Latest / Simply Bitcoin / Nik Bhatia | Simply Bitcoin IRL

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Nik Bhatia | Simply Bitcoin IRL · Simply Bitcoin

• 0:00
  I do feel like 202425 season is the finally the mainstreaming of
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  Bitcoin. We crossed 6 figures for the
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  first time. We crossed 2 trillion in market
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  cap for the first time. We are up about A7X from the
• 0:16
  2022 low. And we've done all of this with
• 0:18
  Fed policy rates still above 4%. Bitcoin will have one of these
• 0:23
  years that just blows people away.
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  If belief is the basis of most money today, then people are
• 0:32
  under a spell because that credit that people hold, if
• 0:35
  they're not trying to do something with it, as in buy
• 0:38
  assets or buy Bitcoin, that practice of keeping money in
• 0:44
  credit, it negatively impacts people's lives.
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  It hurts them. The reason that they are hurt by
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  it is not because they've chosen that, but they are under a mind
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  trick. The crypto war was won by
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  Americans versus the government, including the NSA and the State
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  Department. Joe Biden was involved in that.
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  They came hard at the private industry's ability to actually
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  communicate in an encrypted way. The government wanted a back
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  door and they didn't get it. Say what you want about the
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  United States, I sincerely believe that we have our First
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  Amendment right rights and that we express them everyday and we
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  fight for them by saying and writing controversial things.
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  And the more people that do it, the healthier the First
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  Amendment is. I believe that just talking
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  about it is continuing that fight.
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  It is a First Amendment issue, the attack on self custody, It's
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  the same thing, right? Are you, are you trying to make
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  the argument that writing down 12 words is somehow dangerous to
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  national security? You can make a very good
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  argument that the previous administration's stance on
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  Bitcoin and crypto might have caused them the election.
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  America is a slow moving decentralized vehicle itself,
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  and I do believe the will of the electorate and the people in
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  this great Republic will prevail over the long term.
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  How important. Was the announcement of the
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  strategic Bitcoin Reserve for Bitcoin to be integrated into
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  the financial system itself, Bitcoin?
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  Is already taking on its financial role, the ETF
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  adoption, the spread of Bitcoin around the world, these
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  positions being taken at pension funds and sovereign wealth
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  funds. All of that stuff happened
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  before the strategic Bitcoin reserve.
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  And I believe that financialization of Bitcoin was
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  heading that way with or without it.
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  And now the US government likes the idea, and that's going to
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  bring more people along. And it gives Bitcoin a type of
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  legitimacy that can grow the network from 500 million people
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  to 2 billion people. But anybody who was already in
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  Bitcoin did not need that stamp of legitimacy.
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  They already believed in it. And belief is key, right?
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  It it it matters. Hey Nick, how are you?
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  Long time no talk. Nico, good to see you, man.
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  That crazy, crazy, crazy world Bitcoin land, you know, the, I
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  think the first quarter of this year has been absolutely wild.
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  You know, with this, with the recent election freedom of Ross,
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  the strategic Bitcoin reserve announcement.
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  I mean, in a way, a lot of us bitcoiners got a lot of what we
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  were expecting. But I I don't think as of yet,
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  you know, that hasn't been yet reflected on the price.
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  So what's your take on on on the current events?
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  What's currently happening in Bitcoin, Nick?
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  Yeah, I think that we are in an exciting time for Bitcoin.
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  We are in a period of mass awareness.
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  So I think this is finally the mainstreaming of Bitcoin that
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  people have been waiting for. Think I think, you know, as a
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  Bitcoiner that went through 2017 and then 2021, each time it felt
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  like the mainstreaming of Bitcoin.
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  I'm you know, that's the kind of just the feeling that you got in
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  2017, you know when the price went to $20,000 and it was on
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  the front page of CNBC everyday we were like, OK, Bitcoin is
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  here mainstream in 2021, you know, we had the Super Bowl
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  commercials, you know, and Matt, Matt Damon and Larry David and
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  you know all the stadiums being named and the sports teams
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  wearing all the Bitcoin logos. But this time around with a
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  strategic Bitcoin reserve and a Bitcoin presidency in the United
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  States of Bitcoin having a significant and clearly a
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  material role in the in the election.
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  It we'll never know officially if Bitcoin was the swing vote,
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  right? If the Bitcoiners were the swing
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  vote or not, we'll never know officially.
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  But what what we do know is that the contribution there was
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  material, right, full stop. And so this time around with an
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  electorate going, you know, Bitcoin and the government
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  embracing it, it, it is now and and then the world responding,
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  right, the world getting into a reactionary dynamic to American
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  political action. I do feel like 202425 season is
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  the finally the mainstreaming of Bitcoin and that by itself has,
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  I would say has been reflected in the price and that we crossed
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  6 figures for the first time across 2 trillion in market cap
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  for the first time. We are up, you know from through
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  to peak about A7X from the 2022 low.
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  So and we've done all of this with Fed policy rate still above
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  4%. So I think a very strong run for
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  Bitcoin price action is going to be choppy.
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  But look at the 200 day moving average.
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  Look at the realized price of Bitcoin.
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  This is this is definitely a good time for Bitcoin adoption
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  and I do think it's being reflected in the price.
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  You know, even though we can look at the election date versus
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  today's price and make comparisons or you know, what
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  happened in on Inauguration Day versus today and make
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  comparisons, but I think the the trailing 12 to 24 month time
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  horizon is a better way to judge.
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  And let me ask you something too, Nick, like, so do you feel
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  like Bitcoins best days are behind it, like a lot of people
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  were expecting, you know, a, a, a higher return at this point in
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  the cycle? Like if you compare the cycles,
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  it's very clear that, you know, Bitcoin is not performing the
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  way it has performed in the past.
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  Is that something to be expected as the market cap continues to
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  grow and, you know, diminishing returns law of big numbers, you
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  know, yes, I mean, A7X from the bottom in any type of investment
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  is absolutely incredible without a shadow of a doubt.
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  But I think as Bitcoiners especially, you know, they've
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  been around since 2016. You know, we remember the day,
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  the years where you know, Bitcoin would be up 2000%,
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  right? So are are those days long gone?
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  Because despite its great performance to this point,
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  despite this amazing election, I think a lot of people were
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  expecting it to be a lot higher right now, especially I, I just
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  saw a video from the Bitwise CEO and he was saying like, look,
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  Bitcoin should be at 200K right now.
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  So what's your take on that, Nick?
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  And then, you know, we'll talk about, we'll talk about this new
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  book that you wrote that I'm really excited to talk about as
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  well. So what's your take on that,
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  Nick? Yes, Sir.
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  So I'm going to give you probably the most hedged dancer
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  of all time, but it's a pure market.
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  Its answer. OK, so the price is the truth.
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  The price has all the information in it.
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  We can talk about bitcoins financialization and the fact
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  that there are more ways to short Bitcoin now from a paper
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  perspective. There are also equally number of
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  you know, equal number of ways, new ways to go long.
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  So Bitcoin is a market and the price is the reflection of
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  today's marginal buyer and seller coming to me.
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  So markets are driven by supply and they're driven by demand.
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  What we expect is just a figment of our imagination.
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  OK, So I'll answer your question in a few parts #1 should we
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  expect a lot of diminishing returns in Bitcoin?
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  Yes, I think that bitcoins realized return should
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  marginally decline over time on an annual basis, right?
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  So the greatest returns in bitcoins history are probably
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  behind it on an annual basis. That doesn't mean that, you
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  know, a year where Bitcoin goes up, you know, 1000% is it can't
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  happen, right? Statistically, it can definitely
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  happen, right? You know, so I am.
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  So then it becomes actually my base case scenario that Bitcoin
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  will have one of these years that just blows people away,
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  right? I don't think that that is a
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  foreign concept to Bitcoin just because I believe in the law of
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  diminishing return. So I've given you a hedged
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  answer for that one. Now let's talk about the
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  expectations just being a figment of people's imagination.
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  If the price is a is a function of demand and supply, then more
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  demand can only lead to a higher price if the supply doesn't come
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  to meet it. But in a world where there are
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  long term holders willing to come to the market and sell
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  coins, short term holders willing to come to the market
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  and sell coins, paper sellers willing to do it.
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  And then now option sellers willing to sell calls basically.
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  And in the process of selling options and selling optionality
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  to people that want exposure to the upside, they mute the
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  volatility. And that's just a that's a
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  function of the math because implied volatility is, is an
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  output. The input is the how expensive
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  options are. So if there's more options
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  buyers, unless there's more options sellers, volatility is
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  going to go up, implied volatility is going to go up,
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  the price of options go up. But if there's sellers willing
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  to play and collect that premium, willing to risk it,
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  that I don't think the price will rise that much.
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  And I will just introduce that insurance into the market.
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  That knocks volatility down and it has a suppressing effect on
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  the price because it just dampens the type of moves that
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  you can get in the market. And so from an implied
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  volatility perspective, option sellers coming to play this game
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  and make money, basically think about all the money that was
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  made from traders that came into the market at 110 and said this
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  thing is not going to run to 100 and 25150.
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  I will sell every call to everyone of you for the next six
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  months at every strike there. You know, they're collecting
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  their premium and everyday that goes by, they're realizing more
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  of that gain as options expired that they sold into the market.
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  So it's just, it is just a figment of our imagination that
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  we expect the Bitcoin price to do something.
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  It's just it, it's just a function of supply and demand.
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  So demand is just it just it's too little of a picture.
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  And we can, we can love the demand side of it and we do love
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  the demand side of it right now, you know, but there's also the
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  whole credit creation machine that makes it easy to print,
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  print money and sell options. Basically it's that's, you know,
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  how you have to think of it. It's just a market maker willing
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  to just print money above the price and, you know, knock that
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  volatility down. So I hope that answers your
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  question. No, it absolutely does.
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  And Nick, I am very excited because you're coming on today
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  to talk about your book that you just wrote.
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  It's called The Bitcoin Age by Nick Bhatia.
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  And I love the fact that essentially you started off with
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  a star, a Star Wars reference and essentially you were
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  painting the picture. I think this was episode 1 where
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  essentially the the guy who trained Anakin, I forgot not not
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  a not a Obi Wan, but Obi Wan's like master guy, the guy who
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  trained Anakin. They went to Tatwin, which is
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  like the desert planet and their Starship broke down and they
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  wanted to buy a drive and he offered them credits.
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  I think it was like Republic credits and the guys like
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  Republic credits are worthless here.
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  And I thought it was such a great analogy.
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  Why did you why did you start off your book with with a Star
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  Wars reference? Because I think with what you're
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  trying to describe, it was, it was very, very fitting.
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  Yes, so this is the Jedi Master Qui Gon that he was he was the
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  master to Obi Wan and both of them taught Anakin, you know,
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  before Qui Gon, before his demise.
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  So yes, this is this is a great scene in in Star Wars and it
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  really encapsulates this, this mind trick that we're under now.
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  So why did I come up with this? Because credit itself, right?
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  As we, as I talked about in layered money, credit itself is
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  just a derivative of money. And that money used to be gold,
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  right? So we think of, you know, why is
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  currency worth something? Oh, it's a promise to pay gold.
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  That's the simple layered money framework.
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  The promise to pay is backed by something.
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  It's backed by belief. It's backed by confidence.
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  And credit literally means to believe, right?
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  The Latin root of it means to believe.
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  And so if belief is the basis of most money today, then people
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  are people are under a spell because that, that credit that
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  people hold, if they are not trying to the second that they
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  make that money in terms of income, if they're not trying to
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  do something with it, as in buy assets or buy Bitcoin or, or
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  reinvested in something. If they're holding deposits over
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  any time horizon, even if you want to consider fixed income
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  securities with next to 0 or sometimes negative real return,
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  right, your, your interest rate is eaten up by your inflation
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  rate. That practice of keeping money
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  in credit is a, it is a negative force on society.
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  It negatively impacts people's lives.
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  It hurts them. And the reason that they are
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  hurt by it is not because they've chosen that, but they
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  are under a mind trick. And in pop culture, the Jedi
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  mind trick and that concept it there's, there's, there's a
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  relationship there that could, could be explored.
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  And this scene from Star Wars is something that I have always
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  loved this scene because I've always loved the idea of money
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  and versus credit. My whole research career is
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  basically about this concept, the difference between money and
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  credit. Did you like the scene before?
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  Sorry to interrupt. Did you like the scene before
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  you found Bitcoin? Yes, yes, because I was a a
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  sound money student before Bitcoin, for years before
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  Bitcoin. And then Bitcoin was the
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  solution. So were you a fan of gold?
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  Yes. And I had gold, I had gold.
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  So let's I had gold and silver investments and I did liquidate
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  all of my silver investments at around the time of falling down
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  the Bitcoin rabbit hole. Yeah, I mean, I think that's
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  that's what happens where you find Bitcoin and you're like,
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  and if you're a sound money fan, you're like this is this is the
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  perfect solution. Anyways, I want to I want to
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  jump to a specific chapter. It's called Intergalactic
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  Computer Network and I have a question regarding that.
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  So how did the early development of communication protocols from
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  Morse code to the Telegraph influence the creation of the
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  Bitcoin protocol? It's a it's a great question.
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  You know, why did I start the networking story so many years
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  before Bitcoin And Nico, I do have to just point out, and I
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  hope you don't mind, the book is called Bitcoin Age.
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  There's no the in it. Did I just put?
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  Did I put the in there? I apologize.
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  No, unfortunately there's a gentleman.
• 19:05
  His first name is Adam. I've never met him or spoken to
• 19:08
  him, but he's written a book called The Bitcoin Age.
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  It has an orange cover and it is not the same as my book.
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  So just so people when they're on Amazon, just make sure it's
• 19:19
  this one and has my name on it because there is a book called
• 19:23
  The Bitcoin Age, but. I, I just searched it on Google.
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  The good news is that your book is the one that pops up.
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  But yes, it's the Bitcoin age. We'll put the details, of
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  course, the Amazon link in the in the podcast description, of
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  course. Thank you, Nico.
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  I appreciate it. So the the chapter, it's Chapter
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  5, Intergalactic Computer Network, it goes into the
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  history of ARPANET and the ARPANET is the predecessor to
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  the Internet. Now today's Internet is just
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  think about going online, going to a website.
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  What are you, what are you doing there?
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  You're using really a pair of protocols.
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  You're using several, but let's just say you're using 2 main
• 20:11
  protocols. One of them is HTTP or
• 20:16
  Https://rightsoyour. Your web browser, when you go to
• 20:22
  www.something you are on the interweb right?
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  That's using the hypertext transfer protocol HTTP.
• 20:35
  That protocol HTTP let's people use websites and access websites
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  right on the web. But then how does that
• 20:43
  information go from point A to point B?
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  So when I Google something and I hit enter, that information
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  travels to Google. So how does it travel to Google?
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  It travels via a pair of protocols, TCP and IP.
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  And those two protocols are what breaks down the data packets and
• 21:06
  then routes them to an address. The address that it routes to is
• 21:11
  the IP, right? So your IP address and TCP is
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  how it breaks down and and reassembles the packets.
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  So that is the that's the basis of the Internet.
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  And we all take those two things for granted.
• 21:25
  And so when we use Bitcoin, which is also a network
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  protocol, it's a software that has a cryptographic transactions
• 21:36
  and the information about these transactions is sent to other
• 21:42
  network participants and it's sent via the Internet.
• 21:46
  I know there are offline and parallel ways to use Bitcoin,
• 21:50
  but it is an Internet based software.
• 21:54
  It uses the Internet. So it's using, it doesn't use
• 21:57
  Http://explicitly, but it's using TCPIP as the packets go
• 22:03
  around the the world using IP addresses just as anything else.
• 22:08
  So every Bitcoin node is going to have an IP address.
• 22:11
  So Bitcoin itself is built on top of Internet protocols.
• 22:15
  So where did TCPIP come from? They actually came from the
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  ARPANET, which is the first attempt to network computers
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  together. And the ARPANET was a project
• 22:32
  created by ARPA, which is a Defense Department research
• 22:36
  agency. ARPA was started during the Cold
• 22:40
  War, and the purpose of ARPA overtime shifted from missiles
• 22:47
  to space to the Internet. But when it arrived at the
• 22:52
  Internet, it was really the people that were designing it.
• 22:56
  We're really thinking about how can the military communicate
• 22:59
  more quickly with each other? How can we stop attacks on a
• 23:05
  central server or a Tele, you know, our telecommunications
• 23:09
  network? And so just thinking about ways
• 23:12
  to speed up communication and to actually distribute
• 23:15
  communication and to decentralized communication
• 23:19
  because it really was this. Paul Baron was a gentleman who
• 23:23
  who originated the idea of distributed networking and data
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  packets. There's actually a person I
• 23:29
  didn't mention in the book. He actually Co inventor
• 23:33
  parallelly invented this technology in England at the
• 23:36
  same time. But anyway, Paul Barron, his
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  whole purpose was to figure out a way to prevent a a missile
• 23:45
  attack taking down the army, army communications.
• 23:50
  And so they used Paul Barron's papers to design the Internet
• 23:54
  to, I'm sorry, to design the Arpanet.
• 23:58
  And so the Telegraph was a way to take messages from horseback
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  basically or visual signals to electric communication and to
• 24:12
  have that communication start travelling much more quickly
• 24:16
  than ever before. And the and Arpanet.
• 24:21
  And so when we think about telephones, telephones are
• 24:25
  actually not that much of A leap in communication to Telegraph
• 24:30
  because it was using the same infrastructure, the same lines,
• 24:35
  the same switching, manual switching, actually physical,
• 24:40
  you know, operators taking out, unplugging it from 1, you know,
• 24:45
  a wire from one input to the other to actually allow long
• 24:50
  distance communication. So that technology didn't really
• 24:53
  change from Telegraph to telephone to teleprinter
• 24:57
  exchange, also called telex, if there was no real advancement in
• 25:03
  the true speed or infrastructure until the Defense Department got
• 25:08
  involved with the ARPANET and then the Internet and the rest
• 25:12
  is history. So, but you have to start with
• 25:15
  the government starting ARPANET to really bring the whole
• 25:21
  communications protocol story together for Bitcoin to give it
• 25:26
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• 26:07
  I have a question regarding Paul Baron.
• 26:09
  Right. So you know, and, and AT&T and
• 26:12
  if you live in the United States, you definitely know what
• 26:14
  AT&T is. Why did AT&T resist Paul Baron's
• 26:18
  idea of packet switching? And how did this resistance
• 26:22
  ultimately shape the development of the Internet?
• 26:25
  Yes. So AT&T came to or Paul Baron,
• 26:31
  they proposed this idea to AT&T and they said, we think that you
• 26:35
  should distribute your networking, right?
• 26:39
  And we can. This is how this is my idea.
• 26:43
  And AT&T, at that point, they were so established, they were a
• 26:49
  monopoly. They didn't have incentive to
• 26:53
  invent because they literally owned the entire long distance
• 26:59
  communications network in the United States, and so there was
• 27:05
  no incentive for them. So instead of trying to
• 27:08
  understand Baron's idea, they actually just paraded executives
• 27:12
  and engineers out and explained to that to Baron and his
• 27:17
  associates why it couldn't work and how their system actually
• 27:23
  functioned. And so they weren't, they
• 27:25
  weren't speaking the same language at all.
• 27:28
  And so the project, the project died.
• 27:31
  You know, AT&T didn't advance it.
• 27:35
  And actually, it wasn't until the ARPANET became an idea, a
• 27:42
  concept that the engineers at ARPANET went out looking for
• 27:48
  those distributed solutions that might be able to allow their
• 27:51
  idea. But you know the the answer to
• 27:55
  your question, actually, you can even bring in banks and Bitcoin
• 27:58
  today. 10 years ago. Why would a bank be motivated to
• 28:03
  really study and embrace Bitcoin, right?
• 28:08
  Because it has the potential to end them or to obsolete them in
• 28:13
  a way. So the Internet and the Internet
• 28:15
  did, you know, and AT&T's true monopoly in many ways over time,
• 28:22
  it wasn't just the only thing, but communications itself was
• 28:26
  changed forever because of the Internet.
• 28:28
  And AT&T probably suffered, you know, from its monopolistic from
• 28:35
  that angle because of it. So that's why AT&T rejected it.
• 28:40
  And, you know, how did it, how did it end up leading to the OR
• 28:45
  to any of what, what transpired after a little bit of luck in
• 28:51
  timing, honestly, because if nobody had come along.
• 28:56
  See, Paul Baron wrote, I believe it was 11 volumes about this
• 29:03
  idea of distributed network. And he wrote it over four years.
• 29:07
  So this was his life's work. And they were just collecting
• 29:10
  dust. So yeah, you know, for years he
• 29:15
  wrote this thing in the early 60s, and Bob Taylor and Larry
• 29:20
  Roberts at ARPA didn't really get it going until the late 60s,
• 29:27
  so. They work, yeah.
• 29:29
  And, and all of this is incredibly important because
• 29:32
  essentially, and please correct me if if you think I'm using the
• 29:35
  wrong word, Nick, but these are the, what you're talking about
• 29:38
  is the foundational layer of which a protocol like Bitcoin
• 29:44
  can work without this foundational layer called the
• 29:48
  Internet, right? Not only is it difficult to
• 29:52
  understand Bitcoin, but Bitcoin can exist in its current form
• 29:56
  today. So it's just, it's just
• 29:58
  interesting how that development happened.
• 30:02
  And I forget where I heard this from, but it was, and it's to
• 30:05
  add to your point, but it was basically like if AT&T was in
• 30:09
  charge of, you know, the development of the Internet, we
• 30:13
  would all have a little coin slot in our laptops and we would
• 30:16
  have to, you know, add coins to just, you know, extend
• 30:22
  essentially your Internet time. So I don't know if you guys have
• 30:24
  been around for this, but I remember when I was growing up
• 30:26
  and I would travel overseas and I'd have to make a call to the
• 30:30
  US, You know, it was ridiculously expensive.
• 30:33
  And then you'd get that little annoying message like, please
• 30:37
  add a coin if you'd like to continue your conversation,
• 30:39
  right? So 100% like AT&T definitely
• 30:42
  got, you know, hurt in the process.
• 30:45
  I'm sure a lot of their business model came from being able to
• 30:49
  monetize long distance communications, but it made the
• 30:52
  world a lot better. Right now you have essentially
• 30:54
  free instantaneous worldwide communications.
• 30:59
  That wasn't the case 20 years ago.
• 31:01
  It was it was prohibitively expensive to say the least.
• 31:06
  So my next question Nick, regarding your book, which is,
• 31:13
  but let's talk about the euro dollar system because that's
• 31:15
  something that you keep referencing that you that you've
• 31:18
  referenced a couple times in your book.
• 31:20
  And you also said that there is parallels that can be drawn
• 31:25
  between the unregulated expansion of offshore dollars
• 31:29
  and bitcoins decentralized financial system.
• 31:33
  Yeah. So the parallel there is that
• 31:37
  the banks that operate in a euro dollar realm do so by their own
• 31:44
  governance. They don't use the Federal
• 31:50
  Reserve as a Reserve Bank. So when they settle between
• 31:55
  themselves, they're actually just settling with IO us between
• 32:00
  themselves. That's what a euro dollar is.
• 32:04
  It's a settlement vehicle for euro dollar banks.
• 32:08
  And because they don't, they don't have Fed accounts and only
• 32:15
  with a Fed account can you have a Fed reserve.
• 32:18
  And if you don't have a Fed account, you don't have Fed
• 32:21
  reserves. So you can't settle with other
• 32:24
  banks via Fed reserves. So that that bilateral
• 32:30
  settlement and is a is a highly decentralized way of settling
• 32:39
  versus a domestic. And I guess that is probably the
• 32:43
  strongest parallel between the two, that the euro dollar system
• 32:49
  doesn't have a central bank. Gotcha.
• 32:53
  And and OK. And you also mentioned that this
• 32:59
  potentially could be a threat to US monetary sovereignty.
• 33:04
  Is that correct? So it's the euro dollar system.
• 33:08
  And what I explained in the book is that I believe the euro
• 33:12
  dollar system was allowed by the Fed and U.S. policy makers to go
• 33:18
  on after they discovered it around 1960.
• 33:23
  So it, it started in the 50s, it got going without the knowledge
• 33:29
  of U.S. policy makers or the Fed just by the act of European
• 33:34
  bankers, European clients, Russian clients, etcetera, and
• 33:41
  Soviet clients, I should say. And that system that got going
• 33:46
  in the 50s, it news of it got back to the United States in the
• 33:52
  late 50s. So around the late 50s, nineteen
• 33:56
  60, the Fed sent delegates to Europe to investigate what what
• 34:05
  is going on there. How are they using the dollar?
• 34:09
  Why are they using the dollar? How are they using the dollar
• 34:11
  without our knowledge, without our permission?
• 34:13
  How is how does it work? What's going on?
• 34:16
  They went, they came back and they basically said banks are
• 34:21
  using dollars. They called them continental
• 34:24
  dollars. They're using dollars to settle
• 34:27
  balances, to invest in a money market, to gain yield.
• 34:31
  You might recall that there was Regulation Q at the time in the
• 34:34
  United States, in the United States, which which capped
• 34:37
  interest rates. So a New York bank could only
• 34:40
  offer 3% yield, where a, a euro dollar bank, a London bank could
• 34:45
  offer whatever market yield they wanted to.
• 34:48
  So money was flowing over there. Dollars were leaving the United
• 34:52
  States for these investments. Companies in Europe that were
• 34:55
  making dollars would invest them in the euro dollar market,
• 34:59
  invest them in basically funding other banks with deposits.
• 35:06
  And that system, when the United States became aware of it, when
• 35:12
  the Fed became aware of it and they published about it, they
• 35:15
  said this is on net a good thing for the dollar, a good thing for
• 35:23
  the United States because it increases the size of the dollar
• 35:29
  network. Importantly, at the time, it
• 35:32
  kept dollars in Europe instead of calling gold out of the
• 35:36
  United States. So that was a key.
• 35:38
  That was one of the one of the great benefits at the time of
• 35:42
  the euro dollar system. It kept dollars in Europe
• 35:44
  instead of claiming US gold. The US wishes that it was
• 35:50
  actually probably used more because France and Spain were
• 35:55
  actively calling gold away from US gold reserves with their US
• 36:00
  currency during the mid 1960s. So it wasn't attractive enough
• 36:06
  because there was this understanding, Charles de Gaulle
• 36:10
  had an understanding that there were too many dollar credits
• 36:13
  floating out there and they probably wouldn't be worth $35
• 36:18
  for one ounce of gold for that long.
• 36:21
  It would probably take more dollars in the future to get
• 36:25
  that one ounce of gold. And so let's convert now.
• 36:29
  And so there was a run on the dollar during the 1960's.
• 36:33
  The BIS and and the Fed basically went to Switzerland
• 36:38
  and said we need to form a gold pool in which we sell gold into
• 36:42
  the market and suppress the price and prevent it from going
• 36:47
  up from 35 and continue that mind trick.
• 36:50
  This is why the mind trick is so strong, because the mind trick
• 36:54
  it. They tried so many different
• 36:56
  ways to employ this mind trick. How did you find all this out,
• 37:00
  Nick? Because this is not common.
• 37:01
  This is not common knowledge. What you just what you just
• 37:04
  talked about. Yeah, so I did a lot of
• 37:08
  research, Nico. I love this topic and I read a
• 37:11
  lot of books for layered money and I've read a lot of academic
• 37:14
  research papers over the course of my time.
• 37:17
  I've been teaching at USC fixed income since 2019.
• 37:19
  So it's six years of syllabus formation and just reading
• 37:23
  papers and, you know, understanding this topic.
• 37:26
  And I'm still a student, right? I'm, I teach, I teach my
• 37:30
  students, but I am a student and I'm not a master.
• 37:33
  I, so I, I want to just keep learning.
• 37:36
  I have so many learning goals and research goals, but there
• 37:42
  were, there were two books that changed the course of Bitcoin
• 37:47
  age research for me. I'm holding both of them right
• 37:49
  now. The first one which I read
• 37:53
  during the spring of last year. So this would have been about
• 38:01
  11-12 months ago. This is called central bank
• 38:06
  cooperation by an Italian economist, Tony Yolo, Gianni
• 38:13
  Toliani. Tony Yolo.
• 38:16
  So I'm sorry for all the Italians out there for
• 38:18
  butchering that central bank cooperation at the Bank for
• 38:21
  International Settlements 1930 to 1973.
• 38:25
  So at the time, I was understanding that the BIS had a
• 38:32
  main role in protecting the euro dollar system, which was a story
• 38:37
  that I was hip to for a while, right.
• 38:39
  So the euro dollar system was a story that I told and layered
• 38:42
  money. And, and it's something that
• 38:44
  I've taught in my class for 5-6 years.
• 38:48
  So I wanted to go deeper into the euro dollar system.
• 38:52
  And so I, I, I have a academic research database for all the
• 38:57
  people that are students at universities.
• 39:00
  You can go to jstore.org and login through your university
• 39:05
  and get access to more things than you'll ever, ever have the
• 39:09
  time to read. So I basically did a a euro
• 39:13
  dollar be at, you know, a bank for international settlements
• 39:21
  money markets crossover search in J store and read dozens of
• 39:27
  papers from the 50s, sixties, 70s and 80s just poured through
• 39:33
  papers and papers and papers. And I just I made these
• 39:37
  incredible discoveries. And so you if you guys are
• 39:39
  looking at the footnotes, one of the authors is a Mr. Byrne,
• 39:43
  Katherine Schenk. This was an incredible story.
• 39:47
  Katherine Schenk who wrote one of the foundational papers about
• 39:51
  Midland Bank in the Euro dollar system in the 50s.
• 39:56
  I found out that my editor Joe Kim book, who also edited Aaron
• 40:01
  von Weirdem's book The Genesis Book, which I used in my
• 40:05
  research, that Joe Kim was a student of Professor Shank at
• 40:11
  his Business School in Europe. A a a couple decades ago or a
• 40:18
  decade or so ago, so there was an amazing crossover and through
• 40:22
  those papers, I found this book on the bank for you can even see
• 40:27
  my, my dog ears. I've I get really active when
• 40:32
  I'm when I'm doing my, when I'm doing my research here and.
• 40:37
  It's a small world. This, this book was, I mean,
• 40:41
  this book was so foundational and I learned so much about the
• 40:45
  history of the monetary system and the euro dollar.
• 40:48
  And but the gold pool stories were really from here
• 40:53
  specifically. And the, the great, the greatest
• 40:56
  euro dollar stories were in those papers.
• 40:59
  Then in this book, which I, I'm trying to remember how I
• 41:05
  stumbled upon this one. This one is about Walter
• 41:08
  Wriston, Citibank, and the rise and fall of American financial
• 41:13
  supremacy. I believe that this book was
• 41:16
  cited also in one of my papers. That's how I came across it.
• 41:20
  And in this beast, it tells basically the history of
• 41:24
  American finance through the lens of Citibank.
• 41:28
  So all the way back to its founding in 1812, which I
• 41:32
  learned from this book that Citibank was basically founded
• 41:35
  by a bunch of New Yorkers after the first central Bank of the
• 41:40
  United States, Hamilton's bank expired after its twenty year
• 41:45
  charter in 1811. And they needed they needed a
• 41:49
  bank to continue on with their activities, helping, you know,
• 41:55
  the government finance its activities.
• 41:58
  And the history on the 1812 version of Citibank is then, but
• 42:04
  that you know, some of those stories are back there and and
• 42:07
  I've snuck them in the book. But but City's role in
• 42:10
  discovering the existence of the Euro dollar from the New York
• 42:17
  vantage was fascinating in this book because all of a sudden it
• 42:22
  was like a trader, a forex trader in London heard that a
• 42:28
  bank in London had solicited dollar deposits and paid out a
• 42:33
  rate that was higher than the Regulation Q capped rate.
• 42:37
  And it was just like a rumor on AFX desk in a City Bank branch
• 42:42
  in London that started the wave of U.S. banks moving into London
• 42:50
  to capitalize on non regulated dollar activity.
• 42:55
  And that move of U.S. banks taking over a City of London
• 43:00
  happened in the early 60s. So the timeline is important.
• 43:03
  The 50s was when the game got going and the early 60s was when
• 43:08
  the New York banks joined the game.
• 43:10
  So it happened after Alfred Hayes, the president of the New
• 43:15
  York Fed, went to Basel in 1960 and said, OK, the euro dollar
• 43:21
  system is fine, but what we really need is a gold pool.
• 43:25
  Then the American Bank said, you know, basically, let's go.
• 43:30
  So, and you said and, you know, and this, this is fascinating
• 43:33
  because it's like shadow banking, you know, kind of
• 43:36
  happening in, in, in the back in the.
• 43:37
  Background shadow banking. It's not like shadow banking.
• 43:40
  This is what shadow banking is. And and you say there's
• 43:44
  parallels with the Bitcoin. What are those parallels
• 43:47
  exactly? So the parallels in Bitcoin and
• 43:55
  the euro dollar, yeah, the the euro dollar system is that it
• 44:03
  has, it's not governed by an entity, right?
• 44:09
  It's it's not governed. And so I had this debate
• 44:14
  actually with Saifuddin. He said, no, the euro dollar
• 44:19
  system is explicitly allowed by the Fed and therefore it's
• 44:25
  controlled by the Fed. But it actually emerged outside
• 44:31
  of the Fed. And then the Fed basically said,
• 44:34
  OK, so from my perspective, who who controls whom, right?
• 44:40
  There is a strong argument that it's actually euro dollar banks
• 44:46
  and global banking dollar bank, a banking cabal that is in
• 44:53
  control of the US currency via the Federal Reserve Channel.
• 44:59
  There's a strong argument there. I also debated whether to try to
• 45:05
  formulate an idea to split the dollar between a nationally
• 45:08
  sovereign dollar and a a global banking dollar and to lay out an
• 45:12
  idea. I do have an idea there for how
• 45:15
  the US can take its currency back, but there's so much
• 45:19
  speculation there that that was a real challenge.
• 45:24
  I know I'm not doing a great job maybe of answering the question
• 45:28
  to your satisfaction of the parallels between the euro.
• 45:31
  Dollar, I think and. Bitcoin.
• 45:34
  I think the way you described it, Nick was perfect.
• 45:36
  There is just no central authority and it's just
• 45:38
  something that happened organically like it happened out
• 45:43
  of market. There was a market necessity of
• 45:45
  this and the and the system essentially happened organically
• 45:52
  because it was in need. It was in something that was top
• 45:55
  down. So you did answer my question
• 45:57
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• 47:08
  I want to continue because there's so many good things.
• 47:10
  And the the latter, your book, you start, which is the really
• 47:15
  fascinating part to me, right? You, you lay out the context,
• 47:18
  you give the history and then you start tying in Bitcoin,
• 47:23
  right? So that's the direction we're
• 47:25
  heading right now. And one of the things that you
• 47:27
  talked about was essentially the NSA had a monopoly on
• 47:31
  cryptography. And until these three people by
• 47:36
  the name of Whitfield Diffie, Marty Hellman and Ralph Merkel
• 47:41
  challenge that monopoly. And you made the case that
• 47:44
  essentially, their discoveries actually lay the foundation for
• 47:49
  not only modern digital security, but Bitcoin.
• 47:53
  Absolutely, yes. So the NSA was an agency founded
• 47:58
  by President Truman under a secrecy order.
• 48:04
  And the efforts were, you know, military, militarily inspired,
• 48:11
  and the government needed an arm to engage in security
• 48:19
  intelligence. And so part of that effort was
• 48:24
  the study of applied cryptography and protecting or
• 48:30
  encrypting, because security and encryption go hand to hand.
• 48:37
  But the first, the first US agency or first US actors that
• 48:45
  tried to take advantage of this was the NSA.
• 48:51
  And so for a few decades, they had a monopoly and basically
• 48:55
  every student that went through any cryptography related work
• 49:00
  in, in, you know, science departments went into the NSA to
• 49:07
  work. And so 100% of the development
• 49:11
  of encryption technologies happened in what, you know,
• 49:15
  behind the triple fence, which is the nickname at the time for,
• 49:20
  for this triple, this triple fence electric fence facility
• 49:26
  that they had in Maryland. So the NSA with its monopoly
• 49:32
  over encryption, there was no private sector because everybody
• 49:38
  that studied just went into the NSA.
• 49:41
  But then the breakthrough moment came when a pair of
• 49:47
  whistleblowers from the NSA went to the Soviet Union and, and
• 49:54
  basically spilled a bunch of secrets about how the NSA
• 49:57
  operates. And, and basically they're in,
• 50:00
  they're encryption secrets. And a gentleman by the name of
• 50:03
  David Kahn wrote a book. It took him years to write it.
• 50:08
  It's called The Code Breakers. And that book was actually
• 50:14
  submitted to the government as basically a warning that, hey,
• 50:19
  this is coming out. We're about to expose a bunch of
• 50:24
  things about. In the end the government came
• 50:26
  back and said please take a couple things out but it didn't
• 50:30
  materially change the story in any way and he got to publish
• 50:33
  basically this. Tell all of the NSA.
• 50:36
  That was 1967. Before that book, awareness of
• 50:43
  anything that even happened at the NSA was minimal, let alone
• 50:50
  actual P Americans walking around on the street or in
• 50:53
  universities, inspired to learn and explore cryptography,
• 51:01
  encryption, computer based encryption.
• 51:06
  There, there was nobody. So the first readers of the Code
• 51:11
  Breakers were those founding fathers to encryption, leaving
• 51:17
  the mind hive of the NSA and landing on the streets of the
• 51:23
  United States of America. Where there is free spirit,
• 51:26
  there's innovation, there's computer science departments
• 51:30
  and, you know, brilliant people. And so that event was the the
• 51:37
  defining event was the publishing of the Code Breakers.
• 51:40
  And then Whitfield Diffie being one of those first readers.
• 51:43
  And he carried that thing around everywhere he went.
• 51:46
  And, you know, he treated it like religion, literally he
• 51:50
  would. He even said that.
• 51:53
  And, you know, then he started to look for people.
• 51:57
  He met Marty Hellman, They published together.
• 52:00
  Ralph Merkel read their paper, Then Ralph Merkel got involved
• 52:04
  and then they published together.
• 52:06
  Even though Merkel's name wasn't on one of the ground breaking
• 52:09
  papers. Merkel went on to publish, you
• 52:12
  know, based off of Diffie and Hellman's papers and through
• 52:18
  their papers that trio, the what was in the NSA behind closed
• 52:25
  doors was now on the street. There was a break.
• 52:29
  Whether or not Diffie, Hellman and Merkel invented something
• 52:34
  that the NSA never knew or not. We actually, I don't, we might
• 52:39
  never know that, but it was, it was discovered outside because
• 52:46
  there were people that really wanted to know and learn and
• 52:50
  explore. And from that we have modern,
• 52:53
  modern encryption. We have public key cryptography
• 52:57
  which is the root of Bitcoin. That's that's app first of all,
• 53:01
  absolutely incredible and fascinating.
• 53:05
  And that's a perfect segue to my next question, which is the
• 53:09
  cypherpunk movement, right? And I remember, you know, and I
• 53:12
  think it like the, I remember, like Adam back was part of the
• 53:16
  so-called crypto wars that was happening in the 90s for the US
• 53:19
  government's attempt to essentially ban certain types of
• 53:23
  cryptography. But in, in, in your book, you
• 53:27
  essentially one of your chapters is, is about this.
• 53:30
  And I, I wrote a question regarding it.
• 53:32
  So how did the cypherpunk movement's battle against
• 53:35
  government control over encryption contribute to the
• 53:39
  creation of Bitcoin? And why was?
• 53:42
  Proof of work a. Crucial innovation in achieving
• 53:45
  decentralized digital money. Yeah.
• 53:48
  So we'll do the, we'll do the proof of work.
• 53:52
  Second, the the government wasn't trying to ban types of
• 53:59
  encryption. It actually was trying to
• 54:02
  classify encryption. As a weapon, I.
• 54:05
  Mean as a weapon. And so and so posting it online
• 54:10
  is a version of exporting a weapon.
• 54:15
  And you know, it's exporting munitions.
• 54:19
  And so that was the stance taken by the government with Phil
• 54:27
  Zimmerman and PGP, which Halfini was instrumental in helping beef
• 54:35
  up that code base. And then versus Daniel
• 54:39
  Bernstein, who was a student who just wanted to publish and he
• 54:44
  submitted his paper. I found this tidbit very
• 54:47
  fascinating. When he submitted his paper, not
• 54:50
  only was he told, hey, you can't, you know, this is you're
• 54:53
  exporting munitions or you're, you're getting involved in, in
• 54:59
  an area that we would deem illegal.
• 55:02
  But now if you have any foreign classmates that might ever read
• 55:10
  your paper, they have to register with us as just to get
• 55:16
  permission as foreign because they could be foreign agents to
• 55:22
  gain access to American intellectual property in this in
• 55:27
  this crypto regard. So it was a very specific
• 55:32
  approach and the victory was a First Amendment victory.
• 55:37
  Yep. Right.
• 55:39
  And so the in the Bernstein case, 3 consecutive federal
• 55:44
  courts protected his right to publish under the 1st Amendment,
• 55:51
  basically saying if economist can have mathematical models,
• 55:59
  then, you know, encryption scientists can publish code
• 56:05
  because it's part of their work. Yeah, and it's part of their
• 56:09
  research. So that's, that's the the origin
• 56:13
  of the crypto war. And Adam back what he made
• 56:16
  shirts with the PGP code on it. I'm wearing.
• 56:20
  I'm wearing a weapon. Yeah, I'm wearing a weapon.
• 56:24
  So if you get on a plane with that shirt, you're, you're
• 56:27
  proving the absurdity of, of the ban or not the ban, the, you
• 56:33
  know, the classification. Of course.
• 56:35
  Itself, so you know that the the cypherpunks reacted, Zimmerman
• 56:42
  said. I read the letter that he wrote.
• 56:45
  He said that publishing PGP was a reaction to what the
• 56:52
  government is trying to do. You know that this is this is an
• 56:56
  effort to break free and to get gain privacy.
• 57:02
  And this isn't this. He basically said I am the
• 57:06
  crypto war, you know, in, in his, in his letter.
• 57:10
  And he said, I'm this is the frontline and he knew it.
• 57:14
  He got the support. The cases were won or the
• 57:18
  Zimmerman case was dismissed. Bernstein won his case and the
• 57:24
  crypto war was won by Americans versus the government, including
• 57:32
  the NSA and the State Department, right.
• 57:34
  And you could even say not even you could say the the
• 57:41
  legislative branch because the Senate came hard.
• 57:44
  Joe Biden was involved in that. They came hard at the private
• 57:49
  industries ability to actually communicate in an encrypted way.
• 57:55
  The government wanted a back door and they didn't get it.
• 57:58
  The, you know, the Senate wanted a back door.
• 58:02
  And so there were a lot of victories and you know, all of
• 58:07
  that. It just made the desire for that
• 58:17
  freedom to grow stronger and stronger.
• 58:22
  And, you know, say what you want about the United States, I
• 58:27
  sincerely believe that we have our First Amendment rights and
• 58:32
  that we express them everyday and we fight for them by saying
• 58:37
  and writing controversial things.
• 58:39
  And the more people that do it, the healthier the First
• 58:42
  Amendment is. And we owe a lot to the people
• 58:46
  in the 90s that fought for the 1st Amendment.
• 58:49
  And I believe that just talking about it is continuing that
• 58:54
  fight. So it it's a First Amendment
• 58:57
  story. It still is.
• 58:59
  And. I would say what's up the the
• 59:02
  fight, the fight for because I had the the the way that I would
• 59:06
  and nick me and you are in totally different.
• 59:08
  I'm a I'm an I I have to cover the news every single day.
• 59:11
  So I remember vividly for the last two years the previous
• 59:18
  administration's attack on Bitcoin and we we reference the
• 59:24
  original crypto war that happened back, I believe it was
• 59:27
  in the 90s multiple times because it is a First Amendment
• 59:32
  issue, right? It and you know, if if you you
• 59:35
  know the the crypto War 2 point O, you know the attack on the
• 59:40
  attack on self custody, it's the same thing, right?
• 59:43
  Are you are you trying to make the argument that writing down
• 59:46
  12 words is somehow dangerous to national security?
• 59:50
  They were using essentially the same arguments.
• 59:52
  Now I think it was solved in a different fashion.
• 59:54
  I think this one was solved via an election, right?
• 59:58
  That one was more solved through the judicial process, but it
• 1:00:03
  will still work solved regardless.
• 1:00:05
  And tying this up with what you were saying earlier on regarding
• 1:00:09
  the election. You can make a very good
• 1:00:13
  argument that the previous administration stance on Bitcoin
• 1:00:19
  and crypto they tried to walk it back might have caused them the
• 1:00:23
  election because a big part of their voting demographic we is
• 1:00:28
  the younger generation. The younger generation tends to
• 1:00:32
  own Bitcoin and crypto, right? So, yeah, I mean, I, I think
• 1:00:36
  this is all it, it still is a First Amendment issue.
• 1:00:40
  And in a way, you know, I wish it was solved through the
• 1:00:43
  judicial process because what happens in 2028 when the next
• 1:00:48
  election comes around, right? I, I just hope it, it, it
• 1:00:52
  doesn't remain a partisan issue. But anyhow, I I didn't mean to
• 1:00:57
  go off on a tangent, but. Let me just say quickly, I'm
• 1:01:00
  just. Connecting the dots.
• 1:01:02
  On the judicial process, the legislative process, America is
• 1:01:06
  a slow moving decentralized vehicle itself.
• 1:01:10
  And I do believe the will of the electorate and the people in
• 1:01:14
  this great Republic will prevail over the long over the long
• 1:01:19
  term. And so, you know, we need laws.
• 1:01:23
  Those laws will inevitably be challenged.
• 1:01:26
  The courts will have to uphold them.
• 1:01:27
  And that process will take years, regardless of who who had
• 1:01:31
  won the election, you know, because somebody would have sued
• 1:01:34
  then the courts would have ruled.
• 1:01:37
  The courts were already starting to rule in the favor of Bitcoin
• 1:01:41
  if we look back at the Grayscale case in late 2023.
• 1:01:46
  And that was before the election.
• 1:01:47
  So the election definitely helped us skip a lot of
• 1:01:57
  jurisprudence, but it doesn't mean that we'll avoid it in the
• 1:02:02
  future. And legislation should be and
• 1:02:09
  that's why legislation is important in addition to
• 1:02:11
  executive orders and changes at the regulatory level because the
• 1:02:17
  those, those can be fleeting, which I think is you know what
• 1:02:20
  you're what you're referring to. Yeah, you know, and, and you
• 1:02:24
  know, This is why the Bitcoin Act is so important.
• 1:02:28
  Like This is why, you know, the, the IT because there's only so
• 1:02:32
  much they can do via executive order, right?
• 1:02:34
  And executive order is just one election away from it being
• 1:02:38
  reversed. If you know, if they want this
• 1:02:40
  to essentially remain, you know, policy for the long term, right,
• 1:02:45
  something like the Bitcoin Act or something equivalent to it is
• 1:02:49
  incredibly important. Now I know we are getting to the
• 1:02:52
  top of the hour and I want to be respectful of your time, Nick
• 1:02:54
  and I want to tie in one of the one of the chapter, one of the
• 1:02:59
  one of the final chapters of your book.
• 1:03:02
  So the US government has had an evolving stance on Bitcoin.
• 1:03:06
  Obviously early skepticism in the beginning, now full-fledged
• 1:03:10
  adoption. How does that shape that it's
• 1:03:13
  global legitimacy? And as bitcoiners, I, I, I, you
• 1:03:16
  know, I hate saying that, right? Because it's like, I don't need
• 1:03:19
  the approval of the US government for Bitcoin to be
• 1:03:21
  legitimate. But in the eyes of the world,
• 1:03:24
  you could make that argument. And then how?
• 1:03:28
  How important was the announcement of the strategic
• 1:03:31
  Bitcoin Reserve for Bitcoin to be integrated into the financial
• 1:03:35
  system itself? Yeah, I'll take the second
• 1:03:38
  question first. I don't think that important.
• 1:03:42
  I think you know, Bitcoin is already taking on its financial
• 1:03:47
  role. The the ETF adoption and the,
• 1:03:53
  the spread of Bitcoin around the world, these positions being
• 1:03:55
  taken at pension funds and sovereign wealth funds,
• 1:03:59
  strategic mining positions across the world.
• 1:04:03
  All of that stuff happened before the strategic Bitcoin
• 1:04:06
  Reserve, and I believe that financialization of Bitcoin was
• 1:04:09
  heading that way with or without it.
• 1:04:12
  Does Bitcoin need the government, U.S. government, for
• 1:04:16
  legitimacy? No.
• 1:04:17
  What it does is it brings in, it brings the net, it grows the
• 1:04:22
  network, it grows the potential size of the network because
• 1:04:28
  there are people who are leaders and people that are followers.
• 1:04:32
  So the leaders get in first, the followers get in second, and the
• 1:04:36
  followers don't come until certain leaders say this is OK.
• 1:04:42
  And so Bitcoin has its own leaders without the government,
• 1:04:45
  but it has a new leader, meaning it has a another participant for
• 1:04:52
  people to say, oh look, that person is doing it.
• 1:04:55
  I think I'm going to follow them because every Bitcoin person was
• 1:05:00
  told about Bitcoin by somebody or read about Bitcoin from
• 1:05:05
  somebody else, right? Hal Finney being the first
• 1:05:09
  really person who read Satoshi's idea.
• 1:05:11
  And he was like, I like that idea.
• 1:05:14
  And, you know, then Hal Finney liked the idea.
• 1:05:16
  Then Hal Finney joined the network.
• 1:05:18
  Then other people liked the idea.
• 1:05:20
  And then, you know, then you and I liked the idea several years
• 1:05:24
  later. And now the US government likes
• 1:05:27
  the idea, and that's going to bring more people along.
• 1:05:30
  And it gives Bitcoin a type of legitimacy that can grow the
• 1:05:36
  network from 500 million people to 2 billion people.
• 1:05:41
  And that might not have happened without the political shift in
• 1:05:45
  the United States. I think it's a good thing for
• 1:05:48
  Bitcoins network to gain more participants.
• 1:05:51
  It's a good thing for the United States of America to understand
• 1:05:55
  Bitcoin really well, and I'm happy that we have some leaders
• 1:06:00
  who do now. I would say that there are some
• 1:06:04
  excellent people in the Senate and the House that understand
• 1:06:10
  Bitcoin. The executive branch is getting
• 1:06:14
  there. They also have some people that
• 1:06:18
  do understand some of the right things too.
• 1:06:22
  They won an election with a lot of support from Bitcoin people.
• 1:06:29
  But the actual Bitcoiners in the government are in Congress, and
• 1:06:37
  that's a good thing for the electorate, especially if people
• 1:06:41
  voted for those people because they are bitcoiners.
• 1:06:46
  I think that that's relevant. So I don't, I mean, I don't want
• 1:06:50
  people to walk away from this interview or from my book
• 1:06:53
  thinking that I think the USA gave Bitcoin legitimacy in 2024
• 1:06:58
  and 2025. That's definitely not what I'm
• 1:07:01
  saying. But it increases the size of the
• 1:07:03
  network and it does make Bitcoin legitimate in many more eyes
• 1:07:08
  than before, right. But anybody who was already in
• 1:07:12
  Bitcoin did not need that stamp of legitimacy.
• 1:07:16
  They already believed in it. And belief is key, right?
• 1:07:19
  It it it matters. Yeah, I, I love the way that you
• 1:07:23
  phrase that right, which is it doesn't need to just me, but it,
• 1:07:26
  it definitely it, it, it made the network bigger.
• 1:07:30
  Exactly, exactly what you said. So guys, go check out Bitcoin
• 1:07:34
  Age by Nick Bhatia. It's on Amazon right now.
• 1:07:37
  And I do want to read a quote by Senator Lummis.
• 1:07:42
  Nick is a master at deconstructing bitcoins
• 1:07:45
  complexities to make it digestible for the average
• 1:07:48
  reader. Bitcoin Age brilliantly bridges
• 1:07:51
  the knowledge gap and is a must read for both seasoned Bitcoin
• 1:07:56
  veterans and curious newcomers in the age of digital currency.
• 1:08:00
  So get it on Amazon today. Bitcoin Age by Nick Bhatia.
• 1:08:03
  Nick, thank you so much for joining me today.
• 1:08:06
  I appreciate it. Nico, I appreciate you very much
• 1:08:08
  and all the best to you and your family.
• 1:08:11
  Thanks.