What Is Money? (And Why Bitcoin Matters)

Boom yo yo yo. Welcome back to another episode of the Jack Mallors show. My name is Jack and you have found yourself somehow or some way tuning into another episode of Mailbag Monday. This is episode 98 every Monday. We speak the truth. We spit it real. We're different. No ads. None of that. We're Bitcoiners seeking prosperity through freedom of speech, property rights, open source code distributed networks. You guys know the deal. Let's get into it. I am talking to you all at a Bitcoin price of $87,230 US dollars that puts Bitcoin's market cap just below 1.75 trillion at 1.74 trillion and some change. Our all time high remains the same. It's $126,160. It was made on October 6, 2025. That's 84 days ago from today. So what's the math on that? 12 weeks ago from today, we are about 30% off our all time high made 12 weeks ago from this very day for those of you that keep track of Bitcoin's block height. It was the last Bitcoin block mind since I hit stream. Bitcoin block 930,000 and 83. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, I am very excited about today's episode. Here's a deal. Quick disclaimers. One, I'm short staff. How can you be short staff? You just run this thing by yourself. I do. I run this thing on my laptop. But I do have my friend Dylan, who's also my chief of staff. He collects your guys questions. Well, it's holidays for my employees. So first of all, Merry Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, whatever you celebrate. I hope you celebrated it with love, with family, festivities, culture, food. I hope it was great. Whatever you wanted to do, I hope you did it well. And it's about to be new year. And so most of my employees are taking vacation as they should. Hardworking folk. Dylan is one of them. And so I got nobody on the ones and twos right and down questions. So the first disclaimer is this episode. Q&A is going to be cut decently shorter. For any other reason, then I just don't have anyone watching the chat while you guys are asking questions because I'm streaming. So at the end, I will just kind of open the chat myself and whatever questions are being asked in that moment. I'll just spend whatever 10, 15 minutes answering them. So just to heads up on that one, unfortunately, you got to let people, you know, Dylan and all the people that build strike build 21 work really hard and they deserve it. So you got to let these people get some time off. So well deserved not Dylan's fault. So we'll have to pick up Q&A extra hard next week. And then I'm also you guys don't recognize my background. If you say you do, you're a liar because I'm at dollar bills house. I'm at my dad's house. I am with family for the holidays and for the new year. And I have a family dinner to get to. So this one's going to be a little shorter. No extensive Q&A. But nonetheless, I'm very, very excited about it because the title of today is what is money. So without further ado, let's get into it. And here's my logic here, guys. My idea is that with silver, making the rounds that it did and all time high and gold all time high, I think there's a decent public conversation of what is money? What are investible goods? How do you hedge inflation? What's performance? And I thought it would be a really good time for us to revisit what is money. Fundamentally, why is Bitcoin different than silver? Silver and gold kind of front ran my episode today because they fell quite a bit, you know, you seeing a lot of these metals fall 10 plus percent. And I was looking forward to calling that before they did. And they they before I hit record, they were already down double digit percentages. So they kind of front ran the presentation that I put together for you guys over the weekend. But my point is this. The point in this episode is Bitcoin is money. It's designed to be money. Something like silver is fundamentally not good at money. Why? Because it's a commodity. And I will guarantee you, silver falls and is not able to sustain price levels like this for a sustained period of time. Now, as we know, if we know something about markets, it's that prices move. We know that. As Bitcoins, we know that volatility is natural. It's like entropy. That was part of the last episode, right? But things like commodities, things we consume, things like real estate, which we'll get into a second are not money. We monetize them because this new fiat regime forces us to monetize things around us because the money itself that our government issues is broken. But they themselves are not meant to be money. So let's get into it. So for those that have been living under a rock, see this tweet here, breaking silver prices are exploding due to severe global supply shortage. We'll get into this in a second. The physical market can no longer meet soaring demand. And you see this silver chart, it looks like a meme coin. It is just straight up into the right. Oops. There we go. So the fundamental question of this episode is what actually is money? Is the dollar money, is Bitcoin money, is silver money? What's the difference between money and an investible good? Okay? And so I'm going to try and answer it. Look at how fancy I am, guys. Man are the people. You think I take holidays? I would never let you guys down. In fact, today I put together a little slideshow, not even browser tabs. We're doing literal Google slide deck today for you guys. So here's my presentation. This is going to, this is going to be the long run. So first slide, money is a technology. Okay? I have the copy here. Money is a technology humans invented to coordinate value across time and space. It solves the limitations of barter by allowing us to save today, exchange tomorrow, incorporate at scale. Really, what I need you guys to understand and what is usually fundamentally not taught in school and not part of the common man conversation when discussing money is that money itself is a technology just like any other technology, just like an airplane. Okay? In airplane, there are good and bad airplanes, right? There's such thing as a good airplane that's really safe and gets you there really fast. There's such thing as a bad airplane that's engineered poorly and actually could kill you if you try and fly it in the sky. Another thing is if you wanted a banana to be an airplane, you could try, but when you jump off a skyscraper on a banana, you'll die because the banana is bad at fulfilling the role of being an airplane. Conversely, if you wanted an airplane to be a banana, you could try and eat it. You'll also probably die. It depends how far you get. Okay? The point is money is a technology, just like a car, just like an airplane. Okay? We invented it as humans to solve for barter, but it is a technology that we invented to perform a very specific thing. Right? Money is not necessarily what your government prints and makes you pay taxes in, what the state decides is legal tender. It's not. It is a technology just like the thing that you use to drive, just like the thing that you use to fly, just like the thing that you use to browse the internet, just like the thing that you use to make a phone call, just like the thing that you use to watch television. It's just like those things designed to do a specific thing and there's such thing as good money and there's such thing as bad money. Okay? So we go on. Oh, whoops, just kidding. I need to go to the next slide. So the next question is what is barter? What did money initially? Why was it invented? What did it solve for? Barter was when we exchanged goods and services directly with each other. Okay? So the bartering example is let's say I grow bananas and you grow apples, okay? Without money, we would have to exchange things directly. So I knock on your door and I say, "Hey, good sir, I really want some apples." So I fancy you some of the bananas I just grew and you say, "Well, funny enough, I'd love a banana and I happen to have a surplus of apples because I've been growing them all day." Okay? God damn it, I can do that. That is barter. So in a society of five people, let's say, we say, "Hey, listen guys, here's the deal. Hey you, you go hunt. Hey you, you go get fresh water from the river. Hey you, you watch the kids. Hey you, you build the homes and hey you, you start a fire for tonight." And at the end of the day, we'll all exchange our goods and services directly with each other. Okay? So the guy that gets the fresh water, he divvies it up so that everyone is not dehydrated and is not parched. The guy's going to come home with fresh meat that he hunted, some animal organs. Someone's going to say, "Hey guys, we get to sleep with the roof over our head because I spent all day building a home." It's guy say, "Hey, I can't wait to eat and drink because I've been watching the kids all day." And the last guy's like, "We got heat. We got light after the sun goes down because I made a fire." And you're directly exchanging those services. Now, as society scales, the very complicated issue is that barter doesn't work because of what's called a coincidence of wants. Okay? If there's a society of five people, barter's fine. You go hunt, you get the water, you start the fire, you make the homes. I'll watch the kids and the women. And we'll collectively exchange together as one tiny little village. But let's say, I fix windshield wipers. Who the fuck is going to give me dinner to fix their windshield? What if they don't even own a car? The problem is the coincidence of wants. So let me go back to my apples and my bananas analogy. I grow bananas. You grow apples. I knock on your door and I say, "Hey, good sir. I want an apple. Here are some bananas." And what if you say, "I don't want a banana. I'm allergic to bananas. I've eaten too many bananas." I think bananas taste like shit. I personally, I actually really like bananas before I was carnivore. I used to pound bananas. But anyway, the point is the problem with barter as society scales is I need to coincidentally want what you have and you coincidentally need to have what I want. That's what we call in this economic theory. Coincidence of wants is that unless we both coincidentally want what each other have and have what each other wants, then barter doesn't work. And you can imagine as society scales, listen, as our species grows in population and we get we're hyper specific. So we hyper specialize in the goods and services that we provide to those around us. The fact that we have 8 billion people and that one human can spend their entire life understanding windshield wipers and be so good at making sure that anyone ever has a problem with a windshield wiper, they can fix it. That level of hyper specialization is so amazing for humanity and for society. And so we want that. We want more growth. We want more hyper specialization. We want more focus on specific niches. But then the question becomes what if I want what that person has, but they don't want what I'm making. And you guys have to understand money was created to solve this exact issue, which is I'm creating value and I need to exchange for things I want in my life for the value that I'm creating. But what if the person that has what I want, what if they don't want what I have? It'd be better if I can exchange it for a good or a service, a thing that I can then put in my pocket and then later exchange for the things that I want. So using my bananas and apples analogy, if I'm growing bananas and you're growing apples, and I knock on your door and I say, I want a bunch of apples. I have bananas and you say, well, we have a coincidence of wants problems because you want what I have, but I don't want what you have. I don't want bananas. I want oranges. Well, then what I would do is I would go knock on the door the guy that grows oranges. And I would say, hey, I want your oranges. Do you want any of my bananas? He says, yes, I'd love some bananas. Here, take some oranges. And then I use the oranges. I put them in my pocket. I walk over to the guy with the apples and I say, here, take the oranges that you wanted. I'll take the apples. And in that instance, guys, I used oranges as money. And I used them as money because I acquired the oranges not to consume and to eat them. I acquired the oranges to store the value I created and then later exchange for the things that I needed. Okay. So that's why Barter fails. Now we move on. This is the point that's extremely critical and it's going to be very relevant to silver. Money, therefore, is not meant to be consumed. You acquire money to save it. You acquire money to delay consumption. Money allows you to save right now, not consume right now. You see? And in that instance, where I grow bananas, my friend grows apples, but I needed to use oranges to facilitate a medium of exchange, I monetized oranges. So you see, money is a technology and you can use anything to try and achieve money in the market. Now the question is, what's good at being money? Again, many things can fly. It just depends. What are you trying to achieve? Are you trying to fly across the Atlantic? Or are you trying to fly from your garage to your trampoline in the backyard? You know, you could use a zip line. Right? You could use a parachute. I tell you this, I wouldn't cross the Atlantic on a parachute. You'll probably die. And so, is an orange a good money? No. Why? Well, they go bad. It'd be really, really stupid if I worked really hard and got my paycheck in oranges. And then they went bad and got moldy in a week and all the value that I had created for society is now no good. And I can't exchange it for anything, right? It's not very very sellable. Oranges aren't very liquid, et cetera, et cetera. But the point is, anything can be money. Money is a technology and you, money is the market good that you're not consuming. It's that you're not using. Okay? So then the question is, what does make good money? Okay. Is the dollar good money? Is silver good money? Is gold good money? Is Bitcoin good money? What makes a money good? Because, you know, we as humans, we know more than we can say. Meaning, I know how to ride a bike. I don't know if I'd be able to write a book or teach a computer how to ride a bike. I know intuitively more than I can probably put into words. We know what a good airplane is. We've seen a Boeing. We've been to an airport. We know what we should probably use to travel across the Atlantic and what we probably shouldn't. I probably shouldn't use a parachute or a banana or an orange to fly. Okay. Do we have the same intuition about money? And a lot of the point of my presentation today and why I think this is timely given all these metals are exploding in price, I don't think society has a very good idea of what money actually is, the fact that it's a technology and what makes a money good versus a money that's bad. So I have written here, good money is scarce, durable, divisible, and portable. It is hard to create, it is hard to counterfeit and it is neutral to control it. Okay. So let's walk through each of these properties. One, our oranges, our bananas, our dollars, are they scarce? No. We can create an abundance of dollars, of bananas. Why is that a bad thing? Well, you know, the quote that I love that, you know, I said on the Tim Pool podcast, no man should work for what another man can print. Why would I exchange my time and my energy? Two things that are scarce to me. My time is scarce. I don't get infinite of it. My energy is scarce. I cannot print more energy, right? These are currencies of the universe, time and energy. Why would I exchange my time and my energy for something that someone else could plant in their backyard or for someone else can print at the Federal Reserve, right? Durability. If you store your time and energy in wheat in bread, it will go bad. It will get moldy. It's not very durable. If you store your time and energy in a bunch of paper and someone and it gets rained on, it's not very durable. What about divisibility? Your money should be able to measure a professional sports franchise or a grain of sand in the economy. What good is my money if I can only buy massive objects with it? I can't go get dinner. I can't go get gas. I can't go get a gift for my girlfriend. Or conversely, what good is the money if all I can do is make tiny little purchases. So the money needs to be divisible and then it obviously needs to be portable. If I can't bring the money with me in exchange, it is worse or money. The money that can come in my pocket, the money that I can put in my brain in Bitcoin seed phrase, the money that I can put on a phone, the more portable the money, the more divisible the money, the more durable the money, and the scarcer the money, the harder the money, the better the money. Now, there's something called a commodity premium. There needs to be a cost to create the money, right? For example, dollars at the Federal Reserve, it is effortless and free for them to create as much fiat as they want. Bad money, easy money, not good money. Conversely, gold, it costs money to dig it out of the ground. The question is, how much gold supply is there? We don't actually know the answer like we do Bitcoin. Bitcoin, we know there are only ever be 21 million. Gold, we don't know the answer. Interestingly, there's a lot more in the ground. The problem is it costs a lot of money to get it out of the ground, and that is what actually makes gold relatively scarce. Gold is not scarce because there's a fixed supply of gold. You guys need to understand this. Gold is scarce because the gold that does exist out there, it's really expensive to go get it out of the ground, which is interesting because as the gold price goes up, it makes it more economically viable to go get more gold that we know is on Mars, that we know is underground. So you have to have a cost to create the money. In Bitcoin, Bitcoin and Satoshi, it was an ingenious invention to use proof of work and the difficulty adjustment. I mean, Bitcoin's monetary property here in the cost to create it is the most mind-boggling, ingenious invention I've ever seen personally. Because Bitcoin, it requires a certain amount of energy, and you ask yourself, well, how much energy is it? Two energy units? Is it 200 energy units? How much energy is the Bitcoin network required to create a new one? And the amount of energy required is denominated in time. It takes 10 minutes worth of energy to create new Bitcoin. How fucking mind-blowing is that guys? Satoshi Nakamoto denominated Bitcoin's issuance in the cost to create new Bitcoin in time, which is the currency of the universe, time and energy. It is what governs all of us. It is the only scarcity that you are born with. You value your life because you know you won't live forever because your time is scarce. If I live forever, I would go to the gym in 10,000 years. I get married in 100,000 years. I'd stop eating donuts and start eating whole foods in a million years. I'd spend time with my family in 10 million years. Why would I give a fuck about today? I have infinite of them. Like dollars. How would I give a shit about my dollars today? There's infinite of them. It's free to make more. The reason we care about today, the reason I woke up this morning and I saw the sun rise, and I will make sure I see the sun set. I'm not going to eat ice cream and donuts. I'm going to eat a ribeye and drink water. The reason I get exercise, the reason I'm focused on building a family with my girl, I want to be a father is because I don't have unlimited time. My time is scarce. It's finite. It is the scarcity that governs humanity. And Satoshi Nakamoto actually found a way to make the required amount of energy to produce another Bitcoin, to mine a block, denominated in time. 10 minutes worth. All right, I see you guys in the comments, like, all right, go to the next slide. That's pretty cool though. But anyways, now, here's my next one, and this is the, this is the important one because this is why silver and many other things should not be money in our bad money. Why commodities fail as money? Commodities are meant to be consumed. When prices rise, humans produce more, increasing the supply and deluding the value of the commodity itself. So, let's use silver, for example, because I'll go on to this next slide. Elon, as silver's price has risen, Elon Musk has said, this is not good. Silver is needed in many industrial processes. I'll pull it up on Twitter, because on my way over here to record this, I saw that a lot of US military equipment, if silver remains at this price, there will be shortages of things like jets and planes. Silver, we consume. Silver is what we use to build a lot of the appliances and the technology and the tools that we all live with in our everyday lives. Silver is a consumable market good. Do you guys remember in the earlier example where I said, money is the thing you acquire not to consume. You acquire money to save it and to later exchange it. It's uniquely a thing you acquire not to eat it, not to build technology with it, not to drive it, not to fly it. You acquire it to save it. And people get this so backwards. So, when I go to this, this tweet says, the story ends with silver crashing. This time won't be any different. And it won't be any different. And I can guarantee you that. And you say, well, Jack, how do you know? Well, I know because when you drive the price up of a commodity, all you're doing is building an economic incentive for people to go into the ground and get more. Silver doesn't have a finite supply. The cost to create more silver is not denominated in time. The ingenious thing about Bitcoin that Satoshi solved is in order to drastically increase the supply of Bitcoin and create a really inflationary period for Bitcoin and dilute everyone in a short period of time, you'd have to solve for time travel. I'm not joking. I'm not being theatrical. That's dead serious. It's denominated in time. So, the man that can hyperinflate Bitcoin is the man that can travel in the future in 10 minute intervals. Unless you can solve time travel, Bitcoin is unbelievably secure at a predictable issuance that is not inflationary. Silver is not. Silver is not guarded by time. It is not guarded by cryptography. Silver is in the ground. It's just how much do I get paid to dig it out of the ground? And so the price of silver will inevitably crash because as the price rises, humanity, it's like a bounty for humanity. Everyone's going to go now, dig more up out of the ground. Now, the US military Elon Musk is saying we need to create a lot more silver because it's too expensive to build the products that everyone consumes and lives on. And so silver is actually a bad money. It's a bad money because we consume it. It's a bad money because it's not finitely scarce. It's relatively scarce, depending on how much I get paid to dig more up out of the ground. Obviously, if a bar of silver is 79 bucks and it costs me 80 bucks to dig it out of the ground, I'm not going to dig it out of the ground because I lose money all day. But if to dig silver out of the ground costs me $40 and I can sell it for $79, I'm going to dig more silver out of the ground until it's $40 again. So commodities are bad money. Silver will crash. Unfortunately, for me, I thought I was going to like say this and it was going to be really controversial and you guys are going to be like, ah, shut the fuck up. You don't know what you're talking about. And then it would inevitably crash because it's commodity. And then I'd be like, ah, I told you guys so. But silver, unfortunately, by the time I woke up this morning, I'd put this together, silver already started to fall. Now, I'm not a trader. As you guys know, I'm not a trader. I don't know where the near term price is going to go. But you cannot store a tremendous amount of wealth, of value, of time and energy in something like silver because it's not a good money. You see? And so now this brings me to why is Bitcoin different? Well, Bitcoin is not consumed. And people like Peter Schiff get this like economic professors at universities, talking heads on Twitter, guys like Peter Schiff, get this so fundamentally wrong because they say, I can't do anything with my Bitcoin. With gold, I can put it in jewelry. And that's why gold is more valuable. And it's like, no, you idiot. It's better that I can't eat the Bitcoin. It's better that I can't put Bitcoin in jewelry. It's better that I can't put my Bitcoins between two hotdog buns and eat it for dinner tonight. Because you guys, the money is not supposed to be consumed. If you are consuming the thing, you're not monetizing it. The money is very simple. It's what are you acquiring to save? And then later exchange for things you need. It is specifically not the thing that you're acquiring to live in, to drive, to fly, to eat, to wear, specifically not. And it's crazy because nobody in society understands what money is, the technological role it's supposed to play in the marketplace. And so Bitcoin is very different than a commodity because it is not consumed. We do not put Bitcoin in our iPhones, in our, we don't use Bitcoin to build military equipment. And its supply does not respond to the price. Demand increases value, not production. Meaning, if you send the Bitcoin price to a million dollars per coin, that does not incentivize a bunch of people to go get more Bitcoin out of the ground. You can only get more Bitcoin out of the future because Bitcoin's issuance is paid in time. You have to pay 10 minutes worth of energy to get more coins. So it doesn't matter how high the price goes. Unless you solve for time travel, Bitcoin is going to come out every 10 minutes no matter what. And so guys, this is a critical, critical point. When you log on a Twitter and you see people say, "Silver is better than Bitcoin." We're going back on a metal standard. You laugh at these people. You say, "You don't know what you're talking about. You don't understand money fundamentally." When Peter Schiff says, "Gold is better than Bitcoin because I can't do anything with my Bitcoin." That's the point. The best money possible would be the money that I can't even see because I don't want to consume it. So let me walk you guys even through this. So there's called stock to flow. Stock to flow ratio is very simple. So great minds think of like Luke tweeted this yesterday. He says, "The higher stock to flow ratio, the longer physical reality can be separated from prices via paper games." The point of stock to flow is very simple. It is, and let me go back to this slide here. Stock to flow is how much existing stockpile is there. So how much supply exists of a thing, any given thing. And the flow is how much new issuance is there of said thing. And the stock to flow is how many years it would take given the current issuance rate to recreate the existing stockpile. Does that make sense? And so this gives you a measurement of how scarce something is, okay? And we can see platinum, platinum, silver, gold, Bitcoin. And in that order is the most abundant and the least scarce to the most scarce. For silver, given the existing stockpile of 550,000, and the annual supply growth of 4.5%. It would take 22 years for us to recreate the existing silver supply given on how much silver we're producing every year. And as the price of silver goes up, the production goes up. When the production goes up, there's more silver to sell in the market. It's more dilutive. It brings the price back down. And silver ends up finding a relative sweet spot of annual supply growth, which is 4.5%. Gold, you guys understand, gold is better money than silver. It's been monetized throughout history, better than silver, for this very, very simple reason. Because gold is scarcer. It has a higher stock to flow. The annual supply growth of gold is only 1.5%. It's 1 to 2%, not 4.5%. That's the only reason gold won the monetary race against silver throughout history. And you see Bitcoin is tremendously more scarce than gold, even. And what's really cool is, what's the annual supply growth of Bitcoin? Well, it falls every about 4 years because of the having. And then eventually, the stock to flow will be infinity because there will be no more issued Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the only thing in the history of mankind that is definitively scarce, that literally has a supply cap. There's no other monetizable good ever that's had a literal supply cap. So it'll be the first asset ever in the history of mankind that has an infinity stock to flow. Pretty cool, right? Now, I want to go back to the whole Peter Schiff comment real quick, because this idea of stock to flow, measuring how scarce something is, how many years would it take at current issuance to recreate the existing stockpile? So let's take gold, for example, at 205,000 units. Let's say Peter Schiff says, gold has value because you can do stuff with it. You can hold it. You can put it in a watch. He said this. He's literally said these things, not understanding that money is specifically not to be consumed. He's wrong. What's an easy way to understand that he's wrong? Well, if we take 200,000 of the 205,000 gold units that exist today, that stock of 205,000, let's say we take 200,000 of it and we use it to put in watches where people are consuming it. They're consuming the commodity now instead of saving it and later exchanging it and monetizing it. That would mean 3,300 new gold units are produced a year. It's stock to flow would be dog shit. It would be 0.00001 because the stockpile that's used as money that people are saving and exchanging in the market for goods and services has been drastically reduced because a lot of the gold has now been consumed. So the more of the money you consume, you're demonetizing it. You're making it more abundant. You're making it less scarce. Do you guys see how this, like anyone that says, because I can't do anything with my Bitcoin means that Bitcoin's bad money, it's no you moron. It's the mere fact that the only thing you can do with Bitcoin is use it as money. That is why it is better. It is that much scarcer. You can't consume it. You can't put it in a watch. You can't put it on a plate and eat it. You can't fly it. You can't live in it. So the more a money is consumed, the less scarce it is. It's stock to flow ratio gets hammered. It's annual supply growth is so inflationary to the monetary units themselves. And so if you just measure pound for pound on monetary properties, what money is easiest to verify of silver, gold, Bitcoin, it's obviously Bitcoin. What's easier to transport? Bitcoin. What's easier to store? Bitcoin. What's more divisible? Bitcoin. What's costlier to produce? Bitcoin. Because you have to pay in time. Even if Donald Trump wanted to print unlimited dollars to mine as much Bitcoin as quick as he could, it doesn't matter. Donald Trump can't print 10 minutes. He can't. And so Bitcoin is the most expensive to produce because you have to solve for time travel to hack it. Elon Musk has said, if the price of gold gets high enough, I'm going to go get a bunch from Mars. The day Elon Musk gets a bunch of gold from Mars, where do you think the price is going? The biggest red candle you've ever seen is going to dump that shit. That's inflationary. That's dilutive. And then what money is scarcer? Look at this screen. It would take you 122 years at Bitcoin's current supply growth to recreate the near 20 million Bitcoin that exists. And that number is only going to get closer and closer to infinity over the next 100 years. And so you see, the other point I make about Bitcoin frequently on the whole topic of money and what is money and is Bitcoin good money or bad money? What makes a good money or bad money? We didn't make gold. We found gold. You see, I don't think it's appreciated that we made Bitcoin to be perfect money. And we're currently making it to be perfect money. It's software. We continue to improve it. We continue to harden it. And it is built to be money. It's built to solve these problems. It's built to be the thing that you acquire not to consume. But why is real estate a bad store of value? A lot of reasons. But the most important one is because you acquire the real estate to consume it. How much of the existing supply are people sleeping in? A lot. So you have to find a market good that you're not consuming. Or else you're making it abundant, less scarce, more dilutive to supply growth pressure. So Bitcoin was very specifically designed to be money, to have a cost to produce so expensive that it's paid for in time, to have a supply so scarce that it's literally limited, to have a stock to flow so attractive, that's the only one that can hit infinity, that will hit infinity. Something so easy to store and so portable, you could put it in your brain. I did a keynote on these topics at Atlantis. If you guys want to see me do an actual conference level keynote on this, I know Bitcoiners think it's one of my best I've ever done. It's my Bitcoin Atlantis as the conference. You can YouTube it. And one of my lines in there is gold is stuck in your butt. Bitcoin is safe in your brain. And the joke is at the time someone had gotten caught trying to launder money across borders by shoving a bunch of gold up their ass. And they got caught in TSA, like those little screeners, like just found a bunch of gold up this guy's ass. And the point is like how portable and safe is Bitcoin? I can literally put it in my brain. It's information, it's text. The thing is unbelievable. It's so unbelievable at being money. It's ridiculous. And so short term price, silver, listen, we'll talk next episode on why commodities lead inflation. So what metals in broader commodity prices are telling us right now is that inflation will come back in 2026. I've said it. I think Trump's going to run this thing tremendously hot. I think Bitcoin, I stand by my $250,000 to a million dollars this cycle. You know, this is not a bear market. I don't think the bull market ever really started if you look at Bitcoin in gold. So we'll talk about that next episode. Next episode of Dylan Bat collecting questions. I won't be with family for the holidays. And we'll do more macro and understanding commodity prices and what it means for forward looking inflation. But for this one, hopefully useful guys, just what is money actually? What's the definition? What makes a good money? And when Peter Schiff says, "Bitcoin's bad money because I can't see it. I can't hold it and I can't put it in a watch." Why is he wrong? There is very easy to understand fundamental reasons of why he's wrong. Why Bitcoin has performed better than all of these things. Follow the stock to flow. Follow the scarcity. Follow the monetary properties. Okay. Anyways, here's a slightly embarrassing. I never like watching older videos of myself because I mean, my career started so young. So like a version of me from 2 and 4 on the tallest building. One will build it. Boom. There goes inflation to your real estate scarce penthouse. If silver, if silver gets high enough, I will literally go into the kitchen, melt all my silverware down, and eat with plastic forks. So here, I'll play it. Although, I hate watching my older self, but I'll play it. Take a listen. It's actually not that complicated and I'm excited to try and convey that to America. There's a market term that's used here in Chicago a lot is demand finds supply. What do I mean by that? If Ken Griffin is going to want to buy the most expensive condo in America, someone will build it for him. Someone will put a 200 first floor in Miami's tallest building. If silver is going to 1,000 acts, first floor in Miami's tallest building. If silver is going to 1,000 acts, I will walk into my kitchen right now. I will melt all my silverware and I will sell it at walk into my kitchen right now. I will melt all my silverware and I will sell it at market. If gold is going to rally, Elon Musk will find more on Mars. Bitcoin is, this is a super important point. Bitcoin is the only monetary instrument in the history of our species that is fixed. It does not matter how much more demand comes into the asset class, Kelly. No one will ever be able to make more of it. There are two things I can guarantee you in my life. One that I'll die and the other that there will only ever be 21 million Bitcoin. And those are what's the two things that I can only value as my life and my Bitcoin. So it is the only fixed supply asset. Kelly, it's not that complicated. It's going to go up because everything else can be issued more. Why is it? You've got to explain to me why. Pretty simple. I mean, I'll do some Q&A with you guys, but it's a pretty simple concept. Like, if silver keeps going up, we'll all start eating with wood because it'll be more economic to melt the silver down, sell it, which will bring the silver price back down because it'll be a highly inflationary period. There'll be new supply entering the market. And you're like, that's not new supply. That's existing supply because that silver already existed. Yes, but it wasn't monetized. It's being consumed. So last night, I had a ribeye and I used silverware. I used silver to eat it, but that wasn't monetized silver. It was consumable silver by me making it back into money by melting it down and selling it. Now I'm adding to the monetary pile. I'm issuing new silver into the monetary market, which is why if you take gold out and you put it in a watch, gold gets a lot more inflationary because the one and a half percent of new supply a year becomes 10%, becomes 50%, becomes 90%. You see? And so it's very simple. The higher you send commodities, the more supply you'll get. If a rich dude wants to put a floor on top of your penthouse, guess what? You don't have the penthouse anymore. Get fucked. If silver goes high enough, guess what? We're all going to melt our silverware down and dump on your face. If gold gets high enough, guess what? Elon's going to go get all the gold from another planet. These are none of these things. What I want to store, all my time and energy in, if I also had the option of Bitcoin, and people will, you know, troll me on the internet and stuff, but guess what? That's why it's been the best performing thing over the last 15 years. Hand over a fist, not even close. And I'm not a day trader and I'm not a trend trader and don't draw lines on charts. I'm talking about I work hard, I save for the long term in a thing. I have to pick. I have to pick what money I want. Remember, money's a technology. So when I go fly across the Atlantic, I pick what I want to fly in. Do I want to do a parachute? Do I want to sail a boat? Or do I want to sit in a Boeing? And I choose the technology that best suits me. Same with Bitcoin and gold and silver and the dollar. Trying to cross an ocean in a kayak is like using fiat. And then there's a parachute and then there's like a little punter playing in a propeller. But there's a fucking Boeing out there. You can just sit in that. It's the best technology for the job. We go on. So I wrote here, the reason this conversation is resurfacing right now isn't accidental. We're seeing stress everywhere, housing, health care, commodities, miners. And at the same time, we're being told growth is really strong, which we'll get into in a second. So the question is, what are we using for money? What should I use for money? So I'll end this rant with a little bit of macro Trumpism. Kind of like tie this on a go forward. But Trump posted on December 23rd. So last, what is that? Tuesday, the Trump rule. The financial news today was great. GDP is up 4.2% as opposed to the predicted 2.5%. And this is despite the downward pressure of the recent Democrat shutdown. But in the modern market, when you have good news, the market stays even or goes down because Wall Street's heads are wired differently than they used to be. In the old days, when there was good news, the market would go up. Nowadays, when there's good news, the market goes down because everybody thinks that interest rates will immediately be lifted to take care of the potential inflation. That means that essentially, we can never have a great market again. Those markets from the time when our nation was building up and becoming great, strong markets, even phenomenal markets don't cause inflation, stupidity does. I want my new Fed chairman to lower interest rates if the market is doing well, not destroy the market for no reason whatsoever. And he goes on to effectively say, we're going to run it hot, we're going to grow, grow, grow, and we're going to bring rates down with it. And so here from Mark Andreessen, it's time to grow. And Elon says, double-digit growth is coming within 12 to 18 months. If applied, intelligence is proxy for economic growth, which it should be, triple-digit as possible in the next five years. And we've talked about this guys. The last time we had double-digit economic growth was after World War II, and the Federal Reserve's balance sheet 10x, 10x. So nominal growth is another way of saying, in a men's amount of money printing, in a men's amount of debasement, it's inflating away the debt. And so here's why I kind of paired this at the very end, is make sure you understand what money is, make sure you understand it's a technology, and what makes it a good or bad technology. Because people are going to look at the price of silver right now, pour all of their savings into silver, not to understand that a higher silver price is only leading more silver supply. Creating more silver is not stuck in the future in 10-minute intervals like Bitcoin. Someone right now, as I'm talking, is digging up a fuck ton of silver. You're going to dump it on the market, the price is going to come right back down. It's a consumable commodity. We use silver to eat dinner, we use silver for military equipment, we use silver for technology appliances. It's not money, trust me. And so as they print a metric fuck ton of money, as they debase and inflate away the debt they've created, as they run it hot with double-digit growth. We're running back the same playbook post-World War Two, we're doing it again, wartime financing. Understand what is money, what makes a good money, and why is Bitcoin different? Because at the end of the day, people are going to decide what they want to use as money, the technology. I can't force everyone to sit in a plane in the safety of a well-engineered plane and cross the choppy Atlantic safely and quickly. I can't do that for them. All I can do is record this podcast. And I said, I don't get paid for this podcast. I have no sponsors. I genuinely enjoy having my own expression of ideas and questions and energy. I like having my own little corner of the internet. It's been a blast to hang out with you guys. This is the best we can do. But just, you know, if I don't know if this episode will be a go-to primer to people that don't totally know money, I don't know how good of a job I did, but I've done plenty of keynotes as well. Look up my Atlantis keynote. I've done a bunch. But just try and think hard about what money is, our technology that solves for barter. The thing that you're acquiring in your life, not to consume it. So when people say, I just bought a condo to live in, but it's also what I'm saving in. No, it's not. It's not. You're consuming it. It's not. You need to be acquiring something that you're saving, not eating, not living in, not flying. You need to make more than you consume and take that excess capital and save it in something. And do not choose silver and gold. You're going to get wrecked in Bitcoin terms. I don't know. You'll outperform whatever. You'll outperform owning dollars. But anyway, this tweet from Robert is just reiterating what I just said. I will once again point out that the last time the US had fiscal dominance, debt to GDP of over 110 percent and negative real rates, commodities went up 150 percent. The Dow Jones returned 980 percent in inflation peaked at 20 percent. We'll talk about it next week. What we're seeing from commodities and metals, the price action of things like silver and gold. These are leading indicators of inflation. Inflation will return in 2026. They are inflating and debasing away the debt. They are running it hot, wartime financing. And we can go back in history to get any semblance of an idea. The Federal Reserve's balance sheet is going to have to grow. This from biology, Western states creates so much dysfunction that eventually they themselves become dysfunctional and effectively cease to exist. And what you're looking at is all the yields of the West. The US, Germany, Japan, UK, Italy, France yields up means demand for their bonds down. Nobody wants to lend these insolvent actors money anymore. You want me to lend to the United States? You got to pay me a lot of fucking money to do something that dumb. That's what these are saying. So the West is having a tremendously difficult time financing its debt. If they can't finance a debt, they have to debase the debt. They have to inflate it away. They have to run it hot. One of my personal goals, whatever platform I have, I'm going to try and use it to communicate what money is, how to pick a good one. Why I think Bitcoin is the best one ever. It's really that simple, guys. It's really that simple. And I put these in here just for shits and giggles. Zero hedge pointed out about that surge in personal consumption. So like, oh man, GDP growth. Well, look at the largest consumption category in Q3 for all that growth. It was fucking healthcare. Look at this. It's all a fucking sham. Americans now spend more on healthcare than on groceries and housing. What are we talking about? Yeah, we killed it. Like, what are we doing? Understand money. Understand what makes a good or bad one. Buy yourself some Bitcoin. Take care of your family. Eat whole foods. Get in the sun. Exercise. Enough of the bullshit. Yeah, we're going to grow our way out of it. Because we're going to spend more on healthcare than groceries and housing. This is so, so ridiculous. So money is to save today without being forced to consume today. This is another thing I almost tweeted because I just thought I was a banger. Find yourself a technology that allows you to save today instead of being forced to consume today. We're better with a lower time preference, long-term thinkers, coordinators, planners. Make your future something worth being excited about because you can save for it. Take the value you're creating today and put it in your pocket for tomorrow. But it takes a technology to be able to do that, to teleport the value you're creating for others into the future. Not everything can do that. Not everything is as good as everything else. Bitcoin is uniquely built and good at that. Okay, strike real quick. I heard my family just come through the door. So I'm running out of time. Strike, I'm going to have a end of year recap of everything we built this year reminder. This time last year we had never lent a dollar against Bitcoin. Now we're one of if not the largest consumer retail lenders against Bitcoin in the world. Tremendently proud of the team. We build and ship so much. I think it's valuable to have kind of like an end of the year recap. So I will do that. Be on the lookout for it. A reminder that we've launched California lending. I know you guys asked me about New York all the time. It's up to New York. We've been told by New York a plethora of times. We were going to get the license before Halloween. Then we're going to get it before Thanksgiving. And then we're going to get it before Christmas. And so I hate to be misleading at this point. I'm just regurgitating what they've told me. It's supposedly imminent any day now. We've been working on this license for over three years. So New York should come all the states every single state in America that is not live or does not have a 10k minimum statute like within I'm talking about weeks like within the first half of January. We should be able to get that done. And then all lies Q one for us. So between now and the end of March is about line of credit and yield on cash. We're very excited. Those are kind of the core. And that's not at the end of 2026. So these are not 12 month projects. Strike we ship our product velocity is out of this world unbelievably talented and focused team. So you'll get a end of year video recap from me just to kind of understand all that we're building. All you can do is strike. I mean, I think we're crossing a hundred million dollars of bills paid on strike. You can get your direct deposit on strike, loan on strike. You can DCA and get paid in Bitcoin without any fees. You're going to get a line of credit soon, yield on your cash. And then for 21, I mean, you guys have been hammering me about 21. Listen, I stand, I stand by everything I said. I think we have the best team in this industry. I think betting against tether and I, I invite that challenge. You know, I invite the fact that people can put their money where their math is in bet against tether and I. I welcome the challenge. And we are not a Bitcoin treasury company. We have lots of plans. And when I am allowed to announce them, I will. That's all I can really say. I'm sure you guys have a bunch of questions. And to the best I can, I'll answer them. But end of Q4 is in a few days. And I'm excited to share with the world what we have planned. Not only what we have planned. I'm an actions over words guy. It's kind of like, you know, I'm sure you guys are exhausted by the same shit I say every single fucking time. I am too. I trust me. I don't like. If I, if you know, if I wasn't getting asked many questions about it, I would just not say anything. And the next time you'd hear from me regarding 21 would just be what we built. But anyways, you guys get it. And if you don't and you're upset, I get it. But I stand by it. I think it's a generational team and a generational business. And if you don't, the cool thing about the capital markets is you can express that with time and energy, with money. You don't have to express it through tweeting at me. Which doesn't do much. The exchange rate for tweets in Bitcoin is zero. Unfortunately, I can't go get dinner or get more sats with tweets. So, money where your mouth is. But anyway, all right. Let's hopefully this episode was a little different and valuable, a little one-on-one, a little education. Let's see, I got my phone up here with the chat. So my family did just walk in. So I don't have, oops, unlimited time. But I've got some. Let's see. If you guys are around and you want me to answer a question, just fire away. And let's see if I can make it work without Dylan. I'll blow up my camera here. And I'm very excited about 21. The public markets are just different, man. Obviously, with strike, I say whatever the hell I want, when I want. It's just different. Man, the chat is moving. Why do I swear so much? Oh, I can certainly swear less. I mean, when I shouldn't be swearing, I don't. So it's not like a tick or anything. I don't know. I think this is just like how I talk. I don't know, midwest, Chicago, when I'm at the tailgate for the Bears game. This is how I shoot the shit with my friends. And I like that type of culture for this podcast. It's very raw. It's very real. It's very relatable. It's not professional. I don't ever want it to be super professional. But I mean, if the cursing is like a thing that really bothers you guys or makes it harder to digest the information I can just not curse. No big deal. Jack question, I'm about to start a small business selling a new kind of physical product. How can I position my company to utilize Bitcoin? Can strike help? My biggest advice to businesses is to capitalize on Bitcoin. Businesses need to save money just like individuals and families as well. And so, you know, keeping a portion or all of your balance sheet in Bitcoin, rolling some excess profits into Bitcoin. So strike, we have thousands and thousands of business customers and our businesses are doing exactly that. They act like a consumer. They're buying Bitcoin with their balance sheet. They're buying Bitcoin with profits. I mean, you can use Bitcoin to accept payment and stuff. But it's much more niche of a use case for now. It'll take more time to get like visa level adoption. But the just, you know, making sure that your business is saving for its future using good monetary technology like Bitcoin. That'd be my advice. Let's see. Where's dollar bill? That's probably him that just walked in. He's probably downstairs. My 13-year-old always reminds me it's Mailbag Monday. He wants to start saving in Bitcoin on strike. How has this done? Unfortunately, for us to serve kids under 18, it requires a special license. So I'll answer this in two parts. One, we're building a feature that allows you to kind of create segregated wallets within your account. So if you wanted to stash some and label it like my 13-year-old son, that's a highly requested feature. It's just allowing people to organize their money better by having like sub accounts within their strike account. And then the other is, you know, hopefully one day I get the license. So we're working on that. You know, our goal is to be able to offer products to as many people as we can. And so whether that's more regions, whether it's offering existing products in more places we already exist, or getting new licenses so we can offer Bitcoin products to younger folks. So that's the answer. Okay. Yeah. When will strike reduce the minimum in South Carolina at 10K within the next few weeks? For sure. The only reason it's not right now is because the people that build it are celebrating the holidays with their family. So as soon as they get back in the office. All right. And with that, I got to go be with my family. So apologize for the shorter episode, lack of Q&A. Hopefully this one was fun. If you already knew all this information, you can skip this episode. You know, definitely more of a 101 more educational. But yeah, I really like the topic. I think it's it is critical that we understand money. It's intended purpose. What makes it good or bad and why Bitcoin's different. And the lack of education is so severe that it's yeah, it's unfortunate. So I don't know. Hopefully I can contribute to improving that. And if there's one person out there that had clicked for them like, holy shit, I get money now, then this episode is worth it. So much love again. Enjoy the holidays. Be safe. Happy new year. Take care of yourselves. Create memories. And like I said, leave a feedback in the comments as always. I work for you guys both strike in 21, but then also the show. I do it for you guys. I mean, there's some self enjoyment, but I predominantly do it to participate in the conversation and educate and entertain. I don't know. Some of some of you guys that make laugh somehow. So anyway, leave comments. Feedback. Much love. Be safe. Happy holidays. Happy new year. And I appreciate you guys as always. Peace and love.