“Potemkin economies, all these companies that produce reports and emails and credit to one another and just lending to one another, it's all it uses to run the money printer. And it's all well connected firms, and they get access to cheap credit. And they just need to continue to make enough, make work essentially to justify the credit line. And then essentially they do credit arbitrage, they borrow it from the Fed at 3% and then they lend out to other people at 6%. And they need to look busy while they do that, you know, that's the entire business model. Because ultimately, there is an entire planet that's out there that's buying these dollars. So you just need to get into the good graces of somebody who has access to the money printer, you get a lower interest rate and you're set. That's what the smart people in the US are doing. You can't do that in China, not because of communism. You can't do that because the Chinese can't export their inflation. They can't just print money and send it abroad and buy things. They have to make things. And they've been making things for 40, “50 years. And they've been getting a lot better at it. So all the smart kids in China are out there making actual products, building actual bridges. That's how they eat. You know, it's not it's I don't think it's it's it's some kind of accident that over the last 100 years, China went from being dirt poor and the US was building amazing bridges 100 years ago. And today it's the opposite.” From The Bitcoin Standard Podcast: 303. The Network State with Balaji Srinivasan, Dec 9, 2025 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bitcoin-standard-podcast/id1403202032?i=1000740380839&r=4014 This material may be protected by copyright.

“We're basically getting, in a sense, the hard money that libertarians wanted and the global government that progressives wanted, except that global government of governments is Bitcoin, which is the network that stands above states, that limits what states can do without the consent of others, right? And they simply can't steal like they've gotten accustomed to stealing.” From The Bitcoin Standard Podcast: 303. The Network State with Balaji Srinivasan, Dec 9, 2025 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bitcoin-standard-podcast/id1403202032?i=1000740380839&r=2895 This material may be protected by copyright.

“Now, conversely, what's interesting is Chinese Communism, on the surface, it looks like Soviet Communism versus American Capitalism all over again, where the Chinese actually do look at the absolute numbers of widgets as one of the key variables in their system. Like, they're looking at production, physical production. But why is it, why is Chinese Communism working this century and American Capitalism not, whereas it was in reverse the past century? And it argues because Chinese Communism is fundamentally disciplined by international markets. They crank out all these cars, they crank out all these ships, but they have to sell them abroad, right? So even if it looks like they're cranking out widgets like the Soviets were, the fundamental differences, they're Capitalist abroad. By contrast, the Americans have essentially destroyed Capitalism within their system with the money printing. So they're actually Communist, but it looks Capitalist and the Chinese are Capitalist, but it looks Communist.” From The Bitcoin Standard Podcast: 303. The Network State with Balaji Srinivasan, Dec 9, 2025 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bitcoin-standard-podcast/id1403202032?i=1000740380839&r=938 This material may be protected by copyright.

“Because the Soviets would just crank out a thousand shoes, or a thousand tanks, or whatever, and they'd have quantity over quality and be the crappiest shoes or tanks. That's what the planned economy did, and so on and so forth. And now, actually, I would argue, and you may disagree with this, today, American Keynesianism is actually like that, where the centralization, the money printing has gone to such a level that essentially the whole economy is centrally planned by the Fed and its allies, the Bank of Japan and so on and so forth. And so they are, right? You agree, right? Oh, yeah. And so, as an example, General Motors doesn't exist without a bailout. The banks don't exist without a bailout. But even more fundamentally, the financial system really doesn't exist. The stocks are buoyed by the plunge protection team, like Greenspan. And the thing is, they have a million shell games. They'll say, oh, the Fed didn't directly print money. And it's like they extend the credit or Treasury does something, but if you map Fred and Treasury as essentially a unitary entity that coordinate closely enough for most purposes and most times, sometimes they'll have a bank buy it by proxy. They play a zillion shell games with this to fool themselves and others. But fundamentally, whether it's stocks, whether it's asset prices for mortgages, whether it's General Motors, the entire 20th century is being propped up by printing. And American Keynesianism is like Soviet Communism at the end, where it's a zombie economy that's being propped up by the state.” From The Bitcoin Standard Podcast: 303. The Network State with Balaji Srinivasan, Dec 9, 2025 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bitcoin-standard-podcast/id1403202032?i=1000740380839&r=904 This material may be protected by copyright.