All right, we're here in Miami Beach with I'm such a fan, Jeff
Booth, the author of Price of Tomorrow and GP at Ego Death
Capital. Thank you so much for joining
me, Jeff. No pro.
I really, really appreciate it. Great to be here and like what a
beautiful Swatch. Well, thanks for coming.
And I, I've, I've been enjoying our conversations so much.
Every single time you absolutely blow my mind.
I think what I've been going through recently and just kind
of like my Bitcoin journey is the idea of inflation and how
much it's like ruin society. And I, I guess my first question
to you is what a lot of people look up on YouTube is how much
Bitcoin do you truly need to retire?
I, I don't think very much it, it depends on how long you can
hold it, but I, I, I think it's and I don't want this to be
click baity, so please don't put this in the title, but I think
it'll have infinite purchasing power eventually and I can walk
through why if you'd like. Absolutely.
OK. So if you if you said the the
current all assets in the world currently equal about $900
trillion underneath those assets is about $600 trillion of debt.
And if you include all of the liabilities and I'm unfunded
liabilities and but 600 trillion and so if that debt went
insolvent, all of those assets are worthless, right, Because
everything would collapse. So people are measuring their
assets within a system that that debt is already insolvent and
they're pretending that debt is solvent, that debt requires more
and more manipulation of money forever, exponentially more
manipulation of money so that the assets don't collapse and
everything within that system doesn't collapse.
So we're at the almost end of days.
It could go on a bunch longer, but that system is getting more
and more centralized, more and more controlled.
And because it has to, we'll go into that afterwards.
But every single asset. So instead of thinking 900
trillion of assets, think my house within that, this building
within that, or if that debt weren't insolvent, this place
would be worth nothing like nothing, right?
So there would be complete chaos.
And, and So what does that say to you?
It says it won't go insolvent in that way because you wouldn't
let it if a government allowed the debt to completely collapse
and everything to collapse and it to be anarchy in that in that
way every last man for himself. You would before that happened
vote for more centralization and control.
You wouldn't let the bank fail. So when I say it's going to
collapse to 0, it won't collapse to zero and instead there will
be liquidation, more and more manipulation of money.
So from bitcoins perspective, if you just said you have an open
decentralized, secure protocol bounded by energy and and that's
my kind of five criteria on what the on what this is.
So that system bounded by energy, as long as it stays
decentralized and secure. The only thing that would change
this is if somehow Bitcoin broke and wasn't decentralized and
secure, but that system bounded by energy will reprice all $900
trillion of assets. All it's not, it's not.
Bitcoin isn't within the system. It's outside the system bounded
by energy. There's a really important
differentiation. You know this.
Many Bitcoiners know this, but many Bitcoiners know it.
And at the same time, they're pricing it as an asset within
the system. OK, so it's outside if you hold
it in self custody, if it stays decentralized and secure,
founded by energy, it will. It is repricing that entire
system over time. So what does that mean?
So you take that 900 trillion up today of purchasing power, not
900 trillion of paper money of purchasing power and you divide
it by 21 million and or if you said that, how many lost coins?
You divide it by a smaller number, but let's say that
number equals 43,000,000, approximately 43 million of
purchasing power in today's currency of Bitcoin.
But what would happen from that system?
From that system, you're living in the first global free market
that has ever existed. And from that system, prices
fall every year. Prices as we automate, as AI
moves faster and faster, as AI merges with robotics, as the
free market adds more people to the free market and those ideas
compete to provide us value, prices fall forever ever
relative to that 43,000,000, so that 43,000,000 gains more and
more value forever. So if you had a small percentage
of a Bitcoin into in time, that would be enough to live forever.
And it's just all we're talking about is the timing of when that
happens rather than does that happen so.
I think, and you know this, I appreciate our conversation so
much, Jeff, because I think you Take Me Out of that perspective.
I mean, it's very difficult. You're the one that actually
told me this. It's very difficult to imagine
that system within the existing. System.
It's impossible. Yeah.
It isn't in the system. In other words, we have no, You
have to use first principles and then ask what will happen will
be because of that, What will happen because of that?
What will happen because of that?
Because all of our. When I think about this, I think
about all of our mental lattice, all of our books, every single
other thing we've ever written is within the system.
We've always lived in a control system.
It's never been a global free market.
We've we've always Co opted money.
When people say gold is actually the store of value, it hasn't.
It's failed many times. It gets repriced, it gets
centralized. If gold was actually the price
that the free market says it is, it should be about $80,000 an
ounce. So it's suppressed through
derivative instruments. It's suppressed.
Nobody knows how much gold each central bank has.
And you have a you have a paper currency on top that gold isn't
audited every 10 minutes. So we pretend it acted like a
store of value because of that could get better store of value
than others. But we don't have a mental model
for what a real store of value or not a store value, a real
network protocol bounded by energy looks like because all of
the stuff is in our mind is in this other system.
What's? Stopping Bitcoin from not
falling in the footsteps of gold in terms of it potentially being
captured. And I'll give a little bit of
context. You know, we have 3% of the
supply apparently owned by MicroStrategy.
The vast majority of their ET of the ETF's are custodying their
Bitcoin with Coinbase. It's a tremendous amount of
trust, right? And just one institution really
that's custodying the Bitcoin for all these institutions, all
the, you know, these public companies as well.
Isn't that exactly what happened to Gold?
Is it really is a exactly and and it's a really good question
because of that and because of that it it should break your
mind out of the trap that it's in.
It won't for all Bitcoiners. So but it will for some and over
time. But I put a bar at least for me
in Bitcoin when I even though I keep saying over and over and
over again, if it stays decentralized and secure, that's
my caveat to Bitcoin repricing the entire system.
What would not make it stay decentralized and secure?
Exact. One of the things is exactly
what you talk about. If in over 5000 years in history
we've always centralized and we've always believed that
inflation is natural and deflation is unnatural, then
it's not Bitcoin, it's us that centralizes.
It's is it human? Nature, it's human nature, it's
creed, fear. And when we and and fear, in
fact, a lot of control mechanisms are created by
creating fear in us that then we usurp or we give our control, we
give our time away through fear because somebody else will
protect us, right? And so that's an age-old trick.
It's how false flags work. It's how so to be able to create
to create that that fear. If I knew everything about
Bitcoin and I couldn't stop it every other way, I did social
attacks, I did climates, it's bad for the climate.
I did all of these things. If I couldn't stop it, what I
would do is I would try to Co opt it.
If I knew everything that I knew and I was an adversary, I would
try to Co opt it. I would say I'm so for this,
we're going to regulate it to make sure that that our country
wins on it. And I would get people to trust
my centralized one because it was safe, right?
That sounds very familiar. Jeff, so, so all of the actions
that we see here. And then what would what would
those people be doing what those people would be doing over time
that many of the Bitcoiners today would make so much money
in that centralized system. They wouldn't be bitcoiners
anymore, right? They would be trading their I've
won, I'm there. They would move over this.
They would be moving out of self custody in.
To the system. Trading the system to trade
their Bitcoin for a piece of paper.
And they would. And the Bitcoin would be
centralizing, as a matter of fact.
And it would be, it would seem so normal because they were
pricing from a Fiat system from and that's Fiat system had to
drive inflation. So it had to centralized at a
faster and faster rate, but because they would think they
were getting rich within that system, it would Co opt them
into that system. And I think many, many
bitcoiners are going to do that along the way and they're going
to sell. They'll do OK everything else
and they won't be bitcoiners. The question is how many more
join and understand what Bitcoin really is for humanity.
Yeah, how many people keep going because most of those people
that do that don't run nodes. They're deferring their judgment
to somebody else. And the people that run nodes
and and more so in time it'll be economic nodes and and how many
and transactions what are those look like on the network?
Those are the gatekeepers to Bitcoin.
So now let's just keep playing this this over.
And This is why I talk about this all the time because the
two systems are incompatible. If you're measuring from this
Fiat system that they it price go up, you are part of the
centralization. I can't say that any other way.
It is a first principle. You are part of centralization
right as you really come to understand Bitcoin and you
become an ode. You become someone at the gate
defending that sovereign sovereign.
You become nobody tells me what to what to do.
You realize that you're one of the people that is protecting
all of humanity, moving into a system of hope, truth, and
abundance. Most people don't know that.
Mostly some will know. Some are going to get killed on
the way through or destroyed on the way through.
But you're moving your time into a system that's that's a
competitive cooperative global system.
So it's still competitive. Free market is massively
competitive. You have to provide value to
somebody else on their terms to get paid.
But everybody wins by that. And the more people in it, more
people win because it's what I'm saying is so unclear to most
people, right? They're still measuring Bitcoin
by the other system. They're measuring prices in the
other system. They're giving more control.
Everything they're doing is feeding a narrative left or
right and, and well, well, everything in that is sucking
out more of their, their power and energy and energy and time
and time, but they don't know it.
So they're like, that's going to continue to happen.
But as long as Bitcoin stays decentralized and secure, in
other words, those nodes don't accept the control system.
What would happen when that control system says we're
changing? It has to be the Fiat Bitcoin.
It would look like B cash on steroids, right?
It would look like 2017 on steroids and in the first little
bit there would be a lot of people and threats of you have
to convert, right. But as long as those nodes and
people and all over the world and if you think about game
theory here, yeah, I doubt, I doubt that that system, so that
that would be hyper bitcoinization, that system
trying to attack or trying to attack Bitcoin.
I suspect that system would then be liquidated.
It reveals the man behind the curtain in a way, right.
And in a way, it reveals the fact that despite governments
having a monopoly on violence, their attempts become futile if
Bitcoin remains decentralized. Now when I was preparing the
questions for this interview and just when you're talking to me,
it seems like, Jeff, what you're describing is that there
inevitably is going to be some type of clash between the
previous system, the existing system, the controlling system
and the system that we all want, which is Bitcoin.
And and when you say we all want, I don't know if so, I
don't know if people have thought that many steps ahead,
right? And so I know you want it.
I know I want it. And we're public figures and I
know tons of other people, most of the people running nodes, I
know what they want and they're not going to.
But if you asked most people on the street, they think so.
Think bitcoins a scam. Well, they're worried about the
left and the. Right, there were and and they
don't understand. And the first step into Bitcoin,
it is normally the price go up, right?
I'm making more money, right? And and so it's how many people
I just think about this as a giant funnel with 8 billion
people on the planet. And, and as you go deeper and
deeper into Bitcoin, you never go back up because what?
Because going going back to the other system after you really
understand this one, it actually doesn't say anything about
Bitcoin. Says.
Something about you says something about you.
But we also know throughout history, people cheat people.
And when I say cheat, I'm talking about from a game
theoretical perspective. People will do what they need to
do for their family, for their money.
And they will say, say, I have enough.
I I can escape. But there is no escape from a
centralizing system. So do what you'd ask there.
That clash, it's inevitable. And that clash has been going on
over and over and over since Bitcoin was discovered or
invented. It's that there's been a
centralized system. A control system cannot allow
Bitcoin. Yeah, can't, because they're two
different systems. You almost have to say it 1000
times to yourself. The natural state of the free
market is deflation. Yeah, Which means you've never
lived in one. No.
Unless you've been denominating your net worth in Bitcoin, you
have been experiencing you. You're living on one, yes,
you're you're living in the first global free market that
has ever existed. And as more and more people on
this network, as more and more people build to it and move
their time to it, we are both the map and the territory, it
starts to expand and you start to see a totally different
experience than most people over here measuring their control
system. See.
And you look at them and you think for me too, for a long
time I was, am I the crazy one? Then I go back and 10 years ago,
I didn't really know this much about Bitcoin.
And so I was in that system thinking I was in a normal
system. And so it just, it takes, it
takes a while to really understand that.
Absolutely. I think it takes.
I think you got to pay your dues, you got to stick around a
couple cycles. You've got to endure the
volatility. You got to earn your stripes to
have your Bitcoin in self custody, to have many heart
attacks when your hardware wallet breaks and you got to
recover the seed phrase, you know, set up a multi sig on your
own and you know, pay your dues as a bitcoiner.
And then you understand the sovereignty that it gives you.
And then you imagine the world where I know it's cliche, but
I'm going to use the reference anyway.
You understand how many people are still in the matrix.
And my next question to you is the phenomenon of inflation
being treated as if it's part of nature, the way that politicians
talk about it, like the excuses, the war in Ukraine, you know,
it's the it's a trade war. It's this.
They blame everything and anything but themselves and
people buy into it. And, and my whole view of
politics has completely changed because the way that I'm, I'm
seeing it now as a Bitcoiner is modern politics is essentially A
popularity contest and the winner essentially controls the
money printer for their, their side, right?
That's what it looks like from my angle.
So my question to you is like, when is this psyop end?
Like so many people believe that inflation is, is just a fact of
life, like goods go up over time.
Naturally, they don't even question it.
Yeah. And so where does that come from
and where does that psyop end? And if it's been part of our
history for 5000 year and people believe it and that's why I said
they have to ask or they have to say the natural state of the
free market is deflation 1000 times.
And they have to keep saying it. Because when I, when I say that,
I didn't say from zero inflation, somehow politicians
and economists get productivity growth mixed up with growth.
Productivity growth has faster deflation.
And so people talk about this AI, that as we create more AI,
we're going to be able to pay back the debt.
It's so insane. Now, as we create more AI, you
have faster deflation, which causes the debt to default,
which means you have to create more monetary units, which is
exactly what I laid out in my book.
Yeah, So natural rate of deflation from a free market
should be over 5% right now. Yeah.
Meaning every human being on Earth would get richer by 5% a
year. Every single year, every single
every single human being in Africa, in South America, every
single human being on Earth would get.
Rich by but, but the implications of that are very
serious, because if they're not getting richer by 5% every
single year, who is getting richer or?
So, so the point, that's the point that all centralizes and
the and the puppeteers behind. Now it's easy to say it's those
people. If you had a centralizing force
like that, you were at the top of that.
You'd spend all your time trying to retain power in that and
manipulating time. And but it's more why I try to
keep saying there is no they, because what gives rise to that
is US. It's, it's not them, it's us
Believing that that is, is normal If you just keep start
with the natural state of the free market is deflation.
You have to ask, where does inflation come from?
And I'm not talking about inflation from zero.
I'm talking from the inflation from -5 or -10 or whatever the
productivity rate is in the world.
Where does inflation come from? It only comes from one thing,
manipulation of money. Yeah, only.
And I don't think many people have gone to many Bitcoiners
have gone down that path. Very few people have really gone
to the bottom of what does that mean?
What does it mean for me if I'm measuring in that system because
I'm contributing to that system. Yep.
And then the more I do in that system, and the more I think
it's somebody else turn the mirror around, the more it's me.
Yeah, right. The more focus and attention
you're putting towards it, would it be safe to say?
And one of the things that I see is it, and it's fascinating to
me again from a Bitcoiners perspective, the opposing
parties, essentially the politicians blaming the opposing
side for rising prices, which is hilarious to me.
And my question to you is, do governments fear?
Falling prices themselves because it's like people are
like seeking the solution from the wolf, right?
Instead of just saying government, you know, because
Bitcoin is that people are trapped in a jail cell, right?
Screaming at their, and I've said this many times, screaming
at their captor while the jail cell is open because you have an
open monetary, you have an open protocol.
So they just would walk over any single person on the planet.
So when we talk about would politicians see this or would
this person see this? Or would we just have to say,
would you, right? Would, would every person see
this? And I would venture to say a lot
of Bitcoiners right now who call themselves Bitcoiners still
don't know, right? And still they, they would fall
for these traps, those people, those people, those people.
And they would give that more energy because they're still
measuring in a Fiat currency. They're still measuring and
price go up. Yeah, right.
They're still centralizing. They're essentially moving from
self cast city to non self cast city to trade a derivative
instrument. In other words, they're
increasing their risk to move to the centralized system.
Yeah. And so, so if if many bitcoiners
are still doing this, and of course, politicians, of course,
other people who don't know this yet are doing it.
And This is why the system change is so chaotic and so hard
because it's actually not the. It's us.
It's our cognitive dissonance of where we're going to spend our
time. And that's happening to 8
billion people on the planet. And it's going to take time.
Yeah. And a lot of people are going to
fight this. So what would you expect to
happen from the from the, from this if you've always lived in a
system of theft? Always.
And that system had to centralized more and more
because it's based on stealing that productivity that should
flow to all humans and centralizing it up.
Then you have to ask who would win back from such a system?
And if you're giving more power to that system and complaining
about the people who are winning from that system, maybe it's not
them, it's you. The power comes OK Power comes
from us. The power comes from people
choosing to participate in that said system with their voice,
their time and their money. If we all, as I hate to use the
word collective but as a whole, decide to opt out and just to
participate in the alternative system, it takes power away.
From that system, they're incompatible together.
OK, one has to so this so all the centralization.
So when people say I'm not going to do this because I'm worried
about what the government will do later, they're feeding their
worst fear. They're they're in a 0 sum game,
getting worse and worse and worse and their fear is stopping
them from moving to self sovereign.
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What is the role of government in a world on a Bitcoin
standard? It gets smaller and smaller and
smaller and smaller as more of the productivity units move to
the population for forever. Now, why this is a hard thing to
understand is, is this change? All of these changes don't
happen. One day we're on one system, one
day we're in another and everything resolves itself.
It's constant resolving. But if you just ask yourself or
most Bitcoiners that have gone deep down in the rabbit hole, if
you ask them what does their life look like today versus what
it looked like before, they would all generally say when
they get to that point, what a beautiful and credible
relationships, everything their life is getting better and
better and better. And I think this is also what
creates some inside that those Bitcoiners pushing harder and
harder on their friends to try to get them to understand and
sometimes pushing their friends away because it's it's so
incompatible. The ideas are so incompatible
because they want to help their friends and feel what they feel.
And then as they feel like, they just move to a different, lot of
times, a different group of friends.
And through that, that system and how chaotic that's going to
be on it. Like if you just asked what
would it look like? Many of these people will try to
cheat the system because they don't have any record
recognition that. So if you think of it, FTX, if
you think of all of these things, if you think of it,
Ethereum, if Vitalik just bought Bitcoin instead of he was an
early Bitcoiner. Yeah, he would own more Bitcoin
than the other. So all of the people who've
tried to cheat Bitcoin would have been better if they just
held bitcoins if you look at Coinbase.
Oh my. Well, Coinbase versus micro
strategy, that's, that's a tragedy.
It's a tragedy, but it's a perfect representation of
somebody trying to cheat a free market and all of the song and
dance So. So again, as this happens, why
do we care if you don't have to? If you move into the cooperative
competitive system, you're protected from all of that.
And you know, logs of human nature is going to try to cheat
this system. You know those the human nature
is going to get ruined by by trusting the centralized system.
And you know for sure these systems are incompatible
together. So how would it play out?
So you asked about the government and what the
government will get smaller and smaller.
How will the government get smaller and smaller?
Because because there's always been a global competition for
labor and capital. Where will the best capital B,
It'll be in Bitcoin. Where will the best talent be?
That'll be in Bitcoin. And in this this I'm talking
about Bitcoin, the protocol and all of the people building in
the free market, the protocol and governments are going to
want to track that capital and, and, and talent.
So they're going to offer policies to get more on side
with attracting that. And then other governments are
going to offer more competitive policies to to try to attract.
And what will that mean? It'll mean the centralized
system, how bloated their governments are, have to come
back in line. And it'll be a global
competition that'll keep on going forever.
And that that. So it won't look like a light
switch one day, this one day, it's going to be messy.
It's going to be messy and chaotic the whole way through.
And I think it is with certain political ideologies today that
are very popular do what you're describing essentially a pure
free market. Some ideologies are really
believe in that the idea of of equality via wealth or
distribution. And this is very popular in
modern day politics. Bitcoin essentially kind of
makes that very difficult, does it not?
It makes it impossible. So the only thing at least I'm
willing to debate to anybody on this on how they're from a first
principle, the how their policy couldn't possibly work.
If the rise of inequality is from printing money, which is
theft from the free market, how could you fix inequality with
more theft? I would venture to say anybody
listening to your podcast that's not a Bitcoiner yet I asked this
question to many people and say pick your problem you care about
most in the world, right, Whatever that is and it's taking
all your time and attention and tell me how that problem is
solved by arbitrarily creating more monetary Unix, just more
pieces of paper. Can that problem be solved?
And when people are honest with themselves, I realize that
problem gets worse. And then they start to see all
of the, their imagined problems in the world, world are getting
worse. If they go back ten years or 20
years and all of these things, all these things they care about
are getting worse and worse and worse.
And so, OK, why are they getting worse?
Because we're printing more money.
So we're going to print more money and that's going to get
better, right? So because you're, you're
arbitrarily favoring the assets because the assets aren't are
holding value better. And then those assets are taxed
higher and higher and higher. So government gets bigger, more
and more policy, more and more manipulating the free market to
redistribute the same problem you caused in the 1st place.
Yeah. Now let's compare that to
Bitcoin, or let's compare that to the first global free market
that ever existed. What that means is you have to
create value in somebody else's terms to get to to, to be paid.
It's a crazy competitive process because you're competing with
every person on the planet to create value for somebody else.
The output of that is because all of those ideas come from our
minds to create this value as human beings through the free
market. We are abundance creating
machines out of scarcity because anything that's scarce has a
higher margin. Yeah, which attracts more
entrepreneurs and different ideas to attack that scarcity.
And that process has to be deflation because we only use
the things that provide us more value.
We are part of that. So in other words, in the free,
in the free market, there's no coercion, there's no force,
there's nothing. You're choosing when and how
and, and what is a value to you. You'll trade with somebody you
don't like because they provide more value.
You don't need a middle person. You don't need a middle person
to tell you you can't trade with that person, right?
You'll trade with whoever you want to drive more value, and
that force is unstoppable anyways.
It doesn't matter. Bitcoin is imposing that because
I see centralized, secure, bounded by energy, protocol,
bounded by energy. It's imposing that force.
It doesn't actually matter that I care that it's imposing that
force. It's imposing that force in the
world today. But I would ask people who don't
even know what I just said there, why would you want to
stop that? Yeah, why would you want to
human nature? Yeah, exactly.
Why would? Who is?
Human, I would say human nature. I would say human nature and the
lack of education and also I work in media narratives are
extremely. Powerful.
And maybe we just need better narratives.
Or maybe we just need to repeat these narratives over and over
and over again. Because if you repeat, the
natural state of the free market is deflation.
And unless you can disprove that, it means you live in a
control system. Yeah.
Every single human lives in a control system.
And their argument to bear on capitalism or Marxism or
totalitarianism or socialism, all of those are a different
version of a control system that ultimately relies on my guys
better than your guy. Yeah, right.
Yeah. Fights forever, wars forever.
Bitcoin is basically like there. It cuts through all of it.
There is no guy. There is no guy.
So what would you say to people that they see the US government
announcing A strategic Bitcoin reserve, they see BlackRock,
they see micro strategy, they see the price of Bitcoin, you
know, roughly in the 80 to 100 KA 120K region.
And you know, they believe like I make 50 KA year.
I've missed this train. I've missed this opportunity to
look at this. What's the latest thing now?
I think it's mean coins, right? Look at this.
Trump. Coin.
Yeah, exactly right. Look at this Trump coin.
Like I could buy more Trump coin than I caught than I can
Bitcoin. So, you know, are people still
late? Are people still late to
Bitcoin? Are people late to Bitcoin?
We started this podcast with it. It's going to have an Infinity
value. As it does, a lot of those
bitcoiners trading in Bitcoin will trade their Bitcoin for
services that provide them value, and it'll expand around
the world. And more and more and more and
more, we are so early on this path.
Is there a perception we're late?
There's a perception we're late. It's just perception.
And what that's saying is we're so early on this path that this
is going to be, it's going to just be chaotic.
It's going to be really chaotic. And most people and many people
won't know how early and maybe maybe they'll be the same.
When I thought I was late, right in 2017, because my technology
team told me in 2011 and I dismissed it.
When I first was in, too, I thought I was late.
And when you look around at the world and you realize, wait,
there's not 8 billion people talking about this yet, right?
We're talking about what what this is.
We are so crazy early. But will most people know that?
No, most people won't know that. It's really interesting that you
brought up when you got in, because I got in roughly the
same time, 2016, 2016, 2017 era. And I remember I knew people
that got in at $50.00 or $100 and $200 and I was like, you
mean like bitcoins at 1000 bucks or bitcoins at 3000.
You know, like the hell no. Like this is insanity.
And now, you know, sitting at these upper bounds and, you
know, crosses 6 figures for a little bit, you're just like
what? Was I thinking why shouldn't I
back up I. Shouldn't I shouldn't like took
it out loads or like anything possible, right?
So yeah, I completely agree. And it's really interesting
because you talk to the OGOGS, right?
Like the people that were buying it at a dollar or two dollars
and they say the exact same thing because they met someone
that bought it at like. $0.50 Yeah.
Yeah, $0.10, you know, so it's just interesting the the the
relative this out. I want to hear your story in
terms of you, the process of you getting orange pelt, right, very
successful entrepreneur, built companies, managed teams.
Why did you feel like you had the necessity to see something
like Bitcoin? What interested you in it?
I believe that we're all, a lot of times you'll hear something
many times and then somebody else say so or you'll see
something different and then you'll, and that was your idea
the whole time. So I can't tell you because even
if I go back to 2011, my technology team, which was
unreal and I trusted them and everything, why didn't I trust
them here? And then you'd hear about this
again, then you'd hear about it again.
And so in 2017 and I didn't, it wasn't a big bet.
I just I thought, OK, I'm going to just I'm going to play with
this, I'm going to put some in. But it wasn't really until
really in 2019, two thousand and eighteen, 2019, as I was writing
my book and as I was writing my book, breaking down how these
two systems were different, how the technology was going to move
faster and faster and people weren't ready to recognize and
what would the existing system do?
It was really through that process and in, I couldn't
figure out a fix to that because the system, the system we lived
in and most people measured in and I lived in and measured,
couldn't resolve the conflict that I was talking about.
And all the human action from that system would divide us and
it would get worse and worse and worse like we're seeing today.
And so through that process, that's when I really started
driving into Bitcoin purchasing more understanding it, But to
even say at the end of the book, I specifically didn't make it a
Bitcoin book because I wanted to, for myself to, I wanted to
get to the root of the problem 1st.
And so there was only one paragraph about Bitcoin in the
book. And I've said this on multiple
podcasts, but I at that time, even though I was buying a lot
of it, I, I certainly didn't understand Bitcoin like I
understand it now. I assumed it had about a 5%
probability of failure. I understood nodes, I understood
how it worked. But I, some of the questions
that people asked today, why it, why it'll centralized, why it'll
fail, I went through all of the same things.
I would say I perhaps had a for me, when I look at some of the
the arguments against at least some of the nonsense arguments
against it, I almost like that's cute because, because, because I
was once there too. And I spent so much time
attacking this to say my general principle is this if 5000 years,
we've never had a decentralized secure protocol bounded by
energy. And this was this different
enough to withstand the worst in us, the greed, the fear, the
worst in us. Was this different?
Could it resolve that conflict? And at first that why I said 5%
probability of failure is I didn't think so.
I didn't think as all of these attacks came that this could
stay decentralized and secure. And then as I, as I got way
deeper, I realized because of the way the nodes work, because
of the way they, because of the way the free market works, I
actually can move my time into the system.
And if I choose this, it doesn't matter what everybody else, as
long as there's enough people who are choosing this, it's
protected. And then more and more people
would do that they can actually move their.
And so that's what you're seeing.
You're seeing more and more people move their time into this
this network protocol and that that their time is resulting in
a whole bunch of layers of technology in if you said
lightning and fediment and and E cash and Noster and other things
that are being built to protect to essentially expand the free
market while the other word market is centralizing and and
dying. And so we are all knows we are
literally Bitcoin. Yeah.
And the more and more of us that are moving into it, the stronger
it becomes. Stronger it becomes yes, it's a
way of looking at the world, yeah.
And it's a way of of protecting essentially your time and your
wealth, right. But there's also a a spiritual
component, A philosophical component and ideological
component that's baked into it as well.
Yeah, which that phenomenon is really interesting because it's
like, which is money, but it's a lot deeper than that.
So much deeper you've. Said Bitcoin fails if it doesn't
become a medium of exchange. What do you mean by that?
So we, we already talked a little bit about it.
If people are, so if people are centralizing and it's the medium
of exchange is in the Fiat currency, then it has to fail
because they're, they're trusting it like they trusted
gold only and gold failed. So we know for sure that if
nobody's running, no spending in it, if you're spending in the
centralizing currency and that centralizing currency is based
on theft, then you're part of the theft, you're part of that,
you're part of that economic system that has to centralized
further. You might get rich in it, but it
has to centralized further. Whereas if you're spending in
the network protocol, that's not part of that system, you're part
of the first global free market that's ever existed.
Got you. What's really interesting, you
know, is when I hear Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick
continue to essentially say that a Bitcoin is a commodity, I
think on on another podcast, he says it it has to be seen as a
commodity. It can't be seen as money.
And then I start to connect the dots.
The IMF sure did put a lot of of effort into essentially trying
to pressure a sovereign country into reversing the Bitcoin law.
That would essentially make Bitcoin legal tender.
Now, if you look under the hood, it still functions as money.
There's no cat, There's no tax implications if you use Bitcoin
as as money in El Salvador. But they really put a lot of
effort to try to force El Salvador into saying no, no, no
Bitcoin. It can't be a legal tender.
It has to be something else. And I'm just connecting the dots
with what Howard Lutnick is saying is like Bitcoin is a
commodity, Bitcoin is a commodity, and then I'm
connecting the dots with everything that you're saying
there are. Any thoughts on that?
This is something I saw five years ago, that this would have
to play out, that's why. And the people would take
different sides and it's going to be chaotic and we won't know
what side somebody has actually on until they choose and they
out themselves from first principles.
The systems are incompatible together.
So that would make perfect sense that the IMF, which is largely
controlled by the, by the US World Bank and everyone else, if
that was the system that they wanted, or let let's not say
they certain people in, in, in parts of the government or
organization wanted. It would make perfect sense that
this couldn't be a currency. Perfect sense.
And you would do everything possible to slow it down from
being a currency, including Co opting it and making the rails
of your currency easier to transact into it.
Your currency being tether or equivalent or stable coin.
Because what is a stable coin? It's a guaranteed lost coin.
That's all it is. Gains.
It's gains its stability by losing against well.
I have a question for you regarding stable coins, because
I think Bitcoiners had this theory that specifically in
countries that had relatively stable and unstable Fiat
currencies that Bitcoin was going to come in and it was
going to be widely adopted. Seems like stable coins have
been becoming wildly a lot adopted specifically in the
Global South. So why would that be true?
And why would there a couple of things disable?
Quinn gives 10 to 100 times better, better than those
people's currency. Those people have always wanted
US currency because it though is relative to their currency,
doesn't lose money as fast. Yeah, so it still loses money,
but it doesn't lose as fast. And.
And then we talk about perception, right?
We talk about an understanding of a system change.
Of course they're going to move to stablecoins because they have
something that's better than better than this.
And at the same time, five years ago Bitcoin wasn't, it couldn't
really act as a medium of exchange.
It's now being able to be act as a medium of exchange.
So stablecoins had an advantage there and they had a perception
advantage with a lot of the lot of people in third world nations
that wanted the US dollar. Yeah.
So it would be natural that that would that would happen.
The question is, if it's only that, then you have two
different systems. That system is a centralizing
system. It has to extract more and more
and more. A lot of people inside it are
going to get hurt eventually. And it's how many people move
their time and energy to Bitcoin.
Yeah. So it's very difficult.
It's been very difficult for me to fully wrap my head around.
I think it was the last podcast that we did that it finally
clicked in my head. I don't remember that.
Yeah, right. I was like, whoa.
But just for the sake of this conversation, right, The general
consensus for most people right now is or not most people.
Yeah, I would say most people and and the academics and the
economists, they would make the argument that inflation is
necessary because if if without inflation, people wouldn't
spend, you know, governments wouldn't be able to, you know,
pay their obligations. What would be your arguments
against that? Yeah, so let's break those down
one at a time so people wouldn't spend.
So let's let's look at the counter.
So your TV's, your computer equipment, anything with Moore's
Law attached to it falls in price each year or you gain more
value each year. Do you still buy a phone each
year or every two years even though, you know, two years
later you're going to have a better phone?
Answer is yes, right now. Do you still buy food?
And answer is yes. Would you still buy food?
Answer is yes. There's so many different things
that that you would still buy. And by the way, that argument
with those things also assumes monetary pricing increase in
those things. Those things will be far
cheaper. But you would still buy.
Yeah, we don't buy because because the counter argument to
that, if we go one step deeper would be the only reason you buy
is because if you don't, we'll steal your money.
Because that's what you're saying.
If if people don't, if we don't have an inflationary rate,
people won't buy. Which is absolutely.
Just change those words. Just change those words.
We have to steal people's money otherwise they won't buy.
And we have to steal more and more of it to make them buy.
Seems like why would you want to build a system based on that
theft? All the economists are right
from the perspective of the debt based system would collapse
without if you allowed deflation.
And if the money is so all money is loaned into existence.
When you go to a bank and and get a loan, that money is
created out of the thin air to give you a loan.
So you have an interest rate on that loan.
So if all of that money globally was paid back, there was no
doubt. Yeah, there'd be no money.
Yeah, right. So you can see why if you had
allowed deflation where prices get cheaper and cheaper, that
loan gets more and more expensive because you don't have
the money to be able to service the loan and that liquidates
that entire debt stock. So the economists are right from
the perspective of a credit based economy requires inflation
to survive. But they're conflating do we
require a credit based economy? Do.
They need or it is that system needed.
That system absolutely requires it, and that system is
incompatible with the free market.
And that's why it requires coercion in order to continue
happening. And that's why the coercion will
just continue to increase and increase and increase.
And all of those things are centralization.
Yeah, right. All of those things create more
and more the little, the, the little companies can't survive.
The little banks can't survive they because it has to be
centralized more and more over over time.
It is not a free market. It's the opposite of a free
market. It has to misallocate capital.
It has to mathematically has to government has to get bigger
because you're usurping the free market and as you do, and those
people can't live freely and have great ideas that contribute
to other people and society. The centralized market has to
tell them what to do. So it has to be manipulation,
coercion, control everywhere in that system.
And there's so much noise around conflating those two things, two
things. And that's actually what that's
what Bitcoins repricing. Yeah, free pricing, all of that
nonsense because it doesn't care.
Every 10 minutes, new block, it doesn't care.
Doesn't care what Drew Powell says.
Yeah. It doesn't care what Trump says.
Doesn't care what she says, doesn't it?
Doesn't care. TikTok next blog and then I I
love this website called Priced in Bitcoin and it just shows you
just like everything goes down. Energy prices, Yes.
Prices, Food prices, All prices. Why would that happen?
Because the natural state of the free market is deflation.
Yeah. And Bitcoin is pricing it
perfectly. Yeah.
First global free. Market, yeah.
And then and then you see and then it's, it's interesting
because when you see that and then you compare and contrast
with what you know the politicians are seeing on TV and
you're like, we kind of. Already fixed this problem.
It's already fixed, right. So and and and so now I'll say
you're three different people, three different buckets of
people. One you're you and I, we price
in Bitcoin and many other bitcoiners that understand this
at this end, we price in Bitcoin.
We spend all our time in Bitcoin.
We spend as much time as we can in it.
We contribute our time to this new global system.
What would our lives look like direct response of this
competitive, it would be a mirror image.
The more time you spent it would be it would get better and
better in that system. You're a bitcoiner that prices
in the Fiat system, right? You think bitcoins going up and
from your perspective it is going up.
You're likely to centralized your clients, you'd likely to
take more risk, but for you, you're making more money.
Your asset is going up is you think it's only an asset.
Your asset is going up faster than other assets.
And from your perspective, you're right too.
You're not in Bitcoin at all. You're this camp, the middle
camp that's pricing Bitcoin. You're not in Bitcoin at all.
Your government is telling you that those big monopolies are
stealing your money and you need to vote for me.
You're right to and you're getting destroyed over and over
and over again. Or you're on the other side of
that and you think it's the socialist and you're on, you're
on the technocrat side that transferring more power control.
You're right to. That's what.
So from your perspective on this system, all all would exist.
It seems like as, as as a movement, because it's really
what this is. We, we have a major narrative
problem, like we need more education, more narrative, at
least to get people on our side. Or or when you say that isn't
even necessary. Not, not really.
I just so in a, in a decentralized secure protocol,
it's bound to be that's never existed, that never existed in
human history. It's, it's our own cognitive
dissonance falling away, coming to, to understand that the truth
that then moves more and more people over.
But it's there is no one narrative in in Bitcoin and I
don't know if there should be anyone narrative from Bitcoin.
I would say maybe not the narrative of Bitcoin, but I'm
saying the narrative versus the existing system, the Fiat system
versus the Bitcoin system. Well, I do, as you know, this do
a ton of podcasts and let's just use you and I as an example.
And this is how I think about it just about everybody in the
world. And with you meet people, they
impact you positively or negatively or whatever.
And and you come away changed. Yeah.
Our conversation when the light bulb went on.
Yeah, right. It changed your perspective, of
course. And so before that you were in
that middle camp about Bitcoin. Yeah, right.
Yeah. And then you went you went
deeper. Yeah.
And we, I did a podcast with Natalie recently that's I think
now has 185,000 view views. And that wasn't supposed to be a
podcast. It was, she was writing her
book. We, we were really good friends.
I, I, she's read my book three times and she was writing her
book and she couldn't explain to her editor what I meant.
So she'd so she said, could we just do a non podcast?
Can you just help me through this?
And it was through that, that then she released it as a
podcast because it clicked for her, clicked how different it
was how, but it took a long time together, same with Peter
McCormack. Like I think, I think I was on
this podcast 3 or 4 times and the light finally went on to
what I was saying. So for me, I feel like I've been
saying this over and over and over and over again, but that's
why I say it's the cognitive dissonance from moving from one
system to another. And I went through it too.
It's very difficult because you're you're in the matrix,
right? To use that examle, you're in
the Matrix and you're trying to imagine a world outside of the
Matrix. It's unimaginable.
Yeah, it is imaginable. Like for me, it's for me at
least. I think maybe I'm totally wrong,
but I think it, it's perfectly clear.
It's perfectly clear. Maybe I'm a terrible.
Maybe the problem is I can't explain it very well, but it's.
But I see a world with 8 billion people in service of 8 billion
people. I see a world that looks totally
unlike. That what is that world 10 years
from now describe? It so in 10 years it's still
probably it still probably isn't all the way there.
So what would get it all the way there our choices.
OK, Will most people make the choice that I'm making or you
met you've already made within 10 years?
Unlikely. Which is reclaim their
sovereignty, but. Holes what spend spend your time
in a free market that you complete.
What What about the Bitcoin scaling?
Vast majority of people won't be able to transact on the main
chain. So one of the words I use is
open decentralized secure protocol bounded by money or by
by energy. So if you use the word protocol,
technologies are winner take, most protocols are winner take
all it really important open protocols win.
And we we see we saw that the last protocol anybody knows
about probably before electricity would be to the
Internet and it comes in layers, right.
And you and and so the Internet all around the globe, you have a
choice to be on it or off of a North Korea is off of it, right?
Their citizens can't you can't can't get on it.
Look at what happens to the country.
Even if you're in China behind the great Firewall and you run
AVPN, you can have all of the Internet.
Nobody can stop it. So but how did it emerge?
It came in layers. Yeah, First layer was by Darfa
in the late 60s and it took Tim Berners Lee in 1989.
It took 20 years of layers to be able to to build the Internet.
And then all of the innovation that happened on top of that
took another, call it 20 years. Just about everything we do is
on top of that protocol, protocol today.
And most people, when they're talking about Bitcoin today,
they're talking about Bitcoin like it emerged in 1989, OK?
And they're comparing it to the Internet.
You think that's where we are in bitcoins?
No, no, no. When I'm talking about Bitcoin,
I'm talking about where we were in 1969 right now.
No, no, no, no. But that the Bitcoin that you
know that most people are talking about as a store of
value is the first layer of the protocol TCP IP.
The next layer comes in and it's a transport layer like lightning
liquid, no. And that that would be another
layer or kind of layer 2 and 2 1/2.
And each of these layers has trade-offs, but provides more
functionality without having another coin, without having a
bridge to another coin, without having a tether, without having
a. I understand some of the things
that people wanted through the box sized wars.
I understand some of the people things people wanted through
privacy coins and other because what they, what they were saying
is if this doesn't have privacy, it will be killed.
And if you just, if you just said that they're right, right?
Because if you said later on the centralization and if you do, if
you didn't have privacy, one of the reasons why the nodes in
Bitcoin is so, so it makes it so secure is you can't find all
these nodes all over the place. Yeah, right.
They're all hidden behind toward browsers and they're all over
globally distributed. So if you use that same example
and you said you had as open if Bitcoin was an open monetary
network and you could see everybody's transactions, right,
which it is if the government, if everything's centralized in
the government and everybody could see that, then eventually
you would expect those people to be at risk.
So I completely understand the privacy aspect of why people
wanted that privacy coin, but those people made a it had to be
bounded by energy, decentralized them to secure.
First you had to add privacy in layers, right?
You had to add. So that's what fettiments does.
That's what the cashew does. You had privacy and fettiment.
Now you essentially replicate that known nature of that coin
at the and you have maybe thousands, millions of
federations and end time, all self sovereign that provide
privacy, abstraction, communication, privacy and and
such. And this is very early still,
but it gives a scaling layer that cannot be found and it
gives a resiliency to to to Bitcoin that that can scale all
around the globe without that that attack vector.
These things needed to be in place before the system
centralized. Yes, right.
And that's what I'm talking about in the free market,
whether it's Fetty, whether it's whether it's Cashew, whether
it's, whether it's Noster, whether it's, it's a combination
of all of these things predicting where the value would
need to be building in layers on top of everyone that that build
this parallel system. Literally every you have
parallel Internet being built that everything is going to move
to yeah, in time. And so so you have to
peer-to-peer, which is peer-to-peer, which is which the
the Internet we know of got got captured and consolidated and
you're being farmed in it. Yeah, because of that
centralized, that centralized knowledge, everything in that is
essentially farming you. It's essentially like if I send
you even signal right? I send you a signal message.
It's me Signal server, you right.
Where is that signal server you're trusting?
That signal server is, you know, doing the right thing.
And then I have a buddy founder of Start 9 Matt Hill and like
you can essentially run your own server at home.
And instead of me sending a message to a server, then
sending it to you, it'd be my server is sending a message to
your servers direct through Tor and it's peer.
To peer, and that's a that's a great service is there's a
really good example of, of a service that builds up or
certain iron that builds up to solve this problem and extends
the protocol in a whole bunch of different ways that allow you to
escape that matrix. And more and more people do it
because they, they realize that the cost, the true cost of that
centralization and and so who owns the server firms?
Who owns the like, like you can't even find the numbers, but
the NSA probably runs the most compute.
Where did that money come from from They're running that most
compute, right? It's coming from the same from
the centralizing system. And all of your stuff is going
through that. China would have a similar
thing. So all of the people inside this
system that think that they're making these free choices.
That system is is changing your mind, right?
When you go to Google, when you go to Facebook and what you see,
it's actually feeding the thing that.
Hey, is this why you've chosen to opt out of X and go to?
Poster completely yeah, is Yeah, you know this.
I didn't. I'm not trying to be popular.
My time matters, right. Yeah.
I had left behind 375,000 followers on on X because there
was no fix from that system. And I found it hypocritical when
Elon was talking about free speech and what that would look
like when you know it's can't be you can't you when you when you
know the centralized system can't be.
He makes different decisions in US than he does in China.
Yeah, right. Why?
Because he wants to sell cars there.
Why? He wants to sell satellite.
And all of these things are in the inside that system.
Nostra is exactly the same as Bitcoin, right?
It like we're very similar when the similar conversations.
Well, Nostra won't won't work. It doesn't have as much value as
this. What do you think people said
about Bitcoin earlier? Same thing.
Yeah, right.
It's just earlier. Yeah, right.
And I and I realized I could move my time to the thing that
was earlier and make a difference in that thing.
Yeah. Absolutely.
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Now, one of the things that you've told me in the past that
absolutely fascinating me is that you've said AI is dangerous
under a Fiat standard. AI is safe under a Bitcoin
standard. What do you mean by that?
Well, I just did this podcast with George Gammon.
That was, it's funny, George, it's same thing that you, just
like I wrote in my book that because of the exponential
change in AI, I wrote a paragraph that said we measured
AI today in decades. Very shortly we'll be measuring
in years, then quarters, then months, then minutes, then
seconds. And so what's happening right
now is that's happening. What is that?
It's productivity gains at a massive scale, a staggering
scale. So if you don't use AI in your
business, I'm sure you're probably starting to use it in
your podcasting. You have to, right?
Or you don't have to. But if you don't, your cost is
way higher and you can't compete, right?
And if you, if you do it, your cost is way lower.
And so you, you are going to remove labor and use AI
otherwise you won't be a business.
Yeah, other people will beat you.
Yeah. And why wouldn't you be your
business? Because people will will follow
the business that's cheaper, better, faster, right.
The follower follow that instead of going for the higher, slower,
more expensive business. Yeah.
So every bit every business, because we're on the other side
of it searching for more value, has to use AI.
Every person has to use AI. And so that's staggering
productivity gains. And those people that are
working today, what do they do? They have to manually do it.
I'm I'm saying what do the people that are going to be
replaced by the AI do? There were this many jobs and
now there's this many less jobs. Where do those people go they
don't like? Where is there to go?
So perfect. Now let's, let's so we know for
sure AI is going to happen faster and faster.
We know for sure we're going to use it, right.
We know for sure we're going to choose more value.
Yeah. From the companies that use it.
Yeah. In other words, you have one day
you could have one company producing you or one company
with one person giving you so much value because of the tools
that company replaces thousands of people that you gave you the
same value before or store or what you did before.
So you'll use that. Where do those people go?
Where do they go? OK, that's in the world I
describe on Bitcoin, prices fall by exactly the rate that those
people go. Wait, wait, wait.
What? Why?
Because it's productivity that the productivity that we choose,
the prices fall by that they don't need the job anymore
because prices keep falling and falling and falling.
Oh my. God.
OK, see, it's another Jeff Booth mind breaking moment.
And it is, but it's funny that and there maybe maybe I'm just
bad at communicating it because it's it's that's what they.
What did I say last time the penny dropped?
The penny dropped twice. They keep falling, they keep
falling, they keep falling forever.
And so the the job that you think you need to pay for the
artificial prices that are going, going up is only needed
because of the artificial prices going.
Yeah, it's not needed. You live in abundance.
You continually live in if prices kept falling, if if
prices fell by 5% a year, then 10% a year as the natural course
and then 15%. If people, if people lived in
abundance, what, what incentive would you have to to build
things, for example? So there's always going to be
things to solve, OK, Always. In the free market, you get paid
more than than somebody else for creating value.
How do you get paid? You get paid by creating value
for somebody else. Yeah.
The more people you create value for, the more you get paid.
Then what happens? Somebody sees the value you're
making making, and they compete with you and they remove your
value. And you have to commute harder
and harder to provide more value.
And the output of that is all prices continue to fall.
You win, they win, everyone wins.
Because even if you weren't part of that equation, those people
competing create value for you. When prices are allowed to be in
the free market, the only way you lose from that equation is
if you live in a centralized market.
The prices are artificially made to rise.
I see what you're saying. So then you'd lose your job.
All prices are higher. And you wouldn't be.
You don't know what to do. And you wouldn't be returned to
the government who's creating the problem.
And you say save me, Save me. And they create a new program to
save you that. Where does money come from?
From you. Yeah.
In this world, you just get better and better.
But it is a perfect expression of humankind trading with each
other in service of humankind, that is.
And Bitcoin is imposing that discipline.
If you own part of Bitcoin, you are already part of that system.
That is mind blowing. So what about highly centralized
countries that essentially depend on this top down control
of their population? They'll get eradicated.
So so so. Bitcoin is terrible for
dictators. OK, why?
So you see the CCP. Essentially.
So why? Why is the CCP so against
Bitcoin? Because it's terrible for
dictators, of course. It's terrible for a centralized
planning system. That's why they want to CBDC.
Yeah, so so. But but again, why?
Why many other nations are wanting CBDCS is the same.
The same reason a really good friend of mine, Alvaro, runs the
Democracy Lab in Costa Rica and he has some stops that I think
it was 10 years ago, 47% of humanity lived in somewhat
democracies, right? So 5053% lived in dictatorships.
Now only 10 years later, I think it's like 80 to 2% live in
somewhat dictatorships. The trend is getting worse and
worse and worse. Why would it get worse and worse
and worse? Because the dictator rises
because of the manipulation of money.
Typically what happens is you go socialism first.
Yeah, and because socialism can't fix that problem, right?
Eventually some someone moves to faster fascism to take back
control and they consolidate more power Dictator and and it
consolidate more control. You can't fix that problem
because it's all broke. Based on money coming forward
officially from somebody else, that should go to them to you.
This is why the problem looks like.
But can't they fund the men with guns?
And can't the free market system not fent fund the men with guns
as efficiently as the centralized system?
Nodes all coming back to nodes, same as nodes on fettiment.
If there was one node in Bitcoin, if the if Bitcoin was
completely open, everybody could see it.
Eventually the men with guns let's first one node, men with
guns would go kill that person. It would be over.
The honest system has never prevailed because the honest
system was always outed where if you were honest against this
overwhelming force against you, this system because it's
decentralized and secure and that decentralization is hidden
around the world, you can't stop it.
Stop one person keeps going. Stop Two People keeps going.
It's just to make an analogy that it's, I'm connecting dots,
Jeff. This is why all the guerrilla
warfare was as successful as it was.
Like you look at Vietnam, If you look at Afghanistan, Afghanistan
was invaded by the British, the Soviets and the Americans.
Super centralized force the latest technology and they got
beat by a bunch of independent nodes with AK-40.
Sevens. And now this, this is the this
is the opposite. This is that a fair analogy?
Yeah, but that that's a war analogy to do it.
This is a peaceful analogy to do it because you all you have to
do is move to a node. You can hide your node node
behind the Tor browser or you can you can be part of this
network. And the more people that are
part of this network running, running nodes, the more safe and
secure you are in a group that it cannot be found, a globally
distributed group. That's, that's, that's what's
protecting it. That's actually why I think
Fetty, Fetty and Fettiment is such a big deal because it
expands that ability for you to do that in a complete private
way and gives you all of your friends and people that you
communications private knows about.
And it expands essentially that node model, yeah, in a guardian
type of model into a way that extends, extends the network.
But yes, that's ultimately they it can't be stopped.
It's so fast. Again, you have to essentially
you have to zoom out. You have to think outside of the
matrix to understand this new system and and it's.
It's difficult to because it's not intuitive, but once you
point it out, you can't Unsee it.
Yeah, So what almost what you have to do and what I did what
you're doing, it wouldn't what your exact once you see it, you
can and then you choose to move your time towards it and be part
of it. But the first step is, is this
true? Like, could this actually
resolve this paradox that we've always lived on, we've always
lived in a control system? Could we actually live in as
something else? And, and when you, when you
understand Satoshi's brilliance and creating, creating this and
what this looks like, and the cypherpunks that risk their
lives to be able to, to free money from state and, and, but
now that network, how big it is already and how many people are
there and it's expanding faster and faster.
Kind of have to ask yourself why would I want to live in this
other system when I can live in this system?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. What do you think about
MicroStrategy and what they're doing?
I think Michael is, is inventing A playbook for this.
And I think he's he's a genius in this and he's creating an
incredible, incredible vehicle to take him to take advantage of
kind of the Fiat world moving into the Bitcoin world.
There is the centralization risk on some of that.
But he has no more vote in the network than I have and the
network I'm a node. He's a node right now.
I think he's a is very good for Bitcoin.
I think he's, I think he's great.
We'll see in time and again, when I say cheat and everything
else, I'm talking from a game theoretical perspective.
Eventually in time, every single person is going to be forced to
choose the global free market or the centralized coin.
It's going to and, and so we'll see in time what what people
choose when they choose it. But but now I think he's been
fantastic for Bitcoin. I think he's, I think micro, I
own micro strategy and my RSPI think it's a fantastic
investment. I think we think he's great.
So it's, it's essentially it's, it's a net positive, but over
time essentially will kind of reveal.
For me, I've never looked up to people with money.
I've never looked up to people with power.
I've never looked down to people without money or down to people.
I I see everybody is equal. I just see everybody is a genius
in their own capacity and, and having and then I watch for who
do I want to be around? And I can be friends with two
people with vastly different, I can disagree with both of them
in some different ways, but also really like both of them.
So I tried to take the personalities out of this and go
back to, to 1st principles and, and from a first principle, the
natural stay of the free market is deflation.
And So what does that mean it when most people in the world
don't know that? Yeah.
What it means is people are going to choose for the control
system or the free market and in time, and they're going to be
forced to choose. And we'll just watch to what
they chose. So when it's first principle,
first principle is Jeff. So you, you apply that to
relationships, like when when you're talking to someone or
let's say you, you know, I'm sure a lot of people want to
meet you, Jeff, right? Is that something that you take
into account? Everything.
What's the equation in your head?
Is it just, is this person going to be more centralized?
No, no, no, not in that, not in that.
In the relationship. All I care about in a
relationship, I tend to look through kind of the noise and so
at somebody and I tried to see the the best in them.
OK, that's the the I might not, I don't have to agree with
everything they are, but in a relationship that's I care about
the best in that person person. And, and typically not typically
always, I'm not talking about that person behind their back
ever. Of course, if I have something
to say, I say it to them directly.
And and so in in all my relationships, I would say I'm
very present in a relationship. So you and you and I, right?
Even if we don't see each other for a long time, there's a
closeness, there's a we. Continue where we left.
Off and it's very real. It is very and it doesn't even
have to be real for you. It's real for me.
That's how I feel about you. That's how I feel about anybody
I would spend any time in in my life.
And I so a friend of mine said to my to his son, who then said
to me, he didn't ever said it to me.
This friendly going back to do when I was 10 years old, one of
my really good buddies, he goes, he said to his son, he said, so
his son said, my dad told me to learn from you that you take the
best from everybody and allow them to be who they are and then
talk about the best and and those people.
And so that meant a lot because I didn't, I didn't even know his
dad saw that right. So, but that's how that's how I
would say virtually all of my relationships look like.
Has that ever worked against you seeing the the the best?
In people for for sure there's there's some people who have
tried to take advantage of you. If I thought about a line here
and I said on this side, I'm wide open, I'm living in, in
kind of the way I want all the time.
And the risk is sometimes people take advantage of that.
Then then that would be and, and but the benefit is I see way
more great people and I learn way more.
I see hope I see. So it's a, it's a strategy
that's different from a strategy of seeing the worst in people,
closing myself up and seeing less people, right?
And I just think that strategy has way better odds of success.
Can you have friends within the same industry?
What do you mean? Can you have friends within the
industry? In Bitcoin, Yeah, why not?
This is very competitive. But, but, but it's in, it's
competitive. Every single person in in, in
this industry, every single person benefits me because we're
living in the first global free market, whether they I, I
disagree with them or not, whether they win and my company
loses or what we all win. We're living in a in a world it
because it's a competitive global free market where every
single bitcoiner yeah, benefits me because they're working
towards and I benefit them the adoption of Bitcoin and I
benefit them. Maverick.
Kaiser's saying it's Sailor the employee, who is the employee,
the Bitcoin employee of the month.
There's So what I would say is it's actually probably way below
the people we talk about, including me every day.
It's people that are, are unsung heroes.
The, the fight that's going on right now between core and
knots. The the, some of the core
developers, some of the knots develop all of this thing.
The unsung heroes are all of us doing that thing.
Making Bitcoin strong. And what do you think about the
what's happening between core and knots?
It's another another little mini civil war.
It's not. As bad as the block size yeah, I
don't think this is a civil war. I think this is AI think this is
AI can see both I can see both arguments.
Bitcoin mechanic is a good friend I and I think when it
becomes this is just the way it is on on core.
I don't like that, but I can also understand from the from
the core core developers that and this can be a hostile
situation to be a core developer and constantly in this battle
all the time because people care so much.
Yeah, I'm probably not going to take a side and in it because I
can see, I can see both. I can see both sides.
OK, you know, when I started simply many years ago, maybe I
was young and naive. I would start the show with, you
know, will be your you will be your guide through the
separation of money and state and talking to you.
It kind of revitalizes that that outlook that I have, right,
which is, you know, I think you you identify that, you know, the
state, whether they do it on perfect.
It's all about incentives, right?
You know, really does cause a tremendous amount of harm,
whether intentional or unintentional, manipulating
money. So when I talk to you, you're
essentially you are describing a world where money and state will
be separated. It will be separate.
No matter what, it's going to be separated.
It's just a matter of how long it will take.
It's just timing. This isn't.
Again, this is imposing as long as it stays decentralized and
secure. Every time I say as long as it
says these centralized and secure, What I'm really hoping
people here by that is I have a choice.
I can be part of the network. I can run a node today, I can
spend more Bitcoin, I can spend money in Bitcoin and I have a
choice to keeping it decentralized and secure and
nobody can take that choice from me.
When I say as long as it says decentralized and secure, what
I'm really saying is claim your choice.
OK, That, that, that, that, that, that claim that for you
and you will protect that network and you'll see, you'll
see more opportunity in it. If you think it's hard right now
to do it, learn how to do it. It's not very hard.
No it's not and it's become way
easier. 10 years ago it was like practically impossible.
Now you can build buy a pre built open source node.
Multiple hardware wallet manufacturers, right?
A big fan of cold collar, of course.
What are your thoughts on the strategic Bitcoin Reserve
announcement coming out of the US government?
Of course governments are going to want to acquire more, right?
Ken SIM and a friend of mine and mayor of Vancouver wants to
acquire it on Vancouver's balance sheet.
Why? Because if he acquires it on the
balance sheet, then the money in Vancouver can't be debased and
the services can go further in Vancouver.
That would be the same in any country.
It would be the same thing that would happen in your own
personal life, would happen at A at a business would happen at
the state would happen at the city would happen at a country
exactly the same, the same thing.
So why wouldn't states, countries, cities all all do the
same thing? They will for sure.
They're going to do to do that and they're going to be in
competitive competition with other people doing it.
But what as as people talk about that?
I'm just thinking just go buy more yourself.
Yeah. So you can front run government
still, right? You can front run most of the
global corporations still. That is going to go on forever
like you're going to. Isn't we're so early in this
adoption curve that I would love to see this, the Bitcoin going
into more and more individual hands?
Yeah, yeah. Do you think we've peaked in the
amount of whole coiners? Good question.
I don't know. Probably, probably not because I
think a lot of the coiners, people who hold today will sell
for Fiat dollars and they'll think they will retire and the
move on and other people will replace them, OK.
What I've noticed, Jeff, I think last year, really the last six
or seven months of last year, I went through this kind of
experience and simply where I had a very, very strong, you
know, we're going to remain neutral politically.
We are not going to pick sides. We're not going to say anything
because we believe that our message, our message has to be
all inclusive, right? That's how you get people on
your side of the football. And I think that really switched
when Operation Show .2 point O really started to accelerate and
you had the arrests of, of, of the Samurai wallet developers.
You had Ross Olbrich essentially 2 life sentences.
And then a very wisely and intelligently, you had two
candidates coming in there and basically saying, hey,
Bitcoiners, if you elect me, I'm going to free Ross and I'm going
to end Operation Choke .2 Point O.
And I remember when I started talking about politics, I got so
much heat from Bitcoiners because we, but we do believe in
the theory from the sovereign individual, which is Bitcoin is
going to essentially make politics irrelevant over the
long run. But I think in this last
election, if we did nothing, Ross would still be in prison.
So my question to you is, is Fiat voting still important?
I, I think yes, and and I, but I and I agree with you for the
same reasons. I just so I've been close to
Pierre poliov and he understands us from the sand and in Canada
and I helped him understand this.
I helped him set create self custody.
I helped his wife to create self custody.
And he so far as 3 or 4 weeks ago, maybe a little longer ago
now called and said, listen, Jeff, as we do this, how do we
make the transition? How do we make this transition
from this system that looks like this to to this system?
And prior to that year, a year ago, at one point as he was
going down the rabbit hole, he said he asked same thing you
asked earlier on. How does this protect it?
He asks, are you safe? He asked, are you safe?
Because as he was going down and he was politician party
understands seat get gets a whole bunch of the information
from the and he realizes how broken and how Co opt corrupt
the system is and that's why yes was safe.
So I built personal relationship with him because he's sound
money. Do I think he's perfect or
anything else? Who knows right.
But the best in him that what I was saying before he understands
sound money and why it's so important.
So I for the first time in, in any time, I kind of went out on
a limb and said this and got the same thing that you just said.
And Kearney was Kearney was like, we have a central banker,
like a major central banker that's going to pivot Canada for
further to the left. And it's going to provide a lot
more danger or, or, or the track that Canada's on is going to get
worse, a lot worse, because it's fundamentally unsolvable from
that system. And most people I know are on
that side. I it was, it was staggering to
me because they also know who I am.
Yeah. And it was staggering to me to
watch, watch that. And and then still in the
Matrix. So I'm going to move the Overton
window. I posted this on my ex account
and I will give a little bit of context.
Really, the last century was really between, you know, 2
superpowers, right? Which is you had the communist
system and we know it wasn't free market, but the more free
market system, right? And I posted this on my ex
account which I know you don't use but I'm going to post it on
my nostril. Account after this I'll I'll ZAP
it. But I basically said the future
of capitalism is Bitcoin, the future of socialism, our central
bank, digital currencies. And then that's kind of led me
down the rabbit hole. I'm going to move the Overton
window here, Jeff. Are current left wing politics
compatible with a Bitcoin standard?
Our current left wing current to our current right wing aren't.
They're both incompatible. But I think the right wing is
more open to Bitcoin and I'll give you an example.
So I actually, I agree with you so, so so more.
If you were more of a free market person, you would
probably see Bitcoin first. But that being said, there's a
lot of progressives like if you said Troy Cross and a whole
bunch of who are incredible people that also understand
Bitcoins, the only way that they can solve.
It's not monolithic. I completely agree with you.
But there was a vote and I asked Senator Lummus in DCA couple
months ago and she was like, that's a good question.
So I asked her this. I said there was a vote in the
House last year, and the vote was essentially forbading the
federal government from launching a central bank digital
currency. It wasn't monolithic, but let's
just say the vast majority of the right voted for the bill and
the vast majority of the left voted against the bill.
And if you take a look at some of the Fed's recent actions, you
can make a very strong. I mean, it doesn't help that
Trump's calling Powell a loser on on to social.
But you can make the case that a lot of the Fed's recent actions
were political in terms of helping trying to help Kamala
elected. And if you look at the 5th
tenant of the Communist Manifesto and makes the case for
the necessity of a central. Bank.
There is no capitalism or communism with a central bank.
You just said the 5th tenant of the Senate communist.
It's the same system. It's exactly the same system.
If you manipulate money, if you have centralized control of
money and everything else resolves around centralized
control of money, then capitalism, communism is exactly
the same system. Has to be.
Yeah. So that is the problem.
And so when we say left or right on that, and I would say most
people don't understand that. And maybe more, more right
people on the right. They haven't quite gotten to
this, but maybe some have gotten there.
Ron Paul obviously been talking about this for forever, and
you're starting to see the same things he said emerge.
So there are certainly more people on the right that would
see it. Is it a more viable vehicle to
that? They're both the same.
They both end in the same place. They both end in the same place.
So when I talk about Canada and when I talk about Bitcoin for
Canada, that mattered. For Bitcoin, it doesn't when
you're talking about the state for the US, it's the same, same
thing when you're talking about this, this battle.
And again, for, for the, the, the left, right battle for the
US, it matters a lot that you vote for Bitcoin.
If you wanted to stay in the US for Bitcoin, it doesn't matter.
But do you see what I mean? That like it.
It does matter to vote for the right if you want Bitcoin to be.
Well, I, I, I guess I don't want to impose my beliefs on
somebody. Else, and this is the conundrum
that I went through personally because I'm like, wait a second,
like, no, no, no, I want to be inclusive in my messaging.
I have a lot of friends that do great work.
You mentioned a couple of them. I love the progressive case for
Bitcoiner guys. I have them on my show all the
time. They're incredible.
I give them credit 'cause they're like in a hornet's nest.
They're like, dude, guys, keep doing what you're doing.
But at the same time, I can't deny the reality.
And the reality was if if I voted for Kamala, Ross would
still be in, Ross would still be in prison.
And in Canada, it's the same thing.
The perpetrator of all of the damage against the troops, the
trucking thing, and there's loss of individual rights and
freedoms and the the media, that whole party, everyone, most of
the people in that party are still elected.
It's been 10 years. Canada's standard of living is
going down lower and lower and lower.
All these problems are getting worse and worse and worse
because of the same thing. And we just selected it again.
It's crazy. Yeah, it's crazy.
Now the question is on the resolve for.
So I agree, Pierre would have ripped out a bunch of that and,
and created a path to something that looked better and, and
hopefully Bitcoin would have been a big part of that, of that
path and it would have accelerated Bitcoin in Canada
and it would have made my life easier in Canada.
Now I have to make a decision, Do I exit?
Where do I exit? What does that, what does that
look like? And I think that's going to
happen over and over. My if you read my LinkedIn post
on this, I said exactly, I don't have to impose my beliefs, but I
can tell you my why, right? And and my why, if I was in the
US would have been exactly what you just said.
And I think it's very important to focus on the first part of
what you just said about imposing your beliefs on someone
else, even it doesn't matter how right you think you are.
Let that individual make their own decision.
And I remember I was telling my Co host, like Opti, I was like,
Opti, you know, we might have to move to El Salvador, my friend,
right during the the previous election.
And I was half joking, right? You know, the US has a little
bit more, the states have a little bit more sovereignty.
That's actually what creates the so the way the Constitution is
written and that the power to to slow or stop this from
happening. But what what ends up happening
is money is superordinate to law.
You could see the Constitution being chipped away, of course,
right, because of because of broken money and because of the
central bank, because of the relationship to money, because
money is superordinate to law and money is superordinate to a
piece of paper that protects your rights.
The way that this was formed in the US certainly protected your
rights better than it did in Canada and other other nations.
In fact, the US is a because of that long ago fight for
independence and because of the, the the Constitution and because
all rights are created equal. I think the so in in kind of the
spirit of people in the US that they're not willing to let that
die, which is really good for both the US and it's also good
for Bitcoin. And my question to you is, Jeff,
at what point do we do, I don't want to say stand and fight from
a kinetic sense, but at what point?
And this is where I like, I felt I was at a crossroads and you
just said yourself, you felt like you needed to vote as well.
At what point do Bitcoiners say no?
We need to hold the line here. So I, I, I think this comes down
to, I think what Bitcoiners are doing are both holding law and
and again, decentralized secure protocol bound by energy.
People are going to make any decision and all decisions kind
of form where where we're going. So there's going to be lots of
heights. Some people are going to take
that fight. Some people are going to just
rise above it and just keep on building faster.
And they're like a Gandhi, right?
They're still fighting, but they're they're they're fighting
on something that can't be attacked.
Yeah, right. And so they're using their
energy differently. So I think it's going to, I
think with what's coming, how chaotic this is going to be,
it's going to be all of the above.
That's going to as as as we move over there.
When I think about my energy, is my energy that better?
So there Brad Mills said just recently.
So do you want to help create some kind of political party?
Do you want to help move some of these laws and for not a chance.
So I can move my energy from where it is now, helping
entrepreneurs build products, technology that expand this
network and move faster and faster and faster and stay
there. Or I could take it and do that,
right? It's a no brainer.
Where's your best energy? Where should you focus it?
Yeah, yeah. What message do you have for
future generations? And the reason I'm asking this
question is I just had a daughter by a year a year ago or
so. She's walking down.
That's so cool. So little humans.
I can't. Believe that how that works.
But you know, what I, what I find fascinating is that she was
born into a world where Bitcoin exists versus you and I, we
essentially, you know, we grew up in a world where Bitcoin
didn't exist when we were born, didn't exist for a big portion
of our lives. And then we found it.
She's going to be Bitcoin native.
Because I'm. Going to be telling her list out
of the wallet. You know download Sparrow, watch
some tutorials right? What message would you have for
future generations? It's very hopeful, especially if
she has a dad like you, that that is.
But but year early on this, you're understanding, if you
understand all that stuff that's coming across and you're curious
enough to keep going. And, and so if you think of
people with integrity in your life, right, like what, what
would you want your kids to see? Like would you want them to see
that, that you're aligned in that integrity and everything
else? And a lot of times when you get
to, I think all of the time, when you get to the bottom of
the Bitcoin rabbit hole and you make that commitment, that's who
you are. Your daughter's going to see
that she's going to grow up with it and she's going to benefit
from not just that in that system, but as that system
expands, she's going to see all of the hope and promise of that
system, whereas some others aren't.
They're not really going to be. In fact, if you just ask what
you do on your podcast, what why did I come here?
Why did, why is your podcast successful?
It's successful because you're touching people, you're making
an impact on other people's lives and and that's expanding
and, and you can feel it expanding because you're making
that positive impact. That's what the free market
looks like, that's what Bitcoin looks like.
And that's what the more and more people who step out of that
world are going to look like. So your daughter is going to
bathe in it every day. She's going to be part of a part
of that. And it's so super hopeful that.
Was very touching and I really appreciate it.
Very powerful, Jeff. And you know, I hope everyone
who's watching understands, right?
If they have kids, you know they can see that as well if they're
bitcoiners. Kids, my kids now are 2119 and
17 and close like incredible, incredible.
They reach incredible family. We're so close.
I'm watching kind of that closeness and everything else
out of the same thing. Kids don't do what you tell them
to do. Kids do what you show them to
do. They learn way more about who
you are, how you show up, than what you tell them.
And so if you show up in congruence, if you show up
authentic, if you show up with integrity, that's what your kids
will see. My final question to you, Jeff,
what legacy do you want to leave through your work?
This impact just, yeah, impact positive impact on other people.
Love it Jeff. Poof, thanks an honor.
Thank you so much. You too.