Kind: captions
Language: en
In 1933, under the veil of the Great
Depression, the US government did
something unthinkable. They made it
illegal to own gold. Executive Order
6102. It didn't just [music] ask people
to turn in their gold. It demanded it.
Every coin, every bar, every
certificate. And if you didn't comply,
you face 10 years in prison and a
$10,000 fine. What was even more
terrifying than the act itself is the
reason for it. The goal wasn't to have
the gold. It was to repric it. So, one
year later, the Gold Reserve Act of 1934
was passed, [music]
giving the government the power to jack
up the price of gold, taking it from
$2067
an ounce to $35
an ounce. It doesn't sound like a big
deal, but in fact, as you're going to
see, it's one of the most immoral things
the government has ever done. [music]
Why? Because they had to repric gold
because they had spent years
counterfeiting their own currency. It's
a practice known as money printing. But
if you want to understand its effects,
just think of it as legal
counterfeiting. [music] By creating
debt, you create a bunch of new money.
But the only way to create money without
creating a problem is to create it in
the same amount as the businessmen
create things people actually want to
buy. Get that balance wrong and prices
go up because everyone now has more
money, but there's not more stuff to
buy. So people will pay extra for what
there is. If there's only one pizza in
existence and everyone has a million
dollars, suddenly pizza becomes worth a
lot more. So with EO6102,
a single stroke of the pen stole 41%
of the dollar's value. I would tell you
to imagine it. To imagine what it would
be like to have $100 in your bank
account that buys $100 worth of stuff
one minute and $59 worth of stuff the
next. But you don't have to imagine.
This is exactly what happened during
COVID and why it's so hard to make ends
meet today. And 1933 wasn't the only
time we've done this. We did it again in
1971 when Nixon just flat refused to
continue letting banks exchange their
dollars for gold. A promise we had made
to the entire world back in the 40s.
Given that track record, you can
understand why Anton Kobyakov, one of
Putin's advisers, accused [music] the US
recently of using the cryptocloud, as he
called it, to run a scam on the rest of
the world. As Russia learned the hard
way when it invaded Ukraine and we froze
billions of dollars of their assets with
friends like the US, who needs enemies?
But the question isn't whether the world
needs to be wary of the US printing
money. It absolutely does. The question
is whether what we're doing with crypto
now is nefarious or whether Russia has
their own agenda. That's what we're
going to cover today in five eyeopening
parts. And if you want to know the
depths of the US's economic depravity
and check the veracity of Russia's
claims, [music] part one is for you. But
you're going to be surprised by what we
find. If you're a hodler who has an I
Love Michael Sailor coffee mug, head to
parts two and three. But no matter why
you're here, do not skip part five. That
is the path forward. Welcome to part
one. What exactly are we being accused
of? On September 8th of this year, Anton
Kobyakov stood before the Eastern
Economic Forum in Vladivvastto, Russia,
and accused the United States of
attempting to rewrite the rules of the
gold and crypto markets. He claimed that
Washington is going to shove US debt
into a crypto cloud and use
Treasurybacked stable coins to do it and
then they will devalue the real debt
burden via inflation impacting anyone
who holds dollars or dollar equivalents
which would include every one of those
stable coin holders. His assertion is
that the US wants to preserve US
hedgeimonyy as trust in the dollar is
collapsing using newer rails that the US
can still dominate. And the truth is he
is almost certainly correct. How do I
know? Because we're already doing it.
The US dollar has lost over 96%
of its value since the Federal Reserve
started printing money in 1913.
It takes $30 today to buy what a single
dollar bought in 1913. And we've had 25%
inflation in the last 5 years alone.
Foreign nations already hold over $7.5
trillion [music]
in US government debt and cash
equivalents. That's trillions of
dollars. We're remotely devaluing every
day. And everyone that holds dollars or
gets paid in dollars is getting
clobbered. The truth at the heart of
Kobay Yakov's accusation is that our
reckless deficit spending really does
negatively affect the whole world
already today. But the sad reality is
that Kobe Yakov isn't simply a concerned
global citizen sounding the alarm. This
story is far more complicated than that.
So, welcome to part two. What's really
going on with crypto and the
skyrocketing price of gold? Since 2022,
China has quietly dumped more than $400
[snorts]
billion dollar in US treasuries while
importing gold by the ton through Hong
Kong and Switzerland. In the same
period, US Treasury demand hit its
lowest point in two decades, and gold
surged across $4,300
an ounce, its highest price ever.
Remember at the beginning of our story
when it was just $20 back in 1934? Well,
not anymore. But gold isn't getting more
expensive because it's shiny. It's
getting more expensive because China and
Russia are buying it in bulk and very
publicly. They want the world to know
they're building an alternative monetary
system and directly challenging the US.
China was once the second largest holder
of US debt, but those days are over.
They're now selling that debt as fast as
they can and trying to overthrow the
dollar as the world's reserve currency
by relinking their currency to gold.
There's a little bit of speculation in
that statement, but not much. And where
China goes, you are going to find
Russia. In a joint meeting on the 4th of
February of 2022, China and Russia
issued the following statement.
Relations between Russia and China are
superior to political and military
alliances of the Cold War era.
Friendship between the two states
[music] has no limits. There are no
forbidden areas of cooperation. This is
explicit rhetoric of an open-ended
partnership. It signals that China and
Russia view themselves as partners
unbound by geographical or even
ideological restrictions. And according
to DGAP's analysis, since February of
22, China has gradually become one of
the key enablers of sustaining Russia's
war effort, demonstrated by the growing
frequency of joint military exercises.
Now, when you have collectively starved
around 50 to 60 million of your own
people to death in just the last 100ish
years, you'll forgive me if I clutch my
pearls when you start doing public
displays of affection. But that's where
we are. Both Russia and China have
expressed their dissatisfaction with the
US's influence on global affairs. And
between COVID, QE and deficit spending,
they know that America has printed over
$6 trillion dollar in just two years,
making us weaker and weaker
economically, something they know they
can play to their advantage. Once you
know that, it becomes clear that Anton
Kobayakov has his own agenda. And as I
said before many times, every word out
of a politician's mouth is spin and
positioning. They are the great
illusionists, constantly attempting to
get people to distrust their lying eyes
and believe what they say. But if
they're all lying, doesn't that hold
true for the US? And since the obvious
answer is yes, of course it does, what
are they really up to with their crypto
strategy? We'll get back to the show in
a moment, but first, let's talk about
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now, let's get back to the show. Welcome
to part three. What is the US up to with
its crypto policies? In 2013, the
government of Cyprus did something
absolutely unthinkable. Overnight, they
confiscated up to 47.5%
of people's bank deposits, literally
seizing nearly half of citizens savings
to bail out failing banks. In 2015,
[music] Greece froze more than 60
billion euros in bank withdrawals during
[music] its debt crisis. Ordinary
citizens were limited to 60 euro per
day, not because they did anything
wrong, but because their government and
their banks wildly mismanaged their
debt. In 2012, Spain raided private
pension funds, pulling billions of euros
to plug budget shortfalls. money people
had worked their entire lives to save.
And none of this is new. In 1998, Russia
itself defaulted on $40 billion dollar
of debt and wiped out every rubal
denominated savings account overnight.
And in 2001, Argentina froze every
personal bank account in the country
under what they called the Kolo,
blocking citizens from withdrawing their
own money. And that's why in October
[music] of 2008, while the financial
world was collapsing and America was
bailing out their own banks, a modern
miracle happened. No speech, no new
laws, no politicians. Spin, spin,
spinning. Just an email quietly posted
on a tiny cryptography forum. It said,
"I've been working on a new electronic
cash system that's fully peer-to-peer
with no trusted third party." And it was
signed Satoshi Nakamoto. No anger, no
politics, just math. While governments
robbed from the poor and gave to the
rich by bailing out banks, someone built
money that couldn't be printed, frozen,
or seized. Then January [music] 3rd,
2009, the first block of Bitcoin
dropped. Embedded in its code was a
message about why it was created. The
Times, the 3rd of January, 2009.
Chancellor on brink of second bailout
for banks. A headline burned into
history. A warning to the future. And
then after dropping that first block,
Satoshi just vanished. No interviews, no
goodbye, no rugpole, just code and the
ability to control our own money and not
have it taken from us via inflation or
outright seizure. A ghost that built a
lifeboat and then disappeared before
anyone else could sink it. That's why
despite the [music] US's grotesque track
record of deflation, it's an
unmititigated good that they're going to
allow for private innovation in digital
currencies. [music] There are three
reasons why this is good. One, money
needs to go digital, but it would be a
disaster for it to be in the hands of
the government. Plenty more on that in
the next section. Two, by providing the
necessary regulatory framework for the
private sector to innovate around
digital currencies, potentially billions
of people around the world will get
access to [music] a stable, albeit
inflating currency for the first time.
There's no doubt that Western
governments have fumbled the economic
ball and there is little doubt that
eventually the world is going to go
beyond the current US-led [music]
system. But there is also absolutely no
doubt whatsoever that the US dollar is
leaps and bounds ahead of every other
currency on the planet. For billions of
people, a distributed currency backed by
the US dollar via treasuries would be a
kind of salvation that few of us in the
developed world can even imagine.
Roughly 1.4 billion adults worldwide
still don't have access to a bank
account. Entire continents operate in
cash because local currencies are
worthless. Banks are corrupt. The
country is run by a desperate or all of
the above. In places like Venezuela,
Zimbabwe, Lebanon, and Nigeria,
inflation is an outright catastrophe
that makes it impossible for people to
do anything but fight daily for
survival. With stable coins made
trustworthy through sensible regulation,
a smartphone becomes a bank anyone can
access. A digital wallet becomes a
savings account. And for the first time
in human history, a farmer in rural
Kenya, a developer in Caracus, and a
shop owner in Kabool can all transact in
the same reliable unit of value
instantly globally and without
permission. That's not just a plausible
scenario. It's already happening. USDT,
USDC, and PayPal's PYUSD [music]
are spreading faster than any financial
product in history. Stable coins are not
only fast, but they give people a bridge
to stability and a way around oppressive
governmental controls. The third reason
why it is an unmitigated good that the
US is creating the pathway to private
innovation in digital currencies is that
it lengthens the exit ramp from the
dollar. When a plane crash lands, you
first want to run it out of fuel so it
doesn't burst into a fiery ball of death
on impact. The financial world is awake
[music] to what's happening with
inflation finally. That's why the price
of gold is skyrocketing. China is
gobbling up gold and creating a new gold
corridor and working to convince the
world that despite being a dictatorship
known for kidnapping businessmen [music]
when they get out of pocket that they
are now a safe place for money. Central
banks around the world have been
reducing their USD holdings
significantly in the last 10 plus years.
But they also know a very ugly truth.
Virtually every currency on Earth is
being devalued through inflation and at
least the US is currently a mostly
stable country politically. The bad news
is though that the average citizen is
still unaware of what's happening to
them and [music] it would be
catastrophic for the entire global
economy if America suddenly crashed
economically because there was no demand
for our debt. If it happened today, the
airplane would indeed smash into the
ground and burst into a fiery ball of
death. By creating a regulatory
framework for stable coins that requires
a onetoone backing of US treasuries, the
demand for US debt will remain high
enough for long enough that either the
US will get its together and stop
abusing people or people at least can
exit out of the system entirely in a
more orderly fashion than if it happened
really fast all at once. [music] Here is
the thing. The government knows all of
this. They've watched crypto grow.
They've seen stable coins explode.
They've seen the private sector build a
faster, fairer, freer financial system,
and they're terrified of it. They don't
want innovation. They want integration
[music]
into the government. That's why the
Biden administration was so hostile to
crypto. They wanted to absorb the
technology and use it to tighten their
grip. The current admin definitely wants
to export inflation and continue to
debase their currency. I certainly do
not assume that they have good
intentions, but at least they see an
opportunity in the marketplace that they
can exploit that happens to actually be
good for the average citizen. [music] If
the private sector isn't allowed to
build the next generation of economic
rails, then central banks and
governments around the world will build
their own versions of digital currency,
CBDC's or central bank digital
currencies. In fact, as I covered in
this video, they're already doing it.
They're pitching CBDC's as progress. But
make no mistake, these are not
innovations. They are massive upgrades
to surveillance and control. Because
unlike Bitcoin or privately issued
stable coins, CBDC's are centralized.
They're programmable and provide total
control over your money. With a CBDC in
place, a government can and will
monitor, record, and or block
transactions in real time based on
whatever criteria they want. Once money
becomes code, whoever controls the code
controls you, unless that code is
decentralized and run by the private
sector. So, while the private sector's
version of digital money could free
billions, the government's version could
enslave them. And I'm not kidding. And
that's what we need to talk about next.
So, welcome to part four. Digital money
done poorly will be used to [music]
enslave. In 2022, the government of
Canada had the gall to freeze more than
200 bank accounts. Not for terrorism,
not for crime, but for donating to a
[music] protest. Not actively
protesting. Donating to protesters. No
trial, no warrant, just boop. No more
banking for you. That same year, the
European Central Bank announced pilot
testings for the digital euro, a
currency that will give Brussels the
power to track and limit how you spend
your money down to the last scent. And
as of today, more than 130 countries,
representing over 98% of global GDP, are
actively developing central bank digital
currencies, the CBDC's. That includes
the United States, by the way. China, as
you might expect, leads the pack. Their
digital yuan has been rolled out to 260
million citizens with built-in
geoloccation tracking and programmable
spending rules. Not to be outdone,
Nigeria has launched its e Naira. India
is testing the digital rupee. The
European Union, of course, is running
pilot programs for the digital euro. And
the Bank of England is studying caps on
offline holdings for a digital pound to
make sure no one can save too much
outside of their system. This is so
dystopian. It's not innovation, at least
not for anything healthy. It's
infrastructure for guaranteed control
and obedience. In China, the national ID
system and the digital yuan already work
handinand glove. The same network that
lets you pay for groceries can also
block you from buying a train ticket if
your social credit score is too low. In
the UK, the government has already
proposed using financial data to [music]
enforce carbon quotas, literally
tracking how much you drive, eat, or
travel. And it's not a stretch to see
where this goes. Once every transaction
is digital, programmable, and centrally
controlled, [music] freedom becomes
hyperonditional.
Buy too much red meat, transaction
denied. Attend the wrong rally, account
frozen. Donate to the wrong cause,
flagged for review. This is the
nightmare version of digital money that
we must resist. A system that knows
everything you buy, everywhere you go,
and everyone you support. And it's not
hypothetical. It's what's happening.
Over 100 central banks are either in
active testing or pilot deployment
phases as we speak and the international
monetary fund has called CBDC's the
future of the monetary system. This is
what they're building towards and that's
why what the US does next regardless of
the sneering of Anton Kobakov will
determine whether the future of money is
one that empowers individuals or
empowers the government to have total
authoritarian control. Here is the
ground truth. Money is already digital.
90% of it only exists in numbers in a
bank database. But up until now, it's
been the wrong kind of digital. Slow,
fragmented, and controlled by middlemen.
You can stream a movie from Tokyo in 4K
in real time. But you cannot send
$10,000 [music] to your brother overseas
without waiting 3 days and paying a 6%
[music] fee. That is madness. The global
economy runs in real time, but our money
runs on a 1970s wire system. And worse,
it's run by a cartel. Credit card
companies have a monopoly on credit,
charging fees that crush small
businesses and punish consumers. Banks
can and do cut people off from the
financial system with a single click,
even if that person has not broken a
single law. I know because it happened
to me. That's not capitalism. That is
gatekeeping of the worst kind. We need
competition. We need options. We need
innovation. Because when money goes
digital under private innovation and not
government command, it unlocks
creativity, lowers costs, and opens the
financial system to everyone. That's the
kind of digital future that's worth
fighting for. one where the rails are
instant, global, and open, not
programmable by bureaucrats or throttled
by cartels. If the US doesn't modernize
through the private sector, China's
already waiting with the aforementioned
state [music] controlled digital yuan.
So, yes, money needs to go digital, but
only if it's built by the free markets,
not by central planners. And that's
precisely what America is proposing
right now. [music] A regulatory
framework that will create appetite for
US debt and that debt will almost
certainly be inflated. But it will also
put the power into the hands of the
people. As much as I believe that money
printing is immoral, only assets like
gold and bitcoin offer a plausible
shield from that and neither of them
function as a currency and all other
currencies in the current global
economic system are subject to both
money printing and tyrannical control.
So how do we do this? Well, how do we
buy enough time to land the plane safely
and create a monetary system that gives
the individual actual sovereignty? We'll
be right back with the show in just a
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And now, let's get back to the show.
Welcome to part five. Where do we go
from here? The US is buried under $37
trillion in debt. And that's rising by
roughly $1 trillion every 100 days.
Interest on that debt is now over $1.1
trillion a year, an expense so large it
has alreadyclipsed defense spending. As
of today, the US's debt to GDP ratio
sits around 122%.
130% has proven to be a line in the sand
beyond which no country can stay except
for apparently Japan for any meaningful
period of time without tearing itself
apart from the inside. The kind of
reckless spending [music] that leads to
this unsustainable level of debt forces
the government to print money and money
printing is inflation. And inflation has
made it impossible for young people to
buy a home since real wages have not
kept up with inflation. And that's how
we've ended up here in a populist moment
where an open socialist is running for
mayor of the financial capital of the
world. And many are excited for it
because at least it's different. But if
you're in the desert dying of thirst,
licking the surface of the sun would be
different. But it would also be much
much worse. But when you're playing the
propaganda war as Anton Kobayakov is,
what's true is of little concern. The
goal is to play on people's emotions to
get them riled up and to take advantage
of the fact that people do not
understand how economics works well
enough to vote for policies that will
actually improve their lives. So that's
what we're going to discuss right now.
Because there is a path forward that
will actually improve people's lives and
countless paths forward that will
accelerate our trajectory of ruin. Here
it goes. Here is the path forward for
the US and the monetary system of the
future. Continue to embrace a digital
future that makes economic sovereignty
possible. Outlaw CBDC's and digital
tracking and control. Cut the red tape
regulation that strangles monetary
innovation. create the light touch
regulatory framework the private sector
needs to secure funding and innovate
with confidence that they're not going
to be fined or get arrested. Balance the
budget immediately. Do whatever is
necessary to reduce US debt without
breaking the economy or causing capital
flight. Stop promising free things you
know we can't pay for without stealing
from savers through inflation. It hurts
the most economically illiterate. It
hurts the poor the most. Avoid a
collision with China. Look up
Thusidity's trap and show the world that
you can be fiscally disciplined enough
that savvy investors stop looking for an
exit from the dollar. I don't expect us
to. But if we can do those things, our
economic future will be bright indeed.
But make no mistake, Kobe Yakov is
correct. If Washington keeps running
multi-t trillion dollar deficits, it
won't just be Americans footing the
bill, everyone holding a digital dollar
anywhere in the world will absorb the
hidden tax of inflation. But even if
that's the case, even if the US keeps
spending like an outofcontrol drug
addict, their hail Mary of using stable
coins to create demand for treasuries is
still the right thing for the world. It
not only buys the world time to migrate
away from the dollar in the least
traumatic way possible, but it also
helps ordinary people escape the
clutches of tyrannical governments and
monetary systems that are orders of
magnitude more unstable than the dollar.
And before I land this plane without
crashing, let's discuss head-on what I'm
sure many people are already thinking.
Wait a second. Isn't crypto just a scam?
Isn't this a big con of rugps, offshore
casinos, celebrity pump and dumps and
the like? There's no doubt the world is
full of scammers. Scammers go hard.
>> But that is a flaw with humans, not a
flaw in decentralized money, which is
exactly why the move now is not to ban
the tech or to centralize it, but
instead to civilize it. Clear rules, not
political choke points used by elites to
maintain control. Onetoone reserves for
stable coins, audited custody and
segregation of client funds,
transparency,
plain English disclosures and licensing
that has teeth. Now, if you do all of
that, you will sweep out predators
without killing the protocol. The rails
already exist and they work. What's
missing is adult supervision. So the
upside, speed, openness, resilience, and
freedom from government control will
actually serve the public instead of
enslaving it. And that's the paradox at
the center of this moment. The same
technology that can save us can also be
used to press down on our economic necks
forever. Depending on how we build and
secure the economic rails of the future
will determine who controls the future
itself. Will we get sovereignty and
innovation or tyrannical top- down
control? And that brings us back to
Kobayakov.
Rome clip coins. Britain debates
sterling. Modern states print money.
Inflation's not new, nor is it limited
to the US. It's just how money goes when
it's centralized. The reason Kobe Yakov
is calling out the US's approach to
stable coins isn't because he's looking
out for people. It's because he wants to
be the one that controls the future of
money. His derision isn't moral clarity.
It's marketing for a China Russia
architecture where money is programmable
by the party. China's flirtation with
gold linkage is honestly very smart, but
it's old money and being done by a
nation I do not trust at all. Gold isn't
going anywhere anytime soon. I own more
than my fair share. But we have to look
to the future as well. [music] And
whether the US is doing the right thing
for the right reasons or the right thing
for the wrong reasons, I don't really
care. As I always tell entrepreneurs,
all that matters is what you do. Your
intentions are irrelevant. Here's the
uncomfortable truth. America's
cryptocloud gambit driving treasury
demand via stable coins is a massive
improvement over where we are today.
Even if the US keeps deficit spending,
Kobayakov is right about the sickness,
but he's wrong about the cure. Or worse,
he's being insincere in his framing to
get Russia control. The reality is that
eventually the dollar's credibility will
finally break and something else will
rise to replace it. But whether that's
decentralized and in the hands of the
private market or it's centralized and
in the hands of the government will be
the difference between ending up in 1984
with a boot stamping on our face forever
as Orwell warned or finding our way to a
future of freedom like what Satoshi made
possible. All right. If you want to see
me explore topics like this in real
time, be sure to join me live on YouTube
X, Twitch, or Kick. You can join the
debate or just chill in the community.
We're live every Wednesday and Friday at
6:00 a.m. Pacific. I hope to see you
there. All right, guys. Until next time,
be legendary. Take care. Peace. If you
like this conversation, check out this
episode to learn more. In 2022,
something happened in Canada that should
have stopped the world in its tracks.
Hundreds of ordinary citizens, teachers,
mechanics, stay-at-home moms, all had
their bank accounts