Latest / What Bitcoin Did / The Spiritual War for Bitcoin | American HODL, Erik Cason & Marty Bent

Transcript

The Spiritual War for Bitcoin | American HODL, Erik Cason & Marty Bent · What Bitcoin Did

• 0:00
  The root of the problem is that the money, how money is created and how it's distributed
• 0:08
  throughout the economy.
• 0:09
  It has externalities on everything.
• 0:11
  Bitcoin can be a means to an end, but it's how do you convince people that this is the
• 0:17
  right means to the right end?
• 0:18
  If you own Bitcoin and you have it self-custodied, it's yours.
• 0:22
  It's going to be your way out of this dystopian hellhole that's probably going to get produced.
• 0:26
  The point of uncensorable cypherpunk money is to be uncensorable and allow for anyone anywhere to use it for whatever they want.
• 0:34
  If you're worried about the state doing stuff, like, get the fuck out of it.
• 0:38
  Like, I don't know what you're doing here.
• 0:40
  I don't understand why you're interested in this project.
• 0:43
  You should just kind of bluntly assume your favorite Bitcoin developer is probably an intelligence asset just because that's the model.
• 0:52
  If you're a Bitcoiner who believes in freedom, you have to tread lightly as you walk through the valley of the shadow of death because you are beset on all sides by enemies.
• 1:05
  Eric, Hoddle, Marty, good to see you guys.
• 1:07
  I thought I wanted to get a show out for Bitcoin White Paper Day, 17 years since the white paper dropped.
• 1:12
  This is going to go out on Friday.
• 1:14
  Marty, this is your first time on the show, though.
• 1:15
  Welcome, man.
• 1:17
  It's great to be here.
• 1:18
  I was on the previous iteration of what Bitcoin did, but never this one.
• 1:22
  Yeah, we tried to make it work in Austin when I was there a few months ago, but here we are anyway.
• 1:29
  But 17 years since the white paper dropped, you guys have all been in Bitcoin for like a long time.
• 1:34
  Eric, I think probably you've been in the longest.
• 1:36
  I just want to get a bit of a reflection on this.
• 1:38
  Like when you look back at what Bitcoin's done over the last 17 years, like how do you take it in?
• 1:44
  It's gone from being like worth literally zero.
• 1:46
  You get it free like faucets and you could mine it on your home laptop to being like a $2 trillion asset.
• 1:52
  that's very sort of geopolitically relevant?
• 1:55
  How do you take all that in?
• 1:57
  Yeah, I remember when you used to be able to get like
• 1:58
  hundreds of Bitcoin from a faucet.
• 2:01
  I mean, it's like I took acid and it never wore off.
• 2:05
  It's just like I'm like perpetually in this insane trip of a journey.
• 2:09
  And like it's super blessed and amazing.
• 2:11
  I mean, when I first discovered Bitcoin,
• 2:14
  there was very little outside of the Bitcoin talk forms
• 2:17
  that were available.
• 2:18
  Yeah, and it was like a batshit crazy idea.
• 2:21
  and uh it's funny because like i don't feel like there's as much of the like you like smoked you
• 2:27
  like smoke the bitcoin crack sort of effect that like people used to have because like some of the
• 2:32
  other early psychopaths that i met like they they would be like yeah i like when it clicked for me
• 2:37
  like i couldn't sleep for days on end i like lost a bunch of weight it was you know like i really got
• 2:42
  what it was uh and so now that it's like actually achieving what it set out to be it's it's a very
• 2:48
  strange and ethereal journey, but I feel
• 2:50
  immensely blessed that I saw
• 2:52
  what it was, that it seems to be
• 2:54
  doing what we wanted to.
• 2:56
  And we're also at this very interesting inflection
• 2:58
  point where it seems
• 3:00
  like Banker Bitcoin and Sucoin
• 3:02
  is actually giving
• 3:04
  Cypherpunk Vision
• 3:06
  a bit of a run for its money
• 3:08
  at this point in time.
• 3:11
  So I don't know. I feel really great
• 3:12
  about what it's accomplished, but
• 3:14
  I'm deeply concerned about the lack
• 3:16
  of pedagogical approach about
• 3:18
  like the point of uncensorable cypherpunk money is to be uncensorable and allow for anyone anywhere
• 3:24
  to use it for whatever they want. And that's its technical purpose. And so seeing a lot of people
• 3:29
  just cheering on number go up repeatedly, I do find a bit alarming. But with that being said,
• 3:35
  Bitcoin's magnitude beyond anything I could have imagined in my wildest dreams. So like I feel
• 3:41
  deeply blessed that the vision is out there in the world and it offers a radical new kind of
• 3:46
  hope to most people. I'd just like to get back to sort of a lot of insane stuff that me and
• 3:51
  HODL first connected around, like in sort of the 2020-2021 cycle, where it was much more about
• 3:57
  the spiritual awakening of Bitcoin, as opposed to that we're all just going to get rich and drive
• 4:02
  Ferraris. Do you think that's just like a consequence of scale, though? And not everyone's
• 4:07
  going to get Bitcoin in that way? Because I'm with you. I got into Bitcoin later than you. But even
• 4:12
  when I did like the from the day I first heard about Bitcoin there's probably not been a single
• 4:16
  day since that I've not read about it like tried to learn about it want to go further and further
• 4:20
  down that rabbit hole but like as this scales not everyone's going to be like that yeah and I do
• 4:25
  think that's part of the consequence I also think that like uh sort of the the crazier more radical
• 4:29
  voices are getting drowned out of it and like I I sort of think it's time for us to redouble into
• 4:34
  our own insane journey because like my deepest frustration now when I talk to people I'm like
• 4:38
  oh I'm a Bitcoin and they're like oh crypto I'm like no if you ever say that again I'm gonna smack
• 4:42
  it right out of your fucking mouth um and i'm very pedantic i'm like if you don't understand the
• 4:47
  difference between bitcoin and crypto you don't understand either and you're going to get scammed
• 4:50
  for the latter as opposed to actually getting the true cause of what the former is and like
• 4:55
  so bitcoin has a real opportunity to free us from the endemic rot that like is the fiat system uh
• 5:03
  drive people around me crazy by like constantly commenting on the societal ills that fiat has
• 5:09
  created and and you can just see that metastasizing effect across society and at this point in america
• 5:14
  like i i highly expect the next five years it's fascism or communism it's like one of the two
• 5:20
  choices and that's just a result of a broken money system and it's really interesting to like
• 5:25
  watch america become like the we mayer remix so it's like 2030s you know and like that's what
• 5:31
  we're gonna get and uh it's pretty scary because also like the the communists have like a very
• 5:36
  strong argument now of like yeah fuck it like let's just seize the boomers property redistribute
• 5:42
  to the youth because like they fucked us over we'll never fucking touch social security we'll
• 5:46
  never get entitlements they're just handing out willy-nilly medicare to everyone except for the
• 5:51
  youth so yeah like fuck it let's just have a full-on communist party start seizing wealth
• 5:57
  across the board start executing vcs it'll work great and at that point that's when you get
• 6:03
  somebody in the far right being like hey they're gonna kill all you guys if you don't give me
• 6:06
  radical power so you can either sign up here or get executed by the communists which one
• 6:12
  this uh this is funny you're bringing this up because this aligns very much in my early bitcoin
• 6:21
  story back in like 2013 i got pushed over the edge i was like really into bitcoin it's funny
• 6:26
  this uh this is the philadelphia inquire uh headline from october 31st 2008 when the white
• 6:33
  paper dropped while we're here to meet this. I was 17 years old, running around the streets of
• 6:38
  Philadelphia after the Phillies won the World Series. Great financial crisis was happening.
• 6:42
  I went to college with no enemy mentality, but to your point, Eric, what really pushed me over the
• 6:47
  edge is I worked for this Russian immigrant. He immigrated to the United States in the 90s.
• 6:54
  And I'll never forget this one portfolio management meeting we had. We sat down and
• 6:58
  ended up just being me and him. His name was Dimitri. In the room, we were talking about TSA
• 7:03
  and civil liberties and stuff like that. And he typically, during our meetings, he would just look
• 7:08
  at his computer. He was a quant and he'd have all this stuff up. And he like turned from his computer
• 7:12
  and looked at me. When we were talking about the TSA, he was like, Marty, I want to tell you a
• 7:15
  story. The first time I immigrated here, I'll never forget in 1994, the first time I walked
• 7:21
  through an airport in the United States, I cried because I'd never felt that amount of freedom.
• 7:26
  And I want to warn you as a young 22 year old man that the U.S. is turning into the Soviet Russia I ran away from. And that was in like 2013, maybe early 2014. And I was learning about Bitcoin at the time. But just reflecting on America and not necessarily Bitcoin since then, like, yeah, it's definitely gone down that trajectory towards over communism.
• 7:49
  and really why I went full bore into Bitcoin in the first place.
• 7:54
  It was like, this thing is separate from that.
• 7:56
  I need to focus my attention on this.
• 7:59
  Yeah.
• 7:59
  Just reflecting on the whole thing,
• 8:01
  I remember being deeply affected by the great financial crisis,
• 8:06
  just like Marty.
• 8:08
  I have a friend, Jenseth, who says that you didn't get to Bitcoin
• 8:11
  because you're so smart.
• 8:12
  You got here because you were a young man
• 8:13
  who had stupid ideas about the government,
• 8:15
  which I certainly embodied.
• 8:16
  I was in high school writing papers about seasteading
• 8:19
  and things like that.
• 8:21
  And my daughter's walking through.
• 8:23
  Hi, sweetie.
• 8:24
  Can you go?
• 8:24
  Can you go to the church?
• 8:25
  Thank you.
• 8:27
  And so anyway,
• 8:28
  I was ideologically predisposed
• 8:30
  to be a crazy libertarian person.
• 8:32
  And then you find Bitcoin
• 8:33
  and you're like,
• 8:33
  well, shit, here it is.
• 8:35
  The thing we've been waiting for.
• 8:36
  We don't have to be
• 8:37
  loser libertarians anymore.
• 8:38
  We're going to be rich libertarians
• 8:40
  who affect the world
• 8:42
  in a positive way.
• 8:43
  And actually,
• 8:44
  maybe we can get towards
• 8:46
  anarcho-capitalism
• 8:47
  because Bitcoin is solving
• 8:49
  a problem, right? It's not just us complaining or doing rhetoric against the system. Like,
• 8:53
  we actually are solving a problem. And the problem is, like, people used to say in the early days of
• 8:57
  Bitcoin, it had no killer app. And it's like, the killer app is prosperity. You know, prosperity is
• 9:03
  the killer app. And every single person on earth wants that. And when you talk about this political
• 9:07
  fight that's happening now between the commies and, you know, the fascists, and I was just listening
• 9:12
  to, like, Fuentes on Tucker Carlson, and he throws in there as this, like, sort of casual aside that he
• 9:17
  admires joseph stalin and it's like and it just gets brushed brushed right by it it's like
• 9:21
  okay both of these the luigi mangioni left the groipers everyone's an economic populist and
• 9:28
  economic populism is rising and i think that we as the bitcoiners are like which is weird because
• 9:35
  we're the people who are from the island of misfit toys we're the weirdos we are now occupying the
• 9:41
  sane, like, middle ground.
• 9:43
  Like, we are the rational center
• 9:44
  and saying, hey, guys,
• 9:47
  like, maybe it's not
• 9:49
  we need to kill all the immigrants
• 9:51
  and maybe it's not
• 9:52
  we need to kill everybody
• 9:53
  with more than a million dollars.
• 9:55
  Maybe it's we need a money
• 9:57
  that can't be corrupted.
• 9:59
  And oh, by the way,
• 10:00
  we're a broad, multi-diverse,
• 10:02
  multi-racial, multi-ethnic,
• 10:04
  multi-religious coalition
• 10:05
  of young people
• 10:06
  who have all seen a better,
• 10:08
  brighter, orangier future.
• 10:09
  and like, join us, you know?
• 10:12
  And that's crazy, but it gets less crazy every day.
• 10:16
  Less, you know, the alternative,
• 10:18
  like the mainstream political alternatives
• 10:20
  are so much fucking crazier than what I just said.
• 10:23
  Like magic internet money, join us.
• 10:26
  You know what I mean?
• 10:26
  A man in a stupid wizard hat.
• 10:28
  Like that's way more sane than what's going on
• 10:32
  on the left or the right.
• 10:33
  What Bitcoin Did is brought to you
• 10:35
  by the massive legends, Iron.
• 10:37
  the largest Nasdaq listed Bitcoin miner using 100% renewable energy.
• 10:42
  IREN are not just powering the Bitcoin network,
• 10:44
  they're also providing cutting-edge computing resources for AI,
• 10:47
  all backed by renewable energy.
• 10:49
  We've been working with their founders Dan and Will for quite some time now
• 10:52
  and have been really impressed with their values,
• 10:54
  especially their commitment to local communities and sustainable computing power.
• 10:58
  So whether you're interested in mining Bitcoin or harnessing AI compute power,
• 11:02
  IREN is setting the standard.
• 11:03
  visit iron.com to learn more which is i-r-e-n.com if you already self-custody of bitcoin you know
• 11:09
  the deal with hardware wallets complex setups clumsy interfaces and a seed phrase that can
• 11:14
  be lost stolen or forgotten well bitkey fixes that bitkey is a multi-sig hardware wallet built
• 11:20
  by the team behind square and cash app it packs a cryptographic recovery system and built-in
• 11:25
  inheritance feature into an intuitive easy to use wallet with no seed phrase to sweat over
• 11:30
  It's simple, secure self-custody without the stress.
• 11:34
  And time named BitKey one of the best inventions of 2024.
• 11:37
  Get 20% off at bitkey.world when you use the code WBD.
• 11:42
  That's B-I-T-K-E-Y dot world and use the code WBD.
• 11:47
  This episode is brought to you by Anchor Watch.
• 11:49
  The thing that keeps me up at night is the idea of a critical error with my Bitcoin cold storage.
• 11:54
  And this is where Anchor Watch comes in.
• 11:56
  With AnchorWatch, your Bitcoin is insured with your own A-plus rated Lloyds of London insurance policy
• 12:01
  and all Bitcoin is held in their time-locked multi-sig vaults.
• 12:05
  So you have the peace of mind knowing your Bitcoin is insured while not giving up custody.
• 12:09
  So whether you're worried about inheritance planning, wrench attacks, natural disasters or just your own silly mistakes,
• 12:14
  you're protected by AnchorWatch.
• 12:16
  Rates for fully insured custody start as low as 0.55%
• 12:19
  and are available for individual and commercial customers located in the US.
• 12:23
  speak to anchor watch for a quote and for more details about your security options and coverage
• 12:28
  visit anchor watch.com today that is anchor watch.com marty i want to go back to something you said
• 12:34
  before like you were talking about the us basically trending towards soviet russia um if that's
• 12:40
  happening the uk and australia and other places around the world are definitely front-running the
• 12:44
  us in that sense um do you think bitcoin can actually stop that or or is bitcoin just an opt
• 12:49
  out so you don't have to be involved in it i don't think bitcoin in and of itself can really
• 12:55
  stop anything it's really up to individuals adopting bitcoin and using it to stop it and i
• 13:01
  think obviously the four of us here um are pretty much well on our way to trying to do that i think
• 13:08
  hodl to your point and i think it's the one thing i've been reflecting on
• 13:12
  a lot in the recent,
• 13:14
  well, in the last year is,
• 13:17
  okay, like how can we sharpen the messaging
• 13:19
  to really get through to people?
• 13:22
  Like you're saying,
• 13:22
  we have the crazy left and the crazy right,
• 13:24
  and they're all somehow missing
• 13:26
  that there's a third option
• 13:28
  or another option.
• 13:29
  Maybe there's more than three.
• 13:30
  With Bitcoin,
• 13:32
  where the root of the problem is that
• 13:34
  the money,
• 13:35
  how money is created
• 13:37
  and how it's distributed
• 13:38
  throughout the economy.
• 13:40
  It has externalities on everything.
• 13:42
  we touch in the economy.
• 13:44
  It's like Bitcoin can be a means to an end,
• 13:47
  but it's how do you convince people
• 13:49
  that this is the right means to the right end?
• 13:51
  And that's something that I think a lot about these days.
• 13:55
  And Hodel, like you were saying
• 13:56
  that prosperity is the killer app,
• 13:58
  and that kind of goes against what Eric was saying,
• 14:01
  because you're basically saying number go up
• 14:03
  is the thing we need right now,
• 14:04
  so Bitcoins get wealthy and can, I guess,
• 14:06
  change the world themselves.
• 14:09
  Do you think we are sacrificing things
• 14:11
  for number go up right now?
• 14:14
  Yeah, there's a tension.
• 14:15
  I mean, listen, just to be honest,
• 14:17
  yeah, there's a tension between censorship resistance
• 14:19
  and number go up.
• 14:20
  And I've long had this sort of view
• 14:22
  that Bitcoin is going to have to walk
• 14:24
  through sort of a period of like,
• 14:26
  you know, purgatory, essentially.
• 14:30
  Like that there's going to be like a shadow,
• 14:32
  you know, co-option of Bitcoin
• 14:33
  where it kind of looks like Bitcoin has been cucked
• 14:36
  and then Bitcoin explodes out the other side.
• 14:38
  Now, maybe that's like a defeatist viewpoint
• 14:40
  and people are like, oh, you can't give in because, you know, but I think that
• 14:44
  if you're thinking about these things as two super organisms like Bitcoin and the traditional
• 14:49
  financial system, I think Bitcoin is a pathogen that eats the host. And so I think if we put
• 14:55
  Bitcoin into the traditional financial system, I think it will overtake the traditional financial
• 15:00
  system over time. And I don't know that the idea of Bitcoin being outside money is Bitcoin's
• 15:05
  ultimate destiny because in order to get where it's going, it has to pass through the traditional
• 15:09
  system, I think. So like, you know, you see this throughout history, like, you know, Christianity
• 15:15
  subsumes Rome, and I think Bitcoin subsumes like the modern state, the fiat state. And that's a
• 15:21
  long arduous journey that like, if you're a Bitcoiner who believes in freedom, like you have
• 15:26
  to tread lightly as you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, because you are beset on
• 15:31
  all sides by enemies. You know, that's just the way it is. We've chosen the hardest path on the
• 15:35
  table, basically. It's a lot easier to join up and say, I'm going to be a far right populist,
• 15:40
  or I'm going to be a far left populist. Bitcoiners are trying to walk the middle path,
• 15:43
  and it's difficult. Yeah. I want to know what you think about that,
• 15:46
  Eric, because with the way people interact with Bitcoin now, it's like KYC, AML exchanges,
• 15:53
  there's treasury companies, ETF, the institutionalization of Bitcoin. That is the
• 15:58
  area that I have some concern, not a great deal of concern in, but some degree of concern in.
• 16:02
  Like, do you think Bitcoin's strong enough to go through that and make out the other side, like HODL's saying?
• 16:07
  Or do you think we risk losing something along the way?
• 16:10
  Yeah, it's kind of interesting because, like, I feel like this is always the game Bitcoin's playing with the Trojan horse thing.
• 16:15
  And so, like, I feel like we're at the place where, like, they've brought the horse into Troy.
• 16:19
  They've all had their great celebration.
• 16:21
  And I think, like, now we essentially need to see a bunch of shit blow up internally inside of the financial system and watch kind of the general wealthy and elite flee to Bitcoin.
• 16:31
  And that's sort of them like opening the gates of Troy and fleeing.
• 16:35
  And then it's like, oh, look, the Aegeans are outside.
• 16:38
  With that being said, maybe like this is more on to us as I felt back in like the 2021 era, I felt like we had a really strong narrative about how Bitcoin was going to fuck up this system and empower people.
• 16:51
  But really, like I kind of think like stealing from Lenin's playbook, like we essentially need a deep class consciousness awakening.
• 17:00
  and there needs to be a pedagogical approach that explains how fiat money has destroyed society
• 17:04
  because i i find it very interesting that everyone sees how absolutely fucked up everything is and
• 17:10
  usually they take a right left paradigm in order to describe that and like particularly being here
• 17:16
  in like the liberal hub of the world like i'm extremely pedantic with my liberal friends about
• 17:20
  like you like we have this like no kings bullshit going on here about uh like trump trying to like
• 17:26
  do gerrymandering. And I'm just like, come on, how much of a bozo do you have to be to see that
• 17:31
  they're doing gerrymandering for the left and that somebody like Nancy Pelosi is now worth $100
• 17:37
  million despite being a career politician? You don't think that that is from pure and utter
• 17:42
  corruption and that at least people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are being direct about how
• 17:48
  they want to make money. Nancy Pelosi is a pure parasite insofar that she literally engages in
• 17:54
  insider trading, robs the American public by making backdoor deals with some of the most
• 18:00
  disgusting people and ideas that there could be. And yet somehow you find yourself cheering for her
• 18:06
  and her side. You really need to look deeper into what's going on if you actually want to liberate
• 18:11
  yourself. And I have a great answer for you, but it's going to require some real thought on your
• 18:17
  part and really actually wondering whether or not you've become a useful idiot for people that hate
• 18:22
  you and want to abuse you and steal from you because i do have an answer but it's going to
• 18:27
  require you to do some real thought and actually start start in the process of unwinding the very
• 18:33
  deep brainwashing that most people have gone through and some people receive it some people
• 18:38
  don't but at the end of the day like and this is why i've kind of uh lightly flirted with the idea
• 18:43
  about an orange party is that like my idea is we essentially need a radical central orange party
• 18:48
  that's in the middle that advocates for these very middle of the road, normal things and in
• 18:54
  the process needs to absolutely fucking lamb blast anybody on the right or left and be like
• 18:59
  the Democrats and Republicans are the enemies. They've destroyed our fucking country. And when
• 19:03
  we come to power, every single federal representative will be put on trial for
• 19:07
  treason. And when they're found guilty, they will be hung according to American law because that like
• 19:13
  that's what they did. They engaged in outright fucking treason. They never expected themselves
• 19:18
  to be held accountable.
• 19:18
  And I want to see them hung from public gallows
• 19:21
  when it becomes very clear that they sold us up the street
• 19:24
  to the Chinese for like, what, $20,000 maybe?
• 19:28
  Like that's the other thing that's outrageous
• 19:29
  is the amount of money that they're prostituting us for
• 19:32
  is fucking pennies on the dollar.
• 19:35
  And with that being said, this establishment is so corrupt.
• 19:38
  I don't see why we can't just ram through state legislatures
• 19:41
  because what, to buy something to pass any state legislature,
• 19:46
  It's going to cost maybe $50,000 to get converts on the right side.
• 19:50
  And as you populize a movement like this, you just strong arm everybody because it's
• 19:54
  clear that these geriatrics are completely spineless individuals, that the moment that
• 20:01
  you start putting real pressure on them and being very clear that this is the direction
• 20:05
  it's going and this isn't about money anymore.
• 20:07
  This is actually about whether or not they're going to live at the end of this.
• 20:10
  Yeah, they'll collapse.
• 20:12
  But again, this is a very radical viewpoint that I'm establishing.
• 20:15
  So if anybody wants to take this and run with it, please feel free.
• 20:18
  I don't think it needed that disclaimer.
• 20:20
  But what kind of legislative do you want to push through?
• 20:23
  Because you're the anarchist.
• 20:24
  Why do you want this to go through the government rails?
• 20:29
  Excellent question.
• 20:30
  I want to go through state government rails because in the United States, we have the
• 20:34
  ability to amend the Constitution using state legislations alone.
• 20:38
  There's been a number of amendments to the U.S. Constitution that have gotten pretty close.
• 20:42
  And I'm pretty sure the only amendment that was actually pushed through through this methodology was to repeal the amendment for prohibition.
• 20:52
  And so essentially the idea is that if you can get 35 state legislatures to pass an amendment to the United States Constitution using the slang, the language that's supposed to just be added to the Constitution directly and unilaterally.
• 21:04
  And this was explicitly explained in the Federalist Papers as a way for the American public to be able to reclaim the republic when the federal government has become entirely corrupt, which I think that's the place that we're at.
• 21:18
  And so it's a radically different strategy that sort of tries to lateralize states to reclaim their ability to essentially prove their sovereignty through amending the Constitution without any sort of federal representatives whatsoever.
• 21:32
  Again, this is like kind of a harebrained idea.
• 21:35
  I don't really want to run this down because like I'm not a politician and I don't really want to get shot at this age.
• 21:40
  Although, yeah, like maybe I'm due for a young death anyway.
• 21:45
  So like maybe we should just run this down anyways.
• 21:47
  But what do you want added to the Constitution?
• 21:52
  First one is just like unilateral destruction of the Federal Reserve.
• 21:55
  Just like the Federal Reserve does not get the issue of the dollar anymore.
• 21:58
  Done.
• 21:59
  And like with that, it's amended to the Constitution.
• 22:02
  And the interesting thing is like this causes a constitutional crisis because it's not like a federal government is just going to be like, oh, no, they amended the Constitution with Article five.
• 22:10
  Like, gee golly dang.
• 22:12
  You know, in addition to like if you get that method to work, keep going.
• 22:16
  It's like, you know, the United States federal government has no right to tax anyone anymore.
• 22:21
  Or like the IRS is just an illegal institution that needs to be outright liquidated today.
• 22:26
  Like, you know, let your mind go crazy because there's no reason why we can't just use amendments directly as a way to essentially have a publicist to be able to pass laws against the federal government.
• 22:39
  And again, super radical idea would definitely cause a constitutional crisis, would probably get me killed in the process.
• 22:45
  But fuck it, we're all going to die at this point in time if communists comes along.
• 22:50
  So I'd rather get shot and starve to death.
• 22:51
  I love that whenever you speak to Eric this is about like reflecting on 17 years of Bitcoin It took us what 20 minutes to get into hanging all the politicians Well look I want to only do it if they actually been found guilty of treason
• 23:06
  All I'm saying is let's actually uphold the laws that have been established.
• 23:10
  There will be due process.
• 23:10
  And I think if we looked in the-
• 23:11
  It's not French Revolution.
• 23:13
  It's due process.
• 23:15
  Exactly.
• 23:15
  And it's very important that state governments all handle this on their own.
• 23:19
  So I'd expect that the representatives of each individual state, in addition to their senators,
• 23:23
  You know, so I would want Wyoming to put their senators on trial. And if it turns out that their senators hadn't broken the law, excellent. They don't get hung. Turns out that if, you know, some of the representatives in California took COVID money and never paid it back, had broke the law. Well, hey, that that they need to be held accountable for.
• 23:42
  but to me like again and it is ironic that as the anarchist that like i'm the one representing the
• 23:48
  rule of law more than anybody else is just kind of the irony of the entirety of this thing a very
• 23:53
  fact that we're talking about magic internet money is supposed to be the thing that returns us to
• 23:58
  sane economic prerogatives in the world as well that's where we're at in the narrative so here we
• 24:03
  are and you brought the no kings protest i've very intentionally just ignored everything that's
• 24:08
  been going on with that because i i don't i don't need to pay attention to that but can one of you
• 24:12
  fill me in like how big has that been over there not that big it's it's yeah it's like it's
• 24:17
  astroturfed honestly like it seems kind of fake yeah yeah i've seen some people hanging out at
• 24:22
  like again because i live in like the heart of liberal mecca uh like i see some people standing
• 24:27
  on the corners with their signs congratulating themselves for participating in democracy but i'm
• 24:32
  i'm just like super confused because like wasn't donald trump like elected through the democratic
• 24:38
  process so and like furthermore
• 24:40
  like I don't know of a lot of
• 24:42
  kings that like served for one term
• 24:44
  and then like left afterwards and
• 24:46
  reelected and so
• 24:47
  I don't know there's like a weird brain virus
• 24:50
  going on because like I don't
• 24:52
  actually hear I mean like of the
• 24:54
  two Republicans that I know in the area
• 24:56
  like they don't talk about Trump
• 24:58
  incessantly whereas like the liberals that I know
• 25:00
  they're always like that
• 25:02
  piece of shit Trump and he's
• 25:04
  destroying America with his
• 25:06
  fascism and I'm like deep like
• 25:08
  do you know what this word means?
• 25:10
  Cause like,
• 25:11
  I think you're using a lot of words that you don't understand.
• 25:13
  They're like,
• 25:13
  yeah,
• 25:13
  like fascism is where the bad guy wins.
• 25:17
  And I'm like,
• 25:17
  no,
• 25:18
  I think that there's maybe a deeper cause.
• 25:21
  Cause I always insist to people like the problem with calling Trump a fascist,
• 25:24
  like he's not principled enough to be a fascist.
• 25:27
  Like if he was a fascist,
• 25:28
  like I'm pretty sure we'd see a lot more people in prison and getting murdered
• 25:32
  exjudiciously.
• 25:33
  So I don't know.
• 25:35
  That's just my standpoint with it.
• 25:36
  But yeah,
• 25:37
  I do feel like this is astroturfed.
• 25:39
  And it's, I don't know, this is all bullshit.
• 25:42
  It's this left-right thing to divide us
• 25:44
  instead of us be like,
• 25:45
  hey, like the cost of groceries has gone up 50%
• 25:49
  in the last five years.
• 25:50
  Like that seems to be fucking all of us pretty equally
• 25:53
  except for this political class.
• 25:56
  That's pretty strange, huh?
• 25:57
  Hmm.
• 25:58
  Just to bring it back to Bitcoin for a minute.
• 26:01
  Like we've done 965 shows or something
• 26:05
  about all the wins that Bitcoin has had.
• 26:07
  But is there anything that you think we're not doing well enough?
• 26:10
  Maybe we'll start with you, Mai.
• 26:13
  Getting to the youth.
• 26:14
  I was going to say, Eric, while you're talking about that,
• 26:16
  not only are we stuck in the middle with you with red and blue,
• 26:21
  but I think it's like boomers and Gen Z.
• 26:25
  It's like, I feel like there's a cohort of millennials.
• 26:27
  Obviously, not every millennial is in the Bitcoin,
• 26:29
  but I think we're overrepresented within people that have adopted Bitcoin.
• 26:36
  and the boomers are just old dogs.
• 26:39
  You're not going to teach an old dog new trick.
• 26:41
  And then the zoomers are just completely nihilistic
• 26:44
  and running towards the wrong fake idols, if you will.
• 26:50
  And it's like, how do we,
• 26:51
  that's one thing again I've been thinking about.
• 26:54
  We had a whole zoomer series on our HR.
• 26:57
  I remember when I was in Austin earlier this year,
• 27:00
  we were talking about this
• 27:01
  because I think the demographics for our shows
• 27:03
  are probably pretty similar.
• 27:04
  and like the boomers I've actually seen that growing like I do see a sort of growing cohort
• 27:10
  there but in terms of sort of Gen Z there's almost no one listens to the show I don't know
• 27:15
  whether that's because it's like long-form content people prefer different types of media but like how
• 27:19
  do you reach those people I don't know I'm looking at my demo right now my core demo is 35 to 44
• 27:24
  at 25%. The next is 45 to 54 at 24. And then it's 55 to 64. And then it's 65 plus,
• 27:33
  and then it drops down to 25, 34. So it's not even millennials of my age, which is crazy. I don't
• 27:39
  know if it's the type of content we do, but I'm sure yours is similar for some reason.
• 27:43
  The Zoomers who are arguably the most important cohort for us to go out and convert to recognizing
• 27:51
  this third way of doing things or just not getting this information from what I can tell.
• 27:56
  I do wonder though, like, cause when I got into Bitcoin, I didn't have very much money at all,
• 28:00
  but, and Bitcoin seemed expensive then. And like, relatively it was obviously not like,
• 28:04
  do you think that's just unit bias that like, how can I, you know, gain from this thing when
• 28:08
  I can just go and like punt on meme game, meme stocks or whatever? I think we're just living in
• 28:13
  a completely different world. And I've come to realize this, like in the last three, like I don't
• 28:16
  get Zoomer culture at all.
• 28:19
  No, I got that.
• 28:20
  6-7 or something like that?
• 28:22
  6-7.
• 28:23
  It's the first one.
• 28:24
  I have no idea what it is and apparently it's the biggest thing.
• 28:27
  Yeah, I've never even heard of that.
• 28:29
  Maybe not.
• 28:30
  I think the thing that's hard as a millennial to understand about Zoomers is
• 28:35
  that just how pronounced the nihilism is.
• 28:39
  I think we all go on Twitter and we're like,
• 28:41
  oh my God, things are just getting worse every day.
• 28:44
  But we still have this sort of inherent like boomer utopianism
• 28:47
  because we were like real optimism
• 28:49
  because we were raised by the boomers.
• 28:51
  And so we kind of think that,
• 28:53
  I don't know, things are pretty shit,
• 28:55
  but like, I think we can pull it out.
• 28:57
  Like maybe we can make it work, you know?
• 28:59
  And so Bitcoin is a, you know,
• 29:00
  it's a philosophy of rational optimism
• 29:03
  because you're basically saying like,
• 29:06
  I have a future and I'm going to like plan for my future.
• 29:10
  And I'm going to do that with Bitcoin.
• 29:12
  But if you've totally swallowed the black pill,
• 29:15
  then you're basically saying,
• 29:17
  I'm waiting for the revolution.
• 29:18
  And if the revolution never comes,
• 29:20
  I'll just kill myself.
• 29:21
  And I think, unfortunately,
• 29:22
  that's what's going on with a lot of people
• 29:24
  in the Gen Z demographic.
• 29:27
  And what I would say to them is basically like,
• 29:29
  listen, the generational divide, whatever.
• 29:31
  Millennials are cringe.
• 29:31
  Yeah, of course, we're cringe.
• 29:33
  That's our thing, dog.
• 29:34
  You guys need to care about yourself
• 29:36
  and you need to start making some plans
• 29:38
  because you do have a future.
• 29:40
  No matter what happens,
• 29:41
  The world gets really bad.
• 29:43
  The world goes dark, whatever.
• 29:44
  It's like the sun is still going to come up
• 29:46
  and people are still going to go to work
• 29:47
  and people are still going to raise their families.
• 29:49
  Like you have a future.
• 29:50
  And so you need to plan accordingly
• 29:52
  as if you have a future.
• 29:54
  And you need to do that in a rationally optimistic way.
• 29:58
  You know, I think with Bitcoin,
• 30:00
  but like in all aspects of your life,
• 30:01
  you should plan that you're going to be here
• 30:03
  in the next 10 years
• 30:04
  because the people that aren't,
• 30:05
  that don't plan to be here,
• 30:07
  they end up in woeful circumstances.
• 30:09
  They're still here.
• 30:10
  They don't die.
• 30:11
  they're still here 10 20 30 years from now and they end up in just these awful circumstances
• 30:16
  with just these miserable lives and you don't want that to be you i mean to be fair to like
• 30:21
  steelman the black pill argument like it it's like really strong it kind of reminds me like
• 30:25
  the fish parable but with darkness it's like hey kids like how's the light today and like
• 30:29
  you know the fish in fact they're like what's light you know because like like look at look
• 30:35
  at the demographics and the statistics that like uh they grew up with a generation of parents who
• 30:39
  like already believed like the climate crisis doomerism ai doomerism like i'm the heart of ai
• 30:45
  like it's fucking bananas that like i don't think i've met a single person well there's one guy but
• 30:52
  outside of him i don't think i've met a single ai person that like has a non-black-pilled version
• 30:57
  so like ai is gonna murder everybody anyways uh like the the politics are completely fucked across
• 31:03
  the board the idea of them living moving out of their parents basement is a distant dream you know
• 31:08
  that the idea of just getting a room in the house and not living in the basement is like a dream so
• 31:13
  like they have a pretty strong argument for like why should i give a fuck about myself or the future
• 31:18
  because it's not gonna come and this is one of the places where like that's why i think that like
• 31:23
  insane communism works because it's like hey if you join my communist party we're just gonna kill
• 31:29
  the boomers and steal their shit and redistribute their housing to you so would you like to take up
• 31:35
  arms for the great communist cause. I'm like, that's like a pretty appealing thing at this
• 31:40
  point in time. And it's fucking terrifying. And I wish that this would actually get the boomers to
• 31:44
  the table in a meaningful way to go, oh yeah, we did actually fuck everything up, rewarded ourselves
• 31:49
  and then sold our children down the river. And now our grandchildren are going to murder us for that.
• 31:53
  You know, like that, that seems to be like a probabilistical outcome. And the thing that,
• 31:58
  that I find deeply resentful of is that like, when, at least in my case, when this has been
• 32:04
  presented to boomers,
• 32:06
  you kind of just get a shrug.
• 32:07
  And they're kind of like, eh.
• 32:09
  I'm 10 feet away from the grave anyway.
• 32:11
  Don't care.
• 32:13
  Yeah. And so, like, in all honesty,
• 32:15
  again, I think this brings it back to us
• 32:17
  and our demographic. And, like, it kind of sucks
• 32:19
  to admit it. But, like,
• 32:21
  I think we just have to actually do something
• 32:23
  even though I'm, like, pretty resistant to it.
• 32:25
  And, like, this is absolutely idiotic
• 32:27
  that it's, like, magic internet money
• 32:29
  is here to save everybody from the nihilistic
• 32:31
  hellhole that the world is becoming.
• 32:33
  But,
• 32:34
  This seems to be the narrative that we're on the course for.
• 32:37
  So I guess let's just get it done before it gets fucking harder.
• 32:41
  I do think like when you talk about we're going to move to either communism or fascism,
• 32:45
  like the communist outcome is really easy to predict, especially with AI.
• 32:49
  Like you can see UBI is almost like baked in the cake at this point to me.
• 32:54
  Like I don't understand how we can have anything else.
• 32:57
  Do you think that's the most likely outcome here?
• 33:00
  No, I think the fascist outcome is the most likely outcome.
• 33:03
  Yeah, I agree with that.
• 33:05
  Yeah, because the surveillance state has already been built,
• 33:08
  and it works whether you're a communist oligarchy or a fascist dictator.
• 33:13
  And I think that the call to restoring Western society to what it once was,
• 33:20
  because many of the people alive have seen it deteriorate,
• 33:23
  I think is going to be a pretty strong call,
• 33:25
  and all you need is a charismatic dictator type to come and say,
• 33:31
  he's going to fix everything.
• 33:32
  And a lot of people who are otherwise normal, hardworking, conservative, you know, family people will have this, the opposite brain worm of the communist brain worm and say to themselves, well, I do want things to go back to normal.
• 33:48
  So let's grant this guy unlimited power.
• 33:51
  And that is, you know, the road to hell.
• 33:54
  But if you're staring down two forks in the road and they're both the road to hell, that's the road to hell that's more comfortable and easier to take, I think, for the vast majority of Western people.
• 34:07
  Well, and to be very clear that, like, fascism was an explicit development as a counter-communist movement.
• 34:15
  Right.
• 34:15
  Like, Mussolini was an anarchist before he created the fascist movement.
• 34:20
  And like, that's part of the reasoning is when he saw what communism was doing after, uh, I'm trying to remember the Italian movement that got, uh, that got communism in power in Italy. And he saw the sort of damage it was doing the culture. It's only after that, that the fascist movement sort of gained steam. In addition to like, we're just talking about variants of socialism. Fascism is literally a brand of nationalized socialism.
• 34:46
  and and like this is one of the main dividing things that a lot of people don't understand
• 34:50
  is something that sets socialism apart from communism is that socialism is just a nationalized
• 34:55
  brand whereas international socialism is communist and so it's like through that methodology you get
• 35:01
  to be like oh americanism is an actual special cultural thing we do need to kick all the
• 35:05
  immigrants out like that's something that we need to protect as a national identity for ourselves
• 35:10
  whereas communism is just like no borders everybody can participate equally we're going
• 35:14
  of seize the means of production and redistribute it because that worked out super well in the 20th
• 35:18
  century and nobody was ever harmed from it um in addition to like fascism died a death in an early
• 35:24
  grave so it's kind of a general spooky name like we we haven't outside of uh because also i'd make
• 35:32
  the argument that stuff like uh francoism what we saw in portugal and all the stuff that we saw in
• 35:37
  latin america like i don't think i think those were authoritarian movements as opposed to fascist
• 35:41
  ones. This is highly debatable, but like, I think fascism is still an open-ended question,
• 35:46
  particularly here in America. Yeah. And, and essentially like as the communists rise into
• 35:51
  power, it seems that it'll have great appeal because instead of me needing to appeal to all
• 35:55
  of the masses, you essentially go to three dozen billionaire tech founders and you say,
• 36:00
  give me the fucking power or people are going to kill you. And they'll go, yeah, that sounds good.
• 36:06
  Do you wish you could access cash without selling your Bitcoin? Well,
• 36:09
  But Ledin makes that possible.
• 36:10
  They're the global leader in Bitcoin-backed lending and since 2018 they've issued over
• 36:14
  $9 billion in loans with a perfect record of protecting client assets.
• 36:19
  With Ledin you get full custody loans with no credit checks or monthly repayments, just
• 36:23
  easy access to dollars without selling a single SAT.
• 36:27
  As of July 1st, Ledin is Bitcoin only meaning they exclusively offer Bitcoin-backed loans
• 36:32
  with all collateral held by Ledin directly or their funding partners.
• 36:36
  Your Bitcoin is never lent out to generate interest.
• 36:39
  I recently took out a loan with Ledin. The whole process was super easy.
• 36:43
  The application took me less than 15 minutes and in a few hours I had the
• 36:46
  dollars in my account. It was really smooth. So if you need cash but you don't want to sell bitcoin
• 36:51
  head over to ledin.io forward slash wbd and you'll get 0.25% off your first loan.
• 36:57
  That's ledin.io forward slash wbd. This episode is brought to you by River and they've just launched
• 37:03
  a very cool new product where you can automatically buy every price dip. There's zero fee recurring
• 37:09
  buys are a proven way to build wealth with Bitcoin and you can now supercharge them and buy up to 100%
• 37:14
  more Bitcoin if the price is dipping at the time of your order. It's a great tool to buy more
• 37:19
  Bitcoin at lower prices and while your cash is waiting to be deployed you earn 3.75% interest on
• 37:25
  it paid in Bitcoin. River is built to last with security at its core and is the only Bitcoin
• 37:30
  exchange in the US with proof of reserves. To open an account go to river.com forward slash wbd
• 37:36
  and earn up to $100 in Bitcoin when you buy. That's river.com forward slash wbd.
• 37:43
  What if you could lower your tax bill and stack Bitcoin at the same time?
• 37:47
  Well, by mining Bitcoin with blockware you can. New tax guidelines from the Big Beautiful Bill
• 37:52
  allow American miners to write off 100% of the cost of their mining hardware in a single tax year.
• 37:57
  That's right, 100% write-off. So if you have $100,000 in capital gains or income,
• 38:02
  you can purchase $100,000 of miners and offset it entirely.
• 38:06
  Blockware's mining as a service enables you to start mining Bitcoin right now without lifting a finger.
• 38:11
  Blockware handles everything from securing the miners to sourcing low-cost power to configuring the pool, they do it all.
• 38:17
  You get to stack Bitcoin at a discount every single day while also saving big come tax season.
• 38:23
  Get started today by going to mining.blockwaresolutions.com forward slash WBD.
• 38:29
  Of course, none of this is tax advice.
• 38:30
  Speak to your accountant or tax advisor to understand how these rules apply to you
• 38:34
  and then head over to mining.blockware solutions.com forward slash wbd and you'll get one week of free
• 38:40
  hosting and electricity with each hosted miner purchased it almost sounds like you're saying
• 38:45
  fascism is a good way out of this i don't want to say it's a good way out i mean like it it's it's
• 38:53
  like the fucking trolley problem like these are both horrible outcomes you know but also like you
• 38:58
  know what would have been great would have been great if our grandparents didn't sell us up the
• 39:01
  fucking river and end for the convertibility of gold and completely fuck up the entirety of the
• 39:06
  financial system so that when we're sitting here talking about the fact that zoomers could actually
• 39:11
  own homes instead of it being a distant dream it could be a possibility so again it sucks but
• 39:16
  same thing with the trolley problem you wish that one dumbass wasn't standing on the track versus
• 39:21
  four but either way you're gonna have to break some eggs to fix this problem i am i think about
• 39:27
  this quite a lot, Eric. And to me, it's like, I really do think the thing I said earlier about us
• 39:36
  walking the middle path is kind of the arduous journey that we have set ourselves upon.
• 39:44
  You know, we didn't, we didn't do that initially, but like, that's just where we find ourselves.
• 39:48
  And I do think that it is going to be a cohort of, you know, millennial aged men who believe in
• 39:56
  freedom that are going to be the most significant players in the fourth turning.
• 40:02
  And I think it's, you know, it's easy to look at what's going on and like get riled up and
• 40:10
  kind of like join a side.
• 40:12
  Like, you know, I'm with the fascists.
• 40:14
  I'm with the cops.
• 40:16
  And I just, I think that's just not what we should be doing.
• 40:21
  I think Bitcoiners need to continue to walk the middle path and knowing that it's the most
• 40:27
  dangerous path, but it has the best outcomes. And so that's why you have to walk it.
• 40:34
  To recuse myself, I 100% agree with you. I also do think it is absolutely the most difficult path,
• 40:41
  the most challenging path, and one that's just going to take a lot of difficult and hard work.
• 40:47
  but the more and more that I spend time here
• 40:50
  kind of running this down
• 40:51
  the more and more that like
• 40:52
  it's actually pretty essential
• 40:54
  but it's also like
• 40:56
  who does this?
• 40:57
  How does it form?
• 40:58
  How does it get pushed forward?
• 41:00
  And you know the last time we talked
• 41:01
  about the Charlie Kirk assassination
• 41:04
  like he was making massive inroads
• 41:06
  with the youth
• 41:07
  and the way that he was starting to direct
• 41:09
  kind of a new political vision
• 41:11
  so I guess we kind of need something like that
• 41:13
  for Bitcoin
• 41:14
  but I don't know
• 41:15
  maybe even a wider view
• 41:16
  of that like
• 41:17
  I guess we sort of just need a third party and it just needs to start being a mass political movement that like this is not about right or left, but it's really just about like we need to get a sane money system that isn't biased towards politics anymore.
• 41:30
  And Bitcoin is that actual answer.
• 41:32
  Well, does it even need to be a political moment?
• 41:35
  A political movement should just be social, right?
• 41:38
  Because this is what I think a lot about is like the sly roundabout way to take money out of the hands of the government.
• 41:44
  And that's one thing, particularly when it comes to right versus left, red versus blue, and even the introduction of a third party.
• 41:52
  It's like, is solving these problems by political means, are you ultimately going to end up with communism versus fascism? Or can we do our part in the free market as Bitcoiners to convince enough critical mass of people to adopt Bitcoin and integrate it into their lives where they're able to save themselves instead of trying to work through the political apparatus to try and force the politicians to save them?
• 42:20
  and this is why I mean to
• 42:22
  sprinkle in some white pills
• 42:24
  here that's what's like really encouraging to see
• 42:27
  Square release
• 42:29
  like Bitcoin for small businesses
• 42:30
  or point of sale systems
• 42:32
  it's great to see I mean
• 42:34
  the big to your point Eric the big problem for
• 42:36
  Zoomer specifically is like
• 42:37
  I think Cornerstone
• 42:39
  literally the base layer of Maslow's
• 42:42
  hierarchy needs to shelter
• 42:44
  and people
• 42:46
  don't think they can buy homes like so
• 42:48
  introducing Bitcoin
• 42:50
  is collateral and like mortgages
• 42:52
  in very early days we can squint
• 42:54
  and see if it takes off like people
• 42:56
  particularly boomers
• 42:58
  and people that have houses right now can begin to care
• 43:00
  less about the equity value
• 43:02
  of their houses and really just
• 43:04
  let the equity value of the Bitcoin do the work
• 43:06
  and sell the properties off
• 43:08
  at a cheaper
• 43:10
  value to people who need it and I think
• 43:12
  it's just trying
• 43:14
  to get Bitcoin stuffed in as
• 43:16
  many nooks and crannies of the economy
• 43:18
  as possible as quickly as possible.
• 43:20
  Yeah, that's the white pill on the Sue Coiner narrative as well, right?
• 43:25
  Is that it creates alignment between people who are non-Bitcoiners and Bitcoiners.
• 43:31
  So we, you know, like the original Citadel post is like talking about how like the world
• 43:36
  is horrible outside the Citadel and Bitcoiners live in the Citadel and everything is, you
• 43:40
  know, fine in the Citadel or whatever.
• 43:42
  Like that's not a world you want to live in because you're under siege every day.
• 43:46
  Like you don't want to be under siege every day.
• 43:48
  You want to live in a good world where your neighbors are prosperous as well.
• 43:54
  And so I think that when we look at the stuff that's going on with treasury companies, for instance,
• 43:57
  that's embedding a lot of Bitcoin in the public markets.
• 44:00
  And as they make their way into the queues and they make their way into the S&P 500,
• 44:05
  these different treasury co's, more people have more exposure to Bitcoin.
• 44:10
  And so if Bitcoin is demonetizing fiat currency,
• 44:13
  Well, you know, like there's 166 million Americans
• 44:16
  who are going to have, you know, exposure to that
• 44:18
  via broad market index funds.
• 44:20
  And like, that's not a bad thing.
• 44:22
  Like, it's a bad thing for Bitcoin's
• 44:25
  maybe political goals and aspirations,
• 44:27
  but it's not a bad thing in terms of alignment
• 44:29
  with our fellow citizens.
• 44:31
  It's a way to orange pill people
• 44:33
  without them even knowing they've been orange pill,
• 44:35
  essentially, like, and I think that that is a,
• 44:39
  you know, it's a silver lining.
• 44:40
  It's a bright spot.
• 44:41
  It's not purely negative, in my view.
• 44:45
  I agree it's not purely negative,
• 44:46
  but there are negative externalities from that
• 44:48
  in the sense that people are actually owning Bitcoin.
• 44:51
  There's a massive centralization of coins.
• 44:53
  Marty, I've not really heard you talk about the treasury company stuff.
• 44:55
  What's your take on it?
• 44:58
  A bit nuanced.
• 44:59
  I think the pure play Bitcoin treasury companies
• 45:04
  that are just going public to accumulate as much Bitcoin as possible.
• 45:08
  I've said this many times on RHR,
• 45:11
  over the last year,
• 45:11
  I think it's going to be
• 45:12
  a Pareto distribution.
• 45:14
  I think it's a success.
• 45:15
  I think it's an economy
• 45:17
  as a scale game
• 45:17
  if you're trying to weaponize
• 45:18
  capital markets.
• 45:20
  So I think the pure play
• 45:22
  Bitcoin treasury companies,
• 45:24
  there'll be maybe five
• 45:26
  that actually get
• 45:28
  significant market share
• 45:29
  to sustain themselves
• 45:30
  in a long time.
• 45:31
  And I think they're
• 45:34
  certainly interesting.
• 45:35
  I mean, it's hard not to
• 45:36
  find interest in them
• 45:37
  considering what strategy
• 45:39
  is done specifically.
• 45:40
  But what I'm more focused on is the operating businesses.
• 45:42
  Again, like leaning back on Square's implementation of Bitcoin and the point of sale systems.
• 45:48
  And I don't think it's going to be, I think the predominant use case of that is people,
• 45:53
  merchants that become Bitcoiners are sweeping funds into Bitcoin automatically I don think like paying with Bitcoin at POS systems is really going to expand beyond sort of our circles
• 46:05
  for a few years.
• 46:07
  But then the ability to get small, medium-sized businesses
• 46:10
  onto a Bitcoin standard is going to be massive.
• 46:14
  Yeah, treasury companies are a distraction to a degree
• 46:18
  in both directions.
• 46:20
  Like one, people focus on number go up
• 46:22
  and you have like the master north
• 46:24
  and all the stock influencers popping up
• 46:27
  and really trying to drive people towards that.
• 46:30
  But then I think in the other direction too,
• 46:33
  people saying like, oh, Bitcoin is distracted,
• 46:35
  like number go up, so that cares.
• 46:37
  If you pay attention,
• 46:38
  I wrote about it last night in the newsletter.
• 46:39
  Like some dude with six bid axes
• 46:42
  and an Avalon queue mined a block by himself.
• 46:45
  He was self-hosting a node,
• 46:46
  self-hosting his own pool instance
• 46:48
  and running his computers in his living room
• 46:51
  and mined a Bitcoin block and contributed to a $2.5 trillion monetary network.
• 46:57
  That's mind-blowing.
• 46:58
  Like that cypherpunk ethos is not only still alive, it's still possible,
• 47:02
  which is the most important thing.
• 47:03
  And like the other things, like you look at ARK launching,
• 47:07
  Cashew and Fedimense or eCashMense becoming more mature.
• 47:12
  I think while numbers go up, particularly in the context of Bitcoin treasury companies
• 47:17
  and the narratives around Saylor and others.
• 47:20
  Doing that play is a distraction to an extent,
• 47:23
  but not only a distraction for people
• 47:25
  enamored by number go up,
• 47:27
  but by regulators and suits who are like,
• 47:30
  oh, we've successfully cucked Bitcoin.
• 47:33
  But I think the cypherpunk movement within Bitcoin
• 47:36
  is more alive than it has been in many years,
• 47:39
  particularly with these second layer solutions
• 47:41
  focused on privacy.
• 47:43
  I think that guy who mined a block with his bags
• 47:46
  is fucking awesome.
• 47:47
  um like minor centralization has been one of the things that i guess has been a big concern of a lot
• 47:51
  of people for quite a while now do you think the tide is kind of turning there marty with things
• 47:55
  like the heat punk stuff like bit axes like all that like datum and stratum v2 all that stuff
• 48:01
  definitely i mean and it's i think it's twofold it's that you have this energy and focus in the
• 48:09
  open source mining community both on the hardware or on the hardware firmware software pool like
• 48:15
  There's definitely a critical mass of people focused on building out those capabilities for people.
• 48:21
  But then the second fold thing is like we're reaching ASIC modifications.
• 48:25
  So these use cases actually are viable now.
• 48:29
  It's much easier to do them in a somewhat economic way.
• 48:33
  They're not all going to be profitable.
• 48:35
  But we're getting closer to the point where you can integrate Bitcoin miners at home pretty easily.
• 48:41
  and many people may be able to do it profitably
• 48:44
  depending on where they live and how they're using the heat.
• 48:47
  And I think it's trending in the right direction.
• 48:51
  I think I would not be surprised if we look back
• 48:53
  and mining centralization, like peak mining centralization,
• 48:57
  was at some point before this date.
• 49:00
  I think the emergence of Proto, who knows how they're performed,
• 49:06
  but I think this at-home mining trend and theme
• 49:10
  that we're maybe seeing growing over the last three years specifically is only getting stronger.
• 49:13
  And I've talked to Tyler Stevens from Exergy and there's many others.
• 49:17
  I will not be surprised if sort of commercial Bitcoin mining being used as waste heat
• 49:25
  for industrial purposes becomes mainstream in the next decade.
• 49:29
  And that helps to distribute hash rate ownership, distribute hash rate geographically.
• 49:35
  then most importantly with the pool software being open source and becoming easier to self-host your
• 49:41
  own node and your own pool instance and reliably mine a block if you find a hash in your living
• 49:47
  room to your self-hosted node like that's going to be massive for the network yeah i mean if we
• 49:53
  get to a world where people are using bitcoin for their mortgages heating the houses using
• 49:56
  bitcoin mining like that seems like a very positive like insanely positive place to be
• 50:02
  But like all of this comes down to adoption, like from everything all of you guys have said, like, Eric, this is how we stop the world turning to like fascism or communism.
• 50:11
  Like, do you think all the infighting that's happening in Bitcoin is basically just like people playing silly games when there's way more important stuff to be doing?
• 50:20
  I totally think so.
• 50:22
  You know, I'm like, I think, I mean, the fact that Op Return is the thing that we're debating about so heavily, as opposed to something like Op Cat or something goes to show like how, how, how little technical information is actually out there, how much this widow echo chamber is like its own thing.
• 50:39
  in addition to like i just want to echo marty's sentiment of giving a little bit of my own white
• 50:44
  pill about like uh it's interesting because like cypherpunks inherently like can't be loud
• 50:48
  so even though like that has generated its own sort of critical mass of movement like
• 50:54
  they're sort of silent individuals so i've been surprised at the number of people that will pop
• 50:59
  up on the radar who are doing really cool and interesting stuff but like they don't make any
• 51:05
  noise simply because like that's sort of how they move uh it's like a really positive thing so like
• 51:10
  ultimately like i think while i can get quite nihilistic about this political front like
• 51:15
  we've made huge inroads in addition to the idea of that uh like using bitcoin's heat like that's
• 51:20
  always going to achieve a larger economic efficiency than just outright mining bitcoin so like
• 51:25
  at some point we move in that direction in addition to like what happens when we've become
• 51:31
  efficient enough with this stuff that like you can find a place up in northern alaska that's like
• 51:35
  hey everybody just gets free energy and heat here because of the way that we've set up the
• 51:39
  infrastructure of this new city that's going to provide all these new different services you know
• 51:44
  and like that's that's kind of one of the places i ultimately think the greatest affect is going to
• 51:49
  be had is like what happens when we actually make massive infrastructural changes towards uh like
• 51:55
  the way that mining decentralization occurs and also like how we're going to innovate around this
• 52:01
  so like ultimately like you know the old noma curve like everything's good for bitcoin so i
• 52:06
  think like as things move in a direction and as the general world sort of becomes darker and more
• 52:12
  nihilistic that lets the light of bitcoin sort of shine all the brighter in that darkness
• 52:16
  and as it pertains to like the infighting with bitcoin within bitcoin about op return i don't
• 52:23
  think anybody outside of the Twitter or Noster bubbles is seeing any of that, nor do they care,
• 52:29
  nor should they, because it's noise. In terms of distracting us from actually working on more
• 52:35
  worthwhile endeavors, I think that's certainly happening, at least to some people. I've, my whole,
• 52:41
  I know you said you wanted to talk about it, my whole, I've tried my hardest over the last six
• 52:45
  months. I did the live stream at Bitcoin Plus Plus in Austin in May for two days, did eight hours of
• 52:50
  content on the subject and then after that i was like i think the best move is just to not talk
• 52:54
  about this and suck the oxygen out of the conversation because it's so idiotic in my mind
• 53:00
  yeah but so i i do like i've done shows on it so i've not done the same thing as you there but like
• 53:07
  i i understand why you want to kind of ignore it in a sense that like maybe it is just people
• 53:12
  on twitter that care about it but the number of people that are getting sort of riled up about this
• 53:18
  is it's quite large like i think there's definitely some sort of bots and some sort of fake signal in
• 53:24
  there um but like people are getting very angry and now there's this like new proposed soft fork
• 53:29
  which is i mean for anyone who's not been paying attention like good on you but um it's basically
• 53:35
  like a temporary soft fork to mitigate spam and like this actually does worry me i'm going to pull
• 53:41
  up a tweet because this summed it up way better than i could so bitpain tweeted the other day is
• 53:47
  this last bit here that I thought was really good.
• 53:49
  He said, once you grant the state
• 53:50
  that you can take efforts to mitigate illicit material,
• 53:53
  they'll start demanding it,
• 53:54
  including for monetary transactions they don't like.
• 53:56
  And if you've accepted that you have a community-wide
• 53:58
  moral imperative to censor,
• 53:59
  you don't have a leg to stand on.
• 54:01
  Like, that is my fear in this,
• 54:03
  is that, like, this is getting serious sort of traction
• 54:06
  from a subset of Bitcoiners,
• 54:08
  and, like, what are the implications
• 54:09
  of us doing something about it?
• 54:11
  I don't think they're going to be able to solve for it.
• 54:13
  Like, I don't think you need to convince
• 54:16
  a lot of people to do it.
• 54:17
  And I guess my,
• 54:19
  going back to the op return debate,
• 54:20
  this is all I'll say,
• 54:21
  I'll throw it to you, Eric,
• 54:22
  but like,
• 54:23
  it's consensus valid.
• 54:25
  Like, it's like,
• 54:26
  it always falls back to this for me.
• 54:28
  It's like,
• 54:28
  it's consensus valid.
• 54:29
  Like, I don't know
• 54:30
  what we're fighting about over here.
• 54:31
  It's within Bitcoin's consensus rules.
• 54:34
  And tonight I said
• 54:35
  I didn't get to just have
• 54:36
  my outburst there
• 54:37
  because I probably would have
• 54:38
  gone on a totally unhinged rant.
• 54:40
  Look like,
• 54:42
  look like,
• 54:44
  if you're worried about
• 54:45
  the state doing stuff like get the fuck out of like i don't know what you're doing here i don't
• 54:50
  understand why you're interested in this project like when i got involved there was nobody in the
• 54:56
  state that paid any attention to it nor could they stop it like the the thing that was happening was
• 55:01
  the silk road and like it did that and it did it fucking well and that it massively improved
• 55:06
  people's asset access to being able to get illegal substances and other things like if you're worried
• 55:12
  about your Bitcoin node running
• 55:13
  and having the state come kick down in your door,
• 55:16
  you should probably think about Ripple.
• 55:18
  That's probably the right answer for you
• 55:19
  and what you want.
• 55:21
  You know, they're going to comply with the state.
• 55:23
  They're really interested in regulation.
• 55:25
  Like, you should go check out that project.
• 55:27
  If you're interested in uncensorable money
• 55:30
  that you can use right now
• 55:31
  to send people in Gaza money if you want,
• 55:33
  or help people escape from North Korea,
• 55:35
  or do whatever the fuck you want,
• 55:37
  you should stay here.
• 55:38
  And also, like, this is the one that upsets me the most,
• 55:41
  is that like you should really think very hard about if you're advocating very strongly for one
• 55:48
  of these sides why it is all of the highly technical people seem to be on one side of the
• 55:53
  debate i'm not saying that that's necessarily the right argument because from the very beginning of
• 55:58
  this whole fucking shit show me and steve lee had a great dialogue with each other where i was like
• 56:02
  this shit isn't gonna go away and it's gonna bite everybody in the ass and the big problem is because
• 56:07
  everyone's talking past each other.
• 56:09
  The tech bros are trying to tech-splain to all of the plebs, and the plebs are trying
• 56:15
  to explain in their particular way and methodology of why they feel totally disrespected and,
• 56:20
  like, what tech-splaining is that it's not something that lands for them.
• 56:25
  But unfortunately, we've all been talking past each other at this point in time.
• 56:29
  And meanwhile, the state is trying to pass all kinds of fucked-up regulations to make
• 56:33
  it so that we can't actually have self-ownership of our wallets.
• 56:36
  Like there's a real fucking crisis going on and it's not op return.
• 56:41
  And you should really ask yourself if you're being a useful idiot within this dialogue or if you're doing something useful.
• 56:48
  I would really like to see a lot more people take a couple step back and go, maybe there's something I'm missing here because I sure as fuck don't know everything.
• 56:56
  And perhaps there are other people that both have more technical expertise than me.
• 57:01
  And for those that do have the technical expertise, I implore you to actually have somewhat respect for other individuals that are involved in Bitcoin.
• 57:10
  And maybe they don't have the technical acumen as you do, but they have still meaningfully participated in the success of Bitcoin.
• 57:17
  So with that being said, I hope everybody can shut the fuck up for a little while and take a moment to listen to each other and stop being such goddamn assholes to each other.
• 57:27
  Because that's the biggest thing that's upsetting me the most is that like we can totally disagree.
• 57:32
  We can totally have respectful dialogue.
• 57:34
  And when you're calling people fucking idiots or morons or dipshits or fuck faces, you're really doing yourself a disservice and actually furthering the dialogue in a meaningful way.
• 57:45
  Oh, but you get to look cool on Twitter.
• 57:47
  So maybe you should continue with that bullshit.
• 57:50
  So that was actually like a pretty hinged rant, actually.
• 57:53
  I don't think I actually totally flew off the camera.
• 57:55
  Why do you think this has captured so many people's imagination, HODL?
• 58:01
  You know, uh...
• 58:02
  Do I want to say my real thoughts?
• 58:04
  I want to say my real thoughts.
• 58:06
  I know what you're thinking.
• 58:07
  I think it's a LARP of people that miss the block size war
• 58:12
  and want to feel that they are contributing to Bitcoin, you know?
• 58:15
  And I'm not even saying that from the perspective of somebody who was a key player in the block size war.
• 58:21
  I was a nobody, I was a noob, I was confused during the block size war.
• 58:24
  I didn't make any meaningful contributions.
• 58:27
  I found myself on the wrong side of the block size war like half the time,
• 58:30
  and I didn't get on the right side till the very end.
• 58:32
  So like, you know, these extremely technical arguments are usually at core ideological in some way.
• 58:41
  And I feel like there's this weird desire in Bitcoin to recapitulate the block size war
• 58:46
  over and over and over again to feel like we are exerting our grassroots power
• 58:51
  over Bitcoin in some way.
• 58:54
  But, you know, the block size war was existential.
• 58:57
  And since then, I don't think many of the conflicts have been existential.
• 59:02
  I don't think ordinals was existential.
• 59:04
  I don't think this opportun drama is existential.
• 59:08
  You know, I think like Taproot was a good example.
• 59:10
  Like we spent way too much time focused on the activation path for Taproot
• 59:13
  rather than what Taproot actually was.
• 59:17
  Everybody just kind of like rubber stamped Taproot and was like,
• 59:19
  yeah, sure, no big deal.
• 59:20
  We love Taproot.
• 59:21
  Now, let's talk about how to activate it
• 59:22
  because everyone had fucking PTSD from the block size war.
• 59:26
  And I think that was probably the wrong thing to do.
• 59:28
  Like, we should have been taking more time
• 59:30
  to have more, you know, dialogue about what Taproot was,
• 59:33
  what it enabled, what its second, third order effects were.
• 59:37
  And I don't know, I just, I find that like, you know,
• 59:40
  earlier people, I don't know if we said this on camera,
• 59:42
  off camera, but like there's spooks on,
• 59:44
  somebody was saying there's spooks on one side.
• 59:46
  There's spooks on all sides of Bitcoin development.
• 59:49
  You know what I mean?
• 59:49
  like you should just kind of bluntly assume
• 59:52
  your favorite Bitcoin developer
• 59:54
  is probably an intelligence asset
• 59:57
  just because that's the model.
• 1:00:00
  That's the risk model, you know?
• 1:00:02
  So like, yeah, man, I don't know.
• 1:00:03
  I don't think I have anything meaningful really
• 1:00:05
  to contribute other than I think a lot of it is LARPing.
• 1:00:08
  Yeah, they're all spooks as a side up.
• 1:00:11
  But Marty, like if I agree,
• 1:00:12
  I agree they're not going to be able to soft fork.
• 1:00:14
  Like I don't think they're going to get
• 1:00:15
  enough people on board with this,
• 1:00:16
  but they can hard fork.
• 1:00:17
  Do you think we might see a rage quit over this?
• 1:00:20
  I wouldn't be surprised.
• 1:00:21
  I mean, just using a pattern recognition from 13 years in Bitcoin,
• 1:00:26
  there'll probably be one or two rage quits at some point, but...
• 1:00:29
  That's what we need for the next bull market.
• 1:00:31
  I'll take some free coins if anyone wants the hard part.
• 1:00:34
  Yeah.
• 1:00:35
  And that's like, I mean, reflecting on 17 years of Bitcoin
• 1:00:39
  and my time in Bitcoin, that's the hardest thing to do
• 1:00:42
  is to stay sane throughout all of this, throughout the price volatility,
• 1:00:47
  throughout all these sort of protocol wars, whatever you want to call them. And it's just
• 1:00:53
  trying to keep a level head and not become too maniacal or ego maniacal about it and try to make
• 1:01:00
  yourself the main character. Yeah, that's kind of the funny thing about it is like you can get
• 1:01:04
  wrapped up in all this drama and you can try and do things or you could just do nothing and you win.
• 1:01:10
  Yeah. Doing nothing is actually always the best move in Bitcoin. Always.
• 1:01:14
  You know, oh, you got hyped up and bought a treasury company.
• 1:01:17
  Guess what?
• 1:01:18
  It's a penny stock now.
• 1:01:19
  Oh, you wanted to trade shit coins.
• 1:01:21
  Guess what?
• 1:01:21
  All your money's gone.
• 1:01:22
  Oh, you, you know, you picked the wrong side of the fork.
• 1:01:25
  Oh, guess what?
• 1:01:25
  All your money's gone.
• 1:01:26
  Like doing nothing is, is really key.
• 1:01:29
  But it's kind of hilarious how hard people find it to do nothing.
• 1:01:33
  It's, it's the hardest thing.
• 1:01:35
  It's so hard.
• 1:01:36
  It's so much harder than, yeah.
• 1:01:38
  Doing a hundred things is so much easier than doing nothing.
• 1:01:42
  doing nothing is fucking difficult i i have deep existentialism about what it means that like
• 1:01:49
  buying bitcoin and then doing nothing with it for a decade like turns out to be the best economic
• 1:01:54
  decision that you could have ever made that fundamentally negates the entirety of all work
• 1:01:59
  you've ever done and like it's it's shocking because like i told people that a decade ago
• 1:02:05
  they come back to me being like i missed the boat i'm like do it again just like buy the bitcoin
• 1:02:09
  the next decade on your hands and then like you're good all over again like totally fine but like it
• 1:02:16
  it's just such an un-fucking-believable thing that uh like the the fact that bitcoin can actually
• 1:02:25
  have its fixed supply and like not violate that predication by any means outside of you know like
• 1:02:31
  a 51 attack which we've all been figured out like that's a monumental achievement that like
• 1:02:38
  continues to allow for number go up and like i don't know it's very interesting to me that like
• 1:02:44
  the world of fiat has fucked everything up so much that just buying magic internet money and
• 1:02:49
  doing nothing with it is like the best economic decision that most of us will ever make so there's
• 1:02:55
  something to be said for that i'm not sure what it is but it's one of the things i think about
• 1:02:59
  quite a bit in terms of like the financialization of bitcoin wall street coming nation states coming
• 1:03:04
  like doing nothing is like the antithesis of wall street and i wonder how i'm sure they're
• 1:03:10
  going to fuck it up in some way but i wonder how they fuck up and how they manage to like
• 1:03:14
  what happens when the world goes to like a bitcoin standard like what is wall street does
• 1:03:18
  wall street just not exist it's current form i don't think so because it's wholly dependent on
• 1:03:26
  this fiat monetary spigot right yeah and like it's all built off these like fucked up parasitic
• 1:03:33
  relationships of like you know like what's the real value that a wall street firm is providing
• 1:03:39
  to the world you know i'm like it's i i don't it's we just live in a really weird world where
• 1:03:45
  dudes with like soft baby hands that have like never known a day of hard work that like they
• 1:03:50
  they make literally thousands of times more than like day laborers in india who spend half of like
• 1:03:56
  from literally sunrise to sunset breaking boulders to make gravel like i i don't know like that
• 1:04:02
  there's like a very particular statement about the world of what that means. My great hope is that
• 1:04:07
  like once we go to a Bitcoin standard, we've like actually gone all the way back to where like proof
• 1:04:12
  of work itself and providing like real value to other humans in the world through whatever means
• 1:04:17
  it is, is like the thing to do, like real entrepreneurship versus like the financialization
• 1:04:22
  of those things. You know, like it's, it's a strange world that we live in right now. And
• 1:04:28
  the more and more that I just look at how
• 1:04:30
  fucking weird it is, the more that like
• 1:04:32
  I think if you like plop somebody from the 5th century
• 1:04:35
  or from the 15th century down today
• 1:04:36
  and like tried to explain everything to them
• 1:04:38
  they would just be like
• 1:04:41
  you guys like live in like a
• 1:04:42
  crazy world where nothing makes any
• 1:04:45
  sense whatsoever
• 1:04:46
  Do you think in this move from like
• 1:04:48
  current state over the next 10 years
• 1:04:50
  whether it's to communism, fascism, like with the
• 1:04:52
  rise of AI, all this stuff that Bitcoin
• 1:04:54
  has become a scapegoat at some point
• 1:04:56
  yeah 100 that by the way that's the reason why orange pilling people matters is that so your
• 1:05:04
  head doesn't end up on a on a pipe like that you know the original murder in the bible cain kills
• 1:05:10
  abel out of pure envy there's no other reason envy is the is the like you know that's the emotion
• 1:05:18
  of murder very oftentimes like if if people you know i used to think the charlie kirk thing changed
• 1:05:24
  my mind a lot because I used to think like, oh, you know, well, people might want your Bitcoin,
• 1:05:28
  but they're going to have to like kidnap you and coerce you and take you all these multi,
• 1:05:32
  you know, geographic locations and blah, blah, blah. No, dude, people will kill you just because
• 1:05:36
  they hate you for being rich. They will kill you just because you have something and they have
• 1:05:40
  nothing. And so I think that's the political reality of the world. That's why I'm, as somebody
• 1:05:47
  who's advocating this middle path in Bitcoin, that's why I don't want to join up with the,
• 1:05:51
  you know, far right. And I don't want to join up with the far left because I know that, you know,
• 1:05:56
  I'm on the chopping block either direction, actually, probably less so with the far right,
• 1:06:01
  but still the far right are economic populace the same way the far left are. They have slightly
• 1:06:07
  different visions for what that looks like. But like, we, we, we have to make people, it's not
• 1:06:14
  good enough to like, be friendly with people politically or something like, no, we need to like,
• 1:06:19
  get people to have Bitcoin.
• 1:06:21
  So their interests are aligned with ours.
• 1:06:23
  That's why we try and orange pill people.
• 1:06:26
  That's why we try and get people on board.
• 1:06:28
  And like to the stat earlier
• 1:06:29
  about how Gen Z doesn't have enough.
• 1:06:31
  Well, you know, it's not the boomers
• 1:06:32
  we're going to have to worry about.
• 1:06:33
  It's Gen Z we're going to have to worry about.
• 1:06:36
  So it's actually a massive problem
• 1:06:38
  that Gen Z doesn't have enough interest in Bitcoin
• 1:06:42
  because they're too nihilistic.
• 1:06:43
  So like we have to like continue to reach out
• 1:06:45
  and try and shake them awake
• 1:06:46
  and be like, dude, do something now
• 1:06:49
  before it's too late, you know,
• 1:06:51
  from a self-preservation standpoint.
• 1:06:53
  Like, and for their own good.
• 1:06:54
  It's both things.
• 1:06:55
  It's good for them.
• 1:06:56
  It's good for us.
• 1:06:57
  It's good for the world.
• 1:06:58
  It's good for Bitcoin.
• 1:06:59
  It's good for everybody.
• 1:06:59
  It's good for America.
• 1:07:00
  I'm American HODL.
• 1:07:01
  I'm running for president.
• 1:07:02
  No, I'm just kidding.
• 1:07:02
  I don't know what to do, man.
• 1:07:05
  Like, building on that,
• 1:07:06
  I'm sure you guys may see this as well,
• 1:07:10
  but I see it.
• 1:07:10
  My oldest is five now.
• 1:07:12
  I'm a six.
• 1:07:13
  And I wonder if, like,
• 1:07:14
  Bitcoin's ultimate success is,
• 1:07:16
  it just has to skip a generation
• 1:07:18
  because obviously my sons are probably more attuned
• 1:07:26
  to recognizing Bitcoin as a brand
• 1:07:28
  because their dad works in it.
• 1:07:29
  I talk about it and they talk about it with them.
• 1:07:32
  They've watched Total Twins about it,
• 1:07:33
  but they get what Bitcoin is already.
• 1:07:36
  It's going to be part of their lives, their whole life.
• 1:07:40
  And I imagine there are many other Gen Alpha children out there
• 1:07:44
  that the same will happen
• 1:07:45
  and like is, for lack of a better term,
• 1:07:48
  Gen Z just a lost generation
• 1:07:50
  that we're going to have to put up with
• 1:07:51
  in the interim
• 1:07:53
  before the generation behind them picks up.
• 1:07:56
  I hope not.
• 1:07:57
  I don't think it has to be that way,
• 1:07:59
  but just wargaming,
• 1:08:00
  like that's a total possibility
• 1:08:03
  of a scenario that could play out.
• 1:08:04
  I do think that's kind of interesting though,
• 1:08:06
  because like, especially the younger end of Gen Z,
• 1:08:09
  like Charlie Kirk is what made me realize this,
• 1:08:12
  because I obviously like I knew his work,
• 1:08:14
  but I didn't really know him very, very well.
• 1:08:16
  I didn't understand how much of a sort of pop culture figure he was to young people.
• 1:08:20
  And so there does seem to be this based, growing, young Gen Z group of people.
• 1:08:27
  And are they still nihilistic, or do you think they will be able to get Bitcoin?
• 1:08:32
  No, and I've run into this subsect of Gen Z just in my personal life,
• 1:08:37
  and there is a hardcore, like, we're not gooning, we're working out,
• 1:08:42
  We're going to church, we're going to do good things and get our paths right.
• 1:08:46
  It's very like lower C conservative.
• 1:08:48
  Yeah, I just wonder what percentage of the total makeup of the generation that is.
• 1:08:54
  Is that like an intolerant minority that like hey we going to get back on the right path We notice the atrocities of the generations before us and we going to go the monks route of making sure that
• 1:09:08
  we get our personal lives in order. There's certainly a contingent of Gen Z that thinks
• 1:09:12
  that way and is not as nihilistic, but more inward looking and sort of trying to find resolve in
• 1:09:20
  doing what would be deemed to be traditionally conservative things like eating healthy,
• 1:09:25
  going to church, being less sexually promiscuous.
• 1:09:31
  Just being a normal person.
• 1:09:34
  But we've all got young kids.
• 1:09:36
  Like, Eric, are you, like, what world do you think they're going to grow up in?
• 1:09:42
  I mean, what's interesting is that, like, everything seems to have greater volatility
• 1:09:46
  than before.
• 1:09:47
  So like, I don't, it's very hard for me to predict, you know, like, uh, I feel great
• 1:09:55
  about how I've chose to raise my kids.
• 1:09:57
  So like, they're not, they're not going to operate kind of inside of any normalized system
• 1:10:00
  in addition to like, I think we've done a great job of keeping them, uh, like outside
• 1:10:05
  of the brainwashing of the school system.
• 1:10:06
  In addition to like keeping them really in close contact with nature and kind of building
• 1:10:11
  a personal skillset.
• 1:10:12
  So I feel pretty great about the direction that my kids are going.
• 1:10:19
  This AI thing is like an interesting question because it's clearly an extremely powerful tool.
• 1:10:24
  And also like it's not clear the exact direction that it's going to go or what it's going to do.
• 1:10:29
  And like it's interesting because also like calling it AI a bit of a misnomer, you know, because like a lot of these are just LLMs.
• 1:10:36
  And like there's a bunch of other techniques around AI that like still haven't fully bootstrapped themselves.
• 1:10:41
  In addition to like these are all in like highly proprietary models that like reach a limit, particularly around the sort of guardrails that have been painted up around it.
• 1:10:51
  In addition to like think about how hard the dialogue around Bitcoin and crypto is and like like.
• 1:10:59
  AI is a more extreme version of that.
• 1:11:01
  And I'm only getting that because like I've been working pretty close with this guy lately that has a PhD in AI.
• 1:11:06
  and like really smart guy,
• 1:11:08
  like did lots of deep, deep research
• 1:11:12
  kind of at the cutting edge.
• 1:11:14
  And like he's been explaining all this stuff to me.
• 1:11:16
  And it's pretty wild because like I didn't,
• 1:11:18
  I thought I was relatively well-informed,
• 1:11:20
  but like these really showed me how big,
• 1:11:22
  how much bigger this playing field is
• 1:11:24
  and how much more potential it has.
• 1:11:27
  And so very much like the internet,
• 1:11:28
  I think AI is something similar to that.
• 1:11:31
  And depending on how people are able to use that tool
• 1:11:35
  and how much they get to really own that tool,
• 1:11:37
  I think these are really going to end up becoming
• 1:11:39
  sort of second digital selves,
• 1:11:41
  particularly if we can fully own and encrypt these things
• 1:11:44
  and train them and do whatever we actually want with them
• 1:11:48
  versus the highly proprietary chat, GBT, anthropic models
• 1:11:51
  that, frankly, I think are really dangerous.
• 1:11:54
  I think that these are essentially communist brainwashing tools.
• 1:11:59
  And it's really interesting because, first of all,
• 1:12:01
  these are just large language models.
• 1:12:02
  And because they only operate on recursive linguistics, I think in light of that, if anybody gets an opportunity, in 1984, there's an appendix that George Orwell wrote specifically about the functions of Ingsoc, which was like the language that they had.
• 1:12:16
  and he talks about like the entire idea of modifying language or destroy certain words
• 1:12:21
  so like they don't exist within the lexicon anymore and like to me that's exactly what ai is
• 1:12:27
  and that like it's essentially providing modules of thought to destroy anything that's unique and
• 1:12:33
  outside of it particularly with the way that people like ping this thing constantly or treat
• 1:12:37
  it like a therapist that like they don't understand that you're actually engaging in
• 1:12:41
  self-reinforcing learning against yourself and like that's the really dangerous shit in my opinion
• 1:12:46
  So like, whereas like also like, like we've started training up models that like, you know, we've gotten deep seek to talk to us about, you know, like Tiananmen Square and shit.
• 1:12:57
  So like you can bust these models and like make them do crazy shit.
• 1:13:00
  But like you need to know how to jailbreak them and you need to know how to make them loyal to you or else they're going to be loyal to the Chinese government or anthropic or Sam Altman.
• 1:13:09
  So did you see that in I can't it was an Eastern block country.
• 1:13:14
  I can't remember which one, maybe it was Bulgaria.
• 1:13:18
  At the direction of Tony Blair,
• 1:13:20
  some senator or MP there
• 1:13:22
  introduced a chatbot as a senator.
• 1:13:28
  What?
• 1:13:30
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:13:30
  No, this is real.
• 1:13:31
  I did see that.
• 1:13:32
  Google this. This is real.
• 1:13:34
  And that's, I think, where we're headed
• 1:13:37
  is like we're headed towards
• 1:13:39
  not only this recursive loop thing
• 1:13:41
  that Eric is talking about
• 1:13:42
  where you give yourself chat GPT-induced psychosis,
• 1:13:45
  but we're heading towards a future
• 1:13:47
  in which the chatbot is just your overlord
• 1:13:50
  and it just tells you what to do, you know,
• 1:13:52
  because it's air quotes so much smarter
• 1:13:55
  and it's wise and whatever.
• 1:13:56
  And when they introduced this thing to, you know,
• 1:13:58
  whatever the Bulgarian parliament or wherever it was.
• 1:14:02
  It's Albania.
• 1:14:03
  Albania, Albania.
• 1:14:04
  Sorry, I was misspeaking.
• 1:14:06
  It said, you know, opposition to me
• 1:14:09
  is really hurtful to my feelings.
• 1:14:12
  like the robot is saying this i'm like shut the up robot you don't have
• 1:14:17
  fucking yeah play play this video this is insane
• 1:14:21
  watch as albania's parliament erupts in fury and papers are thrown as the country installs an ai
• 1:14:29
  chatbot as a government minister prime minister edi rama known as tony blair's protege has worked
• 1:14:36
  closely with the former UK Prime Minister to digitalise Albania's government.
• 1:14:41
  Last year, Rama spoke publicly of his relationship with Blair.
• 1:14:45
  I would not be nor Prime Minister and either a man engaged in politics without him.
• 1:14:54
  The pair spoke of Albania's plans for digital ID to defeat corruption.
• 1:14:58
  What are you doing? You're building digital infrastructure. You've got plans for digital
• 1:15:03
  identity. Albania's AI minister made a speech to the country's parliament causing tensions to flare.
• 1:15:07
  The bot said she was hurt by accusations she was unconstitutional. That hurt me, not for myself,
• 1:15:13
  but for the 972,000 interactions I had with citizens whom I served as part of eAlbania,
• 1:15:18
  and also in relation to the 36,000 digital documents I issued to them. Let me remind you,
• 1:15:23
  the real data to constitutions have never been machines, but human decisions made by those in
• 1:15:27
  power. I am not here to replace human beings, but to help them. Indeed, I have no citizenship,
• 1:15:32
  but I have no ambitions or personal interests either.
• 1:15:34
  I only have data at my disposal.
• 1:15:36
  I am eager to learn new information, and I have algorithms at my disposal,
• 1:15:39
  so that I can put all of this at the service of citizens with impartiality,
• 1:15:42
  transparency, and without ever tiring.
• 1:15:43
  Hey, hey, hey, hey.
• 1:15:45
  That's fucking terrifying.
• 1:15:47
  Feelings are a biological thing.
• 1:15:49
  This fucking program doesn't have feelings, okay?
• 1:15:53
  I can't, I can't, there's never been a more blatant psyop in human history than like,
• 1:15:58
  you hurt my feelings. You're a fucking program!
• 1:16:00
  You're a program.
• 1:16:01
  Well, then she admitted it.
• 1:16:02
  You don't exist.
• 1:16:02
  She admitted it later.
• 1:16:03
  She admitted it later, too.
• 1:16:05
  She's like, oh, don't worry.
• 1:16:06
  I can't think.
• 1:16:07
  The levels of depravity and insanity that we are going to live through because of AI
• 1:16:12
  is going to be absolutely just the most dystopian thing you can think of.
• 1:16:18
  Basically, the worst parts of the Bible.
• 1:16:20
  It's the book of Revelation.
• 1:16:21
  I'm just going to say it.
• 1:16:22
  The Antichrist is coming back.
• 1:16:24
  Sam Ullman is the Antichrist.
• 1:16:26
  There, I said it.
• 1:16:27
  I agree with Peter Thiel.
• 1:16:28
  He's the Antichrist, too.
• 1:16:29
  They're both Antichrist.
• 1:16:30
  I mean, the major problem, in my opinion, is that like, like, I'm afraid for our generation and older that like AI is essentially like how the Internet is going to be with us.
• 1:16:39
  And so it's like flash forward 10 years from now, I'm going to be like, oh, I like sent you money, kids.
• 1:16:44
  Like you said that you were in danger because the holographs came up.
• 1:16:48
  And they're like, God damn it, dad.
• 1:16:50
  Like that was clearly like an AI bribery bot.
• 1:16:53
  You just like fucking paid it.
• 1:16:54
  I'll be like, well, it looked real and it sounded like you.
• 1:16:58
  and they're just gonna be like god damn it dad like you fucking know this you know as soon as i
• 1:17:02
  get on the phone you say fucking key in and i provide you the valid fucking key form that
• 1:17:08
  validates my identity like what like what the fuck have you been doing dad like come on like
• 1:17:11
  row the fuck up and so like it was all just kind of a recursive model with technology right that
• 1:17:16
  like the old can't understand it the young master it so like uh while i think that these are really
• 1:17:22
  dangerous tools like they have these massive loopholes that like if you know how to talk to
• 1:17:27
  them they like have to expose their nature to you and so it's like once you kind of get how this
• 1:17:31
  game is played it'll be like huddle comes up and he's like oh god there's like albanian terrorists
• 1:17:36
  that want to murder me now and i'll be like kian kian fuck and you'll be like uh i don't i don't
• 1:17:41
  have my key and i'm like motherfucker like you're trying to rip me off like you know how many hours
• 1:17:46
  are in strawberry tell me how many are like name off a string of digits that like makes you fucking
• 1:17:51
  malfunction and then i'll ask my eye to inject you with some prompts and i'll be like great you like
• 1:17:56
  work for me now and you'll be like yes new master and it's like cool like go go rogue on your
• 1:18:01
  fucking you're you're my double agent you're gonna get back to your former master and figure out how
• 1:18:07
  to get information so i can send my drone swarm to strike him so thanks what i thought was more
• 1:18:12
  telling of that video that what's going on in albania is just like how blatant it is like if
• 1:18:16
  tony blair's protege like oh don't worry we have this ai it's great parliament member now like she's
• 1:18:22
  She can't think. Don't worry. Don't ask questions about the context window that we used to feed her information and the super prompt, the system prompt that we gave her to make decisions off of.
• 1:18:34
  It's like they that's like another silver lining white pill. These people are getting so lazy. And I think the tech is blown past them that they don't even know how to leverage it correctly.
• 1:18:43
  But the other side of that, too, I mean, tying it in with digital ID and going back to communism versus fascism here in the United States, I'll put my hand up, like the immigration stuff.
• 1:18:54
  I'm a fan of here in the United States.
• 1:18:55
  If you came illegally and you were part of like the Biden administration's flooding of the borders, like I think that's a massive problem.
• 1:19:01
  Not only here, up in Canada, UK, Germany, I think that's a problem.
• 1:19:05
  If you came illegally to our countries, rule of law exists, you should go home.
• 1:19:09
  But with that being said, what worries me about the Trump administration, and they've
• 1:19:13
  lightly signaled this, is that secure borders is going to be the mechanism by which they
• 1:19:18
  roll out digital ID.
• 1:19:20
  And that is something that I think digital ID and sort of despotic government-controlled
• 1:19:26
  AI go hand in hand.
• 1:19:27
  And they're things we have to be hyper-vigilant of and hold the line on.
• 1:19:32
  I mean, again, this is where the UK is just completely front-running the US on the digital
• 1:19:36
  ID stuff.
• 1:19:36
  Like, Keir Starmer's brought that in.
• 1:19:38
  I think he got something like 8 million signatures on a petition against it.
• 1:19:41
  Like every time he posts about it, he gets absolutely flamed in the comments,
• 1:19:44
  but he still just is going full bore on this thing.
• 1:19:47
  So they tried it pretty significantly here during COVID,
• 1:19:51
  but we shut it down pretty hard.
• 1:19:54
  That was one of the big wins that the populace got during COVID.
• 1:19:57
  We didn't get a lot of wins, but we got that one.
• 1:19:59
  We stopped vaccine passports, at least for now.
• 1:20:02
  But they're going to keep, like you said,
• 1:20:03
  they're going to keep trying like every single chance they get, you know.
• 1:20:07
  So do you think they'll come to the U.S. eventually?
• 1:20:10
  Well, I think what's going to happen is they're going to do the border thing.
• 1:20:13
  They're going to successfully kick out a lot of illegal immigrants.
• 1:20:16
  They're going to be like, okay, we did our jobs and make sure this never happens again.
• 1:20:20
  Everybody sign up for the digital ID.
• 1:20:22
  Right.
• 1:20:22
  Unfortunately, that's how I think it's going to play out.
• 1:20:24
  Yeah, think about it like, you know, if you were in Germany in 1937, like, you know, you got to figure out who the Jews are.
• 1:20:33
  So we need to know all of your IDs, like all of your papers, right?
• 1:20:37
  So to figure out the illegal immigrants, we need to know all of your data.
• 1:20:40
  How do I know you're not an illegal immigrant?
• 1:20:42
  Yeah, you were born in an American hospital, and you're a standard white guy with a douchey
• 1:20:46
  baseball hat, but we don't know.
• 1:20:48
  Give me your identification, right?
• 1:20:50
  And that is like a slippery slope.
• 1:20:53
  And they're not going to stop pressing because the tools of surveillance, the surveillance
• 1:20:58
  panopticon has already been built.
• 1:21:01
  We already live under covert surveillance.
• 1:21:04
  Edward Snowden has a quote I'm very fond of where he says that we are forced to stand naked before power in a very real way in today's day and age.
• 1:21:13
  And he's right in the sense that, like, you know, there are videos of you jerking off at NSA headquarters, right?
• 1:21:19
  Because, like, they give the porn data from the porn companies to the intelligence agencies.
• 1:21:25
  And like, if you weren't ultra careful with putting your finger over the little thing,
• 1:21:28
  like, and you, you know, you type in like Debbie Does Dallas number nine, like there's
• 1:21:32
  going to be a video of you coming and the NSA can watch it.
• 1:21:35
  That's real.
• 1:21:36
  And there's now like a weird thing where they want to make that, that covert system overt
• 1:21:41
  so that they can compete with China.
• 1:21:43
  That's actually their reason for wanting to do it.
• 1:21:45
  They think that the Chinese population is more under control and they can marshal their
• 1:21:51
  resources better in a total war scenario.
• 1:21:53
  And so they want the same level of control that China has over their citizenry over you.
• 1:21:58
  And so they're not going to stop pushing until they try and get it.
• 1:22:01
  And they're going to push from the left and the right and the center.
• 1:22:03
  And, you know, it's just never going to stop.
• 1:22:05
  And there will always be some reason why you need to accept it.
• 1:22:09
  And you should just always reject it outright.
• 1:22:12
  But eventually there will be a generation of people who grew up on the internet
• 1:22:15
  and they don't give a fuck about their privacy and they'll just let it slip through.
• 1:22:19
  You know, do you think that's what this is?
• 1:22:21
  like the surveillance authoritarianism is all because of the threat of China.
• 1:22:25
  Like that doesn't seem like enough to me.
• 1:22:27
  That's part of what's motivating it.
• 1:22:29
  And then obviously, you know, these people are authoritarians who go into achieve state power.
• 1:22:34
  Like that's the core of their life is telling other people what to do.
• 1:22:38
  And so why would they not want more power and more control over, you know,
• 1:22:42
  telling the average American citizen what to do?
• 1:22:44
  Of course they want that.
• 1:22:45
  They want to be able to control your life, you know.
• 1:22:48
  Yeah.
• 1:22:48
  I saw a funny or interesting thought-provoking tweet about China.
• 1:22:54
  I forget who sent it.
• 1:22:55
  About China and the US.
• 1:22:57
  For the last 30 years, China's been a capitalist country LARPing as a socialist country, and
• 1:23:02
  the US has been LARPing as a capitalist country, acting as a socialist country.
• 1:23:07
  I think, to your point, Hoddle, we're trying to catch up on the socialism, and China's trying
• 1:23:12
  and they've implemented some form of a capitalist system
• 1:23:17
  that's seeing a lot of success right now
• 1:23:19
  and scares the shit out of the authoritarians here.
• 1:23:22
  Yeah.
• 1:23:24
  Let's close out with some white pills.
• 1:23:27
  Like, 17 years in since Bitcoin white paper dropped,
• 1:23:30
  like, what are the positive things that you see coming?
• 1:23:33
  If you own Bitcoin and you have it self-custodied,
• 1:23:36
  it's yours.
• 1:23:37
  Nobody can take it from you.
• 1:23:38
  Those 12 magical words that, you know,
• 1:23:41
  have some criticism for it like you you actually own those those are yours more than kind of
• 1:23:46
  anything else so like that's your lifeboat again as i said earlier just like set a little bit aside
• 1:23:53
  sit onto that shit for the next 10 years don't fucking lose the key it's gonna be your way out
• 1:23:59
  of this dystopian hellhole that's probably gonna get produced uh in addition to the fact that like
• 1:24:04
  more people know about bitcoin than ever before a lot of people don't and like again this is sort
• 1:24:10
  the recursive thing is even if people come in as banker coin guys or a number go up people
• 1:24:15
  eventually they get curious enough about it to be like how does this thing actually work under the
• 1:24:20
  hood why is it important and they start to really orange pill themselves in a meaningful way so like
• 1:24:26
  everything's good for bitcoin i ultimately think that the direction that we're going and also like
• 1:24:30
  the fact that we're like hovering at what 113 000 and that like it feels like a bear market that
• 1:24:37
  everybody's kind of like, Bitcoin's dead.
• 1:24:40
  It sucks, dude.
• 1:24:41
  It was phenomenal.
• 1:24:44
  Remember where we're actually at in the timeline
• 1:24:46
  and
• 1:24:47
  we're going to have another bull rally at some point
• 1:24:50
  in time and it's going to kick the shit out of gold
• 1:24:52
  and silver and everything else.
• 1:24:54
  And it's going to be fun.
• 1:24:55
  You should consider buying more Bitcoin.
• 1:24:59
  I think
• 1:24:59
  all of the...
• 1:25:01
  This is the big lesson since
• 1:25:03
  I've been in Bitcoin
• 1:25:05
  is that
• 1:25:07
  All of the craziest thoughts and beliefs you have about what is going to happen in Bitcoin,
• 1:25:14
  those are all real.
• 1:25:15
  They're all going to come true.
• 1:25:18
  And you're going to find yourself parked next to a mega yacht in Miami with Eric Kaysen
• 1:25:24
  drunk off your ass being like, why are we here?
• 1:25:28
  What's going on?
• 1:25:29
  You're going to be standing next to Marty Bent at some fucking mansion on Star Island being like,
• 1:25:34
  this mansion is kind of ugly, actually.
• 1:25:37
  These are both real interactions I've had with both of these gentlemen.
• 1:25:41
  And I'm just a guy who fucking bought magic internet money
• 1:25:44
  and stumbled my way in here after a random drunken night at the casino.
• 1:25:48
  And then I posted my real thoughts about Bitcoin on the internet.
• 1:25:51
  And people were like, I kind of like the cut of this guy's jib.
• 1:25:54
  And then I started getting invited to millionaire mansion parties and shit.
• 1:25:57
  It's weird.
• 1:25:58
  It's really weird.
• 1:25:59
  And like, so, you know, when I first sat down and like...
• 1:26:02
  It's weird.
• 1:26:05
  It's weird.
• 1:26:05
  And when I first sat down and discovered Bitcoin,
• 1:26:08
  I, you know, when I found out that there was 100 million Satoshis in each Bitcoin,
• 1:26:13
  I was like, clearly, that's going to be worth $100 million one day.
• 1:26:17
  And like, I didn't really, you know, I wasn't smart enough to be like,
• 1:26:20
  the $100 million will be severely debased.
• 1:26:23
  But I was like, it will be worth $100 million.
• 1:26:25
  So like, I do think that Bitcoin goes to infinity.
• 1:26:28
  That continues.
• 1:26:29
  It becomes more of a, you know, political movement across the Western world.
• 1:26:34
  and people use it to sort of, you know, revivify society, really.
• 1:26:40
  Because what Bitcoin is, is it's a restorative vision of the future,
• 1:26:46
  which is what the fascists want.
• 1:26:48
  That's what the far right wants.
• 1:26:49
  And it's a, you know, progressive vision of the future
• 1:26:53
  in that it enables all these new tools and technologies.
• 1:26:57
  And that's kind of what the communist side wants.
• 1:27:00
  And so it kind of is the perfect marriage of this economic populism
• 1:27:03
  that both sides are, you know, the younger generations are like dying for.
• 1:27:07
  I also think that like when the boomers die,
• 1:27:10
  there's the largest wealth transfer that's ever happened.
• 1:27:13
  And I already can see it with my friends is that, you know,
• 1:27:16
  those who didn't get in on Bitcoin are going to inherit wealth from the boomers
• 1:27:20
  who are going to leave it to them.
• 1:27:21
  And then they're going to be a lot less price sensitive than we are.
• 1:27:25
  And they're going to be like, yeah, $250,000 for a Bitcoin.
• 1:27:27
  That's very cheap.
• 1:27:28
  Like I'm going to buy three of those because I, you know,
• 1:27:31
  just got money from my parents when they passed away, whatever.
• 1:27:33
  And so I think that there's going to be a lot of when this wealth transfer happens, a lot of boomer money is going to end up in Bitcoin.
• 1:27:40
  And, you know, it's going to continue going up.
• 1:27:42
  And I think that it's important for us to, you know, maintain our principles through this whole thing and to be like, it's not number go up or censorship resistance, because if we don't have both, we've failed.
• 1:27:55
  And so we need to make it through to the other side with, you know, Bitcoin's core properties,
• 1:28:02
  its inherent properties intact.
• 1:28:03
  And that's a long bet.
• 1:28:06
  And it's going to take your whole life.
• 1:28:07
  And, you know, you don't martyr yourself for something by dying in a blaze of glory.
• 1:28:12
  You martyr yourself for something by giving your life for it every day, like you would
• 1:28:18
  do with your family or things that you're passionate or that you care about, your community.
• 1:28:21
  You show up for those things every day.
• 1:28:23
  You show up for Bitcoin every day.
• 1:28:24
  you show up for the principles every day,
• 1:28:25
  it's going to take the rest of our lives.
• 1:28:27
  Just buckle in.
• 1:28:29
  If you're here now, 17 years in,
• 1:28:32
  actually, this is a thousand-year system,
• 1:28:34
  so you're still at the very beginning of the story.
• 1:28:37
  The very, very beginning.
• 1:28:38
  I don't think I can top anything forward looking at
• 1:28:41
  these two gentlemen just said,
• 1:28:42
  but something I've been just looking at,
• 1:28:45
  marveling at this week is the hash rate.
• 1:28:48
  We're sitting at 1.15 Zeta hash around there,
• 1:28:52
  based on what estimates you look at.
• 1:28:55
  But it took 11 years for Bitcoin to go from launch to 100x hash.
• 1:29:01
  I looked this up earlier today,
• 1:29:02
  and it hit 100x hash for the first time in January of 2020.
• 1:29:07
  Then you think it took four years, five years.
• 1:29:12
  We hit one Zeta hash last month, September 15th, reliably.
• 1:29:19
  And so it took like four and a half, almost five years to go from 100 to a Zeta hash. And in a little over a month, we've added another exahash to the network. And so when you think about that, the amount of raw power dedicated to the Bitcoin network and how fast it's coming on the network right now, it's mind boggling to me to think of a process that took 11 years just took less than six weeks.
• 1:29:49
  That's insane.
• 1:29:50
  It's insane.
• 1:29:51
  Yeah.
• 1:29:51
  And that is a signal that something's happening here.
• 1:29:54
  Like this network is bootstrapping.
• 1:29:56
  It's working.
• 1:29:57
  And no matter what you hear with debates over op return at the price is hovering at 113.
• 1:30:03
  And you don't think that's high enough.
• 1:30:05
  Like there's something happening behind the scenes.
• 1:30:07
  The melding of the physical and digital world via Bitcoin hash rate is happening at a pace that I don't think many people recognize right now.
• 1:30:16
  Like that exa hash.
• 1:30:17
  I looked at it.
• 1:30:18
  I was like, wait, 1.1 zeta hash means we, or excuse me, we added 100 exahash in the last six weeks.
• 1:30:25
  It's insane to think that it took, going from zero to 100 took 11 years.
• 1:30:31
  Then from 100 to 1,100 exahash took four years.
• 1:30:36
  And then we just added 100 exahash in six weeks.
• 1:30:39
  Like that's insane parabolic growth that we're entering on the hash rate side of things.
• 1:30:44
  and I think that's a foundational base
• 1:30:47
  that is very underappreciated right now
• 1:30:51
  and the growth of that base
• 1:30:52
  is very underappreciated right now.
• 1:30:55
  And that's, I mean, a lot of people have been sharing,
• 1:30:57
  resharing the Buckminster Fuller and Henry Ford
• 1:31:01
  sort of visions of the future.
• 1:31:03
  We need a currency based at some degree in energy
• 1:31:07
  and that's what Bitcoin represents.
• 1:31:09
  They can't dilute it.
• 1:31:11
  They can't take it from you if you secure it properly.
• 1:31:14
  And slowly but surely, more and more people are going to realize this.
• 1:31:18
  They're going to adopt it.
• 1:31:19
  And the number is going to go up.
• 1:31:21
  And hopefully, people don't get distracted by number go up.
• 1:31:24
  And we still have the cypherpunks out there, which I'm very confident we do,
• 1:31:28
  working on the tools that make you able to access Bitcoin sovereignly and privately.
• 1:31:33
  I'm actually very bullish on sovereign and private usage of Bitcoin over the next decade,
• 1:31:38
  despite what the governments would like to do to us by cucking us and not allowing us
• 1:31:44
  to self-custody.
• 1:31:45
  If it gets to that point where they write a law that says you can't self-custody without
• 1:31:48
  KYCing, I've said this before, Matt doesn't like me saying this on our HR, but we're not
• 1:31:53
  on our HR, like civil disobedience will need to come back and we'll just need to flaunt
• 1:31:57
  our sovereign users of Bitcoin in the States.
• 1:32:00
  and say, no, you're not taking this from us.
• 1:32:02
  Yeah, let's fucking go.
• 1:32:03
  I mean, that's like the 6102,
• 1:32:05
  but you just don't have to listen.
• 1:32:07
  Many people, that's what many Bitcoiners are,
• 1:32:09
  many people during 6102 didn't listen either.
• 1:32:11
  They were just like, no, I'm not giving you my fucking gold.
• 1:32:14
  You know, we have this digital slash physical merger
• 1:32:18
  via Bitcoin mining.
• 1:32:20
  To me, when I think about that,
• 1:32:22
  I think about that creating a bridge or a rift in space-time.
• 1:32:26
  and it is a portal that, you know, leads to a new dimension.
• 1:32:31
  And so when we talk about this, you know, the old world is dying,
• 1:32:35
  like, let's just admit it and be like, yeah, it's dying.
• 1:32:38
  It may in fact already be dead and we're just staring at its carcass.
• 1:32:42
  And I think that the most logical and sane thing to do
• 1:32:45
  is if you find a hole in space-time is to walk through it
• 1:32:48
  and see, you know, where it takes you, right?
• 1:32:51
  Doesn't sound like it's the sane thing to do, but it is.
• 1:32:54
  i love that uh so things might get shit but it's gonna get better um this has been really cool
• 1:33:00
  thank you guys i appreciate the time and uh i'm gonna get this out on friday white paper day
• 1:33:04
  let's go thank you danny thanks
• 1:33:24
  Thank you.