Bitcoin Memorial Day Briefing

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]Yo, welcome back to another episode of the Jack Mer Show. I am your host, Jack, and you are listening to yet another edition of Mailbag Monday, episode 119, a special holiday episode. It is Memorial Day weekend, Monday, May 25th.

[00:00:19]So, for those celebrating here in the United States of America, happy day. I hope you guys are barbecuing. It's warm out here in Chicago. See the sun, see your family, enjoy some time off. Uh, I wanted to squeeze an episode in. Okay, I'm I love just stacking days, proof of work. Just show up unless you really, really, really can't. And I didn't want to let a week go by without saying what's up to you guys. So, this will be a shorter episode. I got no Dylan. So, I got no, you know, strike is off, 21 is off, uh, everyone in America is off on holiday. So, this will be a shorter episode, just market updates, make sure that we get some updates, check the Bitcoin price, see what's going on around the world. And then, uh, when I was making the episode this morning, I figured, uh, I'd talk about a little Austrian economics for the last few weeks, we've been talking about topics like productivity, and I've been seeing some of the comments you guys have left.

[00:01:12]I figured it'd be a nice little uh, little nugget, a little random holiday edition Austrian economics chapter. But then I got no grind my gears, no Q&A without Dylan. So shorter episode and we'll get back to normal scheduling next week. So without further ado, let's get in this proof of work. I'm talking to you all at a Bitcoin price of $77,340.

[00:01:33]That puts Bitcoin's market cap at 1.55 trillion clean on the nose. We are 38.7% from our all-time high we made on October 6, 2025, which stands at 126,160 per Bitcoin. That is our all-time high.

[00:01:51]We made that 231 days ago. The last Bitcoin block mined since I hit stream.

[00:01:57]Block height 951,032.

[00:02:01]Okay, the title of today's show, Bitcoin Memorial Day briefing. And as I said, I do have family stuff to get to at the top of the hour, so this will be a bit shorter, but let's get into the market roundup. Let's just check in what's going on around the world. It is a holiday in the US, but there's no shortage of drama. So, as we start every episode, the four questions. Is the straight of hormones still closed? Yes.

[00:02:28]Is the conflict still ongoing? Yes. Are global supply chains still being disrupted? Yes. Can global debt, sovereign debt, nation state debt, treasuries survive this level of disruption? No, they cannot. And I didn't even put in the political nonsense that's been going on this weekend. I mean, we've heard from Iran, Israel, the United States, Trump, and everyone made a deal. They didn't make a deal. They made a deal. They didn't make a deal. They made a deal. They didn't make a deal. And that's why we ask these four questions. We're not going to look like fools chasing around politicians in their headlines. I mean, there was even the Iran is claiming that everything Trump is saying is just for the media and he's lying. Trump is saying something about Israel. Israel is saying something about Iran. It's all nonsense.

[00:03:17]The point is the straight of horm remains closed. The conflict is still ongoing. Global supply chains are still disrupted, which we'll get into in a second. and the sovereign debt markets, the treasuries, bonds all over the world, western civilization is being economically challenged. All of that remains true. So, chapter 1, market updates. Let's just shorten this up, make it quick, but give you guys a sense of what is going on. Consumer sentiment continues to fall. So, this from Joe from Bloomberg. Incredible how dismal consumer sentiment is now. It just keeps getting lower. Um, Missish final was expected to come in at 48.2, which is already an all-time low, but it missed by a long while. It fell all the way to 44.8. So, this is an all-time low of consumer sentiment. Main Street, the everyday man, is in a tremendous amount of pain. As we've talked about week over week over week, this whole K-shap economy is real. Tech continues to boom.

[00:04:18]The capex for AI continues to boom, but everybody else is in a tremendous amount of pain. Okay, 44.8 all-time low. This is lower consumer sentiment than COVID. Lower consumer consumer sentiment than the 2008 financial crisis. Lower consumer consumer sentiment in the United States ever all time since we've been measuring it. So, let's check in on consumer delinquencies. US credit card accounts delinquent by 90 plus days. So 3 months of delinquent for credit cards have jumped to 13.1%.

[00:04:57]That's the highest level in 15 years and we're closing in on the highest level ever. Okay, this chart shows you dating back all the way to almost 2000 and US credit card accounts that are delinquent by 3 months are about to reach an all-time high. So again, sentiment on Main Street is bad. You're having knowledge workers, white collar workers getting fired due to AI. Delinquencies through the roof. Inflation is back across the board. Not a good situation.

[00:05:29]They're going to have to print money at some point or we're going to go through austerity. The whole system is going to fall apart. But fiat as we know it is running into some very, very serious issues. Uh, hold on. Let me pull up my uh speaker notes because there was a post by Luke that I thought did a really good job. Um, oh, here it is. So, Luke wrote, "We kicked the 2000 crash up to the housing market. We kicked the 2008 crash up to the US Treasuries market. We kicked the 2020 crash up to the dollar."

[00:06:07]And so all of the debt and the borrowing and the misallocation of capital and the burdening to the common man keeps getting prolonged and prolonged and prolonged kicking it up. So in 2000 that crash kicked it to the housing market.

[00:06:21]The housing market fell apart in 2008 kicked it to the treasuries market. The treasuries market fell apart during COVID kicked it to the currency. And now the currency is the only escape valve that we have left. There is no more cankicking. They're going to have to debase the currency if they want to avoid austerity and a depression greater than any depression that humans have ever lived through. Okay, so as we keep going, this is Wall Street verse Main Street. I feel like this slide is a mainstay in the show week after week is just showing S&P 500 continues to push towards all-time highs while consumer sentiment and main street continues to push towards all-time lows. If this doesn't scream to you that fiat is broken. It does not serve the people.

[00:07:08]It's not about equality. It's not about inclusiveness. It's not about proof of work and governed by mother nature and uh equal rights. It's not about any of that [ __ ] There's nothing less American than fiat. There's nothing less American than the US dollar. As we sit here on Memorial Day, you'd have to sit and look at things like this and say, "This is not American. This is not freedom. This is not democracy. This is garbage." And even if you, you know, equal weighted S&P 500, by the way, is not at all-time highs. This is Kshaped nonsense. This is a very certain sector of the economy is what is holding the economic data together. It is what's driving the S&P 500. So when I say equal weighted, if the S&P 500, if all 500 companies had an equal weight to the index, but that's not how it works. Nvidia represents a lot of the S&P 500, right? And so if you weight it how the S&P 500 is weighted, sure, all-time highs, but every other metric, main street, how uh every everything once you peel the onion a little bit, pull on the thread a little bit, you realize that the consumer is down bad, main street is down bad, the everyday man is down bad, the US economic outlook is down bad, the US bond market is down bad, they have to print the money, and you know, on a more optimistic uh note. How lucky are we to have Bitcoin? How lucky are we to have Satoshi Nakamoto handed us gifted humanity a engineered exit door? But our thesis as Bitcoiners and what the data is pointing us, it continues to get worse. So breaking the 30-year mortgage is continuing up. And I reminded you guys whether it's mortgage rates, car notes, credit cards, all of that is tied to the 10-year. And so as we look, the 10-year Treasury has been on a tear.

[00:09:06]Well, yields have been on a tear up.

[00:09:09]Demand for these pieces of trash have has been crashing. And so this is going back to late February, early March when the conflict in Iran started and Treasury yields have been on a tear. And I told you guys bond math, we we kind of go over this every other week at this point. bond math is as demands for bonds go down and people sell bonds, yields go up. And so when you see high yields, that means that demand for bonds is crashing. Nobody wants to lend to the United States. Nobody wants to own these things. And the United States, when people say, "Oh, bond yields have been 13% before. They're only at 4.5%."

[00:09:48]That's fine. No, that's not fine because the United States has never been in $40 trillion of debt. You cannot have debt levels at this high with yields this high. It is untenable. They can't. You know, you're going to get to a point where the only way to pay your interest expense, just the interest you owe on the debt, is by printing money. And that is like entering full Ponzomics where they're just printing money out of thin air to make their interest payments.

[00:10:16]That I mean, we're we're literally like our true interest expense is it depends on like a month-to-month basis.

[00:10:23]sometimes is more than receipts.

[00:10:25]Receipts meaning the revenue that they're collecting from things like our taxes. So as soon as their expenses and their interest is is more than the revenue that they're collecting from us citizens, true Ponznomics territory. And so the interest expense cannot get much higher because it's already at true interest expense at about 100% of receipts. True interest expense gets to 105 110 120 then they have to print money just to cover their interest expense. true ponzenomics that is a de we're set another way set a simpler way we are seeing western civilization default or markets are starting to price in countries like the United States being broke defaulting not able to afford itself any longer I'm not saying the US is going to collapse I'm not saying the dollar is going to cease to exist but we will enter a new monetary era things like Bitcoin things like gold will be monetized or remonetized and things like sovereign debt will be demonetized. We are like it is in the charts. It is in the data. It is in the consumer sentiment. It is in main street. That is what we are living through. Uh on that note, Turkey liquidated almost all of its Treasury holdings in March. And so the reason we talk about things like the trader hormuz is because global conflict and taking 20% of the world's oil offline has grave consequences. And I made this little sovereign Maslo hierarchy of needs visual. And why is Turkey selling its US treasuries? Well, because you know what comes before US treasuries on its Maslo hierarchy of needs? Things like energy, oil, food.

[00:12:05]If if people like people are now there are countries around the world putting in curfew, telling people to work from home, not get in their cars, basically not consume energy.

[00:12:16]And so if you're a country and you need to make sure that your people don't starve or that your people can drive a car, get on a plane, turn on their lights, have air conditioning, not die from a heat stroke, you got to sell your assets. And as we've talked about US capital account, foreigners own a tremendous amount of US assets. So if foreigners need to finance themselves in crisis, in war, in an energy shock, if if global trade is being disrupted, they're selling US assets, they're selling US treasuries, they're selling US equities. And here in lies the problem. The United States has greatly depleted its SPR, its strategic petroleum reserve. And you can think of that as like um we've talked about dollar swap lines that the US provides.

[00:13:02]Like, hey, hey, hey, don't sell those treasuries. Remember when the UAE asked Scott Bessant, uh, Treasury Secretary?

[00:13:09]UAE said, "Hey, Scott, if you don't give us a dollar swap line, we're going to have to dump a bunch of treasuries and yields are going to go soaring.

[00:13:17]Treasuries are going to crash." And he was like, "Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.

[00:13:21]Here's a dollar swap line. Highly inflationary, printing the money, but just to avoid things from collapsing.

[00:13:27]Like, please don't sell. Like, there's not enough buyers for you guys to be dumping all of these treasuries. Here's a dollar swap line. You can think of the United States using its SPR, its strategic petroleum reserve, its oil reserves. You can think of that as like an oil swap line because what the United States is doing is it's depleting all we're depleting all of our reserves to ship out oil to other countries so they don't do what Turkey did, which is just dump their treasuries to help their citizens live.

[00:13:58]I mean, we saw I mean, a country like Australia, a developed nation, run out of oil.

[00:14:05]They had to run to Singapore and beg to buy their oil. And it's because Russia, I mean, excuse me, Australia imports their oil from China. And China put in restrictions and said, "We're not exporting any oil right now. All the oil we're producing, we're keeping to ourselves. Australia ran out of oil."

[00:14:23]And you're you're seeing developed nations, countries that we've all probably live in, visited going through early stages of crisis.

[00:14:34]And so this is going to be very disorderly for the Treasury market. If I go back, no wonder the US 10-year yields remain above 5 a.5% and look like they want to keep going higher. No young no wonder mortgage rates are getting higher. So it's it's a very like um dominoes very cyclally. So the 10-year goes higher, 10-year goes higher, uh mortgage rates go higher, consumer sentiment, people stop spending, e economy gets worse, receipts become in lower for the uh for the country, receipts come in lower, that means true interest expense comes in higher than receipts, that means they got to print the money. The currency gets worse. Main Street gets worse. It boom boom boom boom boom. It feeds on each other. It feeds on each other. it feeds on each other until you inevitably get a crisis and and I'm not going to predict when when that crisis is coming but uh as you'll see my market update is like as much as things stay the same which they have what's the same straight over mus is still closed the conflict is still ongoing global trade is still disrupted sovereign debt markets are still in a tremendous amount of pain and nearing crisis pe countries are still dumping treasuries consumer sentiment is still at lows so all of that remains the same week over week, but you th this is not a natural state to persist. This is not a natural state to persist. And you know, this episode has to be short. Um, so I'm not going to get into it, but having gunshots at the White House, these are topics that we've talked about on a week-overweek basis is that if you have consumer sentiment at these lows, when you have such a wealth gap in the country, when you've eviscerated the middle class, when your industrial base is no longer, you get political violence, you get assassination attempts. It is it is really not a situation that can persist. And so something is going to break. Something has to change. It seems like the United States is trying to figure out what they want to do in the Middle East. And all of the um political headlines and reporting Hormuz is open, it's closed, it's open, it's closed, it's open, it's closed. Is just jawboning trying to get markets to give uh the administration time. So it's just not good. And let's end the market updates uh on Bitcoin.

[00:16:46]So, I thought this diagram was interesting because there's many ways to show that bit Bitcoin sentiment's just at all-time lows. Well, all times maybe a stretch. It's at lows. Lows in recent memory. And I thought this visual was unique and interesting way to show that is this is the total venture capital activity. And VC activity and Bitcoin usually go hand in hand because it's a new technology sector. And you know, I I've I've thought of Bitcoin as some combination of fiat liquidity plus technology and venture capital and investment and building companies, building infrastructure, disintermediating things like payments, crossber, store of value, lending, credit, and VC has been highly invested over the last 15 years in Bitcoin. And what we're seeing is the dark blue bars are lots of capital being invested. So there's never been more venture capital dollars invested, but the deal count has never been lower in the last five, six, seven, eight years.

[00:17:48]So what what does that mean? That means there's a highly concentrated amount of capital being deployed in a small amount of deals. Anthropic, open AI, SpaceX.

[00:18:00]And this is another way of saying what I've been saying. K-shaped economy, AI economy, everyone else is in pain. So you're seeing SpaceX is going to be one of the biggest IPOs ever. Anthropic, one of the fastest growing revenue run rates of all time. Open AAI is going to be the second biggest IPO ever behind SpaceX.

[00:18:18]Boom. Hype, hype, hype. Alltime highs, alltime highs, alltime highs. Then you look at Coinbase's earnings and Coinbase miss earnings by a mile. They got crushed. And so there's a I mean the Kshape is is not just uh the McDonald's fry worker and Sam Alman. That's not what I mean by Kshape, although that's obviously included. Kshape is like Coinbase is really struggling right now while SpaceX is gearing up for a $2 trillion IPO. And this VC asset is super interesting is that yes, there's never been more capital being deployed. But the deployment of that capital is going into the smallest amount of hands that maybe we've ever seen in the venture capital era. And then the most obvious way to visualize that Bitcoin's just having a tough time right now with mind share and and and just overall consumer sentiment retail is its Google search trends. So Bitcoin as a search term has not been lower than it is today in the last 5 years like dating back to COVID days. So like FTX Sam Bankankman Freed 2022. Yeah. As far as a search term like we're lower. lower than after that when everyone mailed it in. Give up on Bitcoin. It's a fraud. It's a scam.

[00:19:33]Like we're lower than that. And this is why let me tell you guys something. One of the hardest things I've ever done in my life is stay humble and stack sats.

[00:19:41]Everyone that tells you it's easy or you got lucky, remember these times. It is not easy.

[00:19:47]It is not easy. It's one thing to buy a little bit of Bitcoin. It's an entirely different thing to hold it. Remain convicted. Don't let them shake your conviction. As my dad always says, markets try and wear you out or scare you out. Hold strong. Fasten your seat belt. Head down. Low that lower that time preference.

[00:20:09]The, you know, people fantasize about buying the lows, buying the dip. But when the dip hits them in the face, they get too scared to buy. That's why I highly encourage you guys stay humble, stack sats, turn on those DCAs at Strike. You can DCA on Strike for free, no fees. You can withdraw those bitcoins to cold storage for no fees. You can even automate that whole thing. This is it couldn't be a better time to average in to Bitcoin. Maybe Bitcoin dips a little bit from here. Good, you're buying. Maybe Bitcoin appreciates from here. Good. You've been buying. You can't lose as long as you've got a low time preference. You're earning more than you're spending. You're humble.

[00:20:53]You're patient. You're convicted. Okay?

[00:20:56]Like the world is in a very interesting spot. Disorderly treasury uh market activity, move index, volatility index is on the rise again. Conflict in the Middle East. I mean, Worsh can't cut, he can't hike. I mean, we are everybody is starting to say the quiet part out loud.

[00:21:18]We're going to need some form of yield curve control, some form of ponzomics.

[00:21:22]The the Western civilization has kicked the the debt, the borrowing from our future, the misallocation of capital.

[00:21:29]$40 trillion pulled forward from our future and spent where we have nothing to show for it. And that was kicked from the dotcom bubble to the housing market.

[00:21:41]Kicked from the housing market to the treasury market. Kicked from the treasury market to the currency market.

[00:21:45]And here we are. Got to face the music.

[00:21:48]And the question is there's $40 trillion missing. Someone has to realize that loss, that al that that time, that energy, that effort, that labor that's gone.

[00:21:58]Who's realizing that loss? Who's paying the price?

[00:22:02]And as a Bitcoiner, every sat you stack, you're saying, "I don't know, but it's not going to be me. I don't I don't pretend to know the answers. I don't pretend to know the future, but I know that they can't take my time and energy.

[00:22:16]I'm not paying for the mistakes of the past. I'm not paying for the mistakes made by men and leaders before I was born. And I'm not letting men and leaders of today steal the time and energy of my future children.

[00:22:32]You guys have fun duking that out, battling that out, politicking that out, but it's not going to be mine. So, in summary, as much as uh things remain the same, sentiment at lows, war ongoing, inflation ticking up, Ponzi nomics really hitting potential breaking point, I mean, stay humble and stack sats, man.

[00:22:59]Stay humble and stack sats. Okay, so I wanted to uh over the last few weeks I I want to say three weeks actually um three episodes I've been talking about this word productivity and I'll talk about things like profit and productivity and whether it was AOC talking about it's impossible to earn a billion dollars and that if you have a billion dollars you didn't earn it and we need to tax you and take that from you. And I've talked about productivity and profit and property rights and I approached these topics from a school of Austrian economics. Uh and then some of the comments that I see you guys write, you're mistaking my words uh using a different English definition. Like you're thinking that I'm talking about whether someone is productive or not as like a moral judgment of their character. And so we don't talk about literal Austrian economics much on the show. Um, and so given that this was going to be a shorter episode, I was going to breeze through some market updates and just remind you guys that stuff is still pretty [ __ ] up in fiat land and we need to stay humble and stack sats. Uh, I would do a tiny tiny little teaser into Austrian economics.

[00:24:10]Kind of just clear the air on this topic, use the confusion that I see in my YouTube comments as an excuse to go through some like fundamental Austrian economic concepts. Uh, and then we can add this to our vocabulary and potential include it in longer chapters on go forward if you guys really like this or in the Q&A. We can have some healthier back and forth in regards to the topics because, you know, we're just two ships passing in the night at this point. You guys are misunderstanding my point because we're not talking about the same thing. So, chapter 2, the scoreboard, productivity, profit, and what they actually measure. So first and foremost on the topic of Austrian economics I just want to talk about the premise here from Carl Carl Manger in 1871 like there are two ideas that changed economics forever. Uh the first is that value is subjective. Okay it exists in your head not in the object itself. Um value is not it's not chemistry. It's not a physical property. It's a it's subjective. it is a man-made in your head. Uh it's not in the object itself.

[00:25:18]And then the other is that you never choose between having all of something or all of something else. Uh we make economic decisions at the margin. Okay?

[00:25:29]And once you understand these two things, everything else in economic theory seems to fall into place. Um but what Carl Manger said in 1871, he said, "Value is not inherent in goods. It is not physical or a chemical property. It is a judgment economizing men make about the importance of the goods at their disposal." So said another way, how much is, and we'll talk about this later, how much is water worth?

[00:26:01]Well, we know we need water to live, so surely it's worth a lot. But when I go to the store, a bottle of water is like0 50ents. And so is water worth a lot or is it worth nothing? And that's when you realize there's no chemical or physical property that deres water's value. Water is it's a judgment call. It's a subjective judgment call that exists in my head. If I have gallons and gallons of water in my home, water is plentiful.

[00:26:32]I have an excess supply of water given the demand of whenever I'm thirsty. So, it's not worth much. Maybe I need to buy some 50 cent bottles of water when I run out. If I'm in a desert abandoned on an island like Castaway and I'm parched and I'm dehydrated and I'm going to die, I would give everything to my name for water. I would give my entire net worth because it's life or death. And that shows you that value is subjective and that we make these decisions at the margins. I don't have to decide between would I rather have all the water in the world or no water at all.

[00:27:08]I subjectively make the decisions with today I don't want any more water cuz my fridge is full of water. But if I have a bunch of people over for Memorial Day and they drink all my water, tomorrow I will make the marginal decision to increase the demand that I have for water. Does that make sense? So you have value is subjective and that you never choose between all of something or all of another thing. We make decisions at the margin in in the economy as we economize as humans. So on top of that I want to talk about scarcity as it relates to Austrian economics. And mind you guys like I I'm speaking in economic terms. I'm I'm not talking about the the definition of scarcity as an independent English word. I'm talking about the idea of scarcity as it pertains to economics.

[00:28:00]And the point in Austrian economics is that scarcity is a permanent man-made construct. Meaning we will always have scarcity. And scarcity is the reason that us humans economize in the first place. What do I mean by that? Well, scarcity is the very simple idea that it is easier to want something than it is to earn something. What do I mean by that?

[00:28:24]Billions of people around the world want a Ferrari. You can look at a Ferrari and be like, damn, I want that. That's a cool car. However, billions of people cannot produce a Ferrari because it is much harder to produce the Ferrari than it is to want the Ferrari. Okay, building a Ferrari takes engineering. It takes capital. It takes supply chains.

[00:28:49]It takes R&D and pricing and cost. You have to raise the capital to build the car knowing that you'll actually be able to fulfill the sale and recoup costs.

[00:28:59]If we solved Ferraris, then we would want supersonic jets. If we solve supersonic jets, then we will want t time travel and rocket ships. The point is desire is infinite. Okay? But resources are not. And that is the man-made construct that is scarcity. And it is for that reason that we economize because we are prioritizing one thing over another. If every said another way, if everything was plentiful, if we had an excess of every everything that we ever wanted, if all I had to do was look at something and want it and therefore I got it, we would not need economics. we would not need to economize as men, as humans.

[00:29:44]A a a very clean way to think about that is that nobody argues about how to allocate air.

[00:29:50]You'll never hear people say like, "What the [ __ ] Tax that guy's air. I can't believe he gets more air than me." Why?

[00:29:59]Why is that not the case? Why aren't we arguing about the allocation of air? Why isn't AOC politically campaigning and saying Jeff Bezos has too much air? I can't believe that he has air and the people in the Bronx and Queens don't have the same air. It's because air is plentiful. There's always like you everyone has as much air as they want.

[00:30:22]We live in a world of plentiful amounts of air. Now, we do not live in a world of plentiful amounts of grass-fed meat, of Ferraris, of professional athletes.

[00:30:37]And that is the scarcity is that I can look at LeBron James and I can say I want to be that. I want the fame. I want to be 6'8. I want to be 260. I want to be able to dunk from the free throw line. But actually being able to do all those things is different than wanting that.

[00:30:55]And that is economic scarcity. Meaning for that reason we economize.

[00:31:04]Make sense?

[00:31:07]Scarcity, for that reason, by the way, is a permanent construct. I don't think scarcity will ever go away. It's like, "Hey guys, let's take a year off of fighting and conflict and stuff and let's just make an abundance of everything so that we can like treat everything like air where we all have just an abundance of everything." I think that that's impossible because it's always easier to want something than to earn something.

[00:31:30]Always. And that arbitrage, that delta is why economics and money and and economies exist in the first place. So scarcity is what forces us to economize to choose to prioritize one thing over another. Makes sense so far, hopefully.

[00:31:48]Okay, so now let's get into some of the comments you guys have been leaving me.

[00:31:52]So this first one, and this is not a diss or anything. I just figured this would be a fun little chapter for for the holidays. little kind of not ranting about bonds. Okay, so this comment from Mitch Be Healthy wrote, "Yo, in regards to your rant, Jack, I believe there's more nuance to what you're arguing. Does a teacher or educator bring value to society? Sure they do. Do they get paid commensurate with that value?" And this can be said about many professions. Does a billionaire grifter bring value to society or do they steal from others?

[00:32:26]And if the argument is that society decides what is value, then that doesn't say much about man, love you, man, but this topic goes much deeper than the surface argument made by AOC or by your rant. More thought must go into this.

[00:32:40]And then another comment writes, this is from Corey Olant 3762. I agree for the most part. However, what value is a professional sports player bringing to the world? what are they quote unquote producing? And so this these type of comments is what inspired me to do this section is because we are just talking past each other. We are two ships in the in the night passing right right by each other because we're not talking about the same thing. Um I'll I'll get I'll get into I'll react directly to these in a second, but let me keep going. Um so there's two separate concepts here. One is economic productivity which is how much value are you creating for others?

[00:33:31]And there's a key part in here that's implied in in my worldview and in free markets and in Austrian economics which is voluntarily.

[00:33:40]How much value are you creating for others voluntarily versus what you consume to do it? And that's measured in prices. That's measured in profit.

[00:33:49]That's measured in the opposite of profit, loss. It is objective, falsifiable. It is data. Okay? And the key point in there is voluntary, meaning nobody forces anyone to use Amazon. They use Amazon because they want to. They voluntarily become a customer. They're never forced.

[00:34:12]Huge huge huge but very important point there voluntary.

[00:34:18]Okay. Now the other point that seems to be getting confused here is moral worth which is how good or how noble or how essential somebody is. Now that is not objective. That is subjective. That's philosophical. It's important but it's an entirely different axis.

[00:34:38]Entirely different.

[00:34:40]someone's economic productivity does not have moral implications.

[00:34:46]There are plenty of douchebags on Wall Street, right? So, my point is that people are collapsing these two, which is fine. I mean, whatever. Like, you know, you're not going to solve every YouTube comments misunderstanding. But the I I think it's interesting. you know, I believe in Austrian economics, free markets, uh, the way I talk about money and my worldview, and I think many Bitcoiners, um, are of Austrian economics grounding. And so I think it's cool to introduce these concepts formally into the show. Um, and so when people hear the word productive, they think that I'm ranking humans, where I'm saying, well, Bezos sits above a high school gym teacher. And that is not what I am saying. I am reading the economic output. I'm reading data. Totally different things. I'm not ranking people's moral, good, noble, or essential worth. Okay.

[00:35:47]So, back to profit. All profit is is information. Profit and loss is not a reward or a punishment. They're information signals. Profit tells you, a market participant, that you took scarce resources, combined them, and the output was worth more than the input.

[00:36:10]That's it.

[00:36:13]Again, scarce resources is because all resources are scarce compared to the infinite abundance of everyone wanting things. I look around. I want a penthouse. I want a Ferrari. I want to be a 67 professional athlete. I want to have a private jet. I infinitely want things. And once I have those things, I want more. I want two. Once I'm a professional athlete, I want more championships than Michael Jordan. Once I have that, I want championships in another sport.

[00:36:45]So, all profit does, you know, e economics is largely in money. Money generally like Bitcoin. It's just information. So profit tells us that you took scarce resources, you combined those resources and the output you produced with those resources is worth more to people in the market than the inputs themselves. That's it. And that is what is the definition of what we call creating value. Now a loss tells you the opposite. tells you that you took scarce resources, you combined them, and the output of those resources is worth less and that you destroyed value and you should stop doing that.

[00:37:23]And there's a form of Darwinism where obviously if you continuously destroy value, you inevitably won't have the resources to keep going. And so a truly free market doesn't allow scalable destruction of value and incentivizes and encourages one to scale value creation. Makes sense. And so this is what Mises was getting at with economic calculation in Austrian economics.

[00:37:51]Without profit and loss, we as market participants have no idea if we are helping or wasting. We are flying blind.

[00:38:01]The signal, the information is the entire point of economizing as humans. So when I say Jeff Bezos is productive, that just means that Amazon passed that test billions of times.

[00:38:17]Billions of people chose to hand over their money to Amazon voluntarily.

[00:38:24]Nobody forced them. Nobody put a gun to their head and said, "You must become an Amazon customer."

[00:38:31]So, Amazon took a bunch of scarce resources, combined them together, and the combination, the output was worth more to people than the inputs. And how much more was it worth? Well, a lot more. It's a multi-trillion dollar company. And that was all voluntary where Amazon and Jeff Bezos voluntarily collected resources to put together an output that is Amazon and their products and the customers voluntarily exchange money for those services.

[00:39:04]And the scoreboard of profit and loss is telling Jeff Bezos to keep going. You're creating more than you're consuming.

[00:39:12]You're creating value, not destroying it.

[00:39:16]So, another really important point, Jeff Bezos net worth is not a pile that he took from someone. It is the receipt for value that he created. We'll get into this in a second, but it's not as if Jeff took money from somebody else.

[00:39:34]Okay, so back to Bezos and being productive. Yes, it's true. From an economic standpoint, Jeff Bezos is more productive than a teacher. By the Austrian definition, that is unequivocally a fact. That is, the number one is greater than the number zero. Super simple. Again, I don't know Jeff Bezos personally, so I cannot make a moral judgment on his character. And it's I don't find it a good use of time to speculate on his moral character versus teachers as like a broad term. We're not even talking about a teacher in specific. But the point is, as far as economics, which is information, Jeff created more economic value for more people as measured by voluntary exchange. billions of transactions on Amazon, billions of people choosing to hand him their money because he built and served them as customers. That does not make Jeff a better human or a better person. It does not make him noble. It doesn't make Jeff essential. Now you can say Amazon is an essential business to the world but that is different and a different totally different and separate point that you'd have to justify outside of Amazon being productive and profitable in the marketplace.

[00:40:58]It does not make him essential. If there is a profitable barber shop and the barber shop ceases to exist, there could be plenty of other barber shops. It does not mean that the barber shop was essential. So do not mistaken someone being productive as being noble or essential or more deserving of respect.

[00:41:18]That is that is politicians trying to trick you and get your emotions like AOC is trying to get you upset at billionaires. At least that's my opinion. You guys can agree or disagree with me, but they're trying to say like get mad at these people. It's their fault. All the anger that you're feeling is not politicians and governments and central banks distorting the value of energy through through the destruction of currency. Don't get mad at that. Get mad at that guy. What I'm telling you is someone being productive and profitable has no implications on their nobleness, how essential they are, how deserving of respect they are. All it means is they are productive. Totally different words.

[00:42:00]Not everyone who is wealthy earned it this way that Jeff Bezos did. Some people inherited it. Some people won the lottery. Some people got lucky. But if we want to talk about Jeff Bezos in Amazon, which is a great example, he built something that passed the profit test at scale fact, economic fact. The discomfort that people feel, I think that this is political rhetoric.

[00:42:27]This is like government's gotten too big. Fiat has gotten so destructive that you know the destruction of of energy and time and our ability like mind you understanding all these Austrian economic concepts now you understand how valuable a free market is in hard money is because if we don't have this information exchange of hey is what you are doing in the market productive or not is it profitable or not is it a net good or not then you start having people that are doing bad things but able to scale it because you can just print money. You could just bail out. You are distorting everyone's reality and ability to information exchange at scale. When we have things like the AI and the internet, we're we're economizing amongst 8 billion people globally across languages, across borders, across cultures, across races.

[00:43:21]And it's incredibly important that we get the necessary information for us to economize because like I said, scarcity is a permanent. We are always going to want more than we can earn. Always, always. So, we must economize.

[00:43:37]But in order for us to economize, we have to have this information pass. And so things like the founder of Amazon is productive because they've scaled profit. That cannot be a political debate. That must be an economic fact. I am not saying Jeff Bezos is a better person. I'm saying he's more productive in the marketplace.

[00:44:00]Okay, let's go on. Now, back to water.

[00:44:05]There is a very famous, the oldest paradox in economics called the diamonds and water paradox. Water keeps you alive. It is absolutely essential.

[00:44:14]However, water is almost free. In many cases, it is free. You go to the gym, you get free water. Just go to the water fountain, fill up your bottle. Diamonds are useless. Useless. We all survive without diamonds. We do not need diamonds in the slightest. However, they cost a fortune.

[00:44:35]My engagement ring to my fiance was not free. Right? So, what's the point?

[00:44:42]What's this paradox? Water is essential.

[00:44:44]Diamonds are not. But diamonds cost more than water.

[00:44:48]What the hell?

[00:44:50]If economics was just purely based off utility, then water would be a billion times more expensive than diamonds because we need water. Diamonds could cease to exist and no one would give a [ __ ] I mean, people would care, but life goes on.

[00:45:08]This concept bothered economists forever until we realized that the marginal revolution settled it. Prices don't track total importance to life.

[00:45:21]Like Jeff Bezos being profitable or someone in Wall Street being profitable does not map to their importance or their morality or their deserving of respect.

[00:45:33]Prices do not track total importance to life. They track the value of the next unit at the margin. Water is abundant.

[00:45:41]For all the demand that we have for water, there is a ton of supply. The next glass of water is cheap. When you sit down at a restaurant, it's free.

[00:45:48]It's on the house while you order.

[00:45:51]Diamonds are scarce.

[00:45:54]The next stone is expensive. Most essential and most expensive were never the same claim. But to understand that, you have to understand very basic economic theory. Importance and price are not the same metric. Okay. So, back to this idea of let's just tax the rich.

[00:46:15]If wealth was something that one person takes from another person, if Jeff Bezos wealth was something that he took from someone else, then clawing it back through taxes and through government sounds like justice. Sounds like a noble thing to do. Jeff Bezos took wealth from you and you should elect me because I will take that wealth back from him and distribute it back to you. That sounds noble. That sounds righteous. But in voluntary exchange, wealth is not taken like that. Wealth is created.

[00:46:55]hugely important difference in voluntary exchange free markets and now granted the market we're living in today with as big as government has gotten and fiat currency it's not Austrian economics level of free but Amazon is voluntary exchange they created a product they registered amazon.com they sell you a service and they don't force anyone to be a customer all of us can decide we don't want to use Amazon anymore more and many people don't sometimes for ethical principled reasons they don't like Jeff Bezos they don't want to give him their business their time and energy and effort and labor that's fine but the point is in voluntary exchange in the market wealth is not transferred wealth is created the buyer the buyer got something that they valued more than their cash this is another very important point in Austrian economics if I buy something for $10.

[00:47:57]In Austrian theory, we actually don't know that the thing I bought was worth $10.

[00:48:05]All I'm saying in in literal economic theory is that it's worth at least $10 to me because I would rather have the thing than the $10 of cash. Because if that were not true, I wouldn't have handed over my $10 of cash for said thing.

[00:48:25]And so this goes back to values being created. The buyer got something that they must have valued more than the cash they handed. And the seller got cash that they must value more than the product that they've created. If Jeff Bezos did not want to ship you the the service from Amazon in exchange for the cash, he wouldn't have. He must have valued the cash he charged you in order for the service that got delivered. The point of this is that both sides gained.

[00:48:54]Both sizes pies got bigger. Nobody lost.

[00:49:00]In the whole tax the rich political rhetoric, it's that billionaires took wealth from you. They won at your expense. And so involuntary transactions in the marketplace, they won. You lost.

[00:49:16]But that's that is that is physically incorrect because in a voluntary free market both parties win or else the transaction would not have taken place.

[00:49:30]If a customer hands over their cash and again voluntarily if someone has a gun to my head and says hand over the money well economic theory is out the window.

[00:49:40]It doesn't matter. But if I log on to Amazon.com, enter my credit card information and place an order, I voluntarily am signaling to the market that what I received from Amazon.com was worth more to me than the cash that I have. Do you see?

[00:50:00]So when you claw back money, property from someone after the fact, you are not recovering stolen goods. Jeff Bezos did not steal from you. You are punishing the economic signal that told everyone where to create more value next. You are not fixing an issue. You are further damaging and breaking the marketplace.

[00:50:30]So confiscating property via taxation does not redistribute wealth. It destroys the economic information that organizes society.

[00:50:41]We want society to get the signals uh to produce more value that is profitable.

[00:50:47]People taking scarce resources, summing them together to create something net good for those around them.

[00:50:54]We want more signals like that. You don't say, "Oh, all of you guys are creating immensely productive economic outcomes. Let us damage and destroy that so that you don't do that anymore."

[00:51:07]Anyone who creates a billion dollars worth of positive economic outcome must be punished.

[00:51:13]That's terrible for society.

[00:51:17]Terrible for society. And and one of the most important part parts about this slide and this rant is that everybody wins in an economic transaction or else the transaction would not have taken place. Both sides gain. the buyer got something they valued more than their cash and the seller got cash that they valued more than their product. It's the whole pie gets bigger.

[00:51:43]Very important.

[00:51:46]Um so anyways, we're getting close to the top of the hour. Productivity is not a measurement of how noble your job is.

[00:51:54]It's a measurement of how well you serve other people in the market. Period. How much you give them is relative to what you take. That's it. It's a profit or a loss. It is numbers. It is data. It is information. The scoreboard doesn't care about your title, your degree, your intentions, your morality. It asks a very simple question. Did the people you served value what you gave them more than what it costs you to create? If yes, you created value for the world? If no, you consumed value from the world.

[00:52:27]That is not a judgment on your soul. It is honest feedback, honest economic information and is the most important feedback mechanisms society and us humans have ever built. Economizing and creating money allows us to scale past barter.

[00:52:46]We wouldn't be able to have a society more than a couple hundred people because our physical brains cannot construct social relationships past a 100 people.

[00:53:00]In order to have an economy larger than a small town, we must economize. We must have this feedback mechanism, this information sharing. So it takes out guessing. It takes out manipulation. It lets the market and people and their interest tell you with their money which the reason I talk about money as time and energy is it allows everyone's time, energy, effort and labor to communicate whether you helped them or not. That's it. If someone hands you their money that is signal and you ended up with more money than it cost you to produce, that is signal that you are being helpful to others. And we need that feedback because go do more of that. But then if I create a feature at strike where I'm losing money, I'm being destructive to others. No, don't stop.

[00:53:49]Stop. Go back. Don't do that. Don't do that anymore.

[00:53:55]So anyway, a little bit of Austrian economics. Uh hope I'm curious what the comments are. I'm sure you know people are still upset that some people have built wealth. I disagree with them, but um figured if you guys like that, maybe we can do more of that where the episodes are more informational um like like mini educational classes. Uh and if not, I won't ever do it again, but maybe we can have better dialogue in the Q&A cuz like when I'm reading these comments, it's like so what you're saying like what what are professional sports players creating? They're not productive. Well, I'm not saying productive like they're literally creating physical things, but like So, you guys get it. You guys get it.

[00:54:41]Hope hopefully this is more constructive. Uh, and uh I don't know. I I just had an itch to really explain what I was trying to communicate after reading some of your comments. Okay. Um, I got no um grind my gears cuz it's top of the hour uh holiday. I got to go. No grind my gears. No Q&A. Um, but real quickly with Strike, um, we shipped, what did we ship last week? You guys know I do this every week. Um, term loans on the dashboard. So, people always say, "Can I use Strike on my desktop? Can I use Strike on the web?"

[00:55:11]Yes, we we have a desktop experience.

[00:55:14]You go log into the dashboard. So, on the dashboard, you now can do term loans and manage your bill pay on the dashboard. We lowered Pennsylvania consumer loans um to our $5,000 minimum.

[00:55:24]So, we continue to just chip away. We are just machines like whatever regulators need from us, whatever licenses we need, we want lower minimums, more access. We want to build the Bitcoin financial institution and that there's no shortcuts to doing that.

[00:55:38]Um, you got to just pound pavement, proof of work, put your head down, one license at a time, one feature at a time, one market at a time, just keep going. And so every week I like sharing these updates because we are just men and women on a mission to build the Bitcoin financial institution. and some of the things that are coming bigger bigger things that are coming from Strike because I know you guys with no Q&A you guys are probably gonna ask um our interest on cash is coming uh very soon really really excited about it uh and then we also I announced at the Bitcoin conference liquidation proof loans where you can pay a little bit of a premium so I'm just making numbers up off the top of my head let's say uh a loan is 8% you pay 9% and that extra cost means we will never liquidate you.

[00:56:26]We take the extra cost that we're passing on to you to create market hedges to make sure that like literally liquidation is not an option. So if someone wants to pay a little bit of a premium just to make sure that they can sleep well at night and they'll never get liquidated because I see people say, "Oh, you're liquidating people's Bitcoin. You're a terrible person. We don't want to do that." And that actually inspired me to try and create a product where you can pay us. That'll never happen. And so we've been piloting it in an O on an OTC basis and uh we're going to roll it into the app and make it accessible to everybody which is very very exciting. So I think that'll also come out very soon too. So the interest on cash and uh the uh liquidation proof loans I want to say those are both June and it's May 25th. So those are both weeks away. Don't hold me to that.

[00:57:14]Building things is hard. But I know those are the two most requested things uh from you guys and we're super excited to deliver on it and just continue to make Strike like the Bitcoin bank the best uh Bitcoin financial experience in the world. Um okay, happy holidays, guys. Uh with all the banter that we have back and forth, um I appreciate you guys. I hope that you're enjoying the time with your family. Don't let the markets get you too down. Stay humble.

[00:57:40]Stack sats. uh we didn't get to choose what we inherited, but uh we do get to build whatever's next, and that's an honor and a privilege. So, I appreciate you guys tuning in and building uh Bitcoin with me. We're all we're all in this together. Um so, comments, feedback, questions, criticisms, uh leave them below. You guys know I read them. I take it seriously. I just want to be be a better Bitcoiner, better leader for you guys. So, give me all the uh feedback and I'll talk to you next week. Peace and love. Take care. Bye.