Fiat Money is the Problem, Bitcoin is the Solution | Joe Bryan (Saving in Bitcoin Ep. 5) - THE Bitcoin Podcast

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
The way I think about Bitcoin is the amount of Bitcoin that I own is I have a share in all future human economic activity forever.

(00:09):
Bitcoin is the apex savings vehicle in the limit of when the whole world has become Bitcoinized.
Bitcoin is the only money and currency.
So this is everything.
This is the store of value.
This is the medium of exchange.
It's the representation of all the economic energy of everybody.

(00:31):
And when you're in that scenario, the money itself is becoming more valuable over time through the efforts of the free market.
I mean, going back to the perfect money in a free market, everyone's working in their own self-interest, but it benefits everybody else because the prices fall and the quality goes up and the quality of life for everybody increases.
This is where we should be, but it's ultimately where we're going to go with Bitcoin.

(00:53):
That process just takes a very long time, but we're just, we're incredibly early, incredibly early.

(01:23):
minds in Bitcoin to walk you through the basics of why our money is broken, how Bitcoin fixes it,
and how you can use Bitcoin as your personal financial freedom blueprint. Let's get started.
Greetings and salutations and welcome back. Today I'm joined by Joe Bryan.

(01:47):
Joe spent a decade at investment banks before a career as an entrepreneur.
Now he spends his time building and supporting Bitcoin businesses.
And he created what I consider to be the most impactful Bitcoin video of the year, perhaps ever, called What's the Problem?
It will be linked in the show notes.
I highly recommend you go and watch it after this.

(02:09):
So, Joe, welcome.
Thank you so much for joining.
Well, thank you for having me back, Walker.
It's great to be here.
Great to have you back.
and looking forward to hopefully many more of these conversations in the years to come
as Bitcoin becomes more and more ubiquitous in people's lives.
But the point of this series is really to give people an introduction to Bitcoin,

(02:30):
why Bitcoin matters, but also to identify why they need Bitcoin in the first place.
What's broken in our current system?
What's the problem?
Which happens to be the name of your excellent videos.
You're a perfect person to talk to about this.
so i want to start there because a lot of people realize the system is broken something's broken
they can feel it something's not right they just don't understand why it's broken or how it broke

(02:55):
and what's the the root cause of this a lot of other things get blamed that are really just
downstream effects of the problem they're not the problem itself so if we can start out with
what is the problem?
The problem is that the money is not separated from the state.
And so the money is flexible.

(03:17):
And to sort of quote the video,
a big red button exists,
a metaphorical abstraction of the financial system,
but a big red button exists that can be pressed at any point in time
to change the money.
and normally that's just by creating more of it for free
for the person who has access to the big red button

(03:39):
but it could also be other aspects like changing the
the level of control that some central parties have
over someone's ability to use the money
as well as other aspects as well
so it's the lack of independence of the money
from the government

(03:59):
brackets the central banks
I think people have this sense that, especially if you're in the younger generations, that, well, how can you even have money that's separate?
This is just the way it's always been, right?
I mean, what do you say to people who just say, well, what's the alternative?

(04:22):
If the central banks and the governments aren't in control of this, who's going to control it?
Doesn't that just lead to chaos and everything else?
How can you not have somebody in control?
Well, I think many people now, I mean, myself included up until a few years ago, you don't really question it.
You don't really question money because we've been in this system since 1971.

(04:46):
And so if you are a productive person today, chances are you've never known anything else.
Because you would have only been a child if you hadn't retired by now and you wouldn't have really been aware of the system you're in.
So no one's ever known any different.
And when you have the money that you use become easy and online and digits on a screen or notes in your hand, and that's all you've ever known, you then don't really have that intimate connections to what the money is actually supposed to represent.

(05:21):
Well, that money is supposed to actually be.
But the notes and digits are just a representation layer.
of economic value, but linked by, prior to 1971, just a promise.
And since 1971, nothing.

(05:43):
Nothing.
It's just, it's like having monopoly money and you just keep score.
There's no link to any real world anchor of any form in the background
because somebody can print more of it costlessly.
and so someone can print more of it costlessly it doesn't have an anchor anymore to anything in the

(06:09):
real world so you expending your energy in the real world to earn this monopoly paper
there's just a massive disconnect it's like why would i work for something that someone else can
print for free that's just that's just that's just wrong that's structurally morally wrong
but unless you question it it never even it never even comes to the top of your mind

(06:35):
but when stated like that it's just so obviously wrong that you then hopefully go back and question
how did we get here what is money supposed to be and by going down that um series of questions i
I think you inevitably only end up in one place.

(06:58):
What is money supposed to be?
I mean, we're kind of fish swimming in water,
but when you ask us what water is,
I have no idea.
That's how we are with money, right?
As you said, it's all we've known is this current system
where there's not, at least it's all I've known.
There's no backing by gold.

(07:19):
There's no promise of redemption for gold.
There's nothing at all.
And they don't even have to print it with a literal money printer anymore.
They're just a few keystrokes and the money appears.
So what's the alternative to that?
Can we do better?
The alternative, if you are using something as a representation of your economic contribution in whatever way that is,

(07:48):
Like the value you deliver to somebody else or someone delivers to you and the money you're exchanging there is meant to be a representation of that so that you can expend your economic, your personal economic energy in exchange for something that you can retain.
And then spend in the future at any point, should you wish to, but not be forced to.

(08:11):
At the moment, we're forced to spend it because it's an economic battery that's constantly declining.
I do a day's work today and that might buy X amount, equate to X amount of purchasing power.
But then in a year's time, that's 10% smaller.
And the year after, it's 10% smaller.

(08:32):
It doesn't retain the economic energy I put into earning the money in the first place.
It's like a leaky battery. And so when you end up in that scenario, your decision making changes. Your decision making is impacted because your ability to think about storing that economic energy for some future use, for saving it, gets undermined.

(08:58):
because I can't put it, I can't just leave it there for 10 years
because it'd be worth half the amount.
And so what do I do?
I bring forward my spending,
which means I end up spending money on things
that I wouldn't have ordinarily spent money on.

(09:19):
Or I speculate with it because I'm forced to speculate with it
to try and recoup the amount that's being stolen from me through inflation.
And so your decision-making just gets corrupted at the most fundamental level because there's this background level of structural theft of everybody's purchasing power, which is really just everybody's time and energy, is being siphoned away by the money printer.

(09:52):
i want to ask if i can because i think people may hear you say that something's being stolen
right and they may say well that's maybe a little hyperbolic like that's a little dramatic
you know is it really is it really theft can you kind of uh can you clear that up why
you know why is inflation theft i thought inflation was just prices at the grocery

(10:16):
store going up isn't that just inevitable that's what we've been told right it's just prices always
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(10:41):
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prices shouldn't be going up prices should be going down and and if you watch the video within
a minute two minutes you'll understand why this is structurally the case and i know you've had
jeff on already and jeff wrote a wonderful book called the price of tomorrow and if people haven't

(11:06):
read it they should they should read it um but within 60 seconds effectively if you've got
a, if you've got perfect money in a free market where the perfect money cannot be printed for
someone for free and it's effectively capped in supply, then that perfect money with free market
and human action causes prices to fall and quality to go up. And this, and this is really obvious

(11:34):
example like if i'm if there's just the two of us and i was i say there was a hundred of us
and you know we're trapped on an island i'm doing fishing you're cutting down trees
um then because i'm specialized in doing that initially when we first landed on the island i

(11:55):
was cutting down trees as well and you were doing the fishing but i'm better at fishing you're better
at cutting down the trees so now we specialize which means we can produce twice the amount in
half the time and so we can supply the needs of everyone from a goods perspective in less time
or we can oversupply and the price goes down and so by doing that it increases the purchasing power

(12:18):
of the free money we now have to use to exchange these products with each other in the free market
because you know i can't build a house out of fish i need some firewoods i need some building
materials but because there's a hundred of us i'm not the only fisherman you're not the only
woodcutter and the more time we spend on each of these processes the better we get the more

(12:39):
innovative the more efficient we get and the quality of the output is higher and we're competing
with everybody else in a free market and so what naturally happens over time is that prices continue
to go down and quality continues to go up because everybody is buying making a purchasing assessment
on the combination of the two and if you start raising your prices and reducing your quality

(12:59):
you're going to sell less and you're going to go bust. You're not going to make sales. And so this
is just what happens in a free market with perfect money, which is totally the opposite of what we
see today. For us, we never see prices go down. Prices just continue to go up. But that is theft
on two counts, really, because it's stealing the productivity gains that we should be seeing.

(13:26):
in our little example, we should be seeing prices going down.
So the fact that we're not, even if prices were staying flat,
something is wrong because we're not benefiting
from the natural deflationary impact of technological innovation
and human ingenuity, then that person power is being stolen.

(13:50):
But the fact that prices are going up means that if inflation
is 2%, the theft is probably 5%. It's not 2% because the productivity should be accruing to
the money. The money should be becoming more valuable and lifting the quality of life for
everybody. Everyone who has savings should be seeing their economic battery expanding over time.

(14:16):
It buys more tomorrow than it does today, which allows you to save. It then stops you having to
spend it or speculate with it to try and retain your purchasing power because it does it naturally
that's the real state of the world when you don't have a central bank but when you have a central
bank that can print money for free and expand the balance sheet it steals the purchasing power

(14:43):
from everybody and so you get you get this mysterious inflation which you know they never
Hopefully they never tell you what the real cause is.
It's always this or it's that.
But it's a natural consequence of just printing more money.
And we can spend a couple of minutes drilling into why that's the case,
if that's helpful.

(15:04):
I think so, yeah.
So I'll use the central bank and the government sort of interchangeably here
because I realize it's like an introductory.
You've got all that excitement to come about understanding the new potential bank.
but all intents and purposes central banks are mandated by the government and support the
government and so no no currency no government is ever going to go bust they just going to end up printing more of their own currency to pay the pay the bills that they have to pay in nominal terms And so when the government prints more money that money enters the economy

(15:39):
has to enter the economy to those connected directly or indirectly to the government.
And so what you tend to see is, whereas in a free market,
the only reason prices would change would be demand and supply based.
when the government prints this extra money and starts spending it into the economy on
goods and services etc it looks like demand and so the prices start going up

(16:05):
but it's not extra demand it's just extra money
but now you see a greater levels of profitability of those areas of the economy connected to the
government which is then a signal to everyone else in the market all the entrepreneurs are
productive capital productive people hang on there's a demand supply imbalance over there
and I can go and compete there for that profitability.

(16:29):
And so they get sucked away from the other areas of the economy
that they're currently competing for,
making them less efficient to go and compete for this extra free money
that looks like demand from the government.
So they're compromising the effectiveness of the economy
and reducing the effectiveness of the economy materially.

(16:50):
what then happens is the funds that have gone first into the pockets of the people connected
to the government have then gone two ways one those businesses spend with the businesses and
gradually business a spends a business b spends a business c and gradually this extra money ripples
out across the economy driving a level of price increase of all the goods and services gradually

(17:14):
all the inputs like the human cost the raw material they all start to increase which impacts
every single business. I'll come back to that in a sec. The second is that those connected to the
first ring see extra profitability. They now have extra money relative to what they would have had
before, and then they invest that. This is the cancel on effect. So they get the money sooner,

(17:40):
and they often get the money on better financing terms because they're closer to the government.
So not only do they get more of it, they get more of it at cheaper rates, which means investing in
assets and buying property or acquiring businesses and these sort of things just becomes a much
easier economic calculation there's less downside and more upside especially if they know the money

(18:01):
is being printed because then they have an extra very clear in their mind which way the asset price
is going and so the asset prices start going start going up so we'll come back to the asset prices
but then for the for the businesses every business is now faced with a choice
like even the businesses very far from the money printer that don't even know this is happening

(18:23):
because it's done behind the curtain they start to see all their input costs going up
but now you need to charge a certain amount you need to make a certain amount of profit if you're
an entrepreneur to justify running a business otherwise you just wouldn't run the business
and so you need to reinstall your profit margin in some way so you've got you've got a couple of

(18:47):
choices the first is you pass on the price increase completely to the customer and say well my input
costs have gone up so i'll just sell you the same product same size same quality it's just now 10%
more expensive but the customer gets hurt so the consumer is worse off their their affordability
has been hit because of the money printer. The second way is, well, I'm not going to

(19:13):
pass on the price increase. I'll just shrink the product and maybe the consumer won't know,
but it still impacts the consumer because they get less for the same amount. They just have to
buy more of it. And so it still hurts their affordability. But the third way is for businesses
to say, well, I'm not going to change the price. I'm not going to change the size. I'm going to

(19:34):
Compromise on the quality.
And they do this, you know, you find that products start breaking sooner.
If they break sooner, you've got to buy them again, sooner.
Still inflation.
It's just not in the size or the price.
It's the frequency of which you need to buy something.

(19:56):
Or it's the quality that impacts you in other ways.
So, you know, the quality of the food starts to deteriorate.
So you go to ever cheaper ingredients, which then starts to bring health issues into the population, like obesity and these sorts of things.
That's just inflation.
That's personal inflation.

(20:18):
That's like inflation morphed into something else.
It's just the money printer.
You're being compromised by the money printer.
And so there's these three levels of consumer inflation.
One is the very visible price increase.
Second is the sort of semi-hidden, we just shrink the product.

(20:39):
And the third is we're going to compromise other things about you
because of the money printer.
Those are the three.
There's like visible, semi-visible and hidden.
And then you have the asset inflation, which drives the asset prices higher,
drives the stock market higher, drives the cost of housing,

(21:00):
all the things that are in more limited supply than the money,
because the money is being printed faster than these things are coming into existence.
And so for people who are trying to save,
you're getting squeezed from a cost of living perspective
because your affordability is hit.

(21:21):
Your health is being undermined in lots of different ways
because of the compromise of the products and services you're using.
from a quality perspective,
at the same time as you're struggling to buy the assets
because the assets are going up.
And it's like, how do you, how can you win?

(21:43):
You can't win.
You can't win.
Your income is lagging behind the rate of the asset growth.
And someone's constantly trying to pull you back
by undermining your health as well.
And so this is a terrible position to be in.

(22:03):
Absolutely terrible.
But this is just the money printer.
This is the money printer.
When you give somebody the ability to print for free what you have to work for, it will be used.
And it will be used and it will be used and it will be used until they've consumed all the purchasing power of everything you've worked for over time.

(22:29):
It's a dark picture once you start to go down this rabbit hole.
Yeah, that's a dark picture. I'm sorry.
No, it's okay because I think it's so important for people to understand.
And one thing I want to expand on a little bit there, if you would, is the asset inflation side of this.
Because people, if you're a homeowner or if you own stocks, you see asset prices going up, you say, well, that's a good thing.

(22:53):
I like it. I feel more wealthy. I'm winning this economic game.
The boomer who bought their house for a handful of raspberries back in 1970, now that house is worth $3 million and they're like, I'm a genius.
Every stock that – the idea that – well, stocks just keep going up forever.

(23:13):
So just buy the S&P 500 and you'll be great and you'll retire a millionaire.
What are people missing about asset inflation?
Because they don't – I feel like most people don't tend to think of that as inflation.
They just think of that as, oh, this is good.
The value of the things that I own is going up.
What are they missing with that?

(23:33):
They're missing the value of the things they own is going up
when measured in the thing that is being printed.
So if I double the amount of money overnight in the economy,
all the prices should be double.

(23:55):
And so when you normalize the stock market performance or the housing, the cost of housing, by the amount of dollars in existence, they haven't changed.
They haven't changed.
If you're printing 8% to 10% extra dollars every year and the stock market's going up, surprise, surprise, 8% to 10% every year, it's just because they're printing more dollars.

(24:23):
you're measuring it in the thing that is more plentiful
you're not becoming richer
the number on a piece of paper is going up
but the value of that when you convert it into something
else that can't be printed
remains unchanged

(24:44):
so when you price these things in
even in gold, gold goes up 1-2% a year
and the supply doubles every 30, 40 years.
They haven't outperformed those things.
They haven't outperformed the things you can't print for free.
And so it is just the way that you keep score.

(25:07):
It's like your internal unit of account.
So if your internal unit of account is fiat currency, is the dollar,
you feel like you're getting richer.
but you're if you think about your wealth in the percentage of the pie i own
it's going down for most people even if the number itself is going up it's because let's say you have

(25:36):
some savings and you earn five percent on those savings in some way now whatever they
It's saving whatever asset class.
And you're making 5% a year.
And you think, I'm getting wealthier.
But if they're printing it at 10% a year, you're getting poorer.
You think you're getting wealthier because the number's going up,

(25:58):
but the proportion of the overall wealth it represents is going down.
And so you are becoming poorer.
Whereas if your internal unit of account,
if the way you keep score is in something that cannot be printed,
then you realise
you realise this for what it is

(26:22):
is that you lose money
if you're speculating with it
and I am sort of dancing around it
but if your unit of account is Bitcoin
if your unit of account is Bitcoin
that cannot be printed for free
there is a fixed supply of it forever
and instead of

(26:45):
and I'll link it back to savings
to savings here again
we all know that we can't keep cash in the bank
as a long term store of value
if you put $10,000 in the bank now and come back to it in 10 years time
even with interest you've lost money
you've lost purchasing power because the rate of inflation outstrips your interest rate

(27:09):
even the level of inflation we're told is correct rather than the actual rate of money printing
but either way the the real person power that has in 10 years time is materially lower
so you know you can't save it so you speculate whether you buy an asset right which puts fuel
on the fire of the reason asset prices are going up in the first place for everybody else as well

(27:34):
so people drive speculation it drives debt it drives leverage all of these things
So you buy a house, you buy the stock market and it goes up 8-10% a year.
Then you normalize it by the rate of dollars and you realize it hasn't changed at all.
But if your internal unit of account was Bitcoin, you realize you've just lost a load of money.

(28:01):
By having my wealth stored in anything other than Bitcoin, I am losing money.
because my house now is worth much less than it was five years ago
when measured in Bitcoin.
So if your internal unit of account is Bitcoin,
the natural conclusion is, well, I shouldn't own that house.

(28:25):
Why would I save my money in a house when I could just keep the money?
when the house causes the amount of money I have to go down.
You just wouldn't.
You just keep the money.
And so what happens over time is that Bitcoin ends up demonetizing everything.

(28:47):
So it's the flip side of what we just talked about,
where the money printer drives the inflation of the assets.
That's because you're thinking about them in dollars.
but you've got the leverage and you've got speculation in there as well.
So the real value of the homes and things is as a utility,

(29:12):
not as a speculative store of value.
They've become a store of value because the money is corrupted.
And so they're far more valuable in dollars than they should be.
Because a house is a liability.
It's not an asset.
but then when you think about when you switch to bitcoin you're like well absolutely they're

(29:35):
a liability but i don't want the house i don't want that extra house i'll sell that and just
keep it in bitcoin because i'm losing money by having it in the house so what happens you sell
the house and house prices come back down and that premium for the house prices and other
speculative proxy stores of value which are better than fiat currency, they gradually

(29:56):
go get eroded again until they return to just being their utility value.
Because no one buys them to store their wealth because it doesn't store their wealth when
considered in Bitcoin.
And so Bitcoin just gradually just consumes the monetization premium that you see in all
these proxy asset classes purely as a result of the money

(30:19):
printer being there and so Bitcoin is the apex
savings vehicle
I mean in the
limit of when the whole world has become
Bitcoinized, Bitcoin is the only money

(30:41):
and currency, it's the thing that everybody's internal unit of account
will be the things we will use for our savings and also medium of exchange for global value transfer instantly.
That is the global free market that Jeff Booth talks about And in that scenario we on the Satoshi side of the island in the video

(31:09):
So this is everything.
This is the store of value.
This is the medium of exchange.
It's the representation of all the economic energy of everybody.
And when you're in that scenario,
the money itself is becoming more valuable over time
through the efforts of the free market.

(31:29):
I mean, going back to the perfect money in a free market,
everyone's working in their own self-interest,
but it benefits everybody else because the prices fall
and the quality goes up and the quality of life
for everybody increases.
This is where we should be, but it's ultimately
where we're going to go with Bitcoin.
That process just takes a very long time,

(31:50):
but we're incredibly early, incredibly early.
I want to touch on that a little bit because I think especially for younger people, we talk about asset prices, you know, and you mentioned, yeah, like houses are great for living in, but they're terrible investments if you price them in Bitcoin.
Some people have multiple houses, you know, that they just purely they live in one, they own the others for investment purposes.

(32:14):
A lot of people that are my age, younger, are looking at the housing market and saying, I'm never going to be able to even afford one house, let alone enough to have an investment property house.
And I think they feel this dream of owning a home slipping further and further away.

(32:36):
And the reason it's slipping further and further away is because the rate of new money creation is also accelerating.
Right. We've printed no matter what country you're in, just during the past five years, your government central bank is probably printed more money than in the past, you know, 75 years combined, just in the past few years.

(32:57):
This is crazy. And so it's this acceleration, acceleration.
And you mentioned also, you know, OK, we're still early to Bitcoin, but I think people look at Bitcoin now and they, you know, maybe they just heard about it now.
maybe they heard about it years ago when it was a couple hundred, a couple thousand dollars.
It's now a lot more than that. It's got a big kind of scary price tag attached to it. Of course,

(33:21):
you can buy fractions of a Bitcoin. You can buy a few Satoshis. You can buy a dollar worth of
Bitcoin. But still, you look at this and you say, come on, I must have missed the boat like this.
You know, what is this? Can't just go up forever. This maybe there's some other, you know,
uh meme coin or some other speculative investment that i can look into because i've missed bitcoin

(33:43):
what do you say to those people how do you convince someone that we're still early when
they see that big you know big price shock of of how high bitcoin has gone well i think
i think that's a human a human reaction if the price was per satoshi it would still feel like a
bargain. And one Bitcoin is 100 million Satoshis.

(34:08):
So you can get almost a thousand Satoshis for a dollar.
And a price like that sounds super cheap.
And so it's just human frame of
reference and price anchors.
But I would tell you a couple of things.
The way I think about Bitcoin is

(34:31):
the amount of Bitcoin that I own
is I have a share in all future human
economic activity forever.
And I have that share.

(34:51):
Physically, I have that share.
I'm the only one who can control that share.
It's actually mine.
It's the only thing in the world that you can actually own.
It's like buying a share in a company.
You might own a small share of Amazon or Apple or strategy.

(35:12):
It's just a share enforced by promises.
You don't actually own it.
There's nothing you can actually own that nobody can take off you other than Bitcoin.
And so framed like that is absolutely still a bargain because the penetration of the total value of all the Bitcoin that exists is circa $2 trillion.

(35:47):
And the total asset base globally is $1,000 trillion.
So it's 0.2%, 0.2% of everything that currently exists.
And so by buying Bitcoin, I'm owning a share of everything forever
that I can secure my family's future on.

(36:11):
I can look after my children, my grandchildren.
I can help the other people I care about.
I can build more businesses.
I can help drive future value of that by accelerating our move to the global free market.
And it's, it's, Bitcoin is going to allow us to unlock a human renaissance.

(36:37):
That sort of level of civilizational change.
But it's really just not obvious.
It's not obvious because it's 0.2%.
Most people still think it's worthless.
And so we are incredibly early, absolutely incredibly early.
And the second part of your question was around meme coins or something like this.

(37:02):
And it comes back to what we talked about before and that people don't have a clear sense as to what money is.
or what money should represent because we've been disassociated from it,
from this paper layer we've been using for the last 50 odd years.

(37:24):
The money is meant to represent your economic energy,
your economic contribution, the value you bring to somebody else,
which you exchange for money so that you can then use that money in the future
to pay someone else for their contribution.
Right. That's meaningful to you.

(37:45):
Fiat has broken that has broken that link.
But before fiat, we had the gold standard.
And on the gold standard, your fiat, your paper was convertible to gold underneath.
Now, most people wouldn't have an issue with gold being considered valuable or gold being considered money.

(38:08):
But gold has been money in the past.
But it's just compromised because it's not particularly useful as money.
It's hard to carry around.
It's not very divisible.
You can't really verify whether it's real gold or whether it's tungsten or something like that very easily.
And you can't send it over the Internet.

(38:29):
And, you know, you don't want to get attacked with a wrench if you're carrying a big bag of gold.
You know, there are lots of things that compromise the ability of gold to be used as money.
but most people wouldn't question that it could be or would be perfectly fine too from a value
perspective and i think the link that people realize in their minds but perhaps haven't

(38:53):
articulated is why do i think gold is valuable and i think gold is valuable because a it's been
valuable for a long time, fair enough. But more
deeper than that
is that gold is hard to produce.

(39:13):
It has these characteristics which make it a
reasonable money, like a compromised money. But ultimately
it's really hard to produce. You can't just magic
it. You can't just print more gold. You've got to go and actually mine the gold.
like the gold exists it's under the surface and there's a lot of it and it's infinite in the

(39:36):
universe but in above the ground the way you produce it is by expending a load of energy
to produce it or to mine it and that's what makes it valuable the combination of the energy expended
and its limited supply.
Now, once people realize, well, yes, almost like, yeah, of course.

(39:59):
Of course that's true.
Okay, well, I've got something great for you, right?
Bitcoin is the apex energy money.
Gold is just really inefficient energy money.
You spend a lot of energy getting out of the ground,
which is a sort of proxy for your economic energy,
and then people are willing to swap whatever they've produced for gold,

(40:22):
which has been brought into existence because you expended your energy.
They're wanting the same thing.
But it was just really inefficient.
Bitcoin is the end state.
Bitcoin is pure energy money.
You have to do work to bring it into existence.

(40:42):
And it's through a global free market process.
Everybody globally can compete to produce the Bitcoin.
They can't control the rate at which it's produced and it's fixed over time.
But everyone can compete.
There is proof of work to bring the money into existence on a free market process.

(41:07):
Absolutely, that makes it valuable.
It makes it a ton more valuable than gold.
It's not inefficient money.
it's not hard money with soft edges
that if the price goes up
they can go and dig more out the ground
it's 100% efficient energy money
with a fixed supply forever
and you can send it over the internet

(41:30):
and nobody can stop you sending or receiving it
and no one can prove you own it or don't own it
you can carry it in your head
it's apex money
there's nothing there's nothing after it there's nothing after it so if you're if you've convinced
yourself that gold has value you're going to love bitcoin once you connect the dots and you

(41:52):
frame that against a backdrop of being at 0.2 percent of all all assets globally and by owning
it you own a future share in all human economic activity forever like it's a pretty compelling
case and you and you you then balance that against

(42:14):
well i can work for something someone else prints for free
and i'll keep it in a bank account and maybe i'm allowed to use it
maybe they allow me to send it to that person over there maybe or maybe not or maybe they'll
Let me take it out of the bank, or maybe not.

(42:34):
With, and that's a melting ice cube,
and it's going to go to zero purchasing power
unless I speculate with it, unless I spend it.
And it's making me unhealthy, and it's making me poorer
because of all the secondary effects and all of these things.
Or I can opt out, and I can own the thing they can't print.

(42:55):
I can own the thing that everybody's going to connect the dots to eventually.
it's just there's just no contest
i love the way that you framed that because i think this for anybody who's spent uh
um even a just a small amount of time starting to look at bitcoin it maybe isn't initially

(43:21):
self-evident because it's something that's totally new we've we've never had something like this
that is internet native money, but also has the proof of work that something like gold does.
We've never had that before. So of course, it would be difficult to understand. Of course,
it would be hard to wrap your mind around. Of course, your initial reaction might be,

(43:43):
this is too good to be true. This is a scam. This is a Ponzi scheme. It's whatever
nasty label you want to throw on it that's been thrown on it by the legacy media or by bankers
or by politicians, you can see how that would be someone's reaction. But that's why I think it's so
important for people. And again, I want to encourage them if you've made it this far in the

(44:06):
video, spend also go and watch Joe's video, What's the Problem? It'll be linked in the show notes.
Because going that step deeper is I think what it takes because once Bitcoin clicks,
once you realize, oh, this is the real deal. Oh, this is something we've never seen before.
Oh, we are so incredibly early, 0.2% of global wealth, and realistically probably about the same number of global people that own it.

(44:37):
We're still below 1% both in its total share of wealth and in its share of human adoption.
That is insanely early.
You may feel like you've missed the boat, but you haven't.
The boat's sitting right there waiting for you.
You just have to get in.
Absolutely. And I think it's helpful for people to have sort of anchors of similar things they've seen in the past.

(45:03):
And, you know, it's an obvious example in Bitcoin, but the Internet and Bitcoin, you can think about them as sort of similar technological adoption curves.
and think about the ease of the ubiquitous nature of the internet now and the ease with which we can

(45:24):
use the internet that there's there's almost no barriers now everybody everywhere child
babies through to you know 100 year old people can safely use the internet and it's really
user-friendly and everyone has access, more or less in the West and obviously
different, different in various places. It wasn't like that in the nineties.

(45:48):
In the nineties, you needed a computer science degree to get online.
Like it was, it was almost impossible. If someone had said to you then, oh, you know,
in 25 years, 30 years time, grandma over there is going to be on her iPad all evening.
And you'd be like, no, that's not going to happen.
But, you know, it's technological adoption curves are slow moving.

(46:11):
They're slow moving, but they get there.
Eventually, just everybody uses them.
And they're slow moving from a combination of awareness, understanding and usability.
You need all of those, really, to be able to fulfill the adoption curve.
But Bitcoin is still very early It only 16 years in It like the internet in the 90s Like the level of you know Bitcoin does scores amazingly well when you think about awareness

(46:42):
Most people have heard of Bitcoin, which is incredible.
The fact that, you know, there's no, it's not a company, there's no marketing department, there's a CEO, there's nothing.
This is just an optional network for everybody.
And the fact that most people have heard of it is astounding.
the level of understanding is very low
and the level of usability

(47:04):
is also very low
we haven't reached the grammar on the iPad stage
but we will get there
it presents some challenges
but you can see them as challenges
or you can see them as opportunities
it's like
telling someone about Bitcoin now

(47:26):
is about telling someone about the internet
in the 90s when you know where it's going to be in 2025.
So the takeaway should be,
actually, I really need to learn about that.
It's true.
I mean, thanks to the internet,
you have all these amazing ways to learn about Bitcoin,
to access Bitcoin.

(47:46):
Hopefully this series is one of those ways.
Hopefully if you've stumbled across this episode
or any of the other ones,
this has been something that's encouraged you to go deeper
because we can't give you all the answers in one hour, right?
But I think maybe where I'd like to kind of just start, not wrapping up, but just kind of to go to like shift to a little bit of kind of practical moves for people.

(48:08):
Because I think they wonder, like, where do I start?
I don't, you know, especially if you're a younger person, you probably don't have a lot of savings built up.
Because, again, the system isn't designed for you to save.
But, I mean, what do you tell people when they say, okay, you know, how do I actually get started?
Do I need to put everything I have into this?
What are my options?
even if like this is this is still kind of scary maybe i've saved up a little bit of money but i

(48:30):
like how do i do this in the you know the least scary way what's the best way to actually start
for people yeah well bitcoin has always said do your own do your own research you know don't trust
anybody yep do all not us even not not us not us just do your own do your own research learn watch

(48:51):
videos consume content these things are all free they're all free accessible to everybody
and conviction builds slowly over time okay you know you'll find every day that goes by you think
about it a little bit more you understand it a little bit more you have a higher level of

(49:12):
conviction that through your own thought process through your own critical thinking approach
you're closer and closer to thinking yes this is this is what i need to be
saving in long term that doesn't happen overnight and it's probably going to take years to get to

(49:34):
the point where you know probably took you years to to get to where you are now in terms of mental
things it certainly did for me and so the way that i would think about buying or owning bitcoin
now is very different from a few years ago. And your level of exposure and risk needs to match

(49:56):
your level of conviction, because you need to know why. You need to know why you own it.
And, you know, I say quite a lot that I'm happy now when the price goes down
when measured in dollars, which is going to sound really strange to people who are listening,
who still haven't gone through that journey

(50:22):
is because of the fact that by owning Bitcoin,
I own a future share of everything forever.
And I'm going to be buying it forever.
And so the price goes down and just buy more of it.
And there's thousands, tens, hundreds of thousands of people like me,
like you.
But that's when you know you've become a Bitcoin.

(50:45):
by that change because if you're still thinking about owning Bitcoin
because someday you might be able to sell it and get more dollars,
then it hasn't really clicked as to why you're saving in Bitcoin.

(51:06):
It's because there'll be some point in the future
where you don't have to sell the Bitcoin.
You can, and people do, and everybody does.
Because the whole point of Bitcoin is to have that much longer term time preference where you can provide for your family.
You can upgrade your life.
You can do the things that fiat money does not allow you to do in whatever way makes sense for you.

(51:33):
And so, you know, we still live in the real world and you want to sell some occasionally to pay off the mortgage or send your child to college or do something, something.
no one's saying never sell it
I'm saying there'll be a point in time where you don't have to
in my view Bitcoin's going to consume everything
and

(51:54):
but you only get to that level of conviction over time
and so when you're thinking about how do I get started
don't buy it, don't go all in
like you said, should you go all in, absolutely not
because you don't know why you own it
if it goes up, you'll probably sell it and get more dollars out.

(52:15):
And you're back to where you still got more dollars.
You just got the same problem.
They're still going to zero.
Or if it falls, you'll panic and you'll sell it.
I'm never touching that again.
And it's the one thing that can help you.
And so I always say to people, just start very slowly.
I mean, you can, it's 1,000 Satoshis for a dollar pretty much.

(52:39):
even if you buy you know whatever makes sense for you like a dollar a week or a dollar a day a dollar
a month or dollar every 10 minutes it doesn't really matter just get just get started with
something and then just having that little bit you'll take more of an interest in it you start
to learn a bit more hopefully at some point you'll have you'll probably be buying it on an exchange

(53:02):
at some point you think well i know i want to learn about how i take ownership of this
how I take self-custody of this.
So it's something I truly own
rather than having an exchange look after it for me
as if it was just dollars in a bank.
Because that's just a promise that you have Bitcoin.
That's not, you don't actually have Bitcoin.

(53:23):
You only actually have Bitcoin
when you take ownership yourself.
But getting to that point takes a bit of time
and it's a bit of knowledge.
And because we're in the 90s in the internet,
you know, no one has the iPad yet.
So there's a bit of friction involved.
But it's a very empowering experience to go through it.
And it helps really cement in your own mind why Bitcoin is so powerful.

(53:46):
Because just having a fixed cap is not enough.
You've actually got to be able to own it.
And you've got to be able to be free to use it.
And no one can stop you using Bitcoin.
No one at all.
I think that's great advice for how to start because again, the only wrong amount of Bitcoin

(54:11):
to have is zero, right? You just want to, the very first step is just getting off zero. And like you
said, you can buy a dollar, you can dollar cost average, you know, set up just an automatic. There's
plenty of different ways to do that. Set up an automatic buy of $1 at whatever interval feels
good. And that's a start. And then over time, you'll start to see the value of that grow in

(54:34):
measuring in those fickle dollar terms, but you'll see it grow and you'll study more and you realize,
okay, now I'm starting to understand what I own. Cause I think that you're absolutely right.
One of the big mistakes people will make is jumping in when there's a lot of hype,
they see the number and the number going up. They don't want to, they don't want to miss out. They
think, Oh, I've got to, I've got to put it all in right now where I'm going to miss the boat.

(54:57):
not realizing how early we are, how volatile Bitcoin can be. And then they either sell on
the upside, feel like a genius, but then just are back in dollars with the same problem,
or it quote crashes down a little bit. They sell, oh, you know, this Bitcoin would have scam. And
then they ignore it for another four years until they look back and see, oh my gosh,

(55:19):
if I would have just held it, wow, I'd be doing a lot better right now. And so that's,
I think that's excellent advice for people.
Start slow, start small, and match your conviction.
I think that's, you're going to be the most comfortable doing it,
and you're going to be the most,
it's going to be the most sustainable way for you to actually save.
Not just, this isn't a speculative investment,

(55:41):
this isn't a tech stock, this is you trying to save money.
And we're bad at that because the system doesn't encourage us to do it.
Bitcoin does, but it requires a bit of a mentality shift.
and
Bitcoin is volatile
but that is a good thing
that is a good thing
and
just trust your own gut

(56:05):
Bitcoin should allow you to
sleep better at night
not worse
so if you're worrying about it
then you have too much
and so
just
pay attention to the way that you
the way that you feel about it
but
But Bitcoin is volatile, but that is good.

(56:27):
And this is a really important thing for people to think about
because people have been preconditioned,
and the whole society has been preconditioned
to try and remove all risk from everything.
But there are good risks and there are bad risks.
There is good volatility and bad volatility.

(56:49):
The most Bitcoin can go down is 100%.
it sounds pretty bad
but the most it can go up
is forever
and
this is why it's important
to know why you own it
because the dollars are absolutely
going to zero
it's just going to take longer

(57:10):
it's going to take longer
and if you think about
that the asymmetry
when you own Bitcoin
it has to be there
it has to have this skewed volatility to the upside.
Because otherwise, how could something go from being just an email

(57:32):
to being worth representing the entire value of the world?
You can't go from A to B unless it's volatile.
If it wasn't volatile, it wouldn't be worth owning.
but it's a,

(57:54):
it's not how we're sort of,
I don't have a way to do it.
We're wired in modern,
in modern society.
Yeah,
it's true.
It requires a bit of a mentality shift,
but I think once,
once you get there,
you start to realize the,
you know,
Bitcoin's not the risky thing.
The risky thing is everything except Bitcoin.

(58:15):
All these other things are risk.
Bitcoin's the one thing you can know that you can have some faith in because
it's actually predictable in a very unpredictable world. And I think that's what is so, so powerful
about it. And I love that about it should let you sleep better, not sleep worse. And I think that's,
that's absolutely true. Now I only lose sleep because I think I wish I had some more Bitcoin.

(58:37):
It works. It works both ways. Yeah, definitely. Well, well, Joe, I want to wrap up here before
we do. And for anyone again, who wants to check out your work, I'll, I'll link all of your links
in the show notes. So head down there, watch Joe's video. What's the problem? It's absolutely
outstanding. Follow him on, uh, on X and on Noster and check out his, uh, got a ton of material

(58:58):
available for you too. If you get, go deep down the rabbit hole and you want to start helping to
educate others. Uh, but is there anything else you want to leave people with? Is there anything else
maybe, uh, you know, you wish somebody had told you earlier on or, or any,
anything else you want to leave folks with before we close out?
The important thing is just to get started.

(59:21):
Just get off zero.
Because then you've started the ball rolling.
Don't underestimate the power of just owning something, even a small amount of it.
Even if it's a dollar.
Because now you're invested.

(59:42):
Now you have a reason.
You have a reason to watch that podcast.
like you're over the the hardest bit of going from zero to one
and so just just get started and then see where it goes
i think that's that's uh extremely sound advice so yeah if you're listening to this

(01:00:05):
get started uh if you've made it through this video joe's video is a great place to go next
to go deeper down the rabbit hole and understand it in a different way.
Joe, anywhere else you want to send folks, it's satsvsfiat.com.
Yeah, satsvsfiat.com.

(01:00:25):
And we have so many languages available now.
What's the problem is you can find it at satsvsfiat.com.
You can also just Google it now.
It's on the first page of Google, which is crazy.
Amazing.
Generic words.
but there's a massive amount of resources

(01:00:47):
in lots of different languages
if you want to, after seeing the video,
get the slides and share them with others
or share a video or a translation
with friends and family around the world.
Chances are we've got your language.
And so just check the YouTube subtitles
or see the extra videos in native languages
on YouTube as well.

(01:01:08):
And get in touch if you have any questions.
Fantastic. Well, Joe, thank you so much. This was excellent. I hope this encouraged people to get off zero and to just take that first step. But thanks so much for sharing your time.
Oh, it's a pleasure. Thank you for having me and thank you to the people at home for watching. I hope they found it helpful.

(01:01:29):
I'm sure very many will. Cheers.
Thanks.
or financial freedom blueprint on the Bitcoin podcast.
Bitcoin is a return to savings, real savings built on sound money.

(01:01:52):
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Fiat Money is the Problem, Bitcoin is the Solution | Joe Bryan (Saving in Bitcoin Ep. 5)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Fiat Money is the Problem, Bitcoin is the Solution | Joe Bryan (Saving in Bitcoin Ep. 5)