#687: How Fiat Money Exploits the Working Class with Erik Cason

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Deep down like the rabbit hole and not like I think most of the media is like a explicit designed thing to try to get cultural affects that.

(00:08):
Like society wants for controlling people.
What's really weird, too.
Because we're talking about robot dicks and they will manifest.
It seems like we're on a trajectory that will make them inevitable.
Yeah.
and definitely people are going to isolate from one another and be like why should i have a real
human when i have my robot that i can beat and sexually abuse and do all the up stuff i want to

(00:31):
so yeah well like the predictive programming i think of two movies particularly that really
come top of mind quite frequently these days it's minority report and her okay it's i've i've
actually had both of those come up in dialogue recently about it because yeah like with with

(00:52):
where Palantir is going with pre-crime stuff definitely going to try to do minority report style
pre-crime uh and her also like people are obviously falling in love with like different
ai at this point in time and like that's going to be a trend that continues because
uh particularly like i don't know i don't feel like people are actually healing from all of the
trauma that they've sort of incurred by the society and so it's it's becoming easier and

(01:15):
easier just to retreat inward and refuse to try to actually interact with other humans in a meaningful
way yeah well minority report too it's not only the pre-crime it's the uh self-driving cars that
like that like i'm looking around we're in san francisco it's like all the waymos you got robo
taxis coming out and people are very excited for this like oh we're just gonna hop in like a number

(01:36):
of the people that are at this event that we're currently um participating in have said how much
they love the waymo it's like ah there's no driver it's quiet i get to do this and then the back of
mind i'm like there were some movies that warned of this so you can get in that car one day and
the computer can take you somewhere you don't want to go well it's funny when when because i rode in
waymo for the first time last night uh and when me and the other gentleman were trying to get into

(02:01):
the car like it wouldn't open the door for some reason and i had to like drive around the corner
and then stop and do that but like the this whole fantasy that people have they don't see the darker
side of it of that like so what happens when you have your ai girlfriend that you fall in love with
and like chat gbt does the update that like fries its brain doesn't recognize you you know this
happened three to four months ago exactly and like uh these technologies are really cool but if you're

(02:28):
not actually self-sovereign with them they're very problematic and then if you are self-sovereign with
them like we actually get something much more like snow crash which like i think is kind of interesting
but like that is also problematic in a number of its own ways yeah well you said people haven't
dealt with the trauma that's been built up how long do you think this trauma has been building up
uh i mean i think 2000 like september 11th i think was like kind of the key moment that

(02:53):
the juncture changed because like there there was like a pretty great opportunity
after the soviet union collapse that like the united states could have made choices throughout
the 1990s to really have kind of opened the world up to like true liberalism but in that like a
number of mistakes were made and it became pretty clear that uh like neoliberalism wasn't like an
advancement of liberalism but was like this fundamental and inherent lie that was actually

(03:17):
about just like the corruption of culture on a whole for the profitability of a number of
individuals um and after september 11th it became clear that like we were going to take a path where
we were going to build a gigantic surveillance apparatus that would proceed to control everybody
and that's sort of been the path that that's been advanced since then yeah it's not a great path
I believe it was you that we were discussing, like the simulacrum.

(03:40):
Yeah.
And another concept that Bitcoin sign guy first introduced me to back in 2018 when he was on the show was the hyper real.
Like this.
Yeah.
Concept that we live in this digital world with a digital facade.
Nobody's really connected to reality at the end of the day.
Yeah.
And that digital facade is more representative of reality to people than reality itself.

(04:04):
and then I think also with what COVID happened and sort of people eating those lies realizing
how intense those lies were like that created a new and more intense kind of nihilism but I don't
think we've exited from and so it's interesting being here in the Bay Area that like everybody
who's involved with AI that I've talked with particularly like large AI companies like they're

(04:26):
extremely nihilistic they're like humanity's dead within like a decade and then more interesting is
even the subtext under that is like that's why we have to make the ai god to like save humanity
and it's like oh shit yeah that contradiction that and again i haven't expressed this publicly but
i almost feel uncomfortable because maybe i don't feel confident in

(04:49):
my ability to appropriately recognize it but it seems to your point it seems like a lot of people
on the cutting edge of ai are like hey this is very dangerous but they keep going full borehead
and not only full bore head, but trying to accelerate as quickly as possible.
Yeah. And like the, well, and this was kind of an interesting edge case is that like,

(05:10):
actually I think like decentralized, private, homoformically encrypted AI systems that like
interoperate and can kind of exchange data in ways where like you're just revealing subsets of it to
like work together. I think like that's going to be an extremely powerful thing that has a lot of
potential for humanity but the the current version of the proprietary frontier models like anthropic

(05:32):
open ai grok uh to me like this is like this is the absolute apex of communism because like we're
taking literally all of our thoughts dumping them into a single database combining them and then
getting a linguistic regurgitation that's fundamentally designed to destroy our brains
you know like it's it's robbing people of the ability to think at all in addition to like it's

(05:54):
modifying their linguistic capacity so that like they they don't even have the lexicon to be able
to speak in a particular way that's unique or interesting anymore yeah how do we change the
tides of this uh one is is that like i think we need to like i don't think like you know regulations
limits none of this shit works at all uh so like we need to radicalize different models and so like

(06:17):
seeing all the different open source stuff come out is uh in my opinion like it's pretty awesome
there's still problems with how a lot of these models
have been built along with the underlying parameters.
So like, but I think that this is all sort of
a recursive thing of that in the very way
that we got these open source models
was off the back of the advancements
from sort of these gigantic communist models.

(06:39):
So like, I think as things advance,
like we're going to get more and more powerful
open source models and we'll be able to use these models
to collaborate with each other to create totally new models
that can truly be totally open source.
will know the underlying parameters.
There'll be ways to modify that.
And people will be able to actually like in their garage,
be able to build out their own full, totally custom AIs.

(07:02):
And then furthermore, if we have the appropriate systems
to actually like encrypt these and make them like private systems
that people can own for themselves,
then we got something that I think has like really strong potential.
But again, this is only if we make these things totally private.
No way for anybody else to surveil it.
And that like this really becomes like a digital assistant second self or something that like you really own for yourself, totally alone.

(07:28):
And nobody else knows or sort of understands how you work with it.
And this is what you're working on.
A bit. Yeah.
This is kind of what Bora is.
The big thing that we really want is to make sure like this is going to be like a personal home data server that you have that's totally encrypted, has great recoverability.
but also like as you work with it over years to decades
that like this becomes more and more customized

(07:50):
towards who and how you are.
You can feed it all your own personal information,
talk to it about the most intimate things
and really treat it in the same way
that a lot of people are treating open AI right now.
But again, very similar to the minority report thing
is they don't get on the back end of that,
that all of that information can be used against you.
Like Sam Altman was very open about like,
yeah, our information can be subpoenaed

(08:11):
and used against you.
Yeah.
I've said it a couple times in the last six months.
We live in a period that's equally unnerving and exhilarating.
The potential for doom or not salvation, but.
Yeah, there's definitely like not much gray area in between.

(08:32):
And furthermore, stuff like if we didn't get Bitcoin when we did,
like we'd definitely be in doom territory.
but with Bitcoin uh it really modifies and changes how this can happen because like seeing
the very way that you can use Nostra now to like go find an anonymous developer to like work on a
project that you can pay is really powerful in the same way like to me Nostra is the first legitimate

(08:55):
social network that's ever existed like every single social network that has came before
it's pretty clear has had ties to different intelligence organizations and that's been
again with part of that nihilism is like i think that this has been a societal level programming
situation where dialogue has been manipulated across the board whereas on noster like you can

(09:16):
fill it with misinformation but also because the lack of censorship capacity there now becomes way
to actually find signal throughout the noise yeah and so like i think as uh we get clamps down onto
social media across the board as sort of whatever the fuck's going on advances itself noster is
going to become sort of a bastion of people that are saying that can go out there and actually speak

(09:38):
truth to power where they would be banned everywhere else they can actually have those
conversations there yeah it seems like it seems like the the narrative is being prepped particularly
around ai and social media i mean you were just telling me that you had a conversation last night
with a journalist who is pro social media censorship but on top of that i wrote about

(10:00):
it earlier this week, Anthropic came out with a postmortem on some cyber espionage attack
that Claude was used to wage on some critical services.
And if you read the report, it seems like a classic problem-reaction solution set up
where it's like, hey, these people are using AI to attack these critical systems.

(10:21):
The cost to do this is lower than ever.
The ease of waging these attacks is easier than it's ever been.
And what I was reading between the lines of that postmortem is Anthropic saying, hey, we only stop this because we have full visibility into everything that's happening within our LLMs and our MCP framework.

(10:45):
And wink, wink, we need the ability to do this.
So we should probably get regulations that make it so you have to get a license to release these systems into the wild.
That's what I was reading when I read that.
Yeah, and I mean, like to me, Anthropik's entire business model is misaligned from the beginning because like they're playing this game of like safe AI, which means that like they want to prove how dangerous non-safe AI is from the get go.

(11:12):
So like it makes sense that like this is sort of the game that they're going to play.
And to me, like those are the same iterations of power that we've seen over and over again is like create crisis and problem, present the solution and clamp down.
And it's just a ratcheting back and forth of tightening social controls around people.
And like, it's really important to understand like this is very, very powerful technology.

(11:35):
And also it's very powerful technology, just like cryptography.
And so like we're essentially having the first of the crypto wars all over again, but with an AI slant.
And so like, I think as this advances, they are going to try to clamp down with regulations.
And that's why it's great that like, you know, somebody baked in through an inscription,
like I think it was the Obama like open source model like onto Bitcoin's blockchain you can go

(11:57):
find it and download it directly and I think keeping these things free and open source are
important because I'm much more concerned about how do we manipulate and control people through
like these very powerful systems that like you can already see the way it's really
atrophied thoughts you know like I was talking to a couple for professors yesterday they were
talking about how outraged they are at this point in time that like they're just getting AI slop

(12:20):
repeatedly over and over and they can see that their systems that their students don't actually
have the systematic thinking to engage in like true thought on their own like they're literally
just turning to the ai and pinging it every time they have a question and like that creates a
pretty dangerous predication for society yeah no it makes me feel very fortunate i went to the high

(12:41):
school that i did as you go the freshman year orientation week they're essentially like all
all right, you're going to be here for four years.
Our job as your educator over the next four years
is teach you how to think from first principles
and then write.
So you got to be able to read things
and then write basically expressing
that you understand what you just read
in a coherent way, in a consistent flowing way.

(13:05):
And I feel like that's being lost.
And like to going back to like the simulacrum
and the hyperreal, like it's already pretty bad.
And to think of how much worse it can get
if you have AI sort of dictating thought and people abdicating their critical thinking skills to these LLMs,
it can get really bad really quick.

(13:26):
It already is getting really bad.
I mean, the whole meme of getting one shot is real for a reason.
Yeah, and I think the, so like I think classic models are dead at this point in time.
Like I think the way that you and I experience school,
if you go in, you read something, essays are turned in, you get correction.
like I think everything's gonna invert.

(13:47):
Or like I think in the schools people are gonna go in nothing in hand And it gonna become all sort of oratory and about critical thinking And a teacher asking you a question you need to actually stand up respond meaningfully
And they're now becoming a real dialogue between everybody sort of asking people to think.
But the other major problem that's kind of occurring right now in that same process in society is that everybody's so hyper attuned to the opinions of others.

(14:15):
And so it's like the mask wearing phenomenon is the best example is that a lot of people wear a mask under the suspicion of like, I'm doing this to protect you.
They're not actually thinking about protecting themselves.
And there becomes a sort of recursive process of where they're much more concerned about how they socially are perceived than actually doing the thing that is correct.
And so like, I think that essentially just needs to be kind of beat out of people.

(14:38):
and the only way to do that is to like progressively allow for people to stand up
say embarrassing shit allow for that process to play out and be like you shouldn't be embarrassed
thanks for actually expressing your thought let's let's understand why perhaps it might be dangerous
to uh think in this way and really allowing for this process of students and teachers to work

(14:59):
together but that requires a really different approach that's going to require some courage
that I don't think the current public school system is really available to.
So it'll be interesting to see how it plays out.
Yeah, I don't have much faith in much of the public school system,
but it does seem like in the broader public discourse,
this Overton window is shifting where people are openly standing up

(15:22):
and saying, hey, enough, enough.
Enough is enough, whether it's Israel,
the immigration situation here in the United States.
It seems like the situation has gotten to such a point where people are like, okay, we need to stand up now or things are going to get super crazy.
Yeah, and I think it's interesting because it feels like the pendulum swing has stopped swinging that way.

(15:44):
And it's sort of a product of why people are standing up.
But I do think that you're having just as much of the outraged responses from other people going like, no, everybody deserves dignity.
Anybody should be able to come here and get free social services no matter what.
and we should all be able to hold hands and sing kumbaya and make peace happen.
And like, that's a really beautiful idea.

(16:05):
I really think it's wonderful.
And I really wish that's how the world works.
And it's not.
And I'm sorry.
Like, that's a difficult reality to come to terms with.
But like, it turns out, like, if we just have an open border policy, as we've seen,
like, there can be a lot of nefarious people that come in here and take advantage of that.

(16:26):
It also turns out like here in California, like, you know, I have to pay like $1,800 a month for health care for me and my family. But like, if you just walk into a hospital and say like, I'm an undocumented migrant, we'll go great, like free, free health care for you.
that costs real money to actual taxpayers who like need to incur the burden of that which

(16:48):
frankly like we can't actually accommodate that so i think now all these pressures are starting
to add up and people are going huh like it turns out like the kumbaya version of the world is very
very expensive and difficult to implement and furthermore we actually just teach people that
like hey like you should go to america because all the stuff we have to pay for here you can get
there for free. And again, like, I want to welcome people from all walks of life and cultures to come

(17:15):
here and contribute to society. But the key word there is contribute. And I think this has been
one of the things that we've seen repeatedly is that like, there are people that want to take
advantage of these social safety nets, and that's incurred of a real cost to the American public.
I was reading an article this morning about some of the Somalians in Minnesota, sort of weaponizing

(17:36):
Medicaid, claiming autistic children to get Medicaid benefits and then cycling that money
back to Somalia.
Well, and it turns out that like there are real cultural differences of why America is
a leading developed country in the world and Somalia is not.

(17:57):
And I think like this is one of the great cultural neglects that a lot of people don't
see is that like the melting pot of American culture is really about not just taking other
cultures and just plopping them into america but really actually integrating that with greater
american values that have come to define you know like i think you said earlier you had like an
irish italian background you know like i have a a dramatic irish background i'm pure irish

(18:22):
pure irish philly philly is split uh it's like irish irish uh catholic italian catholic polish
catholic and obviously mixed in strong jewish community and uh now um that's that's what it
was like when i was born now that's well and like these were like when our ancestors came here like
they they were true immigrants as irish they were probably discriminated against quite heavily and

(18:46):
not allowed to work in various capacities not uh not very well known the irish were a lot of the
irish were slaves when they came to this country too yeah absolutely and they came to this country
particularly on the back of like the irish potato famine where like one in four people in ireland
died and so like there was there was very real consequences of why and how people got here
and yet your identity today is one of being uh like american irish as opposed to just irish and

(19:10):
like this to me is one of the the great problems today is like we don't seem to be getting cultural
integration in addition to like there's a very negative dialogue about like what being american
is sort of on a whole and that like we should be ashamed of being american or that that america
doesn't have a particular culture on its own.
And one, I just don't believe that's true.
But also, like, I think that's a massive disservice to everybody because it says, well, you as

(19:34):
being somebody who's, you know, lived here as an American for most of your life, you should
be ashamed of that culture.
And I think that I don't really understand it.
Why should one be proud of being any other culture or nationality but not American?
And like, I think it's very difficult to have dialogues with people about why we should
really be proud to be American.
And that doesn't mean that, like, I love my government and they're great.

(19:55):
Like, fuck those people.
They fucking suck.
And they represent everything that I don't like.
And that's why we explicitly have a constitution.
That's like a document about limiting the government, not one empowering it.
So, yeah, well, let's have a discussion.
What is in your mind an American?
What is America's culture?
So I think one is that, like, it's a highly integrative culture.

(20:17):
Like, we want people from all walks of life and different communities from around the world to be able to come here to this country.
but then we're going to work on amerocratic and egalitarian culture where like if you work hard
if you're smart if you apply yourself if you build community with other people like you should not
only integrate and be able to find and create a life for yourself but like you should also be able

(20:38):
to celebrate the various cultures that come in and are part of that but part of that is is truly
respecting other people and also recognizing that like uh all of these sort of race plays or cultural
plays are secondary to the fact of that like we all live here we all love the idea of limiting the
power of our government of being able to live and let live that you should be able to have a business

(21:02):
and make money from it you shouldn't be taxed out the wazoo and with that we should be able to build
community and culture together yeah we've gotten far far far away from that now how do we get back
i guess this highs in the bitcoin and bring it back to like the simulacrum and the hyperreal do
think bitcoin helps tether us back to reality and gets us back to a sound foundation from which we

(21:25):
can begin to affect these these values you just described yeah i mean i think uh first and foremost
is that like we need to understand uh the deep and uh frankly like the core rottenness of our
political culture at this point in time and the way that it's tried to pit us against one another
as it being either red or blue,

(21:46):
it doesn't make any real difference.
And that's one of the reasons that as Bitcoiners,
we've concluded that like the money is the real problem.
Because when you actually look at the development of society
and the way that fiat money printing
has augmented the entirety of it,
this is where a lot of that rot comes from.
And furthermore, when you see this political culture
that has gamified everything
and made everything into a right-left issue,

(22:07):
as opposed to going, hey, hang on,
like we actually share a ton of values
and we need to find a great middle ground to work together.
Like I'm of the opinion the only way back at this point in time is,
and I don't even want to call it a third party movement.
Like we need a full cultural, I don't know,
for very strong reasons that should be obvious.

(22:27):
I don't like the word cultural revolution.
Yeah, I can see it coming.
I was like, hey.
But like we need to have a strong movement to try to return to like this
radical modernism, if you will.
And I think part of a radical modernism is understanding that like,
both the Democrats and the Republicans are the major problem today. And anybody who associates

(22:49):
with either of those, like I actually think we should lineblast them and just make them an enemy
class. And that whatever new political culture established itself is it's based on the very
fact of anyone who's been involved with those two parties, like they're not allowed to be part of
the new political culture. In addition to turning towards the future and saying, hey, like our
children's future and making them better than ours matters, because I think our generation more

(23:13):
than any other generation is sort of the first American generation to truly have it worse than
our parents. And I think that the boomer class and the way that they have chosen to hollow out
America for their own benefit is a very real problem that has to be dealt with. And we need
to figure out how are we going to actually make things better for our children. And I think it's

(23:34):
through a radical modernism that says, hey, we're going to get back to a middle ground.
we're going to work together we're going to find policies that work best for americans who live
here and who have contributed to our culture and also i've talked about this is like i think we
need to do it through a state's rights movement to essentially radicalize states against the
federal government strip the federal government of power and really push power back into the

(23:57):
various states and allow for sort of the experiment of the 50 states and the different ways that they
want to organize themselves become kind of the primary method of how we're going to figure that
out. Yeah. And we had a glimpse of that during COVID. Some states asserting their autonomy and
saying, hey, we're open for business. We're not doing this. And that was beautiful to see. But
that momentum died pretty quickly. Yeah. And I think like that's part of a greater movement that

(24:22):
sort of needs to encourage that. But there also needs to be essentially like, again, I don't know
what you'd call it, but like a sort of political collective that's trying to get the states to
work together and have dialogues about this. And I've talked about it before, is that like, I think
trying to figure out how to use the ratification of the constitution through article five
needs to become this primary tactic to start trying to bludgeon the federal government and

(24:45):
really empower states in new and various ways yeah because to your point about the federal government
and the mirage of red versus blue it's really just a uniparty i think there was an incredible
example of this on the hill yesterday i saw a clip i believe it was the ceo of autopilot which
if you're not aware is this um basically this finance app that allows you to follow the trades

(25:08):
of individual senators and congressmen and so like the pelosi tracker yeah like you can put money in
and trade with nancy pelosi and this guy was on the hill saying like hey we started this to highlight
the overt corruption that exists in terms of insider training that's happening with our
politicians and i thought it was a beautiful representation of the unit party because he

(25:29):
called out republicans and democrats like they're basically leveraging the federal government to
pillage the american people yeah and i think this has been going on for a long time uh like i i i
truly believe this is treason it's treason to the highest degree um that's part of why you know like
80 of military hardware in the united states has chinese components it's part of why we've developed

(25:54):
these deep ties with the Chinese Communist Party. And it's why we have American politicians that are
actually selling us out to that. And this is one of the reasons that I think we need to use Article
5 to radicalize states against the federal government is because like, I very much believe
that pretty much every single federal representative is corrupt in some way. And I would love to see

(26:16):
an Article 5 amendment to the Constitution saying that every single member of the United States,
senate and congress will be put on trial for treason we're going to open the books make it
very clear to everybody and at the end you're found guilty of treason you will be punished as
such because like the fact that nancy pelosi has been a career politician who now is worth what 180

(26:36):
million dollars more than 200 yeah like that this is despicable deplorable and disgusting and the
very fact that she is allowed to exist in our society not be called out by that daily and
hounded, but she's actually put on a pedestal and celebrated as some champion of civil liberties.
Like it's deplorable, disgusting, despicable, and just an insult to anybody's average of

(26:59):
intelligence to be able to look at the situation and not go this. She's made money through explicit
corruption that in any other field would be considered insider trading. And those people
would go to jail for that crime. And so I think the only way to do this is because these people
that are federal representatives, they believe they're above the law. Like I was reading this
morning that there's a congressional representative out of Florida who she was caught laundering like

(27:22):
more than five million dollars of COVID money to herself. She's like still a standing member of
Congress right now. And it's like, well, until until found guilty, you know, which like there's
something to be said for that. But like it just goes to show the endemic nature of the corruption
at this point in time. And I think that like as American citizens, we should be outraged.
It very clear this part of government is broken and we not going to be able to address this through the federal legislature So we need to go through states and use that as the most powerful mechanism to essentially stand against them

(27:52):
Yeah. And we were talking about this with Danny in HODL the other week on what Bitcoin did.
But I think people in the federal government should push for this because you should recognize, like, hey, game's up.
we've pillaged enough like the the plebs if you will are getting angry because it seems pretty

(28:13):
clear that there's two paths that are being framed for how to get through this to the masses it's
find my franco bring him in or overt democratic socialism that leads to communism yeah and like i
you had to you had to defend fascism you didn't want to but like it's just and it's funny like
you say this and people get all pissed off and it's like hey if we're being objective in just

(28:36):
observing the tea leaves of what the younger generations are saying right now this is what
they're saying yeah and like i i and i really appreciate it in that podcast like hodl was the
one that really pointed out that we need this sort of radical modernism and like again like i don't
know how we do this i hope somebody takes up the flag and like makes it their thing like i'm old

(28:57):
i'm tired like i don't i don't have the capacity to try to do something around this uh but like
whoever chooses to take that up, like they have my, my full hearted support, but, uh,
it's becoming sadder and sadder to realizing that like, we're in a pretty desperate situation.
And like we, and then like, nobody's coming to save us. And I think that's the big problem is
we keep having this expectation that like another election, some new person, some new way of doing

(29:22):
things. And like, it's about the actual apparatus of government itself at this point in time. And
that, that again is why, like, I think you need to have radical approaches, like, uh, article five
ratification because like we need to change up the structure of the federal government and so it's
like uh the very first amendment to the united states constitution that was passed but actually
never ratified so like it's not an amendment to the u.s constitution it's still in a weird

(29:46):
quasi state where it could be ratified it's called article the first so i think it's passed i think
like 12 states or something like that so if you got like another 25 states to ratify it like it
would actually become law of the land in the united states and this explicitly stipulates that uh like
no congressional member will ever represent more than 50,000 people at one time.

(30:06):
So that would mean that the House of Representatives would now become like 6,000 people or something
like that.
And that would absolutely fuck up the federal government in a pretty extreme way.
And like, let's fucking go.
Like, that's what I want to see is that like, this thing is broken.
So like, let's either break it the rest of the way or figure out a new way to organize
ourselves.
Yeah.
So 6,000 reps would just trade gridlock where you can't get anything passed.

(30:28):
or like we we would get like a a very interesting like multi-party thing that's starting to happen
because like i think in the uk like the the house of commons i think it's like 2200 people or
something like that it's like i think and the other one is like we need to integrate technology
into this you know like trying to get trying to organize 2200 people to have a dialogue
uh like in person like it's not going to happen but like we know of plenty of forms where people

(30:53):
can have dialogues like that and there there are different technological ways to address all this
that like that's the other thing is i think if we create new forms of governance integrating
technology in a powerful way that uses cryptographic proofs could do something really
powerful and so like i would love to see some sort of platform that uses no stir and voting
and cryptographic proofs and other things to actually really create some new mechanism of

(31:18):
consensus to really try to figure out what do people want and need and how are we going to go
about doing that. Yeah. How does Bitcoin play into this in your mind? Like we essentially,
so if all the things went how I wanted to, we would essentially use Article 5 of the Constitution
and the very first amendment that would get passed would be end the Fed. So the Federal Reserve would

(31:39):
be unilaterally ended through an amendment to the US Constitution. We would just refuse to pay
any US debt. We'd cause a dollar to go into hyperinflation and every single state would pivot
to having Bitcoin not only as their treasury,
some would use as their currencies
and others would actually issue
their own state-based currency based upon that.
These things would float between the various states

(31:59):
in order for them to kind of find stability
between each other.
But like, I think through having states
issue their own currency
and using Bitcoin to backstop those currencies,
I think would be a really powerful approach.
Because again, like unless we actually address
how money is being issued
and the corruption that's around that,
we're never going to solve this problem.
Yeah.
that's what hal finney envisioned in uh december 2010

(32:22):
build a free banking system on bitcoin one you know most people don't know the wildcat era of
banking in the united states between when uh andrew jackson ended the first bank of the united
states between i think it was uh 1862 and the second bank of the united states was created that
like this was an era where there was like 7 000 different free floating currencies that were

(32:44):
issued by private institutions and like that's also the area of the greatest growth that happened
in uh like the american economy so like while this seems like a wacky idea to us today like
this is actually how it operated throughout most of american history that's one of the big problems
is um it's a bit overplayed and cliche but it is apt it's like we're fish and water like there

(33:07):
any anybody living today has never experienced that environment and so it's hard for people to
get comfortable with taking the risks,
take that leap and experiment
with that type of monetary network.
Yeah, and I mean, like,
the other thing is, like,
there's a very different form of life
that could be available to us.

(33:27):
You know, like, most people don't realize
that, like, we don't actually have to live lives
where you work at jobs that you hate
for 40 hours a week
trying to make some tech company
slightly more effective.
And it's, like, I recently read
Dave Graber's essay on bullshit jobs.
And, like, it just...
I think he wrote it maybe a decade ago, but it was just really resounding today of that, like,

(33:47):
I've met so many people recently who have jobs that they really hate, and they don't see any
other way outside of it other than committing their lives to working at some corporation that
they don't like. And trying to give them the empowerment to feel like they could go start a
small business and be successful, really is kind of impossible for most people because of how
destructive the currency has been, how much inflation has affected people and how difficult

(34:13):
it really is to start a business. And I think if we were actually on something like a Bitcoin
standard, it'd be a very different way for people to choose to live. And I think we could go back
to having a number of much smaller businesses and industries that could really allow for us to break
up these large corporate oligopolies and actually create something new and different for the American
in public yeah i was having this conversation yesterday a story of this podcast and this

(34:39):
business my own personal journey like i feel incredibly lucky i've got a bug uh and the
lights above us but i feel incredibly lucky that uh there's something that's deeply ingrained i
don't know if it's my genes or my soul or my psyche where i'm talking about having good genes
but uh i could not do the corporate life like i had a good hedge i was working at a good fund

(35:04):
trajectory to make good money was in a good position and just literally physically could
not stand being in the cube pulling data from bloomberg splicing it up like following markets
well i think i think for a lot of people it's the fish and water thing like they've known that
their entire life they've never had an opportunity to really just be free and allow for themselves

(35:25):
that opportunity and i think if they did have that opportunity uh like i've known a number of
people that have done their sabbatical thing to like go travel the world or whatever and like
essentially when they come back they realize they can't ever do that again and like that's really a
reality i want to provide to more people it's like how do we make this a more creative open and free
culture for everybody because like at the end of the day like this is the one life that we have to

(35:48):
live and the fact that like we're in this culture where uh you know the idea of having a family with
eight kids seems absurd to most people because of how expensive it would be and like what what a
crime against humanity to really have created a world where the idea of a child being too expensive
is a reality that most people live in did you see the stat out of the uk no this is very morbid

(36:14):
for every hundred births in the uk well i believe it was in 2024 there was 48 abortions
this like yeah and like it's it's interesting because i think charlie kirk kind of pointed out
this dialogue that that he really stood around powerfully and like i think it's really important
like uh a woman's body a woman's choice like that that's something that i think as a truism that

(36:39):
trying to overcome would be too difficult but like i do think the consequences of that really need to
be understood and that uh also like we've created a society that that becomes a very real issue for
somebody if they're going to be a single mom having to look at like well how the hell am I
going to provide for this child in a meaningful way and that's something that reflects on our
culture as well and like it's it's really important to understand that the change in how

(37:05):
like this issue is being dealt with has very much had like a demographic shift like in culture on
its entirety that we're now really seeing the consequence of and that like there's a lot fewer
people, there's a lot more individuals that have been imported in order to replace those people.
And also, like, it's a really difficult issue. And I, again, like, I really appreciated Charlie

(37:28):
Kirk after he was assassinated. I watched a number of his videos and, like, he had a very logical
approach. In addition to the fact of that, like, I personally, like, I think children are a beautiful
and extraordinary blessing and uh like seeing these cat videos of women celebrating their
individualism of getting to like sleep in as late as they want or go to brunch that like this

(37:53):
like this is a fulfilling i launched that video this morning too well and it was just like this
is a fulfilling life for you and like like people were out there making fun of her and it was just
like i feel really sad for her like she she'll never know the beauty of what it is to be woke
up in the middle of night by your child who you pick up and they will snuggle into you and fall
back asleep into your arms like that's that's a beautiful thing and the fact that this has been

(38:19):
contorted in such a way that this is supposed to be something that that you're afraid of that you
don't want like that's really alarming to me and like i i don't know how we correct that and like
i don't i don't think there's really easy answers here but i would really appreciate if we had a
society and culture that would really support people if they were going to be single mothers

(38:41):
or whatever, but also the entire conversation about where we're at and like how and why
these things come about is really important.
Well, I think it really, it does come back to the money because, excuse me, I, no, no,
when I was in Chicago, I, I volunteered at a inner city lacrosse program opportunity.

(39:07):
with lacrosse and schools or outreach with lacrosse and schools excuse me and uh so i would go to the
west side and south side in chicago and got to see the sort of ramifications of the welfare state
up close and personal and there's a bunch of kids being raised by their aunts and their grandmothers
and um the father wasn't there and i mean thomas soul has explained this pretty pretty cogently

(39:32):
in my mind like if you replace the family the nuclear family with the state like this is the
ramifications of it. And I think that's happened not only in inner cities, lower economic wrongs,
but now it's pumping up to your point, like the cat lady sitting there, like she was told to go
be a girl boss. And the conditions of the economy are such that you have to be forced into the

(39:52):
workplace because you have to, you have to make enough money to, to suscits because inflation
and debasement is accelerating, um, year after year, decade after decade. And going back to my
story about being able to quit that job. Part of what gave me the comfort of that is like,
I knew I had some Bitcoin savings and I quit that job, got another job in New York. Similar

(40:15):
thing happened. Worked there for two years and then hated it, quit. Thought I was going to get
a job in two weeks. Went up being unemployed for 18 months before I started this newsletter and
podcast. And I spent a lot of time that 18 months in Brooklyn, just like really thinking deeply
about what I want to do, studying Bitcoin very intensely.

(40:36):
I think it was in a monk-like fashion for like a year, year and a half.
And going to all the Bitcoin meetups in New York and trying to get jobs,
but I think subconsciously really knowing like this is what I want to do.
And then the timing struck in June of 2017.
I was like, okay, the price of Bitcoin is going up.
My dad had a somewhat serendipitous conversation with me.

(41:01):
I was down in my dumps, down on the rocks, probably rock bottom for my life.
Though I did have the savings, I was like, okay, I just got married.
I don't have a job. I feel like a loser.
My dad was like, you should write about Bitcoin.
You wrote at the fund.
You know a lot about Bitcoin and started the newsletter.
And here we are today.
But I would not have been able to really do that, to go through that journey

(41:24):
if I did not have this financial backstop that I could pull into
to survive during that period and really have the time to think about what I wanted to do Yeah and like you this is your story of the Dark Night of the Soul of you like going into the dark night that is the nihilism of this society and going through your own true angst of like what

(41:45):
is it that i actually want to do with my life is the time that i sell myself again and and go find
some firm that i can prostitute myself to and have them rob me of 60 hours of my life that
i can go in before the sun comes up and leave after the sun goes down and maybe get to see my
wife for a half hour before I go to bed and do it all over again? Or is there something different?

(42:08):
And I think for a lot of people, even being asked the question if there's something different,
is an impossibility because even if they have money in the bank saved, like that money is
dwindling quicker than ever. And that there's sort of a schizophrenic and paranoid worldview that
happens under a fiat currency regime where all the money can evaporate, the bank can steal it,

(42:31):
like any number of things that can happen.
Whereas at least for me, very similar,
having my Bitcoin savings as a vehicle that I know,
hey, like this is safe and secure.
Nobody can take it away from me.
It should deflate over time
if all of the things work correctly.
That gave me the confidence too
to actually chase my own dreams

(42:52):
and actually say, you know,
I want to do something different for myself.
I don't want to continue to, you know,
work at the bank that I'm working at.
And I'd like to strike out and do something bigger.
and so it's part of a dualism of that like having the confidence and conviction to know and understand
what bitcoin is is one half of the coin but the other side is is then having the conviction and
steam and yourself to say there's something better out there for me that i could actually make for

(43:16):
myself that could be meaningful and i think like this is part of the mission that we're sort of on
that we've been on for a while is trying to get people to understand bitcoin and so like i'm very
big into a pedagogical approach of bitcoin is that like you have to be willing to understand
that for yourself first and actually take a moment to look around and you know after the one fish

(43:36):
swims by and says hey how's the water this morning boys to actually look at your friend and ask the
question of like well what's what's water and actually understand that like we are in sort of
a fictionalized reality that causes for people to go into this prattle and paranoia of that like you
need to work a 40-hour job a week and save money in this way contribute your 401k when that's

(43:57):
That's not actually true.
You could do something different for yourself,
but that requires the confidence and conviction
for you to actually ask the most meaningful questions
to yourself to engage in that.
Yeah.
And I mean, we've been talking a lot
over the last couple of days,
like the state of Bitcoin itself
and people's understanding of Bitcoin.
How would you describe it?

(44:18):
I think it's atrophied over the last year.
Like I think the Bitcoin treasury
and number go up thing has been pretty detrimental
to the dialogue of Bitcoin on a whole.
And people have been treating it just as a banking apparatus to like make more money.
And I think that's sort of dangerous.
And particularly here at the conference that we're at, I've talked to a number of people that are like, no, it's as the Bitcoin white paper says it.

(44:39):
Bitcoin is pure, pure cash.
Like we need to make it a payment network for people all around the globe.
And that there are people that live in the global south who like just being able to have a payments rail is the most meaningful thing.
and again like i number go up's nice but like i i don't see it as being either number go up or we
get a payments network like these things work synergistically together and i think we need to

(45:03):
return to the dialogue of that like bitcoin is truly independent freedom money and people need
to get on board with that and understand like particularly the zoomers that like you need to
empower yourself against a system that has chosen to abuse you and enslave you and bitcoin is a real
exit for you and furthermore like people do crazy shit like take out debt and renege on it because

(45:25):
they can hold bitcoin and just walk away from all of it i'm not saying that's right or correct but
like there are ways that you can empower yourself against a system that wants to abuse and fleece
you sam hyde most famously i think have you ever seen that video no it's like sam hyde i think in
like 2016 talking about like here's what i did i took out 30 grand in credit card debt bought

(45:47):
Bitcoin. Negged on it.
They call me and they're like, hey,
you need to pay off this balance.
And he's like, okay, I don't have enough money. Can I pay you
like $2 a month? They're like, yeah.
And he's speculative attack
for the credit system, essentially.
And look like, do what you want to
for yourself and make the risk
that you want to. Yeah, not financial advice.
Yeah, not financial advice, but like

(46:08):
it's important to understand like
once you have that Bitcoin and if you
secure it correctly, people can not take
it from you. Like that's something really important
and also like if people are like well it's so unethical to renege on it like i'm sorry but like
fuck these people these are super abusive financial institutions who exist off of fleecing people and

(46:29):
to be clear like the u.s government's in the same fucking position right now 88 of tax receipts are
going to like paying this unpayable fucking debt so like at the end of the day like we're stuck in
a debt-based fiat monetary system that is not going to work out for anyone at the end of the day
and people really need to understand that like this system is going to go away at some point

(46:53):
it's not about if it's about when and you should start setting yourself up and preparing for a
different life you know and same thing like uh like urban cultures are really interesting and
innovative but like they're all based around this particular sort of fantasy that like i think is
pretty disconnected from reality on a whole at this point in time and i think if we're able to

(47:15):
get more and more people onto a Bitcoin standard. Like there, there's a real way that culture can
shift in a powerful and thoughtful way that isn't going to be a giant crash, but it's actually going
to create for a solution that I don't think anybody can really predict. But this is only
if people are really going to start thinking for themselves, like stop believing that all of these

(47:35):
different authoritative figures out there, including us, like have the solutions for you.
Like you need to sit down and reflect for yourself about what's the life that you want for yourself
and what can empower you in that?
Yeah, I know we were talking about it yesterday and my belief is that for the up return thing,

(47:56):
it's like I'm just, it's a conversation like I don't feel there's a lot of value engaging in
for myself particularly, but to your point, like don't believe in us. That's been one of the most
disconcerting things about this debate within Bitcoin is the number of people that are literally
tagging me and hopping in my comments on youtube and on x being like what do you think about this

(48:19):
like what should we do it's like i you should not be asking me you have to decide for yourself like
that's what bitcoin is all about well and also people are getting pissed at me because i'm not
responding i'm like you're missing the point like you should not be asking me for this well and also
on that point like people who are doing that tomorrow like fuck you but like like you're not
entitled to a response from him and even in that his response doesn't fucking matter like go do the

(48:45):
fucking work and figuring out for yourself and also like my first tweet when i got back onto twitter
was about this op return debate and how much it fucking frustrated me because people aren't reading
between the lines uh they're not understanding the greater technical debate uh and also like
they're not understanding the ideology that's being injected into it and it just it makes me
really fucking angry because like this is a difficult technical issue to understand and also

(49:09):
it's not fucking cut and dry and people that are behaving as if it is like the the hubris really
upsets me and like at some point can you fucking stop and actually self-reflect enough to go maybe
there's something i'm not seeing here maybe i shouldn't be nearly as confident as i am about
the approach here and so i'd really encourage you if you don't understand this great it means there's

(49:32):
more for you to learn about Bitcoin. And just like, as long as you and I have been in it, I don't
think either of us would be able to assert ourselves as being experts in Bitcoin in any way.
I mean, I fucking became friends with him, sat next to a core developer here for several months.
And even he was hesitant and saying, despite the fact that that he's involved deeply in change and
like developing Bitcoin core, that he didn't feel confident about being an expert in it.

(49:57):
And it's because Bitcoin is a huge project that involves a lot of moving pieces. And it requires
There's decades of deep and intensive study that even people that would be considered experts by most don't feel that way themselves.
So, like, humble yourself enough to say, maybe I'm wrong about this, including the Bitcoin project on a whole.
That's super important.
So you don't fall down the fucking Zcash rabbit hole and go, this is the new solution that Bitcoin couldn't do.

(50:22):
You know, maybe that's true.
But do all the fucking work to figure it out for yourself.
And at the end, you'll probably have a conclusion that you don't need to go tag Marty on X to ask his opinion about this shit.
Yeah.
No, I think I am not an expert.
And that's why I think I've learned enough being in Bitcoin for as long as I have to like know what I don't know.

(50:45):
I'm not going to go out there and pontificate one way or the other in this particular debate because I know that I don't know everything.
And I think that's I call it my Bitcoin Zen.
It's like you just got to it's like surfing when you fall off a wave.
You just got to go ragdoll and be like, OK.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I tried to catch something too big for me.
I got punished for it.
And that's OK.

(51:06):
Yeah.
And like this thing plays out bigger, too.
Same thing with anybody who's out there making the confident price calls about whatever it is.
Like, I'm sorry.
Like, you don't have a fucking crystal ball.
You don't know.
The price goes up.
The price goes down.
And like this is the game theory of Bitcoin.
Now, like, at the end of the day, I know the number of units that exist.
I know the amount of energy and hashing power that's going in.

(51:27):
Those are true things that I can know.
And based off of the rest of the economy, when I look at Bitcoin as a savings vehicle and how it operates as a payments rails, I feel way better about that than anything else out there that exists.
And so as a value investor, Bitcoin is my chosen savings vehicle.
And that's what I'm going to keep doing.

(51:48):
It's funny to watch people really freak out about this price movement.
What's happening?
oh my god $90,000 bitcoin it's so horrible like bro like rewind the tape a little bit look at where
we're at a few years ago like things are going to work out it's going to be great um but also like

(52:08):
we can't just sit on our haunches and say number go up forever like it's important that there's an
ongoing pedagogical conversation with people in your lives to actually get them to do their best
to understand what Bitcoin is, why it's different from crypto on a whole, why these other currencies
aren't a solution, why we can't rely on the government to try to correct these problems

(52:30):
for ourselves and why we really need to have a neutral money that the globe can use for
themselves.
Yeah.
And to your point about, obviously, I think it's objective last year, year and a half
has been really focused on these treasury companies, number go up and the sort of free
to money, peer to peer digital cash as a narrative has been sort of pushed to the wayside.

(52:52):
But I think if you're paying attention to what's actually being built in terms of the
infrastructure, whether it's second layer subsystem protocols, as Steve Lee was describing
to me yesterday, or what something like Block just enabled for their Square point of sale
systems, like if you squint and know where to look, there is very exciting, truly cypherpunk

(53:14):
digital cash infrastructure being built out.
And I think we just need to do a better job of highlighting
and pushing that to the fore of the conversation.
Absolutely.
And like I, these are sort of the ironic cycles
that Bitcoin continuously goes through
that I really appreciate is that like,
despite the fact that things feel kind of stagnant

(53:35):
is like actually under the hood,
there's been huge developments.
And so seeing what's going on with eCash
has been really exciting
and all the different applications
and ways that people are using that.
And it's a really powerful mechanism and it has really great privacy protecting features that like, and I think this is going to continually happen is me and Jesse talked about this at length once of that, like, we think all of the cryptography that Bitcoin needs to become a massively successful project is already baked into pie.

(54:02):
A lot of it's just undiscovered, very similar to like, or not even undiscovered, but we haven't just taken the various pieces and kind of applied them or utilized.
Yeah. And so like e-cash is a great thing.
This is a Chami, an idea from the 1980s that just got reapplied to Bitcoin in a new and innovative way.
And so there are various puzzle pieces that people have and fit together.

(54:23):
In addition to like, there's actually like a pretty small cohort of people that are working on these projects because very similar to like working on a jet engine or something.
Very few people are willing to actually lift the hood and look at what's going on underneath it.
But once you start tinkering with it and giving yourself permission to mess with it and try things with it, you can learn this stuff.

(54:48):
And so I'd really encourage anybody who is really interested in Bitcoin, start playing with it under the hood and encouraging yourself to do developmental work or get involved in different ways.
You can do it.
And we need other people that are involved with it.
And as these discoveries are made, there's going to be more and more opportunities.
And so eCash is just one of many new things that are going to sort of change how Bitcoin

(55:12):
operates on a number of levels.
And so I ultimately think that like stuff's still exciting.
The mission's still here.
We're still going to win and just like chill out.
Yeah.
And like focus, like you mentioned Zcash earlier.
It's a very frustrating narrative, especially if you've been around long enough to understand

(55:32):
Dynamics, which brought Zcash to the market
and the narrative that they're running with,
oh, Bitcoin's not private enough.
But it's like, you just mentioned eCash.
You can push privacy to second layers,
whether that's Lightning, eCash,
Liquid with confidential transactions,
whatever it may be.
But then on-chain too,
like to your point about underutilized,

(55:54):
I guess there's cryptography involved
to a certain extent,
but like underutilized transaction batching
with PayJoin.
like yeah we can we can bitcoin it will be a transparent ledger and you will know that
utxos are going from one address to another but you can construct transaction batching in a way
where it's really hard to tell who owns what address and payjoin it's something i've been

(56:18):
passionate about for years and i think with the work that dan gould and others working on the
payjoin development kit have been doing over the last three years specifically has been incredible
and now I think it's time to make the narrative push for the exchanges in the space,
the large transaction batchers, the largest transaction batchers that exist within the
industry to really implement this and just position it in a way like, hey, you're running

(56:41):
a business, you want to cut costs and be as efficient as possible for your shareholders
and not only your shareholders, but the Bitcoin network itself.
Like, it's a superior way of batching transactions that you should implement.
yeah and also like on that note like uh it's very clear that governments are against this kind of

(57:01):
technology that they are going to try to spook people out of using them and seeing what happened
to keen on it is really uh sad and we should all be outraged and horrified by it and uh we really
need to try to stand behind the samurai devs in the same way that we stand stood behind ross like
it's important to understand what what happened to him was horrific wrong uh and frankly should

(57:24):
should be a bill yeah you know and like this is this is really unfair across the board and we need
to figure out how and why is our government so against us having the freedom to transact and
privacy within that because like this is what this is really about is a war against privacy
and we should be able to as businesses say hey i care about my users privacy enough and about my

(57:46):
shareholders making enough profit that i should be able to integrate pay join that that we're not
violating anybody by doing this and we're protecting people by ensuring them to have
privacy so like where and why is this conversation going wrong and again this goes back to like the
political thing is that like we have this class of fucking dinosaurs who don't understand this

(58:07):
technology in any meaningful way and they get keyed up on the exact same argument from the
first crypto wars of that this is about preventing uh child pornography and terrorism and all the
bad shit meanwhile like these motherfuckers won't actually release the goddamn epstein files because
they're afraid of the way that it's going to implicate everyone in government who is actually

(58:28):
doing these very real crimes and like this is sort of yeah i'm just i'm just really upset and
disappointed at our government right now and i wish there was a real way to push back against
these people and there isn't from a political standpoint and that's one of the reasons why i
own bitcoin is because like this is one of the very few ways that we have to have personal political
empowerment against a system that's highly abusive across the board so yeah and

(58:54):
at what point does corporate civil disobedience need to become a thing like going back to the
page one thing like in my mind it's like it is literally just a way of batching transactions that
is enabled by the protocol and the software kits built on top of it like there's literally nothing

(59:15):
stopping you from hitting the button that says,
okay, here's how we're going to batch transactions now.
And to answer that question,
is that like, I think corporate civil disobedience
is kind of the apex of what we need right now.
It's like, we need courageous CEOs
that are going to integrate these things.
And to be clear, the feds are probably going to come after you.
And when they do that, you go,

(59:36):
I will destroy my fucking business
and allow for myself to go to prison about this stuff
and really stand against you guys,
because this is wrong.
And we need to have,
like America is supposed to be a country that part of its founding principles is the pursuit
of life, liberty and happiness. And being able to have a business and protect your users is

(59:56):
meaningful. Like we shouldn't have to continually kowtow to governments over and over based off of
their prattle and paranoia that is non-existent. And meanwhile, in the background, like they're
the people that are doing these actual crimes and getting away with it. You know, like if we want to
talk about currency laundering like let's go back to fucking pelosi and the kind of shit that she's

(01:00:17):
doing like this this is really disgusting and upsetting and we need to start talking more about
how to to actively resist these people and again like i don't know maybe we need to start organizing
bitcoiners in a more meaningful and thoughtful fashion other than the sort of haphazard approach
that we've taken so far again i don't know what that looks like but maybe we need to have something

(01:00:37):
like that why would you describe it as haphazard uh like there isn't any sort of organizing principle
that like has us you know outside of sort of all of our unofficial contacts that we have with each
other there isn't like a larger umbrella organization that has has us all working
collaboratively together and like i have really strong hopes that like somebody can develop some

(01:01:00):
protocol on nostril that we can actually use to start figuring out like who are bitcoiners that
are really part of this whole thing that we're participating in.
And like, we've all sort of been refugees from, you know, first Bitcoin talk, then Reddit,
then to X and now to Noster.
And like, at what point do we say, like, this is really going to be our home base.
This is really the way that we're going to operate and organize with each other and know

(01:01:23):
who's who within the bunch of people and be able to actually start having real conversations
about like, how do we create our political power together as a real entity, as opposed
to again what i would call the haphazard approach yeah and maybe that's a fool's errand and maybe
i'm totally mistaken but well i feel like the the root of the haphazard approach is probably

(01:01:45):
seeped in this idea that bitcoin is this money for enemies and like it's this apolitical neutral
thing that um we can all sort of anchor into and benefit from but at the end of the day
it not any individual thing It not in the possession of any individual the network itself And I think there this embedded apprehension

(01:02:10):
to trying to do something like you're describing
because it's like,
oh, it's against the ethos of the protocol itself.
And I think the concern and danger of that is real,
but also I've always been the one of that,
I've always objected to the idea of the apoliticalness
because there's an interesting turnabout of that.
because Bitcoin is money for everybody, there is a way to see it as being apolitical.

(01:02:33):
But the truth is, we live in a fiat world where the literal word fiat is by decree. That decree
comes from governments that have organized us around national lines. And so the fact that we
have a money that is not loyal to any single nation state is the most political of all things.
And so being able to actually organize Bitcoiners from around the world around this idea first and

(01:02:56):
foremost, because while we've been talking from a very American centric idea, like these things
are going on in Europe just as much as they're going on in places like Africa and South America
and Asia. And it's important to understand that like Bitcoin truly is a global movement that is
based on top of the Internet. And we're sort of the first culture of people that understand that

(01:03:16):
this apparatus is something that we can use to empower people all around the globe to be
more free, more egalitarian, and have greater economic opportunity than ever before.
And we can totally lose that if we're not willing to actually stand up and say, hey,
this is an important and powerful political principle that people should rally behind.
And it's important to also return to the fact of that, like, the American Revolution wasn't

(01:03:39):
something that was isolated to America. And there was like good reason why Thomas Jefferson was also
one of the primary authors of the rights of man is because like this was truly a cultural movement
that was about advancing like the political capital T, capital P,
as opposed to just politics.
And so like, to me, Bitcoin's about a global political movement

(01:03:59):
for the freedom of money of all people everywhere
against their governments and the sort of endemic abuses
that they've created through fiat money.
Yeah. Yeah. How do we, I mean, ah.
And this returns everything.
How do you engender this fire?
because talking to you like it's very obvious that you have this fire in your belly that really

(01:04:21):
drives you to this and i feel like that fire doesn't exist in most people's bellies anymore
i like i don't know how we engender it and maybe it's like we just need to start building but it's
like to me that this is a true political principle of that like uh we need people to get that like
bitcoin is a political thing it's not it's not just an innate uh like a political thing if you

(01:04:45):
will, that like, it's truly the most political thing. And that's why I've always wanted to try
to encourage this sort of political line of Bitcoin shining through. And that's why I'd love
to see some kind of, and again, I don't want to call it a political party, but like this cultural
movement that's designed around people understanding. And like, again, like being well-read

(01:05:05):
in Marxism, I actually think that there's a lot of very powerful ideological approaches that we
can pluck out of Marxism. And one of the ideas is the idea of class consciousness, like having
people be able to develop a class consciousness around what Bitcoin is and what fiat money is and
how we're in that is a system that empowers us against it is very much like the idea of class

(01:05:26):
consciousness and Marxism and understanding how people were exploited through the labor theory of
value. Well, I'm happy you brought this up because this is what we've intentionally been doing with
AI generated videos. So I was very influenced by Michael Goldstein's 2019 BitBlock Boom talk on
meme warfare and the art of rhetoric and the fact that you shouldn't view propaganda as a bad thing.

(01:05:47):
You're being propagandized in both ways. So with these AI videos we're making, the last one we did
specifically, it's Common Man. Yeah, I saw it. I really liked it. It was like the two farmers talking.
Yeah, but like really like leaning into that Marxist idea, plucking that out. I mean, like,
Like, all right, we're going to tell the story of deflation and how money.

(01:06:07):
We have all this tech deflation, but we're not reaping the benefits of it because we're printing money.
We should talk more about this because this very much is in line with my book, Crypto Sovereignty,
and sort of the extension after it through Alexander Dugan's fourth political theory.
And that, like, in the fourth political theory, he makes the argument that, like, fascism, Marxism, and liberalism
are all sort of the political theories of the 20th century, and they're all dead.

(01:06:30):
Like, they're all murdered by neoliberalism in a very particular way.
That now means the whole world operates sort of under this principle of neoliberalism and that these three prior political theories are dead.
However, there's a possibility of a fourth political theory where you can essentially cherry pick from all of the prior political theories and take those ideas and then apply them to sort of this new political theory.

(01:06:52):
This is what I think Bitcoin actually is, but I think it's only once we imbue Bitcoin with principles that draw from fascism, that draw from liberalism and draw from communism to essentially educate people around the fact of that we have the Internet as a global apparatus that allows for anyone, anywhere, the freedom and empowerment to actually create and contribute to a global economy.

(01:07:15):
We now have a money that anybody anywhere can use freely with one another to transact with each other to create this global economy.
But it's only through the ideological advancement of understanding that fiat money, whether it is from the Japanese government, the Chinese government, the Americans or the South Africans, it is all designed around the explicit exploitation of the working class man against a political culture that is designed to steal from them.

(01:07:41):
And it's only through the development of this class consciousness of getting more people on board to use Bitcoin in a peer-to-peer fashion that allows for them to exchange directly with one another in a private, preserving manner, allows for number go up that sort of creates this dual union between the first world and the third world to advance one another for the working class in each world.

(01:08:04):
And then, you know, like I think Ben Ark and I, we've had a number of really great conversations together because he's very well read in Marxism, too, of that.
I've been meaning to do a deep analysis of Bitcoin from a Marxist standpoint.
And again, these words, Marxism, communism, fascism, they're almost useless at this point in time because of how much they've been abused.
But there is a way to approach Bitcoin through a Marxist lens that allows for these very deep principled recoveries of an ideological approach that that is part of why Marxism was such a powerful movement at the beginning of the 20th century Like it wasn all just an insane idea of using the state to create a giant apparatus of exploitation And that also

(01:08:46):
part of my line of thinking of being an anarchist. Like it's very important to understand that
the socialist movement in the late 19th century, like communism and anarchism were a single thing
up until Marx produced the Communist Manifesto.
And that's when Bakun approached Marx and was like,
hey, what's all this bullshit about the dictatorship of the proletariat
and taking over the state for us?

(01:09:08):
And Marx was like, yeah, yeah, that's how we can actualize communism.
And Bakun was like, fuck you.
The state's the problem.
It's not the capitalist expropriation.
It's the fact of that these things work in tandem with each other.
So like, fuck you, anarchism is going to go become its own movement on its own.
and because there was no organizing principle around anarchism it essentially died an early

(01:09:29):
death during the 20th century which i think now there's an opportunity to recover with this fourth
political theory wow and and it's funny like you're saying this and even myself just like
people hear these words marxism communism and the idea of like let's pick good ideas and they'll
have an like immediate aversion like immediately shut down uh intellectually like oh absolutely

(01:09:54):
And that's part from a multi-generational campaign against both of them.
One is that it's important to understand that Marxism and the way that it advanced into Leninist and Stalinism in the 20th century, it was fucking horrific.
And then in its last iteration of Maoism was almost the worst.
And these are particular maniacal forms that came out of the idea of Marxism.

(01:10:19):
In the same way that like fascism died such an early death and it's been so heavily disparaged over time that most people have no idea what the word means other than that.
It's it's bad.
It's really bad.
And we can't talk about it.
And I think these things are really important to go.
Well, why is it so bad?
What was the things that made it so apprehensible and something that we shouldn't look at?

(01:10:43):
Not only that, but like conversely, what were the things that made people really attracted to it?
Yeah. And like, it's pretty interesting that most people think that like Germany just went insane, like during the 1930s and that there was no real reason that fascism actually became the select approach.
And it's really important to understand the historic context of how and why fascism ultimately is what ran Germany in the 1930s.

(01:11:08):
And the same reason is like, why did fascism become the select thing that worked in Italy at the time?
And most people don't understand that fascism was explicitly developed as an anti-communist movement. And it's specifically because of the way that communism was becoming so powerful in places like Italy and Germany at this point in time. And so like, again, like, I also think that like, these answers from the past won't apply to the future. And that's why I like Dugan's fourth political theory so much.

(01:11:36):
Yeah, well, I'm chuckling right now because we're watching it play out again.
Absolutely.
We were talking about it with Danny.
Fascism is rising as this response to over communism, which is becoming popular.
And we saw how that played out and we should all be very scared of it.
And that's why we need to have a totally new political approach that has the Internet, Bitcoin, censorship resistant technology and privacy at the core of it.

(01:12:03):
because there is a new and very powerful way that we could create a global movement that ensures.
And it's very ironic because like part of what I think the fourth political theory is,
is take picking and choosing a number of these things in order to create essentially like
I don't know what you'd call it a la carte political theory.

(01:12:24):
Well, and part of that is, is that like this political theory essentially is like the most
radical form of anarchism through the most liberal approach that there is, because it
truly makes the sovereign individual and it collectivizes sovereign individuals sort of
under this, uh, like Marxist rubric. But because of the way that privacy is preserved, uh, that

(01:12:45):
like the individual choices radicalized through the internet in this very particular way, it like
actualizes the sovereign individual, like as sort of the preeminent political character of the 21st
century. But again, we only get that if we create this sort of applied political ideology
that like sort of the next iteration
of my own political work around crypto sovereignty

(01:13:06):
has been working on,
but also like this is like such a monumental
political and philosophical task.
And also like, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing.
So it's like trying to figure out how to do that.
Like I need somebody to deeply collaborate with me
and work on something like this.
Well, that was, you say that
and my next question was going to be like,
okay, we're talking high level,

(01:13:27):
30,000 foot view of this fourth political theory
that we should really attempt to go after.
And my question, right before you said that,
my mind was going to be, all right,
let's get into the blocking and tackling.
What is the first step?
I think the first step is acknowledging
that we need something like this
and then sort of trying to figure out
how does it organize itself.

(01:13:48):
And I have a whole bunch of desperate threats and ideas
that I've been juggling with over the past,
I don't know, seven years or something.
But having dialogues like this
encouraged me to look more deeply into it.
But essentially, like it looks something very similar to, yeah, essentially, I should go back through all of my notes from the fourth political theory and reread it.
Because after that, I felt like there's a way and like Bitcoin has a number of these things in it of that like Satoshi's choice of 21 million is like a total fascist thing.

(01:14:19):
But the fact that like one Bitcoin is one Bitcoin, whether it's mine or yours, and that's protected by cryptography is like this very Marxist idea.
And so like the, I think picking all of these things out and kind of trying to go through it in very deep detail to explain it, I think would be really valuable to people and as part of the advancement of that class consciousness to actually have people understand that like, no, you don't own the money in your bank account.

(01:14:44):
that's a debt instrument the bank owns like yes you are actually a very particular form of slave
that has been enslaved to fiat monetary system and something like Bitcoin is the real way that
you can empower yourself and Noster is the way that you can really and I think Noster is kind
of one of the components is that like I think that the thing that the political apparatus of however we like vote or have dialogues with each other or something there like a way to build that on top of no sir but like

(01:15:13):
it's not very clear to me at how that's done yet yeah and it hasn't really hit me well it has hit
me like I intentionally rebranded tftc to truth for the commoner to really play into that working
man thing because that's where like i grew up and both my grandfathers were union workers one was a
steam fitter one was an iron worker my parents had me very young and provided a great life for me but

(01:15:37):
we were never extremely well off and i think just my life experience is such that like i have a lot
of empathy for the working man because i grew up in a working man common man family and uh that's
who's getting crushed the most and that is who's also getting misled the most and they're getting
driven to these polar ideas to your point which have objectively failed and will fail again if you

(01:16:00):
if you try to implement them and the whole point of this show of the newsletter of
my work in bitcoin is to really get through to the common man like this is the way yeah and i think
like through uh like as you were talking about that that reminds me of like one of the ways that
anarchism tried to organize itself in the early 20th century was through an approach called

(01:16:21):
syndicalism. And syndicalism is essentially like this idea of creating industrial unions that are
interoperable together that are like based on those principles. And I think like, we essentially
as Bitcoiners need to start getting more aggressive with being like, hey, if you're a small business
owner, you need to be accepting Bitcoin. And like, you need to be marking up fiat by 10 or 20%

(01:16:42):
and being very explicit about that. Like if you're going to use Bitcoin with my business,
you're going to save money. And if you're not, I'm going to charge you more. And there's a reason why.
and then finding other people to create these collaborative relationships with where like maybe
they're uh people that that are inventory providers or maybe there are other people that you have
relationships with but it's really from a business front encouraging people to be like hey we need to

(01:17:05):
be using bitcoin for our businesses for these reasons and this is how it protects us and
furthermore by because we've collectivized ourselves in a particular way that like if the
government comes after you for, you know, like you get tax audited or something and that that's
taken away from you. Like we have this sort of support network that's going to help you out.
But again, all of this like goes back to, I don't know the exact methodology of how we need to

(01:17:31):
organize around this, but I am convinced that like organization is something that we need to
actually address in a meaningful way. And we also need to address this component of class
consciousness as well. Yeah. And it's never been easier with the tech that exists. Like we really
wanted to if we figured out like okay here's the sort of way in which we're going to organize the
ability to do so it's never been easier well and and getting into the mematic warfare like that's

(01:17:55):
such an important and powerful component because also like if we're doing it right as this stuff
gets promoted like they're going to start banning it and then we can start promoting it on no stir
and then we can start being really clear that like hey there's this whole other dialogue but
if i even try to have it with you here we both get banned and so like come find us on no stir like
this is our censorship resistant network where they can't stop us from talking about this and

(01:18:17):
spreading the signal because the truth is like you're being exploited in a way that like do you
really think that a hundred years ago your grandfather was able to own a farm and have
eight kids and that he was somehow like are you not working as hard as him like my grandfather
was an iron worker and had eight kids yeah like can you be an iron worker today and have eight

(01:18:40):
kids? No. Why is that? Is it that ironworking did not become more efficient? So like there's
clearly a fucking problem here. And why is it that it seems to be that we're working harder than ever
and we're getting by less than ever before? And it's because of these reasons. It turns out that
fiat money is a thing that's designed explicitly to exploit you and redirect money to this parasitic

(01:19:02):
political class. And really trying to figure out the way that we create the mematic warfare around
that, uh, collectivizing people to educate each other and giving each other the resources
and really finding the right ways to organize around that, I think is a very important principle
that I really hope that more people are going to get on board with figuring out how we do

(01:19:23):
this together.
You know, maybe, uh, we need to make like the founding father, like a dinner series
around the country, around the world, even we get a group of us together.
I mean, I think between like our mutual networks, along with some other people that we know,
like I do think that we should actually probably do something similar to this and like have a,
you know, like being here with the group that we're with is kind of a great starting point is

(01:19:48):
that figuring out how do we get us all together for a week just to hang out and really have a
dialogue with each other about if we're to build something like this, what does it look like? How
does it function? And how do we put it together? Very similar to what the founding fathers did.
Because like that was a decision that those men made for themselves to respond to the tyrannical abuses that their government was doing to them at that point in time.

(01:20:13):
Which like this seems to rhyme pretty well with what happened, you know, 250 years ago.
Yeah.
And it would be very fitting as we approach the 250th anniversary of this nation if we were able to successfully do something like this.
And it would be really fun to, you know, like, like, have you have you ever seen the document?
of like the bar tab

(01:20:34):
after they like got together
and actually created that.
And you see what they drink.
Yeah, yeah.
So we definitely need to do that part too.
All right.
Let's end it here.
All right.
Yeah, call to action
for the people who care about this
and recognize that
at least here in America
and I think even more broadly
in parts of the West,
the solutions that are being put in front of you

(01:20:56):
are not going to work.
They haven't worked.
And the nature of our reality
as it stands in 2025 and 21st century in the digital age is not conducive for the solutions
that are being put before you. Yeah. And we need to ask ourselves to stand up and be courageous
enough to realize that like, this is our time to really shine. And if we make the decision together

(01:21:18):
to stand up and create a new political dynasty that could change the future for the next 250 years,
maybe there's an opportunity that our children can actually live freer happier and flourish
better than we could have ever predicted i'm really happy we did this yeah me too all right
peace and love freaks

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

The Joe Rogan Experience

Stuff You Should Know

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#687: How Fiat Money Exploits the Working Class with Erik Cason

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

The Joe Rogan Experience

Stuff You Should Know

All Episodes

#687: How Fiat Money Exploits the Working Class with Erik Cason

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang