Latest / Simply Bitcoin / Samson Mow | $1M Bitcoin | Simply Bitcoin IRL

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Samson Mow | $1M Bitcoin | Simply Bitcoin IRL · Simply Bitcoin

0:00
$1 million Bitcoin. When's that going to happen?
0:03
My guess is is it's going to be this year.
0:05
It's going to be this year. That's a 10X.
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Bitcoin has 17X in the past. There is no upper bound to
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Bitcoin. People talk about diminishing
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returns, right? But if it's a step change, just
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like the failure of the the German mark, it's not a gradual
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thing and there's no upper bound.
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It's just gone. Are they scared of Bitcoin
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Samson? I think the IMF is definitely
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scared of Bitcoin because they are a Fiat organization.
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With Bitcoin, they're irrelevant or they need to adopt Bitcoin.
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It's their choice. Either you adapt or you die.
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My question too is why is the price still at $97,000 if if we
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have all this massive purchasing going on?
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Is it like a flush? All right, we're here in the
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beautiful El Salvador and the Jan Three headquarters in Casa
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Cielo with the legendary one and only Samsung Mao.
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How you doing man? Thank you, Nico.
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It's great to be here. Good.
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Great to be here as well. I just, I kind of want to give a
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little bit of the back story how we got this working.
1:02
So of course, Plan B Forum was just over the weekend here in El
1:05
Salvador for the first time. And I was like, Samson, you
1:08
know, you want to come on the show and you just replied with,
1:11
do you want to do another volcano?
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And I just replied with absolutely, period.
1:15
And then we scrambled and we got this together with this
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beautiful shot. By the way, for anyone who's
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watching this, it's not a green screen, it's an actual volcano.
1:23
So it's pretty cool. Don't trust verify.
1:25
You can come here. Yeah.
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It's absolutely beautiful. So Samson, you know we're here.
1:30
The price of Bitcoin at the time of recording is currently
1:33
$97,000. I think we're expecting a lot
1:36
more of it, honestly. And I think that's something
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that you've said on recent interviews that Bitcoin is
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massively undervalued. Could you talk a little bit
1:45
about that? Yeah.
1:45
So I've been predicting 1,000,000 for a while and
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hopefully I'll hit some time. But I believe this pullback is
1:51
very normal because the altcoin market was overheated.
1:55
If you look at XRP Ripple, it was $3.
1:59
That's ridiculous. With Bitcoin at 97 or so, Ripple
2:02
is still at 260. And then you have Solana and
2:05
everything. Everything is overpriced right
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now for the altcoins. So I think it's normal.
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We come down, they shake off, and then we go back up.
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Bitcoin dominance increases again.
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But Bitcoin dominance is really intellect measurement, like how
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much money is being allocated to altcoins, and that needs to drop
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before we can take off again, I believe.
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But overall, Bitcoin is undervalued and I think even at
2:26
100 KA 100 and 5200, it's still undervalued.
2:30
And what's the case for it being undervalued?
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Well, there's just so much demand for Bitcoin right now
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from MicroStrategy, from the ETFs, from nation states, from
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ordinary people buying and Hodling that I don't think
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people have fully realized that most of the year supply of mine
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Bitcoin is already gone a few times over.
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So you have to understand there is ultimate scarcity in Bitcoin
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and I believe the understanding of ultimate scarcity is very far
2:59
away still. People just can't wrap their
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heads around they're only being 21 million.
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And when the price drops, people kind of feel confident that I
3:07
can get it later. But then Bitcoin rips and then
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there is no later. Like imagine being able to buy
3:12
Bitcoin at $10,000 a coin again. It's not possible.
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And this milestone of 100,000 will be gone again in in time.
3:20
And you say that there's, there's a lot of demand, right?
3:23
There's the talk of the strategic Bitcoin reserve, which
3:26
some news came out that Ripple tried to sabotage it in some
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way. It seems like we still have 180
3:32
days as a community to kind of fight back on that front.
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And of course, MicroStrategy buying Bitcoin, a lot of
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companies following in this footsteps of MicroStrategy, like
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Metaplanet, like somewhere scientific, and they're all
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following the, the MicroStrategy strategy.
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And it seems like all their stocks are performing because of
3:47
it. El Salvador continues to buy
3:49
massive amounts of Bitcoin. My question too is why is the
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price still at $97,000 if if we have all this massive purchasing
3:57
going on? Is it like a flush?
3:58
So there's two things I would say 1 is there are obviously Ogs
4:02
or old Hodlers that are going to sell something and you know buy
4:06
a house, maybe enjoy life a bit. So there will always be some
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coins that are sold outside of the mine supply, but there's
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also a roughly 2 million coins that sit on exchange for market
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making trading and arbitrage. And those 2 million coins, it's
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dropping obviously now it was at more than two million before,
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but now it's at, you know, around 2 million.
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But that is enough for the coins to drop the market.
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And a lot of it has to do with Bitcoin being a 24/7 market as
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well. So this drop I believe is
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related to the tariff war. You know, American, Canadian,
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Mexican, well, we're all going to tariff each other and it's
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just panic. So Bitcoin being the only 24/7
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liquid market is the only thing that can react immediately.
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So sort of like the market sentiment is taken out on
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Bitcoin. We're the 1st to move the most
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volatile and the biggest move, and then the equities markets
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and everything else follows after that when the markets
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open. Such an antiquated concept,
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right? But that's what it is.
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But going back to the point, those 2 million coins is enough
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to move the market a little bit. And the impact of those 2
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million coins, I believe is becoming less and less
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pronounced as we increase hover. So if you break down the scheme
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of who impacts Bitcoin price, you have the the hodlers 0
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impact, they're just sitting on the coins and in ways you can
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look at it, they're coiling up that spring.
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Then you have the buyers, the people that are DCA ING either
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by day or by month, or you can say micro strategy is also in
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the DCA category and Hodling, but they're actively in
5:38
acquisition mode, metaplanet. And like you said, then you have
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the traders, which is kind of that 2 million coins.
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So that is kind of what is driving the market.
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And Bitcoin will always be volatile because you have that
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slush fund of coins on exchanges, but that is going to
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be drained over time. And we do see that and it makes
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it more pronounced. The coil up effect from the DCA
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Airs and Hobblers. Absolutely.
6:00
What do you think about Trump being elected?
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I think Trump is the best choice of the current slate of
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candidates that we have right now and probably the best option
6:11
for America moving forward in this period of time because he's
6:15
able to bring together different groups.
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Like he brought Elon Musk. You know, you might think he's a
6:20
shit coiner and whatnot, but he is the richest man in the world
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and influential and capable. He's able to bring RFK group,
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the people that are concerned about health and other things
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and some activism, environmentalism.
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So he's able to kind of bridge together different segments of
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population that hasn't really been done before in recent
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times. So I think Trump coin, Melania
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coin aside, it was the best choice that America could have
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made. The other choice was Kamala and
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Dark Times more Elizabeth Warren choke .3 point O everything bad
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possibly for Bitcoin and you know the crypto industry.
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But now we see the tariffs and that's another interesting kind
7:00
of worms, but at least you can see that the tariffs are going
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to be great for Bitcoin. I think near term people that
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are affected by the tariffs, they probably can't see it or
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didn't. If they're not into Bitcoin,
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they may not be thinking about this, but it's going to drive a
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lot of people to look at Bitcoin and protect themselves.
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OK. And the, the thing that
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interested me in also is the, you said Operation Checkpoint
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3.0 and we just went through Operation Choke .2 Point O.
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And a lot of the things that they were doing, they're trying
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to obfuscate it and weren't being transparent about it.
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Do you believe that it was a malicious attack on Bitcoin in
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the Bitcoin industry to at least slow down the adoption of it in
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the United States? Definitely it was.
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It was a kind of covert operation to throttle Bitcoin
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and crypto adoption. And it's really just to protect
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the existing system, right? Protect the Fed, protect the
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dollar in a certain way, protect the banking system in a certain
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way and all the incumbents, right?
8:01
And you see that with, you know, closure of some of the banks for
8:04
absolutely no reason. And I think signature, right?
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It was just closed for no reason whatsoever.
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And if you guys had elected Kamala, you would have, you
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know, 3 point O another version of choke point and without the
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new checks and balances that Department of Government
8:18
efficiency is trying to introduce.
8:20
It sucks that he named it after dosh.
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Yeah, take the good with of that.
8:25
It was a massive troll. What do you think about Ross
8:27
being freed? I think that's the most
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important thing. So I had a wish list for Trump.
8:32
I had some predictions and A wish list.
8:33
I think if he just frees Ross and stops attacking Bitcoin,
8:38
like stops the attack on Bitcoin, Bitcoin Hodling, I
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think that's enough. The strategic Bitcoin Reserve,
8:43
it's good for the government. It doesn't really do much for
8:45
the people except for a mass education program for the
8:48
people. Like OK, the government has it
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now I should have it. But outside of that, it doesn't
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really do anything for your average person in the US
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directly. So one of the arguments is that
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it would be used to pay down the debt.
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It'd be used to, you know, get the country out of debt, have
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this reserve for the country, and it'd be beneficial.
9:06
Like, at least that's how it's being pitched.
9:08
You're saying that that would be beneficial for the US
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government, but that wouldn't necessarily be beneficial for US
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individuals. Paying off the debt would be
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beneficial for US individuals, but.
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If they used it for that. Yes, if they used it, but you
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don't know what they will use. That's what we gave.
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And you don't know what the composition will be yet either
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of the well, because it's not a strategic Bitcoin reserve now.
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It's a digital asset reserve which is broad and diverse and
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inclusive. But we don't know yet what's
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going to be in there. And hopefully it'll be just
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Bitcoin, but there are obviously altcoin projects lobbying to be
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included, like Ripple. Yeah, absolutely.
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So what's really interesting about El Salvador is how much
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it's been focused solely on Bitcoin.
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It's like it's resisted that. How come?
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I think President Buchelli is a Bitcoiner.
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Trump is not a Bitcoiner. He spoke at, what was it,
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Nashville conference, but he's not a Bitcoiner.
10:01
He's done a lot of other crypto related projects and I don't
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think he fully understands Bitcoin and you can kind of pick
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that level of understanding out from his speech.
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If you compare his speech to RFK speech, it's a world of
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difference. So he's more crypto, right?
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And that's probably why the US is not as Bitcoin maximalist as
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El Salvador is. So we'll see how things go over
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time. But there are a lot of lobbying
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groups in the US obviously, too, exchanges that are trying to
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push him towards, you know, crypto.
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And if it diversifies the reserve, that's probably why.
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So recently the IMF and El Salvador reached an agreement so
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that El Salvador would receive a loan.
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And I think a lot of people are seeking clarity in terms of is
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Bitcoin still legal tender in the country?
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Yeah. So it's confusing and I would
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say the breakdown is this, it's a a glass of water.
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It's kind of at the halfway mark.
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You can look at it as half full or half empty.
11:00
So the Bitcoin law has been softened or you can say neutered
11:06
a bit. They've amended it to comply
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with the IMF agreement almost to the letter.
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So everything they said in IMF agreement, they've amended it.
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But I think the key thing is the amendments leave the door kind
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of open. It's ambiguous.
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So it there is still a Bitcoin law, but Bitcoin is no longer a
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currency and it is legal tender, but it is now voluntary.
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So what does that mean exactly? It means Bitcoin is legal
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tender. There's no capital gains tax
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still. OK, there's another line in
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there that says you can use Bitcoin.
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The government can't now. So there is this Bitcoin law.
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Bitcoin is legal tender, but what is a legal tender without
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enforcement? Not that there was before it.
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It it always has been voluntary. So you can look at it both ways.
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Like some people are reacting very strongly and saying, you
12:00
know, they capitulated. They bent the knee to the IMF
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and, you know, because they sold us out and they're very
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disillusioned. And then you have the promoters
12:09
of El Salvador and Buckelly, and they're saying, yeah, we won.
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We're going to take the money and buy Bitcoin with IMF money.
12:16
But I think the truth is somewhere in the middle, there
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was a compromise, there was adaptation.
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The law itself is weakened, but Bitcoin still has a standing
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here in El Salvador. So you take the good with the
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bad, and I think it makes sense in the long run.
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But Kelly is not the president of Bitcoin.
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He's the president of El Salvador.
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I mean, he has to do what he thinks is the right thing for
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this country. And if he thinks the right thing
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for the country is to secure the IMF loan, which will lead to
12:44
other loans, then that's the way they should go.
12:48
There's a couple things that are quite interesting to me.
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So it's still legal tender, but it's voluntary and El Salvador
12:55
is still continuously buying it almost on a daily basis.
13:00
Yeah, so I mean, sounds like a pretty good compromise.
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And then if you're coming at it from a Bitcoiners perspective,
13:07
you would want Bitcoin to be adopted from the bottom up.
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You wouldn't want a top down type of thing.
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And what really sticks out to me, and I remember I, I asked
13:17
Mrs. Majorga, the ambassador to the United States from El
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Salvador, and I asked for the same thing about capital gains.
13:25
And I think that's the part that sticks out.
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Yeah. Because as long as there's no
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tax implications from you using Bitcoin as money, then what does
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it matter if it doesn't have? What does it matter if it has
13:35
the official stamp of legal tender if people are just still
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using it to transact? Yeah.
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So there are things that we can do.
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So Gentry, we work on nation state Bitcoin adoption.
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There are interesting, interesting paths for us to use
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Bitcoin as legal tender as a currency.
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We can go to other countries that have laws recognizing
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foreign currencies like Guatemala, and we can say, you
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know, Mr. President, just accept it.
14:02
It's a foreign currency. They have.
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There's precedent already for recognizing and using foreign
14:07
currencies in different countries.
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So that's an angle that is interesting for Bitcoin and for
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Jan 3 to push. But we can live without that.
14:15
Or we can get another country to make it a currency and follow
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that angle again. But I think the top down is
14:21
beneficial still because launching TiVo, making these
14:26
announcements, promoting Bitcoin and Bitcoin education
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initiatives, that is top down but is sort of an endorsement
14:35
and a blessing. And a lot of people, they look
14:39
towards the government, obviously not us, but they look
14:42
towards the government for approval before they do
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something and it is something it is worth something.
14:48
And do you, before I ask you about Jan 3, do you believe that
14:52
this was a set back for nation state adoption?
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It's to be seen, OK? It's to be seen.
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It's not really a set back for a nation state adoption.
15:00
I believe nation state adoption has already taken off.
15:03
So once El Salvador made the move, we started going forth.
15:08
You know, I started Jan 3. I brought on a lot of amazing
15:11
people to the team and we put together this network of people
15:16
going out and engaging. We've met with the president,
15:19
Madera. He said, you know, I'm going to
15:21
make Madera, you know, a place for Bitcoin.
15:24
We met with presence in many countries around the world.
15:27
We've met with regulators, politicians and even central
15:32
banks. And the tide, I believe, has
15:34
turned. We now have some central banks
15:37
reaching out to us. Someone passed them our e-mail
15:40
and we got an e-mail a few months back saying we would like
15:43
to discuss hyperbicronization. No way.
15:45
Yes. And then the emails are, you
15:47
know, from the central bank. We said, yeah, we're happy to
15:50
talk. We we know who introduced us.
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But then they sent a meeting invite, and the meeting invite
15:54
was hyperbicronization. Was it like a Google Meet?
15:57
Yes. So it was just on on the
15:59
calendar, Google Calendar hyperbicronization and you're
16:03
meeting with the central bank. Yes, that OK.
16:07
All right. So we're, we're definitely
16:08
heading in the, in the right direction.
16:10
Before I ask you about the IMF and what what their motivation
16:14
would be to do something like this with El Salvador or to ask
16:18
El Salvador to compromise what what is Gen. 3?
16:21
Gen. 3 is a company, we do a lot of things.
16:24
Our mission is to accelerate Bitcoin adoption or hyper
16:27
bitcoinization and basically anything that falls into this
16:31
mission we will pursue. So one of the first things we
16:33
did was launch the Aqua wallet, a non custodial Bitcoin in layer
16:37
2 and stablecoin wallet, because we see an opportunity to onboard
16:43
the 400 million or so Tether USDT users into Bitcoin.
16:48
They're already using Tether and the sad thing is they're using
16:51
Tether in altcoin wallet. So they're getting pushed, you
16:54
know, NFTS and staking and defy and gambling and there is no
16:58
Bitcoin wallet that's out there in a meaningful way showcasing
17:02
Bitcoin layer 2IN Tether, just a really simple offering.
17:06
And that was our mission to kind of onboard those people into
17:09
Bitcoin and give a Bitcoin wallet that has a lot of
17:12
utility. So that's one of the aspects of
17:14
the business. We have Gentry Financial, we
17:17
offer some financial products and services.
17:20
One of them is at OTC. So we we've been running that
17:23
for about a year now. And the goal is that we have a
17:25
track record. And when the next country says I
17:28
want to buy $10 billion of Bitcoin, we can say, well, we'll
17:31
help you with that. And then we have the nation
17:33
state push, which is just a lot of us in our free time, which is
17:38
not that much. Plus a network of volunteers
17:41
around the world that try to get us meetings with presidents and
17:47
finance ministers, ministers of economy, all of these to push
17:50
for Bitcoin adoption around the world at the top down level.
17:54
So we kind of do both. We work on top down and
17:56
grassroots. I love that.
17:57
So just focused on hyper bitcoinization.
18:00
I want to ask you about the Aqua wallet because I think a lot of
18:02
bitcoiners expected that in the developing world you're going to
18:07
see massive adoption of Bitcoin as people sought non sovereign
18:12
alternatives because their local Fiat currencies were so
18:15
terrible. But I think what we saw instead,
18:17
what the market is telling us is we've we're seeing this massive
18:21
adoption of, of, of stablecoins, specifically stablecoin Tether,
18:25
like the the dollar stablecoin. I think it's quite interesting.
18:30
I think a lot of Bitcoiners didn't expect that.
18:32
But you know, being from Latin America myself originally, I
18:37
think for a lot of people, it's hard to understand that they're
18:40
just trying to get by, right? They don't have the luxury of
18:44
being able to save. So just having a currency that
18:48
that is stable, that they can earn in is a massive upgrade to,
18:54
you know, where they could have been before.
18:56
Yeah, I think it comes down to Alex Gladstein's book title.
19:00
You know, check your financial privilege.
19:02
Absolutely. A lot of people, a lot of
19:03
Bitcoiners, especially really hardcore Maximus, so like
19:06
Bitcoin and nothing else. But you have the luxury as a a
19:10
Bitcoiner in the West to buy Bitcoin.
19:14
A lot of people are earning, just trying to earn a living and
19:17
get by. They may not have a bank
19:19
account. They can't get a bank account
19:20
because they don't have an address and they're excluded.
19:24
The the financial system is A2 tier system.
19:27
People can get in and people cannot get in.
19:30
That's it. And it's engineered that way and
19:32
they will always be that way. The only thing that can break
19:35
that system is Bitcoin. So the reason why people are
19:39
seeking Tether and stable coins is because they need access to
19:45
that system. They don't yet understand
19:47
Bitcoin, but they do want the dollar to hedge, right?
19:51
So if you're a merchant and you're selling stuff and your
19:53
suppliers want dollars or Argentinian pesos and you have
19:57
Bitcoin. There is volatility in Bitcoin
19:59
both ways, and we can't ignore the fact that some guy taking
20:05
Bitcoin can lose a significant amount of money.
20:09
Just by taking Bitcoin and not hedging because that's not their
20:12
savings. It's not yet really savings.
20:15
As long as there is volatility. It's savings for people that for
20:18
people that can weather volatility, people that can't,
20:20
they need a stable unit. And you know, bitcoins like to
20:22
say, well, stable coins are not stable because the Fiat money is
20:26
devaluing. But compared to the Argentinian
20:28
peso, the dollar is gold, right? Or compared to the Bolivar, it's
20:32
gold. And I think we just have to
20:34
ignore people that criticize that and focus on onboarding
20:38
these 400 million people to liquid Tether and Bitcoin.
20:43
Well, it's a stepping stone. It is.
20:45
And then there there's another part.
20:47
The it's an interesting phenomenon too, because like as
20:51
bitcoiners, shouldn't we be free market Maxis, right?
20:55
And the market is telling us, right, that developing world
20:59
massively in Latin America, they're really interested in
21:02
getting a dollar rather than, you know, but Bitcoin, I think
21:06
it's an educational thing. I think it's a survival thing.
21:09
I think it's like the principle, like the hierarchy of needs,
21:12
right? Like you, you just need to be
21:15
able to survive. And then you start thinking.
21:17
And I think it's a Trojan horse because it gives people
21:20
essentially the ability to custody dollars in their mind on
21:24
a digital wallet without having to go through a bank account.
21:27
And then eventually they're going to come to the conclusion
21:29
that all of us have had in the West, which is like the dollar
21:33
is a scam too. And all roads lead to to
21:35
Bitcoin. Now you said that Jan 3 focuses
21:38
on hyper bitcoinization. What is that?
21:40
Hyper bitcoinization is the point at which we no longer
21:44
convert Bitcoin into Fiat. There's only Bitcoin left, so
21:47
it's the end state really. And you could say it's
21:50
hyperinflation of the dollar, really, right.
21:52
When the dollar hyperinflates, then no one's going to want the
21:54
dollar. They will just want Bitcoin.
21:56
So yeah, it's the greatest demonetization event in human
22:00
history. Basically all Fiat will die all
22:03
at the same time very rapidly and everyone just wants Bitcoin
22:07
and transacts in Bitcoin. Really, it's just so you don't
22:11
see a world where the dollar and Bitcoin can coexist.
22:14
I don't see it, but a lot of Bitcoiners do see it.
22:16
I think Sailor is one of those, like if you look at his Bitcoin
22:21
24 model, right, he actually tapers off the model after a
22:24
number of years to kind of slow the death of Bitcoin, slow the
22:30
death of Fiat. So Bitcoin growth tapers off.
22:33
But I think monetary systems, especially when you're dealing
22:37
with 100 X improvement over the old system and even over gold,
22:44
is not a gradual taper. It's just a flip of the switch.
22:48
Everyone's just going to switch to this new thing.
22:51
I don't see that happening in Bitcoin.
22:54
And we didn't even see that happen with the, the devaluation
22:57
of the German mark. It wasn't that it's slowly
22:59
tapered off and there was 1 Baker in this village over there
23:02
that was still taking the mark, you know, five years later
23:05
because, you know, you're that network effect of that money
23:08
dies. So maybe some people have it in
23:11
a drawer, but no one's actually going to exchange anything for
23:14
the the Mark I. Mean that that's going to be a
23:17
pretty big impact on the world. Right.
23:19
That's why we're working on getting Bitcoin option out there
23:23
as fast as we can to soften the fall, OK, It's like the
23:28
foundation series, right? You can't stop the fall,
23:32
although we can soften the fall. And, and, and, and it's going to
23:35
radically change the world. And before I I get to that, like
23:37
what are the implications of essentially Fiat ending?
23:40
Because it's going to be essentially complete a change in
23:45
the balance of power between the state and the individual.
23:47
And I think there's very, very deep implications there.
23:50
But what do you think were the motivations behind the IMF
23:53
asking for those concessions from El Salvador?
23:58
Are they scared of Bitcoin Samson?
24:01
I think the IMF is definitely scared of Bitcoin because they
24:05
are a Fiat organization. For those of people that don't
24:07
know, they have their own shit coin.
24:10
It's called the SDR, the SDR Strategic Drawing Rights, which
24:14
means they can just kind of print their own money out of
24:16
thin air too. But with Bitcoin, they're
24:19
irrelevant or they need to adopt Bitcoin.
24:23
It's their choice. Either you adapt or you die.
24:26
But I think there's another darker angle here, which is
24:29
they're basically a loan shark. Their job is to lend money in
24:34
perpetuity to countries like El Salvador and, you know,
24:39
developing places around the world.
24:42
And this kind of puts them out of a job.
24:44
So I think they had to fight for that or they wanted to save face
24:48
because remember, they made a big stink about all the Bitcoin
24:51
adoption in El Salvador that you know, you're going to fail,
24:54
you're going to, it's dangerous and whatnot.
24:56
And when they're wrong and they're incorrect and the the
25:00
metrics prove them incorrect, vastly incorrect, I think they
25:03
need something to save face. So maybe they insisted on these
25:07
concessions just so they can say, yes, we got something.
25:11
Yeah, it, it definitely felt that way.
25:13
It definitely felt that way because it was like, ha, ha, we
25:15
won. But if you, it's what you said
25:18
with the analogy of the, the, the glass, right?
25:20
It really depends on how you look at it.
25:22
But the most important aspects, there's no capital gains
25:25
implications. You could still use it as money.
25:28
They're still buying it as reserve.
25:30
So did they really win? Right.
25:33
It it's like it, it's like an optics.
25:35
It was for the optics more than the substance.
25:38
Yeah, from my perspective. And as you said, it doesn't
25:40
really matter because that's kind of government top down
25:44
adoption is icing on a cake. The real important part is the
25:47
grassroots adoption. And I think that still needs
25:50
work, too. We should not be lying to
25:52
ourselves and say, yeah, it's perfect already.
25:54
We've got, you know, educational initiatives and we're good here.
25:57
There's still a lot of people here in El Salvador that have no
26:00
idea, and we still have a lot of work to do.
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get started. So I I want to talk about the
26:35
end of Fiat, and this is a fascinating subject.
26:38
You know, I think every Bitcoiner has read the book The
26:41
Sovereign Individual by now at least a couple times in the book
26:44
essentially makes the case that information technologies were
26:48
essentially going to take away the importance away from nation
26:51
States and from governments. And one of the biggest funding
26:55
mechanisms of government of the state is their ability to print
27:00
money out of thin air. Once that ability goes away,
27:03
what is the role of government in society?
27:05
Hopefully it's reduced massively.
27:08
It the whole way that government works right now is very flawed.
27:11
And I think about this a lot because I work on a game set in
27:14
the future. So I'm trying to think how does
27:17
government work in the future? And there's there are differing
27:20
schools of thought. You know, some people, some
27:22
Bitcoiners think anarchy and you know, it's just free for all.
27:28
I think you still need some structure in place because there
27:32
will be bad people that do bad things and you need to be able
27:36
to deal with that somehow. And I think there will still be
27:41
a need for relationships with other groups like diplomacy.
27:45
So I think there is some role for government very scaled back,
27:50
very administrative, not prescriptive in many ways, and
27:54
based off of some sort of foundational codex of laws
27:57
that's far simplified and mirroring a bit of Bitcoin.
28:01
So consensus based rules where to do something, you need a
28:05
super majority to consent to it. So there is no war, no emergency
28:10
act, you know, no martial law, able to be done without active
28:14
consent of people. So that's probably somewhere we
28:17
go. But definitely Bitcoin will
28:19
change that relationship because they can't print money, they
28:22
can't take your money, so they have to.
28:26
They just shrink naturally. And I think this is a good thing
28:29
because most of the problems we have today is the government is
28:32
trying to do everything. It starts out slowly, but as you
28:36
give people free stuff, they want more free stuff and it just
28:39
spirals out of control where you have some of those things
28:42
uncovered by the Department of Government efficiency, which is
28:45
the Treasury was just paying bills indiscriminately to
28:49
terrorists too. So it just becomes a big machine
28:52
that lives off of its own bureaucracy. 100% and it's self
28:58
funded, it has a self funding mechanism.
29:00
And unlike private business, there's no feedback like if you
29:05
know you run Gen. 3 a certain way or if I run simply Bitcoin a
29:08
certain way, we will go out of business.
29:10
There is no feedback whatsoever with government and what we were
29:15
saying, what Doge has been uncovering has been ridiculous.
29:18
And then you're just like, what do you mean you sent $50 million
29:22
to that? Like, what do you, what is this?
29:23
And they don't care. But there's no there's no
29:26
feedback mechanism incentivizing them to care.
29:29
The feedback mechanism is elections, so you get feedback
29:32
every four years and you know, people have very short attention
29:36
spans and memories. So, you know, they forget and
29:40
then you re elect them again. That's why Trudeau was elected
29:43
twice. Yeah.
29:44
So it's kind of sad, but Bitcoin gives me hope that it will break
29:49
the system. So Bitcoin fixes this.
29:52
It fixes this. It's a popularity contest to see
29:55
who controls the money printer. Yeah.
29:57
So what have been some of the difficulties that you have run
30:01
into running Gen. 3, rolling out the Aqua wallet, really pushing
30:07
forward, you know, Bitcoin adoption worldwide?
30:11
What are some of the things that have happened since you launched
30:13
Jan 3 that you would have never expected to run into?
30:17
So let's let's see the Aqua side.
30:19
The biggest challenge for us is we're trying to build it non
30:22
custodially because I don't think you can make a custodial
30:25
wallet that can scale to planet scale and most importantly on
30:30
board the billions of people that cannot access the financial
30:33
system. So it has to be non custodial if
30:35
you're trying to get licenses everywhere until there's a
30:39
massive sea change and everything is deregulated.
30:41
It's just too slow, costly and burdensome to do that.
30:46
So if you want to build it in a custodial, you have a new set of
30:48
challenges, which is delivering a Venmo like experience without
30:52
having custody. And that's actually very hard to
30:55
do. And it slowed us down, but I
30:56
think we're almost there. So we do a lot of interesting
30:59
cryptography and tricks in there to make the the swap system and
31:04
everything seamless. So it's like PayPal or Venmo
31:08
here. It works, it just works.
31:10
But it's all non custodial. So if a transaction, a swap
31:13
fails, it just auto refunds back to your wallet.
31:16
And that took us a lot of time to get right.
31:19
We're trying to implement things like a lightning address, but
31:23
non custodially too. So there's a lot of thinking
31:25
that we have to put into how we do these things, but that that
31:29
was the biggest challenge for us.
31:30
And also we got a massive influx of users, which we didn't expect
31:34
and that kind of made it more challenging to bring on more
31:39
support people. And it's slow down dev as well.
31:42
On the nation state side, I would say the challenge was we
31:46
had the FTX fraud and blow up that slowed us down a bit.
31:50
There was a number of countries we had meetings planned with.
31:53
And because of that, Bitcoin seemed to be, you know, the
31:58
pariah again. And they didn't want anything to
32:00
do with us or Jan 3 or Bitcoin, even though it's FTX.
32:06
And it's because they use FTT is collateral.
32:10
But now that we're back, it's much easier.
32:13
And especially with the talk of the strategic reserve in the US,
32:17
that changes things a lot. So the ETFs changed the
32:20
conversation. That made it easier.
32:23
The Trump admin coming into power and formulating this path
32:27
to a reserve has made it easier yet again for us.
32:32
So tailwinds now. That's good.
32:35
I mean, it's, it's very interesting to hear about the
32:38
difficulties that you're running into with Aqua.
32:41
I'm glad to hear that it's non custodial.
32:43
How did you pull that off? Because I feel like non
32:45
custodial lightning at the moment is an.
32:47
Absolute nightmare. Yeah.
32:49
So we we actually use a trick. We're using liquid as the base
32:53
layer OK, and we're using bolts to do swaps to lightning, so.
32:58
Interesting. It's not really a Lightning
33:00
wallet and a lot of hardcore bitcoins were saying that's not
33:04
a Lightning wallet. We never said it was a
33:06
Lightning. Wallet.
33:06
But does it matter if it does the same thing?
33:09
Well, to some people it matters. So your choice is right now a
33:11
custodial wallet where maybe you KYC, maybe you didn't.
33:17
But if you didn't KYC, then you actually have limits and you
33:20
have risk of, you know, losing your funds somehow.
33:26
If it's a non custodial wallet like Phoenix or whatever, you
33:31
actually have to do a lot more and there are cost like opening
33:35
up a channel, rebalancing. Those are all touching the main
33:39
chain, right? So people think it's cheap.
33:44
They they say, well, I'm using Phoenix and I can pay one SAT,
33:47
but you actually paid, you know, 4 bucks or 8 bucks when it was
33:50
expensive to open the channel at that time.
33:53
But if you have liquid, this as this stable middle layer and
33:56
liquid's been around for 8-9 years now, very reliable rock
34:00
solid block stream. We launched that when I was
34:02
there. It's a a touch point.
34:05
So like it's like a a mid step. So you don't have to go back to
34:08
the main chain and you can go back up to lightning.
34:10
It's a stable repository for your Bitcoin, which also has
34:14
confidential transactions, by the way.
34:16
So it gives you even better privacy.
34:19
I believe the, the Phoenix guy said, you know, right now
34:21
because we're the LSP and whatever we it's not using
34:26
Phoenix doesn't give you better privacy than using wallet
34:29
Satoshi or anything else. They can see everything.
34:32
But with Aqua, you have liquid with confidential transactions
34:36
and we do swaps with bolts. So it's probably the most
34:40
private way to use Lightning right now, other than running
34:42
everything yourself. Why do you guys decide to?
34:45
Use Liquid. I think Liquid is a great
34:48
technology and it is. It was always needed because
34:54
it's a way to scale Bitcoin with side chains.
34:56
So Liquid it's anchored to Bitcoin.
35:00
There can only be potentially 21 million coins in Liquid because
35:03
you have to peg them into the Liquid network.
35:06
But it gives you that confidentiality of confidential
35:09
transactions and you can unblind transactions if you need to
35:12
unblind it. But this is actually a very
35:14
important thing, not just for lightning privacy, but for
35:17
stable coin privacy too. So my friend Russell was telling
35:20
me it's actually dangerous to use stable coins in Latin
35:23
America. The current ones like Tron and
35:26
Etherium and Tron because those are account based systems.
35:29
Liquid is UTXO base. It's a fork of Bitcoin.
35:32
So it's 99% the same code battle tested as Bitcoin, but with the
35:36
confidentiality. When I send you Tether on
35:39
Liquid, you can't see how much Tether I have.
35:42
Whereas if you're using Tron, you send me that.
35:45
You know, let's say my cousin's a gangster.
35:48
He'll say like, yeah, who's that guy?
35:49
And how much Tron does, how much Tether does he have?
35:53
And then he goes and robs you or tells someone else to go rob
35:56
you. And that's a real danger.
35:58
I think that has not really been fully crystallized in people's
36:02
understanding yet, but I think they will understand.
36:05
But above that, liquid transactions are super cheap
36:07
now. They're about 3 cents.
36:09
There was a big upgrade to the network as part of a project
36:13
tsunami to make everything faster and cheaper, and now
36:17
Bitcoin is probably the liquid is probably the cheapest way to
36:20
transact stable coins in Latam in the most reliable fashion.
36:24
Interesting. And, and I didn't know that.
36:28
Very, very interesting. So what, what do you think
36:31
happens to the price of Bitcoin if the strategic Bitcoin reserve
36:35
thing does go through in the United States?
36:37
It looks like it's going to happen on the state level before
36:40
the federal level. Well.
36:42
As Adam Back says, that's the path to 1,000,000. $1 million
36:47
Bitcoin Samson? When's that going to happen?
36:51
My guess is is it's going to be this year.
36:53
It's going to be this year. You look at all the factors
36:56
we're facing, you have. That's a 10X.
37:00
Bitcoin has 17X in the past. There is no, there is no upper
37:03
bound to Bitcoin. So there there are people talk
37:06
about diminishing returns, right?
37:07
But if it's a step change, just like the failure of the the
37:11
German mark, it's not a gradual thing and there's no upper
37:14
bound. It's just gone and you use a new
37:16
thing now, right? It's like, yeah, we don't use
37:20
horses for transportation anymore.
37:22
You know, we came here on a car, on airplanes and whatnot, so
37:26
used to use a new thing and Bitcoin is that new thing
37:29
because it's 100 if not 1000 times better than anything else
37:33
we've used as money in human history.
37:36
But back to the point, what do we have?
37:38
We have MicroStrategy buying non-stop.
37:40
We have ETFs which are a doorway to legacy Fiat money.
37:47
If you go back to all the previous bull runs, where we get
37:51
bogged down is the exchanges because that's the touch point
37:54
right. That's how you convert Fiat into
37:57
Bitcoin. And if you remember back in the
37:59
old bull runs, it was like Krakens backlog for KYC ING
38:04
people was three months long. Coinbase same thing.
38:09
It's that's the bottleneck because to comply as an
38:12
exchange, you have to KYC everyone and you don't keep 1000
38:15
person KYC team, right. You have to keep a team that you
38:20
can feed and you can't scale it up that quickly.
38:23
So that's kind of where it tapers off.
38:25
But with the ETFs, there is no bottleneck anymore.
38:28
Central banks can buy ETFs. So any demand for Bitcoin can
38:33
now be satiated without any problem whatsoever.
38:38
And that is really big. That's why I actually thought
38:40
2024 was going to be the year we hit 1,000,000 because I don't
38:44
think people fully understand how big that is.
38:47
Central banks can buy ETFs. There is no barrier for Fiat
38:51
money entering Bitcoin. But I think this year will hit
38:54
it since we missed last year. But you have micro strategy, you
38:57
have ETFs, you have the removal of the barrier, you have nation
39:00
States and what else. There's just so much going on,
39:05
like real adoption of Bitcoin. So I just can't see it not
39:08
hitting one million this year. And the other thing is you see a
39:13
lot of people predicting prices, right?
39:15
They like to be cautious and realistic and say, yeah, it can
39:20
get to 150, it can get to 200, it can get to 250.
39:25
Because I think they want to sound reasonable.
39:27
Nobody wants to be the crazy guy saying it's got a 10X like me.
39:31
They want to be, you know, I'm, I'm a, I'm a serious person with
39:35
realistic projections, but Bitcoin is not a realistic
39:40
thing. It's a 0 sum game.
39:43
Either you're going to use Bitcoin or you're going to
39:47
starve. So it's all or none.
39:49
And when you get to different levels, like when you get to
39:53
100K, when you get to 100K, it's different, right?
39:56
When you get to 200 K, the world again looks very, very
40:00
different. Just just close your eyes and
40:02
imagine what does the world look like when Bitcoin is at 500 K?
40:07
That's you're reaching half of gold's market cap at that point.
40:11
You know, that will demonetize gold if it doesn't get
40:16
demonetized earlier. Because there's talk of, you
40:18
know, the US selling gold to buy Bitcoin to fund their reserves
40:22
because that would take out their enemies who have been
40:26
accumulating gold for the last decade, right?
40:29
But disregard that Bitcoin is sitting at 500 K.
40:32
We are the second largest asset now behind gold.
40:37
It's a very different landscape. And at that point, do you think
40:42
most people would still want to sell their Bitcoin to get Fiat,
40:45
or would most people now insist on being paid in Bitcoin?
40:50
I think it's the latter. So from there, you just two X,
40:54
yeah. And then you're #1.
40:56
And you know, it's, it's interesting because right, so I
41:00
come from the, the bullish school of thought too, but my,
41:04
my thought process is a little bit different.
41:07
This cycle reminds me of 2017 and 2017.
41:13
We went from $1000 in January to the end of 2017.
41:19
We went to 20K. No one had any idea it was going
41:23
to happen in January. In fact, in January the price
41:26
stayed at $1000. 2020 one happened, and I believe 2021 was
41:31
artificially cut short because of the China mining ban, because
41:34
of FTX, because of Celsius. And I think people have
41:38
forgotten what a true Bitcoin bull market feels like.
41:43
And I'm getting the same type of kind of consensus understanding,
41:49
which is 150K200K Bitcoin. You and I both know that when
41:53
everybody on X or Twitter is calling for the same price
41:57
predictions, Bitcoin does the exact effing opposite.
42:01
So either we're going to underperform, which I doubt, or
42:05
we're going to overperform, which no one is expecting more
42:09
than 200,000, more than 300,000. That's my thought process at
42:14
kind of getting to, I don't know if it's a million, but half a
42:16
million. I wouldn't be surprised at all
42:18
if we hit it this year. I think it's, it's just, I don't
42:21
know what to call it. It's like a a precipice effect,
42:24
you know, like you're standing on the edge of the Cliff.
42:26
People are scared because, yeah, we can fall a lot from 100K.
42:30
And that's why you kind of like hover at that area for a while
42:33
because it's scary looking down. Like what if we go to 70 and you
42:36
remember when we had a little dip, everyone is saying, oh,
42:38
we're going to go back to 70. Yeah.
42:41
But when things solidify, then you kind of go up and everyone
42:45
that was panicking and looking down, looking off that
42:48
precipice, they've been left behind already.
42:51
And because the supply is so limited right now and the demand
42:55
is so high, it's just going to shoot up and you're going to see
42:58
that kind of 2017 face melting shock and awe raise, rise in
43:05
Bitcoin price. Absolutely.
43:06
And I think, I think the reason that I would, it's because no
43:11
one's seeing it. Everyone has again, this general
43:13
consensus of the price. No one is really, no one's
43:17
really expecting it. And Bitcoin tends to do the
43:19
things that everyone least expects, especially if this
43:24
strategic Bitcoin reserve thing comes to fruition.
43:27
Like I think it's going to happen, you know, over the price
43:31
is just going to 2X or 3X overnight because it's
43:34
essentially a rubber stamp of approval by the most powerful
43:37
government on the face of the planet.
43:39
Now my question to you is what happens when central banks that
43:44
have the ability to essentially create money out of nothing
43:47
start using that ability to buy something that has absolute
43:51
scarcity, scarcity like Bitcoin? Omega candles.
43:56
LA is coming out of a volcano. Perhaps.
43:58
Perhaps so, yeah. But what happens?
44:01
What breaks? I think they can go for a while
44:04
and print because the world seems to take time, takes time
44:08
to adjust. If you look back at the low
44:11
lockdowns and the pandemic or pandemic, when they shut
44:14
everything down, the prices didn't jump.
44:16
It took two to three years, right, for kind of the normal
44:20
person to understand or even anybody in the supply chain
44:23
understand what's fully happened.
44:25
And then you saw the inflation come.
44:28
So all the money printing, the shutdown of economies, it didn't
44:31
really kick in until two years later, almost, right?
44:35
And I think it's the same. Everything takes time for the
44:38
world to adjust to. They haven't really fully
44:41
adjusted or understood the impact of the ETFs and central
44:44
banks being able to gain exposure to the ETFs.
44:47
We also forgot to talk about the Czech Republic bank, central
44:50
bank. They've approved buying now too.
44:53
So what you're talking about Nico's, it's like up on the
44:56
cusp. But yeah, they can probably
44:59
print and buy for some time because the ordinary man in the
45:02
street is not going to fully understand what's going on.
45:05
The pot is boiling too slowly for them to realize.
45:09
If they would have understood the impact, you know, they would
45:13
have probably bought Bitcoin already just from try to hedge
45:16
against inflation alone, yeah. Do you think?
45:20
Cycles are dead. I don't really believe in
45:24
cycles. I think if you flip a coin four
45:27
times and then you flip it four times and you get the same
45:29
pattern, it's a coincidence. Go.
45:31
Each flip is independent. And there are a lot of arguments
45:35
of why we have cycles, such as it's tied to the halving or it's
45:39
tied to elections. But again, I believe in phase
45:43
transition step changes, you just go to Bitcoin and when you
45:48
go to Bitcoin, there's no cycle. And This is why the power law
45:51
guys hate me because they expect it's going to progress in a
45:55
meaningful way. Whereas my prediction with the
45:57
mega candles and everything is it.
46:00
What is an Omega candle? And a mega candle is 100,100.
46:03
$1000 candle handle. On a day.
46:07
And you think that's going to happen sooner rather than later?
46:09
It's already happening in other trading pairs.
46:13
That's right, Egyptian pound Turkish lira to Bitcoin.
46:17
They already have Omega candles. OK, this is very fitting talking
46:22
about Omega candles in front of an Omega volcano.
46:26
So I'm assuming that you don't believe in diminishing.
46:30
Returns. I don't believe in diminishing
46:32
returns. OK.
46:35
What's the diminishing returns on air travel from boat travel?
46:40
You know, we just have air travel.
46:42
You take boats for leisure now? Yeah, yeah.
46:45
You don't use it for transportation.
46:46
So you've said in interviews in the past that the US dollar is
46:52
gonna rebase or debase, rebase, rebase.
46:56
I've never heard that term. What does that mean?
46:57
The US dollar is gonna rebase to Bitcoin.
47:00
It's sort of part of that transition to a new money.
47:05
It's an attempt to shore up and strengthen a currency.
47:09
So you can either do that with gold or anything, but you can
47:13
also do that with Bitcoin. So you can kind of say, you
47:15
know, we're going to peg the dollar to Bitcoin now and the
47:18
debt is convertible, redeemable from Bitcoin, so one SAT per
47:23
dollar. One SAP is that $10 million
47:25
Bitcoin. 100 million. Oh my God, is the network ready
47:31
for that? Is the network ready for a 10X?
47:33
Like the amount of people that are going to come on board?
47:36
Is the is the main chain able to handle that?
47:39
I think so. I think people have kind of
47:42
overlooked side chains because they're looking for a more
47:45
shiny, interesting things, more complex things that sound cool.
47:50
But side chains are relatively simple, very reliable, and are
47:55
proven to be a way that we can scale Bitcoin with just what we
48:00
have now. Zero change to consensus rules.
48:03
No need to ask devs for permission or to have a civil
48:07
war or do anything. You just spin up your side
48:09
chain. And we have Liquid, which has
48:12
been running for, you know, getting close to a decade now.
48:15
And Liquid is not decentralized. It's a run by federation.
48:20
We can make the blocks bigger, we can ramp it up.
48:23
We can scale it up, make it more robust.
48:25
You can have other Liquid federations and that is the way
48:29
that right now today we can scale Bitcoin to meet the needs.
48:33
So, you know, Aqua uses liquid now, but let's say liquid is
48:36
packed in full, you know, maybe there's another liquid.
48:39
Maybe El Salvador has a side chain, maybe the Czech Republic
48:42
has side chain. We can support all of these and
48:45
we can perform atomic swaps between different side chains.
48:48
So I don't see any issue with scaling Bitcoin.
48:51
The question is how you want to scale it, because if you're
48:56
going for orthodoxy, then you're a big blocker.
48:58
And you say we need giga megs, we need TB size blocks, Good
49:04
luck. But if you're going to be
49:07
pragmatic, use the technology that we have now and meet the
49:12
demand, we can do all of that already.
49:15
So it's Bitcoin is able to scale, but it has to scale on
49:20
layer 2. Yes.
49:22
Gotcha. And the technology needs to be
49:24
built out. I think you're solving that with
49:26
the Aqua and the the fancy tech in the side.
49:28
And again, as a user, you don't really care what's happening in
49:31
the background. Like the vast majority of people
49:33
don't really care. The vast majority of people
49:35
really care is does it work? Yeah.
49:38
So I mean, stable coins again are another interesting example.
49:41
A lot of people down there don't care.
49:43
They're using Binance, right? To transact stable coins send
49:47
this to my Binance account, They're using Ethereum Tron.
49:50
They're not Ethereum Maxis or Tron fans.
49:54
They just want the the dollar to save some money.
49:58
Yeah, right. And they will move, they're
50:01
moving from Ethereum. They move from Ethereum to Tron
50:05
because Ethereum stable coin transactions were $8 or
50:08
something like that, right? Tron was a, you know, sub
50:11
dollar, but still around that. And now Tron is at $2.00 and now
50:16
they're moving to other things too.
50:17
So there's no loyalty. It's these are just transport
50:21
rails to people. They just care about being able
50:24
to move money. Yeah.
50:26
And, and that's the vast majority of people.
50:28
And I think, I think Bitcoiners forget that on X is that, you
50:31
know, the vast majority of people are, are really looking
50:34
at the utility aspect of it. Yeah.
50:37
What would you say to someone that feels they're late to
50:39
Bitcoin now that it's at $100,000?
50:44
That's a good question. Like I like to say, we're early.
50:48
But still. Yeah, I think we're still early,
50:50
I mean until we see Bitcoin. Does they have 100 X in it?
50:56
Yeah, well, I mean, how much more to go to dollar set parity?
51:00
Yeah, right. But here's that exercise.
51:04
Next time you're stopped at an intersection at a red light,
51:07
watch people crossing on the crosswalk and ask yourself how
51:10
many of them know about Bitcoin? Probably not many of them,
51:14
right? And you can test this, like, go
51:17
to a restaurant and say, can I pay in Bitcoin, You know, watch
51:20
them laugh at you, and then you can understand exactly how early
51:23
you are. Yeah.
51:25
Where are we on the S curve? Still early adopter, still
51:30
early. Adopter.
51:31
Early adopter. Gotcha.
51:33
What advice would you give to your younger self if you knew,
51:37
you know, you got into Bitcoin where Bitcoin was not as
51:39
certain? I got into Bitcoin class of
51:42
2016. I remember the, the block, the,
51:44
you know, the, the, the block wars.
51:46
It was not fun. Now we know that Jihan and want
51:52
to be specific with the names, but let's just say that they
51:54
were artificially making the hash rate go higher and there
51:58
are some doing they were doing some interesting things with
52:00
exchanges to the volume and there was a lot of uncertainty
52:04
at that point. You, you questioned yourself as
52:06
a Bitcoiner and said, is this Bitcoin cash thing?
52:09
Like are they right? You know, like now we know after
52:11
the fact. Well, I knew you knew.
52:14
Now we know after the fact, yeah, but but it's because I got
52:16
into Bitcoin through mining. But I would say if you're
52:18
looking at that, if you're an observer, you you don't know,
52:21
right? You're looking at that.
52:21
You're like, Oh my God, like is this, is this a switch?
52:24
So what I'm trying to say is you got in way earlier, right?
52:28
Things were a lot more uncertain back then.
52:31
Did you always know? What advice would you give to
52:33
your younger self? Is it just going to be like, I
52:36
wish I bought more? Yeah.
52:37
Of course, that's the that's the wish everyone had.
52:39
OK, let's. Scratch that one out.
52:41
What other advice would you give your younger self for Bitcoin?
52:44
Specifically, Bitcoin, entrepreneurship, Whatever.
52:47
I think just focus and and think about things.
52:50
That's the advice I would give. And could you elaborate a little
52:53
bit about what why you would give yourself that advice?
52:56
Because I, I think most people don't think deeply about topics
53:00
and if you really analyse a lot of things, I think you can
53:04
reason out through first principles thinking what is the
53:07
right answer? Like who's right in the block
53:09
size for you have to really step back and objectively look at the
53:12
motivations and incentives of everyone.
53:14
So I think that's the biggest thing to think, like if I was
53:19
really young and I had to tell myself something, just think
53:21
more about everything, analyse everything.
53:23
What motivated you to start Gen. 3?
53:27
I want to accelerate Bitcoin adoption.
53:29
So if Bitcoin adoption, if hyper bitcoinization is this
53:34
demonetization event, there's a lot of preparation that has to
53:38
go into onboarding humanity to Bitcoin.
53:42
And the wallet obviously is a major touch point, right?
53:45
The most people are going to, they're not going to get a node,
53:47
they're just going to download a wallet and in an App Store.
53:50
So you need to have that solid and ready to onboard people, but
53:54
engaging with governments, getting them ready so that they
53:57
don't in, in, in the time of failing currencies, they don't
54:01
accidentally adopt Ethereum or something as a sound money.
54:05
So it's preparation work so that people understand Bitcoin, know
54:10
how to handle Bitcoin and are ready because the it's going to
54:14
be messy. And we've seen this in recent
54:17
history. India had a demonetization event
54:19
in 2016 where they just pulled some notes out of circulation
54:23
and that was a big mess and people died because hospitals
54:28
would not accept the bills. That's.
54:30
Crazy. People were lining up at the
54:32
banks and dying of exposure to heat.
54:35
You know, these things are not orderly.
54:38
So I think given that I'm so bullish that I think it's going
54:41
to go very rapidly. We should be out there engaging
54:44
and educating and trying to onboard people ahead of time,
54:48
getting parallel systems in place where you have your Fiat
54:51
currency and you have Bitcoin, because that's the softest way
54:55
being able to move in. And back to your other question,
54:58
why at which point are we not early?
55:01
When you cannot buy Bitcoin with Fiat, that means late.
55:05
Interesting Are central bank digital currency still threat?
55:08
I don't think they were ever really a threat because people
55:11
don't want to use them. Every country that's rolled out
55:14
a CBDC has sort of failed even in China, which you would they
55:18
could pull it off because you can't use VPN, this great
55:21
firewall and whatnot. But no ones using barely anyone
55:25
is using the CBDC. And then Nigeria had the E
55:28
naira. There was a total failure.
55:30
Total failure. Yeah.
55:32
And they had to actually clamp down and limit ATM withdrawals
55:35
to force people to use what they initially marketed as a
55:40
convenience tool and milk to help you, to keep you safe.
55:43
But if it's so good and so safe, why do you need to beat people
55:46
over the head to use it? Yeah, there should be no need
55:49
for coercion. But you do.
55:51
Because people may not understand Bitcoin, but they're
55:53
not stupid. They're not going to use
55:54
something where they can't get out.
55:56
They're not going to check into the Roche Motel, right?
55:59
Well, some do, but those are. We call them shit corners, but
56:03
generally people know this is inferior monetary technology.
56:06
They may not be able to quantify it and describe it, but they
56:12
know inside. Yeah.
56:14
And what's really interesting, what you said about the coercive
56:17
aspect, right, Like CBDC's Fiat, they do require a form of
56:22
coercion for people to use. I think the reason Bitcoin's
56:26
going to win ultimately is it's, it's incentives.
56:29
It's just comes down to incentives.
56:30
Bitcoin incentivizes people for for them to use it.
56:34
There is no coercion in in the equation.
56:38
And to me, when I really learned that lesson, Samson, was when
56:42
the China mining ban happened and the hash rate dropped 50%.
56:46
Within nine months, the hash rate recovered, decentralizing
56:50
the process went all over the world, Texas, Kazakhstan.
56:54
And there was no Bitcoin CEO essentially whipping people to
56:58
plug in those miners. It was just the Bitcoin network
57:00
incentivizing people, entrepreneurs, miners to plug
57:05
those machines back in. Yeah.
57:06
So it was pretty crazy. It was pretty crazy.
57:09
It's always fun times. Yeah, I mean, it, it kind of, it
57:13
was kind of a bummer because it cut 2021 short.
57:15
Like I, I really believe that. I know there's all these other
57:17
theories, but you look at the hash rate and you look at the
57:20
price drop, it's like it's obvious that that's what it was.
57:23
Well. FTX cut the last one short, too.
57:25
Yeah, that's why I think we should be at 200 right now.
57:28
Yeah. Everything under 200 is, you
57:30
know, cherish. It's a joke.
57:33
So what are the things that worry about worry you about
57:37
Bitcoin the most? I think Bitcoin is pretty solid
57:41
right now. I don't really have too many
57:44
worries. If I had to pick one, it would
57:46
be sometime in the future. We might have something like a
57:50
block size war or a civil war. And it might be from the
57:55
traditional finance system like the legacy finance system.
57:59
Because if you look at the BlackRock ETF filing, they
58:02
actually say in there we get to choose which chain is Bitcoin,
58:05
if there is a split, which is incorrect.
58:08
And if they amend that, I'll feel better.
58:11
But until they do, I think that's a risk hanging over our
58:14
heads. There's a chance that even if
58:17
that doesn't happen, that Bitcoin can split into two.
58:20
You have institutional Bitcoin and free Bitcoin.
58:23
Institutional Bitcoin is just locked up in ETFs, in
58:27
custodians, and it's not allowed to leave.
58:29
And we see little snips and glimpses in the future of that,
58:33
right? In the UK you can only transfer
58:35
from one exchange to another exchange, right?
58:37
Little bits of, you know, Orwellian garbage here and
58:42
there, but that could really happen.
58:44
You just have free Bitcoin, which is transacted in in
58:47
Argentina, El Salvador and everywhere else.
58:48
And then everything else is locked up in a system and it
58:52
can't escape. What can we do as a community to
58:54
avoid that scenario? There may be no way to avoid it,
58:58
but you can protect yourself by keeping your Bitcoin yourself.
59:02
Anything that's in the system or connected to the system, you
59:06
have to understand there is some risk to it there and you may not
59:10
be able to take it out of that system.
59:11
That leads me to my next question, which is the idea of
59:14
self custody. I think I've been doing this in
59:16
nine years and I have this very, you know, ideological view on
59:22
self custody. It's like not your keys, not
59:23
your cheese. But in actuality, I'm, I'm the
59:26
Uncle Jim of my family and my extended family.
59:30
And even though I've showed them 1000 times how to do it, for
59:35
whatever reason, writing down 12 to 24 words is like rocket
59:40
science. So, and then in my experience,
59:44
to use your analogy of earlier on regards to people walking
59:47
across the street, you know, the idea of not having a 1800 number
59:51
to call is radical. It's, it's, it's uncomfortable.
59:58
And now that leads me to like my conclusion that I've come to
1:00:02
with self custody is. Have we underestimated human
1:00:06
nature as Bitcoiners? I don't think so.
1:00:09
We're just going back to the way it was when everyone was using
1:00:13
gold. Who's the 1800 number?
1:00:15
There's no one 800 number. We've just been coddled and, you
1:00:20
know, domesticated into the Fiat system that we think it's normal
1:00:24
to be able to have someone help you.
1:00:27
You know, the reality is you have to take care of your money
1:00:31
yourself. Someone else can't take care of
1:00:33
it for you or you. You think they can, but they're
1:00:36
going to steal it slowly, if not immediately.
1:00:40
So you have to take your assets into your own hands.
1:00:45
Your destiny is your own. And I think we've done that in
1:00:48
the past with gold. We can do it again.
1:00:51
We can rediscover. Yeah, it's just going to take a
1:00:54
lot of work. I think it's going to be a
1:00:56
generational thing, a lot of education required.
1:01:00
I don't think so. I think you get very fast
1:01:03
education. Like everyone burned in Celsius
1:01:06
and FTX. Do you think those guys learned?
1:01:08
Oh, they, they learned very quickly.
1:01:10
I remember earlier on this year my sister lost her seed phrase
1:01:15
and I think she definitely learned how to take self custody
1:01:19
in that situation. So we were at a we were at your
1:01:24
red carpet event yesterday for the HBO documentary Money
1:01:29
Electric. How did that feel, man?
1:01:32
The red carpet event. The red.
1:01:34
Carpet event, You being in a feature film.
1:01:37
The documentary as a whole. It was fun I would say.
1:01:41
I think Peter had fun too. Is he Satoshi?
1:01:44
No, he's the red carpet event was fun.
1:01:47
We thought, you know, we knew we, we're close with the HBO
1:01:50
guys and we said, you know, you didn't have a, a live showing or
1:01:55
screening anywhere. Do you want us to help you do
1:01:58
one in El Salvador where a lot of the film was filmed actually
1:02:02
in El Salvador. So we thought it was very poetic
1:02:04
that we, we bring it here. We have a theater, we've got a
1:02:09
red carpet and we have, you know, Adam, Peter, myself and a
1:02:12
lot of other people, a lot of bitcoiners go and see the movie
1:02:16
together. It's like this thing.
1:02:18
You can't really do that often in your life, but go watch the
1:02:20
movie with your friends that are in the movie.
1:02:23
When you got into the industry and you know when you first
1:02:28
bought Bitcoin, could you ever have imagined what is happening
1:02:31
today? No, no, no.
1:02:36
I think it's everything's happened faster and in a much
1:02:43
more spectacular way than I imagined.
1:02:45
That's why I'm really bullish because I'm kind of bullish and
1:02:49
then my expectations are beat and I try to reset them and then
1:02:52
they are beat yet again. But everything is happening so
1:02:55
much faster. Like the China ban was a nation
1:02:58
state attack. Then you have a Salvador and
1:03:00
nation state adoption. The timeline is definitely way
1:03:04
faster, right? It's 16 years.
1:03:07
And being in it, you kind of you kind of lose your perspective.
1:03:12
But if you step back a bit and you try to look at it from afar,
1:03:15
it's like that's the blink of an eye.
1:03:17
Yeah, the the rapid pace at which we have grown as a
1:03:24
community, as an asset class and as a technology for money, it's
1:03:30
just unbelievable. Absolutely, It's it's been a
1:03:33
hell of a roller coaster ride. I don't think I'd want to work
1:03:37
anywhere else. I'm sure you feel exactly the
1:03:38
same way. Final question, what excites you
1:03:42
the most about Bitcoin for the next 5 to 10 years?
1:03:46
Watching hyper bitcoinization unfold, I think it's 5 to 10
1:03:49
years. Five to 10 years.
1:03:51
Five to 10 years, I don't think Fiat can hold out that long.
1:03:54
So I mentioned all the tailwinds that we have.
1:03:59
This is happening at the same time the Fiat system is facing
1:04:02
headwinds, right, $36 trillion in debt in the US Every other
1:04:08
country is massively in debt with a really crazy debt to GDP
1:04:12
ratio. The Fiat currencies are failing.
1:04:16
Canadian dollar. I don't know if you're watching
1:04:18
it, but it's going like it's trading like a shit coin.
1:04:21
As with a lot of other Fiat currencies, the yen is dying,
1:04:25
right? Last year there there were so
1:04:27
many Bank of Japan interventions to push it from 160 down to
1:04:31
1:50-ish and it's back now. How much more firepower do they
1:04:37
have and at what point does that stop working completely in the
1:04:42
UK? Last year, the pound almost
1:04:46
reached parity with a dollar, which is crazy.
1:04:49
The government bonds were in crisis.
1:04:51
The Bank of England had to intervene.
1:04:54
And maybe people are not paying attention now because there's so
1:04:56
much other stuff going on. But the government bonds in the
1:04:59
UK, the gilts there are again in crisis.
1:05:02
So if you look at everything, the entire macroeconomic
1:05:05
landscape, you can see that 1,000,000 is actually really
1:05:11
conservative for this year. Yeah, a 10X is.
1:05:14
Pretty conservative. That's a that's a perfect way to
1:05:18
end it, Samson. It's been an honor.
1:05:20
We're here at the Jan Three headquarters and El Salvador
1:05:24
filming in front of a real volcano.
1:05:26
That ain't a green screen. Samson, thank you so much.
1:05:28
Thank you. Appreciate that that.
1:05:33
Was dope volcano energy bro El Salvador freedom country it.
1:05:38
Was a lot of fun.