BTC214: Sam Callahan Bitcoin Current Events Rollup (Bitcoin Podcast)
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You're listening to TIP. Hey, everyone. Happy holidays and welcome to this Wednesday's release of the Bitcoin Fundamentals Podcast. This episode is brought to you by River, the place that I personally go to securely invest in Bitcoin with confidence and with zero fees.

On today's show, I have Dr. Sam Callahan on the show for what is an awesome current events rollup. One of the more interesting ideas discussed in the show is how publicly traded miners are finding ways to front run the extraction of Bitcoin via traditional means like their mining rigs and tapping into publicly traded markets by running a similar playbook to MicroStrategy. But what is the impact of this long term if the miners cannot

can effectively pull forward all this Bitcoin mining capacity from a competition standpoint with all the other miners that are doing things more traditional. We get into this among many other topics, so you won't want to miss this chat with the very thoughtful Sam Callahan. Sam Callahan : Celebrating 10 years, you are listening to Bitcoin Fundamentals by The Investor's Podcast Network. Now for your host, Preston Pysh. Preston Pysh :

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the show. I'm here with Sam Callahan. Man, it's always a pleasure having you on the show, and I can't wait to get into some of these topics with you, Sam. So welcome back. Thanks for having me, Preston. It's good to be back. And it's been a minute. Yeah, it's been too long is what it's been. I mean, I saw you, I've seen you recently, but as far as recording, yeah. Hey, this is where I want to start. So literally just saw a tweet that came out, BlackRock, this is in Bloomberg, by the way,

BlackRock just announced that they think a 2% allocation into Bitcoin for any portfolio is appropriate or a reasonable range to have in your portfolio. Have you seen this yet? I mean, literally just dropped like five minutes ago. Wow. They're just saying that more like just broadly. Yes. This was the headline in literally... Here, I'm going to read it right here. This is, I'm on Bloomberg. BlackRock says up to 2% Bitcoin allocation is reasonable range. December 12th, 2024, 7.30 AM. Just dropped.

Wow. Well, I just think BlackRock finally ran the numbers. And I think as Bitcoiners, it's completely reasonable to suggest at least a small allocation to Bitcoin, just given its uncorrelated nature and improving risk-adjusted returns. I mean, it's something that we've talked about for literally years. And if you just run the numbers... I used to educate people and financial advisors and just talk to them about this. And I often even had to just...

change the word from Bitcoin to something else. I'd make up some name and say, hey, is this interest to you? Look at the returns of this and look what it does to your portfolio. And just because of the branding of Bitcoin, like during the bear markets, like it was, you know, if I just changed the name, they'd be like, wow, this is really interesting. What's this? And I was like, well, it's Bitcoin. They're like, whoa, really? So, I mean, BlackRock, you

You can't overstate how important it is for somebody like BlackRock, that institution, one of the largest asset management firms in the world, suddenly recommending to all of their clients that 2% allocation is reasonable and actually intelligent. That's meaningful. It's completely meaningful. So yeah, what are your thoughts? Robert Leonard

has been this idea that, oh, it's too volatile. It has 70%, 80% vol on an annualized basis. I would never touch that is what you hear. And the most basic fundamental thing that you learn when you study financial markets and your proper capital allocation and all this type of stuff that's very traditional, the number one thing that somebody will say is you manage your risk by position size, right? So if this thing just keeps going up,

but it's super volatile and you can't handle that volatility in your portfolio, it's like, "Well, then take a smaller position. Make it a half a percent or make it whatever you can personally handle." So I've just never really understood why people can look at a chart that you literally have to adjust into log terms to even truly see the chart because it's so ridiculously parabolic,

And they're just like, oh, yeah, it's too volatile. I can't. And I'm just like, okay, well, I guess we're not doing like investing 101, which is manager risk by position size. The other thing I want to cover with you, Sam, to kind of get your talking point on this, a lot of people will hear this headline. They'll say BlackRock's bad. You shouldn't be cheering this on that they're now...

saying that you should have a 2% allocation. They run an ETF. You're not actually custodying the coins. I would imagine a lot of people listening to this show, your hardcore Bitcoiners are miffed or frustrated that you and I are here cheering this on and happy about it. So what do you say to that person? What I would say to that person is that it's completely inevitable that all of these financial institutions...

governments, no matter what you think about them, banks, they're all going to find use cases for digital capital. They're going to be attracted to Bitcoin for the same reasons that we're attracted to Bitcoin as a neutral, apolitical, alternative monetary asset. And it has all these benefits that it could provide them. And we could go through the lists, but I mean, just the outperformance, the encore-led nature, when you're thinking about why BlackRock might be interested in

recommending it to their clients, I mean, it's inevitable. And so what did you want to do? Stand outside BlackRock with pickets, say don't adopt Bitcoin? It's just not going to happen. The important part about Bitcoin is that just because BlackRock is recommending it, and yes, they have an ETF and there's trade-offs of convenience versus the counterparty risks that you eliminate when you take self-custody, you're paying for that convenience. There are risks and you should highlight those risks. But you're

But just because BlackRock is a sponsor and the custodian that they use holds all this Bitcoin, it doesn't matter because of how the Bitcoin network is engineered. And the decentralized nature of the network prevents any kind of entity from controlling it or manipulating it, no matter how much Bitcoin they might have access to. That's what's really important to get down to the fundamentals. And so I would say that. I would say it's inevitable. I would say

As long as the ability to self-custody and the options available for individual investors to do that, there's going to be a spectrum of options and investment vehicles to gain exposure to this asset. And it's just a natural maturation process of it emerging on the global stage as an investable asset class. Here's where I want to go next. Everybody was talking about Saylor and talking about how he's doing this speculative attack. And I think everybody's talking about that.

But the thing I really want to cover is this Mara deal. I think this is way bigger than people realize, mostly from just a mining standpoint. And you wrote about this in your Coin Stories newsletter, which was really well done. So Mara, they went out, they wanted to do a convertible debt deal, just like MicroStrategy has been doing. $700 million is what they set out for. It was oversubscribed, and correct me if I get any of this wrong, Sam.

It was oversubscribed to 850 million. They then go out onto the market, and this is a zero coupon, meaning they're going to pay no interest on this. I think, was this five years? Was this a five-year convertible? I think it was due a little bit farther out. I want to make it more than that. Yeah, I'd have to double-check that. Which is even crazier, right? Because think about the underlying. So you have to pay back that principal. If they were oversubscribed at 850 million, they have to pay back the 850 million, but they don't have to do it.

Assuming the buyers don't want to convert into their common stock,

They would have to pay this back, which means if that would happen, and let's say the common stock, they don't exercise that in the common, they'd have to pay this back and they'd probably have to sell some Bitcoin in order to do it. But that won't happen for, we always talk about these four-year cycles. This is further out than a four-year cycle. And Bitcoin has never, and that doesn't mean it won't in the future, but I want to throw this stat out there too, Bitcoin has never had in a four-year holding period, worse performance

then 26% annualized. So anything that you bought at any four-year period, the worst performance you could pluck out of that timeline, you could literally pick the exact moment, the worst moment of any four-year period in the history of Bitcoin, and you're going to get a 26% annualized return. So I say all that because, and I'm sorry, this is a really long question, but I want to frame this up for how crazy, this is crazy what this is.

So they go out, they then buy 11,774 Bitcoin with this 850 million that they raised with some extra, because they bought more than 850 million worth. It was like a billion. So they buy all of this. They now hold $4 billion worth of Bitcoin. They had 40,000 Bitcoin on their balance sheet after this buy, this 11,774 Bitcoin that they purchased.

I started doing the calculations on this. I'm saying, how long would it take Mara to mine this much Bitcoin based on how much Bitcoin is coming out of the block reward right now? And I didn't account for fees and I didn't account for fees raising. I just said, based on the block, they have anywhere from 3%. And I guess their target was 6% by the end of the year of the hash rate, Mara.

So I used 6% in these numbers that I'm about to say. So assuming they have 6%, which I don't even think they have that. I think they have slightly less than that. They're hoping to have 50X a hash by the end of the year. It would take, you ready for this number? Assuming no four-year halving cycle, it would take 12.5 years for them to acquire 11,774 Bitcoin. With the halving happening every four years, it would take them 37.

years to accumulate this much Bitcoin with 6% of the hash rate. Now, this is another important highlight that I have here in this calculation and the assumptions. I'm assuming a 10% profit margin. So any Bitcoin that they mine, they have to sell a majority of it to pay for their electrical expense. And what they can actually retain would take them 36 years to accumulate

accumulate this much Bitcoin. So this is the question with all of this set. If you were a miner, specifically a publicly traded miner that has access to capital markets like this, and you can do these crazy, I'm calling them crazy, it's just normal convertible debt issuance at 0% in

And it's oversubscribed, which just tells me they could adjust the strike on the convertibility to the common even higher, which is more advantageous to them. Preston Pysh : Yeah, I think it was like a 40% premium on the last- Preston Pysh : Yeah. So it tells me they could have done a 50% because they were oversubscribed by 150 million or more or whatever, which is advantageous to the miner itself and all the shareholders.

For me, this is the shot heard around the world for publicly traded miners. If I'm running a publicly traded mining business and I'm the CEO, I'm like, "Yo, I'm about to have my lunch eaten," because all they're doing is just pulling all of this mining forward to today. They're extracting all the coins away from other miners or people that had the coins.

And then they can just play a completely different game than somebody who's not doing this. Yeah. Right? Hands down. And like you said, they're pulling it forward and think about, say if another miner had a different strategy and they were raising money through equity or convertible debts to actually just expand their mining operations, all the overhead, all the costs that that would take and all the time it would take to just mine that Bitcoin to get exactly what your end goal is to just get the Bitcoin, right? Right.

Lara and other miners that are larger and have more liquid stocks can access the capital markets and do these types of things, which smaller miners can't do at their scale. And we'll actually find it difficult to raise any kind of capital in the same way, just because of the liquidity of their stocks. So it's a competitive advantage for these large miners to lean into this strategy. And then it makes so much sense what you're saying. I mean, you're basically getting the end product, which you want,

so much easier, so much faster. And if you do it intelligently and term out that debt from the four-year cycle of Bitcoin, like you said, the conservatively with Bitcoin's massive drawdowns of like 80%, which we could talk about whether we think that's going to happen in the future. But even with those 80% drawdowns, the worst Bitcoin has ever done in a four-year cycle is around 30%, 29%.

That's insane. And so like you're taking advantage of that. You're pulling it forward and you're managing that debt intelligently. Well, I think you're going to really outperform your competitors in one of the most competitive industries on the planet, Bitcoin mining. And so Mara, I mean, Mara has got 40,000 Bitcoin and the next highest, that's almost like 4X the next or 3X the next highest miner. That's insane. Like they have a huge lead compared to all the other miners. And you see Riot kind of come out this week and

and do its first convertible debt specifically to acquire Bitcoin. And so that's the next one. And I think you're just going to see more and more do this. And you saw a note from JP Morgan looking into miners, and now they give a 2X multiple, a HODL premium for miners. And I think that's right. I mean, you got to value these miners differently who are doing a HODL strategy and leaning into capital markets to acquire more Bitcoin quickly because if

In terms of a timing perspective too, I mean, if we are entering a period right now where we're kind of early stage bull market, think about the price appreciation of Bitcoin maybe over the next 12 to 18 months and how much these miners who huddle a lot of Bitcoin are going to separate themselves from the rest of the pack.

And then they can do all types of things like mergers and acquisitions. With that hoard of Bitcoin, they can do all sorts of things as it kind of increases in value over time. So I think you're right. I think it's kind of the shot heard around the world. And I think every single miner needs to wake up to the fact who has this ability politically

publicly traded Bitcoin mining company. It's also like I think about private miners and public miners, like how easy it would be for a large private miner to do something like this. I think about these factors, how much of a competitive advantage it really is. Yeah. I don't know what to fully make of this right now, but going back to the comment that I had, if you're a CEO or you're a CFO of one of these publicly traded miners, and you're not thinking about doing the same thing, I think you're just going to get annihilated by...

by the Maras of the world. Preston Pyshenko Oh, yeah. Preston Pyshenko I think you're going to get annihilated. And it's interesting to me that it's almost like they've got to mine the market premium or the access to public markets now so that they have a large enough treasury to then do the real mining with fee later down the road to be the most competitive. I don't know. But if somebody is listening to this and you're

You want to go onto Twitter and provide your commentary. I would love to hear your comment. I would love to hear why you might think that there's issues with this long-term. But my thing was when I'm looking at the duration of paying back the par, that's where I think it's going to work out for them, especially with all the other stuff we're about to talk about. You agree, Sam? Or do you think that there's concern here? Well,

Well, I think the duration is important. Obviously, there's concern with any kind of volatile. I mean, Bitcoin's volatility could turn the other way on them. And then the obvious risk is that your core business is related to Bitcoin as well. That's the difference between microstrategy and the similar scientifics of the world, right? Yeah. The core businesses and the cash flow to manage that debt isn't related to Bitcoin itself. Whereas...

a company like a miner, you know, it's a little bit different where if you find yourself in a pinch and Bitcoin gets this crazy bear market for a long time and the price is going down, you could have to sell some of your holdings, which actually hurts your core business because you're kind of, you're mining that very thing. And so that's why, you know, I think this is why you see like gold miners not often hold gold, right? They're taking on that risk.

But yeah, like in terms of just Mara, I mean, full disclosure, I'm on the advisory board of Mara. I should probably say that. And by the way, I did not know that. Yeah, I am. Okay. As recently as a couple months ago. But, you know, in terms of the amount of Bitcoin they hold now, and this was in their Q3 shareholder letter, if Bitcoin increases $10,000, it increases $200 million of their earnings.

just from their hodl position. And so you can get a sense of what the impact of that hodl position is on their financials. And we've seen it with MicroStrategy. I mean, Mara's just doing... I always thought miners were some of the most bullish individuals on the planet on Bitcoin. I mean, think of all the fixed costs they're building on all these operations. I mean, they are bullish on Bitcoin as it gets. They should be holding it. If they really were bullish on Bitcoin, they would hold it on their balance sheet and be on the Bitcoin standard. And so like...

In my opinion, a miner, it should be on the Bitcoin standard. I mean, they're as bullish as ever. So these other miners are kind of like doing different strategies going into AI and they're kind of like trying to diversify their revenues in any kind of way they can. Whereas

other miners are leaning more heavily into Bitcoin itself. And so you're seeing this kind of divergence between miners and taking different strategies. And I think it's fascinating. We'll see which ones kind of like went out in the long run. But for me, I just think miners should be on a Bitcoin standard. That's just like, I think it makes sense. And the HODL strategy, I think you're going to see more and more miners start to adopt it because like JP Morgan, Chases of the World, they're starting to value the HODL premium is what they called it, which

which I like. Robert Leonard : Recently, Jerome Powell said, "Bitcoin is a competitor to gold, not the US dollar." This was in a very public forum. What are your thoughts around this one? Robert Leonard : Well, I don't know if you saw the interview with Luke Grohman on Coin Stories. He actually mentioned the conversation you guys had together in Nashville on what Bitcoin did. So I'm just like, "Oh, he's got a podcast." But you guys had a conversation with Luke,

Because you guys were talking about Trump's comments that Bitcoin's the new oil, right? And Luke's been really pontificating over that comment. And I think it's a great clip where he kind of talks about how Bitcoin, similar to what we did with oil in the 1970s, they pumped the price of oil to kind of maintain dollar dominance. And so he's like, the Bitcoin could actually rise because increases demand for stable coins. There's a relationship between stable coin supply and Bitcoin's price and

and then increased stablecoin supply increases demand for treasuries. And so it can kind of maintain that dollar dominance in the world. And at the same time, though, you have Putin coming out and saying, well, Bitcoin can't be stopped.

And so, you know, we're going to Bitcoin for basically to escape dollar dependence, whereas maybe the United States at the same time is adopting Bitcoin to increase dollar dominance. And can both of those ideas be true at the same time? I'm like, kind of, you know, because like what Broman's saying, it's like,

It's maintaining the treasury. It's like, how do you maintain the dollar, but also manage the debt problem at the same time? And that's kind of what I think is actually happening, where you kind of have both of these things that seemingly are not compatible are actually happening because Bitcoin has all these different use cases. And so I think right now, it's kind of completely fair to say that Bitcoin is competing with other reserve assets like gold. And it's

it's going to be interesting to see with Russia getting sanctioned, you see the gold demand increase amongst central banks as they're just trying to diversify their reserves and protect themselves from basically the dollar being weaponized against them. And when you see President-elect Trump come out and say, "Hey, we're going to give you 100% tariffs for any kind of BRICS nations going to any other currencies other than the dollar,"

Well, that's just, you know, Putin was basically responding and saying, that's going to backfire. The Kremlin literally responded the next day saying, that's going to backfire and actually just push us farther away from the dollar, threats like that. And so I think you will see if they kind of go this route of like increased tariff, increased weaponization, you're going to see demand for other reserve assets, specifically apolitical neutral reserve assets, and Bitcoin is an option for them. And so I think, you know, right now, when you compare it with gold and Bitcoin,

Bitcoin, we've talked about it for years, the benefits that Bitcoin brings that gold doesn't have being digital in nature. And so I think it is competing with gold. And you're seeing kind of recently- How about Michael's comments? Michael's like, let's dump all the gold. Because what I just said-

Look, I understand what you're saying because like all of our, you know, enemies, all the people, you know, the BRICS nations of the world, everyone at risk of being sanctioned similar to Russia, they're increasing all their gold holdings, record buying from these central banks and these nations.

And he's saying, well, why don't we dump the gold on them, the price, and then adopt the digital gold and become a leader in the digital gold at the same time. So you're kind of like hurting them at the same time, whereas you're adopting it. And obviously with Bitcoin, there's a first mover advantage for somebody, a large nation state who does it first.

I'm kind of surprised to hear Michael say things like that. I wonder what your thoughts are on that. But that's- Michael Episcope : Yeah, it's really aggressive, right? I completely understand the thesis of, hey, you can, to raise the money, you already have this gold that you think is going useless relative to this new technology.

Yeah. I mean, if I was a gold bug, I'd be furious. If I was, I'm not, I'm not a gold bug. A lot of gold bugs are losing their minds a little bit to that comment. Yeah. But I understand it. I understand what he's saying. I just, it's a huge bet on being right. I obviously think it is right, but if I'm trying to be somewhat objective, yeah,

Yeah. Maybe you do some of that and maybe not all of it. Yeah. I mean, to go under the gold, let's just say you were going to stand up Bretton Woods 2.0 or something like that, right? I just don't see how that would happen in today's day and age. I just don't see how you would run something like that again. Well, I feel like it'd be going backwards too, right? No doubt. It's like they've already tried it.

It has the same problems. And I mean, Lynn talks about this brilliantly in her book, Broken Money, of the problem with gold. And when we have this global world that you need this fast settlement times and things like that, I mean, that's why you had to have these derivatives built on top of gold that leads to fiat paper money and centralization of the gold holdings and you can't audit it. I mean, that's...

you'd just be running into the same problems eventually. And like try to do a peg and like back the fiat or something like that, the peg will be manipulated again. And it's just, you'd run into the exact same problems. So I don't really see why they would go backwards, especially when we have a digital alternative now that kind of potentially fixes

all of those issues in a gold-backed system. So why not try something new? And I think the market will choose it. I think that's the beauty of it is that I think it's already happening and will kind of accelerate if things start to break down further.

in the current system that we have, but I don't really see them going top down up Bretton Woods and they say, "Hey, let's adopt gold." Because even right now, the way that the gold is held by the United States and who holds the most gold, I just don't see it working out. I don't know your thoughts about that, but it just seems so unrealistic to me that that would ever happen. Trey Lockerbie : This casually brought up this point about Putin and something that he had said recently.

If you just back up a hair, this was originated by a comment that Trump had with respect to the tariff. I guess he was threatening the bricks. He said, "If you go and do this, there's going to be 100% tariff on it." Then Putin, a couple of days later or whatever, he's at some type of financial form, investment forum, and he basically says in reference to Bitcoin, "Who can prohibit the use of other electronic means of payment? Nobody."

was the quote that came out of this investment forum. And so his reply basically to Trump is, okay, if you want to try to tariff us 100% or whatever, we have other means to transact that nobody can stop, was effectively the volley there. Did I capture that correctly? Do you have any other comments? Yeah. No, that's what he said. But I liked his second sentence in that quote too, which was like the development of these new technologies. I mean, I'm

I'm paraphrasing, but it's inevitable because the market likes reduced costs and they're very resilient. That's what he said. And so I agree. I mean, like, you know, Bitcoin, there's natural reasons to adopt it for everybody. And part of the reason is it's resilience, it's censorship resistance, it's permissionlessness.

which is probably pretty attractive to Russia, as well as it reduces cross-border payment costs. I mean, that's been a huge problem for decades. And so it's a notable coming from somebody like Putin. On the same day, you had Jerome Powell talking about Bitcoin. You had President Putin talking about Bitcoin. You had Ken Griffin talking about Bitcoin. Robert Leonard

These are the largest minds in the world all talking about this thing. And it's everywhere. Dalio. Dalio just recently. Dalio is talking about Bitcoin. Everyone can't stop talking about Bitcoin. Every single news show is talking about Bitcoin. 100K. I mean, they cannot stop talking about it, even if it's a bad comment. You know, I just saw some MSNBC comparing Bitcoin to Hawk 2 a coin. And I was like, oh, my gosh, like this is...

But at the same time, nobody can stop talking about this thing. It's everywhere. It's everywhere. Preston Pysh : Yeah. It does feel like this is very different. And what's also interesting is you look at the Google analytics, it doesn't seem like we're near previous speculative highs on previous cycles with respect to how the public is diving into it. So- Jay Gould : It doesn't feel that way. Preston Pysh : No. Jay Gould : I mean, just anecdotally in my life, not that way at all. Preston Pysh : Yeah.

Yeah.

certain ways to measure whether it's overvalued or not. It's all kind of aligned up. You can't understate what happened with the election and the appointments that are happening across all these regulatory agencies and how big of a change that's going to be. And even

and even the big banking that's finally getting the spotlight that it deserves after years and years and years of Bitcoiners talking about the banking that's been happening. We saw what can happen when the wrong people get into those agencies. So I think when more supportive people become leaders there, it's going to change the game, much like it changed the game when the hostile figures were leaving it. So I'm excited. I'm excited about some of these appointments. Scott Besant,

Paul Atkins at the SEC. I'm curious to see the OCC pick. I mean, OCC is a perfect example of when Brian Brooks led the OCC, he did a lot of great things. He basically, he wrote interpretive letters that allowed banks to custody Bitcoin. And then when he was gone, immediately all that was reversed and they suddenly stopped it. And then all these large banks that wanted to get just custody Bitcoin on behalf of their clients suddenly couldn't.

for years. And so it delayed that. So now if we get another person back in there, I think you're going to see a lot of changes in terms of the accessibility of Bitcoin, Bitcoin financial services. You're just going to see that expand tremendously. And we have a big opportunity to make meaningful change over the next couple of years, given that all these, we have a Republican controlled House, Senate and White House

And a lot of these individuals that were elected to the House and the Senate and the White House and these regulatory agencies have come out as pro-Bitcoin, pro-crypto, if you will. So it's an exciting time. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors.

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All right, back to the show. You mentioned a couple of names there. So Paul Atkins, I think has been selected for SEC commissioner. Scott Besant is for the treasury secretary. I'm not familiar with him, but my understanding is that both of these guys are pro-Bitcoin and have comments in the past that are pro-Bitcoin.

Who's the guy from the All In podcast? David Sachs. Sachs is going to be- The crypto czar. Yeah. The crypto czar. And he's the best one in that show, by the way. Yeah. So Paul Atkins, I tried to find any specific quotes about Bitcoin. I couldn't find anything. But his background suggests that he's pro-innovation, pro-free markets, deregulation. He was the first libertarian to serve as an SEC commissioner back in the 2000s.

He ran a consultancy agency. He did something with the Digital Chamber of Commerce. He co-chaired something called the Token Alliance, which was meant to be an agency that educated policymakers on the token economy. So I mean, that kind of suggests that at least he's pro-innovation. He's kind of an advocate for this industry.

We want to be careful because we kind of said the same thing about Gensler when he came in. That's true. This is a great point. I mean, his presentation at MIT on Bitcoin was just like, oh, wow, we're in with this guy. And then he gets in there and he's basically a lapdog to Elizabeth Warren. Yeah. There's reason to believe that the SEC just has so much egg on its face right now. Yeah.

I think there's going to be a really change in tune from the SEC, at least around this like SAB 121 rule that was just stuck on there for that prevented, made it prohibitively expensive for banks to custody the Bitcoin on behalf of their clients. Think things like that are going to get resolved.

How long would something like that happen? Do you have any idea? Because it seems like all the banks are wanting that to go away. I don't know, but you've already saw like BNY Mellon bypass that rule. How does that work, by the way? I don't know. It seems like they're just doing this on the cuff. But that's Paul Adkins. Scott Besson...

I'm excited because he's like a markets guy. He's not like an academic, he's like a macro guy. And so back in the day, he worked at Soros' fund with Druckenmiller and he was the guy who ran the London office. And when Druckenmiller was talking about breaking the Bank of England, breaking the pound, he was the guy that was calling and being like, "Yo, the real estate market's not good here." And Druckenmiller was like, "Really?" So he's a smart dude. He's got a track record. I have to come

to kind of prove it. I think he kind of understands the challenges that we face in terms of the debt problems. And he does have a lot on his plate. I saw like a really interesting article from Bloomberg talking with Scott Besson. And he has $6.7 trillion in debt rolling over next year that he's going to have to manage.

without kind of blowing up the long end of the bond market. So that's because Yellen is doing these things where she was issuing so much on the short end. So it's all come and do for Scott Besson when he takes office. So he's going to have his hands full, but it just feels good to have a macro guy in this like

very macro environment that we're in right now to be the treasury secretary and not like an academic. And then he said pretty favorable things about Bitcoin in July, which was that everything's on the table with Bitcoin, Bitcoin's pro-freedom. So he said some pretty positive comments too, which would be a really change from...

what we've had in the treasury department when it comes to Bitcoin over the last four years or so. So yeah, I'm excited about those two. They're going to have to prove it, proof of work. You can talk the talk, but we'll see what they do when they take office. But yeah, I think it's generally good news on both of those. Robert Leonard : I want to talk about a paradox that I think exists right now.

You have Elon, you have other people that Trump has kind of leaned into this idea of this DOGE, Department of Government Efficiency. Thank you. That wasn't a very efficient way to say it. And so what I find to be the paradox here is everybody's for this. Anybody with half a brain would be for this, to reduce the size of the government, push power down into the states, all those types of things that we always talk about. But I think the paradox is this.

Fractional reserve banking requires the constant influx of liquidity. Liquidity is created through loans and debt and all of these things that we're very well versed on as Bitcoiners. And so it reminds me of this really important Lynn Alden quote, which is, nothing stops this train.

And we can talk about how we're going to cut this and cut that, and we're going to make government all that much smaller. But what happens from a fractional reserve fiat banking system is you suck liquidity quickly out of the system, and you start to get contagion in the market when you do that. And you then have to come back in and you have to provide a bunch of liquidity. Well, one of the main sources of this liquidity is the overconsumption and creating more and more debt. So how do you do that?

How does this paradox get resolved? Because I see comments from people like, well, if Elon and them come in there and they really do this Doge thing and they're able to pull... By the way, this takes a lot of congressional intervention. People have no idea how big this cesspool is, how much this cesspool is going to fight back. I'm just throwing that out there as an aside. But I think the even more important point of all of that is

In order for the liquidity to keep this system kind of afloat and keep it moving, you have to create more and more debt. So this is a giant paradox, at least from my point of view it is. I'm curious if you agree. I'm curious what you think is going to actually pop out of this.

And do they have to keep expanding the debt no matter what? And does nothing truly stop this train, as Lynn would say? Yeah. I mean, I'm in the Lynn camp personally. I think that's generally a good camp to be in. That is a good camp to be in. What I've learned. I think it's a good sentiment.

Obviously, I think we can all agree on that. And so at least shift the conversation to more like austerity and like less reckless spending. I mean, I think that's one of the things that Bitcoiners and gold bugs have talked about, just how ridiculous some of this government spending has been. But one of the things like there was a chart from Apollo last month or two months ago,

that show just the percentage of government spending that's discretionary now as opposed to mandatory, meaning like it's literally baked in the cake.

in terms of social security medicare all these different programs and it's gone from 70 percent in the late 60s discretionary spending to now less than 30 percent and so like really what they can change is without like congressional approval which is so politicized now i like highly doubt they'll ever change these things but like they can only change less than 30 percent of

of the government spending. So like how much of an impact can they really make and actually get through? I think that's a completely fair point without kind of an act of legislation. And then you, so you have like net interest just continuing to explode as well. I mean, I just brought up what Scott Besson has to deal with $6.7 trillion. He has to somehow refinance at much higher interest rate, that interest expense is going to go way, way up. And so I think it's a good, like I said, it's good message there.

I think I would love to train the swamp, if you will. I am a free markets guy. I think top-down government spending causes a ton of problems, misallocation of capital, all these issues that I've listened to guests on your show talk about. And I'm in agreement, but I don't know how effective they're actually going to be given these structural issues with the government spending. I'd love to hear your thoughts a little bit too. That's how I'm thinking about it. To me, this is very...

inclusive based on everything you said, which I completely agree with. Nothing stops this train. This puppy's moving out. And your point on the discretionary versus non-discretionary is so important and so overlooked, in my opinion, for people that are looking at what levers do they actually have to move here and how safeguarded are those levers? And I think they're going to find that they're in for a massive, massive fight. Yeah.

And it's going to be very challenging. And even if they do move some levers, they're going to still have to drop that liquidity into the market somehow. So- Robert Leonard : Yeah. Lynn talks about, man, I'm going to butcher this, but it's just the financialization of the economy as well and how it's just tied to the stock market. And so that's an issue as well, because if you want to do austerity and

And it causes the stock market to fall, that lowers tax receipts, you get into this spiral, right? And it's just like, how do you do this? There is this paradox. Yeah. Luke talks about this a lot as well in his weekly newsletter. It's just like, they can't afford for the stock market to be down based on how much interest expense alone that they've got. And when you look at the inbound income that's coming from taxes, so much of it is dependent on stock market performance, equity performance.

And yeah, if you're just looking at how much the bills are racking up, how much the interest expense is racking up, they've got to drop rates somehow. Well, this is the fiscal dominance, right? They're like, what can they change? If they need a piece of legislation to change any kind of these entitlement programs, that seems unlikely. And-

So what can they change? Well, they can try to change the interest expense by- Preston Pysh : Manipulating fixed income. Jay Gould : Basically telling the Fed, "No, we really need you to do this." Preston Pysh : The whole reason we started off the show with the MARA being oversubscribed with 0% coupon for however many years is because they've manipulated fixed income for so many years. That's why that opportunity exists. It got bid for 40 years straight. You don't think that there's

There's a reason that these types of things that you're seeing it priced these ways is because these markets have been so freaking manipulated for so long. Sorry to interrupt you, but it's just like- No, they can't get it out. They can't get out of it too. The Bank of International Settlements just put out this, they say the biggest risk is just these governments and the fiscal deficits and the debt. It's been going on for a long time, man.

And fiscal dominance is just this idea where the central banks can try to bring down inflation with their interest rate policies or any kind of monetary policy to adhere to their mandate to price stability and full employment or whatever. But when you get to these debt levels, when the fiscal situation gets out of control like this, it impacts their ability to do it because they get forced to manage the debt. That's what we're talking about. And so you just saw an interesting piece. I

I don't know the details. I'm not an expert on French government affairs or anything, but I know that there's a lot of problems in France right now. I mean, we're talking about their bond yields getting jacked up similar to what happened to Greece in the European debt crisis in 2013. But we're talking about France here. This is in Greece. It's one of the biggest economies in the ECB, in the European Union. And so they're talking about what's going on there. They're kind of going through a little bit of a fiscal crisis over there.

And there was a headline in political that said, if the French bond market crashes, will the ECB come in and save us? Or something like that. And I'm like, that's not even a question. Yes, they have to. Yes, they have to. They have to. And that's fiscal dominance. And when the Bank of England, when the gilt market blew up and they're trying to bring down inflation and they just had to suddenly pivot and start buying up bonds again, that's fiscal dominance. Robert Leonard

Even when the Fed raised interest rates and all the banks crashed and they had to create a new acronym, Bank Turn Funding, that's fiscal dominance. We're in this period of fiscal dominance where the essential banks are completely constrained across the world about their ability to bring down inflation. And that's only going to continue because of all these structural problems that we talked about.

And so I think right now, even you're talking about Fed cutting rates. So we're talking about the inflation came out yesterday, you know, CPI and it's 2.7 cores at 3.3. It's not coming back down to 2% like they want it to, but then the market's giving a 97% chance of the Fed cutting rates next week. Yeah.

Yeah. Like, what are we, you know, it's they're cutting rates and they're going to keep cutting rates despite inflation remaining elevated above their 2% target goal. And so that's what we're talking about with things like structural, like persistent inflationary pressures.

And it's why BlackRock's coming out recommending 2%, because in an inflationary environment, a persistent inflationary environment, bonds don't perform well. And they don't serve the purpose of being uncorrelated to stocks like they used to. That correlation between stocks and bonds becomes positive in periods of persistent inflation. And so you have to seek diversification and alternative assets. And what better way to do that than Bitcoin? And so like

BlackRock's just looking at the macro picture and being like, this is a regime change. We have to think about portfolio construction differently than the last 30 or 40 years because of all these dynamics. And once you go down that route of what are some alternative assets that would actually provide that increased risk-adjusted return and diversification and the outperformance, you'll end up at Bitcoin. It's right there. It's been there and it's still there. And now all the

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All right, back to the show. Did you happen to watch the Eric Trump speech in the UAE? Yeah, I mean, I saw the clip. I didn't watch the whole thing, but I saw the clip. He says it's gone to a million or will go to a million, I think, right? Yeah. I had a couple people text me saying, you need to watch this. It's actually really good. He seems like he's been just consuming sailor interviews before he went on stage.

I haven't watched it. I did see a couple of clips that were shared. One of them was the one that he said it was going to a million, but from what I heard, it was pretty impressive and pretty instrumental for shaping just the global narrative, because I'm sure people are looking at that and they're saying, "Oh my God, this is the son of the ex-US president. This is maybe something worthy of paying attention to." So I don't know. It's getting interesting, Sam, stuff like that. Four years ago, I would have been just in

It's insane news, right? And now it's just, oh yeah, well, Ray Dalio came out and says you should own gold and Bitcoin. And BlackRock just had an article this morning that everybody should have 2% allocation in the Bitcoin. The president's son is going on stage saying it's going to a million. It's kind of insane. It is insane. Look at all this stuff that's happening right now.

Yeah. I mean, I just saw an Australian pension fund, one of the largest down there, right? So it's like every day, it's like every day you're seeing this. Even for me, I'm getting like used to it because I was like, I wanted like a Middle Eastern nation state or large sovereign wealth fund to announce something that Bitcoin Mena. And I was like disappointed, you know, because I'm expecting these like big, bigger and bigger announcements and I'm getting impatient. But I do think it's just

Like I said, when you look at how the narrative, like the Overton window, people talk about that all the time, but it's just lasted wide open. It seems like over the last month or two, the corporate adoption that we've seen, the talk of a reserve at the nation state level, I mean, pension funds, it just, and we're so early. That's like the crazy part. Yeah. Yeah. I was listening to my friend, Joe Burnett, the director of research over at Unchained, and he just had a really great tweet to kind of

where we're at right now. And he's like, listen, we're crossing $100,000. Let me get this straight. Only basically one public company is really leaning in. I mean, now there's a couple others, but only a handful of public companies are leaning into a Bitcoin treasury strategy. You have basically one nation state steadily stacking Bitcoin. You've got two state pensions in the United States, a couple here and there of large investment firms,

who are leaning heavily into Bitcoin and that's it. And we're already at $100,000. I mean, and there's only 21 million. It's just like, you start to understand people talk about diminishing returns, but when you think about how early we are and how much capital still is not woken up to this at all. And even for instance, the Wall Street Journal had a piece the other day that was just basics, like Bitcoin 101, this is the supply. Look at this, it's only been 21 million. And you

And you just like, you're reminded that people probably don't know this information. They really, they probably don't. They're like looking at this like, oh, wow, this is how the supply schedule works. And that's kind of where we're at. And so when I think about the S-curve adoption, you know, those charts of where we are, I still think we're like right here. Yeah.

As crazy as that sounds with Bitcoin at 100,000, but when you zoom out, most of the world is still sleeping on this thing. As crazy as that sounds. For people that were just listening, Sam put his hand sideways. It wasn't even remotely going up yet when he's saying we're right here. It's right here. It's right up on the curve. Yeah. One of my favorite parts of bull markets too, I had some predictions and

And I'm not the only one to get this right. So I don't think I'm very smart. But I thought Bitcoin would hit six digits in 2024. I thought the Fed would start cutting rates. And I said the coat levels from Bitcoin critics would hit all time highs. And that's my favorite prediction that I had, because when Bitcoin rises from the dead again, it

it gets so much harder and harder for these like long-term critics for people to not take them seriously. Like, how can you say this still? And so you're seeing almost like the shift of like reputation where I don't know if you saw, there's a clip on CNBC of a guy from Newburgh or Berman where

where Joe Kernan kind of said like, you missed this. And like, they're straight up calling him out. And it's becoming like the reputation's shifting where like, okay, well, Bitcoin's up again. Like, what are you guys talking about? I was actually really surprised to see that about Neuberger Berman. And I actually questioned it because the guy was the CIO and president of equities at Neuberger Berman. So maybe there's other, it's a huge business. So maybe there are parts, because he said that they're not recommending it to their clients anymore.

But Neuberger Berman wrote four really in-depth pieces in 2021 and 2022 called Bitcoin, the cornerstone digital asset that was actually very well done for a traditional firm at that time. So I was really surprised to hear that. But my point is that it's shifting the conversation where to be against Bitcoin, price has made it so that like

they're kind of being seen as fools now. Like they're foolish for not at least studying this thing and having good critiques of it. And so the smart people will start to reevaluate their prior beliefs and do the work. And then there's going to be some that double down like the financial times. Yeah. They did that like make hope, you know, sarcastic apology to their readers for speaking against Bitcoin for the last 10 years.

So there's going to be some that double down, but a lot are going to turn around and say like, wow, they're going to be like the Charles Schwab guy who said, I think the CEO, who said, yeah, I regret not buying Bitcoin, but now we're getting into it. We're probably going to get into the spot markets. There's going to be some intelligent people who reevaluate things and say like, wow, we really missed this. Let's lean into this. And then there's going to be some that just double down and double down, and they're just going to have to watch Bitcoin continue to get adopted for the rest of their lives. Yeah. It was interesting.

James Lavish told us last night that evidently he was on stage with Peter Schiff recently, and Peter was just continuing to bag on Bitcoin. And so then after it was over, they go into the back, into the green room or whatever, and James was just valiantly trying to just be reasonable and answer any question that he had. And just like, "All right, dude, honestly, what's the hangup? Is there anything that I could explain?" And evidently he was just, "Exactly what you're describing,

The dementia on it is just getting 10 times worse than it was when it was at 10,000. And it's kind of wild. It's kind of wild to see. Hey, the very last thing I want to talk about, this is going to be very random. I promise you, you have no idea where this question is going next. So it's Christmas and everybody's overeating. Everybody's probably gained 15 pounds this month. And you and I have...

have talked a lot this past year. I did this interview on Fiat Food, the book Fiat Food. And it was really, really influential to me. And just like, I love this book. I freaking love this book. And it just made me take a couple steps back and look at myself and say, Preston, you got to change things up. You just got to start eating more healthy, which then led to me really going to the gym a whole lot more and just really kind of taking care of myself and my body and

you and I started talking quite a bit, probably in the spring timeframe, I want to say, Sam. And you, I know, also went deep and really started paying very close attention to what you were eating and working out as well. And so I guess for the final discussion point here or something, because it's Christmas and everybody's probably looking for a New Year's resolution, talk to me about yourself and what you've done this year to really take care of yourself. I saw you in Montana, you were crushing it.

I'm being serious, dude. So talk to us about what is your... I love the 80-20 principle, right? How can you give somebody a little bit of advice that's only 20% of the effort, but they get 80% of the gain when it comes to nutrition and working out? Yeah.

I mean, it's probably not going to be that unique of advice that you probably haven't heard, but it's just, you know, staying out of the middle aisles of the grocery store. That's where all the processed crap is. And then focus on high quality proteins, like nutrient dense foods, you know, high in protein. I love actually our conversation, how you put it where it's like, it's like proof of work food because you're required. Yeah.

you know, an animal had to like eat this and like, you know, eat the food, develop the meat. It's like, it's not this fake stuff, just like Fiat food put together and put out. There's a ton of nutrient dense foods that, you know,

You can even get like collagen rich foods like bone broth, you know, just focus on eating and eating well and consistently eating. And it depends on your goals if you want to lose weight or gain weight. But, you know, you have to just focus on eating good food. That's like the first part. Like the diet part is 70% of it for sure. Like, and it's always been the case, you know, like I had a prior career working as a sports physical therapist and we would deal with this and I'll be like, the diet's the number one thing you want to get ripped.

Diet. You want to lose weight? Diet. Like, and then the exercise, too many people focus on the exercise. Oh, I got to go to the gym. I got to lose weight. I was like, no, you got to go to your pantry and you got to clear that thing out and actually start focused on it every single day about eating well. That's your first step. And then in terms of the exercise, I also think people get like totally overwhelmed with all kinds of advice of exercising and

And I like to make it extremely simple for people. I mean, one, you got to lift weights. That's important for every single person, whether you're a 75-year-old woman or a young man. Lifting weights is extremely important, resistance training, along with cardio. But you have to make it easier for you. And what I do is I do a lot of body weight stuff, old school push-ups, pull-ups, weightlifting.

Some of these exercises are really good for... They're some of the best exercises, period, in terms of building strength across your whole body, but also to minimize injury. I don't need to throw up a huge amount of weight and risk hurting myself when you're doing a pull-up, push-up, if you're doing it right...

your body will eventually limit you from hurting yourself. So that's, I like to like stick to the basics. And then when I go to a workout, I start to create a workout. I keep it simple. I literally, and there's different exercises you can do, but I push something, I pull something, I do some core, I do like a leg, like a deadlift or a squat. And then I tie it together with a little cardio and that's it. And I kind of like have that framework, push something, you pull something, do some legs, do some core, a little bit of cardio, good to go.

People overcomplicate things and then they have zero consistency with like what they're actually doing. And then they also think they have to go like every single day where it's like, you don't like make it easy for yourself. Like have a goal that you can actually achieve, whether it's three days a week, four days a week, and then build from there. Don't try it. Like I'm going to go to the gym every single day. I'm going to do different exercises every single day. You'll just like...

confuse yourself and make it harder for yourself to actually stick with it. So it's a lot of info in there, but- Dude, that was fire. I'm sorry. That was just absolute fire. If I was just going to foot stomp something that you said, you said diet is 70% of it. I think it might even be more than 70% of it. Seriously, it really is. It really is. And everybody, the whole, I think the industry is focused on it. The

Oh, I got to get to the gym. I got to exercise more. I got to run more. I got to bike more. You will not see results if you don't change your diet. Like you won't get the results you want, no matter what it is, whether it's lose weight, get muscles, like whatever. By the way, I've got to say something here for people that don't know. Sam's a doctor. He doesn't say this to anybody. He doesn't say this to anybody. I'm a doctorate in physical therapy. The first time I figured this out.

I'm there, we were at the same place, we were watching basketball. Some guy sprains his ankle, falls down on the ground. No, he blew his Achilles. He tore his whole Achilles, man. So, you were sitting there together, you run out onto the court and I looked over to somebody next to me who knows you really well and I was like, "Well, what's Sam know?" And they looked at me and they started laughing like, "He's a doctor, dude."

I swear to you, I burst out laughing. I was like, of course he's a doctor. Of course he's a doctor. But that one was so like, you can like people, I don't know if you know this, but when people blow their Achilles, you can almost like see it. So like when it happened, I saw like the, the calf go like, and then they were like, Oh, it's just a, you know, sprained ankle. Like, we'll be fine. I was like, no, I'm sorry, man. But like, we need to get the card over here.

Wow. I did a little bit of a test on it and I was like, I'm sorry, I think you just tore your Achilles. And he was like, really? I was like, yeah, because there's another thing about the Achilles when you got a lot of adrenaline, but it actually it doesn't feel as bad as it does right away. It just kind of feels like something like you or kicked you back there.

And so, yeah. And then sure enough, unfortunately the guy tore his Achilles, but it's happy to help, man. It was like putting on that hat. It's like, I miss it sometimes. It's, it's something I'm fascinated about. It's just the human body. Yeah. It's just like complex systems. And, um, I liked helping people, you know, there's, that's kind of why I went down that route. And so similarly, I, I just, I liked understanding complex systems. So now I like focusing on macro and how Bitcoin and teach people about Bitcoin, because I think I helped them there too, in terms of preserving their wealth. So,

It's all back to the core values. I just like helping people, learning things, and sharing it. Preston Pysheniko This would be my... I want to answer my own question. Can I do that, Sam? Do you mind? Samson Mowin Of course, man. Preston Pysheniko On the nutrition thing. Samson Mowin Of course. Preston Pysheniko First of all, I think for me this past year, follow the right people. If there's one thing that I've learned in investing too, you got to focus on the people who actually have results and who...

earned a billion dollars on their own and it's not daddy's money or something like that. So when you study those types of people, I think that it leaves hints, it leaves clues on how you can also achieve success. So when I'm looking at this,

This guy, and people might have whatever opinion they want. For me, this guy has helped me out a ton. Paul Sardina. I follow this guy on Twitter. His content, especially on nutrition, is just top-notch, totally top-notch. And I started implementing and doing what he recommended. And I can't tell you how much it's changed me physically, mentally, and just

All around. I just feel, I feel like a different person. Yeah. You're crushing it. Yeah. And there's people, I mean, man, they, they put me to shame in terms of what I know. I mean, they, they're just experts on this stuff, right? And there's so, you can go so deep in terms of like down to the molecular level about how this stuff affects your body. And yeah,

I think you're right. I think in terms of the exercise industry and medicine in general, from working it to there is this hierarchy where it's like, "That guy's an MD, so we should listen to him." And then there's this somebody who's, "Just" a trainer or something, but he's read 500 books on nutrition and he's so insightful.

And I learned pretty quickly that some of the smartest people in the exercise world were strength and conditioning coaches and people. It just, it does matter about how they're thinking about things because you almost have to unlearn some of the things they teach you in medical school and things like they, it's similar to business school where, you know, it's certain things are taught.

And everyone kind of thinks the same way. And same thing with business school, with the Keynesianism. Like if you just like, if you don't open a book after you leave business school, I don't know. Like I think you're going to be, you're going to underperform. I think somebody who does the work themselves, educates themselves, keeps learning, learns about things like Austrian economics, learns about,

changing regimes and Bitcoin, gold, sound money. It's just a different way of thinking. And same thing happens in the medical and exercise industry where things really have

over the last 10 to 20 years of how people think through nutrition, exercise plans, musculoskeletal health, prevention. And you want to find the experts who are thinking like that because you don't want to be reactive where you start to get hurt. You go, you start to get on pills. They start to give you like shortcuts because there's no shortcuts. There's no shortcuts to building wealth or health. You got to put in the work and you got to educate yourself. So,

Totally agree. All right. I'm glad we covered that. Hopefully, maybe it led to a couple of New Year's resolutions for people. But Sam, thank you. Yeah, Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas to everybody. Enjoy those last few bites and get after it this 2025. Go eat though. Get that done in 2025. You're fine. Sam, can't thank you enough. I know we mentioned the Coin Stories newsletter, which is phenomenal. The work that you put into this is just like straight fire every week when I get this. I

I can't help promote it enough. It is true value add. Anything else that you want to highlight that we can put in the show notes for folks? No, yeah. I mean, I appreciate it. I mean, you mentioned the news block. So I do that with Natalie Brunel, which I'm sure some of your listeners know. So we do that every week. So you can find that, subscribe. I just like to try to curate everything and get it all in one place, just top stories and...

I write it in a way that I would want, which is I just like reading through all the major reports and coolest stories. And I like putting it in one place for people. So if they want that, then they should subscribe. And then I'm on X. So at Sam Calla, S-A-M-C-A-L-L-A-H. I'm always posting my thoughts there. So, and DMs are open. You guys can reach out to me if you have any questions about anything, but it was a privilege, my friend. I always enjoy coming on the show and talking with you. Always learned so much from you, my man.

It's a pleasure. Thanks for making time, Sam.

Of course.