This is a full transcription of the “Bitcoin Magazine Podcast,” hosted by P and Q. In this episode, they are joined by Ansel Lindner to talk about the Federal Open Markets Committee meeting.
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[00:00:05] Q: I wanna remind everyone, the tickets for Bitcoin Amsterdam are on sale. Use promo code BM live to get 10% off of your tickets today and come to the biggest party in all of Europe come party in Amsterdam with the Bitcoin Magazine crew, October 12-14. And now I am pleased and excited to introduce our guest for today.
I consider a friend, someone that I truly listen to all the alpha that he speaks. He is the host of Bitcoin and Markets as well as the “Fed Watch” podcast. He’s a writer for Bitcoin Magazine and the writer of the newsletter, Bitcoin and markets. Ansel Lindner. Welcome back to the show.
[00:00:39] Ansel Lindner: Hey, thanks Q for having me. Yeah, you guys, this is the best reporting on, on the internet for Bitcoin.
So that was a great little snippet from the outside of the courtroom with Hodlonaut. And I thought that was great. Thanks for having me.
[00:00:55] Q: No, thank you, Ansell. And I wanna reiterate if any people are watching this in concern that we’re not speaking to Craig Wright. We have put in a request to his team to interview him.
We are awaiting a response from his team. So, if you have a line to Craig Wright, please feel free to let him know. We would love to hear his side of the story as well. We are reporting this fully independently. There is no bias in what we are doing. We’re simply reporting the facts. If you think there is bias, my friend, that’s on you. But let’s dive in, Ansel. Yeah. Yeah. You pissed me off a few weeks ago and that’s why I was like, I need him on the show.
[00:01:27] Ansel Lindner: Oh no. Oh no.
[00:01:30] Q: So I wanna go back in time a couple of weeks and, I fell into the camp of, I guess everyone else. So therefore I’m in the wrong and you are most likely in the right, because you are the only person that I read and I read way too many newsletters in macro analysts.
Okay. Who really felt like Powell’s speech in Jackson Hole was more dovish than hawkish. And I really took what he was saying and maybe to a fault, I took what he was saying, literally, because this is the same man who looked us all in the eyes and said, inflation will be transitory with a straight face.
I wanna first just understand your interpretation of how and why you feel like Powell is actually going to be a lot more dovish than his. In that moment. Oh, well,
[00:02:23] Ansel Lindner: I mean, I don’t, I, I don’t remember the exact things that he said there. But it wa first off it wasn’t a policy statement, like, you know, coming from an F OMC meeting or something like that, where he’s saying exactly what they’re gonna do, what they’re thinking that the market had put a lot of weight onto exactly what Powell was going to say there.
And it was a short and sweet statement. He came in and got out. That’s what I remember specifically from that. I don’t remember all the different parts that were, I thought might be more dovish than hawkish, but for Powell, generally, Powell has pivoted once, twice before, right. He’s pivoted from tightening in 2018 to easing in 2019. And then in 2021, he pivoted very quickly from easing to tightening again. So he has pivoted out of the blue several times. And remember that first time in 2018, like he came out, he was a brand new chairman and he came out like in December of 2018 and he said, monetary policy is on autopilot.
They’re going to tighten, it’s on autopilot. The very next month, he paused, so he can switch on a dime and I expect that to happen again. So it’s just a matter of figuring out exactly when the market has deteriorated enough to the point where he is going to pivot on a dime if it is this month and he will, I think, continue to go along with that M.O.
[00:04:06] Q: That’s fair. I feel like there’s also a little bit, he was stealing that or actually that Ben Bernanke stole from him in that moment where he essentially said the Fed’s job is more about talking than actually following through. And we see the markets themselves have pretty much told Powell and the fed, Hey, this is what we want you to do.
Or at least this is what we think you’re going to do. And there haven’t been any surprises. I love James Lavish’s weekly reports in this most recent week. He gave a little bit of history and context on Volcker. And one thing that I think he missed and something that I think a lot of us I’m, I’ll only age myself as like I was never alive, I wasn’t even a thought in my parents’ mind when Paul Volcker was around doing what he did. But more were these, like social media and all that stuff aside, there weren’t these systems in place where predictive methods of, “Hey, these are what we expect the Fed to do.” None of that existed during V’s time.
So we had a little bit more freedom to come out and surprised the markets with such heavy-handed interest rate hikes. I’m not saying you’re expecting Powell is gonna go into that vein, but how much do you feel like the oversight that Powell has? Not just from the government, but from the public and how the public can see and think through everything they’re doing.
How much does that affecting the feds decision making process right now in your opinion?
[00:05:40] Ansel Lindner: Oh, that’s a very good question. I know back, I mean, I don’t remember. I’m too young to remember Voker but I, I do remember Greenspan actually not as an adult, but I remember maybe catching some highlights on the nightly news or something like that from Greenspan.
And he it was pretty serious back then. Like they would worry because he always would carry a briefcase into his testimony in front of Congress, you know, cuz they have to do those oversight hearings with the different houses in Congress. And they would look at where he, how he was carrying his bag.
Was he carrying it with his left hand or his right hand? Was he carrying it by the handle or was he carrying it kind of by the bottom, you know, that they would look at those things and detail out exactly like what they reading his body language. So that is it. It’s always been at least for the last, I would say 20 to 30 years.
It has been extremely. Focused on the chairman and what he’s saying and what he’s doing, interpreting things. Now they have bots that will read like the F OMC statement. It drops like a half hour before the press conference. And there are bots that are scraping that immediately and digesting it and putting it through you know, some algorithm that people have programmed to look for certain keyword and things.
And then they’ll trade based on that. What, what their, their algos their bots are saying. So there there’s, yeah, it’s, it’s heavily scrutinized. Does that answer your question?
[00:07:09] Q: No, it, it absolutely does. I, I, I think the just understanding how our society. Even just the market to themselves have changed from what they were like 40, 50, even 30 or 20 years ago is so important in understanding, I think some of the decision making processes here.
I’m, I’m curious though, what is it with the amount of noise that’s out there? And I’m gonna shamelessly plug Bitcoin and markets as being one of the, the highest signal newsletters out there. What are, what are the things that you are paying close attention to? I wanna dive into the merge later with you.
But what are other things that you’re really paying attention to right now?
[00:07:53] Ansel Lindner: Well, my view on the market has changed radically, I would say over the last four or five years. And I see that the entire global financial system. Is in a debt trap, right? Because it’s credit based money and you can’t solve a debt problem by adding more debt.
And that’s what they’re trying to do globally. So the, the end result of that is low growth and low inflation. It because you can always kick the can down the road by adding more debt. But that doesn’t mean that you can get out of your debt problem. Right? So it just kicks the can down the road a little bit, and you might have reflation, you might have some recovery in the market, but then it eventually given enough time, maybe 2, 2, 3, 4 years, you’ll go back into that low growth, low inflation environment.
And so when I look at COVID and the response, it was dramatic. Yes, it was very big, but it’s going to wear off and we’re going back to a low growth, low inflation environment. Until the only, the end of that is when we changed the money. So we had to go away from a credit based money back to a commodity money.
I think that will be Bitcoin. Personally, of course, gold bugs do have an argument, but I think Bitcoin is, is a better solution and it will be chosen by you know, people as they are starting to switch and look for a new currency, the Bitcoin is gonna be a more ready available option, I think, than going back to gold.
So. That’s what I think. I think these are just the market is gonna do what the market is gonna do. And we are in a low going back towards a low growth, long inflation until we change the money. So that’s how I kind of view everything in all of like all the developments in the space in, in macro or outta China or out of Europe or even the us, whatever.
I always view that with an understanding that the underlying trend that they’re trying to manipulate that they’re trying to get out of is low growth, low inflation. They’re trying to beat the deflationary boo boogeyman. And so that’s how I view view the whole state of the global economy.
[00:10:10] Q: I love that.
I think that’s so well put, I I need to, to strengthen your argument. Have you, have you had a chance ever to, to go and do a correlation between the M two money supply and the S and P 500?
[00:10:24] Ansel Lindner: I mean, I don’t remember. I probably have seen something like that in the past, but I haven’t seen it recently.
[00:10:29] Q: It it averaged, so it fluctuates, it’s never exactly stagnant over a long window of time for, for viewers. Who’ve never made a correlation on a stock chart. Mm-hmm , but with M two money supply in the S P 500, since 2008, the correlation is averaging about 0.92. So the way I interpreted that is for every dollar that our fed was printing that grew the S and P 500 by 92 cents on the dollar.
So. What terrifies me is we’re at sort of that curtain call moment where we can keep passing the buck. We can keep throwing some debt here or there, but we’ve kind of reached a point where all of our other rich friends, all the other rich countries can’t really afford. What’s going on. We’re seeing the collapse of the yen are seeing Europe.
Honestly, just try to be the 51st state in America at this point. Like that’s, that’s my pick that we’re gonna somehow have Europe be like a new form of America. And then you have, of course, just the ongoing debacles with Russia and Ukraine, and then an impending almost debacle, if you will, between China and Taiwan of all of the foreign countries and all of the problems that we hear internationally, is there one or two in particular where you’re like, this is a breaking point that will break a lot of people.
[00:11:55] Ansel Lindner: Out of all those things that you mentioned there
[00:11:57] Q: or anything that I’m not thinking
[00:11:58] Ansel Lindner: of? Well I think that like places like Europe are they’re in for structurally higher inflation. And it’s funny that I say that, but when I, I, you know, I’m bullish on the dollar because I think, you know, the economy in Europe is fundamentally different than the economy in the United States.
They’re heavily dependent. They’ve kind of, you know, cut off a couple, like, like a cut off their leg, their left leg and their right arm to try to be like this globalist globalist power. And now they’re finding out, oh crap, we are, our economy is screwed. So there it’s gonna take them decades. Maybe even as long as a century to recapture kind.
Self-reliance in, in Europe. And the way I think that is gonna happen is I think they’re going to move south. You know, over the last 500 years when you’ve had the Renaissance and into the enlightenment and stuff European culture has moved northward towards places, you know, Amsterdam, Brussels, that type of thing, and into of course, Paris and Berlin and all that.
But you know, the, the history of, of Europe is in the south, you know, Rome and Greece and Spain and places, even north Africa. So I think that the Europe is facing this structural problem. And I don’t think it’s gonna end in some acute fashion. I think it’s going to just be a gradual shift towards resources.
They need to get their hands on more resources. So that is a fundamentally different view than how you would have to look at the United States where the United States has all the resources it needs. It has an excess of resources. And so, the us is actually going to turn back internal where Europe kind of has spent the last 50 years getting their kind of European union in order unsuccessfully, I think.
And they’ve been kind of not worried about resources. Now they’re gonna shift and be more external. I think move south, move into north Africa in the middle east for a race for resources while the us is kind of pulling back and they’re, they’re coming home and not gonna be as big of a peacekeeper in the world.
Now, a lot of people don’t like that term peacekeeper, but you know, the us has since especially since the fall, the end of the cold war, but going back to world war II that we have. Made it so that there’s free trade possible in the world, the world, this has kind of been known as a, you know, a lot of people, well, I have done this, but a lot of people have said this long before I have is called it a PAX Americana.
So during the Roman empire, you know, right the beginning with Augustus and all that, they had what, after he became emperor, they had a PAX, what was PAX Roman. And it was all of the Mediterranean and this peaceful trade, this peaceful trade. And they really grew. They really boomed economically during that time.
Well, the us copied that for the entire world, the entire world was able to trade. And that’s why we’ve seen, you know, the most people taking outta poverty in the world. The most wealth created in the last 50 years than ever combined in, in the world, in the history of the world. And that’s under a free trade regime that the us was externally enforcing.
Now, if. Us is pulling back and Europe is stepping forward. You know, that type of dynamic can cause a lot of problems for a lot of places. You’d have to look individually at different countries. Like you could look at Egypt. Okay. Now let’s see what’s gonna happen to Egypt over the next couple decades.
If this backdrop of what I’m talking about is, is happening. What about Saudi Arabia? What about South Africa, Brazil? You know, you have to go individually through these countries and try to pull out what is gonna happen to them because the, the world is not defined anymore as a global free trade zone.
Okay. The world is gonna be defined much differently. It’s gonna be not, I don’t even call it multi-polar I call it multi-regional and there’s gonna be regional powers. So Europe is gonna dominate the north sea Baltic, sea Mediterranean sea. All that around there, that’s gonna become like the European zone of, of influence the us is gonna have the Western hemisphere.
Then you gotta look at to, to China. Well, what’s gonna happen with China. What is gonna be their region of influence? Is Russia gonna be with Europe or China? Like that’s the age old question by the way, too, about Russia. So you, you can’t just say there’s going to be one or two major events in the next five to 10 years that are going to dictate how this all plays out.
I think every country is kind of on their own and that’s scary. That’s really scary. I think for a lot of underdeveloped places emerging markets, I mean, telling in an emerging market, Hey, you, you no longer have the benefit of the WTO. You know, the world trade organization, you no longer have the benefit of all these other institutions that you can go to to get fair treatment.
Now you have to enforce fair treatment on your own. That’s scary for a lot of places. So, yeah, that’s how I would describe going forward in the world. You have to look at it more piecemeal and take one country at a time, one region at a time. And. Figure out what’s gonna happen with them.
[00:17:17] Q: I respect. And I appreciate that. And I will never again, ask to clump things up, especially to thank you for that. I wanna talk a little bit about, you know, my Homeland of Iran in the news a couple weeks ago, with their decision to settle international trades and accept big, they said cryptocurrencies, but we’re gonna continue to assume they’re implying Bitcoin.
They did settle a very significant international trade with a cryptocurrency that was undisclosed, but given the size of that transaction, we feel very confident in saying it was Bitcoin. And we also have now Russia passing through legislation saying they will accept. Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies to settle international trade.
I don’t need to really read anything more than these are two countries that have us and Western sanctions put on them and they are using these forms of these cryptocurrencies in Bitcoin in particular to circumvent sanctions. And I’m curious if you think there will just come a point where some Western allies may just decide and opt to.
We’re gonna settle trade with Russia because I have, and I’ll, I’m gonna use two specific examples. So we can only analyze these two countries. I wanna talk about the UK with Liz trust. Now being implemented at prime minister, you’re seeing the rising energy bills. You’re seeing people get to the streets and let’s throw out CCHO Zakia, because they have had some of the loudest protests and their citizens are calling upon their leaders to essentially get back to the table with Putin and Russia and come to some sort of an agreement to end the war, to decrease the price of energy.
And I’m curious if you think there could be a breaking point in either of these countries, for them to settle, trade with a country like Iran or a country like Russia, that’s currently under Western sanctions for the sake of their citizens.
[00:19:09] Ansel Lindner: Hmm. So break away and get rid of sanctions unilaterally for themselves is what you’re
[00:19:16] Q: saying.
Not necessarily get rid of sanctions, but rather just simply. Complete trade to receive more oil or energy, gas, and turn and settle it with whatever denomination that their trade partner sees fit. Strictly that nothing else, not necessarily saying they are off sanctions, but strictly to receive gas and oil.
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[00:22:10] Ansel Lindner: Oh man. Well, there’s a lot built into that question because you know, oil, yeah. Oil is a big product of Iran. It’s a big product of Russia. But it’s not the only thing in their economy. Right. They have a lot of tourism that goes in and out of different places. So they have a lot of foreigners going there.
Russians going to places like Cypress and, and other things. So there there’s a lot of travel that you have to worry about. There’s a lot of other business. So I know that I think there was. Out of like the hundred largest companies in Russia, 50 of them were German or something like that. So you, you have a lot of competing interests in both of these places.
And so it’s not as easy as saying, we’re going to get just, this one product is gonna be able to flow and you would even have to worry about, you know, well, what is that gonna do to the import exports of these different countries? And, you know, maybe that would be a cause and imbalance that would actually harm the UK, you know, or harm Chuck Zakia.
So I don’t know, I haven’t looked into that deeply. I think the UK, like, I don’t really care too much about who’s prime minister because the overall powers that be are are going to, and the, the situation political situation, the geopolitical situation in the world are gonna force their hand. So what the UK is looking at right now is the UK is looking at.
Going into this next few decades without an agreement with the United States. So they’ve been stiff arming, a major trade deal with the us. They stiff armed it under Trump. They’ve stiff, armed it so far under Biden where Japan has signed South Korea, I believe has signed there’s some other major countries that have signed this, these, these bilateral negotiations with the United States, but the UK has not.
So does the UK want to be European or do they want to be trade partners with the us? That’s the, the decision that’s facing the UK right now and possibly why their politics look so turned upside down. Why it’s they can’t make a choice why they’re going back and forth between different prime ministers.
So, but I’m not an expert on UK politics. So that’s about all I can say now for Czechoslovakia. When you look at them they are. Smack dab in the middle of Europe, they’re landlocked. They’re next to the largest economic engine in, in Europe, that being Germany. But they’re also next to Hungary, which has a populous leader.
And it sounds like Chuck Zakia is having a populist wave as well. And I talked about this on fed watch yesterday that Italy looks like they’re gonna be turning populist and Sweden looks like they’re turning populist. And what, what I mean by populist is just anti globalist with a anti EU type of proclivity, I guess.
So, You know, all of it’s Chuck Zakia, if they join this camp of kind of populous countries a block inside of the EU, I mean, we could see some major political battles happening and possibly the beginning of the end of the European union. I mean, it would take a long time, but that, that could be the start of that now saying that how does CZE Zakia then deal with all their trade negotiations within the European union, right?
Because they have free trade within the European union, free travel and all that stuff. Well, what happens if they start importing Russian oil, maybe through hungry or something and that, but they. Somebody else in the European union doesn’t like that Germany and or Poland. And they say, well, now you guys can’t travel to Poland.
These checks can’t travel to Poland or whatever. I mean, there’s all sorts of different things that can happen. So, I hope that was a complete answer. no,
[00:26:03] Q: that was, that was excellent. I, I love that. And I, I do think there’s, I, I love the way you frame it, framed it of does the UK want to continue to be trade partners with the us or with Europe.
And I, I do think that there are gonna be certain decisions that we’ve already seen. Countries like, like England make and we’re gonna start to slowly, see, I think other European nations make similar decisions of what’s right. For their citizens or what’s right for the powers that be to retain control.
I do have to, because you are on my show, it is pronounced Iran. I will always crack everyone who comes on. I wanna
[00:26:42] Ansel Lindner: also, what did I say Iran? Did I say that Iran or Iran? Oh,
[00:26:47] Q: what is it? I always Iran. I, I don’t even know how to pronounce it. Improperly
[00:26:52] Ansel Lindner: just okay. Iran,
[00:26:52] Q: Iran, Iran. Here’s something for just, I wanna always tell this story.
Iran currently sits on a estimated 157 billion with a B barrels of oil. This was documented in 2016. So with six more years of sanctions, as well as oil production, I think that number can safely be estimated as higher, but let’s just leave that number as is given the fact that this country cannot export its oil, but the countries that can make up OPEC OPEC countries produce about 28 million barrels of oil a day.
So that means Iran is sitting on over 5,000 times, the amount of oil that OPEC produces on a daily basis. I really would like to understand and just continue to hammer this. I know you’re not gonna have the answer to this, but like at a certain point, when are citizens going to wake up and really ask their leaders?
Why are you preventing this country from selling us a good. That is necessary right now where we find ourselves in the global stage. And it’s not just Iran, Russia as well. And my caveat to that is no one has kicked Russia out of OPEC. Plus no one has said Russia, can’t participate in that. And Russia’s finding these ways to circumvent.
They’re selling their oil to Turkey. They’re selling their oil and gas to China at a certain point. History to me dictates that we’re never gonna actually tell Russia they can introduce their oil directly to the markets and will use these middlemen. And as someone who my past life was literally just as a middleman.
Let me tell you the middleman liked to take a cut too. So are we accidentally introducing a middle man to the oil industry for no reason other than the egos of our political powers to then in turn, introduce higher oil and gas prices that will just stay higher. Yeah, absolutely. I threw, I threw a lot at you, so I’m sorry.
Yeah. Well,
[00:28:58] Ansel Lindner: in your, in your latter point there that’s exactly what they’re doing and that’s why I think the structural inflation or structural CPI, whatever of Europe is going to be higher than other places, because yeah, they’re doing things like putting a middle man in, in between the producer and the consumer.
So, one of the sanctions that this is just an example. So Russia is now exporting a lot of oil via tanker and these tankers, you know, that they need insurance, cuz you’re not gonna have a $5 billion tanker just putting around global oceans without insurance. So, the, the insurance market for these large vessels is like 95% out of the UK.
And part of the sanctions package that the Europeans and the UK wanted to put on Russia was not being able to get insurance for their shipping. Well, the UK ended up backing off of that and just said that they would only ensure they, they would ensure Russian shipping except when it’s coming to the UK.
So that was a, you know, very small percentage of total exports of Russia. Another thing that they said in the EU buzz that they couldn’t do business with Russian oil companies, but now that the they’re kind of going away from that saying, well, if you do business through a middleman, you can do business through a middleman.
You don’t have to worry that the, you know, the other third party is a Russian like problem or something. So, yeah, they’re, slackening those, those regulations. So that’s what I would say to your latter question now about Iran and stuff. I mean, there’s a. I do think sanctions have hurt Iran greatly or sorry, Iran, Iran greatly, but they it’s not like if the sanctions went away that Iran would be able to really come to prominence with their oil production because they have high costs of export, you know, they can only go out the Persian Gulf and they’ve been trying to make some pipelines, you know, through Iraq and through Syria to the Mediterranean that’s, that’s a possibility that they could do something like that, but they, they have higher export costs than say Russia, a pipeline directly to Germany, right.
That, that was like the lowest cost possible to get oil and gas into the European union was directly from the Russian pipelines. Iran has a roundabout way of getting it there. So there there’re always gonna be a slightly higher cost producer in that respect. Also if the us is backing off of securing this free trade who hates Iran?
Well, it’s not like Iran only has enemies because the us is there or the, because they have these ancients, no Iran has perpetual enemies. They Israel hates them and they hate Israel. Saudis don’t like them, even the, the, what would it be? The Sunis in Iraq. Don’t like the Iranians. So there, there is a lot of different things that could go wrong.
If the us didn’t protect world peace, right? Like the only reason why is Israel isn’t bombing places in Iran is because the us has told them, no, we want this free trade. We want the oil to flow. We want people to get rich. We don’t want fight people right now, but if the us is pulling back from that commitment Iran is going to maintain being a high cost producer.
So what do you think about that?
[00:32:27] Q: I’m I’m digesting this, I will say. You’re not wrong. Nothing you have said is a lie. I wanna unpack. However, that’s good. I wanna unpack not the Israel of it. I, that we need like six hours and I need a lot more juices in myself. Yeah. The Saudi Arabia of it all. I think there’s a, there’s a lot of history just within the middle east itself.
And all of these different countries are really just different tribes of the Persian empire. And I’m gonna sound like such an asshole when I frame things like this. And I apologize, even,
[00:33:05] Ansel Lindner: even Saudi Arabia, cuz they they’re they’re the bed wins. Long time past, like, I don’t think the Persian empire ever had the Arabian peninsula, did they?
No.
[00:33:15] Q: But that, and that sort of feeds into why a lot of the middle east doesn’t actually really align with or agree with Saudi and the way the Saudis have handled business. Yeah. And there’s always been, I think, an animosity between the Persian state or the Persian sort of region of the middle east and the Saudi peninsula and the Saudi region.
There is, I think, especially since the post nine 11 climate of the middle east, there’s a growing consensus in, I think Western educat. Persian descendants who will always point to and say, why is it that the west has aligned with the Saudi peninsula that has given them all of this oil and gas while at the same time I can point to and say, every single nine 11 Hijacker had a Saudi Arabian passport, they may not have actually been a Saudi Arabian citizen.
And I’m not gonna go down that rabbit hole with you. But it, there, there are certain questions where a lot of these other countries begin to sort of ask in question and it feeds more fuel into this fire of, well, fuck the Saudis. They fucked it up for everyone else. They now made. The whole world look at brown people in this light, in this way, when it’s in fact, just their class of citizens doing this, there’s always been history and animosity between Iran and Iraq.
I will tell you one of the most ridiculous stories that I literally sat there in the taxi. And I was like, you’re an idiot to my cousin, but I’ve very loudly said this, the Iran Iraq war, which happened in the eighties early nineties, saw George Bush S selling weapons of mass destruction to Iraq, to arm them against Iran during that war, which I’ve said, and I will continue to say is the reason why Dick Cheney and George was junior essentially said, oh yeah, Sadam was saying, has weapons of mass destruction because my dad sold them to him.
They never said the second part, but that was always implied. Iran won the Iran, Iraq war and in a taxi cab in Australia with my cousin who is from, from Iran, served in the Iran, military, which is no different than the Israeli mil military. Everyone must serve for a certain number of years, or you can pay your way out of service.
He turns to the Iraqi taxi driver and says to him, oh, you’re from Iraq, Iraq around war. We won, we won the war. And there’s, it goes back historically. It’s not just in this iteration in the eighties and nineties, you had it centuries ago. And this region drew its borders. Not because the rest of the world was creating nation states.
These borders that are found in the middle east are and have existed for centuries now. And it’s long been understood that this region is our region for our culture to continue to grow and prosper. And this region is yours to continue to grow and prosper. I think a, a big thing that worries a lot of people and draws back to your original point and the concerns of what happens when Iran is introduced and they have these adversaries and how are their adversaries going to react is do in large part, because we’ve never been reliant on this global system where we need oil from other countries or other countries rely on the imports that they bring in and then are able to pay for these imports by exports.
They send out to other countries we’ve never really seen so much reliance. There’s always been international trade as far back as the days of the silk road. However, the reliance on it was not the same as what we see today. That theory that so long and I’m spacing on what exactly it’s called Chris. If it rings a bell in your head, like throw it in the chat real quick.
But please, oh, also throw up SES. To his second comment. He’s so right. And I, I’m gonna, I’m gonna call this out in a second too. Yes, all you white people who call yourself Caucasian, stole it from my people, by the way, because the caucus mountains are in Iran and being Caucasian means you are from that region of the world.
So Caucasian does not mean white skin. You Anglo acks in motherfuckers. Sorry. That was aggressive, but I, I love that. Thank you se for pointing that out there is an economic theory though, that as we become more reliant on one another, we are less likely to wage war because we stand to benefit by being in business with one another.
It was, that was one of the largest economic factors into why we continue to trade with China. Despite the fact that China militarized themself during this growth period. I think there’s a valid argument on both sides of it that should Iran enter the fray of international trade. They may decide to use this excess wealth to militarize themself, further expand their nuclear arms sort of division or however the west wants to depict it.
I do think at a certain point, people just are going to say like, if they have something we want and we have money that they’re willing to accept for it, we’ve reached a point of causing pain on ourself for what is the payout here ultimately. And I, I think that straw is gonna break. I truly feel as though what we’re going to see is I keep seeing these, these headlines of Russia and Saudi Arabia looking to make a deal.
I was banging the drums back in January and February that, Hey, ping and Putin are going to Iran. They’re sitting down with the Iranian president and you have to be a fool to think that the questions that they’re not that they’re asking aren’t in the lines of, or along the lines of how, how has Iran handled sanctions?
How have you guys grown and prospered during these last 50 years or being hamstrung by Western sanctions, your country still operates. You are independent. You’re able to be, self-sufficient like, how do you do that? And I think we’re seeing Russia take some cues from the Iranian playbook and then just flexing their strength a little bit more and taking it even further.
I think ultimately at a certain point, there’s a lot of religious history that. Is the root of animosity in that part of the world. And I will never say, or call someone who is religious or believes anything, any religion or any spiritual text as being foolish or stupid until you start to say that that person’s wrong for their beliefs.
And I think we’ve reached a point in our modern society where there’s too much of, I’m assuming Muslim, you’re a Shiite Muslim, like you’re wrong. And because you’re wrong, I must now take arm and offense to what you say no different than the way a lot of the animosity we see between Jewish people and Muslim people, which isn’t the case always.
But I just wanna also point that out. The last thing I will point out in highlight is I never and will never forget the day the nuclear deal was signed. When Obama was in office and I was watching CNN for the announcement and they cut to Yahoo who was giving his speech and within 10, 10 seconds, he cursed at Obama.
He swore that Iran was gonna use this to attack Israel, attack the Western world. And then all of a sudden the screen went and did the like multicolor, like, oh, we’re having technical difficulties. I’m like, no, we’re not, no, we’re not like I wanna understand what this man has to say and what saying to his people, because we’re just adding fuel to this fire.
We’ve left. Country siloed off from the rest of the world. And we act as though, well, they’re ju we’re justified to leave them off. Then in all honesty, they’re justified to get upset. They’re justified to look at the rest of the world and be like, alright, dude, if Russia can do that and still sell their oil, like we didn’t invade any countries.
We didn’t throw bombs in the us. We didn’t curse out anyone. And so that’s sort of where I’m like, you’re right. Iran has adversaries. So does Russia. So does the us, so does Saudi Arabia, so does Israel, so does Iraq at a certain point, we have to, I think, remove this idea of, well, they’re gonna create nuclear weapons.
What if they’re just trying to, I don’t know, expand their nuclear arsenal to better understand how to harness nuclear energy so they can iterate and move on. Because at a certain point I am in the camp that nuclear energy is the future of energy. and everyone is going to every country. Every region is going to have access to harness this.
I, I think we’re shooting ourselves in the foot, but I have such a heavy and strong bias and I’m not naive to that.
[00:42:00] Ansel Lindner: Yeah. Well, I, wasn’t trying to say that Iran is, is special in that they have all of these problems with exporting their energy or taking advantage of their energy resources. Yeah, you’re right.
Russia has the exact same problem. And that is why, you know, Russia was really, they really do. They would rather be peaceful with Europe and send them energy. They’ve they’ve always had kind of a leaning towards Europe then say central Asia Russians have always kind of had that tie to Europe instead of with central Asia.
But going back to. Iran, sorry, the Iran, I, I wanna talk really quickly about why Saudi versus Iran. Well, it’s obvious that Iran has better geographics. Like the geographic area of Iran lends itself to being a power base, a base of power. And that goes back thousands of years, right? There’s always been a very powerful, centralized state there that has influence that has spread their influence all the way to the Mediterranean and pretty much all the way to the indu river, you know, going to the east.
So, Iran has always been a power base. Saudi Arabia has not. Saudi Arabia is a complete manufactured entity just off the us security guarantee. So, the us knew that they could control the Saudi the Saudis much more than they could control the Iranians. And so to keep kind of a peaceful chess board over there for a long time, they had to humble Iran and build up Saudi Arabia.
That was, I mean, this is outside of a moral judgment. I, I think that obviously lots of people died and there’s lots of bad and ills that came from it. But at the same time, there’s a lot of good, I mean, people have been pulled outta poverty that so many people have been pulled outta poverty over the last 50 years.
Relatively on a global basis. There have been very few war. This has been pretty much the most peaceful era in human history ever. Okay. So there’s fewer wars globally, fewer people dying in wars. That era is. We’re going back to a normal base case of more violence in the world. So you said that there was you know, a lot of people had reliance on free trade or they had free trade, like silk road and all that stuff, but it wasn’t such a big part of their economy.
And that’s true. International trade was like maybe 5% of people’s economies until the last 75 years when it became up to 60% of China, right up to 50% of Germany. All these places now are heavily, heavily reliant on globalization. So I think globalization is the aberration. It is the manipulated state of affairs and people it’s not natural for countries to rely 50% on international trade.
It’s natural for them to rely five or 10. Okay. So we’re going back to that world. Now, if you look around who is the most reliant on international trade, those people are gonna be the most humbled in the coming decades. And the people like Iran that is more self-sufficient maybe they’ve been forced to be self-sufficient, but they’re more self-sufficient they’re probably gonna benefit over this time because yeah, the sanctions are gonna get less, severe or less able to be enforced and they’re already self-sufficient.
So everything else that they do with international trade now is like a, a bonus, a cream on top. So I think when you look at the world that way, and you think, okay, globalization is going away, people most relying on globalization are gonna get humbled where people that are less reliant on globalization are gonna thrive in that, in that time.
So, yeah, that’s, that’s kind of how I look at it. And also you said about the kind of sectarian divide over there in the middle east. Well, we see that in our politics here. Conservatives and liberals, they, they, the
[00:45:55] Q: south, the west coast. East coast.
[00:45:57] Ansel Lindner: Yeah. They get violent, man. It’s, it’s get, there is some similarities in, in that case.
Yeah.
[00:46:03] Q: And I think I, I wanna unpack one thing and then we will absolutely stop and move on. I really, to simplify this the best way possible. Okay. One of the reason I think if you can look at Iran and the way the relationship they have with just the us and the west in particular, and then Western allies as a byproduct is the result of a failed attempt at inserting a leader into power in Iran that aligns with the west.
And there was an uprising and citizens did not want this leader to have the power anymore. And as a result, Iran essentially has been put into this corner of, well, it was a, a failed attempt at putting a leader that aligns with us and their new leader. Like really doesn’t like us. So I guess you guys are just now deemed bad guys.
That’s in all honesty, the simplest way. I think of establishing how and why Iran has the relationship with the west. It does now. It was a failed attempt at creating and inserting, inserting a leader that would align with what the west wanted and needed. And there’s a whole backstory with the fact that BP British Petro petroleum used to actually be Iranian British Petro patrol.
Actually it was yeah, P BP. It was Persian. British petroleum was something, it was owned by the Iranian state and the UK government. And then when the Iranian state stopped being as compliant and stopped, sort of giving everything to the British that’s when the British asked the us to step in and intervene.
Let’s talk the merge. We’ve been reaching out and calling pee nonstop. No one has heard from pee and he owes us shoe leather in his mouth digested in his stomach. If U see on the streets, you arrest him.
[00:47:54] Ansel Lindner: Maybe he did that and he’s in the hospital. has anybody checked the hospitals call the emergency
[00:48:00] Q: rooms?
We got, I I’m on the phone with his local police department as well. They said no missing person report can be submitted until 24 hours. However, the caveat is I have not heard or seen him since yesterday afternoon. So we’re coming up on that 24 hours and the police will be looking. But what are your thoughts like it happened, I guess I don’t really know.
I’m not paying attention. I’m just taking it from the bird app and people talking about it. It having happened so right. Are you surprised
[00:48:31] Ansel Lindner: that it went through? Well, the last couple weeks on my newsletter, I’ve been saying that. I’m leaning towards it going off. Okay. Because we didn’t see a it, all the stuff with the price and what you would expect from a buy the rumor, sell the news, which it’s kind of turning into a, sell the news a little bit here, but I didn’t see a huge pump pre pump.
And so that means that there wouldn’t be a huge crash afterwards, which meant then you could deduct that. Okay. Well that means that it went off. Okay. So when I was looking at the charts and I was trying to decide, you know, what are, what are the kind of lack of a pre pump? What does that mean? Well, I thought that that meant it was gonna go off.
Okay. Now, when you look down two, three weeks, maybe a couple months down the road, I think there’s gonna be some bugs. So, this is like just the initial step. This doesn’t mean that it’s going to maintain. Consensus, right? Cause it it’s supposed to be this consensus mechanism and yes, they transferred over to it.
But look, there’s probably gonna be a consensus bug in the next few months I would, I would guess so. That’s what I think is gonna happen. It’s it’s gonna go, okay. It’s gonna seem okay. Maybe there’s a little bit of sell off right now, but overall it’s a non-event and then couple months down the road, maybe we’ll have some sort of consensus bug that you know, blows everything up.
They will be able to patch it. They they’ll be able to blow, you know, sweep everything under the rug. But overall, I think this is kind of a death nail, at least that’s as a Bitcoin, or I think that this is a death now for Ethereum and it’ll just kinda lose relevance over the next few years. So that’s what I think
[00:50:11] Q: I wanted to also just get your, your take or your sentiment on a, how does this affect Bitcoin in, in just this immediate moment in time?
We have this conversation now, almost too often defending proof of work. I, I saw a statistic where now Bitcoin has a market share of 94% of all of the proof of work, blockchains and existence. Now, as a result of this merge, but what are your expectations? How is this gonna impact Bitcoin?
[00:50:39] Ansel Lindner: Well, the, the big thing is it took a lot of uncertainty off the table.
So I think it, you know, going into this, there was a lot of risk people thought there might be a blow up right away. There might be some, some consensus bug that won’t even let them go to proof of stake in the first place. So there, there was uncertainty around this whole event now that it’s over with I think there is gonna be less uncertainty and what, when that happens, usually that’s bullish for price.
So I think the, the underlying kind of fundamentals of the space are less uncertain. And so that’s gonna be bullish for Bitcoin. It’s not bearish. Let me put it that way. It’s not, definitely not bearish. And I lean towards this being bullish. Now, when it does blow up eventually, which I, I am kind of predicting sometime in the next six months or something, there will be some sort of bug then That could be bearish in that moment for Bitcoin, but it’s Ethereum has always followed Bitcoin.
And what they did by this event is they, they tried to decouple Ethereum from Bitcoin, or is that’s the effect of this whole thing is gonna be decoupling Ethereum from Bitcoin. So it’s gonna be less and less relevant for Bitcoin over the next year or so.
[00:52:01] Q: I wanna get a sense too, of just, you know, we’re, we’re witnessing in real time. I think Ethereum validate itself as a security. You spend some time in your most recent Bitcoin and markets newsletter discussing just how the ripple case is going to be setting precedent for how the SCC wants to handle these things going forward.
We’re seeing the jokes online of, oh, the fed in Ethereum, just merge together like this now is, is more state owned and control. Shout out and congratulations to Jeff Bezos for completing the successful Ethereum merge. Did we lose Ansel? Can
[00:52:42] Ansel Lindner: you hear me? We can hear you. All right. I might, I just, I tried to switch up some, a setting with my camera and I think I goofed it up.
Let me see if I can make, fix it again.
[00:52:52] Q: It’s okay. We’re talking about too much high brow stuff, so I’m sure restream was contacted by the state and said to, to stop any disparaging remarks against our newest Chico Ethereum, 2.0 another couple funny, a couple more funny things that I noticed online.
a cost of $58,000 USD, or I believe roughly. I don’t, I don’t honestly don’t I’m not gonna try to say how much in Ethereum, cuz I don’t know. I don’t. I don’t own any Ethereum. But that is the fee that is going, that is being charged to mint a new NFT on this new Ethereum merged blockchain. So how about those cheaper fees on a proof of stake network guys working out well for the 58 K gang?
I mean, this is wild to say the least I’m very, very interested to see how this plays out, how any, how, and if any minors decided to opt and stay and refuse the emergence, stay on the old Ethereum network and continue the proof of work. Blockchain will be interesting to see how I think all of those old NFTs that were minted on the proof of work blockchain how their value is derived with proof of stake.
Minted NFC. I don’t fucking know if I’m even saying it right, because I just, I don’t care to be in that Bitcoin casino. If you do best of luck, my friends your money and time is much more well spent understanding and helping to build the Bitcoin ecosystem and network. But that’s just one man’s opinion.
An there, there, ah, he’s there.
[00:54:27] Ansel Lindner: Yeah, my camera’s working now. Sorry
[00:54:28] Q: about that. No, you’re good. I don’t know if you have any thoughts on just some of the things I threw out, like for example, this, this cost of minting an NFT on, on the new blockchain or, or what, but
[00:54:40] Ansel Lindner: please. Well, no, I don’t have any thoughts on that because I haven’t really looked into what the, the new fundamentals for Ethereum are gonna be.
So that’s, that’s gonna become in probably the next month or so we’re gonna be able to digest all of that. But I wanted to talk a little bit about the ripple case that you said I wrote about on my newsletter and. I think this is very interesting. Okay. Because a lot of people are like, well, why doesn’t, you know, the S sec, well, first off Bitcoiners don’t want the S E C to go after anybody, but we realize that they exist.
Right. We realize the bad guys exist. And so you need to plan and just realize go forward and invest as if the bad guys exist. And people don’t seem to get that. But anyway, so the S E C, isn’t going after these alt coins really hard. Because it’s kind of tricky that they might lose in court. And that’s what they’re seeing here with ripple and they don’t wanna go through and set bad precedent.
They wanna set good precedent. So they’re, they’re using Howie. Howie was a court case decision from, I don’t know, I don’t know how many years ago it was maybe 75 years ago or something to talk about what makes a security. But how he doesn’t, it’s not really perfect for describing what alt coins are.
So I think what they’re trying to do is expand on the, how he precedent and make a ripple precedent. And so when ripple, when that court case that they’re putting a lot of time and effort into to form good precedent, When that comes down, then they’ll be able to apply that everywhere else. And in the same breath in the, or the same week, I guess, the Gessler from the SCC said that he wants Bitcoin to be under this CFTC, but no mention of Ethereum.
So, you know, I think Gensler is, he’s not a friend or anything of Bitcoin, but he is not an. He’s definitely not an enemy and that that’s good. I think he, he sees Ethereum for what it is. He sees these alt coins for what they are, but he’s just trying his best to not lose in court and form good precedent.
And to me that is almost like that’s a good sign that we have like a robust legal system that the legal system isn’t as corrupt as everybody says. I mean, it is in some cases like political cases, when you talk about one political party versus another political party, there’s gonna be that type of corruption.
But at least for right now in the financial sphere there, doesn’t it, you know, it seems to be working pretty well. And I think the S sec will end up winning this case. They’ll end up forming a precedent with ripple, and then everybody will be on notice with the alt coins. So what do you think of that?
Kind of run down there. You know,
[00:57:31] Q: it’s almost like so perfect for Bitcoin. That there’s no way that that happens. Like that’s, that’s my honest opinion. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? Like it’s like, that’s just too perfect. That’s that’s the dream comfortable in me. Yeah. Like I’m with you though.
I, I loved your take and I wanna unpack a little bit of like, you know, Gary Gensler being more friend than info to Bitcoin. I don’t know if I necessarily buy he’s a friend, but I do. I think buy to this idea that he may not actually be outright against Bitcoin yet. I think he, he might see, he has a better chance of winning certain cases against these Bitcoins first to then establish stronger precedent to then go and attack Bitcoin.
Now. We try our best to, to separate some of these things, but I wanna bring up the ho not trial and yeah. Yeah, there is, there is a, a very key thing. I think that is why so many Bitcoiners are so passionate about this case because it’s calling into question whether or not Craig Wright is in fact to Toshi Nakamoto and what would happen if the court in Norway is to find Craig Wright to be Sutoshi Nakamoto.
Well, now you all of a sudden have a centralized point to point to and say, this person can and has in the past controlled and manipulated this cryptocurrency. Then you can start to see a strengthening argument for. Some lawmakers who maybe don’t understand Bitcoin as well, who maybe wanna try to reach a little bit further, not necessarily use the Howie test perfectly, but just reach and say, well, we’ve gone after all these other cryptocurrencies built on blockchains.
Ethereum is under our control. So either we go after Bitcoin or we put Bitcoin under our control as well. I’m, I’m more worried that in each iteration of an S C win, they strengthen their case to eventually come after Bitcoin.
[00:59:37] Ansel Lindner: Well, what would they do to come after Bitcoin?
[00:59:42] Q: I think the most, the most commonly discussed attack, in my opinion, it would be something as simple as what you saw. I believe it was FDR who announced like, Hey, for the, for national security reasons, everyone needs to turn over their gold mm-hmm for national security reasons. Everyone needs to turn over their Bitcoin.
A statement, as simple as that, we will issue you something back. We will send you the CBDC to credit you for every Bitcoin. Every sat you send over to us. I think something as simple as that would be an attack on Bitcoin whether it be a legal attack or, or not remains to be seen. I also think, and something that you talk about in your, your most recent article is, is the ETF.
And I think something that we don’t, we yeah. Kind of hear on the outskirts of Twitter get discussed, but there’s a reason why the S E C loves the gold ETF it’s because the, it can and has in the past manipulated the price of gold as a result. But I do think there is a degree of. The inability to manipulate Bitcoin’s price is a larger factor into why the ETF has not yet been approved than anything else that has been said, because I don’t think they can ever outright come out and say like, dude, this will be a brilliant idea.
Absolutely. There should be a Bitcoin ETF. Bye. The only reason ETFs really work is because we actually kind of can like fuck around and manipulate it. So it doesn’t like go over the rails too much and they can’t outright say that. Cuz then it calls into question every single ETF that’s ever been introduced for a commodity in the history of ETFs.
That’s just my take, but I’ll take the tenfold hat off now and give you the mic
[01:01:25] Ansel Lindner: Well, yeah, I think so you said there they could do a what was it? 31 0 8. I think that was the executive order where they yes. Seized all the gold. Well, first off they, they didn’t seize all the gold, right? That you could still have numismatic coins and.
They, they took stuff that was easily accessible in certain types of accounts, but they didn’t go into your home and, and tell you with your stack under your mattress, that you had to turn in your gold coins. So there’s a little bit of mythology around that event. I think, plus, you know, if they did that today with Bitcoin, I think they would spook the market for lots of different things.
I mean, do you actually own the stocks in your brokerage account? You know, like all these things, if they did that to Bitcoin, they could do it to a lot of other things. And so, I, I think that kind of weighs on their mind too about being maintaining confidence in the system. Now I’m not saying it won’t happen, but I think it’s much less likely than what people think.
And so building up to that I don’t know, man, I think maybe it’s my old age. Because I’m over 40 now. Maybe it’s in my old age, I’ve become less conspiratorial. And I think that they, you know, Getler, even though they, they are unable to do it. Okay. So their, their main claim is that they are about consumer protection, right?
The S sec, now they are unable to do that. Obviously look at all points. They’re just, it’s 99.9, 9% scams that want to take your money. And the S sec does nothing, right? So there is no real consumer protection in the S C, but I think they kind wanna be, I think they, I, I think a large majority of people that work at the S C just like a large man, I hate to say this.
And, and you guys, you know, this, this wasn’t my opinion, 10 years ago when I was all into like anarchist stuff. But if you, you, there is 10% of cops are bad. I would say. 90% are good, but, and, and you could go down the road of, oh, well, those, those good cops need to rat out the bad cops. They need to take care of their own house, or if they don’t do that, then they’re bad as well.
And the SCC, so 10% of the S C people are bad. 90% are good. That’s, that’s kind of how I break this down. And I think that most people in the sec, and I think Gensler’s one of them, they actually want to do their job properly. I don’t know if they can do it. But I, I don’t have, like, I don’t think there’s like a malicious intent overriding their actions.
So what do you have to say about that queue? I want to hear a proper response to that
[01:04:02] Q: of, of,
I just think ultimately there’s too much. Power and control that has been given to some of these government entities. And it, it goes across the spectrum. It’s not just the federal government level. It’s not just state government level. It’s all the way down to your local government level, where there is corruption.
I won’t dispute whether it’s 90% or good, 10% bad or, or 10% good. 90% bad. That’s not. Yeah, yeah. Necessarily. I think where, where my disagreement with you lies, it’s more about the duties and obligations, cuz somewhere along the way. all these sort of state sponsored jobs. Cause that’s what they are.
They are state sponsored jobs and employment. Yes. They were meant to be done in public service as almost a part-time position or role, whether it be an elected or an fuck. I can’t think of the word right now of, of just being appointed. Yeah. Appointed. Thank you. Whether you’re elected or appointed, didn’t really matter.
This was meant to be a public service somewhere along the way. We, we lost that plot. I would argue it happened somewhere in the late 18 hundreds, early 19 hundreds, when a lot more money started to flow into America. And as, as a result, those with money decided and kind of understood how they could use that money to make rules that benefited them.
I think the most famous example that I will always draw on is John D Rockefeller and a lot of people’s favorite president Teddy Roosevelt and Teddy Roosevelt. Would very loudly get on the campaign trail, say in the speech down with standard oil, like this is a monopoly that has too much control and I wanna break them up.
You would say this in a speech, walk off the stage and then collect a check from standard oil to help run and finance his campaign. And that’s why Teddy Roosevelt actually never broke up standard oil. It wasn’t until Taft who came in after him, who never took money from standard oil and actually followed through on those campaign promises.
So that to me is the perfect signal of that breaking point of politicians, of being in public service or being in service of those who help finance and push you forward. I just think there’s, there’s gotten a point where there’s so much now money involved and turned so much power that it just. It’s we lost the plot a long, long time ago.
And rather than let’s just like put a couple band-aids here or there, I, I haven’t gotten old enough. I don’t have a family to, to settle down and not call for absolute anarchy. I’m sure, sure. Certain things will, will cause me to grow up and think things through a little bit more rationally. But for the time being, I, I personally am in the camp that to tear it all down and rebuild it.
Like, I I’ll say this in a way for, for the coders out there to better understand. There are times when you code and, and you are programming where there’s just, there’s somewhere, there’s a mistake in the code and, and you’re having too hard of a time to understand and find it. And for time purposes, you are often better suited to just redo the entire code rather than go line by line rerun every little point to find that point of failure.
And I think we’re at that point where to go line by line on all of the different powers the state have and say, Hey, actually, you have too much power here. You have just the right amount of power here. You should actually have more power here. That would be in my opinion, a waste of our time. And we’re better suited to tear it all down and, and build back something better.
[01:08:03] Ansel Lindner: Yeah. You make a, I did
[01:08:04] Q: say those fucking slogans and, and I hate it. but that’s
[01:08:09] Ansel Lindner: well, you make a brilliant point about it being too big and I, I think along the lines of being big is it’s inefficient. And I’m not saying by my arguments that, you know, I think that they’re not malicious, that they’re trying to do consumer protection.
I think that they are, are unable to do that. And even if they were, they would be more inefficient than a market solution. So I, I don’t know, it’s kind of a nuanced position, but I totally agree with you now. I think also man corruption, one of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is, you know, Argentina, they are extremely blessed geographically.
They have a lot of natural resources. They have a lot of agriculture. They have a beautiful bay. They’re a beautiful water ocean access. Relatively easy to defend, right? Cheap to defend. There’s not a, a lot of armies nearby that they have to pro protect themselves against. So Argentina should be a super, super rich country.
and it was until a hundred years ago or so, but I think that a lot of times when you have natural resources like this and, and you have like this you’re blessed geographically, like Argentina, and maybe even like the United States is that you have this caring capacity for corruption that’s higher than other places like you, you, so the corruption in the us might be the same as say the corruption in Russia today, but the us can hide it better because we have a, you know, a, a higher corruption care capacity.
I don’t know if that makes any sense, but perhaps know we’re just going in a pendulum from overly corrupt to less corrupt back to overly corrupt. And that’s kind of how I see the world is is you. Fluctuating between extremes. And so you just have to invest accordingly, put yourself in a place, put your family in a place that they can ride the wish of this natural ebb and flow of human history.
I I’m 100, I’m kind of like the antithesis antithesis of a Marxist because Marxists think that they need to redefine history. Then we are in control of writing our home own history or rewriting history. I think we have control whatsoever over history and we are just riding the waves. So you need to identify those things and put yourself in the place where you can benefit.
That’s one reason why I moved to Florida here because I thought it was going the right direction. Now I moved here before COVID and that was kind of a happy accident that they were so great. COVID but I was trying to put myself, my family in a place of that was. The economy was gonna boom, versus a place where the economy was stagnating in the United States.
So, you know, you just gotta do what’s best for your family. Try to ride the waves and invest accordingly.
[01:11:10] Q: So well said. And so I wanna now touch on the white house, the white house report. I wanna come at it from a different angle though. We talk a lot about, I think the I’m gonna be nice right now.
I’m trying to be nice, the foolish and sometimes silly remarks that politicians who very clearly do not understand proof of work or Bitcoin make. And
at a certain point, there will be a decision made. I got into a little bit of a personal debate with my dad where I kind of pointed out. I was like, okay, fine. The U the us wants to ban Bitcoin mining. Fine. Bitcoin’s not gonna go away. It’s just gonna go to the next jurisdiction that will let it, and it will be an almost failure to capture the competitive advantage that the us can have in Bitcoin.
My question is, is there actually in the same way that we talk a little bit about like, what is left unsaid by some of the statements outta the government, do you think there’s something unsaid and a realization that has been made at least by the, this white house, by this white house in particular to say, Hey, Elizabeth Warren, we, we hear you.
All of you crazy idiots who are like, oh, energy’s bad. We hear you. But also. We bigger picture guys, there’s a bigger picture. Do you think there’s some of that? Am I giving, am I giving this white house a little too much credit?
[01:12:46] Ansel Lindner: Yeah, I think that, I mean, it’s my, the way I view this situation is kind of, there’s a lot of different stakeholders here.
So, you know, in the past there, like if you would’ve done this 10 years ago you know, the, this was a conversation with Bitcoin mining 10 years ago in the United States. We, we probably would’ve had different outcome, but right now there’s kind of like this dual between globalist world economic forum folks and wall street.
That’s how I, I do see this, this American business versus the globalists. And that’s how I see this shaping up. Now, why was the Biden. Executive order like friendly, relatively friendly to Bitcoin mining. At least that’s how I read it. And that is because, you know, they’re having to pick their battles right now.
And I think the, the business interests love Bitcoin mining. Just look at what who’s doing. A lot of flare capture now in North Dakota in, in some of these places around, around the country, big ass oil companies are getting involved with Bitcoin. And you just said, who breaking up standard oil with Teddy Roosevelt or Taft or whatever?
Well, guess what big ass oil has a lot to say in Washington, DC. They have a lot of pole with the president. And so there there’s this competing interest between making the globalist happy and Davos with their ESG stuff and making the American businessman happy and American wall street and American banker.
Right? So there’s these competing interests directly that. That meet right in this executive order. And I think you can see that. And for me, the American businessman is winning. I think populism is winning. I think globalism is on the decline. Davos, the Marxist sitting in Davos are losing and we see that everywhere.
We talked about this yesterday on fed watch with Sweden, with Italy. You’re talking about CCHO Slovakia here a little while ago or Slovakia, I think. And we see this in the us with midterms, a quote, unquote, red wave on, I don’t know exactly what’s gonna happen with that, but you know, there is this movement towards anti-global.
That’s out there. So we see this right in this executive order that that’s how I would like phrase it or frame it to read between the lines. Like, what are we, what does this mean? Gimme a framework to understand this executive order, what this exactly means. That’s what I would say. I would couch it within this, over this global competition between populism and globalists and in the us populism is the American businessman in wall street.
So what, what do you gotta say about that? There? Q
[01:15:34] Q: you’re so you’re so right. And then also so wrong. My friend and the reason you’re wrong, I’m gonna start there. Is there one in the
[01:15:44] Ansel Lindner: same? What globalists and American business
[01:15:48] Q: they are because American businesses, especially the, the CRE D creme of American businesses are global businesses.
They are not American only businesses name, any of any company that comes to mind as a top tier business. And I will be hard pressed to find an example of one that is strictly us only. Oh yeah. We can go oil and gas, Chevron, Exxon mobile operations, all over the world. Any of these tech companies from Microsoft, Google, apple down to whatever software as a service company, we wanna talk about consumer goods, Nikes or shit.
I don’t even know any food or beverage thing. Pepsi, Coke, Adida, like. It’s all, they’re all global. So I actually think that their interests are aligned with sort of these, the, the push of these global elites and what they are doing. So that’s where I actually think you are, you are off base a little bit there.
I think there are some smaller businesses that are, and I think this is a very, very key thing, businesses that are rooted locally and keep local values have been able to cement themselves and prioritize. I think their local operation and as a result are their business and value is our antithetical to what globalists want.
And that is sort of, that is where I’m looking for for the fight against. Example example of this are local farmers who are now using and utilizing the internet to reach out to other customers that may not necessarily be in their local purview, but are able to share that share the same values, and then they’re able to conduct business and trade with them as a result.
I think there’s a degree of this where there isn’t us versus them. And I think we’re seeing it play out in real time a P and I joke, but it’s not a joke. It’s more of a coping mechanism of like, yeah, there’s gonna come a point where
I don’t wanna say something insensitive, but there’s a lot of history and precedent from both movements from the left and movements from the right that have called upon something to happen. And. The, the counterargument was, it’s not gonna stop there and I’ll use two examples.
I’m gonna get misquoted. People are gonna try to yell at me, fine, fuck it. These type of things need to be said. The argument against gay marriage was not gay. People don’t deserve the right to marry. There was a larger argument against gay marriage saying, it’s not gonna stop there. It’s going to get a, to a point where they are indoctrinating our children.
Unfortunately, whether or not you agree with that narrative, that narrative has grown mind you. This was the argument against gay marriage that was used in the eighties and nineties, not in 2010, not in 2020. That was the base case back. Then look at where we find ourselves with this issue today. On the other side of the coin, the argument as to why Roe V.
Wade should not be overturned, was not of the skies of women deserve this, right. Babies deserve this, right? No, it’s none of that. It is the press. It sets, it will not stop there. What is the next things that they will look at in interracial marriage? What will, what will they look at next? Right. For gay people to be married or not.
And then sure enough, in the decision that the Supreme court submitted, they said that they wanna reexamine and that things like gay marriage and interracial marriage should be reevaluated. Now, like these concerns validate my, my claim in saying it won’t stop there. It will always be well. You’re not allowed to buy meat in the month of August is gonna turn into, we will never sell meat again.
You will only buy synthetic meat all the way down to, well, now you only have the choice to buy bug based proteins. It’s less about, Hey, whether this is right or wrong and understanding more holistically that history has proven. Once we give an inch, they will take the mile. Yeah. And I think that’s what this fight has turned into.
I hope that answers your question a little bit. I, I deviated a lot, I think.
[01:20:46] Ansel Lindner: Yeah. But I mean, I don’t know about all these, the political examples, I would say, like, you know, they, the Supreme court has something to say about constitutionality of things. They can’t enforce things or make laws or anything like that, but as, as taking it back to the ESG, Business interest versus globalists and stuff.
I mean, just ask the German people if ESG is good for business. I mean, so when I’m talking about the American businessman, The businessman of say Germany, they know that ESG is stupid and it’s not gonna work out. So, that’s the competing force here. You can say that the major companies are corrupt, they’re international and they’re global companies, but at the same time, they understand that these ESG globalist policies are not a way to make.
You know, go woke, go broke is the saying. And now we’re even seeing things like CNN, they’re firing half of their, their workforce. And they’re going back to their good old days of in the nineties when they were relatively nonpartisan. We see things like Netflix firing a bunch of woke people and going back to non woke programming.
I mean, you just see this up and down the line. So it’s, it’s a pendulum swinging back the other way. People know that this kind kind of globalist woke ESG you know, post-modern relativist. Morality is not a good, good for business. And so that’s what I mean is the American businessman knows that this stuff isn’t good for business.
And that’s where the fight is. Does that make sense?
[01:22:31] Q: That makes total sense. And I’ll even, I’ll, I’ll throw this statistic to strengthen your argument. Cause I, I do agree with, with that If you look at the ESG rankings by, I don’t know which one of these like three letter, three letter globalist organizations puts out Sri Lanka, which recently collapsed by trying to follow all of these ESG things to, to keep their businesses compliant with the money that the IMF gave them was like at a 91 or 92% ESG rating was like one of the top countries, as far as ESG ratings goes the USA, you know, we are, we are the leaders of the world.
We are the like people should follow our example. Our example has us ranked all the way down in like the 50% range. So like, I think there’s a degree where us businesses have like, Understood that actually this ESG stuff will inhibit what they do and things like carbon credits have become so normalized to help certain businesses operate because these Western businesses have the money to lobby against some of these legislature and or legislature.
I don’t know. They have the money to lobby against some of the legislation that gets submitted and in turn are able to create legislation that benefits them while not necessarily adhering to these policies and, and telling others, you guys have to do it. No, no, no. Like, trust us, we made this mistake, but it wasn’t a mistake.
We made those decisions because it helped our country grow and prosper. And then now we’re at a position of luxury to be able to maybe cut some of those things back to help this ESG narrative. If that is the goal, which unfortunately I just don’t think it is. That’s that’s sort of the way I’m interpreting a lot of this ESG stuff.
I do think that they wanna push it through, but I think this is an example of these are rules put in place much like many of the laws they got put into place in the early 19 hundreds, by the likes of the standard oil crew to say like, oh, well, like, yo, we learned as we did this, that like, you shouldn’t let other people do this.
Like, you shouldn’t let other monopolies exist, but like, we’ll break ours up. But like not really wink, win, like. The continuum, like I’ll, I’ll bring it to present day. All of these hearings that we hear about like big tech going in and like calling upon Congress, like you should make these new laws, you should pass through this legislation to like curb techs, sort of power and reach.
Why do you think they’re doing that? It’s not because they wanna decrease their power it’s because they wanna cement their place. They don’t want another competitor to come in. And I think these ESG rules are exactly that the developed nations are like, yo, if the whole world’s developed, we’re probably gonna lose some of our share.
So maybe if we create these little boundaries, these little hurdles, no one else is gonna be able to, to get up to our level and we can maintain and keep our place. So I don’t know if that, I don’t know. That’s my take interpretation.
[01:25:50] Ansel Lindner: Yeah. Makes sense. It’s just a, a different way to look at it.
[01:25:54] Q: But, and so Chris is how you guys, we are, we are at that time of day.
I wanna hand it off to you for any final words or remarks. We talked a lot about a lot of different things today. Is there anything we didn’t get to touch on that you wanna highlight really quickly?
[01:26:06] Ansel Lindner: No, just thanks for having me on. Thanks for supporting my content on fed watch. You guys have been gracious hosts you know, hosting me on Wednesdays at 3:00 PM.
Eastern for fed watch. Really love hanging out with you guys and, and doing that with CK. So thanks so much for that. And thanks for having me on here today. Maybe fleshing out some of my stuff. Some of my thoughts that people are unfamiliar with, and if you guys wanna keep up with me, go to Bitcoin and markets.com.
You can get the free newsletter there, or you can even sign up to support my content. I have a telegram and of course I’m also on Twitter at Ansel lender. And that’s it guys. Thank you. I cannot
[01:26:43] Q: stress enough, go subscribe to Bitcoin on markets. The work that Ansel puts puts together for this is truly incredible.
It’s it’s a free newsletter guys. Like you’re just gonna get smarter reading it. Before we go, I do wanna remind everyone. Tickets for Bitcoin Amsterdam are on sale. Now use promo code BM live to get 10% off of the tickets ticket price will be going up soon. Do not snooze. You will lose. And of course, lock in your subscription to the print mag today.
The next edition is going to be coming out shortly. You will want your annual subscription. We’ve released this print magazine once a quarter, so that are four issues every year. The work that went into this censorship resistant I’m resistant issue. I’m so proud of my colleagues overall on the print side, who put this together, this is thick, thick Almanac.
And of course, Chris, can I, can I go. No, no word on P guys, but because P’s not here, should I give you a dramatic reading? Should I, or is Chris just gonna like pull the mic and like wrap hard really quickly while I’m doing the dramatic re reading. But I digress. Get your copy today. Use probably called BM live to get 10% off of your subscription or anything you see at the Bitcoin magazine store.
That’s the wrap. We’ll be back tomorrow. Stay humble.
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