Latest / Simply Bitcoin / $500K Bitcoin Is Coming & The Banks Can’t Stop It | George Bodine

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$500K Bitcoin Is Coming & The Banks Can’t Stop It | George Bodine · Simply Bitcoin

• 0:00
  I think by the end of Trump's second term, so three years from
• 0:03
  now, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw half $1,000,000 Bitcoin,
• 0:06
  which seems unfeasible at the moment.
• 0:08
  But again, what? What's your reasoning behind
• 0:11
  that? No, not to me at all.
• 0:13
  And I, I think it's because it's really, you find 1 central bank
• 0:18
  that is in favor of Bitcoin right now on planet Earth, there
• 0:22
  is none. Doesn't exist.
• 0:23
  It's 0 ideologically opposed. No central bank wants Bitcoin to
• 0:28
  be successful. These people do not like us.
• 0:31
  They don't want us to succeed. The only reason that we are
• 0:34
  seeing the corporate adoption that we're having right now, the
• 0:36
  ETFs, even the Bitcoin treasury companies, is there's money.
• 0:40
  It's Fiat dollars for them. Do you think those ETFs, do you
• 0:43
  think that Larry Fink really believes in Bitcoin?
• 0:46
  That's the key point. They're going to be people that
• 0:48
  are waiting as Bitcoin goes past A15017580 and then eventually
• 0:54
  crosses 200,000. They're going to be people still
• 0:57
  waiting for, you know, 65,000 Bitcoin and they're going to be
• 1:01
  toast. What has been the most difficult
• 1:04
  thing for you holding Bitcoin over the years?
• 1:07
  That's that's an easy question. Matt That was very hard hitting,
• 1:10
  George. It's just us, kids.
• 1:12
  It's just us. Yeah, welcome to another episode
• 1:18
  of Something Bitcoin IRL. Today I'm joined with George
• 1:22
  Bodine. I really enjoyed our
• 1:23
  conversation last time. Thank you for coming back on the
• 1:26
  show. Oh, you're welcome.
• 1:28
  But I'm excited about it. I, you know, last time I, like I
• 1:31
  was saying I had a couple of technical difficulties, but this
• 1:34
  time I think everything's set. I've got a beer here.
• 1:37
  I mean, I'm life's good, you know, I'm pumped.
• 1:40
  We got a lot to talk about and a lot happening, a lot of positive
• 1:43
  things going on with Bitcoin. I mean, there's some negative
• 1:45
  things out there too, but you know, just overall, I mean, this
• 1:48
  is just a a great, it's going to be a great cycle.
• 1:51
  In fact, we can talk about that because I actually posted today
• 1:53
  for the first time. I think the four year cycle is
• 1:56
  dead. Yeah, Yeah, it's you think it's
• 2:00
  so you don't think we've topped because that's what I'm hearing
• 2:03
  with, I'm hearing from people basically this is, you know, it
• 2:07
  was not a good sign that Bitcoin didn't continue.
• 2:11
  And you're saying basically, you know, Q4 is going to be
• 2:16
  fantastic, it's going to keep going.
• 2:19
  That's your argument. You know how I would frame this?
• 2:22
  Is that what you're seeing right now, this continuation that
• 2:25
  we've had, this stair step surge is really positive over the long
• 2:29
  run. I mean, you know, think about
• 2:33
  the times that you've seen Bitcoin a spike up really high.
• 2:36
  I mean, you know, 1020% in a day and continue.
• 2:40
  I mean, what happens is you end up just running out of steam.
• 2:43
  I mean, it's too many coins that are being purchased up there and
• 2:46
  eventually there are not enough buyers and sellers at that
• 2:50
  particular price point. We collapse.
• 2:51
  I mean, it just happens repeatedly.
• 2:53
  This cycle's different. I mean, if you zoom out, if you
• 2:56
  look at the Bitcoin four year cycles and just go into a a
• 3:00
  zoomed out view over the life history of Bitcoin, you can see
• 3:03
  it even in that chart. But there's some other charts
• 3:06
  too that are showing it. In fact, I was just on Glass
• 3:11
  Node and James Check's premium newsletter the other day and
• 3:15
  he's got a chart, I think it's called the Choppiness Index.
• 3:18
  It shows it really clearly. This cycle is different.
• 3:21
  I mean, I'm finally to a point now where I am willing to say
• 3:26
  that I think the four year cycle is dead.
• 3:29
  Now. I, I will tell you, I don't
• 3:31
  think you'll have verification of that until like say the end
• 3:34
  of this fiscal year here or the end of this year.
• 3:37
  By the time 25's over, we should know whether or not this is
• 3:40
  going to be a, if my thesis is correct here.
• 3:43
  You know, you have to remember that most people were projecting
• 3:46
  it. This is the month, October is
• 3:48
  the month in the four year cycle traditionally where we should
• 3:50
  have our peak and be done. And I don't think at all that
• 3:54
  this 120, some thousand peak is our peak.
• 3:58
  You know, we've got some other analysts that have come on
• 4:01
  recently upping their price points and their projections.
• 4:05
  Some of them are pretty wild. But Matt Hoogan, he's been one
• 4:10
  of the more bullish proponents. And of course, we know Sanson
• 4:14
  Mao is, is off the charts as far as bullishness.
• 4:18
  And I, I don't know, I just, I am convinced that this is a
• 4:21
  different cycle that we haven't seen the top.
• 4:24
  This is going to continue. There is a strong underpinning
• 4:28
  bid behind this cycle that we have never seen before.
• 4:31
  You can look at it just from the ETFs themselves.
• 4:34
  This week we put in $1.2 billion in one day in the Bitcoin spot
• 4:40
  ETFs. That's incredible.
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  I mean, you're looking at, you know, if we're producing 450
• 4:45
  coins on average per day, that's about 3 weeks of supply in one
• 4:52
  day just from the spot Bitcoin ETFs, that demand is
• 4:56
  unrelenting. It's been over 2 billion for a
• 4:59
  week now. And so I think that we're in a
• 5:02
  different market cycle. I think that the, the way we
• 5:05
  used to view the halvings is de minimis.
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  Now they really don't matter and we are seeing a different kind
• 5:12
  of a bit. I'm sure you saw the news today,
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  Nico. You know, for the very first
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  time, one of the Eurozone countries actually bought into
• 5:19
  Bitcoin today. And it's may not be spot Bitcoin
• 5:22
  in the sense that you and I hold Bitcoin, but you know what it is
• 5:25
  Bitcoin, it's a Bitcoin ETF just like the sovereign wealth fund
• 5:29
  for Dubai purchase. But this is a small amount, $9
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  million, I think 1%. They got their little tiny toe
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  in the pool there. But you know what that doesn't
• 5:39
  mean that they're not going to continue.
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  And I think that it's just the the beginning of what we're
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  going to see a continuing in nation state adoption, whether
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  it's actually on treasury sheets or whether it's in sovereign
• 5:53
  wealth funds. So and, and what one last thing
• 5:56
  I'm going to say before I let that go.
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  Don't forget that there is a multiplier effect with Bitcoin.
• 6:01
  It's and you can use probably 5, maybe 5:00 to 6:00 somewhere in
• 6:05
  there for a multiplier effect. So when I say they put in $9
• 6:08
  million, that increases our market cap probably about $45
• 6:12
  million. Yeah, So interest, so your base
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  thesis is there it 4-4 year cycles are over, we're going
• 6:22
  much higher. Could you walk me through like,
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  why are you thinking that? I'd say it's demand side more
• 6:29
  than anything else. We'd have unrelenting sell side
• 6:32
  pressure. I'm surprised if you want the
• 6:36
  truth that we are where we are today.
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  I've mentioned this before, I'll say it again.
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  Between 58K and 93K we sold 1,000,000 coins out of long term
• 6:48
  holders. People that are convicted when
• 6:50
  you get past five months, that's glass nose cut off for long term
• 6:54
  holder. There is an algorithmic
• 6:58
  determination of what the likelihood of selling a Bitcoin
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  is. It's very low and yet at the
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  same time we had a million coins, 40,000 day at one time.
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  We've also over this rise up to about 117118K had a lot of other
• 7:12
  long term holders starting to sell into the market.
• 7:15
  They have already into the one 20s.
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  You know, the other thing is that thinking of that glass node
• 7:24
  was just putting out some research that I was reading
• 7:27
  maybe yesterday and it had to cover with the fact that between
• 7:30
  about 115 to 117,000, we had tremendous turnover and coins.
• 7:36
  There a lot of new buyers stepping in and now that we're
• 7:41
  past 120 decisively, that is actually flipped.
• 7:45
  So instead of resistance at that level, it's not like we're
• 7:48
  breaking through it. It basically is a floor and I
• 7:51
  think that it's on this side, this sell side pressure that
• 7:55
  we've seen, which has been like I said, very strong.
• 7:59
  And yet regardless of that, whether it's Bitcoin treasury
• 8:04
  companies which have kind of fallen off a Cliff as far as
• 8:07
  demand or the ETFs or just demand through adoption or
• 8:12
  demand through corporate ledgers, we are seeing enough
• 8:16
  demand there that it's keeping our price point stabilized so
• 8:19
  that we're doing these stair steps.
• 8:21
  In fact, you could look at 2025 and it's just basically a, just
• 8:25
  a slow chop to a higher value. That's the best kind of market
• 8:30
  you want to see. I mean, that is what is going to
• 8:33
  carry us into a much higher price point.
• 8:37
  Yeah, I, I absolutely, fundamentally agree with you,
• 8:40
  right? It's this.
• 8:41
  It's this, you know, there's just there's, it's Infinity
• 8:45
  divided by 21 million, right? I think what has caught a lot of
• 8:49
  us off guard, specifically with 2025 and Q4 is yet to be
• 8:52
  determined. What's going to happen is the
• 8:55
  amount of cell pressure there has been, right?
• 8:57
  So we started the year Trump Inauguration Day, we were at 109
• 9:01
  K, you know, roughly nine months later, 910 months later, you
• 9:08
  know, we've gained maybe 10-15 K on that right at the time of
• 9:13
  recording. So what like, you know, what
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  gives? Like what's going on?
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  So why don't we just we should just wade into the paper Bitcoin
• 9:23
  discussion then and have that have at that too.
• 9:26
  You know the oh. OK, OK, let's talk about that.
• 9:30
  So you think that's what it is? Huh.
• 9:32
  No, I. Now listen.
• 9:33
  Don't. Do not put words in my mouth
• 9:35
  buddy, because I'll tell you right now, I think that I think
• 9:38
  that a lot of Bitcoiners do not understand what I'm talking
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  about here when I say that there has been tremendous amount of
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  sell side pressure. You know, you're looking at old
• 9:50
  coins that have have been dispersed that we haven't seen
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  before. Do you remember not long ago, it
• 9:56
  was a month ago, maybe a little bit longer since I was out out
• 9:59
  West hunting and stuff, Maybe it's been six weeks ago, We had
• 10:01
  80,000 coins come on to the market.
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  Those were very old coins. I think they were around 2011,
• 10:07
  2012, you know, 80,000 coins. Imagine what that would have
• 10:12
  done. Just remember when Germany sold
• 10:14
  50,000 coins, the market tanked and that blip there, that was
• 10:19
  like a 3 1/2% drop when they, when they sold those coins.
• 10:23
  And quite frankly, I want you to know Galaxy Digital, I mean, it
• 10:26
  was an OK sale, but they didn't do the best that they could
• 10:29
  have. They, they did not in my mind,
• 10:32
  maximize the OR minimize the impact on the market that they
• 10:36
  could have. And So what I'm trying to say is
• 10:40
  you're seeing a tremendous amount of sell side pressure
• 10:44
  there over the last ever since actually January.
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  And in that sell side pressure, we continuously just soaked
• 10:53
  these coins up. It's almost like, it's almost
• 10:57
  like the market itself has become smarter.
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  I don't know if it's the corporate side.
• 11:02
  I don't know if it's the fact that we have more liquidity,
• 11:05
  more options, but it has changed.
• 11:08
  This market has changed and the type of momentum that I'm
• 11:13
  discussing right now that that that this particular period in
• 11:18
  bitcoin's price discovery is different.
• 11:20
  You can see it on chart. But the other thing is that it
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  is it it's a reflection of a maturing market.
• 11:29
  You know people Bitcoiners, when they talk about paper Bitcoin,
• 11:32
  they often, they often drift off into like the ETF discussion.
• 11:37
  I just mentioned the ETFs a minute ago.
• 11:39
  Now, if you're listening here, I want you to know something.
• 11:41
  Bitcoin ETFs are not paper Bitcoin.
• 11:45
  These aren't offshores and entities that are unregulated.
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  These are U.S. companies or regulated in the US.
• 11:52
  And of the 12 Bitcoin spot ETS, every one of them is legit in
• 11:57
  the sense they've got people crawling up their ass left and
• 12:00
  right. And none of them are going to
• 12:02
  commit crimes by selling Bitcoin or holding Bitcoin that that is
• 12:06
  not there. And in fact, I think it was
• 12:11
  BlackRock that initiated the upgrade in in settlement that
• 12:16
  they wanted within like 60 to 90 minutes after close.
• 12:21
  So what I'm trying to say is that that's not paper Bitcoin.
• 12:25
  If you want to talk about paper Bitcoin, if you're concerned
• 12:28
  about the fact that Bitcoin is not being bought and sold in
• 12:31
  spot, then you have to go to the derivative market.
• 12:33
  So you have to look at futures, you have to look at options.
• 12:37
  And you know, those markets have changed too.
• 12:39
  I mean, it's tremendous. I, you know, I mentioned a
• 12:41
  little while ago that the Bitcoin ETS took in $1.2
• 12:47
  billion. Well, you know, if you look at
• 12:49
  BlackRock, you just take a look at BlackRock for a minute, you
• 12:54
  know that ETF is now their number one revenue producing ETF
• 12:59
  that they have. That's an $11 trillion company.
• 13:02
  BlackRock, they've got ETFs up the yin Yang and they've had
• 13:06
  them for decades. And this spot Bitcoin ETF is
• 13:11
  their number one revenue generator and it did it in just
• 13:14
  over a year. They are receiving more fees on
• 13:18
  that fund than just about anything they have out there and
• 13:20
  and product. So again, they this is
• 13:25
  legitimate, but The thing is that's changed recently is the
• 13:28
  amount of option activity that is associated with these ETS.
• 13:33
  And in options, usually it's winner takes all or winner takes
• 13:38
  most because BlackRock now is the magnet for both options and
• 13:42
  liquidity in that market. Yeah, and, and the the BlackRock
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  thing is really interesting to me because, you know, again, you
• 13:50
  have one of the world's largest asset manager, they have
• 13:54
  trillions and trillions upon trillions of dollars under
• 13:57
  management. And then they talk I'll of
• 14:03
  Bitcoin specifically, you know, Larry Fink for many years.
• 14:07
  And then all of a sudden the ETF launches with they and they had
• 14:10
  a tremendous amount of pressure getting getting at through
• 14:12
  because it was a politically hostile environment.
• 14:16
  But this is BlackRock, right? Like, you know, they don't play
• 14:19
  by the rules that the rest of us play by.
• 14:21
  And they got the ETF through. The ETF was the most popular
• 14:27
  ETF, the the most it, it was the most popular ETF in history.
• 14:31
  And now it's their most profitable ETF they ever have.
• 14:34
  So the Black Rock guys, which is so strange to say this like,
• 14:38
  think if I told myself this five years ago, I would have been
• 14:40
  like get out of get out of here. You're you're you're lying to
• 14:44
  me. But basically, you know, they're
• 14:49
  saying that that look like Bitcoin is good.
• 14:55
  Bitcoin's here to stay. They're incentivized to do that.
• 14:58
  Larry Fink is not going to talk I'll of his bags.
• 15:01
  All right, And I think that's something that people, you know,
• 15:04
  underestimate. Now with all that being said and
• 15:08
  with Trump winning, right, which was I think was massive with end
• 15:11
  the end of operation show .2 point O again, like what gives?
• 15:16
  Like what's going on here, you know?
• 15:18
  You're you're one of those people that's still disappointed
• 15:20
  that Bitcoin's where it is. Well, well.
• 15:24
  And you? Know let me let me let me
• 15:25
  specify. So all right, go ahead.
• 15:27
  Please, I'm not disappointed at all.
• 15:28
  I've been in been in Bitcoin for a decade, like a third of my
• 15:31
  life I've been in this thing. So I'm not disappointed at all.
• 15:34
  Like I remember the days we were talking about this and the fact
• 15:37
  when we hit 100, Ki put a video of me dancing online because I
• 15:40
  was so happy. But that's not what I'm saying.
• 15:43
  What I'm saying is despite all the positive news that's
• 15:46
  happening, right? Because again, this is the most
• 15:49
  bullish year I've ever experienced in my life in
• 15:52
  Bitcoin's history. But from a price action
• 15:55
  perspective, it doesn't reflect all the awesome news that's have
• 15:59
  been happening. Today I reported on the fact
• 16:01
  that Luxembourg became the first European country.
• 16:05
  Their sovereign wealth fund is going to get exposure to
• 16:07
  Bitcoin. They're putting 1% of their
• 16:09
  sovereign wealth fund. And we all start with 1% and
• 16:11
  then you end up with like 10%, then you end up with 50%, then
• 16:13
  you end up with 80%. So I'm trying to paint this
• 16:16
  picture where like it's extremely bullish, but the but
• 16:22
  the price isn't reflecting that. Now you had a Freudian slip.
• 16:26
  I don't know if you meant to say this, but you said pay for
• 16:29
  Bitcoin. So I want to talk about that.
• 16:32
  What what's your theory behind that?
• 16:34
  Like is this price suppression? Is that what's going on?
• 16:37
  You have to realize that in some of these derivative products,
• 16:40
  the way they're designed is that the people that hold these
• 16:42
  products do not have to hold the spot.
• 16:44
  They don't hold Bitcoin. These are futures are settled in
• 16:48
  cash. And so you're actually what
• 16:50
  you're doing is you're exposing yourself to the price direction
• 16:53
  of Bitcoin while at the same time not having to hold
• 16:57
  particular Bitcoin. But you know, that's a very
• 16:59
  limited market. I mean, if you look at it as a
• 17:02
  percent of the market of Bitcoin, it's a very small
• 17:04
  percentage. And not only that, you have to
• 17:06
  realize too, that these trad fi people are building traditional
• 17:11
  products on Bitcoin. And I do believe that we're
• 17:15
  going to have some come to Jesus moments for these people because
• 17:19
  they are not used to dealing with this.
• 17:22
  A product that trades 24/7 and that is truly provably finite.
• 17:29
  And I do believe that we are going to see some incredibly
• 17:33
  dynamic short squeeze moves from gamma squeeze and and everything
• 17:38
  else it coming up sometime in the future because people are
• 17:42
  betting on this directionally at a very high level.
• 17:47
  I mean, those options that I'm talking about, that market is
• 17:49
  going up one magnitude. I mean, it's gone up from like 8
• 17:55
  to $80 billion in just over a year, I think.
• 17:58
  So this is a tremendous increase.
• 18:00
  And you know, futures, which we used to all watch, you know,
• 18:04
  just like Hawks and look at the funding rates.
• 18:07
  Funding rates right now are up. They're about 8%.
• 18:10
  But I guess what I'm trying to say is everything is aligned
• 18:18
  perfectly for a sustained bull market that is going to go way
• 18:23
  higher. And if we're used to like for
• 18:27
  instance, you said you've been in the space a long time in 10
• 18:30
  years. By the way, I've got like
• 18:31
  T-shirts that are 2030 years old, bud.
• 18:34
  But none the less that probably seems like a long time to you
• 18:37
  and I, I'm sure it does. But, but what I'm trying to say
• 18:41
  is the past cycles, one of the reasons that we started this
• 18:44
  conversation on is that I said, hey, I think the cycles are
• 18:48
  gone. I think we're done.
• 18:49
  I think we're in a different world today.
• 18:51
  One of the reasons I said that was because if you look at the
• 18:55
  past and you see both the cycles, the rate of return, the
• 19:00
  volatility, it's changed. So it doesn't mean that Bitcoin
• 19:06
  isn't going to keep going up into the right, just means that
• 19:10
  it's the kind of sustained lower volatility surge.
• 19:15
  Like imagine standing inside of the tidal wave.
• 19:18
  You know, you can't stop some things.
• 19:21
  This is going to continue going. I mean, we, in my mind, we, we
• 19:25
  haven't seen any of the, any of the peak of what's going to
• 19:29
  happen with Bitcoin over this let's say cycle, but let's say
• 19:32
  over the next two to three years.
• 19:34
  Yeah, yeah, I, I completely, I, I agree with, I think by the end
• 19:40
  of Trump's second term, so three years from now, I wouldn't be
• 19:44
  surprised if he saw half $1,000,000 Bitcoin, which seems
• 19:48
  unfeasible at the moment, but not to me.
• 19:52
  What? What's your reasoning behind
• 19:53
  that? No, not to me at all.
• 19:55
  And I I think it's because it's something you said earlier.
• 19:57
  I think you nailed it when you said that's the denominator.
• 20:00
  It's what is the denominator? It's the dollar.
• 20:02
  That's the issue here. It's the dollar.
• 20:05
  And and you know, I don't want to just bore everybody with
• 20:07
  macro discussions, but the bottom line is the world has
• 20:10
  changed rapidly and it's continuing to change.
• 20:13
  It's changing underneath our feet while we're standing here
• 20:15
  right now. This world is shifting.
• 20:18
  I mean, you know, this is AI. Consider the first phase of what
• 20:27
  the first phase of what we're seeing now as existing between
• 20:31
  1944 and 1971, Bretton Woods to Nixon closing the gold
• 20:36
  repatriation window. That first phase is setting in
• 20:40
  place right now what we are going to be going through and
• 20:42
  suffering through it in some ways as the world shifts.
• 20:47
  Not just, it's not that the dollar is going to go away, it's
• 20:50
  just that the, the underlying premise of the dollar backed
• 20:57
  meaning U.S. Treasuries 'cause that's what
• 20:59
  we've really done. That backed world as a reserve
• 21:04
  currency is weakening and it's changing everything.
• 21:08
  And I mean, that's a, that's a deep conversation.
• 21:11
  But basically I think that over the next, you know, three to
• 21:15
  five years, you're gonna see, I think Larry Laparte's got it
• 21:18
  right in the big print. I think he's got that right.
• 21:21
  I think he nailed it. I think we're going to see
• 21:23
  tremendous amounts of liquidity. And remember when I say big
• 21:26
  print mentioning his book, not talking about them rolling shit
• 21:30
  off of the press or something, I'm talking about liquidity
• 21:32
  injected into the system. And then we're going to need it.
• 21:35
  I mean, we, we are going to need massive amounts of liquidity to
• 21:38
  get through this period That's coming up.
• 21:40
  This this administration, you mentioned the Trump
• 21:43
  administration, They've already told us what they're doing.
• 21:45
  You remember we've pivoted. At first we were going to go in
• 21:48
  there and save $2 trillion. Well, then it was $1 trillion
• 21:52
  and then and, and I'll be just generous with Elon, I think that
• 21:58
  maybe he saved 200 billion Max and that's about it.
• 22:02
  So what have they done? They've pivoted a growth that is
• 22:04
  the next stage. That's what we're doing.
• 22:06
  And we are in a global arms race right now.
• 22:09
  We are in our arms race with China and it is all built around
• 22:13
  AI and supercomputers. And you know, we, we are both
• 22:17
  ahead and behind the curve in that race, but liquidity,
• 22:21
  liquidity is going to be really needed going forward.
• 22:24
  So there, if you think of if you think of the dollar as the
• 22:28
  denominator and you stick Bitcoin up there, what do you
• 22:30
  say? You know what, there is no limit
• 22:33
  to the amount of money that you could see on bitcoins price over
• 22:36
  the next, you know, two to three years.
• 22:39
  I don't think that you're outrageous at all in that I that
• 22:42
  could happen. Yo, I want to tell you about the
• 22:44
  best place to build your automatic self custody Bitcoin
• 22:48
  stack. I'm talking about
• 22:50
  bitcoinwell.com. What makes bitcoinwell.com
• 22:54
  different? Is that it's a completely.
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  Non custodial platform meaning as soon as you buy Bitcoin and
• 23:00
  the funds clear it goes straight to yourself.
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  Custody Bitcoin wallet address and that perfectly aligns with
• 23:06
  simply Bitcoin ethos of the separation of money and state.
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  To get started, go to bitcoinwell.com today.
• 23:17
  Takes 2 to 5 minutes to sign up and bada Bing bada boom you're
• 23:20
  ready to buy Bitcoin. It's quite interesting.
• 23:23
  It's quite interesting times, quite interesting cycle.
• 23:26
  I agree with you by the way, and you're not the first person
• 23:30
  who's told me this as well, which is, you know, it this the
• 23:34
  way that Bitcoin has been appreciating in value.
• 23:38
  This cycle is very, very different and I think it's
• 23:42
  because of the institutional inflows rather than the retail.
• 23:46
  Where is retail? Retail is not existing recycled.
• 23:49
  Retail's not here. Is it, is it, is it too
• 23:52
  expensive? Is it?
• 23:53
  Is it the sticker shock? Like what's?
• 23:55
  Going on, I'm glad you mentioned.
• 23:56
  That's a great point. I wouldn't have even.
• 23:58
  Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that.
• 23:59
  You know, I just had that conversation with somebody.
• 24:02
  So first, you know, before I even talk about that, retail's
• 24:06
  not here. These are not retail driven
• 24:08
  demands that I'm talking about Now.
• 24:10
  I will say when the ETS first launch, it was mainly retail
• 24:15
  investors. From the research from River and
• 24:17
  Banac, they were showing like 60 to 80% of the people involved in
• 24:22
  the ETFs initially were retail or high net worth individuals.
• 24:26
  That shifted though. It's shifting and it's
• 24:29
  continuing to ship now. What I'm talking about though,
• 24:32
  when you mentioned unit bias, the idea that a Bitcoin is 120
• 24:37
  some thousand a coin, I didn't. I don't think I really
• 24:42
  understood the barrier. That is the mental barrier for
• 24:46
  many people. I think 100,000 is a barrier for
• 24:50
  most people. Do you remember the idiots back
• 24:52
  there in 22 or 23? They're still waiting for 12,000
• 24:55
  Bitcoin. They never got it and they're
• 24:58
  still sitting there waiting. They're going to be people that
• 25:00
  are waiting as Bitcoin goes past A15017580 and then eventually
• 25:06
  crosses 200,000. They're going to be people still
• 25:09
  waiting for, you know, 65,000 Bitcoin and they're going to be
• 25:13
  toast. I just as an aside, you know, I
• 25:17
  just got back. I was out out West elk hunting
• 25:20
  with a bow and I, I take a backpack.
• 25:22
  I hike back into the mountains and it's pretty remote and
• 25:25
  pretty lonely. But there's one guy that shows
• 25:28
  up and he and I hunt. We hunt alone separately, but
• 25:31
  then we meet in the evening. Now, I've known this guy for
• 25:33
  like six years, Nico, and I've been talking to him about
• 25:37
  Bitcoin the whole time. Can you imagine just sitting at
• 25:39
  the end of the a long day? You got the bourbon in your
• 25:42
  hand, you just had a freeze dried meal.
• 25:44
  You're sitting there and you're just talking about everything in
• 25:47
  the world. I mean, I'm bored.
• 25:48
  This guy's to tears with my discussion around Bitcoin.
• 25:52
  And I mean, he's had me sitting next to him for years.
• 25:58
  Do you know, he's never bought a single SAT?
• 26:02
  And one of the things that came out in our last discussion
• 26:06
  sitting around the campfire there is that part of it was he
• 26:10
  was waiting for it to, to have a lower price.
• 26:14
  He, he said just what you mentioned 120,000 that it's,
• 26:18
  that's too much. I can't afford that.
• 26:20
  And I, and I tell him, well, you know, you could buy just a
• 26:23
  little piece, but I've always told him this when it was under
• 26:26
  20,000, I was like begging him to buy, but people just can't.
• 26:32
  And, and of all things, after all our discussions, one of the
• 26:36
  things he brought up were shit coins and how they were so much
• 26:39
  cheaper. And I tell you, it was
• 26:42
  everything I couldn't do to just, you know, get up, walk
• 26:45
  away to my tent and go to bed. So it is an issue.
• 26:49
  What you're talking about is, is an issue.
• 26:51
  And for retail, you know the thing that that separates retail
• 26:55
  from these corporate buyers or or sovereign wealth funds, they
• 26:58
  don't give a shit. They they come up with the idea
• 27:02
  of an allocation. You mentioned the fact that,
• 27:04
  yeah, Luxembourg, I saw that, like I said, one percent $9
• 27:08
  million. But but The thing is that when
• 27:14
  they make that decision to buy, it's not based upon price.
• 27:19
  It is based upon allocation. And these businesses, these
• 27:23
  companies, these countries that are moving into Bitcoin now are
• 27:27
  agnostic to price. They don't give a shit.
• 27:30
  They're just allocating and retail for those people that are
• 27:37
  unable to cross that mental barrier.
• 27:40
  How many times have you asked or had people ask you, am I too
• 27:43
  late to Bitcoin? Well, I usually tell people, no,
• 27:46
  you're not. But guess what?
• 27:47
  At some point, yeah, yeah, you're too fucking late.
• 27:50
  It's too late. You waited, you screwed around,
• 27:54
  you didn't do the research and at some point you're going to be
• 27:57
  sitting there And those people that don't hold hard assets in
• 28:00
  the world that I was just painting a little while ago, the
• 28:03
  world of a strong liquidity injected credit based system
• 28:11
  where dollars are created through debt.
• 28:13
  If you don't hold hard assets, something the government can't
• 28:16
  print, Bitcoin being the first, gold being maybe the second, if
• 28:22
  you don't hold those things, you know you're going to be you're
• 28:25
  going to be left out in the cold.
• 28:27
  Yeah, you've said in the past that you've studied Bitcoin for
• 28:31
  thousands of hours. Why thousands of hours?
• 28:34
  Why? To take you like and, and by the
• 28:37
  way, I'm speaking from a place of, of someone who has gone
• 28:41
  through this rabbit hole as well.
• 28:43
  But I want to get your perspective.
• 28:45
  What did you get from studying Bitcoin for thousands of hours?
• 28:48
  What? What, what realization did you
• 28:52
  come to? What Eureka moment did you have?
• 28:54
  And your what? When did it click?
• 28:56
  When were you like, Oh my God, like this is this is insanity.
• 28:59
  This is crazy. Yeah, that, yeah, that's a deep
• 29:02
  question too. I First off, let's start off and
• 29:06
  just say that there is in my mind for most people that are
• 29:10
  getting into Bitcoin, there is no necessarily Eureka moment.
• 29:14
  I do know some people that have had that.
• 29:16
  Usually they have the type of a background where they can
• 29:18
  understand, they can look at the white paper or the code and they
• 29:21
  get it right off the bat. I think what you really need to
• 29:25
  do is when you're studying Bitcoin, what you're really
• 29:27
  doing is you're hardening yourself.
• 29:29
  You know, you're putting your armor on, you're building
• 29:32
  conviction, you're building a determined buying plan.
• 29:37
  Whether it's smashed by like me, I'm a drunken sailor when it
• 29:40
  comes to buying Bitcoin, I am like incredible.
• 29:44
  Or if you're GCA, you know, dollar cost averaging into
• 29:48
  Bitcoin, it is that armor that allows you to go through these
• 29:52
  volatile periods and see them as buying opportunities.
• 29:56
  If you have spare cash, you know, what do you do?
• 29:58
  What would you do if Bitcoin dropped?
• 29:59
  Not right now, down 100,000. You know, you'd buy more
• 30:03
  Bitcoin. Why?
• 30:04
  Because you've put in, you know, hundreds of hours.
• 30:07
  You know what? Bitcoin is the only reason that
• 30:10
  I continue to study Bitcoin. Yeah, I just like it.
• 30:14
  I mean, I like studying. I love, I love reading about
• 30:17
  Bitcoin and you know, I can't get enough of it.
• 30:21
  I mean, I was reading about stuff today, you know, and
• 30:23
  obviously I'm, I'm very involved in heavily involved in this core
• 30:28
  V30 release that's coming out tomorrow and and knots.
• 30:34
  And so I'm just constantly reading and studying and, and
• 30:37
  what does that do for me? I don't normally trade Bitcoin,
• 30:41
  but I just think that it's the most fascinating.
• 30:45
  Bitcoin is the greatest monetary invention in the history of
• 30:48
  mankind. You know, if you read history
• 30:50
  and you study history, you realize that we've been looking
• 30:52
  for this forever and now in a digital age, this is what we
• 30:56
  want. There is no second best.
• 30:59
  Bitcoin is the winner. It's the zero to one event.
• 31:03
  It's the invention of the wheel. You know, I mentioned this not
• 31:07
  long ago, the oldest wheels, about 5000 years old, I think
• 31:10
  it's in Slovenia. It was found in a bod preserved
• 31:12
  down there. It's wood.
• 31:14
  But you know, 4000 years ago they, they had developed or
• 31:19
  evolved into a hub and spoke system.
• 31:21
  And if you look on the Chariots, you know, if you can find one of
• 31:24
  the, the existing chariot chair wheels, it looks about the same.
• 31:29
  In fact, I can go out there to, I've got a sports car stuck out
• 31:32
  in front of the studio. I can go out there right now.
• 31:34
  It's just a fucking wheel. It's the invention.
• 31:37
  Bitcoin is the invention, and it came along at a time when we are
• 31:41
  going to transition. We're going to AI agentic
• 31:45
  agents. They're not going to be going
• 31:47
  down to 5th, 3rd or any other damn bank.
• 31:49
  They are going to use digital money and Bitcoin can be that
• 31:53
  money. It's going to be an incredible
• 31:55
  ride. So I just study all the time
• 31:58
  because I mean, I just, I just think Bitcoin's the most
• 32:01
  fascinating subject out there. Yeah, it really is.
• 32:04
  I mean, it really is. And I think also to like, you've
• 32:08
  heard that trope before in the past, right, Which is like,
• 32:12
  don't talk about money, Money's ugly, right?
• 32:14
  And then Bitcoiners, they can't help themselves but to
• 32:17
  continuously talk about Bitcoin over and over and over and over
• 32:23
  and over and over again. So you know, why do you think
• 32:27
  that is? Well, the holidays are coming,
• 32:30
  so you'll get to show off at Thanksgiving and Christmas.
• 32:33
  You probably get thrown out of the house somewhere.
• 32:35
  You'll get a chance to just bore people to death with discussions
• 32:40
  about Bitcoin. I you know, if you look at your
• 32:45
  life and you think about how your life has different cycles
• 32:48
  in it, you know, at some point, and you probably getting there
• 32:51
  now, Nico, at some point, you know, you're creating your
• 32:54
  building, you're trying to also create wealth.
• 32:58
  And at some point you want to store that wealth.
• 33:00
  You want to put it somewhere, you want to have that thing
• 33:02
  remain in effect, maybe grow, but you don't want to be losing
• 33:07
  your purchasing power. And we have been fascinated by
• 33:11
  money for throughout history. I mean, if you read about the,
• 33:16
  you know, the ancient world of the Sumerians, the Assyrians,
• 33:21
  you know, all of these ancient worlds from 3004 thousand, 5000
• 33:25
  years ago, they all revolve around money, money, power.
• 33:29
  And it's a constant struggle count, constant battle.
• 33:33
  You can look back to the clay ledgers and Sumerians and
• 33:37
  cuneiform, the rating, the Ledger of the attempt to somehow
• 33:40
  determine who owes what to who. And if you've ever seen in
• 33:45
  museums, they have even clay balls that would be broken open
• 33:49
  that might have something inside there that signified the end of
• 33:52
  a contract. We've been doing this for
• 33:54
  millennia. We've been looking for money.
• 33:57
  So we're always talking about money because it's that it's
• 34:02
  that common denominator as you progress through life of both
• 34:08
  acquiring and then attempting to store, you know, wealth, if that
• 34:14
  makes sense. No, it, it absolutely does.
• 34:17
  It, it absolutely does. And I think people inherently
• 34:20
  know that the money's broken, so they don't want to talk about
• 34:23
  it. They, they inherently know.
• 34:25
  So they, they kind of pull an ostrich and they put their head
• 34:27
  in the sand and they said, ah, you know what, Like this doesn't
• 34:30
  exist type of thing, but it does.
• 34:34
  And I think broken money is very ugly.
• 34:37
  And I think it, it really, it, it is, it is a form of rot.
• 34:41
  And I think it really does affect a lot of people's lives
• 34:44
  very negatively. But the sinister part about is
• 34:47
  that they're not even aware that it's happening, right?
• 34:51
  But I, I want to go back to what we were talking about earlier in
• 34:54
  terms of you are extremely optimistic and bullish.
• 35:00
  Not all of us feel this way. So you're very optimistic,
• 35:04
  you're very bullish. And for anyone that doesn't
• 35:07
  know, you were in the Air Force. Right.
• 35:09
  Navy. Navy.
• 35:10
  You're in the. You know, that pisses me.
• 35:12
  I I. Saw the picture on your ex
• 35:15
  account and you're wearing a like a a a pilot helmet.
• 35:18
  So because, because the Air Force, they have, you know,
• 35:23
  anytime the Air Force wants to land, they just look down there.
• 35:26
  They've got like a 10,000 foot long runway.
• 35:28
  It's not a big deal. They're going to go play golf
• 35:30
  afterwards in the Navy, in the Navy.
• 35:35
  And I remember very clearly the first time I ever saw AUS air
• 35:38
  carrier. I was a little student.
• 35:40
  I was stuck on somebody's wing. I was flying like this and I, I
• 35:43
  was looking at him and I thought, man, I don't want to
• 35:46
  screw this up. I just want to stay right where
• 35:48
  I'm supposed to be. But he had a break in the
• 35:49
  clouds. We were circling over the
• 35:51
  carrier. It was my first time to land.
• 35:53
  And I looked down. I made a mistake and I looked
• 35:57
  down through the hole in the clouds and I saw this US
• 36:00
  aircraft carrier that was about this fucking big right here,
• 36:03
  like about a gnat, and I thought I got to land on that.
• 36:08
  I got this somehow trap on that. So there is a big difference
• 36:12
  between Navy and Air Force pilots.
• 36:14
  And have OK, so OK, so OK, all right, all right, talking,
• 36:20
  talking a little bit of Navy, Navy versus Air Force.
• 36:24
  Not so I mean, but that's, that's normal between the
• 36:26
  branches, right? So, but still, you know, Navy,
• 36:31
  you know, that's, that's still duty, right you, you still, you
• 36:34
  probably experience things that a lot of people don't
• 36:38
  experience. So how have your life
• 36:41
  experiences shaped who you are and how you got here?
• 36:46
  Because all Bitcoiners have this story.
• 36:48
  There's just one thing that have has happened to them that has
• 36:51
  initially attracted to them to Bitcoin, because if you benefit
• 36:55
  from the Fiat system, you actually do the exact opposite.
• 36:59
  You try to justify why Bitcoin isn't necessary.
• 37:02
  It's people that need Bitcoin that are attracted to Bitcoin.
• 37:05
  Everyone else but the very few, it's very few people that
• 37:09
  actually benefit from Fiat. They are just like, no, it's not
• 37:12
  worth anything. It's useless.
• 37:14
  It's it's like the central bank should set the policy, blah,
• 37:18
  blah, blah, blah, blah. But the rest of you know of the
• 37:21
  population is like, they don't even know what's going on.
• 37:23
  So my question is, what initially attracted you to
• 37:26
  Bitcoin after all your life experiences?
• 37:30
  I think it's the fact that I don't like authority.
• 37:32
  And some people might wonder what the hell is that about?
• 37:35
  I mean, he was in the military and you know, I used to be a cop
• 37:41
  and I worked underground too, as a minor and a bunch of crap.
• 37:48
  But I found as the years went by that I, I really became
• 37:53
  resistant to authority or to a narrative that I could not
• 37:58
  verify, so to speak, that I couldn't trust.
• 38:01
  And, you know, in the Navy, I mean, I, I scared myself enough.
• 38:07
  I, I, there have been times when I was so puckered up I could
• 38:10
  have sucked up the seat cushions for my ass.
• 38:12
  I mean, but, but I never, I never had the ability to just
• 38:19
  sit quietly and think about what it means to be, like you said,
• 38:23
  to be constantly debased, to live in a world where the things
• 38:28
  that I value are being taken from me.
• 38:31
  I would go further than what you'd say.
• 38:33
  I, I would think that it's, I think the current system we live
• 38:36
  in is a world of theft and it's illegal theft.
• 38:40
  You know, the Cantillian nipple suckers like the politicians in
• 38:44
  Washington. You're right.
• 38:46
  I mean, for them, it's worked great.
• 38:48
  You know, look at the insider trading that we've had occur in
• 38:52
  Congress over the last four or five decades.
• 38:54
  It's incredible. I mentioned this recently, Nancy
• 38:57
  Pelosi started out with 3 million in 85.
• 39:00
  She's worth 413,000,000 now. And Mitch McConnell 1,000,000 in
• 39:05
  87, he's got 33 million now. These people don't want Bitcoin
• 39:09
  to succeed. There's no central bank that
• 39:11
  wants Bitcoin to succeed. It's just people like you and
• 39:15
  me. And I think the reason why you
• 39:18
  and I do these podcasts or why we go on shows and stuff, at
• 39:22
  least for me, I'll speak for myself.
• 39:24
  I, I am desperate to try and show people a hopeful path to
• 39:31
  escape this dystopian digital nightmare that's being built for
• 39:34
  us, whether it's Peter, Peter Thiel with Palantir or that, you
• 39:40
  know, Sam Altman with his World Vision AI and the digital world
• 39:45
  that's coming for us is going to be very, it has the potential to
• 39:49
  be basically a velvet walled prison.
• 39:52
  I don't want to live there. I want to have an escape.
• 39:55
  I want to be able to lead the system.
• 39:58
  So to get back to your question, I, I think that there, you know,
• 40:02
  is an underlying trait in my personality that does not trust
• 40:07
  authority and does not like to be told what to do.
• 40:11
  And surprisingly enough, I've met fellow Bitcoiners that share
• 40:15
  that. And quite frankly, we are often
• 40:17
  aligned in our in our thought process about that.
• 40:20
  So I don't know. I hope that answers your
• 40:22
  question, Nico. Yeah, it totally does.
• 40:25
  It totally, totally does. And you know, I, I heard you say
• 40:29
  a lot of like military terms like triage and stuff like that.
• 40:34
  So interesting. That's interesting.
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  today. So George, what has you the most
• 41:52
  optimistic about the next three years other than number go up we
• 41:58
  and I'll and I'll and I'll lay the groundwork what I mean by
• 42:01
  that so. Yeah, go ahead.
• 42:02
  We're living in this very kind of tumultuous time in American
• 42:06
  history where, you know, you have had a high profile
• 42:10
  assassination that happened about a month ago.
• 42:13
  It was very sad. And then President Trump, it's
• 42:16
  like millimeters away, right? And I've never seen that and
• 42:21
  I've never, I've never lived through that myself, right?
• 42:24
  And I've never seen the polarization as big as it is
• 42:27
  right now. Now my, my theory as to why I
• 42:31
  believe that is happening, I think it's because of the wealth
• 42:34
  inequality driven by central bank policy.
• 42:37
  That's why I believe this is happening.
• 42:39
  But I want to get your, you know, take on this because it
• 42:42
  seems like you're happy, you're optimistic, you're feeling good
• 42:45
  about the future. I'm looking at all the things
• 42:49
  I'm like, yeah, you know, Bitcoin is, is my Oasis.
• 42:51
  Bitcoin is my escape. But I'm still looking around and
• 42:55
  like all these people need Bitcoin because I think they
• 42:57
  would stop fighting if they adopt A Bitcoin.
• 43:00
  I, I like that take Nico, you and I are probably aligned on
• 43:03
  this too, you know, and obviously anybody that's looking
• 43:06
  on the screen or anything, you can tell that I'm an old boomer.
• 43:09
  So I've been through a lot. I mean, I, I've, I've been
• 43:12
  through assassinations and, and attempted assassinations before
• 43:15
  with the president. And I had to say though, the
• 43:19
  part that you mentioned is very real.
• 43:21
  That is, I have never seen the level of division that I'm
• 43:27
  seeing in today's social media and just in general across news
• 43:34
  media and platforms. It is at a different level than
• 43:37
  before. And I do think the other thing
• 43:39
  is I think you're spot on. I, I think that this is being
• 43:42
  driven, you say wealth inequality, but what I'll say is
• 43:46
  that, you know, it's like wealth distribution it, it's so skewed
• 43:52
  right now. If you look back, you can look
• 43:54
  at charts with the Fred Fed and you can see that 1971 that I
• 43:58
  mentioned earlier. That is a pivotal moment.
• 44:01
  That is when it changes for most Americans.
• 44:04
  But the, the groundwork has been laid over decades.
• 44:09
  I'd say that NAFTA, the free trade association in with Mexico
• 44:15
  was a huge turning point. I know most people don't even
• 44:18
  know what I'm talking about, but I was there and I'll tie it into
• 44:21
  the next big event, which was most favored nation status to
• 44:25
  China, followed by next year in 2001 by entry into the World
• 44:29
  Trade Organization. From somebody that lived in that
• 44:32
  period that was there that saw the news cycle and the
• 44:35
  politicians, I can tell you that the you know, the I looking
• 44:40
  back, I can see that I had smoke being blown up my ass because
• 44:43
  the people were lying or just so ill informed that when they
• 44:49
  discussed the fact that jobs wouldn't be going away, that
• 44:52
  this would be a a benefit, A plus for Americans, including in
• 44:57
  the middle class, they were wrong.
• 44:59
  And if you look at what I mentioned before, from 1944 on
• 45:03
  to 71, that that idea that, you know, we set in motion, and I
• 45:09
  know you're familiar with Triffin's dilemma, but we set in
• 45:12
  motion in 1944 a system that could not sustain itself.
• 45:16
  It was not sustainable. I can prove that to you.
• 45:20
  You know, Bretton Woods was not actually finalized until the
• 45:24
  late 50s. Took a long time to get all the
• 45:26
  countries on board. Well, once it was fully
• 45:29
  implemented, it didn't even last, I don't think 12 years
• 45:31
  before it collapsed. It collapsed with Nixon.
• 45:34
  And why did it collapse? Because we had pegged the dollar
• 45:38
  to gold and then we pegged all the other currencies to gold.
• 45:43
  And what happens if you're, if you're the world's reserve
• 45:48
  currency, you have to export your dollars.
• 45:52
  And as we began to produce more and more dollars and we were
• 45:55
  called out on it, eventually Nixon couldn't redeem the gold.
• 45:59
  We had over 2020 to 22,000 tons of gold after World War 2 and
• 46:06
  and by the time we gave up, I think we had about 8000.
• 46:09
  I say think because is there been an audit of Fort Knox?
• 46:13
  No has there been an audit of the Bitcoin?
• 46:16
  No. So I'm just saying that these
• 46:20
  things have been taking decades set in motion over decades.
• 46:23
  And then what happened in 71 when Nixon closed that window
• 46:26
  and I was there, I mean, I, I heard him speaking on
• 46:29
  television. And when he closed that, he's
• 46:33
  closed it based upon the idea that there were speculators
• 46:37
  attacking the dollar. Yep, I remember that meaning.
• 46:40
  I. Remember the video?
• 46:41
  I wasn't there, but I. Remember the video that we were?
• 46:43
  Well, I saw it in person. That's crazy that we were being
• 46:47
  attacked by an outside force. That's how he framed it.
• 46:50
  So what's that mean? Did you know, Wait, hold on, go
• 46:52
  ahead and said something really, really interesting?
• 46:54
  What did you understand the implications of what he was
• 46:57
  saying when he said it? Well, I'd love to say that.
• 47:01
  Yeah, because I'm so damn smart. But you got to remember, I mean,
• 47:04
  I was a kid then. Well, I wasn't.
• 47:06
  I was a working man. I was like 1718 years old.
• 47:09
  I was working. And no, you know, I didn't.
• 47:12
  I'd have to say, here's the thing.
• 47:14
  I hate to say this, but I actually believed much of what
• 47:18
  he was saying, meaning that outside forces were attacking
• 47:21
  America, that we had to defend ourselves, that we were going to
• 47:25
  close the gold window. And he also said it wasn't going
• 47:28
  to make any difference, might make it more expensive for you
• 47:31
  to go overseas on vacation. But of course, you know, over
• 47:34
  the next 10 years, I got to see my eyes open as I witnessed the
• 47:38
  impact of what he had done because what did he really do?
• 47:41
  Let's let's just take that one step further before I stop.
• 47:45
  So remember what I said? How did they peg the dollar?
• 47:49
  They paid it to gold. So what did he do when he left
• 47:52
  that system? He then had to peg the world's
• 47:55
  reserve currency to dollars. Do you understand?
• 47:58
  He moved from that to dollars? And what does that mean?
• 48:02
  That means he moved to U.S. Treasuries.
• 48:05
  That has been the basis of this whole, not Ponzi scheme, I won't
• 48:10
  say that, but this whole idea of US exporting our dollars, the
• 48:17
  world needs our dollars, artificially inflating the
• 48:20
  strength of our dollar and at the same time coupled with those
• 48:25
  things that I mentioned before, we have hollowed out the
• 48:28
  manufacturing base and the middle class in this country.
• 48:30
  And I don't have to speculate. I can prove it just by looking
• 48:34
  at charts and what is result. You know, now we've got people,
• 48:38
  if you look at the amount of wealth distribution, how that is
• 48:43
  skewed to the wealthy, it's intolerable and it's coming to a
• 48:47
  head. And I am positive.
• 48:50
  But I do say that if you follow the 4th attorney, if you've
• 48:53
  looked at Neil Howe and Strauss's work, you realize that
• 48:57
  we are going, we are at the, we're in the crisis mode now and
• 49:00
  we've got about 3, maybe five years left and it's going to get
• 49:04
  resolved in this crisis and it's going to be a tough time.
• 49:07
  But on the other side are those bitcoiners or those people that
• 49:11
  are not too late. You know what you're looking at
• 49:14
  the wheel, so just hold onto your wheel and you'll be fine at
• 49:18
  the end of it. Yeah, 100 percent, 100%, OK.
• 49:25
  So. George, my question to you is,
• 49:30
  what has been the most difficult thing for you holding Bitcoin
• 49:36
  over the years? That's easy.
• 49:39
  That's, that's an easy question. It is my the difficult
• 49:46
  relationships. It's 'cause for me and my family
• 49:49
  and really, yeah. And in particular of of our
• 49:55
  children, my one, one son that I'm have been very close to in
• 50:00
  the past. We ended up just estranged for
• 50:05
  years. Now it's been years.
• 50:08
  And so I'm I'm working hard to get that relationship back in
• 50:12
  place. But without a doubt, it's been
• 50:15
  the the difficulty with some of my kids.
• 50:19
  But I think they've all come on board.
• 50:21
  It's just this one son that it's been really difficult for me.
• 50:25
  And do you think that will change with number go up?
• 50:29
  There's no fucking number that bitcoins going to go to that
• 50:33
  will turn him around. I mean, this is a young man that
• 50:37
  thinks that Bitcoin will boil oceans.
• 50:40
  And so there's no, there's no amount of money that Bitcoin's
• 50:44
  going to go to. You know, someday, someday when
• 50:49
  I'm gone, he's going to get a surprise because you know, I, I
• 50:53
  have all my wealth in Bitcoin and it'll be interesting to see
• 50:58
  how that pans out do. You do you think?
• 51:01
  That let me 'cause that's a OK. So this leads me to my next
• 51:06
  question. Do you think that there are
• 51:08
  certain world views and political ideologies are
• 51:13
  incompatible with Bitcoin? Yes, you know, I'm reading an
• 51:19
  Ran again, Ian Ran's Atlas Shroud.
• 51:23
  And yes, I do believe that I, I think that there are certain
• 51:28
  people you will never on board with Bitcoin because their world
• 51:32
  view doesn't either respect the idea of private property or
• 51:38
  property rights or someone being more successful than others.
• 51:42
  You know, all, all animals are created the same, but some are
• 51:46
  created more equal. So unfortunately, I do think
• 51:52
  that certain ideological bents and social norms are going to
• 52:00
  prohibit Bitcoin adoption in, in some circles.
• 52:03
  And I, I will tell you that, you know, I'm getting to a point in
• 52:07
  my life where I'm working very hard to try and help people.
• 52:11
  You know, I'm not so sure that the work that I'm trying to do
• 52:16
  in podcasts and things like that, I don't know if it helps
• 52:18
  on board anybody, but I'm certainly trying to help people
• 52:22
  understand what they own so that they'll hold on to it or
• 52:26
  increase their stack as time goes by.
• 52:28
  Because those people are going to be very successful.
• 52:32
  They're going to come out on the other side of that three to five
• 52:34
  year period I'm talking about. And don't forget that AI is
• 52:37
  going to be in there too. You know that right now.
• 52:40
  I just read an article as recently as three weeks ago that
• 52:43
  was talking about AI is not going to take jobs.
• 52:47
  That's absolute fucking bullshit.
• 52:50
  AI is already taking jobs. And you can look at the
• 52:54
  Magnificent 7. You can look at Salesforce.
• 52:57
  You know, some people have been naive enough, some CE OS to come
• 53:02
  out and actually say this, you know, in a public forum.
• 53:05
  I think most are starting to learn that that's probably not a
• 53:08
  good technique going forward, but it is taking jobs.
• 53:12
  Now, I'm not saying that there won't be in a tremendous
• 53:14
  abundance on the other side of this window.
• 53:17
  If AI is successful, it, it should, I mean, we should have a
• 53:21
  technological revolution that that increases everything from
• 53:25
  GDP to just personal wealth. I mean, it is possible, but it's
• 53:30
  going to be a very difficult time.
• 53:32
  And I just, I want the people that hold Bitcoin, I don't want
• 53:36
  them to understand what they own.
• 53:37
  Make sure they're not trading, not doing anything on margin or
• 53:40
  leverage. Just make sure you don't do
• 53:43
  anything to lose that stack, because it is.
• 53:45
  It is the wheel and for the future.
• 53:48
  Yeah, that's Matt. That was very hard hitting,
• 53:51
  George. A lot of information to unpack
• 53:55
  there. So first, I'm sorry to hear
• 53:58
  about your son. I appreciate that it's been a,
• 54:02
  it's kept me up many a night and it's, it's difficult for me to
• 54:07
  talk about it. But you know, looking back, you
• 54:13
  know, you got to realize something.
• 54:15
  I'm sure you went through the same period as I did.
• 54:17
  The more that you suddenly became really, you really
• 54:22
  understood Bitcoin. You probably got more and more
• 54:24
  excited about it because you realize that this is the chance.
• 54:30
  This is our, you know, this is our last chance to escape.
• 54:35
  It's not coming again. That's why Bitcoin is so
• 54:40
  important and we cannot Dick this up.
• 54:43
  We can't be doing faffo around Bitcoin.
• 54:46
  There's no fuck around find out thing because it's we're
• 54:49
  counting on it. So many of us are counting on
• 54:52
  it. We see the future.
• 54:54
  We know that it is a dystopian digital velvet line prison that
• 54:58
  they're building. And I don't want to live there.
• 55:01
  And the only way to escape, the only way we're ever going to get
• 55:03
  out of here is Bitcoin. So I, you know, there's a part
• 55:09
  of me that, like I said, it's, it's a regret, but at the same
• 55:13
  time, I don't know how I could have changed anything.
• 55:17
  And if I hadn't done what I did and if I weren't so convicted, I
• 55:21
  wouldn't have the Bitcoin. Now.
• 55:22
  You know, when you go down 80% and you're laying there awake at
• 55:26
  3:00 in the morning or you buy Bitcoin and it's 16,000 and
• 55:31
  dropping and you go outside and you feel like you're going to
• 55:33
  vomit, that, that, that takes courage, it takes conviction.
• 55:38
  And you know, if you have that type of courage and conviction,
• 55:43
  it's natural. You just want to tell people
• 55:46
  about it. Yeah, yeah.
• 55:49
  And of course, because, you know, you know how much it
• 55:52
  improved your life, you know that it will improve their life
• 55:56
  as well. But I think the ideological
• 56:00
  thing is, is quite interesting. And I think it's the elephant in
• 56:03
  a room that a lot of people don't want to talk about, right,
• 56:06
  Because. And they're starting to mention
• 56:08
  it on legacy media. By the way, I, I was watching
• 56:11
  CNBC the other day because I always like to see, you know,
• 56:14
  what corporate media is talking about because it kind of gives
• 56:16
  you like a, a, a window view. Like you're look, you're peeking
• 56:19
  into a window of like what this alternate reality is of what
• 56:24
  they're thinking, what their philosophy is and all that
• 56:26
  stuff. And they brought up Bellagi's
• 56:29
  network state versus the nation state.
• 56:32
  And essentially, like, fundamentally, you know, the
• 56:36
  nation state needs control. It needs people to use this
• 56:43
  single currency. It needs people to use the, it
• 56:46
  needs people to, to go along with the state's control, the
• 56:50
  monopoly over the, the monopoly on money, right.
• 56:53
  And if you look at the original vision of the United States, it
• 56:57
  wasn't founded on those principles at all.
• 56:59
  And the reason we gave the state, the government the
• 57:03
  monopoly on money, the justification was at least
• 57:07
  they're going to be accountable, democratically accountable.
• 57:11
  And they are. Not right.
• 57:13
  We've we found out that the Federal Reserve is an
• 57:15
  independent entity that's acting basically at its own will.
• 57:20
  I think, I think Trump tried to fire one of the governors and
• 57:23
  now they're in law. They're in court right now,
• 57:25
  right? Trump's been telling, hey,
• 57:27
  Powell, lower rates. He doesn't want to lower rates.
• 57:29
  They say, OK, that's fantastic. You know, you have an
• 57:32
  independent Fed. This is the way it should be.
• 57:34
  It won't be politically compromised, but the problem is,
• 57:37
  if you've taken a look at the Fed's track record, it's acted
• 57:41
  extremely politically sometimes, right?
• 57:44
  But it has no accountability. And now you compare that with
• 57:48
  Bitcoin. It's rules without rulers.
• 57:51
  So it fixes the very reason as to why we gave the state the
• 57:58
  monopoly of money in the 1st place, because we needed the
• 58:01
  rules, or at least that's what we were told.
• 58:04
  Now we discovered a system where there's rules, but we no longer
• 58:09
  need the rulers. And the rulers are now trying to
• 58:12
  justify why they should continue being rulers, right?
• 58:15
  Which is what I'm saying. This is when I, when I see
• 58:17
  central bankers talk about CBDC's, when I see them
• 58:20
  criticizing Bitcoin and they, they don't come up with any type
• 58:23
  of logical argument. It's like, listen, I know you
• 58:27
  have better money. That's rules without rulers.
• 58:29
  But let me tell you why you should have rulers and let me
• 58:32
  tell you why you should lose worse money.
• 58:35
  And they'll use scary words like people are going to lose their
• 58:37
  jobs. I saw this clip from from China
• 58:40
  that came out with basically like, listen, if everyone,
• 58:43
  everyone starts using Bitcoin, everyone's going to die.
• 58:45
  Like literally word for word. That's what the guy.
• 58:47
  Said saw that. It's, it's so funny.
• 58:50
  So, yeah, I mean, I don't, I want to get your thoughts on
• 58:53
  that because we are getting kind of close to the top.
• 58:57
  You know, it's, it's, it's an alternative system that proves
• 59:00
  that the other system is antiquated and the other system
• 59:03
  is evil. Nico, the first thing I'm going
• 59:06
  to say is I do not believe the Fed is politically independent
• 59:11
  or independent in any way, shape or form.
• 59:15
  That's what the first thing I'm going to say.
• 59:17
  The only thing that you're seeing right now is a turf war
• 59:20
  between Powell and Trump, and that's OK.
• 59:25
  The second thing I'm going to say is you name me right now out
• 59:28
  of 189 countries and how I don't know how many central banks you
• 59:32
  want to name, you find 1 central bank that is in favor of Bitcoin
• 59:38
  right now on planet Earth. There, there is none doesn't
• 59:43
  exist. It's 0 ideologically opposed
• 59:46
  this. Is what I was talking about
• 59:48
  earlier. So if we tie it into our
• 59:51
  discussion, what does that really mean?
• 59:53
  If you look at the future, where is this going?
• 59:57
  No central bank wants Bitcoin to be successful.
• 1:00:00
  Not a one of them. The quintillion nipple suckers,
• 1:00:04
  whether it's Nancy, whether it's Jamie Dimon, whoever these
• 1:00:08
  people are that are are close to the money source, the money
• 1:00:12
  printer, the actual money spicket, find one of them that
• 1:00:18
  is going to want to break his rice bowl or her rice bowl.
• 1:00:21
  They don't exist. We are in this alone.
• 1:00:25
  This is a battle. Bitcoiners and there aren't many
• 1:00:28
  of us, you know, the, the, you know, you'll see it's a
• 1:00:32
  statistic come out that says there's 200 million crypto
• 1:00:35
  holders, you know, in like say North America.
• 1:00:40
  There aren't that many. There aren't many.
• 1:00:43
  There are not many Bitcoin Maxis.
• 1:00:46
  The people that just hold Bitcoin understand Bitcoin, keep
• 1:00:50
  it in cold storage, get it off these fucking exchanges.
• 1:00:54
  I don't believe in the treasury companies, although I will tell
• 1:00:57
  you I'm an investor in micro strategy and metaplanet, but
• 1:01:00
  none the less they don't mean anything to me.
• 1:01:02
  Jack squat. I'd sell them so fast it'd make
• 1:01:05
  your head spin if I had to. It's Bitcoin and it's Bitcoin
• 1:01:10
  and cold storage. It's the only thing that you can
• 1:01:12
  count on that is your escape. These people do not like us.
• 1:01:16
  They don't want us to succeed. The only reason that we are
• 1:01:19
  seeing the corporate adoption that we're having right now, the
• 1:01:21
  ETFs, even the Bitcoin treasury companies, is there's money
• 1:01:26
  there. It's Fiat dollars for them.
• 1:01:29
  Do you think those ETS, do you think that Larry Fink really
• 1:01:32
  believes in Bitcoin? Larry Fink not long ago said
• 1:01:35
  that he was having a conversation with a sovereign
• 1:01:39
  wealth fund and they were asking him should we allocate 3 or 5%?
• 1:01:45
  He's having those kinds of conversations with people.
• 1:01:49
  He's having conversations where he talked about a debasement
• 1:01:52
  trade six months ago and he said if you believed in that trade
• 1:01:56
  and if other nations follow these sovereign wealth funds,
• 1:01:59
  you're going to have a 700 up to a $700,000 Bitcoin soon.
• 1:02:06
  These people don't want Bitcoin to succeed and they're going to
• 1:02:10
  try to build the rails they can to contain it, whether it's
• 1:02:13
  through stable coins, whether it's through some kind of rails
• 1:02:18
  on FinCEN, whether they're going to go and make a call to foundry
• 1:02:23
  mining pool, whether they're going to talk to, you know, that
• 1:02:31
  I could go down so many rabbit holes here, but the bottom line
• 1:02:34
  is that it's just us kids. It's just us.
• 1:02:37
  We got to realize that, you know, we had this special, you
• 1:02:42
  know, for the people that are here now, we have got a special
• 1:02:46
  gift that we've worked hard to acquire and nobody else really
• 1:02:50
  gets it. And you can prove that.
• 1:02:53
  You just go around and start asking people about Bitcoin.
• 1:02:56
  You're never going to find anybody that has a conversation
• 1:02:59
  like we're having right here. When I talk to the plebs that
• 1:03:02
  are listening or watching right now and I talk to them about
• 1:03:04
  cold storage, they know what I'm saying.
• 1:03:07
  They understand what a seed phrase is.
• 1:03:08
  They know what the exchanges are, they know what the risks
• 1:03:11
  are. Why?
• 1:03:12
  Because they are one of the few. And lonely are the brave, my
• 1:03:16
  friend. So, you know, lonely, lonely.
• 1:03:20
  Are the brave lonely? Are the brave?
• 1:03:22
  I love it. I love it.
• 1:03:24
  I want to give a shout out to our partnersat123.com
• 1:03:27
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• 1:03:30
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• 1:03:33
  people go dark. Cell towers fail, and
• 1:03:35
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• 1:03:39
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• 1:03:40
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• 1:03:45
  anywhere in the US, even offshore.
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• 1:03:55
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  Stay connected, stay independent, stay sovereign.
• 1:04:10
  Go to sat123.com/simply today and use promo code simply to get
• 1:04:15
  15% off anything on the store. Well, George, it's been an honor
• 1:04:20
  to have you on the podcast. I always love our conversations.
• 1:04:23
  I feel like 1 builds on top of the other and I really
• 1:04:27
  appreciate you joining me today. Thanks, I I appreciate that too.
• 1:04:31
  Nico, I I there's some other things I'd like to rift on, but
• 1:04:35
  we'll hold that for another discussion.
• 1:04:37
  We'll see how things turn out with the core V30 proposal
• 1:04:41
  that's coming out. Oh, that's right.
• 1:04:43
  That's right. Yeah.
• 1:04:44
  OK. Because I've got some real
• 1:04:46
  concerns there. So should we save that or should
• 1:04:51
  we? No, I'm I'm ready to RIP now.
• 1:04:53
  Let's let's RIP. Let's RIP now.
• 1:04:55
  OK, All right, we're extending the podcast over an hour to talk
• 1:04:59
  about core V30 verse knots. I'm now I'm remembering George,
• 1:05:05
  that you, you specifically told me you wanted to talk about this
• 1:05:09
  subject. So yes, let's do it.
• 1:05:11
  The reason I want to talk about is I think it's a threat vector.
• 1:05:14
  I think they're increasing the threat surface to Bitcoin, and I
• 1:05:17
  don't understand it. For those of you who aren't
• 1:05:19
  familiar, tomorrow Bitcoin Core developers are going to do
• 1:05:23
  something that's never been done before.
• 1:05:26
  You know, we've got all kinds of shit on the network right now.
• 1:05:29
  We've got Jpegs, we got pixelated Dicks, you know, jpegs
• 1:05:33
  of frogs and other shit on the blockchain.
• 1:05:36
  And it's bloated. The blockchain UTX O set is also
• 1:05:39
  bloated. And these are exploits.
• 1:05:43
  They're hacks, they're workarounds.
• 1:05:45
  They are in response to either poorly written code or an
• 1:05:50
  inability to foresee unintended consequences.
• 1:05:54
  But tomorrow we're going to return.
• 1:05:55
  We're going to take the OP return, which is part of a
• 1:05:59
  Bitcoin transaction, not spendable, pruneable.
• 1:06:01
  And I'll tell you, I can tell you about that if you're
• 1:06:03
  interested, but it's not important.
• 1:06:05
  But what it means is they're going to up that limit on it and
• 1:06:08
  has a little limit of like 83 bytes on it.
• 1:06:10
  Right now. They're going to just blow it
• 1:06:12
  wide open to 100,000 bytes, 100,000 bytes.
• 1:06:16
  That means that you can put all kinds of stuff.
• 1:06:18
  So what am I saying when it's never been done before?
• 1:06:20
  It means that they're putting up a graffiti wall that anybody can
• 1:06:23
  write on. Anybody can put an image in, and
• 1:06:25
  I'm talking 100,000 bytes. That means you can put a hell of
• 1:06:28
  an image in there. And I've got concern about the
• 1:06:31
  types of images that are going to end up in that area.
• 1:06:35
  You've got the ability to put in MP4 audio files, maybe malware.
• 1:06:41
  You can put just about any other any damn thing you want in
• 1:06:44
  there. And here's the thing, Who's the
• 1:06:46
  gatekeeper to that? I run a node.
• 1:06:49
  I'll never run Core V30I will never run that fucking thing.
• 1:06:56
  I run knots, and that's only because it's the only thing I
• 1:06:59
  have available right now to me as a software implementation of
• 1:07:03
  the Bitcoin protocol that will limit that exposure.
• 1:07:08
  I don't want to have a node that's got RAM and and a disk on
• 1:07:12
  it uploading crap. You know, if you look at a node,
• 1:07:16
  what is a node? Node's a nothing but a server.
• 1:07:19
  It's just an open relay. It's a Dropbox, if you will, for
• 1:07:22
  the world. Anybody, anybody can put
• 1:07:25
  something into an OP return. And at some point, if you run a
• 1:07:30
  full node, it's an archival node and you download the blockchain,
• 1:07:34
  you're going to see what I'm talking about when I say spam is
• 1:07:36
  bloating the network. It's easy to do, You know, shit
• 1:07:43
  that's going to get our rant here.
• 1:07:44
  I'm just telling you right now, you know, five years ago, I
• 1:07:48
  could have gone down to, I don't even know RadioShack was still
• 1:07:51
  there, but I could have gone down somewhere and bought for
• 1:07:53
  like 40 bucks. I could have made my own node.
• 1:07:56
  Recently I bought a new node and I spent hundreds of dollars on
• 1:07:59
  it. Why?
• 1:08:00
  Because I had to get more RAM and I had to get a faster node.
• 1:08:04
  I had to get more data storage. 2 terabytes is what I got.
• 1:08:08
  I don't need all that, but I will someday.
• 1:08:11
  And why did I do that? It's because the dip shits have
• 1:08:14
  allowed all this stuff on the network.
• 1:08:17
  And when I say aloud, what I'm talking about is if you look at
• 1:08:19
  the SegWit 2017 software upgrade and then you look at Taproot in
• 1:08:24
  21, you tell me which one of the Core developers told you that we
• 1:08:28
  were going to have all this crap on the network that we've got
• 1:08:30
  now. Those were unintended
• 1:08:32
  consequences. That's the key.
• 1:08:35
  Point it. It is why we are sitting here
• 1:08:38
  today. When you sync that node, I
• 1:08:40
  bought that node and you sync it, you start out with Satoshi's
• 1:08:43
  genesis block. That's really cool.
• 1:08:46
  And you can watch your node sync goes really fast and then get
• 1:08:49
  what happens. Nothing really serious in 2017,
• 1:08:53
  even though they upped the block size to 4 megabytes.
• 1:08:56
  They call them 4 million weighted units.
• 1:08:58
  But you can put a lot of crap in there.
• 1:09:00
  And then people are and then, then after, after the Taproot
• 1:09:07
  Wizard jackasses came on stage in Miami in 22 and said, Hey,
• 1:09:12
  you know, we're going to, we've hacked, we've hacked Bitcoin,
• 1:09:16
  we've exploited this. And by 23 you've your node when
• 1:09:21
  it comes to syncing is going to slow down.
• 1:09:23
  It's going to slow down big time.
• 1:09:25
  And it's going to take days for you to download all that crap,
• 1:09:28
  all that stuff I'm talking about.
• 1:09:30
  And what about what about when that 100,000 byte image on your
• 1:09:36
  node comes up with something that you don't want to see?
• 1:09:40
  And I'm talking about like just really like a bad image of some
• 1:09:46
  little kid or something being something bad happening to him.
• 1:09:50
  And that's on your node. That's not going to work for me.
• 1:09:54
  And the other thing is, if you think I'm an alarmist or a
• 1:09:56
  village idiot here, it's already happened.
• 1:09:59
  It's happened twice and the last time with BSV Satoshi's Vision,
• 1:10:04
  which is a failed fork of Bitcoin Cask which is a failed
• 1:10:09
  fork of Bitcoin. So guess what, they all have
• 1:10:12
  similar code. They took the OP return and they
• 1:10:16
  did exactly what core developer wants to do.
• 1:10:20
  They went and they went from 8:00.
• 1:10:23
  They went from 80 bytes to 100,000 bytes.
• 1:10:25
  And what do you think they got on their child sexual abuse
• 1:10:28
  material very soon and then? I don't understand what is
• 1:10:42
  pushing this agenda. Ideology.
• 1:10:48
  If you look, let me, I'll tell you something.
• 1:10:52
  I'm going to tell you what I think of Bitcoin Core developers
• 1:10:55
  right now. Before I do, I want you to know
• 1:10:59
  I've been involved in this for about four months.
• 1:11:03
  I was one of, I was the person that stood up in Prague and
• 1:11:07
  asked Michael Saylor to a pine about OP, about OP returned core
• 1:11:14
  versus knots. This was months ago.
• 1:11:16
  You should listen to it if you can on YouTube.
• 1:11:20
  And in that time from core supporters, the Three Stooges,
• 1:11:26
  basically there's three of them in particular.
• 1:11:29
  I've been called stupid. I don't know what I'm talking
• 1:11:32
  about. I don't write code, I don't get
• 1:11:35
  to vote, which is true, and I don't have any voice in this.
• 1:11:40
  They don't even want my voice. I know someone that I have
• 1:11:44
  tremendous respect for that's been involved in technology for
• 1:11:46
  decades, who reached out to them during Prague, and not one core
• 1:11:50
  developer or core supporter answered him back.
• 1:11:53
  They ghosted him. These people are insulated.
• 1:11:57
  They are elite. They act like the 1%.
• 1:12:01
  There is no consensus driven policy.
• 1:12:05
  You don't even know what the hell they're really their goals
• 1:12:08
  are. In fact, I'll tell you right
• 1:12:09
  now, if you're listening to this, why don't you do
• 1:12:12
  something, Have some fun. Go on to grok and use ChatGPT.
• 1:12:16
  Use the two of them and then type in who are the five core
• 1:12:20
  developers with commit access merge authority.
• 1:12:24
  First off, the 2 ChatGPT and core may not even agree.
• 1:12:27
  They may not even know the names and then ask them something
• 1:12:30
  simple. How old are they?
• 1:12:32
  What is their education? What's their background?
• 1:12:35
  Don't even ask anything complicated like how much do
• 1:12:38
  they make? Who pays them?
• 1:12:41
  This is not the way to run the world's most pristine collateral
• 1:12:48
  asset that all of us are counting on for our future.
• 1:12:53
  So I'm not even saying that I know what I'm talking about.
• 1:12:58
  Again, I could be a village idiot.
• 1:13:00
  But I tell you, I do know one thing.
• 1:13:02
  I know the way the Core V30 has been approached, by the way the
• 1:13:06
  Core developers and the Core supporters have approached this
• 1:13:09
  issue. You're fucking idiots.
• 1:13:12
  You have pissed off people like me.
• 1:13:14
  You have pissed off people like myself who have contributed
• 1:13:16
  money to Core. You'll never get another dime
• 1:13:19
  for me. And you have burned all kinds of
• 1:13:24
  fucking bridges so that we can't have a discussion about things
• 1:13:28
  that are important, like Quantum and the threat and a software
• 1:13:32
  upgrade. You people have got a lot of
• 1:13:37
  damage to repair if we're going to go forward.
• 1:13:40
  Yeah, yeah. It's, again, it's, it comes down
• 1:13:43
  to there's a core group of people that have a lot of power.
• 1:13:47
  That's what Bitcoin was all about.
• 1:13:48
  It's it that's literally what Bitcoin was to combat to do you
• 1:13:54
  know, Nick Zabo said it recently to download knots kind of like
• 1:13:58
  as a as 1/2 measure initially. That's interesting.
• 1:14:02
  I'm I'm, I come from the camp of I like knots, but I also come
• 1:14:06
  from the camp of I just don't upgrade.
• 1:14:09
  I think I'm running version 27 or something.
• 1:14:13
  So you. Know I'm just.
• 1:14:14
  Going to continue running version 27.
• 1:14:18
  So, well, that's OK, but you have to realize they only keep
• 1:14:23
  three of them like updated. So at some point, I mean, you
• 1:14:26
  are kind of subjecting yourself to a little bit of a risk there,
• 1:14:29
  but I won't get into that. I'll just say that's your
• 1:14:32
  choice. And again, to anybody that's
• 1:14:35
  listening, you know what you can tell?
• 1:14:36
  Tell me. You can just say, George, go
• 1:14:37
  screw yourself, because guess what?
• 1:14:40
  I don't really care. I'll run what I want.
• 1:14:41
  And that is the power of a node. Everybody that's listening to
• 1:14:44
  this, if you've gotten any money from Bitcoin, if you've been
• 1:14:47
  paid, you need to pay it back. You get off your ass like I did.
• 1:14:51
  You run a node and then you decide whether you're going to
• 1:14:54
  run Core V30I hope the hell not, but that's up to you.
• 1:14:57
  You run something and then we can talk.
• 1:15:01
  Yeah, absolutely. Well, George, thank you for
• 1:15:04
  coming on today. I'm really glad that you voiced
• 1:15:08
  your opinion on the core verse knots thing out of the core
• 1:15:11
  verse knots thing. I completely agree.
• 1:15:14
  You know, I'm, I'm a media guy, that's my main focus.
• 1:15:16
  But just doing some research into this and again, it does not
• 1:15:21
  make sense. And then also how how committed
• 1:15:27
  they are to implementing this, even though there's so much
• 1:15:33
  pushback from the community. I've seen this type of behavior
• 1:15:37
  before, right? This is very, this is very
• 1:15:40
  similar behavior. And that's why I said initially
• 1:15:43
  you said like, why is this happening?
• 1:15:45
  My belief is it's ideological. I think that there's two camps
• 1:15:49
  in Bitcoin. There's the we can improve this.
• 1:15:52
  And then there's the ossification camp.
• 1:15:55
  I come heartily in the ossification camp.
• 1:15:58
  Like unless it's a security update that is like 100%
• 1:16:01
  necessary, Bitcoin should be money.
• 1:16:04
  And there is something that you said which I've never heard
• 1:16:08
  someone else say. I've said this before, but I've
• 1:16:10
  never heard someone else talk about this, which is the
• 1:16:13
  unintended consequences of changing Bitcoin.
• 1:16:17
  We saw that with ordinals. We saw that with ordinals.
• 1:16:21
  Ordinals came out of nowhere when everyone in their mind,
• 1:16:25
  including myself, was like, yeah, taproot sounds like a
• 1:16:27
  fantastic idea. Then within a month you had
• 1:16:31
  ordinals come in and everyone was like, wait a second, like we
• 1:16:34
  didn't sign up. We didn't agree to this.
• 1:16:36
  What what what was happening? That is the unintended
• 1:16:39
  consequence. And it reminds me of Adam Back,
• 1:16:43
  you know, and this is someone literally studied computer
• 1:16:45
  science and he said it. He said it specifically when he
• 1:16:50
  was researching, when he was researching Bitcoin.
• 1:16:56
  He was going down this rabbit hole where he spent six to nine
• 1:17:02
  months studying Bitcoin to see where he can improve it.
• 1:17:06
  What he came to realize was if I improve something, it comes with
• 1:17:12
  a trade off. I love it.
• 1:17:14
  And that's the thing that people need to understand about Bitcoin
• 1:17:17
  is, and this is perhaps altcoiners don't understand
• 1:17:21
  this, right? There's a reason the block size
• 1:17:25
  stays at the size it is. You want decentralization of
• 1:17:30
  nodes. If it takes 10 terabytes to run
• 1:17:33
  a node, the the bar the barrier to entry is higher.
• 1:17:38
  Therefore it's less decentralized. 50% of the
• 1:17:42
  Bitcoin of the Etherium nodes, they're all run on servers.
• 1:17:48
  They're all most of them are run on AWS.
• 1:17:51
  So Jeff Bezos controls the majority of Etherium nodes.
• 1:17:55
  Why do they run on servers? Because most people don't have
• 1:17:59
  the means or the hardware to run the software.
• 1:18:03
  That's why Bitcoin is as lean as it is.
• 1:18:06
  It it only cost you 100 bucks. You can even use an old computer
• 1:18:10
  to run a Bitcoin node. You can download, start OS and
• 1:18:15
  boom, you're running a node it. It's not supposed to be complex.
• 1:18:18
  When you add these complexities, even if they come, the road to
• 1:18:23
  Hell's paved in good intentions. Even if they're coming with
• 1:18:26
  really good intentions, there are unintended consequences to
• 1:18:30
  changing Bitcoin. And that's what people don't
• 1:18:33
  foresee. And I think that this debate is
• 1:18:36
  extremely healthy. And I'm really glad that, you
• 1:18:41
  know, Luke Dash Junior threw his hat in the ring and this is
• 1:18:44
  getting the attention that it's getting.
• 1:18:46
  And I think Knotts is up to like 20% of of the amount of nodes
• 1:18:50
  that are running. So I don't think the the core
• 1:18:53
  guys expected that. And honestly, if you look at
• 1:18:56
  Satoshi's original, like original idea of what he wanted,
• 1:19:01
  he thought there was going to be multiple versions of Bitcoin,
• 1:19:05
  right? And that never came to fruition.
• 1:19:08
  What came to fruition is there was core really.
• 1:19:13
  But now you see Satoshi's thinking come into place because
• 1:19:16
  there's a new disagreement in the community and you do have a
• 1:19:20
  vote. You don't have a vote towards
• 1:19:22
  what the developers are going to do, but you have a vote in terms
• 1:19:26
  of what you are going to, what you can and what you will.
• 1:19:29
  Run right. And that's a very strong vote,
• 1:19:32
  right? Well said, Nico.
• 1:19:34
  I tell you, I think that's a banger of a way to end this
• 1:19:37
  because I I mean, that's really that's very good synopsis.
• 1:19:42
  Very well said. I appreciate it, George.
• 1:19:46
  Dude, thank you so much for coming on.
• 1:19:48
  I appreciate it. Go Navy, Thank you for joining
• 1:19:52
  me and hope hopefully I'll have you on again soon.
• 1:19:56
  All right, buddy. Best of all to everybody out
• 1:19:59
  there. I love you kids.