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Feb. 25, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
40:00
What is Going on with BITCOIN?!?
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Time Text
Well, good afternoon, everybody.
It's Stefan Molyneux.
It is 1.30ish on the 25th.
And we're going to talk Bitcoin economy, what's going on.
For those of you who haven't noticed, what are we at now?
It was a little jaw-dropping even for me.
Bitcoin has gone down Canadian almost $11,000 or...
Almost 8% in a relatively rapid pace, 133 down to 124 and change.
It seems to have found a bit of a bottom and is going back up again, but I thought it was worthwhile talking about what might be going on.
Of course, usual caveats apply.
I am not an expert, I'm not an economist, and this is all nonsense opinions and don't make any financial decisions based upon what I'm saying.
Talk to an expert or consult your own conscience.
Or, I don't know, roll some dice and read some tea leaves.
Consult a Ouija board, but just don't take any advice from me.
Okay.
So, let's go over some of the facts.
I talked about this a little bit on the weekend.
So, Bitcoin dips.
This is from, as of yesterday.
Bitcoin dips to 95k amid bit, amid by bit hack.
And FedRate uncertainty.
So there's basically three things that go on.
FedRate uncertainty.
Well, four.
Doge, FedRate uncertainty.
The tariffs are going back on.
And the tariffs are back on.
Bybit hack, FedRate uncertainty, and Doge.
So we'll get into those.
We'll start with the hack on Friday, Dubai.
Sorry, I could speak.
I really promise you I could.
This used to be quite good.
I used to be quite good at that.
Dubai-based crypto exchange Bybit suffered a staggering $1.46 billion hack, the largest crypto heist in history.
Analysts have attributed the hack to North Korea's infamous Lazarus Group, stolen over $6 billion in digital assets since 2017, reportedly funneling the proceeds into the country's ballistic missile program.
So mostly, Ethereum, referred to as Ether, I'm not sure why in this, The stolen assets, mostly Ethereum, are being converted into Bitcoin, likely using unregulated services such as EXCH, and they mix and obfuscate from there on.
So they're shifting assets away from Ethereum, which is more directly impacted by the hack, to Bitcoin.
Recent data shows a slowdown in U.S. business activity with the S&P Global U.S. Services PMI dropping to 49.7 in February of 2025 from 52.9 in January.
The dip was counter to expectations that it would rise by 53 and is an indication of economic contraction.
Meanwhile, the Fed remains cautious, emphasizing the need to mitigate inflationary pressures.
Factors such as persistent inflation, government cuts, and tariffs are complicating economic conditions, increasing volatility in traditional and crypto markets alike.
Now, I hadn't really been keeping track of this because the tariffs were threatened against Europe and against Canada and against Mexico, and then it looked like, at least from what I could read, Mexico and Canada kind of crumbled and agreed to deal with fentanyl issues and trade imbalances and so on.
Yesterday, so this is February 24th, President Donald Trump indicated during a joint press conference with Extremely creepy French President Emmanuel Macron.
Tiny bit of editing there.
The previously delayed 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico are set to move forward as scheduled.
These tariffs were initially announced, of course, on February 1st, delayed by a month to March 4th after negotiations with both countries have been paused following commitments from Canada and Mexico to enhance border security measures addressing illegal immigration and fentanyl trafficking.
So, tariffs, sorry, Trump's comments suggested that neither country, US, sorry, Canada or Mexico, had met his administration's expectations sufficiently during the 30-day pause, with him stating the tariffs are going forward on time, on schedule.
This means that they could begin as early as next week, potentially March 4th, or shortly thereafter.
His remarks were somewhat ambiguous, leaving open the possibility he was also referring to broader reciprocal tariffs planned for April.
Although the context strongly pointed to the Canada and Mexico duties.
So this stirs market reaction reports from Axe Post, noting a drop in the U.S. stock market, particularly the S&P 500. Canada and Mexico have previously threatened retaliatory tariffs.
Canada with a proposed 25% levy on $155 billion worth of U.S. goods and Mexico preparing its own measures if the U.S. duties are imposed.
The situation remains fluid.
Trump did not provide definitive details on exemptions or exact timing beyond affirming the tariffs or proceeding uncertainty as the March 4th deadline approaches.
So, we'll get into what this all means as a whole about Bitcoin ETFs, $516 million outflow amid continued investor retreat.
February 24th, Bitcoin ETFs experiencing a net outflow.
Of almost half a billion dollars, other ETFs shedding 78 million.
Major funds including Fidelity's FBTC and BlackRock's IBIT led the downturn, reflecting a negative sentiment among investors.
Investor sentiment in the crypto market continued to nosedive with both Bitcoin and Ether ETFs experiencing significant outflows and so on, right?
So we can understand all of that.
A major negative shift in investor confidence, more market volatility, And the enforcement of tariffs.
So hedge funds playing both sides.
The theory is that hedge funds purchase ETFs at the same time as they short futures on the CME. This alone probably wouldn't cause a market crash.
Significant downward pressure on the price, the buy bit, the tariffs, economic uncertainty, and so on.
That is happening.
So the theory is when hedge funds pour money into spot Bitcoin ETFs, they're buying Bitcoin in the open market.
Through the ETF issuer, like BlackRock or Fertility.
This ramps up demand for actual Bitcoin, which should, in theory, nudge the spot price up.
And it has.
ETF inflows have been massive, with billions flowing in recently.
But instead of letting that price climb run wild, these funds turn around and short Bitcoin futures on the CME. Shorting means they're borrowing Bitcoin, or its contract equivalent, and selling it now, betting they can buy it back cheaper later when the contract expires.
Each CME contract is five Bitcoins, with net shorts hitting record highs.
18,175 contracts.
That's a ton of selling pressure.
It's about 91,000 Bitcoin worth at today's prices.
So this shorting floods the futures market with sell orders, which drags the futures price down.
Of course, the kicker is spot and futures prices don't move in last step, but they're tightly linked.
Big traders, algorithms, and arbitrage bots watch that futures price like hawks when it dips below the spot price.
A situation called backwardation.
Probably going to be what replaces the word retard over time.
These players sell spot Bitcoin to lock in the price difference, pushing the spot price down too.
It's a feedback loop.
Futures tank, spot follows.
Plus, if the market smells a big short position, it can spook retail holders into panic selling, amplifying the drop.
So, that's the general facts as a whole.
Saylor, of course, is in there.
El Salvador is buying Bitcoin.
Sailor is buying the drop.
Billions of dollars.
But a lot of people aren't buying the dip.
Mike Alfred on X wrote, When Bitcoin first broke above 100,000, millions of people would have given anything to roll back the price of 92k or 88 to buy some, but now that it's actually happening, exactly zero of them will do it.
This is why people are poor.
Thanks for attending my TED Talk.
Right.
Right.
It's easy.
Vivek wrote on X, while you were scared, Wales just bought $2.5 million worth of Bitcoin.
So that's important too.
This is exactly what the beginning of 2017 felt like, and so on, right?
And of course, inverse Kramer is a very funny...
Account on X. Inverse Kramer.
The year is 2040. One egg is now more expensive than one Bitcoin.
A starter home.
Costs $10 million.
Elon Musk has 40,000 children.
Ethereum is still trading at $2,600.
That's kind of a joke.
It's been on there forever.
Bitcoin for Freedom wrote, Imagine working 9 to 5 for 50 years and the Fed prints 80% of the total money supply and inflates away 40 years of your work.
And, of course, Peter Schiff.
I love the sound of a Bitcoin crash in the morning.
Well, he's happy with gold.
I can understand where that's coming from.
All right, so that's the general facts as a whole, and let's get into my free-form, free-base, free-ball analysis time.
And it goes a little something like this.
So, the reason why the tariffs are important, the reason why Trump being in there is important, is that the Anglosphere, the sort of white Western European sphere, with the exception of Mexico to some degree, of course, the white Anglosphere is cracking.
So, all of the latent tensions between, say, Europe, Canada, and America, which have been considerable, Europe is sort of the wounded grandfather, and Canada often acts as the Hyper-aggressive, hyper-competitive, resentful, and doomed to fail younger sibling, younger brother, and America just kind of plows on forward, despite all sabotage, particularly over the last administration.
So, there is going to be a massive realignment of the economy, some good, some bad.
All economic changes have winners and losers, of course, as you know, and all economic changes start off with losers, right?
When the car is introduced, people will stop investing in horse and buggy manufacturers, but they don't exactly know which car manufacturers to invest in.
So whenever there's an economic change, value is reduced as it gets reallocated, right?
So the example would be you suddenly need to repair your car, right?
And so what happens is Your car repair costs $1,000, and you go to the bank and you withdraw your $1,000.
That's a net loss.
And then you have to, I guess, not drive, but walk over to the car dealership to get your car repaired, and then you give them the $1,000.
But there's that time where there's been a change.
Your car is broken, and there's a net reduction in the economic value because the $1,000 is in transit.
So when there has been America the megacuck, right?
That's been the sort of That has been the sort of stable situation ever since really,
I mean, The 70s, the rise of the neocon era, and so on.
And so that is what people are investing in.
Now, Trump, by being focused on America first, what's going on?
This is why I mentioned the Doge thing.
So Doge thing is interesting.
The Doge thing is resulting in a massive change in the economy as a whole, because in the long run, tens or hundreds of billions of dollars are going to be withdrawn from certain areas, and that's going to cause economic losses.
I mean, the fact that people's shows are getting canceled after USAID, It was revealed to be funding a bunch of media outlets.
Probably not entirely unrelated.
So there's going to be a massive reallocation of funds.
So let's just take a silly example, which would be you invest in mosquito netting, but then the amount of foreign aid being poured into Africa, which has been trillions and trillions of dollars.
It's just crazy.
Like 45 Marshall plans went into Africa.
It's a hole with no bottom.
But you invest in mosquito nets, and then USAID is put under spending review.
And then foreign aid to Africa goes down.
Some of that foreign aid was used to buy mosquito nets, so you don't want to invest in mosquito netting anymore.
And the first one to realize that gets out before the price goes down.
So what's happening is there's been a huge realignment in the economy with Trump, Musk, and Doge, wherein there's a whole lot of economic uncertainty, right?
So are some of these contracts going to be re-established because there's going to be lawsuits?
Well, maybe.
How much money is actually being saved?
It's hard to tell.
But there is a massive realignment.
Money, tens or hundreds of billions of dollars that were flowing in one direction are now going to go where?
Are they going to pay off the national debt?
Are they going to get the $5,000 per head check that is under contention or proposed by some members of the Trump administration?
We don't know.
But it certainly does not seem to be going to the place that it used to be going to.
So there's an economic dislocation.
And what happens is people dump the stocks.
That are supported by USAID or other kinds of spending.
They dump those stocks and they don't know what to invest in.
So there's a net drop in net economic activity because people are just holding on.
You don't know.
Right?
You don't know.
It's sort of like you get lost in the woods and you stop and you look around.
But you don't know where you're going to go yet.
Right?
And so there's a whole bunch of economic reallocation.
What's going to happen in Europe?
If there's a potential end to the Ukraine-Russia war, that's going to also change things economically.
If America starts to withdraw its economic support of defense in Europe, then Europe is going to have to change its policies significantly.
And one of the reasons that Europe is dealing with some of the migration issues is because America has taken over.
It's military defense to a large degree, and therefore they have more money for the welfare state that tends to attract a lot of migrants, so that is also going to be a significant reallocation.
If America is no longer driving this kind of stuff, will European states, and I'm thinking France in particular, but others as well, will European states have to deregulate to some degree?
In other words, if America starts deregulating, which really is a big goal of Trump, it was in his first term, and it's even more so in his second term, Then it's going to draw a lot of talent and capital and investment to America at the expense of Europe at the time and European bills going up because America is pulling back from its defense commitments.
And so Europe is going to have to deregulate if it wants to stay at all competitive.
I don't know.
Europe is hell-bent on suicide these days, so who knows?
But if they do want to survive, they're going to have to deregulate.
Now, if Europe deregulates, all of the companies that have adapted and to some degree, quote, Amounts of regulation are going to face more competition and therefore the larger, bulkier European companies are going to be less competitive and they'll be, you know, it's dinosaurs versus the mammals, right?
The mammals are way smaller but way more nimble and end up flourishing in the long run.
So with deregulation, again, people will see these big, propped up, through regulation, large corporations in Europe and they'll say, well, if the deregulation comes along, then...
Smaller companies will start nibbling away at the market share.
So we'll sell the big companies, but we don't know which small companies to invest in yet.
So again, there's just a pause, there's a holding, and that looks like lower economic activity.
The other big question with Doge, which is very interesting, is if you just look at the cuts in government workers, right?
They're aiming to cut a lot of government workers.
Now, the big question is for investors, I think, It's something like this.
Are they going to get jobs?
It's a big question.
If the government workers are competent, efficient, and hardworking, they're probably going to stay.
So the people who are shed the most are the people who are going to be least attractive for people to hire in the free market, in the private sector, right?
So if there's some, you know, 50-year-old pear-shaped, spotty-bottomed doofus, Who's been treading water and pushing paper for 30 years?
Do you want to hire them in your startup?
Well, probably not.
Because they're going to be resentful, they're going to be resistant, they're going to be lazy and entitled and so on, right?
So are they going to want to work for significantly less money and benefits, which generally happens in the free market?
Are the people let go of the public from the public sector?
Are they going to be hireable?
Now, if they are going to be hireable, then what's happening is you're reducing the cost of government and you're increasing the efficiency.
And productivity output in the free market that's going to be good for the economy.
If, though, they're going to live off their savings or they can't get jobs or whatever, then they will not be contributing to the economy in that way.
And I think that investors are probably waiting to see what happens with that.
Now, the other thing, of course, the tariffs are an indication of a breakdown in negotiations.
So that's really important, right?
So if, let's just take, forget Europe for a sec, because we talked about that.
So if we just look at North America, right, like Canada, US, Mexico, the hope was that Trump would threaten tariffs and they would say, oh my gosh, that's bad.
What do you need?
And they'd work something out, right?
Now, if the tariffs go forward, that's because these three trading partners can't negotiate.
Their governments can't negotiate.
If the governments can't negotiate, that means that there's a lot of hostility and politics involved in the relationship.
Now, if there are a lot of politics, hostility, immaturity involved in the relationship between three of the world's biggest trading partners, that's going to really realign the economy.
Because you're not going to get the kind of division of labor and cross-border efficiencies and so on.
That's all going to start to fall apart with these tariffs, right?
So, of course, a lot of US and Canadian companies and Mexican companies America doesn't look out for its own interests and it's easy to take advantage of, which Trump has been complaining about since the 80s.
Now, if America does start looking out for its own interests and say, we're no longer interested in trade deficits, we're no longer interested in partnering with people who keep sending their worst people over the border to sit on our welfare state, then you are setting yourself up for a situation of significant economic realignment.
So, the companies that are easily selling into the Canadian market are going to lose some access to that market.
And they're going to have to realign who's going to make it, who's not going to make it, who has the experience.
I mean, America has allowed itself in many ways to be economically exploited for decades after decade after post-Second World War period, starting with the Marshall Plan.
But America has allowed itself to be bent over and economically railed for decades.
And that's how...
The European economy, to some degree, of course, the Chinese economy, definitely the Mexican and Canadian economies have just gotten used to winning against the lax lack of American self-interest and America first policies.
So, with Trump coming in, the breakdown of negotiations, it's like they can't reason together, so it's going to escalate.
And if it's going to escalate, that means that there's going to be A significant amount of anti-American nationalism and also anti-Canadian and anti-Mexican nationalism.
And it means that the economic dislocations are going to be much faster, which creates more uncertainty, which means people are going to sell, I assume, trades or shares in the companies which are profiting from the current situation and they won't know who to invest in, right?
If there's some race, And the fastest runner drops out, you don't exactly know who's going to win, right?
So I think that there's a certain amount of uncertainty with regards to that stuff as well.
And it is a very wild time to be around with regards to this stuff.
All right, let me just make sure I get your questions here because it does not seem to be updating.
All right, so let's get to your questions and comments.
I have more to talk about, but let's just get to your questions and comments as a whole.
I panic on the dips, then bye.
Love the ride.
What do you think of inheritance from estranged, abusive parents?
On the other hand, feel like accepting compensation and could really, on the other hand, view it as bad money.
It's not a violation of the non-aggression principle, but it may not make you very happy.
Somebody wrote on X, I've heard that you have to lose 80% of your net worth three times before you stop feeling the pain.
That's funny.
That's funny.
All right.
Great time for a live stream to listeners in Europe.
Excellent, excellent, excellent.
I found...
Okay, let's see here.
What about people selling who can't afford to take a loss?
People take, he looks, and similar to speculate.
I don't really understand that.
My apologies.
I wonder if all the laid off government workers are selling off their Bitcoin.
I don't think so.
The other thing, you know, government workers, because they live in such a bubble, and they're so isolated from market forces, government, it's interesting to see, and this is really post-COVID in particular, when They try to pull the sympathy card, like, oh, these are real people, they've got mortgages, they're very sad, it's upsetting, and so on.
When they go on social media and they see the rage, hostility, contempt, and scorn that they're heaped with, I think a lot of people in the public sector are going through a real shock when they're seeing how much people hate them.
Right?
It's really, it's tough, like, we can...
Get mandated and all that.
I'm just telling you from being on the receiving end, that's really tough.
It's really tough to realize that you just kind of hate it.
And when people say, oh, you know, but my income, blah, blah, blah.
And people are like, well, hang on, we've been taxed and you guys aren't even really doing anything.
Or all of the government workers who are complaining that they have to write a five-minute email detailing their accomplishments from last week.
The idea that that would be upsetting.
My God, I loved talking to my boss about the things I was good at.
The things that I was doing.
I was dying for that.
I was really keen to get that kind of stuff done.
So, what can I tell you?
So, people are going to go through a real crisis of realizing that they're kind of hated.
And of course, you know, the fundamental thing that's going on as well is people are upset that they're losing their jobs or might lose their jobs.
But of course, these are a lot of the same people who wanted everyone else to lose their jobs because they didn't take the joy-joy mystery juice during COVID, right?
A little tough, right?
Unfortunately, they have laid their bed and now they need to lie in it, which is they wanted people to lose their jobs and lose their freedoms for the sake of the COVID shot, which has since been proven.
Of course, to be highly questionable, to put it as mildly as possible.
So, people complaining that they're losing their jobs in the government now and in the media, when the media was baying like a bunch of hungry hyenas to tear apart anybody who didn't want to take the mystery shot.
Well, nobody, like, the good news is, no, that stuff doesn't work anymore.
Like, people don't care.
It's just like, it's open and transparent and ridiculous manipulation.
And of course, the media and the left-wing people want...
There to be people in the government because people in the government as a whole regularly vote for more government, right?
It's sort of like for somebody to go from the government to the private sector is like a woman going from being single to being married.
It just makes them go more to the right.
Because when you're on the paying side of the tax equation, you want smaller government.
When you're on the receiving side of the tax equation, you want larger government.
And of course, they'll talk about racial disparities in the firing and so on.
Two-thirds of black women with degrees work for the government.
It's wild.
Somebody says, something that's been on my mind over the past few days has been the sheer ungratefulness of Europe.
They constantly crap on us for, of all things, having a militaristic society.
But then when we even float the idea of not being Europe's primary defense force, they freak out about how it's our duty.
They depend on us in so many ways, yet talk down to us.
It only makes me want to abandon them more.
Well, the American subsidy of the US Sorry, the American subsidy of the European social welfare state has been one of the greatest disasters in human history.
To me, that's not even hyperbole in any way, shape, or form.
It's been one of the greatest disasters because it has removed them from fiscal reality.
It has removed the control of the people over their government, and it has allowed them to tinker around in massive, ridiculously expensive social programs to the detriment and possibly even to the survival of their cultures as a whole.
This is absolutely terrible.
But I understand that free money is a debt, is a drug.
Free money is a drug that's pretty hard to let go of.
And so I understand the sort of kicking and resisting and so on.
But, you know, the amazing thing about the modern world, the amazing thing about the modern world, at least I would say over the last two years or so, is that to guilt and manipulation, it stopped working.
It doesn't work anymore.
It's wild.
Because the counterexamples are so wild.
Like, so people complaining about Kash Patel and Dan Bongino being head and assistant head of the FBI. Well, are they really qualified?
It's like, well, there was that bald guy in the dress who kept stealing women's luggages at airports.
And Pete Buttigieg was not particularly qualified and so on, right?
So, It all is just so transparently manipulated.
All of the people who were saying, but all of these government workers, where are they going to get their jobs?
And then, of course, people just play back stuff like, well, you know, if you're a manufacturer and you lose your job because of the Green New Deal, you can just get a green job.
Or you go even further back, just learn to code, right?
Because that was one of the funniest things.
I talked about this in a show the other day, but it's one of the funniest things.
Really, that has happened in the modern world, in the sort of, obviously, Dr. Strangelove black humor department, is all of the reporters who just said, well, just learn the code to all of the people losing their manufacturing jobs.
But then when the reporters' jobs were threatened and people tweeted at them that they should just learn the code, they often would report that as targeted harassment and be highly offended at their own advice.
It was bouncing back on them.
Of course, it's easier for a reporter to learn to code than a guy who's been working with his hands for 30 years to learn to code.
Because, you know, you already have a computer manipulating abstract symbols.
None of this stuff is working, and this is really powerful.
It's really powerful that none of these manipulations, it's partly social media and also partly just the accumulation of hypocrisy, is so inescapable now.
But it is a wild thing to see.
I don't know.
It's sort of like, I don't know if you've ever been in a relationship.
Let's make it personal, right?
Let's make it personal.
I don't know if you've ever been in a relationship where one day you're just looking at someone who's like, and another thing, or just nagging or whatever it is, complaining and bitching and moaning, and you're just like, I don't believe you.
Like, it just, bing, there's a silver cord that just snaps, right?
There's a silver cord that just snaps.
And then you just don't believe people anymore.
They go from like, okay, maybe, maybe, maybe, yeah, yeah, yeah, you've got a good point, to just bing!
No credibility.
You're a complete manipulator.
Everything you say is a lie, even the punctuation.
Right?
So, I don't know if you've had that experience.
I've had it a few times in my life where I just look at someone and I say, my God, you never tell the truth.
Everything is a manipulation.
Everything is gaslighting.
Everything is a maneuver.
There's nothing real, nothing authentic, nothing genuine.
And it's usually when you catch people in blatant moral contradictions.
And so that has really been the most amazingly healthy thing that has happened as a whole.
Germany still seems to be prey to it, but the failure and collapse of moralizing is just wild.
All right.
Hello.
First time catching yourself live.
Listener since 2012-ish.
Thank you for being a great resource for myself to grow from and for your contributions to the world.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
Somebody says, biggest dip to buy from all markets ever is unvaccinated women to marry before the jab's consequences are widely recognized.
That's interesting.
Yeah, it's a freeing experience when you just look at someone and you say, damn, I'm never going to get the truth from you.
And it's just amazing.
It is just amazing.
When that happens, it's so freeing.
It's so liberating.
From a supporter of Subscribestar, does the United States' global military presence and enforcement of the dollar as a reserve currency counterbalance the exploitation of trade deficits?
Interested on your thoughts in that regard?
In other words, we escape some of the effects of money printing by forcing demand globally.
So, of course, enforcing the global reserve currency of the United States artificially inflates the American economy.
So, you're right.
It's a very good point that there's a mutual, right?
There's a mutuality to it.
So, taking over the defense and allowing trade deficits with other countries benefits those other countries, but at the same time, enforcing the reserve.
Currency status of the US dollar artificially inflates the value of the dollar, which artificially inflates the value of the US economy as a whole.
And so, yeah, if the big goal, you know, if Doge gets in, and I don't know what's going on at the moment with this, it kind of comes and goes.
It's like one of these mirages at a great distance, kind of shimmering in and out of existence.
But, of course, if Doge gets into The Pentagon.
Well, there's a couple of things.
So if Doge gets into the Pentagon, and if Doge plus the new DOJ is going to be able to go after the fraudsters who ripped off hundreds of billions of dollars over the course of COVID, that's going to be something.
Because a significant amount of the US economy, a significant amount of all statist economies, is based on Pillaging the shit out of the government, like just ripping off the government like crazy.
That is a very large proportion of the economy.
If Doge gets in and sort of cuts fraud, waste, and abuse, then there's going to be a massive amount of economic shifting.
And some of it is straight-up fraud, but some of it is not.
So let's say that America stops being the world's policeman and starts to withdraw.
Its forces from around the world or its military commitments around the world stops running all this foreign aid.
Color revolution stuff.
Well, what happens to the economy?
There's going to be massive shifts, because wherever the money goes, it's like dumping sugar in a field.
That's where the ants are going to go, right?
So wherever the money goes, people follow, and the economy aligns and configures itself along those lines.
And so when the money shifts, it stops here, it starts going over there, maybe it's just saved, or maybe it goes to pay interest or the debt.
When there's a big shift in money, and the Trump administration is a big shift in money, right?
If they find out what's really going on with the Pentagon and spending, I think it's going to be pretty tough for the war machines to keep going at their rate.
If the war machines don't keep going at their rate, the current rate, then there's just going to be a massive change in the economy, and it's going to hurt first, right?
You stop all addictions, you get a lot of benefits, but it sure as shit hurts first, the withdrawal and the pain and the agony, so it sure as hell.
When Doge starts going after those massive defense industry contracts, oh man, yeah, it's going to be really wild to see.
I mean, I think people are deeply shocked at how little of their culture is A free expression of people's personal beliefs and how much of what they call their culture is just astroturfed money and paid propaganda.
I mean, I was talking about this the other day, just how much money is hundreds of millions of dollars being spent to promote concepts of racism and so on.
It's like, okay, so how much is racism an issue if it's not funded domestically to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars?
You know, hundreds of billions of dollars, sorry, hundreds of millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars, sorry, to correct.
That can buy you a lot of allegiance and a lot of seeming agreement, right?
And what is the situation that happens when the left is no longer being paid to do these entirely artificial Riots and protests, right?
If they're not paying people to do that, you actually might get a sense of what people actually believe, right?
Like you never meet the actual person when they're in the throes of addiction, right?
Because all you do is you're meeting somebody who's either high or scheming to get high.
So you don't actually meet the person in any authentic or genuine way.
And people have not met the real economy.
Hopefully they will.
Hopefully they will.
But...
And they certainly haven't met the real culture, and most people have no idea what other people believe, right?
I mean, I was reading about, like, it was 83 or 84 of the global warming studies, you know, had significant conflicts of interest that were not identified, right?
And so who knows what it really is, right?
Who knows?
Who knows?
Let's see if I can dig it up.
I think I did.
All right.
Let's just do any of the last questions or comments.
I just wanted to dip in and say hi.
Of course, thank you for your support and everything of all of that.
I imagined the end of The God of Atheists.
I'm not going to give that spoiler, but yeah.
I think so.
Yeah, it's going to be fascinating.
You know, what if they spent billions of dollars on some jet fighter that doesn't work too well when, what was it John Stewart was saying, when the next war is going to be fought with drones anyway?
I realize it's not today's topic, but I'd love to hear your perspective on the Ukraine situation.
So you can go to FDR Podcasts.
I was talking about this more than a decade ago about what was going on in Ukraine.
I mean, obviously, I hope the war ends.
I hope the war ends.
I hope the war ends.
What were they saying?
That Trump said Zelensky was at a single-digit approval rating?
And then people, immediately you get this, oh no, he's at 57% approval rating.
It's like, well, that's not possible.
When a lot of women have fled and a lot of men are trying to flee the country, there's no way.
Thanks, Steph.
Always happy to catch the live stream.
All right, any other last thoughts, questions, comments?
I understand how the boomers say, wait a minute, North Korea just reached in and hacked and withdrew $1.5 billion worth of crypto.
I can understand being goosed by that.
Of course, absolutely.
And this is one of the challenges, of course, of crypto, that in order to make it the most efficient, oftentimes it's on exchanges, but not your keys, not your coins, right?
That is a big...
A big challenge to deal with.
The way that I'd like to see it dealt with, of course, is to remove the corporate liability shield so that if you lose $1.5 billion and you're in charge of a company or a senior in the company, then you get to lose your house and all of that kind of stuff.
Corporations are invented to make sure that the rich are invested in statism because they get to avoid responsibility for bad decisions.
All right.
Well, thanks, everyone.
I really do appreciate your time today.
Have a great afternoon.
We'll talk to you tomorrow night.
Lots of love.
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