The King's Hall - Wealth, Money, & New Christendom： Bitcoin with Jordan Bush

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Brian here with a big announcement from New Christendom Press.

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00:00:37.340 This episode of the Kings Hall Podcast is brought to you by Joe Garrison with Backwards Planning Financial,

00:00:42.960 by Alpine Gold, by Max D Trailers, Salt and Strings Butchery,

00:00:48.180 Full Stadium Marketing, and by Squirrely Joe's Coffee.

00:00:56.600 In 1436, a German goldsmith revolutionized the process of disseminating information and ideas

00:01:07.780 around the world with his new invention of the printing press. Johannes Gutenberg wasn't the

00:01:13.400 first person to utilize movable type. In fact, the Chinese had been using woodblock printing

00:01:19.320 dating back to the 9th century, and Korean bookmakers began using movable metal type

00:01:25.380 roughly a century before the German. Gutenberg's pivotal innovation was the utilization of a screw

00:01:32.520 type wine press that squeezed down evenly an inked metal type. In turn, he found a way to

00:01:40.280 streamline the printing process so that the production of books was relatively inexpensive,

00:01:46.340 thus making publication of revolutionary ideas and the riches of ancient knowledge

00:01:51.880 available to the masses. European literacy, as a result, doubled every century following the

00:01:59.180 introduction of large-scale printing. Ironically, Gutenberg didn't live long enough to see the

00:02:05.860 massive impact of his printing press. The greatest accomplishment in his life was the first print run

00:02:13.080 of the Latin Bible. It took him roughly three years to print 200 copies of the Bible,

00:02:18.880 which seems slow by today's standards, but was truly revolutionary in the age of painstakingly

00:02:26.280 hand-copied manuscripts. Because of extremely low literacy rates, however, there wasn't exactly a

00:02:33.240 booming consumer base to purchase Gutenberg's products. As a result, he died penniless,

00:02:39.600 and his presses were impounded by creditors. Those who remained in the printing business

00:02:44.980 led to Venice, Italy, which was the central shipping city of the Mediterranean during the

00:02:51.120 15th century. The first major item to come out of the printing press wasn't giant volumes like

00:02:57.600 the Bible, but four-page news pamphlets that were spread by ship around the civilized world.

00:03:04.320 Since very few people could read, townspeople would gather in local pubs to hear paid readers

00:03:10.280 recount the news of the day. Before people started reading the great works of antiquity,

00:03:16.660 the printing press helped spark the phenomenon we now take for granted in the form of worldwide

00:03:22.420 news. In time, a higher premium would be put on literacy as more and more people became

00:03:29.400 interested in and gained access to the written word. The Italian Renaissance began a century

00:03:35.780 before the Gutenberg press. But by the time the press had made its way to Italy in the early 16th

00:03:42.060 century, there was a renewed demand for reprinting the classic works of intellectual titans like

00:03:48.240 Caesar, Cicero, Seneca, Aristotle, and Plato. Before the press, wealthy patrons sent expensive

00:03:55.900 expeditions across the Alps to isolated monasteries in search of priceless manuscripts.

00:04:02.700 Others were sent into the heart of the Ottoman Empire to learn ancient Greek and Arabic in

00:04:08.120 order to translate and copy rare texts into Latin.

00:04:11.880 The retrieval of ancient literature took place before the press, but it was the press that

00:04:17.240 sped up this process and made it much more affordable.

00:04:21.560 Prior to the advent of the printing press, the largest library was found in Paris, which

00:04:26.520 housed roughly 300 manuscripts, an incredibly small stable of content compared to the kind

00:04:32.960 of libraries that would arise after the press had done its work. In the 1490s, before Gutenberg's

00:04:38.900 press had been employed, a written work by Cicero would cost a month's salary for a schoolteacher.

00:04:45.560 At first, small towns would start building libraries. Later, books became available for

00:04:51.320 individuals at much cheaper prices. While the press didn't start the Renaissance,

00:04:56.640 it certainly helped multiply its far-reaching impact around the civilized world. The real

00:05:02.840 impact of the printing press came after Martin Luther nailed his now-famous 95 Theses to a church

00:05:09.120 door in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517. Just 17 days after he posted his writings,

00:05:16.580 Presses in London began reproducing them.

00:05:19.340 In turn, Luther's message spread far and wide in a relatively short period of time.

00:05:25.140 Luther, for his part, became the first best-selling author in human history.

00:05:30.440 Later, his translation of the New Testament into the German tongue sold 5,000 copies in just two weeks.

00:05:38.760 From 1518 to 1525, Luther's writings accounted for a third of all books sold in Germany.

00:05:46.040 while his German Bible went through more than 430 editions.

00:05:51.000 It's hard to estimate the total impact, some centuries later, of Gutenberg's invention.

00:05:56.440 Among other things, the press fueled the scientific revolution

00:05:59.600 and the Protestant Reformation, causing Luther to say,

00:06:03.000 printing is the ultimate gift of God and the greatest one, end quote.

00:06:08.040 Francis Bacon, who developed the scientific method, said in 1620

00:06:11.780 that the three inventions that forever changed the world

00:06:14.860 were gunpowder, the nautical compass, and the printing press. Beyond the obvious fruits of the

00:06:20.540 press, it also helped give a voice to what would have been considered fringe voices.

00:06:26.020 As one historian wrote, whenever a new information technology comes along, and this includes the

00:06:31.460 printing press, among the very first groups to be loud in it are the people who were silenced

00:06:36.680 in the earlier system, which means radical voices, end quote. Because it takes effort to perfect new

00:06:44.720 technology, it is often the biggest risk-takers who become early adopters. As a result, the printing

00:06:51.100 press brought major efforts to censor new content. Likewise, the increasing democratization of

00:06:58.300 knowledge in the Enlightenment era led to the development of public opinion and its power to

00:07:03.840 topple the ruling elite. Writing in pre-revolution France, Louis-Sébastien Mercier declared,

00:07:10.540 A great and momentous revolution in our ideas has taken place within the last 30 years.

00:07:17.160 Public opinion has now become a preponderant power in Europe, one that cannot be resisted.

00:07:24.260 One may hope that Enlightenment ideas will bring about the greatest good on Earth and that tyrants

00:07:29.540 of all kinds will tremble before the universal cry that echoes everywhere, awakening Europe from

00:07:35.360 slumbers, end quote. For good and many times evil, technologies like the printing press

00:07:41.180 fundamentally led to transfers of power. In any historical context, this inevitably means the

00:07:46.920 elites, those who control the wheels of power, are often most likely to resist granting voices

00:07:53.120 to radicals and dissidents. This same instinct was on display when, during the 2016 and 2020

00:07:59.300 elections, social media conglomerates and federal agencies conspired to keep certain articles,

00:08:06.100 voices, and posts from seeing the light of day. Dissenting voices were effectively crushed,

00:08:12.280 sued, or shadow banned. Similar societal disruptions have taken place in the advent

00:08:18.100 of the internet, social media, and podcasting platforms. It becomes increasingly true that it

00:08:24.220 is harder for a small group of individuals to control information or ideas. As we found with

00:08:30.480 New Christian and Press, it is far easier than it was centuries ago to platform ideas that go

00:08:35.460 against the regime narratives of the day. You don't have to be on Fox News or MSNBC to get your

00:08:41.220 message out. When used for good, technological tools like inexpensive podcasts and social media

00:08:47.380 platforms can be used, as we have aimed to use them, to resource classical literature in the

00:08:53.280 same way printers did during the Renaissance and Reformation. In many ways, we at New Christendon

00:08:58.460 Press are doing the same work of resourcement as we rediscover things like the reformed view of

00:09:04.040 marriage, household, and patriarchy. Another disruptive and more recent technological

00:09:09.420 innovation is Bitcoin. Although the concept of cryptocurrency has been around for decades,

00:09:14.540 the launch of Bitcoin in 2009 made this revolutionary technology a reality. In some

00:09:20.760 ways, Bitcoin and the printing press solved similar problems by decentralizing information

00:09:26.060 and finance. The printing press solved the issue of a centralized written word that was largely

00:09:32.440 unavailable to the people. Bitcoin works in the form of a decentralized system called blockchain.

00:09:39.340 In the United States, the Federal Reserve is the central banking system. One entity controls all

00:09:46.000 monetary flow. Bitcoin, however, is decentralized and is not controlled by one entity. Could

00:09:52.740 Bitcoin be a technological advancement like the printing press that changes the world?

00:09:58.540 In the next few episodes of the King's Hall podcast, we're going to do some deep dive

00:10:03.080 interviews on Bitcoin, TradFi, gold, silver, and finally on real estate. We've selected

00:10:11.020 key voices to address different ways to store and generate wealth. Why are we talking about money?

00:10:17.700 Well, as our friend and pastor Joel Webin said at the recent New Christendom Press conference

00:10:22.360 in Ogden, Utah, you can't rebuild Christendom without, and as he said repeatedly, cash.

00:10:29.760 In order to build a Christendom, you've got to first figure out how to build,

00:10:34.060 store, and transfer wealth to coming generations. In truth, Christian pietist movements in America

00:10:40.260 have done a disservice to the church in thinking about money.

00:10:44.380 It is our goal in this brief series to revive an interest

00:10:48.020 and skill in the core principles of wealth building.

00:10:52.140 In turn, we hope you'll be inspired to invest

00:10:54.940 and build in a borough near you.

00:10:58.640 The King's Hall Podcast exists to make self-ruled men

00:11:01.480 who rule well and win the world.

00:11:11.060 In 2023, Indigo Sundries became one of our sponsors.

00:11:14.560 At the time, their business was little more than a side hobby,

00:11:17.140 generating a couple hundred dollars a month.

00:11:19.140 But because of their partnership with us,

00:11:20.600 and because all of you chose to support them,

00:11:22.640 they've grown enough to make it their full-time livelihood.

00:11:24.720 This is what happens when Christians support Christians.

00:11:27.200 Our communities are strengthened and faithful businesses thrive.

00:11:30.000 So if you're a Christian business owner

00:11:31.420 who wants to reach thousands of like-minded people

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00:11:36.200 Email us at advertising at newchristendompress.com.

00:11:45.180 Well, gentlemen, welcome to this episode of the King's Hall podcast.

00:11:49.260 We've got Dan Cash Burkholder joining us.

00:11:54.040 It was so funny when you did the voice, because if you were there, when our guy Joel,

00:12:01.040 he asked a series of rhetorical questions, which he answered with,

00:12:05.140 cash. What are you going to need to do this? You need to build a church. What do you need to do

00:12:11.440 that? Cash. You need to build generational wealth. What do you need? Cash. So we call it

00:12:18.180 cash money weapon. Although to this episode, cash, I don't know. I don't know. That's right.

00:12:27.560 Maybe Bitcoin. Gentlemen, as we jump into this series, I just want to ask you this question.

00:12:31.420 We sort of addressed this in the cold open, but, you know, a lot of people will be asking,

00:12:36.580 particularly if you've been exposed to like where many of us came from, like young, restless

00:12:41.220 and reformed, Christian pietist movements, you know, we were taught poverty is the next

00:12:46.820 thing closest to godliness and we should pursue that.

00:12:49.820 And now here we are saying, actually, if you want to build Christendom, you need to think

00:12:53.860 about wealth from a biblical perspective.

00:12:56.040 So Brian, I want to ask you first, just why is this conversation that we'll have in a

00:13:01.420 Why is it so important?

00:13:03.920 Well, Joel is right, is kind of the meta answer.

00:13:07.820 Joel was right in that moment in his talk at the conference that if you really want to build Christendom and if you want to obey the scriptures more fundamentally, you have to know how to deal with money.

00:13:20.600 You have to know how to not be mastered by money, how not to worship money, money sort of being the distillation and representation of things, because money is just a vehicle. I can get things with money. Of course, you have to not be mastered by it. But you have to know how to build wealth, work hard, not spend more than you earn, invest well, leave an inheritance, not just to your children, but to your children's children.

00:13:46.480 right? If we want to have a foothold in our communities, we want to build strong and durable

00:13:51.620 churches. If we want to build institutions in all of the different areas of human life,

00:13:56.480 then we are going to have to be a people who are shrewd and cunning and innocent and wise and all

00:14:04.600 of these other things when it comes to handling money. And I mean, I just remember to your point

00:14:10.100 about sort of the narrative that has been ascendant about money has very much been in

00:14:16.680 evangelicalism towards the one side of that, like, hey, don't be mastered by money to the point of

00:14:23.440 almost a poverty theology. And in some cases, like in David Platt, sort of radical ideas to

00:14:29.540 the point of crippling a generation in their wealth building and in their positive use of

00:14:35.360 wealth. Well, particularly because a lot of the messaging, and I remember hearing David Platt

00:14:39.260 speak at you know southern seminary chapel stuff like this um but kind of the feel was the only

00:14:45.080 reason you have money at all if you ever have it is to give it away so yeah that's it charity and

00:14:51.580 joel actually brought this up in his talk but we've had celebrity pastors who like did make a

00:14:56.440 lot of money in their years doing you know good things writing books stuff like that gave it all

00:15:01.160 away and then the question is what what do you give to your children yeah oops oops i gave it

00:15:06.720 all the way to, even if it was foreign missions, we do have a biblical responsibility to pass on

00:15:12.600 an inheritance, Dan, to our sons. Yeah, I think one thing that is important to recognize is that

00:15:18.400 we're to apply wisdom to the data of scripture in our particular moment. So what are the times?

00:15:26.320 We're not living in, you know, 15th century Europe to where if I was a farmer, I mean,

00:15:32.360 there's a trade automatically built into my kids. There's an inheritance inherently in my, my job,

00:15:38.600 in my task, if you're a blacksmith or whatever trade you have. Yeah. Right. And so you just do

00:15:42.440 the best with what you have in this time, because we're such a globalized economy, what has happened

00:15:48.100 is if you do not build something like institutions, businesses, property, something real, something

00:15:55.360 tangible for your children and for your children's children, what are you leaving them with? You're

00:16:01.060 leaving them without a root. They're going to be like a tumbleweed is essentially what has to

00:16:06.000 happen because they're going to have to move somewhere that is more economically advantageous.

00:16:11.140 And so then you have a lack of rootedness and a lack of unity across generations. And then you

00:16:17.220 multiply that across churches because you have churches where the children leave and communities

00:16:22.280 where the children leave. And they don't actually do that generational work of continuing the vision

00:16:28.380 and the mission of their fathers in building in their local communities.

00:16:32.760 And so a lot of ways, by not having any wealth to transfer onto your generations, you're

00:16:38.620 forcing them to have to go out into the world and try to make it on their own somewhere

00:16:43.560 else.

00:16:44.060 Yeah.

00:16:44.260 And it's really doing a disservice to the people.

00:16:46.860 Yeah.

00:16:46.980 I've been storing this word up for a long time to use for myself because I feel like

00:16:51.640 it's such a big brain world.

00:16:52.560 But I feel like the transience, Brian, is what leads to the deracination of generations

00:16:57.260 and people. Eric, I'm so proud of you. Deracinated. Man, what a good use of deracinated too,

00:17:02.540 because that is rootlessness. That's what it means. Yeah. To be cut off from the root.

00:17:06.020 Totally rootless. One of the things, Dan, that's interesting is we did an episode on King Alfred.

00:17:12.100 We're talking about boroughs. So connecting money to boroughs, obviously, if you want to build

00:17:16.620 cathedrals and build businesses and economy, you're going to have to have wealth. But one

00:17:21.580 of the other things that is even more central to like this episode in this series is that alfred

00:17:27.580 had to change monetary policy yeah he had to have a sound currency they had to have sound currencies

00:17:32.560 so in today's pietist movement that sounds very like unspiritual and unsexy to talk about well

00:17:38.640 let's actually talk about you know how our coins are minted standardizing the money so again just

00:17:44.820 talk to that monetary policy isn't like you know we shouldn't be saying of this conversation well

00:17:51.360 where did they talk about the gospel in there? Yeah. Well, one of the interesting things about

00:17:55.800 Alfred, I think we've talked about it elsewhere, but the currency at the time had been so diluted

00:18:00.740 and I guess if you, you will like inflated because it was not controlled at all. There was no

00:18:06.940 control at all. And so when Alfred determined that, Hey, we need to have some sort of national

00:18:12.640 currency, they melted down the existing silver coins. And in some cases it would take up to five

00:18:19.100 coins to make one true silver coin because it had been so diluted over time. And what happened

00:18:27.120 when you actually have real money then in a region, well, merchants came to do business

00:18:33.840 because they knew that the currency that they were getting was worth something. I don't know

00:18:37.480 if you guys are familiar with our current inflation, but that's actually really problematic

00:18:41.820 when you have this radical printing. There's some interesting information on like bricks and

00:18:47.700 different gold backed and different commodities that they're using to back currency. But what

00:18:55.200 that really did for Alfred and for his kingdom was that it brought a lot of wealth by just

00:19:01.100 standardizing and making real money. And so that's really part of the conversation that we're talking

00:19:06.060 about today is using just weights and measures because God despises unjust weights and measures.

00:19:12.360 And so the question we have to ask is, is Bitcoin a just weight and measure? And so I think that still has yet to be determined. But in this interview with Jordan, I think we get a lot of good information about that. So I didn't answer your question because I don't remember what you asked.

00:19:29.200 I wanted to ask, Dan, if you might just introduce for us this series, because we're going to be doing a series of episodes here that are all related to this question of inheritance, wealth, money, planning.

00:19:45.080 And again, in classic New Christendom Press style, our goal is not just to give you some theoretical floating ideas out there in the ether,

00:19:54.140 But we're actually we're trying to introduce to you over the next weeks some very practical, not competing in some senses, complimentary in other senses, ideas of how to actually stick the landing on not just thinking about some of these things, but literally doing them.

00:20:10.080 We want it to be practical.

00:20:10.980 So why don't you tell us a little bit about this series?

00:20:12.940 Yeah, so I've had a question that's just been eating at me for quite a while now.

00:20:17.520 And, and, and that's, you know, if you've got some cash in your bank account or under

00:20:21.380 a mattress and you're looking at inflation rates and you're looking at the volatility

00:20:25.900 in the stock market and gold markets and Bitcoin and real estate, everything's so expensive.

00:20:31.580 And I'm, I'm, the question is, what do I do?

00:20:34.580 What do I do with my money?

00:20:35.640 I don't know.

00:20:36.660 It's really unclear right now.

00:20:39.060 So this is one of the questions, right?

00:20:40.460 That you asked the guys is like, if you had a hundred thousand dollars, each of the different

00:20:43.900 styles, what would you do with it?

00:20:46.000 Yeah. Yeah. That is one of the questions that I pose to them. None of it's financial advice. It's just like personally, where do your convictions lie? And it's interesting the answers that we get because they're probably not always the answers that you'd expect, but you'll have to listen to the episodes to get most of that information.

00:21:03.620 But really, I set out with this series to try to figure out what should I personally do with my

00:21:09.980 money? What does a wise man do? Well, he has a multitude of counselors. And so that's why I

00:21:15.480 approached all of these men that are very successful in their own interests and in their

00:21:20.360 own investment categories to ask them what they thought about cash sitting in the bank.

00:21:26.720 What should I do with it? And so I hope it's really beneficial for everybody because this

00:21:31.340 was more selfishly for me but i thought it would be helpful for so what is the series what's the

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00:24:39.960 so i i've interviewed four men we have jordan bush who is the thank god for bitcoin ceo i believe

00:24:50.160 you'll see in the interview he introduces himself he's much more impressive than than only that he

00:24:55.660 does a lot of other things he authored a book uh co-authored a book on uh called thank god for

00:25:00.200 bitcoin he's hosting a conference and so he's been in bitcoin for a long time really interesting

00:25:05.640 talks about how Bitcoin, he got into it really through missions and things like that because

00:25:10.760 of how easy it is to transfer, not to go on too big of a side tangent, but one of the issues that

00:25:15.780 I've run into in business in the past is moving money around, which sounds really kind of silly

00:25:21.480 to us when you're talking about like Venmo or something like that. Like it's pretty instantaneous,

00:25:26.060 you know, but if you're, if you're moving like $60,000, it actually is really inconvenient and

00:25:32.380 takes a long time and can be quite expensive to move money. Whereas Bitcoin takes 10 minutes

00:25:39.100 and is just a very, very small fee. And it's all on the blockchain, which Jordan will talk about.

00:25:45.620 So we talk about Bitcoin and its value proposition and some of the risks. And then the next interview

00:25:51.460 that will come out in two weeks will be with Jace Reineveld. And he owns Alpine Gold here in Ogden,

00:25:58.140 Utah, where they do bullion, gold, silver, and other metals. And they also do some really

00:26:04.400 interesting things with gold backs, which he talks about in the interview. And then he also

00:26:09.060 has some interesting leasing programs for gold where you can actually get interest on your gold

00:26:14.600 paid in gold, which is really interesting value proposition because gold and Bitcoin are not

00:26:22.240 productive assets, meaning the only way you can actually make money on them is to not own them

00:26:27.360 anymore anyway so we talked to jace about gold and about the banking system which i think is

00:26:33.220 really really valuable after that i talked to tim six who is a member of our church air force pilot

00:26:39.560 he owns a lot of real estate single family rentals duplexes you know things like that

00:26:45.600 he has under 50 doors somewhere around that so he's he's been in this for a little bit he's also

00:26:52.320 has interest in gold and in Bitcoin. And this guy's got the Midas touch. It just seems like

00:26:57.680 everything he touches turns to gold. He said when he was 16, you'll have to listen to the interview.

00:27:02.700 He tells his whole life story. It's really interesting. When he was 16, he had something

00:27:06.060 like 50 K in the bank from a side business that he had opened while he was in high school.

00:27:10.880 He would like buy. He's the kind of guy that, Oh, I bought some AR 15 parts and, you know,

00:27:16.080 and then the market just tripled. I sold, I made 30 grand. He tells that story too.

00:27:19.900 Yeah. It's really fascinating. So he's got a really good business sense. Yeah. And there's

00:27:25.720 going to be a lot of value. One of the things that I've learned, and this is probably obvious

00:27:30.240 to everyone, but if you want to be good at something, just go seek someone out that is

00:27:34.820 actually successful in the thing you're interested in and then just be around them. Because I'll tell

00:27:40.100 you what, talking to these guys and some of the guys in a church that are successful business

00:27:44.160 owners and have been successful at investing, they think differently than I do. And so it's

00:27:50.520 really helpful to be around these guys and to see the world through their eyes. And then lastly,

00:27:57.320 I talked to Joe Garrison, who's a big supporter of all that we do at New Christendom Press

00:28:03.240 with Backwards Planning Financial. And he's going to be talking about traditional markets,

00:28:08.860 traditional finance, which we call TradFi. And so he's going to be talking about investing in

00:28:14.140 businesses through the stock market and things like that. And so that's the scope of the entire

00:28:19.300 series. And I've found it to be tremendously helpful and very, very interesting.

00:28:24.780 Yeah. I think it's helpful too for me because, you know, I've had the same question Dan has,

00:28:28.300 where do you put your money? And, you know, when you follow accounts online, one of the problems

00:28:33.980 can be like, you'll get some that are like, you know, Bitcoin or crypto, a form of crypto is the

00:28:38.600 only thing you should invest in. It's the only way, if you're not doing this, you're literally

00:28:42.340 the dumbest person on planet earth. I think this is helpful because it gives you kind of a broad

00:28:47.180 lens to kind of start honing in on maybe some different areas where you might want to,

00:28:51.340 you know, start building wealth. So there's multiple options. It's not like necessarily

00:28:55.920 one right answer. And you see that with, uh, when you're trying to get advice and you,

00:29:00.120 you mentioned this with the talking to people who are successful, when you're trying to get advice,

00:29:04.560 that's, that's not just theoretical for you, but like, what am I going to do? Literally this

00:29:09.020 question with my children's future with my grandchildren's future who should you talk to

00:29:14.940 you should talk to people with skin in the game yeah it is actually a key principle really

00:29:20.340 interesting eric earlier you were talking about how this this uh antinomian view of money where

00:29:25.940 you're like it any money i have is not mine it's to give away and in a sense that's true but it's

00:29:31.580 not to just give away to any joe blow you know it's it's it's actually yours you are managing

00:29:37.620 money for your generations. It isn't my money. The money in my bank account is managed so that

00:29:45.400 I can exercise wisdom and pass it on to my generations. And what's interesting is when

00:29:50.060 you contrast, this is why skin in the game is so important. I don't necessarily want to know

00:29:54.500 what someone thinks as much as I want to know, what do you do? And when you talk to a lot of

00:29:59.220 these leading voices that led this sort of radical, basically poverty theology in the Christian

00:30:05.660 church they're all rich what they said and what they did were not the same thing they said one

00:30:10.440 thing and then they bought multiple million dollar plus house a million dollar house today is not as

00:30:15.100 impressive as it was in 2008 but even back then multiple million dollar houses and in expensive

00:30:20.600 areas kids are going to private schools like they're they're doing lots of things that what

00:30:25.920 they're they're telling you kind of like hey shane claiborne crossed with david platt and what

00:30:31.480 they're doing is trad fi typical 401k build wealth real estate real estate they're doing other things

00:30:39.120 yeah it is really important eric like you had mentioned uh you're looking on twitter and you

00:30:43.640 see like crypto is the only way there was a recent news uh that came out that there were paid

00:30:50.340 youtubers to shill certain cryptocurrencies and we know this happens yeah but this because it's

00:30:56.300 It's actually a decentralized platform.

00:30:59.240 All of the information was public.

00:31:01.160 And so they figured out that they're paying these guys, in some cases, massive amounts

00:31:06.140 of money to shill their certain coins.

00:31:09.440 And the thing is, this happens all of the time, right?

00:31:11.820 And so it's very dangerous to get a lot of your information, financial education from

00:31:17.240 just Twitter and YouTube, from the internet, because you can't actually see how these people

00:31:21.700 live.

00:31:21.980 That's why it's so helpful to have people locally that we know that I can actually just

00:31:27.000 go up and ask as I see, like their, their family is, is great.

00:31:31.380 They're well, well-managed household that they are very charitable.

00:31:35.260 I know if they tie, they're not, I mean, I'm the executive pastor.

00:31:39.160 I see the financial, like I can see all of these data points to say, this guy is really

00:31:43.900 successful in, in all areas of life.

00:31:46.460 I want to learn from this guy versus some anon on Twitter who's, you know, he's got some garbage

00:31:53.480 coin, you know, crypto thing or the next, whatever it is, precious metals, over-inflated novelty

00:31:59.440 coin, you know, so it is really important to have people in, in the flesh that you can learn from.

00:32:04.440 Yeah. Final question for you guys, uh, just on the potential disruptive nature of Bitcoin as a

00:32:10.500 technology. Um, you guys have, you know, I guess dabbled research known, participated in crypto for

00:32:17.200 a while now. Um, what do you think the potential of Bitcoin is? Do you think it, you know, we are

00:32:21.560 posing this question, obviously in the cold open, do you think it could be big as a printing press

00:32:25.960 if it were to work? DeFi could be a huge thing. I've heard people like, I think it's Michael

00:32:31.500 Saylor, uh, who's on Patrick, Pat David, you know, he's the, you know, the Bitcoin stand and,

00:32:36.740 And there's one side that's super, super rosy.

00:32:39.920 It's going to change the world forever.

00:32:41.720 I'm kind of with Patrick, but David in that interview, he was like, I think you're underestimating

00:32:45.720 the government's ability to manipulate currency.

00:32:49.280 And we know there's Dan, as you mentioned, there's different forms of manipulation.

00:32:52.200 So with all that information out there, how disruptive do you think Bitcoin could be as

00:32:58.140 a technology?

00:32:59.380 Yeah.

00:32:59.640 I don't know about Bitcoin itself, but the technology that got us Bitcoin, which is blockchain

00:33:04.700 and Jordan talks about it.

00:33:05.920 he's the expert, not me, but essentially having a decentralized finance. This is why in the cold

00:33:11.300 open, we brought up the federal reserve is a centralized bank. You just Google centralized

00:33:16.080 bank and it's going to come up with the federal reserve. There is one entity that controls all

00:33:20.280 of the money. Whereas in blockchain and Bitcoin is the application that is not actually controlled

00:33:26.620 by any one entity. So it's not like you, you go onto, you know, one of the crypto exchanges and

00:33:32.020 you buy Bitcoin and then news comes out that says they're printing 30% more Bitcoin or there's 30%

00:33:37.680 more to mine, whatever it is, that can't happen in a centralized way. And so it's very, very

00:33:46.100 difficult to control. And that's why when we were talking about this episode and we're like,

00:33:50.080 what story would we want to tell? I was like, the printing press actually makes a lot of sense

00:33:53.860 because in the past, only the elites, the very, very wealthy could actually attain any sort of

00:34:01.600 information that was written and so they had a monopoly on information and ideas yes yes exactly

00:34:08.420 and so what this technology is is disruptive to monetary policy and that's why uh for if you

00:34:17.420 followed bitcoin for any length of time there's been a lot of lawsuits there's been a lot of

00:34:22.820 issues with etfs and things like that getting approved and only recently that's happened because

00:34:27.480 BlackRock got involved, which adds another wrinkle of issue into Bitcoin, I think. But anyway,

00:34:34.520 you'll have to do a little bit more research. And Jordan talks about it a lot in the interview.

00:34:38.640 But I think the technology underlying this is really, really disruptive. There's some other

00:34:44.260 cryptocurrencies that I'm more familiar with in some ways that can transfer funds instantaneously

00:34:50.640 and costs fractions of a penny it's uh faster than visa so you know as far as like application

00:34:57.600 for technology it's really useful and the thing that the government hates about it is that they

00:35:02.980 can't control it they can't control it and so just like when the the printing press became popular

00:35:09.460 they could not control the flow of information anymore and and even on social media you see

00:35:15.300 people trying to do that. And you get new technologies and you get new platforms or

00:35:20.360 yeah, new platforms, new men that come out and say, no, we're not going to do that. And so you

00:35:25.580 see how even that is a constant battle today. And I think you'll see the same thing with Bitcoin,

00:35:32.540 decentralized finance, blockchain technology. I think it's highly disruptive. Whether it's

00:35:37.820 Bitcoin or not, time will tell. Well, and people, so the objection, there's multiple objections to

00:35:44.020 bitcoin off one of them is the hey i think you might be underestimating the ability of the

00:35:48.820 government to manipulate a currency things like quantum computing new technological advances and

00:35:54.600 computing power allowing us to hack bitcoin yeah and things like that one of the biggest ones

00:35:59.700 honestly is people are like i just don't understand it they don't understand it but but one of the key

00:36:03.800 points is that it is possible to underestimate that those kinds of things it's also possible

00:36:09.180 to underestimate the fundamental inherent in principle instability of fiat currency and

00:36:15.840 the reality of what happens with fiat currencies, no matter how much the government wants to

00:36:22.160 manipulate it and prop it up and continue. It just is the case that no matter how much

00:36:28.020 power they have, there comes a point when the US dollar is going to fail, either by

00:36:34.980 being fundamentally transformed into something else still under government control. There's

00:36:39.020 things like that. But we also shouldn't underestimate the challenge of what the

00:36:44.900 government is trying to do, like for them. So one of the cases for Bitcoin, and I'm sure

00:36:50.860 Jordan talks about this, is just that one of the driving forces in adoption of something like

00:36:56.380 Bitcoin is a growing lack of faith in fiat currency, in TradFi and fiat currency. And

00:37:04.940 that's accelerating massively. Yeah. It's also really easy to underestimate, uh, resourceful

00:37:10.520 men attempting to get around government regulation. Yeah. Right. Seriously. Uh, taxi cabs in New York

00:37:16.100 city is one of the examples that comes to mind where it was crazy expensive to get one of those

00:37:21.360 tokens. You know, it was like a million dollars to, to, to get one of these tokens so that you

00:37:25.700 could run a taxi and then Uber comes along and just completely disrupts the entire industry

00:37:30.880 because somebody thought about the same thing with cigarettes and with vape and with, you know,

00:37:36.680 Copenhagen versus Zinn. And people are trying to get around these government regulations

00:37:41.680 and creative men that are economically motivated seem to always find a way.

00:37:47.620 Yeah, I think that's a good point. And maybe a place to close and we'll jump into this interview.

00:37:51.260 But we mentioned in the cold open with the printing press, a lot of the people that have

00:37:55.760 the advantage from a technological disruption are the small players who didn't have a voice before.

00:38:01.660 I think it's kind of funny with New Christendom Press. I think even 15 years ago, a lot of the

00:38:06.800 technologies we utilize today to make New Christendom possible didn't exist. Or even something

00:38:12.300 like Buzzsprout, like today, that's the podcast hosting platform we use. The number of features

00:38:18.400 it has today versus five years ago is drastically different. The amount that AI can do for certain

00:38:25.660 parts of businesses. And then if you go 20 years ago, it wasn't having a podcast. If you wanted,

00:38:30.980 you know, the spoken word to be out there, you had to have a radio show and you had to pay a

00:38:35.200 radio station. So you're talking like tens of thousands of dollars to be able to do something

00:38:39.440 like that. Really expensive editing equipment, all that. It seems like, correct me if I'm wrong,

00:38:46.240 the opportunity is, again, it's for the fringe, quote unquote radical compared to the regime or

00:38:52.020 the mainline today. Do you guys think that that's true? Yeah, absolutely. I think it's true. It's

00:38:57.420 interesting right now because Bitcoin, although it's been around since 2009 or so, it's still

00:39:03.660 just a fringe that are accepting it. We've gotten out of the early adoption phase. I think, I believe,

00:39:10.220 oh man, this is quoting off the top of my head, so it could be completely wrong. But I want to say

00:39:14.900 that it's almost 30% of the US population owns cryptocurrency in some form today. Interesting.

00:39:20.660 Yeah. And that's also accelerating because of the ETF. So if you have, you know, money in the stock market, a brokerage account, a 401k, something like that, and you can self-select your stocks, you can actually buy Bitcoin through a proxy, which is an ETF. So Fidelity or BlackRock, who has Bitcoin.

00:39:38.960 So anyway, it's the acceleration of adoption is often compared to usage of the internet.

00:39:45.140 And so that was very slow in the beginning.

00:39:47.720 And then it ramped up, obviously, like everybody has the internet now.

00:39:50.540 I remember going into Haiti at one point and I'm looking around and people are like, they're

00:39:56.100 starving and they have cell phones, you know, it's just a, it's a different world we live

00:40:00.320 in.

00:40:00.740 And so I think something like this is really for early adopters that understand the problem,

00:40:07.400 which is like you talked about a fiat currency. That's a problem. It is a problem that we have

00:40:13.160 to address. And these guys that are, that are looking at Bitcoin, see a possible answer to

00:40:18.820 that problem, whether it will be wholesale adopted or not time will tell, but I do think that's the

00:40:24.900 case. Awesome. Well, gentlemen, very excited. We're going to jump now into the interview with

00:40:30.620 Jordan Bush from thank God for Bitcoin.

00:40:37.400 Well, today I'm joined by Jordan Bush, and Jordan is a really fascinating guy. He wears a lot of

00:40:50.060 hats, but you seem to be best known for, thank God for Bitcoin. I was wondering if you could

00:40:54.640 just introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about you. Yeah, Dan, thanks for having me.

00:40:58.640 My name is Jordan Bush. I was a church planting missionary in Uruguay, in South America.

00:41:03.580 when I got into Bitcoin. We moved there. Basically, I was a philosophy major in college

00:41:09.200 and wanted to preach the gospel to an unreached people group or a place where the church had

00:41:14.780 minimal impact. So we moved to Uruguay, the capital city of Montevideo, and ended up

00:41:20.100 planting a church. We went there to minister primarily to very secular Uruguayans. And within

00:41:26.480 just a few weeks, months, we quickly started ministering to religious Venezuelans who had

00:41:33.020 fled their country and moved to Uruguay. It was largely men who were, again, just trying to,

00:41:39.680 basically the government had hyperinflated their currency, made it worthless. And so they moved to

00:41:43.060 try to get a job and send money home and eventually bring their families over to Uruguay or to the

00:41:48.320 other countries to which they went, if they weren't going to be able to return home.

00:41:53.200 So as we were just trying to help these people pick up the pieces of their lives, again, I just

00:41:57.260 curious philosophy major me just wanted to know, why is this happening?

00:42:01.920 you know what like what's going on and and so just over the course of a few years uh you know

00:42:07.180 just we're ministering we're just kind of getting more pieces of the puzzle and then also just

00:42:11.460 looking around at uruguay and seeing a lot of this same a lot of the similar dynamics that just

00:42:15.800 weren't as far advanced as things were in in venezuela and so the more that we were there

00:42:20.740 and living we just started to see man like there's there's all kinds of these same things that are

00:42:24.460 affecting venezuela as like the end stage of these things that are that are affecting people here in

00:42:28.800 Uruguay. So one of the symptoms was things that we just saw was very few churches were able to

00:42:34.220 pay their pastors a full-time salary or anything approaching a full-time salary. So they're

00:42:38.720 working an additional one or two jobs in addition to being pastors just in order to make ends meet.

00:42:44.320 Another thing was that very few churches were able to own their own buildings. And just every

00:42:48.660 year that went by, rent would increase by law in Uruguay 9%. Wait, by law?

00:42:54.960 Yeah, by law. They passed a law to keep pace basically with dollar inflation.

00:42:58.660 Wow.

00:42:59.320 Because again, they wanted homeowners to be able to,

00:43:01.620 or property owners to be able to keep the value.

00:43:04.120 So we just saw stuff like that.

00:43:05.500 And you're just like, man, how do you even,

00:43:08.220 how do you just not get destroyed by inflation over time?

00:43:12.060 How do you even remotely get ahead?

00:43:14.720 And in our experience, and this is,

00:43:16.780 I mean, praise the Lord that this is the case,

00:43:18.620 the organizations or the churches

00:43:20.200 that were able to survive and thrive,

00:43:22.160 they had a couple different characteristics.

00:43:24.060 And one of those two characteristics

00:43:25.200 was that they had outside largely American support.

00:43:28.280 Um, so we ended up, we partnered with a church that was sent by Alistair Beggs church, uh, in, in Ohio. And so we ended up merging our, our reformed Baptist church plant with them. And, uh, and again, praise the Lord. Like they had their, that church was willing to, I was just sold a bunch of books. So they were willing to, you know, to invest heavily in what they were doing there. And so like, praise the Lord.

00:43:48.740 The reality, though, is that for the vast majority of these small churches that are being planted or the churches that had been planted 20, 30, 40 years ago, is that if they don't have, you know, if they're not able to denominate their life in something that's keeping pace with the currency devaluation and inflation that they're feeling, it's very difficult to get ahead and to just not fall even more behind with every year that goes by.

00:44:11.220 So I ended up doing that. And let's see, after about four years of ministering, I just basically with our small retirement account that we had through our missions organization, I just was trying to figure out what to invest in. I was not some big investment guru. The one basic thing that I knew was that you're supposed to buy low and sell high.

00:44:32.080 And so I said, okay, I, that makes sense.

00:44:34.900 Let me go.

00:44:35.500 Let's take a look around at the world.

00:44:37.260 And, and the thing that I saw was that everything was at all time highs ever.

00:44:42.700 So you're looking at real estate's all time highs, you're looking at stocks or all time

00:44:45.520 highs.

00:44:45.900 I mean, it just was crazy.

00:44:47.160 What year was this roughly?

00:44:48.600 This was 2019.

00:44:49.920 Okay.

00:44:50.440 All right.

00:44:50.760 Early 2019.

00:44:51.720 Yeah.

00:44:52.340 So I just, I just, you know, thinking, well, what do you do?

00:44:56.080 What are you supposed to invest in when, when everything's at all time highs?

00:44:58.920 And so I started looking into a bunch of stuff and ended up doing some stock investment. We had a tax advantaged account that we were able to do some stuff with that. But then one of the things that I just started getting into, just started, was interesting to me was Bitcoin.

00:45:15.940 I had bought like a hundred dollars worth of Bitcoin in 2017 as it was, you know, going from a thousand dollars in early 2017 to 20,000 at the end of the year. And I just, again, but didn't understand any of the dynamics involved. I just thought this thing is moving. I better get some. And then, I mean, I think I bought a hundred bucks at 13,000 and then it quickly went up and then it quickly dumped. And I just was like, what, what is going on?

00:45:39.720 I don't understand this at all. And it was shortly, it was basically shortly about two

00:45:45.900 months later that my role in our church shifted dramatically. I went from the very content number

00:45:51.380 two, the very content, you know, leading music, doing discipleship to just due to the fact that

00:45:58.460 our teammates are, you know, the guy who was the head pastor basically had like a family crisis

00:46:02.100 and they had to go back to the States. And so basically overnight I became the main pastor.

00:46:07.260 Wow. And so anything, any thoughts of Bitcoin, any thoughts of all that stuff just totally went out the window as we were just trying to survive. So by God's grace, we ministered for another another year. We were expecting, you know, these these largely new believing, you know, people to who are dealing with this gringo who speak Spanish, but nowhere near as well as they do. There's there's a few other church options.

00:46:29.280 we were like, man, surely people are going to, are going to leave and go find something that's

00:46:32.660 easier to listen to and easier to deal with. And they just didn't leave. And so we just kept

00:46:37.780 ministering. And, uh, and so that was just huge to see the Lord work. And then it was again,

00:46:42.220 yeah, that was, that was early 2018. And then by 2019, I had a little bit more bandwidth to,

00:46:47.200 to think about such things. And, uh, and then again, Bitcoin went from, I think it bottomed

00:46:51.800 at like 3000 and it was back at 9,000 in early 2019. And so I just said, okay, wait a second.

00:46:57.400 Like I was a philosophy major. I need to understand some of like why, what this is, why it's happening. And so I just went on this, you know, a little bit of a rabbit hole, went down the rabbit hole to try to understand, like, what is this? Why does it exist? You know, what, what are some of the dynamics at play?

00:47:13.520 And the more that I, the more that I read and the more that I studied it, I just was like, man, this thing is, is so interesting. It involves, it's the, at the intersection of all these different disciplines of like history and economics and, and just technology. And, and the thing that was most, most interesting to me was, was religion or just morality.

00:47:35.120 And so just to think about like Bitcoin, it was created in 2009 in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis because of the fact that the government had been able to create money out of thin air and then bail out all of these banking entities that have been profligately gambling using other people's money.

00:47:52.960 And so just the fact that that was even able to happen was something that bothered the founder of Bitcoin to the point that he created this alternative and this potential parallel system that people can use to basically have a money that can't be devalued the way that fiat currencies can.

00:48:12.180 And so, again, this was something that as I started to understand that, it really just hit me that this is the exact problem that our Venezuelan brothers and sisters are dealing with.

00:48:22.000 This is the exact problem that to, again, to a lesser degree in terms of this, the advancing

00:48:26.880 of it, uh, our Venice or our Uruguayan brothers are dealing with.

00:48:30.440 And the thing that blew my mind was the fact that every currency in Latin America and many

00:48:35.100 in Africa and all over the places, all over the world, their currencies had failed three

00:48:39.200 to four times since 1971, when the world went off of a gold standard.

00:48:44.920 Wow.

00:48:45.200 They were not went away from their currencies being backed by something scarce.

00:48:48.360 Right.

00:48:48.600 And so as I, again, was just trying to process those things, I just saw, man, like this, this is a big deal. And there's moral, there's moral principles here that are, that I'm not hearing anybody talk about that just seemed to be really obvious to me as I, you know, as I was going through these things.

00:49:05.420 And so basically, again, one of these things, it really clicked one day I was doing sermon prep was in the book of Galatians and it was Galatians six, I believe the apostle Paul says that God is not mocked for what a man sows that will he also reap.

00:49:20.080 So I was sitting there, I was, I had my, I had my, uh, James B. Jordan, uh, out, you know,

00:49:24.660 he's one of my, one of my sermon helps. I had, you know, uh, through new, uh, house for my name,

00:49:28.660 a Peter Lightheart. I had some other stuff, you know, I had my resources out here and I was like

00:49:32.880 trying to think about how do I, how do you rephrase that idea? Like what, what is, what is

00:49:36.640 that saying? And so what I came up with was, and Paul is saying that God has so hardwired this

00:49:42.180 principle of sowing and reaping into the fabric of the universe that to deny it is tantamount to

00:49:47.200 mocking God. And so as I started to think about, well, what are some other examples of this? I

00:49:51.260 started to think, okay, well, like marriage, there's like a, there's a, you know, in marriage,

00:49:56.460 God says you get married and then you enjoy the fruits of marriage, which is sex and children.

00:50:01.420 The apostle Paul talks to the Thessalonians and says, if one isn't willing to work,

00:50:05.940 then neither should he eat. And so Paul is saying there should be a sowing and reaping within,

00:50:10.520 within, you know, eating food. And the logic there is the reason why you eat is to replenish

00:50:15.800 your energy that you've done, pouring yourself out through work. And so if you're not willing

00:50:19.780 to work, then you don't need your energy replenished. And if you do that for long enough,

00:50:23.620 what's the logic? If you're not willing to eat, or if you're not willing to work, then you should

00:50:27.440 die. So I'm sitting there thinking about just like, okay, there's more and more examples of

00:50:32.860 this sowing and reaping thing. This isn't just some isolated thought. This is foundational to

00:50:37.320 the way that God made the world. And the biggest one that hit me was the logic of salvation.

00:50:43.820 We're not Muslims who believe that God can just forgive sins.

00:50:46.960 He didn't, Jesus, they don't believe that Jesus needed to come.

00:50:48.980 God could just forgive sins.

00:50:50.140 Allah can just forgive sins.

00:50:51.660 But the Christian God, he can't just forgive sins.

00:50:54.360 He can't over, you know, just completely overlook sin.

00:50:57.760 He has to.

00:50:58.260 It would be unjust.

00:50:59.400 There has to be a cost to it.

00:51:00.580 Yeah.

00:51:01.060 And so what the sin that's been sown has to be reaped somehow.

00:51:05.520 And so I just started to see this everywhere.

00:51:08.100 And then the turn to Bitcoin that hit me was like, okay, so basically,

00:51:12.640 no understanding how fiat currency works fiat currency is basically money that denies sowing

00:51:17.360 and reaping it basically is money that that allows governments and central banks to say

00:51:22.200 we're going to reap where we haven't sown we're going to create value out of thin air and we're

00:51:27.580 going to in so doing we're going to act as gods fiat currency allows governments and central

00:51:32.460 bankers to functionally operate as gods in the world and so again i'm sitting here thinking about

00:51:37.880 these things and I'd start thinking about, uh, Psalm two. Okay. You know why? And it talks about

00:51:42.640 the nations of the earth, the Kings of the earth, they set themselves against the Lord and his

00:51:46.600 anointed. And what do they say? Let us cast his chains away from us. We don't want something

00:51:52.280 that's going to bind us from being able to do whatever we want. And it just hit me like,

00:51:56.240 this is literally what fiat currency is. Fiat currency enables governments to try to throw

00:52:00.560 off this chains of sowing and reaping that God has made to govern the world. And there's all

00:52:05.240 kinds of negative downstream consequences from it. And so that, that's kind of, that was kind of

00:52:09.800 the, a big part of the, of the process of kind of seeing the value of, of Bitcoin from the

00:52:14.300 perspective of a missionary and pastor. Yeah. So, so tell me about, thank God for Bitcoin then.

00:52:18.860 Yeah. It seems like that's probably your story is very influential in starting that.

00:52:22.720 Correct. Yeah. So, so again, so we were, so we were, we were Reformed Baptist church planters

00:52:27.120 and over the last few years that we were in Uruguay, we were there for almost a total of,

00:52:31.120 for almost seven years.

00:52:32.660 Near the end of that time,

00:52:34.320 I had been reading a bunch of diabolical Presbyterians

00:52:38.820 and just got to the point

00:52:40.380 where some of the arguments they were making,

00:52:41.900 I just became, I was like, man, I think they're right.

00:52:45.540 And so again, there's more factors than this.

00:52:47.720 There's a number of things.

00:52:48.640 We hadn't taken a furlough in almost seven years.

00:52:51.220 We just needed to come back to the States.

00:52:52.800 I wanted just some time to regather ourselves.

00:52:56.640 And then these theological things were also there.

00:52:58.800 And so as we were working through these things,

00:53:01.120 just basically said, hey, let's go back to the States. We'll regroup, we'll pray, we'll work

00:53:06.600 through, just kind of reassess things and see if we're going to come back here in this capacity

00:53:10.400 or maybe some other capacity. And so I guess right prior to this, so I had taken part in this book

00:53:16.500 club and during COVID in 2020 and with some other Christians who were into Bitcoin, we read a couple

00:53:22.580 books. One of them was called The Ethics of Money Production by a Roman Catholic Austrian economist

00:53:27.140 named York Guido Holzman. Can't recommend that book highly enough. Every, every pastor ought to

00:53:32.340 read that book. We read that one. And then we also read another book called Honest Money by Gary

00:53:37.140 North. That's basically like the ninth grade reading level version of, of the ethics of money

00:53:42.440 production. That's funny because I had a gold guy give me that book a few weeks ago. It's fantastic.

00:53:47.100 And again, this is why we can get into this later, but I tell people all the time. So have you seen

00:53:51.120 the Star Trek meme where the girl asks, are you two friends? And the one says yes. And the other

00:53:55.700 says no. I use this all the time. Bitcoiners are the one who says, yes, we're friends with gold

00:54:00.200 guys because they're totally right about everything. All the principles, they're totally

00:54:04.760 right. We just see gold is good, but Bitcoin is every bit as good as gold and it has a couple

00:54:10.820 of strengths that gold doesn't have. So we can get into that later. But yeah, so this book is

00:54:14.480 fantastic. So we end up, long story short, we end up reading those two books and then deciding,

00:54:19.840 hey, we would love to basically take a lot of these principles, but rather than the payoff

00:54:24.340 being what those are, which is we need to go back to gold. We want to go forward and we want to go

00:54:29.340 forward into Bitcoin and basically just say, hey, we think this actually makes sense, as crazy as

00:54:33.580 it sounds. My last little tidbit on the Gary North thing, when we wrote the book, we wrote a book

00:54:37.420 called Thank God for Bitcoin. And when we published it, we reached out to Gary North, who I think he

00:54:42.400 went to be with the Lord about a year, year and a half ago. We reached out to him and just basically

00:54:45.740 asked him, hey, would you read this? And maybe consider writing a foreword or something. He

00:54:50.340 wanted nothing to do with us. And so people ask us all the time, like, Hey, you know, you mentioned

00:54:54.940 Gary North in your book. Is he a Bitcoiner? And I always say he is now. So, but yeah, so we ended

00:55:02.560 up long, short, short, we ended up writing the book. The book came out in January of 2021 and

00:55:07.260 we had the immense privilege. We had zero, zero expectations for the book being interesting to

00:55:12.540 people other than ourselves, but we had the extraordinary privilege of getting to experience

00:55:16.780 every protestant's dream which was the book and god's providence came out the same week as a book

00:55:21.780 by the pope and we were outselling the pope we said take that bishop of rome take that you know

00:55:26.760 and so yeah so we ended up we ended up the book came out and it just was it was the right time

00:55:32.820 you know early 21 2021 bitcoin's price was going crazy and and so we've i think in the in the

00:55:38.640 intervening time we've sold i think like over 45 000 copies of the book and and so again just

00:55:43.800 ridiculous we had zero zero expectation and just people again it's an intro book we only talk about

00:55:49.160 bitcoin in the last two chapters of the book um largely it's it's a conversation about the ethics

00:55:54.440 of money production and why christians ought to care about that no that's good i i'm curious have

00:55:59.060 you ever read the creature from jekyll island yes i have about the creation of the federal reserve

00:56:03.000 it's a good one it's a good one yeah yeah it's a good one i also like that one tell me about your

00:56:06.860 conference though you have a conference coming up correct and you've got my guys yeah like i saw

00:56:11.700 C.R. Wiley on there. Correct. I saw a bunch of guys that I know. Yeah, this is our goal is to

00:56:16.040 confuse people. This is this is part of our goal is Bitcoin. Most people's perspective and perception

00:56:22.320 of Bitcoin. It's it's guided by where they're hearing about it. Right. Where are you hearing

00:56:27.120 about it from? They're hearing about it on CNBC. OK, so cable news. They're also hearing about it

00:56:32.480 from probably the former high school classmate of theirs is reaching out on Facebook to try to give

00:56:38.840 them a referral code to some, you know, Bitcoin exchange or something. And so a lot of people's

00:56:43.260 perception of Bitcoin because of the source is geared a certain way, right? They're like, I don't

00:56:48.660 know if this is a speculative thing. This is all, you know, they're looking at it through a very

00:56:52.660 specific lens. And what we want to do is kind of reframe how to think about Bitcoin and look at it

00:56:58.220 not through, again, the circumstantial eyes of these things, but we want to look at it both

00:57:02.360 through a biblical lens and then through like a, just a looking at a theological history lens,

00:57:07.460 you know, like, let's, let's kind of, let's try to orient ourselves and orient basically the way

00:57:13.580 that the world is currently operating for Christian ministry all over the world. And so long story

00:57:19.820 short, we ended up, Think Over Bitcoin was formed after the book was written. I had come back to

00:57:24.140 the States is what I was trying to get to. We came back from the States at the end of 2021. I was

00:57:28.800 looking for a job to do in the meantime, because again, we, we had been funded missionaries when,

00:57:34.020 once we realized we weren't going to go back, we wanted to get that money back to people who

00:57:37.380 were going to the field as soon as possible. And so in hindsight, we probably did that a little

00:57:41.160 bit too quickly. The Lord knows he was very kind, but like, we just basically were like, Hey, we

00:57:44.960 want that to happen. And so I just started praying and looking for a job. One of the other authors

00:57:49.140 I thank God for Bitcoin asked if I would be willing to put together like a one day conference

00:57:53.040 in Miami the day before the biggest Bitcoin conference in the world. So me and another

00:57:57.400 guy put that together, had just crazy things happen. Like Tim Tebow shows up to this thing

00:58:02.180 And we're like, what is going on?

00:58:05.140 We had some other like Senate candidates who were Christians.

00:58:08.160 Yeah, I can't remember his name.

00:58:09.280 He's from the state of Illinois.

00:58:11.240 He was probably the strongest Christian politician candidate I've ever heard of in my life.

00:58:15.840 This guy was way, way overt about being a Christian and loving the Lord and, you know,

00:58:20.940 obeying Christ and lots of stuff.

00:58:22.560 So ended up doing that.

00:58:23.760 And in the aftermath of that conference, some of the other authors who were all either

00:58:27.000 Bitcoiners from early on buying Bitcoin at under $10 a coin or entrepreneurs who are independently

00:58:33.440 wealthy just basically saw the conference and saw just, and we had a bunch of people there

00:58:38.580 and they just basically said, Hey, Jordan, you're looking for a job. If you want to do this full

00:58:42.500 time while you're trying to figure out where you're at theologically, you're trying to get

00:58:45.920 all these things sorted. If you want to do this full time to help Christians understand and look

00:58:50.380 at Bitcoin and see the value proposition, we're willing to fund it. And so they gave us a couple

00:58:55.260 of years, a runway of funding to be able to just to do that full time. So yeah, so we do the

00:58:58.880 conference. This will be our third, third straight year that we've done that. Uh, it's going to be

00:59:02.920 in Nashville this year. We, we basically, we follow around the biggest Bitcoin conference

00:59:07.600 there. We, wherever they go, we go. Cause we basically figure, Hey, we can, we can save on,

00:59:12.320 on money bringing in speakers, at least on the Bitcoin side of things. We'll just kind of catch

00:59:16.580 them while they're already here. Yeah. Basically. So their conference is in Nashville this year.

00:59:19.480 And then we just said, Hey, Nashville is a great town for Christians. Uh, there's tons of churches

00:59:23.980 there. So let's do that and we'll see how it goes. So yeah, we've got C.R. Wiley, we've got

00:59:29.420 Michael Foster, Glenn Sunshine, Dr. Ben Merkel. We've got a bunch of other tangential folks. We've

00:59:35.200 got John Moody. John Moody is big in the regenerative agriculture movement. We've got

00:59:39.200 Nate Fisher, who's one of the founders of American Reformer and New Founding. Yeah,

00:59:44.700 just got a bunch of guys. Got a few others as well. So the goal is, again, just to bring together

00:59:49.680 Christians. And so basically the conference is going to be day one is a Christian economics

00:59:54.180 conference. Like how should Christians think about money, economics, investing, you know,

01:00:00.120 these issues? How do we look at these issues? And then day two is much more based on what we

01:00:05.140 learned in day one. And based on these principles, here's what Bitcoin is. And here's the crazy ways

01:00:10.200 in which Bitcoin is being used by Christians all over the world for the glory of God and the good

01:00:15.100 of people everywhere. So that's kind of what we're doing. And yeah, we'd love to have you.

01:00:19.680 Oh, yeah, that's great. You guys should definitely look this up. I've even been

01:00:23.540 considering going. Yeah. Hey, come on now. So I'm very interested. So what I would like to ask you

01:00:29.640 is just a couple of basic questions about Bitcoin, because like you said, people see it maybe on

01:00:34.460 social media. They see something on cable news. They see scare tactics from Jim Cramer. Correct.

01:00:39.960 You know, on investing when they're investing. And so I think there's a lot of mystery around

01:00:45.100 Bitcoin. I mean, there is anyway. I mean, this mysterious Satoshi guy, you know, started Bitcoin.

01:00:50.200 Exactly. But I think it would be really helpful. Just like, what are the basics?

01:00:53.600 Why is it better? Why is it not fiat? Is there a cap? You know, at what point does it go

01:00:59.140 deflationary? Does it go deflationary? Yeah. And just how, what is blockchain? You know,

01:01:04.200 some of those basics I think would be really helpful. Yeah. So in terms of, in terms of what

01:01:08.680 Bitcoin is, actually, let's just do the origin of it. Basically, again, you mentioned there's this

01:01:13.180 anonymous or pseudonymous founder named Satoshi Nakamoto. To this day, no one will admit to

01:01:19.780 knowing who he is or who they are. I've met some of the most OG Bitcoiners that exist,

01:01:25.980 guys who were literally, who Satoshi was in contact from the beginning, who he's asking

01:01:30.800 about this project. So I've talked with some of them, I've seen them, seen interviews with them.

01:01:36.900 And I can't prove this. I think some of them have an idea of who he is, but none of them

01:01:42.080 will own up to it publicly. So again, he's this person who decided not to make his identity known.

01:01:47.560 And I think I don't think I need to make this case to you. But there's there's lots of people

01:01:52.520 who increasingly, especially within Christendom, are understanding the value proposition of being

01:01:56.860 pseudonymous, if not completely anonymous. And so I think there's very good reasons for doing that.

01:02:02.080 But he decided to take that route. And so even though he's not known, there are many people

01:02:07.340 who have been involved since the very beginning and who've made very important changes like to

01:02:12.040 to Bitcoin or they've been heavy influences on the direction of the project of the project

01:02:17.140 since the beginning. Those guys are, are known and are still around. And so, so yeah, it was

01:02:21.420 created, like I mentioned in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis to be a money that couldn't

01:02:26.480 be devalued by any government or central bank. And so it operates in a decentralized way, you know,

01:02:32.660 in just a way that there is no one person who's in control of it or one small group of people

01:02:37.080 who's in control of it. And so this functions basically by, to understand some of this,

01:02:42.240 it sounds weird because most, I would say 99% of people do not understand our own,

01:02:48.220 the regular banking system. And so when you start talking about Bitcoin, it seems like this foreign

01:02:53.300 world. But in reality, if you understand how regular banking works, it's very similar. And

01:02:57.740 at its most basic level, a bank just maintains a ledger. A bank maintains a ledger of deposits

01:03:04.720 and debits, money in and money out. And so with normal banks, the way that they work is you have

01:03:10.980 to trust that they are maintaining true balances and all the accounts. There's a ton of trust

01:03:18.040 involved. You can't verify. We can't go to Wells Fargo and say, hey, show me, open up your books,

01:03:22.820 Wells Fargo, to us. We want to be able to verify all the transactions. We want to be able to see

01:03:26.820 how these things are going down. They're never going to do that. With Bitcoin, Bitcoin is created

01:03:30.500 to be an open ledger where you can, where anyone who wants to can run what's called a node and can

01:03:38.580 run their own copy of the Bitcoin ledger. They can run their own copy of the software and see

01:03:44.520 every single transaction that's ever taken place on the Bitcoin ledger. And so anyone who wants to

01:03:50.320 do this can run their own copy and verify for themselves that the transactions that they're

01:03:55.040 going to be taking part in, that the people actually have the Bitcoin that they say that

01:03:58.960 they do. So if I'm going to receive someone's Bitcoin in payment for a good or services that

01:04:03.720 I have, I can verify using my own node, my own copy of the ledger that they do in fact have the

01:04:10.100 goods. They do in fact have the money that they say they're going to have. And you get settlement

01:04:14.040 across the world using the internet. It's digital final settlement within a matter of minutes,

01:04:19.560 rather than a matter of hours, if not days. If anyone has tried to send a wire or something

01:04:25.520 like that. You know, you imagine we, it sounds crazy, but if you're a business person, you've

01:04:28.960 tried to do this, you've had to send a wire still today, send a wire. You have to wait days in order

01:04:33.740 for that thing to finally clear. And you pay a fee of, of 25, $30. Correct. Correct. Yeah. And

01:04:39.460 Bitcoin settles. What's, what's the fees right now? Because I know there's some volatility post

01:04:44.240 halving, which correct. We can get into in a minute, but a hundred percent fees around like

01:04:48.240 $4, $3, something like that for a transaction. Yeah. It depends on what you're, what you're,

01:04:52.780 how long you're willing to wait basically. Right. Um, if you want things to do things

01:04:55.960 immediately, I think I tried to move. Yeah. I think I tried to move like, again, a small

01:04:59.400 amount on chain and it was going to charge me like, and it was a big size, like a big

01:05:03.540 percentage fee of, of the actual thing. But again, there's all kinds of other ways to

01:05:07.660 mitigate the fees, um, which we can get into. Yeah. So, so tell me about blockchain specifically.

01:05:13.380 Yeah. So blockchain. Okay. So there's, this is one of the, because that's part of the

01:05:17.540 ledger is what you're talking about. Yes. That's part of the mechanism for making Bitcoin

01:05:21.440 work is the blockchain. Okay. Now, if, if, if you want to reveal yourself, okay. As, as not

01:05:28.700 understanding Bitcoin, okay. The, one of the quickest ways to do it is to say, I'm not really

01:05:34.280 sure about Bitcoin, but I know I believe in blockchain. It's like one of the quickest way.

01:05:39.180 It's so easy. You're just like, okay. Because again, blockchain, the only, the only way in

01:05:44.440 which blockchain has been demonstrated to actually provide the value that it says that it's going to

01:05:49.020 provide is with money, is with Bitcoin itself. And there's all kinds of reasons for that just

01:05:55.320 due to the way that it works. But basically a blockchain, what it is, is you have these entities

01:06:00.920 that are called Bitcoin miners or Bitcoin hashers. They're these entities that are running the

01:06:05.780 Bitcoin software. They're playing by Bitcoin's rules. In order to do that, they need these

01:06:10.140 very high powered computers. These computers are, this sounds weird, but there's a very

01:06:15.700 sense in which they're they're like priest like they're priestly and why on earth how on earth do

01:06:20.740 you get there the way you get there is because in the same way that priests are set apart to the

01:06:24.760 lord they're not given to all these other things they're given to the lord that they only focus on

01:06:28.360 what he wants to do a bitcoin mining computer can't you can't like surf the web on a bitcoin

01:06:34.080 mining computer it's literally designed to do one thing and that's mine bitcoin and so what they do

01:06:39.740 is they basically they are out there they're they're trying to uh this is a very crude way

01:06:45.380 of putting it, but basically solve for this very difficult math problem. They're sitting there

01:06:48.380 trying to guess this number that will unlock the ability for them to be the ones who receive this

01:06:53.840 block reward or a block subsidy. That's an amount of Bitcoin. And so if they're the one who solved

01:06:59.800 the problem and are able to do that at the same time as that's happening, they're listening for

01:07:05.060 all of the transactions that are happening every 10 minutes. And if they're the one who mines the

01:07:10.460 block, they then take all these transactions that have happened last 10 minutes. They pack them

01:07:15.300 into this block and they announce to the world, to all these people who are running a copy of the

01:07:20.980 Bitcoin ledger, they basically say, hey, this is the next block. And so you should continue the

01:07:26.740 chain of blocks that have been happening with this block. And so they lock it on there. And then

01:07:32.140 the nodes all latch on and say, okay, we agree. There's like an overlap period where if there's

01:07:37.420 some funny business going on, you can kind of discern that. But basically, once that block

01:07:42.300 it's locked on, then you just continue on the next block. And so every 10 minutes, there's a

01:07:46.980 new block of Bitcoin that's mined, a new set of transactions that are included in that block.

01:07:52.020 And so what that does is it basically ensures that it's extraordinarily energy intensive to

01:07:57.480 try to undo blocks that have been certified, basically are announced through that process.

01:08:02.600 In order to undo them, you have to exert tons and tons of energy and you have to actually buy

01:08:07.840 buy Bitcoin. You have to invest a ton of energy and money in order to try to undo the transactions

01:08:14.640 that have been announced and put together. Right. So in a lot of ways, it does mirror gold,

01:08:18.520 like you said, with even the vernacular, with mining and it takes a lot of energy and it's

01:08:24.000 very scarce resource. Correct. So what is the total supply of Bitcoin? Because it doesn't

01:08:30.040 inflate indefinitely. And so is there going to be a time when there's no more Bitcoin to mine?

01:08:34.840 Correct. And what are mine? What is the inflation rate right now?

01:08:38.420 Yep. So with the supply cap that was set was 21 million. So 21 million Bitcoin, there will only

01:08:44.520 ever be 21 million. Now that can be, and that sounds, you're like, okay, some of you, some of

01:08:49.300 our listening audience might know that there are over 60 million millionaires in the world right

01:08:53.380 now. And so you're like, well, how's this going to work if there's only 21 million Bitcoin and

01:08:57.820 there's 60 million millionaires? Like, how's that going to work? The way that it's going to work is

01:09:01.560 basically because each one of those Bitcoin, each one of those one Bitcoin can be divided up into

01:09:06.400 a hundred million fragments that are called Satoshis. They get called several different

01:09:11.080 things. Sats for short is the name. So you can, you don't have to buy a whole Bitcoin. You can

01:09:16.460 buy a dollar's worth of Bitcoin, which at this point would be, you know, 1500 sats or something

01:09:20.680 like that. Um, so you, you can, there's plenty of Bitcoin to go around for everybody who wants

01:09:26.240 to buy Bitcoin to buy it because you have people who are getting in and getting in at different

01:09:30.480 times. Well, I mean, you will have a supply crunch, I think in the near future, but anyway,

01:09:35.700 continue a hundred percent. Yeah, no, you'll, you'll definitely, when you, you do have supply

01:09:39.260 crunches, but there's supply crunches that get, that gets solved through market forces,

01:09:43.240 through the forces of, again, if Bitcoin went to a million dollars tomorrow, I would, again,

01:09:47.780 just given the nature, I'm a millennial, I'm a one, I would sell some Bitcoin and buy a house.

01:09:52.340 So there'd be at least my Bitcoin, some of my Bitcoin to be on the table, you know, for,

01:09:56.120 for that to happen. But again, there's people who bought into Bitcoin at a dollar per Bitcoin

01:09:59.740 who again for the first time some of them this happened like two months ago and when bitcoin

01:10:04.520 hit 70 000 again some of these the oldest bitcoin uh that that we know about we can trace some of

01:10:10.660 these wallets some of them sold their bitcoins for the first time so everybody has a price

01:10:15.860 everybody has a price at which they're willing to sell some bitcoin right and so the free market

01:10:20.620 works out where that price is so there's a there's 21 million 21 million that there only ever be 21

01:10:26.160 million available. Correct. How many do you estimate have been lost though? Because you

01:10:29.880 hear about the landfill, you know, like I had it on my computer and I threw it away and it's in the

01:10:34.220 landfill. Correct. Yes. And this is, so the way I want the audience to know is Dan is more informed

01:10:39.240 than the vast majority of people who I have these conversations with. So yes, Bitcoin, there are

01:10:43.960 21 million Bitcoin ever. And people estimate that three to 4 million of them are lost forever.

01:10:48.900 And that's largely because they were, they were Bitcoin that was mined when Bitcoin was, you know,

01:10:53.580 sub a dollar. And so people were, it used to be back in the day, you could get onto a website

01:10:59.060 and there were websites that did what were called, um, shoot, they're not fountains. What are they

01:11:02.840 called? Uh, he's basically where you could go on there and anybody could just click a button and

01:11:06.400 they would give you five Bitcoin and you could go back there as many times as you want to,

01:11:09.960 and just get more and more Bitcoin. So back when that was happening, Bitcoin wasn't,

01:11:13.980 was barely even, you know, monetized. And so people just weren't thinking about how to custody

01:11:17.880 it properly. They weren't thinking someday it's going to be $70,000. They just were,

01:11:21.440 Yeah, they're just normal college students and normal people who are just like, oh, this thing is weird and cool. And so, yeah, so that's the best we can estimate about three to four million are lost forever. So you're looking at, you know, 17 to 18 million that are still around.

01:11:35.520 Yeah, that's crazy. So is Bitcoin an asset? Is it money? Is it something else? Because I've heard, you know, in the Bitcoin world, you get different perspectives about that.

01:11:46.980 Yeah.

01:11:47.120 you know, so what do you think it is? So this is, this is where, um, so there's, there's a guy

01:11:52.120 within, uh, in Christendom, all your listeners, Doug Wilson. Okay. Doug Wilson has this fantastic

01:11:56.640 phrase that he says, anytime anybody makes a truth claim, he says, by what standard,

01:12:01.440 you know, by what standard. So I don't just want to give an answer. Or you ask, you know,

01:12:05.200 is Bitcoin, what is Bitcoin? The question that immediately is flying to the back of my head is,

01:12:09.660 well, by what standard am I going to answer this question? Like, what is the standard by which

01:12:13.400 we're going to determine what money is. And I think that this is the question, again, we live

01:12:18.980 in a day of definitional crises on every level, right? Nobody knows what anything is because we've

01:12:24.380 rejected a standard, an objective standard by which to be able to discern objective truth.

01:12:29.040 And so I think we're in a day in which what is a man? What is a woman? What is marriage?

01:12:34.700 What is government? And what is money is one of these questions that doesn't get anywhere near

01:12:39.480 the publicity of those other things, but it ought to, because it affects all of those other things.

01:12:44.700 And so the question is, again, what is the basis by which we know what money is? You know, we can

01:12:49.000 just say, hey, this is what I think it is. Or largely what happens is people will pit certain

01:12:54.040 aspects of what some people will call money against other aspects. And to my mind, it's very

01:12:59.340 similar to what some of the greatest heresies throughout the history of the church. They happen

01:13:03.000 when people try to pit attributes of God against themselves. And so I think that with Bitcoin,

01:13:08.400 here's an example of this. This happens with Bitcoin or with money more broadly. So there's

01:13:11.960 people who will say, what is money? And they'll go, money is a medium of exchange. And it's like,

01:13:15.760 great. Yeah, you're right. Money's in a medium of exchange. And there's other people who go,

01:13:19.400 yeah, money's, it's a medium of exchange, but it's also a store of value. And there's some

01:13:24.080 people who go, no, no, no, it's not a store of value. And, and then again, as soon as you hear

01:13:27.740 that, you need to say to yourself, well, well, by what standard? Like why are he saying it like

01:13:31.820 it's obvious, but like, why, why is it obvious to him? And so this is, this is one of these really

01:13:36.200 good questions that we're going to be answering at the conference and talking about is, wait a

01:13:39.300 second, what is the objective standard by which anybody can say this is or isn't money? And as

01:13:44.300 it turns out, Jesus has a lot to say about this. But again, this is one of the things where clearly

01:13:48.280 I would agree with, we'll skip the drama, we'll skip the, as much as it pains me, the former

01:13:52.500 philosophy major to not give the reason behind. If we just want to get down to brass tacks,

01:13:56.660 money obviously is a medium of exchange, right? Like we wouldn't, that's kind of one of the big

01:14:01.800 points of it is that you give it in exchange for, for other goods or services. But the question is

01:14:06.540 historically, you know, a lot of people will say, all right, there's, there's three main properties

01:14:10.580 of money. One is a, a medium of exchange, store of value, and then a unit of account. Those are

01:14:15.200 the broadly throughout history. People agree that those are the three things involved. The question

01:14:19.500 is what is the relationship between those three things? Um, what, what is the relationship between

01:14:24.200 them and how does it happen? And so we are, this is my perspective of this is that we are so

01:14:29.140 accustomed to living in a world which is a historically non-normative world where money

01:14:36.740 is created fiatly. It's created by governments. Money gets its value from governments declaring

01:14:44.300 that it has value. We're so accustomed to living in and swimming through those waters, that kind

01:14:50.880 of a world, that we can't imagine another world. But if you look at history, thankfully as Christians,

01:14:56.940 Christians are people are, we are respecters of history. We want to, we want to learn. We don't

01:15:00.580 think we're living in some, you know, utopia now where like everything's better today than it was

01:15:04.780 years ago. We don't, we don't think that way. I mean, the Proverbs would say, that's foolishness

01:15:08.340 to actually think that way. You know, why, why aren't the former, the former days were so much

01:15:11.640 better. That's the Proverbs basically say, that's, you don't even know what you're talking about.

01:15:15.700 That's foolishness. And so as Christians, we look back at the world and we say, well, what,

01:15:19.440 what has served as money throughout time? And one of the things that served as money throughout,

01:15:23.800 throughout much of human history is gold and silver, these precious metals. And I'm sure we

01:15:28.340 have all of our gold and silver bugs who are listening saying, amen, you know, this is why

01:15:31.580 we are where we are. What's your excuse? Why are you so, you know, why don't you see the writing

01:15:36.300 on the wall? Now, the question is, the question that the Bitcoiners would ask back is, well,

01:15:39.760 why was gold and silver used as money? And the reason is because there's a number of properties

01:15:44.400 that it has that make it good money. And again, we could go through a whole bunch of this stuff

01:15:48.640 too. But one of these things is it's, it's scarce, right? Why isn't sand uses money? Okay. It's

01:15:53.580 plenty, plentiful. We could use it as a good medium of exchange, but it's not scarce. So you

01:15:57.880 could, again, to borrow our framework about sowing and reaping, you could go out and do no work and

01:16:02.760 get sand and then go trade it for valuable things. That wouldn't be good. According to God's, you

01:16:07.680 know, saying he made the world to operate according to principles of sowing and reaping, that wouldn't

01:16:11.700 be good. You could get resources without doing any work. Again, there's a bunch of these different

01:16:16.260 things that you could look at. Again, why Bitcoin over gold and silver? Okay. Gold and silver is

01:16:22.440 great. It's scarce. You have to, it has a production cost. If you're going to have gold

01:16:27.420 or silver money, you have to pay guys to go dig it up out of the ground. You have to pay for the

01:16:31.700 tools that they're using to do that. You have to pay for the refining process. So with all these

01:16:36.540 things, there's real work, real labor, real energy being expended. And there's a real product at the

01:16:41.320 end of the day that is the product of real energy and value. And what does that have to do with

01:16:45.640 Bitcoin. Bitcoin seems so ephemeral and digital. And how is that not just more fiat currency?

01:16:52.040 The reason it's not is because of the same things we talked about. There's only two ways to get

01:16:56.380 Bitcoin. The two ways are either to mine it yourself, which requires expenditure of real

01:17:02.020 world resources. You have to have the computers. You have to pay for the energy to power those

01:17:07.080 computers. You have to pay people to maintain those computers. And then you have to, there's

01:17:11.460 a whole bunch of other things, pay for the buildings where they house the miners. There's

01:17:14.380 all kinds of real world inputs that go into mining Bitcoin, or you have to either buy or be given

01:17:21.240 some Bitcoin by somebody who's already done that process. So it's a perfectly, it's just like gold

01:17:25.920 mining in that, in that sense, there's real world inputs and real world outputs. So that, that would

01:17:30.920 be, that would be one thing you mentioned. What was the other question you had, like a bunch,

01:17:34.280 but some of the pushback you get from people? Well, no, what I was really curious about was,

01:17:39.040 So I, I understand the, the monetary argument, you know, is Bitcoin money?

01:17:43.980 Well, if it's the definition as money, but do people treat it like money?

01:17:47.960 Sure.

01:17:48.700 Right now.

01:17:49.520 I mean, you can use it as money.

01:17:51.440 I can buy things with Bitcoin.

01:17:53.060 Yeah.

01:17:53.340 Ironically, you can actually buy gold with Bitcoin.

01:17:56.100 Yeah.

01:17:56.560 It seems to me like people treat Bitcoin more as a speculative asset, you know, kind of

01:18:02.040 like a gold bugs are not treating gold as money, even though it fits the definition,

01:18:07.620 Yep. But they're treating it kind of like an insurance policy. Sure. So that's what I was

01:18:11.560 curious about. And as far as, you know, if it's classified as somewhat of a speculative asset at

01:18:15.940 this time, then how is it performed versus other assets? Why wouldn't I take something like gold

01:18:20.960 that is a known entity versus something like Bitcoin or something like real estate or even

01:18:26.800 the stock market? Yeah. You know, so that's kind of where I'm going with the questions is,

01:18:31.520 is it money? Is it a speculative asset? It could be both. Gold is both. Yeah. And so,

01:18:36.120 how, you know, how is it performed? Exactly. And I would say Bitcoin falls in that same,

01:18:40.360 same category. Right. And here's, here's the reason why the question that nobody,

01:18:44.000 nobody thinks to ask is how do things become money? Okay. How does something become money?

01:18:49.180 Right. Like it. And so if, if it's going to be a, the reality is gold and silver was not,

01:18:54.160 you know, ordained from some government somewhere. That's not, it wasn't the gold

01:18:58.600 wasn't chosen to be money because governments mandated it. It was chosen as money because

01:19:02.700 of its properties, buy the free market. It had properties that people wanted and valued. And so

01:19:08.400 people chose it. And then governments, what happened over time was governments put their

01:19:12.260 like part of what the reason you have the famous passage with Jesus with whose likeness and

01:19:17.380 inscription. Part of the reason why that happened was it was basically government stepping in and

01:19:21.320 saying, hey, we certify that this gold and silver is X percentage gold and silver. It's actually

01:19:27.180 the real thing. It's not fake. And so it was basically a certification mechanism. But now

01:19:32.200 we have this thing where all of the value of that for money comes from the fact that a government

01:19:37.500 declares from on high that it's actually got value. Actually, you legally have to take it

01:19:42.640 as money. Correct. And so what your Guido Holtzman gets into in this book, The Ethics of

01:19:46.920 Money Production, is how that is an immoral thing to do. It's immoral for governments to force on

01:19:51.860 their on their citizenry, to basically force them to do something that is outside of to basically

01:19:56.920 try to assume authority that they don't have and try to force their people to do something that

01:20:00.700 that doesn't, that they, basically that is something other than what they would normally

01:20:04.500 do under, under normal circumstances, or that they should want to do under normal circumstances.

01:20:09.620 Because again, this is, this is where the great commandment comes in. This is another thing that

01:20:13.260 this is, this comes to bear here, because what is the great commandment? Love the Lord, your God,

01:20:18.200 with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Okay. Is it

01:20:21.880 loving for me to give my neighbor in exchange for a good or service that he worked hard, he's

01:20:27.360 expending real world time, energy, all these things. Is it loving for me to give him a piece

01:20:32.500 of paper that literally just, it doesn't have any, any value other than one that is assigned to it

01:20:37.740 by a government. Like that, that's not very loving. If that, that thing could get burned

01:20:41.280 up tomorrow, it could be gone tomorrow. And so again, this, this is not loving, especially when

01:20:44.940 that same government can go and create infinitely more of those same currency units within the span

01:20:50.500 of a day, especially within a digital world. Yeah. I was going to say, it doesn't even have

01:20:54.380 to be something as dramatic as it burning up. All that'll happen is it's, it has 98 cents of

01:20:59.460 buying power in six weeks. Correct. Exactly. And then the next, you know, again, this is the crazy

01:21:04.060 thing is that again, we, everybody, Trump, wait, I'm so grateful in a lot of ways, but he's, I mean,

01:21:10.360 Trump printed within the first, you know, first year of COVID let's see, it was within the first

01:21:15.660 few months, 40% of all the dollars that have ever existed were created when he airdropped money to

01:21:20.900 folks. And so, I mean, it's just staggering the amount of money that was created out of thin air

01:21:25.900 at the drop of a hat. Airdrop for non-crypto people is just free money. Free money. Exactly.

01:21:31.140 Let's put in your, your account. Exactly. Now, again, I, we could get into that. I don't have

01:21:34.960 any problem with people doing that because everyone's getting devalued. So you might as

01:21:37.620 well take your percentage of the devaluation and go buy scarce assets with it. So again,

01:21:42.180 to get back to the, to the question of whether or not it's money, it is money. Now it's not

01:21:46.960 fully mature money. Okay. But, but it's money. Now here's, this is, this is where this gets

01:21:52.460 funny because, okay. So let's say here, here's the thing. Cause you, what you said is there's

01:21:56.460 people who don't treat it as money. Right. And so this is where people get messed up. Here's

01:22:00.420 a question for you. Is Jesus Lord? He's Lord. Yes. He's Lord. Right. But wait a second. There's

01:22:05.340 plenty of people who aren't treating Jesus as Lord. Does that change the fact that he is Lord?

01:22:10.260 No, it doesn't. Did you just Jesus juked? I just Jesus juked. That's right. We just Jesus juked.

01:22:16.600 All right. So here's, here's another example of this. Okay. That might seem extreme.

01:22:21.100 Bitcoin can be money and an asset at the same time. I'm not saying it's either or the other.

01:22:25.840 So, so here's the other question, right? So here's again, because something, it becomes money. Okay.

01:22:31.160 So what is the thing separating Bitcoin from being the money that people want it to be? The

01:22:35.600 people who are like, Oh, it's not, it's not as a medium exchange. You're talking about a question

01:22:39.020 of maturity, right? Yeah. So this is the question. It's like the, maybe the more apt, maybe this will

01:22:44.000 cause people not to freak out as much. Like, okay, is a baby a human? Of course the baby's

01:22:48.840 a human, but wait a second. God says, God says in, in Genesis, Genesis one, what is it? What

01:22:55.360 is the requirements of being a human? What does God tell people to do? Be fruitful, multiply and

01:22:59.140 fill the earth. Okay. So a baby can't do that. A baby can't do, is he, is it any less of a human?

01:23:05.120 No, he's just a human. He's immature. He's not able to do everything that he's going to do,

01:23:10.200 but it's not some sort of like inherent weakness on the part of the baby. He's still a human. He

01:23:14.840 just hasn't reached maturity yet. And so the fact that like Bitcoin isn't, it's not a unit of

01:23:20.080 account at this point is a function of maturity. Like there's no, there's nobody other than El

01:23:24.800 Salvador who ruined my perfect metaphor. Outside of El Salvador, every single Bitcoin transaction

01:23:29.920 has been a voluntary transaction. Yeah. And so it's one of these things where around the world,

01:23:35.400 people are adopting Bitcoin because they value it. And part of the maturity issue is that you also

01:23:40.800 have mandatory units, you know, paper units that you have to take as money in exchange for goods

01:23:47.000 and services from the government. Correct. And so the government doesn't really seem to like

01:23:51.260 Bitcoin very much. Although Trump has been really customizing his platform to be pro-cryptocurrency

01:23:57.860 because he sees that it's probably a bigger issue than people realize. What is it? 30 million people

01:24:01.940 in the United States own some sort of cryptocurrency. Yep. Which is, which is quite a

01:24:06.320 bit. And so, um, I, you know, it, it is really interesting because gold is money. You know,

01:24:11.940 there's even, you can get us gold dollars. Correct. But, uh, going to the bank and saying

01:24:17.760 I'm buying a house title company or whatever, that is very difficult. Right. Same thing,

01:24:22.340 same thing with Bitcoin, you know? And so we, we are handicapped in a way by the government,

01:24:27.620 you know, because we have to use these, these, you know, Federal Reserve notes.

01:24:32.300 But here's the thing though, right? Because if you're going to go through a bank, then yes,

01:24:35.120 you're absolutely right. But you can absolutely find there's businesses that enable people to

01:24:39.980 accept gold and Bitcoin for houses. So like, this is another part of, part of the people,

01:24:45.260 people's concern over, oh, well, Bitcoin, it's not really money because you can't,

01:24:48.320 you can't spend it everywhere. Part of that's just ignorance on their part, because you can

01:24:52.100 actually spend Bitcoin a lot more than people are aware that you can. So it's like, some of this is,

01:24:56.760 it's just a lack of awareness of the world we actually live in. But there's an increasing

01:25:00.820 number of people like luxury car dealerships are increasingly accepting Bitcoin for Bitcoin and

01:25:05.480 other cryptocurrencies for selling Lamborghinis and all these different things. So you're talking

01:25:10.000 about, again, you're talking about it's an immaturity problem, but Bitcoin has been growing

01:25:13.940 exponentially for 15 years. Every year that goes by, there's exponentially more users than there

01:25:17.980 were the year before. And that's going to continue to happen because of the different pressures that

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01:28:10.320 Americans have the best situation on earth

01:28:13.340 in terms of fiat currency.

01:28:15.120 I jokingly compare it to,

01:28:16.880 it's like the world's worst beauty competition, okay?

01:28:19.180 You don't have to be pretty.

01:28:20.480 You just have to be prettier than everybody else.

01:28:22.020 And so the United States,

01:28:23.900 again, we're used to being the top dog.

01:28:25.560 We're used to all these things.

01:28:26.820 I have brothers and sisters, people I love,

01:28:28.740 who live in places where their currency is,

01:28:30.860 they've experienced a hundred percent day over day inflation.

01:28:33.920 They go in the morning and the prices are one thing they go in the afternoon,

01:28:37.100 the prices have doubled. Wow.

01:28:38.460 And so that is an increasing number of countries around the world.

01:28:41.360 And so necessarily they're looking for something,

01:28:43.940 anything to protect themselves from losing the purchasing power that quickly.

01:28:49.200 And so increasingly non-technical people are willing to do the work to

01:28:53.320 understand Bitcoin because they have, they don't have an alternative.

01:28:56.420 Well, yeah. So, so talk to me about Bitcoin as a safe haven for,

01:28:59.760 because one of the reasons I'm doing this series

01:29:02.760 is because you look out at the government

01:29:04.800 and the crazy inflation

01:29:06.560 and we've all seen prices rise

01:29:08.940 and there's taxation.

01:29:11.700 My property taxes have gone up 120%

01:29:15.640 in the last few years.

01:29:18.360 And anyway, so talk to me about Bitcoin as a safe haven

01:29:21.520 because that's a really good example

01:29:22.940 for South American countries

01:29:24.540 and other countries that have experienced rapid inflation.

01:29:27.120 Yeah, great question.

01:29:28.300 So again, people talk a lot about Bitcoin as an inflation hedge.

01:29:31.260 Okay.

01:29:31.620 I'd want to go away from that.

01:29:32.700 I'm not this.

01:29:33.280 I didn't come up with this.

01:29:34.300 Like Bitcoin is a debasement hedge.

01:29:36.780 It's a hedge from sitting in, you know, keeping your monetary energy in something that can

01:29:42.180 be debased by a government at the drop of a hat.

01:29:44.760 Like that's really what you're getting.

01:29:46.820 Again, in terms of the inflation, like who knows what's going to happen?

01:29:49.340 Like who's going to, who knows what's going to happen on a daily basis?

01:29:51.700 But you're basically moving off into a parallel system that's not directly connected.

01:29:57.940 And people, there's a lot of people who might hear that and they're like, well, no, you still have to move back into dollars.

01:30:03.700 And it's like, you do not.

01:30:05.420 You do not have to move back into dollars.

01:30:07.640 Increasingly, there are increasing numbers of options for people who live on Bitcoin.

01:30:12.200 I have friends who live on Bitcoin.

01:30:14.500 Well, it's become even advanced and we can talk about other cryptocurrencies at some point if you're interested.

01:30:18.500 But there are other currencies that operate similarly, like Solana is one.

01:30:23.700 And you can use Solana Pay and there's even credit cards that automatically converts USDC, which is a stable coin.

01:30:30.820 Correct.

01:30:31.280 Into USD.

01:30:32.980 And so, yeah, more and more so, this is not exotic.

01:30:36.380 This is something that's going to be more and more regular.

01:30:38.600 Yeah.

01:30:38.940 And again, so again, to get back to your original question.

01:30:41.160 Yeah.

01:30:41.360 I mean, around the world, there's people who are facing all kinds of different circumstances.

01:30:45.420 Okay.

01:30:45.720 Some of it is malicious.

01:30:48.220 Like there's bad things going on.

01:30:49.260 The governments are hyperflating your currency.

01:30:50.600 Some of it, though, is just it's just technological issues.

01:30:53.160 Right.

01:30:53.700 So one of the things that we found, there's a sweet woman.

01:30:56.300 She's, I mean, just a wonderful woman.

01:30:57.840 Her name is Suleyma.

01:30:58.680 She was part of our church in Uruguay.

01:31:00.340 She told me one day, this was, she told me, he's like, Jordan, I tried to, I just sent

01:31:04.940 some money back to Venezuela.

01:31:06.560 And I said, oh no.

01:31:08.100 He's like, how much did you pay?

01:31:09.600 How much did you have to pay?

01:31:10.920 She sent, I think 200 or $250 and paid $80 of a fee to send it home.

01:31:17.520 Oh my word.

01:31:18.220 And so I just was like, no, I was like, come on.

01:31:20.980 So now why is that?

01:31:22.100 Okay.

01:31:22.320 Is it these greedy banks?

01:31:24.420 Put on our Elizabeth Warren hat, right?

01:31:26.860 Is this what's going on?

01:31:27.720 It's just these greedy people.

01:31:29.440 No, no.

01:31:30.540 It's a technological issue, okay?

01:31:32.280 You have, in their case, you have Western Union

01:31:34.640 who's operating in Uruguay

01:31:36.840 and also operating in Venezuela.

01:31:38.780 Now, Venezuela is a very dangerous place to be, okay?

01:31:42.160 And so they're taking extraordinary risk

01:31:44.680 to be in Venezuela, to operate a business in Venezuela.

01:31:48.340 So what they're doing to compensate for that risk

01:31:50.520 is they're charging higher fees.

01:31:52.320 Okay. So I don't begrudge Western union. They're doing like in order for their business to make

01:31:57.180 sense, they're doing what they have to do. Right. So we're, this, this is not some sort of,

01:32:00.620 we're not going to belittle the business owners. No, I refuse. Like, so what we need to do is

01:32:04.760 we need to come up with a technical solution that can solve for the problems that exist.

01:32:09.340 So if we disintermediate this product, you know, if we can disintermediate, which is exactly what

01:32:15.080 Bitcoin does now, we're no longer, we're not dealing with the same kind of restraints as you

01:32:19.320 are with Western Union. The other restraint that they have is when she sent that money home,

01:32:23.440 one of her family members had to physically go to that physical Western Union location.

01:32:30.540 Now, imagine again, you're in a war, you're in a country that's in shambles, right? Yeah. And

01:32:35.320 here's this honeypot. People, if people go here, it's Western Union. It's got a sign.

01:32:40.320 They're coming here to get money. Exactly. And so there's people who've been robbed because

01:32:45.000 as they went to go get money. So you can go there and even the money that you're getting,

01:32:48.960 hooray, we have money from outside and that can be robbed and taken from you. This is part of the

01:32:53.340 other downside of gold and silver. So we had people, a lot of people, again, in our church

01:32:57.520 who were fleeing Venezuela. They had to walk across the border. They didn't have enough money

01:33:01.460 to fly out. The flight prices went crazy. So if they're walking across the border,

01:33:05.920 same dynamic. There's people who know, there's people leaving and walking across the border

01:33:09.460 with all their valuables. They're waiting to rob you. There's soldiers on the border who are

01:33:13.600 willing to basically take advantage of their position and basically force you to pay them

01:33:18.700 money to get out. And so if you have a, if you have a physical currency or a physical store of

01:33:24.140 value in their situations, it's actually the tangibleness, the physicality of it actually

01:33:28.400 becomes a liability. Yeah. And so having a, having a, a money that is non-tangible where,

01:33:34.440 especially one where I can memorize or tattoo on my body or whatever, I can memorize a 12 word

01:33:39.200 seed phrase. I can cross any border in the world, get to where I'm going, plug in those 12 words,

01:33:43.920 and I've got access to my money again. That's an incredibly valuable thing for millions of people

01:33:48.460 around the world right now. Yeah. I don't think people understand this. I mean, any business

01:33:51.920 owners that have to move large amounts of cash with any frequency. Correct. I had run a small

01:33:57.040 auto dealer business for a while and I'm using my own money, my own cash. Yep. And when you have

01:34:02.060 somebody buy a $65,000 vehicle, you know, I've got to go out and buy this car from a wholesaler

01:34:07.400 or from an auction or whatever. They give me a check from the bank, a cashier's check, right?

01:34:12.860 Which is taken out of their account immediately when they write the check. And my bank would hold

01:34:17.780 it for up to 10 business days. Yeah. And so the speed of money was incredibly slow and it cost me

01:34:24.240 actually quite a bit of money in my business. Correct. Yeah. By doing that. Whereas with

01:34:28.300 Bitcoin, all Jordan has to do is provide me his wallet and I could have Bitcoin sent to him in

01:34:36.720 the next five minutes. This is why I'm so bullish on, again, Ogden folks, Moscow folks. I'm so

01:34:42.560 bullish and so passionate about these people understanding Bitcoin. Again, even beyond the

01:34:49.580 speculative investment thing, because these are people who care deeply about the glory of God.

01:34:54.200 And they care deeply about seeing his name worshipped and loved and trusted and adored

01:34:58.660 in the nations. And so again, we have, this is another example. If we're going to get into

01:35:02.560 missions, we have, I have friends who are, they're missionaries, missionary in Lebanon.

01:35:07.080 And he, his mission organization, because of, because of the terrorism stuff that's going on

01:35:11.400 in Lebanon, it's close to a lot of these terrorism things. They're cut off from the SWIFT system.

01:35:15.620 They're cut off from the U.S. banking system. And so his organization in the United States

01:35:20.360 can't send him dollars. He works there in Christian ministry. How is he going to get money?

01:35:25.260 So the current options for him and many other missionaries around the world,

01:35:29.980 they've had one primary option, and that's called donkeying in money. This is what it's called.

01:35:35.420 So what they do is they smuggle in money. There's people who, whether it's on plane,

01:35:41.400 Again, smuggling sounds like horrible, but you can bring up to a certain amount of money on a plane legally and it not be an issue.

01:35:47.800 So that's one thing.

01:35:49.000 There are people, though, there are organizations that are doing different things that are funding, you know, printing of Bibles and all kinds of stuff who are smuggling it across borders.

01:35:56.820 And so I've spoken with different mission organization leaders and heads who are looking for solutions to this problem because here's the dynamic.

01:36:04.740 Here's the reality that they have come to, in some cases, accept and deal with.

01:36:08.860 So we talked to one guy and he said, this is what we do.

01:36:11.400 We send in, let's say we send a hundred thousand dollars.

01:36:15.100 What we do is, you know, we send it to this person and then they physically move it a

01:36:20.840 hundred miles and they get it to this person and they take 10% for being, for doing that.

01:36:25.360 Then you get to the second person, the second person, he'll take 10% to move it another

01:36:28.820 X amount of distance.

01:36:29.940 Oh my word.

01:36:30.340 He's like in, in our daily process, we have four guys or our, or not daily, but our, you

01:36:35.580 know, normal, regular process.

01:36:37.060 we have four guys who each take 10% and 60% of the money gets to where it's going to go.

01:36:42.800 Okay. Now, again, these are these, each one of those four, are they being just greedy guys?

01:36:48.400 No, they're not being greedy. They're risking their lives. They're risking prison time. They're

01:36:53.280 risking, because again, they, if they get found out, nobody, they doesn't know why they have that

01:36:56.880 money. They know that they're using it for the kingdom of God to fund missionaries and all this

01:37:01.780 kind of stuff. But if they get found, it can be seriously. So they're taking risk to do it.

01:37:05.560 and it's also at the cost of 40% of the money

01:37:09.980 that could otherwise be going to the kingdom of God.

01:37:12.700 And so Bitcoin disintermediates and bypasses all of this.

01:37:16.060 So this missionary we know in Lebanon

01:37:17.420 gets paid by his organization in Bitcoin.

01:37:20.340 He then goes to a peer-to-peer community of people

01:37:22.740 in Lebanon who, again, are all dealing with hyperinflation,

01:37:25.840 are all dealing with this thing,

01:37:27.160 and who are always looking,

01:37:28.380 there's always a handful of people

01:37:29.800 who are looking for scarce resources.

01:37:32.440 And so they'll buy Bitcoin with the local currency.

01:37:34.180 he plans everything out so he can get the money and go the same day to the grocery store so that

01:37:38.860 it doesn't lose the buying power. And that's how it works. Um, and so this is, this is happening

01:37:43.780 all over the world. I've talked to a number of organizations that are trying to move money

01:37:47.300 around different places around the world. You could even use war in Ukraine. Okay. Let's use

01:37:50.800 this one. Okay. Oh, Russia cut off from the swift system. Okay. We, those bad Russians. Okay.

01:37:56.920 There, there's no provision on the great commission that says go into all the world

01:38:01.200 to make disciples unless your country puts sanctions on them. Nope. So how are we going

01:38:07.820 to get money to the church planters that are in Russia? Well, we're going to use Bitcoin.

01:38:12.320 That's going to require them to learn a little bit. That's fine. They'll solve it. They're big

01:38:15.900 boys. They'll solve that. But you can find liquidity. You can find ruble liquidity on

01:38:21.460 the ground in Russia to exchange your Bitcoin for. And so Bitcoin is coming in, seeing a problem

01:38:27.100 and serving as a tangible solution or real world solution, you know, for these kinds of things.

01:38:31.560 The last, the last thing, and again, this is more U S based in terms of just everybody's

01:38:35.720 daily existence would be something would be a censorship resistance. I won't, I can't claim

01:38:40.180 all the credit for this, but I certainly believe that Lord answers prayer. So when the Canadian

01:38:44.520 trucker thing happened, I literally had been praying for something like that to happen

01:38:48.740 because I'm like, Lord, like this, I really see this happening around the world. It would be

01:38:53.000 great if people here in the States had some way, like if they could experience something that

01:38:57.060 would demonstrate the value of Bitcoin in the shortcomings of the existence system and basically

01:39:01.840 see like, hey, this is actually a big deal. And so when that happened, I had the privilege to

01:39:06.200 interview B.J. Dichter, who was the spokesperson for the Canadian trucker protest. And basically

01:39:11.900 they had millions of dollars that were given to them. The Canadian government declared them

01:39:16.800 enemies of the state, cut them off from all the access to all of the fiat money that was given.

01:39:21.660 the only money that they were able to, that they were able to access was $900,000 in Bitcoin

01:39:26.820 that was given in custody correctly and given to them one at a time by, by a few guys who were

01:39:32.960 Bitcoiners within that, within that movement. So I had this conversation with Doug Wilson,

01:39:37.300 Doug Wilson came on our podcast. I talked to him and I said, pastor Doug, I literally have been

01:39:40.880 thinking about you in this specific issue for forever. You're sitting here. You're somebody

01:39:44.800 who's not a wilting Daisy, Brian Salve, not a wilting Daisy. You guys go out there. You're

01:39:51.660 and you're going to preach a sermon that says something insane like a boy can't cut off his

01:39:55.900 penis and become a girl, and you could be debanked for that. I mean, that's the world we

01:40:01.820 live in. So again, I'll go to the long term here. The courts have been a bastion of sanity for the

01:40:09.020 most part, but that requires months, if not years. And so if you were to be cut off from your bank

01:40:14.600 account tomorrow, how would you pay your staff? How would you pay your missionaries? How would

01:40:19.100 to do these things? I'm sure you'd have people who would rally, but what is your assurance that

01:40:22.880 those people aren't going to then be targeted? Because that's what happened with the Canadian

01:40:26.100 trucker folks. Well, Jordan, I'll tell you what I would pay them with Bitcoin. Yeah. So there you

01:40:30.200 go. So there you go. And so this is, I really would a hundred percent. And this is, this is

01:40:34.800 why this is exactly what we're, what we're advocating for. We're not saying that you

01:40:38.860 should sell all of your money and go, go a hundred percent into Bitcoin. We're saying is

01:40:42.840 you have, when they tell you who they are, you have to take them seriously. Um, you know, this

01:40:48.100 his, what's his name? Um, Aaron Wren, the, the negative world framing, right? Yep. We live in

01:40:53.820 negative world now and Bitcoin is money for negative world. Like Bitcoin is money for a

01:40:59.200 world in which we, we don't have the same level of trust. We don't have the same level of, you

01:41:04.520 know, of, of ability to rely on, on banks and all these things that we could once when we lived in

01:41:09.620 a world that was, you know, had a far greater fear of God. Yeah. We've seen this a lot with

01:41:13.420 like andrew torba a few years ago he was going through this where where all of his banks were

01:41:17.840 were closing him out visa card you know the whole the whole deal i can't remember the exact company's

01:41:22.600 details but yeah yeah he was getting denied by banks and so um manipulating bitcoin like that

01:41:29.240 is uh quite honestly an impossibility at this point uh maybe in some future date but who knows

01:41:34.960 yeah and again you you still can you can still mess around with it on a day-to-day basis but

01:41:39.380 again, here's, this is what I said to people is I would, I would rather have, let's say

01:41:43.100 you take 20%, 20% of your, your church reserves or whatever, and you put them in Bitcoin. Okay.

01:41:49.480 Like I would rather, I would rather have a hundred percent access to money that could lose 20% of

01:41:56.420 its value on a given day, then 0% access to something that is maybe that only is only six

01:42:02.820 or 7% because that's the inflation rate, the stated inflation rate. I'd rather have than have

01:42:06.880 zero access to something that is on paper, more stable. Right. Like that, that's just kind of,

01:42:11.340 that ought to be intuitive, but it's difficult because we, we didn't grow up in a world like

01:42:15.860 this. Like we live in clown world. Yeah. And so we, you, we can't just continue to act like we

01:42:21.440 live in a world that doesn't exist anymore. So I have just to change the subject a little bit.

01:42:25.540 Yeah. You've talked about Bitcoin as being like, kind of like the people's money in a lot of ways.

01:42:30.340 It's like, it's peer to peer. You, you don't need a intermediary in order to facilitate

01:42:35.140 transactions and things like that. What are your thoughts on the recent ETF approvals? I guess it's

01:42:41.580 been a few months now. ETF approvals. And now BlackRock is buying a lot of Bitcoin. Correct.

01:42:48.360 So what are your thoughts on that? I know there are some Bitcoin guys that really hate it and

01:42:52.780 some that embrace the adoption by BlackRock. I'm just curious what your thoughts are.

01:42:56.820 There's a phrase that goes, Bitcoin is for enemies. And so the reality is, I mean, anything

01:43:02.440 good like anything that's good can be taken and abused by wicked people you know and so i would

01:43:08.480 say again to borrow and this seems dramatic but in the same way that the fact that god created

01:43:13.160 people and then they became corrupted is no indictment on god the fact that bitcoin is this

01:43:18.760 good thing that can be corrupted by bad people is it's not an indictment on bitcoin like and so

01:43:23.860 but well do you think it's actually being corrupted or just co-opted i think it's co-opted yeah yeah

01:43:28.320 And again, I think you could argue people, again, were co-opted by the serpent, by Satan for his own purposes, right? He took them and used them for his own purposes. But I don't think it's great. I don't think it's great. I'd rather all my Venezuelan brothers and sisters, I'd rather Ogden have tons of Bitcoin. I'd rather them hold the Bitcoin than BlackRock.

01:43:47.540 The good news, though, is that BlackRock, because they're not convicted, like they're not in Bitcoin because they actually have like researched it and like they believe in the Bitcoin and they want the world that Bitcoin's they want the world that Bitcoin is bringing about.

01:44:01.380 So, like, I think, again, there's going to be come times where, you know, let's say they go up, you know, let's say Bitcoin's price in dollar terms goes up 60 percent.

01:44:09.760 They're going to sell some. They have like the fiduciary responsibility. They're going to sell some.

01:44:13.340 And so then there's going to be Bitcoin back on the market for normal people to buy.

01:44:17.540 Again, it's it's not it's not great. And at the same time, again, this is the the difference between Bitcoin and some of these other coins is there's no there's no Bitcoin foundation.

01:44:27.320 There's no like small group of people who can decide overnight to create way more Bitcoin or to vote to give power to, you know, to some any entity.

01:44:37.760 We actually experienced this, the same test.

01:44:40.120 We like stress tested this idea in 2017.

01:44:42.900 In 2017, there was this debate within the Bitcoin world over whether or not Bitcoin's

01:44:48.080 blocks should increase in size.

01:44:50.280 If you increase the size, you can fit more transactions.

01:44:53.240 And then that's, it allows Bitcoin to be used for more, more immediately as a, on the base

01:44:58.100 layer, as a, as a medium of exchange.

01:45:00.660 So there were people who thought this is a good thing to do.

01:45:02.560 There were other people who thought, who, who realized, man, if we do that, we're going

01:45:06.460 to sacrifice other things. We're going to sacrifice, you know, something that's not going

01:45:10.360 to be ideal. And so basically what it turned out, turned out to be was that there were large

01:45:15.080 entities, big businesses, big mining companies who all wanted to go to big blocks because it would

01:45:20.680 be advantageous for them in, in fiat profit world in the, in the short-term future. All of the

01:45:27.200 little guys who are all sitting there running their own copies of the, their own copies of

01:45:31.240 the node. They all basically said, we're not doing that. And in real time, you saw these mega

01:45:36.680 companies get defeated. So Goliath lost to David. It was the coolest thing. And so basically that's

01:45:42.900 the dynamic is anyone who runs, if you run a node, you have voting power over which of these,

01:45:48.500 over the future of what you're going to, what you want Bitcoin to look like. And so again,

01:45:53.340 these are geographically distributed. These are people all over the world and all kinds of

01:45:56.700 different countries, including countries that are enemies. And so again, it's, it's this really

01:46:02.440 interesting thing of, you know, basically Bitcoin is being preserved by the fact that there's no

01:46:07.780 one entity or country that's controlling it and can basically, you know, basically force it to do

01:46:13.360 what they want it to do. Yeah. So what are your thoughts on other cryptocurrencies? Just out of

01:46:17.860 curiosity? Yeah. So I have a couple of thoughts. The first thought is I'll give you an example. I

01:46:22.700 I am currently in, I'm sitting here, we have conversations all the time with mission organizations

01:46:27.340 who are looking for creative ways to move money around the world. And they're, they're interested

01:46:30.760 in Bitcoin being one of those tools. Um, so I, I got, I wouldn't name the country, but I got put

01:46:35.380 in a, it's like a communication group with a few hundred other people in a, in a certain country

01:46:40.200 that is difficult to, to move money around in. So I'm in this group, there's a few hundred people

01:46:45.700 in there. And within this group, there's people at any given time selling anything you can think

01:46:50.740 of. Like there's people selling Amazon gift cards in there. There's people selling, you know,

01:46:55.600 a bunch of other cryptocurrencies, Tron, Ethereum, you know, just whatever, Doge probably, you know,

01:47:01.440 like all of these things they're, they're in there willing to sell everything. And so as I look at

01:47:05.660 that, and if there's some missionary who for some reason has Doge and he's like, Hey, I want to sell

01:47:11.960 Doge and then get money into this country. I'm not going to be like, Hey man, you should really

01:47:18.460 be using Bitcoin. Like I'm not going to do that. Like, cause again, what's the Bitcoin is a means

01:47:23.200 to an end. And so remembering what that end is, is really important at the same time as a, as a

01:47:29.500 structural thing. If I'm looking at which of the currencies is actually able to stand up to a

01:47:34.940 government, it's actually able to stand up and is strong enough to withstand a government attacking

01:47:40.220 it. It's only Bitcoin. And that's been demonstrated over and over again. China's banned Bitcoin,

01:47:45.800 uh seven times seven or eight times in the last 15 years and the fact that they had to do it seven

01:47:51.480 means they had to relent on it yeah the ccp is one of the largest holders of ethereum so like they

01:47:57.260 they like governments uh authoritarian governments like these other cryptocurrencies because they

01:48:02.640 have a guy who they can put their thumb on and make him do what they want again even if they're

01:48:06.440 not going to take him out because that wouldn't be advantageous they can still threaten him they

01:48:09.360 can still do all kinds of different things if they wanted to in order to make him do what they want

01:48:12.960 to do. So that's the difference in terms of what I see. Bitcoin is literally, it's actually

01:48:18.580 decentralized. It's actually able to not have one person or small group of people who are able to

01:48:23.660 manipulate it. There's other currencies can't say that. And so for the long-term, the big picture,

01:48:29.620 though, we actually want to have censorship resistant money. Bitcoin is the only thing

01:48:33.700 that fits that bill. And so I'm not willing to, you know, with, especially you have people who

01:48:38.800 are just getting into these things. They're trying to make heads or tails of all these

01:48:42.640 different currencies. I'm not going to sit there and I have zero willingness to basically, Hey,

01:48:47.280 throw a little bit into this and maybe it'll go, you know, maybe it'll go crazy. Even if you're

01:48:51.080 just looking at it from an investment standpoint, it can be seductive to look at the returns. You

01:48:55.580 know, it's, it's, it's intuitive to try to think, all right, I'm going to buy, I'm going to buy

01:48:58.840 ripple. Okay. Ripple is so cheap right now. If all it takes is, you know, a bunch more people

01:49:03.100 to buy a bunch of it and then it'll go up a lot. Like that's intuitive. It's just, it doesn't work

01:49:08.540 that way. And, and the other thing that you have to look at is people, a lot of times they, what

01:49:13.680 they fall into is they look at the, the chart of whatever that other cryptocurrency is denominated

01:49:19.280 in dollars. And those things look great when you do that. What they, what you need to do is look

01:49:24.960 at those other cryptocurrencies denominated in Bitcoin. Yes. So what you're looking at is what

01:49:29.200 is the opportunity cost of, you know, what you would have had if you would have bought Bitcoin

01:49:32.980 rather than this thing. And in every single case, all of those currencies, it looks like going

01:49:37.180 downhill. Like all of them are losing value. They've, they've peaked in their value in Bitcoin

01:49:41.300 terms. And so even as a, as a long-term thing, like it, it doesn't make sense if you, if you're

01:49:46.420 using that as a, as a barometer. Well, thank you for that. Um, what do you think the biggest risks

01:49:50.960 to Bitcoin are in the future? Yeah. So again, the biggest risks are something you talked about. It

01:49:55.340 might've been offline, but, uh, you mentioned like a solar flare, something like that, you know?

01:50:00.340 Oh yeah. Like an EMP or something, you know, like something that where there's going to be,

01:50:05.520 everything's going to fail. Correct. But there has to be more, more to it than that though.

01:50:10.860 Correct. Yeah. So, but, but I'll just full, full disclosure. So like a solar flare, right?

01:50:15.540 Solar flare fries circuits, you know, not good. Okay. And how do you prevent that? Well,

01:50:20.260 there's Faraday bags. Okay. Like it's, there's people, I know I have friends like who have

01:50:25.420 Faraday, I have Faraday bags. Like you store your electronic stuff in them and they keep them from

01:50:29.280 being fried by, you know, EMPs. Again, if, if there's a, if there's a solar flare that fly,

01:50:34.120 that fries every single electronic thing that we have we're gonna have a whole lot bigger problems

01:50:39.200 than just bitcoin you know you're gonna have yeah our entire medical system medical system is all

01:50:43.480 you know digitalized now uh all of our elections oh yeah transportation yeah food like everything

01:50:48.960 we're gonna be in in a bad way um if that happens but in terms of other other risks you mentioned

01:50:54.480 uh like an emp yeah here's here's the the pushback against an emp unless you have like a total world

01:50:59.540 you have like nuclear war where everybody gets destroyed right guess what we'll be with jesus

01:51:04.480 we won't be worried about money yeah what about quantum computing sure so quantum computing is

01:51:09.460 one of these things where it's similar to um cold fusion okay like in the 80s cold fusion was the

01:51:15.480 thing man everybody's like whoa cold fusion yeah it's gonna come along it's gonna and then it just

01:51:19.420 never happened yeah there were articles you could have read them like oh this is gonna happen

01:51:22.720 quantum computing is nowhere near as like set in stone as people think it's gonna be right like

01:51:27.600 It's nowhere near, like I've talked to people, we've looked into this whole thing.

01:51:30.760 So that's just one thing.

01:51:31.760 It's nowhere near as close as people think it's going to be.

01:51:33.620 The second thing is, even if it is close, there's already people working on more quantum

01:51:38.200 resistant cryptography standards.

01:51:40.520 So like right now, the standard that's used is the SHA-256 algorithm for cryptography.

01:51:46.100 There's, again, in the works, I want to say they've already come up with a couple of them,

01:51:49.800 but basically they're just basically even more.

01:51:51.800 So even if you did have a quantum computer, it's still basically the Bitcoin could resist

01:51:56.280 it.

01:51:56.500 So all it is, it's a matter of doing that and then implementing them. These are all possible, feasibly done things that if we see these things on the horizon, they become more of a priority, people start doing it. It's just nowhere near like the, yeah, like this is going to happen tomorrow. And then the first thing they're going to do is attack Bitcoin. Like that's the other thing is there's other things that you could attack if you had that ability and Bitcoin wouldn't necessarily be the first one.

01:52:18.820 Right. Yeah. This was more of a concern of mine pre ETFs. Yeah. Because, you know, now BlackRock

01:52:25.620 owns Bitcoin. So they, the government, you know, is an interest in keeping Bitcoin around. Yes.

01:52:31.340 But this was a concern for me in the future is to make Bitcoin essentially illegal. And it's,

01:52:36.640 it's very difficult to have on ramps and off ramps in Bitcoin without going through one of

01:52:43.660 the major exchanges. Yep. And so that was one of my larger concerns, but I don't think that's

01:52:48.220 probably as much of a risk now, like I said, because BlackRock, it does have its benefits.

01:52:52.640 You know, they have an interest in keeping it around. Correct. Yes. So there's a couple,

01:52:56.080 there's another one too. So you have with BlackRock, okay. And with Vanguard and all these

01:53:00.780 guys comes their lobbying dollars. Yes. So now what you have is they're lobbying. Now they're

01:53:06.120 advocates of Bitcoin, or again, I'll be even more cynical of a, of a version of Bitcoin. Okay. Like

01:53:12.080 they could have their own, they're what, the, one of the things that there there's been talk

01:53:15.760 about doing is outlawing private ownership of Bitcoin. That's self-custody. Correct. Outlawing

01:53:21.960 self-custody. The problem is that constitutionally, and again, we can argue there's lots of things

01:53:26.360 that are unconstitutional that are still done, but you have a couple of things is constitutionally,

01:53:30.700 Bitcoin is just code. It's literally code on a page or on a computer. And so literally like

01:53:37.420 Bitcoin is protected by freedom of speech. This was actually, cryptography itself was under attack

01:53:43.520 in the i believe it was in the 80s they wanted to outlaw cryptography because they were trying

01:53:46.840 to argue this is a weapon of war okay it went before the supreme court the supreme court the

01:53:51.260 the lawyers who were defending the the guys who wanted to allow cryptography just basically printed

01:53:54.780 out the cryptography said hey this is the cryptography it's just text yeah and so when

01:53:58.720 they realized that they're like oh okay yeah you win and so bitcoin is it's literally the same

01:54:04.080 thing it's zeros and ones this is all that this is it's it's code on a piece of paper yeah you

01:54:08.400 literally can't outlaw it it's just it may be totally absurd you know to try to do that but

01:54:13.360 But back to your previous point, you can see why the government would not be pleased with

01:54:17.020 something like Bitcoin existing, because one of the main levers that they have on society

01:54:22.680 is the monetary system.

01:54:24.320 And so if you undermine their money, you undermine their power and their control.

01:54:28.760 Correct.

01:54:29.200 So you can see how that could create some tension and some angst amongst Bitcoin holders

01:54:33.540 or even potential Bitcoin holders.

01:54:35.280 Yes.

01:54:35.640 And 100%, again, then you, this is where we come back to having BlackRock, having those

01:54:40.200 guys that that's a helpful thing.

01:54:42.260 OK, so there's lots of things in which they're not great.

01:54:44.800 So one of the few benefits, one of the benefits is we get their marketing dollars.

01:54:47.620 Another another aspect or another segment of the economy where this basically is helped

01:54:52.280 by this is the oil and gas industry.

01:54:54.580 So one of the coolest things about Bitcoin is that basically you can take what Bitcoin

01:55:00.220 does is it prioritizes finding the cheapest energy on Earth and being able to monetize

01:55:05.980 it exactly where it is.

01:55:07.620 And so what you have is a lot of Bitcoin mining and a lot of the energy that's going into mining Bitcoin is not energy that could be used for other things. This is not normal guys within city limits who are doing this stuff.

01:55:21.760 What you have is you have, for instance, one of the biggest Bitcoin mines was in interior China. There's this giant hydroelectric dam that's too far away from any of the population centers for them to efficiently transport the energy itself to those places to be able to use by the people.

01:55:37.620 So what they do is they hook a generator up to the hydroelectric dam. They plug in a few shipping containers worth of Bitcoin miners to that generator. And they're using the power of this hydroelectric dam to mine Bitcoin. And then they send the Bitcoin to the city and they sell the Bitcoin. And then they have this thing. They've turned wasted energy into money. It's incredible.

01:56:01.300 And so that's happening in rural places all over the world. It's also happening in places around the United States where they have smaller stranded oil and natural gas wells. So you have places where they have these energy sources where they used to have, they calculate how much supply is left, and it's not enough anymore to continue to feed into the big pipelines that are feeding cities.

01:56:27.380 So right now they're just kind of being wasted. They're just sitting there doing nothing

01:56:31.240 Or even in the case of the the the energy sources that are being used

01:56:36.800 They get to points throughout the year based on demand where they run out of they run out of room

01:56:41.940 Where they run out of storage space and so literally what they have to do

01:56:45.840 So they have tankers where they you know, they fill those up

01:56:47.860 They have these other tanker trucks. They fill those up, but there's points every year where they run out of space

01:56:52.260 And so what they do the solution right now

01:56:54.540 is literally to light like a Molotov cocktail

01:56:57.220 and they throw it up there

01:56:59.220 and they just burn off this oil and natural gas.

01:57:02.140 They just burn it off in the atmosphere.

01:57:03.180 They're wasting this energy source

01:57:04.840 because they don't have anything else to do with it.

01:57:07.100 Our favorite Greenpeace and all these other green folks,

01:57:10.980 they're not too authoritative about that.

01:57:12.080 They're saying, oh, look at the emissions you're causing.

01:57:14.780 So what Bitcoin enables you to do

01:57:16.700 is they cap those wells.

01:57:19.020 When they run out of supply, they cap those wells.

01:57:21.800 They hook up a generator.

01:57:22.940 They hook up the Bitcoin mining computers to the generator and they start mining Bitcoin with this strain of energy that's just being wasted.

01:57:29.160 And now that oil and natural gas company is more green than it was before.

01:57:33.460 So, again, we don't believe in any of this stuff, but like even for the people who do, they're looking at Bitcoin.

01:57:38.660 They're like, this is the stuff this actually makes us this gets a little bit worn.

01:57:42.720 This is saving the world. Exactly. We're saving the world.

01:57:45.200 So you're telling me we're saving the world.

01:57:47.360 we're, we're monetizing this previously wasted resource in a day in a, in a moment of crazy

01:57:53.360 inflation where we're losing money everywhere else. And now here's this on this money source

01:57:57.400 that we get out of nowhere. This is fantastic news for us. Well, yeah, there's an old state

01:58:00.860 saying in a, in business, if it doesn't make dollars, it doesn't make sense. Yep. So, uh,

01:58:05.940 yeah, it's economically viable to essentially reduce emissions in that case. And so it makes

01:58:12.140 sense to do it. Yeah. And then the last thing, this is crazy is so in, in the state of Texas,

01:58:16.620 the last at least two years, maybe three years, you've had blackouts. You've had blackouts where

01:58:21.940 because they've invested so heavily in wind and in solar energy, those things, every time I was on,

01:58:29.680 we talked to Chase Davis about this too. It's like every time you hear renewable energy,

01:58:33.880 what you need to hear in your mind is unreliable energy. Every time you hear renewable, you need

01:58:39.720 to hear unreliable. And so what they have is they've invested so heavily. I don't know why,

01:58:43.620 Texas, you disappoint me, but they've invested so heavily in these energy sources that there

01:58:48.820 comes points of the year where the wind doesn't blow. There comes points of the year where it's

01:58:52.640 not hot or conversely, it's too hot or it's too windy because there's a situation in which it

01:58:58.360 gets too hot and too windy. And then neither one of those things work. So what you have is you have

01:59:02.860 Bitcoin mining companies who've created these massive centers and they sign these purchase

01:59:08.140 agreements with these electric companies. And so what they do is they say, hey, we're going to use

01:59:13.200 because we have X amount of Bitcoin miners. We know to like the smallest degree, how much energy

01:59:17.740 we're going to be able to use 24, seven, three 65. Okay. And, and so then what we'll do is we'll

01:59:23.860 use that. And then if you have shortages, if you as the, the, the city or whatever has shortages,

01:59:29.260 we'll power down all of our Bitcoin miners and we'll send all of the energy back to the grid

01:59:34.580 to be used by normal people. And so literally the last two years, this has saved, this has saved,

01:59:40.480 the Texas energy system from dealing with extensive blackouts because they've had they've

01:59:45.860 been able to sign these agreements and make money in the in the short term. They've had a more stable

01:59:49.620 demand. They've been able to soften those those supply demand peaks. And then Bitcoin's been able

01:59:54.300 to kind of come in there. And again, Bitcoin is one of the it's one of the only industries where

01:59:58.360 they can do a cold shutdown of of their of their computers. And if you have like server farms like

02:00:04.680 Amazon Web Service, something like that, they can't just power down and then power it back on.

02:00:08.520 It's, it's way more involved in that and they just can't do it.

02:00:11.300 So Bitcoin provides a service that literally nothing else can provide and actually provides

02:00:16.500 other, you know, um, you know, other real benefit to, to the United States and increasingly

02:00:22.340 to places around the world.

02:00:23.460 It also hasn't hurt that in the last year, it's gone up a lot in value, which is great

02:00:29.020 for investors.

02:00:29.620 And, and, but what that shows is that it's not just, um, it's not as irrelevant as, as

02:00:35.700 wind and solar power.

02:00:36.860 Correct.

02:00:37.160 Is that it actually works and it's a desirable asset.

02:00:40.360 Exactly.

02:00:40.800 And so that's why it's going to continue to go up in price, Lord willing, for people that own it.

02:00:45.180 Yeah. And again, this is what you see is this is where you have the game theory is also working out.

02:00:50.560 Right. So right now you have we have one nation state who's mining Bitcoin.

02:00:55.120 We have one nation state who's declared Bitcoin legal tender.

02:00:57.860 However we feel about legal tender.

02:00:59.240 We're not crazy about that.

02:01:00.200 But like they've they've made it legal tender.

02:01:02.040 so now you've what you've started is this geopolitical like race arms race of like wait

02:01:08.420 a second they're literally their country's turning around because they have a political a guy you know

02:01:13.640 a candidate who's basically willing to stand up and basically say this is wrong this is insane

02:01:18.420 these crime we're gonna we're not gonna allow it but then they're also able to say no to and

02:01:23.060 basically get away from the um the the loans the basically it's payday loans that are offered them

02:01:30.500 on a national level by the imf in the world bank like it is one of those two entities are two of

02:01:35.220 the most corrupt entities on the on the entire earth they like they basically they prey on these

02:01:40.120 small on these small nations by giving them loans and getting them into debt that they know they'll

02:01:44.940 never be able to repay um and so bitcoin is one of the things it's enabling something like el

02:01:49.420 salvador to basically get away from those loans enabling them to basically we're generating our

02:01:54.020 own money that's increasingly going up in value over time um and so this is there's going to be

02:01:58.560 other countries that take note. Nobody wants to be the first, but they're going to take note of

02:02:02.380 what's happening. And the success that El Salvador is experiencing, the success that

02:02:06.240 individual states like Texas are having with their energy sources, plugging them into Bitcoin

02:02:11.980 and being able to monetize these things is people are taking notice. And there's more and more

02:02:15.920 countries around the world that are beginning to do the same. Well, I believe my home state

02:02:19.880 of Wisconsin in some capacity just purchased a large amount of Bitcoin. They did. I did. I was

02:02:25.140 I was incredibly impressed. I also was heartbroken to hear that everyone in Wisconsin is now

02:02:29.640 criminals because Bitcoin is only for criminals, right? That's the very, very heartbroken.

02:02:34.780 Well, I'm in Utah now. So thanks for those people. Just to, just to close out, would you

02:02:40.640 recommend any other assets in addition to Bitcoin? Because Bitcoin, you know, we just talked about

02:02:44.540 how great it is, what it does as you're looking at, because the project we're really working on

02:02:49.640 is like, how do you build a new Christendom? Yep. Right. What, what, what do you need to do?

02:02:53.140 I think Bitcoin is a key part of that. We talked about gold a little bit. I think gold has its

02:02:58.680 place. What about real estate or even traditional finance? What do you think about that?

02:03:06.100 Yeah. So again, all of these things, you might find somebody who's like, all of these things

02:03:10.320 are worthless. It's not me. And it's not going to be like all of these things. Again, you have

02:03:14.700 to have somewhere to live. You have to have somewhere to live. Again, it's getting back

02:03:19.380 to remembering what these things are. Like, I mean, the problem is when, when money stops being

02:03:24.460 money, then something has to fill that vacuum. It's like, it's like any kind of, um, if there's

02:03:29.440 any kind of dereliction of duty or something there, there's a vacuum that's created in somebody or

02:03:34.020 something has to fill that vacuum and everybody, like both the thing itself suffer and people who

02:03:39.700 are interacting with that, with that entity, who's the space fill or suffer. So imagine like you have

02:03:44.400 like a father who, you know, abandons his family. Okay. So now the wife has to become the breadwinner.

02:03:49.760 She has to go start making money. And then that's less time and stuff that she has to give to her

02:03:54.440 family. And so, so basically you have, everybody suffers when, when things aren't being what

02:03:59.920 they're supposed to do. Uh, money is supposed to be among other things is supposed to be a store

02:04:04.200 of value we've had for a hundred years and really been like 50 definitely. But even then it was

02:04:09.920 getting worse before that. We have money that stopped being a store, a store of value. And so

02:04:15.560 other things had to rush in and become stores of value. And one of those, one of the biggest

02:04:20.120 things to do that has been stocks and real estate. And so you have, you have, you know, companies

02:04:24.720 and real estate that is maintaining, it's got what's called a monetary premium where like

02:04:28.900 normally you would look at a company, you look at its P&E, profit and earnings. You basically

02:04:32.520 look at like what kind of business is it doing? And that would be the information that you need

02:04:36.280 to do in order to decide whether or not you're going to buy this asset. But now, because stocks

02:04:40.760 have become a store of value and you have real estate that, you know, has in very many places

02:04:45.340 become a store of value. They're speculative investment vehicles. People are buying two and

02:04:49.800 three homes, not because they're actually going to live with them, but because they're trying to

02:04:52.920 find some place where they can put their money that's getting devalued very quickly, trying to

02:04:56.740 find a place where they can put it, where it's going to, it's going to get a good return. You

02:05:00.180 know, you, that's, that's kind of the thing that I see is the problem with at this moment, investing

02:05:05.000 in those things is because the prices of them are escalated because you're paying that premium.

02:05:11.580 And so, you know, you're looking at a situation which, you know, you have baby boomers who are

02:05:15.120 getting ready to retire. They've largely bought up one of their biggest investment vehicles is,

02:05:19.760 you know, is real estate, is stocks. They're banking on being able to sell those stocks and

02:05:24.440 sell those homes for more than they paid for them. In many cases, they won't be able to retire or

02:05:29.320 their ability to retire is significantly hampered by those things, by those limitations. And so,

02:05:35.000 So that that's the only thing that I would say about, you know, looking at, you know, real estate stocks, all those things is we can't act like it's like buying a stock today is like it was buying a stock 30 years ago.

02:05:44.320 It's just not. So there's definitely situations in stocks in which you'd say, hey, hop in.

02:05:49.720 That's a perfect time, you know, to buy into that or, you know, this real estate property.

02:05:54.120 If you find one, you scoop one up for cheap or you have a family situation, then absolutely go do that.

02:05:58.860 But like that's just it's a thing to be aware of is, you know, Bitcoin, Bitcoin is one tool in the tool belt.

02:06:04.660 I think it's a very timely tool, especially for younger people.

02:06:08.240 It's something that, again, if you can, younger people can tolerate more of the day-to-day

02:06:13.280 volatility, day-to-day risk, if you're looking at it like your long-term savings.

02:06:18.260 But absolutely, I foresee, and again, this is not me, there's other smart people who

02:06:22.940 are in the Bitcoin space who are value investors, who were into value investing long before

02:06:26.640 they were into Bitcoin, who say one of the greatest effects of Bitcoin continuing to

02:06:32.440 succeed is going to be because it's going to be that you're going to draw down some of this

02:06:36.280 monetary premium and you're going to be able to invest sanely in companies again, because you're

02:06:40.740 actually going to be investing in the company itself and not just paying in, not paying that

02:06:44.460 monetary premium included. So 20, 40, 60 X price to earnings. Yeah, exactly. Where are you just

02:06:49.620 like, what is happening here? So like, that would be the thing is I definitely think with, with

02:06:54.300 David Bonson, David Bonson doesn't like Bitcoin, but I think David Bonson, what he's talking about,

02:06:57.940 he's talking about investing in people, investing in people, you know, investing in companies,

02:07:01.880 you know, that makes all the sense in the world. Do that. Again, I just look at Bitcoin is one

02:07:06.880 tool in the tool belt. It's a timely thing. It's here. Like I, I look for a company. Thank God for

02:07:11.900 Bitcoin. I think we should thank God for Bitcoin that we have something that is able to, that's

02:07:17.140 able to mitigate some of the specific threats and specific things that we have facing us right now.

02:07:22.480 But again, all of these, it's a matter of balance. It's a matter of, there's no right answer. There's

02:07:26.760 no one size fits all thing. Yeah. Again, it's just taking into account the different trade-offs

02:07:31.160 that exist in each of those investment categories.

02:07:33.840 I mean, one of the things with-

02:07:34.760 Right, the one guaranteed loser

02:07:36.000 in an inflationary economy is holding cash.

02:07:38.820 Yep.

02:07:39.060 So if you've held assets,

02:07:40.660 even in our economy and our government

02:07:43.200 actually incentivizes people to hold debt

02:07:45.800 in order to further hold those assets

02:07:48.480 in order to monetize them and everything like that.

02:07:50.900 But holding cash, you're going to be the loser.

02:07:53.580 Correct.

02:07:53.780 But even then, again, you have to ask,

02:07:56.980 but even cash or like dollars where?

02:07:59.400 because people, people in Venezuela who hold dollars are going to be way better off than,

02:08:04.440 you know, than people who just hold the, the, you know, Venezuelan Bolivar. So like, this is the,

02:08:09.180 all of this stuff, it's not all relative. I don't mean that. And like, I'm not a moral relative,

02:08:13.800 but in terms of the value of these things, it is relative depending on where you are.

02:08:18.220 So if you're an American, like you're going to be experiencing inflation, the inflation of asset

02:08:23.040 prices, inflation of goods, because the money is able to be created. The amount of money that

02:08:27.820 they're having to create just to maintain keeping up with the interest on the debt the amount of

02:08:33.500 money that they're printing i can't what is this specific thing we're now printing oh man printing

02:08:40.060 money to pay the interest on the debt yes it's like something insane like that like this year

02:08:46.220 as of this year it will pass the defense budget or something crazy but yeah that that's just the

02:08:50.120 reality is you know just taking all i'm asking is like people to think like think about the the

02:08:55.320 trade-offs of the different things that you're holding. And like Bitcoin does have trade-offs.

02:08:59.000 Bitcoin is technical a little bit. When you first get in, it's, you know, it requires some time to

02:09:03.520 understand, but again, there's everything has trade-offs, you know, real, real estate land

02:09:08.020 has trade-offs. You can get a eminent domain. Government can just come in and decide, just

02:09:11.780 take your land and just say, Hey, you're going to, we're going to give you this amount of,

02:09:14.520 so not, there's no such thing. There's no such thing as an asset for which you don't need to,

02:09:19.320 you know, where you you're protected from anything wrong, where you don't need to trust God. All of

02:09:23.720 these things are under the sovereignty of God. All of these things are underneath the reality

02:09:28.440 that, Hey, God loves us. We live in his world. There's been people who've lived through atrocious

02:09:32.460 things. We could be counted among them. And if so, then the Lord will, you know, we'll have to

02:09:37.060 trust him and he'll prove himself faithful with us again. But I think that that's how I would see

02:09:41.460 somebody asked me like, what, what did you, if you were to, they said, if you were to talk to a

02:09:45.880 church that had, you know, $250,000 sitting in a bank, you know, what would be the percentage

02:09:51.160 that you would tell them to put into Bitcoin?

02:09:53.540 And I said, I'm not touching that with a 10-foot pole.

02:09:56.200 But what I said to them was, it would be non-zero.

02:09:59.820 It just wouldn't be zero.

02:10:01.100 I wouldn't let it be zero Bitcoin.

02:10:02.340 That doesn't make sense in a world we live in right now.

02:10:05.700 One thing as a pastor and managing church budgets

02:10:08.760 and everything like that,

02:10:09.580 one thing that I've noted is that

02:10:11.520 there are people that will tithe to the church

02:10:14.940 and I've spoken to them before about giving in Bitcoin instead

02:10:19.660 so that the church itself doesn't have to buy Bitcoin, but I can hold Bitcoin.

02:10:24.660 Correct. Yep.

02:10:25.460 You know, so that's something to think about.

02:10:28.740 If you are a Bitcoin guy and you want to give to your church and they're open to it,

02:10:32.500 that might be a good way to insulate the church budget, you know, if things go crazy.

02:10:37.860 And to also support missionaries and things like that, fund schools, you know, all this stuff.

02:10:43.180 So that might be something to consider.

02:10:44.900 100%. And we are definitely having those conversations.

02:10:46.780 Like this is when, again, when we talk to Bitcoiners, this is a weird application of

02:10:50.560 this, of this verse, but those who are strong have an, uh, have an obligation to bear with

02:10:54.720 the failings of the week and not to please themselves.

02:10:56.640 So like, if you're, if you're into Bitcoin and you, you, again, you see this thing,

02:11:00.580 you're like, Hey, this is valuable.

02:11:01.800 Then like, Hey, yeah, go talk to your pastor and be willing to like either handhold or

02:11:05.980 again, just hold it and like tie it in, in Bitcoin.

02:11:08.560 Like you do the work, like you, you do this.

02:11:10.800 Like this is, it's, it's hard.

02:11:12.460 Pastors are doing really important work and they don't necessarily have time to sit down

02:11:16.220 become bitcoin experts like that's that's not going to be fun yeah help them and don't be

02:11:20.740 insufferable don't be insufferable yeah and again this is yeah it's one of these things where i i

02:11:26.500 love my job and at the same time i hate my job because like we we sit down with people and

02:11:31.920 because my job is so weird people just ask they want to know questions they ask questions and

02:11:36.600 i've had the unfortunate thing to be sitting down with a couple people from church where we had we

02:11:41.760 went to this, uh, the two, there's two families that went to the same meal, like two Sundays in

02:11:46.280 a row. And so I felt horrible because one of these guys had already heard the whole Bitcoin spiel.

02:11:50.480 He like, didn't want to talk about it. And I'm like, Oh man, I should just, I should just schedule

02:11:54.600 a time to go out with this guy. Cause he was the new guy was all into it. He's asking questions,

02:11:58.700 but it's just one of the things. So yeah, don't be insufferable. Don't be just talking about all

02:12:02.680 the time. Well, where, where can people learn more about, uh, about what you do and about the

02:12:07.060 conference, especially I'm very excited about that or buy your book. You've got a lot of resources

02:12:11.260 out there? Where can they find it? Yeah. So you can go to, I mean, tgfb.com is our website. You

02:12:15.580 can find the book, Thank God for Bitcoin, The Creation, Corruption, and Redemption of Money

02:12:20.240 on Amazon. Again, it's written at like a ninth grade reading level. It's not designed to be

02:12:25.280 super heady. It's just really designed to be an intro on the topic. And then I've got a couple

02:12:29.940 other books that are in the works. We've got a kid's book called The Orange Umbrella. It's

02:12:36.060 basically, again, like the non-annoying intro to Bitcoin. We don't even mention the word Bitcoin.

02:12:41.260 But it just kind of tells the story, tells the story of money in a fun, fun way.

02:12:45.540 Yeah, you can go find there.

02:12:46.280 And then as far as the conference, if you go to tgfb.com slash conference, you can find

02:12:49.860 tickets and more information between, you know, from all the speakers.

02:12:53.780 And yeah, just it's going to be, like I said, July 24th and 25th at Rocket Town in Nashville.

02:12:59.200 We'd love to.

02:12:59.720 We'd love to see you.

02:13:00.680 We'll do.

02:13:01.320 I'll do a promo code.

02:13:02.480 I'll do a King's Hall or something like that.

02:13:04.200 Promo code.

02:13:04.600 We'll give you like 20%.

02:13:05.440 Excellent.

02:13:05.900 Yeah, I'll put it in the show notes.

02:13:07.200 That's great.

02:13:07.680 Thank you.

02:13:08.220 Yep.

02:13:08.360 Well, thank you very much for joining us and not a financial advice,

02:13:12.080 but you should buy Bitcoin. So thanks for joining me, Jordan.

02:13:15.780 It was great talking to you too, brother. Appreciate you.

02:13:29.180 Well, in case you didn't know,

02:13:30.400 we have another Kings hall show called the after hours and it's available only

02:13:34.140 to our patrons. We have a great time in the after hours.

02:13:37.080 i play hype songs which brian loves sometimes we even talk about brian's cut we talk about

02:13:41.380 recent news on x and answer listener questions overall it's a great time so i'd encourage you

02:13:46.080 to head over to patreon.com slash the kings hall if you'd like to support the show and get some

02:13:52.140 extra content

The King's Hall - July 26, 2024

Wealth, Money, & New Christendom： Bitcoin with Jordan Bush

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