December 18, 2025 • 41 mins
Was Satoshi Nakamoto really Japanese? An in-depth look at why that might be the case.
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SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Hello, everyone.
This is Ryan from Tea Cafe.
This is episode number five.
I'm calling it episodes nowbecause uh, you know, I just
want to fit in with the crowd,the podcasting crowd.
So here we go.
Um the last one we talked about.
It was kind of a long one, kindof talking about like what
(00:24):
happens during uh bear markets,and um kind of gave me my
perspective of like having beenthrough several of them, like
what it's like, what it feels,what's going on in general.
A lot of stuff like people don'treally want to hear, but uh it's
important.
(00:45):
So anyway, uh it was very long,but there was uh part of it
where I started talking aboutJapan, and I think it was worth
revisiting again because this isuh a lot of things like people
don't really talk about in themedia, or even all the
influencers out there, theythey're not really um honed in
(01:11):
on some of these subjects.
So I'm uh Japanese American, bythe way.
I haven't lived in Japan since Iwas a kid, but I do speak the
language and I do keep up withthings here and there.
So thought maybe I could providea perspective that might be
interesting to people, right?
(01:31):
So without further ado, here wego.
And um, yeah, so there's aninteresting thing that's been
happening in the last coupleweeks, other than the price
crashing, as everyone knows.
Uh I've seen some people postabout how this is Japan's fault.
(01:52):
And I thought it was kind ofbizarre because it keeps kind of
came out of nowhere.
Like, what does Japan have to dowith crypto prices?
It if you look at the uhrankings, right, of the uh
crypto adoption rates around theworld, Japan tends to be rock
bottom, it's underneath likeeven some of the developing
(02:15):
countries because they really umkind of just are not interested
in the whole thing, at least fornow.
Um, which is kind of ironicbecause of the whole Satoshi
Satoshi Nakamoto thing, right?
And while we really don't knowwho Satoshi is, and I don't know
(02:41):
if we ever will, unless uh helike reveals himself like out of
the blue someday.
That's not impossible, but butfor now we don't really know who
this person is.
And uh but are they really,really Japanese, right?
And part of it is uh I wouldlike to try to make the case
(03:05):
that there is actually a goodreason to think so, and it
directly relates to what is whyit was created, why Bitcoin
itself was created, and what'shappening now.
So, like I said, they increasedtheir interest rate uh for
(03:26):
borrowing in the Bank of Japanto its 30-year high.
And by 30-year high, I mean 0.5%to 0.75%.
I guess it relative terms that'smight be a huge jump, but we're
not talking about like 10%, 20%.
(03:48):
And part of the uh the reasonwhy um they kept it so low was
the I under the idea that theywanted to spur economic growth,
right?
And America did a similar thingin the last couple of decades.
Uh interest rates are risingagain, but for if you remember,
(04:09):
for a long time it was basicallysitting at zero, right?
And uh so that zero interestrate loans fuels a lot of uh
economic growth, I guess.
I mean, that part is a littledebatable whether cheap loans
(04:34):
really create real value, butbut anyway, it gives people more
money to play around with, andthat has kind of contributed to
a lot of the things that hashappened in the US, the US
business market, for better orworse, because uh there are big
downsides to it too, which Iwill get into.
(04:56):
But uh anyway, like Bank ofJapan, they kept the low rates
really, really low, and uh thatlike the the Americans know that
too, so they've been borrowingmoney from Japan in order to
(05:17):
feel things like crypto.
A lot of people don't know aboutthis, but it has happened,
right?
When people are looking formoney, they're looking for low
interest rates, and Japan hasbeen basically the destination
for a lot of that.
It's not just there.
There's money for a long time,there's money sitting in the US
as well, right?
(05:37):
You could do something similar,but it is part of that whole
thing.
So when they announce thatthey're gonna be raising
interest rates finally, a lot ofpeople freaked out and basically
said, Oh my god, Japan istanking the US economy or
(05:59):
something, something like it'skind of exaggerated, right?
But but it is what it is, and umuh Americans are like addicted
to cheap loans at this point,and uh it really is uh um sort
of a statement of how things aretoday.
(06:21):
So their decision to raise therates uh is kind of a big deal
because it hasn't happened in 30years, and a lot of people are
thinking that it might be asignal that Japan is ready to
make a move, and this includespeople like Warren Buffett, who
has been uh hoarding cash, so tospeak.
(06:44):
He sold off a lot of his stockum portfolio to hoard cash
because he sees a bumpy rideahead, at least in Wall Street.
But the interesting thing isthat he's been diversifying some
of that into yen because he seessomething happening.
And so I want to kind of likedig deeper into that and see
(07:05):
where we can go with it.
The interesting thing aboutJapan's economy is that you
could say that both Japan andAmerica have been uh relying on
low interest loans, right, forthe last um uh since 2008, I
(07:30):
would say, right?
Um but the way they adopted itis very different.
And this is like why, like whena lot of people go to Japan, it
feels like familiar, but alsovery alien at the same time,
right?
It's like being on anotherplanet, right?
(07:52):
If you've been to like Tokyolately, and the cultural
differences are very stark.
And I would say that uh on abasic level, I do think the big
difference between Americans anduh Japanese approaches to money,
you could say kind of Asian ingeneral, but when there's money
(08:12):
coming in, the tendency is foruh Asian people to save rather
than spend.
And uh if you go to like USmedia and a lot of the things
that people are taught to do inbusiness environments, in the
US, it's about spending andgetting a return, right?
(08:35):
Taking a bet, doing startups,um, investing in crypto, or you
know, like, hey, let's let's uhgrow this thing, let's uh turn a
profit, let's let's make somemoney, right?
Make money, make more money withmoney.
Whereas in Japan, uh they tendto save their money and not buy
(08:58):
stuff they don't need, right?
And uh some people will saymaybe that's a wiser thing, but
uh you know, it wasn't alwaysthe case in in America as well.
There was a time where peopleencouraged Americans to save
money for various things, butthat's not the environment we've
(09:19):
been living in for the lastcouple of decades, and I do
think uh we're hitting like aninflection point where the
spending has been gotten toomuch.
So that uh segues nicely intothe next uh uh thing is that do
you remember 2008, right?
(09:41):
The uh financial crisis.
Um if you haven't watched thebig short, I would recommend
watching it again.
It's pretty entertaining, butalso very uh informative at the
same time.
And uh that thing, that wholething almost took down the
entire financial system inAmerica.
(10:03):
And um yeah, and I do think thereason why Satoshi actually
built Bitcoin, why he inventedthe whole thing, was a response
to that crisis.
And if you look on the timeline,um, the birth of Bitcoin and the
(10:24):
2008 financial crisis kind ofaligns very, very nicely.
We don't know the exact dates,but they were happening at the
same time in parallel, andthere's no way a smart guy like
Satoshi could have not knownwhat was going on, right?
Because it was a big deal and itaffects the Japanese economy as
(10:46):
well.
So I want to dig a little bitdeeper into that because I think
it's gonna matter more thanpeople think, and because it's
such a uh invisible topic rightnow, uh, I think it's gonna some
of the things might take peopleby surprise.
(11:07):
There might be someopportunities in there worth
exploring.
So this is part of the reasonwhy I'm kind of uh talking about
it right now.
So, okay, going into theidentity of Satoshi himself, um
there's really no proof, eitherway, if Satoshi was Japanese or
(11:28):
not.
The name, right, implies he'sJapanese.
Um, but there's no proof eitherway.
Was he there?
There's no records, right?
There's no um evidence.
So that's still up in the air.
Uh apparently there was a pointwhere from Satoshi's account he
(11:51):
claimed to be a 70 37-year-oldman living in Japan.
Uh birth date of April 5, 1975.
That's very specific, huh?
It's kind of interesting how theWestern media just kind of I
don't hear that too often.
I found that on Wikipedia, butyou don't see the people in
(12:13):
crypto talking about Satoshithat he has made this claim,
right?
And I do think there's some uhit's part of like Western
interest trying to claim it forthemselves like they usually do,
right?
But um, but either way, it'sstill inconclusive.
We don't know, even if he couldhave just been making that up.
(12:37):
Um and well we'll never knowunless we have evidence.
Uh the other evidence uh is alsocircumstantial.
If you look at his work andwriting styles, how he
interacted with people, uh thecritics of like the idea of he's
(13:02):
Japanese claim that the way heapproaches software and the way
he talks really shows that hehas Western sensibilities,
right?
But these days, honestly, it'snot that unusual.
Lots of people from Japan orAsia as a whole, they go to the
US or European or they go to theWest to study and they come back
(13:26):
and they end up speaking perfectEnglish.
And uh, I mean, look at me,right?
Like I'm Japanese American, butuh can you tell my writing is if
can you tell by my writing stylethat I am Japanese or not?
I don't I don't think it reallymatters.
Like it's just a skill that youpick up being in a certain
(13:49):
place, and anyone can reallylearn it.
So that's inconclusive as well.
But the reason to think that hemay be Japanese is not so much
the guy himself, but how thingsunfolded in crypto, especially
(14:11):
in the earlier days.
So one of the biggest uh thingsthat happened in the earlier
days of crypto was Mont Gox,right?
The first crypto exchange, so tospeak.
And uh I think the idea, theidea for the company started
(14:32):
somewhere else, like France orum it wasn't started in Japan,
but they eventually moved thereto establish themselves because
they thought it was the bestplace to do this sort of thing.
And you gotta keep in mind, likeback in 2014, 2014 or so, uh
crypto was such uh obscure weirdthing that nobody even really
(14:59):
understood.
Um that was kind of a big deal.
It wasn't easy trying to set upa company over this thing that
people had no idea what it evenwas, right?
So, an interesting thing aboutMonk Ox is that uh the history
of it, it was it kind of blew upin the mid-2010s, and then they
(15:23):
got into big trouble with withlike uh regulations and like
people were accusing them ofillegal activity, and there's
all kinds of drama surroundingit, and eventually it shut down.
Um interesting side note is thatuh Charles Hoskinson from
(15:49):
Cardano, uh, if you know aboutthat guy, uh he had a so he used
to be on the Ethereum Foundationin its earlier days, and he had
a disagreement with uh Vitalikand the crew, and I don't know
what happened exactly, but itended up with him leaving the
(16:10):
team and starting his own thing.
But you could tell he was reallymad about about it because
basically uh he got lucky insome ways and he made a lot of
money in Bitcoin in Japanesefunds or Japanese firms, and he
(16:31):
did an ICO of Cardano as we knowit today, and 90 plus percent of
the initial investors in Cardanowas Japanese.
So it kind of got diluted byother things at this point.
I don't know what the breakdownis, but uh interesting, right?
(16:53):
Like that that part of it.
So I like to think of Japan'scrypto industry as being sort of
off-cycle because they were kindof way ahead of their time.
(17:13):
They created the thing, assuminghe's Japanese, maybe not, but it
doesn't really matter.
They have they were the first toadopt it, as shown in Monk Ox.
Uh, they were first, they werethe first to regulate it.
By the time uh it was like2017-2018.
Uh I remember I took a trip toTokyo and Bitcoin was already
(17:36):
integrated in the equivalent oflike Best Buy or one of those
electronic stores.
Like it was already there.
And then uh they tested it outamong the public.
The public's response was notvery positive or or it was more
like, yeah, sure, but no oneused it.
(17:58):
Sure, you know, Bitcoin, whynot?
They weren't like totallyagainst it, it's just like why
not?
Oh, but oh, it costs it costslike ten dollars to make one
transaction.
Uh no thanks.
Yeah.
So uh so it kind of tried it outand no one used it, and then it
kind of faded away.
(18:19):
It's still there, and uh in thebackground, they st they are
still talking about crypto andNFTs, but it's just not a big
hype thing like it is here.
So yeah, so that's why theiradoption rate is one of the
lowest in the world right now,despite being ahead of the game.
(18:39):
And I think there's a lot youcould kind of read into that
because it might give us like anidea of what's to come.
Uh and what's like both good andbad, because I do think like the
sort of like non-adoption of theJapanese markets is also like
(19:03):
what's basically hap whatbasically happened here in the
last couple of years, right?
So they've already gone throughthat that trowel of
disillusionment, whatever wecall it, right?
The the the valley of uh doom orand uh I think it's worth maybe
(19:23):
like paying a little bit moreattention on that side because
they might be ready to make somemoves and they might actually
show like what crypto is movingtowards in the near future.
This is all just speculation,but but that's that's why I
think that and because all thesethings in the earlier days,
(19:44):
especially when I was lessunderstood, were happening in
Japan, there's a good chancethat Nakamoto is actually
Japanese.
I don't even mean ethnicallyJapanese, it could just be
someone living.
In Japan, not necessarilyJapanese Japanese, but they just
happen to be there.
(20:05):
Could be a white guy or a blackguy, you know.
Um, could be a woman, you know,you know, we don't know, right?
Could be anything, like, but theidea of that and that person
being in Japan is not that ununthinkable because a lot of the
early things that happened inthe industry did happen over
(20:26):
there.
We just don't hear about it hereif you're kind of inside the US
media, right?
Okay, so now going to themechanics or the um economic
reasons why Bitcoin exists.
(20:50):
So um given that Bitcoin was areaction to the 2008 fiasco, I
think it's good.
I think it's a good uh there's agood chance that Satoshi
probably did not likequantitative easing or a lot of
(21:13):
those um mechanics that thatgovernments and uh right the
Federal Reserves play to try tolike manipulate manipulate's not
the right word, but like adjustthe currencies, right?
And uh so one thing it one veryinteresting thing about crypto
(21:35):
compared to regular fiat money,right, is that you there is no
way to be in debt.
Like you have a wallet, right?
The wallet has so much coins init, but you cannot go negative,
right?
You cannot go negative like youcan here.
(21:57):
Because uh our economy is adebt-based economy, and there's
really nothing more radical thanthe idea of hey, no one can get
into debt.
What you have is what you have,and that's it, right?
So I don't know, maybe there aresome projects out there that
(22:17):
have negative balances, but Idon't I don't even know how that
would even work, right?
So uh yeah, so I mean, okay,well, um, so we have this thing
that is supposed to reset thefinancial system, and what
better way than to eliminate alldebt from the beginning, right?
(22:41):
That that idea is more radicalthan a lot of people get it
credit for.
And I do think uh it's a bigpart of why a lot of people got
excited about it, right?
There was this new world thatwas being built that had nothing
to do with the current system.
So over time that got watereddown, right?
(23:02):
And I don't think Bitcoin is thesame thing or even the same
culture it was in the beginning,but that's where that's where
you can see the vision of wherecrypto wanted to be, right?
So it goes even deeper than thatbecause um right now the the US
(23:29):
dollar is inflating at analarming rate.
Yeah.
Uh don't pay don't pay attentionto the CPI thing.
It is because CPI excludes a lotof um like major things in order
to get that low number.
That's another discussion, butuh yeah, don't I wouldn't trust
the numbers that are coming outof the uh reports these days
(23:51):
because it's very, very uhskewed.
But most people understand likeeverything's getting more
expensive.
You can it's not subtle, youjust go to the store, you just
look go online, you look, youlook at your rent, right?
Like it's just everything'sgetting more expensive.
And uh why all of a sudden,right?
(24:12):
Like, I mean, it wasn't reallyall of a sudden.
If you look at healthcare costs,housing, education, those things
have like double, tripled.
Like it's crazy, right?
Like the the rate, like tuition,especially.
If you look at the last 20years, you'll be shocked to see
(24:32):
how much people were paying intuition back then compared to
now.
And it's not just uh regularinflation, it's it's inflating
faster than the currency itself.
So, but it wasn't as bad, right?
Like it wasn't as bad before,and the way uh the Americans
(24:56):
were able to get away with ithas a lot to do with global
trade.
So global trade, uh, there'sthis idea that Americans using
their dollar are allowed to,because they own the currency,
they are allowed to, quote,allowed to export inflation.
(25:18):
So how that works is that if youincrease the money supply on the
American end, on the US end, andlet's use yen as an example,
when you increase money supply,it leads to higher import prices
for countries abroad, not justJapan, but everyone.
(25:39):
And uh it's because when youwhen you uh oh this is
complicated, but it's veryunintuitive.
That's the that's the problem.
So when when the US dollar ithas more of it relative to the
(26:08):
price of the currency that theother country has, you're
basically paying more onimports, if that makes sense.
So American goods become moreexpensive the uh uh the higher
the money supply is for the uhon on the dollar side.
(26:33):
So I'm not gonna mangle itanymore.
You can look it up if you wanna,but that that's basically the
idea.
And if you can imagine, uh mostcountries aren't really too
happy with that.
It's like slapping on a tax oneverything you import, and every
time the Americans print moremoney, it just gets more and
(26:55):
more pricey.
Now, they can't really doanything about it because the
dollar is dominant in globaltrade.
And so that's that's what putsthem in a privileged position,
so to speak, right?
They have the the advantagethere.
So what's been happening thoughin recent years is that due to
(27:18):
various reasons, it's a lot ofthings economics, the uh
government shutting down everyyear, as if on cue uh thing, uh
political instability andeverything, right?
Everything, the everythingproblem.
Um, they've been kind of uhpulling out.
(27:41):
So Japan in particular has beenbuying less American goods uh
overall, and uh just becauseit's like, well, this is I was
fine before, but now it'sgetting pretty expensive, and so
they're just like not buying asmuch.
And this is compounded by theproblem that uh the the US has a
(28:05):
manufacturing problem where wedon't really make stuff anymore.
We become a service-basedindustry, and uh we don't really
export that much stuff anymore,and a lot of people argue that
American goods are kind ofinferior right now compared to
other what other countries aredoing, especially in like uh
(28:28):
electric vehicles and I don'tknow, it's everything because we
moved away from a manufacturingcountry, so there's less stuff
for us to trade in general, andthat makes it less competitive,
and it's just like uh other partis uh uh the Japanese banks have
(28:54):
been absorbing American debt fora long time because we love our
spending here and we want itnow.
So, hey, uh hey, let us borrowfive bucks and we'll we'll buy
that crypto thing and cryptopoop coin, and don't worry, I'll
turn it back, you know.
And uh I'm kind of getting toreason why this gotten out of
(29:16):
control, right?
Like people were just spendingmoney on frivolous things all
over here, and it's not it's notsubtle, you know.
It's it's really like you justlook around, it's happening all
the time, even now.
So, but again, uh Americans willshield it, Americans were
(29:38):
shielded from the after-effectsfrom a lot of those things
because for a long time we had adominance on a global trade, and
uh we did a lot of thatinflation was being absorbed by
countries abroad.
Now, now that they pull it out,uh we're gonna start feeling it
(30:00):
back at home, and yeah, and uhwhile we're at it, just why
don't we just throw some tariffson top of that and make it just
accelerate the whole thing,right?
So, yeah, so uh that the dollaris not in a very good position
right now, and anyone who hasdone any research would know
that.
But for the most part,politicians and most people are
(30:22):
just kind of pretending it's notreally happening because it's
kind of uncomfortable to thinkabout.
Because what will probablyhappen in the next decade or two
is that the US dollar willgradually lose its dominance,
it's probably not gonna ever goaway completely, but it's gonna
be part of a bigger system wherethe yuan, Chinese yuan, maybe
(30:47):
the yen, even the won, rightfrom Korea, Euro, uh BRICS and
SWIFT.
There's all these other optionsout there that people are
seriously considering right nowjust because they're worried of
um where the dollar will be inthe near future.
(31:10):
They already downgraded the USuh economy from like triple A
plus to double A something, andthey did this like a couple
years ago.
It's not news, but they alreadydowngraded the outlook on um the
US currencies right now, and noware finally starting to see it.
(31:34):
So this puts uh I'm gonna tie itback to crypto because this is
what the channel is about, butinterestingly enough, Japan has
the lowest crypto adoption ratein the developed worlds.
And I I said this earlier, butif you look at their rankings,
(31:55):
they're pretty much rock bottom,even though they were the first
to adopt.
They already went through kindof the oh, excuse me.
Uh they already went through thethe hype cycle, right?
And I do think they're one,they're a little bit ahead of
what everyone else has done.
They already went up, they gothyped, and then it went down,
(32:19):
and then they just kind of gotbored of it, and has been
sitting kind of quietly uh atthe bottom for a very, very long
time.
But as they say, uh um well, notas they say, but what goes down
(32:40):
must come up.
Not always the some some thingswill go down and never come back
up ever again.
But uh, but they they haven'tstopped doing the crypto stuff,
it's just quiet.
And the way uh Japan and Asiaapproaches tech is actually very
(33:00):
different from how it's done inthe West, at least from what I'm
used to, uh working aroundSilicon Valley, is like uh their
tech applications tend to bevery practical rather than big,
if that makes sense.
Um like being a programmer inJapan is like almost like a
(33:27):
working like an office job, um,or even a blue-collar job.
It's just seen like, okay,you're a programmer, you make a
decent living doing that, cool.
It's not seen as a uh somethingto put on a pedestal or debonize
like it is here, right?
(33:48):
The people the way people talkabout software here is very
emotional.
Over there, it's just like a joband no big deal, right?
And uh and it's very gearedtowards practicality because if
you look at Japanese websites,the UI is like freaking
terrible, you know.
It's it's car, you know, it justlooks like it looks really bad.
(34:10):
Um and not not to say, you know,I'm not trying to insult anyone.
It's just like they just don'treally care about the aesthetics
of how a website looks.
Yeah, for the most part, thereare exceptions, but like we do
here.
So you go in there, it's justlike it's basically everything
(34:30):
looks like Craig's Craigslist,right?
Whereas here we try to make thewebsite look so nice, use those
rounded corners, border radius.
Oh man, I hate, I hate, I hatehow everything is turning into a
circle, you know.
I just just give me my my squarebuttons back, please.
(34:54):
I don't yeah, I I don't thinkanyone, you should not be
rounding the corners more thanjust a tiny bit, uh if at all.
So unnecessary.
Oh, any anyway, uh unrelatedrant.
Uh, because I do design as well.
But but anyway, um uh maybe aclear example is actually maybe
(35:15):
we can look at China becausethey have similar sensibilities
as well, right?
The way China treats AI isthey're geared towards like very
specific applications and usecases, and it's usually coupled
with the idea of like thereneeding to be human, uh you
(35:39):
know, you need humans monitoringthis stuff, right?
You put in a prompt and it spitson a bunch of mistakes and
garbage, you need someoneproofreading that, or it's gonna
be a disaster, right?
Whereas in the US, we have thisidea that we're gonna create
artificial general intelligenceAGI within the next couple
years, and that's why you needto give uh OpenAI like one
(36:03):
trillion dollars, or we're gonnabe left behind.
But that whole scenario is justmade up.
There is no no one's no one inAsia cares about building AGI
because they know it's not gonnawork, and then focused more on
like I don't know, I sawsomething like landmine
(36:26):
detection, right?
From a picture or video.
Making see those little pixels.
Uh, I've been actually using umfor this podcast itself, like
removing, I say you know a lot,you know, hey, you know, you
know, I'm I'm conscious about itnow, so I'm not doing it as
much, but um I had a recordingthat had just way too many you
(36:50):
knows, and I used uh AI to likeum scrub it up, and it wasn't
perfect, but it was like notbad, you know.
But that's a very, very nicheuse case, and AI can actually be
tuned to do that kind of stuff,you know.
So I said you I said it again,you know.
So so anyway, uh they they dothat, and um that's kind of
(37:18):
their approach to tech ingeneral in the eastern
countries.
In the West, we're hoping thatAGI gets created and it'll solve
all our problems, but I do thinkthat's gonna lead into a
disaster, but it's another uhtopic altogether.
(37:41):
So uh yeah, so the reason whykind of turning it back to
crypto, and I do think cryptoreally was an attempt to kind of
get away from all that stuffthat's mixed into the dollar and
(38:02):
uh debt and quantitative easing.
And Satoshi created this thingthat had nothing to do with
that, and he wanted to make apeer-to-peer payments network
where you didn't have to worryabout debt or all this like
complicated like tradeagreements and inflation
(38:23):
exportation, and um it was likea chance to sort of hit the
reset button and start anew,right?
And a lot of it has to do withthe problems that Japan was
facing at the time.
And if you think about Bitcoinin that context, it's kind of
(38:45):
makes sense why it was created.
And again, this is allspeculation, it's all
circumstantial, but the themotive for this uh invention was
there, now as far as we know.
So, yeah, so like I saidearlier, Warren Buffett has been
(39:08):
moving his cash into yen.
Right now, the yen is probablystill above 150 in the heyday of
uh when uh Japan waseconomically the strongest, it
will it went as low, even below100.
And the the fact that the Bankof Japan is making these moves
(39:30):
now, a lot of people are kind oflooking at them like, huh,
what's going on?
Like, what and I think that thathas uh triggered some interest
in some people, including peoplelike Warren Buffett.
And not not just him, but soanyway, um that's basically it.
(39:52):
And hopefully found it kind ofinteresting.
Well, they're gonna see whathappens to the crypto market
coming next, because If Japanhas been saving money rather
than spending, they could be ina very good position right now
(40:12):
to buy up all the cheap coinsthat are getting shaken out at
bargain prices.
And wouldn't it be crazy ifSatoshi had this planned all
along?
You know, that's something.
He goes into like conspiracymindset, but I'm like, wouldn't
(40:35):
it be crazy if he knew all ofthis was gonna happen?
He's like so such a huge geniusthat he he read The Room of the
World and figured out that okay,in about uh 15 years we can uh
make Japan the dominantfinancial force in the world,
(40:58):
yet again, Empire, the risingsun, you know.
I don't know.
Uh that's the kind of uh stuffpeople are like saying right
now.
Not a lot, but a few of our, youknow, exaggerating what's gonna
(41:18):
happen.
But either way, it's gonna be aninteresting time.
We you know that.
So if your wallet is hurting,mine is hurting a lot too.
I know I'm not I don't likethis, but I do think do see
things changing, which is goodbecause that's what the industry
needs right now.
(41:38):
We need something to change, andthen it's coming.
So hope people are ready.
All right, so take care and seeyou in the next one.
Hello, everyone.
This is Ryan from Tea Cafe.
This is episode number five.
I'm calling it episodes nowbecause uh, you know, I just
want to fit in with the crowd,the podcasting crowd.
So here we go.
Um the last one we talked about.
It was kind of a long one, kindof talking about like what
(00:24):
happens during uh bear markets,and um kind of gave me my
perspective of like having beenthrough several of them, like
what it's like, what it feels,what's going on in general.
A lot of stuff like people don'treally want to hear, but uh it's
important.
(00:45):
So anyway, uh it was very long,but there was uh part of it
where I started talking aboutJapan, and I think it was worth
revisiting again because this isuh a lot of things like people
don't really talk about in themedia, or even all the
influencers out there, theythey're not really um honed in
(01:11):
on some of these subjects.
So I'm uh Japanese American, bythe way.
I haven't lived in Japan since Iwas a kid, but I do speak the
language and I do keep up withthings here and there.
So thought maybe I could providea perspective that might be
interesting to people, right?
(01:31):
So without further ado, here wego.
And um, yeah, so there's aninteresting thing that's been
happening in the last coupleweeks, other than the price
crashing, as everyone knows.
Uh I've seen some people postabout how this is Japan's fault.
(01:52):
And I thought it was kind ofbizarre because it keeps kind of
came out of nowhere.
Like, what does Japan have to dowith crypto prices?
It if you look at the uhrankings, right, of the uh
crypto adoption rates around theworld, Japan tends to be rock
bottom, it's underneath likeeven some of the developing
(02:15):
countries because they really umkind of just are not interested
in the whole thing, at least fornow.
Um, which is kind of ironicbecause of the whole Satoshi
Satoshi Nakamoto thing, right?
And while we really don't knowwho Satoshi is, and I don't know
(02:41):
if we ever will, unless uh helike reveals himself like out of
the blue someday.
That's not impossible, but butfor now we don't really know who
this person is.
And uh but are they really,really Japanese, right?
And part of it is uh I wouldlike to try to make the case
(03:05):
that there is actually a goodreason to think so, and it
directly relates to what is whyit was created, why Bitcoin
itself was created, and what'shappening now.
So, like I said, they increasedtheir interest rate uh for
(03:26):
borrowing in the Bank of Japanto its 30-year high.
And by 30-year high, I mean 0.5%to 0.75%.
I guess it relative terms that'smight be a huge jump, but we're
not talking about like 10%, 20%.
(03:48):
And part of the uh the reasonwhy um they kept it so low was
the I under the idea that theywanted to spur economic growth,
right?
And America did a similar thingin the last couple of decades.
Uh interest rates are risingagain, but for if you remember,
(04:09):
for a long time it was basicallysitting at zero, right?
And uh so that zero interestrate loans fuels a lot of uh
economic growth, I guess.
I mean, that part is a littledebatable whether cheap loans
(04:34):
really create real value, butbut anyway, it gives people more
money to play around with, andthat has kind of contributed to
a lot of the things that hashappened in the US, the US
business market, for better orworse, because uh there are big
downsides to it too, which Iwill get into.
(04:56):
But uh anyway, like Bank ofJapan, they kept the low rates
really, really low, and uh thatlike the the Americans know that
too, so they've been borrowingmoney from Japan in order to
(05:17):
feel things like crypto.
A lot of people don't know aboutthis, but it has happened,
right?
When people are looking formoney, they're looking for low
interest rates, and Japan hasbeen basically the destination
for a lot of that.
It's not just there.
There's money for a long time,there's money sitting in the US
as well, right?
(05:37):
You could do something similar,but it is part of that whole
thing.
So when they announce thatthey're gonna be raising
interest rates finally, a lot ofpeople freaked out and basically
said, Oh my god, Japan istanking the US economy or
(05:59):
something, something like it'skind of exaggerated, right?
But but it is what it is, and umuh Americans are like addicted
to cheap loans at this point,and uh it really is uh um sort
of a statement of how things aretoday.
(06:21):
So their decision to raise therates uh is kind of a big deal
because it hasn't happened in 30years, and a lot of people are
thinking that it might be asignal that Japan is ready to
make a move, and this includespeople like Warren Buffett, who
has been uh hoarding cash, so tospeak.
(06:44):
He sold off a lot of his stockum portfolio to hoard cash
because he sees a bumpy rideahead, at least in Wall Street.
But the interesting thing isthat he's been diversifying some
of that into yen because he seessomething happening.
And so I want to kind of likedig deeper into that and see
(07:05):
where we can go with it.
The interesting thing aboutJapan's economy is that you
could say that both Japan andAmerica have been uh relying on
low interest loans, right, forthe last um uh since 2008, I
(07:30):
would say, right?
Um but the way they adopted itis very different.
And this is like why, like whena lot of people go to Japan, it
feels like familiar, but alsovery alien at the same time,
right?
It's like being on anotherplanet, right?
(07:52):
If you've been to like Tokyolately, and the cultural
differences are very stark.
And I would say that uh on abasic level, I do think the big
difference between Americans anduh Japanese approaches to money,
you could say kind of Asian ingeneral, but when there's money
(08:12):
coming in, the tendency is foruh Asian people to save rather
than spend.
And uh if you go to like USmedia and a lot of the things
that people are taught to do inbusiness environments, in the
US, it's about spending andgetting a return, right?
(08:35):
Taking a bet, doing startups,um, investing in crypto, or you
know, like, hey, let's let's uhgrow this thing, let's uh turn a
profit, let's let's make somemoney, right?
Make money, make more money withmoney.
Whereas in Japan, uh they tendto save their money and not buy
(08:58):
stuff they don't need, right?
And uh some people will saymaybe that's a wiser thing, but
uh you know, it wasn't alwaysthe case in in America as well.
There was a time where peopleencouraged Americans to save
money for various things, butthat's not the environment we've
(09:19):
been living in for the lastcouple of decades, and I do
think uh we're hitting like aninflection point where the
spending has been gotten toomuch.
So that uh segues nicely intothe next uh uh thing is that do
you remember 2008, right?
(09:41):
The uh financial crisis.
Um if you haven't watched thebig short, I would recommend
watching it again.
It's pretty entertaining, butalso very uh informative at the
same time.
And uh that thing, that wholething almost took down the
entire financial system inAmerica.
(10:03):
And um yeah, and I do think thereason why Satoshi actually
built Bitcoin, why he inventedthe whole thing, was a response
to that crisis.
And if you look on the timeline,um, the birth of Bitcoin and the
(10:24):
2008 financial crisis kind ofaligns very, very nicely.
We don't know the exact dates,but they were happening at the
same time in parallel, andthere's no way a smart guy like
Satoshi could have not knownwhat was going on, right?
Because it was a big deal and itaffects the Japanese economy as
(10:46):
well.
So I want to dig a little bitdeeper into that because I think
it's gonna matter more thanpeople think, and because it's
such a uh invisible topic rightnow, uh, I think it's gonna some
of the things might take peopleby surprise.
(11:07):
There might be someopportunities in there worth
exploring.
So this is part of the reasonwhy I'm kind of uh talking about
it right now.
So, okay, going into theidentity of Satoshi himself, um
there's really no proof, eitherway, if Satoshi was Japanese or
(11:28):
not.
The name, right, implies he'sJapanese.
Um, but there's no proof eitherway.
Was he there?
There's no records, right?
There's no um evidence.
So that's still up in the air.
Uh apparently there was a pointwhere from Satoshi's account he
(11:51):
claimed to be a 70 37-year-oldman living in Japan.
Uh birth date of April 5, 1975.
That's very specific, huh?
It's kind of interesting how theWestern media just kind of I
don't hear that too often.
I found that on Wikipedia, butyou don't see the people in
(12:13):
crypto talking about Satoshithat he has made this claim,
right?
And I do think there's some uhit's part of like Western
interest trying to claim it forthemselves like they usually do,
right?
But um, but either way, it'sstill inconclusive.
We don't know, even if he couldhave just been making that up.
(12:37):
Um and well we'll never knowunless we have evidence.
Uh the other evidence uh is alsocircumstantial.
If you look at his work andwriting styles, how he
interacted with people, uh thecritics of like the idea of he's
(13:02):
Japanese claim that the way heapproaches software and the way
he talks really shows that hehas Western sensibilities,
right?
But these days, honestly, it'snot that unusual.
Lots of people from Japan orAsia as a whole, they go to the
US or European or they go to theWest to study and they come back
(13:26):
and they end up speaking perfectEnglish.
And uh, I mean, look at me,right?
Like I'm Japanese American, butuh can you tell my writing is if
can you tell by my writing stylethat I am Japanese or not?
I don't I don't think it reallymatters.
Like it's just a skill that youpick up being in a certain
(13:49):
place, and anyone can reallylearn it.
So that's inconclusive as well.
But the reason to think that hemay be Japanese is not so much
the guy himself, but how thingsunfolded in crypto, especially
(14:11):
in the earlier days.
So one of the biggest uh thingsthat happened in the earlier
days of crypto was Mont Gox,right?
The first crypto exchange, so tospeak.
And uh I think the idea, theidea for the company started
(14:32):
somewhere else, like France orum it wasn't started in Japan,
but they eventually moved thereto establish themselves because
they thought it was the bestplace to do this sort of thing.
And you gotta keep in mind, likeback in 2014, 2014 or so, uh
crypto was such uh obscure weirdthing that nobody even really
(14:59):
understood.
Um that was kind of a big deal.
It wasn't easy trying to set upa company over this thing that
people had no idea what it evenwas, right?
So, an interesting thing aboutMonk Ox is that uh the history
of it, it was it kind of blew upin the mid-2010s, and then they
(15:23):
got into big trouble with withlike uh regulations and like
people were accusing them ofillegal activity, and there's
all kinds of drama surroundingit, and eventually it shut down.
Um interesting side note is thatuh Charles Hoskinson from
(15:49):
Cardano, uh, if you know aboutthat guy, uh he had a so he used
to be on the Ethereum Foundationin its earlier days, and he had
a disagreement with uh Vitalikand the crew, and I don't know
what happened exactly, but itended up with him leaving the
(16:10):
team and starting his own thing.
But you could tell he was reallymad about about it because
basically uh he got lucky insome ways and he made a lot of
money in Bitcoin in Japanesefunds or Japanese firms, and he
(16:31):
did an ICO of Cardano as we knowit today, and 90 plus percent of
the initial investors in Cardanowas Japanese.
So it kind of got diluted byother things at this point.
I don't know what the breakdownis, but uh interesting, right?
(16:53):
Like that that part of it.
So I like to think of Japan'scrypto industry as being sort of
off-cycle because they were kindof way ahead of their time.
(17:13):
They created the thing, assuminghe's Japanese, maybe not, but it
doesn't really matter.
They have they were the first toadopt it, as shown in Monk Ox.
Uh, they were first, they werethe first to regulate it.
By the time uh it was like2017-2018.
Uh I remember I took a trip toTokyo and Bitcoin was already
(17:36):
integrated in the equivalent oflike Best Buy or one of those
electronic stores.
Like it was already there.
And then uh they tested it outamong the public.
The public's response was notvery positive or or it was more
like, yeah, sure, but no oneused it.
(17:58):
Sure, you know, Bitcoin, whynot?
They weren't like totallyagainst it, it's just like why
not?
Oh, but oh, it costs it costslike ten dollars to make one
transaction.
Uh no thanks.
Yeah.
So uh so it kind of tried it outand no one used it, and then it
kind of faded away.
(18:19):
It's still there, and uh in thebackground, they st they are
still talking about crypto andNFTs, but it's just not a big
hype thing like it is here.
So yeah, so that's why theiradoption rate is one of the
lowest in the world right now,despite being ahead of the game.
(18:39):
And I think there's a lot youcould kind of read into that
because it might give us like anidea of what's to come.
Uh and what's like both good andbad, because I do think like the
sort of like non-adoption of theJapanese markets is also like
(19:03):
what's basically hap whatbasically happened here in the
last couple of years, right?
So they've already gone throughthat that trowel of
disillusionment, whatever wecall it, right?
The the the valley of uh doom orand uh I think it's worth maybe
(19:23):
like paying a little bit moreattention on that side because
they might be ready to make somemoves and they might actually
show like what crypto is movingtowards in the near future.
This is all just speculation,but but that's that's why I
think that and because all thesethings in the earlier days,
(19:44):
especially when I was lessunderstood, were happening in
Japan, there's a good chancethat Nakamoto is actually
Japanese.
I don't even mean ethnicallyJapanese, it could just be
someone living.
In Japan, not necessarilyJapanese Japanese, but they just
happen to be there.
(20:05):
Could be a white guy or a blackguy, you know.
Um, could be a woman, you know,you know, we don't know, right?
Could be anything, like, but theidea of that and that person
being in Japan is not that ununthinkable because a lot of the
early things that happened inthe industry did happen over
(20:26):
there.
We just don't hear about it hereif you're kind of inside the US
media, right?
Okay, so now going to themechanics or the um economic
reasons why Bitcoin exists.
(20:50):
So um given that Bitcoin was areaction to the 2008 fiasco, I
think it's good.
I think it's a good uh there's agood chance that Satoshi
probably did not likequantitative easing or a lot of
(21:13):
those um mechanics that thatgovernments and uh right the
Federal Reserves play to try tolike manipulate manipulate's not
the right word, but like adjustthe currencies, right?
And uh so one thing it one veryinteresting thing about crypto
(21:35):
compared to regular fiat money,right, is that you there is no
way to be in debt.
Like you have a wallet, right?
The wallet has so much coins init, but you cannot go negative,
right?
You cannot go negative like youcan here.
(21:57):
Because uh our economy is adebt-based economy, and there's
really nothing more radical thanthe idea of hey, no one can get
into debt.
What you have is what you have,and that's it, right?
So I don't know, maybe there aresome projects out there that
(22:17):
have negative balances, but Idon't I don't even know how that
would even work, right?
So uh yeah, so I mean, okay,well, um, so we have this thing
that is supposed to reset thefinancial system, and what
better way than to eliminate alldebt from the beginning, right?
(22:41):
That that idea is more radicalthan a lot of people get it
credit for.
And I do think uh it's a bigpart of why a lot of people got
excited about it, right?
There was this new world thatwas being built that had nothing
to do with the current system.
So over time that got watereddown, right?
(23:02):
And I don't think Bitcoin is thesame thing or even the same
culture it was in the beginning,but that's where that's where
you can see the vision of wherecrypto wanted to be, right?
So it goes even deeper than thatbecause um right now the the US
(23:29):
dollar is inflating at analarming rate.
Yeah.
Uh don't pay don't pay attentionto the CPI thing.
It is because CPI excludes a lotof um like major things in order
to get that low number.
That's another discussion, butuh yeah, don't I wouldn't trust
the numbers that are coming outof the uh reports these days
(23:51):
because it's very, very uhskewed.
But most people understand likeeverything's getting more
expensive.
You can it's not subtle, youjust go to the store, you just
look go online, you look, youlook at your rent, right?
Like it's just everything'sgetting more expensive.
And uh why all of a sudden,right?
(24:12):
Like, I mean, it wasn't reallyall of a sudden.
If you look at healthcare costs,housing, education, those things
have like double, tripled.
Like it's crazy, right?
Like the the rate, like tuition,especially.
If you look at the last 20years, you'll be shocked to see
(24:32):
how much people were paying intuition back then compared to
now.
And it's not just uh regularinflation, it's it's inflating
faster than the currency itself.
So, but it wasn't as bad, right?
Like it wasn't as bad before,and the way uh the Americans
(24:56):
were able to get away with ithas a lot to do with global
trade.
So global trade, uh, there'sthis idea that Americans using
their dollar are allowed to,because they own the currency,
they are allowed to, quote,allowed to export inflation.
(25:18):
So how that works is that if youincrease the money supply on the
American end, on the US end, andlet's use yen as an example,
when you increase money supply,it leads to higher import prices
for countries abroad, not justJapan, but everyone.
(25:39):
And uh it's because when youwhen you uh oh this is
complicated, but it's veryunintuitive.
That's the that's the problem.
So when when the US dollar ithas more of it relative to the
(26:08):
price of the currency that theother country has, you're
basically paying more onimports, if that makes sense.
So American goods become moreexpensive the uh uh the higher
the money supply is for the uhon on the dollar side.
(26:33):
So I'm not gonna mangle itanymore.
You can look it up if you wanna,but that that's basically the
idea.
And if you can imagine, uh mostcountries aren't really too
happy with that.
It's like slapping on a tax oneverything you import, and every
time the Americans print moremoney, it just gets more and
(26:55):
more pricey.
Now, they can't really doanything about it because the
dollar is dominant in globaltrade.
And so that's that's what putsthem in a privileged position,
so to speak, right?
They have the the advantagethere.
So what's been happening thoughin recent years is that due to
(27:18):
various reasons, it's a lot ofthings economics, the uh
government shutting down everyyear, as if on cue uh thing, uh
political instability andeverything, right?
Everything, the everythingproblem.
Um, they've been kind of uhpulling out.
(27:41):
So Japan in particular has beenbuying less American goods uh
overall, and uh just becauseit's like, well, this is I was
fine before, but now it'sgetting pretty expensive, and so
they're just like not buying asmuch.
And this is compounded by theproblem that uh the the US has a
(28:05):
manufacturing problem where wedon't really make stuff anymore.
We become a service-basedindustry, and uh we don't really
export that much stuff anymore,and a lot of people argue that
American goods are kind ofinferior right now compared to
other what other countries aredoing, especially in like uh
(28:28):
electric vehicles and I don'tknow, it's everything because we
moved away from a manufacturingcountry, so there's less stuff
for us to trade in general, andthat makes it less competitive,
and it's just like uh other partis uh uh the Japanese banks have
(28:54):
been absorbing American debt fora long time because we love our
spending here and we want itnow.
So, hey, uh hey, let us borrowfive bucks and we'll we'll buy
that crypto thing and cryptopoop coin, and don't worry, I'll
turn it back, you know.
And uh I'm kind of getting toreason why this gotten out of
(29:16):
control, right?
Like people were just spendingmoney on frivolous things all
over here, and it's not it's notsubtle, you know.
It's it's really like you justlook around, it's happening all
the time, even now.
So, but again, uh Americans willshield it, Americans were
(29:38):
shielded from the after-effectsfrom a lot of those things
because for a long time we had adominance on a global trade, and
uh we did a lot of thatinflation was being absorbed by
countries abroad.
Now, now that they pull it out,uh we're gonna start feeling it
(30:00):
back at home, and yeah, and uhwhile we're at it, just why
don't we just throw some tariffson top of that and make it just
accelerate the whole thing,right?
So, yeah, so uh that the dollaris not in a very good position
right now, and anyone who hasdone any research would know
that.
But for the most part,politicians and most people are
(30:22):
just kind of pretending it's notreally happening because it's
kind of uncomfortable to thinkabout.
Because what will probablyhappen in the next decade or two
is that the US dollar willgradually lose its dominance,
it's probably not gonna ever goaway completely, but it's gonna
be part of a bigger system wherethe yuan, Chinese yuan, maybe
(30:47):
the yen, even the won, rightfrom Korea, Euro, uh BRICS and
SWIFT.
There's all these other optionsout there that people are
seriously considering right nowjust because they're worried of
um where the dollar will be inthe near future.
(31:10):
They already downgraded the USuh economy from like triple A
plus to double A something, andthey did this like a couple
years ago.
It's not news, but they alreadydowngraded the outlook on um the
US currencies right now, and noware finally starting to see it.
(31:34):
So this puts uh I'm gonna tie itback to crypto because this is
what the channel is about, butinterestingly enough, Japan has
the lowest crypto adoption ratein the developed worlds.
And I I said this earlier, butif you look at their rankings,
(31:55):
they're pretty much rock bottom,even though they were the first
to adopt.
They already went through kindof the oh, excuse me.
Uh they already went through thethe hype cycle, right?
And I do think they're one,they're a little bit ahead of
what everyone else has done.
They already went up, they gothyped, and then it went down,
(32:19):
and then they just kind of gotbored of it, and has been
sitting kind of quietly uh atthe bottom for a very, very long
time.
But as they say, uh um well, notas they say, but what goes down
(32:40):
must come up.
Not always the some some thingswill go down and never come back
up ever again.
But uh, but they they haven'tstopped doing the crypto stuff,
it's just quiet.
And the way uh Japan and Asiaapproaches tech is actually very
(33:00):
different from how it's done inthe West, at least from what I'm
used to, uh working aroundSilicon Valley, is like uh their
tech applications tend to bevery practical rather than big,
if that makes sense.
Um like being a programmer inJapan is like almost like a
(33:27):
working like an office job, um,or even a blue-collar job.
It's just seen like, okay,you're a programmer, you make a
decent living doing that, cool.
It's not seen as a uh somethingto put on a pedestal or debonize
like it is here, right?
(33:48):
The people the way people talkabout software here is very
emotional.
Over there, it's just like a joband no big deal, right?
And uh and it's very gearedtowards practicality because if
you look at Japanese websites,the UI is like freaking
terrible, you know.
It's it's car, you know, it justlooks like it looks really bad.
(34:10):
Um and not not to say, you know,I'm not trying to insult anyone.
It's just like they just don'treally care about the aesthetics
of how a website looks.
Yeah, for the most part, thereare exceptions, but like we do
here.
So you go in there, it's justlike it's basically everything
(34:30):
looks like Craig's Craigslist,right?
Whereas here we try to make thewebsite look so nice, use those
rounded corners, border radius.
Oh man, I hate, I hate, I hatehow everything is turning into a
circle, you know.
I just just give me my my squarebuttons back, please.
(34:54):
I don't yeah, I I don't thinkanyone, you should not be
rounding the corners more thanjust a tiny bit, uh if at all.
So unnecessary.
Oh, any anyway, uh unrelatedrant.
Uh, because I do design as well.
But but anyway, um uh maybe aclear example is actually maybe
(35:15):
we can look at China becausethey have similar sensibilities
as well, right?
The way China treats AI isthey're geared towards like very
specific applications and usecases, and it's usually coupled
with the idea of like thereneeding to be human, uh you
(35:39):
know, you need humans monitoringthis stuff, right?
You put in a prompt and it spitson a bunch of mistakes and
garbage, you need someoneproofreading that, or it's gonna
be a disaster, right?
Whereas in the US, we have thisidea that we're gonna create
artificial general intelligenceAGI within the next couple
years, and that's why you needto give uh OpenAI like one
(36:03):
trillion dollars, or we're gonnabe left behind.
But that whole scenario is justmade up.
There is no no one's no one inAsia cares about building AGI
because they know it's not gonnawork, and then focused more on
like I don't know, I sawsomething like landmine
(36:26):
detection, right?
From a picture or video.
Making see those little pixels.
Uh, I've been actually using umfor this podcast itself, like
removing, I say you know a lot,you know, hey, you know, you
know, I'm I'm conscious about itnow, so I'm not doing it as
much, but um I had a recordingthat had just way too many you
(36:50):
knows, and I used uh AI to likeum scrub it up, and it wasn't
perfect, but it was like notbad, you know.
But that's a very, very nicheuse case, and AI can actually be
tuned to do that kind of stuff,you know.
So I said you I said it again,you know.
So so anyway, uh they they dothat, and um that's kind of
(37:18):
their approach to tech ingeneral in the eastern
countries.
In the West, we're hoping thatAGI gets created and it'll solve
all our problems, but I do thinkthat's gonna lead into a
disaster, but it's another uhtopic altogether.
(37:41):
So uh yeah, so the reason whykind of turning it back to
crypto, and I do think cryptoreally was an attempt to kind of
get away from all that stuffthat's mixed into the dollar and
(38:02):
uh debt and quantitative easing.
And Satoshi created this thingthat had nothing to do with
that, and he wanted to make apeer-to-peer payments network
where you didn't have to worryabout debt or all this like
complicated like tradeagreements and inflation
(38:23):
exportation, and um it was likea chance to sort of hit the
reset button and start anew,right?
And a lot of it has to do withthe problems that Japan was
facing at the time.
And if you think about Bitcoinin that context, it's kind of
(38:45):
makes sense why it was created.
And again, this is allspeculation, it's all
circumstantial, but the themotive for this uh invention was
there, now as far as we know.
So, yeah, so like I saidearlier, Warren Buffett has been
(39:08):
moving his cash into yen.
Right now, the yen is probablystill above 150 in the heyday of
uh when uh Japan waseconomically the strongest, it
will it went as low, even below100.
And the the fact that the Bankof Japan is making these moves
(39:30):
now, a lot of people are kind oflooking at them like, huh,
what's going on?
Like, what and I think that thathas uh triggered some interest
in some people, including peoplelike Warren Buffett.
And not not just him, but soanyway, um that's basically it.
(39:52):
And hopefully found it kind ofinteresting.
Well, they're gonna see whathappens to the crypto market
coming next, because If Japanhas been saving money rather
than spending, they could be ina very good position right now
(40:12):
to buy up all the cheap coinsthat are getting shaken out at
bargain prices.
And wouldn't it be crazy ifSatoshi had this planned all
along?
You know, that's something.
He goes into like conspiracymindset, but I'm like, wouldn't
(40:35):
it be crazy if he knew all ofthis was gonna happen?
He's like so such a huge geniusthat he he read The Room of the
World and figured out that okay,in about uh 15 years we can uh
make Japan the dominantfinancial force in the world,
(40:58):
yet again, Empire, the risingsun, you know.
I don't know.
Uh that's the kind of uh stuffpeople are like saying right
now.
Not a lot, but a few of our, youknow, exaggerating what's gonna
(41:18):
happen.
But either way, it's gonna be aninteresting time.
We you know that.
So if your wallet is hurting,mine is hurting a lot too.
I know I'm not I don't likethis, but I do think do see
things changing, which is goodbecause that's what the industry
needs right now.
(41:38):
We need something to change, andthen it's coming.
So hope people are ready.
All right, so take care and seeyou in the next one.
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