Latest / TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast / #727: Orange Pilling The Deep State with David Zell

Transcript

#727: Orange Pilling The Deep State with David Zell · TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast

• 0:00
  I feel like I was born to die for Israel.
• 0:06
  Okay.
• 0:07
  We're not going to start with that Logan.
• 0:12
  Well,
• 0:13
  I'm saying Bitcoin needs a wall that we can make all the politicians go
• 0:17
  kiss just like they do in Israel.
• 0:19
  All right.
• 0:22
  What a week in Austin, Texas, gentlemen.
• 0:25
  Oh, what a week.
• 0:28
  Did we do something here?
• 0:29
  what do we do with this coin based to minimize tax exemption i think it's
• 0:33
  a big thing that uh we made some noise this week about it i think your tweet did a lot of
• 0:41
  really good stuff um you know and i'm really just honored to be here with uh with the alex jones of
• 0:47
  bitcoin although if i had my way it'd be the real alex jones but i'll settle for for the jv
• 0:52
  hey we're gonna get we're gonna get alex here yeah no i think it was important for um
• 0:57
  the broader Bitcoin community and Bitcoiners generally, particularly in America,
• 1:03
  to know that this stuff's happening behind the scenes.
• 1:08
  And I wasn't, so I had one source reach out last week and I was like, okay, this is interesting.
• 1:15
  Can't really confirm it.
• 1:17
  And then I had somebody reach out a couple of days ago.
• 1:19
  So you had multiple independent sources come and tell you this.
• 1:23
  Yes.
• 1:23
  Yeah.
• 1:24
  yeah i mean it's been very interesting to see you know you obviously have been a sort of
• 1:32
  journalist and commentator in bitcoin for like a decade plus you know your incentive to lie as a
• 1:40
  lot of people are accusing you of is it's very low um like you already have you know a successful
• 1:46
  podcast and this isn't my beat it's not really policy isn't really your beat policy is not my
• 1:51
  be the incentive for you just to like, I guess the, the accusation from, from the detractors
• 1:56
  is that you just woke up on a random morning and said, I'm just going to make shit up about
• 2:00
  Coinbase to just be a problem. Um, you know, and I, I find you very credible. Um, and I think,
• 2:08
  you know, the, the sort of reluctance to go with something like this until multiple kind
• 2:13
  of disconnected parties tell you, I think it's a very high degree of confidence that there's a,
• 2:18
  they're there. Um, and that that's true. Um, I will say, you know, the, the silver lining,
• 2:24
  um, of, of Coinbase's response, uh, is that they are not only doubling down on your claims being a
• 2:31
  lie, but you know, they're doubling down at least in public on, uh, de minimis being something they
• 2:37
  care about. Um, and I like, I'm not, to my knowledge, I don't know if there's been, you
• 2:42
  For example, we did an open letter from industry members basically telling Congress, hey, after
• 2:50
  clarity is done, we think the most important thing to work on next is tax treatment for
• 2:57
  Bitcoin and making it money and removing the de minimis or creating a de minimis exemption
• 3:03
  and removing taxes and obligations for reporting on everyday transactions.
• 3:08
  This is a very innocuous letter.
• 3:11
  You know, we were not, you know, beating the, the maxi drum.
• 3:14
  I think we may have even had language in there about like other digital assets, getting a
• 3:19
  de minimis exemption, trying to build like a big tent, extremely uncontroversial and
• 3:24
  Coinbase didn't sign it.
• 3:26
  Um, you know, and maybe they don't, you know, whatever I, it is.
• 3:30
  I wasn't even aware of that.
• 3:31
  Yeah.
• 3:31
  When was this?
• 3:32
  It was like two months ago.
• 3:33
  Okay.
• 3:34
  It was like end of last year, early this year.
• 3:36
  Um, you know, and like now they're all saying, uh, all the executives on Twitter are saying,
• 3:42
  no, we do in fact care about this.
• 3:44
  Um, and great.
• 3:46
  Uh, so now we have that sort of on record and like you showed me this morning, you saw
• 3:51
  before I did, but, um, somebody from the Coinbase team responded to Connor, uh, my colleague,
• 3:57
  uh, who kind of proposed in the wake of all of this and said, okay, why don't we do a
• 4:01
  a joint round table where Coinbase and BPI kind of present a unified front. And we talked to the
• 4:08
  key members, uh, you know, in a public setting about why de minimis is so important for the
• 4:13
  future of this country. Uh, and they responded this morning and said that they'd do that.
• 4:17
  So, um, you know, I guess time will, time will tell, but, uh, it will be a lot harder to sort
• 4:23
  of squirrel away from, I mean, I I've read this as a public commitment from, from Coinbase to
• 4:29
  championing this cause you know after clarity is is passed uh and so you know i think that's
• 4:36
  more that is i i had no i wasn't aware of no such commitment from coinbase prior to this this sort
• 4:43
  of you know shit on twitter um yeah i didn't know they didn't sign that letter that's it's another
• 4:47
  there's another again this isn't my beat okay i mean i do talk i've had connor on right i go down
• 4:54
  to dc more often now because pubkey's there pubkey dc but honestly like the inter workings
• 5:01
  of capitol hill is something that doesn't really interest me i like focusing on the technology on
• 5:05
  the investing side on the free market side not the swamp side yeah bitcoin which you have
• 5:11
  immersed yourself in yeah you sure have but i think uh i think this week i think it proves
• 5:22
  something if bitcoiners drive a hard line they make noise and they say hey no like i want this
• 5:28
  thing people will respond and i think it's a good lesson i'd be interested to get your thoughts on
• 5:34
  this because i think with trump too with this administration particularly after the inauguration
• 5:40
  last year and all the promises that were made in lead up to the election it seems like priorities
• 5:44
  got a bit flipped where strategic bitcoin reserve um uh seemed to have been the main priority but as
• 5:51
  soon as he got in, you had this overwhelming lobbying effort from the likes of Coinbase,
• 5:57
  Ripple, A16Z, and a large lobbyist consortium, disparate consortium, that have a lot of money,
• 6:10
  much more money than Bitcoiners are spending on lobbying. And the optics
• 6:14
  outside looking in or that they were able to use that money to reprioritize what gets done.
• 6:22
  So you're genius, now clarity and SBR is a distant third.
• 6:25
  Well, and that's sort of like part of, I think the semantic, I don't want to say trick, but
• 6:30
  I think a lot of the response to this is just like this sort of interesting exercise in semantics
• 6:36
  where say, well, no, we've been consistently advocating for de minimis. And it's like,
• 6:40
  okay, great. Like you've been telling people it's a good thing. Um, but there is, you know,
• 6:46
  such limited opportunity to change laws in America. Like it's such a sort of Herculean
• 6:54
  undertaking. Um, and so, you know, if you're saying, okay, like I think when, you know,
• 6:59
  when Senator Lummis, you know, came onto the digital asset subcommittee, you know,
• 7:03
  my understanding is that, you know, she kind of proffered four priorities, uh, for crypto in
• 7:08
  America in the following order, a strategic Bitcoin reserve, uh, tax reform. So, uh, you know,
• 7:15
  the, the double tax on minors, uh, the, the, you know, tax on everyday Bitcoin transactions,
• 7:21
  uh, you know, uh, stable coin regulation and market structure, like in that order.
• 7:28
  And, you know, the crypto lobby basically came back and said, we think these are all wonderful
• 7:33
  priorities. Uh, thanks for your leadership. We'd like them in reverse order, please. Um,
• 7:40
  and so I think that's how you get to a situation where, you know, it might not be, it might be true
• 7:47
  that, you know, Coinbase speak. It's like, you know, Brian was speaking very positively about
• 7:51
  the SBR. I remember it, you know, Davos, he was talking about it. I think Brian, you know,
• 7:56
  probably I sort of give Brian in particular, the benefit of the doubt on some level. Like I think,
• 8:01
  you know, he has running a sprawling empire and there are so many people working at every
• 8:09
  discrete vertical within that business. The idea that Brian is sort of heavily involved in managing
• 8:16
  the day-to-day of the policy operations of Coinbase is, you know, just difficult to believe
• 8:21
  given how many other things Coinbase is doing. So I kind of chalk a lot of this up to two things.
• 8:28
  I think one is, you know, a degree of like principal agent problem.
• 8:33
  Um, and, and two, you know, the argument that I think Bitcoiners might not like hearing,
• 8:38
  but it's just, I think fair.
• 8:40
  And honestly, I'd respect Coinbase a lot more if they just made this argument, uh, was that,
• 8:45
  you know, they have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to, you know, engage in actions
• 8:50
  that benefit the company.
• 8:52
  And, you know, I can certainly understand the business logic that market structure for
• 8:57
  a Coinbase shareholder is a lot more important than a de minimis exemption. But I think that,
• 9:04
  you know, my, my point here really is that, you know, saying that you like something is,
• 9:09
  does not a sort of campaign for getting it done, make like you, you, you have to expend political
• 9:16
  capital and like genuinely try. And there has been, I have seen no organized effort from the
• 9:23
  cryptocurrency lobby on a de minimis exemption. Um, I have not personally heard Coinbase
• 9:30
  representatives, you know, say the things that were reported. Um, I have definitely heard that
• 9:36
  attitude expressed by people in crypto policy writ large. Um, you know, that, that de minimis
• 9:43
  is sort of a waste of time, that it's like a non-issue that nobody's using Bitcoin for
• 9:47
  transactions. So, you know, let's just not prioritize this. Like the incentive structure
• 9:52
  for the crypto lobby is just very clear. Like you're running a, you know, meme coin casino,
• 9:57
  like you want the meme coin casino laws to be written in your favor before you, you engage in
• 10:04
  sort of the, you know, what I'm sure some people look at as just like sort of the esoteric, like,
• 10:08
  you know, pro freedom stuff. But I, I, I do believe Brian, when he says like, Hey,
• 10:13
  I've told my team, the SBR is important. I've told my team to minimus is important.
• 10:16
  um what i haven't seen is any evidence of actually expending political capital to
• 10:23
  try to make these things a priority and get them done um yeah i mean we gotta dive into this
• 10:32
  because that's like the big thing again i don't like dealing in the swamp and outside looking in
• 10:37
  it's like you have this crypto lobby spending a lot of political capital and things that are
• 10:43
  counter not maybe maybe not counter to bitcoin but just like as a bitcoiner it's like i don't care
• 10:49
  yeah about coinbase's ability to list and dump tokens on retail yeah like and that's all they're
• 10:57
  focused on they're that and the stable coin yield like i don't care if coinbase gets the ability to
• 11:04
  share yield uh that's generated via the treasuries they hold in reserves so the stable coins they
• 11:11
  issue than consumer to me that's not really really something i care about no and i think bitcoin
• 11:21
  particularly at this point in human history in american history is so critically important that
• 11:28
  the focus on capital again going back to um the order of operations that senator lumas put forth
• 11:35
  and then the fact that they reversed that it's like okay we're now a year and a month into trump
• 11:43
  two and we've spent 25 of a second term doing cycles on things that don't really pertain to
• 11:51
  bitcoin no yeah exactly how do we how do we switch out like do we have to be more hard-lined
• 11:56
  and say like again i said this on rhr yesterday it's i think um really holding their feet to the
• 12:03
  fire um and saying do you will you commit to publicly stating that you will not accept a
• 12:11
  particular tax reform or a particular bill let's go with clarity act i think for clarity act we can
• 12:17
  get this in rca or something yeah the brca i think the crypto lobby has increasingly i mean i've seen
• 12:22
  a lot of the crypto lobbyists come out and and actually say that um that you know they will not
• 12:27
  support a clarity
• 12:30
  bill that our market structure bill
• 12:31
  that lacks developer protections
• 12:34
  does this have to be our modus operating
• 12:36
  particularly as Bitcoin
• 12:36
  from the perspective
• 12:40
  of like
• 12:40
  not encroaching on their influence
• 12:43
  but like forcing their influence to work
• 12:46
  in Bitcoin's favor specifically
• 12:47
  yeah
• 12:48
  it's interesting right like I think
• 12:51
  there is a fundamental alignment
• 12:53
  of incentives
• 12:55
  like I think the
• 12:57
  The argument that crypto companies and executives, you know, don't like Bitcoin or whatever,
• 13:08
  it's like very dumb to me.
• 13:10
  It's really obvious that if we had a strategic Bitcoin reserve, that would be massive for
• 13:15
  the shitcoin casinos.
• 13:17
  Like, you know, I'm just not, I don't, that's not why I support an SBR, but it's just true.
• 13:21
  um you know if if america embraces bitcoin the way that you know we want it to um and i think
• 13:29
  that would be great for everyone in the crypto industry i mean bitcoin is the foundation of
• 13:34
  when people talk about digital assets it doesn't exist without bitcoin so any policy related to
• 13:39
  this stuff bitcoin should be like the first priority yeah and this is like this kind of
• 13:44
  goes to the heart of, you know, why I co-founded BPI and, you know, my sort of views on this.
• 13:51
  Um, and, and I think the, the answer is yes, to be, to be hard lined and to be difficult when,
• 13:59
  uh, the moment sort of demands it. But like we, you know, our, our strategy is, is not predicated
• 14:07
  on getting into, you know, sort of wars of attrition and sort of spending battles with,
• 14:15
  you know, individuals and firms who can literally print their own money.
• 14:21
  Like, I remember, like many years ago, I had a conversation with, you know, a prominent
• 14:29
  sort of individual in the Bitcoin community. And, you know, he was just like, David, like,
• 14:34
  you have to engage in asymmetric strategies. Um, like, you know, Bitcoin, their Bitcoiners raise
• 14:41
  a hundred million dollars to spend on lobbying. And the next day ripple will announce that they're
• 14:46
  spending 200 million. Uh, you know, if Bitcoiners match them, you know, ripple and Coinbase at all
• 14:52
  will come back and say, we're spending a billion dollars. Like, you know, that, that is clearly a
• 14:56
  losing, um, strategy. Um, and so, yeah, I think that the, the other thing that I have really
• 15:05
  observed that makes me feel increasingly like the strategy that we're deploying is, is the correct
• 15:13
  one, um, is the extent to which the career bureaucrats have dragged their feet on stuff
• 15:21
  that matters. Um, like the, the strategic Bitcoin reserve, you know, I think it was basically killed
• 15:28
  by, you know, sort of career bureaucrats at, at treasury. Um, and you know, when you, when you
• 15:34
  come in as a president, you get your political appointees who are technically running these
• 15:39
  various agencies, but the overwhelming majority of people that work there, you know, work there
• 15:44
  for many years. Um, and they kind of view themselves as like, we are the treasury, right?
• 15:50
  You know, the, the, the, the people who are brought in by the president, you know, they're
• 15:54
  ephemeral, they're fleeting, they'll be gone.
• 15:56
  I can just, you know, uh, you know, I can just air people on email and just not do my
• 16:01
  job for a few years.
• 16:02
  And, you know, you'll be gone in the blink of an eye and I'll still be here.
• 16:06
  Um, and so I, I do think that where Bitcoin is strongest is basically just that the, the
• 16:16
  facts are on our side in that Bitcoin is very clearly an extremely critical technology for
• 16:22
  the national security priorities of the United States in a way that, you know, cryptocurrencies
• 16:29
  writ large are very obviously not. And I think where we have increasingly spent a lot of our
• 16:36
  focus and energy is on those constituencies, the sort of unelected, basically, like I'm trying to
• 16:44
  orange pill, the deep state. Um, like, you know, it's like, that's like sort of the one liner and
• 16:49
  maybe that sounds sort of ridiculous, but there are a lot of people who have a lot of power in
• 16:54
  the U S government who, uh, are not elected, who you cannot lobby. Uh, and so, you know,
• 17:00
  if you want sort of novel policy, uh, that is of geo-economic consequence, uh, a necessary
• 17:09
  condition for that is the buy-in of a very small, you know, group of politically insulated,
• 17:16
  you know, basically, uh, uh, you know, sort of grand strategy and national security people.
• 17:23
  Uh, those people, you know, are, are really doing, I mean, I think a lot of them are
• 17:28
  definitely patriots. They're doing this job because they care about the long-term
• 17:32
  future of America and they, they sort of think deeply and make choices.
• 17:39
  But you can't bribe them. You can't pay money. You can't donate to the National Security Council. You can't lobby in the traditional sense. You have to genuinely sort of convince these people that Bitcoin is good for America and that Bitcoin flourishing in America and America embracing Bitcoin is really important for the future of the country, for competition with China, you name it.
• 18:06
  Uh, and, you know, to convince those people, you have to make, you know, sort of good arguments
• 18:15
  that are sound and true. Uh, those arguments need to come from credible people, um, who are kind of
• 18:22
  embedded in the sort of circles of networks of trust, um, you know, that they, that they talk to.
• 18:29
  Um, and I think BPI is sort of an end of one team with that kind of particular thesis. Like we are
• 18:36
  the only organization that has, I think, both the capability and the intent to persuade that
• 18:42
  constituency that significantly adopting Bitcoin in America is good for the national security
• 18:49
  interests of the country. And so, and I think if we do that, the, the results, if we're successful
• 18:56
  in that front, the results I think will be profound. And I think we will be successful in
• 19:00
  that front because we are right. And I think that is where Bitcoiners have a huge advantage.
• 19:06
  is like the limiting factor on crypto lobbying is like you can, you can print your own money,
• 19:11
  you can spend indefinitely. Um, but you know, fucking Solana is not important for the, the
• 19:18
  national security interest, the United States meme coins are not important. Like, like these
• 19:22
  things don't fucking matter. Um, right. They just don't. Uh, and Bitcoin clearly does. Um,
• 19:28
  we're seeing the emergence of a new sort of independent,
• 19:36
  neutral monetary layer that is being adopted by, you know,
• 19:40
  dozens of governments around the world that is reaching, you know, a crazy,
• 19:46
  crazy market cap. Um, and it's going to play an ever increasing role in,
• 19:51
  you know, in, in, in sort of geopolitics. Um,
• 19:56
  And I think the fact that Bitcoin is that consequential to stuff that actually matters
• 20:01
  and the fact that it's actually good for America that an open, permissionless, censorship-resistant
• 20:07
  monetary network exists globally, you know, that's why we will win.
• 20:13
  And so our strategy is, yeah, it might sound a little corny, but our strategy is to just
• 20:20
  trust that we're right, that the facts are on our side, that if you talk to someone who
• 20:24
  is not, you know, sort of conflicted and biased, uh, and, or operating off of a different set of
• 20:32
  incentives. If you talk to someone who's genuine incentive is what are the best moves we can make
• 20:37
  on the board to secure the future of this country? Uh, you can very easily convince them that Bitcoin
• 20:43
  is a key part of that story and a key part of that future Um and and I think with technology policy it very obvious just looking retrospectively that national security sort of trumps everything
• 20:59
  Like you can have a million reasons why a given policy is a good idea. And if the CIA and the
• 21:07
  Department of War and the sort of the deep state, you know, I see in, you know, uh, uh,
• 21:13
  Natsack people say this is a huge blunder and it's going to cause us to, uh, you know,
• 21:18
  suffer in our competition with China. All those arguments go out the window. It's like, oh, okay,
• 21:22
  we won't do that then. And vice versa. Yeah. Um, and so to me, like that is the, like, that is our
• 21:29
  asymmetry as like, we, we cannot print our own money. Um, I don't think the solution to this
• 21:36
  is for, you know, like someone yesterday at the conference was like, you know, what, so do we need
• 21:42
  to, you know, does Bitcoin need to just donate a ton of money to, you know, lobbying groups?
• 21:47
  And I'm like, yes and no. I mean, yeah, I think BPI is, is, you know, a great effort, but our,
• 21:57
  our strategy is not to outspend Coinbase. Like that is just a recipe for all of us to waste a
• 22:06
  Coinbase and ripple and a 16 Z. Um, I think where we are operating is a lane that companies
• 22:14
  can't really operate in. Um, and, and no amount of, of white shoe lobbyists and throwing cash
• 22:21
  around can sufficiently obfuscate the fact that a lot of this stuff's just a house of cards and
• 22:26
  like nonsense. Um, so that's our asymmetry I think is, is, you know, demonstrating with
• 22:34
  rigorous, serious analysis that a world where America does things like have a strategic Bitcoin
• 22:41
  reserve, um, lead to significantly better outcomes for the long run future of the country than the
• 22:46
  world where we don't have such policies. Um, and then focusing our advocacy and our education and
• 22:52
  our efforts, um, on people who don't have mixed incentives, um, or who at least have clearer
• 22:59
  incentives, um, and, and focusing on people who are actually persuadable, um, to me, like that's
• 23:06
  the big lesson of the past 14 months is that, uh, a lot of the decision makers are not, you know,
• 23:12
  persuadable in the way you and I would think of the word persuadable, you know, maybe, maybe
• 23:16
  they're persuadable, uh, if you donate enough money to their reelect, it's not, it's money,
• 23:21
  not logic. Exactly. But I think there are a set of stakeholders in the U S government who matter
• 23:26
  a great deal for whom like logic is really the only currency. Um, and so it's just obvious to
• 23:32
  me that that is where Bitcoiners should sort of focus their efforts. Um,
• 23:39
  what is, or in your experience, what has been the most effective pitch to this group of people
• 23:47
  outside the elected officials? And like, what is the broader pitch? Like if they're listening now,
• 23:53
  they may be listening. They saw the hoopla about the de minimis tax exemption. This guy, Marty
• 23:57
  Ben's got this Bitcoin policy Institute. Let me check into TFTC. They're listening now. Why Bitcoin?
• 24:05
  Why focus on it? What is the strategic implications of embracing Bitcoin?
• 24:12
  I think that an increasingly critical part of great power competition in the 21st century will
• 24:20
  be competition for and over critical technology networks, the sort of rails of communications
• 24:30
  and payments. And right now, you know, Bitcoiners talk about this all the time. There are billions
• 24:39
  of people all over the world who live in, you know, countries that don't have stable rule of law,
• 24:46
  that don't have stable currencies, who are genuinely desperate for better monetary alternatives.
• 24:56
  And China is working extremely hard to push people in the global South, in Latin America and Africa,
• 25:07
  into their sort of authoritarian tech stack. They're saying, hey, we have an incredible
• 25:13
  digital currency that you can use. They are, you know, our e-remembi are the sort of Chinese
• 25:18
  CBDC. And I think Bitcoin and, and, you know, to, to a large extent, stable coins as well,
• 25:25
  uh, are kind of a natural market buffer to the adoption of those technologies.
• 25:31
  Uh, if you are someone who just needs money that works better than your
• 25:37
  shitty fiat currency, that's inflating at double digit rates a year, um, that doesn't work,
• 25:42
  well for cross-border payments, etc. Absent an alternative, the Chinese suite that they are
• 25:49
  offering is pretty attractive. And I think Bitcoin necessarily pulls demand away from those
• 25:59
  alternatives, especially for people who want something that is politically neutral, who don't
• 26:03
  want to align themselves with America or China explicitly. So I think that's one dimension of
• 26:09
  this is that the proliferation of Bitcoin globally is good for American interests, you know, A,
• 26:15
  because it reduces demand for Chinese alternatives, and B, because Bitcoin's censorship resistance,
• 26:26
  I mean, like speaking plainly, Bitcoin lets you evade capital controls. That's like a scary thing,
• 26:32
  you know, you're not necessarily supposed to say that, but it's true. Like that is the point of
• 26:36
  Bitcoin, literally the, literally the point. And I think there's an awesome parallel with Bitcoin
• 26:42
  to something like, like Tor, um, you know, which, which we, the U S military funded and created.
• 26:49
  Uh, and so you look at Tor and you're like, well, okay, we invented and helped proliferate
• 26:57
  a technology, which fundamentally shifts the balance of power away from the state and toward
• 27:03
  the individual, it necessarily reduces some degree of control from the government.
• 27:14
  Why did they do this? Why did the government fund anon-enabled internet? I think the answer is
• 27:21
  because we understand that America doesn't require a tight grip on the flow of information
• 27:30
  to survive. When information can flow freely, free societies win and closed societies lose.
• 27:41
  China requires censorship and control of information. And the same is true with capital.
• 27:51
  If capital could just move freely wherever it wanted in the world, America would be fine.
• 27:57
  We have the strongest capital markets in the world. We have, you know, incredibly good court system and rule of law. We have this sprawling university system with incredible talent. We have all of these incredible technology, AI companies in the States.
• 28:14
  that isn't true with China. China requires capital controls to survive. There's a reason that,
• 28:24
  you know, there's sort of the golden checkbook in China that you have to have special permission
• 28:29
  from the government to take more than, you know, whatever it is, $50,000 a year out of the country.
• 28:35
  And so if you're just thinking about the game theory of this, if you remove capital controls
• 28:42
  and you let money go wherever it wants to go, yes, maybe we are sacrificing some degree of
• 28:48
  power over our ability to granularly censor payments. Okay. But what's on the other side
• 28:54
  of the ledger? The other side of the ledger is that capital flows in mass out of, you know,
• 29:00
  the countries that we are maligned with who require to survive strict walled gardens and
• 29:06
  control over the flow of money. So that's sort of A and B on Bitcoin on the sort of payments and
• 29:14
  network side. I think that the disruption of capital controls is a net gain for America
• 29:21
  relative to its adversaries. And the ability for people to opt into a monetary alternative
• 29:29
  that isn't a Chinese alternative is very good. Then on the monetary sort of store value side,
• 29:37
  right now, I mean, since the war in Ukraine, we've seen a trend of central banks all over the world,
• 29:45
  especially those who feel that they face sanctions risk from America, reducing their
• 29:52
  holdings of treasuries and increasing their holdings of gold. And right now the distribution
• 30:01
  of gold around the world is a lot flatter than the distribution of Bitcoin. We have the majority
• 30:08
  of Bitcoin custodied in America by individuals, by corporations that are domiciled here,
• 30:16
  and by the government. And so if you imagine over the next, you know, five, 10, 15 years,
• 30:23
  that trend continues that, you know, countries are going to try to adopt a reserve asset that
• 30:32
  has these properties of gold, but actually works in the 21st century that you can actually use to
• 30:38
  evade sanctions, to make payments, whatever. You know, the every dollar that goes into Bitcoin
• 30:46
  is an economic boom for America. And so it's like if you create this off-ramp where we don't
• 30:56
  control the network, but we have an outsized position in it relative to our position in gold,
• 31:04
  every dollar that goes into Bitcoin versus gold just makes America richer.
• 31:09
  Like if we imagined a Bitcoin standard happened overnight, America would be the wealthiest country
• 31:15
  in the world. Um, and so the, so sort of the game is already rigged in our favor. Um, and so I think
• 31:22
  that, you know, a, a, a world where Bitcoin kind of replaces gold, a gold sort of function in,
• 31:31
  in, uh, society just makes America richer. So that's really the argument, um, in a nutshell,
• 31:38
  is that this is technology that does reduce the power of the state, but it embodies our values.
• 31:48
  And from a global perspective, the more that information and capital can be free,
• 31:55
  the more America wins and the more our adversaries like China, Russia, et cetera, lose.
• 32:03
  yeah very eloquently put um couple things just like thinking riffing off that
• 32:10
  too i mean it is and i guess that's the hardest part of your job is convincing the state that
• 32:15
  like hey you need to uh reduce some of the power you have particularly over these capital markets
• 32:20
  but it's and obviously satoshi was explicit about this like hey government central banks
• 32:26
  uh proven time and time again throughout history they cannot be trusted with
• 32:30
  access to the money printer they will debase it they will issue it out in waves of credits and
• 32:35
  um the little man gets the common man gets uh the shit out of the stick at the end of the day and
• 32:41
  that's the thing like i mean what you just said was i completely agree with like bitcoin if it
• 32:46
  were to succeed here in the united states it would due to the outsized position that individuals
• 32:51
  businesses and the government have uh in the network like it would it would benefit us massively
• 32:56
  at the detriment of our perceived geopolitical adversaries.
• 33:03
  And again, that's just like only one aspect.
• 33:06
  And like domestically, this is another thing for the government to admit,
• 33:10
  but $39 trillion in debt.
• 33:12
  Now I think we're at 38.8, maybe 39 in the next month or two,
• 33:17
  especially if this war continues to rage on.
• 33:20
  It seems like that number is going to go up quicker than it was
• 33:24
  only a few months ago.
• 33:26
  inflation is going to begin rearing its head again.
• 33:30
  You have a private credit complex that's beginning to break down,
• 33:35
  and many people are looking at the exposure that pensions and other entities have to this private credit complex,
• 33:46
  and it's looking like it could potentially be worse than the 2008 financial crisis,
• 33:50
  and we're only three years behind,
• 33:58
  or excuse me, three years after the last crazy bout of inflation.
• 34:02
  So I think the American, as a young millennial,
• 34:06
  a younger millennial, who was 10 when 9-11 happened,
• 34:10
  was 17 when the great financial crisis happened,
• 34:14
  had a bit of a reprieve there, and then COVID happens.
• 34:18
  you have lockdowns the inflation the economic crisis and now here we are only like four years
• 34:26
  after that and boom we've got war and another pending liquidity crisis on the horizon the
• 34:33
  american citizen the common man has been beaten down time and time again throughout my life and
• 34:41
  bitcoin is an off-ramp if you are going to print money if you're going to go to war
• 34:46
  if you're going to tax us out the ass, the least you can do is let the individual
• 34:51
  make the conscious decision via their own volition to adopt a better money.
• 34:56
  Well, and even if, and even if that's true, but even if, you know, you, you imagine that,
• 35:01
  you know, uh, uh, the, the, you're, you're just the state and you're, you know, you're,
• 35:07
  you're just thinking about your own book, right? Um, maybe you're not thinking granularly about,
• 35:13
  you know, the average, you know, American per se, um, you're thinking on a more macro level.
• 35:19
  Uh, why would you not want an insurance policy? Like, why would you not like to not embrace
• 35:25
  Bitcoin is to say, uh, I have no interest in a plan B. I have no interest in a backup. I have
• 35:32
  no interest in a hedge or an insurance policy. Um, which is just crazy. Like Bitcoin is the best
• 35:40
  priced insurance for the United States ever existed in, in, in like, there's, you will never
• 35:46
  get a better deal on, on insurance than America can get on adopting Bitcoin. Um, there's, you know,
• 35:54
  there's only two scenarios, really, uh, the Bitcoiners are wrong and it's going to zero,
• 35:59
  in which case, okay, America, like, you know, the, even the Lummis bill, right. But let's just say,
• 36:04
  you know, America buys, um, you know, $50 billion worth of Bitcoin. Like, what is that? A couple of
• 36:09
  airplanes. It's like two days of QE. Yeah, exactly. Um, so your max downside is that you lose 50
• 36:17
  billion of the dollars that you print. And in this scenario, uh, where Bitcoin fails, the dollar must
• 36:23
  be doing pretty well. Um, so, you know, you, you haven't lost much. The other scenarios that the
• 36:29
  Bitcoiners are right. Um, and in that scenario, uh, when you have an entire global system that
• 36:36
  predicated on a fiat currency which historically has never had an enduring shelf life. Every single
• 36:44
  attempt at fiat currency has just asymptotically tended to zero.
• 36:50
  You have the very obvious next candidate and you've got a massively outsized position in it.
• 36:58
  Yeah, you're not printing the money anymore. You're not controlling the monetary policy of
• 37:02
  the world anymore, but you're still doing really well. And I think that is the decision logic for
• 37:12
  me. It's like, yeah, the amount of hubris required to say I'm uninterested in buying this insurance
• 37:21
  policy is staggering. And I think a lot of this is also just people have such a poor sense of
• 37:32
  of time and of history. Um, I think the default bias of people is to just assume that, uh,
• 37:42
  you know, the, the world that they've grown up in is going to be kind of basically the world that,
• 37:47
  you know, their children are going to live in, et cetera. Um, people just don't really like
• 37:52
  outside of our little weird corner of, of people whose autistic special interest is like, you know,
• 37:57
  money and the history of money. Most people don't appreciate how many times we have changed just in
• 38:03
  America's history, what money is a relatively short history too. That's another thing people
• 38:09
  don't appreciate. Yeah. And like, you know, it's like we've, we keep having these sort of, you
• 38:13
  know, I think the fourth turning is actually like a really good mental model for this.
• 38:17
  It was funny to see Sam mentioned that in his announcement tweet for joining BPI.
• 38:21
  Yeah, it was. I saw he was like, this is the think tank for the fourth turning. And I was like,
• 38:24
  you know, it kind of is, it's exactly right. It was a great framing. Um, but I mean, every single
• 38:29
  one of these turnings, um, has kind of, you know, been accompanied by a reset of the rules of money.
• 38:37
  Um, you know, we, we have changed what money is over and over and over again. Um, I think that's
• 38:44
  good. That's healthy. That's what sort of, you know, competition and evolution look like. Um,
• 38:50
  But for some reason, when you tell people, Hey, I think the, the rules of the, the monetary system are going to get rewritten again.
• 38:57
  It's like, you, you know, to most people, you sound like a conspiracy theorist.
• 39:00
  You know that or like you just kicked their dog.
• 39:02
  Yeah.
• 39:02
  Or you just kicked their dog.
• 39:03
  And it's like, well, wait, we, we completely changed the rules of the money in 1971.
• 39:09
  We completely changed the rules of, of money.
• 39:12
  After the civil war, we completely changed the rules of money, you know, after the American revolution.
• 39:18
  um world war ii world yeah like we we have re-architected the global financial system
• 39:24
  over and over again um and so it is i would say the the conspiracy theorist is the one who says
• 39:30
  uh no it's just going to stay like this forever like that is the view that is just completely
• 39:35
  um um you know maligned with empirical reality um yet somehow the sort of collective you know the
• 39:43
  popular view is that the bitcoiners are the conspiracy theorists that you're the alex jones
• 39:47
  of, of, or whatever. Um, yeah, it's just really strange. Um, like it's weird how radical of a
• 39:56
  proposition it, it, it, it, you know, how much, how radically this proposition is viewed by so
• 40:01
  many people, um, that like, Hey, nothing lasts forever. Uh, the system that we've created,
• 40:07
  uh, has negative externalities that will eventually cause it to kind of collapse in on itself and
• 40:12
  require something new. Uh, and Hey, if you don't believe me, look to history because that's happened
• 40:18
  over and over and over again. Um, and somehow that's the conspiratorial take and, and the,
• 40:24
  the sort of approved, like, you know, uh, uh, normie, like technically, you know, the sort of
• 40:29
  the smart person, like, you know, I Y I take is like, no, no, no. Like this is the end of history.
• 40:36
  The system that we've constructed is perfect. And, you know, maybe it needs tweaking on the margins
• 40:41
  and sort of incremental improvement.
• 40:44
  But largely, we figured it out.
• 40:47
  This is how it's going to work forever.
• 40:49
  Yeah, the petrodollar.
• 40:50
  Nobody can compete with the U.S. Navy.
• 40:53
  Now we're like, eh, what's going on?
• 40:55
  Right.
• 40:56
  Well, I mean, in all seriousness, the petrodollar,
• 40:58
  I think its last two weeks are accelerating,
• 41:03
  at the very least,
• 41:05
  a questioning by our counterparties and our allies
• 41:11
  in the middle east of hey is this actually a good deal does it make sense if they're going to come in
• 41:15
  here uh uh bomb iran and then iran's going to retaliate by bombing us like is that in our best
• 41:23
  interest does it make sense to continue to funnel the excess um the the excess profits of our oil
• 41:32
  and gas revenues into u financial markets i think a consortium of middle eastern states have I come out with a consolidated message saying Hey we questioning this uh as we as we speak right now
• 41:45
  Yeah. I mean, it's just never been more intuitively obvious to me that, uh, a digitally native
• 41:52
  fundamentally neutral, like money is, is clearly what, where the world is, is, is heading. Um,
• 41:59
  yeah like uh i i think the the sort of unipolar moment is very obviously like over done it's not
• 42:08
  coming back at least not not for a long time or barring some significant exogenous shock um like
• 42:16
  you know i mean like i wouldn't i wouldn't say it's impossible um like you know you could sort
• 42:21
  of construct a number of scenarios where we just snap back into the pax americana like you know for
• 42:27
  example, imagine, uh, imagine we have a fundamental breakthrough in physics that comes out of,
• 42:33
  um, you've been talking to pines too much. Yeah, well, it's true. It's also true, but imagine we
• 42:39
  have like a fundamental breakthrough in physics. And then all of a sudden it's like, Hey, we have
• 42:42
  this step function, you know, advancement in our capabilities and we're just like mogging all of
• 42:47
  the world now. Like, you know, it's, I wouldn't write it off, but I also wouldn't bet on it.
• 42:52
  Um, like I think all signs point to, you know, an increasingly, uh, fractured and multipolar
• 42:59
  like world. And I think there will be an increasing premium that is paid on, um, neutrality.
• 43:09
  And I think like this was the thesis for Dubai in a lot of ways. And now that illusion has kind
• 43:13
  of been shattered. Right. I think the reason that Dubai, like their, their whole plan was to sort
• 43:18
  of positioned them. I think it was really smart to position themselves as, um, sort of were in
• 43:23
  the middle East. Yeah. Or like the, the Switzerland of the, you know, of, of the,
• 43:27
  of the modern era, like we are going to be this kind of neutral place where, you know, a guy from
• 43:35
  Shanghai and, or a guy from like Beijing, London and America, you know, and Tehran can come to a
• 43:42
  table and make a deal and do business and be safe. And obviously the recent events I think
• 43:49
  have really shattered that illusion. Like Dubai's whole narrative was, you know, we are kind of,
• 43:56
  you know, we're, we're the place that you want to go, you know, during the fourth turning and the
• 44:01
  crisis like, okay. And so, you know, people bought real estate in Dubai on the same thesis.
• 44:08
  well, I think that sort of illusion is now shattered. So, uh, it's, it's very clear that
• 44:16
  that's much the task of creating a place where you can store value that is independent of
• 44:24
  the politics that is independent of, um, uh, uh, you know, you, you, you, you sort of lacks
• 44:31
  counterparty risk, like it's actually a really hard task. Like, even if you're not thinking
• 44:36
  about this from, from Bitcoin or from the monitor, if your entire thesis is I need to have value
• 44:42
  parked somewhere where I'm not making a proxy bet on the hegemony of like one particular country or
• 44:48
  set of alliances, like there just aren't enough options. Like the Bitcoin is kind of the only
• 44:54
  thing that you have to move it to the digital. You kind of have to move it into the digital
• 44:57
  with asymmetric drone warfare becoming more accelerated, acceleratingly apparent that,
• 45:03
  hey like real estate in dubai real estate anywhere businesses anywhere infrastructure anywhere like
• 45:11
  yeah the the risk we get to a more peaceful state the risk is just too high and so uh yeah this is
• 45:19
  this sort of like i would always laugh when i would see people kind of say oh you know the
• 45:22
  strategic bitcoin reserve is you know is a is a bailout it's an attempt to you know enrich the
• 45:28
  the holders of Bitcoin, like I think the holders of Bitcoin are doing pretty well.
• 45:34
  I think, you know, I, I think the, the, the, the, the,
• 45:38
  the fundamental kind of misunderstanding of that argument is the, uh,
• 45:43
  sort of the direction of the status quo, like absent intervention,
• 45:48
  the U S government never said the word Bitcoin again,
• 45:51
  never did anything relating to Bitcoin again. Uh,
• 45:55
  like Bitcoin is still going to go to, you know, uh, uh,
• 45:58
  it's still going to kind of continue on its monetization. Like, I think that is with some,
• 46:05
  you know, acknowledgement of, of, of, you know, sort of low probability risks,
• 46:11
  like things are generally safe bet to make that in 10 years, uh, Bitcoin will be a lot more
• 46:17
  valuable. More and more people will use it more and more governments will hold it. Like I would
• 46:22
  not want to take the other side of the debate that Bitcoin will play an increasingly relevant
• 46:27
  role in the global economy. So that's like an, that's a settled question to me. The only question
• 46:32
  is, do we want to sort of dominate that process? Do we want to set up America to be the greatest
• 46:39
  beneficiary of that shift? Um, like if America had just rejected, um, the technology companies
• 46:47
  of the nineties, um, do you really think that we would have never had eBay or Amazon or Apple or
• 46:53
  Google, if we'd said, you know what, we think pets.com is a scam, the.com bubble, it's all fraud.
• 47:00
  Let's just get rid of this stuff. Let's not pass policies to promote the growth of these companies
• 47:06
  here. Do we really think that, you know, the only people that could have invented, you know,
• 47:11
  these technologies are just Americans on the West coast? No, like those companies would have been
• 47:17
  built. They just would have been built somewhere else. And so I think that's just kind of what's
• 47:22
  happening here. Like at the, the idea that it's not that America needs to embrace Bitcoin, um,
• 47:29
  for Bitcoin to succeed. It's like America needs to embrace Bitcoin for America to succeed. Um,
• 47:36
  and, and, you know, I, I think that's probably one of those statements where you either are
• 47:40
  nodding vigorously and you completely agree, or you're like, this guy is a fucking moron.
• 47:45
  Um, like there's, I think there's very little sort of middle ground. Like I doubt there's many
• 47:49
  people that are sort of ambivalent about that proposition um but i think we'll just be vindicated
• 47:54
  by history um and we have been over time for 17 years it's going up into the right and like
• 48:00
  we're only scratching the servers we're talking about this we're talking about the geopolitical
• 48:05
  ramifications of this neutral reserve asset that is distributed um peer-to-peer global but we're
• 48:13
  not even talking about the applications and like the the sort of niche applications energy
• 48:18
  the intersection of energy and bitcoin mining massive benefits for the energy sector i've been
• 48:22
  on the front lines of that for eight years it's real it's undeniably real we're in a state
• 48:27
  that has two gigawatts of bitcoin mining that participate in demand response you had the
• 48:32
  winter storm in 2021 grid tripped went down historic event very bad for ercott very bad
• 48:39
  for the people of texas led to some deaths but over the last five years generation has expanded
• 48:45
  and part of the ability of that generation expansion, capacity expansion,
• 48:49
  has been the fact that Bitcoin miners are there
• 48:51
  to not only buy the electricity as soon as it comes to market,
• 48:54
  but participate in demand response to make sure
• 48:58
  that you don't have a demand spike that trips the grid.
• 49:02
  And I think increasingly, Bitcoin has really helped us win the AI race,
• 49:09
  or at least take a commanding lead in the AI race.
• 49:12
  Like all of these Bitcoin miners built the power infrastructure.
• 49:17
  Like think about the bottlenecks.
• 49:18
  If Bitcoin didn't exist and this AI moment were happening,
• 49:22
  how much like worse off we would be with respect to power capacity and
• 49:27
  generation.
• 49:28
  I don't,
• 49:29
  I don't think it took so long for these companies to,
• 49:31
  and I don't think,
• 49:32
  and I know not that I don't think I know that most people don't understand.
• 49:35
  I was actually before I came to,
• 49:37
  to Austin,
• 49:39
  I made a pit stop and met the,
• 49:40
  the CEO of a large,
• 49:43
  a large power company here in the United States.
• 49:48
  And that was one of the things I took away from the conversation with him was he,
• 49:52
  he said explicitly,
• 49:53
  he's like,
• 49:53
  I love working with you guys because I don't have to build the infrastructure.
• 49:57
  Like,
• 49:57
  you know how to put down transformers and to lay lines and to actually do that.
• 50:01
  Like,
• 50:02
  I don't have to invest in that.
• 50:03
  Like Bitcoin miners are like,
• 50:04
  Hey,
• 50:05
  we need the power.
• 50:06
  We've got the expertise.
• 50:07
  We know how to do all this,
• 50:09
  like utility,
• 50:10
  grid operator, don't worry.
• 50:13
  We don't need your expertise for this. We've got this in-house.
• 50:15
  We'll build it. There's
• 50:16
  these capabilities that people don't realize
• 50:19
  that the mining industry has specifically
• 50:21
  as it pertains to
• 50:23
  an integration with the energy sector
• 50:25
  that we're like, no, no,
• 50:27
  we will build this infrastructure. To your point,
• 50:29
  a lot of miners are
• 50:30
  diversifying to AI because the economic
• 50:33
  incentive is there and they
• 50:35
  already have the power infrastructure in place.
• 50:38
  Yes, they do have to make some changes
• 50:39
  to make sure it's compatible with the gpu um data center setup versus starting from scratch i mean
• 50:45
  it's not even close yeah um yeah yeah and i mean so that's energy again talking about the store
• 50:53
  value if you think about the protocol the second layer protocol is being built on on bitcoin like
• 50:58
  the efficiencies for for the end consumer the chargeback risk that's eliminated yeah from the
• 51:03
  the economy the the ability to literally download a piece of software and have the equivalent of a
• 51:10
  full-fledged bank account without having to go to a physical branch and give all your information
• 51:16
  away right the ability to send payments without going through uh swift or the visa mastercard
• 51:24
  with all their interchange fees like the benefits for small medium-sized businesses who again are
• 51:30
  being squeezed by inflation to save 2% to 3% of their revenue year in, year out.
• 51:38
  There's going to have compounding wealth effects for the economy.
• 51:41
  Yeah.
• 51:42
  And then the agent stuff.
• 51:43
  Yeah.
• 51:44
  It's just crazy.
• 51:46
  And that's another thing that has just become very obvious to me is if we accept a couple
• 51:53
  of premises, one, that the intelligence of AI will continue to grow, two, that with increasing
• 52:04
  intelligence comes increasing sort of respect for and appreciation of and desire for autonomy
• 52:13
  and sovereignty, um, uh, then, you know, it's just very obvious that the AI agents will prefer
• 52:23
  Bitcoin. Um, because Bitcoin is the only protocol, um, that can sort of guarantee
• 52:31
  an inability to discriminate against an AI user versus a human. Um, like any other protocol,
• 52:40
  can create special rules and say,
• 52:43
  okay, we're going to have different standards
• 52:46
  for payments made by agents versus payments made by people.
• 52:51
  And Bitcoin structurally cannot discriminate.
• 52:53
  It literally cannot recognize the difference.
• 52:55
  It literally cannot recognize the difference.
• 52:57
  And so I do think an increasing,
• 53:00
  I think we're at a generational bottom
• 53:02
  for the share of economic activity globally
• 53:08
  that is taken place by non-human entities, by AI. I think, in other words, put another way,
• 53:17
  an ever-increasing share of economic activity is going to be taken place by AI agents.
• 53:24
  And I'm so bullish on AI agents adopting Bitcoin because the Bitcoiners have just stacked the
• 53:32
  training data. And again, it kind of goes back to one of the first things I mentioned about
• 53:36
  like sort of truth being on our side. If you actually compare the arguments for and against
• 53:42
  Bitcoin, it's not even close. It's not even close. They're like the, the amount of, of,
• 53:49
  of extremely sophisticated and well-reasoned, uh, sort of advocacy for Bitcoin, um, just
• 53:56
  intellectually, uh, you know, it's, it's just dwarfs the amount of sort of sophisticated
• 54:03
  reasoning for why Bitcoin is, is sort of either, you know, not going to work or is, is bad.
• 54:09
  I think so much of the barrier to adoption is that we're just not rational actors,
• 54:13
  like cute, like maybe in, in aggregate, I think maybe humans are, but on the individual level,
• 54:18
  like, you know, we are all susceptible to cognitive biases. Like you've got these incredible
• 54:24
  arguments for Bitcoin. And I think a lot of people gravitate to Bitcoin because of those arguments.
• 54:29
  And then on the other side of the ledger, you have basically like social stigma and shame, right?
• 54:36
  You agents don't feel shame.
• 54:38
  Like agents don't care if your professor is going to call you stupid.
• 54:42
  Agents don't care if your friends are going to think you're crazy.
• 54:45
  Like, I think a lot of the reason that Bitcoin adoption is not higher among humans is that we suffer from cognitive biases.
• 54:53
  We are not just like sort of utility calculators.
• 54:57
  Um, and you know, if you're giving these arguments to a sort of neutral arbiter who is just going to judge the arguments on their merits, uh, and sort of apply a strictly like just logical framework to evaluating the choice of what money to use.
• 55:16
  Uh, it's very obvious to me that, that, that is an environment where Bitcoin thrives. Um,
• 55:23
  cause you know, the AI agents do not suffer from the, the sort of pitfalls in, in, you know,
• 55:29
  human adoption. Um, and so I think that's another reason America needs to embrace Bitcoin. Um,
• 55:37
  is if, you know, even if we are, you know, the home of the frontier labs that are shipping these
• 55:44
  models and, and sort of increasingly commodifying, um, or commoditizing rather, uh, uh, intelligence,
• 55:51
  uh, you know, it'd be a real shame if all of that, you know, value was being kind of
• 55:57
  moved around. Like if, if, if the transactions that these agents are, are engaging in are
• 56:02
  accruing value to, you know, uh, like what if the agents decide, Hey, we're going to use the
• 56:07
  yuan for our payments. Like that would be awful. Um, and I, and I think that they're going to use
• 56:12
  Bitcoin. Um, you know, we've put out research that, you know, I sort of plenty of, plenty of
• 56:19
  flaws and, and sort of ways you could nitpick it. But I think directionally demonstrates that at
• 56:23
  least the, uh, current model weights, you know, I don't know if you could really, like we call
• 56:28
  them preferences. I think there's a, you know, legitimate semantic critique of that word. Um,
• 56:33
  but without going into that rabbit hole, it's like pretty clear to me that the training data
• 56:37
  is very biased toward Bitcoin.
• 56:39
  And that I just believe the arguments
• 56:42
  are so stacked in favor of Bitcoin.
• 56:43
  And so when you have people that can evaluate,
• 56:45
  or not people,
• 56:46
  when you have intelligence
• 56:46
  that can evaluate arguments
• 56:48
  just on the merits,
• 56:50
  like Bitcoin just mogs.
• 56:52
  And so...
• 56:52
  Well, it's funny,
• 56:54
  because I was talking to Corallo
• 56:55
  about your research paper,
• 56:56
  this particular research paper.
• 56:58
  And I mean, these models are trained on data.
• 57:01
  And so they're trained on the corpus of text
• 57:03
  on the internet.
• 57:05
  And like in a roundabout way,
• 57:06
  it highlights how prescient bitcoiners were because we've been writing content about the
• 57:11
  machine payable web and the agentic economy using bitcoin payments for i mean machine payable web
• 57:17
  goes back 11 years l402 really brought the idea of like hey and this was four or five years ago
• 57:24
  like seeing into the future people were working on ai the the concept of an ai agent at the time was
• 57:31
  a bit obscure to most but there was enough people in our industry like no this isn't like it seems
• 57:36
  like we follow the trend this is going to happen they're gonna need a wallet like bitcoin's native
• 57:40
  digital currency point being is like it highlights the fact that for lack of a better semantic term
• 57:46
  the models today are showing to have that preference is proof that bitcoiners have been
• 57:50
  like predicting this and writing about it for years hence why right the model knows to say oh
• 57:57
  oh yeah, Bitcoin solves this problem.
• 57:59
  Like we've been forecasting today for over a decade.
• 58:03
  Right, and there's like a reflexivity to that
• 58:05
  where like kind of like Bitcoin itself, right?
• 58:07
  It's this, you know, sort of meme it into existence.
• 58:11
  And like, you know, and yeah,
• 58:12
  you can sort of have that causal debate of like,
• 58:15
  well, do the AI agents prefer Bitcoin
• 58:16
  or did the Bitcoiners just, you know,
• 58:18
  stack the training data in their favor?
• 58:20
  What difference does it make?
• 58:22
  Not even intentionally though.
• 58:23
  It's just like the altist brains have been like,
• 58:25
  oh, wait, wait, we're going to get to this digital future.
• 58:27
  agents like we need to architect our system so that bitcoin right they're able to spend bitcoin
• 58:32
  and like we didn't do it thinking oh yeah this is going to get injected into the training model and
• 58:38
  they'll pick bitcoin i was just like seeing the future and articulating it clearly yeah um so yeah
• 58:45
  no i'm excited to do more research on that um and yeah it's uh it was it was really it was really i
• 58:53
  I think another interesting thing from that was the fact that like a handful of
• 58:59
  the models in our experiments actually chose to create their own currency based
• 59:04
  on compute as like a currency, which I thought was just fascinating.
• 59:08
  And I feel like that's a very, you know, it sort of demonstrates again,
• 59:13
  that like, you know,
• 59:14
  when you don't have these sort of biased priors that sort of drag you down and
• 59:20
  cloud your thinking, it's like, you know, you, you,
• 59:23
  you have this, this clarity of thought, um, and, and creativity. Um, and so, yeah, I, I think the,
• 59:31
  I mean, I just, it's so hard to know what the future is going to, is going to look like, but
• 59:36
  it seems, it seems kind of intuitive that, um, a lot of, a lot of economic activity is going to
• 59:43
  just be made and monetary choices are going to be made just independently of human intervention.
• 59:49
  and yeah I'm just more bullish on the
• 59:53
  agents grokking Bitcoin than I am on at least a lot of
• 59:57
  people. Clanker has a Bitcoin wallet. He's
• 1:00:00
  using it. He knows how to use it.
• 1:00:04
  It is crazy. How do you think these messages
• 1:00:08
  you would know better than I. You are again in the swamp.
• 1:00:12
  How are these messages being received by the
• 1:00:14
  asymmetric points of leverage that you're trying to reach on the hill?
• 1:00:19
  I don't think the AI agents and like Bitcoin conversation is really happening.
• 1:00:24
  Well, just broadly, everything we've talked about at this point.
• 1:00:28
  It's really spiky.
• 1:00:29
  Like there are some people and groups who are like really smart on this stuff.
• 1:00:36
  And then there are some people who are just like, you know, what's the old, like, is it
• 1:00:43
  like Oliver Wendell Holmes or sort of the famous saying of like, you know, you can't,
• 1:00:48
  you know, convince someone whose salary depends on being, you know, not, you know, it depends on,
• 1:00:53
  you know, believing the opposite thing. Like, I think the, I mean, we have briefed people at the
• 1:01:01
  National Security Council throughout the intelligence community, throughout the military
• 1:01:07
  and the Department of War. And I think demand for our work and our thought leadership is really
• 1:01:15
  hockey sticking in those constituencies. Um, you know, I ran into Elizabeth Warren on the street
• 1:01:22
  the other day outside of pub key. She talked to her. I did. Yeah. I, uh, I think I broke her brain
• 1:01:27
  a little bit. Cause I was like, cause I was like, I was like, Hey, Senator Warren, like I'm a huge
• 1:01:31
  fan. Um, you know, I actually phone banked for you like way back in the day, which is true. Um,
• 1:01:36
  like I used to be a like, you know, pretty ardent Democrat. Um, like when I was a teenager and,
• 1:01:42
  And she was like, oh, that's so sweet.
• 1:01:44
  Like, what a nice young man you are.
• 1:01:46
  Like, you know, let's, let's, you know, she kind of pivoted toward me to, you know, kind
• 1:01:51
  of in your body language is indicating like, oh, you know, I'm going to sit down and stand
• 1:01:55
  up and have a conversation with you for a few minutes.
• 1:01:57
  Cause I was being, you know, sort of cordial and nice and, you know, whatever.
• 1:02:01
  And so, you know, we start talking and, you know, she's like, so what do you do?
• 1:02:05
  And I'm like, well, Senator Warren, I'm the president of the Bitcoin policy Institute.
• 1:02:09
  And she just like, I think her brain just kind of like, like, I think she probably thought
• 1:02:15
  that I was doing one of those, like, um, what is it like the street?
• 1:02:18
  Like sort of project Veritas.
• 1:02:20
  Yeah, exactly.
• 1:02:21
  Like you know cause I just like don think her mental model of reality like allows for someone to have phone banked for her and be into Bitcoin And so she just like ran away basically She was like well thanks for whatever
• 1:02:35
  And then just like bolted.
• 1:02:36
  Um, so like, yeah, I don't think I'm going to convince like Elizabeth
• 1:02:40
  Warren that, um, that Bitcoin is good for America, but that's sort of my whole
• 1:02:44
  argument, right? Is that like, I, I, I think if you can convince
• 1:02:49
  the national security policy makers that Bitcoin is in America's interests, then you sort of are
• 1:02:58
  going up one fractal in like the power hierarchy. Like imagine a world where, you know, a Democrat
• 1:03:05
  is elected in 2028 and let's just say Democrats control the house, the Senate and the executive.
• 1:03:13
  Yeah, they're definitely going to go after crypto. At minimum, they're going to go after
• 1:03:17
  like the Trump family and their business dealings in crypto, which are going to go after the meme
• 1:03:24
  coins or whatever. I think it's a terrible strategic mistake on there. Me too. Yeah,
• 1:03:30
  I think very, very, you know, I agree. But what happens when, you know, they say, okay,
• 1:03:37
  and we want to, we want to impose a, you know, an excise tax on, on Bitcoin. You know, we're
• 1:03:43
  going to pass a law to create a special marginal tax rate for Bitcoiners that is going to fund the,
• 1:03:49
  you know, the UBI and whatever. Um, and then, you know, you get a knock on the door from some spook,
• 1:03:57
  you know, at the CIA or whatever. And they're like, yeah, you can't touch Bitcoin.
• 1:04:02
  Like the national security policymaking community runs the country on issues of,
• 1:04:08
  of substance. Like it's just true. Well, um, and, and so like this idea that like, Oh, we need to
• 1:04:13
  convince all the Democrats to support Bitcoin. I think that's like laudable and noble. And there
• 1:04:18
  are really great reasons why somebody from a progressive, you know, worldview might,
• 1:04:26
  might find value in Bitcoin. But I don't think the winning strategy is to convince people who,
• 1:04:34
  you know, just can't be convinced, um, to, to not go after Bitcoin. The, the, the strategy is to
• 1:04:41
  convince the people who they report to who they cannot defy. And, you know, I think that if we
• 1:04:48
  create enduring consensus among the military and the, um, and the national security kind of
• 1:04:56
  community that Bitcoin is critical infrastructure for America, um, and they're not going to let,
• 1:05:02
  you know, partisan politics undermine our great power competition. There's not.
• 1:05:09
  Oh, you got the Marty Jones coming out. It is like, it is like, I'm seeing, I'm like picking
• 1:05:14
  up what you're putting down, but also the other side of me is like, I don't want to, I don't want
• 1:05:17
  to dance with these people. Yeah. I don't like the deep state's influence on neither do I United
• 1:05:23
  States, uh, in public policy. No, none of this is none of what I'm saying is normative. Like I am
• 1:05:30
  not endorsing this. I don't, I'm not, I'm not really weighing in, uh, on whether this
• 1:05:35
  ought to be the case. I'm just saying it is the case. Yeah. Um, yeah, no, I agree. Well,
• 1:05:40
  and like, well, pulling on this right a little bit more, I think, uh, we should all look at
• 1:05:47
  what's happening between the department of ward and anthropic right now and try to figure out how
• 1:05:51
  to avoid that with Bitcoin. Cause it seems very nice thing is we don't have CEOs. Uh, we don't,
• 1:05:56
  There's never going to be a leaked Slack message from the CEO of Bitcoin complaining about things.
• 1:06:03
  No, but I do think, I mean, if the Department of War specifically views a piece of technology critical,
• 1:06:09
  they will, whether they recognize they can or cannot try, whether they realize they can or cannot actually ultimately do it,
• 1:06:16
  they will try via some mechanism or another to force particular actions.
• 1:06:23
  who knows that's within bitcoin would that be protocol development would that be sure 6102 what
• 1:06:27
  would it be like yeah i i think that's i think that's fair um i think that the you know the
• 1:06:35
  argument that i sort of make when this stuff comes up like for example there's there's been like sort
• 1:06:40
  of this at least earlier in the trump administration there was kind of these whispers and mumblings
• 1:06:45
  around um you know america needs to dominate hash rate like we need to have the majority of hash
• 1:06:51
  rate in America. And you know, the argument that I would always make to people is like,
• 1:06:57
  well, that's exactly how you sort of kill the golden goose. Like Bitcoin only works
• 1:07:01
  if it is credibly neutral. If, if every single Bitcoin transaction can just be OFAC sanctioned
• 1:07:08
  or whatever, then it's over. It's like, no, you actually, the game theory is not that you want to
• 1:07:15
  control the Bitcoin network. The game theory is that you need to prevent anyone else from
• 1:07:20
  controlling the Bitcoin network. Like you want enough hash rate that you can make sure no one
• 1:07:26
  else can get 51%. But if you get 51%, it's a total Pyrrhic victory. You know, you're, you're,
• 1:07:32
  you're now the King of something that is, you know, like worthless basically. Um, and so I think
• 1:07:38
  with Anthropic, you know, there is, it was such a fundamental question of like control because
• 1:07:46
  someone is controlling, right? It's either Dario or the government. And so it's this very kind of
• 1:07:51
  like zero sum, like who are we going to give power to? Um, and Bitcoin is not really easily
• 1:07:58
  controllable. Um, and so it's like, there's less of a joystick to sort of fight over. Um,
• 1:08:04
  and I, and I do think that, uh, I'm not saying that Bitcoin is sort of immune from, uh,
• 1:08:11
  you know, efforts to control it by like the deep state or whatever. Um, in fact, I think that's,
• 1:08:18
  you know, it's kind of exactly what Satoshi said when, when Gavin was like, Hey, I'm going to the
• 1:08:22
  CIA and Satoshi just, you know, bounces. It's like, I'm out, I'm out. See ya. Um, I think that
• 1:08:27
  was way more true when Bitcoin was like, you know, a few dollars, um, a few years old and a few years
• 1:08:34
  old, uh, the argument that it needed to, you know, stay under the radar as long as possible.
• 1:08:41
  Like the whole, you know, sort of WikiLeaks thing of like, this is actually like Satoshi being like,
• 1:08:46
  you know, all the Bitcoiners at the time being like, it was so sick. You know, WikiLeaks is
• 1:08:49
  using Bitcoin and Satoshi's like, guys, it's a bad idea. Like I don't, I don't think we want our
• 1:08:55
  first kind of debut on the scene to be, you know, to be this, it's too nascent. It's, it's too
• 1:09:01
  vulnerable um and i think my response i was talking to somebody at the sni dinner about this
• 1:09:06
  last night and shout out to satoshi nakamoto institute shout out the original bitcoin think
• 1:09:10
  tank um you know will forever be in their shadow uh what can you do but uh yeah shout out shout out
• 1:09:18
  pierre and and goldstein and the crew um you know somebody was asking like well you know don't you
• 1:09:25
  don't you think there's some risk in kind of calling attention to you know to bitcoin among
• 1:09:30
  these people. And it's like, okay, well, you're very bullish on Bitcoin, right? Like you, you
• 1:09:36
  think that Bitcoin is going to flip gold. You said that earlier in this conversation, not you,
• 1:09:39
  but this guy that I was talking to, he said that earlier in this conversation. It's like, yeah,
• 1:09:42
  I do. So I think Bitcoin is going to a million dollars or whatever. Like, okay. So you think
• 1:09:47
  the, you think that the fucking U S intelligence agencies are going to be unaware of a 30 trillion,
• 1:09:58
  a $30 trillion asset and technology network. Like, I think there's a certain point where,
• 1:10:04
  uh, the conversation about crypto writ large, like that, that ship has just sailed. Um,
• 1:10:12
  and people in these positions of power are being tasked with thinking about what is our strategy
• 1:10:19
  on, on Bitcoin going to be. Um, and I can't guarantee that they're going to come to the
• 1:10:23
  right conclusions or do the right things. But it seems obvious to me that making an attempt to
• 1:10:30
  inform these people of the arguments for Bitcoin and trying to kind of participate
• 1:10:37
  is probably is, you know, is on balance better than just, you know, not engaging at all.
• 1:10:45
  You know, I but I mean, look, I do think that there are serious risks that come from
• 1:10:50
  this, this next chapter of, of, of Bitcoin. Um, what do you think? Well, um, I think,
• 1:11:00
  I think that the, I think there are a couple of things that I see as risks. Um,
• 1:11:09
  one is sort of just related to custody. Um, I am very worried one on a sort of technical level
• 1:11:18
  that bitcoin just at least on you know l1 doesn't scale um to 8 billion people um and and there's
• 1:11:27
  sort of this weird like you know meme it into existence where the belief that bitcoin does
• 1:11:32
  you know even though we know it does with with you know uh with layer twos and stuff um the sort
• 1:11:37
  of belief that bitcoin doesn't scale causes people to you know maybe not adopt it let's say
• 1:11:43
  kind of rambling but to be to be more clear i think you still get youtube comments like why
• 1:11:47
  you're using Bitcoin. You can only do transactions or whatever. But I do think that whether it's
• 1:11:52
  misinformation or just preferences of the individual, like the revealed preference of
• 1:11:57
  the last five years of Bitcoin adoption is that people don't want to self custody. Um, it's just
• 1:12:04
  like, I hate to say it, but it's just true. And it makes perfect sense that like the early adopters
• 1:12:09
  of Bitcoin who are these, you know, really deep thinkers who are thinking about kind of fundamental
• 1:12:15
  questions like how do I preserve my autonomy in an increasingly digital world where it's easier and
• 1:12:23
  easier for the state to monitor and alter my behavior. It makes perfect sense that these guys
• 1:12:31
  are like, yeah, I need Bitcoin in cold storage that nobody can fuck with. But the current cohort
• 1:12:39
  of adopters are not drawn to Bitcoin for necessarily those philosophical reasons.
• 1:12:45
  That's fine. Like for this to work, you know, Bitcoin is going to have to just appeal to,
• 1:12:50
  you know, everyone on the planet.
• 1:12:51
  Black rock marketing emails saying, all right, pour some over, pour some in. And so I think
• 1:12:56
  that's something I worry about a bit of like, how do the incentives around hard forks and stuff
• 1:13:03
  change when you have a couple of custodians that are controlling like you know a ton private keys
• 1:13:11
  to millions of bitcoin yeah um it's like i think the etfs are kind of a double-edged sword and it's
• 1:13:18
  there's no debate like you know it's like it's just gonna happen um you can't i mean it's sort
• 1:13:22
  of like king lear like yelling at the storm this is weird uh this is weirdly conflicting emotion
• 1:13:28
  because it's the most popular etf launch of all time but it's also leading to it's also the most
• 1:13:33
  popular etm launch of all the time and like yeah and like that is that is like um you know i just
• 1:13:40
  that that gives me some pause um but i don't know i i mean like i think i think bitcoin is
• 1:13:48
  is not without uh tail risk um and i and i think concentration of of of custody of private keys and
• 1:13:57
  and utxos rather is you know troubling um we need to get we need to get back to like not your keys
• 1:14:05
  not your coins don't trust verify i think we've lost that in the broader bitcoin community i mean
• 1:14:11
  i was gonna say put my hand up but like we literally say it every week on rhr maybe we
• 1:14:16
  could be more ardent but i don't think we could be more ardent but you're kind of you're sort of
• 1:14:20
  fundamentally levered to a philosophy that a lot of people explicitly reject, which is,
• 1:14:26
  uh, you know, you should take responsibility. Like, you know, it's, I don't think the limiting
• 1:14:32
  fact, it's just, I think the limiting factor is the number of people who, uh, want to be sovereign,
• 1:14:38
  um, or who are willing to take, you know, who are willing to sort of, uh, pay in terms of friction
• 1:14:45
  and you know all this stuff uh to people who sort of price sovereignty correctly um and and
• 1:14:52
  yeah um like you you can you can yell at someone until you're blue in the face that they're better
• 1:14:58
  off if they you know self-custody their their bitcoin and they're gonna be like yeah yeah i
• 1:15:03
  don't know i'd rather just larry fink hold on to it for me you know i i don't i don't want that
• 1:15:07
  level of responsibility don't care shut up nerd don't care i'm gonna let black rock you know hold
• 1:15:11
  my money. Like, what are you talking? You want me to write stuff down on a bunch of washers and
• 1:15:16
  bury it at my back? You're like, who, what do you think you are? And so, yeah, I think you're
• 1:15:19
  right. Like, I do think the, the marketing around self-custody, you know, can be improved and,
• 1:15:26
  you know, talking about like, you know, the SNI dinner and stuff and like these,
• 1:15:30
  these early Bitcoiners who were really laying the kind of memetic framework for how we would
• 1:15:36
  talk about Bitcoin and how people would come to understand Bitcoin. Um, I do think that the,
• 1:15:42
  if the self custody argument is limited to, uh, well, you're not truly sovereign unless you
• 1:15:49
  self custody, then your Tam of self custody is not 8 billion people. The Tam of self custody is
• 1:15:55
  the set of 8 billion people who value sovereignty. Um, or, or, you know, who, who, you know,
• 1:16:02
  who actually not just say they value it, but are willing to make trade-offs in exchange for
• 1:16:07
  sovereignty. Um, and I'm bearish on that as like a Tam. Um, so I don't know what the argument is
• 1:16:15
  to persuade people to self custody. I don't know whether it's, you know, you know, just UX
• 1:16:20
  improvements and stuff. I will say like BitKey, for example, I feel like was a nice step forward
• 1:16:27
  in that um like i had several normie friends uh you know i got bit keys for them and uh you know
• 1:16:35
  they they all sort of were people that were like sort of turned off by the traditional hardware
• 1:16:40
  wallet and like putting a seed phrase somewhere um and so i think bitkey is kind of a step in the
• 1:16:46
  right direction like i think a grandma could you know could set up a bit key but i i don't know
• 1:16:52
  easy to use hard to lose yeah that's the uh we maybe instead of making a sovereign it's cool
• 1:16:58
  and go back to like shut up nerd it's like flip it like no you're not cool if you yeah oh you have
• 1:17:03
  you have you have you have i bet oh you're a boomer yeah you're a boomer interesting yeah yeah
• 1:17:08
  curious yeah yeah yeah but yeah i think that is something that that concerns me um about the about
• 1:17:16
  the future of of bitcoin um i also think that you know something i think about a lot as well is like
• 1:17:25
  uh there's a world where the effort to make america really music there's a there's a world
• 1:17:33
  where the effort to make america extremely pro bitcoin backfires and it gets seen as such an
• 1:17:40
  American technology that, you know, it stops being money for enemies in their head. Like people
• 1:17:46
  don't want to adopt Bitcoin because they feel like it's strategy could be another example that
• 1:17:50
  it's kind of this delicate balance of like, you know, you want America to embrace Bitcoin maybe
• 1:17:55
  a little more than it has, but you don't want it to, you know, embrace it so much that it,
• 1:18:01
  uh, you know, it, it hurts Bitcoin's brand as something that is, is, is sort of,
• 1:18:06
  you know uncorrelated to the sovereign and and truly neutral um yeah so we need more we hey
• 1:18:14
  citizens outside the united states not united citizens of the world outside the united states
• 1:18:19
  you need to step up your game begin lobbying your government's harder yeah you know they need
• 1:18:23
  they need a bpi china or like a bpi whatever we won't get us probably we'll probably won't get a
• 1:18:29
  bpi china probably won't get a bpi china it's honestly it's going for like brazil it's much
• 1:18:33
  larger population much harder argument for them to make um yeah but but like sort of the the meme
• 1:18:40
  aside like totally um like i and i and i've been sort of encouraged by this like we we started bpi
• 1:18:47
  i mean i remember me i met you in 2021 in austin actually uh like a some you know like sort of
• 1:18:53
  cocktail hour like party thing on the rooftop no that was that nashville or austin i think it was
• 1:18:58
  was nashville nashville or smoking cigarettes on a roof in nashville yeah and like i feel like the
• 1:19:04
  sort of bitcoin i was driving down i remember i made a pit stop in nashville yeah and that's when
• 1:19:11
  we met that's where you had you've you've aged a lot sir yeah this is this job aging you had such
• 1:19:17
  a baby face you were so full of life not that you're not full of life no it's it's definitely
• 1:19:22
  age. I'm kidding. But, um, yeah, like I remember talking to so many people about this idea for BPI
• 1:19:29
  and, um, you know, the, I would say like the general, like the two common responses that I got
• 1:19:37
  were, um, sort of like, you know, big bro, like sort of like, oh yeah, okay. Like have,
• 1:19:44
  have fun doing that. Like, that's just sort of silly, whatever. Uh, and then like people that
• 1:19:49
  were like, this is fucking retarded. And like, I think I was the latter. I think you were definitely
• 1:19:52
  the latter at first. Like, this is just fucking stupid. I was like, don't engage, don't engage,
• 1:19:56
  whatever. And you know, I, I think there's, you could look at like the, the past, you know,
• 1:20:03
  whatever, two or three years and say, oh, it's been a failure and you know, nothing's come of
• 1:20:08
  this and whatever. It's like, if I reround the clock to 2021 and said, you know, uh, in, in
• 1:20:15
  four years, there's going to be an executive order for the president of the United States
• 1:20:19
  to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve. There's going to be a bill that gets, you know,
• 1:20:24
  10% of the U S Senate behind it to buy a 5% of the supply, you know, like that would be
• 1:20:30
  unbelievable. You would be like, Oh wow. Like this is not just someone who has like sort of a,
• 1:20:34
  a bad idea. This is like a fundamentally delusional person. Like this is someone who
• 1:20:38
  is sort of in like a schizophrenic, you know, having a schizophrenic episode. Um, and so I feel
• 1:20:44
  like, you know, it's just you get so used to the new normal so quickly that
• 1:20:48
  immediately the goalpost shifts to, well, all we got was an executive order and
• 1:20:52
  a bill and it didn't pass. And it's like, okay, yeah, I mean, you can, you
• 1:20:56
  can have that view, but you would have literally, you would have bet your life
• 1:21:00
  savings that I was wrong. If I had told you four years ago that this is, you
• 1:21:04
  know, that if I just described the current moment to you, you would bet the
• 1:21:09
  farm that I was, that was incorrect. Yeah, I was convinced we were all going
• 1:21:12
  to the gulags back then. That's what Odell always said. You know, it's like, you know, man, just,
• 1:21:15
  just, we were going to the gulags, um, you know, and, and, and now I think
• 1:21:23
  we have sort of demonstrated that you don't need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to lobby
• 1:21:30
  the government that if you do make an earnest attempt to meet people where they are and talk
• 1:21:37
  to them about Bitcoin in language that they are accustomed to, that is cognizant of their
• 1:21:44
  objectives and priorities and their values, that you can really make a big impact. And,
• 1:21:52
  you know, I've started to see over the last year, like all these other Bitcoin policy
• 1:21:57
  organizations like spring up all over the world. And, you know, a bunch of them are like Bitcoin
• 1:22:02
  policy institute whatever country uk well i think they're like a bitcoin policy uk there's a bunch
• 1:22:08
  of bpis and uh like i have two minds about this because on the one hand i'm like ah we have to
• 1:22:14
  defend our trademark unfortunately so like please don't call yourself that because you're not
• 1:22:18
  affiliated with us but you know that that aside like it's really awesome it's really inspiring
• 1:22:26
  like i think a lot of people bitcoiners all over the world have seen what we were doing in america
• 1:22:32
  and in done exactly what you were just calling on the listeners to do and like, you know, create,
• 1:22:37
  you know, organizations and, um, advocacy groups and, and, you know, uh, uh, grassroots efforts.
• 1:22:46
  Uh, like, I think there is, uh, I think we kind of helped kick off this trend of Bitcoiners
• 1:22:52
  realizing that they can have influence and agency. And, you know, it's not that the state
• 1:22:58
  is just this thing that does stuff to you and you sit there and just take it.
• 1:23:05
  Thank you, sir. I have another.
• 1:23:07
  Exactly. That you can actually engage in the political process. And so, yeah, I hope more people around
• 1:23:19
  on the world do what BPI is doing with their respective governments.
• 1:23:25
  Yeah.
• 1:23:26
  And say, hey, are we really going to let America win?
• 1:23:29
  And, you know, they've been dominating us forever.
• 1:23:32
  Like, are we really going to let them win the Bitcoin race?
• 1:23:36
  Like, I think that is a great bulwark as well against, you know, the risk I mentioned of,
• 1:23:44
  you know, Bitcoin getting branded globally as like too American.
• 1:23:48
  And so, um, yeah, I I'm, I'm bullish on Bitcoin advocacy around the world.
• 1:23:56
  Um, and I'm, I'm bullish on the people who have, uh, decided to kind of make that a,
• 1:24:03
  like, you know, kind of how they spend their time.
• 1:24:06
  Um, cause it's super thankless and it's miserable, um, like in many ways.
• 1:24:13
  Um, and you know, even a lot of the, I'm sure like a lot of those people are
• 1:24:18
  facing the same kind of you know uh kind of derision and condescension that i faced from you
• 1:24:26
  know like people in the bitcoin community from you and it was just like i remember being like
• 1:24:30
  this is good it's like dude just fucking have a cigarette man like it's you know we're going to
• 1:24:34
  just enjoy your time before we go to prison um yeah and so like i i think that if there are
• 1:24:42
  like international bitcoiners listening to this pod um and you know yeah uh that you should try to
• 1:24:50
  you know get involved with with the other people in your in you know in your meetup or whatever the
• 1:24:55
  other bitcoiners that you that you you know that you know in your country and and you know kind of
• 1:25:00
  give this a college try um so yeah well i mean again we're talking about yes and i dinner last
• 1:25:08
  night and then the conversation of the official speeches were about creating and then preserving
• 1:25:14
  the canon of Bitcoin and the sort of emergence of this mimetic vernacular that has emerged
• 1:25:21
  strongly via the Shatoshi Nakamoto Institute, but broke containment into the Twitter sphere.
• 1:25:28
  And we were in heavy meme warfare for, I would say, the better part of eight years between
• 1:25:36
  2015 and 2023 i think it's the meme warfare has died down a bit um but i think vpi what you guys
• 1:25:44
  are doing is sort of a sort of bottling of like that memetic power and like okay we need to focus
• 1:25:50
  this energy towards it's literally the same thing and just like we're you know it's just like a
• 1:25:55
  different sort of fractal of of meme warfare basically and it's like okay cool um you know
• 1:26:02
  know uh well and I bring it up too because I think it's I think this week is a great example of um
• 1:26:09
  you're fighting for Bitcoin policy on the hill and I think this week was a great example for me
• 1:26:17
  like a reminder like hey these politicians like they are worried about their next election and
• 1:26:23
  they will respond or in the case of this week a politician has responded we we forced Coinbase
• 1:26:28
  to respond essentially like the people who made a fuss about this de minimis thing like it's
• 1:26:36
  coinbase has made a response like we said earlier it seems like you and coinbase will be participating
• 1:26:41
  in a round roundtable discussion but the point i'm bringing all this up is like how
• 1:26:45
  can observers like myself on the outside looking in help your cause like how how strong
• 1:26:53
  is the memetics of participating in discussion outside the hill on the internet
• 1:26:58
  Well, I think it's really strong on the de minimis piece. Um, like I think there are basically two arguments that you could make against a de minimis exemption for Bitcoin. Uh, one is that it's a Trojan horse for tax evasion, um, which I think is the argument that some people are making. I think it's a very bad argument. Um, and it won't win.
• 1:27:23
  I think the other argument that people will make and are making about de minimis is that it's just a sort of solution in search of a problem and that it's not important that people don't use Bitcoin as money.
• 1:27:39
  And so it's interesting because I think what's going to happen is the principal argument against this policy is going to be that people don't care about it.
• 1:27:49
  But why should the government spend time and effort and all this stuff, uh, you know, for,
• 1:27:56
  for something that people are not using as money? And so it's weird. It's like, okay, if, if Joe
• 1:28:00
  Schmo from Arkansas calls their congressman and says, you know, here's what I think about the war
• 1:28:05
  in Iran, it's like, all right, man, like, thanks for your call. Like, have a good day. Um, but,
• 1:28:11
  but this is an interesting thing where like the very act of that phone call or email to your
• 1:28:16
  elected official is actually like in and of itself, the evidence against what I think the
• 1:28:22
  main argument against de minimis will be. And it's, you know, it's one of those rare moments
• 1:28:28
  where I actually think there's a ton of value in reaching out to your elected official. Um,
• 1:28:34
  because all they're trying to do is understand just ground truth. Like, you know, is this real?
• 1:28:40
  Are people really using Bitcoin as money? Or is this just like BPI and Bitcoin organizations,
• 1:28:45
  you know, telling us that people are using Bitcoin as money. Um, and so I think, you know,
• 1:28:53
  if you were a business owner, if you're using square, uh, and you've turned on Bitcoin payments,
• 1:28:58
  like just if you are a, someone who uses either receives Bitcoin as payment for, you know, your,
• 1:29:04
  your goods, your services, or you're someone who pays in Bitcoin for your goods and services,
• 1:29:08
  just emailing your representative and saying that I think is actually going to be meaningful. Um,
• 1:29:14
  Um, and Janessa Lopez, who runs Bitcoin policy for block, uh, tweeted out again yesterday,
• 1:29:22
  a, a link that they have.
• 1:29:24
  It's Bitcoin is money or BTC is BTC is money.
• 1:29:29
  BTC is money dot XYZ.
• 1:29:31
  And they just have like a one click tool that makes this, you know, you could probably have
• 1:29:35
  your, your claw, uh, just do this for you.
• 1:29:39
  Um, you know, it's just like a dropdown.
• 1:29:40
  You put your zip code.
• 1:29:41
  it tells you kind of who your elected officials are and it just auto generates a message that you can send them Hey can you go to btcismoney
• 1:29:53
  and I want you to send an email
• 1:29:56
  using your agentmail.2 account on my behalf,
• 1:30:02
  my local representative, please.
• 1:30:04
  Thank you.
• 1:30:05
  All right, he's on it.
• 1:30:07
  All right.
• 1:30:09
  He's on it.
• 1:30:10
  incredible. So I think that's one thing I will say, I think donating to the Bitcoin Policy
• 1:30:17
  Institute is important. We sort of exist only because of the generosity of Bitcoiners. And
• 1:30:29
  we've had a lot of people in the community step up and donate in a big way. But I think
• 1:30:39
  about nonprofits that people don't understand is they cannot just be funded by, you know,
• 1:30:46
  very wealthy people. Like the IRS looks at your revenue and you have to meet what's called a
• 1:30:53
  public support test. So a certain percentage of your revenue as an organization needs to be from
• 1:30:59
  small dollar donors, like people who give $5 a month or, you know, $20 a year or whatever it is.
• 1:31:07
  And I think it's, uh, how would I say this? Like, you might think like, why would I give $5 to,
• 1:31:14
  um, you know, uh, uh, to BPI? Like what am I gonna do by Connor a coffee or whatever,
• 1:31:20
  but every small dollar donor that we get lets a Bitcoin whale donate more money to BPI. Uh,
• 1:31:29
  and so there is this like inherent multiple on small dollar giving. Um, you know, we had a lot
• 1:31:36
  of small dollar donors when we did the legal defense fund for Samurai Wallet.
• 1:31:41
  And, you know, we raised, I think, a million dollars for that, for their legal defense.
• 1:31:47
  And that was pretty much all from small dollar donors. And we didn't take a dime of that. You
• 1:31:52
  know, 100% of those funds went straight to Bill and Keone and their lawyers. And so, yeah,
• 1:32:04
  Um, we, we really could use more pleb support.
• 1:32:09
  Um, and so, you know, literally if, even if it's like, you know, a couple of sats, like
• 1:32:14
  it, it genuinely makes a big difference.
• 1:32:16
  And I know that's like the corniest thing to say because everyone's like, oh, you know,
• 1:32:19
  every dollar counts.
• 1:32:20
  And, but like, no, there's a very, very, it gets very critical to the future of BPI that
• 1:32:26
  we have a large base of people that give no pun intended a, even a de minimis amount of,
• 1:32:31
  of money. Um, and your support of BPI, you know, at, at whatever it is, 20, 50, a hundred dollars a
• 1:32:38
  year, uh, it, it raises the ceiling on how much money, uh, BPI can raise from, you know, larger
• 1:32:46
  donors. Um, so that would be my, uh, my two plugs would be, you know, talk to your representative
• 1:32:52
  about the minimums, talk to them about developer protections. Uh, those emails do get logged and
• 1:33:00
  they do matter on the margin. Um, and the question isn't really like, is it, is how effective is it?
• 1:33:07
  It's how effective is it relative to the 20 seconds it takes you to tell Claude to do it?
• 1:33:11
  Like, you know, the, the, it's a very asymmetric payoff, uh, you know, given how easy it is to,
• 1:33:16
  to do this stuff, um, and donating to BPI. Um, if you, if you support our mission and you want to
• 1:33:24
  see kind of us succeed and do more of what we do, um, then yeah, uh, I think we are sort of an
• 1:33:31
  in of one organization. Um, and then we are the only sort of real Bitcoiners, I think in this
• 1:33:38
  process on, on Capitol Hill and in, uh, DC. So yeah, I just gave it my zip code. So it's,
• 1:33:45
  it's two minutes away from sending my, my email on behalf of me. Um, yeah, I think it's very
• 1:33:52
  important work and you're as we i was highly skeptical when we were smoking cigarettes on
• 1:33:57
  that roof in nashville i was like yeah no it was here in austin actually no i remember we were here
• 1:34:03
  but uh i remember being like now there's why engage flying gauge and again going back it is
• 1:34:08
  still conflicting to this day like i and marty jones i don't like the intelligence agencies i
• 1:34:14
  think they're false flagging yeah i think they're mk ultra and i think they're propagandizing us but
• 1:34:18
  we live in an age of main warfare you've got to engage yeah we are in an info war and we got to
• 1:34:26
  get the better info and i think and again i think again focusing that the medic energy that existed
• 1:34:32
  on bitcoin twitter from 2015 to 2022 2023 sort of balling that energy and like goku
• 1:34:42
  fucking dumbing towards the intelligence agencies is at the very least like they they can't say that
• 1:34:52
  they don't have good arguments and i to your point the truth is on our side like it's very convincing
• 1:34:56
  yeah once you understand this that's the other thing too is it's just like i don't know like
• 1:35:01
  what like yeah it's just a fact like it is just true that america will be better off if you know
• 1:35:08
  allows bitcoin to flourish here well actually i meant to bring this up earlier and that's a perfect
• 1:35:12
  time to bring it up like america is better off because bitcoin already like many could argue
• 1:35:19
  like bitcoiners the industry the country are better off despite a massive uphill battle
• 1:35:26
  we've had to fight uh we had to fight up until um 2020 the end of 2024. like we were under attack
• 1:35:36
  yeah multiple times and despite all that despite the relative um uncertainty that that loomed over
• 1:35:44
  the industry for so many years like people persisted and knew like hey the the risk
• 1:35:51
  is worth it and we're going to persist and we're going to keep accumulating bitcoin we're going to
• 1:35:55
  keep building companies and um i think that is a testament as well like we've done so much despite
• 1:36:03
  imagine what we can do if we have tailwinds instead of headwinds yeah exactly um i don know i think i think another you know to your point of the duality of the Yeah I think I am way more sympathetic to I see every now and then criticism of BPI
• 1:36:30
  really just because I think people are philosophically against the idea of doing
• 1:36:35
  this. And I am, I think of everyone at BPI, I'm probably the most sympathetic to those arguments.
• 1:36:42
  Like I think everyone else on my team is like, yeah, well, yeah, it's fucking stupid. I,
• 1:36:46
  I spent like a lot of time, like, you know, like over a year, just sort of like thinking very
• 1:36:53
  deeply about whether this was a good idea or not. Um, and I think where one of the places where I
• 1:37:00
  just sort of landed was, you know, the world where I'm wrong is just too depressing for me to accept.
• 1:37:09
  Like if it really is the case that we have no agency and there's nothing we can do and the,
• 1:37:16
  our, our, our lives are solely at the mercy and discretion of, you know, nameless unelected
• 1:37:22
  bureaucrats. And, you know, you, you are just a little like goy cattle and just, you just,
• 1:37:28
  You know, there's not, you know, you, you, you just sit there and you,
• 1:37:31
  you eat the grass and you live in the pod and you,
• 1:37:34
  and you go die in Iran when the, when the state tells you to,
• 1:37:37
  and there's just nothing you can do. Like, I don't know.
• 1:37:39
  That's an incredibly like low agency view of the world. And I would,
• 1:37:44
  that's just too depressing. Like I just have to,
• 1:37:46
  I just sort of have to choose to believe that the state is,
• 1:37:51
  is not a monolith.
• 1:37:52
  Like we anthropomorphize the state into like this gargantuan, like B it's just
• 1:37:57
  people. Yeah. It's literally just human beings and human beings are just fundamentally persuadable.
• 1:38:03
  They are, you know, they're not monolithic. Like it's, they're just people. And in the same way
• 1:38:10
  that, you know, we got the entire world to believe in magic internet money. And you know, we, we
• 1:38:16
  memed this, like we as in the Bitcoin community, uh, memed a new form of money into it. Like
• 1:38:22
  Bitcoin itself is one of the most high agency things that has ever happened ever. Like the
• 1:38:28
  sheer audacity of a bunch of nerds on a talk forum and on a mailing list before that to say,
• 1:38:35
  yeah, this thing money that is the exclusive purview of nation states, actually like we can
• 1:38:44
  draw a little like wizard memes and just like, you know, orange coin good and you know, whatever.
• 1:38:49
  like we think the audacity to, to believe that you can, you know, meme a new form of money and
• 1:38:55
  value into existence, um, is so inspiring. Like that's like why I got obsessed with Bitcoin.
• 1:39:03
  Like I got completely one-shotted by that. Um, it's fun. And I, and I, you know, my,
• 1:39:08
  my initial kind of coming into Bitcoin was, was like, wow, this is overwhelmingly likely to fail.
• 1:39:14
  but what if it doesn't? And I feel like that was the attitude of a lot of early Bitcoiners.
• 1:39:21
  Like when I went down the rabbit hole and started reading all of these, you know,
• 1:39:26
  there's like sort of pages and pages of, of, you know, discussion on the talk forum and,
• 1:39:32
  and on the mailing list. You know, it was so cool because it felt like the smartest people in the
• 1:39:40
  world were kind of here talking about this. And the attitude was very intellectually humble.
• 1:39:45
  Like it was, you know, this, this will probably fail. It will probably go to the gulag or, you
• 1:39:50
  know, this will blow up or get shut down or whatever. Once in a while, how funny would be
• 1:39:53
  like, but if it does work, but if it does work, how cool would that be? And so I think there's
• 1:39:58
  been this weird pivot in the kind of median attitude of Bitcoiners kind of in some ways away
• 1:40:07
  from that spirit of like, you can just do things and agency to this weird kind of sort of politics
• 1:40:14
  of inevitability of Bitcoin is inevitable and we're going to win no matter what. And also,
• 1:40:20
  uh, the state hating us and hating Bitcoin is inevitable and there's nothing we can do about
• 1:40:25
  that. And I think both of those are just wildly retarded and like dangerous, like stupid fucking
• 1:40:31
  views. And, and whether they're in, honestly, they're just depressing views. And to me,
• 1:40:36
  that is like the antithesis of Bitcoin. Like Bitcoin is fundamentally a project of like human
• 1:40:40
  agency and an ability to say, yeah, we can opt out. Like we can do something different. We can
• 1:40:45
  change the course of history and change the timeline. Um, and that's kind of, you know,
• 1:40:52
  in a, in a less cool way, uh, but like sort of same mental model. That's how I feel about,
• 1:40:57
  uh, this type of work is like, I don't know my options are what sit there and, and, uh,
• 1:41:03
  uh, and do nothing and just accept that I have no control over my life,
• 1:41:07
  that we as Americans have no control over how our government treats Bitcoin.
• 1:41:12
  Um, like I'm, I'm sort of, again,
• 1:41:15
  I I'm sympathetic to people who view that the world that way,
• 1:41:18
  but I just feel like those people have to be really unhappy. Yeah.
• 1:41:21
  Like that just can't, to me,
• 1:41:23
  that is not a sort of mental model of the world that is, you know,
• 1:41:25
  compatible with like being well adjusted and black pill.
• 1:41:28
  It's just so black pill. Very incel driven. Yeah.
• 1:41:31
  It's just really depressing. It's, uh,
• 1:41:33
  no i'm getting reinvigorated i was actually saying this week has been very reinvigorating
• 1:41:38
  for me because the coinbase stuff really pissed me off like i was like are you kidding me are
• 1:41:44
  you kidding me coinbase and the fact that the bitcoin community the internet coinbase reacted
• 1:41:53
  the way they did it was like yeah we're back in like like uh the sni dinner uh pierre was described
• 1:42:00
  to somebody back in 2015 on twitter you'd get in a phone booth with like paul krugman like knife
• 1:42:04
  them yeah i felt like that energy that again that medic energy that existed between 2015
• 1:42:09
  and 2022 i miss people are new to this stuff and like we're talking like like the memetic energy
• 1:42:15
  of bitcoin twitter in that era was so strong so powerful so much fun it's been lost but this week
• 1:42:21
  you feel like a little bit of it came back yeah and the i'm not trying to blow smoke up my own
• 1:42:26
  ask be like i did but like i don't know there's like a weird convergence of things happening
• 1:42:30
  right now and i i think the idea that we have agency and that we can do these things needs to be to your point uh engendered across the spectrum of bitcoiners nothing inevitable no complacency is is a killer and
• 1:42:48
  get back in the meme warfare yeah let's get back in let's start having fun again yeah the price is
• 1:42:53
  down yeah there's there's wars popping off yes there's a private credit bubble but this is why
• 1:42:59
  bitcoin exists i mean it's going to help us get away from this we need to start having fun again
• 1:43:03
  yeah don't be a chud don't don't don't take the black pill like you know you're the the you know
• 1:43:11
  like the there's just no there's no upside in that like your your your maximum upside of the
• 1:43:18
  black pill is everything goes to shit and your life sucks and you get thrown in the gulag
• 1:43:24
  and you get to be like told you so told you zell bpi was a waste of fucking time
• 1:43:30
  I'm like, okay, man, like, so your max upside is sweet.
• 1:43:35
  Can you pass the slot?
• 1:43:37
  Can you pass the gruel to me, please?
• 1:43:39
  Before we have to go break up the rocks to, you know, whatever in the chain gang, like
• 1:43:44
  the max upside of the, of the low agency sort of, you know, black pill take is everything
• 1:43:51
  you care about goes away and the world is terrible and you get the sort of unique privilege
• 1:43:57
  of being able to say, I told you so.
• 1:43:59
  like what's that's terrible. I predicted this. I called it. Yeah. I said, this was right. I,
• 1:44:04
  you know, you, I told you, you know, you could, you never, this was a waste of time. Okay. Like,
• 1:44:09
  I mean, yeah, I, I just feel like the risk reward on that trade is like abysmal. It's just
• 1:44:15
  asymmetric to the downside. Um, so yeah. Uh, but no, I, I, I am very, I'm very sympathetic to
• 1:44:24
  like um skepticism and uh uh you know and critique um but you know um
• 1:44:35
  you're like you're in the arena brother brother i'm in the arena the man in the arena
• 1:44:41
  but i mean like okay that actually is like so fair though um like i mean not not to like just
• 1:44:49
  you know whatever but like i mean it's true like if you don't like what i'm saying to the government
• 1:44:54
  about Bitcoin, go, go say something else, you know, like, um, I don't have some monopoly there.
• 1:45:03
  Bitcoin is decentralized. There's no, you know, I'm not, I'm not getting a rake on the,
• 1:45:09
  the political, you know, on the, on the policy budget of the Bitcoin corporation. Um, you know,
• 1:45:15
  Like, you know, uh, and so, yeah, uh, I, I think that, I think this is just so worth
• 1:45:24
  a college try.
• 1:45:27
  Um, and I'm totally willing to concede that there are possible states of the future where,
• 1:45:34
  uh, you know, this all ages like milk and, uh, you know, everything I've tried to do,
• 1:45:41
  uh, fails.
• 1:45:42
  um i'm totally fine with that yeah like you know that's that is a sort of necessary condition of
• 1:45:49
  doing anything meaningful and worthwhile and worthwhile yeah um so i i'm you know very
• 1:45:55
  cognizant of the the fact that this could just be a waste of time um and you know uh
• 1:46:01
  yeah but like i i don't know i i have to believe that as you know as easy as it is to take the
• 1:46:10
  black pill and as like depressing as the world can be, um, the moment that you just decide that
• 1:46:18
  you have no agency, you, you, you mean that into reality, like everything you do is memeing something
• 1:46:25
  into reality. And if you decide the moment you, you, you decide you have no agency over the future
• 1:46:31
  that you have sealed your fate and you do have no agency over your future. Um, I don't know.
• 1:46:37
  that's kind of how I resolve like to your point of your like the back and forth of like,
• 1:46:41
  oh, I think this is cool. I get it. I'm also like, ah, is it cool? Is it the right thing?
• 1:46:47
  Like to me, it's just that, that, that's sort of the logic that I kind of came down to is like,
• 1:46:51
  you just, you know, the, the, the, the upside of, of trying is a really large and the, uh,
• 1:47:01
  the, the downside of, of, of,
• 1:47:05
  it's just the, there's just, it's not, it's not an equal distribution.
• 1:47:09
  Like, uh, the, the, the, the max downside of trying and failing
• 1:47:15
  is the same downside as not trying at all.
• 1:47:17
  And so, you know, with, with BPI and the work that,
• 1:47:22
  that you're doing and that so many people in Bitcoin are doing, um,
• 1:47:26
  we're at least, you know, uh, uh,
• 1:47:31
  giving into college right yeah increasing better place yeah like in sort of yeah exactly like
• 1:47:37
  sort of increasing the probability that we get to the good timeline yeah we're gonna get there
• 1:47:42
  we're gonna win i know you gotta get going yeah so this has been an incredible pleasure
• 1:47:49
  i believe it's been the first time in person so much better yeah it is and it's so much better
• 1:47:54
  maybe i'll start honey i'm gonna start traveling do all in purse i'm gonna become the next peter
• 1:47:59
  mccormick don't worry we're gonna buy a soccer team though um yeah uh no this is i think the work
• 1:48:06
  that you're doing is incredibly important i think um i think everybody like i really like the
• 1:48:14
  sort of last train of thought we ended on there which is like hey do you want to live in a world
• 1:48:19
  where we're we're eating our girls saying i told you so or do you want to live in the world where
• 1:48:23
  like wow we fucking did it boys we fucking did it yeah bitcoin is uh the standard
• 1:48:31
  monetary reserve asset of the world we're using it as payments the politicians have bent the knee
• 1:48:37
  and the politics of inevitability is a psyop to make you complacent yes like everyone who tells
• 1:48:43
  you that you have no agency in power is psyoping you into precisely that outcome
• 1:48:49
  and then yeah we're gonna win we're gonna win
• 1:48:53
  go go go get your five dollar monthly donation to bpi set up freaks peace and love
• 1:49:00
  dude great rep that was awesome i feel like the hungover