Yeah, we're going to submit Bitcoin.
The country with a $570 billion GDP made their next move into
Bitcoin. However, this is not the first
time the Middle Eastern giant has made a Bitcoin play.
And the country we're going to be talking about today isn't the
only Miss Middle Eastern country making Bitcoin plays.
In fact, it's happening around across that entire area.
Area. Is this a sign that these Middle
Eastern oil giants are losing faith in the Petro dollar
system? Perhaps and they think Bitcoin
is a hedge or even the next global currency.
Let's see let's find out today. Anyways, we have a hell of a
panel with us. David Branskin.
He's a coin energy consultant and of course, our Co host here
at simply Bitcoin. The one and only crystal lame
out. Anyways, ladies and gentlemen,
no more delay. Let's jump straight into it.
Here is the coin desk article UAE.
UAE exempts crypto transactions from Value Added Tax That goes
on to say the United Arab Emirates has exempted crypto
transactions from paying the VAT, bringing the industry into
line with several traditional financial services.
The change, which takes effect November 15th, applies retro
retrospectively to transactions from as far back as June 1st,
2018. You never see that from
governments, right? The Arabic version of the
Federal Tax Authority update was made public on October 2nd,
2024. The English translation was made
public on October 4th, 2024. The exemption makes clear for
the first time that the tax doesn't apply to digital assets.
It covers the exchange of and transfer of ownership of those
assets, which means all cryptocurrency transit transfers
and conversions will now be exempt from paying the 5% levy.
This is absolutely massive. And the reason for that is
that's in stark contrast with how the it's in stark contrast
with how it works here in the United States or in Europe,
where you're actually, even if you're sending Bitcoin to
someone else, you actually have to pay the capital gain on that
transaction, on that transfer, which which is absolutely nuts.
But this is kind of like the theory from the sovereign
individual playing out, right, where you have different
jurisdictions all over the world kind of competing in in a way.
And they're basically trying to attract entrepreneurs.
They're trying to attract people to move to the city or the
country. This is why you have so many
people moving to Dubai because of their favorable tax laws.
And I think this is just another step in the right direction.
And when governments compete for your business as an individual,
you as an individual. When?
Anyways, more data to back up this point.
The UAE being one of the fastest growing digital asset markets in
the world. Research suggests that year on
year, the number of daily crypto traders has risen by 166%,
reflective of an overall climb in regional adoption.
It's estimated between 27 to 31% of UAE residents have invested
into digital assets. Among this active pool of crypto
investors, nearly 3/4 are thought to have invested in
Bitcoin. But it's not just UAUA citizens
and long standing residents who are driving the state of the
crypto economy. It includes new expats who have
flocked to the UAE for its safety and protection in the
midst of political and economic upheaval in other parts of the
world. Not to mention the fact of its
favorable tax codes. Isn't it crazy like a small
little city, right, where they don't have income tax, but they
provide more safety and they protect not only the rule of
law, they enforce the rule of law, but also they protect
private property rights more than countries that have higher
income taxes. What's the value add there,
right? I think it's a very interesting
question anyways, but it's not also the tax situation.
The UAE investment entities to monetize flared gas to power AI,
blockchain and Bitcoin data centers.
It goes on to say Hodler Investments, a Dubai based firm
with a portfolio and energy, AI and digital asset mining, has
signed a strategic partnership with Abu Dhabi's EHC Investment.
Together they will launch Next Gen., a product aimed at
monetizing wasted energy like flared gas to power data centers
in the UAEKSA and Egypt. And also last but not least as
well, of course, you have the Bitcoin conference.
They're most well known for the Bitcoin conference that they
throw in the United States. They're about to want, they're
about to have one in Amsterdam, which I'll be at.
Hopefully I get to see some of you guys there.
They're actually doing one in the Middle East, as I believe
this is going to be the biggest Bitcoin conference in the Middle
East ever. Of course, there's been crypto
conference, but not Bitcoin only conferences.
It's going to be called Bitcoin MENA.
It's going to be hosted in Abu Dhabi December 9th through the
10th. So I'm very, very bullish about
Bitcoin in the Middle East and for a couple of reasons.
Obviously the Middle East is known for having a vast amount
of energy, the favorable tax laws and also the respect for
private property rights and the the law and order specifically
in the smaller countries like like guitar in the UAE, Abu
Dhabi, Dubai. So very bullish on the Middle
East. Anyways, David, your background
is energy. Your background is mining.
Is this. Are these just journalists
writing puff pieces? What's actually going on there?
Are you optimistic about Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining in the Middle
East? Well, I think, yeah, it's,
there's plenty of evidence, you know, out there.
I mean, you've got the marathon project, a pretty large
immersion project that they're working with the sovereign
wealth fund over there. There's I'm working on a couple
projects that would be working with different, you know,
countries directly with the government, right, to take
advantage of that flare gas. If if you zoom out, if you zoom
way out, right. And we're looking at
civilization as a whole for the most part.
You know, we've always had to basically set up our lives
around, you know, where there was water, food, vegetation, you
know, for shelter, things like that, right?
And you're seeing this really interesting shift now through
Bitcoin now that we have that attachment to the energy and we
can immediately convert it into a store of value.
You know, whether whatever, you know, you believe as far as
argument, if it's money, if it's not money, whatever digital
gold, you can immediately change that power directly into a store
of value or a medium of exchange.
And so we're seeing this huge shift to places like we're
seeing it in West TX. So I'm in Texas, we're seeing it
in West TX as well, right? Like so West TX is kind of like
that. It's barren, it's kind of a
desert for a lot of the part of the country, right?
So it takes a lot of resources to to make anything grow there
or to make people move out there.
But you see this shift now we're going to congregate around
power, right? The businesses are going to move
to power. They're going to move towards
the energy source because it is now such an integral part of our
lives, whether it be Bitcoin, whether it be AI, whether it be
just general, you know, traditional data centers,
whatever the case may be, mission critical data centers,
everybody's moving closer and closer to the power, right?
So it'll start with the Cowboys that are mining Bitcoin and then
it'll move to the more traditional, you know, kind of
business focus, publicly traded miners, things like that, right?
And then the data centers will come in, you see, you know,
companies like what was it? HUD 8, right?
They start to kind of push more towards the AI focused, they're
trying to kind of hedge their bets, go different multiple
directions, right? So you're still, you're seeing
that happen and a place like Dubai is perfect for it because
it's all about order, it's all about control, It's all about
you're still free, right? But it's like they don't put up
with shenanigans, right? They don't deal with that.
And they are also super, they've always been, I say always,
right, Since they really started rebuilding the city about 1520
years ago, right? I actually sold a crane to a
company in Dubai back when they had like 80% of all of the
cranes in the world, right? So this was like 20 years ago.
But ever since they started that, they have been so focused
on technology and innovation. And they've got the money,
they've got oil, they've got this, this energy available.
It's nice to see them start really, really pushing and using
it, and it's great to see that part of the world is
consolidating to those core values, right?
All these people are coming in because they want that order.
We're seeing a really good swing and countries like that are
just, they're gonna lead the way.
A. 100% and you're seeing this kind of regulatory arbitrage
kind of play out in the United States where people are leaving
California and New York, they're going to Texas and Florida, of
course, freedom country, tremendous amount of people
immigrating to El Salvador in the Middle East.
But you buried the lead there in the very beginning.
You mentioned the fact that some of these countries sovereign
wealth funds are actively mining Bitcoin.
That is not a well known fact. Of course, we know the Kingdom
of Bhutan, We know Salvador is mining Bitcoin.
Of course we know Texas, huge amount of Bitcoin miners there.
But David, I don't know if you could say any of the specifics,
but that's absolutely masses. You just confirm that some
countries in the Middle East, their governments themselves are
mining Bitcoin. Is that correct?
Yeah. I mean, so it's a it's, it's
interesting, right, because of this shift.
You think about the Petro dollar you mentioned earlier, right in
the opening, right? You, you're talking about you've
got bricks, you've got all these things happening, right?
There's this kind of struggle to move off the dollar and
realistically, you know, right now a barrel of oil, right,
There's a billion barrels of oil used a day.
And that's not even counting like all of the natural gas that
comes from that for power generation and stuff and heat
and stuff like that. So that is a massive, massive
industry that just dwarfs, you know, the the Bitcoin market cap
right now, right? So as cool and innovative and as
amazing as Bitcoin is and as revolutionary as it is, it's
still in its infancy compared to the energy market, right?
So, so those guys over there are doing that, but it's still a
rounding error for them, right? I mean, they could be making,
they could be making, you know, a couple billion dollars mining
or a value, right? Mining Bitcoin right now, the
country could, and it's still a rounding error for most of those
countries where oil and gas is their primary export.
Right there. We're talking about, you know, a
few trillion dollars worth of, you know, a few trillion dollars
worth of energy. Bitcoin's just a rounding error.
So are they doing it? Yeah.
Absolutely. I think they'd be silly not to.
And I, I mean, I can't tell you a specific about the project I'm
working on, you know that conversation, but it'll, it'll
start slowly. It'll start with someone
basically a Bitcoin miner, you know, Marathon went in there and
partnered. That's all public information
that, that, that was big. And then other countries will be
like, OK, well, we've got all this excess, you know, gas that
we are either flaring or we try to send it to.
But you you talk about there's a lot of geopolitical issues there
that kind of make it make it advantageous for Bitcoiners,
right? You talk about consolidating
from one state in the US to another based on, you know,
regulations. That happens all over the world
every day, right? All over Europe.
People like, well, I don't, you know, like what's going on in
Germany. So I'm gonna move to Switzerland
or I don't like what's happening here.
So I'm gonna, you know, it's like, it's not that big a deal
because it's basically the size or even a little smaller,
whatever of the US, right? So it's like you're really just
moving from state to state. It's happening in the Middle
East too. People will get, you know,
displaced for, you know, geopolitical reasons for
religious persecution, whatever. And it moves and and they will
naturally gravitate to these places.
Well, the ones that are early adopting Bitcoin, you mentioned
El Salvador, Bhutan, right? They are ahead of the game.
And so the rest of the world outside of those countries start
to see that. You know, it's that old story of
what was it? I can't remember.
It was Spain or France or whatever where they started
taxing everybody and then the boats left, right.
Yeah, it's, it's, it's the sovereign individual thesis
playing out. And because of the Internet, you
can now work from anywhere. And I'm just connecting the dots
here, right. You have Exxon Mobil mine using
flared gas to mine Bitcoin in the United States.
You just confirmed that Marathon signed a deal with a Middle
Eastern country. And of course, we have bit deer
that signed a deal with the Kingdom of Bhutan in Asia.
Right. To think that trend is not going
to continue is just naive. Yeah.
And this is just going to continue to make the hash rate
go through the roof like it has been, which means that Bitcoin
theoretically is more computationally secure, which
means that its value proposition continues to go up.
Yeah. I mean, all things are good for
Bitcoin starting the week off strong.
Chris Alamo, what are your thoughts before we get on to the
numbers? Yeah.
So David, I would kind of want to touch on what you're saying.
Obviously in 1971, France requested their gold out of Fort
Knox and then England followed suit shortly afterwards.
Do you guys remember when the Nixon shock was obviously in 71
mid? 71, yeah. 1971 Do you know when
UAE was founded? 197123.
Correct. Four months after the Nixon
shock. Yep.
So August 15th, 19, let's go. So 1971, August 15th of 1971,
the Nixon shock occurred. December 2nd of 1971.
The UAE was founded as a nation. Obviously, if you can see,
obviously we became on the petrodollar system.
So a big part of this system was obviously, you know, backing
dollars by gold that was nixed. And then basically the the
secretary curious state at the time went over to the Middle
East, mainly Saudi Arabia and its proxies and basically said,
hey, we're going to support you with weapons and protection, but
you have to sell dollar or sell oil and gas or energy in U.S.
dollars. And that's kind of the system
that we've had ever since then. Obviously we've seen, and I
think a lot of those countries in the Middle East have had a
first hand witness or you know, they've seen obviously since
9/11 right after that and when basically the US government was
confiscating reserves. So the deal was basically we're
going to send you dollars and or we're going to send you like
protection basically, or the military in order to protect
yourself. And then you're going to use
those and you're only going to sell in U.S. dollars.
And then with your excess U.S. dollar reserves, aside from
pumping more wells or, you know, running your businesses, you're
going to plow them into U.S. Treasuries.
That's kind of been the game or that that we've been playing for
the last 50 years or so. But the issues started to rise
in 2001 when the US started confiscating assets of a lot of
of, you know, whether they're in the right or wrong, but they
were confiscating assets of Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden.
Then we saw even as recently as 2022, we sanctioned Russia.
Russia had about a trillion outstanding in Treasuries.
China in 2008 was pissed when we bailed out the bankers, but we
didn't bail out bondholders. So China was holding well over a
trillion dollars in reserves. So there's been the cracking of
the financial system and people are looking for a different
asset and a political asset such as Bitcoin in order to pump
their money into Saudi Arabia has been at the forefront of
they're receiving dollars and they're like, these can be taken
from us. So we need to find a better,
more suitable asset that we can hold on.
We have our oil reserves and obviously we have, you know, you
know, they've really been pumping up the economy through
tourism and, you know, welcoming businesses there.
But they're like, hey, we need a reserve asset in the case that
our banks are shut down. So I'll just leave you guys
there with that. I hope that's.
Good 100. That's an amazing take and we
see it in the comments too. Dumbest move is confiscating
assets in Russia, of course, because the moment they, and to
add to Chris's points, the moment that they politicize the
money, all of a sudden other countries that are using and
holding U.S. dollars are saying wait a second, you know what's
stopping one administration from doing the same thing to me?
And then they start looking for alternatives.
And of course the best alternative as we all know is
the only truly non decentralized non sovereign money, which is
Bitcoin that can't be politicized.
You know you could transact. You're going to have to be OK
with your even your worst enemies using it, but I would
say that's a feature and not a bug.
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At the time of recording the Bitcoin prices 63,830 sats per
dollar 1567 Block height 864,623 Realize Monetary inflation 1.32%
Market cap 1.26 trillion Bitcoin versus gold Market cap 6.79%
Money supply 19,764,000. 230 BTC percentage issued 94.11%.
Anyways, ladies and gentlemen, this is simply Bitcoin and we
cover not only the separation of money in state, but also the
separation of information in state and they go hand in hand.
What the Internet has enabled people to do is not only choose
what money they want to use, but it's also allowed them to talk
amongst themselves at a massive scale, mass scale, peer-to-peer
communications. And unfortunately for
governments that have been used to controlling the narrative
through a handful of legacy media outlets, it becomes very,
very uncomfortable when you have people building massive
followings, not going through the traditional gatekeepers of
information like The New York Times, like the Wall Street
Journal, like CNN, like Fox News, right?
You have the rise of independent content creators that are now
becoming more popular than the legacy media itself.
And of course, you have people the likes of which of Hillary
Clinton and of course, former Secretary of State John Kerry,
who ran for president, basically saying things like, yeah, social
media is a problem, The First Amendment is a problem, right?
So I'm going to play you guys this clip of Hillary Clinton
talking about social media. Let's check it out.
There should be a lot of things done.
We should be, in my view, repealing something called
section 2:30, which gave, you know, platforms on the Internet
to immunity because they were thought to be just pass throughs
that they shouldn't be judged for the content that is posted.
But we now know that that was an overly simple view, that if the
platforms, whether it's Facebook or Twitter X or Instagram or
TikTok, whatever they are, if they don't moderate and monitor
the content, we lose total control.
There should be a lot of things. If we if we don't censor or
control the content, we lose total control.
I mean like, wait a second. So that has me asking so many
questions, right? Like, what do you mean control?
Is that the role of government to control the narrative and
control the content? Isn't that specifically what the
1st Amendment is all about? Well, there's a breakdown.
Mike Benz, who originally kind of revealed this, he did an
amazing interview on Tucker Carlson and here are his, here's
his response to this Hillary Clinton interview.
I have been put here on God's green earth, sent here from the
future to tell you that this is the current consensus policy
pivot of every major organ of the US State Department and
state's programming is specifically designed to achieve
total control. I don't think that was the
original vision of what the United States was built upon,
right? And Gigi has a really good
point. And you can find this on Noster,
of course. And This is why protocols like
Noster are so important, because there is no centralized
platform. So even if they pass whatever
law they want, they couldn't take the information down, which
inevitably becomes a forcing function to instead of censoring
what your political opponent is saying, you have to address it.
It's a lot easier to censor for for tyrants anyways, It goes on
to say Gigi. Who defines hate?
Who defines truth? All centralized platforms will
inevitably be forced to be an arbiter, willingly or not.
It's an impossible problem. The only solution is to remove
central control and push it to the edges.
It's messy, it's imperfect, but it's much more preferable to the
alternative. And just a little bit of, of,
of, of commentary in regards to how the 1st Amendment works here
in the United States. I think the Founding fathers had
the wisdom to understand this when they wrote the 1st
Amendment the way they did because they realized, like, if
we give the power to government to get to dictate what is truth
and what is not truth, they are going to abuse that in order to
protect their political MO. So we kind of have to leave this
up to the free market of ideas. Is it perfect?
No, but is it better than the alternative?
And I think that's the point that Gigi's trying to make.
That's the wisdom that the Founding fathers added in the
first men in the US Constitution.
And you know, the Internet that I think is exposing a lot of
things that they didn't want exposed.
I think that they were always they had this idea that they
were always going to be able to control information through the
legacy media outlets. I don't think in in a million
years did they ever think that social media was going to become
more popular than the original outlets.
Anyways, David, what it What are your thoughts on this?
Man, where do you start with this?
Right? Like it's, I mean, we're, we're
literally seeing, you know, commentary and narrative come
out of the US government. Well, we see it all out of all
governments across the the planet right now, most
governments across the planet right now, right?
It's just, it's straight out of, you know, Orwell's 1984, right?
It's, it's Bitcoin ties into this in so many interesting
ways. But I think the main point is it
really does come down to freedom of speech, right?
And because freedom of speech, the reason freedom of speech is
so important is because it allows critical thinking.
It allows you to make your own decisions.
It allows you to create your own ideas and not follow, you know,
just blindly follow orders, right?
That was the whole point. We had just thrown off a tyrant.
And if we had just basically taken a page out of that book
and and copied it into, you know, what is now the United
States of America, then you know, we would be no better off,
right? It would have been just the same
song, different verse. Freedom of speech is so
important. The reason it works with ties
into Bitcoin so well is because it is enabling us to make our
own decisions and our own choices, not just say what we
want to say, right, But actually saying I want to put my value
here. This is where I see my value,
not just from a money perspective and a finance
perspective, but you know, I have value in my family.
I have value in the way that I live.
I have value in my personal beliefs.
I have value in my, you know, my religion.
All of this is freedom of speech, right?
It's not just freedom of speech, it's freedom of think.
It's your ability to actually decide on your own that is
absolutely goes against the the ethos of a government, right?
The government is we get involved and we begin putting
regulations on things and messing with your life, but it's
for the greater good. It's so you're not harming other
people, right? The problem is giving it that
inch, right? It just rolls and it rolls and
it rolls and it rolls and it rolls.
And so, and you see it in every single government that's ever
existed eventually they always try to grab as much of that
power as it possibly can. So things like the Internet,
things like Bitcoin, the ability just even just peer-to-peer
commerce, right? Me being able to go to a farmers
market, right? That's all tied into freedom of
speech, right? And what's so scary about that
is if they can control the speech, that's what they're
saying. That's what she's saying when
she says we will lose control. The way she's talking about is
an elite class that is so ingrained in the US government,
they're now one in the same, right?
They're not going to go away. We can't vote our way out of it,
right? So something radically has to
change. And that's the change she's
talking about. If it keeps going, if it keeps
going the way that it has been and people like Elon Musk don't
fight back with, you know, X if the average person doesn't fight
back. I, I, I wrote out a tweet today
that I was about to post and I had just a split second where I
wasn't sure if I wanted to put it up or not, right?
That's, that's a dangerous place to be at when you're actually
frightened of what the repercussions are going to be.
Now, you should always be willing to take accountability
for your words, right? But what I'm saying is what I
was going to quote and tweet was not, you know, revolutionary.
It was not crazy. It was not dangerous, but
there's just enough people out there that might get upset about
it, right? It made me think.
And those when when I have those feelings, that's when it makes
me realize that pendulum has swung way too far and that they
are living rent free in my mind and trying to control my
thoughts 100%. You have to push so super hard
to swing back it just and the further you go, the harder it
gets to to fight that back. 100% And by the way, David, you're
not the only person that made the case that that Bitcoin is
protected by the 1st Amendment where Bitcoin is speech.
And here is Ross Stevens from NY Dig, and I think he's trying to
get ahead of something from a, from a regulatory standpoint.
You know, he has quotes from Benjamin, Benjamin Franklin.
And I think the most important part here, and this is something
that we've been making the case on simply Bitcoin for a long
time actually, which is the fact that Bitcoin inherently is a
political movement, right? And because it's a political
movement, think about it, If you're not allowed to speak
freely about certain ideas. There was a point in time that
the legacy media was basically saying that when Bitcoiners were
screaming on Bitcoin Twitter that inflation was coming
because they printed a record amount of money, they called us
psychopaths. That's their quote, not mine.
And they said that that was disinformation.
Two years later, they said, oh, no, we were wrong about
inflation at the time. Those disinformation, this is
this is the dangerous part, right?
Is that at the time they'll just they'll just take it off the
Internet. And I think this is where Ross
Stevens is trying to get ahead from a regulatory perspective,
saying, hey, Bitcoin is speech, you know, money is speech.
And by the way, this is not just saying this.
I love this article by Naimbu Kelly because they're basically
saying exactly what David just said.
And these are, these are Naimbu Kelly's words, not mine.
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. Right?
And he also makes the case that their most important, their most
powerful weapon is the control of the truth.
So when you hear Hillary Clinton literally saying at very end.
We lose total control. There should be a.
She literally means that. She literally means that mass
scale peer-to-peer communications enabled by the
Internet is not allowing them to control the narrative the way
that they have been controlling the narrative.
I'm going to pass it on to Chris.
One last bit. A very, very powerful tweet that
I saw and I actually set it at the Bitcoin conference, Bitcoin
2023. I think if social media existed
back in the 2000s, we have, we would have not gone to war with
Iraq. And it was such a powerful
statement because the way that the American people would have
convinced about that war was that The New York Times released
an article that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
It came out half a decade later that that information actually
came from the intelligence agencies.
So it was like, it's nuts. And guys, make no mistake, the
fight for free speech is the front line for the fight for
Bitcoin. If they're not OK with you
speaking freely, they're not going to be OK with you
transacting freely. Anyways.
Passing it on to Chris. Yeah, no, I think that was a
great clip. I mean, they're, you know, the
saying is always they're the carbon you want to reduce.
You know, they're the speech you want to censor.
And obviously we're building tools to fight that.
Bitcoin being the the number one example or the obvious example,
the freedom to transact with peers in a peer-to-peer manner.
And then I think platforms like Noster, like, well, I am really
happy there's platforms like, you know, Parlor, Rumble X now
that Elon has it, like fighting to be more free speech
platforms. I do think as you can see, like
with Telegram, what is it? The CEO of Telegram when they
arrested him and they're trying to either force back doors, you
know, things are being leaked that the program has leaked, not
encrypted communication since 2018.
It's really sad to see. But I definitely think things
like Noster and Bitcoin are going to be things that fight
back that like once the total amount of pressure is applied to
centralized platforms, it's going to be the decentralized
platforms that went out in the long run.
So that's all I got to add there. 100% no, that's a really
good point. I'm bullish on protocols and I
still gotta give credit to Elon because what he's doing is
courageous with the Rumble CEO is courageous doing it was
courageous with the telegrams CEO was doing was courageous.
But as you can see, it's their centralized platform.
So there is someone to go after. And this is the this is how they
contrast with nostril and Bitcoin where it's essential.
There is no one to go after like you can you can, you know,
martyr some of the people involved with Bitcoin and I
think that has already happened in the past.
Free Ross, but you can't make the thing go away, which makes
it a forcing function. And when it comes to
information, it's like, okay, the governments can't no longer
sell you on a narrative when it comes to Bitcoin, it's a forcing
function on the failure of Fiat money.
It it literally puts up a mirror and it says money can exist
without inflation. How do you explain that away?
You can't, right? Anyways, Chris, what what are
your thoughts on this? Yeah, I guess one thing I wanted
to say like, like I commend, you know, the CEO of Telegram and
Elon for like fighting back. And I do think that, you know,
it takes courageous and brave men in order to set things
straight. But I think at the end of the
day, even they are susceptible things.
Like imagine if Elon's kid had a gun to his head.
It's like he would be metaphorically, metaphorically,
metaphorically, metaphorically. That was just an example, no
calls for. Violence if if, if, if they were
threatened or there was threats in order to one of Elon's loved
ones, I think you're more likely to get someone like that to
cave. Like even if you were to
metaphorically torture them or, you know, confiscate their
wealth or do things to prevent them.
I do think that there are ways to get to powerful people
through their loved ones. And I do think that protocols,
not platforms is a way to to defeat that.
If you're like, hey, like I don't have Bitcoin that I can
send because it's in multi sig and it's across three different
jurisdictions. Or it's like, hey, you know, I
want you to delete this user off your platform, off Nostra.
It's like, I can't because, you know, I don't run the relays.
I think those are ways to fight back of like there's no longer a
central entity or head to metaphorically chop off.
Yeah, this is all metaphorical. This is all metaphorical.
These are examples. We we don't.
And none of this is a call to violence.
YouTube. All right, everybody, let's get
to the news. We have lots to cover.
Let's check it out. Here we go.
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spend cold storage Bitcoin without needing this tremendous
amount of technical know how. Anyways, everybody, I do want to
bring this up and I think the central theme here and I'm
really curious to hear what David's thoughts are on this.
And it's a very simple idea. OK, The idea is you shouldn't
have to become a part time investor just to maintain your
purchasing power. The idea the the fact that
somehow, right, that somehow if you make a certain amount of
money, you have some savings. You.
Are forced to invest that money just to maintain not to increase
right Your the size of investment just to maintain your
your purchasing power is not normal.
This is insane this is crazy I I there's so many different
descriptions that I have for this and what the secondary
effects of that is is that it it overly balloons the financial
industry right and I think what we're going to see as hyper
bitcoinization accelerates is you're going to see what Parker
Lewis actually calls the great D financialization so I'm excited
to talk about that I'm going to read a little bit from the
article but first I'm also not the only one to worry about this
apparently this is Bitcoin is a great YouTube channel by the way
BlackRock worried about people with digital Bitcoin wealth not
using financial advisors. Let's check it out.
Hundreds of millions of people that are investing in these
digital assets, but they're holding it away from their
financial professionals that these individuals are buying
assets, holding it onto the onto it themselves, and they're not
allowing financial professionals to help manage it alongside
stocks and bonds to help them understand the tax consequences
of these assets. Over 80%, four out of five
millennial millionaires in the United States own crypto.
So if you're a financial advisor and you're trying to get that
next client of the future, you want to be able to offer your
services to a millennial, a high earning millennial, and you
don't know how to talk about digital assets or talk about the
value that you can provide as a financial professional with
respect to crypto. It's going to be very hard to
earn that trust and to earn that client hundreds of.
OK, so let me just breakdown the conversation that just happened,
all right? What were you just saying?
I'm a cab driver and I dislike Uber.
I really dislike Uber, right? Or I'm a horse and buggy person
and I really dislike cars. Like that's really what
happened. And the other, I'll put it to
you simply right, Bitcoin has, people are anticipating that
it's going to have a 40 to 30% annual rate of return for the
next 10 years, right? Conservatively, all you gotta do
is buy Bitcoin, earn Bitcoin, mine Bitcoin, put that Bitcoin
into self custody and you're gonna get that rate of return
without having to pay a fee and all the benefits of custodying
your own wealth. Why would I have to pay?
Is someone going to beat that return, a good return?
Just to kind of give you guys a perspective, a good return would
be from a financial professional, Financial advisor
would be 12%. If you take a little bit more
risk, 20%. But they can't guarantee that
year after year. That's like impossible, right?
Bitcoin is doubling that and you take self custody and you don't
have to pay a fee for it. That's the problem that they
have, But that's that sounds like a personal problem.
That doesn't sound like a problem for the individuals.
Here is a piece by Parker Lewis and he explains it a lot more
eloquently than I did. He goes on to say, have you ever
heard of a have you ever had a financial advisor tell you that
you need to make your money grow?
This idea has been so hard wild in the minds of hard working
people all over the world that has become practically second
nature to the very idea of work. The line has been repeated so
many times it is now a de facto part of working culture.
Get a salary position, Max out your 4O1K contribution, select a
few mutual funds with catchy marketing names, and watch your
money grow. Most folks navigate this pack
half every two weeks on autopilot, never questioning the
wisdom nor being conscious of the risks.
It's just what smart people do. Many now associate this activity
with savings, but in reality, financialization has turned
retirement savers into perpetual risk takers and the consequence
is that financial investment has become a second full time job
for many, if not most. Financialization has been so
radically normalized that the lines between saving and
investing have become blurred to the extent that most people
think of the two activities as being one in the same.
Believing that financial engineering is Ness is a
necessary path to a happy retirement might lack common
sense, but it is the conventional wisdom.
Over the course of the past several decades, economies
everywhere but but but particularly those in the
developed world, have become increasingly financialized.
Increased financialization has become the the necessary
companion of the idea that you must make your money grow.
But the idea itself that you must make your money grow only
really emerged in the mainstream consciousness as everyone
similarly became conditioned to the unfortunate reality that
money loses its value over time. So I'm gonna leave it at that,
and I'm gonna circle back to my original question or theme.
You shouldn't have to become a part time investor just to
maintain your purchasing power. All you have to do buy Bitcoin,
mine Bitcoin, earn Bitcoin, put that Bitcoin into self custody
and to use their words, let your watch your money maybe not grow,
but watch your purchasing power grow over time without having to
jump through all these, you know, all these hurdles.
So I just find it interesting and that seeing that video and
then reading that article explains to me why I have seven
friends from high school. One of them works at Goldman,
right? Wealth management division, and
he's been the only one out of those seven that I have not been
able to orange pill. Now I know why, right?
So not trying to shit on that, that industry or whatever, but I
mean, coming from a bitcoiner, been doing this for eight years.
Next year's going to be our 9th year, right?
Someone comes to me and they're offering me financial services.
I'm going to look at you with my eyes like that and say, why
would I do that? Why would I give you my money
and then not only give you my money and then pay you a fee for
giving you my money. And then, and I've seen this
with high net worth individuals trying to liquidate their
positions and put it into Bitcoin.
The way they question you and guilt trip you, how you're
trying to get out of these things, which is nuts.
If you think about it, It's like, wait a second, isn't that
my money? Why are you questioning me about
getting my money back? Well, it's simple.
Everyone, no one's better than their incentives.
They're Oh my God, I want to be nice.
They're collecting rent, bro. They're collecting rent.
Their, their their incentive is for you.
It's like the Matthew McConaughey from, from, from
Wolf of Wall Street, Right? Which is like, no, so they make
your clients make money. It's like, no, that would make
it real. What you got to do is you got to
come up with another great idea, right?
And you got to keep them, you know, in the system.
Well, anyways, I think I made my point, David, I was seeing some
of your facial expressions. You have some thoughts on this
because like, in all seriousness, like it's not a,
it's not a it like it's not a jab or, or, or trying to shit on
someone's career. It's just the reality of the
fact that there are a lot of people like me that I'm, I'm for
what is a four? I don't have any 401K, right?
I don't have any of these things.
I've built my wealth outside of that system I'm not interested
in. I don't need a financial advisor
if I'm getting 40% year over year returns, right.
And even with sailors base case, it's gonna you know kind of he's
making taste that Bitcoin will still out compete the S&P 20
years from now and instead of it getting a 30 to 40% return, it
will get a 20% return. Where is the necessity for me to
take that risk to give up custody of my wealth to someone
else and then they charge me a fee for that.
Like from a my perspective, I don't see the value proposition
there, right. So what are your thoughts,
David? Then we'll push it on.
We'll push it on to Chris. There are there are two things
that prepared me for Bitcoin. I just wish they had prepared me
earlier or I had seen Bitcoin earlier, right?
I, I'm, I have not been in it as long as you guys have, but as
you're talking about this, I remember back to my 20s and have
this like almost like PTSD of these conversations with these
guys from like different, you know, wealth advisor, you know,
companies with, they're like, well, you know, you just do this
and you get this and, you know, you get 8% and just trust me,
bro, everything's fine, right? It is.
We'll manage it all for you. And I just remember being in my
20s, I've got two boys that are both in high school now, but I
remember when they were little thinking, you get this advice,
you get these people that tell you like in Parker's, which by
the way, one of my first ever Bitcoin events was actually
seeing Parker Lewis speak. I had no idea how lucky I was to
be introduced to him at that point, right?
Being in Austin, he was with Unchained, you know, all that
kind of stuff. He's a genius.
This book is incredible, but I just remember being told all
those things and trying to do those things and follow the
rules and they're like, OK, you need six months of cash to pay
bills in case something happens or whatever.
I'm like, OK, so I would do that.
And then like two years later I would be like, oh, I just
recalculated my bills and I guess my boys are getting
bigger. You know, life is costing more.
Whatever. So you just, OK, I need to put
more. So I had to put more money in,
right? So I, I worked hard and I put
more money in and I stopped spending money on other things.
And then another year later, like, oh, it's, it's the same
thing, right? And it just, it gradually
happened to quote his book, right?
Gradually then all of a sudden, and then I woke up one day and
I'm like, why in the last, you know, 4-5, six years have I had
to double the amount of liquid cash I have to manage to cover
six months of expenses. My, we're not doing anything
extravagant. The bills have not really gone
up. You know, really like we're not
adding anything. I don't understand what's
happening, right. So that was, that was the first
thing. That was the first thing that
happened. And then the second one was when
I, as a effect of that, right from that, 'cause I started
reading books on investing and everything that you, most of
what you read is just regurgitating the same stuff
that is sort of worked about 25% of the time over the last 80
years, right? And we are so ingrained in this.
It's ingrained in us, this idea that, well, you got to put your
money to work. You got to put your money to
work. No one ever stops and asks,
well, why? Why doesn't the money hold
value, right? That sort of thing.
You don't think about it. So I literally killed myself.
Metaphorically, that's an expression.
That is an expression. Thank you for keeping me real on
that one. I was just working another 30
hours a week in addition to my nine to five job, reading books,
learning, watching YouTube videos, trying to learn about,
you know, how to trade options, you know, cash secured puts,
covered calls, all this, you know, and looking and, and you
know, due diligence, you know, all this stuff.
And it, it was brutal for me because I just, I don't think
that way, right? I'm just not, I'm fine with
numbers. I love a good spreadsheet, but
it was so convoluted and so difficult.
It's just a Fiat game. And so these guys came along and
they're trying to help you play that Fiat game.
It's literally just because people are, they don't want to
put in the time and it's not well, it's not just because they
don't want to put, they don't want to put in the time and
effort. They just want to live their
lives. But even if they do put in the
time, most people can't really grasp and get this.
And even if you do play it right, you're still only right
about 40% of the time, right? And that's not always enough to
keep you ahead of the game. So when these guys say, you
know, Oh, well, you know, it's poor us, you know, we're not
getting a chance to help these people manage it.
We're like, well, you're not getting a chance to help these
people manage it because it's not necessary anymore, right?
This is what happens when you actually bring a this is what
happens when you actually have a hard cap money that's not
manipulated. You can get this return, right.
People don't understand deflation.
And while I was trying to learn all that stuff, I read Robert
Kiyosaki's book, right? And rich Dad, poor dad.
He's a crazy character, right? He's got a lot of good and bad
about him, Stuff I like, stuff I don't.
But he's the one that actually planted that seed in my mind way
back when that he said in a perfect society, money would
actually be deflationary. He's the first one I ever read
that line from. And I thought to myself, oh,
but, but I thought I didn't even know a lot about economics, but
but I thought we had to have at least 2% inflation to encourage
everybody to, you know, So it's like all of these things, all of
these mixed messages and this huge industry that's just been
for been on top of us for so long we've been living in.
It's not surprising that it's so difficult for us to step out and
break free from that and take that risk.
It seems it's counterintuitive to everything we've ever been
told or ever learned at all. And the fact of the matter is
you are better off winning or losing if you take control of it
yourself, right? You're responsible yourself.
But we are scared to death to. Metaphorically.
Metaphorically scared to take that risk on ourselves, right?
And most people, This is why most people will never get
Bitcoin, because they'll never want to do that.
They want the FDIC. They want the fake, you know,
security, they want the false security and and they don't want
to be held accountable for their own actions.
So these guys are, these guys are worthless, not worthless,
but they are. They're no longer necessary.
And once that Fiat game dies, really dies, it's going to be,
it's going to be tough, but they're going to have to bring
real value or, you know, they'll go, they'll have to go find
something else to do. Yeah, it, it's, it's, it's quite
interesting, you know, and that is a, a big part of the US
economy, right? And you ask like, what value do
they provide? What do they create right?
They just made super money around.
And, and, and in the Fiat system, you could say, oh,
they're necessary because that is how high net worth
individuals outpace the debasement of currency, right?
But. We see Michael Saylor breaking
that rule. Yeah, in a, in a bit in a
Bitcoin system, like, you know, I'm a millennial, right?
And I'm like, dude, like I don't, I, I will never, I can
never imagine in a world where I'm looking at a wealth advisor
and saying maybe that would be a good idea.
You know, like, and and I know, and it, he mentioned it, he, he
brought up the statistics himself.
He's like, yeah, you know, 4 out of five, you know, million
millennial millionaires in the United States, like, you know,
they're like they, they own this asset.
Well, how do we convince them not to take self custody is
basically what he's saying. Chris, what are your thoughts on
this before we move on to the culture?
Yeah, I mean, I I think kind of piggybacking off what David was
saying, it's like the whole system, even when you look at
like the billionaires, the Fiat billionaires, the Jeff Bezos,
the Elon Musk, you name it, fill in the blank there.
They're incentivized not to sell their stock.
See, when you get to those upper echelons, what you're
incentivized to do is put them up as collateral and borrow
against them. Because the wealth advisors are
saying if you sell the stock, you're obviously the largest
shareholder or individual shareholder.
If you sell it, you're going to put downward selling pressure.
But in a way that we can avoid that is you pledge them as
collateral will give you a 3% or 4% loan.
And then, you know, you want a billion dollars, you pledge a
billion, a billion and five worth of stock.
You over collateralize over collateralize it in the Fiat
sense. And then they'll give you the
dollars in your bank account for whatever business you want to
buy or yacht or mansion, what you name it, whatever you want.
You pledge this the stock, but then you're at the beck and call
of the markets and like, hey, like all of a sudden there's a
drop. We need to pledge more
collateral, but we can't. How do you sell the stock?
Like we don't want you to liquidate it into liquid net
worth. Well, one, they're slippage and
they probably wouldn't be worth what they are on paper.
That's a story for another day. But you know, in the event that
like you have so much debt outstanding, they change the
rules of the game. Obviously, look at the 2008
financial crisis. It's like the banks messed up in
all intents and purposes, they should go under out of business.
You know, Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, ADP, like all these
AIAIG. They all should have went
bankrupt, but we prop them up with a Fiat money printer and we
basically are like, hey, but now you owe us like you're in debt
and the the taxpayers bailed the app, but we didn't.
We bailed out Wall Street, but not Main Street.
And it's this whole Fiat incentive game where when you
self custody your Bitcoin, you had the risk and onuses on you.
But at the same time, it gives you that privilege and that
power to like go wherever you want.
You know, we see the jurisdictional arbitrage of
people moving to UAE, to Puerto Rico, to El Salvador, to name a
few. And if money goes where it's
treated the best and when what they're trying to do is they're
trying to lock their money into their system, into their
governance. And Bitcoin gives you the
freedom to go wherever you want. So that's just my too sad.
It's not playing by their rules anymore.
A. 100%. Rules A. 100% ladies and
gentlemen, we are almost at 200 likes on YouTube and there's
almost 500 people watching live. So if you guys are enjoying the
show, make sure to smash that like button on YouTube, smash
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support over there on that protocol.
Anyways, guys, stay tuned. We're going to talk to David
about Bitcoin, energy mining, all that good stuff during the
culture. So let's get to it.
Here we go. All
right everybody I want to tell you guys about the Orange app
Stack friends who Stacks apps join the 12,233 bit corners that
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It'll take you directly to your App Store of choice whether
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You want to ask me a question? Send me a message on the orange
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today. Stack friends who stacks sats.
Scan the QR code or check the link in the video description to
get started. Anyways, I do want to open the
conversation up and I want to take advantage of our guests.
For today, we have David Branscomb.
David Branscomb is an Bitcoin energy consultant.
We just did a panel recently together over in Las Vegas at
the Unconfiscatable conference is the last one, unfortunately,
you know, very, very, very sad. I'm sure Tone's going to bring
it back. I know Tone, I know Tone at this
point he's going to bring, he's going to be a crazy bull market.
He's going to, I'm going to bring that shit back.
So but. Yeah, so, and we were, we were
on this panel together and I, I believe the panel had to do with
mining. And I, I didn't know a lot of
David's background and he was just dropping hot fire on that
panel. I was like, I have to meet this
guy. I have to introduce myself.
So David, welcome on, welcome to the show.
Could you tell a little bit about what you do?
Because you, you work with so many companies, right?
What do you do? What do you do in the Bitcoin
space? And a little bit about yourself.
Sure. So I've kind of done I guess
before Bitcoin done a bunch of different random kind of
business development sales gigs. I bought and sold construction
equipment. I worked for a nonprofit.
I ran a consulting company for that nonprofit, you know,
business to business collections kind of thing Dittled stint at
Dell. I was a a technical sales Rep at
Dell. So I kind of have that technical
background experience. But after the pandemic, I wasn't
doing a whole lot, not a lot really going on.
And I was building AI have a koi pond in my backyard.
If you follow me on Twitter, I post a lot of morning pictures
out there. It's like my favorite place to
have coffee and stuff. And I was building a raised grow
bed just really because I was bored, I wanted to see if I
could do it. And so I was building that.
My neighbor across the street came in.
This was maybe, I don't know, early 2021, something like that.
And I was mining a little bit of Bitcoin, but really just kind of
on the on the GPU side, right? I hadn't gotten into ASICS and
stuff. And my neighbor across the
street came in. Turns out he was asking me about
my project. So what do you know about
Hydrodynamics? So just just what I learned
here, you know, went down some, watched some YouTube videos.
Turns out he was the CEO of a company that was manufacturing
immersion cooling in Austin, TX and I went to work for them as
AVP of Business development. They had closed a couple 100
megawatts worth of immersion cooling with Riot and I went on,
worked for them for about a year, selling a few more, maybe
about 40 megawatts total, something like that of immersion
cooling. And that's kind of what brought
me into the space. I was working it with these
guys. I wasn't even really a Bitcoiner
yet, but they just all assumed I was like, you know, all in it
because I was working in the job, but I just thought I was
going to sell the traditional data centers.
So that's kind of what got me into it.
And every day I would just learn more from them working with
these guys, selling immersion, you know, helping deploy at
sites, things like that. I left Midas and start and
consulted with for independent clients building mines built
like a, you know, 8 MW air cooled and eight MW immersion,
16 MW mine. Some good, some nice guys from
at Miami kind of gave me my first gig on that and I've just
kind of been running ever since I can.
Immersion is still kind of the focus, right?
Basically vetting a project or just kind of making sure that
you know, the flow is correct and, and tweaking it to optimize
that system. But I worked with a company
really just kind of tagging along really I didn't like
designed it or anything like that.
But I learned about off grid gas site mining where we're taking
the gas directly out, turning it into electricity through
generators. And that one really kind of got
me into energy. And I've just kind of been
slowly moving upstream ever since.
So I can help out on all of the operation side, you know,
sourcing sites, whether it's on grid, off grid, behind the
meter, whatever. But now I'm really kind of more
focused on, you know, sovereign energy, actually owning that
power source. We were talking earlier about
these countries that, you know, we're getting into Bitcoin even
at the government level, they have so much energy, right?
You've got Chevron and Exxon here in the US.
It just, I mean, they have, they, they, they waste, you
know, so much energy a day just because it's not possible to
properly distribute it and things like that.
So we're kind of at the forefront at this crossroads
between money and energy. And it's a really exciting place
to be. And I'm kind of living 1 foot in
kind of both sides of that, right?
I'm talking to the old school oil and gas, you know, energy
distribution, transmission, and then on the other side, I'm
talking these, you know, Cowboys.
I know a lot of the different, you know, pub Co's personally
and what they're trying to do. And so I just kind of, I just
like to be a part of interesting projects and, and work on
different things and just learn everything I can about energy
and Bitcoin and how those two kind of kind of are intertwined.
Yeah, beautiful. And I, I, I want to focus on the
aspect because it fascinates me, right?
And I think, I think Bitcoin mining is heading to this, to
this new era where I think it peaked in these major data
centers. And now it's all about fighting,
finding isolated energy pockets because that's a major
opportunity and what that's going to do for local
communities that are around those energy pockets that
perhaps those local communities didn't have jobs, they didn't
have the opportunities. And Bitcoin miners just go in
there and all of a sudden it's like this new gold rush, except
the gold isn't going to run out. I mean, technically 202140
eventually, right? But you know, but there's,
there's still the fees. Yeah, yeah.
Which are going to. Be enormous.
So can you talk a little bit about that?
Because that to me, you know, fascinates me.
I, I originally got into the industry through mining back in
20/16/2017. I pivot.
I pivoted away from mining in 2018.
Bane of my existence. Highly regret it.
Pivoted to media. That's worked out so far, but
holy shit, you know, mining since 2018.
That would have been nice. But the point I'm trying to
make, though, is that, you know, this is like a new era and it,
it's so exciting to me because it's going to give so much
opportunities to these relatively small countries.
Yeah. That would otherwise be
relatively poor. Yeah.
They wouldn't have, you know, they wouldn't have opportunity.
I, I, we just had the, the presidential candidate from
Suriname and Suriname has a tremendous amount of energy
potential off its coast, right. And you know, there like that is
a country changing type of phenomenon here.
So could you talk a little bit about that, David, when, when
you said sovereign energy, what does that mean?
What does that entail for the world?
What is that going to bring the world?
Is that was that going to make the world a better place, or are
we going to boil the oceans in the process of mining all this
Bitcoin? We're not going to boil the
oceans at all. The oceans are going to be fine.
You know, even depending on what you think about climate change,
right? The oceans haven't really
changed very much. So I I feel like we're good
there. I actually had a chance to meet
Maya briefly in El Salvador at an event.
Anyone that meets her talks to her, right?
It's got to be bullish on certain these countries have
been a victim of the Fiat game, right?
They may have had we, if you look at really just the universe
as a whole, let alone just planet Earth, we don't have an
energy production or energy supply issue.
We have an energy distribution issue, right?
Same way we do with, you know, food and and things like that.
There's plenty of energy out there.
The rules and the blockades set up by governments and that Fiat
system wanting to control that energy source is what has caused
the problem. So there's the you talk about
Bhutan, you talk about El Salvador.
El Salvador took a huge risk not just on Bitcoin, but energy in
general, the geothermal energy that they use.
So they, they literally create energy from a volcano, right?
They pump water down and it's this giant steam engine and it's
incredible what they're able to do.
And it's almost perpetual. I mean, that volcano would
basically have to go away for that to, to end, right?
So there is plenty of energy out there.
Bitcoin is the 1st technology that allows someone to take, go,
find energy that would normally be completely lost and wasted
and immediately transfer it into a store of value.
So when I said earlier, we're talking about in the past,
company or not companies, but well, yeah, companies, but
society as a whole, we had to go to where there was fresh water.
We had to go to where there was, you know, food, whether it be
hunting, gathering, livestock, farming, whatever, we needed all
of this, right? Those locations are not always
where the energy is, is readily available as far as like massive
amounts of power, oil, gas, you know, even wind, solar, hydro,
right? It's not always right there.
We're at a interesting crossroads where that focus is
being shifted away from that we can, we now have economies of
scale that allow us to move further and further away from
those sources and still be able to survive and provide for
ourselves. And I see this migration now
towards these areas that have been long overlooked, that have
been ignored because of control or, you know, bad governments or
terrible organizations that have, you know, loaned US money
and then basically used it to bankrupt countries.
Bitcoin is a way to solve all of those problems and allow these
countries to take that energy that is readily available there
and make Bitcoin their number one export because it's finite.
I believe there is no risk in that, in that side.
You just literally have to hold on long enough for everyone to
realize that the best store of value we have is something that
is literally backed by nothing but energy.
It's not, and it's not even really backed by energy per SE,
but the fact that it is a through mining, it's
inextricably tied to that energy.
So if I'm going to send you Bitcoin or I'm going to receive
it, I have to have energy. And then on top of all that, the
value of that Bitcoin transaction from one location to
another is literally the amount of energy required to mine and
or make that block, right. So I've used this analogy
before. I think I used it with, with
you, Nico. If I were to you were to an Uber
driver and you were to give me a ride somewhere and it costs one
gallon of gas to go from point A to point B.
The best way for me to actually the most, the easiest way to
measure and to pay you for that service is to actually give you
1.1 gallons of gas right in exchange for it.
That would be the perfect way to exchange to you, for you to know
for sure that you are actually profiting.
We created coins and dollars so we didn't have to carry around
gallons of gas to pay for that, to make that exchange better and
easier. And it was good for a while, but
the problem is now we're using paper notes that can just be
debased. So maybe go from going point A
to point B. You may say, OK, that gallon of
gas is $5 and I made 550 on it. But by the time I got to point
B, that $5 will only buy, you know, $2.50 worth of stuff from
where I started. Point A.
That's the problem, right? Because Bitcoin is tied to this
energy and because of that finite number, it's just it has
the ability to change and shift the way we use energy, the way
we view energy, the way we store our value, the way we use our
time and save our time. So that time and that and that
value together, Bitcoin is just because it's tied to that energy
as a proof of war concept makes all the difference in the world.
Without that proof of work, you have some other things, you
know, that are proof of stake, things like that.
The dollar is proof of stake. Right.
It it it, it anchors. It anchors Bitcoin to reality.
Yes. Because it's an energy based
money. And I think that a lot of the
insanity and a lot of the decadence that you see in
today's world is because the money is no longer anchored to
reality. It's been completely
disconnected. I think that's the power of the
money printer. I think it it makes people sick
spiritually, financially, obviously, but I think it breaks
some people. I think, I think no one deserves
the power of the money printer and Bitcoin like it it, it's a
check, right? Because it's it's a reality
check. It's like you can't just print
more of it, so you have to mine it, you have to buy it, or you
have to earn it, right? It's just the reality.
You can't fake it either, right? Like, well, this in, I mean it.
If I go to the gym, you and I are at the gym, right?
And I say, OK, we're going to put, you know, 225 lbs of weight
on this bench press. You can either lift that or you
can't, right? That's it.
I have enough energy right and muscle power to move this bar
down and back up or I don't, right?
Bitcoin actually works on the same laws of physics, so you
don't have a choice. You either agree the 2 + 2 = 4
and that this many kilowatt hours are required to to move
this transaction from one locate.
You know the the keys from you know, from one location to the
other, transfer the ownership of that from one key to another.
Or you don't. And if you don't, well, you
don't get to play in the sandbox.
You just, you are literally, when you say I don't agree with
this, you are literally turning your back and stepping out of
the sandbox and you don't get to play.
That is what Hillary Clinton doesn't like when she was
commenting earlier, right? Because it's literally what it
is. You have to play by the rules
because it's the laws of physics, energy created or
destroyed, you can use it or not.
And what's great about Bitcoin is it is the perfect balance of
that The value of a Bitcoin will only be worth whatever people
are willing to use it for. And it will also only be worth
whatever people are, whatever amount of energy people are
willing to expend for it, Right. So you talk about these we
earlier, you know, these these countries that are doing it.
OK, Oh, hash rate's going to go through the roof.
Hash rate will always increase to the necessary amount for
security. And then when it's no longer
profitable or valuable or someone tries to come in and
play the Fiat game and, and they, and they, they realize
they're not playing by the rules that hat their hat, they will
lose. They will lose their they will,
they will go underwater. They will spend way too much on
energy or whatever. And they're trying to, you know,
play that hedge. They will get wrecked.
It will happen. So when that happens, when that
happens, the bad actors, that's them turning away.
They're turning away, they're kicked out of the sandbox.
And everybody that is mining Bitcoin in the most efficient
way possible always looking for ways to, you know, to be more
efficient and tweak that process and just be, you know, as as
real with those numbers and those physics as they can.
They're the ones that are going to win.
And if you have to have that incentive, otherwise it just
didn't work. Absolutely.
All right. Well, we are getting to the top
of the hour. Chris, I do want to give you an
opportunity, one or two minutes closing thoughts.
I'll just keep it short and sweet.
Stay humble Stacks acts. That's self custody your
Bitcoin. Beautiful, beautiful David.
Last words, last thoughts before we wrap up the show.
Not your keys, not your coins. Get off the exchange.
Love it, love it. All right everybody, thank you
so much for tuning into some of the Bitcoin Live for October
7th, 2024. I'm your host for today.
This is my legendary Co host Chris Alamo and of course our
special guest for today, David Branscomb.
Go give him a follow. I'm going to put up his Twitter
handle up on screen right now. Anyways guys, have an amazing
rest of your day. Like the show Subscribe if you
feel like we provided you value and Opti will be in the hot seat
tomorrow I'll be traveling to Europe for Bitcoin Amsterdam.
Hope to see some of you guys there and of course, we'll be
doing the show. Show doesn't stop.
Honey Badger Media don't stop. Anyways, love you all back
tomorrow. Peace out, everybody.
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