1 00:00:00,120 --> 00:00:01,760 Alex, welcome to New York State Podcast. 2 00:00:01,760 --> 00:00:03,440 Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me man. 3 00:00:03,680 --> 00:00:05,640 Awesome. So we've been friends for a 4 00:00:05,640 --> 00:00:08,360 while and it's good. I think it's your first time out 5 00:00:08,360 --> 00:00:11,800 here in Singapore. So you have a new book out, 6 00:00:11,920 --> 00:00:13,480 check your financial privilege, right? 7 00:00:13,560 --> 00:00:14,560 Why don't you tell us about that? 8 00:00:15,000 --> 00:00:20,080 Yeah, so I've got a couple books over the last couple years and 9 00:00:20,520 --> 00:00:24,680 working on on a continual theme, which is why are people turning 10 00:00:24,680 --> 00:00:25,560 to Bitcoin? Yep. 11 00:00:25,640 --> 00:00:28,760 Why is the Fiat system broken? So started with check your 12 00:00:28,760 --> 00:00:33,040 financial privilege, which is an exploration of mainly people in 13 00:00:33,040 --> 00:00:35,760 collapsing economies and in police states. 14 00:00:37,120 --> 00:00:39,640 Why are they adopting Bitcoin and interviewing them, 15 00:00:39,720 --> 00:00:44,040 travelling, meeting them and learning about how absolutely 16 00:00:44,040 --> 00:00:46,360 shattered the monetary system is for so many people? 17 00:00:46,480 --> 00:00:51,160 And you know, I don't know exactly what the situation here 18 00:00:51,320 --> 00:00:54,440 is like in Singapore, but in America and in Europe, we have 19 00:00:54,440 --> 00:00:57,720 this immense financial privilege where it's easy to use money, it 20 00:00:57,720 --> 00:00:59,880 doesn't hyperinflate. It's easy to send money to our 21 00:00:59,880 --> 00:01:03,560 relatives and families. You know, you can take your 22 00:01:03,560 --> 00:01:06,320 money out of your country if you have it in your pocket and it, 23 00:01:06,400 --> 00:01:09,280 it works like I've been using U.S. dollars to, to people here. 24 00:01:09,960 --> 00:01:13,640 If you live in a place like Togo or Bhutan, etcetera, and you 25 00:01:13,640 --> 00:01:15,520 take your money out of the country, it's worthless. 26 00:01:15,880 --> 00:01:20,200 So as the Bitcoin evolution is happening, it's been a lot 27 00:01:20,200 --> 00:01:24,440 harder for a lot of people in in rich economies basically to 28 00:01:24,440 --> 00:01:27,360 understand why, because their money system works relatively 29 00:01:27,360 --> 00:01:29,760 well. But only about a billion people 30 00:01:29,760 --> 00:01:33,360 live in a country with property rights, free speech and open 31 00:01:33,360 --> 00:01:36,120 capital markets and some kind of elections. 32 00:01:36,520 --> 00:01:40,640 The other 7 billion people live in a country that either has 33 00:01:40,800 --> 00:01:45,360 essentially collapsing economy or an authoritarian regime. 34 00:01:46,080 --> 00:01:49,440 So for about 7 billion people, money's broken every day and it 35 00:01:49,440 --> 00:01:51,800 really sucks to deal with. And, and a lot of them are 36 00:01:51,800 --> 00:01:54,280 starting to turn to Bitcoin. So that's that's the sort of 37 00:01:54,640 --> 00:01:56,160 narrative I explored in that book. 38 00:01:56,440 --> 00:02:02,000 So I agree with about 70% of that, but the 30% I disagree 39 00:02:02,000 --> 00:02:06,320 with this, I think you know the the golden billion, right? 40 00:02:06,800 --> 00:02:09,280 Have you heard that term right? That's what I'm referring to, 41 00:02:09,280 --> 00:02:10,479 yeah. Yeah, so the golden billion, 42 00:02:10,479 --> 00:02:12,280 Putin has also used that term. Others have used that term. 43 00:02:12,280 --> 00:02:14,400 I mean, it's like neutral or whatever, but it's like, let's 44 00:02:14,400 --> 00:02:17,320 say the US, Western Europe, Japan, Korea, Australia, New 45 00:02:17,320 --> 00:02:20,200 Zealand, what people sometimes. Reserve currencies. 46 00:02:20,320 --> 00:02:22,000 Yeah, exactly. It's what people refer to as, 47 00:02:22,000 --> 00:02:23,240 quote, the international community. 48 00:02:23,240 --> 00:02:25,640 They're aligned with the Fed. They're basically often used 49 00:02:25,640 --> 00:02:28,160 military bases are there. They're kind of people who will 50 00:02:28,160 --> 00:02:31,040 be at the G7 or whatever, this overlapping list of countries. 51 00:02:31,840 --> 00:02:35,440 I think my disagreement with you, partial disagreement is 52 00:02:35,800 --> 00:02:41,080 that if if you look at China, if you look at the Southeast Asia, 53 00:02:41,080 --> 00:02:45,280 you look at Riyadh or Dubai or even India, Russia. 54 00:02:45,280 --> 00:02:50,040 And so it's over Eastern Europe. And then places like El Salvador 55 00:02:50,040 --> 00:02:54,280 are, they're really not as third world as people think they are. 56 00:02:54,280 --> 00:02:55,720 They've actually improved in some cases. 57 00:02:55,720 --> 00:02:59,120 They're not third world at all in the sense of like, they have 58 00:02:59,120 --> 00:03:01,080 modern infrastructure and they have cars. 59 00:03:01,080 --> 00:03:04,040 You might disagree with, you might say, collapsing economies 60 00:03:04,120 --> 00:03:05,600 or authoritarian governments in the. 61 00:03:05,600 --> 00:03:07,240 World or capture it right? Exactly right. 62 00:03:07,600 --> 00:03:10,680 So, so maybe just as a qualifier, many of those 63 00:03:10,680 --> 00:03:12,960 economies are not collapsing, but you might disagree with the 64 00:03:12,960 --> 00:03:15,640 government, fine, OK, great. So which is different, but it's 65 00:03:15,640 --> 00:03:18,520 also it's it's just an important distinction, right? 66 00:03:18,520 --> 00:03:23,320 Like, it's not like only like wealth is distinct from 67 00:03:23,400 --> 00:03:24,920 government, if that makes any sense, right? 68 00:03:25,160 --> 00:03:26,320 Right. And if you think about Bitcoin 69 00:03:26,320 --> 00:03:30,600 as digital cash and digital gold, you know, depending on 70 00:03:30,600 --> 00:03:34,000 your country, one use case stands out over the other. 71 00:03:34,280 --> 00:03:36,480 In a place like China, the digital cash part where you can 72 00:03:36,480 --> 00:03:39,640 get on capital controls and you can have money that's not tied 73 00:03:39,640 --> 00:03:41,680 to your identity, is really important. 74 00:03:41,680 --> 00:03:44,640 Whereas in a country like maybe Venezuela, the gold part's 75 00:03:44,640 --> 00:03:46,720 really important because you want to escape inflation. 76 00:03:47,120 --> 00:03:48,920 And, you know, look, a lot of countries have both. 77 00:03:50,200 --> 00:03:53,480 But essentially my point was only a very small percentage of 78 00:03:53,480 --> 00:03:56,840 humans live in a country that's sort of protected from both. 79 00:03:57,320 --> 00:03:59,520 And that's, again, where you see most of the world's media's 80 00:03:59,520 --> 00:04:01,360 based there, right? So the narratives that 81 00:04:01,360 --> 00:04:04,960 governments have been saying for almost 15 years now that Bitcoin 82 00:04:04,960 --> 00:04:08,200 is wasteful and dangerous and useless, it's just a complete 83 00:04:08,320 --> 00:04:09,720 lie. It's, it's the opposite. 84 00:04:09,720 --> 00:04:12,440 It's actually been dangerous to not use Bitcoin. 85 00:04:12,840 --> 00:04:14,440 Yeah. And I think I, I basically agree 86 00:04:14,440 --> 00:04:17,519 with you in the sense of especially in some place like 87 00:04:17,519 --> 00:04:21,120 Venezuela or like Lebanon where the currency basically went to 88 00:04:21,120 --> 00:04:24,480 zero and Bitcoin went vertical, right, Nigeria, places like this 89 00:04:24,840 --> 00:04:26,840 Turkey, right. Turkey is an interesting one. 90 00:04:26,840 --> 00:04:30,640 Where so, so the other three I feel are very unambiguous. 91 00:04:30,960 --> 00:04:33,360 Turkey, you know, like the thing about like politics being 92 00:04:33,360 --> 00:04:36,920 Byzantine in the Byzantines. You know, I can't, I, I can't 93 00:04:36,920 --> 00:04:38,720 figure out Turkey myself. I probably want to have someone 94 00:04:38,720 --> 00:04:41,720 from Turkey explain it to me because when I fly through the 95 00:04:41,720 --> 00:04:44,360 airport there, it's actually very nice, right? 96 00:04:44,720 --> 00:04:47,960 And yet their currency is being like wrecked and so on. 97 00:04:48,240 --> 00:04:50,920 So that's an interesting edge case that I feel Bitcoiners 98 00:04:50,920 --> 00:04:53,720 should understand better that I don't understand fully at the 99 00:04:53,720 --> 00:04:57,520 current moment, right? Something about it, it's able to 100 00:04:57,520 --> 00:05:01,040 somehow seemingly operate even as it's got these crazy 101 00:05:01,040 --> 00:05:03,720 inflation rates. So I don't know what's going on 102 00:05:03,720 --> 00:05:05,360 there, right? Or maybe maybe it's actually 103 00:05:05,360 --> 00:05:07,960 going to bust or what have you. But something is something 104 00:05:07,960 --> 00:05:11,520 interesting is happening there. But other places like certainly 105 00:05:11,520 --> 00:05:14,120 Venezuela, certainly Lebanon, certainly Nigeria, certainly 106 00:05:14,120 --> 00:05:17,200 many countries. Now a related thing that's 107 00:05:17,200 --> 00:05:21,320 happening is we have, you know, stable coins being legalized, 108 00:05:21,440 --> 00:05:24,360 right? And my thesis and maybe you you 109 00:05:24,360 --> 00:05:29,480 have some thoughts on this is just like local papers all went 110 00:05:29,480 --> 00:05:32,640 online and then they kind of lost against the New York Times, 111 00:05:32,640 --> 00:05:36,400 Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, which then lost to social 112 00:05:36,400 --> 00:05:38,560 media. Basically in terms of where do 113 00:05:38,560 --> 00:05:41,360 people check first, they check X or they check social media first 114 00:05:41,360 --> 00:05:44,080 for news and then this and then this is like second and third 115 00:05:44,080 --> 00:05:46,360 tier. And that took that was a huge 116 00:05:46,360 --> 00:05:49,000 fight over 10 years because once these guys saw they were losing 117 00:05:49,000 --> 00:05:51,000 the social media, they pushed but fought, fought, fought to 118 00:05:51,000 --> 00:05:53,080 try to censor and then the, you know, push back happened yes. 119 00:05:53,480 --> 00:05:55,480 So I think something similar will happen with lots of local 120 00:05:55,480 --> 00:06:00,160 currencies will essentially lose to USD and potentially other 121 00:06:00,160 --> 00:06:02,840 stable coins or basically USD backed stable coins and other 122 00:06:02,840 --> 00:06:06,160 stable coins. And then USD itself is not as 123 00:06:06,160 --> 00:06:09,720 good as Bitcoin because you know USD is devalued by 100 million X 124 00:06:09,720 --> 00:06:11,120 against Bitcoin since inception, right? 125 00:06:11,560 --> 00:06:14,560 So very similar kind of dynamic where locals lose to global and 126 00:06:14,560 --> 00:06:16,120 the global loses to the Internet first. 127 00:06:16,120 --> 00:06:17,440 Do you agree with that as a general? 128 00:06:17,480 --> 00:06:21,040 Concept, I mean, look, I'm I'm a very focused on Bitcoin, but I 129 00:06:21,040 --> 00:06:24,600 think bitcoiners need to acknowledge probably at least 130 00:06:24,600 --> 00:06:27,640 two use cases that come out of the wider crypto market and one 131 00:06:27,640 --> 00:06:30,320 is obviously staple coins. The other one I really I mean 132 00:06:30,320 --> 00:06:31,920 polymarket is the other interesting. 133 00:06:32,120 --> 00:06:34,480 Those would be the two that I I think are smash hits. 134 00:06:34,480 --> 00:06:38,440 I guess now I would, I don't know if they're technologically 135 00:06:38,440 --> 00:06:40,000 innovative. I think they both are successful 136 00:06:40,000 --> 00:06:44,040 because of regulatory arbitrage. But the point being that I 137 00:06:44,040 --> 00:06:46,440 empathize with stable coins as a humanitarian technology. 138 00:06:47,040 --> 00:06:50,200 I would want, I would want them if I lived in Lebanon OR if I 139 00:06:50,200 --> 00:06:53,880 lived in Turkey, or I mean, just think about Egypt and Nigeria 140 00:06:53,960 --> 00:06:57,440 are the largest country in Africa and the largest country 141 00:06:57,440 --> 00:07:00,200 in the Arab world. And they both have lost the 142 00:07:00,200 --> 00:07:02,800 currency has lost 75% of its value against the US dollar in 143 00:07:02,800 --> 00:07:05,720 the last three years. That's almost 350 million 144 00:07:05,720 --> 00:07:08,400 people. So I, I empathize with why 145 00:07:08,400 --> 00:07:11,120 people want stable coins. But ultimately what's really 146 00:07:11,120 --> 00:07:14,320 interesting if you think about it is that stable coins kind of 147 00:07:14,320 --> 00:07:16,520 do the opposite of Bitcoin in the end. 148 00:07:16,520 --> 00:07:18,880 Like they kind of enhance state power, they enhance dollar 149 00:07:18,880 --> 00:07:21,800 hegemony, they enhance dollar network effect, and they create 150 00:07:21,800 --> 00:07:25,600 almost like a new petrodollar effect where the stablecoin 151 00:07:25,600 --> 00:07:29,440 issuers are becoming the largest buyers of U.S. debt in the 152 00:07:29,440 --> 00:07:31,400 world. So last year, the only people, 153 00:07:31,400 --> 00:07:34,480 the only institutions to buy more debt than stablecoin 154 00:07:34,480 --> 00:07:37,360 issuers together where JP Morgan and China. 155 00:07:37,520 --> 00:07:39,760 And this year it's probably, they're probably going to be #2 156 00:07:39,760 --> 00:07:42,520 and #1 So they're really helpful for U.S. government. 157 00:07:43,000 --> 00:07:45,400 And Bitcoin is just solving a different problem. 158 00:07:45,400 --> 00:07:48,880 Like they, they don't ultimately solve the same problem. 159 00:07:48,880 --> 00:07:52,720 Like Bitcoin is unconfiscatable, unstoppable. 160 00:07:53,640 --> 00:07:56,160 It's going to have improving privacy over time. 161 00:07:56,160 --> 00:08:01,480 It's 21 million, it's scarce. And stable coins are guaranteed 162 00:08:01,640 --> 00:08:04,480 lose money. Coins, like, as you pointed out, 163 00:08:04,480 --> 00:08:05,760 like they're losing money every year. 164 00:08:06,120 --> 00:08:08,880 And the ones that have dominated the market are centralized and 165 00:08:08,880 --> 00:08:10,400 they, they get frozen all the time. 166 00:08:10,760 --> 00:08:13,960 So while stable coins, I would argue are humanitarian 167 00:08:13,960 --> 00:08:16,280 technology, Bitcoin is freedom technology. 168 00:08:16,280 --> 00:08:17,440 And I think there's a big distinction. 169 00:08:17,440 --> 00:08:18,520 Totally. I totally agree with you. 170 00:08:18,560 --> 00:08:21,720 But just just to talk about that, just for a second, I 171 00:08:21,720 --> 00:08:25,200 actually think of stable coins. You can separate them into Fiat 172 00:08:25,200 --> 00:08:29,960 coins and flat coins, of which a Fiat coin is just a mirror of an 173 00:08:29,960 --> 00:08:32,240 on chain. You know, like basically it's an 174 00:08:32,240 --> 00:08:34,799 on chain version of an off chain, you know, Fiat dollar. 175 00:08:35,240 --> 00:08:38,360 And then in theory, you could have a flat coin, which was an 176 00:08:38,360 --> 00:08:40,799 asset, which was stable against other assets. 177 00:08:41,200 --> 00:08:44,560 But in practice, it's very hard to have that because let's say 178 00:08:44,560 --> 00:08:47,200 there's a scarcity of tomatoes, the price of this will rise 179 00:08:47,200 --> 00:08:49,320 against that, right? So it's very difficult. 180 00:08:49,320 --> 00:08:52,720 You're going to have to sacrifice like in theory, you 181 00:08:52,720 --> 00:08:55,120 could do some balancing whatever against a basket of goods and 182 00:08:55,120 --> 00:08:57,000 keep the price table. In practice, it's very, very 183 00:08:57,000 --> 00:08:59,080 difficult to do so because those those goods could, you know, 184 00:08:59,120 --> 00:08:59,800 could fly away. OK. 185 00:09:00,200 --> 00:09:02,640 But so when we think of it as a Fiat coin, though, then you're 186 00:09:02,640 --> 00:09:04,480 right. It's just a projection of these 187 00:09:04,480 --> 00:09:07,360 governments on chain. The question is what is the 188 00:09:07,360 --> 00:09:12,560 medium term consequence of that? I think it is on net beneficial 189 00:09:12,560 --> 00:09:15,560 for freedom, OK. And my argument is once it's on 190 00:09:15,560 --> 00:09:20,280 chain, it's swappable. And when it's swappable, then 191 00:09:20,280 --> 00:09:23,600 you can exit and because you can exit, you have greater 192 00:09:23,600 --> 00:09:25,880 jurisdictional choice. No argument with that, but 193 00:09:25,880 --> 00:09:28,960 that's that's that's because they haven't done shotgun KYC 194 00:09:28,960 --> 00:09:31,400 yet. The moment and I just did like 195 00:09:31,400 --> 00:09:34,480 what Tether and what Circle do fundamentally are at odds with 196 00:09:34,480 --> 00:09:38,240 the world's financial system as it stands, which is built on 197 00:09:38,240 --> 00:09:41,160 control and surveillance. And there's going to be a moment 198 00:09:41,360 --> 00:09:43,880 in the near future. Who knows, maybe something 199 00:09:43,880 --> 00:09:46,240 doesn't some of the something terrible with stablecoins that's 200 00:09:46,240 --> 00:09:48,640 all over the news. But as soon as there you start 201 00:09:48,640 --> 00:09:52,320 to get KYC on chain with the big centralized issuers, which I 202 00:09:52,320 --> 00:09:55,720 just think is a matter of time. Then, you know, things get very 203 00:09:55,720 --> 00:09:58,960 complicated and, and I don't, they lose the, the value like 204 00:09:58,960 --> 00:10:01,160 the, the main value that I care about with stablecoins is 205 00:10:01,160 --> 00:10:05,560 someone in Lebanon who, or in Turkey or wherever Argentina who 206 00:10:05,560 --> 00:10:08,200 doesn't have AUS bank account can have AUS dollar on their 207 00:10:08,200 --> 00:10:09,800 phone. It's like a euro dollar in your 208 00:10:09,800 --> 00:10:11,240 pocket really. I mean, it's amazing. 209 00:10:11,760 --> 00:10:14,720 As soon as that's taken away, you know, the whole system 210 00:10:14,720 --> 00:10:16,440 changes that. I guess the one thing that you 211 00:10:16,440 --> 00:10:19,840 could bank on maybe is that if you take that away, the whole 212 00:10:19,840 --> 00:10:22,600 stable coin machine slows down and the US government needs the 213 00:10:22,600 --> 00:10:25,320 stable coin machine to grow. So this is kind of interesting, 214 00:10:25,320 --> 00:10:25,640 right? So. 215 00:10:25,800 --> 00:10:29,760 So I actually, you know, CTO of Coinbase, I actually launched 216 00:10:29,760 --> 00:10:31,080 USTC on the Coinbase site. Yeah. 217 00:10:31,640 --> 00:10:37,040 And one of the big things was, you know, do you have whitelist 218 00:10:37,040 --> 00:10:39,520 or blacklist on chain? And just to explain what that 219 00:10:39,520 --> 00:10:44,760 is, basically whitelist would mean every single address has to 220 00:10:44,760 --> 00:10:47,960 be KYC before you can send or receive to it, which is 221 00:10:47,960 --> 00:10:50,720 essentially the same as the wire transfer system off chain. 222 00:10:50,880 --> 00:10:52,320 Right. That's the fear with Bitcoin 223 00:10:52,360 --> 00:10:55,000 also, right? The, the alternative to that was 224 00:10:55,520 --> 00:10:59,720 you just have KYC at the entry and exit points where you're 225 00:10:59,720 --> 00:11:03,560 trading USD for, for USDC or vice versa. 226 00:11:04,200 --> 00:11:09,120 And in exigency, you have the ability to freeze or seize if 227 00:11:09,120 --> 00:11:10,520 there's like a lawful court order. 228 00:11:10,520 --> 00:11:12,320 And so, and so it's like a terrorist group or something 229 00:11:12,320 --> 00:11:14,000 like that, right? That was, that was, that was at 230 00:11:14,000 --> 00:11:17,440 least the theory of it, right? And now obviously the ability to 231 00:11:17,440 --> 00:11:19,520 freeze and seize is not something that exists in 232 00:11:19,520 --> 00:11:22,040 Bitcoin, right? But on balance, I think that 233 00:11:22,040 --> 00:11:24,040 did. Then there's other aspects where 234 00:11:24,040 --> 00:11:25,680 you can program with it. You can send much smaller 235 00:11:25,680 --> 00:11:26,880 quantities and so on and so forth. 236 00:11:26,880 --> 00:11:30,360 So on balance, I think it was an improvement from a technological 237 00:11:30,360 --> 00:11:33,880 and freedom perspective, yes. Given, you know, I'm, I maybe 238 00:11:34,680 --> 00:11:36,680 relative to most people, I'm an ideologue. 239 00:11:36,680 --> 00:11:38,080 Relative to you, I'm a pragmatist. 240 00:11:39,200 --> 00:11:41,160 Well. But you're actually fairly 241 00:11:41,160 --> 00:11:43,400 pragmatic, even in your own way. Yeah, I'd say, well, but how, 242 00:11:43,760 --> 00:11:46,280 how would you look at this? So we have like let's say 243 00:11:46,280 --> 00:11:48,360 stablecoins 1.0 which are Tether and Circle. 244 00:11:48,360 --> 00:11:51,400 Let's just say as a as a approximation of 95% of. 245 00:11:51,560 --> 00:11:54,000 Well, USDC center and tether, yes, go ahead. 246 00:11:54,080 --> 00:11:55,520 Yeah. USDC and USDT. 247 00:11:55,520 --> 00:11:57,560 Yeah, All right. Now we're going to have the 248 00:11:57,560 --> 00:11:59,560 second wave, which are going to be made by large corporations 249 00:11:59,560 --> 00:12:01,320 that are much more, you know, like stripes. 250 00:12:01,320 --> 00:12:02,320 I don't think they're going to succeed. 251 00:12:02,320 --> 00:12:03,400 You don't think they're going to succeed. 252 00:12:03,560 --> 00:12:04,560 So tell me what? Why not? 253 00:12:04,960 --> 00:12:07,520 Because they're trying to do look nothing. 254 00:12:07,600 --> 00:12:09,760 By the way, I, I, if stripe people are watching this. 255 00:12:09,760 --> 00:12:11,440 I like them different people, nice people. 256 00:12:11,440 --> 00:12:13,320 They they're very competent of what they do. 257 00:12:13,760 --> 00:12:18,720 But there's several reasons I am without calling out stripes 258 00:12:18,720 --> 00:12:20,040 thing or whatever you know there's. 259 00:12:20,040 --> 00:12:21,120 Several companies trying to do this. 260 00:12:21,120 --> 00:12:22,040 So we'll come and try to do this. 261 00:12:22,880 --> 00:12:25,760 Why am I very skeptical is whether they'll succeed 1st is 262 00:12:25,800 --> 00:12:27,880 they just don't understand crypto. 263 00:12:28,000 --> 00:12:30,320 They understand Bitcoin. And what that means is from a 264 00:12:30,320 --> 00:12:33,520 DNA standpoint, for example, you need incentives for people to 265 00:12:33,520 --> 00:12:36,240 adopt. These things are already at huge 266 00:12:36,240 --> 00:12:40,280 scale, like there's a technical adoption, there's a programmer 267 00:12:40,280 --> 00:12:43,560 adoption, so on and so forth. For example, if you have like, 268 00:12:43,600 --> 00:12:46,680 OK, let's talk to Libra, right? Why one of the reasons Libra 269 00:12:46,680 --> 00:12:49,160 didn't work? There's many reasons, but one 270 00:12:49,160 --> 00:12:51,440 reason is it was like a bank chain, right? 271 00:12:51,560 --> 00:12:54,680 So it didn't have the transformative upside of 272 00:12:54,680 --> 00:12:57,320 adopting a new financial network that was critical to get 273 00:12:57,320 --> 00:12:59,400 millions and millions of nodes around the world to adopt it, 274 00:12:59,400 --> 00:13:01,680 right? If there's no asset, there's no 275 00:13:01,680 --> 00:13:03,320 adoption. That's like 1 premise. 276 00:13:03,600 --> 00:13:07,880 The second premise is that these latecomers usually don't 277 00:13:08,160 --> 00:13:10,400 viscerally get crypto in a deep way. 278 00:13:10,640 --> 00:13:12,920 Yeah. So they'll always nerf it in 279 00:13:12,920 --> 00:13:15,080 some way to make it more compliant and think that's a 280 00:13:15,080 --> 00:13:16,760 feature. To me that's the key is the 281 00:13:16,840 --> 00:13:19,320 openness wins, yes. And look, say what you want 282 00:13:19,320 --> 00:13:23,240 about Tron, which is the main blockchain that that USDTUSDT 283 00:13:23,240 --> 00:13:26,080 runs on around the world and ironically is the main 284 00:13:26,080 --> 00:13:29,200 blockchain that I think most value goes over every day with 285 00:13:29,200 --> 00:13:31,440 stablecoins. If you say what you want about 286 00:13:31,440 --> 00:13:34,560 that blockchain, it's it's it's relatively open, meaning you 287 00:13:34,560 --> 00:13:37,000 don't have to provide your passport to use it. 288 00:13:37,200 --> 00:13:39,520 Exactly as. Soon as you cross that Rubicon 289 00:13:40,000 --> 00:13:42,520 it it it just I would agree with you like I don't know where 290 00:13:42,520 --> 00:13:44,720 these are going if you have to like put your ID in the. 291 00:13:44,720 --> 00:13:47,200 The thing is that essentially from a cultural standpoint, the 292 00:13:47,200 --> 00:13:50,840 late adopter is selected to be a late adopter because they're a 293 00:13:50,840 --> 00:13:52,960 late adopter. They're going to be more 294 00:13:52,960 --> 00:13:54,640 cautious. They're going to nerf it. 295 00:13:54,880 --> 00:13:57,000 They're not using assets for adoption. 296 00:13:57,000 --> 00:14:00,040 I mean, when I, when people tell me they're doing a stable coin, 297 00:14:00,040 --> 00:14:02,160 because a lot of people say this, it's like I look at them 298 00:14:02,160 --> 00:14:08,720 and I say, OK, I'm interested Only if it's taking some non off 299 00:14:08,720 --> 00:14:12,960 chain, like a, let's say, you know, some random country that 300 00:14:12,960 --> 00:14:15,800 doesn't yet have its Fiat currency on chain. 301 00:14:16,400 --> 00:14:19,120 That could be worth doing a stable coin with potentially, 302 00:14:19,200 --> 00:14:20,520 right? Because that that bridges those 303 00:14:20,520 --> 00:14:22,160 people into crypto And so it's fine. 304 00:14:22,160 --> 00:14:24,000 And then they can get into Bitcoin and so on from there, 305 00:14:24,000 --> 00:14:26,200 right. So that could be worth doing. 306 00:14:26,440 --> 00:14:29,000 But most other people, like stable coins only make sense 307 00:14:29,000 --> 00:14:32,800 from a revenue standpoint when you have huge deposits, and even 308 00:14:32,800 --> 00:14:34,480 then. Taylor's the most profitable 309 00:14:34,480 --> 00:14:36,720 company in the world. Well, per capita, yes. 310 00:14:36,720 --> 00:14:38,760 Yes. But then the question is like, 311 00:14:38,760 --> 00:14:41,640 are you making real returns right now, Taylor? 312 00:14:41,640 --> 00:14:43,840 Actually, see, The thing is most other people who are buying U.S. 313 00:14:43,840 --> 00:14:45,840 Treasuries are doing it with their own money. 314 00:14:46,200 --> 00:14:50,360 You know, Tether is taking deposits from people and then 315 00:14:50,360 --> 00:14:54,200 they're able to get the returns. And so like, you know, would it, 316 00:14:54,240 --> 00:14:57,680 would you, let's say you have a million USD of value, would you 317 00:14:57,680 --> 00:15:00,200 actually hold it in USD today? I don't think you would. 318 00:15:00,360 --> 00:15:02,800 You'd want to hold it in. Something else to be clear, 319 00:15:02,800 --> 00:15:05,600 Tether's portfolio is much larger than the 160 billion. 320 00:15:05,760 --> 00:15:07,680 I, I know, I know, I know. But but I'm saying though, is 321 00:15:07,680 --> 00:15:11,480 that tethers interesting where they're actually making returns 322 00:15:11,480 --> 00:15:14,040 on treasuries. The most other people who are 323 00:15:14,040 --> 00:15:17,800 treasury buyers are not making returns on treasuries because 324 00:15:17,800 --> 00:15:20,000 they're using their own capital to go and buy treasuries, 325 00:15:20,000 --> 00:15:22,040 whereas Tether is using customer capital in a sense. 326 00:15:22,360 --> 00:15:26,000 So I guess one way to tie that part of the conversation up is 327 00:15:26,040 --> 00:15:28,640 just long term. I'm in this because I think 328 00:15:28,640 --> 00:15:30,000 Bitcoin separates money from state. 329 00:15:30,000 --> 00:15:31,880 And I talk about Bitcoin, yeah. And I really think it's 330 00:15:31,880 --> 00:15:34,200 important that we separate money from state because states have 331 00:15:34,720 --> 00:15:36,840 totally destroyed everything they got their hands on when it 332 00:15:36,840 --> 00:15:38,560 comes to Fiat currency technology. 333 00:15:39,480 --> 00:15:41,800 And just to finish the thought, like if you want to read an 334 00:15:41,800 --> 00:15:44,520 awesome scientific history of money, Lynn Alden's Broken Money 335 00:15:44,520 --> 00:15:47,000 really breaks this down. And the 1st 2/3 of the book 336 00:15:47,000 --> 00:15:49,320 don't even mention Bitcoin or cryptocurrency, but they 337 00:15:49,320 --> 00:15:53,080 basically talk about how money has become, has been on a track 338 00:15:53,160 --> 00:15:56,520 evolving from a tool of relative freedom where, where you can 339 00:15:56,520 --> 00:15:58,480 kind of do what you want and commerce with each other. 340 00:15:58,800 --> 00:16:01,120 And over the last 150 years, it's evolved into a tool of 341 00:16:01,120 --> 00:16:04,600 control and surveillance. And finally we have a new track 342 00:16:04,600 --> 00:16:07,560 where we're evolving the money and making it better and, and 343 00:16:07,560 --> 00:16:09,040 moving away from that towards freedom. 344 00:16:09,400 --> 00:16:11,600 And you know, I, that's what I'm here for. 345 00:16:11,600 --> 00:16:14,320 And you know, when I go to a country like Malawi, I went two 346 00:16:14,320 --> 00:16:18,760 years ago and 16 days after a overnight 44% currency 347 00:16:18,760 --> 00:16:20,960 devaluation, it was just so horrifying to think about the 348 00:16:21,120 --> 00:16:23,880 fact that the government could just press a red button in a in 349 00:16:23,880 --> 00:16:28,440 a democracy and just immediately steal from everyone at mass. 350 00:16:28,440 --> 00:16:30,200 And that's just, I think it's a crime against humanity. 351 00:16:30,200 --> 00:16:31,160 But. It's crazy. 352 00:16:31,160 --> 00:16:32,880 It's funny, like, you know, military treatment has this 353 00:16:32,880 --> 00:16:35,120 line. Inflation is taxation without 354 00:16:35,120 --> 00:16:36,720 legislation. Have you heard that one before? 355 00:16:37,320 --> 00:16:40,360 Yeah, I mean, but you know, the overnight devaluation of such 356 00:16:40,440 --> 00:16:42,720 magnitude, Americans are relatively unfamiliar with. 357 00:16:42,720 --> 00:16:44,320 The last time we had that was FDR. 358 00:16:44,760 --> 00:16:47,040 Yes, yes. And that was the 60 that was 359 00:16:47,040 --> 00:16:51,200 going from it was like $35 per oz to $20.67. 360 00:16:51,240 --> 00:16:52,840 Exactly. Yeah, 20 to 35. 361 00:16:53,000 --> 00:16:55,520 That's right. And so that's a lot. 362 00:16:55,600 --> 00:16:57,440 That's a lot. And actually. 363 00:16:57,600 --> 00:16:59,120 Within a few months. Within a few months. 364 00:16:59,120 --> 00:17:00,680 That's right. McReynolds, who is the one of 365 00:17:00,680 --> 00:17:02,240 the dissenting justices on the Supreme Court. 366 00:17:02,240 --> 00:17:06,000 Yeah, he said, you know, today a dollar is $0.60. 367 00:17:06,240 --> 00:17:08,839 Tomorrow might be $0.30, the day after might be 1 cent. 368 00:17:08,880 --> 00:17:11,040 He was completely right. That's actually what did happen, 369 00:17:11,040 --> 00:17:13,280 you know, But good. But but no, I mean, but I mean, 370 00:17:13,280 --> 00:17:15,640 again, the average person on this planet has lived through 371 00:17:15,640 --> 00:17:17,920 something like that much more recently, whether they be in 372 00:17:17,920 --> 00:17:20,480 Peru or Hungary or so. Many different countries have 373 00:17:20,480 --> 00:17:23,040 had crazy hyperinflations over the last 50 years and one of the 374 00:17:23,040 --> 00:17:26,040 cable coins don't really fix that because ultimately these 375 00:17:26,040 --> 00:17:27,599 stable coin issues going bankrupt. 376 00:17:27,640 --> 00:17:28,720 I agree. I agree. 377 00:17:28,720 --> 00:17:31,320 Like the dollar is, at least. I think the stable coins as a 378 00:17:31,320 --> 00:17:35,160 bridge to the future and from a pragmatic standpoint, I think 379 00:17:35,160 --> 00:17:37,800 it's good that they exist, but then we want to. 380 00:17:37,800 --> 00:17:41,640 Get to So do you think they hasten the evolution towards a 381 00:17:41,640 --> 00:17:43,880 world where Bitcoin is a more dominant currency or do you 382 00:17:43,880 --> 00:17:45,800 think they slow that? Hasten absolutely. 383 00:17:45,800 --> 00:17:46,800 Interesting. Absolutely. 384 00:17:46,800 --> 00:17:48,880 Hasten it. And for example, I mean, first 385 00:17:48,880 --> 00:17:50,880 of all, lots of people buy Bitcoin, would see a coin. 386 00:17:50,880 --> 00:17:52,240 Yeah, just that alone is a huge thing. 387 00:17:52,280 --> 00:17:56,960 Right, that's the. And it it like almost every 388 00:17:56,960 --> 00:18:00,160 crypto exchange for crypto, crypto trades is denominated in 389 00:18:00,160 --> 00:18:04,000 stable coins or in Bitcoin. And so like just just that alone 390 00:18:04,120 --> 00:18:06,560 out there is basically everything, you know, much of 391 00:18:06,560 --> 00:18:08,280 the crypto economy. And this is basically why I 392 00:18:08,280 --> 00:18:11,680 would call myself a Bitcoin polytheist rather than Bitcoin 393 00:18:11,680 --> 00:18:15,640 maximalist, because I do believe that that whole crypto economy 394 00:18:15,920 --> 00:18:17,520 eventually leads people back into Bitcoin. 395 00:18:18,160 --> 00:18:20,560 Okay, right. In the sense of they'll try XY 396 00:18:20,560 --> 00:18:23,720 and Z and they'll say, you know what, let me save in BTC. 397 00:18:23,720 --> 00:18:25,960 That's actually hard currency. That's right. 398 00:18:26,400 --> 00:18:27,880 And so there's something to that. 399 00:18:27,920 --> 00:18:29,520 And from a pragmatic standpoint, go ahead. 400 00:18:29,880 --> 00:18:33,320 I'd like to believe that the one area where we might encounter 401 00:18:33,520 --> 00:18:38,040 some problems is laid out in a book called The Bitcoin Dollar 402 00:18:38,040 --> 00:18:40,480 by a guy he used to edit Bitcoin Magazine and Mark Goodwin. 403 00:18:40,480 --> 00:18:42,480 Interesting, I was going to write a post on exactly this. 404 00:18:42,520 --> 00:18:43,680 I didn't know there's a book that come. 405 00:18:43,680 --> 00:18:44,440 Out. Yeah, it's interesting. 406 00:18:44,440 --> 00:18:47,720 So the idea is he looks at the Petro dollar and how the US was 407 00:18:47,720 --> 00:18:49,520 floundering with the dollar in the early 70s. 408 00:18:49,520 --> 00:18:53,160 We, the dollar lost more than half of its value versus the 409 00:18:53,160 --> 00:18:54,480 German mark in just a couple years. 410 00:18:54,960 --> 00:18:57,880 And then we, we found a way to tie the dollar to energy 411 00:18:57,880 --> 00:19:00,560 purchases, right? So you need oil. 412 00:19:00,800 --> 00:19:02,360 Guess what? You got to eat U.S. dollars. 413 00:19:02,600 --> 00:19:05,280 So he looks at that and how that's really helped prop up the 414 00:19:05,280 --> 00:19:06,800 dollar. And now he's looking at 415 00:19:06,800 --> 00:19:09,280 stablecoins as essentially the infrastructural on ramp to 416 00:19:09,280 --> 00:19:11,760 Bitcoin. You want a Bitcoin, maybe you 417 00:19:11,760 --> 00:19:13,360 need these, maybe you need dollars. 418 00:19:13,360 --> 00:19:16,400 I mean, it's, it's kind of true, right? 419 00:19:16,400 --> 00:19:19,920 Like a lot of people around the world who have who want Bitcoin, 420 00:19:20,920 --> 00:19:23,640 a lot of them have to get some kind of dollar banking or neo 421 00:19:23,640 --> 00:19:24,960 bank relationship first. Yeah, but. 422 00:19:25,360 --> 00:19:30,080 But Tethers location in El Salvador may turn out to be I am 423 00:19:31,000 --> 00:19:35,440 ultra bold but like you see. Just before we move on, that's 424 00:19:35,720 --> 00:19:38,320 that's a little scary. Like if they're tying, if they 425 00:19:38,320 --> 00:19:42,040 found a way to harness Bitcoin to power the dollar, the way to 426 00:19:42,040 --> 00:19:47,040 defeat that is very simple. Pay me in Bitcoin just to 427 00:19:47,040 --> 00:19:49,160 finish, like we just went to Thailand and Thailand's 428 00:19:49,160 --> 00:19:52,240 installing this new system where they're going to try and harvest 429 00:19:52,600 --> 00:19:54,840 Bitcoin. When you arrive, like if you're 430 00:19:54,840 --> 00:19:58,760 a Russian tourist, you'll be able to give them Bitcoin or I 431 00:19:58,760 --> 00:20:01,000 think a couple other different cryptocurrencies. 432 00:20:01,760 --> 00:20:03,800 And then you get like essentially the CBDC, which you 433 00:20:03,800 --> 00:20:05,200 can buy anything in the country with. 434 00:20:05,720 --> 00:20:09,600 So that's kind of. The the fear as we move in that 435 00:20:09,600 --> 00:20:12,720 direction, the solution is merchants in Thailand except 436 00:20:12,720 --> 00:20:15,320 Bitcoin and then you can just sidestep that whole process. 437 00:20:15,320 --> 00:20:18,760 So for me, Bitcoin's all about, I understand Bitcoin's a great 438 00:20:18,760 --> 00:20:20,520 savings thing. It's the best savings technology 439 00:20:20,520 --> 00:20:22,040 we've ever seen, etcetera, etcetera. 440 00:20:22,040 --> 00:20:23,920 I get it. I've no issue you want to buy an 441 00:20:23,920 --> 00:20:27,840 ETF, but I think how how it's ultimate value for humans is as 442 00:20:27,840 --> 00:20:29,800 payments. So that's kind of what I'm most 443 00:20:29,800 --> 00:20:31,600 interested in down the road. Sure. 444 00:20:31,600 --> 00:20:35,280 So right now Bitcoin can do about the transaction volume of 445 00:20:35,280 --> 00:20:38,400 Fedwire right on chain, on chain, yes, right. 446 00:20:38,760 --> 00:20:45,640 So my view is basically that it is infrequently you have 447 00:20:45,640 --> 00:20:49,080 infrequent on chain transactions and I know we'll probably 448 00:20:49,080 --> 00:20:52,480 disagree on how functional lightning is and so it's our 449 00:20:52,480 --> 00:20:57,920 fine, but I think that the scenario that you described is 450 00:20:57,920 --> 00:21:00,160 actually a victory in the sense that. 451 00:21:00,400 --> 00:21:02,600 Which scenario? Well, basically Bitcoin is 452 00:21:02,600 --> 00:21:06,600 accepted everywhere and you can everybody, I mean we're kind of 453 00:21:06,600 --> 00:21:09,560 already there because already in a sense the global reserve 454 00:21:09,560 --> 00:21:14,760 currency, because it is like for many people in many places, they 455 00:21:14,760 --> 00:21:19,240 would want one BTC more than the equivalent in a block of gold. 456 00:21:19,640 --> 00:21:21,040 And that's going to just expedite from. 457 00:21:21,040 --> 00:21:22,360 Here, that's going to expedite from here, right? 458 00:21:22,360 --> 00:21:25,120 Yeah, I think gold is gold is also being a comeback by the 459 00:21:25,120 --> 00:21:26,480 way, if you seen the the charts right. 460 00:21:26,880 --> 00:21:29,160 Yeah, I think. Gold is the currency. 461 00:21:29,200 --> 00:21:32,120 Is becoming the currency of the state and Bitcoin's the currency 462 00:21:32,120 --> 00:21:33,840 of the network. Yeah, just for the listeners, 463 00:21:33,840 --> 00:21:36,720 like we just mentioned that gold used to be worth $35.00 an 464 00:21:36,720 --> 00:21:39,560 ounce. Yeah, it's now $3500 an ounce. 465 00:21:39,560 --> 00:21:43,160 So let's just to see that's a great way to measure the actual 466 00:21:43,160 --> 00:21:44,400 value of the dollar for time, so. 467 00:21:44,600 --> 00:21:47,240 So Justice Reynolds was completely right, yes, where he 468 00:21:47,240 --> 00:21:49,720 said it'll be worth $0.01 because it's like 100, like a 469 00:21:49,720 --> 00:21:52,720 99% devaluation, right, over less than 100 years, right. 470 00:21:53,080 --> 00:21:57,640 So the OK, so coming back. So yes, now one thing I want to 471 00:21:57,640 --> 00:22:02,760 talk to you about is so on check your financial privilege. 472 00:22:02,760 --> 00:22:07,120 Yes, what your take on your intended market for it? 473 00:22:07,160 --> 00:22:11,680 Yeah, are people who are in relatively wealthy countries who 474 00:22:11,680 --> 00:22:14,480 just don't understand the problem Bitcoin solves because 475 00:22:14,480 --> 00:22:16,760 they are right. Yeah, and I also wrote a book 476 00:22:16,760 --> 00:22:20,160 called Hidden Repression, which is about basically how the IMF 477 00:22:20,160 --> 00:22:22,640 and World Bank loot poorer countries for the. 478 00:22:22,640 --> 00:22:25,120 Purposes. Yeah, I mean, well, basically in 479 00:22:25,120 --> 00:22:27,400 a nutshell, the IMF and World Bank were set up as part of the 480 00:22:27,400 --> 00:22:31,080 Bretton Woods system and the late 1940s, as the US and its 481 00:22:31,080 --> 00:22:33,600 allies prepared for a new economy that they would control. 482 00:22:34,280 --> 00:22:38,240 And in the same meetings in New Hampshire that it was decided 483 00:22:38,520 --> 00:22:40,840 that the dollar would play the role of the global reserve 484 00:22:40,840 --> 00:22:43,760 currency instead of the Bancorp, which is what Keynes and the 485 00:22:43,760 --> 00:22:46,920 others wanted. They decided that the US would 486 00:22:46,920 --> 00:22:51,960 also house headquarter and and control by different means of 487 00:22:51,960 --> 00:22:55,280 the world's lender of last resort, which is the IMF, which 488 00:22:55,880 --> 00:23:00,080 is intended essentially to bail out countries that can't meet 489 00:23:00,080 --> 00:23:03,400 their trade requirements anymore to keep the machine going. 490 00:23:03,400 --> 00:23:05,320 They didn't want to see the autarky of the 1930s. 491 00:23:05,920 --> 00:23:08,120 The World Bank was supposed to fund development work that 492 00:23:08,120 --> 00:23:09,840 private capital didn't have an appetite for. 493 00:23:10,160 --> 00:23:13,240 So at the beginning these two institutions were benign and and 494 00:23:13,240 --> 00:23:16,120 arguably did really well in digging out Japan and Europe 495 00:23:16,120 --> 00:23:18,920 from from a lot of infrastructural disaster. 496 00:23:19,360 --> 00:23:23,160 The problem is once they started get getting going, what you have 497 00:23:23,160 --> 00:23:26,280 is the end of colonialism essentially in name at least, 498 00:23:27,080 --> 00:23:30,040 and the birth of a new kind of colonialism, which is debt 499 00:23:30,040 --> 00:23:32,160 colonialism, which is what I talk about in my book, which is 500 00:23:32,160 --> 00:23:35,000 what kind of World Bank do they create debt traps for these 501 00:23:35,000 --> 00:23:37,600 countries? And how that works is because 502 00:23:37,600 --> 00:23:40,920 you need dollars for everything. Paying back your debt, getting 503 00:23:40,920 --> 00:23:43,600 oil, getting fertilizer, buying planes from Boeing, if you're 504 00:23:43,600 --> 00:23:45,840 gonna the CD doesn't do any of that. 505 00:23:45,880 --> 00:23:49,480 You cannot use the CD to to pay back debt to the IMF or to buy 506 00:23:49,480 --> 00:23:53,000 oil or to buy an airplane. So the only way to get dollars 507 00:23:53,000 --> 00:23:56,240 for many of these countries has been to borrow them at a high 508 00:23:56,240 --> 00:23:58,080 interest rate. And then what happens is they 509 00:23:58,080 --> 00:24:01,320 can't pay it back. And the IMF, who's, who's 510 00:24:01,560 --> 00:24:03,440 essentially whose assets at the end of the day are on the 511 00:24:03,440 --> 00:24:07,440 balance sheets of, of Western banks would rather just make 512 00:24:07,440 --> 00:24:09,560 another loan then shrink their balance sheet. 513 00:24:09,560 --> 00:24:12,440 So this is the mechanism we've seen over the last 70 years. 514 00:24:12,760 --> 00:24:15,440 And it's why a country like Bangladesh has gone from in the 515 00:24:15,440 --> 00:24:19,520 1970s, an average, a foreign debt of something like 100 516 00:24:19,520 --> 00:24:22,520 million to today 100 billion. That doesn't track with the 517 00:24:22,520 --> 00:24:24,200 population growth. It's become completely 518 00:24:24,200 --> 00:24:26,920 untethered. So if you look at the debt of 519 00:24:28,040 --> 00:24:30,640 developing countries, even though that might be a misnomer, 520 00:24:30,640 --> 00:24:32,560 many of them are actually deindustrializing. 521 00:24:33,720 --> 00:24:37,520 What you see is a debt trap. And and in dollar terms, it just 522 00:24:37,520 --> 00:24:39,320 keeps going up and up and up and up. 523 00:24:39,800 --> 00:24:42,400 So what I was looking at basically is from a human point 524 00:24:42,400 --> 00:24:44,560 of view. So there was no escape in the 525 00:24:44,560 --> 00:24:47,960 70s and 80s, like when Volcker ripped up interest rates to near 526 00:24:47,960 --> 00:24:51,040 20% and then proceeded to essentially destroy a lot of 527 00:24:51,240 --> 00:24:54,080 the, of the what was then called the third world, third world 528 00:24:54,080 --> 00:24:56,760 debt crisis, where maybe 20 million people were killed as a 529 00:24:56,760 --> 00:24:58,520 result of the structural adjustment policies. 530 00:24:58,520 --> 00:25:01,280 In the 80s, you know, there was no escape. 531 00:25:01,280 --> 00:25:03,120 If you were in Peru, what, what were you going to do? 532 00:25:03,520 --> 00:25:06,400 What's really interesting today is like in an individual level, 533 00:25:06,800 --> 00:25:09,360 you can escape. You can go into Bitcoin like no 534 00:25:09,360 --> 00:25:12,200 matter where you are and you know, interviewing people in all 535 00:25:12,200 --> 00:25:14,240 these different countries and learning that they're starting 536 00:25:14,240 --> 00:25:15,840 to turn to this is very inspiring. 537 00:25:16,320 --> 00:25:18,560 At at the beginning of the book, I have a little saying that says 538 00:25:19,040 --> 00:25:21,920 for the victims of development, they may never get the justice 539 00:25:21,920 --> 00:25:23,600 they deserve, but they make it a way out. 540 00:25:24,200 --> 00:25:26,440 And I think that that's the exploration of that book. 541 00:25:26,920 --> 00:25:28,800 So I'm going. To ask you a question of that 542 00:25:28,800 --> 00:25:30,200 because that's that's interesting it's interesting 543 00:25:30,200 --> 00:25:34,120 frame. So to roughly kind of you, you, 544 00:25:34,160 --> 00:25:38,000 I'll play it back. And so, so let's say the IMF is 545 00:25:38,000 --> 00:25:41,320 for in theory bailing and the World Bank is for building, 546 00:25:41,480 --> 00:25:43,040 right? So IMF is for bailouts, right? 547 00:25:43,040 --> 00:25:45,280 In theory, right, for bailing people out and the World Bank is 548 00:25:45,280 --> 00:25:46,880 for building. So the World Bank is almost 549 00:25:46,880 --> 00:25:50,280 like, well it's debt, but in almost kind of like equity 550 00:25:50,280 --> 00:25:52,080 investment in the sense of it's supposed to. 551 00:25:52,080 --> 00:25:53,080 Build a dam or something. It's. 552 00:25:53,160 --> 00:25:54,520 Supposed to build a dam? Exactly. 553 00:25:54,520 --> 00:25:56,680 Then you have more tax revenue and then you can do things with 554 00:25:56,680 --> 00:26:00,680 it and so on and so forth. And the Marshall Plan, which was 555 00:26:00,680 --> 00:26:03,720 at least one of the conceptual precursors to to World Bank, you 556 00:26:03,720 --> 00:26:06,160 can argue that it did work or what have you, right? 557 00:26:06,520 --> 00:26:09,200 And because it did rebuild Western Europe and you know, the 558 00:26:09,200 --> 00:26:10,640 German economic miracle and so on. 559 00:26:11,160 --> 00:26:14,560 So do you think these were good institutions that went bad or 560 00:26:14,640 --> 00:26:15,520 is? OK. 561 00:26:15,520 --> 00:26:18,160 I mean a good, I mean, I think even in a Bitcoin standard, you 562 00:26:18,160 --> 00:26:21,680 could have these institutions. It's just because the West can 563 00:26:21,680 --> 00:26:25,600 create money much more cheaply than than other countries it to 564 00:26:25,600 --> 00:26:28,080 become predatory. But that's a very useful way of 565 00:26:28,080 --> 00:26:30,920 thinking about the reason is like what the US did post World 566 00:26:30,920 --> 00:26:32,080 War 2. I think is still 567 00:26:32,080 --> 00:26:36,240 underappreciated in the sense of the relative mercy. 568 00:26:36,440 --> 00:26:38,480 I mean, because you had to control experiment. 569 00:26:38,480 --> 00:26:42,400 The Soviet side was incredibly vengeful and the Western side 570 00:26:42,400 --> 00:26:46,640 was, you know, relatively, you know, like like positive 571 00:26:46,640 --> 00:26:48,640 towards, especially towards Japan and so on and so forth. 572 00:26:48,920 --> 00:26:51,840 And Germany, many countries that had been conquered were just 573 00:26:51,840 --> 00:26:54,640 turned into like basically total slaves, like by the, you know, 574 00:26:54,800 --> 00:26:59,200 by the Soviets. But so the Western system, like 575 00:26:59,200 --> 00:27:02,440 Japan did come back, you know, West Germany did come back. 576 00:27:02,560 --> 00:27:05,080 So there was like, you know, South Korea also got built up. 577 00:27:05,080 --> 00:27:07,560 Vietnam, you know, well, Vietnam, you can argue they did 578 00:27:07,560 --> 00:27:10,200 it more on their own, right. So there's some version of this. 579 00:27:10,360 --> 00:27:12,680 And even actually after the end of the Cold War, Eastern Europe 580 00:27:13,040 --> 00:27:16,480 did get rebuilt, right? And it did it's economies did 581 00:27:16,480 --> 00:27:18,680 improve. That's why I'm I'm poking is one 582 00:27:18,680 --> 00:27:19,960 question is. It's shifted. 583 00:27:20,080 --> 00:27:23,560 So what you see is in the 60s it starts to shift. 584 00:27:23,560 --> 00:27:26,720 So I'll give you 2 examples of projects that are very 585 00:27:26,720 --> 00:27:29,920 stereotypical of the World Bank in the IMF since the 60s. 586 00:27:31,720 --> 00:27:33,760 On the World Bank side, they would do something like this. 587 00:27:34,000 --> 00:27:38,040 They would make a loan to a country, maybe Mauritania for a 588 00:27:38,040 --> 00:27:43,040 bauxite mine and they would make a loan to build a, a, a, a train 589 00:27:43,040 --> 00:27:46,760 infrastructure, the mine itself and, and that's about it. 590 00:27:46,800 --> 00:27:49,840 Meaning like they would the, the local government would get the 591 00:27:49,840 --> 00:27:52,880 money to build all this, which by the way, they would hire 592 00:27:52,960 --> 00:27:55,160 companies from the, the creditor nation. 593 00:27:55,440 --> 00:28:00,280 It's called the double loan. So it's a France loans a million 594 00:28:01,040 --> 00:28:03,560 francs at the time to the Mauritanian government. 595 00:28:03,680 --> 00:28:05,240 What does the Mauritanian government do? 596 00:28:05,440 --> 00:28:07,600 They immediately spend a million francs hiring French companies. 597 00:28:07,600 --> 00:28:10,400 So you watch the money go out and the Mauritanians still owe 598 00:28:10,400 --> 00:28:12,360 principal plus interest. It's called the double loan. 599 00:28:12,600 --> 00:28:14,080 So this was happening all over the world. 600 00:28:14,320 --> 00:28:19,120 So, you know, every loan that would go out, in many cases, you 601 00:28:19,120 --> 00:28:22,000 know, 80% of the money would come right back to the to the, 602 00:28:22,080 --> 00:28:25,840 to the lending nation or more. So this kind of thing was 603 00:28:25,840 --> 00:28:27,680 happening and that infrastructure wasn't helping 604 00:28:27,680 --> 00:28:30,200 the people of that country. It was just helping us get that 605 00:28:30,200 --> 00:28:33,040 box that are the grounded into our economy and maybe the local 606 00:28:33,040 --> 00:28:35,160 nation would get a cut. So that became like a 607 00:28:35,680 --> 00:28:39,800 stereotypical World Bank loan throughout 70s, eighties, 90s. 608 00:28:40,680 --> 00:28:44,680 At the same time, the IMF, who likes to say they, they aren't 609 00:28:44,880 --> 00:28:46,680 political and they don't get involved in politics. 610 00:28:46,960 --> 00:28:49,720 I mean, they backed the worst dictators you can imagine. 611 00:28:49,960 --> 00:28:51,280 I mean, it's like a laundry list. 612 00:28:51,280 --> 00:28:57,160 Mobutu, Portillo, Marcos, Mengistu, the CCP, we just, you 613 00:28:57,160 --> 00:29:00,840 know, just think Saddam. So I mean, you could go 50 614 00:29:00,840 --> 00:29:03,680 dictators wide on a giant mosaic and they backed them all. 615 00:29:04,120 --> 00:29:06,960 And, you know, this undermines their their argument that 616 00:29:06,960 --> 00:29:09,400 they're out there to like bring stability and good to the world. 617 00:29:09,760 --> 00:29:12,720 So, you know, I have that's where I started my journey. 618 00:29:12,720 --> 00:29:14,880 And I was like, why are they bailing out all these crazy 619 00:29:14,880 --> 00:29:16,960 dictators? Like, why is CC, who's 620 00:29:16,960 --> 00:29:19,640 responsible for the biggest massacre basically in the last 621 00:29:19,640 --> 00:29:23,800 10 years of unarmed civilians, Why did he get 3 billion? 622 00:29:24,280 --> 00:29:25,720 Why did he get $3 billion bailout? 623 00:29:25,880 --> 00:29:28,760 And, and guess what he does as a, as a condition for taking 624 00:29:28,760 --> 00:29:30,960 that money? He imposes a massive currency 625 00:29:30,960 --> 00:29:33,720 devaluation and raises taxes on Egyptians and cuts key 626 00:29:33,720 --> 00:29:35,880 subsidies. It's just, again, this is what's 627 00:29:35,880 --> 00:29:37,400 been happening for the last seven years. 628 00:29:37,400 --> 00:29:40,320 So now they've got something new that they're doing in Egypt, for 629 00:29:40,320 --> 00:29:44,800 example. Yeah, deal with with the UE for. 630 00:29:44,800 --> 00:29:47,160 Ross, right now that now the sands are shifting because you 631 00:29:47,160 --> 00:29:50,000 have China doing something similar with its own credit and 632 00:29:50,000 --> 00:29:52,040 and the Gulf countries. But guess what, they don't print 633 00:29:52,040 --> 00:29:53,880 the reserve currency. So it's a very different 634 00:29:54,920 --> 00:29:57,240 different dynamic but but in any event. 635 00:29:57,280 --> 00:29:59,640 But they seem to be doing well, right? 636 00:29:59,640 --> 00:30:01,720 Like in the sense of, or rather somehow. 637 00:30:01,760 --> 00:30:03,080 Getting a return on their investment. 638 00:30:03,240 --> 00:30:05,680 Yeah, that's right. China, I would say definitely 639 00:30:05,680 --> 00:30:07,320 the Middle East, definitely the Middle Eastern countries. 640 00:30:07,320 --> 00:30:09,320 Yes. So what's interesting about that 641 00:30:09,320 --> 00:30:12,320 is I think this is part of the broader and interesting 642 00:30:12,320 --> 00:30:16,480 phenomenon, which is in theory the the US and more generally 643 00:30:16,480 --> 00:30:18,600 the West has the greatest business model of all time 644 00:30:18,920 --> 00:30:21,720 because it can just from one standpoint, you can hit a button 645 00:30:21,720 --> 00:30:25,560 and literally print a trillion dollars, which is like selling, 646 00:30:25,560 --> 00:30:28,600 as I've said before, like $1000 iPhone to a billion people is 647 00:30:28,600 --> 00:30:30,400 very hard to do. And it's trillion in revenue. 648 00:30:30,400 --> 00:30:33,080 Forget about in profit and forget about how much effort it 649 00:30:33,080 --> 00:30:36,520 would take you to get that. And you know how many, like you 650 00:30:36,560 --> 00:30:39,200 know how many factories you need to turn out a billion phones and 651 00:30:39,200 --> 00:30:42,840 so on. So the despite having or perhaps 652 00:30:42,920 --> 00:30:46,800 because of having the greatest missile of all time, they are 653 00:30:46,840 --> 00:30:51,080 out competed by others because they're very poor at allocating 654 00:30:51,080 --> 00:30:55,000 the capital, because they the energy required to actually go 655 00:30:55,000 --> 00:30:59,880 and build a productive world. It it, it's gradually, gradually 656 00:30:59,880 --> 00:31:01,960 dissipated. Like all of that printed money 657 00:31:01,960 --> 00:31:06,000 could in theory be used to build bridges and and do productive 658 00:31:06,000 --> 00:31:09,240 things and so sort, but in practice, because there was an 659 00:31:09,240 --> 00:31:12,200 effort that led to the results didn't build the sinews and so 660 00:31:12,200 --> 00:31:14,320 and so forth. I, I, I think over the last 661 00:31:14,320 --> 00:31:15,880 couple years, I think you're on to something. 662 00:31:15,880 --> 00:31:19,120 But like generally speaking, going back 50 years, it would be 663 00:31:19,120 --> 00:31:21,920 a mistake to think that they're like useless or corrupt or 664 00:31:21,920 --> 00:31:24,120 inefficient. If you look at the capital flow 665 00:31:24,120 --> 00:31:25,680 of the world, it's really amazing actually. 666 00:31:26,000 --> 00:31:32,040 So starting in 1982, capital has drained, has been drained from 667 00:31:32,280 --> 00:31:34,720 poor countries to the golden billion. 668 00:31:35,360 --> 00:31:37,840 And it started small and now it's several trillion a year. 669 00:31:37,840 --> 00:31:41,080 So despite this idea that we help poor countries or we give 670 00:31:41,080 --> 00:31:44,000 them aid, it's the opposite. We're draining tons of capital 671 00:31:44,000 --> 00:31:45,640 out and that's that's Dec colonialism. 672 00:31:45,920 --> 00:31:49,200 And my hope with Bitcoin is like that individuals can escape from 673 00:31:49,200 --> 00:31:51,160 that. And I just don't see stable 674 00:31:51,160 --> 00:31:53,880 coins fixing that. Just a question are are? 675 00:31:54,200 --> 00:31:57,480 You know, like during the mortgage crisis, there were a 676 00:31:57,480 --> 00:31:59,600 bunch of bad loans that were made, right? 677 00:31:59,600 --> 00:32:03,200 And many of them were made on the basis of, oh, we will help 678 00:32:03,200 --> 00:32:05,960 these poor people discriminate against people or what have you. 679 00:32:06,320 --> 00:32:09,040 And actually turned out to be bad for both parties and for 680 00:32:09,040 --> 00:32:13,360 everybody else because a lender would make a loan to somebody 681 00:32:13,360 --> 00:32:17,200 who couldn't repay it. That person would default ruined 682 00:32:17,200 --> 00:32:22,000 their financial livelihood, but it also in bulk break the bank. 683 00:32:22,400 --> 00:32:25,160 And then everybody who is a bystander to that transaction, 684 00:32:25,160 --> 00:32:28,320 who let's say it was, you know, I don't know, selling services 685 00:32:28,320 --> 00:32:31,480 to that bank was doing so in part on the bank having good 686 00:32:31,480 --> 00:32:34,360 financial condition which was based on these transactions or 687 00:32:34,360 --> 00:32:36,520 material. So that guy also got wrecked, 688 00:32:36,720 --> 00:32:39,280 right? And so it was something where 689 00:32:39,560 --> 00:32:45,600 the bad loans were in some sense predatory, but also stupid and 690 00:32:45,600 --> 00:32:47,760 self-destructive because they couldn't be paid back. 691 00:32:47,760 --> 00:32:52,640 Everybody was trying to consume or earn more than their means in 692 00:32:52,640 --> 00:32:54,560 a sense, right? Like where these people were 693 00:32:54,560 --> 00:32:57,320 buying a house that they couldn't afford and the lender 694 00:32:57,480 --> 00:32:59,120 was trying to juice their numbers of. 695 00:32:59,120 --> 00:33:00,600 Revenue. But what happened to those? 696 00:33:00,720 --> 00:33:02,840 The US government ended up subsidizing the market, Yes, 697 00:33:03,000 --> 00:33:04,880 which is the same thing it does with all these crazy loans to 698 00:33:04,880 --> 00:33:06,280 dictators. You're right. 699 00:33:06,280 --> 00:33:09,040 So, so the, the government came, the US government came and 700 00:33:09,240 --> 00:33:12,440 printed 787 billion and bailed out a lot and which was at the 701 00:33:12,440 --> 00:33:15,360 time this insane thing that was like, Oh my God, now they just 702 00:33:15,360 --> 00:33:16,720 hit a button and do it every day 6. 703 00:33:16,960 --> 00:33:19,520 Plus trillion dollars of government and mortgage debt on 704 00:33:19,520 --> 00:33:22,600 the balance sheet. From, from, from OA exactly 705 00:33:22,640 --> 00:33:25,560 right but and so this side got bailed out and this side really 706 00:33:25,560 --> 00:33:29,640 kind of didn't right. But in the the thing about it 707 00:33:29,640 --> 00:33:32,600 is, OK, so maybe you can't analyze it in the absence of the 708 00:33:32,600 --> 00:33:36,360 backstop, right? But it was so the 4th party, the 709 00:33:36,360 --> 00:33:39,240 government came in and and diluted everybody down with with 710 00:33:39,240 --> 00:33:40,920 dollar inflation to bail these guys out. 711 00:33:41,640 --> 00:33:44,840 I guess an interesting question is, I guess, remember gay I was, 712 00:33:45,200 --> 00:33:47,720 was that evil or was it stupid? And here's my distinction, 713 00:33:47,720 --> 00:33:50,040 right? The distinction is like, I think 714 00:33:50,040 --> 00:33:53,280 of good as helping somebody else without concern for oneself. 715 00:33:53,680 --> 00:33:56,280 Smart is helping somebody else while also helping oneself. 716 00:33:56,440 --> 00:34:02,640 OK, evil is harming somebody else while helping oneself, and 717 00:34:02,640 --> 00:34:04,680 stupid is harming somebody else while also harming oneself. 718 00:34:05,080 --> 00:34:07,080 And are their actions actually evil or are? 719 00:34:07,080 --> 00:34:08,920 They, well, there's, first of all, who's they, right. 720 00:34:08,960 --> 00:34:11,520 So most people who work at the IMF and World Bank or even 721 00:34:11,520 --> 00:34:14,840 whatever the Chinese development banks, they're not evil. 722 00:34:14,840 --> 00:34:16,159 They don't, they think they're doing good. 723 00:34:16,159 --> 00:34:17,880 They don't even know the full outcome. 724 00:34:18,199 --> 00:34:22,080 I would almost argue that these are outcomes of our way of life 725 00:34:22,080 --> 00:34:25,360 in our system as opposed to like evil conspiracy plans. 726 00:34:25,360 --> 00:34:27,400 I don't think a bunch of people got together and said, oh, let's 727 00:34:27,400 --> 00:34:29,679 create debt colonialism. No, it just was sort of an 728 00:34:29,679 --> 00:34:31,320 outcome of what we were doing over time. 729 00:34:31,639 --> 00:34:33,080 And that's why we need has. It worked out. 730 00:34:33,360 --> 00:34:36,719 Has it worked out for anybody in your view besides Western 731 00:34:36,719 --> 00:34:39,800 Europe, Japan, South Korea? Yeah, There's like a couple of 732 00:34:39,800 --> 00:34:44,040 examples of a country that takes this kind of debt and is able to 733 00:34:44,040 --> 00:34:46,159 pay it back, get out. I mean, I mean, India is a good 734 00:34:46,159 --> 00:34:49,800 example of one that was kind of tried to stay away and and has 735 00:34:49,800 --> 00:34:51,280 done. Reasonably well. 736 00:34:51,320 --> 00:34:54,560 Whatever, you know, your view of India, like, you know, a lot of 737 00:34:54,560 --> 00:34:58,040 the work they did at least post 1990, you know, has been done 738 00:34:58,040 --> 00:35:00,120 without that. Previous to that, there was 739 00:35:00,120 --> 00:35:03,640 crazy World Bank, yes, to India that did insane things like 740 00:35:03,720 --> 00:35:05,840 unspeakable things. That's a great graph. 741 00:35:05,880 --> 00:35:07,840 Syringali Coalfields, yeah, stuff. 742 00:35:07,840 --> 00:35:09,200 Look that up. It's insane so. 743 00:35:09,240 --> 00:35:11,800 That's a great graph to make. What were the other examples 744 00:35:11,800 --> 00:35:13,120 that you thought were worked out well? 745 00:35:13,320 --> 00:35:14,920 Or reasonably well. Well, I mean I'm saying it 746 00:35:15,040 --> 00:35:17,280 didn't work out well. I mean we literally the IMF ones 747 00:35:17,280 --> 00:35:19,520 to India in the 70s were premised on the sterilization of 748 00:35:19,520 --> 00:35:20,440 men. So no, no, no I'm not. 749 00:35:20,440 --> 00:35:22,880 Saying that like I, I agree. With more pre 19, yes, they've 750 00:35:22,880 --> 00:35:25,320 been doing OK. I mean, Korea is a famous one 751 00:35:25,320 --> 00:35:28,120 and there's very little, I mean, most of them have been 752 00:35:28,400 --> 00:35:31,440 catastrophic in my view, in terms of yes, yes, it's true. 753 00:35:31,880 --> 00:35:34,240 I want to, I want to, I want to just steel man the other side of 754 00:35:34,240 --> 00:35:35,680 it. And so, well, the steel man 755 00:35:35,680 --> 00:35:38,600 would be like, OK, well, like Indonesia is richer, generally 756 00:35:38,600 --> 00:35:42,120 speaking, than it was, you know, 40 years ago, which is true. 757 00:35:42,120 --> 00:35:44,480 My argument would be it'd be a hell of a lot richer if it's 758 00:35:44,480 --> 00:35:47,920 currency had been devalued by 99%, which is what has happened. 759 00:35:47,920 --> 00:35:50,080 Interesting. It's like the, the, I was just 760 00:35:50,080 --> 00:35:56,240 there, the rupiah was, was, was worth like, you know, $40.40 761 00:35:56,240 --> 00:35:59,880 rupiah to a dollar in the 60s today, if because they've 762 00:35:59,880 --> 00:36:02,720 chopped off a bunch of zeros, it's 60 million per dollar. 763 00:36:02,800 --> 00:36:04,760 Think we got that. So yes, it's true. 764 00:36:04,760 --> 00:36:07,280 They've done decently well. But guess what, if they're, if 765 00:36:07,320 --> 00:36:09,880 all their resources weren't being drained to Japan and to, 766 00:36:10,320 --> 00:36:13,760 and to Europe and America in that way, they, they'd probably 767 00:36:13,760 --> 00:36:16,240 be as rich as we are. You know, it's just something I 768 00:36:16,240 --> 00:36:17,880 think about a lot. And I'm like, look, now we have 769 00:36:17,880 --> 00:36:19,320 a peaceful way for people to get out. 770 00:36:19,320 --> 00:36:21,200 So what I want to get to two things. 771 00:36:21,200 --> 00:36:24,440 What am I doing personally and HRF on this? 772 00:36:24,800 --> 00:36:26,400 And, and what does this mean for America? 773 00:36:26,400 --> 00:36:30,520 So just very briefly, HRF's getting involved because, you 774 00:36:30,520 --> 00:36:32,600 know, we help people under difficult political climates who 775 00:36:32,600 --> 00:36:35,840 don't have the same access to court systems and NGOs and media 776 00:36:35,840 --> 00:36:39,240 outlets like I do in America. And you know what, like they're 777 00:36:39,240 --> 00:36:41,600 never going to have a good CBDC in those countries. 778 00:36:41,600 --> 00:36:44,120 It's just like maybe in America you could have one, but like, 779 00:36:44,120 --> 00:36:48,200 not, not, not in Togo, right? So they need open, 780 00:36:48,520 --> 00:36:52,000 permissionless, open source money that's decentralized that 781 00:36:52,000 --> 00:36:56,360 their government can't control. So we promote education, 782 00:36:56,360 --> 00:37:00,800 infrastructure, tooling and community building across all of 783 00:37:00,800 --> 00:37:03,760 the world for that. And we deploy about $1,000,000 784 00:37:03,760 --> 00:37:05,440 in Bitcoin every quarter to do that. 785 00:37:05,880 --> 00:37:08,360 And we've done more than 300 grants to different 786 00:37:08,360 --> 00:37:10,280 organizations and individuals since 2020. 787 00:37:10,280 --> 00:37:12,040 And we're we're going from there. 788 00:37:12,040 --> 00:37:14,120 It's really exciting and it's amazing to see the impact. 789 00:37:14,120 --> 00:37:17,960 I just visited sites that we've been supporting in, in Bali and 790 00:37:17,960 --> 00:37:21,400 in Chiang Mai and in Bangkok. And it is so cool what people 791 00:37:21,400 --> 00:37:23,680 are doing with Bitcoin out here. I mean, from there, there's a 792 00:37:23,680 --> 00:37:26,840 system in, in Thailand, for example, where like basically 793 00:37:26,840 --> 00:37:28,360 you can pay any merchant with Bitcoin. 794 00:37:28,400 --> 00:37:31,800 Like you can just have a moon wallet, like a totally, you 795 00:37:31,800 --> 00:37:34,040 know, non KYC wallet on your phone and you can have some 796 00:37:34,040 --> 00:37:36,320 Bitcoin. And what you do is you scan the 797 00:37:36,320 --> 00:37:39,840 code of the merchant and you what's happening is you're 798 00:37:39,840 --> 00:37:42,640 sending a lightning payment and there's a literal person on the 799 00:37:42,640 --> 00:37:45,920 back end who's paying the Fiat and taking the lightning and it 800 00:37:45,920 --> 00:37:47,360 works. It's really amazing. 801 00:37:47,360 --> 00:37:49,640 So there's all these cool systems that are now allowing 802 00:37:49,640 --> 00:37:52,400 people to live in Bitcoin. And like in Kenya, there's one 803 00:37:52,400 --> 00:37:54,560 called Tendo. You live in Bitcoin and you can 804 00:37:54,560 --> 00:37:58,560 pay any invoice in the country, including a cab driver and they 805 00:37:58,560 --> 00:38:02,280 get and PESA immediately. So we're you're seeing people 806 00:38:02,280 --> 00:38:04,560 design these really cool ways to get people to get out. 807 00:38:04,920 --> 00:38:07,720 So that's what we're focusing on is like the pay me in Bitcoin 808 00:38:07,720 --> 00:38:10,720 element, like how can we make Bitcoin freedom money around the 809 00:38:10,720 --> 00:38:12,560 world? And then like the second part 810 00:38:12,560 --> 00:38:16,280 and we can then react to that is, and what I really want to 811 00:38:16,280 --> 00:38:18,760 talk about is America, like I really think that the dollar 812 00:38:18,760 --> 00:38:21,000 system, the Fiat system is not ideal. 813 00:38:21,040 --> 00:38:23,520 I think it's done some good things like dollar hegemonies. 814 00:38:23,520 --> 00:38:26,200 Obviously it's great to have one common language for the world of 815 00:38:26,200 --> 00:38:28,920 money, but it's got a lot of downsides and it's been very 816 00:38:28,920 --> 00:38:31,200 predatory. And I really think that a 817 00:38:31,200 --> 00:38:34,280 Bitcoin standard would be awesome for America because it 818 00:38:34,280 --> 00:38:36,760 would, it would serve a lot of the good things that the dollar 819 00:38:36,760 --> 00:38:40,680 does, global network effect for, for money, etcetera, etcetera. 820 00:38:40,680 --> 00:38:43,720 But it would also not be so predatory. 821 00:38:43,720 --> 00:38:46,720 And it would be great for us vis A vis our, our quote UN quote 822 00:38:46,720 --> 00:38:48,640 rivals, right? Because at the end of the day, I 823 00:38:48,640 --> 00:38:53,280 think that if you have money that provides you free speech, 824 00:38:53,560 --> 00:38:56,440 private property and open capital markets, guess what? 825 00:38:56,440 --> 00:39:00,120 That's what America's DNA is. But the Chinese Communist Party, 826 00:39:00,120 --> 00:39:03,680 for example, or North Korea or whatever, they're based on 827 00:39:04,040 --> 00:39:06,440 confiscation, censorship in close capital markets, like 828 00:39:06,440 --> 00:39:08,560 they're, they're fundamentally incompatible, I would argue, 829 00:39:08,560 --> 00:39:09,720 with Bitcoin from that point of view. 830 00:39:09,720 --> 00:39:13,640 So I think just to conclude that I think the founders of America 831 00:39:13,640 --> 00:39:16,400 would have loved Bitcoin, like Jefferson Washington didn't even 832 00:39:16,400 --> 00:39:19,400 want a central bank. I think it is patriotic to want 833 00:39:19,400 --> 00:39:22,080 to improve our money. I think it's patriotic to be 834 00:39:22,080 --> 00:39:24,680 critical of the dollar, and I think we should head towards the 835 00:39:24,680 --> 00:39:26,160 Bitcoin standard. And I think it'd be great for 836 00:39:26,160 --> 00:39:28,560 America. And it'll be a real struggle for 837 00:39:28,600 --> 00:39:32,120 for more centralized regimes because if you live in a country 838 00:39:32,120 --> 00:39:35,920 where the people have power over the government, you should have 839 00:39:35,920 --> 00:39:39,360 nothing to fear from money that's giving power to the 840 00:39:39,360 --> 00:39:42,040 people. So that's kind of the rest of 841 00:39:42,040 --> 00:39:43,560 what I want to lay out. Interesting. 842 00:39:43,640 --> 00:39:49,520 SO I do agree that like in a sense BTC and CCP are at 2 843 00:39:49,520 --> 00:39:52,320 opposite ends of the spectrum like in a sense total freedom, 844 00:39:52,320 --> 00:39:55,200 total control yeah, they would pose it probably as total 845 00:39:55,200 --> 00:39:57,520 anarchy and total order or something like that right. 846 00:39:57,520 --> 00:39:59,840 Just I always try to at least give you know their. 847 00:39:59,880 --> 00:40:02,440 Yeah, they tried to ban mining because it wasn't harmonious on 848 00:40:02,440 --> 00:40:04,000 the 100th anniversary of the CCP. 849 00:40:04,000 --> 00:40:04,680 That's right. That's right. 850 00:40:04,680 --> 00:40:09,880 So the my one question I have for you is one of the things I'm 851 00:40:09,880 --> 00:40:12,840 most interested in, and this is what I work on all the time, is 852 00:40:13,560 --> 00:40:15,960 bring the Internet into the physical world, right? 853 00:40:16,280 --> 00:40:19,760 So the same like ultimately what Bitcoin is, is volunteerism. 854 00:40:19,960 --> 00:40:22,800 It's consent, right? And it's in a sense, it's in the 855 00:40:22,800 --> 00:40:24,720 deepest sense, you know, democracy is about the consent 856 00:40:24,720 --> 00:40:28,880 of the governed and all of the superstructure of election this 857 00:40:28,880 --> 00:40:32,280 and poll that and so on and so forth is just a way of sort of 858 00:40:32,520 --> 00:40:35,480 quantifying, measuring and channelling that consent of the 859 00:40:35,480 --> 00:40:39,480 governed into something, right? And so the withdrawal of consent 860 00:40:39,480 --> 00:40:42,640 is exit, you know, or it can be voice and so on and so forth. 861 00:40:43,960 --> 00:40:48,160 And so Bitcoin reflects digital consent. 862 00:40:48,240 --> 00:40:50,560 Like do I consent to be here or not? 863 00:40:50,560 --> 00:40:53,280 Do I, you know, like if you if you disagree with this Fiat 864 00:40:53,280 --> 00:40:55,600 currency or this policy now? Exactly right. 865 00:40:55,720 --> 00:40:59,760 OK, so bring that consent into the physical world to me means 866 00:41:00,040 --> 00:41:03,840 voluntary opt in societies, communities, cities and perhaps 867 00:41:03,840 --> 00:41:06,400 eventually countries, star societies and potentially 868 00:41:06,400 --> 00:41:08,840 network states, right? I think we have Internet 869 00:41:08,840 --> 00:41:11,240 companies like, you know, Netscape was arguably the first 870 00:41:11,240 --> 00:41:13,280 modern Internet company. We now have an Internet 871 00:41:13,280 --> 00:41:15,800 currency, Bitcoin. And what I think about a lot are 872 00:41:15,800 --> 00:41:18,600 Internet communities, for example, Bitcoin beach in El 873 00:41:18,600 --> 00:41:20,560 Salvador, right? Or some of the things you're 874 00:41:20,560 --> 00:41:22,520 talking about, like the shops here and there. 875 00:41:22,680 --> 00:41:24,960 So like to know your thoughts on that, like, you know, bring this 876 00:41:24,960 --> 00:41:26,200 stuff into the physical world. What? 877 00:41:26,200 --> 00:41:28,000 What do you think about that? Yeah, we need more than just 878 00:41:28,000 --> 00:41:30,680 Bitcoin. So the Bitcoin communities are 879 00:41:30,680 --> 00:41:32,400 really cool. I mean, I've visited a ton of 880 00:41:32,400 --> 00:41:34,120 them. They tend to pop up where 881 00:41:34,120 --> 00:41:36,320 there's been a difficult history. 882 00:41:36,320 --> 00:41:38,240 Fiat currency. That's interesting. 883 00:41:38,280 --> 00:41:39,280 OK. Yeah, yeah. 884 00:41:39,280 --> 00:41:42,240 Like they tend to be in places where the money doesn't work 885 00:41:42,240 --> 00:41:45,560 very well or where, you know, like Bitcoin. 886 00:41:45,560 --> 00:41:49,080 Chiang Mai is a community that's built in many ways because of 887 00:41:49,160 --> 00:41:52,160 Burmese refugees who don't have a bank account in Thailand. 888 00:41:52,160 --> 00:41:53,880 So they've learned how to use Bitcoin. 889 00:41:53,880 --> 00:41:56,920 And when the earthquake happened earlier this year, it was 890 00:41:56,920 --> 00:41:59,600 impossible to use the US dollar to help people who are trapped 891 00:41:59,600 --> 00:42:01,480 and starving. We were able to run a Bitcoin 892 00:42:01,480 --> 00:42:03,920 fundraiser and help people. I mean, so it's just so 893 00:42:03,920 --> 00:42:05,960 frustrating. You know, we get again and again 894 00:42:05,960 --> 00:42:08,440 this bitcoin's useless. I mean, it's the stupidest 895 00:42:08,440 --> 00:42:09,600 thing. I mean, it does things that the 896 00:42:09,800 --> 00:42:11,720 dollar just cannot do so many things. 897 00:42:12,120 --> 00:42:14,160 I had a big piece coming out in the journal of democracy in 898 00:42:14,160 --> 00:42:18,160 about 10 days, 8000 words on a blow by blow of human rights 899 00:42:18,160 --> 00:42:20,080 defenders adopting Bitcoin around the world because it's 900 00:42:20,080 --> 00:42:23,760 the only thing that'll work. So I'm I'm I'm bullish and I'm 901 00:42:23,760 --> 00:42:26,000 following that. But ultimately we need other 902 00:42:26,000 --> 00:42:30,080 systems to help Bitcoin achieve its its its goals. 903 00:42:30,080 --> 00:42:32,760 And and two, I have two that I'll posit to you. 904 00:42:32,760 --> 00:42:38,760 Maybe 3-1 is for sure Noster, which I understand is like not 905 00:42:38,760 --> 00:42:42,080 getting the adoption speed that a lot of people would hope, but 906 00:42:42,080 --> 00:42:44,280 it's not there's. A client damus for a nostril. 907 00:42:44,280 --> 00:42:45,560 Yeah, there's just a lot of great ones. 908 00:42:45,920 --> 00:42:49,520 And look, I would argue to you that it's not having a lot of 909 00:42:49,520 --> 00:42:51,400 adoption maybe. I mean, I think it's great. 910 00:42:51,400 --> 00:42:55,600 I there's a couple 100,000 people on it, like I have 50,000 911 00:42:55,600 --> 00:42:56,400 followers. It's great. 912 00:42:56,400 --> 00:42:59,000 I get there's no algorithm. I choose the algorithm, you 913 00:42:59,000 --> 00:43:01,360 know, it's cool, but the, the reason it's not doing what 914 00:43:01,360 --> 00:43:04,840 Farcaster or Blue Sky is doing is because it's not like AVC 915 00:43:04,840 --> 00:43:06,640 product. It's it's an open network and it 916 00:43:06,640 --> 00:43:08,440 doesn't have a company. So it's like the early days of 917 00:43:08,440 --> 00:43:09,320 Bitcoin. It's hard. 918 00:43:09,440 --> 00:43:11,680 It's like hard if you have no one who's willing to give you 50 919 00:43:11,680 --> 00:43:13,120 million or 100 million to do growth. 920 00:43:13,160 --> 00:43:15,960 Right, Jack, in theory. Well, Jack is kind of, he's 921 00:43:15,960 --> 00:43:18,040 doing bit chat now, right? Right. 922 00:43:18,040 --> 00:43:21,080 So Jack invested, but invested is the wrong word. 923 00:43:21,080 --> 00:43:24,520 He gave a lot of money to open source developers working on 924 00:43:24,520 --> 00:43:27,000 Noster, right? But they're, they're not like 925 00:43:27,080 --> 00:43:29,640 coordinated necessarily. They're all just working on the 926 00:43:29,640 --> 00:43:32,240 project. But if you have Noster, like for 927 00:43:32,240 --> 00:43:35,040 example, like if the people look me up on Noster, they can 928 00:43:35,040 --> 00:43:37,920 permissionlessly ZAP me, which is like just instead of 929 00:43:37,960 --> 00:43:40,760 reposting my stuff or liking it, they can send me Bitcoin 930 00:43:40,840 --> 00:43:41,840 immediately. Boom. 931 00:43:42,120 --> 00:43:44,560 And it's so cool to think about this from a, from an activism 932 00:43:44,560 --> 00:43:47,120 perspective, from a political perspective. 933 00:43:47,360 --> 00:43:50,240 I mean, it just means that it's just completely different when 934 00:43:50,240 --> 00:43:52,080 you can send micro amounts of money to people. 935 00:43:52,080 --> 00:43:54,360 I think it's really what the Internet was designed to do. 936 00:43:55,040 --> 00:43:57,040 But we need something better than Bitcoin and Lightning. 937 00:43:57,040 --> 00:43:59,800 I mean, even in Lightning's wildest dreams is not gonna be 938 00:43:59,960 --> 00:44:02,280 what you buy coffee within 20 years in the Bitcoin world. 939 00:44:02,720 --> 00:44:05,800 That's where E cash comes in. Look, it was created in the 80s. 940 00:44:05,800 --> 00:44:08,520 It's an awesome technology that does full private payments that 941 00:44:08,520 --> 00:44:11,640 are instant and they can work offline, but it didn't work very 942 00:44:11,640 --> 00:44:13,160 well with Fiat money as the base. 943 00:44:13,440 --> 00:44:15,320 People figured out, though, that it works really well with 944 00:44:15,320 --> 00:44:17,840 Bitcoin as the base. So you have two implementations 945 00:44:17,840 --> 00:44:19,040 now. Xiaomi and E Cash with. 946 00:44:19,040 --> 00:44:22,200 Bitcoin yeah you have cashew and fiddy mint and they both are 947 00:44:22,200 --> 00:44:24,360 awesome so when I shop now abroad like just. 948 00:44:24,360 --> 00:44:26,200 Explain that with that as basically it's like you deposit 949 00:44:26,200 --> 00:44:28,400 some BTC effectively and then you essentially. 950 00:44:28,400 --> 00:44:31,200 Have into a neo bank, yeah. And then you essentially it's 951 00:44:31,520 --> 00:44:33,480 it's hub and spoke. Architect you get an IOU that's 952 00:44:33,560 --> 00:44:36,720 fully private that the bank can't selectively censor and 953 00:44:36,720 --> 00:44:39,760 doesn't know what's happening until you go to redeem it. 954 00:44:40,040 --> 00:44:43,520 And the way they're connected is all these mints basically 955 00:44:43,520 --> 00:44:45,600 lightnings like the central nervous system for what's going 956 00:44:45,600 --> 00:44:47,920 to happen. So you have all these mints and 957 00:44:47,920 --> 00:44:51,120 custodians, you know, say you have exchanges, you have E cash 958 00:44:51,120 --> 00:44:52,960 mints. So that is potentially scalable 959 00:44:52,960 --> 00:44:55,800 because basically you have one on chain Bitcoin transaction. 960 00:44:55,800 --> 00:44:59,280 Yeah, you store it up at a bank that's then issuing IO us that 961 00:44:59,280 --> 00:45:01,320 are backed by Bitcoin. They're not IO us, but they say 962 00:45:01,360 --> 00:45:03,120 digital IO us they. Are I mean they're credits. 963 00:45:03,160 --> 00:45:04,000 Yeah, they're credits. That's right. 964 00:45:04,000 --> 00:45:06,320 But basically you have, let's say, mints, you have exchanges, 965 00:45:06,320 --> 00:45:08,600 you have custodians. And the difference is in the 966 00:45:08,600 --> 00:45:11,480 modern era you can actually sum up those visual IDs and compare 967 00:45:11,480 --> 00:45:13,000 them to the proof of reserve, for example. 968 00:45:13,000 --> 00:45:16,120 You can cryptographically make it so that people know that 969 00:45:16,120 --> 00:45:17,320 they're going to get rugged, yeah. 970 00:45:17,320 --> 00:45:19,440 So the reason that's Go? Ahead, but yeah, just and then 971 00:45:20,280 --> 00:45:22,480 you also have payment pools. So like people are coming out 972 00:45:22,480 --> 00:45:24,840 with new stuff for Bitcoin like Spark that David Marcus is 973 00:45:24,840 --> 00:45:28,280 working on Arc you're going to see a lot more and Lightning is 974 00:45:28,280 --> 00:45:30,440 the central nervous system. It's the clearing layer for all 975 00:45:30,440 --> 00:45:32,960 that stuff. So it's not what I used like I'm 976 00:45:33,040 --> 00:45:34,560 I was wrong. I thought lightning was going to 977 00:45:34,560 --> 00:45:37,080 be like 5-6 years ago. I thought lightning was just 978 00:45:37,080 --> 00:45:38,600 going to be like what we would buy coffee with. 979 00:45:38,880 --> 00:45:41,160 You could do it today. It works well but not in 20 980 00:45:41,160 --> 00:45:43,720 years because lightning ultimately is tied to on chain 981 00:45:43,720 --> 00:45:45,160 opens and closes of channels. This. 982 00:45:45,160 --> 00:45:47,120 Interesting new stuff. OK, yeah, I've changed my mind. 983 00:45:47,120 --> 00:45:48,720 I try to be Bayesian, yeah, but what I'm I? 984 00:45:48,720 --> 00:45:50,360 Didn't want to poke you on it. That's why I wanted, yeah. 985 00:45:50,680 --> 00:45:52,920 But I could, I mean, I think I'm much more bullish on lightning 986 00:45:52,920 --> 00:45:54,960 than I was because now I figured out what it's going to do, OK, 987 00:45:54,960 --> 00:45:56,920 It's going to be this clearing layer for all the different 988 00:45:56,920 --> 00:45:58,360 pools. So let's say you have a 989 00:45:58,360 --> 00:46:02,800 cypherpunk mint and then you also have a coin base account 990 00:46:03,120 --> 00:46:07,320 was KYC, but then you also have like an arc payment pool or a 991 00:46:07,320 --> 00:46:09,040 spark address. Guess what? 992 00:46:09,040 --> 00:46:11,880 They all talk to each other instantly by doing a swap over 993 00:46:11,880 --> 00:46:13,320 lightning. That's how it works today. 994 00:46:13,560 --> 00:46:15,920 Like so when I when I went shopping in Bali at the 995 00:46:15,920 --> 00:46:17,960 Indonesia Bitcoin conference, I bought a T-shirt. 996 00:46:18,320 --> 00:46:20,160 I used E cash that was on my phone. 997 00:46:20,720 --> 00:46:23,680 The merchant didn't get E cash. They were paid in lightning, but 998 00:46:23,880 --> 00:46:26,600 like it left my phone and it was swapped by a lightning service 999 00:46:26,600 --> 00:46:30,040 provider instantly and there's money to be made there. 1000 00:46:30,040 --> 00:46:32,320 So there's all this infrastructure being built and 1001 00:46:32,320 --> 00:46:34,920 it's just cool that I can go around the world and I can spend 1002 00:46:34,920 --> 00:46:38,400 fully fully private money and the merchant gets Bitcoin. 1003 00:46:38,720 --> 00:46:42,120 We're seeing some cool stuff. So that's really interesting. 1004 00:46:42,320 --> 00:46:45,760 And then the last piece would be so if you have Bitcoin noster E 1005 00:46:45,760 --> 00:46:48,280 cash bit chat. And Pam pools and then bit chat 1006 00:46:48,360 --> 00:46:48,880 OK. Right. 1007 00:46:48,880 --> 00:46:51,600 Well, I mean, basically the E cash piece is what's needed for 1008 00:46:51,760 --> 00:46:55,280 ultimately I think like buying coffee like you're not going to 1009 00:46:55,280 --> 00:46:56,880 be on chain or lightning was my point. 1010 00:46:57,480 --> 00:46:59,760 Maybe the other stuff pans out, but we'll see. 1011 00:47:00,080 --> 00:47:02,480 But bit chat's also really interesting because now we can 1012 00:47:02,480 --> 00:47:06,240 do offline communications that are connected. 1013 00:47:06,280 --> 00:47:08,760 So for example, like if we fire up bit chat right here, 1014 00:47:09,360 --> 00:47:12,160 whoever's in this building basically can can be, can all 1015 00:47:12,240 --> 00:47:15,160 all of a sudden we can we can talk to each other and we can 1016 00:47:15,160 --> 00:47:16,240 trade ecash notes. So. 1017 00:47:16,640 --> 00:47:19,000 The hard thing the hard thing, that bitch head is cool just to 1018 00:47:19,000 --> 00:47:19,760 explain. It's like. 1019 00:47:20,080 --> 00:47:21,520 It's like a grid of the world network. 1020 00:47:21,760 --> 00:47:24,120 Thing, yeah, it's a grid of the world, I think where if I get it 1021 00:47:24,120 --> 00:47:27,080 right, it's, I don't know the exact grid size, things like 10 1022 00:47:27,080 --> 00:47:28,920 kilometers by 10 kilometers or something along. 1023 00:47:28,920 --> 00:47:30,600 Those Oh no, it's way smaller because it mainly uses 1024 00:47:30,600 --> 00:47:32,680 Bluetooth. OK, so it's like a couple 100 1025 00:47:32,840 --> 00:47:35,040 feet fine, but then they can Daisy chain. 1026 00:47:35,360 --> 00:47:39,600 Fine, so so you have Bluetooth to Bluetooth totally local on 1027 00:47:39,600 --> 00:47:42,960 Internet chat. The hard part about something 1028 00:47:42,960 --> 00:47:51,120 like this to me is you need to have a very large critical mass 1029 00:47:51,120 --> 00:47:53,840 in one location for that to work. 1030 00:47:54,200 --> 00:47:57,680 Like it actually has to be like within a building, for example. 1031 00:47:58,000 --> 00:48:00,760 But normally what happens with any Internet app is it signs 1032 00:48:00,760 --> 00:48:03,800 people up around the world like this, which are all very 1033 00:48:03,800 --> 00:48:06,680 distributed. So they log on to the app, open 1034 00:48:06,680 --> 00:48:08,440 it, they don't see anybody to talk to. 1035 00:48:08,720 --> 00:48:12,000 So they've got a critical mass problem where they need to be 1036 00:48:12,200 --> 00:48:15,000 launched at a conference or launched at an event or 1037 00:48:15,000 --> 00:48:16,120 something like. That would work. 1038 00:48:16,240 --> 00:48:19,520 So 3 days and it's still buggy. And I mean, Jack Vibe coded it a 1039 00:48:19,520 --> 00:48:22,160 month and a half ago. So it's like and then a friend 1040 00:48:22,160 --> 00:48:25,480 of mine named Kale, Vibe coded the Android version like we are. 1041 00:48:25,720 --> 00:48:27,480 We are doing this because we have Vibe coding now. 1042 00:48:27,480 --> 00:48:29,120 I'm not, I'm not, I'm not being critical. 1043 00:48:29,120 --> 00:48:30,840 I'm just saying but. I'm just admitting that it's 1044 00:48:30,960 --> 00:48:35,720 that they're buggy and it's early, but last week I think it 1045 00:48:35,720 --> 00:48:41,520 was Thursday, 50,000 people downloaded Bitchat in Nepal and 1046 00:48:41,520 --> 00:48:43,840 that's interesting. Because it might give like some 1047 00:48:43,840 --> 00:48:45,440 offline kind. Of yeah, let's say you're in a 1048 00:48:45,440 --> 00:48:47,240 protest and all of a sudden internet's gone. 1049 00:48:47,360 --> 00:48:50,040 I mean, I guess it's useful. The second country, 10,000 1050 00:48:50,040 --> 00:48:51,720 deadlines in Indonesia, that was that day. 1051 00:48:51,960 --> 00:48:54,480 And then the US was like 7000 downloads, just to give some 1052 00:48:54,480 --> 00:48:56,160 sense. Yeah, this thing is moving. 1053 00:48:56,240 --> 00:48:57,920 So it's like it's very interesting. 1054 00:48:57,960 --> 00:49:00,080 And my my it's. It's interesting backup plan, 1055 00:49:00,080 --> 00:49:01,840 yeah. Like like it's like a flashlight 1056 00:49:01,840 --> 00:49:03,840 when the power goes out kind. Of it took me a while to see 1057 00:49:03,840 --> 00:49:06,360 what Jack was doing here. It's not just a backup plan, 1058 00:49:06,720 --> 00:49:11,680 it's that it connects via Noster basically like and when you have 1059 00:49:11,680 --> 00:49:14,920 Internet, all of a sudden you have this global censorship 1060 00:49:14,920 --> 00:49:17,760 resistant network. It's an interesting vision. 1061 00:49:18,400 --> 00:49:20,640 It is. The thing about it, which is 1062 00:49:20,640 --> 00:49:24,920 funny, it's kind of a merger between the old physical carry a 1063 00:49:24,920 --> 00:49:26,560 message to. Somebody and the new and the 1064 00:49:26,560 --> 00:49:28,200 new, right? And the last piece I'll say is 1065 00:49:28,200 --> 00:49:31,000 what's cool is, for example, you fire up bit chat, you can then 1066 00:49:31,000 --> 00:49:33,520 take your E cash wallet. Let's say I have some money on 1067 00:49:33,520 --> 00:49:36,440 my E cash wallet. I can create an offline invoice 1068 00:49:36,720 --> 00:49:39,200 and paste it into bit chat and then you can claim it. 1069 00:49:39,200 --> 00:49:40,760 And we don't have to have any Internet for that. 1070 00:49:41,160 --> 00:49:43,560 And that's really neat. Like you can send money with no 1071 00:49:43,560 --> 00:49:45,040 Internet. That's cool. 1072 00:49:45,080 --> 00:49:48,120 I mean, and I guess it's not that crazy because just now I 1073 00:49:48,120 --> 00:49:50,000 had no cell phone service here and I bought something at 1074 00:49:50,000 --> 00:49:52,960 Starbucks because I just used tap pay and really all that is 1075 00:49:52,960 --> 00:49:55,040 is it's my phone giving a number to the other person. 1076 00:49:55,280 --> 00:49:58,040 Ecash works the same way like the payer doesn't need Internet 1077 00:49:58,040 --> 00:49:59,880 and E cash. So you can do some really cool 1078 00:49:59,880 --> 00:50:01,480 stuff. So my point is there's like a 1079 00:50:01,480 --> 00:50:04,360 constellation of technologies growing around Bitcoin that are 1080 00:50:04,360 --> 00:50:06,840 making it very powerful. Now. 1081 00:50:06,840 --> 00:50:09,680 It doesn't compete right away with like maybe the ease of 1082 00:50:09,680 --> 00:50:12,960 stable coins for some people, but it's it's growing man. 1083 00:50:12,960 --> 00:50:15,200 It's very exciting to see and we're, we're doing what we can 1084 00:50:15,200 --> 00:50:19,080 to push that out because ultimately, you know, I, I just 1085 00:50:19,080 --> 00:50:22,880 think again, having experienced and talked to people who lived 1086 00:50:22,880 --> 00:50:25,840 through these insane devaluations, I just think 1087 00:50:25,840 --> 00:50:27,760 that's one of the world's thing, worst things that happens in the 1088 00:50:27,760 --> 00:50:29,440 world today. It's actually kind of already 1089 00:50:29,440 --> 00:50:31,280 happening. The dollar is devalued 50% 1090 00:50:31,280 --> 00:50:31,800 against. Gold. 1091 00:50:31,840 --> 00:50:33,400 It's like, it's like COVID, yeah. 1092 00:50:34,280 --> 00:50:36,880 And it's valued 75% against Bitcoin since 23 and three. 1093 00:50:36,880 --> 00:50:39,920 And it's devalued 50% against gold since I think in the last 1094 00:50:39,920 --> 00:50:40,560 two. Years, right? 1095 00:50:40,720 --> 00:50:42,520 Yeah, so. That's actually all I mean, it's 1096 00:50:42,520 --> 00:50:44,160 happening. One of the weird things is this 1097 00:50:44,160 --> 00:50:46,080 thing it's it's happening in front of us. 1098 00:50:46,080 --> 00:50:47,000 It's happening in front of our eyes. 1099 00:50:47,120 --> 00:50:50,760 And and yet it's like a train that's accelerating and you just 1100 00:50:50,760 --> 00:50:53,760 don't perceive it because you're in it, you know, So what? 1101 00:50:54,240 --> 00:50:55,360 Are we? The last thing I'll just say is 1102 00:50:55,360 --> 00:50:58,120 just like a lot of people again, Bitcoin's useless. 1103 00:50:58,120 --> 00:50:59,840 I can't understand why you why you'd use it, right? 1104 00:51:00,280 --> 00:51:01,920 So I was interviewing these Cubans in 2020. 1105 00:51:01,920 --> 00:51:03,840 They were using Bitcoin. They were converting their 1106 00:51:03,840 --> 00:51:08,200 pesos, which were at the time trading about 30 to a dollar 1107 00:51:08,760 --> 00:51:11,760 into Bitcoin. OK, So since then bitcoin's gone 1108 00:51:11,760 --> 00:51:15,880 from $5000 to $120,000. OK, amazing. 1109 00:51:16,480 --> 00:51:20,960 The peso, the Cuban peso has gone from 24 per dollar to more 1110 00:51:20,960 --> 00:51:24,520 than 400 per dollar. So when people say Bitcoin saved 1111 00:51:24,520 --> 00:51:27,560 my life, it's real and it's happening all over the world. 1112 00:51:27,600 --> 00:51:29,920 And, and I just, it's funny to me that a lot of people we 1113 00:51:29,920 --> 00:51:33,880 probably know in our social circles would say that's 1114 00:51:33,880 --> 00:51:37,320 nonsense and it's true. So some people just kind of have 1115 00:51:37,320 --> 00:51:39,000 to open their eyes. I just want to check their 1116 00:51:39,000 --> 00:51:40,920 financial privilege. Amazing. 1117 00:51:41,360 --> 00:51:43,320 So get your two books, we'll put them on. 1118 00:51:43,320 --> 00:51:44,800 Screen, Yeah, Awesome. Thank you. 1119 00:51:45,080 --> 00:51:47,080 Welcome and let's work GR for freedom. 1120 00:51:47,160 --> 00:51:47,960 Amazing. Thank you. 1121 00:51:47,960 --> 00:51:49,400 Thank you for your support for Bitcoin. 1122 00:51:49,520 --> 00:51:50,840 It's been important. Great. 1123 00:51:50,840 --> 00:51:52,280 Thank you. Yeah, 10 years together. 1124 00:51:52,280 --> 00:51:53,080 I know. Right. 1125 00:51:53,080 --> 00:51:55,600 Yeah, it's been a while. Good, good stuff. 1126 00:51:55,600 --> 00:51:56,640 OK, talk soon. Talk soon.