Bankster Fraud - The Gamestop Story; Trump Pro Bitcoin??

[00:00:02] If crypto is going to define the future, I want to be mined, minted and made in the USA. It's going to be. It's not going to be made anywhere else. And if Bitcoin is going to the moon, as we say, it's going to the moon, I want America to be the nation that leads the way. And that's what's going to happen. No, you're going to be very happy with me.

[00:00:25] Bitcoin is not threatening the dollar. The behavior of the current US government is really threatening the dollar.

[00:00:34] Trump isn't elected. This country is going to go into a depression the likes of what you had in 1929. And I hope that's not true, but I can understand it and I can understand what they're saying.

[00:00:46] The stock market gain, they think is because looks like we're going to win the election. And I don't know what's going to happen with the election. You know, they cheat like hell and I don't know what's going to happen.

[00:00:55] But if we win it, this country is going to be boomtown. It's going to be booming like it never boomed before.

[00:01:02] As the final part of my plan today, I am announcing that if I am elected, it will be the policy of my administration, United States of America, to keep 100 percent of all the Bitcoin the US government currently holds or acquires into the future.

[00:01:21] We'll keep 100 percent. I hope you do well, please. This will serve in effect as the core of the strategic national Bitcoin stockpile.

[00:01:34] Patriot Power Hour special report, special episode. It's been the Breaker of Banksters.

[00:01:40] It's Bitcoin White Paper Day, October 31st. Some people call it Halloween.

[00:01:45] I really don't celebrate Halloween too much anymore, but if you guys do, great.

[00:01:50] I've had a lot of great Halloweens in my time, but got a lot of other more important things to focus on, to be honest, these days.

[00:01:55] And I also avoid as much sugar and high fructose corn syrup as I can.

[00:01:58] I know I'm old. I'm a curmudgeon. What can I say?

[00:02:00] Anyway, got a special guest, good friend, never been on the show, but he's saying he's thinking about starting a podcast.

[00:02:09] I'm like, yo, man, just do it. The best time to start one is yesterday.

[00:02:14] So without further ado, let me bring on Luke. Luke, what's happening, man?

[00:02:19] Awesome, dude. Glad to be here in the Patriot Power Hour.

[00:02:22] I've been listening to your show since we talked about it a few weeks ago, right?

[00:02:26] And, yeah, I'm just excited, man.

[00:02:29] This whole general space of kind of, you know, you the breaker of banks, all that stuff,

[00:02:35] something I never really got into until, you know, three, four years ago.

[00:02:39] And now it's with Twitter doing what it's doing these days.

[00:02:42] I've really kind of peeled back the layers.

[00:02:45] You know, I've always had suspicions, but now you can see everything.

[00:02:47] It's all out on paper, and I'm happy to be talking to you about it.

[00:02:51] Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

[00:02:52] I've been doing podcasts sometime, probably about 10, 11 years.

[00:02:58] But I feel like it comes in waves.

[00:03:00] Like my wave to wake up was 2008 because mainly I got laid off.

[00:03:05] Because I was watching Kramer.

[00:03:07] I was watching CNBC trying to optimize my trading portfolio.

[00:03:10] I was all in.

[00:03:13] And then I got laid off, went down the rabbit hole, and realized these banks are scumbags.

[00:03:17] And, you know, two decades later, 15 years later, here I am.

[00:03:22] I guess yours perhaps was the COVID bailouts and some of the manipulation.

[00:03:25] I know, and we might as well just start to get into it straight away.

[00:03:29] The manipulation of hedge funds, the whole GameStop, naked shorts, and all that.

[00:03:36] Finagleries going on back then.

[00:03:39] Let's call it that.

[00:03:40] So maybe you could even start talking about that.

[00:03:42] But was that your main reason you woke up?

[00:03:46] Yeah, you know, people like to use all sorts of phrases like red-pilled, woke, whatever.

[00:03:51] It definitely started, you know, I've always been a more conservative person.

[00:03:56] But I just kind of, you know, the news, you don't think they would go to the lengths they go to for these things.

[00:04:01] And I noticed it in the, because, you know, I bought my first GameShop share on January 27th, was it?

[00:04:08] Or 28th, whatever day they turned off the buy button.

[00:04:10] And I didn't, you know, you're like, hey, that's not fair.

[00:04:13] But you don't understand how it's, you know, the people who are pulling those levers are deeply kind of embedded in the system.

[00:04:22] And they can do these things pretty much at free will because they have ties to the media and, in a lot of ways, control over what the media says.

[00:04:31] Because, so you talked about Kramer.

[00:04:33] I mean, I remember seeing Kramer as the GameStop thing went on saying, hey, take your home run.

[00:04:36] You already, you don't need a grand slam.

[00:04:38] You know, you don't need the short squeeze.

[00:04:40] You already made money.

[00:04:40] And there's a logic to that.

[00:04:42] But at the same time, when you see advertisements coming out saying short sellers have covered time to move on.

[00:04:48] It's like, oh, they're paying money on these networks to get people to sell.

[00:04:51] That's kind of weird.

[00:04:52] So, yeah, definitely GameStop.

[00:04:54] And I mentioned it to you with regards to all this because there is still a thriving GameStop community.

[00:05:00] There's also a Bed, Bath & Beyond community.

[00:05:02] I think there's an AMC community.

[00:05:04] I'm not really so involved in that.

[00:05:06] But I could give you kind of a synopsis of how those communities began and kind of what the state of it is, what their opinion is on the manipulation of Wall Street.

[00:05:16] And it sounds to me like the bankers are a good nexus for, you know, the bad guys.

[00:05:22] But I'm sure, as you know, it's the hedge funds.

[00:05:25] It's the market makers.

[00:05:26] It's the old wealthy families that are buying these.

[00:05:29] You know, it's a conglomeration of horses.

[00:05:32] But I think the banks are really the ones that when we talk about pulling levers, they got a lot of levers.

[00:05:38] Great way to put it.

[00:05:39] Yeah, we're going to have a great podcast tonight.

[00:05:41] I can tell already.

[00:05:43] When I've talked with my pal Future Dan on Patriot Power Hour, I mean, we had episode 283 last night.

[00:05:50] So we've been doing this almost seven years, just he and I.

[00:05:54] And when I talk about the banksters, I've said many times, I'm all about free market.

[00:05:59] But we don't have free market right now.

[00:06:01] And the banksters, especially the primary dealers, those that get the direct pipeline from the Federal Reserve for 0% money over the last decade.

[00:06:12] And even now with a little bit higher rates, they're still getting, you know, that sweet honey.

[00:06:17] And they're able to use that in many ways to manipulate it.

[00:06:21] It's one of those situations where they'll make $100 billion on fraud and then pay a $4 billion fine.

[00:06:28] And they're plus $96 billion.

[00:06:30] And somehow they're able to also get away with paying almost no taxes.

[00:06:34] Now, trust me.

[00:06:35] I'm not one of those who's like, we've got to get all the wealthy to pay their fair shareless tax everyone.

[00:06:40] Eat the rich.

[00:06:40] Because I think that's a real quick downhill slide.

[00:06:44] But, yeah, they're able to.

[00:06:47] It's more than just being part of the media or part of the government.

[00:06:51] They essentially are the owners at this point.

[00:06:54] So kind of a fascist state in that regard.

[00:06:56] But anyway, let me know if I got this right with the GME.

[00:07:01] It's pretty much the banksters were shorting the hell out of it.

[00:07:05] And they got exposed, had a knife to their throat.

[00:07:08] And, you know, they needed a bailout in that regard.

[00:07:11] And they pulled out all the stops, including fraud.

[00:07:14] Is that right?

[00:07:15] Yeah, definitely.

[00:07:16] So kind of one way to look at it is there's definitely short interest, right?

[00:07:23] And it came from all sorts of angles.

[00:07:24] It came at different times.

[00:07:26] The story that blew up at the time was a reported 130% short interest.

[00:07:30] And people are like, how can you be over 100% short interest?

[00:07:33] You know, and as you know, there's a rehypothecation of shares.

[00:07:36] So in order to create liquidity so people can buy and sell shares, they make up fake ones.

[00:07:41] And then they're supposed to settle those fake shares within a day or two, two days.

[00:07:46] And now it's down to one.

[00:07:47] And some people hope it'll get down to same day settlement on trades.

[00:07:51] But yeah.

[00:07:53] So the big narrative that I think got pushed, you know, we both talked about how we didn't watch the Paul Dano movie.

[00:07:59] We don't know necessarily what was the story in that movie.

[00:08:03] But in the media, and this is definitely true, but I'll get into why it's only part of the story and why the community in GameStop still exists,

[00:08:10] is that these hedge funds, you know, they had a couple that they really put out there as the guys who got stuck.

[00:08:17] But Andrew Huang, for example, never got associated with GameStop.

[00:08:23] But when he went to trial, GameStop was very much involved with what he was doing.

[00:08:27] And so it was everybody.

[00:08:29] It was all of Wall Street, you know, all the usual players.

[00:08:31] They talk about how there was at one point GameStop was trading for, you know, cents, you know, 20 cents less than that.

[00:08:41] And they're still shorting it and rehypothecating.

[00:08:43] And people have dug into the data.

[00:08:45] They've done really great work.

[00:08:47] They call it due diligence in the community, DD.

[00:08:49] It's not always that.

[00:08:50] A lot of times it's tinfoil conspiracy theories.

[00:08:53] But there are some very brilliant people who have dug into the raw data and said, OK, on this day, there's no way they could have covered shorts.

[00:09:00] And so that that was one of the really original things that got my interest, because right after that squeeze happened, you know, I wasn't an expert by any means, but I could just see the math they presented and said, this isn't short covering.

[00:09:13] The reason that the price rose that day of the initial short squeeze, January 27th, I think, or 28th, I should have looked that up.

[00:09:21] But anyway, was people buying by pressure.

[00:09:24] And so if the short sellers are getting out of that, the price would have to go up.

[00:09:28] Now, obviously, the price would go down from selling from people.

[00:09:32] But the thing that really confirmed that initial theory that the shorts hadn't covered was when the congressional report came out.

[00:09:42] And they described that action that day.

[00:09:44] And they actually said that GameStop – they didn't say GameStop specifically, but they said there was one idiosyncratic stock.

[00:09:50] That's their exact phrase that posed a risk to the market.

[00:09:56] So when I think about that day that they stopped the buy button, I really do think that there is an argument to be made that you don't want a complete and utter destruction of the financial markets because of the short squeeze.

[00:10:06] Right.

[00:10:06] Even if it's the right thing to do, I understand that decision.

[00:10:09] But the community really got alarmed to the media cover-up, the way that there was a coordination between different channels and different parties and different people on Twitter to really misrepresent what was happening at the time and who was doing what and whether it was retail selling or retail buying.

[00:10:29] And what we really discovered is that there's these cycles that go on that when these market maker algorithms come out and they say, hey, somebody's trying to buy a million shares of GameStop.

[00:10:40] Ryan Cohen, for example, the CEO, kind of had done this in December before the January squeeze.

[00:10:46] And these algorithms is the theory.

[00:10:49] They take a while to actually process the buys because they want to try to get these shares at the lowest possible amount.

[00:10:53] So if the stock price goes up over that time, they'll have to do all these forced buys at the very end.

[00:10:59] And that's where you get these big jumps in price because they have all these obligations.

[00:11:03] So if that makes sense, that conspiracy spawned this community from GameStop.

[00:11:09] And, you know, you had your Reddit, subreddits.

[00:11:12] A lot of it's really moved on to Twitter now.

[00:11:14] I know 4chan had an element of the GameStop movement.

[00:11:19] And then also, you know, YouTube, of course, has their people.

[00:11:23] And then now TikTok even is very aware in certain segments of this ongoing belief that there's, you know, still a hidden short interest that the prevailing theory right now is through some kind of long-term swaps that puts the burden on specific banks that are carrying this burden.

[00:11:43] And they know eventually the times that have come up, and they're going to have to answer for these unrealized purchases.

[00:11:49] But, yeah, that's kind of why people are still, you know, watching this stock with a magnifying glass because they're thinking that the mother of all short squeezes is still around the corner.

[00:11:59] And I know I'm rambling here a bit, but just real quick, I want to say this is not financial advice.

[00:12:04] You know, if you're interested in something like this, anybody who's listening, understand that you need to do a lot of research and you have to really understand what financial risk means to you.

[00:12:16] Right?

[00:12:16] And I'm not a financial advisor.

[00:12:18] Ben, I know you're not.

[00:12:19] So this is more about information, not about some kind of crazy opportunity that the world's not talking about.

[00:12:25] Sure.

[00:12:26] And really showing just one side of one scheme of what the banksters are doing.

[00:12:32] The way I look at it is they were way, way behind.

[00:12:37] They were right on the wrong side of the bet as far as it could be.

[00:12:42] But then people smelled blood in the water and it was going to pile in so much that it really would have detonated the collapse of some of these hedge funds, which then would have caused a chain reaction, taking down more of the hedge funds, maybe even some of the bigger banks.

[00:13:00] So that sums it up.

[00:13:02] Right.

[00:13:02] And they had to they stopped the bleeding, though.

[00:13:04] And they would just for my listeners, first off, a good portion of them.

[00:13:09] This is Prepper Broadcasting Network.

[00:13:11] A good portion of them are like, of course, it's all a scam.

[00:13:13] I don't even deal with any of that crap.

[00:13:16] So to all those listeners, this is still super interesting and kind of draw parallels to the entire financial system.

[00:13:22] But to those who may not know, what do you mean that they remove the buy button?

[00:13:27] Like, what does that mean that they remove the buy button?

[00:13:30] And what would have happened if they didn't remove the buy button?

[00:13:33] Yeah.

[00:13:33] So going back to that January squeeze event now, Roaring Kitty is the Keith Gill deep, deep effing value.

[00:13:44] This is the guy who, you know, was on Twitter and on Reddit and kind of really driving a lot of the attention.

[00:13:52] And he was kind of because he had made a bet, you know, months and months in advance when it was trading super low, like we were talking about.

[00:14:00] And his attention on Reddit came to a head shortly before that.

[00:14:03] The week before or so, everyone on the Internet started paying attention to GameStop.

[00:14:07] So on this day, January 27th, the price shot up to, I think, $250-something.

[00:14:14] I mean, at certain points is up to $400 in pre-market on different days.

[00:14:18] But the idea was, as we talked about, these short sellers have an obligation to eventually buy the shares.

[00:14:25] Like they made money selling the share with the promise that eventually they'll buy it.

[00:14:29] So if the price gets higher, they have to pay more per stock and that will drive the price higher again and again.

[00:14:34] So in order to get out of this kind of rolling momentum-gaining situation, especially when it got out of control that January day and the price was shot up to a point that they could never even imagine covering.

[00:14:47] I mean, there's a thing called margin calls that happen where your position is so over the edge.

[00:14:53] Explain those.

[00:14:54] That's huge.

[00:14:54] That's just the overall concept of margin call because on my show, I'm often talking about there could be a margin call on the dollar or just the government in general just at a high level.

[00:15:04] But can you describe more of what a margin call actually is in this context?

[00:15:09] Yeah.

[00:15:10] Maybe in this context, I'll definitely give you kind of the scenario they're dealing with.

[00:15:16] So when they make this bet that they're going to sell some shares at GameStop when it's $2 and they're promising that they'll buy them back,

[00:15:24] what they're actually hoping is that GameStop will go bankrupt and they'll never have to buy shares again.

[00:15:29] But when they make this original deal, they make a deal that, hey, if the cost of covering this position, of buying the shares of GameStop that I said I'll eventually buy,

[00:15:41] if that gets to a certain level, if it becomes so expensive, then basically you're allowed to use all my capital that I have or some portion of it,

[00:15:53] and the position will be covered by default by the – is it what's – do you know if it's –

[00:15:58] It's like a mercy rule.

[00:15:59] It's like you tap out.

[00:16:00] You're like, all right, man.

[00:16:01] Just like I lost it all.

[00:16:02] Just take it before I lose my underwear.

[00:16:05] Exactly.

[00:16:06] And they'll take your underwear if you promised it.

[00:16:08] Yeah, exactly.

[00:16:10] So basically all these hedge funds that were on the line here were going to go bankrupt and all that money was going to get wiped off the table

[00:16:17] and these shares of GameStop would go higher until everybody was liquidated that was on the wrong side of this bet.

[00:16:22] And as we were kind of hypothesizing, it's probably more than just a few hedge funds.

[00:16:27] It was probably just about everyone.

[00:16:29] And there's a lot more reasons for that.

[00:16:31] We could circle back to that later.

[00:16:32] But basically the point at which this might happen is the point at which they called up their buddies.

[00:16:38] And Citadel is really heavily implicated in this.

[00:16:41] Ken Griffin, who's a famous billionaire, was possibly the mastermind.

[00:16:47] I tend to think it's, again, everybody.

[00:16:49] It was a mass crisis.

[00:16:50] But he calls up Robin Hood and there's clearinghouses.

[00:16:55] There's all sorts of financial institutions that are part of this chain.

[00:16:59] But basically he said the word down to, hey, don't let anybody buy any more of this stock, which is –

[00:17:04] I mean maybe you could describe how ridiculous that is.

[00:17:08] It's against the free market directly.

[00:17:10] But it's also – it's really the retail side of it, the people that took the brunt end of it because they're the ones who are going to get –

[00:17:17] none of them were getting margin calls.

[00:17:19] It was all institutions, all banks and hedge funds that were betting on it.

[00:17:24] I guess it's like the Robin Hoods of the world.

[00:17:26] They're the ones that remove the buy button, right?

[00:17:30] What platforms did that or how did that work even?

[00:17:33] Yeah.

[00:17:33] Robin Hood wasn't the only one.

[00:17:35] It was definitely the biggest one.

[00:17:36] But I think even Webull did it.

[00:17:38] And there were some other stocks that they also did it to.

[00:17:41] GameStop was just the far and away, 10 times more of a threat to what their balance sheets were sitting at.

[00:17:48] So their reason for it is that they're supposed to – that they needed to have a certain amount of capital, freestanding capital.

[00:17:57] And if they allowed these purchases to happen, they would fall below the requirements.

[00:18:01] So basically they're saying, hey, we're not big enough to support this kind of price action, this many people buying a stock.

[00:18:07] So we couldn't do it.

[00:18:09] And that's what they told Congress.

[00:18:10] And they're still standing today as an institution.

[00:18:12] So it kind of worked.

[00:18:15] All the outrage did lead to some reform maybe in the financial district.

[00:18:18] But I think that reform was probably guided by the banksters.

[00:18:22] I mean, I don't – are you familiar with the CAT system that came out?

[00:18:26] Good way to put it.

[00:18:27] It was probably the banksters guided it.

[00:18:30] No, explain it a little bit more.

[00:18:31] I didn't follow the reforms or any of that.

[00:18:35] Yeah, so this is maybe just a good example.

[00:18:37] There's some other small things.

[00:18:38] But through this movement, through these communities, activists got involved, even people who didn't care or have any participation in what happened with GameStop and these other stocks.

[00:18:50] But they saw an opportunity to bring some change to Wall Street.

[00:18:52] And one of the really good ideas – I mean, I don't know.

[00:18:55] It could have been a bad idea.

[00:18:56] But it's getting a lot – it got a lot of opposition is this thing called the CAT system, which is basically just trying to get a crypto-esque accounting of each share being traded.

[00:19:06] So you could see who had it, what happened to it.

[00:19:09] And shares, as you know, they don't have a – they're fungible.

[00:19:15] There's no identifier in this system.

[00:19:17] So it's really just tracking trades that happened.

[00:19:20] But it got shut down.

[00:19:22] It got introduced.

[00:19:23] And then within a month, it got shut down.

[00:19:25] That was earlier this year because the hedge funds were saying this is an invasion of privacy.

[00:19:29] A court ruled in their favor.

[00:19:31] Yeah.

[00:19:33] That's funny.

[00:19:33] All the attacks on privacy these days.

[00:19:35] But that was too far.

[00:19:37] Bridge too far down.

[00:19:38] I mean, I probably would agree with them actually.

[00:19:40] He's probably not getting to track it that much.

[00:19:42] But interesting.

[00:19:43] Oh my gosh.

[00:19:44] I got so many things we could talk about.

[00:19:46] Keep going though because I got so many forks in the road.

[00:19:49] Let me just back up a little bit and give you kind of an interesting narrative on what I think happened here,

[00:19:55] what the community thinks happened here and is more of a conspiratorial kind of attack on GameStop and these other shares.

[00:20:03] So it's a concept that we've come up with.

[00:20:05] I mean, certain people.

[00:20:07] I don't know who exactly to credit.

[00:20:08] But it's called seller boxing.

[00:20:10] So if you think of like a basement seller just down in the dumps, that's kind of the image that is used to depict stocks that are bankrupt.

[00:20:21] Because when a stock goes to bankruptcy, there's actually a way to still trade it.

[00:20:27] You have to be a professional.

[00:20:28] You have to have certain access.

[00:20:29] But you can buy for a penny and then maybe try to flip it for three pennies.

[00:20:34] And even though the company is effectively in bankruptcy, it's not functioning, you're still able to trade it.

[00:20:39] And they think of it as a seller.

[00:20:41] So the goal was to bankrupt GameStop.

[00:20:44] I had mentioned a little bit earlier how if you are short selling a stock, you never have to buy it back if it goes to bankruptcy.

[00:20:54] In fact, you actually don't have to pay taxes on your initial short sale.

[00:20:58] Oh, wow.

[00:20:59] So this is tax-free income if you can short a stock into bankruptcy.

[00:21:03] Okay.

[00:21:03] You can imagine why certain players in Wall Street would want to do this.

[00:21:07] And so we've really identified a three-pronged attack.

[00:21:10] I'd give credit to Ian Carroll on Twitter.

[00:21:12] If anyone's seen him, great stuff.

[00:21:14] But it's kind of the three prongs are the short selling.

[00:21:18] And this can be done not only through legitimate short selling but massive fraudulent short selling where they're creating way more shares than actually exist and then selling them, which is an insane concept but actually is pretty much how all short selling goes.

[00:21:33] And then they settle the score later.

[00:21:35] But if you do it, especially when you have algorithms doing it by the thousands for $0.10 a share, they built quite the hole anyway.

[00:21:43] So there was that going on.

[00:21:45] And it would probably have worked if Ryan Cohen, the CEO of GameStop, and he's the guy who built Chewy.

[00:21:51] He's a billionaire.

[00:21:52] I'll get to him later.

[00:21:53] He's an important character.

[00:21:55] But then there's also the media attack on it.

[00:21:58] And one thing from GameStop in 2020, and I think you even caught some of this is nobody was bullish on GameStop in the media and the public.

[00:22:06] Everyone knew it's a dying brick and mortar company.

[00:22:09] Consoles aren't even using discs anymore.

[00:22:11] People are buying games online, right?

[00:22:13] It's like the poster child for the death of an old store because of COVID and digitization or whatnot.

[00:22:20] 100%.

[00:22:20] It was the COVID death before COVID was even around.

[00:22:23] It was – Amazon was going to take it out.

[00:22:25] Yeah, true.

[00:22:26] Good point.

[00:22:26] Yeah.

[00:22:27] And this was a fair analysis, but what Roaring Kitty looked at and why he got involved, I mean, according to his streams and stuff, was that he noticed that this voice, this criticism, this bearishness was actually relative to the balance sheet way over the top.

[00:22:42] That their free cash flow was still pretty good, that they had a lot of assets still, and that they could make some pretty sensible moves and at least stay alive in the current business model for – they're not going to go bankrupt in the next two years.

[00:22:54] But that's, of course, the narrative that everyone wanted to say is that it's going to go bankrupt.

[00:22:59] So that may have been intentional.

[00:23:01] I think it was.

[00:23:03] And then especially after the Squeeze event happened, then that was obviously the media very much wanted GameStop to go away.

[00:23:12] If you didn't see any articles saying forget about GameStop, I don't know if you saw any of that.

[00:23:18] Well, I always had a special place in my heart for GameStop because, like you, I'm a big-time gamer, and I was in a tournament with GameStop, won a trip to Vegas and stuff like maybe 15 years ago.

[00:23:29] So I loved GameStop, and I was kind of sad to see it degrading.

[00:23:34] And when this happened – so I just looked it up, January 28th, 2021, just a few weeks after January 6th, 2021.

[00:23:41] So pretty crazy time going on.

[00:23:43] That was the height of the GameStop stock frenzy.

[00:23:47] Well, I see this happen – I guess there's two ways I see this happen, when they remove the buy button.

[00:23:53] And with Bitcoin, there's multiple times that Coinbase has shut down, collapsed, quote-unquote failed.

[00:24:01] Maybe it truly has, but that is almost like a circuit breaker that has stopped many Bitcoin rallies, a little suspicious.

[00:24:08] Conversely, there's always circuit breakers on the way down, it seems like.

[00:24:13] But on the way up, there's fewer with regard to the stocks with Dow and NASDAQ, et cetera.

[00:24:18] But this was kind of – I mean, okay, here's kind of what I'm trying to get at.

[00:24:24] If they did not remove the buy button, what was the maximum amount of damage that could have been done?

[00:24:29] Was it like $500 billion? Is it a trillion? Is it like unknown?

[00:24:34] Or could it truly have blown apart the financial system?

[00:24:37] Like what's truly your opinion of the magnitude of this, I guess?

[00:24:42] There was a congressional hearing shortly after all this happened, I think a couple months or whatever.

[00:24:48] It was one of the very first ones where one expert went on, and this ended up being cut from the official broadcast.

[00:24:54] It appeared in the live broadcast, but when they aired it later on CNBC or whatever it was, they actually removed it.

[00:25:00] It caused quite a bit of controversy.

[00:25:01] And what this expert talked about was that if the buy button hadn't been turned off, Citadel would have been erased from the planet.

[00:25:11] It would have been liquidated.

[00:25:12] And for those of you – for your listeners who aren't familiar with Citadel's role, they're a market maker, a hedge fund.

[00:25:18] I mean, Ken Griffin has bragged about essentially controlling the price of all the stocks on the market because their influence is so strong on the market.

[00:25:28] So a major institution at the very least would have been liquidated.

[00:25:32] And then from there, you can imagine a collapse, you know, 2008 style.

[00:25:36] Oh, exactly.

[00:25:37] Exactly.

[00:25:38] Because that's kind of what I was going to be pushing at.

[00:25:41] But I first wanted to say Ben Bernanke worked for Citadel a few years after he stepped down from Federal Reserve chair.

[00:25:49] He wasn't there in 2020 or 2021.

[00:25:51] But this is – yeah, Citadel is AAA level, you know, one of the biggest and best badass hedge funds.

[00:26:01] They got the banksters working for him.

[00:26:04] They got Ben Bernanke working for Ken Griffin.

[00:26:08] Okay, so again, it was only a few years and he probably got paid quite handsomely.

[00:26:13] But, yeah, it's not some rinky-dink, you know, credit union in Iowa or something here.

[00:26:22] Yeah, and I've been trying to think of the one that did go down.

[00:26:25] It was – a couple have actually now hedge funds that collapsed kind of at the back end of this.

[00:26:33] One of them, though, got bailed out by Citadel initially just on that kind of – as the squeeze happened, they got bailed out.

[00:26:41] And then they ended up collapsing a couple months later and Citadel just ate the $8 billion loan or whatever and said, that's fine as long as we're still standing.

[00:26:49] And they went on to make a lot of money.

[00:26:51] So they ended up winning pretty good.

[00:26:53] Yeah, they don't mind that.

[00:26:54] They just need a little bit of time to make things work.

[00:26:57] That was what was so scary to them and required them to take that step that – I mean, I don't know if I've ever heard of them removing the buy button.

[00:27:06] The price is going up too much, so we must stop it.

[00:27:10] Did they – I guess – what did the Robin Hood error screen say?

[00:27:13] To save your ass because we think this is a scam, we had to stop you from being able to buy this?

[00:27:19] Like, is that their logic?

[00:27:20] Yeah, dude.

[00:27:22] Due to heightened volatility, you know, yada, yada.

[00:27:25] Yeah, exactly.

[00:27:25] It was for our own good.

[00:27:27] I'm very glad that they were looking out for us.

[00:27:29] That's very nice of Vlad 10F.

[00:27:32] That's really messed up.

[00:27:33] But the sell button was there, though.

[00:27:35] Oh, yeah, and people did take advantage of it.

[00:27:37] Because, I mean, here's the thing.

[00:27:38] At the end of the day –

[00:27:39] I would have been freaked out.

[00:27:39] I would have bailed out probably too.

[00:27:41] Like, how are you supposed to hold them?

[00:27:43] Because everyone's kind of trusting.

[00:27:44] It's like the apes.

[00:27:45] Talk about the apes, right?

[00:27:46] They're all working together.

[00:27:47] But now there's no buy button.

[00:27:49] I don't know.

[00:27:49] The apes are going to panic.

[00:27:51] Exactly.

[00:27:51] And how many of the apes are – you know, have half their life savings?

[00:27:56] You know what I mean?

[00:27:56] They've already made the extreme play and they've doubled up or whatever.

[00:27:59] So, yeah, of course it's going to work that way.

[00:28:01] Another thing they do – you mentioned circuit breakers earlier.

[00:28:03] There's been a lot of runs where they use those to effectively do the same thing because circuit breaker is where the stock is moving so fast that in order to avoid some kind of market collapse or whatever, they have this tool where they just stop trading on the stock.

[00:28:17] And it makes sense.

[00:28:18] I mean it goes back to the original – was it Black Tuesday or whatever, the financial collapse in the 20s?

[00:28:27] Yeah, 1929.

[00:28:27] I think it was Black Tuesday.

[00:28:29] You're probably right.

[00:28:30] Or who knows?

[00:28:31] Yeah, so they have these tools.

[00:28:33] Yeah, I think it was Tuesday though.

[00:28:35] But then you're able to enter short orders during that period.

[00:28:38] You know what I mean?

[00:28:39] So as soon as it resumes trading, it's going to go down, not up for the most part.

[00:28:42] And so, yeah, that's just another tool.

[00:28:44] And turning off the buy button was an extreme one.

[00:28:48] Yeah, and here's another good one.

[00:28:50] And this is kind of the third leg of that scheme I was talking about is they also – if they're trying to destroy a company like GameStop, they can get people onto the board or into the company effectively as spies or moles or whatever you want to call them.

[00:29:07] One of the big –

[00:29:08] Saboteurs.

[00:29:09] Yes, yes, exactly.

[00:29:11] One of the big storylines.

[00:29:12] Are you familiar with the Boston Consulting Group?

[00:29:17] I don't think so.

[00:29:18] So they're one of these – a consulting group is basically a corporate consultant brought in by a corporation by the board to consult and tell them how to run their business better, more efficiently, save money, get their stock price better, whatever the goal is.

[00:29:31] Okay.

[00:29:32] Are they one of the peers of McKinley or something?

[00:29:36] Probably.

[00:29:36] I'm not sure exactly what McKinley does, but if it sounds familiar.

[00:29:40] Yeah, the big four but of consulting, not of auditing or one of those white shoe firms.

[00:29:45] This is where Bibi Netanyahu came from.

[00:29:49] Like it's –

[00:29:49] Okay.

[00:29:50] There you go.

[00:29:50] Yeah, yeah.

[00:29:50] They're players.

[00:29:51] Yes, yes.

[00:29:52] Easy money.

[00:29:53] Exactly.

[00:29:53] And so they had gone into GameStop in the months before Ryan Cohen got there in the middle months of 2020.

[00:29:59] They had a $30 million contract.

[00:30:01] And what people – and Ryan Cohen openly said, these guys are shit.

[00:30:04] Like he went to court with them, said we're not paying.

[00:30:07] You know, it's – sorry for swearing.

[00:30:09] But –

[00:30:09] That's all right.

[00:30:10] Yeah, said these guys are – they're just crap.

[00:30:12] They're not good.

[00:30:13] They don't actually help the company.

[00:30:14] And people started doing research and found that a lot of these bankrupted companies – so I'm talking about Sears, Toys R Us, Blockbuster – they worked with Foss and Consulting Group in the months before their bankruptcy.

[00:30:27] And when people really looked into what decisions were made leading up to that bankruptcy, it was clear sabotage.

[00:30:34] I mean selling of assets way under value to friends of these hedge funds, you know.

[00:30:38] So they were really – and the big one is Toys R Us was the perfect example for – I think Toys R Us set the stage for all this kind of behavior for the seller boxing, these bankruptcies of companies.

[00:30:49] That was Mitt Romney and his hedge fund.

[00:30:52] I forget who it was.

[00:30:53] I was just thinking about that.

[00:30:55] Bain Capital, right?

[00:30:56] Yes.

[00:30:56] I'm a vulture capitalist.

[00:30:58] I was thinking vulture capitalist in the back of my head, but you tied them both.

[00:31:02] Exactly.

[00:31:03] So these vulture capitalists and then this method is really – so you tie that in with the short selling and, you know, whatever else in the media.

[00:31:12] And it's – they're supposed to fail.

[00:31:14] These companies are supposed to fail.

[00:31:15] I'll add a fourth layer if you – do you have a tinfoil hat nearby?

[00:31:20] Dude, this is patron power hour.

[00:31:22] We're half tinfoil here.

[00:31:24] But we do try to prep in practical real world.

[00:31:27] But in terms of what's going on in the world, it's so screwed up these days.

[00:31:31] Like you need double tinfoil to protect yourself.

[00:31:33] Yeah.

[00:31:34] When it comes to these short selling schemes or whatever, one of the big ways to gain an advantage is to have prior information.

[00:31:42] And so the greatest brokers of information on earth are actually in the United States.

[00:31:48] You know what I mean?

[00:31:48] It's the intelligence communities.

[00:31:51] So I highly suspect, especially with COVID being around the same time – now the short selling on GameStop happened well before COVID.

[00:31:58] But even if you believe COVID started, you know, 2019 or whatever, there was already crazy high short selling on GameStop.

[00:32:05] But I think that once the rumors and knowledge of what the plan would be to deal with it came around, that they really doubled down on all this short selling.

[00:32:14] Which means that, you know – and the reason I think this comes from Eric Weinstein.

[00:32:18] He talks about how he thinks Wall Street is used to generate a black budget for a lot of these intelligence agencies.

[00:32:25] Because that's, you know, one of the biggest advantages you have.

[00:32:28] So when all this stuff starts happening on the wrong side of it, I think that the intelligence agencies also, you know, weighed in and put their foot down and said, let's make sure things work out the right way here.

[00:32:39] Because I think they were probably invested in the short end as well in some ways.

[00:32:42] Either, you know, social capital, actual money, who knows.

[00:32:45] But it sure seems like, you know, there was a concerted effort from the Biden administration, especially down the line, to really never address some of the concern.

[00:32:56] I mean, politicians will never, you know, go against the banks like that.

[00:33:00] But, yeah.

[00:33:01] So it really felt like everyone wanted this thing to fail.

[00:33:04] And to this day, it's still standing.

[00:33:06] So, so far, so good.

[00:33:07] That is not even close to 10 full hat material.

[00:33:11] We got some aliens doing this.

[00:33:14] And I'm like, all right, maybe not.

[00:33:15] But I still might believe you're there at this point, it seems like.

[00:33:20] All right.

[00:33:21] A question I had, and really I had this question before I even knew you were going to come on.

[00:33:25] I had seen a couple of your tweets about GMing and stuff, but not really much.

[00:33:29] I didn't know you knew so much about it.

[00:33:31] But the question I had after watching a couple documentaries and looking into it, seeing some of your tweets and stuff was,

[00:33:38] did they really not cover their short even now?

[00:33:42] And you made it sound like they may not have.

[00:33:46] I figured they would have somehow been able to roll it off even if they hurt them really bad.

[00:33:50] Eventually, they would have fully exited.

[00:33:51] But is it really true that they may have a massive time bomb just, you know, deep in the heart of the banksters?

[00:33:59] I already know that they have several of those.

[00:34:02] Whether it's the Japanese yen carry trade, just the debt in general, all this other crap.

[00:34:07] Well, you throw this in there, any of these explode.

[00:34:09] The rest will.

[00:34:10] So has the short really not been closed?

[00:34:14] And if not, has it been rolled off so it's a lot smaller than it used to be?

[00:34:19] Or is it still like really, really big?

[00:34:21] Yeah.

[00:34:22] So the answer is nobody knows, right?

[00:34:24] There's all sorts of attempts at research and finding out how they would stash away this short interest, right,

[00:34:30] and not have it reflected in the price.

[00:34:32] And I'll go into a few of those.

[00:34:33] But I just want to – it's funny you mentioned the yen carry trade.

[00:34:36] I was going to bring that up when you're talking about the addiction to free money because even with the interest rates going up,

[00:34:41] they're not stopping.

[00:34:42] So, yes, there is the derivative.

[00:34:44] It's a derivative.

[00:34:45] Essentially, no matter how they're doing it, it's another part of this derivative bubble or several bubbles, bubble bath.

[00:34:52] Yeah, man.

[00:34:53] It's the poly crisis, the poly bubble, the super bubble.

[00:34:57] I call it the black hole of debt because it's going to actually like implode on itself and bring everybody in.

[00:35:02] Get that event horizon, yeah.

[00:35:04] Yeah.

[00:35:04] Well, I've been saying since probably since about COVID, just after the bailouts of COVID, I said they got one more in them.

[00:35:12] So I think they can do another – and every time it's like an order of magnitude larger.

[00:35:16] So the bailouts of 2007, 2008 were like $800 billion and then maybe it was like $8 to $10 trillion of bailouts

[00:35:28] and overall low interest rates and manipulation over a few years for the next phase.

[00:35:34] And then the next one they're going to need like $100 trillion bailout, which is essentially all global financial assets, more of a bail-in.

[00:35:43] I think they can do it one more time.

[00:35:45] After that, it's just too much, too big to fail.

[00:35:48] Or that's kind of what I think, that they're going to at least be able to kick the can down a little bit longer.

[00:35:54] But not only does the magnitude of the bailout required grow each time, but how long it lasts for, it's like cut in half.

[00:36:02] The half-life is reduced almost.

[00:36:05] So it's like, okay, I think they can kick the can down the road one more time and they're going to have to do that in the next year or two.

[00:36:11] But instead of it lasting for a decade, instead of it lasting for five years, like the COVID one, this one's going to last like 18 months.

[00:36:18] So I'm expecting like about two, three years from now is really when everything's going to blow apart.

[00:36:24] That's just kind of my timeline.

[00:36:26] What do you think?

[00:36:26] And any thoughts that I just talked about?

[00:36:29] There's a lot, I'm sure.

[00:36:30] No, kicking the can is definitely the narrative here.

[00:36:34] And I think that that's, so the GameStop community, and I will say the AMC community to me is a either hedge fund funded or intelligence funded attempt to recreate the GameStop community.

[00:36:48] But without the same potency.

[00:36:50] I have no idea.

[00:36:51] Yeah, that's my opinion is that it was a distraction to be like, see these meme stocks, they all can go crazy.

[00:36:57] But AMC ultimately was controlled by Adam Aaron, who made a lot of decisions.

[00:37:03] I mean, they diluted their shares at the really bad times.

[00:37:07] You know, GameStop's also diluted their shares to generate money.

[00:37:10] So it's hard to, you know, maybe I would need to do more research to really say AMC is not part of this.

[00:37:15] But the general feeling from the GameStop community.

[00:37:19] They're a pretender compared to GameStop when it comes to a threat to the system, at least.

[00:37:22] Exactly.

[00:37:23] And so to get back to the, you know, where is this short interest?

[00:37:27] Is it still out there?

[00:37:28] And if it is, how are they doing it?

[00:37:30] There's a few things that really, I mean, we've looked at fail-to-delivers FTDs.

[00:37:35] Report comes out.

[00:37:36] It's always a month delayed for some reason.

[00:37:38] I can't explain that.

[00:37:39] But it does seem like, like I was saying, people buy a share and then the market maker, instead of buying that share, says, hey, we're going to, you know, kick the can down the road for a month or so.

[00:37:49] And then we'll buy it when it's cheaper.

[00:37:50] And they do that through FTDs.

[00:37:52] And that seems to be an algorithmic process.

[00:37:54] So just, you know, little robots beeping and booping and making the system a lot more dangerous for everyone.

[00:38:00] And then there's what's called the, you know, dark pools, which is, you know, it is an essential function.

[00:38:06] Citadel's got a massive dark pool, which is probably the size of the market.

[00:38:10] You know what I mean?

[00:38:10] They probably, for every stock or for every share that's on the market, they probably got another one in a dark pool so that they can push things around and move them and do all that.

[00:38:20] And essentially, it's just a place to hold your, you know, rehypothecated share so that you have it on your books.

[00:38:28] But the public can't see it or trade it.

[00:38:30] There may be some trading between dark pools, they think.

[00:38:33] There are some rumors that GameStop shares in the dark pool were going for thousands of dollars.

[00:38:38] You know, those are all kind of, it could be a glitch, it could be whatever.

[00:38:44] But the big one is swaps.

[00:38:47] So they think that there's some kind of mass swap trade that's, you know, basically the iceberg that shanked the Titanic.

[00:38:54] Just some massive, you know, dangerous things that nobody can see except for people that have access to swap data.

[00:39:01] And they think that, is it UB or what is that Swiss bank?

[00:39:05] Yeah, UBS.

[00:39:06] Yeah.

[00:39:07] Yeah, UBS.

[00:39:08] They think that maybe they're the bag holders currently.

[00:39:10] Okay.

[00:39:10] And there's been some attempts at figuring out when that's coming up.

[00:39:13] You know, I really don't think that they'll ever get to that until you get to the point of margin calls.

[00:39:18] And then you might see it, you know, then it'll rear its ugly head and things will go real crazy real quick.

[00:39:24] But so those different methods, right?

[00:39:26] And so who knows if there's still decoupling between the dark pools and the actual share price, or if they've managed to, you know, hammer those out and people have paid a lot of money.

[00:39:37] Like I said, a couple of hedge funds have gone bankrupt, but UBS is really probably, you know, if they go under, it'll be because of GameStop.

[00:39:45] That's the, that's the theory there.

[00:39:48] Well, I know that they're like, you know, going back to the ticking time bomb analogy, they've papered over a lot of ticking time bombs.

[00:39:55] So all it would take is one.

[00:39:56] And I wouldn't be surprised if this is just hanging out there on some of those balance sheets.

[00:40:02] And one thing I, really off balance sheet, one thing that threw me for a loop, I didn't even realize coming out of the 2008 recession and the financial crisis and all that garbage with credit default swaps and stuff is there was like a quadrillion dollars.

[00:40:19] Like that's the real number of derivatives and credit default swaps and all these other special instruments.

[00:40:26] And it's like for every actual dollar, there's just so many fake dollars out there.

[00:40:34] Like it'd be bad enough if it was one to one ratio, but it's like 10 to one, a hundred, a thousand on, we don't even know.

[00:40:40] And that's like a big part of what you're going at here.

[00:40:44] You know?

[00:40:45] Yeah.

[00:40:45] If you're fighting the people can.

[00:40:47] But that's what it breaks down to.

[00:40:48] This is like nuclear waste stored away.

[00:40:51] And I don't know.

[00:40:52] Sorry.

[00:40:52] Yeah.

[00:40:52] No, that's a good metaphor is like you bury it in concrete and you're like, we'll never see it again.

[00:40:56] But there's some people with pickaxes trying to dig that out.

[00:41:00] So, yeah.

[00:41:01] And so this community is stayed pretty active.

[00:41:05] I just did.

[00:41:06] I just this one thought I had about it is it also extends to Bed Bath and Beyond.

[00:41:11] And you had mentioned that you were somewhat familiar with that.

[00:41:13] Are you familiar with the ties into Ryan Cohen and other parts of GameStop?

[00:41:18] Well, no.

[00:41:20] And this is really helpful for me.

[00:41:21] And I'm going to be doing a lot of research off of this.

[00:41:24] I just kind of fell for the whitewashing or just glazing over of the meme stock.

[00:41:29] So I knew GameStop was like the big one.

[00:41:31] But I figured the others were the same thing but smaller.

[00:41:34] But obviously, you know, there's maybe some relations seems like.

[00:41:38] But also, like you said, AMC seems a little shady, a little weird.

[00:41:42] So, you know, tell me.

[00:41:44] What about Bed Bath and Beyond?

[00:41:46] What's wrong with that one?

[00:41:48] No, first of all, I love that you're recognizing the something that I'm sure you've seen a thousand times now.

[00:41:54] And I'm starting to recognize the pattern of the media's ability to create a word, to create a narrative.

[00:41:58] And then you don't even think about it because it's just, you know, they're very good at that.

[00:42:04] But, yeah.

[00:42:05] So Bed Bath and Beyond was also one of these companies that, you know, brick and mortar malls are dying.

[00:42:10] All their stores are in malls.

[00:42:12] And they're not doing great on sales and stuff.

[00:42:13] But they also had this subcompany called Bye Bye Baby that actually has been and continues to do very well.

[00:42:19] Have you heard of it?

[00:42:21] I've heard of it as related to the meme stocks.

[00:42:24] Just overall, I think.

[00:42:25] But I know nothing about the details.

[00:42:27] Yeah.

[00:42:28] I just – I knew a friend who had a kid and they used it.

[00:42:30] I was like, oh, yeah.

[00:42:30] I've heard of them.

[00:42:31] But anyway.

[00:42:32] It's a catchy name, whoever came up with marketing.

[00:42:36] Yeah.

[00:42:37] They were a holding under Bed Bath and Beyond.

[00:42:40] So Bed Bath and Beyond owned the whole company.

[00:42:42] So Ryan Cohen went in and there's no way to really know if this was his plan because it wasn't directly stated.

[00:42:49] But they have released court documents since this bankruptcy proceeding has been ongoing.

[00:42:54] It's actually probably wrapping up in the next couple weeks, which is interesting.

[00:42:57] But the bankruptcy court for Bed Bath and Beyond became very public because when Ryan Cohen tried – he bought a lot of Bed Bath and Beyond.

[00:43:07] That made waves.

[00:43:08] He wrote a letter to the board that was basically like his letter to the board at GameStop.

[00:43:12] And so people are like, oh, he's taking on another shorted company.

[00:43:15] He's going to try to turn it around.

[00:43:16] And then if you're invested in it, eventually those short sellers will have to cover two and everyone wins.

[00:43:21] And this is not his unique strategy.

[00:43:23] This is actually – Elon Musk is the best example of somebody doing this, taking a shorted company, making it appealing so that eventually the short sellers have no choice but to get out of there.

[00:43:32] And they're still working on that over time.

[00:43:34] And Tesla is on the moon now.

[00:43:36] Sure.

[00:43:37] So good luck to them.

[00:43:38] So Ryan Cohen did this with Bed Bath and Beyond, but the board actually strong-armed him out.

[00:43:43] And there was some very, very shady things going on.

[00:43:47] One of the members – this you might remember is somebody actually committed suicide.

[00:43:50] And I have no speculation about why that happened, who's good or who's bad.

[00:43:53] Just to say that some high-level corporate dealings were probably going on during this, some sharing of information.

[00:44:03] Maybe some – the FBI was looking into it.

[00:44:06] But who knows?

[00:44:07] There's definitely signs that there was some kind of fraud investigation, redactions in the court documents that were atypical of a bankruptcy court.

[00:44:16] Some people in suits appearing at – standing by as these proceedings were going on.

[00:44:20] So definitely some sketchy things going on.

[00:44:23] Ultimately, Ryan Cohen was strong-armed out of that.

[00:44:25] And a lot of people in the current Bed Bath and Beyond community believe that the shares that they purchased and eventually the bonds that they still hold I think will go up.

[00:44:33] And the shares they hope will be – they'll receive some kind of equity because of the fraud that occurred.

[00:44:39] And nobody really knows if that will happen.

[00:44:41] It kind of doesn't look like it will.

[00:44:42] But the point is that this extended apparatus was fighting Ryan Cohen's moves on every end.

[00:44:49] And Ryan Cohen, interestingly, was fighting them, right?

[00:44:52] He was targeting these companies that are short-sold.

[00:44:55] And there's all sorts of theories on what he's doing.

[00:44:57] Ultimately, I know anybody who is thinking about buying GameStop has to think to themselves,

[00:45:02] well, is it really turning around as a company?

[00:45:04] What are they going to do?

[00:45:05] And that big secret is Ryan Cohen's big plan.

[00:45:08] And people don't really know what it is.

[00:45:11] Maybe this is a good thing to end on, however much time we got, is the connection between this and crypto.

[00:45:17] Because GameStop actually opened up a crypto – it was an NFT trading market.

[00:45:22] But there isn't really a lot of reason for them to get involved with crypto, right?

[00:45:27] But they did immediately.

[00:45:28] And Ryan Cohen has been.

[00:45:30] And, yeah, I got some theories on, one, why that is, what their next move is with relation to what GameStop does.

[00:45:39] And then, two, Ryan Cohen has been a huge advocate for Donald Trump, especially this next year.

[00:45:45] Yeah.

[00:45:46] Okay.

[00:45:46] Yeah.

[00:45:46] Let's do it.

[00:45:47] Let's finish on that.

[00:45:47] I got another topic I want to hit on for, like, five minutes after that.

[00:45:51] But let's hit on all of this we just talked about for, like, another five or ten minutes, and we'll call it a night.

[00:45:56] Yeah.

[00:45:57] So Ryan Cohen's got some big plan, right?

[00:45:59] There's no reason to believe GameStop's going to turn – they may become – right now they're barely profitable because they're investing all the money they've saved up.

[00:46:07] They have $5 billion cash on hand.

[00:46:09] They're using that to invest, and that's making them profitable.

[00:46:11] But they're not really a great company.

[00:46:13] So there's some plan, you know, down the line.

[00:46:16] And one tweet that – Ryan Cohen's like a – he likes to tweet very cryptic things, you know, very, like, puzzles to solve.

[00:46:24] And one was, hey, U.S. government, I wish you'd stop shooting down my balloons during – you remember the Chinese balloon incident?

[00:46:31] Yeah.

[00:46:31] Yeah.

[00:46:31] So basically he's saying the government's shooting down my plans, right?

[00:46:35] And that came at a time where GameStop turned off its NFT market because of regulatory uncertainty.

[00:46:43] So when I hear all this dialogue about, you know, Trump saying that he's going to end Kamala's crypto war or whatever, I'm thinking to myself there may actually be a fire underneath that smoke.

[00:46:54] I think that there were some actions by the Biden administration and the SEC, Gary Gensler, that probably ruined whatever plans Ryan Cohen had.

[00:47:03] And it seems – and my speculation is that it's NFT-backed gaming, maybe music and movies as well where you have, you know – and there's practical reasons for that, partnerships, whatever.

[00:47:15] You get a Pokemon card you like and it unlocks his skin in Fortnite.

[00:47:18] Cool stuff like that, you know?

[00:47:22] Who knows?

[00:47:23] But whatever it is, he's been all over Twitter, you know, vote Trump 2024, Trump, Trump, Trump.

[00:47:28] And because so many of the followers came from Reddit, it really has been a divisive thing for him to do.

[00:47:35] And a lot of people are like, why would you turn away so many retail investors?

[00:47:38] Because GameStop is completely owned by retail.

[00:47:40] It's one of the few stocks on the market that doesn't really have institutional investors.

[00:47:45] Right.

[00:47:45] Ryan Cohen owns a large portion of it.

[00:47:48] He doesn't take any salary.

[00:47:49] He just – we're in shares.

[00:47:50] So they're very much invested in –

[00:47:52] Okay.

[00:47:53] The future and, you know, not only exposing things and surviving but also coming up with a new game plan and actually becoming, you know, cash flow positive or, you know, growing organically as well.

[00:48:07] It's ferreting out this short squeeze if they can – what do you call it?

[00:48:10] The mother of all short squeezes?

[00:48:12] M-O-A-S-S.

[00:48:13] Yes, M-O-A-S.

[00:48:14] Does he believe in that?

[00:48:14] Does Ryan believe that that's real or does he have to say he doesn't believe that because of his, like, leadership or is that the cryptic tweets and stuff?

[00:48:22] Yeah.

[00:48:23] So there was a point where the GameStop Twitter account itself tweeted, oops, M-O-A-S.

[00:48:28] Like they referenced it.

[00:48:29] But, you know, I think that could have been just some kid who didn't know what it meant.

[00:48:32] You know, who knows?

[00:48:33] Right.

[00:48:34] But he is very active about tweeting, like, short sellers are bad.

[00:48:38] BCG is bad.

[00:48:39] You know, the politics are not for the people.

[00:48:42] The people need to rise up.

[00:48:43] That kind of stuff.

[00:48:44] Power to the players.

[00:48:46] All that crap.

[00:48:47] So, yeah, I think he believes in Boaz.

[00:48:50] But it may not – you know, because it may also look like what Tesla is doing where you just accumulate – you know, the short ad interest closes and then your share price levels off.

[00:48:59] And then the next batch of shorts close and you move on like that.

[00:49:03] I think that – so one attempt he did potentially to spring the mother of all short squeezes was a stock dividend he gained about.

[00:49:13] And this is maybe a little high-level stuff, but I'll try to break it down pretty simple.

[00:49:18] A dividend is when you receive something because you own a share.

[00:49:21] A lot of times it's a cash dividend, you know, a quarter, 50 cents.

[00:49:24] You're familiar, right?

[00:49:26] Yep.

[00:49:26] Yep.

[00:49:26] So a share dividend was proposed.

[00:49:30] And this is different than a stock split, but it essentially functions the same way.

[00:49:35] So everybody who had a share was supposed to receive three new shares.

[00:49:39] So all the shares will be worth 25% of what they were worth before, but you'll have, you know, four for every one.

[00:49:45] Okay.

[00:49:46] There's reasons for doing stock splits, you know, for, you know, various applications on the market, maybe making your stock price more attractive so people can buy whole shares, whatever it is.

[00:49:57] But what this specifically was intended to be was three new shares for every one share.

[00:50:04] And now if the shares outstanding are far above what it's supposed to be, this is going to cause a problem for the, you know, whoever is supposed to deliver these shares, right?

[00:50:14] Because there's more shares being given than are supposed to exist.

[00:50:19] So then they have to buy the shares and this is supposed to cause the price to rise.

[00:50:23] And this was in 2022.

[00:50:24] This was planned to happen.

[00:50:27] Following me so far?

[00:50:28] It'd be kind of like the bounce back or like the, uh, the next attempt at the short squeeze, the mother of all short squeezes here.

[00:50:36] Yes.

[00:50:36] Which it seems actually counterintuitive, but I probably missed something.

[00:50:40] But long story short, I felt that the price would go down because they diluted it, but maybe I'm missing that part.

[00:50:47] So the price would, yeah, yeah.

[00:50:49] Sorry.

[00:50:49] So I missed the beginning step and I didn't do a good job explaining this earlier.

[00:50:52] So the theory is with all these, you know, with the dark pool, the FTDs, the swaps, what you'll end up with is more people owning shares than are supposed to, because the price of the share is supposed to reflect, you know, how many people have bought it and the price goes up and there's a set amount.

[00:51:10] Right.

[00:51:10] But when people are buying the share and it's not going up because they're creating a new share so that they don't have to increase the price.

[00:51:15] And then eventually that process happens so many times that you end up with more people owning the stock that are supposed to.

[00:51:23] And so when you have.

[00:51:24] And you amplify that multiple times over by this share dividend.

[00:51:28] Is that the plan?

[00:51:29] Sort of.

[00:51:29] What it is instead is the, the responsibility to give these shares to the people falls on the broker.

[00:51:37] And if the broker is misrepresenting their data, um, and then there's this, this central group called the DTCC.

[00:51:44] That's the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, who's a huge villain in this whole saga.

[00:51:49] Okay.

[00:51:50] But they're essentially a private group that the government uses, that Wall Street uses to hold shares and distribute them in these kind of events.

[00:51:59] And what the DTCC, what was supposed to happen is they release, you know, three new shares for every share that's outstanding.

[00:52:06] And then those three shares go to a share and that's the end of the story.

[00:52:10] But if you have more shares outstanding than when the DTC releases those shares, brokers are going to have to buy new shares to account for the ones they didn't get for the, you know.

[00:52:20] To actually true up.

[00:52:22] Yes.

[00:52:22] So it's supposed to create actual buy pressure on the market so that they have to buy, uh, the stock and that'll cause the price to rise.

[00:52:30] But what the DTCC actually did is they said, Hey, we have the legal right to not follow your instructions and just tell the brokers to split each share into four.

[00:52:41] And so that's what they did.

[00:52:42] So they sidestepped it by saying basically you gave us instructions, but that will destroy the market.

[00:52:48] So we're not going to do that.

[00:52:50] We have a clause or two in our contract or our service agreement or whatever it would be called.

[00:52:55] That's why I also tell people don't buy gold or silver ETFs because they'll just settle it in fiat currency whenever they want.

[00:53:03] You're not going to be able to get real gold out of it as an example.

[00:53:05] Well, most people know that, but this obviously applies to other things like this as an example.

[00:53:10] They can like, ah, force majeure or whatever lawyer speak they want to use.

[00:53:14] Like, we're not going to do that.

[00:53:17] Sorry, buddy.

[00:53:18] You can't.

[00:53:19] And it's almost like throwing you out of a casino for, uh, reading cards or whatever in blackjack.

[00:53:25] But, uh, this, at least that takes skill in person.

[00:53:28] This, I guess this takes some fraudulent skill to get away with all this crap.

[00:53:32] Uh, we only got a few minutes left to talk about this.

[00:53:35] Then I got a question for you.

[00:53:36] Any, you know, anything else you really need to talk about or wrap up?

[00:53:40] Yeah.

[00:53:41] I'll bring it home on one other crypto front.

[00:53:43] Um, and this is something that may be coming up soon.

[00:53:46] Hopefully a lot of people are hopeful for it is another way.

[00:53:49] And, and after this happened, Ryan Cohen, you know, there's a shareholder meeting.

[00:53:53] He proposed this thing where now he has the ability to, he has all sorts of control over the shares.

[00:53:58] He can actually recall them if he wants to.

[00:54:00] And that, you know, to what end that, that could be very bad for shareholders.

[00:54:03] It could lead to a lawsuit if he mishandles it, whatever.

[00:54:06] Um, what people think he might be doing, this is something that the overstock try to do.

[00:54:10] They tried to release a crypto dividend, which is essentially going to try to do the same thing.

[00:54:14] If you have more shares outstanding than are supposed to exist, then when you release this

[00:54:18] crypto dividend, the P the people issuing it will have to buy extra copies of that dividend.

[00:54:24] And that'll drive the price of the dividend up.

[00:54:26] And it worked.

[00:54:26] Their dividend went from about $2 to like, I don't know, $18 or something like that.

[00:54:31] Really?

[00:54:31] Holy shit.

[00:54:32] I did not know that.

[00:54:33] But it was, you know, relative what the share price was.

[00:54:35] People didn't feel like they actually got a squeeze out of it.

[00:54:38] Instead of the share price squeezing, the dividend squeezed.

[00:54:41] Right.

[00:54:41] Um, so people think that there may be some attempt from Ryan Cohn and GameStop to maybe

[00:54:48] move shares or somehow utilize this company T zero.

[00:54:53] That's been getting a lot of, um, government approval.

[00:54:56] They can run now their own marketplace.

[00:54:58] Um, and maybe it's a thing where your shares will be registered in a fungible fashion.

[00:55:03] And so they can actually take an account of all retail shares, uh, or something like that.

[00:55:07] So some crypto method, uh, and the belief is that he's waiting until the election's over

[00:55:13] to do that.

[00:55:14] And that's kind of hidden in the cryptic messages of roaring Kitty and in Ryan Cohen.

[00:55:18] And so everyone's kind of, you know, you don't want to wait for dates because those

[00:55:22] are, that leads you to disappointment, but everyone's kind of watching this election.

[00:55:25] Like, Hey, are we actually going to see something happen now that the SEC is potentially on

[00:55:29] GameStop side, or at least, you know, to some extent under Trump.

[00:55:32] And I mean, if people have been holding this long, I think they got diamond hands.

[00:55:37] They ain't getting rid of it anytime soon.

[00:55:39] I got diamond hands with some things.

[00:55:41] Yeah.

[00:55:42] Yeah.

[00:55:42] Diamond hands is invaluable.

[00:55:44] Uh, all right, buddy.

[00:55:46] This is the prepper broadcast and network.

[00:55:49] So I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about one thing related to prepping.

[00:55:53] If everything hits the fan and or an EMP blows, blows up and the power goes out, whatever,

[00:56:02] calamity, no matter how mad max you want to get to it.

[00:56:05] Do you consider yourself a prepper?

[00:56:07] Have you thought about being a prepper?

[00:56:09] What's your, your setup at a high level?

[00:56:11] If you do have anything, whether bug out bag or security ammo or, you know, food, water,

[00:56:17] you know, what's your thoughts on prepping overall here on the prepper broadcast network?

[00:56:21] Good, bad, indifferent.

[00:56:24] Uh, great.

[00:56:24] It's, it's a great thing.

[00:56:26] I think there's a, so first of all, the general concept of buying gold or whatever else there,

[00:56:31] that has echoed when the GameStop community, people have their shares directly registered

[00:56:35] because they think if there's some kind of economic collapse that this hedge fund liquidation

[00:56:39] process could potentially mean that that asset GameStop shares, you know, would, would be

[00:56:45] more valuable.

[00:56:46] And so they have them directly registered with an agency.

[00:56:48] Anyway, it's a, it's another hedge against this.

[00:56:51] Uh, and everyone does believe that that's going to happen.

[00:56:53] So that mentality, I definitely, uh, and not, uh, I am very familiar with that within prepping.

[00:57:00] You know, I always got the TV shows, the prepper stuff, and they depicted those people as loons

[00:57:05] and kind of goofy folk.

[00:57:06] Uh, man, it seems more, it seems more normal to be a prepper now than to not be.

[00:57:12] Uh, doomsday prepper.

[00:57:14] I remember like about 10 years ago, 15 years ago, uh, some of them were relatively normal,

[00:57:21] but you know, they picked some on purpose to be extra crazy looking or whatever.

[00:57:25] And, uh, but it's grown a lot.

[00:57:27] First off, I think, uh, more and more quote unquote normal people are doing it, but also

[00:57:32] there's just a huge stigma that was BS.

[00:57:33] Yes.

[00:57:34] So combining that more people are getting into it and it was just a bad stigma to start with.

[00:57:38] I think a lot of people are coming around to it.

[00:57:40] And I really think COVID was a big thing.

[00:57:43] Like, Oh damn, like we might actually have to stay in your house for months at a time.

[00:57:47] So you better be ready for at least that.

[00:57:49] That was the exact anecdote.

[00:57:51] I was an anecdote.

[00:57:52] I was going to give you.

[00:57:53] It was, I remember specifically when COVID was happening, when I had a prepper realization,

[00:57:59] you know, Oh, I should have had this in place.

[00:58:02] I have this, I can do this.

[00:58:03] I know this guy.

[00:58:04] Um, and I know who it's friends I would go to and second amendment's a great thing for

[00:58:08] personal protection.

[00:58:09] Uh, you know, I, I've always believed it that way in terms of a post societal collapse.

[00:58:15] Definitely.

[00:58:16] You know, you got to recognize the reality of the world we live in the, you know, it's going

[00:58:21] to be a lot more about what you, the society provides insulation from violence.

[00:58:28] Right.

[00:58:29] And to the point where some people don't even understand the world as it would naturally

[00:58:33] exist without that protection.

[00:58:34] And I think, uh, you know, that element of it, I just, I still am reliant on society

[00:58:39] in a lot of ways.

[00:58:40] And, uh, yeah, maybe I'll keep listening to your episodes, pick up the habits and make

[00:58:45] a little bit more effort on that end.

[00:58:46] But yeah, I definitely have a bug out bag.

[00:58:48] I got some plans.

[00:58:49] If, uh, it should hit the fan stuff at the fan.

[00:58:52] We should hit the fan.

[00:58:53] Don't worry.

[00:58:54] Uh, that's, that's awesome.

[00:58:55] Honestly, I would suggest checking out some of the entire network, prepper broadcasting

[00:59:00] network in the archives.

[00:59:01] There's just so many standalone shows on specific topics.

[00:59:07] So you could spend a couple hours listening about, uh, you know, first, first aid medical

[00:59:13] or, you know, different concerns from, from a doctor that's on this network.

[00:59:17] That's, uh, been interviewed multiple times and he even has the prepper prepare.

[00:59:22] What is it?

[00:59:22] The prepper medical handbook.

[00:59:23] I got a copy of it.

[00:59:25] It's super, super helpful.

[00:59:26] It's like, okay, here's what you need to stock before stuff hits the fan.

[00:59:30] But even if you don't have that stuff, here's what you can do.

[00:59:33] If there's a compound fracture or there's a, you know, very serious, uh, blah, blah, blah

[00:59:38] burner.

[00:59:39] I don't know.

[00:59:39] Um, and some people know this stuff, you know, it's good to have it though.

[00:59:43] It, uh, a book format.

[00:59:46] So anyway, that's a little shout out to one of our sponsors.

[00:59:49] Yeah.

[00:59:50] Yeah.

[00:59:50] I think it's just, this is how I look at it.

[00:59:54] All of our ancestors, at least going back like a hundred years ago and then all before that,

[00:59:59] they had to be preppers cause one missed harvest or one, I don't know.

[01:00:03] A lot of bad things happen.

[01:00:04] You'd be dead.

[01:00:05] Exactly.

[01:00:06] Like you better be saving some stuff for winter or a broken ankle or, you know, a raid or who

[01:00:11] knows what the hell is coming over the mountain the next year.

[01:00:14] So like you better have multiple stashes, backup plans, stuff like that.

[01:00:18] Yeah.

[01:00:19] One last note on that.

[01:00:20] And this is something I was thinking about just when you gave me the invitation earlier

[01:00:22] is the power of community, the way that, you know, there's so many people who understand

[01:00:27] this prepper mindset and come together and have discussed these various topics.

[01:00:31] It's very widespread, but since it is something that people are united on, that you're able

[01:00:35] to have these conversations.

[01:00:37] And that's one thing that I'm very thankful for what I found in GameStop is that a lot of

[01:00:41] the things I learned as we talked about earlier, more about the general financial situation,

[01:00:46] general political situation, you know, geopolitical situations.

[01:00:50] And it's good to have communities that are situated in the real world that aren't afraid

[01:00:56] to, you know, really work out these problems without thinking about how it'll be looked at

[01:01:01] by the media or by, you know, safe society that doesn't want to believe this stuff is real.

[01:01:07] Perfect way to put it, man.

[01:01:09] Like in every day, more and more people are waking up and the more you talk about it, the

[01:01:13] more you find people that are interested in it.

[01:01:15] Yeah.

[01:01:15] Some people don't give a crap or they're totally brainwashed about it, but long story short,

[01:01:19] you'll be surprised.

[01:01:21] There's a lot of people out there that are at least partially awake if you want to call

[01:01:25] it that anyway, buddy, got to get out of here.

[01:01:27] This is an awesome show.

[01:01:28] We're going to have to get you back on sometime in the future, maybe even before end of the

[01:01:31] year if possible.

[01:01:33] And if you get a show spun up, I definitely want to be invited.

[01:01:37] Yeah, absolutely.

[01:01:38] I mean, you know, like I said on Twitter, Luke O'Libre, it'll be the Luke O'Libre show.

[01:01:44] I just got to get setting up.

[01:01:46] The studio has been a little difficult, but this has been so fun, dude.

[01:01:49] We definitely have to do it again.

[01:01:50] Hell yeah.

[01:01:51] Hey, you sound great.

[01:01:52] All you need is a microphone and a headset, man.

[01:01:55] Unless you're going to do video.

[01:01:56] Now, that'd be awesome.

[01:01:56] If you do do that, I'll definitely tune in without getting too deep into it.

[01:02:01] We're hoping to upgrade PBN, Prepper Broadcasting Network.

[01:02:04] We got a couple ideas for early 2025, including maybe some video broadcasts from your favorite

[01:02:10] hosts.

[01:02:10] Anyway, ladies and gents, we got to get out of here.

[01:02:14] Be sure to tune in this Saturday.

[01:02:16] Future Dan and I will be holding our 2024, 2024 election preparedness, election analysis

[01:02:25] show.

[01:02:25] Then we're going to be live next Wednesday, the day after the election.

[01:02:29] And we're going to be keep grinding from there, of course.

[01:02:33] Catch you all later.

[01:02:34] Peace out.