunday sort of outof nowhere, very out.

WW (53:21):
Well, here's one possibility. I think maybe well,
so the the bailout of SiliconValley Bank, which I want to
talk about next, I think the waythey got around the loophole
they used to offer that bailoutwas about systemic risk, right.
So in order to argue forsystemic risks, they'd have to
be like, well, systemic meansother banks are in danger of

(53:45):
failing. So I don't know thatcould have been sort of the
claim that we think SignatureBank is going to be the next to
fail. And this is part of ourresponse tied up with the SVB
bailout. I mean, maybe I'm wrongon that. But yeah, but

Unknown (54:01):
think about think about what you just said, right? I
mean, even if they said that,that's just crazy, right? I
mean,

WW (54:06):
I know, but it's the justification. Yeah. But it's
the public justification, right?And in this space, there's a lot
of pre emptive stuff going on,like I was, I just did a video
the other day about the webpartnership against cybercrime,
and they're talking about, youknow, going after Bitcoin,
because of ransomware and allthis stuff, and that they needed

(54:28):
to pre preemptively go afternetworks that might engage in
some sort of cyber, financialcyber crime. You know, I mean,
they love pre emptive stuff,whether it's financial stuff, or
the war on domestic terrorism orwhatever. I mean, pre crime is
quickly becoming a major facetof United States government

(54:50):
policy. So

Unknown (54:51):
well think about it to that with signature. If they had
waited 24 hours probably thethere'd be no even rationale to
do anything because Yeah, don'twrite facilities and right. So
it's like, they were like, Let'skill this and then announce a
huge bailout. Right? That wasweird, too.
Yeah. Contradictory in manyways, like, because they wound

(55:12):
up bailing out Silicon ValleyBank depositors. And if they
really were worried aboutcontagion risk, like, why would
they shut down signature bankthat just signals that banks
have a similar profile or atsimilar risk, and so you would
have a run on those banks, aswell. Like, if they really
wanted to stem contagion, theywould have every incentive to

(55:35):
make it seem like signatures arevery well capitalized. try their
hardest to keep it open.

WW (55:40):
But maybe if they wanted to close it right to target
signatures, they're like, well,we can wrap this up as part of
this collapse of Silicon ValleyBank and make it look like our
shuttering of this is linked tothat.

Unknown (55:53):
Right. That's, that's what they did. Yeah.

WW (55:56):
There's the other thing, too, about how Signature Bank
was facing some major criminalprobes, apparently, before it
was shuttered.

Unknown (56:04):
I saw I saw that I mean, I guess, I guess you could
just say, again, you know, ifyou if you want to kill a bank,
all you have to do is say, Hey,we're looking into you, right? I
mean, I think they do this topeople just Dennison sometimes
do these days, you know, whenthey can just destroy you. Yeah,

WW (56:20):
they did this, like we just talked about to silvergate as
well, like, Oh, we're gonnatarget you because of FTX and
signature as a we're gonnatarget you because we think
people are using your cryptobusiness or your exposure to
crypto to for money launderingschemes.

Unknown (56:35):
Right, which at the end of the day, it seems like they
were just looking for an excuseto get rid of these two
networks. Yeah, you know, for avariety of reasons.

WW (56:44):
Yeah, I think that's true. Because every time like, you
know, the feds come in andaccuse someone of money
laundering. I mean, it's kind ofsilly, because the national
security state launders a ton ofmoney, and the big banks launder
tons of money for drug cartels,and whatever. And people like
Katherine Austin Fitz, havepointed out that if you know,
the drug trade stop tomorrow, alot of these big banks would

(57:05):
collapse, because they'redependent on, you know, you
know, the money laundering of alot of those illicit funds,
whether for, you know, cartelsor intelligence agencies or
whatever, like, when theyactually decide to prosecute
these kinds of financial crimes,there's usually not always but
you know, sometimes there's anulterior motive. And I think
that's quite probable here,especially when you consider

(57:27):
that some of this legislation inthe works like Elizabeth
Warren's legislation that arguesthat crypto is a national
security threat. It's aboutterror, financing, terrorism and
money laundering are part of thejustifications for that right.
But it's not like getting rid ofcrypto is going to stop money
laundering, money laundering, ofcourse, preceded Kryptos
existence by many decades. Soit's not like it'll go away,

(57:49):
even if crypto magicallydisappears right

Unknown (57:51):
now in the in the overarching narrative, but I
think that's something reallyimportant that we have to dig
into and really see in the mindsof the masses is that the
biggest perpetrators of moneylaundering and criminal activity
are the big banks and thegovernment's stop people using
Bitcoin. Yeah, this goes
back. And this also goes back tothe whole thing where, you know,

(58:12):
we're not allowed to haveprivacy, but they need to have
ultimate privacy. You know,we're not anything, but but they
can do everything in theshadows. And so yeah, I mean, so
if everybody, if everybody sortof transactions are known and
tracked, then whoever is inpower can say, oh, it's sort of
a good blackmail thing, too.Because you can, you can just,

(58:33):
you know, what everyone's doing.And then you can go up to
someone and say, Hey, by theway, you know, did you do this
two years ago, and blah, blah,blah? And then okay, well, you
can either play with us, or youcan go to jail, you know? And so
it's like, yeah, it's a greatthis,

WW (58:49):
this idea of financial blackmail has been going on for
a long time. In my book andvolume one I actually wrote
about how Armand Hammer the guythat ran Occidental Petroleum
was trying to acquire a major USBank, because so many
congressmen had open accountsthere for the purposes
explicitly of what he calledfinancial blackmail. Yeah. So

(59:11):
you know, if there were peoplethinking about doing this in the
early 80s, you know, I'm sureit's happened by now. Right. So

Unknown (59:18):
I think the only the only positive thing I guess I
could say about it is like, whatthey seem to be thinks they can
do is take all of these thingsthat have been going on,
effectively since the beginningof time, right? I mean, sexual
blackmail, financial blackmail,all that stuff is you could
probably find instances of thatin every culture that's beyond
you know, or city that's beyonda few 1000 people because it's

(59:38):
just what humans kind of do. Butum, or psycho humans do. But
what what what they see whatthey seem to be think they can
do is just like, completely ownit, you know, just just just
have it on a level that is soinstitutionalized and dominant,
that it encompasses everythingand there's no sort of black

(59:59):
market or way Go rumor freedom.And and I guess to me that it's
such a brazen goal, that I sortof think it's doomed to fail.
But But yeah, it's certainlywhat they want. I mean, they're
going just for everything. Well,before

WW (01:00:13):
we leave signature, I just wanted to say that there's a
news A new report out today thatclaims. Well, it cites the New
York financial regulator thatshut it down their rationale for
shutting down Signature Bank,they have now said it was,
quote, a significant crisis ofconfidence in the bank's
leadership and quote, yeah, itmeans nothing. That doesn't mean

(01:00:35):
Yeah, I know, they can say thatleadership wasn't going to get
rid of their crypto. So we'regoing to shut you down. And
whoever buys the bank has togive up all the crypto business.

Unknown (01:00:45):
It's just like, we don't like you. Like the CEO,
Bob.

WW (01:00:48):
Yeah. If you didn't think that the government is organized
crime, especially in New YorkState, and I would urge you to
reconsider. Wild that's crazy.

Unknown (01:00:59):
It's egregious. It's disgusting.

WW (01:01:02):
Well, what will come of it? Let's see. Well, how about we
talk about the bailout then? Sowhat has the Biden
administration said about theSilicon Valley Bank bailout? How
has that changed the situation?And how are taxpayers on the
hook? Even though the Bidenadministration says they're not?
And what can we expect regardinginflation?

Unknown (01:01:25):
So we're diving into the actual mechanics of the
bailout, I think, what theTreasury in conjunction with the
Federal Reserve, and the FDICsaid was essentially, hey, we
will buy your debt instrumentsat par value. So as we mentioned
earlier, a lot of what causedthis contagion event in the

(01:01:48):
banking sector was the Fedraised rates and drove down the
value of the debt instrumentsthat are holding on the books.
And they're still, if mark tomarket, they would be
significantly depressed. And sothe bailout was essentially, the
Fed stepping in and saying, Hey,even though these bonds are
worth 85 cents on the dollar,we'll buy them at $1 from you,

(01:02:11):
and we'll hold them on ourbooks. And at some point in the
future, you can you can buy themback in full when when the
markets settle, and the bankingsystem becomes more stable. So
essentially, QE five is started.It is they won't they won't
explicitly say this, but it isquantitative easing, where the
Fed steps in buys depressedassets at par value, it's a bit

(01:02:34):
different than past QE, wherethey're guaranteeing par value.
But that's essentially whathappened.
Yeah, so So one thing I wouldjust add there, I think that the
specifics are that they're notactually buying the assets, but
they're they're Qalat. Likethey're taking them as
collateral at par. And thengiving the the institutions the

(01:02:56):
money, right. So like they'regiving them par value. But it's
like, technically not apurchase, right? Yeah. Yeah. So
so that's the, I guess thedifference between QE But
effectively, it's the same,because because the banks have
access to money at par value forassets that clearly are not
trading at par value, which isincredible. Like, think think
about again, like 10 years ago,I would have just been nonstop

(01:03:18):
riding poppies after floppieslosing my head, because it was
so insane. But it's like, peopledon't even blink an eye now.
Whereas that would be theequivalent of let's say,
Whitney, has her portfolio atSchwab. And, you know, two
months ago, she bought all thehigh flying tech stocks. And
then they crashed 50%. And nowoh, you know, I'm 50% less

(01:03:43):
wealthy. And then then the Fedcomes in and says, Oh, don't
worry with me. We're gonnapretend that didn't happen. And
we're gonna just go back twomonths ago, and to the value
they were at, and we'll justlend you money based on that.
And you're going to be fine,right? wouldn't wouldn't that be
nice? Right? I mean, it's, it's,it's effectively, it's
effectively pausing reality forbanks, so that they can get

(01:04:08):
money and be liquid. And so youcan argue that you can argue if
you want that that's importantat this moment, but the bigger
but the bigger point is that?How do you ever get out of stuff
like this? Right? I mean, onceexactly what started in 2008.
Once you go down a path likethis, you cannot go back. I

(01:04:30):
mean, you really can't. And theFed was trying to prove that it
could kind of go back to normalby raising rates, but look, look
what happens. They raise rates abunch, and now they're doing
crazy stuff again, right, rightaway. Right. And so and so, you
know, the taxpayer angle, thoughis interesting, because, you
know, JP Morgan this morning issaying that the amount of
liquidity that could flow intobanks could be up to 2 trillion.

(01:04:53):
And what their that 2 trillionestimate is coming from, they
basically took the assets ofHave the bonds of maybe the
treasury bonds? I'm not sureexactly which fixed income
securities have non non too bigto fail banks only, and said,
How much do they hold on theirbalance sheets? And I think
their numbers 2 trillion. So JPMorgan's is effectively saying

(01:05:14):
that 2 trillion could just bepumped into banks. If they if
they if they want to use thisfacility very quickly. So just
think about that. I mean, justto say that, I mean, yeah, the
taxpayer is not not only on thehook, like civilization is
saying like, this is so muchbigger than the taxpayer. This
is this is, is again, this isjust another, another, I guess,

(01:05:40):
salvo in like, a coup, you know,effectively, it's just, it's
just a coup.

WW (01:05:45):
I heard someone describe it as private privatizing gains,
but socializing losses,

Unknown (01:05:50):
yes, yes, yes, it's certainly, I mean, it's all
function. I mean, to put it mostsimply, there's too much debt
and not enough dollars. And whenthe Fed raises rates and pulls
dollars out of the market, likethe interest expenses on the
debt that exist, becomeimpossible to pay, it's just a
function of how the FederalReserve operates. And how the

(01:06:13):
fiat monetary system operates,we've created too much debt, and
the fit, there are not enoughdollars to service, the interest
on the debt level and theprincipal on the debt as well.
So like, functionally, the Fedhas to do more dollars, print
more dollars to begin trying toservice the debt. And so what's
really interesting, we go backto 2008. And then you fast

(01:06:35):
forward to 20 22,008, fed stepsand prints a bunch of money,
lowers rates, and then 2016 2017begins to reverse that policy,
then we get to 2020. It wasactually before 2020, September
2019, we're going to reap amarket spasm, which was, which
was driven by Fed policy, tryingto pull dollars out of the

(01:06:58):
system, something broke. Andthen coincidentally, it's
pointing 20, COVID happened, andthey were able to lower rates
print a bunch of money, thatfast forward to today, just
three years later, a year and ahalf after they started raising
rates and pulling dollars out ofthe system. It's broke again. So
I think what I'm trying tohighlight here is just the
depression of the time betweenFed policy decisions, it's

(01:07:22):
something breaking, it'saccelerating. Right rapid pace.
And so right now, the Fed islike if we thought the amount of
money that the Fed printed in2020 was insane, the amount of
money that they're gonna have toprint after this breakdown of
the banking system was going tobe unfathomable, or at the print
trillions and trillions ofdollars, and that is just going

(01:07:45):
to exacerbate inflationterribly. I mean, this the Fed
really didn't want to be put ina position right now to lower
rates because inflation is stillhigh report.

WW (01:07:56):
Yeah, but Blackrock is saying that they think the Fed
is going to keep tightening. Andthat's interesting, because of
the Blackrock and at the end of2019. Basically, convinced the
Fed to alter its monetarypolicy, the going direct reset
or going direct policy. So Idon't really know what that

(01:08:18):
means. But maybe Blackrock hasreason to believe, you know,
reasons, we don't know what theyare exactly, you know, something
they know that we don't know,that leads them to expect that
the Fed is going to keeptightening,

Unknown (01:08:33):
one commentary I saw sort of after the bailout on
Sunday, someone was saying thatthis could allow the Fed to keep
raising rates while keepingbanks operating, right. So like,
the banks don't have tonecessarily face reality. But
they'll still, and thereforethey could sort of keep
functioning. But we could keepraising rates for everyone else,

(01:08:55):
and kind of keep keep messingwith the economy. But I guess,
but my but my feet, and that isan interesting theory. And I
think, I think if they docontinue to raise rates, we need
to take that more seriously. ButI will on a on a just a sort of
personal level. If I had to beif I was a betting man, I would
say now that they're pretty muchdone. And the reason I say that
is because with the the drop intwo year Treasury rates, it's

(01:09:21):
the fastest drop in the last, Ithink, this week since 1987. So
the two year Treasury yield washas dropped 100 basis points or
1%. Three days, right. And whatthat what that signals and
historically tends to alwayssignal is that the market is
saying you're there's no wayyou're raising rates and in

(01:09:41):
fact, you're gonna compete andthat's what people are betting,
you know, essentially hundredsof billions of dollars on that,
that. And my my conclusion wouldbe, that's probably correct that
the market is accurate on that.
Yeah, The banking crisis isbecoming abundantly clear this

(01:10:03):
not isolated to the UnitedStates. It's spreading to Europe
and affecting the globaleconomy. I think they're going
to have to lower its Yeah.

WW (01:10:13):
So you have what we talked about earlier, you have six
other banks, I think all basedin the US on downgrade watch.
And then you have this the stuffgoing on with Credit Suisse
right now, which has led many toargue that the contagion here is
spreading into Europe. Butthere's a couple of interesting
things to know about CreditSuisse. So you know, how we were

(01:10:36):
talking about not that long ago,like signature was being
investigated, silver gate wasbeing investigated. And I think
it was silver gate that washaving problems and was going to
delay, among other things. Thefiling of their annual report.
And Credit Suisse actually had alot of those same problems. So

(01:10:58):
from March 2, there were therewas a news headline, Credit
Suisse breach, spills, personaland foe of high net worth
clients all over the place. Andthen I think, not long after
that Credit Suisse delays, and areport after late call from the
SEC. So there seems to be. Andthe subtext of that from CNN is

(01:11:21):
Credit Suisse just can't catch abreak. Right. And this is what
they had, you know, theircurrent, those poor guys. Yeah.
So anyway, that's interesting,right? Because now, Credit
Suisse obviously having a lot ofproblems. And there's claim, you

(01:11:41):
know, now that like the Swisscentral bank is may have to step
in, and all this stuff to rescueit. And obviously, there's
there's some problems there. Butit's just interesting that it
seems like they were havingproblems before and maybe, you
know, if they think theycouldn't weather that storm,
they see an opportunity to sortof blame something else for
their woes. Any thoughts onthat?

Unknown (01:12:04):
I mean, Credit Suisse has been in a vulnerable
position, even before this week,I think they had a mass exodus
of deposits last year, and theywere they were already
critically weak. And I think alot of people on Wall Street are
looking at Credit Suisse andjust waiting for it to die. It
seems like this banking crisisspreading from the US to Europe

(01:12:27):
is just going to be the finalnail in the coffin for Credit
Suisse. And I do believe thatthe Swiss National Bank stepped
in overnight to provide $54billion loan to Credit Suisse.
But it seems like as US marketsopen today that they're
beginning to price. Theprobability of a Credit Suisse

(01:12:49):
failure, almost it's almost acertainty now of how their
credit default swaps aretrading.
Yeah. So so yeah. As Marty said,I mean, Credit Suisse has been
dying for like decades, kind oflike, it's a long time.

WW (01:13:01):
Yeah, but so have a lot of other banks in Europe, right. So
if Credit Suisse falls, whatdoes that mean for other banks
and deep shit, like DeutscheBank?

Unknown (01:13:10):
Right, right. And stuff? Yeah, yeah, no, I think,
well, here's the here's the keything. And why Credit Suisse is
just a whole different can ofworms from what we've been
discussing, but also could leadinto the same kind of path that
we've seen with the cbdc.Because so credits or credits
with I mean, what they wouldhave to do, there is it's

(01:13:32):
unimaginable to my mind, youknow, how Credit Suisse is, you
know, their assets and what theyowe, and the counterparties is
linked to everything else, youknow, I mean, it would be, it
would be, it would be, you know,crazy cascades if something was,
you know, happen there. So, ofcourse, the Swiss National Bank,
I think did, as Marty said,stepped in with 50 billion or
something last night. But, youknow, to me, I want to go back

(01:13:56):
to the big point, which is, thissystem is obviously not
sustainable for any long periodof time. Because every time you
do these giant bailouts orliquidity injections, all you're
doing is just kind of keeping itafloat without addressing any of
the underlying issues, like, thebalance sheet issues are not
being solved, none of this stuffis being solved, but they're

(01:14:18):
just keeping everything sort offloating up with liquidity. And
what that does then is, which iswhat we've seen over the last 10
years, you just build up more,right? You build up more debt,
you build up more of a biggerbalance sheet, you end up with a
bigger problem down the road.And my personal view, is that
the powers that be completelyunderstand this, I mean, they

(01:14:40):
they know, this is why there'stalking about a great reset,
right? Because they know a resetis coming. And so what they're
trying to do is they want toreset it themselves. Instead of
allowing the public or even youknow, legislative bodies like
Congress to have a role inresetting it, they they want to
essentially preempt that processand, and create their own reset

(01:15:03):
in their minds. And then oncethe time is right, you know,
just just push it all in there.And so that's, that's, you know
where I think this is going, youknow, and I think that we need
to really be open to thepossibility of anything because
to actually attempt the reset inthe way they want it, you do

(01:15:26):
need a lot of fear, and you needa lot of people being hurt. And
so sort of like the panic thatwe saw over the weekend, but But
times 10. And that's what Ithink we're gonna see in the
next year.

WW (01:15:39):
All right, so one question I have regarding regarding all of
this. So if the crisis issystemic, which it seems that it
is, and it seems that this isgearing up to be something on
par, if not worse than the 2008financial crisis. What about
bail ins, right? So after 2008,you know, the Dodd Frank thing

(01:16:00):
comes out and it's like, oh, nobailouts, but it did allow bail
ins to happen, right? Or atleast that legislation allows
for bail ins to happen and bailins as opposed to bail out. So
bail outs is taxpayer moneybailing out the bank, but bail
ends is when banks use depositormoney to sort themselves out,
right. So what do you think, isthe likelihood of seeing some of

(01:16:23):
that if things worsen?

Unknown (01:16:26):
I think it's pretty high, I would not be surprised
at all, and we begin to seethis. In other parts of the
world. I mean, Lebanon,probably, most notably in the
last couple of years, they'vethey've done Baylands, where
they got put their central bankand their banking system got put
in such a situation that wesaid, hey, anything over

(01:16:46):
200,000? Let me Lebanese pounds,we're going to confiscate and
SARS now. And the situation isnot much different here in the
United States or in Europe. So Ithink everything is on the
table, they're going to printmoney. And I would certainly not
be surprised that do balance ontop of that as well.

(01:17:08):
Yeah, I think. So that would bea huge, I think Cyprus had the
balance, right? They were theonly example I can kind of think
of, and then then Bitcoinactually rallied a ton right
after that. I remember. If theydo Baylands, right, which again,
is where you depositors take ahaircut on their accounts, which
is the exact opposite of whatjust happened over the weekend.

(01:17:32):
In my opinion, that would bepart of the cycle effectively,
right? I mean, to to have bailins would be such a scare
mongering thing to people,because, you know, in a tweet I
wrote a couple of days ago, Isaid, three things are needed to
facilitate the rollout of CBDCs.And the first one I said, is
make holding money and banksfeel completely unsafe. And so a

(01:17:55):
bail in would definitely dothat, you know, it would it
would make people understandthat their money is not saved.
And that can be haircut at anymoment. And therefore, clamor
for a solution. And of course,you know, people like myself
already have our solution, youknow, in Bitcoin, but you know,
your average person is going to,is going to is going to say, or

(01:18:18):
even business would say, youknow, oh, I need a solution
quick. And there you go, youknow, a cbdc could be that
solution, just hold your money,you know, in this in this cbdc.
And it says, it's not, you know,it's not being loaned out. It's
not being leveraged, it's justright here, it's for you at all
times. And it's completely safeand guaranteed. And I think you
need some sort of fear pointlike that. And maybe, maybe

(01:18:41):
balance is a trigger, I don'tknow, there could be a lot of
triggers. But that's a potentialone.
And I think balance actuallyinteresting in the context CBDCs
could be like a normalizationtactic, because with the cbdc,
we're seeing it in Chinaalready. Like, it wouldn't
necessarily be a bail in but itwould, it would be like a
normalization of the money andyour wallet has an expiration

(01:19:04):
date, where you can have yourcbdc wallet, and the Fed will
AirDrop money into it. They'llsay, Hey, you have two weeks to
spend this and you can onlyspend it on this, that and the
other goods on this list. Whichis like an interesting nudging.
That could happen as well.
Yeah, that's a good point. Imean, they've been talking about

(01:19:26):
this forever, which is, which islike essentially forcing people
to spend money, which which isexactly what that will do. They
just AirDrop you money that youhave to spend in a month. I
mean, we just like rats in anexperiment. Totally.

WW (01:19:40):
So um, as we wrap up here, I want to there was one thing I
wanted to talk about, too,regarding how all of this has
been affecting stablecoins,specifically USDC and their
issuer circle. So there was alot of concern about circle
because of they I think theywere one of the most exposed
companies after the collapse ofSilicon Valley. bank. And now of

(01:20:01):
course, you know, notnecessarily so and apparently,
they've decided to havereserves. Now at being why
Mellon, which is funny to mebecause they're really dirty
bank and pop up in my books alot so I don't know I'm when you
look at how a lot of the otherbig stable coins like tether,

(01:20:21):
for example, they have theirbanks that Deltec that Bahamian
bank that was super tied up withFTX and is like insanely shady
themselves. It just kind ofsticks out to me that a lot of
these stable coins seem to havetheir reserves at some of the, I
don't know, most suspect bankspossible. But it also, you know,
it seems like there's an effortto sort of clamp down to an

(01:20:42):
extent on stable coins, or atleast get them tied up with, you
know, certain banks that arefriendly to some of these
unfortunate agendas that we'vebeen discussing today. So, do
you guys have any thoughts abouthow all of this has been
affecting stable coins and sortof the politics between stable

(01:21:04):
coins and a likely cbdc launch?

Unknown (01:21:08):
I think, as Michael explained earlier in this
discussion, like the USD stablecoins is somewhat of a systemic
risk. But if you look at theother side of the coin, they
could see it as an incredibleopportunity as well, where they
can co opt circle, consolidatethem into banks that they fully
control, and then somewhattakeover circle and control it

(01:21:33):
very, just fully control it, Ithink, if I were to put my chips
on the table and bet on whobecomes the private entity in
the public private, thecooperation for CB DC circuit
would be high on that list. So Ithink what we're seeing now is

(01:21:54):
sort of like a coring of circleinto these systemically
important banks. And at somepoint in the future, the
government or the FederalReserve could step in and say,
Hey, we're gonna need you tocreate this CB DC pilot for us.
Yeah, that's, that's a
really good point. So to expandon that I agree with with
everything you said. So if youthink about it, and this goes

(01:22:16):
back to my point earlier, whichis that there is a decentralized
sort of organic way you couldreset, which is what I think
there's a lot of bitcoins is ahuge part of that, for example,
right? I mean, that's exactlykind of what Bitcoin is here to
do. And then there's the WEF,and others who are taking it
upon themselves to reset us intowhat they want. So there's like

(01:22:38):
these two competing forces thatare that are battling
effectively right now. Um, andso the stable coin ecosystem,
I'm starting to view as crucialin this in this battle, because
thus far you've had, and I'mincluding, you know, sort of the
network Sen and Signet in thisas well, right, you have sort of

(01:23:01):
a wild west a little bit of asystem that's developed over the
last few years with aroundstable coins and around these
24/7 networks, right, that, thatfacilitate the cryptocurrency
ecosystem. And that's more orless been a sort, you could put

(01:23:21):
it into this sort ofdecentralized, organic resetting
of things. But I think now theUSG and the Fed see that as
having gone too far, let's say,right, like, this is this is
this is to organic, right, it'sto kind of out of our control.
And so I think Marty made areally good point. And that this

(01:23:44):
could be right now, we could beseeing the very beginning stages
of, of the government and theFed starting to sort of CO opt
these, and they may have alreadybeen, you know, like, circle, I
agree. I mean, circle has alwayskind of been like, it's kind of
like red flag to me. Always.Right. But like, even more so.

(01:24:04):
And so this, this goes back towhat we discussed earlier, which
is that there could be thistransition point where a CV, you
know, you get to see certaincbdc Let's I'm sorry, a certain
stable coin, let's say it'sUSDC. That would be the top
contender, in my view as well,that becomes sort of state
sanctioned in a way right, socircle may be all of a sudden in

(01:24:24):
six months is all at JPMorgan,right? And JP Morgan is doing
circle and this USDC and it'sall integrated like that, and
then they can just allow it torun that way for a while. And it
could sort of effectively belike a proto cbdc That's kind of
ostensibly run privately, butthen in a future crisis. Right.

(01:24:47):
They could they could create acrisis with that and say, Okay,
no, no, now we need to take itfully under our own control.
Right. And that's, that's one Ithink pathway for this to
happen.

WW (01:24:57):
Oh, man. Well, one thing that comes to mind based Don't
Want You just said you know howwe were talking about our I
mentioned earlier, you know whythey were targeting silvergate
After FTX but not Farmingtonstate bank, or Moonstone is it
was renamed to be. They had justpartnered with a company. That's
very interesting. And one of themain guys on it is the guy that

(01:25:18):
claimed to invent CBDCs was, youknow, and that was helping lead,
you know, this particular tinybank in the middle of nowhere in
Washington state that had allthis, this cash come in, from
Alameda research, they wereleading some of their digital
transformation and, you know,financial services stuff. So,

(01:25:39):
you know, maybe, maybe that'swhat saved them some of their
ties to cbdc Architects, orsomething like that. It honestly
would not surprise me at thispoint. All right, well, anything
else you guys would like to addin? Before we wrap up here, I
definitely want to let peoplelistening know, you know, what
they can tangibly expect in thecoming weeks and months. And,

(01:26:03):
you know, maybe some solutionsfor people that are worried
about having their money inbanks and things like that.

Unknown (01:26:09):
I mean, I think Michael and I would both agree that
times are tired, the Fed and theUS government are on their
heels, and they're going to tryto cattle herd citizens into the
cbdc future where they have fullcontrol, I guess is why I focus
all my energy and time onBitcoin. As I view, the future

(01:26:33):
is pretty binary, we either getthe dystopian hellscape of
CBDCs, or we're going to trulygrassroots the emergent monetary
system built on Bitcoin. Soanybody listening? who is
thinking of how to protectthemselves against the cbdc?
Future? I would highly recommendthat you begin educating

(01:26:54):
yourself about Bitcoin and onceyou're sufficiently educated and
confident that you believeBitcoin makes sense, and is
something worthwhile. AcquireBitcoin, but most importantly,
don't normally get bitcoin, donot hold it on an exchange.
Bitcoin has native propertiesthat allow you to control it in
a wallet that that only you canaccess, and no government or

(01:27:17):
company can stop you fromaccessing it. So it's, if you're
getting into Bitcoin, it's notimportant, only important that
you buy it, but that youactually possess it as well. You
do not want to hold your Bitcoinon exchanges, because that will
be a pressure point that thegovernment will use, I believe
in the future, they will shutdown these on and off ramps, so

(01:27:38):
it is very crucial. While wehave the time to do so that
people acquire Bitcoin and getit into wallets that they
control. Because at some pointin the future, the government or
the Federal Reserve can flip aswitch and make it very hard to
get bitcoin.
Yeah, yeah. From that, from mypoint of view. I think that I

(01:28:00):
think that, you know, as Martysaid, right, it's a binary and I
think that's right. So, youknow, you you have to
understand, I think everyoneneeds to understand that, you
know, if we're going to have amore decentralized, let's say,
networked world, with morefreedom, versus the, you know,

(01:28:20):
very rigidly hierarchicalcentralized, you know, sort of
panopticon world, which the Westwas, had many, many in the
United States one as well,intelligence agencies in
particular, let's say, you know,there's a responsibility that
comes with the former right, thenetworked decentralized world
with freedom, there's a lot ofresponsibility that comes along

(01:28:42):
with that. And I think that'sone of the key things that Marty
was saying about Bitcoin. Imean, there's to do Bitcoin
properly, you know, you really,there's, there's a degree of
responsibility needs to take,and be willing to take that. And
so people need to also beresponsible for their emotions.
And this is like the primarytrigger, like if we go the wrong
way, I firmly believe that it'sbecause too many people were not

(01:29:07):
responsible for their ownemotions, and are allowing fear
and just programming to get thebetter of them, which allows
these things to push forward.And, you know, so be ready
because that is what's going tobe triggered your your fear
response, you know, your, your,your just natural reaction. And
of course, like the media, youknow, like, like these

(01:29:28):
mainstream media, like,seriously, there should be a
warning on every singlebroadcast and CNN because it is
so poisonous to your mind. It issuch programming. I think, I
think the best advice I couldgive is, when some new thing
happens, that's big and scary,you know, try to just chill out
for a second. You know, take astep back, you know, don't just

(01:29:49):
react because I think,particularly, you know, people
like us to that. We have socialmedia presences that are
reasonably large. You feel theneed to kind of Have a
conclusion or have a response orhave a reaction kind of quickly.
And I've found at leastpersonally that the best path is
to not do that. Because let itsettle out a little bit like see

(01:30:10):
what's, how did it how does thesystem react? You know, how's
the public reacting? Why are webeing triggered in this way. And
so that would be my my advicewould just be, really guard your
mind, really guard youremotions, because that is what
that is what's being veryintentionally triggered with,
with, with every sign up tobring us to that state we all
want to be.

WW (01:30:31):
Yeah, I think that's a really good point. I'm actually
I've talked to some people fromArgentina, because, you know, I
live in Chile. And, you know,they had a full blown economic
collapse, you know, about 20years ago. And what I heard from
them, you know, is the, the bestthing you can do in that kind of
situation is have is not givento the panic, and the fear,

(01:30:53):
because that's going to lead youto make impulsive decisions you
may otherwise have not made, andit's, you're definitely going to
be better off if you can keepyour cool when things get insane
in the economy, and you know,it's not just going to be
Argentina, this time, we're justgoing to be like a certain
sector of the US economy, likeall the stuff is woven together.

(01:31:17):
So you know, if too much stuffstarts to go, you know, we can
definitely see what will happen.But I also want to give advice
to some people who aren'tnecessarily, you know, in crypto
or interested in crypto becausenot all of my audience is. So
what would you say? What do youguys say to people who, you
know, have accounts at some ofthe big banks like JP Morgan,

(01:31:41):
Wells, Fargo, etc? You know, Isthere money safe there? Should
they think about putting itelsewhere? And if so, where I
mean,

Unknown (01:31:50):
all the big banks are insolvent, they're insolvent
essentially, the only waythey're going to survive moving
forward is the Fed printingmoney, or launching a cbdc. Like
the banking system, the way it'serected with fractional reserve
banking, and money printing atthe Federal Reserve is doomed

(01:32:11):
for failure. I mean, personally,I would only keep as much money
in the bank as you're willing tolose. I am again, again, I truly
believe and I know, it's atouchy topic, and people get
very emotional about it. Andthat's why I urge people to
educate themselves about it, I'mnot going to tell anybody to
just go buy bitcoin, right now,like ape into it, educate

(01:32:35):
yourself about it. If you spendthe time to learn about it, I
think that you'll come to alogical conclusion that it makes
a lot more sense than theincumbent banking system. Me
personally, I hold most of mysavings in Bitcoin and not in
the banking system. That's whatI recommend in terms of like an
alternative to the big banks, Ireally don't think there are

(01:32:59):
many there systemicallyimportant. They're the only ones
that will get bailed out everytime a crisis arises. Maybe a
small community bank, but aswe're seeing with this regional
banking crisis playing out rightnow, maybe they're not even
safe. It is really weird timesin the market for money, because

(01:33:20):
the Federal Reserve hascompletely destroyed the dollar
in any confidence we could havein it moving forward.
Yeah, so So from my perspective,and you're kind of asking that
to two guys that probablyhaven't had a banking
significant bank accounts foryears. You know, after 2008,
nine, I mean, I immediately Ihaven't touched it too big to

(01:33:41):
fail personally, you know, sinceyou know, and, and I've had
whatever money I need in thebank, effectively is just what
I, you know, I'll put money inthere to pay bills, you know, as
I need to do that, or what Ineed for other things, but yeah,
I just been, you know, I triedto stick stay away from the
banking system for over adecade. So, you know, I'm not
the best guy to ask about, like,how to navigate the banking

(01:34:02):
system, because I try to stayaway from it. But if I don't, if
I'm not going to talk aboutlike, you know, Bitcoin or even
some precious metals, what Iwould suggest then, what I would
do, like if someone said to me,you know, gun to your head, you
can't buy bitcoin, you can't buyany precious metals. You know,
those are not your options. Sowhat are you going to do? You

(01:34:22):
got a bunch of money in thebanks. What I would probably do
is I would look around and Iwould say, Okay, how do I make
my life more resilient? Youknow, like, what is it gonna
take do I do I start to growgarden? Do I add this to my
landscape? Do I get chickenslike we did, you know, you know,
what, do I stock up on

WW (01:34:42):
stuff? You know, your money in real stuff? keep you alive.
It's usually what I tell people.Yeah,

Unknown (01:34:48):
exactly. So So for example, let me give you an
example. And I haven't done thisbecause for a variety of
reasons, although it's always inthe back of my mind. Okay. So
clearly, there's going to besome serious tensions between
the US and China you know, andif Do you think it's, you know,
bad now, you haven't seenanything. And probably, at some
point, and I don't know whatthat point will be, it could be

(01:35:08):
in 2027 I have no idea. But atsome point, you know, the the
products that are made in Chinaare just going to somehow not
find their way here anymore. Youknow, and that's a lot of stuff.
So, you know, you know, so Sowhat sort of, you know, what
sort of things you know, do youneed, you know, what sort of
things will be important to yourresilience? You know, over the
coming years out, there's,there's, of course, food is an

(01:35:29):
important one energy is anotherone, you know, shut, you know,
shut having your shelter yoursort of security? I mean, do you
need? Do you need certainbatteries? Do you need, you
know, things like that. So, ifyou're, if you're not, if you're
not wanting to, like, put yourmoney into alternative, let's
say, financial assets, I woulddefinitely be investing in
having things that you know,you're going to use anyway,

(01:35:51):
right? Like, don't stockpilestuff that you're not going to
use, but if you know that you'regoing to use this, this and that
over the next three years, whynot just have a habit now, you
know, if you've got the money toburn in the bank, and you're
scared of that, you know, theother the other thing that, you
know, this is what my wife and Ihave been, we've been totally
dedicating 2023 so far to this.And it's been going really well.

(01:36:12):
It's been busy, but you know,skills, right? Learning skills
that you don't have, that youthink would be helpful? And so I
would, I would, I wouldencourage everyone out there to
think about that, like, where doyou feel like you're lacking. So
for me, personally, there havebeen a few areas, one of them is
just my inability, really toDIY, and make things in the

(01:36:36):
physical world at all, you know,I grew up in New York City where
like, nobody knows how to doanything, you just call the
frickin superintendent, like,come fix everything. So for me,
I felt very, I felt veryvulnerable in that regard. So
you know, I'm taking awoodworking class, for example,
in the carpentry, trying tolearn how to do that stuff. And
it's a massive learning curve,like it's, it reminds me of

(01:36:58):
Bitcoins, just like drinkingfrom a firehose,

WW (01:37:02):
that's necessary. So yeah, that's even before these crises,
no one, people in the US werejust completely losing. And on a
generational level, the abilityto produce any of their own
stuff, like the knowledge baseis going away. And that has to
come back for the US to have anysort of self sufficiency going
forward. Right? Yeah.

Unknown (01:37:20):
So we'd like our kids, we're also we're very focused on
that kind of stuff. Like, like,my kid, my oldest son is doing
woodworking classes, too. Soit's up to us, you know, like,
you know, don't just be thisagain, I think, for a while I
even I did this too, I just buybitcoin and sit around. Okay,
well, when is the world gonnakind of blow up, right? But, but
but really, you know, everysingle moment, you know, every

(01:37:41):
single don't waste your time, Iguess is my point. Like there is
there, every single one of ushas a gap, right? Like, yeah,
and we probably know what it is.You're just like, I wish I was
better at this right? Or I wishI kind of will just just go get
better at it. Right? Go learnit.

WW (01:37:56):
Yeah, you don't want to be caught totally unprepared with
what's coming. Because I mean, Ithink it's pretty clear that you
know, if this gets ultra supermega crazy, and people are just
left penniless, you know, theFeds gonna write and be like,
Oh, well, you know, here's yoursubsidy or whatever. Or here's
some money, you know, from thegovernment that keep you alive,

(01:38:17):
but it's only in cbdc form. Andit's programmable money. So you
can only use it on the things wesay you can use it on and bam.

Unknown (01:38:25):
Exactly. And like even making, you know, local
connections, we started buyinggocce Rocco cheese from a
neighbor, you know, I could walkto, you know, in the last two
months, it's been great. We wantit's the best, the best cheese
I've ever had in my life, likelittle things like that. Just
just just just, you know, thereare things everybody can do in
that regard.
Yeah, that's, that's somethingthat's been. There's been a big

(01:38:50):
movement within Bitcoin, likewith this in mind, which is the
concept of going out and shakingyour ranchers hands, maybe you
can Ranch, maybe you can't farm.But what you can do is get in
your car and drive to your localranch or your local farm, shake
that farmer's hand and figureout how you can support them. So
if you're, if you're not goingto be able, if you don't think

(01:39:10):
you're gonna be able to be selfsufficient, and building a farm
or ranch to supply your ownfood. There are people around
you that are and they need to besupported. Just building
community and connectionslocally is extremely important.
Please, Yep, totally agree.

WW (01:39:28):
All right, well, sounds like we're all pretty much on the
same page there and obviouslywe'll be seeing how the
situation plays out over thenext few weeks and mindset these
issues obviously are not goingto go away. So with that being
said, so people that areinterested in listening to this
podcast, how can they follow youguys whether on social media

(01:39:48):
elsewhere?

Unknown (01:39:50):
Yeah, if you want to follow me on usually hang out on
Twitter at Marty bent. And Ihave a website t ftc.io. You can
find my newsletter. There areright about Bitcoin and freedom
in the digital age and then thepodcast as well. T FTC and
rabbit hole recap.
Yeah, from my end, I'm mostlypublicly facing on Twitter at

(01:40:12):
Liberty, blitz BL ITC LibertyBlitz. Yeah, my website Liberty
blitzkrieg, though if I don'treally write on it anymore, but
there's a ton of stuff there. Imean, if you want to just search
any any word you think isinteresting, you're gonna find a
lot of articles I wrote almostdaily for nearly a decade. So
I'm sure I'll write again atsome point in my life, but just

(01:40:33):
not Not at the moment. So yeah,I'm pretty much public facing on
Twitter, and that's effectively.

WW (01:40:39):
Okay, well, super. Well. Thanks so much, guys, for coming
back on to talk about even morefinancial craziness. I'm sure
I'll have you guys back probablysooner rather than later,
depending on how all of thisplays out. Thanks so much to
everyone for listening,especially people who support
this podcast. A big thanks toyou all for keeping this going.

(01:41:00):
And yeah, we'll catch you on thenext episode. Thanks so much.
Thank you

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