How to Thrive in Hyperinflation - January 3, 2026

"How to Thrive in Hyperinflation" - Teia Cafe, Season 2, Episode 5

Host: Ryan Tanaka
Core Thesis: The U.S. economy is heading toward an inevitable hyperinflationary crisis, but there are strategies to not only survive but potentially thrive in the chaos.

• The Inevitable Crisis: Why Hyperinflation is Coming
  • Unsustainable Debt: The U.S. national debt is at historic levels, with annual interest payments now exceeding the military budget.
  • Profligate Spending & War: Continued excessive government spending and new military engagements (e.g., Venezuela) mirror past failed nation-building efforts.
  • Real Estate Bubble: A market crash is imminent, with vacancies rising and prices artificially propped up, threatening a broader economic cascade.
  • AI & Tech Bubble: Stock market and GDP growth are overly reliant on unprofitable, bubble-like sectors like AI.
  • Monetary Policy Failure: The response to every crisis (2008, COVID-19) has been more money printing and debt, a pattern the current administration continues. This "addiction" will lead to hyperinflation as the only apparent "solution."
• The Global Domino Effect
  • As the world's reserve currency, a collapsing U.S. dollar will trigger a global economic crisis.
  • Nations and individuals are already seeking refuge in assets like gold and silver to escape dollar devaluation.
• Potential Strategic Advantages & Survival Tactics
  1. Cryptocurrency's Role:
     • In hyperinflation, crypto may become a necessary haven, as seen in Argentina and Venezuela, despite its current flaws and Wall Street manipulation.
     • A market "cleansing" is coming; projects propped up by cheap debt and speculation will fail, revealing true value and potentially paving the way for crypto's use as a real currency.
     • Caution is needed: Many assets (including some "stablecoins") are dangerously tied to the failing fiat system.
  2. Boost for Exporters:
     • A devalued dollar makes U.S. goods cheaper for foreign buyers.
     • This could revive small online businesses and exporters, though it's a challenge for America's service-heavy economy.
  3. Forced Economic "Un-Sticking":
     • Hyperinflation prioritizes speed, potentially breaking economic stagnation.
     • Wages may finally rise: Employers will be forced to increase pay rapidly to keep pace with living costs, addressing long-term wage stagnation.
     • Oligarchies may break: Industries like real estate, where large players collude to keep prices/rents high, could see this control collapse as the economic reality forces rapid adaptation.
• A Silver Lining? A Shift in Global Power
  • U.S. economic decline could reduce American unilateralism and "imperialism," leading to a more balanced and multipolar world.
  • This may force the U.S. to engage more cooperatively on the global stage.
• Final Takeaway
  • The situation is dire and the path will be extremely difficult. However, by understanding the coming shifts—moving assets into truly independent stores of value, leveraging global trade opportunities, and adapting to a fast-paced economic environment—individuals and business

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hello everyone, this is Ryan from Tea Cafe, season two, episode five, I believe. This one is called How to Thrive in a Hyperinflating Economy, which unfortunately may become a reality very soon. I can list a few reasons why. There's a million of them, but the biggest one is mounting debt in U.S. interest payments. So our payments on interest has just surpassed our military budget. It's almost a trillion a year compared to everything that we put into the military, which is a measly 850 billion. Just the magnitude of that is like kind of hard to wrap your head around, right? And there is no end in sight as far as spending goes. We just launched another war against uh Venezuela, and they're talking about nation building once again. So, you know, think about what happened to Iraq, what happened to Afghanistan, even in recent memory. A lot of these initiatives have not gone over well, right? Uh, to say the least. So economically, it's not looking good. There's also the real estate market crash that's probably going to happen very soon. Um, in the last couple months, the number of home sellers have vastly outnumbered the buyers, potential buyers. You kind of see the aftermath of that pretty obviously. You just look around in many of the U.S. cities right now, lots and lots of vacancies, lots of for rent, for sale signs, and a lot of them are staying empty, but they're very hesitant to lower prices because that would affect the home valuations, and you know, that could cascade into something much, much bigger than what we're facing right now. But you could argue that that has been happening already in the last 10 years or so. It's just that there's all these capital injections that's been going in and basically sort of a subsidy to keep the valuations high. This also affects the tech industry because right now GDP growth and stock growth has been propping up the official numbers. So I believe it's around 40% as far as GDP goes, and like 80% of stock growth came from initiatives like AI, which is still a massively unprofitable industry. Say what you will about the technology itself, but the fact that it's in a bubble is also very obvious, right? So you combine all these things together all at once, it's all happening at the same time. The math doesn't work out. America is basically insolvent right now. The numbers are not reflecting the economic reality of what's happening on the ground, and eventually there's going to be a big correction. But when this happens, there's basically two things that the government can do. One, they can let it crash, but as you know, that has not happened in a long time since 2008. They were bailed out the banks, right, rather than letting it fail. But they bailed out Silicon Valley Bank a few years ago. Um and during COVID, there was a lot of quote, emergency measures taken to stabilize the economy that was pretty much shut down for a good couple years, right? And the weird thing about this whole thing is that it's uh you don't see the after-effects. We haven't seen the after-effects of all of that. Even today, the stock market has kept on going up and up despite shutting down the economy for a couple years, right? Isn't that bizarre? It doesn't really make any sense if you think about it carefully. But the way our uh economy works right now, with all the quantitative easing and basically printing lots and lots and lots of money, has led to that result. And given that uh the Trump administration has shown no signs of backing off on that, he uh Donald Trump himself complains about Jerome Powell not lowering interest rates as much as as much as he would want, right? Because the the higher the interest rates, the harder it is to do these collateralized loans or borrowing. You know, we're just addicted to debt, and the debt is mounting mounting, like no, like this is the biggest error in human history, you know. Like, and I'm not even I'm not even exaggerating it. It really is. Like, so what'll happen, most likely, is that uh since people are not willing to let prices fall in various industries across the sector, it's probab they're probably gonna try to quote solve it by just printing more money, and that's gonna lead to hyperinflation. That's basically the backdrop for what's happening right now as you speak in the American economy. And the fact that uh the US dollar is considered the global reserve is gonna cascade across the globe. Like, nah, because everyone uses the dollar for trade, it's gonna affect everyone, everyone in the world, you know, and so we got to be prepared for that. And so what people are doing now is that they're starting to pull out of the dollar. They're going to gold, silver, you might have heard that in the news, like those things are going up in price because they're trying to escape the uncertainty that comes with a deflated dollar. The dollar itself is already worth 10% less than it was last year and has been declining for quite some time now. And yeah, so you know, there's no sugarcoating this. It's it's a bad situation. So the reason why I'm making this episode is largely because I came to the conclusion that uh this is inevitable. There's really no way out of it, historically speaking, when these sorts of things have happened to other countries, Great Britain, Rome, Portugal, you can go all the way back. It's happened over and over in history that patterns are always the same. When the government accrues too much debt, it goes into an inflationary spiral, and then they gradually lose their position as a global currency, which I think is what's probably going to happen. So, but I don't like making like doom and gloom types of things, you know, without at least some potential upsides that might come out of this, right? So I'm gonna go through a few of them here and uh hopefully come to some strategies or ideas where people can at least mitigate some of the damage and maybe even thrive if they play their cards right. So, in order to do that, we just kind of have to talk about like what actually happens right in this kind of scenarios. Um I've done a bit of research on these things, uh, most of them not very good, you know. It doesn't give you much of a reason to be too optimistic, but it's it's more of a like, okay, can you navigate the chaos that's about to unfold, right? So when a currency hyperinflates, it's like those things you've seen maybe in history books or in the news where every day the price of things change, right? Like stories of like people hauling mountains of cash in wheelbarrows just to pay for groceries or um situations where you go to a restaurant, you order food, and uh when you come back the next day, the price has actually gone up. You know, it's insanity. When uh currency inflates that much, it becomes almost impossible for people to like figure out what anything is worth. And in that situation, uh things have a tendency to go kind of haywire, but it's not completely unmanageable in this day and age where a lot of the money or the transactions happen happen online or is global, there are ways to kind of mitigate a lot of the um worse parts of these sorts of crisis, just because we have much broader access to other currencies and other assets abroad. And this is going to be very difficult for Americans, especially, because they've kind of sat on the throne for a very long time, right? Like everyone uses the dollars. Americans are famously disinterested in what's happening in other countries, they don't bother alerting about like how other cultures work, how other countries work, because they're, you know, they think of themselves as self-sufficient. And to some extent, there's some truth in that, but now that things are changing, that's gonna have to change if uh people want to survive, really. So, in a way that that can be one uh one good thing, because like the US government and in this recent war on Venezuela is a good example of that. They have a tendency to do things unilaterally. A lot of people don't like the whole idea of American imperialism, including people back at home. Uh, if things play out the way most people think it will, this will sort of knock it down a few notches and you know make America play nice, right, with with other countries in a ways that uh they haven't done before. Previously, this was a very hard sell because they just didn't have to, right? They had too much power both militarily and economically, so they didn't bother. But now, if things equalize a little bit, it could be a good thing in the long run because it'll balance the world's power in in a way that's probably more healthy in the long run. Right now, China is becoming a pretty big contender for the Chinese Yuan is being a pretty big candidate for the next world currency because uh people right now, especially see them as being more stable. They don't tend to push their military powers abroad, at least not as much as we do. So that's one country to pay attention to because they have been growing very rapidly in the last uh few decades or so, and projected uh they could honestly surpass the US in 10, 20 years if things go as they are. America's gonna really have to turn itself around if they really want to stay the world's number one superpower. But again, maybe maybe the better thing is for not there not to be a number one, right? More more equal, more balanced. But that's a whole different conversation altogether. So I just want to focus on you know more of the economic side and specifically how it relates to crypto, because that's sort of the theme of this uh podcast to begin with. So the thing about crypto is that it's this thing that emerged in the last couple of years, last couple decades rather, that has kind of taken everyone by surprise. In theory, in theory, when it's done in the way like Satoshi or you know uh crypto advocates tend to argue, it is a neutral entity that no single nation or organization can control, right? There's lots and lots and lots of coins out there that do not do that, it's pretty much run in a centralized way by some startup or a bank or whoever, right? But in theory, it is a neutral form of asset that cannot be controlled by one entity. And as much of a critic I am about Bitcoin, it can serve that function, even if it doesn't really do much other than being a store of value right now. So there is a reason to think that crypto assets will become more popular in the next five to ten years just because it is not the dollar, you know. So I have mixed feelings about like how Ethereum and Bitcoin are gonna do because I feel like they kind of lean too much into the scarcity motto. Um, the scarcity motto is not really great as a payment system, as we found out. And as as we're looking at right now, the price of it hasn't really been maintaining. Uh, the idea that Bitcoin was supposed to be a hedge against economic uncertainty is not really panning out the way a lot of people wanted it to, and a lot of it has to do with that. I I have other episodes where I talk about that specifically, but that's the gist of it. So one way to protect yourself during hyperinflation is to move a lot of your money to crypto. And if you look at other countries like Argentina, even Venezuela, uh, Nigeria was one of them as well. There's a few places where they have experienced that sort of economic collapse where crypto adoption shot up like crazy just because they had no other choice. Some of them bought gold and silver, as you know, places typically do, but a lot of them actually went into crypto. Not because they wanted to, but because they were forced to, basically. So imagine that happening on the scale of the Western world, right? Interesting thing enough, uh, Japan, Japan, where their uh currency tends to be very, very stable, inflation has been very low for the last 20-30 years. It's kind of almost mind-boggling how low it's been. Uh, even my dad said, uh, yeah, like he's been there since the 80s and 90s, and the prices there haven't changed like at all, almost. Uh keeping that in mind, the current the crypto abduct adoption in places like Japan is very, very, very low. And a lot of it has to do with the fact that oh, they might not really see the need for it. To them, Bitcoin is just like this slow, expensive, clunky thing, and they don't have the same type of economic or political uh unrest that we we're experiencing right now in the states. That's kind of besides the point in a lot of ways, because we're really talking about the dollar here, and if we are really entering this era of hyperinflation, crypto assets could really, really um make a mark there. And I'm not even I'm not even trying to show anything in particular, but it's just the reality of things, and despite uh a lot of crypto coins not really being it's not perfect, right? There are lots of problems with it, people get scammed all the time. A lot of the foundations and the projects are not really working in good faith, but it may win out in the end just because it's a lesser of evils when things start to go nuts, right? If uh things really get to the point where people don't know what anything is worth anymore, they might have no choice but to use crypto. Now, the other part of this is that in the last couple years, a lot of the bankers and Wall Street they really tried to put a leash on the whole crypto thing. They were strongly against it when it first launched because it was a threat to their system, right? A lot of the Bitcoiners back in the day used to openly say, bring down the banks, get Bitcoin. Take down the banks. They don't say that anymore because a lot of that money has flowed into the ecosystem and sort of muddled the intention of all the OGs that wanted to really uh replace really their goal was to replace the banking system entirely. After all this money started going in and the prices started going up, people sort of lost their appetite for that, and it became this weird, you know, almost like hypocritical movement. But uh yeah, you know, that's all there is to say to that. But the thing is now the crypto industry is very, very convoluted, and it's hard to tell what's going on inside of it anymore because a lot of the price action has been fueled by Wall Street ETFs, crypto funds like MicroStrategy, uh crypto exchanges have been, I wouldn't say manipulating the price, but because they control all the wallets that they manage, uh, you know, they're gonna put in their own agendas inside of it, and a lot of that is tied to the dollar. Now, when the dollar goes into turmoil and people go into panic, a lot of that money is going to pool out, and we've already seen some signs of that happening over the last year or so, and the price action of crypto hasn't really been great because when you have like fiat money mixed in with this stuff, they have obligations towards their you know, say like for a crypto fund, they have obligations to the people that invested in them, right? Good or bad. If they have to pay them back, they have to pay them back, they can't just ignore that, right? So if they have uh obligations they need to pay and they're not solvent, they're gonna be forced to sell the asset and the prices will likely go down as a result. When we see like MarcoStrategy, especially, like they are deeply, deeply in uh I wouldn't say debt, but they are losing their income very quickly because if Bitcoin doesn't appreciate at least 20% a year, they are in the red. And we've seen that not materialize in the last couple years, so they're running out of money, and when they become insolvent, they're gonna be forced to liquidate everything, and then that's gonna go away. Like a lot of that's gonna go away. The crypto projects that did not get involved with any of that will stay flat or even go up because that's not their problem, right? So we're gonna see how to what extent how much of that has been going on, and when the market corrects itself, it's gonna get cleaned out, and we're gonna see finally for the first time in a very, very long time, what the true value is of each project. And I do think a lot of projects are not gonna make it out alive because they were either propped up by VC money or investments, Wall Street, all this uh capital that came in due to like low interest loans is gonna start to run out. So after all that, like after all that happens, then people might start using crypto as a real currency, at least for for a while. We're gonna see how the things play out in long term, but there might be a point where uh crypto assets might actually become stable. Even stable coins, stable coins might become an ironic phrase because if it's tied, if it's pegged to the dollar and the dollar is not stable, it's gonna spin out of control, just like everything else, right? So, how these places uh decide to allocate their resources and if they can become solvent, that'll be interesting to watch because if they're over-reliant on uh US bonds and treasuries or whatever they have, right? If it's tied too closely to the fiat itself, they could lead to pretty big problems. There are some crypto projects out there that attempt to remain stable without the exposure to those types of things, but but we'll see. Okay, so the next potential upside is with a devalued dollar, this can work to the advantage of exporters because when the currency hyperinflates, it lowers the cost on people outside of that currency itself, right? So if you're doing global trade, for example, exports, you're likely to see exports improve because uh it becomes cheaper for people to buy. And so a lot of the uh businesses that are going to survive, I think, is they're gonna be leveraging that quite a bit, especially in the near future, because that's if it becomes cheaper, that could actually be a boon to their business. But assuming that people want to actually buy things, right? That's another challenge for America because we've kind of lost a lot of our manufacturing sides of things where it become a service-based industry, right? And services are not goods, so you can't really export it in a way that you can with physical goods, right? There are ways to export services, assuming that you have something to offer. Um but in the in an economy where everyone just kind of is looking inwards, uh, that's gonna be a pretty big challenge. It's gonna be a big shift, you know, say the least. So, but if you are exporting goods, and that I would say, even for small businesses these days, that's pretty much the norm now, right? A lot of uh online businesses, even if they sell physical products locally, they do have some aspect of being online, and a lot of their customers come from abroad. So in the long run, it could actually be a pretty interesting revival of businesses, especially small businesses where they are reliant on overseas purchases, right, to survive. So it's gonna be very difficult, like I said. I'm saying, like, oh, these are the good things, but you know, it's not without its challenges. But it is possible that that's kind of the point. Okay, and one last point I wanted to talk about is the hyperinflationary economy itself, and this is sort of like a weird, not very common point that people talk about, but there are some advantages for a hyper-inflationary economy because it prioritizes speed over stability. So, what I mean by that is that let's say uh the inflation rate is like a thousand percent. This forces employers to adjust their prices very, very quickly. And at the same time, they also have to adjust their wages to meet like uh that the currency needs to move in parallel, right? So that means you could potentially get paid more because they'd be forced to raise wages, even if they don't want to, just to keep up with the times, right? So a lot of the big problems that have been happening economically, at least in the US, is that a lot of the wages have stayed stagnant. Like businesses are typically resistant to raising prices or raising wages because you know that's usually a loss of capital, right? Loss of income. But in the situation where everything is just spiraling and inflating out of control, there might be some opportunities for some of the uh more competitive businesses to get ahead. Because if you think about it, if you don't adapt, right? If you don't adapt fast enough, if you don't raise people's incomes as fast as things are costing, you're probably not gonna get anyone applying to your job to begin with, right? If you just like, oh, we're gonna raise prices, but we're not gonna increase pay. Uh no one will come higher. You can get away with it to some extent if it's not moving too fast, but if it's moving very fast, the that gap is gonna be too noticeable and it's just not gonna be competitive anymore, right? So the hyperinflation thing might actually get a lot of things unstuck in the economy. Because when you're living in an economy that's mostly a monopoly or oligarchy, uh they can kind of conspire to keep prices as is, right? A lot of that has been going on, especially in real estate, because many of the real estate prices have been controlled by a few companies, and they have an agreement between each other not to let things go out of control. So, what I mean by that is that when people rent out a piece of property from a bank, there's often a agreement between them not to lower rents because they don't want the valuations of going it going down. They're kind of trying to protect their asset prices, right? And so that creates kind of a perverse incentive to just kind of keep the market static, and it makes it very difficult for landlords to lower rents, even if they wanted to. So there's all these things that are keeping things as is, right? Keeping the status quo alive that might get unstuck if the economy goes into hyperinflation. So it's still kind of a scary thought, but at the same time, it's like, well, something's gotta give, right? Something there's no way that none of this can be sustainable. So maybe this is the only way, yeah. So that those are the things. Like I said, none of this is gonna be easy. Even the good sides are gonna be full of obstacles and challenges. But if you keep your eyes focused on the right things, there might be a way out of it. And that's kind of this uh episode in a nutshell. So if you have any other ideas or you know, things to look towards in the future, I would like to hear them. But yeah, uh, this will be an ongoing thing, and I'll probably be talking about it again, especially as things go on. So alright, so thanks a lot for listening and see you in the next one. Take care.