LIVE: Bitcoin Dip, Tariffs, and Macroeconomics Explained with Jack Mallers

Yo, welcome back to another episode of The Money Matters podcast. It is Mailbag Monday, and I am your host, Jack.

Listen, for those that don't know, this is a podcast entirely sponsored by myself, meaning we have no ads. We are about Free Speech, contributing to the conversation. I'm never going to sell you uh, electrolyte mix. I'm never going to sell you a protein bar. I'm never going to sell you a subscription to a gym. I am here to give my pure thoughts that are unfiltered, real, raw, and authentic.

If you would like to support me and the podcast, I founded a company called Strike. We provide Global Bitcoin Financial Services. We let you buy and sell Bitcoin, store your Bitcoin, move your Bitcoin. We're working on financial services like loans against your Bitcoin. You can be a customer of my company if you want to support me. The other way to support this podcast is to like and subscribe.

The feedback from you all is you love the podcast; the podcast is growing. Last episode, I told you guys we're at 16,000 subscribers on YouTube, and today when I checked, we're at 177,000 subscribers. So if you can like this episode, if you can rate us on Spotify, if you can subscribe to my YouTube channel, I have a goal of 100,000 YouTube subscribers before this year is over. I'm bringing on more guests. I've got a podcast episode with Preston Pish on the way. We've got—we'll get Dorsey on here; we'll get Saylor on here. I go live every Monday to the moon for podcasts and conversations that are about truth, authenticity, and curiosity, and less about biased ads and uh, manipulated conversations. Down with traditional media, and on with raw, authentic, real, personal media. That's what I'm talking about.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, I am still in the jungle. You can see—look at that jungle! Welcome to the Jungle! I'm tan; look at me! I look like a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie—scrumptious, scrum-dilly-umptious! I've got a little bit of scruff going. I've got the wavy hair. I look like a surfer bro. I look like a surfer bro. I'm not—I don't really know how to surf. Um, all right, we're going to let people pile in. I appreciate and love you all, uh, and once people pile in, we will get this show on the road. We will talk about uh, the tariffs, the Bitcoin dip, and my macroeconomic thesis.

While we are waiting, if you have not read my thread on X, formerly Twitter, um, I recommend you do so, uh, if you have time while we let everyone pile in here and join the live, uh, because that's what I'll be talking about. Um, but no, no, uh, no pressure if not; you can always check it out later. Um, all right, we are growing our viewer count. Wow, already 250 of you on YouTube. Thank you guys for tuning in. Thank you guys for supporting me. I mean, the growth at Strike, the growth on the podcast is always so surreal for me. Me, I was just a kid in his room that got into Bitcoin 12 years ago, and I never take it for granted that you guys like hanging out with me on the internet, value what I have to say, and enjoy the products that I build uh, as part of my business. So it means the world. Um, I really do appreciate it, even the trolling. Like, you know, as a young kid, it really did get to me, but um, now as I've gotten older and understood the internet a little bit better, um, you guys are just the best. It's—it's really a joy to hang out and uh, chat with you guys on the internet—the trolling, the good, the bad—you guys are the best, and uh, we're going to the Moon together.

I really appreciate the support. I really do. You know, here's the thing: obviously, my business, you know, we charge fees on our products, and my job is to make money, um, to invest more in what I want to see in the world and build more products and pay my employees, right? And so—so that is a business. The podcast is not a business. The podcast has turned into a personal passion project of mine. A lot of my life is very serious. I am the president, or actually I'm the controlling board member, largest shareholder, CEO, founder, uh, chairman—all the important titles you could give me—of Strike. It's a very serious life at times; lots of responsibility. I love it. I want to change the world for the better. Um, I love it. This, though, is not as serious. This is a passion project. This is me getting to just shoot the… with the world, what's on my mind, have fun with you guys. And so this is less—I'm not necessarily asking you um, to pay me any money or to—I—I just want your support um, to make this podcast bigger because I personally really enjoy it.

So while we're waiting, uh, if you guys could just like and subscribe, um, I have a personal goal. If I hit 100,000 subscribers this year or not—doesn't really matter—my company's going to be more than okay, and my family's going to be more than okay. Um, it's more about uh, the personal journey of becoming the best podcaster. Um, my team just DM'd me and asked if I was okay. That's always concerning, so I'm going to check in on what they meant there because if I don't look okay on the live, then that's not good. I think I look okay, though. You—you know, to some, I may look more than okay. Ladies, I've been in Central America getting a tan. We're going to have to keep it together now. We're gonna have to keep it together. Today is about macroeconomics; it's about geopolitics; it's about the future of monetary order. It is not about my tan; it is not about my luscious locks; it's not about my bright blue eyes. So I think I look okay. The ladies think I look okay. I wonder what my team meant when they DM'd me and said, am I okay? Uh, I'm kidding. I have a girlfriend who I love to death. All right, proof of tan—uh, let's see what we're at numbers-wise because uh, I think we got to get this show on the road, baby. On the road. Um, all right, let's do it. What do you guys say, chat? You guys ready? I gotta pull out the Noster chat zap.stream. Oh, I'm on there, baby. I'm on zap.stream. All right, my team said uh, I'm good. Team said I look great. Um, enough of the jokes. All right, here we go.

Listen, uh, Bitcoin is dipping, or was at least; there's a lot of volatility in markets, and everyone is tying it to a trade war, to Trump's tariffs. Here's my message to the public: this is bigger than tariffs. This is the post-World War II economic order unwinding. People think that this is about Trump's tariffs or about trade wars with other nations. It is not. The entire global economic system that has existed since World War II is breaking down. Okay, the United States has spent the last 80 years or so running what's called a trade deficit—sending dollars abroad to other countries, exporting dollars and importing goods and debt. Okay, this system is no longer sustainable. It was never built to last, and it is coming to an end. This is not another trade war; this is a full-blown economic reset. This is the United States saying, we cannot run this scam any longer. Okay, what am I talking about?

After World War II, the United States created a system that worked for a little bit. What was the problem? Okay, the US was the only industrial power left standing after World War II. Okay, it funded the global reconstruction of the rest of the world, so primarily you had Europe, Japan. I mean, other industrial powers were decimated, destroyed. Okay, and the world needed to somehow get back on its feet and start producing things again, and the US used things like the Marshall Plan, Breton Woods, over the last, you know, 50, 60, 70, 80 years to bootstrap the world back on its feet. The other countries around the world needed dollars to rebuild their economy and rebuild their industrial power. The US figured, we will provide them the dollars. Okay, so here was the plan: other parts of the world would start producing stuff and exporting them into the United States. The US would import the goods that they're producing and export them the dollars. Okay, so other countries around the world would get dollars and US debt, by Treasuries. Okay, the US would shoe away with the dollars and get goods and services. Okay, now this worked for a while, and it was the greatest trade deal in history, because why? The world got to reindustrialize after a devastating World War, and the US got rich. Everyone was happy, until obviously it stopped working. Now this is known as The Triffin Dilemma. Okay, this is the system that was never built to actually last. What is the Triffin Dilemma? It's when—if you have a fiat currency, a government currency, that's the global reserve currency, it's a bit of a trap. Okay, meaning that you have to—if you have the world reserve currency, you have to run a deficit in order to supply the rest of the world with the reserve currency. Your job is not to produce real things, real goods and services for the world; your job is unfortunately to give the world your currency. So you're never producing more for the world than you're consuming. At the end of the day, you have to hold yourself to printing more pieces of paper than you're consuming goods. So you are going to run a giant deficit; you are going to print a lot of money and run up a lot of debt. The reason the US has so much debt is because they have the world reserve currency. This is so misunderstood. Sometimes people say, man, the US has the world reserve currency; they're so dumb, why do they have so much debt? No, you're misunderstanding; they have so much debt only because they have the world reserve currency. Their job is to constantly be exporting the dollar. Now what does that do to your local economy, into your country? It hollows out the domestic economy over time. The world kept needing dollars, so the US kept printing dollars. Okay, that means we stopped producing actual stuff. Okay, so our industrial power went to factory jobs; our middle class—everything like—if—when—when I'm using the term hollowed out, like the inner structure of America decimated. We talk about things like the wealth gap. Look around; if you're an American listening to this, go into your pocket, look at your phone, look at who made everything around you; it's probably not in the United States of America. The middle class no longer exists here; the wealth gap is massive. You're either on the far left, the far right, as far as monetary wealth in place within our economy. So this is not a very sustainable—listen, it's obvious—it's not very sustainable to print dollars and create debt in exchange for real things. You have to do real stuff in the real world; you cannot just print pieces of paper forever. Obviously, duh, duh. This was only a solution to bootstrap the rest of the world and get them back on their feet. This was never supposed to be the rest of the world forever, ever, ever. This was a short-term, shortstop gap solution. This was never, ever, ever supposed to be how the world was going to work forever. Now this is known as The Triffin Dilemma; it's having the world reserve currency; it is a system that is built to fail.

Now the world obviously knows this. Okay, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the BRICS nations—none of these countries want dollars; they're all dumping their treasuries. Okay, so guys, listen, this isn't—I'm not making any of this up; this isn't a genius insight of mine. All these countries are screaming from the top of their lungs; they're not trying to do it secretly; they're not trying to do it maliciously; they're not trying to do it combatively necessarily. They're saying, hey, we don't want to use the dollar for trade anymore; we don't want your treasuries. China's been dumping treasuries for almost a decade, saying, why would I own treasuries when the purchasing power of the dollar continues to go down and has to go down? Okay, they're saying, hey, let's explore things like gold; let's explore something else. Russia and China are now settling increasing amounts of trade in the yuan. Okay, it's not a secret that all of these nations are de-dollarizing. So this is not a theory I made up in my room; this is very public; you just have to tie the pieces together, is that none of these countries want to hold US debt as their reserves anymore. This is very obvious. The US is struggling to find purchasers of their debt. Okay, the financial crisis of Silicon Valley Bank was because the US was relying—is the kind way of saying it—but forcing our own banks to be buying our debt, and th—those long-term duration instruments force them to go and solve it. So we're forcing our own financial institutions to buy the debt because other nations don't want to do it anymore. Okay, and it's like a Ponzi scheme; it's the last sucker finally realizing the game is over—loses. So everyone's kind of waking up to it, and you're seeing central banks around the world increasingly buying gold, increasingly selling treasuries, and increasingly just talking about and socializing the idea of settling global trade in not dollars.

Last point before I move on to the next topic: if you understand the Triffin Dilemma and you understand that being the world reserve currency is a trap within itself, you will never want it in the first place. So when people say China wants to be the world reserve currency, the yuan is coming for the dollar—no, it's not. Nobody wants to be the world reserve currency; it's a trap; it's a dead end. Nobody wants the place of the United States. What's going to happen next? We're very likely to find ourselves back at a neutral reserve asset where the world used something like—where it's governed by the laws of Mother Nature. No one has an advantage; no one can manipulate it; everyone has access to it. A nation should not run, operate, and distribute the world deserved currency because they're exporting printed dollars or whatever it is and debt for real goods and services, and it's not sustainable; it's not attainable. Okay, so what's the solution? Let's bring it back to today. What's the solution? The solution is—well, what this Administration is trying to do is a few things: one, this whole idea of tariffs. Tariffs aren't about a trade war; tariffs are about reshoring and building stuff in America. Okay, also weakening the dollar. Okay, if you want your exports to be competitive, you need the dollar to be weaker, and you obviously need production to be in this country. So when you hear Trump say things like, you know, everyone's taking advantage of us, we need to focus on ourselves, we need to drill, drill, we need to incentivize people to build here in America, what he's really saying—and he said it last night verbatim; I posted this clip on Twitter; he said it verbatim, word for word—in almost every country we're running a deficit, said China, Mexico, Canada, Germany—everywhere we're running a deficit, and he's like, why are we doing this? Why don't I put tariffs on these countries, incentivize production here locally in America? This will weaken the dollar, right? Weaken the dollar, meaning inflation. Okay, everyone's like, tariffs cause inflation. Yeah, it's weakening the dollar; it's making exports competitive. Okay, with a weaker dollar, also you inflate the debt away. Okay, so the US has to bring manufacturing back in order to stay competitive. Tariffs force companies to produce in America instead of markets like China. A weaker dollar also makes the US export competitive and inflates their debt away. Okay, the only way to get rid of $35 trillion worth of debt is inflating it. Okay, so the playbook is very simple: the threat of tariffs, okay, and the idea of incentivizing production in America is about bringing it—reshoring the production of real stuff. Okay, America effectively has printed dollars, consumed goods from other places around the world, and gotten fat, effectively—more or less summarized version in one sentence—print paper, consume stuff, get fat, do nothing, get fat. Okay, and so the strategy is: we have to make the dollar weaker to make our exports competitive; we have to start producing real stuff, and this is kind of like this game theory that you're seeing play out. Okay, so it's really about restructuring and reordering the US, unwinding this World War II setup, okay, and doing it in a way that's sustainable and that isn't going to get, you know, result in war.

Okay, now the main problem that Trump has is the Federal Reserve. Okay, Powell doesn't like Trump; Trump doesn't like Powell. Okay, it's very obvious. The Fed actually started cutting rates leading up to the election, in my opinion, trying to get the Democrats to win. As soon as Trump won, they paused; no more rate cuts. Okay, Trump needs a weaker dollar. Okay, listen, guys, if you're going to reshore production of stuff, and Trump's always talking about tax breaks and tax cuts, you know who he's going to give subsidies to—people that want to build here in America. You know who he's going to give tax breaks to—people that want to build here in America. He needs a weaker dollar. You guys think we're gonna be able to afford that? We can't afford anything; it's about printing record amounts of money. Trump's last term that he served, 2016 to 2020, people bring up all the time; he printed record amounts of money. Yes, that's been his whole strategy the whole time—devalue the dollar, weaker the dollar, reshore production, and unwind us from this reliance on being the world reserve currency. Now, Jerome Powell won't play ball. If you listen to his interviews, he's like, yeah, you know, we were looking at the economic data, and now that we think about it, inflation hasn't really hit our target, and we came up with these new metrics, and we're not really sure anymore, and we might actually have to raise rates. And Jerome Powell's not willing to play ball. Okay, the funny thing is: Trump's the president of the United States; the US government doesn't control the US dollar; a private bank does. This dude, Jerome Powell does, and they've been at war with each other. Does anyone remember the press conference when Powell was like—when he was asked, if Trump asked you to step down, will you step down? No. If Trump asks you to do something, will you do it? No. And Trump tweets every day, Jerome Powell caused these—these issues; he caused inflation; he needs to fix it; he needs to cut rates. I need rates lower now; I need rates lower now; rates lower now. So they're at war with each other. Okay, now why is this related to today, bringing us all the way to where we are now? Trump has a choice to make, in my opinion. He can either allow a mini financial crisis to happen today, or it will happen in 3 to 6 months. But if he's gonna make whole on his campaign promises, and this is about unwinding World War II and the economic relationships that existed post-World War and the devastation that was—and Trump wants to make whole on his promises, reshore manufacturing, build products here, and weaken the dollar, he needs cooperation from the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve will cooperate if there's a crisis, just like they did with Silicon Valley Bank. They're stern on their focus and on inflation and on employment until a financial crisis, then they swoop in to help. And so what is Trump gonna do? He's like, okay, you guys don't want to play ball; I'm gonna tell Bessent not to run down the treasury account, and we're gonna have the negotiations now. I'm gonna impose tariffs on everyone. Now, why did Donald Trump do this over the weekend, guys? If he was rational, wanted cooperation, wanted markets to have his support, why did he do this over the weekend? It's all tactics; it's all negotiations. Okay, he's making—he's—he's punching Powell where it hurts. Last night in his interview, he said very obviously, he said, tariffs and my economic plan, there will be short-term pain, but that's okay; it will be worth it in the end. It will be worth it in the end. I think—and I've said on this podcast every single Money Monday—I've told you guys, $100,000 is a big psychological number for this asset. Okay, I expect a lot of short-term volatility. This stuff has to unwind; someone has to bend the knee. Okay. Okay, is Trump going to publicly backtrack on his campaign promises and backtrack on his vision for the country, which is reshoring production, weakening the dollar, and starting to realign the relationships we have with other nations, or is the Fed going to be forced to bend the knee? Something has to break, but until then, there isn't enough liquidity and clarity to send assets much higher. If anything, there's going to be a crisis. Okay, I expect a lot of volatility in the short term. Now, in the long term, who's the big winner of a weaker dollar in a realignment of the macroeconomic landscape, unwinding of World War II? The big winner are scarce assets; the big winner are neutral assets; the big winner are world assets—assets that everyone has access to that are neutral and can act as a reserve currency. The two candidates are obvious; it's either gold or Bitcoin. That—that's it. Now I'd make the argument that gold already failed as a world reserve currency because in a digital economy of eight billion people, you need trust in order for it to work. Gold cannot achieve transaction finality without trust. Okay, when I needed to exchange gold with my neighbor, gold works fine, peer-to-peer, hand it—hand it right to my neighbor; transaction finality done. But if I need to use gold to book a flight online, if I need to use gold to make a remittance payment, when I need to use gold to order NFL tickets, I need to trust the financial institution. Gold cannot achieve transaction finality in today's economy, in today's world, without trust. If you trust governments, if you trust corporations, if you trust central banks, gold works great, but it's not the money of enemies anymore; it's gold centralized, and it's too easy to manipulate. So listen, in a weaker dollar environment, Bitcoin's the best performer. Bitcoin absorbs the most value. I think the upside over the next year, five years, 10 years, 100 years for Bitcoin to be a major player as a neutral reserve asset for the world—you guys have to understand the Triffin Dilemma—like, no country wants the world reserve currency. We—we have to move toward a neutral reserve asset. Nobody wins in this environment. So when everyone's like, Trump's such an—this is all about trade wars—no, it's not; it's not; it's not. It's about: how do you unwind the World War II setup, post-World War II setup? How do you reshore production in the US so we're actually doing stuff? How do you weaken the dollar, inflate away our debt, and introduce global trade settlement that uses a neutral currency? And so when I'm saying the US should buy Bitcoin and Senator Lummis is Bitcoin Act—these are things like—if the future of the world is neutral currencies, right now the US doesn't own any Bitcoin; effectively, it's never purchased Bitcoin; it needs to get off zero because the odds that Bitcoin plays a role are far from nothing.

But in summary, that's my interpretation of what's happening right now and what we're living through. I think Bitcoin is going to be very volatile; it's the only truly free market in the world. Okay, think of Bitcoin like a truth machine; it is able to collect everyone's inputs; everyone in the world can give Bitcoin input, so it's the only thing that is pure truth—pure truth. It doesn't close; it doesn't disallow anyone from having access. Bitcoin is pure truth, so it's always going to be first-moving; it's always going to be volatile, but it's a truth machine, so I expect it to move a lot; I expect it to reflect a lot of the uncertainty that's in the world today. You have a—you know—the president of the United States and the chairman of the Federal Reserve at odds—at odds—and that's going to take a second to iron out. I expect Trump to not be afraid to stress the financial system and impose his intentions on making his political promises real and forcing Powell to bend the knee. I—I do not think he's afraid to do that. I think if anything, this weekend he sent that message; he sent that message loud and clear, and the market is rebounding momentarily because he's paused tariffs, I guess. But my expectation is: he's full stop, all gas, no brakes, and Powell has to play ball; he has to come to Jesus, according to Trump. So I think there's going to be volatility. Now, in the long term, I expect Bitcoin to go to 250,000 to a million this year. I expect the dollar to be significantly weaker in order for the United States…

To live out this vision and reindustrialize itself, it has to print a lot of money, a lot of money. And the only way out of its debt situation is by inflating it; it's the only way out, it's the only way out. Okay, so long-term, Bitcoin's going to the absolute Moon. Short-term, I expect it to be really volatile, and I expect Trump to be a bully; I expect him to be a bully and say, "This is the best thing for America, whether you like it or not. I need the Federal Reserve support; I need the dollar to weaken; I need the dollar to weaken. It's the only way." But all this trade war, or the Fed, the FED, doesn't like where inflation is, so it's not moving rates. Yeah, all right. Okay, we'll see; we'll see.

Like Trump's been saying, the US government needs buyers of its debt immediately. It needs the FED to do something, like lower rates and re-enable banks to buy this debt—they can't right now—and he needs that ASAP, ASAP. And listen, Trump can either have a mini financial crisis now or in three to six months and play the political game, guys, like he has it now. He blames it on Jerome Powell; he blames it on the Democrats; he blames it on Biden by the midterms and by re-election. Nobody remembers. The more you wait, the more disadvantaged you are in the political game. I said it; you know, don't want to be that guy; don't want to be that guy that says, "I told you so," but I said last week, guys, I expect a lot of volatility, both to the up and to the down, both into the up and to the down. There's a lot of uncertainty that has to be worked out. We're living through a reorchestration of monetary relationships. We are living through the unwind of post-World War II and a new economic order—huge deal. We're moving back to a world where nations use neutral assets to settle global trade and where everyone is forced or relied upon to produce real stuff for the real world.

When Trump says, "America has great potential; we have so much oil and energy we haven't harnessed; we have so much food and production we aren't farming," he's saying, like, "America can produce a lot of stuff that the world would value, but we don't because we don't have to." This is what he's saying. And obviously, his, his tone, he's trying to appeal to the Americans that are disgruntled, that are angry, that feel like they're victims, and this is just politics. But the reality is, America, in their opinion, America helped everyone else get back on their feet by taking on the role of the world reserve currency. And you know that's when Trump is saying, "We've helped everyone out, and no one values us for it." He's saying that. Now, if you're other countries around the world, you're saying, "America took advantage of the fact that they were still on their feet after World War II, and they collected all the gold deposits and became the world reserve currency, and they haven't done jack but print money and fight people when someone has something to say about it." But that's all that's happening. And I think before I die, we'll be in a totally new economic era, totally New Economic order globally. I think we're moving back towards neutral assets. Nobody wants to be the world reserved currency; it's a sucker's game; it's a dead end. And the US is finally saying, "I give up." That's what's happening. And unfortunately, the FED is saying, like, "We're not political; we're not political." Yes, you are; yes, you are. We, we know Powell doesn't like Trump; we know Trump doesn't like Powell; we know that; we know that. Powell started cutting rates leading up to the election, trying to get Kamala elected, and as soon as the election was over and Trump won, he paused. We know that; we know that; we know that.

Listen, guys, the US government has a record amount of debt to refinance, and Powell won't lower the rates to help them refinance it. This is the type of crisis I'm talking about. Like Trump, TR needs the dollar to go down; he needs a weaker dollar if he's going to build a ton of stuff in this country, reshape, like, be competitive in our exports; he needs it, and he's not getting it. So that's what's gonna happen; that's what's gonna happen. Bitcoin's going to go to the absolute Moon. I would not be surprised if nation-states start aggressively accumulating Bitcoin because there's not a 0% chance it plays a role in global trade settlement in neutral reserve currency status. There's no reason anyone, whether you're an individual, a family, a business, or a country, there's no reason anyone should own zero of it. There's zero reason for that. It is far riskier to own no Bitcoin than to own Bitcoin. In the short-term volatility, in the long term, uh, this thing is going to tens of trillions of dollars of market cap within the next five years. You know, a Bitcoin will easily be a million dollars or higher in the next five years, easily, easily.

Um, all right, that is—uh, sorry, I'm just checking, uh, checking the comments—um, that is pretty much my rant. I, I mean, that's a lot, and I hope that made sense. I boiled it down to a tweet storm. Um, I went back and forth if I should do like a little four-minute video of myself kind of organizing my thoughts. I went with a tweet storm. Um, you can check it out on my Twitter, uh, twitter.com/jaacks. Um, but yeah, I mean, I'm curious what you guys think. Any questions you may have, I'm happy to answer it. But yeah, I mean, being the world reserve currency is untenable. Um, the debt's gotten too high; the system's collapsing on itself; all these other countries are, are dollarized; they, they want out. Um, and so does the US; so does the US. The US says, "I got to reshore production; I got to weaken the dollar; I got to make exports competitive." Um, and uh, yeah. Um, all right, what questions do you guys have? Checking the time, I actually have a dinner, uh, that I also have to go to, so I don't think I'll be able to do the full two hours today, but maybe that's a good thing. Uh, let's see what do you guys think of the rant? So let's check the notes that my team—so, uh, for those that are new here, um, my team's in the chat and uh, and they're collecting your guys' uh, questions and feedback, and they're compiling it in a document for me. You could see my face just got bright because I just opened a Google Doc. So, uh, if you guys have questions and you write them down, um, I get them and I answer them at the end. So, um, I see Trump tariffs and policy, uh, and some industry questions. So as you guys have questions, please ask. Um, I think that's one of the coolest parts about this is, um, you know, I try and make myself as accessible as I possibly can as like a CEO and someone who's in the industry. Um, I think transparency, honesty, authenticity—I think people are done having politicians or having corporate suits get on CNBC and tell them what to do and what to wear and what to say. I think people want real connection, and so I try and make myself really accessible and and answer your questions, which I think is rare for a CEO of a financial services firm. So definitely take advantage of it; ask me whatever you want, um, whether it has something to do with Bitcoin or not, and I'm just trying to do my best to, uh, to be accessible and connect with you guys in a real human way. I think the world will move back towards that. I don't think, you know, being all corporate in a blue suit, uh, with Louis Vuitton sneakers is an effective way to be a leader.

All right, let's see what are you guys in the mood for? I see the questions piling in on the doc. Um, we also traditionally do trivia, which I know a lot of you are big fans of, on Monday afternoon, um, but this is a big, uh, this is a big topic today, and a lot going on—big dip. Um, you know, I haven't even gotten into altcoins, and they're so worthless, uh, so, um, maybe we skip trivia today and we just do Q&A, or you guys really value the trivia, which would be less Q&A, but what are you guys thinking? Talk to me, chat. I'll take a sip of water, let you guys, uh, respond. All right, I'm seeing, uh, a lot of "skip trivia and Q&A today," definitely, definitely, definitely. All right, let's do that; let's do that. I'll get right into, uh, I'll get right into Q&A, um, and we'll start with Trump tariffs and policy—is a lot of section on that—but like I said, I see a lot of questions about Strike and our loan product. Um, I've even seen questions about—you guys have asked me about the NBA or like my girlfriend—that one was weird—but you guys can ask me whatever you want is the point, and uh, and I'll answer it. Um, you know, open book here, open book—I think that's the way it should be. So you guys ask me whatever you want, but we'll start with, uh, Trump tariffs and policy. Okay, first question: "Why does Trump care about any of this, or is he just listening to others?" I think, listen, I mean, this is just my opinion; I try not to get political on this podcast. I've said, you know, I'm a millennial, barely—I was born in '94, so I'm young, and you know, my generation—I, I think politics is so far gone at this point. I think we all know that real change is through software, open-source code. No one believes in political change, and so I don't like being involved in politics; I'm not a fan of politics, but obviously when they're relevant and important, I comment on them. So I'll give that disclaimer. Why does Trump care about any of this? Because what I explained—I mean, being the world reserve currency and having a strong dollar is very defeatist to the long-term prosperity of America. Um, it makes our exports so—I mean, we've offshored production of stuff; we don't produce stuff anymore; we only consume stuff, right? Our exports are no longer competitive, and the only future of our world is by printing dollars and importing debt. And you have to ask yourself, how sustainable is that? That requires the cooperation of everyone else that's actually producing real things to value the dollar and value our debt. And if you look at other countries and their holdings of US debt, they're selling treasuries; they're talking about orchestrating trade outside of the US dollar. And you can take this like nationalist approach and saying, "Oh, you know, screw China for that," but like, just try and be rational about it: like, why would China work really hard to produce real things for the real world and take a currency that they know is going to get devalued in return? And they're effectively saying, "Thank you guys for helping us get off our feet, but we're kind of done with this arrangement." The world isn't in this post-World War II era anymore; everyone's on their feet; everyone's producing stuff; let's reorganize. You know, maybe that, like, that's the polite way to say it. And so why does Trump care, or why does anyone in America care? Well, like, we got work to do; we have to reindustrialize the country; we to start like producing things that aren't just printed currency. And the last thing I'll say on this is it's a national security threat in some aspects. Like people say the dollar is backed by the military, but because we don't produce things anymore, the military oftentimes is relying on Russia, on China, on other nations to produce our weapons. That's a—so at a certain point, the Triffin Dilemma becomes a security threat where if you literally are so bad at producing things and your currency is so strong because it's inflated—there's a premium on the dollar because it's the world reserve currency—at a certain point it becomes a national security threat where our military is disadvantaged because we're relying on others to produce our weapons. That's one example of like why we would care. So it's gotten so far out of band where now, like, it's a national security threat to reshore production in certain areas, to weaken the dollar, to be competitive in exports. So is he listening to other people? Maybe, I don't know, but all I'm saying is, like, this is less about trade wars; this is less about the left versus the right, the Democrats versus the Republicans; this is about the post-World War II economic order unwinding. We need a new global relationship; everyone in the world needs to produce stuff, needs to export stuff, right? And, and we need to use a neutral reserve asset, a neutral currency, something like gold, something like Bitcoin, to settle global trade. That's why Trump cares. A weaker dollar makes US exports more competitive and also helps inflate away its debt.

What consequences does this policy have on crypto prices in the coming months, in your opinion? Um, oh, sorry, you were directly quoting me, so I did say this: I said, "A weaker dollar makes US exports more competitive and also helps inflate away its debt." What consequences does this have? It doesn't have consequences; it has the opposite. Um, a weaker dollar means stronger everything else. So a weaker dollar means your groceries are going to get more expensive; your eggs are gonna get more expensive; your gas is gonna get more expensive, but so is your Bitcoin, right? You know, when people say, "Man, you know, grocery inflation is, you know, 5% year-over-year," yeah, but Bitcoin inflation's 100% year-over-year, so I don't hate it, right? You know, inflation isn't bad if you own Bitcoin because Bitcoin inflates more than everything else you want in your life. Inflation's bad if you hold dollars. You know, as someone that doesn't own any dollars and only owns Bitcoin, I love me some inflation. Yeah, inflate that, um, because you're gonna inflate Bitcoin way higher than everything else because it's scarcer than everything else. So anyway, um, there's no necessary consequences, uh, uh, it's, you know, listen, Bitcoin is the best expression of currency debasement; it's the best expression of a weaker dollar. When there's more global liquidity, when there's more dollar liquidity, when Trump is saying, "Hey, anyone that wants to produce stuff in this country, you don't have to pay taxes, and I'll fund it; I'll print money to pay for it," you know, that's good for Bitcoin. Okay. Um, now what's it going to do in the short term? Like I said, uh, volatility, I expect, because Trump may push this to a mini financial crisis to get the FED to see religion again. Okay, we're living in fiscal dominance right now; it's all about the US's debt. The debt is way too high to care about anything else. The US has to refinance its debt, and it has to pay ungodly amounts of money to reshore and reindustrialize production of stuff. How do you think that, that's going to happen without printing a ton of money? Are you out of your mind? And so it needs the FED on its side. And if, if these guys are going to fight and, you know, see eye to eye, then yeah, you know, listen, what the FED traditionally does is wait for financial crisis, right? And as soon as Lehman went down, okay, now we'll do something about it. As soon as Silicon Valley Bank went down, okay, now we'll do something about it. So as soon as something trips up and goes under, or the stock market opens 25% down or something crazy, okay, now we'll step in. But it's all politics, guys; they're not gonna—I'll tell you what Powell won't do: Powell's not going to say, "I see the light of President Trump, and I'm deciding to lower rates because Trump wants it." He's gonna come out and say, "Trump caused the financial crisis, and I'm here to save the American people, and I'm lowering rates," and Trump's gonna say the opposite; he'll say, "This is all Powell's fault; I'm here to make America great again," but it's all politics; it's just—I wouldn't be surprised if there's a financial crisis. If there's a financial crisis, listen, people sell what they can, not what they want. Bitcoin is a leader always; it's a global truth machine. I expect Bitcoin—it won't surprise me if Bitcoin goes down 90, 80, 75k before it goes to 250k. It also could not; I just expect volatility. The world is far too uncertain to understand the active liquidity, um, globally. Also, real quick point, by the way, when the US weakens the dollar, the rest of the world weakens their currencies. Why? Again, because if you have a weaker currency, your exports are more competitive. So if you're China and you are, you know, the industrial leader of the world, the yuan has to be weaker than the dollar, point blank period. And so when the FED starts to cut rates and when the US starts to engineer a weaker dollar, everyone else in the world will start engineering a weaker currency of their own. So global liquidity moves in lockstep. When the dollar strengthens, global liquidity dries up; assets have a tough time going higher, like Bitcoin. When the dollar weakens, everything else weakens; everyone else's rates, money gets easier globally; liquidity ramps up very fast. Okay, so that's another point here is that, like, Bitcoin's a global asset; the dollar gets weaker; that means the yen gets weaker; that means the pound gets—everything gets weaker. So food for thought. Um, this isn't just about the US. Uh, so again, short-term liquidity, uh, long-term incredibly bullish. I would not be surprised to see a $500,000 Bitcoin, a million-dollar Bitcoin in the next 12, 18 months.

Do you think Trump could trade away a Bitcoin reserve for concessions from Powell? Um, no, I don't—like, you know, sometimes people misconstrue my comments as if, you know, I think Trump cares a lot about Bitcoin; that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying Trump cares a lot about reshoring production of stuff in America and weakening the dollar to make our exports competitive. Now, after the math of a, aftermath, like the after-effect of that is gonna send Bitcoin to the moon, like, it's, it's gonna rip your face off, but I'm not saying by proxy then Trump cares about Bitcoin. I'm saying Trump cares about X, therefore Y. Okay, Trump cares about 2 plus 2, therefore I expect 4 is what I'm saying to be clear. So, um, no, I don't think Bitcoin's going to play like a considerable role in anything to do with Powell or the FED. Um, this is all about like traditional X's and O's, unwinding the economic order of World War II, reshoring production, and bringing neutral reserve money back to global trade over some sustained period of time. Uh, next question: "Why does the Fed care at all if the dollar is strong? Is it completely a personal beef with Trump? If someone controlling the Fed above Powell?" So listen, the FED supposedly has a mandate, uh, and that is like, for example, inflation. So the Fed's been very public about, um, you know, "Our inflation target is 2%, and they haven't hit it yet." Weirdly, they started cutting rates before they hit their target; think it was to try and influence the election, but nonetheless, um, that's supposedly what they care about. The reason that the FED is a private independent bank that is not part of the government is supposedly so that they can act independently and that the US government can't have outsized influence on the direction and the terms of the US dollar. Now, the reality is we're living in what's called fiscal dominance, where the government and the US Treasury and its debt are far more important than what the FED cares about. The FED is—okay, it doesn't matter what the FED wants or doesn't want anymore because the US is in way too much debt. Okay, when people say, "Well, look back at the 70s; look back at this other time when the FED did this and that," yeah, but the US didn't have $35 trillion dollars worth of debt in the 70s. The U—the US—like, guys, the US can't afford its interest payments; it needs, it needs lower rates. It's like if you can't afford your mortgage, a quick solution would be lower the rate that you're getting. If your mortgage is, you know, if you got a mortgage at 15%, you, and you can influence someone to make it 0%, so we're living in fiscal dominance where the US government's debt is way too overwhelming, and inevitably that's all that matters. So the FED could care about inflation all it wants, but it's going to cause a financial crisis, and it's going to cause Pax Americana to collapse. So I guess I'll say it this way: if you believe that the US will willingly collapse on itself because it's going to be very principled about inflation, then sell all your Bitcoin, own dollars. If you think that the US is going to try and reshore production, unwind itself from the post-World War II setup, and inflate away its debt, then own hard assets; own something no one can make more of. You have to ask yourself that, and I obviously I think the United States is going to reshore production, um, weaken the dollar, and encourage the world to move towards a neutral reserve asset, inevitably Bitcoin. So, and by the way, like, these are very expensive decisions you have to make because if you continue to own dollars and you're wrong, you're the sucker at the table because everything around you is going to inflate away; you're not going to be able to afford anything with your dollars. Think about it this way: if they inflate the dollar incredibly and everyone moves to Bitcoin, you're gonna walk into a store with these green pieces of paper, and everyone's gonna say, "What the heck are you handing me that for? That was acceptable 20 years ago, not now," right? So like, the longer you wait, the less stuff you're going to get for these green pieces of paper. So if you think that the US is going to voluntarily collapse on itself, um, and let Jerome Powell, like, fight for 2% and collapse all of our banks and the entire economy, um, in the entire world, um, then yeah, like bullish dollars. But obviously, I don't think that's gonna happen. Um, next question: "Is Trump mandated to use the dollar by the Constitution?" I mean, like, the US has to use the dollar because of everything I explained. This whole podcast is—it's currently the world reserve currency; like, every other country—guys, like, over the last 80 years, every other country's produced stuff, and in return for that they've gotten dollars, and then they use those dollars to buy things like treasuries. So the whole world operates on a dollar standard, and we need to use the dollar because it's been our now established tool to actually get—to consume. If we want cars, if we want phones, if we want technology, if we want food, if we want stuff, want energy, if we want to import stuff and, like, live our lives, we need to give people dollars. That's the current arrangement. So we're using dollars because that's what we established after World War II, and we've done no work to unwind that and to hold ourselves accountable to the implications. Like, if the government was sensible and ethical and moral and reliable and, um, responsible over the last 80 years, we would have never piled up this much debt; we would have continually worked on reshoring, been a little bit more vocal to other nations, and, um, I mean, obviously we just got ahead of ourselves.

What role does the sovereign wealth fund play in all of this? Um, that was a new, um, EO, uh, signed today, which I thought was pretty interesting. Um, I mean, it allows us to express economic interests, um, in a pretty unique way. I expect the sovereign wealth fund to be a way for the US to invest in Bitcoin directly and support Bitcoin development in the country. I mean, Howard Lutnick was even talking about, like, "If we're going to be buying so many vaccines from companies, we should have warrants in these companies because we're effectively the only reason they're so successful." Now that's a really weird thing for him to say, honestly, but anyway, the—I get why he said it; it's an example he's using that's going to resonate with the people, which is all of these medical businesses and pharmaceutical companies are getting really rich at our expense of selling us vaccines. At the very least, our country should share in the benefit of that economic upside; it's going to resonate with people. There's COVID, blah blah blah. The point is, it allows our country to express economic interest and gain economic benefit in ways previously not totally possible. Um, so I also wonder if this is an avenue for, uh, the US to be buying Bitcoin, um, in a way that, uh, there aren't so many political hurdles. Um, so we'll see. Next question: "In your opinion, was the lack of mentioning Bitcoin when talking about the sovereign wealth fund for the US strategically, uh, intentional?" A few things: for one, I think you guys—

Got to keep in mind that when these guys are are talking at executive orders, you know they're talking to the whole nation. Um, it's all about politics, you know. Top of mind for these guys as soon as they get elected is already about midterms and reelection, and you know you're constantly appeasing to the public. And the public cares a lot more about a lot of other stuff than Bitcoin, for one. Okay, if everyone, if the majority of America cared deeply about Bitcoin, it'd be way higher than 100K. We'll get there, but we're not there yet.

The other is, if you are America and you don't yet own the amount of Bitcoin that you want, why would you pump it right? So listen, guys, if I'm saying the US is inevitably going to move to a world where they've reshored production, reindustrialized, locally made their exports competitive by weakening the dollar, inflated their debt away by weakening the dollar, and the world is moving towards a neutral asset in global trade and global settlement, and that's likely to be Bitcoin, and the US wants to invest in local mining, in local technology, in local regulation, and in direct ownership of the asset, but before doing all of those things they're going to go tell the world about it—why would you do that? Why would you want, why would you do that? Would you signal that to everyone else, and why would you push the price higher before you've bought? You know what I would do? I would buy Bitcoin first, and then I would go tell everyone how amazing it is. Ah, duh.

So you know, I wouldn't expect the US to come out and talk about how awesome Bitcoin is and how they can't wait to buy a million Bitcoins, because then everyone's going to front run them. You know, it's difficult. You want to appease voters. You know, they have this voting block, this, you know, crypto Bitcoin voting block that was very loyal to them, and I think freeing Ross was a very big deal, was very transactional. It was a hat tip that, you know, "you guys had my back, I had yours." Um, but yeah, the Bitcoin stuff, like we got to build a position first.

Next question: Having altcoins on Sovereign wealth fund would be a disaster, and it looks like Trump family doesn't understand the difference between Bitcoin and crypto. Any thoughts? Um, yeah, I mean, I agree. Uh, I'm doing a lot of work, work behind the scenes to uh, to make sure that the right people fundamentally understand the difference between Bitcoin and crypto. We're making a lot of progress. Um, hopefully there'll be updates for the public soon, but yeah, we're working on that. I think it would be a disaster; it'd be embarrassing; it would ruin um, a lot of our credibility. Um, so yeah, I mean, I I think uh, I'll I'll just end it uh there for now.

Is the government required to disclose strategic Sovereign Reserve allocations? Uh, if not, could one assume that one could figure out if the government is purchasing through the blockchain? I mean, let's be honest, the government doesn't have to do anything the government doesn't want to do. It makes up the rules; it enforces things through violence, through threatening to throw you in jail, or threatening other countries with sanctions and weapons and bombs. So I don't know, you're asking me a question: Does the government have to do something? The government doesn't have to do anything they don't want to do. Um, so I don't know what you want me to say. Could the government theoretically be buying Bitcoin and not telling everyone about it? Yeah, 100%.

Do you think the government will use the next emergency to tank the currency, and if so, how do you characterize Ripple's involvement with assisting the US government to formulate a CBDC? Ripple is entirely irrelevant. Um, really doesn't matter. Um, Ripple, I think Ripple was founded before Bitcoin was even invented. Um, so point in that is that Ripple is a company, I guess, that does stuff; doesn't matter at all what they do. Bitcoin is gonna be successful whether Ripple exists or not. Um, and yeah, I think the US government will use the next emergency to weaken the dollar, to print, to money printer go brrr. That's how these things go, of course.

Do you think that XRP and other stablecoins are a Trojan horse for an eventual CBDC? Um, no, it's been pretty clear. Trump and Bessent said CBDCs are stupid. Nobody, all this talk about CBDCs—no one's ever actually launched and used them. Um, I think this is just a ton of fear-mongering garbage. At the time it was like, "Bitcoin's going to fail because governments are going to create CBDC," but like none of this actually happened. Uh, all this is, it's all made up.

Will Trump actually get rid of the federal income tax? Doubt it. I mean, the government needs income to pay its debt, but I do think Trump will incentivize people to build in America. When he's talking about tax cuts and tax breaks, I think he's talking to people that are going to reshore and produce stuff locally. You know, if you're in the process of weakening the dollar, making exports more competitive, and you need to incentivize companies to build stuff locally, a really quick hack to make it economically feasible and competitive is to just say, "Hey, you don't have to pay taxes. Boom. There, there you go. Save 20% to your bottom line, or whatever the the math is."

Next question: Global, can you explain the El Salvador IMF situation? Um, not at the moment. I think there's a lot of misinformation out there, and uh, I want to get my own facts straight uh before I talk about it publicly. People are gonna clip me and, you know, mislead everyone on Twitter; it's just not worth it. Um, you know, I know that El Salvador is continues to be committed to Bitcoin and stacking Bitcoin every single week and uh supporting Bitcoin businesses like mine, like Tether. So that's all I can say for now, and just I don't want to get myself clipped and spread misinformation on the internet.

Uh, people in other countries still want US dollars. I believe Tether, for example, will be their preferred trade with using Bitcoin for long-term savings. Your thoughts? Yeah, I agree. I mean, like I said, if the US weakens the dollar, other currencies are going to weaken their currencies, meaning that the dollar is going to continue to be the strongest currency relative to other currenc currencies. And so we live in a world where the dollar is the world Reserve currency; it's going to take a long time to unwind that. I'm not saying that the dollar is going to cease to be the world deserved currency anytime soon, and if you're in Argentina, if you're in Turkey, if you're in Nigeria, you know you're still going to have high demand for dollars. And also, by the way, the US values Tether because you're like, what I what I was explaining earlier is China's dump in US treasuries. Okay, they don't want US debt. Russia, like they don't want US debt. So the US has a problem: Who wants it? Then they forced US Banks to buy these long-term instruments, and then Silicon Valley Bank goes under. And so Tether, the way the US is viewing Tether is, "These guys are finding people that want to buy our debt," which is like this Argentine cab driver. A way to think about Tether is Tether is selling the dollar and its debt to like retail customers all over the world; they're like onboarding an Uber driver in Turkey to buy short-term US debt. So you know, this whole like, "Wow, stablecoins are actually awesome; let's support Tether." Yeah, no, Tether's helping the US sell its debt uh because no one else wants that trash.

Do you see Bitcoin hitting new lows below 90K as a lower high to spin us into a mini bear market? Yeah, I mean, like I said, I think uh, I expect Bitcoin to be volatile; that's what I expect. Case in point, the last 24 hours, Bitcoin went down 10%, up 10%, or whatever the math was. So yeah, I expect it to be volatile. Can it go below 90K? Yes. Will it stay there for a while? No. I think there's a chance there's a mini financial crisis; there's economic pressure; there's not enough liquidity in the system right now. The the Fed's not going to lower rates and play ball; something's going to trip up. Could Bitcoin experience a little bit of a crash? Yeah. But guys, remind you, I've been in Bitcoin for 12 years. Every bull run, there's 20, 30% dips along the way. I wouldn't consider last night a mini bear market. You know, if you if you got a good night's rest, you slept through the whole thing; you woke up, price was still at 100K. So I wouldn't stress it. Um, you know, I would just just know what you own. Um, don't compromise on uh on what you own. Uh, don't sell it; stay solvent; stay focused.

All right, we're moving on to industry questions. The mempools cleared yesterday; what is your interpretation or significance of that happening? Um, I I I don't think it's as big a deal as people make it out to be. You know, the pro, I I talk about this on the on uh Mailbag Mondays all the time, guys. The problem is when Bitcoin's used a lot, everyone's like, "What what the hell? Bitcoin's never going to sale scale; there's not enough throughput; it's too expensive to use." Then when the mempool's clear and Bitcoin's insanely cheap, then everyone's like, "What the hell? No one's using Bitcoin; this isn't sustainable." And it's like, you know, this is my reaction: Bitcoin's working as intended; it's working as intended. I don't know what to tell you. And depending on how it's used, someone on Twitter is going to come up with a reason it's fail, and it hasn't failed yet; in fact, it's working better than ever. So my interpretation of it is that nobody is making Bitcoin transactions given that certain period of time when the mempool was clear. Great. Good for Bitcoin; good for whoever needs to use it to settle money; should rebalance lightning channels; consolidate your UTXOs; good. There will be a time where that's not the case. The long-term trend, like look at the volume Bitcoin is settling long term; it's up and to the right. It's just so stupid; it's so crazy because I lived through the blocksize wars where the whole thing was like, "People are using Bitcoin way too much, and this is never going to work, and fees are too high, and how are we gonna onboard the world?" And now people are sitting on my live stream asking me, "No one's using Bitcoin; what's going on?" It's like, "Which one are you afraid of? Come on, Jesus Christ."

Can you comment on the timing and impact of Tether getting on board with Lightning in USDT? Yeah, I mean, I think it's great. I love the Tether guys; I think they're Bitcoiners at the end of the day. Um, I think they're on our team, and I think this is them supporting Bitcoin and, you know, the different layer twos that are going to crop up. I think Lightning is great; I think it's a a longer-term play. I view it as, you know, the interoperable—I think Lightning succeeds in allowing others to interoperate on one value transfer protocol. So I think it's gonna take time though. Like I know, by running these products and talking to the Tether guys, how much volume and activity is on things like Tron. I think it's a long way for Lightning to get to that point, but um, I think the Tether guys are great. I think Paolo's doing a really good job at being the Co-Tether, which obviously, you know, Tether itself isn't Bitcoin, but um, they support Bitcoin in many ways, and I think this is another example of them making sure Bitcoin is a focus for them, and they're doing what they can to support uh Bitcoin.

Do you think Sailor is using the uh—um, can skip that question. Uh, would love to know in simple terms the difference between Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin, and why they are so disconnected? I would say um, first of all, Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin are not similar at all; they're two entirely different assets. Um, Bitcoin's value is in a money that cannot be changed, and that is absolutely fixed with properties that are set in stone forever. Bitcoin Cash naturally is none of those things, because those the rules of the system were changed to benefit certain people and that were dictated by certain people. And so Bitcoin Cash is much more like the US dollar than it is Bitcoin. There was a group of corporations and individuals that wanted a certain set of rules and were able to change those rules, and that is much more like a fiat currency in the system that we are trying to disrupt and build away from. So that's the massive difference: is that Bitcoin is this incorruptible, finite asset that cannot be changed. Bitcoin can change the world because the world cannot change Bitcoin, and anything that the world can change cannot change the world, and Bitcoin Cash falls in that category.

Are you going to organize events to call on Congress to talk about Ripple being a scam? Uh, yeah, I kind of talked about this earlier. I'm doing what I can behind the scenes; you guys will learn more about it soon. What's the date? February 3rd. Yeah, stuff will become public; we're working on it.

Do you think that there will be a need for some anonymity solution on the second or third layers due to AI and the surveillance states? I mean, there's always room to improve Bitcoin. You know, one of the coolest parts about Bitcoin is we engineered it; it's software. So in theory, Bitcoin will get better forever. And I think the story of humanity is engineering a better world at the end of the day. Never bet against human engineering; never bet against human progress. And so if the trend of humanity is engineering a better world, and the trend of humanity is being bullish human progress, then Bitcoin, in theory, will get better forever. One of those aspects is in anonymity and privacy tooling. So I think there's a lot of things that we can build on it. You know, AI surveillance, I guess, is one example, but there's lots of reasons to improve Bitcoin and lots of ways to improve Bitcoin. So I just wouldn't bet against the progress of a human-engineered project that betters our species over the long term. I would just make sure I own some of that.

When can we expect our sweatshirts? I actually uh had a conversation with Dylan this morning. I was like, "Listen, man, I think the hoodies are dope; we raised so much money for Ross, but we got to uh we got to be more communicative with everybody about, you know, what's going on, when they're getting them, how much money we've raised." So he tweeted out something from this Strike account—um, let's see, because I actually haven't read it yet—"Orders will begin shipping tomorrow. Thank you for your patience and for your support of Ross." So basically what happened is um, Dylan set out to sell, and by the way, I'm not blaming Dylan um at all; my best friend in the whole world, this is just kind of what happened. Dylan wanted to sell like a certain amount of hoodies and stuff, and and um, it was a good idea; I didn't say anything about it at the time when we posted that we were doing this. The hoodies sold out in like 30 seconds, and I think we really underestimated the demand that people had to support Ross and buy hoodies from us. I think we even underestimated just like how far our brand has gotten and how many people we reach around the world. And so I was sitting next to him, and he was like, "Damn, we sold out; you got to tell everyone like they're all gone." I was like, "Dude, we just tweeted, and by the way, this is to support Ross; like why are we selling out? Let's just keep selling hoodies; we should sell as much as people want to buy and give all the money to Ross," and so that he obviously agreed, and I got on a video and I said, "Listen, we're gonna keep selling." I overrode, you know, my employees, which I was talking about Dylan, and we're gonna keep the store open, keep buying. And so that's what happened, but obviously that disrupted a lot of Dylan's plans and made everything delayed. So I guess in a long form you could say it's my fault, um, but that's why it was a little delayed. I think we could've done a better job communicating that and, you know, making sure that we are reliable and setting expectations, but sounds like they're going out tomorrow. The delay, that's why they they were delayed, is because we sold a ton. I think we did almost like $200,000 in sales in less than 24 hours. I think we're going to get Ross like close to a whole Bitcoin um from selling hoodies to you guys, which is crazy. Um, so so cool. I mean, this is the coolest job in the world, and we have the coolest community and support and customers in the whole world. You guys are the best. So that's what happened. I I gave Dylan the feedback that, you know, if we're gonna be selling people clothes, you know, we got to be more transparent, more communicative, um, and so he tweeted out today, and uh, yeah, we were backed up because it was way more successful than I think anyone could have predicted.

What software and technology are you currently using? Linux, Kubernetes, Java, and JavaScript? Um, yeah, we use some of that stuff. Uh, CP um, .NET, we use we use Python. Um, we use a ton of stuff; we use uh we use uh whatever is most effective at solving the task at hand. Um, if you're interested in applying to Strike as an engineer, you should—we always have an open application, and we're happy to tell you more about the company. Um, but I don't know, from a high level, we use a ton of different things. Um, I mean, we run a Global Financial Services firm at this point, and I'm not going to talk in too much depth about like our core technology um on the podcast, not that I'm not open to sharing it, but I just need to think a little bit more about how I would want it expressed. Maybe I'll bring our CTO on someday to talk about it, but uh but yeah, I mean, we use all of these things uh and more to—I mean, like our our uh mobile applications are written natively, so Android app is in Kotlin. Um, our iOS app is in Swift. Um, our web stuff uses, you know, JavaScript Frameworks. Um, we use Python; we use C; we use C#.NET; C++; well, there's all sorts of different stuff we use.

Will you ever sell MSTR on Strike or any other company's equity that support Bitcoin? Uh, probably not. Um, we think of ourselves as Bitcoin Financial Services, um, and we don't necessarily want to compete with selling equity and entering that part of your life. Um, so at least not in the near term. Listen, I've said I in 30, I want to be the CEO of Strike forever, and so I plan on working on it for a very long time, so it's very hard for me to uh to like make big statements like, "We'll never do something," uh, but I think in the short term, people would much rather want loans against their Bitcoin and other Bitcoin financial services that allows Bitcoin to be more useful and more part of their financial life than, you know, you can already buy MSTR on all sorts of other platforms; doesn't really matter.

Inspired from your podcast with Gladstein, if we think about the implications of Bitcoin and Nostr as unstoppable education and speech, what are the implications of unstoppable education? I think access to education, information, um, is paramount in building a better tomorrow, 100%. Um, so I don't know, the implications are profound. I don't know exactly where you're you're asking though, or like where unstoppable education—unstoppable education is somehow embedded in unstoppable information, right? Um, a scalable, censorship-resistant internet where no one's speech is censored or biased in any way, like what we've seen on Facebook and Twitter and stuff. So um, I think if we can focus on building uh a sound internet and with something like Nostr, then unstoppable uh education is implied.

Wow, lots of personal questions for me; I kind of love it. Hopefully none are about my girlfriend though. Uh, okay, are you still doing carnivore? Um, kind of. Traveling makes it really hard um because a lot of the times I don't uh get to really pick what I'm eating. Like, for example, I'm about to go to some dinner, and uh I have no idea what they're serving me, and so it makes it a bit harder. But yeah, no, I eat a ton of red meat; ton of red meat. My doctor's like, "You know, oh, your cholesterol is up there." Yeah, you jealous, bro? Um, I eat a lot of red meat, um, and I I try—I mean, my rule really is just avoid processed uh food, um avoid processed sugars. You know, sometimes I'll eat fruits, stuff like that, especially when when I'm uh in, you know, Central America. I try and follow the sun; obviously you can see this luscious tan I have. Um, and so when I'm in certain parts of the world, you know, smoothies, fruits, um, but I try and stay organic, local uh red meat, raw dairy, that type of stuff. But when I'm home and like have my own uh have my own like process and stuff, uh my favorite meal is just steak and eggs. Like if I can, I just eat that twice a day.

Any recommendation uh on books, audiobooks, or podcasts to help us understand better what's going on in this day and age? Um, I listen to all the Bitcoin podcasts, so Preston Pysh, What Bitcoin Did, Natalie, Matt and Marty, um just Marty, just Matt. Uh, I listen to all that good stuff. Um, I really like Luke Gromen; I think is phenomenal, uh macro guy, Arthur Hayes; brilliant macro essays. Um, I read all of his stuff. Um, I don't know, I'm a student of the web; I kind of just stay curious, and uh I'm always following new people and picking up new stuff, but uh I would say podcasts are—I I listen to a a ton of podcasts. Yesterday I got 25,000 steps in, total accident; I was just walking around the beach listening to a lot of podcasts, so um that's uh what I I don't know; a lot of my information comes from podcasts, honestly.

Uh, do I have—I played uh good chess games lately? Yeah, bro. I play chess every single day. Um, so yes. Have you had an opportunity to speak with Ross? I have not had an opportunity to speak with Ross. I've said, you know, I'm here uh for Ross as is the community um when he wants us and needs us, but I think uh I think, you know, Ross probably needs space and some time um for himself.

Okay, last question. Wow, ton of questions today; I love it. While you were learning about Bitcoin in the early stages, what was your biggest fear about its security? Did you come to a resolution about that fear, and what was it? My biggest fear about Bitcoin security—um, I'm not sure I ever had any true fears about Bitcoin security. I mean, I think the blocksize wars was my biggest fear; I've talked about that. I was very concerned at the time about the blocksize wars. Um, it just wasn't clear to me that Bitcoin was resilient to an attack to change the rules. I mean, that was the first time, in my opinion, at a relevant scale that Bitcoin was challenged to implement its game theory, and the fact that those that run nodes defend the network—like, in theory, the people, the individuals that run Bitcoin enforce its rules and protect its properties—and that was the first time that everyone, between miners and corporations, like were all against Bitcoin and its rules, and uh that was crazy. And it wasn't clear to me at the time, like I knew how Bitcoin was supposed to work, but then like we all had to do it—like all of us individuals—like started running nodes and implementing the rules that we thought was best, and uh that was scary for sure, because like I said, it's one thing to like read Reddit threads about how Bitcoin's supposed to work, but then people started to attack it and threaten it, and either Bitcoin was going to survive and it was going to work as intended, or this was, you know, the beginning of the end. And that was scary because no matter how confident you are, um you know, until you live through it, uh yeah. So I was young at that point, and I was like, "This is it, boys; strap in," but obviously the blocksize war is I think one of the most pivotal moments in Bitcoin's history. Um, Bitcoin Independence Day, August 1, critical moment in its history, and uh Bitcoin works from that moment on. Yeah.

Goolag. I like that plebs won that war. Plebs won the war; the individuals prevailed. Bitcoin proved to be resilient, distributed, censorship-resistant. Um, and uh, yeah, I think you know, Bitcoin at the time of that, Bitcoin was like $2,000. The market was really uncertain if Bitcoin was going to work, and then it went from 2,000 to 20,000 in like three months. Like when Bitcoin got that level of certainty, like, no, this thing works and is resistant to any over attack. Okay, last, last question. Looks like one more was added. Uh, Jack, who Orange Ked you and when?

Uh, my father orange-peeled me, and he orange-peeled me 12 years ago, about round number. Um, I was a fresh college dropout, and I thought I was a failure, and my dad was like, "Get up, come to boxing with me and stack some SATs. Stop being such a…" He didn't say that directly, but he was like, "Come on, man. Um, you're good enough. Uh, screw University; maybe it's not for you. Um, come to boxing. Um, get in shape, and uh, and understand this Bitcoin stuff. I think it's the future." So I owe my father um, all my success. Best dad in the world. How many parents would have been like, "You idiot, you go back to University and learn pointless…" And he was like, "University? Let's uh, work on St. Humble and stacking SATs and not being so hard on ourselves." That was in late 2012, is early 2013 type of time. FR. So, best D in the world, hands down. Genius. Understood Bitcoin before everybody else. He was like aggressively stacking SATs and DCA and buying dips 12 years ago. You know, we would like go into the garage box and then talk about Bitcoin, and then he would be like, "We gotta go buy more, don't we?" Run in and buy Bitcoin. We were like early beta users of like GBTC, you know, like early products like that, or like testers. Like we were like beta testers of Tresor. Um, so yeah, it's been a wild ride, but my dad's a true OG, genius, absolute genius.

Um, all right, ladies and gentlemen, with that, your boy is fashionably late, arguably disrespectfully late, uh, to dinner, so I gotta bounce. Um, but uh, man, do I appreciate you guys. Uh, how fun is this? It's just the most fun because, listen, like I own Bitcoin; I've built my own company, so I get to say whatever the I want, and that's kind of the point of the podcast. And I can appreciate that other podcasts have ads, and it's it's certainly a career and a way to finance your life and yourself, and I I can respect that. But um, I just love the fact that uh, I get to do what I want, and I think it's important that um, I have a voice and can represent future generations. And uh, so I really appreciate you guys supporting it and tuning in. It would be a lot less fun if I was talking to myself, so you guys are a joy. Uh, much love. And if you could do me a favor, um, download Strike. And if you could do me another favor, please subscribe. Go on to YouTube, subscribe, leave me a rating on Spotify, or whatever. I'm still kind of learning how this stuff works, but I think we're going to the moon. Like, um, I meet the coolest people in my life on this journey: professional athletes, singers, actors, different CEOs, U macro analysts. So I'm just going to start interviewing everyone I meet and recording, reporting my conversations and publishing them here, and you guys can, you might not always agree with me, um, but you can trust that you know I'm in it for the right reasons, and my voice is never biased. No one's paying me any money to sell you guys anything, so um, it's cool, and I'm young, and so I hope to kind of be here throughout um, a lot that's going to happen over the the coming years and decades and stuff. So, you know, knock on wood, if I keep eating steaking eggs and taking care of myself, and I'm and I'm lucky with good health. All right, guys, with that, I'm out. Leave your feedback in the comments. I read them all. Um, we want to get better, so it's really important you guys let us know what you like, what you think we could do, be doing better, and uh, I'll be here same time next week.