Chris Kline: Running Out of Time - Bitcoin and the Fight to Retire With Dignity

**Chris Kline** (0:00)
We are in a retirement crisis in this country. 50% of Americans are not participating in retirement planning today. So we walked down the streets here in New York, and half the people aren't using a 401k, they're not using an IRA, and that's partially apathy, partially inflation.

**Natalie Brunell** (0:20)
Hey, everyone, welcome back to the show. Joining me this week is Chris Kline, co-founder of BitcoinIRA. Chris, it's great to see you. Thanks for joining the show.

**Chris Kline** (0:27)
Thanks for having me, Natalie. It's great to be here with you today.

**Natalie Brunell** (0:30)
Man, the price action. I have not seen this kind of negative sentiment in a while. I think it's actually worse than 2022 What are your thoughts on what's been happening with Bitcoin?

**Chris Kline** (0:38)
I feel like there's a dichotomy, though. There's a tale of two cities. So obviously, if you watch mainstream media, everybody loves it when we bleed, right? They just get excited. They're like, oh, it's time to talk smack about the Bitcoin folks.
But on the other side, you and I just went through Bitcoin Investor Week, and we watched some really, I think, some resilience, some permanence, some generally positive attitude that if you keep your head down, you innovate and great things are to come. We do this every 18 months, right? Like we just we just get beat up every 18 months. I've been in this for a decade and I've watched three or four of these now cycles where everybody thinks the sky is falling and the world is over and Bitcoin is dead. And if I had a nickel or at least a half of Bitcoin for every time that happened, I'd probably be retired by now. So I kind of see it as, yeah, I get the text messages from family and friends that are kind of new entrants are looking on the outside, looking in going, Oh my God, is it dead again? And it's like, you just said the word again, right? Like they should know the difference to those. But you know, this market, there's probably some more downside too. I don't think that I don't think this bears over with, but I do think it's a little bit different of a bear than we've seen over the last couple of cycles. First, we don't have a self-inflicted wound like FTX, all those things. And we are now more mainstream and institutionalized than we've ever been as far as ETFs, ETPs, all these moving parts. I mean, most of that conference we were at was all about how am I gonna financialize Bitcoin and other holdings, right? And that was a conversation that was not taking place even two years ago.

**Natalie Brunell** (2:00)
Do you think that there's been some price suppression? I can't avoid that sort of question online right now, especially from the Bitcoin community on X. They think that there's some sort of manipulation into the downside, which is kind of ironic, right? They never claim it when we're flying high to a new all time high. It's not being manipulated up. But there's this real sense that because the financial institutions are in, because there's this like new layer of sort of the suits or Wall Street, that it's preventing Bitcoin's rise due to all these derivatives and layers on top of it.

**Chris Kline** (2:31)
Yeah, I think when you add the ability to short it, right? And that's simply enough, the ability to short it, to put in orders, the tea-wapping companionship that they're doing between. There's a lot of moving parts once you get to that layer. And I'm not a tin hat guy, but let's think about it. If every institution wants to be the next Michael Saylor, and every sovereign nation wants to realize that the balance sheet is important, even though they talked about it a bunch a year ago at the Bitcoin conference, everybody was talking about it, and then all of a sudden they got quiet. Would you tell the world you're about to buy $100 million of Bitcoin? I wouldn't, because you want to control the price. Now, is there manipulation? Are we talking Jamie Dimon and JP Morgan with the silver shorts that they were doing?
I don't know if it's at that level. I think that one of the things I love about Bitcoin is we have the blockchain to tell us the truth, other than when you look at stocks, you come from the traditional side, that stuff can be manipulated left and right all day, every day. It's interesting. I do think that because of the number of entrants that are coming in, that are big players, there may be suppression is probably the right word, not manipulation. There may be some suppression or news that hasn't come out. You know, Saylor calls us and goes, hey, guess what? I just bought another $75 million of the Bitcoin yesterday. Not a lot of other people are saying that. And they may be averaging their way in and see where their price points can be at, because nobody wants to say, hey, we're going to buy $100 million. Watch it run to $126,000 and then have to buy at that price. That's just common sense.