Bitcoin Today Recast 4/17/26 Nick Nemeth

0:00This is the end of the video. I see this determined the value of money. It's Bitcoin today. Not Bitcoin today. It's Bitcoin today. How do you build a business today? Bitcoin today. This is Bitcoin. What's that? This is Bitcoin. This is Bitcoin. This is Bitcoin. It's a dollar now, but Bitcoin is on fire. This thing is Bitcoin. You have to find something that you can drop the bank trustless world. Which is Bitcoin. It has a problem that affects you. The US federal government is unsafe. The US federal government is unsafe. The US federal government is unsafe.

1:02Where are the blockchain servers located? Do not. Do not. Bitcoin. This is Bitcoin today. Bitcoin today. Bitcoin today. Bitcoin today. Bitcoin today. Bitcoin today. Bitcoin today. Bitcoin today. Bitcoin today. Where are the blockchain servers located? Do not. Do not close. Do not close. Do not close. Do not. Do not. I have one question. Where are the blockchain servers located? Where are they located? Well, it depends.

2:02Are you talking about Bitcoin or everything else? Depends. Well, Bitcoin that the servers are located on every node. Every node. Every node is operating the exact same. Good stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. I know, right? Nick, listen, happy to have you, Nick. I know you're tight on time. A lot of people saw you on Marty's show the other week, maybe two weeks ago, really intriguing. I know we have some questions as well. So if you don't mind, Nick, we'll get right into it. Why don't you give us

3:03a little bit on your background and then right into your thesis and your research. Hey, y'all, Marty's awesome. I enjoyed that podcast because I didn't have to, like, I'd been on Josh Brown, you have to button it up and I was just like, fuck it, I feel like I can actually speak with this guy. So I'm typically focused on equities, but I've learned pretty quickly, you have to pay attention to the credit markets. I spent enough time wondering why markets were moving without making sense based on equity fundamentals. So research has been, you know, Bolton board 2023 onward of shadow banking growth and then started seeing negative news in 2025, September, mostly blue owl. And I was like, this is going to blow up during a recession because I'm looking into it and I'm like, the way these guys underwrite, I'm going to try to not be too esoteric, but the private equity guys, they put a significant amount of leverage,

4:10you know, on businesses that don't really have moats. So I thought during the next recession, that's going to be a major, major problem. You know, they think they're all diversified and in reality, it's all, you know, the same cycle. And then in February, I was like, hold up. There's credit issues and the economy is actually pretty good. You know, looking back through economic history, I'm sort of thinking, I don't really know many examples of credit stress happening while the economy, you know, appeared to be accelerating kind of at this point. It's a little ambiguous based offer of revisions. So I just came at it from a macro view and not really the way that things should be done. In credit, they all do things and think about things the same

5:14exact way and it's recursive. So because someone tells you to do something and the way that you do something, then from there, everyone does the work. So I've been going through private credit and pretty immediately I realized that insurance is actually the mass of the issue. Pensions can take hits, rich people can take hits, but insurance is backed up by state balance sheets, sort of like FDIC, except it's not really funded. So I've been focusing on that more and just talking about, you know, the systemic risk that I see as a little intro. Yeah, so it isn't a lot of work because a lot of this stuff is purposefully it seems very opaque, right? So how did you get access or how were you able to see behind the curtain to see that, for example, some things that dig red lobster, for example, that have been marked the par

6:15for various reasons, one of which is fees, are really just dust and bad collateral. Yeah, that's a crazy one where they just wipe the equity and the bonds are fine. And they do this, you know, basically back to the napkin model math, where... Sorry guys, can I just interrupt for a second? I'm really sorry to do this, but because I'm listening from the whole thing, I feel like there needs to be a little bit of context setting because I didn't listen to the podcast with Marty and I'm not actually sure what we're talking about. Okay, I'll give you a... I'll give you a... Thomas the guy who didn't do his homework and then shows up in class and says, I don't understand, I'm kidding. No, no, no, no. I do this all the time. You know, it's harder for me to think about going from zero to 60, then going from 60 to 100 or whatever. So private credit is not your typical,

7:16you know, publicly traded bonds. These are businesses that are usually private. Sometimes they just... they're public businesses that go to the private markets, specifically what the issue is. There's issues across, but the most important issue to focus on is leveraged byouts. So when a private equity company buys a business, kind of like when a person usually buys a home, they mortgage it. That, that, doesn't go to the business the way you businesses typically put debt on the business to run operations. They're just trying to increase their returns. Real estate guys, you know, will understand this. It's not, you know, if you buy $2 million home, you're not giving $2 million, you might put, you know, 500 grand down. So if you sell it in five years for $3 million, you're making 50% off of the price, but based on the money you put into

8:17it, it's, you know, bigger IRR. The debt goes to the seller, correct? Or who? No, the debt is taken out by... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Usually it's private equity. Sorry, I thought you meant buyer. So when you, when you exit a business, it could be, you know, if it's, they're increasingly small and smaller companies. So a guy could build an, you know, HVAC business or a dental practice with three locations and then wholesale to private equity. Whole get the $50 million or the $200 million. There's some caveats in that where it's not like always cash, but yes, the exit typically, you know, simply speaking is cash. The buyer only comes in with, you know, half the money. And the rest, they go to the market, the private markets, in order to find, you know, 50, 60%, just call it 50%

9:25of the money in order to make the full purchase. So we're talking about companies here that have changed hands and there wasn't someone to buy the whole equity of the company. So they, they had to go to credit markets to fill up the difference. And these are companies that don't typically issue bonds that trade on public exchanges. So there's private debt, private credit that ends up amounting to something, something significant. And it's hard to price it because it doesn't trade on an open market. Is that, is that starting point? Yeah. I mean, these companies, for the most part, would never be in the public markets. So they don't have access to public market capital. There's a reason why they're not public. I would say that these private equity funds could buy them in all cash. They couldn't buy as many of them in all cash. So therefore, you know,

10:30their potential returns are lower. And because they get paid 2% and 20% carry, you know, they're trying to maximize returns, I have a huge problem with their assumptions in that, but they're also risking pension money, you know, other people's money. So why not jack up leverage a little bit? So private equity tends to not purchase companies entirely with equity. They tend to seek leverage through adding debt. So if they're buying a $200 million company, they'll only put in $100 million with a equity and borrow the rest on the presumption that the cost of debt is cheaper than the cost of equity. So if the company doubles in value to $400 million, really quickly, they've quadrupled their money rather than only doubled their money, even though the value of the company is double. I'm trying to... Yeah. I just want to say, I don't think you're speaking to a very technical,

11:31financially sophisticated audience when it comes to private equity. I'm very sophisticated and honest when it comes to private equity. So there's a lot of basics that it might be useful to slow down on where you're starting because many people here will not have invested in private equity or private credit at all. Yeah, I'm trying. The caveat to what you said where they only put $100 million down and they'll exit for $400. They still owe $100. So they've got to pay that. They only triple their money. But not quite. The cost... Triple-minus interest. Right. The interest, though, we're talking about 9% at this point. So it's not insignificant. Mortgages, people think it's high at 6%. It's not insignificant. And I'll try to go big picture on it. Inherently, leverage is not bad. You know, inherently putting a mortgage on your house is

12:36not bad. The two factors are the price you pay and the interest rate. Right. When people were buying homes in 2020 and 2021, interest rates were what? Two, three percent. Now they're six. The same thing has happened in this market. Also, the price that they're paying is based on these assumptions that are pretty crazy. I'll keep it from super specifics, but just as an idea, these guys all go after the same types of businesses for the most part. We're talking HVAC. We're talking dental practices. We're talking car washes. You know, the list goes on. I have a full, you know, 70 different types of businesses. Also, they're buying usually, and I call it the hot potato from other private equity companies. You know, especially if you get larger in size of these companies,

13:39they just flip them back and forth. I might go to the public market for a second. It doesn't do well. They buy it out at a premium and then they market up. What's underlying all of this is that the opacity that we started with, these guys are determining the prices based off of an Excel spreadsheet, not comparables in the public market. They say they do, but it's like I can, there's numerous examples. And even if they do compare it to the public market, they'll be like, well, our EBITDA is growing 15%, theirs is growing 12. We should get a higher multiple meaning, one multiple is price to earnings. These guys do enterprise value, which is that plus equity minus cash over EBITDA. And EBITDA, you know, Warren Buffet calls it fake earnings.

14:40I think, you know, even unsophisticated people that just have a, I mean, I don't even call anyone unsophisticated, but even people that have a cursory understanding of private equity, they've heard this term synergies a lot. Can you hear me? Yeah, we can still hear you. Okay. So the fake earnings that they have have a lot of assumptions based on, you know, they're going to fire people, they're going to add two businesses together and there's going to be synergies. And those usually don't come true. This is all to say that the price that they're paying for these businesses is too high. And I think, like I'm just going to say, it's too high. I'm not going to hedge that. So when they say that they're going 50% loan to value, meaning 50% is debt and 50% is the cash that they put into buy this, that margin of error becomes a lot smaller

15:42when you overpay, right? It's like you buy a home for two million, you put 500 grand down, but you overpaid. So that equity that you thought you had in the home isn't as much as you thought it was. And potentially negative leverage works both ways. Yeah. Underpay, you make multiples of your money and if you overpay, you can lose all of your money. Exactly. Exactly. So the underwriting across this is because so much money has flown into this asset class, typical of every bubble, it's gotten really lacks. And then you're dealing with issues like the fact that the number one business for these guys to buy were software companies. And even if you look at the business services companies, a lot of those are just software. The healthcare IT companies, a lot of those

16:43are just software. And some, you know, like blackstone, you guys might know blackstone, not black rock, but blackstone. They're one of the biggest private credit players. They have their biggest segment they allocate to a software. Next business is, next biggest is business services. Third biggest is healthcare IT. And then they're using leverage into the leverage. So you're doing something that has been monitored and talked about for a while into assets, you're probably paying too high for to begin with. And then there's massive disruption as we're, you know, seeing cloud code come out with apps that it would have taken six months for, you know, four or five engineers to build. So, so when, when that happens, the value of these businesses in the public markets that are the best software companies are down 60%. And the value on the books

17:48of these private equity guys, haven't come down, have hardly come down. They only come down when there's a super negative news story. So then you're looking at the debt and you're like, I don't see any ability to pay that. And it, you know, the amount of debt is probably, you know, already in excess of what the value of the business is across the board for the majority of companies in some of these portfolios. Nick, can you talk a little about, because I read through your stuff, the mark the model, you know, and the use kind of alluded to a little bit. They're not marking down when the underlying asset goes. And so they're using models that basically are voodoo, which distort the loan to value. Yeah, yeah. It is voodoo. That's that's funny. So I was, you know,

18:48really shocked. Everyone from school onwards learns a little bit about how to price bonds. I was really shocked at the way that these guys do it. But essentially on the private, when they're figuring out the value of the business, you know, they're taking their EBITAS that are consistently higher than they actually are. S&P has some data about this. You know, one year out, they miss by 25% 50% of the time in a good like in a bull market. So they're modeling that out. And they're just saying, well, here's what the EBITAS is going to be. Most of the time, it's not that. And then they say, okay, well, here's what this company goes for. And they compare it to what everyone else is paying for the business. And the reason why that's a problem is because you could

19:49go in 1639 or 1619, whatever to Amsterdam. And you could be like, what does a tulip go for? You know, you're, you're basing it on what another person is willing to pay in that moment. Not any sort of intrinsic value. So Nick, this is a Bitcoin space. How do you want to bring this around to why people are interested in Bitcoin? What they can take away from some of what you're talking about here? Sure. I'll do quickly and you can ask questions. So if pensions lose money, no big deal. If you know, people will complain no big deal. Rich people lose money, no big deal. The thing is that these private equity guys have bought insurance companies so that they become the asset manager so that they can invest in private credit and take fees.

20:55Those, that insurance not only affects like major, if you think about the people that invest in private equity in private credits, mostly rich people, the people that buy life, life insurance policy or an annuity, which is essentially helping your retirement kind of like social security. You give it premium and then 30 years later you start getting your money back. The reason why that, so that affects mostly the middle class America. Also, maybe, okay, well, you know, the middle class is going to get poorer. That people might not immediately think about how this affects Bitcoin. The thing is, the annuity and life insurance space is a $10 trillion balance sheet. That is 140% bigger than the Federal Reserve. So that's when you start thinking, oh crap, that's a big number. Okay. How would happen if that

21:56blew up? And you're looking at a credit event that everyone's saying it can't be systemic because it's not what the system is built on. It's not just like treasuries or mortgages like 2008. It's, you know, this insurance space. That's almost, that's almost worse because the feds tools only affect the collateral markets. So it's easy to fix a collateral problem with collateral. If the fed drops rates to zero and prints money, it doesn't necessarily help the credit. If, especially if people see an identifying issue and it's not popular to, you know, buy those loans, debt, whatever. So in that case, you could see, you know, not only one bailout, you know, the fed during SVB, if any of these guys went and saw them. And I can talk about the specifics of how I see that. But the fed just steps in, you know, it's like fine, right? But if you have

23:03a $10 trillion balance sheet under stress, the fed might be dropping rates, printing money, and there's still receiverships, which is the insurance term for bankruptcy. That is a really nasty thing, which could lead to a continuous discrediting of our financial system. Hey, Nick, do you mind if I give a real-world example that people can wrap their heads around and maybe we talk from that? Sure. So I was, I had a gym franchise. We had 35 units. Private equity came to us in 2018 when interest rates were very low. And they paid us 10 and a half times our next year's run rate EBITDA. So there's a lot of assumptions based in that, right? What are we going to be doing in EBITDA next year? Then they paid 10 and a half times that EBITDA to buy us.

24:03Now, sometimes they'll have the, the sellers roll some percentage backing, which essentially makes me a lender to them. But in this case, we were completely out. We paid off our debt. Let's just say that was just to say they paid 150 million. We paid off our debt of 20 million. We walked with 130 million. But these guys now have overpaid and borrowed to purchase us as part of a roll-up of other fitness sets. So now they rolled that into a portfolio of 170 gyms, okay? They were doing, they were buying up all these smaller franchisees. That bigger private equity, by the way, which was taking fees, two and 20 percent. So two percent of annual fee on the valuation, and then 20 percent on the exit, they then sold a year later to a bigger private equity firm, who paid them 10 and a half times the next year's run rate EBITDA, right? And then ultimately, it's up for sale again. So you can see how this borrowing to buy more, to leverage more,

25:08and by the way, it then COVID hit, and all the gyms were closed. So you can see how all of a sudden this is in distress, this big portfolio, and sometimes these portfolios, no matter fact, a lot of times, get rolled in or bought up by pensions, it's saddled with all this debt. That's a real world example. But they got their fees. The guys that were buying, you know, anything about your business, because they started, I have, is the fee guys are spreadsheet jockies, and they're doing spreadsheet analysis, but they're fucking up businesses, which under, which in, if the market ever gets soft, they're messing with the fundamental value of the business. And I see it a lot in the small business roll-ups that were seen from private equity. Well, that's exactly right. They came in, now look, these guys had some operators. Some of the operators that kept on board and rolled back in to run the clubs. But they were known here, you know, where near as good of operators as us.

26:08We were, we were in the market, we knew the market, and in this case it was the Arizona market. We were really good, strong operators, and now they're running 170 clubs the next day, right, with a new management team from Starbucks, who doesn't know shit about the gym business, but it doesn't matter to them, because they're going to try to financialize this thing and flip it to the next private equity firm that's bigger. You know, it goes from a small private equity to ultimately it ends up with work capital, who buys 250 gyms, but they're not operators. They, they have a big portfolio of Taco Bells and Wendy's and Planet Fitness's, and you name it, and they're just looking for the next out, you know, they stick around for three to four years, and it's kind of hot potato, like Nick said. They're trying to flip it to the next sucker, who thinks that they could get another turn on a multiple and flip it to the next guy. That's how it goes. Right. The equity part of the equation is a lot on pensions. It's a lot in

27:10endowments. It's a lot of rich people too. That's a lot, that's a bubble. The, you know, but what you'll see if you start exploring this process is people, you say, okay, well private equity is a bigger market. It's, you know, clearly, it's clearly, you know, going to lose more value if there is a problem here. And they're right, but the thing is the debt that leverage for the buyout, that is going on an insurance balance sheet. Again, that's $10 trillion, that's levered, you know, 17 times. So that's where it becomes really systemic. And I would encourage people to think about like, what would happen if like, life insurance companies that were named MetLife

28:11and Prudential went bankrupt? Could, could you like, imagine how much of a disaster that would be and how much lack of trust in the system there would be after AIG did this nonsense in 2008. Now, MetLife and Prudential are, you know, considered some of the best publicly traded companies. The private equity backed insurers are worse off, but I'm looking at it and I'm like, people are focused in the public markets on companies called Lincoln Financial and Jackson. And I'm worried about the biggest balance sheets. I see problems there. And if you want to read my work, you can probably draw your conclusions and I'll be coming out with more. But that's what I mean to say, like, if you wipe equity, like the stock market goes down 30%, it's not necessarily a global financial crisis, right? But if credit and massive balance sheets

29:17are being fire sold, and you see people focusing on the publicly traded private credit stuff, but if $10 trillion is at stake, that's when you're looking at what I think is going to be bigger than the last global financial crisis, maybe not in terms of economic reality, because I think that central banks will be more reactive, but certainly in terms of a hole that needs to be covered by the taxpayer. And at that point, it's like the political narrative you can see run with that, as we're seeing Mamdani do well, like you can imagine people being like another bailout for the rich. And then the dollar is completely tanking, you know, or debt going up a lot. And you know, I'm not rooting for this as a guy that's bullish Bitcoin, but it's like, if you don't own any and you just own dollars,

30:22you're kind of in a, like, I would really look into this. Hey, Nick. Thank you so much for your time, man. Incredible work. You mentioned to 809. So the one thing that stood out to me in reviewing your work was this concept of valuation agents. And the kind of what I see is just the modern day rating agency scam from 809. Can you kind of explain what a valuation agent is and how they play a role in perpetuating the scheme? Sure. I'll explain. I'll map it first, you know. There's the underwriters, you know, oftentimes they're at banks. There's the rating agencies. There's the auditors. And then there's the valuation agents. I have problems with all of them. Let's not, let's not, you know, think that the rating guys are better, you know, just because it's 2026, they're not nothing changed.

31:22But the valuation agents, they will pay, you know, I did some work on Cliffwater. They'll pay a company called Lincoln. Nobody's ever heard of anyone that's worked at Lincoln. Like, you don't go, you pen to Lincoln. And these guys will use assumptions based on what the spread is. And the spread is the difference between the risk free rate and what a identical security is going for. That's literally what they say. They think all of these things are identical if they're rated a certain way. But the rating is coming from companies that you probably have never even heard of. We're not talking about standard in pours and moody's and fish. We're talking about Egan Jones and, you know, a bunch of others that standard in pours and moody's are relying on to large extent. So the valuation agents, they have this little model. And they say, this is a triple B loan in stock. And they don't even segment out software, actually. I would press them on that. And he

32:27was like, it's only 200 basis points higher than, you know, everything else. And that's not enough, you know, it's not enough to make an issue out of software. I'm like, what is going on? So anyway, yeah, the, these private credit firms, often like the, make the implication there being software is getting wrecked. And they're thinking it's no big deal. They're getting wrecked by AI essentially. Yeah, this conversation was like March. And he's saying it's only 200 basis points different than every other sector since, since then it's blown out to like, you know, three times that. But they're looking at what is clearing, like the clearing price for software at that point in time. And they're saying, well, you know, data bricks just got priced and that was good. So I'm in a price. There's no name. And if you don't know data bricks, it's like one of the best infrastructure

33:28data plays software, but infrastructure. So it's going to IPO and do well, probably maybe, I don't know, maybe not. But then they're comparing that to, you know, similar, like basically the same rating for a company that has, you know, worth 500 million dollars and is like a wrapper on a network that's completely going to get eliminated by AI. So that's just all to say that the way that these they price these things, sometimes they do it on their own model. And sometimes they pay somebody and be like, all right, I'm going to pay you to tell me what this was worth. And if you don't tell me a good number, I'm not going to hire you next time. Yeah, just go ahead. Yeah, I was just going to say to follow up on that, can you talk a little bit about what happens when a piece of private credit starts to go bad,

34:31meaning the company doesn't have the cash flow to make a payment on the loan. And then they can convert the loan to a pick, but they're still marketed park. And you kind of, because to me, now you're getting to the crux of the scam, right? It's the, it's the valuation agent. It's the conversion to a pick. And it's the marking that all kind of creates the fuel for this fire. Yeah. And to find a, to find a picnic. Yeah. I think I started off by saying, you know, the undirect, like how they get into these deals I have a problem with. And now we're, you know, we're looking at, and there's a lot to talk to. But essentially, I would, you know, characterize this as what are they deal? Like when this starts to go wrong, how do they behave? And one way that they behave is that they do this thing called payment and hide. And if you go back to 2008, they make, like these guys always, always make terms that sound better than what it

35:36is. It used to be junk bonds, then it became high yield bonds, right? They, they made, you know, borrowers that shouldn't get homes sub prime, because you have a prime in there, it's sub prime still sounds like a little bit less than prime. Like, no, that's a junk mortgage, right? And the payment in kind is they can't pay cash. So there, so therefore, they just say, okay, well, let's just compound the debt. It's like getting a credit card. You don't pay your minimum statement. And the bank says, we'll just roll it over. And when this happens, clearly, you're like, okay, well, that's a lot of stress. That's not good. But they don't, they don't see it that way. So sometimes they'll be paying cash and go to this, right? And then they'll point to some gap accounting principle. Anytime you have a new deal, you have to originally market at par. Sometimes

36:40they segment it out and they say, okay, this cash is going to accrue, but it's going to be half as much, and then half as much is going to be roll, like, continuously compounding debt. And the cash part will still be marked up par and the pick part, payment kind part will be marked up par. And they'll do all this finagling, you know, of it. Another key issue is that these loans are typically five to seven years. So if you bought in 2021 and it's five years, right now, you're like, well, that 100,400, 500 million dollars is coming due, we cannot refine it. And you see this in commercial real estate as well. So what they do is they just extend it. And they say, okay, we'll give you two more years. All of this is not a good thing. And yet, they don't acknowledge that as that. And to take it a step further, not only are they not acknowledging the stress,

37:46but when they have this compounding debt, that's part, that's part of, and they don't write it down, that's part of their NAV net asset value. Their net asset value is how they determine management fees. So they're getting paid more for being less honest about what is happening. Yeah, so Nick, just to take it to my example, so I sold at what I thought was a really high price. Why was the price in the multiple so high, the multiple of EBITDA, which Nick said earlier, is kind of a bullshit metrics. It over values just just there, in my opinion, and still like free cash flow. Then somebody else buys it and overpays again. Then somebody else buys it and overpays again. Increasing this amount of debt and leverage on the overall amount of clubs now. Now they got 250 clubs. It's way, way levered in debt. By the way,

38:47it's not run as well. So the underlying business starts to fail. Then they start laying people off to make ends meet. Again, they're managing this from a spreadsheet and whatever, Manhattan. Then ultimately, they've got to refinance what, in 2018, was a 4% loan, potentially, way more than that. They've got to refinance at a much higher rate. Why all these perverse incentives from the rating agencies, which aren't really rating agencies, they're paid to deliver an answer that the fund wants. Then on top of that, if they can't make the underlying interest from the business, the underlying business, they can't make those interest payments. They just roll it into the loan. It's just getting worse and worse. Then ultimately, it ends up on CalPERS balance sheet, which is supposed to be the collateral for that pension. But it's all fougaisy. It's a company that's in distress. By the way,

39:48there's competition coming into that industry. Again, the underlying business keeps getting going downhill from 10 years ago. It's just a hollow shell that's supposed to be the collateral for backing up everything, the pensions, or the insurance company. While they're in, they're paying themselves, they're marking it the par. Why? Because they get paid fees on that high valuation, which is really all just air. Is that about right? Well, we're paying these management fees against NAV, which has a conflict of interest out the Wazoo. What are they saying about this? Are they negotiating lower fees behind the scenes, or are they dumb? No. They completely ignore it. If you guys get interested in this, you're going to start seeing, and you should go and see what the private equity guys are saying.

40:51And they're not substantive in what they want to throw red herrings out there. And they never want to address the fact. They're always doing this screenplay and blocking of what the reality is. That conflict of interest would never be addressed by them. They'd rather point to something else and be like, well, software is an issue, but we don't have that much software. We took it down. It might be painful, but it's like the whole thing is a massive conflict of interest. And you know, CalPERS, I think pretty highly of as a pension. All of the pensions have gone too far into privates in my view. They're not the highest Oregon pairs is like 27%. But still, those massive pension guys, they might be making the wrong decisions. They're not the dumbest of the dumb, for sure. The insurance guys, they are actually the dumbest of the dumb. So, you know, the people that get

41:51the worst part of these pies insurance on that $10 trillion balance sheet. CalPERS might be like intelligent about, you know, they'll buy a collateralized loan obligation, which is not a collateralized debt obligation that brought us down in 2008. But it's one letter away, and it's the same exact idea. That got to the insurance side, but on the pension side, I can just tell you that there's a lot of pressure for the pensions to be hitting a hurdle rate of 8%. So, they almost have to look the other way, because they are chasing, they need that hurdle rate in order to keep their pension fund at least trending towards full balance and insolvency. You get it. So, the conflict of interest is a person sitting, yeah, I know it, but if I call it out, bomb goes off, I get hurt too, so I'm just going to let it go.

42:55Yeah, that's right. People expect too much out of their pensions, you know, no volatility paying out every single year and almost equity returns. And so, when you do that, and when you have your unions and your teachers and your police, whatever, they were underpaid, like they want a retirement with, you know, in 2026, you know, they didn't contribute enough in there, right? So, the pensions are being constantly pushed to getting more and more returns, the private equity guys are saying, you can get returns like the stock market through debt, which makes no sense, right? The only way that happens is if you take a significant amount more risk, and they are, but they're pretending like they're not, and the private equity guys are going around saying, up until this year, that this was safer than investment grade corporate bonds. So, like, you know, bonds on Apple, right? So, the whole thing, it's like, you know,

44:03I'm sure this is a lot to chew on from someone, you know, that's starting off at 15, 20 miles per hour, maybe zero, even if you start off at 60 miles per hour, getting to 200 of understanding this web, which I'm not at yet, it's constantly a new thing where it flows into a mental model of like, this is such a disaster. So Nick, I had insurance guys who I wanted to bring on and kind of challenge you, and of course they said, they'll take MetLife for example, the guy worked at MetLife forever, and he told me, you don't understand, we're backed by triple A graded blah, blah, now I know he knows what's backing. He's an idea. Yeah, he's an idea. And why is it so big? So talk about where they reside, these kind of things in the islands where there's a level of opacity that you, you can't really dig in and see what the underlying collateral is. Yeah,

45:04that's the best part. So, remember, Fitz, Standard and Poor's Moody's say that MetLife credential and they'll always run away from actual debate. They want to say that you don't know what you're talking about. They don't know what they're talking about. They'll talk in metrics that are so esoteric that you're like, dude, you're missing the big picture here. One of the main big pictures on the insurance side, the reason why they are able, Fitz is able to say that they should be double A rated is that they do re-insurance. So, an insurance company will take their risk and they'll send it to someone else. And the ratings agencies say, okay, you sent that risk to someone else, we don't have to count that risk, okay, you're double A rated. The thing is that risk you sent to someone else is massive counterparty risk, right? So, you better make sure it's good. And the thing is that those re-insurance companies and even the specific company itself

46:11will send it to a captive and affiliate in Bermuda. Once it goes into Bermuda, you can't see it. They'll send you eight pages of consolidated statements, but you can't actually see what they own. You can't even see if they didn't send it to someone else. So, the front of the chain is levered 30 times in the case of the double A guys, but they think it's good because they're sending risk away, but you can't see it. And the rating agency is saying, okay, that's good. So, this rhymes a lot with the financial crisis in08, where you know, and you highlighted in your work, you got to pull the thread and understand that counterparty risk. Me offloading it to a third party doesn't change my underlying creditworthiness because that that counterparty could be AIG,

47:12right? Yeah. Somebody who's, you're lucky, you're lucky if the counterparty is AIG. Right. So, and then once you send it to Bermuda, then it becomes a black hole. Can you help us pull the thread in terms of other counterparty threads and where this thing lands on Main Street? Yeah, well, if you have an annuity or a life insurance policy from, you know, there's, I'm just going to segment it out. There's private equity backed insurers. If you have one with them, I would really, really consider the risk. If you have one with one of the public guys, it might be Lincoln Financial and you might be told by your financial advisor, oh no, they're good and they offer, you know, a little bit more money. Worry, I would say, not financial advice worry, but even the MetLife's and Prudentials have issues. Like, like, I want to, you know, do a scale of the public guys. There's worse off than MetLife and Prudential, but they're the biggest. And if I

48:17have worries about them, there's a huge issue. But there's also mutual insurance companies. And if you're a football fan, you know, the Green Bay Packers are owned by the season ticket holders. That's basically what a mutual is. If you're a policy holder, you own part of the mutual. And those are better off because of the incentives that play. They're not trying to increase dividends and paying out. They're not returning money to shareholders. And they're not a profit center for private equity. I still have worries about the mutual funds. But if you have a policy with, and by the way, there's $22 trillion worth of policies out there. So there's a lot of policies out there and mostly on Main Street between the public companies and the private equity companies. That's how it affects Main Street. But if this whole thing goes under, it's going to affect everyone. Right. So you're going to see mortgages spike because they have to sell their mortgage portfolio.

49:21You're going to see corporate debt, cost of capital go up, even the investment grade stuff, as people sell stuff for liquidity. There's going to be layoffs. We're talking a recession of probably pretty enormous proportions, even if the Fed bills it out because it's such a large balance sheet and it's going to be a rolling crisis. I think we're going to be talking about a really big hit sustainably to economic growth. We do have AI. So maybe that it hides it a little bit of how actually bad it is. But AI also might cut jobs. So it also affects pension funds. There's probably five more examples that I could list. Yeah. This affects Main Street and one major one that I forgot that I'll mention. One of the insurance companies goes under. It goes on a state balance sheet.

50:25The rest of the insurance companies are supposed to cobble together some money that is in reserve but also attached to a tax benefit. So it's not really, you know, it's not like they actually paid for this. The thing is they're all going to, this is all going to happen at the same time. There's going to be no money to cover the state insurance of the insurance. And states can't print dollars. So it's going to end up as a federal bailout and then it affects the taxpayer. Yeah. I think you're laying out exactly why this can't go under, why we can't go into a recession anymore. Right? I think you're laying out just the consequences of what would happen if things go south. And it's almost like the system can't afford things to go south. So the only way out of this is constant bailouts. And if it does go south, bailouts won't even work. You're

51:28looking at potentially a bail-in. Yeah. So yes, I think we're so Pavlovian trained to think that the Fed's always going to bail it out. And, you know, it sucks but it works. It sucks but it works. We have enough life experience where we see that. But if you look through, you know, economic history, you see Japan in the 80s and 90s and 2000s. You see huge bubble in the 80s, 90s, 2000s, lost decades. The Bank of Japan was bailing everything out. There was still a recession. So I don't think, you know, like you could look at the Dutch, you could look at the English empire, you could do the Radalio history scope of how empires fail. And I'm really concerned that people think the only thing is, you know, we're going to get inflation. The value of the dollar goes down. You know, I really think that we could get all of the worst components. We could get a devaluing

52:29dollar. We could get a recession. We could get unemployment. No growth. Stock market goes down. Like it is, you know, that is the worst case scenario. The worst case scenario is not no bailout. The worst case scenario, because no bailout, people get hurt, you know, it's 74% of the wealth is own 55 and up. And then we start a new, and it's like a phoenix and you rise from the ashes. Do I think that's going to happen? Probably not. I think they're going to bail it out. The worst case scenario is that we bail it out. It doesn't work. We keep on doing it. We don't solve the root of the issue. And we get everything bad just spread out over a decade. Jack, go ahead. Just say one last comment. Yes, true in Japan, but we're the world reserve currency, which is very different than the yen. The yen was, you know, 25% of reserves.

53:36And you can look back to the reserve currency of, you know, the pound, you can look back to, what was the reserve currencies don't last forever, you know? No. So my base case has been, my base case has been a crack up boom for quite some while. Like I just, I think Mises is going to get this one right. I think it looks more like whimer Germany than it does Japan. Yeah. Well, that's, that's what you could see. Because by the way, it's not that just that the US is doing this perpetual bailouts. It's every country. Even China has been stimulating for three years. Could you imagine a whimer that was all fiat at the same time everywhere? That, that is one outcome, one tail, you know, the tail that has hyperinflation. But I also think you, you can't say that Japan's deflationary environment, where there's no growth and assets

54:40literally go down in value is impossible. The end, the end of valued because yes, we're in a better position. But we've also done all of this off of a bigger sum for longer than Japan did in the 80s. So it's, I would say that it's entirely possible that we have a Japanese lost decade. Do I think we can stomach it? No, probably not. At a certain point deflation always turns into inflation. I think it would probably turn quicker, quicker for us than anyone else. But again, GDP growth, I mean, you know, just the nominal GDP micro go up because we print so much money that money's worth less. But the economy's not growing in a real sense, meaning adjusted for inflation. Nick, I know you got a little time crunch. Hopefully you can stick with us for a couple of questions. We'll go to Chad then India. Before we do, Nick, before you leave, I'd like you to address

55:43how private credit would affect somebody's 401k and Eric Rice did a great interview. I put it in the nest for those who want to watch it. Chad, go ahead. Well, that was my question. I was hopping on for Eric for the average American. How does a 401k bail out work? What would it look like to us? And then I do have a follow up if you have time. But Nick, thanks for joining us. Please don't be a stranger man. Your work is, it was really poignant. And I think your spot on very excited to have you here. But can you start with a 401k question, please? Yes, sir. Appreciate that. So the private equity and private credit guys have looked for the next source of capital. They pretty much tapped pensions, rich people and insurance. So they're like, okay, let's go to people that have two million dollars in their portfolio. Let's go to people that have 500 grand in their portfolio. That's the next source of capital. And it is an aggregate, a pretty decent chunk. Dependent trick. That would extend this and that would be really bad because you're just back

56:43older, son. You know, we're in crypto, right? Like, you know, that's like buying a meme coin when it's at whatever 150 million in the insiders are all selling I do, right? So that would be bad as far as as far as a bailout goes. Um, shit, you know, it's really hard to bail out individual 401ks. I don't think that's how this is going to happen. I think that the fed's just going to drop rates and increase the balance sheet a lot. And that's exactly what I'm saying where it's like indirect where I don't think it's really going to help a 401k that's allocated to privates. If you, you know, everyone can have and they can buy publicly traded BDCs, which are these, you know, you know, the ones I'm talking about are the private credit ones that trade. And you might see the prices move. Blue owl has some areas has, has, you know, a pretty good one. Blackstone has a pretty good one. But there's also private ones where your wealth advisor will be like,

57:49oh, we should allocate five, five, 10% to this. Um, I would just question it because I wouldn't expect, you know, a bailout to help you, you know, like the average person in a 401k, like the government, the government, quite frankly, they might pay you lip service. They don't care about you. You know, so I wouldn't, I wouldn't just trust that bailout taking care of the credit issues. Love it. And then the second part of the second question is really a bigger question from a macro perspective. A lot of us look at Jesse Myers work and we have a quadrillion of assets in the world as a top line valuation, right? You mentioned how this is a $10 trillion problem and, you know, $10 trillion on a quadrillion doesn't seem like a lot. It's 1%. But I loved how you put it in the context of like the defense balance sheet or if you take it in the context of the national debt, that's a whole quarter of the size of a national debt. It's really meaningful. What I'm hoping you could do is, you know, play out the contagion risk, um, quantifiably. Is that possible? He said 10

58:55here, but yeah, spitball, how it would roll to other industries and what they'd be. And I also want to throw in there like we have commercial banks on bank balance sheets are marked to maturity. And when if you mark the market, you know, it's a huge loss there. Kind of that vein. Can you pull all that together for us? Yeah. So the quadrillion is probably 500 trillion of derivatives. It's not, it's not, you know, it's like IOU. It's a, I would say 500 trillion is what people actually think as well. Think corporate debt, you know, we're talking 100 trillion, you know, government debt, 100 trillion, you know, probably I think it's 300 trillion just between and corporate and government debt. Then there's private debt. There's equities that are probably 100 trillion. But what people have to understand is what holds that quadrillion together, not just the derivatives, but like the real estate, you know, real estate is probably 350 trillion or something like that.

1:00:00All of that value is set at the margin. That's why when the Fed brings her balance sheet up to 9 trillion, all of a sudden, you know, you see if you did the, the, you know, let's think about the total global, global wealth that goes up 200 trillion. So they print 4 trillion, global wealth goes up 200 trillion. And it's not just them, ECB, you know, Bank of Japan, China. So it's all set at the margin. And there's, yeah, credit events don't happen in silos, asset prices, even gold, like even gold moves with equities these days. So if you take a trillion dollars out of the system, you throw that on the government balance sheet, you know, you could see cascading effects that, you know, are orders of magnitude higher because of all the leverage and because of all the

1:01:05correlation and the, you know, contagion effect of panic. So, you know, I hope, I hope that sort of maps it out where you're thinking like, you know, the liquidity metric used in the US is M2. Let's like consider what's FIA short term. Total M2 in the world is maybe 90 trillion. That is the cash or cash equivalence in the system. And when the Fed during COVID prints 2 trillion dollars, that's at the margin that a lot of these things could change, but that is only possible if there's trust in the system. When COVID happened, everyone was like, don't fight the Fed, don't fight the Fed. And it just like everyone just goes and rushes and buys assets. And, you know, real estate, if there's a hundred trillion dollars of residential real estate in the US, you know, that's not based on the clearing price, right? You know, that is okay. Well,

1:02:0910% of these homes, 5% of these homes were sold this year. Here's the price. Let's extrapolate that to everything else. It's, you know, people understanding wealth in that way, I would say, you know, it's not exactly right. You see in crypto where there's low floats. So, you know, you can throw a thousand dollars, you know, if you're talking a meme coin or talking avalanche, like if someone bought 50 million dollars of avalanche today, it would move the wealth of avalanche holders a lot, but that's just the marginal dollar and that goes both ways. Like just because, you know, you throw a bunch of money at the margin, at an asset, doesn't mean you can clear the entire market cap of it and extract that as well. And it's obvious because there's only 90 trillion dollars of cash and cash equivalence.

1:03:15So in that context, 10 trillion dollars is one ninth of total cash and cash equivalence of the world or 45% of total M2 in the US. Now, does that 10 trillion dollars go to zero? No, but I think we're lucky if through the reinsurance games, another component is not only impairments on private credit, but also the mortgages that they have, the corporate bonds that they have, and the treasuries that they bought when interest rates were low. You know, a trillion dollars like that has to be realized and recognized there. I really don't think people understand how big of an issue that is. In the global financial crisis, we had a 700 billion dollar tarp, but only 450 billion was drawn. Either way, a trillion dollars is more than both of those numbers. And from my perspective, the 450 billion is the number to look at because in order to

1:04:18sue the market about this, there's going to have to be a, you know, if it's a trillion dollar hole, there's going to have to be a two trillion dollar, you know, bailout. It doesn't have to all be called, but the market has to be convinced that there's, you know, sufficient allocation towards this problem. And even if you just plug a whole of a trillion dollars, we're still worried about recognizing the real value of all of this. And that's where I think it might not be enough. Andy, how you got, how you doing, bud? And then how much time do you have for us? Um, I'm all right. You know, I thought it was going to be busier than I, than I was today. Vincent. All right. Sounds good. Andy, go ahead. So Nick, first of all, thank you for coming here. I'm really obliged. I'm really happy that you here with a group of Bitcoins, because you understand what hard outsets can actually do in an inflationary environment. And I think I kind of agree with your thesis. I've read,

1:05:20I've, I've actually seen your interview with Anthony Pumbly. I know I'm not an expert in private credit. I've all those captured quite a lot of the thesis that you've actually mentioned in some of the articles that I've mentioned in my website, IndiaBitcoinmine.com. One of them, I think you'll really love is the art of the invisible war. I was going to be ending American dollar hegemony to an invisible war, which the America doesn't see coming. And also the other one is the oil shock is the detonator. I think you'll really love those articles, but having said that, what I really wanted to ask you and I actually want to understand from you is that, I mean, although I kind of agree with your thesis and this whole, you know, Fogazi of the financial, because I belong to the financial industry as well in India. And I think this private equity guy is buying up the insurance companies and then managing their, you know, manifestos to get into, you know, to buy those private credits and then re and then off-shorting it to Cayman Islands to re-insure those who actually haven't really marked the market.

1:06:22So I think it's kind of a detonator, but the bomb is already loaded in my opinion. So I just wanted to ask you, I mean, where do you see this going and how fast and how quickly? At the moment, I mean, the markets are rejoicing. I made of kind of a cryptic post today on X saying that oil is going to go negative because the straight up almost is finally open. Carve it with the quote and quote and quote the statement from the Iranian Foreign Minister Aragachi that it's going to be only until the end of the ceasefire. It's not going to be a permanent thing. So we will see how things turn out. So I'm kind of pretty bearish in my opinion. It's still this moment, but I just wanted to ask you, I mean, how quickly do you really see all this unraveling to happen? And I think you talked about the numbers I kind of missed, but I kind of disagree a little bit with your thesis that the fire is going to cut rates. I think, in my opinion, if oil stays elevated, and I'm not discounting the fact that this freighter almost is now open,

1:07:25but I think it's just until the end of the ceasefire as I said, caveat, quote and quote and the statement of the Iranian Foreign Minister. So if this goes on and let's say oil stays elevated, I think the most probable outcome in my opinion is that, you know, the Fed will actually hike rates along with these. That's not surprising. That's Jeffrey Gunlikes call also, which I kind you know, subtly agree with, is because Kevin Wash being the new Fed chain, he's not even testified right now. I think some testimonial charges are pending against power, but once he does, which we believe is the process of the law, which will actually happen and he'll actually become the Fed chair. I think in order to maintain the credibility of the Fed, who's going to kick the soapbox out from under India? I get one more, 10 more seconds, okay. So the point is that I see inflation rising under that scenario, in order to maintain the credit, and as you can see from the PPM numbers, which are, you know, kind of something of the tail of times to come,

1:08:32translates into the CPI numbers. It's about 4% the last reading, 4.2%. If that translates to a 4% or 4% plus inflation numbers in the CPI in May when the April numbers come in, what do you think of the chances that actually Kevin Wash is going to be lowering rates of Trump is demanding, rather than actually maintaining the credibility of the Fed and actually hiring the rates, you know? So I got you. I'm talking about sort of, you know, you're talking about the next move, I'm not talking about the next move. It is highly possible that oil stays high and it stops the Fed from cutting rates. You know, I think it would take a lot to push them to re-height. You got to understand interest rates at this level, interest rates any higher only creates a bigger issue because, you know, as we said earlier in the call, you know, the higher the cost of debt, the more likely there's a problem in the credit markets, right? Not only because some of those

1:09:33are lower yielding and they'll go down in price, but also because of the refinances, it puts stresses on the underlying businesses, as well as the borrowers, the borrowers in general might be a mortgage, definitely stress. So, you know, in that scenario, this only blows up harder and faster and has a bigger hole, although the hole might be more honest that way. So, you know, how do I see this playing out? You know, there's definitely variables. It's going to happen sooner if rates stay higher, but ultimately, you know, the answer that they're going to come up with, it's the only thing that they know. They have to cut to zero and they have to bring the balance sheet up. Inflation leads to deflation, deflation leads to inflation, and that is because of the response of governments, you know, like we don't live in this world where you just ride through recessions or, you know, if a government spends too much, the cost of borrowing

1:10:41gets too high that they're forced to stop spending. No, like the cost of borrowing gets too high, nobody wants the debt, the Fed just buys the bonds. If the recession is bad, there's deflation, they just start printing. And another reason is because why deflation turns to inflation is because people go bankrupt and there's less competition. So, you know, the next move, I'm not too concerned about how this plays out, you know, one of the triggers I think is just the continuing depletion of the asset class and chilling effect of money going in because this is all built on inflows as, you know, bubbles typically are. I think within four quarters, we're going to see major issues. It's a really big macro equation because you have $10 trillion in the next 10 months of treasuries being refinanced. So, you have a liquidity equation. What would end this immediately is

1:11:41just looking at those reinsurers, seven of them back up 550 companies. You'd probably know 10 of them. And then, you know, you shouldn't not worry about the other 540. So, there's definitely variables. I do think the bond is loaded. I think you're right about that. I think it is better if we address it sooner for sure. And also, by the way, people can't extract wealth on these inflated NAVs and all this BS for longer, you know, which is part of the inequality problem in our country. So, I hope that sort of mapped it out. I'm kind of remembered of the quote from Jeffrey and Lackin Lansford who says that it's not marked to market, it's marked to mystery or maybe marked to. I think it's it's marked to some myth that we all agree with. I have a fantasy. I made a site called markedofanacy.com if you guys want to check it out. I don't know who came up with that first. You know, at some point, I was like, you know,

1:12:45like I don't even know if it's, I definitely didn't come up with that. But I'm the amend and pretend all of these, it's just too easy, you know, it's and it's so obvious. And that's what shocks people is, you know, people are like, wait a minute, like how could this be happening? And all of the people in the banks and insurance and like, how does everyone seem so complacent? This is how it always happens. Like go back to 1987, go back to 1619 or 1634, go back to all of the, you know, cycles in the 1800s. It always happens the same way. And it's not that nobody's saying it. It's that nobody's listening, you know. So there's a lot of work that I'm building on of people that have been on this trail for a while. And all I'm trying to do is, you know, communicate. And I have this joke, you know, use the resonance frequency to vibrate people until like waking them up.

1:13:50And yeah, the answer is better, is sooner, sooner than later, do we address these problems? Doc, I'm also next. The Trump is no escape plan article that I wrote. I'm just hoping that you can give me some review on that. Okay, DM it to me. I could do, I could do one more question. And then I'm going to hop off. Hey, Nick, real quick. So somebody, I know you said mutual, mutual aid, you know, like insurance policies. Let's say somebody's got a whole life. And again, I know this isn't financial advice. But you can borrow against that, particularly as you're getting towards your, you know, 12 year of payments into a million dollar insurance. What, what, if you took, you can take a loan out against that. Yeah, everyone, everyone take a loan out on that. No financial advice. But if it goes under, maybe, maybe you get to keep the money and don't have to buy. Yeah, I'm sure you would owe the money, which ostensibly is to yourself, but they're, you know,

1:14:54it's just a totally crazy. I don't know how that actually works. But yeah, man, it's a great question. More leverage. That's the solution. Last question for you, timing. Do you think this is a 2026 problem? Can they kick the can down the road to 2028? When do you think this, this comes home to boost? I think there's a window before the mid-derms, because there's the political competitiveness to start pointing at issues. And I'm going to give enough material that if someone wants to, there is enough material. I'm going to keep it at the top of the stack of papers enough that if someone wants to, they can take it. I see four quarters. I see 2027. There's a lot of refinances and software that need to happen. Five percent redemptions for four quarters, you know, 20%. I don't see a lot of inflows. That's an issue. And then there's a huge

1:15:57debt wall in 2028. I don't think you wait until 2028 to realize that there's a debt wall in 2028. I think at that point, AI has just rupted enough businesses that it's like obvious those loans are not good. And by the way, they're taking management fees off the top every single year. So in reality, you know, if you have a hundred million dollars of debt every year, you take one percent or two percent out of that. And it's not good. It's going to be liquidated for 20 cents after five, or you know, let's just do five years for easy math. After five years of the true value, management fees have cut it in half. So yeah, I think, you know, you're looking at between one of the, how many quarters until elections? Two quarters, I guess. Two and eight quarters could it be extended by going into 401Ks and retail holds the bag, but it provides enough liquidity?

1:17:02I guess. I don't think so. We're talking so big numbers that, you know, penetrating $10 trillion of 401Ks at five percent, you know, which would be a high-case scenario, you know, $500 billion doesn't really solve this. I think it just, you know, extends it. And nothing, nothing, nothing, no amount of more money would solve the underlying brokenness, but, you know, I think it would extend it. I don't think you can extend it through a 20, 28 disaster. And especially because, you know, the news is going to be bad, continuing to be bad, that stops capital from going into the asset class. But, you know, you think that by the time they're getting traction, it goes, you know, one, like, you think it's going to go to 1 percent, to 2 percent, to, you know, in the 20, 28 debt wall software, everyone's realizing that these are basically zeroes, that retail is going to go to 3 percent. Like, I just don't think so.

1:18:09Nick, let you go, Chad, real quick, and then Nick, you can get home with your life when we really appreciate you being here, but... Yeah, I just wanted to highlight something Nick said, because I went to the site, markedtofantasy.com. There's some great information there. Everybody encouraged you to go to the site and peruse. So, Nick, thank you for that. There was a question from a listener, I just wanted to make sure we got in, and I didn't hear it. If we have apologies, just glance over it, and I'll go back to the tape. But, um, the question was, how was the reinsurance market involved in the private equity slash, you know, the private credit equity debacle? It's a... Listen, there's a guy named Compton Grover that's spent 41 years tracking this down. 11 years with the FBI going after fraud, and he's lived in annual reports, you know, the entire time. It is such a big picture, but very simply. First of all, go to my articles on Twitter. I've unpaid welled this for, you know, the reason that, you know, I'm trying to solve the problem and putting a paywall in front of that would be against that. So, if you want to read

1:19:13that, that's a good start, but just as a start to the start, the reinsurance, they don't have the money, they just don't have the money. And also, it's all run through the same reinsurance companies. So, that's the single point of failure, you know, like we said in the beginning, you know, where these are double-a rated insurance companies. They're relying on a counterparty. The counterparties are major problems. And then, you know, it all goes into re-insurance from, and oftentimes, it's not like, prudential will have a set up a company or Brookfield will set up a company or MetLife will set up a company in Bermuda, where you can't see what they have, because that's Bermuda's or Bermuda in law. And they could just be re-insuring it again. At the end of this reinsurance chain, that's where I think there's a massive, you know, lacking of funds.

1:20:18And what that protects against any annuity in life space is losses on the balance sheet. The balance sheets, if you're honest about them, already have losses because of interest rates going up and the problems in private credit, you know, but they don't have to market to them to what the price is today, because they have convinced themselves that these are permanent assets. And a 10-year you bought in 2021, that was 2%. Just yield 2%. You don't need to acknowledge the fact that a 10-year bought in 2021 is now down to 85 cents or whatever. So, re-insurance is a big part of this. That's what I'm talking about. If you just open the hood of that, this would all end immediately. I think the most obvious trigger, though, is the private credit. The most obvious trigger are the BDCs that are publicly traded. I mean, not publicly traded, but because those are closed funds,

1:21:24but the ones where you can redeem and take money out. And the intervals that you can redeem and take money out. Because when money comes out of an asset class, you have to get more honest about the marks. Nick, thanks for your time, bud. I really appreciate it. I would highly implore everybody to go look at Nick's interview with Marty a couple weeks back. And don't be a stranger, my friend. As things change, and I'm sure they will and evolve. We'd love to get you back up here for an update. Thanks so much for your time. All right. Appreciate it, guys. Two questions. Too much. Bye. Appreciate you, brother. Well, I just wanted to a great taking. I feel like we have crowned a new Royal Duma. Welcome to the club. And by the way, like, this guy is like a pit bull on a girl scout with regard to tracking this down, looking at the collateral. What is it? How is it marked? Trying to

1:22:24speak behind the curtain. And what's behind the curtain should distress anybody who's got that normalcy bias that everything's going to be okay. And I know we get called doomers left and right. And, you know, the, the, the straights of hormones is now open ostensibly and everything's great. But really take, take measure of what you have, what your assumptions are in providing for your family and whether or not that's going to be around in five, 10 years when you plan on, you know, living off of this, whether it's a 401k or an insurance policy or whatever it might be. Um, it's not good. And when you have Fed Chairman and former Fed Chairman coming out and they always want to tell you so that they can say, well, we told you are coming out and saying, this is not sustainable. You know, that's the tell. You know, I think you had Hank Paulson and then you had Jerome Powell come out and say something similar. Like they always want to give you that little

1:23:29nugget at the very end. So what were we told you? It was, oh, we told you wasn't sustainable. So just be careful. Stark, what do you got? You know, we, we kind of glossed over the story on Red Lobster. We probably should have dug a little deeper because it sort of outlines what the scam is here. Um, and, and maybe scams the wrong word, maybe scheme is the right word. But the Red Lobster story is that in one, one night last week, uh, one firm who held the equity in Red Lobster wrote it down to zero, meaning worthless. But a private credit firm that hold the, the dead kept it at par. So two things can't be true because they certainly don't have the assets for the, for the debt to collect, right? And the,

1:24:29I believe Red Lobster had gone to servicing their debt through a pick, meaning with equity. So the whole thing's just, you know, you know, he, he, he very methodically walked through the scheme, but to actually see it and understand it and know that these companies, companies that cannot service their debt, has their debt marked at a hundred cents on the dollar. Think about that. If you loan somebody a hundred bucks and they can't pay you back, it's not worth a hundred bucks. The conflicts of interest in the system by people who were the same criminals from 2008 who never were held to account. I mean, why would, is this any surprise that they will go and rob and steal for their benefit and create problems for the common, the common good, private gains social

1:25:32losses. And I have, I have, so people can say doomer and all that. I just tune out when people say it. I'm 85, 90% net long bullish. It's just, but I do look at the tail risk and look at hedging. And I want to understand what are the things that could undermine the thesis because I'm old enough to remember what happened in 2008. The whole system almost fucking collapsed. And you could have been wiped out. And the older you get, the less time you have to recover. So I'm probably too old to recover if we were to have a 2008 style crisis. And don't don't interpret what I'm saying. So we're going to have one tomorrow. We might. And I want to explore all those tail risks. But the conflicts of interest that sit here with this criminal, this criminal group and they are criminals. It's not hyperbole. These people will rob you and steal from you if they can to align their own pockets ahead of the public interest. And it's it's the biggest tell here is the conflict of

1:26:36interest on mark to model. They're lying about the collateral that they have. And they, and there's a reason why they're lying. And no one's calling them to account because the people who know they're they're not necessarily in on it, but they're exposed to the lie. Yeah, I like mark to fantasy better because models suggest that there's some type of mathematics underlying it. But you know, I always say economics is the study of incentives. And just going back to 0809 even going back to my early days on Wall Street in the 90s. The incentives haven't changed. The incentive structures haven't changed. If you're charging two and 20, you're getting your two every year. Right. And there's no claw back on that. That money is banked by what you call the criminals. I think that's a fair assertion. So really, you know, you have to look at the incentive structure of Wall Street. A guy gets paid

1:27:37his bonus. He gets his bonus, right? Like that money's not coming back. So the incentive to go ahead and mark to fantasy is built into the entire system from, you know, Jamie Diamond on the top of the system all the way down to a portfolio manager, you know, who's just working the stuff and then down to the valuation agent. It doesn't matter. They're all profiting off of this mark to fantasy scheme. And at some point, it will break. And when it breaks, the question is, and we're trying to get at it, is it a bailout or is it a bail in and could a bailout even work? You know, a lot of people keep calling me a doomer and saying, hey, private credit's only $1.3 trillion. It's a small market. It's the leverage. You, you heard Nick kind of lay it out. These things are levered maybe 17 to one. In some cases, up to 50 to one. So that, that one trillion is becomes an $11 trillion

1:28:37dollar problem really fast. And talk, talk, you know, Thomas, Thomas seemed annoyed that we're talking about this. You know, it's not what does this have to do with Bitcoin? Well, you just heard the magnitude of the printing that would have to come in an attempt that will probably be unsuccessful in bailing this 50x larger than 2000. So yeah, printing is one thing. And I think Nick touched on this. I'm not sure printing works. But towards the end there, he hit on the main point when asked about reinsurance, this gets to counterparty risk, right? If the guy above you in the capital structure doesn't have the money, then the counterparty fails. And when counterparties begin to fail, the entire system fails, because our derivative based structure or system is based on counterparties. It's based on the fact that whoever you have a contract with will make good on that contract.

1:29:39So you can see if if you're talking about reinsurance companies not having the money, then you're talking about the guy at the top of the chain failing on his counterparty exposure. Now, what does that look like as it ripples through a quadrillion dollars worth of derivatives or more? Maybe two quadrillion, who knows? But it doesn't look good. I can tell you that because all of those derivatives are essentially two parties that have agreed to perform on a contract. And when one party to the contract fails, then you can see the chain reaction that goes through the derivative's complex because the guy on the other side thought he had a good contract and he doesn't. And then he fails. And then that just becomes a chain reaction into nowhere. And what I got from my insurance buddies and we'll get the chat is, no, this guy was really well in insurance. He's retired now. He's living off of 401k and a pension. He goes, Kevin, do you mean

1:30:39to tell me that the president of MetLife knows this and he would go to jail? And I'm like, really? Like the bankers who went to jail? Like the guys who went to jail in 2008? Like, are you delusional? Did you not just live through this? I mean, it wasn't that long ago. And an appointing is the president of MetLife might not even, maybe it's opaque to him as well. I doubt it. But he's not going to jail. He's out. And Thomas, I got a question for you as a public official. Check, go ahead. Yeah, you know, I love this mark to fantasy concept in fiat fantasy land because fiat is fantasy. And the best, first of all, thanks to everybody on stage. You guys really have helped change lives. And it's like the best part about getting more involved is co-hosting and over in the Jersey City stuff is I get to talk to people and I get their feedback about what's happening. And there's something out here that this is going to apply to a lot of listeners. There are a lot

1:31:39of people out there behind a tax wall. And I suspect too many people and I'm somewhat included in that cohort. But there's too many of those people that think they're safe because they own I bet you are not safe. I bet is part of the fiat system. I'm, you know, it's not financial advice, but I'm begging you to consider your own financial situation and take a look at take a hard look at your tax wall potentially or whatever it is and get off zero. And for a very modest amount of money for most people, I'm talking like a thousand dollars. You can make a material, you can buy the best insurance policy literally in the world. Like the only insurance policy because insurance is messed up in all of this. So, you know, if you don't know how to do it, cotton DM us off to the side or whatever, we'll get you there to the resources. And I just can't listen to this again after having lived through 08 and say, as Thomas said, it just rhymes. This is what happens. So

1:32:40much love to everybody out there, but please reach out if we can help because the worst thing is if this happens five years from now and we look back and some of you in this room were there, we can't help you then, but we can help you now by saying learn about self-custody and and evaluate your own situation. But if you come to a different decision, I'd love to hear that too, because give me another way out. To my knowledge, Bitcoin is the only way out. And that's how it comes back to Bitcoin. Thanks, Chad. Thomas. So, when the pension doesn't pay out, you know, they're not going to the guys who extracted fees for years. They're not showing up at their house. That's completely opaque to the fireman, the cop, the, you know, the public servant. They're coming to a city hall because, you know, that's the focus of attention. I made a deal with you, the government. And I pay, I worked in this job forever, and this is my pension.

1:33:42And look no further, Thomas. And I didn't know you know this. The third retirement option plan and for drop program in Philadelphia. You know, these, these politicians, what they did was they passed a law that allowed them to take the cash value of their retirement, sometimes in tune of millions of dollars. And again, these are quote unquote public servants. They took the cash and then they went right back to, again, the next day and started acquiring another pension and went back to work. They didn't retire. It, it was the biggest, it was the slow back rubber in history. Why do you think they did that? They know, they know the actuaries, they know the bullshit. They're getting theirs off the table. They're getting the pension in cash. And then they're right back to work the next day because they see how distressed this is. Thomas, in your world, are they, are you, is everybody aware of what's happening here? Yeah, I would say like in New Jersey, the, the pension is largely in the public sector

1:34:44managed at the state level. And there are multiple state pensions. There's local public employees, there's state employees, there is fire and police, and there are teachers. So those are the four main groups. The fire and police is pretty well capitalized. The state public workers is not. And so there's, there's discussion about pulling all of the stuff and it creates a fiduciary conflict, right? Because you know, the fire guys like, why should I help recapitalize state employees? That's your problem. So those over the years, there's been a lot of pressure for municipalities across the state to increase the pension contribution to recapitalize the fund. Now, if people are interested in this, I would say go to Pew Research. I don't know, I guess not. I'm partisan research outfit and they'll go through all the public sector pensions. And I would say the ones that are a problem are Illinois, New Jersey, California, probably.

1:35:50Those are the ones that I would say are a problem in terms of the claims versus the assets under management. Now, very few pension funds across the entire country have liabilities that match assets. I mean, most of it's, they have more liabilities and assets, but they're banking on higher returns. So this is why I was getting out before where you have pension managers chasing yield on paper to say, hey, we're in good shape. You know, we're anticipating 8.5% returns on, you know, 10 or 20 billion or 50 billion, whatever the number is, you're like, wow, that's a pretty good return on that kind of large asset pool. So people are questioning that that the situation's going to get worse. Now, we've seen a few pension funds in the public sector go, tits up. And there's the thing at the federal level called the PBGC is the pension board guarantee

1:36:56corp. And it's kind of think of it like a FDIC for the pensions, but it's a politically funded, it's not like your guarantee to certain amount. And that's limited to how much they'll put into that. But like, I think Detroit had a pension fail and it was one of the Midwest recently, last couple years. They all took big haircuts. And, you know, the people who are on the receiving end of this, pensioners who are counting on a certain cash flow are took haircuts. And, you know, they end up being Walmart readers where they're struggling around the do stuff. What I tell all of our public employees that I have the responsibility for is not to count on your pension a hundred cents on the dollar, meaning yeah, you want to go get as much as you can, but don't live your lifestyle to the edge, meaning that understand some portion of those pensions payments that you're going to get are at risk from two factors. One is a haircut. And two is an inflation that

1:38:00outstrips the cola that they put in place. So if I'm getting $1,200 a month in a pension, inflation goes 10%. They're not going to give me 1,320. They're not going to give me a 10% increase on my pension. So I'm going to get based on my pension. Or they're just going to give me not right haircut. Those are the two risks. So we do know about it. It's where it becomes a political issue at the local level is on the contribution side. If it goes, if it, if it creators, they'll go to the state, not the local guys, because it's not our fault. We're not managing it. Thomas, but doesn't it, that's a separate and a part issue. And I know people's eyes are probably glazing over, but you know, redemption's not matching kind of the money coming into the system from new payers is one issue. But that is separate in a part from the collateral in the pension. Let's say 500 taco bells I'm just using an example that are worth less than zero, but are marked

1:39:03at par sitting on the pension. And then they have to liquidate that to meet redemptions and it's worth zero. It's literally like negative negative equity. I would just say this. I don't think you have the the clarity about what is in the pension fund holdings. It's it's broad categories of stuff. You if they owned the planet fitness franchise in Arizona, that was in their portfolio, you would never see that. It gets buried through various holdings all the way through a Bermuda based company where you have literally by law, no, it's completely opaque. So I don't think you could ascertain that being an issue. To me, the best metric for the pensions is just to look at the asset liability and then understand that they're they're not being truthful on the value of the assets. And you have to decide how untruthful. So if you have liabilities of 150 billion and assets of 110, I would assume that 110 looks more like 90 or 85

1:40:14because you have illiquid assets in there that are probably not marked the market. Okay. Everybody got anything they want to jump in and talk about? We kind of again, I'm a little concerned that people, if you're not connecting the dots to how this leads to Bitcoin and being outside of that system. Now that doesn't mean that Bitcoin wouldn't, you know, in a correlation to one event, assuming that happens and I'm not predicting that it does, but it could. You're seeing the distress. The people are telling you know, heads up, heads up, heads up. And you're like, what hasn't happened yet? What hasn't happened yet? What happened? Oh, shit, it just happened. What do I do? Like I'm not saying Bitcoin wouldn't wouldn't flush as everything comes apart, but you are outside of that system. And I'm pretty sure that when all of that distress seeks to safety, that's when you're going to see it come to

1:41:15Bitcoin when people come to the realization and dark talks about it all the time. If you don't think that some of these big institutions have understand that Bitcoin is a is a is an escape patch and can do it rather quickly. And then to dark big, big long thesis, or at least it's additive to it, you need to think through it a little bit more. Dark, do you have anything to say on that? Oh, good. I was going to say a lot of people, because I get the messages, you probably get them more than they complain. Oh, you guys aren't talking about Bitcoin. It's a Bitcoin space you're talking about macro or you're talking about the bond marker or you're talking about this private equity thing. To me, it, you know, there's only so many so much you can talk about self-custody and what's the best wallet structure and Satoshi. We need to talk through that to maintain grounding, but all of these things we're talking about are related to Bitcoin because they set the

1:42:16environment in which Bitcoin takes its next leg up. It doesn't go up because anarchists want to buy a cup of coffee with Satoshi's. And so what's going to drive this? It's going to be a loss of confidence in the system that we live in through the the fuckery that's going on with things like private credit, like this war and ran, like the fact that we have a national debt that is unsustainable, never going to get paid back. Eventually, people are going to fucking wake up and realize that the system is going to reset and the thing that's going to be going to save you through that reset. There's one asset that if you had to bet on one, it's going to be Bitcoin. Now, other assets may survive, maybe gold survives a little bit, maybe some of the other things, maybe real estate survives a little bit, things you can't print. But the best one is Bitcoin. And what I like to understand is, in a broader sense, what are the things that are going to make this happen in the next one year, three years, five years? So I know people get frustrated with that,

1:43:22but I do think personally, I think they're related, but not everybody makes the same connection that I'm making. We'll make a talk about it. It sounds like this wall of refinancing in 2008 is like a is a mile marker. But again, you don't you don't want to wait for that. I use this kind of morbid analogy. It's like that white snake concert, man. The people who realized it was a problem and not part of the show, a handful of them made it out of the place. Everybody else got you know, stuck like elephants going through a revolving door as that place burned. You do not want to be great white. Great white snake. You said white snake. Here I go again. Wrong bad. Wrong hair band. But you know, it was, you got it, you got to skate to where the puck is going. And it's better to be three years too early than three seconds too late, because when you're three seconds too late, you are dead. So, let me answer the question this way, Thomas. The what leads to the big long and Bitcoin

1:44:32is the unwind in the derivatives complex in track five, right? Those two things are completely linked. You can't have counterparty failure without have money absolutely pouring into an asset or a system that provides no counterparty risk. That's what makes Bitcoin so special. Bitcoin held in self-custody has no counterparty exposure. You can transact with whoever you want without permission from anyone else and without relying on anyone else to hold your funds or clear your funds or anything else. So, these things are completely linked and you can't have the failure of the counterparty system not lead to the explosion of the trustless permissionless system.

1:45:35Lauren, do you see anybody with hands up or is everybody sufficiently depressed? I saw that hand. There's this guy. Go ahead with your question, sir. Where are the blockchain servers located? There's that guy. And then there's this guy. I think Terrence is still here somewhere. He's he's not a co-host, but he's here. You don't learn it. Whoa, whoa, whoa, Terrence. Whoa, okay, I'd had to mute him because this is a family show. No, I think that was those two and that was about it. Punch. Is it a time to wrap? Go around the horn? Yeah, I guess so. Look, Nick's a super smart guy. Are stupid. Nick's a super smart guy. He's not stupid. He's done the work and we're in a proof of work, you know, cult as it were. Like he's bringing it and when I talk to insurance guys and I say come in and tell Nick or at least in a very respectful way, debate Nick and tell him what he's missing or where he's wrong in these valuations or and the fact of the matter is they

1:46:39have no idea. They've worked in that industry forever and they just assumed that, you know, this is met life. This is prevent the rock. You can count on us. We've been here for 150 years. Well, guess what? They don't know. The fact of the matter is they don't know and the people who do know are misincentivized to keep this thing in the air as long as it'll go and then the minute it doesn't go anymore, they step out. They're okay. They're not going to jail, right? But you're not okay. So consider that. Sam, I'll see your hand. Yeah, I guess sorry. Again, I joined lead. I missed almost all of the conversation, but just wanted to ask, a question occurred to me as dark was wrapping up a question that I wanted to ask him. He used the word failure and regularly we use the word failure for the drippatives market.

1:47:40Just thought it was interesting to tease out how subjective that word failure is because like, I would consider that the system and its entirety has been in a state of failure for a long time. So, you know, does failure come at 11 o'clock on a certain date and we declare, yeah, there's a failure or has failure being sort of a subjective care? Like, I consider this all a failure. That's what brought me to Bitcoin. So if dark still around, I just thought it was interesting to ask him, like, how subjective is that word? Because this system is very, very, very cute and crafty at papering over cracks, pardon the polynomials, the use of the word paper. Not sure if dark still here or not, but just understood and hearing his thoughts on how subjective that word failure is. Dark had to jump. So it can wait. Sounds good. Why

1:48:44cross around the horn, Lauren? It is. Punch there. There was a couple of hands. Larry just hopped up here. A glow just hopped up. Chad had his hand up. Let's go. Larry, did you want to interject? I know you were waiting down there for a while. Sure. I'll be quick. I know we're all wrapping up. So I certainly appreciate you guys drawing the parallels. I see it like you do. I think the biggest question that I see is how long there's just going to take the play out and how much can they kick the can? I tried to message you, Punch and Lauren. Beset is supposed to meet with private credit in the next couple of weeks. I don't know if this is a mechanism that just to get the idea of the scope and try to put it back in its cage or playing contingencies, or is this the beginning of them trying to kick it down the road? I'd be curious if any of you are aware of that or have seen that article and have any thoughts about it. I see it in my DM's, Larry. Thank you. And I read through about half of it. Look, they're telling you there's an issue, right? Before

1:49:51it was everything's fine, everything's fine, everything's fine. Now it's like, hey, we're going to meet with the private credit guys. We're just having a meeting, no big deal. Or, hey, this is unsustainable from Hank Paulson or Bambernack. He's got one foot out the door. They're telling you there's a problem. You should believe them. That's all I believe we all see this. I'm just thinking back to like 2005, 2007. We saw the buildup till the 2008 unwind, right? It went on far longer than many of us could have imagined. I mean, I remember seeing people that had no dock loans and made probably 60, 80 grand, which is fine, but they're buying 900,000 to our homes. And it's like, wait, how's this going to map up? I'd run the map on things as investments. And they'd say, there's no way you can even pay the mortgage, the interest and the taxes on this unless it appreciates. And so you could see the unwanted income. We all, I think, that are in this space and have that attitude to, like you said,

1:50:52the Myers-Briggs or whatever you subscribe to have these pattern recognitions. And I agree completely. I've seen this for a couple of years, but I've owned gold back in 2008. And obviously sold it up first Bitcoin, but I think that same patterns laying out here, but now I'm concerned that are they more aware of the fragility of the system? And they're going to be more advanced in what they're doing to make the can further and try to get the scope of it. You know, as we know, they're going to change the rules and play a different game. The only thing to be safe is to be outside the system. But I think, oh, they speak for a lot of people here. Maybe this is a point for another topic, another space, because what we want to know is, I think we're all trying to live in the real world, which is now produce fiat money or make money out of our investments, prepare for the new world in that transition, put a trend in this amount in the Bitcoin, but how do you balance those two things realizing, when this date comes, it may be further down the road, or we may have all assets correlate to one fall.

1:51:57And we have to write that down and still survive through that down draft. You know, so I'll park it there. And thank you. Thanks, Claire. Look, signs and wonders, right? The stripper who's got five properties or the cab driver who's telling you, you know, you need to get into real estate or the stock tip in 2000 from the Shushan boy. Like these are the signs. And for those of us who've lived through all that for the younger guys and gals, like you, you see it. You feel it. You're here because you feel something's not right. And now we've gotten to the point where they're telling you things aren't right. But don't worry. We got a printing machine. You know, it's up. You just, you just got to think, put yourself in a position where if everything in the worst case scenario just goes to shit in the fiat system, where are you? Are you able to sustain your family? Are you able to get through to the other side? And Bitcoin is that life raft period, end of sentence.

1:53:01Oh, absolutely. And I think we orange peel, orange peel daily. You know, the one thing comforting is my sons and college. And you know, you're trying to prepare for like you said, your life raft for them, their friends, other people, family members. But you got to live through this transition is the younger kids get it. And I think that we do a really good job collectively as a group, but we need them keep doing it, which is letting them know that the money is the problem. And that's the broken system and all the other things, you know, we'll come from it and just keep real instilling that because I feel that this transition point, I don't know how abrupt it will be. I actually want it to be abrupt. So we just get it over with. I feel like it's the slow bleed out is worse than the abrupt, like deal with the situation and move on. I think whatever we can do to keep facilitating that. And in our community here, because if people aren't connecting these stops, which is hard to believe at this point, but if they aren't maybe how to prepare for that transition more should be the nuance to it. Okay, whether you agree it's urgent or not, how do we prepare and you know, we don't get financial

1:54:06advice, but kind of conceptualize that for people might be a nice space to do in the future. Thanks. Yeah, for sure, Larry. And look, the younger people that I talked to including Nick, I think if you watch that that interview with Marty. Yeah, at some point he goes, you know, he's a young guy and he's having trouble making ends meet. And he, you know, this generation can't get married, they can't take a girl on a date because it's too expensive. They're like, that's it. Burn it all down. They're not, they're not afraid of a reset that, matter of fact, the really the ones that are paying attention, tell me, let's get it over with. Let's get to the other side because what we currently have is not working for me. As a 26 year old guy who wants a family, who wants a home, who wants a decent paying job, like, I'm ready for the reset. And that, that, that leads to all kinds of societal instability, even if we don't get to that reset, like, they're, they're not happy. And I don't blame them.

1:55:08And I think you could even include a lot of gen X's in there, honestly. It's a smaller group than the baby boomers, but they've always been a whips out around, right? Whether you go back to the dot, the, the GFC, go with this, the other, they're the ones that are trying to manage both into the spectrum and they're on a big and a voting group to have changed anything. Yeah, that's us, right, punch? Well, I'm on the, yeah, 58. I get some gen X, but, you know, gen X doesn't, doesn't complain about much. We just get shit done. We're the, we're the kids who went out at five and somebody gave us a course and a freaking cigarette and we just figured out how life worked. Can we get a glow in here too? Glow is down there. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Lauren. Thanks, Lauren. Thanks, Larry. Appreciate that good insights. Hey, thanks, you guys. I just want to request to do also, like, like Larry said, a part two of this in terms of what the play out would look like for both the coiners and non-bit coiners in this kind of reset situation,

1:56:10based on what Nick talked about. It doesn't seem too much of a rocket science to figure out what that kind of shit show would be like for, particularly for retail, specifically for us retailers. You know what I mean? That's it all I wanted to say just to request that. Yeah, Glow, I'm right there with you. I mean, my, my fiat world is pretty much franchising retail. So that, that would be a good topic and we'll make sure maybe next Friday we'll, we'll get on it. Yeah, that would be awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Who else we got, Lauren? I don't see any hands so we can take it around. What Larry was saying was stimulating thoughts within me of, I'm just so sick and tired of this whole just doomer, easy label kind of thing. And it's actually really lazy and in my opinion, not wise to just throw a label on whatever group of people or whatever because they're saying something that you don't agree with. It's a lot smarter to evaluate it, see if there's any truth to it and plan accordingly.

1:57:10And I think that's all that a lot of the folks in here are trying to do is just go, hey, is this a possibility? And then we, you know, go through different game theories of yes or no and probabilities, etc. And then I think we always come to the same conclusion, which is the thing we agree on and the thing that unites us all together, which is Bitcoin is thank God for Bitcoin, because it is an out, it is an alternative system. So I really appreciate that, Larry. Maybe we Thomas, yeah, go ahead. If you're going to do the, I'll be first to go on the sign-offs, but I would be back on what you said. It is a lazy moniker to say doomer. And I would just remind people that Bitcoiners as a general rule going back to the OGs are people who question the narrative. They're not the don't worry, be happy crowd. Those are not the people who bought Bitcoin, right? So there are Bitcoin holders today who fall into a don't worry, be happy. And, you know, understand this, when we talk about a lot of these things, we're talking about

1:58:15them as tail risks, as things that are 10%, 15%, 5%, and I would not walk away from any of these things with a negative attitude. I would look at it positively and a positive issue is this. You are exposed to this and attuned to it so that if it does happen and it might not, I hope it doesn't. If it does happen, you'll have thought through it ahead of time and be better positioned for you, your family, your portfolio and everything else. So just remember that Bitcoiners, as an ethos, question the narrative. And the narrative is never, you should never be doing don't worry, be happy, because I think there's plenty of problems that can manifest. Let's hope that they don't, but they could. Yeah, for sure, Thomas. I mean, personally, I love to, you know, have little short periods of don't worry, be happy where you just mind erase, recharge your batteries, forget about your woes, go take a vacation, et cetera. But when you live your life in a constant state of either where you're

1:59:15stressed out about how negative things could be or the opposite where you're just happy go lucky all the time, not a safe place to dwell in either one of those. So definitely sign off on that one. Larry, did you have any closing comments before we close this space down? No, thanks, guys. Appreciate it. Thank you, Larry. What about you, Glow? You're a chiropractor? Yes. Yes. Very nice. You want to say any parting words? And also a property manager. So as far as property real estate and that stuff, in terms of the impact on tenants and just the economy. And I really care about, you know, like the bigger picture, I guess female aspect, right? Sure. Of my, of my marriage breaks. In terms of like, like, even if I have my exit, like, what my, my brain just goes to train figure out, I hope you can talk about this more like what I suggested of when my brain goes is, how does that affect the non-boi big coiners? Not just, and, and how does it affect me, you know,

2:00:18like as a big corner, but also the non-bit corners. And what does that look like? And that, that game theory. And I loved today's talk, today's a, you know, combo. I just thought I was just so pertinent because it doesn't take rock, it's not rocket science. You don't got to be an endless to know that it makes sense that you can't be kicking down, kick, kick things down the road. I just came from Mexico visiting family and just real quick. They're used to inflation. You know what I was telling them? It's just going down. They were like, what else is new? And I'm like, no, you don't get it. Like the dollar is the global currency. And so they're like, no, it ain't going to happen. And so it's wild. It's wild. It is wild. Yeah. Um, mentioned something about female voice in Bitcoin. I was going through the RSVP list. And noticed we probably have close to 50% of the RSVP folks to our party that are female. So happy about that. Yeah. I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. And honestly,

2:01:18sorry about that. Um, uh, within, say the upcoming Bitcoin conference in Vegas, uh, um, there's just so much talk usually about, I mean, I mean, in the speak on the, on the stages of Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin. Um, and man, if there were this more conversations like this, man, I think it would be just so much more impactful. Glow, this is a Bitcoin show. We talked about Bitcoin. No, I'm kidding. No, I forgot who's, who mentioned it. I think everybody was trying to tie it back. Palmer's puncher and others were saying like, Hey, guys, these things are all related. You know, we're talking money here. Yeah. These two systems competing, you know, we're in a race to try to get, you know, 3% or whatever that magic number is of the populace to, uh, to come on board. Um, Hey, punch, you want to take a couple of minutes to say hi to Grant before we close this baby down? Of course. It's going on, Grant. Yeah. Continue in a while. You don't need to say hi to me, man. I'm just the viewer. I'm expecting to say hi to you once in a while. Thank you. I appreciate that, Lauren. Yeah. What's going on? Uh, not much. What's new in your world? Uh, uh, I love what Bitcoin's doing today. We just

2:02:20close to, we were awarded two deals this week and one of those 281 units and we'll add 200 Bitcoin and the other ones, um, two 26 and we'll add 226 Bitcoin, 226, we're trying to add a Bitcoin for every unit now. Beautiful. That is so good to hear. Uh, Grant, do you remember, I don't know, probably two years ago now when you used to come in when, uh, Fred and I would do spaces and you were like a Bitcoin virgin back then. I feel like I still am a virgin. I remember when you first started toying around with this hybrid model that you're now doing and, uh, man, kudos to you, brother. It's, uh, very successful. I love it. Yeah. Well, you know, when Bitcoin starts ripping, again, it'll be even more successful. So the, the, the, the curious thing or, you know, interesting thing is that even with the pullback, we've continued our, our investor bases very

2:03:21positive and very optimistic. Despite the fact that, you know, we, we entered, you know, before the pullback. So, uh, I've got no, um, protests from our investors and they're all in it to win it and they're like, hey, real estate's a long term asset. So it's the Bitcoin. Keep them both for a long period of time. We're all going to probably be very happy. Awesome. Uh, are you heading to Las Vegas this year? I think you went last year. I'm not. I'm not going this year. Um, all right. So I don't know what's there or what I'm missing, but you're missing hanging out with the group of really cool people from the Bitcoin today community. Yeah. Well, but I guess, I guess I get to use to hanging out with you guys without traveling. That's true. Well, you've hung out with us from a helicopter, from, uh, from a jet plane. So yeah. Good stuff. Plenty of you guys. Hosts and rooms, guys. Yeah. Thanks. Well, having you up here. And I think your timing

2:04:23could be legendary and what you put together and what you had the balls to go do. And, um, I think bright days ahead. So congrats. Yeah. Thanks a lot. Well, the crazy thing is the real estate, the real estate's been in correction. So we're buying it at a corrected price. And, um, clearly the bitcoins had its correction moment. I think it, personally, I don't know what you guys are saying about where it goes from here, but I think it will pull back and test again before it, before it starts really dancing. All I know is every prediction I've ever made about Bitcoin has been 100% wrong. Kind of right. Dude, whatever I say, do the opposite. What do you say? What are you saying? I'll do the opposite. Uh, no, I think we could, I think there's a non-zero risk. We could pull back into the, say, 58 range. If, if there's some kind of macroeconomic kind of correlation of one event, but other than that, I'm pretty optimistic. And I come with something bigger than World War

2:05:243 or is that, is that puncture? Something bigger than World War 3? Yeah, something bigger like them, what kind of like what we talked about earlier, distressing, insurance and things like that. Like, I think that that's very, very fragile. Nick, the guy who was on Nick Nemith, who was on earlier kind of laid out how a lot of this stuff was built on, on air. And that at some point, you know, Wiley, Kairoud, he's going to realize that he's out over the, out over the cliff and then the, and the cloud beneath him isn't going to keep him from falling. So, you know, look, I don't know what it is. I don't know. Yeah, but I was talking to someone in the, in the reinsurance business while we were having that conversation. Uh, I posted into the nest or John Boatron or whatever it is. Some of his thoughts on it. And, uh, it was pretty interesting. I did it anonymously because he didn't want to be identified. But definitely, I think people, even in that space in the know, realize that there is the potential

2:06:25for contagion there. So, sorry about that grant. Go ahead. No, no, I was just saying when Wiley finds out he's in the clouds, they're going to print more money. And it's their printing, wouldn't that be good? Well, it'd be good for Bitcoin. And we talked through that. But it's on a scale that makes 2008 look like a wet kiss. And, and the idea is it's so big that just printing money might not, might not, might not do it in the mag and the amount of money they got to print. The big print, as Larry says, is just a magnitude higher than anything we've ever seen before. And has to be. And who doesn't love a good wet kiss? People still need to live somewhere, man. That is true. That is zero. Oh, they're definitely dropping interest rates. But that doesn't fix the problem. The, the bigger. Grant, are you eating a burrito too? I'm eating one of those, remember the orange circus peanuts back from the 80s and 90s? Yep. That's what I'm doing right now. The marshmallow one? Yeah. One of my favorite kids.

2:07:29They're even better when they're still. Starting the show with somebody eating and ending the show with somebody eating. Punches left. Is it Sam? Sam, did you say your farewells or did we miss you? No, I'm just going to wrap up by saying, man, if Grant's a virgin, like those are some pretty sexy moves for a virgin, I like what Grant's doing. You're not a virgin grant. I just wanted to add as well. Puncher triggered something. You can probably put people in four categories. I've been thinking about this recently. There's the largest group that people had in the sand. They don't know what's going on. Then you've got the group puncher mentioned, the kids that want to burn the whole damn thing down. They know they're getting screwed, but it kind of manifests in the wrong way. They're taking to the streets. They want to tax the wealth. They're misguided. They know something's wrong, but their actions are misguided. And then the last remaining two groups are Bitcoiners. We see the life raft. We're in it.

2:08:31And then the final group are the guys who see the life raft. They've got one foot in the boat. They think, yeah, the boat's listing, but I'll keep a foot in this life raft just in case. And then something happens, and they go into the water. They're in neither. That's how I've split people into those categories. I'm in the life raft. It's not really going anywhere right now, and that's fine by me. I don't care how long it's stayed by side with the main vessel. But as long as that minute, when the shit goes down, I'll be fine. So that's kind of how I'd look at it. When shit goes down, hey, Sam, you start talking about different persons and grants here. And I know, maybe it's just a good time. Once again, for me to just put my two bits out about the teenage drama that's kind of going down lately. I am learning the ability to love people in spite of their faults, et cetera. I have called out different people's integrity

2:09:34within this space. And those people, I just decide to not come close to me. I put them at arms distance. I wouldn't trust them to do business, et cetera. I don't need to name any names. I don't want to get involved in drama. But God tells us to love one another, and I can love people and not agree with what they do, but still not have to have ties to them in any kind of crazy way. So I just leave it at that. I don't want to get involved in any drama and just respect and love people and just leave it at that. I know Sam, you kind of got involved in some of that. There was grant got involved in some of that. It just got a little crazy. I was getting DMs and just it really seemed like a soap opera and a high school drama thing that I just didn't want to have anything to do with. Yeah, I feel the need to respond there, Lauren. I'm not that type of person. So there's two people I think you're talking about. One of them, I have no issue with the guy that the whole conversation, I have no issue with that. He blocked me, but I've gotten away. I learned a lot from that guy. The other knucklehead came after me, personally, Lauren.

2:10:39There was racial stuff. There was stuff about my wife and kid. And nah, live and let live to a certain extent. But when someone crosses you to that extent, nah, I don't play down. But yeah, it's over as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, fair enough. Anyway, I think grant got blocked in the crazy whirlwind of insanity that ensued, but it was hopefully that's all dust behind us. We're all supposed to be on the same team here, team Bitcoin, and it can be a struggle. Love one another. Punch over to you. Yeah, so look, Doomer. I'm not a Doomer. I have tremendous peace in my life. You meet me. I'm going to be one of the happiest guys you'll ever meet. I'm not, I'm not, you know, this negativity. I do not carry it around in my personal interactions because to me being negative and like that is more offensive than having bad breath. But been around, some of the got Thomas's been around,

2:11:46grants been around. We've been around. We've seen a lot of this stuff. And in 2008, when I got wrecked, and I mean like I wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out again, I had the chance to rebuild from that. And there was no Bitcoin back then, or at least it was way, way early. It was kind of around the same time. And then I discovered Bitcoin. We have peace in Bitcoin. It may be why some people don't want to discuss these other macroeconomic topics. They're like, what do we care? We're in the lifeboat. Yes, you are. The goal here is to educate and convince people to get in the fucking lifeboat. And the key to success, you may say to yourself, well, I'm not making enough money or I can't leave my job or whatever. Look, the key to success in life is massive action. You need to take agency of yourself. There's, there's nothing you can accomplish if you put your mind to it, but you got to take the first step. And being paralyzed in sheer is nowhere to be. So break out of that. If you don't own any Bitcoin, buy some and just start now. I'm not saying this

2:12:51is going to happen tomorrow, but it could. And the longer it for stalls, nobody wants it to not happen more than me. But I got a low funder, both arms. Grant has a low funder, both arms. Thomas, we have Bitcoin. We're good. We're not telling you because we get some kind of jollies out of being dumerous. We're just kind of laying it out for you because we've seen it before. We recognize the pattern and, you know, we recognize the vibration. And if you don't see it, hang around the rim here, but get off zero and start to put some of that piece into your life so that if things go sideways, you're in a great position to rebuild into the next system because the next system is coming. And you just want to be a, you want to be a maker in that system, not a UBI ticker. I just leave it at that. Beautiful. A bit grant would sign off on your, get off your ass and, yeah, get off your ass and go do it. Even if you got to work in part of one. Hell yeah. I think that's

2:13:56a good place to wrap it up. Most people are stupid. Where are the blockchain servers located? I went out. You know, you're a bunch of fucking Rita, don't even know what the fuck I'm doing here. Fuck you all. It's all up now, but Bitcoin is on fire. This thing is, I can't show it. You have to find something that you can do about trustless world, which is Bitcoin, you know, they might have to determine the value of money. That's you. All right. The U.S. Federal Guards are unstable.

2:14:56This will happen. You can still go. It's not unstable. This will happen. You do not, you do not. Bitcoin. Now you're back. You