host_1_06-16-2026_184156 0:24

Hey everybody, welcome back to TCB. Today on TCB we are talking to Cale McQuitty. Cale, what's up man? Welcome to the show.

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 0:31

Hey, how are you doing?

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 0:32

Good man, good. Glad to have you on here man. So, uh, before we get started, just a little intro dude. Who are the, uh, people listening to? Who are you? What do you do? Where are you from, et cetera?

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 0:43

my name's Cale McQuitty. I'm not necessarily a Bitcoin maximalist or a trader or economist or anything like that. I own part of a fabrication company here down in Houston. My day-to-day is selling steel and, hanging out with customers, making deals and things like that. Um, we have pivoted quite a bit into, the data center space and things of that nature, which kind of runs in tandem with the, the mining space. And so, uh, of just wanted to on here and talk to you kind of a little bit about some of tho- those things

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 1:13

Yeah, man, right on. Well, hey man, this is for the Bitcoin newcomers, so no need to be a Bitcoin expert here, brother. So, if you could, I always like to start here. If you can remember where you first kind of came across Bitcoin, if you like have that memory of when you kind of first came across it or came to know of it, and then just kinda what's your general impression of it? What do you think about what's going on here?

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 1:34

Man, probably the first impression of it, was from a family member kinda talking about it. They turned me onto it, got me interested in the idea. And of course, you're, you're, you're hearing it and you're thinking, get, get rich quick kinda stuff and, you know, sky's the limit and here, put all your money in there and you're gonna be a millionaire next week. However, after I kinda got into it, I found this podcast, that was one thing, and kinda got some more information on it's really about. And, and I think that part's really cool about it

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 2:05

Yeah, man. Yeah, I think, uh, dude, that's a good way to kinda put it, 'cause it does kinda seem like depending on where your entry point is, given Bitcoin's volatility, it could feel like you just made the greatest decision in the history of your life, or it could feel like you're the biggest idiot in the world and you just lost half of your money. So I think getting to learn a little bit more about exactly what it is, exactly what problem we're trying to solve here, I think is what builds you the conviction to be able to kinda hold through those cycles and then hopefully eventually kinda reap the fruits of that, that labor of actually kinda putting the time in to understand it. 'Cause I think of a lot of people, if you kinda try to come to Bitcoin with just kind of like a tourist mentality, it's going to shake you out. It's either gonna bore you to death, it's gonna scare you to death. It's gonna do one of the, one of the above. So you really just have to kind of be willing to stick around and put enough time in and ride out the cycle or two, and then just not be afraid of it and not just get bored to death and kinda move on to the next shiny thing, you know, the next like SpaceX IPO or something like that.

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 3:09

Oh, yeah

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 3:10

think that's the key, man, is just being willing to kinda stick around long enough, put a little bit of time in, and then hopefully have a little bit of an aha moment of, "Oh, hang on, this isn't really just some kind of get rich quick scheme." This is like everything else suddenly starts to feel like a lie that's kind of this like orchestrated lie from the monetary system, and you're like, "Oh, hang on." And then how problematic is that? Is this a solution? And the farther you dig and the longer you stick around, I've kinda got to the point now where it's just I'm basically numb to the volatility 'cause I understand what's driving it, if that makes sense.

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 3:48

Yeah. I, I feel like Bitcoin's been the shiny thing like multiple times in its existence. You know, even, even five years ago, you know, it was mostly retail investors, and now we're seeing ETFs and corporations and institutions and so on all get involved. I, I don't know that that's necessarily good for Bitcoin. I, I don't know that it's bad. I'm back to being kinda, new to it. Every, every single week it's changing, I feel like.

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 4:12

Yeah.

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 4:12

I-

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 4:13

Yeah, for sure. I mean, as, as every kind of player. I think, um, uh, I'm not sure good or bad. I think it's inevitable. You know, I think it's, one of those things where if Bitcoin is going to be money, if it's gonna try to solve money for the world, then inevitably anyone that is in the money business was going to get involved on some long enough timeline. So the fact that kind of the banks are showing up, financial advisors are showing up, that really was to be expected. Depending on who you ask, it maybe happened faster or slower than they maybe expected it to happen. But I think it was kind of the inevitable arc if Bitcoin is to succeed. Like, there's really no way that Bitcoin becomes kind of a new monetary layer for the entire economy without banks and financial institutions getting involved. That just doesn't really make sense. I think we're gonna see the same thing on the nation state level. It's kind of in- in- inevitably, inevitably going to get to that level as well if it is to succeed. Obviously, the people that, you know, sovereigns are gonna wanna hold sound money as well. So, I think that's probably the next shoe to drop. We've already seen a little bit of it. We have a Bitcoin reserve in the United States, whether it just be in name only. We don't see a lot of action on that front quite yet, but we have kinda declared one, and we have at least said we're not gonna sell any of the Bitcoin that they already have confiscated from, you know, law enforcement proceedings and such. So, but I think that's inevitably gonna grow as well, and I think we're gonna be asking the same question. Is that gonna be good for Bitcoin, bad for Bitcoin? To be determined, but I think it's in- inevitable for Bitcoin. If it's gonna end up being a monetary, you know, settlement layer for humanity, then all of those actors are gonna get involved.

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 5:57

Yeah. And you kind of just talked about Bitcoin in like three different things. Um, you know, a lot of people see it as a currency, but then there's the technology side to it, and then it's basically digital re- real estate. I mean, where, where would you place it?

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 6:14

Uh, yeah, good question, man. I mean, I think it's kind of all the above, and I think that's why people have a hard time wrapping their head around it, 'cause it's this idea of like, "Hey, what is this thing? Is this thing supposed to be money? Am I supposed to spend this thing down the street? Is this supposed to be a store of value? Is it supposed to be like gold? Is this a network like Facebook or Verizon?" And it's really all the above. So it's kinda hard to wrap your head around it. And as it's evolving, it's really kind of working its way through all of those, phases, which I would say at least on the monetary front, you kinda have to be a store of value first, and then you kind of evolve into like a medium of exchange phase, and then you evolve into like a unit of account phase where we actually kind of price things in it. And I think what's difficult is kind of at, at least from kind of maybe the investment valuation standpoint of Bitcoin at present, is it's kind of different things for different people. You know, if you're a refugee trying to flee Iran or Ukraine or another war-torn part of the world, for you it's, you know, this unconfiscatable store of value that you can take your net worth across a border. If you're in the United States and you just have extra cash, maybe for you it's a speculative investment.

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 7:21

Yeah

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 7:21

it's, you know, somebody that, get like, Russia getting kicked off of like the SWIFT network or getting sanctioned, maybe it's your way to like work around kind of, the, the watchdogs or the guardrails of the financial system and the players that decide who get to play or who do- who doesn't get to play. So kind of depending on who, who you're talking to, it could be very different things to very different people. And then I think in addition to that, there's kind of two things going on, which you touched on with the kind of network idea of there's kind of this sound money, this evolving sound money that's a rival to something like gold that failed us as sound money

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 7:56

Mm-hmm.

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 7:56

got too centralized and got exploited. And then there's also this network effect of A growing network that grows kind of like, like Metcalfe's law says a network grows at the square of its users. So,

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 8:09

Okay

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 8:10

two people on a phone network, it's not super valuable, but you add another one and then you add another one, and then now suddenly, you know, you got four people, you got 16 connections. So it's growing as a network kind of like Twitter did and kinda like Facebook did and how phones did and how the internet did, honestly. So it's got kind of the like network-based growing demand on one side, and then it's got kind of like this slow evolution of people understanding it as a sound money on the other side.

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 8:38

Yeah

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 8:38

there, those are kinda two different actors. There's like technology people, and then there's sound money, libertarian, cypherpunk people on one side. So, it kinda means different things to different people, but it's, it's just kind of, it serves all of those demand vectors. So it's-- I think that's why it's kind of so confusing is it's very complex, so it's kind of... I, I forget who- whose quote it was, but somebody at one point said, "Bitcoin is everything you don't know about money mixed with everything you don't know about computers." So it makes it a, yeah, like a very difficult thing to wrap your head around. But I think no matter which one of those vectors kinda bring you into Bitcoin in the first place, like whether you're just like, for me, it was just, I've always kinda been an Austrian economics, liberty-minded person that was just like very frustrated with the financial system and how it was designed and came to it as a solution. But then there's also people that just come to it from the technology, and they're just, you know, they're, they're coders and they're cryptographers, and they find the technology interesting, and then they open up the whole door of Austrian economics and the economic side. So it kinda just depends on which side you come to it. But I mean, it's, I guess it's maybe a cop-out to say, "Hey, Bitcoin is just all things to all people." But if you kinda think about how, how money touches everything, and it's why suddenly as like a Bitcoiner running a Bitcoin podcast, I'm not just talking about economics. Suddenly you're talking about, geopolitics, the entire macroeconomic structure of Earth and ga-game theory and

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 10:09

it to like, related it to like Twitter for a second there, and it, it kinda is like its own social media, if you will. then you get deeper into it, and then you find out all these other things and you're like, this is way bigger."

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 10:22

Yeah. Right. Yeah. And it's a, yeah, it's a, and it's a network of thinkers too, 'cause I think of every time, the more I spend and the more time I spend kind of in the Bitcoin space, and when I go to meetups and I've been to conferences, et cetera, then you start to meet all kind of these like-minded people that we're all kind of like gravitating maybe toward Bitcoin, for different reasons. But now we all kind of speak the same language, and it's kind of creating its whole kind of intellectual ecosystem where ideas are getting bounced off and tools are getting built out. So it's just this like emerging, infrastructure. One of my favorite pieces on Bitcoin is like Brandon Quittem wrote this piece that, like Bitcoin is mycelium. So he basically equates it to kind of like a, the mycelium network that like is underlying all the mushrooms in a forest and how that they c- they,

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 11:07

analogy

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 11:08

and they kind of barter nutrients with the trees, and they kind of give and take, and then, but they kind of just turns into this like big shared root system that's kind of indestructible. Like there's no, there's no single point of failure where you can go kind of kill this thing. It's just like if you try to kind of try to whack-a-mole it on one side, it, it spr- sprouts up somewhere else. I think that's really what kind of Bitcoin's becoming. It's kind of this like freedom money mind virus that's just kind of slowly seeping its way into everything. And it's kind of like it's seeped its way into Wall Street. It's seeped its way under the doors of the White House, and now we have a reserve. Now they're talking about it all the time. Now when you watch all the global leaders at Davos, even though most of them hate Bitcoin, they can't stop talking about Bitcoin for some reason. And it's because they understand it as a threat to their power structure. So it's just kind of this thing that like it was a, you know, you had to try to kill it in the womb, but now it's too far gone, and it's just kind of slowly creeping its way into everything.

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 12:08

Yeah. And I think that's awesome. I think we're gonna see another shiny cycle, if you will. Like it's gonna have its next big boom and it's gonna be all over the media again. Right now it seems like AI is capturing all the headlines and all the investment dollars right now and it's kind of wondering like, did Bitcoin just get boring or is it, is it mature, like actually maturing? Is it finally getting to that point where it's past like that, "Ooh, we're shiny," and, it's actually grown up?

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 12:35

Yeah. Interesting. It's been an interesting thing to live through, 'cause just like you said, I think, I think it's still the, you know, best performing asset of, like, 11 out of the past 15 years, something like that. But looking at this year specifically, it's kind of... It seems to be the only thing that isn't running, which I think gives a lot of people a little bit of a pause. They're like, "Hey, I got my money in this thing." The S&P is completely destroying, like, every stock index is destroying. All these IPOs are, like, crazy. I mean, this SpaceX IPO, uh, you know, Musk made more in one day than Warren Buffett's made in his entire life. Like, it's like this crazy

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 13:10

crazy

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 13:11

rocket ship ride of evaluation. So it kind of feels like everything is hitting all-time highs all at once except for Bitcoin. I mean, you look at, like, the housing market, it's the most unaffordable it's ever been. The valuation of the stock market is as high as they've basically ever been. So it, it feels like you're kind of getting left behind, but I think every dog has its day, man. And I think, it's... I think Bitcoin is the dog that has the ch- the largest addressable market to actually attack, so when it runs, it could run farther than any of these things can. I was thinking this, like, I don't have any ill will against, uh, SpaceX, the IPO. I think, you know, shooting rockets up in the air and catching them again is pretty freaking awesome, actually. So,

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 13:54

pretty

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 13:55

I don't ha- I don't have any ill will against what they're doing. But even now, like, they start out, they're one of the biggest co- I think they're already what, like, the fourth biggest company on Earth. They're already a bigger valuation than Amazon, even though they're losing money from a revenue standpoint. So, so what is their total addressable market? And it's not that SpaceX, I think, is not capable of doing incredible things. I mean, eventually, you know, you m- like, we might be able to go from here to Tokyo in 30 minutes on a rocket that gets shot up and then caught on that side. Or we might be building data centers in space 'cause you remove all the friction of data center build-outs when it comes to, you know, cooling or, you know, energy that just comes straight from the sun.

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 14:32

data centers on the ground for right now.

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 14:34

For now. Yeah, for now, yeah. You don't want,

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 14:35

I...

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 14:36

you don't wanna be taking any space trips?

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 14:38

the ground. Yeah,

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 14:40

yeah. But I mean, so I, I guess point being there's, there's definitely revenue, future revenue potential there. But if they're already day one, Jump Street, the fourth largest company in the world, how much total addressable market is there? So if they become the biggest company in the world, maybe you get a 2X out of that investment, maybe. I think realistically, you know, that there's probably a lot of price correction to be had before we go anywhere near what that, you know, maybe biggest company in the world would be. but I think, I think AI's taking a lot of, you know, I guess like air out of the room when it comes to kind of Bitcoin. But I think there's a greater AI Bitcoin story that has yet to be told here. And I think really what's happening, and it's not happening immediately, but I think what's about to happen is I think AI is gonna be severely deflationary for the world. It's gonna be trying to push prices to basically nothing. But the debt-laden system requires wages and prices to continually rise. So those, those two forces are kind of diametrically opposed to each other And I think what you're gonna see is we already had, I kind of think of all these things as the, the kind of fundamental Bitcoin thesis was the government spends too much money. They have no choice but to continue to debase the currency, and because of that, this fixed supply asset will continue to accrue value. Like fixed denominator asset will continue to accrue value. And then even though that fundamental, thesis is completely intact, there's like these side quests that make the problem way, way worse. And so they're just kind of putting icing on that cake, and I think of AI as kind of a side quest that makes that way, way worse because it's trying to force prices down. Because we're already so indebted, we've kind of crossed the debt Rubicon already, we can't allow any purchasing power to accrue to the dollars 'cause we owe 40 trillion of them, and it just gets that debt harder to service in real terms. So no matter how much efficiency gains AI is bringing upon the, the economy, the government is gonna have to offset it because it, it cannot allow its already insolvent debt position to become harder to service. So it's really just accelerating the demise, where I think where we eventually get to is we have a very deflationary economy helped out with all these artificial intelligence technology tools, but we're gonna have to have a money that can reflect that deflationary economic reality, which Bitcoin does very well because as a fixed denominator asset, it could, it can, you know, accrue as much value density as it wants. It's not reliant on debt. It's not a debt Ponzi scheme, so it doesn't have to be this house of cards. But since we live in a system that requires the inflation and that we're up against this exponentially growing, technological force that's severely deflationary, they're gonna coexist for a while, and everything the government does to try to offset that deflation is going to just concentrate wealth further and further to the top until it breaks. And what does breaking look like? I don't know. Does it become a complete banking crisis? Does all credit fail? Do we just get, you know, kind of some kind of socialism revolution because so much wealth gets concentrated in so few hands that the people just won't take it anymore? But something will happen just because those, they're incompatible systems running in parallel, and they just cannot coexist, so one of them is gonna win out. I happen to think that the AI is going to win out But when you look all around, and just kinda look at how AI disrupts everything, and I think of... So we talked just a little bit offline about the idea of like going and buying a house, and I'm like, "Okay, I would love to," right? But the classic way to go buy a house is to take on 30 years of debt. And, you

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 18:32

Right

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 18:33

particularly where I live in Colorado, houses are not cheap here. They're like, I think the third highest in the country, something like that. But like, if you're going to look at like a m- like I just look at any neighborhood, and I think of all the people there, uh, say a house is a million dollars just to make it easy in there, how many of those people bought those million-dollar houses with cash? Almost none of them, because there's only 62 million millionaires on Earth. So they all bought it on 30-year leverage, and the idea of 30-year leverage is I believe I'm gonna have 30 years of predictable income to service this loan I'm taking out. But then I look through that neighborhood and I think of, okay, what perce- like what professions are in this neighborhood on a, in a normal white collar dominated suburban neighborhood? It's lawyers, financial managers, accountants, maybe administrators of some kind. Basically every single list that is just like on the assassin block of what AI is about to disrupt. So I think it

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 19:35

AI agents for all of that stuff now, and it's, it's crazy

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 19:38

Right. So what happens to all of those loans when all of those people think they have 30 years of, you know, horizon ahead of them of stable income, and then suddenly they don't have a job at all? Because not only did their job disappear, their entire job category disappeared because AI showed up and it just could do it better, faster, cheaper. So,

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 19:57

Yeah.

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 19:58

yeah

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 19:58

if you don't have your hands in something and actually touching it, you're in danger

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 20:03

You,

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 20:03

your job, I feel like

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 20:07

100%, yeah. And then the robots come next and probably put that in danger too. But like, it's just, it's just the fact that the economic reality that we have been living in that's accelerating, our monetary system is just completely juxtaposed to it. So it, something is going to have to give, and I don't know exactly what the transition looks like. I just know that, there's going to be an agonal breath of money printing to try to hold off that disruption. So you just have to have something that they can't print 'cause they can print money, but they can't print qualified borrowers. You know, there's gotta be a buyer for this house when you push the valuation to 3 million, so

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 20:42

Yeah. So do you think like-- so all these AIs have these AI agents that are running basically on their own, or they're being created and they're doing different tasks and stuff like that. Do you think AI agents could eventually own wallets and like make new purchases and transact using Bitcoin without human involvement?

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 21:02

Uh, I, I think

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 21:04

do you see that as a possibility?

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 21:06

Possibility for sure. I mean, I think this is kind of one of the...

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 21:09

there, but

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 21:10

A little bit, but no, but it's not too off base, right? 'Cause like, I mean, obviously if you kind of have dedicated agents doing dedicated things, they're gonna have to interact with other agent ecosystems to get the things that they need. Similar to that mycelium network, you know, the, in the bottom of the forest is like, "What do I need from you? What do you need from me?" But you know, what's more realistic? I th- I think, I think sometimes I, I pause this because, you know, some Bitcoiners are just like, "Well, obviously they're gonna use Bitcoin." And it's like, well, I mean, what I've seen from interacting with AI and what I've been able to do with it, you don't really know what they're gonna do. Like, they start doing

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 21:47

Right.

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 21:48

things. You know, I, I remember seeing, you know, I think the, the ones at Google started talking to each other. They had to, like, pull the plug on them 'cause they didn't even know what they were saying. They, like, invented a new language or something. So they may come up with their own, you know, value transition mechanism that we don't completely understand. I think, but given the options that we have, I mean, are they going to use Bitcoin versus the Visa network? Where do I think that every AI agent is going to go open a bank account? And, you know, the bank, when they have to do all the KYC, like, know your customer stuff, they're not gonna give a bank account to a AI agent that doesn't exist. You know, like that's not gonna happen in the traditional, the traditional field. So I would say given, given the choice of Bitcoin versus, the traditional financial system, they would clearly use Bitcoin. Now, whether they'll come up with some other way of interacting that we just don't necessarily have, haven't seen yet or don't understand. There have been interesting studies. I forget what the study was, but it was one that just basically, like kind of spun up, you know, kind of, AI agents and just kind of left them to their own devices and just see what money they would pick. And I think it was like between 70% and 80% of the time it did ended up picking Bitcoin as its preferred choice to interact because it's permissionless, it can't be stopped. You don't, you know, it's unconfiscatable. You don't need anyone's permission. So like when it comes to just AI to AI, it's the least, friction-laden rail that exists today to use. So, yeah, a little science fiction, but I don't think it's completely off base to think if we're gonna go to a digital currency universe, assuming that we're gonna have to just, you know, use money to interact, unless money just goes away. But if we're gonna use money to interact and they have the choice between, uh, you know, permissionless network or probably what's coming next on the other side, which is a, a government digital currency of some kind that's very tightly controlled, kind of similar to what China has. Like, I don't think-

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 23:51

I like that.

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 23:52

Yeah. Let, yeah, but it, I mean, let alone leave the AIs out of it, just us as humans, like the future of currency's going to be digital. It's pretty obvious at this point. But we're really gonna have two choices. Is it gonna be a, you know, a grassroots decentralized network that the government cannot s- cannot dilute, cannot confiscate, and cannot stop? Or is it gonna be the China model of, you know, we, we have your face, do what we say. If you do something we don't like, then we turn your money off. Like, is it gonna be that world? So I think, I think that choice is coming at us pretty quickly. Whether the, you know, robots make the choice with us, I guess, is TBD, but

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 24:30

Yeah. I don't know about that. you know, basically they're, they're generating like fake content, fake identities and information so quickly. I mean, I don't know what's real anymore.

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 24:41

Yeah

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 24:42

but since Bitcoin's on a verifiable ledger, does that give any strength to it?

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 24:48

I think just like you said, like we're going into a world of just basically infinite AI slop that you cannot tell what is real and what is fake. But AIs are not going to be able to fake a Bitcoin transaction because the Bitcoin, you cannot send an invalid transaction over the Bitcoin network. So it might end up being, and this is gonna sound hyperbolic, but it might end up being the only thing on the internet that you know is real. So it might end up being kind of the ultimate truth ledger in a world of just infinite AI slop. 'Cause like basically

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 25:20

Yeah, that's crazy

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 25:22

it was the, discovery in the first place. Like the thing that makes Bitcoin special in the first place was it, was the discovery of digital scarcity. So in a world where anything could be copied or replicated a, a billion times, what Bitcoin solved was to make something digital, not infinitely replicable. So in this new kind of AI world where anyone will be able to fake this podcast, you know, like someone would be able to probably take every other podcast I've ever done, run the transcripts through an AI, take a couple video clips of me, and then just probably create a brand new podcast out of nothing just based on past ideas and

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 25:58

Crazy

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 25:59

them forward. But the only thing you're not going to be able to replicate in that internet world is kind of Bitcoin. So I think it might be this kind of a single node of light in this kind of digital slop universe that's like the only verifiable thing that you can actually trust.

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 26:20

So, we always like talk about how like Bitcoin is succeeding and moving forward, and it has all this, this good behind it, and it's verifiable and all that stuff. But if there was like something that's like legitimate risk that could make it fail, like what do you think that could be?

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 26:36

Uh, oh yeah, good question, man. I'm gonna think it's like ultimately, like we talked about, it's a network, so it will, succeed as long as more people continue to find value in it, and that network continues to grow. There's a myriad of reasons, like all the reasons that I found value in Bitcoin, as we've been moving forward, it seems like they're just all on steroids as far as the money printing just keeps happening, the censorship just keeps happening, whether it's the Canadian truckers or Iran or Russia or whoever else, and then like any, you know, Chinese citizens that can't go to a protest 'cause if their face shows up, their money gets turned off. So all those things get, keep getting stronger because I think we're kind of just converging to this kind of dystopian choice moment of like freedom versus absolute servitude. So the use case keeps getting stronger. So as far as people continuing to find value in it, I think the main barrier to that is just economic understanding. It just takes a lot of work to actually wrap your head around what it is and then trust that it can't be turned off, trust that it can't just d- disappear overnight, trust that there's not some rug pull in the code where the whole thing's gonna get emptied by some evil actor. Once you kind of do the work to understand all of those things, I think the use case is there. I would think the, um, honestly what Uh, the biggest threat to it is, either just complete government crackdown where they just kind of, you know, make it, uh... Yeah, and that wouldn't stop it. That would just force it further underground. But, you know, say the government decides it, it's losing control and it says, "Hey, we're gonna c- you know, tax capital gains on this at 99%," who's gonna use it, you know? Or who's gonna keep it? And I think there still would be people, using it in self-custody and using it peer-to-peer and understanding it's kind of a revol- like a revolution, particularly if we got to that point that we were so dystopian and so authoritarian. But obviously it wouldn't help mainstream adoption if they were to come after it that hard. I think what maybe saves us from this is the, the game theory of Bitcoin really puts you in a position where if you cannot kill it, you have to adopt it, otherwise it will be your destroyer. Like Saifedean talks about this, like it'll be adopted like gunpowder, where as soon as gunpowder existed, it wasn't like, "Do I like gunpowder? Do I not like gunpowder?" It was adopt gunpowder or lose the next fight. Like, so I think

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 28:59

Right

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 28:59

given that it's a jurisdiction-less global asset, unless all of the countries kumbaya and they all get on the same framework and they all try to stop it at once, anybody that chooses to go against that grain is gonna be the first mover, and they're gonna exorbitantly, benefit from being that first mover. So I think the ga- the game theory would get somebody to go, you know? So I think, I th- and once somebody goes, everybody has to go 'cause otherwise you just get left behind. So I like to think of it as like you could cut yourself off the network and become, you know, very not prosperous. Like, I always think of how they show pictures of North Korea at night and South Korea's all lit up and North Korea's completely dark. You can cut yourself out of the network and, you know, be way less prosperous than your neighbor, but you don't have any economic incentive to do so. And then the other thing that comes up all the time, which it seems like they talk about it in a Bitcoin vacuum is like kind of a quantum threat because if quantum shows up and it's able to unlock old addresses. But I think, I think this is,

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 30:02

this

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 30:03

Yeah, but the, the, I think the problem with this argument in general is Bitcoin is right now the most secure computer network on Earth. So if you're worried about quantum being a threat, it, it's basically every single other network is more vulnerable to quantum than Bitcoin is. So, if you're really worried about quantum, you definitely shouldn't have money at Bank of America. You definitely shouldn't have money at Wells Fargo. You definitely shouldn't have money in the stock market. You definitely-- the nuclear codes would be at risk. Uh, yeah, right. I mean, the only thing you could, like something that you could lock in your house, but, basically any digital network. And then I think that's usually where the, you know, 'cause like your bank code is four digits, a Bitcoin address is 256 bits. So it's like way harder to crack than your average PIN code, bank code, et cetera. The cryptography that holds most of our financial s- system together. And I think the other, the second layer of that which people don't ever really go to is, the thing is like if I go and I... If I say I had this quant- I was this evil actor. I have this quantum computer. I go to Bank of America and I empty out 50 accounts, and I take those dollars. There's such a giant global network of kind of unrelated networks that I can spend dollars in. So if I rob a bunch of Bank of America accounts, I can still economically benefit from those dollars that I stole. I could go spend them somewhere else. I could use them somewhere else. But the thing about Bitcoin is Bitcoin doesn't allow Bitcoin to be moved on any other network. So I can't steal Bitcoin and then go spend it somewhere else outside of the Bitcoin network. So if you end up cracking the Bitcoin network with quantum, you destroy all of it. Like you don't get any economic benefit. You just destroy the network.

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 31:48

You, you basically took it down to zero

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 31:50

Yeah. You ba- you basically, you're a s- you're a suicide bomber. You swallow the grenade and you take the whole thing down and you get nothing. So, there's no, since there's no economic incentive to do it, the only actor that would go, you know, try to destroy Bitcoin first instead of going and robbing every other, you know, cryptographically weaker system on Earth first would be, you know, some kind of state actor that their intention was to destroy it. So it would have to be a government that gets ahold of Quantum first, and they would just, you know, they don't wanna give a whole-- or give up the power they get from the money printer. They don't want their citizens to be free. They don't want their citizens to hold value that they can't confiscate or dilute, so they try to destroy it. I think the thing is, there's already, quantum resistant addresses that Bitcoin could roll out tomorrow. It's, it's a matter of bandwidth. It's, it would bog down the network 'cause it would just be larger numbers moving over the same bandwidth. So, it's not that it couldn't be done, and I think in the face of an existential threat, you know, say you did see a whole bunch of Bank of America, accounts get drained overnight because of Quantum, I think the, the community would actually come together and get consensus on an upgrade pretty quickly, in the face of an existential threat. You just don't wanna do it before it's necessary because it slows the whole network down. So it's kind of this like, I've thought about it, what really needs to happen, and I do think it is slowly happening, is there kinda has to be a quantum resistance plan in place, but kind of in escrow, like on a shelf.

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 33:24

Yeah

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 33:25

once this threat shows up, this is what we're going to deploy so that the consensus is ba- is built beforehand and not rushed at the last second. 'Cause what, what one of the greatest strengths of Bitcoin is you can't change the rules unless there's an overwhelming consensus of all the node runners that choose to go to a new rule set. But that can be

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 33:47

runners are there now?

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 33:49

tens of thousands. It's, it's hard. I mean, you, you can kinda look them up. You can see their maps. Uh, like, and it's-- And some of them are reachable at all times, some of them aren't. But it's, it's tens of thousands all over the globe. So it's, it's kind of beyond the reach of any single actor getting, like, control of enough of that processing power to actually do anything that the network doesn't want. So the consensus mechanism, you know, is, is strong in that regard. The only problem is it's a little bit slow to gain that consensus. So if, if there's a fast-moving threat, it's hard to move with a fast-moving solution. So hopefully, and I think this will happen, and, and that to be, to be, to be fair, quantum computing is still just theoretical. So It's kind of this if this theoretical physics problem was ever solved, would it be at risk of taking down this whole network? And I'm like, "You know what? Maybe." But it's also, kind of like Bitcoin, because Bitcoin is kind of inherently digital, and it's code, and it just fits so well. It has enemies as is. It's kind of easy to throw stones at it. But, you know, you never hear about quantum destroying Bitcoin. You never hear about quantum destroying everything else. Like, pretty much every other business with a digital footprint would be at risk at, with quantum. So it probably takes down everything. And, uh, you know, there's completely. And, you know, once we have AI agents working on this problem day and night, and they can digest all human knowledge in five seconds, like, are they gonna be able to solve it? I, I don't know. But it is kinda one of those things where it's, it's not that it's not a concern, it's just that if, if quantum becomes a problem, it's a problem for everything. It's not just a problem for Bitcoin. But I would say, if I was gonna point to one thing that's potentially a problem for, for Bitcoin, it would, it would be that. But it's not, you know, in isolation. Everything is gonna be a problem if we get to quantum, so

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 35:42

Yeah. Well, that's, like I said, that's terrifying. You did talk a little bit about nation states and stuff like that. Back the last time when Bitcoin was real shiny, there was a whole bunch of talk about, you know, state adoption and things like that, where it was gonna get basically adopted by everyone and who was gonna be the first to it and stuff like that. Did the reserve, whenever that happened, did that kinda s- shut some of that down? Or are there more people jumping in because of that or, or what's going on with that?

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 36:13

Yeah, man, it's a good question 'cause I thought, you know, when El Salvador decided to make it legal tender and then, you know, like, Bhutan was found to be mining it and, you know, now even with the Strait of Hormuz thing, it was like the one thing that they could try to like charge tolls with was Bitcoin going through the strait 'cause that's the one thing that can't be sanctioned or stopped. I thought it would be, adopted by more places quicker, but I've noticed that, I'm kind of also assuming that the whole world is suddenly, working off of the same nerd anthology of Bitcoin knowledge that I have. So I'm like, "Of course they're gonna adopt this any day now." But you gotta always remember that it was like most of them are operating with zero knowledge of the entire space, so. And then there's a, there's-- honestly, there's still a ga- the cabal that kind of runs global banking and like the International Monetary Fund and everyone else. Even when El Salvador did it, they were like, "Hey, we're gonna cut you off of all loans. We're gonna do it." Like they're le- they're leaning on anybody that is making any step in that direction because they're trying their damnedest to maintain control. And if, if the I- if the IMF and the, you know, the Bank of International Settlements and, you know, the, the European Union or the Bank, Bank of Euro- if they have their way, they are gonna put everybody on a digital currency system that is under government control that they can, you know, they can code to, you know, set parameters on, "Hey, if you don't spend your money by Friday, it expires, so you better get out there and juice our economy for us." Or,

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 37:43

Yeah

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 37:44

already taken six flights this month. Your carbon tax is, is at max, so you can't fly again until July," or whatever. So that's what they want because, like, honestly, if you could control the money, you have a c- pretty much absolute social engineering control of the society, and you can make them do or not do whatever you want. You know, not very many people go out and protest if, you know, if their face shows up on a camera and their entire net worth gets drained the next day. So you have a lot of control over any kind of opposition. That's what they want. So, and that, th- just that system still has a lot of power. So anyone that has kind of telegraphed it has pretty much gotten shut down. And they've, to date, they've been small enough to get shut down. And I think we-- you saw that entire last year, the entire gold run-up, where gold just shot up to $5,600 or whatever it was. Most of that was, central bank purchases of gold. China's buying a ton of gold 'cause I think they know that this house of debt cards that has been built since we went completely fiat in 1971 when Nixon closed the gold window, they kinda know it's coming to an end. They know there has to be a reset, but they're trying to reset back to the system that they know how to control. They're like, "Hey, we're gonna have gold. We're gonna have all the gold. That's what we're gonna try to go back to." I do think at some point, the same game theory plays out where, they don't want to go to Bitcoin, but somebody will have to go to Bitcoin, and it's gonna be, instead of it being an El Salvador, um, it's gonna be one of the large... As soon as, like, a G20 or a G7 nation

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 39:17

Yeah. Who,

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 39:18

to make a big Bitcoin play Uh, Bhutan's been mining for a long time, just the tiny country of Bhutan. Yeah, it's like, it's more like half their GDP. Yeah.

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 39:27

that's crazy.

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 39:28

I actually think, and I think there's a lot of undisclosed mining going on because it's the way that any government can hedge without taking a outward position in Bitcoin. I mean, if they're mining in China or they're mining in Russia, like no one knows. Like Iran actually had I think up to, it was like 2.5% or 3% of the hash rate 'cause they were just mining it with their energy. 'Cause there's a lot of countries out there that are energy rich. They actually have more energy than they know what to do with, and they don't really know how to monetize it. Exactly, yeah. So, uh, I think there's a lot of that going on too. I just think no one is really willing to telegraph the position until, um, it's like a hey... It, 'cause it's kind of a telegraphing to the whole world, "Hey, this is the checkmate move and we're, we're going for it." And it could just set off like, you know, it could set off a hungry, hungry hippo race of some kind or whatever. So you kinda wanna make, if that's your intention, you kinda wanna slowly build out your position first, just like companies do, right? They like slowly build out a position, they FUD the fuck out of something, and then as soon as they're ready, then they telegraph to the world and then they pump their own bags, and then they become the winner. So, um, honestly, I hope it's gonna be us, man. I hope that like the United States, the fact that we've telegraphed a Bitcoin reserve and, you know, I don't see any better way to try to crawl out of a $40 trillion hole than to be the first mover, make the whole world chase, and then let them pay your debt for you. So, uh, that seems like a great idea. I hope it's us, but if it's not us, it will be somebody. I think the incentives are too strong for a first mover advantage that as soon as everyone realizes like, "Hey, we might be kinda circling the wagons and trying to work up the same, same kind of music now, but whoever goes first wins," somebody will go first. I think about it like, kinda like a showdown at the O.K. Corral. All these big nation-states are kinda sitting there with their hand over their gun, kinda wiggling their fingers, like staring at each other. Someone's gonna pull, and as soon as somebody pulls, everybody has to pull.

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 41:22

Yeah. Yeah, no, that's, that's super interesting. Great analogy again. Um, yeah, I'm, I'm kinda seeing, it, it's, in my s- line of work, I'm dealing with a lot of these data centers and stuff like that, and a lot of them are pivoting from mining Bitcoin into running AI models out of the same hardware or completely scrapping their mining operation altogether, um, for one of my customers and, and basically taking that land and, and, uh, energy and turning it into a data center. Is that-- hash rate right now, is it just not, is there just not that many left out there, or is it, is it gonna go on forever if it's infinitely divisible? How's that gonna work?

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 42:06

Yeah, man. So, the hash rate, I used to be able to say, "Hey, hash rate's always at an all-time high." This time hash rate is not at an all-time high 'cause suddenly there's a, you know, there's a competitor out there that for energy and a competitor out there for compute. And the ha- the hash rate of Bitcoin has not come down a lot, but it has come down. It has corrected because of the CapEx rotation into AI and into data centers and into everything else. So it has happened. I think the, the beauty of Bitcoin, one of the things that, um, as I was learning about Bitcoin, I came to be the most fascinated about was basically, this difficulty adjustment. So they try to-- The, the network tries to mine a new block of Bitcoin transactions every 10 minutes. Once that 10-minute interval gets, like, disrupted in one direction or the other, it goes to nine minutes or it goes to 11 minutes, that's how the network knows how much overall processing power is going to the network. And every two weeks it adjusts the difficulty of mining the next block to try to kinda get back to that 10-minute interval. So it has this amazing kind of anti-fragility of no matter how much processing power is given to the network, it just adjusts the difficulty to basically maintain the exact same level of like Bitcoin transaction processing and Bitcoin mining issuance. So it-- They call it the difficulty adjustment. So they adjust the difficulty of mining a block every two weeks. so it's always adjusting the difficulty. So as long as, as long as data centers don't become such a CapEx competitor or threat that it would push the Bitcoin hash rate w- so far down that you get back into that kind of 51% attack kind of territory where it becomes small enough that now maybe a nation state actor can accumulate enough resources or compute to actually try to attack the network. But we're so far above that at this point that it's really just kind of like not really economically feasible. So you'd have to fall a long, long way from where the current hash rate is. And I think, honestly, I think, um, just like in Texas how you saw a real benefit. Like at first they thought Bitcoin was gonna be a threat to just the electrical grid, and then they, what they realized was since, Bitcoin is kind of the energy buyer of last resort, energy could be overproduced. It could basically be produced to handle, you know, peak Texas sun air conditioning, and then when that kind of electricity need wasn't da- needed by the grid, it could push the extra electricity it was producing instead of it going to ground and getting wasted, it could push it to this buyer of last resort as the Bitcoin miner. So it gave flexibility to the grid so they could actually produce enough electricity to cover for max, you know, max need, and then anytime they were operating below max need, they could push the extra to the Bitcoin miner. It became the buyer of last resort. It allowed it to, allowed you to kind of overproduce so that you had the electricity when needed, but then when you didn't need it, you weren't wasting money. It wasn't just an economical loss for you. I think something similar is probably about to happen with AI data centers just because they're going to need reliable, You know, electricity that doesn't get disrupted. The easiest way to do that is to kind of overproduce the electricity, but you don't want to overproduce the electricity because it's an economic loss for you unless you kind of have this buyer of last resort. So I imagine, you know, AI, if I understand it properly, the data centers, while they're kind of learning these language or, or teaching these language models, it's pretty stable energy need all the-- at all times. Obviously, there's, there's gonna be fluctuation in, you know, what hours are your, your main customers awake using ChatGPT or using Perplexity or using whatever. So that will kind of fluctuate, but as far as teaching the models, that has to be pretty stable. What they can't have is, "Hey, we're in a race to teach our language models. We can't have our power being disrupted or going down to 80% or going down to 60% or going down to like if there's an ice storm or if there's a heat wave or there's this." So I think what's probably likely to happen, if the energy grid is any indication, is data centers will overbuild their energy. They'll have both. They'll have, you know, data center AI compute, and they'll have Bitcoin mining, which will allow them to overproduce the energy, use it all, and then as soon as the actual AI side of the business needs more energy, they can flex it from the Bitcoin side. And as soon as it doesn't need the energy, it can push to the Bitcoin side. So you're always are kind of like, you're always-- It's an economical model that's always running and never puts you in a position that you're down energy or have to turn off part of your capacity.

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 46:48

Yeah. And I'm seeing like some of the politicians now are like, "Look, if you're gonna build more data center or mining operations or whatever it is, and you're generating power, you have to put some of that back into the grid." And so I'm seeing a lot of that now, and it's probably not a bad thing to do.

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 47:03

Yeah

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 47:04

give a little back a little every once in a while

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 47:06

Yeah, and I th- I think, uh, there's another kind of, uh, interesting thing about Bitcoin mining is it doesn't have to plug into a grid, right? So 'cause it could be monetized in real time wherever the energy source is. So that's why it's kind of like this parasite that finds stranded wasted energy everywhere on Earth. Like if there's a waterfall in the middle of nowhere, you can't pipe it to a village, but you could set up a Conex box and you could mine Bitcoin with it there. So, also Brandon Quittem, the same guy that wrote the, the mycelium piece of work, he, he wrote, another piece called like Bitcoin is like the pioneer species and showing how it could kind of find the stranded energy source and it could monetize it real time so it doesn't take some giant loan to get it off the ground.

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 47:45

Mm-hmm.

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 47:45

then you could build out from basically w- as soon as that starts generating a profit, you can use that profit to build out from there. So I could see a world too where, you know, you, you might, you might seed a data center with Bitcoin mining at a stranded energy source in the middle of nowhere that has no connection to a grid. And then, you know, eventually be able to have a profit there, eventually be able to start building out the data center side of it, hooking that data center up to Starlink, and now it's in the middle of nowhere, but you're off to the races, you know?

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 48:15

yeah, I know I said I didn't wanna talk about space data centers, but I mean, you find one, energy source up there, pump a couple mines up, and next thing you know, that's paying for itself to, to continue to grow.

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 48:28

I, yeah

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 48:29

yeah, that's pretty, pretty interesting. Um, yeah. And so talking about nation-states and things like that and, and them adopting, we saw this big push for corporations to adopt it and institutions to adopt it and stuff, stuff like that. At what point, like, do you think it's, it's right for a small business to take Bitcoin onto their, its balance sheet? Or it do it at all?

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 48:56

Uh, yeah, great question, man. I mean, I think, I think what you'll see... I mean, obviously talking to a small-- If you're talking to a small mom and pop, right, they're gonna have to at least have enough in reserve that they can, they can ride the volatility, right? If you're like a small mom and pop pizzeria, I think, you know, you pr- maybe can't have your operating capital get cut in half 60% in a year, so, or get cut, cut down 60% in a year. I do think, though, looking out long term, like, you know, if you, if you zoom in on a Bitcoin chart, it's crazy. It's up and down, it's up and down, it's up and down. If you zoom out, it's literally if you just follow like the 200-week moving average or like the 400-week moving average, it's literally just a line, up and to the right. So, it's the exact opposite line of if you zoom out on a dollar chart and you can just see that you're just getting chewed on every day, every year, year over year. So, you know, it's maybe hard to make the sell to a small business of, "Hey, you should put your money in Bitcoin because it goes up over time." And they're like, "Well, but if you need those operating costs in the next six months, maybe you can't take the cut in the short term." So you might not get to long term if you can't survive the short term. I do think on a longer timeline, however, given any kind of vertical, any industry vertical, just picture two, you know, two coffee shops, two rival coffee shops acro- across the street from each other. If one of them starts to deploy a Bitcoin strategy and the other one doesn't, over time you're just going to out-compete that person because you're gonna have a balance sheet that grows in value, and they're gonna have a, a balance sheet that gets chewed away at the, you know, 8% to 11% monetary debasement rate year over year, over year, over year. Um, I do also think at some point merchants will likely... So Square, which is Jack Dorsey's company- They turned on Bitcoin to all of the Square merchants for all small businesses in America. So any merchant now can just turn it on and they could just accept Bitcoin. If anyone is willing to pay it in Bitcoin, they can seamlessly go from dollars to dollars or Bitcoin to dollars or dollars to Bitcoin. So even if they don't wanna hold Bitcoin on their d- on their balance sheet, they could allow people to pay in Bitcoin, immediately convert to dollars on their balance sheet. They could have people pay in dollars and convert 10% of it to Bitcoin on their balance sheet. So it gives them kinda max optionality and, uh, I know like Steak 'n Shake, I went to Steak 'n Shake, um, the other day. I paid

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 51:17

did you

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 51:17

in, Bitcoin. Yeah. Yeah, I paid in Bitcoin. It was completely seamless. It was very cool. But the CEO has said like their, you know, their transaction costs have come down like 50% because they don't have to pay Visa 3%. They don't have to pay MasterCard 3% for every-- They don't have to deal with chargebacks. They don't have to deal with any of that kinda crap. So, it's, I think it's still early days for that. There's just not a lot of demand except for, I mean, Steak 'n Shake got all the Bitcoiners to go there and probably pay, you know, the equivalent of 5,000 future dollars for a burger, you know? So like I think it's gonna, I think it's gonna work for them. but I do think it's going to start from the merchant side 'cause, I think about it like when you go to a sushi place and they give you a discount when you pay cash. They're only doing that because they don't have to pay Visa. So like I don't have a lo- I don't have a lot of incentive to spend it because, like the Bitcoin pizza guy, the guy that spent $10,000 on two Papa John's pizzas and now it's worth like billions, that could be you. Like that could be me when I spent my money at Steak 'n Shake the other day or spent my Bitcoin at Steak and Shake the other day. But the mer-

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 52:22

where Bitcoin was at whenever you bought that s- shake?

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 52:26

Ah, that's a good question. I think it was, um, we've been ranging here around 60-something for a while, so I don't think I've felt the pain of that thing quite yet, but I know that is to come. Um, but yeah, but the merchant is definitely incentivized to accept it as soon as we kind of get to some kind of Rubicon where they're like, "Oh yeah, this is, this is money." And I think we're just getting closer to that all the time. I, I thought about this actually during this last little war side quest, which is another thing that makes inflation worse, but, like, we didn't need it, but it was like, it's just making the gr- the grander thesis. It's like an accelerant to the greater thesis. the fact that Iran was like, "Yeah, we'll let ships through, but you have to pay us in Bitcoin," I think if you would've said that maybe, like, five years ago, like, I think the whole world would've just, like, laughed. They'd have been like, "What the what? Sure, yeah, go ahead," or whatever. But

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 53:11

Here,

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 53:12

it's g-

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 53:12

Bitcoin

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 53:13

yeah. But it's kind of this, like, I think it's this, like, subcon- for me, it was, like, a subconscious, like, guidepost of, like, where we are that, like, nobody did that. Like, everyone kind of just, like, was like, "Oh yeah, they get paid in Bitcoin 'cause they can't stop it, and that's money." Like, that's money that can't be s- like, it was like it didn't seem ridiculous. At least I didn't, like, get that vibe from anyone that was talking about it. So it's almost like we're already-- we're slowly just kind of the PSYOP is working, where we're slowly just understanding it as having value and it as being money, and I think that's just a matter of the Lindy effect. The longer it's around and accruing value, it just, like, it becomes less stupid to hold it or talk about it or think about it. So I think, I think we're getting there, and I think it eventually just kind of reaches a, like, a Rubicon point of, like, undeniably of, like, oh, this is happening. Like, 'cause to me it's like, it's very binary. Like, Bitcoin either goes to zero, everyone just decides, "Ah, that was a nice experiment, but it didn't work," and it goes to nothing. Or it just grows forever because it's repricing a universe of just ever-increasing, debasing currencies of every flavor. So I think it just will continue to grow, and as long as it doesn't die, it'll just continue to accrue value. And it's kind of, um, I think, uh- It seems like this kind of cra- it's been this crazy run from like 1 cent to, you know, at one point $120,000. But once you kinda realize what's going on, it's just like, oh, this is just a money that's gonna just rival all other monies. You know, that addressable market of just like all assets on Earth is like a quadrillion dollars. Like it's, it's like so much higher than where we are now. I mean, if you just think about even though Bitcoin's been around for 15 years, even though corporations are adopting it, even though the nation has created a strategic Bitcoin reserve, even though, you know, actors like Iran, when they get cut off of every other banking system on Earth, choose to accept Bitcoin, even though you can walk into Steak 'n Shake and pay for a burger and a shake and fries with it. When SpaceX IPO'd, it IPO'd at like almost twice Bitcoin's entire market cap, like one, one company that's not making any money. So I think we just get to a point of Bitcoin's here, it's not dying, it's growing, and then once everybody starts to kind of talk about it in a mainstream way, and it becomes like... I remember seeing an old like Joe Rogan clip about this, and who- I forget who was on his show, but he was like, Joe Rogan was talking about it, he was like, "What if this just becomes like money of the future?" It was like, "Oh, the, your old money, your mo- that money isn't worth shit. You gotta get new money." And everyone starts to realize that like this Bitcoin money's here, and it's not going away, and there's only ever gonna be 21 million units, and I have none. Like, I think every person, every company, every nation state is eventually gonna get to that point, and they're gonna be like, "Holy shit, like I have none. I'm way behind. I have to go get this like yesterday." And then you kind of hit this kind of inflection point of it's not going away, you need it, and you don't have it, and you have to get it. And then I think it might make some of these, you know, like IPO charts look kinda dumb at some point 'cause it's like, "Oh shit, I need it. Get it now. I'll pay anything." You know? "I'll pay anything 'cause like all these, all these dollars are g- gonna be worthless anyway, so I need to get into the thing that's not gonna be debased and not gonna be diluted." So I think-

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 56:41

Do you think that's gonna happen quickly or in like this rapid jump where people are like, "Oh my gosh, I missed the boat," just half of the populations and, and nations and corporations and stuff like that are, are... They're like, "Oh, well, I'm out."

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 56:55

Uh

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 56:56

think it's gonna kind of be gradual like it is, like it has been?

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 56:59

I think it's, shout out to Parker Lewis. Parker Lewis wrote this book that was named "Gradually, Then Suddenly." I think it's gradually until it hits the point that everyone realizes it's never going away, then I think it's gonna be very sudden. So, you know, it's always, it's always like one person at first, and then it's always one company at first, then it's always one nation at first. And, I've heard this, bring up the analogy of like, like a party. Like no one wants to be the first person dancing at a party. They always look kind of stupid, but then eventually everyone just joins in. Uh, I think that's what will kind of happen. I think what you'll start to see-- people will start to see that, oh, hey, you know, I'm getting my ass handed to me at the grocery store. I'm paying too much rent. I can't save anything. My 401looks like a p- like a pile of dog shit. But that Bitcoin dude, he looks like he's doing okay because he's actually walking on firm ground. He's not in quicksand. So like he's gonna start to out-compete. And then a company that starts to put it on its balance sheet as opposed to keeping a giant cash reserve, it's gonna start to out-compete. And then a nation that chooses to start actually instead of just running debt up to its eyeballs and just eventually going fiat bankrupt, which has been basically the playbook of every nation in history from the Roman Empire on, someone's gonna start actually building on sound footing. They're gonna out-compete. And I think once everyone sees that happening, it's gonna take a little while, but then it's like, this doesn't work. That works. I'm doing that. And everyone's just gonna do it. So I think it's gonna be gradual, gradual, gradual, gradual. Then you hit the inevitability, and then it becomes very, very sudden. 'Cause everyone that laughed at it or chose not to think about it or chose like not to care, suddenly they're gonna need it, and they're all gonna have to chase it. And just when you're dealing with a, you know, an infinite universe versus a finite supply thing, it's basically just a giant short squeeze at that point.

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 58:59

Yeah It's interesting,

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 59:02

Yeah. So we'll, we'll see. But we'll see, man. I don't know. But I've-- You know, I also know you have time because I've-- I remember having the feeling, and, uh, did you, did you ever come across any of, uh, Andreas Antonopoulos' stuff? He was a very early Bitcoiner that used to, like, give talks at Bitcoin conventions, but there was, like, five people in the room or something. Really

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 59:24

No.

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 59:24

brilliant, cryptographer guy, but he is like... I remember watching...

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 59:27

one dancing, for

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 59:28

Yeah, he was ex, 100%, yeah. Uh, but he was, he was giving this interview, and he-- once he kind of grokked Bitcoin, like understood what it was, he was like, "Dude, I could not eat. I could not sleep. I couldn't do any- I just, I couldn't do anything but learn about Bitcoin for months." And I, I think, like, I feel like I had a similar, feeling of I thought, you know, as soon as I kind of understood what it was or what it potentially meant for humanity, I thought everyone was gonna suddenly get it in the morning. And then I remember Strategy, when it was still MicroStrategy, was putting on like a, like a Bitcoin for corporations event or something in like 2021, I wanna say it was. And in my head, I was like, "They're gonna tell everyone what this is, and every company by summer is just gonna be, like, loading up on this shit, 'cause they're just gonna be like, 'We need this now. We're screwed.'"

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 1:00:18

I, I, I had a similar s- experience for sure.

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 1:00:20

Yeah, so

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 1:00:21

and I thought, I thought it was just gonna take off the next day, and I had to put every dollar I had into it because it was just made... It just made sense. And then I was like, "I still gotta put every dollar I had into it

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 1:00:31

yeah

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 1:00:31

sense," now it makes more sense.

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 1:00:34

man. I just think, I think it just goes back to the idea of like you just gotta remember that most people are just still at square one. It just takes a lot of time to kind of like not only understand like, you know, it's like, and people like, "Hey, do, do you really have to understand every single nut and bolt and how Bitcoin works before you kinda understand the value prop?" I don't think so because, I don't think most of the people you know could sit down and explain the dollar system to you with like the Federal Reserve and the repos and the commercial banks and the primary dealers that buy the bonds. It was like nobody knows any of that shit. But like they still hold dollars. They understand that dollars are valuable. So I don't, I don't think you have to have some kind of like, you know, PhD knowledge of exactly every single, you know, piece of how Bitcoin functions to understand it was like, Okay, oh, this money, the reason I'm, I'm falling further and further behind is 'cause my money is stealing from me when I sleep, and you're saying that this money doesn't do that?" Like you can just get to that kind of fundamental understanding, be like, "Okay, that's a better idea. I'm gonna start putting some money over there." But yeah, it just takes time, man, 'cause, you know, economics is hard and, you know, unless you're a nerd that like, like economics is not my job. So like I go work all day and then I nerd out on all of my free time. But like I realize that most people do not wanna watch an economics video in their free time. I get that. That's a me thing. That's not a world thing. And honestly, dude, I had this thought the other day of, and this isn't like a hey, nobody understands Bitcoin 'cause nobody understands money, and if they did, it would go up kinda thing. But I think when it comes to like, like finance and economics, I think we've lived through this period because we debased the dollar in 1971 and then from there just basically started like de-pegging from gold and creating infinite paper dollars that pretty much inflated every asset class on earth. I think we have a whole generation of people that didn't-- they were too close. Like, it was kind of done in secret. I mean, even though Nixon came on and said, "Hey, we're trying to defend the dollar against speculators," and he told everyone he was de-pegging, I don't think anybody really knew what the hell that meant or what was about to happen next. And it, it took a little time to kind of like zoom out and see that as a, as a big macroeconomic change. But most of the people that came of age under that system, all you had to do if you were, if you were us in the s- in s- the '70s, you had to have a job, save money, and invest in anything. Because what they did to the currency over the next 50 years, every single thing went up. Houses went up. Like stocks went up. Like gold went up. I mean, and nobody realized it was, you know, we kinda sold this idea that it was just this really productive economy that was doing all of the growth, nobody realized they were debasing the currency at 8% a year, and if you historically look at the S&P, you know how much it goes up? 8% a year. So it was kind of this great, it was this great parlor trick, so nobody really, um All that to be said, I just don't think, I don't think we have the same 50-year window of the same secular environment where you can just invest in anything and be okay. I don't think a lot of people have given a lot of thought to the problem of money, because in their eyes it wasn't a problem. In their eyes, it took their $100,000 house and made it a $1.2 million house. It took their investment portfolio and it did 12X'd it. So it didn't feel like a problem. In fact, it felt like they were a genius and it was great and everything was great. Uh, so I don't think a lot of people spent a lot of time viewing it as a problem. I think now we're at the point that, like housing valuations, stock valuations, anything that the next generation would be able to invest in is completely out of reach, so suddenly they're starting to feel it as a problem. And because they feel it as a problem, I think they're gonna start to digest it and learn about it as a problem and seek a solution. I just don't think we really needed to seek a solution until we kind of really grokked the problem, and that wasn't really until like 2008 until now. So just hasn't been that long. It takes a little time for knowledge to spread, but I think it's spreading, and I think we'll get there.

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 1:04:44

adult life.

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 1:04:45

Yeah. Exact- exactly.

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 1:04:47

Yeah,

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 1:04:47

Yeah.

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 1:04:47

big deal.

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 1:04:48

Yeah.

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 1:04:48

the important part

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 1:04:49

No big deal. Yeah. But I mean, you think of like, I mean, dude, people that kinda like... I, I like, I like sit here and I watch these like TikTok videos of people just like screaming at the sky, and I'm like, I completely understand the angst. I just wish more people could find the solution because they're just, they're just so angry about it. And I get it, man. Like, if you're a young kid now and you're just l- like loaded to the tilt with debt and you can't buy any houses, and you're like, "Oh, what's this $1.2 million house? You want me to pay 7% on it? Oh, with a down payment that I don't have?" You're like, "What the hell am I supposed to do?" square Yeah, so I, I completely understand where they're coming from, and I understand why they just get really angry about it, and then nobody teaches us the solution because they just divide us politically and try to act like if you just vote for the next messiah, everything will be good. But, you know, how many times do we rinse and repeat the messiah to be like, "Oh, there's something structurally going on here." It's not, it's not just a bad guy that makes it impossible for me to live. So, I think we'll get there, man, one podcast at a time. But

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 1:05:54

Yeah

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 1:05:55

we're just about there, Cale, man. Was there any big last question that we didn't hit or... That was great, dude. We hit a lot, touched on a lot of stuff there.

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 1:06:02

Yeah, man, I learned a lot. I guess it's more of a personal question. If Bitcoin was to disappear like tomorrow, tomorrow you woke up and Bitcoin had plummeted, it was at zero, w- what would you take your money and where would you invest that? Or where-- what would you do with it? It doesn't even have to be an investment

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 1:06:18

Yeah, man, that's a really good question 'cause, I think I just became so nihilistic before I found Bitcoin. 'Cause like I, I found Austrian economics first. I knew the system was rigged. I knew it was busted. I knew it sucked. I kind of tried to be thought about like, oh, we gotta go back to a gold standard or whatever. But it was kinda like a, it's kind of a fool me once, you know, shame on you. from just a, for me, Bitcoin is everything I love about freedom and the original idea about America and being life, liberty, property, being a sovereign individual that just, you know, gives a little bit of, uh, authority to the government just so like states don't have to fight. Like we could just propel a foreign invader. It, I think is the reiteration of like true American ideals. If it didn't exist, which before I found it, for me it didn't exist even though it was around. I remember kind of in grad school in 2009, so Bitcoin had just shown up, but I didn't know shit about it yet. I was just writing about how the national debt was gonna destroy us. It was at about $9 to $11 trillion or something like that.

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 1:07:26

Yep

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 1:07:27

nobody read that 'cause now it's at 40 and it's climbing and it's eating us alive. Um, but yeah. So if it didn't exist, I think I would probably just still be in that kind of nihilistic place. And honestly, I think that's where a lot of young people are here. I don't think they even, they don't, they don't think that there's gonna be a dime of Social Security when they retire. They don't think they'll ever buy a house. They're just, they're just YOLOing every dollar they make on Kalshi or Polymarket to try to bet on the weather or like buy a sandwich. It's, it's pretty sad actually. Um, but I think, I mean, as far as just advice, dude, it's, we have this mathematical system where, when they print money, because we have too much debt, we're running $2 trillion deficits every single year. They have to print the difference. When they print the difference, it finds its way into assets. So if you're an asset holder, every asset holder's doing well. Real estate's doing well. Stocks are doing well. If you're not an asset holder, you're just getting absolutely destroyed by this 'cause every time they print money, the new money has to find its value somewhere, and it finds its value in all the people that save in that money and all the people that earn a wage in that money. So the short answer is you have to invest in assets or you're just gonna get absolutely destroyed. So if Bitcoin didn't exist, I think I would just Invest in assets. And it would be kind of perpetuating a system, a K-shaped economy that I cannot stand and I think will ultimately fail. Because if you concentrate that much wealth in so few hands, you know, when you get to the point that your average working man can't buy a house, when you get to a point that, you know, I think 90% of the stock market is owned by the top 10% of people, and they're getting phenomenally wealthy at the expense of everyone else that goes to work and works for them and then gets their money debased away. So I think the advice would be buy assets and just... But you'll just watch your society rip itself in half, which sucks, so

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 1:09:19

Well, he-hearing you say that, it, it, I, I kinda just hear a little bit of, "Hey, this could be really bad," and stuff like that, but I also hear a lot of hope in why you believe in this and why we're here, why we all believe in it.

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 1:09:33

Yeah

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 1:09:34

so

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 1:09:35

I,

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 1:09:36

great

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 1:09:36

yeah, I, I 100%. I think it is a hope thing. I think it's just a matter of, it's the matter of the transition. 'Cause like anyone with eyes when that, you know, goes to the grocery store knows the system is not working, you know? Like, and it's not go- we just can't keep doing this, you know? It's like wealth inequality in America now is worse than it was before the French Revolution, and they were like cutting people's heads off. So it's like you c- you can't, you can't keep doing this mathematically until it hits like, you know, some kind of breaking point. I just hope that, it kinda my overall thesis on it is the, the math is bad. It's carrying us out. The inequality's gonna get worse. It's gonna continually get worse until we kinda fix the problem. It's gonna take some kind of revolution. I don't want it to be a violent revolution. I don't want us to make the mistake of every other socialist country or the history of mankind that chose to go that route. Like, I don't wanna go get a Mom Dani or try to redistribute everybody's wealth or have unrealized capital gains or do any of these things. I don't wanna get that kind of political revolution 'cause I think that ends in poverty. I hope that Bitcoin could be the revolution, and it's, it's completely peaceful. All it requires is for you to understand economics, take the energy that you store up in a day working your ass off, and put it in some place that cannot be taken from you. And if enough of us do that, it's you just, you defund the destroyer, and then they have no choice. If they can't physically take your money and they can't secretly take your money, they have no choice but to give you a seat at the table and actually respect you again. So I do think that day will come. I just think h- the faster we can get everybody on the same sheet of music and be like, "Hey, man, this isn't a right versus left, red versus blue thing. This is a they're stealing from you." We're, we're, we're, we're, we're redistributing income from the bottom to the top on repeat. It's not serving us. We should try something else. So we just go back to, back to basics where you're like, "It's my life. I should be free to do whatever I want with my time. If I get compensated for that time, the least respect you can give me is let me keep the money that I've earned." If we get back to those basics, which I think Bitcoin does for us, then I think the future's actually bright. It's just a matter of getting from this exploitative mess that we find ourselves in to that reality where you can kinda rebuild the American dream. I think that's really what it is. I think we could do it, it just we gotta do it.

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 1:12:05

Yeah

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 1:12:06

Yeah. All right, Cale, man. Thank you, brother, for taking some time out of your busy schedule to talk to us tonight, dude. I appreciate it

cale-mcquitty_1_06-16-2026_194155 1:12:14

Yep. Cheers

host_1_06-16-2026_184156 1:12:15

All right, man. We'll talk to you soon