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Mark Goodwin | BlackRock Capturing Bitcoin | Simply Bitcoin IRL · Simply Bitcoin

• 0:00
  Yo, welcome to another episode of Simply Bitcoin IRL.
• 0:04
  Today we have a very special guest.
• 0:06
  We have Mark Goodwin, Editor in Chief at Bitcoin Magazine.
• 0:11
  Absolutely love the guys over Bitcoin Magazine.
• 0:13
  They're crushing it. Those are some of the best
• 0:16
  conferences in the world. I'm really excited for today's
• 0:19
  episode. We have so much to dive into.
• 0:21
  Mark has been has made quite a bit of a splash in a recent
• 0:25
  episode that he did with Whitney Webb.
• 0:28
  You know and just people have seemed to have received it
• 0:31
  really well. So we're going to explore some
• 0:33
  of those topics. But, but but before we jump into
• 0:36
  the show, I do want to give a very special shout out to the
• 0:40
  Bitcoin company that powers simply Bitcoin IRL.
• 0:43
  And of course I'm talking about Bitcoin.
• 0:44
  Well, Bitcoin Well is the best place to build your automatic
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  Bitcoin on RAMPS All right everybody, no more delay.
• 1:21
  You want to bring up Mark on stage?
• 1:24
  How you doing, Mark? What's up bro?
• 1:25
  I don't think we've ever chatted before, so I'm excited for this.
• 1:30
  Yeah, man. Nico thanks for having me
• 1:32
  brother. Yeah, I don't think we have are
• 1:33
  certainly not in on the show, but I think, you know I think we
• 1:38
  crossed paths and packed Bitcoin a couple years ago as FTX was
• 1:42
  imploding. I think we crossed paths there.
• 1:45
  But yeah man, super happy to be here.
• 1:47
  Love the show, love Opti, love what you guys do and yeah,
• 1:50
  stoked to be here. Appreciate it.
• 1:52
  Appreciate it. Packed Bitcoin.
• 1:54
  Yeah. So that's probably why I don't
• 1:56
  remember because I literally just was running around like a
• 1:59
  crazy person. The 23 so much things going on
• 2:03
  running the stream panels. MC just nuts as like just it was
• 2:10
  all a big blur. Anyways, bro, you're like super
• 2:13
  famous now. You did this epic you know, this
• 2:18
  epic interview like I was saying in the intro and you covered all
• 2:22
  these, you know, all these crazy topics.
• 2:24
  I I think a lot of people when like podcasts really blow up.
• 2:28
  I I think it's because I think it resonates with a lot of
• 2:31
  people. Like it connects with a lot of
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  people's, you know, it hits people's heartstrings, but it's
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  obviously you've you've hit on topics that I think maybe
• 2:38
  perhaps people weren't aware of. So I'm going to rip their
• 2:41
  Band-Aid straight off and just jump straight into it.
• 2:45
  What is Tokenization, Inc? And this is something that like
• 2:48
  Larry Fink has brought up. I've seen him talk about this on
• 2:52
  legacy corporate media. What is that?
• 2:56
  Yeah, totally. Yeah.
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  Let's jump right in. I mean basically, you know, I
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  wrote this piece with my friend Whitney Webb about, yeah, kind
• 3:05
  of this concerning rhetoric that I was seeing from our boy
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  Lawrence Fink, the CEO of BlackRock.
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  You know, as BlackRock is getting ready to embrace Bitcoin
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  in in a really big way with, you know, their I bit or iShares
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  Bitcoin Trust, their their ETF, their SPOT ETF which now has
• 3:28
  like 400,000 Bitcoin or something Insane, right.
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  But this was, you know, this was this was back around the around
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  the approval. So like you know the beginning
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  of January and Larry's getting up there and he's talking about,
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  you know what he how he basically, you know the
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  framework that BlackRock is looking at Bitcoin.
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  And you know something really struck me.
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  I mean literally it was, you know, I was writing out these
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  quotes in real time as I was watching him talk.
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  I think it was on CNBC. I'm not exactly sure what which
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  one was the first interview, but he did a couple interviews like
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  you know right around the 11th of January when the when the
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  ETFs were approved. And in one of them he literally
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  said, you know if we can ETF a Bitcoin, you know what else can
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  we ETF. And I definitely saw this as
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  kind of this like, First off, he's like inventing a new verb,
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  right, Like ETF ING. And and I saw it as kind of this
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  like arrogant, kind of like, hey, you know, look what we're
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  doing with Bitcoin, if we can reduce, you know, all of the,
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  you know, ridiculousness that, you know, the Bitcoin network
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  goes through to like, you know, have decentralized consensus and
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  a distributed network. If we can reduce all of that to,
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  you know, AQ SIP ticker that's traded on the New York Stock
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  Exchange, you know, what else can we, you know, reduce to an
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  ETF? And I saw it as kind of this
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  like, you know, I like to, I like to listen to what the
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  baddies say and and then also look at their actions.
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  And often times they're not aligned.
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  But I think in this case, you know, this one kind of worried
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  me a bit. And I was like, oh, my God, like
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  bitcoiners are rolling out the red carpet here for Larry.
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  And they're so excited about this ETF like so many, you know,
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  not everybody but a lot. And here he is basically, you
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  know, mocking us, saying he's, you know, he ETF to Bitcoin,
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  right. And so I think people kind of
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  just like forgot who Larry kind of is and what BlackRock is and
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  you know, maybe what Wall Street, you know, these huge
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  institutions like what their kind of plan is for Bitcoin.
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  So I started kind of digging into Larry and BlackRock and I
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  found a lot of stuff that you know, I knew he was a baddie but
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  I didn't really realize how connected he was to the the
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  public sector and in in such this way.
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  And so the piece kind of became a look at the private public,
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  you know, paradigm and this, you know, ability for these these
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  huge institutional players, you know, that have benefited so
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  much from the debasement of currency of saving mechanisms
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  for the, you know, the working class and have, you know, really
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  like taken advantage of arguably these private sector caused and
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  public sector exacerbated, you know, financial crises.
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  And BlackRock was a huge part of 2008, huge part of 2020
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  actually. BlackRock bought the iShares
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  brand from Barclays in the 2008 crisis.
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  You know, after Barclays sort of denied A bailout from the UK
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  government, BlackRock came in, bought iShares.
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  They didn't have any ETF products before and now it's,
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  you know, one of the biggest parts of their entire operation.
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  And ETFs are kind of like the most traded, you know, vehicle
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  right now. But anyways, yeah, kind of was
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  just like seeing what Larry was saying about Bitcoin.
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  And so that ETF of Bitcoin scared the shit out of me.
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  And then he said a couple other things that were really crazy,
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  specifically saying I don't believe Bitcoin is ever going to
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  be a currency. I believe it's an asset class.
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  And then he said that he, he called it a technology for asset
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  storage, which I think is really interesting.
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  Especially when you look at, you know, kind of the, you know,
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  maybe that you could argue the distraction.
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  But the debate going on now in Bitcoin culture, which I'm
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  hoping we kind of move on from, 'cause I'm kind of sick and
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  tired of it and doing it for so long, but with like the ordinal
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  stuff and Bitcoin as a database and all this.
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  But he's he's coming out here saying I don't want it to be a
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  currency we want to ETF of Bitcoin.
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  It's an asset class and we we, we look at the Ledger this
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  universal Ledger as being something that we can uphold
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  digital IDs with. We can uphold tokenized assets
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  And basically saying that tokenization is sort of the next
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  ETF ING. And when you begin to look at
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  the history of of Larry and BlackRock and all of their ESG
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  plays and their connections with the natural asset corporations
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  and and all of this stuff, you start to see this kind of
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  ghoulish picture of you know, what Larry and BlackRock you
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  know, are kind of planning to hopefully do with Bitcoin.
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  And yeah, I wanted to just kind of get the story out there,
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  remind people who Larry is and and and sort of raise a little
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  bit of hell about, you know, hey, there's like a concerted
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  effort here to basically label Bitcoin as an asset class, as a
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  commodity and not as this peer-to-peer, you know, medium
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  of exchange. And I, you know, I do think
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  that, you know, thinkers like beauty on and are correct in
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  labeling Bitcoin as, you know, a database and not as money in the
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  legal sense. And I agree with that.
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  It's speech, it's code. But in terms of like the way I I
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  hope users sort of look at it you know Bitcoin really should
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  be upheld as this peer-to-peer thing and and the the the
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  further we get from that the more we go into this unit of
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  account you know store a value commodity class rather than this
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  peer-to-peer currency. I think we we lose a lot of the
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  power that that Bitcoin really gives us as being this thing
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  that circumnavigates the state and trusted third parties and
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  all that. And if we lose that and it just
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  becomes another Q SIP, another ticker, another paper eyes asset
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  like gold, You know, I think it it really defangs a lot of the,
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  the beauty of Bitcoin and the power of Bitcoin and it plays
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  right into this financial class and it can actually be a tool
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  that you know, not just empowers, you know, the unbanked
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  global self citizen, but also you know, empowers the state.
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  So you know, that's kind of the, the general idea for why, you
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  know, we worked on this piece, why we did this piece.
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  And yeah, I think I think the idea sort of resonated with
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  people because I mean they just literally say it.
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  It's like it's pretty wild. I mean these these are just,
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  this isn't really like you know, an extrapolation or some kind of
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  like schizo theory here. I mean these are just kind of
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  things, these are just direct quotes really from Larry and
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  you, you go look at his history and this is kind of the stuff
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  he's done from the from the get go, right.
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  So yeah, that's kind of the little overview of the story
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  here. But yeah, tokenized ink piece
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  for Bitcoin Magazine that I wrote with Whitney Webb, you
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  know we Co posted it on a limited hangout as well which is
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  her site. And yeah, we've been kind of
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  working in that realm for a bit now.
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  We've done three pieces now since, you know, basically
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  Christmas. And all of them have kind of
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  been looking at sort of the the dollar system players that are
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  now kind of encroaching into Bitcoin and using Bitcoin and
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  you know, and some other pieces of side chains of Bitcoin, but
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  using Bitcoin as this asset storage and using this
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  technology that's apparent in blockchain to basically tokenize
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  the natural world. And that's something that I
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  think Larry wants to do. And now he's sort of proven that
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  he can tokenize Bitcoin, you know reduce it to this Q sip and
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  now he's going to move on to other things.
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  They have to find a way basically to service this debt
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  of the US government and how do they do that You know they need
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  they they they basically reversed the the old oil Baron
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  you know mechanism of digging in the ground for oil and now
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  they're debt barons and now they're digging holes not
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  looking for assets but looking for places to to shove debt
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  dollar denominated debt. So here they are looking to the
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  natural world looking to green finance looking to carbon credit
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  that they can denominate with private issued stable coins and
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  basically blow out the the the treasury by tokenizing the real
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  world. You know this is this is a trend
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  that we're seeing. You know when we wrote this
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  article you know BlackRock hadn't even really started yet
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  and now they have this huge USDC fund on Ethereum.
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  It's called the Buildle like BUIDL Fund and they're like you
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  know working on securitizing, tokenizing, you know, real world
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  assets on, on Ethereum basically using USDC, which is pretty much
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  exactly what we we spelled out in this in this article.
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  And now we're kind of seeing it and I think we're going to see a
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  lot more of that. And I think Bitcoiners should be
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  a little, a little concerned about this.
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  Larry's not a good guy, but that's kind of basically the,
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  the, the overview there. I know I've ranted for like 10
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  minutes now, but that that's sort of the idea, yeah.
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  And it was. It was amazing rant.
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  I wish. I kind of wish she kept going.
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  Oh shit. But no.
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  But I have so many questions, So many questions for you.
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  OK. So Larry Fink's not a good guy.
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  BlackRock has a a plan you're saying to you know they they
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  they they essentially want to capture this, they they want to
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  tokenize it like you said. Do you think that has anything
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  to do with the US government, the the kind of the regulatory
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  situation currently in the states where like you can see it
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  happening in slow of motion like for example today Cynthia Lummus
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  basically tried to tweet out and say like look they're they're
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  basically going after self custody.
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  It's not legislation, traditional legislation, it's
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  like legislation through enforcement.
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  Do you think it's interconnected?
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  Oh yeah, absolutely, man. I mean I'm, you know, I'd like
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  to think I'm based in in you know logic and and in in the
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  real world. But you know, I'm at this point
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  I'd say I'm a pretty full blown, you know that there is sort of a
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  conspiracy with the regulatory arm and the governing body, the
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  public sector of the United States to embrace Bitcoin as a
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  method of, you know, basically extending the, the, the economic
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  Hedgeman that is the US dollar system using this sort of demand
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  in elastic energy commodity. So I wrote a book called the
• 14:30
  Bitcoin Dollar. The Bitcoin dollar being this,
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  it's kind of an analogue to the Petro dollar.
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  So it's not a literal monopoly on the insurance and outs of,
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  you know, buying an energy commodity.
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  But just like the Petro dollar, you know, it's basically, hey,
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  you know, you want to industrialize and buy oil, you
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  know, seventies, 80s, nineties, 2000s, two thousand 10s, you
• 14:53
  want to industrialize and buy oil, you got to buy dollars
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  first. So what that does is it, it kind
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  of increases demands inorganically $4.00 because
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  people want this thing that they've basically done a de
• 15:05
  facto monopoly on the insurance and outs of and they've dollar
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  denominated it. So anybody in Asia, they want to
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  buy oil from the Middle East, they got to buy dollars first.
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  They've basically created the same mechanism for Bitcoin.
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  You know all you know 99% basically certainly 97 plus
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  percent of of like volume in the Bitcoin market is is U.S. dollar
• 15:33
  denominated. And you know a huge amount of
• 15:35
  that is now in stable coins but but U.S. dollars in general and
• 15:39
  you know these these heavily regulated on and off ramps are
• 15:44
  dollar denominated. And so oil and Bitcoin are
• 15:47
  actually kind of similar in a lot of ways as sort of this
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  energy based commodity. You know, despite my wanting it
• 15:54
  to be more of a currency like there is a an absolute argument
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  to be made that that that analogue is sort of there.
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  And so I think that the the dollar regime is basically
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  proven that they'll do whatever they need to do to keep the
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  dollarization of the world growing and you know a way to
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  keep servicing their debt. And I think that they've kind of
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  found this method with Bitcoin. And I think when you look at the
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  regulatory stuff that's happening right now, it is a
• 16:19
  push away towards self custody and it's a push towards these
• 16:23
  like highly regulated instruments like an ETF.
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  And I think we're going to see more and more of that.
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  They're going to make it really difficult to kind of run and
• 16:32
  write code most likely in the United States and and and have a
• 16:38
  push towards these highly regulated instruments like ETFs.
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  That's what, you know, Larry wants.
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  And and and I think it's not a coincidence, you know, there's a
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  white pill in here, right? Where why did this happen five
• 16:51
  days that, you know, why did the samurai arrest happen, you know,
• 16:55
  a few days after the halving? You know, why is that?
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  Is the Bitcoin economic policy like that important where, you
• 17:04
  know, having a relative issuance, you know, now below
• 17:07
  gold coming out of the ground, you know, below like 1% relative
• 17:10
  issuance. You know that I think that
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  there's a signpost there that that this economic policy is
• 17:16
  really important, that these things are being timed up.
• 17:19
  And this was something that I wrote, you know, at the end of
• 17:22
  2021 when I did my first piece on the Bitcoin dollar, when I
• 17:25
  first introduced this, this analog to the petrodollar, you
• 17:29
  know, I made a a claim basically that the petrodollar died in
• 17:34
  March 2020. When we saw that quote UN quote
• 17:37
  COVID Low, we saw oil go negative, you know, in the
• 17:41
  futures markets and we saw Bitcoin drop to 3500 bucks and
• 17:48
  you know, then a year later, you know a 20X by by the end of of
• 17:51
  the next year. But you know what?
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  Why was that moment so important?
• 17:57
  Well, obviously it was COVID, right?
• 17:59
  But now we've kind of learned a bit more about COVID, you know,
• 18:03
  where, you know, depending on which level you're looking at
• 18:05
  it, even if you're really going with, you know, the the, the
• 18:09
  mainstream story here still it was, you know, you know, that
• 18:12
  was arguably, you know, funded this game of function research
• 18:16
  funded by the US government you know, hits off and Wuhan around
• 18:20
  then. And there's there's mass
• 18:21
  coordinated global shutdowns, you know, world empire context,
• 18:24
  mass shutdowns, the same policies in Russia as in
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  Ukraine, as in Israel as in the United States as in everywhere
• 18:31
  just did the exact same thing. It's kind of world empire
• 18:34
  context and that's what, six weeks before the 3rd halving and
• 18:41
  the third halving of course, I think was sort of the most
• 18:44
  important having in a lot of ways 'cause it was the first
• 18:47
  time that the rate of issuance relative to total supply was
• 18:52
  below 2%. You know, when we went down to
• 18:56
  three and you know three and change.
• 18:59
  So that's the first time it's below the dollar, the target
• 19:02
  rate of inflation of the dollar. So there's there's not really, I
• 19:07
  mean I think it would be kind of insane to think that there
• 19:10
  wasn't some you know, thinking there by maybe some of these
• 19:15
  powers that be that, you know, hey, you know the US dollar now
• 19:19
  is kind of it's kind of economically toast.
• 19:23
  And what did we see over the next year, right.
• 19:25
  We saw Bitcoin 20X. We saw the US dollar print
• 19:31
  trillions and trillions, you know, under Trump.
• 19:34
  And then we saw, you know, Trump bring in Brian Brooks, Mnuchin
• 19:40
  and and this, this whole group, we saw, you know, him sign
• 19:43
  policy in the OCC to say banks can hold stable coins and hold
• 19:47
  crypto assets. And we saw all this like you
• 19:50
  know, you know, forward dollar system moves in the public
• 19:55
  sector. Meanwhile Trump is tweeting out
• 19:59
  Bitcoin, sucks the dollar rules, blah blah blah.
• 20:01
  But like his actual actions behind it was, you know, the
• 20:04
  digitalization of the dollar, you know and you know, through
• 20:09
  stablecoins, you know that was really the action that was
• 20:12
  happening despite the rhetoric. So I think there's a white pill
• 20:14
  actually in this weird way, despite spelling out this public
• 20:18
  sector capture is that these events are coordinated with the
• 20:22
  having's which I think is important.
• 20:25
  And again. I literally obviously can't
• 20:28
  claim COVID is because of the the third having.
• 20:31
  I mean that's ridiculous. But I don't know.
• 20:33
  There's a lot of things that happened that if they want to
• 20:36
  shut down the velocity of money in a hyperinflationary
• 20:38
  situation, they know that we're, you know, over our skis, we have
• 20:42
  to print trillions and trillions of dollars.
• 20:44
  You know, the reverse repo market implode September 2019.
• 20:49
  The Fed sets up these special instruments to sort of you know
• 20:52
  bring liquidity to the repo market.
• 20:54
  You know, you're starting to see issues in the treasury market.
• 20:57
  You know all of a sudden there's a flu there's a thing shut down
• 21:01
  boom, boom, boom, boom, boom and all these things kind of fall
• 21:03
  into place. So I I I'm not really a believer
• 21:06
  in coincidences anymore, Nico. I I think these things sort of
• 21:09
  generally line up. So.
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  So here we are now it's days after the having a week after
• 21:13
  the having it's Mayday and we're seeing all this fucking crazy
• 21:16
  shit. I mean, I don't think it's a
• 21:18
  coincidence. So yeah, here we are.
• 21:21
  You know, one of my favorite quotes, Mark, is there are no
• 21:24
  conspiracies. But there are also no
• 21:27
  coincidences, and I have no shadow of a doubt the symbolic
• 21:34
  nature of Roger Ver's arrest. C ZS sentencing the same day the
• 21:41
  richest man to have ever gone to prison, you know?
• 21:46
  Meanwhile, we're getting lectured on, you know, on, you
• 21:50
  know, basically how the Samurai guys broke all these laws.
• 21:54
  And I don't remember any notable or large or big banker going to
• 21:59
  jail for what they did in 2008, 2009, even though they did
• 22:03
  significantly more material damage to the American people,
• 22:07
  to the world, frankly, than any type of dev writing code, Right.
• 22:12
  That's that's utterly absurd. And I tweeted it out a couple
• 22:16
  days ago, I said, you know, again to use your word, it's,
• 22:20
  it's, it's not a coincidence that these arrests are having a
• 22:24
  happening around the same time. It is extremely symbolic.
• 22:28
  And one of the observations that I had, it was last cycle.
• 22:32
  And I and Mark, maybe you appreciate this because I don't
• 22:36
  see enough people talking about it, but the CCP mining ban came
• 22:43
  in the middle of the parabola of the last bull run it it.
• 22:48
  And I would even go on to say that was one of the primary
• 22:51
  reasons we didn't hit 100K. Like if you take a look at the
• 22:54
  hash rate and the price, you will literally see the price
• 22:57
  peaking and the hash rate going down.
• 23:00
  And of course all the cell pressure from those miners
• 23:03
  having to sell Bitcoin, having to sell equipment to relocate to
• 23:06
  a more favorable jurisdiction and it kind of created this like
• 23:09
  double peak. It's like literally clear as
• 23:11
  day. You see the hash rate, you see
• 23:13
  the price going down, right. And you know it.
• 23:16
  To your point, do you think you know a a nation state or a
• 23:21
  government like the CCP, like in the United, they don't have the
• 23:24
  sophistication to realize that they must attack the price.
• 23:28
  I mean there is these leaked documents that were coming out
• 23:30
  of European regulators that said we have to do something about
• 23:34
  the price. We have to do something about
• 23:35
  the price. So yeah, dude, no way is this a
• 23:40
  coincidence. I, I, I, I.
• 23:43
  It's not only symbolic in nature, but it's on purpose.
• 23:47
  And there's just been so many actions by the current
• 23:51
  administration that have been incredibly hostile towards the
• 23:56
  industry. The proposed 30% tax.
• 23:59
  The, you know, the the, I remember the the White House
• 24:02
  came out with the Presidential Economic Report.
• 24:05
  They dedicated 20 effing pages bro, to making the case as to
• 24:11
  why central bank digital currencies are necessary.
• 24:13
  And you know Bitcoin is not right.
• 24:16
  And do I think it's a coincidence that now they're the
• 24:18
  FBI is releasing a so-called tips for citizens stay away
• 24:23
  from, you know, unlicensed money transmitters a couple months
• 24:28
  after the ETFs were approved? No, I don't think that's a
• 24:32
  coincidence at all. But before I continue my
• 24:35
  rambling, I think my question to you is what do bitcoiners need
• 24:40
  to do to combat everything that you're talking about?
• 24:43
  Right. So we're seeing this happen in
• 24:45
  slow motion. It's like kind of the slow
• 24:46
  motion train, honestly, I love the guys at BPII love David
• 24:51
  Zell, the guys at Coin Center. Great Dennis Porter on the state
• 24:56
  level is doing good job. But it's not enough.
• 24:59
  Like, I feel like metaphorically we're getting beat up by a 2 by
• 25:03
  4. They're telling you, listen, you
• 25:07
  can give up your US citizenship. Doesn't matter 10 years later,
• 25:12
  doesn't matter what country you are in the world.
• 25:14
  We're going to nab you and we're going to put you in a box and
• 25:17
  we're going to make an example out of you, right.
• 25:19
  So we're definitely heading. We're definitely in the then
• 25:22
  they fight you stage. What can individuals, individual
• 25:26
  Bitcoiners do? Yeah, I mean, we've been in the
• 25:29
  then they fight you stage for a long time.
• 25:31
  I mean they've made examples out of our brothers, you know in
• 25:36
  these Titans, you know someone like a Julian Assange.
• 25:38
  You know for being a journalist, for publishing things, for
• 25:45
  telling the truth. I think this idea in general my
• 25:49
  my only issue with again and I and I, I agree with you all
• 25:52
  those people you mentioned, Coin Center, BPI, Mr. Porter, like I
• 25:57
  think they're incredibly nice people and there's a lot of
• 26:00
  people involved in those things that I really do respect quite a
• 26:04
  bit. But I think the general idea
• 26:07
  that we're sort of and again, you know this, you know, may be
• 26:11
  clippable and kind of bad, but like I just don't think we're
• 26:13
  really in a rule of law anymore. I'm not sure rule of law is
• 26:16
  really intact. You know what the Samurai guys
• 26:20
  did you know is not, is not money transmitting, it's not
• 26:25
  money laundering. I mean Bitcoin doesn't even
• 26:26
  really work that way. It that that's not how the
• 26:29
  Bitcoin system works. There's no transfers.
• 26:31
  I mean it doesn't work in that same way.
• 26:33
  Bitcoin can't be taxed as property and then be regulated
• 26:37
  as a money transferring when you know when the regulatory arms
• 26:40
  pick and choose. It's just not it's just not fair
• 26:43
  in a in a rule of law, you know in a in a land with consistent
• 26:46
  law. And so I think we have to sort
• 26:47
  of realize that we're past that and realize especially too that
• 26:53
  post COVID, post lockdowns, warp speed and and these mandates and
• 26:57
  these things that you know we're in a world empire context and
• 27:02
  the rule of law is, is, is is dubious at best.
• 27:07
  And so I think that's the framework we have to kind of
• 27:09
  understand that, yes, compliance will get you pretty far until it
• 27:13
  doesn't. And what happens when you can't
• 27:16
  comply anymore, when they don't let you comply anymore, then
• 27:19
  you've really lost all of the ground that you maybe could have
• 27:22
  spent fighting while you were so busy complying and and licking
• 27:25
  boots. And so I'm not calling out any
• 27:29
  of these organizations at all because I think we need to
• 27:31
  attack on all fronts. We need people doing those
• 27:33
  things. We need people going through the
• 27:35
  compliance angle. But I think in terms of
• 27:37
  individuals, it's like, like, no, we need to kind of stand up
• 27:42
  and you know, think about what's happening here.
• 27:46
  You know, the rule of law is not being, is not being promoted,
• 27:50
  not being protected. We we shouldn't expect it to be.
• 27:53
  They're changing definitions at a whim when it when it suits
• 27:58
  them. And so that's kind of the you
• 28:01
  know the framework that we have to operate in So understanding
• 28:04
  that we need to make sure that you know we we keep Bitcoin as
• 28:08
  permission less as it was when we found it.
• 28:11
  I think that's the only responsibility bitcoiners have
• 28:14
  to Bitcoin and that is not really you know that's that's
• 28:19
  becoming increasingly more difficult as you know they're
• 28:23
  pushing these self custody solutions you know further and
• 28:27
  further out of the you know the the the reach of of American
• 28:31
  citizens and of app stores and of you know kind of the more
• 28:34
  traditional not quite so public squares that people download
• 28:38
  these the software in. And so I think we need to kind
• 28:40
  of think adversarially and and build more sustainable systems
• 28:44
  that can withstand state sponsored attacks.
• 28:50
  I think we need to reject the notion that Bitcoin will scale
• 28:53
  through stable coins. It's fucking ridiculous.
• 28:56
  It's it's very clearly a state sponsored mode of discourse that
• 29:01
  that's an option and that is the way that we should go about it.
• 29:05
  No. Like Bitcoin is a technology and
• 29:08
  like John Nash said, you know it's technology that we can, you
• 29:12
  know tweak and grow and make better and make more efficient
• 29:17
  for its purposes. It's a technology so we need to
• 29:21
  figure out scaling mechanisms that allow billions of people to
• 29:25
  use it in a in a self sovereign, self custodial, permissionless,
• 29:30
  censorship resistant way. I don't think it's appropriate
• 29:33
  for me, both in terms of my technical lack of knowledge and
• 29:38
  also my editorial position that I don't think I should be
• 29:40
  pushing specific, you know, past.
• 29:43
  I don't think it's really appropriate, but you know,
• 29:46
  whatever it is, I think we need to, we need to build those tools
• 29:50
  in those systems. You know, of course, use
• 29:53
  lightning, use E cash, use these other L twos that are coming up,
• 29:57
  consider coming in proposals and and make sure that Bitcoin is
• 30:00
  ready to, you know, to to to service.
• 30:04
  You know, when Fiat, you know, 'cause let's just be honest, you
• 30:08
  know, as much as we love Bitcoin and it's given us so much
• 30:11
  freedom, you know, if if a huge world currency collapsed and
• 30:18
  billions of people needed to be on boarded overnight onto the
• 30:21
  Bitcoin network, that just wouldn't really be possible
• 30:24
  right now. You couldn't open a billion
• 30:26
  lightning channels. It would take years at current
• 30:31
  you know, channel factory, you know, inability and you know,
• 30:36
  the self creating a billion UTXOS would take an incredibly
• 30:40
  long time. So there's a lot of things that
• 30:42
  we need to kind of like build infrastructurally, you know, to
• 30:48
  allow citizens or not even citizens, but just people to
• 30:52
  have access to this, you know, permissionless Ledger.
• 30:55
  So yeah, the attack is coming. The state is here.
• 30:59
  Bitcoin is for enemies. Our state is the enemy.
• 31:02
  Bitcoin empowers the individual. And you know, in a world where
• 31:06
  corporations are individuals and countries are corporations,
• 31:11
  therefore countries are individuals, it's like countries
• 31:13
  and nation states can be and powered by Bitcoin, whether
• 31:17
  that's, you know, like an El Salvador scenario or even kind
• 31:21
  of more maybe like a a shadowy U.S. economic hedgeman
• 31:25
  perpetuation, you know, using Bitcoin.
• 31:28
  So I think we need to think more adversarially.
• 31:31
  We need to think of Bitcoin as a technology and make sure that we
• 31:36
  keep it this peer-to-peer, you know, medium of exchange.
• 31:42
  Make sure we optimize for that. Because I can tell that, you
• 31:48
  know, these Ghouly goblins want us to look at it as a commodity,
• 31:53
  look at it as a store of value. Only look at it as something
• 31:56
  that can be ETF and reduced to AQ SIP.
• 32:00
  And look at it as something that, you know, they want us to
• 32:01
  look at it as something that just sits on a balance sheet and
• 32:04
  appreciates. You know, there's this rhetoric
• 32:06
  of never spend your Bitcoin, you know, use credit cards or use
• 32:11
  tether and, you know, and keep your Bitcoin, you know, and it's
• 32:14
  like, no, Bitcoin's a means to an end.
• 32:16
  Use it to build a better world. You know, it's that that that's
• 32:21
  really what this is for. It's about perpetuating freedom,
• 32:24
  building more sustainable infrastructure that will allow
• 32:29
  the individual to thrive as the state sort of, you know, loses
• 32:35
  its, its, you know, both, you know, right now at the, the
• 32:38
  state is, is, is is a burning ship.
• 32:41
  I mean, the $34 trillion of debt, you know, the rats are
• 32:44
  escaping. They're jumping off this
• 32:46
  burning, you know, runaway debt service.
• 32:49
  It's a zombie company. the United States, you would never
• 32:52
  invest in it. You know, it's it's it's debt
• 32:55
  service is now outpacing the growth of its GDP, you know,
• 32:59
  taking around the back, Old Yeller it, right.
• 33:01
  So people are jumping off and removing themselves from it.
• 33:04
  And that's why I think there's this big rhetoric shift like
• 33:07
  we're moving towards the malaise.
• 33:10
  You know, at the after AUFC fight, we got Joe Rogan holding
• 33:13
  a microphone and we got a guy going, I love private property.
• 33:17
  You know, it's like, yeah, they want us to love private
• 33:20
  property. Now that they've stolen
• 33:22
  everything from our, from our grandkids, from our
• 33:25
  grandparents, you know, that they've looted the treasury.
• 33:27
  Now they want to push private property in the Austrian school
• 33:31
  and all these, you know, badass great things, sure, of course.
• 33:34
  But like, it serves them now to push us towards this, you know,
• 33:39
  kind of Malay mindset now that they've looted everything.
• 33:44
  So they want us to blame the central banks, Fuck the central
• 33:48
  banks, but fuck the private banks that that pushed the
• 33:51
  private, that pushed the public sector to blow up 2008 and make
• 33:54
  them too big to fail. You know, it was, it was
• 33:57
  Greenspan who was at JP Morgan, you know, who wrote the
• 34:01
  rethinking Glass? Steagall who pushed for the
• 34:03
  dissolving of Glass Steagall. You know, these guys jumping in
• 34:06
  and out, private, public whenever it works for them.
• 34:08
  You know, they're all kind of in the pub in the private sector
• 34:11
  now, you know, sitting on their, on their, you know, COVID money,
• 34:16
  you know. And you know, of course now
• 34:18
  they're pushing, you know, this, this, you know, free market
• 34:22
  capitalism. Malay is talking at Davos, you
• 34:25
  know, saying how badass capitalism is.
• 34:26
  It's like, yeah, sure, capitalism is badass, but you
• 34:30
  know it there, there's a, there's a reason why we're
• 34:33
  seeing that, you know, that you don't see anything by mistake.
• 34:37
  There's not an accident when you see something.
• 34:38
  There's a reason why this person is being promoted and it's
• 34:42
  because it's useful for them to push us towards, you know, cheer
• 34:47
  on the free market as they tokenize the carbon in your
• 34:50
  backyard and and shove it on a Bitcoin side chain and throw a
• 34:54
  satellite in space and they observe you to check on your
• 34:58
  carbon. And it's Steve Mnuchin and Howie
• 35:00
  Lutnik, who you know is the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald who holds
• 35:03
  all of tethers, you know, treasuries like they're running
• 35:06
  this private sector intelligence company.
• 35:09
  The CIA has gone private. It's in Palantir now.
• 35:13
  Like, this is so good. It's so based the free market,
• 35:16
  like, not really. Like, fuck all those guys, you
• 35:18
  know. Fuck Palantir.
• 35:19
  Fuck Peter Thiel, you know, Fuck Mnuchin.
• 35:24
  Fuck these guys. They're they're ghouls that
• 35:26
  have, you know, taken advantage when the public sector has
• 35:29
  allowed it to accrue massive amounts of wealth and they're
• 35:33
  using it as a way to control and observe us and sell our data.
• 35:36
  Like, I don't. I don't think that's based, I
• 35:38
  don't think what Peter Thiel is doing with Palantir is based at
• 35:41
  all, even though I'm a free market capitalist and I'm not.
• 35:45
  I'm not trying to say we should put regulations in to stop it.
• 35:49
  Just like I would never argue we should filter out tether shoving
• 35:53
  fucking, you know, petrodollars and the witness Merkel of
• 35:57
  Bitcoin. Like I don't want to filter that
• 35:59
  shit either. It's a permissionless system.
• 36:01
  Let them do it. But we should talk shit about it
• 36:04
  and say how this is dumb. Let's scale Bitcoin with actual
• 36:07
  scaling solutions that don't perpetuate the military
• 36:10
  industrial complex of the United States via the treasury.
• 36:13
  Ponzi, right? Like let's let's do that.
• 36:15
  So that would be my answer. That's my long winded answer is
• 36:17
  call these fuckers out and let's let's let's make Bitcoin.
• 36:21
  You know the this, this ship that can that can service 8
• 36:24
  billion people that need to get out from underneath the
• 36:27
  encroaching tentacles of of the nation state collapsing. 100%
• 36:33
  dude and and you know I I bro it's it's like I hate saying I
• 36:39
  what I say is I say Bitcoin or slavery right.
• 36:42
  And you know, I, I, I said it very early on, and I think a lot
• 36:47
  of people interpreted it as this hyperbolic statement.
• 36:50
  But once you really understand that there you really only have
• 36:56
  two options, right? It's a future of of it's a Fiat
• 37:01
  future. It's a Bitcoin future.
• 37:02
  It's a it's a future of of peace, prosperity, optimism,
• 37:06
  hope versus future of nihilism, endless war, slavery.
• 37:11
  You know you name it. Right.
• 37:13
  And I think the the battle lines are a little bit obfuscated
• 37:16
  right now. I think people can't really see,
• 37:19
  you know, the two options ahead of them.
• 37:20
  But it's it's clear as day for anyone who's paying attention.
• 37:24
  And you actually reminded me of of something you said was like
• 37:27
  we're living in this era of no laws and actually and you were
• 37:31
  mentioning beauty on earlier, love, beauty on what he's doing
• 37:34
  with this Stecco is is amazing. And it reminded me of one of the
• 37:39
  one of the tweets, I don't know if he originally quote wrote
• 37:42
  this, but this comes from his Twitter account.
• 37:45
  It says the FBI calls Bitcoin money so they can arrest you for
• 37:48
  for money laundering. The IRS calls it property so
• 37:51
  they can tax you on capital gains.
• 37:53
  The SEC calls it a security so they can sue every exchange.
• 37:57
  And the CFTC calls it a commodity, so you can't use it
• 37:59
  as a currency. So it is a currency when it's
• 38:02
  convenient to them, when they, when they need it for law.
• 38:04
  Fair it's not a currency when you know it can't be a currency
• 38:09
  because if it's a currency then capital gains WTF And then but I
• 38:15
  I I also think that they're in this like pickle man like
• 38:18
  they're in this pickle I I think if we get to a we get to a point
• 38:23
  and the Overton window is shifting the Internet and
• 38:26
  peer-to-peer mass level communications brother like you
• 38:29
  know your podcast for example that you did with with Whitney
• 38:33
  Webb and you you start to see this it's the the slow death of
• 38:38
  the legacy corporate media and the rise of independent content
• 38:40
  creators and it allows people to circumvent the gatekeepers of
• 38:43
  information and we're seeing like this great awakening in the
• 38:46
  process because of that. I think people are are are are
• 38:51
  starting to question the the official party line and I think
• 38:57
  most importantly you know as as bitcoiners is to really push
• 39:02
  this message forward of of like if we get the mainstream
• 39:07
  consciousness and and the mainstream populace to just ask
• 39:10
  the question number one what is money and #2 why should I be
• 39:15
  forced to use the money that steals from me.
• 39:17
  Like they don't have a good answer for that.
• 39:19
  Like they don't have one. You see them struggling trying
• 39:23
  to justify the CBD CS with we need more efficient payments.
• 39:28
  Like they completely ignore the inflation aspect side of things.
• 39:34
  So you know like I'm, I hear you and I I think we we we, we do
• 39:41
  have a tremendous amount of work to do education but I also think
• 39:46
  that by the day more and more people join our ranks.
• 39:49
  What would you say about that? I I totally agree, Absolutely.
• 39:52
  I think the the the sort of false dichotomies that's been
• 39:57
  presented to us. You know if if you're if you're
• 40:02
  really still buying that up and lapping that up after COVID, you
• 40:06
  know I think there's really something wrong with with your
• 40:09
  perception. No offence if you really are
• 40:12
  buying the red versus blue, like I mean I we watched the 180
• 40:16
  phase shift happen where? You know, Trump was pushing the
• 40:19
  vaccines and then three months later I was in the Bay.
• 40:22
  I chose not to get vaccinated. I'm being called a Trumper
• 40:25
  because I didn't want to get vaccinated.
• 40:27
  And it's like what? How did, how did we get here?
• 40:29
  What happened? I don't even understand this.
• 40:32
  Like Kamala was saying she didn't want to take the vaccine
• 40:35
  because it's Trump's vaccine and now I'm AI mean it's just the
• 40:38
  phase shifts are happening so fast.
• 40:41
  The cycles are compressing so fast that yeah, maybe you didn't
• 40:45
  quite get that everything was fucked up after 9-11.
• 40:48
  Maybe you didn't quite get everything was fucked up after
• 40:50
  2008. But COVID was a really quick
• 40:54
  turn around and I think that you know our generation were so
• 41:00
  hyper connected. There's so much information
• 41:02
  being exchanged that you're right, there's a huge
• 41:04
  opportunity to to gain inroads into the consciousness of, you
• 41:10
  know, 'cause I think humans are really, they're they're a social
• 41:12
  group. There's there isn't mass
• 41:14
  consciousness. And I think there's a huge
• 41:16
  opportunity now for bitcoiners, for freedom loving people, you
• 41:21
  know, to stand up for the truth and and you know, perpetuate,
• 41:25
  you know, this idea that Bitcoin is a means to an end for a
• 41:28
  better world and how do we, how do we actualize that?
• 41:31
  But I do think there's also you know some danger in the
• 41:34
  Internet, in the hyper connectivity and there's a lot
• 41:38
  of Co option within you know the the counter narrative as well.
• 41:43
  Also something I noticed with COVID.
• 41:46
  You know, I think at this point, you know maybe I'll get roasted
• 41:49
  for this, but at this point I kind of see a lot of the vaccine
• 41:52
  discourse as basically just being a distraction from the
• 41:55
  fact that they shut down the fucking country and told us that
• 41:58
  we couldn't walk around and do stuff.
• 42:00
  So we're all worrying about clots and this and blah blah,
• 42:04
  blah and whatever. And it's no one even cares that
• 42:07
  they literally locked us in their homes and and destroyed
• 42:11
  the working class and and and so much of the discourse from that
• 42:16
  was so controlled and Dom and now we're learning like oh man,
• 42:19
  a lot of that was actually kind of paid by these sort of private
• 42:23
  you know intelligence. And so we're seeing, you know,
• 42:26
  the great example, not to tie it all the ways, always back to
• 42:29
  Tether, but who took Rumble public?
• 42:33
  It was Cantor Fitzgerald. It was our boy Howie Lutnik
• 42:36
  taken Rumble public, who's a huge investor in Rumble, Peter
• 42:39
  Thiel. You know, he's dabbling on both
• 42:41
  sides here. And so there is this huge
• 42:43
  controlled narrative also on the alternative side.
• 42:47
  You know, of course, no one trusts mainstream media anymore,
• 42:50
  but I think it's it. It's pretty easy to buy a
• 42:53
  podcast. It's pretty easy to buy a
• 42:55
  company, a Bitcoin company. It's pretty easy to tetherize a
• 42:58
  Bitcoin company, right? And so much discourse in the
• 43:01
  Bitcoin space is sponsored by the US Treasury system via
• 43:06
  Tether, which is just something that needs to be talked about.
• 43:09
  Doesn't mean they're bad people, doesn't mean that everything
• 43:12
  they say is a lie or whatever. But they're not going to go as
• 43:14
  hard at that, you know, You know, at a tether or something
• 43:20
  if that's just paying their paycheck, right?
• 43:21
  And. You and you're you're burying
• 43:23
  the lead there a little bit because I think not that many
• 43:26
  people are aware of of that of what you just said, right.
• 43:31
  The fact that Tether is one of the largest U.S.
• 43:35
  Treasury holders. I think the IT just they just
• 43:38
  posted their their profits. I think they made like 4.7
• 43:42
  billion or something like that, yeah.
• 43:44
  They have, they have 110 plus billion dollars of Treasuries,
• 43:48
  like China is like barely over a trillion.
• 43:51
  So they're at like a 10th of China, like already like what?
• 43:55
  Think about that, guys. Think about.
• 43:58
  That it it's it's pretty crazy. So Mark, I I wanted to ask you,
• 44:01
  'cause you you mentioned you said they who is they?
• 44:04
  Like, who is this, this, this this cartel.
• 44:07
  Like who is this? I'm, I'm using Andreas's words
• 44:10
  when I say cartel here. Who is this cartel?
• 44:14
  Who is this cabal of people that is pulling the strings?
• 44:18
  Yeah, totally. I mean, I'm not necessarily here
• 44:21
  to name, you know, specific names.
• 44:23
  I like to look at mechanisms and I think it mechanisms are more
• 44:26
  important. I wrote the Bitcoin Dollar
• 44:28
  basically not naming any names, obviously had to list a couple
• 44:32
  companies. But you know, I'm, I don't think
• 44:34
  Paolo's name is even in that book, right.
• 44:38
  And nothing personal against Paolo.
• 44:39
  Again, it's about the mechanisms and I think that's how we have
• 44:43
  to really look at this stuff. It's who's building the
• 44:45
  mechanisms you know who who who's encouraging stable coins
• 44:49
  on lightning. Who's who's building these
• 44:51
  things you know and and and those are those are the kind of
• 44:55
  you know you begin to kind of follow that money And you you
• 44:58
  know I got Joe Rogers our boyfriend of the show friend of
• 45:02
  all of ours. You know hooked me up with a
• 45:05
  with a crunch base account and I'm going through looking at
• 45:08
  fucking every single VC seed raised.
• 45:11
  You know everything of all of these companies and you start to
• 45:15
  piece together this kind of cartel of people that have
• 45:19
  really infiltrated the Bitcoin space, the crypto space and you
• 45:24
  start to see this tokenized Inc take form.
• 45:27
  This dollarization Inc take form.
• 45:30
  And I think unfortunately a big part of this group is directly
• 45:36
  connected with the like the what is known as the PayPal mafia.
• 45:41
  And I think you start to look at PayPal and these players and and
• 45:46
  who's, you know, the big shakers in scene now and a lot of them
• 45:51
  can be connected back to PayPal. So, you know, like someone like
• 45:54
  Reed Hoffman who's, you know, PayPal OG, you know, he was, you
• 46:00
  know, the founder of LinkedIn, you know this, you know, it's,
• 46:03
  you know, it's kind of wild. A lot of these PayPal guys, you
• 46:06
  know, became billionaires like multiple times.
• 46:08
  They hit gold multiple times in a row, kind of interesting.
• 46:12
  And you know, someone like him. So, you know, he invests, he's
• 46:16
  the lead of the of the, you know, the Series A, The Seed
• 46:20
  found seed round for Block Stream in November 2014.
• 46:24
  Well then October 2014, Block Stream releases a paper that
• 46:29
  basically explains how side chains work and that, you know,
• 46:34
  basically allows them to, you know, put other assets onto
• 46:39
  Bitcoin and create this, this, this peg mechanism.
• 46:43
  Kind of interesting. You look at, you know, who was,
• 46:47
  you know, this, the, you know, these early founders of PayPal.
• 46:51
  And you know, you look at this guy, there's this, this guy with
• 46:55
  Bill Elkus who was one of the main founders of PayPal in 97.
• 47:01
  He was the cosignee of the Jay Epstein Foundation.
• 47:05
  And then he goes on to form Clearstone with William Quigley,
• 47:10
  which is another VC firm who considers himself one of the Co
• 47:14
  founders of Tether. You look at Howie Lutnik, he's
• 47:18
  buying assets, real estate assets out of off of the Epstein
• 47:24
  estate. You know he owns I believe 1170
• 47:28
  First East St. Epstein owned 9.
• 47:31
  And and the the the fund was that he bought it from Comet
• 47:35
  Trust was connected with Guido Goldman and and and Wexner and
• 47:39
  all these guys kind of connected to this cabal.
• 47:41
  They're all, you know Reed Hoffman is an Epstein guy.
• 47:45
  You know obviously Peter Thiel and and Elon and you know you
• 47:48
  kind of start to see these guys that you know well what Epstein.
• 47:52
  What was Epstein really. Yeah.
• 47:54
  Everyone focuses on the trafficking and sure he did
• 47:56
  that, but he was kind of an economic hit man and he was a
• 48:00
  big part of of a lot of the things that happened in O Wade
• 48:03
  and was kind of bopping around doing you know running some
• 48:06
  estate stuff for the Bronfman's. And then you look at the
• 48:09
  Bronfman's, they're directly connected with this group
• 48:12
  endeavour, which is sort of this like kind of you know, advisory
• 48:18
  group that's that's all over. You know, MercadoLibre, which is
• 48:23
  the biggest market in South America, was Zappa with Winces
• 48:27
  Cassaris, who was kind of the patient zero of Silicon Valley
• 48:30
  for Bitcoin. He brought Bitcoin to all of
• 48:32
  these guys there, got these guys.
• 48:37
  So you start to kind of piece together the money.
• 48:40
  You follow the money and you start to see a web of of these
• 48:43
  people that are directly connected to some of the
• 48:45
  spookiest people around. And you know, a lot of these
• 48:49
  guys are, you know, building satellite companies and doing
• 48:52
  all this crazy shit in South America, in Argentina.
• 48:57
  That was the piece that we just wrote, Debt from Above.
• 49:00
  It kind of focuses on this satellite company.
• 49:02
  That's Howie Lutnik and Mnuchin, General Dunford, who is the
• 49:06
  chief of staff under Trump. Marcos Galperin, who's the
• 49:09
  richest man in Argentina and Endeavour Guy who runs
• 49:13
  MercadoLibre and then Howie Lutnik, you know, so you're
• 49:17
  beginning to kind of see these connections.
• 49:19
  You're seeing Larry Summers on the board of Zappo, you know,
• 49:26
  and he was a big part of the, you know, dissolving of Glass
• 49:28
  Steagall in the United States. You just start to see all this
• 49:32
  stuff. It's very hard to ignore.
• 49:34
  So I think that there is a cartel there.
• 49:36
  There is sort of this dollar system, private sector cabal
• 49:42
  that has been sort of pushing things from behind the scenes
• 49:44
  for a really long time. You look at, you know, at a
• 49:53
  dozen times in the in the 90s, a new trade agreement is
• 49:56
  happening, which ends up kind of blowing up the Mexican peso who,
• 50:00
  who does the George Soros thing and shorts the peso all the way
• 50:03
  down. It's Joe Lewis.
• 50:05
  Who's Joe Lewis? He's the Deltec guy who's the
• 50:08
  banker for Tether. You start to see all these
• 50:11
  connections, this kind of conspiracy all comes together.
• 50:15
  And yeah, there's there's there's some, there's some shady
• 50:18
  stuff going on in the dollar system, in Bitcoin, in some of
• 50:21
  the Bitcoin infrastructure, in the stable coin infrastructure
• 50:25
  of their bankers. And yeah, I mean that that's to
• 50:30
  my best, you know, hours and hours of pouring over these
• 50:34
  things, looking at all these Series A series BS that going
• 50:37
  through the portfolios of all these people.
• 50:40
  You know, I like to just do kind of all public information, you
• 50:44
  know, kind of open source intelligence stuff, 'cause it's
• 50:47
  just it's much safer and you don't you getting in less
• 50:51
  trouble, 'cause you're not speculating as as much.
• 50:53
  You know, I think people sometimes, you know, accused our
• 50:57
  work of being doomed, hilled and just loose associations and all
• 51:00
  this. But it's like, well, they're not
• 51:01
  really that loose associations. I think they're pretty direct.
• 51:06
  So, like, no, I don't think that there's like a weekly Tuesday
• 51:08
  meeting where all these guys get together and then they say, OK,
• 51:12
  you know, three weeks out from the halving, OK, let's get ready
• 51:15
  to charge samurai. Like, I don't, I don't think
• 51:17
  it's directly that. I think it's a lot more, you
• 51:21
  know, people operating. Some of them are willing, some
• 51:24
  of them are unwilling, some of them are useful idiots.
• 51:27
  I think it's a whole smattering of things.
• 51:30
  I think that's how a lot of these kind of societies and
• 51:32
  cabals kind of work, that there's someone who knows what's
• 51:35
  going on, but most of the agents don't.
• 51:37
  So I think we're kind of in that in that zone where you can only
• 51:41
  really begin to see the sketching out of the cabal, the
• 51:47
  cartel, whatever you want to call it when you like, you know,
• 51:50
  really zoom out. So there's a lot to look there.
• 51:53
  But I would, I would tell people to look at the PayPal mafia,
• 51:56
  look at these guys, look at look at, look look at all the things
• 51:59
  that they've done all their VC firms and how they've really
• 52:02
  integrated, you know, you know from Goldman and Morgan Stanley
• 52:07
  and JP Morgan and that you know they've really like digitized
• 52:11
  the dollar and and really created these information
• 52:15
  networks. You know, all these guys have
• 52:16
  moved on to LinkedIn and Kiva and you know these these other
• 52:22
  product X, right. You know these other products
• 52:24
  that are really networks more than kind of anything Palantir
• 52:28
  is a is a, you know, they sell data to the government, right.
• 52:32
  It's like so you know there's there's obviously a great power
• 52:36
  in data and so many of these guys have have understood that
• 52:41
  and you start to look into the the the cartel behind the data
• 52:45
  markets. I just did a piece on that for
• 52:48
  the last magazine called Random Access Markets.
• 52:51
  That's all about data markets. And you know, you, you, you get
• 52:55
  some really spooky stuff. The Maxwell sisters, Jolene
• 52:58
  Maxwell sisters were like some of the biggest proponents of
• 53:01
  early Internet search engines. Magellan was a Christine Maxwell
• 53:04
  project. And you, you start to see this
• 53:08
  connection unfortunately. And so information runs the
• 53:11
  world just as much as dollars and information.
• 53:15
  You know, it's it's kind of like a Web Three talking point.
• 53:18
  But like, it's the new oil. It's like, well, it kind of
• 53:20
  always was like, that's how they control people, right?
• 53:22
  That's why these blackmail schemes exist.
• 53:25
  It's to catch you in a compromising place where they
• 53:27
  can control you, not 'cause they want you to be doing nefarious,
• 53:31
  gross stuff. It's so they can control you.
• 53:34
  That's why we're seeing the Diddy shit.
• 53:35
  That's why we're seeing this crap.
• 53:37
  It's about control. So how do you control people?
• 53:40
  How do you create a cartel? Well, if you get a group of
• 53:42
  people that are controlled from the very beginning, like say
• 53:45
  maybe a PayPal mafia and then you use these same players for,
• 53:49
  you know, 3 decades, you know, that's maybe how we get in this
• 53:52
  situation that we're in. So I would say look there.
• 53:56
  Absolutely, Man. This is this is fascinating
• 53:58
  stuff. So, so fascinating guys, go go
• 54:02
  check out Mark's writing. This is, you know, this is, I
• 54:06
  can't, I can't imagine how deep this rabbit hole goes but it
• 54:10
  seems like you've you're connecting the dots and yeah,
• 54:14
  it's it's it's just interesting. Anyways, so we did have a really
• 54:18
  interesting question from the audience and I I do wanna ask
• 54:21
  you that last 'cause we are getting very close to the top of
• 54:23
  the hour, but high higher calling was higher callering.
• 54:29
  Was wondering if you thought that they could pull off their
• 54:33
  plan and he commented that Whitney seems to think that
• 54:38
  there is a real chance. And then lastly, this kind of
• 54:41
  goes against a lot of the theory from a lot of bitcoiners, which
• 54:46
  is you know like Safedeen for example, love the guy, super
• 54:49
  great writer and enjoyed his works, but you know he believes
• 54:54
  that Bitcoin has already won, right?
• 54:55
  We we've heard this many, many times.
• 54:58
  So where are you on that camp? Yeah, I mean, it depends on what
• 55:05
  you mean by one, right? I mean, I think Bitcoin is
• 55:09
  inevitable. I think that it's it's it's here
• 55:14
  let me, let me. Let me interrupt you and let me
• 55:16
  rephrase the question. Sure.
• 55:18
  Will Bitcoin Enable the Separation of Money in State?
• 55:21
  OK that's a much better question with of all due respect to your
• 55:25
  first question which was also a good question but that's a much
• 55:28
  that's a much better question. I don't know I think on this is
• 55:34
  a time frame based question and this is something that you know
• 55:39
  you know CK you know long time epic Bitcoin magazine guy who
• 55:43
  who brought me and he he has this philosophy that everything
• 55:46
  is good for Bitcoin. And I think on long enough time
• 55:50
  frames that's probably true like an ETF probably is good for
• 55:54
  Bitcoin long, long long, long term but I think short and
• 56:01
  medium term it could potentially be very, very bad.
• 56:04
  And I think that there's a lot of ways that Bitcoin can
• 56:06
  monetize like that. It kind of depends on what your
• 56:09
  metrics for success. So if the if the metrics of
• 56:12
  success is separating, you know, money and state, well depending
• 56:19
  on the axioms of that, it has already won.
• 56:22
  I think you know if we look at you know, the monetary policy
• 56:26
  landmarks of the having, you know, being right around these
• 56:30
  humongous geopolitical macro events, I think you could argue
• 56:33
  that the the economic policy of Bitcoin is already a world
• 56:37
  changing certainly country changing, you know, the events.
• 56:45
  So in that sense, yes, I think you know, the, the new kind of,
• 56:50
  you know, federal funding rate or whatever, the new interest
• 56:52
  rate, you know, in many ways you could say is the issuance of
• 56:55
  Bitcoin, the block reward, which I think is a state change of
• 56:58
  money, no pun intended. And I think that's important.
• 57:02
  But can the dollar system use Bitcoin in the same way they
• 57:07
  used oil as a way to increase dollar demand and perpetuate the
• 57:13
  US dollar system another 80 years?
• 57:16
  Absolutely, they can. And I think when you're seeing,
• 57:20
  you know, a million or so Bitcoin, you know, within the
• 57:23
  borders of the United States, whether through DOJ seizures or
• 57:26
  micro strategy or the ETFs, that can be seized basically by the
• 57:31
  United States government almost inevitably seized by the United
• 57:34
  States government or already seized by the US government.
• 57:37
  This idea of Bitcoin being unseasable money, I think is is
• 57:40
  sort of a joke when it has been seized, you know, a million
• 57:44
  times or whatever, right? Yes, I understand that's not how
• 57:48
  cryptography works, yadda yadda. But also we have seen it.
• 57:52
  We have seen the US government, you know, seize, seize funds.
• 57:56
  So it is possible. It's like, it's like, I think a
• 57:59
  lot of people have the conception where it's like,
• 58:02
  they're gonna seize it the way that they seize money.
• 58:05
  But they forget that human beings operate in meet space,
• 58:08
  and you put a human being, you break down their door, show up
• 58:12
  with a bunch of guns, put a gun in your face, and what are you
• 58:16
  gonna do? You're most likely gonna hand
• 58:18
  over the keys, right? Absolutely.
• 58:20
  Like, yeah, we talk, we talk big games.
• 58:22
  And I think there's a lot of badass bitcoiners that probably
• 58:24
  would start blasting, you know, and and and and fuck, yeah,
• 58:29
  dude. I mean, I'm condoning.
• 58:31
  I don't want to. I'm not condoning on video
• 58:34
  attacking law enforcement. I'm not saying that.
• 58:36
  I just want to be very clear to the YouTube gods.
• 58:38
  I'm not saying that. But you know, like, you know,
• 58:41
  hey, there are people that will put their money where their
• 58:44
  mouths is in their blood, where their, where their mouths are
• 58:46
  and and and defend Bitcoin. But I think a lot of people,
• 58:48
  that's not what they're in here for.
• 58:50
  And so if the situation gets presented where they go, hey,
• 58:54
  we're going to shove you onto this Bitcoin side chain where
• 58:57
  you get a, you know, an IOU, but we let you keep your limbs.
• 59:02
  You know, you still want $1,000,000.
• 59:04
  Those people are going to go do it.
• 59:05
  You know, I think the majority of bitcoiners will do that.
• 59:08
  That's sort of how they'll win. They'll dangle this thing and
• 59:10
  kind of get us to, you know, hey, you want you want all the
• 59:14
  carbon credits that are offset by the forest in your backyard.
• 59:18
  You know, all you got to do is get this digital ID and sign up
• 59:21
  for this blockchain and we'll give you a hundred, $133,000
• 59:25
  because of your forest. You know, people are going to do
• 59:28
  that because they're going to be like, well, fuck yeah, I don't
• 59:30
  have anything else. And then where do those land
• 59:33
  rights go? Where do the you know the the
• 59:35
  world is going to end in like unread user agreements that's
• 59:38
  gonna kind of be that that's that's the apocalypse here.
• 59:41
  So I think Bitcoin in many ways can monetize to millions and
• 59:44
  millions of dollars and not actually increase the day-to-day
• 59:49
  freedom of most people. I think that there will be a lot
• 59:52
  of us that will you know have increased purchasing power in
• 59:56
  the short term before things get kind of crazy And that This is
• 1:00:00
  why I think this is kind of the most important time in Bitcoin
• 1:00:04
  sort of ever it we're we're getting split between the state,
• 1:00:06
  anti state. Compliance, degeneracy and I
• 1:00:10
  think we need to kind of lean into anti state, lean into
• 1:00:13
  degeneracy and build these tools.
• 1:00:15
  Lean into freedom, bro. Freedom.
• 1:00:18
  Right, Absolutely. Yeah.
• 1:00:20
  And our enemy is not again and not to get preachy, 'cause I
• 1:00:23
  think a lot of the ordinal stuff is really dumb, but like our
• 1:00:26
  enemy is not a guy in a Pepe hat who is throwing some fucking
• 1:00:30
  stupid gifts on fucking Bitcoin. That's not our enemy.
• 1:00:33
  Our enemy is the state and the US Treasury system.
• 1:00:36
  So let's like remember who it is and you know, let's not cheer on
• 1:00:41
  the arrest of our brothers and and the the encroachment of the
• 1:00:44
  state. And you know, you know, let's,
• 1:00:48
  let's, let's remember who the enemy is here and let's, let's,
• 1:00:51
  let's hopefully have Bitcoin be a means to an end for freedom,
• 1:00:55
  for for individuals. And I think, I think we can win.
• 1:00:59
  I do think that they'll, that they'll do some damn good damage
• 1:01:02
  with their fucking plans. But I believe in humans.
• 1:01:05
  I believe the good comes together in the end.
• 1:01:07
  I believe good is coming together.
• 1:01:09
  I believe people are more aware of this shit than ever.
• 1:01:12
  And I do think in a lot of ways they are scrambling too.
• 1:01:15
  You know, like I think these are plans they've had for decades.
• 1:01:18
  But I also think they've made some big mistakes.
• 1:01:21
  And maybe their biggest mistake was letting people like myself
• 1:01:24
  and yourself and and Opti and our friends, you know, get a
• 1:01:27
  little scratch and put together a little some and we get to
• 1:01:30
  build a little thing where we get to fight back.
• 1:01:32
  And maybe that was their biggest mistake.
• 1:01:34
  But you know it. It's only a mistake if we use it
• 1:01:37
  wisely. So that, that, that, I guess
• 1:01:39
  I'll leave it on that. Opti put in the chart in in the
• 1:01:43
  chat. Absolute bars, Yes, 100%.
• 1:01:47
  The state was not ready for the Internet and all the things that
• 1:01:50
  came with it, even though they were responsible for developing
• 1:01:53
  a lot of it, but they didn't, they didn't realize the
• 1:01:57
  Pandora's Box that they opened the Pandora's box for freedom,
• 1:02:01
  which I think is is a good thing.
• 1:02:02
  Anyways, Mark Goodwin, it's been an absolute honour, an absolute
• 1:02:07
  pleasure to have you on simply Bitcoin IRL for the first time.
• 1:02:11
  Hope to see you in Nashville for the Bitcoin 2024 conference.
• 1:02:14
  Really, really excited for that and I'd be an honour to have you
• 1:02:18
  on again in a couple months or so.
• 1:02:20
  So thank you Mark. Appreciate it.
• 1:02:22
  Anytime, man. Thank you guys.
• 1:02:24
  I love what you guys are doing. Stay free, do your thing and
• 1:02:28
  definitely see you in Nashville. And yeah, check out writings at
• 1:02:32
  Bitcoin Magazine. Check out the print mag, what
• 1:02:35
  Joe and AB does. They're just incredible.
• 1:02:37
  Check out the Bitcoin dollar book.
• 1:02:39
  And yeah, I guess see my Schizo posting on Twitter.
• 1:02:42
  And yeah, we'll see you out there for sure.
• 1:02:45
  We need you fight like hell. Appreciate it, man.
• 1:02:48
  Yeah, dude. Honored to be in the trenches
• 1:02:50
  with you man. This is that was that was an
• 1:02:52
  incredible podcast. Incredible episode.
• 1:02:54
  Highly enjoyed it. Mark dropping the hot fire.
• 1:02:57
  Anyways guys, see you tomorrow for another episode of Simply
• 1:03:01
  Bitcoin Live and peace out everybody.
• 1:03:03
  Catch you guys later.