All right. Hey there.
This is from 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 most
relevant technology you should understand and adopt.
In this episode, I'm joined by David Branscom.
He's the Chief Commercial Officer at Rebel Mining, a
company that offers custom solutions to help enterprise
companies mine Bitcoin. He believes that with almost as
with almost any problem in energy, Bitcoin fixes this.
With experience in immersion and hydrocooling, advances in chip
technology and heat recapture innovations, David knows we are
just scratching the surface of what Bitcoin can do to make a
better future. So welcome David.
I'm happy to have you on the pod.
Thank you, Brian. Happy to be here.
Yeah, it was great meeting you in real life.
Super fun to meet people you sort of know from the Internet.
How How did you experience the Bitcoin Atlantis conference?
Oh, it was. It was good.
I mean, that kind of felt like going to the Super Bowl if
you're a Bitcoiner or, you know, maybe not the maybe the World
Cup, right, depending on what country you're in.
But I mean, people from all over the world coming, getting to
meet, like you and some other people from Europe that, you
know, I hadn't met in person. You get to see them in person.
It's a unique experience especially when you realize that
you're a lot taller in person than I than I thought on
Twitter. So it's you're you're very tall
funny comments on Twitter. Yeah.
Especially compared to other people in Madeira.
I don't know what happened but you're you're like twice as tall
as most of the average man. So who was that you took a
picture with that? Did there on Twitter do?
You put Eric stacks. Luke, Luke, Luke.
Poor Luke. Luke had shrunk, Luke had shrunk
and you had grown. So.
But it is really, it is kind of surreal.
I met Michael Saylor real briefly in the just walking
around the concourse and I grabbed him and he was nice
enough to say hello and had a whole conversation with me.
And he walked away. And I thought to myself, I was
like, I didn't get a selfie with Michael Saylor, but I literally
just had a 10 minute conversation with him about
finances and his strategy. And he was like, he was just so
very genuinely interested. It was impressive.
Samson. MO got to meet Samson in person
for the first time. Jack Mahler's right.
So you meet these people that are building incredible things,
doing incredible things with Bitcoin, and they're, I guess
I've been kind of in the mining space, right?
The infrastructure side. So anybody from the financial
side of Bitcoin or financial or development, that's very
fascinating to me, right? Because that's not my
background. So I, I try to understand as
many of the tentacles of Bitcoin as I can, at least know which
direction that octopus is reaching, right?
That sort of thing. And I guess to know I, I I don't
need to know the details or how everything works, but I need to
know what they're trying to accomplish.
That way if something comes my direction that I can help
someone else with, you know trying to push that, put those
puzzle pieces together and help people out what whatever they're
working on. So it was man, just non-stop, no
sleep, fantastic. You know, the Bitcoin experience
and meeting new friends, making new friends and getting to meet
your heroes is it's it was a blast.
Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, I had the same
experience. Just so fun that everyone is so
approachable. Everyone is into the same thing,
but you know, there's all these people from different
backgrounds and yeah, it's just cool to to learn about their
expertise. That's I have the same like
there's all these dimensions of Bitcoin that, you know, you come
across, but we'll definitely get to that that that is on the list
to talk about. And 1st I wanted.
To ask you like. Real quick, can I can I make an
announcement? Just so and I haven't made like
an official announcement in this kind of setting, but I did put
on LinkedIn, but I forgot to tell you.
So I have recently left Rebel Mining as Chief Commercial
Officer and Energia, which was my former company.
I'm with a new company called Veya Energy VEYA and we are.
This is a quick just real quick. This is a move to I started my
Bitcoin journey on the infrastructure side, coming in
through immersion cooling and then I very slowly just moved
upstream to the power source. The energy is going to be
operating and and putting together behind the meter off
grid mining opportunities, natural gas and other renewable
energies like waste energy things like that, those sorts of
projects. So that is, I just wanted to,
since you introduced me to the Rebel, just want to let you know
I've moved to a different position, but I'm focused
specifically on energy production and how it can tie in
and benefit Bitcoin and vice versa, how Bitcoin mining can
benefit the energy infrastructure we have not just
in the US but anywhere, especially reusing that energy
multiple times for through heat recapture and things like that.
So just want to give you that little quick little update that
just happened like a couple weeks ago.
Yeah, awesome. It's on my list to to talk about
because I'm super, super interested in that.
But not very knowledgeable yet, so we'll definitely get to that.
The first thing I I wanted to ask you is which generation do
you belong to and how is your experience educating like your
generational peers? Are you trying to dox my age
here, Bram? Is that what you're trying to
do? I don't know.
You don't have to say your age. I am a It depends on who you
ask. I'm on kind of the tail end of
what you would consider to be Gen.
Y, probably Gen. X and Gen.
Y and not. But I'm not like a millennial.
So I was born in, I'm 46 years old, so I was born in 78.
So whatever that number is then kind of puts me on the edge of a
couple of different generations. So I feel like it's an
interesting kind of place to be. I have a lot of just overall
business experience, but I also have, you know, a family and a
mortgage and I'm further down than a lot of Bitcoiners are
when they're in their 20s and their 30s.
And so I am in kind of a unique, I think spot.
I'm not as old as, you know, like you know, you've got some
guys like Michael Saylor and then you've got Bob Burnett that
have a ton of experience, right? That I don't have as much
experience as they do, but I'm also not, you know, fresh out of
you know, university or still trying to kind of figure things
out, you know, from a you know which direction.
Well, that's not true. I don't know which direction my
life is. It changes every six months, so.
But I've had that experience, so it's kind of a weird spot to be
right. Most people in this space are
either older than me or younger than me.
Not a lot. That's right there at that same
age. Hey there.
Thanks so much for listening to this episode.
I just really want to ask you for a quick favor.
Over the last few months, I've seen that only 75% of people who
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So I really want to ask you to please hit the subscribe button
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are enjoying this podcast. Thanks again for joining me on
this journey. Now back to the conversation.
Yeah, I just quickly, quickly Googled, you're like on the tail
end of Gen. X and and and at the start of
the millennials, but like so, so your age range, well you know
people will have older kids of course a mortgage, house
etcetera. Like when you talk to people in
your age range like about Bitcoin, they are already
obviously well entrenched in the, in the, in the old Fiat
money system. So is that something you run
into when you talk about that? So I this is kind of weird, but
like I looked up the other day and I can't remember the last
time I talked to like friends my age, right?
Like, I make I made a point to go, yeah, I made a point to go
have dinner with some friends the other night and who are my
age and they've got boys about my boys.
I've got two boys 17 and 13 and so I'm kind of on the tail end
of that, right? My 13 year old only has about
five years left until he's out of high school, right?
And so whether he wants to go to college or whatever, I don't
know. But we're we're working at it.
I just, I don't know. I'm so into Bitcoin that it's
like, I don't really talk to what I'd call normies much
anymore. It's almost, it's almost painful
to have like those like conversations about oh hey,
how's your job going, right. You know, 'cause my job, working
in Bitcoin specifically feels so like revolutionary and start up
and it's it's different than, you know what most of my, you
know, contemporaries are doing that at my, my age, it it's hard
it's it's actually kind of almost physically painful to sit
through some of these. I'm trying to be nice and I'm
like, I don't really care about, you know, who you're going to
vote for. I don't really care about this.
I don't really care about, you know, what's going on here.
It's like it's when you see Bitcoin, psychologically
something changes for you and it's very interesting.
I'm at two opposite ends of the spectrum on the Bitcoin side.
It's like I focus on the hardware and energy side,
infrastructure, the tangible. But I'm really super intrigued
by how Bitcoin tied into energy and the way that the way that
it's tied into energy down the on the other end ends up
basically changing the way you think, the way you act, you
know, the psychology of who you are as a person.
It changes everything. And I thought it was just going
to be OK. This is going to be a cool job
and I'm going to make some money.
But now it's like, I think everything in my life looks
different, like everything. And you can't, you can't go
back. It's weird.
Yeah, yeah. Well, we'll talk about that too
in a minute because I I think that's super interesting and I
can definitely relate to that. So I'm super interested to hear
how that went for you. But first I wanted to ask, what
misconceptions did you have about Bitcoin initially and how
did they change? Like what did you have to do or
learn to to change those? So there's kind of two things.
My favorite phrase that I've heard a lot of people, some some
good friends say is you know when not when were you orange
peeled, but when did you first ignore Bitcoin?
And for me, it was 2013. Like, I could have gotten in at
20/13/2014 time frame. And I had all these computers
and you could still mine on, you know, GPUs.
And I had all these 480 GPUs in these computers at this call
center I'd set up. There's not a lot, maybe like a
dozen of them. But I had a friend, a guy that
was working for me, say we should mine Bitcoin.
We even have free electricity. We should mine Bitcoin.
It's like, what's Bitcoin? So he talked to me for about
30-45 minutes and I got done and he goes, So what do you think?
And I said that is the dumbest, stupidest thing I've ever heard.
That's magic Internet money. It's never going to work.
It's never going to work, right? And I like, left it alone and
ignored it for another, I don't know, maybe seven years and then
2019 ish. I started kind of looking at it
right. And so my biggest misconception
was just not taking it at face value and looking kind of
saying, oh, this is interesting technology, I need to dig it.
That's the biggest misconceptions.
People just assume it's a scam or because they don't understand
it, right? But that happens with everything
in life. If you don't take the time to
understand something, you you don't know if it's true or not.
So that's a challenge. And that's the biggest
misconceptions. People just think it's a scam,
especially on the normie side. And then the what was the other
part of that lost? My my train of thought.
The other part of that was. So when when did you So you
thought it was a scam or that was a misconception?
Well, not, not what you thought, but you had that misconception.
Like how did you actually get it?
Yeah, so, so this is OK. Thank you.
So the other end of that, that connection is a misconception is
people. I say I work in Bitcoin and
people start asking me technical questions about Bitcoin and I
don't know, right. I can't tell you how the time
chain works. I'm not a developer.
I don't understand how transactions.
I like watching the mean pool, but I don't like understand how
all the blocks are put together. I don't understand all that
technology, right? I'm not that technical a person
when people ask me how long have you studied Bitcoin?
I said well, I've actually studied Bitcoin less than I've
studied the monetary systems, right?
So started learning. I read the Bitcoin standard,
which honestly, for a a newbie with not no finance background
is kind of challenging, right? I would read a chapter and then
I'd spend like 20-30 minutes on Google researching what I just
read right to verify it, understand economics, the
history of money, all that, all that stuff, right?
It was almost like a it was almost like a textbook I'd I'd
like read a chapter and then I'd have to like write and answer
questions and stuff. It's a study.
Yeah, it is a study. And so there's other books out
there now that, you know, Brandon Mens got one.
That's great. I think Good for normies kind of
as an intro, as a primer, right. And then.
And then you dive into safety and you get, you get a, you
know, Yeah, deeper in. Right.
But what I found was between that and podcasts with like the
first, you know, what is Money podcast.
Michael Saylor, what's his name? Andreas.
Andreas Antonopoulos. Right.
I started watching some of those, like older podcasts and
understanding. I've studied money as a whole in
the dollar system and previous Fiat currencies and history more
than I've studied Bitcoin. So it's like I don't need to
know how Bitcoin works, I just need to know how it fixes the
problems, right? I probably know more about
inflation, the central banking system, Austrian economics, all
of these things, more than I actually know about Bitcoin,
because those things are what taught me what's broken and how
Bitcoin actually fixes it, right?
So for me, it wasn't really saying, you know, oh, I
understand and get Bitcoin. I was like, oh, if I think
Bitcoin has even a 1% chance of doing what people say it's going
to do, I know that my dollar has a 90% or has 100% chance.
It's going to be worth less next year than it is right now,
right? So that that alone, knowing how
broken our Fiat system was just made me say, I don't know if
it's better or not, but the chances are this is a smarter
system because I had know 100% that my dollar is going to be
debased, right. So that was kind of the study
that got me all in and I'm I'm happy to say I'm basically I'm,
I got to zero. I don't know if that's the right
term, maybe it's I'm 100% Bitcoin, right?
But I have very little Fiat cash at all at any given moment.
I am just learning about the new system, how to, you know, manage
taxable income, KYC verse, non KYC Bitcoin.
How to manage it from a long term retirement or you know
liquid savings, liquidity standpoint.
All of those things learning how to live on a Fiat or live on a
Bitcoin standard even when I'm still living in a Fiat world.
And I think that is a big opportunity for education to
teach bitcoiners and people at Normies as well say this can be
done. And if someone streamlines that
process like there's products out there like strike that you
know and and fold the fold card and things like that that are
getting close. Right.
Once we get to a point where they're just like, yeah deposit,
you can have your checks or your EF, TS or sorry yeah electronic
funds transfers or whatever wires directly into this.
We will put it in Bitcoin and then when you need to spend it,
we will automatically do it in Bitcoin.
Take your Bitcoin and convert it and send right like Strike does.
So what? Whoever kind of fixes that and
makes it smooth, we'll see it option move pretty quickly.
Awesome. I think we experience a little
bit lag. So I'm going to wait until
you're fully finished and then I'll ask my question.
You're in a hotel room, right? So sometimes it's a bit, it's a
bit laggy, but it's all, it's all good.
So you shared with me that you think energy is money.
Can you elaborate on that a bit? I think that the best possible
yardstick and I I'm probably stealing this from you know
Michael Saylor when he was first talking to Breedlove on his
first the first seven or eight podcasts, whatever it was.
But and I, I part of me kind of knew this but hearing it
explained the way he did kind of clarified it.
The best way to measure anything is in energy.
The question is just what is the measuring stick, right?
Because energy is a fairly intangible thing for for us,
right? You have, you know, kinetic
energy of stored energy. You have.
So right now I have the energy to stand up and walk across the
room, but I'm not doing it right.
So I have stored energy ready to do that when I need it.
It's a very interesting concept, but the more you dwell on it,
you realize there's nothing we do that doesn't involve energy.
Like, I mean from the 2nd, we are created by birthright that
is or even before birth inception that is energy
required. And it's thousands and thousands
of years at millennia of energy that is kind of slowly come down
to this one point in our lives where we're created, right.
And then there's energy required, additional energy
required, you know, by the mother, you know, you know, to
grow that child, birth that child and then you have to feed
the child to give it energy and all this and there's so much
more energy to grow. And then you're not just talking
about flipping a light switch and you know, doing compute
power, but like you know, building a building manual
labor, right. It's all technically energy.
The question is just how do you measure it, right.
So if we measured everything in kilocalories or joules, if you
will, you could say, OK, you know, this guy did one barrel,
one oil barrels worth of work today or this guy did you know
this many CFM of of gas or coal or you know, this much
electricity, this much kWh per work or what, right.
But those are very difficult and problematic, right.
So you need something in the middle.
And up to this point all we've had is just, you know, it's not
tied to energy, it's not tied to anything.
It may be at the one point it was pegged.
We, you know, can use gold and you can pegged to gold.
The gold's problematic. It's tough to transact and you
got to chop it up. It's hard to make change.
And so that's why people led to Fiat and coins and the dollar
and all this stuff. But ultimately, because it's
under a person man's control, it's all manipulated, right?
So Bitcoin being worth being built on proof of work and being
built on physics and mathematics and basically immutable facts,
right? They say Bitcoin is immutable.
It it's actually just, it's really just based on physics,
the laws of thermodynamics, right?
It literally takes that proof of work, that energy and transfers
it into a into a currency, right?
Without that middleman. So there's no chance of
manipulation, right? If there's some consensus and we
want to do maybe make some changes to the code, we can do
that. But it is the closest thing to
just measurement purely by energy available and the amount
of work it takes to extract that energy and to turn it into a
useful energy that we've ever had, right.
So once you realize that you start to look at everything a
little bit differently right it very
OK. Here we go.
Sorry I got a phone call back that gives me.
It changes your viewpoint on when you see everything as
energy. I don't even see it as Bitcoin.
I see it as energy. But knowing that Bitcoin is tied
to energy. That was when I switched and I
thought everything I do is money now thanks to Bitcoin.
So having been terrible at, you know, managing my money and
finances from, you know, being a young kid, not understanding it,
and then being in a system I was so frustrated with, thinking I
was losing, making terrible decisions, Really, I was just
working within a broken system. Some people are better at
playing that broken system than others, but it didn't make sense
to me. Now all of a sudden, when I
think of energy, I'm like, OK, well, do I go to the gym today
or not? Do I, Would I rather spend my
energy going to the gym or would I rather spend my energy here?
And then I think, well, the gym is energy, this is energy.
So this is SAT's, this is SAT's, This is Money.
You know, it was a this, this
amazing switch flipped. And I think that's probably when
the, you know, that's probably the orange pill moment and I was
pulled out of the matrix and I'm like I can't go back now.
I can't go back. And so now it's easier for me to
say, do I need to buy a new car or do I want to store some
energy for for the future, or do I want to do I need to spend
money on this food or do I want to sport?
Well, you know, in that case, I want to spend the money on the
food, right? So it's like it's like you weigh
things in energy in a new way, that the benefits are so clear
and so obvious to you that it just makes it so much easier to
make smarter decisions for your future, for your financial
future, and then also for your personal well-being.
It transfers out of finances and just into every aspect of your
life. Is this relationship good for
me? What's it costing me?
What's it costing me energy wise?
What's it costing me time wise? Do I want to work with this
person? Do I not?
Do I trust this person? Do I not, You know, do I?
Do I want to live here? Do I want to live there?
It all makes those decisions easier in a very unique way.
And that's why I think it's so interesting that we are what
we're doing is finally taking our decisions and tying them
directly to energy and Bitcoin is just the throughput.
So Bitcoin is cool, but really that energy to our decision
making connection is what is so makes it so profound.
Dude, I love this answer. This is while you started
talking. I was looking up a podcast that
made this click for me, and it's not even a Bitcoin podcast.
It's a I'm going to say it and I'll I'll try to think about
linking it in the show notes. But it's on the Aubrey Marcus
podcast and the title is The Shocking Truth About Our Energy
Crisis with Nate Hagen's. He's an energy expert and they
talk about all different kinds of things.
But at one point he says just also for the people listening,
look around you wherever you are listening and everything you see
has cost energy to create or still costs energy to maintain,
right. So I see books made of paper and
plants here, and I have a tea on the table and you know, I have
this screen in front of me like I have everything.
I don't know. You know, I had a Carpenter fix
the fix the door here. Like, everything is energy.
And like, when I listened to that podcast, I was like, yeah,
this is really it. Like, this is really it, right?
And that's also like what you said about gold.
Gold is actually really the money based on gold is really
the closest we got to energy. Money, right?
Because gold is also condensed energy within that piece of
gold, right, created by the earth.
So it does make sense to to create a paper currency that is
backed by the rocks, right? But as you mentioned, it's
difficult to transfer and we know we know all these things,
right? But yeah, once you see that and
then how I visualize Bitcoin as being digital energy, right,
it's physical energy transformed into a digital asset.
And I think I also have this from Saylor.
But at one point he described it as like if you visualize like a
3D cube, and that cube is 1 Bitcoin and that is made-up of
100 million little cubes, right, The Satoshi's.
And this Bitcoin is created through the usage of physical
energy. And that physical energy is
taken and it's all put into these 100 million little blocks
and it's captured there. It's not physically captured
there. It's digitally represented
through the proof of work, right?
So you know that that one Bitcoin with the 100 million
little subunits was created by using real energy.
And then when you go to what you just said, right.
If money is a way to exchange energy with each other, we want
to use money that is actually created by using energy because
only then it has the right representation of the exchange
that we agree upon with each other.
Whatever it is about that doesn't really matter.
Right. Right.
And so, yeah, I, I, I absolutely love this.
And I think that is what eventually leads to what a lot
of people say, you know, if we fix the money, we fix the world
because if we can transact in energy, money.
And I also love this old newspaper article.
I think it's Henry Ford Wright who talks about energy, money,
money backed by electricity. I mean, he saw it that this is
the this is that Bitcoin is that, you know, if we fix, if
the money is not broken anymore and we can agree upon whatever,
you know, whatever you do for me is worth XYZ, then we have a
real free market. Because then we are sovereign in
our agreements instead of having a third party being able to
dilute the thing we use to exchange.
Value and that is the how. We fix the world because then we
fix all the prefers incentives. Yeah, it's that is so.
That realization isn't what told me Bitcoin was so great.
That realization is what showed me money was so was such a
failure at that, right? Like it was or sorry money Fiat
currency, right. It's like you're storing your
energy and every year you lose 10% of that value if you're
storing your energy, whereas Bitcoin is the opposite.
So it I'm taking, I'm getting to take control of my energy and I
decide when and where it goes. Nobody else can decide that for
me. And like you said, the free
market, not somebody in Washington, you know, at the Fed
or you know at the at a central bank or whatever, determines
where my energy goes right now. They're determining where my
energy. And when you think about it and
you, you talk about Einstein's theory of relativity, right?
I mean, energy is time. Those 2GO together, space-time
and energy are all intertwined. So if they're taking my energy,
they're stealing my time. And so I started looking at it
and saying, oh, well, if I, if I pay 20% in taxes every year,
they're taking, you know, what is that 3672 days every year
they're taking for me, that's just for taxes.
And then you take, then you take inflation and it's like, OK,
well, it's even more. And you say, well, it's only 5%
inflation. No, no, no.
It was 5% inflation last year. If it's 5% inflation this year,
you take your $100 down to 95 and then you take another 9 1/2,
you know, $4.25, it compounds, right?
So, so it over that over time and over the years, it's like
they're stealing more and more of my years.
By the time. I mean, if you do the math like
a 10% inflation, a 10% inflation debasement of your currency,
right, in 25 years you may have saved X number of dollars even
if you invested at a certain percentage, right?
It's still debases faster than any percentage you can get right
now. I don't care what they say.
So somebody was like somebody on Twitter posted, you can do,
maybe you can find my tweet. I can't remember, but they
posted and said hey, you want to have $5,000,000 or $1,000,000 by
in 25 years paid $580 a month, put it into these funds, you
know give 580 a month and then I and then I did the math and I'm
like, OK, but you're taking $164,000 is what it is, right?
And if you take 10% inflation and it continues even with the
amount, you're dead. You're $5,000,000 or your or
your $1,000,000 or whatever the numbers were at that point in 25
years will only be worth $46,000 in purchasing power.
So you're spending that time, that money, investing into
$150,000 of today's time. So in 25 years you can have
$50,000 worth of purchasing power, right?
It it, the math doesn't. It doesn't.
Work. You're you're putting it in a in
a black hole, yeah, yeah, you're putting it in a black hole on
the wrong end basically, right? And so it discounts your time,
it discounts time and energy you already spent, and it discounts
time and energy that you perhaps want to spend somewhere in the
future, right? That's what safety and talks
about with short short time preference, long time
preference. If you cannot save towards the
future, how can you create time for yourself to pursue whatever
you want to pursue basically if you stay stuck in the now.
Yeah. And maybe to add to the
visualization of the of the cube with 100 million, you know,
little parts in it. If you, if you see that,
visualize that. And then on the other side,
think about what, what, what, what you just said, David, is
that all the productivity of people is also energy.
Yes, right. So if you do something for me,
you expend energy and I give you something that has captured
energy back and you can save that thing until you spend it on
something else that takes energy, right.
So productivity is energy as well.
So what is the bigger thesis of Bitcoin?
Why does Bitcoin grow in in value, right?
If there's 21 million of these cubes with physical energy
captured in a digital way, again divided by 100 million on that's
on one side and on the other side we have all the
productivity ever of all the people now and now and into the
future, the that productivity is going to be captured in those 21
million well blocks of Bitcoin. Yeah.
Because this is the best way for us to exchange that energy with
each other. I think that for me is like the
bigger the the bigger thesis there as to does Bitcoin have
value or where does it go right? Slowly but surely people will
understand that this is the best way to save the energy that you
get rewarded, and therefore they will ask to be paid.
Absolutely, absolutely. And if you think about it, I
Samson Samsung Mode did, he said that, you know if you take 8
billion people, 21,000,000 / 8 billion, you have like 259,259
Satoshi's per person. I think that number is smaller.
I think it's about 2:40 because I think that I I personally feel
that the million of Satoshi's in Satoshi's wallet is truly burnt.
I think it's gone. And then you have other, you
know, people that have lost Bitcoin that you know that that
you know that it'll just sit there until someone can figure
out how to recover a wallet. But I think I feel that it's
really like 240,000 Satoshi's somewhere around there.
And if you think about that, 240,000 Satoshi's could
encompass all of the productivity of a for the entire
life of a single person, right? So think.
So think about that for a second.
If I start working at age 18 or 20, let's just say 20 as a
person starts working at 20 and they work till age 60 or let's
say 70, right? Those 50 years of whatever,
their all of their life, all of the work they do, all the things
they move, all the effort they put forth from getting up to
going, those houses they live in, the food they eat, all of
that could literally be encompassed in 240,000
Satoshi's. That puts Bitcoin into a very
different perspective and number.
And then as a as people pass away that two that 240,000
Satoshi's or whatever it is goes into the next person that's born
and becomes their energy, their, you know, potential for their
lifetime, right. So it's and it's not even that,
it's even more because you got to spend energy to raise that
kid right to get it up to age 20.
So it's like looking at that you think about that you're like
man, if I say that just take a Fiat term right now and just
assume that maybe over the course the average person over
the course of their life can produce maybe right now in
today's spending two million, $3,000,000 in overall total, you
know work revenue spending, all of that right, $3,000,000.
Well, if a 240,000 Satoshi's is worth $3,000,000, what does that
make a Bitcoin target price? Now that is a law.
I think it's a little ways off, right?
We'll we'll always have some, but I mean we're talking about
very difficult to calculate and comprehend numbers at that.
Point we're not 1 billion or something.
Yeah, per Bitcoin, Per Bitcoin, right.
And that Fiat currency is not going to change.
So what's really interesting is how do we eventually monetize
things in Satoshi's? Well, you're seeing it real time
in places like El Salvador, right?
With circular economies that are built directly on Bitcoin.
They spent, let's say they spent, you know, 100 million
Satoshi's last year on their living expenses, right?
And they earned 100 million Satoshi's one Bitcoin, right?
Well, as the value of Bitcoin goes up like it did, now they
get the same life, but they only have to spend 500,000 or sorry,
50 million Satoshi's because it's doubled in value.
So it's you're seeing it happen and the more Bitcoin is adopted,
the faster that that drop will happen.
And so Preston Pitch made a really good example.
He's talking about houses, right?
Like we think backwards about a real estate, you and I, before
the call we were talking about real estate, right.
And some of the opportunities there, we're looking wrong at
real estate. If you are doing well, your
house or your business or your real estate should be worth
less, not more, right? The reason your house is worth
more is because you're measuring it in the system that's broken.
And so you're just hedging against the inflation.
But realistically, if someone comes and buys that house from
you, you still have to go live somewhere else.
And if you would just want to move down the road right next
door, right, you're you're not going to get ahead, right?
It's the same number. You're going to buy that same
house. So it will.
Maybe your house was worth 50 Bitcoin, you know, 10 years ago.
Well, now it's worth 10 Bitcoin, right?
And then in two or three years, it'll be worth 3 Bitcoin, and
then it'll be worth one Bitcoin. Then it'll be worth less than a
Bitcoin. So that means the money you're
using to measure is going up in value, giving you actual real
opportunities to improve your life or do things differently,
right? That is a hard concept for us
because we value everything on that Fiat standard.
So you're basically telling me you don't need to accumulate
more. Bitcoin.
Yeah, we price it. Right, right.
There you go. We price it, we don't value it.
We price it right so. So it's it's that is the
hardest. I I I tried to explained that to
a normie not too long ago, a good friend of mine.
And it's like it it just doesn't compute right.
They're like no, no, no, you know my MY4O1K is going up.
My investments are going up whatever.
And I said yeah, but they're not going up enough to beat out
hyperinflation because it's only a matter of time before that
catches up. It's every single Fiat dollar in
history has eventually died and has been hyperinflated.
Otherwise we'd still be using Denari from Rome, right.
So it's that is how entrenched we are in the system that
psychologically we have to do. You know, we always think
NGUNGUNGU and really on a Bitcoin standard it's NGD number
go down, right? I I bought a car at one Bitcoin,
you know, 5-10 years ago now with the same Bitcoin I can buy
five cars. That is actually the way that we
need to think and that is what's so hard psychologically for us
to do. Yeah, yeah, I agree.
I did this exercise for homes in my country.
I took the me immediate, the average home selling price per
month from 2014 until now, January 14th, January 2024, and
then denominated in Bitcoin and in 10 years the prices in euros
went up 92%. In the same 10 years Bitcoin
went up, I think 9100% something like that.
And so when you look at the average average home selling, in
2014 it was I think 1100 Bitcoin, and in January this
year it was 10 Bitcoin, no less, actually.
Yeah, 1088 to 10. Still people don't understand it
when they see that. It's so interesting you know
what what that implies. Yeah, it exactly.
It feels it's completely backwards.
It makes no sense to the way we've been conditioned to value
things and value our time. It's completely backwards from
how we should be valuing our time and our energy.
Yeah, last thing to add to that, and I'm talking about this a
lot, actually last 2-3 weeks. Like I love the example of why
is it funny that a bread was $0.25 fifty years ago and it's
four or $5 now? Like, make it make sense, you
know, if you believe that humans strive for optimization and
efficiency through innovating in technology, everything, you
know. This is what Jeff Booth says,
right? Everything should fall down to
the prices should fall to the marginal cost of production.
So we should basically have free bread now more nutritious than
the bread of 50 years ago and not have $5 breads.
It's we are going back in time. It's like the breads is a new
invention, right? And it's coming on the market at
a high price point. But.
That is not the case. No, no, it's So let me let me
say this. When I was in 20 probably 15 or
16, I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Kiyosaki, right.
And he is a very polarizing figure in Bitcoin.
Right. He's he he's I don't know.
I I it doesn't matter what your opinion of of him is.
But honestly he's the first person that ever put it into my
mind reading that book that if you have a he said a good
society and I think he he didn't I'm gonna have to go look it up.
I don't know if he said sound money, but he said a good
society and that has good processes and good innovations.
He said the price of everything you do or use in life should go
down. The price of it, the cost of it.
And I was like wow, that's is that even possible?
And that was years before I really, you know, got into
Bitcoin, right. I might have actually read that,
even read that book before I heard a Bitcoin.
I can't remember when it came out, but it was just it it that
was eye opening to me and something I thought about a lot
and I was like, how do you do that?
Well, then I thought, OK, well you know, you're, you're picking
the apple illustration is good and easy, right?
It's like the apple still takes the same amount of sun, the same
amount of space, the same amount of time, the same amount of
water to grow as it always has right as far back as you want to
go. So why was an apple a nickel
20304050 years ago? And now it's like $0.50, right?
So it's like, why is it? And there and I, I've had a
conversation with an economist. This was really interesting.
I was in DC at a bar and we'd all had too much to drink.
So the conversation got a little rowdy.
But I was talking to someone that literally used to work in
at at the US Central Bank and someone that used to work at the
Federal Reserve. And I was like, where am I going
to get this opportunity to ask him these questions?
Right. So I started asking him these
questions and every time I say something, ask a question, I
say, listen, I'm going to put parameters around it.
I need you guys to stay in the ring here in the guardrails,
right? We can go down this path but
stay between here And I'd say if I have, you know, the land of
David and I make, you know, $2.00 and I give you each a
dollar and there's one apple, right?
What is that apple worth to keep you for you to survive?
And they're like, well, I don't know.
I said, well, if you don't have the apple, you're going to die.
What's? And you each have a dollar.
What's it worth? And like, well, it's worth a
dollar. I said, right, so who I whoever
gets to me first gets the apple, They survive.
Right? And I have a dollar now.
And now you have the apple and then you grow an apple.
Same thing, right. It's only worth $1.00.
I said, but what if I take and I give you each $2.00, then what's
the apple worth? And they're like, oh, well,
it's, you know, it's worth $2.00.
I said, right. What changed?
The only thing that changes, the amount of money in the system.
That is the only thing that changed.
Right. And I said, so I believe that
the money in circulation is the only reason for inflation.
And they're like, well, no, I was like, well, why not?
And they said, well, well, you know, we need debt for
innovation. We need debt for new technology.
When I said, well, why? I said if you don't have a
dollar and you're going to starve, if you don't get that
apple, you have motivation to go out and figure out another way
to get an app, right. I said but there's there's no
way to issue debt. Take that out of the picture.
How does that apple increase in value?
And they said, well it doesn't. And I said bingo, right.
But then they start saying but it's not that simple.
It's not, it's complicated. You have supply and demand, you
have other countries or whatever, all this stuff or
whatever. And I'm like, I'm like you're
just over complicating it. It's really that simple.
But until you see it and really understand, take the time to
absorb and understand it and they're going to be, they're
going to be a longer turn than I am, right?
Because they are literally living and working and breathing
every day in that money system. So they're buying all of the
lies, all of the works, all of the inefficiencies and they're
living in it. That's where they're living, is
they make their value in the inefficiencies of our Fiat
system. And so there's a great fun
conversation, right. And eventually we just had to
say agree to disagree, let's enjoy our drinks.
But they it it was really interesting to see someone that
was my only opportunity I've ever had to to to talk to
someone on that level that personally in the Fiat system.
And it really just came down to they won't understand it because
it's not complicated enough. They feel like if it's not
complicated enough, it can't be right.
And if I don't understand it or I disagree with it, I'm just not
smart enough, right? I haven't gone to the right
universities and I haven't studied economics the way they
have. So that was a very interesting
eye opening experience. And that tells me it's going to
be when the dollar goes, and it will.
It's going to be tough. It's going to be hard.
It's going to be violent. It's going to be like, you know,
Zimbabwe or whatever, right? It's going to be like all those
other places where the dollar has been hyperinflated and it'll
hit us harder, harder, harder every year, and it'll get harder
and harder and harder. Yeah, your Internet was lagging
a bit. So I hope people got that, but
we'll see that in the, we'll see that in the edit.
But yeah, to to add to that, what I find interesting in the
example of the apple is is great, right.
Going back to what we talked about with energy, it still
takes the same amount of energy to create the apple like you
said. So why does it need more units
representing the same energy to pay for it?
This is really what people need to wrap their heads, heads
around. And once you understand that,
you also then understand that the value of your home, you
know, didn't go up, the price went up because the value of
what you price it in went down. It's the same as the apple.
It's it's not, it's not different because then people
will say, well, homes are different than apples.
No, no, no, it's it's the same principle, right?
And I also love what you said about these guys explaining
like, oh, it's way more difficult than you think, blah
blah. I've spent ten years in the
startup world. I've heard thousands of ideas.
I've learned that if you have to substantiate your idea with more
and more and more words and explanations, it's a bad idea,
right? Like you can have a good idea in
two to four sentences, But then if someone asks a question,
right, if your idea creates more questions than than answers, and
then you have to, you know, give a speech as to why that is a bad
question. Or no, no, no, it's not the
case. Then it's just a bad idea.
If you cannot convey it in 2345 sentences, yes, it's just a bad
idea. So interesting experience there
because they that is their defense.
Their defense is to talk where in Bitcoin.
I love that. You know it's the work, It's the
walk. You can check.
You don't. Anyone listening to us doesn't
have to believe us. You can check that this money
system actually works like this. It's audited by 18 1/2 thousand
computers every 10 minutes, right?
And the Federal Reserve in America has never been audited.
But you should believe two random faceless people you
didn't elect based on their words, right?
Like that should become more people's principle, right?
Like I should not listen to this person.
I should they should give me the option to validate and verify if
what they say is true. Yeah, it's I I read a book by an
author called Bo Lozoff L0Z 0FF, And you're muted.
Nope. Can you hear me now?
Am I on there now? Yes.
OK, so I read a book by a gentleman called Bo Lozoff L0Z
0VF F and I actually heard about him when I read Mr. Rogers
biography. He was a big fan of Bo's work
and and his writings. And he has a book called Deep
and Simple and he says that all thoughts and ideas that are that
are true right are truly simple and easy to understand but deep
and difficult to comprehend as opposed to complicated and
shallow right. And so that was a very, and he
used that from kind of a spiritual background to help
rehabilitate criminals and and violent offenders and things
like that. He was very, it wasn't like
religion specific, right. But it was a very interesting
take. And he said, you know, it's like
he, he was a Christian. So, you know, as a Christian
it's like very easy. I believe someone made a
sacrifice for me. And I feel like I want base
based on that love. I want to live my life the way
that, you know, kind of we're giving to others, right?
So it's like it's a very simple idea, but it's hard to put into
practice and hard to really comprehend.
It's deep, right? And so he would take those
ideas. Bitcoin is like that.
It's a very simple idea, very simple.
Something I am proud of is, you know, people post, it's like,
hey, 100,000 Sats, I'll give you 100,000 Sats, you know, for the
best answer to this question or whatever.
Right. And somebody posted on X and I
responded that it said describe Bitcoin in three sentences,
right. And I was like, man, that's
that's tough. It's like everybody was saying,
oh, it's this, this and this and this.
And people were writing whole paragraphs and you're like, that
is not a, that's not three sentences, right.
But it was, it was very simple. How do you describe it to
someone who's never heard of it? And it's essentially, I just got
had three really basic points. It's one.
It enables you to store your time and your energy in a way
that it can't be stolen and taken from you.
And it also it's a way for you to be your own bank, store your
time and energy in a way that no one else can steal it from you,
giving you the opportunity to better plan for your future or
something like that, right? It was super simple, but at the
core of what Bitcoin is, that's what it does.
I've got some connectivity issues.
Hopefully I'm coming through here or at least at the end will
it'll edit. But that was it's a very simple,
it's a very simple idea, but it takes so long to absorb it and
understand it because it's it's the ramifications are so deep.
Yeah, I actually had a I had a conversation with my friend
today about why we, I don't know, we talked that we ended up
with, like, you know, it is really true that the journey is
more important than the destination.
And then we had to laugh, right? Like, oh, that's such an old
saying. Like, it's so dorky and simple,
but it's always true, right? And but at one point, someone
came up with this, fought, and enough people actually agreed
with it for it to become a thing that, you know, survived through
time. And it's still something that we
use today, right? And so we talked about it like,
why does it sound why? Why, why do we think it's dumb?
It's it's kind of dorky, right? And then we agreed that it's
kind of like this ego thing, right?
Because you can. When you actually have
experienced a certain journey, you know that that journey was
way more fun and valuable than where you ended up, right?
You've you can feel that if you actually had that type of
experience. But when someone says the
journey is more important than the destination, you start to
think, you know, rationally think I think like, Oh no, it
could not be that simple. It is blah blah blah, like all
these say like you, you think of stuff to add to that, right?
And I think here it's the same thing with Bitcoin.
It's it's an it's an it's an ego test in that, in that sense,
right, that if now, now, shit now I lost my train of thought.
But what I wanted to say is like with Bitcoin, I feel like it is
exactly as you said. It's a simple but very profound
idea, right? We should use a money where
energy is captured to exchange energy with each other, as we
just talked about. But then there's so much history
before before this, right? There's so much contextual
information that that people can use to mislead.
Perhaps your initial feeling of that sounds like a good idea,
right? And they throw you into this
rational thinking distraction hall and try to bamboozle you
basically with all these, you know, models and Keynesian and
blah blah like all the all these things and you know eventually
and and every time I say stuff like this, I feel like some
people listening to me will definitely find me like
arrogant, right? Like look at him talk or blah
blah. But it really like once you are
here it's just like why doesn't everyone see this?
Why are we letting ourselves being manipulated by these third
party faceless people that we don't know and they are like
messing up our time preference basically and our energy
allocation because of that. I don't, I don't even know how
to say it differently. Like this is where you end up,
right? And like 2 weeks ago I had a
conversation with a guy, very smart guy, CTO of a company and
we talked about Bitcoin and he was like, yeah, but I don't
think it's going to be anything. But he understood everything
about the money being broken and the time preference being how to
say corrupted and and all these things.
But then he said, like, yeah, but I still think people are
people are egotistical and and they will, you know, abuse each
other, etcetera, etcetera. And then I asked him, like, hey,
do you have kids right? Because I well, for me it's a
big motivation to see if I can be part of something that can
fix the money, right? And he said no, no, but that's
also a reason because I I don't have kids.
And for me it was the first time, like, I know that some
people think like this, right? But for me it was really the
first time I had like a face to face conversation with someone I
deemed intellectual and intelligent and open minded.
And then he said that and that actually made me super sad man.
When I thought like, and I also said that to him, I said, well,
so you basically gave up. Like you give up to the faceless
third party people that just influenced your life.
And instead of spreading your energy to anyone who wants to
receive it, you just stay in this little corner of life and
you know, that is just it. And he said, yeah, and I found
it. So yeah, just saddening, just
just seeing someone can find themselves because there is this
influence over his life that he actually understands, but he
still accepts it. You know, like what?
I don't know. It was a little bit of a
tangent, but what do you think of that?
I I think that's, let's see, let me think about how to
say this. I hear a lot of people and I
talk about it too. I kind of joke about it, right.
And saying toxic maximalism, right.
It's like we're, we're, we're just aggressive towards anybody,
whether they're an army or whether they're, you know,
altcoin or whatever, right? It's like, and don't get me
wrong, I'm a, I'm a maximalist, right?
But I try not to be toxic. But some days you just get
angry. But I realized talking to my
friend, having this conversation, it was intense
because you're basically putting into question their very
existence, right? You're putting into question the
way that they value themselves. And so when you say, you're not
valuing yourself, right? It's a very arrogant statement.
It's very difficult to pose that in a way that doesn't sound
demeaning or arrogant. And so it's really easy to take
that negatively, even if it's not meant that way.
And I think when I say, if I say I'm toxic, I'm a toxic
maximalist. I only get angry because I care
about those people and I see what I see and I'm always doing
the best to. And I I feel like I finally have
an answer to so many questions in life that were making me
miserable. Right.
Just destroying me all the way to my core, to my soul, right.
And so when you talk to someone, especially someone close to you
family or, you know, it's, I mean, I loved, you know, on
Twitter, on X, keeps hearing people talk about, you know,
having to talk to their family at Thanksgiving and Christmas.
You know, and they're like just this is me not trying to bring
up Bitcoin, you know, it's like I got to stay quiet.
I can't talk about it or whatever because it's because it
it does that to people. But we feel that way because we
just so desperately want to help our loved ones or our friends or
sometimes even just the person who we see needs it.
You know, it's like you see people that are not as good.
I've been very blessed and very lucky to be able to make a
living for the last couple, 2-3 years in this space.
Before that, coming into this space, I just thought I was
coming in for a Fiat job, right? And I got lucky.
And before that, I mean, I was almost broke, right?
Like I was losing the Fiat game, right?
So I was desperate when I had, you know, no money in the bank
or even if I had a little bit of money in the bank, but I had
debt, you know, on the credit card or something like that.
And I was worried about how I was going to pay bills.
I remember just laying there awake at night with all this
anxiety and stress and just literally staring into the
darkness, like, how am I going to do this?
How am I going to do this? Right?
And one of the things I mentioned to Saylor when I, when
I got to shake his hand and say hello was that, you know, I've
done a 180, right? I started putting my money in
Bitcoin and valuing my time and effort and money in Bitcoin.
And I still have a little bit of debt, right?
But yeah, I've been able to pay it off more aggressively.
I've been able to save. When I save my time and my
energy, it lasts longer, right? The value of it that my time and
energy has held because it's in Bitcoin, right?
And so now I told him, I said I'm evaluating things from a
interest to Bitcoin perspective, and as long as I think I'm going
to make more value putting my money in Bitcoin, I'm not going
to pay that debt off early. I'll make the payments right,
but I'll put it in Bitcoin and you know, just on a hunch,
because I know if I leave it in dollars, it's not going to save
anything. And paying off the debt with a
with a broken dollar doesn't get any easier.
It just gets harder and harder and harder over time.
So I did that. And now all of a sudden, out of
nowhere, you know my own personal value.
However, you want to value my wealth or estate or whatever,
right? Went from being negative to
being positive in a short, short period of time.
And so now I'm like, this is the cheat code.
This is the cheat code. I I sleep like a baby.
Like I sleep like I don't. I don't worry about anything
knowing my I'm sorting my value in Bitcoin and knowing that I
like you would think if you would ask me three years ago,
how would you feel if you had $0.00 in the bank, no cushion at
all, you know, and your bills are coming up or whatever.
I was doing that and I was stressed out and I was miserable
and I was angry and I was unhealthy.
And now it's like I have $0.00 in my bank account.
How do you feel? Oh, I'm great.
I sleep great. I I know my, you know, it's like
I know my time and my effort is valued in a way that nobody else
can. You know what's it?
Hard money you can't fuck with, right?
It's like that. I know that that my money is
something that nobody else can mess with.
I decide when to spend it. I decide what it's worth and I
decide how to store and how to use, right?
That alone just took every all of those anxieties away.
And so you want that for other people.
You want that for your loved ones.
I want it for my boys, right? Because I don't want them to go
through this. The same thing I went through
for the last 20 years before I found it struggling with that
that system that was broken, right?
Yeah, I I actually wanted to ask you what how has Bitcoin had an
impact on your life, But I think you just answered that.
So that is there you go, amazing.
Let's let's move on to, I wanted to wrap up to the last question
that I I asked everyone and that and that is what is a core
belief that you will never let go.
What is a core belief that I will never like, man, I think
this is, this is kind of this goes back to your comment about
the intellectual individual you were having a conversation with
that you know just kind of made you sad, right?
Nothing we do in this life in my opinion is incredibly valuable
unless it helps others, right? And I feel that the best way you
can help others and help yourself, right, is to have
kids. Or if it if it's not kids, you
need to find someone else in your life, right, that you live
for. So I guess the core belief is
life is better when you live for others than when you live for
yourself, right? So I think now, especially in
this community, so many people that didn't have connections,
didn't have family, didn't have, you know, support net, right
from a friend perspective, person, perspective, they found
their tribe, you know what I mean?
And so when you find that tribe and you're great, truly grateful
for what you have and what you've been given, you don't
want it all for yourself. You want to give it away.
You want to help other people. And so even when it was painful
in this industry and you know, I was working for free, trying to
learn things and do things, my goal was just to always try to
whoever is in front of you, whoever you're talking to do
whatever you can to make your life better, right.
And and one of the best compliments I've ever received
was from someone or walking around and walking around like
actually a Bitcoin conference, right.
And they said, wow, it's like, it's like you're you're you find
somebody or something that you think might be interesting to
me, right? And you willingly bring me into
the conversation and then just step back, right.
It's not about us. It's about what we're doing for
other people in the future and stuff.
And that that makes me feel better, right?
Than when I get accolades or I get things, you know, people
tell me thank you or or whatever, right?
It's like we're all just building on the great stuff that
other people have done and we're all just building for the
future, right? Eventually we're all going to be
gone, right? So the question is, you want a
legacy, You want to be known. Or even if you don't want to be
known, you just want to do good things right?
You just want to make this world better.
You have to look for opportunities to do something
better for other people, not yourself.
And so my core belief that I'll never ever let go of is living.
Living for others is always better, always better than
living for yourself. And so that is AI mean it works
everywhere, it works everywhere. I guess it's kind of the golden
rule, right? Doing to others as you would
have them doing to you, or even do what others better than you,
you know you would like yourself.
So that's probably my that's probably my core belief.
Love it man. Thanks so much for sharing that.
I really enjoyed this conversation and I will link to
your Twitter or X accounts so people can follow you.
And yeah man, let's stay in touch and thanks again.
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 Bram K that's at BR AM K and if you are or know someone who
has an interesting perspective on Bitcoin that's worth sharing,
hit me up. I read and reply to every single
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hope you'll be here for the next episode.
Thanks for listening.