All right. Hey everyone, this is from
Konstein and you're listening to Bitcoin for Millennials.
Together with my guests on this podcast, I go on a journey to
discover how our current financial system works, why it's
flawed, and why Bitcoin is the most relevant technology that
you, my fellow millennials, should understand and adopt.
In this episode, I'm joined by Samson Mao.
He's the CEO of Gentry, a Bitcoin technology company
focused on accelerating hyper bitcoinization.
He's best known for his work with El Salvador's Bitcoin
initiatives and his efforts in nation state Bitcoin adoption
around the world. As as one of the top executives
in the Bitcoin ecosystem is expertise spans from running one
of the largest exchanges and mining pools to guiding the
development and deployment of Bitcoin infrastructure as the
CSO of Blockstream. In the past weeks, he has also
been talking a lot about the Bitcoin Omega candle, which I
think we'll definitely talk about and the road to Bitcoin
being worth $1 million. Yeah, I'm super excited to talk
to you man. Welcome.
Yeah, thanks from. It's good to be on.
Yeah, we've been. We've been in touch on Twitter.
It's one of the things I really love about the Bitcoin space is
that everyone is so approachable.
You know, it doesn't really matter on how long people have
been in the space. Like everyone is just really
passionate about about what this thing could be.
So yeah, it's just fun to to talk on Twitter.
And now, And now we're here, we're going to talk about Gen.
3, about the Omega candle that you tweeted about.
But first I wanted to ask you, how did you discover Bitcoin and
what made you not get it initially?
Let me think, Well, I guess the question is what do you mean by
discover? So I first saw Bitcoin just
reading the news. I used to be a very prolific
reader of RSS feeds and news aggregator.
So I would try to read all the news all the time.
And I think, you know, in 20, 10, maybe I saw Bitcoin come up
and the narrative was bitcoins used by criminals and buying
drugs and it's gambling money, etcetera.
So I didn't pay too much attention to it.
It just came up. But I think a few years later I
read an article about Bitcoin mining and that was when I
really went down the rabbit hole and started to understand the
inner mechanisms of how Bitcoin works.
Essentially, you look under the hood and there's nobody there.
It's just people running ASICS and you know, GPUs and CPUs back
in the day and mining it. So there's no control switch,
Someone can turn it on and off, no one can modify the the supply
or anything. So that was when it really
clicked for me. So was there was there a thing
that made you, like, not get it, or were you instantly hooked?
Well, when I really dug into it, I think that was when I was
really hooked. But before I really got into it,
I it didn't click for me. It just sort of seemed like
another fad or trend. Yeah, just like the easy
dismissal that a lot of people show, I'd say, right?
Like it takes some time to find the threats.
I'd say that personally interests you, right?
Like for you it's mining. For me was more like, you know,
the Internet needs a currency, that angle and other people
really come at it from like the finance angle and stuff like
that. So cool.
If someone asks you why is Bitcoin as a concept so big and
important, what's your answer there?
Oh, that's a good question. We like to say as bitcoiners
that Bitcoin fixes this and it applies to a lot of things.
Bitcoin fixes a lot of problems in society.
It fixes inflation. It fixes the basement of
currency. It, it fixes potentially even
bad governance too. So that's why we say it.
It's a it's like a Band-Aid saying.
But the reality is Bitcoin fixes a lot of these things because a
lot of things in the world are based off of our monetary
system. In fact, you can look at human
civilization as a whole is largely based on our ability to
trade with one another and our ability to specialize.
And that ability comes from having this concept or construct
of money where we can trade and exchange our time and value with
one another. So when that whole system
becomes corrupted and it can be manipulated by central banks,
governments, etcetera, then everything breaks down.
And this is what we are seeing in the world today.
And This is why Bitcoin fixes so many things.
So I guess the answer is Bitcoin is important because it fixes A
foundational part of civilization and society.
That's interesting because a lot of people also say, you know,
like everything is downstream from how good the money is,
right? I think that's also what what
you're saying here. Why?
Why does it take so long for people to realize that it's so
broken? Yeah, we would hope that it
would be faster, but I I think the problem is you're born into
a Fiat world and you're educated in a Fiat designed educational
system and you're inundated with Fiat doctrine at all times.
And most people in general are very easily distracted too.
So there's a new movie, a new show, and they just want to
consume and watch that. And in general, I think people
are just generally more prone to be consumers of things,
information, entertainment, products rather than producing,
creating. And and all of this put together
makes it very hard for people to understand that there are
problems in the world and that things are breaking down.
Because if you've never known the concept of hard money, like
you know, if you were born in the in the 80s, you know you
were born into a world based off of a Fiat money system that was
not, there was no gold backing at that point, right.
And you grow up and you think that money is in the bank, that
when you see a number on your bank statement that is dollars,
but it's not, it's actually just a fabrication.
It's very hard to make that leap back to sound money.
You have to go through a learning process and maybe a lot
of pain dealing with things like inflation.
And then you reach the conclusion that there is
something wrong with the world. So it's sort of like, can you
wake yourself up from the Matrix?
Maybe, maybe you can, but it's also very hard because the
Matrix is all around you. Yeah, it's really that, right.
Like I knew you were going to say matrix or else I would have
said it, right. Like this is a matrix.
Like the the, the number you see on your screen is not real.
Like it's like it's it's like the spoon is not there, right.
There is no spoon, There's no, there's no money.
But you're still seeing, you're still seeing the numbers.
And it's also very comfortable, right, to, well, that's also
exactly like in the movie, right, to stay in the Matrix.
As long as you don't think, like what is going on here, then
you're safe and sound. And you know, with the
attractions that we have, Yeah, you don't really have to think
about it, Yeah. Fiat money is like a security
blanket of sorts. You know you can hold it and you
think you're safe, but the reality is it doesn't protect
you from anything. And in fact it might harm you.
But when you take away that security blanket, you're
suddenly thrust into a world of having to take responsibility
for things like, yeah, take responsibility of having custody
of your own money. And this is like an alien
concept, people that grew up putting their money in the bank
to keep it safe. Whereas you know, in the 1900s,
maybe, at least you would maybe keep your gold bars and coins in
the safe of your own. So it's just an alien concept
now that I need to take responsibility and I need to
keep my own money for myself. Do you ever also experience that
when you talk to people who are new to Bitcoin, this realization
of responsibility, like in in my, like, real life circle, I
have a few friends who've done really well and they don't have
any Bitcoin. And one of the conversations I
had was my friend said, well, if I have a million in Bitcoin, do
I have to hold that myself? I said yeah, that's that's the
point. But it was scary to him.
Yeah, I think that definitely is a component of the discussions.
A lot of people just don't want to have custody.
So I think as Bitcoiners we're we're kind of, we kind of feel a
bit of disgust towards people that use custodians.
But I I think you might have to rely on that as a a mid step to
getting people to self custody just because the concept of self
custody is so far removed from where they are right now.
Maybe it's OK that they use custodian or a custodial wallet
because you know, the shock to having your own money and being
responsible for, well, thousands, 10s of thousands or
even millions of dollars on your own shoulders is a big thing.
Yeah, I think inducing the realization that no one is
coming to save you, then I think that's kind of like the hardest
thing, right? Like who would voluntarily put
that on themselves? Like that's a bit crazy.
Yeah, well, it has a lot to do with governance as well, like.
But I think one of the problems we have that we have with
governance is people look to the government to save them.
Like, oh, there's a virus. Government saved me.
And then the government behaves almost like a very simplistic
AI. Well, the simplest way to save
you is to lock you in your house, right?
Like, if I want to keep you safe from all harm, I'll I'll lock
you in a jail cell. And then nobody will hurt you
unless you're upsteam. But, you know, the whole concept
of the government saving you is sort of a misleading, misleading
train of thought that people take.
Because at the end of the day, you have to protect yourself.
You have to do something yourself.
And even taking part in governance like, well, right now
our system is largely democracies.
You have to vote. You can't just hope that someone
else will vote. The right people and the power
and that they will save you. You actually need to do a lot of
things in the world. At least you should be.
Yeah, yeah, I agree. Yeah, I've I personally find
this like personal journey of people into Bitcoin most
fascinating thing to talk about actually.
Like I think most people can understand the Bitcoin concept
but actually integrating that as part of your world view where
your whole world view is basically based on a matrix like
illusion that's that's like the hardest challenge for people.
I think that that you can open your mind just enough to to see
that other thing and then you know follow the rationale of the
information that you then get. Yeah.
So how we'll get to that about, you know when you talk to to
leaders of nation how, how that goes, I'm super interested to
hear. But first, Gen. 3, what's your
mission and why did you start it?
So the mission of Gen. 3 is to accelerate hyper bitcoinization,
or the point at which we no longer need to go back to Fiat
monies. And it's also helping onboard
countries and getting them onto a Bitcoin standard.
Because our theory is that we will end up on a Bitcoin
standard, but there will be some chaos as we transition into
that. So Fiat monies have to be phased
out, which means you might need parallel systems at some time,
which is a Bitcoin track alongside the Fiat track so
people can gradually move over. Because if it is a very sudden
cataclysmic event, then a lot of people will simply be left out
and will be scrambling to get into it.
So we're here to sort of usher in as well as ease that
transition to Bitcoin. And the reason why we're doing
this is because I don't really see that many people out there
doing what we do today engaging with governments and trying to
educate them and work with them. There are a lot of grassroots
movements, but there is also an importance to focus on the top
level adoption because the top level can make it very difficult
for grassroots adoption. If the laws and the regulations
don't make any sense and I think that is the value we bring, We
can show the governments that this is a model for how you
could adopt Bitcoin potentially and you can implement some laws
that will foster these grassroots communities and help
them grow. And I think a good example of
this is I saw on on Twitter or X today Javier Millay from
Argentina, the new president of Argentina.
He went to the World Economic Forum and I think he was
commenting, you know, it's been corrupted by forces of socialism
and you know I need to go there and bring it back to reality.
And it's it's a similar track to what we are doing.
We are engaging with governments because your your choice is
either to engage or not to engage.
And if you don't engage, I think the problem can snowball and
become worse than if you did engage.
There's almost no downside to engaging with the government.
I think we've had some people critique us and say why are you
helping governments get Bitcoin? The whole point is you separate
money in state, et cetera, et cetera.
But if we can get the government to adopt Bitcoin or champion the
adoption of Bitcoin. And then you win, of course.
Yeah, that is the separation of money in states.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you know there's a few
ways to approach it. You could hunker down and you
know be anti government and never want to engage and just
you know do your own thing. But the sad reality is the
government could come after you someday.
Just like in Europe they're going after self hosted wallets,
right? If there had been more
engagement, more things like Bitcoin and Bundestag in
Germany, maybe that wouldn't have happened because you can
educate them and educating anybody, regardless if it's like
some no coiner or the government has really no downsides, right?
The worst they'll do is say no, I still hate Bitcoin, but they
can't destroy Bitcoin. They could.
The only the only thing you got might happen is they have less
bad regulation, which in my view is a good thing.
Yeah, Well, but I think also because it's a, it's a personal
journey. Like you're talking to a person,
you're not talking to the entity, the government, you're
talking to a person, right? Actually today I had a had a
discussion with a financial journalist in a Telegram group
that I'm in. And he talked about some opinion
piece that someone wrote in like the Dutch Financial Times and
he's also a reporter there. And I said, you know, like the
words in that piece were like pyramid scheme, Ponzi, blah,
blah. So I was like this is, it's just
so disingenuous. Like, I'm just disappointed at
how disingenuous this is, right? And like, if you really
understand this, you would not say this.
And if you don't understand it, why do you pretend to say this,
right, Like the stay humble thing And then this guy replied
like, yeah, but he's right. So what are you talking about?
So then I got a bit into a quarrel with with him.
But then I was just thinking like he and I looked him up,
like he learned about Bitcoin. He's been looking at this for
seven years, right? And so you have people that just
dismiss it because they cannot, I don't know, fathom this whole
ego, ego thing basically, right. So maybe he's lost.
But when you talk to someone, right, the fact that you, you
perfect, you know your pitch and your short explanation etcetera,
like you do put the information in their head, right.
So if they are a honest person or an interested person, or you
know they they can challenge themselves just enough, then
perhaps that seed is already enough because you are talking
to a person and not the not the entity.
Yeah, well, at the end of the day, governments are made-up of
people. So you can still engage with
them and talk to them, and you will have difficult people, but
you will have people that are receptive to the idea of Bitcoin
and learning a bit more too. But when we engage with
governments generally, we try not to get into the nuts and
bolts of it. We don't talk too much about
monetary theory and all the things that we just discussed,
right? We focus more on aligning
incentives to Bitcoin as an asset.
And the the baseline of the pitch, if you will, is really
energy is now money because of Bitcoin.
And we did have a little bit of this in the past with oil,
right? You have oil you can put into a
barrel and export it and convert that latent energy into money.
Now you can convert hydro, geothermo.
Any other form of energy that you couldn't put in a barrel now
can be kind of put into this digital barrel as Bitcoin and
sold. So we focus on getting them to
understand that and seeing what they want because it's not about
what we want. Of course, we want Bitcoin
adoption, but if you want to convince someone to look at
Bitcoin and understand it, you have to come at it from their
interest. I mean, at the end of the day,
Bitcoin is just a massive tangle of alignment of incentives
between users, minors, businesses and all sorts of
people, right? We're all intertwined in these
different alignments of incentives and interests.
So we try to get them thinking like, what do you need?
You need to build an airport. Do you want more energy
production? You want hydro plants, You want
geothermal plants? And then we see what we can do
and propose ideas or projects that can be done to get them
there using and I think that's the most practical way to go
about this. Yeah, yeah, there was.
This was actually one of the things I wanted to ask, like how
do you peel a orange peel a country leader?
And I heard you say this, this what you just said before,
right? Like that the energy is your
translation, you know, it's the power of your country in a, in a
sense, right. Like if you are lucky that you
have a lot of water or geothermal activity or or or
whatnot, right? Like you can finally utilize
that in. Yeah, more global way than
localized, no, capturing that energy in a certain village or
whatever, right. Is that then the main thing?
The fact that they can enable more of their like natural
resources? If you can call it, that it.
Depends on what they're interested in.
A lot of countries have excess energy, and Bitcoin can help
them tap it. You can use something like a
Bitcoin bond to raise capital to build those facilities to tap
into that energy. Maybe they have a goal of
reducing emissions or reducing dependency on coal or something
else and or or methane reduction.
So that way we pitch Bitcoin mining as a way to reduce flare
gas which was what we did in Columbia when we met with the
present Petro. So it it really depends on what
they are interested in. Some people, some, some
politicians are interested in banking the unbanked or reducing
inequity and we say, well, Bitcoin can do that.
You can just give someone a wallet like the Aqua wallet,
which is what we've launched recently.
And yeah, you know, they can onboard and access the financial
system through Bitcoin without having to rely on banks to
onboard people. So it really depends on what
they're interested in and I think that is our key focus.
We don't go in there saying you need to adopt Bitcoin because
it's the future of the financial system.
It fixes a lot of things. And yeah, money is broken.
That's just the wrong, wrong way to go about it.
And it's off putting people like, it's like danking them out
of the matrix by their, yeah, their shirt collar, right.
It's better to go in and say like, well, what are the
problems you're having in the Matrix today and well, maybe we
can fix that with this thing over here.
Fairpoint, good point. So you just mentioned the Aqua
wallets you you recently launched this last week or or
two weeks ago I believe. Can you share a bit about that?
Of course, January 3rd, yeah. Yeah, it's getting close to two
weeks now. So Aqua is a Bitcoin wallet and
layer two wallet. So we have Bitcoin in there as
well as Liquid and lightning and potentially down the road we'll
have something like RGB. So the idea is that it's a one
stop shop where you can do everything.
The core principle of Aqua is that it has to offer a lot of
utility, so it cannot simply be a wallet for a wallet's sake.
We need to allow people to swap into other things like stable
coins like Tether USDT. We have to have services where
they can on and off board into the Fiat system because the Fiat
system still exists today. So we we have to offer the users
a lot of utility but we also want to be a pragmatic as
bitcoiners. So a lot of Bitcoin wallets
don't integrate Tether, but Tether is issued on Liquid, so
you don't need to integrate Tron or Ethereum or something like
that. You can just integrate Liquid
and then you get Tether. And Tether is the most dominant
stable coin in the market by far.
I think they're at 70% dominance down.
And if you go to Global S which is our target market for Aqua,
Latin America, you know less developing countries, they all
accept Tether. But the sad thing is that
they're using it on Tron and Ethereum, and we hope that by
pushing Aqua, they'll start to use it on Liquid.
And there will be benefits to them using it on Liquid as well,
because Liquid has Confidential Transactions.
So instead of everyone being able to see all your purchases,
it's confidential and you can unblind transactions as needed.
But we'll have this deep integration with all these
services that allow you to move your assets fluidly between main
chain Bitcoin to layer two Bitcoin, which is Lightning and
Liquid and Tether. And you can do that just using
swap services. So we can be non custodial
wallet and be a technology provider and simply integrate
these services. So right now the iOS version is
a little bit gimped because Apple wouldn't let us have a
swap button there. So we're working through that.
But the Android version, you can go from main chain Bitcoin to
liquid to USDT and then from the liquid wallet you can send out
on liquid or on lightning. So you can see we can sort of
access everything and the USDT channel, we can use swaps
through side shift and go on to other chains as well.
So if you're from Europe and you're travelling in Latam and
you want to go to Argentina and you have to deal with people
that want Tether to get to Argentinian Pesos, well, you'll
be able to go there with Aqua, swap to USDT and send it to them
on Tron. And it's all in one interface.
And sadly we have to do that right now.
But maybe in a couple years you'll just send them liquid
tether and you don't have to swap the Tron.
It's going to start. Somewhere, Yeah, yeah, of
course. No, I love how you are also
taking feedback on Twitter. There's a lot of people who are
trying this out. I think that's that's great,
right? Like you built you build in
public. In essence I think you get a,
you get a lot of feedback from people and I think you also
shared some updates about OK, like this is already going to be
in the next, in the next version basically.
So would you say that you know when you say like I'm a
technology company and focusing on nation state adoption but
also on on technology, is this Then also I think you just
briefly mentioned it, but like part of this strategy, right,
like if a country decides, OK we work with you and you know let's
say similar to El Salvador and you know however they apply it
in their country, then you also can provide them with technology
that can help their citizens adopt using Bitcoin, right?
Yeah, if they want to, we can set something up for them.
We can also white label Aqua, like El Salvador has their Chivo
wallet. But if another country wanted
their own wallet for whatever reason, we can rebrand Aqua
White label it and build an integration with them to their
banking system. So it'd be a seamless experience
for their end users. And it might be even better than
Chivo because it would be non custodial.
The people would have their own wallet and they only need to
interact with the banking system when they need to, so it's
better for privacy and soft custody, soft sovereignty.
Yeah, awesome. And so I saw you on lots of
trips last year. You mentioned Colombia, I think
you were in Mexico, Suriname. Lately I heard you talk about
the governor of Java, Indonesia, who is interested in Bitcoin.
I think he is like the most popular person to be elected, I
think is that in February or not as president.
But there's like elections in lots of these countries.
Right. Changes.
So the the challenge of doing what we do at Gen. 3IN dealing
with nation states is it changes on the other side.
So yeah, I think he was in the running.
This is Governor Ridwin, Camille.
He stepped down from governor. Now he is an interim governor,
but he was supposed to be the running for VP.
Now it's a different person running for VP.
So things change all the time and we just have to adapt.
So we'll we'll see what happens with the next Indonesian
election, but we do have connections there and we will be
back. Yeah.
And so I I talked, I don't know if it was with Phillip actually
within a previous episode also about the Surinam, which is like
a former colony of the country that I that I live in.
And I thought it was really interesting that you that you
went there because well, I know some about Suriname, right.
But there's there's so many like former colonies.
I think a few months ago we had, there were struggles in Niger,
where France is a former colonist, right.
And then someone wrote the story to explain that in Niger, they
still use French francs, that's France pays Niger in French
francs for the uranium currency that France doesn't use anymore,
you know. And so there's a lot of these,
these these formerly colonized countries that are still
entangled, of course, with their former colonizers.
And so I thought it was really interesting that you went to
Suriname. I don't know what you can share
about that, but I'd love to hear like, what?
What, what starts something like that, like a first visit to a
country and well, for sure. And then like what?
What is the angle there? Yeah, so Surinam was an
interesting development. We we had that lead through
Maya. She's a bitcoiner from Surinam
and she started engaging with us and making some connections.
Eventually we met with the foreign Minister of Surinam,
Albert Ramdin, and we started having a series of meetings
because he would go to to Europe quite often and then then our
COO and then whole he would meet with him.
And we also had a few online meetings with the central bank
there to discuss Bitcoin and Bitcoin strategies.
And then we arranged a trip there to meet with the president
after a lot of legwork. So it just kind of happened
gradually and organically and hopefully now we'll be able to
work with them on doing something with Bitcoin.
But there's a there are a lot of opportunities there too because
they have a lot of different interesting projects they have.
They've discovered oil off the coast, so there is the potential
to do something like a Bitcoin bond to raise capital for that.
They have a lot of hydropower in the country as well.
There is a hydro dam project that could potentially be done
to mine Bitcoin with. There is excess energy at an
existing hydro plant. There is a village deep in the
Amazon that is looking towards mining Bitcoin to finance more
energy infrastructure. I'm probably missing something,
but there's a lot of things that can be done there with Bitcoin.
We also proposed to the central bank that they can buy, use
their reserves by 1% of Bitcoin, and that's still underway.
Hopefully they will do it soon rather than later because I
think Bitcoin price is going to go up.
So yeah, we'll talk about that. I would hope that they do it
sooner rather than later, but everyone gets Bitcoin at the
price they deserve, so yeah. Well, I think that's a nice
leeway into the to the next question.
I I sent out a tweet last week with just like my global game
theory prediction. I don't, I'm not sure if you saw
it, but I was thinking about, I think I saw something about like
in Hong Kong they're thinking about ETFs apparently that's
expedited also there's there seems to be some pace there as
well. And then I thought, well if you
can define BlackRock as AUSG proxy and Hong Kong as as a as a
China proxy, then could the Bitcoin ETFs in America be like
a kickoff for for nation state adoption, right.
Like I mean or or or at least global game theory, let's, let's
let's stay there, right because I think, well we're seeing that
apparently this is happening in Hong Kong.
So I wrote down, well, if America and China go, then I
don't know what they're thinking about in was it Qatar or I think
the was Qatar, was that the guy who visited El Salvador or is
that that's? Qatar.
Yeah, right. Yeah, it's Qatar and Oman has
like a billion dollar mining experiments.
I almost want to say with Marathon, like these dominoes
have to fall, right? Like it doesn't.
Even if you're remotely thinking about adopting Bitcoin or maybe
putting 1% on the central bank balance sheet, like if your
enemies or countries that you don't really like, if they go
like you, you have to go. What?
What do you think about this? What's the What are your
thoughts here? Yeah, I fully agree.
All the dominoes are going to fall and I think that a lot of
countries are still countries, regulators, financial
authorities, etcetera. They all look towards the US for
guidance. So I think we did see like I've
known for a while that there is a spot ETF that's in discussions
and getting close to approval in Hong Kong.
This is from months ago, last year, but we've seen other media
posts about it. I think Bitcoin Magazine posted
to a few weeks ago and then they deleted it for some reason.
I'm not sure why and then recently there is another
politician in Hong Kong saying that we need to accelerate this,
but it is under way and they are looking to the US as a a a rule
setter or trendsetter or the benchmark for whether there
should or should not be a slot ETF.
Even there's an ETF being filed in Australia by monochrome.
I I believe that the Australian regulators also holding off on
that or we're holding off on that kind of waiting for the US
to make the move. So that will come and that
unlocks a lot of capital. And what you touched on earlier
was a point I think I made as well, but in Hong Kong, well,
Hong Kong doing something does mean that Bitcoin is OK because
Beijing okayed it. Hong Kong would not do that if
Beijing says no. And Hong Kong is sort of like
the financial center, not for all of China, right?
So all the mainland China money will flow to Hong Kong and
access that ETF. Yeah, it's actually interesting.
I think that not a lot of people still talk about the the banning
of the mining in China and now it's allowed again and now we
have ETFs coming right. Like that is also in some form
the cap, the capitulation. I think that Bitcoin force on
the deniers, I almost want to say right, like the incentives
are just too strong, right. That's I think a core of Bitcoin
that you don't even have to really understand it.
But when your incentives aligned, like you have to go,
right. I mean you now see I think
Franklin Templeton, one of the ETF issuers, they still talk
about Crypto Web 3 point. They don't fully understand it,
but they're still doing it right.
There's they still join the race.
So I think that's a fascinating aspect of of Bitcoin there.
And also in the ETF approval, actually it's it said commodity
based ETF which I found interesting, right.
So if you say OK, commodity is basically captured energy in
some sense, right, like lots of commodities are used to refine
and build something else. So it's captured energy.
Well, if you see it like that and align that with what you
just mentioned as your your pitch, then of course countries
want to have this right. Like it's a very short.
In my mind it's a very short loop.
Yeah, the the approval of the ETFs is actually very big for a
nation state adoption because it signifies that Bitcoin is OK
now, right. When you can point like when we
talk to some people it still comes up, you know Bitcoin is
risky and it's not really, it's still something that criminals
and hackers use etcetera, right. But now we can say well the
largest asset manager on the planet has an ETF and along with
ten others. So it changes that discussion
and it puts an end to that discussion immediately, which is
very powerful in in the tool bag of things that we can use to
orange till nations. Well, that FUD is gone
basically, right? Or at least.
It'll remain, but you can for some people, yeah, you can
squish the FUD very quickly. You know, like Bitcoin is used
for money laundering. Well, then why is there an ETF
for this money laundering thing? Yeah, it doesn't make any sense.
Right. Yeah, fascination, probably.
This FUD was probably started by the people who now running an
ETF, but that's how it goes. All right.
So ETF launched we this is the third day of the third day of
trading. What's what's your 2024 outlook?
We'll talk about Omega Candle. Maybe that is just the outlook.
We can jump straight into that if you want, but yeah.
Firstly, I think we're overdue for one million per Bitcoin in
2024 just based on the entire macroeconomic situation.
So I guess my guess is 2024 one million that's the outlook.
All right, so you tweeted that, you know, bit similar to what I
just said, like ETFs would kick off perfect storm and share the
list of things that would enable that.
And I'd love to just, I just copy pasted your tweet and I'd
love to talk about, you know, these different elements, but
first of all, the Bitcoin Omega candle.
What is that? So the Omega Candle is the next
step after the God Candle. So we've been talking about a
God candle of 10K green on the daily for some time now.
An Omega candle is 100K green on the daily.
So when Bitcoin goes up 100K or 0.1 M.
Yeah, I saw you define Bitcoin now in millions.
I think that's actually pretty good.
We should, we should keep that. I think the unit bias in general
is a really big thing in in Bitcoin, right, Just for the
ETFs, people buying $25 or $45.00 ETF shares.
But yeah, some people and some organizations, some countries
will only start paying attention at 1,000,000 probably.
So yeah, I think that that's a great switch.
First thing on the list was the ETF ad campaigns.
I'm personally really looking forward to the Super Bowl.
Like I'm just interested to see what they come up with.
I mean there was a Coinbase, the commercial, I think it was last
year or maybe even the year before.
So I am expecting multiple Bitcoin ETF ads.
But yeah, why did you write down ETF?
Ad campaigns. Well, I think this ties into
another tweet thread I did a couple weeks ago.
But the premise is all of these ETFs are competing.
They are competing for AUM and I don't think all of them are
going to survive. It's going to come down to maybe
3-4 of them that are the dominant ones and everything
else is just, you know, no one cares.
So they have to fight for market share and mind share and the way
that they do that is through advertising and we've seen that
already. So Bitwise has a pretty good ad
out there with The Most Interesting Man, I think.
Who's the other one that did an ad?
Vanek did an ad. I don't think Fidelity's done
one yet. No, it was the.
Crocal. So not really.
Who's the DEFY Guy? The DEFY Ticker.
Is that hashtags? Yeah, hashtags.
They did one, but it was kind of floppy.
It was like crypto. And then they did another one.
It was not that great. So another one of this kind of
like like a fiver thing. I thought it was like a.
Fiver Grayscales was a fiver one.
That was basically, I comment fiver quantities, you can
replace Bitcoin with word copper and the ad would work
flawlessly. Yeah, you know, we're the
biggest copper ETF. Yeah, if you want.
Copper, grayscale. So yeah, we know that they are
doing ads and they are getting Hollywood talent.
You know, the bitwise ad is the best indicator of that.
So the question is what is the next level and yeah, next level
Super Super Bowl with a list star.
So we'll see what? Happens.
Yeah, probably. I also saw in the video, what's
the is that Galaxy with Novogratz had like a video of of
Mike Novogratz talking and then he's sitting on the couch and he
opens a paper and there it's like a full page ad you see on
the paper of their ETF. So they're doing like all these
classic things. But yeah, I I think the premise
of we just need the biggest AUM and therefore we do marketing.
Yeah, let's let's see. Let's see where we go.
Yeah. Next point on the list was
nation state adoption. While we just talked about this,
I don't know if you can share anything.
But why? Why you wrote that down for a
reason is that I am assuming that's not a guess.
Well, we're working with a number of countries, right?
So there's Columbia Store in Prospera, not a country, but
special economic Zone, Madera, Montenegro.
There's a lot of countries that we are engaged with and you
know, there are more that we haven't talked about yet.
Those are in their redacted column.
But there's a lot of work to be done.
And I think as Bitcoin price goes up, as the ETS solidify and
as these ETS make their ad campaigns, it makes it a lot
easier for us to engage about Bitcoin.
Like when Bitcoin price tanked after FTX and Doquan, that was a
very difficult time. But even before we recovered to
these levels, we started to get some re engagement again and
that's why we had those meetings towards the end of 2023.
But if Bitcoin does go to 0.1 M or higher, I'm sure there is
going to be a lot more countries coming and trying to engage and
figure what to do. Yeah, just a new question I got
based on based on this, like when you talk to people in
countries, you talk about you know what's how can they
utilize, you know, their resources and then you connected
with Bitcoin. But when we talk about, you
know, game theory and the global adoption, there's also the rush
comes from or the speed comes from the scarcity, right?
Like, do you ever use that argument?
I mean. That that's what I think in this
global game theory, Like, even if you're remotely thinking or
you're still in discussions, like at one point you have to,
you have to go like what the save Dean says about the
gunpowder, right? Like you can fade the gunpowder,
but then you die. Do you see that as the same
thing? Like eventually they're gone,
I'd say. Yeah, we actually, I'm just
trying to think, no, we we haven't.
When we talk to the presidents, we don't talk about scarcity.
I think that's not necessary. Just focus on the monetary
aspect of it and the ability to change things in the near term.
That. Yeah, because once you go into
scarcity, you go into a monetary theory and that's like another
kind of worms. And you have to understand that
when we get to the meetings for the presidents, it's not like we
get, you know, five hours over days, five hours today, five
hours tomorrow. We get like an hour and maybe
more, maybe maybe an hour and a half, maybe 2.
But it's not unlimited time. So we have.
To be very. Concise and go in with a very
compact argument. We can't wax, you know,
theoretical. And, you know, we could send us
to Mars one day. I mean, that's what killed Dave
Portnoy, right when the Winklevoss twins were telling
him, you know, gold can be mined on asteroids.
Elon's going to mine the gold and bring it back.
That just blew his mind pieces and he never recovered.
No. OK.
Well, I don't, I don't think I was that far, but it's more like
in my mind, it's kind of like the second thing because one, if
you understand that Bitcoin is digitized energy and you can use
that the leverage that you have to turn physical energy as a
country into digital energy in a commodity and then trade it
across the world, yeah, you can do that.
But there's also that scarcity part in itself.
Yeah, it's just where my my mind went, but we'll we'll see.
Scarcity. The scarcity will manifest
itself in the price of that asset that you're trading.
That is for trading. Yeah.
That's the proxy for it. Yeah, I agree.
Yeah, it's it's a simpler way to not go there.
But yeah, talk about price appreciation, we talk about
projections like you know our our estimate is 60% annualized
growth per year. So in 10 years you know 3 +
1,000,000 dollars that's very conservative.
So we we focus on that like the scarcity manifests itself in
price. So it's covered.
All right, next point, the halving.
They're having, well, that's self-explanatory.
Supply gets cut. Yeah, well, I saw interesting
calculations people doing on Twitter.
If they were talking about like if there's a constant stream
into or well out of Coinbase or well out of holder pockets or
wherever they get the Bitcoin from into Coinbase for the ETFs,
then that's already like BlackRock bought like 14 days of
new daily supply or something. Yeah, so that's kind of the
argument behind that or the reasoning, right?
Like if it gets cut in half and the the buying keeps this stays
the same for the ETF or even gross, then of course that has
an effect on on the price. All right.
Yeah. The next, I think.
I posted a picture too that someone made.
I forgot who I I just pressed repost picture and it didn't tag
the guy and I lost it. But it was a calculation of how
much exchange Bitcoin remains 1.4 million or so and how long
it takes to exhaust that just by current ETF demand.
And it was like something to the order of 80 ish days which kind
of lines up with having so time. In theory all the exchange
Bitcoin is hoovered up, you have the halving which cuts supply
down more. So it's very interesting to look
at these numbers. Yeah, I think to give him
credit, I think it was Luke Mikage, like the Australian guy,
because I talked with him on another chat and he said the
same thing. Like in 80 days this is gone.
And I was like, what? Really?
And then, yeah, I think he said the same, the same picture.
Yeah. All right.
Next point, the Veblen effect, which basically says, it's funny
because I tweeted before, I think the higher the price, the
less sellers because, you know, it's legitimized, right.
So then you know what you have, so less people will sell.
Is this similar? Because I think Fiblin effect is
the higher price, the more attractive means legitimization,
higher holder rate, higher price, etcetera.
I think it is coin for luxury goods.
So the more expensive a luxury good is, the more people value
it because it's a status symbol and it cost a lot and that's
what makes it luxurious. And I think Bitcoin.
We've already proved that the vellin effect works on Bitcoin.
But unfortunately it was proved when we went down.
So we went down, no one wanted to buy it 15K, it's a horrible
thing. Nobody wants that that that
garbage Bitcoin, right? It has 15K, but that proves that
the effect will work when it goes up.
When we go to 0.1 M or 0.5 M, that's when Bitcoin is a very,
very attractive thing. It's also tied in
psychologically to the market cap gold because it's 0.25 M or
0.5 M we eclipse gold market cap and that's when Bitcoin is the
new goal and that's when the ETS run their new campaign like this
is the new goal and that's basically anchor is Bitcoin and
people will just want. I think that more, Yeah, I think
that will shatter world views, right?
Like, oh and by the way, well, one Bitcoin is already 1 Hermes
Birkin bag, right? Like, I think that bag is like
40K. So I think we're there in terms
of luxury goods, at least price level.
But yeah, when we were around like 65 Ki think we crossed, we
like Bitcoin was more valuable than silver, right.
And so most people, most adults, they grew up with gold.
And silver is the thing you need to have, right?
But then you would have been forced to say, like gold,
Bitcoin, and then silver is what you need to have.
So yeah, I find that very interesting, too.
Like, that narrative will change because then, yeah, you have,
you cannot ignore saying Bitcoin.
Right. Because then it is just
provably, you know, worth more. Yeah.
Fascinating. All right.
The 118 multiplier, this comes from Bank of America report from
I think the height of the last bull market where they said one
$1.00 in means $180 added to the market cap.
Do you think that still holds? Like where have you?
Did you dive into that more? I haven't gone into it more, but
I've seen people say, yeah, it's too high.
It should be, you know, maybe 2 to 10. 3.
Like to recap, For people it's $1.00 going into Bitcoin
increases market cap by X. So I think they probably work
backwards and I remember reading the report, I'm pretty sure they
work backwards from some increase and they said $1.00 in
because they're measuring inflows, increased market cap by
118 times. So it's not like it's a theory
or a projection, it's a reverse calculation.
And yeah, that means that it could be much higher and the
multiplier effect can be amplified by the Veblen effect,
right. So at 500K or sorry, 0.5 M per
Bitcoin, I think a dollar there would have a far bigger impact
than lower because it makes that luxury good even more luxurious
and even higher in demand. So we'll, we'll see what
happens. But it's a combination of all
these factors. I mean jumping ahead to supply
and demand shock. How does supply, demand shock,
Veblen effect and multiplier interact with one another
because there is an interaction there.
These things don't just work on their own, they all amplify one
another. And This is why I made the one
end projection, because nobody really knows what happens.
This is the Bitcoin ETF is the first it's.
The first time. Of a good with limited supply.
You know you have corn, ETFs, gold, copper, you don't know the
supply, it always goes up. Gold is what, 2% a year supply
increase, something like that. But everything in the past was
not bound. So there's always more.
But. You know, Bitcoin is different,
so. Yeah, I I see what happens.
I agree. I I like the the predictions and
and I think it's good you say like nobody really knows.
But I do think and I agree you know, but I do think you can
pinpoint to some of these things and say like this could get
really weird, like really weird, right, because what you
mentioned the the multiplier at least it's proven up to a
certain point. I think we saw something similar
with the fake ETF tweet, right, where I think like 500 million
Max came in in 30 minutes and it moved the market cap by 50
billion. So that there was a, there was
100. I think we've already seen in
the last week something because the price went up before the
grayscale sell off started. So there you already saw the bit
and I agree if the higher the price the less sellers, yeah
this is going to go up one way or another and that's going to
'cause that's the next point. Max Payne, I like the Max Payne
theory. Is that just, you know, you
think you're going to go this way, but it's probably going to
go the other way. Or like, how would you explain
Max Payne theory? The Max Payne theory is in
essence is it's like the most painful outcome.
Or Elon Musk puts it, the most interesting outcome is most
likely outcome. Entertaining, yeah.
Yeah, entertaining. So the most painful outcome at
the end of the day. Like, I made a list of Max Payne
points, but the most serious one.
Some of them were jokes. Like I said, Plan B's stock to
flow is gonna break again, But up this time, Yeah.
But. The real Max Payne is that 8
billion people on this planet will not get a chance to enter
Bitcoin in a way that would impact their financial lives in
a meaningful way. So we know that there is a
divide there, there's the Cantillon effect and
Contilionaires and the thinking is, well, the best case thinking
is everyone can get into Bitcoin.
Your, your average Joe and you know in a working job can
accumulate some Bitcoin and when Bitcoin goes to a million it'll
even out the system. So or or or some guy in Latin
America can accumulate some Bitcoin because typically
they're earning pesos or something and they're not able
to keep up with the dollar even. Let's not talk about Bitcoin,
but the ideal case is that Bitcoin can unify and even out
the playing field because we all have a little bit of Bitcoin and
then Bitcoin goes up to 1,000,000.
We are go balanced out with the the people that have control of
Fiat money. So the worst case scenario is
that doesn't happen. They just inject a ton of
capital, convert their Fiat into Bitcoin and beat everyone else.
They front run 8 billion people and it's status quo.
The the billionaires that control the world still control
the world, but now they have Bitcoin and everyone else is
still, you know, trying to get by with a few SATS.
Yeah, well, that's why we have to talk more about Bitcoin,
right? More, more podcast for more
education. All right, last two points.
And I think this is also what Michael Saylor mentioned when he
said, well, what legitimizes a 5 million Bitcoin price, He said
ETFs approved Fast B rules is one of the things you mentioned,
right? Like those are the accounting
rules, so companies can report the fair value of the Bitcoin.
So that's a more equal reporting in that sense.
And I think his third one was like banks offering financial
services. Well, maybe that's to the
extension also of the ETFs. And your last point was renewed
QE and I think today we saw some news about that where the Fed is
thinking about pivoting, like what what can you share about
that? Well, they have no choice but to
pivot, right. The funny thing is that the
Bitcoin having cycle lines up basically with the election
cycle in the US So you know the IT goes back to a lot of
problems with governance, but we can go into that another time.
But you know the new administration, when they start
they can do things but when it's time for election they need to
give free stuff to people again, right?
They need to, they need to get the people happy and get the
vote right and they will sacrifice the future for that.
So that means renewed QE. It has to happen.
Also the debt is ballooning, right?
The interest payments to service the debt in the US are getting
to hundreds of billions of dollars and they just went up
from 34 to 35 trillion in debt. And if you know how compound
interest works, that you know that that is going to spiral out
of control because it compounds, right?
It's like it's exponential. Compound interest is
exponential. So they can keep that up and get
more debt, or they can lower interest and print money to
service debt because that's the only way to deal with that.
They have to print money from somewhere because it's not going
to come from GDP. There's just too much that has
been printed, printed and sent already.
So QE is inevitable as we go into QT quantitative tightening
or quantitative sorry, quantitative hardening, QQH for
Bitcoin. QHI didn't hear about that
before, but yeah, we'll see. OK, well and what's your
timeline? We said 2024, but of course like
what? Love for you to name a month or
date? Well, I did say we can get to
1,000,001 MBTC in days to weeks after the ETFs are launched.
So I did put a hard cap on that. I said seven weeks because eight
would be getting into months territory.
So we'll see what happens. But these predictions are for
fun and I think some people are angry about the predictions
because they don't understand yet that you can't really
predict what Bitcoin does. Bitcoin will always do its own
thing and a lot of us that are having fun throwing these
numbers out, we already understand that and we know
that. I think the disconnect is that
some people think you can predict it, that you can do TA
and you can analyse where it's going to go and that we are
irresponsible for saying things like 1 million or 1.5 or two.
Whereas we just see that you can't guess any of it and we're
just guessing for fun. But the end state is really
there is no more fee yet, you can't price Bitcoin in dollars
anymore. So all of this is just for
entertainment? Yeah, Well I agree.
I think it's more like a point where we are going because you
know although we cannot put a price on it or an exact
timeline, you can talk through a longer through all of these
things that we just talked about or in general you know why is
Bitcoin better than any Fiat based system, right.
And I think that's also kind of the acceptance in Bitcoin where
you know this is a better thing and and we all do a different
job of evangelizing that and sharing that with people or
educating people. And we know it's true.
So you know this eventually will happen not because we are not
doing anything, but exactly because we are doing stuff,
right. And so yeah, that's why I think
it's also fun. It's kind of it's just we're
we're thinking through it and it would just be really
entertaining if we hit 1,000,000, right.
Like that's I said this before on this podcast like when I went
more into Bitcoin was after I read a tweet of someone who
said, well, if you think Bitcoin is an experiment that's going to
0 or everything, if you even remotely think it's going to be
everything, you have to have a seat in the stadium.
And then that's when I thought, well I need to get you know
solidify my seat in the stadium. And the 1,000,000 Bitcoin is
like one of those moments while you're sitting in the stadium or
a nation state adoption right. Or the ETF approval, same thing.
Like it's all these little steps where yeah, you can enjoy along
the way and and secretly also maybe a little bit think like
I'm right, you know, like I understand this thing and I'm
enjoying what's happening. So yeah, I agree.
Fun. Awesome.
Well, last question that I ask everyone is what is a core
belief that you will never let go?
That's a good one. I don't think I've been asked
that before. What?
What is your core belief? That's tricky.
That's a politician reply Man. Like well.
You tell me yours, I'll tell you mine.
I think that's a good question. It's funny because I asked this
question well more than 20 Times Now, but I my core belief is
actually have tattoo. Might I have tattoo that says
never slow down, never grow old. Like, I think the whole purpose
of humans is to evolve and move forward.
So it's a fun and interesting life pursuit if you keep
following what's happening with humanity.
And I think that has always been like my personal how to say
like, like, yeah, like a personal core thing to to always
just be interested in like what are people doing, right.
And if you dismiss, hey, that sounds like a stupid idea that
will never work, then you're probably wrong, because they're
spending their time the most precious thing we all have on
something. And if you easily dismiss it,
then you probably don't see something.
So I'm always interested in growing.
I think learning is growing. Failing is growing, yeah.
That's a good one. I believe that too.
So I would say my core belief is that people are fundamentally
good and they can be corrupted and there are bad people.
But at the start, everyone is good.
And that's how we should try to engage people, that they may be
wrong on some stuff, but they are fundamentally good, or they
were taught the wrong things, or they've done wrong things, but
fundamentally they are good. And generally, I think people
want what's best for the world, even if they don't always do it
or manifest it. I agree.
Well, let's hope that we can share that message more often.
Thanks, man. Yeah, really appreciate it.
Thanks for talking. And yeah, of course I will link
to your social profiles, Gentry, Aqua, and then people can follow
your journey with Gentry. So, yeah, thanks again for
coming on, was a real pleasure. Yeah, thanks Brahm.
It's fun. Thanks.
I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, it would be amazing
if you could rate, review and subscribe on the podcast
platform of your choice. It will help us educate more
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You can follow and connect with me on Twitter.
I'm Bramke. That's at BR AM K.
And if you are, or know someone who has an interesting
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I read and reply to every single message.
I appreciate your support and hope you'll be here for the next
episode. Thanks for listening.
Bye.