When you make this shift, you'll start pricing your labor and
your time in Bitcoin. Like say you put one hour of
your work into Bitcoin today, and then 10 years from now
someone else is probably going to have to work 100 hours to to
get what you got for one hour today.
Time is very valuable. It's still an amazing
opportunity to store wealth and there is going to be the next
generation or your grandchildren are going to be working
exceptionally hard for a fraction of what you can
purchase today with an hour of work.
All right, Anil Patel, welcome to Bitcoin for Millennials.
Hey Bram, thanks for having me man.
I'm psyched. Well, I'm psyched that you're
here. I mean, your stuff has helped me
along the way and I think it's really cool what you were doing.
Like you are really putting your skills to work for Bitcoin.
And we'll go through some some slides that you made, some
educational material. But what I especially like about
your content is that you are simplifying all these different,
you know, concepts that that touch Bitcoin without dumbing it
down. I would say like the, the, the,
the educated point still comes across right.
And I think there's actually kind of a trap when you're
trying to dumb it down because Bitcoin in essence is quite
profound, as you, as you might agree with, right?
So that's what I really like. But in Bitcoin education in
general, what are kind of like the pitfalls that that you are
seeing? Is that kind of maybe the, the
dumbing it down or just thinking that everyone already
understands what you're talking about?
Like what, what are kind of things that you're seeing?
Yeah, that's a really good point, is communicating to
others as if they know everything you know, which is
rarely the case. The other big trap is simply
trying to sound smart, which I definitely fell into a lot where
I was trying to impress people that I knew all this information
about Bitcoin rather than actually trying to help them get
to another level of understanding.
So it's just, you know, you, you have to slay your own ego a
little because you have to meet people where they are.
You have to not be triggered by men, any of their
preconceptions. Because if you're genuinely
trying to get someone to another level of understanding, it's,
it's not about you. It, it's, it's just about them.
Yeah. Yeah, I'm I'm going to try out
the image sharing thing on here. But first I wanted to show this
this image that you created. Let me see this one, the
polymaths 1 you, you recently tweeted, you know, Bitcoin is
for polymaths with this, with this image.
It says systems design, Austrian economics, communication,
networks, game theory, innovation, mathematics, energy
and software. Now, of course, the kind of like
meme in Bitcoin is a Bitcoin is everything you don't know about
computers combined with everything you don't know about
finance. Here you are showcasing a lot
more. Do you also think that like this
is one of the challenges that that we have in in general?
Oh, absolutely. I mean, you need to know a
little bit about so many different unrelated areas to
make sense of this beast that is Bitcoin.
And it just kind of hits home the point that the learning is
never done. You could keep going forever,
but the most useful way to spend your time is maybe instead of
going very, very deep down just one rabbit hole, be it economics
or game theory, it's you you kind of have to branch out a
bit. You want, you want to kind of
understand how Bitcoin operates across everything from, you
know, as the monetary asset to as a communications network, you
know, to how the mechanics of blocks actually come together in
terms of like an accounting protocol.
So yeah, you, you have to go abroad.
You you can't stay in your lane, so to speak.
And what were like the first topics that you touched or that
you were familiar with where, yeah, Bitcoin kind of, you know,
showed itself to you and you were like, oh, yeah, I
understand this part. And then maybe also, what was
the first part where you were like, OK, this is kind of
intimidating now that I have to understand this as well.
Yeah, this was, this was very humbling for me because I went
through, you know, your, your traditional Business School,
Keynesian education. And so when I got to Bitcoin and
everyone's telling me, oh, you, you need to go back to first
principles and understand like microeconomics from a very solid
foundation. I'm thinking, yeah, yeah, I, I,
I've studied economics, I've got this, don't worry.
And to, to recognize I knew nothing.
I had no idea what I was talking about in a field I was very
confident about, made me go back and think, oh, I need to
reassess everything. And that's kind of why I spent a
good couple of years just trying to really hone the first
principles that are essential to understanding Bitcoin, kind of
these like foundations that you need to build your knowledge on
it's. Interesting to hear your
background because my my next question was actually about, you
know, the, the, the smart people problem, the yuppie elite
dismiss Bitcoin problem. You've spoken about how even,
you know, MBA grads and finance professionals have a hard time
getting Bitcoin. Why do you think traditional
education fails these people when it comes to technology?
And, and maybe also what kind of mental shift should they go
through or, or what happened for you?
Like what, what made you so, so humble or, or what made you able
to humble yourself? Basically?
I think that's it, right? Like humbling yourself.
That meme is more about OK just realize you just don't know
anything basically about money and energy and and all these
things. Yeah, that's, that's a very big
broad question for for context. So I have studied at three
different business schools on three different contents
continents and then I went to work for a Business School as
well. So I was in this bubble for, you
know, almost a decade of my life.
And the whole point of that process and that whole industry
is about de risking your career. But there's not really any other
goal. It's it's how do you give
yourself your, your paying to guarantee a certain path and,
you know, a piece of paper that will give you access to certain
walled gardens or industries. So the people going into them
are generally, firstly, you're either confused because you're
looking for a career change, you're looking for more
certainty and most of the incentive is tied to your future
economic rewards as a result of going down this path.
And the other is you're already on that path and you just want
to accelerate your trajectory, but that the end goal is the
same. You know, you're, you're not,
you're actively not looking to take risk in most cases for the
majority of people that that go down that path.
So you're just not primed to spot something that
fundamentally is a shift in humanity's trajectory, right.
And a new monetary asset appearing in front of that group
of people. Their skepticism is going to be
so great, their desire for that thing to fail, because otherwise
it's going to, you know, destroy all of the work they've put in
there. It makes sense that they would
be either against it, ignore it or continue to be ignorant of
it. So it's just a really
unfortunate, unfortunate situation.
I think this is a different conversation, but you would
think that academics or people that are are close to academics
would actually be constantly curious, right?
Like that is the entire point of of academic research.
I would say like there is no final truth and everything can
be questions questioned etcetera.
But I think your explainer of how this is kind of designed to
put you into a certain job and keep that kind of like engine
engine going. I think, and I mean my daily
activities in the trenches of LinkedIn.
I think I'm also confronted a lot by with people that, you
know, have all these titles, NBACFPCFA, whatever, you know,
20 years experience in finance and they're like, it's a scam.
You know where I think that's what bothers me most in a sense
that I'm just so surprised people aren't curious.
That's that's, I think above all, it's.
Well, they're playing a status game, right?
And they need to not only increase their status, but they
need to protect the status they already have.
So if in front of their entire group publicly, if they're going
to embrace an idea that is very against the group think that
puts their current status at risk.
So there's just no reason for them to do that publicly.
Now, maybe I I know people who privately have a very different
opinion about Bitcoin than what they share publicly.
And it's very intentional and it's very unfortunate, but it's
just the incentives. So it sucks.
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You have to be or have to, to be humble to actually accept that
you have no clue about what money is and stuff like that,
right? And and that's also why with all
the critics that you see, like how they talk about it or the
words that they use, like it instantly shows that they didn't
get beyond phase one, basically thinking it's scan, right?
That's it, That's it. Yeah, there's only so much work
you can do, right? I spent about, oh, close to a
year researching deeply different kinds of scams, most
specifically Ponzi schemes. And you know, how it relates to
central banking and showing Bitcoin as the complete opposite
of that. And no matter how many times I
lay that out to someone, if they're not receptive or they,
you're, you're telling them something that breaks their
worldview, they're just not going to, not going to take it
in. But I'm, I'm glad I still
experience skeptics regularly. Today I gave a talk and This is
why I like, I love encouraging people to read more history
about when periods of innovation happened.
And so I gave a talk at a conference 2 days ago and I was
comparing like gold mining and Bitcoin mining with like the
natural ice harvesting industry before refrigeration.
And that when refrigeration popped up, you had this whole
incumbent industry that was very against it.
And it was, you compare them side by side and it's the same
playbook, you know, 200 years apart, exactly same playbook.
Because humans haven't changed, it's just the technology around
us is changing, right? And just the more examples you
see of that, the more you're like everything that's happening
with bitcoins adoption curve and, you know, the trajectory
it's going, it just makes perfect sense.
Like, of course this is going to happen.
Yeah. It's very important that people
kind of understand the skill of the thing we're trying to do.
Right? Like this is not the minidisc or
the the disk man or whatever, right?
Like that's not what we're talking about here.
Yeah. But maybe we'll we'll get to
that. I'll pull up just like the first
slide. So our idea is you, you brought
like 10 key concepts. We're just going to go through
it. You just talk your talk.
You talk about how you how you share it with people, how you
illustrate it. And then, yeah, I'll reflect on
the book in Jam and then. Sounds good.
I mean, this, this is just, I think the most fundamental thing
for people to understand is that, you know, you're obviously
spending most of your time out in the world trying to earn a
living, right? You're exchanging your labor or
work and you're being compensated, and then you take
your compensation. You have expenses and things you
consume. And if there is anything left
over, which I understand applies to less and less people in a
Fiat system. But if you have anything left
over, that's your savings. And then if you have savings,
you have a big problem because now you can't use the default
option, which is just keeping it in a Piggy Bank or under your
mattress or in a bank account. You have to actually go out and
be like a financial analyst and look at all your options, weigh
them up and make the best decision for for you.
So, you know, This is why anytime the word hoarding comes
up in relation to Bitcoin or in terms of money, to me, that's
just a huge red flag of someone that doesn't understand this,
this very basic equation. Because if you're against people
hoarding and hoarding is just another word for savings.
By the way, you're basically saying you want everyone to live
paycheck to paycheck, have zero savings and be very fragile.
Like the whole point of having savings is to insulate yourself,
your family and actually become less dependent on the state.
Now state obviously has very different goals.
Maybe they want their citizens to become more dependent on
them. Maybe that's good for them.
But ultimately, I really find it hard to believe anyone could be
against people having savings for their family for a rainy
day. You know, if the money is being
infinitely created and printed, then the money is also, the
money that you want to use for your savings is also infinitely
devalued. So you can actually hoard more
units. But if each unit loses its
purchasing power, then, yeah, you're basically going against
the stream. Or, you know, it's an uphill
battle for you to actually create an amount that can buy
you at least the same amount of stuff whenever in the future,
right? Whenever you would decide to do
that. And so, yeah, it's interesting
that this feels so basic, right? But I think this is actually
what you distorted. Yeah, you asked earlier.
Like when you're explaining things to people and you assume
they know what you know, this is something that you would think
would be just common sense to everyone.
But the amount of times I've had people come up to me after a
talk and say, I, I never understood that fully just
because the the economy is so distorted and the Fiat system
has distorted people so heavily. But yeah, I, I love what you,
you know, mentioned the word anxiety because the savings is
anxiety reduction technology in a way, the same way Bitcoin is
savings. Yeah.
All right, next one. OK, so if you understand that
people who create more value in the world accumulate savings and
that they cannot save in the default option, which is their
Fiat currency, they have to look to other things, other scarce
assets. You know, I'm in, I'm in Canada.
I spent most of my life in Australia.
The most common form of, you know, your Piggy Bank in these
two countries is housing. And so you see that housing
starts to attract value in excess of what it would
otherwise command in terms of its market price, right?
And this is the idea of a monetary premium.
So it's the excess amount that an asset basically has built
into it because these additional units of currency kind of have
to go somewhere. People are looking for a way to
store their wealth. And then, you know, obviously
this is amplified by the fact that we're in a system where
people can get exceptionally high amounts of leverage if they
are going to put what they borrow specifically into a into
a house. So yeah, just understanding when
you see a piece of real estate valued at say $1,000,000,
understand there are two components to that price.
People are using homes as a substitute for a function of
money, which is actually pretty Wilds that were there, right?
Like that kind of signals to me that we're pretty far off the
track of where we should be if we had a normally functioning
money. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And that these are all just these terrible side effects.
You've got a normal functioning money where people can save in
it. They have less mental bandwidth
going towards, you know, investing and then yeah, your
housing and other scarce assets don't command in monetary
premium. So, you know, people who want to
purchase a house and that's really what they want to do They
they're they're they're not battling against a cohort of
investors who are equally if not more incentivized to look for
somewhere to store, store their wealth all.
Right, next one. This one, this is really kind of
putting those two ideas together.
And this is also very much the thesis of if anyone's read Jeff
Booth's book, The Price is Tomorrow.
And that is when you have, and this kind of ties back to
certainty versus uncertainty more than scarcity and abundance
really. But the more you understand how
central banking works and debt based systems work and you you
do the math and you understand that mathematically this number
must increase in terms of the number of currency units in a
debt based system over time must go up, you realize that more and
more of those additional units. Are going to be looking for
other places to park. Housing is obviously the example
most people seem to get most intuitively.
But when you've got abundant money or ever increasing supply
of money, it's going to chase these scarce assets bidding up
their price. And the inverse of that is
having a finite supply money where it's completely known,
verifiable, certain. Well, now you're looking to
create value for others. And maybe that's by building
housing to sell and put your profits or your savings into
that scarce money. So when money is functioning,
essentially you have it's, it acts like a magnet.
So before you had scarce assets, they're a magnet for all this
Fiat currency. And now you have Bitcoin as a
magnet, draining the monetary premium in all these scarce
assets over time as it becomes monetized.
I really like this one. Made me think of an image that I
actually created. I don't know if I can pull it up
as a yeah. This one, I don't know if you
can properly see it, but I call this like the Bitcoin paradigm
shift. So on the top left to see people
are incentivized to consume, right?
Because Fiat money, which has an ever growing supply is basically
changing chasing a stable productivity as you said or I
think has also been mentioned before, like if the reward that
I can get for creating value is more and more, if more and more
of of of these of this reward is created, my incentive to
actually build something goes down and my incentive to consume
actually goes up, right? So there is no increased
productivity because the reward is basically infinite and people
are not incentivized to be more productive.
Whereas with Bitcoin, productivity is being put into
the Bitcoin. Basically the productivity is
chasing the Bitcoin instead of the Fiat money is chasing the
productivity. So on a Bitcoin standard, people
are incentivized to to build. And so a growing productivity is
then chasing a finite money supply, which eventually also
leads to prices going down, right?
And so if if we go back to you know, your example here with the
real estate, the idea is that if people follow me on X, they see
that from time to time I update the average home selling prices
in my country and price them in Bitcoin.
They're going up last 11 years with 120% in Fiat and down 99.7%
in Bitcoin, right? So if you have these, yeah, like
you said, scarce money leads to asset abundance, like more and
more assets want to be turned into this Bitcoin.
So that is why you're purchasing power goes up in in Bitcoin
terms over time. Yeah, At a really one other
fundamental question on that is if just think of giving someone
a choice, you can move to two different countries.
One, productivity is going down and one productivity is going up
because people are incentivized to create value from another.
Where do you want to move? And it just perfectly explains
why bitcoiners seek out other bitcoiners because they're
trying to, they want to opt in to, to this, you know, booming
productivity economy. Slowly but surely people are
figuring out that this is a superior money and you cannot
have everyone at the same time realizing that, right?
Because then I think we'll have some very bad big issues, but
which are valid. But conceptually, I totally
disagree with that, Laura. I'd like if I want to move to a
better money, I should be able to do that.
If there's no trust in the money that I'm forced to use, I should
be able to do that. But yeah, that's exactly why
they're cooking the numbers right in front of you on on the
TV, right. Yeah.
Next one. So this goes to what you're just
mentioning now is how do, how do, how does that shift happen
from the bad money to the good money?
And you know, in the past, going from gold to, to U.S. government
bonds was very controlled. It was done in a very controlled
way. And by the way, this, this chart
is global reserve capital. So you've probably seen images
out there or infographics out there about global reserve
currency and that changing between, you know, from the,
the, the, the, the Spaniards to the French franc to, you know,
the British pound to U.S. dollar.
You know, it was a, it was a currency.
The Dutch, sorry, sorry, the Dutch are in there.
Yes, the Guild it was, it was very dominant for a, for a big,
big chunk of important part of history.
And so just making that distinction between currency and
capital, you know, capital is what are companies, countries
and individuals like capitalizing on?
What are they, What's the base layer of their, you know,
business, family, country, what have you?
And so, you know, it's kind of like going from sound money to
unsound money to sound money again with, with the US
Treasuries in between. And you know that the line
between the transition from from green to orange is, is sloped
because like you said, Brad, you know, you're not going to have
just a overnight step function change.
It'll be incredibly chaotic. It's like someone yelling fire
in a movie theater and everyone trying to get out at the same
time. And it's just not, not possible.
So, you know, this is, this is going to take decades probably
to to to fully transition. But yeah, point of this is just
to understand the difference between currency and and
capital. Would you, would you say that it
is also easier, it's easier to go from hard money from gold to
Fiat money, then that's less of a shock than going from Fiat,
you know, mega paper money back to a hard money, especially
something that has has an absolute finite supply.
Yeah. I mean, if you understand
Bitcoin, you know, it's, it's, it's global, it's
permissionless. There's there's really nothing
to stop people adopting it. And that will just happen
gradually over time as people opt out of, you know, saving in,
say, government bonds. So going from from gold to to
Treasuries was not very difficult when everything was so
centralized. You know, gold is analog money.
You have to physically move it to, to, to, to trade.
So you know that that transition could happen in a very
controlled way by very motivated governments.
The next transition I think is going to be a bit messier, a bit
more dispersed, harder, harder to predict, but it'll definitely
be more gradual. This one I really like.
I saw this one before. Yeah, I need to update this
chart. Every time I, I go to update it,
I keep having to reduce the, the scale.
But let's let's go back to the idea of savings.
And you probably find that different decades in modern
history, what kind of dominated by different savings vehicles.
So let's say hypothetically, if your parents generation, if they
may be a boomers and a lot of their wealth was created or is
currently stored in housing, it it kind of makes sense that
they're going to teach their children that that asset should
be their sakes vehicle. And the same way bonds were, you
know, for for the silent generation perhaps.
And so, you know, currently it's fairly accepted that the S&P
500, so, you know, a stock index in the US of the top 500 non
financial companies kind of has become the savings vehicle for
most of the middle class in the Western world, if you have
access to it. And even with that chart, it
looks a little similar, not as extreme, but you know, units of
the S&P 500 kind of was like the savings account for the last
decade or so for the middle class.
And now as we move to Bitcoin, this chart becomes more
important because this is how people are going to measure
their wealth. And it's, you know, I don't want
people to get upset or feel like they've missed the boat because
that's completely missing the point.
It's just that when you make this shift, you'll start pricing
your labor and your time in Bitcoin.
And the more people that do that, as Bitcoin becomes like
this dominant savings vehicle replacing say a basket of stocks
or a 6040 portfolio or real estate, yeah, you just will
start pricing your time in Bitcoin.
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Yeah. Why?
Why do you think it is so hard? I mean we kind of talked about
it, but I mean, when I see stuff like this, I'm I'm like, damn,
you know, if I didn't have Bitcoin, I would be quite
intrigued to a degree, right to see that.
Holy shit, like how is this? How is this possible?
I need to work like almost two years to buy 11 Bitcoin, the
most scarcest asset in the world.
That doesn't seem like something that is attainable for me.
So, you know, nevermind. Whatever.
Yeah. Well, firstly, like you
shouldn't succumb to unit bias, the idea that 121 millionth of
the money supplies like the right amount to own for, for for
someone. And it misses the point.
Like I really think the best way to think about Bitcoin is in
terms of it's current market cap all together and what you
personally believe the total addressable market for Bitcoin
will be. You come up with a percentage,
maybe it's currently 2 trillion out of, you know, maybe 400
trillion. And you're like, oh, OK, it's
it's half of 1% to where it will reach like full adoption or a
saturation point. So there's a long way to go.
And that's the point. If you look at the trajectory,
it's basically saying you can buy Bitcoin today and 10 years
from now. Like say you put one hour of
your work into Bitcoin today and then 10 years from now, someone
else is probably going to have to work 100 hours to to get what
you got for one hour today. So it's just saying that like
time is very valuable. You know, this is still an
amazing opportunity to to store wealth.
And there is going to be the next generation or your
grandchildren are going to be working exceptionally hard for a
fraction of what you can purchase today with an hour of
work. All, all the money you have
today is worth the most today and tomorrow it's already worth,
you know, a little little bit less and the next week a little
bit more and the next year 8 to 12% effectively more and on and
on and on. And here you see a clear
trajectory, which is up when you think about the purchasing power
of Bitcoin expressed in time. But well, eventually you earn
your rewards by applying your energy and time, right?
Like that's literally your, your, your productivity.
So. Yeah, this is an amazing chart.
That's that's the keyword again. Like, yeah, going back to what
you said earlier about productivity is you see this
chart and all this is, is the greatest incentive possible for
people to be more productive and create value for others.
So everyone should be rooting for this chart to continue going
up because the world gets better the the more this trend
continues. Yeah, this is a very, very
simple two by two chart. If you're kind of placing your
wealth across 2 axes or spectrums, you know, you've got
you've got physical wealth, which is very much visible to
everyone. And then you have digital
wealth, which was which is largely invisible or is like
physically invisible. So you know, you compare a
building to maybe a stock on your your trading app and then
the other dimension is mobile, the stationary or another way to
look at that is like non custodial or custodial like do
you need someone else's permission to use it or to or to
move it? Now we we never we never had
something that filled the the lower right quadrant until
Bitcoin was invented. And most people aren't going to
really care or think about this. The benefits of Bitcoin in this
way if you're from a very stable western country.
But then the opposite is also true is that most of the world
does not live in a stable western country and maybe does
have threats around their wealth being confiscated or risks of
having to leave where where they currently live.
They will deeply appreciate portable, non custodial wealth
that is also invisible. That argument of like it is not
physical, so it's not real, it's nonsense.
But again, in the context of money, it's not a strange
argument, right? Like they have had like a crazy
marketing campaign, you know, cash is king, etcetera.
Like, you know, gold you can hold and, and the bills in your
hand, you, you can hold. And I think that is actually why
people don't see the digital aspect of Bitcoin being
valuable, because when they contrasted with real money, real
money should be tangible. Yeah.
And going back to maybe the real estate example, just encourage
people to maybe think about where they live.
And would you say your country is on an upswing or, or things
maybe, you know, degrading and things are getting worse.
And if your country is maybe degrading that you, you believe
it's degrading and maybe trust is declining.
Well, do you want a physical piece of property visible to
politicians, visible to maybe other people who, who are
trusting you less and less? And so, so there's also like
social implications of having very visible wealth in a, in a
society with declining trust and declining standards.
So I just encourage people to really think about that and the
implications of that. I, I always find it interesting
when I see these videos where people flex their gold bars and
they have like 30 kilos of gold bars or, or whatever and I'm
like that It's so not practical, but I think, you know, maybe
that's me, but I've never interested.
I was never interested in gold because I never understood like
there I actually really saw the physical act aspect is a is a
burden. Like it's it's not a, it's not a
pro argument that it is a physical thing in my opinion.
Yeah. And that usually comes from if
you, if you take your own family and maybe go back one or two
generations, like has someone within two generations of you
had to flee their country for any reason?
And for a lot of people, the answer is yeah.
And you'll find that those people appreciate the invisible
digital aspect of Bitcoin versus they would they would they would
never consider storing their wealth in a gold bar.
Yeah, yeah, I agree. Oh, this is this is great.
Yeah, so this I put together you, you actually had my mayor
on on on your show. And this is a, a chart I put
together to present to him and, and and City Hall.
And I think the, the point is to kind of map out all the
different criticisms that get levied at at Bitcoin.
It's it's that we know, we know, like Bitcoin is a well aware of
all the possible arguments you can make against Bitcoin.
That is nothing new. The way someone becomes a
Bitcoiner is they map out all the different arguments again
against Bitcoin and then they go one by one from first principles
and see if they can debunk them. And then when they've debunked
all of these arguments, which you could also go on a Bitcoin
talk forum from 10 years ago and someone else has already done
this work for you. So you know, it's you're, you're
not first to come up with any of these.
That that's how Bitcoin is kind of get forged, that they have to
do their own process of of going through these criticisms and
verifying them for themselves. And another one that that you
don't have on here. So I like that.
What if there's a nuclear war or a meteorite strikes the earth,
right? And then everything is fucked.
You know, you're, you know, if you don't have a Faraday cage,
blah, blah, you know, EMP, you know, the craziest thing that
could happen. I think one you probably have
other issues than Bitcoin for some time, but then the same as
long there there as long as there are two nodes that run
Bitcoin and they can communicate with each other, that could even
be offline. Yeah, it survived.
I love, I love the whenever I meet someone who gives the
nuclear war argument and it's just like this bizarre moment
where I'm like, oh, I need to give this like tin foil, tin
foil hat back to you now, like Bitcoin doesn't become the
rational ones. Well, yeah, if if this is where
people ended up as their main argument.
That's what I mean. Like all these, others are less
heavy than that argument. Yeah, right.
So yeah, you should just, yeah, just discount those people.
That's not someone who's willing to engage and genuinely
interested in in learning more. You know, they're really just
looking to defend their own position that they've, they've
ducked their heels in, they've watched Bitcoin continue to rise
for several, several years. And now they're just trying to
continue to save face. It's going to collapse.
I don't know when, but it will. And then you'll see.
Trust me, bro, Trust me. Yeah.
Yeah, don't verify.
Yeah, OK. Again, going back to like the
critics or the skeptics, this Venn diagram it, it helps
explain why people miss Bitcoin, why they just cannot see it.
And it's because they usually fall into one or of these two
sides. So maybe they've done a lot of
work understanding history of money and usually the gold bugs
fall into this category. And so if you, if you deeply
understand the history of money, but you do no other work in all
those other fields that we kind of touched on earlier about
Bitcoin being interdisciplinary, you're, you're going to be very
fearful and you're going to think that whatever innovation
occurs in money is just going to be crushed, which, you know,
history kind of shows you that it, it, it was, if you look at
all the other past attempts at digital money, if you put the
other side of the Venn diagram, the other side you kind of have
like the tech sector. And these are people, the most
common argument they'll make is that Bitcoin is Myspace will be
obsoleted because they can't, they don't have the
understanding of monetary history.
So they're not looking at it. As you know, Bitcoin's sole use
case or primary use case is as digital cash.
So if you don't have these two pieces of knowledge, you just,
you just you're blind to it. You have to look at Bitcoin from
both perspectives. So yeah, this This is why
Bitcoin kind of hides in the middle of the.
Yeah, I don't know, I find it just interesting for the tech
crowd like TCPIP, IMAP, HTTPS, like all these computer
protocols that were somewhere, just the first that were
introduced and they're still alive and used in the modern
Internet today, right. And so to dismiss that actually,
yeah, I think shows a lack of understanding of of of an area
that that some people are an expert in.
I'm especially fascinated with all the, you know, Silicon
Valley tech Bros, that many, many of them are still fading
Bitcoin, you know? Yeah, it, it makes sense too,
right? Because they, if your reputation
is staked on, I'm the guy that finds things that appreciate
1000 X, that's what I'm betting on.
And in their mind, they don't believe Bitcoin can do that.
Then it just gets crossed off the list of possibilities and
they look for the next the next best thing, right?
Yeah, Fairpoint. Yeah.
Well, that's why paying attention and seeing the signals
is is not that easy eventually, but yeah.
So digital networks, that's a, that's a good one too.
Yeah. So this is like a kind of a term
and thought that Sailor kind of coined around this idea of
dominant digital networks. And if you've read his book, The
Mobile Wave, he kind of lays out what was likely to happen.
I think he wrote it in 20/12/2013.
But the main point is that there's a certain threshold that
once hit, it's pretty clear that the market has decided and
they're going to then redirect capital to that winning horse in
the race. And if you tie it back to even
like innovation where you were kind of dancing around like the
concept of creative destruction, and there's this, this very
clear tipping point in which more people are adopting this
and they're, they're dumping their incumbent.
And you know, that's, that's not going to get reversed.
And so in the digital realm, if you, what we saw in the Internet
era is that different verticals formed and then different
companies competed to dominate that particular application.
And so to think that money's really that different, I think
kind of missed what we just got to witness and had a front row
seat to the last 20 years. So yeah, I think I think it was
pretty clear that Bitcoin had had crossed that threshold like
a long time ago. And the fact that there's still
debate today, even is, is just insane to me.
All the technologies that were well, all the digital monies
that were attempted before, but also certain technologies that
had to exist to eventually be implemented into, into Bitcoin.
Like that's been, I want to say like a 40 to 70 year, probably
more towards 70 year exploration of ideas around cryptography and
decentralization and, and stuff like that, right?
So it's also not that Bitcoin is the first mover or something and
therefore the one that's going to be disrupted.
That's definitely not the case. Yeah.
And this is just to like to be a helpful quick heuristic of, OK,
at what point or dollar market value does Bitcoin need to be in
your mind where you consider like you consider it's one and
there's no point focusing on anything other than that.
So figure out what that amount is for you that it needs to hit
in market cap. And when it hits it like you
have to act, you have to actually act on that
information. Yeah, good point.
Well, we're over 2 trillion now and there's never been an asset
that reached 2 trillion that went away after, right.
So maybe that's an extra signal for for people to to pay
attention. Yeah.
And it's the last word. I really like this.
OK, this, this is really just one around diversification,
which which ties into the, the previous slide is once a winner
emerges, you don't, you don't need to sell your winner to
diversify into like the second best, you know, networking app
or the second best retail platform because the winner's
just going to eat everything else.
And now in terms of Bitcoin, and we're talking about money and
eating monetary premiums, it's well, once you understand
Bitcoin and it's ticked all your boxes in terms of being the
winner of the future, well, you would never want to rebalance
your portfolio. You'd never want to sell
anything to to buy a weaker monetary good because eventually
Bitcoin's going to eat that as well.
So yeah, this is just playing to the perils of rebalancing.
I know I see we have some slides you are working so well.
These these were the, these were the 10 key concepts that that we
wanted to share. I think there there are some
slides about your new book and I think also some supporting
slides. But yeah, you're, you're writing
a new book. Could you tell a bit about what
you're what you're working on? So if you've if you've read the
Almanac of Naval Ravikant, it's a very similar feel to that
book. Basically, you know, there are a
lot of great interviews with, with Michael Saylor, a lot of
great podcasts. He's given a lot of speeches.
And what I wanted to do is take the best parts from all these
interviews, speeches and tweets and kind of condense them into
one neat package. So this is really just a book I
wish existed already. It didn't.
So I I went out and, and wrote it.
It'll hopefully be out actually next next month or possibly
October. It'll also be available totally
free digitally. But it's just taking a lot of
Michael's ideas around, you know, going from how energy
links to money, how money links to wealth, how wealth links to
networks and how networks link to Bitcoin.
And it's, you know, full of visuals, a lot of great
analogies and stories, But hopefully it will act as a guide
for people to better understand how they think of money and how
that splits into capital and currency.
Awesome. Yeah, Well, as I've mentioned, I
will link to your, I think it's your gum Rd. where you put
everything on so people can subscribe there and get all your
other books and your other educational materials.
So I would guess that's also where they can sign up to, to
find this book or or follow you on social.
OK, awesome. Is there is there anything else
to add that you think we might have missed or anything that is
a is a recurring thing that you usually share when when you're
sharing these concepts with people?
Well, I want to ask you something, Bram.
So you recently became a father. How has that reshaped your
relationship with wealth and how has that changed your time
preference? Wow.
I love that. I think, well, this, this is my
second child, so I know what this is like.
But now sometimes I, I, I realize I have two children,
which is kind of crazy to realize.
I don't know, you know, I don't know if you have children, but
like at some .2. As well, Yeah.
You've got two. Yeah.
So then I'm like, holy fuck, I have two.
I have two children. But I was actually talking about
this with someone today. I think understanding finance
economics and kind of macro to the degree that I now understand
it, which I think is, is way more limited than other people.
I would not know what I would do when I wouldn't have Bitcoin,
right? So I think Bitcoin actually
gives me a way to not have this perpetual anxiety towards the
future, actually have a very, very positive outlook towards
the future, which I think it's very beneficial if you have
children, because if you have children and, and, and you're
very nihilistic about the future.
Yeah, man, that must be rough. You know, like, I don't know
what your days look like, but that that's, that's pretty,
pretty depressing. And, and actually, the thing
that I find more depressing is that there are even people, you
know, from our generation that decide not to have children
because they think they cannot afford it or, or they don't know
where the, where the world is going.
You know, And like just that fact I find very, very messed up
because we kind of touched upon it today, but I think about it a
lot like the fact that, you know, we could have a value
exchange in, in total freedom with each other.
I, I propose something for 100 money units and you say 80 and
then I say, no, 90 is OK. And then we shake hands then,
you know, we kind of agreed upon this value exchange in in
freedom together, basically. But then the reward that we use
in this value exchange is influenced by other people,
right? That constantly make sure that
this reward loses value, which increases my anxiety towards the
future, which for a lot of people actually makes it so that
they don't want to have kids, right?
So the fact that something that is man made can influence the
the biological, biological urges that that we all have to
procreate, I think is just one of the most criminal things that
you know, has has ever existed. So I think about that way more
than I actually want because I just see a lot of people that
are kind of like give up right there.
They're like, oh, OK, well, it stops with me.
I cannot do anything about it where I think, no, you can.
You can actually do something about it.
You can move to a better money. You can literally move to a
better money. And I'll throw the question back
to you. But like, it gave me so much.
I don't like the word, but like empowerment, like I feel I, I am
actually more in control of where I can choose to go.
Doesn't mean that it's going to go great.
I don't know what the outcome is, but I feel like I have a
wider view towards the future. And so my options are broader.
And again, I repeated that a lot.
But it doesn't matter about how much Bitcoin you have or how
much wealth or whatever. That's not what it's about.
I mean, I've, I've even spoken to 21 year olds who have a small
allocation who got married at 20.
Right, Right. And you are like super, super
enthusiastic about the future because they are totally on a
Bitcoin standard. Like that is the point I'm
trying to make. Like, look at those people.
Look at those people, you know, and that is, that is real.
Like a better money gives you a better life.
I yeah, but yeah, how how is that for you?
Absolutely no, but that that's beautiful.
I I completely agree. You know, what I've, I've been
noticing at Bitcoin conferences lately is every year the
children's sections seem to just get bigger and bigger and become
a bigger part of the conference. And so it makes perfect sense.
And I think over time, other people, pre coiners will just,
you know, keep looking at this group thinking what are they
doing differently? So yeah, I think the proof will
speak for itself over time. But yeah, bullish on Bitcoin is
having babies. Yeah, more babies.
All right, I'll, I will ask you the last question and I ask
everyone the same question, which is what is a core belief
that you will never let go of? The core belief that I always
come back to is fundamentally I'm an idiot.
It everything I do or all like the content I put out is just a
result of me trying to understand that thing.
And then just sharing like, oh, here's here's what I learnt in
that process. So, you know, if I ever think
I'm smarter than someone or get a bit arrogant, Bram, I want you
to to come knock on my door and give me a wake up call.
Because, you know, I think that's what I love about Bitcoin
is it's just the humility. They're all very high agency and
low ego. And if you lose either one of
those leavers, I think you're in trouble.
So yeah, stay humble. I think it is.
I know that I know nothing. I don't know who that was.
I think Socrates or Plato, one of one of one of the two.
I know that I know nothing. I think that's the translation
of that. Well, thanks so much.
Thanks so much for your time, for your knowledge.
I hope people found it valuable and for everyone.
If you want to find more educational content, go check
out Anils Gum Rd. Everything is for free, you can
use it in whatever way possible. So thanks again brother, and
we'll stay in touch. Thank you.
Thanks, Bram. Look forward to seeing you
again. OK.
Likewise, cheers. I hope you enjoyed this episode.
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Bye.