Sam Callahan (00:02:35):

And I just thought that was hilarious, because I knew they had written pieces about Bitcoin over the last several years, but they just haven’t been positive, like this one about Proof of Stake in Ethereum. And so what I did was I went back to all the times that they’ve ever written about anything about digital assets, and basically collected them, read them, and basically laid it out to show that there’s been a concerted effort from the World Economic Forum to discredit Proof of Work, to attack Bitcoin, and then promote alternative cryptocurrencies that are easier to co-opt and easier to control.

Sam Callahan (00:03:10):

Really, what this comes down to is the merge. They changed from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake, and when they do that, it leads to increased risks of the cartel formations of ability to pool capital together and influence the rules of the protocol of the consensus mechanism. And so it leads to centralization and increased censorship risks compared to Proof of Work. Underlying all of this is the World Economic Forum can’t really control Bitcoin. Nobody can control Bitcoin. That’s kind of the whole point. It’s decentralized, and the poorest Vagabond and the richest tycoon have equal rights in the Bitcoin protocol, but in Proof of Stake, money is power.

Sam Callahan (00:03:54):

World Economic Forum has a ton of resources, power, and [inaudible 00:04:01], and they could just buy a bunch of Ethereum now, and they would have a ton of stake, and they would be able to theoretically alter the rules of the protocol if they desired, if they built a cartel with a bunch of other stakers. That risk exists now. It’s not to say that it’s happening right now, but it exists. When I look through all this past publication from the World Economic Forum, it’s hilarious, honestly. Back in 2017, their first Bitcoin article, it’s titled, “In 2020, Bitcoin will consume more power than the world does today.”

Sam Callahan (00:04:35):

And obviously it’s still up there, which is funny because they’ve been known to delete articles, but my lights are on right now. It’s 2022, so it’s obviously not right, and Bitcoin has been shown to only use a fraction of the world’s, less than one percent of the world’s energy usage is right now, and it’s 2020. It’s obviously false, and so that gives you a sense of the expertise level of these people when it comes to Bitcoin, and yet they’re writing about it. And so you go on to the next couple of articles they’ve written in about 2018. Similarly, they’ve spread misinformation about Bitcoin’s energy use.

Sam Callahan (00:05:12):

One is from the Digiconomist, which is a central banker who has this very flawed model for measuring Bitcoin’s carbon footprint that gets cited by all the essential bankers, but it’s wrong. For instance, Ben Gagnon or something, over at Bitfarms, he wrote this article that kind of showed that when China banned Bitcoin and hash rate was cut in half, that model actually went up, and so that’s how wrong it is, right? So literally half of Bitcoin’s hash rate went offline when China banned it, and that model went up. He’s the one who wrote this other article or kind of had a bunch of quotes in it.

Sam Callahan (00:05:46):

He criticizes Bitcoin’s energy use, say it’s going to eat the world’s energy just like the last article, and then speaks about the coal problem, because at the time China had a lot of the hash rate, so China bands it, and now that problem doesn’t exist, so that’s still up there, but that’s not even relevant to today. Then, they kind of go on a break, and they don’t do anything because Bitcoin’s price goes down, so they probably thought it was dead, like everyone else during 2018, 2019, but then they come back with a vengeance in 2020 with their pro-Proof of Stake propaganda and anti-Proof of Work. This is when they start shilling Ethereum and their move to Proof of Stake and the merge, and they start talking about how it reduces energy consumption by 99.5%, which is flawed thinking. Then, they kind of-

Preston Pysh (00:06:30):

Explain why. So explain why you think that’s flawed thinking, just to kind of interrupt you there on that.

Sam Callahan (00:06:36):

Yeah. Well, the electricity, it doesn’t disappear, and those miners are still mining, and actually a lot of them moved over to Ethereum Classic, and so it’s not reducing the energy consumption of the world by moving to Proof of Stake and the merge. It’s actually just moved over to an old Ethereum blockchain, so it’s really just Ethereum-

Preston Pysh (00:06:53):

Its even worse.

Sam Callahan (00:06:54):

… Going to Ethereum. It’s still happening, and so it’s not like this just completely turned off and these miners walked away, so it’s just kind of flawed thinking to think that this is reducing the world’s energy consumption. My governor of my state, he tweeted out like, “Congratulations, Vitalik, on the move to Proof of Work and reducing the world’s energy consumption by 0.02%,” or something by moving to Proof of Work.

Sam Callahan (00:07:18):

And I was like, “That’s so flawed. It’s still happening. You can literally see it. They just moved over to a different blockchain,” so that’s kind of what I mean. It’s just kind of flawed thinking, but the most interesting piece of the World Economic Forum on Bitcoin that I found was called Unifying Cryptocurrency ESG Efforts to Boost Cryptocurrency Adoption. It’s there that they basically lay out their plans to band together their resources at the World Economic Forum and use the resources to attack Proof of Work, both economically, politically, socially.

Sam Callahan (00:07:49):

They lay out their plans right there in the open, so they create this accelerator called the Crypto Impact and Sustainability Accelerator. It’s called CISA, and some of the members of this are Andreessen Horowitz, which is the richest crypto VC fund out there, to give you a sense of what they think about Bitcoin. In their state of crypto report they put out for 2022, Bitcoin is the largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin’s not mentioned a single time in the report. It’s literally not in the report, and it’s the number one cryptocurrency by basically every measure.

Sam Callahan (00:08:24):

That’s what Andreessen Horowitz thinks about Bitcoin, and they invest in all of these other cryptocurrencies, so they’re incentivized for Bitcoin to lose market share. Essentially, they’re one of the members. You have [inaudible 00:08:35]. You have Chainanalysis, which is a crypto surveillance company. You have CoinDesk, who also benefits from the other cryptocurrencies, because think about all the stories that they get from all the hacks and all the scams, like they literally incentivize to support these other cryptocurrencies, because if Bitcoin’s pretty stable I don’t know if they’d get a lot of stories written out.

Preston Pysh (00:08:55):

I remember where Barry sat back on the 2017 fork wars on Bitcoin, who’s one of the main people at CoinDesk, so kind of interesting to see him continue to battle it.

Sam Callahan (00:09:10):

Yeah, so a digital currency group, I think, owns coins?

Preston Pysh (00:09:14):

Yeah.

Sam Callahan (00:09:14):

Yeah, for sure. And then you got Goldman Sachs. There’s another one who also has not been that flattering to Bitcoin over the years. Then, you have Ripple and Stellar, which are pretty much some of, in my opinion, some of the biggest scams in this space. So they’re all working together in this accelerator and pooling their capital and resources together, and they’re all incentivized in their own ways for Proof of Work to fail. What they’re going to do is they’re going to use ESG as a shield to justify their efforts, and they even talk about how they’re going to do it, and they talk about projects they’re going to support and alternative currencies they’re going to support.

Sam Callahan (00:09:51):

But then they talk about leadership, and they say, “We’re going to create impact opportunities to seize and secure commitments to our leading efforts,” and that just really rubbed me the wrong way, because nobody elected these guys. I didn’t make them my leader, and they say that they’re going to seize and secure commitments based on their leading efforts, like they know what’s best for the world and they’ll use forceful tactics to do it. That’s basically what they lay out there, and what they’re going to do is they’re going to crush Bitcoin, and the reason is not ESG. That’s the key point here.

Sam Callahan (00:10:24):

The reason is because they would have no control or power in this monetary system, and so when you go through this, you just see a concerted effort to discredit Bitcoin and Proof of Work. Then, it shifts over to supporting Proof of Stake in Ethereum, because I believe that they can better co-op that system. When they say that, they won’t say that out loud, but they’ll say that it’s because of the energy usage, right? And so that was where that came from, and I just think it’s interesting. I always go through these things, because they lay it out right on their website, and you can just track it if you just go back far enough and find these articles.

Preston Pysh (00:11:01):

It’s all about control. The whole thing is about control. I guess the ultimate irony for me is, especially on Twitter, you see people that just kind of stand behind these really artificial narratives of maxi or, “Don’t you like the environment?” And these people that are just chirping these narratives on their behalf, as the few puppeteers are kind of sitting at the top orchestrating everything in order to keep pulling the strings.

Preston Pysh (00:11:30):

I’m going to go into a much deeper dive on Proof of Stake, how it functions, and how it does blocks with Jason Lowery next week, where he’s coming out swinging. I think he’s going to have some very in depth arguments around how it functions, why it provides all the control into the hands of a few, and how it’s consolidating and centralizing forces only trend towards further centralization in the future. It’s going to be pretty comprehensive, so I guess I’ll cover that with him more on the technical side, but I really want to have these articles that you’re talking about.

Preston Pysh (00:12:09):

I guess I can share the thread that you’re talking about here, because it lays out each one of these articles. It does a great job kind of providing the resources that you’re talking about, and I’ll have that in the show notes for people if they want to check it out and give a bit more detail. Let’s go to Central Bank Digital Currencies, because when we look at this merge, we look at the centralizing authority that now exists to control the direction of ETH, which is the biggest stable coin token provider out there by a lot, at least today.

Preston Pysh (00:12:46):

To think that through the validation process, transactions can be included or not included based off of some of these validators and people that are running these validators, the few people that are running these validators, it becomes very concerning when you look at the Central Bank Digital Currencies. Walk us through your framework of how you think about these things in general, where you see it going in a five year timetable, how are governments going to issue their Central Bank Digital Currencies, because I suspect you are of the opinion that they are going to do this, what it means from a privacy standpoint. Just take us through all of it, Sam.

Sam Callahan (00:13:27):

Yeah. Look, like I started studying Central Bank Digital Currencies years ago. I’ve tried to read a lot of what the central banks have put out in terms of their research, from the Bank of Canada to Bank of England, Bank of International Settlements, IMF, National Bureau of Economic Research, Fed. I’ve just kind of read a lot about it. Initially, the reason I did that was because I saw it as the number one threat to freedom out there. I see it as a potential tool of surveillance and a tool that could infringe on privacy, like you said, as well as lead to violations of human rights.

Sam Callahan (00:14:05):

And so I started to look into it very, very deeply. The more I looked into it, the less and less concerned I became about them, because I think there’s a ton of risks that lay at the feet of those who issue it, AKA the central banks. A lot of people focus on the privacy, and for good reason. It could potentially create an Orwellian kind of future, where they would be able to track all of our financial transactions. They’d be able to see everything that we do, who we transact with, and they would use that metadata to paint a picture of who we are as a person.

Sam Callahan (00:14:42):

And so 80% of central banks use big data, and they use that for their economic research and to inform policy decisions. They’re already using data, and they just want more of it, so what data they don’t have is if I just gave you a $20 bill, Preston, and then they don’t have that data, and so they want to have everything. What that would do, it would allow them to basically do whatever they want in terms of changing monetary policy to more social policy or to push social agenda if they wanted to. I don’t know if you saw this thread it was like Darin Feinstein. He posted this thread, and he laid it out so perfectly.

Sam Callahan (00:15:20):

He was just like, “Purchase denied. You’ve consumed your quota of meat for the month. Come back in 72 hours,” or “You didn’t vote. Purchase denied. You have to go back and do your voting polls,” or “Purchase denied. You made an offensive social media post,” and so that’s the kind of thing that could be enabled with Central Bank Digital Currency. Not only that, but it could really remove the need for cash in society, and cash is one of the only ways that we transact with any kind of anonymity today, and so they were trying to remove cash, and people will say that they aren’t, and they’ll say they aren’t.

Sam Callahan (00:16:00):

So in all their papers, they say, “Hey, this will compliment cash,” but when you keep reading all their papers, they basically assume that it’ll be a cashless society. They always include one line that says, “Don’t worry. This will compliment cash,” and then the entire rest of the tone of the paper assumes that there won’t be cash, and even their models that they run, they assume there won’t be cash in the models. When they say, “Oh, we’ll keep cash,” going cashless doesn’t just happen. It’s a policy decision.

Sam Callahan (00:16:28):

And so they’re assuming that in some time in the future, there’ll be a policy decision that will remove cash completely. If that’s the case, then it basically entraps everybody into the system, and nobody will be able to get out, except there’s Bitcoin, but if Bitcoin didn’t exist, they wouldn’t be able to get out of the system, and so they can do all kinds of things. They can do negative interest rates if they want. They could do targeted stimulus checks. They could do expired stimulus checks, so to stimulate spending, they say, “Hey, you’ve got to use this in 30 days or you’re not getting it.”

Preston Pysh (00:17:02):

We literally just saw that this week with China, right?

Sam Callahan (00:17:05):

Yeah, no. Exactly.

Preston Pysh (00:17:07):

Yeah, yeah. Supposedly, it was cash, their digital CBDC yuan, and it had a duration or a time limit that you had to spend it by.

Sam Callahan (00:17:18):

Exactly. China’s been doing this since 2014, so they’re a little head of the curve. We also saw an example of how this could go, because China has a social credit system, and there was kind of banking protests happening throughout China. When there was protests about it, they also had these health codes associated with the COVID lockdowns. If you’re healthy, you’re green, and if you’re not, you’re red. What they did for the protestors, you can’t access trains, you can’t access public transportation if you have COVID, if you have a red health code or whatever.

Sam Callahan (00:17:53):

For these people trying to just protest the banks and get on the trains to join the protest, suddenly their health code turned red, and so they couldn’t access the transportation. That’s the kind of power that these Central Bank Digital Currencies would grant these governments as well as central banks. The thing is, they actually think that this is better. They think that they want the data, because they’re a public institution, and so they think people are worried about private companies and FinTech companies having all the data, because they can use it for profitable purposes, selling advertisements, and stuff like that.

Sam Callahan (00:18:28):

But they assume that they’re benevolent and everyone trusts them, because they’re a public institution and there’s no reason for them to use the data for profits, so we should have all the data, but we know that governments abuse data and have been spying on its citizens for the last 10 years since the Patriot Act. I mean, we know this because of Edward Snowden and what he exposed. And so to think that this won’t be used nefariously against the people, I think, is very naive. That’s kind of like the privacy component of this.

Sam Callahan (00:19:01):

But what I want to focus on is I think that this will actually be the nail IN the coffin for central bank credibility. I think it’s because they’ll completely botch this if they try to go ahead with Central Bank Digital Currency, and they have no idea what will happen to the global financial system when to introduce a brand new asset with these characteristics, and what it will do to the banking industry, what it will do to the capital flows. We can get into that right now, but I don’t know if I want to-

Preston Pysh (00:19:30):

No, I do want to go that direction. I think that’s the logical next step. Keep going.

Sam Callahan (00:19:36):

Yeah. Well, the first, the major, major problem is it would basically dis-intermediate the commercial banking system. What a CBDC is, there’s two examples. You can have a token-based CBDC, which would be just a stable coin, private stable coin, but it would be issued by the central bank, and it would have anonymity built into it. There’s an account-based CBDC, which mimics commercial banking deposits. Now, central banks have all consider both, and they just shoot out the token one because they don’t want anonymity.

Sam Callahan (00:20:09):

They want to track everything. There’s only one central bank I know of still considering that, the Bank of Canada, but every single one has decided, “No. We’re going to do the account based one,” and so the account based one is really unique, because basically it would have the liquidity profile of a digital cash, but it would also offer interest, like a bond. And so that asset has never existed before, so it’d be a brand new asset. What they’re worried about is that people would remove deposits out of commercial banks and put it into the CBDC accounts, because it’s technically safer because it’s issued by central bank.

Sam Callahan (00:20:47):

So it’s like risk free. You don’t have the counterparty risk of a commercial bank. It’s the central bank, so you can trust it, so they’re worried that it’s going to drain commercial banks to deposits. The reason this is important is commercial bank deposits are liabilities on its balance sheet, and they’re backed by assets. It typically consists of bonds, loans, other financial assets. If a CBDC is introduced, some households and businesses who hold bank deposits are going to exchange them for CBDs, and that’ll be just like if they took out bank notes at an atm.

Sam Callahan (00:21:22):

Then, you reduce the assets and liabilities of the bank, and you shrink the bank’s balance sheet in that process. When you do that, you are basically making it so they’re shrinking the balance sheet, they’re going to lose those deposits, and then it’s going to make them more hesitant to lend out because they’re not going to have that funding to lend out and do their banking practices. And so you have these dynamics where when you lose the deposits in the commercial banking system, it’s going to increase the cost of funding for these banks, it’s going to eat into their profit margins.

Sam Callahan (00:21:56):

Then, they’re going to raise interest rates to try to make up for that. That’ll result in lower lending in the economy, decrease economic activity, and potential bad situation where the banks are really struggling with their profits, because basically the CBDC is sucking out all of their business. It’s basically like a suck, so that’s what they mean by a commercial bank disintermediation, and so it can really lead to financial instability, and so they’re worried about this. All these central banks, they’re really worried about this. Their ideas for trying to overcome this problem are really poor. They want to have price caps of $3,000 on the CBDC accounts.

Sam Callahan (00:22:38):

That’s a problem, because if you’re a firm or an individual, every time you’re going to vary in size and needs in terms of what you want to transact with in terms of the amount, so it could undermine the actual usefulness of the CBDC for industry and commerce if there’s this fixed cap on what you can hold in the account, so it makes no sense. Then, their other idea is to penalize the people who hold more than the 3,000 CAP limit with negative interest rates, and that’s a slashing mechanism. It’s very like Proof of Stake, where you’re basically slashing people who aren’t following the rules of the system and taking their money for them.

Sam Callahan (00:23:17):

Then, their last thing, this is the funniest one, was when they drain the money out of the commercial banking system, one of their solutions is to basically offset it with a liquidity providing operation via the central bank, and expand their balance sheet. They’re going to introduce this asset, for whatever reason, that dis-intermediates the commercial banking system. Then, their plan is to basically plug it by printing more money and bailing out the banks that they just basically took their business, and so it makes absolutely zero sense to me why they would take these risks to issue the Central Bank Digital Currency. This even gets worse during a bank run.

Sam Callahan (00:23:57):

If there’s like any kind of uncertainty or worry about the commercial banks, now that you have this option where you could run to a Central Bank Digital Currency account, it can lead to bank runs, like an increased risk of bank runs, because you have this new risk-free asset backed by the central bank that doesn’t have the counterparty risk of commercial banks, and so this has actually happened throughout history. Back in the 1930s, there was the French Great Depression. There was savers who held their savings at banks, but they weren’t backed by the government, but there were these government backed savings institutions that were regulated, similar to what a CBDC would be.

Sam Callahan (00:24:37):

What happened was there was a substantial bank run, and it was worse because there was this disparity between the… One was regulated, one was backed by a safe issuer, and the other was a commercial bank. What had happened was it was a terrible time where there’s a complete bank run in France, because there’s these two kind of deposits with different safety kind of assurances. And so it could lead to bank runs, it could lead bank dis-intermediation. The central banks are just continuing to go along with these plans even though these risks are extremely real, and it’s very uncertain what would even happen if they went along with it. So that’s only one thing, but I’ll let you kind of…

Preston Pysh (00:25:21):

Well, so you’re bringing up these risks. I agree with you. I think they do understand that these risks exist if they implement one of these things. And so as I’m thinking through that, I’m also kind of thinking, “Are they going to be completely inept in their decision making, because there’s so much analysis by paralysis happening at their level where they just can’t even make a decision, because they understand all these risks? And in the meantime, does that just allow the rest of the system to continue to implode in real time as they’re continuing to chew over all of this analysis by paralysis?

Sam Callahan (00:25:59):

Yeah. I mean, there’s so many things to consider, and you’re right. I mean, it seems like a massive waste of resources and time that they’re spending on researching these things that seems to be looking for a problem. It’s a solution looking for a problem. They actually read a lot like ICO white papers from 2017, where they come up with all these problems, and then they think they’re smart enough to out design them. I get déjà vu reading them. The other thing is that the security risks of having all of the data in a centralized place…

Preston Pysh (00:26:28):

Oh, disastrous.

Sam Callahan (00:26:30):

All the data. Yeah, so you have these vulnerabilities that could be exploited of the entire national financial system, and so you have sensitive data on an unprecedented scale.

Preston Pysh (00:26:41):

I think they’re scared to death of that.

Sam Callahan (00:26:43):

Yeah. They should be.

Preston Pysh (00:26:44):

Yeah. They should.

Sam Callahan (00:26:46):

They’re not good. Central banks are not good. There’s been a history of hacks all over the place. The Federal Reserve alone detected 50 cyber breaches from 2011 to 2015. Just this last July, this kind of went under the radar, but there was a huge Chinese espionage effort that got exposed in July. For the last decade, they have been infiltrating the Federal Reserve, and the Senate committee on Homeland Security blamed the federal reserves for weak data protection, and they were a victim of a decade’s long espionage effort, right? And so the Federal Reserve was unable to detect, they didn’t have the policies and procedures in place, and even though they knew there was ties for these people to China, they continued to let them have access to confidential information.

Sam Callahan (00:27:34):

That happened just in July, and these are the people that we’re supposed to give all of the data to. It’s absolutely insane to me, and so you’re going to have this potential of significantly increased centralization by storing all this data on a single ledger, and it just becomes a honey pot for cyber criminals to come after, and why wouldn’t they come after it? You can literally attack the very money of a country, and then just like when Russia invaded Ukraine, Anonymous hacked the Russian Central Bank in weeks after. They made it look easy. They released 28 gigabytes of data and 35,000 confidential files just like that. I mean-

Preston Pysh (00:28:12):

I was not aware of that.

Sam Callahan (00:28:14):

Yeah.

Preston Pysh (00:28:14):

That’s crazy.

Sam Callahan (00:28:15):

Yeah. I know. It’s crazy, so the security is just another thing, so you bank this intermediation. You’ve got the security, The other thing is currency substitution, so dollarization is a big problem in emerging markets. If Turkey right now is struggling to implement monetary policy as their lira is inflating at a rapid pace because all their citizens aren’t holding liras. They’re holding dollars, and so they can’t effectively implement their monetary policy. When you have a Central Bank Digital Currency that can cross borders very easily, it could basically infringe on the monetary sovereignty of any country in the world.

Sam Callahan (00:28:58):

And so if is a CBDC, like the IMF actually talks about this with Bitcoin and Tribal Stablecoins. They call it cryptoization, where you have parallel money happening in economies and it can really cause financial instability and problem for the central bank, especially central banks that have high inflation and they’ve been proven to be incompetent where their citizens want to leave their currency. It makes it really hard for them, but the exact same thing can happen with the Central Bank Digital Currency.

Sam Callahan (00:29:25):

It could lead to basically one currency taking over, especially when you have these changes in the arbitrage opportunities between interest rates of the Central Bank Digital Currencies, because they are going to have interest rates attached to them, and so it leads to interconnectedness. It leads to increased spillover effects that could happen when you have more interconnectedness because these CBDCs could be easily transferred. And so again, it leads to increased risk of financial instability because of these currency substitution risks, and [inaudible 00:29:58] just keep going.

Preston Pysh (00:29:58):

No. List them all. I’m writing them all down here. Just keep going.

Sam Callahan (00:30:02):

The other one’s legal. These central banks don’t even have the legal rights to issue these Central Bank Digital Currencies. I’m not a lawyer, but I read a couple papers written by lawyers, and they say, “Do central bank laws authorize the creation of central bank liabilities and the issuance of currency to the public in digital form?”

Sam Callahan (00:30:22):

And no, they don’t, and so you have 107 central banks currently looking into Central Bank Digital Currencies. That’s 95% of GDP. Only 23% of them maybe have laws that would allow them to issue them. Obviously, that can change, but that’s going to take time. You’ve got to change the monetary laws, and some of it, it’s constitutional and stuff like that, so that’s the other thing. Then, the other thing is execution. How do you-

Preston Pysh (00:30:51):

Oh, ahem on that one.

Sam Callahan (00:30:53):

Yeah. How do you assume that there’s going to be demand for the Central Bank Digital Currencies? Nobody seems to want them. The central bankers are writing all this research and papers, and nobody wants them. I haven’t met very many citizens that are really pumped about Central Bank Digital Currency, and not only that; you’ve got to build all the infrastructure, hardware. How do you do storage? How do you build a wallet? What’s the wallet look like? How do you distribute this so that it’s financially inclusive for older individuals who have a hard time with technology or rural individuals who don’t have the access to it? And so there’s all these kind of questions that come into mind.

Sam Callahan (00:31:31):

My favorite is the ECB, because they say, “We are consulting the public,” and it’s great. We have great responses, and they did two public consultation periods. The first one was 8000 responses. I didn’t get to look at them, because I didn’t know about it at the time, but I read their report, and they were like, “It was a great, great… There was so many of them. There’s so much interest in this. It’s great. Privacy is their main concern,” and they said, “We’re going to keep going with it,” so then they had another consultation period, and this time I was aware of it happening. You can actually, there was 18,000 responses on the second one, and I read 14,000 of these individual responses. I translated them.

Preston Pysh (00:32:12):

Of course, you did, Sam. Of course, you did.

Sam Callahan (00:32:15):

They’re funny. They’re what you’d expect. They’re like, “No, we not want this. This is a terrible idea. We do not want to give you this power. This is going to be a human rights…” Basically, I’m just paraphrasing all of them, because I would say 98% of that, of those feedback comments, were just that. Then, if you go to the speeches that Christine Lagarde and Fabio Panetta, who’s the head of the crypto task force for the Euro system, they still are saying right now that, “Oh. It’s such great demand for it.” They’re basically gaslighting and saying that the amount of comments means that there’s good interest in this demand, even though the comments themselves are like, “No. We do not want this.”

Preston Pysh (00:32:59):

Oh my god.

Sam Callahan (00:33:01):

There’s no demand for these things, and so that’s where it’s the difference with Bitcoin. Bitcoin’s demand is grassroots, because it’s an actual good product that people want, whereas this is just like they would have to be top down and enforced. Actually, they’ve said, “How are we going to get the commercial banks to do this, to help us spread this, when it’s going to dis-intermediate them and take down their business?” They’re trying to incentivize by printing money and giving money to the banks to help them push CBDC adoption. That’s one of their plans, and so all of these things together, you’re just, “Good luck. Good luck trying to get this out. Even if you can get it out, the odds of it actually working out are so slim.”

Sam Callahan (00:33:45):

And then I think it’s going to end a disaster. I think they’re going to mess it up. I think there’s a huge reputational risk on these credit banks whose credibility are completely in the gutter right now. I mean, they were literally never lower, and I think it might be the final nail in the coffin, and all Bitcoin has to do is function at this point. It just has to keep doing its thing because it makes sense to me. It’s hubris. They’re going to shoot themselves by thinking that they can get away with Central Bank Digital Currency, and that’d be so perfect for the central banks who think they’re so smart that they can get away with this, and then it just turns out to be a disaster. Then, once everything falls, Bitcoin with TikTok next block, it’ll just be working perfectly, and maybe they’ll understand why it’s a good idea then after they try to go through all the Central Bank Digital Currency nonsense, so that’s my sense of it.

Preston Pysh (00:34:40):

This is why I love talking to you, because you know what? You do the work. You do the Proof of Work. You read all of this stuff in nitty gritty detail to formulate a, what I think is, an objective opinion. I’m sure people who want CBDCs, which there’s probably five out there in the world, they’ve got their own opinions, but you have done the work to understand this. When I’m hearing all this, the thing that I just keep thinking though is, what is their course of action to bring this about, because I think there’s going to be some that do try it.

Preston Pysh (00:35:17):

When think about that execution risk that you brought up, I think that’s a huge one, and it’s like, “How are they going to go about this, because they know they don’t have the technical chops in-house to do this?” So they have to outsource it to some type of company. They have to either go to a coin that already exists, and basically nationalize it or take it over, or maybe they just start running all their own validators, and they control at the protocol level, and they can reorg transactions any way they want, or maybe it’s a combination of multiple of those.

Sam Callahan (00:35:55):

Yeah. I’ve always said some of these really regulated, private Stablecoins, it might make sense for them to just buy them, and basically it’s happened before. The Fed has bought, I can’t remember what, but they’ve actually acquired technology for the private sector before, so I could definitely see that happening.

Preston Pysh (00:36:15):

Is that most plausible?

Sam Callahan (00:36:16):

Yeah, I think so. I think it’s definitely a plausible outcome. The problem is, man, all of the central banks are doing this, right? There is a first mover advantage. It’s the currency substitution problem that I talked about. This is why the digital, this is why the ECBs are so fast with this. They’re faster than anybody. They’ve grown the most in the last two years, and you know why? Because they had a negative interest rate. If somebody else, like the dollar, a CBDC, that could provide a higher rate of interest and could cross borders instantly, they would be at risk because they had literally negative interest rates.

Sam Callahan (00:36:53):

They basically say this in some of their models and some of their papers, and so they’re going after it. Once these governments and central banks set a course of action and get really obsessed with something, it’s so difficult for them and costly to stop. It just seems like they’re kind of on this road where it’s a prisoner’s dilemma, where one central bank’s going to do it, so then they feel like they can’t fall behind, so they have to go after it themselves and, “Even though it’s not a good idea, we’re going to keep doing it,” and so I think it is going to happen. I just don’t think it’s a good idea.

Sam Callahan (00:37:27):

It’s so easy to see why China’s going after it, because the banks are state owned, so there’s not a risk of the [inaudible 00:37:36], and there’s stringent capital controls in place, so the currency substitution stuff isn’t as bad either. They already don’t have any privacy, so they don’t really care about that, and so it’s like everyone sees China doing it and thinks, “Oh. We should do it too,” but China doesn’t really have the same risks because of what they are all about. I think this is definitely happening. It’s funny. I do all the paperwork. I do read [inaudible 00:38:04] this, but I was talking to Jeff Booth the other day.

Sam Callahan (00:38:08):

I was like, “Do you ever think about Central Bank Digital Currencies?

Sam Callahan (00:38:11):

And he said something like, “I haven’t thought one iota about Central Bank Digital Currencies.”

Sam Callahan (00:38:15):

I was always like, “Oh. That’s never a good one, Jeff.”

Sam Callahan (00:38:17):

He said, “Oh. No, no, no.”

Sam Callahan (00:38:19):

And I was like, “Why?”

Sam Callahan (00:38:20):

And he’s like, “Well, they’re doomed to fail,” and I’m thinking about all these things that I just mentioned.

Sam Callahan (00:38:26):

He’s like, “No, it’s because it’s central planning.”

Sam Callahan (00:38:29):

I was like-

Preston Pysh (00:38:29):

Yeah. It’s censorship.

Sam Callahan (00:38:31):

Yeah, but it’s also they think that the problem is they don’t have the right tools to centrally plan, and they need a Central Bank Digital Currency where they can-

Preston Pysh (00:38:41):

More control. Yeah.

Sam Callahan (00:38:42):

Yeah. Targeted monetary policy, targeted taxes, all these things. They’re like, “This is it. Now things are going to get smoother. These businesses, these boom-bust cycles are going to be reduced,” but they don’t realize the actual flaw is central planning itself. And so even if they get everything right, even if they do everything right, it’s still doomed to fail, because just underlying everything is this idea that central planning works, and so that’s the last-

Preston Pysh (00:39:08):

First principles.

Sam Callahan (00:39:10):

First principles.

Preston Pysh (00:39:11):

Yeah.

Sam Callahan (00:39:12):

Again, I used to be worried about Central Bank Digital Currencies. Now I think it might be the biggest boom for Bitcoin in the end.

Preston Pysh (00:39:20):

Yeah, yeah.

Sam Callahan (00:39:21):

It happened.

Preston Pysh (00:39:22):

It may accelerate it, because as they try to put their fingers on even more controls, the complexity itself will eat itself. The more that they try to intermingle and control the uncontrollable, you’re just setting yourself up for just total failure. Hey, so this is what I love about talking to you, Sam. You do a lot of research. One of the things that you’ve recently been studying is just the history of the European Central Bank, the Euro. Walk us through, first of all, why did you go about in this research, and then talk to us about some of the stuff that you uncovered and things that you found interesting.

Sam Callahan (00:40:04):

Yeah. I started researching this a few months ago. Honestly, I looked at the Euro and European situation, and this was kind of before the energy crisis really got bad, but I saw it as a really weak link in the global financial system, and I wanted to understand more about the ECB and how it works for my research in the Bank of International Settlements. I knew that it started, with them, the idea of European and Monetary Union started with the Bank of International Settlements. Then, when I started researching it, I guess it was way more complicated than I thought it was going to be. It’s essentially a political creature. It’s not economic.

Sam Callahan (00:40:46):

To understand the Euro is to understand entire European politics of the last 40 years, and so I was like, “Oh man,” so then I started reading all these books, and it was really fascinating because I realized this thing’s kind of doomed to fail. In fact, all monetary unions in history have always failed. It’s just a matter of time, because in times of crisis, monetary rules get thrown out the window, and eventually these governments adhere to their own self-interests, and that’s just what happens every single time. When the Euro was being created, major economists at the time were warning about how stupid it was essentially. Milton Friedman, he basically said it’s so silly to have monetary union where you have disparate economies, different fiscal policies, tax policies-

Preston Pysh (00:41:35):

Cultures.

Sam Callahan (00:41:36):

Everything. And so he’s like, “This is not going to work. Eventually it’s going to fall apart,” but since it was a political reason for doing it, and the reason why is it’s more like US hegemony was kind of coming up, and they thought that this would help compete because there’s 340 million people under the Euro, 330 million United States. They thought it would just be grouping together and make it more powerful. They were worried, because Germany had just united after the fall of the Berlin Wall. They were worried that they would have too much power, and so they wanted to band together. Germany getting a bunch of power again isn’t really what they wanted, so they wanted to unite France and Germany under a monetary union.

Sam Callahan (00:42:24):

They said, “This is what we’re going to do.”

Sam Callahan (00:42:26):

And the economist said, “This isn’t a good idea.”

Sam Callahan (00:42:28):

And they were like, “Well, we’re going to do it anyway,” and so politicians kind of thought they knew best. Then, the real reason why I looked into the European Monetary Union and the Euro is because I saw a ton of similarities between the European debt crisis of the early 2010s in terms of what’s going on right now with Italy, the peripheral countries, and the debt problems, and what the ECBs trying to do right now, which I think is riding two horses, one ask essentially, as they try to fight inflation and try to keep these yields down to prevent some kind of major default from happening.

Sam Callahan (00:43:03):

The difference between back then and now is back then it was Greece, which was a pretty small country. This time, it’s Italy, which is the third biggest economy in Europe. The consequences are much more dire if something bad happens right now, and then the other major difference is the inflation. That really constrains the central bank, but by studying the European debt crisis in the early-2010s, you kind of see what the playbook that they used was, and that they’re doing the exact same thing now, just kind of in hyper drive, and now with inflation to complicate things. And so that’s kind of why I dug into it, and it was really interesting. My TLDR is that, wow, the ECB is in a really, really hard spot right now. That’s kind of putting it mildly.

Preston Pysh (00:43:56):

Mildly, yeah. Well, look, going back to the complexity that we were talking about earlier, it applies itself there. Culturally, you have different dynamics at play within each one of these countries. At the crux of it, Lyn Alden does such a great job talking about the implications of net exporters versus net importers, and how that’s at the keystone of everything that’s playing out in the world right now.

Preston Pysh (00:44:21):

When you look at Europe and you look at how many countries are actually net exporters, especially right now it’s like zero. But in a normal functioning economy, Germany is the only net exporter amongst them. I think there’s maybe one or two more. I think maybe Denmark’s one and maybe one other, and so that dynamic is a huge stress point for the currency itself as they’re trying to defend its value in on this global stage, and how they’re trying to defend it versus countries that are just total net consumers.

Preston Pysh (00:44:58):

It just puts this political headbutting in place. I think what we’re looking at right now with the whole energy thing now taking front stage, obviously with Russia cutting off the supplies to them, and then all their energy policies over the past decade that have led them to not having a stable grid and having independence on that front, I think it’s just taking a magnifying glass and then putting another magnifying glass over top of that, and just shining it straight down on the area.

Preston Pysh (00:45:30):

It’s very concerning. I can only imagine what this winter’s going to bring. I obviously don’t, and as you don’t either, want any type of difficulty for anybody around the world, but as I’m looking at the situation, it is very dire. It is not looking good, and I think it’s something that is going to have a ripple effect into the rest of the world as we just go into the next two quarters. I can’t even imagine what this is going to bring and what it means.

Preston Pysh (00:46:01):

Not to go too long here, but then you just overlay where we’re at with the credit markets and how they literally have been pegged down to zero, just jam packed like a spring down to 0% since the financial crisis, right? Now, all of a sudden everybody stops trusting each other, and you’ve got this energy thing playing out, which is going to just keep these inflation prints sky high, and when you’re looking at that disparity and that negative spread between inflation, which is your reality or these yields are at in their credit markets, it’s a checkmate type of situation.

Preston Pysh (00:46:41):

I had this question at the end of the show, but I’m going to just ask it right now. Are we in the end game? Is this the global end game that everybody’s been talking about since the global financial crisis? Because I know where I stand, and I don’t want to answer it, because I don’t want to bias or anything like that. I think you already know what my answer is, but I want to hear what your answer is.

Sam Callahan (00:47:03):

I mean, I was just talking to my roommates about this. It just seems like there’s one thing after the other that are just kind of combining right now to create this perfect storm. I mean, the Japan news today about the valuation of the Yen, the fact that how fast the fed is raising rates right now and the pressure that it’s putting on the European Central Bank, as well as the BOJ and their currencies, it’s kind of scary, man.

Sam Callahan (00:47:29):

All these currencies are losing value at such a rapid rate right now, and then you’ve got the debt on top of everything. That’s why I gets so annoyed at the fed presser the other day and not a single question about the debt levels, and they talk about keeping these rates high. I’m like, “Good luck. You’ve got zombie companies in the United States, and then you got all of these other sovereigns around the world with debt levels up to their ears. How are you going to keep rates up at these levels for too long?”

Preston Pysh (00:47:57):

How is nobody asking about the debt spiral? How are they not asking about this? Do they not get an invite if they’re that type of person that’s going to actually ask a hard question, or what’s happening in these pressers? How is it not coming up? How is it these layup questions?

Sam Callahan (00:48:15):

I think that they would risk their jobs, but at some point somebody’s got to do it. Somebody’s got to sacrifice themselves and ask these questions, because it’s ridiculous, honestly. Somebody’s got to ask the hard questions to these central bankers, but unfortunately, I think you’re right. I think once they ask one hard question, they’re out, and then they bring in somebody else who’s going to just ask the right questions.

Sam Callahan (00:48:39):

But one thing that I would say in terms of, “Is this the end game right now?”, I think there is this underappreciated possibility of coordination, and actually one central bank coordination as well as government coordination. I think that’s what we’re kind of hearing today from US officials and Japan officials about, maybe we’ll see some kind of coordination there. I know Ben Bernanke said that they can buy foreign sovereign bonds if they need to. It’s in their charter or whatever, and so you could be in this situation where the fed becomes the lender or the last resort for the world. It just becomes more centralized. That could be the next ultimate bubble.

Preston Pysh (00:49:19):

Now, so who’s paying for that with their buying power, right?

Sam Callahan (00:49:24):

Yeah. I don’t know.

Preston Pysh (00:49:24):

If the US is stepping in to save other countries at this point to defend the global system, we’re incentivized to do that, but there’s somebody that has to pay a price. There has to be an expense. The aviator in me comes out. You can’t have lift without corresponding drag on the air foil, right?

Sam Callahan (00:49:48):

Did you see that there was this video of some Clinton symposium-

Preston Pysh (00:49:54):

Yes.

Sam Callahan (00:49:54):

And they were talking about, “Where are they going to get the money for these ESG?”

Preston Pysh (00:49:57):

Oh my God, dude.

Sam Callahan (00:49:59):

[inaudible 00:49:59] was like, “We’ll find it. We found $17 trillion for COVID.

Preston Pysh (00:50:00):

Trillion. Trillion.

Sam Callahan (00:50:03):

So, that’s what I think about that question, man. I’m like, “They just don’t even think about that.”

Preston Pysh (00:50:08):

She was serious as a heart attack. We’re talking about one of the guests that was on the stage. She made a comment that, “So where are they going to get the funding for all these ESG, net zero by 2050?” Things that everybody’s talking about, and her comment was, “Well, we found $17 trillion to pay for COVID. We just got to do something like that.”

Sam Callahan (00:50:33):

They’re like, “Yeah, I don’t think we’re led by serious people, and they don’t seem to think about these things.” But again, so one of the things I’ve been studying is the Plaza Accord of ’85, and everyone always says like, “Oh. Can that happen?” And it gets brought up every so often. I read this tweet from this currency guy. This was three years ago this tweet was written.

Sam Callahan (00:50:57):

But it said like, “Yeah. Everyone always brings up the Plaza Accord and inflation, and both never happened.” And then I was thinking like, “Well, if inflation’s here, what are the possibilities we have another Plaza Accord?” For those who don’t know, it’s where G-5 Nations got together and coordinated to devalue the dollar, and there’re different theories about why the US wanted to do that, but all I’m saying is that there’s a possibility that there is some coordinated effort.

Sam Callahan (00:51:21):

There was one answer from J. Powell at the presser where, unless you know about the Bank for International Settlements in Switzerland, he basically said, “Well, every month, we go and we talk to other central banks behind closed doors, and we talk to them, see, coordinate, and cooperate with each other, and try to align their policies.” And so that was a one, I’ve never heard him talk about that in a pressor. That’s the one thing I’ll say. Obviously, things look dire. We might be in the end game. I don’t know. Can they keep this going with some kind of coordinated effort? Maybe. That’s kind of what I would say to that.

Preston Pysh (00:51:59):

Well, and so let’s run the scenario that next month we just start to see disgusting numbers in the economy. It’s very clear we’re then going through a recession, and you’re seeing just all the economic energy being sucked out of the system. You see, instead of these inflation prints, let’s just say that you start to see deflationary prints kind of manifest themself in short order.

Preston Pysh (00:52:26):

They have to step in. They have to step in some type of meaningful way, because for something like that to happen, something very substantial has to break down. It’s not like you’re going to get that type of quick response without it being just something just massive, seismic shift in the functioning order of the global economy, so they’re going to have to step in. They’re going to have to do something, because you’re going to just have unbound impairment in credit markets for that shift or for that recession to set in, in such an abrupt way. They have to come with just another fire hose, COVID-level response.

Sam Callahan (00:53:08):

And bigger, right?

Preston Pysh (00:53:09):

And probably bigger, and I just don’t know how you hold it together. I don’t know how you would expect the bond market to, because think about it. Prior to COVID, they couldn’t find inflation if they tried. It was like this mythical creature. Now all of a sudden, everybody saw what happens when you expand broad money, or the M2, and so if they step in with the fire hose and all this printing, that bond market’s going to be looking at it and saying, “Oh my God. If the last go around was expanded by this amount and it gave us these numbers in the inflation gauge, whatever this next round is, it’s going to be that and maybe more,” and I think you just see credit yields explode.

Sam Callahan (00:53:56):

And then… I mean, even today-

Preston Pysh (00:53:58):

It’s crazy.

Sam Callahan (00:54:01):

I mean, the volatility the last couple days in yields-

Preston Pysh (00:54:05):

It’s crazy.

Sam Callahan (00:54:06):

It’s been crazy, so that’s why right now it seems possible this whole Yen thing, and couple that with what’s going on in Europe. It’s those two things. It just seems like they could combine together and cause that response that we’re talking about. When that happens, because I still don’t think they connect the dots between what happened in terms of their fiscal and monetary policies. They still blame it-

Preston Pysh (00:54:37):

They have to. They have to.

Sam Callahan (00:54:39):

Yes. I mean, inflation was complex with the pandemic, and there was definitely supply side issues that are causing it, but I still think that most of it is like that. That was the cause of it. It wasn’t the fiscal. It wasn’t the stimulus. I think there’s still people that think that we can just print money and not have these problems, the MMT crowd and stuff like that.

Preston Pysh (00:55:04):

Regardless of what they think, I know the credit markets are sniffing it out, and they’re totally seeing it.

Sam Callahan (00:55:10):

The interesting thing is, again, Europe right now. You’ve got the ECB who was kind of forced to start to raise rates, because every other central bank was raising rates and the Euro was tanking as a result, as there’s fear of a recession, which is another reason why there was downward pressure on the Euro. But all the other central banks were raising, so then the Christine Lagarde comes out and says, “Yeah. We’re going to raise rates.”

Sam Callahan (00:55:36):

Italian bond spreads spike just for the mention of it, right? Which leads them to announce an unlimited bond buying tool, just like Mario Draghi. I honestly, I just don’t know what the ECBs doing. They are screwed because of the fundamental design flaws of the Euro, the fact that all these other governments could spend money, and they have no control over them, and they’re still trying to fight inflation. You can’t really blame these governments for spending money because of this energy crisis, but they’re doing it, right?

Preston Pysh (00:56:08):

Yeah.

Sam Callahan (00:56:09):

And so I’m trying to keep track of all of these governments, like the UK $180 billion, 6% of GDP. Germany has printed $95 billion Euros. Sweden and Finland have bailed out, given liquidity facilities to utility companies worth $33 billion Euros. Switzerland has bailed out energy companies. Austria is $500 Euros a year until 2024 for all. That’s $2, $3, $4 billion Euros. Greece just announced something. Netherlands has just announced something. I mean, they’re all printing, and they’re trying to bring in inflation. I just picture Christine Lagarde is like-

Preston Pysh (00:56:47):

They’re trying to bring in inflation. I love that.

Sam Callahan (00:56:51):

What is she supposed to do? Have you seen Vegas Vacation, like Chevy Chase? Have you seen that movie?

Preston Pysh (00:56:57):

Yeah, of course. Yeah.

Sam Callahan (00:56:58):

Yeah, so there’s a scene where he is going through Hoover Dam, and he’s walking, and then he picks out a pebble off the wall of the rock, and then a spring starts, and he stuck his bubble gum in it. That’s what I picture it’s like Lagarde’s sticking her bubble gum in it, and then another leak springs, and then she’s got her finger on it, and that’s the inflation. Then, she’s rolling over German bonds to buy, Italian bonds, trying to keep that in check. Then, she’s over her shoulder. She’s just like, “I got an unlimited tool too. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Preston Pysh (00:57:29):

It is. It’s crazy.

Sam Callahan (00:57:33):

It’s ridiculous. When I look at that and I just see that, I just see these central banks are all going to go the same route eventually. They haven’t had these really dire energy crisis that had justified these printing right now, but I just see it all leads to the same place, which is-

Preston Pysh (00:57:54):

And if people think it can be contained regionally, I think they’re kidding themselves. They don’t understand how interconnected the world is. It’s not like it’s just going to happen in Europe, and it’s not going to spread to other parts of the planet. The world is so interconnected at this point through commerce and trade. You’re not able to just contain it in one spot. That’s crazy talk. This is the last question I got for you. Because you’re a very astute observer of your environment, what is one of the most important things happening right now that you think a lot of people are missing or not paying attention to?

Sam Callahan (00:58:39):

I just immediately go to Bitcoin.

Preston Pysh (00:58:44):

Beyond the obvious. Beyond the obvious for people in the community, yeah.

Sam Callahan (00:58:48):

No, but specifically with Bitcoin, I’ve held through 2018 an 80 percent draw down. I’ve seen this before, and there’s a lot of similarities between these bear markets. I think what people are missing is that the amount of building going on is incredible during the bear markets, and it sets the stage for the next bull runs. I mean, you just have news after news, after news every week, and I write about it. It’s like, “Wow. If this happened in the middle of the bull market, price would’ve jumped like $10k on this news.” Whether it’s Fidelity offering $34 million brokerage accounts access to Bitcoin, or the NASDAQ just came out and said they’re offering a custodian solution, or even things like Ledger having their devices in 900 Best Buy stores across the country.

Sam Callahan (00:59:37):

I’m like, “All of these things, they just happen,” and then at the same time, the fundamentals, like hash rate just hit an all time high. Up time is still 99.9%. The security of the network’s never been higher. Long term holders is at an all time high, so the conviction, the base of convicted holders is growing and never been higher, and is holding more Bitcoin than ever before. That sets the stage for the next bull market, so people get just so hung up on the price, but where I’m looking, it’s just the exact same thing of 2018 to 2019, where I was like, “Hold on. All of these things seem so bullish from a health of the network and growth of the ecosystem, and the only thing that’s lying is the price right now.”

Sam Callahan (01:00:21):

Then, you look at the rest of the world, like we’re talking about all this stuff, that’s the chaos right here. The chaos is the traditional financial system. Bitcoin is beating like a steady heart, just block after block. That’s the change in mindset there, is all this volatility is a result of the credit based system that we’ve had, and Bitcoin’s just there doing what it does, and it’s going to be there. Right now, every normal person, they’re all talking about inflation now. Bitcoin’s been talking about inflation way too long, but now everyone’s talking about it, and they’re in their house and they smell smoke, and they’re at the point they’re sniffing and being like, “Do you smell something?”

Sam Callahan (01:01:02):

But when things are on fire, they’re going to look out the window for an escape, and Bitcoin’s going to be there on the ground like a trampoline, and it’s going to function perfectly, and it’s just going to be there for them. That’s all it has to do, is just exist as this unsustainable other system, kind of eats itself or collapses under itself, and so that’s what I’ll say people are missing right now. It’s just, get off the price chart and start kind of looking at the fundamentals. Not to pump Bitcoin or anything, but that’s literally what I think people are missing right now.

Preston Pysh (01:01:33):

That’s why we call the show Bitcoin Fundamentals. Sam, thank you so much for coming on the show and making time, and just always bringing so much knowledge with you. Give people a handoff where they can find you. I know you’re active on Twitter, but also if there’re any articles that you’ve recently written that you want to highlight, we’ll have them in the show notes. Just give people a handoff.

Sam Callahan (01:01:53):

I write for our Swan Private. I work for Swan. I’m an analyst at Swan. It’s a Bitcoin financial services company, and I work for our Swan Private, where I do a lot of the research. Swan Private’s just high net worth individuals. They come to Bitcoin, and they’re just like, “I need somebody to hold my hand,” and so we get a dedicated rep. They have different needs than a retail client, so we help them with all kinds of things, like trust, business, whatever they need. Then, they receive research, so you can DM me if you want that research report. I write it every month with [inaudible 01:02:25], and there’s always like contributions from Lyn Alden and a lot of great contributors every single month.

Sam Callahan (01:02:31):

You can get me there. The blog on swan.com, so Swan Signal. I just had a new piece up there. It’s called Bitcoin and the U.S. Growth Problem: Why Bitcoin and Economic Growth are the Only Reasonable Ways Out of This Debt Problem, so you can check that out. It just published today. Then, I’m on Twitter, so Samcallah, S-A-M-C-A-L-L-A-H. You can get inside of my mind if you want to. Give me a follow. But yeah, that’s where I spend a lot of my time talking to all these other great bitcoiners and thinkers who are thinking about these hard problems that we face, and maybe we can find some solutions.

Preston Pysh (01:03:08):

We will definitely have links to that. We’ll have links to Swan. Sam, thanks so much for making time. This was really fun.

Sam Callahan (01:03:15):

Hey, man. Thanks for having me on. Big fan of the show. I learn a lot from you, so thanks so much.

Preston Pysh (01:03:20):

If you guys enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow the show on whatever podcast application you use. Just search for, We Study Billionaires. The Bitcoin specific shows come out every Wednesday, and I’d love to have you as a regular listener. If you enjoyed the show, you learned something new, or you found it valuable, if you can leave a review, we would really appreciate that. It’s something that helps others find the interview in the search algorithm, so anything you can do to help out with a review, we would just greatly appreciate. With that, thanks for listening and I’ll catch you again next week.

Outro (01:03:52):

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