Bitcoin: Global Tensions & The Hidden Wall Street Play

0:00And it takes you to places you wouldn't have gone otherwise. And I think this applies to everything in life. If you are in fear, you tend to do stupid things because you're not thinking properly, that's how I see it. Forget the price of Bitcoin, it just reinforces why Bitcoin's important in this rapidly changing world, in this volatile world that Bitcoin gives you. Yeah, people were saying, okay, as soon as this lawsuit came out, you noticed all of a sudden a shift in certain market activity around 10 a.m. Eastern, that the price wasn't going down as much anymore. If you're enjoying my content, it will mean the world to me if you could subscribe to the channel and like my video to support my journey. Thank you. Guys, welcome back to another show. Episode 3, catching up with Bitcoin with Neil. Man, how are you doing over there? Good, how are you doing? I think that's the more appropriate topic to start off on. There has been a couple of insane days. I tweeted this, I think it was earlier this morning because many people have reached out and they were worried about my situation. I'm okay.

1:00I think the UAE is taking care of everything. When you look into the numbers, it is quite insane to see how much the UAE defense has been managed to control. Compared to the other day, today the sky seems more clear and there are more planes flying through, so it's scary, but holding in there. You know, I've been to the UAE twice. It's obviously where you and I first met in person, just like in December, so three months ago. And it's always known for how beautiful of a place it is, how peaceful, how safe it is, and it is internally. I'm still very, I guess, bullish on the UAE in general. You know, in this two-shell pass, I'm sorry that everyone in all the countries in the Middle East has to go through this right now. But yeah, this is where we are. And I'm happy that you're okay. And I've talked to other friends that live there and luckily they're okay. Thank you. I mean, if you look at how much the region has been moved by all of these, you know,

2:00you can see Iran has been literally firing to everybody. By itself is fantastic. I mean, I've been here five years. I never had a single problem. I really, really hope that this is going to find a hand soon because I don't think this is sustainable. I've never experienced anything like this before and I hope I would never experience it again. But I'm hoping, like you said, in Shallah, as we say in this region, these two will pass. So I hope it's going to escalate. Yeah, like I said, hopefully this will pass. It'll only make, I think, the surrounding countries like the UAE stronger. As we said, one of the value propositions of the UAE is that it's such a safe place to live. I guarantee you, the UAE government is going to put so much more money into their defenses after this. So you showed like a lot of the success they've had already and defending themselves. But I guarantee you, like the budget for military defense is going to go up so much more. For everyone who experienced the issue with hotels, they're going to pay for everything.

3:00I mean, again, imagine if this is something like this would have happened in Europe, for example. Well, first of all, they wouldn't pay for squat. And second of all, I don't even think they had the capacity of defending this sub so much. A few hours ago, a plane left, a commercial plane. I think Aluf Tansa, a plane left from Abu Dhabi. I don't know if they're going to reopen the airspace, but for now, of course, everything is closed. But as soon as they will reopen, I would imagine a lot of people are going to fly away. Maybe not forever. Also, it's getting warmer in here, so usually in summer, it's kind of quiet. Yeah, I think you'll definitely see, if I had a guest, people that have lived in Dubai for a long time will be more likely to stay and people maybe that have lived there for a short amount of time. Probably might be more reactionary, just kind of human nature. When something somewhere becomes your home, people just, they don't want to leave. But if you don't have an attachment, maybe you leave sooner or you come less or you wait it out a little longer. Happy your side of the discussion here. So I will be traveling in June in Prague, so I've been announced this as a speaker.

4:01So I'm really looking forward to this. I've been to Prague multiple times, but I've never been to the conference in Prague. So I'm really excited to be there. And you said that you might be there also, right? Yeah, I went last year. It's definitely one of my favorite conferences. It might be, it's one of the best conferences in Bitcoin conferences in the world, if you can make it. The VIP experience there too, if you could swing some money for a VIP ticket. You'll have the VIP experience because you're a speaker. But if you could swing the money for the VIP ticket, I would say to do that also, because it's one of the cheapest, you know, compared to some of the other conferences. So, and you get an amazing experience, you get to meet amazing Bitcoiners, the foods amazing. They have food like from 9 a.m. to 10 o'clock at night. It's one of the different kind of conference in the U.S. like most of them. You know, it's like 5 p.m. The main conference area closes down usually. And then, you know, you'll have events afterwards. But this is just all on site all night, you know, all day into the night. Nice plug for BTZ Prague.

5:01And congratulations for getting the speaker opportunity there. There might be a discount code. So guys, check in the description box. They sent me an email. I don't have time to put it together, forgive me, but it's been a busy couple of days. But I will put in the description box 80s count. So, if you wish to buy any tickets, you can do so by using the code below. Sailor, announcing maybe possibly another buy. I mean, we've seen this over and over, right? It's Monday after all. So, I mean, I guess this will be his 100th first buy. We'll find out, I guess, in the next like 15 minutes or so, he usually announces on Mondays. Yeah, you know, it just, it shows the relentless bid that keeps coming in, conflicts with a lot of people. You know, why is the price going down? He keeps buying. You just, you have cell pressure. You have buyers and sellers. Bitcoin kind of retreated down. I don't know if you paid attention at all, because you've been busy. It quickly recovered. It went down like four or five percent. But then it like quickly recovered. Forget the price of Bitcoin. It just reinforces why Bitcoin is important in this, you know,

6:03rapidly changing world in this volatile world. That Bitcoin gives you portability. If you need to leave, you could take your wealth anywhere. You know, and even, you know, you and me were both, I guess, bullish on the UAE long term in the short term. It's nice to be able to like pick up and go if you have to and be able to take your wealth with you. And again, this isn't like specific to the UAE. This is just, or anywhere right now in that region. It just has to do with the fact that, you know, you could bring your wealth anywhere. Without anyone stopping you at the border, you can do that with gold. And you know, also another aspect of this is just looking at the Iranian currency and how it's completely cratered to being worthless over a week. Well, look at it over maybe a year or a month, 15 percent in a month, 97 percent this year. Their currency is devalued relative to the dollar. And if you brought a same thing with the Bitcoin, yeah, it's down a hundred percent.

7:03Over two years, five years, ten years, it's gonna, you know, it's always gonna be a hundred percent, basically. It just shows another superpower of Bitcoin. People in Iran who've worked hard their whole life and they watch their governments to base their currencies. And even sometimes it's not your own government, it's because of conflict that drives the purchasing power down. And yeah, Bitcoin's the only thing that really can protect you from this. Let's not forget how liquid this asset is. Imagine if there was a way to short or sell your home or real estate property like this. How many people would have pulled the trigger overnight? Like sell your house and then buy it right back, like five hours later. Exactly. Everyone is looking at Bitcoin as, oh my god, it's volatile because again, you have the option to sell it. This is interesting though, because banks are coming into Bitcoin. Talking with Hunter, Thursday last week, he saw a bunch of people from city and other banks literally presenting power points and saying, we want to make Bitcoin bankable. So that's a master deal, man.

8:03It's a weird philosophical, I don't know if that's the word, but Bitcoin is supposed to separate money from governments and from the old institutions. But it was also inevitable that if Bitcoin was winning that all these institutions would want to get their claws into Bitcoin. And we're seeing that happen. And again, it's another, I guess, you know, long-term bullish signal for Bitcoin's price and a lot of people get upset because the price action doesn't nearly necessarily reflect that today when it comes to this or the micro strategy and strategy bid on Bitcoin. But yeah, everything right now in terms of like fundamentals to me seemed bullish for Bitcoin. You have more and more adoption. It might be a little slower in bearer times, but it's still up into the right the adoption. Sometimes it just takes time. You got to be patient. And this is our opportunity, right? If you kind of see where the, like in hockey,

9:05the expression is skate toward the puck is going, not to where it is. As long as there will be the option to self-carsity, you're Bitcoin. I don't have any problems in ETFs and banks and countries and whoever wants to participate in seeing banks coming in. And like you said, it's going to increase adoption for sure and is going to allow to someone who doesn't want to have custody and hey, but there might be people they have never experienced Bitcoin before and maybe their first experience is an ETF or maybe through a bank. Ultimately Bitcoin, it's just a tool. It's money. You're not going to like everyone that uses money. The same way there's people who use dollars that you're not going to like but they're using it. What does that have to do with anything, right? People use cell phones to make calls to commit crimes or they use cars to commit crimes. It's always been such like a weak argument. Bitcoin is used only by criminals, which one is not true. But it's like, okay, they recognize it's a superior way for them to transact in certain circumstances. I mean, although we know, you know, still paper money in terms of doing anything

10:08criminals generally more secretive. Now, this is really interesting because I didn't have much time to look into Jane Strait. Briefly so on news last week saying there was a 10 a.m. price manipulation happening. Yeah, I have a superficial understanding of what's going on in the situation. It really dates back to 2022. And I guess the whole Tara Luna kind of collapse. And they're alleging that the now, I think bankruptcy estate, that's trying to, I guess, get money back for its creditors, is alleging that Jane Strait had insider information. And that's like four years ago already. But now people are alleging that they are continually trying to suppress the price of Bitcoin, right? Manipulate the price of Bitcoin. You always hear that when Bitcoin isn't going the way people want it. You don't hear about price manipulation when it's going up. No one's like, oh, people are manipulating it up. Well, I guess maybe we used to hear that when people, when Bitcoin haters complained

11:09about tether and they would just say, oh, tether is just printing money. And that's why the price is up. I guess you do hear it a little bit on the other side. But yeah, people were saying, OK, as soon as this lawsuit came out, you noticed all of a sudden a shift in certain market activity around 10 a.m. Eastern that the price wasn't going down as much anymore. I think this has been kind of debunked. People kind of looked, there were people that went back to and looked at charts at 10 a.m. and couldn't really find some recognizable pattern. They just say, be careful getting to wound up over one institution playing games. One in the long term, it won't matter. But two, you have people playing games to the upside and the downside. And, you know, they're all trying to use volatility to their advantage. And when there's panic, they might be able to kind of feed off that and maybe, you know, manipulate the price a little more to the downside. But in the end, Bitcoin is an inelastic good.

12:13Eventually, the laws, I believe, the laws of supply and demand will override any of the so-called paper manipulation that goes on. So yeah, I, you know, it's a data point, but keep calm and hot along. Now, this is really cool because, as you know, Steak and Shake have been announced. I think in Vegas last year, they now accept Bitcoin for their services, meaning selling burgers. Are there any Steak and Shakes in Dubai? No, we got it. After all, it's that everything settles down there. We need to get a Steak and Shake in Dubai. Yeah, that would be really cool. But now they are saying from March 1st, so yesterday, literally hourly employees, they earn a Bitcoin bonus of 21 cents per hour. So this is freaking cool because they are giving their employees a 21. Of course, that's been selected not by an accident. Since per hour bonus means they are DCA automatically amazing. You know, I think, yeah, it was at the Bitcoin conference, I think last year,

13:13where they announced they were going to be accepting Bitcoin. Their social media account is very pro Bitcoin. I believe there's this CEO of that company. I don't think it's a public company, Steak and Shake. I think it's all privately owned. Correct me if I'm wrong. But I'm pretty sure the CEO is just very, became orange-pilled. I'm not sure the genesis of the story. But yeah, it's cool to see they've been pretty consistent in their conviction behind the coin. They did almost one day have like a social media kind of blip where they're like, oh, should we accept? And they said some other, maybe it was Ethereum. And like people went crazy on them and they pulled the plug on that. But other than that, they've been pretty consistent. I think this is great, you know, obviously 21 cents symbolic for the 21 million Bitcoin. And it may not seem like a lot. But over time, we know, you know, it accumulates and what's 21 cents a day, you know, times, let's say you work, I don't know, 250 days a year.

14:14Ish. $50 worth of Bitcoin that's just thrown every single employee at Steak and Shake. And it just gets you curious. That's how it kind of starts. You know, oh, what is this Bitcoin thing? How do I use it? I'm happy to see somewhat well-known brand in the United States adopt this. And we'll see where it goes. It's cool. More adoption, more curiosity. Hold on. It's not 21 cents a day. It's 21 cents an hour. It's per hour. Oh, so that's like, you know, more like 400 bucks a year, $400 worth of Bitcoin. It would have been cool if they would have said like, you know, 21,000 Satoshi's an hour instead or some sort of Bitcoin denomination. Although we know that wouldn't be able to last because the value of every Satoshi over time is going to go up. But yeah. First, the accepted Bitcoin. Second, they're paying out bonuses on Bitcoin hourly based adoption is happening. So, okay, you know, gradually and then suddenly as we say in the Bitcoin space. Yeah, it's pretty cool. A little, a little positive thing and all the, the doom stuff around the world.

15:17Yeah. Thanks, man. I'm sorry if my energy is a little bit flat today, but I'm running on low sleep and I'm, you know, my head is literally in disguise. So, I'm a little bit foggy today. I apologize. Totally understandable. And just so the audience knows, I told them he didn't have to do the podcast today. If he wasn't feeling up to it, it would be totally understandable. But Mauricio is a champ. And, you know, what, honestly, as long as you're like safe, you know, what else are you supposed to do other than kind of try to go on? The most important thing is I believe how you react to things that happen to you. And there's not much I can do at the moment, like the airspace is closed. Yeah, sure. I could take my car and drive to a man even though they close the airport. There is nothing that I'm stranded here, right? Plus, I have a wife to treat cats. So, there's nothing I can do. I can just have faith in the UAE and have faith that they will find a compromise. If there is one thing that life taught me and I moved a lot, I've been through a lot of this. I didn't have in my resume of life experiences. But whenever you are in quote-unquote panic, if you just stay still,

16:17because panic takes you to places you wouldn't have gone otherwise. And I think this applies to everything in life. If you are in fear, you tend to do stupid things because you're not thinking properly. That's how I see it. A friend of mine tweeted a post this morning and she said, there are three types of Dubai, I guess, people in the space. The first type, she's going to the beach and they don't care. The second type are maybe like me. Okay, I'm aware there is a threat. But I'm also aware that there is not much I can do. But I can try to be as safe as possible, meaning staying indoors, staying away from windows and stuff like that. And then the third type is someone who took a car and drove to a man to fly with a private jet. It's crazy how the same reality is impacting people in a different way, if it makes sense. For the last couple of days, it's been weird as hell. So I really hope that they will sort it. I have faith in the UAE. I think they have done a fantastic job in protecting us. If people are down on the UAE and there's some capital flight out of there and people move, I would definitely consider, maybe I'll have to check out, maybe buying something there.

17:21Because I am long-term bullish on that being a potential place to have a second residence camp out. So I know this whole past like everything. This is your golden opportunity. Money are made when fear is in the market. It goes the same story for Bitcoin. When the price is down, if the asset is good, this is when you want to buy. I guess time will tell. Time will tell. Thanks, my Lord, it's a pleasure. I'll keep messaging you, so don't worry. I'll keep texting you. Thank you for checking on me. I really appreciate it. Sounds good. Guys, thank you so much for watching. We'll see you next week. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers.