Yo, the Bitcoin billionaire just spoke to the board of the third
largest company in the world urging them to adopt Bitcoin.
He showed Microsoft 44 slides in 3 minutes and you have to stick
around to the watch the whole video because there are a couple
of Nuggets condensed in this video that exposes why this
upcoming Bitcoin cycle that could potentially be happening
in 2025 could be different. So let's check out the video.
Here we go. Microsoft can't afford to miss
the next technology wave, and Bitcoin is that wave.
Bitcoin represents the greatest digital transformation of the
21st century. That represents digital capital.
The global wealth is distributed across assets that provide
utility and others that preserve capital.
But risk is destroying trillions of dollars of that capital every
single year, and investors are turning to digital capital in
the form of Bitcoin in order to avoid that risk.
Digital capital is economically and technically superior to
physical capital, and it represents a revolutionary
advance in capital preservation. The asset class itself is
growing from trillions to hundreds of trillions of
dollars, and it is backed by digital power along with
political and economic power. It makes sense for Microsoft to
be powered by digital capital, Bitcoins, the best asset you can
own. The numbers speak for
themselves. It makes a lot more sense to buy
Bitcoin than to buy your own stock back or to hold Bitcoin
rather than holding bonds. If you're going to outperform,
you're going to need Bitcoin, and those bonds are undermining
your options market and your equity liquidity.
Luckily, you have an alternative.
Public support for Bitcoin is surging, as is political
support, as is support for the US Bitcoin Strategic reserve, as
is Wall Street support. And the president of the United
States says. Never sell your Bitcoin.
That's why we're entering year one of the crypto renaissance,
and you have a choice to make. Cling to the past or embrace the
future. Divest billions of dollars and
slow your growth rate. Invest billions of dollars and
accelerate your growth rate. You've surrendered hundreds of
billions of dollars of capital over the past five years, and
you've just amplified the risks that your own shareholders face.
If you want to escape that vicious cycle, you're going to
need an asset without counterparty risk.
What if you could buy $100 billion?
Company growing faster than Microsoft for one times revenue?
What if you keep doing it every single year?
It's time for Microsoft to evaluate its Bitcoin strategic
options. We've created an open source
model. You can plug in your own
assumptions. You can convert your cash flows
and your dividends and your buy backs and your debt into
Bitcoin. If you do that, you'll add
hundreds of dollars to the stock price, you can create trillions
of dollars of enterprise value. You can strip away risk from
your shareholders, and you can prosper on the Bitcoin standard.
So do the right thing for the world and adopt Bitcoin.
All right, everybody, we there, we had the Chad Taylor himself
pitching to the Microsoft board and because you only have 3
minutes, you know, very concise, packed a lot of information in
there and basically saying to the Microsoft board, if you guys
don't buy Bitcoin, you're going to have fun staying poor.
I mean, that's the way that I interpreted it.
I think he did an excellent job with the time constraints that
he has and I think the the biggest like really convince her
is going to be number go up. I think as micro strategy
continues to outperform, as the stock continues to go parabolic,
you know, I think a public companies are not going to have
a choice but to but to at least take a look at Bitcoin.
And that doesn't necessarily mean that they have to go as
balls deep as Michael Saylor. But again, you know, I think
Saylor said in the very beginning, if you have a, if you
have a percentage of your treasury in cash or cash
equivalents, that is that is losing purchasing power every
single year. If you transfer even a
percentage of that into Bitcoin, not only will it compensate for
the loss of purchasing power that those, you know, that cash
or those cash equivalents are dealing with on a on a yearly
basis, but you can actually have potentially some gains, right?
And I think that's the argument that Michael Saylor is trying to
make. And I think he's putting his,
his money, whether money where his mouth is, because he just
announced this morning that MicroStrategy just bought 15,000
more Bitcoin. The current MicroStrategy stack
sits at 400,000 Bitcoin, which is insane.
And Marathon Mara, I think they renamed to Mara just announced
that they're following the MicroStrategy playbook.
And they just announced that they are raising, they're doing
the whole convertible note thing and they're raising roughly
$805,000,000 to acquire more Bitcoin using the MicroStrategy
Sailor playbook. So absolutely crazy and but not
surprising. Anyways, guys welcome Simply
Bitcoin Live, the most watched daily Bitcoin live show on
YouTube, Rumble and X. I'm your host Nico.
I'm joined here by my Co host Optimus Fields and the CEO and
founder of Start 9. I dropped a poll in the live
chat today asking you guys how many of you guys are running a
node? And those numbers are not good.
We got to get those numbers up. So we're going to be talking
about the start 9. We're going to be talking about
Bitcoin nodes during the culture segment.
But first, Opti, what are your thoughts on the Chad Sailor's
pitch to Microsoft? Well, first of all, I found it
hilarious just how many slides he smashed into that 3 minutes.
It like it almost went by too fast where you can't really even
decipher and breakdown every every slide in that
presentation. But you love to see it.
And I really think that that might be a good kind of message
to send to your friends and family or people that look at
you and think that you are, you know, there's special relative
there that doesn't know what's going on in the world and you
kind of send them this. And I think the main point there
is kind of what Sailor said, like the numbers don't lie.
We've been saying get constantly on the show.
Bitcoin is the best performing asset.
You know, Bitcoin is the best thing to be holding.
And once you really see all the numbers jam packed against each
other, it, it kind of becomes a no brainer.
Obviously, it the message doesn't kind of get relayed as
easily or as well from just like the stance of like, oh, my
cousin, you know, my nephew or my brother's telling me to buy
Bitcoin. I'm sure none of us have a
compact 3 minute Bitcoin TLDR like Sailor does.
So it is interesting that he dropped that video.
I, I wonder if it's going to make some rounds and more people
are going to follow suit and who's actually listening and
watching that video and what the fallout will be.
Or rather, you know that the tailwinds will be of that, but
you just love to see it. And I mean, I, I think the point
remains the same. It's like if you aren't
investing in Bitcoin at this point, are you really watching
closely? Are you really seeing what's
happening in the world? And everyone needs to have some
Bitcoin, personal Bitcoin, coin, corporate treasury Bitcoin,
etcetera, or else you are being left in the dust.
As you said, you know, you can have fun staying poor.
It's kind of hard to tell Microsoft to have fun staying
poor when they're, you know what, I think the third biggest
company in the world. So maybe they think they know
better than a lot of Bitcoiners. But it is kind of trending
towards our direction where it's becoming a mature asset.
You know, it's becoming very clearly the best money to be
holding. And now the signal is getting
out there. And so it's no longer just, you
know, a bunch of Bitcoiners peer-to-peer talk talking about
it on Bitcoin Twitter, it's getting set to, you know, the
highest levels of corporate, CE, OS, etcetera, executive suites.
And now they have to very, very honestly think about Bitcoin.
So you love to see it. And also, you know, I think I
think Sailor kind of slowed down his, his speech there a little
bit because usually he's more amped up than I am.
So it is interesting to just hear him kind of say it slowly
but surely. But I really like the punchline.
You know, if you want to help the world, you need to save in
Bitcoin. Does Microsoft really care about
that? I don't know, but I love the
messaging. Absolutely guys, help us break
100 likes within the 1st 15 minutes of the show.
We're at 86 live, 86 likes or 87 likes and almost 500 live
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Consider subscribing if you feel like we provided you value.
We're also joined today with a dear friend and also founder and
CEO of Start Nine. Start 9 is the GOAT of sovereign
computing. It's the node that I personally
use myself because it is so bad ass.
It is so seamless. I'm a convenience maxi guys,
I'll be honest with you. And the two devices that they
make, the server pure and server one are just plug and plays.
You don't sacrifice any of the security, but you can just plug
it in and bada boom, bada Bing. You have access to sovereign
computing. So Matt, thank you so much for
joining us today. How you doing bro?
Doing great, happy to be on again, thanks for having me.
So what are your thoughts on Chad Sailor potentially?
Well, he was really forcing the hand of the third largest
computing software company computing company in the world.
What are your thoughts on his three minute pitch?
It was fine, I guess. It was very, very droll, right?
Like Opti was saying that his tone was just like, like he was
bored out of his mind giving that, giving that little speech
and flying through the slides at a pace that nobody could
possibly digest them in time. So, yeah, so it was a little bit
odd, maybe an awkward kind of a presentation, but sure.
I mean, it's sort of an inevitable trend.
If Bitcoin was ever going to be what Bitcoin is meant to become,
then it's inevitable that corporations and governments
will want some. And so you know, he's out there
pushing and evangelizing. It's definitely not what I or
start 9 focuses on. We're sort of on a different
perspective and angle of Bitcoin, but I'm not
complaining. Unlike most companies and I
would argue even MicroStrategy, I'm not really sure how they
handle their their assets given that Bitcoin is offset by
liabilities and all the rest. I don't know the details of it,
but Start 9 only holds Bitcoin as a company.
We we don't have like some exposure to Bitcoin or
allocation to Bitcoin. We only do Bitcoin and we sell
just enough of it to pay our next month's bills every month.
So we are 100% on a Bitcoin standard.
So for us, this is like very standard operating procedure.
Some people think we're being very risky with that.
And I'm like, come on, you know, maybe maybe if I feel like we're
like super high in, in a, in a cycle or something, I'll, I'll
sell a little more just to ensure a few more months of
operation. But we we think Bitcoin is the
thing to have and we have for a long time.
Absolutely 100% if you and I highly recommend this guy's
having Bitcoin on your treasury as a company is a freaking cheat
code. If you know, you know.
But what I interpreted what I got from that Matt is that you
are not holding IO U's from Brian Armstrong and Coinbase.
No, no thanks. We hold it securely in a multi
signature distributed fashion as as good bitcoiners should.
That's why I'm not sitting here overly concerned about, you
know, saying that Start 9 holds Bitcoin.
I do not have personal access to our treasury and stuff like
that. It's very well secured and not
by a third party. We do it ourselves and part of
that is because we know what we're doing.
We have that confidence and technical acumen to do it.
Well. We're also not a regulated
financial institution that is required to custody your digital
assets with a with a qualified custodian and 3rd party.
So we're able to do that effectively and legally.
But yeah, I mean, it, it doesn't make sense to to sit on dollars
in our world. You know, at start 9, we've made
the determination like we're not a Bitcoin company.
Start 9 is not like properly a Bitcoin company.
We are a computer company that has a large philosophic and
technical overlap with Bitcoin, right?
The products that we make enable people to run Bitcoin nodes, run
lightning nodes, and to do so in a maximally sovereign way.
So we're not, even though we're not properly a Bitcoin company,
we have as a team acknowledged that our company wouldn't exist
if Bitcoin were to fail, at least at this point in time.
There could be a point in the future where we are broad and
diversified enough as a technology and computer company
that Bitcoins failure might not result in our failure.
But if we're being honest right now, you know, 90 plus percent
of our customers, our customers because of Bitcoin and because
of bitcoins continued success. And so that's another reason why
we have no qualms withholding all of our balance sheet in
Bitcoin is because if we didn't say like we held it in Fiat and
Bitcoin failed, Bitcoin goes to 0, we're still going to die,
right? It's like, so why not put our
money where our company is, right?
Our company is invested in Bitcoin ideologically,
technically, practically. So why not put our money there
too? It, it makes perfect sense for
us. It does not make sense for every
company to be as as as fully invested as we are.
Yeah, makes no, makes perfect sense.
And yeah, I mean, I would, I mean I, I I don't think if if,
if I don't think there is another way to do it.
But having, you know, I don't know if, I don't know if we
personally could do 100%, but you know, the, the vast
majority, I think that's of your treasury and Bitcoin.
I, I think it's a cheat code. It really is.
Has been for the last year. Like your, your runway just
keeps getting longer. It's it's phenomenal.
Tripled and we didn't have to raise money to do it.
Yeah, you know, so you know, and then you can make payroll and
then your treasury is exactly where it was.
Well, and over over half of the people that get paid by start 9
get paid in Bitcoin. Well, I don't even have to
convert to Fiat for most of our payroll.
Yeah. It it, it really is a cheat
code. So let's see guys, we'll stay on
top of it. We'll see if Microsoft bites.
I there's definitely a polymarket.
I haven't checked the polymarket odds for that, but I think it's
just a matter of incentives, right?
I think, you know, all these public companies, they're
beholden to their shareholders. Eventually their shareholders
are going to say WTF and they're going to ask, they're going to
start asking questions. And eventually, you know,
especially with all the public support on the on the government
level, especially with the with the election of this pro kind of
a Bitcoin administration, and then also the public support by
legacy financial institutions like BlackRock.
So we shall see. We'll stay tuned.
But you know, shout out to Sailor, shout out to Sailor, and
then shout out to Matt for you know, going 100% Bitcoin
treasury. Anyways guys, before we start
the show, I do want a very special shout out to simply
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At the time of recording, the Bitcoin price is 95,280 block
height, 872,949 sats per dollar, 1050 market cap, 1.89 trillion
Bitcoin pricing gold 36.1 oz Bitcoin versus Gold market cap
10.3% percentage issued 94.24% decline from all time high -4.5%
realized monetary in inflation. All right, so I do want to cover
a topic that is maybe a little bit spicy, but I, I, I think
that, you know, I really do agree with the theory from the
book The Sovereign individual, the book the, the book the
Sovereign Individual, I highly recommend it.
It essentially makes the case that human society is going to
fundamentally change as we transition into the information
age. And one of the cases that they
make in this book is that the politics of today that we see
and how much importance that they have in everyday life over
time will start to become irrelevant.
And actually asked ChatGPT to write me 3 sentences as to why
that was going to be the case over a period of time, So it
says, politics will become increasingly irrelevant as
individuals gain the ability to operate in a borderless digital
economy free from the coercive power of nation states.
The rise of decentralized technologies, particularly those
enabling secure transactions and self sovereignty will reduce the
dependence on centralized governments to mediate economic
and social relationships. In this new paradigm, the power
of the individual will outpace the state's ability to enforce
control, making traditional political systems obsolete.
And I'm so glad we have Matt Hill of Start 9 because I heard
a lot of sovereign talk in there.
And I, I do like sovereign computing anyway.
So why, why am I reading this? Well, yesterday I got a little
bit upset. And the reason for that is,
again, the hypocrisy from, I think, this archaic system of
politics. And I do want to talk about
this, right. So of course, here is the
current president. He says no one is above the law.
And here is his press secretary. I'm sorry, I don't know how to
pronounce her name. And she she says some things as
well. The president would not pardon
or commute senses for his son Hunter.
I just want to make sure that that is not going to change over
the next six months. The president's saying it's
still, it's still a no, it's still a no.
It will always be a no. It's still a no.
It will be a no. It is a no.
And I don't have anything else to add.
Will he pardon his son? No, the president would not
pardon or commute. You heard it, you heard it, you
know it was loud and clear. It was, you know, nothing.
Not like no one is above the law.
I'm not going to pardon my son. It's going to be impossible.
You know, I can. I can never do that.
Inflation is transitory. And then bada Bing, bada boom,
President Biden pardons his son, Hunter Biden.
OK, moving on to the next thing. And there's some also legacy
media journalists of which we love.
You guys know we're huge fans of The Washington Journal and The
New York Times here at Simply Bitcoin.
Here is John Harwood. People who insist Biden will
pardon Hunter after specifically ruling it out are telling on
themselves. They can't imagine someone
acting on principle and keeping his word.
He even got community noted, which I find absolutely
hilarious. Now, of course, you know, no one
is above the law except Hunter Biden.
In all seriousness, I, I, this is what I got to say and this is
what the book the sovereign individual is making the, the
case of is that this is an archaic system.
It it's kind of like it's kind of like central banking, Like we
put we put so much trust on, you know, the central bank not to
debase the currency, but they debase the currency, right.
We put so much trust on, you know, these, these, these, these
elites, the, the, your so-called betters and then, you know, when
push comes to shove, you know, they no one is better than human
nature and that this is the beauty of Bitcoin and this is
the beauty of the information age that we're heading into,
right? I love that that meme that
Bitcoiners have where it's where it says don't tread on me.
That's like the like the libertarian meme and the Bitcoin
meme is can't tread on me. And instead of like, you know,
having to trust someone, you now have the technology and the
capability of being able to trust minimize, of not having to
trust someone. Don't trust verify, right?
It all kind of comes together and now here are my thoughts on
this, specifically about what happened.
Right. So mind you, I don't blame a
father for doing whatever it takes to protect his son.
I would do the same. The problem is the double
standard between these so-called elites and everyone else.
I'm tired of these people lecturing us on climate change,
moral virtue and laws they don't follow themselves.
It kind of reminds me of that time where that senator, or
yeah, I was a senator from New Jersey, was lecturing us about
how, you know, Naimbu Kelly was a threat and he was money
laundering. And then he himself got
discovered with bars of gold and wads of cash in the back of his
Mercedes. And then it leads me to my final
thought. And then I'll open it up to kind
of discuss, to a discussion. One of the things that I'm most
looking forward to is for Bitcoin to make politics
irrelevant. We might not see in our
lifetime, but man a, but a man can dream.
So all that, you know, I, I, I got a little bit upset when I
saw that yesterday because again, I, I don't think I would
have cared like if, if I were president and my son were in
that, that type of situation, I think I would do anything in my
power to help my son. Like that's human nature.
And I, I would say 99% of people fit into that category.
The, the issue that I have is the, the hypocrisy and the issue
that I have is the moral grandstanding.
And the issue that I have is like, you know, hey, we're not
going to do this. Under no circumstances.
We're getting lectured by the legacy media guys and they're
telling us, oh, you got to look within yourself if you think
he's going to do that. And then Fast forward six months
later, oh, yeah, pardon, I'm sorry.
And then it reminds me of the whole inflation thing.
There's going to be no inflation.
Oh, it's transitory. Oh, there's inflation.
Oh, I'm sorry, we got it wrong. And these are the same people
lecturing us about taking Bitcoin into self custody about,
you know, the justification for sanctioning open source
software. I'm sorry man, I, I, I, I just,
I, I don't, I don't that those are my thoughts.
Anyways, Matt, what are your, what are your thoughts on all
this bro? Matt, your your mic's muted.
I mean, you just opened up a gigantic can of worms just
criticizing the whole whole corrupt political system, man.
What are my thoughts on this? OK, so here let you know what
I'm going to tangentially comment on the whole thing
broadly, there's a there's a really popular adage called
absolute power corrupts absolutely, right?
We're all taught this. This is like something we were
really taught and it for some reason is is resonates everyone.
Everyone knows this, everyone says it, and in my mind,
everyone has it wrong. They are they, they do not
understand what that phrase means.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Most people think that that applies to people, individuals,
so that if some person obtains enormous amounts of power,
right, absolute power, that they will become a corrupt, evil
person. And there is no proof of that.
While that may be true for some people who have no integrity, or
who are weak, or who got lucky with the power that they
accumulated and don't know what to do with it, then absolutely
they they could become corrupt, right?
People who don't have a ton of power can become corrupt.
Anyone can become corrupt, but the amount of power that an an
individual person has does not guarantee that person's level of
corruption. However, that phrase does apply
absolutely 100% of the time to any institution, any
transgenerational institution, right?
Any institution that has human turnover.
OK. So the more powerful an
institution becomes, and an institution that achieves a
degree of absolute power, as in the form of a government that
has, you know, a monopoly on violence over a population, must
corrupt. This is not a negative
statement. It's not a positive statement.
It is a fact of nature. It's like calling the sky blue,
right? It's just a fact.
And the reason for that is that when an institution, a system
gains that level of power, it then functions as a magnet for
people who are corrupt, right? People who already are corrupt
or have or are prone to becoming corrupt, who have no integrity
will be attracted to that institution.
They will see it as an elevator to their ambitions.
And so even if the institution begins and is originally
populated by great people of high integrity, as the years go
on and as the generations turn over, it will eventually become
corrupt due to the very nature of the type of people that it
attracts. And so I think all that you're
really commenting on here, very broadly speaking, is that the US
government and their cronies, these the crony capitalist
economic system that we have today has become way too
powerful, that there's too much power.
And as a result, it has attracted the worst of the worst
of these parasitic evil slugs. And they are doing exactly what
they what they do. We should expect nothing less.
The only way to prevent something like this from
occurring is to prevent any system from obtaining too much
power. In other words, avoid
centralization at all costs. Decentralization is the the
essential remedy for all the elements of abuse of power that
this planet has ever seen is to prohibit institutions from
garnering too much power, no matter how benevolent and
wonderful the original person who wields that power is.
You brought up El Salvador right where you have a circumstance
right now in El Salvador where a seemingly and by all evidence
wonderful, benevolent, awesome person is at the helm of a
government that has seized near absolute power over the
country's economic and military systems.
Now, I'm not to say that it wasn't like that before, but it
absolutely remains like that. And so by the in, in recognition
of everything that I just said, people should be extremely wary
and in fact concerned that the predecessor might not be so
benevolent, right, but will still possess the same degree of
power. And so in, in, in large part,
it's still a mistake, right? It is never a good idea to endow
an institution with monopolistic power, especially over violence.
And so that is what excites me about Bitcoin.
It's why I do what I do at start 9 in decent, you know, pushing
the the boundaries of accessibility to decentralized
self sovereign computing is because those are the checks on
centralized power that are necessary.
Without these, without pushing power to the edges of the
network, without empowering individuals and families to be
self-sufficient, there is no check against runaway
centralized power. And the end game of runaway
centralized power, of course, is massive and and sort of blanket
oppression, which then leads to civil unrest and violence and
eventually war. And in the days of, you know,
weapons of mass destruction could be posed an existential
threat to the entire species. So I think that decentralization
with Bitcoin sort of as the as the the leader of the pack and
then and then all of us in support is the remedy to
everything that you just were bitching about. 100%, I
completely agree because it is it's it's absolute power
corrupts absolutely. We have a, we have an
opportunity for change, but it's not the vote harder daddy.
It's decentralization and most importantly, people using these
tools at hand, right? People using taking Bitcoin into
self custody. There's we ran a poll and we did
this on purpose because I already kind of knew the answer.
72% of you guys are not running your own note.
So it's time to take back sovereignty on an individual
level. And this is this is more than
just taking Bitcoin into self custody.
This is about running your own sovereign computer as well,
which you can run your own Bitcoin node off of, right?
So we're going to talk about all of that during the culture
segment. But Opti, real quick, take what?
Don't go too hard. We are on YouTube after all.
Please. Yeah, yeah.
This one's going to be tricky considering we are on YouTube
and yeah, you already know. But is anyone really surprised
at this point? I, you know, like people have
been saying this for a long time throughout the year on Twitter
and people were calling it fake news and the gaslighting was off
the charts. I think at this point, you know,
it's kind of just like the chef's kiss and cherry on top
for I don't even know if I can say this and hopefully I don't
nuke the YouTube, but the worst presidential administration in
history. And that's your opinion in my
opinion. And also in my opinion, very
clearly the most corrupt presidential administration in
my opinion, in my opinion. So with that being said, I think
the silver lining of this that we've seen throughout the years,
something we've kind of been talking about, Nikko likes to
call it the disintermediation of information.
And this is almost like a, a, a good thing, in my opinion, for
people that are sitting on the fence that are really wondering
what's going on. I think this could be one of
those moments where people really stop to believe in the
institutions and start to see that there is a fundamental
problem going on. And the, you know, the Fiat
system, the governments around the world are, you know, rotting
from the inside and something needs to be fixed.
And so if people are actively looking for the truth and
hopefully they will eventually end up on our side and, you
know, become big corners and start to take their own lives
into their own hands. And then on the flip side, the,
the real interesting thing is considering we always cover the
corporate press and, you know, cognitive dissonance.
And it's interesting that people will see this and they just
double down and like completely ignore what's going on.
And so you're seeing, I've, I've been saying this for a while.
So you're seeing a very clear fork in the road right now where
either you want to know the truth or you just kind of double
down on your, you know, your total blindness of what's going
on and you just kind of follow what the powers that be are
saying. And so, hey, I'm not surprised.
I'll leave it at that because you guys know me.
I'll get our YouTube channel news.
All right, everybody, let's get some news.
We have lots to talk about. Stay tuned.
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devices. All right, everybody, the news
over the weekend, everyone, just everyone.
I'm not even getting I'm not I'm not going to even go down that
route. But anyways, you could see Opti
a bit block boom. If you want to see Opti, you can
see him a bit block boom. You can take a picture with him.
All right, so I do want to talk about this.
This is a truth. That truth post or whatever that
that Donald Trump, president-elect came out with
over the weekend said the idea that the BRICS countries are
trying to move away from the dollar while we stand by and
watch is over. We require a commitment from
these countries that they will neither create a new BRICS
currency nor back any currency to replace the mighty U.S.
dollar or they will face 100% tariffs and should expect to say
goodbye to selling into the wonderful U.S. economy.
They can go find another sucker. There is no chance that the
bricks will replace the US dollar in international trade
and any country that tries should wave goodbye to America.
Max Kaiser just replies. It doesn't when someone says how
does this pair with the idea of creating a federal Bitcoin
Reserve? That's a really good point right
'cause it it I'm, you know, I come from the school of thought
that central banking and Bitcoin is not compatible.
Apparently Kaiser agrees and here is beauty on.
Beauty on is the I believe Co founder founder of a Steco and
he had this amazing post. He says if it were any other man
and this is replying to Trump's truth post regarding the the
tariffs and the BRICS nation seeking an alternative
alternative international reserve currency.
Anyways, if there were if there were any other man, I would
doubt any person saying this could pull it pull it off.
None of the leaders, even as a group, have the courage to
challenge Trump. But there is a problem.
The Federal Reserve dollar is fundamentally resolved flawed.
It is not constitutional money. It is not sound money.
It is being used to control and humiliate the countries that use
it. And this threat makes the
humiliation worse. The Federal Reserve dollar is
not federal or American. It is a private money created by
a private business. Everyone knows this.
Now, opposing this is not anti American.
Ron Paul will tell you that opposing the Federal Reserve
dollar is in fact absolutely pure Americanism.
The Federal Reserve dollar system is going to collapse.
Previous presidents fought hard to abolish the private banking
control over America's money. The The money creation under
Barack Obama and other presidents cannot be undone
without increasing interest rates.
They're trapped. The fraudulent Federal Reserve
Fiat dollar must. Go away.
That's the only way out now unless Trump can lace it with
his magical power. This is the first big challenge
of BRICS. If they had even one brain cell
between them, they would have settled on Bitcoin as their
currency long ago. Then it would not only be the
entire world against the Federal Reserve dollar, it would be
BRICS. Even non BRICS country and
American entrepreneurs against the Federal Reserve dollar.
The Federal Reserve dollar is not American and it is not
patriotic to support it. In fact, it is anti patriotic to
support the Federal Reserve dollar.
It is designed to cheat Americans and anyone who is on
the side of Americans and who understands how money works
cannot be for the Federal Reserve Dollar.
Ask Ron Paul why if you don't know why BRICS should retaliate.
Retaliate by declaring that they will settle on Bitcoin and an
international coalition for sound money.
If they were to do this and America refused to join it, they
can keep their fraudulent quote sucker money while the world
moves to sound money. What can America do in this
scenario? They could put 100% tariffs on
all goods coming from countries that refuse the Federal Reserve
dollar. But this should be seen as
trying as tying a string on a baby tooth.
They want to get pulled. Trump will slam the door that
will pull out the baby tooth. In time, their adult tooth will
emerge and the fairy and the tooth fairy will leave them
Bitcoin under their pillows. And believing in the tooth fairy
is identical to believing that the Federal Reserve dollar is
not a giant fraudulent scam that hurts Americans.
If Americans have full unfettered access to accepting
Bitcoin as money, their indominant spirit, and and Trump
intrapreneurialism, entrepreneurialism, there we go.
We'll keep them at #1 globally, what Trump is signalling here is
that America can't win unless it is cheating.
That's exactly what the Federal Reserve dollar is cheating.
So I mean, he goes on to say what Trump should have done,
which is I will end the Federal Reserve System and replace it
with a America constitutional money.
Under Ron Paul's direction, any country rejecting the new
American dollar will face 100% tariffs.
OK, now you're talking but the the but defending the defensible
Federal Reserve. This is not tenable.
Once again, if there were any other man, I would doubt any
person saying this could pull it off Donald John Trump, however,
is not just another man. He is an extraordinary man, a
man of destiny with an appointment with destiny is an
appointment he will keep, I'm sure.
That being said, it is not possible that the entire world
adopting Bitcoin can be resisted by any single nation.
The question is whether or not leaders of these nation states
are minded not to be slaves for the remainder of their lives.
Bitcoin is the only means they have to escape Federal Reserve
domination and it keeps going. You have to check out the entire
post by Beauty on. I think he absolutely nails it.
And a couple comments there. I think This is why they This is
why they freaked out the way they did when El Salvador made
Bitcoin legal tender. And I think the reason that they
had this freak out is because El Salvador essentially figured out
that they can circumvent not only the dollar, but the IMF and
the World Bank. And I think that's what it boils
down to. And I completely agree with
Buteon. If the BRICS nations were
actually serious, they would switch to a, they would switch
to Bitcoin. The thing is, I don't think
they'll do that is because I think all these countries want
to maintain their privilege of being able to create money for
free that everyone else has to work for, just as the United
States. So this, this whole predicament
is fascinating. The game theory about all this
is fascinating. I don't know how this is going
to end, but all I know is that if you stay humble, stack sats,
and put those sats into self custody, I think you'll be fine.
And you should definitely look into sovereign computing as
well. Matt, what are your thoughts on
beauty ONS post? Do you think he hits the nail on
the head? What are your thoughts on
bricks? What are your thoughts on Trump
coming into office? So his post is a mixture of
some, some facts about the nature of the Federal Reserve
notes that we call the dollar with some opinion of his with
regards to Trump and, and Trump's kind of role to play in,
in the forthcoming era. And I, you know, I, I don't
trust politicians, any of them. And when I use that word, I
mean, I mean in the, in the sort of derogatory sense, right?
There are certain people who are in the political sphere who I
would not call politicians. I wish I could use that word
positively. Like someone like Ron Paul, for
instance, right, who I love and adore and is an American hero.
I wouldn't like call him a politician.
Now he is was, but only in the positive sense of that word.
So when I say that word, I, I'm, I'm using it negatively, meaning
the typical politician. And I think Trump is one of
them. I, I see no reason to be
praising or supporting or or having high hopes for the
president-elect. You know, is he better than
maybe a Kamala Harris and administration would have been
probably at least for Bitcoin and maybe for a lot of other
things. I personally was happy to see
the result of that election. But I don't think that's the
answer. I think that at best, a Trump
presidency can delay the decline.
I think a Trump presidency can delay the the implosion, the
inevitable implosion. Do I think that he's, you know,
squeaky clean and and and doing all the the right things for all
the right reasons? Of course not.
Man has a lifelong history of basically bankrupting every
company he's ever been a part of.
He is totally, you know, last time he was in the office, the
drain, the swamp turned into elect the same people that have
always been there and basically change nothing.
Did he start any new wars? No.
Did he implement any new horrendous laws?
I don't know. Maybe, but probably not that I'm
aware of. But again, it's, it's politics
as usual. It's business as usual.
Maybe just with a little bit nicer shine and maybe a little
bit it does play into our longer term strategy a little bit
because I feel like we're buying time here.
But my essential view on the American Republic and on, you
know, international geopolitics in general is, is that we are
reaching the end of a historical era.
My view is very much in line with the view of the sovereign
individual, which you brought up earlier, mixed with a lot of my
own reading and understanding. And I think that, you know, we
are we are nearing the the dusk of of a multi millennia era or
at least, you know, at least maybe not that long, but at
least since the rise of the nation state in the last 500
years. And So what is going to replace
it is what I tend to be focused on.
I do not think that you can resolve the problems that are
inherent in the political system through the political apparatus.
I tried that in 2012 with Ron Paul and it was a very hard
lesson learned when I realized that you cannot destroy the
beast by playing its game. You need to completely change
the You need something that is wholly other, something that
cannot be Co opted, something that cannot be sort of ingested
and used by the enemy, and that is cryptography, decentralized
computer systems with Bitcoin as the as the crowning jewel, of
course, and and a new understanding and new
appreciation for human rights. I'm very optimistic at where the
world emerges from this dark corridor, but I am under
absolutely no illusion that that it is going to happen overnight.
I I think that we have decades, many decades left while the
while the existing system convulses and dies a very loud
and painful death and takes that's.
A metaphor YouTube. Sorry, I'm just I'm just letting
our letting our YouTube overlords know that was a
metaphor. I understand.
Yes, I I do speak metaphorically and allegorically as I am right
now, and this is not something that I am directly trying to do.
So my job is to observe the sinking Titanic and to build as
many lifeboats and get people onto those lifeboats as quickly
as possible. I think that is your fundamental
goal as well, is to educate people on Bitcoin and why it's
important and to help them to begin walking that path so that
they can protect themselves, their families, and their
futures. I do the same thing, not solely
focused on Bitcoin, but trying to really make people
independent digital beings in preparation for humanity's
information age. And again, this is a much longer
story than I think people in the Bitcoin community want to think
or, you know, like to admit. It would be really nice if we
could just go out there and just have like a a table wiping of
the other team and just pounce them in the first quarter and
win, you know, in a blowout. And this be over in 10 years.
And we're all just living on Bitcoin island in our own
citadels and all the rest. And while that may come true for
certain individuals who choose to, you know, opt out and, and
protect themselves and their families and sort of get out of
the game, you know, move away and, and stop fighting.
And that is perfectly understandable and is, to be
honest, something that I will have to consider as I continue
to have more and more kids. But but the war will go on for
decades and it will be a long time before we see these these
monolithic tyrannical institutions rotten and and
eventually die on on under their own weight.
Mind you, again, they don't need to be attacked.
The the ship is sinking. It is taking on water.
There is no stopping it. And so, you know, just to bring
come full circle here, coming all the way back to the the
Trump election and and forthcoming administration.
Is it a breath of fresh air? You know, is it someone playing
the violin while the ship kind of teeters like this for a few
minutes? Probably.
Ship is going down. Trump can't stop it.
Nobody can stop it. And in fact, I I don't have a
lot of confidence that Trump even wants to stop it.
I think he probably just wants to get his before it goes down
as well. And again, we're, we're
witnessing this and like we're witnessing this from the
perspective of we're on, we're on a life raft, right?
We're on a life raft. I think that's, that's the, the
thing that Bitcoin gives you is this life raft to kind of
navigate through, you know, these very kind of tumultuous
times in, in history where you're absolutely right, Matt,
these, these institutions that have been around for, you know,
hundreds of years are slowly you're, you're seeing the
cracks. And this is what the book the
sovereign individual was talking about.
Like you're seeing the cracks in the political system.
You're seeing the double standards, you're seeing the
rules for thee, but not for me. And I think it really just
started to accelerate in 2008, which coincidentally was when
Bitcoin was born, right? And but we have a way to opt out
now. We have a way to opt out of that
system and and kind of find these these information Oas
Oasis, like, for example, like the nostril protocol, What Elon
has done for X has been incredible for free speech.
What Bitcoin is doing for money is incredible because you switch
to a Bitcoin standard and regardless of what's happening
in, in political Andia, if you're saving in Bitcoin,
everything is getting progressively cheaper for you,
right? So you, you have life rafts and
you don't have to depend on, you know, a, a, a God king to be
elected to, to, to fix these problems, right?
But I do agree. I, I, I, I am, I am optimistic
with the incoming Trump administration.
I think for the regulatory environment in the United
States, I'm very happy about that.
So there are some pros, but I think thinking that, you know, a
single person is going to be able to stop decades and decades
of incompetence and corruption, I think is a little bit naive.
Think about it this way, right? If he could, then it means that
someone can then undo it, right? It it means that the power to do
that exists. And that is what I'm saying is
the essential problem. It's that the fact that anyone
can have that much power, that the system affords that to an
individual or to a small group of people means that it has to
get worse. The only way that somebody could
have my full like support is if it was Ron Paul style, where he
is legitimately like, I'm going to disempower myself.
I'm going to disempower the government.
Trump's not doing that right. These there's not going to be
any laws that remove the power of the executive.
I guarantee it. That's what I would want to see.
To get real support from me is like, no, remove your own power.
Then I'll start to trust you. 100% and and even if, and I'm
really glad that you brought that up, Matt, because even if
Elon gets his way with doge, it's just one administration.
I'm not talking about the shit coin, everybody.
I'm talking about the the department of government
efficiency, whatever the altcoin to be nice and inclusive.
But even if he gets his way, he's just one administration
away from the opposite of doge being implemented, right?
So it's just one election away. And I think that's what you're
talking about, Matt, right? Like if Trump did have that
power, then all it takes is 1 election for that other person
to just reverse all of that. And I think it's the inevitable
course because I think people will inherently vote the person
in office that's going to give them quote, quote, UN quote free
things, even though it's not free comes from the money
printer. But anyways, we are at 2805 live
viewers between YouTube and X and under 100 of you guys
watching live on Rumble. You guys are enjoying the show
so far. We're about to break 300 likes
on YouTube. Smash that like button and stay
tuned for the culture because we're going to talk about start
9 sovereign computing. We have Matt Hill in the house
guys. We'll be right back.
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I do want to take advantage of the fact that we got the goat of
sovereign computing in the house.
Opti air horns, please. Matt Hale in the house joining
us. Matt, how you doing?
I just want to go through the results of the poll.
I we asked everybody that we asked everybody an hour ago, 513
people voted. I ask, do you run a Bitcoin
node? 74% of you guys said no. 26% of
you guys said yes. I'm going to end the poll right
there, Matt. Why do you think people should
run a node? OK, yeah, that's that's pretty
bad. So I'll start off by saying that
not everyone should run a node. Let's just be clear about that,
that if you are holding your money on Coinbase and you know
you're buying Bitcoin as a short term or medium term investment,
or you're buying the ETF, for example, or, you know, even if
you're just throwing some Bitcoin and cold storage and
holding it, you know, deciding to look away for 1520 years, you
don't need to run a node. None of those scenarios apply to
you. A node implies participation in
the Bitcoin network. It's not just about owning
Bitcoin or speculating on Bitcoin or even holding it in in
cold stores that that likewise does not require a node.
A node is using Bitcoin, right? And not just using it in terms
of like sending or receiving, but using it in terms of having
a say in the network. OK, so running a node is the
equivalent of being a citizen. If you want to be a citizen,
that term doesn't really apply, but it's probably the closest
term that we have, you know, analogous to the the prior
world, a member, a node, a citizen.
If you want to participate, if you want to have any say
whatsoever in the Bitcoin network and in the consensus
rules of the protocol, you need to run a node.
So there are three benefits to somebody, to an individual for
running a node. And these are not, you know, we
get a lot of people who show up and they say I want to run a
Bitcoin node because I want to, I want to help the network.
I want to make the network stronger.
And we don't preach that because that's really not true.
When you when you run a Bitcoin node, you are not necessarily
helping make the network stronger.
You might be. It really depends on what you do
with the node. So what we focus on instead are
the provable benefits of running a Bitcoin node.
And again, it's not for everybody.
It is for some people. And for those of you who are
interested in running a Bitcoin node, here is why you would want
to do it. Number one is it guarantees your
access to the network, to the Bitcoin network.
If you run your own node, then it means that you can send and
receive transactions through the Bitcoin network without having
to depend on anyone or ask anyone for permission to do so.
You you have unfettered, free, permissionless access to the
Bitcoin network in order to send and receive transactions #2 is
that you can independently verify the transactions that you
receive. So if somebody sends you money,
you can effectively check that money to see if it is
counterfeit without asking anyone else.
Your node is your truth Sayer. Your node is the thing that you
turn to and say, hey, is that money real?
And the node says, yes, it is real.
Whereas if you are not using your own node, you are actually
turning to whatever wallet provider you're using or to
Coinbase or something else and saying, hey, is that money real?
And they are telling you whether it is real or not.
And they can lie, OK, whether it's a scam or some sort of a
sting operation or whatever it happens to be, you are
absolutely trusting another human being to tell you the
truth or not when it comes to your own money.
And so running your own node makes you 100% independent in
that regard. And then the if you are running
your own node, you get to vote on what the rules of the network
are. So you run whichever node
implementation you want. For instance, there's BTCD,
there's Bitcoin D, there's Bitcoin knots, and each of these
are slightly different flavors of the Bitcoin protocol.
They are all adhering to the same consensus rules, but they
do it in a slightly different ways.
For instance, Bitcoin knots, which is something that is
available for start OS and that you can run, has different mem
pool policies where it will refuse to relay or acknowledge
transactions that do not conform to what it defines as a as a
proper transaction. Meaning a transaction of
monetary sending and receiving money.
Anything that contains excessive data or an ordinal for instance
would be filtered from your mempool.
Now while you might not single handedly change the way everyone
uses Bitcoin, it does function as your vote.
So while Bitcoin is a decentralized consensus network,
by running a node you get to at least vocalize and enforce what
you think Bitcoin should be. And so if you then convince a
lot of other people to run that same fork or software or
implementation, then you have now decided what Bitcoin is.
It is your vote on the network. Now, like I said, not everyone
wants to vote and not everyone needs to be independent.
Some people are fine being dependents and trusting other
people whether they're trustworthy or not, and some
people are fine not voting and letting other people vote on
their behalf. But more and more we are seeing
people who want to vote, who want to be heard, who want to
say what they think Bitcoin is, and who want to be independent
humans who can transact without permission from trusted third
parties. So that is why you run a node.
Now, the more people that do that, the more people that run
nodes, the healthier the network is, the more decentralized the
network is, the more resilient the network is.
So if you are running a node and if you are using that node to
cast your vote and to send and receive transactions, then yes,
you are 100% helping the Bitcoin network be more decentralized
and resilient. But if you are running a Bitcoin
node in the sense that you plug it in, click start, put it on
the shelf, and then you never use it and you never pay
attention to it, then you are not in any way helping the
Bitcoin network. You're Larping.
And so that's it. That's that's why you'd want to
learn a Bitcoin node. It's for it's for the people who
who want to be activists, who and who want to be independent.
And one that I love that you guys do, Matt and someone asked
us in the chat and do you want to highlight this?
There we go. Could you ask Matt if they have
any partners in the EU? Yes, I'm going to get to that in
a second. So yes, if you guys go to
store.start9.com right now, you do have a Black Friday sale, is
that correct, Matt? Yep, still going on.
Still going. On you will get a nice discount
off the server PO. We're going to talk about that
in a second, but you're based out of Europe.
You can use these third parties to purchase their servers, the
start 9 servers locally. So again guys, head over to
start 9.com definitely want to take advantage of the Black
Friday 21% off server pure sale. And again, I'm assuming that
goes on till tomorrow. But guys, so Matt just gave this
beautiful explanation as to why you should run a node depending
on your situation. And one of the awesome things
that I love about Matt's products about what Start 9 does
is the, it's, it's a plug and play solution.
So you guys have focused on this amazing operating system for
servers and you guys make it so easy that I, I can even use it.
I'm totally 100% media focused. My, my, my specialty is media.
My specialty is engagement. My, my specialty is how to make
things go viral. That's what I specialize in,
right? It's not that I don't, I, I
don't, I just don't have the time, right?
I don't have the time. And I remember having this
conversation on the floor of Bitcoin 2022 and I was like,
Matt, listen, I'm like travelling and I want to connect
my Electrum wallet because I'm so an Electrum junkie.
I haven't switched. I do have Sparrow, but I liked
Electrum and I want to connect to my Electrum wallet remotely,
you know, And then like everything that I've seen
before, it was like a 15 minute video on YouTube that was like
highly complex. It was like difficult for me to
like, you know, like if I would have spent a couple hours, I
think I would have figured it out.
But I was like, dude, I don't have time for that.
And then here comes along, you know, the, the server pier, I
bought the 1st edition, I got the, the Madex box and
everything. I think I bought one of the 1st
100 and I, and I have not stopped using it since.
And essentially, not only does it make setting up a Bitcoin
node easy to do, you benefit from all the security.
It's completely open source the device.
Matt, I'm going to ask you some questions about the server Pier
because you guys went above and beyond to make sure that the
device doesn't have any kind of back doors or any type of
programs on there that there shouldn't be.
You guys put in the extra effort, but you guys could
purchase this device. You can plug it in, put an
Ethernet cable. I believe you can connect
through Wi-Fi as well. And boom, you you start running
your own Bitcoin node. But this isn't just a node.
This is a server. So it has a bunch of other apps
on there as well. Has the Electrum server, has a
file, a cloud server file app, which is really cool, has a
nostril relay, has a bunch of things that are really awesome
and interesting. And the way that I've been kind
of comprehending this and going down this sovereign computing
rabbit hole, if you may, is the vast majority of, if you're
using Google Cloud, what you're really doing is you're
connecting to Google's computers.
How badass would it be if instead of connecting to
Google's computers, you connect to your own computer at home
that has your files, it has your pictures like Matt was telling
me about like, you know, you guys know the Blink camera from
Amazon, like or you know, those like the doorbell cameras or
whatever. And those all connect through
the cloud. And what happens when you
connect to the cloud is that you're trusting back this back
to this idea of trust. You're trusting someone else's
computer, which is very bad, especially it's a lot of trust
that you're putting that person. They don't really have a great
track record of giving them that much trust.
What happened if we live in a world where you didn't have to
trust someone else's computer, all you had to do is trust your
own computer. And one of the awesome things
too that Start 9 has is it has this like peer-to-peer
messaging. So even Signal, which is dope.
I like Signal, right? But you still have to trust
them. And essentially the way it works
is you send a message, Let's say I send a message to Matt.
I'm like, yo, Matt, here's my private key.
Blah. Matt's like, why did you do
that, Nico? That's a bad idea.
But I'm just, I'm just, I'm just talking about it for the sake of
the video. I'm like, yo, Matt, here's a
message. It still goes for me to signal
to Matt, right? And you have to trust that
signals, you know, doing good things.
The awesome part about that these computers is essentially,
imagine me sending a message to Matt.
I don't have to send it to the signal server signal computer
anymore. I could send it from my start 9,
my server Pier directly to Matt's server Pier compute,
completely removing that middleman.
And I really believe that computing is going in this
direction. I think we're in the infancy of
it, but the really the realization like the aha moment
that I had was not only playing with all the apps that you guys
have on the server, Pier App Store or I don't know if that's
the correct term. I'm sorry, Matt, don't hate me,
but the marketplace, the app marketplace that you guys have
and I'm seeing all these apps that currently exist, but
they're in the form of of cloud like you are trusting someone
else's computer. So it's about self hosting your
own pictures, self hosting your own backup.
And what's really cool is that you can access those backups
anywhere around the world through Tor.
And I know that you guys have been working on clear net
accessibility as well. So it's really, really
interesting. The start 9 servers are just not
a Bitcoin node. That's the that's the Trojan
horse the way that I see it. And I highly recommend it if
you're if you want to run a Bitcoin node and I highly
suggest you get it. You, you, you, you, you get on
that. But they also open the door to
all this other capabilities that are just beginning, and they're
super freaking cool. And this is all about kind of
the general theme of today's show of taking back your
sovereignty, right? Stop trusting else.
Stop trusting someone else's money.
Start doing your own research. Stop outsourcing, you know your
information. Stop outsourcing your computing.
And this is all what sovereign computing is all about.
This is what the Start 9 is all about, Matt.
I'm sorry if I butchered it, but that's been my personal
experience with the Start 9 and with interacting with you over
these last couple of years. And it's been so cool to kind of
witness how this thing is being built out.
And I just see this 5-10 years into the future and I see a
world where so at least a significant percent of the
population are running these bad boys at home and they're talking
directly to each other versus going through, you know, these
these giant server farms. That was that was pretty good
for, you know, and it's not something you do as your job.
So I, I have a lot of practice doing the, the high level kind
of pitch. That was great.
Thank you. You know, it's, it's, it's
really a lot to take in, mostly because people have no idea how
computers work. You know, computers are very
magic for most people, and that's because they're so new.
You know, I, when I was a young kid, there was no Internet.
It's like, and I'm not that old. So this is very, very new.
In fact, personal computers were only really coming into
existence around when I was born.
I mean, I was 85, but personal computers weren't really a thing
until the late 70s, early 80s. I mean, yeah, they were kind of
around, but not not wide adoption until until, you know,
the early 80s when when like the Apple two and and Windows came
out. So computers as we understand
that word today is like this brand new thing in human
history, and it is way ahead. The technology of computers are
way ahead of our understanding of computers, not only for the
layman, but even from a kind of philosophic perspective, like
what role do computers play in, in, in society and to a human
life? These are questions that still
have not been answered or understood and probably won't be
for a while. And there's a lot of people that
take for granted the existence of the computers and, and
they're functioning and kind of think it's how it's going to be
that, you know, computing has reached its final form.
And all that's left to change are, is the nature of the
devices. So now we're going to have
glasses and goggles and eventually just like holographs
that we interact with. But that the underlying nature
of computing itself, namely the flow of information and the
security models are hardened and, and stable.
And they're not, they're not at all.
Since the beginning of computing and that, you know, personal
computing in the 70s, there's been a couple of revolutions,
right? So the initial one was that what
we call the personal computing revolution, which was, you know,
now everyone can have a computer at home and it is siloed and
isolated. It's a local computing device.
It's not connected on a network. It just kind of enables you to
have a more more powerful brain for computation and to do like
word processing and spreadsheets and stuff like that.
And, and then we had the the Internet revolution, which is
where now these computers could talk to each other on a mostly
decentralized network. And this was amazing because now
you weren't siloed in your home with this computer is that your
computer could talk to other computers.
And so it connected the world in a way that it never had been
before. It was a massive revolution and
it revolutionized almost every industry.
We can't state strongly enough how impactful the Internet was
to the nature of society and economies on earth.
And then you had this another revolution, which was the cloud
computing revolution, which essentially meant that a few
very, very powerful, very well resourced companies decided that
they were going to run the computer for everyone.
That they were going to run a giant computer sort of in the
middle, and that everyone was going to, instead of connecting
to each other at the edges of the network, that everyone was
going to connect through their computer to each other.
All right, Essentially we introduced giant middle men into
the computing architecture. And this wasn't some evil plot,
though there may have been some malintent from the beginning,
but it wasn't some evil plot to kind of like control computing.
It came about very naturally because running these computers
and keeping them connected on a network healthily, you know, bug
free was difficult. It's sort of like maintenance in
your own car, right? Getting under the hood of your
own car. It was infeasible for a lot of
people, especially since the technology was so new.
Nobody had learned it in school. And so these large central
institutions like Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, they said,
OK, you guys don't have to learn anything.
We will do it for you, right? We will take care of you.
Don't worry children of the world, we will run the computers
for you and we will just give you all remote controls.
And we'll make those remote controls like really sexy and
easy to use with nice big buttons.
And every button that you push will actually just be sending a
signal to our computer that'll do all the processing, all the
data storage, and all the networking so that you don't
have to do it. And this took, this took hard
because people love a convenient world and they gave it away for
free basically as mostly as a snare.
OK, we're starting to see that now.
But this is the computing model that dominates planet Earth
right now is what we call cloud computing.
And it basically means that everyone is holding remote
controls. Your laptop, your cell phone,
your tablet, your car, all these things are just remote controls
that are remotely operating, giant server farms that are
owned, operated and controlled by an increasingly small number
of very, very powerful corporations.
And a lot of people take for granted that this is the nature
of computing, that this is how humans are going to compute.
Our stance is that this is fundamentally flawed, that the
nature of this is not only economically inefficient because
it fundamentally involves middle men who have to take a cut.
So it's going to always be more expensive than another model,
but it's also insecure. It also must, must result in
abuse of power. Because when you give, as we
talked about earlier, an institution, enormous amounts of
control, enormous amounts of power, even if it is not evil at
first, after there's a few turnover of humans who are in
charge of it, it will eventually attract the worst of the worst.
And they will use that position to extort, to spy, to control,
and ultimately you'll, you end up with the merger of these
giant corporations and governments and you end up with
tyranny. And we're already seeing this,
OK, this is not some, some pie in the sky idea or futuristic
scenario or conspiracy theory. This is how it works.
And, and we're seeing it play out in real time.
And so our stance from a very high level philosophic stance is
that cloud computing must die. It, it, it is a horrible idea.
It's it's a terrible, terrible idea that came about through
naivete and expediency and convenience and that it will
live a very short life. This is not going to be a multi
multi decade battle. As I stated before, for the
battle of money and for decentralization in general, the
battle over cloud computing is going to be short lived because
it's that bad. It's a disaster.
OK, it's only been in existence for about 15 years.
That's nothing, nothing, right? A child born to 15, there's
still a child. Cloud computing is a child and
it is a ruthless, horrible child and it it cannot be allowed to
continue to adulthood. I hated that analogy because
children are wonderful. It's a bad we're.
Not talking about we. Created.
It's an evil demon. We're not talking about
children. This is analogies.
Your YouTube Matt. Matt.
Not a real child. Is we're talking about
analogies? It's a disaster.
It was a horrible idea, OK, And a lot of people made a lot of
money off of this idea. And you know what?
We benefited to a degree too, because it taught us what is
possible. It was a glimpse of the
connected nature of the world. Cloud computing is a wonderful
convenience. I'm able to take a picture on my
phone and look at it on my computer.
Oh my God, that's amazing, right?
The problem is that it is based on extremely powerful
intermediaries. That's the problem.
And So what we have done is identified the primary reason
why these things came into existence in the 1st place is
also the primary means by which we can get rid of them, which is
to empower the individual to run these servers themselves, right?
These giant server farms came into existence because nobody
could do it. It required too many skills, too
much esoteric knowledge. And so we just outsourced it to
Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, and all the
rest. And so now to undo that, what we
have to do is make it easy for people to run their own servers.
And what I love about this is that it's not a network effect
problem. Not everyone needs to do this in
order for it to work for you. Even if nobody else in the world
is running their own server. If you are, you can just stop
using Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon for all your computing
needs and instead start using your own server that's running
in your own home or in a secure location.
We have there's a lot of nuanced questions about how to do this
properly, just like there is around Bitcoin and self custody.
And we have those answers, as do others in the community is you
run your own server and you are immediately garnering the
benefits of that, right? You are no longer being spied on
by these giant tech companies. You are no longer being shown
advertisements. You're no longer your data is no
longer being stolen and sold to everyone around the world.
There's no more terms and conditions to agree to.
There's no more monthly fees. When that server gets hacked,
which it eventually will, your data won't be on it and it won't
leak into the hands of hackers and scammers.
And so there's all these benefits to running your own
server even if nobody else is, and that's why it's going to
work is because it doesn't require everyone to agree on
this. Some people can listen to what
I'm saying and just feel like, what the fuck is he talking
about? Google works great.
Screw you, keep using Google, no big deal.
But there's somebody who's listening that's going to go,
oh, I probably should take control over my entire computing
life so that photos of my children and private financial
documents aren't sitting on some server that's charging me $15.00
a month and is eventually going to get hacked and leaked anyway,
right? There's somebody listening who's
going to go, OK, well, I'm going to do that.
And then again, like Bitcoin, the more people that do that,
the more people that take independent control over
themselves and their families, which is called being an adult.
The more people who do that, the healthier the world becomes.
We win in the marketplace. We don't have to ask politicians
for permission. We don't need to get laws
passed, None of that. This is just technology that
exists that you can run for yourself and your family.
And if enough people do it, we will tear down the cloud.
We will put an end to the hegemony of these giant crony
capitalist megatech companies and their involvement with
government. And I think it's going to happen
faster than than most do. And this is me boots on the
ground, observing the adoption rate.
This is happening quickly. Yes, it's still fringe, but it's
a lot easier than you think. As Nico was saying, he's a
non-technical guy and he was able to do this.
We openly state that this is not for everyone, but it is for
anyone who won values their independence.
And two is computer literate. So what we mean by the phrase
computer literate is that you feel comfortable.
OK, if you feel comfortable going into the settings menu of
your iOS, Android, Mac or Windows device.
So going into the settings menu and changing things.
If you feel comfortable going into the settings menu and
changing things on your device operating system, then you can.
You can do this. You can do.
You can run a start OS start 9 server in your home and connect
to it from your phone and your laptop and your friends and your
family can all connect to it as well from anywhere.
And the experience is mostly as good as if you were using Google
and Apple and all of them. There is a small degradation in
user experience to be expected. Growing your own food is harder
than going to a restaurant, but you can do it and it's not so
bad and it tastes way better. Love it, Love it, guys.
Go get. We'll have to do this.
There we go guys. Go to start9.com today.
Start your sovereign computing journey.
I'm telling you it's it's, it's, it's, it's, it's you can do it.
If you, if you're used to operating a Windows device or
Mac, like Matt just said, you will be able to, you'll be able
to manage your, your own personal server of which you can
run a Bitcoin node off of that server.
It's extremely fast. It's great and they have help
and they can help and they have an amazing community and a
support team too that you can ask questions to I every other
week. I asked Matt if my start 9 is
catching on fire and he said no, Nico dark, dark.
That's not what's happening. So yes, it's highly recommended.
Guys, run your own Bitcoin node run your own sovereign computer,
run your own server head over to start 9.com today take advantage
of the Black Friday sale 21% off their flagship product, which is
the server pure. That's the one that I've been
personally running since they since they initially launched
it. And again, it's, you know, the
best Bitcoin note I've ever run. And I'm using it for Noster.
I'm using it for for kind of lightning stuff as well.
It's incredibly, incredibly awesome.
I can't recommend it enough. Anyways, we are getting to the
top of the hour. Yeah.
I think it's important to mention the operating system
that makes this possible. Start OS is 100% free and open
source software under the MIT license.
It does not in any way belong to me or to Start 9.
We are the people who work on it, you know, we pour our
lifeblood into it and then we we give it away.
We don't own a drop of it. And so you can, without doing
business with us at all, just download the software and flash
it onto an old laptop, an old mini PC if you really want to a
Raspberry Pi that we don't really recommend it.
You can even flash old Macbooks. It works just fine and
effectively convert that old computer or a new one that you
buy off the shelf. You can convert it into a a
start 9 server without ever doing business with us.
We don't know that you exist. There's no accounts to create.
This is just purely open source. It's, it's a Linux distro that's
based on Debian and we are, it's, it's maintainers.
So we do sell plug and play servers and that's our business
model. But you don't have to buy from
us. And, and we root for that and we
recommend it, right. If if you're in a place where
shipping would be enormously expensive or you just you know
you don't have a enough money to to buy a server from us, just go
grab an old laptop that's laying around, go get one from Goodwill
for 50 bucks. Flash start OS on it and you'll
be up and running and we will still help you along the way.
Love it love it yeah guys, you can you can download this.
You don't have to buy their products, even though I really
recommend them because it is plug and play and it's awesome
and guys, this was simply Bitcoin live for December 2nd.
First episode of December baby. Oh my God, Opti.
We made it through this year. I don't know how if you guys
enjoyed today's episode, smash that like button and consider
subscribing. I'm your host for today Nico.
It's my legendary Co host, Optimus Fields, and our guest
today, Matt Hill, founder and CEO of Start 9.
Head over to start 9.com today. Start your sovereign computing
journey. All right guys, love you all.
We'll see you on the next one tomorrow.
Peace out. Was brought to you by
bitcoinwell.com, a Bitcoin only platform on a mission to enable
financial independence.