It's all going to zero against Bitcoin.
It's going up forever. You're against Bitcoin.
You're. Against freedom.
Morning. Because I what I think is
happening is really what we want to measure is your purchasing
power and energy terms. And so I like oil.
And so this is the, this is the SPXTR.
So the S&P total returns that's what this is.
So the S&P total returns, what I'm showing for those listening,
since 2020, the SPXTRSPX total returns is 83.59%.
So since 2020, you're up 83.59% in the SPX total returns.
Now if you measure SPXTR against gold, so that's X PS:, XPXTR
over USD. So in dollar terms, it's up
83.59%. Is it up in gold?
What's SPXTR over gold? 14.52%?
OK, so you're still up. So for all the gold bugs, you're
better off owning the S&P than gold since 2020.
Now are you up in oil terms, which I think is energy terms?
Energy is the foundation of society.
It's how we do shit. No, the S&P total returns
against oil is down 71.97%. What is the only thing that's
S&P is down worse than oil Bitcoin, but not by much Bitcoin
74%. That's So what I think we're
seeing is like the dollar and the treasury market in oil terms
isn't keeping up. And so people are rotating out
of treasuries, out of bonds into we, we talk about harder assets,
fixed supply assets, but at the end of the day, it's assets that
can protect your purchasing power in energy terms.
And so this to me, this is insane because there are people
like our friends are like, yeah, my stock portfolio is booming.
I'm up 80% since 2020. Yeah, you're up 80% in dollar
terms. How much in gold terms are you
up? I'm up 14%.
Well, how much in Bitcoin terms are you up?
You're not up, you're down 75%. So you've lost 75% of the
ability to buy Bitcoin by sitting in the S&P 500?
Yeah, welcome to Simply Bitcoin Live, your number one source to
the peaceful Bitcoin revolution Cup.
Breaking news, culture, aromatic warfare.
We will be your guide through the separation of money and
state. Ladies and gentlemen, coming at
you live from the beautiful Puerto Rico.
I'm going to be here for the next couple of weeks, starting
with the cold opening. Opti's telling me to angle the
mic up. I think I'm just going to put it
right here, get it nice and close.
But yes, Jack started cold opening with Jack Muellers
basically saying the quiet part out loud, which is even with
SNP, even with like real estate gains, even like with these
traditional investment assets in regards to Bitcoin, you've
actually lost purchasing power. This is a message that we've
been trying to hammer in home for I don't know how long and
I'll just read out some of these things.
In dollar terms, if you have been saving in Bitcoin, the
dollar is 80% cheaper oil. If you've been saving in
Bitcoin, it's 91% cheaper, gold, 90% cheaper, S&P, 563% cheaper.
the United States medium new house.
So with housing doubling, it's 84.95 percent cheaper if you've
been saving in Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the superior asset.
Like Max Keiser always says, everything is going to go to 0
as it relates to Bitcoin. It's just a matter of time
before the world wakes up to that reality.
Not to mention Bitcoins physical characteristics with a piece of
real estate with, you know, let's say you own an index fund.
Let's say you have stocks. In all those cases, you're going
to rely on custodians, right? You have to pay, you know, fees
to those custodians. Those custodians are third
parties. You're trusting a third party
with the custody of your wealth and your assets.
And then with real estate, you have to pay property tax.
Also, you have to pay maintenance.
What if there's a a natural disaster, a hurricane, a
tornado, you know, an earthquake?
You, you have to pay for those expenses.
Bitcoin, you can literally put it in a self custody cold
storage wallet. Leave it there.
No fees, No, maybe you have to upgrade your wallet every five
or six years, but it's like minimal, maybe a couple $100
that it's gonna cost you, but that's it.
It's just gonna stay there, right.
So not only from a maintenance perspective is it considerably
cheaper, you can transfer, you can take it with you, you can
send it anywhere around the world.
You can't send like stocks anywhere around the world.
You can't send a house anywhere around the world.
It's kind of stuck where it's at.
And Bitcoin is better performing now.
I think the point where Mahler's pointed out, which is
fascinating to me because this is something that actually Max
Keiser was saying the other day when he went on the Alex Jones
Show, he predicted that within 12 to 24 months, maybe it's a
little aggressive. Everything was going to be
energy prices were going to be repriced in Bitcoin versus
dollars. And it kind of makes sense
because the argument that Jeff Booth makes is that the world
should be naturally deflationary, But as long as
you're living on a Fiat money standard, because of
government's manipulation of money and because of their
coercive means, it creates this artificial, artificial,
inflationary world. If you're on a Fiat standard,
Bitcoin is the only asset that will actually allow you to
experience the world as it should be.
Due to the productivity gains of technology, things should
naturally be deflationary. And that's something that the
world has been psyopped into thinking, which is that somehow
money has to lose purchasing power in order to function.
And it is the job of us Bitcoiners to really wake people
the F up to that reality because they're sound asleep.
They're too busy fighting between red party and blue party
and left and the right where they don't realize that the
issue is broken money. So we fix the money, we fix the
world. We've made a tremendous amount
of progress on that front in terms of moving the Overton
window. Trump speaking at the Bitcoin
2024 conference was a historic event.
I can't emphasize that enough. You have mainstream broadcasters
from Tim Poole, Russell Brand, Tucker Carlson all dropping
Bitcoin by name. It's just a matter of time
before they come to the realization that Bitcoin is the
solution to at least half the world's problems, because you
can make a very strong argument that half the world's problems
stem from rotten, corrupt, broken money.
And that's exactly what Bitcoin fixes.
And I think that's a great way that Mahler's pointed out the
way that he broke down that case in regards to.
Yeah, like, look, it doesn't matter if you, you know, you've
you've invested in the best index funds, Bitcoin has still
outperformed everything. Essentially the only thing that
Bitcoin, you know, according to that graph in the the analytics
that he was looking at, the only thing that Bitcoin, it still
outperformed it, it just didn't outperform it by a a huge margin
was energy. And he makes a really good
point. The energy makes the world go
round. But you know, Bitcoin and energy
go hand in hand. Bitcoin monetizes stranded
wasted energy. No other asset on the face of
the planet does that. Bitcoin is truly unique.
Anyway, I'm gonna bring up my coast, who filled in for me
yesterday with our boy Adam O'Brien from Bitcoin.
Well, of course, we got Optimist Fields in the house and we got
Matt from Macro Minutes. Back in the day when Simply
Bitcoin used to do the Twitter Spaces.
I think this was like a year ago.
Macro Minutes would come in there and drop the macro fire.
So happy to have Matt back on the show today.
How you doing bro? Doing well.
Thank you guys for having me. I appreciate it.
I was actually telling Optia offline.
I feel like I had a bit of imposter syndrome at that time
because I was so interested in what was going on in the world,
but I didn't necessarily have the experience to always
communicate what it was that I was trying to get across.
And have definitely pivoted more to just leveraging my
engineering background now and, and talking about that stuff.
So hearing you talk about Bitcoin and its ties to energy
and not losing purchasing power and energy terms is like, man,
you're speaking my exact language because I'm, I'm
sitting here in the parking lot of a power plant right now,
literally so. Bro you dude, you literally like
what do you mean? What do you mean that you're
you're suffering from imposter syndrome?
Eco, sorry, you need to turn down your gain a little bit.
It's getting a little spiky. There we go.
How's that Opti? Yeah, there we go.
There we go. Makeshift studio in Puerto Rico.
Makeshift studio, Makeshift studio in Puerto Rico.
And by the way, the power might be a little consistent here.
So Opti might have to fill in for me, you know,
instantaneously if I drop out. But I, I will say that, you
know, Matt, I'm so glad that you, you came on today's show,
because you can break down a little bit in regards to what
Jack was saying. Like it.
I don't think it's a coincidence that, you know, the energy, like
the the best performing things is energy and Bitcoin.
And I don't think they're, so I don't think it's a coincidence
that they're so closely correlated.
Yeah, no, I I completely agree. And I think, you know, this is a
lot of people don't like this take that Sailor has.
I don't really understand why there is so much backlash
against it. But when he says Bitcoin is
energy, I really think this is what he's getting at, right, is
that Bitcoin is inexorably linked to energy.
Without energy, you can't have Bitcoin.
Bitcoin, you know, the proof of work consensus mechanism, it, it
literally ties it to energy and that's why it doesn't lose
purchasing power in terms of energy, or it's part of it at
least. Obviously scarcity.
But yeah, I just think, you know, if you go all the way
back, even till like Henry Ford talked about making an energy
currency, right? Because anybody who really looks
into what makes modern society run, you cannot escape the fact
that you have to expend energy to make modern society work.
Our our modern society is built on the backbone of an energy
grid and energy infrastructure that allows for each of us to
basically leverage more work day-to-day in our lives.
If you actually looked at in human labor terms, how much
energy you're utilizing, it's ridiculous.
I mean, just a real quick like fun fact, right?
I, I row competitively and if you look at the wattage output
that I can do for about an hour, I can make 200 watts on average,
right? So I can make 1/5 of a kWh in an
hour and I am dead, right. And then you look at, you know,
just toasting your bread is using more than that, right?
And if you think about that in human energy expenditure terms,
that all of a sudden it comes very clearly into view why it's
so important so. There's actually like a really
famous like graph that it that's been making the rounds on
Twitter where it literally shows you the prosperity of countries
and the amount of energy that they're using.
And it's like a direct correlation.
Like countries that use less energy are poorer, countries
that use more energy are wealthier.
And there's this whole like death cult movement.
Forgive me for like, I mean, isn't it true?
Like there's like a death cult movement happening all around
the world. Again, it's not everybody, but
it, it's definitely popped. You know, it's definitely gained
popularity where they're like attacking energy usage.
They're they're it's like it like even if it's like green or
whatever, it's like like energy usage is bad.
And I just see that as like isn't, is that not a a death
slash poverty cult? Like I can't.
I can't describe it in any other.
Well down on this anyone that wants you to use less energy
literally wants to take you back to the stone ages.
Energy use is good and we're we're gonna definitely dive more
into that during the culture. But just kind of touching on
what Jack Mueller, just saying, I forget where I first picked
this up, but once this thought really like sunk in it, it's
like it really changed my whole view on everything.
And it's exactly this like Bitcoin is energy.
Once energy is priced in Bitcoin, that's when we know
Bitcoin is never going away. Like that's when the real, you
know, hyper bitcoinization moment happened is when all
energy is priced in Bitcoin. You know, we control kind of in
in the naming of it. Once we move away from the Petro
dollar to the petrosat, then things are really going to get
kicked into OverDrive. And and this, this Bitcoin thing
is going to be like so obvious to everyone out there that this
is the way that the world should be priced.
Absolutely I'm bullish on the Petro SAT man, that sounds that
sounds funky. I like I like that name anyways,
ladies and gentlemen, before we start the show, I do want to
give a shout out to our lead sponsor.
Guys, I'm talking about Bitcoin. Well, Bitcoin well is the best
place to build your automatic self custody Bitcoin stack buy
real Bitcoin enable your independence with the fastest
and safest way to buy Bitcoin in Canada and the USAI said
automatic self custody. What does that mean?
Bitcoin well is incredibly unique compared to all the other
rant on ramps because it does not allow you to leave Bitcoin
on the exchange. Meaning when you buy Bitcoin on
Bitcoin well and the funds clear, it goes straight to
yourself. Custody Bitcoin wallet address,
which perfectly aligns with the simply Bitcoin ethos of the
separation of money and state because after all, self custody
is the revolution. By the way, every time you buy
Bitcoin on Bitcoin Well, you earn Bitcoin well points and you
could redeem those points towards the Bitcoin wishing well
contest for an opportunity to win U to 1,000,000 Satoshis, get
your lightning wallets ready. We're going to do that right
now. Is it Opti?
Did you? Did we do this yesterday?
Yeah, so I was sitting here with with Adam and I was trolling
him. Live and do it again.
Try it one more time. Apparently.
No, no, no, not earn points. You had to hit the 500 points.
You don't remember how? To do it, there you are but.
Apparently when it crashes it means someone is literally using
that at the exact millisecond, so it just means a lot of.
People OK, boom. OK, first person to scan.
Thanks, Opti. First person to scan the QR code
wins 500 SAS. I'll do it one more time for
good measure. Going to toss another coin into
the Bitcoin wishing well and 1st person to scan the QR code wins
another 500 sats. By the way, this is a contest,
so you have an opportunity to win up to 1,000,000 to Toshi's
every time you toss a coin into the Bitcoin Wishing well only on
bitcoinwell.com. And if you use promo code Simply
BTC to sign up, you get 3 tosses into the Bitcoin Wishing well
absolutely free. All right everybody, let's get
to the numbers. Lots to talk about the Bitcoin
numbers, right? Ladies and gentlemen, you want
to make it over the finish line with your generational wealth.
And the way that you do that is by properly storing your
Bitcoin. And the way that you do that is
when you get a hardware wallet, usually it comes with a little
piece of paper and the piece of paper is labeled.
It has one through 24 words, right?
You don't want to do that. You don't want to put down your
generational wealth on a piece of paper.
Paper is prone to fire damage, water damage.
Your dog could literally eat it. So what you want to do is you
want to take a step above that. We've seen the steel kits.
This is titanium. You literally want a proof of
work. Stamp your seed into a titanium
seed for a storage kit. You literally hammer the
individual letters into a piece of titanium, one of the
strongest metals on planet Earth.
It is literally fireproof. It's waterproof.
Your dog's probably not going to want to eat it, and if it does,
it's probably going to break its teeth.
So this thing is made to last. This is how you should store
your generational wealth and if you use promo code simply you
get 15% off the Stamp Seed Titanium Seed Free Storage kit.
So head over to stampse-ed.com today and use promo code simply
to get a 15% discount. Hey, Nico, Nico, you got to turn
your game down a little bit, bro.
A little more, a little more, a little more it.
Gets a little. How about now?
Are we good? Maybe maybe a little more, maybe
a little more. This is pretty low.
There you go. Whatever.
I'll turn you up over here. All right cool.
At the time of recording the it's probably because I'm
speaking straight into the mic. At the time of recording, the
Bitcoin price is 59,770 sats per dollar 1673 block height 857,783
blocks to having 192,217 having estimate March 28th, 2028 total
lightning network capacity for 4 million, you know 4801 BTC
capacity value 287,000,000 realized monetary inflation
1.43% market capitalization 1.18 trillion Bitcoin versus gold
market cap 6.82%. And the grand scheme of things,
we are just getting started anyways.
One of the central themes of this show is not only the
disintermediation of of of money, but also the
disintermediation of information and the general idea that you
guys have to get through your heads.
And if you've been tuning into the show or if you've just been
paying attention to what's been happening, is the government or
governments were not prepared for social media.
They weren't prepared for millions upon millions of people
communicating directly amongst each other.
They weren't ready for individuals building up huge
platforms by themselves and being able to say things that
perhaps don't fit the official party line.
One of the things that you know is a highlight of this is the
latest Trump and Elon interview on X.
You literally see all the legacy media outlets not even
commenting on the substance of the conversation, but just a
character attacking Elon and Trump, right?
It's like, what is the, it's like, I didn't, I didn't
subscribe to the New York Times to get your opinion on their
personalities. I subscribe to the New York
Times so you can tell me what the F they said.
That's the whole point of a news organization.
And I think one of the things that like really highlighted
that was the the the rise of popularity of social media.
It's not a coincidence that X is the most popular news app.
People are tuning out of the regular media sources.
And just like the financial system, governments always hoped
that there was going to be a handful of intermediaries they
can Co opt in the case of media, think about it.
There's like, really like 12 notable newspapers in the United
States. Before the Internet, maybe there
was like 50 TV channels, of which maybe five are news
channels. That's only like a handful of
people that you can Co opt and you can like knock on the door
and say, hey, look, I'll give you special coverage if you
choose to cover the news a certain way.
And there's actually a historical precedent.
Back when the United States invaded Iraq, the New York Times
came out with an article, and I believe that the author actually
won like a prize for this and everything that Iraq had weapons
of mass destruction. It came out after the fact, like
five years later, that that was actually information being fed
to her by the intelligence agencies.
Moving forward, a couple years later, it's those same media
outlets, the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, that are
releasing hit pieces on Bitcoin. The New York Times released that
hit piece where they like, manipulated the color of the sky
over a mining facility as if miners release like, gas or
something. It's just hot air.
But of course, they're trying to sell the public on a narrative.
And then the Wall Street Journal article where it was like
Elizabeth Warren and Co tried to convince the American public
that Hamas was using Bitcoin in order to circumvent U.S.
sanctions and launder money. It was only after the reaction
from the online community, Twitter and Noster that we
called bullshit and we said no, that's not true.
Most terrorist financing is done through the traditional
financial system. You're not being honest and
sincere in your arguments. What you really want is to
create a monopoly for a central bank.
Digital currency, and it always reminds me of this Buchele
article, and I reference it all the time.
I'm going to read the last line. This is Buchele writing for
Bitcoin Magazine for the audio listeners.
They're willing to fight, lie, smear, destroy, censor,
confiscate, print and do whatever it takes to maintain
and increase their control over the truth and everything and
everyone. Which is why we always talk
about on Simply Bitcoin. This is narrative trench warfare
on the battlegrounds of the Internet.
These are battles of narratives. 1 narrative of truth and one
narrative of lies. And here's the thing, because
our system is based on incentives, the Bitcoin system
and their system is based on coercion.
They have to control the, they have to control the narrative in
order to sigh up people into thinking that money somehow has
to lose purchasing power in order to function.
Here is another kind of original tweet that I had.
When you know, the, the, the Trump and Elon interview
happened. One of the things that you
noticed is it was authentic. It was off the cuff.
It was literally a conversation and it was organic.
It literally felt like a phone call.
Now, one of the things that we've been covering is this
gentleman by the name of Mike Benz, He did a great interview
on Tucker Carlson a while back, basically making the case that
the government was not prepared for social media and how social
media was actually being used as a tool by the intelligence
agencies to change regimes all around the world.
They had no idea that it was going to backfire.
So they're trying to take back control of the narrative.
And here's a clip from Natalie Winters interviewing Mike Benz
talking about some of the things that they're doing.
It's about a three to four minute clip.
Welcome back to the War Room, home of a misinformation,
disinformation and so much more. I'm sure with the entity
organization. We're about to unpack with Mike
Benz shortly. We probably get a very low
rating from them, but I'm honored to be on the receiving
end of that. But Mike, you guys have a great
new report up at the Foundation for Freedom Online.
Walking through this, you know, media literacy, again, one of
these weird euphemists, classic terms.
They love to use groups. That's, per the headline,
operating in over 90% of American classrooms.
They're targeting the children. Imagine that.
Can you walk the audience through the new report?
Yes, Natalie, this is a very important topic called media
literacy. And if you haven't heard that
that term before, you're going to be hearing a lot more about
it in the months and years ahead.
It is a major initiative by effectively rogue elements of
the US government to institute a North Korea style control over
the news programming that children and adults later in
life experience. Basically, after Trump won the
2016 election, the BLOB decided that they lost because there was
too much alternative news. There were too many Bannon war
rooms around, too many Breitbart's or Oans or Gateway
pundits or you name it. And the the poor little New York
Times Times in Washington Post, we're getting out flanked by all
this mean, you know, nasty misinformation and alternative
opinions on the Internet. And so they came together and
came up with this branding device called media literacy in
order to launder their control back in.
Now, you know, when you hear the phrase media literacy, you think
that means underprivileged inner city school kids being turned
taught how to, you know, become literate and reading the news.
That is not what it means. Media literacy means if you
don't read the right media sources, you are deemed to be
illiterate and you need to get your mind right.
And so there's now been over a dozen US state U.S. states since
2016 that have passed mandatory media literacy laws requiring K
through 12 students in the in those states public schools to
take media literacy courses to be trained about what they can
and can't read and what they can and can't cite.
So if you're familiar with Wikipedia for example, the
reason that it's such a dystopic, you know, Soviet style
information all. Right.
I'm going to stop it right there and just kind of pass it on to
the panel just to have a discussion about this.
Like this is nuts. Like public schools, like not in
all states, just 12 states are literally force feeding children
basically saying the New York Times, OK, CNN, OK, online media
bad. Like I thought we lived in
America. Like what is this stuff?
This is bat shit crazy. This is insane.
And this is this is what I was talking about when I said that
the Internet was not that the government was not controlled
for mass scale peer-to-peer communications.
And this is what Buchele is was talking about in his article,
that their most important weapon is their control on the truth.
And you see them scrambling and wiggling and it doesn't even
matter. Like if they've thrown out all
the norms of what, you know, freedom of speech should
represent in the United States. And now all of a sudden you have
the government dictating in public schools in the US what
information students should consume and what information
students shouldn't consume. And I get what a lot of you guys
may be thinking, like, Nico, this is a Bitcoin show.
Like, why are we talking about Freedom of Information?
It goes hand in hand because without freedom of speech,
without these, without the ability to have this type of
discourse, we cannot wake people up to the scam of Fiat money.
People have been psyopped into thinking that money needs to
lose purchasing power in order to function.
And the way that you combat that is on the battlegrounds of the
Internet narrative. Trench warfare, literally
winning over the hearts and minds of people.
But what happens when and they indoctrinate people very, very
early on to literally say like, look, CNN said inflation is a
good thing. CNN said inflation is necessary.
Or I only could read Paul Krueger.
That's what they told me. Or I'm information illiterate
right to use their wording and then they'll tune out
alternative media sources. Why are they so scared of
alternative media sources? Because if you can't combat an
idea with argument, the next step is censorship.
And that's what they're relying on.
They don't have any more good arguments anymore.
So they're they're just like, OK, you know what?
We just can't have this discussion period.
Like we just got a censor their speech 100%.
That is very scary. And I think it's something to
definitely, definitely point out.
And This is why the rise of independent content creators is
so important, Like simply Bitcoin, like your favorite
independent content creators. We need more of that, not less
of that. Because what the last five years
have shown is that the legacy media that are supposedly
professional journalists aren't journalists.
They've sure acted like more so like propagandists than
journalists. It seems like the dudes that
just buy a camera and a microphone on the Internet have
been doing a better job reporting on shit than the
legacy media. That's my opinion anyways.
Matt, do you think I'm wrong here?
You know, you're a macro guy. Maybe what we're saying is
extremist, but like, dude, like, that's crazy.
Like media literacy. Like what does that even mean?
Yeah, I, you know, it's interesting you talked about
analogs to to history. The first thing that always
comes to mind whenever I hear about censorship and the
response that's come from governments or Central
Intelligence agencies across the globe is it's a very similar
impulse to what happened when the printing press was invented
and unleashed on the world. And I know that's not a novel
idea to me, but it's just you can't escape it.
Once you see that parallel, it's just so obvious, right?
Where the church used to be the source of truth, they had a
monopoly on it. Everybody had to come to them
and their priests for the source of truth.
And if you didn't basically buy into it, then you were a heretic
and you would be literally killed, right?
And while they can't exactly burn you at the stake now, they
they burn you at the digital stake, which is censor you,
deplatform you, remove you from discourse, which in the modern
world is effectively you've been killed, right?
And so to me, that's exactly what this is, right?
Is only our priests can be the source of truth.
We we have the word of God, right?
And the word of God is whatever, you know, your local bureaucrat
decides it is that day. And it's the exact same impulse
that was around, you know, thousands of years ago.
So I think it's human nature. And I think we're just in that
cycle of the redistribution and decentralization of the sources
of, of what's actually going on in the world.
And I view it as a really positive thing.
And I think obviously we're all living through a tumultuous
time, but for for me, it's, it's an optimistic time because these
tools actually exist for us to take advantage of.
So, you know, that's one of the main reasons that I'm out here
just trying to have conversations with with anybody
who's willing to engage, right? It's like we actually have
control over the narrative now. And I'm not going to go to my
local priest, AKACNN to decide what my opinions are.
I I love that how you made that connection because that, like
that's one of the cases that we've been making on, on the
show, one of the central themes, which is the, this is the
separation of money and state. And you just brought up the
separation of church and state. Like that was one of the reasons
that that happened was that people were like, wait, like it
like with Galileo, it's like, no, no, no, no, like you
understand the planets, it's like revolve around the sun.
That's kind of how it works. And they're like heretic, you
know, like that guy, you know, goes to jail and it and again,
it I, I don't even think it's a it's a religious thing or like,
you know, a God thing or any of that stuff.
It just has to do with, like, the free market of ideas and
discussion is a good thing. That's how truth is discovered.
Like, that's how it should work. There shouldn't be a
bureaucratic elite or a papal elite or a priest elite that get
to dictate what the truth is for everybody else, because that
system fundamentally gets corrupted.
That's a lot of power in the hands of a few people and
history has shown that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
And the last five years have shown that.
You know, guys, I got it. Look, unless you've been
completely tuned in, tuned out of the media whatsoever, TuneIn
to legacy media and hear that there was like just not to get
into the the pandemic stuff, but it's like there is no inflation.
There's gonna be no inflation. It's the supply chains.
It's Putin. It's, you know, if you say that
there's inflation, it's disinformation like, you know,
and then all of a sudden, like when they couldn't deny it
anymore, Janet Yellen goes on TV and she's like, I was wrong
about inflation. Meanwhile, the hivemind of
Bitcoin, Twitter was calling it for two years that there was
going to be inflation because it's common sense.
They're obviously debasing the currency.
They're printing records amount of money.
Obviously that's going to happen.
But if you were to listen to the, you know, the appropriate
sources, if you have media literacy to use their words, you
would have gotten absolutely wrecked.
You would be like, Oh my God, no one knew that how, how like God
forbid this. This could have never happened.
Anyways, Opti, what's your take on this brother Mike bends, bro,
coming in with the fire. I love his takes.
Yeah, well, first of all, highly recommend everyone go listen or
rather follow Mike Bend on Twitter.
He's becoming one of my favorite Twitter accounts.
He's got a very like autistic tinge to everything he's capable
of talking about, like naming names and connecting dots, which
you just love to see. Obviously my I I can't connect
all the names off the top of my head.
I have to, you know, go in and do the research and kind of
literally like with lines connected, but Mike Bend is able
to. But my thoughts on this is
pretty simple. Like, am I surprised?
No, I think everyone, at least everyone in our audience, but
two people that maybe are newer here.
This might be surprising that, you know, the the corporate
press is biased. I, I think if, if you are a
Bitcoiner, you've realized this for a while now, that of course
the media is biased. It's very obvious that they're
biased. I think that the next step for
most people is what Mike Pence is doing, which is opening
people's eyes to this, this extension of whatever you want
to call it, the deep state, the swamp, the administrative state,
the federal government, that the media is an extension of
whatever powers that be, however you want to name it.
It's becoming very clear that they are just propaganda wings
for the government and they're not real journalists.
But this is where I think the mantra of bit corners of don't
trust verify is going to become one of the most important memes
for us. Not only the 21 million, also,
you know, Happy Infinity Day or everything divided by 21
million. It's 8/8/21.
Yeah, exactly. You know, that meme of 21
million, the hard cap of Bitcoin and don't trust verify are
becoming the central memes. And of course, for people that
want to learn and, and how to behave the best in Bitcoin is
stay humble stacks at stay solvent.
Like these memes are becoming very powerful because you're
realizing that the legacy media is completely biased.
They're bought and sold. And if you're still trusting or
you know, trusting the official sources, then you're, you're
basically being lied to. And you're at this point
probably willingly being lied to because you you have to dig your
head in the sand to not realize that the legacy press is is
bought and sold. I'll put I'll push back there.
I'll push back there. I'll say like because it it's
like I I like that's such a it's like Opti.
I agree with you, but it's kind of like what I would say is
instead of like, like defaulting to the legacy media is lying to
you. Like don't trust us.
Like don't trust what me and us you have to say trust like go
and like, do your like, watch what the legacy media is saying.
Do your own research, do your research on Twitter, do your own
research. And I like, you're going to be
like, what the fuck is going on? This is nuts.
This is crazy. So like, that's what we're
advocating for. It's not necessarily to like,
oh, legacy media is terrible. They're just lying to you.
Like, no, no, no, go, go. Like do your own research.
Don't rely on a single source of information.
That's all we're saying. Like do your own research, rely
on multiple sources. You'll, you'll start getting
good at it over time. Don't just rely on CNN.
Don't just rely on some random person on Twitter.
Connect the dots yourself and you'll have a more accurate
representation of what the truth is in that, in that way.
Anyways, just to kind of give you guys a little bit of a taste
of how things are shifting, at what pace and the way that media
is changing. We have this notion of media of,
you know, the guys are wearing suits and they're talking in a
certain way. And you know, it's like a
professional studio and everything is produced and it's
very scripted and it's and it's, I would say non authentic
conversation. I think what we've seen over the
last couple of weeks, specifically with with, you
know, the presidential presidential candidate Trump,
we've seen a a variety of different conversations.
So the Elon spaces and the the Aiden Ross stream, which was
hilarious. Like they step out and there's
like a Tesla cyber truck and it's like all wrapped in Trump's
like assassination picture. Like it's absolutely hilarious.
And again, it's it's unscripted, it's authentic.
And he just had another interview with a very popular
comedian yesterday. And the stuff that they said was
absolutely hilarious. Now, the reason I want to play
you this clip is for two reasons.
Number one, it's funny as F #2. It's a representation of the
times changing and where the future of media is heading.
Let's check it out. That was really.
Yeah. So not just.
Yeah, that's. And it was that's down and
dirty, right? Yeah.
And this is. Yeah, this.
I mean, it was. Yeah.
But you don't anymore. No, I don't do it anymore, man.
And I'm not doing it. Is it too much?
Too much to handle? Some of the stuff started to get
a real rattle in it too. I don't know where it we were
even getting it from in this country, but yeah, it started to
make me feel like I was a mechanic or.
Something. So the thing you go.
Back to then is alcohol for the most part right yeah, but well
what I want probably is cocaine but I know that if I have a
drink then it'll give me it'll like be like OK well I had a
drink then I can do this is cocaine a stronger Oh yeah up
yeah yeah, yeah. Cocaine.
So you so you're way up with cocaine more than anything else
you can think of. Cocaine will turn you into a
damn owl, homie, you know what I'm saying?
It'll you'll be you'll be out on your own porch.
You know you'll you'll be your own St. lamp.
You're freaking. And is that a good feeling?
While it's a miserable feeling. Ladies and gentlemen, for audio
listeners who's just like, what the fuck just did we just listen
to? That was the pres.
That was the that was Donald Trump talking to an everyday
podcaster about cocaine. And of course, the reason that
they're bringing this up is because substance abuse is a
very big problem in the United States, right?
There's the opioid epidemic. It's horrible.
You know, substance abuse destroys so many people's lives.
So it's a very serious issue. So the fact that that was
brought up in conversation, you know, the the way it was like,
could you have ever have imagined Opti that type of
conversation on legacy media? By the way, this interview has
gone in millions and millions and millions and millions of
views. And what that tells me is that
the market is telling you that it likes this type of content.
It likes this type of authentic conversation.
Before, it was like these things were unacceptable.
Like, this is insane. This was an insane conversation,
but it's like it adds a human element to it.
Not only that, it was absolutely fucking hilarious.
It was hysterical, bro. That shit was so funny.
Optia, what's your take? Well, first of all, Theo Von is
hilarious. But, yeah, just like seeing, you
know, a presidential candidate just sitting there with just one
of the funniest comedians. And that, like, Theo Von is just
completely unhinged. And you just love to see it.
But the fact that it's gotten this much attention just goes to
show what we've learned here at Simply Bitcoin as well.
Just like authentic conversation, it resonates with
people because we're so tired of the gatekeepers and the polished
media production where it's like, OK, these are the official
narratives and this is what you need to think about.
And it just really goes to show that I think we are entering a
new era in social media where just pure, authentic
conversations about what's actually happening is what
people want. Like we're thirsting for truth,
even if it is unhinged. Like the Theo Bond conversation.
That was so crazy. Anyways, Matt, you have some
thoughts before we move on to the next section.
Yeah, just actually it's a bit of a response to a comment that
I saw pop up a little bit ago after I spoke previously, which
is someone was saying it, it's not optimistic, it's it's
dystopian. And I just want to quickly
reject that and say, no, I I completely disagree.
Is the attempt to control media dystopian?
Yeah, sure, absolutely. But the optimism is what you
guys just showed, right? Which is that that's what's
winning right now. That's what's getting views.
It's authentic, real conversations.
And to your exact point just now, that wouldn't have happened
even 5-10 years ago, right? Because there was this walled
garden of media. And I think that's been
shattered. And the world is figuring out
how to deal with it right now. And a lot of the bureaucracies
are trying to figure out how to deal with it, their natural
responses to clamp down. And I don't see how you can't be
optimistic there. And this is not the time to go,
oh, no, they're trying to control us.
So we just roll over and let them.
It's like, no, now we lean in, we create content, we have
conversations like this. Any time you're given the
opportunity, hop on, have a conversation, put your thoughts
out there and like try to move the world in a slight, like
little nudge in the direction you want it to go in every
opportunity given. And I don't know, it just it
makes me optimistic. That's the only way that I can
think about it. Yeah, I, I want to add a little
bit to this Max, I've said it before as well.
You know, I'm a huge freedom of speech activist or, or advocate.
Like I think we should be having these conversations and not only
so we could get to truth, but it really just goes to show and
exposing people's dumb ideas. And this is how we get to the
truth. And this is how we get a better
world is by us having extremely silly conversation sometimes and
being like, oh, wait, OK, I thought this was smart, but
really, I guess I was misguided. And you're never going to be
corrected if you are. Just like I'm the smart person
and you can't comment on my stuff and you never get feedback
or pushback on your ideas. And we're seeing in real time
that these ideas are happening and people are thirsting for the
truth. Yeah, You know, I will say it is
one of the reasons why I really do love X Spaces or Twitter
Spaces, whatever you want to call it is because if you get on
stage and you speak and you do say something stupid, you're
going to be told that's really stupid quickly.
And I actually, I love that feedback.
I think it sharpens your sword. It makes you more intelligent
and improves your recall. I've become a much better
speaker just getting out there and putting my ideas out and
being willing to be told I'm wrong.
And here's why. And I love that feedback.
I think it's it's a great thing and technology's awesome.
We just have to utilize it once again to move the needle in the
direction we want to move it in. Or otherwise, sure, just roll
over and I guess let the bureaucrats decide what you
think. But I reject that fully.
And I love seeing stuff like this.
I think it's awesome. 100% And there's no way you could put the
cat back in the bag. Like you can't.
You can't. Like once this is opened, like
it's like that dream world where they're just like, yeah, we're
just going to like the future generations are just going to
consume CNN and New York Times. Like we're going to educate them
to do that. Like that is such naive
thinking. But I think it's a it's an
indication of what Boo Kelly was referring to, of how desperate
they are to maintain their control on the truth.
And I think the good news is that they're definitely losing.
Anyways, everybody, let's hit the news.
Lots to talk about. The Daily News.
I want to give a shout out to our sponsor Foundation Devices.
It's self custody done right. They built a premium grade
hardware wallet called Passport right here in the US.
It's fully open source and verifiable.
It's the most intuitive Bitcoin wallet designed with the UX
reminiscent of a simple feature phone, so you will know how to
navigate it and use it the moment you pick it up.
Get your Bitcoin off exchanges and into your into your own
hands in just a few minutes. Experience the Peace of Mind
that comes with taking ownership of your own keys.
After a massive sell out during Bitcoin Miami 2023, the passport
is back in stock at foundationdevices.com.
Bitcoin only open source, verifiable completely air gap
security model, gorgeous design craft premium grade materials.
If you're thinking about getting your Bitcoin off exchange
changes, this is the one for you check out the passport link in
the show notes below to learn more all right everybody, one of
the ways that you take back your financial sovereignty is taking
cold storage of your Bitcoin and the way that you do that is by
getting yourself a hardware wallet right.
So obviously, we recommend the open source Bitcoin only
hardware wallet, the passport by foundation devices.
It's incredibly easy to use. You can pair it up with the
envoy app and if you use promo code simply you will get a
discount when you buy yourself a hardware wallet.
So guys, you want to get the passport it not your keys, not
your keys. Don't leave your Bitcoin on
exchanges. You want to take self custody.
That's how you take your back your financial sovereignty
anyways. Speaking of the acceleration of,
you know, the death of the nation state, that which is
interconnected with the separation of money and state.
We had some crazy news yesterday.
And what I'm referring to, and I love how this article kind of
downplays it, by the way, and it says it's from thestreet.com.
Although not new, social media was abuzz with talk of Kamala
Harris backing Biden's 44 percent, 44.6% capital gains
tax, which is already crazy in the United States.
The capital gains tax, the Max bracket is about 20%.
So there'd be doubling the capital gains tax 44%.
So can you and Matt, like just think about this for a second,
right? Like specifically as it relates
to capital gains, you earn money which you have to pay income tax
on, right? And then you decide to use some
of that money to invest. Investing is not a sure bet,
right? Do you take on risk?
But you know, if you handle the risk properly, you could
potentially make a return. Not only do you have to pay
taxes on the income that you make now, you have to pay taxes
on the way that it's structured now is you pay taxes on the
investment returns that you make while you're also simultaneously
paying taxes on the money that you're using because they're
debasing the currency. Absolutely insane.
It goes on to say Harris potential backing should not be
a shock given that she has been vice president under Biden for
the past 1300 days. The kicker is the 25% tax on
unrealized gains for the ultra wealthy.
So this is a this is a step above everything that I just
said. This is basically saying that if
you are past a certain amount of wealth, you have to pay 25% of
that wealth to the government. So it's not only capital gain.
So it's not only income tax, it's not only tax on your
investments, it's not only tax on your money, but after you
reach a certain amount of wealth, they want to take 25% of
it. So you've paid all of that tax
and you still manage to make a good amount of money for
yourself. And now the government is saying
we feel entitled to 25% of that. This is the same government that
continues to spend trillions of dollars every single year, more
than it collects in tax revenue. This is the same government that
is sending billions of dollars funding foreign wars.
This is the same government that left $80 billion in Afghanistan
just for a couple months later to send billions more to
Ukraine. That's the same government and
they have the audacity to basically tell you, hey, you
know what, we're going to confiscate your wealth as well
because this is what this is. This isn't tax.
This is confiscation on wealth. Now, what a lot of the comments
have said is, oh, Nico, this only applies to people that are,
that are, are worth more than $100 million.
And this is like, OK. And my response to that is,
dude, like, do you not like, do you not know history?
You know how they convince people about the Federal Reserve
and the first iteration of the income tax?
You know what the first iteration of the income tax was?
They promised everybody that they would only tax the top 10%
and that tax would only be 3%. Look at where we are now.
And these are the same piece of same entity.
It's the state. And you're taking their word for
it. You think they're going to stop?
Like, no, that's insane. Like this is insane.
This is this is a crazy, crazy world.
Here's Bob Burnett. Bob Burnett is the CEO of
Barefoot Mining and he says as horrible as this looks on the
surface, it is even worse when you think of think it through.
Currently, nobody must report their net worth to the
government. A 25% tax on unrealized gains
also means we will all be required to report our net
worth. This type of information has
never been the purview of the government.
This is a blatant attack on our privacy and a set of information
no one should trust the government with.
So like, you know, it, it like we've seen this play out in
Soviet Russia before. It's like, please report how
much cattle you have. And then before you know it, the
men with guns show up and it says, hey, you know, we got to
redistribute this to the people. Like, like, that's insane to me.
Here's James Lavish. He says good afternoon.
A 25% on unrealized gains is nothing more than a cheap
political talking point that is monumentally stupid.
That will never happen. I mean, until it does happen.
This is what I said. Unrealized gains equals your
wealth. They want to tax your wealth
after they tax your income. After they tax your money via
debasement. And then I put it another way,
yes. And then of course, I'm talking
as if I was the US government. Yes, we printed a fuck ton of
money debasing your savings and now we're going to tax the shit
out of you for nothing in return.
What are these new tax proposals?
But not straight up extortion and theft?
And you'd say, OK Nico, like these are radical ideas.
What are you talking about? What are you saying?
My question is very simple and it interconnects with the book
The Sovereign Individual. Highly recommend you guys
reading that book. And this is where I am in my
rabbit hole journey. The question that I initially
asked is what is money? But where I'm at right now is
I'm asking the question, what is government?
Do we really get in return the value of the taxes that we're
paying for? What am I going to get in return
for paying 25% of my wealth to a government, to a federal
government that can't control themselves?
That essentially was colluding with social media platforms in
order to silence speech. To bring up the Michael Ben, the
Mike Benz thing that is literally paying for, you know,
media literally courses in schools so that people only
consume certain types of information for a government
that can't take responsibility for the debasement of the
currency. Like is, is that the world that
we want to live in? Like that's my question to you
everybody like is that the world that we want to live in?
This is nuts. It's like the government is a
bunch of shit coiners that can just print the shit coin at
will, AKA Fiat, and they essentially hold everyone
hostage and they control the men's with guns.
Like like I, I like maybe that's a very radical of me to say that
as a Bitcoiner, but I, I can't help but to like not see it that
way. Like when they seriously come
out and make these types of proposals, when I hear
politicians talking about price controls and then then and then
a couple days later talking about a 25% wealth tax, like,
you know, what is this? But not extortion.
Like it, it, this is, this is like mafia like behavior.
And the argument is like, look, like we need more equality.
We need more wealth redistribution.
You know, we need a more equal society.
And my response to that is look, take a look at history and let
me know how that has worked out. Every single time it's been an
absolute catastrophe that has resulted in 150 million people
dying last century. So yeah, I think the best, like
the best allocator of resources is the free market.
It does it without coercive means.
It does it with voluntary entrepreneurialism.
It does it with people taking risks.
And if they succeed in the risk that they take, they get
rewarded for it. What the government does is they
have an unlimited money printer. They have absolutely no
consequences to any of their actions.
And we're all just supposed to be and just stay and like, OK,
this is great. This is this is phenomenal.
Like they're censoring us. You know, they're arresting
certain people for speech and Canada, they're locking people
up if they protest. Like what is government?
What is government? That's the question I have for
you guys. Like what should be the role of
government in life because the way that we've been sold as
Americans of what the role of government should be.
It should be a minimal government to ensure and protect
the property rights, the property rights of everyone,
right? That's that should be the role
of government. It's taken this Frankenstein
role of being the world police, the end all be all of
information. Now all of a sudden we're going
to control markets too. Like I'm sorry, they, they don't
look if they had a great track record of like, oh, they did
such a great job with the war in Iraq.
Like I, I love these guys. They did such a great job with
the pandemic. These guys are to be trusted.
They did such a great job with healthcare and all this stuff.
I love the government. They deserve more power.
It's not like that. They shot the bed in like 5 or
10 different ways and they're still saying trust us, bro.
If you say I don't trust you, bro, they call you an extremist
and then they lock you up in Guantanamo.
Like that is absolutely insane. Like this is insanity.
This is this is crazy world. This is nuts.
So anyways, that's my take. That's where I'm at at my rabbit
hole journey. I think we need less government.
I think we need accountable government.
And I don't think we will ever have accountable government
without the separation of money and state.
As long as there's a bureaucratic recreate money for
free that everyone else has to work for, there will always be a
huge misallocation of resources and there will always be an
abuse of power of the money printer.
That's my take. What are your takes?
What are your takes, Matt? Man, there's so many directions
I could go there. I'd say, first of all, I know
you guys like memes, so I, I sometimes I just think in memes,
that's all you can do when you go on something like this.
And the first thing that came to mind is there's that meme of
Bugs Bunny with the, the Soviet Union flag, like kind of
transparently put across it and it just says your loss, our
profit. That's the first one that comes
to mind for me. But I think, you know, you
mentioned a little bit earlier the Overton window shifting.
And I think more than anything I view this as them trying to just
really shift that Overton window towards we get to have more of
your stuff and you should own nothing and be happy about it.
I do think at least based on just how gridlocked a lot of the
stuff in the US is, I do think it actually pretty hard to get
that through. If hypothetically it did get
through, then I think, you know, you probably end up seeing a lot
of capital flight from the US just on fears of it being
expanded because you brought up the income tax portion earlier.
That's exactly the same thing that happened there.
And I'm also definitely not the first person to say this, but
capital moves where it's treated best, right?
And so if you don't treat it well here, it's going to leave.
And so I don't know, I the white pill take, I guess on it, since
I'm on that stick today, is that it just accelerates the eventual
demise of the current global central banking cabal, which is
that, you know, the more they try to steal, the faster the
acceleration towards its eventual demises.
And I would like to think that that would make Bitcoin adoption
grow. But it's also the last little
bit here would be it raises an important piece, which is self
custody, right? Like if you want to be civilly
disobedient to a hypothetical tax that does not exist yet, the
only way you could actually do that would be cold storage.
Because if it's on an exchange, the likelihood is that it's just
going to be like income taxes just withheld.
You don't even get the option to not pay it, right?
They just withhold it on your behalf.
So I think it would be something similar there with with capital
gains. If you've got a brokerage
account or something, hypothetically they're just
going to basically auto pay that 25% on your behalf because it
makes it easier for you. So yeah, I'll end it there.
And, and, and then also like, because they know that you like,
they know that that's impossible to enforce on a mass scale,
right? Like the way it's super
interesting, like you guys should take a look at this.
I I was like going down this rabbit hole.
I've been going down this rabbit hole of what is government for
the last and I was so curious. I was like, how did they
convince people to agree to essentially the withholding tax?
So if you're AW2 employee in the United States, you know what I'm
talking about. So essentially you get paid
every month, but they ought, your employer ought acts on the
behalf of the government and automatically deducts the tax
that you owe. And the reason that they did
that is, again, it's a lot easier to Co opt a handful of
employers right then millions upon millions of people all over
the country and say, Hey, you owe his taxes at the end of the
year, right? So the way that they, they, they
instituted that system was really clever.
And that system was actually instituted again back during
World War Two. So it was instituted under the
guise that, oh, we have to pay for the GIS coming back.
We have to, we have to pay for the war.
So we're going to institute this system.
It's going to be temporary, just like the Nixon shock, just like,
you know, temporarily suspending the, the convertibility to gold.
None of this shit was ever temporary.
None of it was ever temporary. It just get it just got worse
over time. And then I don't know if I've
mentioned this yet. The Bank Secrecy Act, right when
they passed that essentially that law made it so that every
$10,000 transaction had to be reported to the government.
So, and the reason for that is they they, you know, the guys
for that is like money laundering, you know, terrorism.
AM LKYC what they don't tell you is that back then if you adjust
$10,000 for inflation, it's the equivalent of $80,000 worth of
purchasing power today, but they kept the number right.
So I, there's a historical there, there's, there's
historical examples for me to feel this way, like I don't
trust you. I, I, you, you've, you've
betrayed that trust in 50 different ways.
I don't trust what you have to say.
I don't believe that you're going to be able to get prices
under control. You've been in power for 3 1/2
years. You I don't think you're going
to be great towards the Bitcoin industry.
Your actions have shown something.
You know, your, your words say something, your actions.
So show another thing. Like I'm telling you, like I'm
just jaded. Like I'm just like, dude, like I
don't believe you anymore. So Opti, I, I know that you've
been falling down this rabbit hole with me too, bro.
We were, we were like Gold Star perfect citizens.
I think when we started this channel, bro, we gave them so
much. We gave them so much benefit of
the doubt and so much like, you know what?
Maybe they're just ill informed. Maybe they just know don't know
any better. Like now it just feels like it's
on purpose at this point. Yeah.
Well, first and foremost, my thoughts are this is absolutely
stupid. This would never, never work in
America. Well, I won't say never, but
anyone that understands what's going on here should obviously
not agree with this. But I think the most telling
part about this whole thing is that there's people out there
that are so economically illiterate that they think this
is a good idea. There is been a very, you know,
whirring trend of, of people basically being like, you know,
tax the rich, like the rich don't pay their fair share even
though they pay most of the taxes.
Dude, why do you think, why do you think they want to pass
those those school courses about the media literacy bro?
This is what I'm saying. And and you know, I'm doubling
down on this like Nico, you know, I think you're being a
little nice on this. The way I look at this is this
is just them trying to make theft the property palatable for
people. And we know where this goes
historically, when you allow the government to steal your
property, it doesn't end good. You know, again, as Matt was
saying, the the Bugs Bunny meme, like, you know, you took the
risk, but this is our wins now. And it's like, this is this is
stupid. This is very dumb economic
policies. And I mean, am I surprised?
No, I'm, I, I've said it before, you know, this is this is all
sounding very Marxist to me at this point.
And I've given them the benefit of the doubt for a while, but
now I'm like, yo, this is, it's very clear what they want to do.
They want to steal as much property from you as possible.
I know there's like people saying they're like, oh, this is
only going to be for the ultra rich, but we know how government
mandates go. They're going to use this to
basically ensure that there is no more social mobility.
So that like, if you're a poor peasant now, you will always be
a poor peasant. And there's like, what's the
point of working hard if your wins, you have to give away
2540% of what of the risks that you're taking?
Like, if all my wins are going to the government, what's to the
point of even working? And we've seen this play out in
real time. Like this is this is stupid
economic policies. And the fact that people think
this is a good idea just goes to show like how I'll educated most
people are. And man, it's just it's
absolutely disgusting what we're seeing that people believe this
is a good idea. And like, I could rant about
this forever, but I do want to get into the culture.
So yeah, hold back. 100% like guys like the The solution to
this is the separation of money and state like you want to and
the insanity and the divisiveness and the whole
political fugazi and the thing separate money from state that
fixes the base layer of society. Politicians are incentivized to
actually do good by their constituents.
Like it truly fixes things. As long as DC has the ability to
print money. These continued crazy effing
ideas will just continue. It will just continue until the
system just collapses inevitably one day.
But the good news is that you can opt out right now and the
way that you don't have to wait for the election.
You don't have to whatever. You can vote with your energy,
your time and your work. Buy Bitcoin, earn Bitcoin, mine
Bitcoin, and put that Bitcoin into self custody.
Let's get to the culture and talk to Macro Minutes.
The daily culture. All right everybody, I do want
to give a shout out to the Orange Pull app.
It's the Bitcoin social layer Stack friends who stack sats.
To get started, scan the QR code on your screen or check the link
in the video description. Join the 11,822 Bitcoiners that
are currently on the app. Right now.
It is the Bitcoin social layer. So if you're traveling, you go
to a new city, you go to a Bitcoin conference and you don't
know any Bitcoiners around you. You pull up the orange pull up
and it'll give you, it'll literally tell you the
Bitcoiners around you and it'll literally give you the ability
to send them a message directly. It's also the number one
resource for Bitcoin only events.
Like I said, if you're going to a conference and perhaps you're
there for a week and the conference is only two days and
you want to know what to do at night, the orange pull up is for
you. It'll literally show you the
Bitcoin events near you. It's also one of the best ways
to reach me directly. I appreciate all the messages
that you guys have been sending. If you want to reach me directly
if you have a question for me, perhaps you want to come on the
show, send me a message on the orange pull up.
I don't really answer Twitter DMS or emails these days.
So scan the QR code or check the link in the video to get started
in the video description to get started.
So back throwback to the macro minute days man when he used to
come on our spaces when Opti was slaving away after an hour long
show. Hey, I'm still.
Slaving away, bro. After an aren't aren't we all
the whole simply Bitcoin crew bro Jesus.
Actually, after this news segment, I think we're all
slaving now. At least that's what they want.
From us is straight up bro but but yeah it's a macro.
Minutes used to join us on the simply Bitcoin spaces and you
know the the it's it's in the name.
Matt would give his macro takes, right.
So that's what he's gonna do today.
No, no. No, no, we're switching.
We're. Switching he's not macro
minutes. No, we can.
Tell the macro minutes story. But we're gonna we're gonna talk
about energy, Bitcoin and energy.
Life. So it's energy.
It's Matt. Energy minutes today.
Yeah, I'm excited. I mean, Matt, maybe he kind of
touched on it earlier. So Matt, I don't know if you
want to rehash the macro minute to me, but I really want to get
into the Bitcoin and energy conversation.
So I, I think let's just start there.
First of all, like you said in the beginning, you are literally
outside of you said a plant, you know, an energy plant right now,
you've been an engineer and you do host a spaces on Twitter on
your Twitter account macro minutes about Bitcoin and
energy. And considering we started this
show today with Jack Mahler's talking about Bitcoin and
energy, I think let's touch on just like the importance of
energy, why energy use is good. And basically, like Jack Mahler
said in the beginning, energy use makes the world go round.
Yeah, you know, I, I so let me give a quick background because
I got I got to fill Nico in because I that we haven't
actually chatted since like those spaces used to happen back
in the day. So I was telling Anati starting
out, I, I made my ex account at what I would consider to be the
peak of, of, of mount Stupid is what I told him earlier.
And so that's where you, you're really interested in a new
topic, right? And you go and you just consume
all of the information you can out there.
You try to learn as much as you can.
And for me, I I've always been interested in what's going on in
the world, especially when it comes to just like I said, macro
minutes, right, macroeconomics, just anything like what is going
on outside of my small little day-to-day world.
And so I made the account thinking, yeah, I want to really
lean into that. I want to contribute to that.
Like that's what I want to do, right?
And then you get to the stage where you start to learn all of
the things you know, you don't even know what you don't know
yet, right? And that's the peak of Mount
Stupid. And then you get to the through
of like despair, which is, Oh my God, this is so complicated.
How could I ever even begin to understand what's actually going
on and contribute in any meaningful way?
And I went a little bit silent on X for a while and then kind
of came to the full circle realization of, no, the area
that I actually should be contributing in is the area of
true expertise for me. So I'm, I'm a facilities
engineer. I've been going into power
plants for nearly a decade now. And I help them to basically
make those last couple megawatts, right?
They're trying to put as much power on the grid as possible.
And the projects that I work on help them to do so.
And there's this interesting cross section of Bitcoin mining
and power generation. And that's really just been the
true niche area where I can bring some of my own personal
expertise to, but then also learn from the actual folks who
are doing the mining. And so I started the show the
first week of January this year. And I've done a show every week
except for when the rowing national championships happened,
I missed that week. But aside from that, I haven't
missed a week this whole year. I've done a show every single
Thursday just focused on Bitcoin and energy and the the
intersection between the two. And so I think the start of this
show, as you mentioned, Opti was, was perfect for me.
It's like, wow, that's right in my wheelhouse because that's
literally what I'm doing. And so, yeah, I I would say in
summary, what we were talking about earlier is, is energy is
life. And Bitcoin is immediately tied
to energy. You cannot separate it.
And so based on that, when you see once again, Michael Saylor
tweet something like Bitcoin is life and you see people respond
to that negatively, to me it just shows that they don't
exactly get what he's getting at, which is there's pro human
currency, which is Bitcoin, and then there's anti human
dystopian currency, which is Fiat.
And one steals your purchasing power.
It literally steals your energy, your life force, everything you
put out into the world. That 25% unrealized capital
gains tax is nothing compared to the insidious nature of money
printing, right? Which is stealing whether you
like it or not, 7 to 14% per year in perpetuity and has been
doing so for hundreds of years at this point.
And I just love that Bitcoin is tied to energy.
The tied to energy is what makes it scarce.
And yes, I just love getting into the actual details on the I
nerd out on the engineering side too, which I'd be more than
happy to do, but I don't know if you guys want me to go on that
tangent right now. So anyways, that's that's the
world that I'm in and I'm happy to go whatever direction you.
Guys, Yeah, yeah, I think I really want to touch on energy
in particular because they're like, again, you know, I
mentioned the news, there's a growing trend of saying tax the
rich. There's also a growing trend
about like energy uses bad and you know, everything going to
electric vehicles and you know, like, what's your what, what is
it like? What's your carbon footprint?
And so we're seeing a lot of these trends are making the
whole world go carbon neutral, like, you know, get to 0 carbon
in whatever 20-30. And as someone that really
fundamentally believes that humanity should be using more
energy, that's how we prosper. I really want to just dive in
that that idea is like the answer to our problems is not
less energy use. That's literally going to push
us backwards in time that the the solution is using energy
more efficiently, which Bitcoin will allow, Bitcoin mining will
allow. And you as someone that's energy
expert, for lack of better terms, like, let's just touch on
that idea. What would you say to skeptics
about energy use or you know, going green, you know, 100%
energy by whatever X year. Like what's your thinking on
this? Are they fundamentally misguided
or are we biased? Or am I bi?
I'll do. Am I biased?
Yeah, no, I So when it comes to the green thing, I don't think
anybody wants to just dump toxic waste in the environment, right?
Like, I think pretty much anybody who, you know, loves
nature, loves humanity, loves prosperity.
Nobody says, yeah, let's just go dump toxic waste so we can all
get rich. I mean, maybe there's a very
small percentage of people that would say that, but most, your
average person, you know, they're not going to just dump
their motor oil in the ditch, right?
So I, I think most people would be aligned that, yeah, we don't
want to be just destroying the environment, but that also
doesn't mean that our daily activities have zero impact and
that we could ever get to a state where there's zero impact.
And I think a lot of the people who have been misguided by the
degrowth cult, for lack of a better term, is they've
literally been misguided into thinking that any human impact
is bad. And if you take that to its,
what would it be like Reductio ad absurdum, right?
You take it to its most extreme conclusion.
It is literally that humans shouldn't exist.
And I'd fundamentally reject that, right?
I think humans are good. I think there should be more
humans and we should have more impact.
But I think there's a way that we can impact our local
environment positively. And I'm extremely biased towards
nuclear, pro nuclear. I'm in nuclear plants multiple
days a week. I'm sitting in the parking lot
of one right. So like I, I think that they are
basically peak humanity, us functioning at our highest
level. You know, we're taking spicy
rocks and we're boiling water with it and we're using that to
do all kinds of great things in the local community and it
produces effectively no waste. I mean, the way is stored on
site in concrete cast and it fits in a parking lot and you
can power basically a million, two million homes for decades
and all you do is basically make some concrete boxes in a parking
lot. That's a pretty good trade off
if you ask me, right? And so versus for example, let's
say you are pro solar, I'm not anti solar, anti grid scale
solar maybe. I think if you want solar panels
on your house, by all means go for it, But I also don't think
we should be clear clear cutting thousands of acres of forest to
put up solar panels when once again, it's a bit of a meme, but
we can just take spicy rocks and and boil some water with it
right? Like it wait, it takes so much
less space. Energy density is super
important. Lynn Alden has some great takes
on that. So I encourage anybody to check
out her works on her work and her take on energy density I
think is spot on. And I think one of the like, one
of the one of the kind of like, I don't want to say
misconceptions because it is a, is a, because I love the way
that you simplify it, right? Which is, you know, it's spicy
rocks, right, radioactive rocks, right?
And then, you know, they, they heat up water and then that
powers the turbine and then Bing bam, boom.
That's the way it should work. But I think that there has been,
you know, some issues, whether that's Three Mile, Fukushima,
Chernobyl, that I think have, you know, given the industry a
bad name. I think a lot of people don't
realize how far nuclear reactor technology has come and how much
safer they are today compared to kind of like the first
iterations of nuclear reactors, which have led to some like
catastrophic disasters in the past.
Well, I would say catastrophic depending on how you measure it,
right? Let's take Three Mile Island in
Fukushima, for example. There were no radio radiation
deaths associated with either of those accidents.
And so for me, it's like, how is that a catastrophe?
3 Mile Island still is. Well, I mean, they mothballed it
for economic reasons, but the the reactors still function
fine. People were still working on
that facility. Chernobyl is a little bit of a
different a little bit of a different scenario, right?
But it's also, to your point, a much older design, A Soviet
design. No containment around it.
You have a steam explosion. The actual core material gets
you know, atomized into the local environment.
Were there radiation releases? Yes.
But I actually would encourage anybody who's more curious on
this specific topic to look up the YouTube Kyle Hill.
He has some really good concise videos. 2030 minutes on on Three
Mile Island on Fukushima on a bunch of other lesser known
nuclear incidents with. Orphan sources of radioactive
material and if you really want to understand the science and
the implications of some of those accidents, I'd I'd
encourage you guys to check out that that YouTube channel
because he does a way better job than than I could right now live
in digging into the details of each of those individual
incidents. But I'll just say, broadly
speaking, radiation is just to be respected, but definitely not
feared, right? Just like electricity.
Don't go licking wires, right? And you won't get shocked, you
know? What, what would you say?
Again, I'm, I'm playing devil's advocate here to just address
all, because address all the, the attacking points from the
media and from the, how do I say this, from the, from the death
cult of humanity, which is the people that believe that somehow
losing, using less energy is going to make the world a better
place. But I would argue the exact
opposite. One of the arguments that they
would say is the storage of, of used rods.
I think that's the correct term. So, you know, they kind of
haven't really figured out like that.
Like right now I think they just they, they put them in like a
concrete coffin and they kind of leave them on sight and, you
know, they stay radioactive for I think it's a couple thousand
years or so. Is that overblown as well?
Once again, I would say it depends on what your it's kind
of like when you assess risk of any kind, right?
Certain people say that some risk is acceptable, others would
say no risk is acceptable. There's a spectrum there and
certain people are going to fall in certain places.
For me personally, if you've got a really thick concrete casket
that's storing your fission byproducts, you know, you can,
you can stand right next to one. You know, I'm, I'm not right
next to it, but I'm in the vicinity of one now having this
conversation with you guys and I'm not, you know, glowing green
with three eyes. Your eyes are technically
glowing green right now. But you know it, if you look at
storage on site locally, for example, we used to actually
truck all of the waste to a storage facility.
And then there was some controversy around that and some
laws were passed where it was basically like, hey, we're going
to store it on site at each facility now.
And there are many ways that you can handle the storage of
nuclear waste. In fact, there are next Gen.
reactors that can take that waste and then use it to
generate more energy. Some of the molten salt reactors
which are pretty interesting technology as well.
Probably once again, not a tangent we would want to go on
right now, but the point is there are solutions, whether
it's storing it in the butt underneath the ground in a
mountain somewhere and or actually just recycling that
waste, using it to generate more, more energy.
A lot of the isotopes are actually valuable for medical
devices and or various forms of medicine.
So there's a lot of uses for it. It doesn't necessarily have to
just be put in a concrete cask and sat on site.
But even if that is what you do, we'll still, once again, you
line it with lead, you surround it with concrete.
And you know, aside from somebody really nefariously
trying to, to do something to damage it, which if they did,
they would need a lot of firepower, to me, it's a non
issue. But once again, I recognize that
I'm very biased because it's the field that I work in.
And I do think that being said, because I'm rad worker
certified, I understand radiation like to a degree that
the average person doesn't. I, I think that gives me a
certain level of comfort that if somebody that just hasn't been
exposed to it doesn't have the knowledge, you know, it.
Once again, people are used to be scared of electricity when it
wasn't a common thing that we were all experiencing in our
day-to-day lives. And now nobody thinks twice
about flipping a switch and the lights come on.
It's just a part of life. And so I think there's
absolutely a place where nuclear could get to there.
And I think we were on that trajectory until unfortunately,
you had some pretty strong propaganda against technology.
So that's my general take on it. Technically it's not propaganda,
it's media literacy, but but no in in regards.
And again, the reason I played devil's advocate is because I
kind of want to just lay out all of the counter arguments against
nuclear energy. Now, what would your argument be
for? For example, why shouldn't we
build that? Like for me, it's just so
incredibly obvious. But like, why shouldn't we build
out these giant solar farms and these giant wind farms, like
they don't have the dangers of radiation And you know, the
renewable man, like, you know, we can just use all these
renewable sources. Like what, why should we focus
on nuclear energy versus, you know, these giant, you know,
they, they always say renewable, but you know, those rare earth
metals required for those solar panels, bro.
And the amount of birds those wind turbines are killing man.
No one likes to talk about that. But what's your take?
What's your take on all that? Yeah.
So that's why I'm primarily against grid scale solar, right?
Like I said, I think if you want redundancy at your house and you
know, in the event of a storm or something, you lose connection
to the grid temporarily, you've got some solar panels and a
battery backup. I think from an individual
sovereignty standpoint, it's actually not a bad move to have
something like that. But if we're talking about
trying to power the grid, which is a whole different, you know,
thing, right? It's an interconnected massive
machine. And adding instability to a
machine is just generally speaking, never a good thing,
right? If if I told you, hey man, I
really want to make one of your tires on your car square, you'd
look at me like I was crazy, right?
And it's like, no, that's incompatible with my car's
functionality. Like that doesn't make any
sense. And that's kind of like what
wind and solar do to the grid. They destabilize it, right?
You're adding intermittent sources of energy.
And I would say even beyond some of the points that you brought
up where renewable, not really, right, because the, the fine
print there, if you read it is, well, you got to replace the
wind turbines every six to 10 years.
And the solar panels, you have a hailstorm and they're all FUBAR.
So, you know, you got to replace the entire 5000 acres solar farm
just because you have one thunderstorm.
And oh, by the way, all the places that have a lot of sun
tend to also have thunderstorms. So that's the thing, right?
You know any They're sensitive to weather events.
Yeah, it's, it's almost like as if there's like night time and
then like there's times where there's no wind, you know, like,
yeah, it isn't that interesting. So the reason and, and we are
getting close to the top of the show.
And I do want to make it full circle guys, cuz we again, we
guys know the theme of the show. We will be your guide through
the separation of money and state and all the topics that we
talked about today, whether highlighting the insanity of the
proposed income tax, you know, highlighting the
disintermediation of information and now highlighting the
importance of Bitcoin and energy macro macro minutes, Matt, like
what is like, why is it a match made in heaven?
And my final question to you is, how is Bitcoin going to
fundamentally change the end of energy industry for the better?
Easy question, super simple answers, right?
No, it's such a, it's such a, a novel thing to have a flexible
demand for a grid. And that is the really important
thing to understand, right, is the grid is designed, it's built
with an excess of capacity so that it can respond to any new
demands coming in. So you're always producing more
than the grid is demanding because at any moment the grid
may demand more and there's a response time.
Well, Bitcoin mining shifts that to where the energy generation
facilities can just generate at a steady rate and the grid
operators can basically just tell the miners to shut off if
they need more capacity to go to other places.
And in fact, the miners want to do that anyways because when
everybody else is demanding more energy, I tell people this all
the time on my spaces. I'm like, you're actually
willing to pay more for your electricity to make toast in the
morning than a Bitcoin miner is to make Bitcoin.
That's how cheap bitcoiners are, right?
They will not out compete you on on price per kWh, but what they
do in stabilizing the overall system is lower that cost for
everybody else around. And that's just such a novel
thing. It's so important for human
flourishing. Like if you tell people, hey,
having Bitcoin miners in your area will lower your electricity
prices, They may look at you a little cross eyed because
they've probably been told the opposite.
But that is literally what happens.
And to me that's that's just so powerful.
It's like, who doesn't want to have a cheaper electricity bill,
right? A million percent, 1,000,000%.
And, and I, and this is by the way, like this isn't fury
anymore. This is actually happening in
Texas. Like Texas is providing
stability for the Texas grid. It's actually allowing the
rollout of renewable energy sources without the necessity of
government subsidy because all of a sudden, because they are,
you know, there isn't sun all the time, there isn't wind all
the time, and you want a stable grid, Bitcoiners are always that
buyer of last resort. So it allows the grid operators
to kind of plan ahead because they know that the bitcoiners,
the Bitcoin miners are always going to be like, hey, give it
to me if you no one's going to take it.
So yeah, man, it's. You know, really quick 11 like
slightly different way to to say that right is because you just
mentioned the subsidies piece. Bitcoin mining is so powerful
for the grid that it takes technologies that makes no sense
otherwise, and it actually makes them make sense, right?
Because wind and solar made no sense for the grid without
massive battery backup before. But Bitcoin mining actually
makes a technology that makes no sense for the grid start to
actually make sense. And that just tells you by
itself how powerful it is. And I would just say one last
point of clarity, because I've gotten this feedback before, is
that I, I come across as like kind of a nuclear only guy who's
anti wind, anti solar. And, and I'm definitely not, I'm
a pro free market person. If you want to contribute to the
grid, whether it's burning coal, burning oil, natural gas,
nuclear, wind, solar, I really don't care.
I just think it should have to compete in an open free market
on its own merits. And as long as you're able to
produce electricity at a reasonable cost, I think you
should be allowed to participate.
Amen to that. Amen to that.
All right, everybody, this was Simply Bitcoin Live for August
21st, 2024. I'm your host Nico.
This is my Co host, Optimus Fields, and this is our guest
for today, Matt from Macro Minutes.
Take care everybody. We'll see you tomorrow for a
brand new episode of Simply Bitcoin Live.
It was brought to you by bitcoinwell.com on a mission to
enable independence.