Latest / What Bitcoin Did / Bitcoin’s Parallel Economy Is Starting | Brian De Mint

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Bitcoin’s Parallel Economy Is Starting | Brian De Mint · What Bitcoin Did

0:00
The scam can't run forever. There's something about Bitcoin that we felt like we discovered
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on our own was what kind of flipped the switch for us. We planted the seeds and maybe someday
0:11
that they'll become a Bitcoiner. That's actually how it works. Bitcoin being a free market
0:15
solution. That's why they're willing to tell you that you were right because they learned
0:19
that on their own. I think that's maybe what some of the outside world's seen a little bit.
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It's like, why didn't the Fed shut them down? There's something different about this movement.
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The problem is people are trying to find the alpha.
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Okay, Bitcoin's 75,000.
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Go, I'm going to buy the XRP.
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I'm going to buy this.
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No, the alpha is still in Bitcoin.
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You want to be at the forefront of the Bitcoin economy.
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It kind of behooves us to spend some sats now.
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This is the fulfillment of the prophecies that we've been saying,
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the cypherpunks have been saying since the early days.
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We get to live through those.
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And it's pretty rewarding.
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We're in Vegas.
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There's a lot of Bitcoins around right now.
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And it's really funny.
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Vegas is the most fiat place in the world.
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100%.
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Like you walk around and it's like everything that's good
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and everything that's bad about America in one place.
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It's so overwhelming.
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And then you see this like group of Bitcoiners
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who are kind of just living in a parallel world.
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And you know, the criticism of like Bitcoin is a cult.
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Yeah.
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Is Bitcoin a cult?
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Cause I kind of think it is.
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A hundred percent.
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And I'll agree with that.
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I think I'm like qualified to agree with that
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because actually the first book,
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you might not know this,
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the first book I wrote was called Bitcoin Evangelism.
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So it was like literally like,
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Like, we're a cult, so how do we spread this gospel?
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And it's because there is, I mean, I'm a Christian,
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so I'm not knocking religion because I'm a religious guy.
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But there is something to be said about movements that shake the world.
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They have a, you can call it whatever you want,
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they have a cult-like following.
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They have raving fans behind it.
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And so we do, we need to foster an ethos
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that we shine a little bit differently
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than the rest of the world.
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So I think, you know, that was the knock on the conferences.
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Like, why would they come to Vegas?
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Why would they come to Vegas two years in a row?
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It's like, what better place to shine a light
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than in the darkness, you know?
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And I think that gives a,
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like that's the contrast you see of Bitcoin, Twitter,
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the world where everyone's angry, fighting about stuff.
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And then you get here and like vibes are good.
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Like we're in a bear market.
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There's probably less people here than last year maybe,
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but like vibes are still very high.
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Brian, we didn't introduce you.
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This is the first time you've been on the show.
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You should tell people who you are.
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My name is Brian DeMint.
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That's my real name.
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It's not like some altcoin name or anything like that.
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I get that all the time.
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It's like, oh, yeah, what are you shilling?
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No, DeMint is my real last name.
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I'm the head of marketing for Club Orange.
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We used to be Orange Pill App.
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So if anybody has heard of Orange Pill App,
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we are Club Orange now.
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We're the world's biggest network,
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social network for Bitcoiners in real life.
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So if you want to find and meet other Bitcoiners
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in your neighborhood, when you're at a conference, whatever, we have the app that helps facilitate
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that. We have over 20,000 active members. It's a really thriving, robust community of people who
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want to find local meetups. They want to find the after party. I think that was like,
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we thrive at something like this at a conference where there's a huge concentration of Bitcoiners,
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but most guys, they don't work in Bitcoin. They don't have Bitcoin connections, I guess,
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for lack of a better term. And so Club Orange kind of satisfies that of, I know what I'm doing
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from nine to five, because that's when the conference is. But after five o'clock, I don't
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want to be the guy who's in Vegas. It's just like strolling up and down the street, just finding
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whatever bar to go into. Like most, most Bitcoiners are like more sane than wanting to try and like
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find out what the night has in store for them in Vegas. And so they connect with other Bitcoiners
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and, uh, and actually foster legitimate friendships. We've had, we've had one marriage
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come from Club Orange.
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We try to stay away from marketing that.
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Yeah, when Club Tinder.
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That was the biggest concern
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because it's like most of our members,
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our Bitcoiners are typically men
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or women who are already married.
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And so it's like these people
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who are in loving relationships already,
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it's kind of hard to have your spouse
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find a meetup app on your phone.
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And so it is like when you tell them,
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hey, it's just Bitcoin nerds that are on the app,
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then it kind of satisfies that with the wife.
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But no, it is.
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There's an inherent desire for in-real-life connections.
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That's just what Mateo founded.
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That was his dream of founding this app
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to help Bitcoiners make friends with other Bitcoiners.
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And I think if Bitcoiners think Bitcoin's the future,
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then Bitcoiners are part of that future.
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Yeah, it's awesome.
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And then the group chat while I've been here
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has been going off.
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Clearly, there's a lot of people using it.
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But one of the interesting things
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when we talk about Bitcoin being a cult
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is one of the things you've got to do in a cult
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is bring more people into the cult.
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and I think everyone goes through this journey
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and I definitely did
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where when I got into Bitcoin
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I was super excited about it
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and I'm still super excited about it
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but I wanted to tell everyone
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and like so anytime I went out for drinks with people
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it's all I wanted to talk about
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and now when I go out with my normal friends
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I've kind of given up
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I find it tiring
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and I wait for people to come to me
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rather than the other way around
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like how do you keep the energy up
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to actually do that?
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I mean I think that's probably why people
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want to go meet other Bitcoiners
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so they can start out
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what I would call a friendship second base.
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So it's just like, well, you know
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that this guy's gone through the filter of,
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he's already read four Bitcoin books or whatever it has.
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He's already here, he watches what Bitcoin did.
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You know, that kind of thing.
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Like there really is this filter that happens.
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For the normie world, I think it gives,
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when Bitcoiners have a place to go and be around
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and like talk shop with it.
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And half the time their conversation
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isn't necessarily about Bitcoin.
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It's like Bitcoin's the bridge of the friendship,
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but then they talk about their other passions
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and those types of things.
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It's just like, hey, I know you're cool
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because you're in Bitcoin.
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Like that, that's enough for us to like have a hangout or have a meetup.
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But then we talk about the other things that we're into.
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Now, I think it gives those Bitcoiners more patience with their friends.
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Like you get to satisfy your Bitcoin cravings that you had as a newbie Bitcoiner because
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you have this show, you go to these conferences where people are pulling you in all sorts of
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different directions and asking you questions.
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So you have no shortage of like avenues for that to go into.
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And so I think it probably makes you more effective though.
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the times when your friends do come and finally ask you about Bitcoin is probably going to be
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during the next all-time high or whatever, you know, that type of thing. That's when our holdout
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friends, they wait to start asking questions. But I think it gives you probably as an individual,
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like Danny Knowles, like a little bit more patience with that person of like,
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I don't have to win this guy over so that I finally have a Bitcoin friend, you know,
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because that's what the stakes were before. It's like, I've got to make a, I've got to convert a
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Bitcoin are into the cold or else I have nobody to talk to. And so I think that that's maybe some
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of like the inertia that, that, that we're pulled towards in that. Um, but, but at the end of the
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day, yeah, we just, I think with my, with my normie friends, I just try to ask them questions
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to just meet them where they're at and just talk about normal things. And then the Bitcoin,
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when not everybody has a book or a Bitcoin show or whatever, but if you're, if you're the,
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if you're into Bitcoin, you're like the Bitcoin guy in your normie community. And so you're,
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you're the Michael Saylor to that community. Um, and so those questions will flow naturally. And
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so, yeah, for me, I think it gives me more patience with my, my uncle that just is like the last
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holdout, you know, do you know the funny thing there about like, cause you do become, you're
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known as like the Bitcoin are amongst your friends and you say you become like the Michael
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Saylor of those people, but that's not been my experience. It's like, it's that thing where like
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everyone's an idiot in their own village and like all these people know me from when I was like 11
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years old and absolutely I'm not listening to you. Um, that's a good point, but it's funny at
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these conferences, I, I become the normie, like by the end of it, after like five days of only
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talking about Bitcoin, I'm like, can we talk about football or something? That's funny. You know what?
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And I think I'll, I'll grant you that amongst my family, you know, the ones that have changed my
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diapers when I was a little kid or whatever the shot, you know, saw me light the neighbor's palm
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tree on fire with a bottle rocket. Like those are probably not the ones that are going to listen to
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me. I think it's the guys, there is something that comes from going to a conference and then
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speaking on stage. And then they see that on Instagram or whatever that kind of reinforces
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like, Oh wait, other people pay attention to you. That maybe does make you in that category a little
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bit more, but yeah, no, I've definitely got the cold. Like I had a friend one time, I think it
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was during COVID. He goes, why are you telling me this? He's like, who are you? Like, like,
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you're not the financial guru. I'm like, but I like, I'm trying to, you know? And so yeah,
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yeah, I've definitely gotten that. Yeah. I have seen that swing back the other way a little bit
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as well. And the most interesting thing this bear market has been in previous bear markets,
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I don't know if you've experienced the same thing. Like it's almost people sort of sniggering at you
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thinking like you fucked up, this is going to zero. And this time it's been totally different.
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Like this time I've had people reaching out instead of being like trying to buy at the top,
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they're like, Bitcoin looks cheap now. And I do wonder if the world more broadly is starting to
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wake up to Bitcoin. And I think the kind of sales of the world probably do help that. Like they've
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clearly brought a different level of sort of reputation to it. And then bringing a new audience
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in. But with that, do you think we lose anything in the Bitcoin culture, Bitcoin cult?
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I think that, yeah, that's, yeah, cults, cults. And that's where maybe the cult analogy breaks
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down a little bit is like a cult, once it gets to a certain size, like the feds come in and break
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it up, right? I mean, and like legitimately like the feds. Or you drink the Kool-Aid.
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Yeah, you drink the Kool-Aid, you put yourself out of business. And it's because the scam
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can't run forever. And I think that's maybe what some of the outside world's seen a little bit is
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like, why didn't they drink the Kool-Aid yet? Or why didn't the Fed shut them down? Like there's
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something different about this movement. I thought it was a Ponzi scheme, but like
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the Bitcoin obituaries thing comes up enough to these people where like your normie friends are
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like, yeah, I read this website where it talks about all the times that Bitcoin died. And I
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remember, because now they remember being part of the crew that rubbed it in your face two bear
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or bull market bear markets ago or three bear markets ago or however many however long you've
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been in it and so they recognize that they've had some egg on their face a little bit too
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yeah and so as as much as they could shame you in this moment they're like actually you you didn't
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like you didn't rub it in my face when it was at 126k and i've seen this this kind of cyclical
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thing happening and you just get enough financial like mainstream television that's that's kind of
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getting your back and that for good or bad or whatever that is it's branding i mean all things
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all the world is propaganda. And we can use the word propaganda in this really negative word,
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but it's using information to shift people's perspective. There's good propaganda and there's
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bad propaganda. And so at the end of the day, people are getting messaging through their
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television, through their phone. And there's enough financial institutions that have vested
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interest in Bitcoin that are going to legitimize it in their eyes. And so they would rather maybe
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kind of come back and give you credit because like they know that you you front ran some of
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those institutions it's like okay there's certain people you will get that that that stamp of
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validity with those those people where others they're going to run to yeah they're the financial
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instruments because they don't trust you but but it is it is rewarding when when you see people
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turn the corner and yes like not rubbing in your face in this bear market and saying like wow you
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know 75k seems like a good buy dude that's that's a while for anybody that's been in bitcoin for a
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while the statement that wow 75k seems cheap seems cheap is what we all said would happen but we like
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i hope that we all said we like we said it like i know that's going to happen but you we we hoped
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it would happen and just in the same way that we say oh when somebody you know somebody's going to
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buy it you know three quarters of a million dollars 750 000 and that's going to feel cheap
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We're saying that now, but like, we don't know until it happens, right?
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So this is the fulfillment of the prophecies that we've been saying,
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the cypherpunks have been saying since the early days.
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We get to live through those and it's pretty rewarding.
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forward slash wbd yeah it's funny when i got in first going to bitcoin like 2016 2017 people
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would talk would talk about 100k like they talk about a million dollars now and at the time i was
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like, yeah, a hundred K, but I kind of didn't believe it. And now when I'm, when people,
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I hear people talk about a million dollars, it's like, yeah, it's inevitable. Like it's
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going to happen. Um, one of the funny things on the Bitcoin obituary side, I had a friend
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who works in renewable energy and he, I remember at the time when the narrative was, it was
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going to consume all the world's energy by 2021 or whatever it was. Um, I remember having
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a conversation with him and he was super skeptical about Bitcoin and I, his mind got changed
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in December last year.
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So I went out to Africa,
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did an amazing trip with Eric Herzman.
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So we flew to Nairobi
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and then we did a 30-hour road trip
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from Nairobi up to the Ethiopian border
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over like a couple of days,
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three days, I think it was.
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And I mean, the first seven hours
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were on a road.
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The rest of it was dirt tracks.
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We were in the middle of absolutely nowhere.
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And it's like, there's nothing there.
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It looks like you're on the moon.
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And we went to this village called Saru,
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which isn't even on any map
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that you can find,
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apart from like the very specific one
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that Eric uses.
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he found this town and it's like a transient community there.
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So they have like four or 5,000 people at a time
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and basically no electricity.
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The only electricity they have
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is they've got one solar panel on the roof of a school
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and one solar panel on the roof of their sort of medicine hut.
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And so they have no batteries in either of them.
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And so in the medicine hut,
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they have a rule where at like 4 p.m.,
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no one opens the fridge.
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They have, it's like one of those like, I don't know.
15:44
Yeah, yeah.
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Waist high fridge freezer things.
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They have ice blocks.
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And at 4 p.m.
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That's what the medicine's in?
15:48
They take the ice blocks and put it in the fridge
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to keep it cold overnight
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and then the power comes on
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when the sun comes up.
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And in the school,
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it's quite funny,
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they can,
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it's quite a large-ish school.
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They can light eight
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of the classrooms they've got.
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I think they had 10,
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they can light eight,
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but they only choose to do six
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because everyone wants to
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plug in their mobile phones
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during the day.
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And so he's gone out
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to this village
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and he wants to build
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a huge solar plant
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and he's obviously
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going to monetize that
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by mining Bitcoin,
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but the knock-on effect to them
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is that if they want
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to buy electricity,
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it's going to cost them
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one or two cents a kilowatt hour more than the cost of mining Bitcoin, which is the cheapest
16:23
energy basically anywhere in the world. They'll be getting it for like 10 cents a kilowatt hour.
16:28
And I did a show with Eric after that road trip and we kind of broke down the whole thing we went
16:33
on. And this guy reached out to me like, I was wrong. He was like, this is one of the coolest
16:36
things I've ever seen. And I actually need to put him in touch with Eric. He wanted to speak to him,
16:40
but awesome. So like what it was, it was the, it was the financialization of it. It was like the,
16:45
mechanism of power that won him over?
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The thing that won him over is that there is no way that that project would ever be sustainable
16:54
unless it was an NGO.
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But the thing I also didn't understand until I went there is out in Africa, they hate the
17:00
NGOs because what they do, the way they get paid is they'll get paid to like stand up
17:05
a solar plant.
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And as soon as it's done, they get paid.
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And so there's no incentive for them to go back and like maintain the things that they
17:12
build.
17:12
So this is actually a town.
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It's the closest town to Saru,
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which has a big solar plant that was built by an NGO.
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And they built it.
17:20
And then like a storm came through,
17:22
a load got flipped over.
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And then people started stealing the electricity
17:25
from the energy lines.
17:26
And so they were like, we're pulling out.
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And someone stopped them from pulling out.
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So instead of completely ripping the whole thing out,
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they now charge 72 cents kilowatt hour there.
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So the poorest people in the world.
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That's crazy.
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So like the idea of having,
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so the thing that got him
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is the idea of these people going in as capitalists.
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They're there to make money,
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but the effect on the local people is awesome.
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Right, so a free market solution.
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Like without Bitcoin,
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he couldn't have imagined a free market solution
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that would solve their problem.
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There was no way you could do it.
17:54
Wow.
17:54
No way.
17:55
That's amazing.
17:55
Because they can build a solar plant
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that's big enough for them for decades,
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but they can monetize it instantly.
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Yeah, and I think it's funny
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because I think that's why people get that story
18:07
and it's the humanitarian side and capitalism winning.
18:10
And so, I mean, you can speak to a few different people groups of, you know, you're winning people over to Bitcoin because whether you're a capitalist or whether you're somebody who cares about people in Nairobi or whatever it is.
18:19
I was talking to a dude at the conference today that's talking about how he's working with the wealthiest companies in the world in AI and how they're using and they're throttling Bitcoin miners to allow for kind of a market dynamic for AI computation and stuff.
18:37
And so it's like, whether you're dealing with the wealthiest, the most well-capitalized companies in the world, there's a free market solution involving Bitcoin mining.
18:46
And whether you're dealing with the poorest people in the world, the spectrum is massive.
18:50
And the problems that are being solved by this, and that's like, that's not even Fox News or any of the financial channels have never once mentioned that.
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Like, that's not something that's part of the narrative, you know?
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And so that's where I think when people hear this, they feel like they've discovered.
19:06
And I think that's the biggest eye-opener for most people.
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And I think that was probably true.
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That was true for me.
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Maybe it was true for you.
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There was something about Bitcoin that we felt like we discovered on our own that was what kind of flipped the switch for us.
19:21
And so I think when these people hear a story like that, Bitcoin being a free market solution, that's why they're willing to tell you that you were right.
19:29
Because they learned that on their own.
19:30
Yeah.
19:31
As opposed to like, well, Danny shoved it down my throat.
19:33
And so I got it.
19:34
We're just such prideful people that we want to go and we want to get the last piece of the puzzle on our own.
19:40
And so planting the seeds for Bitcoin, that's why we say corny stuff like that.
19:45
It's like, we've planted the seeds and maybe someday they'll become a Bitcoiner.
19:48
That's actually how it works.
19:50
And so, yeah, it's pretty cool to see that.
19:53
And I think it's super rewarding when you do get that attaboy from the guy.
19:58
Totally.
19:59
And it's funny though, because it feels like the Bitcoin industry, I know people don't like that term, but I don't know what else you'd call it.
20:04
But like the Bitcoin industry has got so mature where we have these like cool things doing frontier energy in Africa.
20:09
There's like the stuff that Cash App and Square have done with allowing Bitcoin payments to every merchant in America.
20:15
Like the Bitcoin backed loans, like the financial side has got way, way better.
20:19
The stuff that strategy is doing, like everything feels like it's really grown up now.
20:23
But Bitcoin is still quite small in the grand scheme of things.
20:26
And like, how do you think it goes from here to being what we think Bitcoin will be?
20:31
That's a good question.
20:32
I wrote, I mean, this sounds like, I mean, shilling my books, but so the first book was
20:37
Bitcoin evangelism.
20:38
The second book was called Parallel.
20:41
So Bitcoin evangelism was about helping people understand Bitcoin.
20:43
If they didn't know it, there's plenty of books that you can do that with.
20:46
Parallel is kind of a unique book in the Bitcoin space because it's kind of like the pitch for
20:51
why we should start to use Bitcoin as money, as a unit or as a medium of exchange. And so it's the
20:58
growth roadmap for money, like anything that becomes the standard in money goes through four
21:06
distinct stages. I didn't create these stages. These are just the stages of money. It starts as
21:11
a novelty. So if you take something like gold, gold was originally like when the first Egyptian
21:15
or wasn't Egyptians, but we'll just say Egyptians because that sounds right. When the first Egyptian
21:20
found a shiny gold rock. He just gave it to his wife because it looked pretty and you'd set it on
21:25
the table and that's why she wanted it. But then enough Egyptians did that and they saw it on other
21:29
people's entry tables. They're like, oh, you have a, you have that, that gold rock and you have that
21:33
gold rock. Then that's when it goes from novelty. And then it moves into store of value because
21:38
everybody says, oh, other people want this too. And so I'm actually going to try and collect some
21:43
more of those gold rocks because I realized that other people want them. And now there's this market
21:47
demand for it. So you go from novelty, the new thing, it's a collectible or whatever it is to
21:52
it's a store of value because other people want it. And then the stage after that is medium of
21:57
exchange. The stage after that is unit of account. So unit of account being like, this is what we do
22:01
our books in. It's like the world is on a fiat standard right now. What's your net worth? Well,
22:06
it doesn't matter. You could have, you know, a hundred kilos of gold, but we don't say you're
22:11
worth a hundred kilos of gold. You're worth X amount of dollars. You're worth X amount of pounds.
22:15
Right. And so it's that's those are the stages of money where we're at right now is pretty undeniable that we're in the store value phase of Bitcoin.
22:24
It was in the novelty phase when you got the two thousand or the two pieces for 10,000 Bitcoin, when you could go to the Bitcoin faucet and you can get five Bitcoin a day for solving a capsic.
22:33
Like that was the novelty phase. We were playing around with Bitcoin at the time. Right now, companies are trying to hoard Bitcoin or countries are trying to hoard Bitcoin.
22:41
That's clearly the store value phase. Well, the medium of exchanges, that was the whole pitch of parallel. It was like, here's a case for why you should spend Bitcoin. I'll tell you what, the most pushback I've gotten in the Bitcoin space was asking people to spend their Bitcoin because Bitcoiners inherently are savers. We plan for the future. We talk about low time preference.
22:59
And so there's something that feels like it's in conflict with spending sats to get a haircut or to have my computer fixed and pay in sats.
23:08
People feel a conflict in that because we've trained ourselves to think of Bitcoin only as a store of value.
23:15
So to me, the future of Bitcoin happens if we don't allow Bitcoin to stay in the store of value phase.
23:22
It's OK to have a savings account and a checking account.
23:25
I mean, that's how we do fiat right now.
23:26
Now, I think, and Jack Dorsey said the same thing.
23:29
He goes, somebody asked him in an interview, how does Bitcoin die?
23:34
And he goes, Bitcoin dies, and maybe this is true, maybe it's not, but he goes, Bitcoin
23:38
dies if we fail to use it as money, not as a savings technology, but as a form of money.
23:43
And he's the one that's, I mean, he's pushing the limits as far as like merchant adoption
23:49
and things like that.
23:49
So he's really putting his technology where his mouth is on it.
23:53
And I think that the people who've been the most enriched by Bitcoin were the people who saw one of those phases ahead.
24:00
Like if you were in the novelty phase and everybody's, you know, and Laszlo, when he did the two pizzas for 10,000 Bitcoin, he's actually a genius in doing that.
24:07
That's a great story for anybody that like makes fun of him for that.
24:10
It's dumb.
24:10
The other thing people don't know about that story, which I think this is true at least, is that Satoshi was trying to encourage him to, because he was basically getting too much Bitcoin.
24:17
He was GPU mining and he was getting all the Bitcoin.
24:20
and Satoshi said, hey, you got to find ways to get this out.
24:23
And so incredible story when you dig into that.
24:26
And yeah, I think that's true as well.
24:28
But anybody that was treating Bitcoin as a store of value
24:31
when it was in the novelty phase,
24:34
you became excessively wealthy
24:35
because you took those 10,000 Bitcoin and held onto them.
24:38
So you were thinking one stage ahead.
24:40
I think the same thing is true for any Bitcoiners
24:42
that are trying to find the alpha.
24:43
And that's part of the problem, I think,
24:45
is when the knock on conferences is that,
24:49
oh, there's so many altcoiners there. There's so much noise or whatever. And maybe that's true,
24:54
but the problem is people are trying to find the alpha. Okay, Bitcoin's 75,000 or 100,000 or 150,000,
25:02
so I'm going to buy the XRP. I'm going to buy this. No, the alpha is still in Bitcoin,
25:06
but it's just by treating Bitcoin as money. It's by treating it as a medium of exchange.
25:10
And so I think if that message becomes popular enough that Bitcoin moves a tremendous step
25:17
forward. And that's probably the biggest step forward that Bitcoin could ever take is if people
25:21
want to transact in commerce with Bitcoin. And I think too many Bitcoiners unfortunately think that
25:27
that would take away from their wealth because it's like, it seems obvious. If I spend my sats,
25:35
that I'm going to lose sats. But this is just not understanding opportunity cost and the idea of
25:39
spend and replace. And that's absolutely right. And I think it even goes a step beyond that
25:45
Because as soon as I spend my sats with somebody, I've now developed an economic connection with somebody who also transact in sats.
25:54
So my first experience with this was a few years ago when I found my barber on Club Orange.
26:00
I went I traveled further to this barber because simply because he he accepted sats for a haircut.
26:06
Yeah. And so one, that's the Bitcoin cheat code.
26:10
that's the, you know, people will come from further away because they want to support a Bitcoiner.
26:16
But I dropped off some of my books with him. And I said, here, man, just like sell some of these and
26:20
you take the money from it. And he ended up saying, look, I'm going to sell them, but I'm
26:24
going to send you the sats for them. And so I paid whatever. I think by the time I was done with my
26:29
tip and everything, I think I paid like $40 for the haircut in sats, the equivalent. And I ended
26:34
up, he ended up selling like $120 worth of books for me. So I went out intention with the intention
26:39
that I'm going to spend some sats into the parallel Bitcoin economy. And it turned out that
26:43
that economic connection actually connected me to his other clients who also spend Bitcoin,
26:48
who also bought a book at the same time. And so my $40 expenditure actually netted me,
26:54
you know, or brought in $120 worth of sats. So it's not that that happens every single time,
27:00
but when you develop economic connections within Bitcoin, you brought up opportunity costs. Yeah,
27:05
the opportunity of the cost of not spending your your stats maybe maybe closes you off to other bitcoiners who spend bitcoin And so if you want to be at the forefront of the Bitcoin economy it kind of behooves us to spend some sats now And like you said spend and replace
27:20
is like the safest method to go. Just if you're going to spend $40 on a haircut and pay for it in
27:24
cash, just buy $40 of Bitcoin, spend it in sats, but you've now unlocked a relationship that's a
27:30
pretty anti-fragile economic connection for you. That's very cool. So I did a panel yesterday with
27:36
Jack Mallers and Miles Suter. And we were talking a lot about Bitcoin as payments. And
27:41
one of the things that Jack pushed back on a little was like the idea that holding Bitcoin
27:46
is still using Bitcoin. And also like the idea of borrowing against Bitcoin and spending in a
27:51
depreciating currency also can be like the trade. Like, why do you think using Bitcoin specifically
27:56
as money? Is it for that reason? Is it that it basically expands your monetary network,
28:00
your like personal monetary network? That's exactly why I do it is because if I spend,
28:04
And those are valid methods.
28:06
And it's like, man, I think we can race a few different ways to get to the same destination.
28:10
So I do not knock them.
28:12
And those guys are pushing the goalposts for Bitcoin.
28:14
So that might be the cheap way to do it.
28:17
The way that the little guy like me can do it is, I think, by spending Bitcoins, by spending some sats.
28:24
And yes, every one of those community connections I get, it's a signal of this is a real one.
28:30
Like as, as soon as I've transacted and I've, I've done a lightning transaction with somebody
28:35
and they've accepted a lightning transaction is like, that's a real one.
28:38
Yeah.
28:38
I know that guy's legit.
28:39
And it's, it's, it acts as a filter for my community.
28:42
Um, and there, there's, there's all sorts of tangential benefits to that.
28:46
I'd say probably the easiest way to orange pill somebody is to send them a thousand sats,
28:51
like take download a custodial, uh, like lightning wallet where like you put in your,
28:57
all your KYC, it can be like, whatever it can be.
28:58
it doesn't have to be protected at all,
29:01
but just download whatever the easiest lightning wallet
29:03
is for you to download
29:04
so that I can send you a thousand sats
29:05
because I can try to explain the double spend problem
29:10
and what Satoshi solved,
29:11
or I can just show you that, look it,
29:13
like I just sent you this money without permission
29:16
and we transacted without the traditional financial rails
29:21
that the rest of the world uses.
29:23
And so whether it's like orange pilling somebody
29:25
in that method
29:26
or it's stimulating an economic connection,
29:28
I think both are valid and both allow, again, the regular little guy to kind of push Bitcoin
29:35
forward just an inch or two.
29:36
But if enough of us move it an inch or two, I think we go pretty far.
29:40
How do you think the sort of merchant adoption of Bitcoin will go from here?
29:43
Because we've seen for years now, like Bitcoiners will go into places and try and convince their
29:48
local stores to take Bitcoin.
29:49
And they're probably the only ones going in there and actually spending in Bitcoin.
29:53
Does this actually need to be flipped on its head where instead of the person trying to
29:56
buy something demanding they accept Bitcoin, the merchant demanding they're paid in Bitcoin?
30:01
I mean, I think if you've got a cool enough business, then you could probably do that.
30:07
It's just it's going to be it's going to be a risk because, yeah, the Bitcoin has a flavor to it and some people don't like it.
30:19
Right. And so you might have you might have some of your clients that that just don't know Bitcoin and that that's off putting to them.
30:26
So I say, I actually speak on this from experience.
30:29
I have a chain of wellness studios called Salt and Light in Southern California.
30:32
So if you ever want to come and do cold plunge or salt rooms or any of that kind of stuff,
30:36
come on in when you're in Southern California.
30:38
Did you give me a hat like three years ago?
30:40
Yeah.
30:40
I didn't realize that was you.
30:42
I hadn't put two and two together.
30:43
Pacific Bitcoin, I think it was.
30:45
Yeah.
30:45
I still wear that hat sometimes.
30:46
It's a good hat.
30:48
There we go.
30:48
It's a good hat.
30:49
I appreciate that.
30:50
Well, thanks for repping the brand.
30:52
But anyway, so yeah, so we've been doing this.
30:55
and we've accepted Bitcoin for eight or nine years now.
31:00
And I'd say the people that have paid in Bitcoin,
31:02
I mean, I could probably count them on a couple of hands.
31:05
And now we've never, we've encouraged,
31:07
we've gone different methods.
31:08
We've gone the discount method where like,
31:10
hey, you can get a discount if you pay in Bitcoin.
31:13
We've also gone the, and I've heard this,
31:16
people encourage this is like,
31:18
no, you charge a fee to pay in fiat, right?
31:21
Yeah, it's a premium.
31:22
This is what Parker loves this.
31:23
Yeah, okay.
31:24
So yeah, so like, and I think that there's something to that.
31:27
That might be the methodology is you still give them the optionality, but you just show
31:33
the Bitcoin price and then the fiat price.
31:36
If we can lever our businesses in that way, then perhaps we're on to something.
31:42
Yeah.
31:43
You said Bitcoin has a flavor to it.
31:46
Do you think that when you say that, are you kind of saying it's associated with like
31:50
Trump, the Republicans?
31:51
Is that what you mean?
31:52
Yeah.
31:53
Yeah, well, unfortunately, I think it has a different flavor for different people.
31:56
People project onto it their different biases.
32:01
The flavor has changed.
32:03
I think now you're right.
32:04
I think the majority opinion is that it's tied to Trump or tied to MAGA or whatever.
32:09
And so if people don't like that flavor, then they're going to resent Bitcoin for it.
32:15
Back in the day, it was, that's online pirates.
32:20
And that's the cypherpunks.
32:22
and I don't want to have, you know, I'm a mainstream financial guy. And so I don't want
32:26
anything to do with that. Actually, there was, I mean, we used to say this all the time because
32:30
you've been around, you've been around Bitcoin for, for a long time. And so you, you remember
32:33
that the term was reputational risk, right? All the mainstream guys were worried about
32:38
reputational risk. And that's, and that's true. That's maybe been dampened a little bit because
32:44
there's, you know, as soon as black rock gets in the game, you can be like, well, Larry Fink did it.
32:48
Right. But but within your firm, you might have been the black sheep if you if you did that.
32:53
And certainly you could have put your career at risk.
32:55
And so I think the flavor.
32:57
Yeah, the flavor is very like Trump flavored, I think, at this point.
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35:32
one of the cool things on this sort of merchant adoption and just general adoption of bitcoin as
35:37
a payment method that i think we've seen did you see david marcus's announcement no so i just did
35:42
a show with him he's done a really cool thing which is i think he calls it grid global accounts
35:47
and what he's built is this sort of plumbing infrastructure that will allow wallets to use
35:52
this and you can basically have you'll have a visa mastercard that you can spend from
35:57
actually no it's just Visa
35:59
a Visa you can spend from
36:00
you have a Bitcoin account
36:02
dollars in there
36:03
other fiat currencies
36:04
stable coins
36:04
and you can completely decide
36:07
how you pay
36:08
and the merchant can decide
36:09
exactly what they receive
36:10
and Square do a similar thing
36:12
where if you pay in Bitcoin
36:12
the merchant can receive dollars
36:14
or receive 90% dollars
36:15
and 10% Bitcoin
36:16
and these are the things
36:17
that I think are really going to
36:18
break through these barriers
36:19
that we're seeing
36:20
so in terms of
36:22
do you want to get into
36:24
the wellness stuff?
36:26
I love it
36:26
that's yeah
36:27
Because this is one of the really interesting things in Bitcoin is that like, we start off as
36:30
these weird Bitcoiners who come together because we're Bitcoiners. And then there's so many other
36:34
things that have come out of that. Like obviously the health and wellness thing has been a huge one.
36:38
Like, was that what you were doing before Bitcoin? Yeah. Yeah. So I started my wellness company in
36:44
2008. It was just, I'd just gotten out of college. Terrible time to start a business.
36:49
It was a terrible time to start a business. So, so Club Orange launched the week that FTX crashed
36:56
at that Pacific Bitcoin. So the only times I've been associated with like launching companies are
37:01
just in like the worst condition. So what's the opposite of a Midas touch?
37:05
That's right. That's a, I've, I've never framed it that way. That that's pretty good. So if you
37:10
have any business ideas, like do not, do not, do not ask me to launch it with you. Um, but,
37:15
but anyways, we, we, we made it through and some, maybe some of the best companies are born in,
37:19
in hard times. Um, but I grew up in a, in a family where, uh, my, my dad died of a drug overdose,
37:25
prescription drug overdose and not to make it all like you know about that but that i think it
37:32
painted my view that something in the system is broken because i remember at one point i think he
37:36
had 12 doctors and i thought like oh he's going to 12 doctors so like that's a lot of medical
37:41
attention well i found out after he died and we're like going through things it's like this was 12
37:46
doctors that were giving 12 prescriptions it was there it was he was he was he was cycling through
37:51
doctors and nobody was trying to fix them. Um, it was, he, it was, it was his, it was his gravy
37:56
train of, of prescriptions and opiates and things like that. And so can I ask when, when that was,
38:01
when he died? So that was 2006 when he, when he died. Because obviously like in the last,
38:06
you know, decade or so, there's been the huge thing about the opioid epidemic in, in America.
38:10
Was this before that had really kicked off or was this, this a part of the same problem?
38:13
This is when it was happening. And I don't think it was getting the press that, uh, cause yeah,
38:18
Doctors weren't being scrutinized for, for, you know, just, there was no standards around.
38:23
You could come in and say you have an achy knee and get, get opiates.
38:27
I mean, I remember I, so I, I, I, I'm a black belt in Brazilian jujitsu.
38:31
I trained, I fought MMA for a long time.
38:34
Just weird, fun stories that, but, but I, I fractured a rib one time.
38:39
I remember going in, this is probably 2012 at the time or 2013.
38:42
I remember going into the doctor and, and I just said, Hey, I just need to know what's
38:46
wrong with my rib.
38:47
I don't want anything else.
38:48
He goes, oh, ribs are really painful.
38:50
He goes, what are you at on the pain meter?
38:52
And it was probably like an eight or a nine
38:54
because it was pretty bad.
38:55
I told him a three.
38:56
I said, it's a three.
38:57
I can deal with it because I knew he would say.
38:59
And so he goes, you know what?
39:00
Let me just give you some Norcos anyways.
39:02
And that was me telling him that I'm not in much pain
39:04
and I have a family history of abusive pain meds.
39:08
And he was still just to be safe.
39:10
Like that was the decorum.
39:13
That was the standard was let's just be safe on that side.
39:16
I mean, it was like the least safe method
39:17
you could possibly do.
39:18
I actually had a similar thing.
39:19
So I did my ACL and I went in for a knee reconstruction
39:23
and there they have like the thing you can press on the bed
39:25
to just like administer as much you want.
39:27
And at first I was like, this might be fun.
39:28
So I was pressing it a few times, felt dreadful.
39:31
And then when I was leaving again, they were like,
39:32
cause it can be very painful,
39:33
but it really depends on how the surgery goes.
39:35
And they're like, how sore is it?
39:36
I was like, it's actually fine.
39:37
Like I'm not in much pain at all.
39:38
And they gave me, they were like,
39:39
I can't remember exactly which drug it was,
39:41
but it was an opioid.
39:41
And they were like, here's something to take home with you.
39:43
I just put them straight in the bed.
39:44
Yeah, man.
39:45
When you got, when you got a family
39:48
and stuff. It's just like, it's too easy for that. And it's like, it was, especially then it was
39:53
socially acceptable. I mean, I remember, uh, seeing, you know, my dad, I would go to visit
39:58
him at work and, and he would, uh, mention to his secretary, he's like, Oh, can you bring me my,
40:02
bring me my meds? Like, cause it was the afternoon or whatever. It was just like,
40:05
that was just like the office, how the office function was dysfunctional to the max. Anyway.
40:10
So that was probably the first time that I recognized like, gosh, man, like systems,
40:14
you grow up thinking systems are built a certain way because they work.
40:18
Like we're sitting in this building.
40:19
We're sitting in like this, you know, like tens of stories up in the air.
40:23
And we've just kind of trusted that the people that constructed this building
40:27
did what they were supposed to do.
40:28
Like we can't operate in life unless we kind of trust in things.
40:33
You have to trust systems.
40:33
You have to trust systems.
40:35
At the same time, those systems could have been built terribly.
40:39
And so some of the systems, I think that's what Bitcoiners,
40:41
That's why there's this cross section between Bitcoiners
40:44
and healthy diet or Bitcoiners and activity
40:46
or whatever it happens to be Because we started to see the cracks COVID was a big one for a lot of people but we have these kind of moments in our lives where man the system that I grew up
40:57
it was like finding out Santa Claus wasn't real.
40:59
And I think that's kind of what was the eye-opening moment
41:03
that, okay, there's maybe other things
41:05
that I should question.
41:06
And so that's where I got into the health
41:07
and wellness movement was just like,
41:09
I wanna help people's bodies heal naturally.
41:11
I firmly believe that we were created in such a way
41:13
that we have the ability, we're kind of like Wolverine,
41:16
but like in slow motion, you know, like if I get injured, my body, it's kind of crazy. Like I can
41:21
get cut and it can literally heal back together where that sounds like magic, but it's actually
41:25
the way our body works. I just need to make sure that I'm getting out of the way of, you know,
41:29
with, with, with toxins and with poisons and things like that. And so that was kind of the,
41:33
the, the groundwork for why we got into health and wellness.
41:36
Can I ask you a bit about this, this like opioid epidemic? Cause I'm sure obviously
41:39
you've been personally affected by it. Um, what do you think is driving this? Cause like,
41:44
obviously you hear people talk about big pharma.
41:47
What are the broken incentives that have led to this?
41:50
Good Lord, man.
41:51
I think it's the most heartbreaking part of it
41:55
because I think it's really easy
41:56
just to place blame on pharma.
41:58
And that's clearly, that's the top of the,
42:01
whether you want to say it's basically the perimeter.
42:03
It's part of the story.
42:04
It's where all the financial incentive comes from.
42:07
But the most heartbreaking was the complicitness
42:10
of the doctors.
42:12
The doctors willing to participate.
42:14
And when you start to get into doctor's incentives, it's like, wait, if you're a pediatrician and for a very long time, if you had a certain uptake of vaccinations in your practice or as an adult doctor, as a regular general practitioner, if you had a certain uptake of pain meds in your practice, you had certain quotas.
42:32
And you would get things like cruises.
42:34
And people, if they want to fact check this, go look.
42:36
Go look it up in ChatGPT, Google, whatever.
42:40
Doctors incentives.
42:41
They actually had sales incentives.
42:42
So they were essentially outposts or like sales agents for pharmaceutical companies.
42:49
So you go to a doctor thinking they're there to help you heal.
42:52
But that guy's financial incentives, the things that are actually going to put a little extra
42:57
money on the end of his paycheck are going to be the add-ons that are, it's not the co-pay
43:02
for the visit.
43:03
It's not what insurance is paying for the visit.
43:05
It's not the cast when you get a broken arm.
43:07
It's the real incentives and the way that he rises in prominence in that industry is
43:12
feeding the beast, which is in that case for, for those doctors that my dad was going to,
43:18
their, their, their flash sale was always on opiates. And, and that was the heartbreaking
43:23
part. So do you think these docs, cause like my, I've got a young daughter and, um, like during,
43:30
I really have never really had to go to the doctors very much touch wood, like, but this
43:33
was a time when I did like, because during pregnancy, you have to go for checkups and all
43:37
this sort of stuff. And once the baby's born, there's lots of things you have to go and do.
43:39
and one thing I found is we used multiple GPs through this
43:43
and obviously there's some amazing ones out there
43:47
but we encountered some that were really giving terrible advice
43:50
and I don't think that was out of sort of negligent.
43:53
I don't think they were meaning to.
43:55
Like what do you think drove the doctors?
43:57
Do you think they knew they were doing wrong
43:58
and wanted to hit the sales quotas
43:59
or do you think they thought they were trying to solve the problem?
44:02
No, I think that their medical school is not about
44:06
here's how the immune system works.
44:08
their medical school is that this drug is the immune system.
44:13
Like this is how this works.
44:14
And that's just for the vertical of immunity, right?
44:18
This is how, this is a well baby check.
44:21
This is when you're supposed to take your baby
44:23
to a six week well baby check and a two month
44:25
and a whatever, you know, these different timeframes.
44:30
Well, if you look at it,
44:31
those are all based around the administration of drugs.
44:35
Like you come in for your well baby check,
44:36
Like not to see like we could take its pulse and we can check its blood pressure and all that kind of stuff.
44:41
But it's to administer a series of drugs.
44:43
And so I don't think that they think there's anything wrong.
44:47
I think they've been thoroughly convinced through many, many years of schooling that this is how Western medicine works.
44:53
And this is just this is the best and latest we have from the scientific data because all of that is backed by some form of scientific data.
45:02
Now, scientific data is there's problems with it.
45:06
But nonetheless, everything has a journal associated with it, a doctor associated with it, a textbook that says that this is the truth.
45:14
And so when – think about it.
45:17
Like we're promoting Bitcoin.
45:19
And in so doing of the promotion of Bitcoin, we kind of enrich ourselves, right?
45:24
Because as Bitcoin grows, the cult grows.
45:26
And we actually – Bitcoin grows and we become wealthy.
45:30
And we think we're doing something good and it's simultaneously enriching us.
45:34
And I actually think we're doing something good.
45:35
There's nothing wrong with being enriched while you do something good.
45:38
Doctors are just convinced that they're being enriched while they're doing something good.
45:43
I tweeted this out recently.
45:45
It was something to the effect of the scariest thing that we could encounter would be to follow the world's most evil man around for 24 hours only to realize he's kind of likable and we totally get where he's coming from.
45:59
Yeah.
46:00
That's a banger tweet.
46:02
Thank you.
46:02
I'm surprised I remembered it right now.
46:04
So how do you change this then? Does this need full reform of like the education system or is it really a little like Bitcoin? People just opting out of that?
46:12
Yeah. I think a lot of that's actually changing now under RFK is that one of the things that he, and this is by kind of like executive and regulatory compliance. So hopefully when a new administration comes in, they don't overhaul this because it's kind of finicky with each administration, which is shocking.
46:31
but in medical school, diet and nutrition is not a rigorous part of medical school.
46:37
That should be the foundation because you might be getting these medications once a year,
46:42
every six months, every five years or whatever, but you're putting food in your mouth three times
46:47
a day. And so if the doctors aren't studying the thing that's being put in your mouth or in your
46:52
body constantly, then they really have no foundational understanding of what the biomechanics
46:57
that are going on in your body.
46:59
And so I think that that's probably
47:01
the biggest change that's happening.
47:02
So I'm very bullish on the way
47:04
that the medical community is going.
47:06
I'd be the first one to champion,
47:08
go to your doctor, go see your doctor,
47:09
because he actually has an understanding
47:11
of the ins and outs of your body.
47:13
I think it would be better,
47:14
a world where doctors would give you
47:17
the best medical advice you could possibly get.
47:20
I would gladly pay and take the time out of my day
47:22
to take my kids to the doctor
47:23
so that I don't have to try and figure out
47:26
what's right and wrong by my research online. And I've actually read a lot of medical journals,
47:31
but even then there's still a lot. I mean, it's just a lot of time and energy. I would rather pay
47:35
somebody that legitimately is weighing the pros and cons. And when there's a time to take a medicine
47:40
that I know that they've done the due diligence on it. When I was still taking my kids to
47:45
pediatricians, I would ask them questions, but I'd say, okay, this drug that you're trying to give my
47:50
kid right now, I just read the three studies that are associated with it. Can you tell me some of
47:55
the contrary. I would quiz the doctor and the doctor's like, I'm going to be real with you.
47:59
I have not read those. I just know that this is part of our protocol. We're part of this
48:03
doctor's network. And so that's why we do this. And they, like, unashamedly, they were honest.
48:08
Like they would lay it out and I'd say, okay, thank you for your honesty. So we're going to
48:12
decline that one today. And so I would love a system where I could go in and I think doctors
48:19
have, you know, they swear a Hippocratic oath that they should have a fiduciary responsibility
48:23
to be the most knowledgeable person
48:25
that you're gonna talk to
48:26
about the entirety of your health.
48:28
And I think that actually is changing.
48:29
I've talked to a few doctors,
48:31
doctors that have come,
48:32
I had a spine surgeon the other day talking about,
48:34
he wants to open up one of our wellness studios
48:36
inside of his clinic
48:37
because he says,
48:38
our continuing education,
48:40
we're learning about infrared saunas
48:42
and red light therapy.
48:43
He's a spine surgeon.
48:43
He goes, we're learning about,
48:44
he goes, what you guys are doing
48:46
is the future of Western medicine.
48:48
And I like that,
48:49
he said that quote verbatim.
48:51
And I'm like,
48:51
oh, that's kind of crazy to think that holistic hippie medicine is the future of Western medicine.
48:57
Is that kind of saying the future of Western medicine is like the history of Eastern medicine?
49:02
I think it's exactly what he's saying. And to me, that was like so, so refreshing to hear.
49:07
Yeah, that's cool. Can we talk about another one of the big scams in this sort of space,
49:11
which is the food pyramid? Oh, yeah.
49:13
So I'm going to let you explain it because I'm going to do a way worse job than you. So why is
49:17
this a problem? Well, it goes back to why the food pyramid was built in the first place. And it was
49:23
the regulatory agency says that you said that you need to have certain things in your diet. Well,
49:27
the things that the companies that were that had influence over that criteria were ones that were
49:34
this is post World War Two. And so most people don't realize that how much of an influence we
49:40
know that Bretton Woods happened at that time, the Jekyll Island and, and all that the new world
49:45
order of finance came about at the end of world war two, but we don't know that there's like this,
49:51
there's like this free market dynamic that didn't, it didn't need to be like backroom deals and stuff.
49:56
It's just that all the munitions factories, all the industrialization of the United States economy
50:01
that we did to produce war materials needed to find something else to produce. Think of like,
50:07
if you were doing your American duty and you, Oh, and you're a, you're a wealthy capitalist and you
50:12
opened up a factory that was producing gunpowder and all of a sudden after the war you're like yeah
50:17
i helped us win the war but now like what do i do with this thing you'd be looking for something
50:21
else to do well at the same time we had the baby boom right we know about the post-war baby boom
50:26
and so now there's more mouths to feed so your capitalist duty would be not only to make sure
50:32
your factory has something to do because we don't need to you know produce war munitions anymore but
50:38
now the country has this huge demand of hungry people. So we need to help farmers. And so we need
50:44
a lot of those munitions factories started developing fertilizers. And so fertilizers
50:50
became this huge industry and the fertilizers, it was a race to the bottom in terms of trying to
50:56
find the cheapest fertilizers to feed the most people. And actually that was probably a good
51:00
thing. We had a lot of people that even if it wasn't the most, the healthiest way to produce
51:05
food, at least we were putting food in people's mouths. And so, so it kind of came out of these
51:09
good incentives, but over time, after a couple of generations of that, you're left with these
51:14
people that are exerting this influence over the food pyramid. The guy that was just this,
51:19
this industrialist that was trying to find something to do with his factory. Now he's part
51:24
of big ag and he's part of this process of, of he has these chemicals that he needs to do something
51:29
with. Like you look at fluoride in the water, whether we want to go down that hole or not,
51:32
But it's like, what's a byproduct of producing fertilizer?
51:37
It's like you have this product of fluoride that all of a sudden, why in the 1960s does
51:41
fluoride in the water become something that every government needs to do?
51:44
Well, it turns out those same guys that had influence over the food pyramid were also
51:48
the ones producing fertilizer for the farmers.
51:53
Well, they also had this byproduct called fluoride that now instead of it being a waste
51:57
product, they can actually make money off of it because they can sell it to local governments
52:00
because it's good for your teeth, right?
52:02
And so there's this like intertwining of the diet and our like supplements that we need and this idea that the government should be telling us what's in our water, that government should be doing like because we have a lot of hungry mouths to feed.
52:17
And if you have six kids running around your house, well, make sure that you give them this basically matrix of food.
52:26
And the foundation of it being, well, one of the things that we produced the best as a country was wheat and bread.
52:32
And so let's make bread, because we can give that to everybody, let's make that the foundation of the pyramid.
52:37
Again, probably in pretty good motives.
52:39
Like, yes, farmers can produce a lot of bread, so we want to make sure there's market demand for it.
52:44
But at the same time, at least we can make sure that the American population doesn't starve.
52:48
And so it goes from there.
52:49
And it's like, clearly we know by today, by a 2026 standard, that just because we can produce a lot of bread doesn't mean that it should be the foundation of our diet.
52:58
It actually should be maybe at the top of the pyramid where we're just sprinkling that in as a tasty treat, you know?
53:04
And the foundation of the diet needs to be more nutrient-dense foods.
53:08
Before, it was about getting calories in.
53:10
Now we're recognizing that nutrients are the most vital role in the food pyramid.
53:17
And so with like saying it in the most complicated way possible, that that was the incentive structure around the food pyramid.
53:24
So it's easy to say that, oh, big food constructed the food pyramid because they were nefarious.
53:29
I do think there's a lot of nefarious actors in regulatory agencies and government.
53:33
I try to ascribe the most like basic economic motives to it.
53:39
I think that that's probably the closest approximation I can make as to why we got the food pyramid that we did.
53:45
It was based in like necessity, market demand.
53:48
And then, yeah, some guys wanted to get rich off of it too.
53:51
So at the same time, you know,
53:52
if I can feed this growing American population,
53:54
but I can get filthy rich off of it,
53:56
off of the cheapest parts of my food,
53:58
then I'm going to do that.
53:59
Yeah, it makes sense like in that post-world era,
54:01
because obviously in the UK,
54:02
there was rationing at that time.
54:03
I don't think you ever had rationing here, did you?
54:05
Yeah.
54:05
So it's really just make whatever.
54:07
As long as people can eat, then that's kind of good.
54:09
But we're not living in that world now.
54:12
Obviously in Bitcoin, the sort of carnivore diet,
54:14
this kind of thing has been big.
54:15
What do you think the right diet is?
54:17
Because I love eating steak,
54:19
but I just don't wanna eat every meal.
54:21
Like I've never done the carnivore thing.
54:22
I like fruit and vegetables.
54:25
But when I'm at home, I eat pretty well.
54:27
Like I eat really good,
54:28
like generally just whole foods,
54:29
We make everything from scratch.
54:31
When I'm away, that's a different story.
54:33
Like I'm drinking an energy drink
54:34
and now we're on day three of a conference.
54:35
I'm with you on that, don't worry.
54:37
But like, what do you think people should be doing?
54:39
Because I don't want you to tell me
54:40
that I shouldn't be eating bread
54:41
because my wife makes amazing sourdough.
54:44
You sound like you got a good one at home.
54:46
The sourdough, there's nothing intrinsically bad
54:48
about sourdough.
54:50
The way it's carbohydrates are constructed
54:55
is completely different than the very synthetic form
54:57
of bread that we would get.
54:58
then there's a nutritious value to sourdough.
55:01
So I don't think there needs to be any guilt
55:03
associated with homemade sourdough.
55:06
My daughter, my 12-year-old,
55:07
she makes a dynamite sourdough as well.
55:10
But yeah, I'm not a scientist.
55:15
I'm not the leading expert on this
55:17
other than I'm a guy that's genuinely spent
55:20
the last like almost two decades
55:22
trying to understand this and reading and understanding
55:25
and talking to the genuine experts in the space
55:27
because this is my livelihood.
55:30
The best approximation I can come to on that
55:32
is that diets need to be unique.
55:34
Like your body type is very different
55:37
than somebody else's, right?
55:39
If somebody's an endomorph and something,
55:41
like there's these different types of body types
55:44
that people have, we burn different rates of fuel.
55:48
And so, like I mentioned earlier,
55:50
I like to train Brazilian jujitsu.
55:51
I have a jujitsu school.
55:53
And so I'm constantly training with these young people.
55:56
Please do.
55:57
Your ears are going to get jacked up.
55:59
I'm a big boxer, but I've never done jujitsu.
56:02
You're going to love it.
56:03
Like if you're willing to take a punch to the face,
56:06
like it's so easy to do jujitsu.
56:08
It's tiring just like boxing, but yeah, less head trauma.
56:11
I was sparring like twice a week until about a year ago,
56:14
not long after my daughter was born.
56:16
My wife said, you got to stop this.
56:17
I was like, fair enough.
56:17
I probably do.
56:18
So when I had done kickboxing, Muay Thai and stuff
56:22
and trained some grappling,
56:24
but when my daughter was born was basically the same time when I went full jujitsu And I love it And it scratches the competitive itch It makes me feel pretty confident that somebody jumps up from behind me and tries to strangle me to death
56:37
I can at least try to fight out of it a little bit.
56:39
Now, if somebody stabs me in the back, it doesn't do much for me.
56:44
But all that to say is like, I can tell that my nutrient demand when I'm training jujitsu
56:53
is different, even in my own body type, than when I'm out of training camp.
56:58
And so to think that different body types wouldn't need types of diets, I know guys that
57:03
thrive on carnivore.
57:04
My wife thrives on carnivore.
57:06
My mother-in-law just started carnivore last year and she stuck to it and transformed herself.
57:12
I mean, at 65, she looks younger than she did when she was 50.
57:17
I mean, it's crazy.
57:18
And I think what people are seeing in these transformation diets, and especially what we see in our business of older people, they've been programmed to think that life is just a slow degrade until you die.
57:30
So after 50, things are not going to get better.
57:33
And when things get a little bit worse, here's another pill for it.
57:35
I guess it's the pharma tie back into it.
57:37
But every time some new symptom arises, cool, we can kind of medicate that.
57:41
but it's certainly not going to reverse it. Like the whole concept of the medication is just to
57:46
deal with the symptoms as they go. And you have to kind of mentally accept the suck that is life
57:53
is only going to get worse from here. So seeing people, we have people, we have these vitamin D
57:58
sunbeds where like in three treatments of people, just if they can't get vitamin D, because there's
58:02
not good sunshine outside or whatever, people are like, I feel like a different human being.
58:06
I'm like, stay on this stuff and start to eat well. And you know, these people were in their
58:10
late 50s or early 60s, I said, I guarantee you that you are going to, the biggest unlock for you
58:16
will be that life doesn have to be a slow downward spiral until I die And I think that Bitcoiners have kind of the upper hand on that because we saw that with the money We started to ask what in our money So then we asked what in our food and then we start to ask all these other questions And so there lots of Bitcoiners in their twenties thirties
58:34
and forties that are, that are kind of like capturing that ethos and running with it now.
58:38
And so, I mean, it's only gonna, you know, that's like a compounding effect that by the time that
58:43
we're 60, hopefully our health and wellness is even, is even better than the generation before.
58:48
But the fact that people that didn't take that good care of themselves at 65 can start doing
58:52
it at 65 and have like life altering changes is really, really encouraging. And yeah, that spans
59:00
different. Um, I've seen people do that through a vegetarian diet. It seems, and I think what it
59:05
comes down to, and this is the most consistent thread I've seen is that those people have
59:09
community, they have purpose, they have a regular activity, and then the food they eat just isn't
59:14
processed. So whether it's vegetarian, whether it's meat or whatever, whatever it is, it comes
59:18
from some sort of, like you said,
59:19
whole food natural source.
59:21
And there's just not crap pumped into it.
59:24
And so those are like the four pillars
59:25
that I see most consistently.
59:26
I love it.
59:27
Because I feel like Bitcoiners are so focused
59:28
on taking sovereignty of their money,
59:30
but you also have to take sovereignty of your health.
59:32
Yeah.
59:32
Yeah.
59:33
It like sucks if you don't do that.
59:34
It's kind of like a,
59:36
it's like seeing a personal trainer
59:38
that's like super fat.
59:39
You know, like when you see a Bitcoiner
59:40
that's just like not taking care of himself,
59:42
I'm like, dude, you got it on the money.
59:44
And so why aren't you getting it here?
59:45
And so, I mean, everybody's got their own path.
59:47
So what happens when I come into one of these places?
59:49
Like, what do you do?
59:50
I'm going to give you a personal massage.
59:51
No, I'm sorry.
59:52
No, no, no, no.
59:53
So, so yeah, salt and light is, is a pretty cool, fun experience.
59:57
We try to make the, the components of sunlight as easily, I guess it's almost like the components
1:00:01
of a, of a day at the beach.
1:00:02
And so we have six different wellness services.
1:00:04
We have, like I mentioned, the vitamin D sunbeds, which incorporate red light therapy.
1:00:08
So, so you're, you're, you're getting the, the healthy elements of the sun without the
1:00:13
overexposure risk of it.
1:00:14
because when you're outside, right, you don't, you don't, you know, make sure you, you don't
1:00:18
avoid getting too much And so everything kind of more properly dosed infrared light which is also in the natural sunshine You can go into the sauna get a get a sweat which pulls some of the toxins out You move from that room to our cold plunge room which you know when you go to the beach
1:00:32
and you go in the water,
1:00:33
even if you go to Southern California in the summertime,
1:00:35
the water's always like, it hits you a little bit.
1:00:37
Not in Brisbane.
1:00:38
Yeah, not in Brisbane.
1:00:39
You don't go in the water?
1:00:40
Oh, no, I do, but it's not cold.
1:00:41
It's not cold.
1:00:42
Not in the summer, at least.
1:00:43
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:00:44
So, yeah, you get a brisk,
1:00:47
I don't know if you've done cold plunge,
1:00:48
but the invigoration of the cold plunge,
1:00:50
And then that's all inside of a salt room.
1:00:53
So you're actually just breathing in salty air,
1:00:54
which has incredible effects for your respiratory tract.
1:00:57
I think that's one of the things that a lot of people don't.
1:00:59
I think that if anybody's trying to look for the alpha in the wellness space,
1:01:04
I think the thing that most people in wellness,
1:01:07
like red light's kind of a fad right now,
1:01:08
which, well, red light's been around for a long time.
1:01:10
I don't think it's going anywhere, but it's just like kind of cool right now.
1:01:13
The salt therapy, breathing in salt, it's crazy how good it feels.
1:01:19
like if you have a lung condition, if you're sick, if you've got a cold, how fast it clears it up.
1:01:24
And, uh, or, or we have people that have asthma and the fact that it, it, uh, it's anti-inflammatory.
1:01:29
And so people are like, oh my gosh, it's the first time in a long time I could breathe naturally.
1:01:32
I think that's, if you're betting on something or if somebody has got a wellness company out there
1:01:36
and just like, like put a salt room and do these things, these things are incredible.
1:01:39
See, I surf quite a bit and you get the feeling like, I think being in the ocean again, I did.
1:01:44
I never really thought of the salt part, but like being in the ocean, doing exercise and then coming
1:01:47
out, you don't ever feel better. It is the best start of any day. A hundred percent. Um, this has
1:01:53
been awesome. I'm going to come and see you, dude, please do. I want to go and do jujitsu.
1:01:56
We're going to do jujitsu. Yeah. We're, we're LA and the greater LA area. Okay. Yeah. I'm going
1:02:01
to be in LA in July, so I'm going to hit you up. That'll be fun. So we, we've been accused of being
1:02:07
just like pharma and the fact that in jujitsu we beat people up, but then I also charge them to go
1:02:11
do the full punch afterwards. So we caused the problem and we pay you for the, you make,
1:02:14
That's just good business.
1:02:16
But I'll take care of you.
1:02:17
Don't worry.
1:02:17
There you go.
1:02:18
And can I pay in Bitcoin?
1:02:19
You absolutely can.
1:02:20
Awesome.
1:02:20
Let's go.
1:02:21
Thank you for this.
1:02:21
It's been cool.
1:02:21
Thank you.
1:02:22
Thanks, Danny.