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Aug. 25, 2025 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
11:36
Why SELF CUSTODY is the only option to survive the financial reset
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We've all heard the saying that possession is nine tenths of the law.
And this is a podcast about the importance of self-custody.
Because self-custody means, of course, you possess it.
And it's much more difficult for any of your assets to be confiscated or taken from you, especially digitally or electronically, which we'll talk about, if you physically possess them.
And the issue about self-custody is also that you have no counterparty risk when you have it in your possession.
And what got me thinking about this was because I hear some financial people, some kind of mainstream finance people who are not very smart.
And they say things like, oh, you shouldn't buy gold because, you know, it doesn't earn anything for you.
You should be buying stocks.
Yeah, the problem is that when you buy gold, you have it in your possession.
And so there it is.
You know, you can look at it.
You can touch it.
It's yours.
When you buy stocks, you don't own them.
Basically, what you're buying is an IOU.
You're buying a promise to deliver the value of the stock to you when you want to sell it one day.
But the actual stock shares aren't even in your name.
So when you think you're buying stocks, you're actually not.
Your name isn't on the ownership of those stocks.
And if the brokerage company goes bankrupt or collapses or they run away with your money, which happened over and over again, you know, look at Bernie Madoff and all that.
Well, then your money's gone.
It's just gone.
you didn't have possession you didn't have self-custody So these mainstream financial advisors that tell you, oh, you should buy stocks, they never consider counterparty risk.
They are operating from the false assumption that all brokerage houses are always 100% stable, legit, that they will never close down, they will never go bankrupt, nobody will ever steal the money and run.
And they also have the same assumption about banks, that banks will never fail.
Well, sorry, that's just not true.
Banks fail all the time.
They're even scheduled to fail, usually on a Friday.
And then sometimes they get partially bailed out, sometimes not.
And the Fed says, or the Treasury, FDIC, says, well, we'll decide who to bail out entirely and others will only bail out to the 250k and so if you have a deposit over 250k and they decide they don't need to save that particular bank then you're just screwed so counterparty risk is the single largest untold risk in the financial system when you own treasuries
and I use the word own sort of in quotes when you own treasuries you don't really own anything you have claim to some future amount of money it's an IOU so you have handed over your money in exchange for an IOU,
and you are trusting that the United States government will be able to find some other sucker to buy more Treasury debt at some point in the future to pay you back for the money that you loan them, plus a little bit of interest.
And since the government is perpetually broke and 37 trillion in debt, the only way you get money back on the Treasury is if they find somebody else to buy the next stage of the Treasury Ponzi scheme.
That's the only way you get your money back.
So you're not buying.
assets.
You're buying, actually, just an IOU.
When you deposit money in a bank, you're not still in control of the money.
You don't even own it anymore.
The bank owns it.
You have given your money to the bank.
You have become a creditor of the bank.
And if the bank goes under, then now you get to line up with a bunch of other creditors to make a claim in the bankruptcy court.
And then maybe one day you'll get your money or pennies on the dollar or whatever the settlement may be.
Owning gold and silver is totally different.
You have it in your possession or you can have it vaulted, allocated or even segregated so that your gold or your silver is held separately in a vault, it's still yours.
You own it, and you can go touch it if you want to.
But having it in your possession at home or within reach, you know, maybe you have it hidden away somewhere, but you can get to it, that is the ideal situation that can cover any kind of collapse scenario.
And there's no replacement.
for self-custody and the same thing is true in crypto so a lot of people are buying bitcoin etfs which is insane satoshi never would have wanted that to be the case.
Bitcoin ETFs, are you kidding me?
The whole point of Bitcoin was to decentralize the monetary system and for each person to have their own Bitcoin wallet so that they could have self-custody of their crypto and to take the banks out of the system, to take the brokerage houses out of the system, get the middlemen out of the way.
The very idea of having Bitcoin ETFs, which are just IOUs for Bitcoin, but not real Bitcoin, You know, it's not, I mean, you don't have it in your possession when you bought an ETF, okay?
That is the antithesis of what the Cypherpunk movement.
was supposed to be about.
And the fact that Bitcoin has become this sort of mainstream finance thing with ETFs and governments buying it and everything, it's like, well, you know, what happened to the original ethos of Bitcoin?
It's gone.
And now that ethos is actually found in the privacy crypto coins like Monero or Zano or others.
privacy crypto, which is why I prefer privacy crypto personally.
So even when you own crypto, you should own it in your own wallet on your own computer, not leave it in an online exchange somewhere because, And how many times have online exchanges stolen people's money and run away?
Yeah, well, it's happened a lot, a lot, a lot of rug pulls out there.
And there's probably no end to that.
But, you know, a bank failure is also a rug pull in the monetary system.
And if you think about it, the printing of dollar fiat currency is a giant rug pull.
They're rug pulling the value of your currency every time they print trillions more.
I mean, that's it's a coordinated legalized government rug pull like a multi-generational rug pull the dollar has lost 98% of its purchasing power since 1971.
And of course, over 99% since the creation of the Federal Reserve, which was supposed to create monetary stability.
So that's a rug pull right there.
And it shows you that if you stockpile fiat currency, you're a financial fool.
Or if you stockpile assets that are denominated or expressed in dollar currencies only, that's also a problem, like treasuries.
Because the dollar keeps losing value.
And that's why buying stablecoins backed by treasury debt is also a foolish idea.
Why would you even do that?
They're not.
even stable they are unstable because they keep losing value so stable coins that invest in us treasuries should be called unstable coins and if you do buy stable coins why on earth would you hold them there's no point i mean you're losing value every day that you hold stable coins so with the passage of this new genius act and you know the white house now kind of pro crypto which is great i love that aspect of it but If Trump and the Treasury,
if they think they're going to launch these new stable coins or have JP Morgan launch them, if they think they're going to raise trillions of dollars to shore up treasury debt.
I say think again, I don't think people are going to buy trillions of dollars of stablecoins and just sit on it.
I mean, they'll buy stablecoins to send them somewhere to move them around and translate them into something else.
They'll exchange stablecoins for bitcoins as quickly as possible.
So whatever your strategy is, make sure that you focus on self-custody.
And anytime that you hear an investment advisor or person telling you to buy this or buy that, buy or deposit in the bank, you get CDs, get treasuries, buy these stocks, buy these mining shares.
the one question that they almost always leave out is the self-custody question because gold has no counterparty risk.
None.
Silver has no counterparty risk.
And that's why gold and silver are tier one forms of money, universally recognized throughout history, mentioned 400 times in the Bible.
Okay?
So there is nothing that is more than...
And you could say silver along with it.
it and if everything else collapses whoever has the gold still has assets so if that makes sense to you and you want to get some gold well check out our sponsor battalion metals you can find them at metalswithmike.com they are our affiliate sponsor we've been working with them for many many years under the name treasure island they launched a new website called battalion metals It's a new branding,
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They don't play those games.
Otherwise, I wouldn't work with them.
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So check them out.
Medals with Mike.com and thank you for your support and oh if you use discount code ranger they'll waive the shipping insurance fee on any order from battalion metals so check that out at metalswithmike.com and do your own research don't take this as financial advice obviously you know make up your own mind get your own experts whatever but be careful Be cautious about the issue of self-custody.
You want to make sure that when it all comes down, you've got something in your direct control.
And that's probably what you'll have left when the system craters.
We'll see, but do your research and make decisions that are in your own best interest.
And thank you for listening.
I'm Mike Adams, the Health Ranger.
Take care.
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