Free the Money

Is the U.S. dollar really on the verge of collapse, or is the rest of the world underestimating its staying power?

In this episode of Free The Money, I'm joined by Brent Johnson, founder and CEO of Santiago Capital and the mind behind the Dollar Milkshake Theory, to challenge the popular narrative surrounding the decline of the U.S. dollar. Brent explains why America's enormous debt and economic challenges don't necessarily mean the dollar is headed for collapse. As he puts it, the United States is the cleanest shirt in the dirty laundry. It's not that America doesn't have serious problems, but that the rest of the world may be in an even more vulnerable position. In fact, the structure of the global monetary system may actually strengthen the dollar during a financial crisis, as countries scramble to secure the dollars needed to service their debts.

What if the dollar's greatest strength isn't America's economic health, but the rest of the world's dependence on it?

Dr. Jim Willie returns to Free The Money to discuss why he believes the wars in Ukraine and Iran are interconnected parts of a much larger global conflict, with energy supplies and shifting geopolitical alliances playing a critical role. He shares claims of a potential Trump-Putin agreement involving Russian diesel shipments, an end to the Ukraine war, and Russia's possible role in resolving the conflict with Iran. Jim also examines Europe's continued dependence on Russian oil and gas despite sanctions and its support for Ukraine.

Against this backdrop, Jim warns of mounting pressure on the U.S. Treasury market, the unwinding of the yen carry trade, and a potential global liquidity crisis. He explains why he expects accelerating debt monetization to drive gold and silver prices higher and discusses XRP's potential role in the evolving financial system.

I sat down with Ed Dowd, former BlackRock portfolio manager, founding partner of Phinance Technologies, and bestselling author of Cause Unknown: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 & 2022.

Drawing on his decades of Wall Street experience, including the dot-com bubble and the 2008 financial crisis, Ed explains why he sees alarming similarities between today's AI investment boom and previous speculative bubbles.

We explore the nearly $3 trillion private credit market, the growing reliance on debt to finance AI infrastructure, Nvidia's vendor financing arrangements, and warning signs emerging from companies like CoreWeave. Could the unraveling of the AI financing boom trigger a much larger financial crisis?

Ed also explains why he anticipates a deflationary crisis followed by massive Federal Reserve money printing, potentially setting the stage for another wave of inflation.

Later, we discuss his bestselling book Cause Unknown, his research into excess mortality, disability, cancer trends, and declining fertility rates in the wake of COVID-19, as well as his concerns about vaccine safety and the importance of individual freedom in an increasingly centralized world.

James returns to Free The Money to discuss America's $40 trillion national debt and why he believes the U.S. cannot simply grow its way out of its debt crisis, despite Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's optimism surrounding AI-driven productivity growth.

James argues that we're already in the early stages of fiscal dominance, where the government's growing debt burden increasingly constrains the Federal Reserve's ability to conduct independent monetary policy. He explains how the Fed and Treasury are headed toward an inevitable "shotgun wedding," with inflation becoming increasingly necessary to sustain America's debt-dependent financial system.

We also explore rising Treasury yields, the oil-driven inflation shock, the housing affordability crisis, and why lower Fed rates don't necessarily translate into lower mortgage rates. Finally, James shares his concerns about the debt-fueled AI boom, extreme stock market concentration, CoreWeave's credit default swaps trading at distressed levels, and the growing risks surrounding private credit.

In this episode of Free The Money, I'm joined by Max Schwartz, CEO of Anvil Research Labs, to discuss how Anvil is building the universal collateral layer and rethinking how financial promises are secured and enforced.

Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) is on track to become a nearly trillion-dollar industry built largely on unsecured debt, with J.P. Morgan projecting the market to grow from $560 billion in 2025 to $912 billion by 2030. Federal Reserve survey data found that 26% of BNPL users made at least one late payment in 2025, while 11% incurred an overdraft or insufficient-funds fee because of a BNPL payment.

The underlying problem? Our credit system still relies heavily on trust, credit scores, and collateral that can be difficult to value, transfer, or liquidate.

Meanwhile, younger generations are accumulating wealth differently. With an estimated 560 million-plus crypto owners worldwide, an enormous pool of digital wealth remains largely disconnected from traditional credit markets. This wealth could serve as collateral but often sits outside conventional underwriting. 

Rather than relying solely on promises and third-party enforcement, Anvil uses smart contracts to place provable holds on digital assets, allowing them to secure financial obligations on-chain. Crypto offers unique advantages as collateral: markets operate 24/7, assets can be valued and liquidated rapidly, and financial commitments enforced through code.

We explore how Anvil's digital letters of credit could bridge DeFi and traditional financial services, allowing users to secure future payments without necessarily paying upfront or selling their investments. Assets can retain exposure to potential price appreciation, while supported yield-bearing collateral can continue generating returns.

Max also breaks down Anvil's newly launched enterprise SDK and the $5 million ANVL token purchase led by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, including why major investors are seeking a voice in the governance of this emerging financial infrastructure.

The Bearable Buill is back to talk XRP, tokenization and the next crypto boom—from Evernorth’s Nasdaq listing and Brazil bringing securities infrastructure onto the XRP Ledger to DTCC’s tokenization push and AI threats.

Bruce Fenton is a longtime Bitcoin advocate since 2012, securities professional, and one of the early pioneers of tokenized securities. He is the founder and CEO of Chainstone Labs and founder of Atlantic Financial. 

Alongside Overstock founder Patrick Byrne, Bruce was involved in some of the earliest efforts to bring securities and financial-market infrastructure onto blockchain rails. In 2018, he tokenized equity in his own company, Chainstone Labs, on the Ravencoin blockchain—years before tokenization became one of Wall Street’s biggest narratives.

In this episode, Bruce breaks down naked short selling, the plumbing behind traditional securities markets, and why he believes much of the problem is ultimately a ledger problem. We dive into questions such as: Who actually owns the stocks sitting in your brokerage account? How can shares be lent and rehypothecated? What role do brokers, clearing firms, DTCC, and Cede & Co. play in determining who owns what? And could blockchain replace an opaque system of claims and intermediaries with a transparent ledger showing exactly where an asset is and who owns it?

We unpack what “tokenized stocks” actually means—and the important distinction between a token that simply gives you exposure to a stock’s price and a security issued natively onchain, where the token itself represents the actual share and the ownership rights that come with it.

Bruce discusses how tokenization could allow smaller businesses to tokenize ownership and have their stock traded globally without needing to be listed on a traditional exchange like the NYSE, as well as what a future without KYC could look like. Finally, we get into Wall Street’s embrace of tokenization, the SEC’s evolving approach to tokenized securities, and one of the biggest questions surrounding the future of this technology: who ultimately controls these new financial rails?

I sat down with the lovely and beautiful Bonnie Freeman, wife of Ian Freeman, a longtime libertarian activist and host of Free Talk Live. Ian was one of the very first voices to introduce Bitcoin to a radio audience.

Free Talk Live began discussing Bitcoin all the way back in 2010, and Ian's mission was to get Bitcoin into more people's hands. He sold Bitcoin directly to customers, operated Bitcoin vending machines, and went into local businesses helping onboard them to Bitcoin—giving them tablets and helping them set up point-of-sale systems. He used his time to actually help people use Bitcoin.

He was also fiercely outspoken against the government and became a major advocate for Bitcoin, financial privacy, and individual freedom.

On March 16, 2021, their home was violently raided by federal agents. Bonnie takes us inside that morning, describing armed agents, armored vehicles, a drone, and a flashbang used during the raid.

We break down what Ian was actually accused and convicted of and how the government and media painted him out to be a fraudster.

Prosecutors claimed Ian's operation processed more than $10 million connected to romance scams and internet fraud, said his business “catered to fraudsters,” and publicly called him an “internet fraudster.”

But the romance-scam allegations are much more nuanced than the headlines. Ian was not convicted of committing the underlying romance fraud. Investigators never produced communications showing Ian and the actual romance scammers agreeing to defraud victims.

Ian also had his own customer-screening procedures. He asked customers why they were buying Bitcoin and tried to identify potential scams. According to his defense, some victims actually concealed the true purpose of their transactions because Ian may have stopped them if they admitted they were sending the money to an online romantic interest. Ian also had a business incentive to prevent customers from being scammed because his reputation depended on satisfied customers.

So we examine one of the biggest questions surrounding his conspiracy conviction: How can you establish that Ian knowingly joined a conspiracy if you haven't demonstrated an agreement between Ian and the people actually committing the scams?

Testimony from scam victims was also presented to the jury, and Ian's defense argues that it emotionally tied him to the scammers even though he wasn't the person committing the underlying romance fraud.

Ian ultimately received an eight-year federal prison sentence.

And at the center of our conversation is a much bigger question: Was this simply the prosecution of financial crimes the government believed he committed, or did his influence on Bitcoin adoption and his outspoken opposition to government power put a target on his back? And was this really an attempt to silence an influential Bitcoin advocate and send a message to an industry that threatened the traditional financial system?

Bonnie shares why she believes Ian's name was smeared, what prison has taken from their lives, and why she believes his case belongs in the broader conversation about the war on crypto.

Key Points:

Jim argues the war is about much more than the U.S. and Iran. In his view, Iran is only the visible front of a broader conflict between U.S. nationalism and the City of London, with the Strait of Hormuz becoming a key battleground because of its importance to global oil flows.

Jim believes Europe will break before the United States. With Brent crude above $100 and Europe heavily dependent on imported energy, he argues the energy shock could accelerate industrial decline, political instability and ultimately the disintegration of the European Union, with Germany particularly vulnerable because of its energy-dependent manufacturing base.

 A 5% 10-year Treasury yield is Jim’s major danger line. He predicts that crossing it could trigger a stock-market correction, a major decline in residential real estate and a wave of foreclosures. With more than $10 trillion in Treasuries maturing this year, he believes the pressure could become far larger than 2008 once combined with an unwind of the yen carry trade.

Jim believes the U.S. is being pushed toward outright debt monetization because there simply aren’t enough natural buyers for all the debt. His argument is straightforward: when Treasuries mature or foreign holders sell and no replacement buyer appears, the government will ultimately print money to absorb the debt. He calls monetization of U.S. government debt potentially “one of the biggest stories of the century.”

Jim believes BRICS nations and other foreign holders have a growing incentive to dump U.S. Treasuries. He argues countries increasingly view Treasuries as vulnerable to sanctions, asset freezes and confiscation, while major financial institutions are also selling as bond prices fall. In his view, central banks converting Treasuries into gold is part of the same move away from sovereign debt.

The yen carry trade is one of Jim’s biggest systemic risks. He rejects public estimates that put the trade in the hundreds of billions and says he believes it is at least $4 trillion. As the yen strengthens and institutions face losses on both their Treasury holdings and yen-funded borrowing, he expects a multi-trillion-dollar rush to sell Treasuries that could become the bond crisis.

Jim believes XRP could become a neutral global settlement asset as confidence in government debt deteriorates. He argues that countries doing bilateral trade will increasingly want something other than another nation’s depreciating sovereign debt, and he sees tokenized stocks, bonds and potentially derivatives creating a much larger settlement role for XRP.

Jim remains extremely bullish on precious metals, particularly silver. He believes Shanghai’s move toward physical metal weakens the influence of COMEX and the LBMA, while military demand, solar, EVs and other industrial uses are creating a silver deficit that will continue to worsen. He even raises the possibility that Wall Street banks could eventually require a bailout over massive silver short positions, and predicts silver can trade above $100 on a sustained basis next year.

In this episode of Free The Money, I sit down with Jack Gamble host of Nobody Special Finance to break down what he believes to be the “biggest misallocation of capital in history,” following the biggest monetary expansion in history.

Jack explains the circular financing behind the AI boom and why he believes OpenAI and Anthropic’s massive spending is supporting the entire bubble, despite both companies losing tens of billions of dollars. We also discuss NVIDIA, CoreWeave, private credit increasingly financing the AI data-center buildout, and the debt being sold to people’s Pensions, 401Ks and IRAs. Jack refers to this as “one giant crowded trade that everybody is in, whether they realize it or not.”

We get into the parallels with 2008, attempts to turn future GPU compute revenue into asset-backed securities, problems Jack sees developing in private equity and life insurance, and the warning signs surrounding a potential OpenAI IPO.

Finally, Jack argues that “the real economy is doing very poorly, even though speculative asset bubbles are inflating more and more,” and explains how the enormous borrowing needs of the AI buildout are beginning to compete with the U.S. government for capital, putting upward pressure on interest rates.