← THE Bitcoin Podcast
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- [00:00]
Jeff Booth
What Bitcoin is, it's an open, decentralized, secure protocol bounded by energy. And it resolves that control system. It allows us to escape the control system in favor of a protocol that allows all of the benefits of our productivity around the world to accrue to us instead of someone else. And that state change that the world is going through, if you're measuring that state change from the state change, it would be really confusing. If you're measuring it from the new system, imposing what I just described, you'd start to see how the world heals everywhere because of bitcoin.
- [00:42]
Walker
Welcome to Saving in Bitcoin, your financial freedom blueprint on the Bitcoin podcast, Powered by Fold, the best place to buy, earn and save in Bitcoin. I'm your host, Walker, and in this six episode limited series, I'm talking to some of the best minds in bitcoin.
- [01:02]
Host
To walk you through the basics of.
- [01:04]
Walker
Why our money is broken, how Bitcoin fixes it, and how you can use Bitcoin as your personal financial freedom blueprint. Let's get started.
- [01:22]
Host
Greetings and salutations. Today I am joined by Jeff Booth. Jeff is an entrepreneur, a founding partner at the venture capital fund Egodev Death Capital, coolest named venture fund ever, and author of the incredible book the Price of why Deflation is Key, the key to an abundant future. Jeff, thank you so much for joining me.
- [01:44]
Jeff Booth
No problem. Great to see you, my friend.
- [01:46]
Host
Good to see you as well. So as we were just talking before this, you know, the, the goal with this is to talk about why everyone needs bitcoin. But oftentimes we get deep into that conversation without kind of defining what is bitcoin. So let's start there. When somebody says, you know, I just don't get it. I don't, I don't get bitcoin. I don't understand it. How do you help them to understand what bitcoin really is, what it's about, and kind of why it matters so much right now?
- [02:15]
Jeff Booth
Well, first of all, I completely understand that question, right? The, the first, because I didn't get bitcoin and nobody gets bitcoin in the beginning. So. So it would. If you had a state change the world, going from one system to another system, that would be very confusing and you'd likely misunderstand that. So ultimately, why you need to understand bitcoin is we are going through that state change in the world. And so even though it feels hard to understand, people should stay with it because of that state change. So what is it to me, and maybe we'll start kind of in the state that everybody lives in today. We live in a control system driven by money. And that control system is an exploitative system globally that has to concentrate wealth. And as it concentrates wealth, wealth kind of accrues at the top and then joins with politics. And it has to be a control system that we lose. Humanity overall loses from that control system. And everything we do from that control system makes it stronger. As we fight within it, it makes it stronger. And what bitcoin is for me anyways, at least as I see it, it's an open, decentralized, secure protocol bounded by energy. And it resolves that control system. It allows us to escape the control system in favor of a protocol that allows all of the benefits of our productivity around the world to accrue to us instead of someone else. And that state change that the world is going through would be really like. If you're measuring that state change from the state change, it would be really confusing. If you're measuring it from the new system, imposing what I just described, you'd start to see how the world heals everywhere because of bitcoin.
- [04:33]
Host
So I think that that's a really great foundation to start with. Was that idea of this protocol that you talked about. Because a lot of people, when they see bitcoin on the news, they, you know, CNBC or in, you know, whatever, not newspaper, but news website that they happen to be reading, they see it talked about in a way that's very similar to how people talk about tech stocks and speculative investments. And it gets kind of lumped in with all of these, you know, risky type assets. Can you break down a little bit maybe why you view bitcoin differently, why it's not a. Why it's not like a tech stock, and why it being a protocol matters so much more than it just being another technology product.
- [05:10]
Jeff Booth
Yeah. So technology stocks or technology products are winner take most until the new, better technology comes along. Protocols are winner take all. And everything is built on top of a protocol. And I was really intentional when I said the five words connected. So they're all interdisciplinary. An open, decentralized, secure protocol bounded by energy. All five of those words matter a lot. And it's open. Anybody can choose to move to it. It's decentralized. So having more bitcoin, it doesn't give you any more control of the network. It's decentralized around the world. It's secure. In 16 years, nobody's ever attacked it. Even worse, every Single person who has tried to control it essentially tried to cheat it could have done better if they just bought it on the cooperative network. It's amazing. So it's staggering in the fact that if you cheat Bitcoin, you only cheat yourself. And more people will try to cheat Bitcoin. But at least in the 16 years to date, it's proven that protocol and protocols are winner take all. There is only one Internet, and it comes in layers. You have a choice on the Internet. You could be in North Korea and choose for your society not to be on the Internet, and they suffer the consequences. But you cannot. You're either on the Internet or you're off of the Internet. And protocols come in layers and add more and more functionalities in layers, and it's bounded by energy. So when you put those five things together and you say, what would that world describe versus something that is manipulated? Our time is manipulated, and money's manipulated in that. That would describe perfectly the first global free market that ever existed when measured from the protocol. But it would create a whole bunch of confusion because we don't see protocols very often. It would create confusion, and we see technologies more often. So it would say it would be easy to conflate the protocol with another coin and say, I have a faster, better coin. And most people would think would be convinced then, bitcoin is old technology, and the new one would be better. It would be normal that the transition would look exactly like it looks, because most people would misunderstand how protocols are winner take all. They would think they need some other piece of technology. They would think they need something else, some other blockchain, without understanding this deep enough, because they don't understand protocols nor technology deep enough. And then if you added the point that a whole bunch of venture capitalists and others could get rich by by creating exit liquidity on those same people, all of the incentives would align to make that happen more so the world we're seeing as we go through one system to another, and all of the noise that would naturally happen would be normal because of incentives in the market, out of the broken system and trying to cheat a new, new protocol that can't be cheated, you would have to create other coins. And a lot of people would fall for that because they didn't understand the difference between protocol and technology. So this would be perfectly normal.
- [09:09]
Host
So is this why we see or saw and continue to see the movement of. For a while it was blockchain, not bitcoin? Yeah, Bitcoin's neat, but it's this dinosaur technology. And what we need to focus on is the newest, biggest, best, fastest, strongest version of, quote, blockchain is that. So does that just come from. As you said, it's kind of like an affinity marketing scam, trying to conflate. Okay, we'll say Bitcoin's this technology and technology can be improved. We'll ignore that. This is a new protocol, a new paradigm for money. And that's where these, all this confusion. Because one of the big questions you get when people ask you about Bitcoin is, okay, bitcoin sounds interesting, but it's very expensive. What about xyz, Coin, whatever other altcoin it may be? You get that every time you talk to someone.
- [09:57]
Jeff Booth
Yeah. So let's, let's break that into. Because it's easy to say all or nothing. And it's. And you. But let's take, let's take pieces of that. So being an open, decentralized, secure protocol bounded by energy, then, then there might be a whole bunch of people kind of in the, the government. The government is terrible. Government is controlling us. Everything else. And, and in that control structure wouldn't allow Bitcoin to be able to survive because it was open, because anybody could see the transactions. So inside there, there's, there's, there and there's. Honestly, there's probably some reasonable arguments to saying there's not enough privacy. And as this structure gets bigger and bigger and more concentrated, they're going to come and attack Bitcoin and they're going to attack the protocol with everything. They have to be able to stop this from removing that power, essentially by redistributing the power back to people instead of government in a natural state of the market. So they would worry about that. And in that it might make sense to have a privacy coin. And that privacy coin might not be somebody saying, I'm going to try to destroy Bitcoin, I'm going to try to create something that can evade that. So inside the nuance of that example, you could say, is that a good idea? And the idea of privacy is a good idea. Privacy, especially if you had a massive control structure trying to attack a decentralized, secure protocol bounded by energy. Now, we've seen through this process that Bitcoin has stayed resilient in the entire time and no government can control it, at least not yet. But I can understand why somebody might think they have to be totally private. And. But what you find in, in the protocol is the protocol is developing the privacy on layers above Bitcoin. Instead of needing a new coin that then that coin centralizes and becomes a problem because of the. Because. So there's some ideas within the coins that makes, makes and extend the functionality and the benefits of Bitcoin, but they come in different layers. So you don't need a new coin. And then there's. And then the other part of that. So I would say what I just described might be a good actor or an actor that thought through this is needed, right? But then once the coin and the way that the coin is mined and they have most of the coins and it realizes it can't be everything else, then I'm married to this thing that all my wealth is in, and now I'm making different decisions based on my own personal needs of this thing. So you find the incentives kind of misaligned on a lot of these other coins. But by the way, if you follow the early Internet protocol development, you found a lot of competing ideas, many centralized companies trying to control the Internet, trying to have something out, and this is the one we're going to use. But the open, decentralized protocol beat them all and they all failed. And then it extended functionality through that same process. So that's the process that's happening in Bitcoin. And it feels messy, but it's actually not messy. That messiness is part of the evolution that resolves this paradox of us living in a system of control and moving to one of freedom.
- [14:05]
Host
So let's talk a little bit about that system of control. So you have your book again, the Price of Tomorrow. I highly recommend everybody give it a read or a listen. It was very transformational for me in my Bitcoin journey. I think it helped a lot of things that I felt I maybe intuitively understood but couldn't put into words. It helped me understand them. And maybe it's a good thing to just kind of break down what exactly is the central thesis there as it relates to? I mean, the title talks about deflation. Now that's key for an abundant future. But people may be saying deflation, I thought that was bad. Or deflation, I don't even know what that is because all I hear about is inflation in the price of my groceries and gas and houses and everything going up. So can, can you break that down a little about this control structure that we live in? How does that actually work and how is it that there's this mismatch between. That you have identified in this book?
- [15:04]
Walker
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- [15:32]
Jeff Booth
And I think you have to start and you have to say what I'm about to say over and over and over and over again until your brain really grapples with it. The natural state of the free market is deflation. In other words, you only use things that give you more value. And all companies, all entrepreneurs, anything that's kind of willed into existence from our brains have to compete against what was there before. And you only use the things that give you more value. So you are a part of the thing that is the natural state of the free market. The entire globe, 8 billion people's ideas competing for you. The output of that has to be deflation. And then as we create more ideas, let's use an idea AI, right? And we compete to provide better tools and AI that they people will use those things to remove labor faster to be able to provide more value. Because if they don't, if they don't provide more value, the company that does provide more value will kill them. Why will the company that provides more value kill them? Because you won't use the one with less value. So you are an integral part of creating the natural state of the free market as deflation. And it's not zero inflation, it's deflation, like faster and faster deflation, where if you didn't work, everybody working and everybody doing the world would benefit you anyways because prices, everything would fall faster and faster and faster for you forever. So if that's the natural state of the world and technology is a supercharger of that, or when you say technologies, think about it, it's just different ideas that we're trying to solve problems to be more efficient. And those ideas. So in that world, anything that's scarce creates an attack of entrepreneurs because there's more money where the scarcity lies and an attack of entrepreneurs to solve problems for us that results in prices falling. And so that process describes really clearly why the global free market is deflationary and faster and faster deflation. And why you have to start there is. You've never seen that world, ever. There's no history book that describes that world for any length of time. We know it's true, yet we measure our world in a different world. So then we have to ask, why do prices Go up. What's stopping that? Because something has to be stopping it. And the stopping of it is more and more manipulation of money, just creating more units of money to be able to make prices go up relative to those units of money. And then we fight within that system for control of it. Who gets to print the more units of money and who gets to exploit others from that system? And trying to get richer and richer in a zero sum game where everybody's losing and it's just even the rich. If you can't come out of your house because you're scared of the poor arising with pitchforks to be able to take it back from you, then you're losing too. In that zero sum game, you might think you're winning, but you're not. Long term, you're in a zero sum game that typically gets reset through global conflict, killing millions of people, that then we say we promise not to do it again. Where it starts again. The entire history of money is through that exact same lens. By stopping by an exploitative control system that gets worse and worse and worse and divides people. To be able to resolve this. And Bitcoin is the first time in history that we've ever had something that can resolve that conflict and allow all of the abundance that we create to flow to us. The first global free market that's ever existed.
- [20:00]
Host
So we've essentially never lived in a free market. And all of the benefits that we should be getting that humanity should be receiving, essentially because of all the technological innovation, because of everybody trying to compete and work harder to make something better, all of that is basically being stolen away because people in power can turn on the money printer, so to speak, and create more units of the currency. And they must do that faster than the rate of prices naturally falling because of technology. Is that correct?
- [20:36]
Jeff Booth
Yeah. So the rate of printing has to offset and more. Right. So prices have to go up. Because if you allow deflation from a credit, if a system is based on credit and you allowed deflation, the credit is reset. And so no one, when we say those people, there isn't a person even in Bitcoin that I know would say stop the printing completely. Because every single thing would fail, every bank would fail. All of the houses, all of the real estate that people think they have and is valued, it would all completely fail to zero. Because the entire credit based system is based on the credit that if you allowed deflation from it, the thing collapses. So we have to be careful in our words, it's not those bad people, it's Us in that system, not wanting it to fail, and then thinking that there's some savior within that system when it's actually us. Almost the hypocrisy of us believing in one part of our lives, we want lower and lower prices, and then the other part of our lives, our assets, our houses and stocks, we want higher prices. And it's nuts. But those systems have to be connected because they're connected through us. So we're making one system. So all of our votes, this side or this side, are just ludicrous from a system that must steal more money. And I want to pick up on something you said, because we've never lived in a free market. Well, it's not totally true. There's been more free markets in time, like in the Great Deflation in the late 1800s in the US where middle class was rising. In fact, the rise of the US Was the Constitution, which provided freedom of the individual. More ideas, more people moved from control systems in Europe to the US because they could get their start, they could leave a system where they could. And yes, it was harder. They had to leave the comforts of their home and they had to create great ideas. But those ideas propelled the US to be a superpower because free markets are more competitive. And so you had more ideas. And for a while it looked like a free market until that free market became a control system through the Federal Reserve and then exploited other nations in the same way that Europe used to exploit other nations. So this has been repeating throughout. It constantly repeats. And what I was specific there is Bitcoin is the first global free market where everybody gets to participate, not just one nation.
- [23:45]
Host
And I think that's a really important point. Right? There's no way to be excluded from Bitcoin, anyone, no matter where you live or what your background is or what currency you happen to use in your native country, you can freely opt in to Bitcoin. So I would ask then, are we. If they can't stop printing because everything will break, but also if, as you've identified this system of they have to print money or everything will break, but also they almost can't print money fast enough to keep up with the deflation that is naturally occurring because of technology. You mentioned AI, specifically, things that are massively deflationary, are we reaching sort of a tipping point then? Are we reaching a point where these two misalignments can no longer continue to operate as they have? Something has to give, basically, or can we keep kicking the can down the road? Can they keep, you know, the central bankers keep printing just the perfect amount. What happens here?
- [24:50]
Jeff Booth
So it's just a greater control system. So today you see the control system switching from Biden to. So all of the backroom, usaid, all of the manipulation going back jfk, going back to all of the things that you knew would have to happen again. Place this leader in this place, all of the nation building that would have to happen to create the control system that was. And a lot of people would in bitcoin space with all these conspiracy theories. Right? And the conspiracy theories, many of them are true, right? And they had to be true. Because if you follow the money, that's what it looked like to be able to keep the control system. And now you've inverted it to the other side and you say, we're going to rip this out and Elon is going to rip this out. But Elon was just on a podcast and whether he understands this or not, he was on a podcast that was talking about, pretty soon AI will do everything you, everything you want. You have every. It'll be free, all of these things will be free. And. And that sounds a lot like what the WEF was saying 10 years ago, right? But now it's going to be from his. He also in the same podcast was talking about Twitter could be half of the global economy. Well, so it's just a different control system from that perspective, because all of that free can't be free. It has to print more money, making Twitter stronger, making the controller of the system the bigger actors, you feeding their engine faster and faster. So I can understand, for me, it's either through this, a different control system with different rulers on top. And just imagine where that would go. Imagine you have, instead of globalists, you have technocrats who are smarter than the globalists, but still a control system. And everything you rely on is their women. Fancy deciding whether they turn you off on Twitter or you can use their money or anything else, because that's where the world will go faster and faster on top of this control system or Bitcoin, which resolves that paradox and lets all the productivity flow to all humans without a controller.
- [27:36]
Host
So as of today, people can still freely opt into Bitcoin. You can buy it on any number of platforms. You can get access to it fairly easily in most places in the world. Some places it's not quite as easy. There's different controls in place. Do you think we've seen a lot of acceptance, seemingly of Bitcoin by the US government, for example, at least parts of this new administration but if Bitcoin is this thing that will be able to basically show everybody, hey look, we can see the system is breaking and is unstable because we're measuring it from this Bitcoin system, because we're measuring via only 21 million bitcoin will ever exist. Infinite fiat can possibly exist. That number doesn't have a top. Do you foresee them trying to, let's say, burn the lifeboats to take away the ability of people to get bitcoin? Or is there also a, is there a different timeline that we live in where maybe, maybe not, maybe there is more embrace of it from large governments that hopefully get smaller, but governments that are more, let's say, freedom minded, that respect their citizens individual liberties. It seems like there's a bit of a clash that's brewing there.
- [28:57]
Jeff Booth
There's a clash that's brewing and you and I have talked about this before, but it's going to, that clash is going to brew for years and there's going to be a lot of more people who are going to try to cheat Bitcoin, potentially even government. And if you just keep on going back to the first principles, the natural state of the free market is deflation. When measured in the natural state of the free market, then Bitcoin should measure all prices falling forever. Most people don't measure Bitcoin that way. They measure in a US dollar derivative and they think Bitcoin is going up in value against the US dollar derivative. And you have to remember these are different systems. One system is the global free market and all prices will fall forever in that system. You should self custody, you should add a node, you should create economic nodes. You should spend in Bitcoin and you should be part of a community that is the first global free market ever. And as you do that, you'll see it everywhere. And that will compete against a system that must increase prices. That system that must increase prices even in Bitcoin will likely have a whole bunch of bitcoiners who sell their Bitcoin for pieces of paper and centralize their Bitcoin. It will likely have a bunch of people who don't go deep enough on what we're describing right now and invest only in ETFs or in other derivative instruments, thinking they're getting rich. And they probably will get rich in a piece of paper as well. They'll probably do really well and it'll reinforce their decision to do it and they'll keep doing it. And as they reinforce that decision, they'll take more risk because they're measuring in the piece of paper. But that piece of paper is the credit based system that is the opposite of the global free market. So it has to at some point, not anytime soon, because you would never try to attack Bitcoin right now from that because it would fail. But at some point that system has to try to attack Bitcoin. Has to. Because the system problem can't be resolved from the system. It can only be resolved through a new system. And so if you're trying to put this new system inside that other system to resolve the paradox of a global free market that is deflationary and the other system isn't, it can't be resolved. The existing system has to centralize faster, has to control more. So it makes perfect sense through that lens that if you're the US and you know you have to control more, that you would think about Canada as the 51st state, that you want, Greenland, that you would want Panama, that you want all of these things. And, and so what you're actually describing here is bigger government, bigger control, more, more, more things being taken from you because we can protect it better than those people. And it's amazing. It's fascinating watching a whole bunch of bitcoiners get co opted by that same, same thing. No, no, it's just part of the path this is going to. It's, it's inevitable that this is part of the path. Always had to look like these because the systems are incompatible together. They're two different systems.
- [32:39]
Host
I think that that's a, it's a very difficult thing for people to wrap their minds around that yes, this was inevitable and yes, these two things can never work together at the same time. Like, and there was nothing you could do. As soon as Bitcoin was created and maintained a certain level of decentralization and security for a long enough time, these steps became inevitable pieces of the path that we would all be walking. And it was always going to break and there was nothing anyone could really do about it. You know, it's just kind of like a mind blowing thing to think about that, okay, this is just, it is what it is. And so if it is what it is, and this is all part of this path for the individual, for the person who's thinking about their family, who's looking at this future or, and even the present and seeing a lot of uncertainty, a lot of chaos, hopefully not a lot of unrest, but probably some unrest, I think that's a natural thing as well. What can that person do who's listening, saying I see all this happening, okay? I'm being told this is inevitable, that these clashes were going to happen. The existing system will continue to print and print and print. How do I opt out of that? Can I even opt out? How do I protect myself and my family not just today, not just tomorrow, but for the next years, for the next decades? How do I set up my family for a future where they won't be just slaves in this. Whatever the new control structure is.
- [34:17]
Jeff Booth
Primarily, once you understand what we're talking about right now, and this is why you should spend the time. Because the biggest challenge here is the cognitive dissidents moving from the system you've always known. And for 3,000 years, that means we've always lived in a control system. All the isms, capitalism, communism, are all different versions of a control system. For 3,000 years, in all the history books we've ever read, is this exploitive system that we don't know any better. So I think the first step is, what if there was a better? Would I be willing to explore if there truly was a better or there might be a better? And as you explore more and more and you realize, oh, my God, this really is true. You have this honest ledger that is describing perfectly the global free market. You start to move more of your time into that ledger and you start to protect it. You run a node, you start to invest in it. You're spending in all of the different places knowing that the attack is coming. But you could either feed the beast and worry all day long about all of this thing that's getting worse and worse, or you could feed the world that you want to emerge based on the honest protocol. I came to this realization that for me, and I think everybody does this, I know you have to. Walker. I realized that the open, decentralized, secure protocol bounded by money didn't care what I thought and what I thought about it, it didn't matter. Right. It described perfectly the honest system attacking the other system. And I had to ask myself, which system did I want to spend more time into? Right? And it didn't say anything about bitcoin. It said something about me.
- [36:29]
Host
I think that it's a very profound realization to have, and it's one that, as you go deeper down this bitcoin rabbit hole, I think for most, anyway, not for everyone, but for for most who are honest about it and able to be honest with themselves, it's a realization that you will inevitably have. I think for a lot of people, when they're just starting out, speaking for myself, as well. Probably speaking, not to put words in your mouth, but probably speaking for you. It takes a while to get to that point. It takes a while to really accept, to come to terms with the cognitive dissonance that you feel and to realize that you may think that what you're doing in this existing system is just, you have to do it. Or this is, you know, you have to stay on this hamster wheel. You have to keep running and running and running. Because if you slow down or if you stop, the wheels fall off and you crash and burn and your family's screwed and what are you going to do? You can't even conceive that you can just step off and somebody else is going to keep running in that hamster wheel. Most people are. But there is a way for you to opt out. But it starts with a choice, right? And I think it's an incremental choice. Is that how you've experienced it as well? It doesn't. You know, you can have that realization, but that realization is the result of many smaller steps building towards it. Take buying some Bitcoin and then great, you bought some bitcoin, you've got a stake in it, taking it into your own self custody, learning how to take care of it, you know, and make sure you keep it secure. Running a node, doing all of these different things along that path that then bring you to that realization was that. Or maybe for you it happened a lot quicker. But for myself at least, it was a slow process, especially at first, which then accelerated.
- [38:13]
Jeff Booth
Yeah. So in me writing the book, it took a process for me too. And so I think I've told you this before, but I owned bitcoin a small portion before writing the book. But, but I didn't really see it even when I finished the book. I saw it as a plausible potential path forward. But my mind was really deep into how would people make changes in something that was so, so big when we've never, in 5003, 5000 years, we've never had a system that could allow a global free market, never. So we must be part of this problem. And so for me, I thought bitcoin, there's no way bitcoin, I thought it would fail or it would have a probability of failure because we've never seen this before. But I was looking to something to solve the paradox of two systems that were different. But we always kept falling back into a path of the other system, then promising, building institutions that we'd never kill people again. We'd build fairness and it always broke again. And we always fell on the same path. So I was looking for a resolve to that paradox. And when I found Bitcoin, I didn't truly believe that it could withstand us. When you've heard me say this, there is no they, it's us. And so, and then when it. So for my process going deeper and deeper and realizing that the nodes, by actively running a node, by contributing that this, you're encoding the best of us into a protocol that's the best for us, you're actually, you're doing that work. And well, if not me, then who, right? And, and as a, as I did it, I also realized that your life just gets fundamentally better and better and better and you tune out all of the noise. You, you, you, you still understand that there's going to be a lot of chaos. It's gonna be, it's gonna be crazy. A lot of people are gonna get trapped. And I have empathy. But you don't have to stay there. You don't have to be one of those people. And I don't think there is average people. I don't think there's those people and me or anything else. I think every one of us can easily see this in time. It just takes time. It takes a curious mind to be able to understand. But do you have to face the fact, unfortunately, that a lot of what you thought was true before was not true. And you were contributing to a system that exploited people all over the planet. And those things are hard to accept.
- [41:11]
Host
I agree with that completely. And especially as an American or somebody living in a western country in the so called developed world, coming to terms with the fact that a lot of these control structures, while they do control you, they exert far more control and negative impact on the rest of the world than they do on you directly. And you actually benefit from those control structures more than perhaps you want to admit. And I think that's maybe one thing I wanted to ask you about is just kind of the, this global impact of Bitcoin. So we're talking about a decentralized, secure, transparent, open system bounded by energy. It's accessible to people everywhere in the world. And we've seen in developing nations, you know, Bitcoin is not just something that's used by Americans or Canadians or, you know, French people. Uh, it's used by people all over the world. And oftentimes the rates of usage are much higher in countries where people do not have access to the same banking system, to a currency that is relatively stable, the US dollar is relatively Stable relative to other fiat currencies. And so, you know, you see people using Bitcoin as a tool to escape financial repression, as this tool to escape massive debasement and inflation of their currency in all these other countries. Do you think that starts to just be the case everywhere? Where eventually as this timeline plays out and these central banks and governments are forced to continue printing money to try and outpace deflation, does Bitcoin become the obvious thing that not just people in, you know, in Africa or Latin America are using to escape these really hard, intense difficulties, but it becomes obvious for anyone, even in a so called developed nation, that this is the only way you have to opt out of this.
- [43:04]
Jeff Booth
Yeah, so you said the relative, which is so interesting because the long term debasement rate over the last, I think it's over last hundred years in the US is 11.2% and if you added all the countries it's 13.2%. Why are the other countries failing? Why are their dollars failing faster is just from the very same thing. But then people realize they think the US dollar is almighty and they forget. Look back at your costs, look back at costs of anything 20 years ago and you will realize that your money has lost value, a lot of value. Look back 30 years ago. And when you think about what families look like 30 years ago, when you think about what your life looked like, when you versa versus what's happening today as the control system takes more and you're looking at this world through this lens and you were all of those people and this is crazy and every day it's crazier and crazier and people are in there laughing, not laughing, but looking at another country that's had inflation rates of a million percent. Right. And they can't see it happening in their own country because they're thinking relative and relatively we're doing better than that other country. How are they making those mistakes when they're making the exact same mistakes all over the world, including the US.
- [44:35]
Host
And I appreciate you calling that out. So relative is maybe a bit of a trap because it somehow, let's say, makes it so that we don't. In the US for example, we can say, oh well, yeah, we're bad, but we're not that, that bad. So it's, it must be okay, basically, like at least we're not there. But your point is that the same system is in place in each of those areas, just in varying degrees of intensity. Is that fair to say?
- [45:03]
Jeff Booth
That's exactly, that's exactly it. You, it's almost. It's almost like watching a movie and not knowing how it ends because you're in the middle of the movie when you can see it all playing out. Every one of these countries is experiencing the same thing that will happen in the US Right? Or we'll resolve that conflict by going to global conflict and reset all of these things. They're going to get worse and get worse at a faster and faster rate. Why would they get worse at a faster rate? Because the natural state of the free market is deflation. Meaning you should be living in abundance and the prices should be falling at a exponential rate every year. Like they should go faster and faster and faster as more humans have more ideas to compete for value for you and you use the things that provide you the most value. So how would you stop that? The only way you could stop that is, say those humans can't give you value. We're going to tariff them or we're going to use our dollar to stop them, or we're going to close off our markets from them. You could. North Korea did it really well for their citizens. You could stop global competition. And you will pay the cost of that too. In time. People wouldn't see it immediately, but they pay the cost of it again. You just have to keep coming back to first principles. The natural state of the free market is deflation. That means you should be living with more in abundance every year and your life should be getting better. If it isn't, you're doing something wrong.
- [46:56]
Host
Is the way to fix that then? I mean, is there another antidote besides bitcoin?
- [47:01]
Jeff Booth
There isn't. There is no resolve from the system by the system. There is no resolve. I want to qualify that. The resolve is typically a global war that kills millions of people. Then you reset currencies on the back of that and restart. I don't know if today's. With technology where we are today, I don't think society might not be able to survive a global war of that without that resolve. Bitcoin is the resolve.
- [47:50]
Host
I think that it's a powerful statement because a lot of times people think again, okay, this bitcoin thing has. I've been seeing it in the news and I keep hearing about it. Maybe I've got. My friend Jeff keeps talking about it and he wrote a book that mentions it and these different things. But I think we're still so early. By some measures, we're maybe at like 0.2% of the world who owns bitcoin in a meaningful way. Like actually has has, you know, taken. Taken custody of it actually owns, you know, Bitcoin. Like that's a. That's a very, very tiny number.
- [48:28]
Walker
So what does it take?
- [48:30]
Host
What does it take to wake more people up? Does. Is it just a matter of they're going to have to keep getting burned by this existing system or is there. Is it just you have to make the choice to wake up?
- [48:45]
Jeff Booth
I think that's different for each person. I think what you do is really important. I think a lot of what the podcasters do is really important. I think a lot of what the entrepreneurs building different layers on top to be able to use this as a medium of exchange. Also as a medium of exchange with privacy. Also the things that is happening with Nostr, all of these pieces are essentially different. That fabric being rebuilt into a system of honesty for the world and all. And they're going to. And it's going to get easier to use. More and more people are going to understand it. It's going to not just easier to use. It's going to provide more value as the system centralizes and makes life harder. Some people will only see it when they get wiped out, which is terrible. Some people won't be curious enough until they get wiped out. Some people will see it for they might have heard you on a podcast or heard somebody else on a podcast and it might have driven curiosity to look before they got wiped out. And they have a hedge. Some people will start there and they'll move deeper and they'll be. I find this fascinating because what does the free market value? The free market values what people don't know. So if you say 2%, 0.2% of people know this today and this is true and there's all of this control structure moving the other way, which you know, it's true as well, then it means that there's a whole bunch of value to exploit or to build value for others by being early. And if you look at the bunch of the people we know and how much value they've created by providing value to other people and what their lives look now just by making a choice to move into Bitcoin, it's staggering the value we see that people are making by understanding that, by being early, by understanding this is confusing. By saying, okay, how do we make this easier? The same thing is happening in Noster. Same thing's happening in Fetiment. Same things happening in Cashew. Same thing's happening all of this entrepreneurial spirit and teachers and are building the path for the future and being Rewarded for building the path because it provides that path out of this dystopian system.
- [51:19]
Host
I think that that's really powerful. And so, I mean, to summarize that you'd say each individual needs to make the choice. But if you're receiving hints from either things that you're seeing, people building the way that you're seeing, perhaps friends or family who have adopted bitcoin live their lives a little differently from even listening to a podcast or maybe even seeing a clip on the legacy media of somebody talking about bitcoin, just whatever it is that's piquing your interest. Maybe listen to it a little bit because you have the opportunity right now, because we are so early. We'll be early for a while, but we're very early right now.
- [51:59]
Jeff Booth
And this is very real for me. I just was on a ski trip and. And we do the ski trip each year with family between 50 and 120 people. And some of those people who listened to me for years. And one of the dear friend is so caught in the existing system and the politics in Canada, and he's known where I have been for a long time. And finally we had a breakthrough on this ski trip. But I'm watching his life get. He's getting madder and madder and madder and everything that you could predict a long time ago and him getting captured more and more and more. It's so real for him to watch this and also to watch people like you, people like Natalie Brunels, people like Peter McCormick, people that have made a choice before to be able to create this value over here and what has happened to their life. And watching this, it's very real. And so I explained this to him one late night here, and he's finally ready to go deeper on this because I just couldn't talk about the politics. I just wouldn't talk about the politics unless he looked deeper. But it kind of broke his brain to say, okay, I'm going to give this some time. We'll see if he does. But you hate watching friends go deeper and their life getting worse and worse, or as they go deeper into what you see in most of social media, most people yelling at the system that's getting is just sucking their soul.
- [53:52]
Host
I mean, you had a piece that you wrote a while ago about finding signal in the noisy world. Is it safe to say that it's hard for people to find that signal, to see the solution, because they're too focused on the symptoms of the problem versus the problem itself? The problem itself being a much deeper control structure that you've identified. This lack of a global free market, this control system of inflation to combat deflation. They're missing the forest through the trees, essentially, because they're so focused on what are the symptoms that this system is throwing at me instead of what is the actual disease at the root of it.
- [54:32]
Jeff Booth
That's exactly it. And it's hard to. It's easy to be confused about another symptom. And every day in the news there's another symptom. You should give me your energy so I can exploit your. Exploit that. And so people are feeding it with every. And they think that there's an evil person on the other side of that. And they're so sure that they're spending their time in this without looking deeper and saying, wait, maybe this person's wrong and I'm wrong. And it's a different problem that's arising out of this. And so I think that's exactly. I think that's exactly it. But it's hard for people to admit where they were wrong before, especially when they're living in fear and chaos. And so it's driving all of the things that press the buttons for us in our minds, that keep us captured.
- [55:38]
Host
Is it safe to say that everyone needs bitcoin, they just don't know it yet?
- [55:44]
Jeff Booth
Safe to say, but a better way to say that is if you really simplify things. And you just said, I have a choice of living in an honest system that's competitive but cooperative, where every single person in the planet is no better or worse than any other. They're judged on their ability to contribute value to all of us. An honest system that can't be changed, or a dishonest system where those in power or those who are in control get to reap more of the rewards of all society. Which one would you choose? And if you choose the dishonest system, or if you're spending most of the time in the dishonest system and you're looking for people to judge or why the world's getting worse might be worth looking in the mirror, that's a very different thing than saying there's. Most people, I would say don't know what I just said, but if you got to that point and then made the choice of the dishonest system, isn't saying anything about bitcoin saying something about you, Jeff?
- [57:06]
Host
I think that might be a very perfect and profound note to wrap up on. Is there anything else you want to leave folks with? We covered a lot and I want to thank you for sharing your time to help educate people about this honest system and how they can switch to it. But anything else you want to leave folks with or that we didn't get a chance to touch on?
- [57:25]
Jeff Booth
No, I think this is good. You always explore deeply, so thanks for doing this.
- [57:32]
Host
Well, no, and thank you. And for anyone who wants to follow Jeff and again, I highly recommend that people check out the Price of Tomorrow for when you're ready to take a deeper dive into this system of control and what the future may look like and see how right many of Jeff's predictions have been since the book was published a number of years ago. Check out the Price Tomorrow. Jeff is on nosterrimal.net jeffbooth you are less frequently on Twitter these days. Efbooth. You have moved more of your focus to Nostr and your website is jeffbooth.ca Jeff, thank you so much for sharing your time and your wisdom. I always appreciate it.
- [58:12]
Jeff Booth
Thanks Walker. Right back at you.
- [58:20]
Walker
Thank you for watching Saving in Bitcoin, your financial freedom blueprint on the Bitcoin podcast. Bitcoin is a return to savings, real savings built on sound money. Make fold your personal finance hub and take control of your financial freedom. Buy, earn and save in Bitcoin all in one place.