Is The Banking Collapse Being Used to Push CBDCs? | Bruce Fenton

New Hampshire. We're gonna then move into kind of the politics side. What he learned running for US Senate, Get inside the belly of the beast, go through the banking system, the eventual push to central bank digital currencies, of course, the big risk that that poses, and as well, how we can push back and how we can fight this. It was a great conversation with Bruce, one that I enjoyed. You're gonna enjoy it too. So let's go ahead. Just jump right in, all right, Bruce, thanks so much for

joining me. A little bit of technical difficulties on your end last week, am I in. But here we are, man, You've been around a long time. You've done a lot of different things. There's a lot of things I want to dig into here, but let's start a little bit just kind of setting the stage with with with your background. Um. You know, I know you've done a lot of things in the technology space, you know, bitcoin space, financial space, but also dipping your toe into politics. I think you

were running for a Senate seat, is that right? Yeah? Yeah, over the summer I ran for I ran for US Senate representing New Hampshire. So, um, just about a year ago. I was in that process and I you know, I announced about a year ago and I was you know, I ran through November. Um, and I didn't win the primary, but it was a great experience. I was kind of a long shot. I jumped in late and I had never had much experience with politics, and so it was sort of a long shot, but it was a great

way to get my ideas out there. I got to be in the national debates with the other candidates, and you know, really kind of got a PhD in politics over the over the summer. So so I'm glad I did. What are some of the takeaways of your PhD in politics? What'd you find out your ideas don't really matter, um you know you and really even who you are, if you're a good speaker, bad speaker, charismatic, not arithmatic. That stuff is all, you know, a far, far, far distant

second to how much money you raise. You know, the politics is a multideck, a billion dollar business with a lot of very motivated people to you know, perpetuate this status quo. There's a lot of people making high six figures even seven figure salaries, consultants and media experts and all of these other people that are in this political system. And it's very, very very competitive, with high stakes and

a lot of money. So it's become a commodity. It's like if you want to if you want to have a new soda, you know, you want to compete against Coca Cola or something, the smart vcs will tell you that's almost impossible. You know, you just have to spend a fortune on marketing. Nobody really cares if your soda tastes a little bit better than the other person's soda. And that's sort of the way it is with politics.

Nobody really cares that much about your ideas. It comes down voters are just you know, basically driven by how much you spend and they have it almost down to the penny. You know, it costs you know, fifteen dollars twenty two cents a vote in this district or that district. Um, So that's that's kind of unfortunate, you know, I know that's a reality of it. I wish it was different, you know, I wish people would care more about the issues. But you know, that's one reality of it. But you

know politics is as very much dominated by money. Is that because of the repetition where they just need to see your name over and over and over. So when they go to vote, they don't really know who they're voting for, but they recognize the name. So there's happened to vote for the name they recognize. Yeah, yeah, it's there's a lot to it. For one thing, not that many people vote. Um, the average voter here in New Hampshire is seventy years old. Um. You know, it's only

a small especially in primaries. You know, it's a it's a fraction of a fraction. You know, most people just don't vote, don't bother. Um. So the ones that do, it's a very predictable set of metrics, Like you know, they know exactly how many times you have to have name recognition, you know, have your um, you know, kind of touched these voters with with mail or television or whatever.

And it really is the name of the game, you know, your ideas, you know, don't don't or nearly as much as just you know, repeating and getting that that kind of name recognition out there, unless unless somebody like Elon ran for office, or in Trump's case, when Trump ran, you know, he was already very famous. Well, they've already got the name recognition, they've already got the brand. Uh, why why would you want to subject yourself to that?

I mean, you said you jumped in last minute, so it wasn't something that was like pre pre planned and meditated. So what made you judcide? Do you want to jump into that? Yeah? You know, I mean part part of the reason I lost, frankly, is because I probably, um, I don't want to say I didn't try. I tried. I tried, but I did it my own way. I didn't play a lot of the political games, and partly because I didn't really want the job, you know, Frankly, like I don't really want to go down there. I mean,

it wasn't an exciting thing to go down there. It was sort of like a duty, you know, like like serving in the military or something. I viewed it as almost like a deployment, you know. If I would have won, I would have dreaded it, you know. And and my my youngest son, the night that I lost the primary, he said, to be honest, Dad, I'm kind of glad you you didn't win. And then, you know, I totally agree with that. I mean, i'd be I'd be miserable

in DC. And I've thought about that many times since January, which is where I would have been sworn in, you know. I mean, it would be an absolute miserable, miserable. But our country needs it. Our country's in trouble. There's a lot of serious stuff going on. And if I could help in some small way, which is really all a senator can do. Senators can't help in a big way, they could help in a small way, then I think that would be worth it, if I could help our country.

So I would have done it, and I would have served, but I wasn't psyched about it for sure. So what are some of those big things that are happening that

that caught you so concerned, do you want to jump in? Well, you know, big picture, we're in a fourth turning, you know, where this time of epic change, you know, the kind of times that you only see every century or so, where you know, money systems change, borders change, and you know clearly you know this is this is a you know, there's a book called The Fourth Turning which came out in the nineties which talks about this, but they're not

the only ones. Historians and other others have talked about. You know, how the world is cyclical and things change, and empires rise and die, and power structures rise and fall. And that's what we're going through right now, a very epic time in human history, and we're either going to go down a path of more tyranny or a path of more freedom. You know, I like the path of decentralization, liberty,

human freedom, those kind of ideals. But there is a very very significant movement in our government and globally down the opposite path, a path of tyranny and controls CBDCs, you know, central bank digital currencies, money that the government can control, controlling aspects of health, controlling you know, telling

you to wear a mask or locking down businesses. These kind of things wouldn't have been possible with governments in and throughout most of American history, wouldn't have been possible. So we've had a radical departure from our history and the way that, in my opinion, things are supposed to work down this experiment of socialism and wokeism and kind of uh, you know, identity politics and things like that, which I think are very destructive and antithetical to our

values as as a nation and our constitution. So it's serious times, you know, and it's getting more serious now. You know. There's a good chance of some sort of global war or major global conflict. There's a good chance of major economic meltdown. You know. These kind of things are things I talked about last summer, and you know, I'll have to pull up some of the those speeches because a lot of it has come, you know, unfortunately come true, some of my concerns about inflation and economics

and other things. Yeah, you know, as you said, I mean, there's there's all a lot of work that's been done in cycles. I've done a lot of work in the cycles as well, the eighty year cycle. There's a book written called the pendulum and talks about how the pendulum swings back and forth on an eighty year cycle three times eighty four eecles is two hundred fifty year cycle, which is then this like big political revolution cycle. So two unfreto years ago the American French Revolution two and

freto years before that was a Protestant Reformation. And it's sort of like we just uh, sort of I mean cycles, right, So it's like you go too far one way and then you swing back the other way like a pen. And so it swings between like centralization where we give more and more and more and more to the governments in the state, and then we've given so much, we see how bad it is, and then we swing all the way back to the other side, right, and we probably go too far that way. And so I think

I've kind of talked about it. Like in markets, you have like this blowoff top, right, where like markets keep

going up up up, like real estate boom. It's sucking more and more people in and eventually because there's no more buyers or you know bitcoin in twenty seventeen or crypto in twenty seventeen, you know, it sucked all the people in and then no more buyers and then it blows off and so sort of like that, like we've we've given more and more to the government, and just take care of my retirement, take care of my education, take care of my health care, and like eventually there's

nothing else to give them, Like they've gotten as big and centralized as they can. We've seen how bad it is. I'm hopeful that that we're at that blowoff top moment and the pendulum is starting to swing back. It seems like we're seeing signs of it all over right. I mean that the global homogene is breaking apart. I mean, look at what's going on in France just today, all those big riots and things that are happening. So it's

like that's what's happening. But it's it's certainly a volatile time. Yeah, I mean, I hope we're I hope we're swinging the other way. You know, we've had a lot of tyranny, uh you know, kind of things that were unrecognizable and this is sort of a twenty year um you know thing I think I think we go back twenty years is where this has been headed. You know, more and more government control, you know, after nine to eleven that created the Department of Homeland Security didn't even exist before.

Now it's like three hundred. It's the domestic standing army that our founders warned about, you know, three hundred and fifty thousand people, you know, and they're they're doing like uh, honor guards at the parades and the football games. And think that they paid the NFL five million dollars to have these TSA honor guards come out. You know, it's

just sort of bizarre. You know, the the this sort of ever expanding state, and um we saw that manifested most clearly in the last few years with with these um you know, insane uh COVID policies. You know, the idea that the government can tell you to lock down in your home or stay home, or you have to close your small business and somebody else can keep their large business open. You know, these things are just you know, totally unworkable. You know, they're exports, especially in the COVID

policy case. You know, they're direct exports from China. You know, China influenced the who and the who influenced the United States. But they're terrible ideas, you know, And we have the same thing with censorship. You know, you have the government involving themselves with things that you would have never seen. Um. You know when I was growing up or even even

twenty years ago. You know, you wouldn't the idea that the government would go and tell a private organization what to say or not say, or censor or kick these people off your platform. You know, these are very new and dangerous ideas that are you know, totally against the constitution, against everything that we stand for as a nation. So hopefully people will finally get fed up and you know, maybe the ship sort of rights itself. You know, I

think freedom is a good thing. You know, central planning and central control doesn't work. Communism is a bad idea. China will fail in my opinion, because it's bad economics. It's a stupid idea. And uh, you know you can you can live on fumes for quite a while if you steal enough money from enough people and you enslave enough people. I mean, look at the pharaohs of of of old Um, you know, and people who ran slaves

and everything else. You know, you can you can prop it up quite a bit on an artificial economy based on theft and violence and cohersion. But at the end of the day, I believe that the you know, free markets and freedom is what made America great, and I think that that's what we'll we'll come back again hopefully. Yeah.

Well that goes back to kind of the as you were referencing the fourth turning, right, And so it's like that generational theory where the hard times create the strong men and then the good The strong men create great times, great times, great weak men weak man create great bad times. And so it's like those weak men creating bad times are living off the fumes, as you said, right, So the strong men create those good times and it carries them on for a while. I mean, we can see

examples of that all over. I mean I like to think about like Weimar Republic of Germany. Right, they went bankrupt. They this massive, massive hyperinflation, they had to pay back all these war reparations. I mean, the country was completely demolished, really really really hard times, and Germany became the economic engine, the powerhouse of Europe. Right, those extremely hard times made them the strongest, most profitable country. But now look where

they are now. They've lost all reality, They've shut off all their energy. Now they're deindustrializing now they've created really really, really bad times for themselves. Yeah, we're totally seeing that, and we see it with generations too, I mean, right

before our eyes. You know, there's a big difference between uh, you know, kind of the Bob Hope generation, the Baby Boomers, my generation Generation X, and then the millennials are very distinct and then Gen Z. And my hope is that you know, unfortunately, I think the millennials have it the worst, and a lot of people kind of agree that's, you know, one of the generations with a lot of challenges and frankly, you know, that's a high percentage of the authoritarians and

status and people with these you know, bad ideas about you know, identity politics and economics and socialism and everything. A lot of them are millennials. But it's interesting, you know, my kids are gen Z, you know, the real young kids. A lot of them are very, very skeptical of politicians. They're skeptical a lot of this identity politics and other

nonsense that's being crammed down their throats. And unfortunately, I do fear that we're going to have hard times, and I think that a lot of them are going to grow up in a very different, uh, you know, type of job market. You know, when I was a teenager and in my early twenties, jar market was radically different, radically different. You had adults doing unpaid internships, you had

commission only sales jobs were very very common. You know, people would you know, sixty people would fight for one position, and that, you know, the dot com bubble and other things, you know, sort of changed that and made it much more of an employee's market. But you have a lot of employees that just don't produce. So I think you could have, you know, again, the pendulum swing back the other way, and unfortunately for gen Z, I think they're

going to get hit it hard by it. I think that more of gen Z is not going to have the kind of uh you know, the idea that you just graduate from school and you know, the world is handed to you. I think it'll be much more like workers in the sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties, where I mean you might have to work for free for two years, you might have to do an internship or an unpaid internship or an apprenticeship, or you may have to work

commission only. My first job was commissioned only. They paid me, um, basically minimum wage. Uh for some of the hours I worked. And you know, and this is at Morgan Stanley. You know, Morgan Stanley had jobs that were you know, if you worked at Morgan Stanley in the before my time, especially in the eighties, most of the people didn't get paid believe it or not. You know, one of the biggest banks, you know it was, it was a big bank back then. Um, you know, you'd you'd go in and it's like you

eat what you kill. If you if you make money and you earn revenue, you can you can get a bonus and commissions. Otherwise uh, you know you're out. Um. So, so I think you'll probably have that and that you know, I have high hop help for gen Z. You know, they're really smart and creative and they're able to learn, and they're embracing technology and everything. So you know, my hope is that they are the new strong generation. Yeah. Well,

it's not a bad model. I mean, you can go work for free and learn a valuable skill that you can go then use to make money the rest of your life. Or you can pay to go to an overpriced college and learn nothing and come out come out with no skills that are worth anything in the marketplace and an entitled attitude. So maybe that wasn't such a bad bad model back in the day. Maybe we kind of need to go back to something like that. I'm curious coming from New Hampshire where you're part of the

Free State Project that was there. Yeah. Yeah, and I'm an active member. My wife's on the board. I signed this Free State Pledge, we both did, I don't know, a decade and a half ago or something, and there's a non binding pledge that said you're gonna try and get twenty thousand people to move to New Hampshire and pursue the maximum role of government being the protection of life, liberty, and property. So it's not necessarily libertarian, it could be.

You know. Originally we're saying kind of nonpartisan Republicans and Democrats. You know, Unfortunately, I think the Democrats have gone so far the other way. I don't think there's probably a lot of Democrats they are members. Although originally it was just kind of nonpartisan, like, hey, let's all pursue less government. Because at the time when the Free State Project was created, uh, you know, Democrats had an interest in reducing war, reducing

domestic spying, surveillance, uh, the NSA. You know, these kind of issues that were we were talking about twenty years ago. Um, were things that Democrats had a lot in common with libertarians. But as politics changed, you know, it turned out they they didn't really care as much about those issues as

they did about the alphabet letter next to their name. UM. So it's so it tends to be you know more you know, certainly liberty liberty, libertarian oriented, but it's not you know, a nonpartisan group, um and very diverse because there is uh, you know, so many people and a lot of them are kind of not joiners or not followers by nature. You know, a lot of even me, you know, although I identify, you know, I don't necessally like being put in a box or associated with other

people who may have different ideas than made. But there is a good strong liberty community, a good number of people, good annual events. There's a few annual events. Porkfest is the big one coming up in the summer where people just you know get together and share these ideas and it's it's attracted a lot of people. And I think we had the record number of movers over the last three years because there was a lot of people who were on the fence who signed the pledge or whatever.

But if they were in a place like California or New York where they had especially high tieranny, a lot of the you know, thousands of those people ended up moving to New Hampshire. So New Hampshire, you know, New York and California both lost, and I think Texas and Florida new Hampshire gained. New Hampshire was a smaller gainer as a smaller state, but you know, we definitely gained from you know, people who just want to get out

of oppressive regimes. You know, I left Massachusetts. You know, I immediately got a fifteen percent raise by moving sixty miles north because I don't have state tax. Now I used to have income tax, and I don't. It was really weird. The first year We're like, well, how do we file, and they're like, you don't file. You just pay your federal and that's it. There is no state tax. And that was very strange for us having lived in Massachusetts all our life, where we got to pay a

small fortune to Massachusetts. And then what you notice is what what do you get for it. In Massachusetts, I had a bunch of busybody bureaucrats up in my business twenty four to seven. You come up here and it's just you know, less people, less government involvement, less heavy handed bureaucracy, less you know, police state kind of things. It's just more of a of a free place. So, uh, you know, a lot of people are seeing that movement.

But what about the roads, so Bruce, what about the roads? Exactly? Who built the roads? I don't know. We don't have roads up here. Nobody would ever figure out. You know, it's funny right outside my house, the road that basically it's like turns into my driveway. That road has been there since at least sixteen twenty probably maybe even a hundred years before that. So the before these people, yeah, before the United States even existed, when there was a

tiny number of settlers. Somehow these people figured out how to you know, follow a path that was used by deer and make a road out of it. I don't know how they did it without politicians, but they man. So you still have roads without without government taxes, without state taxes. We do amazing we do. And it's like

point two percent of the budget or something. Is it Is it like a community though, like you've all kind of moved to one area of the state or is it just that you just a bunch of you in the state and then you kind of get together like kind of more free. Yeah, it's it's it's in the state. Not everybody even gets together. There's people who are very inactive. They just kind of signed the pledge and do their own things, you know very much that leave me alone

ast sort of people. Some people don't. So it's not like not like a big libertarian community or something. Not really. There are some pockets of it where friends will come in and tell a few other friends and you know, so you do end up with some towns like Keane and Manchester and a couple other places where you have these you know, p gets where you know, fifteen friends will you know, live within a mile of each other

kind of thing. Um, you know. But there isn't any like and there's places that are more libertarian than other Keen is one of them, um you know, but but there's not really any you know, sort of official place that they go. I get a lot of people who ask me, uh, you know, almost every week, somebody will email me and say, hey, I you know Free state, so you ran, can give me some advice on where to um where to move If if I'm looking at

New Hampshire, where would I look for houses? And I'm a great person I ask because when I ran for Senate, I've visited every single town in the state. UM and I you know, I usually say it depends on you know, there's places you can go up north where it's very very very cheap. There's cities, there's towns. I like the Sea Coast area because you've got the ocean and you've got these cutesy tourist towns and night nice little cities. But it's more expensive. If you go up north, you

can you can get you know, absolute steel. The further you are willing to go from Boston and airports, you know, the cheaper you can get. So it really depends on who you are and what you're interested in. And New Hampshire is also very spread out, you know, when one one of the only drawbacks is, uh, it's just like I have this wonderful farm or beautiful place I'd love to have like a weekly get together and just like

hang out. But it's just kind of logistically hard, Like I don't have enough friends locally that you know, there's no critical mass um to you know, to kind of to kind of do that. So I do like a like I do a big cookout in the summer, and you have a couple other events or anything. But it's not like a city where you can just you know, like Dubai, where you know, you can easily get fifteen twenty people together with a couple of texts. You know. Yeah, man,

it's interesting. I don't know a lot about it, so I appreciate you sharing that. Let's let's jump gears and let's talk about we kind of started talking about like all these problems that we have in the world today. The big fire alarm that's going off right now is like this pending banking collapse that's going on right now. Um, And it seems like and tell me how you how

you kind of see it. But going back to this growing state that just continues to get bigger and bigger and bigger and more authoritarianism, etc. A lot of that seems to come from I frame it up as like their power, the source of their power comes from the money printer, the ability to continue to print money for all these bureaucrats and all these organizations to build out, as you said, the DHS, private army, et cetera. Comes from the ability to kind of continue to print money.

But at the same time, it seems like we're witnessing the collapse of that monetary system. The banking system is on fire. The FED now is saying they're going to back you know whatever, seventeen eighteen trillion dollars of deposits. Kind of what's your take on that the banking system collapse? Are we coming to the end of that system? What do you see in there? Yeah? I think you're right. You know. It comes back to the question that I

urge a lot of people to ask. It's it's it's such a very very basic question, but very few people ask. And I've gone, you know, other places, especially outside bitcoin circles, I say, what is money? You know, that's a very very good question. We all work, everybody cares about money to some degree. Uh, for most of us, it drives a good chunk of you know, maybe a third of our lives is focused on money. And it's can be

stressful and everything else. But very few people actually stop even me, I was in finance for twenty years, probably before I ever even asked this question. You know, what is money? And you can google that. You can google properties of money and you'll and you'll get an answer that has been around since long before bitcoin. It'll say that, you know, typically throughout human history, money has been something that is you know, widely accepted. It's got to be fungible.

So you know, my dollar is the same as your dollar. Um, it's got to be scarce, limited in supply. Uh, you know, and there's other fact you know, other other properties that make money money, and so asking uh, you know that question is a is a key. Um, you know part of this answer because once you figure that out, you know, part of it being the limited supply. We don't have that with this US dollar or fiat in general. That's just something that people print from thin air and call

all it money, and you can't do that. You can't. You can again, just just like you can kick the can down the road and you can be a tyrant and you can temporarily have a jump in your economy like China, But at the end of the day, if you print something from thin air and call it money, it's ultimately not money. It's not going to meet those properties of what makes good money good and that human humans have always gravitated towards the best form of money.

They're just naturally going to They're going to go to something that's you know, more scarce, more acceptable, Uh, you know, divisible, easy to move, all of this other stuff. Um. So you know, our money is less and less money. You know, the US dollar is just not meeting that definition. It's running on fumes from you know, really fifty years ago when it was backed by gold, it was backed by a sound form of money. And it's not backed by gold,

it's not backed by anything. It's just backed by politicians saying that this is valuable. And they are doing that, of course, like you said, um, to prop up their cronies. You know. There it's a very very very powerful thing to be able to print money from from thin air. If you if you asked us a six year old what magic power they would have if they had a magic wand you know, they might say, oh, I want to have free money forever, you know, And that's basically

what Janet Yellen and the other politicians are doing. They have free money that they can just give to their cronies and give to black Rock and give to their banks and give to others, and you know, it's it's not real money. So so so yeah, it's broken. It's a broken system, and it's it's corrupt, and it's it's really unsustainable. You can't just keep printing money from thin air and having at work. If you could, Zimbabwe would be the richest country in the world because they printed

their money like crazy. I have Zimbabwe notes kicking around my office here somewhere. There's like a trillion dollar notes that you had many people who have seen these, you know, from Zimbabwe when they printed. You know, politicians printed their money out of thin air, just just like our politicians are doing now. Yeah. Yeah, I mean everybody became a billionaire in Zimbabwe, but it was three hundred and fifty

billion for one single egg. So uh that win. The Zimbabwe dollar, I believe, was one to one with the dollar. And that's how how fast and how far it went. They I think they reset the currency like four different times and the continue to just have hyperinflation every single time.

Because at the end of the day, you have to kind of realize that we don't want money, we want the things that money buys us the goods and services, and so then you basically take all the money divided by all the goods and services, right, and if you just increase the money, then the cost of the goods and services go up. It's like a pretty simple math

if they would just teach it that way. But yeah, most people haven't really taken the time to think about that, and so you know, we're kind of at the at the end. I was, I was on a Swan signal before this, and we started getting into the kind of banking situation. I said, you know, before we even do that, let me just kind of frame this up a little bit, like, none of this would even be a conversation. We wouldn't have to have the FED considering if they're going to

back deposits. If the banks just had the money, If the banks just had the deposits, none of this would even be a problem. But the fact is they don't have the deposits. You know, they've put them in you know, with FTX, they took you know, depositors money and put them into risky tokens that lost value. In the banks case, they took dollars and put them into risky assets. That were US treasuries and they lost money, and so we're

kind of witnessing this whole thing come down. But it's like now the FED is like basically, you know, we've been seeing them kind of the walls closing in this rock in the hard place kind of a thing, and like they have basically created this fire alarm or this fire the arsonist trying to bring inflation down, but inflation is not coming down, and now they're kind of stuck like having to kind of reinflate again. I mean, is

that how you see it? Yeah, And you know, ironically, you know, the banks don't have the money because the government won't let them have the money. You know, Caitlin Long with Avante wanted to create a bank with one to one reserves where they didn't do any of this crazy shenanigans, and they wouldn't approve her charter. They go into the banks, The FDIC goes into the banks and forces them to make loans, and they forced them to do this stuff, and they've done it again and again.

So you know, typically the government causes a lot of these problems that they're trying to fix or say that they're trying to fix, and you know, whatever they do with inflation and everything else, none of that's going to work. Government typically makes just about every problem worse, you know, everything that they YEA. So she tried to launch a bank that was a full reserve bank, I meaning she would keep all the deposits, no novel idea that they would keep all the deposits and then if you need

your money you could get them. There was another bank I believe called Narrow Bank that tried to do the same thing, and they the FED basically approves the bank charters,

and they denied these banks. Now it seems the speculation seems to be pretty clear the FED doesn't want those They've obviously denied them, even though Caitlyn Long's bank passed all the other tests apparently, and so it would almost seem like they don't want that because if there was a bank that would actually hold your money, people would probably want that, and then all the money from the banking system would go over to that. I mean, do you see this as sort of like a basically a

way to force people to stay in the financial system. Yeah, I mean, status are going to state. You know, people who think that the government is a solution, are you know, they're going to view view it as, uh, it's a nanny state, you know that, oh, we can't allow this, or that we can't prove Caitlin, We've got to do it our way, you know. Um, they think that that it's a legitimate role of government to sit there and tell you know, banks what they can do, which is absurd.

You know, the government shouldn't the FDIC shouldn't even exist really, I mean, the entire thing should be uh, you know, completely upended because politicians. And this is the crazy thing. You know, I'm always amazed that there's so um, there'sn't a lot more libertarians or people who have these kind of ideas because nobody really trust politicians. Doesn't matter whether you're Democrat or Republican or independent. You know, if I say, if if I said to you, you know, would you

trust the United States government to feed your dog? No way, No way? Would a lot of people department or something. You know, there's a lot of things you wouldn't you wouldn't trust these people to do. Politicians don't do things well. There's very very few things that they can do well, and even fewer that they can do better than the private sector. One of the only things they can do is they can kill very very efficient efficiently, which could

be useful if we're invaded by a foreign power. You definitely it could be very useful to have a military who can fight back. But other than that, there's really not much that they're good at. So you know, they

tend to go in there. I mean the idea that these clowns in fancy offices paid for with money that they stole from people, can sit lording over people in their marble and ivory towers saying like, well, we know what the economy would do, and let's do this and change interest rates here, and deny this charter and approve this one, and let this let Sam come in and get special access to regulators. They don't know what they're doing.

They're clowns, and they're corrupt, and even the best of them, even if they really did know what they're doing, central control is not the place to do that. If somebody really really was competent, they should go and be private industry and become the next Steve Jobs, you know, but

that's not what you see with politicians. It's not our best and brightest, and they usually don't know what they're doing, and they almost always mess it up to a great cost, great cost of human life and globally, you know, you're talking about a lot of lives lost and a lot of treasure lost because of you know, these Nanni state politicians who think that they know better than the citizens

that they rule over. The crux of the matter goes back to what you said, it's the central planning, and so these people certainly have no idea what they're doing. It's it's it's apparent to anybody who's paying attention, but nobody would have an idea what they're doing because it's a complex system and nobody has enough information to manage that properly. Right, the market has to set that policy. And so yes, they're completely incompetent, but everyone else would

be as well. Maybe maybe they'd be a little bit more competent. Leave it, leave it alone a little bit more. I guess it might be a better option, But at the end of the day, it just shouldn't be managed. I think it's the big thing. I'm curious what your take is. It seems like yesterday there was all this stuff going on on Twitter, Ben Hunt, absolute theories going on and on and on telling people how dare you? Bitcoin? People tell tell people that there's a lifeboat you can

get onto. How dare you If you tell people to get on a lifeboat, you're gonna cause the the ship to go down even faster apparently. And then you have like Bology is making this bet this you know, million dollars a bit on bitcoin and now people are calling him out. How dare you? You're just gonna You're just gonna cause a banking collapse. You're causing a banking crisis. What's your take on that? I mean, how could someone even say that, like by talking about a banking crisis,

that creates a banking crisis. Yeah, I mean tweets. It's just like the binance FTX thing. People said that that you know, CZ caused the FTX collapse. It's like, No, a tweet can't create uh, you know, theft A tweet can't make balances disappear. The problem with the banking is meddling status to regulators and bad regulations that they have pushed on the banking industry and ultimately the public, which

are unsustainable and don't work. That's the problem, you know, Otherwise there's no amount of tweets, no amount of tweet. If the money is there, then no amount of tweets or fud can can affect it. But if the money's not there, then all the pr and marketing in the world will eventually be useless and ultimately reality will catch up and people will figure it out and call out the scamp. So so yeah, I mean, I'm a man team Balaji with that one. I hope he's right about

the million dollars. I don't think so. He said it's bitcoining might hit a million in ninety days, but you know broader, and I think he's making that more of a as a hyperbolic point. Um, you know, to say, you know, hey, there's some serious problems in the system and here's an alternative. But you know, those concerned about it should show off their balance sheets. If you're concerned about banking being affected by tweets, then you know, maybe

have better banks. Do you think this is something that could continue to happen? I mean if the banking system financial system continues to deteriorate. Um, I mean, do you think there will be more angst anger directed at bitcoiners?

You know, we've seen even the Christine Laguard you know from the imath now at the ECB um she said that this innovation is a threat to financial stability, right, and so yeah, do you think do you think a lot of these people could build up this angst and kind of use like these these lifeboats, these ability to escape with something like bitcoin us as like almost pointing the blame over there. Yeah, I mean, the the status powers, the laguards of the world will certainly try and blame

this crisis that they created on us who are fixing it. Um. You know, we believe in sound money. Bitcoiners believe in real money, sound money limited in supply that is controlled by math and code, rather than by people in fancy offices, you know, living on money that they stole from the citizens. So it's a radically different view. The people living off of money that they stole from the citizens through taxes or inflation of you know, printing money from thin air.

They love that system. They want to see that system perpetueum. So you know, there's their system is going to die either way. It's just completely unsustainable when you keep printing money from thin air and giving it to cronies and calling it money. Eventually it's not money and every single time, Warmar Republic, the you know hungry um, Zimbabwe, uh, you know, Russia, Argentina, you know, again and again we you know, this is

a lesson in humanity. Um that that doesn't work. So yeah, it will collapse, and there's a good chance when it collapses, people will use bitcoin as an on ramp. I think they already are because well Tailor said today on the you know, Michael Sailor said today, you know where else are you going to put it? You know? I think, and I've said this before, you know, I think bitcoin is honestly kind of a stupid idea. It's just less stupid than everything else. I mean, people sitting in a

fancy office in Washington, DC, Now that's a really stupid idea. Um, this whole geek money that I've loved and been involved with for a decade now, it's kind of a crazy idea. I mean, I think it's just as crazy as I did ten years ago. I'm like, what on earth is this weird nerd money? But I just don't know of anything better. I'm in the finance business. I've looked at every kind of asset. I just don't know anything better than this crazy nerd money. So there's a lot of

people like me who are going to use this. You know, they're going to offload onto from Fiat and go on to bitcoin, and you could see bitcoint rise radically radical inflows. If you look historically at these other times where you've had hyperinflation, it's crazy. And some of them are recent, you know, two thousand and eight, you know recent history where you know, you have inflation in some of these places.

Why my Republic is obviously earlier, but you know, one hundred percent a day, you know, and I mean Russia, Russia had you know, people were wanted to get paid in the morning because they knew by the afternoon, if they got paid in the afternoon, the money be worthless. And so that that happens, and it probably will happen, and a lot of people are going to hopefully have

bitcoin as a lifeboat. So of course the tyrant powers who caused this mess in the first place, who love their broken money, are going to blame it on us, and as a last hurrah, they may try and uh, you know, outlaw bitcoin or fight us. You know, that's that's the ultimate boss fight. But that you know, may happen when you already have hyper bitcoinization, and the dollar has already collapsed, and everybody's moving into this you know,

new form of sound. But think about it like the way I kind of look at it though, too is you know, so then the final boss fight, as you said, right, like okay with the tack on bitcoin or whatever. But

like I don't think I would. I would guess the majority of people know that they shouldn't store their wealth in dollars or fiat, which is why people buy stocks and bonds, and they buy real estate and they buy gold, and they buy private equity and venture capital, and like nobody's trying to build wealth by saving money in FIAT.

So we're already everyone's already exiting FIAT to go into real estate, stocks, etc. Right, and so out of all these reserve assets that we have, debt and whatever, bitcoin is just one more thing, right if you look at it that way. Yeah, but you know they're when you say all the people you, it's all the people you and I hang around with, all the smart people you know, your followers, your listeners and stuff that they know that FIAT isn't a place, but your average American does not.

You know, a third of the money in the country roughly is in just plain old fiat. You know, you go into your I used to be a retail financial planner, so I'd call up and uh, you know, do financial

plans for retirees. And it's a massive number of people that they've just always trusted the bank and always do trust the bank, and their idea of doing something innovative is to buy some T bills or some CDs and maybe maybe maybe some really good salesperson from Merrill Lynch convince them to buy a couple of stock mutual funds with sometimes as little as ten or twenty percent of their money. Now that changes demographically and stuff. You know,

younger people do tend to buy stocks and stuff. But you know, also a lot of younger people don't have as much money. You know, the most most of the wealth is with the retirees and awful lot of people that you know, they do see the banks and they do see feaut as crazy as that sounds to you and I, they do see that as a as a place to put their money. Um. So there's a big,

big learning curve, uh, you know from those people. Uh, you know, and then even people with brokerages, you know you you you know, your companies like robin Hood have relatively small balances compared to companies like Merrill Lynch. But if you look at places like Merrill Lynch, even a huge percentage of those people are in things like CDs, T bills, municipal bombs. Um. You know that does seem crazy to me as as a bitcoiner and a financial person. You know, I hang out with a lot of vcs

and stuff like that. But but it's true. There's a there's a massive amount of wealth in the United States and globally that are in these instruments which are negative yield when you count account inflation. You know, they're they're losing their purchasing power as they speak. And um, a lot of people just won't realize it. You know, if we do have hyper bitchonization or uh, you know, a full real hyper inflation, uh, you can collapse. There's a lot of people who just won't even know that it

happened until it's too late. You know, they just won't even know. They'll be the ones sitting on the you know, every time there's a banking collapse, you see people sitting outside the bank. That's the that's the photo the reporters want, and that's probably going to happen in the US, and people will be sitting outside the bank crying because they've lost their their life savings, which is horrible, but there's a lot of people who just you know, they're not

going to get it until they get it. I love the book When Money Dies, and they it basically documents, you know, the Weimar Republic hyper hyper inflation. And the part that sticks out to me about the book is that they were it was kind of like this biography.

They're kind of interviewing people that kind of lived through that, and all of these people saw the rapid increase in prices of their gold and their real estate and all their assets, but they all thought it was a bubble and that they should sell those assets at the top of the market. So they sold their gold, they sold their real estate, whatever it was they owned at the

top before it crashed back down. And then they ended up holding a bunch of worthless paper, and they had no assets, and the paper game so worth worth so little that they eventually just burned the paper because it was worth less than even the wood, was right, And so I kind of think about it like that, where like to your point, right, people see these rising prices, real estate rising super fast. Gold now is pumping bitcoin

obviously all these things, stocks, equities, et cetera. And some of them are like, oh, that's a bubble, I don't want to buy, or oh I should sell before it crashes, without maybe really to your point, understanding what's going on here. If if you don't zoom out and look at the big picture. Yeah, you got to look at the big picture. You know, a lot of people say Charlie Shrem had a funny line. Somebody said, Oh, I wish I would have bought bitcoin at ten cents, he says, he said,

you would have sold it at twenty cents. You know, people, you've got to internalize what is money and why this makes sense. Otherwise people will make that mistake. And there's men many who've made it over the last ten years where they view this as a trade. They view bitcoin as a way to get more FIA. So they bought it at one hundred and were psyched because they sold it at one hundred and ten. You know the famous bitcoin transaction, the pizzas that were bought for ten thousand bitcoin.

That bitcoin was at roughly well it was like one hundred and fifty bucks or something like that for the ten thousand coins, so he got two pizzas, and then when bitcoin hit ten cents, he sold those coins and bought a laptop. I think. So he's like, whoo, I turned five one hundred and fifty bucks into a thousand bucks, suckers. You know, well, you know he would have ten thousand bitcoin if he had held them, so you know, you know,

and I've had panic both ways. You know, sometimes I've worried about market falling, but a couple of times I've panicked the other way. I worry about FIAT falling. You know, there was a time a while ago where I'm like, I just gotta get in. I gotta get more bitcoin before this whole thing crashes. So thinking about those kind of things and internalizing them and getting into the right assets and stuff is key. But that's not an easy game.

You know, professionals get it wrong all the time. You're better off just kind of get you know, having some sound money, maybe even some gold, but you know, I like bitcoin, uh, and kind of setting it in forgetting it just so you have this head against who knows what's going to happen. We are in crazy times right now. Well, I gave a talk. I went to a Bitcoin ski week in Jackson Whole a couple weeks ago, and I

gave this talk. I called it the predictable Future. They want me to talk about the uncertainty of the financial system, but I was like, no, no no, no, let's talk about the certainty of it. The predictable future. And if you look out and you see what's happening, you know, you look at the US Treasury's budget, you look at their now declining tax receipts, and they're increasing payments on the interest.

You know, even then, even the Treasure of themselves put out a paper in twenty twenty one that it was an unsustainable path. And when you take a look at all this information, you see that there's no way out but to keep printing. It's the only option. And so if you we don't we don't know what's gonna happen

over the next couple months. I mean, the volatility. Maybe we can talk about that, the volatility, what's gonna happen over the next couple of months, But like over the next five years or ten years, like we know what's going to happen like there's just no way out but to print trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars. And so when they do that, that makes a sad prices go up, and so you should probably want to do that and you want to kind of just stay zoomed

out and ride that long trend um. How have you manage to state? Uh, in it for so long with the volatility that you've had to deal with. You know, I M being in the financial business for so long really helped me a lot. You know, I avoided trading. You know, I haven't. I've probably done I don't know, a couple dozen trades in ten years. You know, I don't trade. Um. You know, I very very rarely will kind of speculate on you know, what's it going to do? You know, by day or by week or by month.

You know, I'm more looking at long term. Um. You know, I try and keep very conservative. Surviving is a big thing both right now and in crypto and you know, most likely going forward in the future. You know, you always always want to make sure that you have enough financial stability to you know, at the very basic level, pay for a few months expenses, pay for food and rent and things like that. If you lose your job or lose your wealth. Uh, you know, have some diversification.

As you get more you know, more wealth or a more complex situation, you can look at things like you know, owning some hard assets like real estate, having you know, bitcoin backup plans, uh, you know, planning for contingencies. You know, I just try and you know, survive and and and be cautious and prudent um. And that served me well so far. Play the long game, Yeah, the long game. What about and so what's your take on the CBDCs? Right, So, like now it seems like all these banks collapsing are

leading this to this like bank consolidation. Now. The FEDS saying they're rolling out this FED now, which is sort of like a digital payment system, maybe not directly a CBDC. Of course we know China's rollers out. Of course they did because they're communists. Um. You know, Europe's trying to

push their through pretty quickly. Um. You know, I've kind of thought in the United States that maybe we wouldn't we wouldn't be rushing into it because you know, we still have that pesky document called the Constitution kind of limits the powers of the fed um. Of course they try to get around that whenever they can. Maybe also the pushback that that might happen in the United States.

What's your take on the CBDC coming in. Yeah, you know, central bank digital currencies are a big, big danger that everybody should be aware of because in a digital world, the world that we are in now, a central bank digital currency has the ability, you know, will will have a mechanism of control by the issue or which is a central bank, which is the government, basically which is politicians.

And so basically you're giving politicians control of your money, not just how they print it and how they inflate it and give it to their cronies, which they already do, but your specific money right down to probably your own wallet, and the ability for politicians to have even the potential of being able to freeze your money is unacceptable. It is a power you cannot have them have in a

digital world. I mean, it is way too great of a power and too ripe for abuse because very simply if they shut you off, they in a digital world, you don't have a lot of options if they if they can shut your money off, and your money literally isn't any good anymore. Your money doesn't work. My money works, and yours doesn't. You're at a tremendous disadvantage. You can't

really do anything. I mean, you probably can't even barely survive for three days, you know, three four days maybe, you know, depending how much food you have if you're a prepper, maybe six months or something. But it'd be extremely difficult. I mean, even as a prepper, I need fuel if I can't get if they had a CBDC and I said something they don't like, you know, or Trudeau. You know, Trudeau tried to shut off there, or he did shut off the visa and the MasterCard and the

PayPal of these truckers. If he could shut off their money at the at the route, so their money just didn't work anymore, he could eliminate his political opponents, you know, and he could do for any reason, and you never even hear from them because they wouldn't have internet connection. He can't you know, you can't get on the internet. You can't even drive, you know, you can't even go to a local rally. You know, suppose they pulled this on me, you know, I wouldn't even be able to

drive to your studio. You know, because I wouldn't get gas, you know, I mean, it's it's a it's just too great of a power to give politicians, especially in this world where they have shown themselves not to be trusted and they've abused us again and again with increased tyranny and authoritarianism. You know, we just can't allow politicians to have that, no matter what political stripe you're from, whether

you're libertarian, anarchist, republican, Democrat status, you just can't. And you know, I always say, just picture your least favorite politician, whether that's Pelosi or Trump or someone else, whoever your least favorite is. You don't want them to have that power, the power to make it so that you you're just completely shut off. Your credit cards don't work, your money doesn't work, your internet won't work, you won't be able to pay your rent, your mortgage, or your taxes. Um.

It's major, major trouble. And we and I mean even just errors and things like that, they could accidentally, you know, if they if they roll this out, it's only a matter of time before they're accidentally seizing people's money as well. Um, And and all you know, they'll just expand it and expand it, expand it like they do with everything else. You know, they'll say, well, what about the children, shouldn't we freeze the uh you know, the kidnappers, you know

money and you know, of course, well what about terrorists? Okay, let's seize their money too well. Isn't kind of everybody at terroist? Yeah, you know, what about racists? Let's seize their money too well, isn't everybody a racist? What about Republicans?

Let's just seize their money? I mean, you can, you can just keep seeing how it's very easy to expand this and the people at the brunt of it um, you know, have very little ways to fight that, you know, because you can, you can shut off their voice and shut off their ability to even survive. Uh So, no, we we've got to fight this like crazy. We you know, it's it's exhausting, but we have to. We have to

fight CBDCs. We can't allow this to happen. I mean, and and we saw Ronda santist And in Florida, I think yesterday or this week was saying he's going to sign some bills where they can't at CBDCs in Florida, which doesn't really make a lot of sense. Obviously, it's a would be a federal federal thing, not in Assai state thing. Uh we see, you know Rep. Tom Emmer is doing a lot of pushback. Ted cru has been doing pushbacks. So there are are some people fighting the fight.

So I guess, uh, I mean, do you think this is something that maybe won't shift? The other thing? The thing I take a little bit of solacen is is in the FED zone, the government's own incompetence, Like, how did it work for them getting an Obamacare website off the ground, right? They can't even overhaul the IRS website, So like I also kind of have a little bit

of faith in their incompetence. Um, But I mean, do you think this is something that maybe you definitely see obviously in the communist countries, but me doesn't really happen in the US, or is it it's a real threat of going through and we really got to be vigilant. Yeah, I think it's a real threat. I mean, you know, they may be incompetent, but never underestimate their ability to

do violence. You know, there's always a meathead with an IQ of seventy who will light a match or you shoot a gun, and you know, they'll just that it is a tool of force and violence, and they can force you to They can force you to use a bad website, if they start arresting people, they can force the banks to do it. They there's a million different

ways they can make this work. And you look at the level of tyranny that we saw over the last few years with these crazy policies that were based on nothing. You know, we now look back and you know, we see that you know, there was this idea of lockdowns was really there was no science saying that even their own plans with the CDC and others didn't have plans for a lockdown. That was just something people invented because they thought it sounded good and it gave them a

good feeling, you know. Um so, so yeah, I mean, I wouldn't under I wouldn't underestimate the ability to push forward something even if they are incompetent. So I do

worry about it quite a bit. I feel like, unfortunately, I feel like it's almost inevitable and we just have to hope that these other um, you know, alternatives or carve outs, you know, things like the Free State Project or what the Santis is doing, or bitcoin or you know, other things give us enough of counterbalance that we can effectively fight this or at least have an alternative to limit its power, kind of like guns, do you know, firearms, UM, you know do limit the power quite a bit of

the state just to to you know, be heavy handed wholesale abuse of people. That's why you'll see, you know, when you when you have um, you know, kind of groups that are more pro gun, the police tend to be lighter hands, you know, when it's when it's Occupy Wall Street, which was mostly lefties who are unarmed, and also a lot of New York where you can't be armed just mazing them and handcuffing them and abusing them.

But if you see like a pro firearms rally in Connecticut or something, you know, they cops aren't just amazing people wildly, and it's not because they're worried about getting shot. It's just because you have a little bit better a balance of power. Hopefully you can do that with CBDCs where you know you have some of these regulations. We'd like to get something like that passed in New Hampshire as well. It is hard, Like you said, I looked at the legislation, and I have some friends that are

state legislators. It's not easy to prevent because because state law can't supersede the FED, so it's not easy to just say, you know, no, the FED can't come in here, and nothing is welcome. You know, it's it's it's a trick your rule. If there's any lawyers out there, you know,

that's a great area. If you can figure out a clever way to make it so that a state can do this, you could you know, piggyback off of Florida and apply it to places like New Hampshire, Wyoming or other places where it might be likely to be passed. But yeah, you know, I worry about it. I think it's something we have to be very cautious. Yeah, definitely, definitely, And we can see it playing out an other other other countries, so we kind of get a head start

or a look into the future of that. But certainly it would be the final piece for their what we'd call a digital panopticon, right, like the turn us into digital surfs, right, And so we'd have to keep that from happening. I agree. Without the freedom to transact, there is no freedom. So man with that. I think we're going to wrap it up. You know, I know you have a lot of things going on. You know, Watchdog Capital, I think is kind of your big things to Toshy roundtable.

Anything you want to shout out or draw attention to that we can link in the show notes. Yeah, I mean, pursue freedom and you know, follow me on Twitter or whatever. But you know, we're all in this together. We've got to we we decide what our world is going to look like in this crazy fourth turning. And you know, just as people in centuries past, they were just normal people. Our founding fathers and others did brave things and made the world a better place. Uh, you know, it's it's

our duty to do that now. So, um, you know, we should all be aware of these things and talking about it. And you're doing a great thing by talking about these these issues so much. So, UM, you know, we're all in this together. Let's let's make the world better and more free and more decentralized. Pursue freedom. I love it. That's the mission, all right, Bruce, thanks so much, appreciate it. Awesome, Thank you