recap/history/1775587377519-Rc9lTSs7wgI.json

{"id":"1775587377519-Rc9lTSs7wgI","videoId":"Rc9lTSs7wgI","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc9lTSs7wgI","title":"While Everyone Was Watching Iran, They Missed This","type":"youtube","topicCount":6,"segmentCount":15,"createdAt":"2026-04-07T18:42:57.519Z","uploadDate":"20260406","chunks":[{"title":"Introduction and Weekend Catch-up","summary":"The host and Arnold briefly discuss their Easter weekend and joke about the increasing number of Catholic converts before diving into the episode's main topics.","entries":[{"text":"Host: Mr. Arnold, here we are again, another Monday morning. How was your weekend?","offset":0,"duration":5},{"text":"Arnold: Terrific, great Easter, hope everyone else had a great Easter as well. Got to mass, jam-packed as we were talking about before we started. So very bullish in a world with not a, not always a ton to be bullish about... that was bullish.","offset":5,"duration":13}],"startTime":0},{"title":"Navigating Geopolitical Noise","summary":"The hosts discuss the difficulty of interpreting the Trump administration's erratic geopolitical messaging. They emphasize the need to look past confusing headlines and focus on concrete data points to understand actual policy logic.","entries":[{"text":"Host: Yeah, if there is one number going up, it is Catholic converts in recent years. But we are not here to discuss Catholicism, we're here to talk Bitcoin markets and what's going on in the world. You titled this week's 10:31 timestamp, \"Schrödinger's Regime Change,\" and basically highlighted that it's very hard to discern what's going on if you're simply looking at the headlines coming out of the Trump administration. Particularly and the IRGC for that matter, obviously we have two sides of a war that have very specific motives to try to get what they want in terms of leverage and that is leading to a lot of chaos and uncertainty in markets. And a lot of your focus this week is what should we be focusing on to actually discern some signal from all the noise out there?","offset":18,"duration":47},{"text":"Arnold: Yeah, absolutely. In putting this newsletter together week to week, it's just gotten to the point where, you know, you try to stay on top of all the headlines and all the data points that could be pointing one way or another, and it's just gotten to the point where it almost all feels kind of pointless to really follow it all that closely. If you pull up the first slide for today, I just kind of screen capped a piece of the newsletter with the bullet points showing all the different ways that Trump and the administration more broadly seem to have flip-flopped, intentionally or not, often within the same hour on key things, like whether the Iranian regime has changed or not, whether he's now working with people who want to make a sensible deal or whether they're doubling down, whether we're going to force the Strait of Hormuz to be reopened and take all the oil, or make other people do it, or we're just going to leave without dealing with it. You know, you can see all these things every single, basically every single hour there's a version of this. And it feels very, for the under-50 crowd, maybe under-40 crowd, there's an image you can hear on the left side of the screen here, and the over-50s probably will not even be able to relate to it even if they look it up. But for anyone who's aware of Leroy Jenkins, that's what it all feels like, right? Whether intentionally or not, whether you're a plan-truster or a panicker, whether you think that there's a bunch of strategic logic under the hood, or whether Trump is in the early stages of dementia and is flushing the country down the drain as a result. It feels from the outside like a lot of Leroy Jenkins with everything that's going on. And so it just got to the point where I was like, okay, well what are the concrete data points that we should be focusing on, what can we attach to to figure out what might be actionable or happening under the hood as a derivative result of all this, regardless of what happens from here, regardless of what kind of logic might exist or not in the plan such as it is. So that was kind of my focus for this week and I definitely think there are a few big things we can dive into that are worth thinking about that are going to be relevant, regardless of what happens with Hormuz, regardless of what happens with Trump and Israel and the IRGC.","offset":65,"duration":121}],"startTime":18},{"title":"Strait of Hormuz and Global Sanctions","summary":"Analyzing a recent analyst report, the hosts discuss the nuanced reality of oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz. They note that countries like Japan and France are prioritizing their physical energy needs over strict adherence to Western sanction regimes.","entries":[{"text":"Host: Yeah, I think maybe starting with barrels of oil and how much are actually, not only being produced, but actually being delivered from that part of the world. And you touched on this: roughly four million barrels of oil exited the waterway on Thursday, the largest outflow since the start of the conflict. At the same time, the French-owned container ship crossed the strait, marking the first explicitly Western crossing since February. And so it seems like the activity in terms of ships actually making it through the strait is beginning to increase consistently. And I was telling you before we hit record, I thought it was very fitting that Citrini released their report of analyst number three heading to that part of the world to observe with his own eyes what was going on. Because it essentially confirms what you wrote about this week, which is that it seems like activity is increasing and I think not only did it confirm that quantitative data, but I think the qualitative data of this is not really a binary situation here. It's very nuanced, there are obviously multiple players and different incentives at play. And I think the most important incentive that was highlighted by Citrini in their report was that Iran wants to keep the strait open because they need to project that they actually have control and are acting as a responsible actor in that part of the world. Sort of enticing countries that need oil to work with them to create this tollway that many people have discussed.","offset":186,"duration":85},{"text":"Arnold: Yeah, for sure. It's a great piece, everyone should go read it, highly recommend paying for a Citrini subscription to do that. But yeah, I think the big takeaway, you know, this won't be spoiling anything and there's a lot more alpha in there that you can go read about, but I think the big, interesting takeaway from it is everyone on the ground seems to think both that we're going to get messy military escalation that will not end soon, and more oil is going to progressively flow out of the strait. Because as you said, there are a lot of interests aligned on all sides to keep oil moving through the strait. Iran wants to do that both to project an image of itself as kind of the wise governor of those resources in that waterway in opposition to the crazy Leroy Jenkins US, also a key source of revenue for the country. So shutting down oil flows there and also for its adversaries that may get even more aggressive with it if they literally can't ship massive amounts of oil through that strait for a meaningful amount of time... that all leads in a very bad path for everyone, so there's this kind of tacit desire and understanding to that everyone wants oil to flow out of the strait in one way or another. And Iran has thus far, it seems like erected some sort of like toll booth system that you can go read about that seems to be getting broader and broader in the participants that are allowed to be involved in that. But I think that the piece also has an interesting set of implications that they outline at the end, which is basically kind of undermining both poles of like reading what's going on. You know, there's been on one side kind of this very, you know, frankly like you see it a lot in our camp, you see it a lot in the kind of pro-Bitcoin or pro-gold sound money like death of the dollar type camp saying like, \"This is the beginning of the petro-yuan and all the only tankers that can get through are paying in yuan and this is the beginning of China dominating global oil flows and energy markets.\" And on the other side you've got and perhaps it's not even appropriate to call it the other side but guys that we flagged on this podcast before like Anas Alhajji who are, you know, real experts in global energy markets kind of saying that this Western consensus reading of what's going on is basically all a sham, and the only reason that you're not seeing ships flow through is because of the issues in the insurance market with all these tankers, which maybe is driven by US interest. And so in some sense, the US is kind of driving all this. And I think the report's interesting because it basically puts both of those somewhat, it really undermines both of those to some degree. Interestingly, Citrini's analyst, unclear who that guy is, I have to think he's not a denizen of traditional finance because I can't imagine anyone who actually worked on Wall Street doing what this dude did... very entertaining stuff, again I recommend people read. But you know, what he found was that yeah, there's a little Chinese yuan facilitating payments, but a huge amount of it is through diplomatic channels. You know, back-channeling between different countries and different quid pro quo trades being made totally out of band between those countries to guarantee safe passage for tankers that are aligned with different countries or different groups. There does appear to be ongoing fear of OFAC sanctions and so that's forcing different ways of facilitating this. I think that's interesting and relevant as it relates to how dominant the US dollar system still realistically is globally. On the flip side, also a lot of locals are reporting that their main concern is not getting killed, right? Not getting blown up drafting through the strait, and insurance is kind of a secondary concern. Also some interesting data points in there on the rates that some of these tankers are getting paid just to basically be floating storage in kind of the current disrupted market and how that also is kind of a disincentive, insurance or not, to go through and risk your life and risk your ship. So all that is to say like I think this just highlights what we've been saying the last few weeks: the simple stories just like don't really work. You're going to have to have like an interpretive lens that's kind of multivariate and doesn't isn't reducible to kind of one simple story. And so I again think that just further highlights the need to focus on data points outside of like the constant stream of of headlines, whether pro-Trump or anti-Trump, pro-Iran or anti-Iran, and look at what's actually happening in other markets that are maybe downstream of this or potentially orthogonal to this and flow that back to the decision tree that the US is going to be looking at over the next month or two.","offset":271,"duration":255},{"text":"Host: Yeah, I thought after having read the piece that the tidbit here, which you've highlighted a bit, I don't think the direct highlight, but some countries are unfreezing sanctioned assets, Iranian assets, to let things flow. And to your point, that does throw a wrench in the US and Western sanction regime. And it really highlights like when push comes to shove, this rule-based order that many people have talked about for decades and Trump specifically called out in his national strategic or security strategy letter last year, it definitely seems to be fading away. And this is yet another data point that proves okay, this this sanction regime that has existed that's been dominated by the West seems to be dissolving in front of our eyes and push is coming to shove, whether the US likes it or not. The countries that are working with the IRGC right now need the oil. And I thought two names on the list and they've made the headlines the last couple of weeks, but I think this report verified it... I mean Japan and France are essentially forced to play ball. They're deciding, hey we need this oil more than we need the sort of social cachet with with the United States right now. Like we need to make sure that our systems are operating and our economy can actually function. And so you're seeing this sort of physical reality enter into the realm of geopolitics and a reshuffling of the board in real time. And we're you posted this as well, but obviously again Leroy Jenkins on Easter, Trump is praising Allah and saying that we're going to blow up power plants, \"Open the fucking strait, you crazy bastards, you'll be living in hell.\" Very Caligula-esque as some some were describing yesterday. I was not on Twitter much, but I did catch this. Bitcoin reacted to this. Who knows if it reacted to this, but coincidentally after this Truth Social post was sent out, Bitcoin rallied a bit.","offset":526,"duration":119}],"startTime":186},{"title":"Critical Materials and Supply Chains","summary":"Arnold highlights key physical world developments to monitor, including helium shortages, a new US-Qatar LNG facility in Texas, Alberta's separatist movement, and Western efforts to secure rare earth refining.","entries":[{"text":"Arnold: Yeah, you know my my guys out here having a normal one on Easter morning with with this tweet. But you know, I threw the Bitcoin chart in there just because I think it's an interesting direction for it to move... this is the 24 hours after this this tweet was posted. So do I think it was popping on this exactly? Like no. But this is the kind of thing that I think my knee-jerk would have been like, okay we're going to dump another couple couple grand on a comment like that. And we kind of did the opposite, even over the weekend in kind of a liquidity-constrained time when most markets aren't open. So you know, an interesting counterfactual data point. We'll see if it ultimately means anything. But yeah, I think it's you know, gets to the same Leroy Jenkins point we've been talking about. And I think you know that maybe we can jump in from there... like a couple slides down, some of the the physical world realities that that you're talking about that I highlighted in the piece and we've mentioned this before on the show, but just just a couple to flag. You're really starting to see headlines about helium production shortages biting. This is a key input to among other things, semiconductor manufacturing, which is you know, among the most sensitive, perhaps the most sensitive advanced manufacturing industry in the world right now. The split there is basically a huge amount from Qatar. A lot of that's offline now with all the damage to infrastructure in the Gulf. And that leaves basically the US in pole position to kind of control flows of this this critical input. And you also see interestingly this past week Qatar and Exxon's joint venture to produce LNG, 18 million metric tons per year, which would more than offset the amount that's currently offline as a result of the attacks on Qatar's facilities in the Gulf. That's coming online and interestingly, that is not a replacement facility in the Middle East or somewhere else. It's in Texas. It's a 70-30 joint venture between Qatar Energy and Exxon, and headlines I've seen suggest that's going to ramp up to full capacity over the next 12 months, roughly. So we'll see if that happens. But interestingly highlighting like the cards to some extent that the US does have to play right on the physical production reality side. Definitely does not mean that the US is out of the woods, but things like this are I think going to be increasingly important to watch as supply chains fracture and basic materials that a lot of us either took for granted or had never really heard of or thought of before kind of become the poles along which this fight is progresses and along which countries kind of try to exercise leverage on on one another. And you know, the next slide shows the same thing in kind of different ways. These are not again things to like necessarily trade on or to construct a thesis on, but I think they're all like collectively they form an interesting mosaic for what the US might be trying to do TBD whether they can. But our friends to the north in the the province of Canada that produces most of Canada's oil, Alberta, seem to be on a separatist path, a secessionist path that is not going away. And they've got apparently the required signatures now to launch a referendum vote on starting a separation process. That vote will take place in October and it seems like there's a decent amount of linkage, perhaps engineered by the CIA, perhaps not. But a decent amount of linkage between Alberta separatists and the Trump administration. And on the rare earth side, you see on on the right-hand side a couple headlines from last week about the US kind of moving aggressively to gain some control over some some key rare earth materials. A key question here is still the the refining of these things. They're actually not that rare in terms of deposits, but actually getting them refined is a very messy and difficult process that China has gladly you know, taken taken up over the last 20 years as the West was collectively kind of casting out all quote-unquote dirty industries. So moving in a you know, strategically relevant direction, still very much like first or second inning on on those things. But collectively, I just think like those are key data points to be watching. Like things like that are, I think, are forming the base that we should be watching more and more closely and are kind of telling you collectively as a mosaic you know, where things might might be going over the next 12 months.","offset":645,"duration":246}],"startTime":645},{"title":"The Quantum Computing Threat to Bitcoin","summary":"The conversation shifts to recent advancements in quantum computing and the resulting panic over Bitcoin's cryptographic security. The hosts advocate for a methodical, panic-free approach to implementing post-quantum signature schemes, emphasizing trust in specialized developers.","entries":[{"text":"Host: Add a few tallies to the 4D chess column right there. I mean, again, that's why I love doing this show with you every Monday because I think you do a good job of zooming out and really trying to filter. And I think these are definitely things that make me believe okay, maybe there is a plan here despite what Trump may be posting on any given day or any given hour of any given day. These are strategic moves to re-industrialize and create alliances, whether it's in Africa, Latin America or soon to be our neighbors to the north. Alberta, it's always been on my mind... there's so much potential there and the the sort of thirst for freedom that that exists in that particular province is palpable, knowing some Albertans ourselves. Having having one very staunch Albertan in the portfolio and Steve Barber and Upstream Data. I'm cheering for them, if I'm being honest. I'm letting my bias shine through here. But I think we risk becoming too much of a macro-geopolitical think-tank podcast and so I think we should shift to some Bitcoin-specific topics. And I think the big one last week was the reemergence of quantum fud. It seems like that is reemerging at a quickened pace as as new papers are released. And obviously, I'm sure most of you know, Google released a paper last week that basically cited or basically claimed that the amount of theoretical or the amount of logical theoretically the amount of logical qubits that would be needed to use Shor's algorithm to break ECDSA was reduced significantly. And this led many of the quantum panickers to come out and say that Bitcoin needs to upgrade as quickly as possible to be quantum-resistant because it seems like a cryptographically relevant quantum computer may be on the horizon. And so this started a lot of conversation last week. I had Brandon Black, also known as Rearden Code on the TFTC podcast, that episode dropped Saturday morning and we tried to do our best to to do a methodical walk-through of the spectrum of the quantum debate as it relates to Bitcoin and where we actually sit. I will put a hand up and say obviously I think Brandon and I are a bit biased towards the \"it's not as big of a worry as many are making it out to be,\" but I think we tried to to cover all the bases there. What are your thoughts on the quantum debate?","offset":891,"duration":149},{"text":"Arnold: Yeah, I mean it's funny like as it relates to the theme of what can we actually know? Like what can we actually reasonably assess? You know, that's why I titled the essay this week \"Schrödinger's Regime Change\" and said the subtitle was like \"A Superposition of Hot Takes\" because you very much have that on the geopolitical macro scale of kind of what's actually happening. Is there a plan? Is there not a plan? Is Iran almost as strong as they've ever been or are they about to fall? Kind of both of those things are the case at once. Like there's kind of a superposition as well of takes on quantum... you know where we are almost there and Bitcoin's cooked, or this is literally never going to happen and it's all fairy dust and anyone thinking about it is completely wasting their time. I think you your episode with Brandon did a really good job of, you know, he's he's very skeptical of the the claims here. I think I would put myself in that camp as well. But you know, I think you guys did a balanced job of walking through the puts and takes and the the pros and cons and the different cases that one could make, as well as you know, realistic mitigation strategies. And you know, I recommend people go listen to that. And I also recommend people you know, take as middle-of-the-road an approach as is possible here. Generally, I think both of those poles that I mentioned are probably not the place you want to be even though I would probably say if you gun to my head, I wouldn't make the bet that if you said is it ever going to happen is a CRQC ever actually going to be instantiated in physical reality? I would probably still shade to no. That said, you made a really good point I think over the weekend that there's we should already be assuming that ECDSA is not going to last forever, right? There are always advancements in cryptography, advancements in technology. You never want to short human ingenuity especially when there's you know, value involved and in any kind of system that is monetary in nature or that has an incentive to be attacked, you know, whether that's Bitcoin or any other system that depends on ECDSA or RSA or any other cryptographic scheme. So generally, I think it it makes sense to have some level of you know, preparation, some level of understanding of the problem space. I think it's important for people to look who see the scary headlines from Google and QuEra to like Brandon recommended kind of think through: there's the mathematical and theoretical side of things and then there's the actual physical reality, like we talked about earlier with other elements of the world, you know, the physical reality of bringing this into into being. And the advancements on the latter have not been nearly as impressive as the advancements on the former of kind of the the theory of how this could work on a machine that does not exist. But regardless of what your ultimate view on all that is, I think the the thing that you can most clearly like anchor to as something that's observable is that there has been a lot of work done on this by Bitcoin devs and people who are generally just around the cryptography space. I listed a bunch of them in the newsletter that people can go back and look at. Jonas Nick had a proposal just last week, coincidentally timed I think on the same day as these papers dropped, for he's calling it \"SHRIMP\"... and you know, you can just go go look at kind of what that involves but basically would be post-quantum signatures on Bitcoin that are substantially smaller in terms of data requirement than prior prior proposals. That's a relevant trade-off for us to think through as we add any novel cryptography to Bitcoin, the the way that heavier signatures to to have quantum security might affect throughput. So that's one of the trade-offs to think about. Another big one, the last thing I'll say that I think people need to always keep in mind with this or any other situation is like we as humans naturally have action bias toward any problem. I think we all saw that especially during COVID. But you see it during any kind of crisis event, the impulse is to do something, just literally do anything. And oftentimes like it's very easy to forget that doing something is is not itself risk-less and you know, can carry especially if you if the thing that you do is very rushed in in nature and done in a sense of panic or false urgency, you know, that can carry its own downsides that need to be thought through, right? And you know, I've said this elsewhere and I think you've said it too, but if I were a state actor and I wanted to disrupt Bitcoin, one of the things that I would definitely do would be to engineer some sort of panic state that would make people add untested novel cryptography to Bitcoin, right? And make people rely on that, and you potentially have you know, the possibility for backdoors that are undiscovered due to being you know, untested or not tested sufficiently. So not at all saying that that's my base case for like what is happening here, not attributing any bad faith to anyone who is involved in quantum projects or talking about this on Twitter or elsewhere. But simply just stating that's an example of like an unintended consequence, a potential downside that needs to be thought through as we look to kind of restrain our action bias and just approach things you know, from from as sober a lens as possible.","offset":1040,"duration":284},{"text":"Host: Yeah, completely agree there. I would just add just to clarify, like to me and you referenced the tweet I sent out, but I think, and again not a quantum physicist, I'm not a cryptographer, but from what I can gather the theoretical side of quantum computing is advancing at a rapid clip, which is great. You have some of the smartest people in the world working on these theoretical physics problems and they're making strong advancements. But the physical applied physics side of things just hasn't made the same advancements and again, Brandon said it during our conversation, there hasn't even been one sort of standardized quantum computer that you could benchmark to itself that has made progress consistently over a certain period of time. And the way he put it is until you see one standard set and being iterated on and improved at a consistent pace then there it seems like you're panicking for for no reason. Just to steelman it, or to be fair to both sides, the other side will say well we're not going to get the warnings that these advancements on the physical applied side are being made and Q-Day is coming faster so you have to prepare now. And I'm not convinced. I think methodical, consistent progress towards a solution, like you said many Bitcoin developers think on a long enough timeline ECDSA will be broken eventually and they've already been preparing for new cryptographic signature schemes that we will transition to. You mentioned Jonas Nick's SHRIMPs paper that he released, I think one sort of point of context I wanted to add to that: it was an iteration on \"SHRINKS+\", which was a solution that Jonas Nick and Mikhail Kudinov came up with through their research of hash-based signature schemes that could be added to Bitcoin and make it quantum-resistant. They released that paper in December, and so here we are, beginning of April, end of March, a quarter later, Jonas is already sort of advanced that primitive idea and made it more efficient. And so the progress is being made on the research side of what we need to do to upgrade Bitcoin's signature scheme for a world in which ECDSA is broken, or a world in which quantum computers manifest, exist, and are scalable and efficient. And so yeah, I think I think a level-headed approach to this is is the best way. And another thing, last thing I'll say on this, the when you're out there and you're not immersed in this debate and you're an outside observer looking at this and you have Chamath Palihapitiya, you have Nick Carter and others saying we need to do this now and they're saying \"Bitcoin developers need to get together and solve this problem\"... I think one thing to understand is that not every Bitcoin developer is qualified or equipped to solve this specific problem. There are many different parts of the Bitcoin stack, people working on the P2P layer, initial block download, networking between nodes, wallet GUIs, all of that... and there is a subset of a subset of Bitcoin developers that really understand the cryptography, and then within that subset of a subset, a subset that understands how to make it quantum-resistant. So finger-wagging at every Bitcoin developer and saying do something is completely unproductive because not every Bitcoin developer is focused on this specific part of the Bitcoin stack. The people who are are making progress.","offset":1324,"duration":189},{"text":"Arnold: Yeah, I mean the last thing I'll say is to that point: there's a concept called a \"load-bearing internet person,\" someone who's just like 10,000x the the median engineer or the median computer scientist on questions of the design of the internet, internet protocol. I think there's very much like a similar concept here of a \"load-bearing cryptography person.\" I mean, there are literally like probably under 50 people in the world who are truly like masters of this this domain, you know, or maybe under 1,000, I don't know however you would frame it. But you know, to the extent that you think that that's like a risk to Bitcoin, it's also a risk to every digital system that we have in the world. There are so few people who are really equipped to to think through all this stuff. But it's so worth noting as you just ask yourself, to that point, like \"Why isn't this solved?\" Well, it's a very thorny question that not everyone in the world or even a majority of people who are deeply involved in Bitcoin are really qualified to you know, weigh in on and opine on. So all the more reason then, right, to be methodical about it and to make sure that nothing is getting kind of rushed or pushed faster than you know, it needs to go, particularly given some of the questions that you highlighted around the actual physical scaling progress of of getting this stuff out into the real world. So yeah again, you know, avoid the black boxes, focus on what you can actually analyze and get your hands around and try not to weigh in on the stuff that's borderline impossible to really figure out.","offset":1513,"duration":78},{"text":"Host: Yeah, and to flip the frame there: the fact that Bitcoin, the Bitcoin project has a few of these individuals who are qualified and equipped to do this work is high signal that it is a very valuable protocol. The fact that it's able to attract that type of talent that can actually solve these problems is an endorsement in and of itself.","offset":1591,"duration":20},{"text":"Arnold: Yep, co-sign.","offset":1611,"duration":1}],"startTime":891},{"title":"Outro","summary":"The host concludes the discussion and signs off until the following week.","entries":[{"text":"Host: All right, see you guys next week.","offset":1612,"duration":15}],"startTime":1612}],"entries":[{"text":"Host: Mr. Arnold, here we are again, another Monday morning. How was your weekend?","offset":0,"duration":5},{"text":"Arnold: Terrific, great Easter, hope everyone else had a great Easter as well. Got to mass, jam-packed as we were talking about before we started. So very bullish in a world with not a, not always a ton to be bullish about... that was bullish.","offset":5,"duration":13},{"text":"Host: Yeah, if there is one number going up, it is Catholic converts in recent years. But we are not here to discuss Catholicism, we're here to talk Bitcoin markets and what's going on in the world. You titled this week's 10:31 timestamp, \"Schrödinger's Regime Change,\" and basically highlighted that it's very hard to discern what's going on if you're simply looking at the headlines coming out of the Trump administration. Particularly and the IRGC for that matter, obviously we have two sides of a war that have very specific motives to try to get what they want in terms of leverage and that is leading to a lot of chaos and uncertainty in markets. And a lot of your focus this week is what should we be focusing on to actually discern some signal from all the noise out there?","offset":18,"duration":47},{"text":"Arnold: Yeah, absolutely. In putting this newsletter together week to week, it's just gotten to the point where, you know, you try to stay on top of all the headlines and all the data points that could be pointing one way or another, and it's just gotten to the point where it almost all feels kind of pointless to really follow it all that closely. If you pull up the first slide for today, I just kind of screen capped a piece of the newsletter with the bullet points showing all the different ways that Trump and the administration more broadly seem to have flip-flopped, intentionally or not, often within the same hour on key things, like whether the Iranian regime has changed or not, whether he's now working with people who want to make a sensible deal or whether they're doubling down, whether we're going to force the Strait of Hormuz to be reopened and take all the oil, or make other people do it, or we're just going to leave without dealing with it. You know, you can see all these things every single, basically every single hour there's a version of this. And it feels very, for the under-50 crowd, maybe under-40 crowd, there's an image you can hear on the left side of the screen here, and the over-50s probably will not even be able to relate to it even if they look it up. But for anyone who's aware of Leroy Jenkins, that's what it all feels like, right? Whether intentionally or not, whether you're a plan-truster or a panicker, whether you think that there's a bunch of strategic logic under the hood, or whether Trump is in the early stages of dementia and is flushing the country down the drain as a result. It feels from the outside like a lot of Leroy Jenkins with everything that's going on. And so it just got to the point where I was like, okay, well what are the concrete data points that we should be focusing on, what can we attach to to figure out what might be actionable or happening under the hood as a derivative result of all this, regardless of what happens from here, regardless of what kind of logic might exist or not in the plan such as it is. So that was kind of my focus for this week and I definitely think there are a few big things we can dive into that are worth thinking about that are going to be relevant, regardless of what happens with Hormuz, regardless of what happens with Trump and Israel and the IRGC.","offset":65,"duration":121},{"text":"Host: Yeah, I think maybe starting with barrels of oil and how much are actually, not only being produced, but actually being delivered from that part of the world. And you touched on this: roughly four million barrels of oil exited the waterway on Thursday, the largest outflow since the start of the conflict. At the same time, the French-owned container ship crossed the strait, marking the first explicitly Western crossing since February. And so it seems like the activity in terms of ships actually making it through the strait is beginning to increase consistently. And I was telling you before we hit record, I thought it was very fitting that Citrini released their report of analyst number three heading to that part of the world to observe with his own eyes what was going on. Because it essentially confirms what you wrote about this week, which is that it seems like activity is increasing and I think not only did it confirm that quantitative data, but I think the qualitative data of this is not really a binary situation here. It's very nuanced, there are obviously multiple players and different incentives at play. And I think the most important incentive that was highlighted by Citrini in their report was that Iran wants to keep the strait open because they need to project that they actually have control and are acting as a responsible actor in that part of the world. Sort of enticing countries that need oil to work with them to create this tollway that many people have discussed.","offset":186,"duration":85},{"text":"Arnold: Yeah, for sure. It's a great piece, everyone should go read it, highly recommend paying for a Citrini subscription to do that. But yeah, I think the big takeaway, you know, this won't be spoiling anything and there's a lot more alpha in there that you can go read about, but I think the big, interesting takeaway from it is everyone on the ground seems to think both that we're going to get messy military escalation that will not end soon, and more oil is going to progressively flow out of the strait. Because as you said, there are a lot of interests aligned on all sides to keep oil moving through the strait. Iran wants to do that both to project an image of itself as kind of the wise governor of those resources in that waterway in opposition to the crazy Leroy Jenkins US, also a key source of revenue for the country. So shutting down oil flows there and also for its adversaries that may get even more aggressive with it if they literally can't ship massive amounts of oil through that strait for a meaningful amount of time... that all leads in a very bad path for everyone, so there's this kind of tacit desire and understanding to that everyone wants oil to flow out of the strait in one way or another. And Iran has thus far, it seems like erected some sort of like toll booth system that you can go read about that seems to be getting broader and broader in the participants that are allowed to be involved in that. But I think that the piece also has an interesting set of implications that they outline at the end, which is basically kind of undermining both poles of like reading what's going on. You know, there's been on one side kind of this very, you know, frankly like you see it a lot in our camp, you see it a lot in the kind of pro-Bitcoin or pro-gold sound money like death of the dollar type camp saying like, \"This is the beginning of the petro-yuan and all the only tankers that can get through are paying in yuan and this is the beginning of China dominating global oil flows and energy markets.\" And on the other side you've got and perhaps it's not even appropriate to call it the other side but guys that we flagged on this podcast before like Anas Alhajji who are, you know, real experts in global energy markets kind of saying that this Western consensus reading of what's going on is basically all a sham, and the only reason that you're not seeing ships flow through is because of the issues in the insurance market with all these tankers, which maybe is driven by US interest. And so in some sense, the US is kind of driving all this. And I think the report's interesting because it basically puts both of those somewhat, it really undermines both of those to some degree. Interestingly, Citrini's analyst, unclear who that guy is, I have to think he's not a denizen of traditional finance because I can't imagine anyone who actually worked on Wall Street doing what this dude did... very entertaining stuff, again I recommend people read. But you know, what he found was that yeah, there's a little Chinese yuan facilitating payments, but a huge amount of it is through diplomatic channels. You know, back-channeling between different countries and different quid pro quo trades being made totally out of band between those countries to guarantee safe passage for tankers that are aligned with different countries or different groups. There does appear to be ongoing fear of OFAC sanctions and so that's forcing different ways of facilitating this. I think that's interesting and relevant as it relates to how dominant the US dollar system still realistically is globally. On the flip side, also a lot of locals are reporting that their main concern is not getting killed, right? Not getting blown up drafting through the strait, and insurance is kind of a secondary concern. Also some interesting data points in there on the rates that some of these tankers are getting paid just to basically be floating storage in kind of the current disrupted market and how that also is kind of a disincentive, insurance or not, to go through and risk your life and risk your ship. So all that is to say like I think this just highlights what we've been saying the last few weeks: the simple stories just like don't really work. You're going to have to have like an interpretive lens that's kind of multivariate and doesn't isn't reducible to kind of one simple story. And so I again think that just further highlights the need to focus on data points outside of like the constant stream of of headlines, whether pro-Trump or anti-Trump, pro-Iran or anti-Iran, and look at what's actually happening in other markets that are maybe downstream of this or potentially orthogonal to this and flow that back to the decision tree that the US is going to be looking at over the next month or two.","offset":271,"duration":255},{"text":"Host: Yeah, I thought after having read the piece that the tidbit here, which you've highlighted a bit, I don't think the direct highlight, but some countries are unfreezing sanctioned assets, Iranian assets, to let things flow. And to your point, that does throw a wrench in the US and Western sanction regime. And it really highlights like when push comes to shove, this rule-based order that many people have talked about for decades and Trump specifically called out in his national strategic or security strategy letter last year, it definitely seems to be fading away. And this is yet another data point that proves okay, this this sanction regime that has existed that's been dominated by the West seems to be dissolving in front of our eyes and push is coming to shove, whether the US likes it or not. The countries that are working with the IRGC right now need the oil. And I thought two names on the list and they've made the headlines the last couple of weeks, but I think this report verified it... I mean Japan and France are essentially forced to play ball. They're deciding, hey we need this oil more than we need the sort of social cachet with with the United States right now. Like we need to make sure that our systems are operating and our economy can actually function. And so you're seeing this sort of physical reality enter into the realm of geopolitics and a reshuffling of the board in real time. And we're you posted this as well, but obviously again Leroy Jenkins on Easter, Trump is praising Allah and saying that we're going to blow up power plants, \"Open the fucking strait, you crazy bastards, you'll be living in hell.\" Very Caligula-esque as some some were describing yesterday. I was not on Twitter much, but I did catch this. Bitcoin reacted to this. Who knows if it reacted to this, but coincidentally after this Truth Social post was sent out, Bitcoin rallied a bit.","offset":526,"duration":119},{"text":"Arnold: Yeah, you know my my guys out here having a normal one on Easter morning with with this tweet. But you know, I threw the Bitcoin chart in there just because I think it's an interesting direction for it to move... this is the 24 hours after this this tweet was posted. So do I think it was popping on this exactly? Like no. But this is the kind of thing that I think my knee-jerk would have been like, okay we're going to dump another couple couple grand on a comment like that. And we kind of did the opposite, even over the weekend in kind of a liquidity-constrained time when most markets aren't open. So you know, an interesting counterfactual data point. We'll see if it ultimately means anything. But yeah, I think it's you know, gets to the same Leroy Jenkins point we've been talking about. And I think you know that maybe we can jump in from there... like a couple slides down, some of the the physical world realities that that you're talking about that I highlighted in the piece and we've mentioned this before on the show, but just just a couple to flag. You're really starting to see headlines about helium production shortages biting. This is a key input to among other things, semiconductor manufacturing, which is you know, among the most sensitive, perhaps the most sensitive advanced manufacturing industry in the world right now. The split there is basically a huge amount from Qatar. A lot of that's offline now with all the damage to infrastructure in the Gulf. And that leaves basically the US in pole position to kind of control flows of this this critical input. And you also see interestingly this past week Qatar and Exxon's joint venture to produce LNG, 18 million metric tons per year, which would more than offset the amount that's currently offline as a result of the attacks on Qatar's facilities in the Gulf. That's coming online and interestingly, that is not a replacement facility in the Middle East or somewhere else. It's in Texas. It's a 70-30 joint venture between Qatar Energy and Exxon, and headlines I've seen suggest that's going to ramp up to full capacity over the next 12 months, roughly. So we'll see if that happens. But interestingly highlighting like the cards to some extent that the US does have to play right on the physical production reality side. Definitely does not mean that the US is out of the woods, but things like this are I think going to be increasingly important to watch as supply chains fracture and basic materials that a lot of us either took for granted or had never really heard of or thought of before kind of become the poles along which this fight is progresses and along which countries kind of try to exercise leverage on on one another. And you know, the next slide shows the same thing in kind of different ways. These are not again things to like necessarily trade on or to construct a thesis on, but I think they're all like collectively they form an interesting mosaic for what the US might be trying to do TBD whether they can. But our friends to the north in the the province of Canada that produces most of Canada's oil, Alberta, seem to be on a separatist path, a secessionist path that is not going away. And they've got apparently the required signatures now to launch a referendum vote on starting a separation process. That vote will take place in October and it seems like there's a decent amount of linkage, perhaps engineered by the CIA, perhaps not. But a decent amount of linkage between Alberta separatists and the Trump administration. And on the rare earth side, you see on on the right-hand side a couple headlines from last week about the US kind of moving aggressively to gain some control over some some key rare earth materials. A key question here is still the the refining of these things. They're actually not that rare in terms of deposits, but actually getting them refined is a very messy and difficult process that China has gladly you know, taken taken up over the last 20 years as the West was collectively kind of casting out all quote-unquote dirty industries. So moving in a you know, strategically relevant direction, still very much like first or second inning on on those things. But collectively, I just think like those are key data points to be watching. Like things like that are, I think, are forming the base that we should be watching more and more closely and are kind of telling you collectively as a mosaic you know, where things might might be going over the next 12 months.","offset":645,"duration":246},{"text":"Host: Add a few tallies to the 4D chess column right there. I mean, again, that's why I love doing this show with you every Monday because I think you do a good job of zooming out and really trying to filter. And I think these are definitely things that make me believe okay, maybe there is a plan here despite what Trump may be posting on any given day or any given hour of any given day. These are strategic moves to re-industrialize and create alliances, whether it's in Africa, Latin America or soon to be our neighbors to the north. Alberta, it's always been on my mind... there's so much potential there and the the sort of thirst for freedom that that exists in that particular province is palpable, knowing some Albertans ourselves. Having having one very staunch Albertan in the portfolio and Steve Barber and Upstream Data. I'm cheering for them, if I'm being honest. I'm letting my bias shine through here. But I think we risk becoming too much of a macro-geopolitical think-tank podcast and so I think we should shift to some Bitcoin-specific topics. And I think the big one last week was the reemergence of quantum fud. It seems like that is reemerging at a quickened pace as as new papers are released. And obviously, I'm sure most of you know, Google released a paper last week that basically cited or basically claimed that the amount of theoretical or the amount of logical theoretically the amount of logical qubits that would be needed to use Shor's algorithm to break ECDSA was reduced significantly. And this led many of the quantum panickers to come out and say that Bitcoin needs to upgrade as quickly as possible to be quantum-resistant because it seems like a cryptographically relevant quantum computer may be on the horizon. And so this started a lot of conversation last week. I had Brandon Black, also known as Rearden Code on the TFTC podcast, that episode dropped Saturday morning and we tried to do our best to to do a methodical walk-through of the spectrum of the quantum debate as it relates to Bitcoin and where we actually sit. I will put a hand up and say obviously I think Brandon and I are a bit biased towards the \"it's not as big of a worry as many are making it out to be,\" but I think we tried to to cover all the bases there. What are your thoughts on the quantum debate?","offset":891,"duration":149},{"text":"Arnold: Yeah, I mean it's funny like as it relates to the theme of what can we actually know? Like what can we actually reasonably assess? You know, that's why I titled the essay this week \"Schrödinger's Regime Change\" and said the subtitle was like \"A Superposition of Hot Takes\" because you very much have that on the geopolitical macro scale of kind of what's actually happening. Is there a plan? Is there not a plan? Is Iran almost as strong as they've ever been or are they about to fall? Kind of both of those things are the case at once. Like there's kind of a superposition as well of takes on quantum... you know where we are almost there and Bitcoin's cooked, or this is literally never going to happen and it's all fairy dust and anyone thinking about it is completely wasting their time. I think you your episode with Brandon did a really good job of, you know, he's he's very skeptical of the the claims here. I think I would put myself in that camp as well. But you know, I think you guys did a balanced job of walking through the puts and takes and the the pros and cons and the different cases that one could make, as well as you know, realistic mitigation strategies. And you know, I recommend people go listen to that. And I also recommend people you know, take as middle-of-the-road an approach as is possible here. Generally, I think both of those poles that I mentioned are probably not the place you want to be even though I would probably say if you gun to my head, I wouldn't make the bet that if you said is it ever going to happen is a CRQC ever actually going to be instantiated in physical reality? I would probably still shade to no. That said, you made a really good point I think over the weekend that there's we should already be assuming that ECDSA is not going to last forever, right? There are always advancements in cryptography, advancements in technology. You never want to short human ingenuity especially when there's you know, value involved and in any kind of system that is monetary in nature or that has an incentive to be attacked, you know, whether that's Bitcoin or any other system that depends on ECDSA or RSA or any other cryptographic scheme. So generally, I think it it makes sense to have some level of you know, preparation, some level of understanding of the problem space. I think it's important for people to look who see the scary headlines from Google and QuEra to like Brandon recommended kind of think through: there's the mathematical and theoretical side of things and then there's the actual physical reality, like we talked about earlier with other elements of the world, you know, the physical reality of bringing this into into being. And the advancements on the latter have not been nearly as impressive as the advancements on the former of kind of the the theory of how this could work on a machine that does not exist. But regardless of what your ultimate view on all that is, I think the the thing that you can most clearly like anchor to as something that's observable is that there has been a lot of work done on this by Bitcoin devs and people who are generally just around the cryptography space. I listed a bunch of them in the newsletter that people can go back and look at. Jonas Nick had a proposal just last week, coincidentally timed I think on the same day as these papers dropped, for he's calling it \"SHRIMP\"... and you know, you can just go go look at kind of what that involves but basically would be post-quantum signatures on Bitcoin that are substantially smaller in terms of data requirement than prior prior proposals. That's a relevant trade-off for us to think through as we add any novel cryptography to Bitcoin, the the way that heavier signatures to to have quantum security might affect throughput. So that's one of the trade-offs to think about. Another big one, the last thing I'll say that I think people need to always keep in mind with this or any other situation is like we as humans naturally have action bias toward any problem. I think we all saw that especially during COVID. But you see it during any kind of crisis event, the impulse is to do something, just literally do anything. And oftentimes like it's very easy to forget that doing something is is not itself risk-less and you know, can carry especially if you if the thing that you do is very rushed in in nature and done in a sense of panic or false urgency, you know, that can carry its own downsides that need to be thought through, right? And you know, I've said this elsewhere and I think you've said it too, but if I were a state actor and I wanted to disrupt Bitcoin, one of the things that I would definitely do would be to engineer some sort of panic state that would make people add untested novel cryptography to Bitcoin, right? And make people rely on that, and you potentially have you know, the possibility for backdoors that are undiscovered due to being you know, untested or not tested sufficiently. So not at all saying that that's my base case for like what is happening here, not attributing any bad faith to anyone who is involved in quantum projects or talking about this on Twitter or elsewhere. But simply just stating that's an example of like an unintended consequence, a potential downside that needs to be thought through as we look to kind of restrain our action bias and just approach things you know, from from as sober a lens as possible.","offset":1040,"duration":284},{"text":"Host: Yeah, completely agree there. I would just add just to clarify, like to me and you referenced the tweet I sent out, but I think, and again not a quantum physicist, I'm not a cryptographer, but from what I can gather the theoretical side of quantum computing is advancing at a rapid clip, which is great. You have some of the smartest people in the world working on these theoretical physics problems and they're making strong advancements. But the physical applied physics side of things just hasn't made the same advancements and again, Brandon said it during our conversation, there hasn't even been one sort of standardized quantum computer that you could benchmark to itself that has made progress consistently over a certain period of time. And the way he put it is until you see one standard set and being iterated on and improved at a consistent pace then there it seems like you're panicking for for no reason. Just to steelman it, or to be fair to both sides, the other side will say well we're not going to get the warnings that these advancements on the physical applied side are being made and Q-Day is coming faster so you have to prepare now. And I'm not convinced. I think methodical, consistent progress towards a solution, like you said many Bitcoin developers think on a long enough timeline ECDSA will be broken eventually and they've already been preparing for new cryptographic signature schemes that we will transition to. You mentioned Jonas Nick's SHRIMPs paper that he released, I think one sort of point of context I wanted to add to that: it was an iteration on \"SHRINKS+\", which was a solution that Jonas Nick and Mikhail Kudinov came up with through their research of hash-based signature schemes that could be added to Bitcoin and make it quantum-resistant. They released that paper in December, and so here we are, beginning of April, end of March, a quarter later, Jonas is already sort of advanced that primitive idea and made it more efficient. And so the progress is being made on the research side of what we need to do to upgrade Bitcoin's signature scheme for a world in which ECDSA is broken, or a world in which quantum computers manifest, exist, and are scalable and efficient. And so yeah, I think I think a level-headed approach to this is is the best way. And another thing, last thing I'll say on this, the when you're out there and you're not immersed in this debate and you're an outside observer looking at this and you have Chamath Palihapitiya, you have Nick Carter and others saying we need to do this now and they're saying \"Bitcoin developers need to get together and solve this problem\"... I think one thing to understand is that not every Bitcoin developer is qualified or equipped to solve this specific problem. There are many different parts of the Bitcoin stack, people working on the P2P layer, initial block download, networking between nodes, wallet GUIs, all of that... and there is a subset of a subset of Bitcoin developers that really understand the cryptography, and then within that subset of a subset, a subset that understands how to make it quantum-resistant. So finger-wagging at every Bitcoin developer and saying do something is completely unproductive because not every Bitcoin developer is focused on this specific part of the Bitcoin stack. The people who are are making progress.","offset":1324,"duration":189},{"text":"Arnold: Yeah, I mean the last thing I'll say is to that point: there's a concept called a \"load-bearing internet person,\" someone who's just like 10,000x the the median engineer or the median computer scientist on questions of the design of the internet, internet protocol. I think there's very much like a similar concept here of a \"load-bearing cryptography person.\" I mean, there are literally like probably under 50 people in the world who are truly like masters of this this domain, you know, or maybe under 1,000, I don't know however you would frame it. But you know, to the extent that you think that that's like a risk to Bitcoin, it's also a risk to every digital system that we have in the world. There are so few people who are really equipped to to think through all this stuff. But it's so worth noting as you just ask yourself, to that point, like \"Why isn't this solved?\" Well, it's a very thorny question that not everyone in the world or even a majority of people who are deeply involved in Bitcoin are really qualified to you know, weigh in on and opine on. So all the more reason then, right, to be methodical about it and to make sure that nothing is getting kind of rushed or pushed faster than you know, it needs to go, particularly given some of the questions that you highlighted around the actual physical scaling progress of of getting this stuff out into the real world. So yeah again, you know, avoid the black boxes, focus on what you can actually analyze and get your hands around and try not to weigh in on the stuff that's borderline impossible to really figure out.","offset":1513,"duration":78},{"text":"Host: Yeah, and to flip the frame there: the fact that Bitcoin, the Bitcoin project has a few of these individuals who are qualified and equipped to do this work is high signal that it is a very valuable protocol. The fact that it's able to attract that type of talent that can actually solve these problems is an endorsement in and of itself.","offset":1591,"duration":20},{"text":"Arnold: Yep, co-sign.","offset":1611,"duration":1},{"text":"Host: All right, see you guys next week.","offset":1612,"duration":15}],"logs":[{"elapsed":"0.0","message":"Downloading audio from YouTube...","detail":null},{"elapsed":"0.0","message":"Trying download with browser cookies (ad-free)...","detail":null},{"elapsed":"3.9","message":"⚠ Cookie download failed: WARNING: [youtube] [jsc] Error solving n challenge request using \"deno\" provider: Error running deno process (returncode: 1): \u001b[0m\u001b[1m\u001b[31merror\u001b[0m: Uncaught (in promise) TypeError: Cannot read prope","detail":null},{"elapsed":"3.9","message":"Retrying without cookies...","detail":null},{"elapsed":"19.1","message":"⚠ Downloaded without cookies — audio may contain ads","detail":null},{"elapsed":"19.1","message":"Audio downloaded (16.4 MB) in 19.1s","detail":"File size: 16.4 MB"},{"elapsed":"19.1","message":"Video title: While Everyone Was Watching Iran, They Missed This","detail":null},{"elapsed":"19.1","message":"Audio duration: 27:03 (27.1 min)","detail":null},{"elapsed":"19.1","message":"Uploading audio to Gemini File API...","detail":null},{"elapsed":"22.6","message":"Audio uploaded in 3.4s","detail":"File ref: files/0pux57h4vh8d"},{"elapsed":"22.6","message":"Audio processed in 0.0s. 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