With RFK Jr. taking over as the head of the HHS the big pharma AND big media companies already on the ropes should be scared.
Big pharma spent $18 BILLION in advertising last year. The second-largest ad spender by industry.
If RFK makes advertising big pharma products illegal, as it already is in 98% of the world, it could be the death blow to mainstream corporate media.
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Watching Dennis the Menace with my boys. First time they’re watching it and the first time I’ve watched it in decades.
Pure Americana. White picket fences. Well dressed parents. Children free to explore.
We must bring it back.
Having access to a distributed P2P digital cash system with a fixed supply during a time of incredible political divisiveness and out-of-control runaway sovereign debt feels like a Godsend.
Here are a few things to keep an eye on during election week.
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We are less than $30B away from crossing over $36 TRILLION in national debt and the Treasury is issuing $42B worth of 10Y-Notes at auction tomorrow.
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The central bankers are very scared and they should be. They will attempt to convince politicians to use lawfare to punish those of us who have been championing sound freedom money as they continually debase their fiat currencies.
Buckle up, freaks.
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The European Central Bank is reading the Bent. What a wild timeline.
Nice to see they’re doing their research but their conclusions are off. Small steps.
Everyone will come around to bitcoin eventually.
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You need to be bull maxxing.
Kashkari says bitcoin is worthless?
"Shut up, suit. Bitcoin is replacing the dollar."
Wait for the election.
"There's only 21M bitcoin and 8B people. The election is a distraction."
What's your price target?
"$50M per bitcoin, conservatively."
"If the utility in money lies in its ability to coordinate trade, then bitcoin’s value is not merely tied to one’s willingness to save it. It is tied to its ability to coordinate trade and to transfer value between humans.”
Great piece from @Parker Lewishttps://graduallythensuddenly.xyz/exchange-theory-of-value/
Real Estate is a $300T market that is propped up by its premium as a monetary asset. As it becomes clear that bitcoin is a superior store of value asset developers, banks and consumers alike will need to incorporate bitcoin in their credit structures.
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Over the last four years bitcoin has, among other things, established itself as an incredible corporate treasury asset that benefits those who adopt it as such. Microstrategy is the shining example of this theme going from a company that was hovering barely above a ~$1B market cap in mid-2020 to a ~$40B market cap company holding more than 1% of the 21,000,000 bitcoin that will ever exist. Microstrategy's success has emboldened a number of other publicly trader companies to follow suit. Bitcoin as a corporate treasury asset is well on its way to becoming a standard. If you run a business that doesn't hold bitcoin on its balance sheet you are doing yourself, your customers and your shareholders a disservice.
This is a trend that has its legs under it and will accelerate moving forward. A trend that I believe will emerge this cycle is incorporating bitcoin into real estate markets. Leon Wankum has been beating the drum about this for the last few years and I had the pleasure of sitting down with him this morning to record an episode of TFTC that will be published tomorrow morning. Leon is a real estate developer in Germany and he has made it his mission to educate and warn others in real estate about the demonetization of real estate that is under way due to the fact that bitcoin exists and it provides a far superior alternative.
These are pretty stark numbers. Nothing highlights the superior monetary properties of bitcoin better than looking at a chart of the average price of a home priced in USD v. bitcoin.
Since 2016: +46% in USD -99% in BTC
Since 2020: +34% in USD -70% in BTC
The funny thing is that an overwhelming majority of the individuals who make their living in real estate markets do not understand that this is happening to them. Many think they are doing exceptionally well all things considered. Sure, there may be a bit of a slow down and price retraction due to a couple of years of relatively elevated interest rates, but don't worry! The Fed is lowering rates again and the good times are about to start back up. Nothing could be further from the truth. This trend is going to continue unabated until bitcoin is fully monetized and those is the real estate industry, particularly real estate developers and those who lend capital to developers, should seriously take the time to understand what is happening to them.
Real estate is the largest store of value asset in the world at the moment. The most common number that is thrown around for the total size of the market is $300 TRILLION. $300 TRILLION of wealth being stored in an asset that is illiquid, comes with maintenance costs, taxes, insurance premiums, and susceptible to extreme weather event, among other things. Compared to bitcoin - which is extremely liquid, saleable, divisible and hard to confiscate, real estate is a far superior asset to store your wealth in. This is something that I'm sure is well understood by many of you reading this letter.
What's less understood is the dynamics of the real estate development market over the last few years, which have been severely hindered by elevated interest rates. The higher interest rate environment coupled with the inflationary pressures that forced rates higher in the first place have put developers in a predicament; they have a higher cost of capital to start new projects with raw material prices that are still much higher than they were before the economic lock downs of 2020-2022. This has led to a scenario where it isn't advantageous to start new projects and the projects that broke ground in 2021-2023 are finding that they need to incur more debt to get their developments across the finish line.
Despite the fact that interest rates are on their way back down, it doesn't seem like the economics of these projects are going to materially improve in the short to medium-term as headline inflation begins to creep back up. Couple this with the fact that the jobs market is cratering while real wages struggle to keep up with inflation and many builders are going to find themselves in a situation where they do actually complete a development problem but their cash flow suffers because their customers can't afford the inflated rents that builders will have to charge to get a return on their outlaid capital. Many will be put in a situation where they are forced to be happy with lower rents (cash flow) or sit on the sidelines making no cash flow.
The post-1971 era that brought with it a booming real estate industry is suffering the same fate as the bond market; the generation bull market is over. Real estate prices may go up, but that will be nothing more than a mirage of wealth creation. The unit of account those prices are built on is in dollars, which are being debased at an accelerating rate. Developers, banks and borrowers need to de-risk their real estate exposure and, as Leon points out, bitcoin is the only way to do this in an effective way.
Moving forward developers will have to finance by dual collateralizing their debt with the real estate and bitcoin. In the graphic below Leon illustrates what this type of financing structure will look like. Instead of taking $10m of debt to finance a project and putting it all into materials, construction and marketing, a developer will take out a $10m loan, put $1m in bitcoin and the rest toward the development project. Over the course of the construction of the real estate project, bitcoin will sit in the credit structure and, if held for 4+ years, should increase significantly in value. Saving the builder from risk of default and providing him some optionality in terms of what he can do with the project once it's finished.
In this scenario downside risk is contained - a developer isn't pouring all of the cash into bitcoin at the beginning so the worst case scenario is that bitcoin goes to zero (highly unlikely) and they can eat the small loss and hope to make up with it via cash flows once a project is finished, while upside potential is enormous. Bitcoin is still monetizing and having exposure to the hardest monetary asset the world has ever while it's monetizing has proven to be massively beneficial.
We are still in the early days of bitcoin and this idea will likely seem absolutely insane to most Tradfi investors, but I strongly believe that developers, banks and end consumers who don't leverage this type of bitcoin structured credit will be cooked in the long-run. And those that take advantage of this type of structure first will be considered geniuses in 20 years.
There are many more nuanced benefits to this strategy; holding bitcoin allows landlords and management companies to weather ongoing maintenance costs throughout the years, those who take out mortgages dual collateralized with a house and bitcoin not only protect the equity value of their property but could see their equity values increase significantly more than others using vanilla mortgages, and builders who accumulate bitcoin in their treasuries will be able to use better raw materials when building, which leads to more valuable properties that cash flow for longer.
Again, it's going to take time for these types of structures to become commonplace in the market, but I firmly believe this cycle will be the cycle that these strategies get off the ground. In four to five years they will have a track record and after that it will be considered irresponsible not to finance real estate in this way. The banks will begin to demand it.
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Final thought...
Sinus congestion sucks.
It feels like the Fall of 2016 for bitcoin again. If this is the case we’ll pump for 6-9 months before you start getting calls + texts from friends and family about what’s going on.
In the last week the US government has:
- Sent money to Israel and Lebanon (funding two sides of a war)
- Neglected to provide material help to Appalachia in the aftermath of Helene
- Admitted that they’ve been poisoning the public with fluoride for decades
They hate you.
What an incredible week at our annual Ten31 portfolio company retreat.
I’m extremely honored and humbled to be able to work with some of the best individuals in the world who are building generational businesses that are making the world a better place.
We’re winning.
This is America. Find light in the darkness.
This country is filled with good people who will answer the call when needed. This is where the signal is despite what the mainstream media would have you believe.
The Cajun Navy and Appalachian Air Force will always be there for their neighbors.
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Early bull market signal: hop in an Uber this morning and the driver is listening to @jack mallers debate Peter Schiff.
“Jack is mopping the floor with him.”
We’re going to win.
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The hottest startup out of California right now was founded by a boomer who scratched his own itch and figured out a way to repel the homeless from his garage.
Inspiring.
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Elizabeth Warren, the Federal Reserve and a number of regulatory agencies have been unconstitutionally targeting banks that service bitcoin and digital asset companies.
An affidavit published last week from Silvergate lays everything bare.
Must read.
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Future generations will look back on fiat currencies controlled by central banks and laugh at the absurdity of it all.
Bitcoin will be the most obvious innovation in human history to the Earthlings of 2100.
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Bitcoin's fundamentals are stronger than ever.
This is evidenced by continued improvement to the protocol stack, adoption by reputable actors like the Kingdom of Bhutan, and the mismanagement of the fiat monetary system.
Don't fade the coin.
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War machines have never been easier and cheaper to deploy.
In a world that is becoming increasingly fractured and angry, this is absolutely frightening.
Asymmetric warfare as predicted in the Sovereign Individual is upon us.
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This was one of the more inspiring rips I've recorded in some time. I sat down with @OpnState to discuss the mechanics of the supranational regulatory regime that dictates what information financial institutions need to collect.
There's a big call to action in this rip; send a FOIA request to your politicians. If they won't hold themselves accountable you should be using the tools at your fingertips to hold them accountable yourself.
We're going to win!
https://fountain.fm/episode/dg7rlmtOICVDGwtr7Jnc
I am here to remind you that there is no industry in the world that is more ruthlessly competitive than the bitcoin mining industry.
With difficulty at an all time highs, hashprice hovering above all time lows, and no price pump in sight it's very hard to be a bitcoin miner.
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Just recorded the most insightful and invigorating rip for TFTC in some time.
Be the change you want to see in the world.
Action leads to change.
We’re going to win.
Building a company is hard in it's own right. Building a bitcoin company is significantly harder for a number of reasons.
I shared some reflections on my conversation with Will Reeves about Fold's journey from a startup to a publicly traded company.
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The zombie economy is on its last legs as is evidenced by companies like Walgreens, which find themselves strapped for cash, loaded with debt, and on the brink of bankruptcy.
This puts the Fed in a catch-22; let them fail or turn the money printer on.
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“Hate speech” is a made up Marxist euphemism. A dog whistle for aspiring censors.
There is no such thing as hate speech. There is only speech that particular people don’t like.
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With all of the focus on bitcoin as a strategic asset I think some technical developments and trends have been overlooked. Particularly in the realm of second layer privacy.
BOLT 12 is making progress and people are waking up to the power of ecash.
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The upper bound of this range (which is probably generously conservative) would mean that 12% of 2023 tax receipts ($4.4 TRILLION) were funneled to criminals within the government.
Taxes have become one big humiliation ritual.
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I had a great time joining Tom Luongo on his podcast last week to discuss bitcoin from first principles, some of the uncomfortable truths that exist within the protocol at the moment, and the correct approach to "selling" bitcoin to others.
https://fountain.fm/episode/BqTa7HI5R31W435nLKKY
Said another way: “The citizens using their freedom of speech on social media sites are more powerful than our propaganda and we can’t have that.”
These despots are really going to hate Nostr when they finally figure it out.
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We live in the most interesting point in human history.
There are two paths that lay before us and forces are exerting a lot of pressure in one direction or the other.
The path we ultimately go down depends on the individual.
Will you cave to the totalitarians or will you embrace freedom tech and stand up to the insane people who want to control every part of your life?
The Nanny State will tax, censor and jail you if you don’t take a stand.
Make yourself resilient by embracing freedom tech like bitcoin, Nostr, and other open source software projects while building a strong community in meat space.
We can defeat these despots. It will take many individuals taking action to do so though. Don’t cower in fear. The future of humanity depends on you taking a stand.
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Having played around with Highlighter and Habla over the last few days, I still think one of the most high leverage things that can be done for long form content on Nostr is a simple bridge from other publishers like Ghost
@djseeds built this for TFTC with Scribsat last year but we haven't been working on that for quite a bit and the bridge broke. It was incredible while it was working.
Devs, plz help.
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