TRIGGERnometry - Money & Crypto for Dummies with Saifdean Ammous

00:00:00.000 The politicians, the media, and the major corporations, of course, they are the beneficiaries of inflation.

00:00:08.920 And the victims of inflation are essentially duped into voting for their own impoverishment because they're told they're going to be getting some of the spoils.

00:00:18.440 But the spoils that they get are a tiny little fraction of the wealth that gets stolen from them.

00:00:30.000 hello and welcome to trigonometry i'm francis foster i'm constantin kitchen and this is a show

00:00:39.600 for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people our brilliant guest today is

00:00:45.380 the author of the fiat standard and the bitcoin standard who also runs his online learning

00:00:49.820 platform at safedean.com dr safety namus welcome to trigonometry thank you for having me guys it's

00:00:55.140 a pleasure to be here it's a great pleasure to have you on before we get into the conversation

00:00:59.480 itself. Tell everybody a little bit about who are you, how are you, where you are, what has been

00:01:04.140 your journey through life that leads you to be sitting here talking to us? Well, I'm Palestinian,

00:01:09.640 Jordanian, and I got a PhD in sustainable development from Columbia University. And I

00:01:16.460 was a university professor in the Lebanese American University when I came across this

00:01:20.620 new interesting toy called Bitcoin. And then it fascinated me. And then it drew me in like a

00:01:26.300 black hole and took over everything in my life. And I left my university job and I started teaching 0.99

00:01:31.120 online. So now I'm independent. I just teach to students directly online and I write books and

00:01:38.060 I talk to interesting people on the internet like you. Well, thank you for taking the time to talk

00:01:43.400 to us. I've listened to many of the things you've spoken about and read some of your work.

00:01:48.540 You're a very smart man, much smarter than me or Francis. So what we wanted to do is to go through

00:01:55.080 the basics for us and our audience to get a basic understanding first of all about money and then

00:02:01.860 about bitcoin and maybe other crypto stuff as well so first question is what is money

00:02:07.880 the short answer is money is a medium of exchange it's something that people buy not for its own

00:02:14.760 sake you don't buy money because you want to eat it because you want to look at it because you want

00:02:18.140 to use it for a certain thing it doesn't have a function in and of itself its only function is

00:02:22.700 that you plan on later exchanging it for something else that's what distinguishes money from all other

00:02:27.600 goods it's something that you don't buy for its own sake but for the sake of exchanging it for

00:02:31.580 something else and so um that is what we call the function of medium of exchange because it's just

00:02:37.920 something that you use for exchange and essentially this is something that has developed naturally as

00:02:43.380 humans um you know as as human society became more complex as humans lived and started trading

00:02:49.540 with more people we started developing more products we started living in larger societies

00:02:53.160 the idea of trading things directly for one another becomes increasingly impractical you

00:02:58.940 know if it's just five people on an island then all the only things that they can produce are you

00:03:04.920 know maybe five or ten things or 20 things between them it's easy for them to keep track and to just

00:03:09.960 exchange things directly but as the number of people grows it becomes difficult for them to

00:03:15.100 exchange things directly for one another because you know the thing that you want to

00:03:18.540 you would like to acquire is held by somebody who doesn't have the thing that you want to give them

00:03:25.260 and so they don't they're not interested in your apples but you're interested in their oranges

00:03:29.780 they're interested in bananas so you need to find somebody who has bananas and wants your apples and

00:03:35.420 you give them the bananas you give them the apples you take the bananas and then you give the bananas

00:03:39.380 the guy with the oranges and he gives you the oranges that you want so um as naturally you

00:03:45.220 know as the number of goods increases in an economy naturally people start buying things

00:03:50.900 not for the sake of holding them but for the sake of exchanging them and these things are media of

00:03:55.700 exchange but over time you know bananas do a pretty bad job of being money because um you know they

00:04:04.340 spoil in a few days and not a lot of people want bananas if the guy that you wanted to give the

00:04:12.020 bananas to changes his mind then you're not going to find a lot of people who want the bananas

00:04:15.540 so over time the things that end up playing the role of money end up acquiring certain end up

00:04:23.180 having certain properties that make it that make them suitable for the purposes of being a medium

00:04:29.900 of exchange of being exchanged and um you know some of these properties are that it is divisible

00:04:35.040 you know bananas aren't very easy to divide into smaller pieces and that you can combine small

00:04:39.980 pieces into one big piece so the whole thing is homogenous and another property is that it is

00:04:45.600 portable that you can move it around so houses aren't very good as money because you can't move

00:04:50.260 a house around you can't take it with you same is true with land and um i think over time though

00:04:58.300 you know what ends up uh what ended up being the most uh common form of money around the world by

00:05:06.300 the end of the 19th century was gold and so in my book the bitcoin standard i begin by explaining

00:05:10.920 what it is that makes things good as money and why is it that gold was the world's only money

00:05:16.620 at the end of or the world's prime money at the end of the 19th century and my explanation for

00:05:21.360 that is that the property that matters the most for monetary selection is monetary hardness how

00:05:27.840 hard the money is, because that determines the ability of the money to hold on to its value over

00:05:32.980 time. And in the long run, that ends up being the most important property, because, you know,

00:05:38.780 bananas will rot, fish or any kind of food will also rot. Other metals will rust and decay and

00:05:46.260 corrode. But gold doesn't rust, doesn't corrode. And more importantly, gold, because it doesn't

00:05:52.860 rust and corrode, we're constantly stockpiling more and more gold all over the world. And we're

00:05:57.320 not consuming it you know it doesn't you you consume copper you put copper in machines and

00:06:02.880 then the machines run out and the copper disintegrates and rusts and is thrown away

00:06:06.940 but you don't consume gold you know you people mined gold 5 000 years ago and that gold is still

00:06:14.920 running around the world today being gold it's in somebody's necklace or in somebody's gold coin

00:06:19.940 it's still there it doesn't rust it doesn't corrode it doesn't ruin so the result of this

00:06:24.760 The implication of this is that we have thousands of years of gold production piling up.

00:06:30.580 Safety, can I interrupt just with a very layman question?

00:06:34.120 What's the difference between gold and silver?

00:06:36.200 And why do we perceive gold as having more value than silver?

00:06:39.980 Yep, that's a great question.

00:06:41.380 So the difference primarily is that silver can tarnish and can ruin.

00:06:49.200 And it does get used up.

00:06:52.280 but gold does not ruin it all.

00:06:56.340 And gold is more scarce in the Earth's crust,

00:06:58.560 and it's harder to find.

00:07:00.100 So historically, silver had a lower value than gold.

00:07:04.020 We had a bigger abundance of silver.

00:07:06.680 But those two metals were the two monetary metals

00:07:10.340 by the beginning of the 19th century.

00:07:13.620 Before that, copper and iron had been used as money,

00:07:16.340 but then they lost their monetary role as well.

00:07:18.880 and the reason for that is their monetary their non-monetary uses or their industrial uses

00:07:25.660 became pretty significant so people were using copper for all manner of things and that leads

00:07:30.720 to the corrosion of the copper and so therefore what happens is if this is why you know a lot of

00:07:36.200 people say well money is just a hallucination or money is just a shared a shared social contract

00:07:44.100 between people you know we can decide that we want gold to be money or we could decide that

00:07:48.100 we want copper to be money or we could decide we want pigskin to be money and if we all decide it

00:07:53.940 hard enough then we can make it money and i think that's completely nonsense if we all decide that

00:07:58.800 we want to make copper money tomorrow it doesn't matter how hard we want it it doesn't matter if

00:08:03.760 everybody sells everything that they have and buys and puts all of their and stores all of their value

00:08:08.700 in copper it's not going to work as money and the reason is you keep the if we buy if we if we keep

00:08:16.560 stockpiling copper and we keep using it as a store of value the people who are able to mine copper

00:08:22.080 are just going to keep mining more because the more we buy it and use it as money the more its

00:08:27.020 price goes up the more the miners are incentivized to produce more of it the more they produce of it

00:08:32.100 the more they bring it on the market they crash the price so no matter how much you want to store

00:08:36.680 copper as a store of value eventually the mining production will catch up with you and will bring

00:08:43.460 the price down. It's not possible to keep the price of copper significantly high because it's

00:08:47.920 very easy for people to make more of it. And because it rusts and corrodes and gets used up,

00:08:53.800 the quantities that we stockpile will eventually decline. They will get used up and they will

00:09:02.480 corrode. And so new production is a large percentage of existing stockpiles. This is

00:09:11.460 true for all commodities and all goods with the exception of silver and gold those are the two

00:09:17.620 ones that managed to maintain large stockpiles wherein annual new production is small compared

00:09:24.220 to the existing stockpiles in the case of silver historically this was around five percent so every

00:09:29.760 year we add about five percent to the stockpile of silver a little bit of it gets consumed but

00:09:34.620 we add around five percent in the case of gold we're adding historically around one and a half

00:09:39.360 to two percent only so every year you're only adding one and a half to two percent to the

00:09:44.320 stockpile of gold and every year we get better at finding gold you know every year we develop

00:09:48.700 more machinery better technologies for digging for gold but what that leads to is that we um you

00:09:56.320 know we we we never are able to make you know a 20 increase in the supply of gold because we get

00:10:03.340 marginally better this year but then that just means that the production of this year gets added

00:10:08.020 onto the stockpiles the stockpiles get bigger so the production next year even though it's bigger

00:10:13.680 it's still it's still the same kind of fraction because the stock pot is also bigger so that

00:10:18.900 ratio of the supply increase uh annually in the case of gold has always been around one and a

00:10:25.600 half to two percent and that's why historically i think gold became money silver was like in second

00:10:32.140 place it had about a five percent growth increase but the advantage that silver had is that it was

00:10:39.480 more divisible than gold you know a silver coin is what people would use for small day-to-day

00:10:45.320 transactions whereas a gold coin would be something that you would use for bigger transactions so

00:10:49.100 you'd buy a house with a few gold coins you'd buy your lunch with a silver coin but over time

00:10:55.940 what ended up happening in the late 19th century is that as banking developed um and modern banking

00:11:02.500 allowed for people to just make financial instruments backed by gold then it didn't

00:11:08.260 matter how divisible gold was you know we could have the british pound backed by gold and you

00:11:13.680 could make a payment with a piece of paper that was backed by gold and it didn't matter you know

00:11:17.800 you didn't have to cut up the gold coin itself the the pieces of paper were divisible and so

00:11:23.600 So the use of silver as gold began to decline toward the end of the 19th century, and then its value continued to decline.

00:11:32.880 So around the mid-19th century, the price of silver in terms of gold was 15 to 1.

00:11:40.160 So 15 ounces of silver would buy you one ounce of gold, something in that range.

00:11:45.400 Today, it's around 100 or so.

00:11:47.160 So it's dropped significantly.

00:11:48.680 Silver has lost its value significantly compared to gold in the 19th century.

00:11:54.640 Just to jump in again, I know you're probably going there anyway, but it seems like we're getting to the point of we're talking about, you know, gold is fairly consistent in having a certain value.

00:12:05.820 And you talk about creating currencies that are linked to gold.

00:12:09.660 And then comes a point in human development when that link is broken.

00:12:14.600 And that, I think, is where a lot of the modern issues we have that we're probably going to talk about a little bit.

00:12:19.540 So talk to us about that and how we got there and how that decision was made and some of the consequences of that.

00:12:25.140 Yep. This is a major theme in my two books, The Bitcoin Standard and my second book, The Fiat Standard.

00:12:31.600 So in The Bitcoin Standard, I trace the development up until this point where gold basically won over all the other monies.

00:12:37.940 And the conclusion that I get to is that the hardest money always wins.

00:12:41.280 And we also have several other examples. You look at seashells. And when gold comes into a society that has seashells, the seashells lose their monetary role because it's easy. It's not because people just think, oh, well, gold is shiny and yellow. It's because people keep making more seashells, but they can't make more gold.

00:12:59.940 So the people who have gold maintain the value of their wealth in the gold, but the people who have seashells witness their wealth disappear.

00:13:07.340 So it's not a matter of choice.

00:13:09.540 And this is, I think, the main issue that a lot of economists don't get.

00:13:13.020 They tell you it's a matter of choice.

00:13:14.060 No, it doesn't matter how many people choose to hold seashells.

00:13:18.620 The choice only hurts the person.

00:13:20.780 It doesn't affect the consequence.

00:13:22.880 Inevitably, gold is going to drive out seashells.

00:13:25.360 Your choice is whether you go poor holding seashells or you trade your seashells quickly while they still have value for some gold and you manage to maintain some wealth.

00:13:35.020 So this is what happened.

00:13:37.180 And I think I personally think this was, you know, the development of the gold standard is not just me, but a lot of people also think the development of the gold standard at the end of the 19th century when the entire planet was basically using the same money and all the global currencies were effectively just different weights of gold.

00:13:54.780 So there was no exchange market as it is today, where, you know, the price of the dollar and the pound and the yen are fluctuating.

00:14:00.400 The dollar and the pound and the yen and all the other currencies were just different weights of gold, specific number of grams of gold.

00:14:07.920 And so the exchange rate hardly ever moved.

00:14:10.760 There was no foreign exchange market variation.

00:14:14.240 It was just similar to the exchange between meters and inches and different units.

00:14:20.320 They were fixed.

00:14:20.880 so all of the world running on one currency and that currency being hard in my opinion is

00:14:26.900 basically the pinnacle of human civilization at the pick at the turn of the 20th century at the

00:14:32.500 beginning of the 20th century that's when all of the most incredible and important inventions were

00:14:37.620 invented everybody anywhere in the world could save money into the future and they could be

00:14:45.080 quite confident that it would hold on to its value. You know, you didn't have to be an expert

00:14:50.440 in financial markets as you have to be today, knowing, understanding stocks and bonds and

00:14:55.820 commodities and monetary policy and all of these arcane fields in order to be able to maintain the

00:15:00.620 wealth that you've earned. You could be a butcher, a shoemaker, you could have any kind of job,

00:15:07.380 and then you get paid in a gold coin, and you just held on to that gold coin, and you knew that 10

00:15:12.520 years down the line, that gold coin will buy you slightly more than what it bought you when you

00:15:16.400 earned it. You didn't have to go out and speculate in a stock market casino in order to just keep

00:15:20.620 the wealth that you have. So then 1914 comes about, and that's the topic that I focus on in

00:15:26.100 my second book, The Fiat Standard. And we move from the gold standard to the fiat standard,

00:15:31.020 where effectively governments, and it's a long process, and I describe the details in the fiat

00:15:35.740 standard, and like a lot of bad things that have happened in the world, started all in England.

00:15:42.520 to be fair a lot of all good things as well you know the steam engine and football and the three

00:15:48.500 piece suit uh you you guys have done good things as well but you know you destroyed the gold standard

00:15:54.520 which was a terrible terrible terrible mistake um but that led to the replacement of gold which had

00:16:01.300 annual supply growth rate of around one and a half to two percent with national currencies which in

00:16:06.800 the last 60 years you know you look at the data from 1960 until today in 2020 in those 60 years

00:16:12.540 we see that the average money supply increased at around 15 or so um in the world and so per year

00:16:20.720 per year yeah um wow you know yeah so what's the total increase then since 1960 it's enormous

00:16:29.800 i mean it must be insanely big it is it absolutely is i mean in the best currencies you know the

00:16:35.180 the better currencies like the u.s dollar or the swiss franc or the danish kroner these kind of

00:16:41.720 currencies they've increased at around maybe six seven eight percent on average that's the best

00:16:46.500 you know that's four or five times the rate of increase that you had with gold and but of course

00:16:52.720 you know you look in the history of the 20th century you see an enormous number of countries

00:16:56.140 that suffered hyperinflation which is something that never happened on the gold standard and on

00:17:00.800 all of these hyperinflations, the money supply was increasing at maybe 100%, 200%, maybe 500%

00:17:07.140 in a year. So the value of the currency was getting destroyed. So the average fiat user

00:17:12.900 in the last 60 years would expect that their money would be diluted by 14% per year. That's

00:17:20.440 the number that I calculated in fiat. Fiat being normal currency, just in late person.

00:17:24.160 Yeah, government money, basically. It's money because government says it's money.

00:17:28.220 And Safedin, can I ask, why did the evil English in 1914 do this? 1.00

00:17:34.660 Because they wanted to fight a war.

00:17:36.300 Actually, this is something that is amazing.

00:17:38.320 They don't teach you this in your history books,

00:17:40.180 and it's something that, you know, the history books in England completely paper over this.

00:17:45.920 There was a huge inflation, price inflation, that happened in England during World War I,

00:17:49.240 but you don't talk much about it.

00:17:50.840 But only in 2017, you know, 100 years after the event,

00:17:55.980 did the bank of england a bunch of people in the bank of england dug into the basement and found a

00:18:00.660 bunch of papers that explained what actually happened and it was published quite recently

00:18:04.300 um and interestingly enough you know the um when the world war began and it wasn't a world war

00:18:11.340 then it was just a bunch of european kings fighting each other then the british wanted

00:18:16.320 to interfere and the uh government introduced a sale of bonds to finance the war the english

00:18:22.960 people being you know not sociopaths did not buy that bond issue they didn't buy a third of the

00:18:30.320 bonds so the government had a problem on its hand you know they wanted to go out and kill a bunch of 0.91

00:18:34.720 europeans but the english people had better things to do with their money than go kill europeans

00:18:39.300 so they only bought about a third of the money that the british government needed so what did

00:18:44.860 the bank of england do well the bank of england got a couple of members of the bank a couple of

00:18:49.820 people who worked at the bank, high-ranking officials,

00:18:53.320 the Bank of England basically gave them a credit line in their own name,

00:18:56.760 and they went and bought two-thirds of the bonds in their own name.

00:19:01.360 And then a certain rag in England called the Financial Times,

00:19:05.900 you may have heard of it,

00:19:07.040 they published a story saying the bond issue was oversubscribed

00:19:11.460 and it was extremely successful,

00:19:12.700 and the people of England really do want to join this war,

00:19:15.360 and it's going to be a great victory for England

00:19:18.820 because we have all the resources we need.

00:19:20.980 And of course, remember, it was an August bank holiday.

00:19:22.980 It was going to be just a quick tour into Europe

00:19:27.360 where we're going to go and establish our dominance and come back.

00:19:30.820 And that was the idea.

00:19:31.880 But of course, when they did that, what ended up happening is,

00:19:34.400 essentially, they issued a lot of credit money and paper money,

00:19:38.540 not backed by gold.

00:19:41.380 And so as a result, the value of the paper money began to decline.

00:19:44.900 and as a result they started collecting the gold from people's uh hands and so they instructed the

00:19:51.540 post offices and the banks to only take payment uh to only make payment in paper money so and they

00:19:58.600 told everybody to hand over their gold to their local post office and bank because that was needed

00:20:02.760 for the war effort and if you weren't doing that then you know you were basically a traitor

00:20:07.680 effectively so with this kind of emotional manipulation they managed to get gold out of

00:20:12.460 circulation and get people to use the papers and of course the consequence of that was that prices

00:20:17.080 rose so during world war one prices more than doubled and then after world war one there was

00:20:21.940 a big recession and a big problem in england and they were trying to get back on the gold standard

00:20:26.160 at the old rate but they couldn't do it because they had a whole bunch of other money a whole

00:20:30.140 bunch of new money that was circulating and so it's it's like a comedy of errors where you know

00:20:35.780 it's like we're watching one of these slapstick comedy movies but you know with hundreds of

00:20:41.340 millions of dead people, where, you know, they make this lie, and then they just keep making

00:20:46.420 bigger lies to try and cover it up. And the money supply keeps increasing. And that creates more

00:20:53.320 problems, more inflation, more economic disasters, destroys people's livelihood, destroys people's

00:20:58.980 savings, and creates, you know, economic recessions and all these problems. And then in order to cover

00:21:04.500 it up, what do they do, you know, almost like an episode of Benny Hill, they go and they print

00:21:09.560 more money to fix it and then it just continues to get worse and worse and then um that effectively

00:21:16.740 leads to britain losing the british pound as the global reserve currency and the dollar which was

00:21:23.160 managed by people who are slightly less insane than the bank of england so it was much stronger

00:21:28.460 and got a lot of gold flowing into the u.s from europe the dollar takes over as the global reserve

00:21:33.720 currency and it becomes the global uh money that is you know used all over the world but of course

00:21:41.020 you know the americans then started using that as well and then in 1971 all the world goes off

00:21:46.740 uh any kind of link with gold where the bank of where the u.s federal reserve uh stops or in the

00:21:53.700 u.s treasury they stop redeeming gold in for their dollars and then there's no limit on how much they

00:21:59.260 can print and so from 1971 onwards national currencies all over the world are backed by

00:22:05.640 basically nothing it's just governments that are just printing and since then we see price inflation

00:22:10.480 takes off and government debt takes off and we just I think you know it's it's it's it's at the

00:22:19.660 root of a big big big number if not the vast majority of economic problems all over the world

00:22:26.580 But of course, it's not something that is discussed extensively in your economics textbooks at university because your economics textbook is written by people who get paid from that printed money. So they turn your attention to all kinds of other inconsequential bullshit instead. 0.80

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00:25:03.920 That's a huge worry for the world, isn't it?

00:25:06.840 Particularly as because in the COVID era, we've all been printing huge amounts of money.

00:25:12.200 And before that in 2008.

00:25:14.360 And by the way, can I just say before you answer that question,

00:25:16.540 And as an honorary Englishman now, I've got no problem with my money going to annoy Europeans or whatever. 0.74

00:25:22.220 Mess it up. That's very much on brand for us.

00:25:26.300 Yeah, it's true. It is a major problem.

00:25:30.720 It is a major problem all over the world.

00:25:32.840 I think, you know, it's amazing when you if you follow the news over the last year in particular, you know, inflation is rising everywhere.

00:25:40.160 Prices of everything is going up.

00:25:42.260 Now, listen to the mainstream media, listen to the PhDs in economics.

00:25:46.540 Why is this happening?

00:25:47.920 There's an infinite number of reasons that they'll bring up.

00:25:50.620 You know, it's happening because of supply chain disruptions and it's happening because

00:25:54.100 of the virus and it's happening because of this and that and the other thing.

00:25:57.720 And it's, you know, it's all distraction from the one very, very obvious cause, which is

00:26:02.320 that the money supply just keeps going up.

00:26:04.640 And, you know, you look at the rate of increase in money supply, it's just always going up.

00:26:09.320 It's gone up vertically over the last couple of years, but it had always been going up.

00:26:13.520 And the problem with this inflationism is it's like a drug addiction where, you know, there's no such a thing as a moderate heroin user. It's addictive. So you need more and more and more. And so even if initially, let's say in the 80s, inflation seemed like it was under control in the 80s and in the 90s, well, inflation, the more it seems like it is under control, the more tempting it is to engage in more of it.

00:26:39.480 And then the more you engage in it, the more problems you create. And then if you think that inflation can solve those problems, then you're going to try and solve the problems of inflation with more inflation, which is what they're doing.

00:26:50.900 And I think it is a huge problem. It's something that proper economists, what I like to think of as proper economists, you know, are the alternative schools of economics, the Austrian school of economics, which is what I consider myself a part of.

00:27:06.880 They've been harping on about this for more than a century now, that this is the biggest problem in the world economy. And they are marginalized because, you know, there are a lot of very powerful interests that benefit from money printing.

00:27:20.300 And so they'd like to deflect away from this and focus on, you know, all other kinds of inconsequential bullshit.

00:27:28.820 But now it's, you know, the world's waking up onto the fact it's very hard to, it's becoming harder and harder for establishment economists and central bank to continue to make the astonishingly absurd lie that, no, no, no, no, our money printing is helping fight the price inflation.

00:27:48.560 We're not responsible for the price inflation. The reason prices are rising is because of other things.

00:27:53.720 And our money printing is how we're fixing this. It's becoming less and less tenuous in many more people's minds.

00:28:00.020 And if we, you know, the people of England or the people of Britain or the people of America went to the ballot box

00:28:07.180 and we had a choice of somebody who wanted to bring us back onto the gold standard,

00:28:12.780 is that even possible now or are we just too drugged up now and there's no way out?

00:28:19.300 I think theoretically it is possible.

00:28:21.820 Like if you voted for somebody, yeah, he could do it.

00:28:23.980 It would require a massive revaluation of gold.

00:28:28.840 So the price of gold would go up to maybe something like 10,000 pounds an ounce or 20,000 pounds an ounce.

00:28:34.100 So theoretically it is possible, but practically and politically it's impossible.

00:28:38.420 So if you look at somebody like Ron Paul in the U.S., he had a lot of grassroots support,

00:28:44.740 But he could not translate that into political effective success because – and this is really the really pernicious thing about this.

00:28:54.040 It's a very sustainable equilibrium because once you've started printing money, then the people who are in government have an enormous amount of power over society.

00:29:06.920 And so they are able to use that power in order to get themselves reelected.

00:29:12.220 And if you're going in with the agenda of I am not going to use the money printer, it's kind of like going into war without a weapon, you know, because politics is the weapon, you know, democracy is I'm going to give you free ponies and free hospitals and all of the nice things that you want, you know.

00:29:30.840 And so the more promises you make, the more votes you get. So if you run on the platform of screw you, I'm not going to give you anything. You're going to have to work for things. You're not going to make it in politics. So a lot of people have tried. There have been a lot of economists and a lot of politicians who have run on this kind of hard money. Let's go back to gold platform. But it's a dead end.

00:29:53.140 The bureaucracy, the politicians, the media, and the major corporations, of course, they are the beneficiaries of inflation.

00:30:03.660 And the victims of inflation are essentially duped into voting for their own impoverishment because they're told they're going to be getting some of the spoils.

00:30:13.560 But the spoils that they get are a tiny little fraction of the wealth that gets stolen from them.

00:30:21.620 and that's the perniciousness of the scam you know so you're witnessing your savings destroyed

00:30:27.640 you're witnessing your ability to save for the future destroyed and you're willingly giving it

00:30:34.000 up because you're voting for people who aren't promising you you know we're going to give you

00:30:36.940 free this and free that um but uh you know we see what how this ends up uh it ends up with a lot of

00:30:44.580 you know nothing is free at the end of the day you're just promising these things to be done

00:30:49.980 with central planners central planners are going to be doing those things and it's just going to

00:30:53.700 um end up being more and more expensive and it's going to end up destroying the currency even more

00:30:58.900 so um i don't really think that political solutions are possible this is a job for superman

00:31:10.180 this is a job for bitcoin okay and we segue nicely into bitcoin so look here's the thing

00:31:18.000 safe dean in i think it was in 2011 a friend of mine told me uh he gave me two pieces of advice

00:31:26.160 get into silver and he said get into bitcoin buy bitcoin and obviously me being skint as a skint

00:31:32.880 comedian i i didn't have the option of doing it i had no idea what bitcoin is i still don't really

00:31:39.280 understand what bitcoin is can you do a basic layman explanation of what bitcoin is and actually

00:31:46.160 why it's so powerful in today's economy yeah so bitcoin um you know the

00:31:52.400 i'm not going to get into the technical aspect of it because it's going to take a lot of time to

00:31:58.360 go into that so i'm just going to discuss it functionally you know i'm not going to explain

00:32:01.800 how the car works i'm just going to tell you what a car does um and the importance of bitcoin is

00:32:07.320 that it is a form of money it's a digital form of money that exists on the internet that is

00:32:11.320 controlled by nobody nobody is in charge of bitcoin it's a protocol that anybody can use

00:32:18.240 but nobody can control so it only has users it doesn't have admins and the really really important

00:32:23.740 thing about it which is the focus of my first book the bitcoin standard is the idea of hardness

00:32:28.740 remember when i said gold is the hardest money one and a half percent increase well bitcoin is even

00:32:34.520 harder than gold it's becoming harder it's now increasing at around two percent it started off

00:32:39.980 increasing at a pretty high percentage uh rate of increase but that rate declines over time and now

00:32:46.400 it's at two percent and it's going to continue to decline and then eventually it's going to arrive

00:32:51.240 at a growth rate of zero so there's only ever going to be 21 million bitcoin there's no way

00:32:56.960 of making more than 21 million so we've already made almost 19 million at the time currently and

00:33:03.480 there's only going to be another 2 million bitcoin that are going to be made over the next century or

00:33:07.520 so the supply growth rate of bitcoin has already dropped significantly it's around the same range

00:33:14.080 as gold right now and in the next few years it's going to decline below gold and it's going to

00:33:19.060 continue to decline until it eventually hits zero and then stops growing so um what i'll say if you

00:33:25.980 want the details for why you should read my book but basically this is extremely credible there's

00:33:30.220 no way of anybody finding a way of making more bitcoin it doesn't matter how many petitions you

00:33:37.160 sign it doesn't matter how many media how many university professors how many academics how many

00:33:41.640 keynesian textbooks you write you can't make more bitcoin and so that's why bitcoin basically you

00:33:47.400 know it's it solves the problem of politics we don't have to um we don't have to convince the

00:33:54.520 crazy inflationists anymore we don't have to reason with them we don't have to win elections against

00:33:59.080 them this is money that just doesn't give a about what anybody thinks it's just going to be there

00:34:03.720 and it's only going to be 21 million and your only option is to deal with it or, as Bitcoiners

00:34:09.340 like to say, cry harder. There's nothing you can do to change it or affect it. Well, on that point,

00:34:15.220 Safedin, I don't understand Bitcoin or money nearly as well as you do, but I understand people

00:34:20.400 and politics, I think, reasonably well. And the one thing I know is if a government has an incentive

00:34:25.240 to punish you or to prevent you from doing something or to find a way to prevent you from

00:34:31.820 doing the things that they don't want you to do, they will eventually, at least very, very hard,

00:34:37.080 look for a way very, very thoroughly and very, very hard. And I don't know if they can prevent

00:34:42.060 you from making more Bitcoin or force you to make more or whatever, but what they can do is prevent

00:34:46.020 you from using it somehow, right? There must be a way they can prevent you from buying things,

00:34:50.800 from selling things. There must be a way they can punish you. They can make it illegal, for example,

00:34:55.640 right? So isn't that a real concern going forward? It's like, okay, I hear you. It's a really hard

00:35:00.780 currency. It's not going to increase by more than a specific amount. It's a very easy medium

00:35:05.020 of exchange. It can be broken up like it works in the way that money works. But isn't it, if it's

00:35:11.120 in direct, directly against the interests of the people who run our world, they will find a way to

00:35:16.300 prevent it from fulfilling that destiny, won't they? Perhaps, but I think, you know, the more

00:35:23.080 you look into how it functions, the more difficult it is to find a way in which they can stop it.

00:35:28.120 Because ultimately, this thing was built precisely with the objective of resisting capture and attack by government.

00:35:38.700 So it's not optimized for your user experience.

00:35:41.420 It's not optimized for ease of use.

00:35:44.940 It's not an Apple iPhone.

00:35:47.200 It's, you know, it's not this cute app on your phone that is just blowing your mind at how cool it is.

00:35:53.060 It's not Netflix.

00:35:53.880 It's not Apple. 0.95

00:35:54.680 It's an ugly contraption.

00:35:56.280 Think about it as like this ugly machine that you use to make a dirty job, to pull off a dirty job, but it does the job that you want, and that job is resisting capture by a central authority.

00:36:11.760 And so the key thing to understand here is that there's no single point of failure in Bitcoin.

00:36:17.420 There's no trusted party.

00:36:20.660 There's nobody who is critical for the operation of Bitcoin.

00:36:26.480 There's nobody you could kill to kill Bitcoin.

00:36:28.420 There's no building you can bomb to destroy Bitcoin.

00:36:31.160 There's no headquarters.

00:36:32.420 There's no single computer.

00:36:33.940 There's no single server anywhere in the world that you can take out, and then you take out Bitcoin.

00:36:38.980 Bitcoin is essentially a bunch of code.

00:36:41.120 And so anybody who runs that code on their machine is able to join the Bitcoin network.

00:36:46.000 So there are maybe 10 billion Internet capable devices around the world between phones and laptops and servers and so on.

00:36:55.320 Any of these just needs to run the code of Bitcoin and find a way of connecting to other machines through the Internet and maybe not even through the Internet itself.

00:37:07.660 You know, they could connect through radios and you could connect through mesh networks, you know, not necessarily through the Internet, but through just connecting through other computers that connect to other computers.

00:37:18.860 With these kind of networks, you you will be able to basically do Bitcoin.

00:37:24.240 So what it would take in order to shut it down.

00:37:27.840 My question is, at the end of the day, if money is a medium of exchange and governments control whether you can convert Bitcoin into their money, because that's what you're going to have to convert it into to buy stuff, right?

00:37:41.600 No, that's the key thing.

00:37:43.880 Like, eventually, you don't have to.

00:37:45.760 I mean, you don't have to convert Bitcoin into pounds in order to buy things.

00:37:50.460 You can just give somebody Bitcoin and they give you things.

00:37:54.260 And so the tricky part here...

00:37:56.220 Are we ever going to get to a point,

00:37:57.500 sorry to keep interrupting,

00:37:58.540 I just want to hone in on this.

00:38:01.180 Are we ever going to get to a point

00:38:02.320 where you can save all your life savings in Bitcoin

00:38:04.800 and then be able to buy a house

00:38:06.420 if the government in that country

00:38:08.520 has banned transactions in Bitcoin

00:38:10.840 because it thinks they're immoral or illegal

00:38:13.360 or undermining the economic system or whatever?

00:38:16.100 They've decided Bitcoin is not allowed in our country.

00:38:18.760 Am I ever going to be able to buy a house?

00:38:21.120 Well, I think, you know, the example here to look at is if you look at your average country that has experienced hyperinflation over the past century, and there's many of them, when the currency begins to collapse and when there are problems, you know, people naturally move away from their local currency to dollars and pounds or euros, and they start using these currencies.

00:38:43.820 and of course governments will clamp down on these currencies and they will stop they will

00:38:49.860 ban people from using them but what that does is the exact opposite effect so when you say

00:38:56.200 you can't buy dollars with you know our peso or our whatever it is well then what happens 0.98

00:39:02.360 you're not going to destroy the dollar you're just going to destroy your local uh shit coin 0.96

00:39:07.100 basically so you're just saying that this currency cannot buy real money and so people 0.94

00:39:13.900 who hold this currency now value it less and they want to get rid of it more and they don't want to

00:39:18.520 get paid in it so that's uh that's i think the reality in uh if you so um even if major governments

00:39:27.800 decide to ban bitcoin you know that just gives a massive advantage to other governments to go

00:39:33.100 and accumulate bitcoin or people in other countries to accumulate bitcoin hold on to it

00:39:37.080 and then um you know the people who are forced to use the uh inferior currencies of their

00:39:43.960 governments are just going to witness their wealth destroyed and the people who use bitcoin

00:39:48.800 are going to witness their wealth accumulate and i have several examples of this happening

00:39:52.560 with gold and silver so for instance at the late 19th century china and india were the last two

00:39:58.160 countries that were on a silver standard and that was a massive massive mistake for which they're

00:40:03.960 still paying i think until today because the value of silver continued to decline while the rest of

00:40:09.000 the world was on gold and so that's what allowed the british and the europeans to essentially

00:40:13.660 economically dominate china and india because their money was appreciating while the chinese 1.00

00:40:18.600 and indian money was depreciating and so everything just got cheaper for foreigners in china and india

00:40:24.140 so they could keep buying more and more things and this is uh this is effectively what you would

00:40:29.100 be doing as a government if you ban bitcoin you're um you're basically um picking the seashells

00:40:37.660 you're going with seashells and saying yeah we're just going to ban our peasants from using gold

00:40:41.780 coins and then we'll be able to keep them on the seashell standard and then gold will just go away

00:40:47.900 i don't think that's going to work safety and what would you say to those people who go look

00:40:54.440 You look at the fluctuations of Bitcoin, you know, it will surge and then it will crash, etc.

00:41:00.760 It's not stable. It's not reliable.

00:41:04.140 And actually, it's quite reckless to invest a lot of money in it.

00:41:09.540 Generally, what Bitcoiners say to those people is have fun staying poor.

00:41:14.460 This is the kind of very common attitude.

00:41:18.760 The idea is, yes, it is volatile, of course, but it is volatile going up.

00:41:23.300 So the long-term trend is always up.

00:41:26.400 You know, Bitcoin's never been down on a three or four-year horizon.

00:41:29.980 It's always going up.

00:41:31.220 It's going up in many multiples of its value.

00:41:34.160 So, yes, if you hold your local national currency, it doesn't fluctuate as much as Bitcoin, but it's trending down in real terms.

00:41:45.340 You know, look at the price of houses in your local town in terms of your local currency, anywhere in the world.

00:41:50.800 You know, houses just keep it getting more and more expensive every year. Well, why? We keep building more and more houses and the technology to make houses continues to get more efficient. So we have, you know, in real terms, houses are less expensive. We make them much more efficiently today. And yet the price of houses continues to go up. It's not the price of the house that's going up. It's the value of the currency that is going down.

00:42:13.220 And so if you hold on to your national currency for the long run, and even if you try to beat the inflation by investing in stocks or bonds, you're basically not beating inflation.

00:42:26.160 It's very difficult to beat real inflation.

00:42:28.160 When I say inflation, I don't mean the CPI number or the consumer price inflation statistics that the government puts out, which is just another form of fictional statistics from government.

00:42:38.760 I mean the real inflation.

00:42:40.140 Think about the house of your dreams where you'd love to live and think about the price of that house.

00:42:46.460 Look it up online if you can and see what has happened to the price of that house over the last 10 years.

00:42:52.420 It is going up by much more than the CPI number.

00:42:55.600 Think about all the things that you actually desire, the things that you really want, the value of precious goods.

00:43:01.820 It's going up much higher than inflation.

00:43:04.300 And that's not the thing becoming more valuable.

00:43:08.260 it's the money becoming less valuable so the answer to this is yes bitcoin's volatility is

00:43:14.100 a problem in the short term if you want to hold bitcoin for the short term it is a problem if you

00:43:19.060 have a lot of exposure to bitcoin in the short term and you know you have short-term liabilities

00:43:24.620 like if you're a business and you have to make payments then yeah it is a tricky thing you don't

00:43:29.140 want to be fully in bitcoin because you might not be able to make your payroll at the end of next

00:43:34.440 month so you do still need to hold some of your local operating some of your currency for your

00:43:40.280 operating expenses but if you want to think about the long term you know if you want to hold money

00:43:44.880 for the next five ten years bitcoin is really the best option and so you have to have a long-term

00:43:51.380 perspective on it and you have to ignore the day-to-day noise and essentially understand

00:43:56.360 that what we're witnessing is that this thing is just continuously going up and it's going up

00:44:01.600 because the supply is fixed there's no way of making more of it and so um you know the sooner

00:44:07.620 you get in the more you're going to have and the more you're going to benefit and the less you're

00:44:11.960 going to suffer from your local inflation but of course you may not want to get in all in initially

00:44:16.540 because of the volatility particularly if you're a business um i think perhaps that might be

00:44:21.040 understandable but um in the long run what you think about what you want to what you want is

00:44:28.860 you want to maintain value you want to or increase the value and bitcoin really does this better than

00:44:33.800 anything else hi francis do you have your own business no what do you think trigonometry is

00:44:40.940 an opportunity for me to annoy people and shout catchphrases birds love it one two three four

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00:45:24.360 online ad design email design web design print design motion graphics and more they do design

00:45:31.320 guys visit the older files.com forward slash triggered and fill out the project request form

00:45:36.600 to get 10 of your first project and a free consultation that's the older files.com

00:45:43.480 slash triggered and get 10 off your first project and free consultation we have the saying here in

00:45:51.080 in the UK, which are safe as houses. And you've alluded to the house price inflation that we're

00:45:56.200 seeing. How would you say Bitcoin will compare to something like property over a 10, 15, 20 year

00:46:02.320 period? I think, I mean, we look at the past, it's done much better than property. And I think it's

00:46:09.860 likely going to continue to outperform property. And I think, you know, a big part of the reason

00:46:17.820 why property continues to increase is that people use their houses as their saving accounts under

00:46:23.780 the gold standard you had a saving account which was backed by gold and um you would invest you

00:46:30.240 would buy the house that you'd need and you would just buy the house that you need as a consumption

00:46:35.820 good now people think of their houses as their saving account you know this is where i put my

00:46:40.420 wealth and you maybe over invest in housing because if you have a lot of money you know

00:46:44.680 you'd rather have that money in a house than have it in a bank, right?

00:46:48.120 It's a better investment or you buy more houses and you rent them out,

00:46:51.320 which leads to the situation where people who have money end up with a lot of

00:46:55.040 houses and people who are young and who are just getting started,

00:46:58.140 they can't afford to buy houses because their houses are being bid up by the

00:47:01.120 people who already have the money because they're using them as a saving

00:47:04.160 account. So, you know, young people,

00:47:06.220 the reason that young people can't afford housing and they need to get into,

00:47:09.720 you know, enormous amounts of debt is that you're not just bidding against

00:47:14.080 other people who want to buy a house you're bidding against people who want to buy uh

00:47:18.320 an investment a saving account exactly and i think the interesting thing is that bitcoin is going to

00:47:24.720 obsolete this use case for houses so i think the long run it's gonna you know more and more people

00:47:29.440 are discovering that you're better off putting your money in bitcoin than putting it in a house

00:47:32.980 therefore i think over time that's just going to return housing to being a consumer good where

00:47:39.500 people buy the houses that they need to live in, not the houses that they, you know, not saving

00:47:46.220 accounts. You use Bitcoin as a saving account. So I think one of the issues that people have

00:47:52.500 with Bitcoin is it seems to be because it's such a new thing, there seem to be a lot of scam artists

00:47:59.040 that you hear all these stories about people being scammed. You know, I got an email sent by

00:48:04.780 my bank and now you can question the bank's motives for this but basically saying there's

00:48:09.180 a lot of people out there using bitcoin using crypto as a way to scam others is this being

00:48:15.580 overstated or is this a problem in the market no i think it's true i think it's uh it's it's a new

00:48:21.420 technology and it's very difficult for uh people to figure it out quickly you need a lot of time

00:48:25.820 you need to spend a lot of time figuring it out and understanding it um you know nobody has uh

00:48:32.140 nobody's born understanding bitcoin you need to spend a lot of time understanding it so that is

00:48:37.420 that creates a very rife environment for people to take advantage of people who are not very

00:48:42.180 familiar with what's going on and personally i think um you know my personal opinion is that

00:48:48.140 all the other digital currencies are effectively scams um that they're they pretend to be

00:48:55.880 decentralized like bitcoin and that allows them to sell themselves as being the equivalent of

00:49:00.260 bitcoin but they're not decentralized only bitcoin has truly managed to be decentralized because

00:49:05.440 you know you look at the history of how bitcoin has developed the guy who made it he was anonymous

00:49:10.940 he didn't nobody knew who he was it was just one person and he made it he you know he he put it

00:49:19.700 online for anybody to use and then other people started to use it and then he disappeared and

00:49:25.580 nobody knows who he is nobody knows uh what happened to him um he may be dead he may have

00:49:31.260 just you know gotten rid of that identity and um moved on with his life but the important thing is

00:49:37.720 that it's now been 11 years that he's been disappeared so the the person the only person

00:49:43.580 who could control bitcoin has been gone for 11 years and bitcoin has been running for 11 years

00:49:48.220 so we can and in those 11 years a lot of people have tried to take control of bitcoin a lot of

00:49:53.920 People have tried to make changes to Bitcoin, and they've all failed.

00:49:57.520 Bitcoin continues to refuse to be controlled.

00:50:00.980 And so therefore, when I say 21 million Bitcoin, I know there's going to be only 21 million Bitcoin.

00:50:06.500 I'm comfortable going out there in public and putting my name out and saying this is what's going to happen.

00:50:11.980 And I know that if one day there's going to be more than 21 million Bitcoin, I'm going to have an entire bucket load of egg on my face.

00:50:18.700 but i'm willing to take this chance because i think really the the you know the mold's been

00:50:25.700 broken and there's no way to make another bitcoin there's no way to mess with bitcoin

00:50:30.000 that's not the case with all the others once bitcoin was up and running it was the real thing

00:50:35.180 it was decentralized nobody could control it and then if anybody came about and built another one

00:50:40.340 them building another one was only going to um work and is only going to succeed if they were

00:50:47.300 able to be in charge of it if they were able to be handling it and that's why basically with all

00:50:52.660 the other currencies you know it only takes you 15 minutes of digging to figure out who are the

00:50:56.600 people behind it and it's entirely easy for the people behind it to change the supply change the

00:51:03.580 rules and we've seen that happen with pretty much most of the big currencies that they're run like

00:51:08.880 startups whereas bitcoin is a neutral protocol bitcoin is like a language you know who controls

00:51:13.580 the english language nobody there's no authority that can say what is the english language and to

00:51:19.220 the extent that there are authorities that write dictionaries you know they don't make up new words

00:51:23.640 new words emerge and then they incorporate them into the dictionary so um this is what bitcoin

00:51:30.120 is like whereas all the others are um i i believe centralized and i think therefore they're

00:51:35.480 they're essentially fraudulent because they're marketing themselves as decentralized but really

00:51:40.840 they're just securities. It's a bunch of people issuing financial liabilities.

00:51:46.760 Sorry. Oh, sorry. So you'd say even a big currency like Ethereum, which loads of people

00:51:52.160 have bought into, you know, which has become pretty much mainstream, you would say that that is

00:51:57.320 not a good investment? No, I would not recommend anybody put any money in any digital currency

00:52:06.020 other than bitcoin and safety uh it's really interesting you've explained things so brilliantly

00:52:12.300 in in a way that's simple to understand and i really appreciate and your books do a great job

00:52:16.880 of that as well can we talk a little bit about since you're making predictions about the moment

00:52:21.740 that we find ourselves in right now as a world particularly the western world uh so let's just

00:52:28.800 go back a little bit 2008 you know we have a massive financial crash our solution is to print

00:52:34.820 a shit ton of money and give it away mainly to banks and to ourselves, right? And then we have,

00:52:41.320 you know, zero interest rates or maybe even negative interest rates, depending on how you

00:52:45.520 want to look at it for however many years it's been, 14 years now. Then we have COVID when we

00:52:51.720 go, okay, well, look, we've got this disease. I don't know what you guys did over there, but in

00:52:56.240 this country, what we did is we went, stay at home. The government's going to give you shit 1.00

00:52:59.800 loads of money that we're going to print, right? Now, you know, World War III, if we all survive 0.97

00:53:04.520 that like where are we going to be because you know we had people on the show two years ago going

00:53:09.220 inflation's coming it's coming and it's it's been coming and now it's here like what's happening

00:53:15.060 economically and what is the future going to look like i mean um i don't have a crystal ball so i i

00:53:22.260 don't really know um and i'm wary about making predictions in the future but i think um betting

00:53:28.440 on these very strong very persistent uh decades long trends to continue is probably the best bet

00:53:36.900 i think we're just going to be more of the same uh we're going to have more money printing

00:53:40.740 more inflation more devaluation of the currency more price rises and um i think the dangerous

00:53:47.800 thing that we're seeing increasingly is that the more this money printing we get the more power

00:53:54.460 the government has and I think you know the last two years just the insanity of the idea that

00:53:58.780 government can just decide all right we don't want you to get sick so you know screw your business

00:54:03.340 screw your life screw everything that you care about you just need to stay home and we're going 0.99

00:54:08.200 to lock you up I think this is just completely insane and I think it's something that can only 0.98

00:54:15.680 happen when a government has this insane tool that is a money printer and so you know a lot

00:54:22.380 of people would say well what would happen if we were on a bitcoin stand a lot of people have asked

00:54:26.820 me this question what would happen if we were on a bitcoin stand and then covid comes along

00:54:29.800 how do you expect the government to shut down the world and give people free money and the answer is

00:54:35.300 exactly they won't shut down the world and then people would have to make their own choices and

00:54:39.840 i believe in a world in which people have to make their own choices covid would have been dealt with

00:54:44.880 extremely far more efficiently i think doctors would have done a much better job than what

00:54:50.180 happens now when all these essentially non-medical bureaucrats were making decisions for millions of

00:54:58.020 people rather than letting doctors and patients make their decisions for themselves. And we saw

00:55:01.460 this with a lot of these medicines, which I'm not going to mention because I don't want to get your

00:55:04.940 YouTube channel canceled. But there's a lot of these medicines that came about that were proving

00:55:09.740 very effective, and many doctors were speaking about them. But the bureaucrats, they didn't see

00:55:15.540 any power in it and so they were promoting the measures that involve power and submission and

00:55:21.460 compliance and dependence you know they want to shut down your business so that you need the

00:55:25.900 government for their money and then you'll have to vote for the government to give you more money

00:55:30.200 and then they'll be able to control you politically and they'll be able to control you more and more

00:55:33.940 so i think it's a very very dangerous world and another aspect of it is just the amount of

00:55:41.740 government propaganda that we're seeing and the ability of the government to just brainwash

00:55:45.920 everybody into marching along with everything that they want is extremely dangerous i think it's

00:55:51.600 uh sadly i think things are just going to keep getting worse and of course you know nobody knows

00:55:56.300 how things are going to get worse i mean uh you know if i asked you five years ago what's going

00:56:02.900 to happen in 2022 you know you wouldn't have imagined that there's going to be a big war

00:56:07.360 russia and ukraine you wouldn't have imagined there was going to be a virus and break out

00:56:11.100 these things just come out of nowhere and they show up so i think you know we're going to be

00:56:15.840 getting more and more of these kind of dramas in the next upcoming seasons of fiat world

00:56:22.920 and things are going to keep getting worse and worse until bitcoin fixes things and i think it's

00:56:28.220 just we need more and more people are going to wake up to bitcoin and they're going to join

00:56:32.320 Bitcoin not because of, you know, not because of ideology, not because they want to fight

00:56:37.740 the government, they want to take money out of the government, they're going to join Bitcoin

00:56:41.060 because it appreciates and it gives them, you know, it protects them from inflation.

00:56:47.620 It makes gains, you know, we call it number go up technology, the price of Bitcoin keeps

00:56:52.080 going up, people kind of come for the number go up, and the more people join for the number

00:56:56.040 go up, the more Bitcoin rises in value.

00:56:57.780 And the more that this free market monetary system grows as an alternative to the clown world of fiat that is just threatening to nuke all of existence into oblivion.

00:57:13.840 And I, you know, it's like the final scene of a movie where will the hero manage to rescue the sweetheart before the bomb goes off in the building or not?

00:57:25.580 I think this is where we are right now, so stay tuned.

00:57:30.220 And on that wonderfully positive note, SafeDean, it's been a great episode,

00:57:35.420 and thank you, interviewer, and thank you so much for coming, for explaining to us

00:57:39.260 and illuminating not only myself, but also our audience as to what Bitcoin is

00:57:43.500 and the potentials of it.

00:57:44.940 Yeah, I knew all about Bitcoin, SafeDean. In about, I can't remember when it was,

00:57:49.260 probably about 2011, something like that, I bought 400 pounds worth of Bitcoin

00:57:55.260 And then a few years later, it doubled.

00:57:57.580 It doubled to £800 and triumphantly I sold it.

00:58:01.320 What a legend.

00:58:02.620 And now that amount that I had,

00:58:04.160 I think it was like half a Bitcoin or something,

00:58:05.860 is worth about 20 grand.

00:58:07.540 So I knew even less than nothing about it.

00:58:10.820 So thank you for coming on and talking about it.

00:58:13.620 Listen, before we ask you our questions

00:58:15.560 from our supporters on Locals Only,

00:58:17.760 we have our usual question,

00:58:19.240 which is the one we ask all our guests,

00:58:21.220 which is what is the one thing

00:58:22.740 we're not talking about as a society

00:58:24.840 that you think we really should be um i'm gonna go with meat i think people should be eating more

00:58:35.620 meat um and yes government is constantly telling you that you need your grains and you need your 0.99

00:58:41.560 veggies and you need your fruits i think that's all bullshit they want you to eat all that crap 0.91

00:58:45.640 because it's cheaper and um eating meat is expensive and then it brings up inflation numbers 0.98

00:58:50.620 so that for the last 50 years since we moved on the fiat standard i discussed this in detail in 0.97

00:58:54.780 my book governments have been telling people to eat shit basically because they want to cover it 0.92

00:59:01.460 up and then all these industrial food manufacturers have developed massively profitable business models 0.97

00:59:07.040 of feeding people industrial waste which they make highly addictive and the way to beat that

00:59:13.540 is to eat meat i've eaten nothing but meat for the last six and a half years and it's been the

00:59:17.920 best thing that has ever happened to me so i i eat only meat literally only meat and water that's

00:59:23.900 all i eat and i highly recommend it um you won't hear your nutritionist talk about it because your

00:59:29.240 nutritionist's nutrition department is financed by industrial food manufacturers and if you eat

00:59:37.520 meat you don't desire the industrial junk that makes them a lot of money so our producer is a

00:59:43.440 is a passionate vegetarian we're called trigonometry for a reason he's walking off now

00:59:48.460 Oh, I can see. That's it. He's left.

00:59:50.260 He's folded his arms and he's furious.

00:59:52.800 Yeah, yeah.

00:59:53.860 So that's fantastic.

00:59:55.400 So safedean.com for your lectures,

00:59:57.580 the Bitcoin Standard and the Fiat Standard,

00:59:59.400 your two great books.

01:00:00.120 We're going to ask you a couple of questions.

01:00:01.720 But with that, thank you so much for coming on Trigonometry

01:00:03.800 and thank you all for watching and listening.

01:00:06.120 We'll see you very soon with another brilliant episode like this one

01:00:09.220 or our show.

01:00:10.620 All of them go out at 7pm UK time.

01:00:12.720 And for those of you who like your Trigonometry on the go,

01:00:15.500 it's also available as a podcast.

01:00:17.020 take care and see you soon guys

01:00:19.440 how concerned is SafeDean

01:00:23.280 by the Canadian government

01:00:24.660 seizing the trucker's crypto wallets

01:00:26.700 and the incoming

01:00:29.100 regulations aimed specifically

01:00:31.200 at crypto

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TRIGGERnometry - April 11, 2022

Money & Crypto for Dummies with Saifdean Ammous

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