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Bradley Rettler | Resistance Money | Simply Bitcoin IRL · Simply Bitcoin

0:00
Yeah, welcome to another episode of Simply Bitcoin Idol.
0:03
Today we have a very, very special guest.
0:06
We have Bradley Rettler. He is the director of the
0:11
Bitcoin Research. He's the director of the Bitcoin
0:13
Research Institute and a philosophy professor at the
0:17
University of Wyoming. Incredibly excited for this
0:20
conversation. But before we jump into it, I do
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started. All right everybody, I do want
1:24
to bring a guest for today. Brad, how you doing?
1:27
Thank you so much for joining us.
1:30
I'm doing well, thanks for having me.
1:33
Appreciate it, man. So dude, I'm excited for this
1:36
conversation. So much to get to.
1:40
So hold on a second. So you are the director of the
1:45
Bitcoin Research Institute. I didn't even know that existed.
1:48
What is that? It it has existed for less than
1:51
a month, so you're forgiven for not knowing that we announced it
1:55
at the the Bitcoin conference in Nashville.
1:58
And it is, yeah, an academic unit within the University of
2:04
Wyoming and the College of Arts and Sciences that exists to
2:08
produce peer reviewed academic research on Bitcoin.
2:13
And how's that doing? Cuz I feel like just please
2:16
correct me if I'm wrong here. I feel like all the peer
2:19
reviewed people are like bitcoins boiling the oceans.
2:23
Yeah, that's a problem. So in writing the book that
2:27
Andrew Bailey and Craig Warmke and I wrote, we had to read a
2:32
lot of the academic papers on Bitcoin.
2:35
And some of them are very good and some of them are very, very
2:37
bad. And the ones that were the worst
2:40
were the ones that made the most dire predictions about
2:44
specifically things like Bitcoins effect on climate
2:47
change. And when you read them and dig
2:49
into the details, you find faulty assumptions everywhere,
2:52
misunderstandings, simple failures that should have been
2:57
corrected. These weren't, you know, areas
3:00
where an argument went wrong or there was just a slight mess.
3:03
But things like not knowing about difficulty adjustments or
3:07
not knowing about block sizes or not knowing about layer twos.
3:12
And we just see these mistakes being made over and over again.
3:16
Things where any bitcoiner who you know, didn't even have to go
3:20
to college would read this paper and recognize, oh, they think
3:25
this can happen, but bitcoins design guards against this ever
3:29
happening. And so the more we encounter
3:31
that, the more we were just thinking we need some sort of
3:37
way to help these people write better papers.
3:40
And so this is the idea that we came up with and hopefully it
3:44
can help correct some of this misinformation by we, we think
3:49
actors who are trying to get it right, but just are making
3:52
mistakes. So, and, and like, I'm a little
3:56
bit jaded when it comes to this stuff because we have, you know,
3:59
of course we have our interview series, but we also have like a
4:03
Daily Show and we cover the news a lot.
4:06
And from my perspective, I believe a lot of the actors that
4:11
are writing these papers are not acting in good faith in my
4:15
opinion, because here we are in the year 2024, right?
4:19
This isn't, you know, 2015, 2014 Bitcoin is tried and tested and
4:26
you still have these narratives. Like, you know, Bitcoin is bad
4:30
for the environment. Like, I mean, in Norway
4:32
recently, they literally like, which is nonsensical.
4:37
They, they banned Bitcoin mining.
4:39
The vast majority of Bitcoin mining is happening in the north
4:42
of Norway, where, you know, it's it's isolated energy pockets.
4:47
You can't mine Bitcoin where like you can't just set up a
4:51
Bitcoin mine in the middle of Manhattan, Right?
4:53
And one of the arguments that you always hear from
4:55
politicians, which site, you know, these papers is Bitcoin
5:00
uses too much energy and it's actually making energy prices go
5:02
up. That's nonsensical.
5:04
Like that is literally a stupid argument.
5:07
And I remember some of the research that was coming out of
5:12
the White House was citing a lot of these, you know, papers.
5:16
And I'm sure you're, you know, exactly which papers they were
5:18
citing. And it was, it was, it was, in
5:22
my opinion, it was on purpose. Like they were purposely citing
5:26
papers that they know, that they know are incorrect.
5:30
Like the Coin Center and the Bitcoin Policy Institute have
5:35
put in a tremendous amount of work to trying to educate.
5:39
You know, a lot of these politicians, I just don't
5:42
believe they're sincere. And, and the the reason that I
5:45
believe they're not sincere is, you know, depending on where you
5:49
stand on this situation. But it's like they just want CBD
5:54
CS, like they want to retain that privilege of being able to
5:57
create money for free that everyone has to work for that
6:00
monopoly on money. So, you know, I'm sure you've
6:05
discovered a lot of skeletons in the closet, Brad.
6:10
Am I wrong in assuming that? Well, there, so there's a lot
6:14
going on there. First thing is there is a
6:18
pipeline from academic research to politicians, policymakers,
6:24
bureaucrats, etcetera. And the the pipeline often goes
6:28
through journalism. So it might be that the reason
6:31
that politicians are citing the academic papers that they're
6:34
citing is because that's what journalists are relying on.
6:37
So one of the one of the goals of the, I mean, I think, I think
6:40
you've got the diagnosis exactly right.
6:42
One of the goals of the Bitcoin Research Institute is to provide
6:47
better academic research that can be relied on both by people
6:52
who are trying to combat the the narratives of the current White
6:57
House and also by people who are, yeah, trying to figure out
7:05
the correct answer. So you might think that a lot of
7:10
the politicians are coming up with what they believe and then
7:14
looking to confirm what they believe by selectively citing
7:18
research. Or you might think they're just
7:20
looking at what gets cited. And it just so happens that a
7:24
lot of the academic papers on Bitcoin are incorrect about some
7:28
of these things. So that leads to the second
7:32
problem, which is I think you're right that some of the academic
7:36
research on Bitcoin is by motivated actors who are being
7:40
disingenuous. I would specifically single out
7:43
here Alex Devries from the Dutch Central Bank.
7:48
His research is often. Wait, wait, wait.
7:53
Are you saying that someone who's associated with the
7:56
central bank would, you know, misrepresent research?
8:00
Are you claiming that? Shocking, right?
8:05
So so he has. There are two persistent issues
8:09
that come up in his reporting. One of them is just a lack of
8:13
understanding of the physical characteristics of Bitcoin
8:16
miners, assuming that they operate only for so long and
8:20
then have to get thrown away. So he has a lot of papers on
8:22
Bitcoin e-waste that, you know, turn out to be encoding false
8:27
assumptions about how long miners can continue to remain
8:30
profitable. And then the second problem,
8:32
which is I think even more well known is, is this statistic
8:36
about how how many, how much energy per transaction Bitcoin
8:46
uses? So he takes the amount of energy
8:49
that miners use for a given block and then divides by the
8:52
number of transactions in the block and then says this is the
8:55
per transaction cost. So every Bitcoin transaction
8:59
costs as much as one household uses in a month or something.
9:04
And he's been pressed on this point by a number of people and
9:08
has admitted that this is a terrible way for two reasons.
9:11
One, the block takes as much energy as it takes, regardless
9:17
of how many transactions are in the block.
9:20
So transactions have no effect on miners, competition for black
9:26
space, and minor energy use. And the second thing is that
9:29
Bitcoin doesn't have to use any energy at all beyond one laptop
9:34
computer running mining software.
9:37
Everything beyond that is used by choice because miners find it
9:42
worth doing, and the reason is because it it's economically
9:47
incentivized. They get black rewards and
9:50
people have decided that Bitcoin is worth a certain amount of
9:53
purchasing power. So this per transaction metric
9:59
is a ridiculous one. Devries has admitted this, but
10:02
continues to publish this. And it's since it's so short and
10:05
sweet and, and surprising, it makes for a great sound bite.
10:10
And it it's one of those sort of like ear worms that you hear it
10:14
and you're like, Oh yeah, this is something that I can
10:16
remember. It's something I can cite.
10:18
And if you don't like Bitcoin, it's something that you can
10:20
continually bring up. It takes almost no effort to
10:24
say, but it takes a whole lot of effort to debunk.
10:28
And it's that classic Internet rule that misinformation or
10:32
bullshit takes a few seconds to create and much, much longer to
10:37
correct. So go ahead.
10:41
No, go ahead. And so, yeah, and I agree with
10:44
that 100%. But how much like, again, it
10:48
feels like he's colluding with certain politicians that you
10:53
know, it, it's like, it's almost as if they're doing it on
10:57
purpose. And, and at this point, like I
11:00
feel very confident that they're doing it on purpose.
11:02
Like I, I was the first one, me and Opti, we gave them the
11:07
benefit of the doubt for over a year.
11:10
And you know, when so much information gets brought to
11:13
light and you choose to ignore that information, like the hit
11:18
piece from the New York Times comes to mind right where, you
11:22
know, the the picture that they took that was essentially
11:27
looking down on the the mining operation, You know, that sky
11:32
looked awfully dirty and dark. And it's like, wait a second,
11:35
like Bitcoin miners don't emit, you know, CO2 and black like
11:41
what it like. That's what I'm trying to tell
11:43
you. Like it.
11:43
It almost feels like, you know, like it's like we could present
11:48
them with the facts, but how interested are they in the
11:52
facts? Or is it so important to for us
11:56
to, despite their non interest in the truth, for us to continue
12:02
in our research and to continue writing, you know, the pieces
12:06
that you're writing so that you know, the people that are
12:09
interested in seeking the truth at least have that content or
12:14
that research available to them. I think that the facts are on
12:19
our side and so continual presentation of the facts will
12:25
sway people. Now, it's not going to sway
12:27
everyone, and I'm not thinking that the Bitcoin Research
12:31
Institute is going to solve the problem of politicians who are
12:35
against Bitcoin citing fallacious Bitcoin research.
12:40
What it might do is it might make for less fallacious Bitcoin
12:43
research because I think a lot of the academics really are
12:47
trying to tell the truth. They come up with models, they
12:51
run the models, they tweak assumptions and if you give them
12:56
a reason that the model that they're running with isn't
12:59
right, then they fix it. That's one of the hallmarks of
13:05
academic research is this this independence and willing to
13:08
follow the evidence where it goes.
13:10
And you know, we in writing Resistance Money, we ended up in
13:17
our research saying some harsher things about Bitcoin privacy
13:22
than we early on expected to say because as we worked the details
13:27
out, we realized that Bitcoin would benefit from being a lot
13:31
more private than it in fact is. So just like we're following the
13:36
evidence where it goes, we're hoping that that researchers are
13:39
wanting to do the same thing. We also think two things about
13:42
politicians. One is they want to follow the
13:46
evidence where it leads as well. They are incredibly busy and
13:50
they're not researching Bitcoin like we are.
13:52
They have 1000 things that they're supposed to be focused
13:55
on and they have Staffs. Now it could be that one staff
13:58
member in one office is assigned to 10 topics, one of them being
14:03
crypto, of which Bitcoin is a small part.
14:06
So how much energy and effort can they actually dedicated to
14:11
reading the Bitcoin research? Not too much, which is why
14:15
Bitcoin Policy Institute exists to translate the the academic
14:21
research to the politicians. Another thing that we think
14:25
about politicians is that they are representing people who own
14:28
Bitcoin and some surprising facts are coming out about just
14:33
how many Americans own Bitcoin and about their the political
14:38
makeup of those people. They are more liberal than
14:42
conservative and they are more young and they are more by per
14:48
capita people of color. And so it's becoming clear that
14:53
the picture that's painted of Bitcoin to these people by
14:57
people who hate Bitcoin is not an accurate picture.
15:00
This idea of the tech bro or even the crypto VC is not the
15:05
vast majority of people who use Bitcoin.
15:09
It's a young probably person living in a democratic area.
15:15
And so I think what we're seeing is that politicians are looking
15:21
for reasons to be in favor of Bitcoin because their
15:24
constituents are in favor of Bitcoin and there are good
15:27
reasons and those reasons need to to come to the fore.
15:31
So one of the things that I have been thinking in the last week
15:36
or so, right? I attended the the crypto for
15:38
Harris Town Hall and I spoke with one of the organizers
15:41
afterwards and I was like, man, the only mention of Bitcoin on
15:45
this call was Mark Cuban, who was, you know, denigrating the
15:49
Bitcoin Maxis as elites and then talking about him, one of the
15:53
common people who need crypto. But the voters are people who
16:00
own Bitcoin. They might say that they own
16:02
crypto more broadly, but the vast majority of what they own
16:05
is Bitcoin and they don't care about the entrepreneurial
16:11
climate for crypto companies or blockchain companies.
16:16
What they care about is am I going to be able to hold
16:18
Bitcoin? And a lot of them care not just
16:20
about am I going to be able to buy Bitcoin ETFs, but can I self
16:24
custody my own Bitcoin? And so I'm hoping that we hear a
16:28
lot more about self custody in the upcoming discussions and a
16:34
lot less about crypto venture capital and trying to make a a
16:39
space for digital assets and things like that.
16:42
You know, I think Bitcoin is resistance money.
16:45
I think it's really important that resistance money exists.
16:48
And so I'm interested in people understanding those aspects of
16:53
Bitcoin. 100% So let's pivot the, the conversation to the
16:59
book, right, which is Resistance money, a philosophical case for
17:03
Bitcoin. Could you just give like a quick
17:06
lowdown, like first of all, what inspired you to write that book?
17:10
What was the journey of writing that book?
17:13
And what's the general insist? Like what?
17:15
What is the? What is the goal of resistance
17:18
money? The inspiration for writing the
17:21
book was the desire to think more about Bitcoin and to do so
17:27
in in the way that we've been trained to think about things.
17:30
So there's certainly economic approaches to Bitcoin, legal
17:33
approaches. As trained philosophers, you
17:37
know, we're we're good at one thing, which is doing
17:39
philosophy. So Andrew and Craig and I had
17:44
been talking about Bitcoin for a while.
17:45
We'd written some papers and we thought it was worth trying to
17:49
do something like this. We wanted it to be accessible to
17:52
non academics, people who have not been trained.
17:58
And so I had in mind my my target audience was like my
18:01
parents who are in favor of me. They're willing to read a really
18:04
long book, but they don't know anything about Bitcoin other
18:08
than that it's like this computer money thing.
18:10
So we try to be also try not to bring in too much ideological
18:16
baggage, political, religious, even philosophical.
18:21
We try to start from as common a ground as we can and we
18:26
acknowledge that we have biases, right.
18:28
We've been using Bitcoin for a while.
18:30
We also point out that people who are against Bitcoin also
18:34
have biases, maybe reputational, maybe opportunity cost reasons.
18:40
They they heard about Bitcoin in 2011, they didn't get any.
18:44
And now they just have to be right that Bitcoin is worthless.
18:47
Otherwise they'll have missed out on life changing money.
18:50
So we thought the best way of figuring out how to evaluate
18:53
Bitcoin and get around these biases is to imagine that
18:57
tomorrow you could wake up as anyone in the world.
19:01
You know all the facts about all these 8 billion people and you
19:06
don't know which one of them you're going to be.
19:08
Would you want to wake up in a Bitcoin world or a non Bitcoin
19:12
world? And then we go through some
19:14
features of Bitcoin that bear on this decision like bitcoins,
19:17
privacy, censorship, resistance, inclusion, monetary policy,
19:23
security and things like that. And we think for the vast
19:26
majority of people, they are better off in a Bitcoin world
19:32
than a non Bitcoin world. They can, they can live a better
19:35
life if they have access to Bitcoin.
19:38
Some of those people need Bitcoin just to survive.
19:41
They're being pursued by authoritarian governments and
19:45
it's hard to use cash. They're they're trying, maybe
19:47
they're trying to leave the country that they were born in
19:50
and they know the cash is going to get confiscated at some
19:52
point. But they can memorize a seed
19:54
phrase and leave. Maybe they live in a country
19:56
with with extra high inflation and if they don't have access to
20:01
Bitcoin, they're not going to be able to afford to eat a month
20:03
from now. So the people that do benefit
20:06
from Bitcoin, a lot of them benefit a whole lot.
20:10
And the people that are harmed by Bitcoin by and large, aren't
20:14
harmed that much. And they're harmed, we think,
20:17
not by the existence of Bitcoin itself, but by some
20:20
externalities about Bitcoin, specifically mining.
20:24
That can be undone or fixed it. They're not inherent to Bitcoin.
20:31
They're just accidental facts about how Bitcoin works in in
20:36
the current system. So the book overall is an
20:40
argument that Bitcoin is good for the world, and it's trying
20:43
to help people get in this neutral, unbiased perspective in
20:47
order to be able to see that. Yeah, no, it's 100% true.
20:53
I I think if people knew the power of self custody, the power
20:59
of being able to write down or memorize if you're in a pickle,
21:02
to be quite frank, 12 words and then being able to bring all
21:07
your wealth with you, it would fundamentally change the world.
21:11
Now you would think that, you know, especially this is the
21:16
trend that I'm starting to see in the United States,
21:18
unfortunately, because I believe Bitcoin is for everyone and I
21:21
believe that it's a non partisan issue.
21:23
But the trend that I'm seeing in the United States is you're
21:27
seeing more of an accept. It's not a monolith to be
21:30
specific, but you it's you're seeing more of an acceptance
21:33
coming from the political right and then you're seeing like a
21:38
pushback from the political left.
21:42
And to me, it's a little bit confusing because the Bitcoin is
21:47
the most equitable, equal money the world has ever seen.
21:50
And it it and it helps the people that are most affected by
21:56
the ravages of inflation, which are the lower and middle
21:58
classes, the people that are saving and earning in Fiat.
22:03
Those are left wing progressive causes, right?
22:06
Helping the little guy, helping the guy who's disenfranchised,
22:10
helping, you know, the underprivileged people in
22:14
society. I'm very surprised that you're
22:18
seeing so much pushback from, you know, the left in the United
22:22
States and, you know, now it's official, right?
22:26
You know, before it was kind of in the dark a little bit, but
22:30
you had the Republican Party release their, their, you know,
22:35
their, their, their policy. And they said they protect the
22:39
right to self custody, protect the right to mine.
22:41
And then you see the Democratic Party release, you see the
22:47
Democratic Party release their policy.
22:53
No mention of any of these things.
22:55
Now they've walked it back a little bit because it's an
22:59
election year. But I would have been saying on
23:01
Twitter for the last three weeks, you know, when I see the
23:04
whole crypto for Harris and all that stuff, like it's like talk
23:08
is cheap, actions are expensive and we want actions now.
23:12
And one of the things that happened recently too, which I
23:15
found very interesting, was they held a town hall for the crypto
23:19
for Harris the same day the Fed and FDIC sued Customers Bank.
23:26
Customers Bank is one of the the last remaining Bitcoin slash
23:30
crypto friendly banks in the United States.
23:33
So it's like slapping you in the back, right?
23:36
And at the same sign saying, you know what, trust us bro.
23:39
We're gonna change our policy from what has happened over the
23:42
last 3 1/2 years. You have Chuck Schumer coming
23:46
out saying like, we're gonna pass these bills and all these
23:49
all this good talk. But it's like, you know, it
23:52
comes to a point where like, you know, Bitcoin is for the
23:56
disenfranchise, Like Bitcoin is resistance money, to use your
23:59
term, Like Bitcoin is for people that live in totalitarian
24:04
regimes. It allows them to, for the first
24:07
time in human history, like own private property in a way
24:11
without fear of confiscation. That to me is perplexing.
24:16
I don't understand. And the rabbit hole I've I've
24:20
come to recently is I just, I don't believe they actually
24:27
really meant those things. I just, I can't come to, I can't
24:31
come to a conclusion where it's like we've shown them the facts.
24:35
People like yourself have done incredible work trying to show
24:39
this and they're still hitting us with a metaphoric 2 by 4, you
24:44
know, like, and, and I've, and I've gone into, for example, a
24:47
space held by the Krasenstein twins, Dennis Porter and, and
24:55
the, the my friends over at the progressive case for Bitcoin and
24:59
they were making the case of let's support Kamala.
25:02
And I go in there and I said, guys, like, I get it.
25:05
You know, this is great. Bitcoin is bipartisan, but one
25:09
guy is telling me I'm going to protect the right to self
25:11
custody, I'm going to free Ross, I'm going to protect the mining
25:15
industry. And the other party is like not
25:19
saying those things. At what point do we say like,
25:23
you know what, like I get it, but you got to show us something
25:27
like you're in the executive branch right now.
25:30
You can free Ross if you want to, you know, So I don't know if
25:34
that's something that you've come across in your circles.
25:39
Yeah, that would be a baller move, by the way, freeing,
25:42
freeing Ross right now. It would.
25:43
It would. End the momentum.
25:45
It would it would literally take away the crypto Bitcoin momentum
25:51
off from the Trump camp. And if Kamala just said I'm
25:54
going to protect whatever, then all of a sudden that voter, it's
25:57
going to go half and half right? Because now it's going to go
26:00
down party lines. But now it's like it's become
26:03
partisan. And that's the last thing I want
26:06
to happen in the United States because it's like now Republican
26:08
candidate, OK, great for the industry.
26:10
Democratic candidate, bad for the like.
26:13
It shouldn't be like that in my opinion.
26:15
Yeah, I think you're exactly right.
26:16
So one, one of the interesting things is that Republicans are
26:21
saying this and doing this when they don't have control of the
26:24
executive branch. It will be interesting to see if
26:27
they were to win, whether they would follow through on
26:31
protecting the right to self custody Bitcoin because I am,
26:35
you know, in my opinion and what we argue in the book is that
26:38
Bitcoin is anti authoritarian money.
26:40
It's money that makes it harder for authoritarians to enact
26:45
their own agendas. And right now, Bitcoin would is
26:51
making it harder for the Biden administration to do the things
26:55
that they want to do with money. And if there were a second Trump
26:58
administration, it would make it harder for the Trump
27:01
administration to do what they want to do with money.
27:03
So it wouldn't surprise me to see Bitcoin support gather in
27:11
whichever party is out of power at the moment.
27:14
And then the second they gain power to go back on those
27:19
promises. Let's let's talk about that.
27:22
I don't mean to 'cause that that goes right into the name of your
27:25
book, which is resistance money, right?
27:28
So why is that? Why is it that it's like Bitcoin
27:32
is the money of enemies, Bitcoin is the money of the the party or
27:37
the power structure that isn't in power?
27:39
Like why is that the case? It's because Bitcoin lacks three
27:47
of the traditional roles that are done by public and private
27:55
actors in the the current monetary space.
27:58
So a lot of people know Bitcoin supply cap 21 million.
28:03
If you know one thing about Bitcoin and you're on Bitcoin
28:05
Twitter, it's probably that. But the broader point is not
28:09
that Bitcoin has a supply cap or that the supply cap is 21
28:12
million. The broader point is that
28:14
Bitcoin doesn't have any rulers. There's no person or group of
28:18
people that can change the monetary algorithm.
28:23
There will be a block reward roughly every 10 minutes of
28:27
3.125 Bitcoin for the next three years and 10 months, and then it
28:33
will be cut in half. The rules are well known and
28:36
nobody can mess with them. This is in stark contrast to
28:39
government backed currencies that are run by individuals or
28:43
boards or whatever. So Bitcoin resists monetary
28:46
authorities at the creation stage.
28:49
It also resists monetary authorities at the management
28:53
stage, right? If you have dollars, you
28:55
probably don't have physical cash under your mattress.
28:59
You have it in a bank and physical cash is printed by the
29:04
feds. They have bank accounts with
29:06
themselves. It's a whole messy picture, but
29:12
Bitcoin, you can hold yourself. You don't have to rely on
29:16
someone else managing it for you.
29:17
You can also transact peer-to-peer with it.
29:19
So you don't. It doesn't require mediators
29:21
like Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, things like that.
29:26
So at every point in the monetary flow, Bitcoin does away
29:33
with the traditional authorities, and that's what
29:37
makes it able to be resistance money is that you're not relying
29:41
on, indeed, you're disallowing mediators, managers, and makers
29:47
of money. But then if you're someone who
29:51
wants to use money making as a way of enacting an agenda, then
29:59
Bitcoin makes it harder to do that, right?
30:01
You obviously can't create Bitcoin, and the mere existence
30:04
of Bitcoin makes the thing that you're creating more difficult
30:08
to play around with because you play around with it too much.
30:11
The people are going to go over to Bitcoin instead.
30:13
So it disciplines central banks and it disciplines governments
30:17
in a way that the people who are in power in those governments
30:20
aren't going to like. 100 percent, 100%.
30:24
And, and, and then that leads me to the next question, which I'm
30:27
really interested about, which is kind of like the conversation
30:31
from the sovereign individual, which is, and honestly, like if
30:36
you spent enough time down the Bitcoin rabbit hole, you come to
30:39
this inevitable conclusion, which is the very organization
30:47
of society is going to radically change because the balance of
30:53
power from the state to the individual is going to move
30:57
dramatically, especially if a portion of the population starts
31:02
to take self custody of Bitcoin. And it, I don't think that's
31:06
compatible with the way that the current power structure is
31:11
organized where you have this giant nation state, this giant
31:16
federal government that is essentially like spun spending
31:20
money like a drunken sailor. They're they're talking stuff
31:23
about like a 25%. What like that's insane, right?
31:28
So it's like you tax income tax the tax the, so you, you tax the
31:34
income with that income, you decide to invest in something.
31:38
If you make a gain on that investment, they tax you again.
31:42
And then they're also taxing you, you're also taxing your
31:45
money via currency debasement, right?
31:47
That's a very kind of inefficient system specific
31:51
especially because of what we get in return.
31:53
Like what do we get in return for all these things?
31:56
And now they're talking about instituting a, an unrealized
32:01
gains tax, which is essentially a wealth tax.
32:04
That's insane. I think Bitcoin is going to
32:08
radically change that system because in a way it defunds it a
32:13
little bit. Like the way that the reason
32:16
that they're able to get away with a lot of this is, you know,
32:19
they have essentially deputized the custodians of people's
32:24
money, which are the banks, right?
32:26
The, the, you know, the, the custodians of, of if you're, if
32:30
you own equities and stuff, it's like not you don't actually own
32:33
the paper of the equity. You could, but that's not what
32:36
most people do. They have it on the Robin Hood
32:37
account. So I think that they've planned
32:41
the whole regulatory system around always having the
32:45
assumption that there was going to be a handful of custodians
32:49
that they can Co-op and deputize to act on the behalf of the
32:52
government. Now that you have the
32:55
individual, the individual has the capacity to store, like you
32:59
said, vast sums of wealth in their mind.
33:02
If they're in a pickle and you will memorize 12 words.
33:05
If you're in a pickle and your family depends on it, you will
33:08
do that right? Again, how is that enforceable?
33:11
Like how you going to enforce the current system with
33:16
something like Bitcoin? And I truly believe that's where
33:19
a lot of the pushback comes from is that perhaps some politicians
33:23
see that, especially the central bankers, they see that and
33:25
they're like, party's over. I kind of see like, like the
33:30
more people find out about this, like words, how are we going to
33:33
explain that money needs to lose purchasing power in order to
33:36
function? How do we explain that away, you
33:39
know? Yeah, I think that the existence
33:45
of so I differ with a lot of Bitcoiners on this.
33:48
I think or at least a lot of loud Bitcoiners who are vocal on
33:51
Twitter that I think governments are good.
33:54
I think that they solve a lot of problems that are really
33:59
difficult to solve without them. Certain kinds of collective
34:03
action problems where it only makes sense to do something if a
34:07
sufficiently large group of people do it, but there's
34:10
penalties if you try and other people aren't doing it.
34:14
And they also solve certain kinds of tragedies of the
34:17
Commons, right? So if you have like a big open
34:19
field where anyone can graze, the best thing overall is for
34:24
everyone to just graze their animals a little bit, let the
34:28
vegetation come back. But the best thing for each
34:31
individual is to like take it all.
34:34
So when you come up against situations like this, ideally,
34:38
in the best scenarios, governments are supposed to
34:42
solve these problems. It's the reason why healthcare
34:45
works better, I think, with governments than it does on
34:48
Gofundmes where no individual is incentivized to pay for someone
34:52
else's cancer treatments. And we might have to, but but we
34:58
want our own cancer treatments to be paid for if we end up
35:00
getting cancer. So we buy into the system where
35:03
eventually we'll get taken care of, but for now, we take care of
35:07
others. So all that to say, governments
35:12
can do good things. Now, one of the problems with
35:14
currency creation and distribution and stuff is that
35:18
there's not really the kinds of checks and balances that you
35:20
might want to make sure that the the government is doing all and
35:24
only good things. And so when you hear things
35:27
about Bitcoin defunding wars, right, you can't just print as
35:30
much money as you need and then go fight a war.
35:33
Bitcoin will make it harder to to fund wars.
35:36
That seems pretty good to me. And I think that if you had
35:40
these kinds of checks and balances, a lot of people would
35:44
not vote for a lot of the international actions that their
35:51
governments have taken in the last bunch of years.
35:54
So in one sense, Bitcoin makes it harder to collect taxes to do
36:00
that it it certainly makes it harder to print money and then
36:03
do it if if the money isn't worth as much because of the
36:07
existence of Bitcoin. But does it make it harder to
36:11
track people's wealth so that you can assess taxes for them?
36:18
Yes and no. I guess a government that's
36:20
determined enough that has enough blockchain analytics
36:23
going on and a people that aren't sufficiently skilled at
36:28
coin joining and using lightning and things like that, it's not
36:31
going to be that hard. And at sufficiently high amounts
36:35
where the government is incentivized to do that, they're
36:40
going to be able to do that. I think this is one of the
36:42
reasons for more privacy within Bitcoin.
36:47
And you might think, well, we want the government to be able
36:49
to do that. I mean, you might not think
36:52
that, but people listening might think we want the government to
36:54
be able to assess taxes because it's important.
36:58
You might think that of your government, but it's not.
37:00
It's not too hard to think of a government that could use that
37:03
to harm people. And I guess the basic principle
37:06
behind the book and resistance money is that even if you like
37:11
the authorities in your monetary networks, even if you love the
37:16
US central bank and you have a nice time with Visa and PayPal,
37:21
it's not too hard to imagine how that might change with new
37:25
political administration, new corporations in charge.
37:29
And it's also not too hard to put yourself in the shoes of
37:33
people who live in other countries.
37:35
Do you think the same things of the Chinese government, the
37:38
Russian government, the North Korean government, the British
37:40
government, the Argentine, I mean every government.
37:45
It should be the case that that people have access to something
37:49
that their government can't take from them.
37:51
Because not all governments are perfect.
37:53
In fact, no, no governments are perfect.
37:55
Not all governments are even good.
37:58
Yeah, and, and, and just to be specific, right, Like you don't
38:02
want to come off as you thinking that I'm some type of anarchist
38:05
or something. I think that society definitely
38:08
needs the state. It definitely needs a
38:10
government, but I think that the ability for them to just print
38:16
money out of thin air has fundamentally corrupted the
38:20
system. You mentioned checks and
38:22
balances. And I agree with the other
38:24
statements, by the way, where there are functions of
38:27
government that that are necessary.
38:31
The healthcare thing is, is, is incredibly, it's, it's a tragic
38:36
situation because it's like you don't especially when you get
38:40
older or something, like I don't think it's acceptable for
38:44
someone to die of a disease that is curable because they can't
38:48
pay for it. That is, you know, like that's,
38:51
that's something that is. And again, you could take that
38:57
like libertarian stances, like no, no, no, but that's where the
39:00
humanity comes in and it's like, no, that's a human being, right?
39:03
So, and it's a very kind of difficult like conversation, but
39:08
what I will say is I think that the way that it's currently the
39:13
like the government is currently structured where there's cities
39:18
falling apart in the United States, not to mention the
39:21
healthcare issue and they've spent trillions of dollars
39:24
funding foreign wars like death essentially.
39:29
So it's like the priorities are all misaligned 1,000,000% That
39:35
money printer isn't being used to, you know, save lives here in
39:41
the in the United States or make cities better.
39:44
It's almost like it's being, it's not almost like it's being
39:47
used to line the pockets of politicians.
39:50
Some of them have over $100 million net worth of a
39:54
government salary. Like that doesn't happen
39:57
naturally. So yeah, like, I definitely see
40:01
your point. I 100% agree.
40:04
But at the same time, like, it's you can't make a good argument
40:09
that the government's unique ability to create money for free
40:13
has corrupted the system to the core and that the separation of
40:17
money and state would be a good thing.
40:20
And I don't know how you feel about El Salvador, but one of
40:23
the things that I've noticed is I don't think it's a coincidence
40:25
that the first country that made Bitcoin legal tender, all of a
40:29
sudden that that president is one of the most popular
40:32
president in the Americas. And the crime rate has been
40:35
significantly lowered. Like I, I, I don't think that's
40:38
a coincidence. So it's like, I think government
40:41
is good, but I think that there needs to be a check on
40:44
government. And I think that the spending
40:47
that they're doing right now is completely being misallocated
40:52
and it's not helping the general populace.
40:54
I think it's helping like a, an elite group of people while
40:59
everyone is else, everyone else is getting poorer.
41:01
It would it be safe to say that? It certainly seems to to be the
41:07
case. Wealth inequality is growing and
41:12
the national debt is climbing, the deficit is climbing.
41:17
So I'm not this is where an economist would be great to to
41:22
sort of give the potential causal link between these two
41:26
things. But as a matter of fact, that
41:30
seems to be what's happening. And so one of the things that
41:33
might be possible is to discipline the spending by right
41:38
now there's, there's essentially no limit to what the government
41:42
can pay for because they can create the money to pay for it.
41:46
And in some cases, this is a good thing in, in my opinion, I
41:53
was in favor of stimulus checks during COVID.
41:58
I had a lot of people here in town who couldn't pay rent and
42:01
relied on that money to be able to pay their rent because they
42:04
couldn't work at servers or bartenders or whatever.
42:07
People weren't going out as much, etcetera.
42:09
So that that comes with the cost and the cost is inflation.
42:13
And sometimes it's good to pay that cost.
42:16
A lot of times it's not good to pay that cost.
42:19
And certainly it's been the case that it not all of the national
42:25
debt has been racked up in service of things that have been
42:29
wise choices for adding to the money supply.
42:34
And then it's, as I said, it always comes at the cost of
42:37
inflation. Anytime there's more money and
42:39
there's not a corresponding rise in in the real economy and goods
42:42
and services, then you get inflation.
42:45
So it hasn't been tried for a while to to discipline this kind
42:52
of spending. Can you though, can you like is,
42:54
is that possible, Brad? Because the way that I see it as
42:57
a Bitcoiner is, you know, absolute power corrupts
43:00
absolutely if you have the power of the money printer.
43:03
I don't think as a bitcoiner, I, I just, I don't think anyone
43:07
should have that God like power because it is essentially a God
43:10
like power. Like, essentially the rest of us
43:14
have to spend time and energy working for money.
43:18
And then, you know, a bureaucratic elite in DC
43:21
essentially can just create that money out of thin air.
43:23
And that's in stark contrast to how Bitcoin works.
43:26
Like every like, if you want to make more Bitcoin, you got to
43:28
buy it, buy it, earn it or mine it like everyone else.
43:32
It's a more equal system. So I don't know what you think
43:36
of that. Yeah, I mean you, you, you have
43:40
to mine it. So there have to be miners going
43:43
in order for more Bitcoin to exist, but they don't have to be
43:48
working particularly hard. They they do it in the current
43:52
system because of how Bitcoin is valued and what the competition
43:55
is. But as I pointed out in the the
43:58
problems with some of the academic research as they assume
44:01
that mining has to grow at a certain rate and they assume
44:06
that a certain amount of energy has to be expended in order to
44:08
mine Bitcoin. And really the the number is
44:10
almost zero. That's required.
44:13
So another interesting thing is like people who are the the
44:19
bureaucrats who are pushing the money printer aren't printing
44:23
the money to their own accounts. They're printing the money to
44:29
then pay for things which are ostensibly supposed to then
44:32
create more goods and services of the real economy, which then
44:36
offset the fact that there is more money going around.
44:40
So in a perfect world, money is printed in a way that adds to
44:46
the things in the world that are worth money at the same rate,
44:51
and you don't get inflation. So when that doesn't happen,
44:55
when you do get inflation is when the new money has been
44:59
misallocated. And this is a way of thinking
45:02
about the success of the money printer is has it led to
45:07
inflation? If it has, then it's been
45:09
misallocated. And given how inflation has
45:13
happened, it seems pretty clear that it's been misallocated.
45:18
So I don't know if any economists are listening to this
45:20
and I have this totally wrong, but I'm I'm doing some epistemic
45:23
trespassing here in areas that I'm not trained in.
45:26
But it seems like based on what I know of money creation and how
45:31
inflation works, I think what I've said is right.
45:34
Yeah, it, it, it just, I'm just going down the rabbit hole.
45:37
My curiosity. I'm, I'm, I'm just enjoying this
45:39
conversation because these are just really important topics and
45:42
issues in regards to, you know what, what Bitcoin changes the
45:47
game, to say the least. Anyways, I do want to pivot the
45:50
conversation a little bit. So what's it like, you know,
45:54
being like a a Bitcoin academic? It's weird in academia
46:05
especially. Why is it weird?
46:07
Well, for a couple of reasons. One is you go to school in
46:11
philosophy and then you go to grad school in philosophy.
46:13
And there's this like agreed upon set of topics that you can
46:17
work on depending on what area of philosophy you're interested
46:21
in. My area was metaphysics.
46:23
So you can, you can think about space or time or material
46:28
objects or properties or whatever, but you don't think
46:32
really about Bitcoin, certainly even money there.
46:37
There's not too much going on in metaphysics of money.
46:40
Now that's been changing in the last maybe five years or so as
46:45
people have been getting more interested in doing metaphysics
46:48
about social reality, things that are human constructed and
46:52
human dependent, race, gender, money, etcetera.
46:58
But the other reason it's weird is that Bitcoin is something you
47:02
can buy and sell and exchange for things.
47:07
And so academics are are perceived to be and demand that
47:11
each other be sort of above those things.
47:15
We don't get paid much money at all.
47:17
We're supposed to have forsaken the life of making money in
47:20
order to pursue the life of knowledge.
47:23
And philosophers are, you know, among the most caring about
47:28
knowledge. So when you're doing philosophy
47:32
about an asset, about something that is worth money, there's, I
47:38
think quite rightly and naturally, this question of
47:42
conflict of interest or a disclosure or however you might
47:45
want to put it. It's like, OK, you wrote this
47:47
book on Bitcoin, but is that 'cause you own Bitcoin?
47:50
Is that 'cause you're hoping this will make the price of
47:52
Bitcoin go up and it'll make you wealthier?
47:56
And so, you know, we have to disclose obviously that we use
47:59
Bitcoin and we do disclose that. We've never been cagey about
48:04
that. And we also, I, I think what a
48:09
lot of people miss is that we could sell our Bitcoin if we
48:13
were doing research and we thought this actually isn't
48:17
good. The, the research that we're
48:20
doing is leading us to believe that Bitcoin is bad for the
48:23
world. Well, then, then we could stop
48:24
using Bitcoin and we could get rid of the Bitcoin that we have
48:27
and go do something else. So it's not the fact that we own
48:31
Bitcoin that makes us do this research.
48:33
It was doing the research that that made us decide to use
48:37
Bitcoin, that we thought Bitcoin was a good thing and that we
48:41
could help the network by using it.
48:44
How? How has it changed you?
48:45
How has Bitcoin changed you? I think it's it's a deep
48:53
question, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, some people tell
48:56
these stories of like how Bitcoin came along with all
49:00
these personal epiphanies and they started working out and
49:03
they started like eating only meats or, you know, all these
49:06
other. I'm like, how did you get from
49:08
one of those things to the other?
49:10
I do think that Bitcoin has has since working on Bitcoin, there
49:16
are a few personal virtues that maybe have been strengthened in
49:19
me. I think in areas I've been more
49:21
patient. I've also because the value of
49:24
Bitcoin goes up and down. And once I started using
49:28
Bitcoin, it was like, oh, how much I can pay for goes up and
49:33
down. What I can have goes up and
49:34
down. And so you just kind of get
49:39
inoculated to that kind of thing.
49:42
And and I get a more wait and see attitude.
49:45
But I think the biggest thing is, you know, in writing the
49:47
financial inclusion chapter and in including all the stories
49:50
that we do of people who are who are using Bitcoin, I became a
49:54
lot more aware of just how lucky I am to be born in a country
50:00
that has one of the more responsible central banks and
50:03
one of the more responsible governments in the world.
50:07
And most people aren't as lucky as me.
50:11
The vast majority of people have it much worse than me.
50:16
And I think the people who are against Bitcoin aren't
50:21
recognizing just how lucky they are to be in the situation that
50:24
they're in. They don't need Bitcoin and so
50:28
they're against it. And they're not thinking about
50:30
all these people. So I've I've just become a lot
50:32
more aware of how the rest of the world is living.
50:35
And that's developed more like compassion and empathy in me,
50:43
not just in terms of money, but also in terms of other things.
50:46
So I've you've given more charitably than I had in the
50:50
past, both in raw numbers and also percentage wise, because I
50:56
recognize that I didn't, I didn't do anything to be able to
51:00
be born into this relatively stable system.
51:04
And now who who knows how long it will be stable, but at least
51:06
for my life so far it's been relatively stable compared to
51:10
all of the other ones. Yeah, 100%.
51:13
You know, and as a first generation American originally,
51:17
you know, my parents immigrated from Venezuela, right, One of
51:22
the countries where you could make a very strong argument
51:24
that, you know, Bitcoin is literally it's, it's not a, it's
51:33
not a, it's not an option or an investment.
51:36
It is like, like it's a life raft, right?
51:39
It's, you know, it's, you don't, you don't buy Bitcoin out of,
51:44
out of, you know, just because you're interested in interested
51:48
in it as a speculative asset, you buy out of necessity.
51:52
And I completely agree with you. I think that the vast majority
51:55
of the world, you know, doesn't have, I think Alex Cladstein
52:00
coined the term financial privilege that we have here in
52:05
the United States, where we have a relatively stable Fiat
52:08
currency that, you know, isn't just, it isn't stealing enough
52:13
for it to be dire. And most countries in the world
52:16
don't have that special type of privilege.
52:18
I mean, we've seen that all over a lot in America.
52:21
We've seen that in Africa a lot as well.
52:24
And yeah, Bitcoin is, is definitely it.
52:28
It's like it comes in and kind of saves the day for a lot of
52:31
those people. You did mention inclusivity I
52:36
think earlier when when you were talking about that.
52:39
Could you tell some stories the specifically, could you tell the
52:43
one that has resonated with you the most?
52:47
Specifically on inclusivity, yes, or so the the kind of light
52:52
bulb moment for inclusivity you have, you have like a practical
52:58
working out of inclusivity where you just look at how many people
53:03
use Bitcoin and how much of the Bitcoin is owned by people who
53:10
own less than let's say 0.0001 Bitcoin.
53:17
And it's a pretty high number. Quite a lot of the Bitcoin is
53:21
distributed amongst a lot of people.
53:24
And so you see that also Bitcoin is trending towards more
53:29
distribution. So every time that new all time
53:33
highs are reached, people who have a lot of Bitcoin sell a
53:36
little bit of it, and people who've never bought Bitcoin
53:38
before buy a little bit of it. And so Bitcoin is spreading
53:41
itself out across the world in this way, which I think is a
53:44
really cool thing. There's also this theoretical
53:47
level of inclusivity where if you want to participate in the
53:50
current financial system, you have to somehow acquire dollars.
53:56
And you could be given them by like a parent or a family member
54:00
or someone under the table. But if you want to get paid,
54:04
have a job, you have to go through quite an onerous process
54:07
and get approval of others in order just to earn money.
54:12
And if you want someone to manage that money, you have to
54:15
go into a bank. So you got to be close enough to
54:17
a bank to get there. You have to have a way to get
54:19
there, either live close enough to walk or you have to have a
54:22
car. And if you have a car, you have
54:24
to have a driver's license, which is another thing that is
54:27
granted to you by an institution.
54:30
And so there's these roadblocks at every step of the way to
54:33
trying to acquire money, which you need to live your life.
54:38
If you want to get food, it's difficult to grow enough food
54:42
for yourself in most places, and you have to have a lot of land
54:46
and that costs money. There's no free land sitting
54:49
around for people anymore. So at every point of trying to
54:52
be involved in the current monetary system, there are
54:55
roadblocks that are set up that some people don't meet.
55:00
And for Bitcoin, there's one roadblock.
55:02
And that roadblock is you. You got to have an Internet
55:06
connection somehow. There are people working on
55:09
doing Bitcoin transactions over non Internet connected devices.
55:13
They're still using phones and phone signals.
55:15
You could do it over ham radio or something, but for the vast
55:18
majority of people, you need probably a cell phone, probably
55:22
that's connected to the Internet.
55:25
But the percentage of people in the world who have an Internet
55:29
connected cell phone is substantially higher than the
55:32
percentage of people in the world that have a bank account.
55:35
And so it's substantially easier for them to get Bitcoin than it
55:39
is for them to interact with the financial, the banking system.
55:45
So that's sort of, that's not yet any individual stories of
55:51
inclusion, but it it does tell you something important
55:55
structurally about Bitcoin, which is that it doesn't have
56:00
these roadblocks that the current monetary system has.
56:03
And that I'm happy making the moral claim that it's better to
56:08
have a monetary system that has fewer roadblocks, that has fewer
56:11
authorities that can determine whether or not you're allowed to
56:15
participate. So yeah, then a lot of the a lot
56:22
of the stories that we tell are stories about the other
56:26
important aspects of Bitcoin, people who are using it for the
56:29
privacy or censorship resistant features or inflation.
56:34
I don't remember trying to remember from the financial
56:37
inclusion chapter whether that one does have stories.
56:43
I'm not coming up with any off the top of my head so I'm not
56:47
sure. I think, I think you, I think
56:51
you addressed it well though, in my opinion.
56:56
Now we are getting to the top of the hour, Brad and I do want to
57:01
give you an opportunity to, you know, leave a final message with
57:06
our audience specifically, maybe something that something that,
57:13
you know, something that was mind blowing while you're doing
57:17
all this research, while, you know, you were, you know, help
57:21
writing this book Resistance Money.
57:24
So yeah, I'll give you the floor.
57:28
I think the the message that's most important now to give is in
57:33
light of these Bitcoin ETFs that have come out and just the
57:38
changing and conversation around Bitcoin in the last even four or
57:42
five months. Early on in my Bitcoin journey,
57:48
the focus was on self custody and on being outside of the
57:53
government and things like that, a money that's not controlled by
57:57
the state. And the conversation in the last
58:01
months has shifted to politicians endorsing Bitcoin
58:07
and politicians advocating for a strategic Bitcoin reserve,
58:12
governments holding Bitcoin, people wanting an ETF so that
58:17
they could have Bitcoin through Iras and things like that.
58:22
And so it seems to me like we're a far cry from where early
58:26
Bitcoin conversations were and, and for some of the reasons that
58:30
Bitcoin was created. This is a cypherpunk movement
58:33
that was searching for a digital cash that could be private and
58:36
censorship resistant. And it seems like the
58:39
conversation has shifted a lot and people are wanting different
58:43
things from Bitcoin than that. And one of the chapters in the
58:47
book is just dedicated to considering and answering
58:51
objections to Bitcoin. And I think one of the strongest
58:54
objections to Bitcoin is this idea that it could potentially
58:59
be like ideologically captured by the very things that it
59:04
originally sought to undermine, which were governments and
59:07
corporations. You have governments talking
59:10
about owning up to 5% of the Bitcoin supply and corporations
59:15
who are now, I think BlackRock, I read yesterday, is the third
59:19
biggest owner of Bitcoin after Satoshi and finance.
59:24
And that for, for people who got into it for cypherpunk ethos,
59:29
resistance money, kinds of reasons that that should be a
59:32
little bit scary that so much of the Bitcoin supply is going to
59:37
these entities that don't I think value the cypherpunk
59:41
ethos. And so I guess if, if there's
59:45
one thing that I would want to leave people with, it's that
59:50
Bitcoin isn't an ETF. Bitcoin is in the government
59:53
treasury. Bitcoin is there as a resistance
59:56
money. It's meant for people like us.
59:58
But if we don't have control of our of our keys, if we're not
1:00:03
transacting peer-to-peer, then a lot of the promise is gone and a
1:00:08
lot of what makes Bitcoin work as resistance money is gone.
1:00:11
Absolutely, man. Well, that was a very powerful
1:00:14
conversation. I really enjoyed it quite a lot.
1:00:18
And guys, go check out his book, Resistance Money, A
1:00:23
philosophical case for Bitcoin. And Brad, I, I, I want to again,
1:00:28
thank you for joining us on the show.
1:00:31
Thanks for having me, it was a pleasure.
1:00:32
I appreciate it. All right, guys.
1:00:34
Well, we'll be back for the live show tomorrow at 12:15 PM
1:00:38
Eastern Standard Time. Again, go check out Brad's book,
1:00:41
Resistance Money, a philosophical case for Bitcoin.
1:00:45
Peace out, everybody. Episode was brought to you by
1:00:48
bitcoinwell.com on a mission to enable independence.