Latest / Simply Bitcoin / Jimmy Song | Bitcoin was Always Going to Win | Simply Bitcoin IRL

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Jimmy Song | Bitcoin was Always Going to Win | Simply Bitcoin IRL · Simply Bitcoin

• 0:06
  Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of
• 0:08
  Simply Bitcoin at IRL. Today we have a very special
• 0:11
  guest and I'm really looking forward to this conversation.
• 0:14
  A legend in the space. Maybe you feel it makes him feel
• 0:16
  uncomfortable when I say that, but at least to me, from class
• 0:19
  of 2016, he is a legend. And of course I'm talking about
• 0:22
  the one, the only Jimmy song. But before we jump into the
• 0:25
  show, I want to give a very special shout out to the sponsor
• 0:27
  of the show, Swan Bitcoin. Best place to build your Bitcoin
• 0:31
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• 0:33
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• 0:37
  so, visit swanbitcoin.com today. And if you go to swan.com/simply
• 0:42
  if you make your first purchase, you'll get $10 in Bitcoin for
• 0:45
  free. So anyways, no more delay.
• 0:46
  I want to bring Jimmy up on stage.
• 0:48
  Jimmy, did I make you feel uncomfortable when I called you
• 0:50
  a Bitcoin legend? Just a little bit, but that's
• 0:53
  OK. I've been caught lots of other
• 0:54
  things that have made me much more uncomfortable, so that that
• 0:58
  that's that's not too bad. Then you've you've been in this
• 1:02
  space a very long time. Could you have, what could you
• 1:06
  have ever have imagined where we are today?
• 1:11
  Bitcoin legal tender in a nation state, a public company holding
• 1:15
  Bitcoin on their, you know, on their balance sheet.
• 1:18
  BlackRock announcing that they're going, you know, one of
• 1:21
  the most evil organizations in the world announcing that
• 1:24
  they're going to be launching a Bitcoin ETF and then all of a
• 1:28
  sudden. The legacy corporate media
• 1:30
  changes tune like Bitcoin is actually a good thing.
• 1:32
  What are you talking about? Could you ever have imagined
• 1:35
  this when you got into the scene?
• 1:38
  Well, I kind of could have, because I thought it would.
• 1:41
  There was a chance that it could become sort of that global
• 1:43
  reserve currency and if it's gonna get there at some point in
• 1:47
  between, all of those things kind of had to happen.
• 1:50
  What I couldn't imagine was kind of my role.
• 1:53
  I'm a I'm a coder, right? Like I I.
• 1:57
  I'm a code monkey or whatever. And that that's what I was when
• 2:00
  I first got into this space, you know, doing podcasts and
• 2:04
  speaking at conferences and doing stuff like this.
• 2:07
  That that part I didn't imagine. I I had no idea that I would
• 2:10
  have sort of the role, I guess, that I ended up having in this
• 2:14
  space and that that's the part that's still kind of blowing my
• 2:18
  mind. What made you feel so confident
• 2:21
  that this thing was going to be world reserve currency,
• 2:25
  especially in the very early days that I think it wasn't so
• 2:28
  obvious? I mean, I think it's obvious to
• 2:30
  bitcoiners, but what? What made it?
• 2:33
  What made it obvious? Because there's a lot more
• 2:35
  uncertainty back then, right? You know, there's famous Fork
• 2:38
  Wars 2017, you know, the China ban, which ended up being a
• 2:43
  blessing. So what made you so certain?
• 2:47
  From the very beginning, the very early days of Bitcoin.
• 2:51
  Well, I wasn't certain at the beginning.
• 2:53
  I just thought it had a chance. So I think the reason why I even
• 2:59
  had that little bit of hope was because I had studied some
• 3:03
  Austrian economics and so on after the 2008 great financial
• 3:07
  crisis. And when I finally saw it in
• 3:10
  2011, sort of having the coding and math background and the
• 3:15
  economics sort of education that I had from 2008 just sort of
• 3:19
  fell into place and it was like, OK, I'm not sure if this will
• 3:24
  get there, but you know, it has a chance and if it has a chance,
• 3:29
  then it's plus EV to go get some.
• 3:33
  And that that was sort of the calculation in my mind.
• 3:36
  It wasn't, you know. I'm completely certain that this
• 3:40
  is going to be be the thing that that takes over the world or
• 3:44
  whatever that conviction I developed later on.
• 3:47
  But you know, at least at that point in time just having that
• 3:51
  little bit of like expectation or probability or calculation in
• 4:00
  my mind of what what could happen was enough for me to, you
• 4:04
  know, sort of dive into it. Yeah.
• 4:08
  And I kind of want to talk about that because 2011 is very early
• 4:12
  days, right? And I think a lot of people
• 4:15
  don't fully understand the so many, so many, so many things
• 4:22
  have been built out since then to make Bitcoin more accessible
• 4:26
  to the masses. I'm class of 2016.
• 4:29
  I'm. I'm an Electrum junkie baby.
• 4:30
  I'm never going to leave. You know they still have Sparrow
• 4:34
  and all these like new fans. And I'm like, no, you know what
• 4:36
  I I figured out Electrum. I'm sticking with Electrum.
• 4:39
  It is my cup of tea. But back then there what didn't?
• 4:42
  There wasn't even Electrum. There was just Bitcoin Core.
• 4:46
  So what what what were those early days like?
• 4:50
  Yeah, I it was, it was very different obviously.
• 4:53
  And I think there were maybe 3 exchanges in the entire world
• 4:58
  and one of them was Mount Cox. That was sort of where you went
• 5:01
  to go and trade Bitcoin. You know, everyone would hang
• 5:06
  out at bitcointalk.org and like, you know, there there was no
• 5:11
  Bitcoin community on Twitter or really even an active Bitcoin
• 5:16
  subreddit on Reddit. It it was just everybody was on
• 5:19
  Bitcoin talk. And it wasn't that many people.
• 5:22
  So I still remember, and I think this forum's still there, you
• 5:27
  know, news articles on Bitcoin and you'd maybe see one article
• 5:31
  week, you know that that was it. It really didn't have much
• 5:36
  mindshare over people at all. And you know, the the little bit
• 5:41
  of news that you got, you got from, you know, the the people
• 5:46
  that were on the forums themselves.
• 5:48
  You know, you still had stuff like cassaceous coin and people
• 5:53
  trying out lots of different things.
• 5:56
  And you know there were a lot of other sort of exchanges that had
• 6:02
  gone bankrupt and like rug pulls of all kinds and things like
• 6:07
  that. So it was very much sort of the
• 6:09
  Wild West back then and there were there weren't any, you
• 6:13
  know, education sources or many wallets.
• 6:18
  You know you you had I think a couple of web wallets all all of
• 6:22
  which rug pulled you had Bitcoin core wallet but you also had
• 6:27
  Armory I think was was started around 2011 as well.
• 6:33
  I I ended up working there which is why I know about it but you
• 6:36
  know there there just wasn't very much stuff so.
• 6:40
  You know what? One of the things I talk about
• 6:42
  sometimes is, you know, people have this sort of time travel
• 6:46
  fantasy, especially about Loslow and the 10,000 bitcoins for like
• 6:51
  2 pizzas that he traded in the middle of 2010 like.
• 6:57
  Like they they're it's totally a time travel fantasy, right?
• 7:00
  Because for them it's, oh, you know, I wish I got and then and
• 7:04
  I'd have 10,000 Bitcoin and had had like like a billion dollars
• 7:09
  or something like that. Well, no, no, you wouldn't
• 7:11
  because there were lots of people that had 10,000 Bitcoin
• 7:14
  back then, but they didn't hold, hold, hold the Bitcoin largely
• 7:20
  because they didn't understand the economics or they didn't
• 7:24
  understand the tack. It was sort of like this.
• 7:26
  Plaything for them and you know when it got to $5, six dollars,
• 7:31
  $8 and they bought it at $0.25 is like Oh yeah I'm I'm selling
• 7:35
  I want to I want to book the profit or something like that
• 7:39
  that that's how they were thinking and you know $80,000 is
• 7:42
  like oh you know that's enough for a car I can I can go do that
• 7:45
  and you know just sort of like bank their gains or whatever it
• 7:50
  it. It was a very difficult sort of
• 7:53
  journey at the beginning to. Know that this would be
• 7:58
  something someday without like having studied a lot of this
• 8:01
  stuff and there weren't that many books, you know, safety and
• 8:04
  published the Bitcoin standard, I think in 2016.
• 8:09
  You know that that was sort of like the first economics work
• 8:12
  where, you know, like. You could really kind of get why
• 8:17
  this was significant or like a viable path for it to sort of
• 8:22
  become that reserve currency. Very few people understood the
• 8:26
  tech. I still remember coding a lot of
• 8:29
  this stuff in 2013. There are so few resources for
• 8:33
  understanding a lot of that stuff, which is.
• 8:35
  Why I ended up writing Programming Bitcoin because I
• 8:37
  was, I was incredibly frustrated with the material that was out
• 8:41
  there for just like as a coder, OK, what?
• 8:43
  What the heck do I do? Like, how do I, you know, create
• 8:47
  a wallet or what do I do with a private key?
• 8:50
  What the heck is a private key anyway?
• 8:52
  And you know, how does it work and why is it secure and all of
• 8:56
  that, Like, very little of that content was out there.
• 9:00
  Like, nowadays, there's just so much content, so many books.
• 9:04
  So much. You know, so many podcasts, so
• 9:07
  many YouTube videos. There are even hardware wallets
• 9:11
  and things like that and like hardware wallets weren't a thing
• 9:14
  until like 2015 like that. That tells you that this it was
• 9:19
  very, very difficult back then and and like that conviction
• 9:24
  early on like very few people had it and.
• 9:29
  It's honestly only by the grace of God that I have what I have
• 9:34
  because I could have been rugged many times.
• 9:37
  I could have lost it many times and it was, you know, I I got my
• 9:42
  coins out of Mount Cox in the middle of 2013, for example,
• 9:46
  thanks to a tip from a friend. You know it's it's stuff like
• 9:49
  that that that let me sort of hold on to the stack that I have
• 9:54
  and you know it's it was it was just really difficult.
• 9:57
  And you. And that's a story that you hear
• 9:59
  over and over again, right? Which is you have, you have a
• 10:02
  lot of people that accumulated an ungodly enormous stack in the
• 10:08
  in the very early days, right. But again, no one really thought
• 10:12
  of Bitcoin the way that they see Bitcoin now.
• 10:15
  Now you know for the first time, I don't know.
• 10:17
  I'm sure you've seen this because you know we all, we all
• 10:20
  kind of live on Bitcoin Twitter in a way.
• 10:23
  Where the amount of coins being held on exchanges just continues
• 10:28
  to go down. It seems like people are just
• 10:31
  like, yeah, I'm not gonna sell this anymore.
• 10:33
  This is precious. There's 21 million.
• 10:36
  But in the beginning it seemed like that, you know, people were
• 10:40
  a lot less. You know, I remember there's the
• 10:44
  story of maybe you were around during this era, but the famous
• 10:47
  Bitcoin faucet that was like giving people, I think it was
• 10:50
  like, what was it like 5 or 50 coins or something if you put in
• 10:53
  your e-mail? It wasn't even an e-mail.
• 10:56
  It was like a CAPTCHA and you put in your Bitcoin address and
• 11:00
  it just it just automatically sent it.
• 11:02
  I think Gavin Andreessen set it up initially at 5 Bitcoin.
• 11:06
  This was like in 2010. I I remember going to that
• 11:10
  faucet in 2011 and I got .05 Bitcoin and I I was like oh man,
• 11:17
  this is so little. It used to give so much more.
• 11:19
  Of course like .05 Bitcoin is what, 5,000,000 Sats or
• 11:24
  something like that, which is which is a lot of money now.
• 11:27
  I ended up putting that into a web bugs anymore.
• 11:34
  Man, I am having some in my back.
• 11:37
  It said that there was some connection issues, but okay.
• 11:40
  Anyway, assuming you can hear me there, there was a lot of a lot
• 11:47
  of that, you know, faucets and you know, people giving, you
• 11:52
  know, stuff away for free or you know people selling kind of
• 11:57
  silly stuff. You know, there were, there were
• 11:59
  alpaca socks on Bitcoin talk forums that were.
• 12:03
  I don't know, like 8 Bitcoin per socks or something like that.
• 12:07
  And people bought them. Oh cool, I could spend spend
• 12:11
  Bitcoin for this stuff. It was it was kind of crazy.
• 12:15
  But that that that's kind of the era that we're coming from
• 12:18
  where, you know, Bitcoin was worth like a dollar.
• 12:21
  So paying 8 bucks for alpaca socks seemed like pretty
• 12:25
  reasonable. You know that like you know a
• 12:28
  lot of us sort of regret spending.
• 12:31
  To quit on on that silly stuff, especially now.
• 12:36
  But you know that that was kind of what it was back then.
• 12:39
  People didn't really understand sort of the sound money
• 12:42
  property. It was more kind of a plaything,
• 12:46
  you know, It was, it was mostly technical people like me that
• 12:49
  were trying stuff out. Oh, look at this cool new thing
• 12:53
  I made or whatever. And not so much the economics,
• 12:57
  which turns out to be the much more important thing.
• 13:00
  When did you realize this was the real deal?
• 13:03
  When did you? Because I had a very similar
• 13:05
  story in the sense that like I used Bitcoin as money to buy
• 13:11
  something online that you couldn't use other money for to
• 13:15
  to, you know, to put it that way.
• 13:17
  And but I used it as money. I didn't use it as savings.
• 13:22
  So you know and and if that was in in in my case it would have
• 13:26
  been 2015. That my first exposure to
• 13:29
  Bitcoin. But it was a year later that I
• 13:32
  realized crap, I should be stacking and saving this and
• 13:38
  never spending my Bitcoin. So when did it click in your
• 13:42
  head? Like what?
• 13:44
  How did you come to that realization?
• 13:46
  Okay, this is more than just fun, money, or technology.
• 13:51
  This thing is this thing is savings like this is the real
• 13:55
  deal. What led you to that
• 13:57
  realization? Yeah.
• 13:58
  I think like everybody else, as the price started going up, you
• 14:02
  do the math. You know, it's like, wait, I
• 14:04
  spent how much on this thing And I still have that story from
• 14:09
  2013. There was some.
• 14:12
  Guy on the Bitcoin Reddit that posted hey we're we're selling
• 14:17
  beef jerky for for Bitcoin, if you want to buy some here and
• 14:21
  you can pay here and so on. So I bought $100 worth of beef
• 14:25
  jerky in 2013 and this was when it was about what, $400.00 per
• 14:30
  Bitcoin? You know, I spent a quarter of a
• 14:32
  Bitcoin on beef jerky. Now that quarter of a Bitcoin is
• 14:35
  like $7500. I mean, it was it was decent
• 14:38
  beef jerky. But ten years later, it's $7500.
• 14:44
  I don't know if it was worth it, you know.
• 14:47
  And that's when you start realizing sort of like the power
• 14:50
  of saving and that this is how it should be in any sort of like
• 14:54
  sound money economy. That's how money behaves, is
• 14:57
  that you could buy more and more stuff as.
• 15:00
  You know, people become more efficient and new technologies
• 15:04
  come online and stuff like that. I, I, I don't know if you've
• 15:07
  ever done this with like a computer or whatever, but, you
• 15:10
  know, you you, you buy like a computer or maybe a cell phone
• 15:15
  or something like that. And then like two years later
• 15:18
  it's worth like a tiny fraction and it's like, ah, yeah, but I
• 15:21
  at least I used it, you know, it it it puts sort of like a
• 15:26
  different mentality into you as you watch.
• 15:29
  You know, the price of something or a price of Bitcoin go up.
• 15:35
  That's kind of how you learn. And I think like very viscerally
• 15:39
  that's how most people in Bitcoin learn that it's really a
• 15:41
  savings tech that like if you spend it, you end up kind of
• 15:46
  getting screwed over later in terms in those terms and so on
• 15:51
  and. You know, I, I, I know people
• 15:53
  that bought cars in like 20-12 with their Bitcoin gains, I mean
• 15:57
  those would be worth like millions of dollars now.
• 16:01
  And you know, they they just didn't think about it that way.
• 16:04
  They thought it was a more transactional currency and so
• 16:07
  on. And you know, I mean like no
• 16:10
  doubt that it's, it's useful for that but.
• 16:13
  The far more needed thing, especially in Western Europe or
• 16:18
  the United States or something like that, is it's a good
• 16:21
  savings technology. You have plenty of ways to pay
• 16:23
  for something. You can pay for something with
• 16:26
  credit card or check or. You know, Venmo or Cash app or
• 16:31
  Apple Pay or Google Pay or whatever, like their PayPal, You
• 16:34
  know, there's so many different ways to pay for something that's
• 16:38
  not really what's lacking. The thing that's lacking is a
• 16:41
  good place to store your money or to have savings.
• 16:44
  That's not the base away from you.
• 16:46
  And really the only three things that I've been able to identify
• 16:49
  besides Bitcoin are gold, stocks and real estate and so.
• 16:53
  Coincidence that at least real estate and stocks have been
• 16:57
  going up like crazy during a period of monetary expansion.
• 17:00
  So having something like Bitcoin, like it's that's where
• 17:06
  the gap in the market is. It's not payment tech except in
• 17:10
  places like El Salvador or whatever where you don't have.
• 17:15
  You know modern POS systems and stuff like that.
• 17:18
  So people use Bitcoin as a transaction thing or remittances
• 17:21
  and things like that. It ends up being a much more
• 17:26
  useful thing as a as a savings vehicle.
• 17:29
  And honestly the the people that have used it that way have seen
• 17:34
  like insane utility out of it, including myself and that's.
• 17:40
  That's where I think it's still needed in large parts of the
• 17:45
  world, just because inflation is just so rampant and you're
• 17:50
  seeing prices go up and so on. Yeah, Opti's putting smash.
• 17:55
  So like, we only do that during the live show, man, not during
• 17:59
  the IRL controlling me. Anyways, okay.
• 18:06
  Yeah, man. So you were talking about
• 18:09
  basically utility. Do you think that we'll ever get
• 18:12
  to a point? You know, there's like the law
• 18:13
  of big numbers, right? It's a lot easier for Bitcoin to
• 18:16
  get from a dollar to $2.00 and then it would then it will be
• 18:19
  for it to get to 1,000,000 or 2,000,000 or maybe maybe it's
• 18:22
  just as easy, who knows? But I guess what I'm trying to
• 18:25
  say is like, does it ever become, do you ever see it
• 18:28
  becoming a medium of exchange, especially once it gets to those
• 18:32
  high price points? Yeah, absolutely.
• 18:36
  The the, the way I've observed sort of like you know currencies
• 18:42
  sort of go is you know when at A at a certain point merchants
• 18:48
  don't like the other currencies. And you can see this in
• 18:52
  hyperinflating countries where you know if you try to pay with
• 18:55
  the local currency that's hyperinflating they they kind of
• 18:58
  don't like it. They prefer dollars or you know
• 19:00
  some other currency. And that and when the merchant
• 19:05
  starts demanding it and you know they don't give you any other
• 19:10
  way to pay that, that's when you end up sort of giving it up
• 19:13
  because you want whatever it is that the merchant has and you
• 19:17
  you have no other choice. And that that's if you study any
• 19:21
  hyperinflating economies, that's that's what ends up happening
• 19:24
  during like Weimar Germany for examples, farmers.
• 19:30
  Like had entire store houses of food right And they refused to
• 19:35
  sell for the depreciating mark they were they were just like we
• 19:40
  can't buy anything with this. It's like getting away from us
• 19:44
  too quick So we we just refused to sell.
• 19:46
  So you have this like bumper crop of.
• 19:50
  Of food one particular year. And like nobody could buy food
• 19:55
  in the cities you had like a man made famine from hyperinflation.
• 19:59
  So in that sort of situation, I bet you the farmers would have
• 20:04
  sold for gold or something like that, because that holds its
• 20:08
  value. And you know, I imagine that's
• 20:12
  what it's going to take once. You don't have a Fiat currency
• 20:17
  available and you don't have like dollar as a backstop or
• 20:19
  something like that. At that point, yeah, it becomes
• 20:22
  a medium of exchange because that's just what everyone's
• 20:24
  going to demand. I like are you going to take a
• 20:27
  hyperinflating dollar for your goods or services?
• 20:30
  Probably not, because you know that there, there are all kinds
• 20:34
  of things to consider, especially with, you know, so
• 20:38
  much of it being digital and really being credit and not.
• 20:42
  Not cash or anything like that. You know if you're if you're one
• 20:47
  of one of the things I observed in Lebanon is that it's it's
• 20:51
  entirely cash based at this point because no one wants to
• 20:56
  wait 31 days or 45 days to get paid because that's too much
• 21:01
  depreciation so. Everyone just ends up using cash
• 21:05
  for everything. You can't you can't use credit
• 21:06
  card, you can't you can't use, you use you know Lebanese pounds
• 21:11
  or the US dollar there. So I I think that's the point at
• 21:16
  which Bitcoin really becomes that medium of exchange that
• 21:20
  everyone ends up using because that's that's the point, like
• 21:23
  it's it's all merchant driven. Like no, it's not a useful
• 21:29
  medium of exchange if the merchant doesn't take it.
• 21:31
  I could. You know, want to go buy a car
• 21:34
  at my dealer for Bitcoin, But if the car dealer doesn't take
• 21:38
  Bitcoin, then I can't transact with it.
• 21:41
  And even if they did have the option of taking Bitcoin, I'm
• 21:45
  not sure I would unless I only had Bitcoin because I'd want to
• 21:49
  spend my dollars first. But you know, if it comes to a
• 21:54
  point where they're only taking Bitcoin and I need, I really
• 21:57
  need a car, then that's when those transactions happen.
• 22:01
  So I suspect that'll be the point at which it becomes sort
• 22:05
  of that medium of exchange. And honestly, that's gonna take
• 22:08
  some time because the US dollar has.
• 22:12
  An enormous market to expand into.
• 22:15
  It's not like a small like Lebanon where the only people
• 22:19
  that use the Lebanese pound are the people in Lebanon and a
• 22:24
  large number of them don't like using it.
• 22:26
  So they they they use the dollar instead.
• 22:29
  You know, the the US essentially has the entire world to use the
• 22:32
  dollar or to expand the dollar into.
• 22:35
  So it's going to take some time, but at some point it'll happen
• 22:38
  and. At that point, I think it really
• 22:41
  will be sort of this transactional currency, the
• 22:43
  medium or the method of payment I'd like to say for you know
• 22:49
  like sort of smaller transactions and so on.
• 22:52
  Yeah, and I completely agree with that as well.
• 22:53
  Do you see that? And please, I would love to get
• 22:57
  your input on this, Jimmy. I see this happening and this is
• 23:00
  what I'm so optimistic about Bitcoin adoption in developing
• 23:04
  countries. I see it at the writings on the
• 23:07
  wall. I'm personally from Venezuela,
• 23:10
  originally from Venezuela. I immigrated to the United
• 23:11
  States. There you tell someone Bitcoin
• 23:15
  and they're like, how do I sign up?
• 23:17
  That sounds. Like a good idea?
• 23:19
  You pitch someone Bitcoin in the states are like.
• 23:22
  It's a 5050, right? They're like, why not Doge?
• 23:25
  That's one answer. And then the other answer was
• 23:27
  like, that's boiling the oceans, man.
• 23:30
  Yeah. But again in Argentine, A
• 23:33
  Venezuelan or whatever, they're like if a non government
• 23:36
  currency they cannot debase. Where do I sign up?
• 23:39
  How do I get you know how do I get my hands on this?
• 23:42
  So that's something that I've observed.
• 23:43
  I want to get your take. Yeah.
• 23:46
  And I've seen that in a lot of different places where you know
• 23:50
  there there's like a core Bitcoin community all over the
• 23:53
  world. I I I spent the last I I spent
• 23:57
  this past year traveling with my family and going to a lot of
• 24:00
  these places. And honestly there, there, you
• 24:03
  know a lot of these people get it.
• 24:05
  You know they they understand the the problem is that, you
• 24:09
  know another large percentage of the world just doesn't get it
• 24:12
  right. Like they don't understand how
• 24:14
  money works. They don't understand, you know,
• 24:17
  the mechanisms of Fiat money, central banking and all of that.
• 24:20
  So it takes some education, but you know like brutal reality
• 24:24
  kind of forces that their hand a little bit, most of them end up
• 24:28
  going to the dollar and I'm I'm sure you've seen this in
• 24:31
  Venezuela as well. They they want dollars more than
• 24:34
  anything because it's the most liquid and you know, it's
• 24:38
  understandable because they they're concerned about that
• 24:42
  liquidity. I think as the dollar inflates
• 24:47
  more and the debasement of the dollar becomes more and more
• 24:50
  obvious, you know the allocation will change.
• 24:54
  Maybe it'll become 90% dollar and 10% Bitcoin and slowly
• 24:59
  change over time. But that that's what I suspect
• 25:02
  will happen. You know, it'll differ for
• 25:05
  different people. But you know, like for people in
• 25:09
  hyperinflating countries, they they just sort of have to do
• 25:12
  something now, right? Like it's it's a common, common
• 25:17
  sort of problem where you know if your currency is debasing
• 25:22
  like 10% in a month or something like that, you can't, you can't
• 25:25
  keep it in that currency to keep it in the dollar.
• 25:28
  But that's also debasing maybe 1/2 percent a month or something
• 25:32
  like that. But that that's still enough
• 25:34
  where you know over. A few years, you're losing a
• 25:38
  significant amount of money. So you know, like having to deal
• 25:42
  with that and having a longer time horizon, you know, people
• 25:48
  are gonna have to understand it and figure it out and you know,
• 25:54
  reality will essentially teach them.
• 25:56
  Yeah. And I think that that that last
• 25:59
  part, reality will eventually teach them and I think.
• 26:05
  I think the what I've noticed is the the countries that that that
• 26:10
  have you know to use Gladstein's words right that have the the
• 26:14
  most financial privilege right where the the inflation rate
• 26:20
  isn't big enough for people to start asking like very difficult
• 26:23
  questions and they still take the guy in the suit on TV
• 26:26
  seriously you know just walking out and.
• 26:31
  The the the the reality for them it's it's ever approaching but I
• 26:35
  think that they they they you know they what I what I believe
• 26:39
  that governments and and central banks like I believe like one of
• 26:42
  the the the strategies that they use it's like this divide and
• 26:47
  conquer right where like they basically whoever whatever
• 26:52
  political parties in charge or got elected the opposing
• 26:55
  political party accuses them of all the economic woes and all
• 27:00
  the hardships. And then they get voted out
• 27:02
  eventually and then they come back and then the other guy gets
• 27:05
  in and then they do the other side.
• 27:07
  But the entire time these people just have been printing money
• 27:11
  the entire time and just robbing everyone blind.
• 27:14
  Especially if you're in the lower middle classes, you don't
• 27:16
  have the means to save an assets, therefore you're not
• 27:18
  benefiting from all the money printing, you're you're saving
• 27:22
  in the Fiat money itself. So I mean that in itself.
• 27:28
  Does that, does that worry you at all?
• 27:29
  It's specifically because, you know, at least maybe I'm
• 27:32
  speaking for myself like I live in one of those countries that
• 27:35
  has a tremendous amount of financial privilege.
• 27:38
  And and I'm seeing the rumblings and I'm seeing the actions by,
• 27:42
  you know, at least in the case of the US, the current
• 27:44
  administration, right? They're telling you clear as day
• 27:47
  that they don't like this thing and their eyes, they're
• 27:50
  releasing papers. the US Treasury released a paper called
• 27:54
  the The Future of Money. They literally released a paper
• 27:57
  called The Future of Money. In that entire paper they don't
• 28:00
  mention Bitcoin. They mentioned stablecoins and
• 28:02
  payment platforms like it's so hilarious.
• 28:04
  And then they tell you it's very inefficient use of energy.
• 28:07
  Then they they say we're going to tax the mining industry 30%.
• 28:11
  Forget about all the other energy intensive industries,
• 28:14
  it's just the mining industry that we're going to tax 30%.
• 28:17
  So does that worry you a little bit the reaction from?
• 28:22
  The governments that have the most to lose if Bitcoin
• 28:25
  succeeds, because these are the governments that have the
• 28:28
  privilege of truly being able to create money for free, that
• 28:32
  everyone else has to work for, and then by doing that, being
• 28:36
  able to basically fund this crazy bureaucracy, this crazy
• 28:39
  government. Yeah, that that's been happening
• 28:42
  for a long time. And you know, you can go look at
• 28:46
  WTF happened in 1971, but bureaucracy and.
• 28:51
  Pretty much everything has bloated exponentially.
• 28:55
  This is why you know you you go all over the world.
• 28:58
  You know both parents work everywhere.
• 28:59
  Birth rates are coming down everywhere.
• 29:01
  Why? Because everyone has to work.
• 29:03
  They have to go serve the state. The rent seeking class, the
• 29:06
  bureaucracy the the cantalon winners instead of themselves
• 29:10
  and this is this has been what's happening.
• 29:15
  So in that sense like you know all of these policies and
• 29:19
  proposals and stuff like that, it's to perpetuate the current
• 29:22
  system and it's trying to continue the grip the the scam
• 29:28
  the. The thing that they've been
• 29:31
  doing all along. But I think people are starting
• 29:34
  to wake up to it. And, you know, you can kind of
• 29:37
  see it in a lot of different parts of the world there.
• 29:40
  You know, a lot of places I traveled there were still like
• 29:44
  protests about all kinds of stuff.
• 29:47
  It could be from the left, it could be from the right.
• 29:49
  It could be, you know, various different issues or whatever.
• 29:54
  But there is sort of like the sense that something is deeply
• 29:58
  wrong. And you know, there's at least a
• 30:02
  core group of people that aren't just going to take it.
• 30:06
  Now they could try to tax things or whatever, but that's just
• 30:11
  going to get the bitcoiners to leave the the people that want
• 30:17
  to build and create. And you know that that's going
• 30:22
  to be the detriment. Like, it's interesting because.
• 30:27
  The United States has had this major exorbitant privilege of
• 30:33
  being able to money print. And that means that generally
• 30:36
  the most talented people will come to the United States.
• 30:39
  Because success in the United States means like many billions
• 30:43
  of dollars, whereas success elsewhere.
• 30:45
  I mean, you can still do well, but it's it's only in the
• 30:48
  1,000,000. So a lot of people, a lot of
• 30:51
  talented people end up in the United States for that reason.
• 30:55
  Well, if you. You know, if you think about
• 30:57
  sort of like the downfall of the dollar and you know, the
• 31:02
  creation of newer systems, well, where where are the most
• 31:09
  talented people going to go? Well, it's going to be the place
• 31:13
  with lots of Bitcoin and so. I think governments will have to
• 31:18
  compete for the people, especially with population
• 31:24
  declines all over the world and so on.
• 31:27
  That's going to mean that, you know, whoever sets up the best
• 31:31
  jurisdiction that they're going to be the ones that benefit.
• 31:35
  And if you have sort of like anti Bitcoin policies, well
• 31:39
  you're kind of going to pay for it by losing the productive
• 31:44
  people essentially. So I'm assuming you're a fan of
• 31:47
  the theory from the book The Sovereign Individual, because
• 31:50
  that sure sounded like it. Yeah, a little bit.
• 31:54
  I mean, a lot of those predictions have come true.
• 31:57
  A lot of them have not and so on.
• 31:59
  And I I have read it, but I I mean, this is just simple game
• 32:04
  theory, right? Like if if you kick people out,
• 32:07
  then they're going to go somewhere else.
• 32:09
  There's a reason why. Like Mona, if you, if you look
• 32:12
  at Monaco, right? Tiny.
• 32:15
  Principality in Europe, not very big, but property prices there
• 32:20
  are insane and every car there is like like if you own a
• 32:25
  Porsche there, that's considered like a low class car because
• 32:30
  it's like filled with Lamborghinis and stuff.
• 32:33
  Why is that? Well, they have really good tax
• 32:35
  policy so everybody rich wants to move there.
• 32:39
  That's kind of what ends up happening when you.
• 32:42
  When you treat the people well, is that the rich people, the
• 32:47
  productive people and the like buying property there and so on.
• 32:50
  So I I expect, you know, you know, jurisdictions to fight
• 32:56
  over people, but I I also expect jurisdictions to get smaller.
• 33:00
  A large reason why, you know, countries are so big is for
• 33:06
  monetary union purposes. So you you essentially have free
• 33:09
  trade within the borders of that.
• 33:12
  Jurisdiction. But if you have a money that's
• 33:18
  independent of that and it's convenient and you can you can
• 33:21
  use it everywhere, then there's no reason for it to be one giant
• 33:26
  union because free trade can happen without all of that and
• 33:32
  and that's that's what I'm I'm guessing will happen like the
• 33:37
  United States for example like. You know, downtown San Francisco
• 33:41
  like shares very little in common with Omaha, NE or, you
• 33:46
  know, some rural community or something like that.
• 33:49
  And they should probably govern themselves.
• 33:52
  And I I suspect that at some point as the monetary union
• 34:00
  collapses, then you know what else is going to keep it
• 34:04
  together. And I'm not really sure and
• 34:06
  maybe common defense, something like that, but.
• 34:10
  You know, at least in the USI don't, I don't see foreign
• 34:13
  invasion or anything like that as a as a real or at least
• 34:18
  warfare wise as a real possibility.
• 34:20
  So yeah, I I I just, I I think states will become smaller.
• 34:27
  Yeah. And and, and that's actually, I
• 34:29
  completely agree, right. Because again, what is that
• 34:31
  common denominator? What is the common denominator
• 34:33
  between? A state like California and a
• 34:36
  state like Florida, which is radically different ideologies
• 34:39
  in terms of, you know, in terms of how they're governed, the
• 34:42
  people that live there and what is, what is the common, the
• 34:46
  common union. The common union is the Fiat
• 34:48
  currency. It's the money, right?
• 34:50
  Would California and Florida be, you know, as you know as.
• 34:57
  Would they be as. Would they, you know consider
• 35:01
  themselves the same country, the same union, if if they.
• 35:04
  If that same currency wasn't being used right?
• 35:08
  And then then there's autonomy to it.
• 35:09
  Because if if the same currency isn't being used in California
• 35:13
  and Florida, then what incentive do those governments have to to
• 35:21
  to, I guess have do you know, get to get the.
• 35:25
  I don't know. I don't know how I'm trying to
• 35:26
  articulate this, but it's like yes, I I guess to add to your
• 35:30
  point, Jimmy, I completely agree.
• 35:31
  I I think that you you are going to see a balkanization.
• 35:35
  I think that's inevitable. I think the only thing that's
• 35:37
  keeping together these giant countries is the fact that they
• 35:40
  use the same money. I think that once you get rid of
• 35:43
  that element, I I don't see them.
• 35:45
  I don't see the necessity to cooperate the way that they're
• 35:48
  cooperating now. Yeah.
• 35:50
  And not just cooperate, but you, you have like a single law for
• 35:54
  everybody, right? Like you, you have federal
• 35:55
  governments and so on. And people want to be governed,
• 35:59
  definitely. They want to try different
• 36:00
  things. I mean, I'm not a fan of
• 36:02
  socialism, but if if a small community wants to try it out,
• 36:06
  go for it, right? Like, I'm not going to tell them
• 36:09
  no. But if you're going to impose it
• 36:11
  on me, that's when we're going to have a problem, right?
• 36:14
  So this is where you know. You want more experimentation,
• 36:20
  especially in governance and stuff like that, because we
• 36:24
  haven't really, like everyone sort of trends towards this
• 36:28
  monolithic authoritarian communismish thing.
• 36:33
  Every government seems to be trending towards that.
• 36:36
  And that's that's not good for anybody, you know, It's less
• 36:40
  freedom for for the people that even the leads, I suspect don't
• 36:44
  really like it because you you have to.
• 36:47
  Surveil everyone. And you have to constantly be
• 36:50
  looking out for people that might be taking your place and
• 36:55
  might come and kill you or something like that.
• 36:58
  Like just, you know, instead of having a single policy over a
• 37:02
  very vast area that's very, very different, You know, give each
• 37:08
  place sovereignty. And that that was sort of the
• 37:10
  original idea behind the United States.
• 37:13
  The original 13 colonies they they they sort of at least
• 37:18
  before the Constitution and so on between you know after the
• 37:22
  end of the Revolutionary War and before the Constitution they
• 37:25
  acted like their own nations right Each each little little
• 37:30
  state and you know that that was the model.
• 37:35
  Now wasn't really that workable because they had all this debt
• 37:40
  from. From the Revolutionary War and
• 37:43
  so on. But that that's something that
• 37:45
  could have worked And you know, at least on paper that's what
• 37:49
  states are supposed to be. They're supposed to be you know
• 37:52
  they're in their sovereign nations and you you sort of have
• 37:55
  this economic union that became more than that post that Abraham
• 38:01
  Lincoln. You know it it it could be a
• 38:05
  very different system and. I would like to see more
• 38:09
  experimentation, just because I don't think we've found what
• 38:16
  works in many ways, cuz there just aren't enough experiments
• 38:19
  going on if you had. You know, 1000 jurisdictions
• 38:25
  that were trying all kinds of different things, then you find
• 38:28
  out very quickly okay this works.
• 38:30
  This doesn't because you you get markets, you get people voting
• 38:33
  with their feet, people trying different things.
• 38:35
  And okay, there's a lot of prosperity there.
• 38:38
  What what are they doing right? What are they doing wrong?
• 38:40
  And you know that that would be a good thing instead of.
• 38:46
  You know, you know, monolithic. I think there's like maybe 300
• 38:50
  countries in the world right now.
• 38:52
  Like everybody lives under a flag, basically.
• 38:56
  Why do we have to have that? I think, you know, smaller
• 39:00
  states would be more local, more responsive to their populace
• 39:04
  better, you know, more experimental and trying
• 39:09
  different things and seeing like.
• 39:11
  Instead of arguing about OK, well we should do more green
• 39:14
  energy or whatever, Well, have a jurisdiction try green energy.
• 39:18
  If it doesn't work, then we can find out very quickly and not
• 39:21
  screw over the entire country and get us into like economic
• 39:26
  stupidity. Like try different things right,
• 39:30
  but instead of. Having you know imposing it on
• 39:34
  people that don't want it. You know have smaller
• 39:36
  jurisdictions where they're welcoming it.
• 39:39
  I'm fine with San Francisco trying Ubi you know like that
• 39:43
  that's fine if that's what they want to do.
• 39:46
  Let's see how it works out economically for them right.
• 39:49
  Like that's that that that's how you find out whether or not
• 39:52
  something works. So I yeah, it it just bothers me
• 39:57
  that that instead of. You know, reality being sort of
• 40:04
  the judge, it ends up becoming politics and rhetoric and
• 40:08
  propaganda and things like that, which end up deciding a lot of
• 40:12
  this stuff. 100% and that's only viable with a money printer,
• 40:17
  right? Like that system is only viable
• 40:20
  with the money printer. I would even say that certain
• 40:23
  collectivist ideology. Are only viable with the money
• 40:27
  printer as well. I think that if you remove the
• 40:29
  wealth redistribution mechanism altogether and it becomes very
• 40:34
  difficult to offer Ubi, it becomes very difficult to offer,
• 40:39
  you know, all these free things that you know if you study
• 40:42
  economics, they're not free. You know there, there there's
• 40:44
  $100 getting taken out of your back pocket and you're given 20
• 40:47
  and you're like. I got $20.00 for free.
• 40:50
  Look at that. Anyway, so we're talking about
• 40:52
  competition. I really want to talk about the
• 40:54
  nation state, the country that is a shining country, shining
• 40:58
  city on the hills. The expression is something that
• 41:01
  I talked about today, something to me that I hold near and dear
• 41:05
  to my heart as a Latin America, as someone who, you know, had
• 41:10
  the privilege to be able to immigrant to the United States,
• 41:14
  I really do all see El Salvador as this country of hope and
• 41:17
  freedom. And I've spoken to El
• 41:19
  Salvadorians, you know, not, not double.
• 41:22
  I've spoken to one of Salvadoran and then my producer Opti in the
• 41:27
  back shout out to him, my brother.
• 41:30
  He also had a story that he told on today's Simply Bitcoin Live
• 41:33
  where he ran into, you know, this this El Salvadorian kid.
• 41:38
  And he asked them, like, what do you think about Naim Bukele and
• 41:41
  the kids? Like, this guy's an inspiration.
• 41:43
  I want to go back. As someone who lives in Miami,
• 41:46
  OK, where that's like the pinnacle, if you immigrate from
• 41:50
  Latin America and you make it to the States and you make it to
• 41:53
  Miami, that is the pinnacle, OK? You don't go backwards.
• 41:57
  You don't go backwards. The fact that you're hearing El
• 42:00
  Salvadorian say I want to go back because of naive Bokele
• 42:06
  tells me, Holy cow, there's something beautiful happening
• 42:11
  there, right? There's something.
• 42:14
  There's something good, there's something good happening there.
• 42:16
  And I was thinking about it today, Jimmy.
• 42:18
  I was like, okay, It can't be a coincidence that the first
• 42:23
  country that adopted Bitcoin is also one of the it's also one of
• 42:30
  the first functioning countries in Latin America that is doing
• 42:35
  good by its people. And the only conclusion that I
• 42:38
  got to is like. And I think this is the first to
• 42:41
  government that you that you're seeing on planet earth that the
• 42:46
  reason that they're doing that, that the reason the name Bukela
• 42:49
  is doing good by its people is because the unit of account that
• 42:52
  they're using has aligned incentives versus Fiat has
• 42:56
  misaligned incentives. So it's just a crazy thought.
• 43:00
  Maybe I'm an insane Bitcoin hopeful bitcoiner.
• 43:03
  Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I would love to get your
• 43:07
  thoughts. Yeah.
• 43:08
  No, you're absolutely correct. And the thing that I've noticed
• 43:12
  about El Salvador and I've been there twice and I'm going there
• 43:15
  this weekend. So I was there January of last
• 43:19
  year and June of last year. And you know, the thing that I
• 43:23
  noticed was just in those six months, like stuff changed
• 43:26
  really fast. They were putting in.
• 43:28
  Sewer lines at the community in Bitcoin Beach and you know, the
• 43:32
  roads were getting repaid. And you know in San Salvador
• 43:37
  there were like bike lanes. You know that that's like the
• 43:40
  stuff that you see in like your major European cities are bike
• 43:44
  lanes. So, you know, people can ride
• 43:46
  bikes everywhere. Yeah, stuff like that.
• 43:49
  You can just sort of see the change happening and and what
• 43:55
  you said is right there, there is.
• 43:58
  The the money affects everything.
• 44:01
  And and what I found out from just studying some of the IMF
• 44:06
  stuff is that a lot, most of these governments in Latin
• 44:12
  America and you know pretty much everywhere you have to align
• 44:17
  with the US. You, you, you're, you're forced
• 44:21
  to align with the US. And the way this works is that
• 44:25
  they want to develop their country in some way.
• 44:27
  So they take out a loan. Now it might be for an airport,
• 44:32
  it might be for, I don't know, new military equipment, whatever
• 44:37
  it is. But they they, they usually just
• 44:39
  can't afford it because they're not collecting enough in taxes.
• 44:42
  So they get a loan or where where do they get the loan from?
• 44:45
  They they generally have to. Deal with like a U.S. bank or if
• 44:49
  you're in other parts of the world, maybe like a euro bank or
• 44:53
  something like that and get loans in the euro dollar because
• 44:57
  the dollar is the global reserve currency for any international
• 45:02
  transaction stuff that you need to buy, you need to use dollars
• 45:05
  to go get them. So they get that loan and then
• 45:10
  they mismanage things. They can't pay it back.
• 45:13
  Boom, the IMF steps in and. They do what's a bailout?
• 45:17
  But it's not really a bailout of the country.
• 45:19
  They're bailing out the bankers. So they'll bail out the, you
• 45:24
  know, the banker that loan them that money.
• 45:26
  They take over the loan and say, okay, well, we'll start
• 45:30
  forgiving this loan, but you're going to have to do things our
• 45:33
  way. And that usually means some sort
• 45:36
  of austerity measures of some kind and that and they demand
• 45:41
  some form of. Budgetary control.
• 45:44
  So if your budget country's budgets, I don't know, $100
• 45:49
  million, you could spend at most 10 million on on infrastructure
• 45:56
  or you know, and you have to spend this much and this much
• 46:00
  and and you basically have been taken over by the I MF and
• 46:05
  eventually you end up selling the resources of your nation to
• 46:11
  you know. Yeah, US firms or something like
• 46:14
  that, you basically have to sell off stuff and you know this is
• 46:19
  where we get the phrase Banana Republic, Chiquita.
• 46:22
  Banana ended up like owning large portions of Latin America
• 46:25
  so they can produce bananas out of these places and it was
• 46:28
  through this mechanism, right, like it they they essentially
• 46:31
  got got to own these places through you know financial games
• 46:37
  essentially because the I MF budget comes from US money
• 46:41
  printing, so. It's money created out of
• 46:44
  nothing that's weaponized to go get resources from these places.
• 46:48
  Now what's what's different in El Salvador is that naive
• 46:52
  Bukelli as part of you know and Bitcoin is part of this entire
• 46:56
  program is saying you know what let's not depend on the IF let's
• 47:02
  let's you know figure out a way to make it work without the I MF
• 47:07
  because. Out of the four previous
• 47:10
  presidents tonight, Bokelli, three of them are in prison for
• 47:13
  embezzlement, right? Like it's it's horribly corrupt.
• 47:16
  They and the two opposition parties tonight, Bokelli, are
• 47:21
  all pro. I MF, they're all pro.
• 47:23
  Hey, we got to do what they say and you know let you know, agree
• 47:30
  to their austerity measures and stuff like that.
• 47:33
  And you know, we can only spend this much on infrastructure and
• 47:36
  so on. Said that Nay.
• 47:38
  But Kelly has basically given them the middle finger.
• 47:42
  They're issuing bonds and getting money from the market
• 47:46
  instead of through the IMF, and they're able to spend money the
• 47:51
  way they want to and. And guess what they they want to
• 47:55
  build infrastructure. They want to increase police
• 47:58
  presence. They want to make sure that
• 48:00
  things are safe for business and make sure that, you know, people
• 48:04
  can engage in commerce and things like that.
• 48:07
  Stuff that frankly the IMF doesn't care that much about.
• 48:11
  They just want like the resources of the country and not
• 48:15
  don't care about the people. So he's able to respond to the
• 48:21
  to what the people want and. It's really instead of being
• 48:25
  ruled by the International Monetary order, they're being,
• 48:30
  you know, they're they're able to elect somebody that's like
• 48:35
  going to do what they want and it's become a self sovereign
• 48:40
  nation. And you know, you were
• 48:42
  mentioning sort of the, you know, Latin Americans in Miami.
• 48:45
  That's sort of like the top. And from what I understand like
• 48:50
  after that is maybe like people from Mexico because they're like
• 48:53
  closest to the US and I don't know, maybe you know, from
• 48:58
  Colombia or something. And then you know all the way
• 49:01
  down at the bottom was El Salvador, right?
• 49:03
  Like if you're from El Salvador, you're at the very bottom of
• 49:06
  this sort of like Central American status ladder.
• 49:10
  They're, they've climbed that right?
• 49:12
  Like it's they're no longer part of this other system, so.
• 49:17
  There's motivation for people to go over there because, well,
• 49:21
  you're not shackled by IMF debt and things like that or
• 49:27
  austerity measures or whatever. You can actually create things
• 49:31
  and make things and. And make money that, I mean that
• 49:37
  that's really why people come to the US, because they want to
• 49:40
  make money. If you can make money there,
• 49:42
  why, why wouldn't you? And This is why a lot of
• 49:45
  Salvadorans that I've met or heard about in the United
• 49:49
  States, they they're they're like, you know, I illegally
• 49:52
  immigrated here like 20 years ago, but I want to go back.
• 49:57
  And it's it's for good reason because there's opportunity
• 49:59
  there. Like they the whole reason they
• 50:01
  came to the US in the 1st place was the opportunity or there's
• 50:04
  opportunity back home and it's your own culture and your
• 50:07
  family's there and everything else of course they'd want to go
• 50:09
  back. So it's it's flipping back the,
• 50:15
  you know the influence of the US dollar over a lot of these
• 50:22
  countries and I think that's that's.
• 50:24
  Basically what's happened in El Salvador, and this is something
• 50:28
  that I think a lot of other world leaders are watching
• 50:31
  because they want that self sovereignty too.
• 50:33
  They and a lot of the people in Latin America are watching El
• 50:38
  Salvador for that reason because they're like wait, what they
• 50:41
  he's doing What, how, how is that possible?
• 50:44
  What, how, how are they able to do this, that and whatever.
• 50:48
  And they're realizing it's it's really the dollar hegemony
• 50:52
  that's been oppressing them the whole time.
• 50:54
  Yeah, yeah, 100% And you know and in a way it's it's it's a
• 51:00
  bit of cosmic justice. But at the same time, you know,
• 51:06
  maybe I was naive, but I was sold and I know Opti feels the
• 51:09
  same way I was, I was sold a a version of America that I think
• 51:17
  is is so unique in the world and I think that.
• 51:22
  Fiat money, and how that's allowed the federal government
• 51:25
  to grow to the size that it has, has completely frankensteined
• 51:31
  that version of, you know, what you believe America is, you
• 51:37
  know, and maybe that was completely naive.
• 51:39
  I'm getting to the point I don't want to name any names or be
• 51:42
  specific where, you know, there's people that I know that
• 51:45
  are considering or have even, you know, renounced their
• 51:49
  citizenship. You know because they they don't
• 51:52
  see the the net benefit anymore and and and I and I and I do see
• 51:57
  that pattern continuing. And I, I don't know what what
• 52:02
  that world is, is, is that world that we're heading in is going
• 52:05
  to look like this this Balkanized world that there
• 52:09
  isn't this one major power that that basically tells everybody
• 52:14
  else what to do. So I don't know I'm but I'm
• 52:19
  definitely, it's definitely a great ride along the way and it
• 52:22
  definitely gives me stuff to talk about every day.
• 52:25
  Yeah, who knows what that looks like.
• 52:29
  But I do know that people figure things out, and you don't need
• 52:37
  sort of centralized control of everything in order for things
• 52:41
  to run smoothly. You know, there are other
• 52:45
  organizations that can work and stuff.
• 52:49
  You know, I sort of shit on the US dollar hegemony and stuff,
• 52:54
  but that's it's not all bad. There's there's something called
• 52:58
  Pox Americana. There's been basically free
• 53:02
  trade all over the world for a while now since Bretton Woods,
• 53:06
  essentially. And and that's due to sort of
• 53:10
  the peace that the that America has been keeping.
• 53:14
  But you know that comes at a cost of course because the US
• 53:18
  ends up being a third party to every conflict anywhere.
• 53:23
  So you know you see the US and peace talks wherever, right.
• 53:27
  Like it, it could be between like Pakistan and India on the
• 53:31
  other side of the world. But you know like they they they
• 53:34
  have to be involved somehow because.
• 53:37
  Well, they control the money. The the money is always a third
• 53:39
  party. And you know, we we have a
• 53:42
  conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
• 53:44
  And you know, again, that's very far away from the US, but the US
• 53:50
  ends up in the middle of it. You have a conflict between
• 53:52
  North and South Vietnam. They end up in the middle of it.
• 53:55
  You have conflicts in the Middle East end up in the middle of it.
• 53:59
  It's it's. It's largely because of the
• 54:04
  dollar hegemony that the US ends up in a lot of this stuff and
• 54:11
  you know if you take that away you know what takes its place.
• 54:14
  I mean that those those are those are all really good
• 54:18
  questions and I'm I'm very curious about how that will all
• 54:22
  work because there is certainly a lot of efficiency in.
• 54:29
  And sort of like the scale that we produce things at where, you
• 54:33
  know, a lot of stuff ends up going to China and being
• 54:35
  produced there and shipped back. And and you're you're able to
• 54:40
  ship like a tshirt from China all the way to your local mall
• 54:45
  for like 17 cents or something ridiculously cheap because they
• 54:50
  they're able to do it at such an enormous scale.
• 54:54
  You know how how, how does that get affected if the scales
• 54:57
  aren't? Quite as big.
• 54:59
  And is the efficiency that you gain from you know, removing
• 55:04
  bureaucracy going to overcome sort of like the slightly less
• 55:08
  efficiency from having lots of different factories all over the
• 55:13
  world sort of like competing and stuff, I don't know.
• 55:16
  And the like the world is essentially ordered around the
• 55:19
  dollar hegemony right now and figuring out how that changes
• 55:24
  as. That dollar hegemony starts to
• 55:27
  crumble is is one of the big questions for the century.
• 55:32
  Honestly, we're what, 23 years into it now?
• 55:36
  But this is the question is what happens as the dollar crumbles.
• 55:42
  And you know, I don't, whether it's, you know, a bipolar world
• 55:47
  with bricks on one side and NATO on the other or if it's, you
• 55:52
  know, like a multipolar world or.
• 55:56
  You know, you have thousands of small sovereign states on a
• 56:00
  Bitcoin standard. I don't know.
• 56:02
  Whatever it is, the world needs to reorder itself.
• 56:07
  Because right now everything's ordered around the dollar
• 56:10
  hegemony. And you know what it looks like
• 56:14
  when it's not, is the big question.
• 56:17
  Yeah, 100% that's the big that's that is the 1,000,000 sack
• 56:21
  question. It's not the $1 million question
• 56:24
  anymore, it's the 1,000,000 set. But but yeah, very interesting
• 56:29
  times ahead. Anyways, Jimmy, I want to, I
• 56:31
  want to use the last five minutes or so to talk about a
• 56:37
  conference that that you you helped launch.
• 56:42
  And I was very, very privileged to be able to have a
• 56:44
  conversation with Alex Gladstein.
• 56:47
  We were talking on his book and. What I'm referring to everybody
• 56:49
  is the thank God for Bitcoin. I I I thought it was amazing.
• 56:54
  The production was the production value of the team
• 56:57
  over there. They did an absolutely
• 56:59
  incredible job. So I I just kind of want to ask
• 57:02
  you like why thank God for Bitcoin, like why that specific
• 57:06
  name? Why are you, you know, including
• 57:10
  God in the picture? Yeah I the reason for the
• 57:14
  conference's name is because of the book's name and the book's
• 57:17
  name is thank God for Bitcoin and you can you can go check it
• 57:20
  out at Amazon and buy it. I think it's been translated to
• 57:24
  a couple languages already so if you're I get I think it's Dutch
• 57:28
  and maybe some some. I know Spanish and Portuguese
• 57:32
  were in the works but I I don't know where that is at the moment
• 57:36
  but that the the book is the reason why the conference is
• 57:39
  named what it is and the book came out of.
• 57:42
  Bible study that we did during the pandemic, I, you know, I
• 57:48
  wanted to keep meeting with people during a time when, you
• 57:53
  know, everyone was basically locked indoors.
• 57:57
  So you know, we started a Bible study and we studied a couple of
• 58:04
  Christian economics texts. The.
• 58:07
  Ethics of Money, Money Production by Your Greedo
• 58:11
  Halsman and Honest Money by Gary North.
• 58:14
  And at the end of them, we learned a lot, but we also
• 58:18
  realized that we we could write a more updated version because
• 58:25
  neither of those books really took into account Bitcoin.
• 58:30
  So we wrote the book based on that and.
• 58:35
  You know we we didn't really expect the reception that it's
• 58:38
  had which has been fantastic. It's I think one of you know
• 58:43
  I've written four books it's it's probably the best selling
• 58:47
  book that I've written and it's you know we we wanted to you
• 58:55
  know give a different sort of argument and it's a it's an
• 58:59
  argument based on morals and the way.
• 59:04
  Things ought to be based on, you know, biblical morality and sort
• 59:08
  of making that argument to Christians.
• 59:10
  Because honestly, a lot of Christians don't think about
• 59:12
  monetary policy or anything like that.
• 59:15
  And you know, we we've made that argument and we wanted to keep
• 59:20
  that at the forefront and there was certainly a lot of Christian
• 59:25
  bitcoiners that were interested in meeting together and.
• 59:30
  And that's what led to the conference.
• 59:32
  So yeah, and it's, it's been very interesting.
• 59:37
  Very interesting to say at least.
• 59:38
  And there's something that I've noticed, Jimmy, and I'm I'm
• 59:42
  very, I'm confident that you've noticed it as well, is that I
• 59:47
  guess that if you can make the argument that Fiat money is
• 59:51
  untethered from reality, is untethered from truth.
• 59:55
  Right. And you can make the argument.
• 59:58
  That Bitcoin is tethered to reality, therefore tethered to
• 1:00:03
  the truth by proof of work. And then of course, you know, I
• 1:00:09
  usually don't like to talk about this, but as a Christian, you
• 1:00:12
  know what you believe. God is truth, right?
• 1:00:14
  Is there something there? Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 1:00:18
  The, the main thing is that. You know when you, when you deny
• 1:00:24
  reality, you kind of go off the rails very, very quickly and you
• 1:00:29
  know Fiat money is very much like that.
• 1:00:31
  It it was tethered to reality, right it each each dollar
• 1:00:37
  represented a certain amount of gold up until you know 1971
• 1:00:42
  basically you know up until 1933 I think it or 3033 it was.
• 1:00:49
  Each you could submit $20.67 to any bank and they would give you
• 1:00:55
  an ounce of gold. That's what it represented.
• 1:00:59
  FDR changed that with Executive Order 6102 and then a year later
• 1:01:04
  they devalued it and made it $35 per oz.
• 1:01:08
  And then in 1971, Nixon completely cut ties to gold.
• 1:01:13
  But that that's essentially when it became untethered.
• 1:01:15
  It used to represent a particular amount of gold.
• 1:01:19
  But then when you when you cut that off now, now it's free
• 1:01:23
  floating and it has no anchor anymore and it's it's you know
• 1:01:29
  been spiraling out of control ever since.
• 1:01:32
  And this is where we get crazy inflation and so on.
• 1:01:35
  Hyperinflation is essentially. Just, you know things going
• 1:01:41
  crazy because it it it has no basis in reality whatsoever.
• 1:01:46
  The dollar is still I guess you could argue with with the Petro
• 1:01:51
  dollar that it has some anchor with with reality because of
• 1:01:56
  that, but it but essentially like having no anchor is is very
• 1:02:01
  bad because there's no way to value anything.
• 1:02:07
  And in the same way, I would say, you know, with morals and
• 1:02:11
  ethics. You know if you have Christian
• 1:02:14
  values and you believe in Christ, then it makes a lot of
• 1:02:18
  sense. But once you untether from God,
• 1:02:21
  then where? Where do your morals and ethics
• 1:02:24
  come from? And this isn't something that
• 1:02:27
  some Christian philosopher asked.
• 1:02:29
  This was what Friedrich Nietzsche asked, right?
• 1:02:32
  Like his his entire. You know a philosophical
• 1:02:38
  exploration was what? Well what happens then, right?
• 1:02:41
  Like you, you've taken out God, you've you've untethered from
• 1:02:45
  the sun. Where does your morality come
• 1:02:48
  from? And he, he came out with this
• 1:02:51
  entire different system of morality based on will to power.
• 1:02:56
  And you know, I mean, at least in my reading it's, it's
• 1:03:00
  basically. Being a sociopath and you know,
• 1:03:05
  like that, that's where you end up because you're not tethered
• 1:03:09
  to anything. And and you know, I I think most
• 1:03:14
  people find that kind of morality completely abhorrent.
• 1:03:17
  I I would consider people like Hitler or Stalin like
• 1:03:22
  Nietzschean in that way because they were all about power and
• 1:03:26
  exercising that power and. This is where, you know, having
• 1:03:32
  some basis or some link to reality is so important.
• 1:03:37
  And you know, This is why I think for Christians, you know,
• 1:03:43
  they can see the reality of Fiat money as saying okay, well, that
• 1:03:47
  doesn't have any real basis. And look at Bitcoin and say that
• 1:03:52
  does have a real basis and therefore it's truer.
• 1:03:54
  And that's, you know, I guess one of the more subtle arguments
• 1:03:57
  in the book. But you know, I I, I think it
• 1:04:01
  goes the other way too, you know, Bitcoin or start
• 1:04:03
  recognizing that Okay, having a link to reality is very good
• 1:04:07
  because it keeps it scarce and that gives it a lot more
• 1:04:12
  utility, especially as a savings vehicle and so on.
• 1:04:16
  And you know they start investigating and start
• 1:04:20
  realizing Okay, Well what about all of this other stuff?
• 1:04:23
  Does that have a basis in reality?
• 1:04:26
  And, you know, a lot of them find Christ as well, so.
• 1:04:29
  For me, you know, like truth leads the truth always.
• 1:04:33
  And if you if you found truth in one area of your life, it just
• 1:04:39
  tastes so good, it's so useful and so satisfying that you seek
• 1:04:46
  it in other places in your life. And you know, a lot of people
• 1:04:52
  thankfully, have found that. 100% and Jimmy, this has been.
• 1:04:58
  An honor and a privilege to have you, you know, join me on Simply
• 1:05:05
  Bitcoin Live, you know? I said in the very beginning,
• 1:05:11
  I'm going to fanboy once again, definitely a legend in the
• 1:05:14
  space, you know, and so much work that you've contributed, so
• 1:05:19
  much work that I've consumed that that you've made.
• 1:05:22
  And you know, having the privilege of being able to be
• 1:05:24
  part of the Thank God for Bitcoin, you know conference as
• 1:05:28
  well. That was incredible.
• 1:05:29
  So I'm extremely thankful, Jimmy, for you coming on the
• 1:05:33
  show today. Is there anything that you want
• 1:05:35
  to tell the audience that you're working on nowadays that you're
• 1:05:38
  thinking about? Have you?
• 1:05:40
  Have you? Let me ask you something?
• 1:05:42
  Have you reached the end of the rabbit hole?
• 1:05:45
  No, and I'm I'm actually finishing up a book.
• 1:05:50
  Fiat ruins Everything. And that should be out very
• 1:05:54
  soon, in the next month or two. And yeah, please go pick up a
• 1:05:59
  copy. I'll be doing a Kickstarter of
• 1:06:02
  some kind in the next next month or so.
• 1:06:06
  And yeah, please participate too.
• 1:06:09
  Awesome. All right.
• 1:06:09
  Well, Jimmy, thank you so much. I'm gonna put you backstage.
• 1:06:12
  Well, I'll wrap this up. Guys, Thank you so much for
• 1:06:14
  tuning in to another episode of Simply Bitcoin IRL.
• 1:06:16
  We really appreciate it. We'll be back tomorrow with the
• 1:06:18
  live show, 12:15 PM Eastern Standard Time, but until then,
• 1:06:22
  I'll see you guys later. Peace out.