host_1_10-18-2026_173857 0:22

​Hey everybody, welcome back to TCB for another TCB rehash. Today we're checking back in with Becky Haag. Becky, what's up? Welcome back to the show

squadcaster-82bd_1_10-18-2026_173856 0:31

Thank you. How are you doing?

host_1_10-18-2026_173857 0:33

I'm doing well. I'm doing well. we talked a little bit offline here. We last spoke, or at least it went live on 14 August, 2023, and the Bitcoin price on that day was $29,408. So, quite a bit has happened since then in that kind of three-year timeframe. So just off the bat, what has changed for you Bitcoin-wise? You don't have to get into all your personal life, but Bitcoin-wise in your thinking since 2023

squadcaster-82bd_1_10-18-2026_173856 1:04

So I'm actually really excited to talk to you about this 'cause I thought it was very interesting for this three years ago, and then it scared the crap out of me, and I wasn't sure if it was super smart or super stupid, and I was like, I... So I didn't do it. But I got a book, and I read it, talking to a bunch of people at work about it, and never could pull the plug, and I had hesitations, but I don't legitimately know why. So I'm actually really excited to talk to you again.

host_1_10-18-2026_173857 1:40

Yeah, I think that's probably pretty normal. I think, almost by design, and it's not Bitcoin doing anything itself because Bitcoin is just mathematics. It's just a mathematical protocol. But kind of the way Bitcoin moves in the marketplace, since it's being priced at the margin and, you know, the marginal buyer of it is also in that same place where they probably don't have a robust understanding of it, and they see the same kind of price swings that everybody else sees, and it has a tendency to cause panic. So I think that's very normal. It's, one of the things, being around Bitcoin for a long time, I've come to just kind of appreciate when I'm talking to newcomers is, I can be very comfortable when Bitcoin suddenly draws down by 60% because I've just done a lot of work. I've put in a lot of intellectual energy, and I've built conviction over time. But I do always, I'm always someone that likes to remember where they came from, and I do remember how if I didn't really have that conviction and I was involved in something and I saw that, it would scare the shit out of me too. So I think that's a completely, completely normal reaction to seeing that happen. I think, um, a lot of times people will see that happen once, and depending on maybe where they choose to get involved or started to pay attention, they maybe immediately stop paying attention. They'll see it draw down, and they'll either say, "Well, that was dumb. I shouldn't have got involved with that." Or if they didn't get involved, they're like, "Hey, I'm glad I didn't get involved in that." And that's kind of, the end game, at least in the beginning. And then I think what Bitcoin seems to have a tendency to do is it just keeps kinda coming back around again, almost like a Halley's Comet kind of sense, where you're like, "Oh, I thought this thing died." And then it comes back, and then it dies again, and then it comes back again, and then it dies again, and then it comes back again. And it seems to just kind of slowly, kind of build into higher layers of the cake. I mean, I remember being really excited about it when it first showed up on, like, the ticker on, like a, like a financial news show, and I thought that was, like, a monumental achievement for Bitcoin to kind of raise to that level of awareness. And then, but then you start to see it have its own segment, and then it becomes its own sector of the market that they talk about every single day. And then it starts to get talked about by politicians, and then it starts to get adopted by large financial institutions, and then it starts to get debated on at the World Economic Forum or the World Bank. And so you just kind of see it slowly, like almost like this kind of freedom virus. It's kind of just slowly infecting other circles of the world. It's like kind of slowly building out, and it just refuses to go away. And I think at some point, even if the people got kind of scared, touched the stove once and backed off, there is kind of this staying power that inevitably will knock on your door again and they'll say, "Hey, remember when you thought about that Bitcoin thing a few years ago?" It's, it'll come back on your radar somehow, and it kind of forces you to maybe, take stock of it again or take g- reenter the conversation. Be like, "Hey, Maverick's re-engaging," kind of thing. It was like it's like you have to kind of get back in and be like, "Hey, what is going on here? Either, either what did I get right? What did I get wrong? What did I miss? Why is it still here? Why is it still growing? Is it going to stop? Am I really missing something?" So I think, the idea of, yeah, getting a little bit involved, learning a little bit enough, just enough to be dangerous, and then having it scare the shit out of you is actually a pretty normal response

squadcaster-82bd_1_10-18-2026_173856 5:12

That, that's comforting. It's actually nice too to see that it's as, for lack of a better word, big, and the interest is still there three years later. It's more socially acceptable and talked about in normal terms, I guess, as time goes on, which I like. as opposed to something, like, shiny and new and nobody really knows what's gonna hap with it- happen with it. But it still is a little bit of the unknown,

host_1_10-18-2026_173857 5:40

Yeah, that's fair. I mean, you, y- yeah, you gotta try to figure out like, hey, is this a fad? Is this Beanie Babies or is this the internet? And you're not really sure, and really only the passage of time can help you become sure. Like, it's either going to go away or it's gonna continue to kind of build out. There's gonna be continued larger players getting involved, 'cause it is, it's a network, right? So like a network will die without participation. So it's really a network is kind of either growing or dying. There's really no other choice. Like it either has to be adopting more and more users that find value in it, or it'll just s- people will stop finding value in it and then they'll, they'll leave and it will, you know, go the way of like a MySpace or something like that. It's like a network has to have users finding value and utility in it. So it's just a matter of like whether it's growing or dying. And I think it has been growing obviously since 2023 in just general use, acceptance, and awareness. And then it's just a question of, well, whether is it going to keep doing it and why is it still here? Like why has it not been a fad? And I think maybe the answer to that is, well, if it's addressing a real problem, you can say, well, has that problem gone away or has that problem been addressed or has that problem gotten worse? And I think in Bitcoin's case, if it's supposed to solve money, that problem is getting exponentially worse. I don't think there's really any-- it'd be hard to say that's not the case as far as the monetary debasement and the indebtedness positions of all these governments worldwide. All of that seems to be getting worse and seems to be accelerating. So the problem hasn't gone away. And if the problem doesn't go away, well, is there a better solution? And I think in the early days of Bitcoin it was, well, people think about Bitcoin like a technology. The normal course of technology is that another superior technology supplants the old technology. And that's usually true when it comes to like a software or a certain application. It's not as true when it comes to protocols. And I think for a long time people were understanding Bitcoin as a technology and expecting something superior to come along and surpass that technology. And I think now we're starting to understand it as a protocol. So it's not so much waiting for Facebook to replace MySpace. It's as if you're waiting for another internet to replace the internet itself, which is a much larger ask of any kind of technological breakthrough. Um, so I think that's what the longer, the more Lindy and the longer Bitcoin sticks around, people are starting to understand it that way, where it's not just waiting for the next technology, it's waiting for a whole new protocol stack to be miraculously launched from nothing and grow to that level of awareness again. And I think once you start to appreciate just how, maybe lightning in the bottle, unprobabilistic that was in the first place, the idea of that replicating seems to be almost impossible. Like, so I think that's kind of where we hopefully get to with Bitcoin with time, is people like, "Oh, hang on. Not only do I think this is not really getting surpassed, but I don't think the problem's going away, and this may be our last best chance to have a real exit from that system that's no longer serving us as it gets worse and kind of clamps down on us harder." Like, I think the money printing is only going to accelerate because it's mathematically required to do so to keep the system alive, and knowing that this really might be our last best chance to exit before it completely takes over and you have nowhere to go.

squadcaster-82bd_1_10-18-2026_173856 9:20

I mean, they're gonna stop making the penny, you know? So no more pennies. What's next, you know? Is this literally where we're going in the future? And is actual coinage, like, gonna start dissipating? 'Cause I thought that was interesting when they decided to stop producing the penny. As silly as

host_1_10-18-2026_173857 9:43

Yeah.

squadcaster-82bd_1_10-18-2026_173856 9:44

it

host_1_10-18-2026_173857 9:45

I don't think it's Yeah, I don't think it's silly. I think it's a canary in the coal mine. I mean, you kind of look at, if you wanna look at like the, you know, the American history of money, you know, the ability to coin money is what, um, and set the weights and measures is what Congress was given the power to do in the Constitution. And the idea was that there was gonna be coinage, and that money would always be tied to and restricted by something in the physical world that the government didn't have control over, and it was supposed to keep them in check. Something like the penny no longer being produced because, it actually has gotten to the point that the value of a penny is so little that it costs more to produce a penny, that a penny is even worse or is even worth.

squadcaster-82bd_1_10-18-2026_173856 10:27

Worth

host_1_10-18-2026_173857 10:28

kind of tells you what is happening to the currency. And just like you said, it was like, "Hey, what's gonna be next?" I mean, realistically, a nickel would be next, and then a dime would be next, and then a quarter would be next. And I think we may get to the point that we kind of transition completely away from coins. It could because they've kind of lost any tie to the physical world as far as being a restraint on government money printing, that they don't really maybe serve a purpose anymore, particularly in like a digital currency future. Um, I think what we go toward is inevitably we go toward a digital currency of some kind. I would, of course, on a Bitcoin podcast advocate that that should probably be B- be Bitcoin because Bitcoin is the one that is basically verified by the users of the system and isn't controlled by anyone and can't be diluted. But realistically, the system is more, more likely, incentivized to push us toward a, kind of central bank or government-controlled digital currency of some kind. And that's a little scary if you're kind of a freedom-loving American or person because that would potentially come with all kinds of different parameters. I mean, you kind of look at how the government kinda likes to use money as a tool of social engineering anyway, and that if you picture a, software money or a digital money, they can program whatever parameters into that money they want to. I mean, they can decide if you have over a certain threshold in a account, it just gets swept, or they could decide if, you know, if the kinda climate craziness comes back into purview, they could be like, "Hey, you know, you've flown too many flights this month. You can't fly until next month." Or, "Hey, we need to juice the economy, so maybe your, maybe your money expires on Friday if you don't spend it," just like a gift card or something would. So there's, um, from a social engineering dystopian point of view, a digital currency is very scary. I think it's inevitable given technological progress that physical money is going to probably look antiquated, and we're gonna have to adopt digital money of some form. I think Bitcoin just gives us the option to say Instead of going to that dystopian world where no matter who has the power to either print, manipulate, or put stipulations on the money, even if you agree with that person now, the chances of you agreeing with that person into perpetuity is probably pretty slim. Whereas the other option is to just use digital money that nobody controls, and then we can kind of just exist as free people freely exchanging in a free marketplace and don't have those stipulations put on our money. So, yeah, I think the penny's just the first of many to come. I don't know exactly when they're gonna try to go for a, complete outlaw ban on physical currency, but I do believe that's probably coming at some point in the future. They'll just stop producing it

squadcaster-82bd_1_10-18-2026_173856 13:25

going, it's... Everything is getting more digitized, which is why I see you were on this at a very early point in it, which I think was exceptional. Venmo, PayPal, all of these things have exploded in the last decade. Um, even, you know, Uber Eats, all of these silly things that you're using anything digital for, nobody's using cash anymore. It's not really much

host_1_10-18-2026_173857 13:50

Yeah. Right. And yeah, and I mean, I, I think it still exists as a check on the system for now. Similar to how there was a gold standard at one point, and that put some kind of physical restraint on money. I think physical currency, which kind of exists as some kind of soft restraint on money because it's the last form of money that you can go hand to somebody and nobody tracks that or surveils that transaction at all. I think at some point we also de-tether from physical money, and we are in a universe where every single payment is digital, and therefore every single payment is tracked and potentially, censored. So, I think the beauty of something like Bitcoin is it at least offers us a, a world where you can exist in a digital economy, you can still do commerce over the internet, you can still send a payment at, at the speed of light if, if need be to anywhere in the world. But it does it in a completely censorship resistant way where it can't be diluted or stopped or tr- like, and I guess it could be tracked because it's a, it's an open ledger, but it can't be,

squadcaster-82bd_1_10-18-2026_173856 14:53

Yeah

host_1_10-18-2026_173857 14:54

They can't just decide arbitrarily, "Hey, you're a bad actor. We don't like you. Your bank account gets frozen," or, "You can't send this transaction," or, "You can't do XYZ." So it at least gives us a new, option to exercise freedom inside that space where I don't think the alternative gives us that at all.

squadcaster-82bd_1_10-18-2026_173856 15:13

I still Like in your opinion, 'cause you know far more about this, like is... Do you feel that this is going to like depreciate to the point where it's not a good investment?

host_1_10-18-2026_173857 15:30

You mean Bitcoin itself or...?

squadcaster-82bd_1_10-18-2026_173856 15:32

Yes.

host_1_10-18-2026_173857 15:33

Um, I actually think

squadcaster-82bd_1_10-18-2026_173856 15:35

in a to where it's not... I guess, what's the word I'm looking for? Not valuable, but not, I guess maybe, yeah, maybe val- like, not, not of enough value to continue, if that makes

host_1_10-18-2026_173857 15:49

I think the real question would probably be, I think the use case for Bitcoin is just going to continue to grow, continue to gain awareness, and really explode. I think the question would be: are they going to be successful in, sidelining it to a certain degree? I mean, are they going to be able to turn it into, I guess, like black market money? Because you, there is a world where similar to cash, if they don't want cash, they could try to, you know, just turn off all the on and off ramps of, of money outside of whatever digital money they create, right? I mean, they could make it so you have to pay taxes in this, or all your government benefits get paid in the central bank digital currency or whatever it is. Or, you know, like when I, I sometimes wonder when you hear these kinda outlandish claims like a, like a Trump says, "Hey, if we win this election, I'm gonna give everyone $5,000." Which one, on its face is insane because it's three times the amount of money that got sent out during COVID that ripped our inflation up- upwards of 10%, and it would just do that on the steroids. But also is, is that kind of idea in the future at some point there this idea that, "Hey, we'll send you this money," whether it's that a $5,000 or a tariff dividend or a freedom dividend or a DOGE refund that never comes to exi- whatever it is. But, or if it's a UBI of some kind because they're worried about AI disrupting jobs, but they will only pay it in this kind of centrally controlled government currency, and it'll be their way to try to transition everybody into that system because basically the only way to get the money is to sign up onto this, you know, dystopian surveillance digital currency system. I think at some point, whether that's done via incentive or done via emergency, I think that's probably what is coming. I think could they, in order to protect that system, come after something like Bitcoin pretty hard? Potentially. I mean, they could try to drive it underground. They could try to tax it really heavy-handedly. But I think in that world, there will always be the option that I could have Bitcoin, I can use my phone as a wallet device. I can walk into a merchant or, buy eggs from my neighbor or go to a farmer's market and pay peer-to-peer with a digital currency that they cannot stop. So it may just force it underground or kind of force it to become the cash layer of a new digital economy. Um, I think the other potential is Uh, I think there's some game theory at play here where it kind of is this system where, they always kind of say the dollar is like the cleanest dirty shirt because all of these global currencies are all debasing the shit out of them. Ours just happens to kind of be the least because it's accepted in the most places. So like if I'm debasing, if I'm printing, bolívars, I can overflow Venezuela with bolívars pretty quickly. It's not a very big place. But if the entire world is using dollars for exchange and energy and everything, and our debt is the main kind of reserve asset of the world, you can print a lot of dollars before you kind of start to overflow that pool. So we have a lot more flexibility there. So it's always been kind of what they call the cleanest dirty shirt, where it's lost 97% of its value in the last 100 years. But believe it or not, that's the best fiat currency on Earth, The other ones are far worse than that. But I do think there's kind of a, a game theory here where if all of them are kind of losing value, and then suddenly there is this new, digital financial instrument that will not dilute in value because it's got a fixed amount of units. And, going into a world where I think we're about to become kind of phenomenally productive when it comes to, AI kind of digitizing cognitive work and being able to work 24/7 without any breaks, without any union 15 smoke break, without any sleep, without any vacation days, without any healthcare. I think we're gonna become phenomenally productive, and if you denominate that phenomenally productive world in a finite monetary asset That asset is gonna accrue phenomenal value because we're gonna produce so many more things and so many more services than before, and it's gonna still be denominated in a finite unit. So inevitably that unit has to go up in value. I think on the flip side, you have extremely indebted governments that cannot allow their monetary unit to increase in purchasing power because they owe so much of it. They've pulled so much of it forward. So you imagine just the United States, it owes $40 trillion of debt. If suddenly the dollar was to double in value, the real cost of that debt basically doubles, the burden of that debt doubles. And since it's already insolvent, they cannot allow any purchasing power to accrue to our money. So it's no surprise that our entire life is getting more expensive because mathematically they cannot allow it to get cheaper. They cannot allow the money to become more powerful. So whatever the free market economy is trying to do to prices, it's trying to push them down. It's trying to make a TV cheaper, computer cheaper, air travel cheaper. It's trying to make everything cheaper, but they can't allow it. They have to take it all instead. So they have to like suck all of it out of the economy and push it up. Um, but I think there's a game theory here where, it was always a race to the bottom and maybe we were winning that race before. But now if you enter this kind of new tool in the toolbox that really any nation could start to save in, and then any person could start to save in, any corporation could start to save in, it changes the math here where even though they would prefer the old game where they could kind of confiscate without consequence If there is this option, it kind of becomes a you have to go first kind of situation. Because if you're a country or you're a company or you're a person, and your competitor could potentially save in something that cannot be diluted and will actually capture the efficiency gains of that new kind of agentic universe, if they choose to do it and you don't, you're kind of screwed. Like, they will destroy you. I think I recommended Saifedean's book to you, "The, uh, Bitcoin Standard," the first time we talked. he says that basically Bitcoin will be adopted like gunpowder, where if you don't adopt it, it will be your destroyer. So I do think there's a game theory at play here where, in any competitive universe, whether it's nation-state global competition dynamics, or it's business dynamics, or it's individuals, whoever kind of chooses to save their economic energy in something that will not be diluted first will end up being the victor. So I think that may be what changes the dynamic of will Bitcoin ever be worth nothing, potentially if everyone abandoned it. But I think all the incentives basically up the entire economic stack is you're incentivized to not only to use it, but to go to be a first mover because you get, first mover advantage. If you do start to save in it and everyone else comes later, they float you. So,

squadcaster-82bd_1_10-18-2026_173856 22:56

Mm-hmm.

host_1_10-18-2026_173857 22:56

the game theory is going to win out. even though these government actors and central banks should be Bitcoin's enemy number one because it directly attacks the economic privilege and power that they've, enjoyed by being a monetary monopoly, I think it's disruptive enough of a force that, they're going to be forced to adopt it instead of come at it heavy-handedly, because if they don't, their competitor will, and they will lose. So I think, I don't know when it happens exactly. I mean, right, right now you have like the US has 300,000 of these things. China has 200 something thousand, but they still seem to be kind of dancing around it because nobody wants to go all in and give up the power that they're holding at present. But I think somebody will. Somebody will understand that in the, in the next phase of this kind of geopolitical whatever power dynamics If you go first, you're going to be the next empire. So it's, it's almost like it's too much of a-- You have to give up power to gain power, but it's such a, it's such an asymmetric bet that I can't imagine that everyone will hold out for too much longer. Sometimes we give these entities, um Uh, we like-- we, we give them too much credit. Like they, they can't go through this process any faster than we can go through this process. So they don't have any kind of divine way to understand Bitcoin. So they have to go through the same process we do, where they maybe touch the stove, maybe get scared of it, maybe back off, maybe try to learn a little bit more, maybe decide, "I don't wanna touch that." Maybe wait three years for the comet to come back around. They're not immune to that same process of understanding. And, I'm amazed at the naivete that they're dealing with at present.

squadcaster-82bd_1_10-18-2026_173856 24:43

Mm-hmm

host_1_10-18-2026_173857 24:44

I just don't think there's a way to speed run the understanding. I think we're slowly collectively getting there, but I think it could be one, um... I guess it would be the counterargument to, well, why hasn't this happened yet? And I think just like it takes individuals to wrap their head around this thing because, it's everything you don't know about cryptography, plus everything you don't know about economics, plus everything you don't know about, you know, global fiat currency warfare. It's, it's a lot all kind of wrapped up into one instrument, and it really has to prove itself by just sticking around. I think just like, any technological innovation, whether it was automobiles or electricity or the radio or the internet, it pretty much always begins at the same place where it starts to gain a foot, and then it just has haters everywhere. Like nobody likes change. There's all the kind of like people that held power under the old, under the old infrastructure. They don't wanna move away from it. Like I remember, when, when automobiles first showed up, they passed these things called like red flag laws where somebody-- they said it was gonna be so dangerous 'cause they moved too fast for pedestrians to get out of the way or something. And that's just the incumbent power structure trying to maintain power.

squadcaster-82bd_1_10-18-2026_173856 25:59

Mm-hmm

host_1_10-18-2026_173857 25:59

And you have to just, you have to believe that, Bitcoin is enough of a innovation, enough of a technological leap forward that it can overcome all of the kind of regulatory moats that everyone will kind of come at it with to try to, box it in. It has to be strong enough, just like the internet was, and just like electricity was, and all these other innovations were, to break out of the box. So you just have to believe that's true, and I don't think there's really any way-- I mean, I can, I can try to convince anyone why I think it's true, but the really only thing that really changes anyone's mind as to it being definitively true is it just sticking around. Like the longer it sticks around and grows instead of dying, the more kind of inevitable it looks. And I do think there's just a point on the horizon where it becomes-- it looks so inevitable that everybody realizes they're behind, and that's gonna be, I think every person, if this thesis is correct, every person, every corporate, every nation state is suddenly gonna be like, "Oh, shit. Like this money of the future, I have none." So I think it's potentially gonna get to the some point where I think it hits like a flash point, almost like a, like a fire building in a house can reach this like it builds, it builds, it builds, and then just like the conditions get right that it just flashes and the whole entire house goes up at once. I think there's potential for that to happen here, where collectively everyone, and it could just be a big mover deciding. I mean, like we've-- I'm surprised it kinda hasn't happened yet, but like when the US announced a strategic Bitcoin reserve by executive order, I thought that was gonna be kind of the shot heard around the world of like, "Oh, this thing is here. It's here to stay. It's not only valuable, but it's of strategic national security importance." I thought that was gonna be the kickoff of everything. That obviously hasn't been the case. It looked like it was more maybe a way to pander votes, but it still does exist, and there still is an avenue that they could push in that, that direction at any moment. we're under this kind of weird dynamic where it's just that, pretty much all these governments kind of have like autocratic control of their people, and it's this weird like have to give up, you have to give up control to adopt the next thing. And I just don't think they're willing to do that until they have to. So it's, it really becomes a point. It was like, at what point does it become so inevitable that they have to? I don't think anybody knows the answer to that timeline-wise, but I do think that it just is the, um, it's just mathematical incentives put in place. And, the thing that draws me to mathematics more than anything else is math doesn't negotiate. So it's not going away. It's gonna continue to math, and at some point you're just gonna have to join or die. I think that's kinda where, where we're headed. It's on some timeline.

squadcaster-82bd_1_10-18-2026_173856 28:55

Do you see this, like when it starts becoming more acceptable and different countries start switching to it, do you see that as like a slow roll? Or once it starts, like this is gonna like happen quick and fast?

host_1_10-18-2026_173857 29:10

I mean, yeah, that's a trillion-dollar question. if you look at the United States kind of just debt position, it's $40 trillion in debt. We're running $2 trillion deficits. We're clearly printing the difference. We're injecting a ton of liquidity every single year because we're not taking in enough money to pay for all the things we're paying for. So we're pushing more and more monetary units into the system at all times. That's why the cost of everything is going through the roof. It, it's 'cause the money has to go somewhere. That's why all the asset prices are getting pushed out of reach. That's why we have an entire generation of kids that watch houses go over a million dollars, and they wonder how they could ever afford one, 'cause the only way you can afford one is if you already had one. All these things are tied together, but as far as like, could that end in catastrophic collapse tomorrow? Like could everyone suddenly wake up and be like, "Hey, I don't think these guys are paying this debt back," and then nobody buys Treasury bonds, and then they have to print all of the currency instead of borrowing it, and then you kind of just hit some kind of like hyperinflation like tons of nations have. It's not like a-- It seems impossible in the United States, but it wasn't impossible in Argentina, and it wasn't possible in Venezuela, and it wasn't impossible in Libya, and it wasn't impossible in all these places. So it could end catastrophically, but on the other side of that coin, could they just continue to kick this can down the road, try to keep it on some kind of manageable debt-to-GDP level where we know we're never paying it back, we know it's a one-way trip, but we can extend the timeline and kick the can down the road and continue to service the debt and continue to roll it over and push 40 trillion to 80 trillion and, you know, it's-- things won't be good, but

squadcaster-82bd_1_10-18-2026_173856 30:54

Mm-mm

host_1_10-18-2026_173857 30:55

it'll be workable. I mean, I think like the inflation rate in Egypt right now, I think I heard is like 15%, so could we just kind of extend and pretend and kind of know it's, we might be, we might know we're playing a game of hot potato, but at least it won't be on my political watch that the whole thing collapses. How much longer can we do that? I don't really know. And I think that's just the opposite end of this question of kind of Bitcoin where, yeah, Bitcoin can maybe just kind of float around as like an alternative asset, and some people think it's maybe interesting, and maybe their financial advisor will convince them that, you know, put 1% or 2% of your money in it, and it just kinda limps along, and it kinda slowly kinds of, kinda builds. Or does it just become a, A flashpoint like, like the house example of, "Hey, wait a second, like, you know, all these other investments I have aren't keeping up with inflation at all." Like if you're really looking like, I mean, people like, the stock market's been on absolute fire, but people don't correlate to this, and it's like it's when we kind of say things are always hitting a all-time highs, it's nominally. But obviously if you're pouring more money into a system, you're always hitting all-time highs. It's like if you were filling up a pool and the money never turns off, obviously you're gonna look at a year and the water level's gonna be higher, then it's gonna be higher, then it's gonna be higher. So we've kind of been psychologically conditioned to think all-time highs mean doing well, but it doesn't really matter if we're just always injecting money. It has to go up. There's really no, nowhere else for it to go. But we look at like the kind of the long-term historical average of like the S&P 500, it compounds at about 8% a year, and the M2 money supply goes up of an average of 7 or 8% a year. So it's really just the inflation rate kind of floating the entire market. But it has that psychology of your portfolio, the number in it keeps going up, so it feels like you're doing well. But I think there is a, a point at some point where if we start to feel it more, because we feel it in prices around us, we're like, "Hey, they tell us inflation's 3%, but gas is up 45% and groceries feel like they've doubled, and that suddenly that house down the street seems like it's completely outta reach." So I think it's kind of like they cook those numbers because they have an incentive to do so because, all the government entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security are all indexed to these numbers. So if they're honest about the, inflation rate, their entitlement costs just go through the roof. So they kind of are incentivized to kind of manipulate those numbers down with hedonic adjustments and things like that. Even the relative recent history, if you were in 1995 and you looked around the, investible landscape of, say, companies and you said, "Hey, which one of these companies is gonna be around in 2005?" It wouldn't have been that difficult. Like you could have looked at some, like the largest companies in most sectors and been pretty confident that they'd still be around in 10 years. I think now that AI is showing up, it feels like no company is safe. So it's a lot harder to maybe project out which investment will work or not, or which investment will outrun inflation or not. I think you might get to the point that it'll become so unknown or so Like s- the ability to pick winners and losers will become so difficult that you might come to the conclusion that the best thing you could do is just bet on the idea that we're, we collectively, like not picking a certain company, like not Anthropic, not Nvidia, not, Google, not Meta, not, not any particular player, but just in aggregate, these tools are gonna make the human race far more productive. So that's the only thing I'm sure of. I have no idea who's gonna win, but I know we are gonna make more stuff and we're gonna make things better, faster, cheaper. And I'm just gonna bet on the money that's gonna be the denominator to all of those things. So you have to believe that Bitcoin will be adopted as global money, but if that ends up being true Every single efficiency gain that any company can produce will get denominated in those same 21 million units. So if we just keep producing more things, more ideas, more services, whatever the future ends up looking like, if that continues to hold value and gets denominated in that unit, it will accrue value. So it's, it almost becomes the safest place to put your money because if, if you just believe that it's still gonna be here in 10 years, no matter which company still exists and is producing things and is making efficiency gains, you know, whether we have, you know, a flying car or we're, we're launching ourselves into space and landing in Tokyo in two hours, whoever ends up doing it doesn't really matter. The fact that we are doing it collectively will get denominated in that money unit, and you know that no one could debase it to keep, like, to offset the technological progress. So if humanity becomes 20% more productive every year, if that happens and we're using dollars, I could guarantee you the government will print 25% because they cannot allow that money to produce or to increase in purchasing power. But Bitcoin will just become 20% more powerful. It'll just finitely den-- like finitely dom- or denominate that, that new economic reality. So I think it's, um, it's-- I think we're on a collision course of, we're on the horizon of a phenomenally productive economy because there's so much innovation that's all kind of exponentially growing at the same time. But we have a monetary system that doesn't reflect economic reality. It doesn't allow technological progress to accrue to the people and the people actually earning and holding the money. It basically has to confiscate it all because we're just kind of mathematically overweight. So Bitcoin is just the money that reflects the economic reality we're entering and have actually always been in because the free market economy has always wanted to push prices down. The only reason we're even-- I mean, 'cause if you, if you pause and just think it was like How many technological gains have you and I seen in our lifetime? It's been pretty phenomenal. You

squadcaster-82bd_1_10-18-2026_173856 37:14

Yes

host_1_10-18-2026_173857 37:15

but in that world, so we've had all this new technology come to bear in the market, how are prices going higher? It doesn't make any sense. Like, it doesn't make fundamental economic sense. It's as if I was a shoe cobbler that was making shoes by hand, and then I got a machine, and then prices of shoes went up. Like, it just doesn't make sense. Like, I could only make two pairs of shoes a day. This machine can make 200 pairs of shoes an hour, and somehow the price of shoes are going up. Like, it doesn't make fundamental economic sense until you understand that the monetary system we're living in is built to kinda confiscate value. And it's almost like the faster... That's great when the technological progress is small because you can kinda steal it and nobody notices. When the technological progress gets really big, like if AI and agentic and robotics, you know, should be pushing prices down by 30% in a year, but we know they have to go up because we're insolvent. Like, suddenly it becomes very obvious to everybody that you're like, "Wait a minute. I just walked into a McDonald's. There's no people. I hit a kiosk. There's nobody in the kitchen. It's all robots. The food comes out, and somehow it's more expensive than it was when all of those things were run by people?" It just doesn't make any sense, and I think it's the s- the speed of progress is getting to the point that everyone's kinda waking up and they're like, "Hang on, something, something's wrong." Like, I don't... It's as if we just hit the iceberg on the Titanic and you're like, you're not sure what happened, but you're like, "Something's happening,"

squadcaster-82bd_1_10-18-2026_173856 38:46

Something

host_1_10-18-2026_173857 38:47

they're not being, they're not being honest with us about it.

squadcaster-82bd_1_10-18-2026_173856 38:50

Yeah

host_1_10-18-2026_173857 38:52

I think that's just where we're headed. I think it's just a-- We're pulling on two sides of a rubber band. It cannot continue, and there's this kind of a economic law, Stein's Law, that basically says, "If something cannot continue, it will end." And I think, this entire experiment of just kind of a de-tethered fiat currency, we've only been doing this since 1971. That's when Nixon kind of officially broke the tie to gold. So we're only talking about less than 60 years. It's been 50-some years. It's failing at a c-catastrophic pace, I think. I think in hindsight, we'll look back at this period and it'll look insane, honestly, that we were-- we basically de-tethered and just pulled so much future productivity forward. I think it will be the anomaly. I think it has to kind of, It, it might, you know, it's kind of like, The, the further we go, the more obvious the error becomes. I think about this like a-- I think about this if you like shoot a bullet or you hit a golf ball, and you're, if it's like one, you know, one degree off early, it doesn't really matter. But the more time that goes by, that one degree becomes a much, much

squadcaster-82bd_1_10-18-2026_173856 40:00

that

host_1_10-18-2026_173857 40:01

bigger problem. The gap becomes huge, and then the kind of the alligator jaws at some point, like reality will reassert itself. It will snap shut. I think we're just kind of approaching the point where we can no longer keep going off course, like we have to redirect. And I think reality is gonna come and collect the bill, and I don't know exactly what that looks like. I don't think the transition's gonna be particularly smooth. I just think There's enough gravity to technological progress that what we're doing can't continue. 'Cause it basically just every time you print currency when things should be getting cheaper, it has to find its value somewhere. So it finds its value in everyone that saves in it, everyone that works for it, and then it eventually finds its way into assets. So we're watching assets blow out. Anyone that owns a house is like, "This is great. My house has like doubled since 2019." And it was like, that's great for you, but y- if you think about it from a systemic point of view, does that feel sustainable? Does it feel sustainable? And like do you think that that next generation of like a working couple that is trying to buy their first house and they don't have a house that just doubled in value in five years, do you think they're gonna be able to buy that at a 7.5% mortgage rate? So I think if we're honest about it, asset holders are doing fine. But when you consider who are asset holders, about 87% of the stock market is owned by the top 10% of people. The vast majority of real estate is owned by the top. So the top is doing great. Everybody else is falling further and further and further behind. And I think for a while we've maybe kept that at bay by, Promising stuff, like promising programs and things. But, anyone looking at like France right now, I think France is realizing they made a lot more promises than they can actually keep. Their unaffordability is blowing out. And when you have too many people on the bottom part of that, bottom part of that ledger, and too few at the top, eventually you get some kind of revolution, you know? So I

squadcaster-82bd_1_10-18-2026_173856 42:05

Yeah

host_1_10-18-2026_173857 42:06

I think, I think we're in the early stages of that. I think the wealth inequality shouldn't be a surprise because it's mathematically where our monetary system is taking us, but we do seem to be surprised by it. So that tells me that the math isn't understood by most, and probably what you get is some kind of misguided revolution, either, either violent or political. So if, if I were to like, to put a bet on like Polymarket or Kalshi, I think technology continues to speed up, debasement of currency continues to speed up. That causes blowing out of wealth inequality, and then you inevitably get like a socialism political response to that wealth inequality. Like that's just kind of like where we have to go.

squadcaster-82bd_1_10-18-2026_173856 42:51

Mm-hmm

host_1_10-18-2026_173857 42:51

And so I don't, I don't think that's a good idea. I think it's ill-advised. I think anyone that's ever tried that, they quickly come to realize that, redistributing wealth isn't that hard. But if you forgot how to produce it, then redistributing it doesn't matter anymore. I think that's usually where that experiment goes. But I also think I sympathize with the, like the feeling. Like I understand 'cause the system is rigged and the people are getting screwed, and wealth inequality is terrible, and it is getting worse. So, and when you live in a democracy, it's at, at some point it becomes two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner, and they just come for it because it's, it gets too concentrated and they're like, they don't have anything to lose anyway. So, um, yeah, I don't have a crystal ball. I just think looking at kind of this same math playing out all over the world, because it's been such a short experiment, but we hit the gas pedal on that experiment so fast, we got ourselves into a irreparable place everywhere all at once, that that's probably what comes next. I think I just maybe clutch to Bitcoin because it seems to be a way that we could course correct with doing the least amount of damage possible. I don't know. So

squadcaster-82bd_1_10-18-2026_173856 44:06

So with what it's done the last three years, would you anticipate seeing it doing at least that in the next three?

host_1_10-18-2026_173857 44:15

Uh, I mean, yeah, it's a good question. I mean, so what we're talking, it's maybe gone up by about 150% or something, if my math is correct from when I looked at that. Yeah, I believe it probably will. I think it actually gains momentum. There's a theory that, there's like a diminishing returns theory that says that A, you know, Bitcoin is too big now. Bigger things don't move as fast. So kind of the gains of the past are of the past. The, it's too big now. It'll move at a slower pace. It won't have these phenomenal gains. I think that may be true, but it also could be that it's not accounting for just how few people actually care, understand, or are aware of kind of Bitcoin or any of these monetary problems at all. So if the monetary problems accelerate, maybe it pushes people toward a solution faster. And the adoption rate of Bitcoin now is still below, you know, 5% of the globe. And if it could potentially be global money, you're still looking at 95-plus percent of its growth ahead of it. And that's before you account for the fact that you're pricing it in a money that will continually be diluted and debased. So the dollar price of a Bitcoin should go up inevitably, regardless if anyone else adopts it or not. More and more people, are gonna be incentivized to adopt it, and I think there is kind of that same kind of Rubicon thing. If you look at any, kind of the S-curve of any kind of technological adoption, it usually starts kind of slow. But if you look at like TV or radio or internet or cell phones or pagers or really anything, it kind of reaches this point where kind of-- And I think you can kind of just-- This passes the eyeball test too. If you think about like when Uber came out and like even now it's about to happen. Like if you see like a Waymo or you see like a cyber cab and you're like, "Oh, that's interesting." And it goes from like interesting to everywhere seemingly overnight. They hit this inflection point. Every technology hits like an inflection point where it goes from interesting to inevitable overnight, and then suddenly it's in everybody's living room, or it's in everybody's pocket, or it's around every corner. And I think Bitcoin also has that potential where, I think it's going to do more than what it's done in the past because I think it's, as its awareness grows, it just like debt has this kind of compounding exponential element to it. I think Bitcoin has that too, 'cause not only is the-- If you price it in a money that has to accelerate a debase and then you, so you have that on one side. You have the debasement pushing the price higher on one side, and then you just have the, the network adoption pushing the demand from the other side. So you kind of have like an infinite amount of suppli- an infinite supply of dollars chasing it, and then you have a increasing demand of people actually demanding it on the other side. So those things are kind of both colliding, and I think they could push it up pretty violently actually. So, yeah, I'm not really a price prediction person. I like to talk about why Bitcoin matters, but I think Bitcoin matters to the whole world, and I think they're all going to collectively kind of come to understand it As this problem kind of blows out in front of our face.

squadcaster-82bd_1_10-18-2026_173856 47:25

Mm-hmm.

host_1_10-18-2026_173857 47:26

um, where that takes the price, I don't know. I just think it's significantly higher than where it is now. I mean, if you look at the market cap of Bitcoin right now is about a $1.5 or $1.6 trillion c- like market cap. Just for perspective, the gold market cap is about 30 trillion or thereabouts, 25 to 30 trillion, depending on like the, the gold price on a certain day. Um, given that Bitcoin is finitely scarce, if the world collectively decided it's, it's g- it's gold, but it's better than gold and nothing more, then the implied Bitcoin price is like $1.6 or $1.7 billion per coin. That's just if it matches the, the, market cap of gold. And when you think about the diminishing returns theory, the idea of gold being too big to move quickly would've been exactly what everyone would've said. It's been around for thousands of years. It was at about a $20 trillion market cap, and it went from 20 trillion to 30 trillion seemingly overnight. Gold has been the historical solution for that, so a lot of people went there first. They didn't, they didn't go try to like learn about a brand new technology that fixed that problem. They went back to the same technology that's fixed that problem for all of antiquity. So that's not really a surprise out of the gate, but I think that same energy proves, one, market cap, even if it's very large, can move very quickly and very violently upward. And two, there's, a lot of people that are slowly waking up to this being a problem, and they just don't understand that Bitcoin's a superior technological solution to that problem. I think that probably grows in awareness and understanding too. So, yeah, I don't know where it goes, but I think I would expect it to accelerate moving forward as opposed to decelerate. If that's a...

squadcaster-82bd_1_10-18-2026_173856 49:18

I,

host_1_10-18-2026_173857 49:19

just about there, Beck. It's, another quick hour. So is there one last big question?

squadcaster-82bd_1_10-18-2026_173856 49:27

For anybody such as myself that has been curious and hesitant, is it too late?

host_1_10-18-2026_173857 49:36

Definitely. It's definitely not too late. It's only too late when, honestly I would no longer have to do this podcast. You know what I mean? 'Cause it's, uh, I do this because I think it's an important thing that a lot of people should know about that don't, and I'm trying to kind of fill the need. I think once your neighbor can tell you everything about Bitcoin, it's-- then it's probably too late. But I think, we get that question a lot because it seems like, "Oh, hey, this used to be $3, and now it, at one point it was $120,000." That just seems like a lot of distance for something to move.

squadcaster-82bd_1_10-18-2026_173856 50:11

Yes

host_1_10-18-2026_173857 50:12

look at the, overall addressable market, kind of like just saying that, like even that $30 trillion, that's like the low bar, low hanging fruit, like gold market cap. I think, if it matched gold's market cap, I don't even think you'd be too late at that point. I think at that point you're, you're basically this kind of deep basement hedge, you know, kind of, apocalypse money. Maybe you've kind of addressed that market. But really I think, I, I think about this sometimes. If, if you picture a future like, you know, Elon's kickflipping a car and he's like doing crazy crap, and he's trying to like colonize the universe. And no matter what you think about him specifically, if we're going anywhere kind of in that direction as like a human race, I think at some point a global currency is gonna make a lot of sense. And I think whether it's Bitcoin or something else, I think Bitcoin's probably our, our best prime candidate for that now because, you know, America's not gonna use Chinese currency, and China's not gonna use American currency, and Russia's not gonna use American. So like, but maybe the next best option will just be everyone uses a neutral currency that nobody controls. Like maybe that's the only thing anyone could ever come to agree on. But at some point, I think we'll look back at in monetary history and we'll say like the idea that there was 150 countries with 150 different currencies is gonna look pretty stupid actually. I think, on a timeline looking back, that's gonna look dumb. But if you look at Bitcoin from that, if you make it that candidate, and it's not saying it's inevitable that it's gonna be global money. But if it becomes global money, I mean, there's about a quadrillion dollars of assets in the world. So you're talking about a thousand trillion, dollars worth of assets in the world. And right now, Bitcoin's market cap is 1.5 trillion. So it's like this tiny, infinitesimally small portion of that pie. And I think it probably makes more sense as money than, bonds who basically there's $300 trillion in bonds that are all underwater if you consider it against the actual debasement rate. They're all dead money. That should probably all move. It does everything that gold does. It's basically-- Because basically what Satoshi did was he was like, "Hey, what, what parameters made gold good money?" And instead of like, instead of using like alchemy to try to create gold c- like with chemistry, he basically just created the parameters of gold with mathematics He's like, "Hey, everything that made gold good money, I'm just gonna program. So I'm just gonna make something that does what gold does, but it's better and it's not, like, in the natural world, and you can send it over the internet." It's a brilliant innovation, but it's, When it comes to just, like, day-to-day currency, like we said, we know they're gonna keep diluting dollars, so if I could start saving in it in my own life, when I go to work, I give them time and energy away. They compensate me with dollars. I know those dollars are gonna lose value as soon as I walk out the door, but if I put it into this, it won't. So there's a-- It's set up there so it could just be money. There's no, like, every company that uses Square as their point-of-sale terminal now actually has Bitcoin functionality that they could turn on, whether they know it or not, or care or not, it is there. So everyone could start spending it if they wanted to, so it could be money. Just like I said, there's kind of real estate, market that's north of 300. I think it's $350 trillion globally now. I think it's actually pretty silly that we use houses as money. I look at a house that gets 40 years older and we expect it to 10X in value as being kind of silly. Like, I don't-- It's, it's 10X. Like, it's 40 years older. It probably should be less valuable. It should be more like a Toyota Corolla. But we have this kind of Pavlovian psychology that it should be always going up in value, even though it gets older and crappier. I look at houses, w- I'm looking at houses now. So I think houses are great for utility. I don't think they're great as money, and I think we should demonetize them so that young families can buy them as a utility, as opposed to having to have one as an investment. Um, all that to be said, I think the total addressable market of what Bitcoin is going after is so large, it's almost difficult to put a price on it if it actually came to fruition to be global money. So even though it's gone from $3 to $100,000 and that feels like it's gone too far, that's not understanding-- That's kind of understanding it like a company. It's like, "Hey, how much bigger could it really get?" But if you really think the, the far buoy for Bitcoin is becoming either a reserve currency or asset or maybe global money for all of the human race, that, I mean, you're not even, you're not even sniffing around the ballpark of what its potential could potentially be. So, yeah, I don't think you're early until Everybody you know, if you bring up Bitcoin, everyone's like, "Oh yeah, of course I have that." Like, it-- imagine yourself at like a cocktail party and you bring up, "Oh yeah, I have some Bitcoin." Everyone's like, "Well, duh, everyone has Bitcoin." Until you get that answer, you're nowhere near, like, too late, I think is probably the answer. And that's just the easy anecdotal way to feel like, "Hey, is it too late?" It was like, well, it's not too late because everyone you talk to doesn't know anything about it.

squadcaster-82bd_1_10-18-2026_173856 55:31

Okay. That's true. I like that. That's helpful

host_1_10-18-2026_173857 55:35

Yeah. So we'll see. I mean, maybe when I talk to you again in another three years and we're like, "Oh yeah, man. Like everyone, ev-everyone in my family, everyone I know at work, everyone in the neighborhood, everyone's got Bitcoin." Then, then maybe it's too late. But even then, I would say even then, the fact that it's a finitely scarce asset and we're never gonna stop producing things, we're never gonna start-- stop putting energy forward. Really, even if you were the last person, say you froze the global population at eight billion, you were the last person of all of those eight billion to start to save in Bitcoin, you still aren't too late. You're too late for it to probably get some kind of life, life-changing astronomical investment gain. But you're not gonna be too late to know that when you go to work and you bust your ass and you come home, you can immediately put it into something that can't be di- debased and diluted while you sleep. So even if you're the last person to ever adopt Bitcoin, you still protect yourself from the debasement that is making everything more unaffordable and making your life exponentially harder. So even the last person won't be too late when it comes to the actual utility of Bitcoin. It just-- I think we, we see it now as a speculative investment instead of a savings technology, and eventually we'll just see it as a savings technology. So then it still won't be too late, I guess is the, the point of that. Well, cool, Beck. Well, thank you for taking some time again. I know not everybody wants to, uh, sit down in the nerdery, so I appreciate your willingness

squadcaster-82bd_1_10-18-2026_173856 57:13

this makes me feel better, like three years later, like it's, it's comfortable. Like I feel better

host_1_10-18-2026_173857 57:21

So we'll do it again in three years, and if w- if we still have the ability to do this again in three years, now you're talking about Bitcoin's been around most of, you know, a certain large percentage of our lifetime. So it's probably safe to say it's sticking around.

squadcaster-82bd_1_10-18-2026_173856 57:36

Um, yes, I would agree.

host_1_10-18-2026_173857 57:38

All right, Beck. Well, take care. We'll talk to you soon.

squadcaster-82bd_1_10-18-2026_173856 57:40

it. Bye

host_1_10-18-2026_173857 57:42

right, see ya.