0:00

One of the things that held

0:02

up the US dollar hegemony was the state

0:05

of our institutions and the quality of our financial

0:07

markets and the rule of law and the

0:10

level of corruption and criminality

0:14

that is on blatant display in

0:17

Washington DC as a polity. And

0:19

once you lose your ethical framework as a society, what

0:23

do you have? Good morning from

0:25

a very happy Bedford and a very

0:27

happy chairman of the football team that

0:29

just won their first FA Cup game. We're

0:32

through to the next preliminary round of the FA

0:34

Cup against MK Irish on Saturday, which

0:36

was amazing. Also, very cool. We had

0:39

two Australian Bitcoiners, WhatBitcoin

0:42

did listeners

0:43

who'd come into the country. They made the pilgrimage to Bedford

0:46

and came and watched the game, which was amazing. Speaking of

0:48

which, we're making the pilgrimage

0:50

the other way around. September the 9th, Danny

0:53

and I are going to be in Australia. We've

0:55

got a WBD live in Sydney with

0:57

Nick Bartier, Willy Woo, Checkmate, Rusty

0:59

Russell and Dan Roberts all on stage.

1:01

It's going to be a banger. If you're in Australia and

1:04

you want to come out, you want to hang out, you want

1:06

to come and see a live WhatBitcoin did, go

1:08

and get yourself a ticket. It's whatbitcoindid.com

1:10

and click on WBD live. Anyway,

1:14

welcome to the WhatBitcoin did podcast, which is

1:16

brought to you by the legends at Iris Energy, the

1:18

largest NASDAQ listed Bitcoin miner using 100%

1:20

renewable energy. I'm

1:23

your host, Peter McCormack, and today I've

1:25

got everyone's favourite giant green

1:27

chicken back on the show, the amazing Doonberg.

1:30

Now Doonberg's becoming a regular on the show now. I

1:33

find his analysis of almost anything,

1:35

any weird stuff that's going on in the world, anything

1:38

related to, you know, recently

1:40

we've got superconductors, we've got aliens,

1:43

we've got economic crisis. I

1:45

find he is a good person to go to and talk to

1:47

about this. Now originally when we did

1:49

book this, we did plan to talk about superconductors,

1:52

but before we actually started recording,

1:55

it came out that LK99

1:57

wasn't in fact a superconductor.

1:59

We talked about this and we talked about how they

2:02

analyze this and how they came to their thoughts

2:04

but then we moved on to a broad range of subjects

2:07

from cancer cure in medicine to the BRICS

2:09

currencies and everything Elon Musk

2:11

is doing with X and why Doomberg

2:13

has gone loco mode on X, formerly

2:16

Twitter.

2:17

And I couldn't let him leave without asking him about Bitcoin

2:20

as well. Of course I had to after his $5,000 call last time. Anyway,

2:23

listen, I know you're going to love this one. I absolutely

2:26

love talking to Doomberg but you got any questions about this or

2:28

anything else please hit me up at hello at whatbitcoindid.com.

2:34

Big green chicken, good to see you. Yes,

2:37

good to see you Peter. How you been? Yeah,

2:39

really good. Really good. Yeah,

2:42

just busy, traveling a lot. Been

2:46

out to Argentina since I spoke to you last and

2:48

I'm not sure if you saw the results that came in last

2:50

night from their primaries.

2:52

Yes, indeed. Making the big news. I

2:55

might even ask you about that later on. Sure.

2:58

Loads of weird stuff's been happening since we last spoke.

3:01

Yes, indeed. Well, the good news is that

3:03

the news flow means that we'll never

3:05

have a shortage of things for us to talk about.

3:08

No, I thought we were going to talk about

3:10

superconductors. I definitely,

3:12

well I recently read your piece on the

3:15

cancer curing pill and we've also had the

3:17

US congressional hearings on aliens amongst

3:20

other things. So

3:22

just your standard news flow for a

3:24

post-COVID world. Indeed.

3:28

Where would you like to begin? I know

3:30

the information's changed, but let's talk a little

3:33

bit about the superconductor thing

3:35

because the internet

3:38

was feverish with

3:40

excitement about the potential of a super,

3:42

the discovery of a superconductor. It turns out that it

3:44

wasn't. What

3:47

happened here? Were we hoodwinked? Were we

3:49

tricked?

3:50

So specifically

3:52

what was claimed was the development of a room temperature

3:55

superconductor. Of course, if you

3:57

cool down certain materials to low enough

3:59

temperature, they do.

3:59

do already display

4:03

superconductive behavior,

4:06

the discovery of such

4:08

a behavior that could operate at room temperature, or

4:10

in this case, they claim that they

4:12

were able to observe superconducting activity

4:15

at temperatures above the boiling port of water. That

4:18

would truly be a world-changing

4:22

discovery on par with fission

4:24

and perhaps the development of semiconductors.

4:28

And it is a holy grail, and that phrase

4:30

is used, it's overused of course, but

4:33

the advent of such material would truly qualify

4:35

for one of those. When we first

4:37

saw the piece that was published,

4:40

we were very skeptical

4:42

of it, we wrote our own analysis of it

4:44

in the days afterwards, at the peak of the excitement

4:47

really, called Conducting Diligence. And

4:49

over the years, we have used a

4:52

five-question framework for analyzing

4:55

such discoveries, and

4:58

we applied it, introduced it, and applied it here.

5:01

As background, when I was an executive in

5:03

the corporate world, I led very

5:05

large technology groups and many

5:07

CEOs get most of their science advance

5:10

information in the Wall Street Journal or the Financial

5:12

Times, and so it was very, very common for

5:15

whoever my CEO was at the time to forward

5:17

such things to me and demand my

5:20

instant analysis of it. And

5:22

oftentimes I had to talk such people out of reorienting

5:26

investment dollars to chase down the latest hype cycle.

5:28

And so over those decades really,

5:32

we developed this framework that allowed us to

5:34

systematically write five

5:36

paragraphs to our

5:38

executive overlords and to explain

5:40

to them most of the time why such

5:43

an advance was worth watching but perhaps

5:45

not worth acting on yet. Occasionally, one

5:47

does pass that screen, and in this case, we used those five

5:50

questions and concluded by

5:52

saying that we were deeply, deeply skeptical. Happy to

5:54

dive into the details as to why, but

5:56

I do think that piece that we wrote has stood the test

5:58

of time quite well.

5:59

Before we dive in, can you explain

6:02

why a superconductor would be such a game

6:04

changer? There's the

6:07

superficial reasons that the media likes

6:09

to write about, which is, oh, you can imagine transmitting

6:13

massive amounts of electricity with no loss

6:15

and reorienting the entirety of our electricity

6:18

grid. But in reality, in our view, it

6:21

would be how a

6:23

room temperature superconductor could facilitate advances

6:26

in

6:26

otherwise unrelated fields. And

6:29

then the second and third order effects of those would

6:32

be truly game changers. Again, in particular,

6:35

quantum computing, for example, would stand to benefit

6:37

greatly from an advance in room temperature

6:40

superconducting. And

6:42

that field, of course, has had

6:44

its own hype cycle. But

6:46

quantum computing, a true advance

6:49

in room temperature superconductors, for example,

6:51

we believe could put the world of computing back

6:54

on pace of

6:56

exponential growth. If

6:58

you squint at the log curves of the rate of computing

7:01

advances, it seems to have slowed down

7:03

a little bit in the past few years. Of course,

7:05

we're still making massive advances. But

7:08

it's the second and third order impacts from the other

7:11

technologies that would be enabled by such an advance

7:14

that we think would ultimately transform society.

7:17

Again look, all manner of sensitive electronic applications,

7:20

you know, a quantum computing advance would

7:23

jeopardize encryption, for example. And

7:26

there's just countless other ways that a step

7:28

change like this would be very, very useful. And

7:31

as we said in the piece, you know, vast riches and a quick

7:33

ticket to Stockholm to collect a Nobel Prize await

7:36

those who succeed in demonstrating the phenomenon. And

7:38

many serious physicists doubt that

7:41

such an advance is even possible. So when you see

7:44

such an enormous claim like this, it

7:49

is irresistible that the hype

7:52

wouldn't proceed in the way that

7:54

it did. It's totally understandable. But at the

7:56

same time, we had serious,

7:58

serious doubts from the very beginning. for the reasons that we

8:01

wrote in that piece. Okay, so can you

8:03

break down why you were skeptical

8:05

in your piece? Yeah, so we asked five

8:07

questions and I'll just list them carefully.

8:10

They're simple questions and the good thing about this approach is

8:12

it doesn't require all that much in the way of specific

8:15

expertise in the underlying area and I should say up front,

8:18

this is not something that I personally

8:20

have a deep level of practical knowledge

8:23

in the nuances of the science, but it's not needed

8:25

in this case. So the five questions are, who's

8:27

involved? Where was it published?

8:30

Where are we in the scientific process? What

8:33

is the scientific context and then what should we

8:35

expect next? And if you go through

8:39

each of those questions, the first one, you know,

8:42

as with most human endeavors, the reputation

8:44

and pedigree of the people involved matters. As

8:46

we said in the piece, you know, if Google

8:49

and MIT announce a computing advance, you

8:52

probably would be, you know, safe

8:54

to bet that they have the goods. But if your neighbor

8:56

tugs on your sleeve

8:59

at a party and whispers quietly about

9:01

an invention he's been working on

9:03

in his garage for years, that's sure to change the world.

9:05

You'd probably be justified

9:07

in having a healthy degree of skepticism here. The

9:10

researchers involved have very good pedigree. The

9:13

team is based in Korea, but they also collaborate

9:15

with a relatively well-known physics

9:18

professor at the College of William and Mary and they

9:20

seem to be trained in the field. And

9:23

most importantly, one of the main inventors

9:25

said they would be willing to support anyone trying to replicate

9:28

the work and we took them as a good sign. Things

9:31

get a little sketchier when you

9:33

consider where it was published, which is the second question.

9:35

And here, these

9:37

results were not published in a peer-reviewed journal

9:41

of any pedigree. They were self-published

9:43

as pre-prints on the internet, two

9:45

of them actually, one with three authors and the other

9:47

with six. And the

9:49

barrier to publishing a pre-print is zero.

9:52

You and I, Peter, could publish

9:54

a pre-print making claims to

9:56

this very same website and generate

9:59

a hype cycle of our own. own. That's

10:01

not to say that the work was bad, but in

10:03

our view, if this had passed

10:05

peer review at a reputable journal,

10:08

it would have lent more credibility

10:09

to the claims.

10:11

Unfortunately, this is not the world that we live in, and

10:13

these preprints were hyped. And one of the reasons

10:15

why this matters

10:17

is because, as I believe, ultimately

10:19

the story will dictate the

10:22

misinterpretation of the data that this looks

10:24

like is what happened. This

10:26

would have been caught in that peer review process

10:28

and would never have made the hyped cycle,

10:31

which is the third question, where are we in the

10:33

scientific process since it's unpublished? And

10:37

basically, nobody would consider these

10:40

results to be validated until

10:42

independent researchers reproduce the work in

10:44

their own laboratories. And one of

10:46

the reasons why it's important to publish your paper in

10:48

a journal and pass peer review is because

10:51

a key job of editors at such journals is

10:53

to ensure authors provide sufficient specific

10:56

details that allow others to

10:58

confirm the work. And

11:00

the good news with this is, as we pointed

11:03

out, the compounds used were pretty simple, and

11:05

the synthetic procedures were rudimentary, which

11:08

actually gave us even more pause because typically

11:10

giant leaps of science don't usually arise from what we

11:12

call, quote, kitchen chemistry, such as

11:14

this. But on the other hand, the fact that it

11:16

was so straightforward meant that others would

11:19

very quickly be able to test

11:22

whether the results were real. And then the

11:24

fourth question is the scientific context. So

11:27

here, we've had example

11:29

after example of such claims falling

11:31

flat, data being retracted.

11:34

Sometimes it's fraud. Most often

11:37

it is a misunderstanding

11:39

of the phenomenon. And

11:41

so especially, you

11:43

know, the equivalent would be claims of battery

11:45

breakthroughs. You know, we've written another piece on this as well.

11:48

There are certain fields where the prize

11:50

is so high that

11:53

the weaknesses of the scientific method as practiced

11:55

in the modern era are really on

11:58

display and the... suit of a

12:01

room temperature superconductor would be one

12:03

of those. And then the last question

12:05

is what should we expect next, which is exactly what has transpired.

12:08

A bunch of people have tried to reproduce it. Nobody

12:11

has been able to do so. It appears

12:13

as though experts have studied

12:16

the pre-prints and their own experimental work and have come

12:18

up with an alternative explanation

12:20

for the phenomenon that was witnessed. And as

12:22

we said in our verdict, nobody would be more thrilled to

12:25

see these results validate in us, but we found

12:27

ourselves deeply skeptical. Last

12:30

point I would say is the leap was too far, the method's too

12:32

simple, and the process too premature to get excited.

12:34

And I think that was a good view at the time.

12:37

So is their project dead or are they still working

12:39

on it? Well the problem with making such a hyperbolic

12:42

claim is that it

12:46

becomes difficult for people to

12:48

continue to pursue the work. And there's really not

12:50

that much to pursue here if

12:53

the reinterpretation of the data

12:56

is as the scientific community

12:58

seems to be coalescing on, because

13:00

it's just not that interesting of

13:02

a discovery. And

13:05

so back to the drawing board, we

13:08

were going to write a follow-up piece called

13:11

What If. It's one of these pieces that was

13:13

sort of written in my head that never saw the

13:15

light of day, because by the time we would have gotten it published,

13:18

it would have seemed a bit

13:20

silly. But

13:22

if this had been

13:24

true, even if it was a small component

13:26

or a minor byproduct, the

13:29

state of industrial heterogeneous synthesis

13:33

using high-throughput techniques is such

13:35

that the big chemical companies would have obliterated

13:38

this experimental map across

13:40

all dimensions. Concentration,

13:42

oxygen, temperature ramp, you

13:45

name it, they would have done thousands

13:47

and thousands and thousands of experiments. They would have found

13:49

the exact molecule that worked.

13:52

And that it can work itself is

13:54

a gigantic discovery. And

13:57

so

13:58

if one can work... it

14:00

would have taken weeks for

14:02

the industry to isolate

14:04

an entire family of these things, then

14:07

the theory would have caught up to it very quickly

14:09

and there would have been something about these things that

14:12

that teaches theory something interesting

14:14

which then would very quickly inform

14:17

the synthetic chemists as to how to optimize

14:19

and create it would have been you know like

14:21

how the first person to break the four-minute

14:24

mile then suddenly everybody does it yeah

14:26

that this would have been one of those situations where

14:28

the the raw

14:31

power of the high

14:33

throughput synthesis discovery

14:36

workflows in the big multi-decadillion

14:39

dollar chemical companies would

14:41

have made short work of this would have

14:43

optimized it very quickly there would have been

14:45

no barriers to no no

14:48

meaningful barriers to commercialization because

14:50

materials involved were so simple and

14:52

so widely available that cooking them

14:55

in a certain unique way is of no challenge

14:57

whatsoever to the industry so if

14:59

it if there was even a a possibility

15:04

that this had once worked that

15:06

would have been game changing but it doesn't look that way unfortunately

15:10

what is the general state of scientific

15:12

research and peer reviews because there was

15:14

a period a certainly post-co-code

15:17

where there's been hotly debated and

15:20

the trust the science meme was spreading

15:23

quite regularly with people just having vast

15:26

doubts about peer-reviewed studies and the

15:28

peer-reviewed process what have you looked at

15:30

into that or is that just no there's there's a

15:32

huge ongoing

15:34

retraction scandal

15:37

in the scientific world and

15:40

as

15:41

we said in the piece you know

15:43

peer review on its own doesn't

15:47

mean that this is fundamentally

15:49

accurate science it

15:51

still needs to be reproduced

15:54

in other labs for it to really go from

15:57

an observation to say an accepted theory or

15:59

accepted experience set of results. But

16:01

the state of modern science is

16:05

poor right now and it's because

16:07

it is performed by humans

16:09

who are susceptible to the hype cycle,

16:12

the need for funding. You

16:14

know, we wrote a piece called Science by Press Release

16:16

where we took to task a certain

16:18

group of scientists who issued

16:21

some fantastical claims before, you

16:23

know, without really any basis

16:25

for them. A real challenge in science

16:28

is acometicians who've never worked a day

16:30

in industry claiming vast

16:32

industrial relevance where none exists. And

16:36

you know, one of the strengths of Dümberg is that

16:38

our team exclusively comes from industry

16:40

and we leverage our decades of practical experience

16:43

to be able to assess hype

16:46

from solid advances.

16:48

And as we said in the piece, conducting

16:51

diligence, the

16:53

vast majority of science proceeds in very

16:56

slow, agonizing

16:59

two inches forward and three-quarters of an inch

17:02

back kind of approach. Had

17:04

to see such a giant chasm like

17:06

literally hopping across the Grand

17:08

Canyon would be an analogy we would

17:10

use. Really, really should have given

17:13

everybody involved significant pause. I

17:16

will say I think that the researchers genuinely believed

17:19

that they had accomplished what they claimed to have accomplished.

17:22

I've seen no evidence that there was

17:24

any impropriety involved

17:27

here. Perhaps that might change

17:29

someday, but this is just

17:31

not how science normally works. And

17:34

so it was a kind of an easy

17:36

bet to make. And I should say a couple of pieces after

17:38

that, we use the exact same five questions approach to

17:41

assess a potential breakthrough in cancer.

17:44

And we had a different view of

17:46

those results. And so it is a framework that

17:49

is widely applicable that we introduce to our

17:51

readers that leverages our own experience having

17:53

done this hundreds of times over

17:56

the years. I can't tell you how many times I wrote about

17:58

the various battery breakthrough claims. claims that found

18:01

their way into

18:03

the tape.

18:04

Can we talk about this cancer

18:06

pill? Because again, I read that piece that

18:08

you wrote. But just explain to people what

18:10

this proposed breakthrough

18:12

is and if you can apply then your

18:15

five questions to it and tell

18:17

us what your conclusions are.

18:19

Yeah, we wrote a piece called Hold

18:22

My Beer and the social preview

18:24

was something along the lines of room

18:26

temperature superconductor and a cure for cancer

18:28

in the same week. Things

18:31

are getting a little crazy. But

18:33

here actually if we use those same five

18:36

questions, we come to a different answer. And

18:39

so at issue is a

18:42

new drug that has been discovered that

18:44

attacks cancer in a way that has

18:48

long been hypothesized to be a potential

18:50

vulnerability that is common to

18:52

all cancers. And through

18:55

what appears to be high throughput organic

18:58

synthesis, they've stumbled upon a molecule

19:00

that works extraordinarily well. So

19:03

let's go through those same five questions for

19:05

this discovery. First, who

19:07

is involved? So this research was performed

19:10

by a team at City of Hope, in

19:12

particular the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer

19:14

Research Center, Comprehensive

19:17

Cancer Center, sorry. And City

19:19

of Hope is frankly speaking one of the best cancer

19:22

hospitals in the world. This is

19:25

a elite hospital filled

19:27

with excellent researchers routinely

19:30

ranks in the top 10 in the US, which as you know,

19:32

dominates the world in cancer research.

19:35

If you have cancer and you are lucky enough

19:37

to be treated at City of Hope, you have won the hospital

19:39

lottery. And so by

19:42

our view, the

19:44

pedigree of those involved adds significant confirmatory

19:47

weight to their claims. Second

19:50

question is where was it published? Here in

19:52

contrast to room temperature superconductor work,

19:55

this was introduced to the world in

19:58

a full article.

20:01

in the highly impactful journal, Cell Chemical

20:03

Biology. And this means that this

20:05

work has survived the journal's editorial

20:07

and peer review processes. And

20:10

the authors provided significant additional

20:12

supplementary information that described

20:14

their sources and methods in significant

20:16

detail. And in perusing this paper, we

20:19

find no particular red flags. And like we are relatively

20:21

well trained in this area for a variety of personal

20:24

and professional reasons. And in our view, this was a solid,

20:27

appropriately referenced report that builds on decades

20:29

of preexisting research. Where

20:32

we are in the scientific processes here, where

20:34

the hype and reality begins to deviate.

20:38

This is a new molecule, and it has

20:40

shown excellent results in

20:42

cell line testing and in animal

20:44

studies. On top of that, the

20:46

researchers have a pretty good understanding of the

20:49

theoretical basis for why this should work. But

20:53

it hasn't been tried in humans yet. And

20:55

the leap from this to quote, cancer killing magic

20:57

bullets is premature. And this

20:59

is something the authors themselves make

21:02

abundantly clear in their own article. The

21:06

history of advances in cancer

21:09

is littered with great

21:11

results in the lab that don't materialize in humans,

21:14

which is the answer to the fourth question, where are we

21:16

in the scientific context?

21:19

And the hard reality is that 90% of

21:21

such drugs fail in

21:23

the clinic. And

21:26

they fail to gain regulatory approval for a variety of

21:28

reasons, unanticipated secondary

21:31

side effects, or there's

21:33

something unique about cancers in humans that doesn't

21:35

manifest when

21:37

the drug is applied. And this is where

21:40

I think the authors flubbed

21:42

it in their press release. They

21:45

had what we think and described in the pieces

21:47

of particularly cringe worthy quote about our

21:49

cancer killing pill is like a snow storm that

21:52

closes a key airline hub, shutting down

21:54

all flights in and out of the airport.

21:58

And to a level,

21:59

A layperson who doesn't have the sophistication

22:02

that say trained

22:04

scientists have, using words like cancer killing

22:06

pill and snowstorm and shutting down all

22:09

in the context of an early stage

22:11

drug development risk, giving unwarranted hope

22:14

to desperate patients in our view. And we

22:16

would have preferred that they wait to see how it does

22:18

in the clinic. Luckily,

22:20

again, here, what we can expect next, which is

22:22

the fifth question, is as

22:25

we showed in the piece, they have in fact started a phase

22:27

one clinical trial. Patients are undoubtedly receiving

22:30

doses of this material. If

22:33

the results are exceptionally positive, we would expect

22:35

to see two things in short order. We should

22:37

see them bragging about it in an abstract

22:40

at a respectable conference. Additionally,

22:43

we should very quickly see in the NIH's

22:46

National Database of Clinical Trials a phase two

22:48

trial show up. And

22:50

if we see that, then we would begin to get excited. And

22:52

so our verdict in this case, which again, using the

22:54

same simple five questions is, here

22:57

we have little doubt that the results published so far are

23:00

empirically valid. And

23:02

for decades, people have known that this might be a suitable

23:04

pathway. They've discovered a molecule

23:07

that certainly works in the lab and

23:09

on animals. And

23:12

if it does work in humans, it could indeed mark a

23:14

significant step change in cancer treatment. And

23:16

if it does, we should all expect to hear about it soon

23:18

enough.

23:19

This show is brought to you by Ledger. Now

23:22

Ledger is the world leader in Bitcoin security

23:24

and is the best way to own and secure your

23:26

private keys. If you're still holding Bitcoin

23:29

on an exchange or with a custodian, it

23:31

might be time to take your security more seriously

23:33

because remember, not your keys, not

23:35

your Bitcoin. The Ledger suite of hardware

23:38

wallets paired with the Ledger Live app are the

23:40

easiest and safest way to start managing

23:42

your own private keys. You can send

23:45

and sign your Bitcoin transactions with full transparency

23:47

in the Ledger Live app. And honestly, it couldn't

23:49

be easier. I have been a Ledger customer

23:51

since 2017 and I absolutely

23:53

love their products. Now, if you want to find out more

23:56

or purchase a hardware wallet from Ledger, then

23:58

please head over to shop.ledger.com.

24:06

Next up today we have our lead sponsor, Iris

24:08

Energy. Now Iris Energy is the largest

24:10

NASDAQ listed Bitcoin miner using 100% renewable

24:13

energy. And their

24:15

strategy is to target markets with low

24:17

cost excess renewable energy. And

24:20

they build their own highly efficient Bitcoin

24:22

data centers and are led by a seasoned

24:24

management team with a track record of

24:26

success across renewables, infrastructure

24:29

and digital assets. Danny and I met with the

24:31

team in Canada and were super impressed with their

24:33

values which align with us so they are

24:35

a great fit for what Bitcoin

24:36

did. We have now been working with

24:38

Iris Energy for a number of months across the podcast,

24:41

films and events and they're even sponsoring

24:43

my football team Raoul Bedford. It's been

24:45

really great to work with such a forward thinking

24:47

and sustainable Bitcoin company so if you want to find

24:49

out more about them please head over to irisenergy.co

24:52

which is I-R-I-S-E-N-E-R-G-Y.co.

24:59

So today we have Leden. Now from savings

25:01

accounts to personal loans and even mortgages,

25:03

Leden's financial services enable Bitcoiners

25:06

to experience the benefits of holding today without

25:08

selling their Bitcoin. Leden have

25:11

a robust risk management strategy

25:13

and always prioritize safeguarding clients

25:15

assets with no DeFi yield

25:18

farming. And Leden only supports Bitcoin

25:20

and USDC, two of the highest

25:22

quality and most liquid assets in the industry.

25:25

They are also dedicated to transparency

25:27

and are the first digital asset lending company

25:30

to complete a proof of reserves attestation

25:32

which they re-verify every six months. Leden

25:35

also have a brand new product, Prime

25:37

Loans that allows private wealth clients

25:40

to lend assets on their terms and

25:42

by locking in for a fixed term they can

25:44

earn even more interest. Leden

25:47

has a team of seasoned experts ready to

25:49

work with you through the entire process to

25:51

ensure your assets generate yield while

25:53

protecting your principal. If you want to find

25:55

out more, please head over to leden.io which

25:58

is ledn.co.

25:59

So I think if we

26:02

apply your five questions to

26:04

the recent discussions regarding

26:06

aliens and visiting the planet,

26:09

I think you're going to come into the deeply

26:11

skeptical area.

26:12

Yeah, it does seem a little convenient. And

26:15

we are actually going to write about this. Oh, I have

26:18

it in my mind, at least. And

26:21

I'll just riff on it with you here, maybe,

26:24

and you can help shape it. My

26:27

view of this is this clumsy

26:29

attempt to change the

26:31

narrative proves just how cynical

26:33

people are and have become

26:36

with the lack of trust in our elite institutions.

26:40

Because if this had happened 15 years ago, it's

26:42

all we'd be talking about. And

26:44

nobody's talking about it because nobody cares, because

26:47

nobody believes it.

26:48

As far as I can, I mean, I don't believe it. I don't know what

26:50

you think. So I've

26:52

interviewed a guy called Matthew Pines,

26:55

who has worked at a high level within government. And

26:58

rather than saying whether he believes it or not, he

27:00

talked about the,

27:02

I guess he had his

27:05

own framework in terms of who these people are,

27:07

what they've said, where they are in the chain

27:09

of command, historical

27:12

credibility, and why there would

27:14

be congressional hearings on this. And

27:16

he said he's moved. It's not that he believes it.

27:19

It's just his position has moved to

27:21

believe in more so that this might be a

27:23

possibility. Sure. But

27:27

the thrust of our piece will be why isn't everybody

27:29

talking about this 24 seven? Because

27:32

we've lost the trust in authorities.

27:36

And that is really the insight for us. Because

27:40

they are trying really hard to put this on people's radar.

27:42

It couldn't be more of a right. And

27:45

this is part of, in our view, like

27:47

an 18 to 24 month pattern of

27:50

ever increasing statements. Again,

27:53

in the mid 1990s, if

27:55

this had come out, it

27:57

would literally be all that everybody's talking about.

27:59

I have not had one person in my real life

28:02

asking about it. Yeah. I remember

28:04

back in the 90s where a crop circle would

28:06

make the news and everything. Yeah, exactly.

28:09

I'm still curious

28:11

about the origins of such crop circles. So

28:13

that's perhaps a topic for another

28:16

day. Yeah. Well, I'll wait for that piece. Okay.

28:18

So look, there's stuff I really want to get into you. Well, our

28:20

listeners will really care about. Look, you and I talked about this

28:22

before, but I want to get it back into

28:25

the bricks stuff with you and

28:27

the bricks Nations and what they're doing. I

28:30

know you've been looking at this a bit

28:32

further. Just again, for anyone listening who doesn't know who

28:34

they are, who are the bricks Nations and

28:36

what is it they're trying to do? Yeah, the bricks

28:39

Nations

28:39

are Brazil, Russia, India,

28:42

China and South

28:44

Africa. And the first time

28:46

we wrote about bricks, we made the critical

28:49

typo of referring to South Africa as South

28:51

America, which led to about 250 emails,

28:54

which is always fun when you make a typo in a piece, but I

28:56

digress. They

28:59

are, of course,

29:03

prominent members of what many would call the Global

29:05

South

29:06

or the developing Nations or

29:09

the subset of the four to five

29:11

billion of people on the planet for whom the

29:14

US dollar system is suboptimal. And

29:17

for decades, of course, people have acknowledged

29:20

and in many ways lamented the

29:23

US dollar hegemony and its impact on the Global

29:25

South and the disproportionate benefit

29:27

that accrues to the Global North because

29:30

of this setup. And

29:32

there is no shortage of people historically

29:35

who have made

29:36

overt efforts

29:38

to try to do something about it. History, coincidentally,

29:41

seems to imply that

29:43

war and regime change follow swiftly

29:46

whenever such efforts get to be too serious.

29:48

But there is a lot of talk and excitement in the gold

29:50

community that this time might be

29:52

different, that the bricks Nations

29:55

might come together. And create

29:58

a unified currency where internet. international

30:00

trade imbalances are settled in part, at

30:02

least with gold, and perhaps a mix

30:04

of commodities, commodity basket. And

30:08

so we wrote a piece on this called Something or Nothing because

30:10

the hype had gotten pretty big and in this piece

30:12

we actually just asked five people we really respect

30:15

for their opinion and then synthesized

30:17

it into a story. And ultimately we concluded

30:21

that

30:22

we would probably fade

30:24

this hype. This is, you

30:26

know, there's no question that

30:29

the US dollar system does

30:32

disproportionate damage to a lot of people. There's

30:35

no question that many of these people would

30:37

like a new system.

30:39

But the speed with which this

30:41

can be done and the difficulties involved are significant.

30:44

And

30:47

ultimately, if,

30:48

you know, despite the fact that lots

30:50

of countries want to do this and the seizing

30:52

of Russia's assets has only increased, you know,

30:54

their motivation to try,

30:57

it's probably not going to happen on any

30:59

reasonable timeframe. And

31:02

so there is a summit coming up and

31:04

we suspect that what comes out of that summit will

31:07

likely disappoint, although we shall see. We will certainly

31:09

be watching with significant interest. So is

31:11

it that despite the disproportionate

31:14

benefit that Global North has with the dollar, the

31:19

actually moving away from the dollar technically is

31:21

just too difficult? Yes,

31:24

there's a variety of issues and

31:27

some of them were highlighted in the piece. Brent

31:29

Johnson over at Santiago

31:31

Capital, of course, is probably the most prominent figure

31:34

on Twitter with his milkshake theory on the

31:37

US dollar. And I just pulled it up so I could quote him

31:39

carefully.

31:41

To be clear, it's not that the idea isn't

31:43

potentially a big deal, but the ability of the BRICS

31:45

nations to actually develop it and then successfully

31:47

implement it is far from the certainty that

31:49

many on Twitter seem to think it is. And

31:52

they would still have to deal with their U of dollar debt problems. And

31:55

so he goes on to talk about a few other challenges, including

31:57

the US's inevitable response.

31:59

And we've already seen, of course,

32:02

shortly after the

32:04

head of India visited the White House for a state

32:07

dinner, suddenly India backed out of, or

32:09

was public about backing out of their participation

32:11

in a unified BRICS currency. You

32:13

know, it's not like the U.S. You

32:16

can't have it both ways. The U.S. dollar system can't

32:18

be so beneficial and in many

32:20

ways so evil to so many analysts

32:23

and assume that the U.S. won't pull out all the stops

32:25

to defend it. And

32:28

so it's not like, you know, the

32:30

U.S. the

32:32

U.S. may be waning in its geopolitical power,

32:34

but it

32:34

is still the most prominent geopolitical

32:37

power on the planet and by a long

32:39

shot. And so if this

32:41

is in fact so critical to their maintenance

32:44

of such power, the last thing you would expect them to

32:46

do is to go out with a whimper. Do

32:48

you think we will see more settlements

32:51

in the Yuan though?

32:53

So more

32:56

settlements in Yuan

32:58

is a different beast altogether than a

33:00

unified BRICS currency backed by gold. And

33:04

yes, of course, another person we quoted in the piece

33:06

was Luke Grohman, who has been following this for

33:09

the better part of several decades, I

33:11

believe. And there is a pattern,

33:13

there is a trend

33:15

away from the U.S. dollar towards

33:18

currencies like the Yuan or

33:21

bilateral trade agreements. There's no question that

33:23

there is a trend. And

33:27

Luke's view, you know,

33:29

the need to diversify away from the U.S. dollar arises

33:31

from the need to tie a neutral reserve asset

33:34

to the price of oil, which we agree with

33:36

his energy lens of

33:38

his focus on this issue. The

33:41

real issue here is the

33:43

sort of decades-long trade

33:45

between the U.S. and the Middle Eastern producers that the

33:47

U.S. dollar shall be as, quote, good as gold for oil

33:51

has been broken since the global

33:53

financial crisis of 809. That's just one of the

33:55

many casualties of that

33:57

financial crisis, including many aspects of our

33:59

financial crisis. financial rule of law, which

34:02

is a whole other topic. In Luke's

34:04

view, we are at peak

34:06

cheap oil or peak cheap

34:08

energy, and that this is

34:11

the underlying trend or the

34:13

force that is driving all of this.

34:16

I think we're a

34:18

little further away from peak cheap energy than perhaps he

34:21

believes, and that's where our

34:23

analysis may deviate a bit. I

34:25

do think that what's really driving

34:27

this, of course, is the fact that we have

34:29

based the US dollar to a significant extent

34:31

that now the price of oil has

34:35

gone to levels that

34:38

are historically quite high and has stayed there

34:40

for historically longer periods of time.

34:43

Why does he say we're at peak cheap oil?

34:45

Because I think people here in the UK would want to

34:47

challenge that.

34:49

The basis of that analysis,

34:52

and he does, by the way, disclose and

34:55

make the point that a major breakthrough

34:57

in the production of energy would change his hypothesis,

34:59

but it's based on the fact that for

35:02

the past decade and a half or so, the vast

35:05

majority of the growth in oil supply

35:07

has come from the US shale patch, and

35:09

it is his view and the view of other really

35:12

respectable analysts that perhaps we're seeing the end

35:15

of that growth and

35:18

perhaps even seeing

35:19

that growth turning over. Few

35:22

analysts have that in their models.

35:25

We would be more bullish on the

35:28

fact that our

35:30

access to oil is largely

35:33

truncated by political processes and not

35:36

technical ones, and that if prices

35:38

got high enough or the situation got serious enough,

35:41

political change is far easier to overcome

35:43

than technical challenges. And

35:46

I do think that many of the peak oil

35:48

proponents are shorting

35:51

human ingenuity in the field. People think

35:53

of the oil and gas companies as commodity

35:55

players and so on,

35:57

but these are in fact home to some of the most brilliant.

36:00

technologists and engineers and scientists on the

36:02

planet. And if, you know, I haven't

36:04

spent time, perhaps, on bias because

36:06

I come from that area.

36:09

But if you've ever visited the headquarters

36:12

of Saudi Aramco, you would not leave that tour

36:14

wondering whether this is a technology company

36:17

or not. This is why, in fact, we

36:19

were pretty skeptical of various

36:21

analysts who were proclaiming that Russia's oil production

36:25

would collapse simply because Western engineers pulled

36:28

out. I mean, Sinopec

36:30

and Reliance and all of these

36:32

major oil and gas

36:34

companies of the global south have thousands and

36:36

thousands of engineers. They're

36:38

producing far more petroleum engineers than we are in

36:41

the U.S. And they're not afraid to steal our technology.

36:43

And so this technical arrogance that we had that

36:46

we would collapse Russia's energy production

36:49

simply because Western oil

36:52

and gas services companies pulled out was, we

36:54

thought, a bit foolish

36:57

and displayed a lack of industrial knowledge. And

36:59

I do think peak cheap

37:01

oil

37:02

is an artifact of politics.

37:05

And I think there's

37:08

plenty of oil and gas in the ground for us to exploit

37:11

for many decades to come. It's

37:13

just a matter of having the political will to do so.

37:16

How much have you considered Saudi

37:18

Arabia's kind of expansion into

37:21

sports and tourism?

37:26

We get endless TV ads

37:28

for Visit Saudi Arabia in here. We've

37:30

seen so many of the Premier League footballers head

37:33

out on huge, like the most obscene

37:35

contracts to play for Saudi Arabian teams.

37:38

We've seen what's happened with live golf.

37:40

How much is that playing to all this? Have you guys looked at that?

37:42

Yes.

37:44

There's a cynical view, which is they are

37:47

voting with their feet on the value of the

37:49

currencies that they're currently holding and whether

37:51

they will be able to maintain

37:53

that value over a timeframe that matters. And

37:55

they are spending it at a rate

37:57

that is pretty phenomenal. And

38:01

ultimately, what you mean by spend, I mean, they're building

38:03

infrastructure. They're built, you know, we talked

38:05

about this in a piece called United States. It was the opening

38:08

story where we talked about these

38:11

tourist destinations that they're developing out

38:13

of whole cloth, you know. And

38:16

they're spending several trillion dollars on

38:18

this. And this is under

38:21

MBS's Saudi Vision 2030,

38:24

which was sort of a grand plan to reduce Saudi Arabia's

38:26

dependence on oil and

38:28

to diversify its economy into things like tourism

38:30

and so on. The Red Sea

38:33

Project is the one that we highlighted

38:35

in the piece, which is the development of a beautiful

38:38

international airport and all of these, you know, seven,

38:40

eight star hotels if such things even exist.

38:43

And, you know, the opulence is off the charts

38:46

in these things. In our view,

38:48

the most important part of all of this is

38:51

it just proves that Saudi

38:53

Arabia needs oil above, you know,

38:55

Brent above $80 a barrel if it's going

38:58

to fund all of these things.

38:59

And we think that these

39:03

plans, however ridiculous they might

39:05

sound to us,

39:06

are real in the eyes of MBS

39:09

and sort of are the genesis

39:11

of a Saudi put under

39:14

the price of oil. And you notice that any time the price of

39:16

oil gets down into the 70s, we

39:18

see OPEC Plus

39:20

coming to the table with more

39:22

cuts or talk of cuts or other

39:24

actions that put a put under the price of

39:26

oil. So we're in this sort of sweet spot

39:28

right now between $70 and $90 a barrel where, you know,

39:33

at the high end of that sweet spot we're seeing in the

39:35

U.S. today price of gasoline

39:37

passing $4 a gallon again nationally.

39:40

That is beginning to get into the risk zone for team

39:42

Biden as they head into a presidential election year. But

39:44

at the same time, that

39:47

is a very useful price for the ambitions

39:49

of Saudi Arabia. And so if

39:51

they're cycling this quote-unquote money

39:54

into things like, you know, football

39:57

purchases or airports.

39:59

development or hotel development

40:02

that does give you some indication of their view

40:04

of the US dollar long term.

40:06

Yeah, this election cycle

40:08

I think is going to be even weirder

40:10

than the last one. As

40:14

an outsider looking into the US

40:17

and knowing our whole political cycle is

40:20

particularly weird itself, but kind

40:22

of looking in a potential Biden

40:25

versus Trump. We have Hunter

40:27

Biden now being investigated. We have Trump

40:29

currently being investigated and in court.

40:33

It's a particularly weird time.

40:36

Are

40:36

you writing about this at all? As

40:38

an insider, I can tell you it is a particularly

40:41

weird time. You don't have to be an outsider

40:43

to see how ridiculous it is. To

40:46

answer your specific question, we

40:49

try not to be a political newsletter

40:51

to the extent that politics

40:53

is an input into the main things we write about.

40:56

We are politically aware. We

40:58

have said on other appearances that we voted

41:00

for neither of these candidates last time. We

41:03

would hope that we would have a better selection than

41:06

these two this

41:06

time. We are, I

41:09

mean, if you just read out loud

41:11

the things you just said, again, back

41:13

in the 90s, you wouldn't believe it that this is

41:15

the United States we're talking about. By

41:18

the way, this is bipartisan. Mitch McConnell has no idea

41:20

where he is.

41:22

Joe

41:24

Biden is not all there. I read 1984.

41:26

You can use all the propaganda techniques you want

41:29

on me. I can visually see that he's

41:31

not there. They've charged Donald

41:33

Trump with 73 felonies and counting. He's

41:35

still the front runner for the Republican nomination.

41:39

It's banana-republic stuff. It's absurd.

41:43

This is all coming on the heels of the bricks discussion we just talked

41:45

about. The Hunter Biden stuff, it depends

41:47

on which side of the

41:52

Algrel that you sit on. To some,

41:54

he doesn't even exist. And to others, that's the

41:56

main news story of the day, the polarization

41:59

of the U.S. political

41:59

this course is off the charts, but

42:02

it can't be that

42:03

the best candidates we have are people in their 80s. I

42:06

mean, Dianne Feinstein has no idea where

42:08

she is.

42:09

It shouldn't

42:11

be partisan to point out these things. Mitch

42:15

McConnell, it's time he retired.

42:17

I was on a podcast

42:22

the other day where I said, look, why

42:24

can't we just have something like Gavin Newsom

42:27

against Ron DeSantis with Joe Manchin running as an independent

42:29

and give the country a choice between three

42:32

people who can complete a sentence. I

42:34

mean, it's really upset. Of course, Donald

42:36

Trump can complete a sentence, but Donald Trump comes with his

42:38

own set of legacy issues.

42:42

But it can't be that this is the best we have. Well, it

42:44

isn't really. And it is a

42:46

sad

42:47

state of affairs. So that's probably as political

42:49

as I would ever get. We would never write such

42:51

a piece because it's not what our audience comes to us for.

42:54

But it truly is as an insider, sad, really,

42:56

and a bit scary.

42:57

Is it just another signal of a crumbling

43:00

empire? Yeah, a huge debt. I

43:02

mean, we didn't even talk about the downgrading

43:05

of US credit. Yeah, we can.

43:08

That's something we have certainly spoken about with our pro

43:10

tier and might write about. But yeah,

43:12

I mean, people say it might

43:14

be at the decline stage of the Roman

43:16

Empire, but the Roman Empire took hundreds of years

43:18

to go from decline to collapse. I

43:21

don't know, in the Internet era, maybe things

43:23

feel like it might be accelerating a little quickly.

43:27

But this is,

43:28

yeah, this is

43:29

unsettling as a person who is

43:31

a proud patriot. And by

43:35

the way, it used to be that that was an uncontroversial

43:37

statement. You can't even say that you're a patriot in

43:40

the US political discourse today without receiving ridicule

43:42

from at least half the country. And

43:44

what does that say about the state of

43:46

affairs? I'm not sure what it's like in the UK. But

43:51

nonetheless, it is it is

43:54

not positive. One of the things

43:56

that held up the US dollar hegemony

43:58

was the. the state of our

44:00

institutions and the quality of our financial

44:03

markets and the rule of law and the

44:05

belief that you could get a fair hearing in the US

44:07

and the level of corruption

44:11

and criminality that

44:13

is on blatant display in

44:16

Washington DC is appalling.

44:18

And once you lose your ethical framework as

44:20

a society, what

44:22

do you have?

44:23

This show is brought to you by Unchained. Now

44:26

the events and exchanges and in traditional

44:28

banks over the last year were all an important

44:30

reminder of how critical it is for you to take

44:33

control of your private keys.

44:35

But taking ownership of your Bitcoin keys, you know

44:37

what, it can be daunting. That's why our

44:39

good friends Unchained offer a personalized

44:42

concierge on-boarding service. Now I have

44:44

personally been through this process and set up the vaults

44:46

for my football team Real Bedford. And

44:48

you know what, I know this is a personal recommendation

44:50

here, but the multi-sig solution which Unchained

44:53

created is so easy to use. They

44:55

ship the required devices to you and they

44:57

walk you through it step by step so

44:59

you can understand exactly how the vaults work.

45:02

Now after you set up, Unchained continues to

45:04

provide you with regular support to help

45:06

you get comfortable with controlling your keys.

45:09

So if you've been putting off taking control of your Bitcoin

45:11

wealth, Unchained's concierge on-boarding

45:14

is a simple way for you to get started. Get

45:16

it done sooner rather than later. You

45:18

can book your on-boarding today at unchained.com

45:21

forward slash what bitcoin did and at

45:23

the checkout you can get $50 off with the promo

45:25

code what bitcoin did. That is unchained.com,

45:29

U-N-C-H-A-I-N-E-D

45:31

dot com forward slash what bitcoin

45:33

did. Next up it is Wasabi,

45:36

who I am using to keep my Bitcoin

45:38

private. Now Wasabi is the

45:40

easiest way to send and receive Bitcoin privately

45:43

and even for non-technical people like me,

45:45

it is effortless and provides privacy

45:47

by default. Now with Wasabi

45:50

there is no minimum amount so you

45:52

can start coin joining straight away

45:54

and Wasabi makes coin join transactions

45:56

together with BTC Pay and Trezor

45:58

users and BTC Pay server users

46:01

can make payments in CoinJoin which saves

46:03

on fees and is a privacy improvement.

46:05

Also Wazabi just dropped a

46:07

badass new feature. Now Trezor

46:10

Suite users can CoinJoin directly on the

46:12

hardware wallet which obviously is very

46:14

cool. Now if you want to find out more please head

46:16

over to wazabiwallet.io which is

46:19

W-A-S-A-B-I-W-A-L-L-E-T.io.

46:20

Also

46:24

today

46:24

we have Bit Casino. Now

46:27

Bit Casino was established in 2013 and

46:29

is the world's first

46:31

licensed Bitcoin Casino. It is trusted

46:33

by tens of thousands of players worldwide and

46:36

not only do they have cutting edge security but

46:38

they offer fast withdrawals and VOP

46:41

experiences that money can't buy. Bit

46:43

Casino has over 2,800 games

46:45

and tournaments for you to try out and

46:47

with their 24-7 live chat support you

46:50

can always get help if you need. Now if you want to find

46:52

out more about Bit Casino the first Bitcoin

46:54

Casino to win an EGR award head

46:56

over to bitcasino.io which

46:59

is B-I-T-C-A-S-I-N-O.io

47:03

and please remember to gamble responsibly.

47:06

Well I mean I mentioned to you I'd just been out to

47:08

Buenos Aires spent a week there

47:10

making a film about inflation but anyway which

47:13

was a weird experience because because the inflation

47:15

was so high I expected to see quite

47:17

a desperate picture but actually the

47:19

restaurants were full the shops were full people especially

47:22

those there's kind of like two

47:25

classes of people there's the the poor

47:27

and everyone else the

47:29

poor are just a large voting block and backed

47:32

by unions and tend to see they get wage

47:34

increases that go with inflation whereas

47:36

the rich have access to dollar

47:38

or other tools where they can hedge

47:41

themselves so it was a very weird experience but at the

47:43

same time I kind of felt like

47:45

some of the things I was seeing was almost like a window into

47:48

the future of what may happen

47:50

I don't know to the extent but

47:52

what may happen in the UK and the US I mean

47:54

look we have better institutions

47:57

so I don't see us getting 150%

47:59

I hope not.

48:01

I hope not. But certainly

48:03

things that really stood out to me were

48:05

the difficulties in doing business,

48:08

how much the state interferes with doing business,

48:11

setting up a business, licenses, the weird

48:14

rules they have there like you can't fire people. You don't

48:16

have it in the US as much as we do here. But if someone's

48:19

worked for you for two years, it's very difficult to get rid of them

48:21

here in the UK. But just doing business

48:23

here in the UK is very hard. I own three businesses.

48:26

Setting up a bank account is particularly hard.

48:29

The taxes you pay are particularly

48:32

onerous. And so it was like a window

48:35

into the future, especially

48:37

if somebody had set up businesses

48:39

for 20 years, now it's harder

48:42

than ever. The state here

48:44

in the UK is in your pocket for everything.

48:46

And once we hit particularly

48:49

more challenging times, there's other suggestions

48:52

that come out. You hear windfall taxes,

48:54

or you hear of new inheritance

48:56

taxes, all these different new taxes to solve

48:59

their overspending problem. You never hear of

49:01

government austerity, but it just it did

49:03

feel like a window into a potential future. So

49:06

let me give you a perhaps a scary

49:08

interpretation of what you just said.

49:10

Okay. The difference between Argentina

49:13

and the US is Argentina

49:16

has far more practice going through such hyperinflationary

49:18

spirals. Yeah, they used to. In many

49:20

ways, the society is conditioned

49:22

to proactively hedge, to

49:25

minimize risk, to port wealth

49:27

from one regime to the other. The UK,

49:29

of course, had a pretty bad experience in

49:32

the 70s, but the US is

49:34

nowhere near ready for the consequences

49:36

of the first, second or third time that this happens.

49:40

And in many ways, the US

49:43

in particular is the least prepared for

49:45

the hardships that would come and would react the worst. And

49:47

perhaps social unity and institutions

49:50

would dissolve quicker and harder. Argentina,

49:54

at least the citizens of Argentina,

49:56

both categories of people that you described

49:58

have seen.

49:59

this movie before.

50:01

And that does

50:03

two things. Of course, it does make them particularly susceptible

50:06

to further bouts

50:08

of hyperinflation because the pattern recognition

50:10

kicks in and becomes quickly self-fulfilling. But

50:14

also it does harden them to it. And so

50:16

you can have this contrast of what

50:18

you would expect to see at home if this was occurring

50:22

and what you actually see on the ground in Argentina.

50:25

Although I would say the election results

50:28

that came out overnight are fascinating

50:30

and very interesting. Obviously,

50:32

it's not a zone of expertise. We'd be curious to get your

50:35

thoughts on it. But this move

50:37

to potentially abolish the central bank and adopt

50:39

the US dollar, while that transition would be

50:41

difficult, it does seem at least somebody is talking

50:43

about a curative approach to these problems.

50:46

And they seem to be catching some resonance with the population.

50:49

Well, so that was a really interesting

50:51

part of the film in this documentary

50:54

is asking people about Milagas, we're

50:56

referring to the primaries that

50:58

happened last night in Milag. He had

51:00

like 35% of the vote significantly

51:02

ahead of anybody else. Something like that.

51:05

Yeah. And what's really interesting is you

51:07

do have this large voting bloc in Argentina,

51:09

which is the poorest of society. But they are the

51:11

people that still get screwed the worst. They

51:14

don't have access to the tools that other people

51:16

do. And yes, they may get wage rises backed by

51:18

unions, but they still get screwed the worst.

51:21

They don't have access to simple things like credit cards.

51:24

Some of the people I met, the more middle class people, they

51:26

would buy everything on a credit card and by the end

51:28

of the month they would have a 10% discount on everything

51:30

they purchased. Just simple

51:32

tools like that. But Milagas

51:35

seems

51:35

to have appealed to

51:37

a

51:38

lot of the young people who are fed up with

51:40

this. So again,

51:42

a couple of things that really stood out. Young

51:45

people saying there's

51:46

no point

51:48

in me staying in Argentina. I won't

51:50

be able to buy a house. I

51:52

won't be able to conserve wealth. So a lot of

51:54

Argentinians are leaving and moving to Australia or the UK

51:56

or the US. So that's a real brain

51:59

drain from the. country itself. But

52:01

there are even people who, you

52:03

know, not even from the richest parts who are now

52:06

saying, look, I'm fed up with this. This has been decades

52:08

of inflation that we've dealt with. Yeah, this is

52:10

a cult. This is part of our culture now. And

52:12

so those people

52:15

I spoke to like Millet, who wouldn't vote for him, what they

52:17

said was he doesn't

52:19

appear to have the experience.

52:21

We're not sure whether he can deliver against what

52:24

he wants. I actually interviewed his economic

52:26

advisor while I was out there.

52:30

Everything he said said to me makes sense. He

52:32

said, he said, we have to car

52:34

spend. We have to stop these huge subsidies. We

52:37

have to rein in the central bank or obliterate

52:39

the central bank. One of

52:41

the things they also have discussed quite heavily,

52:44

which is becoming a dollarized

52:46

nation. I mean, it

52:48

essentially kind of is a dollarized

52:50

nation. Correct. As such, you know,

52:52

it's the underground economy dominates

52:55

the official economy, which is what you see in such circumstances.

52:58

Same thing in Venezuela. Yeah.

53:00

Well, so I've been to Venezuela as one that both

53:02

were very different. Venezuela

53:05

was a basket case with Argentina. If you didn't, if

53:07

you were just dropped into one as areas and nobody told you, you would

53:09

have no idea there's high inflation. Life's

53:12

going on

53:13

relatively as normal as people

53:15

can do it. Whereas when I was in Venezuela,

53:18

it was just abject poverty everywhere. People. And

53:21

of course, Argentina used to be a very, very wealthy

53:23

nation. And so this is, this is

53:25

probably a closer analogy to what I fear

53:29

in the US than perhaps Argentina

53:31

is today. I will say to your

53:33

point as a protest candidate that is suddenly

53:36

thrust into the lead and the momentum building

53:38

behind Malay. I don't

53:40

ever want to say it, but I would be concerned

53:43

for his security first and foremost. But

53:45

we have to have an inequity. Exactly.

53:47

You know, such radical

53:50

shock therapy

53:52

does not usually come without a

53:54

counterpunch, but we shall see

53:56

it. It's very, very interesting and worth keeping an

53:58

eye on for sure.

53:59

I just think, you know, people

54:03

who know, people are like, well, what do you think? I was like, come on,

54:05

I've been here for seven days. I'm

54:09

not really an economic analyst and I can't really

54:11

give you an educated answer. But

54:13

what I would say is that what

54:16

have you got to lose? You had decades of, sorry,

54:21

administrations who have robbed the

54:23

country, who have failed to reign

54:26

in spending and have slowly

54:29

destroyed the value of

54:31

the Argentinian economy. So what have you got to lose

54:34

with someone like Millet? I mean, it

54:37

doesn't really matter what I think, what will be, will be, but

54:39

it's if he does win without

54:43

any risk to his life, can

54:46

he make change? And if he does make change, I'm

54:48

quite interested to see the economic

54:52

impact through all of South America. I

54:54

mean, we just saw, I don't know. I see the report that came

54:56

out with regards to El Salvador. I

54:59

did not. I have to dig it

55:01

out. Bukele

55:04

tweeted about it. Let me see if I can find it.

55:10

But, you know, you have got these leaders

55:13

in South America who are trying fundamentally

55:16

different things, trying to stimulate their economies,

55:18

trying to move away from reliance

55:20

on the IMF and the World Bank. It

55:23

feels like it feels like

55:27

Bukele has had success in El Salvador and perhaps

55:30

Millet may have success in Argentina, maybe

55:32

that will reverberate around South America.

55:34

Well, there's also the influence of China and the BRICS

55:36

countries as well. And

55:38

the relationship between Brazil and China, to circle back

55:40

to what we talked about earlier, and in many ways, as

55:44

you mentioned, you know, confessions

55:47

of an economic hit man is a must-read

55:50

and China in their own way is

55:53

repeating some of the tactics of the U.S. They claim

55:56

with a different approach, but

55:58

they are sort of maneuvering in.

57:59

campaigns as people become fed up

58:02

with the existing system and who

58:04

benefits. And this is all really a symptom

58:07

of this massive inequality that has

58:09

grown in all Western countries and

58:13

in fact by extension between the have and

58:15

have not countries as well. The winners

58:17

are taking way too much of the pie and

58:20

if they continue to take bricks from the bottom to put them

58:22

on top, the entire Jenga Tower will soon

58:24

collapse.

58:25

I think this is why this rich man of North

58:27

Richmond went viral so quickly because I

58:29

think everything he sung about in that song. Because

58:32

I was, I don't know, I mean I kept

58:34

seeing this tweet but I wasn't properly looking at

58:36

it. I felt like just a story of someone as a

58:38

musician who'd, you know, got some

58:40

relatively far viral success. I hadn't

58:42

actually paid much attention to it and I listened to the song the other day. I

58:45

was like, holy shit,

58:47

he's basically relaying the experience

58:50

that most people are living right now. It

58:52

doesn't matter whether you're a developed nation or

58:55

a developing nation, if you are,

58:57

you know, not part of the elite

58:59

side of society, you are getting screwed constantly.

59:01

And I just think, I think he

59:04

just hit the mark perfectly. Yeah,

59:07

and

59:08

in the case of Argentina, again, you

59:11

know, this anger manifests itself, at least

59:13

initially in the polls. And then if

59:16

that doesn't work, then sometimes things

59:18

turn violent. And so

59:21

it is interesting to see both in Argentina and

59:23

in Germany and in the UK, you

59:27

know, even here in the US,

59:29

this polarization isn't occurring in a vacuum.

59:31

And everybody can sort of diagnose

59:33

what the problems are, but it's very, very

59:35

difficult to find

59:39

out what the solutions are that those in power would accept.

59:43

Because, you know, once you accumulate enough wealth, you have

59:45

all manner of tools to protect it.

59:47

Yeah. And it just feels harder in places like

59:49

the UK and the US to have this kind of outsider candidate

59:51

like a bouquet, like a Millet, who wasn't part of

59:54

the established political groups. So,

59:58

you know, I think it's interesting in Argentina,

1:00:00

I just don't hold much hope I'd see some. Well,

1:00:03

look, Donald Trump was that candidate in 2016.

1:00:06

Yeah, yeah. And look what happened

1:00:08

to him. So, well, I just think,

1:00:10

I think he, there's a lot we

1:00:12

could talk about. Sure. And I think,

1:00:14

I think RFK is perhaps

1:00:17

in that similar kind of category, although

1:00:19

I, you know, I'm reticent

1:00:22

to compare him exactly to

1:00:24

Trump, but we don't have anything

1:00:26

like, certainly don't have anyone in the UK, anti-establishment

1:00:30

person that is making any ground.

1:00:32

We had Farage a couple of years back on Brexit.

1:00:35

Sure. He was very polarizing and,

1:00:37

and

1:00:38

not that kind, he wasn't like an inspirational

1:00:41

leader. He was also a creature

1:00:43

of the establishment himself. He just held anti-establishment

1:00:46

views, right? And so we've

1:00:48

written in support of his, you know, troubles with

1:00:50

banking, which I'm sure you would agree with. But, but

1:00:52

yeah, he was certainly a polarizing figure. But

1:00:56

again, we wrote a piece about the AFD situation

1:00:58

in Germany, and that's one of our key leading indicators

1:01:01

is, is how they're doing in the polling and how the

1:01:03

political establishment is dealing with it. And I

1:01:05

would say that the piece we saw in the Financial

1:01:08

Times

1:01:08

over the weekend doesn't inspire too much confidence.

1:01:11

All right. Well, as on the contras of time, let's, let's

1:01:13

talk about x.com. Yes. The

1:01:16

artist formerly known as Twitter. You don't have a blue

1:01:19

check.

1:01:20

We're no longer active on Twitter. So

1:01:22

last week we wrote a piece explaining it, a

1:01:26

piece called Notes on X. And

1:01:28

we have put our account into

1:01:30

lurker mode for

1:01:33

reasons that we described thoroughly in that piece.

1:01:35

This is a bit personal for us because it has to do with

1:01:38

the new owner of Twitter's treatment of

1:01:41

Substack authors on the

1:01:43

platform. And this is something that we have experienced

1:01:46

directly. Everything

1:01:48

and everything to do with Substack is being significantly throttled,

1:01:51

including our account.

1:01:53

And in tweets when we would

1:01:55

publish a piece with a link to our piece on Substack,

1:01:57

historically we might get 500, 600 likes.

1:01:59

likes or a thousand likes for a good piece. Our latest ones

1:02:02

were getting 14 likes after

1:02:04

24 hours. And even though we allegedly

1:02:07

have, you know, 260 odd thousand followers. And as

1:02:11

we said in the piece, it is very, to be very

1:02:13

clear, the new owner of Twitter is free to do what he likes

1:02:15

with his private property. But

1:02:18

we, as a business owner, had

1:02:20

a decision to make and we decided that we're going to participate

1:02:23

on Notes exclusively, which is the

1:02:26

Twitter competitor that Substack

1:02:28

rolled out in April and was the genesis

1:02:29

of the throttling of

1:02:32

various Substack authors. And, you know,

1:02:35

as we said in the piece, we would rather lose with

1:02:37

our partners than win with an antagonist. And we're

1:02:40

not claiming that he is specifically targeting

1:02:42

us, but as a large Substack

1:02:45

account, you know, with several

1:02:47

hundred thousand followers, the real

1:02:49

damage being done here are to the people

1:02:52

just trying to grow an audience today and to

1:02:54

the extent that we could

1:02:56

influence perhaps others to join us on Notes, you

1:02:59

know, jumping ship felt like the right

1:03:01

thing to do. And

1:03:03

so when you were mentioning earlier about things that

1:03:05

had gone viral, I've actually missed those things. And

1:03:09

by the way, I really so

1:03:11

in lurker mode, that means I said like I still have

1:03:14

the account and I look at it twice a day for

1:03:17

various lists of people that I follow that produce interesting

1:03:19

content just so that I'm not missing anything

1:03:21

too badly. But having

1:03:24

freed myself from the algorithm, which is designed

1:03:26

to make you angry and to keep you engaged, I

1:03:29

have found not only no impact

1:03:31

on our business, but I've gotten more

1:03:33

productive at researching, writing and publishing

1:03:35

these pieces, which is what we were meant to do anyway. And

1:03:38

so we

1:03:40

left Twitter last week and

1:03:43

we have no intent of going back.

1:03:46

So you're saying to me, if I get off Twitter, I'll be happier.

1:03:51

If you get off Twitter with

1:03:53

a good solid plan in a way that doesn't impact

1:03:55

your business, look, if this was purely about

1:03:57

driving our revenue, we would have plugged our nose and made a go.

1:03:59

of it,

1:04:01

but at some point, you

1:04:03

know, it was just

1:04:05

the return on effort. We're a very small team. We

1:04:09

have created the

1:04:11

work of our lives. I did an interview with the co-founder

1:04:13

of Substack discussing this decision

1:04:15

where I said, you know, Hamish, if

1:04:17

you would have asked us to write down on a piece of paper before

1:04:19

we started this what our wildest dreams would have

1:04:22

been, we've lapped that

1:04:24

number several fold over. One

1:04:27

of the things we've worked really hard at resisting

1:04:29

doing is recalibrating our

1:04:31

wildest dreams such that, you

1:04:34

know, this need for more and to keep growing

1:04:36

even if you are far beyond

1:04:38

what you could ever possibly need is a disease. We

1:04:41

don't want to succumb to it. We're going to

1:04:43

rely on our audience

1:04:44

for

1:04:45

growth, which actually aligns our incentives

1:04:47

if we continue to delight them. We've

1:04:49

provided them with tools to refer us to gift

1:04:52

subscriptions, to selectively

1:04:55

forward our pieces and inviting them to

1:04:57

join us on notes for perhaps a more civilized

1:05:00

discourse. And if it turns

1:05:02

out to hurt our business in the long term, that's OK,

1:05:04

because we have enough and

1:05:07

we've enjoyed the journey. And as

1:05:09

I said, we would rather lose with our partners. My

1:05:11

friend Matt O'Dowd, I don't know if you know him, but

1:05:13

he convinced me to drop my blue check mark,

1:05:15

which I did over a month ago and I still

1:05:17

have it. I don't know why it hasn't gone, but

1:05:20

I cancelled my subscription. But he talked more about

1:05:22

that Elon

1:05:24

Musk is building a massive KYC

1:05:27

platform whereby you are

1:05:30

essentially you have

1:05:32

to pay to get access to the most

1:05:34

important tools. And if you don't pay, then you're

1:05:36

not part of it. But he said he worried

1:05:38

about the impact of having all

1:05:40

that data centralized through to it. And

1:05:43

I kind of agreed with him. So I've got rid of, like, say, I cancelled my blue

1:05:45

check. I still have it for some reason. I

1:05:48

don't know. I personally don't

1:05:50

like the direction Twitter's gone under

1:05:53

Elon Musk. I think it feels like a plaything, a $40 million

1:05:56

plaything. And I feel

1:05:58

like it's being used to. to spark

1:06:02

even more hostility between people,

1:06:04

make people even more angry and have more fights.

1:06:07

And I don't know, I've not been keen on it myself.

1:06:09

Other people seem to love it. So, you

1:06:12

know, we tried not hard not to make

1:06:14

this about the direction of Twitter except

1:06:16

in the following way. The, what

1:06:18

made the entire thing viable

1:06:20

on old Twitter.

1:06:22

Look, there were lurkers, there were participants

1:06:25

and there were creators of lurkers

1:06:27

just watched. And for a variety of reasons, personal

1:06:29

and professional never participated but extracted

1:06:31

useful information. Participants liked and retweeted

1:06:34

and commented and helped drive the algorithm. But

1:06:36

the thing that made it viable were the several hundred thousand

1:06:38

creator accounts like celebrities

1:06:40

and musicians and journalists and influencers and all

1:06:43

manner of expert analysts that contributed

1:06:45

original work. And the unspoken

1:06:47

deal between the site and

1:06:49

the creators was Twitter

1:06:51

would sell ads against your impressions and keep

1:06:53

all that revenue. But

1:06:56

creators were free to derive benefit

1:06:58

from billing an audience. And sometimes the

1:07:00

way in which creators derived that benefit was to

1:07:03

temporarily invite

1:07:05

followers to click away from Twitter where

1:07:07

creators could capture that value offsite, which

1:07:10

was fine enough with old Twitter management.

1:07:12

The symbiotic relationship meant both sides had to

1:07:14

win. And Twitter's an addictive

1:07:17

platform. Anybody who leaves it to go visit Peter's

1:07:19

website temporarily is gonna go back. And

1:07:22

so that deal is now broken. And

1:07:25

because of the debt load and

1:07:27

the regret of purchasing the decision that he

1:07:30

quite correctly feels, that

1:07:33

value that was being created by creators

1:07:35

offsite

1:07:36

is a pool of

1:07:38

cash that new Twitter

1:07:41

is looking to grab for themselves. And so

1:07:43

once you view the behavior of Twitter through that

1:07:45

lens,

1:07:46

it makes a lot more sense. Having

1:07:49

built the business at the nexus between old Twitter

1:07:51

and sub-stack,

1:07:52

Twitter has left us. It

1:07:55

just took us several months to realize that

1:07:58

we should perhaps reciprocate and.

1:07:59

and leave Twitter ourselves. I

1:08:02

wish the man all the luck in the world.

1:08:04

It's a wonderful resource. It's

1:08:06

truly has the potential

1:08:09

to be a great town hall.

1:08:11

Whatever his long-term ambitions are, if he can keep ownership

1:08:13

of the thing with the debt load that it's carrying, who

1:08:15

knows? He is a survivor,

1:08:18

if nothing else, and has long

1:08:21

ago crushed his cynics as

1:08:24

to what is possible and what isn't. But

1:08:27

in the context of having

1:08:29

built our business, we

1:08:31

decided that the best decision for us was to

1:08:33

be done with all that and to wish our friends on the

1:08:35

platform the best of luck and to jump

1:08:38

in the canoe with our partners and row in the same direction.

1:08:40

Well, good. Well, fair play and good luck to you with that.

1:08:43

I think anyone listening, if they, I mean, I think

1:08:45

most people listening to my show will know you by now, but if they don't,

1:08:47

definitely go and check out your Substack. doomberg.substack.com

1:08:51

will put it in the show notes. I mean, I love your emails.

1:08:53

Whenever something big is happening in the world, usually

1:08:56

I get an email from you guys within a week explaining it

1:08:58

to me in a way that's like, okay, this is

1:09:00

actually what's happening. This is the bit that's relevant and

1:09:02

this is the bit that's nonsense. So I love

1:09:04

what you're doing. I think it cost, was it like $300 a year, I think,

1:09:07

I pay? Yeah, that's the cheapest way to do

1:09:09

it, or $30 a month.

1:09:10

Well, no, I mean, you get a discount for signing up for

1:09:12

annual alerts. $30 a month if you just want

1:09:14

to sample it. And we also have, we have a pro

1:09:16

tier for wealthier investors as

1:09:19

well. But look, Peter, that is our exact

1:09:21

brand ambition. So thank you for articulating it. And

1:09:23

as always, it was a really amazing time. I

1:09:26

can't believe an hour's already gone. I feel like we could go on

1:09:28

for twice as long and never notice. So

1:09:30

that's a great, a sign of a great discussion as always,

1:09:33

and appreciated the invite to come back. Well, every

1:09:35

few months we will be in touch when there's

1:09:37

new stuff we want to talk about. Oh, look, before we go, have

1:09:39

you changed on Bitcoin yet?

1:09:40

Yeah, last time I spoke to you,

1:09:42

you said to me- Thanks for that, by the

1:09:44

way. One of the reasons we left Twitter, but go ahead. Yeah,

1:09:46

no, you said to me last time, look, if

1:09:49

Bitcoin got down to $5,000, I

1:09:51

would be interested, I would be diving

1:09:53

in. Where are you now? Are you the same or you changed

1:09:56

at all? Yeah, so I actually, I said two things.

1:09:59

It's so funny because-

1:10:00

That comment has generated thousands

1:10:03

and thousands of trollish responses

1:10:05

on Twitter, and frankly was probably 2

1:10:08

or 3 percent input into the ultimate decision

1:10:10

to leave, but I digress, I kid, of course. We

1:10:13

said that the tether situation would need to be resolved

1:10:16

so that we could be more confident that the price on the

1:10:18

screen was real, and that if it then fell to $5,000,

1:10:21

we might allocate some

1:10:23

of our saving budget on

1:10:25

a flyer on Bitcoin. By

1:10:28

the way, if the price of Bitcoin goes to $10

1:10:30

million tomorrow, that is not going to affect

1:10:34

our life, our relative wealth.

1:10:37

I would be happy for my friends who are long Bitcoin,

1:10:39

and I would not feel an ounce of regret

1:10:41

for not having participated in it. In the same

1:10:43

way that we've never owned or

1:10:45

speculated in Nvidia stock

1:10:48

in any meaningful way, the fact that it has gone

1:10:50

bananas because of the AI revolution

1:10:52

does not somehow send me home

1:10:54

each night with my head down in

1:10:57

regret that I don't own any Nvidia stock. But

1:11:00

I wish you and the other Bitcoin

1:11:02

enthusiasts nothing but the

1:11:05

highest financial success. If the tether

1:11:07

situation becomes resolved and if the

1:11:10

true price of Bitcoin, in our view, becomes

1:11:13

known, we would be interested to speculate

1:11:15

in Bitcoin at the right price. As value investors,

1:11:18

you make money when you buy. We're not traders.

1:11:20

We're not speculators. Last thing I would say

1:11:22

is, luckily for Bitcoin, this

1:11:25

room temperature superconductor claim has

1:11:27

fizzled out because the development of quantum

1:11:29

computers is one of the potential

1:11:31

as extensible threat to the Bitcoin network and would

1:11:34

potentially diminish the long term value of Bitcoin and change

1:11:36

even our view that we

1:11:40

expressed last time. But it's just funny,

1:11:42

every once in a while you make a comment on a podcast, and that

1:11:44

comment with you on

1:11:47

your podcast has generated

1:11:49

more tweets and mentions than

1:11:52

anything we've ever said, which is kind of funny.

1:11:54

I remember seeing

1:11:55

it all. Well, listen, you're not on Twitter anymore now, so you

1:11:57

can say what you want. Then I'll be able to

1:11:59

have control you. Those trees are followed and

1:12:01

we ain't here at them Well, listen,

1:12:03

keep up the great work. Love what you're doing And

1:12:06

I'm sure we'll chat again before the end of the year. You

1:12:08

bet. I do

1:12:12

All right, what do you think of that do you enjoy that?

1:12:15

Yep, I love doin burg I love

1:12:17

the green chickens takes on everything It's

1:12:20

a really good person just to get on with anything

1:12:22

going on in the world and just see how doin

1:12:24

burg is analyzing it So

1:12:26

very happy to get him on the show. He's not there yet

1:12:29

with Bitcoin I think he's coming around though. I don't

1:12:31

know about you. I think he is I think he's gradually

1:12:34

becoming a Bitcoiner We will see time

1:12:37

will tell Anyway, I

1:12:39

am off to London now. I'm going to record a few shows

1:12:41

I've got quite an exclusive one. I'm recording

1:12:44

Thursday. Actually, I've got two massive shows. I'm recording

1:12:46

this week Two huge

1:12:48

shows ones. I'm really happy to get so I

1:12:50

can't wait to get them out We have also

1:12:52

got a three-parter coming out very

1:12:55

soon with Lynn Orden all about her

1:12:57

new book You're gonna love that Okay,

1:13:00

before we close out two things Rael

1:13:02

Bedford versus MK Irish in the next round

1:13:04

of the FA Cup on Saturday If you're in and

1:13:06

around Bedford, you want to come down and watch that with us? Let

1:13:09

us know great to see you and

1:13:11

also our live event in Australia WBD

1:13:14

live in Sydney and the Masonic Center

1:13:17

Willy Woo Nick Bartia checkmate, Rusty Russell,

1:13:19

Dan Roberts and the Legend Danny

1:13:22

Knowles will all be there you want tickets head over

1:13:24

to what Bitcoin did calm? Click on WBD

1:13:26

live and get yourself a ticket, right? Love

1:13:29

you all gonna go and watch England ladies in

1:13:31

the World Cup semi-final

1:13:32

and then head to London got any questions about

1:13:34

this Or anything else hit me up is hello what Bitcoin

1:13:36

did calm

1:13:55

You