#120 Eric V. Stacks - BITCOIN FIXES ALL THE THINGS - Ben Wehrman Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
We live in a deflationary world, full stop, end of story.

(00:04):
Free markets are deflationary, but we have an inflationary monetary system.
And those are two incompatible forces.
And the incentives created are centralizing.
They're exploitative and they're bad for everybody, including our home, planet Earth.
Nothing, absolutely nothing in the marketplace on planet Earth.

(00:29):
is getting more valuable. Housing is not going up in value. Your Amazon stock over time
is not getting more valuable. What's happening is the currency that you denominate its value in
is getting less valuable. Hello, my friends. Thank you so much for coming by for another

(00:55):
episode of the podcast. I appreciate you being here. Today, we are joined by one of many Bitcoin
ranters who has joined the space and just turns the camera on and talks about Bitcoin. And this
guy is one of my favorites. And a lot of people have been bringing him on just because he has
great content. His name is Eric V. Stacks. He's a cannabis farmer from Northern California.

(01:19):
And he has a lot of things to say about Bitcoin. I think it'd be really cool to just have your
insights here, sir. So thank you for joining me. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm stoked to be here.
Why don't we start with your backstory? I think that this is definitely a unique one and how you
went through the motions and found yourself at Bitcoin like so many of us have. How did that

(01:40):
happen for you? Yeah, so I moved to Northern California in 2009 to work on a medical marijuana
a medical marijuana farm and trim and process a harvest. And I never left. I basically got here
and I knew immediately what I was going to do with the next many years of my life. Growing up,

(02:00):
I developed an affinity for cannabis. I'd say a lot of that was predicated upon pharmaceutical use
in my family. My mother and father divorced when I was a child and my mother remarried a psychiatrist.
and as a result she ended up getting into pharmaceuticals, antidepressants,
anti-anxiety pills. None of it was really recreational but I would say that it was she

(02:24):
was definitely abusing the pharmaceuticals and so in my teen years I started smoking weed with
some of my friends. I kind of determined it was rather benign and should be legal. It kind of
blew my mind that it was illegal. You know you can get all fucked up on alcohol and tobacco and
pharmaceuticals and all of these other things that are legal. And so when I was 20 years old,

(02:47):
my mother ended up dying, she committed suicide. She took a large dose of a barbiturate,
because she was so depressed, these antidepressants and she was taking wasn't helping the underlying
problem that actually kind of exacerbated it. For many years, she was kind of like a little
zombied out, it was almost like she just wasn't herself anymore. So that was kind of a very

(03:09):
impactful thing for me in my life and really fueled this like vendetta that I had against
the pharmaceutical industry. And now in hindsight, it's just the incentives baked into the fiat world.
So when I got here and I was trimming on this farm, I was like, wow, this is amazing. Like I
want to, I'm going to spend the next many years of my life producing cannabis. And so I did, I

(03:32):
saved up some money and set up a nonprofit collective. So I was compliant in the state
of California, started producing cannabis, selling it to the dispensaries. And then in 2016,
the laws had changed and it was going from medical marijuana to recreational. And the state was going

(03:53):
to license and the counties were going to permit all the existing cannabis businesses. So I bought
a property. It was kind of like a Hail Mary. It was like, it was a real big move for me at the
time. I scraped, scraped together every dollar I possibly could get my hands on and bought this
land. It's going through the permit process with Humboldt County planning department.

(04:16):
And, uh, so as soon as I closed escrow on the property, um, I went down the economic rabbit
hole. I wanted to understand the boom bus cycles. I now, and at that point in my life, I think it
was like 32 years old. I had this enormous economic incentive to understand what position I was in,
you know, I had all my money tied up in this land. And so, you know, very quickly, you know,

(04:39):
you learn about fractional reserve banking, the Federal Reserve, Keynesian economics, then hard
money, and Austrian economic theory. And after about nine months of going down that rabbit hole,
I discovered Bitcoin one month before I got issued a license from the state of California.
And you would think I would be really excited about this. Like I was in one sense, because it

(05:00):
was like a vindicating moment for me in my life. All of my, you know, teachers and parents,
friends or anybody who had given me any shit over the years in my earlier days for my affinity for
cannabis. It was like, there I am with this, this license from the state of California to run my
business and produce cannabis at a, although I was legal, this is like the next level of legality.

(05:23):
And, um, but it was an existential crisis. I was like, oh my gosh, like as a commodity producer,
I'm in trouble. Like the value of my product is going to continue to decrease while my operating
costs and living costs are going to increase. And watching the pound price change over the
few years around permitting and licensing between like 2015 to 2018, I was really well primed to

(05:49):
understand the magnitude of Bitcoin. You know, if you could pair infinite demand with true scarcity,
you have the apex monetary instrument of our civilization, species, whatever.
And so, you know, when I first discovered Bitcoin, I was thinking like, you know,
money is essentially the only thing in the marketplace that has infinite demand.

(06:11):
Not everybody wants cannabis farms.
Not everybody wants a place in Costa Rica or a house in L.A. or whatever.
But everybody wants money because money is a call option on any good or service the marketplace can produce.
So if you've got infinite demand paired with true scarcity, like at that time, I'm like, this thing is going to just destroy every other monetary instrument over time or the governments will shut it down.

(06:37):
I've since then determined amongst many other brilliant minds in the world that this is an unstoppable protocol and the world is capitulating into the Bitcoin network and that incentive vortex.
And so that's kind of the long and short of it and my story and how I got into Bitcoin.
And so actually, I also sold my farm a year later after getting it licensed.

(07:02):
That was because of the discovery of Bitcoin.
I could see the position I was in through a different lens.
And it definitely provided a lot of clarity and helped me to pivot my strategy.
So I sold the farm and I started doing farm management and consulting services because I've been producing cannabis for 15 years since 2009.

(07:23):
So 16 years now. Yeah. So that's how I got here today.
Very cool. And one of the words that you pulled out there that I want to highlight is this idea of licensing,
because this is one of the things that, you know,
as you go through the libertarian side of things

(07:44):
and learn like the truth behind it,
licensing is just when the government takes away
your right to do something and sells it back to you.
And they say, oh, it's for everyone's safety
because this is a drug, it's dangerous.
What are your thoughts on this general idea of licensing?
Do you think that's a pretty accurate way to put it?
And what would your response be to people say,

(08:04):
oh, like we need some because drugs are bad?
Yeah, I think that's a great way to put it. I really like that. You know, for me, in some sense, you could say that my perspective was skewed. It's almost like I was grading on a curve, right? Like because of this thing, because of federal prohibition and like the murky legalities surrounding cannabis, when licensing came in and adult use was voted into effect by the people of the state of California,

(08:35):
I was excited just based upon the fact that I personally believe that cannabis should be available to anybody who wants it.
And so I wasn't necessarily too upset at the time about the state and the regulatory involvement.
I've become much more adverse to the idea of it as time has gone on.
on. And I think ultimately, you know, because I have a lot of debates with friends and whatever,

(09:03):
and especially licensed farmers in Humboldt County, where I've been for 16 years. And there's a lot of
conversation. There's like Humboldt County Growers Alliance. It's HCGA. It's an alliance of growers
and it's a nonprofit. The people who founded, you know, founded this nonprofit, they basically work

(09:24):
on making legislation. They work to make the legislation more friendly and the rules more
friendly for the producers and cultivators. And so there'll be like weekly phone calls. And I know
people that are members. The owner of the farm that I'm sitting at currently is a member of HCGA.
And the conversation always seems to be, if you distill it down to first principles, what I always

(09:46):
hear is the farmers are complaining about things that are allowing the supply to increase, right?
They want to see the state go in and stop the black market cultivation, for example.
They want to prevent large corporations from coming in and putting in large facilities.
And what I hear in all of these conversations is effectively, let's reduce the supply, even though no one's actually saying literally this.

(10:14):
But if you distill it down to first principles, this is what they're saying.
Let's reduce the supply, because if the supply goes down relative to the demand, then the margin will increase and then it'll be better for the people producing the product.
Now, I disagree with that. I think that if that were to happen, as an example, if the state of California were capable of stopping all of the black market product that's being produced and then all of the product that gets consumed in the state of California would be produced in licensed facilities.

(10:43):
If that margin increased, if it became more profitable, then more people would just deploy capital and they would produce licensed product.
And then the supply would satiate the demand and the value of the commodity would descend down and near and probably all the way to the marginal cost of production over time.

(11:04):
So regardless whether it's legal or illegal, that margin is a large incentive for entrepreneurs to attack that margin.
excuse me, effectively satiate that demand with supply.
So when it comes to the state's involvement,
one of the things that I think about very often
is if the state was more lenient about what regulatory hoops and what fees and licensing fees et cetera that they need that they make business owners jump through it would still the end result would still be the

(11:38):
same. You know, you would have the supply satiate demand and then that incentive for people to do
it, that black market or that criminal element would go away regardless. And we're actually
seeing that in California now where a lot of the black market producers are throwing in the towel
because it's not very profitable. A lot of the licensed producers are struggling.

(11:59):
And I see this problem as like a common theme across the marketplace. As an example, I was in
Florida recently. I'm planning on moving to Florida pretty soon here. And I flew into Tampa.
And as I'm flying into the airport, we're landing. I'm looking at all these residential neighborhoods.
And a lot of them have tarps on their roofs because there's a big hurricane ripped through

(12:20):
there last year. And so when you have an issue like that, so you have a hurricane go through the
place damages all these roofs. Well, the first thing that's going to happen is, is that all
these homeowners are going to contact roofing contractors in their area. And they're going to
say, Hey, I need, I need a roof put on my house. Um, when that happens, you have more demand for

(12:41):
this service than you do supply. What'll happen is the free market will bid the price up. Then
that's going to be a beacon of opportunity for other roofing contractors nationally, potentially
even globally to come into that area and attack that margin to satiate that demand with supply.
And the value of that service is going to dissent. So anywhere in the marketplace, I see that you'll

(13:07):
have an opportunity to make a surplus for some period of time. And there's effectively two things
that you can do. You could either brand to hedge yourself against commoditization, or you can get
political or leverage regulation to build some sort of a regulatory moat around your sector in
the marketplace, like insulin producers. I could be wrong about the specifics, but the idea still

(13:30):
stands. I think it's two companies can produce insulin because of patent law or something like
that. So insulin is very profitable and they're effectively, the producers of insulin are
preventing competition from coming in so they can protect that margin. But in a free market,
you can't do that. So what I learned and what I did is, is I made sure that my,

(13:50):
my balance sheet strategy was strong. And in my case, I took on a Bitcoin treasury,
put all my surplus in Bitcoin. And as my income started to descend, my balance sheet is
appreciating. So it's like, you know, it's one thing to be P&L focused, and you got to make sure
that you're profitable in whatever you're doing. But it seems that nothing is going to be really

(14:14):
profitable forever. Because if it's good, other people are going to want to do it. And that's
where that balance sheet strategy comes in. It's kind of a long answer there. But yeah,
I mean, we brought the answer here for a reason. I love it.
Well, thank you.
Yeah, great, great stuff there. Just how free markets, you know, they naturally work in such a way that provides the most good for the most people, both on a consumer side and the producer side.

(14:46):
And another word that we haven't brought up yet, unless I missed it, is capitalism.
I think this is sort of brought up in these conversations around the world right now.
And it's typically being fed to us through the schooling system as a bad thing.
Like capitalism is evil.
It's unfettered capitalism.
It's destroying the planet.

(15:08):
It's only helping the rich people.
I'd be curious.
And it's funny.
We talked about Robert Breedlove earlier because you're going to be working with him soon.
And when I had him on my podcast way back in the early days, I think it was like episode five or six, we challenged this idea and talked about how perhaps capitalism isn't as bad as we were told it was.
And there are other more evil forces behind the scenes who want us to think capitalism is bad so they can push something more communism, socialism.

(15:35):
And I'd just be curious to hear your thoughts on all of these isms and what lies have we been told about them and what do you think is the signal in the noise?
Well, I do think that as the currency is debased, generally speaking, and I could be wrong about this, but this is at least my perception and what I can see taking place is that you create this dynamic where your cost of operating and living is typically increasing at a faster rate than your wages are increasing.

(16:08):
And like in my case, I was experiencing wage deflation. As an example, like 10 years ago, a bulk wholesale premier pound of cannabis was like three grand. Today, a better pound is honestly like 500 bucks.
And in that period of time, my my operating costs have doubled, if not tripled.

(16:28):
So I'm making like, I don't know, one six to one twelfth what I used to per unit produced.
And so that's wage deflation.
And that squeeze is something that that most people are feeling some version of.
Let's say you make 20 bucks an hour.
Your cost of living increases by 15 percent one year because you have a crisis like covid and they print a bunch of dollars.

(16:52):
Um, and then your, your wages then follow an increase by 10%. Well, you're actually in real
terms. That's, that's 5% wage deflation. You're getting squeezed. And so I think as that's
happening, people are looking for somewhere to point the finger. And it's really easy to fall

(17:12):
into this idea that capitalism is bad and that greedy entrepreneurs are bad, but that, that
greed, you could say, or that desire to procure a margin from the marketplace is a good thing.
If the market is buying something, then they're signaling to the market, we want more of this

(17:33):
thing. If the market is selling something, they're signaling to the market, we want less of this
thing. So there is this natural phenomenon that takes place where things get balanced out the
supply and demand dynamics. Now, speaking of Breedlove, one of the things that he said that
I really like is, is, you know, money is half of every transaction. And so if you have a central

(17:54):
bank in any jurisdiction, you're effectively half communist, half socialist. I was literally
going to bring this up next. I love this framework. And it's so true. It's so true. And so a lot of
people are looking at the problems that we have in the States and in Europe and in most places in
the world today. And they're thinking, hey, this is a problem of this is a result of unfettered

(18:15):
capitalism. We need to regulate this stuff. And the irony in that is, is that they're the people
who are struggling because their property rights are being violated because of the debasement of
the currency are effectively asking for more violation of property rights and more violation
of their freedoms. Hey, let's this is causing problems for everybody. We need more of this

(18:38):
regulation. We need to stifle, you know, entrepreneur and capitalistic forces, right?
And so, you know, there's a guy I see, he's starting to go viral a little bit. Some of the
Bitcoiners retweet him, call him an idiot. But this guy, Gary Economics, who's in, I think he's
in London. And he basically is just, oh my gosh, going on and on and on all these interviews,

(19:02):
all these videos, he's got a YouTube channel and his whole message is like, we need to tax the rich.
and I see a monumental problem with that.
You know, the idea, I mean,
because it's effectively taxes or property confiscation.
It's a violation of your property rights.
If you earn a surplus and you save that surplus,
but you have to give a piece of that surplus up to,

(19:23):
you know, a state authority or a government.
And then also in my case, I'm in the United States,
I can't leave and not pay those service provider fees
if you want to call them that.
without having to expatriate and pay an exit tax if you have enough of a net worth or whatever.
So you don't have the ability to just move to a different jurisdiction that has more favorable

(19:46):
terms. So you're kind of locked into the jurisdiction and you're effectively being
exploited. And so the idea of property confiscation sounds good or redistribution of wealth. It sounds
good till you fall into the bracket that's being redistributed from, right? It's easy to think,
oh, let's just redistribute Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk's wealth.

(20:10):
Like that could sound good to somebody who's economically challenged.
But then if you if you zoom out and you're like, well, hey, actually, you make 30 grand a year and there's people mining lithium and some mine in Africa that make $100 a year.
And we're going to make that that wealth tax, you know, anything above 10 grand and up, we're going to tax.

(20:31):
You're going to take half your stuff. Well, people would lose their minds.
So I think that in addition to all of that said, the governmental apparatus, if you will, it has to come up with some sort of a narrative to enforce what they're trying to achieve.
And I think that that is that distortion that's that's causing all of the noise.

(20:54):
It's making the signal really murky. It's confusing people.
And as people's lives get harder as a result of inflation and this Keynesian economic lie that we're living in, they're susceptible to that.
And so it does create this division.
We see this currently in the United States with the Democrats or the left-leaning political sphere as opposed to the right-leaning political sphere.

(21:20):
They're, you know, the right leaning, you know, Republican.
Generally, they're the business owners or they're the people working in the, you know,
countrysides or the producers, business or whatever.
And then you have the Democratic group.
But actually, when I saw a map, you know, when Trump is about to win the election,
you're looking at the map and you're like, wow, after it was all said and done,

(21:42):
most of the country is red, except for these pockets around these.
You got New York and some of these East Coast cities.
And then on the West Coast, you got L.A. and Portland and some.
It's like in these these these urban jungles, people who are a little bit seemingly detached from like how the rest of the country works.
They're the ones that are like asking for more regulation and effectively more violation of property rights than the other political party is.

(22:09):
And I find that to be a little bit ironic.
and then just to like throw in Bitcoin into this, you know, a thing that's playing out.
I think that the incentive vortex that is the Bitcoin network over time will kind of change some of these things
because the government can't so easily take your Bitcoin from you, but they could tax your real estate.

(22:32):
They could confiscate any other assets that you have.
So I think that the fact that Bitcoin is undebasable or it can't be debased,
You can't make more than 21 million.
No governing body in some sort of COVID 2.0 crisis is going to be able to just mint themselves a bunch of Bitcoin.
And because Bitcoin is so valuable in the appreciation rate theoretically over time should be higher than everything else on average based upon the simple idea that we making more of everything else at a faster rate than we making more Bitcoin So if you want

(23:07):
the Bitcoin, you have to, as they say on the streets, you have to come correct. You have to
offer up goods or services or some sort of, you know, as the government there, I effectively look
at them as service providers. You need to offer up services that people are willing to pay for.
And the more and more people, you know, that get exposed to Bitcoin, at least in my case, and and so many Bitcoiners that I have had the pleasure of becoming associated with over the last year and a half.

(23:36):
You kind of it's a really easy way for you to be able to look more clearly at what's happening in the world.
It really is this like this this energy around it and this clarity that like exposes all of these things.
For me, like I knew intuitively that commoditization was a problem.

(23:58):
I knew intuitively that free markets were deflationary.
But there's such abstract thoughts relative to the way we're indoctrinated.
You know, the Keynesian economic model, I find that the people who are the hardest to communicate or talk with about Bitcoin are the people that are well educated, who have gone to colleges.
Right. And they seem to they just can't get it through their head.

(24:20):
There's like a deep level of cognitive dissonance there.
And I think that it's partially because, you know, the system is continuing to teach people to, you know, things that enforce the forces that, you know, the system is operating upon.
And really, it's violation of property rights.
It's straight up theft.

(24:40):
And it's you could say it's not theft if you could go somewhere else.
If I could move to El Salvador, Costa Rica, wherever you're somewhere in Europe.
and I could just say, hey, you know what, I'm going to take my economic energy, I'm going to
take my capital, I'm going to go somewhere else, I'm going to pay them for my, you know, I'm going
to pay them for their services. But I can't do that. The United States government has me on lock,

(25:01):
right. And so it's definitely exploitative. And I think that, you know, the system, if you want to
personify the governmental apparatus, like the system doesn't want you to know what's actually
happening. Yeah, so many great points, sir, I agree with. And I'm glad that you brought back
this concept that Bree Love talks about where the if you have a central bank who controls the money,

(25:26):
which is half of every single product and service transaction we make, you are already 50%
communist. And like most of the time, way more than that, because they use that control to control
other things. And so this idea that we're even under capitalism right now is already a lie.
It's not totally this. We've never seen real capitalism. No, as real capitalism would be an

(25:49):
actual free market where you have sound money. And everyone has the ability to do whatever they want
in the business sense. And I would say like, this is the way that nature has a design is where we're
just free to do what we want. And we would not have these problems that we see right now,
which are wrongfully blamed on this idea of capitalism.

(26:10):
Like you said, people are just economically illiterate for calling this late-stage capitalism.
This is really late-stage fiat money that we're seeing right now.
And I love how Bitcoiners are really beating this drum.
Could you put a little bit of color on this idea of just late-stage fiat money,
why that is the actual problem we're seeing here and how people can connect those dots?

(26:30):
um yeah i think that so i think we're at it's more so late stage central banking or late stage fiat
or late stage mmt keynesian economic bullshit whatever and you have it's like the ultimate
trick fuck the central banking authority is lending dollars into existence as debt against

(26:54):
assets the assets let's use real estate as an example they're real assets they took energy to
produced, they took resources produced, the marketplace produces these things because people
need them. Then the central banking authority and then the states with fractional reserve banking,
the FDIC insured banks or whatever banks are within that system, get to effectively mint

(27:18):
dollars into existence as debt against those assets. So if you go get a mortgage in the United
States, most of, if not all of that currency that you're going to use to buy that house, that
debt you're taking out is newly minted currency. So what's happening there? As far as I can tell,
the central bank is effectively stealing the wealth out of the marketplace. By the click of

(27:42):
a button, they produce, they're expanding M2, they produce currency, and then they get the title for
the real estate as collateral against the debt. So the free market in some ways is freely giving up
assets, things that we need or produce to the central bank in exchange for this debt. Now,

(28:04):
because the basket of assets, you could say that collateralized the debt, equities, T-bills,
real estate, we're producing more of those things every year. And the rate in which we're producing
more of those everything every year is increasing. So it's actually that deflationary force that

(28:25):
exists in a free market does exist in the world today. We just can't see it because there's this
optical illusion taking place because they have to continue to inject liquidity into the market
to quote unquote prop asset prices up. For example, though, we're pushing the asset prices down,
but you need the value of the assets in the system as a whole to be higher than whatever

(28:47):
the debt is. But if we're pushing these down, they keep printing dollars, raising the debt,
the property asset prices up. So it creates this feedback loop, or it's like a runaway train.
So you have more debasement of the currency to keep the system solvent, but the insolvency is
based upon the fact that the currency is being debased. And you have this inflationary monetary

(29:09):
system, which effectively requires everything, or at least specifically the assets that collateralize
the debt to go up. But that's the exact opposite from what's really happening. The value of these
assets is going down in real terms, like in energy terms. We can produce a house now in a couple
weeks where 50 years ago would take a year, year and a half, whatever. So in real terms, things are

(29:33):
less expensive. You just can't see it because we're denominating the value of things in dollars.
Um, yeah, so I just think it's a Keynesian runaway train that's taking place. And as things get worse, the irony in all of this kind of going back to one of your prior questions, is that then the people want more violation of their property rights.

(29:57):
They're like, hey, let's let's go ahead and let's tax these people. Let's put in regulations to prevent these these these second and third order negative effects taking place as a result of this, this incompatible monetary system.
Yeah, so it's a it's a it's a real problem. It's a real problem.

(30:17):
Yeah. And one of the recommendations I want to throw out there, I'm not sure if you've watched Mike Maloney's Hidden Secrets of Money series.
I don't know if you've heard of that, but it's incredible.
And it's so this guy's a gold bug who isn't really doesn't really understand Bitcoin a lot, but he does an amazing job describing the problem.

(30:38):
And I would recommend for people to understand like this debt based system, how it works to watch the fourth episode of that series.
And it's I think it's called like the greatest scam of mankind or something.
I'll put a link to it in the show notes.
But it's it's it's an impossible system.
It's never going to work. It's only built to just continue running away and screwing future generations more and more by just pushing the tab further and further out.

(31:04):
And so it's really just a giant mess that we've gotten ourselves in.
And I'd love to hear you keep bringing up the word Keynesianism and Keynesian economics.
And this is basically what people are taught in school, myself included.
I took an econ class in college.
Could you give us a quick definition of what Keynesian is and what Austrian economics is so people can sort of understand those two sides of this coin when they're learning about this?

(31:29):
Yeah, well, I'm definitely not an economist or an expert. I'm just a business operating dude trying to make it in this world and figure out what forces I'm contending with.
But I would say generally Keynesian economics is the idea that you need a central authority or you need the government to control the levers of the money supply.

(31:56):
They are going to debase the currency. They need to continue to expand the money supply.
And it's my understanding that the idea was, is that they would expand the money supply at about the same rate in which the marketplace gets more productive.
So if we innovate and we produce more at like 2% a year, every year, we're getting 2% more efficient.

(32:21):
Those productivity gains in the Keynesian economic model, the idea that you would have 2% inflation to keep the velocity of money up.
The idea is that if you're not inflating the currency supply, if the money within the marketplace isn't losing power, then people will hoard the money and they'll stop spending.

(32:45):
The economy will suffer.
You'll have deflation and you have all these problems.
And so if you're debasing the currency at 2% a year, the recipient of that newly minted currency, if it was actually 2%, is effectively stealing the 2% productivity gain.
their 2% surplus that the marketplace produces every year. So it's that that that surplus is

(33:08):
being siphoned out of the marketplace and given to the hands of the central authorities,
or the apparatus that could debase the currency. And then they can fund whatever endeavors that
they want. So the Keynesian economic model is essentially this idea that there needs to be a
central authority that's going to decide the rate in which the currency is debased to keep the

(33:29):
economy thriving. And when I hear Keynesian economists talk, it kind of almost makes my
brain hurt. I'm like, this is ambiguous. It's nebulous. I don't fucking understand it. There's
all these crazy, confusing terms. It's really just a bunch of mumbo jumbo. And the idea with

(33:49):
Austrian economic theory is that you have a hard money that the central authority or the government
can't arbitrarily produce more of.
And the result of that would be is you would have a deflationary money
or a money that increased in purchasing power.
That was really more of a theory.

(34:11):
I think that there's been periods in history where we had a gold standard
or a hard money standard.
And those times seem to be when we had great economic prosperity.
And Bitcoin because it truly scarce does allow this Keynesian or this Austrian economic theory to actually be something that we can try We can see how this works You know the idea of debasing the

(34:41):
currency to keep the velocity of money up, I think, is a flawed premise. You know, a good example when
I get into debates with people about this is like, how many people do you know or do, you know,
yeah, how many people do you know that have like an iPhone 15 that works just fine, that will go

(35:01):
and buy an iPhone 16 with the knowledge that two years later, they can get a better iPhone for the
same price or maybe less, right? Like flat screen TVs is another example. So people will always
satisfy their needs and wants, even if the money is increasing and it's purchasing power as opposed
to decrease in its purchasing power. So a little bit of critical thinking, and you could see right

(35:25):
through the Keynesian economic, you know, ideology or theory. And one thing that I think about a lot
is something Jeff Booth says, he has such a knack for just distilling down these mega concepts into
such small, dense, little snippets. And he says, where you have abundance and money, you create

(35:50):
scarcity and everything else. Where you have scarcity and money, you create abundance and
everything else. So in this Keynesian economic model, this fiat, peak fiat paradigm, you know,
late stage central banking, not late stage, late stage capitalism. The money is shitty. It's weak.
It's, it's being produced at such a fast rate that it's not a hard asset within the marketplace.

(36:14):
So then you're incentivized as a market participant to get out of the money and into anything else that preserves its economic energy better than the money does.
And actually, because we have this debt based system with fractional reserve lending, you're incentivized to short the currency, to borrow the currency and go to go short the currency, go long an asset like real estate.

(36:42):
and where you have scarcity in money, you create abundance in everything else. If the money
is the hardest thing in the marketplace, it's the hardest to produce more of. And in this case,
we have Bitcoin. Thank God we have Bitcoin has no industrial use case. This is purely monetary,

(37:02):
pure monetary technology. There's, you can't do anything else with Bitcoin than use it as a money,
Use this distributed ledger technology as money. And so because it's the hardest thing in the marketplace, the incentive is to hoard the money and not all these other things that people need like houses.
and so yeah the austrian economic theory is much easier to understand and wrap your mind around

(37:26):
the challenge i think is is that we have this chasm to cross from where we are now in this
keynesian economic paradigm this fiat i call it the bb world effectively it was basically
before bitcoin before 2009 all of known history we were limited to the technology of a yellow
shiny rock because of gold's physicality you needed a layer two system on top of it a derivative

(37:53):
system a certificate system you take your gold to a custodian the custodian issues a certificate
you trade the certificate in the marketplace it's as good as gold the problem is is and i refer to
this as the game theoretic fuckedness the issue is is that the central authorities if they can get
away with being dishonest, issuing more certificates than they have gold on reserve or underlying asset

(38:19):
on reserve, they have an advantage in the marketplace. You know, they could grease the
wheels of a king, some political regime, whatever, create bank holidays, effectively prevent you from
creating a bank run against them, exposing that dishonesty. So it's like this incentive to
corruption or dishonesty and the market participant that could get away with that dishonesty had the

(38:44):
advantage. Now, because of Bitcoin and the AB world after Bitcoin, post 2009, our ability,
if Bitcoin becomes the underlying global reserve assets or monetary instruments,
our ability to expose dishonesty, you know, let's say a lightning provider or an ETF issuer

(39:07):
if they issue more sats than they have Bitcoin on reserve, or if the ETF sells more claims to
Bitcoin than they have on reserve, there's like 10 to 40,000 nodes, something like that,
from what I understand, checking the base, the main chain every 10 minutes. So you can audit the
supply of the underlying asset quite easily. And what I think will happen in time, because of this

(39:33):
technological discovery, creation, advancement, whatever, will be able to expose that dishonesty.
And what that means to me is, is that the honest market participants are going to be the ones that
gain the market share. The dishonest ones will be weeded out of existence. It's in some sense,
it's quite, it's, it's like economic Darwinism. And the thing that I think is so profound about it,

(39:58):
And the thing that gets me so excited is, is there's been an inversion in the incentives and there's been this inversion and this shift from the incentive to corruption, deceit, violence.
You know, that's why we had this L2 system built on gold.
If you're in London, you want to buy a villa in Italy, you can't just take a covered wagon and a couple of horses with your gold.

(40:21):
Some bandits will just prick you and steal it. Right.
So you have an incentive to violence because the property is physical.
and you have an incentive to dishonesty, scumbaggery, as I like to call it.
And now because of Bitcoin, you have the incentive to peace, consent, consensual exchange.

(40:41):
You want someone's Bitcoin. You're not going to get it if you kill them.
Right. So now you better offer them up something that they want.
And then the ability to expose dishonest market participants makes it so that the honest ones are incentivized to be honest.
and they're going to win in time.
So I know that's kind of a big answer, a little bit all over the place.

(41:01):
But, you know, those are some of the things that I see taking place.
And I think that we are in the midst of like a paradigm shift.
It's like a state change.
Like the fabric of our reality is changed.
Satoshi merged.
Like I get I'm a little spiritual.
I get a little metaphysical.
You know, Michael Saylor says he merged the physical world with the digital world.

(41:23):
But I actually think it's a little bit deeper than that.
I think it's the physical world with the metaphysical world, the invisible realm, the ether, the place beyond that we all kind of intuitively know exists.
And now we have the ability, we have this bearer instrument that exists in the physical.
It's the first thing in human history that's informational that's a bearer instrument.

(41:49):
You know, I like to share this thought with people when I'm talking about how profound Bitcoin is.
You know, 100,000 years ago, if I said to you, hey, go down the river, there's a fishing hole there, and then go a few rocks to the left or whatever, there's a bunch of berries, right?
That's a data packet.
You have that data packet, but so do I.

(42:11):
If I send you an email or a JPEG or a text message or whatever, it's you have that information and I have that information.
So with Bitcoin, Satoshi solved the double spend problem.
It's the first thing that's invisible or is informational.
It's a bearer instrument.
I send you Bitcoin.
It leaves my possession.
It goes to yours.
And because of the encryption, you can't get someone's Bitcoin if they've custodied it properly unless they willingly give it up.

(42:40):
So that tilts the incentive from violence to an incentive to peace and consent.
And all of these things, it's like this vortex of incentives.
It's this monumental state change.
Just like we're going from, you know, liquid to gas or water to ice.
It's this monumental shift in the world that we live in today.

(43:04):
And just thinking about and talking about the long-term implications of this is just really fun.
It's really fun.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Because so many people are just desperate for some optimism right now.
And it's one of the really sad things that we see today.
And I talked about this in my episode with Brandon Quittem, how each new generation coming up is getting more and more pessimistic and just feeling more and more like darkness about the future because they're just filled up with all these ideas about how, you know, you're the problem.

(43:38):
You're being lazy.
You're the reason why you can't afford a house and to eat is because you're you need to pull yourself out by the bootstraps and climate change is going to kill you and all these viruses are going to kill you.
And it's just like the optimism is just being sucked out of people.
I just increasingly believe that the same educational system who is lying about all this economic stuff and lies about all the history and lies about everything else, which is just an arm of the fiat beast.

(44:08):
is also intentionally keeping people in this low vibration state,
this spiritually bankrupt state,
because it benefits them to have obedient slaves
who don't ask too many questions
and don't learn about things
that are actually going to free them from the state
and just instead have people that just continue
going through the nine to five,
cog in the machine path,

(44:29):
paying their taxes like good cattle
and just going through those motions.
Would you agree with that?
And do you think that Bitcoin could be the real reason
And you sort of touched on there. This could be what actually brings people into a much higher spiritual state because people will finally have this boot off of their neck from inflation.
And they're able to finally, you know, think about bigger ideas for the first time in their life and have some extra bandwidth to play with.

(44:56):
Yeah, I absolutely love that spiritually bankrupt. That's very well said.
But yeah, I totally agree.
And I do think what is really beautiful about what's taking place is that the NGU technology that's baked into the Bitcoin network, that number go up, that incentive, it's very alluring.

(45:21):
You know, there's a saying that you come for the money and you stay for the money.
Like that's that's very profound thing.
So a lot of people, I think, are going to be drawn into Bitcoin as the price continues to rip.
It's like the meme at like 108.
There's one guy standing in line trying to buy some sats or yeah, 108.
It's like the line is really long.
And then at 84 K there's one guy standing there.

(45:43):
Right.
So as the price rips, it just brings a lot of attention in.
And, and I see this as like kind of the common, most common phenomenon.
People get into Bitcoin as the price pumps, whatever allocation they have to Bitcoin rips.
Then they're forced
to make some sort of a decision. Do they rebalance? Do they sell the Bitcoin? Do they

(46:07):
harvest those gains and then put their money into something else? And if they're still economically
productive and producing a surplus, they'll actually have more capital, more economic
energy that they need to put somewhere. So it actually is this forcing function that causes
you to have to think a little bit more deeply about it. Wait a second. Hey, I'm up 100 percent
over a four year period or whatever the circumstances are. Do I sell this and buy

(46:31):
some Apple stock? Do I buy a duplex? Do I buy an apartment building? Do I buy some gold?
Do I get some T-bills or do I hold it? Do I buy more of it? Should I diversify against this?
And so that's this enormous incentive to understand more about what's happening.
And the more that people understand it, the more they realize that there's no better place to put

(46:54):
the money. And so I think that in, you know, there's a like what comes to mind often when we're
when I'm discussing, you know, things around this topic and people's lives getting so much harder.
It's the best of times and it's the worst of times. Like it's both happening at the same time.
It just depends on what side of history you're living. And part of that is perspective based,

(47:15):
I believe, being somewhat spiritual. I think that you can adopt a gratitude practice and you can be
grateful for everything that happens in your life. As an example, like I never look back on my life
and think to myself, oh, I made the wrong decision. Even if the decision produced results that I was
adverse to in the moment, I just think, okay, it was the perfect decision. Because at the very least,

(47:38):
through process of elimination, it helped me understand more of what I do want, right?
And I think too, with Bitcoin, there are a lot of people who are struggling because they don't have
Bitcoin and Bitcoin could help mitigate those struggles. However, I do think that Bitcoin is
making the world better for everybody today, including people who don't have Bitcoin. As an

(48:00):
example, where I live, I don't own any real estate. I don't even own the house that I live in. And I'm
glad that I don't like I'm moving to Miami, Florida. All I had to do is pick up the phone,
call my landlord and say, hey, I'm out of here in 30 days. I go lease a new place and say there's a
hurricane or another job opportunity comes up. I just get called on a ham done. I'm going to go
at least another place. I hold the Bitcoin and I rent my house. So that gives me a hedge against

(48:25):
the inflation, the currency debasements. It's the hardest asset in the marketplace and it increases
my optionality. I can easily move with minimal friction. But because of that, that means that
people who do want to buy a house, let's say here in Humboldt County, who want to raise a family,
there's less upward price pressure on the housing in the jurisdiction or the area that I live in

(48:51):
because I'm not trying to buy multiple houses, right?
So it might be infinitesimal, but there is a real effect taking place.
It's my understanding that BlackRock, I could be wrong about this,
but it's at least my understanding.
BlackRock has been buying a lot of single family homes across the country for many years now.
And other corporations and other hedge funds are putting housing on their balance sheet.

(49:14):
They're effectively trying to hold assets that are losing value because they are actually losing value in real terms, but at a slower rate than the currency is.
So we have all of these assets, you know, that are monetized because the currency should you have abundance and money, you create scarcity and other things.
But now that the ETFs exist and now that Bitcoin exists, and especially now that we have a political regime that's much more OK with Bitcoin, Operation Choke Point 2.0 and whatever, those things have kind of gone away.

(49:44):
Currently, you can easily purchase Bitcoin and you can hold it in self-custody.
That is freeing up physical things that other people need to exist.
Right. And so I do think that that the positive effects from Bitcoin are touching everyone's lives in the world that we live in today.

(50:06):
However, there is like I don't know, there are some people that just may not ever get it, you know, and they're going to continue to own the real estate and the equities or maybe they'll try to save in dollars.
And that's that like natural, you know, Darwin is Darwinistic force that's taking place.
And those people are going to struggle. The more that they struggle and others see them struggle, the more people are going to get on the other side of that.

(50:29):
And so based upon those ideas there, I actually have softened my concerns about the world.
I've also become more accepting to like the bad things taking place.
I kind of just look at it like, hey, this central baking scam that we have was just a result of the incentives baked into the reality that we existed in based upon the technologies that we've had.

(51:01):
Now that's shifting.
You know, we're in a new paradigm.
We have a new technological solution to preserving capital, to trading that capital.
It's orders of magnitude better than its predecessor.
And as a result, the world's going to reorganize itself.
And I think, you know, we're in the midst of that. Sometimes I get asked like, hey, when do you think hyper Bitcoinization is going to be here?
Like it's fucking here. It started in 2009. Are you paying attention? It's fucking eighty four thousand dollars today.

(51:28):
The United States government just signed into effect an executive order.
It's we've got an SBR like the game theory is playing out like it's happening.
And I think all those are very positive things. It makes me very hopeful.
um you know i had a little bit of a nihilistic feeling i think we can all relate to that you
know you're going through life and you're looking at the world around you i think most people default

(51:50):
to being honest and compassionate and sharing and and all the things and you have this small
percentage of the population whatever it is one percent less than one percent that are sociopathic
and they don't give a fuck they'll lie cheat still kill whatever to do what you know they need to do
to serve their self interests. And it seems that for all of known history in the BB world, 2009,

(52:14):
all the way back to the beginning of known history, those people had control. And now
there's a forcing function, there's a new protocol, there's a new monetary instrument
that is going to punish those people, and it's going to reward the honest ones.
And so I've really trans gone through a shift in my life where the distaste that I had in that nihilistic, hopeless, kind of bummed out feeling that I had about the world.

(52:43):
Like, why are these shitbags the ones who are running the show?
Well, that's now changing.
And I now have some sort of a mental narrative around why things got that way and how they're going to change as a result of Bitcoin, which really elicits a deep feeling of hope and gratitude.

(53:04):
Yeah, so that's kind of a lot there, but that's what I think.
one of the things you mentioned there that i want to highlight is and we sort of talked about this
earlier about how the blame is being as we believe put in a lot of the wrong directions for the
problems we see today and the big one is just like the rich people are evil this kind of idea that we

(53:27):
have and i come from seattle so the perfect example right there is like amazon jeff bezos
Everyone's like, oh, this is a evil thing.
And I think that a big reason why that is is they're partially right that these giant corporations are just – have so much power to control everything and manipulate things and cheat the rules.

(53:50):
But the reason why they do that is – or why they can do that is because we're in a proof of stake financial system where having more power gives you the ability to change the rules.
Yes.
And I think this is a really powerful concept that Bitcoin brings in where no matter how much money you have, you can't change the rules.

(54:10):
It still has that hard cap supply of 21 million and it forces responsibility on these big companies.
And it really shifts the incentives to where in order to get rich, you really have to provide the most value to the most people and make the most happy people.
Yeah. Where in contrast to today, the way you get riches by cheating enough and getting enough people in Congress bought out so they can stifle your competition by passing a bunch of laws that kill off the mon-pa shops.

(54:41):
and just like it just is the current system is just allows so much fuckery and i just think that
it's the wrong uh approach to get mad at those who are utilizing and taking advantage of the system
rather than looking at the system itself that allows that to happen and when you think about

(55:01):
it this way it's really gonna just give people a much cleaner and clearer path to want to become
an entrepreneur and solve problems and make the world a better place because that will actually be
rewarded and you won't have to fight all this bureaucracy the licensing like we mentioned
earlier is one of the many things that's really just become a tool of oppressing like smaller

(55:25):
businesses and like the bigger ones don't have to follow the same rules because they're buddies
with congress you know right it's quite profound i think this could lead to a renaissance of
people just being more inspired and feeling like they can actually see a path where they can
become an entrepreneur and create a small business and do something unique that the world needs.

(55:46):
Would you agree? 100%. I have a buddy who's very intelligent, as a matter of fact. And then I've
had like a two and a half year ongoing debate and really Bitcoin and free market, I don't know,

(56:06):
ideology, theory, ideas, whatever, was like the idea of, you know, my side of the debate. And he's
like, hey, we need more regulation. We need property confiscation. We need to tax the rich,
et cetera. And so one of the things that I say often, we talk about Jeff Bezos specifically,
very often or did in this ongoing multi-year debate. And my response would always be is,

(56:30):
is hate the game, not the player. It's the incentives baked into the economic paradigm
that are causing the behavior. If it wasn't Jeff Bezos, it would be Bob Smith or whatever it is,
who would have leveraged the existing incentives baked into the fiat economic paradigm to centralize

(56:53):
a business authority or an entrepreneurial endeavor and use that fiat leverage and the
ability to sell equity on Wall Street to centrally control some sort of business endeavor.
Now, it's not actually the most energy efficient to have one retailer globally that's responsible

(57:16):
for providing all the goods that the people need.
It's just only possible because of the fiat subsidies, I suppose you could say, or like
the idea that we cut down the rainforests and graze cattle and feed lots and feed them GMO corn and then ship that beef all over the world In energy terms that not more efficient than grazing cattle and grasslands globally and feeding that cattle to

(57:41):
people who live near those grasslands. It's much more energy efficient to do that. Now, the current
business practices, I suppose you could say, are only a result of the fiat incentives and the fiat
leverage that's available. And so without that, you naturally would decentralize. And especially

(58:05):
because of Bitcoin and its decentralized, inviolable, unconfiscatable nature, what will
happen is, is I think that it'll disrupt the central monopolies and that centralizing force,
and it'll decentralize and it'll create this, this economic environment where what's most

(58:27):
energy efficient is actually what persists. And, you know, another thing was like free markets and
regulation and this idea that we have unfettered capitalism and all these things. I see that
there's an immune system, you could say, within the economy that exactly parallels the one that

(58:49):
takes place in nature. You can't have an entity or a living organism in nature that consumes less
energy than it exerts. That's an unprofitable endeavor. You will cease to exist. But the fiat
system that we have allows for zombie corporations or unprofitable endeavors,

(59:14):
fiscally irresponsible governmental programs. All of those things are not possible without
the subsidy of the fiat theft. Effectively, they're stealing the economic energy from the
people who are using the currency, especially the non-property owning class. They're the ones that

(59:36):
They're subsidizing energy inefficient endeavors.
And, you know, if you had like, this is part of the debate to one of my buddies, like, well, you can't just have no regulation.
Well, because if you don't have regulation, some shitbags are just going to continue to exploit and they're going to run the planet.
Well, I think that over time, as more people have access to the capital preservation that Bitcoin allows, even if there is still fiat mandates, you have to use dollars or euros or whatever.

(01:00:11):
Over time, though, every year, more and more people are liberated from the problems that the fiat system creates.
As that happens, they're more economically empowered.
And I would argue that anybody who has the ability to buy the nicer thing, the higher value product or the product that is produced by an ethical individual or business entity, they will do so.

(01:00:41):
And so the honest market participants, the ones providing the most value, the ones that are treating the planet and the resources the best will obtain that market share over time at the expense of the dishonest ones.
and kind of circling back to what I was explaining in the beginning in my experience
with cannabis, which is also very interesting, is so many of these people are outside of the box

(01:01:05):
thinkers. They're freedom fighting, freedom minded. They wanted to produce a product
while it was illegal because they felt like it was the right thing to do. The marketplace wants it.
There's an incentive to do it. They believed in it. Now those same people are like, whoa,
could we stifle the supply? Could you go and stop other people from doing this? So I see it as an

(01:01:28):
incentive-created phenomenon that is a result of the fiat system. We live in a deflationary world,
full stop, end of story. Free markets are deflationary, but we have an inflationary
monetary system, and those are two incompatible forces, and the incentives created are centralizing

(01:01:51):
They're exploitative and they're bad for everybody, including our home, planet Earth.
And so I do see that all changing. I really do.
Could you take just a little bit more on why you think that this is better for the planet to to have full free markets?
Because I know this is a sensitive spot for the people from where we're both from on the West Coast, the more left leaning folks as they care about the environment.

(01:02:18):
And when you think about capitalism, you can understand their thought process of like, oh, there's no cap to it, like there's no regulation.
So it seems like it just keeps going on forever. It keeps consuming more and more resources and it keeps damaging the environment.
Could you explain why that's not necessarily the case and why having a full free market would actually be the best thing for the environment and sustainability?

(01:02:43):
Yeah, that's a fantastic question.
And so, OK, what left leaning people typically want is for there to be laws put in place to regulate the exploitative destruction, destructive nature of what they believe to be capitalism.

(01:03:07):
Now, I think that because of the extractive nature, as the currency is debased by the central authorities, the central bank and the government, that extractive force creates an extractive force amongst the individuals within the marketplace.

(01:03:31):
If you're being diluted, and I also go in the BB world, there was nothing that you could own that wasn't bleeding energy.
If you think in terms of using an asset or a money or something that you're going to own to preserve your economic energy, and you want to think of that thing in terms of like being a battery, there was nothing that wasn't leaky.

(01:03:55):
Gold, the supply on average, I guess it's 2% a year is being, you know, increased.
So that's a 2% dilution rate. Real estate here in California, 1% tax and 1% annual average
maintenance costs. That's 2% ownership costs. That's a 2% dilution rate. Well, over 35 years,

(01:04:17):
you lose half the value of the asset. You get diluted. You got $1 million worth of gold out of
you know, a hundred trillion or 20 trillion or whatever, that gold supply doubles. Now you have
1 million out of 40 trillion worth of gold. You've been cut in half. And so that causes a problem

(01:04:40):
where people are looking to continue. They have to extract more value from the marketplace to
maintain their ownership percentage of the pie, I suppose you could say. Now that's a big problem.
And let's see, where was I going with that one?
I lost my train of thought.

(01:05:01):
Could you reiterate the question one more time?
Yeah, just how capitalism is not bad for the environment
and more so like the fiat system is bad for the environment
and how like bringing free markets
are better for the environment.
Yes.
So if you can preserve your economic energy

(01:05:21):
and it's not bleeding out,
then you don't have to continue to extract more from the marketplace.
The governmental apparatus has to extract more from the marketplace to keep the current system operating and solvent.
And as a result, the individuals within the marketplace have to extract more.
They're incentivized to stifle the competition, stifle innovation,

(01:05:44):
which is bad for the end consumer because you have less optionality within the marketplace.
And there is like an immune system in nature. There's an immune system in the economy. And if you have a business that's doing unethical things and the people who are doing business in that marketplace have the optionality to work with someone else who's not doing unethical things,

(01:06:11):
I believe that they will over time gravitate towards the most value and the most ethical producers.
Right. And so with cannabis, the value of the cannabis as a result of the supply increasing has gone down.
And now the black market element has really gone away for the most part.

(01:06:34):
Like it used to be a concern here in Humboldt County.
You had 10, 12,000 farms in Humboldt County that you could see via satellite.
You could go on Google Maps.
I could take you a tour on Google Maps of all these farms.
You could see them from space.
And what's happened is, well, there was a lot of concern around the environmental impact.
You have people, you know, diverting stream water, drilling wells, discharge runoff from nutrients.

(01:06:59):
They're cutting trees down.
And so you could you could expend energy with enforcement going and rounding these people up.
But it's actually not very energy efficient to do so. That's more rules. That's more regulations.
And if they would have just been like, hey, cannabis is legal. Anybody who can produce it anywhere you want, whether it's in a garage, a basement or a full blown open field, a big greenhouse facility like this.

(01:07:28):
If you can pass a certain testing requirement, which the free market would want, they would want to buy cannabis that is clean, free of heavy metals, free of pesticides.
If you could pass this test, you could sell your product into the free market.
What would happen is, is that in no time, the margin would descend, the value of the commodity would plummet to its marginal cost of production.

(01:07:52):
And then the producers who are doing unethical things would over time lose market share.
The people would be buying the best product from the people who are ethical, who could prove.
And now with social media and this this hyper rate of information sharing, spread, whatever you want to call it, you can tell pretty quickly who are who are the ethical and honest people who are doing the right thing.

(01:08:15):
And so there is this natural dynamic that that takes place in a free market where the things that the marketplace wants will produce more of and the things that the marketplace doesn't want will produce less of.
And then there's this this this conversation, I guess you could say, anarcho capitalism, some hardcore libertarians, which there's a lot within the Bitcoin space.

(01:08:38):
This idea that we need to downsize government or get and get rid of government entirely.
I think that if you had a Mad Max apocalyptic scenario where the government ceased to exist, the first thing that I think people would do is it would the government wouldn't cease to exist.
just the current governmental central model I suppose would change and you would end up with a decentralized governing model where you would have people who would they would band together

(01:09:09):
and they would pull and elect, you know, the fiscally responsible, intelligent, creative people
who wanted to do so into positions of power where they would then pool capital together
and then they would allocate that capital to take care of things that the marketplace wants,
like roads, schools, clean water, etc.
And in that free market, I think you are providing more value to the end consumer, because if you could prevent monopolization, you're effectively preventing excessive exploitation.

(01:09:40):
You know, as an example here in Humboldt County, PG&E, Pacific Gas and Electric, they're the only power providers.
That's the only person that this facility can only entity that this facility can procure electricity from.
So the electricity is really expensive.
Right. Because there's no option. There's no one else that could come in and say, hey, you know what? Actually, you have this this margin. It's 100 percent. It's 50 percent, whatever. I'll do it for less.

(01:10:08):
And so that free market dynamic does create an environment where the person or the entity that's providing the most value, that's the most efficient and destroying nature is not the most efficient.
Those are going to be the entities that end up with the market share.

(01:10:32):
I hope that makes sense.
It's really, I mean, like this, a lot of this stuff is inverse to the way we have thought a lot about the world.
You know, like when I heard the Sailor series for the first time, it was like so clarifying for me.
I'm like, oh, my gosh, this is what's happening in the world.
Holy shit.
You know, when I heard the Jeff Booth series and listen to The Price of Tomorrow, I'm like, fuck.

(01:10:56):
I remember pausing it like several times.
I'm like working with the plants and the grum here.
So wherever I was at the time, I'm like, pause.
hold on, the natural state of a free market is deflation. Like had to wire new neuro pathways.
And I remember some of those moments, it was almost like like a psilocybin trip where it's
like I get the cerebral elation where I'm like, Oh, my God, it makes sense. I can't believe it.

(01:11:21):
Like it's so clarifying. Yeah, and Bitcoin's a catalyst for that understanding. And it's and it
It is the forcing function.
You know, as far as also, and I'll leave this thought with this, the idea that we need more laws, more regulations to prevent people from doing things that generally we could all agree people in businesses shouldn't be doing is actually accurate.

(01:11:49):
But what we need is a money that can't be corrupted or controlled because money is superordinate to law.
So we now actually have that. And it's in some sense, it's the laws of physics that govern our physical reality are now going to govern our economy.

(01:12:10):
And we were, for whatever reason, this runaway train of deceit, like this game theoretic fuckness because of the technological limitations that we had as a civilization allowed for an unnatural phenomenon to take place.
But I think that Bitcoin is like it's an emulogical response from the marketplace.

(01:12:32):
You would have that in nature.
If things get too out of balance, something else will evolve and shift to bring back balance that harmonious.
What is it like homeostasis?
And so Bitcoin is that forcing function.
It is the law that will regulate our entire global economy and prevent the scumbaggery.

(01:12:56):
The things that we can all fucking agree upon are a problem, you know?
And I think that that's a beautiful thing.
Yeah, I fully agree with all that.
And I think that another piece I would just throw in in terms of just the sustainability side and why sound money brings us a more sustainable world full of people who care about the environment is fiat inherently makes people think short term.

(01:13:23):
And especially the big dogs at the very top who control the knobs, they are definitely thinking short term all the way up to the politicians who are just in for a few years.
And so they're just going to give all the free stuff so they can get reelected.
everything is just wired to be very short-term thinking right now because people can't save their
money their money is disintegrating so they have to act quickly they have to spend things fast and

(01:13:44):
the most extreme example is these companies or countries who've gone through hyperinflation
where the money is worth less at the end of the week or the end of the day than when they get it
so they have to run to the store and spend it right away and the stores have to you know like
have only let you get a certain amount of things of each product.
All this stuff is just making people think really short term and closing their world down

(01:14:08):
and all the way up to the corporate and government level.
And when you have a sound money that allows people to save and start thinking long term
and provides more benefit for those who plan long term and create good businesses that,
like you said, do things the right way, which will be more and more transparent

(01:14:28):
as we have more independent journalists out there using Nostra and getting zaps for, you know,
talking about these things and investigating things and just doing the research themselves,
as we're seeing already, it's going to provide this really paradigm shifting bandwidth upgrade
in people's brains to just be thinking more about the future. And people who think about the future

(01:14:51):
are naturally going to do more sustainable things and take more sustainable habits, both
on a personal level for their own health, for example, but also just caring more about nature
and the environment because it's impossible to care about those things when you can't survive
and you have to feed your kids and you're struggling to live, you know? And as soon as those things,
and this sort of ties in with the spiritual side we talked about earlier, why people,

(01:15:15):
like there's just no spirituality, no higher thinking. These days when you just walk around
the city and you see people and they've got their heads down, their phones, and they're just kind of
walk in a straight line like a zombie. It's because that's all that they can do. They just
don't have any extra space left in their brain to think bigger. And so I think that this expansion

(01:15:36):
from the short-term fiat system to the long-term Bitcoin system is going to be super profound in
how it affects people. And I'm curious of your thoughts on that as well. Well, I totally agree.
Um, I do also think though, that it's almost like our reality seems to be splitting and not to get

(01:15:57):
too woo or metaphysical, but it almost seems like we're like, our, our, there's like a bifurcation
taking place where some people are sending to a higher state of consciousness. And there seems to
be a large spiritual movement and a great awakening around, you know, vibration, frequency,
energy, how that affects our reality, quantum physics, you know, the Newtonian model seems to

(01:16:21):
be being somewhat disrupted by the quantum model of reality. And so I think that some people are
evolving at a faster rate in which we maybe ever have, and then some people are devolving at the
same time. And so it's almost like a reality is splitting into two groups. But I think, I think

(01:16:42):
what you're speaking to is dead on. And I think that one's ability to plan for the future is
directly related to their ability to project their capital into the future. And so if you can't
effectively project your capital into the future, 10 years, 50 years, 100 years, then you can't

(01:17:06):
really plan for that. That's also why some of the sociopaths, like Bill Gates, for as an example,
who have so much economic energy at their disposal, you know, Jack Mallers, I love how he
says this money is your time and energy in an abstracted form. Well, Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos,
none of these people have a lot of money. They have a lot of stuff. I just also want to be clear

(01:17:31):
about that one. That's I think like, so there's a misunderstanding there. You know, I talk with a
lot of people and they'll be like, oh, so and so they have a lot of money. I'm like, whoa, no,
they don't. They have a lot of stuff. They have a lot of real estate. They have a lot of equities.
They might have some gold. They might have some treasury bonds, whatever. That's not money. That's
stuff that we've monetized because the money is really abundant and shitty. So the incentive is
to hold the stuff. But someone like Gates, he has at his disposal an immense amount of economic

(01:17:58):
energy, life force in an abstracted form. So he's capable of thinking about the long term.
Now, I would argue that his perspective about the long term success of the species seems to be the
exact opposite of what mine is and a lot of other people like I think that he's concerned about the
resources on the planet is concerned about the unsustainable forces that are taking place. And

(01:18:21):
he wants to reduce the population and feed everybody fucking grasshoppers and put them
into a camp. Now that's not the solution, in my humble opinion. But it is a real issue.
Your ability to plan for the future. Like, why would why would somebody who whose life is getting
harder? See, the other thing too is, is like, most people, although they may not be able to

(01:18:46):
articulate all the things that we're talking about in this conversation, and a lot of Bitcoiners
speak to, but they intuitively know there's a big problem. Like you don't have to know that,
hey, the government's debasing the currency and they're funding fiscally irresponsible endeavors.
It's more rules, more regulation and more taxes and more debasement to enforce those rules and

(01:19:09):
those regulations. People may not understand that at, you know, at in great depth, but everyone
knows when they're getting fucked. Like it's really clear. And then what the problem is,
is though that everybody turns to the left, they turn to the right. They're like, you're
screwing me. You're screwing. Who's screwing me. Let's stop all this. And so, yeah, I do think that,

(01:19:30):
you know, like I said, you nailed it. You know, people, if they, if they're struggling now,
they, you know, it's like, hold on. I want, I want to be able to have a good month now. I want
to have a good year now. Like I want to take my kids to Disneyland or whatever it is that you want
to do and I'm fucking broke and I can't do that. Like I'm going to work on figuring out how to do
that. And then if you could achieve that, then maybe you could think, oh, in two years, I want

(01:19:54):
to upgrade my house or in 10 years, I want to start this business that I'm going to leave with
my children or I have my whole life. I want to work on a distillation business that could distill
water out of the air or I want to solve cleaning up the oceans or whatever these things are.
your ability to project that economic energy into the future.

(01:20:15):
Um, how effectively you can do that,
I think directly affects how far into the future you can plan.
And so I do see that that that's a monumental problem.
And you also see that in Bitcoin I know some Bitcoiners that you know have um enough Bitcoin that they like oh yeah they starting to think longer term longer term and more you know yeah it just low time preference

(01:20:40):
I mean, we talk about this, you know, all the time in Bitcoin, high time preference versus low time preference.
And I think that's just all predicated upon one's ability to project that energy into the future.
100%.
Eric, I feel like I could talk to you all day, man, but we've covered so many great things here.
I'm sort of getting in the habit of trying to not just go for freaking hours since I know we'll do another one in the future.

(01:21:03):
Yeah, man, sounds good.
It's good to keep things short for those folks, you know, in still not fiat world, just kind of looking for little tidbits of new info.
So I do have one, I think, a great question to start wrapping things up here, which is something I heard you say in one of your previous podcast episodes I listened to,
which is when you buy Bitcoin, it's good for everyone who holds Bitcoin.

(01:21:25):
And it's also good for everyone who doesn't hold Bitcoin.
So could you take us home with just explaining why Bitcoin really is helping everybody in the world right now?
And the more that you can anyone can do out there on an individual level to support this movement, whether it be buying Bitcoin, you know, just reading books about educating yourself, sharing resources to help others like my podcast.

(01:21:51):
anything else you can just spread the love spread the education and spread this bitcoin
uh word out there you know what would your explanation be for that um well i spoke uh
about this a little bit earlier and i really want to drive this point home where you have abundance
in money you create scarcity and everything else like we talked about you mentioned venezuela as

(01:22:14):
an example you have hyperinflation the currency is being debased at such a fast rate that the
people who get paid in that currency, they actually won't even save the money or the currency that they
need to buy the groceries two weeks or four weeks later. They'll literally spend it all.
And then if they have a surplus, they'll buy real estate, mopeds, whatever it is, anything.

(01:22:37):
They're going to hoard anything that they can to project their capital into the future.
And that creates shortages. Effectively, you're not hoarding the money. You're hoarding
other things that have demand in the marketplace. Now, where the money is the hardest thing in the
marketplace, the incentive is to hoard the money and nothing else. So there are people here in

(01:23:00):
Humboldt County where I live, and actually Humboldt County has a history of environmental
exploitation. There was, you know, this is the Redwood Forest, some of the biggest,
most beautiful trees on the planet have grown here. Some of them are two, three thousand years
old, right? It's a beautiful, mystical, special place, very resource rich. Well, the logging,

(01:23:24):
like I think it's 99% of all the old growth redwoods were cut and sold out of the area and
actually by corporate outfits that weren't even local to the area. So it was very exploitative
thing that happened. And so we have with the planning department there, it's very difficult

(01:23:49):
to subdivide land. You have environmental groups that have really put a lot of pressure on the
county and the politicians and whatever. So the expansion of the real estate market has been
stifled by this environmental pushback, which you could say is a good thing. But there's been a
housing shortage for the last 15 years that I've been here, like the rent relative to the quality
of houses that you can get, it's kind of high. And that's because there's more demand than there is

(01:24:14):
supply. In other jurisdictions, other areas where it's easier to expand, put in more subdivides,
build more houses, you have less of that dynamic taking place. But now because we have scarcity
and money, I can use me as an example, for the last 10 years, as I've been producing a surplus,

(01:24:36):
providing a commodity that had more demand than supply, I was able to have a strong P&L,
you could say. So I had an economic surplus, I had savings, I had extra capital that I was able to
accrue as opposed to buying some stocks and, you know, I don't know, Amazon, Netflix, Google,

(01:25:01):
Meta, whatever, like, you know, most people do that, that nice basket of those tech monopolies
and buying some real estate. I have all my money in Bitcoin. So what that's doing is,
is it's making it so that there's less upward price pressure. There's less demand on the
existing housing market in the jurisdiction that I live in. There's less capital for these big tech

(01:25:23):
monopolies to use to further violate our privacy. Right. And so that's good for people who don't
own the Bitcoin. Right. Like if you want to use Google and you want to stop, you know, you have a
problem with them violating all your privacy. Right. Well, maybe you should stop saving in their
equity. Right. That's like a common theme I see in America where people are all up in arms like

(01:25:46):
all these fucking problems we have with all these tech monopolies. Well, hold on. How much of your
401k is in Amazon stock, Apple stock, Google stock? You know, oh, housing's so expensive.
Well, okay, you own a home you live in and you own three rental properties. Well, you're contributing
to that upward price pressure on the housing. And so Bitcoin is quite literally making everybody's

(01:26:13):
lives better today because there are more and more people every day that wake up that are just
like you and I and so many other Bitcoiners that realize they have that light bulb moment. Oh,
wait a second. Bitcoin's the final trade. Like it's the best thing to hold my economic energy in.
Like I don't want an additional house. Like you can only live in it one at a time, right? Why do

(01:26:34):
you need 40 fucking houses? There are rich people who own trophy who own like I want a nice house,
Right. But rich people own all of the nice houses to preserve their capital.
There are lots of nice houses that aren't even being lived in.
Right. So as they figure out Bitcoin appreciates in its term, in terms of its convertibility into other goods and services at a faster rate than the real estate does.

(01:27:02):
It has less ownership costs, less counterparty risk.
Like, you know, they want to, let's say, for example, California, I'm leaving California, but if I was going to stay here and let's say the, as Saylor would say, the well-intentioned politicians wants to come up with some sort of a plan to keep their unprofitable governmental business endeavors going.

(01:27:24):
Hey, let's go ahead and put a tax on Bitcoin.
Well, it's hypermobile capital.
I'm just going to take it to a different jurisdiction that'll treat it better.
Right.
And so it's a forcing function to cause governments and businesses to be more fiscally responsible.
It moves that the focus from the P&L extractive business strategies into a strong balance sheet strategy.

(01:27:45):
Like it's really it's actually better if you could just have a strong balance sheet that's shredding than it is to try to figure out how to exploit the marketplace.
That's a path of least resistance.
So the same forces that have caused all the problems in our world are the same forces that are going to change the world as a result of this immutable, scarce money technology protocol that we have.

(01:28:12):
And so that's kind of a long answer there, but I think it's comprehensive and, you know, as I can make it and still have it make sense and whatnot.
And so, yeah, it is making everything better for everybody, regardless of whether you have the coins or not.
Yeah, and we've talked about real estate and housing a few times throughout the conversation, but I think that's sort of a good example for people to just visualize and stick to is using that Jeff Booth analogy, as you talked about earlier, where when there's abundance in money, there's scarcity in everything else.

(01:28:42):
When there's scarcity in money, there's abundance in everything else.
Well, right now, money is abundance.
It's getting printed by the billions and trillions all over the place by these governments.
so the the smart money that has lots of money knows that they need to get out of the currency
they holding the money itself is going to punish you which is crazy it's not supposed to be that

(01:29:03):
way like back when we were on gold you know if you got a gold coin as a kid and saved it till
you're an adult and gave it to your own kids it would be worth more that's deflation that's the
natural way that money should be when the products and services ascend faster than the supply of the
money. But now that we're in fiat world where everything's getting printed all over the place,

(01:29:23):
people are trying to escape the money. And so they throw it into things like houses.
All these rich people are just buying up tons of houses because it holds its value better than the
money does. And so this is the root problem. And once there is a better solution out there,
which we believe is Bitcoin for simply saving your value, then guess what those people are
going to do? They're going to move it out of the houses and into this better alternative.

(01:29:47):
And this is why, you know, I tell my smart friends who own real estate, my own family owns some real estate.
I'm telling them this is like as soon as people figure out Bitcoin, the big money figures out Bitcoin, they're going to be dumping their houses.
Because, I mean, it's just a pain in the ass to have to take care of these things, hire the, you know, all the different extra third parties involved in maintaining a house, cleaning the toilets, all that stuff.

(01:30:11):
You know, you don't have to do that with Bitcoin.
You just buy it and hold it.
it actually does what money is supposed to do. And so there's going to be huge capital flight
out of real estate at some point. And I think that the people who hold on to those houses are
going to be holding some giant bags. Would you agree? Yeah, I do. I describe that dynamic
unfolding in front of our eyes today as the great demonetization. All of those assets that have been

(01:30:38):
monetized as a result of the currency or the money that our economy has been using being so
abundant or so weak or shitty, however you want to describe it, has effectively monetized all
these other things. And that monetary energy will flow out of those asset classes and into Bitcoin.
I think it's happening today. I mean, it's going to end up in the rate in which it's happening is

(01:31:00):
going to increase. You know, I think most people are unaware of the fact that like, you know,
this real estate strategy, because you can leverage the real estate, because the system
needs to inject liquidity, the currency needs to debase. So real estate's a good vector to debase
against. Most people are unaware that they're actually just using, they're thinking in terms

(01:31:23):
of it being an investment, and then they want their investment to cash flow. But if you're
effectively only trying to preserve capital, and you're using real estate, well, now you're also
forced to become a service provider, which is a headache, like, hold on, I got to rent this thing
out. I got to Airbnb this thing. I got to make sure I have some sort of cash flow to pay for the
property taxes, the maintenance costs, you have entropy of nature just trying to gobble this

(01:31:48):
fucking house up, right? And so it's not energy efficient. And one of the things that I could
leave you with this thought, I think this is so important. And very few people are aware of this.
Nothing.
absolutely nothing in the marketplace on planet earth is getting more valuable.

(01:32:11):
Housing is not going up in value.
Your Amazon stock over time is not getting more valuable.
What's happening is the currency that you denominate its value in is getting less valuable.
I talk about houses and cars.

(01:32:33):
I was literally just talking to somebody about this yesterday here at the farm.
Talking about Bitcoin.
They're asking me some questions.
And I'm like, the value of your house is going down just like the value of that Honda Accord.
You just can't see it because you're denominating the value of the house and the car in dollar terms.

(01:32:56):
And the dollar is losing value fast enough that it creates the optical illusion, or at least in dollar terms, the house is going up, but the car is going down.
So the currency is not being debased fast enough so that the value of the car is increasing in dollar terms.
And so it's this optical illusion.
People are unaware of the fact that they're getting they're not actually getting wealthier most commonly.

(01:33:22):
And let's say, you know, I don't know, you buy some Apple stock and it shreds and then you sell it.
And I mean, you could definitely like changing lanes.
You could you could speed a little bit.
You could get a little bit ahead, but you're trading.
And that requires energy, cognitive bandwidth to do.
And so I like the saying that Bitcoin is the final trade.
It's the best place to have your money.

(01:33:43):
And and you can denominate the value of anything in this world in anything else.
I could denominate the value of this greenhouse in terms of microphones or in laptops or cups of coffee or whatever.
And so if you denominate the value of anything in the marketplace in terms of Bitcoin, it's going to increase because we're making more of all of those things than we're making more Bitcoin.

(01:34:09):
And so currently actually Bitcoin in real terms is losing value because we increasing the supply Once we hit 21 million Bitcoin will quite literally be the only thing on planet Earth that has a fixed value
But it'll seem like it's going up in value because its convertibility into other things are decreasing.

(01:34:33):
So nothing on planet Earth is increasing in value in terms of energy, including Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is just being produced at a slower rate than everything else is.
It's the quote unquote hardest asset in the marketplace in terms of stock to flow.
So everything on planet Earth is going down in value.

(01:34:55):
Quite literally everything.
Like I saw a chart.
I think it was Swan.
One of their daily videos like a year ago.
I think I was in Prague going to the conference there.
and they were denominating the value of the S&P in dollar terms
and the chart hockey stick up to the right.
But now let's just complete the algebraic equation there.

(01:35:18):
Let's throw in how many dollars are in the M2.
So if you adjust that chart for M2,
what you can see is that actually the S&P is going down by like a half percent or 1% per year.
treasury bills, tech stocks. I mean, what did we just see? There was,

(01:35:39):
oh, I forget what it was. There's some AI company just came out and NVIDIA just had a crash. What
was it? DeepSeq? DeepSeq, I think. DeepSeq. Yeah. So there's going to be another tech company
that's going to issue shares. There's going to be another search engine, another social network.
There's going to be more treasury bills, gold, you know, the Mike Maloney's of the world, bless their hearts.

(01:36:04):
But they're failing to see that gold has failed us.
Gold was really good, I suppose you could say, as a money or as an underlying asset.
If you take away that central corruptible element to it because it has to centralize because it's physical.
Gold was cool before we had computers and bulldozers.
right and if the gold price shreds you know if peter schiff wakes up one morning and lives in his dream come true reality and they revalue gold to fifty thousand dollars an ounce a bunch of unprofitable miners are going to just fire up their bulldozers and rip up the forest floor and dump gold onto the marketplace

(01:36:42):
So. Yeah, Bitcoin, it's fucking Bitcoin.
such a big deal oh and so probabilistically speaking i know that bitcoiners sometimes
can get a little bit uh you know seemingly hyperbolic and speak in terms of certainty

(01:37:03):
um and so i can you know i disclose these are all the things that i believed based upon probability
when i say that bitcoin is going to appreciate at a faster rate than everything else forever
However, probabilistically speaking, that's true.
You know, unless we have a black swan, an unknown unknown.

(01:37:25):
But there is not going to be a Bitcoin 2.0.
There's millions of new cryptocurrencies that people come up with.
And Bitcoin is the one.
It's not going to be replaced.
It is a protocol.
It's like the additional layer on the Internet.
Now with the Internet, we can send value.
It used to be just information.
um there's no need to replace it markets converge onto one this is a protocol stack not a technology

(01:37:52):
this isn't this isn't a tech stock that you're going to trade so you can go buy a fucking lambo
and the people who do so are going to look back and they're gonna be like oh i should have just
held the bitcoin and so that's that there's just this beautiful incentive vortex that's reorganizing
our world. I call it the great imposition. We're in the midst of the great demonetization

(01:38:15):
and the great imposition. Bitcoin is imposing a new economic order, a new economic rule set
on our civilization. It's going to reward the ethical and productive individuals,
and it's going to punish the ones who aren't. And the zombie corporations, the fiscally
the irresponsible governments,
the lying cheating stealing central banking apparatuses will all have to change their way of operating or they will be Darwinian out of existence And that just like such a beautiful thing Just the fact that that is now much more

(01:38:55):
logically or reasonably possible is so inspiring. Like it's like such a catalyst for hope and
optimism like everyone should be ecstatic like this is a state change things are changing and
that's you know beautiful 100 agree with all that and also just your statement that yes it is all

(01:39:21):
probabilistic and yes bitcoiners get a little crazy sometimes and we just talk about how this
is such a sure thing is going to happen but like you the more research i've done on this thing and
and the deeper I dove down a rabbit hole, the more sure I am that this is inevitable.
And all the reasons that we sort of have in our brain coming into it, why it won't work, are just not correct.

(01:39:45):
And that humanity is due for a new form of money that just works.
And I also agree that we're in sort of a fiat interregnum period right now.
I'm sure you may have seen that analogy before.
I think it was Anil Patel said that one or something, I believe, how we're really just in between sound monies right now.

(01:40:06):
It's like an intermission.
Like this fiat experiment is an intermission between gold and Bitcoin.
And Bitcoin is going to be the best money we've ever had.
And it's going to create a very, very beautiful future for everyone.
And it's up to all of us to just continue spreading the word, spreading the love and spreading knowledge.
So more people can get plugged into this thing and make sure that we benefit from as much as we can.

(01:40:28):
Eric V. Stacks, it's been such a pleasure chatting with you today, sir.
Thank you for coming by.
And I really look forward to keeping in touch.
I'd love to do another one at some point because certain people,
it's just super fun to just chat with for hours and hours.
I could definitely do that with you, sir.
So I wish you all the best in your future changes you have coming up,
and we will stay connected for sure.

(01:40:49):
Yeah, man, sounds good.
I've really enjoyed it.
So thank you for having me.

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#120 Eric V. Stacks - BITCOIN FIXES ALL THE THINGS

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#120 Eric V. Stacks - BITCOIN FIXES ALL THE THINGS