The Michael Knowles Show - The Establishment FEARS the POWER of Bitcoin

00:00:00.000 I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:09.400 I could be a very wealthy man right now if I had invested in Bitcoin a long time ago,

00:00:16.460 but I don't know anything about Bitcoin. I don't really know anything about investing.

00:00:19.560 Might be able to be a wealthy man if I start investing in Bitcoin now, but I need someone

00:00:23.380 to tell me what the hell Bitcoin is, which is why I've brought on the expert, BitBoy Crypto,

00:00:29.200 Ben Armstrong. Ben, if you're not following his content, he's got well over a million subscribers

00:00:34.620 on YouTube. He is the place to go for crypto news, cryptocurrency trading advice, all these things

00:00:41.960 that I don't know anything about. Ben, thank you for coming on. Yeah, thanks for having me. Anytime I

00:00:48.280 get to talk crypto, and especially when I can reach an audience that maybe doesn't know that much about

00:00:53.000 it, it's always a win for me, so I'm very excited to be here. You're talking to the main audience that

00:00:57.060 doesn't know anything about it, namely me, the audience of one. I need you, Ben, if you don't

00:01:02.680 mind, to answer this for me once and for all. Allay my fears. I have had, one, this sort of

00:01:09.020 Luddite disposition, which is I'm skeptical of all new technology, and I never would get the new

00:01:14.880 video game consoles when they came out, and I'm an old man. Ben, I'm an old man in a young person's

00:01:20.860 body. So what is Bitcoin? What is crypto? Is it real? Is it just gambling? Is it just a speculative

00:01:27.380 asset? Or should I start throwing my money into it? Well, I'm glad I'm speaking to an old man in a

00:01:35.000 young body, as I'm an old man in an old body. So I've always been a little bit of an early adopter.

00:01:41.480 I think a lot of people would tell you about that if you ask them about me and my life. I've always

00:01:47.020 been a little ahead of the curve on things of technology. I look ahead and I see what's coming,

00:01:52.820 even if I don't necessarily think it'll be beneficial for me. Gaming is getting absolutely

00:01:58.080 huge. I'm not a gamer, but we try to take advantage of that on our channel. We talk about

00:02:02.200 different gaming coins and gaming cryptos and things like that. So I understand where you're

00:02:06.360 coming from. I think the majority of people are skeptical about crypto. Back in 2017, when I really

00:02:12.480 went kind of all in on crypto, I talked to people back then where it's just as skeptical then as you

00:02:18.440 are now. The people that listen to what I was telling them at that time, they're doing very well.

00:02:23.440 The people that didn't listen and remain skeptical, well, they missed out on a golden opportunity. So

00:02:28.380 I do think it's really important to differentiate between Bitcoin, crypto, and blockchain. Crypto is

00:02:34.140 kind of the larger arena that all of that kind of fits within. Blockchain is the technology

00:02:39.840 that underlies a lot of the crypto infrastructure. There are some coins out there, crypto projects

00:02:45.380 that aren't technically blockchain. They're even using newer technology like IOTA is a coin

00:02:51.200 that uses something called Tangle, which try to wrap your head around that. I don't even know if

00:02:54.480 it's going to work. But then, of course, you have Bitcoin, which is the first crypto. Or a lot of

00:02:59.520 people say cryptocurrency. I personally don't use the word cryptocurrency because it gives

00:03:04.800 everybody, I think it's really one of the most common misconceptions about crypto is they're

00:03:10.580 not all currencies. Like everybody looks at Ethereum and they says, well, how are people

00:03:14.600 going to be spending Ethereum as a currency? That's not really what it is. You're really

00:03:19.020 investing in crypto or in Ethereum as a network. And the more successful the network is, the more

00:03:24.420 valuable the coin will be. It's not about trying to replace the dollar with Ethereum. Now, when

00:03:29.500 Bitcoin started, it was certainly started with the mission to be a currency. And I think this is

00:03:34.420 really where that misconception comes from. I like to use digital assets. I think that's a much better

00:03:39.480 term for everything in the space or crypto assets in some cases. So when it comes to Bitcoin, its

00:03:46.040 original intention was written, of course, by Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous founder. A lot of us think

00:03:53.100 it's a combination of Hal Finney and some of these other cypherpunks. It was multiple people

00:03:57.320 that created it. We haven't heard a word from him since I think 2010 was his last post. So we don't

00:04:04.240 know where he is. But he wrote the Bitcoin white paper in late 2008. And what that said, the subtitle

00:04:11.940 was Bitcoin, you know, peer-to-peer electronic currency that was or electronic cash is the gist of

00:04:21.340 the byline. And so a lot of people took that to mean that this is going to be a currency. We're all

00:04:25.240 going to pass back and forth. It was created in response to the 2008 bailouts, the financial

00:04:30.140 crisis, because, hey, if we're responsible for ourselves, but the banks and the insurance

00:04:37.520 groups and all the auto industry, they don't have to be responsible for themselves. That's

00:04:43.380 not really fair. We're having to foot their bill and we don't like that. So what if we had

00:04:47.840 a way that we could be in control of our own money? And that's what it started as. Well,

00:04:52.260 it's a great and noble cause. I think we would all agree. We don't, we want privacy in our

00:04:57.120 transactions. We don't want every single thing we do tracked. I think that's something a lot of

00:05:00.740 people in your audience can, that resonates with them and they understand that. Crypto in a lot of

00:05:05.740 ways, it works very similar to cash in a privacy aspect. Like if I want to pay you cash for something,

00:05:11.040 I can go pay you cash and the government doesn't have to have their nose in that business.

00:05:15.060 Of course, above a certain amount, you would have to disclose that according to the IRS.

00:05:19.100 But crypto kind of captures that same idea. I should be able to send a transaction without

00:05:24.160 the government putting their nose in the middle of that. But something happened in the last eight

00:05:30.480 years, probably starting around maybe less than that, maybe about 2015 to 2016. The narrative of

00:05:36.860 Bitcoin started changing from, hey, this is a currency. We wanted to replace the US dollar

00:05:42.020 to now people see its value. It's appreciating value over time. It's the greatest appreciating

00:05:48.600 asset we've ever seen in the history of mankind. Some charts will even show you. It's like an

00:05:53.260 infinite rise, you know, like the, the crazy for Bitcoin for a penny was what it started as,

00:05:58.360 of course, as the recording here, somewhere between 45 and $50,000 per Bitcoin.

00:06:03.320 Bitcoin. So the narrative changed to, hey, the biggest value is holding it. So now we actually

00:06:09.060 look at Bitcoin as digital gold. It is an alternative to gold. I could go over all the

00:06:14.060 reasons why it's far superior to gold. I know I just did a debate with Peter Schiff that people

00:06:18.940 can see some of that information on. But so it started as a currency, but now it is more digital

00:06:24.500 gold. And in terms of an actual cryptocurrency, we're seeing a lot of different options arise from

00:06:31.040 that. There are several coins that try to fulfill that still like Bitcoin Cash, for instance, or

00:06:35.900 Litecoin or Dash or some of these other ones. But we're also seeing the rise of what we call CBDCs,

00:06:40.820 which are central bank digital currencies. These are centralized cryptocurrencies that are just

00:06:45.860 another iteration of your local central bank. So that does clarify some things, but it raises

00:06:53.060 about a million more questions for me as well. It's a lot to unpack. So I'm glad to hear you say

00:06:57.980 that it's not really a currency or it's not just a currency or it's not primarily a currency.

00:07:02.980 Because that's been one of my issues with Bitcoin from the very beginning is I've thought,

00:07:06.660 I don't really think this is going to behave like a currency. I don't think people are investing in

00:07:10.960 it as though it is a currency. I think they're looking at it more as a speculative asset.

00:07:15.560 They see it as a thing that they want to put their money into it because they think the number

00:07:19.840 is going to go up and then they're going to have more money. So then the question becomes,

00:07:23.840 is this just the tulip bubble in the Netherlands? Is this just a bunch of people

00:07:28.820 who are pouring their money into something because the number keeps going up?

00:07:32.680 But if there's no real value underneath it, and if there's no sort of longstanding human

00:07:40.240 interaction with this thing that can give you confidence that it's going to have value,

00:07:44.540 is it just going to collapse one day?

00:07:46.020 Well, and I always got to say this, eventually it will collapse one day. I mean, I don't think

00:07:53.060 it'll be the world currency for the rest of human civilization. There will be a new technology

00:07:58.100 that comes around one day, but in the short term, over the next 50 to 60 years, I would say

00:08:02.400 there's very little chance of that. The 55 out of the top 100 banks in the world,

00:08:08.140 more than half have exposure, heavy exposure to crypto. We're seeing more added by the day.

00:08:16.200 Fidelity recently just jumped into crypto in a big way. They've already been doing crypto

00:08:19.540 custodianship for a while. You're seeing more and more banks and hedge funds. We saw over this little,

00:08:25.540 we call it the mini bear market where the prices dipped here for Bitcoin over the last few months

00:08:29.360 are on the rise again. But BlackRock, the biggest hedge fund in the world, they tripled their Bitcoin

00:08:35.120 holdings during that dip there. So there are a lot of big players. We know Tesla's bought Bitcoin,

00:08:40.840 SpaceX owns Bitcoin, MicroStrategy owns Bitcoin, PayPal, Grayscale. At some point, when you look at,

00:08:47.680 when you read the tea leaves here, it all starts to add up. Crypto adoption is coming and it's coming

00:08:53.940 pretty quickly. So there's a lot of belief underneath crypto that pushes this forward. And of course,

00:09:00.360 I do like the way you said, or a longstanding human interaction, because I mean, you could

00:09:06.580 really argue there's not much difference between Bitcoin and the dollar. Actually, dollar way more

00:09:12.800 inflationary. They just print it at will. I mean, a lot of people would say the world's biggest

00:09:16.920 Ponzi scheme is the US dollar. Yeah, I see that point. And so I'm trying to make these distinctions

00:09:23.020 so that I don't want to make a criticism of Bitcoin that could be equally true of gold or equally

00:09:27.660 true of the dollar. How long do you point that out? Well, when you get to the dollars,

00:09:31.440 the dollar is sure, very inflationary. It's actually very inflationary right this minute

00:09:35.180 under the Biden administration, but it's still backed by a bunch of guns that are held by the

00:09:41.020 Pentagon. And if you look at gold, gold, it's just a thing, right? It's just a pile of bars,

00:09:47.960 but it can be turned into jewelry. It has been valued by human beings since basically the dawn of

00:09:53.780 time. People like to look at it. It glitters all nicely. People have confidence in its value.

00:09:59.720 People don't think it's ever going to go to nothing. So my question then for Bitcoin or

00:10:04.260 crypto more generally is, what am I getting? What is the value beyond, if there is one,

00:10:12.020 what is the value beyond it just going up a little bit? I saw this other related technology,

00:10:17.460 the NFT, the non-fungible token, which is, I suppose, and again, I obviously don't understand this very

00:10:23.380 well either, but it's a way of selling some image. It's a way of selling some digital property

00:10:29.040 at which I can just download right now and print out myself, but it's somehow you have ownership

00:10:33.960 of it then. Yeah. Like you can print the Mona Lisa, but you don't own it.

00:10:36.800 But you don't know. Exactly. Right. But so for a, for a digital technology, you know,

00:10:41.260 if I were to sell the NFT, the non-fungible token on a tweet of mine, I guess then someone would own

00:10:47.020 that tweet, but everyone else gets to look at the tweet too. And I just don't,

00:10:49.880 I don't see what the added value is. So what, so what am I missing?

00:10:55.360 Well, I would tell you, we're at the very beginnings of an emerging technology that,

00:11:00.700 you know, when I'm really passionate about decentralization, and I think that's something

00:11:04.540 a lot of your audience, you know, I hate the techocracy. I speak out against the big tech.

00:11:08.860 I speak out against the censorship, the stuff that happened with, what was the app that got

00:11:14.600 taken down the app store? Parler.

00:11:16.260 Parler. I can't even remember anymore because it's been so long as I took it out.

00:11:19.780 But the stuff that happened with Parler, that's unacceptable. Yeah.

00:11:24.520 Crypto and decentralization and blockchain are really the way that we can tie together

00:11:29.700 the internet. A lot of people say, well, crypto is in the days of the Wild West. Well, no,

00:11:33.380 the internet's still in the days of the Wild West. When you're going to have a seven-year-old that can

00:11:36.540 pick up a phone and look at pornography, we're still in the Wild West days of the internet for sure.

00:11:41.400 And blockchain actually has a lot of ways it can solve many of those underlying rotten decaying

00:11:46.800 problems with the internet. So we're at the beginning of this. The first time somebody

00:11:51.100 tripped over a gold nugget, let's say, you know, I don't know, in a cave or something,

00:11:56.500 they looked down. They didn't look down at it and say, oh, you know what? One day that's going

00:12:00.380 to be using cell phones. How cool. You know, they didn't look down and they say, oh, I can melt

00:12:04.320 this into jewelry. You know, how awesome. The first people that, when this, you know,

00:12:08.240 when gold, not a technology, but when it was emerging, you know, he said, this is the beginning,

00:12:12.240 like people didn't know what it was going to become down the road. And with crypto,

00:12:15.880 this is an emerging technology. The same way you would have looked at the beginning of the internet

00:12:18.960 and been like, I don't understand why my company needs a website. It's cool that people can,

00:12:23.200 you know, chat on AOL Instant Messenger, but what do I do with this? That's where we're at with crypto.

00:12:27.760 And a lot of these other crypto projects like Ethereum, like Cardano, they solve a lot of the

00:12:33.960 problems that we have in society with the internet. For Bitcoin specifically, this is why I do believe

00:12:40.360 that Bitcoin is more akin to gold than these other projects, because it doesn't really have

00:12:43.760 a working network of DeFi projects, decentralized finance projects like Ethereum does, but it's all

00:12:49.700 developing. So what can you actually use your Bitcoin for? I mean, the same thing that you would

00:12:55.200 probably use gold for to appreciate as an asset. Well, the development of something called the

00:12:59.620 Lightning Network, which is a faster way to send Bitcoin transactions. There are all kinds of things

00:13:05.920 coming in the future with Bitcoin development that maybe there will be actual more functional reasons

00:13:11.820 to hold a Bitcoin. I mean, right now, like you said, it is just based on the fact that, you know,

00:13:17.220 like you said, the dollar is backed by all the guns inside of Washington, D.C. and the Pentagon and,

00:13:23.960 you know, our military. Well, I would tell you, looking at the banks and their movement into crypto,

00:13:28.880 I would tell you that the money in the bank's coffers are far more dangerous than the guns.

00:13:34.200 That, okay, this is starting to make sense to me then, because I obviously empathize with the

00:13:40.720 demand for decentralization. And I, and especially now as my dollar is basically worth nothing and I

00:13:46.560 go to the grocery store and everything, all the prices keep going up. I think, okay, yes, I certainly

00:13:51.620 want that. I don't want, whether it's the government or big tech, I don't want them having this

00:13:55.620 creeping, awful surveillance state to, to monitor everything I, I do or think. So, okay, I recognize

00:14:02.160 why people would want to get into Bitcoin that way. And, and I, I see the other point, which is,

00:14:06.900 yeah, maybe Bitcoin itself is not doing anything for you other than going up and down,

00:14:11.360 but the underlying technology of blockchain, this is going to be very important. You know,

00:14:15.980 George Gilder, who was Reagan's favorite economist, actually, is Ronald Reagan's most

00:14:21.000 cited economist. So George Gilder has been around a very long time. He wrote a book a few years ago

00:14:25.760 called Life After Google, where he said, listen, you young whippersnappers get into this blockchain

00:14:30.360 because this is the future of the internet. This is going to be the future architecture of the entire

00:14:34.360 internet. So, okay, I get that. And then this leads me to my next question. If Bitcoin, if crypto,

00:14:42.060 if blockchain is posing a threat to centralization, certain monopolies on currency and assets,

00:14:50.120 if it's, if it's, a lot of people are going to be turning against it. So I want to know,

00:14:55.960 how is this thing going to survive the inevitable regulatory push and who are the people trying to

00:15:01.080 regulate it? Yeah. So the people trying to regulate it, I mean, it's, it's a mixture of the CFTC,

00:15:06.620 the SEC, the treasury, you know, we call her Janet, no telling yelling, because there's no telling

00:15:11.140 how much she's going to print or, you know, recently more, you know, we like calling her Janet

00:15:15.560 felon yelling, as you know, she's taking all kinds of bribes from the bank. You guys may not

00:15:19.660 know this. A third of her overall net worth came over the last year from Zoom calls.

00:15:25.040 This is the treasury secretary. Treasury secretary. And a third of her net worth has come over the,

00:15:29.640 over the past. She is worth $20 million right now. Over $7 million of that came in this last 365

00:15:37.740 days from speeches she gave over Zoom calls, which were paid by banks. Many, I don't have

00:15:45.900 the list right in front of me of the banks that actually paid her. Citi was definitely one of them

00:15:50.120 though that, that paid her. So, you know, a third of your income or your net worth, not your income,

00:15:55.360 your net worth came over Zoom calls from banks. You wonder who she's trying to protect. There's a

00:16:01.220 reason she's pushing against crypto, but they're all arguing over who it should be. Now here at BitBoy

00:16:05.980 Crypto, we are pushing hard. We're actually trying to create the first crypto lobbying group. That's

00:16:10.780 something we're trying to do to push, to get more favorable crypto regulation and help people

00:16:15.120 understand it. We've also, I went and spoke with the Texas State House of Representatives who are,

00:16:19.620 we find the state representatives are great. We're going to be speaking to Alabama soon. We've got

00:16:24.140 several other ones. I go and give a presentation, talk about the beneficial, you know, elements of

00:16:28.560 innovating in blockchain. The new space race between us and China is going to be over blockchain,

00:16:32.640 we believe. And so trying to get that favorable innovation is something we need to push these

00:16:37.500 states to do. On the federal level, they're all owned by the banks. 90% of our politicians are

00:16:42.420 owned by the banks. So the fact is, it's going to be hard from that standpoint to really get

00:16:48.340 favorable regulation, but you can't ban Bitcoin. People may have seen like China banning Bitcoin

00:16:53.400 mining or, you know, we make jokes about banning Bitcoin because we know there's no way to ban

00:16:58.360 an open source computer code. What they can do is they can come after the on and off ramps to

00:17:04.480 exchanges. But we also know that Coinbase is a highly regulated exchange and they're part of what

00:17:10.460 we call the financial cartel, which is a lot of the biggest banks, including some Hong Kong tycoons

00:17:15.560 or some of the original investors in something called the digital currency group that actually

00:17:20.100 owns a large portion of Coinbase. And so Coinbase is kind of the chosen financial cartel

00:17:25.740 exchange. And so now that doesn't mean you shouldn't use it. It's the easiest way to use

00:17:30.460 crypto or to buy crypto for a person that's new, the Coinbase app. But, you know, Coinbase is not

00:17:37.320 going away. The government's not going to be able to regulate. And we saw with the infrastructure bill

00:17:40.540 that a lot of stuff that was very negative towards crypto. And before it's, you know, it's going to

00:17:45.940 leave the house again and get, you know, approved, all that stuff's going to be fixed. And actually,

00:17:50.660 I think it was the, I think it was, I can't remember if it was the SEC. I can't remember exactly who it

00:17:54.860 was said that in the current state of the bill that they wouldn't even legislate it as it's written

00:18:00.680 because it's unenforceable. So we don't know who's in charge of crypto. We're a big advocate for

00:18:05.660 having an independent, not, I mean, there will be politicians on it, I'm sure, but having a separate

00:18:12.040 commission or council that is over crypto with people there that actually understand it at least

00:18:17.500 a little bit. Cynthia Lummis, you know, Senator from Wyoming. She's a person that definitely

00:18:22.300 understands Bitcoin, understands that Wyoming's, you know, very pro-crypto. She's definitely a

00:18:26.520 person that, you know, she was also, you know, wrote on one of the amendments to the bill that

00:18:30.980 didn't get passed, but had a lot of favorable stuff for Bitcoin. So there are some politicians

00:18:35.060 who do understand it in inkling. Some understand a little more, but the vast majority of people

00:18:39.520 trying to regulate crypto right now don't know what they're talking about. And we've seen this,

00:18:44.360 the SEC, the CFTC and the treasury, they're all arguing who is in control of crypto,

00:18:49.900 which is just pushing this, you know, it's your common, you know, political nightmare.

00:18:53.780 So. Well, this is true of most issues I've found in Washington is that the people making the rules

00:18:58.620 and the laws don't have any idea what they're talking about whatsoever. And so I'm not surprised

00:19:03.940 that crypto, which genuinely is somewhat complicated, is eluding them. So speaking of who's in control

00:19:10.100 of Bitcoin, you mentioned this name earlier, but I want to go a little deeper. Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?

00:19:18.020 Satoshi Nakamoto. Oh, Satoshi Nakamoto. So this is the guy. We say the guy. Now I got into Bitcoin

00:19:24.260 first in 2012. And so first Bitcoin I bought, was it $12? I kind of backed into it. I was not using

00:19:32.120 the Silk Road like a lot of people who got hit at that time. I was actually buying a software for a

00:19:35.760 business that I needed. And for those people who haven't followed it, the Silk Road, because there

00:19:39.340 was a major legal case about this. The Silk Road was this sort of network of dubious legality that was

00:19:45.560 outside of the main internet. It was on like the secret internet, the dark web. You had to log into

00:19:51.220 all these different things to access it. And this is one of the places where Bitcoin really began to

00:19:55.120 flourish. It did. So it's a little bit of a black eye on Bitcoin that one of the things that really

00:20:01.000 pushed it into the spotlight was such a negative thing where people were buying nefarious drugs.

00:20:06.080 I mean, if people want to feel better about it, just know there's a guy out there that paid 30

00:20:10.120 Bitcoin for some shrooms, you know, so, you know, by the way, I mean, people can buy drugs on the dark

00:20:17.100 where I guess now they shut it down, but they could have bought drugs on the dark web with Bitcoin or they

00:20:21.040 could have walked down the street in Chicago and paid cash for it, too. So, you know, this is not just a

00:20:25.560 total black eye on Bitcoin. So but we do look at it kind of like that. But it was one thing that caused, you

00:20:31.600 know, Bitcoin to flourish for real. But, you know, when I first got in, I remember reading an article

00:20:38.120 about this guy, Satoshi Nakamoto. And at that point, like they were still thinking it was just

00:20:41.860 some random Japanese guy, which was so funny. The education that we provide on our channel,

00:20:46.320 BitBoy Crypto, like it wasn't out there during those times. It's hard to learn about Bitcoin.

00:20:50.360 So over many years, like we put a lot of stuff together and I'm of the opinion, I feel very

00:20:55.820 strongly that Satoshi Nakamoto is actually a combination of many of the what they call a cypherpunks.

00:21:02.400 It was a group of people that included Julian Assange, Craig Wright, Hal Finney,

00:21:07.360 Nick Szabo, many of these early kind of innovators in the world of crypto.

00:21:12.420 And, you know, they created this thing called Bitcoin through something called Bitcoin Top Forum.

00:21:17.740 This was where they would go back and forth. Hal Finney was the first person to receive

00:21:22.540 a Bitcoin transaction or transfer. That's why a lot of people think he was probably the one. Now,

00:21:27.280 Hal Finney has passed away. He had a disease and died. Then many of the other candidates for being

00:21:32.600 Satoshi Nakamoto have also passed away, which, you know, there may be a little conspiracy there.

00:21:37.140 Dave Kleiman is a guy that people look into. His death was very suspicious. He's associated with

00:21:41.840 Craig Wright, who claims to be, he outright claims he created Bitcoin, but no one believes that's true.

00:21:48.860 A lot of people think it's maybe because he was good friends and partners with Dave Kleiman,

00:21:52.720 who, you know, could have been Satoshi. And then he died of, you know, mysterious circumstances,

00:21:56.660 which is why Craig Wright's out there saying, I did it because he knows the real creator can't

00:22:00.680 come out and say it. But here's the important thing.

00:22:02.640 Well, before you go on, I think this merits a little more discussion because I had heard this,

00:22:09.560 that, you know, Satoshi Nakamoto is probably multiple people. And a lot of the people who

00:22:15.360 it could have been have died under very strange circumstances. I have a pal of mine who floated,

00:22:20.660 call it a conspiracy theory, floated this idea that John McAfee had something to do with the

00:22:25.720 development of Bitcoin. He did seem to have a lot of money in Bitcoin at one point. He died under

00:22:29.720 infamously suspect circumstances saying they are going to kill me. They're going to kill me. And

00:22:33.960 then he committed suicide, allegedly. So regardless of whether McAfee was involved or not,

00:22:38.680 what does this mean? I just, I suppose what, what really worries me about all of this is

00:22:44.900 John McAfee dies. Forget about Bitcoin for a second. John McAfee dies and he says,

00:22:50.900 they're going to whack me. People are going to come and kill me and say it was a suicide. And then

00:22:54.500 he allegedly commits suicide. Jeffrey Epstein, we all joke about it. We say Epstein didn't kill

00:22:58.280 himself because no one thinks Epstein killed himself. But we just say like, oh, ha ha ha,

00:23:01.980 you know, the, the nefarious forces of this world murdered this man and they'll get away with it.

00:23:06.080 And then, and then you get to Satoshi Nakamoto and a bunch of these dudes who allegedly created this

00:23:12.700 world changing new digital asset wind up dead. And there are questions of, did they,

00:23:18.980 were they killed by state actors? Were they killed by non-state actors? And we all just kind of brush

00:23:23.000 that off as, oh, well, that's what happens. You know, if you're very powerful, you'll be

00:23:25.880 assassinated by some people. I mean that we should take a moment and pause. That is a very scary

00:23:31.240 prospect. Oh, it is for sure. And this happens. And, you know, it is very sad that we live in a

00:23:36.780 world where we laugh about Jeffrey Epstein and not because, I mean, we laugh because it's, it's

00:23:43.120 comical to believe that he hung himself. Everyone knows everyone outright in the public, everyone

00:23:48.360 knows he didn't hang himself, but I will tell you a story, which is, uh, I know a person who was a

00:23:55.700 very high level, uh, you know, uh, person in the military, uh, someone who had a lot of international

00:24:03.460 kills, uh, under his belt. And this is a person I said, the name people, they might not know who it

00:24:08.740 is, but if they did a little research, you know, there's been stuff out about him. And, uh, you know,

00:24:13.380 he said one of his things, he missed the most, one of the, his biggest regrets, uh, in the military.

00:24:19.700 And as basically a person that, uh, you know, had a lot of international kills, uh, 50 to 60,

00:24:24.960 I believe, uh, he said that, uh, he was very irritated. He never got a state side killed.

00:24:32.900 You have to think, you have to think about this. There's literally a person out there responsible

00:24:38.280 for killing Jeffrey Epstein. There's literally someone out there. Hillary Clinton, by the way,

00:24:42.500 we know that. No, I'm, I'm joking. I didn't say it. I'm not allowed to say that. I didn't hear that,

00:24:47.980 but, uh, regardless of, you know, let's just imagine Hillary Clinton didn't even exist.

00:24:53.400 And that wasn't a meme itself that someone out there literally was responsible for the actual

00:24:59.320 kill. Someone went into that cell, John McAfee, who I know personally, I met John Mac or I haven't

00:25:04.660 met him in person, but we've done several, uh, three or four interviews together. Uh, and I know people

00:25:09.640 that know him very well. And I can tell you, I'm pretty sure he didn't have anything to

00:25:12.460 do with the beginnings of Bitcoin, but he knew a lot. He certainly knew a lot. Someone went into

00:25:17.360 that cell and murdered him. And that's a very dark proposition to believe that we, you know,

00:25:23.080 we talk about the control and we talk about the censorship. There are literally people working

00:25:26.700 for these people who are going and doing these kills of people are involved in this. And so I do

00:25:31.880 have to say that, but on, on the greater subject here, I will say that there's a lot of suspicious

00:25:37.640 stuff around many of the people floating around the beginnings of Bitcoin for what we know.

00:25:41.960 But I still believe that the number one person responsible was Hal Finney. There's a lot of

00:25:46.920 evidence of that. And he actually died of natural causes. He did have a disease and he did die.

00:25:51.800 But I think it's kind of a perfect storm. I think it's a perfect storm of the best thing possible.

00:25:57.980 Now, certainly I wouldn't want to wish death on anyone, but the best possible case for Satoshi Nakamoto

00:26:04.600 for Bitcoin is that he has passed away. He owns anywhere between 600,000 to 1 million Bitcoin.

00:26:13.240 He would actually, when Bitcoin goes over, I think 55,000, like it was before,

00:26:17.620 so as you know, Nakamoto technically would be the richest man in the world by the public numbers.

00:26:21.680 You know, there's people that own more money, but that's a different story.

00:26:24.400 But, you know, with, with, you know, him passing away, that means a couple of different things.

00:26:30.240 It means that Bitcoin will never move. So that's like a million out of the circulating supply.

00:26:34.040 But it means there's nobody to speak for Bitcoin. So there's no, that's been one of the most

00:26:38.740 beautiful things. He's like a folk hero, Satoshi Nakamoto. He can't come out and tell you what

00:26:43.160 his vision was. He can't tell you, guys, I meant this is a currency, not his goal. He can't come

00:26:47.160 out and tell you like, you know what, guys, I actually don't like the way that the volunteers

00:26:50.600 have been developing Bitcoin lately. There's nobody in that role. And if you look at Ethereum,

00:26:54.740 Vitalik Buterin, he's done stuff all the time that makes the Ethereum miners upset or the

00:26:58.900 community upset. You look at, you know, Charles Hoskinson with Cardano or Brad Garlinghouse with

00:27:03.340 XRP, you know, there are certain things they say that a lot of people don't like. Bitcoin doesn't

00:27:07.620 have that. So it's really been the perfect storm of allowing Bitcoin to flourish without, you know,

00:27:12.080 someone having to get attacked for it. And so I don't believe like personally, look, I'm,

00:27:17.120 you know, I'm all for conspiracy theories that aren't really conspiracy theories. You know,

00:27:20.400 we know a lot of stuff that people tote out there as conspiracy theories are actually facts,

00:27:24.020 like the Jeffrey Epstein thing for sure. But when you look at Bitcoin, I actually believe in a little

00:27:29.660 more wholesome, like it was created, the creator actually died. Ultimately, you know, that's great

00:27:35.340 for Bitcoin. Don't wish death upon him, but it's great for the future of Bitcoin and that, you know,

00:27:40.420 not having someone to speak for it has been extremely beneficial. That's right. It allows it to be

00:27:44.300 stable, not even just in the numbers and it's in it's, you know, the actual numbers of Bitcoin,

00:27:49.880 Bitcoin, but in the, in the narrative, the narrative is very important too. Is this one

00:27:54.820 guy's weird pet project or is this something that really now belongs to everybody? I have so many

00:28:01.760 more questions. I have so many more angles. I want to take this down. I have so many different

00:28:06.200 investing tips that I want to ask, but we got to leave it there. Thank you very much. Ben Armstrong,

00:28:13.240 BitBoy Crypto, go check out his channel. It's already got lots and lots of subscribers,

00:28:18.200 but go add some more subscribers to that and find out more answers to questions that,

00:28:23.380 that I clearly am not able to answer, though I'm better able to answer them

00:28:26.820 now after talking to you. Thank you, Ben. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

The Michael Knowles Show - August 22, 2021

The Establishment FEARS the POWER of Bitcoin ｜ BitBoy Crypto

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