PBD Podcast
Trump's Credit Card CAP, Musk's Iran Move, 50% OnlyFans Tax + Efran Soltani Execution | PBD Podcast | Ep. 718
14 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What topics are covered in the beginning of the podcast?
Did you ever think you would make it? I feel I'm supposed to take sweet victory.
I know this life meant for me.
Adam, what's your point? The future looks bright. My handshake is better than anything I ever signed, right here. You are a one-on-one? My son's right there.
I don't think I've ever said this before.
Okay, gang. Great to be with you guys. Business Wednesdays today. A lot of stories to cover. A number was dropped on BNPL. How catastrophic it's looking right now for BNPL and specifically Gen Z. Tom's got an entire report on it. We got a special guest with us here, Mark, who has a YouTube channel himself. Mark, you got about what? You got a million subscribers. Almost. We're getting there.
A million subscribers. Maybe this will help. Yeah, well, listen, you are helping yourself. You know, as a guy that's doing a great job, we've been watching you for a while. Brandon always would rave about you, and we met at the Manect event at Soho House.
Yep.
So we're excited about Mark Moss' views today on different things. Thank you. But let's go through some of the stories, some of the stories that we got. So... NPR reports yesterday 2,500 people, Iranian civilians, killed by the government. CBS says 12,500. We'll definitely get into that. Trump says any country doing business with Iran will face a 25% U.S. tariff.
Last time they did this, Iran was suffocating. They're already suffocating the government. It's about to get even worse. Google co-founder Sergey Brin joins California Exodus, and he's another one of those billionaires that left as well. And remember, Chamath said there's about a half a trillion dollars of net worth of business owners in the state of California that are leaving.
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Chapter 2: What are the implications of Trump's proposed credit card interest cap?
And so all these U.S. banks were really asking you, me, all of us U.S. taxpayer in the form of the U.S. government to be the backstop for this $20 billion for Argentina. Meanwhile, Millet was down there, got inflation under control. You remember him with the chainsaw and the whole thing running? Well, he went from the chainsaw to the pen, and it was afuera, which I think means— Kill it off.
Take it off. And it was like, okay, Department of Nothingness and Trees, afuera. Remember, he took all those— Those labels off the board and said, this is the government we need. We need defense. We need police. We need fire. We need pension for our people. We need a working government. All the rest of this stuff, afuera. Well, then he went to the U.S.
government and says, hey, getting this under control to float the peso, you know, we need a little bit of liquidity. We need several billion dollars of liquidity. So this was a currency support line that the U.S. banks didn't want to do. And so instead, it got done through IMF and the U.S. government. And guess what? They only needed $2.5 billion of the $20 billion line, number one.
And number two, they stabilized the peso with the IMF, International Monetary Fund. And now Besant comes out and says, by the way, all of you who doubted, it's working. So Besant is really saying it's working. Inflation is down. They've stabilized the peso. They want to make a fund where the peso will peg with the dollar on a more consistent basis.
And Besson is saying, and by the way, ladies and gentlemen, the American taxpayer made tens of millions of dollars in interest on the $2.5 billion over the amount of time that the loan was dating back to the election they had end of last year in Argentina. So this is a big deal. Pat, this is the kind of intervention that's good. You're not your intervention.
Hey, I need a loan to help myself and I need this. And you find great leaders with a reliable risk and you do it and then the taxpayer gets paid back. So this isn't just foreign aid going into a bucket somewhere and never to be seen again. And so this is no less than Scott Besant saying, hey, It worked. It worked for Argentina. It worked for Malay. And it's worked for the American taxpayer.
And we've been paid back.
Let me tell you why I think this is a big deal. And, Mark, I'm going to come to you. I want to hear your thoughts on this. You know why this is a big deal when I looked into it is imagine you go to a guy. Do you have that one person that every time they borrow money from you, they've never paid? Think about that person. Everybody has that friend, right?
You may be that friend to somebody, but we all have somebody that never pays back the debt, right? You're watching to say, man, I'm kind of that person. Or... It's Johnny, my cousin, my brother, whatever. Argentina was that person. They came, they got debt, 82, they never paid it back, they defaulted. 89, defaulted, never paid back. 01, defaulted, didn't pay back. And it happened two more times.
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Chapter 3: How does the BNPL trend impact consumer debt?
This poor CFO must be having – there's no way this person is sleeping. Yeah. This is the CFO of America, folks. Let's give him some credit. Can you pull up his picture, Rob? Who are you? And no one's even talking about you. Yeah, she's the Comptroller General of the U.S. Okay, go to her. Is she really the Comptroller General of the U.S.?
I think there's a better picture than that one on the American flag there. She looks kind of crazy, doesn't she? No, no, but I'm actually being serious. Is this truly the Comptroller General of the U.S. today? Is she the comptroller general of the U.S.
or a state? Began December 2025.
She's the acting comptroller who sat in the chair following the retirement of Gene Dorado, who retired just a couple weeks ago on December 29th. So who's the new one?
She's the acting, and it hasn't been named. So they haven't announced the new one yet. Right. And this is just a couple weeks ago. Well, go to Gene Dorado. So Gene Dodaro was the one that was doing all the stuff in 2025? Correct. Can you go to Gene, please? He was official. Who is Gene Dodaro? Funny that we don't even know who this person is.
this guy's probably aged more in the last 12 months than the last 40 years. The amount of every day, 25%, it's like working for a sales company and the CEO keeps changing the comp plan every day. Change it here, change the commissions to this here, change the commission to there. It's like this constant, you know what I'm saying? Like that's... That's what it is, working in that environment.
But the threat is you're suffocating Iran to have no choice but for everybody to stop doing business, to eventually give up. He's trying to get these guys to quit and give up. Do you think it'll happen, Mark?
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of China's parallel financial system?
Iran.
I think there's a bigger problem at play here. And so while I certainly hate what's happening there and I hate to see the people getting slaughtered, I mean, it's just absolutely insane to think that people still live like that in today's day and age is insane to me. But the bigger problem that we have is China. And so what China is doing is they're setting up a a new parallel financial system.
The dollar is the reserve currency of the world. The US dollar is the payment network of the world, back to Visa and MasterCard. The US dollar is the payment network of the world. And so the US is able to sanctions, sanctions, sanctions, sanctions.
Chapter 5: How does the U.S. dollar's status as a reserve currency affect global finance?
But eventually you kick so many out of that payment network, that financial system, and they go find a new one. And China is setting up a parallel system through Hong Kong that's being settled in gold. And they've now set up swap lines with 32 countries, almost every country except the United States.
And so now all of these countries can do business with themselves using the RMB, being settled in gold in real time, and they don't have to use the dollar network. And so this is happening, and it's happening very, very quickly. And the more that we weaponize the dollar and the more that we slap sanctions, the more it drives people to that network. And so what happens is this has diminishing
returns. And so while I certainly would love to help the people in Iran and I would love to see the United States somehow change this.
Chapter 6: What role does Elon Musk play in addressing Iran's internet blackout?
You said it needs an outside power to affect this. The problem is, is that it's accelerating the demise of the dollar.
Very good point, because behind closed doors, this is getting people to say, well, I want to independently do it. So let me lean on China to help me out with this. If that ends up actually happening, you know who behind closed doors is celebrating right now? with Iran getting hit left and right, and they're hoping Iran doesn't have a revolution?
You know what's the one country that is hoping Iran doesn't have a revolution, Iranian people don't become free, Iran doesn't become a democracy? Humberto said it in the back, and you know who it is. Saudi Arabia. Saudi is sitting there saying, no, man, let him stay like this.
Chapter 7: What are the potential impacts of a 50% tax on OnlyFans income?
Let the sanctions stay on. Let people not do business. Keep it like this. This is more business for us. Saudi is quietly sitting there saying, please stay chaotic. Please don't get rid of IRGC. There's no other country in the world that is probably quietly supportive of IRGC than Saudi. Quietly. In their own way. Not in a way that they're helping them out. In their own way.
Brandon, you look like you want to say something.
Yeah, no, I do agree with what you're saying with the demise of the dollar, but the renminbi, I've never thought of that as something the rest of the world would rely on. They're not relying on it.
They're not relying on it. It's only used as liquidity, and it's all settled in gold. They're relying on gold. Held in China, though?
it's not they're they're they're settling it and so it's not fully functional yet but it's rapidly accelerating it's all happening through hong kong so the shanghai gold exchange is working or partnering with the hong kong board and so it's all being used only as liquidity but again settled in gold and so we're seeing the reserve currency of the world the u.s treasury has been dropping right
from 60% down to just under 50% in just like the last decade. But we've seen gold now rise to about 30%. It's happening very, very quickly.
And behind closed doors. Isn't it if you, Rob, type up what country has been buying up the most gold the last five years or four years? I think China's at the top.
Well, China doesn't report it all, so we don't really know. But to answer your question, nobody's going to trust Chinese currency. It is not a free, it's not an open capital market. Nobody will trust it. Right. They don't have to. All they're using it is for the liquidity, and then the gold is what's settling it.
Yeah. So you're not saying that China's a threat to be the next reserve currency at all, right? No, gold.
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