Ep 57: Balaji Srinivasan on the Origins & Severity of the Bank Crisis, the Future of Bitcoin, and "Make America States Again"

25:43I think basically whether it's Texas, uh, or, or it's, uh, or it's Dubai or it's some combination. I love as a Texan that you say, Texas is offshore from the U S thank you for that. Cause we're doing our best. it's it's funny because that is actually increasingly being true right like i mean i mean look at what alana's done and and you know that is he's very smart he's doing that with the governor of texas right because essentially florida texas you know have you i don't know if you heard my like as i'm saying i'm sure other people have come to this make america states again yep yep well you know this is my policy group the sister institute we work in like 15 states and that's how we get all of our best ideas done as you know and that's yeah so the states is the right framework to actually fix things.

26:25That's right. And there's rational people at the state level. That's where, I mean, see, the thing is, what people will try to do is they'll try to conflate, oh, you're critical of the federal government with you're anti-American. Actually, I can't think of anything that's more American than being critical of the federal government. You know, that's like something that, whether it's on the left being skeptical of the CIA and COINTELPRO and so on, or on the right overreaching government, like the whole thing, you know, being critical of the federal government. If you're American, you're supposed to attack the federal government I mean, and try to make it better, try to try to fix it.

26:55Yeah. I 100 percent agree. Yes. Or that's right. So coming it's coming back. So what do I think actually happens? What I think happens is here's let me give at least a sci fi scenario, something that could happen. OK, so I'm taking all of those prerequisites and also taking it against the broader background of states breaking away from the feds, both to the left and right, whether it's on abortion or gun laws, drug laws, sanctuary cities, immigration policy. As you can see, states are innovating and they are just not listening to the feds anymore. Just marijuana alone, obviously, the states differ from the feds dramatically, right?

27:28Gun laws, immigration laws. So now apply that to crypto. DeSantis has talked about allowing state-chartered banks to bank crypto companies. This solves several problems at one stroke. First is it brings deposits back to red banks that are losing all the deposits to the too-big-to-fail banks. second is um it puts the fed in a tough spot where either a they have to allow that to happen and allow you know wires to go into something that they're trying to kill they're trying to block the exit to bitcoin or b they actually try to stop fed wire ach swift chips going into florida state state level banks which would show their hand and approve that de santos was right that the cbdc would be used for financial tyranny okay so it kind of proves that point third is um he could do something like bitcoin.florida.gov and abbott could do something like bitcoin.texas.gov and others could do it as well what would that be it's just a it's a dot gov website it doesn't have to be but it could be where you can just do buy sell send receive bitcoin that's it it's like 2013 coinbase that's great so if you want to push back on the federal government and all the crazy things they're trying to do to lock this down let's just do it with a state by, you know, basically we have our own utility basically for Bitcoin.

28:43Exactly. It's, it's, you know, the gold window. Do you remember that? Like the concept of the gold window? Yep. This is the digital gold window. Okay. States open. Right. And here's what's cool about that. They, in return for essentially quote, taking the political risk, whatever, this is commodity technology. It's trivial to set up a buy, sell, send, receive Bitcoin thing in 2023. You can do that. Like I shouldn't say one engineer, but a few engineers. Should we build a forum? It sounds like we should build a forum and go bring it to him. Maybe we should. Okay. And now all they have to do is give state chartered banking support so that wires can come in and out.

29:13So it's just USD BTC exchange. That's it. And then what does the government do? It takes, let's say, 1 % of every transaction. So Florida and Texas start accumulating a Bitcoin reserve, number one. Okay. And then number two is you have like a feature on the exchange where it charges somebody, I don't know, maybe 10 bucks or 0.1 % or something like that. like a significant penalty for keeping your Bitcoin on the exchange because they want people to pull it off. Okay. So you want local custody. You do not want it to be custody there. Okay. So that you have the decentralization baked in what I just described there, you make that open source and that order book can be shared with Coinbase and Binance, but also across all of the Bitcoin States.

29:56And I actually think this becomes a very important dividing line and political issue where it's essentially the Bitcoin states where, you know, people are allowed to hold Bitcoin in private hands and the dollar states where they're not. Basically, meaning you literally can't hold it in private hands, like guns being banned in private hands, right? The right to Bitcoin shall not be infringed. Like that's already in Texas GOP platform and other states or something where they're going to try to seize it. So the reason I think that's important is like a company, let's say, you know, just an exchange versus government.

30:31You're, you're seeing the movie Pacific Rim. I don't think so. Tell us what Pacific Rim is. Okay. So, so Pacific Rim, it's like, um, these giant monsters come out of the ocean and humans can only, can only fight them so much. So the humans end up doing is they build giant robots and now giant robot versus giant monster. That's actually a fair fight. Okay. So when the giant monster of the federal government is coming out of the ocean, like a mere human, like a startup can't really fight it but like florida or texas now it's like government versus government and now it has enough hit points to actually have a real fight and let's step back who who i know you talk about this a lot in the past but some people may have heard some people may have not like who in the federal government is actually doing this it seems to me like it's elizabeth warren it's janet yellen it's it may maybe pal i don't even know if it's pal i don't think it is but i think there's all these people who are just real ideologues who are for centralization in the world and who don't want to see the decentralization happen?

31:28Yeah. Yeah. So basically here's how I kind of think about this. See, on the one hand, if you read the articles on like Operation Chokepoint 2.0 by like Nick Carter, it's on Mike Salon's blog. You've probably seen that, right? If you read those articles, it really does look like a coordinated attack by SEC and Treasury and the Fed and so on and so So the Fed is denying licenses to crypto banks and Treasuries making negative statements about crypto. And then SEC is attacking and all these CFTC is attacking. All these guys are attacking the same time. On the other hand, obviously, these guys have their own conflicts like SEC and CFTC have jurisdictional conflicts.

32:10All these guys have conflicts. A lot of them are on the same team behind the scenes. They're from the same groups of people, these deep state kind of groups in general. Right. That's right. And so I think the right way of thinking about this is not, quote, conspiracy theory, but community theory. The only premise you need to believe is that, let's call them blues, okay, that a blue looks at every single decision they're making on the basis of whether, A, this is good for blues or bad for reds or grays, okay? And ideally, it's both. Basically, they're calculating the political aspect of it. For example, even with the COVID vaccine, that was not just an apolitical process to benefit all Americans.

32:52Do you remember that like Christmastime statement, I think in 2021, where it was like, you know, Republicans will die if they don't take the vaccine or something. Do you remember that? Yeah. It was like something where even something that should have been totally neutral, apolitical public health had this partisan edge to it, unfortunately. It was a cold, dark winter. That's right. I remember that. Yeah, it was something like that. I forget the exact words, but I do remember that it was like, it was something where the most, I mean, the way to think about it is, it's not a single country anymore.

33:22It's Sunni versus Shiite, right? It's a binational thing. And actually, a lot of people on Blue Team think of it this way. This guy, Podorzer, in The Atlantic, had you seen this article? He's like, it's actually a binational republic, and we should not think of Reds as fellow Americans. Did you see that? I didn't see it, but I could believe it. I mean, this is like the Tim, I think Tim Urban had a really good book on this and where people's happening, people's tribal brains and like the giant golems they form to fight each other. I think it's very unhealthy and America has definitely moved them more that way.

33:53I mean, I'd have to say, Balji, your other analogy works well for this too. In the 19th century, I mean, we had a civil war, right? I mean, in the 19th century, we had all sorts of divisions. We had newspapers were either one side or the other. I mean, this was, there was a time when we had this, this is not abnormal to human nature. it's actually which is actually this is actually i think like 1950s were more the exception not i mean there were tribes then too it's just the tribes have come to the fore again and they become the main thing which is very sad and i'll give in fact there's visuals of this if you google like uh the vox polar watch congress polarize in one graphic right 1950 1949 fdr had created the uniparty like you know republicans and democrats voted with each other by 2011 they had pulled apart by 2017 that was manifest in the broader public and now if you go and look at social networks you just have totally disjoint social networks republicans are friends with republicans democrats are friends i know i know i know like a small number of people on the on the far left who are who follow me and comments on my twitter there's only a few of them left it's like it's like it's just it is crazy right it's like it's like we're spread out you know even though i have 110 000 followers or whatever there's there's probably like a few percent of them who are on the extreme left and i'd bet like 10 or 15 on the left it's crazy how much it diverges that's right and so basically what's happened is um we have cognitive separation cognitive separation has happened social separation has happened we're still physically proximal and what that portends in my view is something similar to uh do you know what partition was in india yep yeah so partition in india around the time that india got independence um pakistan was created.

35:30And essentially it was like the balloon goes up and many Muslims made their way into Pakistan and many Hindus had to make their reign to India and literally millions of people died. And it was really chaotic and it was the bloody birth pangs of it was, it was terrible. And I'm afraid to talk about any of these things. Cause there's so many people who speak English now from that part of the world that if I get it wrong, they all get angry at me. So I'm going to let you comment on it. Right. So it was a very – it was a – normally you want a new country's beginnings to be positive and so on. But let's just say that that was something where there was a lot of bloodshed at the very start.

36:10I think normally new countries' beginnings involve bloodshed, but that was particularly bad, I think. Yeah. That was particularly bad, right? Right. And the now the thing about that is it's only known by it's known by like one term. If you just say partition India, everybody knows what you're talking about. You don't have to say the Indian partition or whatever. It's like saying the war or whatever. Right. So something like that. See, the thing is, Hindus and Muslims live near each other. And then suddenly these borders arose and they geographically sorted. And for decades, we've had the big sort going on.

36:41OK, where people have been clustering on the base of their ideology. and we're purposely accelerating this in a lot of places like a lot of red states i don't know i don't necessarily agree with this but a lot of red states are being more extreme than than even the average person there on social issues in order to try to to sort in order to say we don't want blue people coming yes like if like oh we're gonna be much more extreme on our abortion rules because it'll keep those people out and it'll separate us right that's right that's fascinating like this is literally how they talk now in a lot of these places and the other side seems to be doing it too in san francisco like well if you like guns we're gonna ban your security guards from having guns.

37:14Like that's Dean Preston, you know, today on the left. So, I mean, these, these both sides are like, seem to be doing this to drive the others away. That's right. And that's because we're kind of going in my view, um, just the trends of techno, I don't know the timescale, but the secular trends are, are on, on towards a line of disunion, right? Where whatever that new relationship is, it is something where states are relating to each other, you know, make America states again. States, it's not like one centralized government. It's like some huge, messy American partition. And I, here's like one sci-fi scenario for how it can happen.

37:51Okay. Let's say that, uh, this banking crisis. And by the way, one thing that I thought was like the dumbest, the dumbest argument I've heard on the whole thing about the bank crisis. And you actually mentioned this at the beginning is who caused the banking crisis, the Russians, your tweets or whatever. Obviously the fed caused the banking crisis. That was my sarcastic tweet but the point is people are like why are you trying to cause a bank run by tweeting and i'm like the bank runs started before anybody tweeted right and the reason that they happened is because the fed fundamentally undermined these um portfolios it's it's literally something where people are blaming the way i put it is some h1b immigrant in sunnyvale is supposed to find the hidden footnote on page 70 of their employer's bank's financial statements that discloses the hidden insolvency.

38:45But Jerome Powell is responsible for nothing. Okay. Like, I mean, put it like this, have you seen on, you know, your bank webpages, there's like those pop-ups that tell you whether they've got cookies or not. Yep. Yeah. Wouldn't you want a pop-up that tells you whether they're insolvent or not? Yeah. I mean, I mean, basically your point is that people, because we're dividing and we're going more crazy, we're going to blame everything on the other tribes that were angry or for the reasons we're angry at, which is what's happening. Yeah. That's right. So essentially right now you pay for all the regulation, you get none of the protection.

39:14You fork it all over to the state and you get nothing. That is going to lead to a renegotiation of what the whole thing is. And it's going to be super messy probably. And I think one way it could work is financial disunion because it's not just a banking crisis. It's not even just a bond crisis. It's a commercial real estate crisis. It's a student loan crisis. You know, student loan payments were suspended for three years and now they're starting up again. That's actually the worst of all worlds. If you had just forgiven them, that's one thing to suspend for three years. What's happened is everybody's consumption has now risen.

39:49No, it's actually, it's actually totally crazy. My assumption, Balgy, is that Biden and people around him will realize how terrible this is for them and continue to suspend it further and make the next people deal with it. But who knows? Maybe, but there's some Supreme Court case on this now, right? So maybe they can't then. And God, I'm not up to speed on that. So yeah, so therefore, it's just absolutely the worst thing for themselves too. It's pretty stupid. Right, exactly. So, okay. And then there's credit card debts at all time highs. And oh, by the way, like the countries, I mean, here's the thing that most people don't get is, I've done both and it's much easier to launch currencies than to scale factories.

40:25And once you have that in mind, it's way easier for China or any other country, frankly, that has natural resources or manufacturing or both to launch a currency than it is for the West to just quickly build factories. I mean, it's possible AI saves us and makes it easier to build factories. I don't know. That's a question. But what you're saying is unless something dramatic changes, we lose our reserve currency status and things are messy and they fall apart. Is that what you're saying? Yes. Like when do we lose? That's when do we lose? Is that the next, that's the next decade, but we don't know when, or you think sooner?

40:58So basically what I said in this thing was, you know, 10 % months, 70 % years, 19 % decades, 1 % centuries. So, um, uh, you know, like for example, just this default that might be coming up, people think, you know, it's debt ceiling vote, right? It's not just like a clean thing, by the way, even if, uh, and by the way, I'm actually, I'm sympathetic, of course, to the idea that we shouldn't keep spending money ad infinitum. Obviously. The issue, of course, right? The problem is, I think, and many of the Republicans might realize this, but it's kind of past the point of no return. That is to say, like, you cannot, even the extreme cuts by Republicans or whatever, they're not actually getting to a balanced budget or anything close to that.

41:41Paul Ryan, who's Speaker of the House, is a friend, and he was the last person who was a speaker to propose a balanced budget. And I actually, I actually, I think this is where you and I differ. I actually think you can get a competent enough leader in charge that we go Supreme court, get the right to fire people and just like clean house. And like the other sci-fi version is that we actually do like totally like fire and remake a bunch of this stuff and just like root out the deep state and actually like just put in all sorts of accountability. Cicero type rules we're doing in States. We put them in the national level as well, make everything more accountable, just fire all the useless people.

42:12Like I think there's some version that saves the country. I, I think that that window has been missed. And that's me. That is maybe where we, so to be clear, I think, I think you can still do it and maybe in the next decade, if you have someone really good, just because America has such resilience, but I get what you're saying that it is a freaking mess the way it's set up right now. Right. And so, so essentially let's talk plan C. Okay. Because plan A was, is, you know, save, save the us right as it was okay plan b and here's the thing that i think is really important that i think most people are not thinking about so you know with east germany a lot of the guys there who had been nazis during the war became communists and the soviets found that that certain kind of personality of being like a hater or whatever it like easily flipped over 100 i mean They're very similar in a lot of ways.

43:08They're both totalitarian. That's right. And so one thing I don't think people are taking into account is that a lot of people who are currently very for the federal government, if it has serious financial difficulty, will simply fold into the new Chinese overlords. Okay? Like the flip will be much more dramatic. I disagree that China has any chance in their term of doing that. but i understand okay i understand you think that right yeah so so basically like i if you if you give me two premises then let me give let me give a spot a third right those two premises are a there's a lot of financial problems and we may have missed the window and b china is actually very strong and that's why i'm concerned about them like um like they are strong in my view i think china's strong in some ways you know i'm i'm i think the leading defense entrepreneur in the U S I've built a bunch of top defense companies aside from other things I do.

44:06Uh, right. I think that there are areas where they've gotten ahead and there's areas where they're ganging, but I still think overall our military is way stronger, like way stronger. Okay. So, so here's, here's, here's the thing. I, there was actually a really great graphic that came out recently that was looking at like edges of tech and it's like the U S contested areas, AI, and they're ahead on, um, like 5g and America's ahead on quantum or something like that. There was like some venn diagram we're ahead on ai yeah i think right the issue is okay yeah that's cutting edge tech but when it comes to just like mass producing screws and steel and stuff like that it's not even a contest unfortunately china is you know like like i i placed this graphic basically in in 1970 um the u.s was making 10x as much steel as china now it's like 14x the other way well that's because it's a low value good which i agree we shouldn't have given up, but it's because it's extremely low value good that we don't necessarily, I mean, we could make our own for key things that we need, but you know, I, I, so here's the thing.

45:07Do I, do I believe it is possible to turn this around eventually and over time? Yes. But it also took China 40 years from 1978 because they were under, I mean, in a sense, communism was just regulations holding back China. It's funny to put it that way, but you're right. And so they, they, it took them 40, 45 years to build this behemoth that they've built. And it's kind of like, do I think that, you know, there's lots of Americans who could build amazing things? Absolutely. But it's like lifting, you know, you know, the U S was a manufacturing powerhouse 40 years ago, but if you haven't lifted weights for 40 years, you can't just walk over.

45:43We're getting a bunch of manufacturing going and we've started a lot of multi-billion dollar manufacturing things in the last decade, but I see what you're saying. We're behind, but so let's go back to your three premises. So, so what were the three premises? So my premise is basically, A, that unfortunately, I think we've passed the window for the turnaround at the federal level. B, unfortunately, China is quite strong. So C, how do we defend freedom in that world? That is the thing that I think a lot about. In the world, because that is two steps out from today's world. Unfortunately, I actually think it's got a much higher probability than other people do.

46:18I'm not saying it's 100%. So I disagree, but I respect the position. I definitely think it's a huge mess and you may be right. I'm optimistic we could fix it. This China strong thing, like China has like this, like crazy debt crisis. They have a demographic crisis. They have totally crazy corruption. They have a crazy madman who took over and like killed all sorts of people. And like, just like shot their tech sector in the head. The tech sector used to be great, but now it's like, no one, like I know tens of Chinese billionaires, none of them want to build a company. All of my billionaire friends in the U S are building companies.

46:46Like I just was thought to three of them today. They're all building new companies. None of them want to do that in China right now. China's screwed. You're totally right about all that. And that's the thing is lots of Chinese liberals have left. Z totally screwed up COVID lockdown. He burned a lot of political capital with Jack Ma is basically like one of their best guys is basically in hiding. And every other mini Jack Ma you and I don't even know is also terrified right now. That's right. All of that is true. However, here is the thing that they have shown over the last couple... And again, I'm seeing this from the perspective of somebody who is concerned about like what i think of as their strength um what they have flexed over the last couple of months is the new diplomatic muscle yep right they've managed to get france and brazil and a bunch of neutral countries formerly neutral countries they have peace between we elected biden who's who's like the worst foreign policy president since carter right so So that's definitely part of it too.

47:45Yes, absolutely. But the net of it is that like, you know, it's like, I mean, these are, you're not talking anymore about Russia, China, Iran, like known enemies, right? You're talking about them coming into America's backyard and America's allies and picking them off. And that is a new thing, right? Essentially, the Chinese for years, you could bank on them doing, have you heard the term wolf warrior diplomacy where they basically like yell at people right yep for years you could bank on that they've somehow figured out they switch gears somehow okay we i think we i think we are particularly bad right now this foreign policy era and i think china is definitely stronger in that sense that they're able to play that game i think with a really good president we would run circles around them but yes i think that's where we are right now yes unfortunately and so now you're seeing blinkin talking about and actually zelensky took a call with china and he's saying China should negotiate peace in Ukraine, right?

48:43Or should help. And Blinken is agreeing to that. He's saying that they'll negotiate with China and Ukraine. All of those things portend something where, unfortunately, because here's the thing, as you know, once China kind of rolls into a territory and everybody is running WeChat and Alipay and so on and so forth, they've got a backdoor into everything. It's got Huawei, it's got this, it's got that. No, I mean, I was furious. I met with my friends who run one of the small European countries, and they put in Huawei. The security guy had put it in, and they didn't even know the people in charge.

49:14I'm like, what the hell are you guys doing here? It's ridiculous, people giving China that kind of access to their country. Right. But right now, essentially, China is out-executing Biden. Unfortunately, that's what, at least on things which should be a total layup, like France. On some of these things. He's not out executing the American technology sector, but he's definitely out executing our pathetic government. Yes. Yes, exactly. That's right. So this is a key thing is gray and red Americans, I still have confidence in. Blue Americans, I don't. And the problem is blue Americans are in, you know, and now - They control the deep state right now, which is broken.

49:51That's fair. That's right. So at the state level, like, for example, you're doing or American dynamism, stuff like that, I think a lot of that is actually very good. I think, however, it's something where, you know, there used to be a saying like what Intel produces, Microsoft disposes of. It's like back in the 90s, like Intel would come up with all these chip innovations and Microsoft would have this very bloated operating system that would chew it all up. Right. And it's like, just think about, I mean, you and I know how hard it is to build like a billion dollar company, let alone like a trillion dollar company.

50:32And I mean, they will just, if you just think about every time they say another$300 billion, you know, this 300 billion dollar, that that's like 300 of those companies just being thrown in the trash compactor. right like so what what the you know tech or reds or whatever producing moreover the blues don't allow things like keystone excel they don't allow that's why it's very crazy so so studying back baldy i want to i want to i want to wrap up to the key points you want to get across what what are we what do we face so we have to defend we have a big thing to defend freedom going on with with what's going on with our federal and china like what's going to happen otherwise so so in that world um what i think you want to i mean what i think is going to happen is i think it's going to be financial disunion i think the blues are managing the money so poorly that whether it there's there's several different paths to this but i think what happens is there's a genuine debt crisis that involves asset seizure okay where uh what happened to the blues are in charge during the debt crisis if they're not in charge during that crisis they can be very different Correct.

51:40But we've got about two years for that at least. And so, um, and I don't think they can kick the can for two years. So during this process, I mean, think about lockdown, right? At the beginning in January, 2020, it was denied that COVID was even a problem. In fact, you were a racist. I like people called me and other people on Twitter. Oh my God, I can't believe you're even talking about this, this virus. Uh, you know, you're a terrible person for doing this. It doesn't exist. You're paranoid. And then they flip completely to, you know, from denying the virus is even a problem to imposing lockdowns on like school children who weren't even at risk.

52:19Right. Obviously you remember that. So we're in the middle of that flip where a few weeks ago they were denying there was a banking crisis. Just a few days ago, they finally published an article in NYT saying, yes, there's a banking crisis. It's real danger. You should be worried. That augurs a flip. A flip is coming. And they're going to flip into something that I think of as digital lockdown. And if you've heard the term financial repression, it's when an emerging market country doesn't have enough money to pay its bills. So it implements all kinds of policies that are basically taxation, seizure by other means, including inflation, just seize assets.

52:55Seize assets. Don't they need Congress to do this? Because we have the court, The blues do not have the court, which is why they're attacking it so much right now. They hate that they don't have the court, and the blues do not fully have Congress. So it seems like in America today, without the court or all Congress, it's going to be tough for them to do these things, which I agree with you. Some of them probably would want to do in a crisis. Right. So you're right. The Supreme Court, they may examine Chevron deference now. That could limit the federal government. That's going to be amazing if we fix Chevron deference, which gets rid of the arbitrary power of regulators.

53:26That'd be amazing. That's right. People have speculated that's why you suddenly are seeing all of these crazy personal attacks on judges is because they want to try to hit them before the Chevron case. Okay. Because that's like hitting the – that's the most important case that people don't know about. Exactly. Anyway, what I do think is I think that there is probably enough strength among grays and reds to prevent a complete repeat of Executive Order 6102. I think it's going to be attempted. 6102 is the gold seizure. No. The gold seizure, right? I mean, just imagine if every American is like a Canadian trucker, where your assets can be frozen at random.

54:05And one way of thinking about this, by the way, is those people, just from the very beginning, Powell's most loyal banks trusted the U.S. government. And they bought those bonds. And they bought them on the assurance that the interest rate wouldn't be hiked, that inflation was transitory. And they got completely destroyed. And what that means is if even the richest and most loyal and most powerful institutions that are very close to the Fed are just getting killed like this, nobody's safe. I think this is a very good point. I think there's a big crisis coming. You know, I have this company, Adapar, which has, I think,$5 trillion plus reporting through it.

54:46And so we have a general aggregate sense of what all the top families are doing and other things. I actually think our country has more sophisticated top families, even by far, than our institutions in a lot of ways, because these are actually the wealth creators and these people. And I don't think any of them are being fooled. I don't think almost none of them were owning any of these kind of long-duration bonds. I think they're all in short-term treasuries, which I have too, by the way, because you have to to manage your money and not trust the banking system. So there are some ways the short-term treasury things can get hit.

55:15There's risk in that now also because... No, I know. Of course, they could not pay the treasuries temporarily. rarely. I don't think they'd actually long-term default on treasuries, but you're right with the debt crisis. Basically, what will happen in my view is they may not default on it long-term in the sense they'll pay cash, but they'll inflate it away to such a point or make it illiquid or suspend convertibility. TLDR is, at least I personally prefer to hold Bitcoin and stable foreign fiat over usd stable foreign fiat bitcoin if you're if you're worth 100 200 300k if you're worth millions just more and more and i mean listen i think i think it's having some foreign fiat some bitcoin makes sense too i like i like high growth profitable companies that's you know or companies that will be profitable soon that's what i do you know it's probably still fine so yeah so so with those companies let me give a maybe seemingly crazy piece of advice okay or or let's call it let's call this uh an out of the money suggestion okay so the thing is in much of the 20th century in china in russia in many countries most of the world there were revolutions where companies were seized assets were seized companies were nationalized that happened in iran under the fundamental revolution south america in fact much of the world outside of the the west basically that happened right so um in the event that it actually gets that intense what is the backup plan for companies?

56:41I think one answer is, um, if you think about the level, like when a company is about to get acquired, it has like a folder with all of its documents. You know, it's got every contract it's ever signed. It's got its charter and bylaws, all this type of stuff, right? It's like acquisition ready. And that's actually kind of like a good thing to do anyway for a company, because rather than doing it all in a rush at the time of an acquisition, you just, so you want to get it ready just in case you going to move it offshore or something really fast is not the worst idea. So, so that's right. So basically let's say that you have to go and move from Delaware to Miami.

57:17Okay. Or Delaware to Austin. You know, Texas just are setting up their own business courts to compete with Delaware. So we're going to have a good system here. Exactly. So the porting of a business could be done relatively easily if all of your contracts are there. And then it's, it's like porting a smart contract from one chain to another. It's like a provision for a corporate refugee or corporate asylum. I think it's super interesting. We got to be making preparations for the long tail just in case. I am still the American optimist who thinks there's ways around this biology, but this is very valuable for us all here because I think you're right.

57:45There's a big crisis coming and there's a lot of ways this can go. And I think the more prepared one is, I mean, like Dalio has a great saying, if you're worried, you don't have to worry. If you're worried, you don't have to worry. Let's be ready. Yeah, exactly. Thank you, biology. Wonderful talk tonight. Thanks.