Shownotes
This spending vs saving narrative is one of the major differences between Keynesian and Austrian economics. Keynesian logic is that people in a nation shouldn't be "savers". They should be out spending money - driving the economy. It's your duty to spend and not save. Austrians think that savings is an important component of any healthy economy. Of course these concepts are at cross-purposes. Let's dig in!!
News and Links
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US Personal Savings Rates Data Since 1959
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The Digital Asset Anti Money-Laundering Act
Eight Social Media Influencers Charged by SEC with Stock Manipulation Scheme
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Transcripts
Hey, SatStackers. It's December the 19th, and this is Episode 87 of Generational Wealth of
Speaker:Cryptocurrency. I'm your host, MacIntosh. Today's episode is about Consumption vs. Savings.
Speaker:Of course, no one on this podcast is a financial advisor, and any information presented on this
Speaker:podcast is for informational purposes only. Now that we have the legal stuff out of the way,
Speaker:let's jump on in. All right, it's Sunday night. The market has closed for the week. It's turned
Speaker:over, and we'll talk about that in just a minute. But the Earl Grey is hot. I just finished a little
Speaker:bit of wonton soup that I made earlier. One of the things that I'm trying these days is
Speaker:doing a little bit of cooking as kind of a hobby, as a way to do something that doesn't cost a whole
Speaker:lot of money, because frankly, I work too much and need something to do to keep myself from working
Speaker:even more. So this week, I tried my hand at making wonton. It turned out pretty good,
Speaker:happens to be my favorite type of soup. And this time, I purchased the wontons frozen,
Speaker:and of course, assembled everything else. Next time, I will probably actually make the wontons
Speaker:by hand and make a batch of them and freeze them up. All in all, it was quite tasty. I had one child
Speaker:who thought I had a little too much ginger in it, but that's okay. We'll adjust that a little bit.
Speaker:Next time, I thought the ginger was quite nice, but everybody has different tastes. So sorry about
Speaker:that. A little side note there. But I finished my bowl of wonton soup, still sipping on the Earl
Speaker:Grey, and off we go. Markets did close a couple hours ago, and let's chat. It's got a BTC price
Speaker:at closing of $16,765.64, so $16,765. Ethereum closed at $1,185, and ADA closed at $26.65.
Speaker:All three down, of course, from the week before. All three kind of in this same range that we've
Speaker:been trading in. We did have some numbers come out this week in terms of interest rate. The Federal
Speaker:Reserve chairman, Jerome Powell, announced they would be raising rates 0.5%, which is what was
Speaker:expected, which puts the central bank lending rates somewhere in the neighborhood of 5%. I don't know
Speaker:exactly offhand, maybe 4.5%. The rates are 4.25 to 4.5%. So I don't actually understand why there's
Speaker:different rates, I guess, for different situations. I don't know, but that's the ballpark rate that
Speaker:they're lending out money to the other banks, and then you can call it trickle down or whatever.
Speaker:The rates that we pay as consumers for car loans, house loans, whatever, are based off of that.
Speaker:It looks to me like we're going to end up around 5% before this is done. I suspect in January the
Speaker:rate will either be 0.25 or 0.5%, which would put it very close to 5%, and then in February we'll
Speaker:either have a very small rate increase or maybe even, quote, a pause. I am of the opinion,
Speaker:of course, 2023. We will continue to go sideways. I posted a thing on Twitter,
Speaker:speaking of the crypto market specifically earlier tonight. It's what's called a three-day.
Speaker:So every bar on the chart represents three days of information. So what that does,
Speaker:it basically enables you to easily put an entire year on the screen at one time.
Speaker:What is that? A little over 100 bars, 100 and, I don't know, 15, 20, whatever,
Speaker:very easily fits on one screen. And it's very obvious when you go back that we have been in
Speaker:a downward trend since we topped at 69,000. And we need to respect that as if you're trading,
Speaker:we need to respect that if we're buying, and it's something to keep in mind.
Speaker:So you can go on my Twitter account, McIntoshFintech on Twitter, and you can see that chart
Speaker:if you would like, but it is a sharp downward line. And you can see the way that I drew it,
Speaker:it's approached it twice, if I remember correctly, but it's actually not touched it. And until it
Speaker:crosses that line, essentially, we're in a downtrend. Now it may bump up like over the
Speaker:last few weeks, it goes up, it goes down, but in general, it's continuing to work its way down.
Speaker:And what I said on the Twitter that I posted was, where did that go? Man,
Speaker:I posted a lot tonight. I was catching up on my Twitter feed. I had not been on all day,
Speaker:so I posted quite a few things or retweeted. Some of them we'll talk about tonight.
Speaker:Anyways, it's approached that line. I look at it as from the top. The line
Speaker:actually is not exact. It looks like if you want to draw it to where it's touching the top,
Speaker:and then down near the bottom, it would start in May of this year. But regardless,
Speaker:we have a clear downward trend from that 69,000 top, and it's approached the line
Speaker:a couple of times. It just approached it over the last few days, and it is starting to look like
Speaker:actually it's going to be rejected again, not surprisingly. I don't think that we're done.
Speaker:And until we cross that line, until it crosses that line, starts on an upward trend, retest that
Speaker:trend, retest that line is best case. So it would actually cross it, go up, fall back, hit the line.
Speaker:This is a classic trading pattern. And then start back up. We're not out of the bear market.
Speaker:So it's a very easy metric way to look at this if you're just kind of interested in knowing where
Speaker:we're at. I think we might be close. I don't think we're there yet. I also think we will have
Speaker:some form of capitulation event where, and we've seen some good drops. I look at two right there
Speaker:on the chart actually over one bar over a three or six day period, but we've had dramatic drops.
Speaker:But I think there's too much out there. We've talked about the Bitcoin miners.
Speaker:They're running out of capital. They've done everything that they can, and energy prices are
Speaker:not going up. They bought a lot of miners. Many of them bought a lot of miners when they were very
Speaker:expensive. Right now you can buy almost a top of the line unit for brand new for $3,000. And at the
Speaker:top of the market, it was like 15, 18,000 maybe if I remember correctly, because I actually looked at
Speaker:it and said, I can't do that. Now I'm actually thinking about buying one or two of these units
Speaker:to start mining with them because they're quote so cheap, at least relative to the price of Bitcoin
Speaker:and the basically four year lifespan that these units would have.
Speaker:So I think we will have one or two more miners capitulate. I think that if there are
Speaker:certain, if there are companies who have large holdings of Bitcoin who capitulate,
Speaker:that could start all this off. We'll see. I just don't think we're there yet.
Speaker:I come on here every week and I know you all get tired of, you want me to come on here and
Speaker:be like rah rah rah, but we're just not there yet. This is the bear market. Welcome to it
Speaker:in case you didn't know. And this is the time for building and this is the time for learning.
Speaker:And this is the time for stashing away your money. I hope that you're DCA into Bitcoin.
Speaker:And we've talked about these other assets, Ethereum, ADA, so on. But now's the time to
Speaker:be buying those assets at these bargain basement prices. If we do have a capitulation event,
Speaker:buy as much as you can when that happens. If we don't, we go sideways, so to speak,
Speaker:between say $15,000 and $20,000 for the rest of, for all of next year, then so be it.
Speaker:And that may be what happens. And that's okay. All right. So there you go. Yay. Buy your Bitcoin.
Speaker:DCA. I'm happy with where the market is right now. I'll tell you during the last bear market,
Speaker:I was not happy. I was miserable at this point. And maybe you are too. And if you are, understand
Speaker:this is part of the process. You have to get through this. And maybe next bear market,
Speaker:and there will be one, maybe you'll embrace it and use it as a chance to do these things that
Speaker:we were talking about. Build, learn, buy more Bitcoin. Right? All right. This week's topic,
Speaker:of course, we're continuing our discussion of Austrian economics versus Keynesian economics.
Speaker:This week's actual topic is consumption versus savings. What does that mean? So
Speaker:as we've discussed with the Keynesian worldview, it's all about GDP. GDP, GDP,
Speaker:GDP. This is the most important statistic. And a big part of that statistic is spending.
Speaker:So when we have this discussion, you have to understand that. So spending of consumers,
Speaker:people like you and me, that's super important to them. So you have to keep that in mind as we're
Speaker:having this discussion. Austrians, on the other hand, believe that savings are fundamental
Speaker:to the economic growth of a country. In other words, they believe that by having high savings,
Speaker:high savings by stashing away money or assets or whatever, in order to use those later for
Speaker:various things, that is what will help make a country prosper. It's a very fundamental
Speaker:difference between those two. Now, the reasoning, I'm going to explain the reasoning for the
Speaker:Austrians. It's going to take about five minutes and then I'm going to spend the rest of this time
Speaker:talking about the Keynesian economics view of it. And I'm trying very hard. Of course,
Speaker:I've told you all a number of times, I have an Austrian mindset. That's my bias. But I am
Speaker:trying to be open to this. I'm going to explain it. I'm going to explain how, what I think that
Speaker:they're, where they're coming from. And then I'm going to kind of pick that apart and say,
Speaker:this is why I believe that it's incorrect. You can choose to do whatever that you want
Speaker:with that information. So Austrians believe that savings is fundamental to growth. The
Speaker:reasoning is that money is saved by people. It becomes available to businesses for investments.
Speaker:So maybe they make a loan to a small business to help get them started. This investment gets
Speaker:spent on new technology and on other improvements, or maybe they're expanding their square footage of
Speaker:their factory or whatever, and that drives up the productivity of the business. The increase
Speaker:in productivity then contributes to an overall increase in the economy and ultimately growth.
Speaker:To me, that's really straightforward. Now, does everything that people save get spent on businesses?
Speaker:Of course not. Many people save and they're going to pass that money on to their kids or whatever.
Speaker:But over time, people do tend to invest in businesses as their assets and their money
Speaker:matures and diversifies, I guess. Maybe it's a local pizza parlor where they're expanding
Speaker:the square footage to include the building next to it. Maybe it is something like,
Speaker:well, these days, certainly, it could be something as simple as investing in stocks like
Speaker:an early Amazon, for example. There are a number of ways that people can save and invest.
Speaker:The end result of that is almost always productivity increases in the nation's total
Speaker:in the nation's total economic output. The problem is it's not immediate.
Speaker:If I'm saving, let's say, I don't know, let's say I'm making a pretty good living. Maybe I'm making
Speaker:$60,000 or $80,000. Maybe I'm saving $1,000 a month. That would probably be pretty difficult
Speaker:these days, but let's say that we can do it. The problem is that money is not immediately
Speaker:visible in the economic output of the country, is it? No, of course not. It gets stored up,
Speaker:it gets saved, it gets put into stocks, it gets put into bonds even, real estate, whatever.
Speaker:But down the road, maybe that real estate, for example, becomes a rental property.
Speaker:That's actually contributing to the GDP of the country. Because the rental, if I buy
Speaker:an $80,000 house and I'm making $200 a month net in rent after expenses, that's what that means,
Speaker:is what that means, then that is going to contribute to the GDP of the country in the long term,
Speaker:if that makes sense. So it's just a much slower process than the Keynesian view where
Speaker:consumption is king. If it's the holiday season right now, as I record this, of course,
Speaker:it's in the middle of December. We're approaching Christmas. Hanukkah is tomorrow. Happy Hanukkah
Speaker:to the Jewish listeners. And so you've got this holiday season. You've got people buying things,
Speaker:going to the stores. Typically, these last few months of the year, certainly the last quarter,
Speaker:is the strongest in retail. Those are immediate. I go out and buy something and yes, that's going
Speaker:to increase the GDP. I'm spending it. So on the one hand, I do understand that thought process
Speaker:in terms of the Keynesian view. I want to read, I got this off of a web page. I'm not sure I even
Speaker:have a link to it, so I'm not sure I can give proper attribution to it. But I'm going to read
Speaker:this. This was definitely written by a Keynesian person. And I'm going to read this. I will stop
Speaker:from time to time and I will say things that I think versus what this person is saying.
Speaker:I think this provides a very good view of the Keynesian viewpoint on spending.
Speaker:John Maynard Keynes, who published his influential work, The General Theory of Employment Interest
Speaker:and Money, now there's a best-selling title for you, but yeah, lots of economic books have fun
Speaker:titles like that. In 1936, noted savings can ultimately be detrimental to the economy
Speaker:because of the paradox of thrift. So they actually believe that savings can be detrimental.
Speaker:Now, they go on to explain at some point that some savings is good for the economy.
Speaker:This theory argues that if everyone individually cuts spending to increase savings, which is
Speaker:absolutely what I would encourage you to do, aggregate savings will eventually fall because
Speaker:one person's spending is someone else's income. So this is me. I think this is a very simplistic
Speaker:viewpoint, but that's the thinking. Because increased savings, by definition, decreases
Speaker:current consumption. It stifles demand. A simple example can illustrate this paradox.
Speaker:Let's assume I want a new computer, so I start saving an extra $100 each month that I would
Speaker:otherwise spend going out to eat. By choosing not to spend that $100, I deny the waitstaff
Speaker:at my favorite restaurant some work hours and tips, i.e. some portion of their income.
Speaker:As a result, these workers also have to reduce their consumption because they are earning less.
Speaker:If society, as opposed to an individual, as in our example, follows the savings pattern,
Speaker:this snowball or Keynesian multiplier effect could ultimately lead to decreased consumer
Speaker:spending and lower income for everyone. Consequently, Keynes argues output would
Speaker:decrease and therefore limit economic growth recovery until, of course, I bought my new
Speaker:computer with the money that I would save. Okay. So that's the first example. I'm going to jump in
Speaker:here for just a second. Now, they even allude to this. It's like until they spend that money,
Speaker:which you're saving the money, in this case, to buy a new computer, which is going to stimulate
Speaker:the economy for that manufacturer, for the manufacturer to buy a new computer,
Speaker:the economy for that manufacturer, for the manufacturer of the components for those supply
Speaker:chains, so on and so forth. Is it delayed, so to speak? Yes. It's not as immediate as spending
Speaker:that money at the local diner. But that doesn't mean it's not as effective. It's just different.
Speaker:So I personally, well, let's go on. People don't save forever. They don't. Even if the money
Speaker:or assets are passed down, descendants, the people who they get passed it down to,
Speaker:almost invariably spend that money or maybe they sell the asset, maybe some real estate or whatever.
Speaker:Think about the number of people, even with something as simple as land, who own land
Speaker:that's been in their family for quote, you know, generations, even 100 years. It's extremely rare.
Speaker:And even though it does occur, basically that land is just out of circulation in that case.
Speaker:That real estate is out of circulation for that time frame. Does that do as much for the economy
Speaker:as if it were, you know, passed, if it were sold every few years? Well, technically, no, it does not.
Speaker:But it's not going away. And if you want to follow the Keynesian logic,
Speaker:to the logical end, you would just continuously, everything would be up for sale at all times.
Speaker:Nobody would have any savings. I'm going to sell my house every chance I get, because I'm generating
Speaker:GDP for the economy. See how ridiculous that is? All right, going back to the article,
Speaker:in the Great Recession, the increase in the number of adult children, 25 to 29 years of age,
Speaker:living with their parents, is also a good example of the paradox of thrift. According to the Census
Speaker:Bureau's Family and Living Arrangements data set, the percentage of 25 to 29-year-olds living with
Speaker:their parents increased from 14% in 2005 to 19% in 2011. This arrangement allows them to save money
Speaker:on rent, mortgages, utilities, cable, and furniture. However, because the addition of just one new
Speaker:household contributes an estimated $109 million to the rate of rent, mortgages, utilities, cable,
Speaker:and furniture, the rise in the number of 20-somethings living with their parents could
Speaker:have deprived the economy of up to $25 billion per year during this period. Even if this is accurate,
Speaker:it's a very small share of the $15.3 trillion in economy. In the short run then, some could argue
Speaker:that this choice, and I want to emphasize that word choice, by young adults to save, slows not
Speaker:only the housing market, but also the retail, construction, and manufacturing industries.
Speaker:So this is complete baloney. I'm not denying the numbers. I'm sure that during, quote,
Speaker:the Great Recession – I keep calling it the Depression – I'm sure that during the Great
Speaker:Recession that the number of adult children essentially went back home and lived with their
Speaker:parents. But they weren't doing it because they wanted to. Most of them were not doing it to save
Speaker:money. They were doing it because they were broke and desperate and had nowhere else to go,
Speaker:plain and simple. So what this person is proposing is that these people should have been out buying
Speaker:homes and so forth, renting apartments. They couldn't because we were in a recession,
Speaker:because we were in the lead-up to a recession. So this is the kind of logic that they used to
Speaker:use to create this worldview that spending is good, that everybody should just spend, spend, spend,
Speaker:spend everything you've got and then some. Go out and get some credit. Go down to that car lot and
Speaker:buy a car and put it on credit. And you know what? Right now, you can get a car for 3% if you've got
Speaker:good credit, which most people don't. But let's say you've got good credit. Let's say you've got
Speaker:800 on your credit score. You could go down to a car lot, get credit for 3%. It's less than what
Speaker:the Federal Reserve is charging all the other banks. That sounds like a great deal. Spend, spend, spend
Speaker:on a depreciating asset in that case. Your car, and here in America, that's pretty needed,
Speaker:but your car is a depreciating asset. Do not forget that. By the way, of course, that was all
Speaker:my opinion. I think that's fairly obvious. But these two short examples illustrate that savings
Speaker:can have unintended consequences because one person's consumption is another person's income.
Speaker:That is not true. It is true in some sense. If I don't go to, if everybody does not go to
Speaker:everybody does not go to the restaurant and spend money, the waitstaff will be laid off, the restaurant
Speaker:will close. That is true. But that is a very, very, very, very simplistic view of an economy.
Speaker:The economy is much more complex than that. In fact, the Austrians would argue the economy
Speaker:cannot be managed by some government planning it. The economy is going to, it's just going to do,
Speaker:it's going to do what it's going to do. There's going to be recessions. There's going to be
Speaker:downturns in the economy, and those are needed things. They shake out, quote, the bad players.
Speaker:They shake out the weak, if you want to put it that way. During recessions, decreases in consumption
Speaker:could inhibit economic recovery. Sorry, got to jump back in here. Well, duh.
Speaker:I think I've mentioned, I'm pretty sure I mentioned about a month or so ago, the company that I work
Speaker:for twice, twice this year has laid off people. They've laid off 15, 20% of the company.
Speaker:I think it's around 15%. Half the team that I work on has actually been cut.
Speaker:Do you think if those people lost their job and they couldn't find a job that they're out
Speaker:spending money at a restaurant? I hope not. I hope they're buying food at the grocery store,
Speaker:as expensive as that is, and staying at home and cooking it themselves, because that will save them
Speaker:money. I hope they're doing everything they can to cut expenses. So yes, during a recession,
Speaker:during a downturn, the economy, the GDP is going to go down, and we're not going to get out of it by
Speaker:everybody going out and spending a bunch of money. That's baloney. It doesn't make sense.
Speaker:If you think about it, in my mind, maybe I'm wrong, but if you think about it for more than a few
Speaker:seconds, and then they have to backpedal. All right. Carrying on, and you'll see what I mean in
Speaker:just a second. Carrying on with the article. However, in the long run, the accumulated money
Speaker:from the individual savers is available for capital investment. Bingo. That's the exact
Speaker:viewpoint of the Austrians. I'm sorry, Mr. Keynesian, that you had to say that. A 60%
Speaker:situation where businesses borrow to purchase capital, machinery, technology, expansion,
Speaker:et cetera. Thus, an increase in the savings rate increases capital investment.
Speaker:Such increases in capital stock ultimately lead to higher levels of business productivity and growth.
Speaker:Because economists are largely concerned with long run growth and economic theory,
Speaker:notes the positive aspects of increased savings, the paradox of thrift remains a controversial
Speaker:concept. I'm going to backpedal on everything I just said, Mr. Article writer, and agree that
Speaker:actually savings is a good thing. Yes, GDP is important. Ultimately, GDP is a measurement of
Speaker:a country's long-term growth, but making consumption and buying the god of the economy
Speaker:is not the way to create stable economies and stable growth over the long run.
Speaker:So, that actually will cover our section for this week. Trying to keep these a little shorter,
Speaker:not really being very successful, but I did okay. Oh, and then I'm including,
Speaker:and I posted this on Twitter as well. Of course, one of the things that they're adamant about,
Speaker:the Keynesians are, we shouldn't be saving, essentially. I found a chart, and this is
Speaker:federal economic data. This is straight out of a federal database. I do not know exactly. I
Speaker:believe it's from this website, it's the St. Louis Federal Reserve website, and there's a link to it.
Speaker:I'll put a link to it in the show notes. Personal savings rate. This is basically what the Keynesians
Speaker:are talking about. This is the rate that people save. This particular data set goes back to 1959.
Speaker:I wished it went back further. I don't know if they have it any further or it's just cut off,
Speaker:but this one goes from 1959 until now, and it's amazing because basically from 1959 all the way
Speaker:up to 1982-ish, the savings rate was around 10%. It basically did not dip below that.
Speaker:It was a little above it sometimes, including actually during the 70s, 1971 right there, 1973,
Speaker:and then a big spike up to, see if I can get it, there it is, 1975, 17.3% in May for some reason.
Speaker:And then it starts going down, and it went down all the way to 2005 where it was at 2.6%.
Speaker:I'm sure the Keynesians were celebrating, and then we had a recession, that Great Depression,
Speaker:Great Recession that we were just talking about, and it started climbing again.
Speaker:Because people remember, subconsciously at least, in 2020 all of a sudden it shot up
Speaker:to over 30%, and then it dropped back down in 2021. No, that was actually still in 2020.
Speaker:Late 2020, down to 13%, so still higher, and then it shot back up in 2021 to 26%,
Speaker:and it has absolutely taken a nosedive since. It's at 2.7% right here, even though they haven't
Speaker:declared it a recession, in the middle of this recession. In my mind, we are in a recession.
Speaker:We've been in one for a year. The people in Europe certainly think we're in a recession.
Speaker:I believe even though our unemployment rate has stayed fairly low that we are in the middle of
Speaker:recession. I'll talk about that another time, but we've seen our savings rate drop because
Speaker:people don't have money to save, because their jobs are getting eliminated, downsized. They're
Speaker:taking second jobs, or they lose their job. They can't find a job that's as good, so on and so
Speaker:forth. The extra money's gone, and you've got a lot of people here in the United States who are
Speaker:barely hanging on, and I'm afraid in 2023 it's only going to get worse. Even if the economy starts to
Speaker:improve, the longer this goes on, the worse it will be. So our savings rate is dropped to the floor,
Speaker:and yet I do not see this Keynesian miracle. People are not saving. Where's the economy going?
Speaker:It's not going anywhere. Our interest rates are still going up. Companies are still cutting jobs,
Speaker:etc. All right. All right, let's move on. Talk about our supporters for just a second.
Speaker:It's been a fairly slow week, to be honest. On a side note, right where I'm sitting as I record,
Speaker:I can see the new computer. I did pull it out of the closet over the last week,
Speaker:dusted it off, booted it up. It's running Windows 10, and so I had to install Ubuntu on it before I
Speaker:can do anything with it, and to do that with the setup that I've got, I had to get a little boot
Speaker:disk. I had to get a USB stick. I did not have one. What are they called? Like a thumb drive.
Speaker:That is on its way. We'll be here in the next couple of days, and I'll be able to start setting
Speaker:that up. In the meantime, I honestly don't know what's going on with Sotoshi Stream.
Speaker:If you try to send Sats and they're not getting through, please let me know by direct message on
Speaker:Twitter or something. I would really appreciate that. It makes it very hard to figure out if
Speaker:people are not getting through, or they just don't like what I'm saying. I don't know.
Speaker:Inflation and deflation. One of our newer users, rdg3, sent in 250 Sats for that episode, and he
Speaker:said, promo episode had me hooked in. Great episode. He could have been talking about this episode
Speaker:or the other one that I'm promoting through Fountain, which is the one, the three parts of a
Speaker:blockchain. Security, speed, the trilemma of a blockchain. Security, speed.
Speaker:I can't think of the third one right now, but anyways, it could have been either one of those.
Speaker:Anyways, rdg3, I do appreciate that. It's awesome. Glad you're liking it.
Speaker:Our friend Kyrin at Mereamortals podcast, which of course you guys should go take a listen to.
Speaker:I haven't had a chance to listen this week, but I'm glad you're liking it.
Speaker:I haven't had a chance to listen this week, by the way. I've kind of gotten behind on my podcast, so
Speaker:I will catch up with them hopefully early this week. Sent in 1,324 Sats
Speaker:and said this. I don't actually know specifically what he was talking about. I know I
Speaker:got a little wound up last week, but anyways, getting wound up is good. McIntosh shows that
Speaker:you have some passion, and I do. Sometimes it comes across maybe more than others,
Speaker:but I appreciate that. I just got to make sure it's a righteous anger that is channeled in a
Speaker:positive way rather than becoming mopey nihilistic and self-defeating. I appreciate that. I agree,
Speaker:and it's easy, frankly, when you're kind of Don Quixote out here tilting with windmills.
Speaker:Sometimes it seems like to be that way, but we will carry on the fight. To be honest, I had a
Speaker:discussion. We have some friends that we've known for a long time. We were talking the other day,
Speaker:and I don't even know how. I try and actually stay out of these discussions, to be honest,
Speaker:because I find they're generally not productive. We got to talking about banks and surveillance,
Speaker:essentially, and I started talking. Maybe it didn't necessarily end well, but what it did do
Speaker:is it made me think since then really hard about how could I best present it. It's one thing. You
Speaker:can go listen now to 87 episodes if you've got the time and understand, at least to an extent,
Speaker:what I think about Bitcoin and crypto in general. On the other hand, it's a lot more difficult,
Speaker:at least for me, to put that into two minutes. In early January, I've already got the episodes
Speaker:lined out for the rest of the year, as you all know, and then plus one on January the 2nd,
Speaker:but then in early January, I'm going to do an episode on
Speaker:why I believe that Bitcoin, specifically, is a solid, sound investment in today's world
Speaker:and what it can do, I hope, to change the world, because that's ultimately what I believe. First
Speaker:of all, I believe it's a solid investment, and second, I think it has a chance of making a change
Speaker:in the world that we have not seen before. I think it's a solid investment, and I think it
Speaker:seen easily since the Industrial Revolution, maybe even more than that, because if it's put
Speaker:into the hands of everyone, it's a way to set people free. Now, I'm going to hopefully elucidate
Speaker:that better in a few weeks when we talk about this, but I'm partially doing this so that I can
Speaker:carry on a conversation with this particular person. They're fairly knowledgeable. They're also
Speaker:set in their ways, as many people are, and they can't see what's going on, in my opinion,
Speaker:and I love these people. I'm not trying to put them down at all, but that's where they're at,
Speaker:and I think everybody knows people, the majority of people that you know are like that, so
Speaker:maybe you can go along with me on that journey as to how we approach people like that. I saw something
Speaker:on Twitter. Somebody was like, they were really trying to boil down the Bitcoin message into just
Speaker:a few sentences, and I thought that was pretty neat. A mission statement almost, and maybe that's
Speaker:really what I'm going after, but I think Bitcoin is a lot. It's basically impossible to put it in a
Speaker:mission statement because it's so all-encompassing. It's amazing. All of the things that are going on
Speaker:in Bitcoin, and people are just like, well, Bitcoin's bad because it consumes energy. I'm like,
Speaker:wait, you don't understand because over here, we're using Bitcoin to reduce methane emissions
Speaker:in a landfill. There's nothing else that can do that economically, and while we do it, we can
Speaker:generate sound money. Over here, we're using it to burn, to use the natural gas that we had been
Speaker:burning off and mining oil, which by the way, we need to continue to do because otherwise we have
Speaker:crazy issues with energy. And over here, we're using it to provide economic incentive for a
Speaker:base load for an energy system, a new energy system to reach out to people who've never even
Speaker:had energy before, but you think it spends too much electricity because that's what you hear
Speaker:maybe on Twitter or some little blurb on God knows what. I don't know that we can get it down to a
Speaker:mission statement per se. Maybe we can. I would love to, but I'm going to think really hard about
Speaker:this stuff over the next few weeks. What's coming up basically after the Austrian economic crisis
Speaker:and economic stuff, because it's really important to me. It's important that it is a way to empower
Speaker:people. All right, I will stop. Sorry. I'm giving all this stuff away. So there you go.
Speaker:Moving on to news. So as you know, I'm using Twitter to replay my news at this point. It just
Speaker:makes it easier. So let me click to my Twitter account, McIntoshFintech. Of course I'm on
Speaker:mastodon at macintosh at podcast index dot social as well. And away we go. All right.
Speaker:Some of this, I'm just going to flat out skip. You should obviously, you should obviously follow me
Speaker:on Twitter. Um, but if you don't, that's okay. All right. I, um, I posted on the 13th,
Speaker:a retweet about a place in Africa. They have got some really good things. You should follow
Speaker:gridless compute on Twitter if you can. Uh, they are working with villages in Africa to bring them
Speaker:electricity through hydroelectric power. And there are a lot of places like this remote.
Speaker:They don't have any form of electricity or it's very expensive because maybe they're running
Speaker:generators or, or whatever, but they have a river or they have some large stream or whatever that's
Speaker:providing a large amount of potential hydroelectric power. They bring in the capital
Speaker:to set up the hydro and they mine Bitcoin there and also provide power at a very cheap rate because
Speaker:once that's set up, it is cheap to the local village. And what that does then allows them to,
Speaker:to grow really neat stuff. So, uh, take a look at that. This was a frontier town is what they're
Speaker:calling it on December 13th, 12 years ago, Satoshi Nakamoto posted for the last time.
Speaker:This is the key difference. Really. There's no other crypto that this is happened. He's the
Speaker:founder. He's the guy who started, he or she, sorry, we do not know, or the group started all
Speaker:this and left. They left and walked away and they have a wallet of a million Satoshi's Bitcoin
Speaker:that they mined to help things get started. And that wallet is sitting there and has never been
Speaker:touched. Tokyo electric power grid is going to use excess power for Bitcoin mining. Now,
Speaker:when it comes to crypto, when it comes to Bitcoin, I don't think personally that the Japanese have
Speaker:been very active. Now I may be mistaken, but I don't recall over the, over the years, a large
Speaker:number of Japanese crypto stories. Well, this is a big one, Tokyo electric. They will be using
Speaker:their excess power for mining Bitcoin. So energy discussions themselves, people don't understand
Speaker:how complex energy is. We think just cause you flip on a light with a switch, that's how energy
Speaker:works. It's just, it's there when you need it. It's not there. It's gone. That's not the case,
Speaker:whether it's coal, whether it's nuclear, whether it's natural gas or hydro or solar or whatever,
Speaker:the power just doesn't go away because you're not using it. It's still there and it has to be used
Speaker:or essentially wasted. So if I build a hydro electric dam, for example, like compute gridless
Speaker:compute did in central Africa, and it's generating a megawatt of power and only two-tenths of that is
Speaker:being used. The rest of it just goes to waste. That's what they're using to mine their Bitcoin
Speaker:with that, the rest of that power. They built a system that provides more than is needed because
Speaker:the river's there. In this case, it's available and can be used for that. And it doesn't hurt to do
Speaker:that. So they're doing it. They put the capital into it. Now they've got a place to mine their
Speaker:Bitcoin. Plus they can sell essentially the excess to the village. And as the village grows
Speaker:and prospers, they're going to be using more power. Well, they'll cut back on their mining
Speaker:and they'll go build somewhere else. On the 14th, I retweeted about the SEC is charging
Speaker:eight social media influencers and a hundred million dollar stock manipulation scheme promoted
Speaker:on Discord and Twitter. Just as a point, because this kind of stuff happens outside of crypto.
Speaker:We think that crypto is like the only thing that this kind of stuff ever happens. It's not true.
Speaker:We, people think that for example, you know, the illicit use of Bitcoin or some other token
Speaker:is like that only happens in crypto. No, actually far more cash is used for illicit means. If you
Speaker:want to call it that, then what happens in crypto? In fact, a very small percentage of crypto
Speaker:transactions are related to this stuff because the reality is it's actually very difficult to
Speaker:truly be private on a crypto network. So they found out they get caught. So influencers,
Speaker:they get busted because they were doing pump and dump or, or whatever. I don't even know.
Speaker:I didn't even look into it because I didn't even know what was going on. I didn't even look into
Speaker:it or whatever. I don't even know. I didn't even look into it because the point is this stuff is
Speaker:happening elsewhere. Oh, and by the way, well, I'll save that for next month. That's all right.
Speaker:Something that you do need to be aware of on the 14th of December, we had a new bill come out called
Speaker:Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act. And this is being promoted by Senator Elizabeth Warren. It's
Speaker:requiring devs to register identity and obtain a license, censor and surveil users that ban privacy
Speaker:tools. Now, I do not think that this bill will pass. I truly hope it does not because this will
Speaker:be a huge step towards creating some dystopian nightmare with a complete lack of privacy.
Speaker:Again, I'll be talking about that early next month because that's part of why I believe in Bitcoin.
Speaker:Now, I do not think again that that will actually pass, but anyways, I got another tweet on here,
Speaker:another retweet with more information about those eight social media influencers. You can take a
Speaker:look at that. Oh, by the way, this chain analysis done in 2021, I actually said the other day it
Speaker:was 1.5%. I was off by digit, by decimal point, I should say. It's 0.15. So for 0.15% of the
Speaker:transactions, they want to surveil everyone. And that's what really gets my goat.
Speaker:All right. Will Klemint posted this. I thought this was funny. I retweeted this. The UN
Speaker:estimates that $800 billion to $2 trillion, that's pretty good spread by the way, but anyways,
Speaker:is laundered globally every year. So in other words, it's done something, I don't know,
Speaker:it was part of some criminal activity, so they're cleaning it, they're laundering it. That's why they
Speaker:call it that. We must outlaw this fiat currency, fiat being the dollar. It's used for terrorists,
Speaker:rogue nations, money laundering, and evading sanctions. It's also backed by nothing.
Speaker:Oh boy. Anyways, Kevin O'Leary has come out very strongly saying that there's nothing wrong with
Speaker:what was going on at FTX and blah, blah, blah. Kevin O'Leary was also paid $15 million by FTX.
Speaker:And that's something I think that's very important in this discussion,
Speaker:because he says he lost everything, but in fact, he lost part of what they gave him. He lost $9
Speaker:million. They paid him $15 million. You do the math and then wonder why he's talking. I have no…what's
Speaker:the word I'm looking for? I won't listen to anything else he says at this point. There's nothing
Speaker:for him to say. He's proven what he's like. US interest rates are now at the highest level
Speaker:since 2007. That came out on the 14th on Wednesday, which of course was when they raised the interest
Speaker:rates to that 4.5% level. All right. I have decided not to get too involved in this one.
Speaker:I've probably mentioned it a little bit, but Binance is kind of…a lot of people are talking
Speaker:about Binance. Maybe they're insolvent. Maybe it's the next Celsius, whatever. The leader of Binance
Speaker:did come out this week and said that users are more likely to lose crypto by holding it in a cold
Speaker:wallet, in other words, offline, rather than putting it in a centralized exchange. Yeah.
Speaker:Okay. I'll take my chances actually, but that was interesting. By the way, same day that came out.
Speaker:Oh, the same day that this bill came out, the anti-Monday laundering, whatever. The Dansk Bank,
Speaker:and I don't know where that is other than I think it's in Europe. D-A-N-S-K-E. Oh, Estonia. It's
Speaker:Estonian branch. I do think they're in Europe, but anyways, the Dansk Bank to pay $2 billion
Speaker:to settle money laundering charges. They have agreed to plead guilty to money laundering charges
Speaker:at its Estonian branch. Hmm. I don't know. I don't know. But you know, Bitcoin is used by
Speaker:terrorists. I don't know. I don't know what they're going to come up with next. It probably is,
Speaker:but so is dollar bills. So don't treat me like a terrorist, please. I'm sorry if that offends you,
Speaker:but here in the United States, as I continually remind people, I'm just going to put it on my
Speaker:shirt, we have a right to privacy. We have a right to free speech. Anyways. And in fact, I tweeted it
Speaker:this week. I retweeted somebody's. George Washington said, if the freedom of speech is taken away,
Speaker:then the dumb and silent, then dumb and silent, we may be led like sheep to the slaughter.
Speaker:Now, I did think this was very interesting. Just a few hours ago,
Speaker:Nigeria, this tweet came out from Bitcoin magazine. Nigeria is going to pass a bill. Now,
Speaker:sometimes when this stuff comes out, it's maybe a little premature and it doesn't really happen.
Speaker:But I'm going to say this, preface it with that. And then I'll explain why I think this is
Speaker:very interesting, actually. Nigeria to pass bill legalizing Bitcoin and crypto. So again,
Speaker:Bitcoin is leading that. Nigeria has had a lot of money problems. Nigeria's currency is not doing
Speaker:well at all. And they are promoting, I've mentioned this currency, Naira, N-A-I-R-A or something like
Speaker:that. I've mentioned it a number of times. They're promoting their own digital currency as a way to
Speaker:combat this. And really what they're doing is they want to make it digital so that they can make it
Speaker:easier to print more of them. But apparently they've, if this is true, they're somewhat
Speaker:capitulating to that. Because the people in Nigeria, a lot of people in Nigeria are turning to Bitcoin
Speaker:because their local currency is a joke. All right. I did post something,
Speaker:a few hours ago from the Bitcoin conference that apparently is some kind of, it's a TikTok video
Speaker:of somebody who went into a bank, tried to withdraw $5,000, which the reality is these days,
Speaker:that's not very much for a lot of people. It's $5,000. I wished I had $5,000 sitting here on the
Speaker:desk, okay? I don't want to diminish that, but I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker:But the bank wouldn't give it to him. They said, we don't have it. That's insanity to me. But
Speaker:okay. Argentina. Congratulations, Argentina. They just won the World Cup. I've been watching the
Speaker:World Cup actually. It's great this year, this time. It's really the first time I've watched it
Speaker:from start to finish, but congratulations. They were not the team I was rooting for. I was
Speaker:actually rooting for Morocco because I love the underdog. And they got booted in the round before
Speaker:this one. But anyways, they also won in something else. Their inflation has now hit 90%. So
Speaker:they are not doing well. Glenn Greenwald, very much a liberal, not somebody that I often agree with,
Speaker:to be honest, posted this definitive evidence showing a fully integrated relationship between
Speaker:the FBI and Twitter's top censors. If you're not bothered by the U.S. security state's infiltration
Speaker:of big tech and its ability to censor at will, then you are by definition a hopeless authoritarian.
Speaker:I have not waded into this whole Twitter thing. This is not what this podcast is about.
Speaker:I have been watching it with some interest. I am on Twitter because that's where everybody is.
Speaker:There certainly was a lot of censorship going on. There is appearing to be more censorship going on,
Speaker:maybe of a different kind. I do not know. I am also preparing to open up a third social
Speaker:media platform because, you know, two of these isn't enough. But there is a decentralized one.
Speaker:But there is a decentralized one that I will be talking about very soon
Speaker:that, in my mind, actually might provide a long-term alternative to a lot of this.
Speaker:Mastodon is better, in my opinion, in regards to this stuff, but it is not perfect.
Speaker:And I am on it because of the Podcast 2.0 people. I do cross-post a fair amount. I have not been so
Speaker:good at it lately, but it is not decentralized in some ways, and I will explain that when I talk
Speaker:about this later. Time is running out. Banks in Lebanon froze money. We have talked about this
Speaker:for a while. People are robbing the banks just to get their own savings. It is still going on.
Speaker:This was an article from December the 17th. And by the way, since 2000, according to this guy,
Speaker:Alexander Ellefson, which again, this is Twitter, I do not know where he got this from in this case.
Speaker:So treat this with a modest amount of doubt. But given the actual news article, I just posted
Speaker:$2 billion, and that was on MSN, by the way, the Dansk Bank, $2 billion for that one thing.
Speaker:Anyways, since 2000, the year 2000, banks paid, let us see, hundreds, thousands, millions, billions,
Speaker:$340,816,534,000 in fines, mortgage abuse, toxic security abuse, investor protection violations,
Speaker:sanction violations, banking violations, price fixing, false claims, market manipulation,
Speaker:tax evasion, and fraud. I am not saying you should not use a bank. I cannot answer that for you.
Speaker:But I will point out that banks are not perfect. One last thing, just came out on Cointelegraph,
Speaker:352 scam tokens were created every day this year. So scam tokens are, they're just built
Speaker:for rug pulls, this kind of thing. Been happening a lot, more than ever. And I have a solution.
Speaker:It's a simple solution, only by Bitcoin, proven for the last 13 years, and it's not a scam.
Speaker:Follow me on Twitter, McIntoshFintech. That's it. No crazy news other than that.
Speaker:Bitcoin sits at 16707, still wanting to go down. Generational wealth of cryptocurrency supports
Speaker:podcasting 2.0. It's a value for value podcast with no sponsors, no advertising. You can support
Speaker:the podcast in three ways, by time, talent, and treasure. If you want to support the podcast and
Speaker:has the time or talent, I could use help with things like transcriptions. Treasure is just
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Speaker:your friends about the GWC podcast. That is actually the fastest way to help us grow and
Speaker:I would really appreciate that. Thanks for being here. I hope this has been helpful and I certainly
Speaker:would love to hear from you if you haven't figured it out by now. I'm on Twitter at McIntoshFintech,
Speaker:mastadon at mcintosh at podcastindex.social and my email is mcintosh at genwealthcrypto.com.
Speaker:Our website is over at genwealthcrypto.com. I don't post a whole lot there. In fact,
Speaker:I very rarely post something that I would like to do, but I don't have the time right now.