Yo, welcome back to another episode of the Jack Mallers Show. I am your host Jack and you are listening to yet another edition of Mailbag Monday, episode 135. Bitcoin pumping despite a Fed rate hike and the Clarity Act being taken to the back of the shed with a shotgun. Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, let's get into it. But I'm talking to you all at a Bitcoin price of $86,618. Sheesh. Bitcoin's market cap now sits at 1.74 trillion. Our all-time high remains at $126,080. We are now only 31.3% away from that all-time high. Don't look now. Objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear. That all-time high was set on October 6, 2025. It's been 350 days since we made that all-time high. Lastly, the last Bitcoin block mined since I hit stream was block height 968,048.
What is going on, guys? What a Monday, don't you say? So, here's the deal. We got both a Fed rate hike. So, for those that missed it, the Federal Reserve officially hiked interest rates by 25 basis points. That is the first Fed rate hike since July of 2023. And then the Clarity Act failed. Congress did not approve it. So, this headline reads, 'Clarity Act's failure kicks off a wave of blame in the crypto world.' Despite all of that, Bitcoin has gone straight up. So, what you guys are looking at, I drew two lines. One was when Clarity Act failed and did not pass Congress and did not get approved. And then the next is when Sir Kevin Warsh, the latest banker wanker, hiked rates just to show you guys that Bitcoin did not care one bit, not one ounce. And it went from 75,000 to 87,000 almost immediately after what you would consider bad news. Straight up.
Anyway, by the way, checking in on Bitcoin priced in gold. Don't look now. Don't look now. Now, we're 31% off of our nominal dollar all-time high, but we're still about 50% down from our gold all-time high. A new all-time high in ounces of gold would be 40 ounces of gold per Bitcoin that has an implied Bitcoin price at current market rates of $175,000 per coin. But the coin is starting to kick everyone's butt. The fastest horse in the race. Always has been, always will be. Don't look now. Objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear.
Listen, I tweeted this today. Okay. I said, 'Bitcoin always crashes loudly and recovers quietly. Zoom out and watch for lost levels slowly reclaimed through terrible sentiment. We don't need clarity bills or rate cuts. Fiat is broken. The long-term trend is intact. If you're not paying attention, you should be.' Here's my point. Bitcoin's bear markets are loud. They're violent. They attract media. They happen quick. They happen overnight. I mean, that crash in February, I mean, we fell 20% like in a day. And that's just gut-wrenching. That's hard. The recovery is a grind. Bottoming out is a process. I tell you guys all the time, markets either scare you out or wear you out. You got to have thick skin. You got to have thick conviction. You got to hang in there. See the other side. Okay.
What just as someone who's been in this industry for almost 14 years, what to look for? Zoom out and watch levels quietly reclaimed despite terrible sentiment. If I would have told you a few months ago, Clarity Act is going to fail violently in Congress. It's going to be a political embarrassment for this crypto president and the crypto administration. They're not going to be able to get their crypto bill to support all these crypto shitcoiners. And Warsh, who Trump has been banging the drum. Powell, remember, I mean how long ago was it when Trump was going to sue Jerome Powell in the Federal Reserve for whatever misbudgeting their office renovations and then also refusing to cut rates. And if I were to tell you, Warsh would get sworn in and then in a really in a front to Trump and everything that he wants as the sitting president running these massive deficits and he's going to hike rates in his face. If I would have told you guys that, you would have said, 'Oh god, maybe Bitcoin is going to 50k, is going to 40k,' and it just starts quietly taking out 70k level and then the 80k level. And then before you know it, you're like, 'Wait a second. Am I reading this right? We're almost at 90K.' This is what this beast does. You get with it or you get out of its way.
And I'm telling you guys right now, no sane person that understands everything we talk about on this show and has a relative understanding of Bitcoin ever behaves being short at all. You do not wait for the right moment to buy. You do not wait. Guys, this thing is a monster. It's unpredictable. It is a revolution. And you gotta, my dad said, get long, get paid. Get long, get paid. That's why my advice is always, you want to DCA, you want to smash buy, just get your exposure. I said this on TV this morning, actually. It's so hard. What's obvious? I'll tell you guys what's obvious. What's obvious is the dollar's purchasing power is only going down. Only going down. I have not met anyone that's like, you know what, I actually think things are going to deflate against the dollar and life will get cheaper in fiat terms. I haven't. Nobody is making that case. Everybody is expecting weakening purchasing power in fiat terms, more chaos, political fighting. Everybody, the problem is how do you monetize short dollar? How do you monetize chaos? How do you get long human engineering? How do you get long innovation? How do you create a deflationary world around you? It's easy to say, 'Yeah, I already know the dollar's going to go down.' But what do you do about it? And once you figure that out, that's hard. It's hard. Do the research. Find the right things to own. Understand things like Bitcoin, relative to AI, relative to the S&P 500, relative to Miami Beachfront real estate, relative to gold. That journey's hard. Once you figure it out and you found Bitcoin, I'm telling you, don't make it any harder than it needs to be. You get long. You get paid. I promise you. I promise you.
Because everyone's, 'Oh, you guys are stupid. You're dumb. It's been flat for the last five years. Gold's kicking its butt. Bitcoin doesn't get support from Congress. Its days are numbered.' And then you blink and all of a sudden we're at 90K. Excuse me. What did you say? What did you say? Because the thesis for us has been clear as day. The existing monetary system doesn't work. The dollar purchasing power only goes down. We need an alternative. We need hard assets. We need digital money. That's it. That's it. And you just sit and you wait and you be patient. You have conviction. You have thick skin because markets will either scare you out or wear you out. Wear you out, the harder one. They're going to take time. It's going to take a slog. Man, I bought this thing in 2021. I still haven't gotten a return.
Telling you. I'm telling you. Because a year from now, five years from now, 10 years from now, not one soul on this planet could say, 'Well, man, I wish Jack Mallers warned me a little bit.' Nah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. If anything, we on this show warn you too much. So, the TL;DR of what's going on is fiat is breaking. I'm a broken record, but the repetitiveness, it just you guys have to get it through. We have to get it through everyone's thick skull in society on this planet. The current monetary system is breaking in real time and that is why Bitcoin's pumping. So I bring your attention, by the way, who's been telling you guys for a year that the clarity bill doesn't matter. Doesn't matter to Bitcoin. Doesn't matter to Strike. Doesn't matter to me. Doesn't matter to bettering society. It was a bunch of large shitcoin degenerate speculative gambling companies trying to create regulatory moats for each other. Thankfully. I mean, oh my goodness. Can we stop talking about it? I don't care what these companies that are pushing their users. Hey, you're getting push notifications. Hey, did you remember to bet on the NFL? Hey, did you remember to bet on the weather tomorrow? What date do you think Trump is going to stop the Iran war? That's not financial innovation. That's not financial inclusion. That's not anything productive. That's not anything inspiring. That's not anything hopeful.
So, a bill that's crafted to make sure that these people can continue to push degenerate speculative gambling applications on society. Western society, Western culture is rapidly crumbling and becoming porn addiction and degenerate speculation. And this is all because the money is fundamentally broken. And so the fact that this bill which was always about regulatory moat, political donation infighting, it just the nasty part of all of this of political donations behind the scenes. It's all nothing to do with Bitcoin. Satoshi Nakamoto never needed Washington DC and Congress's approval to release the white paper and mine Bitcoin's first block. So I don't understand. And you guys want to know what my suggestion for the United States government is? Well, take a look at what I already did in El Salvador. You want to know what my suggestion is? Buy as much as you can and make it legal tender. Provide a regulatory environment where people are incentivized to come on your soil, build incredible products for your citizens. You want innovation. You want entrepreneurs. You want new jobs. You want people that have a lot of the asset that are looking to monetize it and build restaurants, build new schools for their kids. You want them on your soil investing in your country, creating jobs for your citizens, their products, making your people's lives better. And you want the thing on your balance sheet. You don't need any clarity bill passed so that prediction markets can be regulated by the CFTC and we can jam gambling down. I mean, that's if you are a youthful person in America, you're just getting porn and gambling shoved down your throat. And obviously that doesn't scale. That's not real culture. That is demonizing. And this is just the result of broken money. This is the result of a debasing currency of a broken system. And ultimately, kids will revolt. Kids will revolutionize. This doesn't scale. That's not real human culture. That doesn't fulfill real human needs and desires. And inevitably over time, people find Bitcoin. So anyways, fiat's breaking. Bitcoin is pumping. Let's get into it.
I point you back to the bond market. Do not get distracted by these stupid bills. Do not get distracted by the Fed. Pay attention to the thing that matters. Sovereign debt crisis. These, I mean the whole financial system is based on credit. It's based on money printing. And we're living through the beginnings of a sovereign debt crisis. From Jim Bianco. Does anyone else see a theme? The US 10-year at 5%, highest since 2007. The US 30-year 5.4%, highest since 2004. The Japanese 10-year 3%, highest since 1996. The UK 10-year over 5.4%, highest since 2007. The French 10-year over 4.5%, highest since 2008. The German 10-year 3.5%, highest since 2009. This is a lot of really high government debt yield and highest since, highest since, highest since. Oh wow. This hasn't been this high in 20 years, 30 years, 40 years. You guys recognize this theme? I put together this chart. Take a look at this. What you guys are looking at, there are one, two, three, four, five lines trending up in a similar direction. That is the US government 10-year, the Japanese 10-year, the German 10-year, the UK 10-year, the French 10-year. All those yields are rising higher. There is one line going down. The one line going down. And I've said it before on this show. I know it's uncomfortable, but we're about truth. We're not about politics. I'm not selling you guys advertisements and products. I'm giving you signal. I'm giving you the truth. Nobody can buy my opinion. Truth through the noise. You can find it on this show. China is the only country whose government yields are going down. Why? Well, turns out they're a productive country and they're taking their surplus and buying a lot of gold. I mean, they operate in a trillion dollar surplus and they're rotating that surplus into a hard asset with a relatively fixed supply.
Telling you guys, I've been saying it again. This is not a US thing. This is a western sovereign debt crisis. The idea that the West can just print and export inflation and import real goods and services, it's a myth, guys. I mean, use your common sense. Of course, that doesn't scale. Of course, that doesn't work. Why would it? Why would it? Okay. So, the question is, and what's fundamentally broken, which we'll repeat probably every week on this show until Bitcoin hits a million dollars a coin and we go buy professional sports teams. Who is buying government debt? Who is lending to these governments? And the answer is increasingly nobody. Now, I'm going to spend a lot of time on this slide because this is in my opinion and hat tip to Luke Roman. This is in my opinion the most clever way to understand the fundamental shift in what's happening in the legacy system. So this tweet reads, 'Gross inflows into treasuries are down to $300 billion, 1% of GDP into long-term treasuries only. Well short of the fiscal financing that the government needs.' So $300 billion is not going to cut it. Not going to cut it. Right? We're talking about $2 trillion dollar deficits, right? We're talking about health and human services. We're talking about social security. We need defense. We have increasing interest expenses with all this debt. That's not enough money. So what's fascinatingly interesting to me is you have to ask yourself who is, so the end of this tweet is 'who's financing the United States then if it's not foreigners?' And the tweet reads, 'Americans now have to fund their own government for once.' I'm going to say that again. We've run out of suckers willing to lend to us to finance deficits and print money.
When the world moved to globalization, globalism, and America exported its jobs, exported its industrial base, exported its military ability to vertically build and create its blue-collar jobs, the middle of America exported, right? The iPhone's not made here. Your laptop's not made here. Nothing's made here. We hyper-financialized what America is, what is made here. Big tech, Wall Street, hedge funds, high-frequency trading, quantitative firms. That's the American dream. Can't work with your hands. You can't build the consumable products that we all have on our desks, in our pockets, that we drive. No, that's overseas. Okay, that creates, and we wanted to be the world reserve currency. That creates a deficit financing structure for us. If you want to be the world reserve currency, you must export the currency and then your debt and then inflation. You are exporting inflation because what happens is you're creating a surplus in other parts of the world. So that means your trading partners, if we are running a deficit, the person on the other side of the table is running a surplus, right? Very simple. I mean, the math, 2 plus 2 has to equal 4. We're in a $2 trillion deficit. There's $2 trillion worth of surplus somewhere out there. We know China is a trillion of it, right? And the deal was you guys run a surplus and then you rotate your excess cash that you're making trading with us. We're going to consume and pay for all your stuff. You rotate it back into lending us the money, buying our government debt. And then we export inflation via financial repression where we will keep the yield on the debt lower than the growth of our economy. And that way we export the currency, we export the debt, we export inflation. Now that deal is gone. It's over. Especially after 2008, no one wants to finance the US government anymore, at least at these rates. If the 10-year gets to 10%, 20%, 30%. If gold, an ounce of gold gets to $25,000, if one Bitcoin gets to millions of dollars a coin, maybe. Maybe. Right now, Bitcoin at 87K, gold at $5,000 an ounce, the 10-year at 4.9%. No chance. No chance. The US economy is growing at 8 to 10%. Why would I lend you money at 4.9%? Bitcoin just did 7% today. Between me waking up and me streaming, Bitcoin out-returned the 10-year. Get out of here. I'm like, I don't want your yield.
So, who's lending and financing the US government? America is. Americans now have to do it. So, you take, we were exporting inflation. Well, now let me put your brain in a pretzel. Let me blow your mind. Does that mean we're now importing inflation? Say that again. When the deal was we print money, we export our debt, we export inflation, therefore via financial repression. But that deal is dead. Nobody wants to do that anymore. They realized after 2008 and we printed the money and bailed everyone out, they were suckers at the table. We've run out of marginal buyers and lenders to the United States government, to all Western governments. All yields, highest since, highest since, highest since. So we've gone from exporting inflation to finance western civilization to now importing inflation. This makes inflation secular. This makes inflation here to stay. It doesn't matter. 'Oh, I'm going to hike rates. I'm going to lower rates. I'm going to do none of, I'm going to implement buybacks.' None of that matters. You either need to implement real rates being negative, financial repression. Therefore, you have gone from exporting inflation to importing inflation because Americans are now the ones that have to finance someone that can't pay their own bills or the system collapses. We've talked about it over and over and over on this show. We get to Bitcoin being money and being a world reserve currency and monetizing itself throughout the world one of two ways. Either through austerity because the system as we know it crashes and burns in real time or through inflation and weaker currency because they print the money to make the difference, one or the other. But please appreciate Bitcoin is pumping because Americans are now funding their own government. Americans are living through financial repression. Americans are starting to face the same inflation that they used to export all over the world. You want to know what it's going to be like to live in the United States of America? Ask someone in Argentina. Ask someone in Turkey. This is what we've been doing to them for many years. But they're done buying our debt. They're done dealing with this financial repression. China's not rotating its trillion dollar surplus into our market. So, we have to create leverage and regulation and buybacks and all sorts of financial [__] to finance ourselves. And again, I will say it over and over and over. Somebody has to lose. The question is, is it going to be you? When I buy Bitcoin, when I say I'm not participating in this fiat nonsense. Bitcoin only for me. What am I effectively saying? I don't know who's going to lose. It's not going to be me. That's the way to think about it, guys.
Gross inflows down to $300 billion. That's a lot less than two trillion. So, the US government has to find financing somehow. They're going to change the rules. They're going to change the laws. They're going to rehypothecate your bank deposits. Your deposits sitting in Chase and Bank of America. Yeah, those are going to be lent to the US government. They're going to allow excessive leverage for all the hedge funds, right? So, let me keep going. So, China, just so you guys know, this is a headline at the Financial Times. 'China's US Treasury holdings fall to its lowest level since 2008.' 'China gold market update. Official buying has accelerated in August.' Guys, it's not a surprise. China is taking its trade surplus and saying, 'Ah, we'd rather not be financially repressed and have negative real returns. We're gonna own something relatively hard.' And the world looks like it's going towards a more neutral reserve asset. The collateral of the world is not going to be government debt, especially Western civilization debt. These countries aren't nearly productive enough for that. Okay, this from the Wall Street Journal. 'Hedge funds are the wild card in a turbulent bond market. A pullback by pension funds and treasuries has created a void filled by hedge funds. The New York Fed is asking about the potential risks of that.' I've been talking about it on this show forever. The Cayman Islands is one of the largest purchasers of US government debt. How is that possible? The Cayman Islands, oh, that's where all these hedge funds are domiciled. And these hedge funds, how do they have all this money? Oh, they don't. They're on leverage. They're borrowing it. It's not their money. So, why is Scott Bessent the chief volatility officer? Oh, because if you have a system that's heavily reliant on leverage, the one thing you can't afford is volatility. Everything is fine except volatility. You cannot have the MOVE index spike because then these guys have to delever. They have to decrease their position and whoops, there goes the financing of the US government. The US government is not financed by its trade partners. It's not financed by foreigners. It's not financed by anyone other than excessive leverage hyper-financialized on Wall Street.
So Luke makes this very obvious point. Again, I'm a college dropout. I mean, I'm not the smartest guy in any room. Let's be real. Let's be honest. Bitcoin kills your ego. I'm not a computer science wizard. I'm not, I mean, come on. It's like the dumb, I was the class clown in high school. The point is it's really not that hard. It's all very logical. First principled thinking. Luke makes the very, very, very obvious point: meaningfully, meaningfully increasing prospective federal deficits is a reason to sell bonds, not buy them. This is true whether you increase the deficits by going to war or increase the deficits by the Fed raising rates instead of cutting rates. Check to you, Kevin Warsh and Scott Bessent. You guys understand? By the Federal Reserve hiking rates, they are making it more expensive for the US government to finance their debt. What does that mean, guys? Well, we know and we've shown this slide and this data consistently on this show, the largest expense for the US government is health and human services. The second largest, social security. The third largest expense, Treasury, financing all this debt. So, if you hike rates, you add a tremendous amount of expenses to that Treasury item. It won't be too much longer until the cost to carry all of this debt is the biggest line item on the government's expense sheet. Because at the bottom of this visual, we see the largest sector growth for expenses from the US government. You've got Department of Veteran Affairs has grown 10% year-over-year. You've got Social Security Administration has grown 5% year-over-year. Health and Human Services has grown 7% year-over-year. The Department of Treasury has grown 10% year-over-year. So, if Warsh is claiming, 'I'm going to keep hiking rates to fight inflation,' guy at debt to GDP of over 120%, you're not helping the problem. You're just making the country more indebted. The deficit is growing. You want to know how we go from a $2 trillion deficit to a $3 trillion deficit? The Federal Reserve keep hiking rates. And this is the thing I've been saying on the show. It blows my mind that professional economists and Harvard graduates blah blah blah blah blah that they sit here and say, you know, hiking rates is going to be bad for Bitcoin. Oh, really, jackass? Well,
It didn't take long for that opinion to be totally invalid and one of the dumber things anyone has said this year about financial markets. Clearly, it's not. Clearly, you say, 'Well, how was that possible? Hiking rates is a constraint on growth and Bitcoin's about growth.' No, Bitcoin's just another version of a tech stock. No, Bitcoin is a solution to a failed monetary system. The monetary system is failing. The Fed can hike rates and they will blow out the deficit of the US government and cause a sovereign debt crisis. Why would you continue to lend to someone who's increasingly insolvent? That's why the 10-year will go up despite rate hikes. Now, the Fed can then cut rates, but by cutting rates, it's cheaper then to create credit and the number of fiat currency units floating around the world will explode and Bitcoin will also go up because that is severely weakening to the dollar and severely debasing the currency. So, you say, 'Jack, what should they do?' Checkmate. It's been over, guys. It's been over.
And this is why you stay humble and stack sats. This is why you don't get scared out. You don't get worn out. And everyone's, 'Oh, you're an idiot. You're stupid. Are you kidding? How did you not invest in AI?' Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then one day, Bitcoin starts to run since the debasement trade was named dead because Kevin Warsh came out as a hawk. And Bloomberg wrote, 'The debasement trade is over. Gold is up 9%.' Oh, wow. Nice. Cute. Bitcoin's up 41%. You're an idiot until one day you're a genius. And people assume that transition from black to white involves a lot of gray, you know. No, it's at a snap. At a snap.
So, this from Arthur, I mean, took the words right out of my mouth. See, we didn't need some nonsense piece of crypto regulation like the Clarity Act. We just needed a rate hike that puts more dollars in the hands of rich people to consume more financial assets. Guys, if you increase the rate to borrow money on a debt pile that's already at 40 trillion, you know that all you're doing is increasing the amount of money that people that own that debt are getting paid to then go buy other things. Look at Tether. Tether does not take the money that the US government pays them to back their stablecoin and buy more US debt. They don't have any more US debt than they absolutely have to. What do they buy? They buy Bitcoin. They buy gold. They build productive businesses. Now, take that for every single person that owns US debt. Nobody is taking cash flow, is taking excess payments, is taking yield and piling further into US debt. How do I know that? Well, I already read you all of this at the beginning of the show. Oh, this long-duration treasury is highest since 2007. Well, the Japanese one highest since 1996. Well, the German one highest since 2002. That's how I know. That's how I know.
So, the Fed hike was stimulative. The Fed hike will cause more inflation. We are now importing inflation. The same inflation that we were exporting to all these countries around the world, we are now importing because we have a government that cannot spend less. They can't. People say, 'This is simple. Let's cut the $2 trillion deficit to zero.' Okay? What do you guys want to stop spending on? Social Security. All the boomers out there, you guys cool with that? I mean, you guys got to buy your houses for a hundred grand and now you're selling them for $10 million. You cool if we just cut Social Security? Oh, you're not. Okay, you won't vote for that. Okay, Health and Human Services, are you guys cool taking care of your own bodies? If you eat donuts and you abuse your liver with substances that you got to pay for the consequences of treating your body like [__] are you guys cool with that? Oh, you're not. You're not going to vote for that. Okay, no defense. How about no defense? How about we're not going to back the fiat currency that we issue around the world with the threat of violence? You guys cool with that? That doesn't sound very American. Oh, no. No, no, you're not comfortable with that. Okay, you don't want to vote for that. Got it. Are we cool just not paying anybody for the money that they've borrowed us? Let's just, you know, the Treasury expense, let's just bring that to zero. Oh, no. That's not cool either because all the debt is now owned locally in the country. That would crash our banking system. That would crash all the money market funds. That would crash... Oh, okay. Got it. Okay. So, we can't spend less money then. We can't. I'm glad that we doged up the Department of Education. That made for some good memes, but it turns out that doesn't really matter.
Okay, so we have a government that refuses and probably literally can't spend any less money because any sitting politician that spends less money and makes any cuts to these expenses is going to get voted out of office. All it takes to win an election is 'I'll give you guys even more free [__] than what that guy's promised to give you.' It's whoever can credibly promise free [__]. The guy in New York is literally, 'You'll walk into the grocery store, you'll grab what you need, you'll walk out, you don't even have to pay.' And that guy got elected. Clown world. Clown world.
I mean, so I mean this to me is this is crazy. So the Fed decision in October, there's now over a 50% chance according to these prediction markets that he hikes again. Okay, great. This is the thing. He starts cutting rates. I know what to do with that. Buy Bitcoin. He keeps hiking rates. Oh, I know what to do with that. Buy Bitcoin. Oh, Bessent is buying back his own long-duration instruments. I know what to do with that. Buy Bitcoin. Hate to sound like a broken record, and 90% of my career, I'm thrashed on the internet. I'm called an idiot. I'm called a [__]. And it's only the rare moments where everyone, 'Oh, wait. You were right, guys. Bitcoin's the answer.' Telling you right now. Been telling you this whole time. I'm telling you right now.
Here's a geopolitical nuance that I think is fascinating. By the way, this is from... now let's be honest with ourselves here. I don't totally understand like the Iranian regimes and how the government works and stuff. I know that this guy is part of Iran in some capacity. I got to be intellectually honest with you and saying I don't know exactly how all of that works, but this tweet was fascinating. So he tweets out, he says 'Strait of Hormuz rule' and he puts out this equation and he says, 'Let's see if a hike' so he's talking about the Federal Reserve rates. 'Let's see if a hike could open the Strait of Hormuz or produce a barrel of oil.' Smiley face. You cannot 25 basis point a choke point. It's Strait of Hormuz risk premium. And we see it. Stay unanchored. What's this guy's point? His point is you guys can't financially engineer your way out of this one. You can't financially engineer the Strait of Hormuz to open. You can't financially engineer more oil and put an end to this oil shortage. And the oil shortage and the energy shortage is or the energy inflation is clearly causing a lot of the inflation. Warsh has been on record saying, 'I have to fight inflation.' And what Iran is effectively saying, we've been saying it on this show consistently, is Iran is not fighting the United States with weapons. They're fighting the United States financially. They're fighting the United States via the bond market. And what I'm saying based on reading this tweet, Iran is basically saying, 'Oh, perfect. The Federal Reserve says they need to hike until they fix inflation.' But Iran is claiming we control inflation. We control how much oil flows through the global economy. We control the Strait of Hormuz. And so by proxy, we control Fed monetary policy. Warsh won't stop hiking until we open the strait and we patch the oil market back to normal. That's what this tweet says. Now, I'm not saying if that's actually going to happen or not, but so I read this tweet, right? This tweet was last week and I read it. I'm like, 'Wow.' I mean, people are starting to say the quiet part out loud. Iran's not saying they're going to come bomb American soil. They'd be crazy to do that. They're saying, 'We're going to hit America where it hurts, inflation and the bond market, and see how much pain the American people can tolerate.' Are they willing to have unaffordable homes? Are they willing to have persistent inflation? Are they willing to have austerity and some of the institutions fail? Or are they going to get bailout, bailout, bailout, and then Trump's going to taco and back out of the war? That's effectively what Iran has been saying this whole time and now tweeting it like, 'Oh, cute 25 basis point hike. Good luck fighting inflation. We control that right now because you guys can't control the Strait of Hormuz and you guys are running out of strategic petroleum reserves to patch the oil shortage.' That's what he's saying. Quiet part out loud.
Now over the weekend, I read this breaking. Netanyahu has cut short his trip to the United States and canceled the planned Texas stop, flying to New York and returning to Israel the same day, shortly after Trump cut short his own weekend at Camp David to return to the White House tonight instead of tomorrow, citing potential for significant escalation in the Middle East. At the same time, US embassies across the entire Middle East have issued security alerts for American citizens in the past hours. Trump said on Thursday he is approaching a quote 'major turning point' in the war with Iran and asked, 'Do I want to go in and annihilate them or do I not?' So I find it, you know, at what point is this not a coincidence that Warsh hikes rates and Iran says, 'Ah, so we control Fed monetary policy because as long as we want to continue to impose an energy shortage and an oil shortage on the United States, they will continue to have inflation. And the Fed will continue to hike rates, which will continue to put the United States in a debt spiral because it's going to blow out the deficit because the more that they hike rates, the deficit grows exponentially larger because they're already sitting on a pile of $40 trillion of debt.' Something to keep an eye on. It looks like Middle East is going to get really interesting. And again, this is potentially why the US government and the Federal Reserve are at odds. The Federal Reserve is supposed to control and tame inflation. This Keynesian nonsense. It's ridiculous. Inflation should be 2%. Inflation should be zero. We should just live in a free market. We don't need central planners, unelected central planner, banker wankers setting the price of money. But maybe this is a lot of the tension because the US government can't have growing deficit just because the Fed is hiking rates. You're going to blow out the deficit and you're going to cause increasing geopolitical tension. Maybe Iran is, 'Oh, nice, nice Fed hike you got there. Turns out that hiked rate can't produce any more oil though and doesn't open the Strait of Hormuz. So, sure would be a shame if we keep squeezing the grip on oil for you guys.' Can't wait for October. I'm sure he's going to hike it again. Good luck financing all this, Scott. That looks like what's happening. I don't know. I'm not a geopolitical analyst. I'm not even a professional podcaster for loyal listeners. Who knows? Not me. But interesting nonetheless.
Now, bringing it back to the people on the street, this is the result, guys. Real wages is back on the decline. So, I mean, I could have pulled anything. This is from the Atlanta Fed. Housing affordability is now at its worst. Worst ever. Meaning, the gap between median household income and the cost of a median-priced home, the largest gap ever. All-time high. All-time high. Qualifying income to buy a median home is above 120 grand. Now, the median household income is slightly above 80 grand. Not good. Not good. What's another way of expressing what I'm saying? Well, if inflation is back and wages aren't growing, then by just working paycheck to paycheck, saving in dollars, holding your money at Chase, you are getting poorer. You're working away from owning a home. You're working away from getting more vacations. You're working away from being able to finance having another child. You're working away from eating higher quality food. You're working away from being able to get that car. Want to know why Bitcoin is up? Because everything I'm saying is becoming common knowledge to the people. Everybody has some familiarity with what I'm saying. Why is Bitcoin up even though the Fed hiked rates? I mean, do you want to own dollars? Do you want to own government debt right now? I don't. Clearly, a lot of people don't. Yields are going higher and bitcoins are going higher. Whoops. Simple, guys. Simple. 21 million divided by 8 billion. Super simple.
Uh, okay. I'll get to this in a second. I am going to include... So, you guys want Strike updates. Still, you know, I told you guys this is just going to be about macro updates and news. We'll keep these episodes tight. We'll keep them short. We'll keep them focused. 30 to 45 minutes. We're right on track. And that I've started to do more higher quality content. I've been releasing Bitcoin education episodes, Bitcoin history episodes, Q&A as a separate video. You guys are really digging all that, which I'll get into in a second, but there was no room for the Strike updates. So, I am going to try to put the Strike updates back into the Monday live stream at the very end. I'll keep them brief, but just a heads up, give me feedback on that. You guys have really been driving the show. I don't know if anyone, any YouTube podcast streamers as active in the comments on Twitter listening to you guys and iterating on a daily or weekly basis. So genuinely give me feedback on it. But here's your Strike update. This week we launched our brand new website which I think should, you know, if you're like getting your friends, getting your family, getting yourself into Bitcoin and you need a Bitcoin financial service provider, that's what I built. I built it for myself first and for the world later, right? Like I built the company that I wanted to be a customer of. I think now our website tells our story far better. So we have services for the individual, for your business, or we have private high net worth, institutional, family office type products. We have all three sectors. You can see on our website now we have millions of downloads. We've been in the market for a long time. We're in over 100 countries. All Bitcoin-backed, one-to-one. We have almost 50,000 five-star reviews. So Strike has become a big institution. I think our website helps convey that and shows you all the different services we have. You want to buy Bitcoin, you want to sell Bitcoin, you want to hold Bitcoin, you need to borrow against it, you need a line of credit, you need a liquidation-proof loan, you need to make payments, you need a concierge white-glove service, you need to get on the phone with someone just to make you feel a little bit more comfortable. Man, this new monetary network, this whole new system is a little bit overwhelming. I just want to talk to somebody. I don't want to do it by myself on my phone. You give us a call. If you want to predict what the weather's going to be like tomorrow, if you want to bet on the NFL, if you want to try and make money predicting when Trump is going to start and end wars, you're never going to be a customer of mine. It's not a bad or good thing. I just will never serve you degenerative speculative tools. Ever, ever, ever. If you want high-quality financial services for the future of money, which is Bitcoin, that's why we're here. So check out our new website and the big product launch coming right around the corner amongst many other things is interest on cash. So we will be paying you guys and you get paid in Bitcoin by the way, interest on your cash balance on Strike. We're going to start it at, it was going to be 3.5%. Now with the Fed rate hike we might be able to even raise that, get close to 4%. So, if you have cash, idle cash sitting in a Chase account, in any financial account, you might as well deposit it to Strike because we'll pay you at least three and a half percent interest on that cash and we'll convert it live daily into Bitcoin so that you're basically getting passive Bitcoin on the side as long as you have idle cash. I don't know how many of you guys have cash, but if you do, you might as well earn some passive Bitcoin on it. There's a bunch of other stuff coming. I want to hear your guys' feedback first in regards to how much of Strike updates you want on these live streams. But for now, that's on the way. Check out our new website. Give me some feedback.
Okay. And then to end it, just an update on the calendar. What I released over the last week and what's looking forward. First of all, this is from the Bears game yesterday. I went to the Bears game yesterday. Don't really want to talk about it. For all of the haters out there, kid show. [__] you guys. Kid show. Kid show. Kid show. But I do want to shout out just all the love and the support. So, I saw a bunch of you guys at the gym over the last week. I saw Andrew here happen to be sitting next to me at the Bears game yesterday. His tweet's on the screen for the podcast listeners. There's a photo. We took a selfie together, him and his lovely wife. I just want to say, man, I really appreciate you guys. So, if you aren't already, please subscribe, like the shows, all that stuff. Unfortunately, I don't control the algorithm. So, the reach that this show has is largely on you guys to subscribe and like and comment and all that good stuff. So, if you don't mind, it takes the content and further distributes it to people who maybe aren't as orange-pilled as we all are. And I just, I really do love you guys, man. Like, this is the coolest thing. It's cool to start a company. It's cool to build products. It's cool to have revenue. It's cool to produce profit. But I will say, I mean, on a human level, there's nothing quite like having a connection with a community where whether I'm at a professional sports game or I'm at the gym or I'm at the grocery store running into you guys, don't ever, ever, ever think that you can't tap me on the shoulder and interrupt what I'm doing to say hi. I mean, for those that have introduced themselves, I'm a hugger. It really, I think this is a revolution at the end of the day. We don't really have too much control as to the world that we're born into and that we inherit, but we have all the control for the world that comes after us and that our kids get. And it does feel like we're on one giant team. So, just wanted to thank you guys, all the feedback, all the support. I can feel the show getting bigger just by how many of you guys are coming up giving me a hug. So, it's really cool. It means a lot. So, oops.
With that being said, last week we uploaded another Ask Jack. So for those that don't know, Q&A is now a totally separate episode. I built a tool. It's at ask.jackmallers.com. You can call in and leave a voice note. I play those voice notes as a separate video. It's a total separate video, about 30 to 45 minutes Q&A where I play your voice note. We get to hear your guys' voices, hear your questions. The feedback on this has been tremendous. People saying, 'Man, these are questions I would ask. These are questions I had.' It's good to hear people's voice. It feels more like a conversation and not interacting with a YouTube chat box. And of course, if you can't make it live, you shouldn't not be able to ask questions. So, you guys call in at ask.jackmallers.com. You can leave your name and your email if you want. You don't have to. It could be totally anonymous. I want to hear from you guys. We pick questions that either seem popular, that are funny, entertaining. I mean, we're enjoying this. I got no advertisers. This is all for enjoyment, for the people, for the movement, for the culture. So, call in. We released a recent episode of that and we'll be doing one a week at least. So, don't forget to call in. We also released another lesson. So, we call these Bitcoin lessons. This one, 'From Cows to Coins,' it's really about the history of money. Money emerges naturally within any marketplace. You need a market good that you acquire not to consume but to save and later exchange. So I go through the history of money, how it evolves from barter, different types of money throughout human history and ultimately where we are today and where Bitcoin fits into that and how you can measure Bitcoin as a money versus other things. People seem to be really liking those as well. So with that being said, we're going to be doing more of this content every Monday, 6:00 p.m. Eastern. There's 135 of these now. And you bet your ass next Monday, no matter what, you'll get 136. No matter what, 6 p.m. Eastern Monday, you can count on me to give you the least amount of noise possible and the most amount of signal. Okay. Tuesday, we're going to start releasing, we've been working on Bitcoin animations. So, these are like one to three minute animated videos narrated by myself that really are just very sharable, very inclusive. They're not overwhelming, they're not long. You don't have to invest in reading books and listening to me rant and scream for hours and hours and hours. We've done videos like this before. They've been our most successful. I mean, these videos have gotten tens of millions of views across all the platforms. And I told the team like, 'Man, we should do one of these a week.' I mean, people love these. Love to share it with their family. We got holidays coming up. So, we're going to try and get you guys a new animated narrated Bitcoin video from us, whether it's about inflation, government debt, scarcity, what open source means, all of that good stuff. On Tuesday, so hopefully tomorrow, we drop a new Bitcoin animation video. I'll likely drop that on Twitter, but we'll upload it to YouTube and everything as well. And then Wednesdays, we're going to try and make Bitcoin lessons. Thursday, Bitcoin history, and Friday, you'll get the Q&A. So, Friday should be Ask Jack Q&A. I think that's fun. Monday live stream. Friday is going into the weekend casual hang out with you guys, play the voice mail note, audio notes that you guys are leaving me and then in the middle of the week try and get you guys educational content, some historical documentation of Bitcoin. We'll see how that goes. Okay, so this is what you can expect. And with that, I'll see you guys tomorrow. Kept this one under an hour tight. Keep it tight. Keep it simple. Life's hard enough. There's enough going on. We're busy. You guys don't need three hours of me ranting and screaming. High quality content, high quality education. Try and keep this channel unique, positive, inspiring, funny, relatable. The revolution, the movement, the culture. We march on. We march on. Take that Clarity Act. Throw it in the trash. Take these Fed rate hikes, put it in a cigar, and smoke that [__]. Bitcoin to the moon. Bitcoin is the answer. Stay humble, stack sats. I love you guys. I'll be in the comments taking all the feedback in and we're going to continue to implement it and take this YouTube channel and orange pill the world. All right. If I see you at the grocery store, at the Bears games, at the gym, I'm traveling over the next few months. If I see you guys around town, please tap me on the shoulder. Give me a hug. I appreciate it more than you know. Seriously, the movement is the most inspiring part of my job. It's what keeps me going. All right, guys. Hang in there. Take care.
