The Money Problem No One Understands - Natalie Brunell

0:00Anthony Scaramucci:When you want your spring break to feel like... And your kid's pool day to feel like... And your hotel bed to feel like... Ooh, and room service to feel like... Because at Hilton, hospitality feels like...

0:19Natalie Brunell:Your cabana's ready. Would you like fresh towels?

0:21Anthony Scaramucci:It matters where you stay. Book now at Hilton.com. Hilton. For this day. This episode is brought to you by Nespresso. Introducing Virtuo Up, the latest in a long line of innovation from Nespresso. It's innovation you can touch, sense, and taste in every single cup. With a three-second start, easy open lever, and dedicated brew over ice button, it's even easier to enjoy your coffee your way. Sip for yourself. Shop Virtuo Up exclusively at Nespresso.com.

1:03Anthony Scaramucci:As a chef, I know flavor doesn't begin in the kitchen. It begins on the land. And West Home's nature-led Australian Wagyu is a story written in the landscape of Northern Australia. Cooking is storytelling, and West Home Wagyu carries a story of Northern Australia itself. Raw, powerful, and deeply authentic. It's a testament to the passion and care raised in the rhythm of Northern Australia. I'm Chef Maylin from ADA Club in Los Angeles and I invite you to visit Westhome.com slash Maylin to learn more and taste a story only Westhome nature-led Australian Wagyu can tell that's W-E-S-T-H-O-L-M-E dot com slash M-E-I-L-I-N

1:46Natalie Brunell:If you own assets, you're going to be okay but if you're a working class family like the one you grew up in and the one I grew up in what are they doing to the money and how are they stealing my time and my energy?

1:57Anthony Scaramucci:When you inflate the currency, ultimately, you are stealing people's time. That's something that can't be done in Bitcoin. It's something that allows all of us to access a level playing field. In the current game, the rules are a bit rigged, right? Especially for the people that have the most, the people that already have assets. If you've got assets, if you're close to the money printer, you benefit. The rules are rigged in your favor. Everyone else is kind of fighting for the scraps. And that's why people feel so frustrated and so left behind.

2:27Natalie Brunell:Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. Joining us today is a dear friend, Natalie Brunel. She's a speaker, a podcaster, a Bitcoin educator. She's the host of the Coin Stories podcast, which I've been a guest on, I think twice, Natalie. So thank you for that. But she has written an incredible book. I have it right here. And as I pointed out to Natalie, It's in my favorite stack behind me here where I like to market my friends' books. But this book is called Bitcoin is for Everyone. Why our financial system is broken and Bitcoin is the solution. So Natalie, first of all, this is an incredibly readable book.

3:09Natalie Brunell:I'm going to encourage everybody to go out and buy this book because in a couple hundred pages, I think you just tell a rollicking story about Bitcoin. And before we went on the air, you and I are lamenting Bitcoin's price activity last year. But we both know that Bitcoin does what Bitcoin does, right? Natalie, there's nothing we can do about it, right? It just is what it is, right?

3:29Anthony Scaramucci:That's right. It's so great to see you, Anthony. Thank you for having me. Thank you for the positive endorsement on the book. And yeah, you know, this is an opportunity, right? I mean, cheaper Satoshis that we can scoop up before it heads back to a new all-time high.

3:42Natalie Brunell:This book is deeply personal. It is warm. You go into your personal story. And I sort of want to start there. I want to start with Natalie Brunel. I want to start with your odyssey to where you are today. You know, how you grew up, you know, some things that happened in your life that led you to be this great libertarian that you are and Bitcoiner, et cetera.

4:08Anthony Scaramucci:Well, I think you and I have a lot in common. We come from very hardworking, blue-collar immigrant parents. And that's really my backstory. I watched my parents work so hard. They were born under communism in Poland, and their dream was to come here to the United States to pursue the American dream. They asked for nothing in return but just a chance. And I watched them work really so, so, so hard, six days a week, you know, getting up at three o 'clock in the morning outside of Chicago, scraping the snow off the car to head into work just to make their children's lives better and to offer an opportunity for their kids to get a good education.

4:44Anthony Scaramucci:And that really made a huge impression on me. I wanted to work hard. I knew that education was going to be the vehicle for me to succeed. But I grew up not understanding the financial system. You know, I got all the good grades in school because I had to, but I never learned how banking works, who issues money, the history of money. And I didn't get to learn all of that until I went down the Bitcoin rabbit hole. And that's when things changed for me, right? I started to connect all the dots and I realized why so many people today are struggling and feeling like they're working harder for less.

5:18Anthony Scaramucci:And I saw it as this amazing solution for economic empowerment for the average person who, again, feels like they're working hard, they're playing by all the rules, but they haven't been able to catch up in terms of wealth creation and being able to provide for their families in a way that was much easier a couple generations ago.

5:37Natalie Brunell:I want to start there, actually because uh you're almost anticipating my questions i felt like uh you said something i haven't been able to completely put my finger on it yet but you said something in the book i'll sort of articulate it like this there's something deeply wrong with the economy everybody feels it you go out on the road you talk to people you talk to people in your family you talk to people in your neighborhood something is off we almost can't catch a breath you know i went into a comic book store last night i'll show you the comic i have a hit and uh this was a comic that was produced in 1976 and it was one dollar was one dollar and i was a 12 year old boy in 1976 this is before you were born girl so don't don't get all ageist on me okay but i want to show it to you okay because it's illustrative of what you talk about in the book so this comic book i purchased at the Forbidden Planet.

6:35Natalie Brunell:It is a reprint of a book I bought 50 years ago. I want you to look at the price there. Do you see the price?

6:40Anthony Scaramucci:$19.99.

6:42Natalie Brunell:Okay. So it's the exact same comic. Yeah. I purchased it for$1 at the local newspaper stand in my neighborhood. I bought it for$19.99. Said differently, if you're worth$100 million today and you divide it by 20, it's the equivalent of five million us dollars way back in 1976 when i bought this if you own assets natalie brunell you're going to be okay but if you're a working class family like the one you grew up in and the one i grew up in what are they doing to the money and how are they stealing my time and my energy so so go into that if you don't mind because uh when i read your book i was in the store last night i was on when i interviewed natalie second i'm gonna buy this comic and illustrate this problem.

7:28Natalie Brunell:All right, but go ahead. I'm sorry.

7:29Anthony Scaramucci:Yeah, well, that's one of the things that I tried to spotlight in the book, that we all do sense that something is wrong. But a lot of us have turned, unfortunately, to partisan politics and placing the blame on different people or different groups. But I challenge you through the book to look deeper because it really is the financial system. And to your point, that comic book didn't change. Time has passed. And And the thing that has changed is the purchasing power of the dollar. It's the dollar that's grown that much weaker. And what's causing that? I think that's what people don't realize. And right now, because of social media, it's really powerful to see, especially young people, put those price tags and the differences online showing like, hey, Kevin McAllister in Home Alone got to take home this big grocery store basket for$20.

8:20Anthony Scaramucci:And today, the same one would cost$100. Like, why is that? Why is that? And I think everyone places blame on the wrong things, right? Everyone just goes to, oh, well, it's greed. Oh, it's just the corporations. Oh, it's this political party. And they want more centralization and more government to come in and fix it. But my argument in the book is that we really can't fix it until we address the core problem, which is our money, which is constantly inflated. And we need to, to your point, we need to acquire hard assets, ones that can't easily be diluted and debased, and ones that maintain and grow our purchasing power so that the average person doesn't feel like they're drowning.

8:57Anthony Scaramucci:Because to your point, I mean, even if you're making raises in your income, you're actually probably experiencing deflation when it comes to your wages because of how much money they've printed and inflated away your purchasing power, which now you understand, the populist calls for, hey, I need a higher minimum wage. I need more this. I need more that. It's because your dollar doesn't go as far as you need it to. And a couple generations ago, you can point to things that were so much cheaper and people could afford on just one income, a middle class income. And it isn't fair. And I agree with people that something needs to be done.

9:33Anthony Scaramucci:But instead of dividing ourselves and fighting among each other, why don't we just address the financial system and embrace a tool like Bitcoin that's available to everyone?

9:42Natalie Brunell:It's so well said. You know, you're making a claim in the book, which I agree with. And again, I'm summarizing. But you're basically saying in the book, it isn't, the root problem isn't necessarily politics or policy or even greed. It's money itself. In simple terms, you say, and, you know, our friend Lynn Alden agrees with you, the money is broken. So what do you mean by that statement, the money is broken?

10:09Anthony Scaramucci:The money is broken because you can't save in our money, right? You have to invest. You have to accumulate assets. That's the only way that you're going to maintain or grow your purchasing power. But the reason for that is because our money supply keeps growing. So every individual unit is worth less and less. That's where your purchasing power is destroyed. But unfortunately, one thing we know is that they have to keep printing in order to pay off our debt and maintain this massive tab that we've created. We have to keep printing money. So the average person is suddenly on a treadmill. Right.

10:40Anthony Scaramucci:One of the reasons I wrote the book is to help educate people that, first of all, you can't save in currency. It's just a melting ice cube. So you need to acquire hard assets. Bitcoin being, in my opinion, the best one, the most accessible one, the one that is truly for everyone. But at the same time, I think it just puts a spotlight on something, which is the incentive system within a broken financial system, right? Because it does have some political aspects and policies that were put in place with the best of intentions. Like, for example, in the 90s, they passed legislation, which was meant to combat the wealth gap between the executives and the workers.

11:16Anthony Scaramucci:And so they made executive compensation over a million dollars not tax deductible, right? But where did the compensation flow to? Stocks. Because lobbyists came in and said, well, stock compensation doesn't count for that. So now all of the executives are making a killing with their stock portfolios and the money printing flows into assets. And now you have an even bigger wealth gap between the executive and the worker. So great intention, wanting to close the wealth gap, but the outcome is 10 times worse. And so that's where I feel like people, again, they kind of group off into these different political parties and groups and they get all upset with each other.

11:59Anthony Scaramucci:But if we come together and address the root problem, which is the fact that we live in a money printer society and we need a shift into something parallel that doesn't rely on money printing and debt, that's when we can empower the most amount of people and create a situation where there's more opportunity. The outcomes won't be equal, but they will be more fair because they'll be based on things like merit and competition and a truly free market, which I argue we have not had. Okay.

12:28Natalie Brunell:I think it's very well said. I want to take it another step though. I'm a 62-year-old guy. I don't understand it. It's too technical. It seems like a bunch of financial blather, a string of codes on the internet. How could that be worth anything? Yeah.

12:49Anthony Scaramucci:I mean, I think that new technologies are always -

12:52Natalie Brunell:I can't even play act that, by the way, because you know I didn't believe anything I just said, but go ahead.

12:56Anthony Scaramucci:Yeah, totally. I know. Give it to me. Give it to me, Natalie. Well, one thing that I love too is, I mean, Bitcoin has been embraced by people of all ages. I know boomers and people that are, you know, in their 90s that are obsessed with Bitcoin. So first of all, that's why I titled it Bitcoin is for Everyone. Second of all, okay, so let's say you come from a different generation, technology is not your thing, but you can probably acknowledge that technology in and of itself can be transformative. It can change our lives in ways that we don't even anticipate. The biggest transformation in the last 20, 25 years has been the internet, right?

13:30Anthony Scaramucci:And one thing that I share in the book is we all probably remember those early days in the, let's say, 1990s when the internet was just emerging. And I was watching my favorite news show at the time, Today Show. And they're sitting around going, what's the at sign? What's this dot com thing? They all dismissed it as sort of a passing fad. Barely anyone's going to use this. And now we all have these computers in our hands. We can access more information than royalty could 100 years ago. And we are basically conducting all of our lives online. We're buying everything online. All the business has gone online.

14:06Anthony Scaramucci:And really, all of our dollars are now electronic dollars, right? So I think that we just have to be open-minded when we come across a new technology. As you take time to learn about something and embrace it, you see that it's maybe not as intimidating, as scary as you originally thought. And I think that we can look back at history and see that so many transformative technologies were first dismissed or criticized that ended up being the way of life in just a couple of years from there.

14:36Natalie Brunell:And you sort of answer this question in the book. You state the question and then you answer it. I want you to give our viewers and listeners the answer. It's mainly benefited the early adopters who are already wealthy. So therefore, why is it for everyone?

14:55Anthony Scaramucci:Well, actually, I see Bitcoin as something that over time is a much more egalitarian system than our current one. Because if you zoom out and you look at our fiat society, for example, wealth concentrates over time. If you look at Bitcoin, Bitcoins distribute more and more over time. So of course, if you're early to a technology, if you're early to say Amazon or Google, you have a tremendous benefit, an asymmetric opportunity. But my argument in the book is, A, we are still early. This is a$2 trillion asset class headed for$100 trillion or more. So you're very, very early right now. But also, I mean, this is something that is going to take decades of time, transform all of our lives.

15:39Anthony Scaramucci:And I think that we are only at the beginning stages where, I mean, this is something that I think over years, it's going to be hard to have just one Bitcoin, right? We've got like tens of millions of millionaires, but only 21 million Bitcoin. So not everyone can have just one Bitcoin. There is enough for everyone. I think in the future we'll denominate things in Satoshis. I think more and more people will use it as the payment protocol that it was designed to be. But right now, especially here in the West, it is this powerful store of value. And I do not see it as something that concentrates wealth or creates a system of haves and have nots the way that the fiat system does because of its inherent incentives.

16:19Natalie Brunell:Okay. Very well said. Let's keep going if you don't mind. You write that it's not just an asset, but it's a moral and structural alternative. What do you mean by that?

16:31Anthony Scaramucci:Yeah. So I really think that when you have a system of money where no one has a special advantage, where no one can click a button and print new units in the way that we have in our current system, that inherently is a more moral system because you can't steal someone's time. When you inflate the currency, ultimately, you are stealing people's time. That's something that can't be done in Bitcoin. It's something that allows all of us to access a level playing field. Think of it as, you know, people equate life to a game. Well, in the current game, the rules are a bit rigged, right? Especially for the people that have the most, the people that already have assets.

17:14Anthony Scaramucci:I make an analogy to Monopoly in the book where you've got assets, if you're kind of close to the money printer, you benefit. The rules are rigged in your favor. Everyone else is kind of fighting for the scraps. And that's why people feel so frustrated and so left behind. Bitcoin introduces a new game, a new game of rules that are fair for everyone. No one, no matter how wealthy they are, how powerful they are. No one has a special advantage that can game the system and manipulate it so that they all of a sudden can print more units and benefit from Bitcoin. That's what I think we need to create a new sort of base layer, a base layer of capital so that we can build on top of it and create an economy globally that's interconnected, that offers the most opportunity for all of us to kind of compete and innovate.

18:02Anthony Scaramucci:Right now, because of the way our system is set up, it really does benefit the incumbents and those that are already wealthy, established, the ones that have access to capital can leverage it. And the little guys kind of left out and they can't compete. But the thing that's going to drive prices down is competition, is people coming in with their ideas, innovating and being able to actually have a seat at the table. And I do think that Bitcoin will offer that. Look, it's not a fix that'll happen overnight. This is a long journey. We're, again,$2 trillion in and we've got probably 100 million people investing in Bitcoin.