The Culture War - Tim Pool - $100,000 Bitcoin, Becoming A Bitcoin Millionaire, The END Of The Dollar

00:00:01.000 So a few years ago, Bitcoin spiked to around $20,000 and everybody in their grandma was

00:00:07.740 rushing to buy as much as they could.

00:00:09.640 People mortgaged their homes to purchase Bitcoin.

00:00:13.440 And then shortly after that, it dropped down to like 13 and all of these people panicked,

00:00:17.440 not literally everybody, but a lot of these people panicked and sold everything and said

00:00:21.320 it was a mistake.

00:00:22.000 I can't believe I fell for this.

00:00:23.280 Now I'm in debt.

00:00:24.380 And now Bitcoin is at $100,000.

00:00:27.080 So lesson learned, I hope, for the people who bought and just said, I'm chill.

00:00:31.180 We'll just sit back and wait, not panic.

00:00:32.980 They just got a 5x return on their investment.

00:00:37.260 Bitcoin has consistently done this.

00:00:39.220 And anybody who's been paying attention knows that, I'll just put it this way, guys.

00:00:43.400 You know, my one regret is knowing about Bitcoin since 2011 and not just using it as a bank

00:00:48.500 account, essentially.

00:00:49.780 If every time I got a paycheck, I bought Bitcoin instead of putting it in the bank, I'd have

00:00:54.300 hundreds of millions of dollars.

00:00:55.440 So the guys are laughing now because of what they know.

00:00:57.640 Well, that's actually what he does.

00:00:58.700 And I actually don't have a Bitcoin bank account, but Jack does.

00:01:01.360 Well, so Jack, let's go around and have everybody introduce themselves.

00:01:04.300 Who are you?

00:01:04.640 What do you do?

00:01:05.220 My name's Jack.

00:01:05.960 I've been in Bitcoin for 12 years.

00:01:07.880 And I'm the founder, CEO of Strike.

00:01:09.880 And we sell Bitcoin financial services.

00:01:12.260 So you're rich.

00:01:13.900 I'm all right.

00:01:15.300 How about this?

00:01:16.060 How about this?

00:01:16.480 I own zero dollars.

00:01:18.100 Yeah.

00:01:18.500 I own Bitcoin, my house, my business.

00:01:20.720 That's it.

00:01:21.280 It's been that way for a long time.

00:01:22.620 Right on, sir.

00:01:23.320 Yeah, I am Ben Askren.

00:01:24.720 I was a wrestler fighter on Wrestling Academies.

00:01:27.720 I was a Bitcoin advocate.

00:01:29.100 I didn't get into it as early as you guys.

00:01:31.120 I was 2017, but this is going into my third cycle.

00:01:34.360 So I'm all in.

00:01:36.640 Right on.

00:01:37.200 Yes.

00:01:38.020 And I'm Ben Workman.

00:01:39.140 I'm probably the face that a lot of people here aren't going to know.

00:01:41.620 But I got into Bitcoin back in November of 2013.

00:01:45.180 And then ever since then, I went down the journey.

00:01:47.040 And I really started covering the equities that were getting involved in Bitcoin.

00:01:51.740 So companies like MicroStrategy has really been what I've started to cover in the corporate adoption and companies shifting over to a Bitcoin treasury standard for themselves.

00:01:59.820 So it's got a fun ride.

00:02:01.200 And I'm really happy to be here with you guys.

00:02:02.720 I got a couple stories to start off for you guys.

00:02:04.440 So I think most people who know my Bitcoin story who watch the show have heard this, but bear with you so I can tell these gentlemen so they can laugh at me.

00:02:11.920 In 2011, in like January, I was hanging out at a hacker space in California.

00:02:16.700 Bitcoin's at 70 cents.

00:02:18.100 It was like March or something, somewhere around there.

00:02:20.360 And I look up at my buddy Jeff.

00:02:22.460 Jeff.

00:02:23.480 I'm looking at you, Jeff.

00:02:24.940 And I said, I was like, I got $5,000 saved.

00:02:28.060 I'm not going to do anything with it.

00:02:30.120 What if I just bought a bunch of this Bitcoin stuff?

00:02:33.220 I mean, it's sitting in the bank anyway.

00:02:34.980 And he goes, I don't know, man.

00:02:37.460 You're going to give all your money to some dude on the internet for what, internet points?

00:02:40.640 And then what, it's a scam?

00:02:42.260 They run off with your money?

00:02:43.140 And I was like, yeah, I guess good point.

00:02:45.080 And then I think a few months later, like $5.

00:02:48.860 And I was like, damn.

00:02:50.980 Damn, I would have had so much money.

00:02:52.560 Now I think if you do the math, it's something like $400 million.

00:02:56.620 But to be fair, come on.

00:02:58.820 If I bought Bitcoin at $0.70, as soon as it hit $5, I would have cashed out and been jumping up and down with 20-some-odd grand.

00:03:05.720 Being like, yeah.

00:03:06.760 The other funny story is I've known Max Kaiser for a really long time, Max and Stacey.

00:03:12.280 It's like a couple years after this, Bitcoin's at, I don't know, like $17.

00:03:17.520 And Max is like, Tim, hang out with me long enough.

00:03:19.680 You're going to be rich.

00:03:20.520 And I'm like, okay, Max.

00:03:21.640 And he's like, just buy Bitcoin.

00:03:23.500 I'm telling you to hold on to it.

00:03:24.800 And I was like, yeah, I'll buy Bitcoin.

00:03:26.300 I don't know, whatever.

00:03:27.060 And I sold what little Bitcoin I had when I needed some cash for rent.

00:03:30.320 And if I had just listened to what Max was telling me, I'd probably have $100 million.

00:03:35.940 So then, you know, regret, I suppose, at some point, a couple years after that, I was just like, I'm just going to buy a bunch of Bitcoin.

00:03:42.400 And so in the mid-2010s or whatever, I bought a good amount.

00:03:45.260 And I'm very, very happy with my purchase.

00:03:47.920 Nice.

00:03:48.440 But tell me about where you guys are at.

00:03:50.120 So, well, I was telling these guys before, and we were saying the Microsoft, they just put it up for vote of their company should buy it as a treasure reserve asset.

00:03:57.940 Bitcoin, it was 99.45, do not buy it.

00:04:01.100 And I said, to me, that's like what society is at right now is 99.45, don't understand Bitcoin.

00:04:07.580 There's probably 0.5 to do.

00:04:09.500 And you have to take a few steps to really understand Bitcoin.

00:04:12.460 And I think the very, very first step that most people don't understand is what is money.

00:04:18.520 They don't understand that.

00:04:20.240 And if you can't understand what is money, you obviously won't get Bitcoin.

00:04:23.140 And then, you know, the second step is, well, what is good money?

00:04:26.580 Like what values do I want the money that I hold to have?

00:04:31.120 And so, you know, like I, most of my liquid assets are in Bitcoin, but Jack's further.

00:04:36.100 Jack doesn't have a bank account.

00:04:37.280 He said, I think he probably talked me into it, but I'll probably talk to him more afterwards and go all the way, all the way down that rabbit hole.

00:04:43.660 But, you know, so once you understand what is money and what is good money, then you can start taking the road to Bitcoin.

00:04:48.040 And if you don't understand those things, you may just be in for the number go up.

00:04:51.480 Oh, number went up.

00:04:52.280 I made money.

00:04:52.800 Oh, great.

00:04:53.520 And that's it.

00:04:54.040 You don't understand.

00:04:54.440 That's all you understand.

00:04:55.300 Well, so you transact everything in Bitcoin?

00:04:58.840 Yeah.

00:04:59.080 Well, I mean, I approach it with first principle of the dollar only goes down with time.

00:05:06.140 How much do you want to own of a thing that only goes down?

00:05:09.480 None of it.

00:05:10.560 OK, Bitcoin only goes up with time.

00:05:12.620 How much of the thing that only goes up do you want to own as much as possible?

00:05:15.680 So I looked myself in the mirror at some point.

00:05:17.880 I said, well, why do I own any dollars if they only go down?

00:05:20.480 Is it because I've been programmed and my first principle of thinking has been stripped from my brain by going to university?

00:05:28.700 Like, why do I own any of these things?

00:05:32.780 And so the way I set up my life and our company, we sell this product, but I'm not even here to be a salesman, is I get my paycheck, direct deposit, 100% converted into Bitcoin.

00:05:41.180 And it's an account routing number.

00:05:42.820 And I pay my bills from my Bitcoin balance as well.

00:05:45.440 So I spend on credit cards.

00:05:46.580 Credit cards are a great product for me because I get to spend the thing that only goes down without having to own it.

00:05:51.080 Right. And so I got whatever, Amex, Chase Sapphire, Fidelity card.

00:05:55.020 And then at the end of the month, my account pulls from my Bitcoin, converts to Bitcoin, pays the bills.

00:06:01.180 Automatically.

00:06:01.720 Automatically.

00:06:02.360 And people get really hung up on the tax burden.

00:06:06.480 But what people don't understand is Bitcoin is taxed as a capital gain.

00:06:09.180 Capital gain means you made money.

00:06:10.680 Capital gain means Bitcoin went up.

00:06:12.680 And so, yes, the fact that I have to share my gain with the government, we can talk about, you know, the philosophical debate all day long.

00:06:20.020 But the reality is this.

00:06:21.920 I'd rather give the government a little bit of my gain than have gotten debased and inflated.

00:06:26.620 That's the ultimate tax is if I'm sitting in dollars.

00:06:29.460 So the fact that I'm in the best performing asset of all time and I have to share a little bit with the government when I pay a bill, that's a way better deal than just getting persistently poor forever.

00:06:39.060 And so, listen, like Bitcoin's up over 100% this calendar year.

00:06:43.760 100% is a fancier way for those at home of saying that things more than doubled.

00:06:47.660 More than doubled if it's my base checking account, if it's my capital asset.

00:06:51.720 That's another way of saying my life's gotten over half off this year.

00:06:54.920 So, right?

00:06:55.880 I mean, in fiat, in dollar terms, what is just getting by today is poverty tomorrow.

00:07:02.920 In Bitcoin, what is poverty today is good enough for tomorrow, right?

00:07:08.100 So I've reversed my life entirely.

00:07:10.620 Things get cheaper for me.

00:07:11.600 But you know what's crazy, too, about the taxes is if you end up owing taxes at the end of the year, they charge you the inflationary interest.

00:07:18.720 Oh, yeah.

00:07:19.100 So it's like if you owe 100 bucks in January, next January, it's $104.

00:07:24.000 You've got to pay them more because you lost.

00:07:26.340 Yeah.

00:07:26.620 That's crazy.

00:07:27.440 So crazy.

00:07:28.500 Yeah.

00:07:28.640 And Jack's done a real big service for common people, right?

00:07:31.840 Because he's putting it in a way now where it becomes very familiar to everybody.

00:07:35.420 I think early on in Bitcoin and when everyone's going down their own journey, people start with it as this really speculative asset.

00:07:42.540 And they think that really the only thing you can do with it is trade it.

00:07:45.380 That's kind of the way everyone viewed it for a very long time.

00:07:48.480 And that was actually how I started out.

00:07:50.420 I bought Bitcoin back in 2013, made the joke with my dad saying maybe we should just buy 1,000, see how it works.

00:07:55.940 Oh, man.

00:07:56.460 We didn't do that, unfortunately.

00:07:58.780 But then it went from $270 to $1,400.

00:08:03.420 I sold the initial amount that I bought, thought I was a trading fan, right?

00:08:07.860 Like it was a good feeling.

00:08:08.720 I thought I won, right?

00:08:10.260 And now time's gone on and you realize what it is that you were holding.

00:08:13.720 And it took me a couple of years, probably until 2017, to really have it click for me what was happening.

00:08:19.900 And that when you're looking at Bitcoin, the beauty that it brings to us is it gives everyone an education in economics that they're not going to get anywhere else.

00:08:28.360 Yes.

00:08:28.660 Right?

00:08:28.880 Most people, when you go to school, they'll teach you all your standard talking points around inflation.

00:08:34.480 But you don't really understand how it impacts your life and the life of the people you care about.

00:08:39.220 And the reason that Bitcoin really grabbed me was because it was the only one of these digital assets that people told other people they care about about it.

00:08:49.320 They weren't trying to get people into a speculative play to pump it.

00:08:52.200 Like you're telling your family members.

00:08:53.780 You're telling your close friends.

00:08:55.220 Like it's one of the only assets that you find these communities going, no, really, I want you to get into this.

00:09:00.800 And I want you to get into this because I see what's happening broadly in the world that you're not seeing yet.

00:09:06.220 It's a protective thing that we can bring to the people we care about.

00:09:08.880 And I think that's a really big component of what Bitcoin's brought.

00:09:12.780 And it's really helped get the message out in a way that shows people there's an alternative now.

00:09:17.620 There didn't used to be.

00:09:18.460 You used to be trapped in the fiat system.

00:09:20.540 Now there's an alternative and Jack's building the rails for how the rest of the world is going to be able to use this.

00:09:25.000 Well, the what is money is the critical piece in my opinion.

00:09:28.180 I couldn't agree with Ben more.

00:09:30.480 What is it?

00:09:31.400 So money is the market good that you acquire not to consume.

00:09:37.060 Very simple but super important.

00:09:38.680 I acquire a cheeseburger to eat it.

00:09:41.200 I acquire a plane or a car to transport me.

00:09:44.860 I acquire money not to eat it, not to move me around, not to live in it like a house.

00:09:50.080 I acquire it to store, save, and exchange my labor, my effort, my time, my energy.

00:09:56.760 Money is your time and energy in an abstracted form.

00:09:59.020 Before money, we had barter.

00:10:00.900 In a society of 10 people, barter is fine.

00:10:03.420 Hey, you go hunt.

00:10:04.660 You go build the homes.

00:10:05.580 You take care of the kids.

00:10:06.660 At dinner, we all exchange our services and our contributions to society.

00:10:10.340 You want an economy of 8 billion people.

00:10:12.320 You need an instrument to abstract your time, energy, effort, labor into a monetary market

00:10:18.060 good that you acquire, again, not to consume it.

00:10:21.180 Now, people think money is what we decide we want it to be.

00:10:25.980 If I wanted water bottles to be money, I could be money.

00:10:28.860 Bottle caps.

00:10:29.620 Right.

00:10:30.100 Totally.

00:10:31.040 Yeah.

00:10:31.740 And trading cards.

00:10:33.000 And because the government decided dollars are money, then that's what money is.

00:10:35.940 Money is not.

00:10:36.960 Money is a technology just like an airplane.

00:10:39.380 If I decided an airplane was a banana and I tried to fly here to do this podcast on a

00:10:44.720 banana, I would have killed myself.

00:10:46.240 There would have been physical harm because it's not the right technology to have flown

00:10:49.640 me through the clouds.

00:10:50.880 Same with money is if I decide money is dollars, it's a poor technology.

00:10:56.720 I will just end up poor.

00:10:58.140 I will end up with less food, less housing, less travel, less kids, less vacation, less

00:11:02.580 stuff.

00:11:03.900 So money, the most important property of money as a market good is scarcity.

00:11:09.820 How hard is it to create more of it?

00:11:11.700 Because I'll tell you this.

00:11:12.400 If they can debase your money and money is your time and energy in an abstracted form

00:11:16.140 by proxy, they're debasing you.

00:11:17.880 Yep.

00:11:18.140 When they're making the money less valuable, they're making you less valuable.

00:11:21.100 But when the, when the, when the, so at first it's gold and precious metals.

00:11:24.840 Yep.

00:11:25.060 Right.

00:11:25.420 So if we go back, it's a, I actually have these really cool, I have a silver Greek coin

00:11:29.180 and gold was valuable.

00:11:32.160 I guess we largely believe because it's, it's, it's easy to press and it's relatively scarce.

00:11:37.560 So that way.

00:11:38.800 Durable.

00:11:39.540 Right.

00:11:40.020 Yes.

00:11:40.240 So these, these rulers were like, okay, it's going to be hard for someone to counterfeit

00:11:44.320 this.

00:11:44.540 And then we can assert that this is, this is a valuable thing.

00:11:47.620 And then at some point you get people saying like, well, I'll store it in the bank.

00:11:53.000 It's too heavy.

00:11:53.500 And then they'll write me a note saying, here's how much I got.

00:11:56.800 And then eventually it's like, I'll just give you the note.

00:11:58.980 I don't got to go get the gold.

00:12:00.000 You can just hand this to them and they'll give you the gold.

00:12:01.600 And then eventually the government went, we don't even need the gold.

00:12:04.720 Severed the gold from it and said, now you have government pieces of paper that we determine

00:12:09.140 is valuable.

00:12:09.740 And if you try and copy it, we'll lock you up and through threat of force and violence,

00:12:13.540 they maintain that control.

00:12:14.600 But now that they can print and access in to infinity and largely because it's become

00:12:19.740 a digital light, like the, the, the U S currency, I believe is a what?

00:12:23.220 Like 98% digital.

00:12:24.920 They can just type in a computer, enter, boom, there's money.

00:12:28.660 Instantly.

00:12:29.060 All of your money becomes worth less.

00:12:30.960 The easy way to explain it is if there are 10 apples in the market being shared between

00:12:35.680 people, there's a value of that apple.

00:12:38.420 If the government comes in and then just gives everybody at the same time, a ton of money,

00:12:43.460 they're all, all of their, all of their, like they've just given themselves half the

00:12:47.900 value of that labor force.

00:12:49.160 They come in, buy all the apples.

00:12:50.960 So that's happened with other monies.

00:12:52.300 They bought the, the rise stone, um, you know, and they were using that for a currency and

00:12:57.180 then, uh, some British explorer came and they, they mined it all and they brought it

00:13:00.640 in and it debases the currency immediately.

00:13:02.640 The other thing I think we should note that we haven't said yet is we have been talking

00:13:06.220 strictly about us dollars and us dollars is actually the best fiat currency.

00:13:11.500 Most fiat currencies are significantly worse than the U S dollar, uh, inflating at much

00:13:15.860 higher rates.

00:13:16.580 And because we've had the world reserve currency, we've been like insulated from further debasement,

00:13:21.900 but you know, of the 8 billion people, 300 some million live in America and we've had

00:13:26.800 the best treatment of fiat currency, but there's a lot of countries who are way worse

00:13:30.540 off where, you know, they get their paycheck on Friday by Monday.

00:13:33.480 They're, they're, that's, that's, that's true.

00:13:36.180 But I'd like using the U S dollar because now it's real in America.

00:13:39.260 It used to be, you guys don't understand what the government's doing.

00:13:41.840 Trust me.

00:13:42.120 If you lived in Nigeria, you'd recognize it.

00:13:44.280 Now, if you live in Manhattan, you recognize it.

00:13:46.480 Yeah.

00:13:46.640 Yeah.

00:13:46.860 And really for me, it's no man should work for what another man can print.

00:13:50.560 And so I don't, I don't do dollars strictly be out of just principle.

00:13:55.660 I will not live my life and contribute my time and energy for what another man can print

00:14:01.340 the properties, money needs scarcity is the most important, but it needs to be saleable

00:14:05.620 and liquid.

00:14:06.120 You need to be able to exchange it at any point for whatever you need.

00:14:09.200 You need to be a liquidity needs to be divisible.

00:14:11.680 It's a measuring instrument in an economy.

00:14:13.460 It needs to be able to measure a grain of sand or a professional sports team.

00:14:16.940 So it needs to be able to scale to any transaction size.

00:14:19.420 It needs to be portable.

00:14:20.300 I got to be able to move it.

00:14:21.520 I need to be able to verify its authenticity.

00:14:23.860 If I can't tell the difference between a fake and a real one, these are the properties that

00:14:28.000 define if a money is a good technology to solve the problem.

00:14:31.480 I'll tell you where gold failed.

00:14:33.100 Gold failed.

00:14:34.000 When you want a digital economy of billions of people, you were reliant on a central party

00:14:39.620 corporation or government to achieve transaction finality.

00:14:42.560 When gold was physical in the local, I went to the local butcher, gave him a gold coin.

00:14:47.760 I went to the local tailor, gave him a gold coin.

00:14:49.680 And I, it was peer to peer.

00:14:50.800 Gold was fine.

00:14:52.140 As soon as we scaled the world to billions and we were on the internet, I have to deposit

00:14:56.640 my gold to the government and trust that Bitcoin is digital gold in this.

00:15:01.500 It's not only a physical bear instrument, but it's a, it's an, a network.

00:15:06.160 It's a network that can achieve transaction finality without the central party.

00:15:10.860 That's why it's better.

00:15:12.180 I know this is a little cliche to say, but I, you really need to just think about it.

00:15:17.340 But the U S dollar system is a Ponzi scheme.

00:15:21.560 Yes.

00:15:22.000 White literally.

00:15:22.900 And in, and the reason Ponzi schemes are illegal is because they're, this dude was just basically

00:15:27.320 like, Hey, I'll do what the government's doing.

00:15:28.720 And then they're like, no, only we can do that.

00:15:30.780 We have the guns.

00:15:31.480 So the way I have to describe it in the simplest of terms is if the four of us all agree that,

00:15:37.880 you know, we're going to trade this tech deck over here, I'm going to give it to you for

00:15:41.940 a dollar.

00:15:42.340 You give Tim for a dollar that all of the value of the labor that we're doing is, is inside

00:15:48.160 our community.

00:15:48.880 Along comes some dude with a gun who says, I got a tech deck and he holds up this weird

00:15:54.320 piece of garbage.

00:15:55.160 And he says, I can now insert it into with, with, with doing no labor.

00:16:00.040 You will now accept my goods for your labor.

00:16:02.700 So what the government basically does by printing money, they do no labor, but convince you to

00:16:08.080 give you theirs.

00:16:09.160 Exactly.

00:16:09.580 They use that to fund wars and other who knows what hamsters on drugs, fighting and I'm not

00:16:15.540 even kidding.

00:16:16.160 Yeah.

00:16:16.340 They took hamsters, they gave them cocaine and made them fight.

00:16:18.800 And it's like, okay, I, I do understand.

00:16:21.180 That sounds like a useful, uh, useful way of spending money.

00:16:23.740 They wanted to know what cocaine did to mammals, whatever.

00:16:26.800 I, I, I kind of think maybe you shouldn't print money and then give out these grants to

00:16:31.120 just do these things.

00:16:33.420 But once the government was able to have an infinite Ponzi scheme, the insanity started

00:16:38.640 to envelop our society.

00:16:40.060 Yeah.

00:16:40.900 There's a great, I love the book, Fiat Ruins Everything by Jimmy Song.

00:16:43.700 I don't know how you feel about that book, but he kind of talks about this.

00:16:46.340 It's a process where you can print essentially infinite amount of money and you can do whatever

00:16:49.340 you want.

00:16:50.360 Uh, nuts.

00:16:51.260 You, you go, you absolutely go nuts.

00:16:53.000 You know, the one that I thought would be most relevant to kind of what you talk about

00:16:56.580 a lot is, is war.

00:16:58.040 And so most people don't understand before we could print as much money as we wanted,

00:17:02.000 we had to, we had to finance the war.

00:17:04.420 And when the war couldn't be financed, then the war was over cause we didn't have any money

00:17:08.400 for it.

00:17:08.740 And so we had to sell war bonds.

00:17:10.520 Do you guys support the war?

00:17:11.720 Okay.

00:17:11.900 Give me your money.

00:17:12.600 If you support it, you know, you buy the bonds.

00:17:14.580 And then once you're not ready to support it, you don't buy the bond.

00:17:16.920 And then the war's over cause we can't finance it.

00:17:19.100 Now we're in these freaking forever wars cause we could just print as much money as we want.

00:17:23.320 How much did we give to Ukraine?

00:17:24.500 I don't know.

00:17:25.320 How much did we?

00:17:25.940 200 billion or something at this point.

00:17:27.140 Well, but they feel they keep failing the audits.

00:17:29.000 So like, we don't actually know cause they can't pass the audits.

00:17:32.160 I think there's an argument to be made that you can't have fiat currency without war and

00:17:36.020 you can't have war without fiat currency.

00:17:37.640 It's fair.

00:17:38.120 Yeah.

00:17:38.260 I think the last hundred years has been the century of war because the last hundred years

00:17:41.980 have been the century of nation states printing money.

00:17:44.880 Yeah.

00:17:45.320 Yeah.

00:17:46.020 I mean, in, in the, uh, it's got a good ring to it.

00:17:48.860 There will be war without fiat, but to this scale that we are seeing modern warfare exists

00:17:54.200 because the government doesn't need to ask the people to support its wars.

00:17:58.940 It just makes the money.

00:18:00.660 This is, this is a problem of just general population scale, right?

00:18:04.420 So we talk about why are people mad at cops?

00:18:06.880 Why did you, why do you end up with defund the police or why are people mad at healthcare

00:18:10.520 CEOs?

00:18:11.300 If you go back 300 years, you have a small town of a couple hundred people and there's

00:18:16.220 a guy who's known to be a dick who's dumping human waste in the river.

00:18:20.320 He shows up to buy bread and they go, you get out of here.

00:18:23.100 You, you screwing everything up for everybody.

00:18:25.260 He knows that he's got a community of people who are going to excise him.

00:18:29.780 They're going to ostracize him.

00:18:31.440 All the people are like, no, no, no.

00:18:32.860 You can't be exiled or like, we can't do these things.

00:18:35.740 Now, a corporate CEO who's screwing people over and knows it can walk into any Starbucks,

00:18:41.600 any store, and there's never going to be any social consequence.

00:18:44.700 So the U.S. government, the people know, they're ripping them off.

00:18:48.940 The people know these wars are bad.

00:18:51.120 They continually express their distaste for these wars.

00:18:54.140 But the people who are making the war machine happen have anonymity and will walk into any

00:18:58.700 store, any building, and no one's going to say anything.

00:19:01.480 There's no, there's no shame.

00:19:02.780 There's no shunning.

00:19:03.560 There's nothing.

00:19:04.600 Because of that, they can keep printing money and keep ripping us off while we know it's

00:19:07.760 happening.

00:19:08.340 The misuse of the dollar is really what's going to be its own downfall, right?

00:19:12.060 We saw it particularly when the U.S. weaponized the financial system against Russia when the

00:19:17.320 Ukraine war started.

00:19:18.800 And that was really a big red flag to all the other nations to evaluate their standing.

00:19:23.660 If you're completely reliant on the SWIFT network and the U.S. dollar, your country is

00:19:28.120 now vulnerable to another country changing their opinion of you, and they can start cutting

00:19:32.700 you off from the economics of the world.

00:19:34.540 And I think that was a really eye-opening event where now that we do finally have an

00:19:40.960 alternative that's decentralized, that's not held within any one country's borders, they're

00:19:46.720 looking at this as an opportunity to say, look, if the United States is going to bully

00:19:51.220 us around by having the global reserve currency right now, and they're going to put pressure

00:19:56.980 on our economics of our country if we don't do what they're looking for, we have to look

00:20:01.300 for an alternative.

00:20:02.380 And you're seeing it with BRICS right now, right?

00:20:04.360 Russia's starting to mine Bitcoin.

00:20:06.500 And they're starting to set up mining facilities in other BRICS nations as well.

00:20:10.260 And that's important to note because the reason that they have to do that is because not every

00:20:15.940 country has the luxury the U.S. is going to have if we try to start a strategic Bitcoin

00:20:20.640 reserve where we have to buy it in the dollars we print, right?

00:20:24.300 We create the currency that we're accumulating Bitcoin in because we have the luxury of being

00:20:28.500 the global reserve currency.

00:20:29.920 If you look at all the other nations across the globe, they don't have that same luxury.

00:20:34.440 A lot of them don't have the military power.

00:20:36.440 A lot of them don't have the economic power.

00:20:38.200 And a lot of them surrendered their own currencies to use the U.S. dollar.

00:20:42.880 So if you're one of those nations and you see a country, even like the United States,

00:20:47.480 evaluating, making a change, whether it's defensive or not, right?

00:20:50.940 It's a defensive move.

00:20:52.120 We shouldn't pretend that it isn't right now because the other big nations have said,

00:20:56.600 we're going to look at bringing this on.

00:20:58.340 But if you're a smaller country that doesn't have the luxury of printing the currency that

00:21:03.320 you're going to buy and accumulate the Bitcoin in, you have to move first before the

00:21:08.180 giants get in.

00:21:08.940 I do like your point, though, in that because it's the same thing in 2008, is that if there's

00:21:15.080 no punishment consequences for poor behavior, society can't function.

00:21:19.520 2008, the government didn't let the business cycle complete.

00:21:22.540 If the banks messed up, then they should have gone under, right?

00:21:26.120 And point being there is what I do think we're living through today with the red wave in the

00:21:30.220 recent election, is a reversion back to what's real, is if you don't allow yourself to be

00:21:35.820 governed by the immutable laws of Mother Nature, you screw humanity up.

00:21:41.420 We are destined to be—that's what gold was.

00:21:43.740 Gold was a good money for a long time because it's governed by the laws of Mother Nature.

00:21:48.140 If you try and abstract your own universe, like your own Narnia, and govern human beings

00:21:52.620 and society abstracted too far away from Mother Nature, you screw things up.

00:21:56.240 That's when people are like, I'm just going to have a Beyond Beef burger instead of a

00:21:59.240 ribeye.

00:21:59.960 Are you—well, are you nuts, right?

00:22:01.820 That's when humans get so abstracted away and it's like—but what I'm inspired by right

00:22:06.620 now in America is a reversion back to what's real.

00:22:09.160 Fuck those burgers.

00:22:10.300 I'm going to eat a steak, right?

00:22:12.500 At some point, people were educating me in university that the way government was spending

00:22:17.580 money and going to war was a good thing, right?

00:22:20.080 At some point, someone was saying, no, Bitcoin's bad.

00:22:22.240 But now, Trump wants to buy Bitcoin.

00:22:24.480 Now, people are eating ribeyes.

00:22:25.860 I do think that we will see a reversion back to the means.

00:22:28.940 There's a lot of cyclical behavior in this stuff, and we got too far abstracted, society

00:22:33.480 did, and punished badly for not being governed by the universe, in my opinion.

00:22:40.060 Well, so let me ask you guys a question.

00:22:41.840 Trump's talked about a strategic Bitcoin reserve.

00:22:44.300 I mean, if Trump buys $500 billion in Bitcoin overnight to create a reserve, I mean, the

00:22:53.860 price is going to jump, what, 20% instantly or what?

00:22:55.920 More.

00:22:56.200 More.

00:22:57.420 Right.

00:22:58.040 Because certain people just aren't going to sell.

00:22:59.500 Like, I'm just not going to sell my Bitcoin.

00:23:01.360 He's probably not.

00:23:02.060 He's probably not.

00:23:03.060 You know, so you have probably this really large illiquid supply where we're just not

00:23:06.640 going to sell it at probably any price.

00:23:08.500 Well, I mean, Bitcoin's the only—they call it a scarcity.

00:23:11.960 It's the only thing with an actual fixed supply.

00:23:14.720 In financial markets, with more demand comes more supply.

00:23:17.380 If everyone wants an iPhone, Apple can make as many iPhones.

00:23:20.920 You can't make any more of this thing, so we've never seen price discovery in something.

00:23:25.680 The only thing that's as scarce as Bitcoin is your life, is time.

00:23:30.540 You're right?

00:23:31.260 So isn't there a—so I lost about 20 Bitcoin 12 years ago.

00:23:35.920 I had a laptop.

00:23:36.640 RIP.

00:23:37.360 What are you thinking, Tim?

00:23:38.700 Well, I mean, it was worth something.

00:23:40.880 It was like $27 on my laptop, and so it got destroyed in a fire.

00:23:46.200 Not by fire, but by the sprinklers.

00:23:47.920 Just wiped the whole thing out.

00:23:48.960 And I was like, whatever.

00:23:49.660 And I threw it in the garbage.

00:23:50.840 And I was like, pfft.

00:23:52.300 But there's an attrition to Bitcoin.

00:23:54.120 So Bitcoin's got a cap of $21 million.

00:23:56.300 It's currently at $19.79 million.

00:23:58.760 Have been mined.

00:23:59.860 Have been mined, right.

00:24:00.920 And so there—and it's becoming exponentially harder.

00:24:03.100 I don't think we'll ever actually reach the $21 million technically, right?

00:24:06.120 $21.40, I believe.

00:24:07.300 $21.40?

00:24:07.880 I think so.

00:24:08.540 But in that time period, there is going to be loss.

00:24:11.620 Yep.

00:24:11.820 I mean, the scariest thing is when people put in the wrong address.

00:24:14.180 Yep.

00:24:15.040 Gone.

00:24:15.700 Yeah.

00:24:16.280 I mean, this means simply mathematically over time, Bitcoin will be lost.

00:24:21.080 Correct, yeah.

00:24:21.860 So what do we do?

00:24:22.920 Well, we think like—I want to say the estimate 20%, 25% are already lost, I believe is what

00:24:27.540 estimates are, I mean, then it's even more scarce.

00:24:32.040 I mean, we're saying the positive thing about it is that it is scarce and can't be recreated,

00:24:36.180 and that's—no other asset in humanity is like that.

00:24:39.680 And so that's the good thing, not really the bad thing.

00:24:42.640 If you're saying, how are people going to transact because we're going to run out of it,

00:24:45.600 I just don't see that being the case.

00:24:46.920 And Bitcoin can be broken down, like Jack said, right, to visibility.

00:24:52.240 One 100 millionth of a Bitcoin is a Satoshi.

00:24:54.560 So it goes 0.000090.

00:24:57.520 So it can be broken down to pretty small parts.

00:24:59.620 As long as the monetary unit is divisible, it can scale to society.

00:25:03.820 So it should be fine.

00:25:05.380 What is—do you guys view and think there'll be an upper limit to the value of a Bitcoin?

00:25:11.880 Well, you know, I like—I don't remember who said this first, so I'm obviously stealing

00:25:17.900 this from somebody, but they say that the U.S. dollar is in—you know, they can print

00:25:22.960 into infinity, which they are, right?

00:25:25.220 And so—but Bitcoin is 21 million over infinity, right?

00:25:29.700 So infinity, all value in planet Earth is going to go into Bitcoin, into 21 million.

00:25:34.540 It all depends on the denominator you're using, right?

00:25:37.280 Like right now, the predominant way that we're valuing everything is in U.S. dollars,

00:25:41.220 right?

00:25:41.580 It's Bitcoin, U.S. dollars.

00:25:43.440 But I saw a chart the other day that I thought made a really good point in terms of how you're

00:25:47.180 looking at the value of Bitcoin, and what people are looking at is they're looking at

00:25:49.980 the dollar like it's stable and Bitcoin's going up, where in reality, it's Bitcoin

00:25:54.160 that's stable and the dollar's going down.

00:25:56.420 So when you start changing the way you're thinking about it, it changes how you look

00:26:00.780 at the value of Bitcoin.

00:26:01.980 But I think that the quote you're looking for on a lot of this was, if the dollar has

00:26:06.460 no limit, or if the dollar has no limit—

00:26:08.940 The dollar has no bottom, Bitcoin has no top.

00:26:10.820 That's what it was.

00:26:11.500 Yes.

00:26:11.900 That's what I was looking for.

00:26:12.440 We got a third try.

00:26:13.500 We got it.

00:26:13.900 Let's go.

00:26:14.500 Three, we got it.

00:26:15.720 So I think Bitcoin does go up in value, and dollars do go down in value simultaneously.

00:26:21.760 Yes.

00:26:22.140 I think you could actually do a—I don't think it'd be that complicated to actually find

00:26:26.120 the true stability of Bitcoin and its gains, simply by looking at purchasing power, comparing

00:26:33.500 it to perhaps houses might not—

00:26:35.400 A house is a good one.

00:26:36.360 They got a chart of that.

00:26:37.500 Get that one up there.

00:26:38.160 That's a good one.

00:26:38.780 A chart of—

00:26:39.340 My wife loves real estate, and I just order this chart all the time.

00:26:42.780 I think the best—to me, the best way to measure Bitcoin is in energy terms, because

00:26:48.980 again, money is intended to be your time and energy in an abstracted form.

00:26:52.500 So how can I measure in energy terms?

00:26:54.720 So I think Bitcoin charted against oil is fascinating.

00:26:57.580 I don't think people—

00:26:57.940 Yeah, that's probably a good one.

00:26:58.660 I don't think people measure that enough, right?

00:27:00.200 Because really what you're trying to understand is the hardness of the asset.

00:27:03.620 Bitcoin's going to go up against Nigerian Naira more than dollars, because it's harder

00:27:08.140 to make more dollars than Naira.

00:27:09.620 But Bitcoin's going to go up more in dollar terms than penthouses, because it's harder

00:27:13.900 to make more penthouses than dollars, right?

00:27:15.780 And you can find your denominator.

00:27:17.020 Oil, yeah.

00:27:18.380 This is actually a really—I think oil is a good way to do it, as oil is strong.

00:27:22.700 Longer time frame, like five years on this one.

00:27:24.620 Yeah, and so really what you—

00:27:26.220 Oh, yeah, right.

00:27:26.980 On the chart right there, yeah.

00:27:27.880 Really what you want to do all—

00:27:30.260 Oh, boom.

00:27:30.960 Look at that.

00:27:31.780 Yeah.

00:27:33.120 And what you really want to philosophically understand here is—

00:27:35.860 It looks much more stable when you look at it this way.

00:27:37.580 That's actually only a year and a half, I think.

00:27:39.920 So it looks like it starts April of 2023, I believe.

00:27:42.200 Oh, I see.

00:27:42.660 And that is all.

00:27:43.260 That's all they have.

00:27:44.020 Or 2022, maybe.

00:27:45.180 Somewhere there.

00:27:45.860 So the point I'm making is a lot of people are like, Bitcoin's not going up.

00:27:51.320 The dollar's going down.

00:27:52.040 Well, it's both, actually.

00:27:53.320 As more nations adopt Bitcoin and start mining it, Russia, they want to build reserves of it.

00:27:58.760 That demand is pulling on the existing supply, which is limited.

00:28:02.600 At the same time, the dollar is miserable.

00:28:06.300 It has been—I mean, one of the things that gets Trump the election is inflation.

00:28:10.860 Yep, absolutely.

00:28:11.340 So we got these salami packs.

00:28:13.400 I always tell the salami story.

00:28:15.340 A couple years ago, these little packs of salamis were $7, and it's like three different kinds,

00:28:20.100 like a red pepper one, a garlic one.

00:28:21.380 And we'd buy them and load the fridge up because people love them.

00:28:24.000 And you dip it and whatever, you put cheese on it.

00:28:26.080 They're $13.99 now.

00:28:27.560 And it's been a couple years.

00:28:28.680 I'm like, the price has doubled for this.

00:28:31.780 But like you were saying, people look at the dollar like it's a stable thing, like it's the line when it is not.

00:28:38.420 And they fundamentally understand that in their lives, right?

00:28:41.620 We see this notion of core CPI, right?

00:28:44.880 Like they keep coming up with new ways to show what inflation looks like on the dollar.

00:28:49.440 And when you look at core CPI, you can go, sure, as long as you don't need food or utilities or gas in your car, right?

00:28:57.720 Things everybody needs.

00:28:58.700 Well, that's been a fake metric forever also.

00:29:00.720 That's the point, is that when you have a currency like the U.S. dollar, they can play games to generate the outcome that they want to communicate to you.

00:29:08.520 Anyone who goes to the grocery store knows inflation is not in the 2% to 3% range.

00:29:12.580 You want to know the sad story, the sad thing of that $5,000 from the beginning I told you about, I've never spent it.

00:29:21.080 It was my savings, and I've only saved more on top of it since then, got a different job, got more contracts.

00:29:26.380 Wait, but are you saving in dollars or saving in Bitcoin?

00:29:29.260 So now it's both.

00:29:31.820 Now, you know, I'm very pleased to say that Bitcoin is about $1,000-something.

00:29:38.580 And I was just like, it went through those cycles where, so I had about 20 Bitcoin again in like, I can't remember what year it was, maybe 2012.

00:29:49.540 It hit $20 at some point, and then I was like, from $5 to $20, I get $400 cash.

00:29:55.740 I should use that.

00:29:56.660 I can get a new phone or I can pay my rent.

00:29:58.660 I did.

00:29:59.740 Wish I didn't.

00:30:00.600 But at the time, it's like, who really knew exactly where the top was going to be?

00:30:05.220 And this was Mt. Gox.

00:30:07.260 This was particularly difficult to transact.

00:30:09.720 It was hard to find.

00:30:10.860 The one thing, too, going back to 2011 when I was saying it was at $0.70, people are going to look at Bitcoin now with Coinbase or Gemini or SwanBitcoin and things like that, where they can just buy it and it's relatively easy.

00:30:23.620 It was very difficult back then.

00:30:24.860 There was nothing.

00:30:25.560 There was nothing.

00:30:26.200 I had the original Bitcoin app, and I was getting Bitcoin from the Bitcoin faucet.

00:30:30.780 Do you guys remember that one?

00:30:31.520 Yeah, yeah.

00:30:32.680 Man, was it 0.05 Bitcoin for free?

00:30:35.080 Yeah.

00:30:35.300 And you just clicked the button.

00:30:37.180 It's like it was worth nothing back then.

00:30:39.860 But I had that $5,000 in savings that I said maybe I'll buy Bitcoin with.

00:30:44.840 Never spent.

00:30:46.100 And guess what that is worth today?

00:30:47.560 It's worth probably a third of where it was at the time when I had it.

00:30:50.460 So I have just lost the majority of the value of that savings.

00:30:53.400 And if I had bought Bitcoin with it, I'd be worth like $400 million.

00:30:55.900 Well, what's interesting is the value of it today in what?

00:30:59.820 In Bitcoin terms, it's gotten demolished.

00:31:02.060 It could have been, you know, hundreds of thousands of Bitcoins to now it's like 0.000.

00:31:06.460 In housing terms, in dollar terms.

00:31:08.620 So what you realize is measuring inflation is on a per unit basis, right?

00:31:12.240 It's like if CPI is measured at 3%, but housing is 20% year over year, you got to be getting a 21% raise every single year just to be making progress to be a homeowner, right?

00:31:21.080 So maybe a good metric isn't housing or oil, but, you know, $5,000 can only get you so far.

00:31:27.660 $400 million, that can buy you like three whole senators.

00:31:32.260 That's funny.

00:31:33.300 The other one that I like, the other chart I like showing people because they say, oh, you know, one of the bigger, it's too volatile, right?

00:31:39.040 If you look at, say, the 200-week moving average, it's up only, right?

00:31:43.000 And so you don't get into Bitcoin for this, you know, quick number go up.

00:31:47.140 You get into it because you understand it and you want a long-term hold.

00:31:50.620 And if you look at the 200-week moving average, it's up only.

00:31:54.060 Yeah, but people got to grow up, man, with the whole – scared of volatility.

00:31:57.020 No, I'm serious.

00:31:57.940 When you go to the doctor and they're checking your heart and your heart looks like a flat line, what does that mean?

00:32:04.860 What if it's slightly going up?

00:32:06.820 That means you're dead.

00:32:08.540 That means you're dead.

00:32:09.520 So volatility is life, right?

00:32:11.580 Like the central banks have tried to suck volatility out of this world and price control everything.

00:32:17.900 Volatility is life.

00:32:18.780 If you want to be a man and you want to own the future of this world, then own something that's got life in it.

00:32:23.980 Don't be a bitch.

00:32:24.820 Sorry.

00:32:25.360 But you were completely correct.

00:32:27.140 And the issue is the stability of the dollar is an illusion to the average person.

00:32:30.500 Correct.

00:32:30.960 They look at their bank account and they see $100 and like, I have $100.

00:32:34.020 They're not tracking the price of everything else because if they were, they'd be like, the dollar is going like this, like crazy.

00:32:39.460 The fact that overnight oil could jump 30% or whatever and then all of a sudden all your prices are skyrocketing.

00:32:48.580 We end up seeing that in the past four years with inflation.

00:32:51.480 The cost of goods became erratic.

00:32:53.080 They spiked.

00:32:53.940 And everybody, you know, they interview these people on the streets and they're like, I can't afford eggs right now.

00:32:58.380 That's because your dollar is volatile and erratic.

00:33:01.780 Eggs are eggs.

00:33:03.020 The labor required to make an egg stays the same the whole time.

00:33:06.000 In fact, an egg is substantially more stable than a dollar.

00:33:09.180 So I got, but it's, but it is true.

00:33:11.200 I got chickens outside and the chickens, we can feed them only bugs if we wanted.

00:33:15.460 We can do a total natural chicken farm.

00:33:17.520 You'll get less eggs.

00:33:18.300 But then we, you put the wood in the ground in the morning.

00:33:20.780 You lift up the bugs, run around the chickens, eat them all.

00:33:22.740 The chickens will also eat grass and they'll find food.

00:33:25.200 And then that egg emerges.

00:33:26.540 And I have an egg.

00:33:27.380 I know how much labor I need to get that egg.

00:33:29.020 That egg is stable.

00:33:30.900 The dollar is not.

00:33:32.420 You go to the grocery store and eggs cost 20% more.

00:33:34.720 It's because your dollar has become worth less.

00:33:36.880 The chicken egg is the same things it always was.

00:33:38.960 Same, same calories, same bird, same everything.

00:33:41.520 Yeah.

00:33:41.640 I want to circle back to your, uh, the strategic Bitcoin reserve that you brought up.

00:33:44.840 We, I don't, we got distracted.

00:33:46.040 Who knows what happened?

00:33:47.160 Um, we are having fun.

00:33:49.220 I thought RFK actually laid out a better one.

00:33:51.600 So the Trump and RFK both spoke at the Bitcoin conference in Nashville this past, uh, July.

00:33:56.620 And, you know, Trump, he's Trump.

00:33:59.000 And he laid out, yeah, he said a lot of positive, big words.

00:34:02.400 And, you know, maybe he'll feel good, but RFK was the one that really clearly laid it

00:34:06.500 out.

00:34:06.760 And hopefully that's the one they follow.

00:34:08.060 And his plan was to, I believe, get a million Bitcoin over a five year period, 200,000 per

00:34:13.740 year.

00:34:14.700 Um, and you know, the thing that Michael Saylor just brought up was what if we started selling

00:34:18.860 our gold in order to buy Bitcoin?

00:34:20.080 Cause Bitcoin is essentially gold 2.0.

00:34:22.420 And I actually loved it.

00:34:23.680 I thought, let's get it faster.

00:34:25.480 Let's sell some gold.

00:34:26.300 And then honestly, if you're the first country who does it, you kind of screw all the other

00:34:29.940 countries.

00:34:30.180 Well, uh, El Salvador, aren't they doing this?

00:34:32.400 Well, they're going to start mining.

00:34:34.200 Right.

00:34:34.620 But so they discovered what, like a trillion dollars in untapped gold reserve mines, three

00:34:39.460 trillion.

00:34:40.000 And then someone tweeted like, what would El Salvador, what could they possibly do with

00:34:44.140 this, uh, with this gold?

00:34:46.040 And I think Nayib Bukele posted a picture of like a Bitcoin price tracker.

00:34:49.460 Like they're going to start converting to Bitcoin.

00:34:51.440 Yes.

00:34:51.660 Yeah.

00:34:52.400 I mean, I, I think, well, so first of all, Senator Lummis of Wyoming, shout out to Senator

00:34:57.460 Lummis, unbelievable Bitcoin advocate, um, tremendous.

00:35:00.480 That's her bill, by the way, the Bitcoin act is that you're going to take the excess reserves

00:35:05.060 from the Fed banks, which is in gold, and you're going to build a Bitcoin position with

00:35:09.280 that.

00:35:09.940 Um, and it's a million Bitcoin is the target.

00:35:12.240 Um, I also know, um, Trump is looking at an, a day one executive order.

00:35:17.660 Um, you there's, there's, you know, like.

00:35:21.000 Sorry, sorry.

00:35:22.200 Day one executive order for a Bitcoin reserve for the United States.

00:35:25.260 Yeah.

00:35:25.680 But so I know that, um, there's people looking at the dollar stabilization act is it gives

00:35:32.620 the president wide discrepancy to protect the dollar.

00:35:35.380 And, um, there's potential to use a day one executive order to purchase Bitcoin.

00:35:39.740 It wouldn't be at the size and scale of a million coins, but it would be a significant

00:35:42.980 position and it'd be a message that the United States, listen, here's what I think isn't

00:35:46.800 talked about enough about the strategic reserve is it's the first, I think it's one of the

00:35:51.640 biggest economic announcements if it happens in American history, but it's the first positive

00:35:55.240 one.

00:35:55.480 Why is no one talking about that?

00:35:57.240 The U S made a really big economic announcement in 1933.

00:36:00.240 What was it?

00:36:00.700 We're taking all your property, right?

00:36:02.360 We're confiscating your stuff.

00:36:03.800 They made a big one in 1971.

00:36:05.700 What was it?

00:36:06.120 We're divorcing ourselves from the gold standard, divorcing ourselves from the immutable laws

00:36:09.980 of mother nature.

00:36:10.760 We're printing money.

00:36:11.920 They made a big one in 2008.

00:36:13.560 What was it?

00:36:14.060 We're bailing out all the bad actors.

00:36:15.640 We're not letting consequences follow through.

00:36:17.460 We're not letting the business cycle finish.

00:36:19.160 If Trump makes one, it's a positive one for the first time ever.

00:36:23.640 It's not defensive.

00:36:24.660 It's not reactionary.

00:36:25.820 It's pro-technology, pro-growth.

00:36:28.200 Governments own 2% of the supply of this thing.

00:36:30.240 Who owns the rest?

00:36:31.120 The public.

00:36:32.200 It's something that's acts in the best interest of the people.

00:36:35.000 So to me, if he does an executive order on day one, no matter the size, the magnitude

00:36:40.180 of a positive economic announcement out of this country for the first time in 100 years

00:36:44.680 that acts in the best interest of the public, where the public owns it, the public was first

00:36:49.500 before Wall Street, right?

00:36:51.520 Like, why is no one talking about that?

00:36:53.680 They call him, what, a terrorist instead or whatever.

00:36:56.020 But to me, that's the message.

00:36:58.100 It's a great point.

00:36:59.020 It's inspiring.

00:36:59.860 Yeah.

00:37:00.100 With the market cap right now at $2.12 trillion, if Donald Trump signs an executive order and

00:37:06.360 buys a substantial amount between $100 and $500 billion, I think that could be somewhere

00:37:10.260 north of, like, somewhere around $4 or $5 million Bitcoin, it's going to make millionaires

00:37:17.080 overnight.

00:37:17.680 Well, so I don't know if he'd be able to buy that many Bitcoin, because like I said, there's

00:37:21.820 a lot of people who just aren't going to sell.

00:37:23.840 And so, yeah, you're going to have to, the price, I mean, I might sell, I don't know,

00:37:27.180 if it gets to half a million, I might sell a Bitcoin or something.

00:37:30.100 But I have no need to sell any Bitcoin, too, then.

00:37:32.840 But even then, you can sell when you need to buy something.

00:37:35.020 Exactly.

00:37:35.540 And what are you selling into?

00:37:36.940 Yeah.

00:37:37.320 Like, you better have a plan for it.

00:37:38.720 Yes.

00:37:38.860 Because if your plan is to just go back to the system that we're trying to exit, right?

00:37:42.740 I mean...

00:37:43.100 Well, obviously, I would never sell all of my...

00:37:44.760 So to this point, I've never sold any of my Bitcoin, zero.

00:37:48.320 And then moving forward, it's like, again, what are you going to exit into?

00:37:51.840 You better have a plan for it.

00:37:53.200 And I would never, ever sell all of my Bitcoin.

00:37:55.380 That's totally insane, right?

00:37:56.800 It's just better.

00:37:57.460 But I think there's a lot of people like me, or say, a Michael Taylor, or an ETF, like,

00:38:03.200 they're just not going to sell.

00:38:04.220 So I don't know what the price...

00:38:05.780 If Trump wants to buy that much, I don't know what the price would go to.

00:38:08.940 But it's going to be something...

00:38:10.060 It's going to be insane.

00:38:10.480 It's going to be totally insane.

00:38:11.360 I think we...

00:38:11.840 Millionaires overnight.

00:38:13.000 Easy.

00:38:13.440 $250,000 to $1 million per Bitcoin within calendar year 25 has been my prediction for...

00:38:18.980 Wait, wait, wait.

00:38:19.320 $250,000?

00:38:20.500 $250,000 to $1 million in this range.

00:38:23.200 And it's highly dependent.

00:38:24.220 Like, Trump's executive order purchase, if it happens, wouldn't be at the size and scale

00:38:28.560 of a million Bitcoin.

00:38:29.920 He wouldn't be allowed to do that.

00:38:31.760 But it'd still be significant.

00:38:34.280 I think it's...

00:38:35.140 I think we...

00:38:35.980 Bitcoin's got at least a 3 to 10x in it from here over the next 12 months.

00:38:40.860 I agree.

00:38:41.500 I think Max Keiser raised his target to $2.2 million.

00:38:46.100 Shout out, Max.

00:38:46.620 But Max is always on the higher end.

00:38:48.760 He's a little hyperbolic, sir.

00:38:49.860 Yeah, exactly.

00:38:50.880 But I think what people need to consider is El Salvador.

00:38:54.820 Here's what's really fascinating about El Salvador.

00:38:56.920 Naya Backeli gets in and he turns El Salvador into a first world nation of wealth and prosperity.

00:39:02.800 Crime is gone.

00:39:03.960 They had this big celebration recently.

00:39:06.440 They opened the library.

00:39:08.580 Bitcoin hitting $100,000.

00:39:09.820 And he's posting the National Reserve and how much money they've made.

00:39:13.880 And I was playing poker over at National Harbor in D.C.

00:39:18.580 Guy to my left was from El Salvador.

00:39:21.380 And I forgot how the conversation came up, but he goes, we're actually going back home.

00:39:25.340 Someone asked him, like, where are you from?

00:39:26.920 And he's like, El Salvador.

00:39:27.720 He's like, but actually we're leaving.

00:39:28.800 We moved here to get away from the crime, but it's so nice and now we want to go home.

00:39:32.900 And I was like, whoa.

00:39:34.720 I mean, that's massive.

00:39:35.880 You got the Syrian civil war is over, I guess.

00:39:38.440 They've removed this.

00:39:39.340 Probably not.

00:39:40.120 But Assad's out.

00:39:41.240 And all these Syrians are like, nah, we're sticking around where we are in UK and Ireland.

00:39:45.680 El Salvador just won them all back.

00:39:47.220 But El Salvador, this is the beginning of a nation proving that this is a path towards wealth and prosperity.

00:39:55.780 But what I find fascinating is the hatred and resistance from the establishment, how they insulted and attacked Naive Bekeli as he was doing this.

00:40:04.540 And now Trump is in a similar position ideologically where Naive is.

00:40:09.520 Arrest the gangs, shut down the cartels.

00:40:12.280 Bitcoin, yes.

00:40:13.760 We're going to be looking at a boon similarly, but we're exponentially larger than they are.

00:40:18.380 When other nations see the same thing, a million is not out of the question.

00:40:22.520 Did you – I was – at the time, I was the kid that did that with El Salvador.

00:40:27.100 So I was attacked by the media as well.

00:40:29.420 I was the one that wrote – that worked with them on that and announced it with them.

00:40:34.700 So first of all, shout out.

00:40:36.280 It was – I was at a sushi restaurant in El Salvador and Bekeli's brother DMed me on Twitter.

00:40:41.160 That's how that whole thing went down.

00:40:42.960 They gave me 24 hours latitude and longitude to meet the government.

00:40:45.800 And at the time, it was like the most dangerous country in the world.

00:40:48.800 I texted my dad.

00:40:49.560 I was like, man, if this is how I go out, I love you.

00:40:52.780 It would make for a good documentary.

00:40:55.020 But I think you're right.

00:40:57.960 I know Trump misspoke about Bekeli actually a few times in his running.

00:41:04.500 But I think you're right.

00:41:05.760 And they're on good terms.

00:41:07.200 And I think El Salvador is a smaller scale of what we'll see in America hopefully.

00:41:10.840 Hopefully.

00:41:11.160 But it's when these other nations look at what El Salvador did and then say, I want that.

00:41:18.060 But let me throw in the greed factor real quick.

00:41:20.420 There's going to be some crackpot warlord who's like, why don't I have $100 million?

00:41:25.140 Buy Bitcoin.

00:41:26.380 Yeah.

00:41:27.060 I mean, Bitcoin is to – it's money.

00:41:29.820 So people can do whatever they want with it.

00:41:31.080 But, you know, in the El Salvador thing, Bitcoin leads you down a lot of funny paths.

00:41:36.560 And I started reading, like, Alex Gladstein.

00:41:38.560 Do you guys know who that is?

00:41:39.140 Yeah, yeah.

00:41:39.780 HRF.

00:41:40.680 HRF.

00:41:41.240 And then, you know, kind of like with the IMF and the World Bank, they propose that they're doing good.

00:41:47.200 But they really essentially just keep all these people under their thumb.

00:41:49.980 And then, you know, I don't want to make any statements for sure, but, you know, if you read some books, you learn some things.

00:41:56.700 And it seems like when the – and this is why, like, B. Kelly, to me, should – I can't believe they haven't assassinated him yet.

00:42:03.260 Because the United States government in some way, shape, or form has probably assassinated many other Central and South American dictators who don't do what they want over the course of years.

00:42:11.880 And so if you can buy Bitcoin and get freedom from the IMF and the World Bank and all the things that they force you to do, that's a really, really powerful thing.

00:42:20.340 So I can't believe there has been not one other country who has followed his lead to this.

00:42:24.380 El Salvador has gotten – it's a lot of credit for tough on crime.

00:42:28.140 This was when I met him.

00:42:29.520 Tough on crime, clean, technology, support, forward thinking.

00:42:34.000 They want new business entrepreneurs and hard money in Bitcoin.

00:42:37.120 That was the blueprint executed to a T.

00:42:39.700 Nobody's talking about the IMF stuff, though.

00:42:41.920 And the reason I think it's relevant to America is that's a country that climbed out of debt.

00:42:47.000 And that's what Trump's talking about is we've got deficits.

00:42:49.900 How can we make progress?

00:42:52.120 But you've watched a country that was in a perpetual indebted relationship that was killing them and suffocating them like we're living through in America that was able to climb out of it through Bitcoin.

00:43:05.920 And I don't know why no one is drawing that narrative to America.

00:43:09.220 We're obviously a larger scale, but why can't we do the same?

00:43:12.560 Well, Trump loves winners, right?

00:43:14.320 And Bukele is becoming a very public winner.

00:43:17.080 Totally.

00:43:17.420 He's totally transformed the economic standing of El Salvador.

00:43:21.040 He's brought all this new technology investment into El Salvador, right?

00:43:24.960 They're making it a very open country for people who want to come and build.

00:43:28.500 They're making it hope, right?

00:43:29.740 They're making it hope for the world.

00:43:30.860 And he's going to become a very big marketing tool for the rest of the world, right?

00:43:35.080 You can't ignore that type of success because they were—what were they, murder capital of the world before he started down this?

00:43:42.100 One of them.

00:43:42.800 One of them.

00:43:43.540 Depending on the metric you use, there's more murders in Venezuela but not per capita.

00:43:46.860 Honduras is the highest per capita, and El Salvador was, like, up right next to them.

00:43:51.360 Yeah.

00:43:51.720 And then to Jack's point, or I can't remember who made the point, but when someone wants to now go home to El Salvador from wherever they're at, that's a big shift.

00:43:59.580 Because people were only leaving, and they were trying to come to the United States and send money back, and that money was getting captured by Western Union on the way in the door.

00:44:07.440 They were bleeding all that value out, wasn't getting home to where they thought it was going to be.

00:44:11.320 Just that simple shift of saying, we're going to embrace Bitcoin, we're not going to attack Bitcoin, and we're going to support the growth of Bitcoin within our borders, has been such a huge transformation for that country that I don't think it's going to be able to be ignored.

00:44:24.660 I mean, this is historic dream-come-true-level stuff.

00:44:27.320 Look at this video.

00:44:27.840 This is just the celebration they're doing.

00:44:31.900 The things they've constructed, the crime reduction.

00:44:39.380 Wow.

00:44:40.100 That's incredible.

00:44:40.520 Yeah, you know the other thing that we haven't brought up yet in this conversation, and actually, I was just, I was talking to my daughter about it on the way over here, but high-time preference versus low-time preference behavior.

00:44:51.280 And when you really get into Bitcoin, you start going deep down the rabbit hole, I feel like it changes the way you think about a lot of things.

00:44:57.380 So in a high-time preference country where your money's inflating at an insane rate, so, you know, what was Argentina, but they're turning that around.

00:45:06.200 Yes, no debt anymore.

00:45:08.000 No debt.

00:45:08.240 Totally crazy.

00:45:08.940 If you get your paycheck on Friday, and by the next Friday, your money's devalued, there's absolutely no point in saving, because why would you ever plan for the future?

00:45:18.440 Because your money's essentially going to go to zero, so there's no use in trying to save and plan for the future.

00:45:23.920 So you have this insanely high-time preference behavior, and that's really bad, right?

00:45:29.000 And if you have money which is good and strong and solid, you're going to have low-time preference behavior, which means I know the money I earned today in 2024 is going to be worth, you know, as much or more 10 years down the road.

00:45:41.400 And so I can plan for my future.

00:45:43.440 I can save.

00:45:44.280 It makes sense.

00:45:45.320 Yeah.

00:45:45.460 And so it kind of, like, flips the way you think about things if you have good, hard money.

00:45:49.440 Well, when you can't save dollars.

00:45:51.120 You can't save them.

00:45:51.880 When you go back to money 101, just monetary theory, and money is the market good that you don't consume and you need to save it, the intention of money is to be able to place a premium on tomorrow.

00:46:05.300 It's our ability to value the future.

00:46:07.080 And so there's a direct correlation to the harder the money, the better human flourishing in society because we're able to coordinate and place a premium on tomorrow.

00:46:17.040 And so that's fundamentally – and that's what Ben's talking about is low-high-time preference.

00:46:20.840 If your money's shit, then tomorrow's shit.

00:46:23.020 If your money's hard and good, then tomorrow could be great.

00:46:26.060 And your ability to have confidence in that – because everyone's preference is now.

00:46:29.720 You want $10 million now or $10 million in 10 years?

00:46:32.520 Well, I'll take it now.

00:46:33.180 But our ability to place premiums on tomorrow and the future and not go to the beach every day, not spend everything we have right now on bottle service and Louboutin bags, seriously, I mean, that's what you're talking about, 100%.

00:46:45.920 100%.

00:46:46.620 So let me pull this up real quick.

00:46:49.620 This is a story from 2021.

00:46:51.460 Treasure Hunter finds lost box of $46,000 cash in House Attic.

00:46:56.940 Boy, is he happy.

00:46:58.040 Look at that smile on his face.

00:46:59.360 He found $46,000.

00:47:00.880 You see, back in the 1960s, his family bought the house.

00:47:04.560 Someone who lived there in the 1950s had stored that $46,000 in cash under the floorboards in the attic to keep it safe.

00:47:12.260 And this is the sad reality of the United States and the U.S. dollar.

00:47:15.460 Uh-oh.

00:47:15.940 You see how happy he is?

00:47:17.200 How much happier do you think he would be if he found half a million dollars in the attic?

00:47:21.240 If that was stored as gold or – you know, they don't have Bitcoin back in 1950.

00:47:26.300 But if it was stored in something of true value, not a U.S. dollar, it's lost 90 – around 90% of its value.

00:47:33.440 This guy is so excited to find $46,000 and the government is laughing all the way to the bank.

00:47:37.660 Your buying power is gone.

00:47:40.440 You could have bought several – I mean, houses back then were even – were relatively cheap.

00:47:46.760 That's going to buy you two houses today.

00:47:48.260 $46,000 could have bought you three or four or more.

00:47:51.000 Imagine if they bought real estate and handed it down to their kids.

00:47:53.560 That's what – you know, we talk about the high time preference and low time preference behavior.

00:47:56.720 And, you know, you said people think of the dollar as the stable thing.

00:47:59.840 And I think maybe they do like if they were speaking.

00:48:03.000 Oh, that was Ben.

00:48:03.840 Oh, I thought you – maybe both of you.

00:48:06.220 Yeah, I said he was right.

00:48:07.760 That's how I –

00:48:08.280 That's how I think of it.

00:48:09.840 But I think subconsciously or inherently they almost know because every friend I have, I've only convinced a few to buy Bitcoin.

00:48:16.320 They're stubborn.

00:48:16.920 It's unfortunate.

00:48:18.000 But every friend I have who makes any kind of money knows that they don't hold cash in the bank.

00:48:23.440 It's not like they just get their money and they hold their money.

00:48:25.540 And if money was good and money was hard, I don't have to have a second job.

00:48:29.780 I can just get my money.

00:48:31.360 I save it.

00:48:31.940 And then 10 years it's worth the same amount and I can spend it.

00:48:34.380 But every single friend I know has to say, oh, do I want to invest in extra real estate or do I want to invest in the stock market?

00:48:40.600 Or where do I invest my money because they know subconsciously that they have to invest in something in order for their money to keep up with inflation so it doesn't go away.

00:48:49.700 And that's kind of like – that's another one where it's like I wish we didn't have to do that.

00:48:53.180 I wish we just had good money and we didn't have to worry about it devaluing.

00:48:56.020 Well, debasing the currency is probably the cruelest thing you can do to society.

00:49:00.740 And you can – what human-level KPI do you care about to measure how society is doing?

00:49:05.920 Obesity rates going up.

00:49:07.040 Cancer rates going up.

00:49:07.960 Divorce rates going up.

00:49:09.140 Child per woman crashing.

00:49:10.660 At one point, life expectancy was crashing.

00:49:13.580 Recently, like 2022, I haven't gotten an updated statistic.

00:49:16.900 But if you create a society where, to Ben's point, you're supposed to be a doctor, you're supposed to be an engineer, not 50% doctor, 50% expert on central bank, Japanese monetary policy and your Robin Hood account.

00:49:30.060 Seriously, and people are getting unhealthy because they're compromising on the quality of their food because they can't afford it.

00:49:34.520 You're eating seed oils.

00:49:35.580 You're eating trash, right?

00:49:36.680 And so it's the worst thing you can do to a civilization is you're basically sucking the life out of it by sucking the purchasing power, the monetary good, out of the people.

00:49:48.460 It's evil.

00:49:49.500 And you're training them to be borrowers, to go deeper down that hole, right?

00:49:52.940 People are going into deep debt to fund the lifestyle because the money is not worth it.

00:49:56.880 They can't get ahead.

00:49:57.700 They can't save.

00:49:58.500 They can't do anything.

00:49:59.380 No, but they trap you.

00:50:00.460 But you can get points for a credit card.

00:50:01.920 They're going to the student loans.

00:50:03.160 And listen, don't judge me.

00:50:04.880 I invested in a company and not Bitcoin.

00:50:07.100 It wasn't that much money.

00:50:08.700 But one of my friends who works at a bank said, hey, there's this young kid and we can't give him a loan.

00:50:14.760 Maybe you should talk to him.

00:50:16.200 And this kid, he wanted a $40,000 loan.

00:50:18.400 I didn't invest all of the $40,000, but he wanted a $40,000 loan for his ketchup business.

00:50:22.480 He already had POs for – shout out ketchup, please.

00:50:25.160 It's really great.

00:50:25.780 It's healthier than regular ketchup also.

00:50:27.300 He already had purchase orders from Hy-Vee.

00:50:32.300 He had like a lot of – everything good.

00:50:35.140 They would give him $200,000 in student loans, but they wouldn't give him a $40,000 business loan.

00:50:40.080 It's like, holy shit.

00:50:41.600 But he's already got revenue.

00:50:42.660 He's already got purchase orders.

00:50:44.280 And you guys won't give him $40,000, but you'll give him $200,000 in student debt?

00:50:49.020 Like that's brainwashing right now.

00:50:50.160 You'll give him the one he's saddled with forever.

00:50:52.020 Forever.

00:50:52.480 You can't get rid of it.

00:50:53.240 The one you can never discharge.

00:50:53.760 It's totally insane.

00:50:54.220 They're willing to give you that one.

00:50:55.480 And that is, to Jack's point, that's cruel.

00:50:57.300 Because you're putting people in a deficit position when they're starting out their lives.

00:51:01.100 I don't think people understand how big of an advantage it is to launch your life without debt.

00:51:07.040 Yes.

00:51:07.480 It puts you in such a place of strength where you can actually spend the time to think about what are the assets I should be owning to continue my success forward?

00:51:15.040 How do I build on the advantage I had early in life?

00:51:17.580 But most people don't have that advantage.

00:51:19.580 Because they're brainwashed to go to college.

00:51:20.940 Because that's the model.

00:51:22.000 That's what their parents did.

00:51:23.220 That's what they see on TV.

00:51:24.480 The credit card companies.

00:51:25.740 Well, you can get a bunch of points if you get a credit card with us, even if you don't really qualify to be able to pay it back.

00:51:30.960 Again, I think it's just this divorce from reality where society, we get so abstracted away from what's real.

00:51:36.560 On what planet, in first principle thinking, did you think you were going to take out a $200,000 loan to get a liberal arts degree?

00:51:42.840 No, I'm being serious.

00:51:44.120 But here's the reality is, if things that you need in your life are getting 10% more expensive year over year, you have to be getting an 11% raise every single year or you're working backwards.

00:51:55.320 What's working backwards?

00:51:56.320 Draw the picture for me, Jack.

00:51:57.500 Okay.

00:51:58.040 That means I'm not eating ribeyes.

00:51:59.980 I'm eating McDonald's.

00:52:01.540 That means I'm not having five kids.

00:52:03.160 I'm maybe having one.

00:52:04.360 That means I'm not buying a house.

00:52:05.760 I'm renting an apartment.

00:52:07.280 That means you have – when you print money, assets inflate, right?

00:52:10.960 Bitcoin housing, so those that own the assets, the boomer class, has all the money, all the housing.

00:52:15.660 Who do you think is going to compete better in a housing bid war, the guy that's worked 50 years at 60 years old or the guy that's worked five months at a fresh college grad?

00:52:23.400 So you've got serious civil unrest, mentally ill and physically ill population of the youth.

00:52:29.420 They're like now don't know what gender they are.

00:52:31.540 It's sick, sick kids that don't own assets that are in perpetual debt that are compromising on their profession and their quality of life because they're running a rat.

00:52:40.960 They're running on a treadmill.

00:52:42.160 They can't make any real progress.

00:52:45.260 And then you get the civil unrest where everyone's mad at each other.

00:52:48.820 No one can disagree.

00:52:49.840 It's the most un-American America has ever felt.

00:52:52.900 And I do think that – I think if we – fix the money, fix the world is a common saying in Bitcoin.

00:52:58.300 I think if we can fix the money, we can solve at least half of the biggest problems we face today.

00:53:03.620 I fundamentally believe that.

00:53:06.440 I'm sorry.

00:53:07.060 I just – finish your point.

00:53:08.440 I don't want to interrupt you.

00:53:09.020 I was going to say, look at the depression and anxiety rates that have started to pop up in the last decade or two, right?

00:53:13.840 I mean, when people feel hopeless, and that's the position a lot of people are finding themselves in, they're starting to feel hopeless like there's no way out.

00:53:20.980 That's when you're going to start seeing the massive rise in that.

00:53:24.020 And so the more education that can get out there to let people know that you have an alternative now, you don't have to be stuck in that system, that's a huge net positive for the world.

00:53:33.500 And I do think that the youth – I'm starting to see them get really involved, right?

00:53:37.300 And I think a lot of them are probably following Jack because he's electric.

00:53:40.660 But that education is going to pay dividends for their entire life if they learn it early.

00:53:46.460 Most people wait until it's way too late, and they're under the $200,000 of student loan debt, and they have to be in a job that they hate because they have no other alternative.

00:53:54.500 They have to have the paycheck.

00:53:56.080 They're starting to see a way out, and I think getting that message out is one of the most important things we can do.

00:54:00.600 So the International Monetary Fund, the swift payment system, right, the weapon that is used by Petrodollar, Western, NATO, et cetera, you know, we're going to sanction you.

00:54:11.760 We're going to cut you off from the credit card transactions and things like this.

00:54:15.740 So I'm jumping back because I pulled up the wiki on El Salvador, which I find absolutely fascinating.

00:54:20.360 There's a section on presidency of Naib Bukele, and it says – it's fascinating to read this because if you're a layman who pulls up Wikipedia, I feel bad for you because Wikipedia is trash.

00:54:31.840 But this is what a lot of people are turning to, and I think it proves the point of the machine being outraged, upset.

00:54:37.840 It says in January of 2022, the IMF urged El Salvador to reverse its decision to make cryptocurrency legal tender.

00:54:43.680 Bitcoin had rapidly lost about half its value, meaning economic difficulties, and as of May 2022, the government bonds trading at 40% of their original value.

00:54:52.960 The prospect of looming sovereign default, Bukele announced back in January 2022 plans to build Bitcoin City at the base of a volcano in El Salvador.

00:55:00.780 Nowhere do they write here that Bitcoin has exploded in value, and he's made a massive gain.

00:55:06.240 They do go on to mention near the bottom.

00:55:07.960 What's fascinating is it then goes on to say his fight against criminal gangs made it some of the highest incarceration rates in the world with crackdowns resulting in hundreds of deaths and international human rights organizations declaring it the worst abuse of human rights since the Civil War.

00:55:23.180 And then it says he won the election with 83% in 2024 because they're not telling you the full picture that Bitcoin exploded.

00:55:30.900 It's not just about Bitcoin.

00:55:31.960 It's about real transformation, the reduction in crime, becoming one of the safest countries in the world now, the safest in Central America, I think safer than America now, and extremely wealthy.

00:55:42.300 Now, don't get me wrong.

00:55:43.580 El Salvador's GDP per capita is much lower than the United States.

00:55:46.500 I mean, you'd be crazy to think that it wasn't the case.

00:55:48.660 But it's jumped up substantially, $5,607 GDP per capita, 108th in the world.

00:55:55.300 It has rapidly improved as a nation.

00:55:57.120 Listen, the machine, like the IMF is the debt machine.

00:56:01.120 So as you're talking about getting young kids in student loan debt, the way this machine works is they go to your developing nation and say, if you want a McDonald's and you want to be wealthy, take a loan from us.

00:56:10.880 And they know that loan will never be paid back.

00:56:13.420 They put these insane terms on it.

00:56:14.660 You'll be in debt forever as a nation.

00:56:16.720 And they're telling you to sign your sovereignty over to us.

00:56:19.800 Yes.

00:56:20.160 And the people who are in these countries are like, well, you know, I'll be rich.

00:56:22.660 And then they default on it and then they say, well, you know, give us some of your mineral rights or something like that.

00:56:28.560 And then they default on it again and they say, give us some more.

00:56:30.620 And then, you know, and then one guy comes in and says, we don't want to do this anymore.

00:56:33.680 And then.

00:56:34.700 Yep.

00:56:35.020 And then there's a then there's an invasion because he had weapons of mass destruction.

00:56:38.400 Yeah.

00:56:38.640 I know I'm repeating myself, but this reminds me of the Beyond Beef Burger to the ribeye.

00:56:43.480 It's a it's a reversion.

00:56:45.860 Do you ever eat one of those?

00:56:46.420 I've never eaten.

00:56:46.960 No, no.

00:56:48.340 It doesn't have to have like a burger.

00:56:49.920 I mean, it's salty food.

00:56:50.940 I don't know if this, you know, it's just it's not like when I went to El Salvador and I worked with the government on the Bitcoin stuff, I was so excited.

00:56:59.680 I was like, guys, you won't get it.

00:57:00.880 They're focused on clean streets, no crime, innovation, growth, Bitcoin.

00:57:06.080 And the media crushed me for it.

00:57:08.280 There's, you know, I was getting thrashed, crushed.

00:57:11.060 The IMF reached out to me.

00:57:12.160 I presented to the IMF, World Bank IMF on my ass.

00:57:15.100 And it was again at the time when I was sitting as a kid in my mid 20s, I was like, what?

00:57:20.280 This doesn't make any sense to me.

00:57:21.380 What's wrong with no crime?

00:57:23.220 What's wrong with being clean?

00:57:24.380 Like it just wasn't computing in my brain.

00:57:26.480 But now outside of, I guess, this Wikipedia page, because he's a rock star, right?

00:57:30.760 Elon Musk is like, man, this guy's a great leader.

00:57:33.600 And I do.

00:57:34.360 I feel inspired.

00:57:35.720 I have.

00:57:36.060 There's a lot of optimism where I think the world is like, wait a second.

00:57:39.200 No Beyond Beef Burger, ribeye.

00:57:41.060 And like, you know, in that that example abstracted into wherever El Salvador for me is living through that as well.

00:57:46.860 Well, I mean, to what you're saying is, and I think this is probably what won Trump the election the first time.

00:57:52.720 And then this election, probably more, is that people are just so sick of being lied to.

00:57:57.740 And we know we're being lied to in a lot of cases.

00:58:00.820 We know.

00:58:01.200 And, you know, and then that goes into like the cotillion effect.

00:58:04.340 And who's ever closest to the money printer is the one that's benefiting the most from the money printer.

00:58:08.180 And then the government has co-opted all these organizations, media and otherwise, pharmaceutical, et cetera, to kind of like push this narrative.

00:58:17.360 And regular people can see we're being lied to and we didn't like it.

00:58:20.220 So, you know, that was kind of this uprising that you're talking about.

00:58:23.360 Yeah, lies don't scale, right?

00:58:25.080 Like Mother Nature is undefeated with time.

00:58:27.500 I think one thing that we can count on, though, is that Trump is a legacy guy, right?

00:58:31.260 One, he loves winners.

00:58:32.200 And you're seeing a guy like Bukele out there whose approval rating just continues to rocket through the roof.

00:58:36.860 And they've brought themselves into the serious position of independence for their own nation.

00:58:41.400 And I think that Trump looks at the United States and he can kind of view this as his opportunity to set us on a new trajectory where we've got a new path.

00:58:50.860 And he can be the guy that made that change.

00:58:52.960 And I think he's right.

00:58:54.000 I think he can be the guy to make that change.

00:58:56.180 And it is a bold move to do.

00:58:58.080 And the strategic reserve is one of the steps along the way.

00:59:00.960 But when you look at all the former reserve assets of the world, they all fell at some point.

00:59:06.020 Yes.

00:59:06.120 So the question becomes, when you are the reserve asset of the world, is are you going to take the steps to prevent that from happening?

00:59:12.480 Are you going to fight and pretend that this decentralized asset isn't happening in the world?

00:59:17.960 Because it's not just a U.S. thing.

00:59:19.420 You can't just shut it down in the U.S. and it goes away.

00:59:21.640 That's not real.

00:59:22.260 It doesn't go away.

00:59:22.740 So do you look at that and do you say maybe there's an opportunity for us to integrate with this and maybe the U.S. dollar then still continues to be the transactional currency across the globe and it might even strengthen its position.

00:59:34.800 But we're going to start backing ourselves with the new emerging assets that's decentralized from all countries.

00:59:41.280 Right.

00:59:41.680 And we're going to participate in that, too.

00:59:43.020 And I think he's got a chance to change the course of history.

00:59:45.560 I mean, that's probably Trump's biggest challenge going into this term is the debt is so insane.

00:59:51.440 And we're about to go into this debt spiral where, I mean, interest on debt payments, I think, this year is $1.3 trillion or $1.4 trillion.

00:59:59.520 I mean, if it gets much worse, there's no coming out of it.

01:00:02.180 Like, it's going to go to zero eventually.

01:00:03.940 We're reaching the bad part of escape velocity, right?

01:00:06.220 We're going to reach that escape velocity.

01:00:06.800 It's almost there.

01:00:07.580 It's almost there.

01:00:08.600 Oh, yeah.

01:00:09.080 Oh, gee.

01:00:09.560 Oh, no.

01:00:10.300 Not there.

01:00:11.500 Well, I think they said it was $360 billion in the last two months only of debt added to the—

01:00:19.680 Well, look at the U.S. federal debt-to-GDP ratio.

01:00:22.520 In the 1960s, it was 52.

01:00:24.860 In 1980, it was 34.

01:00:26.500 In 2000, it was 54.

01:00:27.740 Today is 123 percent.

01:00:29.600 We are generating more debt than actual product.

01:00:33.840 Yes.

01:00:34.740 That's insane.

01:00:35.840 Yeah.

01:00:36.020 So, I mean, this is literally his biggest challenge to figure out.

01:00:39.700 And, you know, I know Elon and Vivek are going to do the Doge, and hopefully that works.

01:00:45.120 They've been watching what's been happening.

01:00:46.560 No, that doesn't stand a chance.

01:00:47.760 You don't think so?

01:00:48.360 There's not enough to cut.

01:00:50.280 All the expenses are things like medical, social security, defense spending.

01:00:57.080 You could fire everyone at the government.

01:00:59.080 You're not—it's a rounding error of our expenditures.

01:01:03.060 I don't think that that's going to make a real dent.

01:01:06.400 I mean, maybe—

01:01:07.360 Really?

01:01:07.580 I mean, just mathematically, there's not enough.

01:01:11.300 They can—unless they're going to remove our ability to defend ourselves, social security's out the window.

01:01:16.040 Well, social security, that—you said the dollar's a Ponzi.

01:01:18.920 Social security is, like, the biggest Ponzi.

01:01:20.660 Well, it's all Ponzi.

01:01:21.560 I think this debt-to-GDP is a great way for people to understand why America should own Bitcoin, because what does debt-to-GDP tell you?

01:01:28.420 It's how much have we borrowed from our future versus the growth that we're producing to pay it back.

01:01:33.540 And, okay, so what's America missing?

01:01:36.560 Growth.

01:01:37.020 Real growth.

01:01:37.640 And when I say things like child per woman is down, just so everyone knows, you can't print 18-year-olds.

01:01:43.100 So if we're not producing enough humans, we can't be growing the economy.

01:01:46.420 If the amount of humans coming out of vaginas is going down, we're in serious trouble.

01:01:50.600 No, I'm serious with debt-to-GDP.

01:01:52.520 And so how do you—

01:01:53.540 Our worst—they're going to invite 60 million non-citizens to flood the country at the southern border.

01:01:58.160 A hundred percent, and that causes problems.

01:02:00.060 So how do you buy growth?

01:02:01.720 Well, what if I told you there was a thing that, on average, is growing 65% year over year over the last 10 years?

01:02:07.580 It's the best-performing thing in the history of mankind, and you can just buy it off the shelf.

01:02:11.620 It's like, oh, I'll take a double cheeseburger, Coke Zero.

01:02:14.060 Oh, and this thing that's growing so fast that if we lean into it, we could pay off our debt in the next 25 years.

01:02:20.020 That's why the government would be interested.

01:02:21.700 For those at home, it's, like, pretty simple.

01:02:23.560 We have a lot of debt.

01:02:24.480 We have no growth.

01:02:25.160 How do you buy growth?

01:02:25.960 Yeah, immigrants, whatever, but, like, you just buy it.

01:02:29.600 Buy Bitcoin.

01:02:30.260 What do you guys—so we had this story break from Google just a couple days ago.

01:02:34.740 Willow, the state-of-the-art quantum chip, that they say was able to handle a benchmark computation that would take 10 septillion years.

01:02:42.940 It handled it in less than five minutes.

01:02:44.680 And the concern is with the rapid development of quantum computing, encryption as we know it will be completely dismantled.

01:02:50.180 So to simplify it for everybody, the way Bitcoin works is there's a private and public key.

01:02:54.900 It's basically you get access to a thing, and then you have an encrypted password that can't be broken that ensures only you have access to those specific Bitcoin or fractions of.

01:03:04.780 A quantum computer can basically find the password instantly and then unravel the whole thing, get access to anybody's Bitcoin.

01:03:12.580 Just take it all.

01:03:13.240 What's going to stop that from happening?

01:03:16.160 Well, for the public, first of all, this is not nearly strong enough to make a dent in Bitcoin.

01:03:23.940 And for the general public as well, cryptography and using public-private key pairs, that's what runs the Internet.

01:03:30.800 That's what secures your bank account.

01:03:32.280 That's what runs the universe in the world.

01:03:33.960 Quantum computing destroys the world.

01:03:35.180 Right. But from an engineering standpoint, before being a CEO in a suit, I was an engineer.

01:03:42.940 That was my initial contributions to Bitcoin.

01:03:45.320 And the technical community is aware of this.

01:03:48.800 And there's going to be a transition probably over the next decade or so onto different cryptographic curves.

01:03:58.020 So this will be addressed and solved.

01:04:00.180 This story came out and everyone was like, oh, is Bitcoin going to go zero?

01:04:03.140 No, absolutely not.

01:04:03.640 They say that every time there's a breakthrough in crypto.

01:04:05.240 Not a risk at all.

01:04:06.340 And it's a known technical barrier that everyone in the world, not just Bitcoin.

01:04:12.340 I mean, the first thing is that all the money in your Chase account would disappear before people started attacking Bitcoin.

01:04:17.940 So not a concern.

01:04:20.320 It is pretty wild.

01:04:21.160 The article says it lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse.

01:04:29.340 That's like the craziest thing you could write.

01:04:31.740 But, you know, I don't know.

01:04:32.880 I'm not a quantum computer guy.

01:04:35.140 So whatever.

01:04:36.260 Or a physicist.

01:04:37.100 I also think that people need to recognize that quantum and classical technology systems don't necessarily mesh well together.

01:04:43.180 Right.

01:04:43.420 So people think that quantum is just like a standard computer, but super powerful.

01:04:47.560 But I think this is a good time to reference that Bitcoin is technology, which for the first time we have a money that can adapt and get better.

01:04:57.120 Like what I think fascinating point is Bitcoin is going to get better for as long as I'm alive and then long after I'm dead.

01:05:04.080 Gold, like once gold stopped working, it's a rock.

01:05:07.920 But Bitcoin, we can improve it.

01:05:09.700 Right.

01:05:09.880 And that's what I don't think Bitcoin can evolve, which is totally different than any other commodity you've ever owned.

01:05:15.780 Right.

01:05:16.020 Like corn.

01:05:17.060 So let's let's go the other direction on this one.

01:05:18.520 Let's go full conspiracy.

01:05:19.500 Do you guys know the the globalist conspiracy theory about Bitcoin?

01:05:22.360 I'd imagine.

01:05:22.960 Oh, so.

01:05:24.080 Yeah.

01:05:24.240 Started it or what?

01:05:25.280 So Satoshi Nakamoto literally translates to what?

01:05:30.620 Intelligence Central Hub or something.

01:05:32.860 Yeah.

01:05:33.100 So it was a it was a viral meme that let me let me let me see if I can pull it up.

01:05:38.440 I tweeted it.

01:05:40.280 And I can let's see if I can find it.

01:05:44.300 What do we have?

01:05:45.000 The CIA invented Bitcoin.

01:05:46.440 Here we go.

01:05:46.860 Yes, I've heard that one.

01:05:48.240 So what does Satoshi mean in Japanese?

01:05:50.820 So for those who don't know, Satoshi Nakamoto is the inventor of Bitcoin.

01:05:53.460 In Japanese, Satoshi means wise or intelligent.

01:05:56.500 What does Nakamoto mean?

01:05:58.120 Naka means middle or center and moto means origin or base.

01:06:01.600 So it means intelligence center base, central origin or root of the center.

01:06:07.320 So intelligence central.

01:06:08.720 And then, of course, we flip the names Satoshi Nakamoto.

01:06:12.400 We would say that Nakamoto Satoshi in the United States, but they go by last name first.

01:06:16.480 So that would mean central origin of intelligence.

01:06:20.260 The Central Intelligence Agency, something like that.

01:06:23.620 But so here's the idea.

01:06:25.620 In the late 2000s, you had this conversation about the Amero.

01:06:29.360 People were saying, look, Europe is doing the euro.

01:06:32.340 They're creating a centralized currency for the entire bloc.

01:06:34.940 They want to create one in the United States that U.S., Canada and Mexico would all use, the Amero.

01:06:39.220 Never happened.

01:06:40.120 They were leaked images claiming this was what it was going to look like.

01:06:43.160 And it would cause problems for the U.S. because we're the top.

01:06:45.960 And so it's going to pull us down and lift them up.

01:06:48.520 Never happened.

01:06:49.640 You had a bunch of people who are relatively pro-America, anti-government, conspiracy theorists, etc.

01:06:54.060 So the idea goes, you're the IMF or the Davos group or whatever, and you're sitting there being like, these people do not – they're not going to let us just do this.

01:07:06.920 They're going to protest.

01:07:07.880 There's going to be revolt.

01:07:08.660 It's going to be messy.

01:07:09.880 How do we trick them into doing it?

01:07:11.900 And so they create a publicly trackable, easily transferable system of value, Bitcoin.

01:07:20.500 Yep.

01:07:21.140 Nobody really knows who made it.

01:07:22.600 They then cede it to the anti-government type saying, this gets you out of the system.

01:07:28.980 Now you're outside of the government and who adopts it, a bunch of libertarian weirdos who are buying drugs, anarcho-capitalists.

01:07:36.880 Then you've got the anti-government types proselytizing for your new global currency and becoming wealthy doing it.

01:07:45.660 And so then everyone wants to start adopting it.

01:07:47.880 But what do you end up with?

01:07:49.340 Any standard algorithm, moderately weak AI can track the entire ledger of Bitcoin and figure out who you are, what you're buying, and where that money is going.

01:08:01.320 So with the public ledger, Bitcoin itself is a massive surveillance network of everything you'd purchase.

01:08:08.380 Cash, you can buy a lot of things in cash and transfer that value the government can't track.

01:08:13.160 And so as the conspiracy goes to simplify, powerful international interests wanted to create a global currency or global trade of value to replace the petrodollar.

01:08:22.360 They needed to get, in order to get ubiquity or to get adoption, you have to give it to your, make your opponents believe it's their path to victory and play the heel.

01:08:31.420 All of these anarcho-capitalists adopt it, it becomes mainstream.

01:08:36.660 And now, a simple example is when, I think it was Weave, Andrew Anheimer fled the country of the United States and went to Ukraine and was posting on like a Stormfront or whatever, Daily Storm or whatever the website was.

01:08:48.240 Journalists knew he had received $1 million in Bitcoin because the public ledger tracks where everything is going.

01:08:55.920 A computer can do it way better.

01:08:57.940 Now they can simply ask ChatGPT if it's plugged in, show me the entire transaction history of John Smith, and it'll show everything they've ever done in Bitcoin.

01:09:07.760 And then it can map out probably what expects them to buy.

01:09:10.840 So what do you guys think?

01:09:14.960 I think there are ways to use Bitcoin privately.

01:09:18.240 I've done it.

01:09:19.280 Use the Lightning Network, super private.

01:09:21.220 It's advanced.

01:09:21.940 It's not easy.

01:09:22.540 It's not for everyone.

01:09:23.300 But the notion that Bitcoin was designed to trace and track everybody, I say it here first.

01:09:29.740 Bullshit.

01:09:30.440 Not true at all, technically.

01:09:32.300 I think the most important point here is it doesn't matter who created it.

01:09:36.280 Like, I'm still going to store my time, energy, effort, labor, work, and future in it because-

01:09:42.160 Because it's better.

01:09:42.580 What?

01:09:42.980 Because it's better.

01:09:44.280 Because it's better.

01:09:45.120 Because it's better.

01:09:45.740 Like, if someone were to say, that guy created it, but he committed a crime to-

01:09:50.980 Whatever.

01:09:51.440 Shake his hand.

01:09:51.900 Thank you.

01:09:52.340 I appreciate it.

01:09:53.020 And whatever your morals and opinions and principles are, I don't give a shit.

01:09:56.200 It doesn't matter.

01:09:57.200 So the technology stands on its own.

01:09:59.740 It can compete against anything.

01:10:01.060 It's the best thing to own, period, for yourself.

01:10:02.820 And so it just doesn't matter.

01:10:04.240 It still is permissionless, and they still can't confiscate it.

01:10:07.100 So you still have those things.

01:10:08.240 And you think if, like, the CIA made it, they'd have some backdoor to confiscate it, and that hasn't happened in 15 years.

01:10:13.400 No, but I don't think it would undermine it.

01:10:15.340 If they're trying to build something and get it mass adoption, they wouldn't undermine themselves, even if they were.

01:10:20.400 So it certainly does create some kind of freeing principle for sure.

01:10:24.080 It is traceable.

01:10:25.000 Like, a computer can't track addresses and see where the coins are going.

01:10:28.180 Yeah, there's ways to use it that imply certain things.

01:10:31.500 But listen, I mean, we don't ask, what was the intent of the car?

01:10:34.320 Was it to drive over and hit a chick in the head?

01:10:36.400 Who cares?

01:10:37.660 I use it for what I need to use it for now.

01:10:39.840 It's a tool.

01:10:40.660 So it doesn't matter.

01:10:41.380 And by the way, Ben, the code's open source.

01:10:43.380 So if there is a backdoor, humanity hasn't found it.

01:10:49.280 And so if you are short Bitcoin because you think it's compromised, you are short humanity.

01:10:54.460 The story of humanity is engineering a better world.

01:10:56.380 So if you believe in that, then there's nothing to worry about.

01:10:59.400 Satoshi Nakamoto has, what, 1 million Bitcoin?

01:11:02.320 1.1, I think.

01:11:03.220 1.1.

01:11:03.800 In theory.

01:11:04.320 It's never moved.

01:11:05.180 It's presumed to be that these original allotment or whatever is Satoshi's because it's never moved or whatever.

01:11:11.020 Yes.

01:11:11.760 Do you guys think we will ever find out?

01:11:13.280 Hold on.

01:11:13.680 It's not an initial allotment like some of these ICOs where they give them.

01:11:16.740 Right, right.

01:11:17.240 You know, like the Hawk Tua coin where they gave people a bunch of coins.

01:11:20.380 There was zero at the beginning and that wallet mined in order to earn those coins.

01:11:25.400 Exactly.

01:11:25.660 Yes.

01:11:26.320 So do you think we're ever going to find out who it actually was?

01:11:30.400 I say no at this point.

01:11:32.080 No.

01:11:32.480 I think whoever it actually is is probably like, I don't want to die.

01:11:36.000 Mm-hmm.

01:11:36.540 Or, yeah.

01:11:37.520 It's already rich.

01:11:38.620 Yeah.

01:11:38.960 Like anybody who's done something like this, I would imagine Satoshi probably had other coins as well

01:11:43.720 that weren't as easily noticeable.

01:11:45.980 And doesn't need to move 1.1 million.

01:11:48.720 But also, like, I'll just put it this way.

01:11:50.040 If it were me, I wouldn't just have 1.1 million.

01:11:53.240 There'd probably be smaller bits and pieces there.

01:11:54.800 I would have held on to other wallets, probably have made money elsewhere.

01:11:57.980 Someone smart enough to do this with this vision probably is already successful and wealthy

01:12:01.140 in other ways.

01:12:02.520 But at this point, if you were to make a move on those coins, they'd find you and your life

01:12:07.000 would be in danger.

01:12:07.960 Yeah.

01:12:08.060 Well, everyone in the world is going to be coming at you.

01:12:10.740 So it's funny when these guys come out and go, I'm Satoshi.

01:12:13.220 It's like, no, you're not.

01:12:13.960 Well, first of all, Satoshi leaving, and we can comfortably say now he, based on emails

01:12:19.660 that have been shown in court.

01:12:21.220 He leaving is the best thing that's ever happened in the project, in my opinion.

01:12:25.500 Tremendously important to its independence.

01:12:27.080 Also, setting the tone for the level of humility and lack of ego.

01:12:33.220 I think I always say Bitcoin's an ego test.

01:12:35.920 And those that value and prioritize ego have the toughest time adopting it.

01:12:40.500 What type of man?

01:12:42.160 You don't want to be on the time cover.

01:12:43.940 You don't want to get the hottest chicks at the dance.

01:12:46.100 You don't want to have the biggest yacht.

01:12:47.540 No, seriously, what a humanitarian act to say, this is my gift to our species and walk

01:12:53.840 away.

01:12:54.480 That is the most profound act of a human.

01:12:57.760 To create the best money ever.

01:12:58.520 And money is something human beings use on it every single day.

01:13:00.500 I've never.

01:13:01.340 And that set the tone, I think, for the level of humility.

01:13:04.280 When you adopt this thing, you're not bigger than this thing.

01:13:06.560 You're one with this thing.

01:13:07.540 It's equal rights.

01:13:08.340 It's rules with no rulers.

01:13:09.520 And I do think those that think they're late to Bitcoin is ego.

01:13:12.860 Late to who?

01:13:13.700 Oh, you're comparing yourself to your friend.

01:13:15.220 You're comparing yourself to your colleague, to your college roommate.

01:13:17.960 It's about ego.

01:13:19.300 And he set that tone by saying, this isn't about me.

01:13:22.580 I'm walking away for the importance of what good money means to the world.

01:13:27.180 I've never.

01:13:28.220 Like, draw me a comparison in human history that has done such an act.

01:13:32.040 I don't know of anything remotely close.

01:13:34.640 It's the most selfless thing that somebody could do to invent something and to give up the

01:13:38.040 control, right?

01:13:39.280 Once Satoshi walked away, they released Bitcoin to the world.

01:13:42.400 And the world gets to now decide what to do with Bitcoin.

01:13:45.340 It created this really powerful network, this monetary network.

01:13:49.840 And now that it's out there and it's open for everybody, everyone's getting to choose

01:13:53.760 how they're going to use that and integrate that into their life.

01:13:56.640 And the lack of ego to release something like that is important.

01:14:00.240 But I do think, to the conspiracy points here, you're going to get a lot of that from people

01:14:04.800 who either don't understand it or are incentivized for it not to succeed, right?

01:14:09.440 There's going to be all these stories that come up.

01:14:11.100 You have to try to go to the source, which is often very hard to track, right?

01:14:14.200 You never really know what the source is.

01:14:15.880 But when you've got people like Jack and you've got the core developers who have been

01:14:20.240 diving through this code now for a decade and a half, looking for ways to upgrade it,

01:14:24.960 looking for ways to make sure that this stays the strongest store of value on the planet,

01:14:30.120 right?

01:14:30.380 You can draw some comfort for yourself that people are really invested in making sure that

01:14:35.880 this stays the best solution.

01:14:37.680 The best part is that Bitcoin is one of the only truly free markets in the world to this

01:14:42.820 day, where there's not a central party or central government that's picking the winner.

01:14:47.520 And so I tell you what, if you guys want to read New York Times headlines and read Wikipedia

01:14:51.500 and make your decisions, I'll do the hard work.

01:14:54.400 I'll educate myself.

01:14:55.180 I'll buy Bitcoin and I get rewarded for that.

01:14:56.880 I get bigger houses.

01:14:57.760 I get nicer travel.

01:14:58.860 So you guys do make decisions you want, but it's a free market.

01:15:01.920 You're going to pay the consequences.

01:15:03.060 Let me ask you guys, what do you think about Ethereum?

01:15:05.820 Garbage, bullshit, trash.

01:15:07.680 I don't think that negatively, but I would say that Jack, this is Jack's living.

01:15:13.340 He spends his life in Bitcoin and crypto.

01:15:16.000 This is not my living.

01:15:18.220 And so I don't know if I would call myself a Bitcoin maximalist exactly, but at this point

01:15:22.820 in my life, it's like, I'm going to pay attention to Bitcoin and that's it.

01:15:25.680 I'm sure maybe someone else will create some good projects at some point in time.

01:15:29.440 But then you look at the last seven years and how many scams have there been?

01:15:34.060 There have been just like, it's just scam, scam, scam, scam, scam.

01:15:37.060 So unless I had my life to do research into what this project is and who's backing it,

01:15:41.800 like I'm just kind of going to avoid it.

01:15:43.360 Well, just look at the way the policies change on Ethereum, right?

01:15:45.920 If something's not set, like Bitcoin's set.

01:15:48.260 When the people come out and say, well, how do we know there's only going to be 21 million?

01:15:51.480 You go, well, because there's like five lines of code that tell you Ethereum changes its monetary policy.

01:15:55.620 I'll give you a better answer.

01:15:57.940 I think Bitcoin's the only money in cryptocurrencies.

01:16:01.260 It's the only thing that's built to be money, which we've talked extensively about what that is, why you'd hold it.

01:16:06.200 I think everything else is technology.

01:16:07.960 So you're talking about, we're going to distribute this, decentralize that.

01:16:10.760 But what is that?

01:16:12.360 It's not where I store my time energy.

01:16:14.100 People say, well, Ethereum has utility.

01:16:15.760 I'll tell you, the most successful utility token in human history is the US dollar.

01:16:20.000 It's got about 5 billion daily active users.

01:16:22.620 Really useful.

01:16:23.820 There's a lot of utility in it.

01:16:25.060 Does anyone want to hold it for the long term?

01:16:27.380 We've spent this whole podcast saying no.

01:16:29.420 So why would I hold these things?

01:16:31.700 How much do I have to trust the people that created it?

01:16:33.620 How do they make decisions?

01:16:35.040 What's it useful for?

01:16:36.440 How am I supposed to value it?

01:16:38.240 Guys, I'm telling you, I've been in this space for 12 years.

01:16:40.720 None of those questions have ever been answered.

01:16:43.500 The value accrual has been by drawing a false comparison to Bitcoin and rent seeking off of this trend that Bitcoin and Satoshi created.

01:16:52.620 So that's why my initial reaction is bullshit because there's a little bit of anger there.

01:16:57.080 You guys are riding the coattails of this technology with no clear value creation whatsoever.

01:17:02.560 You're clearly not money.

01:17:04.120 So that's my, and that goes for any of these coins outside Bitcoin.

01:17:07.660 I've never found one.

01:17:08.880 And the whole utility narrative, well, the dollar is useful.

01:17:11.080 I don't want to hold that either.

01:17:12.020 So I just don't get it.

01:17:13.760 You have to be able to extrapolate how this is going to benefit you in your real life.

01:17:17.300 And if you can't tell people that, it's very tough for someone to say this thing should be immensely valuable.

01:17:22.940 And I think that's what happens in a lot of the broader crypto ecosystem.

01:17:26.360 The value that it seems to hold to a lot of people, and I'm not just talking to Ethereum, I'm talking to all the other ones, because I went down that rabbit hole too, right?

01:17:32.380 It's almost like a rite of passage when you first find these things.

01:17:34.820 You've got to buy some shit coins.

01:17:35.860 You've got to lose your money.

01:17:37.220 You've got to go screw up big time, right?

01:17:39.400 And so I got in earlier, and you see all these people making all these money on all these dog coins, and you're like, wow, people are really valuing these.

01:17:46.920 But they're not.

01:17:47.420 They're speculating on these, right?

01:17:49.140 And it's a way to prey on people that don't understand or that are desperate.

01:17:53.300 I don't know.

01:17:53.700 I'm up $2,000 on doge.

01:17:55.160 Oh, there you go.

01:17:55.940 See, I got at least one winner in the room.

01:17:58.300 But eventually, over time, your focus narrows, and you go, which one of these can I really define a value proposition in my own life?

01:18:06.000 What problem is it solving for me?

01:18:08.140 So the rest of them are kind of like gambling.

01:18:09.780 If you want to go gamble, fine.

01:18:11.100 So one of my friends, they come to me.

01:18:13.440 One of them said $100,000 on, was it doge last week or something?

01:18:17.700 I'm like, what are you doing?

01:18:19.260 No.

01:18:19.720 Look, you've got to hawk to him, man.

01:18:21.240 I'm thinking about buying the dip.

01:18:22.620 Spit on that thing.

01:18:23.700 He's coming back.

01:18:24.960 Well, so we haven't spoken about what's the opportunity size of Bitcoin.

01:18:29.720 So there's about $900 trillion worth of stuff in the world that people own.

01:18:34.320 And if we're talking about money in that what you want to save and persist and exchange later for the goods and services you need, about half of that is people use as money.

01:18:44.820 But people are using housing as money, equities as money, right?

01:18:47.420 But you can safely estimate the opportunity for Bitcoin is about $450 trillion worth of opportunity size because that's the amount of wealth in the world today that people are just trying to save.

01:18:57.900 Like people are always like, what's the use case for Bitcoin?

01:18:59.700 I can't buy pizza.

01:19:00.640 The use case is keeping your money.

01:19:02.760 How about that?

01:19:03.360 Did you ever need to do that?

01:19:05.060 Is working hard, earning something, and being able to fucking keep it.

01:19:08.760 Yes.

01:19:09.080 Is that a use case?

01:19:10.060 So that's how big it is.

01:19:11.300 When people say, oh, this technology is going to distribute dental.

01:19:14.720 How big is that use case?

01:19:15.880 When they say something like that.

01:19:17.280 $100 million opportunity set at best.

01:19:20.440 When they say, what's the use case, you realize they don't understand what is money.

01:19:25.420 100%.

01:19:25.860 It's money.

01:19:26.440 It's the best money that humans have ever created, and 8 billion people use money every single day.

01:19:33.260 But if Solana is like a really valuable technology, whatever, I actually don't even follow these shit coins enough, but it's like, Amazon's valuable technology.

01:19:43.240 We'd all agree at the table.

01:19:44.220 Okay, what's the opportunity that, what's it, $2 trillion company, $1 trillion company, something like that, right?

01:19:49.300 So Solana's ceiling is like, oh, man, if they could be as successful as Amazon, which in your life, get the hell out of here, but let's just assume.

01:19:56.260 But if Bitcoin is successful, it's 500 times of an opportunity bigger for the world.

01:20:01.380 So I think these things are an utter and complete distraction.

01:20:04.380 Sorry, rant over.

01:20:05.340 I'm just like, I don't even know how to find the Hawk to a coin, to be honest, because there's like 87.

01:20:09.280 Nobody can find it.

01:20:11.280 Actually, one of my friends, shout out John Kim, he said.

01:20:14.500 Can you pull this up?

01:20:15.340 Look at this.

01:20:15.640 It's like when you, when you go to search for Hawk to a, there's like a bunch of fake ones.

01:20:19.700 Yeah.

01:20:20.220 Which one?

01:20:20.760 Well, he said that, you know, he said in the last cycle, cause there's all this bullshit that always comes up.

01:20:24.900 And he said, you know, the unfortunate thing is these high time preference behaviors is really smart kids coming out of college, realize they can come create some type of shit, Bitcoin, a blockchain project, and then make a hundred million dollars overnight and cash out.

01:20:39.700 And that's the easiest way to make a whole bunch of money.

01:20:42.020 And so you have all these people doing all these bullshit coins.

01:20:44.280 And then, so you know, if you watched for the last seven years and you see just scam after scam, after scam, it's like, I'm just going to stay away from all of that.

01:20:52.260 Well, you got to, if you go onto YouTube, you can watch people doing it live.

01:20:54.940 I saw a video the other day of some 12 year old kid launching some coin on Solana and he rug pulled it live.

01:20:59.660 No, he took like 30 or 40 grand.

01:21:01.140 Are you kidding me?

01:21:01.260 Yeah, yeah.

01:21:01.480 Just like that.

01:21:02.080 Are we taking that 12 year old to jail?

01:21:03.840 The positive, the positive spin on this though, is just how beautiful free markets are.

01:21:07.840 You can get on podcasts and I truly try and educate and really distill what is money.

01:21:14.240 And I tell you guys, Ethereum is not something I'd want my kids to ever inherit.

01:21:17.980 But if you're dumb enough to buy Haktua coin, maybe you didn't need the value anyway.

01:21:23.980 It's artificial selection, right?

01:21:25.240 Yeah, a hundred percent.

01:21:26.660 And I think in the corporate world now, we're seeing a big shift in this as well.

01:21:29.740 Cause you've got a company like MicroStrategy.

01:21:32.040 Well, hold on.

01:21:32.460 Zoom back out there.

01:21:33.180 That was Tim buying the dip.

01:21:34.260 He told us he was going to do it.

01:21:35.560 And right there.

01:21:36.820 That's Tim.

01:21:37.600 That's Tim.

01:21:38.260 He's the only guy on earth up on Haktua coin.

01:21:42.820 Haktua coin.

01:21:44.820 You know what, man?

01:21:46.040 It is sad that people are getting the rug pulled out from him on these things.

01:21:50.580 But Haktua coin, you really got to ask yourself what you're buying.

01:21:54.940 You know what this reminds me of?

01:21:55.860 You guys remember the Beanie Baby craze in the late 90s?

01:21:58.660 Yeah, of course.

01:21:59.120 Everybody was like, Beanie Babies are being discontinued.

01:22:01.320 There's Beanie Babies at every store I go to.

01:22:02.900 They're worthless.

01:22:03.560 But people were buying tons of them.

01:22:05.220 It's like, what are you buying?

01:22:07.820 Is there utility in it?

01:22:10.140 And so the obvious thing with Bitcoin is that very simply, very early on, the use cases I saw were tremendous.

01:22:18.100 It was easy to remit.

01:22:20.120 It was easy to transfer money instantly.

01:22:23.020 So when you're doing like an ACH transaction, a purchase with someone overseas, it's moderately complicated.

01:22:28.600 Even inside the U.S., there's all these different clearinghouses.

01:22:31.120 Bitcoin eliminated and streamlined everything.

01:22:33.300 And that's just a base utility.

01:22:35.440 Smart contracts are possible with Bitcoin, the same as with any other thing.

01:22:39.740 So instantly it was like, oh, okay, you can see how the code works.

01:22:42.840 You know how it works.

01:22:44.160 You can take the choice to educate yourself.

01:22:46.060 And it has a general utility.

01:22:48.120 There's a reason to buy it.

01:22:49.460 And that's why I'm saying, you know, back in 2011, I was like, maybe I should buy some of this.

01:22:52.460 Because I'm not just going to go on the internet and be like, Reddit karma.

01:22:55.400 Maybe I should buy that.

01:22:56.500 I never considered why I would want Reddit karma.

01:22:59.220 Reading about Bitcoin, the plans for it.

01:23:01.260 And I was like, you know, maybe there's something here.

01:23:02.480 My friend talked me out of it.

01:23:04.220 Ended up picking up some seven months later.

01:23:06.060 And then sold it when I made like a couple hundred bucks off it.

01:23:08.820 Like, whoo, I'm excited.

01:23:10.320 Hucked to a coin.

01:23:11.020 What?

01:23:11.860 What is this?

01:23:12.920 What are you going to do with it?

01:23:13.720 People inherently love to gamble.

01:23:15.420 I mean, it's almost like to the point where it's a problem in America that how much people love to gamble.

01:23:19.660 Well, why do you think there's a problem?

01:23:22.020 High-time preference behavior.

01:23:23.260 Desperation.

01:23:23.820 Well, yeah, you force everyone to be a speculator if they can't save.

01:23:27.680 Yeah.

01:23:28.000 Right?

01:23:28.440 Oh, yeah.

01:23:28.960 But, I mean, it's a lot.

01:23:30.040 We've got cultural problems.

01:23:31.620 We've got boredom problems.

01:23:32.820 We've got greed problems.

01:23:34.160 It's all part of a cultural sickness in general.

01:23:36.860 But it comes from that.

01:23:38.240 Like, instead of I'm just an engineer or I'm just a doctor, I'm an engineer and a speculator that has to earn an ability to make progress towards a home.

01:23:47.480 And you become degeneracy where you're looking for a way to just stay afloat and just find a way to finance having a kid or finance a home or finance a vacation.

01:23:56.840 And, yeah, Hawk to a coin is – I'll tell you what.

01:23:58.900 Hawk to a coin – no, in all seriousness, Hawk to a coin's got more upside than just saving in dollars.

01:24:05.920 There's at least a chance you're going to win.

01:24:07.560 Yeah.

01:24:07.860 He's not wrong.

01:24:08.580 Look, look, look.

01:24:09.060 The dollar's 100% down.

01:24:10.200 He's rebounding.

01:24:10.920 This is him right here.

01:24:12.700 Dollars never come back like that.

01:24:14.000 Saving in dollars, you have a 0% chance winning saving in dollars.

01:24:18.440 Not zero in Hawk to a coin, right?

01:24:20.540 That's where I think it comes from.

01:24:21.860 Seriously.

01:24:22.020 I've got to be honest, though.

01:24:22.860 At a tenth of a cent, I might consider buying some Hawk to a coin because it's funny.

01:24:26.000 Oh, my gosh.

01:24:26.640 You know, like, hey, look, put, like, a dollar.

01:24:28.400 Yeah.

01:24:28.820 So I bought, like, 10 shares or whatever of DJT.

01:24:33.040 And then when it went down, all of these leftists are like, ha-ha, Tim lost all his money.

01:24:36.820 I was like, bro, it's about, like, 100 bucks on DJT because it's funny.

01:24:39.340 Yeah.

01:24:39.560 You know, I wanted to own a piece of whatever that was because it made me laugh.

01:24:43.420 I'll buy some Hawk to a – because it's funny.

01:24:45.760 We're going to see the – we're going to really watch this price spike live because you're talking about –

01:24:50.120 No, but I was going to say, this might be the –

01:24:51.680 So many degenerates.

01:24:52.400 So many degenerates.

01:24:53.760 I'm not going to tell anybody what to buy because that's always a mistake.

01:24:56.700 People get mad at you.

01:24:57.520 Yes.

01:24:58.080 But look, right now, as of today, Hawk to a is up decently.

01:25:04.960 Like, somebody just made some money.

01:25:07.160 I always – well, you.

01:25:08.300 We know it's you.

01:25:09.040 We saw you doing the trades over there.

01:25:10.360 I always tell people instead of, say, you need to go buy Bitcoin.

01:25:13.900 I mean, I will say you need to go buy Bitcoin, but I'll say, you also need to do your research first.

01:25:18.780 Take responsibility.

01:25:19.740 Take some responsibility.

01:25:20.820 Do some reading.

01:25:21.500 And that's what this comes back to is taking responsibility.

01:25:24.720 Like, you know, most people, what is money?

01:25:27.620 And what is money in the bank?

01:25:28.720 Most people don't realize because we haven't had a ton of bank runs in America.

01:25:31.880 We had a few last year.

01:25:33.020 But, you know, the money in your bank account, if there is a bank run, it's not actually there.

01:25:38.700 They lend it out at 20 to 1.

01:25:40.120 Like, your money is not there.

01:25:41.320 Whereas if you own Bitcoin and you hold it in cold storage, your money is your money.

01:25:46.060 No one can touch it.

01:25:46.840 It's not theirs.

01:25:47.600 It's yours.

01:25:48.640 But you have to take responsibility for that money.

01:25:51.080 And a lot of people are, like, scared by that.

01:25:53.040 They don't want the responsibility of actually holding their own money, which to me is really weird.

01:25:57.660 Well, if you don't do the homework, you are a speculator.

01:26:00.200 Yes, 100%.

01:26:00.780 Like, if you're just buying it and your only intent is, well, if it's 100,000 today, hopefully it's 110,000 tomorrow, you don't really understand what you own.

01:26:08.900 Yes.

01:26:09.200 Right?

01:26:09.380 You haven't made it a core part of understanding the way that the world financial markets work and evolving your view on that.

01:26:16.480 Once you evolve your view on that, I always tell people, Bitcoin's the most stable part of any investment that I have.

01:26:21.220 I don't even think about it anymore.

01:26:22.360 Yeah.

01:26:22.760 Because I know how valuable it is.

01:26:24.320 So why on earth would I be selling it?

01:26:26.020 I was just trying to pull up one of my favorite quotes.

01:26:28.540 Uh, I'm convinced that any attempt to restore harmony in the world can only rest on the renewal of personal responsibility.

01:26:35.920 Great quote.

01:26:36.420 So, so great.

01:26:37.120 And I think it's so true if you-

01:26:38.700 I thought you were over there buying Hawk 2 a coin.

01:26:40.380 No.

01:26:41.260 You're watching Jack.

01:26:42.380 You know I would never.

01:26:44.860 I would never.

01:26:45.680 That's such a great quote, though.

01:26:46.800 Yeah, no, I think, I mean, and reflect on where society is today.

01:26:50.300 You know, people, their life is dependent on who's elected or who their boss is or get out of here.

01:26:55.860 You know, take ownership over your life.

01:26:57.280 But you have to take it personally.

01:26:58.620 I mean, that's the biggest part is it can't be soundbites.

01:27:01.460 Even soundbites from, you know, us talking here, right?

01:27:03.420 That can help pique your interest.

01:27:05.000 But you really do have to do the work to understand it fundamentally yourself.

01:27:09.180 That's what builds that conviction.

01:27:10.600 There is a really funny meme where it's, you know, the woe jack of the greasy guy with flies and like a couple hair and it's supposed to be like a leftist or whatever.

01:27:21.080 There's like a normal looking Chad guy being like, after doing my research, saving up some money, I decided to buy a small amount of Bitcoin.

01:27:29.340 I've seen a tremendous return of about 240%.

01:27:31.860 This is a pretty good investment.

01:27:33.540 And then the greasy, smelly guy is like, I was trying to buy drugs in 2011 and I'm a millionaire.

01:27:39.700 That's pretty good.

01:27:40.600 That's so funny.

01:27:41.340 It is kind of wild.

01:27:42.100 I met a dude a while ago and he's super, he's probably a billionaire off of Bitcoin.

01:27:48.680 He was like some anarcho-capitalist guy.

01:27:52.620 Outright was just like, he bought Liberty dollars.

01:27:55.020 You guys remember Liberty dollars?

01:27:56.300 Yeah.

01:27:56.680 That guy went to jail.

01:27:58.080 So this dude then saw Bitcoin and just started buying up crazy amounts of it because he's an anti-government, you know, conspiracy kind of guy.

01:28:04.700 And now he's just super rich.

01:28:05.940 He has no idea how it works.

01:28:07.600 And he's like, I don't care.

01:28:08.760 He's like, and I was like, I was having a conversation with him and he was like saying all these things.

01:28:13.960 And I was just like, do you have any idea what you're talking about?

01:28:16.120 And he's like, no.

01:28:17.580 He's like, I just Bitcoin.

01:28:18.840 Bitcoin is all that matters.

01:28:19.480 And I was like, did you research it?

01:28:21.240 Do you know what it is?

01:28:21.680 Like, no.

01:28:21.980 And I was like, and you bought a bunch.

01:28:23.860 He's like, yeah.

01:28:24.840 And now he's on private jets and he's flying around and he's – I'm just like, this guy doesn't even know what he's talking about.

01:28:30.340 I'll defend the early Bitcoiners a little bit because I think there's bad rhetoric that, you know, these guys just got lucky, right?

01:28:36.340 And there's – what did they do to earn any wealth or any good standing in society?

01:28:40.700 I'll say this.

01:28:41.580 When a really good idea needed attention, needed energy, those people were there when no one else was.

01:28:48.860 And the fact that that guy even put a bid in the market and valued it at more than zero is worth the private jets he's flying on right now because look at how it's helping the world.

01:28:56.480 So I do think – I want that message to get out there.

01:28:59.680 And you mentioned it, Tim, is buying it is half the battle.

01:29:03.420 Keeping it is the other.

01:29:04.980 There's plenty of stories of guys that got arrested through Silk Road stuff, spent a decade in jail, came out multimillionaire.

01:29:12.000 That's the forced hoddle.

01:29:13.380 That's the – you were handcuffed.

01:29:15.120 You couldn't sell.

01:29:15.580 Or even just holding through the bear markets because it's like as much conviction as you have, you are lying if at some point during the bear market you're like, damn it, am I a dumbass?

01:29:24.660 I'm like, is this going to zero?

01:29:26.180 Did I waste all my money?

01:29:27.520 A few years ago, Allison and I were talking about should we do a portion of employee pay in Bitcoin?

01:29:33.540 And then we talked about it.

01:29:35.320 And I was like, I think most people would be totally cool with it.

01:29:37.460 And then we just didn't pursue it.

01:29:39.660 It just kind of fell off the radar.

01:29:41.500 And I'm pretty sure everybody who's here would have greatly appreciated a 20% app because it –

01:29:45.840 They wouldn't have held it.

01:29:46.580 They wouldn't have held it in 20 –

01:29:48.260 But they still would have made more money.

01:29:49.320 They would have made more.

01:29:49.760 In 2021, so I built – or 2020, 2021, one of those years, I think 2021, I built a disc golf course on my property.

01:29:57.220 No, it was 2020.

01:29:58.300 And I would have my wrestlers who are high schoolers, they'd come over to work.

01:30:01.660 Like, you know, they want to work for $10 an hour, $12 an hour.

01:30:03.960 Now they're like, I want $14 because, you know, inflation and shit.

01:30:07.700 But anyway, so the one summer I made a bunch of them a deal.

01:30:10.200 I said, I will pay you in Bitcoin for whatever dollars you earn.

01:30:14.160 So $10 an hour.

01:30:15.360 You work six hours.

01:30:16.120 They'll pay $60 in Bitcoin.

01:30:17.260 And then I said, on September 1st, if whatever I paid you in Bitcoin is worth less than what you – you know, what you earned, I will pay you the rest to make it up to you.

01:30:27.020 Just, you know, I didn't want – it wasn't a ton of money, right?

01:30:29.200 I didn't want them to feel like I was ripping them off.

01:30:31.460 Well, so that summer, Bitcoin was $6,000, $7,000, $8,000, you know?

01:30:37.360 And so some of them, you know, if they made $1,500 that summer, they might have made somewhere, you know, between $10,000 and $15,000 instead of $1,500.

01:30:47.680 And I just harassed all – there was three or four of them that I mainly paid.

01:30:51.740 And one of them claims to still have half of it.

01:30:53.960 I don't know that I believe them.

01:30:55.200 But most of them have sold it because holding it is hard.

01:30:58.920 But that's – I – people, you don't have to hold it.

01:31:01.200 I mean, if you're saving, you hold it.

01:31:03.360 But like you said, you use a credit card and then you pay it off with your Bitcoin.

01:31:06.580 Yeah.

01:31:06.960 So you're not holding it indefinitely.

01:31:09.360 And this creates the liquidity in the market that allows people to get in if they have not gotten in.

01:31:14.240 Yeah.

01:31:14.520 So for a young dude who's working a summer job –

01:31:17.700 Yeah.

01:31:18.940 This is what I would say.

01:31:19.780 I'm not going to – again, I'm not telling you guys what to do.

01:31:21.400 You do your own research.

01:31:22.400 I'm saying I wish 10 years ago I started using Bitcoin as a bank account at the very least.

01:31:27.020 Yeah, absolutely.

01:31:27.460 And then when I needed to buy things and I do a new car, I would take out of my bank to buy the car.

01:31:31.920 But here's the thing.

01:31:33.360 If I put all of my income into Bitcoin like it was a bank account, like I get a paycheck, convert to Bitcoin and save it, I could have probably bought five cars per year.

01:31:44.920 Yeah.

01:31:45.300 And I'd still have more U.S. dollar value than I do now, which is absolutely insane.

01:31:52.280 Yeah.

01:31:52.540 I'd have 50 free – 100 free cars just sitting around and more U.S. dollars.

01:31:58.580 Yes.

01:31:58.720 So again, like high school kid gets paid in Bitcoin, spend the money at the end of the summer.

01:32:03.380 But that's high time preference behavior because I said like you live in your parents' house.

01:32:07.580 You haven't got expenses.

01:32:08.700 Like you haven't got – what are you going to cash out and buy something you don't actually need?

01:32:12.260 And that's what's wrong with America.

01:32:13.220 My wife gets mad at me when I go on this rant.

01:32:16.480 So many people buy so much bullshit they don't actually need and they think that bullshit is going to make them happy and it makes them happy for maybe a short window of time.

01:32:24.420 But the bullshit doesn't make them long-term happy.

01:32:26.960 And so like I have so many friends who are working these jobs that they don't actually like.

01:32:30.220 So if you just saved in something that actually held its value and didn't buy bullshit all the time, then you could say, hey, you know what?

01:32:37.600 I don't need this job anymore because I'm independently wealthy and I'm going to do whatever the fuck I want.

01:32:41.580 Do you guys remember Bitcoin Cash?

01:32:44.100 I remember.

01:32:45.040 Yeah, of course.

01:32:45.920 So at some point, Bitcoin forked.

01:32:49.180 Forked, yes.

01:32:49.700 And there were some people that they were like – they forked off Bitcoin Cash saying, this is real Bitcoin.

01:32:54.820 I mean it's trading for $530.

01:32:56.660 So what happens is if you had 10 Bitcoin, when they forked it off, you would get 10 Bitcoin Cash.

01:33:02.360 I immediately sold it for Bitcoin.

01:33:04.120 Smart.

01:33:05.100 I was like, I don't know what this is, but I'll take free money.

01:33:07.060 I couldn't believe – explaining this to relatives at Thanksgiving, I was like, okay, you guys aren't going to get this.

01:33:13.540 Some dude created money out of thin air and gave it to all of us.

01:33:18.020 However, if I just created Jack Bucks with this beef jerky here, no one would value it.

01:33:26.080 But here's the catch.

01:33:27.220 He created money out of thin air, gave it to all of us, and then said he'd give his Bitcoin for it.

01:33:32.260 So we all – everyone was like, what?

01:33:34.880 Someone created money out of thin air and then gave you real money for it?

01:33:37.600 It's like, yeah, I swear to God.

01:33:39.080 There was a short period where Bitcoin Cash was worth more.

01:33:41.480 It spiked really high.

01:33:42.740 But if you do the chart like one against the other, it's –

01:33:45.080 Oh, it's nuts.

01:33:45.660 I mean, Bitcoin Cash is $500.

01:33:47.560 You'll notice they're similar.

01:33:48.960 One's $100,000.

01:33:50.020 One's $500.

01:33:51.200 There was also Bitcoin Diamond.

01:33:52.480 There was all of them that kind of came out at the time.

01:33:54.580 Yeah, and this goes to –

01:33:55.320 ESV.

01:33:55.840 I love using chess as an analogy of – no one wants to play Jack's chess or Tim's chess,

01:34:01.840 especially when I start losing and I say, well, okay, I'm going to change the rules.

01:34:04.700 Your queens act like pawns.

01:34:05.940 My pawns act like queens.

01:34:07.020 And I call that Jack's chess.

01:34:08.340 No one wants to play that.

01:34:09.880 The rules of chess are the rules of chess.

01:34:11.240 And if you lose at the game, get better at the game.

01:34:12.820 You know, if money is truly a measure of your contributions to society and it's supposed

01:34:18.020 to work how it's intended to work, if you don't like how much money you have, then work

01:34:21.800 harder and be more valuable to people.

01:34:23.600 I'm going to launch my own crypto called TimCastCoin.

01:34:28.160 I am declaring that it is worth nothing.

01:34:30.400 It will never be worth anything and I will never own a single one.

01:34:33.920 And then some people are going to gamble on it.

01:34:36.600 100%.

01:34:37.040 You should partner with Hawk Tua.

01:34:39.260 Ah, there you go.

01:34:39.920 Strategic deal.

01:34:41.420 I'll call it Hawk 2.

01:34:45.020 I think that early on, though, like the messaging was always you buy Bitcoin, you hold Bitcoin,

01:34:50.560 you never sell Bitcoin, you die with your Bitcoin.

01:34:52.440 Even Trump said, even Trump said, you never sell your Bitcoin.

01:34:56.240 I know.

01:34:56.800 But I do think that that mindset has to shift a little bit because if people are really

01:35:00.500 going to adopt a Bitcoin standard for their personal lives like Jack has, you have to

01:35:05.500 start getting comfortable with that being that Bitcoin is the primary core of your entire

01:35:10.860 financial life.

01:35:12.000 Yes.

01:35:12.300 And you're going to be working in and out of that constantly.

01:35:14.700 It doesn't mean that you're buying it and dumping it all, right?

01:35:17.280 It means that over time...

01:35:18.500 Yeah, I'm buying it as a speculative asset.

01:35:19.580 As you're buying your goods and services on your credit cards, you know, hopefully as Bitcoin

01:35:24.420 becomes more valuable over time, you're actually paying less of your Bitcoin over time for

01:35:29.040 your expenses, it strengthens your financial picture long term.

01:35:32.600 That mindset shift is going to take a little while.

01:35:35.740 The products have to get really good.

01:35:37.540 I mean, Strike's doing a great job with this to help people understand that.

01:35:40.740 Treat it almost like it's your own bank account and then pay your bills out of it.

01:35:44.040 What's fascinating, so my lifestyle got cheaper after I adopted Bitcoin and don't own any more

01:35:50.340 dollars.

01:35:51.020 And it's because what does it do to a man or woman if it's technically true...

01:35:56.380 I don't want to give this shit away.

01:35:57.500 Yeah, it's technically true that all the dollars you have now are best spent this second because

01:36:03.680 next second, they're worth less stuff.

01:36:05.880 And so what does that do to a society, to a person versus the opposite on Bitcoin?

01:36:10.100 My Bitcoin is better valued tomorrow than today, so I only consume what I absolutely need.

01:36:15.560 All of a sudden, like the interest of getting whatever bags and fancy whatever cars is like,

01:36:22.040 I'm cool with an Uber, man.

01:36:23.560 It's all good.

01:36:24.560 And you are able to save.

01:36:27.020 And conversely, if you are being bled to death monetarily by inflation and a currency that's

01:36:32.180 being printed, then you become an active, addicted consumer because your life's better

01:36:36.700 off spending it now.

01:36:37.800 Literally.

01:36:38.220 That's what they want.

01:36:38.880 The government...

01:36:39.220 That's what they want.

01:36:39.860 After 9-11, George W. Bush said, go spend money.

01:36:43.480 They want you to just short-term gains, keep spending.

01:36:46.800 That's the premise of Kenzie and Axonomics, is that you spend money all the time.

01:36:50.760 You don't save it.

01:36:51.760 They don't want savers.

01:36:52.780 They want to extract a portion of your labor.

01:36:54.980 So if you're not spending any money, they're not extracting from you.

01:36:58.320 That's how they got to play it if they want to engage in the dirty games.

01:37:01.480 But to be fair, during COVID, they got rid of the limits on fractional reserve banking.

01:37:06.440 This is the other crazy thing people don't understand, man.

01:37:08.200 It's so crazy.

01:37:08.800 So how do I discover Bitcoin in 2011?

01:37:12.220 Well, have you guys all seen Zeitgeist documentary in the 2000s?

01:37:15.900 No.

01:37:16.180 Oh, you got to watch it.

01:37:17.140 I feel like I did, but it's been so long, I don't really remember.

01:37:19.600 So there were a couple of big viral documentaries in the early days of the internet.

01:37:22.880 Loose Change, 9-11.

01:37:23.800 Oh, yeah.

01:37:24.580 People were sharing DVDs with each other.

01:37:26.540 And there was also Zeitgeist.

01:37:28.380 And in this, what's the guy's name?

01:37:32.160 I can't believe I'm forgetting his name.

01:37:33.300 Anyway, he made a documentary, and in it, he explains basic fractional reserve banking.

01:37:37.100 How does it work?

01:37:38.240 The bank needs to hold only 90% of your deposit.

01:37:42.360 I'm probably getting it wrong.

01:37:43.340 It's like 9-1.

01:37:44.080 They can issue out a loan.

01:37:45.700 Yeah.

01:37:46.640 They can create money as long as they have a certain amount to accommodate for that.

01:37:52.540 Let me dramatically simplify it.

01:37:54.400 If you put $100 in the bank, they're allowed to create $90.

01:37:59.580 No, no, no.

01:38:00.720 $900.

01:38:01.600 $900.

01:38:02.520 Right, 9-1.

01:38:03.320 9-1.

01:38:03.660 They got rid of the limits in March, meaning they could give out an infinite number of

01:38:07.620 debt to anybody at any point, meaning inflation was bound to go nuts.

01:38:12.820 Nuts.

01:38:13.120 Yeah, yeah.

01:38:13.460 And then it did.

01:38:14.720 And we are swimming in it, and it's getting worse.

01:38:18.260 The removal of that limit was basically like, this is apocalyptic for the U.S. dollar, and

01:38:23.820 we are still in it.

01:38:25.880 Can not, you know, is Donald Trump going to be able to solve a lot of this stuff?

01:38:28.960 Well, it may be, he's saying he's going to get the prices down.

01:38:33.400 Okay, I think he will with energy, but will it get down?

01:38:36.760 It can never go backwards to the point where things are going to be as cheap as they used

01:38:40.180 to be because of inflation.

01:38:41.340 Well, I mean, I actually think about that.

01:38:43.740 So I think, okay, we've borrowed $36 trillion that we don't actually have, right?

01:38:46.980 That's why we have a debt.

01:38:48.280 And if we're actually going to pay that back, that means moving forward, we're going to have

01:38:51.600 to spend $36 trillion less than what we make in order to get back to zero, if that's

01:38:57.020 possible, right?

01:38:57.800 You could do that a few ways.

01:38:58.900 You could print more money to make $36 trillion, not all that much.

01:39:02.520 You could have austerity and spend less money.

01:39:06.880 You know, we're going to try to do that with Doge.

01:39:08.200 Jack says it's impossible.

01:39:09.420 We'll see.

01:39:10.540 You know, real quick.

01:39:11.720 Sorry.

01:39:11.940 No, no, it's 90%.

01:39:13.220 So they're allowed to lend out 90%.

01:39:17.280 So in fractional bank, in fractional reserve banking, if you put $100 in, they can create

01:39:22.900 a $90 loan.

01:39:23.800 So they don't take your $100 and give it to someone else.

01:39:28.080 Yeah.

01:39:28.280 They create a $90 debt, which just creates cash in the air.

01:39:32.460 Are you sure?

01:39:33.120 Yeah, yeah.

01:39:33.560 Okay.

01:39:33.800 And then what happens is the individual at $90 deposits that into a bank, and then they

01:39:39.180 can issue out an $81 loan.

01:39:41.560 And so it just, so $100 turns into something like $900 with everybody getting, until it

01:39:48.180 winds all the way down.

01:39:49.480 They removed that limitation in March.

01:39:51.340 I do believe they re-implemented it afterwards, like a year or so ago or something like that.

01:39:56.660 But just to dramatically simplify, instead of trying to get into the whole thing, explaining

01:40:00.600 fractional reserve banking, banks and the US government, they're not printing money in

01:40:05.940 Denver, like people think, with like a machine printer.

01:40:08.840 They're going into a computer and going, 5-0-0-0-0-0, enter.

01:40:13.260 Well, that's why they're so protective over the banking system.

01:40:15.920 Yeah.

01:40:16.220 It's an extension of the whole scheme, 100%.

01:40:18.860 And that was, I mean, honestly, the reason I went, but if someone first told me about

01:40:22.980 Bitcoin, and I wish someone would have told me earlier, I was like, oh shit, I need some

01:40:26.620 of that.

01:40:27.180 It's because I was a Ron Paul guy, and I had read End of Fed a few times, and I realized

01:40:31.540 why our dollar was flawed, and I just didn't see an exit.

01:40:35.080 You know, I obviously bought some gold and silver prior, but I didn't know about Bitcoin

01:40:39.880 until someone told me.

01:40:41.960 And so, you know, that's a great start for people, is read End of Fed and figure out

01:40:46.380 what they're doing there, and why has no one ever audited it?

01:40:48.940 Like, why does it still exist?

01:40:50.120 And if Trump could end it, that would be tremendous.

01:40:52.880 Well, you look at Millet in Argentina, and you look at El Salvador, and I just imagine

01:40:58.060 Ron Paul, just when that happened, he put his feet up, he lit up a cigar.

01:41:01.540 And he's like, told you.

01:41:04.560 I think what Trump wants is, because we talked earlier that inflation can be measured depending

01:41:10.420 on what you want.

01:41:11.140 You want a house, you want a Caesar salad, different inflation metrics, right?

01:41:14.880 I think what he's going to try and engineer asset inflation is, I'm pretty, it's pretty

01:41:19.680 clear.

01:41:20.240 He wants consumer goods to come down.

01:41:22.400 He's going to invest in energy, local production, tariffs, but then he wants the stock market,

01:41:26.880 he wants Bitcoin to go up.

01:41:28.740 He's even hinted at, he's been really critical of Jerome Powell and the Fed, almost to the

01:41:35.500 point where, does he want oversight over the Fed?

01:41:39.300 Is he going to maybe potentially say that this thing can't be independent, because I need

01:41:43.460 to control the short term and the long term?

01:41:45.660 What if the head of the treasury was also the chairman of the Fed?

01:41:49.100 Now, I'm not saying that'd be a good or bad thing, but to me, to your point, I don't know

01:41:53.940 if this is a fixable problem.

01:41:55.620 It's certainly the most complicated thing to inherit ever, probably as a president, as

01:42:00.220 far as fiscal situation goes.

01:42:02.160 And he's, because asset inflation, to be clear for everyone, is good for the president, for

01:42:07.640 Trump, because you get a lot of tax receipts.

01:42:09.700 You know, they get a lot of cap gains, tax receipts if things go up, right?

01:42:12.400 Things go up.

01:42:13.180 There's the wealth effect.

01:42:14.060 People feel rich.

01:42:15.160 They sell it.

01:42:15.640 They buy big stuff, economic growth.

01:42:18.220 So I'm hearing his comments.

01:42:20.300 You know, America's so weird.

01:42:21.360 You guy gets elected and then we got to like sit and wait.

01:42:23.500 It's like blue balls.

01:42:24.140 You got to sit and wait, see like what's actually going to happen.

01:42:27.100 Like he's not even in office yet.

01:42:28.600 He can't actually make decisions and give direction.

01:42:30.460 So we'll see.

01:42:31.360 But based on what he's saying, I think that I think that's what he's going to try and

01:42:34.540 do.

01:42:34.840 Asset inflation.

01:42:36.020 The reason why the international interests despise Trump so much is they want normalization

01:42:43.640 between large economic blocks.

01:42:45.060 They want a one world currency.

01:42:47.640 They want to be able to control the entire payment structure.

01:42:50.640 And here's the truth.

01:42:51.660 We have a one world currency and we've had it for a long time.

01:42:53.500 It's called Visa and MasterCard.

01:42:54.940 In reality, it's called the Swift payment system.

01:42:57.020 I can go to any country on the planet and swipe my exact same credit card and it will

01:43:00.960 automatically convert.

01:43:01.980 So I think what these people realized was we don't need to create the earth dollar.

01:43:07.740 Let people transact locally with whatever they want.

01:43:10.620 Give them the credit card that will automatically handle everything behind the scenes.

01:43:13.940 And they're trading as if they have one currency.

01:43:16.200 Donald Trump wants America and Americans to benefit, to be better off, to be wealthy.

01:43:22.500 And this is in defiance of external interests that are not American.

01:43:27.080 So there's a lot of money around the world that wants to stop a guy like him from from

01:43:31.520 doing what he's doing.

01:43:32.480 So I agree with you.

01:43:33.380 What does he want to do?

01:43:34.500 He wants the cost of consumer goods to go down.

01:43:37.000 He wants food to go down.

01:43:37.700 He wants fuel to go down and he wants assets to go up so that Americans become wealthier,

01:43:40.920 can buy more, can have more.

01:43:42.700 And that's bad for those who want a flat, stable, low income planet that's easy to control.

01:43:48.720 And that it's still a tax on the people that don't have the assets.

01:43:51.620 If the assets are inflating, then you're increasingly getting poorer when measured in housing,

01:43:55.860 when measured in equities.

01:43:57.420 But what's unique about Bitcoin is everyone can own it.

01:44:00.560 Everyone can own it.

01:44:01.180 You could buy a penny worth of it.

01:44:02.820 So I would, again, recommend entirely on this show to get yourself some Bitcoin, because

01:44:07.240 if Trump is going to try and engineer asset inflation, that's the one asset that's going

01:44:10.940 to perform the best.

01:44:11.680 And it's the only one that all of us can have.

01:44:13.180 You can't recommend on a podcast.

01:44:15.060 I think everyone should go get themselves some beachfront real estate in Miami, right?

01:44:19.200 But I can say everyone should get a little bit of Bitcoin.

01:44:21.420 I've got family members who bought Bitcoin at like 30K and or no, no, no, at around 50 or

01:44:27.260 60 that dropped down to 30 and they were freaking out being like, I don't know what I'm

01:44:30.000 going to do.

01:44:31.360 And I'm like, why are you acting like you lost anything?

01:44:32.860 Do you need the money right now?

01:44:34.420 No, you didn't lose anything.

01:44:35.440 And now they're not complaining.

01:44:36.620 Yeah.

01:44:37.220 Now they're like, oh, I'm like, yeah, it's look.

01:44:41.620 Donald Trump's going to come in and I hope he does a Bitcoin reserve.

01:44:46.080 I hope he starts doing everything he says he's going to do.

01:44:51.720 It's only going to get better for everybody.

01:44:53.760 That's it.

01:44:54.420 I mean, if you live in a foreign country, well, then you're not America.

01:44:56.780 I don't know.

01:44:57.140 We're not supposed to be securing the interests of other countries.

01:45:00.220 They can buy Bitcoin too.

01:45:01.840 Individuals in any country.

01:45:03.440 Here's the other thing too.

01:45:04.140 I've had friends tell me like when Bitcoin hit 12K or whatever, they were like, man, I

01:45:09.220 wish I got in.

01:45:10.160 And I was like, so buy some Bitcoin.

01:45:11.740 And they're like, well, it's 12,000 now.

01:45:13.220 And I was like, buy a dollar's worth of Bitcoin.

01:45:15.720 What are you talking about?

01:45:16.700 And they were like, well, how do you do that?

01:45:18.900 And I'm like, oh, my friend.

01:45:20.760 Well, just to circle back to where Jack started is, one of them is going to go down in perpetuity.

01:45:27.000 One of them is going to go up in perpetuity.

01:45:29.020 So it doesn't matter what the price of the Bitcoin is.

01:45:31.400 If you buy $1,000 of Bitcoin, if you waited 10 years, your $1,000 of cash is going to be

01:45:36.920 worth less than your $1,000 of Bitcoin is going to be worth more.

01:45:39.180 So it doesn't really matter how much of the Bitcoin you own if you just buy whatever you

01:45:43.740 can.

01:45:44.780 Someone is like a viral post where they basically tracked the value gains of Bitcoin over time.

01:45:53.620 And the prediction is if Bitcoin follows the exact pattern it's been following for the

01:45:58.980 past 14 years, 10 years from now, Bitcoin will be at $1 million.

01:46:04.760 I think faster.

01:46:06.700 But this doesn't take into account-

01:46:08.240 I saw that post, though.

01:46:09.920 They said it was the amount of time from zero to $10,000, $10,000 to $100,000.

01:46:16.240 So $100,000 to $1 million will be in 10 years.

01:46:18.500 Yeah, on a logarithmic scale.

01:46:20.020 Right.

01:46:20.980 It doesn't take into account ubiquity.

01:46:22.640 It doesn't take into account if there's mass adoption or a variable shock to the system.

01:46:27.380 Yeah, because, I mean, what Ben's expertise is, is corporate treasuries.

01:46:33.160 And, you know, I told him in the last cycle, it was like microstrategy, maybe there was

01:46:37.420 a couple others, but it was really rare.

01:46:39.960 And now it feels like there's, and they're not huge companies, but it feels like there's

01:46:42.680 about five being announced every day.

01:46:44.180 Like, oh, this company bought 20.

01:46:46.020 This company bought 100.

01:46:47.000 And, you know, and so like once that ramps up, and then if America does it, to his point,

01:46:52.640 it might happen like-

01:46:53.760 I think that it's a really important message.

01:46:56.000 I think Bitcoin people misunderstand it as like some intellectual test of how smarter you

01:47:00.180 to understand it.

01:47:00.820 It's an ego test.

01:47:02.100 Because if you think you're late, late to who?

01:47:04.360 No one, there's no Bitcoin CEO taking attendance.

01:47:07.720 It's, you're late because you're comparing yourself to other people, which just, that's

01:47:11.400 vulnerable insecurities.

01:47:13.120 That's being a small person.

01:47:14.240 Because at the end of the day, decisions are made at the margin.

01:47:16.880 You wake up every day, you do stuff for the world.

01:47:19.160 You have to get, you have to store your value in return for the stuff you've done.

01:47:23.160 And you have to make the decision every day.

01:47:24.880 Do I want it in dollars?

01:47:25.780 Do I want it in this other thing?

01:47:27.680 And so it doesn't matter what the price is.

01:47:29.640 I will be storing my life's work in Bitcoin at the top forever.

01:47:34.300 Michael Saylor quote.

01:47:35.300 I will always make the decision to own the thing that no one can print versus the thing that

01:47:40.460 a man can print, right?

01:47:41.840 In 15 years, there has not been a failure of Bitcoin.

01:47:49.020 So since its inception, what happens is it'll spike in price due to runs or due to some interest.

01:47:57.100 There's an announcement that some company or some country is going to invest a large amount

01:48:00.660 of money.

01:48:01.240 So a lot of people want to buy it up quick.

01:48:02.980 The price will spike.

01:48:03.900 And then a bunch of people will rush in.

01:48:06.980 Then the price will drop.

01:48:08.540 And they'll say, I'm ruined.

01:48:10.020 And they'll sell off.

01:48:11.400 That's their fault.

01:48:12.660 That's not an issue of Bitcoin at all.

01:48:15.000 If you put your life savings into Bitcoin at any point in the past 15 years, you have

01:48:21.140 not lost anything.

01:48:22.280 You'd be up significantly in US dollar terms.

01:48:25.000 That's 100% this year.

01:48:26.000 I mean, Ben said this earlier.

01:48:27.560 He didn't say the exact words.

01:48:28.360 I'm not making suggestions of what people should do.

01:48:30.260 I'm just saying.

01:48:31.040 Not financial advice.

01:48:32.440 Not financial advice.

01:48:33.580 But you said, you know, if you're only getting in for the number go up technology, if that's

01:48:38.860 only the year and four, then yes, when it goes down a little bit, you're going to get

01:48:41.600 scared and you're likely to sell.

01:48:42.760 But if you start reading and educate yourself and you start realizing what this actually is,

01:48:47.600 then it goes down a little bit.

01:48:48.740 And you're like, oh, it's not a big deal.

01:48:50.920 Like, I realize this is better.

01:48:52.580 And in the long run, which is what I'm investing for, it's going to go up.

01:48:56.600 Well, you have to realize that pricing of these assets is set at the margins, right?

01:49:00.320 It's really only the ones that are available to exchange hands.

01:49:03.060 And a lot of that does get driven by traders.

01:49:05.260 And the weird thing with the digital asset markets is the international exchanges have

01:49:10.540 introduced huge leverage into these systems.

01:49:13.020 They'll allow you to trade with 100 times leverage or 200 times leverage.

01:49:17.280 What that also does is it does create that volatility because you've got really razor thin margins

01:49:22.760 for liquidation levels.

01:49:24.240 So you'll get these price movements.

01:49:26.120 But as bigger and bigger capital has been entering Bitcoin, the volatility is actually starting

01:49:31.120 to decrease, right?

01:49:32.880 And so you've got companies like MicroStrategy where they saw the value in that volatility and

01:49:38.680 they tried to manufacture more of it successfully, right?

01:49:41.740 They're like two times as volatile as Bitcoin is.

01:49:44.320 And what people miss about that entire strategy is that what MicroStrategy is doing is they

01:49:50.640 basically created a loading dock for Wall Street Capital to get brought to the spot Bitcoin

01:49:56.540 market that can never make it there otherwise, right?

01:49:59.240 So all these funds that are investing in all these convertible bonds that MicroStrategy is

01:50:02.980 offering, they have a charter that only allows them to invest in convertible debt.

01:50:08.100 That's it.

01:50:08.540 That's the only thing they can buy.

01:50:09.880 Billions and billions of dollars.

01:50:11.300 And there's never been any returns there because you're investing in companies that

01:50:16.000 have no volatility.

01:50:16.960 They'll have 15 or 20 volatility.

01:50:19.580 MicroStrategy is 120.

01:50:21.540 So now he's basically capturing Wall Street Capital and bringing it to the spot Bitcoin

01:50:27.260 markets, which is a big shift.

01:50:29.300 And the reason they all love him for it is because it's providing those returns.

01:50:32.560 So people do still love it as a trading asset, but there's the fundamental part of the asset

01:50:36.220 that individuals need to know about.

01:50:38.060 You guys know the story of how Max Keiser tried to give Alex Jones 10,000 Bitcoin.

01:50:42.620 I thought he did give it to him.

01:50:44.460 Is that what he lost it?

01:50:45.060 He lost it, I believe.

01:50:47.500 Idiot.

01:50:47.900 That's a billion dollars.

01:50:48.580 What an idiot.

01:50:50.840 So it's funny because he still would have had it seized in the Sandy Hook lawsuit.

01:50:55.880 Well, but you can't seize anyone's Bitcoin.

01:50:58.720 Yeah.

01:50:59.120 It's hard to even track it.

01:51:00.220 I think they tried claiming that Alex Jones had hidden crypto assets, which I mean, I'm not

01:51:06.060 going to make any statements about Alex personally, because I don't know, but who doesn't have

01:51:09.900 crypto assets that are difficult to track?

01:51:11.920 Yeah, absolutely.

01:51:12.460 You know what I mean?

01:51:12.740 I mean, I encourage everybody who has it, you make sure you're reporting properly and

01:51:15.420 all that stuff.

01:51:15.820 But I'm saying you might have Bitcoin lying on a drive somewhere that no one even knows

01:51:19.920 about, you know?

01:51:20.620 I was fishing a few days ago and I just tweeted out and I said, oh, shoot.

01:51:26.100 I think I lost my keys at IRS.

01:51:29.020 And hey, it's a joke, IRS.

01:51:31.320 I've been through the audits.

01:51:32.700 I don't want any smoke.

01:51:33.980 It was bold to tag them directly.

01:51:36.700 I had sympathy for your loss, but I thought tagging them.

01:51:39.680 No, it's the age-old joke, though.

01:51:42.440 Yeah.

01:51:42.860 I mean, if I wanted it to be, it could be 12 words that I've stored in my brain.

01:51:47.240 That's what's crazy.

01:51:47.980 If I could put an asset in my brain.

01:51:49.840 I had the joke of like Bitcoin's safe in your brain and gold is stuck in your butt.

01:51:53.460 If you've got to take gold through TSA, good luck.

01:51:59.140 Explain the 12 words people don't know.

01:52:01.820 Your key, your passphrase, the sensitive part that deems you the owner of the Bitcoin can

01:52:07.420 be represented as 12 plain English words.

01:52:10.300 And so if you have trust in the future of your memory, so no head injuries or any, you

01:52:15.080 know, don't get in a fight.

01:52:17.280 No.

01:52:17.440 Listen, I just had my brain studied in September and he said, man, your brain's

01:52:23.280 great.

01:52:23.800 Looks like no concussions ever.

01:52:25.140 Good.

01:52:25.400 I said, well.

01:52:26.980 Good.

01:52:27.660 Awesome.

01:52:28.280 So there's, you know, trade-offs for everything, but, you know, you could store your key with

01:52:33.360 12 words.

01:52:34.300 To be fair, it's like, you know, the IQ bell curve meme?

01:52:37.040 Yes.

01:52:37.300 Where the really dumb guy with his eyes flying outside, I said.

01:52:39.220 Yeah, that's great.

01:52:39.720 You've got that guy and you've got the monk guy and the guy in the back end is like,

01:52:43.260 I bought Bitcoin.

01:52:44.160 The smart guy's like, I bought Bitcoin.

01:52:45.380 And then the guy in the middle crying is saying, this is stupid.

01:52:48.200 It isn't even represented by any value.

01:52:49.400 Why would you buy this?

01:52:51.420 Well, it also goes back to, you know, if the government's going to quote unquote ban

01:52:54.860 Bitcoin, they're going to ban English because fundamentally Bitcoin is speech, Bitcoin's

01:53:00.340 text, Bitcoin's information.

01:53:01.820 Yeah.

01:53:02.040 And so it goes down to like really fundamental human rights that we theoretically are born

01:53:06.860 with.

01:53:07.260 I think they learned their lesson.

01:53:09.500 I think, you know, because you had for a while, I think Elizabeth Warren was talking

01:53:13.140 against her.

01:53:13.600 She's the worst.

01:53:14.400 Yeah.

01:53:14.680 And they were all saying like, it's bad and it can be used for drugs and all this other

01:53:17.440 stuff and then they probably just looked and they're like, there's nothing you can do to

01:53:21.380 stop this.

01:53:22.480 This is a damn break and you can go with the flow and try and move through it or you can

01:53:28.460 stand there and just get washed away.

01:53:30.080 So I think what we're probably going to see moving into the Trump administration, especially

01:53:33.040 because they have a crypto czar, is they're going to try to do to the best of the ability

01:53:36.900 to utilize the wealth and power of the United States to have some influence in this

01:53:41.640 space as opposed to just trying to resist what can't be stopped.

01:53:44.660 Oh, yeah.

01:53:44.960 Absolutely.

01:53:45.320 They'll incentivize investment within the United States economy.

01:53:48.140 And try to capitalize on it.

01:53:48.940 Bring it in.

01:53:49.260 Yeah.

01:53:49.500 Try to capitalize it.

01:53:50.360 Try to be the leader in getting this.

01:53:51.860 Because, I mean, Gary Gensler was, he was freaking awful and, I mean, he lost a lot.

01:53:56.800 So thankfully he didn't have very much success in what he was doing, but he was torturing

01:54:00.280 every crypto company and it made some of them, I think some of them, you guys could probably

01:54:04.360 speak on this better than me, but I believe some of the companies did actually leave the

01:54:07.880 United States because of how hostile it was.

01:54:10.100 You know, there's that Paul Krugman quote.

01:54:13.120 Let me see if I can find this.

01:54:14.040 He's almost as bad as Gary Gensler.

01:54:15.600 Fax machine?

01:54:17.180 The fax machine quote.

01:54:18.320 Yeah, yeah.

01:54:18.880 And then there's Peter Schiff.

01:54:20.500 Oh, he's insufferable.

01:54:22.320 Let me pull up this quote here.

01:54:23.960 Schiff's the worst.

01:54:24.740 Let's understand.

01:54:26.220 Here you go.

01:54:27.040 He's a nice guy.

01:54:27.920 He's a funny guy.

01:54:28.540 He debated him.

01:54:29.220 Good guy.

01:54:29.520 So Paul Krugman said, by 2005 or so, it will become clear that the internet's impact on

01:54:34.860 the economy has been no greater than the fax machines.

01:54:39.980 Yikes!

01:54:40.920 That is bad, bad, bad.

01:54:43.020 And then you have these constant tweets from Peter Schiff where it's just...

01:54:47.300 Constant.

01:54:47.580 Bitcoin will never reach this amount.

01:54:49.640 Bitcoin won't...

01:54:50.040 It's like every year he has to say it and then it happens.

01:54:53.200 Every year, every day, every day.

01:54:55.200 I noticed that Peter Schiff owns no Bitcoin, but his wife owns Bitcoin and his son owns

01:54:59.680 Bitcoin.

01:55:00.520 So he's a marketer, right?

01:55:02.640 He knows what he's doing.

01:55:03.700 He's got products that he's selling.

01:55:05.200 This has become his shtick and it keeps him in the mainstream perpetually.

01:55:08.740 And I've debated, Peter, Bitcoin versus gold.

01:55:11.440 And the funniest part is I'm 100% Bitcoin.

01:55:14.820 Literally, he owns zero dollars.

01:55:16.380 You ask Peter, you know, what percentage of your net worth is in gold?

01:55:19.620 And it's whatever, 5%, 10%.

01:55:22.180 It's okay.

01:55:22.800 So you believe in gold 5%.

01:55:24.860 Like, I'm telling you, I believe in this thing 100%.

01:55:27.860 I'm that confident.

01:55:28.960 How can you be selling something that you're...

01:55:30.580 Like when people sell you like 2%, you should allocate 2% of your portfolio.

01:55:35.080 So that means you're 98% not confident.

01:55:37.540 Like, you know what I mean?

01:55:39.300 So I don't know.

01:55:39.980 You can't take people like that too serious because they're not that confident in what

01:55:43.600 they're selling.

01:55:44.280 Basically sounds like even he just has an insurance policy, right?

01:55:47.280 Like 2% is an insurance policy.

01:55:49.140 That's how BlackRock's coming out and saying everyone should have 2% Bitcoin.

01:55:51.920 Insurance policies aren't a solution.

01:55:53.700 If you want an insurance policy for a natural disaster, it's not preventing the natural disaster.

01:55:57.560 Like I'm talking about, I have a solution.

01:56:00.140 You know, Michael Saylor, I love this is, you know, hedges are for when you don't know

01:56:04.220 the answer.

01:56:05.040 Right.

01:56:05.260 And you want to diversify the potential.

01:56:06.880 If you know the answer, I'm not diversifying out of Bitcoin for shit.

01:56:11.240 I know the answer and I'm leaning into the answer as much as I can, right?

01:56:16.760 Yeah, man.

01:56:17.740 This next administration is going to be interesting.

01:56:20.340 What do you think about the cryptos are?

01:56:21.780 Like, what do you think they're going to do?

01:56:22.960 I think most people think very positively, David Sachs.

01:56:26.020 And if you read, read slash listen to him, he's not exactly a Bitcoin maxi, but he's not

01:56:32.020 really far off.

01:56:32.840 Like, he's very, very pro Bitcoin and he understands it deeply.

01:56:36.280 I think it's a, David's bright.

01:56:39.540 The commitment that Trump is making, which is, I want someone in position to service this

01:56:44.920 space.

01:56:45.660 Here, the criticisms, the feedback, build a plan.

01:56:48.740 I mean, there was no role prior.

01:56:50.120 And the fact that there is a role for that now is incredibly exciting.

01:56:53.780 Now, you know, is he going to make mistakes?

01:56:55.580 What decisions is he going to make?

01:56:57.000 He's a bright guy, super successful businessman and has experience in the industry.

01:57:01.720 That's all you can really ask for.

01:57:03.240 I mean, everyone's going to like, I would love if Saylor was in charge, right?

01:57:06.160 But what, what are you going to do?

01:57:07.720 I think it's exciting.

01:57:09.340 You have to look at the collective too, right?

01:57:10.820 Because it goes further out in his cabinet than just having a crypto site.

01:57:13.560 Remember, they're all kind of Bitcoiners.

01:57:14.460 You've got Howard Lutnick in there.

01:57:15.600 You've got Bascent in there, right?

01:57:17.080 JD Vance owns Bitcoin.

01:57:18.140 Bitcoin, like this is going to be by far the most pro-Bitcoin administration that we're

01:57:22.840 going to see.

01:57:23.080 The game theory and story of Bitcoin is you're, you're better off on its team than in its

01:57:26.580 way, period.

01:57:27.940 And that's been the story.

01:57:29.340 And I think Trump realizes that is, who am I to get in the way of this saying for what?

01:57:33.480 You know, just if I had a time machine, it's funny to ask, like, what would you do if

01:57:38.120 you go back in time 10 years?

01:57:39.300 Like one of the most common answers now is buy Bitcoin.

01:57:42.000 Like the gain has been so massive on, I mean, you could buy Nvidia.

01:57:45.180 People are saying like, oh, Nvidia stock, whatever.

01:57:46.660 My company stocks, company stock, though, that, you know, the thing about Bitcoin is

01:57:50.600 it's fascinating that every step of the way I've had people screaming in my ears about

01:57:54.440 this is a revolution.

01:57:56.120 So even when Bitcoin was at 50 bucks, I remember talking, I'm hanging out with Max Keiser and

01:57:59.880 he's saying this is like a revolution in asset technology.

01:58:03.400 I don't know if you guys know, like Max created online trading in the first place with the,

01:58:08.600 what was it, Celebrity, what was it called?

01:58:10.980 I don't remember the name.

01:58:11.900 And yeah, he had a celebrity stock trading app that he had made and sold.

01:58:16.640 And he effectively created, I could be getting this wrong, so forgive me, Max.

01:58:19.800 But my understanding is that he was like an old Wall, he was a young Wall Street guy.

01:58:23.060 And he basically created a digital way to trade assets on the internet in a rudimentary way

01:58:26.720 and sold it.

01:58:27.840 Bitcoin comes around.

01:58:29.480 He's the guy who knows.

01:58:30.720 And he's telling everybody like, if you want to be, if you want to be rich, Tim, just hang

01:58:33.960 out with me.

01:58:34.380 That's what he told me.

01:58:35.340 He told me that in like 2012.

01:58:36.560 And I was like, yeah, I know, Max.

01:58:38.720 I know, I know.

01:58:39.640 And it's funny because I was hanging out with Max and one of his buddies, his buddy was talking

01:58:44.740 about, he's like, he's a billionaire guy.

01:58:46.880 And he said, Square, the point of sale technology.

01:58:51.100 He's like, that's the investment.

01:58:52.220 And I was like, sure.

01:58:53.580 So I bought a little bit of Square at like 15 bucks and that's at a hundred.

01:58:57.680 Yeah.

01:58:57.880 And I'm like, these guys understand the economic system.

01:59:01.360 Um, I, I, I guarantee you, like everybody and their mom wishes they were watching Max

01:59:05.420 Kaiser's show 10 years ago and listened to what he had to say.

01:59:08.420 And so to be fair, when Max is saying right now, his price target is 2.2 million.

01:59:13.580 I go, okay, Max.

01:59:14.600 Okay.

01:59:15.480 And then I look back 10 years and I'm like, yeah.

01:59:17.680 But what, what, by what date did he say that next year?

01:59:20.700 I don't know if he said, I don't, I don't know his timeframe.

01:59:22.500 Well, it eventually he'll get there.

01:59:24.200 Eventually.

01:59:24.380 Yeah.

01:59:24.680 But I think of a fool makes the same mistake twice for anyone that has regrets about Bitcoin.

01:59:29.480 Don't do it again.

01:59:30.320 And I've get some thing.

01:59:32.100 If you didn't buy it, then you can buy it now.

01:59:33.720 Right.

01:59:34.020 I don't, I don't, I hardly at the top, but I'm right.

01:59:36.740 And my, my attitude kind of is, uh, I don't know.

01:59:40.180 I don't, I don't, I don't know.

01:59:40.960 And I don't care.

01:59:41.460 Like the people at home, I'm not gonna tell you what to do.

01:59:43.600 I got to a point where I had, I had, I've, I've been watching Bitcoin since 2011 when

01:59:49.780 I first saw it, 70 cents and, uh, was reading the stories about it, was using the Bitcoin

01:59:53.980 faucet, had the app on my computer.

01:59:55.260 It was much easier, much, much easier to mine back then for sure.

01:59:57.540 So, and, uh, I have watched it spike and then fall and then spike and then fall and

02:00:01.280 spike.

02:00:01.680 So at some point in the early, uh, or like, yeah, like I think it was like 10 or so years

02:00:05.340 ago or something.

02:00:05.800 I can't remember when Bitcoin was around like a 1100 or whatever.

02:00:07.740 I said, I'm just gonna, I'm done.

02:00:08.840 I don't, I don't, I don't, 2016, was it?

02:00:11.320 It might've been around then.

02:00:13.000 I was just like, I've watched it go from 70 cents to a thousand dollars and everything

02:00:19.420 in between.

02:00:20.660 And everyone keeps telling me and all the experts and like Max, for instance.

02:00:23.820 And I was like, whatever, man.

02:00:25.180 And I just, I'm just gonna buy a bunch, put it in my wallet and I'm just gonna forget

02:00:27.660 about it.

02:00:28.080 Okay.

02:00:28.280 Cause I've got, because that $5,000 I never spent is worthless to me.

02:00:32.300 Like I know it's $5,000 today, but 10 years ago it was, it had bought the double or triple

02:00:36.900 the buying power or whatever.

02:00:38.260 And so I just bought a bunch, whether anyone wants to buy it or not, it's happening.

02:00:43.260 It's, it's happening.

02:00:44.160 It's happened and it's going to keep happening.

02:00:46.280 And, and the, you look at El Salvador, you look at Donald Trump's position on this.

02:00:50.000 It's going to keep happening.

02:00:51.100 So you do you, I'm not gonna tell you what to do.

02:00:53.020 All I know is I'm good.

02:00:54.260 You know, uh, we're gonna, we're gonna wind things down.

02:00:56.880 So if you guys want to give any final thoughts and shout outs as we wrap up.

02:00:59.940 Yeah.

02:01:00.100 I think instead of, uh, encouraging people to buy Bitcoin, I challenge you to think what else you

02:01:04.340 can own.

02:01:04.720 Um, it's a really interesting, again, can't buy Miami beach front property.

02:01:10.000 Um, what else are you going to own?

02:01:11.280 It'll be underwater.

02:01:12.000 They tell us.

02:01:12.620 Yeah.

02:01:13.800 They've been telling us that.

02:01:16.460 Um, and I don't know, I'm, I'm excited to be in America right now, building on this thing.

02:01:20.200 I've never been more optimistic about what I've been working on in the last 12 years.

02:01:24.140 And I'm glad Trump has said no CBDC and brought into cryptos are, he is listening.

02:01:29.000 It's great.

02:01:29.380 Yeah.

02:01:29.660 Yeah.

02:01:29.960 I would say, uh, before you buy, do your research.

02:01:33.460 And because you can get in for the number of technology and, uh, maybe you stay for the

02:01:37.640 life change.

02:01:38.160 Cause it really will change the way you think about things.

02:01:40.880 If you get into it deeply enough.

02:01:42.920 And I would say, I think this is your chance to think differently as an individual, right?

02:01:47.800 Really take stock of the things you believe and figure out why you believe them.

02:01:51.500 And once you crack that code for yourself, it opens your mind to the different possibilities

02:01:57.160 that something like Bitcoin brings to you as a sovereign individual.

02:02:00.720 And I think that's a journey that's worthwhile for everyone to go down.

02:02:04.280 Where can they find you?

02:02:05.640 Uh, Jack Mallers is my real name.

02:02:07.460 So Twitter, all the other stuff, give it a Google.

02:02:10.580 Where?

02:02:12.120 X.

02:02:13.240 X.

02:02:14.400 I still say Twitter.

02:02:15.360 Sorry, Elon.

02:02:16.120 Lord Elon.

02:02:17.000 My apologies.

02:02:17.740 I'm at Ben Askren on Twitter also.

02:02:20.960 Right on.

02:02:21.760 I'm at Ben Workman.

02:02:22.820 None of us are hiding.

02:02:23.860 There you go.

02:02:24.480 All right, everybody.

02:02:25.060 This has been great.

02:02:25.860 I love talking to this stuff.

02:02:27.120 Thanks for hanging out, everybody.

02:02:28.580 Look into it yourself.

02:02:29.500 Figure out what makes sense for you, but it's coming.

02:02:31.240 It's happening.

02:02:31.960 It's been happening.

02:02:33.080 And we'll be back tonight at 8 p.m.

02:02:34.540 over at youtube.com slash Timcast IRL.

02:02:36.880 And we'll see y'all then.

02:02:37.740 We'll see y'all then.

The Culture War - Tim Pool - December 13, 2024

$100,000 Bitcoin, Becoming A Bitcoin Millionaire, The END Of The Dollar

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