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NUMBER GO DOWN: Deflation, Bitcoin, and Communist Lies | Allen Farrington
01:31:37
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- [00:00]
Alan Farrington
Everything that your fiat teacher told you is lies. It's just accurate to say that central banking is communist.
- [00:07]
Host (Walker America)
It's literally in the Communist Manifesto.
- [00:09]
Alan Farrington
Therefore spend more money. The whole fiat game is misleading people by being imprecise. So I'm just performatively doing the opposite.
- [00:16]
Host (Walker America)
We know that necessarily every fiat currency goes to zero eventually. Can you have a true free market? Without a free market in money, you
- [00:23]
Alan Farrington
just end up in this doom loop of like socialism. Culture causes misery and poverty, both of which cause people to want more socialism to try to fix it. They will never own a home. They'll be paid wages because nobody can be bothered starting business and accumulating any capital in the first place. Real estate is monetized so they can't afford anything. So they just feel like, you know, they're on a hamster wheel. They're never, they'll never get off.
- [00:45]
Host (Walker America)
Maybe we should just burn this down.
- [00:48]
Alan Farrington
I'm pretty close to the sun, so. Could do the next one from prison. That'd be fun, right? Have you ever had anyone dial in from prison?
- [01:03]
Host (Walker America)
Alan Farrington. How you doing, man? Welcome. Welcome back to the show. It's been a little while.
- [01:08]
Alan Farrington
Yeah, thanks so much.
- [01:09]
Host (Walker America)
Yeah, you're doing well. Life's good.
- [01:11]
Alan Farrington
Doing very well. I.
- [01:13]
Host (Walker America)
Last time we talked, I think we. It was right when Apple came. I remember specifically Apple came out with that commercial where they were basically crushing all, all the instruments and all the different, you know, all these great pieces of art and stuff and shoving into an iPad. And I think we did a cultural review of that. It's like just came back to me in the moment.
- [01:31]
Alan Farrington
I, Yeah, I completely forgot about that. But now you mention it. Yeah, I remember us being all grouchy about that.
- [01:39]
Host (Walker America)
Perhaps, perhaps. Perhaps a bit grouchy these days. Yeah. Oh, God. They're taking away our art and our music and everything and shoving it into one of their funny computer pads. How dare they? How dare they. Oh, man. Well, good to have you back on. We were just chatting off, off air about this and we were talking about kind of the boy, the, The Fiat system and how it just almost makes you feel like you're taking crazy pills. And you and Sasha Myers, your, Your, Your co author from, from Bitcoin is Venice and from. You guys have done a bunch of. A bunch of writing together now. Obviously you just put out a great piece called Number Go down. And I think this is one of the things that people have the, they struggle with the most because we've been so, you know, Fiat has been the water that we swim in as fish and you know, it's like, what. What the fuck is water? And so this idea that deflation being that it's been this boogeyman in the fiat system, but actually when they talk about deflation, they're, they're, they're not really. We're not using the same words to mean the same things, so, so to speak. So may maybe a good place to. Just one of the things you talk about in this, in this piece is sort of good deflation versus bad deflation. Can we set the stage with that? Just so that anybody who's tuning in saying deflation. Well, I'd hate to have a deflationary spiral. You know, just, just we can put that one to bed at the start and kind of take it from there.
- [03:08]
Alan Farrington
Sure, yeah. I mean, we, we made out this terminology to be clear. It's, it's meant to be slightly tongue in cheek and that it's obviously not a very technically rigorous definition. We, we toyed with like trying to.
- [03:20]
Host (Walker America)
Neither are theirs, to be fair. You know what I mean?
- [03:22]
Alan Farrington
Like more academic. But no, we kind of like this in the end because if anything, a lot of what we're writing about is, you know, economic jargon is kind of unavoidable and it makes it a bit dry in places. So landing on this, I think we're pretty happy with and the reason we come up with it is to. I actually don't think it's all that interesting in its own right. I think it's, we used it as kind of a rhetorical tool to unpack what we expect the fiat objection to be to our overall argument that just deflation is good. Right. I mean, that's basically the entire essay is just deflation is good, actually. Everything that your fiat teacher told you is lies. But we anticipate so in, in setting out that we think relatively straightforward argument, we anticipate the fiat Keynesian objection of pointing to. Basically the only time you ever see deflation in a fiat context, which is in the aftermath of a credit bubble popping and I'm a little wary of. I mean, we can dig into this more detail if you want, if you want to kind of pry on, on, you know, for more specifics here. I don't, I again, I'm wary of like drowning in jargon right from the start, but I guess a decent summary would be like, I, your, your audience will know perfectly well and won't need me to explain, you know, why prices typically go up, why you typically have inflation under fiat. But it Might seem a little counterintuitive that you can actually have brief periods of deflation. Brief as a result of. As painful as it is to say this is like one of the only times if you want to invoke aggregate demand, it's like somewhat meaningful without being completely silly, where the idea would be because everybody's just insanely leveraged. And the idea of a credit bubble being that you're just getting more and more leverage and you have more and more of the illusion of wealth without anything real kind of substantiating it, that what it means for the credit bubble to pop is basically everybody being forced to adjust to that reality all at the same time. And so people stop spending because they were on a path of spending that they thought was sustainable, because they thought they had all this wealth, and then they realized they don't, so they stopped spending. But in the meantime. So that's, you know, aggregate demand goes down. But up until that point, all of their spending had been facilitating and kind of creating the fake price signals to enable all kinds of supply. And that's still there, right? Like all of this inventory is there waiting to be sold at the point at which everybody realizes they actually don't have any wealth at all. And so that's the exact set of circumstances in which you would see deflation in the sense of prices going down, not really in the sense of the money supply contracting, because all of a sudden nobody's buying it. You just have seemingly sustainable purchasing and then everybody stops. And then everyone who's selling things like, oh, shit, well, we need to lower prices to actually clear this stuff. And so that's like the exact window in which you might see it. But the funny thing is that's pretty much the only time you would ever see it in a fiat system. And so the fiat economist explanation of this is basically getting the causation completely wrong and saying all of that, therefore deflation bad, right? Like deflation is symptomatic of the bad thing happening, and therefore it itself must be bad. And the only way we can cure this is inflation. And then that comes full circle to. Even as this hasn't necessarily happened, this could be like all hypothetical. Or maybe you've had like one experience of it, or you point to, you know, they always point to like the crash of 29 as the worst case ever of this having happened and we need to make sure that never happens again kind of thing. That's their justification for just always having inflation all the time. It's, it's. Yeah, you don't actually need to live through it necessarily. You just need to follow their logic or their illogic to get comfortable with. Well, that must be avoided at all costs. And so that's back to your question. That's, that's what we somewhat jokingly mean by, you know, good and bad deflation. Good deflation is what you would actually expect in a normal functioning system. And bad deflation is this one weird thing that can occasionally happen in fiat.
- [07:56]
Host (Walker America)
Well, right, you have this one quote in there that's a lot of, a lot of great zingers in there. But they conclude that money printing will avert hardship. Not seeing that it was money printing that created the capital misallocation and balance sheet fragility in the first place. And that's kind of the whole thing, right, is that these, you know, these problems that they are warning about that must be averted. What they're describing are problems that have been of their own making in the limited. In the limited instances where they can even cite an area where this occurred.
- [08:25]
Sponsor/Announcer
Right.
- [08:25]
Host (Walker America)
Like people have all these ideas about, you know, the, the crash of, you know, of, of 1929, the Great Depression that followed and all these things. And then it's like you look, you know, it's, there's like what you were taught in the, you know, in your history textbooks growing up, and then there's what actually happened. And, and it's sort of like, well, what actually happened once you dig into it a little more, you're like, oh, well, this, this narrative doesn't really make any sense at all anymore. Like there was just, there was manipulation all along the way. And then it reached, you know, reached ahead. Right? And then it blows off. And then what gets blamed? Well, it's actually, the problem was, was deflation at the end of the day. Clearly, you know, the problem wasn't that we were, you know, just playing it fast and loose. No, no, no. The, the problem is this other thing that we will now use as a boogeyman for the next hundred years. But it's just kind of crazy to me, Alan, that they've sort of gotten away with that. Like, like how, how is it that are people just so conditioned at this point where you've, we've only. You and I have only ever grown up in an inflationary world. Right. Except for in certain areas where deflation, technological and entrepreneurial deflation out. Flat screen TVs are always the example everyone uses but like it because they're a great example. Right. They just keep getting better and thinner and cheaper. And at all along, even as everything else gets more and more and more expensive. And so are we just so conditioned to expect prices to go up that we don't, you know, ride in the streets and overthrow our overlords for it? Hypothetically speaking, of course. I know, you know, don't want you getting arrested, you know, in the.
- [09:54]
Alan Farrington
Yeah.
- [09:54]
Host (Walker America)
In the United Kingdom for these things.
- [09:55]
Alan Farrington
I appreciate your concern for my, my, my jurisdictional liability. It's. I don't know, it's really hard to say. I mean, I'm wary of giving an answer that's like unhelpfully, you know, pathologizes 99% of the, of the population. It's equally unsatisfying to just be like, oh, people are stupid or, oh, people are brainwashed. Whatever it. I, I don't have a good answer. I, Whatever it is is, I think, more sophisticated than that to try to say something positive, I guess, rather than just whining about, you know, everyone's dumb or everyone's misinformed or whatever, you know, sneaky Russian disinformation. Um, the, the goal with this essay, we can get into this a little bit more if you want and like, how it feeds into future writing that Sasha and I are, are planning on goal with this essay is basically to, you know, we have a few, like, snarky jabs here and there just because it's fun and it's like, it's a bit dry otherwise, but it's, it's sort of to assume that you don't really have any, certainly no academic background in economics as the reader, but potentially not much of, you know, just, just common sense. Right. Like an ability to reason, some real world experience, but, you know, not, not really asking a lot in terms of like, conceptual, you know, groundwork that you need to have, you need to have, you know, had some like, undergraduate education or whatever, like just, just common sense as, as common sense as possible, as first principles as possible, and just guiding the reader through why, why you would expect what we're arguing for not in terms of some kind of grand sweeping theory, but because I feel like maybe that's part of the answer to your question that, that Fiat Keynesianism, whatever you want to call it, does sweep a lot of this stuff under the rug by virtue of grand sweeping theories that you're supposed to accept, even though you have no real world validation of it at all. It just kind of sounds good, it sounds coherent even though it isn't. So avoiding that as much as we can and just trying to Go. You know, I use the expression first principles a minute ago, just going through like, okay, well, why would people behave this way? Having behaved that way, why would these things happen? And you know, hopefully it's coherent. Hopefully the reader follows the logic, ends up agreeing with us. And then I guess the sneakiest part of the whole thing is that, you know, we don't actually mention bitcoin at all. But, but it's. And it's kind of not really about bitcoin other than the implication being, well, therefore you should also like bitcoin. Right? So that, that's the kind of the cherry on top of you. If you do make it all the way through, if you do follow all of this, you ideally find yourself liking more than liking bitcoin more than you would otherwise, even though we didn't argue for that directly. And then that. I don't know if you want to get into this right away, but that kind of then feeds into like what the point of all of the bitcoin is Venice is and how this is going to fit into what we're, what we're planning there.
- [13:03]
Host (Walker America)
Yeah, I do want to get into kind of what you're, what you're planning a little bit too there maybe first, just because there's a couple things and for anybody, you know, you can go and obviously read this full article. It's available on X. They've got a great new feature now actually too, where you can listen to it. Like they've got Grok just auto, auto, auto dubbing it, which is super convenient.
- [13:23]
Alan Farrington
Like it's fun or sorry, I didn't do this, someone else did it. And I find it hilarious. I think, is it Google? I think it's like Google Notebook or something like that does. I mean, you can do with anything obviously, but you give it some text and it makes a podcast for you about it. Someone did that and I listened to it. I was like, yeah, they get it. That's good.
- [13:40]
Host (Walker America)
Was it decent? The, the podcast that Google generally.
- [13:43]
Alan Farrington
I mean, I guess the thing is that I've, I've known about this thing for a while and I've tried it on a whole bunch of different inputs. And so I sort of, the, the, the initial wow factor is kind of gone for me. Like I've kind of, I've learned the format, so I don't taken. Okay, I don't know seriously anymore, but it was like, yeah, I guess it's pretty good. I think if you, if you've literally never heard it before, as in something fed into this and then you listen to the. You know the podcast I put I'm for people only listening I'm doing like air quotes with my fingers podcast. It's very entertaining.
- [14:15]
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- [17:18]
Host (Walker America)
Stack harder oh no, I'm yeah, I'm gonna have to try that out. I Mean, I do, I, this is a slight digression, but I, I, this stuff is very convenient to do these sorts of, you know, like whether the summaries I think are like very convenient. Okay, let me, you know, Grok will generate a quick summary for me right next, it'll let me play the article out loud. Okay, that's very convenient. If I'm doing other stuff in terms of like the auto generated podcasts though, it's like I'm, you know, I'm not listening to a podcast just to like, just to I guess have the, the facts. Do you know what I mean? Like, I, I also want, like I want to listen to the, the people that I know are behind that.
- [17:51]
Alan Farrington
That's what I, I've always found this kind of confusing, this Google thing, this. I, I, I'm sure it has, I'm sure this, there's a product name for this that I'm just not aware of and I'll just call it the Google thing for now. I've always been a bit confused by it because I'm not sure how you're supposed to use it other than a joke. Like it's, it's so obviously, you know, just not real. Like no one could possibly mistake this for a real podcast. It's almost like I think the intended impression in the listener is that it's funny how good it is, but it's in kind of uncanny valley territory, right? It's like you would never think it's actually real, but you're surprised that it is that good, if that. Yeah, but I don't know what people are supposed to do with that. Like the only, the only way I have ever consumed this and now probably four or five different contexts or you know, as derived from four or five different source materials is just to laugh at it or laugh with it. Like, it's not that it's stupid, it's like, yeah, but I don't know what they're going for. I don't know if they actually want it to be funny. I find it very funny.
- [18:54]
Host (Walker America)
Yeah, no, no, I mean, I do too. It's like, and it's going to get better, obviously. Like these will continue to get more impressive. But it's like right now the only people who are like, who, if they heard just as a one off, the only people who are going to think, oh wow, that's like, that's a real, you know, thing we're not thinking anything of are like the boomers on Facebook who can't distinguish, you know, like the rainbow Colored rabbits jumping on a trampoline. You know, they're like, wow, where was this video taken? You're like, oh geez, you guys are, you guys have no natural defenses against this. Like, this is a, this is a viral infection hitting a new continent of thought and you are just about to be decimated by it. Like it's, it's, it's digital smallpox blankets and you guys have zero defenses against it. But you know, we love you boomers, especially the bitcoin boomers out there. Okay, so digression aside, you know, one of the things I think that's, that's so interesting about all of this and about, you know, what you've already kind of set the stage for in terms of quote, good deflation versus bad deflation and just this, this misnomer of deflation generally as this bad thing is you look at even stuff like the, you know, the 2% inflation target. It's like, you know, you, you talk about being reticent, right? Like right now you're talking about being reticent to make up terms or use things that aren't, you know, you know, that are not particularly accurate but are useful to describe just because you don't
- [20:06]
Sponsor/Announcer
want to make things up.
- [20:06]
Host (Walker America)
But it's like fiat economists have no problem just making things up. It's kind of like it's kind of the whole game.
- [20:11]
Alan Farrington
Right?
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Host (Walker America)
And I'm just curious, is, is there, is there any part of, of modern fiat Keynesian economics that is actually true and real or is all of this just sort of made up, made up jargon like yeah, 2% inflation. Because new Zealand.
- [20:27]
Sponsor/Announcer
Right.
- [20:27]
Host (Walker America)
Like, I mean, it's like what? So like, does any of this have a basis in actual fact and, and you know, versus just theory that kind of sounds good, isn't used to justify more printing.
- [20:39]
Alan Farrington
I feel like I'm an entertaining person to ask this of, but not an, a useful one. I don't think your audience is going to learn anything from me opining on this because the answer might be interesting though. They might learn something in, in more of like a meta sense of how to laugh at all of this without what the answer really is. I've never studied economics in an academic context. I've just approached it, I guess as a layman, as a well educated layman with decent experience in. Well, bitcoin obviously helps all the patterns of thought around bitcoin make you very skeptical. I think the classic route there too, even though for me it went the other way around, but nonetheless is, is to then get Interested in Austrian school and kind of maybe somewhat tangentially other, you know, heterodox schools. And, and yeah, just. Just an assortment of actually worthwhile real world experiences diverging on academic in some senses. But, but almost anything other than, you know, I actually took a class or like, or got a degree in this. And I'm saying all that to kind of avoid answering directly because I don't really know directly. I'm honestly not sure what they like. If you did an undergraduate degree in economics, I'm really not sure what you would be taught day to day other than the. Almost like the highlights of what makes the least sense. I feel like that's kind of what makes it to, you know, bitcoin, Twitter. Right. And like, and it bubbles up enough to, to give rise to the 2% number and whatever other things are particular and like money. Printer Goldberg and whatever else, whatever can, can attain meme status because that's most fruitful for bitcoiners to debunk. But in terms of like the day to day of what they actually learn, I honestly don't know. Maybe it's fine. Maybe it's just kind of boring by comparison. I'm honestly not really sure. Sorry.
- [22:45]
Host (Walker America)
No, no, no, that's. That's fair. You know, I always know with you. Alan. I need to, I need to be very particular with my question because you can be very elusive at times. But.
- [22:55]
Alan Farrington
Okay, I don't anybody. This is exactly like. You set it up this way, right?
- [22:59]
Host (Walker America)
Yeah. Yeah.
- [23:00]
Alan Farrington
The whole fiat game is misleading people by being imprecise. So I'm just performatively doing the opposite.
- [23:07]
Host (Walker America)
No, and it works well. It definitely works well. I, I'm curious to. Maybe we can. And then I want to kind of get into where you guys, you and Sasha are. Are taking this in the, let's say in the realm of your. The larger bitcoin is Venice universe and everything. But can we, can we talk a little bit just about this idea of the. The paradox of thrift and some of these other things?
- [23:28]
Alan Farrington
Oh yeah.
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Host (Walker America)
You know, just because again, like some things that are perhaps misnomers purposely or you know, accidentally so. Can you, can you dig into what that is? A little bit.
- [23:38]
Alan Farrington
So the paradox of thrift is a. Is confusing because it's not a paradox. It's more like, I guess, a thought experiment. It comes from Keynes, but in the sense of actually, you know, we say a lot of things are Keynesian. This actually was proposed by Keynes and I believe in the general theory. I think it's like, you know, Classic Keynes canon. And it's, it's sort of, I think it, it feels plausible. I think this is sort of contributes to why people probably fall for it, that it's not like completely ridiculous nonsense that you know, you can't, you can't follow, like, and, and then you're surprised why anyone believes it. If anything, I feel like I get why people believe it. It's just, it's only superficially plausible when you really dig into it. It's, it doesn't, you know, you can unpack it without too much difficulty. But the idea of it being a paradox is that if you're thrifty, I. E. If you save right, then you are not spending. It's kind of true by definition, right? You have to, you have to do one or the other. Or saving is almost a lack of spending. And then if you don't spend, then nobody else is going to earn and if nobody else earns then nobody's going to be able to work. And if nobody works, then no one's going to be able to save in the first place. So the so called paradox is that too much saving prevents the ability to save. Like there's, there is therefore in theory some optimal amount. But then if you like really poke at this from a fiat perspective, that optimal amount gets lower and lower and lower and really you shouldn't save it all. You should just consume all the time. You should just, you know, boost aggregate demand. And it's a like again, I think that seems plausible in the sense that a lot of, a lot of the claims on the face of it are not that controversial. Like if, yeah, if you're saving, you're not consuming. But it's, I think the reason it's tricky. I may be a little averse to, to fully unpack it now because that is kind of like the entire point of this essay that is take you like an hour or something if you get grant to read it. But the gist of why it's wrong, let's say, is that it's quite deeply confused about the causation of saving and spending. It basically assumes that spending causes savings or at least sets in motion a chain of events that results in you being able to save, when in fact that's almost exactly backwards that saving, I wouldn't exactly say saving causes spending. That's a, that's a bit kind of reductive. But saving and investing creates the, let me think how much detail I want to do creates the, the capital that enables the productions of the goods and services that it is even possible to then purchase and then consume in the first place. And even the way I'm sort of hearing myself speak now and realizing you risk getting bogged down and not that this is jargon necessarily, but kind of more dense concepts than you maybe set out to. And I think it's always, we try to do this a couple of times in the article. It's always good to step back and just remind yourself that it really is as simple as you have to produce before you can sue. Like almost everything comes back to that. You can make it more complicated if you want to make a more involved point about like capital accumulation, say, which obviously we do in the piece, but that, you know, nothing, nothing more complex you go on to say at all changes the starting point of in order to consume something, you have to have first produced it, right? And in order to. I'm trying to think of even more like if different terminology is even merited here, but in order to, I guess in order to demand, you know, there must first have been a supply or something, something along those lines. Ultimately the, the notion that if you save, you are prevented from saving in the future is just false. And I know just wrong is almost exactly wrong. It could hardly be less correct.
- [27:49]
Host (Walker America)
Yeah, well, and no, I, I appreciate that, that explanation of it because I think it's also the like the important real world results of all this and of Keen's making these types of arguments is that okay, well, you know, because what I am saying as Keens, you know, I'm saying, you know, because what I'm saying is undoubtedly true and this paradox so exists and we only cure is to spin up the Monty Print money printers good boy. And set them to burr and like. But that, that's like, that's the whole thing. It's like all of these arguments being used in justification for monetary expansion, right? For government stimulus, for more, for more top down monetary and economic control. Like that's really the, the disastrous effect of all of these arguments.
- [28:29]
Alan Farrington
Safe jokes about this quite a lot. I don't know if there's an exact quote that I should be memorizing when I'm citing this, but I mean, I've heard him say this several times, that a lot of the jargon and a lot of the kind of academic pretense of Keynesianism ends up being irrelevant in the scheme of there being a practical application. Because the conclusion is just always the same. Like it doesn't really matter what they say in the middle. It's just window dressing to, you know, we have problem A, that we explain it with B, C, D, xyz, whatever, blah blah, blah. But then you know, therefore print more money. Like it's always print more money. So it doesn't, it doesn't really matter what comes in the middle. You may as well just get to print more money and then that's, you know, that's it over with.
- [29:11]
Host (Walker America)
Yeah, yeah it is. I mean it is amazing. Like you know what the destination is going to be. It just depends on what their journey to get there. And that may vary slightly, but it's like it's always just, well, I guess we got to print more money. It's like they've got one button that they can push and they just need, they need a, some circuitous way of getting to that button, no matter how nonsensical it is. And they will get there and then they will press it. Like that's, that's what happens.
- [29:34]
Alan Farrington
Inflation is bad. That's, that's one, that's one tool that they have.
- [29:38]
Host (Walker America)
Well, and because the other side of that is the implication in, in the statement that deflation is bad is of course that inflation is good and necessary. If deflation is bad then of course inflation must be good. It's the opposite of that. Right. So then it must, if it's good, it must be necessary. So then that's again almost this moral justification for saying like we have to avoid the bad thing, like we're doing this to save you. And that's the thing is that obviously there are, you know, many people, asset holders are benefits beneficiaries of inflation. Right. You know, and you know, like as people holding Bitcoin, we are beneficiaries of fiat inflation in terms of the exchange rate. But the problem is that the majority of people in the world are not, you know, are not beneficiaries of it. Right. Like inflate. And this is, this is something, maybe this is a way to tie this into the, the political a little bit because I've seen there just seems to be, I don't know if it's the algo feeding it to me or just the sad reality of the world, but a resurgence in just really smooth brained, you know, neo socialist takes out there these days and all of this all, you know, we, we need to, we need more equality. And the problem of course is that it's capitalism that is causing the inequality.
- [30:47]
Alan Farrington
Yeah.
- [30:47]
Host (Walker America)
And then you know, like, you know, I love the Peter McCormick saga of course and just seeing him just try to, try to be very gracious with some of these socialists, and then, you know, they just won't take them up on any of it. But this. This idea that the capitalism is the problem, the problem is all this greedy capitalism, and that's why we have inequality. So we need to fix that by taking, you know, reallocating this capital from the top down, of course, to different people to make things more equitable, make things more fair, or make things more equal. But they don't ever talk about the actual problem, which is like, inequality is a natural thing. The question is, do we have more inequality right now than we naturally would? And probably the answer is yes, but they won't address the fact that that inequality is ultimately driven by the fact that fiat inflation benefits those at the top. Those are the greatest proximity to the money printer the most. And I just don't know what it's. I mean, because if you acknowledge that, then of course, it tears your entire argument down, you know, from. From the base. Right? I mean, is there will. Will can a socialist ever acknowledge that fact and still be a socialist? Is that possible?
- [31:51]
Alan Farrington
Hmm. I honestly don't know because I. It's funny you bring up, like, Peter McCormick arguing with people on Twitter about this. I haven't. At least of late, I haven't seen him really go into Bitcoin, I suppose. But even this entire argumentation around, you know, fiat money versus even if not necessarily bitcoin, more sound money as being relevant, like, it seems like he's for now at least, or in the context of those arguments, he's just sticking to basically socialism versus, I guess, what he calls capitalism. But because, I mean, he obviously does know, given who he is, given why we're talking about him at all. Of course he knows the difference, but I don't. My hunch is that he doesn't think he's even gonna get anywhere moving the conversation to being about the properties of money, because it's almost like the misunderstanding is deeper even than that. It's like these. These people are. They're not primed yet to think about something that. That, you know, nuanced in a sense. Another thing that came to mind, though, I think maybe partly an explanation for this is that. Well, in Peter's case, it's obviously very focused in the uk, where I would suggest the problem that you identified at the eyesight is a lot more exaggerated than it is in the US and so he has more of an uphill battle to convince anybody of this, that we've basically had so much, not only socialism, but ultimately know, as driven by, by a fiat monetary regime where basically where you have, where this conflation around capitalism is, is like, I actually understand it. I have some sympathy for this because what's presented to these people as quote, unquote, capitalism is really just fiat banking. Like the biggest industry in the uk, London, more specifically, is finance. The most prestigious thing to do is either finance or something, you know, derivative of finance or downstream of finance. And so that is what they see capitalism as being. And you and I know, I mean, there's a chapter in Bitcoin's event. It's called this is not Capitalism. So we can give, I think, a fairly decent argument as to what the problems there are. Potentially not even mentioning Bitcoin, but if the audience is interested enough, obviously you can then get to that. But these people can't. Like, they're, they're so far prior to really understanding this that Beer just has to argue with him about socialism in the first place. And the really tragic thing, I think is that this is why I'm saying I'm somewhat sympathetic to this. Only somewhat, only, only a little bit is that you can see, given the circumstances therein, given the problems caused by partly socialism and partly fiat, why they would be so mad about this. Because with a very narrow focus on, you know, what, like tangibly are their problems, as opposed to, you know, intangibly all this, all this grand theorizing, it's basically that they just can't afford anything, right? Like, they see rich bankers and, and, you know, booming city trade or whatever. I don't know exactly how they conceptualize it, but. And then, you know, they'll realistically never be able to afford a home or something like that. Which also goes to your point that like, that's, that's because of real estate being monetized. Right? But again, you're like, you're never, you know, the circumstances they're in that make them feel that way. But you also know you're never going to be able to convince them that that's what's actually causing their problem. And so you just end up in this doom loop of like, socialism causes misery and poverty, both of which cause people to want more socialism to try to fix it. And like, how do you get out of that? And it feels like that's basically what Peter spends all his time arguing with people about. That. No, it is actually worth trying to get out of it. So, like, good for him, I guess. I, I can't really tell if it's working, but he's fighting.
- [35:58]
Host (Walker America)
Well, it's it's such that doom loop you talk about because it's like this idea that, well, I've been poisoned and in order to, to stave off this poison, the antidote is just more poison. Like we just need, you know, like, like that. That's the problem with it ultimately though is that it's like you see all this evidence and people like, rightly as you called out, they have this conceptualization of what they think, quote, capitalism is. And maybe it's, you know, better to not even use. It's better for us to start using terms like, you know, free market. Right? Because maybe capitalism has too much of a, has too much of a, like a stain on it in their minds already. But it doesn't matter if you try to tell them, like, look, capitalism is good because they already know with beyond a shadow of a doubt that capitalism is bad and it's what causes their woes. And if you try to tell them, well actually like the governments that we have, like especially in the uk, but you know, creeping in the US like what you have is actually closer to socialism. Like you've got a huge amount of money being, you know, allocated and misallocated from the productive people and allocated towards the non productive people. But if you try to say that they're like, nope, nope, that can't be true because socialism is supposed to be the good thing and if we just give the government more power, socialism will finally work this time. And it's like, I don't know how, I don't know if it's even, maybe enough people can be swayed where it's worth it. And you know, God bless Peter for, for doing the Lord's work out there, trying to, trying to deal with these people. But I just don't know if it's possible for, for people who have ideas that are so deeply entrenched, like if you can you teach an old dog new tricks in this regard. I don't, I don't know the answer to that. I don't know if people have just again dug in their heels so far that there is literally no hope for ever convincing them, like, look, your entire worldview is predicated on a lie. And because they've made this part of their identity, that's the other problem. It's part of their identity that, that I am anti capitalist, that I am pro socialist. And because I'm a good person and good people. And that's what it all comes down to, right? It's tied into your identity, that you are somehow virtuous you are somehow more moral, you are somehow more empathetic, you are somehow more good. I want to take care of everyone. Who wouldn't want to make sure, you know, healthcare is a human right and all the. And you're just like, ah, I don't even know where to start. And the problem is that like, to us, it's a really dumb message because like, these things are just demonstrably false if they don't even pass basic muster. But they sound really good if you, if you only think about them for like two seconds. And you've never studied history or economics, even as a layman or any of these things. Like, yeah, they sound kind of good. And they especially sound good if you are struggling and you perceive. Exactly. And you perceive that the source of your struggle is this boogeyman called capitalism. Like, then it's like, I get it. I get why they're at that point. I just don't know how we get people away from that.
- [38:37]
Alan Farrington
Yeah, me neither. I don't know if you wanted me to be bullish on that.
- [38:39]
Host (Walker America)
No, no, no, I, I'm just like. That was just like a fuck, man. I don't know, it's. It's tough. It's tough. But like, it's worth still trying, I think. And I think that you can get enough people to embrace common sense to make it a worthwhile pursuit. Maybe speaking of, you know, embracing.
- [39:00]
Alan Farrington
Well, I think, well, one, okay, I'll be a little bit military. I'll kind of shill our bags a bit too.
- [39:06]
Host (Walker America)
This is what I was going to ask you next, actually. So that's perfect.
- [39:09]
Alan Farrington
That I always hesitate to say, I've probably even said it to you or said it on this, this show that like, I don't want to tell people to buy bitcoin. Right. I feel like that's a little bit kind of on the nose. It's a bit crass. I'm comfortable. Things like, you know, I feel like if you learn enough about it, you'll probably want to buy it on your own. But I feel like you have to want to buy it on your own. Right? You have to. If you're just doing it because someone else told you to, then you'll sell it because someone else again told you to. And you haven't really achieved anything. You probably lose money. But I think there's a way of tying that in that I really do want to generalize it a bit beyond literally just shilling my own bags and number go up to maybe something like treating buying bitcoin as indicative of, say, lowering one's time preference. If we want to throw out another one of our memes that buying what buying Bitcoin would achieve, you don't want to think of it as like a lottery ticket to avoid this cycle of misery and poverty or whatever. That's probably an unhealthy approach to it. You, you want to think of it as a. You want to understand that it is savings first and foremost and that, you know, the reason that you save is to actually, I'm not even sure how to, how to conclude that this is getting a little bit more kind of philosophical than I was maybe intending when I started the ram. You want to lower your time preference basically, like, you want this to be part of improving your overall standing in, in life. Right? And ideally, as paired with, you know, building skills that are, that enable you to add value for others, such that you can start to be more independent, start to have somewhat sustainable sources of income, which potentially then go towards buying more Bitcoin and so on and so forth. Again, your audience doesn't need this as advice. I'm just, I'm trying to think how to best conceptualize all of this other than just saying buy Bitcoin. But back to, to your point about what do you do about it? I think the more you can encourage this at the micro level, the less we'll see of exactly the kind of problem that you're identifying. Because again, I really do have sympathy for someone who, you know, especially if they've wrapped up in all this kind of emotional, frankly, nonsense about how good a person they are. But ultimately it's somewhat materialistic in that it's derived from they literally can't afford anything. Right? Like the situation that the culmination of fiat and socialism has caused for them is they will never own a home, they'll be paid shit wages because nobody can be bothered starting a business and accumulating any capital in the first place to enable them to, to generate any income from their, from the productivity of their labor. And then in the meantime, real estate is monetized, so they can't afford anything. So they just feel like, you know, they're on a hamster wheel. They're never, they'll never get off. And they've identified the, the fake boogeyman of capitalism. Like, whatever this is, none of this is permanent. And at the, it's not permanent at the macro level, but at the micro level of, you know, the individual making the decision, if you can encourage the shift in mindset as opposed to, you know, Necessarily treating it as like you need to change their entire worldview, right? Like you need to give them a new philosophy of economics and politics and whatever else you can, you can chip away in a healthier, a healthier fashion by just trying to change their, you know, their way of thinking and their, their day to day actions. I think that's the, that's the bull case, that that route is both preferable, but I think more easily achievable as well.
- [42:55]
Host (Walker America)
I think that that's, that's fair and I would agree with that. To play devil's advocate to it, I would say, you know, it's, it's difficult to get people to, you know, if we're saying, you know, starting from, okay, if you start to understand Bitcoin, you start to understand why savings is important and you lower your time preference that you're actually, you know, you realize the reason for savings, right, At a fundamental level that, that can ultimately lead to these other, these other changes in your belief structure, right? Because some of them necessarily follow from that shift in mentality around what is saving, what is, you know, what is bitcoin, what is money. I think part of the problem more broadly because, and again, I, I agree with that thesis of yours and I know it's, it's been true for me in terms of my own journey down the bitcoin rabbit hole. Probably true for a lot of people listening to this, that, that learning about bitcoin and maybe just coming for the number go up, coming for that initial part of like, I want to have more money and then going down that rabbit hole and learning more. That's a journey so many have taken, myself included. I think part of the difficulty is that it's, you know, maybe bitcoin number go up just doesn't seem, maybe the number doesn't go up enough for people that are looking for like, I need a, I need a 10x return by tomorrow. Like, you know what I mean? Like, so it's so hard to start, you know, trying to get people to understand the, the lowering of the time preference, the, the, the inclination towards savings. Why bitcoin is such a perfect vehicle for savings when it's like, well, they don't want us even learn about savings, they want to gamble. And we see the proliferation of all of these predictive prediction markets we see is why crypto in quotes has been so powerful and pernicious is because people, they don't want to save wealth slowly, they want to get rich quick. And, but it's like, boy, maybe you get burned enough times and you finally come around to bitcoin. I don't know. But I do agree with that thesis more broadly that, yes, once you start learning about the need for savings, why it's important, why you should lower your time preference, how bitcoin fits into that, so many of these other things naturally follow, you're going to start learning about how, oh, maybe the causes of the pain that I've been experiencing are not from the things that I thought they were from and that I've been always told that they were from. Maybe it's from these other forces that have remained hidden to me for some time. But, you know, one person at a time, right? Like every. That's. That's why I do this podcast, because I hope that, like, even, you know, one new person tuning in, who. It makes them think about something a little bit differently. Like, it can change your life. It can completely change your life. You can stop being a victim of, of, you know, the capitalist boogeyman and, you know, start being a value creator and a producer. But it does take some time. It takes some time. Alex, I do want to ask you, you brought up bitcoin as Venice earlier, and what you and Sasha are working on and how this current number go down thesis article is, is fitting into this larger narrative of what you guys have planned and what you have going right now. Can you, can you explore that a little bit?
- [45:49]
Alan Farrington
Yeah, sure. So we're. We're doing a second edition of the book, which will be mostly just revisions. It's not like version two. It's not like entirely new content. It is a true second edition for the most part, but there will be some new content. We're undecided exactly where we want to fit it all in, but we'd been working on this for quite a while. As you can imagine, this was kind of the priority in terms of thinking that we sort of identified a gap that we hadn't really covered the first time around. And so we knew where we wanted to slot this in as we were revising it. We also wanted it to work on its own, though, so we were quite deliberate about releasing it in the way we did. Not mentioning bitcoin, for example. That's partly derivative of where we expect it to go in the book, because we also won't have mentioned bitcoin by then, but we want it to work as a standalone essay. That. Very similar to what you just commented, that hopefully at least one or two people find this or they get sent it or whatever, and ideally it changes their Mind partly about inflation, partly about economics, but as I alluded to before, because we don't mention bitcoin, maybe they then kind of come to bitcoin on their own without us having to shove it down their throats. So, yeah, so we wanted it to work standalone and we'll probably do that. I don't want to commit to this because we are on a relatively tight deadline in terms of knowing how much more we want to write. We might do this one more time. We might have one new completely standalone chapter that we release in, you know, maybe a couple of months. But they'll slot in and then the rest of it will be revised, updated, hopefully just improved. Like, I. I very much think that. I very much hope, knowing partly what we've done, partly what we plan to do, that the second edition will be better than the first. I mean, I'm not sure how that relates to, like, do I want to encourage people to go buy it again if they already have the first one? Yeah, maybe. I mean, the new stuff will be online, so maybe not. It's up to them. But for noobs, yeah, would very much encourage it. And actually, Bitcoin magazine have been great about this. There's some stuff I don't want to be. I don't want to say now because I don't think they. So Bitcoin magazine publish it. That's the point of that reference. And we've been chatting to them a lot more recently as we build up to the plan for how we're going to publish this. There's some things that we are discussing with them that they haven't agreed to. To yet. Precisely. So I don't want to say them now, but I think it'll be fine. I think they'll go through and it'll be really fun. What we're able to do, we do know, though, like, the entire. The deadlines that were being set, like the schedule we're working to, is that they're going to publish it at the next conference. So Nashville next year is when this will come out. They'll also sunset the first one, so we won't be able to get the first edition anymore. So for noobs, very much nudging them to get the second one. And then also the interesting thing, too, again, I'll kind of dance around this because I don't want to. I don't want to promise things that haven't been fully agreed to yet. But interesting detail that bitcoin is van. Is, you know, the first one. So far, the Only one that was the first book that Bitcoin magazine ever published. And so they are kind of. It almost has, like, I don't know, emotional or sentimental value, let's say, to them, in the sense that they're. They're revamping their entire publishing effort. And it's quite exciting how basically how much more of a machine they have to drive this now. Like, not. Not that they did anything wrong last time, just to be completely clear, but it was kind of experimental for. For all of us, very much. Me and Sasha included. Whereas this time, you know, all the things that I'm not quite allowed to say yet are, like, really exciting ways that they're going to help promote it and hopefully get it to, you know, many, many more normies than we did the first time around. That's ultimately the goal. It's.
- [49:42]
Host (Walker America)
It's. It's interesting, too. I was just thinking, as you were talking about it, like, first of all, I mean, the.
- [49:46]
Alan Farrington
The.
- [49:46]
Host (Walker America)
The title of Bitcoin is Venice is. Is great, right? Especially, I think, for bitcoiners. It's. It's. It very much. Even for non bitcoiners. I think it's very. It's intriguing, right? It's an intriguing title. Do you think? Just because, you know, you were also talking about. Okay, not wanting to mention bitcoin, you know, right. Right away. Or, you know, you haven't mentioned it, but it's like. But. But it is in the title, right?
- [50:10]
Alan Farrington
So.
- [50:10]
Host (Walker America)
So, you know, like, it is kind of mentioned. Like, actually, you know, as the first thing they see is part of that. I mean, how do you think about that in terms of, like, okay, yeah, we want to bury the lead with the bitcoin thing. But then it's also like, hey, by the way, the title is Bitcoin in Venice.
- [50:25]
Alan Farrington
You know, I haven't thought about this in a really long time, but we thought about it a lot when we were publishing the first time around. Because if the audience is unfamiliar, the point of Bitcoin is Venice. Both editions. I won't keep qualifying which one I'm talking about. The point is that, first of all, each chapter kind of works as a standalone essay, which is more reflective of the way we wrote it. It's not like we set out to write a collection of essays. It's like a lot of the essays were written and we were sort of cobbling them together into something coherent. But that does allow, for example, like, with number go down, you know, we can just post it on its own and it can get its own attention and it doesn't need to be wrapped up with the book necess. But also that throughout the very few of the original ones had much to do about bitcoin anyway. Some of them kind of mentioned bitcoin in passing. Some of them were obviously alluding to bitcoin even if bitcoin wasn't mentioned. And then others were clearly about bitcoin. But in terms of the content, I mean, I don't know the exact number. It's quite a long book as well. But I'd say for the first edition, probably a third of it was actually about bitcoin, and it was mostly the last third. Because the real point of the book is it, It's. It's an argument about this touches on what we covered before. It's an argument about what capitalism is like, how you should think about capitalism. So I don't know if you, if it's not too pretentious, you might call that like philosophy of economics or something like that. I mean, it just builds up and up and up to then getting to bitcoin. But the idea with that flow, and this is something that we're being even more deliberate about when we're revising the second edition, the idea with that flow is to kind of try to convince the reader that they already believe in bitcoin. Like, they're. They're prime. They don't know it yet, but they. They already believe enough things that when. When presented with the right perspective, the bitcoin element should just click into pace and they should. They should almost have like an aha moment of, you know, without even really being told that much about bitcoin, like, oh, of course I believe in bitcoin because I believe all these other things. Like, that's the. If that happens, that's success for us. So that's what you should know about the book. As to the title, though, we went back and forth on this a lot. And I'm glad you like it. I'm glad you think it's. I forget exactly what you said, but it's like it's an evocative title. We only thought to use it because the essay, the original essay, which was called Bitcoin is Venice, but for like, better reasons that, that, you know, makes sense in the context of what is being said in the essay that just was wildly more successful than we'd anticipated. And it had kind of quite a good brand and the, the messaging of it was something that we, we felt, I guess, did capture quite well the thread of the book, even Though again, most of the book wasn't really about bitcoin. But it's a fitting conclusion to what everything else is in the book. And then weigh that up with, you know, some or other title that captured philosophy of economics. I don't think anyone would care about. Like, we never had a good idea. If you have a good idea now, please tell me and we'll consider stealing it. But we never had any good idea. And the way I've always joked about it is that the title is actually clickbait. Right. Big one is Venice is Complete Clickbait. The subtitle, which is Essays on the Past and Future of Capitalism. That's actually a good description. It's a terrible title. But that's fine. They work well in combination. So we've got the clickbaity meme title that's evocative and it gets people interested. It's not complete nonsense because it does reflect something that is eventually in the book, but it hooks you and then you learn about economics by accident.
- [54:15]
Host (Walker America)
I mean, it is. It's a. One might call it a sly, roundabout
- [54:18]
Alan Farrington
way perhaps, you know, way of educating you.
- [54:23]
Host (Walker America)
Yeah, yeah, that would be. That would maybe be the other. Other title I would suggest, but that's a little too overdone. You know what I mean? That one's not quite as unique and bitcoin as Venice obviously has a ton of just like, let's say, brand recognition. Now at this point, I want to. Want to kind of loop back and I. Excited. People should. So what you're also telling me is that people want to get the first edition of the book as like a collector's item. Now, Will, that wasn't.
- [54:48]
Alan Farrington
But I guess if they. That's. Yeah, that's a reasonable interpretation.
- [54:52]
Host (Walker America)
Yeah, just. Okay, you heard it here first. But. Okay, so I. I do want to get back a little bit.
- [54:57]
Alan Farrington
Yeah. One. One might say it's a scarce asset. They're not printing anymore. Oh, there we go now. But they won't be eventually.
- [55:05]
Host (Walker America)
There you go. There's a defined. Defined supply schedule. 1.
- [55:09]
Alan Farrington
One might say hard cap on the supply. Even more scarce than bitcoin.
- [55:14]
Host (Walker America)
Yeah, exactly. Oh, boy. You know, you're gonna. Peter Schiff is gonna be coming after you soon here too. You know, I wanna talk a little bit just about, let's say. Let's talk more broadly about capitalism and this idea that again, we've kind of established that capitalism has become this boogeyman. It's very much become like this. It's used incorrectly. Right. Or it's. It's not understood fundamentally.
- [55:36]
Alan Farrington
Yeah.
- [55:37]
Host (Walker America)
Do you think, you know, the communists are always saying like, well, real communism's never been tried. Has real capitalism ever been tried in a meaningful way?
- [55:44]
Alan Farrington
That I think that's actually one of the better critiques of not exactly a bitcoin is Venice, but of it's not even really a bitcoin thing. It's of kind of this Austrian, I guess, if you want to call it like anti fiat line of argument about whenever anyone says, you know, this is not again, this is not capitalism is kind of a meme too. Just because we. Right that titles of one of the chapters. But, but yeah. Well, has it, has it ever actually been tried? I think that that is, it's cute as, as an attack, but it's not entirely serious because the sense in which we are claiming this isn't real capitalism is very, very different from the sense in which the communists claim that they haven't done real communism. So in the case of fake communism, I guess are like aborted attempts at communism. It has in fact been the communists in charge and they mess everything up and they want another try. Whereas in the case of what we're claiming is in capitalism, it's. Oh, actually one other thing to say about communism that is sort of key as a contrast is while it's happening, they're perfectly happy to call it communism. They never claim, oh, this isn't, this isn't going well until it's over and they failed and then they want to try again and they want to call it the same thing again and they want to call themselves the same thing again. Whereas with the analog of, you know, this isn't real capitalism, we should try real capitalism. It's still the communists in charge, they're just, they're just calling it something else this time. And then the people who are outside who are complaining, you know, aren't complaining about their own failed attempts, they're complaining about the kind of the. Oh, there's definitely like I'm, I'm blanking on the right expression for this. It's like, like plagiarism almost of, you know, stop using that word because that's not what this is like. You're, you're misrepresenting, you're, you're falsely advertising what you're doing to try to get away with it. Right. So it's, it's a very different, it's very different circumstances for the people claiming that it's not the real thing.
- [57:59]
Host (Walker America)
Yeah, no, that, that's, that's completely fair and it is very much like a kind of cute tongue in cheek thing to say because it's just like the whole real communism has never been tried thing is just so absurd on its face. You're like, okay, well if we're going to be absurd, like, you know, I'll throw this out there. But I think one can make a strong argument that per, again, perhaps like, if we talk about capitalism in terms of talking about free markets, it's like, can you have a true free market without a free market in money? Like if you have a central bank who's able to set the price of, able to set the price of money, you know, then okay, well that's something that like Marx was all about a central bank, you know, to, for issuance of credit. Right? That's like, that's literally in the Communist Manifesto. So like, how can you have a, how can you have a free market? How can you have capitalism when something so foundational as the price of money is set by a centralized bureaucratic institution? I think that's, that's like a, a fair way to frame that. Would you agree?
- [58:54]
Alan Farrington
Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. I, if anything, I feel like it nicely captures the difficulty that we have in, I don't know if you want to call it education or like just meme. Craft, I suppose, like, like whatever, whatever your means is of reaching normies. Because I think it's, you know, exactly as you allude to is 0.5 in the communist Manifesto is asking for the nationalization of credit. We have since had that. I mean this was written considerably before. They're considerably earlier than any modern instantiation of a central bank. And that is now virtually exactly what it does. Which means, I think it's completely accurate and not like, I don't think it's in any way derogatory or overly rhetorical. It's just accurate to say that central banking is communist. The monetary system is in fact communist. I'm not saying it in the way, I've said communist a couple of times, but before, which is probably my bad for, for kind of confusing the two for, for the, the sake of amusement. But you know, in this case, this, it just is communist. And as you've just alluded to there as well, you know, money is half of every trade. So can you really have. If, if, if a free, if you're looking for a free market and you're finding that the, the money that is lubricating the market is not free, it's perfectly good question to ask whether you even have a free market in the first place. But if you try to present any of this to a normie, like they're, they're just not going to have any clue what you're talking about. You're like, I, I, honestly, I, I don't think I've even done this. So this is purely hypothetical. But if you say, you know, our money is communist, right? Like no one will know what you're talking about. No one will even take you seriously, never mind like actually recognize what it is you're pointing out about the money. So it's tough, it's tough out there.
- [60:49]
Host (Walker America)
It is. And you know, again, it's like, what do you mean the money is communist central bank. In a communist utopia, there will be no money and we'll all be artists. What are you talking about? You know, you can't, you can't even, it's like, oh, okay. Like I don't even know where to start with this. Yeah, let me, let me ask you too, as we move forward in time, what are your opinions on whether or not the various fiat systems that exist around the world, various fiat currencies issued by central banks, continue to persist even under a hypothetical hyper bitcoinized world? Let's say, I have my position on what this is, but like, let's go, you know, deep into the future. Bitcoin is far more ubiquitous than it is today. It's, you know, used in all sorts of different, you know, financial instruments as well. Think, you know, let a thousand, you know, microstrategies bloom or something like this, you know, but like it's much more ubiquitous. It's much more integrated, it's much more commonplace. Do government slash central banks still persist in issuing their own fiat currency? One, and then two, Is there at least more, is there more, let's say, honesty in that issuance because there is a credible exit that is widely known. Does that make sense?
- [62:06]
Alan Farrington
I, I don't, I don't have a good fear. I'm curious on what your theory is actually. Please say after I finish my ramble, but I, I don't have a, a kind of a base case for this. I can imagine different scenarios, but I think, I think what they'll all come down to, like the, the variables that I have no clue on that will predict which of these we end up in. I think are probably effectiveness of education in general, because I feel like that's some. I've not been involved for long enough that I feel like I can say I'm a little bit disappointed that basically the more people aren't Aware of the stuff that we've been talking about for like 10 years or 5 years or whatever at this point. And it's not clear to me how that really fixes itself. I feel like the trend is that that's one thing I should qualify all this with. The trends I think are inevitable. So, so the point I'm making, I think it's extremely unlikely that bitcoin actually fails even without being too precise about what that means. But I am very hesitant to be like, will this take five years or will this take 50 years or will it take 200 years? Like I, that I kind of don't know. So one is education or like just spread of knowledge, like awareness. Right. And then the other is the effectiveness of political or just like violence in general as a way of preventing the first one. Right. As a way of preventing people from using it. I'm not entirely clear on how effective that can be either. So I can imagine a whole range of outcomes on a whole range of different time horizons, to be honest. I think, yeah, I think one of them that you alluded to could well be we actually do keep central banking, but it's massively reined in in terms of there being a market enforced expectation of being backed by bitcoin. So there's significantly more, significantly greater limits on credit extension that are kind of abided by, by the market participants because they, they basically understand that there isn't really a lender of last resort anymore. Like they can actually go bankrupt and including the central bank can functionally go bankrupt in a way that isn't really true. That could happen. And I mean that would obviously be amazing to even get to that massive improvement in human welfare. But even say that, that's kind of tricky. I don't want people quoting that out of context because that almost feels like defeatist For a hardcore bitcoiner to want to say that is by no stretch of the imagination hyper bitcoinization. So should we accept that? I mean, probably not. No, we should keep pushing. If, you know, if we get to that point then it's certainly not over. But nonetheless that would be good. And I can see that as being somewhat plausible, I guess. Yeah. The other end of the spectrum is obviously just there's no central banks, there's barely any. There's no banks in the way that we know them now. There's just completely new flavor of financial institution and we are hyper. Bitcoinized. But yeah, I mean, ultimately I just, I don't know. I think I will rule out it fails like, it won't go to zero. There won't be, you know, the price won't go to zero. The applay won't go to zero. It will exist forever. I was just very much on the fence about how long it'll take to have any particular level of success. But what's your theory, though? You said that you, you have one. I don't mean to put you on the spot. Too much.
- [65:31]
Host (Walker America)
Yeah, no, no, no, I, and I, I appreciate that. So, I mean, mine is generally it also, it completely depends on what sort of time horizons we're talking about.
- [65:38]
Alan Farrington
Right.
- [65:39]
Host (Walker America)
And so like, I, you know, because obviously, you know, on a long enough time horizon, you could be like, okay, well, we all, we know that necessarily every fiat currency goes to zero eventually. Thus every fiat currency will eventually go to zero. Yes, more will spring up in their places. But on a long enough time horizon, if you take that to its logical conclusion, probably you would eventually have the complete extinction of fiat currencies. But I don't think that happens in our lifetime. Yeah, I don't know if that happened. I don't know if that happens in my, in my children's lifetime even. And this is not me naysaying, thinking, you know, saying like, oh, well, Bitcoin's not going to. Like, Bitcoin doesn't need. We don't need every fiat currency to be extinct for Bitcoin to have achieved what it needs to achieve. Like, Bitcoin is actually already winning.
- [66:22]
Sponsor/Announcer
It's already succeeding.
- [66:23]
Host (Walker America)
It's already achieving what so many people who have opted in, who have taken that credible exit. It's already doing what we need it to do.
- [66:32]
Alan Farrington
Yeah.
- [66:33]
Host (Walker America)
Now my other thought is like, okay, I think that. And you brought this up exactly correctly. I think even within our lifetimes, what we will see, I think we will see many fiat currencies fail. I think they will start to fail at a greater rate. I think they will also continue to spring up though.
- [66:49]
Alan Farrington
Right?
- [66:49]
Host (Walker America)
I think they will continue to, you know what I mean? Like, like, it's not like the number of fiat currencies that we have today is like, that's the only ones that can ever exist and there will never be any more created. Like, no, we know they'll keep making, like, even, you know, and it's like, even if the US Dollar fails. And by the way, guys, if the US Dollar fails, that means every other fiat currency has failed, like, maybe a couple times over and been replaced. Like, just realistically speaking, like, you know, you can say that the dollar is going to fail. But like it's the. It's the skinniest kid at fat camp, right? It's the prettiest horse at the glue factory. It's the worst. Except for all the rest. Except maybe the Swiss franc. But you know, like, that's a, that's a different story. They're the only first world country that we have. As a, As a Swiss man once told me, which I thought was hilarious and maybe kind of true. But I think that we will see because more and more people realize, like the credible exit already exists. Bitcoin already exists. It's a matter of how many people realize what that actually means for them. I think that bitcoin will, as it becomes more and more ubiquitous, I think that it will create more of a check on unrelenting money printing because as you said, these banks will go bankrupt, central banks will go bankrupt. And you know, they. There will be much, much. It'll be so far less palatable to bail them out than, than it has. It's already not palatable.
- [68:05]
Alan Farrington
Right.
- [68:05]
Host (Walker America)
People already hate that. Like you, you're only getting a couple more of those before people are like, you know what? Maybe we should, theoretically, I'm not speaking for myself, I'm speaking for people in the future. Maybe we should just burn this motherfucker down. You know what I mean? Like that's. And not as myself, of course, but somebody. You could see somebody potentially saying that at some point in the future, maybe many someones. So I think they continue to exist for our lifetime. I think fiat currencies persist for our lifetime at least. But there starts to be much less tolerance for mismanagement. And said mismanagement will lead to fiat currency failures via hyperinflation at an increasingly fast pace. That's sort of. And then on a long enough time horizon, maybe that stop. Maybe, maybe they all go away, but I don't know. But speaking in terms of my lifetime, maybe my kids lifetime, I think we still see them, but they are held to account a little bit more. That's generally my thesis on this. I would be very happy to be proven wrong. Enter a pure hyperbiconized world. I'm just not sure what that time horizon actually looks like. You know what I mean?
- [69:09]
Alan Farrington
Yeah, yeah. Same.
- [69:11]
Host (Walker America)
Yeah. So that's my general thesis. Okay. So I want to be conscious of your time here as we move through. Okay, okay. Time and space. I want to talk a little bit too about what you're seeing, kind of. Okay, let's. Let's separate out from what we were Just talking about. Not entirely, of course, because it is all connected, but what you guys are doing with Axiom and sort of what you're seeing from that side of things. Are you good to talk about that a little bit without getting into it?
- [69:37]
Alan Farrington
Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's nothing like sensitive. It's more just the stage where you're at. I think it's gonna be a little bit boring for your audience. Let me ask it differently, but like,
- [69:47]
Host (Walker America)
yeah, maybe I can ask a different question in terms of, like, what, what, what are you looking at inside the. Let's say, okay, outside of bitcoin, just as the money there is all this stuff being built around bitcoin, built. Being built on top of bitcoin, being built to make bitcoin, you know, more, let's say more usable to build products and services around this nascent monetary technology. What are you seeing? What are you looking at? What are you keying in, on. In that. In that general realm?
- [70:15]
Alan Farrington
So I'd say the thing that we are by far the most excited about is ark. And I don't know how familiar you'll be or how familiar the audience be. I also just be clear, I'm not putting myself forward as an expert in this. So I, Yeah, I don't want to get into like a. Too much of a technical digression, let's say. But one neat way of capturing why we like it so much is that it feels like it affects basically everything about the ecosystem positively. Like, it, it doesn't, it doesn't necessarily replace anything or like massively, you know, you don't swap in ARK for something else and, and then all of a sudden everything's amazingly better. But it's almost like the opposite in terms of the, the, the implication of like, everything probably gets a little bit better because of this. I can give some tangible examples in terms of like, I probably shouldn't name companies, but, but, you know, opportunities that we're seeing where companies that we can invest in. But there's like, the use cases is a more interesting thing. So I think it makes, it makes lightning significantly better. And I think we're quite rapidly moving to a point where people won't, like, a lot of the terminology that people have got used to about making bitcoin payments is probably going to have to change. And to be clear, what I mean by that, not that like, oh, we're, we're saying things wrong and we need to learn a new jargon or whatever. I think it'll be entirely natural. I think it just will change by virtue of the infrastructure itself maturing and, and kind of one, one perspective I guess would be getting more complicated but also also just being obfuscated away. So the exact link that I have in mind between ARC and Lightning is that I think a lot of payments will have many behind the scene components that the users just won't need to care about. And it may go beyond ARC as well because you can pretty seamlessly plug in like E Cash, say on, on top of arc and then the other side of it might not even be arc, it might be like Spark, say like a lot of Lightning wallets are now using Spark as their backend and basically because on all of these you can do effectively HCLCS is kind of what they like that's like the linkage and that's the, the whole thesis. I don't know if you're familiar but Roy Scheinfeld, I think it comes from a blog originally but it's more like the, it's become kind of his own meme, I think rightly so because it's a very powerful thesis of Lightning being the connective tissue. I think that is the name of the blog. Lightning is the connective tissue of the L2 space. But I think a lot of bitcoin payments like every day and importantly peer to peer payments as well. We're not talking about banks clearing with each other will shortly become a lot more involved than people are used to talking about them. So it could be like you know, any cash mint to Ark and then over Lightning that then pays somebody else using a Lightning wallet, but which is actually using Spark or whatever. Like it could become fairly complicated in a way that's like very interestingly mimicking the development of Fiat but with the obviously important difference that it's actually all self custodial here. Or like it's as you know, I've said ecash and I said Spark. It's like it's as self custodial as the users actually want it. So as opposed to, you know, you make a Visa payment and there's X many banks and the network and the intermediaries and blah blah blah and like every single one of them is, is a custodian that takes fees and takes time and you're completely beholden to them and it's impossible to send a payment in any other way to the person you're trying to pay you. You have all the intermediaries involved because they're, you know, they're, they're, they're, they are adding value in a Limited sense of like they're creating the network for you but they're massively constrained as to, you know, they have to operate within this system of it being impossible to self custody basically and you have to trust them. So in our space though, you start to see this kind of complexification and diversification of roles, but strictly predicated on it being peer to peer in it being opt in. I think that's really exciting and I think like ultimately this is kind of, this is maybe a more specific instance of just a general trend of like as it gets more normalized. Right. And as it moves away from the, you know, the initial hardcore believers who have all their in group slang and whatever it. To them it maybe feels a bit annoying that like the newbies don't really understand what's happening but that's actually a good thing. Like if you, if we, if we get away from oh, I'm paying you on lightning and it's like a bolt 11 or what. Like no, normal people don't give a shit how it actually works. They just want it to work. And we're getting quite close I think to it just working, which is pretty cool. And so to come full circle, I think ARK is key to tying all of this together to improving lightning, but also to improving everything else that plugs into this. So we're looking at it. I said I wouldn't name companies. I'm hesitant to name companies we haven't invested in or haven't yet invested in ARC Labs we invested in a while ago and they're driving a lot of this and they're just unbelievable. They're. I think they're one of the most important. Yeah. Bitcoin companies, if you want think of it that way. What, what they're doing is the most interesting and what they're enabling is incredibly
- [75:33]
Host (Walker America)
cool and, and basically for those that are, are not familiar and, and correct me if I'm wrong here, but the, the core idea with ARK is just that it's like whereas enlightening, you have, you have to open channels. You need various, you know, inbound liquidity that you need to manage and all these things like Ark, you just kind of don't need that. I'm, I'm very much simplifying.
- [75:52]
Alan Farrington
Right.
- [75:52]
Host (Walker America)
But to go non technical like there's no inbound liquidity, there's no channels, et
- [75:57]
Alan Farrington
cetera, et cetera way of understanding the difference to lightning is that you're kind of, you, you can almost think of it as like. And this is somewhat reflective of how it was Even created. Although obviously there's pretty over generalizing the, you know, the process. But in, in, in conceptual terms, you start with lightning and you kind of yank it away from being strictly peer to peer. You set it up to be client server instead. But what you're doing is you're pulling away from the, from the peers or from the clients. The channel management and the always onlineness. Right. The. And basically both of these requirements. Like I don't want to go into much of a diversion of like pros and cons of lightning, but I think it's more like this isn't an original thought. This is like widely understood at this point that those two properties are what make lightning great for businesses but not so great for regular users. Because nobody want basically no, no, nobody wants to run a server. Whereas businesses always run servers all the time. It's not a problem. And nobody wants to like conceive of working capital management. It's just like not a thing that regular people do. Again, it's the thing the businesses do all the time. So both of these things are fine for businesses and they're a nightmare for regular people. And what Ark does is start with again in very, very hand wavy terms, it starts with the lightning design where everyone's a peer and everyone has to do that and kind of yanks it apart a bit so that you split out these roles of the server managing the liquidity and managing the onlineness and the client just getting the vastly improved ux. But the genius of it crucially is that you know, this isn't just like Coinbase is my favorite L2 kind of meme. It's, it's engineered in such a way that it is actually a true L2. So you have the. Yes, you have the server, you have, or I think they want to call them operators now. The architecture is such that you need that role, but they're not a custodian. You, if you have an ark balance it, you can you self custody this. You can exit to real Bitcoin without their permission. Which is awesome.
- [78:03]
Host (Walker America)
Yeah. And I think that's such an important point around, around all of this. That self custodial nature of these things you were saying, you know. Oh, you know, it's like the, oh shoot. You know, we accidentally just created fiat banking again like the meme basically, you know. But it's like, but it's like no, the difference being in the fiat system, you cannot custody money self custody money digitally. You can't do it. And even if you have the, even if you have Physical money, which, yeah, you can keep money, you know, or you can keep, well, Federal Reserve notes in the US you can keep those. Like that's still, you know that that's still just a promise right at the end of the day. That's so, you know, this idea that, that is really this incredible thing about bitcoin is that, you know, you can
- [78:44]
Alan Farrington
actually hold it tongue in cheek with this. I'll also shill my own, you know, content, I guess for lack of very opening.
- [78:51]
Host (Walker America)
Please.
- [78:51]
Alan Farrington
If people having the scene and they want to go look at the talk that I gave at BTC Lightning in Berlin. I'm actually, it's a bit tricky. I'm not sure how to find this. I think, I think it's on YouTube. I think BTC have a YouTube channel. Is it like I don't have it, it's not in my custody or whatever, but it's out there. Like it shouldn't be too difficult to find. I talk about basically how. How ridiculous the actual mechanics of making a fiat payment are. And so to your. Your point, I mean I'm not meaning to like pick on the terminology that you use, but it is amusing poke at this that I think you said something like you, you can't self custody digital fiat. Which is true, but it's true for an. I think an even more amusing reason than you meant, which is that it doesn't even really mean anything. It's not like there is such a thing as digital fiat and it's just set up in such a way that oh, they can custody it but you can't. Like they don't let you touch it or whatever. It's like it doesn't even really exist. It only, it only exists as a bank liability. And again I'm wary of like it's a 30 minute talk. I don't want to give the whole talk now, but knowing where this is going and how stupid it is, it's. If you're into this kind of thing, if you want some, you're feeling kind of masochistic, I guess you go, go watch this and learn and learn just how crazy it is and by implication just how much of an improvement. Arc slash, lightning slash, both. As one other thing I just want to mention quickly. By the way, sorry to be jumping around, but this came to me after I, after I start. Sorry stopped my rant about arc and lightning and then when you were commenting in the comparison to Fiat, I think that it ties back as well to you asking what am I excited about? I'm surprised that people aren't more excited by Arkansas. But I think I know why, or at least I have a theory as to why, which is that the hype around lightning was so intense and so spectacularly failed to deliver, that people are just jaded from that. And even that, I feel like I kind of have to qualify because I. I mean, I think lighting's absolutely amazing. I get really irritated. And I say this in that talk, by the way, that's why I remembered it. And I get really irritated. People saying, oh, lighting sucks. It doesn't do this, it doesn't do that. I think it's fair to criticize the extent to which it was hyped up in say, 2017 until like 21 or so. Like, I distinctly remember this. I probably contributed to this myself, to be fair, that it was kind of presented as like, this is the silver bullet for payments. Like, this is how you scale bitcoin and this is why we won the block size wars and it's over and we're just going to win now. I'm not sure if anyone said it in exactly those terms, but that was kind of the vibe that obviously didn't happen. And I think people are really jaded and they. They don't. They feel like they don't want to fall for that again. And so they're very, very skeptical, which I guess is healthy. But it's all. It's just unfortunate because I feel like it's kind of misplaced. I am. I'm also wary too, because I. I don't want to. I don't want it to come across that I'm saying that. Oh, actually ARC is that. But it's more like we should be more nuanced in all of this. Like, lightning is amazing at these specific things. It shouldn't have been hyped up as much as it was, but it should still be hyped up. And then ditto with arp. Like, it's amazing at these things. It's also not perfect, but it's great. And it makes lightning even better and it makes bitcoin even better. So you should be more excited just a bit.
- [82:28]
Host (Walker America)
Yeah. But this is the beauty of layer 2s in general and interoperability between them. Right. Is that ability. It's like, yeah, Lightning, for example, like using lightning in a self custodial way is not a great experience for the vast, vast, overwhelming majority of people. Right. It works well, I think.
- [82:44]
Alan Farrington
Nor should it. You know, I don't even see that as being a problem, really. I. I almost. That's that that's kind of equivalent to saying something like, using Swift is a bad experience for people. It's like, well, people don't even. Like, it doesn't even make sense. Like, why would. Why would it be a good experience? And I kind of like, I did that on purpose because I think where we're moving towards is. And this is like a different perspective. This is almost like forcing a fiat analogy to Roy's thesis, which has now become a lot more widespread. I think, rightly so, that in the new paradigm that we're moving towards, lightning is kind of playing the role of Swift. I hesitate to push that too hard because it's. It won't be exactly the same. And you don't want to take it too literally. But in terms of being like, what. How the value is right at behind the scenes and you don't necessarily see it. But I mean, back to your comment that that triggered me, right? This, I think, is kind of the gist of like, people even talking about the, you know, the user experience of lightning. I think not. You know, maybe ARC solves for this, but whatever it is, that's also for this. When this all improves, you won't even think in those terms, right? That we'll. We'll have one. I guess, when nobody knows it works, right? You just, you don't think of it as like, oh, my channel management and lightning is like, oh, I gotta go fiddle with this and this and this. It's like, no, I just. I just send somebody money. Like, I sent the money and it worked and that's the end of it.
- [84:11]
Host (Walker America)
Yeah, no, I'm in total agreement. Like, I think that's what you're sort of seeing between like, lightning, arc, spark, like, and then you've got E cash on top of that. You've got, you know, like, Fediment as well as these other kind of layers and protocols on. That can be used in conjunction with or on top of these other protocols that are built on top of Bitcoin. And like, that's. That's kind of the beauty of it. But it, like you said, it's like, at the end of the day, the goal isn't like, oh, I'm using, you know, I'm using such and such layer two or layer three protocol to send. I'm just sending. I'm just sending you money and it just works. And that's like, we've pretty like, again, the custodial, as it stands today, the custodial lightning experience is excellent. Like, it's really, really excellent. It is seamless. Like, you don't have to worry about, you know, a $500 worth of Bitcoin payment, like failing because you don't have enough channel liquidity. Right. Like that. Which is something like I had happen, you know, like back in. Whenever it was like 20, 21 or 22. Right. Like, it was more complex. Now they're just big fat channels, you know, between big fat lightning nodes and stuff. Just works in a custodial way. And if you want to use it non custodially, you can do that too. But then there's all these other again with Ark and Spark and everything. It's. It's very heartening to see where we're at right now on that medium of exchange side of things in terms of enabling that at a. You know, so that people can stop saying, well, bitcoin's so slow. It's like anytime somebody's. And I still see people say that, I'm just like, dear God, like, do you know what year it is? Like, if you just say that, you're just telling on yourself for having no idea what's happening. Yeah, but, you know, plenty, plenty of those still out there. Alan, we're coming up on the end of the time here. I want to thank you for sharing yours with me. Excited to get this second edition of the book. What else do you want to show? What else. Where else do you want to send people?
- [85:55]
Alan Farrington
I don't have a huge amount of show right now. I mean, number go down was the big thing. Obviously, we talked about that at length. People want to read it. It's pinned on my. I refuse to say, by the way, I'm sorry, it's pinned on my Twitter profile.
- [86:06]
Host (Walker America)
There you go.
- [86:07]
Alan Farrington
Something really fun. I don't. My ph phone's not here. I can't show you, but probably wouldn't be that wise to put the phone off the camera either. But I. I haven't updated my Twitter app on my phone in like four years. At this point, I'm very deliberate about not updating it. So, like when you go into the update thing and you're like, update, update, update. No, not that one. Update, update, update. And it's still Twitter. It's still the blue square with the white bird. But that's literally the only reason I'm not updating.
- [86:34]
Host (Walker America)
And it still works like, it still works fine. That's actually mind blowing that it's still like that. They haven't just deprecated that. You know what I mean? Like, I'm. Yeah, boy, we Might have to cut this segment out because Elon's a listener to this show, obviously, and so, you know, I don't want him getting any ideas.
- [86:50]
Alan Farrington
Well, because every now and then I'm like, I should really delete Twitter on my phone. Because it's like I, I barely use it on my phone, but the fact that it's there means obviously I still can occasionally. And I, you know, I kind of fall into that trap. I, I like to pretend. I like to kid myself that, you know, I have better mental hygiene and I can, in fact, just sit still and wait for something and not doom. Scroll. But occasionally I have to do scroll. So I don't. I don't delete my phone. But, but. But one of the main reasons I don't delete them on my phone is that this will end, right? Like, if I delete it and then I install it again, I'm never getting the bird back. So deprecate it. That would be very healthy for me because I could finally delete the app and then I'd be at peace.
- [87:36]
Host (Walker America)
That's it. That is incredible. I cannot believe you've kept that for that long. That is truly. That, that is impressive. You know, you just need to just, Just give me a phone. Save that phone. Save that phone.
- [87:45]
Alan Farrington
I want to know if, like, I wonder if there's literally anyone else in the world. There must be somebody somewhere. But maybe that's impressive. Them.
- [87:55]
Host (Walker America)
Yeah, that's. That is. Wow. I was not expecting that fun fact at the end. My mind is kind of blown with that. I love it. Well, Allan, thank you so much, man. People should go check out bitcoin is vanished. Check out number go down. Go check out your other musings online on, On Twitter that may or may not get you thrown in the. In the slammer someday. I don't know. If you guys say slammer over there, what you say? I don't know.
- [88:19]
Alan Farrington
I, I don't say slammer. What. What would I mean? I guess just jail. I'm not sure if there's. If there's good Scottish slang for jail. I've never been so. I don't know. I'll tell you when, When I, When I finally hit the trip wire. I mean, I tried to be very, like, I've definitely said things that could be interpreted as hate crimes. I mean, they're hateful for sure. I'm just, I, I, My wife cranks me up by this all the time as well, that I, I'm. I try at least to be very careful to, like, If I'm saying something that is verging on hate crime, I say it in such a convoluted or pretentious or, like, intellectual way that nobody stupid enough to hate it would get it. So, like, that's how I get away with it. But I'm pretty close to the sun, so could do the next one from prison.
- [89:11]
Host (Walker America)
That'd be fun.
- [89:12]
Alan Farrington
Have you ever had anyone dial in from prison?
- [89:14]
Host (Walker America)
I have not. I have not. Perhaps someday. But yeah. This one simple trick for not getting thrown in jail for hate speech is just make it super, super insufferable to get through from a logical standpoint. Really convolute.
- [89:27]
Alan Farrington
Or. Or actually another. Another good. Well, I say a tip. If I end up in jail, it's obviously not a good tip, but do it. If it is, like, verging on proper hate crime territory, do it entirely ironically. And I. I have it. This isn't legal advice, but I have a kind of an amateur legal theory that you should get away with it in that case, because they can't really get you. Because they. They'd have to admit, like, if you. Basically, what. What I mean is that, you know, if you. There's some, you know, hate crime point and you say it completely over the top in the other way, but obviously sarcastically. Right. In order for them to treat it as a crime, they have to argue that that's obviously wrong and then you're like, got you.
- [90:10]
Host (Walker America)
Yeah, that's a nice way to do it.
- [90:13]
Alan Farrington
We'll see if I stayed out of jail.
- [90:15]
Host (Walker America)
I truly hope you do, Alan. Thanks so much for joining. Thanks to folks who tuned in on Noster as well. Appreciate you all. And yeah, Alan. Yeah. Stay free over there in the uk.
- [90:27]
Alan Farrington
I'll do my best. All right, man.
- [90:37]
Sponsor/Announcer
And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin Talk episode of the Bitcoin podcast. Remember to subscribe to this podcast wherever you're watching or listening and share it with your friends, family and strangers on the Internet. Find me on noster@primal.net walker and this podcast@primal.netcoin on X, YouTube and Rumble. Just search at Walker America and find this podcast on X and Instagram at Titcoin Podcast. Head to the Show Notes to grab sponsor links. Head to substack.com walker, Mark 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.