True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 444: WAGMI Baby One More Time
Aired: 2025-03-14
Duration: 01:37:42


=== Welcome To Franzakcoin (03:47) ===

[00:00:00]  Cardano, Ribbitcoin, Zergo, Mofa, Pirate, Solanyi, Solano, Sigbo, Fuchsia, DuCoin, Token Market, MarketMaker, Maker Space.
[00:00:26]  All of these things are part of what we call the crypto ecosystem, or as some call it, Web 3.0.
[00:00:34]  We have with us today one of the foremost experts on various things to do with blockchains and other cryptographic things on the internet, Liz Frankzak, the owner of...
[00:00:50]  Wait, why did you just not say my name right?
[00:00:52]  Franzakcoin.
[00:00:54]  And of course, Liz Space.
[00:00:56]  Liz, welcome to the show.
[00:00:57]  Thanks.
[00:00:58]  Happy to be here.
[00:00:59]  I am so glad you're back.
[00:01:01]  I'm so glad you're back.
[00:01:02]  Could you imagine if I had to do this episode without you?
[00:01:04]  You abandoned me.
[00:01:05]  Oh, I thought you were doing a bit.
[00:01:07]  I was doing a bit.
[00:01:08]  I was doing a bit.
[00:01:09]  We've gone to the bit to.
[00:01:10]  I didn't abandon you.
[00:01:11]  You abandoned me.
[00:01:12]  No.
[00:01:16]  Yes.
[00:01:17]  You said you were going to kill me.
[00:01:18]  I did not say that.
[00:01:20]  You said if Liz quit the show, you would kill me.
[00:01:21]  Liz, I did not say that.
[00:01:23]  He's fucking gaslighting right now.
[00:01:24]  I didn't say that.
[00:01:25]  I mean, he said that he was going to kill me.
[00:01:27]  I would only quit the show if I was dead, which means that you would have to avenge my death.
[00:01:32]  So then I think that that would be appropriate.
[00:01:34]  Well, because that implies that one of us would have killed you.
[00:01:37]  I would never kill either of you.
[00:01:38]  But I don't know if, you know what I'm saying?
[00:01:43]  We're all alive right now, and that's the important thing.
[00:01:45]  Yeah, we're Wagny.
[00:01:48]  Welcome back to the real True Anon.
[00:02:12]  Phrase.
[00:02:14]  Yes, my ape.
[00:02:16]  What?
[00:02:19]  Yes, my ape.
[00:02:20]  Hello.
[00:02:21]  Hello.
[00:02:23]  It's such a pleasure to be back.
[00:02:25]  It's a pleasure to be here.
[00:02:29]  Did you miss me?
[00:02:30]  I did.
[00:02:31]  Thank you.
[00:02:32]  We're back.
[00:02:33]  Hello.
[00:02:33]  We're back.
[00:02:34]  I'm Brace.
[00:02:35]  I'm Liz.
[00:02:36]  We're joined by Producer Young Chomsky.
[00:02:38]  And you know it, you love it.
[00:02:39]  It's Truan.
[00:02:41]  Hello.
[00:02:42]  Hello.
[00:02:42]  Liz, we actually should probably just do an episode about some of the stuff that's going on with the domestic terror stuff with Tesla and everything that's going on right now.
[00:02:50]  Everything's going crazy.
[00:02:51]  But I got to tell you, I have been keen Cybertrucks for years.
[00:02:56]  Don't.
[00:02:56]  That is a joke.
[00:02:57]  It's a joke.
[00:02:58]  Don't put that out.
[00:02:59]  I've been keying keying them with your keys.
[00:03:02]  No, that's wait.
[00:03:05]  Question.
[00:03:06]  Can they trace a keying to a key?
[00:03:08]  Can you dust for keys?
[00:03:09]  No.
[00:03:10]  Yeah.
[00:03:10]  No, because then there would be a lot more, I'd be in some trouble.
[00:03:15]  I key a lot of cars.
[00:03:16]  But you, but you, the mistake you make is you write brace rules.
[00:03:19]  I do write.
[00:03:21]  This is, of course, a callback to when I was arrested, my first arrest of my life for writing brace rules.
[00:03:26]  And that's why they call me the queen of callbacks.
[00:03:28]  They call her the queen of callbacks.
[00:03:29]  Dennis Miller of podcasts.
[00:03:31]  Dennis Miller.
[00:03:33]  Another callback.
[00:03:34]  That's a comedian.
[00:03:35]  Some say.
[00:03:36]  The leather jacket.
[00:03:36]  It's debatable, I think.
[00:03:38]  You would be the Dennis Miller.
[00:03:40]  No.
[00:03:40]  I could never be the commenter.
[00:03:44]  Who would you be?
[00:03:44]  Queen Latifah?
[00:03:45]  Well, that would be fantastic.
[00:03:47]  I would love it.

=== Crypto's Seller's Remorse (15:42) ===

[00:03:48]  Oh, God.
[00:03:49]  She's still kicking, right?
[00:03:50]  We should get her on the show.
[00:03:52]  Oh, my God.
[00:03:53]  You really didn't watch the Oscars.
[00:03:54]  No, was she at the Oscars?
[00:03:56]  Hello, everyone.
[00:03:57]  Hello.
[00:04:00]  This is our Oscar special.
[00:04:01]  We're talking about crypto today.
[00:04:03]  We are.
[00:04:05]  You know, it's not that we want to keep talking about crypto.
[00:04:08]  We don't like doing these episodes.
[00:04:09]  Crypto keeps making us talk about it.
[00:04:12]  This is something that I think we do need to tell people.
[00:04:14]  This isn't like our pet thing that we're like.
[00:04:17]  It somehow has become one of our beats.
[00:04:19]  You love crypto.
[00:04:20]  Here's the thing.
[00:04:22]  And I sit back and think about this quite often, more often than I should, because I should really stop thinking about everything.
[00:04:30]  I should have bought Bitcoin when I was 40.
[00:04:34]  Yeah.
[00:04:35]  Try 13.
[00:04:36]  But anyway.
[00:04:37]  I did.
[00:04:38]  10 years in prison.
[00:04:40]  So a lot of things that kind of started as joke truanon beats have sort of all cohered into the Trump administration and into our present.
[00:04:51]  I do think about that a lot.
[00:04:53]  I do.
[00:04:53]  Like, really, like, was it our third, fourth episode that was about Brock Pierce?
[00:04:58]  Yeah.
[00:04:58]  Like, that's fucking crazy.
[00:05:00]  I know.
[00:05:00]  Not to mention, obviously, we, you know, we are the foremost experts on Elon Musk and Tesla, obviously.
[00:05:07]  But also, I mean, everything in between, you know, teal, crypto, Israel.
[00:05:14]  I mean, there's just, it's, it kind of blows my mind a little bit.
[00:05:18]  And all of this stuff now sort of snowballing with the Trump administration, accelerating, I find myself doing the Kathy because I can't stand it, but it is sort of impeding on our reality.
[00:05:39]  I don't like it.
[00:05:41]  You know, I gotta tell you, I don't like it.
[00:05:43]  No.
[00:05:44]  It is.
[00:05:44]  I mean, granted, we can talk about it because we thankfully know about it.
[00:05:49]  I just thought we were covering stupid shit and then it became the government.
[00:05:52]  It is.
[00:05:53]  Well, we were, and we do, and it is.
[00:05:56]  And it did.
[00:05:57]  Yeah.
[00:05:58]  I just, it's crazy to me.
[00:05:59]  I know.
[00:06:00]  And you know what?
[00:06:01]  And why would you want this?
[00:06:03]  Like, this is just, it's, who, why?
[00:06:08]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:06:09]  Don't ask me.
[00:06:10]  Just wag me, baby.
[00:06:11]  Wag me.
[00:06:12]  Here to wag with us is Jacob Silverman.
[00:06:30]  I love this shit.
[00:06:33]  While YouTube birds were yapping or squawking or whatever you do up in your little trees, your fiat trees, I've been down here looking at my portfolio.
[00:06:46]  Now, many people know that I invest heavily in several different blockchains.
[00:06:52]  Web3, things like that, various artworks that are created algorithmically, sometimes including music and sometimes generated by AI-generative technologies such as the ones that are on the internet.
[00:07:04]  I am right now.
[00:07:06]  So they walked in on me.
[00:07:07]  I was in the studio and I had a cyber gun in my digital mouth and I was about to pull the motherfucking bit trigger because things are not going great for Brace.
[00:07:19]  My Bitcoin is slightly up, but it's down from where it was two weeks ago.
[00:07:24]  My Doji is at 0.016757.
[00:07:29]  No, 93 cents right now.
[00:07:32]  And my Trump coin is down 73% since I don't really know how to read this app, so I don't know from when that is, but possibly yesterday.
[00:07:40]  I am about five seconds away from killing myself.
[00:07:44]  Three, two.
[00:07:46]  Don't do it.
[00:07:47]  Jacob Silverman is here.
[00:07:49]  To save you.
[00:07:50]  No.
[00:07:51]  Oh.
[00:07:51]  To pull the fucking trigger.
[00:07:52]  To pull the fucking trigger.
[00:07:54]  Because I, you know what's interesting, Liz?
[00:07:56]  What?
[00:07:57]  We have a hater in the studio with us today.
[00:08:01]  We have a fucking hater.
[00:08:02]  And we are not letting you leave this room.
[00:08:04]  We're going to kill you in here today because Liz, Young Chomsky, and myself have put everything true and on into coin.
[00:08:10]  And you are out there jibber-jabbering on your motherfucking, you know, libs of TikTok ass, fucking TikTok account, Blue Sky, fucking what other woke one?
[00:08:18]  Mastodon, whatever, you know, what other ones dedicated to various woke projects and stuff saying that this crypto shit is not working and you will not be living unless you appease me during this interview.
[00:08:29]  So welcome to the show, Jacob Silverman.
[00:08:32]  There's a lot on the line.
[00:08:33]  Thank you.
[00:08:34]  Thank you for having me.
[00:08:37]  I wasn't kidding.
[00:08:38]  I'm going.
[00:08:38]  Trump is down, dude.
[00:08:40]  Trump coin.
[00:08:42]  Yeah, but to me, there's no difference.
[00:08:44]  To me, it's the same.
[00:08:45]  He's a human coin.
[00:08:46]  And he has become coin.
[00:08:48]  How did you not get out of that already?
[00:08:50]  How did I not get out of that?
[00:08:51]  Because every time, this is a little behind the scenes tip for people.
[00:08:54]  Every time that we talk about some financial, every time Liz is like, we have to do an episode on this or I'll kill you.
[00:08:59]  That doesn't happen.
[00:09:00]  Or, well, it's implied.
[00:09:02]  I invest a little amount in that so that I get notifications from Robinhood about what's going on with it.
[00:09:08]  So that when I talk to Liz in the future, I'm not even kidding.
[00:09:10]  I sound like I know what I'm like following stuff and I know what I'm talking about.
[00:09:16]  Welcome.
[00:09:17]  Thank you.
[00:09:18]  We were going to have you on last week and then we bumped it because the White House just had their first big, what, what was it called? Digital Bitcoin Conference, where they had all business leaders all together.
[00:09:37]  Plus the FIFA guy.
[00:09:39]  Plus, oddly, the FIFA guy.
[00:09:41]  The FIFA guy.
[00:09:42]  But also, that is not that surprising.
[00:09:44]  Not exactly.
[00:09:44]  When you're looking at kind of like global racketeering, you got to include it.
[00:09:50]  He wants to learn about new payment networks for bribery.
[00:09:52]  I mean, clearly.
[00:09:53]  Totally.
[00:09:53]  He's probably one of the biggest users.
[00:09:56]  But they all gathered at the White House pre-Tesla December to Remember event and to talk about Bitcoin, specifically the newly announced, what, strategic reserve?
[00:10:10]  It's the strategic Bitcoin reserve, and then there's also a crypto reserve.
[00:10:16]  The digital asset stockpile.
[00:10:18]  Exactly.
[00:10:19]  So it's a twofer.
[00:10:20]  So, Jacob, I understand that you are presumably with a last name, Jewish, live in New York City.
[00:10:29]  That's right.
[00:10:30]  You are a journalist.
[00:10:31]  Yep.
[00:10:31]  So you don't maybe understand that in the real world where the rest of us fucking work, oil is strategic.
[00:10:37]  Cheese is strategic.
[00:10:39]  Women are strategic.
[00:10:41]  And the U.S. keeps a huge stockpile of each of these things in different various crates or whatever in mountains.
[00:10:48]  What I don't understand, because this is kind of your wheelhouse.
[00:10:50]  How is there a strategic reserve for Bitcoin?
[00:10:53]  Let's back up to the beginning here.
[00:10:55]  Sure.
[00:10:55]  Where did this idea come from?
[00:10:57]  Because it's strategic reserve is, well, there's the implication of strategy there and a reserve that we are going to need it.
[00:11:03]  Right, right.
[00:11:04]  Is there going to be a situation where it's like break glass for an emergency for Bitcoin?
[00:11:08]  Yeah.
[00:11:09]  You know, what people have been saying, of course, is that if the idea of like some strategic reserve is a little silly because if you're hedging against the dollar, well, one, what are you doing?
[00:11:17]  Because if the dollar collapses, we're all in trouble.
[00:11:20]  Bitcoin's not going to save anybody.
[00:11:21]  Well, also, we have the dollar.
[00:11:23]  We're the dollar.
[00:11:24]  Yeah, of course.
[00:11:24]  And the whole beauty of being the global hegemon that prints the world's reserve currency is that you can keep doing it.
[00:11:32]  So it doesn't make any sense.
[00:11:35]  But this idea has been going around for a few years, well before Trump had his crypto conversion, because the government does seize a lot of Bitcoin because it's used for crime a lot.
[00:11:45]  And so it's seized as a matter of course in all kinds of court cases at all levels and in various other instances.
[00:11:52]  And I think for a while, the industry has been sort of salivaying, like, how can we do something with that, with that government crypto, or how can we get our hands on it?
[00:12:00]  You know, it's almost like seed money for something.
[00:12:03]  Other governments, of course, have a lot of crypto.
[00:12:05]  Like Bulgaria at one point had like the most Bitcoin in the world, I think.
[00:12:08]  But it's Bulgaria.
[00:12:09]  It made like a huge organized crime bust.
[00:12:11]  But it's like, you know, it's a little different now where their timeout basically like. the government's going to start day trading crypto practically.
[00:12:18]  Like they have different excuses like, oh, this is going to be revenue neutral and things like that.
[00:12:22]  But the basic idea is to get the government involved in the crypto markets and help provide a floor for asset prices.
[00:12:28]  Right.
[00:12:29]  I mean, from what I understand, like, you know, Trump, Trump's beautiful sons have been involved in this world sort of in the interregnum of the Biden years.
[00:12:39]  And Trump realized probably via his, you know, dysgenic children that he could kind of get a lot of support from this sector and have that as like a big in to the tech sector.
[00:12:49]  And so, you know, he's spoken at like Bitcoin conferences multiple times, I think, but very spectacularly last year when RFK did as well, because RFK was really positioned to be the Bitcoiners.
[00:12:59]  Yeah.
[00:12:59]  Bitcoin.
[00:13:00]  He got superseded.
[00:13:01]  I mean, he was like the dog coin people liked him.
[00:13:04]  Every coin motherfucker liked him.
[00:13:05]  And then Trump goes out there and he's like really making a lot of promises.
[00:13:09]  It's super unclear.
[00:13:11]  In fact, I would actually say it's super clear that Trump doesn't necessarily know what Bitcoin is from the way that he talks about it.
[00:13:18]  I've seen him give several interviews.
[00:13:20]  I know that he knows it's a digital asset.
[00:13:23]  I'm not sure.
[00:13:23]  I think he's probably in the same boat as the rest of us.
[00:13:26]  We're like, I don't really see the use of this.
[00:13:28]  He said so in like 2021, by the way.
[00:13:31]  Yes.
[00:13:31]  Very prominent.
[00:13:32]  He was like, this doesn't seem to have any use value.
[00:13:35]  And it was what you're saying up until that, like, he had to make the big deal with RFK that he starts embracing crypto.
[00:13:42]  I remember I was working in the New Republic at the time and I wrote just like, you know, a daily take.
[00:13:46]  Trump had said that Bitcoin seemed like a scam because it competed with the dollar.
[00:13:51]  And that's actually a reasonable thing to say.
[00:13:53]  And I wrote like an 800-word take that morning for TNR.
[00:13:56]  So I remember that.
[00:13:57]  Like he actually had a somewhat grounded opinion about it, but obviously that changed.
[00:14:03]  So the reserve is made up.
[00:14:06]  I mean, and he promised this from like the get-go.
[00:14:08]  And there's been a lot of hype in the coin community, which I'm not, but a certain Protestant diminutive friend that I have is a large member of, big time member of.
[00:14:21]  He has gotten a lot of support from them because basically it's like, if this happens, kind of the thinking behind this was like, if the government creates some kind of reserve, we didn't know what it was going to look like.
[00:14:31]  But if that happens, like there might be like a big surge in the market and all of our coins are going to go up.
[00:14:36]  And so when Trump was elected, I mean, everybody watched in delight, as I'm sure all our listeners did, as your Bitcoin portfolio soared.
[00:14:43]  Yeah, wag me.
[00:14:44]  Wag me.
[00:14:45]  Wag me.
[00:14:45]  Wag me not, however, because Bitcoin did not soar.
[00:14:49]  It kind of yeah, so the government, the government announced that it's not buying Bitcoin, that it just has Bitcoin.
[00:15:01]  It's a hodler, and it's going to continue to hodle it.
[00:15:05]  It seems so, but the way they're talking also is, I mean, Trump has said at that crypto conference that they had, like, oh, you're not supposed to sell it, right?
[00:15:13]  He said something like that.
[00:15:14]  He's like, You didn't know that?
[00:15:15]  He's like, Who the hell knows?
[00:15:16]  Yeah, and he said, Who the hell knows?
[00:15:18]  To be fair, I agree.
[00:15:20]  I agree too.
[00:15:21]  But, you know, they first definitely want to sort of take a census or an audit of like where is crypto in the various government accounts and then kind of put it all together.
[00:15:30]  Wait, so can you explain that?
[00:15:31]  Because, like, how, how does the government have Bitcoin?
[00:15:34]  So, like, if the F, so for example, let's take the Silk Road as an example, which is a major case, but this happens in much smaller cases too.
[00:15:41]  But, you know, when the government took down the Silk Road, the dark web drug market, whose founder was recently pardoned by Trump, they seized a hell of a lot of Bitcoin that was in the wallets controlled by the founder there.
[00:15:56]  Billions of dollars worth.
[00:15:57]  And then there was also, but this being crypto, some of that money was stolen from the Silk Road.
[00:16:04]  Some of the cops working on that case stole money and then went to drugs.
[00:16:08]  Do you think they had the patience to hodle?
[00:16:10]  Because I bet some of them sold so early and are now looking at those prices and are just like.
[00:16:16]  Well, actually, one thing I meant to say is that there is that sort of seller's remorse that, and the government, people in the government have been talking about that, like Trump and but Sachs specifically, David Sachs has said like the American people missed out on X billion dollars worth of price appreciation in Bitcoin because what has happened over the years is that, yes, the government is holding Bitcoin, but not in the hodling sense.
[00:16:40]  Like, I believe what they usually do is periodically some of it is sold into the market, kind of at that daily market price through, I believe, Coinbase.
[00:16:48]  And the Marshall Service has a contract with Coinbase to custody Bitcoin.
[00:16:52]  And every time that happens, isn't it like incredibly destabilizing to the market?
[00:16:57]  It can be because it's like unleashing a flood of liquidity into the market and it causes crazy volatility in the pricing.
[00:17:03]  Right.
[00:17:04]  So there are probably ways in which to slow that down maybe and like and sort of more slowly release that into the market and bring some return for the government.
[00:17:11]  But the fact that Sachs is timeout like missed out profits or profits that they missed out on, that tells me that like they're looking for profits.
[00:17:18]  They're going to look to trade or to make money off of this, which is just at its core is not what the government's supposed to do.
[00:17:24]  The government is not in the profit-making business.
[00:17:26]  It's not supposed to be involved in daily markets like that.
[00:17:29]  So this is what I truly just do not understand.
[00:17:31]  And I don't understand.
[00:17:33]  And I've said this before on the show, and I'll say it again.
[00:17:35]  Crypto makes zero sense to me on any level, except for like the most basic one, which I think must be too stupid to be the reality.
[00:17:44]  But what Trump is saying during this, and sort of what the implication of the reserve is, is like this stuff is just held by the U.S. government for some reason, and it's going to be held indefinitely, as Trump kind of like jokes about.
[00:17:58]  Like, we're going to hold it.
[00:17:59]  We're going to hold it.
[00:18:00]  But then, you know, you have David Sachs saying we missed that on all this profit.
[00:18:04]  We, like, that's going into your bank account.
[00:18:07]  We missed out on all this profit.
[00:18:09]  I don't understand how the government is going to be.
[00:18:10]  It's not even that much, to be honest.
[00:18:11]  It's like, I mean, like, it's a lot of money.
[00:18:13]  It's like 20 billion, which is like a big number.
[00:18:15]  But when you're talking about government revenues, that's not a big deal.
[00:18:18]  But like, it's this is the thing with like all the coins that I just like, am I, are they, everyone says they're holding it because they're trying to find the right time to sell it to make more money, which will drive the price down and cause other people to sell and crash the market, right?
[00:18:34]  That's like the dream of selling crypto, no?
[00:18:36]  It's a little bit of a game of chicken in some ways because like they're trying to hold it until I think until the price is right, like you're describing.
[00:18:43]  But then, you know, if a whale dumps into the market, then the price crashes.
[00:18:47]  So you have to sort of treat it for have some kind of strategy about it.
[00:18:51]  But this is what I'm saying.
[00:18:52]  Like, and all the crypto spaces, you hear just people being like, I'm holding, I'm holding, I'm holding, I'm holding.
[00:18:58]  I'm going to hold this forever.
[00:18:59]  Diamond hands or whatever.
[00:19:01]  Like, you know, all that kind of shit.
[00:19:02]  But like, everyone's just saying that to encourage other people to hold it so that you can sell at the time that you think is right.
[00:19:08]  That's what makes it into a confidence game for me.
[00:19:10]  When people are telling you, like, you know, don't sell, don't sell, but also buy back in.
[00:19:14]  You need this.
[00:19:14]  Don't sell, don't sell.
[00:19:16]  Like, if they don't want you doing that or a core part of like of what this market does, that there's, to me, a shady reason for that.
[00:19:24]  And that's because, you know, this all operates on the greater fool theory where you're just trying to find someone who thinks your bags are worth more than they are.

=== Crypto Confidence Game (15:21) ===

[00:19:31]  And is some of the Bitcoin of the guy that Trump pardoned, Ross Albright?
[00:19:36]  I mean, that's a lot of Bitcoin the U.S. seized, not only from him, but the guys who worked for the FBI who stole it from him.
[00:19:44]  Is that going to be in the reserve?
[00:19:46]  Because they freed this guy and they're like, oh, actually, you know, whatever, it's all good.
[00:19:50]  But we're taking his money.
[00:19:52]  And we see that with pretty much everyone, I guess it's that's true.
[00:19:54]  We do lots of asset seizures.
[00:19:56]  And actually, which was another thing that someone mentioned to me, you know, the government does seize crypto as a matter of course investigations, but like, you know, we've seen how asset seizures go.
[00:20:06]  If cops know that like crypto is sort of like on the table to just be seized and then used somehow, like we might start seeing a lot more asset seizures of just of crypto, like on local levels and stuff.
[00:20:18]  But there is some question, I think, whether Ross Albricht will ask for his money back.
[00:20:22]  Because I don't know what the legal situation is, but he was pardoned.
[00:20:25]  So he may ask for some of it back.
[00:20:27]  There have been also, of course, some crypto companies that set up some wallets for him and people were donating money to him.
[00:20:33]  And he was already.
[00:20:37]  He went to Congress and met with someone, maybe Thomas Massey or someone like that.
[00:20:42]  Of course.
[00:20:42]  Yeah, I think it was Thomas.
[00:20:44]  Of course.
[00:20:45]  So we're going to be strategically holding Bitcoin a la Fort Knox.
[00:20:51]  Yeah.
[00:20:52]  Which means it actually won't be there.
[00:20:56]  But so this was, this is set up to, so it's going to be all of the asset or all of the Bitcoin that all of the agencies already have, right?
[00:21:04]  Have already seized from criminal activity or whatever.
[00:21:07]  Everyone was bummed because they thought they were going to announce that the government would start buying Bitcoin.
[00:21:12]  But they said that they won't be doing that, but kind of left the door open that that could be a move down the line.
[00:21:20]  I think that's where they want to get to.
[00:21:21]  I think they have the reason why they started with just saying, what does the government already have is because they don't have to go through appropriations in the Senate or anything like that or in Congress.
[00:21:32]  And so they don't have to appropriate new money or claim to divert money.
[00:21:36]  I think they can just say, we already have this and work from there.
[00:21:39]  And I wouldn't be surprised if maybe they'll say like, oh, we're going to sell some of the Bitcoin and then use that to buy crypto or if they re-divert money.
[00:21:46]  I think the goal is just going to be to start buying those tokens, all the shitcoins, Solana, Cardano, all this stuff.
[00:21:52]  But I think they're going to try to find a way around like the normal appropriations process.
[00:21:56]  So my question, this is like so basic, but so this is operating in the treasury.
[00:22:01]  Like how is this actually working?
[00:22:02]  Like who's in charge of this?
[00:22:04]  How is it managed?
[00:22:05]  Like do we know any of that?
[00:22:06]  That's a good question.
[00:22:07]  I'm not sure.
[00:22:08]  I think it would run through the treasury and Besant seems supportive of it.
[00:22:15]  Because it's kind of Luttnick's also like little pet project.
[00:22:18]  I think Luttnick would love to have control over it.
[00:22:20]  I don't know if he will be allowed so close to it.
[00:22:24]  But for those who are listening who may not know, Howard Luttnick, the Secretary of Commerce, is the former, until recently, the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, a New York financial services firm, which is basically the U.S. banker for Tether, which if you listen to this show, you should know about Tether.
[00:22:39]  And his company owns 5% of Tether.
[00:22:41]  So Luttnick really wanted to be Treasury Secretary and wanted to be the crypto guy right there.
[00:22:46]  He still, of course, is going to have a role in this stuff, I think, but not the prime supervisory policymaking profiteering role that he wanted.
[00:22:54]  Yeah, in fact, I think Elon really was pushing for him to be Treasury Secretary.
[00:22:59]  And everything that I think everyone has kind of seen from Luttnick in the past month and a half has been like, well, thank God you're not the Treasury Secretary.
[00:23:08]  Yeah, like there were articles about him in the fall about he's not very well liked on Wall Street.
[00:23:12]  I mean, this is a successful guy, but people just think he's a prick.
[00:23:16]  Well, and also just like, you know, let's call a spade a spade here.
[00:23:19]  You know, all these other Goldman, Citibank, like, if you work for them, you're likely going to live.
[00:23:25]  Cantor Fitzgerald has an insane kill-death ratio because of the tragedy of 9-11.
[00:23:31]  And I just wouldn't go to work for that.
[00:23:32]  You know what I mean?
[00:23:33]  I mean, it's just ridiculous.
[00:23:34]  He can't take care of his own people.
[00:23:36]  He himself, though, has been very lucky individually.
[00:23:39]  Exactly.
[00:23:39]  And that's because he sacrificed those souls during 9-11 in order to increase his portfolio.
[00:23:44]  But that's a topic for a different podcast.
[00:23:46]  And so we're creating the strategic Bitcoin reserve.
[00:23:50]  Okay, wonderful.
[00:23:51]  200,000 Bitcoins.
[00:23:53]  The Bitcoin price is not happy about that.
[00:23:56]  It's going down.
[00:23:57]  And yeah, and I think that's revealing too is that like you both have mentioned this, I think, a little bit.
[00:24:01]  They've made all these attempts so far to juice the crypto markets and it hasn't worked really.
[00:24:05]  Or like it works for six hours, which says something, of course, about crypto and its limited viability, but also maybe says something about like, I don't know, we all thought that even they thought like, okay, they get in there, they start putting money into crypto or supporting it on a government level, and then all the bags will inflate.
[00:24:24]  And it's kind of a problem for them, I think, if they can't even pull off their own scheme.
[00:24:28]  What's funny, we were talking about this before we started recording, and this is a little off topic, but there seems to be, there was a kind of like coming into this administration, Bitcoin people, kind of everyone adjacent on the right, even sort of just like general kind of like art crypto kind of like trend people or whatever were like, oh, we're going to see this.
[00:24:49]  Like now we're getting back to the like Trump mania of the market and like everything's going to be crazy.
[00:24:54]  It's boom, boom time, like 80s, whatever.
[00:24:57]  Let's go.
[00:24:58]  The age of excess is back.
[00:25:00]  And it has been the exact opposite, even as these guys are like actively trying to juice a lot of stuff, like you're saying.
[00:25:07]  And it almost seems kind of sad, like these kind of like sad, desperate pleas to kind of make this kind of like American psycho moment like happen again.
[00:25:16]  And yet like nothing in the culture and the political economy is like working to kind of actually make that happen.
[00:25:24]  You know what I mean?
[00:25:25]  Yeah, that's a good point.
[00:25:25]  There's a desperation there.
[00:25:26]  I mean, right after the election and around inauguration, you had all these tech guys saying like, we are so back, you know, American golden age.
[00:25:33]  And like all the defense tech bros were so excited to like go back to their Zen and coding and weightlifting and making drones for America and shit.
[00:25:42]  And, you know, from Mark Andreessen on down, all these guys.
[00:25:45]  And it's just, but I think what we might be running into here is the fact that like Trump is just so destabilizing the whole economy that like they can't get their crypto grift on really when stocks are plummeting, when corporate America itself is like not hiring and universities aren't hiring.
[00:26:02]  Like I was in DC yesterday for the day and I was just talking to some friends from college, like regular people who worked in various governmental roles.
[00:26:10]  And everyone there is looking for jobs or like and there's no jobs and people are being fired.
[00:26:15]  Like you know, people's lives are being thrown into chaos and like their ability to be basic consumers and stuff.
[00:26:21]  And large corporations are trying to budget out like multi-billion dollar timelines of supply chains in relation to the tariffs and they can't do it because the tariffs keep changing.
[00:26:32]  Like, I do kind of think that maybe if he hadn't done all the tariff bullshit and just, you know, try to tank the economy on day one, that maybe the crypto grifts could have worked actually in a way or could have, you know, we could be seeing the bubble reforming for them.
[00:26:46]  Yeah.
[00:26:47]  It does seem like everyone is sort of, everything is kind of like too crunched.
[00:26:51]  And, you know, if you're cutting everything and stripping everything away, you're killing liquidity, which is just going to like, I mean, nothing is going to move.
[00:27:01]  Yeah.
[00:27:01]  And so you're seeing everything kind of just like stop up.
[00:27:04]  And it's, you know, it's not going to be the kind of exuberance of the 80s.
[00:27:09]  It's going to be the fucking stagflation of the 70s.
[00:27:11]  And there's no cons and there's no consumer interest with crypto right now.
[00:27:16]  So what the, you know, the plan of the industry has been, first we get institutional money.
[00:27:20]  So they went and got the ETFs and stuff like that.
[00:27:23]  And now they're trying to get institutional and government money.
[00:27:26]  But because regular folks aren't buying in no matter what the industry says.
[00:27:31]  So if you can't create that FOMO for like the public, I don't know how this is going to really work.
[00:27:36]  I mean, that's the whole thing with crypto to me since the beginning.
[00:27:39]  It seems like it's like a concerted effort by people who kind of created this stuff to get everyone to kind of buy into their fucking stupid little schemes to make more money for them because they're the house now.
[00:27:51]  You know what I mean?
[00:27:51]  And like, remember the Super Bowl where like every ad was a fucking crypto ad or an NFT ad, right?
[00:27:57]  Before the FTX crash.
[00:27:59]  Exactly.
[00:27:59]  And then the next year there were zero.
[00:28:01]  There were zero ads.
[00:28:02]  But they're still acting like it's everywhere and so widely adopted that like this is this just makes sense.
[00:28:08]  They're acting like it's 2020 or 2021 again.
[00:28:10]  Yeah, you're totally right.
[00:28:11]  And I think actually one point that you guys just made me think of, which is that like back then when we had that bubble a few years ago, the economy was a little struggling.
[00:28:19]  I think it was, you know, during COVID, but people had some extra money at home sometimes from checks from the government.
[00:28:25]  And like there was still unemployment.
[00:28:28]  Yeah, still low interest rates at the time.
[00:28:31]  So it was like the tail end of the Zerp era.
[00:28:33]  Like there were things frothing up the economy and letting this all happen that just aren't in place now a few years later.
[00:28:39]  Unless, unless, unless you fucking haters stop doing your crazy fucking BPD shit about Elon Musk and let the doggy dividend hit the motherfucking checking account.
[00:28:50]  Because once we get $5,000 from firing DEI consultants, we are buying crypto, ladies and gentlemen.
[00:28:56]  This is straight up Liz Franzak, finance corner.
[00:28:59]  If you get money from the government, tax return, or even they accidentally give you too much on the tax returns and you might have to pay it back later, a good thing to do is keep that in crypto now.
[00:29:07]  But I want to talk about, too, the digital asset stockpile, the DAS, because we got the Bitcoin crypto reserve.
[00:29:17]  Because the Bitcoin is a strategic, it's very strategic.
[00:29:21]  Very, very.
[00:29:21]  But the other digital assets are a little less strategic, but still very interesting to me.
[00:29:27]  Ethereum, which I love.
[00:29:30]  XRP, which I don't know what it is.
[00:29:34]  Also known as Ripple.
[00:29:36]  Oh, I love Ripple.
[00:29:38]  Solana, which is sort of like the Latin kind of coin that they have there.
[00:29:42]  And Cardano, Cardano, it's called, which is also very Latin.
[00:29:46]  So I was looking into these.
[00:29:48]  People probably familiar with Ethereum.
[00:29:51]  I'm certainly not explaining anymore.
[00:29:53]  XRP is, yeah.
[00:29:54]  I was like, oh, it's Ripple bullshit.
[00:29:56]  I read about this a while ago and I need to read about it again.
[00:29:58]  I'm fucking only got so many time minutes in your life.
[00:30:01]  Solana is, of course, hugely, that's like the VC thing, right?
[00:30:06]  Like it was like funded and founded essentially by like a consortium.
[00:30:10]  Including Sam Bankman Freed.
[00:30:12]  Including Sam Bankman Fried.
[00:30:13]  Yeah, including Sam Bankman Freed, including Sequoia, Sean McGuire, America's most Irish Jew.
[00:30:20]  They said they couldn't do it.
[00:30:21]  They said they couldn't do it.
[00:30:22]  They said they finally taught one to read.
[00:30:25]  And A16Z, which is actually, I was shocked to see the guy.
[00:30:31]  Have you ever seen this guy, Mark Andreessen?
[00:30:34]  Yeah, I believe there's something about his head, right?
[00:30:36]  Oh, he's ugly.
[00:30:37]  Oh, he's ugly, Jacob.
[00:30:39]  I mean, if I, Mark, if you're listening to this and you look in the mirror, I'm going to tell you, get in that car.
[00:30:45]  Oh, you can't because it's probably electric.
[00:30:47]  But go out and buy yourself a vintage car.
[00:30:49]  Close that garage door, put on some Neil Young, and just fucking fade into black.
[00:30:56]  But Solana was like funded by all of these VCs.
[00:31:00]  A bunch of them still own a shit ton of the token.
[00:31:05]  And also, that's what Trump coin, I think, runs on, right?
[00:31:08]  Yes.
[00:31:08]  And so a lot of the recent shit coins are on Solana blockchain.
[00:31:12]  Yeah.
[00:31:12]  And then Cardano, this, I'm Cardano, I got to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, Coindexter has found his new coin.
[00:31:20]  I can see Coindexter liking Cardano.
[00:31:21]  I love Cardano.
[00:31:23]  So Cardano is great because it's bullshit just like all the other ones.
[00:31:27]  But it's going to change technology as we know it forever.
[00:31:30]  Believe me.
[00:31:31]  New stuff happening every day.
[00:31:32]  But Cardano is like a bullshit like all the other ones.
[00:31:35]  It's claimed to fame is that it makes faster transactions, right?
[00:31:40]  But the big thing that I like about it is Cardano has just announced so many projects in Africa that have never imagined.
[00:31:49]  In Africa, they call it sister Cardano.
[00:31:51]  They do indeed.
[00:31:54]  But unfortunately, was that sister present on October 7th?
[00:31:57]  Because she is gone.
[00:31:58]  We have not seen her in a long time because Cardano, Cardano said that it was going to do like, oh, we're going to make this, we're going to change Ethiopia's education system.
[00:32:07]  Eh, never happened.
[00:32:08]  We're going to fucking do a partnership with Tanzania with the telecoms for some reason.
[00:32:13]  Eh, it never happened.
[00:32:14]  We're going to do a pan-African financial network.
[00:32:17]  Eh, it never happened.
[00:32:18]  And you should be lucky that you never happened because they killed Gaddafi for doing something similar.
[00:32:23]  I watched an interview with the founder, this guy, Charlie Hoskinson, where he says the point of crypto is to transcend governments and get rid of crypto.
[00:32:32]  He's not supposed to say that out loud.
[00:32:34]  Supposed to say that out loud.
[00:32:35]  But I do think that that is what they all believe.
[00:32:37]  Yeah.
[00:32:37]  Absolutely, 100%.
[00:32:39]  Without a doubt.
[00:32:40]  Including the people in the Trump administration.
[00:32:43]  No, I just want to clarify a question.
[00:32:45]  Charlie Hoskinson, you told me before we started, is 30s?
[00:32:48]  Yes.
[00:32:49]  You'd have to look exactly, I think, 38.
[00:32:51]  Charlie, connect with Brian Johnson.
[00:32:53]  You look so old, my brother.
[00:32:55]  You look like you're dying.
[00:32:56]  You look like Gary Gygax.
[00:32:57]  You do not look good.
[00:33:00]  These all seem to be like the government is investing in carnival barkers and freaks.
[00:33:05]  These are scams, right?
[00:33:07]  Yeah.
[00:33:07]  I mean, the most sort of legitimate of these is probably Solana in a way.
[00:33:12]  Or Ethereum.
[00:33:13]  I don't know.
[00:33:13]  Even time of legitimacy, it seems silly.
[00:33:15]  Like it's very minor degrees.
[00:33:17]  Yeah, like you said, Cardano has often been listed in sort of the top 20 tokens worth of market cap, but like no one uses it.
[00:33:23]  And there's nothing to distinguish it from anything else.
[00:33:26]  For a while, its claim to fame was supposedly these projects in Africa.
[00:33:29]  And I believe Hoskinson, its creator, was one of the co-founders of Ethereum.
[00:33:34]  But I don't know how exactly he got in there.
[00:33:37]  He has been tweeting, though, I believe, that he was advising the administration.
[00:33:42]  You know, a lot of these guys claim that they're advising the administration and stuff, but he seemed to have some in into kind of the crypto staffers and people in the White House.
[00:33:51]  And I guess that's how Cardano ends up in this stack of shit coins.
[00:33:57]  But the Solana one is so clear.
[00:33:59]  I mean, this is just paying back the donors.
[00:34:04]  You know, one thing is David Sachs will say, oh, I don't own any Solana.
[00:34:09]  We don't know if he owns any individual tokens.
[00:34:11]  He claims he doesn't.
[00:34:12]  But the thing with David Sachs is, of course, he's a VC and he invested in companies that invested in Solana.
[00:34:18]  He invested in MultiCoin Capital, which was a big Solana investor and holder.
[00:34:23]  And he invested in other companies that dealt with Solana, I believe, and other crypto companies.
[00:34:27]  So he has exposure in one way or another.
[00:34:30]  There's an infamous video from All In, our favorite podcast.
[00:34:34]  Oh, we love it.
[00:34:34]  Yeah.
[00:34:36]  From a few years ago, where Chamith and Sachs are talking, and they're kind of ribbing each other back and forth.
[00:34:43]  And Chamuth says, like, Sachs, those bags under your eyes, your billion dollars worth of Solana must be really heavy or something.
[00:34:50]  Or like, your Solana bags must be so heavy.

=== Zin's Smoking Speculation (09:49) ===

[00:34:52]  Some joke like that.
[00:34:53]  And they go back and forth about how they each have a billion dollars worth of Solana, supposedly.
[00:34:57]  And Chamith has this line where he goes, like, well, I don't buy, I don't buy a billion dollars of anything except for at a discount.
[00:35:02]  And the whole point of it is that they are insiders, so they got Solana mad cheap compared to like the public market price.
[00:35:11]  And that they're just waiting, this was three years ago or so, to dump on the public.
[00:35:15]  Now, this video has gone around a lot.
[00:35:16]  And even one time, Sachs responded to me when I posted it and claimed, like, you have no idea what you're talking about, blah, blah, blah.
[00:35:22]  But the point is, of course, that these guys have massive exposure to these tokens, either directly or indirectly.
[00:35:29]  It's so funny because it just like it makes all of the like right-wing memes about Nancy Felosi insider trading like so pedestrian compared to the actual shit that these guys are doing and holding and kind of obfuscating about their own holdings and then their influence on something as absurd as a digital asset stockpile of Cardano by the United States government.
[00:35:54]  Like that is a fucking like punchline.
[00:35:57]  Yeah.
[00:35:58]  And Nancy Felosi's like, you know, investment bank or holding a portfolio of Tesla options or whatever is like not as like nearly as like incendiary as something like this.
[00:36:12]  And it gets absolutely no play by anyone.
[00:36:15]  To be honest, like not even the mainstream business press has been a little, I would say lackluster in some of the criticisms of this because it's such an obvious, it's like, you know, I'm going to insult countries if I name it.
[00:36:32]  It's like, it's so obvious, like how just depraved and clear grift is.
[00:36:40]  It's low class, Liz.
[00:36:42]  Like everything else in this fucking administration, it's low class.
[00:36:46]  It's criminal.
[00:36:47]  I mean, it's just so obviously criminal and just stealing from the public to enrich people in office.
[00:36:55]  I mean, it's like so absurd to me.
[00:36:57]  And then you have people treating it like at face value and saying like, well, you know, perhaps there is a use value of card.
[00:37:06]  There's no use value of Cardano.
[00:37:09]  Like all of this stuff, and I know that everyone knows this.
[00:37:11]  And this is every time we do an episode about coins of various types, Brace, you talk yourself into thinking that you just don't get it, but you do.
[00:37:20]  It's that it's the only use value is for speculation.
[00:37:25]  It's just speculation and crime.
[00:37:27]  Crime and crime.
[00:37:28]  And crime.
[00:37:28]  And so like, we're in a situation where, I mean, not to like live out or whatever, but you have the U.S. government basically institutionally backing to the point of like basically saying we will probably bail out.
[00:37:44]  And we'll talk about that with the Genius Act because I do want to talk, mention that, like the like criminal money laundering.
[00:37:51]  Like that's literally what all of this is doing.
[00:37:53]  Yeah.
[00:37:53]  And we've already seen some of it kind of in action.
[00:37:56]  And I don't just mean like the history of crypto crime over recent years, but like, you know, people have been worrying about avenues of corruption and stuff.
[00:38:03]  But as you guys know, Justin's son, one of our favorite crypto entrepreneurs, stateless crypto entrepreneurs, he bought $30 million worth of World Liberty Financial tokens and publicly talked about it.
[00:38:16]  Steve Witcoff and his sons congratulated him because Steve Witcoff's sons run World Liberty Financial with the Trumps.
[00:38:23]  And then he bought another $45 million.
[00:38:25]  And then I believe it was last week the SEC paused its case against him or presumably is dropping the case against him for fraud.
[00:38:31]  You're kidding me.
[00:38:33]  I wish I were.
[00:38:36]  Wait, you're saying that this criminal, Justin's son, he buys a bunch of products from a company that's owned by Donald J. Trump and his disgusting, disgusting.
[00:38:49]  I don't know how they came out of a woman so beautiful as his ex-wife, whatever her name might be.
[00:38:54]  And the Witcoffs, they own a company together.
[00:38:58]  Justin's son buys things from them and then his case is dropped?
[00:39:02]  Yes.
[00:39:02]  And the thing is, he didn't even buy anything.
[00:39:04]  He just gave them money, basically.
[00:39:05]  He bought the governance tokens, supposedly, which you can't do anything with.
[00:39:09]  So basically, he gave a $75 million bribe, and then his case was dropped.
[00:39:14]  And so, like, one thing I've been telling people, I posted about this on X today, like, yeah, sometimes you do feel like you're living out a little bit when you're worried really about payoffs and corruption and all this stuff.
[00:39:23]  But like, if you work, if you're some other government, say you're the finance minister of Senegal or something, or you're the head of, or you're like the Let's choose like a good kleptocrat.
[00:39:34]  Say you're the president of Azerbaijan.
[00:39:36]  Yeah, like a good dictator kleptocrat.
[00:39:39]  You're about to have a meeting with Trump or like the secretary or Rubio or something, and you want something from the Trump administration.
[00:39:46]  Why wouldn't you go buy $50 million worth of Trump token or World Liberty Financial or whatever?
[00:39:51]  Like it's in the direct financial and realpolitik kind of interests of these other countries to like pay him off whether he wants it or not.
[00:40:00]  I mean, this is the goddamn emoluments clause.
[00:40:04]  And this is what frustrates me so goddamn much.
[00:40:06]  Because guess what?
[00:40:07]  All you little fucking people wringing your hands, Hunter Biden being the goddamn barisma board was a motherfucking crime.
[00:40:14]  It was.
[00:40:14]  It was.
[00:40:15]  Whether it's technically an illegal one or not, in a real regime, that boy would be deep underground, alive, but contributing by maybe making a place for us to put our Bitcoins.
[00:40:27]  This new regime, they're just doing the same thing.
[00:40:29]  These people are self-dealing.
[00:40:31]  And none of their little freak fans give a fuck.
[00:40:35]  And I got to tell you, I'll say it before, I say it again.
[00:40:38]  There is no amount of racist I could be to tolerate crooks like this in charge of our government.
[00:40:44]  It is shocking to me.
[00:40:46]  But that's what, I mean, they're all fucking liars.
[00:40:49]  That's what pisses me off.
[00:40:50]  You go back to David Sachs for a second.
[00:40:52]  David Sachs, disgusting, by the way.
[00:40:55]  He looks disgusting.
[00:40:57]  He fucking goes out there with his weird...
[00:41:00]  You know what he looks like?
[00:41:02]  David Sachs looks like a Peter Lorry in a land where fast food was very cheap and maybe even free.
[00:41:13]  He looks like an engorged Peter Laurie.
[00:41:16]  And I love Peter Laurie.
[00:41:17]  I think Sax looks like shit.
[00:41:19]  But Sax is going out there and he's talking.
[00:41:21]  He's like, I've sold everything.
[00:41:22]  He's going on Twitter.
[00:41:24]  I've sold everything.
[00:41:25]  You are one of the least trustworthy human beings that I've ever laid.
[00:41:28]  He looks like he's a sat Laurie.
[00:41:34]  He does have mournful eyes.
[00:41:35]  And hopefully maybe his family will at one point.
[00:41:38]  But Sax is like going on.
[00:41:41]  He's like, oh, yeah, I've sold everything.
[00:41:43]  I can take one look at you and tell you that you've never, you're not doing anything good for the good of the country's good of the country.
[00:41:50]  You very clearly have never done anything for the good of anything in your life.
[00:41:54]  You are a fucking scumbag.
[00:41:56]  So forgive me if I don't believe you that you've disinvested yourself completely from this stuff.
[00:42:01]  Yeah.
[00:42:01]  Well, all the MAGA people, like the base or whatever, everyday people have talked themselves into the false populism and the idea that like these guys are on their side and are actually rooting out waste fraud and corruption.
[00:42:12]  Or like, I was in a bodega the other day and there was a dude fucking talking about the $5,000 dose checks.
[00:42:20]  Like, you know, people unfortunately believe this stuff.
[00:42:22]  Like he thought he was getting money back.
[00:42:24]  Those aren't coming.
[00:42:26]  He's like, yo, ock, they're giving us $5,000 checks.
[00:42:31]  It's kind of like that.
[00:42:32]  I feel like a bodega story is like a taxi.
[00:42:34]  This is like a Thomas Friedman taxi driver story.
[00:42:37]  I was in the Elizabeth Warren barbershop.
[00:42:40]  Because honestly, I was in a smoke shop the other day and they were talking about like, you got to buy Bitcoin, bro.
[00:42:44]  It's not going to go down before 75%.
[00:42:46]  I mean, that's where they have the idea.
[00:42:48]  I do go into these bodega and I say, Asalaam, I like them.
[00:42:51]  That's what I say.
[00:42:52]  How's that go over?
[00:42:53]  They love it.
[00:42:54]  They love it.
[00:42:54]  But I say, give me menthol jewel pods 5%.
[00:42:57]  They say I only have 3%.
[00:42:58]  I say, I've never seen a pack of those ever in my life.
[00:43:01]  Why would you sell those?
[00:43:02]  3%.
[00:43:02]  But this Zin stuff is out of control.
[00:43:04]  I don't know.
[00:43:04]  It does.
[00:43:06]  Liz eats them.
[00:43:07]  Did you know that?
[00:43:08]  You know what?
[00:43:09]  This is why I hate Zen.
[00:43:11]  My rant about Zin, which is one, I don't smoke.
[00:43:15]  I quit smoking.
[00:43:16]  But even if I did smoke, I wouldn't fucking touch Zen because you have taken, you have stripped away out of cigarettes all of its aura, all of its kind of romance, everything that makes a cigarette a cigarette, and like shunted it into like productivity drug.
[00:43:32]  Like, oh, how could we make this less about you being able to take a break and do your own thing and get away from the boss?
[00:43:40]  And how could we actually make it so that you could do it and make it so that you could just work your shitty job more?
[00:43:45]  And all of these like based people are like, yeah, this is so fucking sick.
[00:43:48]  You people are just as bugged out as the people you claim to hate.
[00:43:52]  Exactly.
[00:43:52]  Because you can Zen legally anywhere.
[00:43:54]  I can't jewel anywhere.
[00:43:56]  You can Zin.
[00:43:57]  And so how much of a rebel are you?
[00:43:59]  You know what I mean?
[00:43:59]  I can't jewel on the plane, but I do.
[00:44:01]  I do it.
[00:44:02]  I do it in babies too.
[00:44:03]  Cause there's no, there's, I do, I do.
[00:44:05]  I get, I give kids it because there's no, the science is not settled.
[00:44:09]  Cigarettes even, Liz says that.
[00:44:11]  I've heard they're healthy.
[00:44:11]  And also.
[00:44:12]  Just like you're never going to get me to buy into a productivity drug.
[00:44:15]  Yeah, I hear that.
[00:44:16]  Yeah.
[00:44:17]  Sorry.
[00:44:17]  Also, if you listen to what Liz just said, but think of her doing a character as the Pope from Transylvania, then it makes a lot of sense too.
[00:44:26]  I don't mess with Zinn.
[00:44:28]  You see what I'm saying there?
[00:44:30]  Okay, so we just had a 45-minute discussion about what I meant by imagine if Liz was doing the character of the Transylvanian movie.
[00:44:38]  But just if Zinn is the way that he would pronounce Zin.

=== North Korea's Crypto Strategy (08:33) ===

[00:44:41]  Yeah, I got it.
[00:44:42]  It's very cute to think about.
[00:44:44]  Thank you for clarifying that.
[00:44:45]  I guess also imagine the Pope, but then as a vampire.
[00:44:49]  I can't believe they haven't done that yet.
[00:44:51]  But as a cartoon character, too.
[00:44:53]  It's kind of cute.
[00:44:54]  The Hotel Transylvania movies are pretty fun.
[00:44:56]  I watch those in my kids.
[00:44:57]  It's Adam Sandler as like Dracula.
[00:44:59]  Oh, interesting.
[00:44:59]  Yeah, they're fun.
[00:45:00]  Classic Sandler, I suppose.
[00:45:02]  Oh, he does the voices.
[00:45:03]  He does the voices.
[00:45:05]  But yeah, when I do that, people say it's ableist.
[00:45:07]  I find interesting.
[00:45:10]  So the digital asset summit that the White House held, when they didn't make that many announcements, I think a lot of people were looking for it to be a bit more, have a bit more of a splash.
[00:45:21]  But one thing that Treasury Secretary Besant, I think I keep saying Besant.
[00:45:27]  I have no idea which it is.
[00:45:28]  You know what?
[00:45:29]  I could say it any way I want.
[00:45:30]  Besent.
[00:45:31]  He said this.
[00:45:32]  He said, as President Trump has directed, we are going to keep the U.S. the dominant reserve currency in the world, and we will use stable coins to do that.
[00:45:41]  So I want to talk about that because that seems to be sort of the next big agenda item for the kind of big crypto push from the White House, which is, I don't know, pointing towards stable coins and either some sort of regulation with them or absorbing them.
[00:46:01]  Or let's talk about that.
[00:46:03]  Yeah.
[00:46:03]  So there's the Genius Act, which you may have heard about in the Senate.
[00:46:08]  I'm not sure if they've renamed it or there's a sort of a similar version under a different name introduced.
[00:46:13]  And then there's a bill in Congress, which is somewhat similar.
[00:46:16]  And it's not really clear how exactly this will end up in its final form, but it's going to, the effort overall is to bring stable coins more into circulation and more part of the economy by under this mantra of what you're talking about of extending dollar dominance.
[00:46:35]  And this is like, this is actually something that we were hearing from Tether a lot last year.
[00:46:40]  Tether, which is a stable coin, Tether.
[00:46:42]  Yes, Tether's a stablecoin.
[00:46:43]  Referred to our episode on it like three from four years ago.
[00:46:46]  Which, by the way, I want to say, we got a little hot tip that, you know, members of the SEC and the CFTC listened to that episode when they were looking at each other.
[00:46:54]  Oh, Jesus Christ.
[00:46:56]  Sorry about that.
[00:46:58]  I feel good for you guys about that.
[00:47:00]  I worry a little bit about the government.
[00:47:02]  Yes.
[00:47:03]  No offense.
[00:47:05]  But Tether, so where was I?
[00:47:07]  Tether, oh, so last year, Tether started talking about like, hey, we're not, hey, we're not counterfeiting the dollar or like running a unregulated shadow bank from the Caribbean.
[00:47:18]  We're actually giving people access to the dollar by creating a digital dollar and extending dollar dominance.
[00:47:24]  So we are part of extending American financial hegemony.
[00:47:29]  And that's the line.
[00:47:31]  That's the story that the industry is starting to tell now after everything else with crypto has basically failed is that we need to bring in stable coins because this is how the world gets into the dollar.
[00:47:42]  So I want to kind of game this out a little bit because if you, there's basically, you know, there's no crypto without stable coins, right?
[00:47:50]  Like 75% of all trades are done with stable coins.
[00:47:54]  Right.
[00:47:54]  Yeah.
[00:47:55]  So, and a lot of that, just real quick, is because, you know, say you're going into a crypto market, you want a lot of these exchanges might not have fiat on-ramps and off-ramps, you know, so you may only be able to buy within stable coins.
[00:48:07]  So wait, by that, we have to go even further.
[00:48:09]  By fiat, on-ramp, and off-ramp, you mean I can't like put my actual dollar bills that I earned at my job into this.
[00:48:16]  I have to buy these stable coins in order to spend them.
[00:48:20]  So it's like casino money.
[00:48:21]  Yes, it depends where you're doing business, basically.
[00:48:24]  Like if you go into one of the big exchanges like Kraken or Coinbase, you could probably put in your debit card or your bank account or something.
[00:48:32]  But if you're doing a DeFi exchange or anything like that, any decentralized finance, you have to use the casino chips, the stable coins, to buy those tokens.
[00:48:41]  And basically, it helps keep the crypto ecosystem somewhat separate from the banks and from the mainstream financials ecosystem.
[00:48:47]  So you don't have to switch back and forth between real money and fake money.
[00:48:51]  Real quick, though, I want to say that that is in the use case there would be for an individual who's going into the crypto market, right?
[00:48:59]  I'm going to Coinbase and I want to trade whatever fucking shit I want to trade.
[00:49:03]  So I need to get Tether, whatever, to go in.
[00:49:06]  And that's true, but that's like pales in comparison to the use of stablecoins in dark pools, right?
[00:49:13]  Or in liquidity pools that are used by either hedge funds or larger, I don't know, non-bank entities, we'll say, or criminal organizations that are also looking for like massive amounts of entry into the kind of crypto market, right?
[00:49:30]  I just want to make that clear because I think a lot of times, and you see this in the legislation, nobody talks about that.
[00:49:36]  Nobody wants to talk about the actual like financial, like who's actually using the markets.
[00:49:42]  They're trying to kind of legislate for the individual.
[00:49:45]  Yes.
[00:49:45]  When that, like the percentage of individuals that are using this shit versus like the to the ratio of like financial entities that are moving massive amounts of money at any given time in crypto markets is just like it it makes no sense to legislate for that one thing and not the other.
[00:50:05]  Totally.
[00:50:05]  And as we've talked about, the consumer interest is gone in crypto.
[00:50:09]  I mean, there are still hardcore people who will annoy you on social media who are like, oh, I'm making money on DeFi.
[00:50:13]  I'm doing all this stuff.
[00:50:14]  But it's the true believers.
[00:50:16]  And so the people who are using, while stable coins are highly used within crypto, you know, they're used mostly besides for making trades, but for money laundering, for cybercrime, like all the pig butchering scams use stable coins at some point along the way.
[00:50:31]  Often they will con their victims into sending them stable coins or Bitcoin or something else.
[00:50:36]  And, you know, now it's used as sanctions evasion.
[00:50:41]  For sanctions evasion, there's belief that perhaps China and Russia might start settling sort of accounts with their own tokens.
[00:50:51]  Oh, a lot.
[00:50:51]  Yeah, you know, North Korea, of course, like it's not a joke that North Korea is like actually financing some of its weapons program with crypto hacks and stuff like that.
[00:51:00]  Sure.
[00:51:01]  We need more crypto.
[00:51:03]  That is what I got to say.
[00:51:04]  I'm not even kidding.
[00:51:05]  I'm telling you.
[00:51:05]  North Korea, now is your time.
[00:51:07]  Well, they're the only country whose economy has been revolutionized by crypto, I would argue.
[00:51:12]  Really?
[00:51:12]  Because it's enabled them to get around all of that.
[00:51:15]  They were pretty early, right?
[00:51:16]  And so they were able to get around all of that.
[00:51:18]  They've done a lot of big hacks.
[00:51:20]  Yeah, and they had a big hack recently, $1.5 billion.
[00:51:22]  A few years ago, they had the big one of Axie Infinity, which is this exploitative online crypto game where that basically conned people in the global south and they stole $600 million from there.
[00:51:36]  Oh, that's true, Jay.
[00:51:36]  It's not, you know.
[00:51:37]  Honestly, the thing that they do that's kind of cool, really sophisticated and clever, is that North Korea sends people out to go work for the crypto companies.
[00:51:49]  And some of those guys, they have software engineers who pretend to be, sometimes they say they're Korean or they pretend they live in Singapore or China or elsewhere.
[00:51:58]  And there have been some articles about this.
[00:51:59]  There's a good one in Coindesk.
[00:52:01]  But you have these companies who are just hiring North Korean agents to work for them as developers, mostly unwittingly.
[00:52:09]  I think sometimes they might know.
[00:52:10]  That's so sick.
[00:52:11]  Yeah, and they don't do any due diligence.
[00:52:14]  So they're like, oh, you worked on that other project.
[00:52:16]  You say your name is this and you say you live there.
[00:52:19]  Like, okay.
[00:52:20]  Because it's all remote.
[00:52:21]  It's all remote, and they're all being paid in stable coins too, probably.
[00:52:24]  Like, they're not being paid in dollars or any Asian currency.
[00:52:27]  They're probably being paid in stable coins or in Tether.
[00:52:30]  So if you're like some crypto entrepreneur and some crack coder from Singapore says, like, I want to work for you guys, and he seems to check out, then, okay, you sign him up.
[00:52:40]  And before you know it, you have a North Korean agent putting back doors in your code or working in your system.
[00:52:45]  This is happening a lot.
[00:52:46]  I guess it's just my, I don't know, every time, this is like 56 for me.
[00:52:51]  You know, like my faith in everything is shaken.
[00:52:55]  I supported DBRK until I heard that they're creating cracked coders.
[00:53:01]  And now I'm like, this seems like a fucking, this is, they're just like, oh, the fucking rest, aren't they?
[00:53:06]  If they get Zen, it's over.
[00:53:07]  If they get Zen, it's fucking over.
[00:53:09]  They're out.
[00:53:10]  They're out.
[00:53:11]  Yeah, I mean, that's amazing.

=== Banned Business in Bars (03:31) ===

[00:53:15]  But yeah, it's like USDT, we talked about this in the Tether episode.
[00:53:19]  It doesn't make any sense to me because it's like they are functioning as like a shadow treasury bank Fed everything.
[00:53:27]  And I'm like, how is that?
[00:53:29]  I literally, even though I did an episode on it, and I, if granted, was very confused during most of that episode, which I think was very clear in the episode.
[00:53:36]  Liz blessedly explained it to me, which, but it didn't never, I don't understand it.
[00:53:41]  Why is this allowed?
[00:53:43]  It shouldn't be.
[00:53:44]  You know, and like if we live in a normal country, so many of these things wouldn't be allowed.
[00:53:48]  Some people, the comparisons I make are like, if you've ever heard of BCCI, which would make a great episode for this show, actually, like the outlaw bank from the eight.
[00:53:56]  We definitely touched on it a lot.
[00:53:57]  Yeah, I'm sure it's been mentioned.
[00:53:58]  Like it's sort of like that, just this unregulated shadow bank that happily deals with criminals or Liberty Reserve, which was counterfeiting the dollar out of Costa Rica like 15 or 20 years ago.
[00:54:10]  And it took like 18 countries cooperating to bring it down.
[00:54:13]  I mean, this has been the sort of maddening question for Tether Watchers for years is like, why hasn't anything been done?
[00:54:20]  And now one of its custodians is commerce secretary.
[00:54:23]  Commerce secretary.
[00:54:24]  And more than that, his son, what does he work for Tether?
[00:54:29]  Yeah.
[00:54:29]  So Howard Luttnick's son is handling the Tether accounts at BlackRock.
[00:54:33]  I don't know if he, what his position is at, I mean, not BlackRock, sorry, at Cantor Fitzgerald.
[00:54:38]  Okay.
[00:54:39]  I don't know if he immediately succeeded his father as CEO or is he just an executive, but he is handling the Tether accounts.
[00:54:44]  And Howard Luttnick, you know, was talking about like, oh, people say they don't have the money.
[00:54:49]  Well, my son went to Switzerland and saw some gold bars in a vault.
[00:54:53]  And that was just for the Tether Gold product, which is like this little niche thing that they do and not their main product.
[00:54:58]  But it's supposed to be like, look, they're not.
[00:55:00]  And there's Tether said like a week ago.
[00:55:02]  They're like chocolate bars.
[00:55:03]  Tether hired a new CFO recently.
[00:55:07]  I haven't really looked into him, but they claim that he's going to finally do an audit, which there's no way that's happening.
[00:55:13]  And there was also a picture the other day that Paulo, the CEO of Tether, posted that I think he was in DC on Capitol Hill.
[00:55:20]  That was a little surprising to me.
[00:55:21]  Like people are always like, you're surprised by stuff.
[00:55:24]  And I'm like, well, not surprised, but like when things sort of, you know, they're little symbols or sort of like lines that you see crossed every day.
[00:55:31]  You know what I mean?
[00:55:31]  Like, and one of them is like Trump starting a shit coin or something like that.
[00:55:35]  And when you see someone from Tether who wouldn't have entered the United States under the Biden administration, simply would not.
[00:55:40]  Just like Justin's son would not have come to the U.S. Like I tried, I asked a PR person for Tether a couple years ago, like, do they ever come to the U.S.?
[00:55:47]  We could interview them.
[00:55:48]  And they're like, no, they don't really come to the U.S.
[00:55:51]  So just seeing Paulo on the Capitol steps, for me, and I think for people who watch this stuff, it was a big deal.
[00:55:59]  Like the criminals are in charge.
[00:56:01]  It shows how everything's changed.
[00:56:02]  All the investigations are gone.
[00:56:03]  Like it's amazing how quickly it's turned.
[00:56:06]  Hold on, because I recently, so I was obviously, I've been very liberal for about two months.
[00:56:12]  Yeah.
[00:56:12]  But recently I've become very conservative and a nationalist.
[00:56:16]  And so what I don't understand is how is there like if we're kind of integrating some of our like financial stuff with this company, Tether, their company doesn't come to the United States of America.
[00:56:30]  They're actually also banned from doing business in the state of New York.
[00:56:33]  I don't even know how they can work legally with Cantor Fitzgerald.
[00:56:35]  Maybe that stuff goes through subsidiaries in other states or countries.
[00:56:39]  But I don't understand.
[00:56:40]  If we're like getting, these guys are doing like a shadow Fed, but they're not, they don't come to the country of this.

=== Drying Needs, Shady Banks (04:13) ===

[00:56:46]  That's right.
[00:56:47]  But they're patriots don't work.
[00:56:49]  But this is what's crazy to me because I've been a nationalist since I heard about it.
[00:56:53]  And it is just like, it seems like, this is what's so, this is what drives me so crazy.
[00:56:59]  It's like, these are the most like globalized to internationalized motherfuckers in history.
[00:57:06]  Like none of this is even American at all.
[00:57:09]  Like this is, this is, some of this stuff is just like not even real.
[00:57:12]  It's just in cyberspace.
[00:57:13]  And like this is supposed to be our big nationalist project that we have some fucking guy, some guy that doesn't even exist in another country because he can't come to this one, but it doesn't matter because it doesn't exist doing all this stuff with our financial system.
[00:57:26]  Right.
[00:57:26]  And then it's kind of insulting when it's sold to people as kind of extending dollar dominance, even in that language, which is supposed to be kind of patriotic or whatever.
[00:57:34]  It's like, like, it's, it's like asking like, you know, some shady overseas bank or organized crime, like, hey, make sure more people start using the dollar overseas or something.
[00:57:43]  There's just no sense to it.
[00:57:44]  Yeah, I want to talk about that because I do think that that's an important part to understand with the kind of stablecoin push, which is that if we understand that, like, you, if you want to expand crypto, that means theoretically that that will increase the demand for dollars via stablecoins because you need to exchange dollars for stablecoins in order to trade crypto, right?
[00:58:07]  Okay.
[00:58:07]  So with stablecoin demand going up, that will then increase the demand for U.S. treasuries because stablecoin issuers, custodians, whatever, the people that manage these so-called vaults, right?
[00:58:21]  Where, you know, if you're getting dollars, you don't want to hold dollars because that doesn't make you any money.
[00:58:26]  So you buy treasuries.
[00:58:28]  And that's why we know that like stablecoin owners are one of the largest owners of U.S. treasuries in the world.
[00:58:35]  Like I think it's like they're the 18th largest holder of U.S. debt, like larger than Germany, which is like kind of a fucked up thing to think about, by the way, because you're like, this stuff isn't real.
[00:58:45]  And then it's like very, very real on that level.
[00:58:48]  By the way, the Global Money Laundering Syndicate is a huge holder of U.S. debt.
[00:58:51]  Yeah.
[00:58:52]  And so when you start hear, you know, and we've been hearing for like, you know, it's ever since, let's say, the invasion of Ukraine, it's been getting louder and louder and louder since then about like, oh, de-dollarization is happening.
[00:59:05]  Or all of these countries are trying to make moves to like exit the dollar.
[00:59:09]  You have all of these big holders of U.S. Treasury selling.
[00:59:12]  And it makes a lot of people in the United States in power rightly very nervous because you want to maintain dollar strength as the kind of global reserve currency because that's what enables you to discipline the world.
[00:59:29]  Right.
[00:59:30]  And so how can you do that when all of this other stuff is happening while you want to also enact all of these protectionist policies or kind of like make the markets go insane?
[00:59:41]  And crypto seems to be the bet to kind of do that, right?
[00:59:44]  Where it's like, if we can expand crypto, which is like, you know, it's funny, thinking about all of this sort of like the kind of like historical steps of onboarding into like the crypto ecosystem.
[01:00:01]  I don't even want to call it economy, but ecosystem, like, you know, we've talked about before how like COVID was such a like massive onboarding event for all of this stuff.
[01:00:09]  And that does seem to be like when all of the like retail individual, you know, everyone kind of got on board with this for as much as they could, you know, and then all the apes were gone.
[01:00:18]  And then it kind of like lost some of the, you know, and then we kind of moved into this like second phase with all of the meme coins.
[01:00:24]  Again, very small relatively on the individual level, but institutionally, like big financial players were already like majorly bought in and playing with a lot, you know, for every kid that was doing dumb shit on pump.fun.
[01:00:41]  Shooting themselves in the head on a live stream.
[01:00:43]  Yeah.
[01:00:43]  Oh my god.
[01:00:44]  Like fucking, you know, major firms were making a lot of fucking money in the past like two, three years, you know, on these markets or whatever.
[01:00:52]  Right.
[01:00:53]  But now that's all kind of like drying up or there needs to be like, we got to get more and more and more.

=== Crypto's Regulatory Quagmire (15:28) ===

[01:01:00]  And so now the government literally needs to come in and not just like, okay, we're going to try to prop up Bitcoin, you know, with this one reserve.
[01:01:09]  Let's see if we can do that.
[01:01:10]  But now also like we're literally going to backstop this with the dollar.
[01:01:16]  Yeah.
[01:01:16]  Right.
[01:01:17]  Which is like kind of like freaking me out a little bit.
[01:01:20]  You know, it's like completely and totally fusing these two worlds together where you say like, I think the comparison about with Tether to BCCI, I'd never thought of that, but that feels like so on point for understanding.
[01:01:33]  I think I think that the resemblance is very strong.
[01:01:35]  Yeah.
[01:01:36]  Yeah.
[01:01:36]  And so like part of the thing that's really interesting, like I read, I can't believe I read, but I did read the Genius Act, which is the bill in, it's in the Senate, right?
[01:01:46]  It's a Senate version of the bill.
[01:01:47]  And I can't believe it's called the Genius Act, but it stands for the guiding and establishing national innovation of U.S. stablecoins.
[01:01:53]  Can I just say, I think I've said this on the show before, but I'm like, I want a bill that the acronym is just like, it's not pronounceable.
[01:02:03]  It doesn't make sense.
[01:02:03]  Like, stop being fucking cute.
[01:02:06]  I don't care.
[01:02:06]  It's not the fucking Genius Act, you moron.
[01:02:09]  You're fucking, and if you'll allow me, if you're a parent, your children cannot read.
[01:02:15]  They're going to grow up to be stupid and psychotic because this government has given up any pretense on taking care of its citizens.
[01:02:25]  And they're playing around with shit like this in the fucking Senate while the bridges are crumbling.
[01:02:30]  Our brave farmers are not being eaten because I don't like farmers, but our brave farmers are being abandoned by the government.
[01:02:38]  All this shit is happening.
[01:02:39]  And they're out here doing the genius.
[01:02:41]  What's in the Genius Act?
[01:02:43]  You know, honestly, it's not a lot.
[01:02:46]  And I think some of that is because there, I mean, look, it's ostensibly, it's trying to create the legal means for banks and what they call other financial firms, which like definition required, don't know what that means, to launch stable coins backed by dollars and what they say are other highly liquid instruments, which is like, again, definition required.
[01:03:11]  Don't know what that means.
[01:03:12]  Like a tuba that shoots water.
[01:03:14]  Yeah.
[01:03:15]  That's got market value.
[01:03:17]  I don't know how that wouldn't, would that would preclude backing it with other crypto.
[01:03:22]  I mean, you know, I mean, there's like, what's a highly, what's another highly liquid instrument?
[01:03:26]  Tether does that.
[01:03:27]  Tether gives out loans backed by Bitcoin.
[01:03:30]  Now, however, I think like looking into this bill, I get like so hung up on this, the same like kind of bait and switch that happens where it's sort of attempting to create a kind of legal framework and architecture to sort of regulate, sort of not regulate stablecoin use.
[01:03:49]  So especially in the event, and especially addressing risk, right?
[01:03:54]  So like in the event of bankruptcy, insolvency, all those things that we've seen happen to crypto firms.
[01:04:01]  Very recently.
[01:04:02]  Very recently, like what happens?
[01:04:04]  And it's like, oh, if we could just like treat it like a real bankruptcy, then it will be fine.
[01:04:08]  That is like, you know, there's a lot of reasons why that kind of comparison doesn't work in the crypto ecosystem versus in like traditional finance.
[01:04:19]  But the thing that makes me mad is like reading this is that again, it seems to address, it's really looking at protecting consumers, right?
[01:04:26]  Which is very noble, right?
[01:04:28]  And I understand why Congress is like, that's what we're doing.
[01:04:31]  What's consumer protection, whatever, right?
[01:04:33]  But like, okay, fine.
[01:04:37]  There's a lot of reasons why that doesn't make sense.
[01:04:39]  Most of it is that like bankruptcy and dealing with creditors and bankruptcy with like these crypto firms is very complicated as we've seen with FTX.
[01:04:47]  It takes a long time.
[01:04:48]  You don't know what you're getting and you don't know what if your investment is going to be worth anything by that point because, you know, that's just how the laws work.
[01:04:55]  Right.
[01:04:56]  But at the same time, like it doesn't address any of the issues, which is that are like the major use case for all of this stuff are like major financial players.
[01:05:06]  Yeah.
[01:05:06]  Right.
[01:05:07]  Like Congress is not going after or trying to regulate this with like the, you know, how financial firms, hedge funds, and other non-bank quote unquote entities use stablecoins and crypto trading.
[01:05:23]  It's not even attempting to look at any of that.
[01:05:25]  It's not even fucking naming it.
[01:05:27]  And so it has like this huge blind spot that it just makes me think that it's like a bunch of fucking people that one, are being fed lies by the crypto industry, such as like, oh, Cardano is used for remittance payments.
[01:05:39]  It's just like, fuck off.
[01:05:40]  No, it isn't.
[01:05:41]  Like, no, it isn't.
[01:05:42]  It's traded.
[01:05:42]  It's a fucking, like, stop it.
[01:05:44]  No, it isn't.
[01:05:46]  And everything else to create legislation that gives off the impression that the government is regulating this stuff when it actually isn't.
[01:05:55]  And so when this stuff fails, not if, but when, the government will fucking bail it out.
[01:06:01]  Yeah.
[01:06:02]  And I think what I'm worried about is that we're going to end up with the worst of all worlds where, you know, we end up with crypto more legitimized, but poor, but with this poorly regulated system where stablecoins are pushed into wider usage, but the protections aren't really there.
[01:06:20]  And then once all this stuff blows up in a few months or later this year, then you have the real contagion into the regular economy and everything goes kaput.
[01:06:31]  And I don't think they're thinking about that at all.
[01:06:34]  I mean, and we've already even seen stable coins get de-pegged and contribute to market instability.
[01:06:40]  Or like when Silicon Valley Bank got bailed out, its biggest depositor was Circle, which runs USDC, which is kind of like the slightly more legitimate American-based stablecoin.
[01:06:50]  The USDC lost its peg during the SVB crisis and went to like 87 cents.
[01:06:56]  So, I mean, if you're like, and when you were just talking just now, you made me think like how there is this totally different role for stable coins for like the average sort of crypto speculator or whatever, dealing with small amounts of money versus like big banks are probably trying to like arbitrage them.
[01:07:11]  They are.
[01:07:11]  You know, when they lose their pegs, they're trying to like arbitrage that stuff and do lots of trades and make huge amounts of money.
[01:07:17]  And it's like, you're right.
[01:07:18]  It's a completely different kind of world, but we're talking about the same product and regulatory system and patchwork regulatory system for it for both audiences.
[01:07:28]  I've had just like a feeling since a lot of this stuff, I mean, really since like Trump went all in on Bitcoin, that I was like, something, I know that something bad is going to happen.
[01:07:38]  I know as this stuff gets more and more enmeshed, like somehow this shit was going to destroy the world's economy or like the American, like this is going to cause like an insane depression or something because our fucking government gets like caught up or all these financial institutions get caught up in what is essentially, yeah, like different versions of fucking BCZI.
[01:07:59]  Like it is, it seems just like flirting with disaster for absolutely no gain for the average or even not average American.
[01:08:09]  Like, I just don't understand that, like, saying this, like, I am a normal guy in this world, just trying to, just trying to live my life.
[01:08:17]  What possible, what is this giving to me?
[01:08:19]  Like, how is this helping me?
[01:08:21]  Who is this helping?
[01:08:22]  This seems to just be helping like a bunch of people who, A, don't live in America and B, fucking hate me, or C, well, actually, B and C are kind of the same here, or like run these companies and have lied consistently since day one about the uses of their products and about what they're,
[01:08:40]  what the ecosystem is going to be like and what this is going to give to society have told bald-faced lies day in, day out, day in, day out, in order to trick me into buying their product so that I can get fucking ripped off.
[01:08:52]  Like, and this shit is just like, why are we doing this?
[01:08:55]  Yeah, they're looking to America.
[01:08:57]  The industry is looking to America to be its exit liquidity.
[01:09:00]  Yeah.
[01:09:00]  You know, like A16Z is probably underwater on some of its crypto investments.
[01:09:04]  Hugely underwater.
[01:09:05]  Yeah.
[01:09:06]  I would assume.
[01:09:08]  And obviously we've talked about SACS's crypto exposure.
[01:09:11]  This doesn't help anybody.
[01:09:13]  And this is, you know, as sort of a fellow normie, I get so frustrated sometimes when it's like, this is how I feel like when people, when, when they're talking about like crypto being some future source of prosperity is like how I feel when some of these tech guys start talking about longevity research or conquering death.
[01:09:30]  It's like, motherfucker, I just want health care.
[01:09:32]  Yeah.
[01:09:33]  You know what I mean?
[01:09:33]  Like I don't need I don't need to live forever.
[01:09:36]  I don't need you guys if you're eternal youth.
[01:09:38]  I want first let's start with giving everyone health care and not wait for like you to crack longevity and that maybe will trickle down to us in some way.
[01:09:45]  And I kind of feel a similar way about crypto stuff.
[01:09:48]  It's like, let's secure the rudiments of the economy and the banking system, whatever else.
[01:09:53]  Not that I expect the Republicans to do that, but it's like this is just sort of a parlor trick on top of things that is not actually helping anyone except for their donors.
[01:10:01]  The thing is, is that they have hollowed out every aspect of society so much so that like there's no, there's no job market anymore, right?
[01:10:12]  There's no meaningful way to kind of move up in society.
[01:10:17]  There's no, I mean, advanced education is too expensive and doesn't give you what it was promised that home ownership you can't get anymore because it's just completely overtaken by landlords since 2008.
[01:10:29]  And so for a lot of people, it's like, well, the way that I can get in on this is the only way I could advance in society now is to fucking do a pump and dump and fucking spectacle myself in the sloth economy and try to ride the wave up with these fucking criminals.
[01:10:49]  And hopefully I don't get got on the way.
[01:10:52]  Yeah, I think that's totally right.
[01:10:54]  And I think we saw a lot of that in the sort of 2022, 2021 bubble, which is that, you know, you could say very statistics about how most people haven't had a raise against inflation in 40 plus years.
[01:11:06]  Like even just the other day, I was listening to some video.
[01:11:08]  It was kind of like some sort of hustle and grind type person video that I stumbled upon.
[01:11:13]  But they were talking about something like, you know, no one really builds wealth just from their salary.
[01:11:18]  And I was like, actually, there is something to that.
[01:11:19]  Unless you're like, you know, being really high level executive or something like that.
[01:11:23]  People who get really wealthy, they inherit or they have a big stock payday through a startup or something like that.
[01:11:30]  They're going to be a property, things like that.
[01:11:34]  And I think that that actually does speak to where we're at now, which is like, how are you going to get ahead?
[01:11:39]  Like, how are you going to make any money?
[01:11:41]  Fucking Solana, bitch.
[01:11:42]  How are any of us?
[01:11:43]  Yeah, I mean, this is the thing that I just don't like, that is so depressing because this stuff really does have worldwide adoption on some scale, right?
[01:11:52]  Like there are a lot of people in a lot of countries that are bought in on this.
[01:11:57]  And that's, I think, what like gives me the biggest, because I think everybody all over the world, not everybody, but a lot of people all over the world are seeing exactly what you're seeing and being like, I guess this is the way that like I can like fucking make a bag, you know what I mean?
[01:12:10]  And like put something away and like, you know, actually get forward in life or like, you know, get some substantial money or more substantial that I'd be just making my fucking shitty job.
[01:12:20]  But so many people buying in.
[01:12:22]  I think it, you know, obviously like the consumer, like it has decreased since like the high of 2020, 2021.
[01:12:28]  But like it's still, there's this steady adoption of it.
[01:12:32]  I just, I'm like, something fucking bad is going to happen.
[01:12:35]  Something bad is going to happen.
[01:12:36]  And something really, like, if this, this is like, I don't know.
[01:12:40]  This is me talking completely from the place of my soul that I think this is going to like, well, this is, this smells of World War III.
[01:12:48]  And that's a brace.
[01:12:49]  That's a brace.
[01:12:50]  No one has to go sign that.
[01:12:51]  But something bad is happening.
[01:12:53]  You know, there was, I think we're headed towards a very bad place economically.
[01:12:57]  And it's kind of this mix of the crypto stuff with, you know, the obvious destabilization over tariffs and everything else.
[01:13:04]  But, you know, some people before used to talk about Teal and Musk and some of these tech guys as like, oh, they want to crash the dollar and like replace things with crypto or whatever.
[01:13:16]  I kind of thought that that was like a little bit of like almost like a blue-in-on Russia gate type attitude.
[01:13:23]  I'm a little more open to it now.
[01:13:25]  It's what Liz thinks.
[01:13:26]  I don't know if I think that.
[01:13:28]  I think that it's on the well, I was thinking like, why would they want to do that?
[01:13:32]  Because the world still runs in dollars.
[01:13:33]  Their fortunes are mostly in dollars.
[01:13:35]  I was sort of trying to think semi-rationally, but then you look at these people and what they're doing and their view of the world and their view of crypto and their place in the world.
[01:13:43]  And it's like, maybe that is, I mean, that's that the kinds of policies and behavior that they're undertaking right now indicates someone who doesn't care about the stability of the U.S. economy or the dollar.
[01:13:55]  Well, I think, yeah, I think there's a couple of things, which is that, like, one, it's funny.
[01:13:59]  I saw just Jamie Dimon put out a quote today or a statement where he was like, well, the economy feels uncertain and things are bad and stocks are going down.
[01:14:07]  It's like, Jamie, you want stocks to go down because you want to buy more of your own stocks.
[01:14:11]  Like, I fucking know you.
[01:14:12]  It gets a better price 10% lower now.
[01:14:15]  But so there's, I think there's like that where people are looking to kind of like, they feel like the market's overvalued and you can get a better deal if things go.
[01:14:24]  So there's like some of that.
[01:14:26]  But I also think it's funny, like I make this mistake a lot, which is that you kind of think people are cynical.
[01:14:34]  You read way too much cynicism.
[01:14:36]  I mean, there's a lot of cynical, a lot of cynicism in Washington, but also like, I, you know, I genuinely think that these people do not understand how the world economy works, let alone like how the Fed works or the dollar or the U.S. government works.
[01:14:54]  And so like, Musk is like such a perfect example of this because he is so malformed.
[01:15:01]  You can see when he's talking about Social Security and kind of like rattling off those Heritage Foundation talking points or kind of like, you know, Rand, Ann Rand-esque high school debate club flashcard notes.
[01:15:20]  The comprehensive, like they don't actually understand how any of this works.
[01:15:24]  And so they really believe like, oh, we are going to save the world because the world is so saddled by debt that we have to rescue and the way to and then usher in the future with like crypto and all these other things.
[01:15:42]  And it all kind of plays into this ideology that they're so fucking drunk on, but that is so like divorced from any kind of actual like it just like completely misunderstands like how the how the like sausage is actually made.
[01:16:02]  Do you know what I mean?
[01:16:03]  Like not to whatever, but it's like, no, but like you're like, you're wrong.
[01:16:07]  Like you don't need to worry about it.
[01:16:10]  Yeah.
[01:16:10]  I mean, we've Musk certainly isn't the first low information deficit hawk, but no one has ever had this kind of access and influence to do something about it to say, I'm going to actually start cutting off payments, congressionally appropriated payments.
[01:16:22]  Sure.
[01:16:24]  So, yeah, when you bring that level of ignorance in and you just don't know how shit works, but you have total access.

=== Politicians' Crypto Hypnosis (03:25) ===

[01:16:28]  I mean, that's a horrible combination.
[01:16:31]  Basically, politicians in fear, right?
[01:16:33]  Because Musk can just say, Well, I'm going to throw a $10 million check at your opponent.
[01:16:39]  Exactly.
[01:16:39]  Yeah.
[01:16:39]  I mean, and the Republicans are afraid of that.
[01:16:42]  And all the Democrats are afraid of Musk and crypto money.
[01:16:45]  I mean, and that's the thing.
[01:16:46]  It's not even just the politicians.
[01:16:47]  It's like judges and stuff, too.
[01:16:49]  I mean, it's really, it's sort of extraordinary, like what's happening right now.
[01:16:56]  Breathtaking.
[01:16:57]  Yeah, it really is.
[01:16:58]  And boy, would I like to take some people's, well, just, I just like, I don't, I just don't, it's, it sometimes boggles my mind that like every negative trend, like annoying fucking online bullshit that like the dumbest, fucking, like, most obvious crooks in the world have gotten behind of like the past like five, six, seven,
[01:17:24]  Eight years is like all now so ascendant that there's like getting enmeshed in the like.
[01:17:29]  They're these fucking.
[01:17:30]  If you were a 60 year old woman who's fucking in, you're a senator and your fucking intern is putting laser eyes on your fucking profile, like i'm sorry, this is not, this is these.
[01:17:40]  Are these disrespect?
[01:17:42]  I mean, it's just it's.
[01:17:43]  It's completely.
[01:17:44]  That's my friend, Cynthia Loomis you're talking about.
[01:17:46]  It's it's insulting.
[01:17:47]  She brought us a crypto stockpile.
[01:17:49]  It was her idea.
[01:17:50]  It's insulting.
[01:17:51]  Like this woman Loomis, I wouldn't allow her near my children, you know.
[01:17:54]  Like this is.
[01:17:55]  This is ridiculous.
[01:17:56]  That these people control everything and and and nobody says that maybe this is.
[01:18:01]  This is not how things should be.
[01:18:02]  This is crazy because all these Democrats let me talk about this guy real quick Richie fucking Torres.
[01:18:09]  Right there, Richie Torres, future governor of New York State, Richie Torres, and he's doing a bipartisan crypto.
[01:18:18]  Yeah, thing right.
[01:18:19]  Like it's like a, like a whatever, some bullshit.
[01:18:22]  It's just a way.
[01:18:22]  These people are all fucking bribed by these crypto companies or cowed by them and like it's just, it's crazy.
[01:18:31]  There's nobody it doesn't seem like there's anybody with any amount of power who is like stop, this is nuts.
[01:18:37]  Yeah, and I think that's one of the remarkable things about the last couple months is just like no one is enforcing the laws.
[01:18:44]  Who is going to enforce the laws?
[01:18:46]  Who's going to say stop Or?
[01:18:48]  um, you know, you've had some things go to court, but like, hey, even today, uh, as we're recording this, Mahmoud Khalil, who was abducted by ICE, he had a he okay, great, he had a court hearing today in Manhattan.
[01:18:59]  He wasn't there, yeah, he's still not free.
[01:19:01]  Like, I hear from some people, including kind of an older generation, that they still have some faith in the courts as a backstop or like some other elements of the American system, but I'm just like that ain't working, and it's not going to, especially as more Trump judges take office.
[01:19:15]  I mean, that worked for Trump one.
[01:19:17]  Yeah.
[01:19:17]  You know what I mean?
[01:19:18]  When the deep state was all in his cabinet, but like it's not working in Trump too.
[01:19:22]  And these, the liberals are pathetic.
[01:19:25]  Oh, my fellow liberals.
[01:19:27]  Pathetic.
[01:19:29]  I hate to watch them.
[01:19:30]  And just, it's just, but the thing about the crypto stuff that I kind of keep coming back to is it really does seem like so many people are just like under the spell of this Malachian, you know, fucking hypnosis where they're like, these are, this money's going to go up.
[01:19:46]  We're all going to get our fucking wag me.
[01:19:48]  We're all going to make it.
[01:19:49]  We're securing the bag.
[01:19:51]  Like, it's, it's going, and it's like, it's based on nothing.

=== Cyber Superstition Casino (10:32) ===

[01:19:54]  It's like a cyber superstition.
[01:19:56]  You know what I mean?
[01:19:57]  That's well put.
[01:19:58]  And then they, and they, and they, you know, they lie to people.
[01:20:01]  I mean, that's what's so galling about it.
[01:20:02]  It's like, oh, we've been in Web3 for a little while now.
[01:20:05]  I just want to ask you, listeners, American or whatever you are listeners, has your life improved from Web3 or any of this, the new technological advancements, even in Web 2 at all?
[01:20:16]  Of course it hasn't.
[01:20:17]  Yeah.
[01:20:17]  Your life has gotten worse.
[01:20:19]  You know, sometimes I remember about 10, let's see, this is actually a little longer, but I think it was 2013.
[01:20:24]  I went to South by Southwest and I wrote a piece on it, sort of like a takedown of how ridiculous the place is.
[01:20:29]  I actually remember seeing Musk talk about it.
[01:20:30]  This witch house shit sucks.
[01:20:32]  Yeah, no, about the tech part.
[01:20:34]  And I remember actually seeing Musk talk, and at the time he had like six or eight kids, and they're like, how do you keep up with all your children?
[01:20:40]  And he's like, well, I don't.
[01:20:41]  I don't.
[01:20:41]  He said something like, I don't see them that often.
[01:20:44]  But I remember there was a speech there from Yevgeny Morozov, the tech critic.
[01:20:49]  And, you know, probably not the kind of person who would be invited to South by today, but he gave this speech and he's like, you know, in his thick Belarusian accent, and he's like, and this is when people were talking about like apps changing the world.
[01:21:00]  So this is like 12 years ago.
[01:21:01]  was like every app on your phone was going to somehow change your life.
[01:21:05]  Snippies.
[01:21:05]  And so he's like- It did change a lot of people's lives.
[01:21:08]  He said, like, a billion apps have been sold.
[01:21:10]  Where is the betterness?
[01:21:11]  Or something like that.
[01:21:12]  But, you know, it's a little silly, but I think about that sometimes.
[01:21:14]  Like, you've had 15 years to create the crypto future of finance and you haven't.
[01:21:19]  Like, you haven't succeeded.
[01:21:20]  It's almost a tautology.
[01:21:21]  Like, if you were going to create the future of finance, you would have done it already.
[01:21:24]  Yes.
[01:21:25]  And now what they need is they need a government bailout, a bespoke regulatory regime, and all the investigations into their illegal activities to go away.
[01:21:32]  And only then might they have a chance to achieve escape velocity and make something on that.
[01:21:38]  So ridiculous because the whole thing with crypto in the first place, not the whole thing, but a large part of the ideological backing of crypto was this decentralized, libertarian, sort of utopian kind of system.
[01:21:51]  And what they're actually doing is they bought part of the U.S. government and are like, they have to do these like, yeah, bespoke, tailor-made regulatory regimes and almost forced adoption in some way in order to get people to do it.
[01:22:06]  I mean, it is, it is, but it doesn't matter.
[01:22:08]  Like contradictions, Mao would have a field day with this, but contradictions are just, it's just, it doesn't, everything exists at once, and it doesn't matter that everything existed once.
[01:22:19]  Like that's, and I think, I think that is just like a, that is one way that this happens, but like that happens in so many other spheres of political and economic life that like two opposite things coexist within the same person or at the same time.
[01:22:31]  And there's just like absolutely no attempt made to resolve that dialectic.
[01:22:35]  They just both co-occur.
[01:22:37]  And like that is, it's a recipe in this instance for like complete, it's like almost like a mental break with like reality.
[01:22:46]  And that's, and we have to live in that.
[01:22:48]  Like we have to suffer from that because people like David Sachs, who contributed so greatly to this world, you know, have this, have this, have this influence.
[01:22:58]  And it just, it, it drives me bananas.
[01:23:00]  I just want to, I just want a regular world run by regular people.
[01:23:03]  And it's, these people are fucking nuts.
[01:23:05]  You, even if you like this shit, even if you're one of those crypto people that listens to this podcast and you do exist, even if you like this stuff, you got to look at the guys that are running these companies and be like, I think these guys might not be the best people in the world.
[01:23:15]  Look at a guy like fucking Michael Saylor, right?
[01:23:18]  Yep.
[01:23:18]  We love Saylor.
[01:23:20]  We love him.
[01:23:21]  But Michael Saylor.
[01:23:22]  And that is like, Michael's, I mean, what?
[01:23:25]  Like, that is, that is what we're supposed to just be into.
[01:23:28]  But my question is, like, I owe it with crypto.
[01:23:31]  With crypto.
[01:23:33]  But even with Bitcoin, right?
[01:23:34]  Like, Mike, because you're talking about Sailor.
[01:23:36]  Like, my question is, like, these guys can't sell.
[01:23:40]  Yeah.
[01:23:41]  Because they will crash.
[01:23:42]  They're too big of, they're too big of whales, right?
[01:23:44]  Sailor's sort of a different machine.
[01:23:46]  But he's got tons of debt.
[01:23:48]  Oh, yeah.
[01:23:48]  No.
[01:23:49]  And he just has to buy to like escape margin calls.
[01:23:51]  Oh, wow, waggy, waggy, waggy, waggy, wagman, waggy.
[01:23:55]  Pyramid Ponzi scheme that he's running or whatever he's fucking doing.
[01:23:58]  But I mean, like, you know, all of these guys keep, you know, trying to find that next ladder up or whatever.
[01:24:08]  Like, are still sort of, they've got golden handcuffs because the second they sell, they'll dump.
[01:24:14]  I mean, they'll just dump too much in the market and it'll crash.
[01:24:16]  And so like, they're all kind of playing a little bit of chicken with each other.
[01:24:21]  Yeah.
[01:24:21]  That, like, I don't really understand how that gets resolved.
[01:24:25]  Well, one, one thing that they do do, some of them, though I don't think this is like a solution for the, I guess, I guess what you would call their problems, there is some like OTC trading like over the counter or off-chain.
[01:24:37]  So like, but and I've heard that there are like Telegram groups or signal chats for, but more for like prominent people in the industry who are like, hey, who are trading like big bags or like coordinating sales.
[01:24:50]  But that is fucking, by the way, that's illegal.
[01:24:53]  That's illegal coordination like within the market.
[01:24:55]  Right, right.
[01:24:57]  But that's what I've heard is that some of those bigger bags, like that's how they kind of engineer things.
[01:25:02]  Or I don't know if they still end up in the black at the end, but that's the point also I think that people need to understand with cryptos.
[01:25:11]  It's just like the stock market in some ways, but worse.
[01:25:13]  But there are people who are operating on a different level than you with different rules, different information, different connections, maybe even able to trade faster or trade on your information.
[01:25:23]  And you are just not going to win against that.
[01:25:26]  I know.
[01:25:26]  It's funny because at least the casinos are fair to me because if you just keep gambling, you win.
[01:25:30]  They're highly regulated.
[01:25:31]  They're highly regulated.
[01:25:32]  And you know what?
[01:25:33]  And they've cleaned up their act.
[01:25:34]  And I have found statistically that if you just keep gambling, you not only get it back, but you get more.
[01:25:41]  It's a profitable thing.
[01:25:42]  Everybody makes money off of it.
[01:25:43]  That's not true.
[01:25:44]  It is, well, I mean, it's called Liz's Law of Gambling.
[01:25:47]  No, that isn't true.
[01:25:48]  But I don't, I mean, I agree with it too.
[01:25:51]  But the thing with all this shit is it's so wild.
[01:25:55]  Wild West is a stupid thing to call it because the implication there is like it's going to become regulated and like regularized and normalized.
[01:26:01]  The reality is, is like this is the point of all this shit is to have this fucking stacked casino against you.
[01:26:08]  And it has its defenders because people will make somehow make a little bit of money and then they'll be like, oh, well, actually, it seems pretty fair to me.
[01:26:16]  But it is a fucking, a whole thing is a fucking scam.
[01:26:19]  And this is like, I just, it pisses me off so fucking much because, yeah, you're right.
[01:26:24]  These people are trading on more information than a casino would have.
[01:26:27]  Like these people have more info on you and more ability to rip you off than a casino would have.
[01:26:32]  And there's privileged players and there's people that fucking have the deck stacked in their favor and they are always going to win.
[01:26:38]  And in the final, in the end of it, you are always going to lose if you keep playing.
[01:26:42]  Absolutely.
[01:26:43]  And, you know, I always like to quote our friend Brock Pierce whenever I come on this show.
[01:26:49]  You know, there's a quote from him from many years ago.
[01:26:52]  He co-founded Tether.
[01:26:54]  You should Google him.
[01:26:56]  We've done episodes.
[01:26:56]  Yeah.
[01:26:57]  Yeah.
[01:26:57]  You should have done it.
[01:26:57]  And plus true or not.
[01:26:59]  Yeah.
[01:26:59]  One of his quotes is, whenever I need money, I just make another token.
[01:27:04]  I mean, but at least that's fucking honest.
[01:27:06]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:27:07]  Not to say anything nice, but that just appears.
[01:27:09]  Of course.
[01:27:10]  And that just shows like these guys are operating on a different level than everyone else.
[01:27:15]  They are running the markets and everything, but it's not even like the stock market where you have the clearinghouse and the broker and these various roles divided up by the law.
[01:27:24]  Like you have one entity who is like the bank, the broker, the clearinghouse, like doing everything, also probably manipulating the price and based in some overseas.
[01:27:33]  Automatic market makers.
[01:27:35]  They're doing everything.
[01:27:37]  Yeah.
[01:27:37]  So it's just like, it's such an absurd, like, it's not even as if it's like there's two casinos.
[01:27:42]  And they're trading against you on their own exchange.
[01:27:44]  So there's like the casino that exists as like the figment casino, which is like, please come to our casino and play the game of crypto.
[01:27:53]  And then behind that, like Wizard of Oz, there's another casino that is the real casino that you will never get into.
[01:28:00]  And that's where all of the real money moves and plays.
[01:28:03]  And your little chips, like.
[01:28:05]  you know, play into that, but you will, not only will you not have access to it, like you don't even see that it's there.
[01:28:12]  You don't even know it exists.
[01:28:13]  And everyone pretends that the casino that you're in is the real casino.
[01:28:17]  And that's what gets me mad because it's like you have these fucking clowns in Congress that are like, we need to regulate that casino.
[01:28:22]  And I'm like, bitch, no, look behind the curtain.
[01:28:25]  Yeah.
[01:28:25]  Go after it.
[01:28:26]  I mean, the reality is you need to shut down the casino, shut down the other casino and shoot everybody involved from the CEO to the Croupias.
[01:28:34]  I mean, it's ridiculous.
[01:28:35]  I'm not even kidding.
[01:28:36]  These people, these people cannot be reformed.
[01:28:40]  These people cannot be reformed.
[01:28:42]  I mean, these people can be reformed.
[01:28:45]  Well, no.
[01:28:46]  Well, to take a little piece of that, maybe a little more gently, I really think one of the main problems with the Democrats is that they just don't see crypto, the crypto industry wholesale as their adversary.
[01:28:57]  Like, you know, they think, I mean, Democrats are weak in a lot of ways, of course, but like some, and a few of them are pro-crypto, like Richie Torres or whatever.
[01:29:04]  But a lot of.
[01:29:05]  He's pro-anything for the right price.
[01:29:06]  That's right.
[01:29:07]  But a lot of them think like, oh, maybe we could work with them or something like that.
[01:29:10]  Or yeah, maybe I do need some of that money.
[01:29:12]  But it's like, even if you get that money and manage to retain your seat, like your constituents are getting screwed by these crypto companies.
[01:29:18]  So like this, this is like, this is a leech upon the economy and upon your constituents if you're a Democratic politician.
[01:29:26]  Like, okay, maybe the next cycle you get some crypto money, but like you are selling yourself and your constituents out.
[01:29:33]  It seems like everybody's being sold out to parasites by parasites.
[01:29:37]  It strikes me about Richie Torres.
[01:29:39]  Jacob doesn't co-sign any of this, but Liz certainly does.
[01:29:42]  Sometimes I think that he just Googled money plus other word and then hit that up for donations.
[01:29:48]  So I think like for crypto, he was like money plus illegal.
[01:29:51]  And then like, was like, all right, guys, I'm getting behind you.
[01:29:54]  Jews, he's like, money plus religion.
[01:29:56]  And he's like, all right, guys, get behind me.
[01:29:58]  I mean, this guy is, this guy.
[01:29:59]  By the way, it's so many shekels.
[01:30:01]  I mean, my God, the guy, he is, I think, Jacob, if we play our cards, right?
[01:30:06]  I think we could get Richie Torres to do whatever we wanted.
[01:30:09]  You know, we pop in there with a couple of Yavakazad.
[01:30:13]  The guy is pathetic.
[01:30:15]  Juice our valuation numbers so that we can get, we can try and buy Richie Torres.
[01:30:21]  We should donate heavily.
[01:30:22]  I think Truanon should get involved in the next campaign cycle.
[01:30:25]  Start a super bad.

=== Get a Strong Bot Army (03:33) ===

[01:30:26]  That's what we should do.
[01:30:29]  We should get involved.
[01:30:30]  We have a strong bot army.
[01:30:33]  We do have a strong bot army.
[01:30:34]  We should get a strong bot army.
[01:30:36]  Wait, actually, this might be a fun little after-school project.
[01:30:39]  If we just do, Young Chomsky, we need, you need to go to Mumbai.
[01:30:45]  Hey, get us some of those.
[01:30:47]  I saw this video on the internet the other day of a Chinese guy with like a big ass, one of those gulu screens, you know, the screens that are like, ooh.
[01:30:54]  And he had like 50 AI.
[01:30:55]  He had like 50 mini cell phones open with AI agents.
[01:30:58]  And I'm like, dude, I could be doing that to DM Mae Musk.
[01:31:03]  Because here's another thing I want to announce it right now.
[01:31:05]  I'm going to fuck Elon Musk's mother, Mae Musk.
[01:31:12]  This is my plan for the year.
[01:31:14]  I realized, I reread, because I got a book from when we did the Elon series.
[01:31:18]  I reread the part about, I Googled various keywords.
[01:31:22]  Not Google.
[01:31:23]  I did like the Kindle word search thing on how, on like love, marriage, divorce, etc.
[01:31:30]  She has not had good luck since Errol, who is Elon Musk's step, or his deaf father is now married to his stepdaughter.
[01:31:38]  Which is just, it's true.
[01:31:40]  I don't know what else to say.
[01:31:41]  Elon Musk's father is married to technically Elon Musk's sister.
[01:31:47]  May has not found a new man in her life.
[01:31:50]  She is 76 years old.
[01:31:51]  She is going to die soon.
[01:31:53]  Pearly Gates.
[01:31:54]  And do you want to go to Pearlie Gates with a no ring on the finger?
[01:31:57]  I don't think so because you're going to need that to trade to St. Pete to get in there because otherwise, May, you are going to hell because of your piece of shit son and your pornographer daughter.
[01:32:07]  Frankly, that doesn't get enough play.
[01:32:09]  But you know, Elon Musk's sister is a pornographer.
[01:32:11]  I did not know that.
[01:32:12]  Oh, yeah.
[01:32:13]  Sorry, I know I'm getting a soft.
[01:32:15]  You don't know this?
[01:32:16]  No, I didn't know this.
[01:32:18]  She owns a company called Passion Flick.
[01:32:21]  And let me just read from the Wikipedia right now.
[01:32:23]  Passion Flix is an OTT.
[01:32:24]  What does that stand for?
[01:32:26]  Over-the-top media service.
[01:32:27]  I don't know what that means.
[01:32:28]  It would be crazy.
[01:32:29]  I feel like we're over.
[01:32:30]  It means the tops.
[01:32:30]  It's over the top.
[01:32:33]  Passion Flix is an OTT entertainment streaming platform production company.
[01:32:36]  The platform was created and co-founded in 2017 by director and producer Tosca Musk.
[01:32:41]  Crazy name.
[01:32:42]  Uh-huh.
[01:32:43]  But Passion Flix focuses on releasing original film adaptations from best-selling romance novels while also streaming classical romance.
[01:32:52]  So it's also a bit of an IP play.
[01:32:54]  Yes.
[01:32:55]  Question, is it Flicks with an X?
[01:32:58]  It is.
[01:32:58]  It is.
[01:32:59]  Let me just tell you the last things that Elon Musk's sisters production company has put out.
[01:33:05]  February 2025.
[01:33:06]  Oh, just recently.
[01:33:07]  A Lover's Vow.
[01:33:08]  December 2024.
[01:33:10]  Lick.
[01:33:11]  October 2024.
[01:33:13]  A Man's Promise.
[01:33:14]  Before that, The Air He Breathes.
[01:33:16]  Before that, Wallbanger.
[01:33:17]  Before that, Gabriel's Redemption, parts one through three.
[01:33:21]  I mean, we've got Tangled Seduction and Snacks.
[01:33:24]  We've got The Will, Dirty Sexy Saint, A Brother's Honor.
[01:33:28]  That's about Elon and Hollywood Dirt.
[01:33:32]  It is, I mean, I'm telling you, they also have quickie shorts.
[01:33:35]  In my head, it's all like straight to VHS.
[01:33:38]  It sounds very Vintage.
[01:33:40]  It is straight to VHS, but for the streaming.
[01:33:42]  That's what I'm saying.
[01:33:43]  It would be cool if it wasn't streaming.
[01:33:45]  Yeah, I mean, this is a family, the Musks here.
[01:33:49]  Pornography daughter, Jeffrey Epstein girl dating brother, and then Elon Musk himself, the doggy doge.
[01:33:59]  I love Elon.

=== Grateful for Cheese Reserve (02:26) ===

[01:34:00]  I've totally changed my mind on him.
[01:34:02]  I rode in a cyber truck the other day.
[01:34:04]  You did?
[01:34:04]  No.
[01:34:06]  I didn't.
[01:34:07]  I did.
[01:34:07]  But I can't.
[01:34:08]  We're not insured enough to put you in a Tesla product.
[01:34:11]  Oh, God.
[01:34:12]  These things.
[01:34:13]  I have ridden in a Tesla before.
[01:34:17]  Yeah.
[01:34:17]  Me too.
[01:34:18]  It's got scared.
[01:34:19]  I know.
[01:34:20]  I got scared too.
[01:34:20]  But that's because whenever I drive in a car, I try to touch the steering wheel.
[01:34:24]  Because I don't trust these drivers.
[01:34:25]  Sure.
[01:34:26]  You know what I'm saying?
[01:34:26]  Oh, right, right.
[01:34:27]  Because I'm like, I don't know.
[01:34:28]  Well, because you're like, let's do FSD.
[01:34:30]  Let's do FSD.
[01:34:31]  Yeah, I'm poking his little iPad in the middle there.
[01:34:35]  What do you, let me ask you this.
[01:34:38]  What are you grateful for?
[01:34:39]  What am I grateful for?
[01:34:41]  What if I started anywhere just like that?
[01:34:43]  What do you, let me ask you this because you've been so fucking negative this entire episode.
[01:34:47]  What are you grateful for?
[01:34:48]  You know what?
[01:34:50]  Someone was talking to me online today when I was criticizing the crypto reserve, and they're like, we have a cheese reserve.
[01:34:57]  I was like, we should have a cheese reserve.
[01:34:59]  You can eat cheese.
[01:35:00]  So I think I'm grateful for the cheese reserve today.
[01:35:02]  We do have a cheese reserve.
[01:35:04]  What's up with that, by the way?
[01:35:06]  Who came up with that and why?
[01:35:07]  I'm assuming the cheese lobby?
[01:35:09]  No, that's when the Dutch was coming here during the Civil War.
[01:35:12]  Is that like where you needed to prop up cheddar price?
[01:35:14]  Is it when like when there's nuclear war and the elites have to go live in the mountains that they can eat cheese?
[01:35:21]  Estimated at 1.4 to 1.5 billion pounds.
[01:35:24]  I think that's nice.
[01:35:25]  It's kind of like a diarrhea nuke.
[01:35:27]  If, you know, if we were ever to go to war with my people, we could just give us, you know what I'm saying?
[01:35:33]  They could just give us that.
[01:35:34]  Maybe this is how we solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: we just flood the region with cheese.
[01:35:39]  We just like crack.
[01:35:40]  Yeah.
[01:35:40]  You know what I mean?
[01:35:41]  The CIA just can't stop eating cheese.
[01:35:43]  Put the cheese everywhere.
[01:35:45]  They'll stop bombing.
[01:35:46]  They'll stop bombing.
[01:35:47]  The great milk flood of the Sinai.
[01:35:50]  That's what we're doing.
[01:35:50]  The land of milk and honey.
[01:35:51]  They call me May.
[01:35:52]  They call me the great milk flood of the Sinai.
[01:35:54]  And you are my Kayapatra.
[01:35:56]  That's a different river.
[01:35:58]  But still, Jacob, I'm grateful for you.
[01:36:01]  Thank you.
[01:36:02]  Yeah, sorry.
[01:36:02]  That wasn't a great answer, but I do.
[01:36:03]  What are you really grateful for?
[01:36:05]  Man, I'm grateful just to be here, be healthy and alive today.
[01:36:09]  That's lovely.
[01:36:10]  I really am.
[01:36:11]  I'm a normie.
[01:36:12]  I'm going home to a spouse and two kids.
[01:36:14]  You know, I'm grateful for that kind of stuff.
[01:36:16]  Yeah.
[01:36:17]  That is true.
[01:36:18]  I am grateful that you're going home too, so that we can have a players club in here.
[01:36:21]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:36:22]  I was going to ask, you know, when things get dicey at home, I might have to crash here a little bit.

=== The Great Milk Flood of the Sinai (01:16) ===

[01:36:26]  Yeah, that's okay.
[01:36:26]  No, no, no.
[01:36:27]  It's okay.
[01:36:27]  You can tap into Liz's Siroq selection that she's got back there.
[01:36:32]  Liz is a bunch of Sirock and Gold Schlager in the other room.
[01:36:36]  Liz's private reserve, she doesn't let me touch it, but I do relapse on it occasionally.
[01:36:41]  And you can touch some of my buzzballs if you would like.
[01:36:43]  No opening.
[01:36:44]  Liz, what are you grateful for?
[01:36:45]  I'm grateful for you.
[01:36:47]  I'm grateful for you, too.
[01:36:48]  I missed you.
[01:36:48]  It's nice to see you.
[01:36:49]  I know it's you too.
[01:36:50]  I'm grateful for you and Young Chomsky.
[01:36:53]  And I'm grateful for God.
[01:36:55]  And for the podcast True Anon, I'm Liz.
[01:36:57]  My name is Brace, the Midnight Mover, Belden.
[01:37:02]  And we are joined by Jacob Silverman.
[01:37:06]  You never thought about upgrading?
[01:37:08]  Goldman?
[01:37:08]  Yeah.
[01:37:09]  One time in high school, I was in, this is really stupid and nerdy.
[01:37:13]  I was in, I took Russian language classes and I was in a Russian Olympiada.
[01:37:18]  And I won, whereas like I won silver second place.
[01:37:21]  And I go up to get the medal.
[01:37:24]  And the guy is like, maybe next time you should change your name to Goldman.
[01:37:28]  There we go.
[01:37:28]  So I've been thinking about it ever since I was 13 is what I'm trying to tell you.
[01:37:32]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:37:33]  Because of course many have called me Bladnenberg.
[01:37:36]  And we're joined by producer Young Chomsky.
[01:37:40]  And we'll see you next time.
[01:37:41]  Bye-bye.