All right. Hey, everyone.
This is from Konstein and you're listening to Bitcoin for
Millennials. Together with my guests on this
podcast, I go on a journey to discover how our current
financial system works, why it's flawed, and why Bitcoin is the
most relevant technology that you should understand and adopt.
Today, I'm joined by Knut Swannom.
He's a prolific thinker and author of several books on
Bitcoin. He writes about the
philosophical impacts of Bitcoin and how it changes the world for
the better. Yeah, there they are.
Some describe his writings. I don't know if you heard this
clute, but as a guided meditation that suits the
experience and tutors the uninitiated in the ways of
Bitcoin, I like that a lot. In his latest book about
praxeology, he talks about this approach to economics and social
science, where logic and deductive reasoning alone could
provide more robust explanations for people's actions than
empiricism ever could. I've already learned so much
from him and I'm very excited to talk to him.
Knuth welcome. Happy to be here.
Good to see you, Ram. Thanks so much for coming on.
I just told you like I love your thinking and your writing, and
it's just fun to see how far it it it travels.
And actually, when I read up on you more, I saw you were a tall
ship sailor before. Yeah, yeah, I did that for for
eight years. So I was the officer on a tall
ship of high school students on board.
Sailing around the the North Atlantic Ocean mostly and all
throughout Europe, Mediterranean and the Caribbean and the US
East Coast. Yeah, nice.
I'll, I'll get back to that later because you have a
Robinson cruiserweight example in your book.
We'll we'll talk about that. But like first thing I want to
ask you like you are now a very prolific Bitcoin or Bitcoin
thinker. You share a lot about it, but
what made you not understand Bitcoin when you first
encountered it? Oh, that's a good question.
What made me not understand it the first time I encounter it?
Well, I guess like everyone before you do a deep dive you
you sort of dismiss it as an Internet fad.
And something that may or may not become something, but it's
only when you do the deep dive and you you try to like devil's
advocate your way through through the learning process and
try to debunk everything because it sounds too good.
And then at the end of the 10,000 hours, or whatever you
need to put in to actually understand it, you realize that,
holy shit, this this could actually deliver on its
promises, I guess. An important point for me was
the block size wars and how that whole thing played out.
After that, my my conviction, if you will, in Bitcoin became
much, much more robust because I I saw that the users were
actually in charge and not the big companies and not the miners
and that's that's. Key.
Yeah, Yeah. I find it very interesting that
also when when people talk about Bitcoin, they mentioned humility
a lot, right? Like, it humbles you once you
understand it. And I also think that when
everyone dismisses it at first, nobody understands it at first,
right? And like, a dismissal of a new
idea is actually very intellectually lazy and easy,
right? You just say like, oh, you know,
it's a fad or it's a simple thing.
But once you actually do the work, I think that what humbles
you is your own, like the realization of your own
ignorance or something, right? Like that you actually.
Yeah. Honest in the beginning or
something. No, not honest to yourself.
I mean, I'm the obviously the most humble person in the world,
no. But but on a on a serious note
there like the the humbling part for for me personally the
humbling is all. I mean it does humble you, but
at the same time I had, I had personal success with my own
personal journey as a official person in Bitcoin, which I more
or less deliberately became. I mean my books got a little way
more recognition that I that I expected and the other stuff as
well. So, so at the same time I I.
That Bitcoin humbled me. I I started to get all this
appreciation for for my work so but I'm going to embrace that
and like of course I every every single time I get a a like or a
kind comment it it still warms my heart.
I mean, I still appreciate everything so and I'm, I'm going
to live my life to the fullest and I'm going to embrace this
and. If if people see value in what I
do, I'm going to do more of it. I would probably do more of it
regardless. But but, but it does help fuel
the fire, if you will. Yeah, yeah, that's nice.
I talked with Thomas Ferrer in a previous episode and once we
stopped recording, we just chatted about what we like, if
we like the conversation, you know?
And he said, well, it's actually really nice to talk to someone
outside of my, like local social circle and and see that like
another person came to the same conclusion or has the same
thoughts, right, that that because if you are alone on this
journey to understand it, then sometimes you end up at a point
where you think like, no, it cannot be this big, right?
Like I I'm a bit crazy or something.
But it's nice to see the recognition in the thinking of
other people. Yeah, And The funny thing is
that that is true regardless of what what religion you belong
to, where you come from. Like you could have read a
completely different set of books but still end up at the
same conclusion. And I find that highly
fascinating to me. That's further proof that
there's something real in this that it it maps onto all sorts
of different world views, as long as you're.
Honest in your ex examination of of this phenomenon, yeah, it's
actually, yeah you can interpret it in a certain in, in different
ways I'd say or maybe maybe it's more like you can view Bitcoin
in certain ways but like the base layer of understanding is
is something that we share or something like that, right?
That it goes across the interpretations of certain
religions or, you know, whatever you whatever you adhere to, I'd
say. Yeah, you need a certain level
of understanding of some of the concepts, and for not only one
field. So you need to know some basic
economics, specifically Austrian economics.
Oh, excuse me. And you need some mathematics.
You need some computer skills, some knowledge about how the
Internet. Works I guess.
And yeah, you need to understand game theory to a certain extent
as well to do 2 points, a lot of dimensions.
And there's a. Lot of touch points and you need
to know. I guess for.
A deeper knowledge you need to know about the energy sector and
how that works and electricity and how electricity prices form
and all sorts of other stuff. But but still if you have a.
A pretty good understanding about a little bit of this and a
little bit of that. In each of these fields, you can
connect the dots and see that there's something here.
Yeah, yeah, I agree. Like I I don't have a like a
finance or economics background, so I had no clue about those
dimensions. But that's maybe also why it
takes so long to fully grasp what you know.
This could be and like as long as you are curious and like
intellectually honest. Yeah.
And then sometimes that's. Yeah.
And sometimes that's an advantage rather than a
disadvantage to to not know too much about economics because
then you're untainted by Keynesian economics, the
Keynesian economics taught in modern universities.
So. So.
You ask yourself. Very basic questions, like how
could printing more money create more wealth than like if if they
can print money, why do we pay taxes?
And you know, why do people in the public, say, pay sector pay
taxes at all? Like simple questions like that,
Yeah, yeah and yeah. Why a target of 3% inflation?
Why not 100? Yeah.
If and then and then you also get to these points I think
where you for example I liked in.
I don't know if we spoke about the example in the previous
episode, but like if all the money is amount is totaled in a
pizza with eight pieces, right? And then they print money.
The pizza doesn't get bigger but the but the slices get smaller,
right? Yeah, it's a very good analogy
when you think about the total energy captured in the in the
first piece that's now divided in two pieces.
But if you buy the same thing that caused the same energy to
make, you still need the same energy.
So now you need instead of 1 pizza unit, you need two pizza
units. Right?
When I heard that for the first time, without all my background,
without having a background in this, I was like, yeah, that
makes sense. But then if you start thinking
and think like, Oh well, the people who are in charge of the
money supply, they do this and blah, blah, but it doesn't make
sense logically, doesn't make sense.
So then you quickly come to the conclusion that it must be
ideological in a way, right. They are beyond the beyond the
logic and reason. And it's more certain, yeah,
ideology that they follow. And that's where I think, well,
for me, some things clicked where I was like, yeah, I don't
adhere to the ideology. I adhere to the logic in this in
this. Example and and when you unpack
it and when you realize what it means it's it's the hurdle is a
bit too big for people because they can't comprehend that that
all bankers are criminals and all central bankers are you
know. Really.
Really.
Bad criminals, and there's no other way to explain it if if
you have. If you're allowed to counterfeit
money, you're no better than any other counterfeiter.
Like, why should anyone have the privilege?
It's it's just vulgar and absurd to think that's any human being
should be allowed the power to to print money for themselves,
which is basically what they're doing.
They're exchanging it for government bonds and whatnot
and. Fiat money gets created out of
thin air when when the bank gives out a a mortgage or a loan
to someone. But but still it's at the heart
of the the whole system is is fraud and and that realization I
think that's a bit too much for for people because they they
want to believe that. They're living in a society
that's functioning and that there's.
I mean, they're just also right? Like if you think, yeah, I would
never do that, then you think that someone else would never do
that too. But that's not reality.
No, no. And also like the even the
people who run the Central. Banks at this point may not be
criminals themselves, or may not.
In their own minds, be criminals because they they were born,
they were also born into a system that is broken at its
core and fraudulent at its core. And then they know of nothing
else. I mean inflationary currencies
have been around for a long time, thousands of years.
I mean we we've had more or less stable systems historically and
it wasn't until. You know 1971 where where the
dollar was finally cut completely loose from from any
connection to gold that that things have gone S the way they
have now during the last 50 years but or 60 years but but it
was always fraudulent to to. More or less fraudulent.
Let's say that yeah we'll we'll get to that in a second but if
we take a step back. So as a former tall ship sailor
you of course Robinson Cruz away example in the in your in your
book about praxeology which I think is is cool but like you
share his journey and that his journey mirrors the journey of
someone who discovers and understands Bitcoin.
Can you elaborate a bit on that how?
Yeah, I I. Deliberately left Bitcoin out of
the Praxeology book. I'm not so subtly hinting at it
here and there, but I never mentioned the word Bitcoin.
And I mean crucial. Economics is a term in itself,
right? And and it's it's a good
framework because it starts from the individual and explains
economics from the individual and up.
And I got the idea. For.
For the Crusoe theme for the book, halfway through the
writing process. So like oh this is this is how
we tie this thing together. We we use Crusoe for all
examples and a lot can be learned from from just reasoning
yourself to what would happen to Crusoe if he did X or if he.
Did Y like if it's the first example I think is him catching
fish with his hands? And then he can catch X amount
of fish per time unit. And if he's if he saves up some
fish and chooses not to fish with his hands for X amount of
hours per day, but instead spends his time producing a net,
then that sacrifice of capital allows him to catch more fish
per time unit later on in his life.
And that's the importance of of capital and the importance of
being able to save the fruits of your labour for a later date,
yeah? So even there, you can see you
can draw parallels to how money printing is a crime.
Yeah. And it also kind of ties in with
what Jeff Boots talks about. You know when he says that
technology should eventually make things cheaper, slash more
efficient, right? Like instead of catching fish
with your hands, when you invent technology, like a net, in the
same time you have more fruits of the same labor, right?
So that is that the same illustration there.
Yeah, I I. Guess sorry I had to send a
message here. So can you repeat the question?
So the example that Jeff Booth gives about, you know,
technology makes everything cheaper slash more productive,
right. And so Robinson catches fish
with his hands, then he invents the technology of his net or he
creates a net and then in the same time frame slash energy
expenditure, he gets more fruit for the same labor, which
eventually, well, conceptually goes on and on, right.
But when you look at the current system, that is that is what's
been broken in a sense. Yeah, yeah.
The the the thing with Jeff's argument there is that it's
absolutely true. It's not only that it would have
been true. It is true at all times that the
marginal cost of production in a free market, the marginal cost
of production for all goods and services, all, all prices fall
to their marginal cost of production.
That's the sentence. So overtime, things get cheaper
and cheaper, and if they don't, you're using the wrong
denominator. It's as simple as that if you're
using Bitcoin as your denominator, right?
Yeah yeah you could use Bitcoin. You could use kilowatt hours.
The they that will give you a better result than using dollars
and cents like yeah how how much did what's the price of this in
kilowatt hours and or or what's the price of.
This in Bitcoin and that will give you a different figure than
if you. If you denominate in dollars,
yeah yeah, I find that fascinating.
I had this example already on once.
If you go to tradingview.com and you pick any stock, any index
and you put it against USD, then the the numbers, the price goes
up mostly. But if you put it in the money
supply, it's mostly down. And actually the most
fascinating one I found was the NASDAQ about the tech stocks,
where the value of the current tech stocks.
So the value in M2 is less than at the height of the 2000.com
bubble, which arguably is. We can view that it's not less
valuable, right? Like we have more technology.
We have better technology. We.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, all these things.
But in value, it's absolute value.
It's down. Yeah, that's crazy.
Yeah. And it's because of money for
it. It's because someone is
counterfeiting money. That's our currency.
That's that is the problem. It's stealing from everyone,
everywhere at the same time, at all times.
And it's it's. Greatest scam ever committed and
why is that so hard? To see why is that so hard to
see. Because everyone, because
everyone is living in it. Like everyone is so used to it
and have been for generations. So.
So we can't we can't see the truth.
It's like this is like. There are a lot of Christian
Bitcoiners out there who won't like this next thing, but but I
view Bitcoin as financial atheism.
Like we're we're not the cult, we're the ones leaving the cult.
The cult is Fiat, because Fiat requires you to believe in
something that you can't verify. Bitcoin does not.
It doesn't require you to believe anything.
It requires understanding which is another.
Another thing altogether so so I don't think bitcoiners are
religious cult. We're we're the ones who are who
have dared to left to leave the cult that we were in which was
the Fiat monetary cult. Yeah.
Is this what you in the book you
also talk about the truth goggles right is.
This. Yeah, Yeah, from that Carpenter
movie. It it gives you truth goes when,
when you start seeing things from this perspective and from
an individualist perspective, a consensualist perspective if you
will, or a bitcoiner perspective, and you denominate
stuff in Bitcoin, you see the world for what it truly is
instead of seeing this deliberate facade.
And how sometimes you hear people say like once you see it
you cannot Unsee it right in Bitcoin but how does that apply
to to then the current world like the current system If we
like the one of the goals of of this podcast is of course to
help people find the threats that they can pull right to
start their own like rabbit hole journey.
What are these things that you that you couldn't Unsee anymore
once you saw? Like the once you stepped out of
what you call the cult? Well.
You're seeing money printing for what it is.
It's it's stealing from everyone's time everywhere.
Like that's that's the key thing.
But also seeing what the effects of that is that everything gets
politicized. So in like in a totally free
market, the whoever can provide you the best goods and services
for the lowest price wins the market and.
Therefore they they are rewarded and in the current system where
where the game is rigged so that the closer you are to the
monetary spigot due to the the the cantilon effect kicks in,
which is that people who are closer to it get richer faster
and everyone else pays for that. That asymmetry, so So what that
means in in real term is in real terms is that it becomes more
important for a market market actor to be to have friends in
high places than to actually provide good good goods and good
services. So for instance, for an airline
today, it's way more important to be connected politically so
that you can get bailed out when when you don't sell enough
flight tickets than it is to actually provide a good flight
experience. Yeah, so.
So this is the thing. Everything becomes a political
game where lobbyism becomes very important.
If you ever go to Brussels, I I urge you to drive through the
the, the block where all the lobbyists live, because that was
very eye opening for me to see this luxurious apartments.
That is where the real power resides, whoever, because money
is a stronger force than than than political will.
So so. Politicians can be bought as
scientists can be bought. Everyone can be bought for the
for the right price, and if not outright bribed, they can be
pushed into focusing their attention and efforts in in
directions that they wouldn't have chosen on the free market
which which produces clown world.
Why we get these? Arbitrary things to to fight
about Instead of focusing on how do we make like life better for
most amount of people, how do we free up people so that they can
pursue life, liberty and and property and prosperity like
instead it becomes this game of appeasing no or or.
Pleasing the bureaucrats and pleasing the politicians and
pleasing the media. Yeah.
And is it also your airline examples?
Interesting. I think last week I read that
Delta. I think it was Delta Airlines
makes more money on the interests of their of the credit
cards they they give out like their.
You know how do you call it like flight points or whatever like
how you can say, yeah points like they get more revenue from
the interest on the cards than revenue from the flights that
the seats that that they sell. Yeah, Isn't that Then also like,
does the brokenness of the money also open up like the like I
almost want to say like the exploitation of the people who
are kind of, like subject to the broken money, kind of like how
Delta has. Absolutely everyone.
What happens when money is broken and can't store value
over time is that people invent new money and they they use
other things as money. Like, yeah, real estate for
instance. People save in houses instead of
saving in cash in a bank account because that makes no sense
today since you lose money over time doing that.
So instead they invest in risky things.
That do not have a guaranteed return.
Nothing has a guaranteed return but but the money is broken so
you can't save in money so so air miles for instance becomes
becomes a a new means of of saving for the airline company
mostly but and yeah so every that is the air Miles are are
are. One aspect of every company
becoming a bank, when they're big enough they start to become
a bank. Like you can see supermarkets
having their own banks and like yeah, if you if you become a
member here you get this and that discount.
The same with you know large electronics stores and
everything. Every every large chain becomes
this bank like entity where where you're supposed to be
rewarded for being loyal to them.
And that is that is a product of Fiat currency.
It it wouldn't exist if money wasn't broken And how about
because I I think you probably believe in a in a meritocracy
and and then also kind of in capitalism or what you said,
right. Like if I make the best products
for the lowest price then I win. And if you don't if if I make
better cakes than than your cakes then you lose.
You have to do something else right.
But yeah, the the capitalism in that definition is then also
broken because the money is broken, right?
Yeah, Well, it. Is capitalism?
Well, yeah. We've never had such a thing as
real capitalism. Like just like the argument the
the socialists used. Like the we've never seen real
socialism. I would argue that we've never
seen real capitalism. We we have seen real socialism.
It sucks, but we haven't seen real capitalism all we've seen.
Is more or less central planning, but it's always
centrally planned and so we'll see what happens in Argentina
here in the come forthcoming months.
But yeah, it's interesting to see the the reactions on that
also. I feel, but when the money's
broken, it's all central planning.
It doesn't matter if you're a Liberal or Conservative or a
Green Party or whatever other political.
I mean, it's all central planning at the end of the day,
because there's a central bank planning the supply of money.
So they that mechanism allows for political influence
everywhere, and politicians steering society into whatever
directions they see fit for their own interests.
And this ties into something I wanted to ask about the book you
talk about. You discuss the relationship
between irrefutable statements about human beings in in the
book and what is the relationship with how Bitcoin is
decentralized like? My interpretation is that you
know and we just talked about it.
I think like once we all accept that when people like you and I,
when we are given the choice to exploit the system that we are
part of, like, but most people will do that although we think
we wouldn't like that is when a system is corruptible and you
can get a benefit from that, then you know there are people
who who do that right. And Bitcoin helps us mitigate
that human flaw because we cannot trust ourselves and
others like individually. We need a protocol or a set of
layers we can trust so that we don't have to trust other
humans, right? Like, that's the trustlessness
of Bitcoin. That's kind of like my
interpretation of that. Yeah it's a it's a pretty pretty
solid explanation and I think the word decentralization gets
thrown around too much and and it's used in the wrong context
because decentralization is a an unfortunate means to much
greater end. So the only reason that we need
decentralization is that what you said like that we can't
trust one another with. Controlling the money supply
would be way easier if there was a trustworthy guy who could just
keep one Excel sheet of everyone's transactions and we
could trust that guy, That would be way cheaper, way faster, way
better in every sense. It's just that we have this
problem that we can't because the incentive to to abuse that
is too. Large.
So that's what the decentralization does it it
allows for a global. Free market.
Sound money. Sound money.
Free market. To exist.
And that is the real deal. Because that's what leads to the
meritocracy. That's what leads what leads to
ever falling prices and better everything for everyone,
everywhere, all at once. And why is that then?
If like the money, so the technology we use to exchange
value with each other is transparent and open and all
these things, why does that make it better?
It does. Does it then actually give us
more trust or what? What does it say about?
The well, it's not, it's not the transparent and open here that
we need transparent and open to assure that this is actually the
case. But the key point is the
absolute supply like the the finite supply the the the supply
cap that that no one can ever make more of this thing.
So instead of having. This is actually a pizza that
that gets cut into 21 million pieces, or a 2.1 quadrillion
pieces to be exact. But this pizza can grow larger
and your share of the pizza stays the same no matter how
large the pizza gets. So abundance in in in.
In money scarcity everywhere else, and vice versa, abundance
and everything else requires scarce money.
And so that's also the meme right on the shirts that you're
wearing is everything. Divided.
Yeah, but but like 111 like a bit deeper on that.
I like the analogy of actually you have like all the money
units, right. Like what you said the 21
quadrillion is like the in Satoshi's like the smallest part
of a Bitcoin. Those are the numbers to keep
count 1 satoshi equals etcetera, but the pizza represents the
value, right. So those are two different
things. Yeah, it's.
Represents all economic value in currently in Bitcoin.
Like, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
What people decided to save or store in Bitcoin then?
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It like we the the point of the
equation is that theoretically the entire world economy could
be be denominated in this not ever changing number which yeah.
Translated easily to the least amount of characters, that's
everything divided by 21 million.
That's what it means, yeah? Yeah, and it also means
everything now, but also everything in the future then,
right? Like.
Everything exactly, which is a completely mind blowing thought
because it changes everything about how everything works.
Like you could even imagine starting a company in the
future, not to have black numbers on your balance sheet,
but just to slow slow down the pace of your diminishing stack.
Because you need to pay for everything in Bitcoin, so your
stacks will eventually diminish even though your purchasing
power can still go up. So it's going to be very hard
for humanity to wrap their heads around this, especially in the
long run. I think two more next week.
I'm talking to Michael Dunworth. You know him.
Oh, great, great. Yeah, yeah, we're good friends,
so I love his mind too. But he talks about sending
Bitcoin to the future and basically doing what you just
said, right. You can send it to the future so
you don't have it now. You can program basically a time
lock, right, that you can only access it in 30 years.
And despite having the same amount, the number of whatever
satoshi's in the future, it will represent a different value than
what it represents now. Yeah, I.
Tell him, tell him I said that he should focus more on the on
weird numerology and stop worrying about magnets.
OK, I'll set this up before. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we talk, yeah,
But. But I think that's also the fun
part. I think that there's something
in Bitcoin for everyone, right? Like whatever you find
absolutely or whatever floats your boat, like you can find it
in Bitcoin. And that's also why I think for
me at least, it's some sometimes hard to communicate, that's
sort. Of like, yeah.
But of course there's something for everyone because it's money.
Like there's something for everyone in money.
Like if if there's a thing that you can buy other things with,
the people are willing to trade for other things, of course
there's something in it for you. Like it's the ultimate thing,
actually. Yeah, it is.
It's it's the thing with the with the least diminishing
marginal utility ever. If you follow that.
That's a long, complicated sentence, but it's one of the
loss of economics, the law of diminishing the marginal
returns. So if you if you have an apple.
If you're hungry, you can eat the apple if you have two
apples. The first apple will give you
more pleasure than the second. It will.
It will you're probably fed up after after the first apple.
OK, at least the first apple will give you nourishment to
find another apple to eat like so.
The each additional unit of a homogeneous good.
Which is also subjective, by the way, but that's another story.
Has a diminishing return to you, so like more of stuff, more
stuff of the same stuff doesn't really make you richer, because
like each unit of something has less and less value, and The
thing is money has a. This effect is in money too, but
not to the same extent, since you can exchange money for
absolutely anything else. It has a very low diminish,
diminishment of the its marginal utility.
But there's still a point where no where more money doesn't make
any sense, like where it doesn't bring you that much more joy or
what? It's one of the things I
actually wanted to ask like what is wealth for you and does
wealth equates happiness? Well, wealth is like when you
study praxeology, you really realize the importance of using
the using correct worth the correct words.
Now you use the wrong word just because.
But wealth is different than being rich.
Like being wealthy sort of means you have capital, and capital
can be capital goods or it can be money, or it can be some some
way of storing time. So being wealthy to me is having
a lot of capital, regardless of which shape or form, way, shape
or form that capital is. But being rich is to me is
another thing. Being rich sort of means getting
to decide what to do for yourself as much as possible
during your life, like a person. Who comes to the insight that
that's which they can do without their own early on in life?
In my mind, it is a richer person than someone who's keeps
on chasing more money throughout his life without really
questioning why. So if you really want to be free
and able to do whatever you want to do.
Then that is the thing to aim for.
Of course money helps with that since money is support.
At least true money as Bitcoin. Because money is supposed to
store store up time for you for later use so you can trade your
and the more of it you have, the more you the the freer you are
because you can you can buy yourself time.
But another thing that frees you up is realizing that you don't
need to be a materialist. You don't really need much more
than a toothbrush and and a laptop and a phone maybe, and I
would add a guitar to that, but other than that I have very few
material cravings and that frees up a lot of time too.
So why do you think that is? I I I love that.
I see that as a common theme with a lot of people that see
and understand Bitcoin and own it, but it makes you more.
I don't think frugal is the right word, but it's.
Less materialistic, Yeah. Yeah, it's like and I think
there's. There's a very good explanation
for that. If you have inflationary money,
you're incentivized to spend it, because if you don't spend it,
it loses its value. So you're always incentivized to
buy more shit to get the the energy that it represents now.
Exactly. Exactly.
Future Whatever. You don't know how much.
Yeah. Yeah.
You have, right. Yeah.
Exactly. So you have a high time
preference. Basically, if you if you have a
money with a fixed supply, you have a low time preference.
And because you know that if you don't spend but save instead,
you'll have more tomorrow, you'll have access to more
things, more goods, more services later on, and this is
the path to seeing that. Stuff isn't that important.
Like this is the path to seeing that living a more modest life
is key to to becoming wealthy in the in the true sense of the
word in the in the long run and being or I should reduce the
word rich here in order to live, live a rich life.
Yeah, I think two things. They're like, it slows your time
down. Right.
It's we all have the same time. Well, whatever you think time
is, yeah. Everyone lives 100% of their
lives? Yeah, exactly.
No. But the lower time preference
also gives you the most mental space to think about.
What do I actually want to contribute?
Like, what do I want to do? Like the space for you to figure
that out is created instead of consumed by whatever.
Quick, how do you say figure you can get to satisfy?
Exactly. And here we come into the thing
that I just can't stop thinking about.
Because you get more time as a Bitcoin.
You get more time on your hands. Because you realize this, these
things like you, you become incentivized to have a lower
time preference. So you so you save rather than
spend you you start prioritizing quality over quantity and also.
For this to In order for this to work, Bitcoin needs to work, and
Bitcoin needs to succeed and grow its purchasing power over
time. So how do we make that happen?
We we help other Bitcoiners with whatever they do.
So we're incentivized to save rather than spend and we're
incentivized to help one another.
So I'm that's why I'm on this pod.
I'm incentivized to help you and that's why you're interviewing
me. You're incentivized to help me.
We want we both want the same goals here, not a 0 sum exchange
no. Right.
So we're. So we're giving each other our
time right now. We're in a trade right now.
Yeah, without sending a single Satoshi, yes.
Which means that bitcoiners are incentivized to be fucking
awesome to one another and not spend.
So I see the the usage of money going down on a Bitcoin standard
so that we won't need money as much as we did before because we
just become better people, more trustworthy.
Because we have this base layer of trust already which allows
for more trust on the human layers on top of it because
because you can't cheat the system.
So so I see this. It's a wonderful transition,
basically. Yeah, because the the killer app
of Bitcoin is you. It's not, it's not something
technical, it's the the human being that is changed from the
inside. So it it allows us to wear our
hearts on our sleeves and be be excellent to one another.
And this is fine when you yeah, I'll, I'll keep on the ramp.
This is sort of my shtick here. But if you think about what
Bitcoin is, so like Bitcoin has been described as anything from
from a potato to, you know, digital cash or hope or
whatever. Everyone frames it differently,
but at its core, it's ones and zeros.
It's just binary bits of information and we every
bitcoiner if to own a Bitcoin or to possess a Bitcoin is just
keeping a secret. That's all it is if you memorize
your 12 words and you destroy every other location the 12
words are in. You, You literally are the
bitcoins. There's no distinction between
the bitcoins and you. Yes, but unpack that a bit more.
Every other Bitcoin that is not in someone's head, It still is
in someone's head because it requires that person to keep a
secret, the secret of the PIN code, the location of the
device, whatever. It always involves keeping a
secret somehow. So we are all our bitcoins.
We are the same entity. And if you think about what a
node is, it's a it's a consciousness becomes a
consciousness. No.
Well, it's the node is just a fancy Abacus.
The only thing it does it it helps its owner do the
verification. Yeah, which is just a bunch of
calculations. So it helps its owner with the
maths, but it's still the owner. There needs to be human action.
The A guy needs to or girl needs to buy this thing, plug it in,
run the software, and do the verification himself.
Same is true for a miner. A miner is just it's not an
ASIC. It's a guy trying to guess a
number and he buys ASICS to help him guess numbers faster.
That's all they do. They guess numbers.
So, so everything in Bitcoin is the people in Bitcoin?
They're using mental tools to help them calculate.
That's all there is to it. Yeah, so we are the bitcoins and
they help us be more awesome to one another, which is just what
the fuck is this thing? It's, it's.
And that makes me think that means to me it also means taking
ownership, right? Like that the the don't trust
verify you do the action to. To verify that other people
verifying but also adding so it's again.
This. No, no, it's it's it's yeah it's
verifying that other people are truthful.
But if they if, if everyone was, if there were no scammers, we
wouldn't need this thing. Yeah.
Which means that we all had this with within us all along.
To me that's what this says that we we never really needed this
in the 1st place. We only need it because we.
We didn't figure out any other way of how to unlock that
fucking immense power that is already within us.
Yes I yeah I I have to think about what you just said but
yeah I think I think for me like I love this angle of Bitcoin
where the I saw I I I also think like you see it almost and more
as a philosophy right. It's a philosophy that's kind of
like backed by the in the the discovered technology in a
sense. But eventually it's it's not
just the technology. It's absolutely not way, way
more than that. I mean, the technology would be
nothing without the human actors acting upon the technology.
Like if if humans didn't act, we wouldn't have like we wouldn't
have any technology. But that's beside the point.
Like this specific technology is literally nothing without these
users, yeah? A car is still a car whether or
not it has a driver in the in it or or not.
But a Bitcoin is not a Bitcoin until a person interacts with
it, yes. And here's another because I'm
on A roll here. Like, here's another funny
thought. All all the numbers in Bitcoin,
that is to say all the private keys, all the bitcoins have
always existed. It's just that the hashing power
was 0 up until 2009 or or 2011 so but all the numbers were
already there. It's just that we didn't know
about this way to use them. So in that sense, it's way much
more of a discovery than an invention.
Yes. Yeah, I like to, I like to talk
about a discovery as well because, yes, I agree.
Just you also mean like just in general math exists.
The numbers existed already, it's how you utilize them and
then create the the the effect in the in the in the physical
realm in a sense, right? Exactly.
It's. And I don't know what I like in
Bitcoin. There's a lot of these.
What's the word in English? I don't want to say funny but
it's like it's like consequences of Bitcoin that are actually
like soul things for the people that don't see Bitcoin at all
which I don't know how to call that in English.
But for example when we just talked about you know you your
time gets slower so you get more mental space to figure out how
can I add value to mutual exchanges not the all these zero
sum games etcetera. We by doing that, we well, by
adopting Bitcoin, the people slowly also undermine the system
that other people keep afloat. And because they are so
entrenched in keeping this current system afloat, they
don't pay attention. Well, they they see Bitcoin, but
well, we'll see. We'll see what happens, right.
But their the incentives are not aligned.
So the people who are currently have the biggest incentive to
exploit the system. They will be the last to
actually. Yeah, that's wanted.
That's one aspect of it. But you can you can do that
thought experiment even deeper, like since this Bitcoin.
So as more and more money flows into Bitcoin, it also flows out
of the Fiat system, disempowering that and
empowering Bitcoin. Yes, but that's another thing as
Bitcoin. As the Bitcoin economy grows,
that allows for a very well oiled global trading machine
that can trade goods and services over which.
Pushes costs down, production costs and transportation costs
down because of a free market competition for everyone, not
just bitcoiners, yes. Even Fiat people benefit,
whether they like to or not. From the success of Bitcoin,
yes. So.
So it's a success for absolutely everyone except dishonest people
who try to steal from others. That's those are the only ones
that have something to lose from this do you think that's also
the biggest kind of like paradigm shift in a sense the
the like the the the you know don't trust verify is kind of
like aligned with you know we follow rules instead of rulers
and we follow the rules because we cannot trust ourselves and
therefore on also not the rulers that's you know one realization
we talked about is that the biggest kind of like paradigm
shift that people also will need to learn as in well it will make
you more sovereign and more in control and give you more space
but you do need to do the work as well you you will get the
responsibility for also getting the the the those new positive
elements in the sense in your life like you also it's not free
right where some stuff in the current system is free this is
not free. No, there's no such thing as a
free lunch. And there is also no second
breakfast as Michael Saylor would have put it.
So no, it's not free. But but over time as as number
grows up, people who who put in work and to put in the work to
understand this thing and get some Bitcoin and start changing
their lives in order to be able to.
Be more Bitcoiny are going to be rewarded for that behaviour and
other people are going to see that, see that play out.
And then they're going to see, you know, they're going to keep
on seeing videos and photos of us bitcoiners having a swell
time at any everywhere in the world and just living our lives
as we see fit. And that is going to rub off on
other people. I mean, I.
When I quit my Fiat job, for instance, like, I think that at
least the more curious minded people in that office keep an
eye on me now and see what happens to me after I made that
move, if I'm doing OK or if it was a catastrophe.
And so it is. Whenever you choose to devote
your life to this thing, people will notice.
And that they will notice if you fare well or not like.
So it is setting an example, I guess.
Yeah. And that's also that that number
go up, right, Like the price that people see, the people that
are also not yet into Bitcoin that is obviously like one of
the primary drivers because they will be like OK, am I well they
they can still dismiss it obviously.
But some people, it's kind of like every cycle you get like a
new chunk of of people. That's.
It's going to take a while but yeah, but yeah, well what will
happen if we I I hear Peter Dunworth, like Michael Michael's
brother. He talks about, you know, one
day we're going to wake up and one Bitcoin will be 1,000,000.
Will that be shocking enough for most people to pay attention?
You think or hope I? Hope, I guess.
I guess we'll have to wait and see this, this.
It's hard to predict the future like that.
But I expect, like, I think we'll see, like if if I'm going
to make any predictions about the future, is that one of these
bull runs is going to be the big one where it goes absolutely
bonkers. Like where there's because
there's simply aren't enough bitcoins around, And when people
realize that they they have everything to gain from not
selling, Not even in the bull run.
Then things will start to get weird.
So we might see these cycles a couple of more times before that
happens, but one of these bull runs is going to be the bull run
that that that triggers hyperbacronization.
And if like which sounds weird and sounds wild, but how
couldn't it be like? How?
How could you stop that from from happening?
How could you what how could you stop people from realizing that
there's a better system? Like, it's unstoppable.
You you can't. Anything you will do will
legitimize it, I think, right? Like what you said, if people
move, that was one of my insights at one point.
Yeah, I thought like, I don't see it as buying Bitcoin
anymore. I see it as moving my my energy
from one system to another. So that's when I started doing
that and once they you know they the the current system in the
current system they don't like it of course because they cannot
make more money out of your money.
So they will start closing the doors probably that will happen
at some point and well you've we've already seen it happen and
like those are these these things that will show some
people that hey is is the is the money in the bank actually mine
and then what is money and why don't they want me to take out
that what I own and then you know slowly find out more about
how it works. But, but if any one of us runs
into legal trouble or whatever, I mean, look at how much they
raised for Hodlin odds trial against Craig Wright, for
instance. Yeah, like instantly everyone
shipped in and he raised a lot of money in no time.
And nobody knows knows him personally.
Well, I do, but most most bitcoiners don't.
And still they're on his side, because that's that battle was
important, and many future battles would be important too.
But there are a lot of wealthy people in this already, and we
got each other's backs, and we're everywhere around the
globe. The meet ups are small, but
they're everywhere. They're literally everywhere.
In in in Germany, there's a meet up in every major city every
week in Spain, like, I went to one the other day here and I've
realized that they're almost everywhere here too.
They're in Valencia, Alicante, Madrid, Sevilla.
How can you stop it everywhere, right?
Yeah, that's it. I think it's more an idea.
Yeah, you can't. An idea whose time has come.
It's it's completely unstoppable.
Yeah. One thing I wanted to ask you
about as well, I think it was you who gave the example, and
correct me if I'm wrong, but about you can put a a seed, a
seed phrase in a in a vault somewhere in the world.
This was you, right? I think, I think so, yeah.
Yeah, you can put a seed phrase so the access to a Bitcoin
wallet in a vault somewhere and as long as you know the the
public key of it, so the wallet address, you can send value to
that without no. No, no, it's no, it's the other
way wrong. Yeah.
I mean so you you, but the the thought experiment is make a
paper wallet. And you obviously need the
private key outside of the vault.
Oh yeah, that was it. Yeah.
So you can access default without going to default.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or let me see if I if I Yeah.
Yeah. No, you're right.
You need the public. You only need the public key in
the vault, but you need to scan it first.
And then you can send money into the vault.
It's a it's a ridiculous thought experiment, but it's it comes
from a a true story. One of my first mind blow
moments in in Bitcoin was just fiddling around at home with
paper wallets. And I had one and I scanned the
the public key. And I put it in an envelope.
And then I sent Bitcoin to the paper in that envelope.
So I realized, like, I just beamed money through the through
the envelope. Like how, though, how, how, how
can that work? And if I.
But The funny thing is, if I can beam it through paper, I can
beam it through concrete as well.
I can beam it through anything, yeah.
Because it's information. This is the thing.
This is what element 0 is it. It has no weight.
It doesn't care about physical reality.
It's all in our heads, yeah. I think this is one of the
things that once you see this then I think you go all in on on
understanding more of Bitcoin, I want to say or Bitcoin itself.
But it's such a different way of framing how something works.
Like it's actually feels way simpler in a sense than how a
lot of current things work because it's just the ones and
the zeros change and it corresponds with, you know, this
hash etc. It's just I also had one thought
some weeks ago that it's it's only text.
I read the the full blockchain is like 500 gigabytes I think
ish 600 gigabytes. And then I thought this is just
text it's only text it's just one big crazy text file in the
sense. And yes, when you give that
example of how you send a part of a Bitcoin to another number,
it just adds just numbers are added to this long list of
numbers and that is just it like.
It's crazy. Tie back to the example of the
paper wallet in the in the vault.
Because if if that money is to be usable, you need both the
private key you you need a a public key and a private key
printed on the same paper in the wall in the vault.
Well, not the same paper, but you need both keys to be in the
vault in order for anyone to be able to spend it.
But you don't need to put the the The thing is you don't need
to put the money on the paper before you put it into the
vault. You can lock the vault first as
long as you you have the public key.
And also once you hold the paper, you can say this this
paper with in pen, written numbers, letters on it is worth
XYZ value right? Like like you can actually say
that and and that's what it represents is totally somewhere
else, actually. And how cool is a mnemonic seed
phrase really? Like that you can travel with
money in your head. Like it's it's it still blows my
mind every day that that is absolutely, 100% real
impossible. It changes everything.
Yeah, I agree. I love.
I love these thoughts. So this is, yeah, yeah, the 1st.
Talking to you, I love it the first time.
First time I had an epiphany about the 12 words.
It was like going through airport security a long time ago
and like, and they emptied my my bathroom bag and threw away my
toothpaste. And I'm like, all right, you can
have my toothpaste. You can't have my 12 words.
Like, like there's no way you can have my 12 words.
There's not. You can't even know that I have
them. But go ahead and take the
toothpaste. Yeah.
No, no, this is absolutely true. Like the the, the, the.
Not many people have felt that. Sovereign in a no in his.
Power in general, right? Yeah, exactly.
No, not never, never. It's it's a completely new mode
of being like and it allows you to be yourself to the fullest
extent possible. You don't have to play any Fiat
games. You can like, yeah, it's it's
like the example before you said you appreciated me telling you
that I was lazy. So, like, So what?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah yeah fun.
It's fun it makes you it makes it simpler life or something
like I I find it fascinating to and also really really fun to
talk to more honest also helps you challenge my own fault.
Yeah, it's more honest. It's it's it's real.
It's also, I never really met a Bitcoin or I didn't like because
we have some sort of common understanding about very.
Things that are very core to humans, I think, right?
Like that you discovered something within yourself that
you know is hard work. Like it.
It takes it takes work to figure that out.
And and when you meet other bitcoiners, you know they did
the same thing and everyone has their own individual struggle in
a sense, right? But that is what the bond is, I
think. So you can skip all the bullshit
conversations about the weather and go go into how how entropy
is a requirement for consciousness or something
instead of like have these great philosophical things instantly,
yeah? So I I have two two last
questions for you. One is like what are you talk to
a lot of people about Bitcoin, obviously, like what are the
most common counter arguments you still face?
And like how how do you respond to to them the counter
arguments? Yeah, there are only bad ones.
Like it's only used by criminals.
And yeah, then you try to point out that the real criminals are
the bankers and the central bankers and the politicians.
But most people don't see the world that way.
The other thing. When you say like when you say,
there are no informed critiques, right?
That's also what Michael Saylor says.
Like it sounds so it's a hyperbolic yeah, it sounds a bit
arrogant maybe yes, but like, well, there isn't none.
Like they I I got the question for a questionnaire once, like,
what's the biggest threat to Bitcoin?
And the biggest threat I could think of was Godzilla.
Godzilla is a laser eyed monster with the, you know, fire breath
and whatever 200 meters tall and can destroy buildings that that.
That's probably the biggest threat to Bitcoin there is.
Can you elaborate, like why this is just a random answer, or
well, well, it's at least as real as all the other threats?
Like that, Yes. Just as.
Yeah. Yeah.
Unfounded. Yeah.
All right. Yeah, fun.
I I do think this is one of our challenges in the sense, like it
it sounds arrogant, but it's true.
Like I would love to see debates between, I don't know, you and
someone who actually truly believes and can argument why
Bitcoin is a Ponzi or this or that or whatever.
But there are Show me that personal.
There's nothing. There's nothing.
Yeah. And that is also.
Yeah, it's a rationale, right? Like, well, if you think it
sucks, come and talk. You know, like, let's really
talk about it. And because people don't do
that, you know, they don't believe what they say they
believe, right? Well, there are legitimate
criticisms about some of the functionalities like the the fee
structure and that there always has to be a trade off between
block size and fees and whatever and also the.
But the answer to that is, have you had never heard about the
Lightning Network? And then there's criticisms
about that, that 70% of the Lightning Network users use
custodial services and not their own thing.
Yeah, but still it's better than a fucking bank and you can still
put the stuff in cold storage when you can come home and just
use this as a, you know, facilitator.
And then there's criticisms about what else is there.
Well, that's the environmentalist FUD, but that's
very easily debunked. There's nothing better for the
for the planet than Bitcoin because you it leads the world
where resources aren't misallocated anymore and that's
the key thing and the consensus mechanism is yeah, I did this in
the Satoshi versus Oppenheimer video we made a couple of months
back about how the so Bitcoin, the Bitcoin network has has used
around 2000 Terra joules of energy so far or Exa joules or
so. I don't remember exactly the
figure or or the prefixes for it, but the point of the video
is that the largest atomic bomb ever, the largest explosion made
by men, consume more energy than the Bitcoin network has so far.
So the worst thing you can do if you want the the absolute worst
thing you can do for the, for the, for the earth, for the
environment is give money to the state because they are the ones
that keep exploiting it and keep destroying it.
Like that's the worst use case for.
I mean, it's way worse than Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is is enabling us to to not do that to the same extent
anymore and to instead just have a system where as few resources
are misallocated as possible and where people don't crave as much
consumers bullshit stuff every day.
That's a that's a great, that's a great summary.
All right. Last question, I asked everyone
the same question. And that is what is a core
belief that you will never let go.
I believe that communication is the best tool we have for for
anything. As long as we can communicate,
we will figure stuff out. Awesome.
Well, thanks for sharing. Thanks so much for this
conversation. And I will link to all the
places where people can can follow you your website.
I'll link to the Oppenheimer video.
I think that that's great. Yeah.
And please link to the Freedom Footprint show as well and go
and subscribe to that. People do that.
So we'll have a lot of interesting stuff to come there
on that Channel and we're doing a lot of great interviews here
in the upcoming ones. So yeah, that's my main what I
mainly do these days because I love talking to interesting
people. Awesome.
I'll make sure to to link to that.
And yeah, everyone subscribe. And so thanks again, Knuth.
And I hope, I hope to stay in touch.
Thanks. Bye.
Thanks, Cheers. 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 millennials on the importance of
Bitcoin. 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 message.
I appreciate your support and hope you'll be here for the next
episode. Thanks for listening.
Bye.