All right, hey there. This is Brom Constant 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 should understand and adopt. In this episode, I'm joined by
Fred Krueger. He's a Bitcoin investor,
professional trader and entrepreneur with 10 successful
exits. He holds a math PhD from
Stanford and is a Wall Street veteran, having worked there in
the 80s and 90s. He shares his opinions on
Bitcoin on his popular X and recently created YouTube channel
and never shies away of a discussion with other investors,
so I'm happy to talk with him today.
Welcome, Fred. Thank you, Bram.
Awesome. Yeah.
Thank you. Yeah, it's awesome to meet
people that I just know from Twitter.
So that's always, that's always fun.
Same. Yeah.
So I have some questions for you.
But first I wanted to ask, like, how do you experience talking
about Bitcoin with your generational peers?
Like, do you still try to educate them?
Like what's What's your experience there?
I mean most of them have given up on do not are not open to the
idea of Bitcoin. So I would say most people that
I worked with on Wall Street, very few of them have any
interest at all. And then and most people think
it's just some kind of Ponzi scheme and it's bullshit,
basically. That's kind of what most people
think in my my age bracket. But there are some notable
exceptions, right? But.
We have Larry Lapard, right, I think.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Well, for example, Larry, Larry, I mean is he's very rare that
people coming from the gold background transition to
Bitcoin. I think most people kind of and
once they they're into gold for 20 years, they stay with gold.
They they they don't transition. Yeah.
So I would say, but I just think in general people who have done
well in the kind of the Fiat world, right they they, you know
they stay in the Fiat world and it's it's kind of rare to kind
of change your mindset. Yeah.
Now Larry Fink has changed his mindset on Bitcoin.
But yeah. I think so, yeah.
Yeah. It's not impossible, right?
But there's definitely, there's definitely, it's definitely not
the the the normal thing. Yeah, yeah, I agree.
I I tweeted before like for me people well also like Greg Foss.
You know, I think Greg has in his bio like 35 years in a risk
chair. He, he says, right, right.
And then I think, well, I'm 35, you know, what do I know?
It's then like kind of my, my take there, right like that that
I find it so interesting that that like what you said, like
people who've been in that world for a very long time, the fact
that they can turn around almost to 180, right.
And adopt Bitcoin. I think for me personally that's
a really big signal because it's a really big like personal
challenge as you said, You know, like it's it's difficult to do.
Yeah. And I, but I think a lot of, a
lot of them, even if they are accepting of it, they're
accepting of it to the, you know, 5% of their portfolio kind
of accepting of it. You know what I mean?
They're not, they're not full on bitcoiners.
Yeah. So I think it's really tough.
You know, when you've made it's it's it's it's easier when you
haven't made a lot of money, right.
But when you've made a bunch of money for you to send millions
of dollars to Coinbase to buy Bitcoin, yeah.
As well. You know, that's just it's a
tough thing. I I did it, but it's it's tough
you know what I mean? Like it's it's tough getting
there. It's a lot easier if you're, you
know, if you bought it sort of cheaply and you just saved and
and it went up, you know? And so how do you now look back
on like your Wall Street career and and now that you understand
and know about Bitcoin, like how how do you look back, but also
how did you get introduced to to Bitcoin?
Well, I mean, I got into, I bought my first Bitcoin in 2013,
right? So I I saw it.
You know, I'm a tech guy, so I I, I saw it pretty early and I
bought some, but I didn't think of it as being any more than
just kind of a joke, really, you know, sort of like, OK, this is
some kind of sort of interesting, vaguely vaguely
interesting thing. I'll buy a few.
It's see how it goes. I bought it and then I sold it,
you know, so. Same same.
Yeah, yeah. So, like, I didn't really think
of it as being, you know, like I thought the chance of it taking
off was pretty low, you know, and it really took for me until
2019 before I really kind of, you know, kind of got it, I
would say, you know, and I certainly, you know, I've been
around it. I knew people around it, friends
of mine were into it. But like, it didn't sort of
click for me personally to the point where, OK, I'm going to,
I'm actually going to go out and buy a bunch of this thing, you
know what I mean? Like that and I think that's a
personal thing. It's just like who you talk to,
what it what, what it clicks for you.
A lot of people have different you know roads into it, right.
It might be some kind of economic thing like you think
that inflation is going to take over.
That wasn't really it for me but you know I just I I sort of got
it in 2013 I mean 2019 that's that's kind of and then you know
after that I was I was sort of orange peeled and I added more
but you know sort of like you know right around you know a
little bit one year before sailor.
You know, you beat Sailor. Yeah.
Well, I have the same path I think like and that is also what
I like to, you know, explore also in this podcast because as
you said, it's this personal discovery, right?
Like you, I I am also into Bitcoin from 2013.
I bought at 400. I sold at 4000, You know, I felt
great. But now I have less Bitcoin than
before, you know? And I saw all tweets of myself
tweeting when it went to $100, I saw myself tweet.
It was a a digital commodity. And I was like, damn, I got it.
But I didn't get it, you know, like I I understood it to some
degree, but I didn't. Well, I think.
The big, the big thing for me, which is, you know, I it it.
I was really concerned right up till 2018 that something else
was going to win, you know, because I think that everybody
in tech always sort of has this mentality that, you know,
Myspace is going to get displaced by Facebook, that AOL
is going to get displaced by Yahoo, which is going to get
displaced by Google. So we don't, we think of it as
just pure technology and you're always sort of thinking, well,
there's something better that's going to come along.
You know, why would I bet on this particular thing?
When there's something you know, this is slow, expensive.
Maybe there's going to be fast and cheap that comes along, you
know? So I was really of that opinion
that fast and cheap would win over slow and expensive.
Yeah, well, TCPIP didn't get replaced, right?
Like it's more on that level. Yeah, I mean, but there's a lot
of other crypto currencies, right?
So you know, there wasn't a lot of TCPIP.
That's true. You know what I mean?
Yeah, that's that's true. Yeah.
But you do see the difference now, right?
Like you. Yeah.
So I I definitely think that
that's, that's, and I think still a lot of people on Wall
Street, just fundamentally, even if they say they're pro Bitcoin
fundamentally they may be like, well, wait a second, maybe
Solana is going to take over Avalanche or something.
You know, you, you know, they really fundamentally they're
open to that idea. Yeah.
I think that takes time to understand as to like which
layer does this belong to, right?
Should I look at this as as a technology or as a startup
creating a token that is fueling a certain ecosystem?
Or is Bitcoin just a totally different?
Right. I mean, I think it's sort of, I
think if you think of this thing as payment, as a payment
technology, you're missing it, right?
You will miss it. You will miss exactly.
You will miss the what it is right is you're like, OK, well
Venmo does really well. You know Venmo does pretty good.
It's it's it's it works. PayPal works, you know.
You know and maybe stablecoins are better than you know than
using Bitcoin because you know stablecoins is the dollar.
It's, you know, if you're in Venezuela, the dollar seems
pretty good. Do you know what I mean?
So I think that the, the problem is I think payment tech you, you
miss, you miss it. And I think the hard thing is
realizing that it actually is a new form of money and it's, you
know, it's a new, it's a new unit of account.
And that's really the hard part because you know I think it it's
a very counter intuitive that that that we even why do we need
a new unit of account, you know, like that's it's not clear like
living in America in particular or Netherlands, right.
Why do I need to start? You know, going from, you know,
the Euro to this weird unit of account called Bitcoin.
You know why? You know, hey there, thanks so
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this journey. Now back to the conversation.
Well that was actually my my next question.
Like what? What do you think is the main
thing people need to learn before they can understand
Bitcoin? Is it that the money that they
are forced to use is not really designed to work for them?
Or like what's what would you say there?
Look, I thought about it. Now my thesis is this is that I
think there's a couple things that Bitcoin does much better
than regular money, right? And the first thing I think it
does is it's, it allows your money to be held in custody by
yourself and and and moved wherever you want, right.
And you know, if you have EUR and you move to America, your
euros are basically useless. You know, they, you know, we do
not accept the euro over here, right?
Yeah, the dollar, if my dollars in in Netherlands are pretty
useless, you know, But Bitcoin is this, this unit where I can
hold my my Bitcoin in a wallet and I can take that wallet
anywhere I want in the world, right.
And that's a fundamentally new thing.
And I think that's. I think that's actually the
killer app of Bitcoin, right, Is that it's sort of it it it's
money that you can transfer, you can hold and you can move around
the world, right? That's the first thing.
I think it's just and no, no, nothing has it.
Because Fiat really has to be stored in the bank account,
right? And then there's some third
party that's kind of gating it. Bitcoin can be stored, you know,
just in a wallet, right? And so that's the first thing.
The second thing is, you know I can send Bitcoin anywhere to
anybody, anywhere in the world without an intermediary either,
right. So I don't need a a checkbook to
send it. I don't need a wire to send it.
I can send it to anybody in the world.
And again that's a that's a really new thing right now.
Other cryptocurrencies have that capability as they have the
capability of the wallet, right. But I would think those two
things are the thing that are that are the the biggest
capabilities of of of of crypto in general, right.
And then the third thing is you know this sort of finite supply,
right. So you know it cannot be
debased. And I think between those
things, I think you have something that is extremely
powerful and it's extremely powerful for for people to keep
their money out of the reach of the government.
And that I think is the biggest, that's the use, that's the core
driver of bitcoins growth #1 driver is I want to take my
money and I want to move it outside of the banking system.
I want to move it outside of the government system and.
How how much do you think people should understand that?
Like what you said, the finite supply but also the issuance,
right? It cannot be debased like that.
They have to understand how that is enforced, right?
With all the incentives within the miners and and.
Right. So I think there's sort of two
things, right? One is understanding crypto in
general, right? Because Bitcoin works the same
as all other cryptos, more or less, right?
Whether it's Ethereum or anything, right?
You have a wallet. Usage.
Yes, in terms of the usage, right.
And then there, then, then there's also.
Why is this particular 1 special?
Right, yes, exactly. That that's that's really the.
So the first thing is just can do you understand wallets?
And do you understand see phrases and do you do you
understand those things? Now that's a that's the first
step, right. So people have to get over that
hump. Not obvious, right?
Because like, people don't understand where is my Bitcoin?
Is it stored inside the Ledger somewhere?
Is it like people? People don't understand that,
right? They have a hard time even
understanding what it is that it is.
Comparing it to an existing experience right there.
Yeah. Their concept is my.
The money I see in my. Banking concept is the wallet is
the wallet, You know, yeah, this wallet has, well, I don't have
any dollars in this wallet, but it has, it can't have dollars.
So if they leave, they're either in the wallet, they're out out
of the wallet, but they're they're not in two wallets at
the same time, right. That that that doesn't exist
with with cash, right. It's in one wallet, but Bitcoin
can be in three wallets at the same time.
So, you know, I think that's from a conceptual layer,
conceptual level. People, a lot of people just
don't understand that. And I think it takes a while to
really understand that. To be honest.
I don't, you know, I think a lot of and and Bitcoin is
particularly particularly tricky because they change the ad, you
change the addresses, you know the the setup of Bitcoin's a
little odd, you know, I would say, yeah, there's.
There's so many layers to understanding as to why.
There's a lot of features work to to what Bitcoin is, right.
So I think, you know, it takes a certain takes a while.
But then there's then there's sort of the, OK, well, why is
this? Why is this thing, why is this
different from say, Solana? Right.
Well, there's no, there's no company behind it.
There's no Solana Foundation. Bitcoin, there is kind of
Bitcoin Foundation, but there there's no foundation that's in
charge of Bitcoin, right. So there's nobody who says,
well, you know, we're going to change the rules of Bitcoin.
We're going to do this. So that's another whole layer
that I think people get really they have a hard time with.
And and I think, you know, I mean I'm honestly not that many
people really understand it to be honest.
But but they understand that they they do understand that the
price is going up and they understand that people are
saying this is the one And so you know and they listen to
people like you and me, you know and and they're they're like,
OK, these guys seem to be passionate about it.
They seem to they seem to you know be articulating that this
is different from some other cryptocurrency.
So you know. And so why do you?
How would you explain why this is such a big concept and the
future of money? Like what?
Why should people pay attention? I saw you tweet.
You know, like something along the lines and I'm maybe
butchering, but you know, like you have to pay attention, like
you cannot miss this. Like if you're missing this, now
it's just your own like. Right.
Well, look, I mean attention, you know, you know, it's it if
we're right, right, if we bitcoiners are right.
And I think I think we are right.
But like, you know, if this is going to become the future world
money, right then if you don't get involved at year 15 of the
future of world money, you kind of missed pretty much the
biggest thing that that that's going to change the world
economy. You know, going forward, I I
don't see anything that's going to be bigger than that, right.
Because if if if the entire money supply changes to to a
world where we're running Bitcoin and if that happens
within the next, say 20 years, well, the difference between you
not getting involved now and getting involved 20 years from
now is, I mean it's it's going to mean completely night or day
as to kind of whether you retire, for example.
You know what I mean? You still may retire, but you
know, it's an amazing opportunity, right?
What? I wanted to say not as
advertised. Not as advertised.
You could still survive. I mean, I I think you'll do
fine. But like you know it it it's
probably the single biggest wealth creation event for
people, especially your age, is there's going to be one decision
did did they did they get orange spilled or not?
Yeah, so. Why do you think it's so hard
for people? I totally agree.
What I sometimes think is the fact that we are living in a
time where something so big is developing.
That's already hard for people to like get right, like big, big
things that happened in history. They are history.
We read about them right. They seem far away from us.
We we seem far removed from that.
But the fact that we are actually living through it, I
think sometimes that's also what drives people to kind of like
ignoring it or saying, like, yeah, well, you're talking in
this big way that doesn't really make sense, right?
They cannot just, they cannot, They are not able to wrap their
head around the fact that this is the invention of a new,
better money basically, right. And something.
That creates the cornerstone of kind of, you know, government,
economics, business, everything, right.
So you know, that's The thing is like you said, well, So what
money. OK, so it's like a new PayPal,
OK, that does that's not going to change the world, right?
A new PayPal is not going to change the world, right.
But a new thing where everybody's going to be stuck to
the system of like really honest money, where governments can't
print and where, you know, everybody who does go into debt
is going to you just can't keep on racking up debts forever
either. That's fundamentally going to
change everything. So I think it's it's hard to I
think you can understand that it's going to happen.
But I think it's so it's it's so revolutionary that I think most
people think, yeah, it can't possibly happen, but not in my
lifetime, right? Exactly, yeah.
Yeah. I mean, they're like, yeah.
And and I think, you know, you know, I was having this
conversation on spaces with some, some people from Europe,
from England. And they're like, well, you
know, people, a lot of people in Europe sort of believe that the
government's going to take care of them, right?
Like the government's going to provide my pension, the
government's going to do this, government's going to take care
of me. And you know, I think that's
probably an incorrect assumption.
You know, we're seeing that in the same thing in the US You
know, government's going to pay pay for my Social Security.
No, the government's not going to.
There will not be any Social Security.
You don't. That's just a lie, you know, for
the next. In America for the next 300
years probably or so maybe. Sorry, in America probably for
for the next 3-4 hundred years if you look at you know how many
trillion of unfunded liabilities.
Yeah, I mean, they can't. Well, they can't pay it.
That's never going to be and they can't.
And those Medicare benefits and the Social Security benefits are
not they. They do not have money for that.
And so the system is kind of bankrupt, but we're all
pretending that it's not. And so there's got to be,
there's got to be a fundamental change to the system and that
change is coming and and bitcoin's going to be part of
that change, right. So it it's a really big change
and I think a lot of people would rather, you know, it's a
little bit like thinking about your your own death, right.
It's not particularly pleasant thinking that you're not going
to be around, you know, 100 years from now, but you're not
going to be around 100 years from now, you know what I mean?
And. It doesn't make it less true,
right? So you're feeling about?
It doesn't make it feel you're exactly there's nobody has ever
lived beyond 123 years old that's the maximum a human being
And you know we've had you know 10 billion of us going to walk
the earth and nobody's lived beyond 123 that we that's in
recorded history. And look I think we're going to
this system is also going to fail and and you know I if not
thinking about it doesn't doesn't make it not happen so
it's going to happen and and kind of bitcoins your solution.
You know and you know it's just a question of how much do you
want to hedge your bets. Maybe you maybe you sort of say
well OK Freddie kind of 10% believe you.
OK great. Well 10%'s probably probably
enough. You don't you don't need to be
100% believer you know you just you need to be a little bit of a
believer. You know, we're still
sufficiently early that if you kind of believe a little bit, I
think you're going to be OK You don't have to put all your eggs
in the Bitcoin basket, but you know it it it really makes no
sense to have no coins, I think, at this.
Point I think the fact that this is so big, combined with the
weird perception of people that it's too late and all these
things that I think that makes a lot of people not pay attention,
right? Like well, because Brahm and
Fred are talking about it, yeah, they're only talking about it
because they have Bitcoin, by the way.
I always then think, right, Of course that is my skin in the
game. It would be weird if I didn't
have Bitcoin and talked about how good Bitcoin was, but
anyway, but the point is more like people think they are too
late, but how are you too late to a new money, right?
And that's kind of ties into like how big?
You think look how far can you zoom out.
I think part of The thing is like you you it's it's hard
without looking at sort of quantitative numbers of how how
how much this is catching on. You know and that's one of the
things I've been kind of doing on Twitter recently is I've I
really, you know I really been focusing on kind of trying to
explain to people about these power laws and not not just
about power laws of price but like power laws of adoption,
right. So you know Bitcoin at the end
of the day it is growing almost exponentially.
It's it's growing like a weed. OK.
And and basically, you know, 25% a year, there's more Bitcoin
users every year. And it doesn't matter whether
bitcoin's going price is going up or down, the usage is
increasing, right. And there's all these ways of
measuring that. You can measure people who have
one Bitcoin or people who have 110th of a Bitcoin or addresses
that have 100th of a Bitcoin or even addresses that have 10
Bitcoin. And you see these these things
are growing at a sort of a geometric rate, right?
And so there's, you know, it really is, there is no
uncertainty about it. It's just this thing's growing.
It's sort of like population growth in a country like, you
know, India, right? Population growth in Netherlands
is not growing, but population in India is growing or Mexico
it's growing every year. It's growing at you know
whatever 7% a year and you know I think the we're dealing with
sort of an inevitability of the growth and adoption of Bitcoin
that that's that's the that's really the basis.
Now this is also growing in terms of price.
It's also growing in a very consistent way, but it's a
little harder to really appreciate and understand that
because it's happening in this logarithmic kind of way and we
have very bad intuition for logarithmic growth.
Can you explain a bit on that? Like what's?
The main thing to understand, let's just say if people like if
you ask most people who are not in Bitcoin, or even people who
are in Bitcoin, you say explain, explain the price of Bitcoin,
they'd be like, well there was back in the day, a long, long
time ago, Bitcoin was really cheap, right?
Like you were saying, right? You know, 2013, it was like a
couple $100, right? You can buy Bitcoin for $200,
right? And then so there was this
prehistory where it was very cheap.
And then in 2017 it kind of went from $1000 to $20,000, right?
Almost 20,000. Then it crashed and then it was
like dead. And then it went in late 2020 it
rose again from the dead and then it went to $60,000 and then
it stayed there for about a year, went down and went back
up. It hit 60,069 thousand in the
second peak, then it crashed and then it did nothing for three
years it died and then last year it went back up.
Well that doesn't sound like a like a straight line at all,
right. Like that's that's not, that's
sort of like sounds like a very risky kind of investment that
probably too risky for most people, right.
Like especially somebody my age, right.
They'd be like yeah, I don't need that that sounds like way
too much volatile just complete risky casino, you know.
But if you look at it on logarithmic space and you say,
great, let's look at the logarithm of Bitcoin price,
right, which the logarithm is, is a a good way that you can put
a a graph of Bitcoin price over a very wide time scale, right.
So from when Bitcoin was at $0.10, right?
So the logarithm is -1 at $0.10, right to right now where
Bitcoin, let's say it's roughly $100,000, not quite 100,000 yet,
but you know 100,000 would be 10 to the power 6, the logarithm of
it in base 5:50. So you went from -1 to +6,
right? So you look at that And now the
trick is look at time also on a logarithmic basis.
So look at time starting at the genesis block and 15 years from
that, from there, so 10 years. That left, that's one, right?
Because 10 to the power of 110 to the power one is 10, right.
And so you know, you start at zero, you go to a little bit
beyond one, Now you're at, you know, 1.4, right, 1.3, you know.
And so if you look at time that way and logarithm price, now you
see, whoa, it's a complete straight line.
Yeah, it's very clear. Once you see it.
You're like, I can't Unsee that it's completely a straight line.
And now it wobbles around the straight line, but it's very
clear that it's growing linearly.
Not possible that it's random, right.
Yeah. And I think, you know, there's
not, you know, not that many people have seen that graph,
including not that many bitcoiners, right.
Yeah. And so once you see that graph,
you're like, oh, hmm, that's odd.
Why is this thing that went up from $0.10 to 100,000?
So it went up 7 orders of magnitude, right?
How? How could something like grow up
in such a consistent way? And the answer is it's a power
law. It's it's a it's part of these
power laws that exist in nature all over the place, right?
Yeah. And.
So, yeah, sorry to ask you a question about it.
Like I'm, I'm talking to Giovanni in two days, so that's
great. So we'll dive deeper, but I
think the essence of the power law is like, I think there's
there's a great example and I want to say it correctly, but I
think it's like the like how the size of the heart of an animal
is correlated to its weight or its size in a certain way,
right, like that. Eventually, So if you look at.
Stuff like that. The mass, the mass of an element
of an the mass of an animal, right.
Measured in kilograms, right. Yeah, and you measure the
logarithm of the mass of an animal, and on the other axis,
you put the metabolic rate, which is how much energy does
that animal need to stay alive, right?
Well, it turns out you need 100 watts to stay alive.
So you you require, you and I both require about the same
amount of energy as a light bulb to keep going, right?
And all this food is just to produce 100 watts.
That's it. That's what we did.
But if you look at that relative to time, you'll see that it's
the three quarter power. So it's a sublinear growth,
right. It's a sublinear power law and
that so if you can, if you double the size of the animal,
you do not double the, you only have to you only increase the a
metabolic rate by 75%, right. So the bigger the animal, the
more efficient it is. And it it actually, it works
for, you know, even like bacteria all the way up to like
blue whales, yeah. And there's.
Also, I guess a line. Yeah.
And there's also examples of how cities grow in their GDP.
Or yeah, but even number of patents per capita, for example,
things like that. Right.
Wow. But yeah, and so the the the
biggest question I have there, I think what I like about it.
And it's also why I started talking to Giovanni.
I saw his post on Reddit and then I.
Went happy that you're talking to.
Him I went down to power law rabbit hole which was
fascinating so. But what I find difficult with
Bitcoin and I hope to formulate the question right like I see it
as of course it's a network growing right.
It's a network of participants growing.
So it's kind of like similar to perhaps kind of like Moore's law
type type ish. But where?
Where does the power law of Bitcoin come from?
Is that because it's basically like a mind virus, it's like a
social adoption thing? Is it the human behavior type of
element there or is it because Bitcoin is so rooted in in math
and physics as well, like just how how that is engineered does,
does it make any sense to identify those two or like how?
How do you see that? Because that's why.
Why? Why would the number of patents
per user? Why?
Why would the number of patents increase sub linearly with the
amount of users it does? OK, sorry, it's super linearly.
So the amount of patents grows by 20%.
It's true, It's a fact. It's a fact, right?
Why is that so? Why?
Why do these numbers show up? I don't know.
It's just a normal growth kind of curve.
Everything has. Either they grow sub linearly or
super linearly at some rate, yeah.
But is it irrelevant then to talk about this human behavior?
Because the one thing I think about with the power loss of
Bitcoin, right, let's say the in this bull run we go to 500 K
plus, right? There will be a bigger number of
people that will pay attention to Bitcoin because of that than
the amount of people that did at, you know, $0.10 to $10 or
whatever. Probably not, but there will be,
but. That's the point.
That's the point, right? Not on a percentage basis,
right. Exactly.
Yeah. So actually what these power
laws suggest is that there's nothing new under the sun,
right. So and everybody's like, well
ETFs are big, Fred, like I'm like, well, so was Mount Docks
when it came out, right. That was a big thing for Bitcoin
to have an exchange, right. It's you know what I mean or but
at that. Point within that context, with
that amount of users, you say like percent.
So it's not about the absolute numbers, it's more about the
percentages. It's a look, all these things
there's there. It doesn't really matter that
there is now ETFs or. It seems like that.
It's just a general function of time that doesn't depend on
anything else. There's only one variable in it,
which is time. That's the only variable.
Yeah. So basically nothing else.
Yeah. So this is what Jeff Booth says,
right? As long as it stays
decentralized and secure, it will be chugging along and
people will adopt it as it goes, basically.
Yeah, I mean it's there's nothing, there's nothing you or
I can do that's going to change that or or anybody else or ETFs
or it's just a normal growth pattern, right.
And I feel like you know the question is, is sort of why is
it a power law? Well, because I think it's kind
of a natural type phenomenon, right.
It's a, it's a network type thing, but it's it's like cities
or networks or you know animals or networks.
We're networks of cells, right. That's kind of what we are.
We're, you know, we have, we have all these little cells that
make us up trillions of them. And for those cells, we we don't
exist, right. They're just like they're doing
their own thing. Exactly.
And that's true. You know, and so Bitcoin itself
is, you know, the growth of Bitcoin as as a store of value
and stuff is, is it's just, it's clearly has its own clear path
and other other cryptocurrencies don't, right.
So if you look at Litecoin, for example, the price of Litecoin
is not a power law. OK, Right.
And I mean the price of Litecoin, Litecoin was is lower
than it was in 2017 right now. Yeah.
And would you agree? That Litecoin is not growing as
a power law. So yeah, you know.
But would you agree then? Do you agree then that the price
is like a proxy of the adoption also or not?
I think, yeah, I think there's all there's there's, that's the
crazy thing, which is that the price of Bitcoin was known to be
a power law first, right? But then, you know, the hash
rate of Bitcoin is also a power law.
And furthermore the the amount of the usage of Bitcoin's a
power law. So there's all the, there's
power loss everywhere in Bitcoin.
It's not just prop price, it's there's all all kinds of power
laws. In fact, there's even power laws
of power laws. So if you look at the amount of
Bitcoin that the growth rate of Bitcoin for Bitcoin wallets,
having one Bitcoin, 110th of a Bitcoin, 100th of a Bitcoin,
etcetera, that's also a power law of of Bitcoin.
What I'm just trying to say is there's all these intrinsic
power laws which just tell you that you're looking at a
network, you're looking at this growth of a network.
And there's a lot of different ways you can look at it.
And there's power laws at every single one of those points,
right? Whether it's Ashray, whether
it's usage, whether it's price, it's all connected.
And so what's the biggest difference with like the classic
S curve of of technology adoption than here like is that
something we should let go? I mean, there's people that.
Don't follow. I mean it's probably ultimately
going to be an S curve, right, But we're still in the very
early phases, right. So you know, I would say roughly
Speaking of kind of like how close are we to the end 1%, you
know? Yeah.
We are at 1%, you mean, Yeah.
Maybe, maybe not even 1%, right? So I.
Agree with. I agree.
So when you look at. Too early to talk about S curve
adoption then, but. Right.
Well, a friend of mine, Steven Paranoid, He's, you know, he's
an astrophysicist, right? And he's actually even model
like S curves that actually look like power laws in the very
early phase, they're identical to power laws and then they turn
into S curves, right. So you can model these things
with an S curve. But realistically we're probably
10 years away from the S curve stuff even starting to become an
S You know it looks, it looks like that and then it sort of
has an inflection point, it bends, right.
But we're not to that, we're not even to the, we're still in the
very early phases, you know, so we're 1% of the way in, I mean
realistically. Yeah.
And probably in terms of time where, you know, we probably
have at least one decade before we stop power law growth at all.
OK. So we're going to grow pretty
much exponentially for the next decade.
I mean very close to exponential.
And would this be your main argument against people who say
you know Bitcoin is too volatile for to be a predictable,
predictable store value? It kind of depends on what your
time frame is then, right? If.
No, I mean, I think it's sort of like this.
It's sort of like, here's the thing, let's if you took, if
you, if you're looking at an asset that is sort of growing at
some linear rate, right, and it is oscillating around this
linear rate, I would say, yeah, it's way too volatile, right?
Like why would I want an asset if I said, OK, I'm going to, you
can either invest in something that's going to go up 10% a year
almost guaranteed, right? Or you can get an asset that's
going to grow 40% a year ±4040%. Now you're like, well, I'll take
the 10%. I'll take the 10% for sure,
right? Like my house on the canals in
Netherlands, right? That thing's probably going to
grow up 10% a year, maybe 7%, right?
That sounds a lot safer than something that's going to might
go down 40%, right? But that's not the correct way
of looking at it. It's not like it's a linear
thing that's going to be, it's actually an exponential thing,
right? So because it's exponential, not
linear, right? It's not just volatility around
a linear path, it's volatility around an exponential path.
So if somebody said, well, you have this exponential asset
which has some volatility around an exponential path, do you want
that you should be like, of course I want that.
It's great. This thing is going to be in the
next Microsoft, right? I'm buying Microsoft in 1986.
Great. Like I don't care what the
volatility is, if I buy Microsoft at 8 and around 86,
you know, Microsoft went up you know, 3000 times from 1986 till
now, you know, so Bitcoin is, is, is, it's on a very high
growth trajectory, right. And it's not just a linear
growth, it's it's going to grow a lot compounded really high,
right. So, you know, this is something
that's going to go up 10X20X from where we are now.
And so because it's going to go up 10X20X, you're going to get a
massive amount of volatility because it's growing at the
Super linear way, you know, not just even X ^2, it's growing at
X to the power 6. So you know, if you see
something that's growing at X to the power six, you absolutely
should own that thing. Yeah.
So what's? You, you just have to get it in
your head. This thing's growing at X to the
power of 6. OK, I'm going to own that way,
you know? Yeah.
That's, that's huge. So what do you think about then
last question about this, like people talk a lot about, you
know, diminishing returns. Like if they look at the
previous cycles you see like there was like third, I don't
know, X 1000% up, then X 100% up, then like 110% up.
Now is that going to go down? Because like in my mind, I think
I, I, I think that I don't know if they were going to go down.
Because at one point, if the adoption grows and people
understand what this is, my logical reasoning is less people
will sell into, you know, the boot, you know, the boom and
bust that I mean, I can. Tell you what, statistically
it's doing right? Statistically, the volatility,
well, it's growing in an exponential rate, the the a
quasi exponential rate. So power law is very similar to
an exponential rate except the exponential curve is growing
down. So in 2017 the growth rate was
100%. Now the growth rate's like 45%,
OK. In 20 years the growth rate will
be 20%. That's kind of what the, the
power law tells you. So it's still going to be 30%
growth in you know in 10 years. So it's still so.
So it's still going to be a very, very high growth thing for
10 years. You know you you're getting a
very, very high growth thing. The volatility is going down a
little bit, but not that much, right.
So the volatility has gone from .3 in log terms to .25, not even
that much. So I think that realistically we
can expect, you know, high, high volatility and high growth for
the next decade. And by the way, because we're
now looking at these numbers on a much bigger scale, you know, I
think it's going to look like it's going to be crazy.
I mean, it's going to be like Bitcoin went from 500,000 to
200,000, you know what I mean? That's going to appear like
people are just not going to get their their heads around that
because it's going to seem so crazy going from 500,000 to
200,000. But that's only, you know,
that's one standard deviation, right?
That's like 1 standard deviation is I dropped by half.
OK. That's not not terrible.
You know what I mean? Especially if I if I overshot on
the upside, I might go from 500,000 to 125,000.
Yeah, I think that's what Giovanni says too, right?
Like his downside is like half of the of of the trend line and
his upside is like 1.5 ish or something, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
But I mean, we could go, you know, we could go well above the
trend line, right? We could go two times and
there's twice we've gone 2X the trend line, which then puts a
downside to 75% drop, right. So you could go down, you know,
you could go up conceivably to 500,000 then drop to 125,000.
It's really hard to get an intuitive number without looking
at the the actual math and looking at the thing in in log
space. Your intuition will be wrong all
the time. Yeah, I think this is a great
tool to help you remember what this is, right, to emphasize
what this is, because I think you can study Bitcoin and you
get to a certain understanding. I mean, this is what I do like,
I I still feel it when the price goes down a bit, but then I just
reiterate like, oh, this is the stuff I know and nothing's
changed, right? Like nothing fundamentally.
Changed it's sort of like. This is the same thing.
If you learn to fly a plane, you you have to learn to trust the
instruments a little bit. You know what I mean or driving
a car you you know you're you look at the speedometer you look
at like the RPM you sort of see you have to like trust a little
bit and like OK this is this is what I the past behavior.
This is what I expect. Now I I have to learn to trust
the instruments a little bit and I think that's that's where
you're going to get freaked out. If you, if you don't have any
basis for this stuff, you're just going to, you're just going
to be like, OK, went down a lot. Looks like it's going to 0.
I'm out. Yeah, all right.
I have another. I have another subject I I saw
you tweet about gold and you know, some people argue against
Bitcoin and say, you know, at least you can hold gold
physically and you can store it physically.
Like, you cannot do that with Bitcoin.
Like, I would argue that Bitcoin is like metaphysical, you know,
But in fact it's also tangible because you know it.
It's verifiably, it's just math. And the fact that letters and
numbers represent all the Bitcoin there is, like in some
way it is tangible. And I can write down a private
key with a pen on the paper and that can represent real like you
can hold a billion dollars in your hands.
Like how how do you view this when people say this like I I?
Mean I It just seems to me the person who said that is is the
head of Goldman Sachs's wealth management unit.
So it's like something is wrong if she thinks that you can't
hold Bitcoin. It just to me it's like it's
insane that somebody who has that position right who's
advising literally trillions of dollars of money that is that
she does not understand even that you can hold Bitcoin in a
wallet. Yeah, well, it's, you know, it's
it's the amount of of just lack of understanding is just
unbelievable to me, you know? Is this, is this, as a Wall
Street veteran, is this on purpose?
Like, do they not understand? Like, I I agree, right.
Like if this is your life, if this is your work and there's a
new form of money. Yeah, that is adopted by your
biggest competitors in a sense. How?
How I I can I I mean, I worked in Treadfy as well.
I cannot imagine there's a research team researching this,
right? Like, are they so ignorant?
Yeah. Really.
Or is this this is just show look like what?
Else would I say, that's what I mean.
You know, there's a lot of people who who don't, they don't
like to get their hands dirty. You know, I'll tell you a funny
story. I sold a company to a social
network to Viacom, OK. And it was a pretty significant,
you know, amount of money like mid 8 figures, you know and you
know, and I talked to the CFO of Viacom, Viacom's MTV, right.
And I'm like, have you ever tried our product?
And he's like, no. I got like, I'm like he goes,
no, I don't do that. I don't actually try things.
And I'm like, I know, but I've been, I've been like, in due
diligence for like 6 months with you.
We do all these meetings. You do this, you know, dozens of
lawyers, all this stuff. You we've worked on, all these
fine prints of this. Have you never even actually
created a profile? I don't care if it's a real one
under your own name or whatever, but have you, you know, no,
absolutely not. I don't.
I'm not a guy doing social networking.
And I think the same thing is true for Goldman Sachs.
I mean I guarantee you that woman has not created a Bitcoin
wallet. Now she can pontificate all she
wants about Bitcoin wallets, but she doesn't know what a Bitcoin
wallet is. She's never actually stored
Bitcoin. Otherwise she wouldn't be saying
that she it's a it's a it's typical you know I I'll leave
that to some younger people they'll they'll do the actual
work. I'll just look at read some
article and I'll make some statements.
Yeah. So but how?
Yeah. Well, how do you view BlackRock
getting into this? Like my idea here is I I kind of
see the the the Bitcoin adoption of well, at least a part of Wall
Street kind of like a Trojan horse in a sense.
Like for me, it's very fascinating that a huge winner
of the Fiat financial system, you know, is already one leg
into this new money system. I mean, like, usually the
winners move last, right? They cash, they milk their cash
cow and then they move on kind of like, well, this Goldman
Sachs lady or Vanguard, right? Like these people, they they're
just pushing this away. But I think that's what's
British huddle. I heard him once say, like, if
you don't think there's like a team of 50 people figuring out
what this Bitcoin thing is for the past two years, you're five
years at BlackRock. You know you're crazy.
And I definitely agree. Like, they totally understand
what this is. Of course they can make money
off it, so they make a product for it, etc.
But still, the fact that they actually moved here for me is a
very big signal because the winners usually move last,
right. So how do you see this
comparison to like these these firms that don't move and
actually talk against it and these other firms?
Well, if you hear Larry Fink talk as.
Well, totally. Well, especially if you listen
to him talk like five years ago. Exactly.
Yes. Right.
Because he completely has 180. You know, apparently it's some
young guy working at BlackRock who who weren't spelled in.
Yeah, you know, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
You know, look, I think it's, you know, it is like this with
somebody, you know, it's a personal thing.
You know, I think Larry Fink personally got it.
You know, he personally understood this stuff, whereas I
don't think he personally understood it five years ago,
you know what I mean? So I do think I do think he he
he was orange filled in the in the kind of conventional sense
and he was like ah hmm OK and not just for Bitcoin right.
But I think like you know he he has this idea of tokenization
and you know stocks also on you know on on the blockchain which
you know I I don't think even is a bad idea long longer term.
But what I'm saying is like, I think, I think he, he realized
that this is, this is, this is the future and he better get on
board and own the future, yeah, before somebody else decides to
do it to him, so. Well, maybe easier in some sense
for him that he's the founder of this firm, of course.
And then, you know, the woman at Goldman Sachs or the CEO of
Thank Art is not. So maybe there's also a
different kind of like structure there of course as to.
I mean, I've met Larry Fink. I mean I I actually worked for
him for a day, you know, so back in the day, so yeah.
So look, I mean he's he's a very, very smart guy and you
know he is, he is, he's a visionary, not just and he's a
visionary. He was a visionary in terms of
financialization of assets you know creating the first CMO that
was that was an absolutely masterful move.
You know doing that with Lunari, it was at Solomon at the time
where I was and you know and then embracing ETFs you know and
buying I shares, he bought I shares from Barclay, right.
So you know that was seeing that ETFs were the future was was you
know critical right. And so I think you know it it's
it's it's similar to Bezos realizing that e-commerce is
going to be huge, right. But when he did, I think, you
know, I think he has the right view of wait a second, what's
the most important thing? ETFs are the most important
thing. Boom.
I'm going to, I'm going to get an ETF, I'm going to provide
super low cost friction ETFs for everything.
Brilliant. So I mean that's, you know, he,
he, he, he saw that he did that, right.
And that's what kind of BlackRock made its mark really,
you know, as, you know the ETF Superstore, right?
Well, and if you keep on this view of of that you have of
Larry Fink like I have AI. Don't know if it's a strange
theory, but I have a certain theory and maybe it's too big
and it doesn't make sense. But what I'm thinking from my
point of view, but I think you can add to this like the, the,
you know, the speculative attack story of George Soros and the
Bank of England, right? Larry Fink knows what's up with
the dollar, I assume. Right.
He totally understands this, right?
Would you say, could this already be like some sort of
speculative attack on the dollar in a sense that he has this like
one leg in this new money system that let's say when the dollar
actually breaks, that he is already with one leg in a
certain lifeboat, which also gives him a certain amount of
influence, right. I mean, yesterday we saw the US
government again sell 30,000 Bitcoin like they're they're,
they're selling it like. Crazy.
Could this be? Something like that.
Look, he knows more than anybody else, right?
Because kind of when QE happened, right?
And then when when you know the latest kind of, you know, the
latest version of QE came, they said hey BlackRock, you're going
to do all the bond buying for us, right.
And so he, he's got the front row seat so he sees the problem
way before we do and and much closer than we do.
So, yeah, I I don't, I don't know if he's trying to attack
the dollar so much as I think he has a better view of kind of the
problems in the current system than than anybody.
And and I think you know, I think he realizes that this is
going to be a very, very significant asset class for the
next 10 years. I think that these guys think 10
years in advance. You know and I think sort of
like the Japanese used to do those you know five year plans
and stuff, I think they've now shifted.
They're like, OK, Bitcoin and and crypto, right.
I think he's definitely thinking both and, you know,
tokenization, you know, let's, let's see, you know, if they
don't allow ETH this year, fine. We'll just wait until next year
or two years from now when they, you know, maybe it's the new
head of the SEC, maybe it's the new president, whatever it is,
Yeah, but I definitely think that, I mean, I think he's in it
for the long game, right. And.
And so, yeah, yeah, I think it may perhaps attack It was a was
a not. Really attack?
Too hard word was a too hard word.
But it's it's it is a certain strategy against it, I'd say if
you adopt this new money, right. But it's just interesting to
think about. I think it's just interesting he
moved anyway. So yeah, for me, that's a big.
I definitely think that if you had any question about whether
it's going to be, is Bitcoin going to survive, the fact that
BlackRock has put their, you know, their stake in the ground
tells you that 100% is going to survive.
Like, yeah, there's no doubt in my mind, right?
Yeah. I agree and this is also how I
always saw Bitcoin. It's an well, it was an
experiment I'd say and it would go to 0 or it would be like the
black hole value type theory and it's not going to.
To 0 anymore. So I agree with that.
But yeah, I think the outlook should be long, right?
You should have like a long term vision.
And that's actually, I want to ask you a question about this
because I saw you tweeted something that I really agreed
with and you said I was a tread fight, Deegan like a degenerate.
Then slowly I kicked the habit and instead of trading or making
bets I moved into long term investing.
I also saw that you had like a crypto related project before
with a token. I mean I made a crypto market
research platform that that failed before.
You know like like we dabbled around in this too.
But how did you move from being a Deegan, A degenerate to be
like a long term investor? Etcetera.
You know, I, I don't know for crypto, you know, called Lynx.
And so I was very and I was convinced back in 2018-2019 that
you know if the sort of the multi coin Solana type thesis
fast, super fast blah blah blah is is good.
I'm still not anti token or anti any of these things.
I think you know I'm not I just think that I'm I'm sort of a I'm
a Bitcoin maximalist in that I think no other coin is going to
is going to be money, right. There's no, there's no
possibility that, you know, people start, you know, having
prices in ETH in the next 10 years.
You know, that's that's nobody's going to do oil settlements in
ETH. So it's not going to happen,
right? Or or Solana or anything else,
right. Those are not going to become
world money. They are going to be useful.
There's a lot of use for some things like this.
They're just not money, right? And so the way I look at it is,
you know, a lot of these things are actually useful for.
I mean, even NFTS are quite people like them, right?
They're they're useful. They can be.
They can be used for art. They can be used for, for a lot
of things potentially, right. We're still at the very
beginning of that. You know, like Larry thinks
there's enough tokenization. You know, I have a friend who's
doing, you know, a property thing, Natalie from Propy,
right? She's doing, you know real
estate on the blockchain. Yeah, it's still very early
days, but she's doing it. She's, you know they they've had
apartment buildings or houses that have been sold, you know
entirely, entirely the whole, the whole chain of command is
you know title everything on on blockchain.
So I'm not anti token and I think, you know a lot of people
are saying, well Fred, you're a maxi, you can't support other
tokens. No, you can.
It's just I I just don't think they're going to compete for
money. Right.
That's a different thing. They're different thing and it's
this much smaller thing, right. Like to me, like creating a new
form of money for the entire planet.
Well, that's, you know, that's $100 trillion prize right now.
Creating a token for NFTSI don't know, maybe that's a couple 100
million. Maybe, you know, like if you're,
if you're lucky, like Open C you know what I mean?
It's not to say it's bad you can certainly do it.
But I I I think it's not I think the you know you have to look at
what's where is the eye on the price you know so I think you
know and and I think the the the big the big prize is Bitcoin
right. That's the prize is money.
Now if you have a 5% of your money is spread around a bunch
of stuff, you buy some NFTS for art.
Do whatever you want. Fine, great.
Do that. You know what I mean?
Like I'm not. I'm not a a maximalist in the
kind of Spanish Inquisition sense of the word.
You know, I I don't, I don't want to like, sorry man, you
bought an NFT bad. Like, no, buy a buy a little,
eat. So what, You know, use Meta Mac.
It's not the end of the world, right?
But I I don't think it's, it's a great use of your money to
invest, especially if somebody doesn't own any Bitcoin, if
they're buying some meme coin or something else.
It's kind of a mistake right now, you know?
If if you own a lot of Bitcoin and you're also like playing
around, you want to do something else.
You want to buy Dogecoin? Fine, buy Dogecoin.
You know what I mean? Like, have fun.
You know, like it. It should.
You might view it in. You should view it in different
ways I think. Like you have to view in
different ways. And also it's like and the other
part of being a D Gen. is trying to time Bitcoin.
Like really bad idea. I don't know.
Yeah, I agree. You know, like trying trying to
buy and sell Bitcoin constantly is just not a good idea.
Why do you think people are so degenerate with their money or
like on this gambling? Five in a sense, like why?
Why is? That I think, I think people
seem to think that they can outsmart the market.
You know, and and I think it's, I think it's a combination of
greed and fear. You know, I think people, people
think, oh, I'm going to be able to sell Bitcoin and then buy it
back cheaper. Well, generally speaking.
I did that twice. Yeah.
Two times. Bad idea, yeah.
Yeah, Well, there you go. Did you?
Yeah. Yeah.
So I mean, I think generally speaking, if you sell it, you're
probably not going to be able to buy it back cheaper.
You know, like you know, you you probably think you will, but
then it it'll go down, maybe it'll go down, but then you're
going to be convinced yourself that you shouldn't buy it until
it goes back up above where you bought it.
And then you're going to be like, oh damn, yeah, you know,
so I I just don't. I think psychologically it's
it's it's it's a really bad idea to kind of actively trade this
stuff. I don't think it's a terrible
idea to spend your Bitcoin. You know, like you know
ultimately you ultimately you're going to be spending it somehow,
right? You're going to be using it to
to do something with it, right. But that's different than trying
to sell it and buy it back, right.
So if if I'm like, OK, great. Now it's time for me to buy a
house because I just got married and and I needed to sell a
little bit of my Bitcoin to buy the house.
OK, Well, sell a little bit of Bitcoin.
I mean you got to live. You got to, you know what I
mean? I I I think that makes sense And
you know, I think make, you know, try to postpone it as much
as you can, but you know also you're going to live.
You know you're not living forever anyways.
You know so. That's true, but what would be
your biggest, what would be your biggest tip for someone?
Like how can someone develop a this long term view and
basically also like trust themselves with their
understanding of what We're talking about Bitcoin, right?
But at one point you, I think the goal.
Is to get to it. Don't use leverage.
Do not use leverage. Right.
Yeah because if you're if you have too much of something, if
you're using leverage I think you're going to you're
psychologically you can you can get wrecked too easily.
The second thing is I wouldn't put all your money in Bitcoin.
And the reason I say that is I still think your best
percentage, it the best for kind of percentage of your asset,
like even fully invested, to me, I think that's like 70% Bitcoin,
you know what I mean? Like, even if I'm a young
person, I would keep 30% in cash.
I'd actually put it in like something super safe, like a
bank account, you know? And the reason is, is that
there's always unexpected things in life.
You know, like whether it's, you know, you, you get sick, you get
hit by a car or something. You know something happens, You
know you have a kid and the kid needs some operation or
something, right. And or you lose your job, right.
And you have three months where you're not working right.
I think I think a lot of, especially a lot of young people
underestimate those risks and those risks are real.
So having cash that you can sell, that you can use beyond
just Bitcoin is is good because you never know if if something
happens like that and you get caught in like 2022, you're
going to sell all your Bitcoin, right.
To pay for it. Yeah, I agree.
I don't think it's a great I I mean, I think you have to
realize that things can, you know, things can happen and it's
good. And so, you know, one of the
things that I've done in my life is I've always had a very
barbell strategy, you know, where I have some stuff that's
very risky, like a start up, right.
And you know that that's risky and takes cash.
And then I have a lot of cash on the side too.
You know, just because you know, I don't, I don't need to have,
like if you're 70% in Bitcoin, you can have all the rest in
cash, no problem. You don't need to invest the
rest. Put the rest in the bank
account, You know what I mean. Well, I'm at 9010, so.
OK, well 9010 it it look, if you can handle 9010 good.
It's depends like if you have a job and you have everything else
you, you know 9010's probably OK.
If you don't you know if you're just like counting on this
Bitcoin. And I just think a lot of people
are cutting it a little too close to the edge.
You know you have to it's a personal decision.
But that's that's I think a tip that I would say is don't you
know don't try to optimize too much.
And and I would say I think these power laws and stuff are
are are good for giving people a little bit more perspective on
like numbers not for trading so much but just like you know like
to give you a little bit of belief to reinforce your belief
that wait a second if I wait five years is this thing really
going to be much higher? Probably will, right.
Probably it's going to be triple where it is today, five or more
and maybe quadruple, right. But like, you know, I think, I
think a lot of that is just giving you the conviction that
you need to hold something you know, because no matter what
Bitcoin can go down 10% in a day.
And we saw it the other day, right.
Yeah. So you know things things can
move a lot and and and and and not getting freaked out about it
is, is I think now having said that, I, you know, another tool
is just, you know, dollar, dollar, cost, average.
You know, like if you are, if you do have cash coming in
regularly, well Greg, just plot that cash into Bitcoin, you
know, yeah, that's another good tool because then you don't have
to think about it too much. Right.
So it's like, oh, I just made $1000.
Great. I'll just put put it in Bitcoin,
right? Yeah, just view it as a savings
vehicle, right? Yeah, I think.
Like a savings vehicle, right? Yeah.
And I think that makes total sense for, especially for a
young person right now. Like I think that's that's a lot
of, that's a good thing. And I would say the other thing
is just, you know, and this is something I think you become
more as a Bitcoin or you start realizing that having Bitcoin is
such a good thing to have that you, you know, you, you, you cut
down on sort of stupid expenses. Yes.
Right. Maybe I don't need a new car,
you know. Maybe I can live in my current
wherever I'm living without upgrading that, you know.
Yeah. I mean, I think buying a house,
for example, is probably a, you know, like, look, I own my
house, but I wouldn't if I was doing it right now today, and I
was, especially if I was younger, I would definitely rent
for five years as opposed to buying a house right now.
Yeah, I think it's interesting. That, this, this is what a lot
of people experience this more. They're kind of like this, this,
this frugality in some sense. They become more frugal, or at
least more aware of what things cost or what is the value of
something that I buy, like, does it add value to my life?
You know, stuff, stuff like that.
You become more. Yeah.
And there's one other thing I would say is start thinking in
Bitcoin. Yeah, you know what I mean.
Yeah, I. Don't think in terms of I have,
you know, so much dollars, but just think I've got so much.
I've got three Bitcoin, OK, I got, I got 3.1 Bitcoin.
You know, I just, yeah, I want to get to 4, you know, like how
do I get to 4? Like, you know, that's.
Also if you think about that big purchase right, if you put that
in price that into Bitcoin. I would definitely think in
Bitcoin. I think that that that is a
significant hack to helping people, you know, and I think
that's one of the big advantages of Bitcoin relative to other
things is nobody really thinks in Ethereum, but they don't
think they're like, oh, I got so much dollars of Ethereum,
nobody, nobody thinks of like I got 20 ether, you know, or I
got, I got, I got 10,000, you know, 4000 Solana, this is like
got so much dollars worth of Solana, right.
But like Bitcoin is different because you know, Bitcoin is it
really is this unit you know the units of Bitcoin.
And and the other thing I would say is definitely and I know
people, some people may not agree with this, but I would
definitely get get used to bought sent not buying and
selling, but get used to using Bitcoin wallets and transacting
with Bitcoin even if it's small amounts.
I think that's another thing I would I would recommend
everybody do you know what I mean And you know use lightning,
use Bitcoin wallets. Just be don't just put it in one
thing and just forget about it. You know I think, you know I
think getting involved a little bit and you don't have to go
crazy. You know, you don't have to.
You know, you don't have to go, you know, looking for the rest
of one restaurant in your town that accepts Bitcoin.
But it's it's not necessarily a bad idea to do that a little
bit. You know what I mean?
Well, it's fun to see the technology in action.
I try. To use it, look it's just sort
of like you need to remember it's it's one of these things is
if you don't exercise you lose muscle right?
And I think it's useful. Like it's useful to actually do
trades and send people Bitcoin and send a friend Bitcoin.
I owe you some money here. I'll give you some Bitcoin.
You know what I mean? Like I feel like people should
remember this is a peer-to-peer transaction test, you know what
I mean? So I you know I recommend people
in the US you know we have this cash app thing here and I say
everybody should use cash app and you know get get in the mode
of stuff and you know you want to buy and look I I'm in favor
of these ordinals and stuff. You know you want to buy an
ordinal or something go do it. You know and and you don't don't
spend a lot of money but just you know get get a little bit
used to things moving things in Bitcoin.
You know get familiarize yourself with block you know
mempool you know understand how Bitcoin works.
And I think that I think that once you get in I think you
really it's it you don't want to go any other place.
You know like you're you're like I like the Bitcoin world.
I like blocks. I like having a block You know
what I mean? I like I like checking block
times I like you know I like all these things and all these
things are part of Bitcoin to me.
And I think, you know, being part of that world and really
being into that world and really understanding the difference
between SegWit and taproot and these type of addresses and you
know, all this stuff will help you become a better Bitcoin, you
know? Yeah, I agree.
So I think that that's, you know, like I would use every
single Lightning wallet that exists every.
I would test out ten different wallets and you know you know
try moving some money between them.
You know, yeah try different, different custody solution.
Don't just do one and then just leave it and let it sit for two
years and then then realize you didn't actually store your words
properly or something, you know. So I think this usage is very
important and you know and join a bit Bitcoin meet up groups and
you know that that those things I think are important you know.
And I actually got my hairdresser onto Bitcoin, so now
every time I go I pay him in Bitcoin.
So. That's good.
See, that's the thing. It's, it's and it's not.
Look, even paying somebody on chain Bitcoin is not terrible.
You know, it's not, you know, the fees are actually kind of
reasonable right now. You know what I mean?
So. Yeah, I agree.
And so I I I'm, you know, I I think that I mean I love the
Bitcoin. I love the whole ecosystem of
Bitcoin. So I'm like there's nothing
about any of the part of it that I don't like you know.
And so, but I, I, I know there's a lot of people who, well, for
example, we were doing this with a space and you know this this
guy Gary Cardone, he we had this bet and he lost this bet and
this Bitcoin Beagle guy won. And then Gary's like, OK, he
goes, OK, you're paying 100,000 Sats.
And he's like, I don't know how to send 100,000 Sats.
I'm like, wait a second. Like, you got you have Bitcoin,
right? And he goes, yeah, well,
Coinbase, you know, I don't like, OK, you got to learn how
to send Bitcoin. Like you, you don't know how to
send Bitcoin. You're not a Bitcoiner.
I mean, you're what are you doing on a Bitcoin space?
You know, talking about Bitcoin for hours on the end when you
actually can't, If you can't send somebody 100,000 sats like
that, you you need to, you need to do your homework a little
bit, you know what I mean? So.
Well, I think it's it's the summary is like study Bitcoin in
breadth and and depth, right. And you, you try everything out
And I think that's also well, for me, it's what's fun.
It's like I'm learning every day.
Still, this is such a, it's such a huge thing.
And so every every day there's a new.
New topic to learn or or a thing to try out, So that's always
just very rewarding. A lot of cool tools out there
and there's a lot of you know there's a lot of there's a lot
of good projects and cool tools and and you know it's it's
interesting too and and I think that you know part of it is if
you stay interested in these things you become a better
holder of the stuff because it's like OK this this is kind of
what I'm this is all relates to my passion which is this
Bitcoin, right. Yeah.
So that's what I think. All right.
Fred, to wrap up the last
question and I ask everyone the same question, what is a core
belief you will never let go? A core belief that I will never
let go. A core belief about Bitcoin?
Anything. OK, I think my core belief is
that you really need to do it yourself and you need to.
You need to be hands on and you have to make up your own mind
and not accept other people's opinion, but just make up your
own mind about these things like you.
It's not good enough to to be like, well, Sailor said it, you
know, or so and so said it, or Fred said it, or Fred said power
law. Like no, you should, you should
100% convince yourself of whatever you're thinking.
But you have to go through all the work yourself and you have
to convince yourself and you should make up your own mind
because that's the only way you're going to have really
strong convictions, I think. I love that, Yeah.
Now that's that's kind of what? Couldn't agree more.
I'd say, yeah. Well, this is also what Bitcoin
invites you to do, right? I think that's the whole point.
Like, you don't have to believe what people like us say about
Bitcoin. The entire idea is that we
invite you so you can study it because it's so transparent that
you don't have to believe us. That's the entire point, right?
But you have to do that work as you said.
Well that's that's why I love it so much because it's it's it's
just it. Well, from my perspective it's
so mathematical. It's just so transparent and and
you know I love that every little thing is like like even
even in Ethereum they're not even sure how many ether there
are. Nobody's even sure, like,
something's wrong with that system.
Right when they can't even tell you how many there is, you know,
and. They're changing it again.
Well and. They're changing.
Like, I don't know, Like, to me there's something fundamentally
wrong. But Bitcoin is so it's black and
white and you know, there's there's no sort of real
mysteries there. It's all, you know, it's it's
it's, you know there's there's mysteries as to why it's working
the way it is. And you know, like it is kind
of, it's almost feels like it's an alien force.
You know, it's like this thing was created and it's just
working so well and it's taking out of the world in such a way I
don't know why that is exactly what why is it so?
You know, it just seems like it was just it was created once one
code changed a little bit, but not much, you know.
Yeah, I think it's because it it just works it.
Sounds so stupid. But it works and everyone can
check it out. And I think maybe to add to what
you said, like if you're studying Bitcoin, like one of
the things to keep an eye on this, you know, the halving
that's coming up, that's not just like, oh, the, you know,
the block rewards are split in half.
But this is actually like a celebration of the the fact that
we can trust the rules that are set out for this monetary
system, right. If the halving happens on the
day that we predict, that actually shows you that the
monetary policy of this system is true and enforced and adopted
by everyone who uses it, right? That's the entire point.
And yeah, I think that that's a nice illustration of I think
what we studied and now believe in so well.
Bram, it's been a great talking to you and you know, if I'm ever
in Netherlands, I'll look you up.
Hit me up. Yeah, and if you're ever in LA,
come, come by. Let's do it.
Well, thanks so much for your time in this conversation and
we'll stay in touch. OK.
Thanks, Bram. Thank you.
I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, it would be amazing
if you could rate, review and subscribe on the podcast
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I'm Bram K that's at BR AM K and if you are or know someone who
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Thanks for listening. Bye.