The Mark Moss Show Feb 18, 2022

One of the biggest problems that I see with people today in bitcoin is that they think they understand it too quickly, or some people say they don't understand it it's too too difficult, and um, neither one of those are true. So bitcoin is a lot of things. It's a lot of things, and it's so new, it's so revolutionary that we don't even understand all the things it will become it is today, will become and the impact

that it will make in the future. Imagine a few hundred years ago, sitting around table and uh, you know, we had just seen the invention of electricity, and what would how to do as humans as we try to understand what is this? What is this new technology? And so we try to Um, compare it to something that we know, so we can try to understand what it is. We might have said electricity was what is that. It's

like a digital candle, right, it produced light. Previous before electricity, all light for all of humanity had come from fire, and now all of a sudden, we electricity. So what is electricity? I don't know what it is. Well, it's kind of like a digital candle, right, um. And people might say, well, why do we need that? That doesn't make any sense. Like a candle's way better. Look a candle is easy and I can pick it up, I

can move it. It's portable, and look, I don't need all these wires and all this other stuff, right, like a candle's way better. Electricity stupid. It's a waste of it's a waste of time. It's a waste of money. Candles are better. Um. And you know, maybe that was true at that point, But what was electricity? While that might have been an application of the technology to produce light, the technology itself was so much more, and it became

so much more. The fact that you're listening to me today right now is because that's what electricity is doing. So while the application of providing light at the time was the best application of electricity. That wasn't what defined electricity. Electricity was a new technology that has given us so

much more. It has the light on me right now, and it's powering this microphone that I'm talking to you on, and it's powering the computers that are plugged in the walls that are sitting this transmission across time and space. And so electricity has multiple there's multiple applications of electricity,

and I would think about the same about bitcoin. So we're trying to understand what bitcoin is as a new technology, as a technological revolution, and right now, maybe the best application for that is money, digital cash, right, store of value, et cetera. But that that technology, Bitcoin is a technological revolution. Bitcoin as a decentralized network can have lots of other applications. Let's let's look at another example. So like the Internet.

For example, when the Internet first came out, the killer application for Internet was email, electronic mail, electronic messages. And at the time, what is this Internet thing. Well, it's kind of like a way we can communicate across. These message boards become messages up, we can send these electronic messages and it was it was that that was the that was an unapplication, a killer application for Internet. But

of course Internet is so much more. The Internet technology, the Internet network has now allowed us to again do what I'm doing. I'm using the Internet to broadcast this um it allows you know, the differences of my personal website or Facebook personal website, by the way, is one Mark Moss dot com. But the website or Facebook or Netflix, which are all different applications using the Internet technology. All right, And so when bitcoin, what is it? It's a new network.

It's a new network that transfers values. So the Internet transfers info, the Bitcoin network transfers value. And what what does that mean? What's the what's the application? Where the application is money storing value, et cetera. But it can become so much more. So that's why it's hard to understand. Now if we just look at money on its own, if it can if it can give us a better form of money, what does that even mean? Do we even have a problem with money? And so we have

to even just dig into that piece. And so I guess what I'm trying to highlight to you is that there are some deep, deep, deep rabbit holes that we can dig into to try to understand what bitcoin is and ultimately try to understand where it's going, how it will impact our lives. And it's important for you to understand because this is the biggest revolution that we will ever see. It's the biggest opportunity that you'll ever see. And if you don't understand it, if you if you go, oh,

I get, it's kind of like digital cash. I don't need digital cast. It's cash. It's worthless. It's not worth my time anymore. You're gonna be missing out. You're gonna be missing out really big. And I see a lot of people make that mistake where they think they understand it and then they dismiss it. I get, it's like digital cash. I don't care about digital cash. We don't need digital cash. Visa works good, Venmo works good. What

do we need it for? Right. It's a very US centric frame of mind, by the way, um, and so people are easily to dismiss it, or the opposite. People say, like I said, it's too complicated, I don't understand it. And so it can be simple where let's just understand this one application today and then you can just kind of keep you in the back of your mind that

there may be other applications in the future. Now, the killer app on bitcoin today is of course money, and most people don't even know what money is, which sounds kind of crazy, right, Um, do you know what money is? Think about that? I think about that question. Do you know what money is? Do you know what makes a good money a bad money? Most people probably never stopped

to even think about that. So um, and if you don't understand what money is, then you don't understand how different types of money affect different things, and how manipulating the money call, there's other manipulations that may warrant or may produce unintended consequences. Now, what the heck am I even saying? Am I spinning in circles here? Well? Not really? So today I should say This week, um, depend on

when you're listening to it. This week we saw the Federal Reserve, the government of the United States, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the BLS put out a report on the CPI, which is the Consumer Price Index. And basically the Consumer Press Index is it measures inflation. And when they're measuring inflation, what they're trying to measure is what the prices of goods and services are. And so basically what they would do is if you went to the shop,

if you went to the grocery store. Um, let's say in the eighties, so whatever, forty years ago, you went to the grocery store and you bought a basket of goods. So you put some steak in there, you put some milk in there, you put some cheese and some eggs, and you put some bread, and you put some whatever. Right, you bought that basket of goods, and then you went and checked out, and your receipt came out to a hundred bucks whatever, um. And then over time, how much

does that that basket of good change? And so over time, uh, the price of steak and milk and cheese and eggs and bread all went up. And so they try to measure inflation based off of that basket of goods. That's CPI consumer price indexes. Now, some people try to make this a very academic argument, and they might tell you that, you know, we haven't had any inflation since two thoight, and I'm like, really, because all the stock indexes and gold and real estate are all up. Oh, well, Mark,

you're talking about asset price inflation. I'm talking about consumer price inflation, and so they try to kind of get it very difficult for you to understand. Um. And that's ridiculous. Right, I'm a consumer. I bought a house. If the price of the houses went up, you're calling that asset price inflation. I call the consumer price inflation. It's pretty ridiculous. But anyway,

we have this CPI basket. The BLS puts out and like I said, just this week they put out the new report and it is a record breaker, and and it broke the previous record that we had set last time it came around. So the previous cp I we call it a print. The CPI numbers were seven percent interest, which was a four decade long record that had been standing seven and we just broke it to seven point five.

That's a big increase, a really big increase. Now, just to put this into perspective, they're saying that prices are going up by seven point five percent. What they're really saying, though, is not that prices are going up by seven point five percent. What they're really saying is that your dollar, the purchasing power of your money, has lost seven and a half percent of its purchasing power. So if you if you think about that, that means over two years

you've lost fifteen percent. Over four years, you've lost over thirty percent of your purchase in power. So that means, you know, a dollar still worth a dollar, right, Well, a dollar is still worth a dollar, but that dollar doesn't buy you as many goods and services. So if you had a thousand dollars in the bank today, in four years from now, it only buys you about six or seven hundred dollars worth of goods that you could

buy today. That's what that means. And so what that means is that when that inflation number goes up, your money literally has been stolen from you because you can't buy as many goods and services as you could have bought before. So homes, the value of my home went up, No, the value of your home didn't go up. The value of the dollar, the purchasing power of the dollar went down, and it just takes more dollars to buy that home today. And that's illustrated in this cp I report that happened.

And like I said, it's a massive blowout report, seven and a half percent versus what the Fed was hoping and expecting of only being two percent. But what does that really mean to us? What does this mean to bitcoin? Why am I even talking about this on a Bitcoin conversation? Uh? And more importantly, what's the real number? Because I'm here to tell you that this is not cp I, It's more like cp LIE. It's a CPLI, it's a government

manipulated statistics. I'm about a breakdown. What's really in this number, what's really driving it, Why the Fed isn't able to stop this, and of course, how Bitcoin fixes this, fix the money, fix the world. You're listening to the Mark mos Show. We're talking about bitcoin. We're talking about the decentralized revolution. We're talking about the CPI numbers that just came out, breaking all records, and how bitcoin can fix this. We're back with more. All right, welcome back. You are

listening to the Mark mo Show. We're talking about bitcoin. We're talking about the decentralized revolution that is happening. You know, it's Uh, in my opinion, it's changing a lot of things in the world. Of course, I highlighted that in the first UM segment. Hopefully you did miss it. If you did, don't ever let that happen again, if you're

not driving, pull your phone out right now. Put a reminder to join me on this channel at this time each every week, where I promise it will be the most important, the most educational, and the most profitable part of your week. Now, before the segment, I was talking about the c p I, the consumer price index number, the blowout number that just was released, breaking records again again and again and again. We broke a record at seven percent inflation. Now where it's seven and a half

percent inflation. Food inflation is seven point three percent. It's the highest sense, which is amazing. Why is it doing that? Uh? And more importantly, what does it mean? And what does what does you have to do with bitcoin? Right? Well, I guess a couple of things. So the first thing is that um, First of all, trying to put a single number onto inflation like seven percent is ridiculous. It's absolutely ridiculous. You could not measure the volume of water

in a bathtub with simple arithmetic. You can't measure the wind drag coefficient of a jet plane with simple arithmetic, nor can you measure the inflation of the economy with a seeing number or arithmetic. I mean, if you think about it, there's seven and a half billion people approximately in the world, hundreds of millions of people in the United States. There's trillions of inputs that go into prices, trillions of inputs that go into prices, and so they

they're all different. What inflation really is is the increase in the money supply. So when the Federal Reserved, the Central Bank, the central banks of the world create more money, they increase, they inflate the monetary supply. Like a balloon. If I was going to have a balloon, and I would inflate a balloon, right, I would inflate it by putting more air into the balloon, increasing the volume of the air that inflates the balloon, and the same with

the money monetor supply. Inflation is putting more money into the balloon, putting more money, inflating the volume of the money. That's what inflation is. The prices is the result of that. When I increase the monetary supply, the prices go all over the place. Now home on the lakefront Lake Travis outside of Austin in Texas. I have a buddy that bought a home for ten million dollars a year ago.

Just hold it for five million dollars. That's a hundred and fifty percent increase in real estate there, but nationally it went up about thirty five percent, so average a hundred and fifty percent there. In some areas it probably went up ten percent or fifteen percent. So inflation is different to different people depending on where you're buying a home. If I'm trying to send my kids to college and by a home on Lake Travis, inflation is hitting me very,

very hard. And if you live in your parents basement and you watch Netflix and eat Cheetos, you don't even notice inflation. Well maybe Netflix went up by a buck, right, you don't even notice it. And so inflation means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. You can't put a single number on it. But what you can put a single number on is the money supply.

As they increase the monetary supply. And we know that the Central Bank of the United States, the Federal Reserve, increased the monetary supply by approximately thirty five percent in the last two years, and so if the monetary supply increased by then, it kind of makes sense why the average home price went up by thirty five percent and use cars are up by and steak is up and etcetera. Right, things like that, And what does this have to do

with inflation, Well, that is the inflation. They're measuring consumer price inflation, which is the result, it's the outcome of printing all that money. And so the Federal Reserve now is saying they're going to combat They're going to fight inflation. What's funny because they're the ones that created it in the first place. They created the inflation. Now they're gonna

fight it. And so they're gonna do that by doing two things, one injecting less money into the system and also to to um start sucking money out by raising interest rates. Supposedly that's what they're gonna do. Um. We don't know if they're actually gonna do that. I kind of think that it probably won't happen. Um, but they got to do something because inflation is raging and we are going into a election cycle this year for mid terms, and the uh, the incumbent party, which is the Democrat

party right now. It doesn't matter if it was Republicans or Democrats, whoever, the incumbent party is, UH, we'll typically lose when we're in an economic environment like we have, so it doesn't matter which side it was holding power at the time, that side is pretty much guaranteed to losing. The Democrats know this, and if they don't do something to fight inflation, it's going to be game over for them.

The problem is the way to stop inflation is the opposite of creating inflation, which means stop pumping the markets full of money. The problem with that is that if they do that, the next thing you know, it creates recession. You start, you put the money in, and it increases the economy. I can now take out loans for really cheap. I can buy more houses. I go buy ten houses. Now there's ten houses for home builders, and then there's ten companies to make home windows and floors and cabinets.

And then I need landscapers. And those landscapers now have a new business, so they go buy new trucks. So now forwards making new trucks for those landscapers. And all that was created because they pumped in more money. But when they suck the money out, the opposite happens. I don't buy two ten homes. Now ten homebuilders don't have work. Those window manufacturers, flooring manufacturers, cabinet manufacturers don't have work.

That landscaping company just bought all those new trucks now has no jobs to send those trucks on, and that leads to recession. So why am I talking about this on a bitcoin podcast Because all of these booms and bus are because the central banks put money in and then they take money out. They put money in and they take money out, and bitcoin takes away their ability.

It takes away anybody's ability to create more money. So people think, well, the problem is that we just you know, the guys that run the central bank, and you know, if we if we replace the politicians, like let's just get rid of Trump and put in Biden. Let's just get rid of Biden and put in whoever. If we get better people, we won't have this problem anymore. But they're misunderstanding the problem. The problem is not the people who are there. The problem is people in general. It's

humans in general. Since the beginning of time, humans have tried to get something for nothing. Since the beginning of time, people have tried to create gold from metal, it's called a right alchemy. Since the beginning of time, they've tried to figure out how to produce money from nothing. And now, of course the central banks have to have figured out a way to do that. It doesn't matter who is

controlling that, they are going to do that. The only way to fix this problem is too As one of my favorite economists, F. A. Hyak, he famously said in eight there shall never be a sound money again, a sound money meeting something that can't just be inflated or created at will. There shall never be a sound money again until the thing is taken from the hands of the government. But it cannot be done by force, but rather by a sly roundabout way introducing something that cannot

be stopped. And he said that in of course, it was prophetically talking about something like bitcoin, which takes away the ability not of the Biden administration, not of the Federal Reserve, but from anybody being able to create money. And if you take away is ability to create money, then you can end inflation. And why do we want

to end inflation? Because inflation is stealing your wealth. Remember, your thousand dollars in the bank only buys you six or seven dollars worth of goods and services in a couple of years from now. They stole your purchasing power by enriching themselves and anyway, that's it man seven and a half percent inflation number, record breaking blowout. It continues to go higher, and that's that's a manipulated number. The reality is the money supply was increased by about thirty

So that's the real number. And so that means that you need to make about thirty five percent more money this year to be in the same place you were last year. Did you get a thirty five percent raise? Because I hope you did. When we come back, I want to bring on somebody who's actually running in politics trying to bring some change with bitcoin to this um. You listen to the Mark ma Show. I'll be back with more in a second. Uh, talking about how we

can fix this. So don't go away, all right, welcome back. You are listening to the Mark mo Show. We're talking about bitcoin. We're talking about the decentralized revolution that is happening. You know, there's a lot of things going on. One of the big things that I hear about bitcoin and

cryptocurrencies a lot. One of the biggest objections I hear, and of course I did a whole series breaking down all these objections, but one of the big objections I hear is that, Ah, the government's are just gonna make it illegal. And I've talked about that at length. One of the things I've said, well, there's two things I would say that. One, I would say that I've made videos on I don't think they would do it even if they could, and I've explained why, financially and for

the system, etcetera. But then I've also said that I think even if they wanted to, it would be very difficult for them because the level of entrenchment that's been made both in the financial system, the financial system being lobbies of the government, Um, they don't want to see that, but also the level of entrenchment of people inside the government that have seen the need for a bitcoin, have adopted it and so forth, and so UM. Joining me

in the studio today, I have Erica Rhodes. She is running for Congress and the U. S. House of Representatives in California on the thirty second district, and Um, she's made a big splash, I would say for two reasons. One is that she's trying to unseat an incumbent, which is Brad Sherman. And Brad Sherman is someone that I've talked about at length. Um, he is a major opponent on your freedom to choose what you want as money, specifically on what you want to choose as the money

being cryptocurrencies. UM. And also Erica is running one to unseat him, but to also on kind of like a pro bitcoin platform. So, Erica, thanks so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to talk with you. So. You know, I've been catching quite a bit of the content you've been doing. I was on the Twitter space as you did the other night with Jack Dorsey and and others. That was pretty cool. Um.

I'd like just a little bit of your story. UM. I know you're a teacher, you can tell us about that, but more specifically being a teacher, Uh, what's your involvement with politics? Why do you decided to get into this, and why have you decided to make bitcoin a piece of that? Yes, So, UM, again, thank you for having me. So, I been teaching for ten years. I never wanted to enter politics. UM. I never had any aspirations to run for a public office. But once Trump got elected, I said,

you know, I want to be more politically active. And it's not because I have a thing against Republicans or anything like that. It's more so the rhetoric in which he projected. And I just felt like there was great division um merging in our country. And so I ended up getting politically active. And then after the Democratic primary, we saw so much civic unrest, We saw a lack of thoughtful policies being implemented. You know, I feel like there needs to be changed on both sides of the

political aisle. And so my dad was like, Erica, you should you should run. And so when I was building my platform, it was specifically going to be community service driven. It was about to bring everyone together. It was about to model a different way of governance, in a different way of campaigning and really being data and solution oriented

because I think that is exactly what we need. And so um, and then once we built our platform, it was like myself and another teacher and UM, I was like, you know, I put it out there, I like announced my candidacy and there were some like young kids that were like, you know, you should put bitcoin on your platform, and I was like what what They're like, you know, we really care about this and we think that that's

something that you should add to your platform. And Initially I kind of like dismissed it because of the FEC violations and like counting, and I wasn't really sure how it would work. And then um, later on I was approached by the bitcoin community after a hearing that Brad did, and then we just looked more deeply into it, and then we decided that was absolutely something that needs to be protected, the technology behind it, the Lightning network, and so that is why we had made the decision to

go ahead and add it to our platform. Interesting, now, you started out talking about out um you know, after the last election cycle you got more involved and um, you were kind of more on the democrat or or left side. Um. You know, my show focuses on bitcoin, which I believe is the intersection of politics, finance, and technology to kind of together. Um. I think that, UM, I think that a lot of there's a lot of there's a lot lost in words today and we don't

know what things mean anymore. Um. And so even left versus right, what does that even mean? Republican versus democrat, what does that even mean? People might say that socialism is on the left and fascism is on the right, um, which doesn't make any sense. To me, I look at

things as the individual versus the collective. So I look at it as like, I want freedom to choose, freedom from being coerced to make choices I don't want to make UM and so Bitcoin, I believe, gives me that best choice to be an individual because now I can control my money without being forced. And one of the reason why I don't like Brad Sherman is because he wants to take away my ability to be free to choose what I want to store my wealth in. UM.

So I'm curious. I mean, you said you're on the left, but would you also think that that's a proper framing that really it's actually um Maybe we could get rid of some of those labels and look at like the difference of like individual freedom versus like the collective or the central planning model that tries to like control every aspect of our life. Yeah, I think we do have

to get rid of the labels. I get called all kinds of things that I feel like don't represent me because I'm like very rational and reasonable and I just want whatever the best idea is, that's what we need to go with. It doesn't matter which your whatever your political affiliation is if it's going, if it makes sense, it's and we can implement it and it helps people. That's what we should be able to do. That's one of the reasons why I'm very attracted to bitcoin because

I think personally it is my personal opinion. I don't think it should be a partisan issue. I think anybody that wants the whole bitcoin should be able to. Anybody that wants to use that as a way to acquire wealth should be able to and I think that they

should have absolute freedom in order to do that. And so something that worries me is that it does get politic sized that you can't be a Democrat and hold and I think that that's unfair because I know a lot of Democrats, a lot of my coworkers, we all have hold bitcoin, right, So I think anybody that wants to have it should absolutely be able to have it. That's my personal opinion. I also think that Brad Sherman's getting you're you're so radical, You're so radical with that opinion.

How dare people be allowed to store their wealth and whatever they choose? But but you know, almost I would say a lot of people I know hold bitcoin. That's just This is just my experience. And I have not met any person in the thirty second district that doesn't have some type of either bitcoin or a form of crypto. And I have not met anyone that does that want to see a band even if they don't have any I've never met anyone that's like, no, it should be banned.

I think people should have the right to invest in whatever they want. And that's where Brad's getting it wrong. And I think also that's where members of Congress are getting wrong, you know. And I think there's a lack of education. I think if people really take the time to understand what it is, the future of it, they'll be like, Okay, that's why so many people are making this choice and wanting it, you know. And I think for me, I'm always learning. I don't ever proclaim to

know it all. I you know, I spent a good deal of my you know week reading or watching, listening to the podcast, talking with people just to learn. Like right now, I'm in the in the process of really really becoming a very knowledgeable about lighting, because I think that that's a very important technology that we need to build upon and support. That's my personal opinion and Um.

For me also to um, if you're a Democrat, don't say that you're for ending poverty and helping people and being against this because it absolutely is something that can leverage people out of poverty. I know so many people personally, like, personally met that it's been advantageous for Yeah. Yeah, I mean a lot of a lot of wealth has been made.

And um, I love how you keep saying in your opinion, um, and so you know you have obviously opinions about things, but I think some things well, I mean it's hard, they're they're not disputable, Like it's your opinion that you know lightning is could could be very advantageous to be used for the world. I would agree. My opinion is the same. Right, I share that, But it shouldn't be controversial or have to be your opinion that people should

have the right to store their wealth and whatever they want. Right. Rich people might store their wealth in cars or art, some people buy houses, Um something right, I mean I want to buy gold, I want to buy bitcoin. What differences that make? You know? And so? But the other thing too is that you can enter I whatever your financial situation is, Like you don't need x amount of dollars to hold bitcoin, Like if you only have five dollars, you can start with five dollars and then say, you know,

every paycheck, I'm gonna put ten dollars into it. And you don't have to wait to have like a thousand dollars to be able to, you know, get in to the market. So I think that's that's important. Yeah, that's a great that's a great point. Um, you're listening to the Mark mos Show. We're talking about bitcoin and the decentralized revolution that's happening. I am. I'm joining the studio

right now with Erica Rhodes. She's running for Congress, the U. S. House of Representatives in California for the thirty second district. She's a school teacher trying to make a difference. Um, she's running on a pro bitcoin platform, trying to unseat Brad Sherman. We're gonna be right back with more. Don't go away, all right, welcome back. You are listening to the Mark Moa Show, and we're talking about bitcoin, and we're talking about the decentralized revolution. And I'm in the

studio right now with Erica Rhodes. She is a school teacher running for the Congress US House of Representatives in California on the thirty second district, trying to unseat one of our opponents, Brad Sherman, opponent of the bitcoin crypto industry. I should say, um, now she is running to unseat

him and h on a on a bitcoin platform. But you know, one thing that I think it is important for most people to understand is people who need to be more flexible in their thinking and understand that everything has trade off and understand there's different dimensions to all these different things. And so while Erica might be pro bitcoin,

that's not the only issue that you should be thinking about. Um. We've seen in New York City, for example, the mayor there ran on a pro bitcoin platform and elis that he wants to ban bitcoin mining. That doesn't make any sense to me. And so Erica, I'm sure that there's more things that you're concerned with than just bitcoin. Give us some ideas of some other things that you care about. I'm not like Eric Adams, so please so ever, I'm not you, but like people were like worried, I am

definitely not him. But well, the problem the problem in that was that you know, if all you voted for him is because he said he was pro bitcoin and then you did me look at all the other things that he stood for in his track record, then you didn't catch that. And so I don't think the would necessary comparing you, but I think maybe just kind of like a warning, like, hey, what else do these people care about? So it's a good time to hear, yeah, you know something. And I mean, because I think it's

connected to bit rain is campaign finance reform. I think it's something that's really important, Like Brad gets a majority of his money from big banks, check cashing, pawn shops, and to me, that's like a contradiction, like how can you say that bitcoin? You know people of color, like in the last time you are gonna be help left holding the bag when you yourself take money from people that completely keep people in poverish, right, And so I think that we need to really look at where people

get their money from. I didn't really appreciate this until I was starting to run for Congress and I'm on the back end of things. So I think that's really really important. And I think it also really sets the tone of your character, right. And then the second thing I think that I would love to raise awareness on is foster care reform. You know, it's something that does

not get talked about. And if we're going to talk about people being unbanked, well let's talk about kids that when they age out there left with a trash bag a sidewalk and they have no idea, no bank account, no financial literacy, nothing, and then what ends up happening is they end up staying impoverished, and then it ends up costing us more for all the services. So I think we have to really also look at preventing problems as well. And so that's something that I'm really advocating for.

When you say financial literacy, um, I'm an educator. I'm an online educator that's spent the last many many years trying to educate as many people as I can, and so I would agree with that, right, education is so important you talk about financial literacy specifically, And a quote that I throw out often is that Henry Ford throughout a hundred years ago that if the American people knew how the banking system worked, there would be a revolution before the morning, he said. And that was over a

hundred years ago. Imagine how much worse the banking system is today. And of course it's probably no surprise that they don't teach us anything about it. Uh, and probably either one whatever they do teach us is either maybe either mislead or you know, like I said, purposely admitted UM. And so you're absolutely right, like people have no idea

how the financial system works or how to navigate within that. UM. Do you have any ideas of how you might prove financial literacy specifically one, we have to start teaching it, and I think that I can. I think it has to be I think it can absolutely be differentiated based on grade level, so would be age appropriate. And it can just start with like if you're an element to the importance of you know, saving money, like bitcoin actually teaches people how to save money and the importance of

saving money. Like just an example, UM, I think that like just what retirement means, just the language that you know is around UM, personal finance and understanding what it means for a loan and interest rates and all those kind of things. Like I always use this, And there's two examples that I always use. The first one is I met with high school kids and they didn't even understand the difference between a debit or credit card and

that they had to pay that back. And then second, when we talk about student loans, well, why are we letting kids take out two hundred thousand dollar art degrees and not asking, like making sure they're aware, like is this the best return on this investment? Is this profession going to be able to pay off this particular or degree. You know, it's just a little things like that, making

sure that you know, one is knowledgeable. And I also think that when it comes to personal finance, you know, people end up learning the value of it through big financial mistakes and then they end up having horrendous credit scores as a result of that. And so I think again we have to be proactive and make sure that when kids are graduating from high school and entering um college or a trade school, because I think that in college is not for everyone, that they just have a

really robust understanding of personal finance. And kids want that, they want things to be connected to the real world, you know, and they start making money, you typically at fifteen and sixteen years old, so it's a it's an

opportunity to really make those connections. Yeah, good stuff. Yeah, I mean I can't agree more, right, I have I have a teenager in high school as well, and um, you know, she has her dad is teaches financial literacy literacy online, so she's a little bit more advantage than most people. But you know, I see what she's learning, and I mean, it's just it's just absolutely ridiculous. Um. Do you do you remember when the GameStop thing happened?

Do you remember that first? I made many videos about it? Sure right, So like that was a really to me, a really unique thing because at that time, two weeks part, we had my students and I just covered the stock market and then that happened and they were able to understand the brilliance of what those kids were doing on Reddit. I thought that was such a really iconic a time during when that happened. So that's just another example that kids are are eager to learn about financial literacy and

how everything works. Yeah. You know, Um, one thing in regards to that, and this is what I see with my daughter in high school and her friends in high school, is that they all want to trade stocks, on trade options on robin Hood, or trade cryptocurrencies. Last month or December, we had the record amount of job quits ever, and people want to quit their jobs to trade options and trade stock and trade cryptocurrency. And I think back to a quote by Vladimir Lenin, who's not somebody I necessarily

want to quote, but he said. He said that the best way to destroy a capitalist system was to debouch the currency, debase it right, inflate basically through inflation. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate secretly, and I'm unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. So that's what he said. So destroy the system by deep debasing, by inflating away confiscating um the currency. So when the government prints more money, it inflates it, which

steals the purchasing power from you. And then the last part is what I really like here. He said. Um. He said that as the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors. To your point, credit, which formed the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so disordered as to be almost meaningless. Here's the best part. The process of wealth getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery. Wow.

So he said that over a hundred years ago, and so by deep asen the currency. Basically, it evolves to a point where all order is broken and the best way to make money is gambling. So to your point with the game stop right now, everybody wants to gamble, everybody wants to trade options on robin Hood and uh, it is the best way to make money today. But that's a problem. And uh maybe with the right education we can change that. So anyway, I'm all for it.

I love I love the idea of increasing the financial literacy. It's it's super important and so um and and I'd love to see Brad Sherman get out. Thanks so much for joining UM again. I'm you're listening to the Mark Ma Show. I'm in the studio with Erica Rhode. She is running for Congress, the U. S. House of Representatives in California at thirty second district. What's the what's the website they can check out more there's Erica Rhodes. Yeah. So it's Erica with two A so A A R

I K A for fo R Congress dot com. And something that would be very advantageous for us is to make sure if you live in the thirty second district, which is the West San Fernando Valley, Malibu Palaceades and uh Tapana. Make sure you are registered to vote, and then the primaries on June seven, and we also have now in California mail in ballots, so if you can't make it out on that day, please please vote that day. It's really important that we win our primary. And if

you can't, please donate to our campaign. We're going up against a two you know, decade incumbent, Brad Sherman, and we need every contribution we can to make sure that we can you know, win this primary, So every dollar absolutely healthy. And you can donate in bitcoin through Lightning Network, so we are very excited to have that. That's actually better to donate in bitcoin to be host. So thank you so much, Mark for having me, and thank you

for caring about financial literacy and young people. I really appreciate that. All right, thanks so much. Erka, you're listening to the Mark ma Show talking about bitcoin. Thanks for listening.