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Full Measure After Hours
After Hours: The (Bitcoin) World According to Jeffrey Wernick (From the Archives)
00:46:57
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- [00:04]
A
Hi everybody. Cheryl Akisson here. Welcome to another edition of Full Measure. After Hours today, a rare interview with professional investor Jeffrey Warnick about bitcoin and his lack of confidence in the future of the US dollar and the centralized money system. You might not have heard the name Jeffrey Warnick. He's pretty famous in his world, but he just doesn't do many interviews. I'm lucky he agreed to do a second interview with me for Full Measure. The first was about four to five years ago when I was trying to better understand and explain bitcoin. Wernick, who foresaw success and invested early in Uber and Airbnb, now says he's devoted his life to ethical investments encouraging free freedom, not censorship and decentralization, which means bitcoin. On Sunday, February 23rd, on full measure, I'll have the interview with Jeffrey Warnick. But you get to hear the whole thing today in this podcast. And as you'll hear, he talks about a lot more than just bitcoin because actually his thoughts on bitcoin relate to a much more global view of the US dollar, centralized monetary systems and the economy. Here's Jeffrey Warnick.
- [01:27]
B
I think some people refer to me as like an OG in the, in the, in the bitcoin space because I was an early adopter of bitcoin. I think some people, several years ago when I used to, well now it's been quite a few years ago since I used to, when I used to regularly speak at conferences. Since some people know me, is that for many people, even though I'm not the first person to say it, I might have been the first person to repeat it frequently is I would tell people if it's, if it's not bitcoin, assume it's a shitcoin. So I think I was one of the most, I might be self serving but I think I was one of the most principled advocates not only for bitcoin but you know, the underlying principles of bitcoin. And how would I like separate myself from like a Michael Saylor? I mean I would never make a statement saying, you know, I want to partner with the government in regulation and people should not be able to custody their own coins. You know, I'm a believer that everybody should custody their own coins and nobody should use, you know, third party custodians for their, for their expression is if it's not your wallet, it's not your money. Possession is 9/10 of the law. So anything valuable people should self custody. And I'm an advocate for all the other underlying principles of Bitcoin, which means I, I like decentralization. I'm an actual opponent of anything that's centralized. I think everything should be permissionless. So I'm, I want to live in a permissionless world. I want to live in a, in a decentralized world where there are no authorities. And to the extent that we deem somebody authority, we've done it because we've chosen to. And that person, we own authority based upon, you know, mutual agreement and explicit consent. And I believe in censorship, resistance. So, you know, hence the fact that, you know, I gave money to Paula, hence the fact they gave money to Gabriel, hence the fact that I've given money to Bitchute. So basically, I think probably, you know, again, without being self serving, I'm probably the most principal investor with respect to free speech because I don't embrace any form of content moderation. I don't embrace any form of shadow banning. I don't embrace any form of throttling. You know, and if people find, you know, speech offensive, you know, they shouldn't listen. So we have a First Amendment not to protect the speech we like, but to give as much protection to the speech we don't like as speech we like. And that's an unpopular position. It's a presumption that gets you punished in the marketplace because you get advertisers who don't like to be affiliated with platforms that actually like free speech. And so I would never say something like freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach. So I think I'm a, how I'd like people to know me is someone who's a very principled investor who has certain deeply felt values. Passionate and deeply felt. And I put my money where my mouth is.
- [04:52]
C
If I remember correctly, you were an early investor in Uber or something like Uber.
- [04:57]
B
Yes, but I don't, you know, those are centralized things. I don't really like to talk about Airbnb. Yeah, I don't really like those platforms, so I don't like those platforms.
- [05:08]
C
But you made some money on, on them.
- [05:10]
B
Yeah, I've made money on a lot of stuff. So. Well, I think, I think I, I. There was a point in my life where I like to trade just for the pleasure of trading then at a point in life. And I think maybe I was influenced by a lot of friends who said that I shouldn't opt out of society because for many years that was my decision basically to opt out. I wanted to be private and I wanted to be anonymous. I think a lot of my friends had Pointed out to me that I have firmly held views, but I'm not willing to fight for any of my views. So I think as I got older, I decided to focus my effort, energy in fighting for things that I strongly believe in. So while then I liked to be anonymous, you know, now I don't want to be a public figure, but I want to put effort into things. You know, I don't want to just figure out how I can create my own world independent of everyone else's world and know, you know, I got a few bucks and I could live my life and I can't have any third party damage me that maybe I have some responsibility to make the world a better place. And, you know, in my way of doing that, you know, is advocating for, you know, for freedom. And I think the type of freedom that, you know, Thomas Jefferson, who's my, you know, favorite founder, would appreciate. So let's see, I just was 69, so I don't, I don't know how many more productive years I have left.
- [06:51]
C
You have a lot.
- [06:52]
B
But whatever productive years I have will be for advocating for, you know, decentralized platforms that advance liberty and freedom. You know, I hope I don't lose money on it, but my main goal is not making money, even though I want to make money to the sense that if I don't make money, I haven't succeeded. So. But I want know, succeeding at this. You know, even when I first invested in Paula, you know, I had told the founder of Paula, you know, that I'm investing in a movement, not a business. So. And I've said the same thing to, like I said to the founder of GAB and to Bitchute also, you know, that I'm investing in a movement and I want the movement to succeed. So, you know, the financial returns are secondary to me. You know, the principal thing is I want us to remind the people of, you know, how foundational principles, because whatever other people think about what made America great, you know, for me, my opinion, what made America great, what made America exceptional is not government, you know, is the people and the people uninhibited, you know, by an interventionist activist, you know, government, parasitic government. And I don't think, you know, if even Alexander Hamilton, he woke up today and saw that, you know, government spending represented directly over 40% of GDP. And then if you take a look at all the rules and regulations and things you need to permission for basically free market capitalism is available to people like Elon Musk and no one else because everybody else is in the world that they need to ask permission for everything. So that's not really free market capitalism. So we have capitalism for the few, not for the many, not for everyone. So, and the founding was capitalism for everyone. And when you need to ask when it's when you have to ask permission. And it costs a lot of money to ask permission, you know, because most of these businesses you got to hire lawyers, you have to show certain capital requirements, you got to go to a Wall street firm or something to raise money. You know, you have all these rules, you know, that basically all these barriers to entry, you know, and in a free society should eliminate all the barriers to entry. So it said the government keeps erecting more and more barriers to entry. So I think that they would wake up appalled to see, as Franklin famously said, it's a republic if you can keep it. We haven't kept it, and I'm going to keep reminding people we haven't kept it. But it's never too late to start moving back to be a constitutional republic and embrace the principles that the founders espoused. And that's where American exceptionalism came from, in my opinion.
- [09:41]
C
Sorry. We're here primarily to talk about Bitcoin because you're really good at talking about Bitcoin. But keep in mind that most people watching this are like me. As much as I've read up on it and tried to understand it, a lot of it's still very much of a puzzle. So try to speak, if you can, in simple terms about it.
- [09:58]
B
Okay?
- [10:00]
C
But since you are interested in ethical investments today, in a nutshell, why do you think Bitcoin is an ethical investment?
- [10:09]
B
I think Bitcoin is the most ethical investment, and I think it's the most ethical investment. For first, a lot of the principles that I just spoke about, I think bitcoin is ethical in a sense. It has well defined rules, and those rules are immutable, so you can't buy influence. So what could be more ethical than a protocol? That. An uncorruptible protocol. What could be more ethical than that? So the ledger never lies. Okay? Whatever the ledger records, whatever the ledger reports, is always the truth. So here you have a ledger that only records the truth. A lie does not exist in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Inside the ledger, there's no such thing as a lie. The protocol prohibits lying, okay? And people trust the protocol to keep lying out of the protocol through the process under which a Bitcoin is created. So it's a completely honest ledger, and nobody doubts the integrity of that ledger. You don't need to hire third party auditors to validate that ledger. You have third parties trying to track who's transacting on that ledger because people want to try and find people's identity related to their engagement in the platform. The ledger doesn't offer that information, but third parties go hunt for it. But that's not. A ledger doesn't produce that information and share that information on its own. If third parties decide to go into the ledger and look at the public keys and try and track who they think identities are, but that requires a lot of effort from third parties. That's not part of the ecosystem of the ledger itself. So what's more ethical than something that you have a store that people can exchange value without having to ask permission. Doing a transaction on a mutual voluntary basis that can't be censored. There's no lying involved. The transaction is recorded real time. The whole world can observe the transaction without knowing the identity of the parties engaging in the transaction. But the whole world can observe that the transaction was done and at the price that was done at, and the amount of value was exchanged at that transaction. Okay? And nobody can influence that. It's purely a process of complete volunteerism. So what could be more ethical than two parties, two mutually consenting parties agreeing to do a transaction and leaving a public record of that transaction, and knowing that public record is an honest, truthful recognition of that transaction. What could be more ethical than that?
- [12:49]
C
We first spoke about bitcoin some years ago. A few years ago, maybe six, four years ago. Four. I feel like it was longer than that. What's changed on the bitcoin landscape in that period of time? Anything unexpected happened that you didn't predict or did things come true that you thought might?
- [13:10]
B
I think most of what I predicted, I think has. Has become. I. My. My fear on what would happen to the bitcoin ecosystem is that the people who would begin to have, you know, early, early on in bitcoin, you had people like this guy, I might be mispronouncing his name, Andreas something. Sorry, Andreas, for mispronouncing your name. But these were people who gave lectures. They put them on the YouTube, they went around to small audiences and they gave deeply philosophical lectures on what the nature of bitcoin is. And so the early bitcoin community got attracted by lectures like people like Andreas, you know, some listening to me, you know, I think Andreas have larger audiences than me, so. But there were people who really believed in the values of bitcoin, not just as A speculative investment, not as it is a speculative asset. So something more than just a way of accumulating wealth. So now you now who are the influential people or the Michael Saylors of the world, you know, who want to custody of bitcoin? They want to buy it on your behalf, they want to convert it into a financial instrument. And so they want to cooperate with government. So the only value of bitcoin they really embrace is its scarcity value and how that scarcity value could make it as an attractive investment. That's the only attribute they care about, Bitcoin. And my concern was that Wall street would take over the bitcoin space and they would promote, they would then promote the type of values that Saylor has promoted. That was, that was always my concern and I think I've been correct in that concern. So how it's evolved has not been a surprise to me. It's been a disappointment to me, but not an unexpected disappointment to me.
- [15:08]
C
What's happened to the value of a bitcoin in the past four years?
- [15:12]
B
I think, I think when, when you and I talked, bitcoin was, I guess about, you know, 10% of the price it is today. So bitcoin has gone up tremendously in value and I think it's gone up tremendously in values. For I think the reasons I articulated back then is the fact is that the world is fiscally irresponsible, that all fiat money regimes end up dying and they usually get replaced by the best form of money at that point in time. That best form of money used to be gold. And bitcoin has, in my opinion, attributes much better than gold. I was a gold person years ago. So before I was a bitcoin person, I was a gold person. But once I got exposed to the white paper, I no longer was a gold person. I immediately saw why, in my opinion, gold bitcoin was, was far superior to gold. And I think it's far superior to gold, you know, that I convert, I became from a gold person to a bitcoin person.
- [16:30]
C
I've read projections that bitcoin is going to go from, let's say, $107,000 or so per coin for a high in recent months to a million dollars. Do you believe that? What do you think?
- [16:44]
B
Let me give a perspective on this. Okay? If you take a look at the market cap, what would be if right now you could say the most credible money out there, you know, not a statement I agree with, but the marketplace does, is the US dollar. Okay? Most, most transactions are settled in dollars. Many people hold dollars. A lot more people hold dollars that hold bitcoin. And then you could see this. What's considered the second best form of money, you might say, based upon measuring the market cap, you know, is gold. So given the fact that I firmly believe that within the next, you know, number of years, you know, less than 10 years, I think more people will embrace bitcoin as the second best money and that bitcoin will pass gold. So if you take a look at the market cap of gold, I think, I think the price of bitcoin that would be equivalent to the market price of gold is probably around, I think, I think one person told me recently and I haven't checked it, but it could be as high as like 750, $80,000. So Bitcoin price. So if people believe that my, if I don't want to hold dollars, the next best thing is no longer gold, but bitcoin, you know, then bitcoin could easily go 500, $750,000. And we'll have to see, you know, we've had a lot, we've had something that we're seeing discussion about now is corporate treasurers are now looking at holding some amount of bitcoin. These are people who never really held any gold, but they're considering holding bitcoin. So in some respects I could say I'm happy about it because this will drive up the price of bitcoin and other things. I'm not happy about it because who I want to see adopt bitcoin are individuals, not companies. So, you know, the whole idea is to build an ecosystem of peer to peer money where people can transact independent of some third party participating in the transaction. So people could be independent of government? Yes, I want to, I want to, I want to avoid, you know, the government. I bought a place in Mexico and when I, when I went to the buyer, the seller, I mean of the property that I bought, I said I want to, I want to buy it. And I bought it in tether. I don't, I don't ever get rid of my bitcoin. So I had some, I have tether, you know, that I use for transactions. And the guy, tether is usdt. It's what's called a stable coin. Okay. I don't, it's. To me, it's not crypto. Okay. So I don't want people confused. But the point, the point of it is, is he asked me why I didn't, I wanted to do it this way. I said because I want to do a transaction that a bank is not involved in. I don't want to go to a bank branch. I don't want to have to give an explanation to some banker about why I'm doing this and then have them be a judge whether I have a right to do it or not have a right to do it. Okay? This transaction between you and I, and I don't want any third parties involved, except for the notary who needs to validate that this transaction, you know, has legal effect that it's actually occurring. So outside of the third party validating that you're selling and I'm buying, I don't want any third party involved. So I don't want to go to a bank. I don't want to take time speaking to a bank manager. You know, I don't want to have to give any explanations to anyone. I just want to give you money. I want you to accept it. And I made him feel comfortable. And we did a transaction that I was told was the first of its type in Mexico. So I had to explain it to the notary. And when the notary asked me, why am I doing this transaction this way, you know, I said, look at it. I'm going to right now. I'm going to give. I'm going to give the buyer the money right now. In a few minutes, it'll be in their. In their wallet. And we've done this all right here, and we haven't had to make any third party a transaction to it. And the cost of me wiring this quantity of money to this person is cheaper than I would have at the bank. So it's cheaper and faster and more convenient. So when the notary sat and experienced that transaction, you know, the. The notary was very impressed with it. So the world I want to see is one of the things I've also. I don't know how famous I am for saying it, but I say there's no such thing as a trusted third party. So I studied economics at University of Chicago. I got to know a number of brilliant people there, including Ronald Coase, who's the father of what people call transaction cost economics. And basically, we should engage in transactions with people with as little friction as possible. So to the extent that we can get rid of a third party in transactions, we can eliminate friction and transactions, you know, and facilitate a lower cost of transactions. So then the question is, what's. Does a third party really add value to the transaction or not? And for us to exchange value with one another, there shouldn't be a reason why a third party should bring value to that transaction. So, you know, I don't really like stablecoins in the sense of they're expanding because stablecoins, the most popular stable coins, are collateralized by dollars. So they're really expanding, you know, right now today stablecoins really help the surveillance states because, you know, the government is happy that these companies that issue stablecoins, you know, share information on who, when, when they trade on exchanges or whatever, they can now track people who are not Americans, you know, who are move, who are transaction and stable coins. So it gives the government even more surveillance powers, you know, rather than less. But you know, I'm going to be surveilled anyway, so at least, I can at least eliminate the bank from the transaction, you know, and I consider the most evil institutions as banks. So as Thomas Jefferson and many of our founders also believed banks were amongst the most evil of institutions. And I agree with that assessment.
- [22:51]
C
There's always temptation these days for government to get involved in things. And there's talk about them somehow getting involved in regulating bitcoin. What should we look out for on the landscape, do you think in the.
- [23:04]
B
Coming decade the government can't regulate bitcoin? Okay, Bitcoin is a protocol, okay? So it's not like the shitcoins that have been issued where some group of people created a foundation, they got pre mined compensation, which means they rewarded themselves for just thinking through the project, you know, and bitcoin is an open source protocol, you know. So there satoshi said, here's bitcoin, whoever wants to go and buy computer equipment and mine them, There was no barriers to entry to doing so. And it's not like satoshi mined bitcoin the day after the paper was published or rewarded he or herself for bitcoin for writing the paper. No, it was a couple of months later that satoshi went out and mined bitcoins, the genesis block. And it could have been anyone else could have done it at the same point in time. So satoshi had no comparative advantage, no special privileges associated with it. And satoshi had to work as hard as anybody else to get a bitcoin. So no privileges, no preferences, no control rights, no governance rights. Okay. Which is different than, you know, all these other coins. Who wrote a paper said, I'm going to build this, I'm going to reward myself with a lot of tokens, you know, you're going to give me money to build it. You know, you're not going to ask any questions. You have no Real role in the governance. You know, you're just going to give me the money and trust it. Maybe I'll build it, maybe I won't. You know, my incentive is, is that to build it is that I get all these tokens, you know, if I did. So, you know, to me those are securities. So they've issued securities and all securities are regulated. So to the extent that any securities are regulated, they can't be censorship resistant and they can't be permissionless because the act of creating a security requires permission, you know, and it records and it requires the maintenance of that permission. So if maybe some party that engages in a transaction, you know, is somebody the U.S. government doesn't like and you know, you're a security and the government says reverse that transaction, you know, or we're going to delist you as you as a security, you'll. Then you'll delist it. So if the government says I want you to share information, you'll share it. With bitcoin, there's no one to ask. There's no controlling authority. So there's nobody for the government to subpoena. Not because we don't know satoshi exists. Even satoshi exists. Satoshi doesn't have that knowledge. Even if satoshi existed, Satoshi just doesn't have. You can subpoena satoshi and say, tell me what you know. But ultimately it's a decentralized protocol and satoshi has no privileged knowledge over anyone else over the process of how that block got created.
- [25:50]
C
So when the government talks about looking at regulations for electronic currency, are you saying they don't understand they can't regulate bitcoin or they will be carving bitcoin out of the equation?
- [26:03]
B
I think when they take a look at the e currency. I remember when there was a debate when the government was taking a look at would bitcoin be considered a currency or would bitcoin be considered some sort of asset, like an intangible asset? And a lot of people were disappointed when bitcoin was not considered a currency. I was happy. Bitcoin was not considered a currency because it would not be regulated by the occasional. So the production of bitcoins would not be regulated, but the distribution of bitcoins could then be regulated. So they could basically require people to acquire bitcoin through regulated entities. That's the risk to me. The risk to me in the US at least, and maybe other parts of the world is that people will say, like the Biden administration already tried, is you can own bitcoin, you know, but you have to have, you have to have a third party wallet. They could consider US miners as financial intermediaries and regulate US miners. So that's, that's the regulatory, you know, for people to think there's no regulatory threats. There are, there are regulatory threats but the regulatory threat is not the bitcoin in and of itself. It's to those who are make part of the ecosystem how they could wreck, how they could regulate them. So they could regulate miners by defining miners as financial intermediaries and bring them under the control of OCC or some other entity or they could create some new entity to do that, you know, and, and they could, and they could regulate who's permitted to, you know, that you're not allowed to self custody. So therefore they can track all the movement. So you know, is there a risk.
- [27:45]
C
That'S going to happen, you think?
- [27:46]
B
I think there's a great risk that's going to happen.
- [27:48]
C
What about under President Trump who has express some support I guess just in concept for bitcoin. But does that mean potentially less threat of regulation or not?
- [28:00]
B
I think right now the more the market cap of Bitcoin grows, the more threat there is to the dollar as the reserve currency of the world, the more likely that the US Government will take action and hostile action against it. If you take a look at like I read yesterday that today in the newspaper that Trump, and Trump has repeated this threat several times about the BRIC nations, you know, not having them develop a parallel monetary system and settlement system, that they have to commit to keeping the dollar as this national settlement systems or else he will, you know, he says he wants to be known as tariff man. So something like that. So Trump understands for his point of view the importance of preserving what I describe as dollar hegemony. Okay. Actually there was references even made in previous regimes in even Kerry act, I don't know which. Democrats also said we have to be careful about all these sanctions of countries because if we sanction too many countries then they're going to create a parallel currency and we will lose the tool of dollar hegemony. And basically as we see in our foreign policy, we use dollar hegemony very aggressively. You know, economic sanctions is an important part. Our control of swift, the international payment systems is crucial to our ability to inflict economic hardship on countries. We want to inflict harm to them. It's a form of hegemony. For me it's an act of war. I mean so to me it's a violent act of war. I think anyone who had their property taken away from them or deprived of use of their property, we'll consider that a very hostile act.
- [29:45]
C
If the government were to take a hostile act, as you say, against bitcoin, would that impact people who have bitcoin in terms of make the value of their bitcoin fall?
- [29:57]
B
I think hostile actions are actions that occurred from a sense of weakness, not of strength. I generally think a bully is a coward. So somebody who gazes a bully, it's an exposure of their weakness, not the strength. So for me, the more hostile the government gets against bitcoin, for those that would be panic selling, I'd be buying. And I think that would just give me an opportunity of making a lot more money off of bitcoin because I think ultimately the attributes of bitcoin will win. So do I think that the government can sustain this hostile attacks against bitcoin? Can they preserve dollar hegemony? No, I don't think dollar hegemony will be able to preserve. I think it could be we could buy time so the U.S. can buy time. But ultimately, unless the U.S. embraces fiscal, monetary or fiscal responsibility, you know, the dollar will collapse and something will replace it. And, you know, more and more people will like bitcoin. And also the more and more people that hold bitcoin, the harder it becomes for them to take hostile action against bitcoin. You know, if 100 senators and 400 House of Representatives all own bitcoin, they're not going to be enthusiastic about promoting regulation that will impact their pocketbook. So to the extent that part of the hedge against the government being too aggressive against it is that many people in Congress do recognize that the fragility of the dollar and the appeal of many of them won't say it publicly, but most of these people who own bitcoin in Congress are buying it as a hedge against fiscal irresponsibility of the US Government and them understanding that our deficits are unsustainable, that politically they can't do anything about it. So personally, they can hedge a bit. Hedge it by owning some bitcoin.
- [32:00]
C
You know, some members of Congress who have bitcoin.
- [32:04]
B
I don't want to give names to people, but yes, I give names. Yes, yes.
- [32:07]
C
Okay.
- [32:08]
B
Yeah, some people have contacted me, you know, with advice. So, yeah, I know a number of people that own bitcoin.
- [32:20]
C
Lastly, for ordinary Americans who still don't know much about this universe, what would you advise them if they were saying, what do you think I ought to do?
- [32:29]
B
Now, last time you asked me this question, I Think Bitcoin. People should always expect bitcoin will be highly volatile. So one is someone first is. No one should invest in money they can't afford to lose. Somebody else has to determine their own preferences for risk and own talents for risk. So if they feel compelled to look at the price every day and then when they see a 10%, 20% move, you know, if that's going to give them a heart attack, you know, then, then they, then they shouldn't own it. But as long as they feel that they have the stomach for some level of risk, can absorb some losses, and just can be patient and know that over time they will be more than fairly compensated for that risk. You know, everybody should own, you know, some bitcoin. You know, Bitcoin is the best hedge against the collapse of the fiat money regime. People should view the collapse of the fiat money regime as a likely outcome sometime in the future without me being able to predict exactly when, because the level of debt the world has produced and the ability to service that debt just doesn't exist. You know, the math doesn't intersect and something's going to happen and it's, you know, not going to be very good. And then the question is, so I don't view Bitcoin as an inflation hedge. So I think the argument that's an inflation head, I think is a, is a, is a, is a stupid argument. I think the argument is a hedge against, you know, global dysfunctional global financial environment, which is basically every government has signed on to basically the similar policies, you know, is borrow and spend, borrow and spend, borrow and spend, borrow and spend, borrow more and spend, borrow even more and spend and borrow even more, more, more in spend. So, I mean, even Trump, on the one hand, you notice there's no talk about cutting $2 trillion out of the budget this year. I mean, Musk mentioned it. You know, he and Vivek went around, we're going to cut $2 trillion. You know, Vivek doesn't exist anymore in dogi. And Musk is not talking about $2 trillion anymore. And Trump asked that during the duration of his presidency there be no debt ceiling. So, you know, desiring to eliminate the debt ceiling is not an indication that I'm going to cut government spending and I'm going to cut the deficit. It's in recognition that I'm likely to increase the debt and I don't want to have to have a leverage in me reducing spending by the fact that somebody could use the debt ceiling against me to cut spending and to Cut the deficit in a way, I don't want to cut it. So to me, that's signaling that the government is saying is we value the right to spend a lot more money very, very highly. So that's what the government does. That's what all the governments do. There's a limit to how much the US can tax people, tariff people, embrace surveillance and all the other tactics used to exercise dollar hegemony, you know, for the, you know, the British kingdom thought they would, you know, what was it? What they say? The sun never sets on the British kingdom. That's what they used to say, something like that, you know. And the British economy started collapsing around the time of World War I, but the pound sterling remained the standard until World War II. So we were in a pound sterling standard up until, you know, people think maybe the dollar standard was the global standard for a long period of time. No, this is a project. This is a product of Bretton Woods. You know, that's. That was post World War II. Prior to that, we won a sterling standard. And the UK economy was a basket case for 30, 35 years before the sterling collapsed as the global currency. And British never thought that. They always thought that forever they'd be on a. The pound sterling would be as good as gold. It was the reserve currency of the world. So people have a lot of hubris. And Americans think we'll always be the greatest and we'll always be the best. And, you know, the dollar will always be the standard. We can always apply, you know, dollar hegemony. And I'm sure the Ottomans thought the same thing and the Greeks thought the same thing and the Romans thought the same things. You know, all these great civilizations thought that they were going to be permanent, and none of them have been permanent. And, you know, it's the hubris that we get and the lack of appreciation for how we got there that ends up being the downfall of everyone. And ultimately it. It begins with the debasement of money. That's to be beginning of the end. So we're at the beginning of the end. I think the last token, the last money, the last coin standing, you know, will be Bitcoin, and it'll be worth significantly more and, and unwinding. This system will be more difficult now than it was in the past because it's so highly leveraged. It's so highly leveraged through intermediaries that are all guaranteed by the government. So, you know, if the system collapses, nobody's priced in the value of the government guarantees to the financial system. You know, so we have, we have the amount of debt that the government has been issued. We have the unfunded liabilities of Social Security, you know, and Medicare. But now you have to add to that. If we have a collapse of the fiat money system, what are the value, the guarantees that the government has to have regarding deposit insurance? So the question is, you know, one is what do I have to pay off if I only pay off insured depositors? And how many losses will there be in the system if I don't pay off uninsured depositors? So nobody's giving consideration to the fiscal financial course of the U.S. you know, of that outcome as well. So what will that drive people to do? You know, maybe, maybe people have limited access. Everything about the Depression, right? People have limited access to their money. So that could, that it happened once. People think this can't happen in this country when it has happened. The US has had times where banks had holidays where you couldn't get your demand deposit does not entitle you to demand whenever you want it. It entitles you to demand within a 30 day period of time. But the bank has a right to not give you the money when you demand. It's already in the contract of a demand deposit and the US has defaulted on that before. It was one of the issues that Roosevelt threatened the Supreme Court to stack. The court is when he wanted to renounce gold clauses and contracts. So when people had the option of taking, you know, dollars or gold, when the gold was at a premium to the dollar, you know, that's when, that's when, that's when Roosevelt said, well, we don't want to honor, we don't want to get rid of our gold and we don't want to pay at the dollar, at the gold value. So we just want to pay the dollar value. So that represents a haircut of about 20, 25%. So people took a 20, 25% haircut. I would consider that a debt default. I think most people who had two alternative payments, getting $100 in gold or $80 in cash would view that as a default. So we've defaulted on our debt, we've confiscated gold, we've done all these things in the financial crisis. And we tend to give the President extraordinary power. So don't do extraordinary things at this point in time and we should expect that we have crises, that that's what they'll do. So I think the only protection we have is what's ours and right now, and this could change. Owning Bitcoin has no Reporting obligations until you move it. Okay? So if I buy bitcoin, I don't have to report it, okay. If I hold it, I don't have to report it. You know, if I transfer from one wallet to another, all under my custody, I don't have to report it. The day I transfer to a third party and I get some other form of compensation, then I have to report the capital gain associated with it. But as long as I buy and hold, which is what most, you know, quote whales do with bitcoin, they buy and hold this. Currently, there is no reporting obligation. And if the government imposes a reporting obligation, you know, when China. Report what happened in China, when China's government decided to make it more difficult for miners, people left China. So I assume that the type of people that own a lot of bitcoin, you know, if, if the government becomes too restrictive, they'll move out of the United States, the mining will move out of the United States, and the owners will move out of the United States, and there'll be other countries that are hostile to the United States or neutral to the United States or don't even, not necessarily don't dislike the United States, but don't like dollar hegemony that'll sit back and say, we welcome you. So there'll be a place that'll welcome them, and as long as there's a place for welcome them. You know, the personality of a bitcoiner is, you know, true bitcoiners kind of nomadic in nature. So, you know, if you ask like the founders, like Ben Franklin or people like that, they would say the country they resided in was liberty. So for them, in my opinion, the US Was an idea, okay? And the country and where they wanted to reside was inside the context of that idea. And that's how I see myself as well. You know, I. I love ideas, so I want to reason my residents are my ideas. Okay? Wherever I'm geographically located is indifferent to me. You know, my, my loyalty to my. To my ideas. So I don't like to be disloyal, but my prime loyalty are to my ideas and my ideals, and I could be anywhere.
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Warnick and I kept talking after the interview, and I learned a few more things that might be interesting to you. He says that 90% of the Bitcoin have been mined and that the way the system is set up, the last bitcoin will be mined in 2140. It's going to take a long time because right now, every two years, there's a halving. As he Called it, which basically means that by design, as time goes on, it takes longer and longer to produce a single bitcoin, and it takes more computational power each time. That's what he says keeps the ecosystem secure. The computing power to produce a bitcoin. I mean, this is hard for me to understand, let alone explain, if I don't understand it really well. But it was sort of an ingenious design by the person or entities who set this whole thing up. I mean, back when it first started, an individual with a computer at home is my understanding, could mine or create a bitcoin. And the reward for taking part in that process, the way everything's set up, is the person. If they manage to solve the algorithm or the mathematical problem correctly and create a bitcoin, the process also results in validating transactions in a blockchain technological way. And the person who accomplishes it is rewarded by being rewarded with a bitcoin. And I remember way back when, I'd never even heard of a bitcoin. My daughter was young and she was talking about it. She had been awarded a bitcoin, which was valueless at the time, but had been awarded bitcoins or Bitcoin as part of the some kind of gaming website. And I kind of scoffed at it. She tried to explain it to me, and she was actually trying to get on the computer and solve algorithms and take part in that process. Of course, years later, I'm like, wow, she knew what she was doing. And one of the scary things to me about bitcoin is if you keep it on what's called a wallet, like on your computer, but you lose that computer or the key code that gives you access to that wallet, which is stored on the computer, then you lose your bitcoin and all your money, if that's how you've stored it. Sure enough, a few years ago, my daughter was asking where all our old computers were, because she remembered that she had a bitcoin or bitcoins that had been valueless at the time, stored somewhere on some old computer, which, of course, she could never find. It's like having those old comic books in perfect condition. And that hearing years later, they're worth like $100,000 or something, but you can't find them anyway. Again, by design, the process of computing and solving these algorithms becomes more difficult. So that bitcoins are made on a particular schedule that slows down. And, well, it used to be that you might be able to mine or make a bitcoin on a home computer after a while. It took supercomputers and now apparently these are like communities of computers and actually chips that are created specifically to mine Bitcoin. And it can take if it's not done with the right chips. If you've tried to do it with computers, it can take a tremendous amount of power. It's my understanding something like they talk about being required for artificial intelligence anyway, fascinating. I wish I understood it better, but I hope that today's podcast sheds some light for you. I know it did for me. I hope you enjoyed today's podcast and that if you did, you'll leave a terrific review. Subscribe and share it with your friends. And check out my other podcast, the Cheryl Atkison Podcast. And if you haven't done so already, I hope you will look into buying my book Follow the How Big Pharma Misleads, Obscures, and Prevails. It's on sale for half price at Amazon. Proceeds support independent reporting. I promise you there are insider secrets in this book that you've never heard. No matter how well informed you may be on the issue of corruption and compromise of our medical establishment, medical schools, continuing medical education classes, the studies that your doctors rely on. Practically everything that can be touched by corruption, particularly of the pharmaceutical industry, has been influenced or touched by that. And as I posit in the book, as you'll see, it explains a lot about why we suffer from so many chronic health disorders today that our doctors for the past decade or two seemingly don't even notice. But for the chance to treat these disorders with expensive pills and potions, that's Follow the science. Do your own research. Make up your own mind. Think for yourself.