Confirmation That Fort Knox is EMPTY?! | Bitcoin Banter

We're never going to get the gold audit. There's too much leverage in letting the world believe you have the gold. This is such an old convoluted story of theft and corruption and pollution and every other disgusting thing you want to add. The only thing that these firms at Wall Street can manipulate is the fiat denominated price and your conviction if you have weak hands. They cannot manipulate the protocol. You've got the government, which is the arsonist and the firefighter.

They're playing both roles. They're forcing everybody up the risk curve by inflation. If you don't want to be a casualty of these collapses, well, you just have to be playing on a different chessboard. And the only one that protects you against all of this is Bitcoin. Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of Bitcoin Banter. I've got Greer and Tony, as always, and we've got a special guest, Mr. Adam Hudson of Unemployable Media. Adam, thanks for joining, my friend. Let's jump right in here.

So this is big news. The Epstein files have been sort of the headline for the last couple of weeks.

And one of the findings has been that a an IMF chief was jailed for discovering that all U.S. gold is gone. So the Fort Knox effectively empty. And so he's charged with some sex crimes and that sort of thing, which, you know, to be fair, IMF guy, probably true, but also very convenient that the whistleblower has to be put away. So they stopped talking about the fact that we don't have any gold here in the United States. Adam, as our guest, I would love to hear your thoughts on this story first.

Look, I have zero surprises about this and I have zero surprises around the playbook of charging him with sex crimes for being a whistleblower because as soon as the normies hear sex crimes, that's all they hear. and whatever comes after that has been discredited. I had this argument on stage in the Nomad Capitalist event.

I gave a talk in Kuala Lumpur last year and Tony was in the audience and on stage with me was a Bitcoin vault company and a big, sorry, a gold vault company and a gold saleswoman who basically is like a Peter Schiff. And I had this exact argument about verifying gold, how, you know, the complexity of moving it. It just once again shows that it's not verifiable.

CZ gave that gold bar to Peter Schiff on stage late last year, just to verify that even a gold expert can't verify whether it's gold when he's physically handing him a gold bar, let alone is it actually there? Because if it was there, of course, they would have, or they should have. As Trump and Musk were saying, we should audit Fort Knox. That never happened, and this is probably why. So again, Bitcoin for the win.

yeah i think uh i think the obvious answer is they someone said hey elon we don't have the gold so let's let's kind of put that to bed and never talk about it ever again uh tony i i assume you're unsurprised at this news uh although i i guess to be fair like you know we we haven't seen fort knox so maybe they have some maybe they don't have as much like it's we still just don't know really the story here what's your take the thing is man this is such a like an old convoluted story

of theft and corruption and collusion and every other disgusting thing you want to add into that mix. I mean, gold, you know, maybe 5,000 years was probably a lot more valuable than it is today, you know, considering it got the human touch and they sort of like corrupted it and destroyed, you know, any form of value it had. And here we are today. We don't even know who has it.

You don't even know who's stolen it. You don't even know if it's real. You know, it can be manufactured, mined, you know, from other planets, from, you know, every once in a while you hear a country discovering trillions of dollars worth of gold. And it definitely, you know, does not work in today's world, you know, the digital world that we're in, and especially the one that we're headed towards with AI. I mean, gold, this is like a fax machine in this world, man. It's just not going to work.

But, you know, because it's got, you know, the advantage of time, that's what most people understand and this is this is where we are we are at the phase of limited understanding and gold is sort of like an autopilot reflex but you know it's going to become very clear um not i don't even i don't think it's going to even take that long for it to become that clear that this is not the way forward and the only way is bitcoin in full self-custody for those that want to preserve

their generational wealth otherwise you know there are going to be a bunch of folks using bitcoin with counterparty risk and, you know, nothing really changes for them. Greer, conspiracy theorists aren't wrong. They're just early. And now it seems we're right on time. What do you think? Yeah, I think you're right. I think there are two things that I think about when I hear this story. We're never going to get the gold audit because there's too much leverage

in letting the world believe you have the gold. That's the whole ruse. You know, we don't need to prove it to you. Just imagine that it's there. And I think that's been working for a while. But this article is like from 2011. I remember reading the news about this ambassador who was who was picked up on these crimes. And it's just amazing to find out that he knew or found out what we've, you know, kind of thought all along.

But the second thing is this proves to me why gold will never be the global reserve asset. As much as the gold bugs want it to be, it's just not going to happen. And the reason is, is it because it requires too much trust and there's not going to be a gold backed digital. stable coin either for the same reason. You cannot trust that the gold is actually there. And even if it is there, you have to melt it down in order to verify it, which is ridiculous. So I

think that we're seeing the world kind of scramble for some semblance of security. And so the first thought is to go back to what you know. This is like sort of a dog returning to its vomit. But the truth is that Bitcoin is the only trustless asset that you can hold. So I think eventually the world is going to figure it out. But this news, like you said, it confirms all the suspicions that we already had.

Yeah. Did we talk about on Banter a week or so ago, that guy who was talking about gold can be used as a medium exchange? And he had giant wire cutters to break up the bars of gold into little pieces or something. Like it's comical the lengths you have to go to to imagine gold as a medium of exchange in a global digital economy. But anyway, let's move on here.

So this is a big one. The court appointed administrator winding down Doquan's Terraform lab sues Jane Street. We talked about Jane Street on the last one, I think, alleging the trading giant used insider information to front run trades and accelerate the crypto firm's collapse. damages are being sought after Jane Street against Jane Street and senior executives. So they help break the the peg of their stable coin. Grew, I'll let you take this one first.

I mean, this is unsurprising, not necessarily Jane Street, but like that Wall Street would be, you know, manipulating markets and don't care about the fallout of this sort of thing. What's your take? My take is that Jane Street, if this is true, you know, they're at it again. What are they doing? They're providing an opportunity for you to get Bitcoin at a lower price. The last time this happened, Bitcoin plummeted down to $16,800 and it stayed there for a while. You know, I

remember picking up Bitcoin at $17,000 or $22,000 and it's happening again today. You know, Jane Street is alleged to be the one who does the 10 a.m. slam, sells Bitcoin to buy it back cheaper. And you might be looking at the price and wondering what happening but the secret is they want Bitcoin And so you should too So I would say thank you Thank you for letting me stack at lower prices You know I look forward to the day when

Bitcoin's, you know, 250,000 or more. But until then, I'm going to get as much as I can, every opportunity that these institutional investors provide us. So, you know, this is this is a good thing, depending on your perspective. Yeah, I agree with that. But like by the dip, I mean, there's signal here that they want Bitcoin. The thing for me is the real takeaway, like the lesson

for people, I think is Bitcoin is still on this journey of maturation. And it is somewhat trivial still, even for one firm to manipulate the market, it appears, and to help bring down entire cryptocurrency exchanges. You need to take self-custody. It is only yours. It is only secure if you don't have any of this counterparty risk that exists within the broader crypto industry. Just don't play around with it.

Tony, I'll let you take this one next because I have a feeling you would concur with my assessment. Yeah, of course, man. And for me, the silver lining here is that I'm hoping more people finally see that, you know, these institutions, they're not your friends. I mean, a lot of people welcome them into the space thinking it's going to be, you know, the jackpot ticket, right?

But these players, they see the prize. They know Bitcoin is it. And they have infinite amount of resources to manipulate and play all these games that separate the ignorant from their coins. And this is exactly what we're seeing. It started many years ago. It's still happening to this day. That volatility is definitely not organic. I mean, a big part of it is due to sheer mass ignorance.

But of course, you know, because of because of the existence of that ignorance, it doesn't take much for a player like this to pull a few strings and really amplify the illusion of everything going sideways. Right. And so focus on where the puck is going, man. Understand why you're here and why people are so emotional about Bitcoin. You know, it's because, you know, this is going to become the future of money.

It's just that the world doesn't understand this yet, except for a small percentage that do. And that small percentage, unfortunately, has the means to drive everybody else crazy until we get to that stage. Absolutely. Adam, what do you think? Oh, look, it's just yet another example of why Bitcoin stands alone as a proof of work network that can't be manipulated.

And we saw last year on October 10, the unwind of crypto or everything outside of Bitcoin when traders lost conservatively, they believe, $20 billion in a day because of these shenanigans. And there's an old saying right in poker, if you're playing poker and you don't know who the sucker is at the table, it's you.

And so last year, we were all reminded when they took $20 billion off the suckers. And people asked me who were involved in trading, what do you think? Do you think this will happen again? Should we go back in and reposition ourselves in crypto trading? And I'm like, dude, mark my words, no one is going to jail over this, right? So if people can go and take $20 billion off everyday punters and not get punished, will they be back again or not?

Of course, if they have the lack of morality to steal it in the first place and they can do it again, sooner or later they'll do it again. So this is unfortunately the world we live in. And this is where people really need to understand what Bitcoin is, why proof of work is different, why not having a centralized team of executives that can be bought dinners.

And if you read the Epstein files, all kinds of other horrific favors to get things to move a certain way or get information that others don't have. Bitcoin, there is nobody there in that position to get insider info from. There is no insider track on Bitcoin. It does not exist.

so it's just another example of you know the average guy getting screwed over and the villains mimicking excellence in bitcoin and taking out all the controls that avoid the average man getting screwed so that they can screw them so yeah i i encourage people just to learn more about bitcoin and then when you understand the fundamentals hold that up as a proof of truth against any other people refer to as crypto.

Yeah, maybe in summary, I would say that the only thing that these firms at Wall Street

can manipulate is the fiat denominated price and your conviction. If you have weak hands, they cannot manipulate the protocol. Correct. That is the important thing to take away from this. All righty, guys.

Up next, the Fed has proposed formally removing reputational risk from supervision guidelines. So no more penalizing banks for serving legal Bitcoin customers. This is an indication that maybe choke point 2.0 is being rolled back. I have my skepticism about, you know, the intent of these sorts of things because there hasn't been any real meaningful progress around any sort of legislation that I think broadly helps with Bitcoin adoption.

You know, no removal of capital gains taxes for spending, no de minimis exemption, that kind of thing. But Greer, you want to give your thoughts on this? I think this is a really big shift.

You know, banks make money off of your time and your energy when they sell you debt. And what they're looking at now is holding your Bitcoin. And if you have Bitcoin, you can, you know, have bank services based on that. And I think we're going to see a whole range of offers in order to entice people to store Bitcoin at the bank, to have it as part of your checking and savings account mix. And I think we're going to you're going to see them dangle the carrots in front of people.

How much can you get? How much Bitcoin can they get in their own custody? So, yes, I think we knew this day was coming. And Chokepoint 2.0, you know, maybe we'll see another one with the next administration and things will get worse. But in the short term, I think what we're seeing is that Bitcoin is becoming financialized. It's becoming part of the larger system. And the incentives are going to be there for you to custody it with them.

And of course, as Bitcoiners, we know you can be your own bank. You don't need these services. But I think, as Tony said, it will onboard people who feel like the bank is a safer place to do it. Our advice is avoid that at all costs.

Absolutely. I understand that there are some Bitcoin companies who need fiat rails, but if you're an exchange, for example, I mean, the whole business is exchanging fiat for Bitcoin. And so I think that's good that they're not going to necessarily be kicked out of the traditional banking system.

But I just I tend to look at these events and I assume that it's a bone that they're throwing, not some, you know, philosophical alignment that they suddenly have with us after, you know, years and years of and obviously the threat that Bitcoin in particular poses to the powers that be. Adam, what do you think? One other thing real quickly is the banks see that all these exchanges are asset managers. You know, BlackRock, Fidelity, they're also asset managers.

Banks need to get in that game, especially as the Clarity Act is looming. I think they need to pivot. And that's really more about what they're trying to do here. They need more assets under control, and Bitcoin is the obvious choice. They need to stay in business, basically. That's the bottom line. If they don't do this, they become extinct.

Absolutely. Michael this one I very passionate about because as an Australian Aussies will really love this because they are being treated literally like criminals to try and buy Bitcoin in Australia right now They go through 15 20 minute painful calls with banks just to get 10 grand to a crypto exchange Like for real, they get treated like absolute children and criminals, well, somewhere between the two. So if there's any progress towards the decriminalization of buying Bitcoin, I'm all for it.

But for the first time in my life, yesterday, I'm now here in Panama and setting up the Bitcoin way and the plan B residency and all that stuff. And I bought a property here. And one of the things that real estate agent said to me is, Adam, just make sure you get on top of moving the money into Panama because it can be quite challenging moving larger amounts of money into Panama. And the boys here, Tony and the guys said, look, Adam, don't worry, we'll open you a Bitcoin friendly bank here

and you can just transfer Bitcoin into the bank. And then from the bank here in Panama, you can just pay it out in USD to settle the property with a local developer. And man, it was so like, oh my God, this is a real moment where I log into the bank now and I can see my checking savings and Bitcoin account at a bank. It's wild. And it's really, really profound and liberating. And just to put a sort of button on this, like the funny thing was to fund the bank account, I put $200

in, right, just out of my Wise account. And it cost me, Wise charged me $8. The bank charged me $35 in commission plus a $2.50 fee on the commission. They took 50 of the $200, 25%,

right, of the cash just to put it in the bank on Fiat Rails. I paid a supplier last week, 10 000 it took by the way two hours i paid a supplier last week in us uh sorry in bitcoin 10 000 usd i owed him so i paid him in bitcoin i paid 17 cents 257 times less on the bitcoin network and i got there in exactly six minutes so i got there 10 times quicker for 257 times cheaper and people say it's real dude but anyway so i'm i'm super pro the decriminalized lens that people

are putting on using banks and i think it's going to make people realize oh shit there's real there's a real use case here for moving money and being able to pay for things much quicker and the agent there's real estate agent once it clicked with her that i could move that money in on bitcoin rails in in six minutes. When I first looked at her and said, will the developer take Bitcoin?

She looked at me like a criminal. But then when it aligned with her interests of getting paid more quickly and overcoming the banking rail challenge, all of a sudden she's asking me about Bitcoin and she's looking at you guys on Instagram going, who is this Bitcoin waker? Now she's interested. So I think it's great. I love it. We probably take for granted, like Greer and I sitting in the States, like we can go buy Bitcoin on an exchange, move it into

self-custody. We use, you know, there might be like a withdrawal period if you go to a crappy exchange, but in general, we probably take that for granted. So I think that's a good perspective to have, Adam. Okay, guys, speaking of the current administration and crypto. So TFTC tweeted this

Trump family cleanup. Eric Trump is deleting crypto posts. And so there are a handful of posts So they share from where he's tagging World Liberty Fi, their crypto project. And they've been since been deleted. It's interesting timing. I'm I'm curious. Greer, I'll let you take this one first. I mean, what do you do you think they're preparing for something? Is there going to be a collapse and they want to kind of wipe their name free of the crypto thing? Do they know something we don't know?

Or is this just, I don't know, Twitter hygiene? One thing we can know for sure is that crypto is for insiders.

And if you're not an insider, then that crypto is not for you. So I don't know exactly what they're doing. I saw that World Liberty file depegged, I think, briefly yesterday or for a short amount of time. And so people were kind of expecting it to maybe collapse like some of the other cryptos. Who knows what's going on here? All I know is that it's not Bitcoin and it's crypto. So that means that I'm not going to benefit. No one's going to benefit. Who benefits the most? It's the insiders. It's the Trump family and their very powerful friends.

who have been engaged in this crypto. So just like everything else we say, if you play these kinds of fiat games, you're going to get wrecked eventually. And our hope is that you just avoid it. Sticking with Bitcoin is the easiest thing to do. Sometimes it feels hard, but you just have to hold. It would be a wild timeline if Eric Trump went the way of Do Kwan and ended up caught at an airport with a ledger up his ass. That would be the only hope. and just unbelievable.

This smells of UST vibes, man. So, I mean, this cannot de-peg if it was really as strong as how they marketed it to be, right? Like if it's backed one-to-one, how do you de-peg? So either it's not backed up properly or it got hacked or it's buggy or it's just a shitty product altogether, right?

But the fact that there's, you know, a movement now to delete all these posts this this is what's really alarming is because maybe they don't believe in this project anymore and are just trying to you know like uh do a clean slate so that people can't point fingers at some point but again you know like stay away from these things this is all you know a manipulated game you know no different than any other shit going out there

and if you don't want to be you know a casualty of these collapses well you just have to be playing on a different chessboard. And the only one that protects you against all of this is Bitcoin. You simply have to learn what it is and how to use it. You got to sympathize a little bit. Like there's going to be a day where Eric Trump is fully orange pilled, right? Just like I think most people will be to be running like this, you know, crypto project and only to have that moment.

It makes me wonder if they're like going to slowly begin to unwind their crypto positions, go Bitcoin only and try to make it so seamless that a year from now, all they're talking about is bitcoin and no one really remembers all the other shit coining that that's possible what do you think he keeps shilling the million dollar bitcoin uh yeah yeah like he understands that it's it's going up but what do you think adam i just think we're living in a clown world

i mean they're not even it's not it they're not hiding it anymore i mean you've got your dad as the president of the United States and your son issuing shit coins. And I mean, it's just wild to me that it's so patently obvious that, you know, that their entire lives, the Trump family has been about money and wealth. And this is like a bonanza if you control the levers, if you are the Wizard

of Oz. I don't know. It just blows my mind that they're able to do this so openly. And I I think they're absolutely cleaning up because these things, they get out of control. As you pointed out, there's so many vectors where centralized projects can go wrong that it's just wild. And yeah, I just think it's just like we always just keep saying, go back to the decentralized protocol for what it is.

All this stuff is noise and unfortunately just puts Bitcoin in the same bucket as everything else in the minds of people who haven't done the work. And I just think it's a tragedy. And I think the other tragedy is you've got the government, which is the arsonist and the firefighter. They're playing both roles. They're forcing everybody up the risk curve by inflation.

So the average working man and woman has to now look at taking on more risk because they just the ground is falling away from underneath them And unfortunately the rich without ethics are just taking advantage of it and promising ridiculous returns and then just screwing them even harder And it's just sad. It's really sad and it's funny at the same time. Amen. All right. Speaking of returns, if you put your USDC, your stablecoin, up on Coinbase now, they will pay you 3.5% rewards in Bitcoin.

So hang on. I know we love to dunk on Coinbase. Before we do that, just keep in mind that at River, you can put cash in and earn Bitcoin yield about this. So I think what's happening on the back end is there's a bank who holds treasuries. They're earning interest. And unlike going to a bank where they pay you almost nothing, River's just saying, hey, we're actually going to partner with a bank who is willing to pay you and we're going to dominate it in Bitcoin.

However, I think this is one of these traps that people fall into. They think that they're getting something that is largely irrelevant, right? Like I think for River, for example, you might make the case that, hey, if you've got a rainy day fund in cash because Bitcoin is more volatile, you know, you can earn some Bitcoin while it's sitting there. All of that said, I would love to hear, Tony, starting with you, what your reaction is to this story.

Make sure you don't put more than what's insured in that account, if it's insured. because these yield, it has to come from somewhere. And as we've seen many times in the past, it only works while it works, and then when it doesn't, everything goes south really, really fast. And that's how you get separated from everything you own. So again, there's no such thing as free money.

All of these carrots that they dangle, these are, you know, I mean, they look nice, but they're really counterparty risk at the end of the day. If you're going to engage with them, you know, do it intelligently and make sure you've got proper insurance in place before going ahead with this. Yeah. Greer, I know you've been looking for a place to park your USDC. Is it Coinbase now? I was going to ask, do people really use USDC? This is Circle's product, right?

I'm not sure that you would want to just buy a bunch of Circle and leave it on Coinbase. Those are two very bad decisions right there. And then just getting 3.5% on whatever money in BTC rewards, it just you know, this is this is ridiculous. I don't know who this entices. You're just much better off just using whatever cash and buying Bitcoin and putting that in self custody. Like, it's not that hard. But I agree. Like, who's paying the yield? Maybe it's Circle. Maybe it's

Coinbase. Maybe it's some partnership. I think that all of this has a shelf life, right? It's only going to be working for a certain amount of time. And I think we're getting close to that point where people understand that Bitcoin self-custody is the only way out. It's the only way through. And I think these are just games to lure you in. It's kind of like the cheese in the mousetrap. And I think the best thing is just to stay away. Yeah, they want you in their ecosystem

more than anything. And if they can afford the rewards, even for a time, that's how they're going to do it. Adam, I'll let you finish this one off. Yeah, I just personally, I always look at When I've got cash and I'm going to allocate it, I look at risk reward. And the reward here of 3.5% to me is not worth the risk of being on a centralized exchange in the crypto space. It's just not worth it.

If I had cash and I wanted to get a return on it as a Bitcoiner, I would probably go to somewhere like Firefish and I would just lock up a short-term loan against a Bitcoiner who wants to put their Bitcoin up as security. And if the price moves, my return is secured by Bitcoin, which is pristine collateral. If the price moves and the Bitcoin doesn't top up their position, I get the Bitcoin and I can get double that return. And it's secured with pristine collateral in a smart contract.

That's what I would do. And then I would have a hard asset underpinning it. And I'd get double that sort of return in fiat, which I just basically convert to Bitcoin anyway. So I would get the interest return by Bitcoin with it. And then the underlying collateral is secured by Bitcoin. So Adam, we always warn against Bitcoin backed loans, but I guess you're suggesting you play the other side of the table.

I'm saying if a Bitcoiner wants to secure a cash, if they want to take my cash and give me their Bitcoin to secure it, you know, okay, I'll take that pristine collateral if I wanted cash on, if I wanted a return on my cash. It's something of, if you're a hardcore Bitcoiner, it's something of a win-win and someone on the other side, you know, has to eat it.

all righty i think that's a good place to wrap guys hey before we do though first of all thank you all three of you for joining adam really appreciate being here i just want to make sure everyone knows that uh so this is going to come out wednesday tomorrow so thursday uh we're going to have a webinar with adam and tony and they're going to be talking about adam's escape i guess you could say from australia why he's chosen panama as a plan b tony's going to talk a little

bit about the mechanics that, you know, how the process works, getting your residency, and then why Bitcoin in self-custody makes this sort of life of freedom possible. You are not going to want to miss that. Just go follow us on X. We're going to be posting about it. We've been sharing it. Sign up for our newsletter. We share these sorts of things there as well. Adam, any other comment you'd want to make about that? I'm super excited.

We've got well over a thousand registrations for tomorrow, and I think people are going to really enjoy it because we're going to get the critical you know facts from tony about the immigration the service that you guys provide which has been unbelievable um everything from opening a bank accounts they're just turning up at the government departments and you know there's no line it's all sorted and organized just it's just an absolute white glove service but i'm going

to also be talking about the softer elements of when you do relocate your life to a new country like how do you do that successfully and what sort of things do you practically look for and what sort of things do you need to do the moment your feet hit the ground to integrate and feel at home in the place you are and i've been to a lot of places and panama has got so much going for it i'm really really enjoying it and i'm going to unpack it all in a way that i think will be very unique in this

space of relocation for people i think they're going to really really enjoy it i love it man i can't wait to be a part of it and we'll link to uh the registration page in the show notes as well so go go check that out guys thanks for talking really appreciate it always a lot of fun adam I'm glad we get to see you again later this week. So cheers, guys. Thanks, guys. Thanks. reinforce the training we've provided and fill any gaps in your knowledge.

While you're at it, ask about our solo mining service, something we think everybody should be doing. We also help with addressing your personal and online cybersecurity, and we can even help you set up a privacy phone free of big tech and Big Brother surveillance. Don't underestimate the amount of tracking taking place in your browser and in the apps you use every day. And finally, whether you're ready to make a move to a freedom-loving paradise or want to back up in the

event of a worst case scenario, be sure to ask about our plan B residency program. Being untethered from a single location is one of the best ways to ensure your self-sovereignty into the future. Again, you can schedule a free consultation at thebitcoinway.com slash podcast. If you are enjoying the show, please do me a favor, subscribe to our channel wherever you listen, give us a

five-star review, and drop us a comment. We would really appreciate it, and it makes it easier for others to begin finding us as we preach the gospel of financial self-sovereignty and beyond. Thank you again for listening. Until next time, stay safe, stay sovereign, and remember, the yield on Bitcoin is freedom.