Guest
Creator of Porkopolis Economics · Host of Crypto Voices
Matthew Mežinskis is the creator of Porkopolis Economics and the Crypto Voices podcast. He researches the global monetary base and Bitcoin's adoption through long-run charts, including the power curve he has tracked since 2018. His twenty-four TFTC appearances since 2018 include a recurring quarterly review of central-bank money and Bitcoin.
Mežinskis works in corporate finance and brings a balance-sheet discipline to monetary arguments. Porkopolis separates money that settles a claim from the claim itself, then compares national currencies with gold and Bitcoin on that basis. He created Crypto Voices in January 2017 and Porkopolis Economics in January 2023. The method matters as much as the chart: comparing Bitcoin with bank deposits, currency in circulation or central-bank reserves answers different questions, even when all of them are called money.
The quarterly TFTC conversations began as a survey of monetary supply and increasingly became an examination of two different growth processes. He describes fiat finance as exponential and Bitcoin as a network growing along a power curve, with high but declining percentage growth. By July 2026 the conversation was also a defense of the model against criticism after a sharp drawdown. Eight interviews have written TFTC pages below; the feed records twenty-four distinct conversations, including the older monetary-base updates.
Latest
Matthew Mežinskis is back for the quarterly data walk. Bitcoin is sitting near the zeroth percentile of its power curve, the global monetary base is coiling after four years of tightening, and Powell left Warsh a lot of room to monetize. Plus the civilizational stakes: does Bitcoin pull TradFi onto
Bitcoin’s sharp drop looks scary, but Mežinskis shows it still sits on its long-term power curve.
Matthew Mežinskis shows why Bitcoin’s power curve points to $250K–$375K, with network adoption, not macro noise, driving its long-term path.
Matthew Mežinskis argues Bitcoin’s price follows a power-law curve driven by adoption, not Fed policy or ETFs.
Matthew Mežinskis discusses Bitcoin’s potential to hit $800,000 by 2025, its role in strategic reserves, and its transformative impact on global finance and geopolitics.
Matthew Mežinskis is back on to discuss his Q2 2023 monetary base update.
Matthew Mežinskis is back on the show to give us the latest update on where bitcoin stands in the pecking order of the global monetary base, how insane the financial system has become, and a distillation of full reserve banking.
Matthew Mežinskis is back for his Q4 2022 Monetary Base update and to discuss the chances of actually attaining Balaji's prediction of $1,000,000 by June 15th of this year.
Positions drawn from Matthew’s TFTC appearances, grouped by theme. Quotes are from TFTC’s own recordings and are dated.
His monetary-base work begins with a distinction that broad money totals can obscure. A bank balance is a claim on another balance sheet; base money is the settlement layer underneath it. He compares Bitcoin with that layer, alongside the historical roles of gold and silver. On TFTC in August 2023 he used the distinction to explain why the size of the central-bank monetary base is the relevant comparator for his charts, rather than treating every deposit as another unit of final money.
“So it's called outside money, so that's why Bitcoin is also outside money.”
“Gold and silver as well are analogous to this in history.”
Mežinskis argues that the shape of Bitcoin's growth has remained distinct from traditional financial assets. Exponential growth holds a percentage rate constant; a power curve scales with the age of the network, so the percentage growth rate declines as the network gets older. His claim is descriptive and testable against price history. It does not say Bitcoin doubles every fixed number of years forever, even when the current slope implies a rapid doubling time.
“We're probably increasing the rate of exponential growth. But Bitcoin is still following a power law.”
“Bitcoin is not growing like other stuff, it grows proportional to itself.”
His strong claim is that network adoption explains most of Bitcoin's long-run price movement. He points to a high regression fit and the persistence of a similar curve when the calculation uses older data. In July 2026 he contrasted that with exponential and stock-to-flow projections that had moved far away from the observed price. The fit is evidence for his interpretation of the data; it cannot establish that future returns are guaranteed or that every short-term move has one cause.
“This is a 96% R². This is better than your stock-to-flow meme.”
“The power curve is consistently painting the same numbers, it means it's stable and it has the highest R-squared, which is about 96%.”
The July 2026 conversation came after Bitcoin had moved toward the bottom of his historical bands. He explained that those bands expand when a new extreme arrives, and that drawing a neat channel backward from today's data can conceal how uncertain the chart looked at the time. He considered the level attractive over a long horizon while expressly allowing another fall. That distinction is necessary to understand the optimistic language in the older episode titles.
“So I'm making no predictions of where we can be, but statistically, long-term, not financial advice, but statistically, we are in a very, very bullish phase of Bitcoin's growth relative to the power curve.”
“Could we go down and paint another low in this zeroth percentile, as I call it, which is really, it's 0.0001 percentile.”
A long-run adoption curve does not settle whether the familiar halving cycle still controls market timing. In September 2025 Mežinskis attached a concrete year-end threshold to his willingness to keep the four-year framework. In December, after the selloff, his emphasis returned to where the price sat relative to the longer trend. Keeping those statements dated preserves the difference between an observation about adoption and a forecast about when a market cycle should accelerate.
“If we don’t get above 170K by year end, time to rethink the four-year cycle.”
“The price right now has only been this low 30% of the time.”
The question he repeatedly puts to the audience is what happens when an exponentially expanding financial system holds an asset growing along a slower percentage path. His July 2025 discussion put a possible crossover with fiat base money in the 2040s. He treated the result as a tension between two systems, not a date for the overnight end of fiat. In his view, contracts and expectations around interest would have to change if Bitcoin became the measuring unit.
“What happens when the TradFi world starts to buy an asset that moves in power?”
“Compound interest is incompatible with power law growth. That will reshape contracts, debt, and finance.”
Mežinskis's interest in the curve sits alongside a more basic monetary argument. Bitcoin gives its holder a defined share of a supply that cannot be expanded to satisfy a bank or a government. That makes custody part of the analysis, not a detail to leave until after a price forecast. In the December 2024 and December 2025 conversations he returned to the difference between holding the asset and trusting an institution to provide it later.
“For the first time, we have an asset where you don’t need to trust the custodian.”
“You cannot print Satoshis like you can print dollars.”
The tone of the quarterly updates can be exuberant, but his closing advice has been unusually consistent. He wants listeners to understand the monetary trend well enough to stop treating each daily candle as a verdict on Bitcoin. Building a business and spending time with family are the activities he recommends in place of staring at a chart. His model supplies perspective for that choice, without promising a return in the next quarter.
“Twitter is not real life. Spend time with your family. Stack sats.”
“Spend time with your family. Don’t freak out over a $5,000 candle.”
Notable appearances on other shows, newest first.
The Peter McCormack Show · Apr 2023The Failure of Central Banking with Matthew MezinskisThe banking-system argument with Peter McCormack during the aftermath of the 2023 failures.
The Peter McCormack Show · Oct 2019Matthew Mežinskis on Bitcoin as Base MoneyAn early explanation of Bitcoin as base money, before the quarterly TFTC series became established.
Around The Coin · Apr 2017Fintech Podcast Episode 132 Bitcoin Blockchain Breakdown with Matthew MezinskisA 2017 conversation on Bitcoin and blockchain, close to the launch of Crypto Voices.Long-run monetary charts and the Bitcoin power curve.
The definitions and comparison rules behind the monetary survey.
The podcast he created in January 2017.