I have a meager investment in Bitcoin (BTC). It’s a hedge against the dollar collapsing. I have enough to get me through about five days, then I guess it’s The Road for me, but those five days spending my sats will be glorious.
No, but for real, Michael Saylor made an amazing case for Bitcoin in an interview with Tucker Carlson. So, here I am listening to a billionaire, nodding my head, and thinking this guy has it figured out. I’ll follow him and do what he says about crypto, forgetting for a second, that billionaires have disappointed me in the past. But, I’ll get into that later.
My Bitcoin Setup
I don’t have a ton of disposable income. So, I set up an automatic withdrawal from my bank account every week to buy Bitcoin. Doesn’t matter what the price is, I’m buying some every week. If there’s a big dip I’ll try to scrape together a few extra bucks and buy more. Generally, it’s a slow build week after week.
I have been doing this with Swan Bitcoin for a few years.
Fundamental rule: never keep your crypto on an exchange. Did you see Coinbase is teaming up with the World Economic Forum (WEF)? I send my Swan BTC to my Trezor offline wallet. It’s a great piece of hardware and cold storage is the best.
At the very least download the free Exodus desktop wallet and store your crypto there.
I used to dabble in the other coins, and there’s no doubt you can make money with them, but now I’m a Bitcoin maximalist. Despite price fluctuations, it’s the world’s most stable store of wealth.
That’s my whole crypto setup. Hold on for Dear Life (HODL)!
Is Michael Saylor Legit?
Saylor is smart, confident, and speaks well. He’s a successful businessman. He’s passionate about Bitcoin and has a handle on the “stick it to the man” BTC ethos.
In this discussion with Tucker, Saylor outlines the history of economics, the perpetual money conundrum, and how Bitcoin is the first stable store of value that power’s that be can’t mess with.
This interview (more of a monolog) is my new go-to resource when people ask me about cryptocurrency. Saylor makes a compelling case for Bitcoin as he answers three fundamental questions:
What’s money?
What’s the problem?
What’s the solution?
A Spotty History of Money and Debasement
Money is monetary energy.
It’s the symbolic representation of your stored labor.
Once it became apparent that barter was clunky (i.e. I’ll cut the head off this goat in exchange for a dozen eggs) man figured out a more proficient means of exchange: tokens of value like seashells, glass beads, tobacco, copper coins, silver coins, and gold coins.
Unfortunately, these tokens were ripe for mischief and misfortune. For example, an African nation might trade in glass beads with a shared ledger (tracking who owes what). Good system when contained to the region, but when, say, Europeans figure out how to mass-produce glass beads, and dump that supply into the African nation’s economy, the Africans lose all their land, homes, and wealth, and become impoverished. They debased the glass bead causing real-world consequences.
Gold was a popular means of exchange, but it was hard to lug around for big purchases and hard to divide for small transactions. Gold dealers figured out a solution. We’ll store the gold and hand out “I owe you’s” representing a specific amount of gold. A holder of an “I owe you” could redeem it for gold at the dealer. Transacting with slips of paper was convenient.
Unfortunately, the dealers started to get into fractional reserves. They knew it wasn’t likely that a mass of people would walk into the shop all at once, receipts in hand, and demand their gold (i.e. a bank run), so they got the bright idea to print more paper than they had gold. They got to spend that paper into the economy, buying assets with the counterfeit coupons. In the process, they debased their receipts with what amounts to a Ponzi scheme.
States started printing money like precious metal coins. This helped with convenience. You could carry the coins in your pocket and they had a standard value. Unfortunately, the state also discovered the art of debasement. They clipped chunks out of coins or mixed the precious metals with base metals.
This was the cause of the collapse of Rome. They debased the currency until the people didn’t want it anymore. This made it impossible for the Roman government to pay their mercenaries. When mercenaries weren’t paid they didn’t fight. The empire was not protected and soon fell.
The same thing happens today when the Fed prints dollars. It reduces your purchasing power.
This is why Saylor says inflation is the key indicator, and that the lack of a tracking ledger ensuring fair distribution is the problem.
The Problem with the Consumer Price Index (CPI)
If inflation is 5% and your wages only increase 3% annually, it’s easy to see you’re losing purchasing power, but what’s a couple of percentage points. The trouble is inflation is underreported. They are stealing an obscene amount of your wealth year after year.
Here’s the con. The government fills a basket with specific goods to represent consumer prices (CPI). The problem is they pick stuff that doesn’t represent necessities. There is no energy in that basket or real food like meat, eggs, and produce. Rather, products with stable prices like streaming media subscriptions and Domino’s Pizza.
Saylor says the S&P Index, which is a basket of “desirable” stocks, is a much better indicator of inflation. Instead of single-digit inflation, the S&P was at 34% in 2021. This is the actual monetary inflation. That’s a big chunk of value taken out of your hide. Using this alternative method of calculating inflation, the rate has averaged 14% for the last decade. Most people’s cost of living wage increase doesn’t come close to keeping up with that.
Sophisticated wealth managers put you in buildings, companies, property, real estate, collectibles, sports franchises–desirable rare assets that rise in price with inflation. The middle class works for cash, which is dropping in value at the rate of monetary inflation.
“The road to serfdom is working exponentially harder for a currency that is exponentially weaker.”
Every monetary system ever established has collapsed because of inflation, but governments still print money rather than raise taxes because it’s easier to obfuscate the theft.
The Blood Donation Analogy
You donate a pint of blood. It takes two months to recover. What if you donate a pint every month? That’s a problem. That’s inflation. Once you get into hyperinflation, like Argentinian currency losing 98% of its purchasing power, you’re talking about giving blood every week. Then there’s the economy of the Weimar Republic (Germany) prior to WWII. That’s giving blood every day.
Currency is to the economy what blood is to your body.
Economic energy is to currency what oxygen is to blood. Sucking oxygen out of a room you either suffocate or freeze unless you have an alternate source of oxygen. That’s Bitcoin.
Saylor: “The point of Bitcoin is to fix the money. Money is energy. Energy is life. And if I keep sucking the energy out of the economy, I’m sucking the oxygen out of your system. In the best case, you perform poorly. Under the worst case, I suffocate you to death.”
It’s not an individual problem or a family problem. It’s a problem for every institution, company, city, municipality, government, and ultimately civilization. Money is essential to civilization.
When money doesn’t work anymore you revert back to barter, and the economy becomes a million times less efficient.
Bitcoin Evolves Into the Ultimate Store of Value
A group of nameless engineers saw the collapse of 2008 and realized things weren’t right. So, they used two technologies, the Internet (network of computers) and cryptography (transactional security), and conceptualized an immutable ledger. A bank in cyberspace.
21 million coin units, divisible by 100 million (a Satoshi or sat). Saylor says BTC has the most secure database in the world. We don’t know who designed and built Bitcoin.
Satoshi, the alias given to the leader of the squad or to the collective, gave the gift of BTC to the world and disappeared. He mined a million coins to get it going, and they have never moved.
In 2009 BTC could have been banned or hacked. Nobody knew. By 2020 there were 12 years of history. The system was attacked thousands of times but no one successfully hacked the underlying network, because it’s built on the most secure database in the world.
BTC is digital gold without problems. Miners can inflate the supply of gold. When they dump derivatives into the market, gold paper inflates.
With every other asset, when the price goes up the supply increases. More stock. More bonds. BTC is the only thing inelastic to price.
BTC is a conservative monetary system. True, pure, and with integrity and durability. Bitcoin is property rights and economic empowerment.
“You can build a life, family, company, or civilization around it.”
They can take every asset in the world from you by force, except Bitcoin. You can have the passwords in your head. They can shoot you, but they still can’t take your BTC. It’s the only asset you can take to your grave. Meaning, there’s a better chance the kleptocrats will skip your house and look for an easier target.
BTC is concentrated digital energy. It is energy in digital form.
BTC is better gold than gold. Better property than property, because they can’t seize it, and there’s no maintenance cost. It is the hardest asset.
BTC has gone up 170% a year for a decade. S&P is up 14% and gold is flat over that time.
BTC is moral money. It’s the money of the people. It gives people a banking option for the price of a cheap phone and a free download. There are 2 billion people in the world that don’t have access to banking. BTC solves that.
How Michael Saylor Got Into BTC
Saylor got into BTC in 2020 because his company, MicroStrategy, was sitting on $500 million in cash. He didn’t want to lose it to inflation. So, after a ton of due diligence, he bought Bitcoin. Then he borrowed $2.2 billion at 1.5% interest and put that into BTC. His stock price is up. The BTC price is up. This huge bet is paying off for Saylor and the MSTR stockholders, who stuck with him.
Can the State Shut Down Bitcoin?
If a country views BTC as a currency it will get suppressed because it’s a fundamental threat to the currency that props up the nation-state. If viewed as an asset it will compete with gold, index funds, bonds, and real estate as a store of value.
The IRS said it was property.
Jerome Powell, U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman, said he has no intention to ban or limit the use of cryptocurrencies.
Christina Legard, European Central Bank (ECB) President, said Bitcoin is a “highly speculative asset.”
He says the United States has embraced crypto. It has broad support in the Senate and the House.
Saylor warns regulation and taxation of crypto are coming. It’s inevitable but it doesn’t diminish the utility of Bitcoin.
You will have to pay tax on any transactions through institutional crypto exchanges. And corporate players will take big positions, but he still believes it is the “apex investment,” and that it will serve its purpose as a store of value better than any other asset for a long time.
The Future of Bitcoin
BTC doesn’t need to be a medium of exchange. It doesn’t need to replace the US dollar. We need something to store value and BTC is the best asset for the job.
“Keep a month’s worth of salary in dollars and store everything else in an asset.”
Saylor says Bitcoin is going to increase in price forever because it is scarce. There’s a cap on the supply. Inflation in the economy will cause BTC to go up. Mass adoption will cause it to go up.
He predicts it will replace gold in 3-5 years. Then it will replace the fixed income and equity indexes. Then, it will demonetize property, which will cause the prices to stabilize so that young people starting out their careers will be able to afford a house.
People will buy Bitcoin instead of an investment real estate property, so the price of the property will go down. People will buy Bitcoin instead of bonds, so the yield on bonds will increase.
Fix the money, fix the world.
Saylor’s a Billionaire, Be Wary
I don’t trust billionaires. It’s hard to make that much money without compromising your integrity and serving the man on some level. Can Saylor be an exception? I don’t know. He talks a great game, but there are things to be wary of.
The biggest red flag for me is his pinned tweet. It’s poetic, but reeks of Gnosticism, celebrating the goddess of wisdom (i.e. Sophia).
As I get deeper into my studies of geopolitics and Christianity, I realize Gnosticism is the root of much of the evil in the world today. It’s anti-Christian speaking in a spiritual language. It is the driving force behind the Great Reset, transhumanism, and the New World Order, in which the technocratic elite attempt to become immortal, and subjugate humanity in the process.
Saylor might not be packing that baggage, but the language is reason to be wary.
Saylor made a huge bet on BTC. He makes tremendous gains if the price goes up. Is this eloquent rhetoric of BTC being the money of the people a sordid pump and dump scheme? I wouldn’t put it past a shrewd billionaire.
It will be interesting to see what Saylor says about Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), which is the inevitable government-sponsored crypto that will complete the utter enslavement of humanity. Catherine Austin Fitts thinks Bitcoin and the rest of the cryptocurrency space was a test run to lay the groundwork for CBDC’s. Is Saylor playing his part to condition the masses to accept crypto, so they’ll shift with little resistance into CBDC’s? We’ll see.
I’m still putting money into BTC despite the reservations, because, as Saylor says, it could be the solution to our money problems.
Speaking of Billionaires …
I vowed to never fall into the seductive traps of charismatic billionaire leaders. You see, I voted for Donald Trump … twice. I still think he’s hilarious, and all things considered a much better option than Hilary Clinton or Joe Biden. But (big but) … he’s still a Zionist shill who fast-tracked vaccine production, palled around Jeffrey Epstein and his “network,” and appointed swamp creatures top to bottom in his administration.
Trump pimps gene therapy boosters. He is the populist pied piper for disenfranchised conservatives, leading them down a side road to the technocratic Great Reset.
That experience made me wary of anything sold by billionaires: ideology, electric cars, free shipping, or even “the first engineered monetary system in the history of the human race.”