Latest / Simply Bitcoin / Worlds Largest Asset Manager Drops A Bitcoin Bombshell At DAVOS | EP 1166

Transcript

Worlds Largest Asset Manager Drops A Bitcoin Bombshell At DAVOS | EP 1166 · Simply Bitcoin

• 0:00
  Yo, why is the world's largest asset manager going to Davos and
• 0:05
  predicting a $700,000 per Bitcoin price?
• 0:11
  And that's not the only thing that was fascinating, Cody
• 0:14
  coming out of Larry Fink's mouth in this viral clip that came out
• 0:17
  of Davos this morning. We have a lot to talk about on
• 0:20
  today's show, but let's just play you the clip right off the
• 0:24
  RIP. You, if you're frightened of
• 0:28
  your debasement of your, your, your currency at your, or you're
• 0:33
  frightened of your economic or political stability of your
• 0:37
  country, you can have an internationally based instrument
• 0:42
  called Bitcoin that will, will overcome those local fears.
• 0:50
  And so I, I'm a, I'm a big believer in the utilization of
• 0:54
  that as a, as an instrument. And so if that becomes true and
• 0:59
  you want to, and you see that it, it, it, it is, it could be a
• 1:04
  proper hedge against maybe hope security or equities.
• 1:09
  The question is, could you see a 2 or 5% allocation?
• 1:13
  I was with a sovereign wealth fund during this week and that
• 1:18
  was the conversation, should we have a 2% allocation?
• 1:21
  Should we have a 5% allocation? If everybody adopted that
• 1:24
  conversation, you know it would be 500,600 thousand 700,000 per
• 1:30
  Bitcoin but. There does it also.
• 1:31
  I'm not, I'm not promoting it by the way, so.
• 1:38
  He totally did promote it though.
• 1:41
  I mean, he's incentivized and promoted.
• 1:43
  It's almost like he's got a ETF around this.
• 1:45
  But let's recap this a little bit.
• 1:47
  Some of the things he said and obviously, guys, apologies on
• 1:50
  the on the clip sound. It sounded good when when I was
• 1:52
  doing it and it seems a little low now.
• 1:54
  But whatever you heard the clip. The first thing is, you know,
• 1:58
  Larry Fink out here, obviously the head of BlackRock, biggest
• 2:02
  international asset manager out there, basically owns a part of
• 2:06
  almost every every company in the world.
• 2:09
  It seems like he's completely flipped on his Bitcoin stance,
• 2:12
  though. It's very interesting how the
• 2:14
  conversation has changed from hey, this Bitcoin thing is
• 2:17
  useless to you know, if you want an international base hedge of
• 2:21
  the basement and your local currencies are trash, maybe you
• 2:24
  should look into Bitcoin again, very interesting.
• 2:27
  It is kind of funny that this is the writing on the wall right
• 2:30
  now. Actually, before I go on, sorry
• 2:31
  guys, of course I'm here with Nico, our fearless leader.
• 2:34
  And if you guys don't know Mark Goodwin, I don't think we could
• 2:38
  have picked a better day to get Mark Goodwin on here.
• 2:40
  Investigative reporter. He's on the beat of a lot of a
• 2:43
  lot of interesting stories. And we're going to cover a lot
• 2:45
  of that on today's show. But moving back to the clip, the
• 2:49
  other interesting part is, of course, we've been hearing a lot
• 2:52
  of rumors of not only nation state Bitcoin adoption, but
• 2:55
  sovereign wealth funds adopting Bitcoin or at least looking into
• 2:58
  Bitcoin. And if they're having these
• 3:00
  conversations with Larry Fink asking him, wait, should we
• 3:03
  allocate 2 to 5%? It's no longer just a
• 3:06
  hypothetical. They are actively looking into
• 3:08
  adopting Bitcoin. They're trying to talk to their,
• 3:11
  you know, asset managers, their financial advisors and be like,
• 3:15
  hey, how much do we actually need to buy?
• 3:17
  Remember, it used to be don't buy it to now maybe 1% to now 2
• 3:22
  to 5%, maybe 10% of your portfolio should get into
• 3:25
  Bitcoin. And like you said, if everyone
• 3:28
  does this, if all the sovereign wealth funds do it, if all the
• 3:30
  institutional capitals do it, nation states, and of course
• 3:33
  what we like to talk about here is individuals doing this, we
• 3:37
  will see a 506 hundred 700K per Bitcoin price.
• 3:43
  Absolutely incredible where we are right now.
• 3:45
  And before we even jumped on the show, we were kind of talking
• 3:48
  about this and chatting about this idea of like what is
• 3:51
  actually going on right now. Obviously we have two raining
• 3:55
  tinfoil hat guys on the show, myself and Mark, and we have
• 3:59
  Nico, who was just in a suit talking to Senator Lummis
• 4:02
  yesterday. So.
• 4:07
  So the whole TLDR is like we've been saying on the show for a
• 4:12
  long time, we are finally in the room now.
• 4:15
  And as much as winning is awesome and we are obviously
• 4:20
  going to see number go up with all of this good PR here, a part
• 4:26
  of us as Bitcoiners, I think where it still makes us feel a
• 4:29
  little a little iffy here. Like we said before the show,
• 4:32
  what's going on here where we have we're on the side of the
• 4:35
  president, Larry Fink and the CEO's of some of the largest
• 4:38
  banks. Like what a interesting and
• 4:41
  weird time to be a Bitcoiner. But hey, I guess Trump was kind
• 4:46
  of right on. We're going to be winning so
• 4:48
  hard that we're going to get tired of winning at this point.
• 4:51
  But it is absolutely incredible. And there's a lot of clips
• 4:54
  coming out of Davos that are Bitcoin focus didn't bring them
• 4:57
  on today's show, but also Ray Dalio's talking about Bitcoin.
• 5:00
  I have a clip for you guys from David Solomon, who's the CEO of
• 5:03
  Goldman Sachs. We played a clip yesterday
• 5:06
  about, you know, banking and Bitcoin regulations around
• 5:09
  Bitcoin and how that's going to start the bank following into
• 5:12
  Bitcoin. So we are entering what I I
• 5:15
  believe is obviously a new paradigm in Bitcoin and it is
• 5:19
  very, it's just like it makes me feel a little weird just how
• 5:22
  hard we're winning and what the incentives are on this.
• 5:25
  But as we say, you know, Bitcoin is incorruptible and the
• 5:28
  incentives, it is aligned incentives here.
• 5:31
  So it is just an incredible time to be a Bitcoiner.
• 5:35
  And man, it just, it's kind of crazy hearing Larry Fink say
• 5:39
  700K Bitcoin. I mean, this sounds like some
• 5:42
  bull tarted Bitcoin shit posts here and he's at Davos talking
• 5:46
  to the global leaders of the world saying, hey, look, I'm not
• 5:50
  endorsing this Bitcoin thing. But yeah, if you know, just a
• 5:53
  small portion of the capital gives into Bitcoin, we can see
• 5:56
  half $1,000,000 per Bitcoin. But I'm not endorsing that
• 6:00
  message. So it's just incredible where we
• 6:03
  are right now. So I'm going to pass it over to
• 6:04
  Nico 1st and then we'll get Mark's take on Larry Fink.
• 6:08
  Uncle Larry pumping our bags. Yeah, dude, so happy to be back.
• 6:14
  Spent some time in the Imperial City yesterday and some time in
• 6:19
  New York. So happy to be back in my
• 6:20
  hometown Miami. Lots of traveling.
• 6:23
  But yeah, man, I mean, look, it can't stop winning, You know,
• 6:27
  it's, it's it's Trump's promise from Nashville, 2024.
• 6:32
  It's coming true. I mean, yesterday was a historic
• 6:36
  day for bitcoiners in our movement.
• 6:39
  Ross Ulbricht was fully pardoned.
• 6:43
  His sentence wasn't commuted. He he was given a full pardon by
• 6:48
  President Trump. I've been saying this for the
• 6:51
  last five to like five to six months.
• 6:54
  I kept saying elections have consequences.
• 6:56
  A lot of people were talking about the fact that, hey,
• 6:58
  voting, does it matter? And, you know, this system so
• 7:02
  broken. Well, you know, voting Fried
• 7:06
  Ross, which was absolutely incredible.
• 7:08
  So historic day for the Bitcoin movement.
• 7:11
  And I think it's a testament to the power of our movement, the
• 7:15
  influence of our movement. I was in DC yesterday, ladies
• 7:19
  and gentlemen, our industries in the room.
• 7:22
  And if you're not in the room, you don't get included in the
• 7:25
  deals and we are in the room. So when you have figures like
• 7:31
  Larry Fink going to the Contillion air conference or for
• 7:35
  the World Economic Forum Davos and basically dropping Bitcoin
• 7:40
  price predictions, it tells you how influential our movement is
• 7:45
  and how attractive and irresistible number go up
• 7:49
  technology is. And you know, 3 to 5%
• 7:53
  allocations are not something that is crazy that that's pretty
• 7:59
  conservative. And Larry's basically saying
• 8:02
  that or Mr. Fink is basically saying that, look, with three to
• 8:05
  5% Bitcoin allocations from large institutions, banks, you
• 8:09
  know, we're going to get to we're easily going to get to 500
• 8:13
  to $700,000 Bitcoin. And another thing that I kept
• 8:16
  the another thing that I'll say is we have not seen the
• 8:21
  executive orders regarding the Bitcoin and crypto industry
• 8:26
  coming out of the Trump administration yet.
• 8:29
  We are waiting for the repeal of SAB 121, which will allow banks
• 8:36
  to custody Bitcoin because right now it's an accounting
• 8:39
  nightmare. And that was one of the things
• 8:42
  that sailors said needed to happen in order for Bitcoin to
• 8:47
  hit $5,000,000 per coin. He said an approval of spot
• 8:51
  Bitcoin ETF. He said a change in the fasby
• 8:54
  accounting rules and he said the ability for banks to custody
• 8:59
  Bitcoin. We are on the verge of that
• 9:02
  being a possibility. We played you guys a video of
• 9:05
  the CEO of Bank of America yesterday.
• 9:09
  So basically saying like, look, we don't have a choice but to
• 9:12
  get involved in this industry, but essentially what we're
• 9:15
  waiting for is a regulatory green light or regulatory thumbs
• 9:20
  up. So I think that's going to
• 9:22
  happen. I, I, I got the raw, the Ross
• 9:24
  prediction, right? I said that Ross was going to be
• 9:26
  pardoned by the end of the week. I'm, I'm going to make another
• 9:29
  prediction. I think we're going to get the
• 9:31
  repeal of SAB 121 by the end of the week and that's going to
• 9:35
  allow large institutions like banks to custody Bitcoin without
• 9:40
  taking an accounting hit. All that being said, guys, we
• 9:44
  are a Bitcoin show after all, and we all have to remember what
• 9:49
  the revolution is. The revolution is individuals,
• 9:52
  not institutions or nation states, but individuals on a
• 9:56
  massive scale reclaiming back their financial sovereignty
• 10:01
  through taking Bitcoin into self custody.
• 10:04
  So all of this news is very bullish from a number go up
• 10:08
  perspective, from a price perspective, but there's two
• 10:11
  things that you got to pay attention to in Bitcoin world.
• 10:14
  There's Bitcoin the investment and then there's Bitcoin the
• 10:17
  revolution. So the revolution is self
• 10:19
  custody. Don't lose your eye on the prize
• 10:23
  because at the end of the day, our mission isn't over until we
• 10:27
  see the full separation of money and state.
• 10:30
  Mark, what are your thoughts, brother?
• 10:33
  Yeah, Hey, thanks for having me, fellas.
• 10:34
  I'm not going to try to take the air out of the room or anything.
• 10:38
  Well, you. Can you can dude.
• 10:40
  Wait a second, that's exactly why we brought you on, man.
• 10:44
  Drop your Mr. Goodwin goodness, bro.
• 10:48
  Yes, well, thank you fellas. I appreciate it.
• 10:50
  Well, but well the truth is, is I agree with with most of what
• 10:52
  you just said if not all of it, right.
• 10:54
  I mean, I think that, well, First off think is, is a bear
• 10:57
  Bitcoin is going to go way past 700 K because it has to, it has
• 11:02
  to because Bitcoin is going to be the instrument, this sort of
• 11:06
  neutral reserve asset that is going to allow basically the
• 11:09
  debt pardoning to happen on a massive scale where the US can
• 11:13
  get out from underneath this 36 trillion.
• 11:15
  If they want to get out from underneath that 36 trillion,
• 11:18
  they need Bitcoin to inflate the $200 trillion in assets, $300
• 11:22
  trillion in asset and, and be able to use, you know, the money
• 11:27
  market that, you know, uses T-bills and treasuries from the,
• 11:31
  from the US dollar system and U.S. dollar debt.
• 11:34
  These stable coins to be able to sort of be the mechanism, the,
• 11:37
  the monetization, the scaling mechanism underneath the
• 11:41
  financialization of Bitcoin will be these dollar instruments.
• 11:44
  If we can get Bitcoin up to 300 K, you know, we can get 10 to
• 11:47
  20%, you know, go into stable coins and now we have, you know,
• 11:52
  20-30, $40 trillion of demand for U.S.
• 11:57
  Treasuries and all of a sudden we can pay off our debt.
• 11:59
  So I think there's a reason why we're seeing this mass
• 12:02
  institutional pivot towards Bitcoin.
• 12:05
  And basically we're going to, we're now entering the, the,
• 12:08
  the, the, you know, next stage of the game where, you know,
• 12:12
  they, it's been acknowledged, we are in that room.
• 12:15
  And so we're going to see a lot of wild things happen here.
• 12:18
  And I think we have to be very vigilant and we have to be very
• 12:21
  prepared because we have an amazing opportunity.
• 12:24
  If that's true, if this 200 to $400 trillion asset class is
• 12:28
  true, we're about to have some pretty significant coffers to
• 12:32
  play with. We're about to have some pretty
• 12:34
  significant wealth to be able to push back against these power
• 12:37
  structures. The, the, the ideal revolution
• 12:39
  here is not just, hey, you know, we get pretty rich and the
• 12:43
  largest asset managers in the world and the largest empire in
• 12:46
  the world, you know, has a greater stroke, you know,
• 12:49
  chokehold over, over the world. That's not really, you know,
• 12:52
  that's the asset side of the, of the Bitcoin winning, not the
• 12:55
  revolution side of, of Bitcoin winning.
• 12:57
  So we need to really make sure that we keep pushing that way.
• 13:00
  That doesn't mean we need to be doomers or unnecessarily
• 13:03
  pessimistic about stuff. This is awesome.
• 13:05
  It's true. You know, there's a reason why
• 13:07
  this Davos pivot has happened. And I wrote about it last year,
• 13:09
  actually, this piece called tokenized ink, right?
• 13:12
  Specifically was watching Larry talk to Bloomberg right around
• 13:18
  the time that the 11 ETFs were were approved.
• 13:20
  So that was January 11th of last year.
• 13:23
  And he talked about how, you know, Bitcoin is this, you know,
• 13:26
  great universal Ledger for asset storage.
• 13:28
  And you know, talked about a lot of this, you know, blockchain
• 13:31
  technology and how we're every, every asset is going to have a
• 13:35
  tokenized version of it and it's going to have AQ SIP and it's
• 13:38
  going to live on this Ledger. And so Bitcoin is basically
• 13:40
  showing up as that neutral reserve asset that the US dollar
• 13:43
  can inflate into that these large asset managers can use as
• 13:47
  a, as a storage technology to put their, their tokenized Q
• 13:51
  sips basically. And Bitcoin is basically
• 13:53
  appearing as this wonderful. You know, we talked a lot about
• 13:57
  the public sector, the private sector.
• 13:58
  Bitcoin is, is this new third sector.
• 14:01
  It's, it's not really either of those things.
• 14:04
  It's this decentralized neutral, as he said, internationally
• 14:08
  based, right, which is fun. Bitcoin is based and it's
• 14:11
  internationally based and that's fun, but also, you know, as much
• 14:15
  as it can empower the person in the global South or, or myself,
• 14:20
  you know, it can empower nation States and large asset managers.
• 14:23
  So we just have to make sure that we are like, hey, you know,
• 14:27
  but let's, let's, let's make sure that we increase UTXO
• 14:30
  ownership for everyone on the planet.
• 14:31
  Let's make sure that we really don't just let dollar
• 14:34
  instruments come in and be the scaling mechanism for Bitcoin.
• 14:37
  Let's let's really work on Bitcoin, Bitcoin sats that
• 14:40
  that's what we're here for. And, you know, I think that
• 14:44
  there was a lot of people that predicted this pivot, myself
• 14:47
  included. And you know, there's a reason
• 14:50
  why we were able to do that because the writing was on the
• 14:55
  wall. Trump and his first
• 14:56
  administration did so much to set up, you know, what we're
• 15:00
  seeing here now with Brian Brooks and and the Comptroller
• 15:04
  giving people the right to hold stable coins and other crypto
• 15:09
  assets. So a lot of that stuff was was
• 15:10
  written on the wall. We saw Malay come in, talk to
• 15:13
  Davos, tell everybody, you know, hey, free market, free market.
• 15:17
  And everyone cheered, right? There was this phase shift that
• 15:20
  occur, this faceshift dialectic. And it's really important to
• 15:23
  know that you know what, you don't see anything that you're
• 15:26
  not supposed to see, right? You know, they don't let us see
• 15:29
  stuff we're not supposed to see. So why did they let us see that?
• 15:31
  Perhaps because they're pushing us into the deflationary age.
• 15:35
  Bitcoin is very important. It's an incredibly important
• 15:38
  economic monetary policy. It's very important technology.
• 15:42
  And so now as we're moving into a deflationary monetary policy
• 15:45
  after they just did the COVID pandemic breakdown, they, they
• 15:49
  loot the treasury of the world and debase the world currency.
• 15:52
  Now we're moving into a Bitcoin denominated system.
• 15:55
  Now we're championing the free market all of a sudden, right?
• 15:58
  So we're having these guys that have typically been these debt
• 16:00
  barons now championing Bitcoin because they have it, right?
• 16:04
  So we just got to remain diligent and, and know that we
• 16:08
  have a great opportunity to to slice the beast's neck off
• 16:12
  because we, we, we have sats, right?
• 16:14
  Metaphorically, I, I don't condone violence in any way.
• 16:17
  I, I condone pushing back with truth, right.
• 16:19
  So, you know, that's why I'm here today.
• 16:21
  And yeah, I think that's, you know, there's so much exciting
• 16:24
  shit, Ross getting free. It's, it's so beautiful.
• 16:26
  That's amazing. Fuck yeah.
• 16:28
  But let's not let them by our consent.
• 16:29
  The world operates in, in, in, in a karmic law.
• 16:32
  And you know, that's why they do soft disclosure.
• 16:34
  That's where they do all this stuff.
• 16:35
  And and so for them to by our consent with little, you know,
• 16:40
  sort of crumbs, I think we need to just keep pushing back.
• 16:43
  And obviously, Ross, just to say it's a little crumb is is is an
• 16:46
  insult. But, you know, we have to push
• 16:48
  back on Poppy warp speed and just make sure that, you know,
• 16:51
  where we go is really the freedom world that we want to
• 16:53
  see and not just yeah. Absolutely, Mark, you absolutely
• 16:57
  nailed it, crushed it. I love the way that you
• 16:59
  articulated that. And, and I think that's a really
• 17:02
  good point and I completely agree.
• 17:04
  You know, when you, when you saw Zuckerberg on Rogan the other
• 17:08
  day and basically, you know, like playing the victim, saying
• 17:12
  like, Oh my God, we got so much pressure from the
• 17:15
  administration, from the previous administration.
• 17:17
  And you know, it was, it was, it was, it was bad and all this
• 17:20
  stuff. No, these people did not just
• 17:24
  find, you know, God all of a sudden like it, it, it's
• 17:29
  literally because you know, they, they see the writing on
• 17:32
  the wall. They see kind of this populist
• 17:35
  movement that's picked up steam all over the world, You know,
• 17:39
  this recent very, very crazy, crazy election cycle, right?
• 17:43
  The, you know, the, the mass adoption of, of peer-to-peer
• 17:47
  communications, allowing people to do their own research,
• 17:51
  consume the information they want to consume.
• 17:53
  And obviously the rise of Bitcoin.
• 17:55
  So, you know, they, they, they see the writing on the wall.
• 17:58
  They now own Bitcoin, they're benefiting from Bitcoin.
• 18:02
  So it's not like they've changed.
• 18:05
  It's that it's convenient for them to go along with, oh, you
• 18:09
  know, free markets are actually good.
• 18:11
  Censorship is actually bad. This Bitcoin thing is actually
• 18:15
  quite good. Yeah, no.
• 18:17
  IA 100 percent, 100% agree with you, Mark.
• 18:20
  It's it's because they're benefiting from it.
• 18:23
  Their incentives are now more more closely aligned with the
• 18:29
  rest of us. But that doesn't mean that we
• 18:31
  should drop our vigilance. That doesn't mean that we should
• 18:34
  just say, oh, you know what, Larry Fink's my homie now.
• 18:38
  He's he's my good friend, right? You know, maybe he's a good guy.
• 18:42
  I don't know him personally. But what I'm trying to say is
• 18:44
  like, you know, I remember five years ago he was saying it was
• 18:47
  an index of money laundering. I remember the whole, you know,
• 18:51
  the, the whole social credit system thing that they were
• 18:54
  pushing. I forgot what the exact term,
• 18:56
  exact terminology is for that. But yeah, no, it's, it's true.
• 19:00
  We have to remain vigilant anyway, seems like we dropped
• 19:05
  come back. In Michael come back in.
• 19:07
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  All right guys, let's get to the numbers.
• 23:32
  If you are new, here we go over some Bitcoin time chain numbers.
• 23:36
  Of course the current Bitcoin price is 100 and $4460 per
• 23:41
  Bitcoin which means the stats per dollar AKA how much Bitcoin
• 23:44
  you can buy for a single dollar AKA how much the dollar is worth
• 23:47
  in Bitcoin is currently at 9:00, 157 SAT's per dollar.
• 23:50
  The current block height is 880,378.
• 23:55
  Market cap in Fiat terms is 2.07 trillion.
• 23:58
  And the Bitcoin versus gold market cap, still a lot of room
• 24:01
  to run in the hard money game is at 10.85%.
• 24:05
  And the total percentage of Bitcoin that will ever be
• 24:07
  issued, I repeat the total percentage of Bitcoin that will
• 24:10
  ever be issued is currently at 94.35% with roughly 19.8 million
• 24:16
  Bitcoin in circulation. So again, again, guys, we have
• 24:19
  another clip from you guys coming out of Davos and this is
• 24:22
  kind of harping back to what we were playing for you guys on the
• 24:26
  show yesterday. But today we have a David
• 24:29
  Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, obviously one of the
• 24:32
  biggest banks in America, being asked about Bitcoin.
• 24:35
  What his takes are, you know what, what's his view is on the
• 24:39
  incoming administration. And I'm really glad we got Mark
• 24:43
  here on today's show because it's not only just Nico and I,
• 24:46
  I'm sure we're going to be polishing a lot of this.
• 24:49
  And I know, I know Mark's got some interesting takes on
• 24:53
  Bitcoin versus the dollar, but let's just play this clip.
• 24:56
  It's a short clip and then we'll chat about it.
• 24:58
  You know, for a long time we talked about it, and there was
• 25:00
  nothing for a bank like Goldman Sachs necessarily to do about
• 25:02
  it. But I wonder, in an environment
• 25:04
  where Trump is now talking about a strategic Bitcoin reserve,
• 25:08
  whether your sort of thought process around how to deal with
• 25:12
  crypto is going to fundamentally change?
• 25:16
  Well, first, you know, and Andrew, we've had this
• 25:18
  conversation a number of times. The underlying technology is
• 25:22
  something we spend a lot of time on.
• 25:24
  It's something that we're utilizing and testing to create
• 25:27
  less friction of the financial system.
• 25:29
  Super important, you know, at the moment from a regulatory
• 25:32
  perspective, we can't own, we can't principle, we can't, we
• 25:36
  can't, we can't be involved with Bitcoin.
• 25:39
  But you may be able to soon. If if if the world changed, you
• 25:42
  and I could have a discussion about.
• 25:43
  It but you want it to change. Is that something that your
• 25:45
  lobbyist in Washington would be would be advocating for?
• 25:48
  I don't, I don't have, I don't have a lot to say about, you
• 25:51
  know, a speculation is to a significant change like that.
• 25:54
  At the end of the day, I'm a big believer in the US dollar.
• 25:57
  I think the US dollar is super important.
• 25:59
  Bitcoin's an speculative asset, but an interesting speculative
• 26:02
  asset. I don't think there's a lot more
• 26:03
  to see. Let.
• 26:04
  Me ask you about this though in an America first world and we
• 26:07
  were talking to Brian Armstrong a little bit about this the
• 26:09
  other day is Bitcoin a threat to the US dollar meaning if the
• 26:15
  United States I. Really think Bitcoin is a threat
• 26:17
  to the US dollar? Do you see what I'm saying?
• 26:19
  Meaning. Meaning if there's there are
• 26:20
  others that might see. I don't see Bitcoin as a threat
• 26:22
  to the US dollar. Let me ask you a different.
• 26:25
  Interesting stuff. All right, so first, First off,
• 26:29
  First off, I do want to mention the fact that like what year are
• 26:34
  we in? You know, he's saying I like the
• 26:36
  underlying technology of Bitcoin.
• 26:39
  We've done a lot of research into this.
• 26:41
  It sounds like he's going, you know, blockchain, not Bitcoin
• 26:44
  here. But hey, that's just the the
• 26:46
  simply Bitcoin angle here. But as we've been saying and
• 26:48
  Nico mentioned it earlier, if Trump, whether it's this week or
• 26:52
  next week, we really don't have a timeline on when he or if he's
• 26:56
  going to do an executive order on repelling SAB 1/21.
• 27:00
  It seems like a lot of the banks out there and CEO's are kind of
• 27:04
  looking at the same playing field that we are.
• 27:06
  They've been, you know, sidelined from holding Bitcoin
• 27:08
  to really playing into Bitcoin. Obviously, it's because of a lot
• 27:12
  of the jurisdictions and obstacles they had to go through
• 27:15
  and the regulations, particular with SAB 121.
• 27:18
  And it seems like we will see a whole new watershed moment if
• 27:22
  this does get repealed. Obviously we do not recommend
• 27:25
  and you give your Bitcoin to these banks, but this does open
• 27:28
  a whole new liquidity capital for the normies out there,
• 27:32
  people that trust the banks. They're like, yeah, you know,
• 27:34
  hey, if if my bank is allowing me to use Bitcoin, then maybe I
• 27:37
  should get a little bit of Bitcoin.
• 27:38
  And the the last part that I want to mention before I pass it
• 27:41
  on to my guest here is this idea of is Bitcoin a threat to the
• 27:46
  dollar? Now I know a lot of Bitcoiners
• 27:49
  are on the on the idea that Bitcoin and Fiat money can't
• 27:54
  coexist in the same world. And I'm kind of on that fence as
• 27:57
  well. But I think as we start to
• 27:59
  progress into this decade and decades, moving further, we're
• 28:03
  going to see this like by medalist period going on where,
• 28:07
  you know, you transact with dollars for your federal
• 28:09
  government and the real money that you use.
• 28:12
  Maybe you can say the Gray market money that you use in
• 28:15
  saving is Bitcoin. So it's very interesting to see
• 28:19
  the CE OS and the banks, biggest banks in the world.
• 28:21
  Let's let's not forget, kind of not be afraid of Bitcoin.
• 28:24
  And I think this kind of goes into a lot of the tinfoil hat
• 28:27
  stuff that does Bitcoiners think about is like, has Bitcoin been
• 28:31
  neutered now that we have, you know, the Larry Finks and the
• 28:34
  Trump's and the Goldman Sachs of the world and JP Morgan's of the
• 28:37
  world starting to embrace Bitcoin?
• 28:39
  Is this something to keep our head on a swivel on about?
• 28:43
  Or is it more that Bitcoin's aligned incentive structures
• 28:46
  will win and they are being forced to bend the knee here.
• 28:48
  They're capitulating, understanding what's going on,
• 28:51
  All of what Mark was just saying at the beginning of the show,
• 28:54
  and it's just very interesting, interesting times that we're
• 28:56
  seeing it. It's interesting seeing the
• 28:58
  capitulation go on, though. There is still a lot of the 2017
• 29:02
  floodlines or even earlier floodlines kind of pop and rear
• 29:05
  their heads right now. And I think we're going to be
• 29:08
  seeing a whole, it's the eternal September problem that I'm
• 29:11
  seeing right now. We're going to have to keep
• 29:13
  repeating ourselves constantly about what Bitcoin is why we
• 29:16
  Bitcoin with a whole new breed of Bitcoiners coming into the
• 29:20
  space and Wall Street and executive levels and nation
• 29:25
  state leaders. It's really it does feel like
• 29:28
  this time is starting to be different and I guess we're just
• 29:32
  here for it. This is going to give us a lot
• 29:33
  of content here on simply Bitcoin to talk about and or
• 29:37
  destroy and dismantle. So I'm hyped Nico, we're going
• 29:40
  to have a job for a little bit, but before I pass it to Nico, I
• 29:43
  want to get Mark's take on this stuff.
• 29:45
  What do you feel when you hear, you know, David Solomon, Goldman
• 29:48
  Sachs CEO kind of skirt around the question about Bitcoin, but
• 29:53
  low key kind of embrace Bitcoin? But I really, I really want you
• 29:56
  to hit on, is the dollar a threat or the Bitcoin a dollar
• 30:00
  to a threat to the dollar. Yeah, thanks for teeing me up
• 30:05
  there. No, I don't think it is.
• 30:08
  I think Bitcoin is probably the only thing that can save the
• 30:12
  dollar, actually. Ironically, Bitcoin doesn't
• 30:14
  compete with the dollar as a currency in any way, shape or
• 30:17
  form at the moment. What it competes with,
• 30:19
  ironically, is the things that back dollars, the reserve assets
• 30:23
  like treasuries that are the things that banks buy from
• 30:26
  governments or nation states buy from the US You know, the game
• 30:32
  of capital creation has been sort of a private sector thing.
• 30:35
  They it's innately happens in the private sector, but it is a
• 30:40
  private public partnership where a private entity buys a reserve
• 30:44
  some debt from the US government and then creates dollars in your
• 30:47
  checkings account. Bitcoin doesn't compete with
• 30:49
  dollars in your checkings account.
• 30:51
  You know, if there was a currency crisis and 8 billion
• 30:53
  people wanted to get to Bitcoin tomorrow, there simply isn't
• 30:56
  enough block space for that to occur.
• 30:59
  They would be huge chokeholds. And so they would have to be
• 31:03
  forced to go into these other instruments, forced to go into
• 31:05
  sort of custodian situations to be able to get access to the
• 31:09
  deflationary, disinflationary, for the moment, the monetary
• 31:13
  policy of Bitcoin. So they'd be forced to kind of
• 31:15
  go into these things. Bitcoin competes with the
• 31:17
  treasury system. It doesn't compete with the
• 31:18
  dollar. So right now the dollar system
• 31:21
  is trying to find a way to service its debt and find a way
• 31:24
  to keep selling these reserves, knowing that Bitcoin really
• 31:28
  isn't the threat at its current to the dollar itself.
• 31:31
  The the Bitcoin's gone through a lot of phases.
• 31:33
  I think people don't really recognize what the halving
• 31:36
  process has sort of done to Bitcoins economic standing,
• 31:41
  right? And you can look at Ross as a
• 31:42
  really interesting example. We can kind of tie this all in.
• 31:45
  You know, when I was first told about Bitcoin, it was it was
• 31:48
  right after the first halving and I was I was working at a bar
• 31:52
  and a regular at my bar was this guy named Blake Benthall who
• 31:55
  took over for Ross for Silk Road 2 point O.
• 31:58
  He was the DPR of the second Silk Road.
• 32:01
  And he explained to me that Bitcoin was just this awesome
• 32:04
  anonymous payment system that you can use online to buy
• 32:07
  things. There was no talk of the
• 32:09
  speculation of of how much it's worth or, or how much it, you
• 32:13
  know, it can fluctuate in price. I literally had no idea.
• 32:16
  I used it with friends and, and, and to buy things online.
• 32:19
  I had absolutely no idea that it could move around.
• 32:21
  It wasn't until after the 2016 happening, right?
• 32:25
  So in the 1st epoch, 50% of all Bitcoin issued were were that
• 32:30
  will ever be issued were issued. And as we just saw in the
• 32:33
  numbers section, you know, we're at just about 95% of all total
• 32:37
  Bitcoin has been issued. Now that that's happening, you
• 32:39
  know, Bitcoin, you know, for, you know, 4th epoch in is now
• 32:43
  not really this highly inflationary object.
• 32:47
  You know, we're we're seeing it's monetary policies change
• 32:50
  because the halving has actually changed the way that it, you
• 32:53
  know, that it acts. So early on in its history, we
• 32:56
  saw it being used as this sort of peer-to-peer, you know, more
• 33:00
  of the cash system and being able to be used to buy things
• 33:03
  online. Of course, you can still do
• 33:04
  that, but it was, it wasn't people weren't really holding on
• 33:07
  to Bitcoin in the same way. It was kind of novel that you
• 33:10
  could settle and 50 Bitcoin came out every block.
• 33:13
  So it wasn't really this, this scarcity mindset yet.
• 33:16
  But now that we're a few halvings in, you know, hey, our
• 33:19
  relative issuance is actually below 2% now.
• 33:22
  It's below the target inflation rate of the dollar.
• 33:24
  It's below gold coming out of the ground.
• 33:26
  All of a sudden it's now being embraced by a Goldman Sachs as
• 33:30
  sort of this digital gold analog, the speculative asset,
• 33:33
  not as a currency. I think that there's a fear from
• 33:37
  the government of some sort of, you know, currency, sort of, you
• 33:43
  know, there's a, there's a reason why maybe the Libra
• 33:45
  project, you know, they got, you know, within a week of the white
• 33:49
  paper coming out, they got pulled in front of Congress
• 33:52
  because they knew how many billions of users they have
• 33:55
  every month, literally. And they were like, hey, you
• 33:57
  know, this could actually compete with the networks
• 34:00
  effects of the dollar system. That's not really the case with
• 34:02
  Bitcoin from a from a day-to-day standpoint, specifically with
• 34:05
  Goldman too. It's interesting if you look at
• 34:07
  their history and Bitcoin, they're everywhere.
• 34:09
  In the early history of Bitcoin, Charles Cascarillo, who's the
• 34:13
  founder of, of Paxos, is a former Goldman trader.
• 34:16
  He, he and his company, at the very beginning, they were a
• 34:19
  mining company and they had over 25% of the hash rate.
• 34:22
  He was a former Goldman trainer trader.
• 34:25
  Brock Pierce, who obviously was the founder of Tether, was
• 34:27
  heavily connected with Goldman early on.
• 34:30
  This company that he started, IGE, this gaming company, got
• 34:33
  bought out by Goldman. Steve Bannon became the CEO of
• 34:36
  the company. He's a former Goldman guy.
• 34:39
  And then you look at obviously, who Trump put in charge of the
• 34:43
  Treasury during his term. Mnuchin, former Goldman guy who
• 34:46
  helped, you know, bring in Brian Brooks, who helped set the rules
• 34:51
  that banks can hold stable coins.
• 34:53
  So you start to look at Goldman's sort of influence in a
• 34:55
  lot of the VC stuff in the Bitcoin space.
• 34:59
  I wrote a lot about this for Unlimited Hangout in this series
• 35:02
  called The Chain. Goldman is really all over
• 35:04
  early, early, early Bitcoin and specifically with the stable
• 35:08
  coin play. So it's interesting that he
• 35:10
  would come out and say it's not competing with the dollar.
• 35:12
  Echo what Trump said at his speech at Bitcoin 2024, that
• 35:16
  they got that story exactly backwards.
• 35:19
  That was Trump's word. So I think a lot of these people
• 35:21
  are understanding that due to the monetary policy of Bitcoin,
• 35:24
  it's not an inflationary currency in the same way the
• 35:29
  dollar is or something that you want to spend where you're
• 35:32
  encouraged you to, you know, the debasement that's scheduled into
• 35:36
  the dollar system, you're supposed to spend it, right?
• 35:39
  You're incentivized to spend it because your value gets debased
• 35:42
  over time. Bitcoins not like that.
• 35:44
  It doesn't compete with the dollar in that same way.
• 35:46
  And you know, fair enough, Here comes this this dollar analog,
• 35:50
  this tokenized dollar that can kind of take the place of that
• 35:53
  take, take this debt problem that the US government has and
• 35:57
  give this neutral reserve internationally based asset, as
• 36:00
  Fink says, and allow the dollar system to inflate into it while
• 36:04
  retaining net purchasing power of the United States.
• 36:07
  So I think that the Bitcoin dollar system that I first
• 36:10
  proposed in 2021, this idea that they would use dollar stable
• 36:14
  coins to literally tether the Bitcoin system to the dollar
• 36:18
  system, at the point of which the dollar system is beginning
• 36:21
  to show, you know, serious cracks, right?
• 36:24
  This is when we should be seeing de dollarization.
• 36:26
  We should be seeing the BRICS currencies and, you know, gold
• 36:29
  back currencies and other things coming up and sort of sniping at
• 36:32
  the feet of a weakened dollar system.
• 36:34
  But what are we actually seeing? We're seeing a rapidly
• 36:37
  globalized dollar. We're seeing the world more
• 36:39
  dollarized than ever. More people have access to
• 36:42
  dollars than ever and the the Dixie, the sort of relative
• 36:45
  strength, not index, but that's a different thing.
• 36:50
  But you know, the relative strength of the dollar versus
• 36:52
  other currencies is, is just booming, right?
• 36:54
  There's a chance we might see some local tops or whatever, but
• 36:57
  in general, we should be seeing the US dollar going down because
• 37:00
  of this massive debasement. And instead we're seeing it
• 37:04
  increase over other national currency.
• 37:06
  So, you know, you kind of have to sort of peel back, roll back
• 37:10
  and sort of ask yourself like, it's kind of interesting that
• 37:12
  Bitcoin sort of popped off on this anonymous mailing list in
• 37:16
  2008 when the US is going through its first big debt
• 37:19
  crisis. And right before the happening
• 37:21
  in May 2020, where Bitcoin does truly go below the issuance of
• 37:26
  of the dollar at 2% and gold at 2 1/2 percent.
• 37:29
  You know, six weeks before that May 2020, having we see the
• 37:33
  world get shut down and, and, you know, demand get crushed.
• 37:37
  And we see the US government give trillions and trillions of
• 37:40
  dollars to our boy Larry Fink in this project called Going
• 37:43
  Direct, which was actually scripted by Trump.
• 37:46
  And Fink. Fink was formerly Trump's money
• 37:48
  manager before he even went into the White House.
• 37:51
  And they make this plan called Going Direct, which gives
• 37:53
  BlackRock basically, and Wall Street all of this money that
• 37:57
  can't possibly go to Main Street at all under the guise of
• 38:00
  pandemic stimulus. You know, where did that money
• 38:03
  go to? Why was there this mass
• 38:04
  debasement, you know, that has no ability to go to our pockets
• 38:09
  at all? Why did that occur a couple
• 38:11
  weeks, six weeks before the the having cycle when we see Bitcoin
• 38:15
  once again evolve into being mathematically the hardest money
• 38:19
  on earth? It's very interesting and I
• 38:21
  think you have to ask yourself these questions that maybe it is
• 38:24
  possible that the US system understood that the dollar was
• 38:28
  going to be debased and if we wanted to retain economic
• 38:32
  Hedgeman, we had to create something that would basically
• 38:34
  solve this Trippin's dilemma and be this internationally based
• 38:37
  asset. It's very interesting that the
• 38:39
  largest money manager and literally Trump's money manager
• 38:42
  is now saying this. Goldman is now saying this.
• 38:46
  All of this stuff is now out in the open and was predicted by
• 38:49
  some people that were really paying attention.
• 38:52
  Why? Why is that?
• 38:53
  Well, perhaps Bitcoin is actually very helpful for the
• 38:56
  dollar system. It's a very big question to
• 38:58
  consider. It's a very big question to ask.
• 39:00
  And it's very hard to ask because we know what Bitcoin is.
• 39:02
  We've looked at the code. We've we've watched 40 hours of
• 39:05
  Bitcoin podcasts a week. We've read the books.
• 39:08
  We know what you know Bitcoin is.
• 39:10
  We know that the math is we know that our 21 million will not be
• 39:13
  debased, but that's also true for money managers and people
• 39:17
  trying to, you know, save the dollar system.
• 39:19
  It empowers them just as much. So, you know, there's a lot of
• 39:22
  things to consider. And I think that the fact that
• 39:24
  this is now sort of just widely across the board being accepted,
• 39:29
  you know, by the powers that be, that perhaps there's something
• 39:31
  else to it. And in which case then you have
• 39:34
  to sort of ask yourself, OK, well, what do I want to do about
• 39:37
  it? Do I want to just be a little
• 39:39
  baby and sell them my Bitcoin? Because I think Larry Fink and
• 39:42
  Trump are going to use it to do bad?
• 39:43
  No, I think that's the exact opposite approach.
• 39:46
  You know, a lot of people in independent media are sort of
• 39:48
  getting jacked up by this hijacking Bitcoin, you know,
• 39:52
  angle or that, you know, the US government came in and took it
• 39:55
  over and all this. And I just don't really think
• 39:57
  that's true. I think Bitcoin's doing exactly
• 39:58
  what it was meant to do. Which is to create a new
• 40:01
  internationally based reserve asset that really enters us into
• 40:06
  a deflationary age. So establish yourself firmly,
• 40:09
  plant yourself firmly as we do this phase shift.
• 40:12
  As this pole shift occurs, equip yourself with Bitcoin, arm
• 40:16
  yourself with it. Make sure you don't have it in
• 40:18
  these systems that can be controlled.
• 40:21
  You know, with KYC and these other things.
• 40:23
  Those things are going to ramp up.
• 40:24
  They're going to start throwing dissonance in jail and doing
• 40:27
  stuff with their, you know, sort of predictive AIS and, you know,
• 40:30
  the DARPA social networks. They're going to start scanning
• 40:32
  all these things. And a lot of the things that we
• 40:34
  were doing yesterday are going to become illegal tomorrow,
• 40:37
  whether it's mixing and these other things.
• 40:39
  So I think we have to just be very aware that there is perhaps
• 40:44
  a bigger thing at play here. And that doesn't mean we should
• 40:47
  freak out and run away from it. We should go into it and go at
• 40:50
  it head on and understand that, well, the game is on, baby.
• 40:54
  Like this is a game. The US government, you know, if
• 40:56
  they did create Bitcoin, well, they better damn be sure that
• 40:58
  they can control it and maybe they can't.
• 41:01
  You know, there's a lot of things that there's sort of a
• 41:04
  misnomer in Bitcoin about decentralization.
• 41:06
  It's really not decentralized as much as it's distributed.
• 41:09
  And that the consensus is distributed among the chips,
• 41:12
  among the hardware, along the energy suppliers, among the
• 41:15
  Internet service providers and among the people, right?
• 41:19
  That's a really important part, the people that uphold Bitcoin.
• 41:22
  The ethos is actually really important and we can fork people
• 41:25
  off and we can do you know, some fun technological things and
• 41:29
  consensus things. You know, money is is is a
• 41:32
  communications platform. So if we want to create new
• 41:36
  systems and use Bitcoin to create parallel and circular
• 41:39
  economies that completely completely circumnavigate the
• 41:43
  dollar system entirely. The Bitcoin dollar system only
• 41:46
  works if we let the dollar become the scaling mechanism of
• 41:49
  Bitcoin. And if we can circumnavigate
• 41:51
  that by directly doing peer-to-peer things by, you
• 41:54
  know, working on scaling Bitcoin and enlightening and, and having
• 41:57
  channel factories and, and being able to onboard 8 billion people
• 42:00
  on the lightning and, and, and other clever things like ARC,
• 42:04
  you know, whatever it is, there's, I don't even know if we
• 42:07
  have the correct answer yet, but that's what's so cool about this
• 42:09
  game is it's still malleable, it's still pliable.
• 42:12
  So if we let it ossify and we let these, you know, people
• 42:15
  basically come in and tell us it's a reserve asset, it's a
• 42:18
  speculative asset, goodbye, then I think that, you know, we might
• 42:22
  end up in a place where we're very rich, but the experiment
• 42:24
  has sort of failed as a freedom technology.
• 42:27
  So I think we need to remember that it's still pliable, it's
• 42:30
  still a game, and we can still push things in the way that we
• 42:33
  want to. We have a lot more power if we
• 42:36
  don't consent to their systems. We have a lot more power than we
• 42:39
  ever could possibly imagine. And Bitcoin, especially us early
• 42:42
  dissonance and people that have been in Bitcoin that have, you
• 42:45
  know, stacked a little bit. We got something, we got
• 42:47
  something we can work with. So we got a band together, work
• 42:50
  together, understand and remember who the, who the
• 42:52
  baddies are, who locked us in our homes five years ago.
• 42:55
  You know, who forced us to do these things?
• 42:57
  Who debased the, the, the money? Who, who blew up the mortgage,
• 43:02
  you know, markets and, and bailed out the banks and not our
• 43:04
  parents, You know, remember who these people were?
• 43:06
  Who were these asset managers? Well, it was Larry Fink and,
• 43:10
  and, and, and, and perhaps the Goldman guys and, and perhaps
• 43:14
  Trump too, right? It was a lot of these people
• 43:16
  that are now championing our cause did a lot of damage to our
• 43:19
  family and our friends in the world and have done debt slavery
• 43:22
  plays against the global South and Asia and so many places
• 43:27
  they've used the dollar system as as an economic warfare.
• 43:31
  And they can absolutely do that again with stable coins and
• 43:34
  potentially even with Bitcoin too from a surveillance
• 43:36
  standpoint. So we need to make sure you
• 43:38
  know, hey, what what do we want out of this?
• 43:41
  We want an alternative. We want to be able to opt out
• 43:44
  from debt, from a debt based system, not enable it.
• 43:47
  So how do we do that? How do we build?
• 43:49
  We educate, we push, entrench yourselves, exit and build.
• 43:53
  Don't rely on their systems. And when you do that, you can
• 43:55
  truly be free. Oh my God, beautiful Mark
• 44:01
  Goodwin in the house guys, you're listening to simply
• 44:04
  Bitcoin Live. If you guys are enjoying the
• 44:06
  show, 920 of you guys watching live on YouTube and almost 4000
• 44:12
  live viewers across all platforms.
• 44:15
  We're about to break 300 likes on YouTube alone.
• 44:19
  Help us break 400 likes NO4450 before the show is over anyways
• 44:25
  guys, we're going to hit the news so much to cover.
• 44:28
  We will be right back. I want to give a very special
• 44:32
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• 46:52
  all yours. All right, man.
• 46:53
  Well, first and foremost, we would have been remissed if we
• 46:56
  didn't talk about this on today's show.
• 46:58
  We got an absolute W here yesterday.
• 47:00
  Of course, if you're on Twitter, you probably heard about this,
• 47:03
  but Ross was freed yesterday. Trump came through with the
• 47:07
  promise of freeing Ross. I mean, there's still some
• 47:10
  argument of if it was on day one, but I think as I was saying
• 47:13
  yesterday on the show, it is very fitting that Ross got freed
• 47:16
  on January 21st. It's almost like the simulation
• 47:19
  winking at us. It seems like we have a new
• 47:22
  holiday and it is the day that Ross got freed.
• 47:25
  So here's just a tweet. Ross was just granted a full and
• 47:28
  unconditional pardon by Donald Trump.
• 47:31
  And of course, this was Lynn, his mother behind this account
• 47:35
  saying words cannot express how grateful we are.
• 47:37
  President Trump is a man of his word and just saved Ross's life.
• 47:40
  Ross is a free man. So.
• 47:42
  So I do want to read you guys the tweet that or rather this
• 47:44
  was a true social post that Donald Trump posted.
• 47:48
  And there's a funny thing. He he didn't misspell his last
• 47:51
  name. So there's, you know, people
• 47:52
  trolling like, did he free the right guy?
• 47:53
  No, he's freed. He's freed.
• 47:55
  All right. So anyways, we got Trump here on
• 47:57
  Truth Social and he goes, I just called the mother of Ross
• 48:00
  William. He wrote Albright, but it's old
• 48:02
  Bridge. And he says to let her know that
• 48:03
  in honor of her in the libertarian movement, which
• 48:05
  supported me so strongly. It was my pleasure to have just
• 48:09
  signed a full and unconditional pardon of her son Ross.
• 48:13
  The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same
• 48:15
  lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of
• 48:18
  government against me. He was given two life sentences
• 48:21
  plus 40 years. Ridiculous.
• 48:23
  And here's a you know, picture of him finally released from
• 48:27
  jail. So absolute W here for the
• 48:29
  Bitcoin community. Awesome to see Trump keeping his
• 48:32
  promise here and honestly going a little over and beyond what he
• 48:37
  was promising because people were just saying he was going to
• 48:39
  commute his sentence. But full and uncount
• 48:42
  unconditional pardon of Ross. Absolute W.
• 48:45
  So I'm gonna, you know, I'll give you guys a chance to talk
• 48:47
  about this because we do have another news story.
• 48:49
  So first of all, I guess I'll go to Nico.
• 48:52
  Nico, I'm sure you felt the same way.
• 48:54
  Actually, we were on the phone when we both found out about
• 48:57
  this. So just absolute WI think L for
• 49:01
  everyone in the chat that was being a pessimist and a cynical
• 49:04
  nihilist. He came through.
• 49:06
  He followed through on his promise.
• 49:09
  Let's see everyone in the chat start to move the goal posts a
• 49:12
  little more. But hey, he did it, guys.
• 49:14
  So this is AW for Bitcoin. I would say AW even for Trump.
• 49:17
  So Nico, what's your thoughts on this before we move on to the
• 49:20
  big, I think of another big news story.
• 49:23
  Yeah. So I have a couple of thoughts
• 49:25
  just because we as a media organization, we were a little
• 49:31
  bit, we got a lot of shit for just vocally coming out and
• 49:39
  supporting the orange man and Bitcoiners are inherently I
• 49:44
  would say we're inherently apolitical for a long time and
• 49:50
  so were we as as simply Bitcoin. But something happened last
• 49:55
  year, which was Operation Choke .2 Point O and the arrest of the
• 50:01
  Samurai wallet developers, the attack on self custody, the
• 50:05
  attack on the attack on the Bitcoin mining industry, but the
• 50:11
  proposed 30% mining tax. The this is Cynthia Lummus's
• 50:17
  words. We're going to be dropping that
• 50:18
  episode in about a week or two. The assassination of the
• 50:22
  Signature Bank because of its, because of it working with the
• 50:28
  Bitcoin and and crypto industry. So we were kind of forced to
• 50:33
  throw our hat in the rain as a community, as an industry, and
• 50:38
  become vocal and speak up and become political.
• 50:42
  And initially we got so much crap for it because people are
• 50:46
  like, hey, guys, I tuned into this because of Bitcoin and what
• 50:49
  are you talking about? And like, whatever.
• 50:51
  And I kept trying to make the case for you guys, like over the
• 50:54
  long term, I said, guys, elections have consequences.
• 50:57
  You might not care, you might think you're opting out, but if
• 51:03
  you opt out of the vote or whatever, essentially you're
• 51:08
  just allowing someone else that is voting to have power over
• 51:12
  you. Is it a perfect system?
• 51:15
  No. Could it it be improved?
• 51:17
  Absolutely. But I this is the separation of
• 51:20
  money in state and the separation of money in state's
• 51:23
  going to require courage. So I was very riled up last
• 51:27
  night. So I, I, I dropped some original
• 51:29
  thoughts on XI was going absolutely crazy.
• 51:32
  I'm going to go through some of them.
• 51:33
  So first thing I said, the reason so many people said,
• 51:35
  quote, voting doesn't matter is because it's easier to opt out
• 51:39
  of politics than to participate. Even if Trump didn't keep his
• 51:43
  promise, which he did, at least we gave it our best shot.
• 51:47
  Courage in the eyes of uncertainty is required to win.
• 51:52
  I followed up with, if Trump hadn't had won, if Trump didn't
• 51:57
  win, he would have been sent to jail for life.
• 52:00
  They would have kept attacking our industry, shut down X, and
• 52:04
  Ross would still be in prison. Do you understand yet?
• 52:09
  So yes, elections have consequences.
• 52:12
  We won this previous election. Is Trump perfect?
• 52:16
  No. Is everything that you know, all
• 52:19
  his policies perfect? No.
• 52:21
  Is it like, are we out of the woods yet?
• 52:24
  No. However, we are not only moving
• 52:28
  the Overton window, the acceptable window discourse, but
• 52:33
  we're getting one step closer to worldwide Bitcoin adoption.
• 52:38
  And unfortunately, in a two party system, you only got 2
• 52:43
  choices pro. And the choices were simple.
• 52:46
  You vote for a candidate that was not going to free Ross, was
• 52:49
  going to be very hostile towards the industry, continue a lot of
• 52:52
  the Biden administration policies or you had another
• 52:56
  candidate who was going to free Ross and was going to be very
• 53:00
  pro Bitcoin industry and put all the other, you know, political
• 53:07
  slogans and policies aside, 'cause this is a Bitcoin show
• 53:11
  after all, we're single issue voters here.
• 53:15
  It was a very clear choice, right?
• 53:17
  And I think yesterday, I hope was an example for anybody who's
• 53:22
  been watching the show for the last six months as to why we
• 53:26
  took the stance that we took And history was made On January
• 53:32
  21st, Ross Albrecht at 40 years old, was released from prison.
• 53:39
  And that absolutely gives me chills because he he, he, he
• 53:42
  represents, he's a martyr. He, he, he is a big part of this
• 53:46
  Bitcoin things, but specifically in the in the early days, you
• 53:49
  know, in the Silk Road days. So, yeah, I mean, absolutely
• 53:53
  historic. You know, kudos to Trump.
• 53:56
  Kudos to David Bailey as well. And, you know, I'm glad he kept
• 54:01
  that promise. Now I'm just looking for that
• 54:04
  repeal of SAPT 121, which I think is going to make the price
• 54:08
  RIP. I think that there's a very high
• 54:11
  probability. Gains.
• 54:12
  I think we had a no. There was a New York Times
• 54:15
  article talking about getting rid of income tax altogether as
• 54:18
  well. So I think that if an SBR gets
• 54:23
  implemented this year, there's a very high probability would hit
• 54:26
  half $1,000,000 per Bitcoin by the end of 2025.
• 54:29
  I'm sticking with that. Anyways, again, and I want to
• 54:33
  preface this because Mark is here and I have to behave from
• 54:37
  a, from a number go up perspective, all of this is
• 54:42
  really good news from the freedom of Ross.
• 54:44
  This is really good news. But remember guys, the
• 54:47
  revolution, the Bitcoin revolution is individuals
• 54:50
  reclaiming back their financial sovereignty via self custody,
• 54:55
  right? So there's going to be a lot of
• 54:57
  apps that are going to be developed.
• 54:59
  A lot of banks are probably going to start offering this
• 55:02
  within their apps, within their UIS for you to buy Bitcoin.
• 55:07
  But that ain't real Bitcoin unless it's in yourself, unless
• 55:10
  it's in your in your own custody and no one else has custody to
• 55:14
  it. So we're going to keep hammering
• 55:16
  that message home because it's going to become more and more
• 55:20
  convenient to buy and access Bitcoin.
• 55:23
  But I think to add to what Mark was saying, I I think it's going
• 55:27
  to be it's going to become less and less convenient to be able
• 55:32
  to withdraw that Bitcoin from custody from someone else
• 55:36
  custodying it for you. Anyways, Mark what?
• 55:39
  What's your take on the freedom of Ross?
• 55:42
  Well, a few things. First off, I just want to
• 55:44
  apologize. I am a man of my word and I say
• 55:46
  we should exit and build. And I don't know if you guys can
• 55:48
  hear, you know, there's someone, there's someone hammering the
• 55:51
  point home right over there building some stuff.
• 55:54
  So I apologize for the for the for the folks at home wondering
• 55:58
  why Nico's talking about hammering and then they hear
• 56:00
  hammers. You're not losing it.
• 56:03
  It's true that is happening. Well, First off, I mean, I think
• 56:06
  the freedom of Ross is, is, is one of the most, you know, as a
• 56:10
  man who gets accused of being a black pillar, I think the free
• 56:13
  the freedom of Ross is one of the most white Pilling, you
• 56:15
  know, things that, you know, I really had extreme doubts about
• 56:19
  it happening, not because of the Trump promise, but just of it
• 56:22
  ever happening. And, you know, when I was
• 56:24
  running the print magazine, you know, AB and Joe and I really,
• 56:28
  you know, and really it was, it was, it was AB and Joe that
• 56:31
  really pushed to make sure, you know, every single magazine.
• 56:35
  They never forgot to make sure to leave room for Ross that we
• 56:37
  always had a page, usually right in the beginning, right when you
• 56:40
  open up the front cover on the inside was a free Ross, you
• 56:44
  know, art piece and, and, and often work from Tommy at BM as
• 56:47
  well. And, you know, Lynn, you know,
• 56:49
  wrote us some emails just like thanking us for always keeping a
• 56:51
  space for him. And, you know, I, I, I really
• 56:53
  just kind of never thought that we would see it happen.
• 56:56
  And the fact that it did is, is so beautiful.
• 56:58
  He was such an important part of the financialization of Bitcoin
• 57:01
  and even more so just, you know, standing up for for free
• 57:05
  markets, not in this way of, Hey, I'm going to make a ton of
• 57:08
  money off of it, but because it's the right thing.
• 57:11
  And I think especially drugs, as someone who, you know, worked in
• 57:13
  service and had substance abuse issues and who Bitcoin played a
• 57:17
  big role in my, you know, sobriety.
• 57:19
  And coming out of that, I think actually the way that you
• 57:22
  mitigate harm is by having, you know, reputation based markets
• 57:26
  and, and having, you know, dealers that, you know, that you
• 57:28
  can trust because of, you know, market dynamics, because the way
• 57:34
  that it was working before, it was pretty much the CIA running
• 57:37
  drugs. And that's not so good.
• 57:40
  And we don't like that. So markets for the people is is
• 57:43
  a very powerful thing. Drugs can be used in horrible
• 57:45
  ways. They can also be used in very
• 57:47
  good ways. And also Silk Road wasn't just
• 57:50
  that, you know, it wasn't just drugs.
• 57:51
  That's what it gets talked about a lot, but it wasn't, it was
• 57:53
  really a free market. And that was the point of
• 57:55
  Bitcoin. That was this, you know, no
• 57:57
  trusted third party, you know, settlement network and Ross
• 58:02
  exemplified that as much as anyone.
• 58:04
  He was there on on board, you know, hosting Austrian economic
• 58:09
  read, read arounds and all these things.
• 58:12
  He really, he really walked the walk and unfortunately he had to
• 58:15
  do the time for that walk and him coming out.
• 58:18
  I mean, he looks really good. He looks really healthy.
• 58:22
  He looks really happy and he's getting out and, you know, I, I
• 58:26
  couldn't be happier for Lynn and for him.
• 58:29
  I'm also extremely happy for David Bailey and Angela McArdle.
• 58:32
  I'm very glad that Trump upheld his promise for them because
• 58:37
  obviously the libertarian movement gave a lot for, to
• 58:40
  Trump for really based on this one promise.
• 58:44
  And so to see him follow through, you know, is very white
• 58:48
  Pilling it, it, it's very great. I, I couldn't be happier.
• 58:52
  He deserves freedom. I hope he does what Julian did
• 58:55
  and I hope he just kind of fucks off and, and doesn't go do all
• 58:58
  these circuits and do the show and, and, and get and get
• 59:01
  trotted out. I, I really want him to go live
• 59:03
  his life and, you know, fall in love and do things and do have a
• 59:07
  family and just and, and, and hang out with his parents and
• 59:10
  with Lynn and, and, and he doesn't need to go do a billion
• 59:13
  podcast. I hope he knows that his freedom
• 59:14
  is his and, you know, he did enough for this 'cause
• 59:18
  obviously, you know, I'd love to hear him talk, but I hope he, I
• 59:21
  hope he does go live his life. And I think it's, I think it is
• 59:24
  really cool actually, that, you know, 'cause the way I look at
• 59:27
  basically what's going to come in this technocracy
• 59:29
  administration, I think is going to, was going to happen anyway.
• 59:33
  So I think in a way that you could, you could really say
• 59:36
  that, you know, this, this freedom of Ross was negotiated
• 59:40
  in a way where we didn't really have any leverage.
• 59:43
  Libertarian Party was never going to win.
• 59:47
  I don't think the voter base really mattered.
• 59:48
  I think Trump was going to win in a landslide.
• 59:51
  I mean, against Kamala, it wasn't even close.
• 59:54
  And so I think that the administration really didn't
• 59:56
  need to do that. And the fact that they did is
• 59:59
  like kind of nice. And the fact that these people
• 1:00:01
  put their neck outs there for Ross when I think they could
• 1:00:05
  have just done whatever they wanted to do is is is is kind of
• 1:00:08
  sweet. So I'm very happy about that.
• 1:00:10
  But in the same way that I wasn't like.
• 1:00:13
  Down on my knees for Joe Biden when Assange got out of jail.
• 1:00:15
  I'm not going to do the same thing for Trump.
• 1:00:17
  And, you know, the same day that he let Ross out, he's having
• 1:00:21
  Larry Ellison of Oracle, which, you know, literally started
• 1:00:24
  within the CIA as as a CIA cut out called Project Oracle on
• 1:00:27
  stage with Peter Thiel's protege, Sam Altman of Open AI,
• 1:00:32
  talking about investing with SoftBank and doing a $500
• 1:00:35
  billion AI generated mRNA vaccines for cancer alongside
• 1:00:41
  these huge data Centers for predictive health using AI.
• 1:00:45
  And I think that that's also very like concerning, right?
• 1:00:48
  So there's a lot of like the day.
• 1:00:49
  One thing is, is very interesting.
• 1:00:51
  I'm super glad that he, you know, held up his promise and,
• 1:00:55
  and, and let Ross go. I think it is so beautiful.
• 1:00:58
  But also I think we have a lot of things to be concerned about
• 1:01:00
  with Trump. And I do respect the vote in
• 1:01:04
  many ways of voting for Trump to free Ross as a single vote thing
• 1:01:08
  in the sense of, you know, hey, this is going to happen anyway.
• 1:01:11
  So let's at least try to, you know, do the right thing for
• 1:01:14
  Ross like I do. There's a part of me that does
• 1:01:16
  respect it. And then there's a part of me
• 1:01:18
  that's like so terrified of what's going to come by the
• 1:01:22
  second administration with all of this consent.
• 1:01:24
  Because I think we're the only really block the voting bloc
• 1:01:27
  that can meaningfully push back. You know, we have the resources.
• 1:01:31
  We we theoretically have the ethos, theoretically have the
• 1:01:34
  intelligence to be able to see what's coming and push back.
• 1:01:38
  And the pacification of this voting bloc concerns me a little
• 1:01:43
  bit. And I've been very vocal about
• 1:01:44
  this, about how I think the SBR is probably not a great idea and
• 1:01:48
  lobbying the US government is probably not a good idea.
• 1:01:52
  I would rather the US government wither away and every other
• 1:01:55
  government embrace Bitcoin, you know, because I think we're
• 1:01:59
  going to have to deal with a lot coming up here.
• 1:02:01
  Trump with this mandate. Look what he did the first term
• 1:02:04
  without a mandate, you know, unprecedented money printing,
• 1:02:08
  unprecedented erosion of liberty and freedom with the lockdowns
• 1:02:12
  and pushing pharmaceutical products.
• 1:02:14
  Now he has a mandate. He has full Congress.
• 1:02:17
  He is literally already, you know, running the country from a
• 1:02:22
  desk that he put up in a hockey arena to sign 80 executive
• 1:02:25
  orders or whatever. That's not really smaller
• 1:02:29
  government. Yes, it's one guy signing all
• 1:02:31
  those things, but it's a it's a grand encroachment of the
• 1:02:34
  executive branch upon the checks and balances that are supposed
• 1:02:38
  to be a part of our democracy. So we should be vigilant.
• 1:02:41
  Stay vigilant. Except the win.
• 1:02:44
  It's amazing. But also, you know, be be really
• 1:02:48
  concerned about some of the other things that we've seen
• 1:02:50
  happen already. And yeah, but Ross is an
• 1:02:54
  absolute hero. I think, I think what he built
• 1:02:57
  was Soak Rd. is, is a legendary Internet website, a legendary
• 1:03:03
  marketplace. He's a legendary person.
• 1:03:06
  He deserves to be free. And, you know, and I'm thankful
• 1:03:11
  that this person that I do not trust did the right thing and
• 1:03:15
  and upheld the promise that he made.
• 1:03:17
  So that's where I'm at on that. Absolutely.
• 1:03:20
  And let me ask you something, Mark.
• 1:03:22
  So a, a couple things also in the chat, 'cause people were
• 1:03:24
  asking so it, Ross got a, a full pardon initially it was a Trump
• 1:03:31
  promise a, a, a commuted sentence meaning like the
• 1:03:34
  conviction is upheld, but he is released.
• 1:03:37
  He got a full pardon, meaning that the kid, it's like as if
• 1:03:41
  the conviction, he gets a clean slate, the conviction is just
• 1:03:44
  taken away. So he essentially is like, he
• 1:03:48
  didn't commit that crime like in, in the, in the eyes of his
• 1:03:51
  records and all that. Give him his Bitcoin back.
• 1:03:54
  Yeah, right. Going back now I want to add to
• 1:03:57
  this before we get on to the culture mark.
• 1:03:59
  What do you think about doge? What do you not the not the shit
• 1:04:02
  coin, but not the not the altcoin, but like the have to be
• 1:04:06
  nice the. Department of Government
• 1:04:08
  efficiency. Not the altcoin, the department
• 1:04:11
  of of government efficiency. Isn't that the whole point of of
• 1:04:15
  of that whole thing when he's is doing with Elon is to actually
• 1:04:18
  shrink the size of the government?
• 1:04:21
  Well, that's certainly the dialectic that's been proposed
• 1:04:26
  to us. As you know, hey, this is the
• 1:04:27
  point of of doge is to shrink the size of the government.
• 1:04:31
  But in reality, it's not shrinking the power of the
• 1:04:35
  government. It's just literally firing a lot
• 1:04:37
  of people and reducing it and basically giving all of these
• 1:04:40
  contracts to the tech and AI buddies that are surrounding,
• 1:04:46
  you know, Vivac and Trump. Obviously.
• 1:04:48
  You know, there's been a lot of fun talk recently about how
• 1:04:51
  Vivac does. This whole H1B tweet says we're
• 1:04:54
  all watching too much Boy Meets World and too many sleepovers.
• 1:04:57
  And then he gets fired from Doge, right?
• 1:05:01
  And is now he has to be forced to run as the governor of Ohio.
• 1:05:05
  And just like, oh, he's so embarrassing.
• 1:05:07
  Well, sure that that dialectic makes sense if you're not really
• 1:05:11
  paying attention. In my mind, what's going on in
• 1:05:13
  Ohio is extremely interesting. That's actually where the
• 1:05:16
  majority of the tech manufacturing is being built up
• 1:05:19
  in the United States right now. So him saying that this is this
• 1:05:22
  demotion, especially after literally it getting demoted for
• 1:05:26
  talking about using the special visa program to import tech
• 1:05:30
  talent into the United States, now he gets to go be the
• 1:05:33
  governor of Ohio. Well, what's going on in Ohio?
• 1:05:36
  There's a $20 billion Intel chip manufacturing plant that's going
• 1:05:40
  in there. And Duriel just announced this
• 1:05:42
  humongous, you know, war manufacturing plant there.
• 1:05:46
  Google, Microsoft, Blackstone, Amazon, they all have data
• 1:05:50
  centers there. Ohio has become this really big
• 1:05:53
  important data tech center. And who's going to work at these
• 1:05:57
  places? The Endurio plant itself and its
• 1:05:59
  headlines were saying that it was creating 4000 jobs due to
• 1:06:02
  its creation. Well, interestingly enough,
• 1:06:06
  probably a lot of these jobs are going to be held by people that
• 1:06:09
  are are in the country using H1B visas because these visas give
• 1:06:13
  companies, you know, a lot of leverage over their employees.
• 1:06:17
  You can't stay in the country if you if you reenact on the
• 1:06:19
  contract, you know, there's a lot of price control.
• 1:06:22
  So it's kind of this really interesting dialectic where, you
• 1:06:25
  know, they're like, hey, he's this guy that's going to do doge
• 1:06:27
  and then he gets fired for being anti American and is forced to
• 1:06:31
  go, you know, you know, sit in the kids table in Ohio.
• 1:06:35
  Actually, Ohio is, is where it's all at.
• 1:06:37
  That's where it's all happening. So I don't think that giving the
• 1:06:42
  power of the government to an AI or really the handlers behind
• 1:06:46
  the AI is actually shrinking government.
• 1:06:49
  It's certainly getting rid of jobs, but the powers that be
• 1:06:53
  that are derived from these positions certainly aren't being
• 1:06:56
  shrunk because of efficiency and, and artificial intelligence
• 1:07:00
  or, or what have you. So I'm very skeptical of this
• 1:07:03
  stuff. You know, I I have a lot of
• 1:07:04
  issues with a lot of a lot of these players.
• 1:07:07
  So strive asset management, which is, you know, now about to
• 1:07:10
  get into the Bitcoin space is Vivex, you know, management
• 1:07:15
  firm. It was sponsored by Howard
• 1:07:16
  Lutnick, who's the incoming commerce secretary who works at
• 1:07:19
  Cantor Fitzgerald, one of the 24 primary dealers of the New York
• 1:07:22
  Fed and is a part time owner of tether.
• 1:07:25
  Cantor Fitzgerald holds all of Tether's T-bills.
• 1:07:28
  He was a funder Joe Lonsdale who is one of the Co founders of
• 1:07:31
  Palantir which is the Peter Thiel CIA cut out that basically
• 1:07:34
  privatized the anti fraud at PayPal under direction from John
• 1:07:39
  Poindexter of DARPA to basically privatize this program that was
• 1:07:43
  controversial because it was called Total Information
• 1:07:46
  Awareness. Tia It was sort of this post 911
• 1:07:51
  Patriot Act era where they were really just making the data
• 1:07:53
  Baron state that we know of. It was funded by Lonsdale,
• 1:07:57
  funded by Lutnick and and seeded by Peter Thiel.
• 1:08:00
  So Vivek has always kind of been this guy that's sort of been in
• 1:08:02
  this world. He's been invested in mRNA
• 1:08:05
  technology. And so I had a lot of kind of
• 1:08:08
  like, you know, a lot of alarms go off when I see a lot of those
• 1:08:11
  names, the teal verse people being involved with this.
• 1:08:14
  And now that I see that he's going to go basically run Ohio
• 1:08:17
  as all of this money in tech and stuff is going into Ohio.
• 1:08:21
  I think you kind of have to, you know, that's an interesting
• 1:08:23
  dialectic to look at specifically how it goes for
• 1:08:27
  Doge. You know, I think government is
• 1:08:30
  too big and government should be more efficient.
• 1:08:33
  I agree on that principle for sure.
• 1:08:36
  I'm not a I'm not a hypocrite. I do worry about the way that
• 1:08:39
  people will use AI as sort of this.
• 1:08:41
  Don't pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
• 1:08:45
  You know, I don't think, I think AI is a lot of grift and a lot
• 1:08:47
  less, you know, really there, you know, when it comes to
• 1:08:52
  really predictive really, you know, the high level computation
• 1:08:55
  stuff that's really applicable to the real world.
• 1:08:57
  I have a lot of doubts about it actually being there yet.
• 1:09:00
  But you can really use the dialect of AI and be like, hey,
• 1:09:03
  you know, we fired 4000 people and we're running this whole
• 1:09:07
  government department using the software or really who's running
• 1:09:10
  the software. It actually becomes a
• 1:09:12
  consolidation towards the technology and that to me is
• 1:09:16
  scary. It's smaller government in
• 1:09:17
  itself is not necessarily great. Dictators are very small
• 1:09:21
  governments. They're incredibly small
• 1:09:22
  governments. That doesn't mean it's
• 1:09:23
  necessarily good if they can send you to the gulag because
• 1:09:26
  you tweeted that, you know, hey, I think Elon gave a, a, a, a
• 1:09:32
  Roman salute or whatever, and then they send you to the gulag
• 1:09:34
  because you said that that's not good.
• 1:09:36
  Just because it's smaller government that's not great.
• 1:09:38
  A drone built at the Andurial plant comes and picks you up and
• 1:09:41
  sends you off to to jail and you get neural linked and then
• 1:09:44
  you're in some, you know, I don't want that.
• 1:09:47
  I don't want that stuff. So I think there's a lot to be
• 1:09:49
  said about the efficiencies that come downstream and we should
• 1:09:52
  just be weary of that. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:09:55
  I, I agree. I think it's, we have to stay
• 1:09:57
  vigilant, you know, and it is, it is the, it is the state.
• 1:10:01
  The state has a monopoly on violence.
• 1:10:03
  And you know, it's good to to stay vigilant and to question,
• 1:10:07
  right. But simultaneously, I think we
• 1:10:10
  can definitely celebrate the wins.
• 1:10:12
  This is politics after all. Politics is a, the definition is
• 1:10:17
  the organization of power. So like, obviously it's going to
• 1:10:21
  be messy and it's never perfect. You never get a full win and
• 1:10:26
  there is always concessions and all that stuff.
• 1:10:28
  But I would say that, yeah, Ross being freed, definitely a big
• 1:10:33
  win, but we we should definitely remain vigilant as as
• 1:10:39
  individuals anyways, guys, we. Are before we get to.
• 1:10:43
  That guys you're listening to Simply Bitcoin Live.
• 1:10:46
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• 1:11:12
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  bit block. Boom 2025 Anyways Opti I mean we
• 1:13:17
  got Mark Goodwin in the. House, he's actually.
• 1:13:20
  Hot fire on today's episode, yeah.
• 1:13:23
  And we, and we've got, we still got a lot to unpack.
• 1:13:26
  But I did ask you this question before the show, Mark and, and
• 1:13:29
  Nika's like, wait, wait, wait, wait.
• 1:13:30
  Let's, let's keep this for the show here cuz this is good
• 1:13:33
  sauce. So I just asked you a very
• 1:13:35
  simple considering you know, you've been called a black
• 1:13:39
  pillar a lot lately and you know, everyone's calling you a
• 1:13:42
  doomer. I asked you the question because
• 1:13:44
  I love the way that you think about stuff and keeping our
• 1:13:47
  heads on a swivel here on simply Bitcoin is just a simple like,
• 1:13:50
  what is your take on all the stuff going around Bitcoin right
• 1:13:54
  now? How are you feeling at large
• 1:13:55
  with the Bitcoin movement and maybe even with the Bitcoin
• 1:13:57
  network itself, because obviously there's a lot of stuff
• 1:14:00
  to be doomy about. But on the flip side, you know,
• 1:14:05
  we all know that Bitcoin is actually what we say it is.
• 1:14:08
  So Mark, the floor is yours. What is your general thinking
• 1:14:12
  and thoughts around Bitcoin at the moment?
• 1:14:15
  Yeah, totally. Well, thanks for the setup.
• 1:14:16
  Well, I just want to also just say just for the numerous stuff,
• 1:14:19
  it's like I'm the happiest I've ever met in my entire life.
• 1:14:23
  I'm very happy. Life is so beautiful.
• 1:14:25
  I have so much opportunity to get to go on shows like this
• 1:14:29
  with, with my boys and, and, and talk in a, in a environment
• 1:14:32
  where people aren't just going to be like, how dare you
• 1:14:34
  criticize or say anything, You know, it's negative about
• 1:14:37
  Bitcoin. It's like I love Bitcoin.
• 1:14:38
  Bitcoins changed my life. It's done so much for me.
• 1:14:42
  It's because of that that Bitcoin has changed my life so
• 1:14:45
  much that it has, it has pulled me out of addiction, that has
• 1:14:48
  pulled me out of, you know, crummy living situations.
• 1:14:51
  It's allowed me to say fuck you to moments where I, you know, I
• 1:14:55
  was maybe going to do something, you know, that wasn't within my
• 1:14:59
  ethos, you know, whether it was work or, or rejecting medical
• 1:15:03
  treatments or whatever. I got to say, you know, screw
• 1:15:06
  you and, and, and walk away because I had this, you know, I
• 1:15:10
  had savings that I was able to not be debased during a period
• 1:15:14
  of high inflation. And I worked really hard to, you
• 1:15:17
  know, I got into Bitcoin, this Bitcoin space as a writer
• 1:15:20
  because I was just trying to help my friends, you know, feel
• 1:15:24
  the same empowerment that I felt.
• 1:15:27
  And that's what I want to make sure Bitcoin retains, you know,
• 1:15:30
  Bitcoin as a number go up asset that sits.
• 1:15:34
  And Larry thinks coffers is not that interesting to me.
• 1:15:37
  It's just another stock. You might as well be buying
• 1:15:39
  MicroStrategy or something. I just don't care about that.
• 1:15:42
  It's not interesting, you know, they Bitcoin is interesting
• 1:15:46
  because I can verify with 100% fidelity, Fidelity back to
• 1:15:50
  Genesis, like every transaction that's ever occurred.
• 1:15:53
  And and I can know that I'm broadcasting transactions from
• 1:15:57
  my own node that, you know, can't be stopped by anybody,
• 1:16:02
  assuming they get into a block, right.
• 1:16:03
  So, you know, Bitcoin is is special, but it it can in in
• 1:16:10
  many ways become not that special.
• 1:16:13
  And when we allow it to be reduced to basically a ticker or
• 1:16:15
  AQ SAP on some broker, that's not that interesting to me.
• 1:16:20
  Bitcoin changed my life. I want it to be able to be life
• 1:16:22
  changing for anyone that wants to get in.
• 1:16:25
  I think it's our responsibility as Bitcoiners to leave Bitcoin
• 1:16:28
  as permissionless as it was when we found it.
• 1:16:31
  And we are, unfortunately, I think going down this path where
• 1:16:34
  we're sort of being encouraged and being sort of bought out in
• 1:16:39
  this ethical way. The ethos of Bitcoin as a
• 1:16:42
  community sort of is starting to erode.
• 1:16:44
  I watched a lot of apology about Trump's Solano meme coins from
• 1:16:48
  supposedly hardcore toxic Bitcoiners being like, well,
• 1:16:52
  it's still better than Kamala. It's like, well, you would have
• 1:16:55
  eviscerated anybody else in the world doing this.
• 1:16:59
  But the fact that it's, it's, it's your daddy, Daddy Trump
• 1:17:02
  doing it, you're clapping like a fucking seal.
• 1:17:08
  Frankly, I think that's kind of embarrassing that we've allowed
• 1:17:11
  basically number go up and give us this amnesia of, of, you
• 1:17:16
  know, what a lot of the space kind of kind of stood for.
• 1:17:19
  And that was what was exciting to me.
• 1:17:20
  I really leaned into Bitcoin during the pandemic, during the
• 1:17:24
  lockdowns I was living in and one of the worst places for
• 1:17:28
  freedom during the pandemic in the world in the, in the Bay
• 1:17:30
  Area, in Northern California. And I was so it, it really broke
• 1:17:34
  my heart to watch these people that I thought really understood
• 1:17:37
  it, that really understood to fight for for freedom and
• 1:17:40
  goodness in the world who are on the left side of the spectrum.
• 1:17:44
  I was pretty apolitical by then, but we're on the left side of
• 1:17:47
  the spectrum, become these total totalitarian, borderline
• 1:17:51
  fascist, you know, not letting me go into buildings without a
• 1:17:55
  car that said I had a medical treatment or whatever.
• 1:17:58
  And it was just so appalling to me.
• 1:17:59
  I got kicked out of college and it just really sucked.
• 1:18:04
  And so I leaned into the Bitcoin space and I found a meet up that
• 1:18:08
  I could go to that I could still go out and be a member of
• 1:18:10
  society and be at a bar. It was very special to me.
• 1:18:13
  Those people were very important to me at a time when, you know,
• 1:18:16
  I lost the person I was dating. I lost a lot of my family.
• 1:18:19
  I lost a lot of friends. Not like 'cause they died, but
• 1:18:22
  just cause the fact that I didn't want to do this thing,
• 1:18:26
  you know, made me a person non grata.
• 1:18:27
  And now to sort of watch the same sort of slow erosion
• 1:18:31
  happened to the Bitcoin space. There's just so many of
• 1:18:36
  Bitcoiners now that are apologists, that are statists
• 1:18:40
  that are have forgotten to stand up and are on their knees, you
• 1:18:45
  know, thanking Daddy Trump for, you know, bringing us to 100K
• 1:18:50
  and all these things. And it's like, listen, Bitcoin
• 1:18:53
  was going to do this anyway. Bitcoin didn't need Daddy Trump
• 1:18:56
  to come in. Well.
• 1:19:03
  Did we seem seems like Mark, I've never seen a drop that
• 1:19:10
  there we go Mark continue your thought the guys this is this is
• 1:19:13
  a live show. After all this would make simply
• 1:19:15
  Bitcoin simply Bitcoin. Anyways, the last thing you were
• 1:19:18
  talking about was a lot of people, a lot of Bitcoiners, but
• 1:19:23
  looking at looking up at Trump because of 100K Bitcoin and then
• 1:19:28
  him taking credit for it. Right.
• 1:19:30
  And, and they're taking credit for it.
• 1:19:31
  They're looking up to him 'cause they're on their knees and
• 1:19:33
  they're looking up. And I think that the Trump
• 1:19:35
  didn't build this. He didn't make 100K.
• 1:19:37
  He'll take credit for it. And of course he said some
• 1:19:40
  things in 2016 through through 2020 with some, you know, OCC
• 1:19:45
  stuff and whatever, sure. But he didn't build this.
• 1:19:47
  It was, it was technologists and people that took the reins from
• 1:19:50
  Satoshi and, and, and built this, it, it was the people that
• 1:19:54
  like you and, and, and you know, people that run these shows and
• 1:19:58
  run meetups and run this community and create this people
• 1:20:01
  like Ross. You know, these were the people
• 1:20:02
  that that, that built Bitcoin and made it this wonderful
• 1:20:06
  thing. And now these people that are
• 1:20:09
  trying to trade credit for it are also pushing us towards.
• 1:20:13
  I mean, like people being like the president bought $47 million
• 1:20:17
  of Bitcoin. It's like, no, they're holding
• 1:20:19
  fucking tokens of Bitcoin on Justin Sons wrapped Bitcoin
• 1:20:23
  protocol. You know, the apologists are
• 1:20:27
  just, it's just crazy how much this and I'm not even like this
• 1:20:31
  super toxic maxi guy. I've never really been that like
• 1:20:34
  I don't I'm a free market guy. I'm a I'm a I'm a free banking
• 1:20:38
  guy. I don't really.
• 1:20:40
  Care. Mark, to be fair, to be fair,
• 1:20:42
  yeah, if Trump didn't win, Ross wouldn't be free.
• 1:20:45
  I get the 100K argument that that's a fair argument, but what
• 1:20:50
  about Ross's freedom? Well, if you know, Bitcoin's
• 1:20:53
  going to do what it's going to do, it's going to wither away
• 1:20:55
  the fucking government. And the government is no longer
• 1:20:57
  going to be able to support having people in jail.
• 1:21:01
  And we're going to all be able to go buy bulldozers with
• 1:21:04
  fucking steel plates on it and run into the fucking prisons and
• 1:21:08
  get our boys out of there. OK, this is this is all
• 1:21:13
  metaphorical. Actually, actually on this
• 1:21:16
  point, on this point though, Mark, we did get a good question
• 1:21:18
  in the chat earlier. So Chad Himley, good name, he
• 1:21:21
  goes the hey simply. Would you ask Mark to reconcile
• 1:21:25
  this bit, the Bitcoin ethos with the possible origins being the
• 1:21:29
  government's development? How is BTC what it appears to
• 1:21:32
  be? If it's meant to be Co opted?
• 1:21:34
  What would be your response to this?
• 1:21:36
  Well, yeah, it's a great question because I go back and
• 1:21:38
  forth. I think I'm like 55% sure that
• 1:21:42
  the US intelligence operatives created Bitcoin.
• 1:21:45
  Ultimately, I don't think it really matters.
• 1:21:47
  It matters where it's going. That's what really matters to me
• 1:21:51
  and where it's going. It's now becoming this, you
• 1:21:54
  know, this, this neutral internationally based asset that
• 1:21:57
  the US dollar system can can inflate into.
• 1:22:00
  There's a lot of surveillance aspects that are very terrible
• 1:22:02
  with Bitcoin. The thing that's really
• 1:22:03
  interesting about Bitcoin, right?
• 1:22:04
  I have a node right over there. I have every transaction that's
• 1:22:07
  ever occurred, as I just said, with complete fidelity back to
• 1:22:09
  genesis. But I can't do anything with
• 1:22:11
  that data. I can't triangulate and
• 1:22:13
  heuristically figure out, you know, who did a transaction and
• 1:22:16
  then blah, blah, blah. It's pretty much meaningless
• 1:22:18
  gobbledygook to me. It doesn't.
• 1:22:20
  It's just numbers. I don't know.
• 1:22:21
  But when you pair that up with an AI data center, you pair it
• 1:22:25
  up with the data caches that say a Palantir has or, or FBI or CIA
• 1:22:30
  or an NSA. All of a sudden you can
• 1:22:31
  triangulate pretty much every single transaction that's ever
• 1:22:34
  been made. If you use the, you know, IIP
• 1:22:37
  tracking and you basically look at at everything and you start
• 1:22:40
  to look at banking information. These these nation state capable
• 1:22:43
  entities have an asymmetric informational and an analytical
• 1:22:47
  advantage to us, the plebs to be able to dissect Bitcoin and be
• 1:22:52
  able to use it as a as a surveillance system.
• 1:22:54
  Bitcoin's an incredible surveillance system.
• 1:22:56
  Unfortunately, you know, that's just a reality.
• 1:22:58
  There are some ways we can scale and find privacy in other layers
• 1:23:02
  and coin join and all those things, sure, but the Internet
• 1:23:05
  isn't private. It's really not at all in any
• 1:23:09
  way. And it's very hard to do things
• 1:23:11
  private on the Internet. So, you know, you have someone
• 1:23:13
  like Peter Thiel, who is literally an FBI informant
• 1:23:16
  saying he's talking to people at the FBI that say they'd rather
• 1:23:19
  criminals use Bitcoin than $100 bill.
• 1:23:21
  They're phasing out cash. You know, cash is a really
• 1:23:24
  important thing because it is, it is a bearer instrument and
• 1:23:28
  it's not trackable. It doesn't make a, a, a, a data
• 1:23:31
  point in a Ledger. Bitcoin is a Ledger.
• 1:23:33
  That's all it is. So there's a lot of there's a
• 1:23:37
  lot of ways that Bitcoin can monetize like crazy and become
• 1:23:41
  this panopticon surveillance system that increases the
• 1:23:45
  economic reach of the greatest terrorist organization in the
• 1:23:48
  world, which is the US government over the global South
• 1:23:51
  and over the the economic hedgeman of the world.
• 1:23:53
  That's not good, right? That's not great, but it also
• 1:23:56
  empowers individuals like me and you and and my friends and my
• 1:23:59
  people to be able to fight back and build their own little
• 1:24:01
  communities. And we're going to see sort of a
• 1:24:04
  balkanization of things within a total globalization happening at
• 1:24:07
  the same time. And and and it's really up to us
• 1:24:10
  to live the life that, you know, we want that gets our
• 1:24:13
  responsibility. That's what's cool about
• 1:24:15
  Bitcoin. It's a responsibility to hold
• 1:24:17
  your own money, to hold your own, to uphold your network, to
• 1:24:20
  validate your own transactions. It's a huge responsibility.
• 1:24:24
  And it's a big responsibility to opt out of the the increasing
• 1:24:28
  encroaching, encroaching technocracy That's coming.
• 1:24:31
  It's here. It's not even really just
• 1:24:33
  coming. It's been here for a while.
• 1:24:36
  So to opt out of these digital ID systems as they're phasing
• 1:24:39
  out cash, you know, it's very difficult.
• 1:24:41
  We have to make these very extreme choices to be able to do
• 1:24:44
  that. But Bitcoin can allow you to do
• 1:24:46
  that, which is what is still great about it.
• 1:24:49
  So ultimately, I don't think it necessarily matters where it
• 1:24:52
  came from, although I think that there is a great argument that
• 1:24:55
  can be made as to why it did come from intelligence.
• 1:24:57
  It matters where it's going and you matter and you matter where
• 1:25:01
  you're going. So don't hold all your coin on
• 1:25:04
  some custodian. Don't post your your wallet
• 1:25:09
  balances. Don't tell people you're doing
• 1:25:11
  privacy things online. Don't, don't be stupid.
• 1:25:14
  Don't go to these conferences and, and go to these things and,
• 1:25:17
  and dox your kids and do this stuff like get the fuck out of
• 1:25:20
  here. Don't do that stuff.
• 1:25:21
  If you want to be free, you have to understand the scope of the
• 1:25:24
  surveillance state that we're dealing with and understand that
• 1:25:27
  we are going to be directly targeted because we are talking
• 1:25:30
  heads that talk about Bitcoin. So I have done what I've done
• 1:25:33
  non anonymously out here in the open.
• 1:25:36
  Learn from me, listen to what I'm saying, not because I know
• 1:25:39
  more than anything else, but just because I, you know, hey,
• 1:25:41
  no one else is saying this. We have more than enough
• 1:25:43
  propagandists and Bitcoin that are encouraging people to come
• 1:25:46
  into the space and take it seriously.
• 1:25:48
  And we need that. We need that, but we also need
• 1:25:51
  people that are in here that have been in the space for a
• 1:25:53
  long time to be like, hey, Bitcoin, it shouldn't ossify.
• 1:25:58
  We're not ready yet. Of course, we don't want to
• 1:26:00
  change monetary policy, but let's get more people on here.
• 1:26:03
  Not that many people own Bitcoin.
• 1:26:05
  It's ridiculous that people think that all these people own
• 1:26:08
  Bitcoin. It's it's not, it's a very, very
• 1:26:10
  small group of people that own any substantial amount of
• 1:26:12
  Bitcoin. So let's not lobby the largest
• 1:26:15
  like entity in the world with the world reserve currency money
• 1:26:18
  printer to, to, to hold a bunch of Bitcoin to try to prevent
• 1:26:23
  further debasement of their currency.
• 1:26:25
  Let's let's lobby them not to do that.
• 1:26:27
  We should be telling them that it's illegal for you to hold
• 1:26:29
  Bitcoin. the US government can hold Bitcoin.
• 1:26:32
  Maybe states can, but the federal can't.
• 1:26:34
  We should be pushing all this stuff towards things that
• 1:26:37
  actualize community and actualize circular economies.
• 1:26:40
  You know, we should be caring a lot more about legalizing the
• 1:26:44
  ability, the ability to transact, legalizing the ability
• 1:26:46
  to not, you know, to tax free, spend Bitcoin or send it to
• 1:26:51
  someone, get rid of these ridiculous capital gains taxes.
• 1:26:54
  Because the reality is, is they need tax receipts.
• 1:26:56
  They need people to capture, you know, humongous amounts of, of,
• 1:27:01
  of incoming tax receipts in order to service this ballooning
• 1:27:04
  debt, right? Our, our, our, our service
• 1:27:06
  payments for our debt are more than what we pay for the
• 1:27:08
  military. So how do they do that?
• 1:27:10
  They have to find a lot of ways to tax people and Bitcoin,
• 1:27:15
  unfortunately, because of the way it's built, is a very easy
• 1:27:17
  mechanism to to get taxes from. If you've gone through these KYC
• 1:27:22
  services and you want to play within the regulatory regime of
• 1:27:24
  the United States, it's very dangerous.
• 1:27:27
  Also, you can say fuck you and self custody and remember 12
• 1:27:30
  words in your head and go and go to another country.
• 1:27:33
  And if you're holding your Bitcoin in the right way, you
• 1:27:35
  can also avoid all of that stuff, right?
• 1:27:37
  So both things are true. Bitcoin is also freedom and also
• 1:27:41
  it's fucking a panopticon surveillance hellhole.
• 1:27:44
  Both of those things are true. Why can't we talk about that?
• 1:27:47
  Why can't we say that it empowers the individuals and
• 1:27:50
  empowers the state? Of course that's true.
• 1:27:52
  I'm not arguing that we should make anything at the protocol
• 1:27:56
  level push governments off. I'm never, I've never suggested
• 1:27:59
  that. I don't think we should fix the
• 1:28:00
  filters and filter Blackrock's I bit I shares portfolio off the
• 1:28:04
  network. I've never said that.
• 1:28:06
  That's not what I'm saying. Bitcoin is permissionless and
• 1:28:08
  the state has to be able to get in there.
• 1:28:10
  But why would we as Bitcoiners champion it?
• 1:28:13
  We should be saying get out of here.
• 1:28:15
  We know what you did last summer.
• 1:28:17
  We know what you did. We don't want you here.
• 1:28:20
  We don't want you playing in our system.
• 1:28:22
  It's OK if you want to, but you ain't going to centralized this
• 1:28:25
  shit. You ain't going to ossify this
• 1:28:26
  stuff. You ain't going to tell us we
• 1:28:28
  can't add privacy. You aren't going to tell us we
• 1:28:30
  can't add covenants and increase UTXO ownership and get channel
• 1:28:33
  batching. You're not going to you're not
• 1:28:35
  going to make the lightning network a a silver platter of
• 1:28:38
  financial data because you can surveil packets.
• 1:28:41
  We're not going to let you do that.
• 1:28:43
  We're going to create systems that that circumnavigate your
• 1:28:46
  nation state level control over the world.
• 1:28:48
  And we have to just keep our eye on the prize and know that
• 1:28:51
  that's an an equally possible path.
• 1:28:54
  And just because we're going to get rich from this doesn't mean
• 1:28:57
  that the world is going to be free from it.
• 1:28:59
  And we have to divide those notions.
• 1:29:00
  So when we see people stepping up and saying, Hey, Bitcoin went
• 1:29:05
  up to 100K, you're going to love Bitcoin at 150 K, it's because
• 1:29:09
  of me. When we see that stuff, it's
• 1:29:11
  like, well, I'm not here for that.
• 1:29:13
  I'm not here to get super rich. I'm here to exit and, and and
• 1:29:16
  getting rich is a part of that. But I don't care if that took 10
• 1:29:19
  years to break 100 Ki would have rather that happened so more
• 1:29:22
  people could get on the network. Yes, price drives interest.
• 1:29:26
  Yes, price drives the ability to exit and build, but if it's
• 1:29:31
  price at a, at a, at a centralization point and there's
• 1:29:35
  a chokehold happening, oh, it looks like my camera went out
• 1:29:38
  again. It's very hot down here.
• 1:29:40
  If there's a choke point happening, you know, I, I, I, I
• 1:29:43
  think we should be very just just, you know, it's, we have to
• 1:29:47
  be able to talk about this stuff and that, that's really my
• 1:29:49
  biggest issue with the Bitcoin space today is that we're not
• 1:29:52
  allowed to talk about this stuff and we have to be able to.
• 1:29:55
  Do it all right, well, hey, hey, Mark, almost fitting that your
• 1:29:58
  camera did shut off because we are going long and we just hit
• 1:30:02
  the hour 30 minute mark. So at at the, you know, interest
• 1:30:06
  of time here, let's just plug your site and guys, you know,
• 1:30:11
  Mark doesn't make too many appearances.
• 1:30:13
  He isn't a lot of podcasts, But if you really want to read up
• 1:30:15
  and catch up on what Mark's thinking, make sure you hit his
• 1:30:19
  his writing. He's got a lot of writings out
• 1:30:21
  there. Of course, if you're watching
• 1:30:22
  the show, you can see it on the bottom unlimited hangout.com and
• 1:30:26
  I put the specifically, you know, Mark Goodwin's writing
• 1:30:29
  there. So slash author, slash Mark dash
• 1:30:32
  Goodwin and go check out his stuff.
• 1:30:34
  I absolutely love Mark. I consider him a good friend.
• 1:30:37
  He you do get a lot of Flack right now for being, you know,
• 1:30:40
  the, the Mark Dumer, but I think it's very important to talk
• 1:30:43
  about this stuff. So Mark, thank you so much for
• 1:30:46
  coming on today. Audience, you know, bear with us
• 1:30:50
  with all the AV stuff going on. But hey, you guys got the
• 1:30:52
  signal. At least the audio went through
• 1:30:54
  the whole time. So, Mark, thank you so much for
• 1:30:56
  coming on today. Yeah, my absolute pleasure.
• 1:30:59
  I really, it's really, really special and important that you
• 1:31:02
  guys hold space for this kind of stuff and not in this liberal
• 1:31:05
  walkway, but like literally you're holding space for dissing
• 1:31:08
  and stuff because we need it. We need it.
• 1:31:10
  And it doesn't mean that we don't need the propagandists
• 1:31:12
  because it's important too. We need to drag people into this
• 1:31:14
  system. We need to do it.
• 1:31:16
  And and I mean that with all the love, it's true, we do.
• 1:31:19
  We need both. So I really appreciate the
• 1:31:22
  opportunity. You can check me out on Twitter.
• 1:31:24
  Mark Goodwin good W under score IN I'm writing for unlimited
• 1:31:28
  hangout right now. I worked for a long time at
• 1:31:31
  Bitcoin magazine. Check them out too.
• 1:31:33
  Thanks boys so much for having me.
• 1:31:34
  I appreciate it. Yeah, it was a lot of fun.
• 1:31:37
  I apologize for the the camera issues, but you know.
• 1:31:40
  All happens, hey, hang out behind the scenes and we'll wrap
• 1:31:43
  up the show. Give us 30 seconds or a minute.
• 1:31:46
  Absolutely, guys, you're you listen to simply Bitcoin live
• 1:31:49
  for January 22nd, 2025. If you guys enjoyed the show,
• 1:31:53
  you know what to do smash that like button.
• 1:31:55
  Consider subscribing if you feel like we provided you value.
• 1:31:59
  I'm your Co host today, Nico, my legendary host, Optimus Fields
• 1:32:03
  in the captain chair and of course, our special guest for
• 1:32:07
  today, Mark Goodwin in the house.
• 1:32:09
  Guys, we love you all. We'll see you on a brand new
• 1:32:12
  episode of Simply Bitcoin Live tomorrow.
• 1:32:17
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• 1:32:20
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• 1:32:23
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