#131 Joe Bryan - What's The Problem? - Ben Wehrman Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hello, folks. Hope you're having a wonderful day out there. I am checking in here real quick to
announce that we have a very special and different episode today. I will be bringing on Mr. Joe
Brian, who made one of the most fantastic Bitcoin educational videos I've ever seen, and one of the
most viral ones, too. It was getting hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube, millions of views

(00:23):
on Twitter, and audio podcasts everywhere. It just completely blew up, and it's no mystery why.
It's a beautiful explanation of why us Bitcoiners care so much about what this fiat system is,
why it's the root of so many problems, and how Bitcoin fixes it all.
And it's extremely good to send to beginners as well, so keep that in mind.

(00:44):
And I will also note that he does an amazing job explaining everything in words,
so audio listeners will get a ton of value out of it.
However, he does have a slide presentation that goes along with it,
so I do recommend watching it on video later if you can.
you'll get even more out of it. So without further ado, here is Joe Bryan's video titled

(01:04):
What's the Problem? And once that's done, I will see you in about 40 minutes when we
get back together for an interview and talk about it. So I will see you then.

(01:29):
Hey Joe.
Hey.
What's this all about?
Well, we have a problem and it's a very big problem.
And unfortunately, most people aren't aware of it.
It doesn't matter what your personal views are, your politics, your religion, or where you are.

(01:55):
And once you see the problem, you can't unsee it.
It's like a one-way door.
But thankfully, we also have the solution.
And it's this solution that I'm so passionate about sharing.
And it's what makes me just so optimistic for the future.
The challenge I find, though, is how can anybody fully value a solution

(02:18):
unless they understand what the problem is?
And so I put this presentation together for some friends.
and it assumes no knowledge other than just being human beings and life experience.
And they encourage me then to make this presentation into video

(02:39):
so I can share it with everyone.
So I hope you enjoy.
Welcome to What's the Problem?
So what is the problem?
Well, too many, unfortunately.
I probably could have written twice as many things down on this slide.

(03:02):
I think we all have that sense of unease.
We all feel internally that things are not moving in the right direction in our lives, in the world.
Things are becoming harder, not easier.
And I think for most of us, we would recognize some elements of these things on the screen as touching our lives directly or indirectly.

(03:26):
And what I'm here today to show you is that all these things may seem unconnected, but they're really not.
The primary cause of all of these is the quality of our money.
Now we're going to do this through a story.
So imagine there's this far-off world where you have hundreds of smart people traveling on a ship.

(03:51):
And this ship gets wrecked on a deserted island.
This deserted island is so far from everywhere else they're effectively cut off.
But the island is resource rich.
It has everything they could possibly need to rebuild society.
But because these people have come from an advanced civilization,
they know exactly where they're ultimately going to get back to.

(04:13):
But now they're starting again with nothing.
What's also clear is that they need some way of trading with each other once they start to rebuild.
So they prioritize deciding on what to use for their new money and suspend your disbelief slightly further in that they have, despite not having anything, the ability to create whatever monetary system they want with whatever characteristics.

(04:36):
So the first question they need to answer is, what makes good money?
And there are seven things.
So these guys have the ability to create whatever they want.
So instead of just creating good money, they create the perfect money.
And the perfect money is scarce, which means it has a fixed supply forever, and is instantly

(04:56):
and costlessly verifiable by everybody.
So if everybody can check it whenever they want at no cost, then you can verify for yourself
that nobody's creating any extra.
It needs to be portable, so you can effortlessly move and store it with negligible costs.

(05:16):
It needs to be divisible and the perfect money would be infinitely divisible.
It needs to be durable.
It can't rot or go off.
It can't deteriorate.
So the perfect money exists forever.
It's fungible, which means every piece is forever the same as every other piece.

(05:37):
It needs to be acceptable.
So everyone, anywhere can both send and receive.
And the really important one is it needs to be censorship resistant.
You hold it yourself.
Nobody can take it away from you without your permission.
And no one can stop you sending or receiving it.

(05:59):
So this is great.
They decide on perfect money.
But then there's a disagreement.
Two leaders emerge from within the population.
The first, Satoshi.
he says well given these are the characteristics of perfect money that's going to be true today
true tomorrow and true forever so we should lock them in you should never change whereas

(06:22):
Fiatello he says well I get that I get this is the characteristics of perfect money and I totally
agree but what if there's an emergency what if we need to change something what if the people we put
in charge of our money feel like it's not working and need to make an adjustment I think we should
have the perfect money but we should also have a big red button which allows someone to press it

(06:47):
and change any of the characteristics if we need to. Of course no one ever will but just in case.
This becomes an irreconcilable disagreement. So a fairly drastic solution but they build a huge wall
right down the middle of this island and on one side they create the currency called satoshis
which is perfect money always and on the other side are Fiatellos which is perfect

(07:13):
money but with the options changing. Now this wall is so big it cuts off the
communication and the trade between both sides on the island so effectively they're
cut off from one another. So to begin with nobody has anything on either side of
the island so everyone's starting from zero and initially people have to be

(07:33):
self-sufficient. Each person is fishing for their food, cutting down trees for
the wood to make fires and also for houses and then they're also building
their own shelters. Now even though they have perfect money there's very limited
trading here because people are working hard just to satisfy their day-to-day
needs across all of these goods. But people are different. Some people are

(07:57):
better at some things than others and so people quickly realise that if I spend
my time focusing on the things I'm good at, I'm reducing the amount of time I spend on things that
I'm poorer, then I can contribute more to society. I can increase the amount of goods I can provide
to society in the same amount of time as the average person. So the woodcutter spends all his

(08:19):
time now cutting down wood. He stops fishing. He stops building shutters. And because he's spending
his time cutting down wood, he increases the quantity of wood available to everyone else
versus three people spending a third of their time each,
because he's good at it.
And not only does the increase in the quantity of wood available
reduce the price of wood for everybody on the island,

(08:41):
the quality is also high.
He's better at doing it.
He produces a higher quality output.
So prices fall and quality increases.
And not only that, he's not the only woodcutter.
There are multiple woodcutters.
So they're all competing to supply wood to everybody else
and they're competing at price and in terms of quality.

(09:04):
And now what happens is because the woodcutter needs other goods to survive,
he has to sell the wood to buy facials, sell the wood to pay for the services of their home builder.
So now everybody is actively trading in this perfect money.
Now, because processes continue to improve,
the woodcutter can now satisfy the needs of the rest of the population for wood in a smaller amount of time.

(09:27):
He can then take that time and think about his own processes, his own innovations.
Maybe he can make cutting down wood even more efficient.
And if he does that, it drives prices lower.
It drives quality higher.
Maybe he reaches the end of his innovation within his wood cutting
and then uses the excess money and excess capital he has to invest in other people.

(09:48):
Maybe he lends it to the fisherman who then builds a boat
to increase the amount of fish the fisherman can catch for everybody.
So what happens over time in a free market with perfect money, prices go down forever and quality goes up forever.
So what people see on both sides of the island is that the purchasing power of their money starts to increase.

(10:14):
Goods cost less tomorrow than they do today, so the price of tomorrow is lower.
The purchasing power of both currencies is increasing at about 3% a year.
And this lifts the quality of life. Life becomes cheaper and cheaper over time for everybody, not just those people who are most productive in society.

(10:37):
But the key thing is the money itself is becoming more valuable over time.
That is, until these guys come along.
So now because the society is growing and the population is growing, both sides of the
island elect a government.
Now it doesn't matter if the government is left or right, big, small, up, down, doesn't

(11:02):
matter.
They are all the same when it comes to this.
Now however well run the government is, inevitably it will hit a deficit at some point.
And that means it's spending more than it's receiving.
And that could be through mismanagement,
but it could just be through external circumstance,

(11:23):
like a natural disaster or something like this.
The causes are not important but it will happen over the course of time inevitably But now we see a divergence across both sides of the island Satoshi he only has two choices here
To balance the budget, he needs to either raise taxes or cut spending.

(11:44):
Or maybe a combination of the two.
Whereas Fiatello, he has exactly the same choices.
But he also has a big red button.
And the important thing here is they're both up for re-election.
and Fiatello knows that if he raises taxes or he cuts spending it's going to cost him boats.
So just this time he decides to press the big red button and print a little bit of extra money

(12:09):
for the government. Okay so what are the consequences? Well for Satoshi not great.
He cannot hide those changes from the population because they're paying more in taxes or they're
getting less back from the government, from its spending.
So he loses the election,
but government reduces in size naturally.

(12:31):
So now overall, the efficiency in the economy has increased,
but not only this,
the social balance is improved within the economy
because people now realize there is no free money.
Taxes need to balance spending.
But the important thing is, prices continue to fall
and quality continues to increase.

(12:54):
Now for Fiatelo, great news, he gets re-elected.
And to start with, it's consequence-free.
He thinks this is the greatest thing ever.
I get re-elected and there's no downside.
But something's changed.
So what's happened?
Fiatelo has pressed the big red button,
which has printed some money for the government,

(13:16):
which has debased the currency.
So what does that mean?
He's increased the amount of money in the economy overnight.
But he hasn't increased the amount of goods and services available in the economy overnight.
So now there's more Fiatellos washing around compared to yesterday for each piece of the goods and services.

(13:36):
And this has three major impacts.
The first is a distortion of price signals.
The second is that it increases input costs for businesses.
And the third, it leads to asset inflation.
And that first one, distorting price signals, well, prior to Fiatello pressing the big red
button here, all price changes in the economy were purely a function of demand and supply

(14:01):
because this was a free market with perfect money.
But what's happened now is that money has entered the economy, not to everybody equally,
or even in proportion to the amount of money everybody holds.
The money has entered the economy via the government and it enters via the
government into the accounts of companies and people connected directly

(14:23):
or indirectly to the government. So what Fiatallo starts to see is price
increases in certain parts of the economy. So the signal to everybody else
in the economy is that there's an imbalance of supply and demand just in
these sectors. So you see a misallocation of capital by the entrepreneurs in the market

(14:44):
caused by the money printer. But not only that, it's human capital. It's smart people,
it's active people who are trying to be productive, get sucked in closer to the government and
not servicing the rest of the economy. The second is that business input costs increase.
Now every single business in Fiatela's country has at least a human being and some raw material

(15:07):
inputs like energy or even some harder raw materials. Now because the costs of
these things have gone up, these businesses now need to try and change
something about their product to maintain the small profit margins that
ensure that they can continue in business. Now the first and most obvious
one is just to pass on the price increase to the customer. The second is to keep

(15:32):
the price the same and the quality the same, but just shrink the product. So instead of having 100
grams, it's now 90 grams, but for the same price. Or the third one is to reduce the input costs.
Now this is where consumer inflation comes from. This is the only source of consumer inflation,

(15:54):
is the money printer, causing businesses to make these changes. But if a business
passes on the price increase outright,
or it shrinks the product
and the customer now just needs to buy more of it
to satisfy the fact that they needed 100 grams, not 90 grams.
Both of those things reduce affordability.
So the population is becoming poorer.

(16:15):
They're going to have less disposable income
despite buying the same as what they bought yesterday.
If instead the business chooses to keep the price the same,
the size the same, but just reduce the cost,
The most obvious thing to do is just to fire people, which leads to unemployment.
And now there are fewer people with jobs, which reduces the overall affordability for the population in Fiatelo's world.

(16:42):
But not only that, now the government's got a second issue it needs to solve.
How does it help support all these people who are recently unemployed?
But the most insidious way is for companies to reduce their input quality.
And so what Fiatallo starts to see is there's a rise in obesity across the population.
Because the food that was previously fresh and had high quality ingredients

(17:06):
is replaced with ever lower quality ingredients, a more industrialised sludge.
So this leads to obesity, it also leads to a myriad of secondary health issues,
which causes a health crisis. And now the government has to step in
and figure out how it needs to support all these people who are now unhealthy.
The third is asset inflation.

(17:29):
Since Fiatello pressed the big red button,
asset prices have been going up.
The stock market goes higher and higher and higher.
House prices go higher and higher and higher.
He thinks I'm some sort of economic genius.
But they're going up in price
because he's just created more Fiatellos.
So anybody who knows that there are more Fiatellos in the system

(17:50):
of course wouldn't sell their asset
for the same as they did yesterday.
they would take into account the fact that there were just more field tellers in the system.
So this is what is driving these prices up.
But this asset increase is good for the people who own the assets,
but not for the people who don't.
So it has a wealth inequality begin to emerge across the economy.

(18:12):
And not just that, because house prices are now more expensive.
The rent is more expensive.
So you see these increased levels of homelessness.
And these increased levels of homelessness, guess what,
require more government intervention to try and deal with.
And now asset prices are flying.
The stock market's on fire.
The prevailing perception across the population is,

(18:33):
why would I not invest?
Why would I just keep the money?
I should be buying the stock market.
I should be invested.
I should be buying a second home to rent out.
I should be buying speculative assets
because they never go down.
They just go up.
If I don't invest, I'm a fool.
And because the assets are going up,
the banks are pushing ever more leverage for people
pushing bigger and bigger mortgages to individuals, to loans to companies.

(18:57):
But now that house prices have gone up, and now that everyone has more debt,
at the same time as families are struggling with affordability of day-to-day life,
it's now much harder to buy a house.
So families where previously they could have one main earner
and afford to buy a house with a mortgage can't anymore.

(19:18):
You now need both parents working.
both parents working to afford the mortgage and afford to live.
And when that happens, people spend less time together
and you start to see the breakdown of the nuclear family.
They spend less time with their children.
They can afford to have fewer children.
Now, because you have decline in birth rates,

(19:40):
Fiatello starts to see a change in his demographics across the population.
Fewer children are being born, whereas the older generations are living longer.
And he now starts to realize that the promises he made to these older generations about being able to retire at a certain age or having a good quality of life or defined income in their retirement can be delivered upon.

(20:03):
For those not lucky enough to be able to buy a house who are maybe stuck renting.
Whereas before, they could think about renting the same place for three years or five years because the rent goes up too much every year.
So now they're thinking about one year, maybe two years.
you're planning less for the future.
Maybe you're putting off getting married,

(20:23):
putting off having children.
You start to prioritise today at the expense of tomorrow.
People see that their saving their fiatellos
never gets them anywhere
because the asset prices are going up too quickly.
They'll never be able to buy a house.
So if you'll never be able to buy a house,
then prioritise living your best life
and go on a holiday and spending more,
enjoying yourself.

(20:45):
But for those not fortunate to be in this position,
for those that every day is a struggle feeding themselves and their families,
housing themselves and their families.
They're stuck on a treadmill of decline.
Now, every day is harder, which leads to a growth in addiction,
various forms of addiction, including opioids across Fiatello's island,

(21:08):
which leads to yet more of a health crisis
and yet more intervention from the government.
And all of this leads to a mental health crisis across the population.
And now the government finds itself in a position where, because it's pressed the big red button,
it's created a whole range of secondary issues that now it needs to step in and try and solve.

(21:30):
And because it has to step in and try and solve these things,
it means the government needs to divert more capital to these areas of the economy.
which again is a greater misallocation of capital,
which pulls more entrepreneurs into the wrong parts of the economy
through the distortion of the price signals.
And between the increased leverage in the economy driven by the banks
and the misallocation of capital, it sows the seeds of the next emergency.

(21:55):
And Fiatello has only one choice, and that's to press the big red button again.
And now he's starting to realise that actually this wasn't consequence-free.
But now he's lurching from crisis to ever bigger crisis.
He presses the big red button, which debases the currency, which leads to bigger government and more involvement in everything.

(22:18):
And now not only is the government bigger, but the government has spawned a series of parasitic industries attached to it.
Big pharma, who are increasingly involved with the government, should try to deal with the symptoms, but not the causes, of the various health crises.
never incentivized to actually cure a patient,

(22:38):
just to treat them long term,
because a healthy customer is a lost customer.
Big food pushes for ever lower food standards across the economy.
The military-industrial complex pushes for ever greater spending on defense
both at home and on foreign shores.
Wall Street are up to their eyeballs in debt

(22:59):
and now so leveraged that the government wants to protect them they can be allowed to fail Because if the banks fail the population loses their money the government falls
The government also continues to make unproductive investments.
Investments trying to deal with the secondary issues
it's created, but also investments

(23:21):
driven from whatever political ideology the government has.
And all of these things are effectively
now crony corporatism. It's very hard to see where the government ends and these industries begin.
The success of the government is deeply intertwined with the success of the industries.
These industries start to ask the government to become regulators. You need to regulate us

(23:45):
to protect the public. But this regulation, all it does is make competition harder. The one, two,
three companies in each of these areas are now very, very close to the government. They supply
the people for the regulator. When the regulators end their tenure they go back
and work for these companies. It stops smaller companies coming in and
competing with them to then supply the government on better terms with higher

(24:08):
quality product. So quality starts to decline and prices start to rise, which
of course is great news for these companies because profit margins go up.
What happens then is the media gets captured. The government is teetering to
maintain social stability. It's now protecting these industries at the expense of the population

(24:33):
rather than the other way around. And because of this social balance that it needs to maintain,
it can't allow free speech, dissent, alternative opinions or questioning of
anything that undermines the legitimacy of the government in anywhere.
Not only that, the biggest advertisers for the media companies are the companies connected to

(24:54):
to the government. So the media companies increasingly don't want to upset their advertisers.
And when you have a captured media and a military industrial complex fomenting strife on foreign
shores, you get the creation of the forever wars. And the wars themselves are actively
supported by the Fiatelo population because all they see in their media is that we have

(25:17):
to do this because it's the right thing to do. And between the forever wars and the banking
system bailouts and the excessive debt. It leads to the next emergency but this time it's just so
much bigger and the only choice he has is to press the big red button again but this time it's
different. It's a massive erosion of trust. Every time he presses the button more and more people

(25:42):
become aware of what's happening and this goes round and round and round until something breaks.
And now Fiatello's starting to get quite worried.
So what's happening to the money?
Well, instead of increasing 3% a year in purchasing power, he's now losing 7% a year because he's
printing 10% a year of extra money.

(26:05):
And not only that, he's undermining the productivity in the economy by distorting all the price
signals.
So what happens to the Fiatello island population?
Well, the poor who are on fixed wages, have very low income security and no assets.
They can't win.
They just get poorer every single year.
For the middle earners who have fixed salaries and mixed income security, they're not the

(26:31):
first to be fired.
They often have a home.
They can never sell the home and realise any game because you've got to live somewhere.
If you sell one home, you've got to buy another home.
You might have some investments, but they are becoming the new poor.
Surely the wealthy are doing well.
Their income is largely from asset yields, from operating businesses or investing.

(26:55):
Their income security is high because they can't get fired.
But for them it's death by a thousand cuts.
They see their wealth as a number continue to increase.
but they feel like they're getting poorer.
Life continues to get harder.
And that's because the rate at which they're earning money,
their yield on their assets is below the rate

(27:17):
at which Fiat Lowe is printing money.
So they're slowly having their wealth siphoned away
by the politically connected.
Those that are government funded
and have fully insulated income security.
And perversely, their income goes up
and becomes even more valuable
as society continues to decline because the government needs more and more intervention.

(27:42):
And it's really just industrialised theft at this point from everyone else in society.
But now so much time has passed that the wall down the middle of the island starts to crack.
And it starts to crack in such a way that both people and money can start to flow from
one side to the other.
So on the one side you've got the Satoshis increasing their purchasing power at 3% a

(28:05):
on the other side you've got the Fiatellos that are losing 7% perching power every year.
So what happens? Why? What Fiatello starts to see is that money and people start to leave
because they don't trust their ability to save using Fiatellos. They want Satoshis.

(28:27):
Okay, so this sums it up. On a Fiatello standard, your money is stealing from you.
Whereas on a Satoshi standard, the whole world is working 24-7 to increase your purchasing power.
But now the escape valve is open, people realise they can't save in Fiatellos.
So they start selling Fiatellos to buy Satoshis. So the Fiatellos decline further in value,

(28:52):
triggering yet more budgetary and currency crises for Fiatello to deal with.
And the only choice is to press the big red button again.
But this time, printing money is not enough because value is leaking out of Fiatello's side of the island.
He needs to change another characteristic of perfect money, which is to remove the censorship-resistant nature of it.

(29:18):
So the Fiatello population used to be able to hold the money themselves.
Now Fiatello says, no longer allowed to hold it yourselves, you have to put it in the banks.
The banks are going to hold everybody's money.
The population now feel that they are guilty
until proven innocent for making any transaction.
The banks will check every transaction to protect you.

(29:43):
Which means when people are trying to buy certain things,
including Satoshi's, the banks now say no.
It's because of this, it's because of that, it's because of the other.
He restricts the flow of capital out of Vitello's side of the island.
He may even just create explicit capital controls.
You're no longer allowed to buy Satoshis at all.

(30:06):
But people always find a way,
and more and more people are waking up to what's happening,
and the cycle continues.
But the important thing is the wealth and the people
flee to the uncorrupted money.
And now Fiatello's beginning to really panic.
So where does it end for Fiatello?
Well, if he's lucky,

(30:27):
with sustained inflation, allowing the government to inflate away its debts and slowly siphon away
the wealth of the public. This may even border on hyperinflation. I say lucky because it's very hard
to do that and maintain social cohesion and something is likely to go wrong. It will definitely

(30:51):
be asset seizures. Now that all the money is held in the banks, one day Vietela will
decree that we're all in it together and the banks will hand over a proportion of that
capital to the government. Just like in Cyprus in 2013, if you held over 100,000 euros in
the bank overnight, 45% of that went to the government. The public was effectively bailed

(31:17):
in to bail out the banks and the government from their own mismanagement.
It also happened in the US in 1933. They made gold holdings for the individual illegal and this
lasted for almost 40 years. If you held more than a hundred dollars of gold and you were caught,

(31:37):
ten thousand dollar fine or ten years in prison. And this is when ten thousand dollars was a huge
amount of money. Vitello sees a rise in political extremism on both ends of the spectrum.
The government never explains to the population where these problems are coming from. They don't
tell them it's because of the money printing via the big red button. They control the media.

(32:03):
The government is protective of itself. They don't tell the population the truth. They don't help the
the population join the dots. They don't explain the link from the big red button to the issues.
They blame it on the greedy businessmen or the billionaires or that foreign dictator or this or
that. And then what happens is people ask for more help and more support from the government

(32:26):
to deal with all of these issues. And so the only solution is the government's involved in everything.
So at every step of this journey, the solution to all the problems has always been
more government involvement. And so the people see these problems and vote for
more government involvement to solve them. Or something worse. But in all

(32:53):
scenarios people want to hold Satoshi's and not Fiatello's. So if we go back to
that list of seven characteristics of perfect money,
Fiatello only changed two of them. The other five are still exactly the same.
And look where he ended up.
Now, the reveal. And some of you may be slightly ahead of me here.

(33:18):
The US dollar is just a terrible version of the Fiatello.
So the US dollar is corrupted on the same two key issues that the Fiatellos were.
but on the other five it's materially worse as well. In terms of portability it's easy to carry,

(33:39):
easy to pay but it's not great for merchants. You pay instantly but the merchant doesn't get
the money for multiple days and that's if there was no fraud or chargebacks. It's divisible but
only to a point and removes the ability to do microtransactions which will unlock potentially
completely different economic models. It's durable in digital form but we have

(34:04):
cash component and that cash component is constantly undermined. The notes are
reprinted in terms of design every 15 or 20 years so there's no ability for an
individual to save outside the banking system. If you put notes under your bed
or under the floorboards and leave them 25 years they're worthless. Those types

(34:26):
of notes have gone out of circulation.
So you need to take the notes every 15 or 20 years
to the bank hand them in and get new notes They re everything periodically out of choice They fungible which means every dollar is the same as every other dollar until it
not. Some countries around the world have already introduced what are known as CBDCs,

(34:50):
which are central bank digital currency. But effectively it's programmable money. A specific
dollar may have an expiration date. You need to spend it before this period of time elapses
or else it disappears.
Or a dollar may have only specific use cases.
You must spend this dollar on X or Y,
or you must not spend this dollar on ABC.

(35:13):
The dollar is very acceptable around the world,
but you can't pay for it everywhere.
And typically, most national currencies
are only acceptable in their own country.
And the US has a major Fiatelo problem.
This is the budget for 2024,
The budget, not the actuals, which of course were worse.

(35:34):
But deficit of almost two trillion on a spend of just over six trillion.
That's a loss in one year.
And to put that in context, they'd have doubled the amount of individual income taxes for everybody in the US just to balance that.
And on the cost side, they can make some improvements, but there are some key things there you just cannot remove, like the debt interest.

(36:00):
And the consequences, well, this is a chart of the amount of money in the system in dollars
and the amount of debt issued by the US government over time.
Now, I've labelled 1971 on here because that's when the US came unilaterally off the gold standard.
Prior to 1971, you could give your dollars back and receive gold in return.

(36:26):
Nixon took the US off the gold standard and every currency in the world.
followed. And since then, it's allowed the US to print unlimited amounts of money to satisfy its own
needs. And the red chart on the left-hand axis shows that amount of money is now 22 trillion.
And on the right-hand side, you've got the US government debt, which even a month later,

(36:50):
this chart is now out of date. It's now 36 trillion. And this doesn't include the unfunded
liabilities, the amount of money the US government has committed to pay at some
point in the future through Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. But it
hasn't had to write the cheque yet. Now depending on how you calculate that, it's
between 50 and 200 trillion on top of 36 trillion of debt. The only way to

(37:15):
solve that is more money printing. So the money printer is systematically
destroying the purchasing power of the dollar. Now you may think I have something against the
dollar. I absolutely don't. The dollar is the best that we have. I would love to be able to use the
dollar as would the vast majority of people around the world. But unfortunately, most people just

(37:38):
aren't as lucky. This is the performance of all the other currencies versus the dollar over the
last 10 years. Some have near enough disappeared completely and some absolutely have. They've
ceased to exist. The people who saved their economic energy in those currencies have seen
them vanish. The unfortunate reality here, as the wonderful Lynn Alden repeatedly says,

(38:03):
is nothing stops this train. There is no way out for governments. The only solution is to keep
pressing the big red button.
And so the conclusion is a quote from Hayek,
who was an economist of the Austrian school,

(38:23):
is that the history of government management of money
has, except for a few short happy periods,
been one of incessant fraud and deception.
And he said this in 1988.
Now, that would all be pretty depressing
if there wasn't a solution.
But thankfully there is.

(38:46):
The only solution here is the separation of money and state.
The government cannot be allowed access to a big red button.
And Hayek again, and this time the quote from 1984.
I don't believe we shall ever have good money again until we take it out of the hands of government.

(39:08):
We can't take it violently out of their hands.
All we can do is, by some sly roundabout way, introduce something they just can't stop.
Brilliant quote.
So I hope now, with these links between the big red button and the money printer,
and all of these issues that we see in our lives today,

(39:32):
that it's now much clearer that if we can fix the money, we'll fix the world.
And the good news here, and this is the best news, is that Satoshis are real.
And even Fiatelo is now a convert.
The solution is Bitcoin.

(39:54):
One Bitcoin is 100 million Satoshis in the same way that $1 is 100 cents.
Now you may feel you know about Bitcoin already because of something you've been told by friends
or you read in the media, I would encourage you to start again.
When we derive our information from media or people who have derived their information from

(40:22):
the media and that media is connected to the people who own and benefit from the money printer,
it tends not to be necessarily the most accurate information.
So don't trust, verify.
Thank you for watching.
I hope you enjoyed it.
Please share this with anyone you care about.

(40:45):
And if there's one thing that you take away from this
it's I hope you will remember
that if we fix the money, we'll fix the world.
Thank you.
cool just hit the recording button we're live wonderful so as joe and i were just discussing

(41:11):
the possibility of having the entire episode in the beginning of the the podcast which i think is
a new thing for both of us like we'll see how people like it but so people just hearing this
now just heard a full episode and i think that they're probably having their minds blown
by this beautiful explanation,
which I was surprised actually going back.

(41:33):
It has a lot of visuals in it,
but you also explain everything very in detail.
So I think people listening just on audio
will also get a ton out of it.
So super, just happy to have you here, Joe, Brian.
Thank you for coming.
Well, thank you.
Thank you for having me on, Ben.
And I think if you're listening to the audio only,
you're going to be much more aware

(41:53):
of the spa music in the background
than if you're watching it on the video.
So if you have listened to it on audio only,
go back and watch the video
because the slides are very helpful
and makes the spa music less prominent.
So is that the most controversial part of the video,
the spa music in the background?
Because I love it.

(42:14):
I think it puts your brain in an absorbent state
that it wants to gain new information.
I feel like I'm getting a massage
and I'm just in full absorption mode.
yeah well i'm i'm trying to get it in as many spa places as possible to be honest
don't tell them anything else say hey no start with like a 30 second of only the music and then

(42:38):
it just cuts in to to the fiatelo story brilliant do whatever you can to help as many people as
possible see it exactly that's amazing hey we need to have a big we have like bitcoin winemakers we
have bitcoin farmers we need bitcoin spa creators people have spas and they just drop that on their
clients i don't know where that is basically i've made the business for you already so

(43:02):
amazing so joe i want to hear your backstory sir i know in the intro of the video it basically just
gives the quick introduction of you studied physics at oxford you had a decade in investment
in banking and a decade as an entrepreneur. So could you just give me a walkthrough of these

(43:24):
important life phases that you had and how it led you to being so passionate about Bitcoin?
Oh, yeah. Well, it was only 2020 when I properly found Bitcoin. You know, like many people have had
multiple touch points before then, but I consider it relatively late. So it's been

(43:47):
just over five years
I kick myself for not
taking it more seriously
sooner and doing
that small amount of work required
to sort of
get the ball rolling
down the hill because once you start
it you don't step off that track
but you've got to get the ball moving

(44:07):
but
yeah
it's
it should have come sooner because
had i engaged i would have got it because it's right it's right up my street my whole my whole
career has been maths and non-linear non-linear thinking so bitcoin was perfect bitcoin was perfect

(44:30):
i just never let it in so yeah it's just physics oxford and then from there i went to join goldman
sacks as an equity derivatives trader which was a tremendous tremendously tough start to a career
in terms of the content, but also the pace, the intensity.

(44:54):
It's being thrown in at the deep end from a career perspective.
But then after a couple of years, you sort of get used to it.
And I think it sets you up very well for moving on to other things.
So I spent five years there and another five years across Morgas,
Sandy and UBS, all doing the same thing.
and then I started modeling football from a mathematical perspective so soccer sorry for a

(45:16):
mathematical perspective and then left the city to move into sports so I was modeling the probability
of events happening in a soccer match initially it's a bit of fun but then it evolved into
into something where you could monetize it and then I met with we'll let you call it football
here we'll allow it for our international audience if I don't if I at least call it soccer people are

(45:39):
gonna have the wrong idea i visualize like have you seen the movie money ball have you seen that
that's like i have not seen i've not seen i'm aware of it that's exactly like i feel like you
just explained exactly what that movie is about it's it's about these guys who come in they're
hired on to basically really run the super math these statistics to figure out which players add

(46:00):
to this team that that's exactly i feel like what you're doing you should totally watch that out to
your list. Yeah, it is on my list. I've just never got around to watching it, but I'm aware
I think the difference is, Ben, I never cared about the statistics, which is going to sound super weird when you say, like, how can you be modelling sports if you don't care about the statistics?

(46:26):
Isn't that the first thing you need?
And the reason is because we just cared about prices.
we cared about expectations
not about what happened in the past
just expectations about the future
and so when you've got the whole world looking at statistics

(46:46):
and then passing that through whatever mental
filter they have, be it hunch or be it a model
or something like that, they then express those
views in a betting market and the betting markets move
around and the betting market is the best proxy for what the world on average thinks
about something. It's like prediction markets. They're basically prediction markets that settle

(47:10):
very quickly with an observable outcome one way or the other.
The bet either wins or loses.
If you're able to view
lots of these betting markets that all move in real time,
you can infer what the world must think about
certain things without having to care about the statistics because you're standing on the

(47:37):
shoulders of everybody else right and so that's that's really that's really what we did and then
we you know automated that and built models and things like this so build real-time scalable
pricing engines and trading systems where you didn't have to care who was playing what country
at walls or any of this any of this stuff you just it would be through inference

(48:02):
interesting yeah the whole betting market thing is so interesting to me because that's such a
it's a good example of like a free market mechanism and i'm sure you've heard of poly
market that's that's really blown up in the last few years people pulling up screenshots of the
betting odds of all these sorts of random things from the elections to sports to is some war going

(48:26):
to start over in this other country like all sorts of different things and it seems like that's the
true free market deciding what's going to happen and it tends to be really accurate because there's
no third parties manipulating things it's been very fascinating to see that that become sort of a thing
polymarket polymarket is great it's um you know gambling is a regulated industry

(48:52):
and in most parts of the world, not everywhere,
but it is a global market.
So lots of people bet in Asia, for example,
where it's not regulated,
not even legal in some countries,
but it's one of the things which is global,
but it's also accessible to most people.

(49:12):
Whereas it's not,
when you think about finance,
you've got to have certain privileged access
really to express a view in those markets.
Whereas even if you're betting on Liverpool versus Man United in a backstreet bookmaker in China, for example, that bet to some small degree does impact the global price.

(49:37):
Arguably, it's a fairly free market system, much more so than the financial markets.
Less so than Bitcoin.
Yeah.
Yeah. So, okay. So we got physics at Oxford,
you went into investment banking and then you went into this numerical world of

(50:00):
sports stuff. And then it was, was entrepreneur after that. What'd you do there?
No, that was, that was, that was it. Okay.
Yes. I left the city and built a business with a colleague.
He was CTO. I was CEO. And then we wrote out goes,
produce new trading, pricing and trading systems

(50:21):
and new products for people to bet on.
So new maths combined with real-time engineering
to unlock a greater surface area of interesting higher margin
products for bookmakers. Essentially, and then we were acquired and then
spent the last five years up to last year, up to about 12 months ago
helping to scale that business. And now,

(50:43):
along the way found bitcoin and yeah that's what i was going to ask is like were you picking up on
the problems with fiat money during this experience how did that trickle into these
different phases or were you purely just a physics mindset you didn't really understand the money side
at all but you just had such a mathematical brain that as soon as bitcoin came in you just figured

(51:05):
it out didn't really have that preliminary steps like most of us do um i was aware of it i mean
It can't be a derivative straight for 10 years and not think about the bigger picture.
But you don't.
You gradually do piece it together.

(51:28):
But you're also inside the system.
And so, you know, the Krosis, Jesse's article about, you know, why the Yuppie Elite don't get Bitcoin is so on.
it's just so accurate
but there was a point in time where I would have been in that
UP Elite
and when you're surrounded

(51:51):
by people who are in the UP Elite
it takes lots of knocks on the door
for you to answer it
it was
when I'd moved
into the entrepreneurial
moved out of the bank, started my own business
scaling that and then you are much more
exposed to
all these downstream issues
of the big red button

(52:11):
you see them you know you're not insulated in an investment bank which is
you know in that politically connected class of the beneficiaries and so your sort of layers of
protection or separation from that aha moment with bitcoin are you know materially reduced

(52:36):
and then eventually you do answer the knock at the door
and then it all makes sense fairly quickly
because it makes sense fairly quickly
from a financial risk-reward perspective initially,
which is how I came in.

(52:57):
But then Bitcoin is a multi-headed hydra
and you just keep finding new heads, don't you?
The longer you spend looking at it.
And so over that, from 2020 through to 2024,

(53:19):
I just went further and further down the Bitcoin rabbit hole
and it's very clear there's just nothing more important
I could be spending time on.
And I felt that way for a little while.
And I was just fortunate last year to be able to have that route to take a step out of the business

(53:40):
and then just focus now entirely on this, which is great.
Absolutely great.
You know, if you told me 12 months ago that I'd be, you know, having podcasts with you
and, you know, get to talk to Bitcoin all the time
and have contributed something that people find useful to the cause,

(54:01):
then i'd have been i'd have been absolutely delighted so you're very pleased to be where
we are today and i think useful contribution would be an understatement i'm just going through the
different people posting it i mean michael saylor posted it got like 14 000 likes i don't even know
how many views do you have an idea of how many views this video has gotten across all the different

(54:21):
places i mean it's super viral well north of a million i mean we yeah um
there's about 250 000 now on youtube but youtube was just the link under the x video when i posted
it and so you know the x you can't track it on x because people repost it but they also then

(54:46):
like sailor did copy the video repost it and then you know you've you've lost you don't get
to see all the stats and things like that so yeah it's just amazing it's really amazing and
we have lots of other videos now but on the youtube channel we've got six seven other languages
already full videos so somebody's you know someone's speaking thai and all the slides are in thai

(55:12):
there's far music still there thankfully but the rest of it the rest of it with the thai culture
yeah so you know we'll be dropping a couple more in the next in the next week as well
and that's on top of 25 sets of full materials in languages so people can then take the slides
and go and present to their family friends with the speaker notes in their native language and

(55:37):
then the youtube channel with this 40 must be 45 native subtitled translations there now and these
are all done by bitcoiners around the world who just got in touch saying you know please can i
translate it to tie it's just just amazing but it just shows you made it is when people start
wanting to translate into other languages like i know that safe dean always talks about how many

(56:01):
languages the bitcoin standard has been translated to which is just all of them because that is the
bitcoin book so this is sort of reaching that level too i'd love to see it and i just pulled
up on x i think you're way off on your prediction here because i just pulled up michael saylor's
posting of the video and that has 7 million views on twitter i think it's probably over 2 million

(56:22):
wonderful but i could not have expected that when i released the video to two men and a dog
on x and zero subscribers on youtube so what was the inspiration yeah i think you talked i listed
one of your other podcasts yesterday and you you basically just wanted to have a presentation for
some friends right and that's that was the impetus yeah i was invited to a weekend away with some

(56:47):
with some friends of a friend who i'd never met and he asked everyone to bring something to talk
about for half an hour and so you sort of co-create the weekend it was a lot of fun
meeting sort of like-minded entrepreneurs but i wanted to go and talk about bitcoin so i had to
figure out what to talk about but i didn't know anyone else was go who was going and so i couldn't

(57:10):
assume any knowledge so i sort of just stripped it all back and said well if i've only got 30
minutes my target should be after 30 minutes i want them to learn i want to learn about bitcoin
and so you know they didn't even know it was a bitcoin presentation it was just called what's
the problem and so everyone's guards were down and even if someone previously didn't like bitcoin

(57:34):
or had decided they didn like bitcoin they were sat there sort of open to start with which is really important and yeah it just went so well So I couldn have asked for it to go better
And they encouraged me to just share this with other people.
So this is, you know, so I went away and spent probably a month

(57:56):
making the video with a local production company
in a really amateurish way.
I think it was really professional looking,
just the way that you had your little studio there and you had like a mix of you just sitting
and looking very smart and talking through the slides i think it's great but it's turned out
really well and i'm really really impressed by the production company they they support me a lot

(58:20):
and they made a really nice quality output it was more my approach to it was amateurish but
i just turned up i just turned up and i didn't have a script
I've got these slides
we're going to talk through them
so we filmed it a couple of times
and I said of course
something different both times

(58:42):
and so trying to edit it together afterwards
is sort of
slightly challenging
if I was making another one
I'd know some of the obvious things
not to do wrong
make your life difficult
but I'm so happy with how it's come out
yeah it's great
it's great so thank you for having me on and thank you for sharing it with with your viewers as well

(59:05):
um yeah of course i think this is what i mean this is what the the podcast fear can do this
is what we can help with is just distributing cool shit everywhere in a more decentralized way
you know well yeah bitcoiners are the distribution for this video so the video is not for bitcoiners
the video is for

(59:27):
the people Bitcoiners want to bring along.
Because you watch that video,
there's going to be nothing new in it.
But it's just far more accessible
for the people that you want to help understand
why you're so passionate about this thing.
And so I have so many messages

(59:49):
from people around the world.
Like, I've been working on my sister for three years
to try to get her to understand this.
I send her the video and she's like,
how can I buy some Satoshis?
It's brilliant.
Literally every day, every day I get a message from somebody
with some, you know, little unlock or, you know.
It's wonderful.

(01:00:10):
That's so awesome.
Yeah.
And so well-deserved too.
And this is why I focus this podcast primarily on the zero-to-one crowd.
I try to start every episode with super beginner and walk people through the steps.
And that's always been the goal.
And that's why stuff like yours, I never get tired of the beginner level stuff.

(01:00:32):
I just continuously love it and get passionate about sharing that stuff and boosting it out
there because I think that's the most important segment we can work on right now is people
who are on the fence or they just haven't gotten any yet.
The people that need to get off zero.
Would you agree that those are the most important people we can focus on helping understand us right now?
Yeah, absolutely.
Because they're in the vast, vast, vast majority.

(01:00:56):
And so even if we can convert 1% of those people, it massively expands Bitcoin.
And this is my hope for the video is just want everyone in the world to watch it.
If everyone in the world watched it, then we can make a big step forward.
You still get people pushing back and it doesn't resonate with some people and that's fine.

(01:01:19):
People have their own starting points and no single piece of content is going to make everybody happy.
But it can bring a large chunk of people to the starting line.
And then it's, you know, they read the Bitcoin standard or they watch Lynn's Broken Money or Jeff's The Price of Tomorrow or, you know,

(01:01:39):
100 other pieces of introductory content, depending on which of the heads of the hydra they're most interested in exploring to start with.
Yeah, that's the thing is anyone can find their passion, whatever it may be, connects to the money because it's so important.
And I'm curious, how do you give people that summary of it?

(01:02:03):
Like, it doesn't matter what you're interested in.
Money matters here.
How do you explain the significance to it?
I point you back to the video because there's interests, but there's interest in the things that motivate you and then there's interest in the things that affect you.

(01:02:23):
And the things that affect you tend to be broader than the things that you're motivated to learn about.
Because you don't necessarily get to choose the things that affect you.
You're like a cork popping on the water.
And so at the start of the video, when I go through that list of issues, everyone resonates to a greater or lesser degree with all of them, or at least is aware of them, even if they don't feel like they necessarily impact you.

(01:02:52):
And so you make the top of the funnel really wide.
It's like everybody can watch that slide and be like, yeah, OK, there's something here where I can be like, OK, I've got now motivation to find out what's the solution to this thing.
You have a small motivation or a large motivation, but you have a motivation.

(01:03:13):
And then so you can get to the starting line.
Then once you're at the starting line, we do have a broad set of content across the Bitcoin space.
It's not as broad as it will ultimately be because it's not super specialized in really niche areas.
because the people who have passed through the door yet haven't been able to produce it.

(01:03:38):
There aren't the specialities of people who've passed through the door to create content about some particular aspect of Bitcoin
that would appeal to some small segment of the population.
But that will happen in time.
But I think whether you're interested in finance or technology or freedom or politics, philosophy, economic.

(01:04:08):
I've named about five there before I've even mentioned economics.
And then, you know, a whole bunch more.
Then you can find some link back to Bitcoin.
to Bitcoin. But to more specifically answer your question,
I say to
people that there's almost no decision you make in your life

(01:04:29):
which isn't in some way related to the money.
And so if the money's
corrupted, every decision is corrupted.
It doesn't matter who you are.
All your decisions have been corrupted.

(01:04:51):
You may choose a certain area of study because you think you needed to follow a certain career path.
But you maybe wouldn't have done that if the money wasn't corrupted.
Or you've decided to wait an extra five years to have children.

(01:05:11):
Then you would have done.
It's because the money's corrupted.
everything's related to the money and when you see video it's like okay when i understand everything's
related to the money and so now anybody on the spectrum any on the anybody who's a human being
is going to have some motivation above zero to try to understand that and improve their lives so

(01:05:36):
yeah sorry man what were you going to say no no you're good that was that's a perfect elaboration
on what I basically use as my super simple answer to the question I asked, which is money
is half of every single transaction.
So if you don't, you don't think that if that gets screwed up and is being manipulated behind
the scenes, it's going to cause problems.
Of course it is.
It's going to cause problems everywhere.

(01:05:57):
And to the few people who will say, oh, we can just go back to a bartering system of trading
the goods that we produce for other goods that other people produce.
They just haven't done their homework on the efficiency of markets, I would say, because
that isn't a good long-term solution for a fluid economy with lots of people who produce lots of
different things of different sizes and values yeah it's if people suggest that they haven't

(01:06:22):
they haven't thought about what comes next because you can remove these things but some systems
reform naturally and they always will they always will with human behavior
so some medium of exchange
some governance structure of some form

(01:06:45):
will naturally, these things will naturally occur in any
society and so
you can say I want to live in a society where
those things don't exist but they only won't exist temporarily
before they reform
yeah and one of the things i found very interesting about the video is the way that i usually

(01:07:12):
do a similar how do i say this the way that i help people get to the starting line like you said
is i usually talk about gold first as a foundational sound money that we've seen already in the past
and how i talk about how it worked better than fiat and then i work into bitcoin but the thing
about your video, you don't even talk about gold at all. You go straight into Bitcoin, which I think

(01:07:34):
is very difficult to do. And you do it beautifully. And so I just heard on a podcast a couple of days
ago, someone say that Bitcoin is the first real money we've had, because gold has lots of other
jobs. It does it's jewelry and coins, and it can be diluted by different metals, and it's never

(01:07:55):
going to be actual pure hard money bitcoin really is the first one would you agree with that statement
yeah absolutely it's also it's also super inefficient
gold was just the best thing available
it wasn't i want to hear your elaboration on why it's inefficient from a physics mathematical

(01:08:18):
perspective like you have well it was just the best of a bad set of choices it was not
engineered perfection there's a mass there's a massive gulf between between the two and
i don't talk about i don't explain bitcoin in the video i give you this i give you the structure

(01:08:38):
of what perfect money is right and then you understand you have that mental framework that's
structured around it gold is not perfect money and it fails on a bunch of those on a bunch of
But when you start with perfect money, you then see the shortcomings of gold rather than thinking gold is great and then trying to justify why Bitcoin is better.

(01:09:01):
It's a start with perfect money.
Doesn't matter what the money is.
What characteristics does it need?
Does it need to have?
But I also say it really inefficient because even outside of its core properties like you can send it on the internet You can easily verify that verify the total supply
You can't verify whether any individual piece of gold is real.

(01:09:26):
Yeah.
You've got all of these things, which where gold is,
I mean, it's really only durability.
Really only durability where you could argue gold does all right.
everything else is compromised oh i think you're on mute ben oh my bad i was on mute i just wanted

(01:09:49):
to clarify for people who are listening on audio i just pulled up a a list of all the different
characteristics of money that make it a good money so could i just have you joe walk through
these here and just to as an overview we have scarce portable divisible durable fungible acceptable

(01:10:09):
could you walk us through each of these and just elaborate a little bit
I think this would be a good 101 for what makes a good money
sure we can contrast gold versus bitcoin here on each of these
on each of these measures so firstly scarcity
the bitcoin is sorry gold is
is considered hard money

(01:10:31):
but it's hard money with soft edges
it's
there's a lot more gold that exists in the planet than we have above the surface
and there's an infinite amount of gold in the universe
so gold is absolutely not scarce

(01:10:52):
it's just scarce where it's currently economically accessible to us
and
If the price of gold goes up when measured in fiat currency, the supply then goes up above the ground because gold companies raise equity because gold is now more valuable.

(01:11:14):
Some deposits that were previously inaccessible from an economic economically inaccessible.
The cost of getting them out the ground would be more than the value of the gold and how economically viable.
And so the supply goes up when the price goes up.
and so you have elastic scarcity with gold with no cap

(01:11:36):
whereas with bitcoin you have programmatic absolute scarcity
and doesn't matter whether it's you talking about planet earth or the universe there is only ever
going to be 21 million and everyone knows the rate at which they will be coming to existence
or you could argue they already exist.

(01:11:58):
They just, nobody is able to access on the ledger.
I mean, depending on which way you want to take it,
but there's not going to be more than 21 million.
Now, I'll probably also touch on within scarcity
on the inefficiency question.
What I find helpful,
what I think is helpful for people

(01:12:19):
is linking gold to energy
because people don't really think about money in terms of energy.
But that's what gold is.
It's just really inefficient energy money.
Because in order to
bring more gold into circulation,

(01:12:43):
you have to expend energy,
economic and literal energy, getting it out of the ground.
It's an arduous process.
But you're translating real energy for economic energy.
There's a proof of work that goes into extracting more gold.

(01:13:09):
But that's just really inefficient.
0So what you really want is a money that also requires proof of work.
You can't create without doing work.
but where the proof of work is absolutely efficient.
You're not wasting a load of energy by doing it.

(01:13:32):
And that's Bitcoin.
It's pure work.
It's electrical energy all over the world
and everyone competing to secure the network
to bring Bitcoin into existence.
So Bitcoin is just apex energy money.
the free market and energy money which when framed like that is is just is a much closer

(01:13:56):
0step from gold so if if you are comfortable that gold represents value 976 01:14:01,1000 --> 01:14:09,460 then thinking about gold is really inefficient energy money that's compromised on this list of
characteristics to move to bitcoin which is 100 efficient energy money that is perfect on each

(01:14:17):
these characteristics. That's a much smaller mental leap to make and just feels logical.
So that's scarcity. On the portability, effortless to store and move. Gold is not effortless to
store and move. That's why we ended up in a fiat era. If you have gold, you tend to secure it

(01:14:42):
somewhere because you can't move it over the internet you can't stick it it can't move very
quickly it needs to be protected secured you end up just keeping it in one place because it's cheaper
to build security infrastructure around something that doesn't move than secure things that move all

(01:15:03):
the time because the cost of securing them would be would far outweigh the benefit of moving the
gold around that's why you put the gold in the vaults and that's why you then issue paper on top
of it initially convertible into gold and then people never ask for the gold and therefore you
break the convertibility for just printing more money and that's why we've ended up in the world

(01:15:25):
we are to where we live in today and so when people think about what the future may hold
going back to the gold standard while an option would only be temporary
because the same thing would happen again.
There is nothing to stop the same thing happening again.

(01:15:45):
So the same thing would happen again.
So going back to the gold standard is temporary only.
The big thing is you can't send it on the internet.
I mean, Bitcoin is, by contrast, you secure it with your security setup.
You're securing it cryptographically.

(01:16:06):
you don't need armed guards around your bitcoin it's knowledge
you can secure knowledge far more cheaply than you can secure physical
physical infrastructure and anyone can do it it's not only a few people at the top who have

(01:16:28):
the control knob that can tell you what it is which can obviously introduce lies and different
incentives for why they would manipulate certain information, which we see right now.
You know, just looking up any auditing of the Fed is going to be total BS numbers.
We know this.
It's common knowledge.

(01:16:48):
And Bitcoin allows anybody to verify for themselves.
Yeah.
And it's actually zero cost to secure Bitcoin.
It's just 12 words.
Right.
You can put those 12 words wherever, separate them.

(01:17:09):
You own Bitcoin.
No armed guards, no internet, nothing.
Nobody is excluded when it comes to Bitcoin.
And then the negligible cost, I just covered that bit as well.
Some of the pushback with Bitcoin is it's slow, it's expensive.

(01:17:32):
it's because the blocks are every 10 minutes on the base layer.
And that's fine.
But also the costs can be, you know, a dollar, $10, you know, $50
if it's getting stuff full of JPEGs at any given point in time
or something like that.
But, you know, that's very rare.

(01:17:55):
Quite often now the blocks are empty because it's very efficient
at clearing this stuff, but it's still slow.
But then people don't think about the Lightning Network.
And the Lightning Network is amazing.
It is absolutely amazing.
You can send value to anybody in the world instantly at virtually zero cost.

(01:18:18):
Virtually zero cost.
And you just keep a channel open between you.
that's still slightly is inaccessible or has a high learning,
steep learning curve for many people because the infrastructure is still being built out.

(01:18:40):
I would equate Bitcoin and the Lightning Network now to like being,
getting online in the 90s.
Like you can do it.
it's not super easy from a UX perspective.
But in 2025, going online, everything's online.

(01:19:01):
Everything's super easy.
We're in that technological adoption and development cycle
when it comes to making user experience more accessible,
more secure at the same time.
And so the combination of Bitcoin and the Lightning Network,
which is native to it, solves medium of exchange as well.

(01:19:24):
It's just that just hasn't played out. 1044 01:19:25,1000 --> 01:19:26,880 It's already solved.
It just hasn't played out yet, but it will.
Just people haven't woke up to it.
The third one, divisibility.
I mean, gold is divisible.
But if you think about trying to pay for something which doesn't cost very much,

(01:19:44):
how are you going to pay?
a grain of gold
or a speck of gold.
How do you give change?
You put that in your pocket, you're never going to see it again.
It just doesn't work.
Just some flakes out of a little fish food
bottle.
It just doesn't work.

(01:20:05):
Whereas Bitcoin, you've got
100 million Bitcoin
per
100 million Satoshis per
Bitcoin. And each of the
satoshis on lightning can be further
broken down when you have channels
open and just because you're tracking a net
balance between you, which then gets settled
on a base layer. So you effectively have
infinite divisibility but it's also

(01:20:27):
programmatic and so if you ever reached a point
where
the lack of sats
was becoming a problem or the lack
of fractions of a sats was becoming
a problem, which is sort of a long
long way into the future then
that could be resolved
programmatically So But it is infinitely divisible People struggle with that though Ben because it the infinite pizza dilemma

(01:20:53):
But how can something, if it's infinitely divisible, be scarce?
Because it's infinite.
But then the obvious thing is, if I give you a single pizza,
you can cut it up as much as you like.
Can you feed the world?
No, you can't.
so we sort of put that to bed

(01:21:14):
the next one is durable
gold is extremely durable
all the gold that's ever been mined is still in existence
so from that perspective
it ticks the box
it doesn't necessarily survive in

(01:21:36):
recognisable form
or consistent form, but it survives without deterioration.
Bitcoin is obviously the same on that measure.
Fungible, gold is absolutely not fungible.

(01:21:57):
I mean, technically, chemically fungible, practically not fungible.
because you can have gold coins
and you can have them all cut to the same size, same shape,
same design,

(01:22:17):
but you can't verify them.
They might look the same, but are they really the same?
Are they really the same?
How do you know it's not something like some zinc compound
or something in the middle and it's just painted gold?
because you know the people who control the money system and those with power to do so will always

(01:22:40):
want to dilute it to put cheaper metal in there so they feel like they have more money and this
was done in history when you when you go back and i think it was with the roman times or something
always been done it's always been done but typically in the past you were constrained by
physical process.

(01:23:03):
So fungibility was
dilution and it comes into scarcity as well.
Undermining the
100% fungible nature of money, of coinage
was something you had to do gradually.
You couldn't just command it. You had to actually take the coins, melt the coins

(01:23:26):
down, reform them either 10% smaller or with 20% less gold and more alloy.
Gradually, they get debased, but they get debased by accepting them, smelting them,
and then reissuing them again.
So it's a slow process.
It's a slow process.

(01:23:46):
Whereas today, we can do it with the click of a button and just issue more currency or
change what it means, which is what will happen in CBN.
so once CBDC's come in
and they're already available in some parts of the world
I think you guys will be okay, the jury's out for us
whether we'll go down that route or not

(01:24:08):
but once you have this, all fungibility goes out the window
but fungibility requires trust
in a fiat world anyway, and on a gold standard
or with gold it requires trust
because whoever has access to their money can just change it
whereas with bitcoin you can't everything is always fungible forever

(01:24:29):
implicitly so there's no no one gets to control what a sat is or what bitcoin is
and i think that a lot of people the first time they heard the word fungible at least
in the last handful of years is with nfts non-fungible tokens that's kind of the word
where they've heard this and so just to be totally clear you you want your money to be

(01:24:56):
fungible not non-fungible you absolutely it all needs to be the exact same across the board
to keep things stable because all these things are talking about like we're talking about stability
here you want to have the most stable brick house of a monetary system where things can't
be manipulated anywhere fungibility is a good thing absolutely absolutely absolutely

(01:25:19):
And then last one is acceptability.
Everyone everywhere can both send and receive.
Is it absolutely not the case with gold?
Because of a function of all of the other things.
You can't send it to anybody in the world.

(01:25:41):
You're not allowed to own it in some countries.
You weren't allowed to own it in your country for quite a period of time.
Okay, so everyone everywhere can both send and receive just doesn't work with gold.
Absolutely works with Bitcoin.
Nobody can stop you.

(01:26:02):
And so gold fails on or falls short on every single measure with potentially the exception being durability.
i would say the only other thing that maybe isn't one of these hard checkbox items but i
the gold does do well on is just historical precedence you know history in long-term

(01:26:29):
sustainability i think i've seen some other charts that sort of lay that out there like
that is the one thing gold does have is it i mean thousands of years it worked you know so it has
proof of work that it's done a good job
relatively to the other options
but
now that we have a better one, that sort of isn't
even relevant anymore because
it should be used as

(01:26:51):
an example for what can happen and we have
an even better one so we know that things will happen better.
I think that's
right. I think there is also one missing from
the table.
Which one?
Censorship resistant.
Maybe I took a screenshot from your video.
I think you took a screenshot before the end of the slide.
And the last one is the censorship resistant,

(01:27:13):
which I've sort of lumped in my explanation
because there's only six on the screen.
I've sort of lumped into acceptability
because if you can stop someone accepting it,
then it's not acceptable.
If you stop someone sending it, it's not.
You sort of break the acceptable link as well.
I think when people describe the characteristics of perfect money,

(01:27:33):
you'd have lots of different lists,
five, six, seven, eight characteristics.
Because you could argue some aspects fall inside some of these things.
You know, a particular aspect could both be considered linked to portability

(01:27:54):
and acceptability, for example.
It's never, they're not quite explicit boundaries between the two.
But I think you get the sense.
so i hope that's i hope that's helpful for people amazing thank you so much for walking
through each one of those i know it's it takes a lot of explaining but this is so important i think
this is an excellent next step after people watch the video which sort of skims through these really

(01:28:21):
digging into each one a little bit more because this is what it all comes down to is what we
already established earlier money is important having a good source of money in the world is
extremely important and these are the characteristics that make up a good money so those two things are
the most important things you can talk about and i got a couple i think i got three screenshots from

(01:28:44):
your videos i was watching it this morning okay but we'll go to this one next this one is talking
about we talked about earlier how the importance of money affects everything in society
And we have here this picture for people listening on audio.
The quality of your money, if it deteriorates, it caused all these problems.

(01:29:05):
Cost of living crisis, forever wars, mental health crisis, social instability, declining birth rates, addiction crisis, political instability, and tons more.
As you mentioned, anyone can find something here that they care about.
Ideally, everyone should care about all of them because this is what makes a good society work well.
and all these things happen when you have a bad source of money could you maybe add a little bit

(01:29:31):
of elaboration i know this is exactly what your video does in super depth but what's your
elevator pitch for why fiat money is what causes all these negative outcomes and bitcoin fixes them
but i think it comes down to um it's the consequences of a lot of loss of
the consequences of having to trust.

(01:29:56):
If you have to trust anybody,
eventually that trust will be broken.
And if you have to work for something,
somebody else can print for free.

(01:30:17):
That's at the core of the core of this.
because if you think about what that means,
it means that you are devalued.
You as the person are devalued.
You are less valuable than somebody else.
They have privilege in a system over and above you,

(01:30:42):
which is wrong.
and so how can you expect good things to come for you in that system you can't
you can't you are you are fighting a structurally losing battle

(01:31:03):
and this these are the manifestations of what comes downstream of that but even those simple
statements are just so obviously true nobody should have the ability to print what you have
to work for i mean that's just theft theft theft of your life

(01:31:26):
yeah and and one of the things i would add on to that is just
any of the societal problems people care about are at least worse and if not
root cause by people just being under stress and unable to think clearly and have some bandwidth to

(01:31:52):
prioritize themselves and their families and people around them and in their communities and
just be a happy person in general.
You know, people are all stressed right now.
Everyone's stressed out.
No, no problems are going to be solved.
And everything is going to be made worse when people are stressed.
Yes.
Financially and mentally and physically, they don't have time to, you know, eat healthy

(01:32:17):
food or go to the gym.
They can't afford healthy food.
Everything gets more difficult.
And you talked about this in the video, how the people on the fiat side of the island all got obese and sick because their food is lowering in quality.
And as a result of that, the government comes and says, oh, we'll fix this problem by making a big food arm.
And we'll solve it by printing more money for more regulation.

(01:32:41):
And it just makes everything worse.
And I think this is one of the big themes I've tried to push throughout the show.
I had an episode with Matthew Leschak who wrote that book, Fiat Food, who really ties it in super
well. But I mean, talk about everyone should care about health and public health. And the fact that
you can walk around and you see so many sick people everywhere, and you can just feel the stress

(01:33:05):
exuding off of people, even if they're not physically looking bad. This is such an enormous
problem. And it all comes down to the money, really does. It does. I would, I'd probably frame
as it compromises all your decision-making on everything.

(01:33:27):
Everything downstream, you are making a poorer decision
because of the money printer.
And it's poorer decisions about your health,
physical or mental health,
poorer decisions about your family and your work,
your actions.
in part because you're stressed

(01:33:48):
because you're always on the losing side
you're on the losing side structurally
not because of anything you've done
that's definitely not going to be a positive thing for your decision making
definitely going to be a negative thing
yeah and speaking of the stressful state that people get into

(01:34:12):
And this worriedness people just have about everything.
People are scared about the future and they're not having kids because they're scared the future is going to suck.
A lot of that also comes down to this other chart I just pulled up here, which is how this big red button that you use, the beautiful analogy of just the money printer, is the cause for all of these different government institutions to come in.

(01:34:41):
who, as we explained, they are created in the illusion that they're going to help fix these problems,
but they really just make them all worse.
And it leads to the incentive of manufacturing more emergencies
so the government can create more and more of these institutions
and create more power for themselves, take more and more freedom away from people.

(01:35:03):
And you just see this vicious cycle of these more and more extreme outcomes,
which is the last box there is because when a government benefits from crisis because it gives
them more power they're going to manufacture more and more of them and you're just you're never going

(01:35:23):
to get out of this hole until you you have a form of money that can't be printed because the beginning
of that cycle is the big red button you know that's right and and but quite often it isn't
I think we're at the point where it's not necessarily just the government.
Because of the issues that the government has created through printing the money, they've exposed themselves to needing or have feeling a natural alignment with certain industries.

(01:35:54):
and then when you have the natural alignment
with certain industries and those industries spend a lot
of money on lobbying, then you tend to
get preferential treatment for the participants
in those industries.
They get regulated, which stifles competition.

(01:36:20):
They become more profitable, more central
to supporting the government.
And then they end up inside that dotted red box,
sort of proxy extensions of the government in some way.
And it becomes very clear whether they're really independent
or they're not, but the population feels like the government

(01:36:43):
protects them more than the population.
But this is because of humans.
It's how humans behave when there's a big red button.
Because the government, no, very, very few politicians want less power.

(01:37:04):
Some may.
Some may, but they, you know, often met with unfortunate accidents along the way, I suspect.
Yep.
Yeah.
Much more true in some countries than others.
And so the alignment of incentives within that big red dotted box is just to maximize the extraction from the money printer

(01:37:34):
That's it.
So anything which enables them to deliver on that incentive or actions that move them in that direction are considered fair game.
And the population is on the losing side of that trade.
They're on the losing.

(01:37:55):
They're on the receiving end of the impact of the big red button.
So the people on the winning side are incentivized to maximize their advantage.
The population outcome is maximal disadvantage.
That's it.

(01:38:16):
It's just structural.
And this is one of the things that your video goes into very well is that everyone on earth, no matter where they're at on a political spectrum, can understand there's a wealth disparity, a wealth inequality problem.
but most people have the wrong idea of who the real perpetrators of this problem are

(01:38:39):
because those with the money printer control the whole media and education and the the movies and
the the news you see on tv and the books because they have unlimited money so they know that in
order to keep the game going they need to keep people fooled and under this illusion
So it makes it really relatively easy for them to just continue feeding people garbage and saying, oh, it's the rich people's fault because they have more money than you and get people stuck in these battles below the true problem here, which is the very top of the money printing machine.

(01:39:17):
Would you agree with that?
How would you elaborate on that?
Absolutely.
I mean, they have two things.
they have access to the big red button.
And you could argue this as a consequence,
they have the monopoly on violence.
And so, you know, the combination of those two things
is very hard.

(01:39:38):
It's very hard to...
It's very hard for the population to remove themselves
from the influence of those two things
when you have a lifetime of propaganda.
The whole education system, everything you hear on
mainstream media is all pushing you in one direction from birth.

(01:40:02):
And it's all...
What I like to say...
Let me reframe that. I intentionally made the video to be as politically
neutral as possible. Because it's not
red versus blue.
it's not it's it's absolutely everybody against the central bank

(01:40:26):
which like to even try to think of a percentage of the population that is it's like 0.00001
what is it like yeah maybe a couple dozen to a couple hundred total people that are winning from
this system only and everyone else is suffering?
Well, I would sort of, I would just qualify it slightly in that it's the existence of

(01:40:52):
the central bank that precipitates all of this.
And the central bank exists because we don't use Bitcoin as our money.
And we don't use Bitcoin as your money because Bitcoin is the first time we've ever had the
option to separate money and state.

(01:41:14):
You just couldn't do it before. Even when you say, oh, we're on a gold standard, the state doesn't control the money.
The state has the big red button. They're just choosing not to
press it. It's very different from not having the big red button.
Okay. And so
the people who control the big red button are very, very,

(01:41:34):
very small percentage, probably in line with what you've just said.
the percentage of people who are benefiting at least economically because you could argue
society is not and therefore they are not but economically better benefiting from the bigger
is a much bigger percentage net benefiting but it's still very small who own lots of assets and

(01:41:59):
you know they're like the upper echelon and you have a good graph in the video about that how they
are benefiting for now but they're also being cut out by inflation so they're only relatively better
than everyone else who's much poorer there they are and in the video i have to sort of i present
it as four boxes four segments as opposed to a spectrum and everything in life is is you know

(01:42:23):
when it comes to economics is a spectrum and so you know it's an extremely extremely small
percentage of people actually control the central banks a much bigger percentage but still small those who are net benefiting Now those people who are net benefiting don necessarily know why
they're net benefiting. And so they may have been fortunate. They may realize they may have

(01:42:51):
done a good trade. They've borrowed lots of money to buy assets a long time ago, and they've gone
up and they think they're a genius, they don't necessarily connect it back to the money printer.
They're not necessarily politically connected. They just have done well out of the rules of the

(01:43:11):
game. That doesn't make them responsible for this. And so when I say it's not red versus blue,
it's everyone versus the central bank, it absolutely is. You have some people who are
winning in the system. The vast majority
are losing and some are losing
horribly.

(01:43:31):
But no one should be forced to play the game.
That's what it
comes down to. So trying to be
as politically neutral as possible here.
I think it's only probably
Christine Lagarde
and Jay Powell. If you'd watch this,
if they take on Bridget, the framing
of it.

(01:43:53):
And I think that's so important.
Because this is a pattern I'm seeing more and more people agree with, which is very promising news that people's brains are starting to expand outside of the very narrow red versus blue story they've been told.
More people are just saying, screw it.
I don't agree with either of these sides anymore.
They're just getting too extreme, too rigid in the policies they have to believe in order to be part of the tribe.

(01:44:19):
people are just becoming more independent minded. And they're realizing that these two sides are
really just a uniparty that support more debt, more money printing, more wars, more negative
outcomes, when people really do the digging past the propaganda they see on TV. And I feel so lucky,
so thankful that we have a real solution out there, which is Bitcoin to fixing the real root

(01:44:43):
problems that people care about. It's just about connecting the dots to getting their understanding
Bitcoin is the most important vote we have and the form of money that you have.
And maybe this is how we could start wrapping this up because tack on your video as well.
We're at an hour and 40 minutes right now.
And I think this is what I want.
Thank you for being with us.

(01:45:05):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
I think that some people will, when they see a super long number, they don't want to listen.
So we'll keep it relatively brief.
but what would be your message out there to the people who maybe heard to the people who
listen to your whole video listen to this extra elaboration and are starting to realize that

(01:45:26):
this could be a really important thing and that getting out of that political squabbling
left versus right is not the way we're going to create a better future and a better future is in
fact fixing the money how do you give people that next crumb of curiosity to keep learning more
well the first thing i would say is don't trust verify don't take take our word for any of this

(01:45:50):
just reflect on things and make your own mind up you know you can watch the video and agree
with everything and sort of you get there but if you hold any preconceptions about things you've
just put them aside and start again and just do a small amount of work.
The return on a small amount of work to get started with Bitcoin is absolutely enormous.

(01:46:16):
And that's not from a, you know, you buy something that goes up perspective.
Just the way it's like a personal upgrade.
It is a better way to describe it.
It is a personal upgrade.
Once you start thinking about Bitcoin, once you start trying to connect the dots as to why it's important, it's going to click.

(01:46:43):
And when it clicks, it changes everything.
Because then you question everything.
You can't have the penny drop with Bitcoin and not develop critical thinking, not improve your critical thinking capability.
And so an improved critical thinking capability and a greater level of feeling like you're back in control of your own life because you understand the rules of the game now.

(01:47:16):
And if you understand, then you don't have to play anymore.
And so the combination of those two things is incredibly empowering, incredibly empowering.
And you'll see it like filter out into other areas of your life.
And it's a great journey to go down.
And so if you want to learn more if you want to watch more videos then you can go to the website that was mentioned at the end of the video which is satsvsfiat

(01:47:47):
And you'll find half a dozen other videos there now and half a dozen bucks.
And there'll be something, it's like that multi-headed hydra.
There's an economics one, there's how the Bitcoin time chain works.
there's um there's one from alex gladstein about uh humanitarian stuff and

(01:48:09):
commerce and energy around the world there's a you know a michael saylor one for people who are
interested in business there's there's something there that you'll go and you'll find at least one
video regardless if you are but it will pique your interest and just watch that one and then
when you've watched that one, watch another one.

(01:48:31):
And it doesn't take a lot of effort, but it will start to sink in.
It will start to make more sense.
Yeah, just talk to people.
Listen to as many podcasts as possible.
When you're walking or you're commuting on the train
or you're driving in the car, just put a podcast on.
Don't expect to wake up tomorrow and be a maximalist.

(01:48:54):
It doesn't work like that.
it's a process
it's a process but once you start
I'm very clear in my mind where you're going to end up
if you do the work
and the thing is everyone's going to end up there
absolutely everybody
we're just really really early
and so even if you

(01:49:16):
don't feel motivated to do it
based on the content
maybe you're motivated to do it for the competitive advantage
amazing and i couldn't agree more with that how just switching i mean everyone out there right now

(01:49:37):
is consuming some sort of digital media whether it be just listening to music as they're walking
to work or watching youtube when they're on their lunch break or with dinner or whatever watching
Netflix at night. All you have to do to dramatically change your life, I would say it's a certainty
from the amount of people I've heard have done this, is just switch even just one of those with

(01:50:00):
some Bitcoin content. Switch the music to Bitcoin podcast or the lunch break video to going to pull
up a tab of your channel of Sats vs. Fiat and just start watching those videos one a day.
you're going to completely blow your mind to pieces on how simple it can be to drastically

(01:50:24):
improve your life and your future and i i'm just so excited there's just more and more content like
this coming out at an exponential rate it's just blowing up this is the ultimate white pill of the
future looking much better than as we mentioned earlier people are just scared of the future
right now which is sad they really shouldn't be because there's a lot of hope if we just
fix a few core components of society we can make a beautiful future it's going to be awesome

(01:50:49):
you're absolutely right and i would i would think that bitcoin is probably represent the
most hopeful segment of the population and that should tell you something
and also really smart people these aren't people just blindly hopeful like
when you go to a meetup these people are sharp you know well i think that's true but i think it's a

(01:51:15):
consequence of where we are in the site in the adoption cycle because it's it's not easy or it
hasn't been easy it's getting easier as we create more content we make it more accessible for people
but it's been you've had to really have an engineering or a finance background or
some structural hyper critical thinking capability to sort of

(01:51:42):
or look or look to be able to be in the right place the right time with the right message
and to be able to connect the dots but now it's getting easier and so please just put some put
some time in you won't you absolutely will not regret it amen couldn't agree more joe brian

(01:52:02):
I appreciate you so much for joining me today for this conversation and for letting me use your video in this podcast.
I just love having as much signal as I can in my little walled garden of content here.
So it's amazing that we can share that with more people.
And looking forward to just seeing more of your content because I love how you created it.
It's really going to resonate with a lot of people.

(01:52:24):
So keep doing your good work, man.
I'm excited to keep sharing it out there.
Oh, well, thank you, Ben.
And I would welcome everybody and anybody to share it, to watch it, share it, iterate it, create more materials.
It's something for the community.
And let's just try and bring as many people with us as we can.

(01:52:44):
All right.
Well, thanks very much for having me then.

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#131 Joe Bryan - What's The Problem?

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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;}#131 Joe Bryan - What's The Problem?