Transcript: Matthew Mežinskis: Bitcoin Is Cheap and Nobody Believes It

Marty Bent [0:36] Matty, good afternoon.

Matthew Mežinskis [0:39] Marty, good to be here, my friend. As your longest running guest, most anti-commie, anti-Nazi guest, I'm always glad to be back on.

Marty Bent [0:47] It's always great to have you on, sir. Wild times we're living in. Wild times. You're just saying I need to get off Twitter.

Matthew Mežinskis [0:56] I have been saying that, yeah, for a few years now myself. I find if I go to conferences and really need to link with people via Twitter DMs, then put it back on. But a few years now, I've had it off the phone. I don't know. How are you feeling? You in the doom spiral?

Marty Bent [1:16] No. I mean, we got midterms here. next week. And so I think the, the algos are being turned up to stoke fear to get people to vote one way or another. Um, so it's just observing that. Then the AI stuff is pretty crazy, what's going on.

Matthew Mežinskis [1:36] It is. But you guys are in the golden age, right? The golden age of America.

Marty Bent [1:42] Oh yeah, baby. All systems go. All systems go.

Matthew Mežinskis [1:47] There's nothing to complain about, my friend. We're good.

Marty Bent [1:49] We got everyone and their mother building data centers, locking down power deals. They're handing out Starlinks like candy over here.

Matthew Mežinskis [1:59] Mm-hmm. You're led by the doctor. You have a fearless leader in the doctor. And he's not a doctor. You remember the doctor, don't you? Which one? Don't you remember this tweet came out? It was a very, very controversial tweet with the Ivan evangelical, right, by your fearless leader. And he said, this is not a picture of Jesus. This is a picture of a doctor.

Marty Bent [2:27] Oh, yes. Yes. So

Matthew Mežinskis [2:30] you're led by the doctor. So I

Marty Bent [2:32] forgot about that. This is the other crazy thing about, about Twitter. It's like 24-hour news cycle. That thing is— I had to— I had to—

Matthew Mežinskis [2:39] 6 months. 6 months is already way deep in the recesses.

Marty Bent [2:43] I had to go deep in In the mental random access memory of my brain to pull that one out.

Matthew Mežinskis [2:48] Well, this is the beauty of like not getting on Twitter much is, you know, you just barely see this nonsense. So yeah. Yeah. But you know, to each their own. Ignorance is, ignorance is bliss, I guess.

Marty Bent [2:59] I mean, over the weekend, I don't know if you saw it, but he was parading around Nicki Minaj saying, look at her ass.

Matthew Mežinskis [3:04] I did not.

Marty Bent [3:07] And this is true. This is a true thing that's happened here.

Matthew Mežinskis [3:12] All right. Well, next time I'm on, I'll do a little search for that.

Marty Bent [3:16] Yeah.

Matthew Mežinskis [3:17] Can't wait.

Marty Bent [3:18] Can't wait. The Bitcoin price sitting at a boob price right now, $80,080. Boobo. Yeah. It's all been quiet on the Western front of Bitcoin. I feel like we're in a consolidation period for the last couple months.

Matthew Mežinskis [3:33] Yeah. But generally, I'd say still pretty positive from that August I was much more bearish in the summer and happy to be proven wrong on that bump that we got in August. And so far holding. And, you know, I would be highly, highly doubtful if we go back to, you know, $60,000, even $70,000 levels, maybe for a quick, quick minute, but Yeah.

Marty Bent [4:06] Flirting with

Matthew Mežinskis [4:07] it. I chart this stuff out and we're looking at it most days.

Marty Bent [4:11] I mean, we do this every 3 months.

Matthew Mežinskis [4:15] Yes, we do.

Marty Bent [4:16] And we've been doing this for 7, 8 years now almost?

Matthew Mežinskis [4:23] Yeah, it's going to be 8. It's going to be about to be 9 years actually. next year.

Marty Bent [4:33] I know we've both been hanging around the rim of the corn for quite some time now, 13 going on 14 years, which is hard to believe. But I tweeted this out like a month ago, the dislocation between market structure, I guess the price of Bitcoin. And I know looking at your charts, power law trend, it's or power trend line, it was near historic lows, but it felt like the bear market wasn't as severe as bear markets past from a price perspective. But the dislocation between what I would call market structure, pretty shallow bear market and short bear market, and the sentiment is larger than I've ever seen it. The sentiment is very reminiscent to the summer of 2015 to me these days, and the price is hovering around $80,000, which is— I don't know, there's a disconnect between price and sentiment right now, I think.

Matthew Mežinskis [5:39] Yeah. Yeah. I think that you're right. If you back it up though and take a look at the numbers, we're definitely in cheap territory. In fact, the same thing as those 2015 lows or 2018 lows or 2022 lows. But I still remain pretty confident. I mean, it's— we do this every time, it rebounds every time. And I say it often in my streams, especially when we get to these levels and, you know, when we're around $16,000, $17,000 at the end of 2022, all the FTX debacle was in full swing, and Peter Zeihan, the geopolitical genius, was on Joe Rogan saying Bitcoin was $17,000 overvalued at $16,000. Those are moments to remember because often people spout off about Bitcoin without knowing anything about it, even if they may be somewhat learned in other spheres. I'm not saying he's not learned in certain things. It's important to remember because cycles do repeat and we are in the exact same scenario percentage-wise, percentile-wise now as we were in those periods. Yeah.

Marty Bent [7:05] You tweeted out on Friday, Bitcoin sits at the 8.4th percentile on 17-year power trend. Gold At the 93.5. So we've got this gold still hovering up there.

Matthew Mežinskis [7:20] Yeah. Yeah. So we can look at these. I don't know if you want.

Marty Bent [7:26] Yeah, let's do it live.

Matthew Mežinskis [7:27] Usually, dear listener, when we do these, it's a little bit better on the YouTube streams. Or when you launch on Spotify, do you have the live videos going as well? I think you do, right?

Marty Bent [7:41] We do on Apple now. Spotify's been a little finicky with Fountain. Fountain is trying to communicate with the Spotify team like, hey, we have video all over the place. But you can watch the video on Apple or Fountain if you're listening on Spotify right now.

Matthew Mežinskis [7:55] Okay. So again, just brass tacks, being in the— trying to get the macro trend and not get too worked up. The nice rainbow-looking log-linear trend of Bitcoin with a power trend, 96% R-squared. You go log-log, get a nice straight line, beautiful trend. Uh, here's, here's the Peter Zion moment, right? It's here, end of 2022, 16 and change. And you see here, we actually went lower Uh, and set really like an all-time low here in, uh, in June, uh, when that was $60,000 Bitcoin for the time, for the, you know, for the relative time of Bitcoin relative to the power trend. And so now, yeah, we're even lower than that, uh, tweet that I did last week.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ So we're about, uh, I can never see. We're about around $80,000, whatever. It's a little bit below 8%, the 8th percentile. So again, that means 92% of the time of all observations that we've had in the Bitcoin world, you know, the price has been higher relative to trend. So I'm pretty bullish. Not saying that we couldn't go down to the 5th percentile. And in fact, I do think we could see some weakness here, especially if, you know, Elizabeth Warren gets on her high horse after a blue wave or whatever might happen here in the midterms, you know, trying to target corruption in crypto or whatever from the Trump admin.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ There's, there could be narratives to bring the price even weaker, but generally speaking, I would say, you know, not financial advice, but this is this remains a relatively cheap price point for Bitcoin.

Marty Bent [9:56] Yeah. What's been going on with gold and the Bitcoin-to-gold ratio?

Matthew Mežinskis [10:04] Right. So let's look at gold first. Let me just pull it up here, just a quick second. So with gold, I called this one pretty accurately. Gold's trend is much less explosive, in fact, than Bitcoin's. It's been on a hell of a tear last 3, 4 years, no doubt. But if you look at the gold price here, just straight up gold price, and you go over a long, long macro trend, all right, this is linear scale, all right, linear. And then if we go log linear, get that straight line, and that's an expo trend. So gold, just like stocks, bonds, you know, I've said it 1,000 times, exponential trends.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ The only thing that will give you that rainbow on the linear— sorry, log-linear scale is Bitcoin. The only financial asset, in fact, that I have observed be doing that, which is pretty wild. But if we do gold, you know, you can you can start to see these bands of what extreme overvaluation or undervaluation looks like. So we can see in 1980, January, for about 2 seconds, got to $850 an ounce. Then it nadired in, I believe it was July of— actually, I think it was 1999, but also from 1999 to 2001, basically it was scraping the bottom around $250. And then I told everybody a lot of caution this winter when it was going over $5,000 an ounce because it was just pushing this 100th percentile.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ You know, if you just look at that, that's a 55-year trend to new highs and it set a new high. And so we're off that. You know, we may have a little bit more of a dead cat bounce or something, but I don't see this going anywhere to fantastic Jim Rickards, you know, $50,000 announced territory. Again, anything could happen, but the probabilities of supply and demand suggest something different. 7%, which is pretty wild, right? 7%. So yeah, we're coming off of it. I could project this forward. Let's go even out to the year 2050. And if you look at the OLS there, the first line, the price projected in 2050 for gold on this trend is $8,500.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ So nice, good. But keep in mind, we were at $5,000. already in February. And yeah, in February. And there's much more data inside these trends than there is for the Bitcoin power law model, which only has, you know, as you know, 17 years worth of data, less pricing data. So I'm pretty confident to be bullish on Bitcoin compared to gold. And it's fine. I got no problem with gold if you want to hold gold, but As we see, Peter Schiff has been wrong and wrong again. And yeah, that's kind of the update there. I can do Bitcoin in terms of gold now. Might be helpful.

Marty Bent [13:29] I think that's, I think that's where the signal is too.

Matthew Mežinskis [13:32] Yeah.

Marty Bent [13:33] Bitcoin price and other commodities.

Matthew Mežinskis [13:35] Right. So here we got Bitcoin dollar, we got gold dollar. Now we'll go Bitcoin gold. All right. So this is interesting. First thing to notice is its power curve. Okay. We go log-log, a straight line. All right. So the Bitcoin price in terms of gold, that the power regression dominates here. Like it's not an exponential trend, which again shows us that something's going on more in Bitcoin land than it is in, you know, the world of gold. But what is interesting here is because of gold's massive success, relative to its history in the last 3, 4 years, you see this, like, you know, Bitcoin had a major low, right, in the winter and the summer.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ In terms of gold, I'll zoom in here, but you can see like where usually we have these gaps is between the, you know, the 90th, 100th percentile, right? Here we had a huge gap between the, you know, the bottom and the 10th percentile, which is fine, but I think it just shows people it, You know, you can have these probabilities on both ends of the spectrum depending on what your lens is, depending on what your frame of reference is. And so here, and I said this at the time, again, I try to not be too arrogant with these calls, but I was pretty confident with this one that this trend was just way too strong for Bitcoin.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ I saw it bounce from the 12 ounces of gold. I said, I think 10 ounces of gold is out of play. And there we go. So think about this. If you were a gold holder back in February, March, you could have got Bitcoin for 12, 13 ounces of gold. We could have gotten 1 Bitcoin. Now, just waiting 8 months, going to take you 20 ounces of gold to buy Bitcoin. So it might not seem like in the last 8 months Bitcoin has done that great, right? Even though it has had a great recovery, especially from August, as I mentioned, which does surprise me. Look at that change, right?

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ It's almost— the price has almost doubled in terms of gold, which shows you Bitcoin is on a way stronger trend line than gold is. And quite unique, quite good. Again, we could retest again so that it's growing all the time. So the lower trend now is 15 ounces of gold, right? I think we still could test it in the 4th quarter here. You never know. But I do think 10 ounces of gold might be— I do think 10 ounces of gold is out of play. I mean, forever, barring like a massive black swan. If you just look at this chart, look at the probabilities, look at the way the trend line grows, it's pretty incredible.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ 7%. So actually a little bit shallower. The Bitcoin dollar trailing 12-month trend is a little under 40%. So gold does a— takes a little bit of that return away. But still, you can see that the name of the game here, it's Bitcoin's power curve way more defines what's happening in Bitcoin world than, like you said, sentiment or money supply even. You know, as we— I know this is another quarterly update here with the base money, so I can show you that. I think this is the main thing. We've been doing this long enough, right? I don't know how long I've been talking to you about the power trend for, but I've been tracking this long enough where this is the main story for Bitcoin and how it's growing.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ And I think it's way more descriptive of what Bitcoin is doing, and it should give people a lot of calm presence. Take that frame of reference and try to expand that to other areas of your life. touch grass, see how good Bitcoin does relative to these other assets, and hopefully it will give you some peace.

Marty Bent [17:31] Yeah. No, I think Bitcoiners need to do better. I'm sure you saw the headlines of the fusion reactor turning mercury into gold and every Bitcoiner and their mother running out and saying, oh, Peter Schiff, we can use alchemy to turn mercury into gold now.

Matthew Mežinskis [17:48] Yeah. It's not the first time that such news has broken, but yeah.

Marty Bent [17:55] Almost like that. If you look at it, I think mercury is something like $14,000 a gram to do something like that at scale. And then if you do successfully use a fusion reactor to turn mercury into gold, you have to bury it underground for 20 years to let all the nuclear waste dissipate from the asset. But the point being is you just look at the— you don't need to discover alchemy to shit on the gold bugs. Just look at this trend.

Matthew Mežinskis [18:28] Correct. Correct. And it's still not the first instance, I think, in history where someone has demonstrated in a lab where it's possible to create gold. It's been demonstrated years before, as far as I know. So that's it.

Marty Bent [18:49] Yeah. I mean, let's go into base money now because I am interested with everything going on.

Matthew Mežinskis [18:53] Yeah. Well, one more here on the— I had these quarterly candles now, just a simple one. I think these are actually helpful. If you look at the downtrends, right, in prior cycles, 2015, as you mentioned, was a real long one. 2018, 2019, relatively shorter, although we did have that fall in 2019 again, 2022. But bottom line is, I think if you just gloss over these trends, right? Of all the cycles down, it's at least 4 red candles and we've had 3 full red, right? From 2025. So 2025, 4th quarter was red. First 2 quarters this year were red and green, and now we're actually currently in a red.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ So it wouldn't surprise me at all if we have a red quarter here. And I think this is again, just to warn people like, yeah, you can always be mega bullish. Great. But probabilities. I wouldn't be surprised at all if this quarter's red or first quarter next year's red, but just something to keep in mind. Okay, so that's quarterly. Let me show you this one. This one I think is really insightful. So again, this is the old monetary base update. It's a little bit slower than I used to because I got some broad money stuff in here as well, which we can talk about. But base money is basically central bank money.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ It's the printing press. It's what actually central banks print to primarily buy government bonds, but they also have some gold on their balance sheets. And these are the top 5 in the world. So the Chinese yuan is actually in first place right now at $6 trillion. 5 trillion. 6 trillion, and the poor yen. As you have surely been following the story of the yen over the last few months, it's just getting crushed in dollar terms. So the yen was actually winning. You might remember some quarters we did, right? 5 trillion. Then Bitcoin, and then the British pound sterling, which is about a trillion dollars in base money.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ So we were actually close to catching it at quarter end, and this is only from second quarter, but you can see I got the, of course, the market cap I keep growing. 2 trillion there at the end of second quarter. now we're well back up. So this is it. This is really, if you want to look at Bitcoin versus the fiat world, this is how it's growing and this is how it's going to continue to grow. And I think it's an interesting, just an interesting alignment there of the top 5 currencies and Bitcoin.

Marty Bent [21:51] Yeah. I mean, just looking, eye testing, caveman TA, this chart looks like my favorite. Yeah. yen, euro, pound going opposite of the yuan, the dollar, and Bitcoin, it looks like.

Matthew Mežinskis [22:08] Yep. Yep. And I'm not sure how much the yuan will continue there. That's interesting. I mean, sometimes the news cycle might be overhyped on some of these technical things, but you read the tea leaves, the Chinese seem to be worried. about their debt. You know, they're the largest— of course, the US always, it's a debt story, right? But the Chinese, even though they have a huge manufacturing base, they have the fastest growing debt. They have the largest debt of all, you know, developing countries and the second largest debt holding country in the world, basically. So it comes with economic growth. It's true. I'm not defending any of it, but that might face some headwinds as well. And again, all this stuff about the BRICS currencies or the yuan being like some sort of a new safe haven. I just don't see that at all. I think we agree it's going to be Bitcoin before it's going to be Chinese yuan.

Marty Bent [23:05] Yeah. And I think that's, I mean, bringing the debt into focus here, big point of contention here in the United States, especially where considering where yields have drifted to. Obviously they've come off their highs and the last couple of weeks, but big point of contention here, which is how high can we let these yields go as we're rolling over all this debt? And then you have the Genius Act rules being set last week and this over-indexing on the front end of the yield curve by the Treasury with Scott Bessent at the helm. And that's been a very consistent topic of conversation on this show over the last 6 to 8 months is what's going on with yields and what's going on with the Treasury.

Marty Bent ⋮ I mean, the theories out there, they're trying to push everything to the front end and imbue the financial system with stablecoin rails to drive demand even further for that and sort of do a hot swap of this long-ended, long-duration debt with short-duration debt and try to drive the flows towards those short-term bond auctions with stablecoin demand. And then that's— I'm interested to get your thoughts on the whole stablecoin conversation and the push to integrate it very broadly in our financial system.

Matthew Mežinskis [24:42] Yeah. Well, it's a longer-term thing. First of all, I would say I think it's much larger sort of, I don't know, what's the word, like sort of clickbait sort of a topic, right? Because the stablecoin market cap still, is it even $200 billion? I have it somewhere, but $100 and some billion. So you're checking me right now?

Marty Bent [25:13] Yeah, I'm checking. We got Tether at $182 billion. Oh,

Matthew Mežinskis [25:19] okay. So it's rising faster than I—

Marty Bent [25:22] USDC. So it's like, yeah, $250 billion between USDC and Tether.

Matthew Mežinskis [25:27] Yeah. So $250 billion. But then if you look at What M3 money represents, which is basically money that is most analogous to a stablecoin. Okay? So M3 money is repurchase agreements, Eurodollars, which I don't have, but I do have everything else part of the M3 stack, which is the broadest money. It's the most liquid, non-bank, non-insured deposits. All right? So money market funds, repurchase agreements, those types of assets, we're getting your $8 to $10 trillion in size, just dollars. And that doesn't even count eurodollars, which are offshore dollars, which are also analogous in some way to stablecoins, right? Because stablecoins are basically an offshore money market fund.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ So, and no one has a good handle, as far as I can tell, on what the true— I'm trying to still get a good proxy for eurodollars, but I don't have it. But anyway, I have all the others. And if you factor even all the other M3-type instruments for other currencies, right, on top of the more narrow deposits like demand deposits, so on and so forth, I mean, total M3 globally worldwide is about $150 trillion. I have a chart for this, but $150 trillion. So here I sort of just, I look at these again, it's kind of clickbaity and yeah, it might be, it might drive some news stories, it might drive something there, but it's really, really small at the moment.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ What I do think is a bigger question mark, back to your original question about yields, is how high can the market go on this, particularly in the long bonds? Because as everybody knows, the more that resets higher, the harder it is for people to pay off a lot of that underlying debt. And I just don't know the levels here. I can show you looking at the short. All right, here's Fed balance sheet. I had this pulled back like 30 years, 35 years. You see So you see the craziness, right? QE1, 2, 3 from post-GFC, then you see the pandemic high. What I do think is interesting is, remember this, the old repo seizure?

Marty Bent [28:07] Yep.

Matthew Mežinskis [28:08] Right? Which is a short-term seizing of the market that happened in September of 2019. The result of that was they had to raise asset purchases. They're doing that again, and they have been here from the end of last year, right? As Powell did what he said he was going to do, but usually they always overshoot it. So this is, I would say, eerily similar to 2019. It's just like, are we going to get that shot or shock of a a black swan, which would give them the excuse to monetize, give them an excuse to lower interest rates. That might even be preferable to them. But if they do not have that, then that seems like it's going to be pretty difficult for debtors to pay the creditors.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ So it doesn't look good either way. Bitcoin looks fine. either way. But yeah, this is where I mostly take my analysis to the extent of it because I just don't, you know, it's hard to say, but it's absolutely, we know that if they do have that shock, if they do have that black swan, we know what's going to happen to the money supply and to rates.

Marty Bent [29:26] Yeah. It's interesting here. I guess the one difference between now and Q4, end of Q3, Q4 2019 is we're raising rates and it's still going up.

Matthew Mežinskis [29:39] Yeah, correct. Correct. That is a difference. It's almost like it's actually the opposite situation because here they were just the standard targeting lower rates, rates were going down and they were purchasing more, printing money. And here they're actually able to do the opposite. and how long that can go. People think, what, there's a Fed meeting coming up this week? No. And people think that that might stay the same, might be a hike at the next meeting in December. So it is diverging from the 2019 story. But yeah, overall, that sort of trying to normalize the balance sheet, which happened from 2014 to 2019. And then even pre-crisis or pre-pandemic, we had this exploding of the balance sheet again, which showed that not all was well.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ And they're doing that again here. So even though I think they're aware of it, that's why they're trying to keep the rates higher. But as you said, the economy is complex, and the more that these central bureaucrats try to get involved with it, they're usually not on the mark.

Marty Bent [30:54] Well, we're doing a lot all at once right now, trying to reindustrialize, obviously tariffs we talked about. The AI trade, whatever you want to call it, build-out seems to be somewhat existential to the quality of economic growth moving forward. And as we're talking, Anthropic has released their S-1 to go public next week and Just reading the tea leaves here, doesn't seem too confident. The market doesn't seem too confident in what they released this morning.

Matthew Mežinskis [31:34] Right.

Marty Bent [31:35] That's been the big question is, can any of these companies get public? And if not, what message does that send the market? There's obviously hundreds of billions, trillions of dollars even locked up in this trade, for lack of a better term.

Matthew Mežinskis [31:56] Yeah.

Marty Bent [31:57] Is that, to your point, is the 2019, 2020 equivalent of the COVID scare this time around? Is it like a bailout of this infrastructure build-out if it begins to puke?

Matthew Mežinskis [32:13] Yeah. And 2019, well, in 2019 at least, I know people tried to read the tea leaves on, I think the yield curve inverted even in August of 2019. And there were rumors, I guess, if you really look back about what was happening in China in 2019, but really the market didn't even know at that time. So like, I don't think that was really a story until, you know, January 2020. Just point is, Yes, I agree with you. Yes, it's very incestuous the way the capital markets are treating AI right now. io/topmoney. 7 trillion, whatever it might be, is still a top 10 stock, even though Anthropic will probably push us down a peg.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ So it's— there's— yes, there's a lot of incestuous liquidity chasing AI. There's a lot of question marks there. You brought up data centers, all those things. But Bitcoin to me just seems like such a solid play right now, especially when you consider all those other factors.

Marty Bent [33:32] But quantum and AI breaking ECDSA, it's here. We're screwed. It's going to zero.

Matthew Mežinskis [33:39] Yes. Yes. If I had a nickel, if I had a sat for every time I heard quantum over all the years that I've been in Bitcoin.

Marty Bent [33:46] But this time it's real. AI's here. This time it's different. It's really smart.

Matthew Mežinskis [33:52] Well, we've seen how AI has been able to penetrate certain people's stash. For sure, there's a hardening going on, but, uh,

Marty Bent [34:08] I mean, yeah, I mean, we haven't spoken. I don't think you've been on the show since ColdCard.

Matthew Mežinskis [34:13] Yeah.

Marty Bent [34:14] And all this, um, all these vulnerabilities have been, uh, identified and exploited by, by people leveraging these AI tools. Do you think it's a hardening that's been going on the last 3 months? Do you think we're out of the woods? Do you think— I

Matthew Mežinskis [34:30] think it's definitely hardening. Yeah. I don't know if we're out of the woods, but, you know, like what Kali and those guys have been doing, trying to track these white hat, you know, actors in space, it's fantastic. I think there can only be— there can be no other way, right? Like, it's not government regulation that's going to save us here. So if AI is exploiting people's stash, and very sadly so, first of all, there are ways, there were plenty of ways to mitigate that. And again, I'm not, definitely not happy for that situation, but the fact that I think new software releases can be so much clearer now in the way that they're implemented as far as checking for bugs, and the bugs are out there, and the potential attack surfaces are out there. It's going to be this cat and mouse game, but I absolutely think that we're attacking this all in the right way as far as trying to protect people.

Marty Bent [35:36] What's up, freaks? This was brought to you by our good friends at Square. Bitcoin at Block is creating a whole ecosystem of companies, Cash App, BitKey and Square to make Bitcoin everyday money. The way Square does that is by enabling eligible businesses to accept Bitcoin over Lightning. This is a superior way to do payments compared to incumbent payment processors. And if you're a Square merchant that enables Bitcoin payments, if you're an eligible Square merchant that does that, you're going to have 0% processing fees through 2026. Another benefit, there's no chargeback. There's no chargebacks. Think about what that means. The card networks have been skimming every local business for decades, plus chargeback risk on top.

Marty Bent ⋮ Lightning settles in seconds. final, for free. This is Bitcoiners asking merchants for a favor and saying, hey, Bitcoin is a superior payment rail. If you adopt it, I have Bitcoin, you accept it, I will pay, you will save on those fees. It's a beautiful thing. On top of that, these merchants can take some of their fiat revenue, convert it to Bitcoin automatically in the backend. Square is trying to make Bitcoin everyday money for small, medium, and large-sized businesses. com/go/tftc for up to $200 off eligible Square hardware. Terms apply. This episode is sponsored by Bitcoin AppBlock. All right, freaks, you know I don't take sponsor money from products I wouldn't use myself, so listen up.

Marty Bent ⋮ The Aven Bitcoin Visa card is one of the most interesting things I've seen in the Bitcoin lending space in a long time. Here's the deal. You can get a line of credit up to $1 million backed by your Bitcoin without selling a single sat. No games, no annual fees, no minimum draws, and your Bitcoin is custodied by BitGo, one of the most trusted names in digital asset security. Aven never lends it out. There's no rehypothecation. You stay in control. You can lock in a fixed rate for up to 10 years. 10 years. That's 10 times longer than most lenders out there, or go interest only for up to 5 years.

Marty Bent ⋮ 99% APR. For a product that lets you keep your stack and still access liquidity, it's hard to beat. On top of this, guess what? You also get 2% unlimited cash back every time you use the card. Spend fiat, keep your Bitcoin. That's the whole game. If you've been stacking for years and you need liquidity without triggering a taxable event, This is worth a serious look. com/bitcoin. com/bitcoin. Check it out.

Marty Bent [37:41] It's scary. It's unnerving. And that's the other thing. That's why I love talking to you. And I say this every time you're on, but just looking at the charts to detach yourself from the narratives of the day is extremely important. And not going to lie, it was very discombobulating end of July, August, September. what the hell's going on? Felt like every other day something was happening. And I think one thing I've been telling people behind the scenes is it was never ever going to be easy. You're going to have these trials and tribulations on the road towards the Bitcoin standard. These are just par for the course. You got to go through these hardening experiences and I mean, I was definitely guilty of this in the past, but I think in recent years have become more sober about Bitcoin's path to ultimate success

Marty Bent [38:37] and it's arduous, not a straight line. And I think we're still learning how to interact with Bitcoin correctly. We're still discovering what this alien technology is, how to interact with it, and what we can do with it, and how to secure it. And I think the conversations that have been had over the last 3 months about how we secure Bitcoin, how we audit the code, and what products are actually needed right now, it's been a lot of hard conversations, but I think very important, and in the long run will be a massive net positive, but you just have to realize we're in the middle of the storm and you can't let the storm sort of dictate your view of Bitcoin in the long term.

Matthew Mežinskis [39:31] Yeah. And I mean, like anything, there's a wall of worry, right? None of us know the future. We could do these charts with these probabilities to try to chart out the relative range of where we think the future could go, the more uncertainty that is posted or the more volatility that is posted on these charts, it's true, the range of probabilities widens, right? But at the same time, you gain more confidence that those bands, you know, are relatively accurate. And that's why I was pretty confident in the in the winter where I said that gold was reaching a top. It just doesn't matter what Peter Schiff or James Rickards says.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ They're on sort of their own odyssey that is outside the realm of reality. But if you price Bitcoin in terms of gold, price Bitcoin in terms of dollars, price Bitcoin in terms of oil or anything else, you're going to start to see this really interesting power trend, which suggests a really strong network effect. which I think is really exciting. And another one I could show you here in the same vein of the chart I just showed you. I got, I got the different administrations up as well. Bring it back to the, to the, to the— yeah, well, not administrations, but this is actually, this is, this is fully controlling the Congress.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ So the white spaces would be a mixed split Congress. And the non-white spaces would be when both parties control— or sorry, one party controls both houses. But, and again, I'm not defending it. I'm not saying that I want it to happen, but if we do have a situation where, as we talked about, they have to explode the money supply, black swan, whatever it might be, they do have room to do it. Right. The last Major high in the '70s here was when we were going into a petrodollar, going off the gold standard. And as I've told you probably many times, if you don't remember, dear listener, the reason this goes down and looks better— so this is the Federal Reserve's proportion of the US federal debt.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ So this is literally how much they— this is the monetization of the debt, the phrase you've probably heard often.

Marty Bent [41:52] Fed doesn't monetize the debt. They don't monetize the debt.

Matthew Mežinskis [41:56] Who said— who says that?

Marty Bent [41:57] That was Bernanke's thing. We're not monetizing the

Matthew Mežinskis [42:02] debt. I mean, yeah, cue any sort of no-coiner there, but the reason this goes down and actually looks better, it goes down from, you know, 16, 17% of owning the federal debt in the '70s is not because the Fed is printing any less money. It's actually because the US has taken on more debt. So it shows sort of how this thing can go on for a long time. But anyway, if you zoom in here and then we look at the QE 1, 2, 3, and then again the pandemic, you can see at the height in 2021, we're at 20% of federal debt. And this does not include agency securities, which are separate numerator, separate denominator, but It's basically, it's just gross federal debt and how much the Fed owns of it, Treasury securities.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ 3%. So if they need to act fast and swiftly and flexibly, use all those terms that economists like to do, I think that there's precedent that they can, right? They could go, they could double, the Fed could double its balance sheet and still be within the realm of historical possibilities. So it's another reason, again, I'm not hoping for it, but I'm just saying they can do it, which is again another reason why it just shows that Bitcoin to me is a much better holding than say the dollar or bonds.

Marty Bent [43:31] How do you think Warsh has been doing since he stepped in, particularly on the KFAB side of things? Fine.

Matthew Mežinskis [43:38] Fine. Yeah. I'm not a big judger or even trainspotter on everything that they're saying in those meetings. But, you know, seems to be a little bit more independent than was maybe feared by some of the naysayers. But I don't know, you?

Marty Bent [43:57] Yeah, I think it's— I think he's definitely more independent. I think he was handed a I mean, if you're handed the reins of the Federal Reserve, I do not envy that position at all. No. I do like no forward guidance. I think it's good to have the markets trying to figure out things for themselves instead of reading the tea leaves.

Matthew Mežinskis [44:21] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it'd be better if we didn't have central banks at all, but we are where we are. So it's also interesting, If you look at this from basically the Progressive Era, really the end of the Progressive Era, but this is the start of the Great Depression all the way through almost to Newt Gingrich. It was a— I didn't quite realize that, right? But if you look at that, look at that Democrat stronghold on the House. That's the House and the Senate. being run by the Democrats. Pretty wild.

Marty Bent [45:02] Yeah.

Matthew Mežinskis [45:03] For, you know, 60-some years. And, uh, yeah, but whether it's Republican, Democrat, whatever, unless you're Jacksonian, ready to extinguish the debt, uh, they both take the debt up. So it's just interesting that there was a long period of American history where it was only Democrat

Marty Bent [45:28] No, I think to your point, when you talk about the debt, I mean, this is on-balance-sheet

Matthew Mežinskis [45:33] debt.

Marty Bent [45:34] I think the topic of conversation around off-balance-sheet debt, particularly Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, historically a third rail, don't touch, but that third rail is weakening. The electric current flowing through that rail is weakening and people are beginning You're beginning to see bubbling of conversation around Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, cutting it. And then I think interestingly, in parallel, you had the Trump accounts being launched for children to start. But then last week or the week before, they said they're going to come out and make Trump accounts available to anybody under 40. And so you can see the beginnings of trying to hot swap Social Security out for this Trump account. equity portfolio, index portfolio for people.

Matthew Mežinskis [46:28] No discussion of Bitcoin there though, right? With the Trump accounts?

Marty Bent [46:32] No, no, no. Yeah, I think you have to buy indexes. I'm pretty sure.

Matthew Mežinskis [46:37] Right. Just be in funds. Yeah. I mean, as John Williams used to say from ShadowStats, I mean, you could cut every single thing in the budget except for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and you'd still be in deficit. So that's the brass tacks math of the US federal budget. You can cut the military, you can cut literally every single thing except for those sacred cows, and you'd still be in deficit. So we'll see. Again, I'm kind of— again, I haven't said that this yet here. I think that There's a lot of difficult things going on in the world, right? You know, where I live, it's war right on our borders and stuff.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ And I would just hope that at least in the free world, we can start to manage these problems like adults. I'm not sure if we can, but I would, I would, I would, I would hope that. say that managing these problems like just head on, just telling people that, you know, I mean, I don't expect to get anything from Social Security that I've put in, right?

Marty Bent [47:53] Yeah.

Matthew Mežinskis [47:54] It's not going to be politically popular, but I have to at least start addressing it. And maybe you can start to somehow fix the problem long term. But I still would say, you know, the West is still way better than what's going on in Russia, for example. So I'm always balancing those things as well, but we'll have to see.

Marty Bent [48:19] What's up, freaks? This episode was brought to you by Simple Mining. I'm sure many of you listening to this right now own Bitcoin and own it the same way. You go on an exchange, you buy it, sweep it to the cold storage, maybe you keep it on the exchange and you pay full price. But there's a smaller group of business owners, family offices, and investors with sharp CPAs that are quietly getting theirs a different way. They own the machines that make it. Here's how it works. You buy the miners at Simple Mining. Simple Mining hosts them, runs them at their facilities in Iowa on industrial power rates you could never get on your own.

Marty Bent ⋮ The Bitcoin they mine goes straight from your machine to your wallet. 2 reasons I find this interesting right now. The second one is the one that nobody's talking about. One is the economics, cheap power. This lets you convert your electricity into Bitcoin at a discount to spot. You're acquiring the asset below the sticker price everyone else pays. 2, and listen closely, if you've had a big income year, making a lot of money out there, I know a lot of you freaks are making a lot of money. Miners are classified as computer equipment, the big beautiful bill. Equipment means depreciation. Qualifying buyers can write off the entire purchase in year one.

Marty Bent ⋮ It's the same playbook real estate investors have run for decades pointed at Bitcoin. Your CPA will want to see this before the end of the year. And with attractive financing available, you can deploy without selling assets to do it. This is not a garage operation. Simple Mining runs over 40,000 machines and was just ranked the fastest growing company in Iowa on the Inc. 5000 chart. They put together a valuable resource called the 2026 Bitcoin Mining Blueprint. covers the 5 mistakes investors make when allocating to mining and how to avoid them before deploying capital. io/tftc. io/tftc. Freaks, look at me. I'm glowing. I've got like an angel's halo going around me.

Marty Bent ⋮ You know why that is? Is I feel good. I feel taken care of. I feel blessed, healthy, happy. And that is because I'm a CrowdHealth member. My family and I have been CrowdHealth members for 5 years now, literally this month, 5 years ago we joined CrowdHealth. We've had 2 babies, we've had multiple health events, and we're never going back to health insurance. CrowdHealth is crowdfunded healthcare. So you sign up for CrowdHealth, you pay a monthly fee, you help out with other people's bills, and it's significantly cheaper than health insurance. We were on COBRA as a family of 3 when I left my last job before I went full-time with TFTC, went on CrowdHealth, Now, as a family of 5, we pay, I believe, $700 a month.

Marty Bent ⋮ It's significantly cheaper. They're going to negotiate prices lower for you. They've consistently negotiated healthcare prices as much as 50%, 60%, 80% in many cases. They help out with babies. If you have a pregnancy, you pay the first $3,000 and the crowd covers the rest. If you have a regular health event, you pay $500 and the crowd pays the rest. com, sign up today, use the code TFTC, opt out of health insurance. I'm uninsured, baby, and I love it. com and you'll get $99 a month for the first 3 months that you're on the CrowdHealth platform in the community. Bitcoiners, you found sovereign money. Now find sovereign health and sovereign healthcare.

Marty Bent ⋮ I've been thinking about it a lot recently, and obviously it's like one of the sacred books of Bitcoin lore, but like the sovereign individual thesis just getting stronger and stronger by the day, whether it's what we're talking about on the entitlement side, Getting out of hand. I mean, Trump was not— they didn't say Trump's going to be president, but they said some populist outsider will emerge who will run on immigration reform and tax reform, and that's happened. And then what you're seeing in your neck of the world, asymmetric drone warfare. Yeah. was protected as well. And that's like, I've been following that trend on both sides of that battlefield, and it's insane.

Marty Bent ⋮ And I don't think people appreciate the gravity of the advancement of drone warfare.

Matthew Mežinskis [52:08] It's already affecting us, man. I mean, the Baltics, every country, and Romania, Poland, we've all been Our airspace has been penetrated by errant Russian drones. And imagine getting a text that there's an air raid alert and your child needs to go to the basement. I don't know about you, but I grew up in the Midwest in the US, and I know you did as well, but we had tornado warnings and they never really happened where we were, but still had them. the warnings, you had the drills, you had everything. But imagine, you know, you got to go in the basement, not for a tornado warning, not for a hurricane warning or anything, but a drone warning.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ Your child goes in the basement for that. I mean, we're already, we're already having it here. That's why we're so pressing for the free world to take on the savage Russian hell state. But yeah, they're the 2 countries in the world right now that are taking this to the next level is Russia and Ukraine. And AI is going to be a part of it. And it's a cost-effective way to scale both offense and defense. And that's what's happening. There's just no doubt about it. There's no getting away from it.

Marty Bent [53:28] And I mean, it seems like we've crossed the event horizon too. I don't know.

Matthew Mežinskis [53:33] Oh yeah. Again, there's no talking around this on a podcast. This is not happening. This is This is happening.

Marty Bent [53:40] And I don't think people in the West appreciate it unless you're terminally online. And it's, again, going back to the sovereign individual thesis, that's one of the things they predicted. And it's— I can't imagine having to— like what you just described, having to worry about that. But I mean, I don't want to sound like too much of a doomer, but you'd be naive to think that this type of risk is not going to spread throughout the world.

Matthew Mežinskis [54:11] Yeah. No, I said it, I think, on the last show with you. I've said a few times, it's already happened to Americans on bases. Whatever you think about the Iran War, I don't support any offensive wars of America, but they happen and they started that war. And I thought it was Frankly shameful. I mean that the Iranian Shahed drones—it could have been Russian augmented drones—they didn't say specifically, but it was Iran and Russia. It's one and it's it's both sides of the same coin—the Shahed drone model. But that killed the first six Americans there in Kuwait in the bases, and America wasn't prepared for that.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ That's just. That's a, that's a war theater, right? Like that's, that's active war. And America wasn't even prepared for that. And then of course the Ukrainians come in with the thankless help that they always do and gave anti-drone tech to the US as they continued that and they're continuing to help. But I mean, it's, you know, you saw Operation Spiderweb last year from Ukraine where they're able to knock out like a huge proportion of Russian bombers. Using covert drones hidden in lorries and semi-trucks. So there's no way that this does not even— that anyone credible in the US Defense Department could not be thinking about this as a major threat that could happen even in the US.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ So that's for sure. Again, I'm not trying to be a doomer or scare people. I'm just saying this is sadly the state that we're in right now. And there's no way around it. You have to now be in a counter-drone state of mind.

Marty Bent [55:57] Well, especially in the US, because you have members of the Sinaloa Cartel going to the front lines to learn how to use these drones. I mean, showing up as mercenaries, but really using it as like an education trip.

Matthew Mežinskis [56:12] It's, it's nuts. It's nuts. Yeah.

Marty Bent [56:24] That's my hope. My great hope is that we're just being pushed to the precipice and we wake up one day and say, okay, this is getting too crazy. Let's focus on the good productive stuff. But how long that period lasts is yet to be determined. I mean, you have the Neil Howe acolytes saying we got the fourth turning, probably won't find a resolution to any of this till the 2030s, after the turn of the next decade. But yeah, I think it's going to be crazy times.

Matthew Mežinskis [56:57] Yeah. I mean, monetarily, we can stick on the military stuff for a second, but monetarily, that's what I'm seeing as well is the big things with the way that Bitcoin's growing, the trends, something that might be as large as the government monetary base, about $100 trillion, which might just be rounding to a number that wouldn't mean anything, but that stuff's going to happen late 2030s where Bitcoin's going to be about as large as $100 trillion, which is probably, or could be, $80 to $100 trillion could be the number where Bitcoin passes the growth rate of central bank money in the world. That still just means it passes it.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ It might not mean banks are really holding it. Maybe they do. Maybe they don't. Also, early 2030s, we'll pass $1 million per coin. This again, just a round number, but I do think that late 2030s from the monetary side, at least from what Bitcoin has the capability of doing, that shows something. But I fear much sooner than that, right? I mean, Ukrainians right now are going to have to deal with probably the most brutal winter they've ever had. You know, there's— I don't know if you've been following, there's a lot of drama with Elon Musk and Starlink in the Ukraine space. Yeah. He's blaming Trump and Trump's blaming him on who turned it off, but they turned it off.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ They finally got back to full speed. And this is, this is defense. This is not offense. They don't— the Ukrainians, if they go on offense into Russia with their homemade drones and ballistic missiles, which they're starting ballistic missiles now, by the way, But that has nothing to do with Starshield. That's just— this is just defense of, you know, Ukrainian families and cities that are being bombed. So that was throttled like over a week ago, and no one is owning up to it in the government. But in any event, it doesn't matter. It's clear, I think, that you can't trust one dude with Starlink if you're Ukraine.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ So Europe knows that Europe's building out their own. Russia, of course, has their own. China's going to have their own. This is just what's going to happen. People are going to, you know, companies, governments, they're going to scale out this now sort of modern drone shield. And it seems very Orwellian, apocalyptic, but also there's, it's so much cheaper. than the large-scale stuff, that's just the way that it's going. There's just no way around it. You have to defend against

Marty Bent [59:33] it. I can't imagine investing a trillion dollars in a naval ship today considering the Houthis can just get one of these drones and hit a trillion-dollar asset in the sea.

Matthew Mežinskis [59:45] Yeah. Yeah. S. hasn't spent anything on Ukraine in two years, and they're still fighting. They're still fighting, even gaining territory against the Russians. So they're doing you know God's work for us on the eastern flank of Europe. But I do fear this political division will keep going and. if the hard right of France, say, wins next year— the French president is, people don't maybe know or may not know in the US, but the French president is probably one of the more powerful presidential offices in the world based off of old Charles de Gaulle. It's a 10-year term potentially. I mean, it's 5 plus 5 and they have a lot of powers.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ And if this Le Pen gets in, who has literally taken money from Putin, if she gets in, then that would, I think, be very bad for a united Europe. So that's what we're dealing with over here. Oh, by the way, speaking of The Sovereign Individual, wasn't it— did you see that Reece Maugham discussion with Tucker Carlson?

Marty Bent [1:00:53] I did not.

Matthew Mežinskis [1:00:55] I mean, I saw it happen.

Marty Bent [1:00:56] I didn't sit down and watch it though.

Matthew Mežinskis [1:00:57] Yeah, I didn't, I didn't watch it either. Just watched some clips. But he is the son, I believe, of the author of The Sovereign Individual. Is that right?

Marty Bent [1:01:05] Yep.

Matthew Mežinskis [1:01:06] Yeah. Yeah. So You don't have a take on that, or did you see any of the clips?

Marty Bent [1:01:13] I didn't. I saw that he was on it and dive into any of the clips. What were they talking about?

Matthew Mežinskis [1:01:18] No, it's just— it was about— I mean, again, this is— people can just take a look at the map. But this thing that kind of goes back to— again, I'm anti-commie, anti-Nazi, like both Baltics and Poland. We were occupied by both. the fear that we have, especially with this harder right sort of crop that is coming up that I would say Tucker Carlson represents, is saying that, oh, well, you know, we should just let Hitler roll over Europe. You know, Czechoslovakia, it's not a real country. The Baltics, not real countries. You know, Darryl Cooper said, I think somewhat famously now, a couple years ago on Tucker's podcast, that like World War II, the reason it became What it did, you know, is just because of Churchill, this evil villain.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ You know, it would have just been a small invasion of Poland. But if you actually look at a map, like all of Europe was invaded by the Nazis and the Soviets together as they were buddies in treaty before May of 1940 when Churchill came to power. So just basic historical things like people. People saying, oh, you know, just it would have just been an invasion of Poland. You know, the UK didn't need to do everything. That that was what he was arguing with this Reese Mog about. And of course, Reese Mog was taking the normal British position that Churchill was actually fighting, helping to fight a good fight.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ But yeah, it's like that's that shit just scares us obviously on the Eastern Front because I think everybody. Should get a vote in Europe, including the Poles, including the Baltics. And that's where that's where we're. You know, I've said it enough on the show. People that know my my views, but we're actively being threatened right now every day. And people got to think about it. Like there's there's two accounts. I just saw one. This Kirill Dmitriev. He's the head of the Sovereign Wealth Fund in Russia. He's. Dim Philby, which those who follow Michael Weiss, this great reporter on Russia and Middle East from The Insider, he calls him Dim Philby.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ This is a reference to Kim Philby, the old Cambridge spy group. I mean, just an absolute— if you're going to spy for Russia, you got to be an absolute moron. And Kim Philby wouldn't live the rest of his days in Soviet hellscape Russia. But Witkoff has to be like the lowest IQ individual dealing with— you called Putin humanitarian the other day. I don't know if you saw. I mean, it's just, it's incredible stuff. But anyway, Philby and Kushner, right? So they're going over there dealing with, with Putin and everything. And these guys are dealing with this Kirill Dmitriev as the counter, as the counter guy, like the direct counterpart.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ S. and Russia fighting together against the EU and Britain, and this is just Russian disinformation. I mean, all the while, just just so people know if you're listening to this, Twitter is banned in Russia. Just want people to know that if you if you see sock puppet accounts for Russia, pro-Russian stuff, just know that Twitter is banned in Russia. Facebook, YouTube, they're all banned. So this is the problem with like the— I think the disinformation world space these days is like the hellscape of Russia, the mafia communist hellscape of Russia, and then the communist Orwellian technocratic whatever of China. You know, those 2 states in particular, they use our platforms But we can't use theirs, right?

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ Like TikTok famously is a very different experience in China than it is for our lowbrow, low IQ American population, right? So like that is something that people really need to think about. Like why would it be that Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram—it's all banned in Russia. But you see, you know, Kirill Dmitriev for. This other guy's name is Solovyov. He's like the chief Goebbels propagandist of Putin. They're on Twitter spouting their propaganda, and yet the platform is banned. So I would just— I would encourage people to understand that if you are liking or retweeting something that just seems so wonderfully sovereign and MAGA and US, but really it's put out by some Russian hellscape.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ They don't even care if it's right or left. They just want you to fight. Right. This goes back to— we always talk about Yuri Bezmenov. Wonderful popularizer of the useful idiot. They don't care. They don't care if you're right or left. They'll fund Jill Stein. They'll fund you know Tenet Media, all these guys: Dave Rubin, Tim Pool, the woke righties. So it's dangerous. It's dangerous out there. I would just say it's dangerous. Be careful. You know. Yeah, I'm not a I'm not a I'm not a lefty commie. I tell you that, but it's— I fear, I fear them both right now, like the hard left, hard right.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ And yeah.

Marty Bent [1:06:36] Yeah, like you see what's going on in Brazil and it just feels like stuck in the middle with you situation. It's like, all right, let's just— and it's funny because, I mean, you know this, I've had many, many people on the show who are very pro pro-Russia. And it's interesting to get both sides of the perspective, I guess. One, I guess, neutral comment that I make that I think is, uh, what I like to see is like Europe finally realized, like, at the end of the day, regardless of what you believe or not on both sides of the argument, I think it'll be a net positive. In the future that Europe's saying like, okay, we can't depend on the US, we got to do our own. Yeah.

Matthew Mežinskis [1:07:26] No, I mean, and that also, to be fair, although I'm, I'm fine with sort of the Trumpian attitude there, but that was already happening after the invasion of Crimea. I would again say this is where I think normal Republicans have more to say here. Doesn't mean you have to fund, right? I mean, like, you haven't— the taxpayer has paid $0 for Ukraine in the last 2 years. There's, uh, Europeans have bought systems on behalf of Ukraine from the US, but that's a reimbursement of prior old systems that the US purchased. It's like shrink-wrapped in warehouse. But the taxpayer hasn't paid anything. But the point is, it was already happening.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ We, we had already been, been funding a lot of our defense, uh, you know, that, that 2%, whatever, NATO threshold, which is way, way higher than that now. The Baltics, Poland, Finland. But that stuff was already happening in 2014. But I think where the normal, like, Republican strong defense, strong American values, you know, peace, prosperity, all these things, uh, you have a lot to say there. Because when did Putin invade Crimea? Who was president then? Obama. When did Putin invade Ukraine for the full scale? Who was president then? Biden, right? It's, it's, it's, it's pretty self-evident in my view. It's a weakness of American strength and power.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ It doesn't mean you have to, you know, go full force. We're talking about— I'm not talking about invading Iraq here, right? Talking about, as you know, I'm always talking about defense of freedom and liberal values. But I think when the US has shown weakness is usually where the free world kind of gets screwed. So though I take your point and I agree, that, you know, US or sorry, EU funding their social welfare programs, you know, since they have a shield of American NATO dominance. Right. And I think the US and the EU and Canada has arguably done that over the last 30 years in particular.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ That really was not the case for the people that were really in danger. Like we were always And in particular from Crimea, right? Like, once Crimea occurred in 2014, like, there was just no turning back. There were a lot of new NATO things that started at that point, like to work on protecting us and everything. But it's a savage hell state, man. Let me show you a funny one. Have I shown you this one? Hold on. Have I shown you this one?

Marty Bent [1:09:58] No.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ Population using safely managed sanitation services. So this is, this is literally if you have a toilet, I'll just read it because some people, it's from the World Bank. There's a population using improved sanitation facility that is not shared with other households and where excreta are safely disposed of in situ or treated off site. Improved sanitation facilities include flush port, flush to piped sewer systems, septic tanks, or pit latrines, pit latrines with a slab, including ventilated pit latrines and composting toilets. So this is literally if you have a toilet. Not the outhouse. All right. So, and I— it's, you know, no one is— you're not making— I've heard like trolls try to say like, oh, it's septic tanks.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ Septic tanks are in here. If you have a septic tank, this is an improved sanitation facility. So here's the US. You can always improve. 67%, now 97%. So no matter what the lefty, the lefty commies say, we actually improve for everybody. Here's Monaco, just to show you 100% is possible. All right. Now here, I showed this to a pro-Israel audience, so I just wanted to show this. Israel actually did really well here from 2000 to 2010, passed the US. But even whether you're Jew, Gentile, Arab, here's Jordan, not as good, but right next to Israel. Started at 70%. Now they're up to 80%. Here's Ukraine, uh, actually started at 87, passed by Israel, but now at 92%.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ Okay. Now, you know where I'm going with this, but China, good old China. Let's look here. A lot of this, by the way, reflects moving into cities, but this is pretty wild. This is pretty wild. So China started the century at 13%. Now they're at 68%. Dang. India started the century at 9%, and now they're at 63%. All right, so whether you're Jew, Gentile, Arab, Hindu, Buddhist, everybody's moving well. Now, you know what I'm about to do here. Last one, Russia. You ready?

Marty Bent [1:12:11] Yep.

Matthew Mežinskis [1:12:12] Russian savage hellscape started at 54%. Currently 58%, behind every single country on this chart. Literally, this is why I literally tell you people, look who's banned on Twitter. They are literally spouting propaganda for a shithole. Sorry to say it, but the country is a savage hellscape shithole. They— 2 in 5 do not have safely managed sanitation services according to the WHO. So I don't think Tucker Carlson knows this.

Marty Bent [1:12:48] WHO or World Bank?

Matthew Mežinskis [1:12:50] Did I say World Bank? Sorry.

Marty Bent [1:12:54] WHO.

Matthew Mežinskis [1:12:54] Okay. WHO.

Marty Bent [1:12:57] Yeah. The— do we trust the WHO? That's the question.

Matthew Mežinskis [1:13:03] Well, I mean, do you think they're specifically singling out Russia? Usually, usually these world bodies Nothing would surprise

Marty Bent [1:13:14] me.

Matthew Mežinskis [1:13:14] Nothing would surprise me. Usually these world bodies cover for Russia, right? Go in the UN where Russia has a veto of the Security Council and see what it says about their savage hellscape invasion of Ukraine.

Marty Bent [1:13:27] Yeah.

Matthew Mežinskis [1:13:28] I think this, of all of these countries, all right, are going to be fairly accurate equally. Or fairly inaccurate equally.

Marty Bent [1:13:42] I'll say

Matthew Mežinskis [1:13:42] that.

Marty Bent [1:13:42] Do you think there's any resolution to that, or maybe resolution ending to this? And we're coming up on what, 5 years?

Matthew Mežinskis [1:13:48] Coming up on 5 years. Yeah. They're going to keep fighting. You look at the polls, they're going to keep fighting. Again, they're not asking for Americans to fight. They just want support. They keep fighting because it's a tyranny. It's a dictatorship. There's no private property. There's no rule of law. So they're going to have to make it too expensive for Putin to tell even his people, like, yeah, I'm just going to keep slaughtering 50,000 of you a month, because he's getting close to 50,000 now. a month that are getting killed, captured, or maimed with his invasion. So

Marty Bent [1:14:38] it's insane. That's the scale of that. So like more than half a million.

Matthew Mežinskis [1:14:42] Yeah.

Marty Bent [1:14:45] Yeah.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ It's, it's hardcore. And again, this, like, you can see, I think if you look at this war and you look at actually what happened from the beginning until now, first of all, it's a completely different war. All right. So back then it was traditional war. It was even like, you know, 1914 trench warfare. There was the errant Shahed that would come in to Allied or, you know, America. And there were Americans helping Canadians, whatever. I mean, not officially, but there were plenty of Foreign Legion that was helping Ukraine. But on the Ukrainian side, you would get some errant drones coming in. They were very like Inaccurate and you know not very successful.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ That's a complete. It's a completely different military theater now. I mean, there's a kill zone of like 50 kilometers or so. Basically, it is competitive still, and Ukraine has actually showed that they can retake territory. So it's still competitive, but. What, for example, but this just shows you it might just be the way of the world and like, you know, people like to use counterfactuals and stuff, but our counterfactual on the, and let's say the hardcore national defense against the savage Russian hell state, right? This is the Baltics, Poland, Romania, Finland. We would have been, I think, more comfortable at the start of the war 5 years ago saying, And we were trying to say, look, Ukraine is asking for a no-fly zone.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ We should just do a no-fly zone. I think that actually would've worked because what it just means is basically you engage. I mean, you engage if there's missiles coming in, if there's drones, which drones were not existent 5 years ago really on the battlefield coming in, but you just engage and you try to save the population from the air. But it does mean that you engage. it does mean like pilots would get at risk. And again, I'm not a military guy. I'm not, I'm not going to try to fight any battles, certainly in terms of like, let's say, 2020 hindsight or something. That was basically what was being said from people that thought that NATO was— which NATO was legitimately strong enough to protect Ukrainians here.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ That didn't happen. We didn't let that happen. All right. So now, 5 years later, Savage Russian hell state is still coming, but Ukraine is defending, and now the world is completely different. So we have this cheaper, cost-effective, just massive drone theater, and now the whole world is having to adapt from that. So it's—I kind of just look at it as. Like if we had had our way where like the old world could have stepped up and saved the day, let's say the old free world, like kind of like the US did in Kuwait or something. And I know this is hard for a lot of people listening because they think, oh, you know, just US militarizing.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ That's not at all what I'm talking about. I'm not— you know, if you were against Bush's invasion of Iraq, I cannot see how. And I don't know, you mentioned— I actually didn't know that you had like deliberate pro-Russian voices. I'd be curious.

Marty Bent [1:18:05] It's not really pro-Russian. It's more like pro-Trump, like the whole Yeah.

Matthew Mežinskis [1:18:10] Well, you see, you see Trump. Trump, I don't think, knew how to solve it either, right? He said he'd solve it in one day. It's been 2 years. He hasn't solved it. You know, he's got Musk to try to cut off

Marty Bent [1:18:21] the— The more accurate description is amenable to Trump's foreign policy as it relates to Russia.

Matthew Mežinskis [1:18:28] Yeah.

Marty Bent [1:18:30] Yeah.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ I mean, that's all I can tell you there is. That's a fool's errand. Like, There are no— there's no way that the Trump family is going to get access to any Russian assets. And there's like any cash flow that's tied to a Russian asset in Russia. Now we'll see what happens with this Lukoil deal because that was one that's been speculated, right? Lukoil's foreign assets, they might try to— at least people connected to Kushner. We'll see. Again, this is— if the Biden administration was doing this, by the way, this is blatant Blatant corruption when you're carrying out the national interest of you know being commander in chief.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ But let's just put that aside. Let's put that aside. If if you were actually trying to do deals with Russia in Russia, you would be completely and utterly fucked, and you just have to live next to Russia to understand this. But like, I mean, IKEA had a line item for corruption when they were operating in Russia. Like they're and they're all gone now. Like The people that stayed post-invasion, right, like Dannon, Carlsberg, Nestlé, and over the course of 5 years, they've had all their assets stripped from them. You get nothing. So, you know, you saw that McDonald's left. There's no rule of law in Russia.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ There's no private property, no rule of law. There's no— every court decision at the end of the day will go to do whatever Putin wants. I mean, he is literally the not the most powerful person in the world, but he's the single most probably consequential richest person in the world. Like, he has the entire Russian economy at his will, right? You can dress it up any way you like, but it's a $2 trillion economy that he has at his will. So, uh, so that's where, you know, that's where it is. That's how I'm viewing it. Um, and then, like I said, the old world, which I would have— which all of us would have wanted to see stay at the start of the 2022 full-scale invasion, which would've been like, let's be strong here and stand up to a dictator, just like the Kuwait situation.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ Then I think we could have done it differently. I think we could have saved a lot of Ukrainian lives. We could have done it differently, but we didn't do it. And so now we're in the new world, and that's probably a much scarier situation, but— You know, there are glimmers of hope there, or let's say more realistic things. Going back to what you said, like, I do think that Western European countries not relying on US, uh, the US security umbrella, right, or not, let's say, not funding their social safety nets, uh, as much because of the US security umbrella, I would certainly say that's a good thing.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ So again, I'm— I, I try to look at this very realistically, but If they're— yeah, I'm just curious, like, if there was someone that really came on your show in like a pro-Russian stance, they would have to— they would have to contend with the fact that we can't use any of their platforms and they are literally, you know, spouting— Yeah. Yeah.

Marty Bent [1:21:35] Pro-Russia is a mischaracterization. It's amenable to Trump's foreign policy as it relates to Russia.

Matthew Mežinskis [1:21:41] Well, and that, that, you know, that I think is shown to not be that good. Let me go— let me show you this. It was a year ago tweet, and I think it was very informative of what he actually understood. Like, for example, like the stuff that I'm saying versus the reality of the situation. So just on the— yeah, so I hear you, first of all, on the Trump foreign policy. Look, I— it was hard for me, but I did try to give him the benefit of the doubt the first year. But I think this is enlightening. He posted this about a year ago, a little over a year ago, September 2025.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ We'll just read it. After getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine-Russia military and economic situation, and after seeing the economic trouble it is causing Russia, I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and win all of Ukraine back in its original form with time, patience, and the financial support of Europe and in particular NATO. The original borders from where this war started is very much an option. Why not? 5 years, a war that should have taken a real military power less than a week to win. This is not distinguishing Russia. In fact, it is very much making them look like a paper tiger.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ When the people living in Moscow and all of the great cities, towns, and districts all throughout Russia find out what is really going on with this war, The fact that it's almost impossible for them to get gasoline through the long lines that are being formed, and all the other things that are taking place in their war economy, where most of their money is being spent on fighting Ukraine, which has great spirit and only getting better. Ukraine would be able to take back their country in its original form, and who knows, maybe even go further than that. Putin and Russia are in big economic trouble, and this is the time for Ukraine to act.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ In any event, this is the funniest part. In any event, I wish both countries well. We will continue to supply weapons to NATO for NATO to do what they want with them. Good luck to all. So there's many interesting things about this. First of all, I don't think you and I on this podcast need to go back like the— or go over the absolute, like, for lack of a better word, neurodivergent, like 180 flip-flops that Trump makes on his tweets, like from day to day. I understand we don't have to do that. I also would say, yes, whenever Trump does get a call from Putin, he takes it and he's happy to hear it.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ He's gotten one recently, which is what the current kerfuffle is about. He got calls from Putin in the early days, and this is where he said, Zelensky's a dictator. Zelensky has a 4% approval rating. These things that are just Literally, you can tell that it came from Putin's mouth. But here in this tweet a year ago, he's— or this truth, this truth— he's angry at Putin because Putin has not stopped his war after a year of trying. And so that's true. All of those things are true. Yes, you can say all those things about Trump. But what is, I would say, sad from this side, from the support, like the perspective of Ukraine— and again, this is a year ago— like He gets glimpses of the Ukrainian spirit here, like actually protecting a democracy, fighting for democracy.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ And you don't even have to do it with American soldiers. But I think if the American president would come down on the side of Ukraine, like forcefully, fully, without, you know, remorse or whatever. And of course, we have all this corruption on the side, which is just crazy. And again, like I said, it's never going to work out for them. It's never— it's never going to work out that they will get any Cash flow producing assets into the Trump family without massive heartache and or you know gulag death situations. But if if if you know you go back to the traditional Republican strong defense standpoint, I think that would have helped Ukraine much more and much quicker than than this.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ So I think this is just enlightening. Let's say of where Trump's positions have not really been. At the very least, they have not been straightforward. And you can see a year later, he's now gone back to the other thing where he's gotten a call from Putin recently and he thinks that he can actually squeeze the Ukrainians out. And the Starlink Starshield thing is just one of a million things that's been happening where they think that they can squeeze the Ukrainian people. There'll be a lot of interesting things. Look, I follow this conflict very close and I know that This might not be enlightening for— well, hopefully it's enlightening, but might not be as interesting for some people.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ But I can tell you, it will probably come out. This is my view. I haven't seen this quoted or anything, but this former defense minister of Ukraine, his name's Mykhailo Fedorov. He did a really good job with Musk at the start of the year, and he got Musk onto his side to get the Russians, because the Russians were like, spoofing and using Starlink when technically they shouldn't have. And so Musk actually finally got on fully board with Ukraine at the start of the year and blocked Russians from basically using that on the actual front contact line. And that was a huge thing that he did.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ And he gained a lot of stock, a lot of currency with the Ukrainian people at the start of the year. And then there was realpolitik things that happened in Ukraine over the summer. Very unfortunate, whatever. " All the all the stuff, and it's true, it was. But then, and there were protests actually to bring bring Fedorov back on as a defense minister. All those protests, though, dissolved in August because. And this is me talking. I don't know this for sure, but I bet you it's going to come out. Basically, he's a tech guy. He was helping them a lot, but he made this statement that said, oh, we just have to start elections again because this is the Trump line and we can't let Russia postpone our elections, which this has already been voted on by the Ukrainian parliament.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ They cannot do elections in wartime. It's under martial law right now, the country. And the fact that he said that, in my view, clearly shows he's keeping up pretty close ties with Musk. And Musk really wanted to put Fedorov in. And it shows you how powerful someone like Musk is and how much like this realpolitik is going on even in the war here. And the protests just dissolved for him overnight. And so that was like a sad thing because the guy was doing really well. He's young, forward thinking. He was trying to root out corruption and things like that, and he was really trying to do a good job.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ But at the end of the day, Musk tried to install him basically, and you could basically read that through the tea leaves. And then all the protests just dissolved because they're not— no matter what anybody says, they're not going to try to put elections on during wartime. So that's just a little bit of— that's my view, my reading, but I imagine that's going to come out at some point. that she was basically trying to get onside of like Musk and/or Trump. And they're not, you know, they— that the Ukrainian people are able to actually see through that. They're not going to have elections just because, you know, Elon Musk wants them to have it or something.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ So they're going to do everything they can. To fight off the savage hell state, and that's that's you know that's that's what the Constitution says. That's what they have to do. Holding elections right now would be just incredibly dangerous. The Ukrainians are dying every night, every night, and they're going to go through a huge battle this winter. It's just going to be a you know if if there was any a time ever a time for the free world to in to enact a no-fly zone, it would be this winter. Because Russia's last winter was like going after, you know, all the electric substations. This winter it's going to be going after— they've already— it's already been leaked, like what— and they've already showed what they want to do.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ Like, they would just want to completely bomb and destroy Kyiv because this is all that Russia knows how to do when it wins wars. Like, this is how they won in Chechnya, you know. This is what they do. It's what they tried to do in Afghanistan. This is what they tried to do in, uh, World War II. , which is you know it is what it is. But they're they're going to be really tested this winter. So anyway, just wanted to show just wanted to. share a few of those things because that's basically what's been going on in my view, and it's going to be tough for them.

Marty Bent [1:30:47] Yeah. And I mean, as I've been saying for almost 5 years now, I hope— maybe hope's not— maybe it's weak here, but yeah, like you, I am very anti-war and would like to see a resolution to this at some point soon. Similarly with Iran. Because I think there's a ton of potential to do good right now considering everything that's happening in the world of tech and productivity. And we have the potential for a golden age globally if we'll take it. But realpolitik gets in the way a lot of times, unfortunately.

Matthew Mežinskis [1:31:27] It does. But I think the World War II analogy is probably most apt right now. You know, that there is no elected government in Russia and they're not going to, you know, Putin's just going to do whatever he can and he's not going to, you know, democracies actually would be more prone to stopping the war. As we know, democracies like to extend wars with the printing press, right? But they're still more prone to stopping the war Due to blood and treasure being lost and families speaking out, right? Even though it could take a long time, as we saw in the history of the US and Afghanistan, right?

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ But in Russia, they don't have that. Putin doesn't have that escape valve. And so what is actually in his interest is to not stop the war, because if he does stop the war and he shows, look, I'm such a shithole leader of a shithole country. We have literally taken— you know, they just, just to talk about the percentages at the beginning of the war, they got up to 30% of the country. All right. And then they had to retreat because Ukraine kicked them out of Kyiv. And now they're under 20%, like 19%, and they're losing ground every month. So it's less likely for a dictator to stop war because if he stops, And he says, look at me, I'm such a shithole leader.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ You know, you guys don't have toilets. Your GDP per capita is $15,000. The US is $90,000, by the way. We've closed off— we've closed you off to the free world. You can't travel. There's sanctions, all this. Look at me. Look at me. Look at me. Obviously, he's not going to do that, because if he does do that, and Russia has a very strong history of this, he would probably just be a dead man. And he's not going to do that. I mean, he's prepared for revolts, like the secret police in Russia. There's probably a million— I've heard figures of a million people that are paid well, fed well, and are ready to protect the Putin institution.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ So that's what we have to deal with. But if it was a democracy, they would be more likely to stop war, not less.

Marty Bent [1:33:45] Yeah. I got to run here in 5 minutes. I did want to end it on a Bitcoin thing.

Matthew Mežinskis [1:33:51] Yeah, that was a big—

Marty Bent [1:33:52] No, it was good. We haven't done that. We haven't done that in like a year. I'm happy for the deep dive on that. And I think it's important, as I've said every time that we've—

Matthew Mežinskis [1:34:03] Well, I'm glad to get on and give a different perspective because I'm well aware of the audience that I speak to. But

Marty Bent [1:34:09] yeah,

Matthew Mežinskis [1:34:10] it is what it is.

Marty Bent [1:34:11] But you mentioned Bitcoin getting integrated in the banking system if and when that happens. Yeah. And I've kept it in the back of my mind to bring up because I do think it's an interesting, underappreciated data point that I've been seeing on the back end, just talking to companies involved in this area of the market, which is Bitcoin collateralized lending and the cost of capital. and the amount of capital that is opening up to these Bitcoin collateralized lending desks.

Matthew Mežinskis [1:34:45] Yeah.

Marty Bent [1:34:46] Capital, the amount of capital's going up dramatically, lines of credit being issued, and then the cost going down. And so I think you're seeing credit funds, some banks, obscure banks, I think, being willing to lend against Bitcoin at 6%, 7% to these lending desks, then obviously they're putting some margin on top of that. But I think the base cost of capital for Bitcoin collateralized loans is falling. And so if you're looking for a fundamental indicator and data point that things are going in the right direction for Bitcoin, I think that's one of actually the most important that most people don't have any insight to, that it does seem to be trending in the right direction.

Matthew Mežinskis [1:35:30] Are you seeing that 6%, 7% from Banks or non-bank lenders?

Marty Bent [1:35:36] I think non-bank lenders particularly, and that's via competitive forces of other non-bank lenders coming in with more capital. And so you're seeing—

Matthew Mežinskis [1:35:46] Yeah. No, I think it's great. And by the way, that could be the answer to— I've posed this question a lot, but the power versus exponential question, right? And again, brass tacks, I just mentioned it earlier, during our projection of what could happen in the 2030s, but $80 to $100 trillion, that's what the power curve projects by late 2030s, 2040, let's say for Bitcoin. That could be about the level where this, which is the monetary base, which we've been talking about a long time, which is only about $26 trillion at the moment, but if it goes on the same trend that it's always been on, which is, you know, not that fast, actually.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ It's only 8%, roughly weighted since Bitcoin's been around. That will get you to $100 trillion by 2040 as well. So that could be a point where they meet. Now, again, just because it's a big round number doesn't mean that anything has to happen at that point. But I do think unfortunately it's more likely than not that Bitcoin gets pulled into the exponential trend of the financial system than Bitcoin pulling the rest of the financial system into a power trend. And precisely what you just said, interest rates becoming more competitive to borrow against Bitcoin, people just sort of using their Bitcoin as a facility to draw liquidity and do other things with their life, which is fine, but those are all exponential endeavors, right?

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ Compound growth. It's just how it works. And so if you do get enough fiat units levered against Bitcoin, One would presume that that could pull Bitcoin's price back into an exponential trend. And by the way, if it goes into an exponential trend, Bitcoin, as opposed to a power trend, which it is right now at 40% per growth, a power trend slowly falls, right? So it's 40% trailing 12-month growth right now. All right? So again, it's a pretty good bet. This is the sailor bet, right? He pays 10%. If you could pay 6%, whatever, and the Bitcoin power trend is 40%, a little bit under and falling, you still got plenty of coverage for your collateral before you might have to look for other places to service that cash flow, that debt.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ But if enough people start to do that and the Bitcoin just becomes another financialized asset like gold or silver or whatever, stocks, bonds, then yeah, Bitcoin will turn into an exponential asset and that will break Bitcoin to the upside, not to the downside. I think we are at risk if everybody not being as happy. Maybe the project will fail, maybe it'll be too centralized, maybe that's a KYC world. I don't know. That's a lot of questions that are out and we don't have much time, but yeah, that's where we're going. And by the way, I still don't think we're anywhere near that, even though, like you said, it's happening because here you just look at the raw numbers.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ This is the broad and base money picture. So the base money is most analogous to Bitcoin, $26 trillion. Broad money I have at $158 trillion, and that's less precise number, but it's— that's not even including Eurodollars. There's probably one or two other big countries I could get that would maybe make that a little bit larger. Note, by the way, that ratio. All right. So this is like the money multiplier ratio. It's climbing again. And that also could portend another risk in the markets because the ratio used to be around 10, which makes sense, kind of like the just the traditional fractional reserve banking 10-to-1 ratio, with all the liquidity that they printed post-2008, this thing got down to 6.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ Sorry, not 4. Sorry, 4. It's 6 right now. 4. 1 in 2021, and now it's back up to 6, which is the level we haven't seen since 2011. Now again, I don't know what this could mean. There's no way to tell when this is going to push another crisis or anything, but it's just to show you Hundreds of, you know, tens of trillions of dollars as base money, hundreds of trillions of dollars as broad money repurchase agreements, money market funds, all that stuff. Doesn't even count, you know, stablecoins are dropping in the bucket of this. So there's a, you know, there's a long way to go still for Bitcoin to like be sizable to penetrate these markets.

Matthew Mežinskis ⋮ So I still think just another reason why I still think if you want to sort of relax, don't think about war as much as I do, hopefully you don't have to. The power curve and looking at the percentile quantiles of the power curve, as we're very, very cheap right now, that could be a better way to sort of touch grass and live your life because it's a pretty strong indicator of where Bitcoin has been, I think, and where it's going.

Marty Bent [1:40:24] You heard it here first. Look at the charts, touch grass. Log off of X every once in a while. Matty, it's always a pleasure, sir.

Matthew Mežinskis [1:40:36] Likewise, my friend. Thanks for having me on. Thanks for listening to my my my my digressions there, and I appreciate chatting with you every quarter.

Marty Bent [1:40:47] We're gonna win. We're gonna win.

Matthew Mežinskis [1:40:48] Yes, we will. Yes, we will. Freedom, democracy, anti-commie, anti-Nazi.

Marty Bent [1:40:54] We're gonna win. Peace and love, freaks. Okay. Thank you for listening to this episode of TFTC. If you've made it this far, I imagine you got some value out of the episode. If so, please share it far and wide with your friends and family. We're looking to get the word out there. Also, wherever you're listening, whether that's YouTube, Apple, Spotify, make sure you like and subscribe to the show. And if you can leave a rating on the podcasting platforms, that goes a long way. Last but not least, if you want to get these episodes A day early and ad-free. Make sure you download the Fountain podcasting app. You can go to fountain.fm to find that. $5 a month gets you every episode a day early, ad-free. Helps the show, gives you incredible value. So please consider subscribing via Fountain as well. Thank you for your time, and until next time. Okay.