← THE Bitcoin Podcast
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- [00:00]
Jeff Booth
Freedom is very different than a potentially controlled system. They cannot exist together. One system gets worse. It has to be a complete surveillance state. One system gets better. Your time is going to tell you which system is going to win. But they cannot coexist. The natural state of the free market is deflation. If bitcoin stayed decentralized and secure, it is the first free market that's ever existed. It's not bitcoin that's changing, it's us moving from a zero sum game to an infinite gain. But we wouldn't have the map of what the infinite gain looks like, because we've never lived in that map. Nothing has changed in bitcoin. Nothing. This is money. It's going to be money. And the more you use it as money, the faster it becomes money. But even if you don't use it as money, it's becoming a money.
- [00:44]
Walker America
Why was this something that you felt it important to focus on now? Greetings and salutations my fellow plebs. My name is Walker and this is the Bitcoin Podcast. Bitcoin continues to make new blocks every 10 minutes and the value of one bitcoin is still one bitcoin. If you are listening to this right now, remember you're still early. This episode is brought to you by Blockware. What if you could lower your tax bill and stack bitcoin at the same time? Well, with blockware you can. New US tax rules let miners write off 100% of their mining hardware in a single year, so earn Bitcoin daily while saving big come tax season. Get started at mining.blockware solutions.com TitCoin use the code TitCoin to get $100 off your first miner when using the Blockware marketpl. This is not tax advice, so go speak to the team at Blockware to Learn more. That's mining.blockwaresolutions.com Titcoin Head to the Show Notes for links to find the show on centralized social media platforms and on Nostr. Or just go directly to bitcoin podcast.net you'll find it all there and kind reminder that you can support this show by becoming a paid subscriber on Fountain. Or don't. Bitcoin doesn't care, but I sure do appreciate it. Without further ado, let's get into this Bitcoin talk. You you know I've been very excited you've been on this show a number of times and I've got to say I'm very grateful for you always sharing your time. I think between like between you and, and Lyn, you two have both been on so many different podcasts. And I think for every podcast both of you two go on, and I, I call you both out specifically because I noticed that no matter what podcast you guys go on, that podcast does numbers. And I think it's because both of you, and you happen to both be, you know, work together as well at Eco Death, you both break things down in a beautifully simple way. Two different approaches, but incredibly, incredibly coherent and clear in the way that you break things down. And it clearly resonates with people. So anytime I can have you on, it's an opportunity, kind of almost like a touch point with reality for me and I think for people who listen as well. And so excited to chat with you. There's a lot of interesting things happening. You've just come back from El Salvador. We're going to talk about that a little bit. But maybe as a place to start. We were just mentioning this before we went live, but the idea that right now there seems to be a lot of chaos. And if, you know, we won't specifically mention the fiat price of bitcoin, the infinitely printable fiat buck price of Bitcoin, but it is, it is languishing lower than people would like it to be, apparently. And there seems to be a lot of sentiment out there that is just very, very negative. People are very worried. And I would just love your overall take on this. Is this something that is, you know, are we, does it, does it matter if we're in a bear market right now? Are we in a bear. Did the cycles ever exist? Are the cycles broken? What do you attribute this? Just general, I don't know, malaise or discontent that people are feeling right now. Like, is it all just the price action or is there something deeper there?
- [03:55]
Jeff Booth
Yeah, it's obviously the price action in US Dollars. So people say it doesn't affect them, but every time they measure it in that currency, then of course it's affecting them. So we know that there's a tightening of liquidity conditions in the world, and that tightening of liquidity conditions is creating credit problems globally. Those credit problems, if you saw the, the auto loans and delayed in payments or late, late auto loans were off the charts more than 2006, 2007, 2008. The LPs in funds like real estate and private equity funds like real estate are prohibited to get out of those because those haven't been marked to market. So there's, there's, there's a whole bunch of tightening liquidity positions that people thought that their money was worth X. It isn't worth. Like I love what Larry says. Larry Leopard it's already gone to money heaven. And, and the belief. And the belief is it's still. So it hasn't been mark to market. And there's a whole bunch of these that any. That the tightening liquidity conditions will create more of these that'll get exposed and that exposure will start to move into other industries because those people who thought they had money are paying other people who thought they had money and that'll tighten. So we've been. The Fed has been removing liquidity for a while and every time they do, you hit these events come from nowhere that have always been there. That then will cascade, which will create a whole bunch of need for liquidity. It's not just the Fed, but it's a global liquidity that's needed. And when we say liquidity, that's just grant money out of nothing. And the irony is everybody's measuring what bitcoin is worth through that. If the money never was printed, then bitcoin would fall a lot more and it would be the only thing of value in the world because everything else would fall to almost zero. So but I think the cause for concern or what people are doing, nothing has changed in bitcoin. Nothing. Every 10 minutes there's a new block the builders are building. All of the layers are being built. Is being used as a circular economy money in many different communities around the world. And it's growing extraordinarily fast because retail hasn't bought or Michael Saylor can't buy because his engine just went into reverse. Doesn't mean bitcoin isn't successful and isn't imposing success. It does mean that if you take in leverage, you could get liquidated. And lots of people have been taking leverage in this.
- [07:24]
Walker America
Well, yeah. And it's such a great point. Price action, like remove price action from the equation, which is difficult for a lot of folks. Like, and I'm not saying it's easy for me.
- [07:34]
Jeff Booth
Right.
- [07:35]
Walker America
Like, obviously it's nice to see bitcoin going up. I like seeing bitcoin go down as well because it means my dollars buy me more SATs than they did the day before when my DCAs hit. Right. But at this same time, if you can remove yourself from that. It's been an incredibly bullish, let's say on Bitcoin as a medium of exchange period for these past couple weeks. Just speaking of the announcements that Square and Cash app had opening up bitcoin to bitcoin acceptance to over 4 million merchants, which is incredible. Right? Incredible. Cash app talking about using Bitcoin as the actual Rails even for settling USD and things like this. To me, these sorts of medium of exchange announcements and things that further the ability of everyday people to use Bitcoin either purposefully or without even knowing it by using the Bitcoin network, to me those are incredibly bullish developments. Those are things that I look at and say that's great. That is just great for a freedom go up standpoint. Right. For actually getting more bitcoin out there and circulating it through these economies. Are there other things that you're looking at? Because obviously you're closely involved with Fetty through the work that you do at ego death and advising them. Some of these other projects like I guess maybe first, what was your take on the square announcements? Were you equally as excited about that? And then are there other things that you're seeing from the medium of exchange standpoint that are making you go wow, this is an incredible time.
- [08:57]
Jeff Booth
Yeah, there's nothing to worry about doing this. This is imposing a new discipline in the world. I'm not like I just the other nonsense. I just don't pay any attention to it. I traveled for two weeks in Southeast Asia with Miles Souter who's leading the efforts on the Cash app and he's just such a genuine incredible guy who also understands where this is going. Obviously he would have jacked us, but he's a bitcoiner. He knows it needs to be used as a bitcoin as a medium of exchange and they've done as far as a public company, There is no public company that has done more to accelerate this including investing in open source and some of the stuff than Cash app and Miles has done so fortunate to call him a friend and seeing some of this, seeing some of these that were coming out and knew that they were coming out. Some of the other stuff behind the scenes that that are happening. This is so people the headlines would talk about Venezuela and what's happening from we're going to target the drug dealers. Right. But really do you think that is. It's the US exerting its control over. We need energy resources, raw materials and the likes and we can't move him out by talking about democracy. So what's happening there too on the bottom up and it is a dictatorship but that's not really the thing. Right. So the real thing is is it's. There's lots of dictators that the US doesn't go into perhaps even funds in this case. I think the security umbrella of what the US, what North, South America look like it needs, it is really at play here. And you can imagine Venezuela has vast resources in energy, utilized energy, wasted energy per se, that would likely pay for the entire energy infrastructure and more by going into. So some of these things the wheels are in motion to, these things are already going to happen. I can't tell you the time of when these things happen. But, but there's, there's more and more bitcoiners in the world. There's more and more understanding of what bitcoin is and mining and energy and everything else. And it's securing the energy resources to, to increase the wealth of their nation. And that will happen. I can't tell you when, but that's going to happen. And, and so you can see this playing out in all sorts of different ways around the world. And then at the same time, people are talking about bitcoin price in US dollars.
- [12:17]
Walker America
Well, I mean, that's the thing. I think nothing has changed, right? And this is often there's this attitude that you see if you spend perhaps too much time on social media, centralized social media especially, where the algorith feeding you exactly what it knows is going to get you riled up, that you may have this perception that somehow something has negatively happened that, that made bitcoin somehow change or weaker or something like this. And it's like it's never been stronger. There's never been more acknowledgement of what bitcoin is, the potential that it has and the future that it is going to usher in. And yet at the same time, when you have a fiat price and we speak usually about US dollars, but we could be speaking in Canadian moose shekels or in Turkish lira, or in Argentinian pesos or any, any number of other currencies, right? It doesn't. As you've said, you know, they're all just pieces of paper. That, that discrepancy between the vibe that you feel online and the. Combined with the paper value of the bitcoin if measured in these pieces of paper versus what's really true and real about this network and this monetary, this monetary network that just to me it always presents an opportunity, right? It seems like it's a time where, wow, the world is still mostly asleep to what's happening, more and more are waking up. But if you as a humble pleb are trying to do things to set yourself and your family up for the future, the best time to do that is not when everybody's jumping on board, it's when everybody seems to be kind of terrified or there's an information asymmetry there.
- [13:55]
Jeff Booth
Yeah, I would even go further, like way further than that. I think three things together. What I say the natural state of the free market is deflation. If Bitcoin stayed decentralized and secure, it is the first free market that's ever existed. Number three, only your time matters. So where are you spending your time? Are you spending your time contributing to the nonsense or getting co op or getting co opted or listening to all of what has to be a control system that might be is your energy making it stronger? And if you're doing it, if you're just anything in it, the answer is yes. And if you're pricing Bitcoin from the control system, you haven't left the matrix yet. What's worse, you're talking about a whole bunch, you'd probably talking about a whole bunch of other people still in the Matrix. Like you're better, right? And, and, and, and I'm not. There is no better or worse. It would just have to look like this as we shifted our mental energy into a new system. And the new system, because of our, our mental energy and what we're building in it would become, would become stronger and it would bend reality in a different way than we've ever lived in. We would be part of that equation. But now the thing that I said is more important. If you're part of the equation in the free market and 99.9% of people aren't, wouldn't that provide an incredible opportunity to create value? And why would you be mad about the value you're able to create for others? Because the world looks like it does. You should be celebrating it. You should be celebrating it all day long. You should have empathy for people that live in the other world. Why are you mad at the thing that's giving you ability to create crazy value? Because you can only do that because the world looks like it does today. Because so many people are trapped in fiat. Because so many people are. The ability to contribute comes from that.
- [16:19]
Walker America
And that's like that's your opportunities essentially what you're saying.
- [16:22]
Jeff Booth
It's the best opportunity that you ever. There's no ever in history been a better opportunity. Because we've never lived in the free market. You live in the first one. Why would you let that system take your best energy? Why would you fight it? Why would you just spend the time building doing the things that walker, this is what you do this is why we became friends, right? This is why. But, but, but a lot of, A lot of my incredible friends, this is why I feel, like, so fulfilled because I'm doing this thing with people that are doing this thing, and the first time it's ever existed that we actually get to bend reality.
- [17:05]
Walker America
And the more.
- [17:06]
Jeff Booth
And we all, me too, were once in that other system and we moved our time more and more, and every time we moved our time, it's gotten a little better. So this is not something I. This is not something I'm mad about. I'm just so glad I get to do that. I get to do this. And the opportunity wouldn't exist unless the other system looked like it and everyone else was confused or sorry or I'm confused, but I don't think I'm confused.
- [17:39]
Walker America
Right? I think that one thing that, and I appreciate that sentiment very much, and I completely agree with it, and one thing that I think that is an easy trap to fall into is people think that this switch. Because you talk about this switch often, right? About moving your time to this other system, to this system that is enabling value creation outside of any currency debasement, outside of the centralized control, the ability to actually live in and prosper because of a truly free market that we've never been able to experience for any meaningful amount of time. I think that a lot of people, when they hear that the first time, they think, well, I can't just switch over to this new thing. I can't just flip a switch and be in this new system. Like, I have these obligations and I have all these things. And I think, is it fair to say that for most people, the best approach is going to be something that's incremental? Like, it doesn't have to be an all or nothing, an immediate switch, which it's about those gradual steps to start doing what you can, and you probably will do it in increasingly large steps, but to at least make some shift just. Just to take that first step. Do you know what I mean?
- [18:44]
Jeff Booth
Yeah. So. So in your podcast, you would be talking to more bitcoiners and more people on Nostr who have already taken further steps, and they can already see that, see this, and, and so they might be still holding on to a little bit less than their friends who haven't even taken step one, right? And when they look at their friends compared to their life, I suspect that most people that are listening or broadcast will have already seen a transformation of their life and they'll look at their friends that saying, I can't because I have this I guess and it's just a different relative position to where they are. And then, and then some people will be further along that transition and they'll look at people who are still stuck in the fiat telling them kind of I'm straddling both systems that'll look at them and say that this the same thing again. It's all in ourselves, it's all in our own perspective of what that looks like. I agree with you generally that I think you could do it in a number of different ways. I've always been an entrepreneur so once I understand something I want to jump all in, make every mistake I need to make because I learn faster and I just go and I don't care about the consequence. I do a lot of work to say am I right? Is this the right thing? But if I if that then is aligned then I just make the jump. And I realize that the jump also makes me ensure that I have agency to because the right and wrong comes from us. And so I'm right in the new system. If the new system wins and I'm one of the nodes in it that helps it win. So but for some other people wanting to how do Because I get asked the question you just asked all the time you could do this. You could say okay, here is how many hours I spend in the existing system and what they should do and what I would do if I were is also count the hours that it's. It's usurping your energy by your fear in it. What AI is going to do from it, what Elon Musk how many, how many times you're listening to the media out of inside that system and how much of your real time just add up your hours in a day, take out eight hours for sleeping and say how much time? How much time am I really still co opted into it? Then I'll have a job or whatever I have in my business and then take some of that time intentionally draw a box around that time and say I'm contributing all of this to the new and in that I'm going to do what I'm best at and I'm going to provide value to somebody else. You're doing in podcasts and audible for other writers and stuff. Each person will have their unique genius, strength and everything else. And if I don't want to start something myself to great value for somebody else in this new system then who is aligned? Who else has started something that I'm completely aligned with and I need to now meet them and tell them why I'm the best for their business. But in the two or three or four hours that I've chosen the bucket, I don't even need to get paid for. I'm just doing for learning. And then what will happen is that bucket will expand, that bucket will smack. Because you'll be showing up by providing value to somebody else, and you'll learn exactly what it is to provide value to someone else, and you'll then more easily be able to make that jump.
- [22:31]
Walker America
I think that's actually excellent, actionable advice for people to start out. Like, you can just do things. You can just start doing something. And once you. And I think this is the experience for everyone who has started being involved in Bitcoin in, In Noster, in any of these, these new open systems, these parallel systems, as soon as you start, you want to spend more time there. You naturally there. There's. I mean, perhaps you can find an edge case where that's not the case for somebody. But I would argue if you are doing it in a meaningful way, in a purposeful way, and doing it for the right reasons, the more time you spend, the more time you want to spend. Like that is the natural progression.
- [23:08]
Jeff Booth
And it doesn't mean every business idea is going to work. The free market is brutal. Like, it's brutal to create value for somebody else. You have to create value for somebody, for, for somebody else. And, and other people are trying to create value too. So you have to, you have to do better to provide value to somebody else. But just remember, if you're making just even a little bit of salads that are a 45% IRR against the existing system, that's valuable time. Those SATs are going to be worth a lot of money in time if you can just compound those sats you don't have to make. If you're making $8,000 a month in one system, you don't have to. And you're carving out some hours in this, you don't have to make 8,000amonth in Bitcoin because that's what people are doing. They're measuring the other system that's being debased and they're scared to it because they have to replace the whole thing. Yeah.
- [24:08]
Walker America
And there is something, something very freeing about getting paid by somebody else for value you've created in Bitcoin without the Fiat Rails being involved at all.
- [24:18]
Jeff Booth
It's awesome.
- [24:20]
Walker America
It's. Well, because it's just, it's just freeing. Right. Like you, you know that there's you're not waiting to see some fake numbers appear in your bank that they don't actually have. Like you're not waiting for somebody to change their centralized spreadsheet. It's like, nope, that's, that's there in my wallet and I can verify that on my node. And that's a really beautiful feeling.
- [24:39]
Jeff Booth
You want a, a funny story to just. So. So my kids are on Noster too. They're not well known on Nasser. They're not on it all the time, but. But they, they do you. My, my son, we moved here. He wanted a boat. He really wants what he loves fishing and everything else. Wants a book. And we're at dinner just on the, on the balcony and I oh wow, somebody sent me value for value. And because it still feels like when somebody says you changed my life and you. And they sent me, I think in that case they sent me 50,000 sats. And it's like it means something. And so I stop telling it's my wife. That and I get, oh, I got another one. But this one has a note. You're the best dad in the world for buying a boat.
- [25:37]
Walker America
Oh, that's good. That's good.
- [25:40]
Jeff Booth
Pretty smart.
- [25:41]
Walker America
That is. That is very smart.
- [25:43]
Jeff Booth
Yeah.
- [25:44]
Walker America
Well, can I ask this a slight, slight tangent here? You. Can we talk about it all, the fact that you have changed locations. We don't have to say the new location that you're at, but that, that's you've been public with. Okay. You left Canada. Maybe I can just say that broadly.
- [26:03]
Jeff Booth
Yes.
- [26:03]
Walker America
Can we talk about the why a little bit? Because I think that I've met so many incredible, incredibly based Canadians that I probably never would have had the chance to meet if it were not for bitcoin. Now I know more Canadians that I can, you know, shake a bottle of maple syrup at. But why did you decide to leave Canada?
- [26:23]
Jeff Booth
So you can see, you can see that Canada is going to experience a lot more pain before it gets better. You can see when it's. It's not that, it's not that Carney was elected. It was. Carney was elected with supposedly open mind, open minded people that understood the problem. So you can, you can. You realize that most people don't understand the problem and they're just trying to do whatever short termism to get more money from a system that spends their money and manipulates it and that leads to inevitable collapse or a very different world than when I grew up in Canada. And from there. So I've always been pretty good at Seeing the future. And, and a part of that is understanding what system you're in. What does it look like? What are the next things that have to happen, not might happen, what are the next things that have to happen out of that? And so capital controls will come. Taxes are going to go way up. They're already 54%. They're going to go way up. The medical system might as well be insolvent because you can't get in for anything. It's brutal. And, and so I've watched these things change and accelerating, change getting worse. And, and just like in the US and many other countries, you have two sides fighting against each each other, making that system stronger without any resolve to what are the underlying root cause. And, and even Pierre, who I was helping understand this, I think he made a tragic error. And if he knew it was Bitcoin, he should have gone hard to the hoop and said that to the world just like Pkeli did, instead of trying to straddle this. And so when Carney got elected, and Carney's the same Carney that created where the nightmare that is the UK today and his own money is protected in, in all around the world and in, in trusts and Caymans and everything else, yet he comes to Canada and gets elected by. Is a major, almost a majority in Canada. Just realize, huh, this is, this, this is a sign. And if I don't, if I don't listen to the sign, then it's time, then it's shame on me. Now, that's not easy to do. It is like you, you know, you've been to my lake house, you know, the type of deep relationships, everything else that, that looks like. So to pick up and move, that's not a, that's not an easy thing to do either. I just, when I'm weighing the pros, cons, what's going to happen on both systems? I've been saying on podcasts for a long time that not for fear of what's happening, but for flexibility in the new system that's being built. You have to design flexibility because the curveballs that are going to come, there's going to be lots of curveballs. And so I didn't want to just knowing that myself, knowing where things are going. I just didn't want to be trapped in trapped.
- [30:00]
Walker America
I mean, I think that's, that's understandable. And yeah, I cannot imagine the difficulty of making that move, but knowing that move needs to be made right? I mean, like, it's like you, you knew you needed to do it, that doesn't make it any easier to do from just a personal or interpersonal or emotional standpoint. Like, it doesn't, doesn't ease that. It's just like, well, you know, yeah, you, you have to, you know, the decision you have to make, but it's, it's not a fun one to need to make. You'd rather not have to make it. You'd rather it not be the case that you're worried about. And an increasingly, you know, increasingly encroaching government.
- [30:33]
Jeff Booth
Hostile government. Yeah, hostile government. One that's censoring information that. Yeah, you don't. But, but all the signs are there. Ignoring those signs is worse. Putting your head in the sand saying, my, My lawyer said, I was just with him last week. He came down to El Salvador and he said all the shepherds are leaving Canada to leave only the sheep to get preyed upon, to get eaten by the wolves. God.
- [31:04]
Walker America
So, well, it's, I mean maybe that's a, it's a good way to transition to a. Talking about El Salvador a little bit because you were just there. This is a, a country that appears to be going the opposite way of many in the so called developed rural world. There's a lot of controversy, obviously, much of it I think perhaps manufactured around Bukele. And we can talk about that a little bit. But can you talk a bit about why you were in El Salvador this time? The bitcoin historico, the event that you helped to put on and all this. Can you talk a little bit about why as somebody, you have a lot of demands in your time, your attention is begged to be pulled in many directions. Why was this something that you felt it important to focus on now?
- [31:47]
Jeff Booth
Yeah. So when the IMF went into El Salvador and, and a whole bunch of people attacked Bukele and, and maybe rightly so, or just kind of what's happening here because we all know where it is in bitcoin that these systems are incompatible. I got a call, I got a call saying that the president wanted to meet me. Here's, here's what the alarm bells that went off in my head, here's exactly the story I told myself. Great, because at least in my mind I'm unbiable. I know where this is going and I'm going to spend my time in this. So, so I don't care who you are. Like I literally. That doesn't matter. So you could be the richest person in the world. I don't get fast. I'm not fascinated by that at all. I'M I'm more. I. I care who people are rather than what they have. And so I. What I went on in my mind is great. He wants me to come there, take a photo op so he can say I'm still a bitcoiner, and, and. And try to get back on side with bitcoiners. That's truly what I thought. But. But I thought, I'm gonna go anyways because I want to look in his eyes and, and understand my questions. Not through third parties, not through all the nonsense. I want to understand my own questions. So I went and the meeting was supposed to be half an hour and ended up being two and a half hours. And we talked about the same things you and I would talk about, Walker. We talked about how deep this is, how the system would always look broken, how hard that would be to get out of that trap. That bitcoin wasn't yet big enough for a country for him to actually remain in power and to deliver services like water, sewer, roads, and ensure that the population was moving towards bitcoin. Standard, he said. So I have to do both. I need the money, but I also know the money comes with. With a catch, and that the money looks to me like I'm this little pawn of assistant. I'm. I'm a rat, and I'm gonna take the cheese, and, and these are precise words. I'm gonna take the cheese, and then they're gonna catch me in the trap. But then he said this. But if my citizens run notes, go into self custody and pay in bitcoin, then I can get the cheese, get out of the trap, and actually free my citizens. And I went, wow. And I. So this was in the meeting, say about five months ago, six months ago, and I went, wow. I've never actually, I've never met any leader who could articulate this like that, which both he and I knew. So I agreed to help him put on this conference. Stacy and I kind of leaned in and put on this conference and try to put on a conference like this. And I think we had four months to do it and get competed with other events at the same time, but we wanted to put it on at the same time as adopting bitcoin because. Or just before so this people could go to both. And, And. But I realized, okay, what is my risk reward? What is. My people are going to say, okay, you're just a shill for the state, and I don't care actually what people say. So I just know the, the. But the aligning myself to that, giving Me a stage where I could tell the citizens that they need to be in self custody and paying bitcoin and that then even if he changed his mind later on my work helped. We would free people. And so, but more so I think he's actually committed to this. I actually believe that he's protecting that he's going to allow that to be protected. He'll stand up for that. And, and that means the agency isn't his. It's not up to him. It's up to the citizens to do that. And they have, and they have agency now to be able to be able to do that. And what you see as a result and what you see as a result, kind of. And you, you can, you can feel this when you go to El Salvador. The change from three years ago when I went the first time to right now, it is so remarkable. It is. Have you been there yet longer?
- [36:46]
Walker America
Twice in 2022 and once this past January. So I also saw the multi year difference and it was incredible.
- [36:54]
Jeff Booth
So even this time compared to last time six months ago, like that center square in San Salvador which the first time I need needed armed guards to, to and I wasn't able to get out of the car to, to now have families like 12 o' clock at the night, at night families. Sorry, give me one second. You're good. The, and. And full like crazy full. People laughing. The, the street vendors. It was so wild. The, the bitcoin historical. They. They had all the speeches translated to Spanish and this, that square was full the entire day, entire day and into. Into the night with people celebrating. It was wild. It was, it, it was, it was so hopeful. You actually. It's so palpable. It's crazy. It's still things to do in El Salvador. Right. There's still roads is busy and everything else but to see people them talk about what he's done for it. Like you said, like you said when you've been there, it is wild. And then to hear people elsewhere talk about El Salvador as a dictator when he cannot be a dictator if all the power goes to his people.
- [38:20]
Walker America
To.
- [38:20]
Jeff Booth
Watch them try to talk about what it looks like this when they have never been and in their own country it's going the other way. It's wild. Right. So I would encourage people to if you believe something, go see for yourself. Go see and talk for yourself. Talk to people yourself and see why he has kind of a 92, 93% approval rating. People wouldn't say that if they were in fear.
- [38:49]
Walker America
Yeah, this was this was my experience as well. And the thing that you mentioned about the palpability of the, like, just the energy, the hope there, that was my first. Even in 2022, when Carl and I went there, we went there first time just. Just purely to have, like, a small, small vacation there. Like, we, you know, went there and meanwhile, all of, you know, friends. Friends and family, El Salvador, are you sure that's safe? And at this, we were like, well, yeah, like there's a. There's somebody new in charge now. But that's all anyone knew about El Salvador. All they knew was that it was just this. And this is funny coming from people who live in Chicago, where, you know, like, El Salvador is a, trust me, a much safer place than Chicago. Yeah, enough said there.
- [39:35]
Jeff Booth
When. When in 22 did you go?
- [39:38]
Walker America
August of August of 2022. And then we came back again. We didn't know we were going to. We were excited to come back, didn't know when it would be. We got asked to come to adopting bitcoin. And so we were back there a couple months later. So that was fantastic.
- [39:52]
Jeff Booth
So I went the first time in March, and I. And so there was a. There was a conference that they asked me to keynote there. And it was. I went because bitcoin country first, Bitcoin country, I wanted to see it for myself. And the day before we went, my whole family was going. We were in. We were in Mexico flying there. The day before was all the gang warfare. And we're 80 something, 60 or 80, I might have the number wrong, but in that neighborhood, people killed all across the country, tourists, all different people. And we still went. We still got on the plane. But there was. You can imagine what my family was thinking when we went and bitcoin beach. But even at that time, bitcoin beach and all the people who flew in from around the world, there was still that hope. There was still that glimmer of, is this real? Is that. But that's not. I think that's not what surprised me. What surprised me. And I'm almost positive that this happened. So if you had an elected leader that went into bitcoin and knew bitcoin, he was a bitcoiner before he was elected leader. Right? He actually, there's a post that he said even before he was running that I'm going to bitcoin, right. A long time ago. And so if you'd like to leader that did that, that put a shot across the bow of the IMF World bank, every single other thing, what would you expect? To happen? Would you expect to? Because here's another thing. I spent three hours with John Perkins, Diary of a Hitman.
- [41:27]
Walker America
Incredible book for anyone who hasn't read it.
- [41:30]
Jeff Booth
And what he said is we went in with bag of money in one hand for the people, gun in the other, and we will bash channel whatever it takes to get you out. So choose what you want. Do you want to get rich or do you want to be deposed? Said specifically, what do you do? So what would you expect knowing that the world's always looked like this, that it's always been a control system, that if somebody went to bitcoin, you would expect the gun to come out because it had to. And what would the gun look like? Wouldn't it be a back channel talk to gangs that you helped create? The opium trade or the trading? To be able to do something to weaken a president with a high approval rating, that's exactly what it would look like. Why do I think that happened? Why do I almost know that that happened? Because it was like a singular media response that when he locked everybody up, every coordinated media, it was wild. I couldn't believe coming from El Salvador and what the citizens were saying versus what the media was saying. I went, wow, right? Because what I think what happened is the system was caught flat footed when he locked everyone up and they responded to try to weaken them through the media, through a whole bunch of people that had never stepped foot in El Salvador, who didn't care about, they didn't care about its existence when it had the crazy high most dangerous place in the world, who then talk about him as a dictator. And a bitcoiner can't be a dictator for long because they're giving their power to somebody else. I just find these, I find these things, even how I think through these things in a system that has to look like this, I find these things just fascinating. How many people get trapped kind of through the, through the lens of the world that they've always looked at. They don't know they're trapped in it.
- [43:39]
Walker America
I think that it's a really important point that you brought up about like a bitcoiner couldn't stay a dictator for long, right? You're, you're essentially by being pro bitcoin, by encouraging your citizens to use bitcoin not just as a store of value or hold a bitcoin etf, but or you know, buy my bitcoin treasury company. No, no. By encouraging them to run a node, to use it as a medium of exchange to engage in commerce with bitcoin you are sowing the seeds of your own demise. Because what is like, if you want total control, you necessarily must have total control of the money.
- [44:16]
Jeff Booth
You're giving your power away to them, you're giving your agency away to them. The only way you could still be elected is if they chose. So it's impossible to be dictator on bitcoin. Impossible maybe for a very short period of time, or possible if you were fooling them and it was all in, let's imagine it's chivo wallet. And that was. That was all self custody of it. And you rugged them later on, right? You could do it then. Or if you told them to go into a stablecoin that then you rugged them later on. But if you told them to get into self custody, run a node so they have agency and spend in bitcoin, you couldn't be a dictator.
- [45:01]
Walker America
One of the remarkable things to me, and something that I think that people, as they think about power structures in countries generally, whatever country this is one thing that is not discussed enough is the educational systems in these countries and what the product of those educational systems is, what kind of adults they produce, what kind of adults they mold out of kids. And one of the things that was remarkable to me the first time we were in El Salvador, we got to know Roman Martinez Gimbera and he took us on a little excursion and took us to a school up in the mountains. And we sent kids sats and they learned how to set up a wall. And they do this everywhere. And there's now this was like a totally grassroots initiative, but there's obviously these different government initiatives now with this too, with this education. And it's really wild to think about the fact that in El Salvador, okay, say what you will about any other parts of it, you cannot deny that there are more young kids being educated about how to actually use bitcoin, how to use freedom money than anywhere else in the world. There are more young kids who know how to do it than adults.
- [46:14]
Jeff Booth
One of the earliest people out of Kubo plus was one of their. It was a person named Mario. He now runs the AI AI initiative for the government. He's one of the senior directors of the whole initiative. He's brilliant. He understands bitcoin perfectly. This is integrate. Now. If you had a nation full of people who had never had free economic freedom or freedom and they were always living under fear and then you implemented this new thing, it might take a while for people to trust, right, and to develop the capability and the capacity to be able to do the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. So there is some truth to Bukele is kind of a bold, courageous leader on this and the capability is building from the inside of the team and sometimes there's step forward, step back and everything else. But when you see that, when you, when you're talking about Walker, that hope and what people are feeling, that's what they're feeling. They're able to. And then when they see someone else start with the same thing and nothing and just go to this program and then take their own initiative and go to this, then it paves the way for a whole bunch of other people to see themselves in that freedom.
- [47:37]
Walker America
And that I think is kind of what's remarkable. Like this isn't. Or perhaps maybe I should say this. What I think is really incredible about what's happening in El Salvador is that this was actually. This was a grassroots bottom up movement from the start. Yes, there is now the government is getting on board with it. But if a government wants to control its people like this is set off. I mean I think Gladstein is one of the. Maybe the. I don't know if he's the first or one who popularized it but you know like dictators don't like bitcoin. Bitcoin is not good for dictators.
- [48:10]
Jeff Booth
Right.
- [48:11]
Walker America
It's. It's just. This is a fact. So if you want to be in total control, the like the worst thing that you could do is educate your people about a money that allows them to completely subvert the state's control on money.
- [48:23]
Jeff Booth
Yeah. The worst thing you could do is teach them how to be totally. They have agency. The worst thing. And so, so, so that's. So imagine he carries this on. He won't just be the most important leader in El Salvador. He won't just be the most important leader in Central America and South America. He might by other people doing the same thing in their countries. He might be one of the most important leaders ever by allowing that to expand and his citizens first. His citizens and other people who take notice around the world of what is inspired. There are the beneficiaries.
- [49:13]
Walker America
It's very interesting. I mean I think this is one of those cases where actions speak louder than words. And in the US for example there has been a lot of talk about various being very pro. Extremely pro bitcoin and pro quote crypto and all these things.
- [49:30]
Jeff Booth
Crypto and incoines and nonsense. Yeah, right.
- [49:35]
Walker America
And if, if that's the case and this is truly the current administration in The US really supports the freedom of, you know, software developers to write open source software and such. One would think that the samurai devs would be, would be pardoned. Post haste one. One that would think that, you know, Roman Storm and all these other, you know, the bitcoin Fog and Tornado Cash and all these other. Because even if you were developing an Ethereum mixer, that to me, I don't care. I may be a bitcoin maximalist, but I'm also a. If you're writing open source software, not controlling people's funds, the government has no business throwing you in jail. Like that seems pretty obvious to me. But we're not seeing that. I hope that we do. I really hope that we do. I know there's a lot of people pushing on that. I just had Angela McArdle on the show and she was talking about that. The efforts to really push the administration to say, hey, look, this isn't right, this is anti American. I don't know. I'm hopeful that bitcoin and the ethos of bitcoin pervades more and more countries around the world. But right now, if I look at.
- [50:39]
Jeff Booth
Europe.
- [50:41]
Walker America
I mean, Switzerland, obviously, I was just there for Lugano. Plan B. Switzerland's kind of a different breed, right? It's a whole different type of animal there. The rest of Europe, boy, it looks like they're going down some dark paths. The UK is undeniably. They're not Europe anymore, technically not in the eu, but they're going down a very dark path. I see a lot of this all over the world. I mean, we're seeing some of this prosecution of open source developers in the U.S. thankfully, we're not seeing people locked up for memes yet in the United States. Hopefully we don't get there. But I mean, do you think we. Is there a rebalancing of the world happening? Because a lot of people look at El Salvador and say that's just a little country that does, you know. Yeah, that's, that's a nice little experiment, but it's just a little country that's, that's not, that doesn't move the needle.
- [51:25]
Jeff Booth
So my honest opinion is this is going to take longer and be more chaotic than most people realize. And why? Because those people are still giving their energy to that system and they think they're not. They think because they hold bitcoin, they're not. So why I constantly. How many times have I said the same thing? The natural state of the free market is deflation, because it's actually the only Anything you need to know to realize if you're living in it or not. Prices should fall and, and when you, when. And you should get more value forever, right? If you're living in a more free market and the more people that freedom is very different than potentially controlled system. It's like they're, they're binary. There cannot be, they cannot exist together. One system gets worse. It has to be a complete surveillance state. One system gets better. Your time is going to tell you which system is going to win. But they cannot coexist. It's impossible that they coexist. And so exponential technology should free you faster and faster and faster. And you will use the AI that removes labor because it gives you more value. If you're doing that from the system of manipulated money, then you are the control system. You're inside it. Well Walker, I say this over and over again because it's so critical that people choose. It's so critical that people choose and move their time. The vast majority won't. But it doesn't need to be the vast majority. It just needs to be enough to move this other system. Maybe we'll talk a little bit about Fetty and why that's a key piece of the system in my mind why that had to exist before this centralized system co opted people. But the vast majority of people I watch are still measuring in the fiat system and they don't know it. And remember that just the bitcoiners I'm talking about, most others, the 99% of the others are still completely in the other system.
- [53:59]
Walker America
This is actually a very good bridge to Fetty because something that I've been thinking about and trying to talk about as much as possible recently is just this idea that we live at this incredible time where we actually have the tools to be able to take our freedoms. Right? Government doesn't give us any freedoms. We have to take them. Government can protect, can enshrine laws which protect the freedoms that we have legally, but they can't give us those freedoms. Right? We have to take them. We, that's the. And luckily we can take them in nonviolent ways through the beauty and the incredible advancement of cryptography through Bitcoin, through open protocols, open source protocols, through near perfect privacy preserving protocols. That's a tongue twister on different layers like, like, like Fedi Fediment and and E. Cash, you know, with Cashew. But not only does the majority of the world not they're, they're not even close to grokking Bitcoin yet. The vast majority like 99%. Even if you say I don't care what number you say actually owns Bitcoin, you can say 99% plus the world does not even come close to really grokking the gravity of this.
- [55:03]
Jeff Booth
Add any single person in Bitcoin that says number go up, then you do. Yeah.
- [55:09]
Walker America
And furthermore. Okay take that. So let's just. Let's very generously say 1% of the world rocks bitcoin, which is not. It's far less than that. Far far less. Like it's a fraction of 1% but an even tinier fraction of those people who are quote Bitcoiners use or even are aware of any of these other tools that are possible.
- [55:30]
Jeff Booth
Let's break down why it would look exactly like it looks like. So let's. So that. Why what you would expect to see is exactly this, right? Is not bad people, not bad, but a system. And if we've always lived in a control system, then we would have a really hard time understanding that we live in a control system. We would defend our control system to call it democracy, capitalism, this. We would defend it at all costs because it couldn't be us, it was something else. So we would all these words that mean something, but they don't mean the natural state of the free market. They mean control system. We would defend them with everything we have because we've always lived in them and all of our history has always, has always supported it. And then we would yell at the bankers who created it, the Warburgs, the. And, and, and we'd fight them from within that control system and we'd make the whole thing stronger. It would the conspiracy theories, those people, those people when we didn't realize it was actually us. Right. So if we've never lived in the natural state of free. Free market. We know that for sure, right? Then, then just about all of our thoughts would be inside this other thing and gives rise to our thoughts or gives rise to dividing us. This other thing would know how to mind control us be by using analysis to. How does marketing work? Right. How do. By shaping your mind. How does. How do techno. How does technology work? We've uncovered the secrets of mind control through technology. And now AI would be be sitting on top of this, be able to drive that faster. Most of your decisions would live inside there, right? So it would probably happen faster. It would have to happen faster. And we would be convinced it was somebody else inside that system when it was actually us. So that's the bar I put on bitcoin, right? Because the bar I put on Bitcoin, staying decentralized and secure against us, it has to, right? So now how does that, how does that happen? And, and so all the fights that you knew had to come because the, the government that the, that puts them in jail for, for creating freedom comes from you, right? That couldn't happen if the government wasn't this size that you vote for and everything else and allow that happens. It comes from stealing your power in your energy. And that is allowed to happen. That government has to make, make martyrs or not martyrs. Make examples out of people that don't toe the line. So other people are scared to do it. And you can slow this down. Not might have to, has to because the control system collapses without this. Add into most of the things that a lot of things that the US is trying to do is trying to stop China by becoming more authoritarian than China, that will never work. All of these things that are trying to. The only way that the US could possibly win is by opening absolute freedom. Because that's the thing that accelerates everything that no one else can win. And by the way, if the US doesn't want to win that, El Salvador will win it. Other countries will copy El Salvador and US will go down and down and down in that. But they cannot win this fight with a bigger control system than China. But just about everyone that's raised in that control system that believes in their, they're smarter, better everything else and they're watching what's happening in China through this. He's now trying, okay, we have to play the same playbook. We need to monitor our citizens communications, everything else we have to do. And so this creeping authoritarian Patriot act banking acts what you can spend money on. It's just a natural thing that has to happen from all of those people making decisions inside that system. It is not the natural state of the free market. It is exactly the opposite. And people are getting caught in it. So why I say that is nothing here is a surprise. You know how long I've been talking about this? There's not one surprise. Everything I wrote about still happening at that speed. Everything in this system consolidating at that speed. Right? And so why we invested in FEDI is because you realize you had to invent, you had to build something that was untouchable on the second layer that created privacy that nothing could stop. That essentially replicated the nodes at another layer. Because the nodes, in other words, the nodes, if there was one or two nodes, Bitcoin would have been shot down a Long, long time ago. If nodes get centralized, gets shut down. But if there's hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands of nodes distributed around the world, every time you try to stop when another one pops up, more and more and more. And so the attack creates the strength because more and more people see it. And that's what bitcoin is. But if you were used to seeing if all of these people in these worlds are used to seeing technologies and not protocols, then it would also be easier to convince them. Bitcoin's old tech. We need new tech that gives you smart contracts or we need new tech that gives you privacy because Bitcoin's open. And all of these coins would be like honey pots for people to get caught into. We need stable coins, which is a guaranteed loss coin, right. To be able to. For you to transact so you can transact with our. They would all just be. You'd expect everything we're seeing, you'd have to expect it. If this thing was going to. It was imposing an entirely different way of living in the future. You'd have to expect it. But what else would you expect? You'd expect if it was a protocol that these would develop in layers. And you'd expect some really great thinkers that we're saying all of this is coming. What do we need to do to ensure that this is resilient? Make sure that this is lining up in bitcoin. Make sure even though they can't see it right now, even though they're really on all these tokens, just trying to get rich in a system that's dying, selling a different piece of a solution. The protocol is going to give you all the solutions in layers. And what does it need to look like to be able to do that? And those people would be deep building the tech, the solution architecture to be able to do that. They'd be doing it some in anonymity, some that by the time this was really needed, it would have merged. That's what Feddy is now. And, and so you could set up right, right now. And one of the hardest things with Fetty and people don't really understand it yet, just like they don't understand Bitcoin. So it's hard to to but maybe I'll say this and then I'll let you ask some questions that we could take deeper. One of the long pulls in the 10 to Fetti was the trust to with a small group of guardians that then would create. Then those guardians couldn't see any of the transactions. Fedi can't see any of the transactions or the communications that happened on top of those. Those guardians could be considered money transmitters. So now if you me, three others are guardians and a whole bunch of people are free on top of us, and there's only one federation or two federations and you can guarantee with the surveillance state we would be caught, right? Guaranteed. So now who goes first? What does that look like at a different, a different tangent. Inside of that. How do you find people who want to run these things in this trustless environment and that could come under attack and everything else, but somebody has to go. So Bitcoin Hadiment had this kind of long pole in the 10th that was really hard to be able to scale, even though some of the federations and the federations that worked were really run by four or five different people who didn't know each other and FEDI didn't know any of them. So it was impossible to shut down. So they were impossible to shut down and they were tried. So in early going in fetty DNS servers got shut down by two of the two people that mentioned Fedi in their website. That's like finding a needle in a haystack, by the way. So the only people who could do that are three letter word agencies that could find that. And what Fedi looked at is, wow, like that's. We're proud of that because it gave them time because the system kept running with the other three guardians and it gave them time to be able to move DNS and now iro, which you don't even need DNS. So it's created a way to harden, harden, harden this protocol on top of Bitcoin. The other risk, the risk exists in Cashew as well. If there was one federation or if there was one, one Cashew Mint and somebody rehypothecated the funds, would, you know, what if the guardians colluded and your bitcoin that went in one for one was now one for two, right? And that you started and they started rehypothecating and that becomes a real risk in trust. So how do you avoid that risk and how do you scale this? Something ingenious that they did is they found a way to add 15 OG guardians. Those 15 OG guardians, they devised a way to crowdsource guardians proof work. And none of those guardians were put forward with by, by say one, one person named two or three guardians. They asked for people who knew people proof work who would step up to be OG Guardians. And each of those people are, are not known, then they were they were driven in Feti Fedi has no idea who they are. They're acting as nodes. Now you can set up a federation and you can set up a federation in literally five minutes. Now your own federation you can go in under with, with not your real name. It'll auto select three or four guardians and you can set the rules for. For something that protects your family and their communications or anybody you want with, with money that can't be co opted with money and communications that can't be co opted because it's outside of the system. So what happened and what you would expect to happen as they solve that and what's happened is I think for one year there were three federations. The first day they turned this on there were between 10 and 20. Because now you have it in your hands. You could do this right now. You could set up a. So I've been asked to a couple times. There's a cost for the federation per month. The cost is really you can, you can charge people by the way, provide this service. Essentially let's say you're in, let's say you're in Nigeria. You can provide private banking to all your friends and you can charge them a buck a month. Completely private banking. You might pay 20, $20 a month. But the money that you pay right now is really to support the lightning gateways. So it's on off ramps and the cost of running these guardians and such. But you've now enabled, now you have a protocol that's enabled an entire ecosystem that can be built on top of it. But every single one of these federations adds to essentially the number of nodes that complete privacy that he can't see any of the transactions. Neither can the guardians. Only you and the person you're transacting with. That makes us very resilient. But it had to exist now before what we're going to see and what you're going to see with increasing frequency around the world.
- [69:30]
Walker America
Well this is. There are so many things I want to pull on here and for anyone who does want like a, a deeper dive into maybe more nuts and bolts of Fedi and Fediman. I did, I did an episode with you prior and one with Obi as well where we got kind of more into some of the like the technicalities, how some of this, this actually works. I should have Obi back on again actually to dig into that some more. But maybe for the purposes of this conversation, I think for anyone listening right now that may have heard of Fetiman or like just casually they may not have understood that not only is this about private, you know, community based banking, right. But it's also a just private messenger. Like this is. This is making a. A complete. A complete black box is the wrong word for it. But like.
- [70:17]
Jeff Booth
Or is that an okay so signal right now it would been. It's still probably my primary, but. But we know it could be compromised, right, because it's centralized servers. This can't be. So this is becoming my primary communication. And if you think about where we're going with artificial intelligence, how people will. Will start to. I'll show up on podcasts as me with different words that convince you that it's me. Right? And it'd be really hard to distinguish what's coming with all of this. And that could happen to any of your friends and everything else since you're caught into this matrix. So what do you need as an antidot to that? You need people that you trust, they're connected to you and that you can have this conversation one on one with them without anybody in the middle. You need your money like that, you need your communications like that. You need your sovereignty. And so I would, I would venture to say, please go and create a federation. Please go and protect yourself, your, your family, for your friends. Once you're there, you can add people to it super easily. And your, your network of people there, you know, it's them.
- [71:36]
Walker America
I think that that's really powerful. I mean, not only from the, again, as you mentioned, like the perspective of, of AI and you know, okay, how do I know the person I'm really talking to is really, is really Jeff? But from that government overreach perspective, we know that we are at a point right now where existing power structures are kind of crumbling a little bit at the foundations. But that also means that they're going to be grasping and trying to take in more power, trying to shore up their foundations, trying to use all of these tools which are available to us as individuals, but which are also available to government and which many large corporations are pouring billions and billions of dollars into and working hand in hand with the government to make sure they get as big of a moat as they can and can get. These big juicy NSA contracts and all these things at a time when that is accelerating. Because governments around the world, I think they feel their power starting to slide away or they see, maybe not all of them, but some of them realize they see the writing in the wall, right? They may know that we're in sort of a period of chaos before a period of rebirth. And so they're going to be clawing tooth and nail to try and hold on to whatever power they can. If you don't, as an individual, use these tools, like Bitcoin, obviously, but also like Fediment, like nostr. If you don't have these ways to be able to actually still communicate and transact freely and privately, you are just going to necessarily be caught in their dragnet, right? And they're like, there will be no escape. And if you don't start using these things now, like, you don't want to start familiarizing yourself with these tools when you're like, oh shit, I really need to do this. It needs to be like, it needs to be now. That's what I'm trying to push people towards. Like, please do this before you're like, oh shit, I really need to do this right now.
- [73:26]
Jeff Booth
Yeah, I totally agree. Now, what would you think a world like that would look like to a free market opportunity that created value against the world that was increasingly looking like that? And you can see why there's so much opportunity as well in seeing. Because what I find every day today is when I remember when we started, we said it had to look like this. And if you said. He kept saying, the natural state of the free market is deflation, it means you're choosing when you're not. Prices aren't falling. It's you're choosing to store your things in assets because the money's broken. The very idea of an asset, like Saylor talking about this as an asset, the very idea of an asset, a house, when you talk about a house, very idea of an asset is because money is broken and you can't use money as money, so you need to put it in something else that will protect it. This is money. It's going to be money. And the more you use it as money, the faster it becomes money. But even if you don't use it as money, it's becoming your money. And so, yeah, so all of all of these things, it's just driving a free market force into this thing. And the people that are using that free market force and creating value there are going to be exponentially better than the people that are. That aren't. But every bit. It's an open door that anybody can move to the unassistable.
- [75:02]
Walker America
Let me ask you, Jeff, because I want to be conscious of your time too, and I think we may be running up on it, but maybe I.
- [75:08]
Jeff Booth
Could ask you.
- [75:10]
Walker America
I think broadly and I appreciate the fact that you repeat these things and Maybe you get some grief for it, but I think it's good because repetition is what actually makes it sink into people's heads. The natural state of a free market is deflation. And for so many people, the first time that they heard that, I think for most people the first time they heard it, unless they heard somebody quoting you, was reading your book the Present Tomorrow, hearing that it changes something within you and you start to think, oh my God, like, yes, obviously, of course this must be true. But I, you don't think of it until you, you know, you laid it out for people. I think the next part that people get to is they say, okay, but given that is true and I can make the decision to opt in myself at any time, right. I can start living in that deflationary world right now by saving in a money that can't be debased by saving in Bitcoin. But zooming out even further, or perhaps zooming forward even further, what does that look like? What does that look like? During this, I think inevitable period of late stage chaos? We're seeing what it looks like right now. But I think things are going to get more chaotic. And then when it comes to like this eventual rebirth into 8 billion or 9 billion or 10 billion people, however many people were at that point on the planet in service of those other 10 billion people, is that something that can go on forever with the right monetary incentive system?
- [76:39]
Jeff Booth
Forever. Okay, so it's. So you won't. And we're going way out. And I saw one of the questions about a Star Trek world, right?
- [76:49]
Walker America
Yeah. This is what sparked it.
- [76:50]
Jeff Booth
Yeah, yeah, but that's actually what it looks like. It looks like that because it has to look like that. I would say by 2140, that's where it will be living. Because what is money in itself? All money is, is an abstract concept for our trade between humans. And what is our trade to humans? To provide value to each other. And we choose. Right. So all money is in the middle of that trade. It allows us to evaluate each other. So if you defined money instead as this thing we control, so people can't trade with each other or trade with each other with this friction that has to go through our central authority to be able to trade with each other, then you've just created a control system, abstract concept for our trades. We've always been used to creating this, an unfettered flow of trade, our free market of ideas creates more value. That's why free markets couch the word free. They've never been free. But some of them more free than closed markets have always out competed closed markets always. Now for any small window of time like what's happening to China right now, you could drive in trillions and trillions of dollars of capital and in a small window outperform a free market by just driving. But long term you cannot because you have. What you're doing is saying no one else matters except for my ideas. And you miss most of the ideas. So the ideas come from us. The physical reality comes from. From our mind and is turned into physical reality from our mind which exists almost infinite opportunity. And, and so in that world it's always infinite opportunity against us. A cascade of problems in any single time period. How are those problems addressed by the infinite capability in our mind? Because in the free market because we had swarm and attack them and, and the margin of the problem to be able to solve problems for others becomes the opportunity that entrepreneur goes after. And as soon as they've created margin from it, every entrepreneur tax them to steal their margin. So what would the world look like in that world we'll always still have problems. Whereas an entrepreneur I would look at as opportunities. And those opportunities be solved faster and faster. And every single person on the planet wins as a result of all other people competing faster to solve their problems. Can you imagine 2140 on Bitcoin going back from that time that looks like that to this time. Can you imagine what it would take for people to think oh we're going to trade this for that, right? Just the knowledge that you would gain. People forget that they're both part of the system and the solution to it. They forget that their minds change and they become somebody else along the way. And they think it just happens to other people or that everybody's going to stay stuck forever. It can't look like that. If you believe in human progress, if you believe that more people want to unlock. Just like I unlocked to the system, just like you unlocked this, like we all did. This didn't exist. A bunch of cypherpunks go to try to create this. All the failures, all everything else. Then. Then Satoshi creates it by taking those failures and creating it. We're standing on the shoulders of giants that created all of it. And then we're the giants that are creating it for everyone else. And then the other giants are trying to replace us. And it's all in service to all of us has to look like this. The only reason this could fail is if you didn't believe in us.
- [81:12]
Walker America
It's a fair point that Once you reach that state, if we are able to actually achieve a state where we are operating in a truly free market because the market for money is not being centrally controlled, why would anyone opt to go back in? Because, I mean, even the people who would, perhaps, let's call them the bad people or the evil people, even those people would benefit more from a freer system.
- [81:40]
Jeff Booth
Right? They just can't see it. And most people, by the way, most people playing in the zero sum game can't see that. You can't build walls high enough for what's coming from a system that's a zero sum game. There's nothing you can do. That system burns to the ground and so on this transfer through, it's us that's changing. It's not bitcoin that's changing. It's us moving from a zero sum game to an infinite game. But we wouldn't have the map of what the infinite game looks like because we've never lived in that map. We're creating the map. We're both the map and the territory.
- [82:21]
Walker America
Man, I almost. Jeff, I could always keep asking you questions ad nauseam, but I feel like. But what a. What an incredible note to wrap up on so that I don't take too much of your time. We've gone over a little bit already. I would just encourage people. The last thing I would say is just to say, check out fedi. Like you can. You can download this and you can start using it. You can create your own federation. If you're listening to this after the fact. For those who are listening live on nostr, thank you for being here and for. For spending some of your scarce time with Jeff and I. For those who are listening after the fact, not live on nostr, come check out nostr.
- [82:55]
Jeff Booth
Exactly.
- [82:56]
Walker America
Use these tools. Spend more of your time over here. It's more fun. The vibe is better. And yeah, you will. You will like who you are when you're posting on NOSTR more than you will when you're being fed. Fed algorithmic BS on. On X. And yeah, that's what I would leave people. Is there anything anywhere else you want to send people? Anything else you want to leave folks with before we close out?
- [83:17]
Jeff Booth
No, I think we're good. We'll just do it again soon or on a patio somewhere or the cabin.
- [83:26]
Walker America
I look forward to that. Yeah, we got to do one of these in person eventually. That'd be really a treat. But Jeff, really, thank you for your time and thank you for all the work that you do as well. I think you have opened many minds in just a short span of time and I think everybody's just excited for the price of everything book to eventually come out. Know I know you're probably a little short on free time right now, but I don't know, I think. I think folks have been been hankering for it and that's a wrap on this Bitcoin Talk episode of the Bitcoin Podcast. Remember to subscribe to this podcast wherever you're 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 tcoin 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 but podcasts are abundant. So thank you for spending your scarce time listening to the Bitcoin podcast. Until next time, stay free.