Brandon Keys: Building Bitcoin biz, macro folks get this wrong, 100 year loans coming..

The decay of society is reversed by sound money.

Mar 14, 2024

Summary

I had the pleasure to sit down with this super sharp dude, former track athlete and engineer from the University of Memphis who is building a unique platform for bitcoiners to learn about financial literacy and #BTC education from someone who sees life through the lens of Bitcoin.

Brandon shares his journey into Bitcoin, starting the Green Candle media company, and his mission to make finance more accessible and enjoyable. He discusses the potential triggers for a collapse of the current system. Brandon emphasizes the importance of understanding the charade of the fiat system and the need for a more cheerful and relatable approach to educating people about Bitcoin. We talk about the breakdown of the American dream, the transition of power to #Bitcoiners, what macro folks miss in their analysis, plus the three cogs of #Bitcoin - philosophy, energy, and development AND lastly his love for some Bitcoin Trading Cards to orange pill the pre-coiners.

Takeaways

Starting a blog or podcast can be a great way to learn and connect with others in the Bitcoin space.
Bitcoin content creators have the power to make finance more accessible and enjoyable for a wider audience.
Understanding the macroeconomic environment and its connection to Bitcoin can provide valuable insights.
The current fiat system is a charade, and Bitcoin offers a more transparent and reliable alternative.

Timestamps

00:00 Introduction 03:13 Orange Pill Journey 08:15 Start & Evolution of Green Candle 12:30 Vision for Green Candle Company 15:16 Motivation & Mission in the Bitcoin Space 23:12 Macro Environment 26:12 Views on Fed Meetings & Macro 30:41 What Macro Experts Miss 34:25 Fragility of the Current System, Potential Triggers 36:16 Potential Impact of Inflation on 3rd World 39:27 The Breakdown of the American Dream 44:13 The Transition to a Bitcoin Standard 47:31 The Transition of Power to Bitcoiners 53:02 The Need for Pain in Education 59:45 The 3 Cogs of Bitcoin 01:00:08 Word Association & BTC Trading Cards

Transcription

Brandon Gentile

Mr. Brandon Keys, thank you so much for joining me here today. I always joke with everyone in the beginning as I talk about playable characters, which, you know, the name of the podcast. Finding people who can think, quite honestly, and see a non -playable character. So thank you, brother, for joining me today.

Brandon Keys

Of course, man, I'm happy to be here and I'm excited to get rolling on this pod, man. Yeah, let's do it, dude. I'm hyped up today.

Let's go. I love it, I love it. So you, we just, with full transparency, we recorded a pod the other way around and Brandon was talking to me about Bitcoin Trading Cards and asking me about that. I want to know about your journey here and really, like you said, you met Aladdan at Pacific Bitcoin. I was telling you about my first event, Pacific Bitcoin 2022. I have to know about your orange pill journey, getting into Bitcoin, and when you started going to events and when you kind of started ingratiating yourself into the community.

So once upon a time, I was a big shot. I ran track and cross country at the University of Memphis. So go Tigers. But coincidentally, all my teammates and I, we all went to different graduate schools. So I went to Texas A &M and a lot of them kind of went to different places around the country. But we had this group message that kind of kept us all connected.

So, you know, we were talking, whatever. I was listening to podcasts. I was driving Uber on like Friday or Saturday nights to use that for my beer money and then kind of try and figure out ways to make that money go farther. Because I'm like, hey, you know, like, you know, it's great. I drive for these couple hours. I get or I drive, you know, four or five hours. I get a couple hundred bucks, which was a lot for going out and drinking in College Station. But in reality, it's not not too much money. So I was like, how do I make this money go farther? So I started listening to a bunch of podcast, I started telling them a little bit about what I was learning. None of them wanted to listen to me. They're all like, dude, you're crazy. What are you talking about? All this and that, except for one of my friends. His name is Dan. He doesn't work with me at Green Candle anymore. But he's like, well, I was like, well, I've always kind of got this idea to kind of like learn out loud, you know, like whatever it started a blog or, you know, Twitter account, whatever, like maybe we can like, kind of pick the minds of some other people that are out there in this space going along this journey with us because not only do I want to start to do this, I know that there's other people out there that have probably found Bitcoin before me. I'm not this big time genius or anything. So I just began going down the rabbit hole and I was trying to explain it to my friends, which made me need to learn about it more. So that was what I went to grad school like 2016 to 18 time. So I was learning about it then. That was when...

Preston Pysh was on the “We Study Billionaires,” so shout out to him. That was prior to his Bitcoin Only show. And he had Saifedean and I believe Plan B on back-to-back weeks. And then like some even personal finance podcast, I don't even remember what it was called, had talked about Bitcoin one random week. So it was like literally within like a two week period, I had like two of my podcasts, like have three episodes on that. And I was like, all right, now it's time for me to kind of look into this and kind of figure out my way around this. So I did a little research. I found some articles and they told me Bitcoin price was going up as well as Dogecoin. So I was on Robinhood at that time, which, you know, obviously Cardinal sin for all the Bitcoiners listening here. But hey, I was a newbie. I didn't know what I was doing. And at that time, you couldn't pull your Bitcoin off of Robinhood, too. So even worse.

But I kind of traded Bitcoin and Dogecoin. I got lucky. I made a little bit. But then I always kind of remembered this Bitcoin thing. I knew that Dogecoin was a meme or whatever, and I just didn't really understand too much about Bitcoin. So I kind of just went down the rabbit hole. And then December 2018 when I graduated, every paycheck, when I first got that big boy job, I just kind of started going into it there. So.

It's kind of led me to that path. And then, you know, a couple years later, finally, I started the Green Candle, the Green Candle Media Company and did that, you know, I guess like right after 2020 when I had a lot of time, kind of sitting at home from from the job. So and that's taken me in plenty of places. And yeah, I met people like yourself and Aladdin and a bunch of other great people doing stuff in the Bitcoin space. So if you would have told me all this was gonna happen when I started going down this rabbit hole like eight, seven, eight years ago, I would have told you you're crazy. But hey, here we are, man.

Yeah, I was gonna ask you, you've got some big guests on the show. What was the evolution of the show? What did it start out as? And now you're interviewing some of the big boys and big girls on stage at Bitcoin conferences. What was this evolution with Green Candle? How did this kind of come about?

Yeah, so it's been a ride for sure. So like, you know, when I first started off, I actually started off doing just a blog and blog only. So I started it at Green Kendo, I think like April 21, I want to say. So we started kind of just tweeting it out, writing blogs, writing educational stuff, sub stack basically newsletter.

I was always kind of tentative to get behind the camera. I don't know why I kind of had this. Maybe I was just like, I don't know what would people judge of me, but I've always kind of felt like I, I don't know, like my personality kind of shines through a little bit better behind the camera than I can write, unfortunately. But maybe I'm just being hard on myself. I don't know. But either way, my, my friend that I started this with Dan, he was like, dude, why don't we do a podcast? Like just kind of start like doing that. And then we did a couple with ourselves. And then and then we got Cedric Youngleman was like the first guest we reached out to and he's like, Yeah, sure. And at that time, I think he had like a little over 10 ,000 followers or something. And we were like in the couple hundreds. So shout out to Cedric, but he, he came on and then and then my buddy got a job where they didn't want him to do content anymore. I was like, well, I like this, like we built up a maybe it was like 1000 followers on that time on Twitter or X or whatever it is.

So I was like, all right, maybe we have enough pull where I could start to bring in some more people. And then it's just asking, man. It's just like kind of asking the question. Being persistent, I can be a pest sometimes. I'm sure some of my guests, maybe they don't appreciate it at first, but once they kind of get to know me, they know like, hey, I'm like just trying to build this thing. They appreciate the hustle and the drive. But yeah, man, it's just kind of like evolutionized from like, you know, at the beginning, 10 people listening to it and probably like,

You know, there's just my friends telling them and then, you know, it's grown into this thing where, you know, now I'm lucky and blessed enough to get on stage with a lot of these people. And then when I go to these conferences, they recognize me, which, you know, is just it's a whirlwind in itself. So actually, as we're recording this, I got back from Bitcoin Atlantis like less than a week ago. So, yeah, it was I was, you know, the emcee of part of the stages there. And it's, you know, it's been great. I'm hoping to continue to do more of that. And.

I think big things are ahead for Green Candle, I'm hoping, man. Fingers crossed for me.

Yeah, that's that's super cool. What where did so where did the name come from?

So I always kind of wanted to have it as like a personal finance, like kind of like, I guess a way to get to get people in without saying Bitcoin. So obviously, you know, there's the the candlestick charts, right? So the green candlesticks means you it means you're making making money, whether it's, you whatever, like you're denominating it in. But I've always kind of had this vision. And I guess I'll kind of just say it out here as to what I want to build it as. But I don't want it to be just Bitcoin and just Bitcoin only content. I kind of want it to be more on all kinds of finance aspects of things. So whether I have a macro show as well called Macro Insights, State of Bitcoin podcast, obviously I want to get some more other podcasts around money, basically. But that'll be kind of my indirect way to orange pill people and create almost like a media company, like the Barstool sports of finance, basically, is kind of how I word it to people. So we'll see. I mean, I'm kind of hoping I can be on that path, but I kind of want to make it like, you a little bit more digestible, but kind of draw some people in with, you know, I guess the other financial aspects things if I need to. And yeah, hopefully they meander on over to the Bitcoin side of things sooner rather than later.

Yeah, that's, that's so cool. You're you're, I don't know, you're really good at interviewing people. Like I know you're like, I was afraid of getting on there, you know, like, do you have a background though, and like, you know, media or communications or anything like that? Because you like you do, you do a really good interview. Like, that's the thing, like, when I first saw my very, the very first interview I ever saw you conduct or do, I was like, dang, like you just, you, you got it, like you just have like some people haven't some people don't, but like, I was like, dang, like, nice. Where'd that come from?

Well, I really appreciate that. I mean, I don't know, to be honest. I have an engineering background and I kind of mentioned before I ran cross country and track. So I don't know if you know too much about those kind of like groups of people, but generally speaking, they're a little socially awkward. Right. So I don't know if it's just I've kind of had the experience of being around a group of people where it's like, you know, they're not always like the cool kids in school or whatever. And I've kind of been able to mix in both worlds where, you know, I guess I'm smart enough to know, like, how to make things come across a little bit more clearer, but also dumb enough to ask the right questions and be curious enough to kind of, you know, poke into wait, you use this jargon here, like, what does that actually mean sort of thing.

So, you know, I think, I don't know, it's like a kind of combination. And then, you know, too, like just repetitions, man, like I, I'm in like, you know, I've been doing the podcast, both of them now for over 200 or over 100 episodes on each. So 200 total. So over two years on both of them. It's like, you know, I'm now like, yeah, I think I just published like episode 116 on the Bitcoin podcast. And then it's like, you know, 108 or something on the macro show. So, you know, it's just like, you talk to enough people and then you just kind of, I don't know, you just you realize that everybody's just a person, right? Like we're all just kind of trying to figure it out here. So, you know, I think I don't know, maybe I've gotten nervous on a couple of them before. Then I kind of sit back and I'm like, man, if I if I was just like, you know, I once I get nervous at the beginning, I kind of take me a second to get going. But after that, it's like, all right, well, you know, they're all people at the end of the day. So we're all just trying to figure it out and educate as much as we can and, you know, have a general conversation.

I love that. So the overall, you talked about the mission a little bit and like where you're trying to take it. Where in terms of Bitcoin, I was telling you earlier, some of my mission of trying to minimize collateral damage and why I love educating people and I love bringing people on such as yourself or whoever is willing and gracious enough to come on and talk about Bitcoin, share their story because that's how humans learn and that they get emotionally pulled to say, oh, wow, I have a similar story. Maybe I should look into it.

What is your, I guess what's your calling or what's the thing pulling you that really is driving you with the, of why you wanna take it to where you wanna take it.

Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. So I mean, like I found Bitcoin right, I mean, a while ago, and I still can't convince convince my family to really get on it. Granted, I probably made a few few mistakes with them here or there along the way. But you know, to me, I think that everybody kind of has their own lane when it comes to like the content creation and, you different aspects of things. So I think you know, what I have been able to, I don't know, like my personality, what I bring is a little bit different than, you know, what somebody else might bring. And I think, I don't know, like I feel like my message could potentially resonate with some other people. And I think that, you know, a lot of like traditional finance, the jargon, all that kind of stuff, it's really pretty simplistic if you think about it, right? Like supply and demand, it's like economics 101. This is what we learn, right? The digital scarcity aspect.

But we can't like, you know, we try to muddy up the waters. A lot of people try to make it more complex. They think like, okay, Bitcoin's like this, you know, the blockchain, like what is that? Like it's so complex. But in reality, I just kind of want to break it down and like, you know, make it a little bit digestible and make it fun too, right? Because I mean, I think exactly what you guys are doing is an awesome thing with the Bitcoin trading cards, like making it more fun, like collectibles, adding aspects of that.

I think a lot of stuff in Bitcoin is so serious, man. Like, I get it. Like, the money is screwed. The money is, I don't know, this kid shows, I was like, drop a F -bomb, so I won't do that here on your show. But I mean, the money is not a great thing right now, obviously, the fiat system. But, you know, I don't know if that message is gonna resonate with so many people where it's like, you know, hey, like, I get it. I have to go through inflation. Like, I already hate my job, you know? I already hate going to work and waking up every single day. I come home and I have to smoke weed to turn my brain off and battle the depression. I have to do all these things. And then I listen to this Bitcoin podcast where we're talking about serious things in the world ending. I just don't know. Some people might just not resonate with that. So what I'm trying to do is make it a little bit more cheerful, a little bit more joyous, have a good time with it, maybe crack a couple of jokes here or there, all while trying to try to educate some people. And I think like. to me, that's where I have more fun with it, because I think at a certain point, the philosophical conversation, I think it's great. I think everybody needs to go through that to realize, hey, I've been feeling this way for X amount of years, and I finally figured out the reason why, and it's the fiat money system. All right, now where do I go from here? I'm at the where do I go from here aspect of things, and I want to have fun with it, because life at the end of the day is about having fun to me.

Connecting with people, trying to educate, bring the Bitcoin message further. So, I guess back to your earlier question, that's what kind of drives me is like, let's have fun, let's have a good conversation and let's educate some people, but not make it as daunting as maybe some are. I think that there's room for every single conversation to be had for sure. I just think like at certain points in time, like I don't know.

I want to sit back and have a beer with the fellas and just shoot the shit a little bit, you know?

Yeah, that's so I love that. It's it's and it's, you know, we talked about earlier to like you grew up, you know, cross country and track and I grew up doing hockey. So it's like you have this like built in camaraderie, right? With team or like kind of locker room, right? So it's like it's the same kind of feeling in Bitcoin a little bit in a way to write like whether it's going to conferences or some of the relationships you develop. What what was your introduction to just money in general?

Like what was your, like as a kid, like when was the first time you remember kind of being like, oh, money, like interesting. I was sharing you my journey a little bit of like, oh, eight, oh nine and seeing like the both teams, like how it's red versus blue or red and blue versus all of us basically. And what was your introduction to money and kind of seeing this system and being like, wow, like for the first time.

Yeah, I don't know if I've actually shared this story on a podcast before. So this might be the first. I don't even know if I've told my parents this story. So if they listen to this, they might kind of, they might kind of hear it from me. But, you know, I do remember it was 2008, right? So I mean, I was like, maybe it was either right before that or, you know, right around that time. So I was like about to be a freshman in high school at that point in time. And I grew up in one, we moved to this one house in Austin when I was four.

We moved from Chicago to Austin and that's kind of where we lived, right? So I was like, what, four to, I don't know, 13, 14 age or something like that. So 10 years of my life, I was in this one single house. I remember my mom sitting me down then, you know, I had all my friends and everything and said like, yeah, we have to sell the house. Like my dad's an entrepreneur. His business was not doing well. You know, we have to sell the house. We don't know if, you know,

We don't know if we're gonna afford to live in the neighborhood that we're in anymore. Like there was a bunch of different question marks. And then we bounced around for a couple like rental properties. My parents did everything they could to kind of keep us in the same neighborhood. So we went to the same schools, didn't have to worry about friends and whatever. So, you know, I mean, I commend them for that, but I just remember this feeling of like helplessness at that point in time where it was like, there's nothing I can do. Like my parents are doing like everything that they can do, but you know, for some reason, like, we just are getting, like, this is getting taken from us, if that makes sense. And so, you know, from there, I just always knew, like, I never wanted to experience that feeling again. Like, no matter what it was, I never want to have that happen. And so when I got to grad school, at that point in time, I didn't, you know, my parents luckily started doing like pretty well when I got to college, and things kind of flipped on its head and...

I was able to get a scholarship, so I didn't get in a bunch of student loan debt. So I knew that there was a lot of things that I had where it's like, okay, comparatively to some of my peers, I set myself up where I'm not going to be in a bunch of student loan debt, like astronomical things. And maybe I could go to grad school and get that paid for. I got to figure out ways to kind of do that, but I got to figure out what I got to do. And then I got to figure out what I want to do with my money.

So it's kind of this like, I don't know, like long -winded scenario, but I always remember that feeling back in 2008 where it's like, hey, I gotta do whatever I can to make my money go farther because I never wanna experience what my family did and wanna be able to take care of them and do all that kind of stuff. So that kind of sent me down to just a personal finance rabbit hole, to be honest with you. And from there, that's kind of how I found Bitcoin, where I was like, all right, like you know, what happened in 2008, like what happened after it, you know, and I, and I, to be honest, I was never really, I guess, like an economics guy, like in high school or anything, I didn't really care about any of it. None of it really interests me. I was always like, kind of like a math and science nerd, I would say. But when I realized like, hey, you know, money kind of makes the world go around at the end of the day. That's what kind of set me down that hole. And, uh,

Yeah, now here I am like an engineer kind of in the podcasting game, I guess. So yeah.

That's crazy. So transitioning off that a little bit. What? So now fast forward to today, what is your, what is your favorite part of, of the Bitcoin space? Are you, is it kind of the numbers? Is it looking at, you know, the flows of the money, the ETFs, you know, wallet adoption, hash rate, like where, where do you really kind of find your, your niche inside Bitcoin? The thing that

You know, I guess you're a superpower in a way, I guess, within Bitcoin, everyone brings something different to Bitcoin. But what are what is your kind of superpower being an engineer, you know, and that having that background? What's what's the thing that really gets you going?

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, right? I mean, that's a great question. I think like more of my interest is on the overall kind of like just macro environment, how everything is connected, right? Because like, you know, I think like, you know, we talked about price a little bit here in this one, and we've talked a little bit about it on my show, right? But at the end of the day, it's kind of simple, right? There's a fixed supply of Bitcoin, right? The number that gets mined every single day is going down, and people are buying more than that are getting put out. Simple as that, right? So Therefore, the price is going to go up at the end of the day. And so to me, I think it's like looking at how everything has been interconnected and how everything can change, if that makes sense. So it's like whether the interest rate environment, how that's going to affect Bitcoin, the jobs market, all these different aspects of the overall macro economy. And it's all kind of drawn back to money and the monetary policy. It's like...It's interesting how the Federal Reserve is kind of like, we're like puppets to them, right? They're pulling the strings here and whether it's the interest rate string to see, oh, maybe a couple banks break, but the consumer is strong and they're still spending. So we can keep pulling on this until the consumer breaks. And then it's like, oh, shit, we pulled it too far and now we got to pull it back sort of thing. And just watching, I guess, the human nature behind it.

And I think that that's the power of Bitcoin right there, right? It's like everything is programmed into it, right? I mean, it's like on these four -year cycles where the halving, we know it's gonna come in this amount of time, right? And I think taking that power away from humans, that's where I kind of, I don't know, dive into it. It's like just kind of seeing the overall macro economy, understanding kind of how we got to this point and kind of like being, I guess, a little hopeful for where we could go on this Bitcoin standard. So...

I don't know if that answers your question completely, but my aspect that I like to look at is just how the overall macro looks into Bitcoin and just the overall economy as well, seeing how that plays into venture capital money and all that kind of stuff. The whole business side of things really is, I guess, appealing to me.

I can't remember now if we were saying this earlier in this episode or now in the other one, but are you a, you know, like, again, it's like the whole Jerome Powell thing or the, you Wednesday, the feds meeting and they're giving us their meeting notes and stuff like that. Like me, and I was telling you like personally, I just kind of chuckle at stuff like that. And I'm like, unless you're like managing someone's money, I don't know why in the world a Bitcoin or tears or spends more than a second on that.

And I'm from that world in a sense where like being investor real estate, like we talked about, I used to follow that stuff, but now understanding Bitcoin, I'm like, this stuff's pointless. Like this is just moot. Like, why don't I even, I don't even care. Is that, are you watching the Fed meeting minutes on Wednesday or the inflation? Like, are you watching that? Are you kind of like, no, I'm off watching other metrics, other things. How do you kind of come down in that space?

Yeah, that's a great question. So I mean, I watch, I do watch it. I don't like, you know, watch it very closely, right? I still have a fiat job, unfortunately. So like, I kind of just surf Twitter to kind of see some of the highlights and whatnot. Just to get a kind of like an overall sense of things, right? Because, you know, I think it's also interesting because I mean, like I said, I have the macro show. So I have a lot of like, traditional finance followers and like kind of the traditional finance aspects of things. So they follow it very closely and just kind of hearing things from different side of things to help shape my own thought process. So like if you ask a lot of people in traditional finance, inflation's done. We've beaten it. We're just kind of like in a slow growing economy and that the drone pal is going to cut rates tomorrow and things are going to be peaches and daisies. But if you ask a Bitcoiner, inflation still running rampant, the world's gonna end and, you know, and all these things.

So I mean, it's like it's in reality, it's kind of somewhere in the middle. But it's interesting how wrong the market has been and how wrong like people that have been in this industry have been for the past like four years, basically, it's like, you know, I followed it maybe a little bit closer the past four years just because of, you know, green candle and kind of like the COVID, you know, pump and dump kind of thing. But, you know, it seems like everybody's kind of tuning into that a little bit more. Maybe it's the bubble I put myself into, you know, I never really even knew who like the Fed chair was before maybe like 2020. I mean, I know it was like, you know, Trump had him at 2016 to 2020, and then, you know, kind of Biden got him back into his seat as well. But, you know, people hang on this guy's word.

And I think it kind of highlights an important issue that we have right now is that, you know, is the United States in a true democracy? If, you know, somebody that is, you know, basically pulling, like I said before, pulling these strings, he's not an elected official, right? He's appointed by the president. And so, you know, I say what you want about Powell, no matter what side you lean on. He was the Fed chair under Trump and he's the Fed chair now under Biden. So, you know, he's going to do what he can to kind of stay in power. But I also think it's interesting too, that he's kind of like going on 60 minutes and doing his media rounds now saying like, you know, things aren't that great. Like we're kind of screwing over the later generations. And, you know, I think it's becoming more evident how much these people in power, whether it's Janet Yellen or, you know, Jerome Powell or what have you are just straight up just like, you know, lying to us. And then we have, we all have the receipts on Twitter. So I mean, to me, that's kind of what the more interesting and like fun part of it is like, hey, like this guy's full of shit, this guy's full of shit, this girl's full of shit. Like just kind of like pointing out that opposed to maybe like hanging on his word and being like, I'm going to make a financial decision based on what he says. It's just kind of always interesting. I mean, cause you know, I mean, in the big, I'm a Hodler, right? I mean, so I don't, I don't want to sell. I don't want to ever have to sell.

And so, you know, with that being said, it's like, you know, I like it'll maybe swing the price up or down one day. And I could post a meme about it going up or post a meme about scooping up more stats at the bottom. You know, it's like, it's like, what meme am I going to post today kind of thing, opposed to like really making some big decisions on on one swing or another.

Yeah, that's yeah, such a great point. Do you think there's anything any like the macro, whether it's in legacy, you know, TradFi or Bitcoin macro guys, do you think there's anything that they they miss? You know, like, again, like it's sometimes it's tough when you're on a perch and you've got to either a big following or there's, you know, you're you're constantly running from interview to interview or spaces to spaces or things like that. Is there anything that those guys are missing or those gals at a high level that they're kind of, they kind of miss or kind of overlook at all in your view.

Yeah, I mean, I think that the biggest thing that they miss is that Jerome Powell kind of sticks to his word when it comes to the interest rate stuff. I think that the market Bitcoiners in general think that, you know, when we're going to cut interest rates and kind of revert back to the other side of things, everything's going to be good, right. But if you kind of look back at at like different time periods, when the Fed starts to cut interest rates, that's usually when we hit a recession is like so I mean, it's

The Fed is, they're also run by humans, right? So you gotta think that they're, they started raising at a rapid pace. They're probably gonna lower at a very, you know, wrong time. They're probably gonna lower a little bit too late. So in my eye, I mean, I wrote this on my blog too, and kind of discussed it in a few other places, but I think that they're gonna start cutting interest rates in Q4 of this year. But if you look at the market,

Basically, the market the bond market has been telling us that we're going to cut interest rates dating back to sometime early in 23. So I mean, the market's been continually wrong. The pivot bros, you know, everybody in Bitcoin thinks that something should have broken at this point in time. But in reality, look, I mean, the fiat system, we all realize it's like a charade, right? I mean, I always like revert back to that.

Wolf of Wall Street scene where they're sitting there, Matthew McConaughey, it's right before he starts beating his chest, you know, and he's like, uh, right before he's doing all that, he's like, you know, what, what are you, what are you doing with your, with your clients, right? You're selling them an idea on this stock, right? Because you don't know if it's going to go up or not. You don't know if they're going to make money. It's all a charade. It's Fugazi, Fugazi, you know, it's kind of like the expression he uses. And, you know, in reality, that's kind of, you know, where we're at is like people think that the market is not making any sense. And a lot of people, if you look at the macro factors, you look at consumer spending, job markets, they're like, things have to be worse than what all these things are saying. But in reality, we've been living in a charade this entire time. It's just we've finally seen it. And that's what's making Bitcoiners kind of being like, well, this has to fail at some point in time. In reality,

I think the charade is going to keep going on for a little bit longer and that they'll cut interest rates probably like later this year, maybe not even until 2024 because it's just keeping up the facade that they're trying to fight inflation, even though the traditional finance thinks inflation is done and the Bitcoin space thinks inflation is running rampant. So I mean, I think the overall macro people are thinking that they're going to cut a lot quicker than they are. And I think Bitcoiners are missing that as well.

That's fascinating. I love that. I want to hear your take on this too. Like what is your like, I think about 1971. I mean, 64 to right, we start taking the silver out of out of our coins and then 71, which is a precursor to 71, obviously. And there's many things before that too. But 71, it's like, to me, I'm like, how do we not go to war? Like, how is there not a world war? And I guess, you know, our military is bigger than everyone already at that point, it was probably our it was tough, but

Like how do you like, you just got a rug pulled, like every country just got rug pulled and you just sat back and took it. And it's kind of like a microcosm of, I feel like everything, like Americans, government just does whatever we just take it. We just don't, we don't, no one stands up and does anything and they just keep running you over. It's just like, at what point and where I'm getting at is you're just saying like, there's a lot of people missing this and where, where do the tracks go out? I mean, I feel like at some point, whether it's the,

Baby boomer started retiring, you know, five, six, seven, eight years ago, hitting 70 and a half, and they got to start taking money out of the pension. The debt exponentially just keeps going up. At some point, you feel like, I mean, the tracks are out. There's warning signs everywhere, and it feels like they can keep papering over everything and seemingly into oblivion. I mean, do you have any inkling, like, what are your things where like, hey, if that happens or that, like, it's no -go zone, like, everything just starts. That, to me, is just...

I still think 2016 or 2015, I was waiting for like a double, like a dead cat bounce. I'm like, oh, we're going back into GFC, you know, whatever. What are your thoughts on just like where we are in this game right now?

Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. So, I mean, you brought up like a war too, right? So, I mean, I think that, you know, maybe we're not necessarily in it yet, but we might be close with like, you know, the whole Russia -Ukraine system, obviously, you know, Israel -Hamas, like that kind of thing going on. I mean, no matter what side you're thinking on, I think, you know, maybe like, maybe call me crazy here, but I think that Russia has kind of realized like, hey, you know,

I said it earlier in this podcast, money makes the world go around. What's the step beneath that? It's energy, right? So Russia's pulling, they're realizing like, hey, the US and all these different countries, they kind of screwed themselves by making these green energy policies when in reality, it's not really green, right? They're just, you know, whoever's, you follow the money, you see which policies are going to be enacted, right? So in reality, Russia's pulling that cog. And what's the US doing? They're pulling the monetary policy card. And so because of that,

You know, a lot of small guys like El Salvador, like we'll probably see Argentina, we'll see some of the smaller guys who have nothing to really lose start to turn up and maybe go on a Bitcoin standard or kind of get off the dollar, whatever route they take. And a lot of countries are going to try to get away from the dollar and more transactions are going to slowly kind of get away from it. And a lot of these, you know, like third world countries are going to realize like, hey, the US got built on this system.

where the inflation was running so rampant that they made a lot of these systems not as good as they could have been. And if we get on more of a hard money system, these third world countries, they basically have a blank canvas, if you think about it, right? Countries like Brazil, very energy dense and a part of BRICS, a lot of these countries are super, super energy dense and just they haven't really tapped into those markets yet. And so what I think is going to happen is the US,

We're going to keep inflating away the currency. And then what's going to happen, right? The baby boomers are going to start to retire here soon. And what's something that is a Ponzi that's going to be running out? Social security. So people are going to try to be relying on social security. They're going to have to be working longer. I mean, it's just like it's a never ending cycle that that's going to continue to continue to break. But I think we're going to we're not quite there yet, because, you know, until like the American dream of buying your own personal house.

is basically a gone and forgotten kind of aspect of things. That's where I think like things are going to break in the Americas. We're not there yet because in the US we have that 30 year fixed kind of thing where it's like a lot of places around the globe they don't have that they have like floating variable rates and a lot of different stuff like that. So I think until that breaks where it's like the average house you can't basically can't buy it unless you're like, you know, working until you're 40 with your wife.

and you guys are both consistently saving up and you don't have any kids and that's kind of like, you know, until basically the engineer and the nurse, that couple cannot buy a house, I think, you know, and I think that's when it will break. And I think we're honestly kind of getting towards that, right? Because I mean, if we want to get into housing a little bit, I know you have a real estate background, but you know, we saw like a housing inflate like crazy, you know, since 2020.

And then now interest rates are making personal mortgages probably in the fours, the five, maybe 6%. And a couple of years ago, they were at, I got my house that I'm sitting in here under 3%, which is absolutely insane. And I think until, once we lower the interest rates and the personal house is just basically unaffordable, I think that's when the whole system collapses. But we also have products here that you could put like 3 .5 % down. My next theory is they're going to start coming out with more products where it's like 0 % down and people are just going to get into debt up to their eyeballs and then get house poor. And that's kind of like how things are going to play out here in the US. I don't think we're there yet. But I mean, as Powell said, we're kind of on a slippery slope and we're screwing a lot of the later generations. So that's kind of a long -winded answer.

But I think like there's kind of two things at play here, like what's going on abroad with like the potential like energy versus monetary policy war that we're in with like Russia and the BRICS nations. And then the screw ups that we're making at home right now where it's like, you know, a lot of people are getting pissed off and you know, having to, you know, work a job and then drive Uber on during the weeknights and just like, you know, work two jobs or do something like that. I just think like, you know, that's not really a sustainable path long term.

And where do we go from there? I don't know. Like if we were going to try to, I guess, make a case for the dollar, it would be pretty tough to do at this point in time.

It's it's it's wild because it's just like Bitcoin, the dollar has a network effect, right? And it's it seems that people, whether it's education happening around the world with with us or bricks happening, you know, China and Russia not buying treasuries or whatever it is, it just it seems that there there's some are able to paper over a lot of this still is beyond me.

But the network of the dollar is losing strength. Now it's still massive, but it's losing strength. You mentioned the loans too. Do you think what do you think the possibilities of 50 year, 100 year loans coming on? I think they have those in some parts of the world, but I can, I just feel like we'll see those in the next, in the decade here in America.

I honestly like I wouldn't doubt that either. Like, I mean, I brought up the 0 % down, you know, obviously, like, yeah, I mean, you know, you think you think I mean, they have those products for like the VA, right? Like, if you're a military veteran, they have some of those products out already, I wouldn't be surprised if they become more mainstream. Or if, you know, people just kind of get in the, you know, aspect of like, hey, you have a family house, you know, like you have multiple generations living under one roof.

Brandon Gentile (40:56.83)

Yeah, that's why I thought of it. Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon @greencandleit (41:20.046)

And those multiple generations have to basically pay off that house because they can't afford to move anywhere else. So, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if that kind of comes comes through. And, you know, we're seeing some of those crazy products kind of come out where it's like rocket mortgages, doing a lot of stuff like that. No free ads or anything like that. But I wouldn't. And from what I can tell, it's like, you know, they just feed to death from what I've what I've seen a lot of those things. And so I think that those things are going to.

Continue a lot of those products are gonna come out But you know I actually just had a CJ constant Dina's son on my podcast and he's trying to make a case to make something like more of like a Bitcoin back mortgage So you don't have to sell your Bitcoin to necessarily purchase a home I think like that's one way to escape it But I mean to be honest like not enough people own Bitcoin in order for that to be like a super super mainstream product a project to you know, save the housing market, so to speak. I think too many people are just like kind of ignorant where it's going. But I think, you know, a lot of innovation is going to be ahead, especially in the housing market, right? I think maybe products like that, like I just mentioned, and I think, you know, like utilizing Bitcoin miners to heat any aspect of your home. Like I'm in Tampa, Florida, right? So I mean, it's hot here. So I don't need like a heater necessarily at all, maybe one or two days a year.

in order to kind of heat my home. But what I do need is hot water, right? I like taking a hot shower. I like kind of doing those things. So utilizing Bitcoin miners to kind of cut some of those costs and, you know, kind of innovate in that aspect, I think that's going to be kind of another cog to fall in housing, whether it's, you know, utilizing it for a water heater, you know, heating your home, that kind of thing. I think like those kind of aspects are going to make...

people who aren't Bitcoiners just kind of see how valuable Bitcoin can be because it's like not only am I, all right, I'm utilizing key that I was normally gonna utilize, but now I'm getting Bitcoin back for it. Are you kidding me? Like that's genius, right? So I think, you know, there's gonna be a lot of delays and, you know, the way I kind of see us moving to a Bitcoin standard is hopefully a slow and steady, steady route where it's like we kind of do a lot of these things to help mitigate.

the problems that are kind of like pushing them down until eventually, you know, we just get to like a full fledged Bitcoin standard, where it's like we're utilizing Bitcoin to transact, pay bills, pay contractors, do whatever. But, you know, of course, that's not going to be met with without some resistance from the people in power. So I think, you know, the the long story short, I think, you know, what you want as an American,

is to kind of have the people in power not deflate away the dollar and kind of make it a slower transition, make it difficult for Bitcoiners to, not difficult for them to transact or anything like that, but make it difficult for Bitcoin to kind of become the global reserve currency until Bitcoin is ready. Because let's be honest here, as it sits today, Bitcoin is not ready to onboard 8 billion people. But I think, you know,

give it some time, I trust in these devs that they can find out some solutions. And a lot of innovative projects are happening, a lot of building can happen. And I think we'll get there. But I think as it stands right now, I want to see a slow transition over. And so although there is a bunch of macro factors and a lot of potential bad things underneath the hood, I still think we could get from point A to point B, hopefully soundly.

It's so it's so funny that I mean, I couldn't agree more. Like you said, it's it has to really be this transition off. You can't just, you know, the Fiat debt based legacy, monetary Titanic is slowly slipping beneath the waves. And you can't just have like the whole entire boat just jump all at once into the life rafts. Like you can't just you can't do that, you know, so one at a time, one at a time on board, you know, one wall at a second, one wall at a minute, whatever it is, right. So like, I couldn't agree more. It has to be this transition.

And it was funny that you, I was listening to Peter Schiff the other day on one of the spaces he was on like Mario Nafle, like one of those goofball spaces they have going on, talking about something. And they had him in there and they're like, you know, what do you think that Bitcoin will be viable then? And he's like, well, when I can, and he admitted, you know, the quiet part out loud, I guess, which is like, well, when everything's denominated in Sadoshis or in Bitcoin, like when I can buy everything in Bitcoin, it's like well, I mean, technically you can right now, Peter, and that's the Bitcoiner answer, but also like that is the answer in a way, right? But it's this education and it's us continuing down this path of educating, putting out content, indoctrinating people, incepting it, whatever it is, or just straight up education or people going through good times and number go up or bad times and Canadian trucker events. These things have to kind of happen, but the guy who's...quote unquote, against it so much is giving you the plan right there. He's like, well, when everything's denominated, which like you mentioned, it's going to happen. It's going to be this transition over time here as in where I think this is my kind of question to you kind of bringing this part together, which is, do you think that we, I've thought of this as like the baby boom or like the hippie bubble. I've been calling it where you have this, the fourth turning is really this bubble of all the people that are 70 and up in power at every level of society, you know, whether it's academia or government or you name it institution. And and they're all going to sunset here in the next five, 10 years, 12 years, they're going to be gone. And you're going to have this transition where it's going to be almost like we weren't even able to recognize what's going on. But do we elect Bitcoiners? Are they in places of power over the next handful of years? We're a lot of this almost as moot. A lot of the things you and I think about are Bitcoiners think about and talk about.

I feel like doesn't even happen in a way just because we're going to be the ones in power. People like us, we're going to elect those people and it's just going to be like a moot point. Like what are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I mean, I think, I don't know, man, I don't know if you just saw like the recent RFK kind of speech when he was at, I think it was like, ETH Denver or something, but he was like, I spoke at the Bitcoin conference in Miami. And after that conference, I got bought a bunch of Bitcoin after speaking at this conference, like I'm going to buy a bunch of ETH. So I mean, like to me, it's, it's, we need to get Bitcoiners, I guess, like, I guess understanding or in power to that aspect. We can't try to orange -pill traditional politicians. Because at the end of the day, politicians, they got to fund their campaigns. They got money that they need to get. And these shitcoin companies, they have the money. That's what we saw in the last bull run is you can market a coin and put blockchain behind something, and that valuation will go from zero to a couple billion pretty damn quick.

And that's what kind of worries me here. But at the same time, we also saw during the midterm elections, I don't know if you were on spaces much then, but in around 2022, we were getting a lot of politicians that realized, hey, I tweet about Bitcoin or I go in this Bitcoin space, my follow -up count goes from 1 ,000 to 10 real quick. And people start reaching out to me and that kind of thing. So I think they kind of know, but they don't right now.

And I still think there's an education and a knowledge gap behind it. And I think, to be honest, RFK, I applaud him for trying to say the quiet part out loud where he wants to denominate the dollar and back it by hard assets. But at the end of the day, he said he wanted to back the dollar by Bitcoin, gold, real estate, all these different hard assets.

I just think we're too far gone at this point in the fiat currency space. How do we even implement that? And then if we do it behind multiple hard assets, what does that even look like? And to be honest, it's four -year cycles. So in a four -year cycle, this is not gonna really change anything. I mean, we see it all the time. The first two years, the person kinda comes in and says what they needed to say and tries to do what they can.

And then that year three they realized like hey, I'm not gonna be able to do all these things now It's trying to started a campaign to do whatever I can do to try to set up for the fourth year where I'm basically gonna be campaigning to be reelected and blame the other party because hey like you know, I wasn't able to do XYZ because the Democrats or the Republicans or whoever on the other side didn't allow me to do that But if you reelect me, I'm going to be able to do that in this next four -year cycle And then it just starts all over again

So it's kind of the same never -ending thing with politicians here in the US. But at the end of the day, if they are just at least friendly to Bitcoiners, they set up friendly policies, they allow us to work and do that. I think, I was kind of talking about this, I'm gonna drop this episode with Stefan Lavera here in the near future, but I think the US politicians might be, I don't know if I'm gonna be giving them too much credit, but they might be pretty smart here because the way they're attacking it in the US.

Is there attacking these custodial lightning wallets or non KYC lightning wallets? Right? So it's like you look at wallet of Satoshi, you look at Moon, you look at like all these different places. Like realistically, when I was just abroad, it's like, where are the lightning wallets I have access to? It's like strike and cash app. Really? Like, I mean, you could do Phoenix, but you got to balance the channels. It's a little bit harder.

You can do some of these other ones like Mutiny, but it's more of a web -based app and it's not necessarily an app that you can get on the App Store. So, I mean, there's a lot of great projects going on, but they're making it difficult to basically make it easy to transact in Bitcoin, right? I mean, unless you're making an online purchase, they're making it tougher for you to go to your coffee shop and buy coffee with Bitcoin. And I think...

If that's going to be the case, then what do you have your options as? You can make it really difficult where it's like the average Joe Schmo is not going to download the Phoenix wallet and know how to balance for channels or do anything like that. And then, too, the on -chain fees are just going to keep going up, so on -chain fees or on -chain transactions just aren't going to make sense to purchase a coffee.

And so the on -chain fees, who can weather those storms? Probably traditional finance, right? The big boys. And then, you know, from the lightning transactions, the little guy gets crushed. So if they want traditional finance to come in and take over Bitcoin, which, you know, very well, I mean, I guess tinfoil hat in it here, they very well could with the rate that they're buying. You know, they're making it very difficult for us to kind of like move that, that industry aspect of it forward, which if you're...sitting here rooting for the dollar, I guess that that's a smart way to do it. But at the end of the day, we all know Bitcoin is inevitable, and it's going to win. It's just they're putting a few roadblocks in front of us here that we're going to have to try to find our way around.

And well said. Holy cow. I know getting toward the end here another one I want to ask you one more thing kind of here and then we'll do a little a little new segment a little word association then I'm gonna start to have yours. Have you ever seen a Caleb Presley's Sundae Conversation with Barstool Sports?

Oh yes, of course. Big fan. Big fan of Barstool and big fan of Caleb.

Yeah, so we'll do. I always think of the we're in a new segment, but sponsored by my meat does. I always think of that. So I'm going to I'm going to start doing that. Actually, I have the first 33 episodes. I have not done that, but I'm going to start doing this little word association game with everyone at the end. So I got to I just I was just thinking about it. I got to do that anyway before we do that, though, to kind of cap it all up. What you mentioned, you mentioned something here and made me think of capitalism, you know, you had this this pendulum of capitalism and swinging to the other side of socialism, communism, and, you know, it just seems like every single time you have capitalism and it gets destroyed by, you know, it's got to be built on something and that monetary foundation. And when the money's corrupted, now you've got this, this, this capitalism, you got this structure built on sand, and it just evolves into socialism, communism. And like you were saying,

What made me think of that was we've already gone too far. Like, I don't think you can, you can't win in the system as Jeff Booth always says, right? Like you can't fix reality from the current system. Like you have to build a new system. And I think like, what are, I guess, what are your thoughts on that? But also like, what, like, how do we, is it just pain? Like my, my father always said like pain is a great teacher, you know, like, and it's just like, do we really have to go through this pain and like this, this suffering in order for people to wake up again for the billionth time? Like what, what are, please give me some good news here.

Well, I mean, I think like at the root of it, right, capitalism is good, right? I mean, you provide a good service for me. I find value in it, right? It's like value for value. That's capitalism at its core. I think we've kind of gotten away from that because of the way that the fiat currency has, you know, in a sense, just kind of been diluted and inflated away. So, you know, I think like, you know, we could still get back to the capitalism roots, I guess. I just think that, you know, where we're kind of at is where we're at, we're in a country right now that we're probably never been more divided than we are right now. Right. I mean, it was the whole like maybe 2020 was the most dividing kind of point in time. And we've maybe gotten a little bit closer since then. But it's like, you know, the fiat currency kind of encourages crisis is kind of the way I like to word it. Right. I mean, if you think about it, COVID pandemic.

Who makes all the money there, right? The big pharmaceutical companies. So if you're in the big pharmaceutical companies, you're making out like a bandit. Who profits in war? Always defense companies, right? I always think of the movie War Dogs with Jonah Hill and Miles Teller, right? I mean, when a war breaks out, they're like, oh shit, they see dollar signs. You know, so, you know, that, and to me, that's not necessarily like true capitalism. True capitalism's like, all right, like, you know,

Brandon, you guys provide these great trading cards. I think this is worth, I don't know, 100 ,000 Satoshis, or I think this is worth X amount because I find the value of it. It brings me joy, so I will be willing to pay you X amount. And so I think, what Bitcoin encourages is us getting back into that. I don't think we're really there yet with the value for value aspect of things. But I think when it comes to pricing and everything like that, the closer we get to more of the denominating and like the kind of the Satoshi's aspect of things, I think that's when we'll get to stuff. And, you know, it's kind of like a slow, slow and steady progression when we get there, right? I mean, like I have a video editor guy that Luke Mickich, so shout out to Luke. He does great editing for a lot of my podcasts and stuff like that. But he has denominated his, you know, when I pay him every single month in Satoshi's.

So like, you know, six months ago, it was great when I started working with him. I was like, ah, this isn't bad. Now it's a little, he's a little bit more expensive for sure. But I mean, it's kind of like, you know, came with the territory in like, you know, denominating in that. And so like, you know, obviously I've grown since then and whatever, and he's, he's a hundred percent worth, I pay him, you know, I'm probably underpaying him too. So I mean, shout out to Luke and everything he does. But I think like, you know, the pain that we have to experience.

Like one, I think it is a teacher, right? I mean, I think like if you kind of take a step back too from that, like all Bitcoiners, right? We all shit coined at some point in time, right? I mean, like I admitted it here. Like I traded Doge a little bit. Like majority of Bitcoiners probably shit coined. How did I get, like, of course I made a little bit of money in Dogecoin, but I didn't make enough to get hurt. A lot of people lose money when they shit coin. Majority, I would probably say, right? They all get rugged, right?

And so what does that mean? Right. You either one, like learn why you got rugged, learn from your mistakes or to like you disband cryptocurrency and you conflate Bitcoin with all that and you kind of just, you know, group all those things together. So, you know, it really I think it just takes like a certain kind of person to to kind of like learn from their mistakes or like really be curious. And I think like, you know, some people, they just don't even want to care about money or anything like that.

So I think, you know, at the end of the day, it really just depends on the type of person either like one, you're probably going to have to suffer so much pain that you actually start to look into it. Or two, like you're kind of like going to play around with some things and get curious or three, like you're just kind of going to be naturally drawn to something like like Bitcoin, whether it's you know, you're in the energy business or you're in like, you know, the computer science aspect and like those things kind of appeal to you.

I think it's just kind of like looking at it from the three different cogs I like to put out in Bitcoin, where it's like the philosophical aspect of money, the energy side of things when it comes to mining, and then the development side of things when it comes to the layer twos or threes. So I think to kind of get somebody into and onboard Bitcoin, it's like you have to kind of figure out where they're at in that aspect of things, like what would resonate with them more. And then from there, once you kind of figure that out, then you could kind of see how receptive they are.

But majority of the time the things like, you know, it's the price, right? I mean, we're going to get probably more text and phone calls in the next like six months about Bitcoin than we've gotten in the past like year and a half.

So true good stuff brother. Well before I let you go here, I want to do a new segment presented by Bitcoin Trading Cards. So how about that? Word Association. So the first thing that comes to your mind when I run through this list here for you.

Michael Saylor.

I don't know man. I've been trying to come up with a good nickname for him, so I'm gonna say Hard Money Mike.

Oh, I like it.

Cold storage.

Security

politics

Whoo, that's a tough one. Fugazi

I love that. Fiat.

Dying

Normie.

Sheep

Women in Bitcoin.

What's up?

I love it. Peter Schiff.

Hard headed.

Vitalik Buterin

Manipulator.

Jack Mollers

Ballers.

Love that. Macro.

Craks

Wizards.

Oh man. Um, I don't know. I was just going to say with wizards, I always think of my buddy Bitcoin Gandalf, so I'll just say Gandalf.

Satoshi Nakamoto.

Genius.

I like it. I like it.

Bitcoin Trading Cards.

Oh, the new wave.

And lastly, Green Candle.

On the rise! Yes sir.

Let's go. Dude, appreciate you brother. Appreciate it so much Brandon for coming on and this is a blast. And I appreciate you indulging me in the new segment presented by Bitcoin Trading Cards. Appreciate it. But where can people find you at?

Of course, man, of course.

Yeah, so people can find me I'm at

Green Candle Investments

and on X,Instagram, or tik -tok I know it might be a little cringe, but I'm everywhere I'm trying to spread the word of Bitcoin there you can find like my podcast, I got state of Bitcoin and macro insights wherever you got podcasts. Or if you just want to go to one central location, you can search Green Candle on YouTube. And yeah, I upload them there.

So check out all my stuff. And yeah, subscribe to this one, man. Subscribe to the great stuff that my fellow Brandon is doing over here and the great stuff that they're doing at Bitcoin Trading Cards.

Follow along and scoop up some packs. I got one of these packs here sitting with me. We're showing where it's showing them pre-show so I'm coming strapped with my Bitcoin Trading Cards are you?

There we go. Let's go. Appreciate it, brother.

Lets go!

This doesn’t constitute investment advice. Do your own research. Trust but verify.

Freedom advice, not financial advice.