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- [00:00]
Rob Wallace
These things have blow off tops, right? And it's only after a blow off top, in terms of chaos and just the table being flipped over, are you able to have new lines in the sand for another 80 years of civilization to, to grow on top of it. We're going to live through it. We're going to live through the transition of the dollar, whatever that means. We haven't seen the end of this fourth turning. There's no way bitcoin is like here. It's, it's end of the world tech, right? These corporates don't have the balls, dude. They don't have the testicular fortitude to, to ride it out. Hope for bitcoin is that it separates money from state. And if it separates money from state, every state is going to need some bitcoin. Nothing can stop an idea whose time has come. All the pieces just line up together. It was such a beautiful, simple design that worked. It will be there when people need it and then we'll see the next great wave of adoption when shit hits the fan again.
- [01:03]
Walker
Rob Wallace, Robert Wallace. It's. You sound like a Scottish warlord.
- [01:11]
Rob Wallace
I think I, I come from a line of them. Hopefully that's what I tell myself at least. Right?
- [01:18]
Walker
Yeah. There we. There we go. Well, William Wallace and Robert Bruce, right? This is why my brain is going there. Because you just, you split the difference with both of them. It's kind of like 50% Scottish in me. I'm like most Americans. I'm a, A dirty mutt.
- [01:30]
Rob Wallace
Yes.
- [01:30]
Walker
My wife is a purebred Balkan. Like literally a, like a guy. It's amazing. Just, you know, running with a thoroughbred. I am like the mangy mutt. But it has its benefits. I think I'm mainly the product of like generations of, you know, let's just say non consensual Viking extramarital affairs. Like it's like Scandinavian and then a bunch of British Isles, mostly Scottish. So like, you know, you put the pieces together, it usually means one thing.
- [01:57]
Rob Wallace
I'm right there with you. On the, on the dad's side, English, Scottish, Norwegian, mom's side, heavily Polish. So got that Slavic.
- [02:07]
Walker
Won't hold that against you. But we're great, dude.
- [02:10]
Rob Wallace
We're going to have a greater GDP than per capita than Japan soon. So Poland's on the rise.
- [02:15]
Walker
Poland has actually been crushing it. No, like, I mean, because Poland has remained very based. And I think this is what I've told people a lot in terms of Eastern Europe, broadly, you know, not just Poland specifically. Poland's a really Interesting case too if you just like you look at also you've seen the chart like Venezuela versus Poland. It's like socialism versus not socialism. Like which one works, you know, but more broadly I think Eastern Europeans have this incredible kind of natural immune system against wokeism and just socialist, communist because it's like they're like we've seen this movie before. We literally lived it. Like we had friends, family who died because of it. We know this, we've seen the movie before, we're not doing it again. We're not falling for this. Meanwhile, Western Europe and much of just the western world in general is like oh yeah, well let's give this a try. What's the worst that could happen? Like it's not like we've tried this many, many, many, many times before. Like maybe this time it'll work great. It's tiresome. But I think Eastern Europe is rising. I think Western Europe is falling and it's going to widen. At least that's my opinion.
- [03:19]
Rob Wallace
Absolutely. From even, even with what's going on in Ukraine. I mean the devs are still coming out of Ukraine, right? I mean like they've got an immense amount of talent and they know how to work hard and of course they, they've learned from the horrors of the not too distant past and because of that they have a bright future ahead of them. Whereas the Western Europe needs to go through all and learn those lessons which they are rather quickly. Right. It's happening right now for them and especially we'll see as they have decimated their own energy infrastructure, particularly Germany how they are going to fare with this situation we got going on now.
- [03:56]
Walker
Germany is such a painful thing to watch. Like let's leave aside them selling how much was like 50,000 bitcoin that they sold at like 56k of memory or maybe it was 58k. Maybe they were level if I remember correctly. Of course it was, you know, 58K gang remains undefeated. I still think that's the bottom this cycle as a sidebar, I still think it's 58k. But I mean leaving aside that massive blunder which will be looked back on and written about in the history books or by the history AI scholars just like the whole decom, like let's decommission all our nuclear power plants to you know, stop boiling the oceans or something. It's like you're, you're turning off the cleanest form of energy humans have figured out how to use yet in favor of firing up more coal plants and being more dependent On Russian lng? Yeah, okay, like it's insane, man. We, we live in an upside down Orwellian world in so many ways, 100%.
- [04:52]
Rob Wallace
And they. What's also crazy is that north street pipeline was blown up, right? And they haven't gone for anybody's head for that. It wasn't the Russians, because if it was the Russians, we would have heard about it.
- [05:04]
Walker
Right?
- [05:05]
Rob Wallace
So you look at this whole entire energy strategy that America possibly has been playing since 2022, when that happened. I mean, are we making them more dependent on us for our LNG since then? I mean, that's a, that's a really big question. And do you think that there's 5D chess going on right now with this whole global energy situation and the straight of Hormuz, or is this just a giant boondoggle that we've got ourselves in and we have no way out of?
- [05:33]
Walker
Ah, it's so hard to know. You know, what's that old saying, never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. And I usually operate with that heuristic when dealing with anything the government is doing, anything any governments are doing. But then it's important to remember that while broadly governments may be incredibly inept, incredibly inefficient, incredibly bureaucratically bloated, right, and not able to actually get things done, there are elements in every government which are incredibly efficient, incredibly effective, and incredibly long term with their thinking. Like, you look like you look at the, you know, if you compared like the, the general, let's say the DMV part of the U.S. government versus like the U.S. military, you know, the DMV versus Seal Team Six. Right? That's maybe that's to the ends of the spectrum, right? Like SEAL Team six is a fucking hyper elite group of fighting machines the likes of which the world has never seen. The DMV is like the slop of the slop of the slop of the slop of the slop, you know, and so it's like, you gotta remember my point here being it's like I want to attribute a lot of things just to general incompetence, but then I remind myself, hmm, they're not all incompetent. And incompetence is a great foil for a great, you know, a great shield, a great excuse, a great cover for the hyper competent getting exactly what they want. So I think a lot of this is pretty contrived. You know what I mean? That's, that's my take. I don't know what yours is I
- [07:09]
Rob Wallace
mean, Simon Dixon has really been doing the rounds recently on the Bitcoin podcast and he attributes all this to the financial industrial complex, right. And the fact that they want to take America down from its role as the hegemon and make it a regional power and sort of create a series of regional powers around the world in which they can more easily control. Because if you do have a top dog like America who's able to self direct and put its great resources to its own benefit, that is a, I guess, a challenge to transnational power. So it would make sense. I mean, it does seem as if we, we've been on this path for 25 years plus now, right. I mean, I think we're both around the same age and had our youth sort of stained by 9, 11, right. Like you that, that happened when we were kids. And it's been straight trajectory, sort of slow sloping downwards since then in many. And it can't be there. There are players, part of this government who outlast of course, presidents and it does seem as if they are steering the ship in a certain direction for at least the last quarter century.
- [08:17]
Walker
Yeah, it's, it's hard not to be conspiratorial these days, Rob, because all of the conspiracy theories have turned out to not be conspiracy theories at all. Like, you know, yesterday's conspiracy theory is just tomorrow's headline, right? And I feel like that really started accelerating with COVID And honestly, none of this, I think, none of the uncovering. Let me take a step back. We're both in, let's call it new media, independent media, right? For those who don't know, you founder, you run bitcoin news, probably fastest growing or biggest. You know, we were talking about this before, like fastest acceleration, arguably non bitcoin, podcast related of course, you know, but bitcoin news related. You guys have had an incredible trajectory. I want to get into that later. But we're in new media, right? We're in new media and new media has just completely decimated legacy media. You look at, you look at viewership numbers even during, you know, when people were actually like watching legacy news more still during COVID just because it's what they were used to more even at that time. It was only a couple years ago, but there were high, a lot higher numbers at that time. They've just dropped off a cliff. Like I'm pretty sure 50% of CNN's viewers are probably just captives in airports, right? It's like they didn't choose to have that monitor on, but they've completely lost the control of the narrative and that's allowed for so many, you know, truthful narratives to actually find their way in. It's no longer a one to many one way broadcast, it's a many to many two way dialogue. And I think that's completely changed the, let's say the power calculus when it comes to, you know, hey, look, we are not going to put up with the bullshit that you're spouting right now. We know it's crap. And I'm just going to go ahead and record a live stream on my phone where I'm have, you know, I'm mildly autistic. I'm going to go through and do a bunch of research that the media didn't bother to do. I'm going to break this down exactly. I'm going to uncover all this stuff like citizen journalists have changed the game and I don't think the genie goes back in the bottle. I think maybe the only thing that hurts that is the prevalence of AI slop and just people being tired of wading through it. But I'd love your opinion on this. My thought is that in the coming years and decades, as AI slop proliferates more and more and more, it's already like the amount of AI generated content is larger than the amount of human generated by like quite a lot already. But as this proliferates more and more, I think reputation, proof of personness, proof of work becomes exponentially more valuable. It's already valuable. I think it becomes even more so. I love your opinion though. In like a hyper AI worlds is like, does the person matter or does it just become irrelevant?
- [11:01]
Rob Wallace
I think the person matters to the people that matter. You're going to have a lot of, a lot of average people, I'm sorry to say, but they won't be able to tell the difference between AI person and an actual person and they'll be uncaring as to consuming content from either. Whereas if you're slightly more educated or intelligent, I mean even now if you read something that's AI written right, like something a flag will go off in your head, you're like, oh, do I want to read any further? And sometimes you're like, okay, this is actually has some valuable information and whatnot, but you can, it has a bit of a stench and you know it from the get go. So I completely agree with you that I think everyone right now we don't really know what the job market is going to look like in terms of AI within the next five to 10 years. But one thing you can do is start a personal brand. You know, as ridiculous as that sounds, everybody should have their own bitcoin podcast. You know, I think you're a big proponent of that. But it's because you, you want to put your voice out there, right? And you don't want to just pop up in a couple of years. Once AIs outnumber us 10 to 1 on all these social platforms, you want to start getting and making your connections too. Because the amount of trust is going to take in order to make a new online friend for anybody who's discerning, the barriers are going to be so much higher than they are right now. Again, we are sort, we're in a bear market right now. Bitcoiners are, are looking for stuff to talk about and to, to share and so you can go out there and you can make waves right now. It's an opportunity, you know, try something new. Look what Julian Figueroa did this last year, right, with his YouTube channel. Absolutely insane. And he is connecting to an audience that is completely brand new, that had never been exposed to this type of content before. And he's making it relatable, enjoyable and easy to consume. So there is an opportunity right now and I do think that if you wait, even if you don't want to put yourself out there, even you can even put yourself out there as a nim right now. And I think you'll be much further ahead than others who are too scared to in a couple of years.
- [13:01]
Walker
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- [18:20]
Rob Wallace
Yeah, I think there's a lot of cool stuff going on in the background. Of course. Just had Odell on to ask him about, as we were talking about before, Spark, the new wallet for Primal. And they are the wallet for, or the infrastructure for a lot of other wallets happening right now, of course, Wallet of Satoshi as well. And so we have Spark, we have this new platform, Ark, of course. And Lightning is the sort of interconnective tissue for. For all of them. So with all these different implementations, we are going to see bitcoin payments become easier and easier. And I am someone who thinks you should not be afraid to spend some bitcoin. You know, go out there, get used to it, right. As people who have never made a bitcoin transaction before, and I've had bitcoin for years, there are a lot of them out there. And it's. It's absolutely insane to me that it could. Could be this way because you have no freedom if it's just sitting forever and ever and you, and you don't have the skills or the comfort level to go out there and use it when need be. Right. It's like when, when stuff hits the fan, you want to have the muscle memory to be able to open up a wallet, send some bitcoin, send a receiver transaction and be able to get on with your day and not have to fumble or. Cause you know how scary it is the first time you send bitcoin, right? Like you're double checking, you're reading each letter and you want to make sure that you don't mess up in any way. After a while it becomes like second nature. So bitcoin is like here it's, it's sort of, it's end of the world tech, right? It's like. Or transition to a new world tech. And I mean that's what first got me into it. I've been sort of as you. I think you can tell from the beginning of this conversation, bit of a conspiracy theorist. Happy to admit it had been thinking that America might go into a hyperinflationary tailspin since at least 2010, 2011, right? That's what. When I first got wind of all these things. And I've been thinking in this way it's like how best to prepare, how best to get yourself ready for a world that is rapidly changing and you see it more and more every single day. So bitcoin needs to go out there and be used. So any new tech that allows that to happen is very nice. Other big stories that are interesting, I mean today just came out Coinbase, you can now use bitcoin as collateral for a mortgage through Coinbase, right? That's pretty huge deal. We've got Morgan Stanley with launching their own Bitcoin ETF and they've got six, $7 trillion assets under management. They if they tell their clients to put a 2% allocation, they'd have a Bitcoin ETF that is three times the size of BlackRock. The most successful Bitcoin or ETF launch of all time. Right. So there's all these things it's happening now, right? On the highest scale, on the lowest scale. If you look over at Africa, the amount of just meetup and organizations that are just popping up all over there, there's a lot of encouraging things. It's just like the, it's the bitcoin Twitter I think is, which is having the, the atrophy right now, whereas there's just so much good stuff happening everywhere else. There's plenty of reasons to be bullish and excited for the future. And we're here for a reason. We want to make the world a better place. We think that fixing the money fixes the world. And if we're able to get the word out and just have one more person understand that, it could unlock a whole bunch of positive effects for the planet.
- [21:42]
Walker
Amen to that. Did you say you were. Have you been in bitcoin since, like, as long as you said you started learning about hyperinflation? Oh, I was, I was, yeah.
- [21:52]
Rob Wallace
I was.
- [21:52]
Walker
I wasn't. Wasn't trying to like docs, you know, just. Just curious, like, what. Can you talk a little bit about that? And then maybe just like, at what point you started the bitcoin news part of your journey? Like, how far along into your bitcoin journey?
- [22:04]
Rob Wallace
Yeah, so, I mean, I was studying at Tufts during the great financial crisis. I remember coming back to my fraternity during the fall of 2008 and seeing Hank Paulson come on TV and say, if we don't give the banks a trillion dollars, there's going to be tanks on the street. We're going to have to declare martial law. And that just hit me as complete lie. I knew something was horribly fishy, and it just sank to the bottom of my stomach knowing that I'm being lied to right now. We're all being lied to, and we're all being robbed because that's our money they're going to take to pay those bankers. And of course, that was the time of Ron Paul and at the Fed, and of course, not long after that was occupy Wall Street. So there was that. There's that general feeling, the tea party of. We've been sort of going down the wrong path here since 2001 with 9, 11 and the global war on terror. This is an opportunity for us to turn things around, use this crisis to our benefit, learn about hard money, Austrian economics. At that time, I thought. I thought gold and silver were the answer. Right. As a college kid, I didn't have, like, much money to. To buy gold and silver with, But I got some silver coins and I thought, oh, I'm preparing for hyperinflation. I thought hyperinflation was common. Dude, in 2010, I thought it was going to be here by 2012. I was reading a lot of, like, poor Stanberry, those newsletters and whatnot. And they had me convinced like this we were about to hit the fan. But that didn't happen. That didn't happen, Right? So I was studying Chinese at the time. I Thought I wanted to like work for the government to be a diplomat. And then I went to China and said, wow, this, this is a country on the rise right now. This is on the come up like the. There's cranes everywhere you look. There's entrepreneurship on the lowest to highest levels. You can really do what you want. And so as a college kid studying abroad there, I decided, oh, I'm going to stay here. I'm going to stay in China. So I lived in China for four years in Shanghai and started teaching English, had a band, wrote for a magazine, started a YouTube channel doing comedy stuff. I was the shooter editor, director for a channel called Donnie Does. He now works at Barstool. He's been a barstool since 2016, 2017. But it was like the, the Borat shtick, right? Like, he was a drunken Bostonian who woke up in China and needed to work his way back. So we would like. He was a kindergarten teacher. That was our first episode and so I brought my camera into him. Teaching kindergarten. He's teaching little kindergartners to teach to say Yankee suc.
- [24:32]
Walker
Suck.
- [24:33]
Rob Wallace
These suck.
- [24:33]
Walker
Right?
- [24:34]
Rob Wallace
We had these Chinese kindergartners. Incredible. So, I mean, that was amazing, right? And so I lived in China from 21 to 25 and it was really, it was peak vibes. They had the, the Olympics before I was there, but then they had the World's Fair in Shanghai and people were welcome. This was before Xi Jinping. Then by the time 2014 or so came, I was like, okay, if I stay here for a couple more years, then I'm just going to like be stuck in China for forever, right? It's going to be very hard, acclimate back into America and get my whole life going over there. So I decided to leave and it was actually pretty good timing because when she took over, that was bad news. One example I like to use is foreigners. Like Shanghai is a huge party city, so there's lots of great bars and clubs. When she took over, they would send cops into some bars or clubs, take out 10 random foreigners, clip their hair, tested for drugs, and if it was positive, they'd kick them out of the country. So it became much less friendly to foreigners. Before we could do whatever we wanted, we were throwing party buses. We would just jam like 80 college kids onto a double decker bus and take them to like three bars across the city in the night and charge like 50 bucks ahead and give them all panda hats. It was, it was, it was a really fun time and like stuff that you can never get away with in New York City. And I absolutely loved and relished that. That opportunity. But I still had in the back of my mind that, like, oh, wow, there I knew about inflation and the dollar's a scam and all this stuff. And so I was thinking, like, what is going on here? How are they able to keep this whole entire system going? Came back to New York city in the mid 2010s, started working in advertising and marketing, doing that stuff. And that's when actually, I bought my first, first Bitcoin in 2016. Went to a Bitcoin ATM at the Southside Seaport in Manhattan, put in $1,000, and got 2.2 Bitcoin. But I had no idea what I was doing, right? I had no idea about cold storage or how to properly take care of your bitcoin. So I was just walking around with a QR code, a printout from the bitcoin atm in my backpack, right? And so it was worth a thousand bucks at the time. So, I mean, it's a. It's a decent chunk of change, but it's nothing too crazy. But a year later, I was traveling. I had this QR code in my backpack in the airport in Las Vegas. I put my backpack down, I put $5 in a slot machine, pull the lever, lose the $5, look down, and my backpack was stolen. So that's my donation to the bitcoin network, those 2.2 bitcoin, never getting those back. But that was right as, like, it started to go parabolic. It went from a thousand grand or one grand a piece to 20, you know, in that fall. And it was. That made me kind of bitter having that bitcoin stolen from me. And so I was like, oh, I don't need bitcoin, whatever. So turn my back on it for, I guess, two years there. And then in 2020, we were locked in our homes. And I got that feeling at the bottom of my stomach that I had when Hank Paulson went on TV and said, we need to give the banks a trillion dollars. And so this time, they printed 6 trillion to keep the system afloat. And I just. I knew, like, none of the principles had changed from what I'd first learned a decade before that. But it's just accelerating, right? So was able to get back into bitcoin during COVID and join bitcoin Twitter and haven't looked back. Haven't looked back. That's my origin story.
- [28:08]
Walker
That is a wild origin story. First of all, I didn't realize it was that permissive Pre Xi in China. I guess I thought it was, you know, by degrees. I didn't realize it was that much of a, a kind of about face.
- [28:23]
Rob Wallace
Yeah man. Especially like Beijing and Shanghai like they've always been competing cities and Beijing of course is the government capital and they're more locked down and a little bit more stuffy. But Shanghai has always been a party city. Shanghai jazz like in the 20s it was ripping and roaring. Before that, of course, opium dens. It's a huge port and you've got people and sailors from around the world coming and going and so they, everybody likes to have a good time and that city definitely is on top of the list for that. Especially back then.
- [28:52]
Walker
Yeah man, it's just wild because like now from what I've seen, if you're like you should maybe be very cautious about even bringing your normal phone as a foreigner into China. Like probably just maybe get a, get a burner for that, you know. But also maybe be careful with the burner because they may be like why is this a burner phone? Where's your normal phone? Like you know, I don't know, I don't know. Have you been back since?
- [29:14]
Rob Wallace
I have actually last time my, my best friend he, we went there together and he state and he's been there ever since and so he's any day now he should be having a baby there in China which is kind of crazy. But a story that we just posted today is that Hong Kong just issued a new law on March 23rd saying that if you do not give over your passwords or de encrypt any device that you bring to Hong Kong, even if you're just traveling through it, you can face a year in jail and 100,000 Hong Kong dollar fine. So yeah, we said be careful to bring any hardware wallets if you're traveling to or through Hong Kong right now. Absolutely wild.
- [29:57]
Walker
That is a pretty nuts one. And it's also, it's funny because it's like look we. For those that don't know at the border, like and just generally governments have such so much scarier tech than you realize and they can clone your phone very, very quickly. Like they, they have so many like boy they, I mean all they need is your phone number for a lot of these different softwares and it's like you're fucked. Like, you know, and that's not. Again not even talking about what they can do at the border but boy yeah, that's, that's a tough one. It's like they just want Explicit permission from you, basically, to fully, you know, run roughshod over you, it seems.
- [30:33]
Rob Wallace
Yeah. And I mean. I mean, I guess I'll divulge a little bit because it might be past the statute of limitations, but when I was living there, I was under the age of 25. Right. And in order to get a work visa to live there, you needed to be over 25, have a college degree, and, like, three years of work experience, all of which I did not have at the time when I was living there. But I did know a dude, and his dad was a big wig in the Chinese government back, like, decades ago. And he was an older guy and he. At the time. But, yeah, through him, I was able to get a. A work visa in China, Pre Xi, just through connections. And so, I mean, she. The president has cracked down so much on this corruption and this backroom dealing that you used to be able to get away with in China. And I guess it's. It's for the better, but it's serious business now. There's a. I wouldn't try that again these days.
- [31:26]
Walker
I guess the. For you better or for the better part depends on who you talk to. Maybe. It is wild how fast things can change, though. It's a while. This is a totally just unrelated anecdote, but just talk about the pace of change and kind of how bad we are as humans at understanding it. The wife and I decided she'd never seen Hell's Kitchen before, you know, with Gordon Ramsay. So we went back to, like a season six or something, I don't know, from 2009. And, like, it's not that long ago, but you look at it and it's like, it's a different world. Even like what they say on the Pro, just like it's a completely different world. And we. It's so easy in the moment to forget how quickly things can change. Like, it's. It's kind of wild. And I guess we're. We're always just kind of bad at that. Nothing wrong with living in the moment, too. Like, you should live in the moment. The moment is all we have. Right? But, like, live in the moment while respecting the future and remembering the past as well. You know, planning for the future, remembering the past, and. And then trying to experience the moment as much as you can. I'm not saying in, like, a degenerate way. I just mean like a be present, you know, it's wild, though. I did not know you had such a rich and colorful history. I love. This is why I love Bitcoin podcasting guys. And you too can just bitcoin podcast and learn fascinating stuff about fascinating people while talking about bitcoin. It's a beautiful thing. I want to ask you too, because 2020 for me was when I went down the bitcoin rabbit hole. I heard about it the first time in 2014. Buddy of mine was utilizing a website that some may be familiar with called the Silk Road. And he was like a finance guy, I was an engineering guy. So I don't know, I guess he thought like I might know more about computery stuff. And he was like, hey, have you heard about this bitcoin bitcoins thing? I've got to get these bitcoins to, to, you know, get this stuff that I want to get on this website, Internet website. And I was like, no. Like, I don't know if that is nerd. Anyway, back to whatever fiat stuff I was doing. Just like completely blew it off. 2017 during the run up, paid attention again because it was in the news, right? And I was like, oh, I remember, you know, my buddy asking me about this back in the day. That's funny. This thing's still around, you know, that's not gone yet. That's crazy. Thought it was just for that website or whatever. Nope, still around, running up to, you know, 17, whatever thousand dollars or 20,000 or whatever it was. And at that time I was like, I don't have enough to buy a full bitcoin. I can't do that. I'll just get a couple of these litecoins, you know. But that was a dumb move. So I always have empathy for people who are like, don't understand the whole satoshi thing. You know, it's like I didn't understand it right away either. You know, it's not necessarily self evident, right? You don't buy bias is real. But then it was 2020 where honestly, like, so similar to, you know, I think so similar to many bitcoiners out there who maybe had heard about bitcoin before. At least it was somewhere in the back of their mind, whether they, you know, got some back in the day, lost it, whatever, or like me, ignored it multiple times, or just badly informed, didn't take the time. 2020, I think was a turning point where people started waking up at, you know, en masse. Either that or I think it was you went one of two ways, right? You either flipped a switch and woke up and started going down the bitcoin rabbit hole. Going down or many other rabbit holes, or you kind of Went deeper into the matrix, you went more asleep. That's obviously there's some people in the middle too. It wasn't a binary thing, but I saw a lot of both ends of that spectrum. And thank God for both you and I and probably a lot of people listening to this. It was going on the, you know, taking the red pill, right? Well, if you hadn't already, like you really took the red pill, then you took the orange pill and there's no looking back, right? And I think that's like a. I wonder, I sometimes wonder from. And I love your perspective on this from an adoption standpoint. We were talking just before the call how kind of like retail never really made it here this cycle. You know, maybe they made it here through the bitcoin treasury company. I don't know. There's different theories on this, right? If maybe a lot of that frothiness came in through other, other mechanisms and just never touched spot bitcoin as much. But regardless, we didn't really see that retail hype on spot bitcoin. We just didn't see. We didn't see it in on social media either. Like, it's like felt more dead than it was during like the 2022 bear market, right? Like, it just felt weird. What do you think it takes to spark the next wave of just individuals, not talking institutions? Saylor is going to be buying no matter what. That man is a beast, right? He's going to be scooping up as many as he can. He gets it. He's gotten it for a long time. He also ignored it for a long time. Then he got it. He hasn't looked back. What do you think it takes to wake up another massive wave of just fellow humble plebs like you and me?
- [36:04]
Rob Wallace
Well, I think you gotta look back. Bitcoin was born out of the great financial crisis, right? The same. I'm sure Satoshi, whoever he, she, they might be, sort of had that same feeling that I did when they went on TV and said, we're gonna print all this money that we're being lied to. We need to find a fix for this. And it was born out of that, another huge adoption. Bo, of course, when Cyprus did the bail ins, right, 2013, and they said, we're going to take your money, it's in the bank account and we're going to give you a 25% haircut. And thank you very much, have a good day. Well, that can't happen with bitcoin. And that led to another huge burst of adoption. And then it really took until 2020 to have that next craze. I mean, of course 2017 was number go up, does a lot for getting new people on board. But in terms of 2020, I do think that you need that sort of negative catalyst, right? That thing that unites bitcoiners together in finding a solution versus some external threat that really is a menace to you and your way of life and those you care about. It's. It's having that external pressure outside, I think, is what drives people to find bitcoin and become sort of zealous about it, right, Because. Because you were able to find a shield, something to protect you and those you care about from something negative that's at the village gates. And so whether that be censorship in the future or another massive round of money printing, we've won a lot since 2022, during the FTX crash, since Larry Fink came out in 23 and said, I think I want to do a bitcoin etf. And then he got it approved, and then we got Trump and then we got a strategic bitcoin reserve. All these things allow us to pat ourselves in the back and say, hey, look, who cares about us? Like, we're, we're on the biggest stages. But that doesn't drive new people. Necessity does. And I think that bitcoin is going to be there, right? It's not missing a block. It's still running just as perfectly as it has for the last 17 years. So it will be there when people need it, and then we'll see the next great wave of adoption when shit hits the fan again.
- [38:15]
Walker
So you think it's the next wave of adoption is more likely to be driven by, let's say, a, A push than a, than a pull. Like more likely to be driven by people running away from pain than running toward pleasure. It's not that they're even running towards number go up. It's not. They're running towards. You know, we know that most people don't give a shit about whole, you know, unconfiscatable, uncensorable, immutable. But let's be honest, most people don't. A lot of us do, and that's. That's what matters, but most people don't. So you're saying it's going to be pain, running away from pain, that would be the driver of the next large adoption wave. Am I understanding correct?
- [38:52]
Rob Wallace
100%, dude. I mean, we're humans, right? We're primates. We like to coast when we can, and we really only change when we have to. And bitcoin is a change. It's a mental framework change that you need to make. And it's the running away from pain that forces you to do it. Yeah, I mean, I'm out here every single day talking about bitcoin. And also you got to provide that for people so that when they do wake up up, people wake up on their own levels. And I'm sure even today there's no major external catalyst, but there could be one around the corner. And eachbody finds it, each person finds it when they, when they need it. So the masses will. When we have that next big catalyst and.
- [39:33]
Walker
No, that's. It's fair. I mean, I. The other side of that, if I'm to play devil's advocate, I would say NGU is a great. Like NGU is bitcoin's best marketing like number go up. People want bitcoin. They don't want bitcoin when it's cheap. Right. Nobody wanted Bitcoin at 16k at the bottom. And for the, for those. I don't know if people remember if people weren't around. But like we were, we bumped around, we went up and down from right around 19k in 2022 so many times that Carl and I made a song. Well, I helped write it. Carla did all the singing and all the editing. But I was there, you know, you know, the sound of silence. But you know, starting out like hello 19 my old friend. Like we had hit 19k so many times over and over. You had so many opportunities to buy at 19k above it, below it. And then finally it did one last wick down to 16 and then that was it. Then it went up to 125 like and that. And like that was actually a pretty. You know, people say this last run was like disappointing. I don't know, was it like. It was a pretty hefty run. It wasn't a 20x, right. But it was like what, 8x? Something like that. 9x something to that effect. It was pretty decent. But nobody wants it at that point. When everybody's dancing on bitcoin's grave when Peter Schiff's got a hard on. Nobody wants bitcoin, but they want it once the number's pumping again. You know, humans are funny, man.
- [41:03]
Rob Wallace
They are. And I think the, the reason it. It pumps is when usually there's. There's something external bad going on. Right. Like Covid and the money printing and even the basement trade of. Of 20, 24, 25 was the same thesis that like, yeah, we're. Even though things might be hunky dory right now, we're still getting debased. We all are. And the, the largest money managers understand that too. And with the ETFs, they can finally allocate towards it. So, yeah, people run towards bitcoin when something scary is behind them. And that's what we've seen before and what we'll see again. And number go up is a great advertisement, of course, and it gets normies on board because usually something bad is causing that. But also it attracts the worst things too, right? When bitcoin pumps, all these other scams go up as well. And it attracts the charlatans and the stake oil salesmen that want to strip people from their money rather than see us all win by getting our fair share of sass.
- [42:03]
Walker
It is a very fair point that, okay, bitcoin, NGU tends to coincide with shit hitting the fan. So it's like those two are not mutually exclusive. It's not that, you know, it's. It's just one is a function of or at least correlated with the other, which I think is a, is a fair assessment. I think another point that I wanted to dig into a bit that you mentioned is just having the resources available for people because I'm sure, you know, first time you bought bitcoin from an atm, and certainly first time I heard about bitcoin from my buddy and, you know, 2014 or whatever. Not that I even bothered to look for resources, but if I would have, it would have been probably, you know, Andreas Antonopoulos, like a couple others, like, pretty meager. You fast forward to now, even if you go from 2020, when, when you and I really both went down the rabbit, you go from 2020 to now 2026. I mean, it's an exponential increase. Like BDC sessions alone. Who's been doing it longer than that? Obviously, what, 10 years now? Legend in the game. But even the amount of content that he's put out since then, the breadth and depth of content alone just from him is insane. And then you tack on all of the other people that came onto the scene, all the other educators from all different walks of life, it's like it's a night and day difference, man. And I'm curious if you think, is the bitcoin education media space broadly, is it saturated yet? Do we have enough, you know, do we have enough bitcoin podcasts? Do we have enough bitcoin news? Do we have enough bitcoin education out there? That. Okay, yeah, you know, people that are here, they'll keep producing what they're producing, but like there's enough for people to chew on or do we still have work to do? From an education, adoption, awareness, et cetera
- [43:39]
Rob Wallace
standpoint, you always need fresh blood. No matter what it is. Whether it's a school or a military or bitcoin ecosystem, you need new people to infuse new life ideas, perspectives on it. Because you never know who you're going to resonate with and who's going to resonate, resonate with you. And even if we have a whole lot of bitcoin podcasts right now, I'm sure there are some that you prefer to listen to than others, right? And so because of that, you got to put your, put your voice out there. If you love bitcoin, if you can't stop yourself from talking about it, you'll soon realize that the people around you, they'll either have understood it or they'll have gotten sick of you talking about it. So the best thing for you to do is try to go find out new people on the Internet to pitch it to. One thing that we're, I think we are missing right now is, is the meme energy, right? I mean, HODL and 6.15, all these things have fun staying poor. They were so vital back in 2020, 2021. And right now, I don't know if it's because the treasury companies or the suits are here or what it is, but yeah, we're missing some of that, that vital energy. And I think that comes from youth. I think that like having 40 year olds try to come up with the memes is very different than having a 22 year old come up with a meme, right? So it's, we need new people in this space. And I think I try to, you got to be on the platforms where they are too, right? Like I, I, I have TikTok on my phone because I'm making bitcoin videos to, to put on TikTok. Right. You know, I don't, look, I don't scroll TikTok, but I do post there because that's where people are. And so you got to be there and you got to meet them where, where they're at. Platforms and attention span too.
- [45:28]
Walker
No, that's, that's fair. TikTok is the, the one. I mean, when Carl and I started with, you know, the, the crypto couple, the bitcoin couple, we started on TikTok and that's where we went like very viral. It wasn't until later, like where they started shadow banning us for various things or outright taking down our videos that we were like, fuck this noise. And haven't been back there in a while. I have still never downloaded it, still haven't posted any content from the bitcoin podcast on there. If there's a zoomer out there who want to, you know, intern for me and, and handle TikTok, I would be very grateful. I will pay you in sats. So if you're, if you happen to be anyone listening to this, who wants to do that, hit me up. I. Because I don't want to do it, but it is important to meet people where they are. And on that demographic piece, I wanted to talk to you about that too, because I don't know about you, but from what I know about my own content, seeing the demographic info that I see from YouTube, from other people's, that I, you know, talking to other podcasters, people in the space, looking at demo info, it's like, it's hard to get into that 18 to 25 demo. I will often have like 0%, literally 0 in my YouTube. It'll be like 0% were 18 to 25 a lot in the late 20s, 30s, 30s to 40s, 40s to 50s boomers as well. I've got more boomers than gen zers. Shout out to the bitcoin boomers out there. You guys are based. You're the good boomers. But that's a tough demo to break into. And it, I think, my opinion at least, I'd like your thoughts. Thoughts. It's like, it's because they want to hear from people that are their own demographic. Like we, we naturally want that, right? We want to hear from people that are like us or similar to us, that we resonate with. And like it or not, Rob, we're getting old, you know, we're. We're getting old, you know, we're not cool anymore. Maybe we never were. You sound like you were probably cooler than me, given your hijinks. But, you know, I'm curious. Your take on that, I mean, is the other side of it is like, okay, a guy like Jordan Peterson, just as an example, off the top of my head, ends up appealing to a massive demographic of younger men, right? Or Andrew Tate appear appeals to a massive demographic of younger men outside of, you know, outside of their own demographics. Do you think that that's something that in the bitcoin space we should be focusing on, trying to find ways to target that demographic? And I don't mean targeting like the fiat way. I just mean actually like figuring out ways to get the content in front of them or find things that resonate or is that not our job? Is that where the fresh blood comes in, where we need young bitcoiners to step up, start making that content? And clearly there is an opening there, from what I've seen.
- [47:58]
Rob Wallace
There is. And it's a couple things. For one, they're so Internet native, right? Like, and I don't like to use the term brain rot, but a lot of that content that they've consumed from a very early age is, is brain rot, right? Like with the multiple, multiple things happening on one scre just to keep your attention for 15 seconds. And in order to understand bitcoin, you got to study, you got to do the hard work. Like, there's, there's no easy way into becoming a hardcore bitcoiner. You gotta, you gotta read, you gotta watch, you gotta listen. You should also be writing and creating things to get your thoughts out there, see if you truly understand them. Because that's the best way to understand, if you know, if you. To see if you understand something is to, of course, express it, to teach it, and try to tell other people about it. So when it comes to these kids, yeah, I think it would be great to have Gen Z content creators getting out there, making their own stuff that appeals to that. But also I think younger guys want to look up to older guys who they see as successful, right, who have been able to do it. So I think there still is a place for us. We're both bitcoin dads now. And being able to have a family in the 2000s is a task to into of itself, right? Like, there's a lot of people who just say, no, it costs too much. I don't want to have kids. Well, that's, that's crazy. I think by showing that you, you want that, you were able to execute it, do it yourself. And that bitcoin helped you get there is a great example for younger people and hopefully they will jump on that train and realize that. Because more than bitcoin podcasters, we probably need more bitcoin babies.
- [49:41]
Walker
Bitcoin baby NGU is a powerful thing. It's like you don't need the orange pill. Still a baby, you know, if you're raising them right, they're going to be bitcoiners. You've got to shoe in for the next generation. I think that that is one of the incredible things about bitcoin that at least I've seen. I Mean, it's certainly been true for me, for my family, probably for yours, for a lot of bitcoiners that I've talked to, whether it's on the Internet or in person. You know, bitcoin giving them the confidence to be able to start a family just from a. From a pro, especially from a man's perspective, from a provider's perspective, saying, yep, like, I. You know, I may not. I. I'm gonna keep working. I'm gonna keep doing. I can't sit back and rest my laurels. I'm not an OG who's been stacking or, you know, who bought a bunch of bitcoin when it was $2, right? You know, I've been stacking all the way up to the recent tops, all the way down the recent bottoms. Gonna keep doing it. But you do that for enough years, you get a lot of breathing room. Even if your stack's not yet where you want it to be, you still have that breathing room. You still have that cushion. You know, you've got this incredible sound money that you can always fall back on, and that frees you up to be able to do the things that are like having bitcoin itself, just accumulating. Bitcoin is not the goal, Right? The goal is what bitcoin allows you to do. Money itself is never the end. Money is the means. But the problem is that broken money is a broken means. And, you know, sound money is a. Is a sound means, right? And. And so I think that what I've seen, just the microcosm of the bitcoin community and how many babies are being made in this small, crazy, niche Internet psychopath community. It's amazing. And you look at the declining birth rates everywhere. You look at the increasing nihilism everywhere. You look at the people just who are not getting married at all, not having kids at all, all of this. So much of it. I think people give bitcoiners shit for, like, oh, you're oversimplifying. You can't. It's not just, you know, it's not always, just fix the money, fix the world. But, boy, a lot of things get fixed when you fix the money. And you know, this is true because it's true on the individual level, and it will be true on the societal level. The problem is, I think it takes a long time to get there. But every new bitcoiner counts, right? Every new bitcoiner helps every new person who decides to start a family, raise their kids the best way they know how. Like, it moves the needle Even if it's slowly. And I think it's important for us to remember that like these little things may not seem important at the time, but they add up and they do make a huge difference,
- [52:08]
Rob Wallace
100%. A funny thing that Marty Benz says is that like, yeah, Gen Z is not getting it right now, but we're having kids and so we'll just skip a generation and then it'll just be an army of bitcoiners. Right. And so that's one way to look at it. But it gives you hope too, right? Not just a financial cushion, but, but hope. And in my earlier conspiracy theory days, like thinking that you needed to get some gold and silver and bullets and you'd be able to hunker down and ride out a Mad Max situation. Well, bitcoin gives you the belief, the hope that the world might and will be different in the not too distant future. But there's a way for you to ride that wave that looks possibly better than what we have right now. There's not just a doomer mindset because once you get into that frame of thinking, you don't want to do anything else, right. And it's a lot easier just to rest back and try to get into the hedonistic spiral. Just like I need to live for today because I don't know what's going to come next. Bitcoin allows you of course to delay some of that gratification and believe that there's something better on the horizon. So the hope is just as powerful as the financial.
- [53:21]
Walker
The world doesn't. We need more hope, right? We need more bright orange optimism. I'm curious because, you know, if we keep going down this path, we're going to get extremely out into the either very esoteric out here. And I love it, I love it. But I, I want to bring us back a little bit as well because otherwise I will be the one leading us down this, this very feel good rabbit hole but, but one that perhaps not everyone's ready for yet. So I want to bring it back a little bit to just the good old fashioned news side of things. There's a lot going on right now, to put it mildly in the bitcoin world, in the larger world, but focusing kind of on where we're at right now again in the adoption cycle we clarified earlier, like, look, retail never really made it here. They're probably not going to come back in large numbers until there's a big push, until. And that push being from something negative happening, some sort of a breakdown. I'm curious what your kind of general vibe check is on. Are we at a point right now where we are about to kind of come out the other side of all the chaos that we're seeing? Are we, are we closer to a. Maybe put a different way, are we closer to the start of a first turning or are we still in the depths of the fourth, if you know what I mean?
- [54:40]
Rob Wallace
I mean the Bugle guys like to joke that we're, we're already in the first turning. Dude, just open your eyes. We're in the first turning.
- [54:46]
Walker
I love those guys.
- [54:48]
Rob Wallace
Maxi madness ending right now. But dude, no, we haven't seen the end of this fourth turning. There's no way. I mean, of course you got to go back 80 years. World War II, Civil War, Revolutionary War. These things have blow off tops, right? And it's only after a blow off top in terms of chaos and just the table being flipped over, are you able to start a new, new rules and have new lines in the sand for a, another 80 years of civilization to, to grow on top of it. So, so I mean, I don't like to say that of course, but yeah, this, this is forth turning. It's just getting turned on. Right? If you read the book, of course they say it started in 2008, but they said that it should peak around 2030. You know, that's 22 years later. These, these turnings are around 25 years apiece. And so yeah, I, I don't think we're going to see the first turning till the 2030. So four more years left of the 2000s. It's been quite the decade thus far. Let's keep going. But another thing is there's only so much you can control, right? By spending so much. I spend too much time on X, right. I do it for a living. I'm scrolling all day. I do think that I've built up some cognitive security. Try not to let things hit me too much much. Sometimes they do. Like this weekend. To be completely honest, it's sort. I was in the shower and it just sort of hit me like, wait, so the straight of Hormuz is closed? Oil could be going to 200, $300 a barrel. What, like, what does that mean for me and this baby, right? Like this is the first time I've had to face like a global crisis with, with a baby in the house. And it, it changes things for sure. But all you can do is care about those and yourself and those around you, right? And you gotta be mentally, physically and spiritually. Fit. So meditate, read, take time off of screens and appreciate. Gratitude is a hell of a drug. It's a hell of a drug. And you can turn any situation upside down if you just are able to zoom in on what you can be thankful for. Because no matter what situation you're in, I mean of course, Viktor Frankl, whatever, no matter where you are, you can find something thing that day to be grateful for. And if you can just put on those glasses, it will make your life a whole lot better than if you're constantly looking for the thing that's wrong.
- [57:22]
Walker
That is a damn good piece of advice. I'm curious on taking a slightly different tack here. What's your read broadly on treasury companies? This is like a total 180 here, but I follow your guys feed pretty close. You guys do a lot of coverage of treasury companies. Obviously there's kind of, there's strategy and there's everyone else. Right. Just both from a size and I think from a operational perspective as well. But I'd love your view on it. As somebody who spends a lot of time covering this, looking at this stuff, analyzing it, talking about it, what's your overall assessment on them? Just kind of like, just personally like you know, good, bad, ugly, indifferent, inevitable, whatever. And then where do you sit on the, you know, are these a winner take all or winner, you know, a couple winners take all sort of thing. Is strategy just gonna eclipse everything or is there a lot of room for these other players? I'd love to hear what you think.
- [58:19]
Rob Wallace
Yeah, it's funny when you are able to look back and realize that you were in the midst of a mania. The space, it was, you know, May last year, it was just like, like any mom and pop shop who put a couple bitcoin on the balance sheet, they were able to triple their stock price. And you had coffee shops in Spain doing it. And it was really all gravitated around the conference last year like in Vegas, it was the, the suit show and it was, it was fun and everybody thought that like this was going to take Bitcoin to 200, 300, $400,000 because all these companies were going to do it. And it was a, you couldn't lose. You couldn't lose as long as you bought bitcoin coin. And now we're a year later. And I mean I, I respect it. I think it's a natural part of what's going to happen. You know, bitcoin, like bitcoin sovereign money, anybody's going to be able to go out there and purchase it and benefit their balance sheet by buying it. But it's the, the motivations of those who do that determines whether it'll be successful or not. Because as you know, you got to be able to, to ride these waves and a lot of these companies aren't. I think a lot of newbies got burned. You know, when you first get into bitcoin, you realize everybody thinks they're too late. No matter if you got in in 2012 or 2022, you think, oh, I missed the boat, I need to try to catch up. And whether that's getting into shitcoins in the beginning or treasury companies this last go around, a lot of new people pot treasury companies. I mean, I remember seeing this dude saying, I'm going with the better money. I want 100% MSTR, 0% Bitcoin. And it's just like, like guys have lost the plot here, right? There was so much, so much of losing the plot. And I mean it was really. I mean Odell said this. I like going on Twitter. Last year it turned into LinkedIn because everybody was just congratulating each other for getting a spot on a Treasury company, right? And yeah, it's. At the end of the day, they're only going to be handful of winners, right? MSTR is going to run America. I do think what Metaplanet is doing in Japan, it's going completely different jurisdiction, different rules and laws over there. Because of that, I do think that they are in good position to win. They've got a fat stack. They're at number four now, I think on the list at 35, 000 Bitcoin. We just saw Marathon today sell 15000 Bitcoin. Right? They were sitting at number two with over 50000 Bitcoin and they just sold 15000 of them in order to fund their pivot to, to AI and clear up some of the debt on their balance sheet. Because they were manic too. And in the middle of the euphoria, they took out a billion dollars of convertible notes in order to go buy $95,000 Bitcoin. And then they went and sold it at 65. Right? These corporates really don't. They don't have the balls, dude. They don't have the testicular fortitude to ride it out. And they do have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. But bitcoin doesn't follow those rules. So. So yeah, I mean it's. I'm sort of glad that the whole entire like the froth Is is out of the system. Hopefully some new cooler narratives can, can come up because of it. But yeah, I mean, and now we're seeing this whole perpetual preferred stocks, right? These strc and SATA getting 11%. But again, the numbers came out today and I think Fong Lee, the CEO of MSTR said that the purchasers of STRC stretch 80% are retail.
- [61:55]
Walker
Wow.
- [61:56]
Rob Wallace
This is supposed to be an institutional product, right? This is supposed to be the answer to all these big boys, these insurance companies who need that coupon to go out and get this Wall street product that provides a high yield, but it's retail buying it right now. So yeah, it's an experiment, right. And they're learning in real time. And owning 760,000 bitcoin allows you to have a cushion and figure things out on the fly. But for a lot of these guys, no. And I'm just so glad that I was able to get into the space before this whole entire thing so I wasn't caught up in it and was walking around wearing an orange tie 24 7.
- [62:42]
Walker
My digression, nothing against the guys wearing the orange ties. Sailor, since I know you listen to every episode of my podcast. This is not about you. You look great in the orange tie, man. Not about you, just to clarify here, but let's say it's about everyone else who decided to, you know, be a follower instead of a leader. Like Sailor was the leader with the orange tie. You know what I mean? That's cool. Doing the same thing as everyone else is doing, man, that's not cool. But my, my father in law, he always says like Walker is escaped communism. He's a badass dude. He's like, what's the difference between a necktie and a cow's tail? And it's like, I don't know. What is it? Well, the cow's tail covers the entire asshole. And I was like, yeah, just beautiful. Beautiful. I'm curious, I mean, do you think we're gonna. Because you're spot on about the kind of the conference in Vegas last year and that really being like the. Yeah, baby. It's up only forever now. Look at all that. These companies to be playing the, the Fiat system like a fiddle. They're going to be buying so much corn. Like it's up only forever now. Most of those are down aggressively.
- [63:51]
Rob Wallace
Yeah.
- [63:51]
Walker
From, from their highs and even from the conference time. You think you guys, you'll be in Vegas. I, I assume again this year. You think we see as many suit corners or do you think they're a little bit more quiet. Maybe they're tightening up the travel budgets. What's. What's your read on that?
- [64:07]
Rob Wallace
I think it's still going to be a big narrative. I mean, NACA is the ones who are throwing this event, and, I mean, they're the poster child for this. Right. I mean, I just saw a clip of David Bailey talking about raising money for NACA to buy Bitcoin. And when they started off with their fundraising initiative, they wanted to raise a hundred million. Well, he said that he was on the phone from 6am to 2am for weeks on end, and. And they were just. They went up to 700 million. They raised $700 million. People could not get enough. They were. They're knocking down the doors trying to get a part of these companies. And now we see that they went from $32 to 26 cents. Right. I mean, it's like insane, insane drawdowns. Much worse than anything we've seen in bitcoin ever. Right. Other than the very early days, drew down to a penny. But, yeah, I. I think it'll still be a part. I mean, these treasury companies will still exist. They're pl. They're. I mean, and again, at the. We just saw the latest numbers this quarter. Other treasury companies bought just 2% of the total treasury company buying a bitcoin, and MSTR bought 98%. Right. So they're not buying right now. So I don't know if they've got money to send people to Vegas, but it's. Yeah. You know what I'm trying to say?
- [65:38]
Walker
Yeah, yeah. No, it's. Oh, boy. Yeah, that's. I mean, it's. It's wild what Sailor has done. I know Sailor gets a lot of grief. Like, a lot of people may think, like, oh, you know, he's like the, you know, original, you know, suit coiner, progenitor. Right. Or whatever. But, like, from everything that I have seen, Sailor been privileged to interact with him, you know, in person a couple of times. Like, first of all, he's. Boy, he's one of the smartest people I've ever interacted with. The guy, you. If you, okay, you don't like him, whatever. But say what you will about him, the guy is in. Has, in my opinion, done more in terms of the, you know, evangelization of bitcoin than everyone, except maybe a couple other people. Like, the sheer amount of podcast appearances, like Lyn Alden, Jeff Booth, they do a lot of podcasts, too. Sailor. Actually, I don't know. Those three would be in A, a tough competition for who does the most podcasts, but the guy has done an incredible job evangelizing. And yeah, he, you know, he explains things, uses analogies that maybe some people might not like at times or. Well, that's not exactly how it works. It's like, yeah, the point of an analogy is not to be exact. Right? The point of an analogy is to make somebody think a little bit differently. To put something in a way that, that makes something click for them. And he's made it click for a lot of people and shout out to Eric Weiss for actually being the one to orange pill sailor in the first place. Right? Like this, that talk about the butterfly effect, like that, that action and the ripple effects that it has, has created and will create throughout time. It's, it's fascinating. But I mean as, as, as we sit here now, it seems as though strategy is not slowing down. As you said, they've purchased what, 98% of all the treasury company buying that's been done. The other treasury companies have had to sell some strategy, to my knowledge. Have they sold a single SAT today date? I mean, at, at any point?
- [67:25]
Rob Wallace
Never.
- [67:26]
Walker
And like amidst all the talk of it's always, you know, sailors, sailors about to get liquidated. He's about to get liquidated, always from usually the crypto, you know, bitcoin hating, crypto loving, moon boy type guys. You, you see that from a lot. Or the Peter shifts. They're like two sides of the same coin really. But I mean, I'm curious your thoughts. Does, does. Are, is there any part of you that worries about strategy at all? That worries about, you know, okay, even if Saylor has the best intentions, like is, is he creating something that may be even too big for him to handle at some point? Like the guy's going to be, he's already one of the richest people in the world. He's already a billionaire. I think he's going to be, I mean, give it 10 years. Like it's going to be like him, Elon Musk and a couple other people will be like the richest people in the world. That is my opinion. I think as far as people being richest people in the world go, he's not a bad one, honestly. Like, he's, he's pretty darn mission aligned. I have this idea that he's actually, he plays the suit corner role very well, but he is more subversive than you might think. He has never said anything to make me think that guys, if the government's listening, he has no subversive Plans. I'm just, just my read. Just my read. I think he's more of a revolutionary than he lets on. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm wrong, maybe, maybe I'm the cuck here. I don't know. Just love your read on it broadly because a lot of people are always shrieking about strategy. Is this huge risk there, this huge risk. What's your take?
- [68:49]
Rob Wallace
It's not a risk. They've got $2 billion in cash to pay these dividends, right. And they've got about $50 billion in Bitcoin. That means that they can pay the dividends for the next 75 plus years and they'll be fine. There is no liquidation risk when it comes to strategy. If we look at giant holders of bitcoin, I mean BlackRock, they've got roughly the same amount of bitcoin right now. I mean of course it's not BlackRock owning it, they own it on behalf of the ETF holders, but they have a fat stack of bitcoin themselves. And of course there's Satoshi stack, or we think it's Satoshi stack of 1.1 million bitcoins and that's roughly 5% of the entire issuance. So of course we've seen that bitcoin can function just fine if there's, there's large pools of bitcoin owned by one party here. So I don't think that's the risk in terms of the long term plans. I mean, look at Saylor in terms of his past. He grew up as an Air Force brat, right. He spent some time in New Zealand because his dad was in the military. Then he goes to mit. There's lots of connections between the US government and mit. And, and now we have a sovereign wealth fund, right? And the sovereign wealth fund just bought a portion of intel and we have talked about building a strategic bitcoin reserve. If you look at Google Maps and the location of Tyson Hill where strategy is headquartered in the distance to Langley, the headquarters of the CIA. They're not far from each other.
- [70:29]
Walker
Other.
- [70:30]
Rob Wallace
Right. So I do, honestly, I'm putting on again my, my tinfoil hat here, but I think he does seem like a patriot. And Larry Lard says that he's one of the smartest guys he's ever met and that he very well could run for president in 2032, something like that. So yeah, I think there might be some connections there between Michael Sailor and the United States government. Maybe he got the nod early on in some said, you got a job here, boy. Go, go do it. And he's done a hell of a job doing it. But I don't know. I mean, of course I'm just throwing things out there, but there's a lot of different pieces of evidence to maybe draw some conclusions. But at the end of the day, bitcoin doesn't care. Bitcoin's going to exist. And Even if the US government does wind up owning 5 million Bitcoin, Bitcoin will still be able to succeed and provide what it the people from around the world who, who use it.
- [71:26]
Walker
I, I agree with that. And yeah, of course, we're just. Michael, because again, I know you're a regular listener to the bitcoin podcast. We're, we're just, we're just shooting the, shooting the breeze here. Michael, am I, am I getting a
- [71:37]
Rob Wallace
little too out of bounds here?
- [71:40]
Walker
No, no, no, not at all. Because this is, this is bitcoin. There is no out of bounds. Right? That's the, that's the beauty. This is an uncensored show and I know Michael, as a regular listener appreciates that. And I appreciate, appreciate him buying up so much corn. And that's, that's the other thing when, when I hear people to your point about like, yeah, okay, Bitcoin doesn't care. The government buys try or tries to buy. Try would be the operative word. Tries to buy 5 million bitcoin. Okay. Like, I think what a lot of people who are gnashing their teeth about either institutional or state based adoption of bitcoin maybe fail to understand is like, this is what bitcoin winning looks like. If bitcoin was going to be successful, if bitcoin is successful, of course, every individual, every family, every company, every, every country is going to want to own as much of it as they can. This is a symptom of bitcoin's success. This is not a sign that bitcoin is somehow failing or not working. Have the properties of bitcoin changed? The underlying fundamentals of bitcoin? Has the 21 million supply cap changed? Has its unconfiscatable, uncensorable nature changed? No, no, no. So nothing's changed there. Bitcoin is still Bitcoin. And because of its properties, everyone who is paying attention wants some. So to me, I look at this and I say, yeah, like, you don't have to like it. We don't have to cheer it, but it's the reality. It's the natural, natural evolution of where this was always going to go. Luckily we had, you know, over a Decade of time where no corporations and no governments or very few corporations, non. You know, anyone outside of the bitcoin space, let's say any. Nobody was paying attention to it, or they were paying attention to it, but thought it was some little thing, it was going to fizzle out, die off. Okay, yep, cute little project for, you know, magic Internet money nerds. But it's not going away. Bitcoin is here to stay. Bitcoin is winning. There's a growing acknowledgment of bitcoin winning. So of course this is what we're going to see. See, this is what it looks like when bitcoin is winning. Now you again, you don't have to like it, but you should acknowledge that this is what reality looks like and also say, hmm, well, I guess if this is what reality looks like, where does this go next? You can pretty easily draw. Draw that line right, to say, okay, well, this is only going to accelerate. Given that it's only going to accelerate, how should I alter my actions in the present? As you know, how should I stack our. How should I create more value? How should I do what I can to evangelize more of my fellow plebs? If that's what you're. If that's what you wanted, you want individuals to hold more bitcoin, no one's stopping you. You know what I mean? You can just do things. You can just go out there and start a bitcoin podcast, start a bitcoin news channel, do just talk to people at a farmer's market. I don't know, be like Ben Justman and go out there and just put a bitcoin preferred sign and sell your wine. You make with your own bare hands. You know, like, you can be steak and shake and start giving your employees. Start giving your employees a bitcoin bonus for every hour they work. That's cool. Like, you can just do things, guys. So, like, hey, I. I don't even have a question here, Rob. Just, just more just the statement of.
- [74:50]
Rob Wallace
I've got a response.
- [74:51]
Walker
What bitcoin winning looks like. Yeah, yeah, no, I would love your. But like, so much gnashing of teeth when it's like, guys, we're not going to change reality. What you can change is your own behavior. Focus on what you can change. Change, not what you cannot change. And celebrate the fact that, look, this means bitcoin is winning.
- [75:09]
Rob Wallace
The greatest hope for bitcoin is that it separates money from state. And if it separates money from state, every state is going to need some Bitcoin, that's just how it boils down to, right? Like these. We want to rip the money printer out of their hands, and they're not going to do it willingly. They're going to do it because their situation they've got themselves in has been so horribly destroyed. I mean, we're at $39 trillion worth of debt, right? When Trump first got in in 2017, it was 19 trillion. Now, less than a decade later, it's 39 trillion. And over the next 30 years, they project that we're gonna have to spend a hundred trillion just in interest. A hundred trillion in interest. Right.
- [75:50]
Walker
Like insane.
- [75:52]
Rob Wallace
There's, there's no coming back from that. And we're going to live through it. We're going to live through the transition of the dollar, whatever that means. And as we're both Americans, right, we've had this exorbitant privilege of being able to be born into the country that issues the dollar, that uses it. The whole entire world is forced to use it. And because of that, we've had cheap energy and food and life is easier in America because we use the dollar. But as bitcoiners, we're willing to give that up, right? Because we believe that we're going to see a better world on the other side of it, where this money printer is at the Federal Reserve, and that states need to use Bitcoin because bitcoin separates money from state.
- [76:33]
Walker
That's actually such an important point here that I'll double tap on for a second because I've heard that argument. Not your argument. Your argument, I believe, is absolutely correct. I've heard the opposition to that, which is, oh, I thought bitcoin was about separating money from state, but now the state is adopting bitcoin themselves. It's a like, okay, let's add a different. Let's add one more word in there. It's about separating the creation of money from state or about separating the control of money from state. Holding bitcoin does not give you control over bitcoin. That's one of the whole points, right. Does it make you a significant economic actor to hold a million Bitcoin? Of course. Do you, if you're custody that yourself, if you're running your own node, do you have a very large economic note? Yes, absolutely. Still doesn't give you unilateral control? Control. And the beautiful thing about Bitcoin is if you do hold that much bitcoin, it's not in your best interest. The game theory doesn't work out for you. To sabotage bitcoin. That is one of the other beautiful things that I, I come back to again and again, Rob, just about the. I don't know, sometimes I wonder with Satoshi and I'd love your opinion on it. What was he, she. They just that brilliant. Were they actually game through so many of these different things that we think about now and like you know, galaxy brain meme or did they just get a lot of the fundamentals right, a lot of the first principles right. And that naturally led to the game theory on second, third, fourth order effects also being brilliant, you know? Do you know what I mean? Because like some of the stuff you think about, it's like if you are a large holder of bitcoin, you have an economic incentive not to fuck up bitcoin. That fact alone combined with all the other game theoretical parts of bitcoin, but that fact alone is so powerful. It's so powerful. And unless you're willing to put up a lot of money, if you don't hold bitcoin, but you want to somehow hurt bitcoin, the amount of money that it would take you to do that, if we're even just from 51% attack standpoint, right? You don't have it. You don't have that money. And if you are a government, you try to print that money, you're going to bankrupt yourself. Like it's. But I'm curious, your take was Sato did Satoshi galaxy brain this think about every eventuality or is bitcoin's simplicity in architecture and game theory from a first principles level such that all of the rest of this perceived brilliance was really just a natural consequence of getting the basics right? Do you know what I mean?
- [79:01]
Rob Wallace
Yeah. I think nothing can stop an idea whose time has come come. And 2008, 2009, it was just the perfect. All the ingredients were there, just like the, the spark of life on planet Earth, right? Was it a lightning bolt? Who knows. But it was a, it was an idea that, that he had. He was able to put all these pieces together. I mean cryptography goes back hundreds and thousands of years, right? I mean people have been trying to hide messages from their enemies for a long time and allow their friends to decrypt them. Since the beginning of warfare and now we've gotten to a point whether it's the inter Internet and the need for it too, right? Because I think back in 2008, what was the, the national debt? It was, it was under 10 trillion, that's for sure. Right? But it was still gotten to a Point it took us from 1776 to 1980 to get the first trillion. And then we had what, 10x it by then and now we've 4x since there. So it was. He stood on the shoulders of giants. Of course people had been doing lots of different, different trying to figure out how to do digital gold for a long time since the birth of the Internet almost and cryptography has been going on much longer than that. But yeah, all the pieces just line up together and it was such a beautiful simple design that, that it worked. And the, as you mentioned before, the incentives are there. It's a, it's a Mexican standoff and everybody benefits by not screwing it up. So let's all, let's all win together. Just like we should all go on each other's podcast.
- [80:26]
Walker
Yes, we really should. And we're getting right up against the edge of our time here. But I do want to point out to you I just checked real quick. Looks like the US national debt at the end of 2007 was around 9 trillion, which is just like it's laughable now we've added that in the last few years. It's insane. Shout out to Lyn Alden. I think economic macro means of the decade, dare I say of the century, of the millennia. Perhaps nothing stops this train fiscal dominance. They just got to keep kicking the can down the road. And I could keep kicking the proverbial can down the road with you, Rob, all day long. When it comes to the conversation though, it never feels like kicking the can because it's not. I don't know, we're doing something else. We're shooting the can with the high powered rifle or something. I don't know, something more American. But thank you for your time here today, man. Seriously could go on for way longer. But I try to be respectful of people's scarce time as much as I can. And we are at the end of ours. Where do you want to send people? I hi. I want people to go and follow you. If they're not, I want you to get a personal account on Nostr too. Do that for me. That's. I don't, I don't usually give homework and you gotta do it, you know, and that way I'll blast you out. Get everybody following you there too. You guys do great work. But where can people find out, where can they follow, like subscribe newsletter, et cetera. Send people where you. You want.
- [81:48]
Rob Wallace
Yeah, we're on Noster. Bitcoin Newscom on X. Same Bitcoin Newscom. Two things that I would like people to check out if they have the. The time and energy. Our newsletter, Bitcoin News Weekly, comes out every Monday morning. That's awesome. Full roundup of the last week's news gets you caught up, ready for the week ahead. And then we're going live five days a week on X, LinkedIn, YouTube. We're the Daily Stack. So we're covering Bitcoin markets, AI, everything but 12:30 Eastern, five days a week. A week. Really fun new initiative that we started this year. Would be great to have people come check it out. We just did our first live event at Pub Key two weeks ago, so we're going to be doing that on a monthly basis.
- [82:30]
Walker
How'd it go, by the way? I think I was just. I was on your show, I think, right before you guys were doing the event. I assume it went swimmingly.
- [82:36]
Rob Wallace
Yeah, yeah, no, it was great. We had like 120 people sign up. It was a packed house. And yeah, we talked about navigating the bear market. Right. And so each month we're going to focus on something new and I think we might do a, A like claudebot type of workshop next time. So. Always something interesting coming out.
- [82:56]
Walker
Nice. I haven't taken the cloudbot plunge yet, so perhaps that would be enough to, to entice me. But Rob, appreciate your time, man. This was a treat. And also shout out to everybody who joined in on the NOSTR live stream. The bitcoin podcast streams live on nostr and I appreciate every one of you who zapped me SATs during this stream. Sincerely, thank you for sharing a scarce piece of absolutely finite 21 million Bitcoin with me for doing this stream. It means a lot. Sincerely, I know you worked hard for those SATs, so thank you for sharing them. Thank you for tuning in. Thanks for the comments in the chat. There were some good ones there. I need to start reading those live. I'm just, I'm not quite as good as, you know, Adele and Odell and Marty at this thing. I'm working on it, guys. I'm working on my stream.
- [83:39]
Rob Wallace
It's.
- [83:40]
Walker
But Rob Wallace from Bitcoin News. Thank you, brother. This was a pleasure. Best to you. Keep up the great work and yeah, we'll do it again soon. We'll cross pollinate again soon.
- [83:48]
Rob Wallace
Cheers now. Thank you. Anytime.
- [83:57]
Walker
And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin Talk episode of the Bitcoin podcast. Remember to subscribe to this podcast wherever you're watching, watching or listening and share it with your friends, family and strangers on the Internet. Find me on noster@primal.net walker and this podcast@primal.netcoin on X, YouTube and Rumble. Just search at Walker America and find this podcast on X and Instagram at Titcoin Podcast. Head to the Show Notes to grab sponsor links, head to substack.com walker America to get episodes emailed to you, and head to bitcoin podcast.net for everything else. Bitcoin is scarce, but podcasts are abundant. So thank you for spending your scarce time listening to the Bitcoin podcast. Until next time, stay free.