← THE Bitcoin Podcast
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- [00:00]
A
We are in a have yacht and have not economy right now and it's getting worse. And it's all based upon this fiat system that's not tied to anything anymore. We are going to have some, I think really difficult secular inflation going on where you are going to be exposed in certain areas like child care, health care, car insurance, all of these different things that are going to make your life very difficult going forward. What Bitcoin can give you that hope is that you can finally find something that you can store your value in and rest and be at peace. We've been a deficit nation for decades now and it's coming home to roost. This is going to be a difficult time. You've got to find things that this government and the rest of the governments here cannot fucking print. And they cannot print Bitcoin. Let's just start from this principle. If bitcoin has returned 55% CAGRADE, you know, annual growth rate for the last five years, what the fuck more do you need than that? You've got to find things right now. It's critical. I mean this is a critical moment in your world. Over the next three to five years you got to find things that you can store value in. Bitcoin is electronic, digital cash moving at the speed of fucking light and it settles forever. The world just hasn't figured out. That's another reason why we're early. The world doesn't understand anything I'm talking about right now. Tradfi, they clueless. You talk to these central banks, they would just stare at you. There's nothing going on behind their eyeballs when you talk about bitcoin. So we are early. Bitcoin is the wild wild west. You get into this market, you start trading and using margin and stuff, you're going to have a comeuppance. You'll have a come to Jesus moment at some point. Because bitcoin is unlike other assets. We have never had a truly far finitely finite asset. I can prove to you there are 21 million coins. That's written in the protocol that that is part of the Bitcoin protocol. I cannot tell you how important it is for people to start thinking about self custody and getting their own bitcoin, getting it off exchanges, holding it yourself, becoming a sovereign individual, memorizing 12 words. And when the world goes to you can just, you know, go across any border, take all your wealth with you. I don't care what they do at the border, strip searches, stick stuff of your ass, it doesn't matter. You're going to come across on the other side. You're going to have all your wealth intact. You will be a sovereign individual. But to do that, you've got to have self custody. And the more people that do self custody, the less chance we have of this capture. Regulatory guardrails, paper, bitcoin seizure, everything you can imagine can be fixed if people will just self custody as quickly as they can.
- [02:50]
B
Greetings and salutations, my fellow plebs. My name is Walker and this is the Bitcoin Podcast. Bitcoin continues to create new blocks every 10 minutes. The value of one bitcoin is still one bitcoin. And if you're listening to this right now, remember you are still early. If you're not already, go ahead and subscribe to this show wherever you're watching or listening and you're watching if and share it with your friends, family and strangers on the Internet. If you want to follow me in the show on Nostr and X, just head to the Show Notes to grab the links. If you're enjoying the Bitcoin podcast and want to support it by becoming a paid subscriber, you can download the Fountain app, search for the Bitcoin podcast and subscribe by paying with Bitcoin via Lightning or Fiat via card. You'll get access to ad free episodes and early releases of select content. Plus you'll help support this show and head to the Show Notes for product discount links. Go to walkeramerica.substack.com to get episodes emailed to you and head to bitcoinpodcast.net for everything else. Without further ado, let's get into this Bitcoin talk. George, welcome back on the show. We always have a great time when we're together in person or together on this show. This is your second time back here. It's great to see you again, man. Great to see the studio. You were just talking about the painting behind you and you'd just done that in Prague. You want to talk about that a little bit? Because it's a beauty. I saw your post of it and I was like, wow, that's amazing work.
- [04:23]
A
Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, it's good to see you again too. And like I said, I'm ready to let this fucker rip.
- [04:29]
B
Let's go.
- [04:30]
A
I'm pumped. You know, I just got back from Prague and Prague was kind of a changing event for me. I'm not the same person after I went to Prague, you know, it was a no shitcoiner conference. Nobody else was allowed in There, you know, nobody. There were no politician, no jackasses there, you know, making fools or promises or whatever the hell they do. And so it was just bitcoiners and you know, it was nice. I could just walk around and talk to bitcoiners and have a beer with them and you know, I like to listen to people, hear their stories and it was just really cool. Then I hired a model, a Swedish model from the conference there and she and I went around Prague and did some different photo shoots and stuff and I got quite a bit of material. I'm trying to come up with some paintings and this one here behind me is one of the latest ones of her. Inside of a tower. There was a really neat tower that was near my hotel. It's a great city if you haven't been to Prague. I just can't say enough about it. And you know, the best thing is their beer just rocks. I think they actually put you in jail if you pour a bad beer or something.
- [05:32]
B
Their beer is outstanding. And it's such a cool city. I mean there's so much history there. It's a very based vibe in the city. The conference too. Carl and I went to the first BDC Prague that they did, which was fantastic. That was actually. Carla was very early in her pregnancy at the time. We weren't telling anyone even at that point, but we had just such an outstanding time. They do a wonderful job with the conference itself. The city is, is great and it is extreme. I mean it is a bitcoin only conference for sure. And you, you can, you can really feel that.
- [06:06]
A
Well, you know, bitcoiners, we're going to have to get used to this. I mean we're going to have to start hanging out with each other, just bitcoiners. And the reason is because first off, I don't think, I think we're going to turn around one of these days and we'll see that bitcoin's up there at $1 million a coin and it's still going to be basically just a few of us psychopaths out there. Because I don't think adoption is going to take off at least as real bitcoiners, meaning holding bitcoin in cold storage. Understanding what bitcoin is. The power of bitcoin sovereignty. These people just aren't going to get it. That are holding ETFs or even in the BT we'll call them from now on we'll just say treasury companies, but meaning bitcoin treasury companies. These people aren't going to be with us. And you know, if you look at river and you look at the numbers that they project for adoption, you know, they just came out with a new report. I was reviewing it today. I'm constantly studying and it's. I think that they're pretty accurate there as far as the actual number of users. Some of these numbers that are floated out there and include crypto and other shit coins, but just real bitcoiners like you see at a conference there. I mean, I don't think there's probably more than just a few million of them right now across the planet. And I don't know, I don't know if that's going to change much. You know, it went past $100,000, 100,000 a coin. And what happened, really nothing retail didn't show up in fomo. The only thing I will say that has been a narrative that could push a bit, push back against. What I'm saying is the initial launch of the ETFs. Yes, primarily that was 80% retail and high net worth individuals that came into that system. Obviously there is pent up demand for bitcoin, but they're seeking rails that are not the usual rails that bitcoiners use. You go over to someplace like Prague or another conference with no politicians, no jackass shitcoiners or former shitcoiners on stage, or no gold bugs, you know who's got gold stuck up their ass somewhere? Those people. Those people are the people that you can talk to in a bitcoin conference. And I don't like to. I know I'm going to yak a lot today, but when I'm at a conference, I like to listen. I like to just talk to people and hear their story, hear what they got to tell me and you can learn a lot.
- [08:14]
B
Amen to that. You know, that's what's the old cliche. It's why we have two ears and one mouth.
- [08:18]
A
Right. I love that. That's my saying. Exactly. That's what God gave it for. You know, shut up and listen.
- [08:24]
B
Exactly. Which is not always easy for us bitcoiners, especially as bitcoin podcasters. Although, you know, I think that as a bitcoin podcaster, you hope you should be getting better at practicing listening more than you speak. That's the goal. At least, you know, don't drown out your guest too much. But sometimes you just can't help it. But you know, I think you're right. And honestly I. In terms of whatever we want to call real Bitcoiners, because you could. Okay, fairly subjective in terms of how you flavor that. Right. Is it someone who holds Bitcoin in self custody and cold storage, do they have to have a certain ethos about them or is it just they use Bitcoin as savings, they have it in cold storage. That's enough. I think the numbers, it is very small, very small. And I also am inclined to agree with you. The whole world's not going to self custody. It's just not, it's not going to happen. I think the majority of people, bitcoin will be the water in which they swim. Like they're going to be fish. They're going to be swimming in water and they're not going to, they're not going to notice that they're using Bitcoin. Right? It's just, it's just how it's, it's going to be the money or at least the, you know, the reserve money. And I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. But I also would say that if you are, if you're like, this is why I start out every show saying, you know, if you're, if you're listening to this right now, you're still early. You're still early because we, we are so insanely at just the very first inning, not even the first inning. We're still warming up, right? We're still just, just, we just got out of the dugout to continue the baseball analogy. You know, we're, we're, we're just lacing up our cleats here, barely getting started. There's a chart, I'm sure you know it, it's the very famous one that Jesse Myers put out. Croesus btc. Yes, the awesome chart's been reused by Michael Saylor by tons of people because it's just, it's so visually perfect, right? And it just shows total global asset value and it shows Bitcoin at 2 trillion. But there's a thousand trillion dollars worth of global assets. We're at 0.2%. How could we not be early?
- [10:21]
A
Right?
- [10:22]
B
That's just exactly. It's just plain and simple. In your face. But something you and I were talking about before. This is like, yeah, we're still early, but like, but bitcoin can move really violently, really quickly. The suddenly part is very sudden and it behooves you to start stacking as soon as you can. I'm sure I think just about everyone and correct me if I'm wrong for you, but at least for Me, I had to hear about bitcoin a couple of times over multiple years. To my shame. It took me six years from first hearing about bitcoin to actually buying bitcoin over six years. I mean, that's, you know, going to be embarrassed when I tell my grandkids that, you know, when they're like, what are you fucking stupid, grandpa? You know, like, why did it take you so long as it wasn't it obvious? And that's the thing, it's non obvious for, for a lot of people. Maybe, maybe you got it right away when you first heard about it and go, I'd love to actually know that. I'm not sure if I know that part of your story. Like, when did you, when did it snap for you?
- [11:24]
A
Now I'm a village idiot. I mean, there's no way I had, I had bitcoin I had shoved in my face a couple of times. I just, I thought it was the stupidest. You know, it takes a while and it takes there. You've got a couple of, you know, there's some barriers. One of them's age. You look at me right now if you're watching this, you know that I'm older and that's a real handicap to try and get into bitcoin. You mentioned about self custody. Yeah, it's going to be difficult to get grandpa and grandpa, you know, or, or to get your uncle that's at the Thanksgiving table to understand bitcoin and be able to cold storage, put it in custody. It's tough. It's really difficult for a lot of people and it is scary to do it. But the idea that, the idea that we're early. Yeah, absolutely. Even though, you know, this is a good time, let's talk about something else you mentioned there. Let's talk about getting into bitcoin, for instance. I was very fortunate because when I did understand bitcoin, it was right about the time that Michael Saylor did. When I understood bitcoin, I got it. I got the bug really bad. And I tried to dca. Tried to get into bitcoin. And then the next thing you know, I'd wake up the next day and I'd start reading more about bitcoin and I'd want more bitcoin. So then I'd buy some bunch, a bunch more and then I'd buy a bunch more. And then like a week, you know, I was running out of money. And then I. Then I started liquidating things. I liquidated all my gold holdings, put it into bitcoin. I liquidated my 401. I put everything. I just kept buying almost like smash. That is what I'm like, a drunken sailor. Not, not S, A Y, L. I am a drunken sailor. You know my history. I was a Navy pilot, fighter pilot. And so yeah, I'm a drunken sailor like smash, buying bitcoin. And I will tell you something, I've always felt that that is the key. That if you could become convicted enough that you actually just put all your money in bitcoin, you would outperform anyone else. And you do. And it's proven. There was one study years ago that came out that verified how I felt about it. But another one just came out by Theo Magine and he put out some really good research. It took about a million different portfolios and ran them through both DCA and SMASH buyers. Drunken sailors like myself, the drunken sailor return for that period of time. It was a 10 year period. It was around 1300% for DCA average, it was around 3 to 400%. So I've known this for some time, but yet I've often told people to use DCA to get in dollar cost averaging to get into bitcoin. Now why would I do that? It's not because, I mean, not because I don't want you to get all the different returns. And it almost seemed, again, it's not like I'm lying to people, but here's the problem, is that, you know, just like Saylor probably, I'm sure that there were many a night where he laid in his mansion there and kind of stared at the ceiling like I did at 3 o' clock in the morning wondering what the fuck have I done? I've lost 80% of my wealth. You know, I'm down in the toilet, my wife's sleeping very gently next to me and I'm thinking, God, I hope she never understands the level of anxiety I have here. And this was somebody who was pretty convicted. And I got more and more convicted. I just kept studying, reading. And since then I've had other opportunities where I've had some money. And what do I do? I just, I just buy. I don't even think about trying to time, I just buy. And so the other thing to mention, and this is really important too, we often use that expression. And so, okay, so let me get back before I leave the subject. Why don't I tell people dca, okay? Because I'm afraid that they're going to take these little nibbles and they're going, they're going to be able to weather the volatility. But if they smash by like a drunken sailor and they're sitting there or laying in bed at 3 o' clock in the morning, they're going to lose conviction. And at the worst opportune moment, they will sell. And when they do, they probably will never come back. And if they've, you know, if I had been telling people, hey, just go out there like a drunken sailor, go have a beer, get on the computer and buy everything you can. Well, guess what? You know, they, they would have a pretty bad memory of me as the years went past. And what we do here does echo into eternity. So the things that you're doing now are really important. You got to be careful what you say. So I thought DCA is a better policy to tell people because they can weather the volatility, get through it, not sell it. Now, the other thing I was going to say, here's another thing. So obviously by putting myself in with a smash buy by somebody who's doing dca, I also made sure that I was in the market. And you've got to do that every year. You've got about between five to 20 days every year that you cannot miss. If you want to get your returns maximized in Bitcoin, you've got to be there, you got to be in the market. And so I cannot tell you how important it is to stack like a smart psychopath, huddle onto that bitcoin. No trading, no margin. And this is not the time to be around with bitcoin. You got, you do not want to be trading bitcoin right now. You know, we got these people that are all, they've got their panties in a WAD over these 20% dips or some other shit. And you're wondering, you know, it's a good thing you're not smash buying because you couldn't handle it if it really went down 40, 50%. What do people that do that are really convicted when they're dcing into bitcoin and you see a 40, 50% drop, you buy like a son of a bitch. So anyway, those are just some thoughts that I've got on, you know, getting in the market volatility, how you buy bitcoin, depending upon your level of conviction and then not timing the market. Just get in the damn market and be patient.
- [17:11]
B
I think that conviction piece you mentioned is so important because you're absolutely right for most people. And this is why I too recommend for anyone who asks me, I say, you should dca, and that is what I do as well for the most part. I also do smash buys when I have more cash. But I don't have just piles of cash sitting, sitting around, you know, I, I don't either.
- [17:33]
A
Yeah, it's all gone.
- [17:34]
B
Exactly. Usually my bank account has, has very little fiat. It would probably have hardly any fiat in it at all if my wife wasn't a little bit more responsible than I am sometimes with our fiat expenses. Because she's like, listen, we still got to pay some bills in Fiat here, Walker. I'm like, okay, well, smash buy. But that is, the important piece is once you have the conviction, once you know that you can weather that drawdown and look at that drawdown as an opportunity to stack more. Instead of the end of the world, I better sell. Because you will sell at the bottom. That's the weird psychological trick about markets. It's like you will sell right as it's hitting the bottom and it's gonna bounce up right in your face and then you, like you said, you will end up feeling burned, feeling like you got scammed somehow by bitcoin and these bitcoiners. Cause you bought the top, you sold the bottom. But the thing is, if you're just, if you have the conviction, you hold onto it and you buy that bottom, you know, sell all your chairs and maybe a kidney, but I, I keep mine just because I feel like I need them. Maybe that changes if we take a big nose dive here, who knows? But if you have that conviction, you're going to be okay. You're not going to get burned. Because if you have a low time preference and you look out over the next. Okay, it's okay. Yeah, it's down now. I'm going to buy some more. I can, I'm going to lower my cost basis and I know that I'm holding this for a very long time. So okay, not, not a big deal if you don't have that conviction. If you haven't gone down the rabbit hole deep enough, you are going to get hurt. And again, you're going to buy the top and you're going to sell the bottom and you might do that again in the next cycle. So that's why DCA is just, look, you can set it and forget it and it is going to still out. Dcing into Bitcoin will still outperform every other investment strategy that's out there for non bitcoin assets. You know what I mean? So yeah, you're going to be fine. But man, it's hard to recommend folks if I Tell them, listen, you should do everything you can to smash. Buy as much bitcoin as you can right now because I honestly believe that that is the best move if it dips. And they don't have the conviction that I do because they just bought bitcoin because they listened to me or they listened to some other influencer or their favorite politician started getting into bitcoins. They're into it now and then it dips. There's a good chance they're gonna sell and think, well, it's gonna keep dipping and I'll buy back lower. But again, the moment you sell is the moment that trend reverses and then you feel like an idiot and you feel burned. Hello friends. You may notice that there are no sponsors for this episode and that is because this is a pure value for value episode. So if you find this episode valuable, consider giving value back. You can do that by becoming a paid subscriber on Fountain. You can send me a zap on Nostr, a boost on Fountain, or if you don't feel like doing any of those. One thing you can do that is totally free is just to share this show with your friends, family and strangers on the Internet so that it reaches more people. If you are listening on a podcasting app like Apple Podcast, you can also give this a five star rating so more people find the show and you can subscribe on YouTube, Rumble or wherever else you're watching. But again, I always recommend that bitcoiners check out Fountain. You can also go check out the Big Print audiobook which I narrated. You also, of course do not have to do any of those things. Bitcoin does not care. But I sure do appreciate all of your support, so thank you.
- [20:55]
A
You know, markets are driven by humans. Humans are markets that it's been that way since the beginning of time. You can read all the way back in Will and Ariel Durant's story of civilization and understand that they were market driven. Even in Those days, in 3000 B.C. we are. Humans drive markets. It's a market of psychology. Read. I'll tell you a great book to read is Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, a story about Jesse Livermore. Terrible title, by the way. It's almost difficult to pronounce it, but you can find it on Amazon. And it is an incredible story. Although it's fictionalized, it's really a story about a particular trader and the ability to time move how they viewed markets in those days. And it was kind of the wild wild west of markets. Well, guess what Bitcoin is the wild, wild west. If you get into this market, you start trading and using margin and stuff, you're going to have a comeuppance, you'll have a come to Jesus moment at some point. Because bitcoin is unlike other assets. We have never had a truly finite, provably finite asset. I can prove to you there are 21 million coins. That's written in the protocol. That is part of the Bitcoin protocol. The protocol itself defines things like how many coins, difficulty adjustment, things of that nature. I can prove it, I can show it to you. And nobody's dealt with that. You know, we have a discussion going on often around paper Bitcoin and you know, I will tell you right now, kids, if you're listening to me, paper Bitcoin is not an issue for bitcoin right now. If you think that the ETFs are not holding physical Bitcoin, that they don't settle within 90 minutes at the market close every weekday, you're just not thinking this through and you've not read enough. Nobody, no company, I don't give a shit if it's Fidelity, Coinbase, no company is going to, or blackrock. None of them are going to take a chance to commit not just criminal activity, but serious enough that people are going to go to prison as felonies. Nobody's going to do that. It's not necessary. They're making all the money they could want right now. I mean, they made so many, so much money in fees, BlackRock, it's incredible. There's no need for that. And then if you think about the bitcoin treasury companies now, now amplify that three times because now you've got the sec, you've got other people up their ass, you've got auditors, you've got accountants. Nobody's going to lie, cheat, steal here. Now, why do you think FTX was offshore? Why do you think some of these other entities were operating offshore? Well, so if you're thinking about paper bitcoin, what you need to do is to look at the derivatives markets, okay? You can see or make a case for Bitcoin, paper bitcoin and derivatives. I personally don't think, you know, from the research that I've done, I don't think it's more than 1%, maybe 2% of the market on a daily basis. I can float. But you know, the getting back, the reason I'm talking about all this is because bitcoin's different. Bitcoin can be settled. Bitcoin can be immediately provably removed from circulation. And it is all the time. I cannot tell you how important it is for people to start thinking about self custody and getting their own bitcoin. Getting it off exchanges, holding it yourself, becoming a sovereign individual, memorizing 12 world words. And when the world goes to shit, you can just, you know, go across any border, take all your wealth with you. I don't care what they do at the border, strip searches, stick stuff up your ass, it doesn't matter. You're going to come across on the other side, maybe they'll give you a pair of pajamas, you're going to have all your wealth intact. You will be a sovereign individual. But to do that you've got to have self custody. And the more people that do self custody, the less chance we have of this capture. Regulatory guardrails, paper, bitcoin seizure, everything you can imagine can be fixed if people will just self custody as quickly as they can.
- [24:50]
B
I think that continues to be the best advice. As Odell would say, stay humble and stack sats and then get a large enough UTXO and transfer that to cold storage and live your life with the knowledge that you cannot be diluted or debased or confiscated. That's a beautiful, powerful thing. And I think that this kind of brings me, just because you mentioned as well to treasury companies, I'd love to get your take on them. I'm of the opinion these were inevitable. Of course, companies, countries, nation states, corporations, individuals, everyone wants bitcoin because bitcoin is winning. This is a natural progression in the long line of bitcoin winning at this monetary game. So of course they're going to want it. You don't have to like it, you don't have to buy it. But you should know that this is, I think overall it's a good thing. Now caution here is I still recommend that everybody just buy spot bitcoin and take it into self custody because there is a very good chance that you're going to get burned with some of these treasury companies. It's not to say that there are bad people, there's bad actors everywhere. But I know a lot of the people who run some of these treasury companies, there's really great people, they are hardcore bitcoiners and I think what they're doing is good. But you, and for anyone out there, it's like you're going to be better off just stacking bitcoin and creating value and living your life. But I'm curious if you have any exposure to these I know you've had Microstrategy. I think we talked about that in the last show. Have you dabbled in any of these other ones? Is there anything you think folks are missing with these? Any either words of encouragement, words of caution? How do you think about them?
- [26:30]
A
Man, that's a. Yeah, I like the way you phrase. I like the yeah that. I like this. This is a, this is a good one. I got to think about how I'm going to phrase this. First off, disclosure. I should disclose, you know, I do own a strategy and I do own Meta Planet. I had some Semler, but I ended up switching out from Semler doing some other investing. So doesn't that tell you something right there? What am I talking about? I'm not talking about holding bitcoin. I'm talking about playing. I'm just having fun. I'm trading around. I'm looking at these, saying, why? Because I like to study. I want to understand these companies. I want to figure out what they're about. And I have gone out a deep rabbit hole and got hundreds of hours following these damn things. And boy, this is, yeah, this is such a deep subject. Let me. How do, how do you approach this? First off, I love what you said at the beginning. You remember what you said? They're inevitable. I agree 100%. Bitcoin is going to financialize and securitize all these different markets. We are like a monster. Bitcoin is a monster. It's a monster virus. It's spreading everywhere. You can't stop it. It's going to be in every company you can imagine. Right now there are about, there's about 60 bitcoin treasury companies that actually have any significant portion of bitcoin, like maybe above about 10 bitcoin. If you combine all of the different companies that are funded into it, both Bitcoin treasury companies and other funds, it's significantly higher, probably about 130, 140 companies. And it's incredible. They're up to about 1.4 million coins between all of them and the ETFs and other funds similar to that, the investment funds, they're up about the same amount right now. You know, that's an incredible inflow into products that are attempting to again, securitize or be wrapped around bitcoin. So you're right, it's inevitable. But you know, I'm, I'm definitely worried about these Bitcoin treasury companies. We'll just call them treasury companies or BTC or whatever the hell because there is a threat There a real threat. And they are trying to generate different metrics to somehow give investors a conventional framework to. To value their price, whether it's pulling, you know, forward value some way, a metric. I think this. Of all the ones that they're using, the one that. And I'm talking about everything from the, you know, the time to cover going forward, the torque, you know, the different convertible. Of all the things that we're discussing, the most important thing is M Nav. That is the concept of how much bitcoin do they have on their balance sheet? What. What is the actual price of that company? The market cap, what kind of premium is associated with that company? You know, we saw some crazy valuations that were going up 1012. Metal Planet was one of them. And why do I say that's the most important? Because of all the different things that they're. They're attempting to do, nothing is more important to me as an investor who understands Bitcoin than getting more bitcoin per share. I expect them to use everything, every tool in the box that they can use to get it. But that's the metric. You show me. Prove to me on paper and it's easy. Prove to me on paper that you're doing what I said, fully diluted shares. I want to know all the outstanding shares out there. You show me that over a period of time you are getting more bitcoin per share. And I'm thrilled. I'll just sit there and go, oh, that's great, I love it. But how are they doing that? They're doing it through that M Nav. As long as that M Nav's above one, life's good. Well, you know, I think you probably saw a downturn, didn't you, last time, Walker? Well, yeah.
- [30:15]
B
You mean. You mean in bitcoin?
- [30:17]
A
Yeah.
- [30:17]
B
Oh, that's. I mean, I started in 2020, like during COVID probably around the same time as you, and then, you know, bought all the way up to that top and thought I was a genius and then felt the pit in my stomach grow as my stomach dropped out of my ass when we went down to 16K. But, you know, it was rough. But you, you keep stacking, right?
- [30:37]
A
So you can make an, you can make an argument that we can talk about cycles later, but just to think right now, for instance, that statement, that Saylor, you know, Saylor has been the greatest spokesman of all for bitcoin. I got no complaints with him. But he says stupid things sometimes. You know, his comment, you know, there will not be a crypto winner. Now that's a dumb comment. He doesn't know that. Nobody knows what's coming down the road. There could be a crypto winner. It could go down 50, 60% within the next six months. That's possible. Anything's possible. Well, what I'm trying to say is if we have a severe, if we have a real downturn and that M Nav begins to compress, people will begin to flee that market. There is a recursive, reflexive loop associated with that trade. And that trade means that as that M Nav gets down to one or hits one and then if it compresses below, meaning just what you saw in Sailors company, what strategy happened? They, they ended up with an M Nav down below. It was like maybe 0.7, 5.8. I can't remember what it was. So what would a normal company with fiduciary responsibility do in that case? They'd sell their bitcoin. They would do that. That's why I say it could be recursive. It makes sense. It's not buying back your shares. You're. If you understand how NNAV works on the way up, you should get it when it goes down below zero. Now, obviously strategy does get this because they've already put out the information to people. They said, we're not selling. Even with an M Nav compressing below one. We're not selling. We are going to raise capital through our other various financial products. So what's the threat then? Well, the threat for strategies, not much. I don't give a shit. Go ahead, let it compress. I'll get, get some more. You know, I don't care. But, but what about for these other companies that don't have the access to the financial capital that he does? You know, they've got 636,000 coins right now. They've built up long relationships now of several years with companies to raise capital. And those are real relationships. He's talked about that on air. I have built relationships with these people. They're called QIBs. You know, they're buying. He's actually negotiating some of these debt instruments with people. What do you want in these? What do you want me to take out? What do I need? I need this. And they're bargaining, negotiating. He's got capital, you know, bitcoin would have to crash down to like $20,000 and stay down there for years for him to ever get in any kind of situation where he was raising capital sufficient where he had to sell something off. So their debt leveraged you know, that's nothing. Look at Metaplanet, kind of the similar thing. They're using that market, that Japanese market, which is unique with NISA accounts, savings accounts that are tied to the stock market. The fact that if you go over to Japan and you buy bitcoin and sell it, their capital gains is like 55% on Bitcoin. So it makes sense. I mean, but what about these small treasury companies that are out there and they're just all fomoing in and they're, they're just raising capital left and right and, you know, markets that are not thinking this through. I'm just telling you, if you're out there and you're thinking, I'm going to get better returns than I can on bitcoin, then you should know how those returns are being generated. You should understand what M Nav is. You should understand capital markets access and. I'll take a break in a minute. I'll take a break now, but at the same time, I do want to talk a little bit about the marketing of these companies and how they're going about that too.
- [34:04]
B
But go ahead, let's do it. No, no, roll right into it because I think you're spot on the money so far. So keep it. You know, it's a safe space for rants and tangents. You know that.
- [34:14]
A
And I definitely have got some fucking rants to get out, I'll tell you right now. But, but this isn't really a rant as much as I think people don't understand that, that what makes these treasury companies not just unique but successful in my mind revolve around just a certain few principles. One, and this is very obvious to most bitcoiners. It has to be 100% bitcoin. You cannot be doing these treasury companies and mixing anything on your balance sheet. You have to be fully committed to bitcoin. So that's my first. When I look at these companies like I was doing an investing analysis, that's the first thing. Are you 100% Bitcoin? I look to see what the CEOs are saying about their conviction and where they feel bitcoin is going. I look at like that idiot in GameStop that came in out on Vegas. I didn't go to Vegas because there were shitcoiners and other stuff going on there. But you know what? That clown that came out on the stage there, Cohen, you know, it was not only was his speech a flop, I mean, he could have just done a face plan on the stage because later he Doubles down on it. And really, you know, his purchase was so small out of that treasury asset that they raised that he showed me, this is what I'm trying to say. He showed me he didn't have the conviction he wasn't all in. And you've got to be. And then three, you've got to be totally transparent. You know, there's been pushback. I've mentioned this in podcast recently. There's been a lot of pushback against some of these influencers, podcasters being involved in these treasury companies. But if you think about it and what I'm discussing, it makes a lot of sense because you have to get your message out. You've got to have your word out on the market. People need to understand on a daily, weekly basis what you're doing. You know, sailors putting out information every week about what their plan on their earnings calls are works of art. And, and so, you know, there's a lot of things behind a successful treasury company. But let's just end it on the note because this is a deep subject that I do have concerns. I mean, I am concerned about this going forward.
- [36:15]
B
Yeah, I think that you brought up a ton of great points there. So I'm trying to figure out where. Where best to kind of jump off of there. But I think again, the important thing is that there's different levels of these companies. Right. Like strategy is in its own class. Right. Far and away, nobody's touching them. The other instruments that they're providing with these four different products, Strike, stride, strife and stretch.
- [36:41]
A
Don't forget stretch.
- [36:42]
B
Yes, thank you.
- [36:43]
A
That's important.
- [36:44]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just so many S words I get confused sometimes. But they, they are providing a wealth of products that the others simply are not and cannot really at the. Because they're not operating at the same size. Right. And one thing I do want to maybe talk about is what you think about S and P inclusion for sailor to or for strategy, we can get into in a sec here. But again, I mean, I think you're right. Is it fair to say, though, I want to clarify this, or is your concern like that you think this is going to potentially have a negative blowback on bitcoin or more so you'd think a lot of just plebs are going to get hurt by trying to outpace the rate of bitcoin's. You know, bitcoin's growth itself, which is pretty amazing. They're going to ape into some of these treasury companies. They're going to try to teleport to become An OG like American HODL talks about and they're just going to get hurt. Is that the concern?
- [37:30]
A
I love that. I love that. Teleport to OG status. I just, they, yeah, you know what, that doesn't work that way. I mean, and here's the thing, okay? Let's just start from this principle. If bitcoin has returned 55% CAGRADE, you know, annual growth rate for the last five years, what the fuck more do you need than that? So if you're not like me and you're just, you've already got your Bitcoin, you got all the Bitcoin you want, you got your Bitcoin. Now you're just wanting to play around with these trick. Okay, great. But if you think that. So my concerns are both those things you mentioned, okay, not only getting hurt, but I honestly think that they are a threat. Meaning that many of these companies that are not convicted are going to do just what I said, that if the mark, if the market has a downturn, they are going to be pressured into selling. And there is a case to be made for why that makes sense. It does. On paper it just makes sense. So just beware. And I'm not saying I'm not a fan of the treasury companies because you remember what you said, it's so true. You got it, Walker. It's, it's inevitable. And George, you know, Jethro sitting here, you know, yelling at the people, don't, don't buy those Bitcoin. Treasury doesn't mean jack shit. People are going to buy that because they want that securitization, that financialization using Bitcoin. And it's inevitable. It's going to be everywhere. It's a virus.
- [38:58]
B
Yeah. No, and I think the one point I would push back on is just that I don't view it as too much of a threat. Like threat to Bitcoin or threat to, to Bitcoin's fiat value for these smaller companies specifically because their size is so small? Yes. Could it have some short term, a little bit of turmoil maybe, but it's never going to form. This contagion that trickles all the way up to Saylor and he has orders of magnitude more coins. You look at these bear whales, or not bear whales, but OG whales that have been selling 80,000 coins, 20,000 coins. That's more than basically all the Treasury. You take microstrategy out, that's more than all the treasury companies combined right now. Could that get into a different position? Maybe. I'm not sure. I can't predict the future, but I'm less concerned about that. I'm more concerned about plebs getting wrecked and full disclosure as well. I've owned some MicroStrategy for a while. I've bought some MetaPlanet when their MVav was almost as high as it went. Felt like jumped in the train. Got there for a couple days. But this is. I own a couple others. I have a little bit of. A little bit of Semler. I have a little bit of Nakamoto. I have a little bit of a couple others. Honestly, they're all getting wrecked compared to Bitcoin. They're all getting absolutely destroyed. And, I mean, I knew that was a likely course of action sometimes. I told Checkmate this the other day. I was like, I quote, trade with a very, very, very small amount of fiat cuck bucks. Because it's important for me to stay humble that way by reminding myself that I'm just a terrible trader and the only good trades I have are when I buy something when it's cheap and I just hold it. I never do a good job when I'm trying to chase trends. So for me, it's bringing myself back down to earth. And so that's why I always say, just get bitcoin. Just get spot Bitcoin.
- [40:53]
A
Let me interrupt you for a minute and tell you something. You talk about being stupid or chasing trends or making wrong trades. I left. I calculated one time, and it was really painful. But, you know, I bought MicroStrategy years and years ago when it was like 12, $20 of a share. I don't know what it is today, but it's probably like, that was. That was before it split. So we're talking. It's probably around 4,000 a share now. I don't know what it is, but. But. So I left about 5 to 8 million dollars on the table by selling that stock. It had gone up five or six times. I thought, man, that's a boy. I'm a genius. I am one of the smartest people I know. Great return. And so I sold it all. And of course, several years later, or, well, it wasn't even that long, but a couple years later, I went and thought, you know, that was pretty stupid. And so I got back into it. And, you know, everybody does this. It's the psychology of markets, you know, Walker. It just. It is the nature of learning. It's the beast. And the longer you're in these markets, I mean, hopefully you can get smart and realize that you're often their worst enemy is You.
- [41:56]
B
Amen to that. And again, that's why, like, you know, for me, it's. Bitcoin is saving. For me, it's actually, it's actually money that we can save. And you can't save in Fiat because Fiat's debased. You can't hold it for a long period of time because you lose purchasing power. Gold is, is pretty good for saving because it maintains its purchasing power over time. It does. That doesn't really, in terms of the real goods that you can buy with gold. It's. It's not really increasing, but it's. You're maintaining purchasing power. At least you're not losing it. Bitcoin, you can actually grow your purchasing power over time. You can save because it is sound money. We're not used to that because we don't have that in the FIAT world. Bitcoin is unique in that regard, as you touched on earlier. And so for me, I was a terrible saver before bitcoin. I was a terrible investor, too. Still a bad trader. That hasn't changed. But bitcoin finally gave me a vehicle in which I could actually save. And I'm a good saver. It turns out when I save in bitcoin, everyone's a bad saver when you're saving in Fiat. And so that's why for the vast majority of people, if you want to play, do whatever the fuck you want with your money, I don't care. It's your money. I'm not here to tell you what to do with it. But for me, it's like, I try to stay as humble as I can. I try to create value. I try to stack as many sats as I can, and I try to spend as much time with my family as I can. And that's what's really important to me, you know, and the less time I spend trading, the better because, again, I am terrible at it. So. And I know this about myself, but I have to remind myself every now and again by, you know, burning a few FIAT cuck bucks.
- [43:29]
A
You know, bitcoin does it. Is that it's. I'm glad you brought that up. Let's pivot the conversation then and talk about some other things that, that are even more maybe cyclical but also very important right now. You know, I. I have been reviewing and reading Neil Howe's Fourth Turning Again. And for those people that aren't familiar with it, if you're listening and stuff, it's really a theory about cycles and the fact that we go through these cycles of 80 to 100 years called seculums that kind of mirror the idea of a longest lived human life in history. And if you follow the theory, you realize that in 2008, and they predicted this about nine years prior, but they said around 2008 and that's when it happened, we would be in what would start the fourth turning the idea of crisis that we're in now. And this idea that you just mentioned, the idea of trying to store value of all the things that I think is going to be very, very critical for people going forward over the next few years. We're going to have a really, we're going to have a really difficult time as a nation and in the world. And for just ordinary people like us over the next three to five years, it is going to be a. Just a, a show. You know, I just saw yesterday I, I was looking at a chart from the St. Louis Fed. It showed that from the launch of Chat GBT, which was the spring of 22, so just the very first iteration, and in three years, just three short years, the average American's kilowatt hour cost has gone up 35% in their home, 35% across the country. Wow. And I'll tell you another thing. If you look back, it's just a straight line like this until 22. Then it bumps and it's like a hockey stick and it's still going up. We are going to have some, I think, really difficult secular inflation going on where certain you are going to be exposed in certain areas like child care, health care, car insurance, all of these different things that are going to make your life very difficult going forward. And what Bitcoin can give you that hope is that you can finally find something that you can store your value in and rest and be at peace. If you look at, you know, Bretton woods only lasted for about a dozen years. People don't realize that in 71, when Nixon closed the Gold Window, we broke the peg. You know, prior to that, we were pegging the dollar, attempting to, to gold. And then other nations would peg their currencies to the dollar. Well, we broke that. And if you look at a lot of charts, you can see 1971, for instance. Wealth inequality is the moment where our worlds change. You know, we are in a have yacht and have not economy right now and it's getting worse. And it's all based upon this fiat system that's not tied to anything anymore. You know, the problem is, what did we do after he closed the Gold Window? We attempted to make, we Attempted to peg the world to our cash, our currency. And that currency is backed basically by US Treasuries. So we have. We have seen a world where we have. We've wanted to export dollars, force other nations to purchase our treasuries, and at the same time artificially boost the value of our currency, our cash. And we've been a deficit nation for decades now, and it's coming home to roost. That's what I'm trying to say. I'm just telling people, you know, this is going to be a difficult time. You've got to find things that this government and the rest of the governments here cannot print, and they cannot print Bitcoin. Now, I can prove that they cannot print gold. I am a former gold bug, and I also understand gold. And I have no problems understanding why other investors think gold is a great escape valve, because I do, too. It cannot be printed. Now, it can be papered, but it can't be printed. The thing is that you've got to find things right now. It's critical. I mean, this is a critical moment in your world over the next three to five years. You got to find things that you can store value in. So I'm glad you brought that up. I think it's bitcoin, personally. And, you know, I tolerate the gold bugs, too.
- [47:59]
B
Yeah, no, I mean, you know, the gold bugs, their heart is in the right place.
- [48:03]
A
Right.
- [48:05]
B
They are also fans of sound money. Nobody is a fan of debasement except those that are the very closest to the printer who hold, you know, the have yachts, as you said. That's. That's. That's nice. I do. I am not a have yacht. Be nice to have a yacht someday. That's. It seems like a ways away, though. We'll see. We'll see what bitcoin does. I would also somewhat hate parting with bitcoin for a yacht because, boy, the. I've heard the upkeep on them is just astronomical. But I digress.
- [48:30]
A
I flew with a captain. I'm just going to interrupt you. I flew with a captain one time, and I was talking about Guy. I don't know what it was, getting a plane or something like that. And he looked over and he said, son, if it flies, floats, or it's better to just rent it, and I thought, you know what? That's probably true, buddy. So, yeah, and the other way is to describe a yacht is you just put a hole in the ocean and pour as much money into it as you can. So I probably am not going to do the yacht either. But the bottom line is that those people, you're right, that are closest to the money printer, they are really benefiting. I mentioned recently, you know, Nancy Pelosi came into Congress with $3 million in 1985. She's now worth $413 million. And her average, the max average salary I think is $174,000 a year. Her husband, same way he's just boomed. And it doesn't matter what party, Republican, same way you can look at Mitch Connell, I can tell you his story. It's the exact same story.
- [49:27]
B
Got that? That's one of those things that bugs me so deeply because it's insider trading at the highest level. I mean, it's the same with the Fed presidents who, people have kind of forgotten about this. I think this was 2023 though, you had Fed presidents Rosengren and Kaplan.
- [49:44]
A
Kaplan.
- [49:45]
B
And there was one more whose name.
- [49:47]
A
Bostic was also in the Atlantic. Atlanta Fed was accused. Yeah. And he refused to resign.
- [49:54]
B
Yeah, yeah. But the other two, they stepped down. They said, oh well, you know, maybe we did something, but we weren't trying to do anything. And it's like that is literally, that's an even higher level of insider trading. You are the cabal that controls the money. You are part of the Federal Reserve and you literally have the most material non public information that you could possibly, that anyone could possibly have. Because you know how fast the printer is going to be running, you know what the price of money is going to be. So for you to insider trade on that information, it's like, man, it is shocking. If people paid attention more, we would have brought back the guillotine a long time ago, I think. But most people don't pay attention. They don't know what's actually happening out there. But the fact that you throw sweet Martha Stewart in jail for insider trading, but these fucking crooks at the Fed and in Congress, just insider trade nonstop. And there's never any repercussions, there's never any even acknowledgement of it.
- [50:50]
A
Zero.
- [50:50]
B
It's disgusting like that. Until we fix that, until there is any sort of accountability there, I think, I mean, well, the Fed is a joke anyway and should be abolished. But our Congress as well has zero legitimacy.
- [51:04]
A
Yeah. You know, the thing is, being a student of history, you know, having read a lot about history, this is not just nothing new. But I don't think that this is going to change. I mean, those who are closest, for instance, I'll tell you, great, great story. Spain is probably one of the world's first reserve currencies. Back in the 15th, 16th century, they were bringing back gold in huge galleons from the New World, mainly in Central and South America. And what they did was brutal to extract it. But the bottom line is, guess what happened? They would bring a galleon of gold, full galleon ship into port, and the economy would immediately inflate because again, they were increasing the hard physical money. And the thing is that those who were closest to that galleon when it arrived, and I'm talking the government officials, the religious officials within the Catholic Church at that time, they received the most benefit from that gold. And what happened is it the, what they did is they bought as much as they could before prices inflated because they had the hard money. And as that gold worked its way through the system, prices went up and up and up. And then, you know, it was the shopkeeper that was sitting there, you know, with his legs being cut off because he couldn't keep up with that level of inflation. And he didn't have access to that money until it was distributed. And then they did the same thing the US did. They were a world currency and they began to export all of their wealth outside of their nation's borders. They exported their manufacturing because they could buy things. And, you know, eventually it resulted in endless wars for them and finally they collapsed.
- [52:53]
B
It's interesting too, because we have, you know, history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes, right? And I think you're correct that so many of these things are destined to repeat. History occurs in these cycles that all kind of rhymes. And you even, you saw, you know, that's, that's. I love that story about Spain. It's like, it's one of my favorites because it shows that, look, even, you know, if you have a liquidity injection, even in a hard asset, something happens. And as you said, the important thing there, which people sometimes gloss over, they just look, oh, the inflation. People assume that inflation just kind of like happens all like that. It doesn't. It's, it's, you know, it's, it trickles down. It's, it's not trickle down economics. It's, you know, trickle down inflation. It's, it's trickle down money, right? And we saw that exact same thing during COVID when they printed. They injected trillions of dollars into the economy under Trump so damn quickly. I mean, you look at the M2 money supply graph and that thing is just straight up, straight up like you've never seen. And what happened initially, there's no quote, inflation or so they say. But asset prices start going ballistic. And people don't think about that as inflation, but it is a result of the monetary inflation. Asset prices are the first thing that gets bid up when there's a huge liquidity injection, right? The hard assets or also the various equities and things. But you saw real estate go ballistic, you saw the stock market go ballistic, and you're like, this doesn't make any sense. Everything's all shut down. How the heck is this happening? But hey, there's no quote inflation because my ground beef is still about the same price as it was. I mean, maybe it's 2% higher because that's the healthy amount of inflation for you, thanks to your friendly central banker. And then inflation's transitory. Once the inflation starts actually trickling down to the consumer goods and services that people actually rely on to live their lives, trickles down from the assets into those. Then people start saying, okay, well that is getting a bit, it's a bit more expensive. That's 10, 15% more expensive than last year. But it's okay. It's transitory, guys, it's just a hump. And it will go down, it will come, it will come. As Lagarde said, it's all transitory. Then, well, it's maybe it's stickier than we thought. Okay, it's actually, wow. Now we've. Everything's about 50% more expensive than it was when we started this money printing. And so it goes, and so it goes. But people ignore the asset price inflation when you have these big liquidity injections, when the money printer goes brrr. Asset prices are the first thing to pick up that new liquidity. And those that hold the most assets are the biggest beneficiaries of it. And those are the folks that are closest to the creation of new money. This is, you know, the Cantillon, or Cantillon, however you'd like to pronounce it, in fact, Richard Cantillon, Irish French economist, that's what he proposed. Those closest to the proximity of creation of new money derive the greatest benefit from it. And everyone else, you know, they get the shit under the stick.
- [55:40]
A
There are so many ways to take this conversation. I mean, if you look at the history as we were talking about with Bretton woods and what happened to the the US and you look at the US treasury market across the the world right now, and then you look at gold, for instance. You know, central banks have been stockpiling gold a tremendous amount. And especially since 22 after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, then our seizure of the Russian reserve. It's been nonstop. You can look at it just, just going straight up. And in fact, for the very first time in decades, U.S. excuse me, world central banks are now purchasing more gold than they are US treasuries. And you know, in 2010, that's when China pivoted from U. S. Treasuries. They knew that we were not going to stop printing. It was Bernanke. And they said, oh, we see what's coming here. And they went from like about $1.25 trillion in U.S. treasuries. They're down somewhere north of 700 million or a billion I think right now. So that's one way to take this. But the other thing I'll tell bitcoiners too is a lot of bitcoiners think that we're going to be able to solve this issue through, I don't know, a strategic bitcoin reserve or somehow backing the dollar by bitcoin. I will tell you right now, if we backed, if we went all in on bitcoin, if the US Stole strategy and got a huge stockpile of bitcoin and we backed up the dollar by bitcoin, our bitcoin would be gone within a decade. If you don't change the dynamics of what I was discussing before, if you cannot understand that we need a neutral reserve asset for the world, then nothing will change. If we stayed in the same system we're in right now, I don't give a shit what you back our dollar with. It's going to exit our country right now. If you look at the history of gold and you say, okay, well, why did we depeg? Well, because we had over 20,000 tons of bits of gold at the end of World War II. And by the time Nixon gave up, we were down to about 8,000, maybe. Still hasn't been audited, kids. We still haven't had an audit of the bitcoin. We haven't still bought one single sat by the way of bitcoin. We've taken a lot of bitcoin. We've seized. So that's another reason you should be thinking yourself, gee, I wonder if I should get some bitcoin in cold storage. Anyway, I digress. What I'm trying to say is we need something almost like what was proposed in Bretton woods originally in 1944. And that is the idea of a special drawing rights, you know, a basket, some bancor, something that is a neutral basket or some neutral reserve asset. And it could Be. I will tell you right now, there is a chance that it's going to be gold someday in the future. I mean, the nation states recognize gold. It has been used for that in the past. It's being stockpiled now. And you know, there is a chance that will be the case. Well, guess what? That means you're going to have to. Everybody is going to have to de. Peg from the dollar. That means you're going to have floating currencies right now, China, which says they want to do that, but there is no way China can do that. The chance that China could somehow manage to convince the world that their currency, which has both an off and onshore component to it, could become a world reserve currency, a neutral currency. It's ridiculous. So there's so many barriers that we have to overcome here in order to go forward from this system right now, which is broken. This is a broken system.
- [59:11]
B
I couldn't agree more. I just brought up this chart that I saw that TFTC shared. I mean, it's wild when you look at this. So for, for those that are not watching the video, it's just China's gold holdings in kilograms. And I mean it's, it is pretty, pretty stable. And then goes ballistic. Like, especially this, this last, you know, last couple of years.
- [59:32]
A
One of the things, one of the things I'll say about this chart, just leave it up for a minute here. Okay? Something you need to understand, if you are watching this and you see the chart or later you have a chance to look at it. Yeah, it shows a hockey stick, just like I was discussing with the energy price. But what you need to keep in mind here is these are called warrants. And so basically what China said is, okay, Shanghai Gold Exchange, I want you to audit and verify and tell the world that we have this much gold. And it's almost like China is broadcasting. That's what it is. They're broadcasting the world, hey, look how much gold we got. You know, don't mess with us. We've got gold. But, but let's just, you know, let's take this conversation to the next level here. Let's just stay with gold then. Okay, sure. How those, how those countries would then settle trade imbalances is through gold. So first off, if the US Ever wanted to go to a gold or bitcoin standard, the very first thing we'd have to do is the dollar would have to be weakened so dramatically that in order to be pegged properly across international markets. So that would be a really difficult time for the U.S. i don't know how in the hell what would happen to us consumers in a case like that. You know, we've got ourselves in a real bind here. I mean, there's no easy solution to this problem. One thing you know that the. And this is, this is like 4D chess, which I'm not very good at. I can't even play regular chess. But let's just say that I was good and I was thinking like a 4, 4D chess player. One of the things I would think about is, is something that Saylor actually mentioned already once too, before which I actually had. Have thought about this in the past, which, hey, guess what? These central banks, these nations, they're betting on gold. They've used it in the past. Central banks wanted to gold after the World War I ended, they all wanted to go back to the gold standard. They attempted. There was a strong push to try and work that out at the end of World War II. But the problem is you almost need to escape the system. If the US actually, actually did do what I said and just bought all, all the bitcoin they could and basically gave the bird to the rest of the world, that this is the new settlement layer. Because let's say portable, divisible, durable, fungible, verifiable, scarce seizure. That's money. Bitcoin's money. And we can talk later about these jackasses that don't think it's money. Bitcoin's not a data transmission device. It's money. It says in the first line of the white paper, peer to peer cash, electronic cash. It's money. So anyway. God, I'm starting to rant. So anyway, just getting back to that subject, what I'm talking about. What am I saying? I'm just saying that it makes sense to have a protocol or a base neutral reserve asset like Bitcoin, because the problem with gold is nobody trusts it. Nobody knows how much gold. Now, China just said, you've got that chart still up there on that thing. They said, this is the gold we've got. Nobody really knows that. And not only that, tomorrow you still don't know that because as soon as somebody walks out of a vault or whatever, the, you know, whatever aspect we're using here, again, people don't know what you really hold. So what was the solution? You know, before they used to have these damn vaults like under London and in New York, and you know, they would move gold physically from one side of the vault to the other to designate that somebody new had acquired gold. Hey, France, you've got more gold now. Let's move it over to your side. And they use these stupid looking carts. Well, bitcoin is electronic digital cash moving at the speed of fucking light and it settles forever. Bitcoin is the transmission level that they should be using for these trade settlements. And the world just hasn't figured out. That's another reason why we're early. The world doesn't understand anything I'm talking about right now. Tradfi, they clueless. You talk to these central banks, they would just stare at you. There's nothing going on behind their eyeballs when you talk about bitcoin. So we are early. Now I don't think the US is going to do that. I really don't because I haven't seen any indication that they are going to get off their ass and start buying sats. But it's just something to put in.
- [63:52]
B
The back of your mind, I agree with you because that's the thing. If you work out this game theory and Matthew Pines has talked about this extensively and a lot of the folks at BPI who I think have done a really excellent job working through some of the game theory scenarios of this, it's like, who owns the most gold? Well, it's China and Russia and you know, our kind of quote adversaries own a ton of gold. I mean many, many tons of gold. But you know what I mean, they own a lot of gold. Or so they say. Because again, no one's dropping their, no one's dropping their pants and letting you know somebody else check. Right. They could be tungsten bars wrapped in some gold leaf for all we know. Who knows. But let's say they own the gold that they actually. Or they actually own the gold that they say they do. And let's say the US owns the gold that we say we do. Wink wink. And still no Fort Knox audit, as you said. Okay, we'll see. Maybe it'll come. Maybe. Who knows? The US Both the government from all the bitcoin it's confiscated, even though it hasn't started buying any yet. But the confiscated bitcoin that it has the corporations in the US and individuals in the US own. I forget what the exact number is. It's something like 40 or 50%. It's a huge, huge percentage of the overall bitcoin ownership is in some way tied to the United States of America. So if you were going to want to designate a new neutral reserve asset that was going to most advantage you and most disadvantage your adversaries, it wouldn't be gold for the United States, it would be bitcoin. But whether or not they actually do that, because as you said, that would require a massive, massive debasement event to be able. If they actually went full bore and said we're going to start printing money to buy bitcoin, basically, even though that may sound cool in a lot of ways that may signal that we're about to enter a very strange and tumultuous period. I think we already are in it. You mentioned the fourth turning earlier and I've been mulling around this thesis that I should probably actually just put pen to paper and write. But it started with the idea of the fourth turning and then I learned about kondrative waves and that's kind of a different cyclical theory, but it's economic growth and stagnation that it's driven by technological evolutions. It was a Russian guy who came up with this theory and then the Soviets killed him basically because it didn't speak very nicely of socialism, communism and it spoke very well of capitalism. And then you've got these other theories. You've got things like anacyclosis, which is this 2000 year old theory from a Greek philosopher, Polybius, where you basically go through monarchy to tyranny, to aristocracy, to oligarchy, to democracy, to oglocracy, which is mob rule. And then you start over again and that goes right back to a strong man and it keeps repeating. You got Ray Dalio's long term debt cycles, all of these things. You've got global reserve currency cycles, all of these different things. And the fourth turning as well, they're all kind of coming to a head. All of these cycles are converging right about now and in these next few years. On top of that you have AI, which is a techno industrial revolution the likes of which we have never seen before.
- [67:28]
A
Massive.
- [67:29]
B
And you have bitcoin, all of these things happening at once. What does that mean for the next few years, the next decade or two? Probably means things are going to get really crazy. It means things are going to get insanely wild and you need to have some sort of a lifeboat, you need to have a shield to make it through that storm unscathed. And in my view that's bitcoin. And I think in your view as well. But people need to be prepared that yeah, I'm very optimistic and bullish on the future and very hopefully. But in the short term things may get very strange, they may get very violent and there's going to be an incredible amount of unrest. We're already seeing it, right. And it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. In my opinion.
- [68:13]
A
It's going to be a shit show. Next three to five years, it'll be a shit show. And you know, the thing is that we are in a, we are in a race right now. This is an arms race. We are in a superpower arms race race between us and China. And it's all on AI and it revolves around three things. Power chips, infrastructure, and guess what? You know, we're both ahead and behind. China is building out nuclear power plants at about eight times cheaper than we can produce them. They've got hydroelectric, that is just off the chart. And they are invested heavily in it. It's the chips that they're struggling with. And you know what? Taiwan TSMC, that chip factory is like 80 nautical miles across the Taiwan Strait. I mentioned the other day in my F18, like that thing in burners, and I could be there in like, probably nine minutes. And that that is an issue. And then the other thing is the infrastructure. Now that, you know, this administration, I mean, they're. Everybody fucks up, you know, I mean, I can't stand, I can't stand either one of these parties. I don't like politicians, but I will say that this administration, they pivoted. They went, you know, from we're going to save $2 trillion to fuck it. We can't. We're not going to save anything. And they're not. They're going to spend the exact same amount Biden did in his last year in office. They're going to have $2 trillion in deficit this year. So they're not doing jack shit. But the thing is that they are pivoting and they have made a conscious decision to grow their way out of this. And how they're doing that, and they're betting big is on AI. And you can see it. They're telling you they're telegraphing what they want. Why do you think they're pushing, why Besant and Trump are all over the top of the Fed right now and why they want those rates lower. It's not just our interest expense. They also want to build out the infrastructure to go forward. We need so much in this country right now if we are going to become the AI superpower. And it's a, it's a sharp race. I mean, it'll be over, I'll bet, within three to five years. And, you know, I want the US to be out on top. I want us to be Number one on this. And I think that, you know. Yeah, I just said it's going to be a shit show. But you know what the good news is if. If you get through this period of time, every one of you out there, you ought to just look around. You might be living in the most abundant world that you can possibly imagine, and it could be like paradise, and we might actually finally solve the. The constant battle. You know, reading history, I was just read the. I was reading about the Assyrian Empire last night around 700, 600 BC, and I won't bore people here, I promise.
- [70:51]
B
As one does a little light reading at night with a little whiskey. Yeah.
- [70:55]
A
Hey, you know, as an aside, tell Carla this too. You know, a lot of times people think I'm just talking, you know, like an old warrior or something to guys and stuff like that, but I'm not. I'm talking to women, too. Women can be warriors. You know, you look at the Scythians, they were like warrior women. In fact, you know, they were tremendous. I almost said horsemen, horsewomen, and they could shoot, throw a javelin, they could handle a sword, short combat. And here's the thing that most people don't know, and this was written about by Hippocrates and Herodotus and then other historians, so I believe it's true, and that is that they had to remain virgins. They could not marry until they had killed an enemy in combat. And so can you imagine this woman riding along on a horse out there on the steps and she's, you know, she's got somebody next to her and she wants to marry him. In fact, she just wants to mount him. And basically she can't. Until she kills somebody, she's going to be a really pissed off person to meet on the battlefield. But getting back to the Assyrians, that's amazing.
- [72:01]
B
First, I need. Now I need to look deeper into that, because that sounds fascinating.
- [72:05]
A
These Assyrians, if you read history, it's a constant constant. It never stops. And they had written language then, too. It's an endless series of battles. Fighting, killing, raping, pillage, plunder, destroy cities, everything you can imagine. Burning things to the ground, every person slavery or executed. Ramsay too, in Egypt, brought home 100,000 slaves from one campaign. It's been constant struggle and fighting. I've always hoped that bitcoin somehow would get us out of this constant loop of fighting. And maybe, maybe, you know, if I really does come to fruition, and it is what I said it could be, you know, the money it will be using will Be digital. It sure as hell isn't going to go down to 5th 3rd bank and open up an account. It's going to be digital money. And I want it to be bitcoin. Now, you know, it may be stablecoins. It could be, you know, some other. It won't be a shitcoin. It will be something along those lines. But, you know, this could be a great world going forward. You just have to get through this tier, this period right now.
- [73:12]
B
I agree with that completely. And it's, you know, this is a. This is an opportunity, too. And no matter. No matter what, what age you are, it's like we are so lucky to be alive at this time when bitcoin exists and be this early in it. You know this. I have a son. He's under 2 years old. I mean, in 20 years, when he's into the workforce, I don't know if he's going to go to college or what. I have no idea if that'll even look the same 20 years from now. Probably not. But it's going to be wild for him to look back and say, oh, my God, my parents were around, you know, in the early days of bitcoin. Like, this is. If you are here right now, if you are stumbled across this podcast, or if you are a regular listener, thank you very much. If you're here on Nostr right now, you're really early. So cheers to everybody who's out there listening on Nostr and who is zapping this. Who is zapping me Bitcoin on Zap Stream or Primal or Fountain or Amethyst or any of these clients. Like, that's amazing. You're sending me a little tiny chunk of 21 million. Thank you for that. But if you're here, you're early. You're so early. We get to be here at the start of all of this. And it is going to be, I think, in the long arc of time, it's going to be incredible. It's going to be usher in, as you mentioned, an age of true abundance. Jeff Booth talks about this all the time, better than I or really anyone else ever can. Technology is deflationary. Everything should be getting cheaper. Everything should be getting more abundant. One other thing he says, you know, abundance in money creates scarcity in everything else. Scarcity and money creates abundance in everything else. We have a chance to live in a really incredible future. Some of us are living in it right now. And that's the incredible things that you can make the decision to start saving the value of your Time and your energy in bitcoin right at this moment, and you can start to already enjoy the benefits of that abundant future. You know, you don't have to wait like, the future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed yet.
- [75:05]
A
Yeah, I love that. I do. I love that. I. And, yeah. And Jeff, you know, Jeff Booth's a smart guy. He's a lot smarter than I am. But. But I do agree with you. 101 of the things I want to say is, you know, we're talking about Bitcoin, and both of us, I think. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but for me, bitcoin is probably the single most important thing that I want to succeed. I cannot imagine it failing. For one thing, I have all my wealth in bitcoin. Two, I'm counting on that, as you are, for a legacy to not just my children, but my grandchildren. It cannot fail. You know, when bitcoin started, in the first week of January 2009, you ran that protocol. And bitcoin is. So Bitcoin is a protocol and a network. The protocol discusses things like the hard cap, the difficulty adjustment. The network is basically us. And when I say us, I mean running a node. So the network, think of the network as a node. When. When he first started that, and Hal Finney, even himself, when he ran bitcoin, the protocol. And by the way, when Satoshi put it out, it was version 0.1 of that software implementation to run the protocol. So Hal ran that on a computer, just a PC like this. He. It was a Windows run, and it was a spare PC that he had. So he's running Bitcoin. And. And here's another thing. You mined and you had a wallet and a node all on the computer. You did it all. Now, why am I saying this? Because Satoshi never envisioned where we would go today. He did not understand that there would only be 23,000 reachable nodes today with maybe 2 to 3 million hardcore bitcoiners that are really just maxis like myself and you. If I think. If he could speak, I think that he would be appalled to know that because the. The reason you run a node is to strengthen the network, to build the health of the network, and to be a sovereign individual. Those three things are key. So I am telling you right now, if you're listening to me, and you've made any money in this last cycle, and you know I've made money in this cycle, and if you haven't, you're an idiot. So if You've made money in this last cycle. Get off your ass like I did. You get a node. If you're like me, an older boomer or something, get one that I did that. You just plug it in the damn wall and it starts syncing up with the network. Run a node. And I will tell you something else. I. You know those soft. That software implementation that I mentioned, how to run the protocol? It Bitcoin core. And don't get confused. I'm not talking about the bitcoin protocol. I'm talking about the developers that maintain the software to run the node. That is the default software. But there are other ones available to run. I run knots. I run knots because I believe that bitcoin core is not aligned with my values as a bitcoiner. And I want to be a sovereign individual. And I will not participate in some of the things that bitcoin core is pushing. I just won't. And so you have a responsibility. If you want this thing to survive, you got to run a node. First and foremost. Get, you know, get a hardware wallet where you can actually connect the node to the wallet. If you don't know how to do that, go to BT sessions, type in how to connect Sparrow to the network. Use your node. If you can't do that, go to Matthew Craters. Actually go to both of them. And if you're confused about what I'm discussing regarding core versus knots, then get off your ass, start doing the same thing. Go to both of those sites, especially Matthew Crater, and start understanding what Knots is about and why it's so important that you remain a sovereign individual and you support this network that we all want to be here for next hundred years. And if you do that, then we've got a fighting chance. And if you don't, we're fucked up. I'll tell you right now, we are fucked. Make sure you understand that you've got, you know, 95% of all the bitcoin profit gated on the blocks came out of six. Six. Oh, that's. Six is hard. I'm not, you know, I got to take off my shoes. The reason they called me Jethro in the Navy was from that old TV show, Jethro Bodine. So, you know, I got to take off my shoes if I'm going to count past five or six. How many is this? Whatever, six. Six mining pools. There's six nodes, six that are putting out all this data. That's not right. It's. We got something. Something's really fucked up here. This, this mining Centralization is a problem going forward. You know, you've got so much hash rate concentrated within these mining pools. You can go on to the mempool space, follow it along, and you can see blocks, sometimes six to eight long, all mined by foundry, foundry, foundry, foundry. That's not healthy. So run a node. And the reason I say that is because in the future, you're going to have to make some pretty important decisions as a bitcoiner. And guess who gets to vote on those decisions? It's the nodes. Okay, that's enough rant.
- [80:37]
B
No, no, no. I think it's an important topic and I think it's important that people understand, like, what, you know, there is a difference between, like, economic. There's. How am I going to say this? Lyn Alden and Moneyball did a great piece on how bitcoin consensus actually works and what actually happens in hard fork, soft fork scenarios. I had them both on the show to talk about it because they're so much more knowledgeable about it than I am. And that is a really important thing to understand, is that no one entity, whether it's the miners, whether it's the nodes, whether it's the whales that hold a ton of bitcoin, whether it's the podcasters and the influencers or any bad actors that are out there, everybody has a different level of influence somewhere. Right? And it's important to understand the interplay of all of that. If you haven't read this piece that they put out, I can link it in the show notes. It's a really good one. You can listen to the episode that we did together too, where they kind of go in depth in a lot of these things. But the mining pool centralization piece is, I think, the really concerning one. I was really happy to see also just on mining hardware centralization, basically all of it coming from China in any meaningful volume, and now Jack Dorsey with their new proto rig. I think that's fantastic. I also think that the movement towards more people solo mining at home is wonderful. I think bitaxes are fantastic. I think that this is all of these things that. Yeah, maybe you view it as a lottery ticket. Right? But you're still mining bitcoin, right?
- [82:10]
A
I got one back there right now. Yeah, yeah, See it, It's in the picture. It's. It's there, right there. It's actually mining bitcoin while we're talking. So I get it. I get it 100% and I will agree with you. But the thing that people need to understand is that when you see that little bit X back there? Or if I have a mining rig somewhere that I'm working, that thing is a hash. It's hashing, it sends out hash rate. The problem is that with the current software that mining pools are using, all the miners themselves, even the large organizations, maybe a guy that's got a thousand miners, all they're doing is they're sending their hash rate to these pools. That's it. They're not building the templates, they're not exercising any power here because the power is in the template. The template is where you get to decide what am I going to include here in a transaction. And so it's not just a node. All of these small miners, you should be have, have your own node. I'm talking if you've got 10 miners, 100, whatever, get your own node run. I, I personally would run datum and use that to send my hash rate either to Ocean or build my own template. Somebody that is morally and ethically aligned with what I feel bitcoin is and where it can go in the future. And remember, I've already said bitcoin for me is money. It's not anything else. It's not JPEGs or any other jackass shit. It's money. And that's what it is.
- [83:44]
B
Yeah. What I love about bitcoin most, I think, is that bitcoin benefits from all of us acting in our own best interest. Right. It benefits from all of us being selfish and making subjective value judgments about what is most important to us and our stack, because we are going to do whatever it takes to preserve that. And I think something that gets lost in a lot of these conversations is especially when people are pointing back and forth and saying, this person wants to ruin Bitcoin. No, that person wants to ruin Bitcoin. Well, this person doesn't understand Bitcoin. Well, no, that person doesn't understand Bitcoin. I think what's lost in that is that at the end of the day, most of these people who are arguing back and forth deeply care about bitcoin. Are there perhaps some bad actors in there who are CIA plants or something who wanted to stabilize this? Perhaps. I don't know why the CIA would really want to at this point with the strategic interest that America has in bitcoin. But, okay, let's say that there are. But by and large, when bitcoiners are arguing about stuff, it's important for us to remember that we all want bitcoin to win. Right. And I think that it's Healthy that we have these debates and that we have these debates out in the public, because it's not happening behind closed, you know, closed doors. It's happening right out there in the public square. And the amazing thing about the Internet is that even a pleb can have their voice heard in this debate. Because you can write one banger tweet or one banger post on nostr, and that can reach a lot of people. So there is no more one, or let's say, centralized broadcasting of ideas. This is a free market for ideas that we all get to compete in. And at the end of the day, I couldn't agree more. Run a node. I. People are going to hate me for this and say that I'm a terrible person. I still run bitcoin core. I've run an older version of it for a while. Probably not going to update it for a while either. I think a lot of people won't because, well, I don't. I don't care to have no plans to update it to version 30. That's okay. It's my node. I can do whatever I want with it. Everyone can do whatever they want with their node, right? And, you know, at the end of the day, it's like, I know I want what's best for bitcoin. You won't want what's best for bitcoin. Every bitcoiner that I meet at a conference and get a chance to have a beer with wants what's best for bitcoin. The fact that we maybe have some, you know, some alignment issues on what that actually means in practice, I think is a great thing, because ultimately, I think it helps us reach a better point and it makes bitcoin stronger. That's our immune system. You know, bitcoin's immune system is. Is all of us like we. We humans are the immune system. Bitcoin doesn't care. It's just code. It can't have wants, it can't have desires. We do so what we project. Like, Jeff Booth has said this before, too, to quote him again, we are the network. All of us. We are the network. That is what makes the bitcoin network is all of us making individual value judgments. And I think that's a beautiful thing. And so, yeah, I say, yeah, run knots, run core, run whatever you want. There are other implementations, too. Run whatever you want. Because nobody can tell you what to do. That's the beauty of bitcoin.
- [86:49]
A
Yes. Nobody can tell you what to do. And you're right. Most. Most bitcoiners that you meet. They're aligned with our goals. But, but I will tell you that there are definitely other forces out there that are not aligned with our goals. And, and I'm not talking about bitcoiners. I'm talking about, you know, if you look around the world right now, find one central bank anywhere on this planet that would want bitcoin to succeed. I can't think of one.
- [87:17]
B
Maybe, one, maybe the Czech central bank. They were, they seemed, maybe guys who seem pretty bullish. But these are just, you know, but he'll only tell you folks in Czech.
- [87:25]
A
Republic, he'll only say that to you when he's in the closet with you and nobody else can hear you. So. And think about some of the governments in the vested interest. Think about all the politicians that are next to the cantillion nipple, okay? Those people don't want us to see succeed. There are going to be a lot of people that are not going to be pushing for bitcoin to be successful because they are going to be losers. And if you follow again what I was discussing about the idea of constant warfare, that warfare can apply to bitcoin too. We are in a struggle. Regardless of the adoption that you, that you believe we're seeing, we still are in a struggle for the future of bitcoin. You mentioned about Core 30, the new update that's coming out in October. I caution anybody that's listening to this, I would not run that. And like you said, it's a node. You run whatever the fuck you want on it. That's the power of a node. But I would not run, run 30 and either run like you're doing that smart, or in my case, like I said, I run knots. So. But just be aware of the fact that, you know, whenever we're in a circle together, we're roasting marshmallows and we're fellow bitcoiners and we're all just talking to each other. There's a world outside of that little campfire circle and there are many people that do not want bitcoin to succeed.
- [88:45]
B
I 1000% agree with that. And an important technical clarification for people is one of the beautiful things about bitcoin's node software is that there are no, you can't be pushed and update. So you can't. No. But nobody can just auto push an update to you that you say, what the, you know, what the hell? It's not like your iPhone. I mean, granted, you can turn that off on your iPhone too. But, like, they can't Just unilaterally push something and say this. You're updated now. There you go. You have our new rules. No, no, no. You can just. You can just be lazy. Like, this is a great one of those great examples where it's like being lazy. You can wait and see what happens. You can benefit from hindsight and then decide what you want to do rather than trying to guess what's going to happen and making a decision that maybe ends up not being the right one. So that's the great thing. You can just sit on your hands, continue running your old software, because all of these software versions must be backwards compatible. That's like the, you know, kind of the whole thing, right? Otherwise, like.
- [89:38]
A
And be lazy. The lazy bitcoiner. I like this.
- [89:43]
B
It's sometimes being lazy is being smart. You know what. But yeah, it's. Oh, God.
- [89:51]
A
Well, one thing I'll say is that eventually, you know, as these nodes continue to be built and. And there is a huge, huge upswing in knots. I mean, it went from 2% to 8 for 18% in actually 18.5%. It just jumped overnight in three months. So, you know, we talk hockey stick. It was like this. Now it's boom and it's not stopping. But eventually these, the people that are putting out nodes and producing them will have to come with some default program. And you. At some point. Right now, most default is core, some version like you said. And it will probably upgrade to maybe core 30 at some point too. So that's just something to be cautious about. I do want to say one thing about. You mentioned it yourself. I really like this or you hinted at it. The idea that you have to be in consensus with the protocol call. So when I say I run Knots, it's not like I'm a. There's no soft fork here. There's no nonsense like that. Knots is basically core software with filtering on it to keep OP Return from being opened up. And I have. Whoops. I have some reasons why I don't want OP return opened up. I mean, I'm really concerned about it. I mean, I run a node in my home. I don't want any weird on my. You know. Do you know what a node really is? It's a. It's a. It's a server. It's. It's like an open relay. It's like Dropbox. It's almost like. Have you ever run a server before? A server? It means that. What. Here's what it means. Means that you just took this little white box or black box and you turned it into an open portal to anyone in the world who wants to upload something into your node and the RAM or disk. And I have real concerns. I don't want anybody uploading any weird into my computer or I don't want to see anything on my node or anywhere else on hardware in my home. In that op return section that's beyond what not suppresses. And, and that's about 83 bytes right now. And I don't want to see anything beyond that. That's just me personally. Personally, yeah.
- [92:02]
B
And I think that that's great. And everybody should again, run whatever version that they want and know that there are trade offs to that. And ultimately it's like it's your node so it's your rules, what you decide you want to run on that, what version, what implementation, and that's totally fine. And that is separate. That personal mempool policy is separate from the entire Bitcoin consensus layer. It's all still in consensus. That's a different story. And I think people sometimes maybe get that mixed up. But yeah, I fully support everybody running whatever the hell they want. And I don't believe that you shouldn't do anything you don't want to do when it comes to bitcoin. That's kind of the whole fucking point. Bitcoin's fuck you money. So feel free to say fuck you to anyone you want and say it loud and say it proud. And at the same time, I want to go back. I completely agree with you that it would be naive to assume that there are not many different hostile actors trying to destabilize bitcoin. And a great way to destabilize bitcoin is to cast as much doubt, fear, uncertainty and doubt as you can on all of the open source developers who work on bitcoin. I think that is the best step. One of my playbook, if I was a hostile actor who wanted to destabilize bitcoin, would be take away any sort of faith that the bitcoin community has in all of the open source developers who are building on that community, because then and then threaten them with jail time, threaten them with all sorts of things. Use the government playbook of saying, well, you know, you don't want to be supporting this kind of terrible activity, do you? And you know, you might need to, we might have to take you in for that. Like people have been jailed for writing open source code before. We've literally seen this in the tornado cache. We've seen it in the samurai wallet, like this is this is nothing new. And so if I wanted to destabilize bitcoin, what I would first do is sow dissension in the ranks and try to create a situation where people are really scared to build on bitcoin. Are really scared. Or alternately, if I was somebody who really wanted to see bitcoin ossify as fast as possible, that's what I would do as well. But again, run whatever you want, guys. That's the beauty of bitcoin. Nobody can tell you what to do. It's your node. You can run whatever you want. You can build your own implementation. If you are so inclined. You can vibe code one. Although I probably wouldn't recommend that if you're not a very technical person. That may not turn out so well for you.
- [94:30]
A
I agree.
- [94:32]
B
Well, George, I've kept you here for a while here as usual. The time has flown by. I want to see. Man, we went on so many different tangents and rabbit holes and I loved it. I loved it, as usual. I hope we can do this in person over a beer again soon. But is there. Is there anything else you want to talk about at all? Is there anything you're working on that you want to share with people? I mean, you showed us some of those beautiful paintings behind you. Maybe you could also just. Well, you can answer that first question later. But where can people actually, if they want to support your work by buying your work, maybe spending some stats on it. How can they do that?
- [95:08]
A
You know, that's funny you should ask that because I don't normally sell my. I haven't sold my paintings. I don't do commissions usually. Very rarely, once in a while for a friend. I just did one for Bob Burnett recently and from Prague. Yeah, it was incredible painting. And his wife was the model, and she is the model for that original painting. Years ago I did God bestows Bitcoin to Eve. Larry Lepard's got both those paintings. He bought both Adam and Eve. They're by side. By side. You mentioned earlier. Yeah, you mentioned the beginning that we are kind of documenting a historical. Historical period. And that's what those paintings and pieces were about. You know, in fact, you're in those. You and Carla are in both of those paintings as a mon. Like a kind of a magazine article or maybe something quotes from you that are in there as a montage. And it looks really cool. And that's at the bitcoin museum. But what I was going to say is, yeah, lately I actually have sold a few paintings to Bitcoiners and there I'll only do that since I'm represented around the country in galleries. I only do that if they pay in bitcoin because none of the galleries will pay me in bitcoin. So if people are interested, they can always DM me or something. And if you just type my name into the Internet, George Bodine, you'll find me. I'm the first thing that comes up in Google and stuff.
- [96:28]
B
So, I mean, real quick, there are no, like, standard art galleries that will let you do transactions. That just kind of surprises me.
- [96:38]
A
I know. And, you know, here's the thing, too. I've tried to talk to gallery owners about bitcoin and. And I've been involved in the space for years. How many. How many galleries do you think have successfully used my advice to put any bitcoin on their treasury operations or just to buy some themselves? How many? How about zero? No. How about zero? So out of the, you know, six galleries around the country, not a one of them has bought in. I mean, I've been pitching it since it was down at $16,000 or something, and none of them have bought in. I talked to my physicians about it. Nobody's ever bought in. Last time I went to a general physical or something, I told the guy, I said, hey, you remember last year, I look on the calendar, I said, I saw you one year ago, you know what bitcoin price was, and I don't know what it was. And he said, oh, he said, yeah, that's right. You did talk to me, but what is it now? And I told him, it's like $120,000. He just kind of looked at me. But they nonetheless, they haven't bought. So where was I going on this? I was just going to get ready to say goodbye to everybody, and I appreciate your having me on here. And I, you know, I want everybody to know that. You know, again, although I think this is going to be kind of a tough time right now for people getting through this particular period. I know it is. I mean, it just sucks. My kids, they're all working their ass off. You know, daycare sucks. I mean, in childcare, the cost is incredible. Health insurance is incredible. They're all struggling with house payments, car payments. It's crazy. And so it's a difficult period. But I honestly do believe that if you can find a way to get bitcoin as much as you can comfortably stack like a smart psychopath and hold onto the damn thing, I think that on the outside, on the other side, when we come through this crisis period. If it is a fourth turning, I think it's going to be a great world. We'll have a reset. It could be a incredible reset. I mean, and maybe bitcoin will be a base neutral. It'll be a neutral reserve asset somewhere on the planet, maybe the US you never know. So to fuck you, money.
- [98:35]
B
Cheers to that. And George, I want to thank you because you are just like one of my favorite people. I feel so grateful. It's actually thanks to both Larry Lepard and to Greg Foss that we met for the first time at that dinner Larry was putting together. Yeah, feels like ages ago now, but only a few years ago, I guess, but we were talking about this before. Time moves differently in this space.
- [98:56]
A
Bitcoin ages your kids. I mean, look at me, I'm like 32 years old. Used to have dark hair. I mean, look at what, look at what bitcoin did to me. But it's been worth it.
- [99:05]
B
You still look better than most 32 year olds out there, George.
- [99:08]
A
So you're doing all right? I'm still, I'm working out every day. I mean, I'm out there ready to kick ass, take names right up after action reports.
- [99:16]
B
I, I absolutely love it. And just for anyone who, who wants to follow you, you, you are on Noster as well. You've been, been off it for a little bit.
- [99:22]
A
You know what on there. Yeah, I'm gonna have to re. Establish that because I can't. You know, a typical boomer. I mean, I've played around with it. I think I lost my key immediately.
- [99:31]
B
So spin up a new one. Spin up a new. Send me. You know, let me know when you do and I'll, I'll go ahead and follow and I'll blast it out there. And your handle on, handle On X is Jethro 111 1.
- [99:44]
A
Yeah. And if you don't see, if you don't see a blue check mark on my name there, that's some scamming prick, some sycophant that's trying to scam you. And I never contact people with a DM or Instagram or anything like that. I don't want any money. I don't want anything from anybody. I just want everybody to be happy and, and stack bitcoin.
- [100:01]
B
Can't think of a better note to end on than that. George, thank you so much for sharing your time. Great catching up with you and hope we can do it in the flesh again soon. I'm going to. We got to make it back to Prague next year.
- [100:11]
A
That sounds good. I'll see you there.
- [100:22]
B
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 Beyond Noster@primal.net Walker and this podcast at primal.net Titcoin 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.