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Finally, an interesting Bitcoin podcast!

It’s been a while since I’ve seen people argue in Bitcoin but nostr:npub1gdu7w6l6w65qhrdeaf6eyywepwe7v7ezqtugsrxy7hl7ypjsvxksd76nak managed to pull Saylor into an interesting conversation about credit and lending in Bitcoin.

Saylor apparently hasn’t fully thought through the implications of 21M and remains wedded to his fiat ideas.

He expects there to be yield on Bitcoin in future, but never says where it will come from in a completely fixed supply money.. “They’ll have to sell their assets to finance themselves!” - yeah no shit Michael!

The only way to generate yield in Bitcoin terms is to mismatch duration - literally run a Ponzi scheme. But Saylor expects that because the US Government will back the banks that this can’t go wrong 🤣🤣

Saif takes nostr:npub1sfhflz2msx45rfzjyf5tyj0x35pv4qtq3hh4v2jf8nhrtl79cavsl2ymqt line that capital will flow but HODLers will take equity rather than yield. This is the correct logical conclusion.

I’m not saying Saylor is completely wrong - I do see a future where banks will get into this space and lend and pay yield on Bitcoin.

But they WILL blow up. I don’t give a fuck if they’ve got their own nuclear arsenal let alone the full faith and credit of the US Government behind them, they WILL get out over their skis and they WILL be unable to fulfill their obligations at some point because they WILL greedily try to rehypothecate it in the meantime and no Government will be able to save them.

Saif and Allen both know the economy doesn’t require interest to function, that the world won’t grind to a halt without it - people will still spend money. Saylor just isn’t ready to let go of his statism (as evidenced earlier in the conversation) because he’s become accustomed to Billionaire privileges.

This is why I love #Bitcoin. You can be the CEO of the most successful public company of the past 4 years, all thanks to Bitcoin, and you will still be totally humbled by it unless you fully embrace the system as it is because it won’t be changing for your fiat games!

https://youtu.be/k7XhzXMSAPo

I've listened to the full podcast, and the two mains points I got from it are :

-Saylor is all about a "soft deleveraging" (paraphrasing Ray Dalio), and think we'll go from a FIAT standard to a FIAT+BTC Standard progressively, but that not much will change in the economy. He thinks BTC will basically start to underpin FIAT and become part of the base layer of money, which is currently the bond market.

It's highly debatable that a soft deleveraging can be achieved at this level of worldwide debt, and part of me thinks Saylor is playing the statist card to not have his assets seized in the eventuality the US becomes a communist government and starts confiscating assets of "dissidents capitalists."

It's guesswork, so he might really believe it, but I personally thinks he has to play it safe with the state, otherwise he might come under fire from his shareholders/lenders...

-Saylor thinks capital that doesn't produce yield is useless, so Bitcoin would have to produce a yield to keep enticing banks, institutions, states and even people to hold it.

That's a wrong take in my opinion because as Saif rightly stated several times, you can't guarantee a yield without a lender of last resort that can print infinite money, and especially not a 5% yield.

If a 5% Bitcoin yield would somehow exist, my guess is that it would either involve paper bitcoin (Fractional reserve banking) so it would eventually collapse ; or if it was done in a Full-reserve banking kind of way, it would be arbitraged close to 0% very quickly by the big capital allocators.

In the future, I believe banks and lenders will still exists, however they'll be much smaller in size and in scope. There will be many more smaller regional/national and independent banks, which will mostly be about keeping custody of people's bitcoin with full-reserve banking, and facilitate their life for the time that fiat and bitcoin will coexist (could be for decades, even a century or two). They would also offer local investments opportunities which would return very low yields over short periods of time (months, couple of years maximum), but with very low risks because it would be for small scale, local projects with "known in the community" people (think your local farmers needing a new tractor, your local entrepreneur creating a company...)

On the other hand, specialized lenders/big national/international banks would focus on national/international companies and states, and offer lending opportunities with higher yields and equity in national or international ventures, with much bigger scope (Think the next SpaceX, the next OpenAI, even state-sponsored projects, etc...), but with also much bigger risks and time horizon. These projects would probably be offered only to professional capital allocators

Most of the everyday people would not care about getting a big yield on their Bitcoin, because due to technological improvements of the means of production over time, their purchasing power would either stay flat, or even keep increasing over time when the next big successful ventures would bear fruit. (Mass-produced factory robot workers, AI Agents replacing repetitive and boring jobs, Real full self driving cars, Nuclear Fusion...)

That in itself would be their "yield", and everyday people would focus on what matters in their everyday life : Family, Health, Work, Relationships, Community Projects... Without needing to spend time and energy fighting endless inflation due to endless money-printing, they would do a much better work at these activities too, and end up living longer, healthier and fulfilling lives...

That last points also highlights why lending is good and needed in the economy, and will surely keep existing for ever. Humanity will always birth a next Leonardo Da Vinci, a next Nikola Tesla, a next Thomas Edison, a next Steve Jobs, a next Elon Musk... And most of them might not come from a wealthy family, so they'll need capital from other people whom accumulated it over the course of their lives to unleash their creativity, fulfill their destinies, and hopefully keep pushing humanity toward a brighter future.

These future capital allocator will be probably very smart since they would have managed to accumulate capital in a fixed-money supply world, which means they produced a lot more things than they consumed.

And these future capital allocators might reach a point in their lives where they realize they'll be more efficient allocating ressources than grinding in a factory or a lab 24/7, thus allowing the cycle to continue.

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