Bitcoin: The Infinite Game & The Price of Everything | Jeff Booth - THE Bitcoin Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Freedom is very different than a potentially controlled system.

(00:04):
It cannot exist together.
One system gets worse, it has to be a complete surveillance state.
One system gets better.
Your time is going to tell you which system is going to win, but they cannot coexist.
The natural state of the free market is deflation.
If Bitcoin stayed decentralized and secure, it is the first free market that's ever existed.
It's not Bitcoin that's changing.
It's us moving from a zero-sum game to an infinite game,

(00:26):
but we wouldn't have the map of what the infinite game looks like
because we've never lived in that map.
Nothing has changed in Big One.
Nothing.
This is money.
It's going to be money.
And the more you use it as money, the faster it becomes money.
But even if you don't use it as money, it's becoming the money.
Why was this something that you felt it important to focus on now?

(00:46):
Thank you.

(01:16):
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(01:39):
That's mining.blockwarsolutions.com slash titcoin. Head to the show notes for links to find the show
on centralized social media platforms and on Noster, or just go directly to BitcoinPodcast.net.
You'll find it all there. And kind reminder that you can support this show by becoming a paid
subscriber on Fountain. Or don't, Bitcoin doesn't care, but I sure do appreciate it.

(01:59):
Without further ado, let's get into this Bitcoin talk.
You, uh, you know, I've been very excited. You've been on this show a number of times,
And I've got to say, I'm very grateful for you always sharing your time.
I think between like, between you and, and Lynn, you know, you two have both been on

(02:23):
so many different podcasts.
And I think for every podcast, both of you two go on and I, I call you both out specifically
because I noticed that no matter what podcast you guys go on, that podcast does numbers.
And I think it's because both of you and you happen to both be, you know, work together
as well at EgoDeath.
You both break things down in a beautifully simple way, two different approaches, but
incredibly, incredibly coherent and clear in the way that you break things down. And it clearly

(02:47):
resonates with people. So anytime I can have you on, it's an opportunity kind of almost like a,
a touch point with reality for me. And I think for people who listen as well. And so excited to
chat with you. There's a lot of interesting things happening. You've just come back from
El Salvador. We're going to talk about that a little bit, but maybe as a place to start,
we were just mentioning this before we went live, but the idea that right now there seems to be a

(03:11):
lot of chaos. And if we won't specifically mention the fiat price of Bitcoin, the infinitely
printable fiat kuckbuck price of Bitcoin, but it is languishing lower than people would like it to
be, apparently. And there seems to be a lot of sentiment out there that is just very, very
negative. People are very worried. And I would just love your overall take on this. Is this

(03:34):
something that is, you know, are we, does it, does it matter if we're in a bear market right now?
are we in a bear? Did the cycles ever exist? Are the cycles broken? What do you attribute this just
general, I don't know, malaise or discontent that people are feeling right now? Like,
is it all just the price action or is there something deeper there?

(03:55):
Yeah, it's obviously the price action in US dollars. So people say it doesn't affect them,
but every time they measure it in that currency, then of course it's affecting them.
Um, so, so we know that there's a tightening of liquidity conditioning
current conditions in the world.

(04:15):
And there's that tightening of liquidity conditions is creating, um,
credit problems.
Glow, uh, globally.
Those credit problems.
So if you saw the, um, the, uh, auto loans and, um, and delayed in payments
or late auto loans were off the charts more than 2006, 2007, 2008.

(04:44):
The LPs in funds like real estate and private equity funds like real estate are prohibited
to get out of those because those haven't been marked to market. So there's a whole bunch of
tightening liquidity positions that people thought that their money was worth X. It isn't.
It's like, I love what Larry says, Larry Leppard, it's already gone to money heaven.

(05:11):
And, and, and, and the belief in the belief is it still, so it hasn't been marked to market.
And there's a whole bunch of these that any, that the tightening liquidity conditions will create
more of these that'll get exposed and that exposure will start to

(05:31):
move into other industries because those people who thought they had money
are paying other people who thought they had money and that'll uh that'll tighten so we've been
um the fed has been removing liquidity for for a while and every time they do
you hit these events that come from nowhere that have always been there that then will cascade

(05:55):
which would create a whole bunch of need for liquidity.
It's not just the Fed, but it's a global liquidity that's needed.
And when we say liquidity, that's just print money out of nothing.
And the irony is everybody's measuring what Bitcoin is worth through that.

(06:17):
If the money never was printed, then Bitcoin would fall a lot more.
and it would be the only thing of value in the world
because everything else would fall to almost zero.
But I think the cause for concern
or what people are doing,

(06:37):
nothing has changed in Bitcoin.
Nothing.
Every 10 minutes, there's a new block.
The builders are building.
All of the layers are being built.
It's being used as a circular economy.
money in many different communities around the world and it's it's growing extraordinarily fast

(06:59):
because retail hasn't bought or micro sailor michael sailor can't buy because it's because
his engine just went into reverse doesn't mean bitcoin isn't successful and isn't imposing uh
imposing success it does mean that if you take and leverage you could get liquidated and you're um

(07:20):
And lots of people have been taking leverage in this.
Well, yeah, and it's such a great point.
Price action, like remove price action from the equation, which is difficult for a lot
of folks like and I'm not saying it's easy for me, right?
Like, obviously, it's nice to see Bitcoin going up.
I like seeing Bitcoin go down as folks.
It means my my dollars buy me more sats than they did the day before when my DCA is hit.

(07:42):
Right.
But at this same time, if you can remove yourself from that, it's been an incredibly bullish, let's say, on Bitcoin as a medium of exchange period for these past couple of weeks.
Just speaking of the announcements that Square and Cash App had, opening up Bitcoin acceptance to over 4 million merchants, which is incredible.

(08:06):
Cash App talking about using Bitcoin as the actual rails, even for settling USD and things like this.
To me, these sorts of medium of exchange announcements and things that further the ability of everyday people to use Bitcoin, either purposefully or without even knowing it by using the Bitcoin network, to me, those are incredibly bullish developments.
Those are things that I look at and say, that's great. That is just great for a freedom go up standpoint, right? For actually getting more Bitcoin out there and circulating it through these economies.

(08:34):
are there other things that you're looking at because obviously you're closely involved with
with fetty through the work that you do at ego death and advising them some of these other
projects like i guess maybe first what was your what was your take on the square announcements
were you equally as excited about that and then are there other things that you're seeing from
the medium of exchange standpoint that are making you go wow this is an incredible time yeah there's

(08:57):
nothing to worry about on this this is imposing a new discipline in the world i'm not like i just
the other nonsense i just don't pay any attention to it i traveled for two weeks uh in southeast
asia with miles suitor who's leading the efforts on the cash app and he's just such a genuine
incredible guy who also understands where this is going obviously he would if jack does and

(09:24):
and and but he he's a bitcoiner he knows it needs to be used as a bitcoin media
It's a medium of exchange and they've done as far as a public company,
there is no public company that has done more for, to, to accelerate this,
including investing in open source and, and some of the stuff then, uh,

(09:44):
then cash up as miles has done.
So fortunate to call him a friend, um, and seeing some of this, uh, uh,
seeing some of these that were coming out and knew that they were coming out.
some of the other stuff behind the scenes that uh that are happening um this is
so people the headlines would talk about venezuela and what's happening from we're going to target the

(10:11):
drug dealers right but really what do you think that is it's it's a u.s exerting its control over
we need energy resources raw materials and the likes um and uh and we can't move him out by
talking about democracy so so what's happening there too and and uh on the ground on the bottom

(10:37):
up and it is a dictatorship and uh but that's not really the thing right so the real thing is is it's
there's lots of dictators that the U.S. doesn't go into, perhaps even funds.
In this case, I think the security umbrella of what North and South America look like

(11:02):
is really at play here.
And you can imagine Venezuela has vast resources in energy.
utilized energy wasted energy per se that would likely pay for the entire energy infrastructure
and more by going into so some of these things the wheels are in motion to that these things are

(11:30):
already going to happen can't tell you the time of when they these things happen but but there's
there's more and more bitcoiners in the world there's more and more understanding of what
bitcoin is in mining and energy and everything else and it's securing energy resources to
to increase the wealth of their nation and that will happen i can't tell you when but that's going

(11:57):
to happen and uh and and so so you can see this playing out in all sorts of different ways um
and uh and around the world and and then at the same time people are talking about bitcoin prices
in US dollars. Well, I mean, that's the thing. It's, I think nothing has changed, right? And this

(12:23):
is often there's this attitude that you see if you spend perhaps too much time on social media,
centralized social media, especially where the algorithm is feeding you exactly what it knows is
going to get you riled up, that you may have this perception that somehow something has negatively
happened that made Bitcoin somehow change or weaker or something like this. And it's like,
it's never been stronger. There's never been more acknowledgement of what Bitcoin is,

(12:47):
the potential that it has, and the future that it is going to usher in. And yet at the same time,
when you have a fiat price, and we speak usually about US dollars, but we could be speaking in
Canadian moose shekels or in Turkish lira or in Argentinian pesos or any number of other
currencies, right? It doesn't, as you've said, they're all just pieces of paper.
that that discrepancy between the vibe that you uh feel online and the uh combined with the paper

(13:18):
value of the bitcoin if measured in these pieces of paper versus what's really true and real about
this network and this monetary uh this monetary network like that just to me it always presents
an opportunity, right?
It seems like it's a time where, wow, the world is still mostly asleep to what's happening.

(13:39):
More and more are waking up.
But if you as a, you know, a humble pleb are trying to do things to set yourself and your
family up for the future the best time to do that is not when everybody jumping on board It when everybody seems to be kind of terrified or there a you know there an information asymmetry there Yeah I would even go further like way further than that And from a

(14:01):
I think three things together, what I say, the natural state of the free market is deflation.
If Bitcoin stayed decentralized and secure, it is the first free market that's ever existed.
it. Number three, only your time matters. So where are you spending your time? Are you spending your
time contributing to the nonsense or getting co-opted or listening to all of what has to be

(14:28):
a control system? That might be. Is your energy making it stronger? And if you're doing it, if
you just let anything in it the answer is yes and if you're pricing bitcoin from the control system
you haven't left the matrix yet what's worse you're talking about a whole bunch of you'd

(14:50):
probably talking about a whole bunch of other people still in the matrix like you're better
right and and and i'm not there is no better or worse it would just have to look like this
as we shifted our mental energy into a new system and the new system because of our mental energy

(15:11):
and what we're building in it would become would become stronger and it would bend reality in a
different way than we've ever lived in we would be part of that equation but now the thing that
i said is more important if you're part of the equation in the free market and 99.9 percent of
people aren't wouldn't that provide an incredible opportunity to create value

(15:35):
wouldn't and and why would you be mad about the value you're able to create for others
because the world looks like it does right you should be celebrating it you should be celebrating
it all day long you should have empathy for people that live in the other world why are you

(15:56):
mad at the thing that's giving you grab of it ability to create crazy value because you can
only do that because the world looks like it does today because so many people are trapped in fiat
because so many people are the the the ability to contribute comes from that
and that's like that's your opportunity is essentially what you're saying it's the best

(16:23):
opportunity that you ever there's no ever in history been a better opportunity because we've
never lived in the free market you live in the first one why would you let that system take your
best energy why would you fight it why would you just spend the time building doing the things that

(16:44):
and walker this is what you do this is why we became friends right this is why but but but a lot
of a lot of my incredible friends this is why i feel like so fulfilled because i'm doing this
thing with people that are doing this thing and the first time it's ever existed that we actually
get to bend reality um and the more and we all me too were once in that other system

(17:09):
and we moved our time more and more and every time we moved our time it's gotten a little better
So this is not something I, this is not something I'm mad about.
I'm just so glad I get to do it.
I get to do this and the opportunity wouldn't exist unless the other system
looked like it and everyone else was confused.

(17:31):
Or, or, sorry, or, or, or I'm confused.
But I don't think I'm confused.
Right.
I think that one thing that, and I appreciate that sentiment very much and I
I completely agree with it. And one thing that I think that is an easy trap to fall into is people
think that this switch, because you talk about this switch often, right, about moving your time

(17:53):
to this other system, to this system that is, you know, enabling value creation without, you know,
outside of any currency debasement, outside of the centralized control, the ability to actually
live in and prosper because of a truly free market that we've never been able to experience
for any meaningful amount of time. I think that a lot of people, when they hear that the first time,
they think, well, like, well, I can't just switch over to this new thing. I can't just

(18:18):
flip a switch and be in this new system. Like I have the, I have these obligations and I have all
these things. And I think, is it fair to say that like for most people, the best approach is going
to be something that's incremental. Like it doesn't have to be as, you know, an all or nothing,
an immediate switch. It's about those gradual steps to start doing what you can. And you probably
will do it in increasingly large steps, but to at least make some shift just, just to take that

(18:42):
first step. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. So, so in your podcast, you would be talking to more
Bitcoiners and more people on Noster who have already taken further steps and they can already
see that, see this. And, and so they might be still holding on to a little bit, but less than
their friends who haven't even taken step one. Right. And when they look at their friends

(19:04):
compared to their life, I suspect that most people that are listening to your broadcasts
will have already seen a transformation of their life.
And they'll look at their friends that saying,
I can't because I have this, I have this.
And it's just a different relative position to where they are.
And then some people will be further along that transition.

(19:28):
And they'll look at people who are still stuck in the fiat,
telling them kind of straddling both systems,
that'll look at them and say that it's the same thing.
Again, it's all in ourselves.
It's all in our own perspective of what that looks like.
I agree with you generally that I think you could do it in a number of different ways.

(19:48):
I've always been an entrepreneur.
So once I understand something, I want to jump all in, make every mistake I need to make.
Because I learn faster and I just go.
And I don't care about the consequences.
I do a lot of work to say, am I right?
Is this the right thing?
but if that then is aligned then I just make the jump

(20:10):
and I realize that the jump also makes me
that I have agency too
because the right and wrong comes from us
and so I'm right in the new system if the new system
wins and I'm one of the nodes in it
that helps it win

(20:30):
so but for some other people wanting to how do it because i get asked the question you just asked
all the time you could do this you could say okay here is how many hours i spend in the existing
system and what they should do and what i would do if i were is also count the hours that it's

(20:53):
it's usurping your energy by your fear in it what ai is going to do from it what delon must how many
how many times you're listening to the media out of sight out inside that system and how much of
your real time just add up your hours in a day take out eight hours for sleeping and say how much
time uh how much time am i really still cop co-opted into it then i'll have a job or whatever

(21:18):
i have in my business and then take some of that time intentionally draw a box around that time
and say, I'm contributing all of this to the new.
And in that, I'm going to do what I'm best at
and I'm going to provide value to somebody else.
You're doing in podcasts and Audible for other writers and stuff.

(21:44):
Each person will have their unique genius strength and everything else.
And if I don't want to start something myself
to great value for somebody else in this new system,
then who is aligned who else has started something that i'm completely aligned with and i need to now
meet them and tell them why i'm i'm the best for their their business but in the two or three or

(22:06):
four hours that i've chosen the bucket i don't even need to get paid for i'm just doing it as
for learning and then what will happen is that bucket will expand that bucket will expand because
you'll be showing up by providing value to somebody else and you'll learn exactly what
it is to provide value to someone else and you'll then more easily be able to make that jump.

(22:30):
I think that's actually excellent, actionable advice for people to start out. Like you can
just do things, you can just start doing something. And once you, and I think this is the experience
for everyone who has started being involved in Bitcoin, in Nostra, in any of these new open
systems, these parallel systems, as soon as you start, you want to spend more time there.

(22:53):
You naturally, there's, I mean, perhaps you can find an edge case where that's not the case for
somebody, but I would argue if you are doing it in a meaningful way, in a purposeful way and doing
it for the right reasons, the more time you spend, the more time you want to spend. Like that is the
natural progression. And it doesn't mean every business idea is going to work. The free market
It is brutal.
Like, it's brutal to create value for somebody else.

(23:16):
You have to create value for somebody else.
And other people are trying to create value, too.
So you have to do better to provide value to somebody else.
But just remember, if you're making just even a little bit of sats
that are a 45% IRR against the existing system,

(23:38):
that's valuable time.
those sats are going to be worth a lot of money in time if you can just compound those sats you
don't have to make if you're making eight thousand dollars a month in one system you don't have to
and you're carving out some some hours in this you don't have to make eight thousand a month in
bitcoin and then because that's what people are doing right they're measuring the other system

(24:00):
that's being debased and they're not they're scared to it because they have to replace the
whole thing yeah and there is something uh something very freeing about uh getting paid
by somebody else for value you've created in bitcoin without the fiat rails being involved
at all it's awesome it's it because it's just it's just freeing right like you you know that

(24:24):
there's you're not waiting to see uh some fake numbers appear in your bank that they don't
actually have like you're not waiting for somebody to change their centralized spreadsheet it's like
nope that's that's there in my wallet and i can verify that on my node and that's a really
beautiful feeling you want a uh a funny story to just so uh so my kids are on nostril too they're

(24:46):
not well known on nostril they're not on it all the time but uh but they they do you uh
um my my son we moved here he wanted a boat he really wants to put he loves fishing and
everything else wants a book.
And we're at dinner just on the, on the balcony.

(25:08):
And I, oh wow.
Somebody sent me value for value.
And because it still feels like when somebody says you changed my life and
you, and they sent me, I think in that case, they sent me 50,000 sats.
And it's like, it means something.
And so I just don't tell.
It's my wife that when I get, oh, I got another one, but this one has a note.

(25:30):
You're the best dad in the world for buying a boat.
Oh, that's good.
That's good.
Pretty smart.
That is very smart.
Yeah.
Well, can I ask a slight tangent here?
Can we talk about at all the fact that you have changed locations?

(25:53):
We don't have to say the new location that you're at.
You've been public with.
Okay.
You left Canada.
Maybe I can just say that broadly.
Yes.
Can we talk about the why a little bit?
Because I think that I've met so many incredibly based Canadians that I probably never would have the chance to meet if it were not for Bitcoin.

(26:14):
Now I know more Canadians that I can shake a bottle of maple syrup at.
But why did you decide to leave Canada?
So you can see that Canada is going to experience a lot more pain before it gets better.
you can see um you can see when it's it's not that it's not that carney was elected

(26:36):
it was carney was elected with supposedly open my open-minded people that understood the problem
so you can you cannot you realize that most people don't understand the problem and they're just
trying to do whatever short-termism to get more money from a system that spends their money
and manipulates it and that leads to inevitable collapse or or or a very different

(27:03):
world than when i grew up in canada and and from there um so i i've always been pretty good at
seeing the future um and and a part of that is understanding what what system you're in what
What does it look like?
What are the next things that have to happen, not might happen?
What are the next things that have to happen out of that?

(27:26):
And so capital controls will come.
Taxes are going to go way up.
They're already 54%.
They're going to go way up.
The medical system might as well be insolvent because you can't get in for anything.
It brutal And so I watched these things change and accelerating change getting worse and and just like in the u and in many other countries you have

(27:53):
two sides fighting against each uh each other making that system stronger
um without any resolve to what are the underlying root cause um and and even pierre
who I was helping understand this

(28:13):
I think he made a tragic error
and if he knew it was Bitcoin
he should have gone hard to the hoop
and said that to the world
just like Pichelli did
instead of trying to straddle this
and so when Carney got elected

(28:36):
and Carney, it's the same Carney
that created the nightmare that is the UK today.
And his own money is protected all around the world
in trusts and caimans and everything else.
Yet he comes to Canada and gets elected
as almost a majority in Canada.

(28:56):
He just realized, huh, this is a sign.
And if I don't listen to this sign,
then it's time, then it's shame on me.
no that's not easy to do it is like you you know you've been to my lake house you know the type of
deep relationships everything else that that that looks like so to pick up and move that's not a

(29:24):
that's not an easy thing to do either i just when i'm weighing the pros cons what's going to happen
number of systems. I've been saying on podcasts for a long time that, that not for fear of what's
happening, but for flexibility and the new system that's being built, you have to design flexibility.

(29:45):
Because what the, the curve balls that are going to come, there's going to be lots of curve balls.
And so I didn't want to just knowing that myself, knowing where things are going, I just didn't want
to be trapped and uh trapped i mean i think that's that's understandable and yeah i cannot
imagine the difficulty of making that move but knowing that move needs to be made right i mean

(30:08):
like it's like you you knew you needed to do it that doesn't make it any easier to do from just a
personal uh or interpersonal or emotional standpoint like it doesn't doesn't ease that
it's just like well you know yeah you you have to you know the decision you have to make but
it's it's not a fun one to need to make you'd rather not have to make it you'd rather it not
be the case that you're worried about capital controls and an increasingly you know increasingly

(30:31):
hostile government yeah hostile one that's censoring information that yeah you don't but
but all the signs are there um ignoring those signs is worse putting your head in the sand saying
my lawyer said yeah i was just with him last week he came down to el salvador and he said

(30:52):
all the shepherds are leaving canada to leave only the sheep to get preyed upon
to get eaten by the wolves god so well it's i mean maybe that's a it's a good way to transition to
uh talking about el salvador a little bit because you were just there this is a

(31:12):
a country that appears to be going the opposite way of many in the so-called developed world.
There's a lot of controversy, obviously, much of it, I think, perhaps manufactured around Bukele,
and we can talk about that a little bit. But can you talk a bit about why you were in El Salvador
this time, the Bitcoin Historico, the event that you helped to put on and all this? Can you talk

(31:35):
a little bit about why, as somebody, you have a lot of demands in your time, your attention is
begged to be pulled in many directions. Why was this something that you felt it important to focus
on now? Yeah. So when the IMF went into El Salvador and a whole bunch of people attacked
Pichelli, and maybe rightly so, or just kind of what's happening here, because we all know,

(32:00):
which is in Bitcoin, that these systems are incompatible. I got a call saying that the
president wanted to meet me here's uh yeah here's what the alarm bells that went off in my head
here's exactly the story i told myself great because at least in my mind i'm unbuyable i know

(32:24):
where this is going and i'm going to spend my time in this so so i don't care who you are like i
literally that doesn't matter you could be the richest person in the world i don't get fast i'm
not fascinated by that at all. I'm more, I care who people are rather than what they have.
So what I went on in my mind is great. He wants me to come there, take a photo up so he can say

(32:50):
I'm still a Bitcoiner and try to get back on side with Bitcoiners. That's truly what I thought.
but i but i thought i'm gonna go anyways because i want to look into his eyes and and understand
my questions um not through third parties not through all the nonsense i want to understand

(33:12):
my own questions so i went and the meeting was supposed to be half an hour and ended up being
two and a half hours well and we we talked about the same things you and i have talked about walker
we talked about how deep this is, how the system would always look broken, how hard that would be to get out of that trap.

(33:33):
That Bitcoin wasn't yet big enough for a country for him to actually remain in power and to deliver services like water, sewer, roads,
and ensure that the population was moving towards the Bitcoin standard.
He said, so I have to do both.

(33:54):
I need the money.
But I also know that money comes with a catch
and that the money looks to me like I'm this little pawn of a system.
I'm a rat.
and I'm going to take the cheese. And, and these are precise words. I'm going to take the cheese.

(34:19):
Um, and then they're going to catch me in the trap. But then he said this, but if my citizens
run notes, go into self custody and pay in Bitcoin, then I can get the cheese,
get out of the trap and actually free my citizens. And I went, wow. And so this was in the meeting,

(34:43):
so about five months ago, six months ago. And I went, wow, I've never, actually, I've never met
any leader who could articulate this like that, which both he and I knew.
So, so I agreed to help him put on this conference.
Stacy and I kind of leaned in and put on this conference and try to put on a

(35:07):
conference like this.
And I think we had four months to do it and get competed with other events at
the same time, but we didn't, we wanted to put it on at the same time as
adopting Bitcoin because we're just before, so this people can go to both.
and and um but i realized okay what is my risk reward what is my people are going to say okay

(35:30):
you're just a shill for the state and i don't care actually what people say so i just know the the um
but the um aligning myself to that giving me a stage where i could tell the citizens
that they need to be in self-custody and paying Bitcoin and that,

(35:51):
then even if he changed his mind later on,
my work helped.
We would free people.
But more so, I think he's actually committed to this.
I actually believe that he's protecting that.
He's going to allow that to be protected.

(36:13):
He'll stand up for that.
and and that means the agency isn't his it's not up to him it's up to the citizens to do that
and they have and they have agency now to be able to to be able to do that um and what you see as a
result and what you see as a result kind of and you you can you can feel this when you go to el

(36:36):
salvador the change from three years ago when i went the first time to right now it is so remarkable
Have you been there yet, Walker?
Twice in 2022 and once this past January.
So I also saw the multi-year difference and it was incredible.
So even this time compared to last time six months ago, like that center square in San Salvador,

(36:59):
which the first time I needed armed guards to, and I wasn't able to get out of the car,
to to now have families like 12 o'clock at the night at night families
sorry wait one second you're good you're good the um and and full like crazy full people laughing

(37:24):
the the street vendors it was so wild the the bitcoin historical they they had all the speeches
translated to spanish and this that square was full the entire day uh entire day and into into
the night with people celebrating it was wild it was it was it was it was so hopeful you actually

(37:46):
it's so palpable it's great it's still things to do in el salvador right there's still roads is
busy and everything else but to see people them talk about what he's done for it like you said
like you said you when you've been there it is wild and then to hear people elsewhere talk about

(38:09):
El Salvador as a dictator when he cannot be a dictator for if if all the power goes to his people
to to watch them try to try to talk about what it looks like this when they have never been
and in their own country it's going the other way
it's wild right so i would i would encourage people to if you believe something go see for

(38:35):
yourself go see it and talk for yourself talk to people yourself and see why he has kind of a 92 93
approval rating people wouldn't say that if they were in fear yeah this was this was my experience
as well. And the thing that you mentioned about the palpability of the, like just the energy,

(38:59):
the hope there, that was my first, even in 2022, when Carl and I went there, we went there first
time just, just purely to have like a small, small vacation there. Like we, you know, went there and
meanwhile, all of, you know, friends, friends and family are El Salvador. Are you sure that's safe?
And at this point we were like, well, yeah, like there's a, there's somebody new in charge now,

(39:19):
But that's all anyone knew about El Salvador.
All they knew was that it was just this.
This is funny coming from people who live in Chicago where, you know, like El Salvador is, trust me, a much safer place than Chicago.
Yeah.
Enough said there.
When in 22 did you go?
August of August of 2022.

(39:40):
And then we came back again.
We didn't know we were going to.
We were excited to come back.
Didn't know when it would be.
We got asked to come to Adopting Bitcoin.
and so we were back there a couple months later.
So that was fantastic.
So I went the first time in March
and so there was a conference
that they asked me to keynote there
and I went because Bitcoin country,

(40:02):
first Bitcoin country,
I wanted to see it for myself.
And the day before we went,
my whole family was going,
we were in Mexico flying there.
The day before was all the gang warfare
and we're 80 something 60 or 80 i might have the number wrong but in that neighborhood people
killed all across the country tourists all different uh people and and we still went we

(40:27):
still got on the plane but there was you can imagine what my family was thinking when we went
and bitcoin beach but even at that time bitcoin beach and all the people who flew in from around
the world there was still that hope there was still a that that glimmer of is this real is that
but that's not but i think that's not what surprised me what surprised me and i'm almost

(40:49):
positive that this happened right so if you had an elected leader that went into bitcoin
and knew bitcoin he was a bitcoiner before he was elected leader right he actually there's a post
that he said what even before he was running that i'm going to bitcoin right a long time ago
And so if you'd elect a leader that did that, that put a shot across the bow of the IMF, World Bank, every single other thing, what would you expect to happen?

(41:17):
Would you expect to, because here's another thing that I spent three hours with John Perkins, Diary of Economic Hitman.
Incredible book for anyone who hasn't read it.
And what he said is we went in with bag of money in one hand for the people gun in the other And we will back channel whatever it takes to get you out so choose what you want do you want to get rich or do you want to be deposed said specifically what

(41:46):
so what would you expect knowing that the world's always looked like this that it's always been a
control system that that if if somebody went to bitcoin you would expect the gun to come out
because it had to and what would the gun look like wouldn't it be a back channel talk to

(42:07):
gangs that you helped create the opium trade or the the training what to be able to do something
to weaken a president with a high approval rating that's exactly what it would look like why do i
think that happened why do i almost know that that happened because because it was like a singular
media response that when he locked everybody up every coordinated media it was wild i like i

(42:37):
couldn't believe coming from el salvador and and what the citizens were saying versus what the
media was saying i went wow right because what i think what happened is is is the system was caught
flat-footed when he locked everyone up and they responded to try to weaken them through through

(42:58):
the media through a whole bunch of people that had never stepped foot in dale silver who didn't
care about they didn't care about it existence when it had the crazy high most dangerous place
in the world who then talk about him as a dictator and a bitcoiner can't be a dictator for long
because they're giving their power to somebody else um i just find these i find these things

(43:20):
even how I think through these things in a system that has to look like this.
I find these things just fascinating how many people get trapped
kind of through the lens of the world that they've always looked at.
They don't know they're trapped in it.
I think that it's a really important point that you brought up about

(43:42):
a bitcoiner couldn't stay a dictator for long, right?
You're essentially, by being pro-Bitcoin, by encouraging your citizens to use Bitcoin, not just as a store of value or hold a Bitcoin ETF, but, or, you know, buy my Bitcoin treasury company.
No, no, by encouraging them to run a node, to use it as a medium of exchange, to engage in commerce with Bitcoin.

(44:05):
You are sowing the seeds of your own demise because what is, like, if you want total control, you necessarily must have total control of the money.
you you're giving your power away to them you're you're giving your agency away to them the only
way you could be you could still be elected is if they chose um so it's impossible to be a dictator

(44:28):
on bitcoin impossible maybe for a very short period of time or possible if you were fooling
them and and it was all in let's imagine it's chivo wallet and that was that was all self
custody of it and you rug them later on, right? You could do it then. Or if you told them to go
into a stable coin that then you rug them later on. But if you told them to get into self custody,

(44:53):
run a node, so they have agency and spend in Bitcoin, you couldn't be a dictator.
One of the remarkable things to me and something that I think that people,
as they think about power structures in countries, generally, whatever country this is,
One thing that is not discussed enough is the educational systems in these countries and what the product of those educational systems is, what kind of adults they produce, what kind of adults they mold out of kids.

(45:21):
And one of the things that was, I mean, remarkable to me, the first time we were in El Salvador, we got to know, you know, Roman Martinez, Jimbera.
And he took us on a little excursion and took us to a school up in the mountains.
And we sent kids sets and they learned how to set up a wall.

(45:42):
And they do this everywhere.
And there's now, this was like a totally grassroots initiative, but there's obviously these like different government initiatives now with this too, with this education.
And it's really wild to think about the fact that in El Salvador, okay, say what you will about any other parts of it, you cannot deny that there are more young kids being educated about how to actually use Bitcoin, how to use freedom money, than anywhere else in the world.

(46:11):
There are more young kids who know how to do it than adults.
One of the earliest people out of Kubo Plus was a person named Mario.
he now runs the ai uh ai initiative for the government he's one of those uh the senior
directors of the whole initiative he's brilliant he understands bitcoin perfectly the the this is

(46:34):
integrate now if you had a nation full of people who had never had free economic freedom or freedom
and they were always living under fear and then you implemented this new thing it might take a
while for people to trust, right? And to develop the capability and the capacity to be able to do
the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. So there is some truth to

(46:57):
Bukele is kind of a bold, courageous leader on this. And the capability is building from
the inside of the team. And sometimes there's step forward, step back and everything else.
But when you see that, when you're talking about Walker, that hope and what people are feeling, that's what they're feeling.

(47:21):
And then when they see someone else start with the same thing and nothing and just go to this program and then take their own initiative and go to this, then it paves the way for a whole bunch of other people to see themselves in that freedom.
and that I think is
is kind of what's remarkable like this isn't
or perhaps

(47:42):
maybe I should say this
what I think is really incredible about what's happening in El Salvador
is that this was actually
this was a grassroots bottom up
movement from the start
yes there is now
the government is getting on board with it
but if a government wants to control
its people
this is set off I mean I think Gladstein is one of the
maybe the

(48:02):
I don't know if he's the first or one who popularized it, but you know, like dictators don't like Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is not good for dictators, right?
It's just, this is a fact.
So if you want to be in total control, the worst thing that you could do is educate your people about a money that allows them to completely subvert the state's control on money.

(48:23):
Yeah.
The worst thing you could do is teach them how to be totally in.
They have agency.
The worst thing.
And so imagine he carries this on.
He won't just be the most important leader in El Salvador.
He won't just be the most important leader in Central America and South America.

(48:44):
He might, by other people doing the same thing in their countries,
he might be one of the most important leaders ever by allowing that to expand.
and his citizens, first his citizens and other people who take notice around the world
of what he's inspired there, are the beneficiaries.

(49:11):
It's very interesting.
I mean, I think this is one of those cases where actions speak louder than words.
And in the U.S., for example, there has been a lot of talk about various,
like being extremely pro-Bitcoin and pro-crypto and all these things.
Yeah, crypto and link coins and lancets.

(49:32):
Right. And if that's the case, and this is truly the current administration, the US really supports
the freedom of software developers to write open source software and such, one would think that
the samurai devs would be pardoned post-haste.
One would think that, you know,

(49:53):
Roman Storm and all these other,
you know, the Bitcoin fog and Tornado Cash
and all these other,
because even if you were developing an Ethereum mixer,
that to me, I don't care.
I may be a Bitcoin maximalist,
but I'm also a,
if you're writing open source software
and not controlling people's funds,
the government has no business throwing you in jail.
Like that seems pretty obvious to me,
but we're not seeing that.
I hope that we do.
I really hope that we do.

(50:13):
I know there's a lot of people pushing on that.
I just had Angela McArdle on the show and she was talking about that, the efforts to really push the administration to say, hey, look, this isn't right.
This is anti-American.
I don't know.
I'm hopeful that Bitcoin and the ethos of Bitcoin pervades more and more countries around the world.

(50:37):
But right now, if I look at Europe, I mean, Switzerland, obviously, I was just there for, you know, Lugano Plan B.
Switzerland's kind of a different breed, right? Like, you know, it's, it's, it's a,
a whole different type of animal there. The rest of Europe, boy, it looks like they're going down
some dark paths. The UK is undeniably, they're not Europe anymore, you know, technically not in

(50:58):
the EU, but they're going down a very dark path. I see a lot of this all over the world. I mean,
we're seeing some of this prosecution of open source developers in the U S thankfully, we're
not seeing people locked up for memes yet in the United States. Hopefully we don't get there, but
But I mean, do you think we, is there a rebalancing of the world happening?
Because a lot of people look at El Salvador and say, that's just a little country.

(51:19):
That does, you know, yeah, that's a nice little experiment, but it's just a little country.
That's not, that doesn't move the needle.
So my honest opinion is this is going to take longer and be more chaotic than most people
realize.
And why?
Because those people are still giving their energy to that system.
And they think they're not.

(51:40):
they think because they hold bitcoin they're not um the um and inside so so why i constantly how
many times have i said the same thing the natural state of the free market is deflation because it's
actually the only thing you need to know um to realize if you're living in it or not prices should

(52:03):
fall and and when you went and you should get more value forever right if you're living in a
more free market and the more people that freedom is very different than potentially controlled
system it's like they're they're binary there cannot be they cannot exist together one system
gets worse it has to be a complete surveillance state one system gets better your time is going

(52:28):
to tell you which system is going to win but they cannot coexist it's impossible that they coexist
And so exponential technology should free you faster and faster and faster.
And you will use the AI that removes labor because it gives you more value.

(52:50):
If you're doing that from the system of manipulated money, then you are the control system.
You're inside it.
well walker i say this over and over again because it's so critical that people choose

(53:10):
it's so critical that people choose and and move uh and move their time the vast majority won't
but it doesn't need to be the vast majority it just needs to be enough to move this other system
when maybe we'll talk a little bit about feddy and and why that's a key piece of this system in
my mind why that had to exist before this centralized system co-opted people.

(53:39):
But the vast majority of people I watch are still measuring in the fiat system and they
don't know it.
And remember, that's just the Bitcoiners I'm talking about.
Most others, the 99% of the others are still completely in the other system.
I let's this is actually a very good bridge to Fetty because something that I've been thinking

(54:02):
about and trying to talk about as much as possible recently is just this idea that
we're we live in this incredible time where we actually have the tools to be able to take our
freedoms right government doesn't give us any freedoms we have to take them government can
protect can enshrine laws which protect the freedoms that we have legally but they can't
give us those freedoms right we have to take them we that's that and luckily we can take them in

(54:25):
nonviolent ways through the beauty and the incredible advancement of cryptography, through
Bitcoin, through open protocols, open source protocols, through near perfect privacy preserving
protocols. That's a tongue twister on different layers like FETI, FEDIMINT and eCash, you know,
with Cashew. But not only does the majority of the world not, they're not even close to grokking

(54:52):
Bitcoin yet, the vast majority, like 99%. Even if you say, I don't care what number you say
actually owns Bitcoin, you can say 99% plus the world does not even come close to really
grokking the gravity of this. Add any single person in Bitcoin that says number go up,
them too. Yeah. And furthermore, okay, take that. So let's just, let's very generously say 1% of the

(55:14):
world groks Bitcoin, which is not, it's, it's far less than that. Far, far less. Like it's a fraction
1%. But an even tinier fraction of those people who are quote Bitcoiners use or even are aware of
any of these other tools that are possible. Like, let's break that why it would look exactly like it
looks like so let's so that way what why what you would expect to see is exactly this right

(55:40):
is um not bad people not bad it's a bit of a system um and if we've always lived in a control
system then we would have a really hard time understanding that we live in a control system
we would defend our control system to call it democracy capitalism this we would defend it at
all cost because it couldn't be us it was something else so we would all these words

(56:05):
that mean something but they don't mean the natural state of the free market
they mean control system we would defend them with everything we have because we've always
lived in them and all of our history has always has always supported it and then we would yell
let the bankers who created it the warbergs the the uh and and and and we'd fight them from within

(56:31):
that control system and we'd make the whole thing stronger the conspiracy theories those people
those people when we didn't realize it was actually us right so if we've never lived in the natural
state of free free market we know that for sure right then then just about all of our thoughts

(56:52):
would be inside this other thing and it gives rise to our thoughts or gives rise to dividing us.
This other thing would know how to mind control us by using analysis to how does marketing work,
right? By shaping your mind, how does technology work? We've uncovered the secrets of mind control

(57:18):
through technology and now AI would be sitting on top of this to be able to drive that faster
most of your decisions would live inside there right so it would probably happen faster
it would have to happen faster and we would be convinced it was somebody else
inside that system when it was actually us so that's the bar I put on bitcoin right because

(57:43):
the bar i put on bitcoin staying decentralized and secure against us it has to right so now how does
how does that happen and so all the fights that you knew had to come
because the the government that the that puts them in jail for for creating freedoms comes from you

(58:06):
right that couldn't happen if the government wasn't this size that you vote for and everything
else and allow that to happen. It comes from stealing your power and your energy. And that
is allowed to happen. And that government has to make, um, make, um, martyrs or not martyrs,

(58:26):
make examples out of people that don't toe the line. So other people are scared to do it. And
you can slow this down. Not might have to, has to, because the control system collapses without this.
Add into most of the things that, a lot of the things that the U.S. is trying to do

(58:49):
is trying to stop China by becoming more authoritarian than China. That will never work.
All of these things that are trying to, the only way that the U.S. could possibly win is by opening
absolute freedom because that's the thing that accelerates everything that no one else can win

(59:12):
and by the way if the u.s doesn't want to win that el salvador will win it other countries will copy
el salvador and u.s will go down and down and down in that but they cannot win this fight with a
bigger control system than china but just about everyone that's raised in that control system
that believes in they're they're smarter better everything else and they're watching what's

(59:38):
happening in china through through this is now trying okay we'd have to play the same playbook
we need to we need to monitor our citizens communications everything else we have to um do
and and so this creeping authoritarian patriot act king banking acts what you can spend money on

(59:59):
It's just a natural thing that has to happen from all of those people making decisions inside that system.
It is not the natural state of the free market.
It is exactly the opposite.
And people are getting caught in it.
So why I say that is nothing here is a surprise.

(01:00:20):
You know how long I've been talking about this.
There's not one surprise.
Everything I wrote about still happening at that speed.
everything in this system consolidating at that speed, right?
And so why we invested in FETI
is because you realized you had to invent,
you had to build something that was untouchable

(01:00:44):
on the second layer that created privacy,
that nothing could stop,
that essentially replicated the nodes at another layer
because the nodes, in other words, the nodes,
if there was one or two nodes bitcoin would have been shot down a long long time ago if the nodes
get centralized get shot down but if there's hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands of

(01:01:09):
nodes distributed around the world every time you try to stop one another one pops up more and more
and so the attack creates the strength because more and more people see it see it and that's
what bitcoin is but if you were used to seeing if all of these people in these worlds are used to
technologies and not protocols then it would also be easier to to convince them bitcoin's old tech

(01:01:32):
it's it's uh it's uh we need new tech that that gives you smart contracts or we need new tech
that gives you privacy because bitcoin's open and all of these coins would be like honey pots for
people to to get caught into we need stable coins which is a guaranteed lost coin right to be able

(01:01:56):
it for you to transact so you can transact with her they would all just be to you'd expect
everything we're just saying you'd have to expect it if this thing was gonna it was imposing
an entirely different way of living in the future you'd have to expect it but what else would you
expect you'd expect if it was a protocol that these would develop in layers and you'd expect

(01:02:19):
some really great thinkers that were saying all of this is coming what do we need to do to ensure
that this is this is resilient to make sure that this is lining up in bitcoin to make sure even
though they can't see it right now even though they're really on all these tokens just trying

(01:02:39):
to get rich in a system that dying selling a different piece of a solution the protocol is going to give you all the solutions in layers And what does it need to look like to be able to do that And those people would be deep building the tech the solution architecture

(01:03:00):
To be able to do that, they'd be doing it, some in anonymity, some in that by the time this was really needed, it would have merged.
That's what FETI is now.
And so you could set up right now.
and one of the hardest things with Fetty and people don't really understand it yet,

(01:03:20):
just like they don't understand Bitcoin.
So it's hard to, to put, maybe I'll say this and then I'll let you ask some questions that we could take deeper.
One of the long pulls in the tent of Fetty was, um, the trust to, with a small group of guardians
that then would create, then those guardians couldn't see any of the transactions.

(01:03:43):
FEDI can't see any of the transactions or the communications that happen on top of those,
those guardians could be considered money transmitters.
So now if you, me, three others are guardians and a whole bunch of people are free on top of us
and there's only one federation or two federations, then you can guarantee with

(01:04:09):
the surveillance state, we would be caught, right? Guaranteed. So now who goes first? What does that
look like? Had a different, a different tangent. Um, the, um, inside, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, inside of
that, how do you find people who want to run that run these things in this trustless environment

(01:04:34):
and, um, that could come under attack and everything else, but somebody has to go.
Okay. So Bitcoin had, sorry, FEDMENT had this kind of long pole in the tent that was really hard
to be able to scale, even though some of the federations and the federations that worked
were really run by four or five different people who didn't know each other and FEDE didn't know

(01:05:00):
any of them. So it was impossible to shut down. So they were impossible to shut down and they were
tried so in in early going in in fedi um dns servers got shut down by two of the two people
that were mentioned fedi in their website that's like finding a needle in a haystack by the way

(01:05:22):
right but it uh so the only people who could do that are three letter word agencies
that couldn't find that and and what fedi looked at is wow like that's that we're proud of that
because it gave them time because the the system kept running with the other three guardians
and it gave them time to be able to move dns and now iro which you don't even need dns

(01:05:43):
and so the so it's created a way to harden hard and harden this protocol on top of bitcoin
the other risk the risk exists in cashew as well if there was one federation or if there was one
one cash you met and somebody rehypothicated the funds would you know what if the guardians

(01:06:09):
colluded and and your bitcoin that went in one for one was now one for two right and that you
started and they started rehypothicating and that becomes a real risk in in trust so how do you avoid
that risk and how do you scale this something ingenious that they did is they found a way to add

(01:06:30):
15 og guardians those 15 og guardians
they devised a way to crowdsource guardians to proof work and no none of those guardians were
were put forward with um by by say one one person named two or three guardians

(01:06:57):
they asked for people who knew people approved work who would step up to be og guardians
and each of those people are are not known that they were they were driven in fetti fetti has no
idea who they are. They're acting as nodes. Now you can set up a federation and you can set up a

(01:07:18):
federation in literally five minutes now, your own federation. You can go in under with not your real
name. It'll auto select three or four guardians and you can set the rules for something that
protects your family and their communications or anybody you want with money that can't be

(01:07:39):
co-opted with money and communications that can't be co-opted because it's outside that system and
so what it would what happened and what you would expect to happen is they solve that and what's
happened is using something i think for one year there were three federations
um the first day they turned this on there were between 10 and 20.

(01:08:03):
because now you now you have it in your hands you could do this right now
you could set up a and so so i've been asked a couple times there's a cost for the federation
per month the cost is really you can you can charge people by the way provide providing this
service essentially let's say you're in let's say you're in nigeria you can provide private

(01:08:25):
banking to all your friends and you can charge them a buck a month completely private banking
you might pay 20 what 20 dollars a month but the the money that you pay um right now is really to
support the lightning gateways so it's on and off ramps and and and the cost of running these

(01:08:46):
these uh these guardians and and such so but it's a you've now enabled now you have a protocol
that's enabled an entire ecosystem that can be built on top of it but every single one of these
federations adds to essentially the number of nodes that it can complete complete privacy

(01:09:10):
that he can't see any of the transactions neither can the good audience only you and the person
you're transacting with that makes us very resilient but it had to exist now before what
what we're going to see and where you're going to see with,
with increasing frequency around the world.
Well, this is,
there are so many things I want to pull on here.

(01:09:33):
And for anyone who does want like a,
a deeper dive into maybe more nuts and bolts of Fetty and Fetty men,
I did,
I did an episode with you prior and one with OB as well,
where we got kind of more into some of the,
like the technicalities,
how some of this,
this actually works.
I should have OB back on again,
actually to dig into that some more,
but maybe for the purposes of this conversation,
I think for anyone listening right now

(01:09:54):
that may have heard of Fetty Mint or like just casually,
they may not have understood that not only is this
about private community-based banking, right?
But it's also a just private messenger.
Like this is making a complete a complete black box is the wrong word for it but actually or is that an okay word the only so signal right now it would have been a primary it still

(01:10:21):
probably my primary um but but we know it could be compromised right because of centralized servers
this can't be so this is becoming my primary communication um and if you think about where
we're going with artificial intelligence, how people will start to, I'll show up on podcasts

(01:10:42):
as me with different words that convince you that it's me, right? And it'd be really hard
to distinguish what's coming with all of this. And that could happen to any of your friends and
everything else as you're caught into this matrix. So what do you need as an antidote to that?
you need people that you trust they're connected to you and that you can have this conversation

(01:11:07):
one-on-one with them without anybody in the middle you need your money like that you need
your communications like that you need your sovereignty and so i would i would venture to say
please go and create a federation please go and protect yourself your family for your friends
once you're there, you can add people to it super easily. And your network of people there,

(01:11:32):
you know it's them. I think that that's really powerful. I mean, not only from the, again,
as you mentioned, like the perspective of AI and, you know, okay, how do I know the person I'm really
talking to is really Jeff. But from that government overreach perspective, we know that we are at a
point right now where existing power structures are kind of crumbling a little bit at the

(01:11:57):
foundations.
But that also means that they're going to be grasping and trying to take in more power,
trying to shore up their foundations, trying to use all of these tools which are available
to us as individuals, but which are also available to government and which many large
corporations are pouring billions and billions of dollars into and working hand in hand with
the government to make sure they get as big of a moat as they can and can get these big

(01:12:19):
juicy NSA contracts and all these things. At a time when that is accelerating, because
governments around the world, I think they feel their power starting to slide away, or they see,
maybe not all of them, but some of them realize they see the writing on the wall, right?
They may know that we're in sort of a period of chaos before a period of rebirth. And so they're

(01:12:42):
going to be clawing tooth and nail to try and hold on to whatever power they can. If you don't,
as an individual use these tools like bitcoin obviously but also like fediment like noster
if you don't have these ways to be able to actually still communicate and transact freely
and privately you are just going to necessarily be caught in their dragnet right and they're like

(01:13:06):
there will be no escape and if you don't start using these things now like you don't want to
start familiarizing yourself with these tools when you're like oh shit i really need to do this it
needs to be like it needs to be now that's what i'm trying to push people towards like please do
this before you're like oh shit i really need to do this right now yeah i totally agree they now

(01:13:28):
what would you think a world like that would look like to a free market opportunity that created
value against the world that was increasingly looking like that and you can see why there's
so much opportunity as well in in seeing because what i find every day to today is when i remember
when we started we said it had to look like this right if that in the end if you said he kept saying

(01:13:52):
the natural state of the free market is deflation it means you're choosing when you're not prices
aren't falling it's you're choosing to store your things in assets because the money's broken
right the very idea of an asset like sailor talking about this as an asset
the very idea of an asset a house when you talk about a house

(01:14:15):
very idea of an asset is because money is broken and you can't use money as money
so you need to put it in something else that will protect it this is money it's going to be money
And the more you use it as money, the faster it becomes money.

(01:14:35):
But even if you don't use it as money, it's becoming your money.
And so all of these things, it's just driving a free market force into this thing.
And the people that are using that free market force and creating value there
are going to be exponentially better than the people that aren't.
But it's an open door that anybody can move to the honest system.

(01:15:01):
Let me ask you, Jeff, because I want to be conscious of your time too, and I think we may be running up on it, but maybe I could ask you, I think broadly, and I appreciate the fact that you repeat these things, and maybe you get some grief for it, but I think it's good because repetition is what actually makes it sink into people's heads, right?
That the natural state of a free market is deflation, and for so many people, the first time that they heard that, I mean, I think for most people, the first time they heard it, unless they heard somebody quoting you, was reading your book, The Present Tomorrow.

(01:15:29):
So hearing that, it changes something within you and you start to think, oh my God, like,
yes, obviously, of course, this must be true.
But you don't think of it until you laid it out for people.
I think the next part that people get to is they say, okay, given that is true and I can
make the decision to opt in myself at any time, right?

(01:15:51):
I can start living in that deflationary world right now by saving in a money that can't
be debased, by saving in Bitcoin.
But zooming out even further or perhaps zooming forward even further, what does that look like during this, I think, inevitable period of late stage chaos?

(01:16:15):
We're seeing what it looks like right now, but I think things are going to get more chaotic.
And then when it comes to this eventual rebirth into 8 billion or 9 billion or 10 billion people, however many people are at that point on the planet in service of those other 10 billion people, is that something that can go on forever with the right monetary incentive system?

(01:16:38):
Forever.
Okay.
So you want – and we're going way out.
I saw one of the questions about a Star Trek world, right?
Yeah, this is what sparked it. Yeah. Yeah. But that's actually what it looks like. It looks like that because it has to look like that. I would say by 2140, that's where it will be living. Because what is money in itself? All that money is, is an abstract concept for our trade between humans. And what is our trade to humans to provide value to each other? And we choose.

(01:17:13):
So all money is in the middle of that trade.
It allows us to value with each other.
So if you defined money instead as this thing we control
so people can't trade with each other
or trade with each other with this friction that has to go through our central authority to be able to trade with each other then you just created a control system

(01:17:41):
Abstract concept for our trade.
We've always been used to creating this
and unfettered flow of trade.
Our free market of ideas creates more value.
That's why free markets couch the word free.
They've never been free.
but some more free than closed markets have always outcompeted closed markets.

(01:18:07):
Always.
Now, for any small window of time, like what's happening to China right now,
you could drive in trillions and trillions of dollars of capital
and in a small window outperform a free market by just driving.
But long-term, you cannot.
Because what you're doing is saying,
no one else matters except for my ideas.

(01:18:28):
And you miss most of the ideas.
so the ideas come from us if physical reality comes from um from our mind and is turned into
physical reality from our mind which exists almost infinite opportunity and and so in that world
it's always infinite opportunity against us a cascade of problems in any single time period

(01:18:55):
how are those problems addressed by the infinite capability in our mind
because in the free market because we have swarm and attacking and in the margin of the problem
to be able to solve problems for others becomes the opportunity that entrepreneur goes after
and as soon as they've created margin from it every entrepreneur attacks them to steal their margin

(01:19:21):
so so what would the world look like in that in that world we'll always still have problems
or as an entrepreneur i would look at as opportunities
um and those opportunities be solved faster and faster and every single person on the planet
wins as a result of all other people competing faster to solve their problems

(01:19:44):
can you imagine 2140 on bitcoin going back from that time that looks like that
to this time can you imagine what it would take for people to think oh we're going to trade this
for that bullshit right they just the knowledge that you would gain people forget that they're

(01:20:07):
both part of the system and the solution to it. They forget that their minds change and they become
somebody else along the way. And they think it just happens to other people or that everybody's
going to stay stuck forever. It can't look like that. If you believe in human progress, if you

(01:20:27):
believe that more people want to unlock, just like I unlocked to the system, just like you unlocked
to this like we all did this didn't exist bunch of cypherpunks go to try to create this all the
failures all everything else then then satoshi creates it by taking those failures and creating

(01:20:48):
it we're standing on the shoulders of giants that created all of it and then we're the giants
that are creating it for everyone else and then now they're giants trying to replace us and it's
all in service to all of us. It has to look like this. The only reason this could fail is if you
didn't believe in us. It's a fair point that once you reach that state, if we are able to actually

(01:21:18):
achieve a state where we are operating in a truly free market because the market for money is not
being centrally controlled, why would anyone opt to go back in?
Because, I mean, even the people who would perhaps, let's call them, you know, the bad
people or the evil people, even those people would benefit more from a freer system, right?

(01:21:40):
They just can't see it.
And most people, by the way, most people playing in the zero-sum game can't see that you can't
build walls high enough for what's coming from a system that's a zero-sum game.
there's nothing you can do that system burns to the ground and and so on on on this transfer

(01:22:00):
through it it's us that's changing it's not bitcoin that's changing right it's a it's us
moving from a zero sum game to an infinite game but we wouldn't have the we wouldn't have the map
of what the infinite game looks like because we've never lived in that map
we're creating the map we're both the map and the territory
man i almost jeff i could always keep asking you questions uh ad nauseum but i feel like but what a

(01:22:27):
what an incredible note to to wrap up on so that i don't take too much of your time we've gone over
a little bit already i would just encourage people the last thing i would say is just to say
check out fetty like you can you can download this you can start using it you can create your
own federation if you're listening to this after the fact for those who are listening live on noster
thank you for being here and for,

(01:22:48):
for spending some of your scarce time with Jeff and I,
for those who are listening after the fact,
not live on Noster,
come check out Noster.
Use these tools,
spend more of your time over here.
It's more fun.
The vibe is better.
And yeah,
you will,
you will like who you are when you're posting on Noster more than you will
when you're being fed,
fed algorithmic BS on,

(01:23:08):
on X.
And yeah,
that's what I would leave people.
Is there anything anywhere else you want to send people,
anything else you want to leave folks with before we close out?
No, I think we're good. We'll just do it again soon or on a patio somewhere or the cabin.
I look forward to that. Yeah, we got to do one of these in person eventually. That would be really a treat. But Jeff, really thank you for your time. And thank you for all the work that you do as well.

(01:23:36):
I think you have opened many minds in just a short span of time.
And I think everybody's just excited for, you know, the Price of Everything book to eventually come out.
You know, you're probably a little short on free time right now, but I don't know.
I think folks have been hankering for it.

(01:23:56):
And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin Talk episode of The Bitcoin Podcast.
Remember to subscribe to this podcast wherever you're watching or listening.
and share it with your friends, family, and strangers on the internet.
Find me on Noster at primal.net slash walker and this podcast at primal.net slash titcoin.

(01:24:17):
On X, YouTube, and Rumble, just search at Walker America
and find this podcast on X and Instagram at titcoinpodcast.
Head to the show notes to grab sponsor links.
Head to substack.com slash at Walker America to get episodes emailed to you
and head to bitcoinpodcast.net for everything else.

(01:24:37):
Bitcoin is scarce, but podcasts are abundant.
So thank you for spending your scarce time listening to The Bitcoin Podcast.
Until next time, stay free.

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