← The Wolf Of All Streets
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- [00:00]
A
Listen, as long as like I can without permission send some bitcoin anywhere in the world and no one can stop it and no one can confiscate it from me, the dream is alive. I think we skipped from this time of everybody was like the government's going to ban bitcoin and now we skipped to like, oh my God, like the government's going to use bitcoin. People abroad, they don't have access to U.S. bonds and stocks and like a diversified portfolio. Like if they're lucky, they can get some gold maybe. Probably not. And they're probably saving in shitty local currency, sheet metal or cattle. That's the savings technology, the aver person in the world. Just remember stablecoins are not freedom money. They can be rugged, they can go to zero, they can be frozen, they can be censored and as Jeff Booth calls them, they're guaranteed lose your money coins like they track inflation. The early cypherpunks would never, could never dream that the President of the United States and the Treasury Secretary would be saying bitcoin is, is like the goal.
- [00:54]
B
I often say that there's bitcoin and there's everything else and there's a place for everything else as venture capital, tech investments, but that bitcoin is the most important, important asset ever created. I make that statement. But there's people who are much, much better at really describing why than I am. And one of those is Alex Gladstein. Alex, in this incredible conversation really breaks down why bitcoin is freedom money, why it's fuck you tech and why people all over the world are adopting it to really escape and save themselves from dictatorial regimes. You do not want to miss this incredible conversation about bitcoin altcoins st stable coins in the world with Alex Gladstein.
- [01:34]
A
Let's dope.
- [01:49]
B
I caused quite a stir, I think of late and I've now had this conversation probably with five people who are in the comments on my tweet. This was the tweet that I had originally sent. Bitcoin is amazing, but it's obviously been co opted to some degree by the very people that it was created as a hedge against. Many of the most ardent early whales have seen their faith shaken and have been selling at these prices. Right. And so I will say it was very unfortunate that I used the word co opted because I should have said the narrative has been co opted, not the code or the asset itself. And I actually went on after that to talk about how these were narratives that I was hearing from Bruce Fenton and Iago and early bitcoiners on my shows. But you had an incredible response which I actually retweeted just to give it. No technical aspect of bitcoin has been co opted. The network remains cypherpunk and the tools get more so by the day despite or even I would argue, because of mainstream adoption. Major challenges around education, mining, decentralization, privacy remain, but co opted. No.
- [02:42]
A
Yeah. So here's the deal. If you think about bitcoin at the beginning with Satoshi and how when it didn't have a monetary value and you're trying to dream of it becoming something globally useful that's spread around the world that people are actually using and it's on a journey from zero to a million or ten million or whatever you think it's going to do, or back then even a zero journey from zero to a dollar. Right. With more price increase comes more adoption. I mean they're intertwined. Right. So you can't have a world where Bitcoin is at 100 and whatever it is today, $15,000 a coin, and where only based cypherpunks are using it. That's impossible. And that's not going to happen. And what ends up happening along the way is that the small group of people who were there at the beginning, who had all these for the most part, you know, maybe aligned values around maybe libertarianism or they wanted the state out of their affairs or they wanted to see this global dream of a, you know, a fully anarchic, you know, sort of an anarchist Internet society. They were together at the very beginning. And it's hard, I guess it's hard for some of them to see that bitcoin's not only. Only going to be for them forever and it's actually going to be for everybody, including BlackRock and the US government and all these other entities. But at the end of the day, this is the only way it can happen. And I, and I guess my, my, you know, when we were going back and forth on, On X or whatever. My point is that some people are, I think reading it the wrong way. Not. I know, I know that you were trying to say that here's a narrative as opposed to like this is my opinion and it got miscontrued.
- [04:30]
B
I just co. Opted. I just used the wrong.
- [04:33]
A
Sure. No, but like a lot. No, but tons of people use the word co opted, not you, but like other people do and I think what they're missing. And I've had this debate with epsilon theory with Ben, Ben Hunt about four Years ago, we debated this, and he's like, wall street is taking over bitcoin. And I'm like, no, no, no. Bitcoin's taking over Wall Street. So we're debating this. And my point to him was like, listen, as long as I can, without permission, send some bitcoin anywhere in the world, and no one can stop it, no one can confiscate it from me. The dream is alive. And you know what? Like, at the end of the day, my view has been that, look, man, now we got blackrock and the Trump family, like, basically promoting bitcoin. And. And they might be promoting it in a particular way, like, buy my derivative, you know, buy my ETF or buy my shitcoin connected to bitcoin or God knows what. But bitcoin is a brand. It's a brand just like anything else. Just like Nike or the US Dollar or anything. And the very fact that they're talking about bitcoin is good for bitcoin. So when Trump says, even though he's got his family shitcoins and all this other stuff going on and stable coins and get into that, but when he says he wants America to be the global bitcoin superpower, and when Scott Besant, the Treasury Secretary, is talking about how America's going to be like a bitcoin power, like, this is awesome. From that perspective, when I say awesome, I mean the actual word. It's awe inspired. It's like the early cypherpunks would never. Could never have dreamed that the President, United States, the Treasury Secretary would be saying, bitcoin is. Is like the goal. Like, so I think we skipped this time. And I'll stop here. But, like, I think we skipped from this time of everybody was like, the government's going to ban bitcoin. And that's. That was the fud, right? I still have these dice from Dick Carter, the FUD dice, right? I keep them in my desk, right? And you know, the government banning bitcoin is on here and, like, that's no longer a thing. Like, that's not going to happen. And now we skipped to like, oh, my God, like, the government's going to. The government's going to use bitcoin. And, like, people are now afraid of that. And I'm like, I just think this is really amusing. And, like, you have to just understand the journey of something like this from zero to hero is going to involve people that you don't like adopting it. Like, this is money for bitcoin at.
- [06:51]
B
The end of the day. Yeah, exactly. I was just going to say bitcoin is for enemies.
- [06:54]
A
It's a neutral currency. Yeah.
- [06:56]
B
Because even if you have poor incentives, your incentives are effectively aligned. It caused a huge sort of debate though, which I'm glad. And there is the part that you alluded to before, which is obviously the. Factually, we know that there are some very early whales who have sold a whole lot of bitcoin. Right. And I don't, I have no idea, no window into their mind why they would do that. I don't fault them for doing that. Right. If you got 150,000 bitcoin and you unload 25,000 bitcoin, I guess who can blame you? I think there's also the argument that maybe the bitcoin had to come from those hands into a new floor to advance. But it is interesting to see a lot of people that once really spoke about bitcoin napasha way as being anti government or anti institution embracing every piece of news that sends the number up. So I can see there being some disillusionment if you were there from the beginning.
- [07:51]
A
Well, look, first of all, every seller has a buyer. And yeah, these people who, you know, and we don't really. Chain analysis is sort of like fake news. It's at best a guess. It doesn't actually know. It's just guessing. And you're using heuristics. It's not an actual science. These people could easily just be moving the bitcoin around like we don't really know what's happening. Now if they go to a while.
- [08:20]
B
It goes to Galaxy and Galaxy does.
- [08:22]
A
A press announcement on it. Right. So there's certain ones we know, but most of it is like we don't know. And you know what, a lot of these people were moving coins a while ago. And, and generally speaking, you can kind of see, actually you can visualize the velocity of coins over time. People make cool, cool visualizations of this. Bitcoin's got this interesting Jekyll and Hyde thing where on the one hand it's quote unquote transparent because we can kind of see everything. But on the other hand, it's very private because we don't, we don't even know every time one of these whales moves money, some absurd amount of money, billions of dollars of bitcoin. I think it's funny that on the one hand, yes, we can see that the coins moved, but on the other hand, no one knows who these freaking people are. Like, their identities are protected, which is amazing.
- [09:05]
B
So we know that they have big brass balls when they just send 10,000.
- [09:09]
A
Sure.
- [09:09]
B
From a wallet that hasn't touched bitcoin since it was on paper or an old Ms. Dos.
- [09:14]
A
Well, it also be like, it might be like a small percentage of their holdings. Crazy. And someone else is buying. And you know what? Like, that's fine. I mean, I don't. It's amazing they held this far, to be honest. Like, honestly to hold from. So. So one of the early pumps in 2011 was from a dollar to $2 to $30, back to $2. So imagine living through that, right? And you're like, oh, my God, I should have sold at 25. And then, you know, we went in the year 2013, we went from $100 to $1,200. Okay. And then we went all the way back down to $200. So imagine these early pumps were so violent and so intense. People must have lost their minds. Right? And then even the 2017 one, you go from when I was really starting to get into it was late 2016, early 2017. Andreas had just been on Rogan. It was 600 bucks late 2016, and I saw it get to a thousand. And then it starts to go, starts to run. And I remember we did our first event on bitcoin, human rights, right as it broke 2,000 bucks. And it was just like, we. Sky's the limit. And it goes to freaking $19,000 by the end of the year. Now, of course, it'll go all the way back down to like three. Something in the bottom of the. Both. Both December of 2019, I believe, as well, or 2018, as well as the pandemic, like, collapse. So, you know, again, that's another massive. And then now, you know, we'll see where we go from here. We went from 69 down to 15. So every time you see these violent movements, people buy, people sell. I think that, you know, they don't think there's a whole lot to say about early people selling sometimes. I mean, they have to. Unfortunately, we don't live in the bitcoin standard yet, and not everybody accepts bitcoin for payment. So maybe they're trying to buy a company or a piece of real estate or, you know, maybe. Maybe they're starting a business. And, like, the person who needs to be paid for something just doesn't accept bitcoin yet. So it is what it is.
- [11:17]
B
So you're all over the world advocating for human rights and specifically for bitcoin, promoting human rights. What have you seen in the last year or two as We've seen this sort of level of mainstream government, institutional adoption. How is that actually driving adoption in the places where, where you're deeply paying attention and deeply involved? Has it had an effect at all?
- [11:41]
A
Yes. So the main thing is that end user experience using Bitcoin has gotten so much easier over the last five, six, seven years. So when we started doing Bitcoin training for human rights activists, which is what we do, by the way, I know we kind of skipped over that, but yeah. Hi, my name's Alex. I work at the Human Rights Foundation. We help people who live under. We help people live under dictatorships around the world. 5.7 billion people live under an authoritarian regime.
- [12:09]
B
That's insane.
- [12:10]
A
And eight out of, we'll call it, let's say nine out of 10 people on Earth live under either an authoritarian regime or a collapsing fiat currency. So only one out of every 10 people on earth, only about 10, 11% of people in the world live under a liberal democratic system with reasonable property rights and free speech guarantees and a currency that's not going to go to zero tomorrow. Only about one out of every ten people on Earth. Everybody else, money's a problem, a big problem in their lives. Like it either devalues severely against the dollar. Nigeria and Egypt are two of the biggest countries in the world. Both of them issue a currency that has lost 75% of its value in the last few years. So you have to just think about that because those people, generally speaking, we're talking about 3,400 million people in those countries, right just there alone. They don't have access to Amazon stock in America. The mainstream economists say, well, of course, the dollar lost 99% of its value in the last century. But that's being silly. Nobody uses it for a store of value. That's an incredibly privileged thing to say. People abroad, they don't have access to U.S. bonds and stocks and a diversified portfolio. If they're lucky, they can get some gold maybe, but probably not. And they're probably saving in shitty local currency, sheet metal or cattle. That's the savings technology, the average person in the world. So to all of a sudden be able to access Bitcoin, which not only requires no id, no paperwork, can't discriminate, It's a superpower. It doesn't know if you're a refugee or a billionaire or a woman or a man or a Muslim or a Christian or a Jew. It doesn't, doesn't care. But also it's kicked the living shit out of every other investment over the last 15 years, including all the altcoins. If you go just back from where, obviously where it came from, it went from zero to $115,000. Like Solana's gone from. Yeah, a few cents to $200. Well, not even close. Right? So we are watching something that is the most fair possible currency investment combination emerge out of nothing from zero. And the whole time it's been available to anybody and it's been such a powerful tool. And I know there's a debate right now between store value, medium of exchange. That's what's, that's what's like today. If you log on then you're like in this, in this bubble, this is the debate people are having. And it's like, well guess what, it's both. It's digital gold and it's digital cash and it has to be both. If it loses one of the features, the whole thing collapses. You had all these cypherpunks in the 80s and the 90s trying to create private digital cash for the Internet because they knew the surveillance state was coming. You can go back and read all this stuff in Wired magazine and all these sci fi books in the 80s and 90s. Like people knew the electronification of our world would lead to mass financial surveillance and control. That's why David Chaum invented E cash in the 1980s. But what they, what they couldn't figure out was how to issue it, how to do it right. And Chom failed with ecash because he had to have a centralized mint. So it just didn't work. And it's, it's a vector for single point of failure regulation US government 911 happens KYC, AML everywhere. It just became impossible. So the genius moment was Satoshi was able to, the, the real genius was the idea of like okay, in order to have this peer to peer payment system that is described in the, in the headline of the white paper. The only way to actually have that sustainably in a robust way is to have a decentralized issuance and to have the decision to print money be taken away from humans. It's the only way to actually have it in a robust way. So my thesis is that you can't separate the medium of exchange cash aspect from the store of value 21 million, you know, hard money aspect. The way they're married together is what makes bitcoin work. And that's why, you know, it doesn't matter what narratives you have. Like Saylor has his narrative, you know, he doesn't want, he doesn't really necessarily Want people to spend bitcoin as money, right? And then Dorsey has his narrative where he's like, no, no, it's got to be cash for the Internet. That's what it has to be. And what's cool is they're both right. Like in terms of bitcoin works for both. Again, it's been an awesome sov for people. It remains very easy to self custody. I know people, you stress out about it but like it's no more difficult than setting up an Instagram account or whatever. In the end of the day, like things are getting easier and the cash environment for it is fascinating. So I'll just give you some examples that we've seen around the world in the last few years. What's really getting easier is paying people in bitcoin. So for example, in many countries around the world, Kenya, Costa Rica, South Africa, Brazil, Ghana, what people have invented is a very clever bridge. So let's say you're in a taxi cab in Nairobi right now. The driver accepts something called M? Pesa, which is mobile money. It's what everybody uses in Kenya. The driver doesn't know what bitcoin is. That's fine. Kenyans have invented an app where you can live in bitcoin. You can only have bitcoin. It's all you have. Or you're a tourist. Let's say, Scott, you and your family go to Kenya and you don't want to deal with the local currency forex. You just have bitcoin in the wallet on your phone or whatever. Great. You can use this app called Tando. And what it does is you scan the drivers and Pesa thing and you just pay in bitcoin. It takes three seconds and it pays in lightning. And he's paid. He doesn't know what bitcoin is. He's paid in M? Pesa, he goes on his merry way. You've paid lightning and the company does a swap and there's no KYC or anything. This is also possible in Costa Rica with what's called Bitcoin Jungle and in a bunch of other countries with other apps. Now it's coming in America too with square. So 4 million small businesses in the United States and larger businesses use these physical cash app Square Cash terminals. You've seen them, they're like these little small things. There's other ones too, but like square ops, you know, let's say Block now runs one of the larger ones, larger networks, so it's starting to be rolled out in pilots. But by the end of the year, it Seems you can use like any wallet you want. You can write your own bitcoin wallet and you can have some bitcoin in it and you can pay your barber or your local bookstore or whatever in bitcoin. And the default will be that it auto converts and the merchant gets dollars, but that they can turn on if they want to. Just take it in bitcoin. And this is the frontier, like when we have the famous meme. The most famous meme in bitcoin history is the Matrix meme where Neo asks Morpheus, what are you telling me, that I can trade my bitcoin for millions someday? And Neo asks this to Morpheus and Morpheus says, no, Neo, what I'm telling you is when you're ready, you won't have to. And the point of that is bitcoin is hyper bitcoinization. The point is that eventually there won't be any dollars anymore. That's the idea. Eventually you can just use your bitcoin for everything. And there's a fascinating friction here because in richer countries, most bitcoiners have a fiat job. They get paid in dollars and they stack bitcoin. And this is totally reasonable, understandable. And it's, it's the smart thing to do, right, if you can do that. But eventually what happens? And that's, I guess I would call that like where. That's where we are today, for the most part, around the world. There are some places where people use bitcoin more as money for different reasons. They don't have as good fiat as the dollar, etc. But generally speaking, in the western world, that's where we are. What's going to happen eventually though, is that the merchant's not going to want your Fiat. That's going to happen eventually. Five years, 10 years, 20 years, I don't know when, but eventually the person selling you the house or the car, I think it's going to start with more expensive items, luxury items, Louis Vuitton. They're not going to want dollars, they're going to want bitcoin. And then you have to spend your bitcoin and that's, that's hyper bitcoinization. So we're not there yet, but that's going to happen eventually. That's my thesis. And as far as what happens to stable coins and altcoins and all that, they're always going to be around. I think that's my thought. I just think over time the market gets smarter and they become the first of all. The altcoins become more like Penny stocks. Like sure, if you, if you can game it out, maybe you can make, yeah, but like maybe you can make a quick buck. But even today it's like Ethan Solana will like outperform bitcoin for like large periods of time and then they'll crash and then, but you know, we're still early, right? Like eventually these things will be penny stocks. Stablecoins are like, I mean they're really interesting, right, because they're kind of like they were not invented to be a tool of U.S. economic policy. They were invented so people could have liquidity. When they were trading bitcoin in the early days, yeah, they were hedging their speculation and they were invented to be so exchanges could do business with each other and had nothing to do with like US economic power or the national debt problem. But over the last few years, some very smart people in the government now they've, now they're in power. The Trump administration figured out that stablecoins could kind of be like the euro dollar market and they could simultaneously a increase dollar network effect and hegemony around the world. So even in these like brics, countries like Russia where they're like trying to fight the dollar, the people want tether, you know. So it's like, it's fascinating. So a, it's increasing dollar network effect around the world and B, the issuers of the stable coins have become a top five treasures of treasuries. So last year, 2024 stablecoin issuers after JP Morgan in China, they were the third largest net buyer of treasuries in the world. This year they, it, they'll probably be top two, maybe even top one. So this thing is going in a way where they can meaningfully impact interest rates. And the government sees this and that's why you have Scott Besant on television telling people that stablecoins are super important. That's why they passed the Genius act. So I think these things will continue for a while and they'll gut and crush other small nation state currencies. I'm a believer in that dollar milkshake theory. Like I really, we're seeing it happen, I think before the dollar dies and collapses, you're going to see it eat all the other fiats. That's my theory here. And then eventually it fades to bitcoin. But that's going to take a really long time. So for now it's still the dollar world, right?
- [22:44]
B
So much unpack.
- [22:46]
A
Yeah, well, I mean the main thing is that the way we win, when I say we Is like all the bitcoiners who believe in the neomorpheous world where we can just use bitcoin as money and it's a meaningful improvement to the world in many ways. The only way we win, you know, is to Dorsey's point, if it can be used as cash, if it can be used by people, can be paid in bitcoin, I think. So we're not there yet. And the stable coins are an interesting challenge because governments are going to try to use those to sort of fight off and fend off the bitcoin payment thing. Yeah, they would rather have they defend.
- [23:22]
B
The fiat currency that bitcoin was created as a hedge against.
- [23:26]
A
Well, imagine if you could look, think about the visa merchant network around the world. So you have hundreds of millions of small businesses that use these credit cards around the world, right? So imagine if you can have your like metamask wallet or whatever, wherever you're keeping your stables, right? And then you can just be in like the Philippines or whatever and you can just, you can pay a local merchant and it settles into visa. That's what they have their eye on, right?
- [23:51]
B
So stablecoin, American Express travelers check and fly somewhere and use the check to the merchant or open, use an account locally. I mean, stablecoins really make life a lot easier for a lot of people.
- [24:02]
A
The big conundrum will be KYC versus Reach, right? Because if there's no kyc and you can just use stables like cash, then in theory they can take over the world. But then they have this conundrum of they don't, they don't know, they can't have micro, they can't see. Because stablecoins are permissionless for now at least. So we'll see that unfold. I mean, I'm about to go out to southeast Asia, visit a few countries, check out what's going on there in Thailand. Check this out. So the government has this new program where when you visit at the airport, you can convert your, your bitcoin or your stable coins or your cryptocurrency. You can convert it into the Thai essentially like central bank digital currency, some sort of digital credit. And it's something that all the merchants accept like through their, their phone and, or their, their, their like payment reader. So what they're, what they're doing though, if you think about this carefully over time, is they're like harvesting hard money bitcoin from tourists and they're giving you this like thing they can print that you can spend in the country and that's really clever. It's what the Cuban government does. Like, Cubans are paid in this, like terrible peso currency that nobody accepts, even businesses inside Cuba. The only way to get the good stuff is to get your family abroad to send you hard foreign currency. And then they give you mlc, which is like a gift card thing, and then you can buy stuff. So what they're doing is they're harvesting the good currency and printing the shitty stuff that's hyperinflating. So you're gonna see a lot of countries do this. And the way out is pay me in bitcoin. Like, if the local merchant in Thailand or Cuba all of a sudden accepts bitcoin, you can go around this whole kind of basically stealing operation. Like this is government stealing from people. So that's why pay me in bitcoin. And bitcoin as money is so important and it's not necessarily a technological thing. Like, yes, it's true. There's a lot more to be done with bitcoin at the app level and at the network level to get it to where it can really do this for everybody. I agree. But at the end of the day, there's so much more we can do today about education and, and, and just sort of in just, sort of just understanding way before we catch up to the technological limits. Like, people say bitcoin has a scaling problem. Yeah. It's called education. Like, we're easily have another.
- [26:14]
B
Yeah, I think that's what I was hinting at with the last question was like, how much has Trump talking about bitcoin all the time and percent and BlackRock and literally everybody in the world in financial markets becoming a promoter, how much has that helped your job as an educator? Because at the end of the day, yes, you're the Human Rights foundation and you're looking to help people, but you can't help anyone until you educate and convince them on it. And these are pretty hard topics to educate a lot of people on.
- [26:42]
A
Well, look, if you take my premise that we could easily have another 100 million occasional on chain users with like, no, really no impact on the bitcoin network. It's really good. I mean, look, now, admittedly, a lot of the newcomers are coming into bitcoin derivatives, meaning they're buying ETFs or ETFs or what have strategy wrapper.
- [27:04]
B
Yeah.
- [27:05]
A
But generally speaking, like their validation of bitcoin, the fact that blackrock's out there, they have suits and hundreds of sales agents sell side people, like selling a bitcoin product and You've got the US government saying it wants to be the bitcoin superpower of the world. And you have a lot of these like Biden era anti bitcoin regulators out the door. And again we still have challenges. The privacy thing's a huge issue. But still the fact that bitcoin is like here to stay strategic, bitcoin reserve, all that stuff, like it makes it so much safer and people are less worried about it today than a few years ago. It makes our job a lot easier. Absolutely. If bitcoin is no longer seen as like black market money by the average person, then it makes it way easier for us to do what we do. So this is general validation and adoption and normalization of bitcoin As a first. Yeah. As an investment. And I think that's fine. That's where we are. That's step one is like general realization by the public that Bitcoin is not a Ponzi scheme, it's not a pyramid scheme, it's not criminal money. It's an investment. And you know what, it's done really well. And I think money managers have figured that out and have started to talk to their clients about it. I mean I'll tell you, as you know that we're still early on that but that's stage one and then we'll see what the further stages are. But like I think generally speaking my thesis has been I'm not like government adopt like adoption by like governments and mega corporations. Instead of being a betrayal of the ethos, I think it's, it's like a trojan horse. It's made our jobs a lot easier because there's only one bitcoin, like I get it that you can, you can say buy my whatever, ETF, etc. But for now like ostensibly whenever they, whenever BlackRock has more demand to sell more of that, they have to buy more spots in the market. Like there is at some point someone's buying, someone's buying.
- [28:59]
B
The person who's buying the ETF is not custodying their own bitcoin. But let's be honest, the person who's buying the ETF is probably buying it as an investment because they think the number will go up and not as the hard money. And by the way, that's totally fine.
- [29:14]
A
Yeah, yeah. I guess my argument is like people are unwittingly participating in a big revolution. Of course.
- [29:21]
B
Yeah.
- [29:21]
A
And it's going to take decades. They don't realize it. Even the blackrock people don't, I don't think quite realize it. Now they have changed their tone. If you listen to what. Larry.
- [29:29]
B
Larry, it's wild.
- [29:32]
A
Well, five years ago he was like, no fucking way, scam. And now he's like, he's like, he's like, he's not saying it's going to replace the dollar, but he's basically saying.
- [29:42]
B
Hey, he said it could, right?
- [29:43]
A
I mean, he said it could.
- [29:44]
B
Literally said, you know, if the treasury continues on this path or if the debt, you know, train continues to run out of control, something like Bitcoin could be the global reserve currency. The dollar could be replaced by something like Bitcoin, something to that effect.
- [29:59]
A
And I love it. And like, I think the main thing that I. Well, here's the thing. So I'm working, I'm working on a book on this idea, but what I want to advance is this idea for America, for Americans, of if you're a patriot, you believe in American values, you have to deeply question our money system. It's not like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson would have been happy with what we have now, a 7 trillion dollar debt empire that's reliant on forever wars and financial surveillance. No, they would have been like, I'm out. That is not what I'm building. There's a reluctance to have a central bank at the beginning of our country. They didn't want that. They didn't want any centralization. They didn't. They wanted privacy. They did. They wanted. They had values, right, that are embodied in our Bill of Rights. The current financial system is the opposite of that. We have this petrodollar system. We have to have this crazy pact with these like crazy dictators in the Middle east to prop this thing up. We got out our own middle and lower classes as part of the Triffin Dilemma where we export these dollars around the world and the dollar becomes really strong and it becomes very hard for us to be competitive manufacturers of stuff. And all these things have happened that are, I think, contrary to what the founders would have wanted. So I think it's time for us to make like a hard stand and say that like if you're pro American and you're a patriot, you should be anti Dollar. I think dollar has been bad for America. It's certainly been bad for a lot of the world. And I think the middle ground is saying, okay, let's actually analyze this. What's been good about the. Because a lot of, the lot of like the dollar has been good. Like the market naturally wants a global, neutral, shared currency that makes things easier, right? There are certain attributes about the dollar that are good, it's like great. We can take the. Bitcoin takes some of those. One neutral currency for the world, one standard. It does a lot of the things the dollar can do without a lot of the costs and it can do something new and better for America. So my main thesis and argument is that I think America will be super dynamic and powerful in a bitcoin world. And it's so bad for dictators. It's so bad for dictators. If you're, if you believe in America as an idea of a people, a free people that have a government that is accountable to the people and a government that works for the people, we should not be afraid of money that the public controls. That should not be a fear. However, if you're the Chinese government, the Russian government, the Saudi government, you are petrified of money that you can't control. And ultimately it's going to bring your, your empire down. So I think this is awesome for America. I think it's really bad for dictators. I think it'll help reform America away from some of its worst parts that I'm ashamed of as an American when it comes to too much spending on forever wars and conflicts, too much surveillance inside our system, a lot of like opaqueness in terms of like essentially financing projects the public is not interested in. A lot of that collapses under a bitcoin standard. So my, my main sort of, I guess radical, provocative thesis would be I think bitcoin. I think America will be way better with bitcoin as the global currency than the dollar. That, that's, that's, I guess, the main one.
- [33:02]
B
It's interesting because before this administration there was this tremendous fear of a central bank digital currency. And it seemed like actually that was the direction that the government was likely to push in.
- [33:11]
A
Probably not going to happen in the United States.
- [33:13]
B
No, it was probably not going to happen even if it was being pushed for in the United States. But now it seems like if you're tilting the scales of justice, we would have more of a chance of bitcoin becoming the currency than a central bank to digital currency based on the dollar. Which leads to the question of whether if stablecoins as currently in existence begin to proliferate, we get private stable coins and maybe some of these stable coin issuers like Circle who have actually floated now there or will be creating their own blockchain, do those become de facto central bank digital currencies if they're on centralized blockchains that are controlled by the entities that are issuing them?
- [33:51]
A
Well, Part of its semantics, like definitionally speaking. No. A central bank digital currency by definition is issued by the.
- [33:59]
B
Yeah.
- [34:00]
A
They ask for the central bank. However, they could kind of be like a stealth one where they're issued by these private entities. But really the government controls.
- [34:08]
B
Yeah. If the government has a, if the government has a transparency into what's happening on that chain and that chain can roll things back.
- [34:15]
A
I guess there's a couple things. There's interest and then there's kyc. So at the end of the day, if stablecoin issuers are not able to provide interest. So currently they can't. And part of the whole, part of the genius thing was sort of trying to like, sort of calm down or assuage in some way the traditional banks because they don't want to lose their lunch over stablecoins. Because who's going to want like a crappy savings account if you have stablecoin?
- [34:47]
B
1% in a stable.
- [34:48]
A
Exactly.
- [34:49]
B
Bank account or in a bank account, 5% interest hourly.
- [34:54]
A
Exactly. Right. So, so, so there's something going on there with a friction and like there's already loopholes. Like I think the PayPal stable coin you can get interest on. I don't know. There's some loopholes that are going to happen. That's one fight that the banks are going to fight the issuers on. We'll see. Now at the end of the day the banks just might issue their own stable coins. We'll see. The other one would be the KYC thing. And this is I think the most interesting one. So again, going back to what I was saying before about the. The stablecoin is a tool of U.S. economic power. There's a dilemma, right. Like we can, we can have a much more powerful global stablecoin regime as long as there's no kyc. But I don't know if they're going to like that. So if they start imposing kyc, shotgun kyc, whatever flavor of KYC you want on the majors, on the major stable coins, I mean you're gonna, you're gonna have a collapse in both velocity of money because you're all of a sudden hundreds of millions of people in the global south that currently use them today unable to use them.
- [35:48]
B
Right. They couldn't KYC if they tried. So it's. Yeah.
- [35:51]
A
And, and while I, I understand that the major clients and like depositors at Tether are, are mainly like, you know, banks and large institutions, there's only like 10, 15 people who work with Tether. Right. Probably similar with Circle, but the Thing is they're reliant on demand from places like Nigeria of like on tether volume. So the like individual small transactions of tether are connected to the larger volumes. And the whole thing of course is also tracks the price of bitcoin. Like it moves up and down along with bitcoin demand. But like at the end of the day I think they become way less effective and profitable if they require kyc. Like they're also going to become by.
- [36:37]
B
The way, way less profitable when we inevitably have rate cuts.
- [36:41]
A
Well, when interest rates are, interest rates go down well. Well that'll be an interesting thing because you know, with bonds it's like, it's an interesting conundrum. Like they'll, they'll be less profitable short term, but the asset itself will grow more valuable. I mean it's just sort of an interesting.
- [36:56]
B
But isn't circular stock effectively just interest rate exposure? I mean it's a bond.
- [37:00]
A
Yes, so, so what?
- [37:03]
B
I have other things but I mean if we go back to 1% interest rates, I think I read it like circles income decreases like 70, 80% a year or something. It's a big, big difference.
- [37:13]
A
I get. I guess what I'm saying is like, you know, we're, we're on our mission. We're doing bitcoin education around the world. We're bringing people into bitcoin. We want people to be paid in bitcoin. Pay me in bitcoin should be the thing. I mean that's, that's the key to a prosperous futures. Pay me in bitcoin. Not just save it, not just get exposure to the price through my retirement account. It's pay me in bitcoin. This is it. Like podcasters, graphic designers, architects, small business owners, like they want to be paid a bitcoin. I mean you can at least be paid like. And if you're thinking about this and listening to this, I'm not, I'm not saying your entire salary should be in bitcoin. I mean, how about like tips or how about like a couple projects you're doing or maybe you can talk to your employer and get 10% like. But, but if you don't, if you don't, if you, we don't create that demand, you know, this is, this is a harder fight. So the one thing I'm looking at is, is that, and how do we increase the global bitcoin economy where people are paid and they buy and sell things in bitcoin? And then the second thing is watching this fight unfold and just kind of Being in the back, like you know, observing where the existing legacy banking system is going to fight the stablecoin issuers and they're going to fight over interest and they're going to fight over KYC and we're going to see how it comes out. It's going to be really fascinating to watch.
- [38:25]
B
And it's in plain sight now. I mean Citadel completely freaked out a few weeks ago about the genius act and obviously we know exactly how it would affect their business. But now the bank lobbies have very transparently been trying to, to your point, slow or close loopholes that they viewed in the genius act that could eventually be used to have interest. The minute there's interest on stablecoins for retail, banks have almost zero purpose.
- [38:52]
A
Well, again, like I'm already saying, there's already some kind of loophole where PayPal's off. Boring. Yeah, if you look it up like so, so we'll see. I mean at the end of the day there's a lot to unpack there with like how much is a stablecoin really different than like an existing, you know, line of credit? Like there's interesting stuff there to unpack. Like at the retail merchant level. Is the actual transaction of money going from one party to another, is that going to be done with like a stable coin moving around or are we talking credit still? There's a lot to unpack in that whole area of like retail adoption of stablecoins and it might, it might just fail. Like, we don't know. Like, like governments have tried to impose CBDCs in places like Nigeria and China and no one's interested for, for some of the obvious reasons like they don't want negative interest rates, they don't want zero interest rate, they don't want to be like, they don't want limits on like calorie intake or like buying cigarettes or whatever. This is actually, you know, the case in places like China. They want, they want to have more freedom with their money, which is of course the long term Bitcoin thesis. But like I think the stablecoin proliferation thing is going to be, is going to have a lot of challenges. Like there are some reasons why some re, some, some individuals would want stable coins, but the average American, if it's not going to offer interest and if it's going to have all this KYC stuff anyway, what's the point? So, so it's going to be interesting to see how they evolve over the coming years. But you know, at the end of the day, just remember stable coins are not freedom money they might have. They absolutely have humanitarian value. Of course they do, because people in Egypt and Lebanon and Turkey don't have.
- [40:33]
B
Relative, maybe the relative bitcoin, but having a digital dollar versus, oh, currency that cuts in half your value in a month. And if you want dollars, you have to go walk into like a mafia den and get, you know, beaten up and losing three times the money anyways, you know.
- [40:53]
A
Yeah, so. So like, let's, let's like be realistic. Like stablecoins today offer a lot of humanitarian value for a lot of people, but they're not freedom money. You can't actually self custody them in a way that's unconfiscatable. They can be rugged, they can go to zero, they can be frozen, they can be censored. And as Jeff Booth calls them, they're guaranteed lose your money coins. Like, they track inflation. Like they're literally going down. So, so there, there's a lot of issues with them. They're definitely useful for a lot of people around the world. That's why, you know, one of the reasons you see such a huge volume increase. So we'll see how it goes. But ultimately that they're orthogonal to the bitcoin revolution. They're not connected in a meaningful way. Like, at the end of the day, they don't solve the things that bitcoin solves. Like bitcoin is, is you money. It's, it's neutral money. It's gives people free speech and property rights and it's not tied to the central banking system and it's scarce. So the value of these things, over time, it's rocky, but over time goes up. So they have NGU and they have FU built in, and stablecoins don't have either. So at the end of the day, they're not. It's funny, they're not really competing. They don't share the same kind of DNA. But for now they. People, people think they're. People think they're competing. You know what I mean?
- [42:06]
B
You and I had a not so different Twitter conversation about this. I tweeted something to the effect of bitcoin basically has already won the race and bitcoin maxis don't need to be so concerned about altcoins because I was like, you know, bitcoin's hard money and all coins are VC investments and whatever. So different asset classes. That was my view. And I think you said something to the effect of shitcoins or trash coins, I think you said at the time were the biggest threat to bitcoin adoption because so many people have been scammed around the world. And I actually responded, what about stablecoins? They're the ones that have actually taken the peer to peer cash shine off of bitcoin for now. It really is very interesting because I think in certain places people don't conflate bitcoin with these other things. Yeah. But in certain places it really maybe is a choice, like which one do I.
- [42:54]
A
Well, I agree that like some people, if stablecoin didn't exist, yes, I guess those people would be using bitcoin. Fine. But what I really meant by that is like the people who got scammed and lost money and now they're not going to touch any digital assets at all. Right.
- [43:08]
B
Because so which is an education thing again, right? Because like if you got, if you got scanned in the real world you still would go. You put your money in a bank because you had to.
- [43:17]
A
So I guess what I'm talking about is like in the developing world you have a lot of presence from companies like Binance, shilling all kinds of crypto crazy shitcoins, like ones you've never even heard of before. And people are getting sucked worldcoin. The whole thing where they were giving out the world coin tokens like when you traded your retinal scan for them. So there was a, there's a lot of that going on in the developing world. And that, that ca. That gives people at least a bad taste in people's mouth is my point. And it makes it really hard to show people the value of bitcoin. So yeah, I do think in many ways that this vast sea of altcoins is a huge hurdle to bitcoin education. Now. Then again that was, it was always going to be that way. So it's just, it's part of the story, it's part of the journey. Like you have to touch the stove. I wonder how many people learn that it's bad.
- [44:03]
B
The flip side of that, and I don't disagree, but on the flip side of that, I wonder how many people have backdoored into bitcoin because they found crypto in an entirely different way. I mean, last cycle you look factually like the most people who signed up for some sort of crypto account that maybe ended up buying bitcoin like wanted NFTs or. Right. I'm not saying they're for bitcoin adoption. I'm just saying there has to be some population that backed into it.
- [44:27]
A
I think that this was more of a thing in the 1718 cycle where a lot of people, including me, didn't have. We were just like, oh, there's all these coins. Cool. Like litecoin. And then you learn about it. I don't think it's the same with, like, the 21 cycle. I. I think there's, like, people who are like, no, I'm just like, into Solana.
- [44:46]
B
I think there's people who don't know bitcoin basically exists.
- [44:48]
A
I don't even know what bitcoin is.
- [44:49]
B
Yes.
- [44:50]
A
Yeah. Like, there's a great. This is from a long time ago, but there's a great Andreas Antonopoulos thing where he's like, talking about how he went to Singapore and he's talking to this guy who works on blockchain for bank of America. And. And Andreas is like, oh, I do like bitcoin education. The guy's like, what's that? And. And I think that. I think that that's obviously, it's a great story. I wouldn't say that. All these. The Solana community, these people, like, obviously they know what bitcoin is, but they've never used it for sure. Like, maybe they also.
- [45:16]
B
The type of people who would ever become like, I don't know, Solana, but, like, if you came to trade meme coins, like, you're in, right?
- [45:23]
A
You're not bitcoin.
- [45:25]
B
Right. But. But. So say. But there are people who will say that those would have been bitcoiners if not for Trump Token. And I'm like, no, those people just, like, wanted a digital lottery.
- [45:34]
A
They're just. Yeah, yeah, no, no, but. But that's fair. But, like, I guess my point is. That's fair. That's fair. But a lot of them, you know, they make up all this nonsense about lightning and they try to fud bitcoin and it's totally inaccurate. Like, they. It's like they have some sort of need inside themselves to criticize bitcoin for some reason. I. There's different reasons for that. And. And you. You realize over time that, like, they haven't used any of these products. Like, like, Lightning is very good today. Like, it was totally shitty five years ago, but, like, it's gotten a lot better. Like, you can. If you. If you use wall. If you download Wallet of Satoshi now, the new beta, it's super slick now. It's. It's interesting. Like, it uses spark so that there. You don't have to deal with lighting channels anymore. Like. Like, if you download it right now, Scott, I can just send you a dollar and it goes right to You. And it works like this was it. It's so awesome. Wallet of Satoshi. It's now it's in test flight. So the new beta. So, like, go to the Twitter account of Walletoshi and download it on your thing and then after the show message me and I'll send you a dollar. You'll see how amazing it is. Now, in your mind, though, you have to understand it's not actually on chain, bitcoin or lightning. It's Spark, which is a sidechain developed by LightSpark. Here's the cool part, though. I know Spark has unilateral exit. It. Yeah, it's killing it. It has unilateral exit, so you can't really get rugged. And it speaks lightning. So, for example, once you've got that dollar from me, you can pay and you can go to Steak and Shake and buy french fries with it. And it works immediately. Like. And Steak and Shake gets actual bitcoin. So it's. This is what you're seeing is this growth of these kind of side chains and other L2s in Bitcoin that are. That speak Lightning.
- [47:16]
B
David said to me in May. I interviewed him at bitcoin conference and he was like, I tried to build on lightning for like three years and it just didn't.
- [47:23]
A
Yeah.
- [47:23]
B
So here we are.
- [47:24]
A
Spark. Yeah. Well. Well, I think. I think, you know, look, you have to be Bayesian, Right. You have to change your mind when things change on the ground. Right. So I think, to be fair, yes, the 2017 dream of lightning that I believed in, where it was going to be the thing we did micropayments on the Internet with and paid for coffee with. You can, I mean, you can kind of still do it today, but I think, to me, at least it's pretty obvious that that's not. In 20 years what's going to happen. My view on lightning currently is that it's like the central nervous system of the bitcoin economy. And you're going to have custodians, EE cash mints, L2s, payment pools, and you're going to have all these different ways to use bitcoin and they're all. It's all going to settle over lightning. That's. That's, in my view, how it's going to work. And there will still be hobbyists who run their own lightning node. And. But that's good. In the future, that'll be like a ham radio operator. It'll be like. Like a club of people who do it for sport. The average person will not run their own lightning node. But you know what? There'll be enough of them to keep the network healthy. And everybody else will use something like Ecash or Spark or something like that. And look, man, we're going to be living in the bitcoin world. I think it's beautiful. So I think that's what people are sleeping on in the other crypto communities. They. They are not looking at what's happening, which is this. This kind of scaling of bitcoin in this new unique way. But we don't even need like a fork to get there. I think we will eventually get some kind of fork. It'll be interesting, that'll make it more powerful. But we don't even need that right now to have Arc, Spark, E Cash, and just the improvement of Lightning. So it's been fun. And, you know, Noster is this other thing I love, which I agree, it's small, small community. It's only, whatever, somewhere between 50 and 100,000 active users at the moment. But you know what, it's so cool to have a social media platform where I control my stuff. I cannot get censored. Nobody controls what I say. I can do whatever I want and I can zap people and nobody can stop me. And I think it's just inevitable that Nostra grows because all of these other platforms are controlled by somebody else. And they're not natively bitcoin compatible, whether it be Farcaster or X or YouTube or whatever. They're all controlled and they're proprietary. And Nostr is the only one that's fully open to the world. So it's got its own problems. It's like 2011 Bitcoin in terms of development and how hard it is to use and stuff like that. It's getting better, but I'm excited about that as well. So I think a lot of the broader crypto world is missing out on some of the cool stuff happening in bitcoin and they should come check it out.
- [49:55]
B
We somehow ran right up against time already. But final thoughts on what you guys are doing in how people can contribute or help or even just obviously further bitcoin education?
- [50:07]
A
Sure. Well, look, bitcoin was the first use case of bitcoin was Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. That was the first real use case. Right. It was like, okay, that the bank accounts were all shut down and this worked. That continues to be. I would argue to you listeners that that is. That is the use case for bitcoin still today. It's money that the government can't stop. And people have discovered other use cases for it. Wonderful. But at the end of the day, that's what it is, that's what it does. And that's why we use it at the Human Rights foundation, because it's money dictators can't stop. And if you're interested in learning more about that, you can join us at our live events. We do something in Scandinavia every spring, a lot of bitcoin content called the Oslo Freedom Forum. That's a lot of fun. You can look that up. We have a fund where we give away about a million dollars in bitcoin every quarter, quarter to open source bitcoin projects called the Bitcoin Development Fund. You can look that up. And then we have a weekly newsletter that goes into financial repression and also how people are fighting back with open source tech called the Financial Freedom Report. So you can look that up as well. So stay tuned, you know, meet us, come hang out, check out our newsletter, and if you're interested, apply for a grant. So I think that's kind of where we'll leave it. Thanks so much for having me on, Scott.
- [51:18]
B
Yeah, man. Thank you so much for taking the time. Glad we had to hash us out. And I don't know how many years it's been, like I said, but. But let's do it again soon.
- [51:25]
A
Yeah, make it happen. Thank you.