← The Wolf Of All Streets
The Wolf Of All Streets
Bitcoin’s Purchasing Power: $43 Million Today, Infinite Tomorrow | Jeff Booth
01:03:10
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- [00:00]
A
The people that are listening to your podcast, they would be a tiny, tiny fraction of the overall number of people in the world that understand this.
- [00:09]
B
I've been kind of taking abuse for sharing the never sell your bitcoin is flawed.
- [00:13]
A
If you just carried the math on that forward, it would look like imperialism 3.0.
- [00:18]
B
Even if people don't get it yet, the seeds are planted.
- [00:21]
A
So relative to the $43 million in today's purchasing power, it turns into infinite purchasing power.
- [00:29]
B
Such a fascinating conversation as usual. I wish we had another two, three, five hours. People who truly understand bitcoin had an aha moment at some point. For many, it's when they first read the white paper. For others, it's when they read the bitcoin standard for the first time. For me, I think everything really clicked when I first read the Price of Tomorrow by Jeff Booth. Since then, I've had Jeff on the podcast a number of times, and each time I continue to learn and fall deeper down the bitcoin rabbit hole. Jeff has been a steady voice and now we're lucky to have him on the front lines talking to world leaders about adopting a bitcoin standard and moving entirely to this new and superior system. This conversation with Jeff Booth is mind blowing as always, and I deeply encourage you to listen to every word of it.
- [01:15]
A
That's dope.
- [01:29]
B
So we had a bit of a historic moment this week, which is probably the best place to start in a conversation with you, and that's that Moody's, the third of the major credit agencies, finally, for the first time, downgraded United States debt. Now, I think markets have shrugged it off. People have largely shrugged it off, but to me, it's a huge signal.
- [01:49]
A
Yeah, I don't know if it's any more signal than anything that's been happening for a long time. It's just the, it's. You have an exponential debt that from a system of inflation or a credit based system has to grow exponentially all over the world. And you have the natural state of the free market. Exactly the opposite natural state of the free market is deflation. So if these two systems colliding into each other and one, the natural state of the free market trying to make prices cheaper for you forces an exponential rise of debt to try to make prices more expensive. And depending what side of that system you're measuring from, if you're inside that system, measuring everything from inside that system, you're going to be really confused. You're going to think you're going to, you're going to constantly think about what's the next thing, what's the next thing, what's the next thing when it's all the same thing, right? So it's the same thing I wrote about six years ago that would happen for sure. Because the centralizing system based on, based on debt had to manipulate money at an ever increasing rate to stop the productivity from flowing to us broadly through the free market. And that had consequences. It had consequences of centralization. It had consequences of everyone measuring in that system, believing that they could fix it from within that system dividing society. So nothing has changed. We're just further down the path of that centralization and exponential debt that it's been insolvent for a long time. We only reason we believe in all of the prices from that insolvent system is because we believe nothing can go wrong in it.
- [03:37]
B
Having written the book six years ago, as you said, obviously talking about the price of tomorrow, where are we relative to where you believed we would be on this path now in 2025? Are we further along? Are we less far along? Completely unsustainable?
- [03:53]
A
Can it be fixed so we're exactly like so. So I read a passage to somebody the other day that talked about AI and that AI had been moving exponentially since the 50s and that. That most people were measuring AI moving linearly and that, that, and that would mean that I would move faster and faster and faster and we would use AI, so. And we would use AI because if we didn't use AI in our businesses, then other people wouldn't use our goods and services. Right? So we're a part of the economy. We choose more value. So how could we choose more value? And you have exponential AI or artifact, not just AI, but exponential technology trying to make things cheaper and not. And things not get cheaper if we're a part of the economy. And so were exactly where I expected to be. A different passage in my book I wrote, it's not the looking backwards thing I'm worried about. It's the looking forward, the exponential rise of debt to try to stop that, the exponential manipulation of money and the centralization that that would bring and everyone believing that there's a fix within the system. So I would say that we're exactly where I thought we would be.
- [05:09]
B
So I mean, the United States, I'm looking at the debt clock, which is always entertaining to watch how quickly it rises. But 36,870,000,000 right now, we're adding it at a faster rate than we ever have in the past. I think it makes A lot of sense why Moody's would downgrade the debt. But we also, on the other side, have new approaches to dealing with this debt, right? But we finally have a government, I guess you could say that at least admits it's a problem to some degree. Although now they're talking about tax cuts and less austerity. We haven't heard about Doge as much anymore. Is there any government, I mean, I'm talking specifically about the United States, but is there any way any government can reverse this? Are there even policies at this point that they could begin to adopt that would address this problem?
- [05:57]
A
This is the biggest thing. And for years, years and years and years, you hear commentators talking about which snowflake causes the avalanche, right? And everybody is, this snowflake causes this snowflake causes. And when does it absolutely collapse ups everywhere. Now, remember, the US Is the strongest country in the world and they're in most solvent out of all the others because they have the de facto currency. And that de facto currency reserve makes sure, because your labor has to be more expensive than other, make sure that other labor around the world is cheaper. And so from the Triffin dilemma, that's going to continue to happen under a currency like the US So it's more stable. US Dollar isn't going anywhere anytime soon, right? I mean, everybody's saying, when does the entire thing collapse? It probably doesn't. Like, like they're looking at. There could be a whole bunch of tail events that happen when, when, when Japan breaks or Europe breaks or all of these things, but they're kind of tiny little avalanches in the greater, in the greater game. That system you have is a specific question. And, and I spent a lot of time on this. Could that system resolve the problem? And how could that system that we measure from where money is lent into existence? And it can't allow deflation. How could it resolve a problem that the free market, the natural state of the free market is deflation? It's impossible, right? They're two different systems. And I would say the biggest challenge for most people's brains, when they measure Bitcoin or when they measure anything, they're measuring everything from within the system, thinking there's a fix in the system. There is no fix in the system because it's incompatible with the natural state of the free market, which is deflation. It means you've never lived in a free market, never lived in a global free market. If you're measuring in Bitcoin. And this is going to be a stretch for people who don't believe it or don't understand it or haven't gone to depth or traders that are trading all sorts of things inside that system to try to get wealthy. They don't understand that an open decentralized secure protocol, protocols are winner take all that is bounded by energy is pricing the first global free market that's ever exist. Existed. The only caveat, nothing else. The only caveat is can it stay decentralized and secure? Because if it stays decentralized and secure, it doesn't care what I'm saying right now. Every 10 minutes there's a new block bounded by energy that the nodes confirm and 16 years of trying to break it. Biggest governments on the planet trying to break it. All of the nonsense trying to break it. It doesn't care if there's $100 trillion printed, $10 trillion printed. Doesn't care about tariffs, doesn't care about anything else. And if you measure in the energy backed system, Bitcoin, all prices are falling exactly like you'd expect.
- [09:02]
B
All right. It's not the denominator. So listen, that wasn't the direction I necessarily want to go in, but perhaps it's worth having a conversation on what could be threats to the decentralization and or security of Bitcoin. Because you said as long as they remain, as long as it remains decentralized and secure, there are no threats to it. It's basically an inevitable future. We have a world where certainly governments and institutions and Wall street are getting much more involved in Bitcoin. We know that mining you could argue becomes progressively more centralized as larger miners take more of the hash rate which has sent hash rate skyrocketing. Are there any threats to the security and or decentralization of Bitcoin?
- [09:40]
A
So this is. I've spent a lot of time here, I don't think so, but that sounds off the cuff, right? You'd have to go, I don't think so because I've spent 10 to 12,000 hours trying to find them. Almost the opposite view that I took. A view that if in 5,000 years we've never lived in a global free market and we were part of the market through our actions and pricing or trying to, trying to achieve more value and our actions in trying to free market has to provide more value. But we've never actually experienced one totally a global free market. The US did but on Declaration of Independence and Constitution for a while until it was taken over by the Federal Reserve. And that led to incredible prosperity and all of the people moving to the US to take advantage of free market, better ideas, more ideas on that which created the biggest superpower in the world out of that. But we've never lived in a global system of that.
- [10:49]
B
That was my next question. I was like you very specifically said a global free market. So since we've had globalism and this level of trade, if I would say free trade, but this level of trade and interconnectivity among the world, there's never been a free market.
- [11:05]
A
It's just a giant banking cartel. If you just ask yourself really, really quickly and then who has the power, who has power over all the media and everything else? It gets more and more centralized, more and more control over the top. Where does centralization come from? If the natural state of the free market is deflation, you get richer every year by everyone's work for you, whether you're doing anything or not. So where does the inflation come from? There is no natural inflation. It all comes from money supply. You don't have a vote in it. You have no vote. So do you actually live in a democracy anymore if you have no vote? And the thing that steals the most of your wealth and you don't have a choice? And, and, and everybody's measuring from that same system. So, so yes, it's, and it has to work. The worst, it has to keep getting worse and worse than that is everybody's, the media that they're watching, all of these things are inside that system and they believe it's somebody else's fault. And, and, and they're, by trying to make more money in that system and trying to, trying to protect their own savings in the system that the denominator is, is constantly changing. They're centralized, they're creating more and more centralization and they don't realize it. So now you ask the question on Bitcoin, could that risk Bitcoin? Right. So let's just follow the math on what that would look like. So if you're in Bitcoin and if you're in self custody and holding it in self custody, you are outside of that system, in the system bounded by energy. If you run a node, you are part of the vote of Bitcoin, right? You're part of, you're part of. People have to come through your consensus to be able to try to change Bitcoin. What do you think the people centralizing and essentially trusting somebody else with their Bitcoin are doing? Do they run nodes? Are they a part of the network? Are they spending in Bitcoin? Probably not. They're Trying to make more money in the existing system. And what they're doing is introducing counterparty risk to trust someone else.
- [13:12]
B
They're bringing bitcoin into that existing system.
- [13:15]
A
Exactly. And if it looked like that, what would happen is if I wanted to try to centralize bitcoin, that's what I would do. I would say let's make this legal, let's do this. Let's get as much as we can. And don't worry, we're the bank, we're going to protect you. You can trust us. And I would get people to do that. But as long as enough people don't do that and run nodes and more and more people understand this specific thing I'm talking about right now, that has zero risk. Zero.
- [13:46]
B
So there's no risk to this massive holdings of BlackRock, although that's on behalf of their customers or the United States government adding a strategic bitcoin reserve or any of those things.
- [13:57]
A
Zero. Because what will happen is if one day that that system came and said you have to use our bitcoin right on the inflationary system, what do you think the nodes all over the world would do? It would look a lot like bitcoin cash. It would go to zero. Right?
- [14:18]
B
Yeah.
- [14:18]
A
There is no. There is no so. So when you understand that at that depth, or understand quantum risks or anything else, or if you thought about those risks, when you understand you can move your time to the new system and vote with your time to be able to move, to remove the risks and to spend. That's what we do in ego death capital. We're building all the layers on top of this by investing in companies that are creating tons of value for users that are going to get trapped in this other system. And the new rails of the new economy are building in parallel and, and every single person on earth because it's an open, open, decentralized, secure protocol bounded by energy. Every single person on earth that's stuck in a jail cell saying when is the collapse? When is this going to happen? Is there feeding more of their energy to that? The jail cell door is open. They could just walk over to the other side and spend their life in a better system that is in service to them. So I find it crazy that people spend so much time talking about what those people are going to do when they don't have to.
- [15:35]
B
It's interesting because there is this sentiment that if the blackrocks of the world or the governments get enough bitcoin that they could control bitcoin, but that has nothing to do with controlling the network to your point, which is what actually matters.
- [15:46]
A
Yeah. So unless they control all the nodes, which is impossible, and even this podcast, you and I doing this, there's going to be a whole bunch of people that are listening to this podcast that haven't done enough work and they're going to say, oh, that doesn't. No chance, no chance. Because they haven't done enough work. They haven't actually understood that they contribute to whatever system they want. If they're contributing to a system that they believe prices always go up, and the only reason prices always go up is because of monetary printing, then everything they're doing in that system is taking their power away. But if they believe that, it'll be true for them. If you're in bitcoin, if you move your energy into the other system and you see what is actually happening, the energy backed system is repricing the world and you have a choice of where you spend your time.
- [16:39]
B
It's an insane thought in general that maybe most people don't understand that because our money is so poor being money, the money that we have, that you literally have to be an investment professional or higher one just to beat inflation. Right.
- [16:55]
A
And, and you can't because inflation, because, because inflation is incumbent in the system. When you say beat inflation, it's not from zero, it's from the productivity rate of the world which is probably negative 5 and will move to negative 10. In other words, every year in the free market you would get richer even if you did nothing because prices would continue to fall from other entrepreneurs trying to compete, value, compete to provide you more value. It's just such a brain, it's such a brain break the cognitive dissonance that you've always lived and measured from this system and you believe that inflation is natural and you haven't asked the question and you believe economy requires inflation to be productive and you've never asked all of the other questions and what that leads to. That's actually what's so hard. It doesn't say anything about bitcoin. It says nothing about that. It says something about your brain measuring it. And most people's brains right now, even measuring Bitcoin, are actually converting Bitcoin, the energy backed system, to a piece of paper to measure things.
- [18:06]
B
Do you think that Satoshi understood all of this when he, she, they created Bitcoin, or do you think that it just ended up being this, just perfect solution to this problem?
- [18:24]
A
I don't know. When you, when you look at some of the early message Boards. When you look at health and E and talking about what the entire world would be divided by this. So there were, there was definitely some deep thoughts onto this. But when you think about even Satoshi or the invent or the discovery of this and how this, how this works, to be able to provide this you have to actually look way further back. You have to look at the cypherpunks in kind of 92. And if you think about the 92, that mailing list that was 70 people and 92 and all of the mistakes and those people at that time essentially projected the same thing I wrote in my book and I knew this before I did, right? So those, those people realized they were technologists and they realized that technology is going to move faster and faster and faster. And if you're in a control system that is stealing that productivity, you have to remove this money from state because if you don't you're going to be in an Orwellian state controlled system. Those 70 odd people that were originally on the mailing list trying to move cryptography into the public field and the cypherpunk manifesto and all of the these things, there were a ton of different failures along the way, right? So tons of failures. The failures instructed what might succeed. So it was part, the failures actually were critical to Satoshi's genius, right? He added certain things together, proof of work, this difficulty algorithm and a bunch of different things to then create it. People think, oh it's just created out. It was all of these things for 20 years that then it defined just like the free market works in anything, right? Like try, try, try, fail, fail, fail, fail. And then more and more people see what the insight is and then build on top of it. So if you kind of said you have two systems or anything, what ends up happening in a market is as a market gets worse and worse and more co opted or more a monopoly takes most of the market. The free market attacks that, attacks it everywhere. And so it starts off really small with ideas in our head that say this is a terrible future and then it grows. And so take if you just thought about that 70 something people in 92 to where we are now in the free market and how many people are actually know what I know and are building in bitcoin. And I'm not talking about the people that are trading in bitcoin, I'm talking about the people that are committing their time to this network, to expand this network. And that's, that's hundreds of thousands, maybe millions around the world. And that network that that protocol is getting stronger and more and more robust out of that work. And that investment capital, like I said in our fund too, that investment capital is racing into this to build profitable companies that are denominating their balance sheets in Bitcoin by providing value. It's totally logical where the market would go.
- [21:41]
B
I want to talk about the idea of never sell your bitcoin because as you mentioned before, in a true free market and if you opt out of the legacy system into the bitcoin system, it obviously requires spending. You mentioned that specifically. Obviously, if you want bitcoin to be in circulation, if you want to be in money, it requires somebody to sell some sometimes or to use it for some sort of economic purpose. But we kind of also have the cult of never sell. How do those two things kind of square together?
- [22:13]
A
The never sell cult is likely the people that would centralize. Because I spend in it every day. I know it's growing so fast is spending around the world. And I've been to tons of communities all over the world that have completely circular economies that are outside of control of anything else and nobody even knows they exist because they haven't been to these communities. It is. You could simplify the entire thing and you could say if Bitcoin isn't used as a currency, it will fail for sure. Because what does that mean? It means you're in the inflationary system and the inflationary and you're still in there and that inflationary system has to steal more from you forever. Right. And that would centralize bitcoin if it looked like that. But also what we talked about before, the free market always provides more value. So what is as you understand what I just described, and I would venture to say the majority don't. Right. But as you understand, you get to decide and you get to decide whether where you spend your money. You don't have to go to the government to say where can I spend my money? You get to decide peer to peer and nothing can be done to stop it. You don't have to go through the banking rails. You don't have to pay 10% to a tax to be able to do the. You don't have to pay two and a half percent to Visa for the vendor to take. So you have a peer to peer monetary system that's more efficient. It's. And why is it growing like I just described? Why is it being used as money? Is because of that. Now will everybody use it as money? No, there's a lot of people will take Risks and centralize it and centralize. If they're introducing counterparty risk by centralizing, trusting somebody else with their bitcoin, they're paying a fee to introduce risk.
- [24:11]
B
That's right. You're literally. I know, I've learned that the hard way and many people, of course. Yeah, but you learn the lesson. I guess the question is though, you obviously you have that side of it and then just going back to the original question is if everybody's hoarding it, even if it's in self custody, you still are not really existing in a free market that's decentralized and so I mean you have to spend it. I've been kind of taking abuse for sharing the never sell your bitcoin is flawed idea of late. I've thought deeply about it, as you have about many topics and I just don't see a world where it's good for everyone if the wealthy simply hoard it and never use it. And by the way, then it dies as you said.
- [24:58]
A
So. So it would look, if you just carried the math on that forward, it would look like imperialism 3.0.
- [25:04]
B
That's exactly right. Never sell your Bitcoin is a luxury for the extremely wealthy.
- [25:10]
A
Yeah, it would be. And that's what it would, that would look like which you know, if it looked like that, it would centralize and break. It wouldn't work. Right. And everyone's welcome to do whatever they want but, but you can so easily today spend and replace.
- [25:26]
B
Well, if you're also saying, listen, if you're spending in bitcoin but also receiving bitcoin for services and goods, it's a circular economy. That's the point.
- [25:34]
A
And, and again what does that do is so. People are so worried. When I said the jail door, they're yelling at the government. The government's getting bigger. I'm so worried. They're in that control system yelling at the jailer and saying it's their fault. I'm so scared. But the door is open. They could just go, they could just move their time and what do they do? By they moving their time into the circular economy, they reduce the ability of that impact. They remove the thing they're most worried about. They don't have to participate in the rigged game. That's the craziest thing. Everybody thinks it's somebody else and it's them. Their time in the rigged game, their time trading, trying all of the nonsense that they're doing trying to get enough money in the rigged game, measured in the, in the rigged currency is contributing to the thing they were most fear. And they don't have to, because just move their time, move their energy into the other system, and it gets. And their life gets easier and easier and easier. And it doesn't matter what the rigged.
- [26:39]
B
Game does, because you've opted out entirely. You're in Canada. I'm in the United States. You say that you spend bitcoin every day. I also have become a fan, although it's taken some discipline to actually use it and not hoard it, like Scrooge McDuck with the gold Vault. But listen, you do understand that when the loudest voices scream, never sell your bitcoin, and I'm not begrudging that attitude from them, it becomes almost dogmatic. You feel an actual deep level of guilt at a certain point for spending or using or daring to sell your bitcoin because you've violated the number one dogmatic axiom of the community. Right. But let's say that you've crossed that chasm and you understand that you need to actually utilize your bitcoin for it to exist and to be successful. Can you live your entire life now in bitcoin in a country like Canada or the United States? Are there ways without. I don't think so. Because, like, even when I've looked at the most creative ways to, like, pay your mortgage or something in bitcoin, it's really difficult and clunky.
- [27:43]
A
Yeah. So I know a very small number of people in Canada that do. And by doing so, they're actually creating more value because more and more, because there's such leaders there. And what is it again? What is the free market value as you're doing this? You're creating all sorts of, wait, how are you doing that? How are you doing that? And so many people that don't know they're stuck over here that how are you doing it Provides value. So. So I'm not that far yet, because it's. It's. But I know people that are completely, completely outside of the system, and I'm trying more.
- [28:18]
B
They're using, like, you know, it's like they're buying gift cards and debit cards. It's very clunky, and it almost touches on being a part of the other system just to say you kind of did it because you're still ending up in some way on a rail that is tied to the other system.
- [28:34]
A
So here's the thing. I remember specifically in the late 90s, specifically when people tried to move all of their purchases to Amazon, it looked exactly the same. It Looked exactly the same. I remember certain friends that said, I'm going to try this because this is where the world's going. I'm just going to be early. And I remember a friend who built a house on Amazon and it was the late 90s or early, early 2000s. And try to find everything you need for, for a house on Amazon at that time. It was clunky what happened. And, and, and so, so you can see most people, this is just, you're early in a protocol.
- [29:19]
B
Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, just a matter of being early. That makes perfect sense now between a YouTube video and like probably one bulk order on Amazon, you could have a house delivered.
- [29:28]
A
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And now, yeah, now it looks totally different.
- [29:33]
B
Interestingly, I think a lot of people have pointed out the idea that bitcoin obviously is the killer app. It's money. But in the rest of crypto, which I know is not something you deeply explore, the only killer app has been stablecoins, which I think ironically, as bitcoiners or blockchain enthusiasts, is just faster, cheaper dollars. Right?
- [29:58]
A
What is a stablecoin? What is a stable coin? It's a guaranteed loss coin against bitcoin. Where does it get its stability? It gets its stability by pegging to the US dollar, which loses value to bitcoin. Right? So it's a guaranteed loss coin. That would be a really great game if you could create something to convince people you have a stable coin. Tell it, say it, what it actually is. It's a guaranteed loss coin.
- [30:30]
B
But let's say for now, if you're trying to exist only in blockchain based technologies, okay, there's a lot of people who say bitcoin is for saving and fiat is for spending. Right. And I think that, that maybe is a reasonable place when you're not in a world yet where you can exist entirely in bitcoin. Do stablecoins solve a problem there or do you see them as a bigger risk moving forward than the benefits they provide?
- [30:55]
A
So I understand why people, I understand why the cognitive dissonance what we're talking about is hard to understand. For around the world. Around the world, the US dollar is the strongest currency. So people will take their currency and say, no, I need a US Dollar. But if you measure instead of the US dollar and strongest currency, if you measure the system from Bitcoin, you realize US dollar isn't stable at all either. It's an inflationary currency, it's a fiat currency. So relative stability compared to all the other broken currencies, it looks Great. It's the best dirty shirt in the laundry. But relative bitcoin is terrible. What would that lead to? It would lead to a whole bunch of people believing it's safe. Just like if you're not in bitcoin. If you're not in bitcoin and you the last 14 years you have a 45% IRR against the existing system if you just hold bitcoin. But if you're not in bitcoin and you have an IRR on your house of 6%, you believe you're doing relatively great compared to the people who don't. Because they don't have the money in real estate, they have the money in cash and they're losing that value per year. And your relative value, you think you're doing great, but when you measure it against bitcoin you're losing 39% a year. So that's what's happening. So people believe, and there's a belief that, and for them it'll be true. They'll save in a stablecoin. It'll be better than their existing currency. Yeah, it's all relative and it'll lose a ton of value to bitcoin. All of these things are determined because we are the market and our beliefs inform the market. This energy backed system doesn't care about your beliefs. You should, but it doesn't care. It doesn't care whether you believe it's great, it doesn't care whether you want it or not. It's imposing the first global free market that has ever existed. It's imposing. It doesn't care.
- [33:06]
B
Truly. You presented this thesis years ago. As you said, there's others who had presented it before. But I think you brought it all together and certainly in the mind of bitcoiners have been pushing it. People are listening. Right? I know you mentioned that you spent some time in El Salvador, but not just in El Salvador, experiencing the bitcoin economy. But you sat down with the president and basically advised him and had a conversation on what the world could look like moving forward. What's it like to now be invited into the room with world leaders who maybe are not fully understanding, but certainly on the path to understanding your thesis. It's really happening.
- [33:46]
A
Yeah. And I want to be careful about advising. I went specifically because I wanted to see how deep he understood this and the conflict that we just talked about, the imperialism 3.0, what does that look like? Did he truly understand what bitcoin brought? And it's the first global free market and El Salvador is early in that and that meant that they're going to experience if they continued that an extraordinary wealth generation, ideas formation, everything else. That's what I wanted to see because it's early in this program. So I wouldn't say advising. He asked me to come, I went to spend and we spent two and a half hours together and I was blown away. I was blown away.
- [34:36]
B
So he really gets it, he really.
- [34:38]
A
Gets it like blown away with we need to get more citizens into self custody, we need to get more spending on bitcoin. He really gets it. And, and, and he gets it to the degree that now maybe people could say when you're reading the media and you're looking at both sides of it's locking up prisoners on or the other side you have these, these hero worshipers or vil you and people are on one side or the other and they can't even get out of what is the first principle here? What does this look like? That's why I went, I wanted to see does he really understand this? Because it's hard to understand. And if you've never lived in a system like this, you don't have a framework for understanding that system. He's super, super impressive leader. I can't say I'm one side or any other media nonsense, but he's a super impressive leader and I understand why he has a 95% approval rating.
- [35:42]
B
So he understands the problem obviously and I think he understands the solution. In your conversations or even just if you were advising, let's say how can a entire country move off this system that they're so deeply ingrained in. Because it's one thing for an individual to become sovereign to self custody their bitcoin, to self spend it, but for an entire nation to eventually cut the umbilical cord and make that move seems nearly impossible. Especially when they're still beholden to IMF loans and the World bank and all of the same things that we've seen in countries around the world.
- [36:18]
A
Well look at what's happening. They're buying a bitcoin a day. Look at the value of their bitcoin holdings going up and pretty soon they won't have any debt. So it's the same principle that any single person would you Scott and this is why this is so hard to. There's levels and levels and levels of understanding this. You went through all of the trading and all of the nonsense and all of the loaning your bitcoin and you got burnt. You were early in this process and those learnings we're friends, we talked about this five years ago, that this would happen.
- [36:54]
B
But it happened. Yeah, you told me before it happened that it would happen. Some lessons, it's like your parents, you gotta learn yourself.
- [37:02]
A
And that's what I meant. Everybody's going through this. Their cognitive dissonance of trying to understand this new system that is imposing different rules. And you can see that, what that means, but individually. So what are you doing now? As you've understood this, first you start. You start saving more. First you go through this path of all trading and trading training. You end up realizing you only cheated yourself.
- [37:27]
B
Yep. You can't say nothing of time and time and effort. And bitcoin, by the way, it's not just the bitcoin that you lost or that you would have made more money. You literally wasted hours and hours of your life.
- [37:39]
A
There's one rule in bitcoin that seems to be one rule. Do not cheat. Because every single person who's tried to cheat bitcoin, including Vitalik, including all of the people, if they just held bitcoin, they would have done better. Right? All of the nonsense. If Coinbase held bitcoin instead of traded all of their. They have more Bitcoin than MicroStrategy. There's one rule in bitcoin, don't cheat Bitcoin. A cooperative competitive protocol gets better by just being part of it. And so what would that look like to you? What did it look like to you? Same thing. If you're in this and doing the right thing in bitcoin, you get. Your life gets better and better and better. And all the time frees up and all of the nonsense that it used to look like. Right. And then you want to start spending in it and your life gets even better and you start to see what life would look like in the different system takes a long time because your brain is actually changing from what you've always believed to the new system. But it is true. What would it look like for a corporation holding bitcoin? Exactly the same. Right. What would it look like for a country holding bitcoin exactly the same? It would look like that for every single person on this competitive cooperative product protocol, it would look like that. No matter where you were in this, as the country did that, and they generated more wealth for their citizens because their wealth couldn't be confiscated.
- [39:09]
B
The natural progression will be for them to adopt the system that's working.
- [39:12]
A
Citizens would prosper. Yeah, exactly. They said this business would prosper. And just because we're early on, this doesn't mean it's not happening. It's growing exponentially and all of the value creation is on top of it. I can't believe people can't see it.
- [39:30]
B
You mentioned companies which we haven't really dug into too deeply. So I am a huge fan of companies buying Bitcoin to replace the cash in their treasury. I have my concerns about more and more companies taking on different versions of financial engineering to buy bitcoin. I think it works maybe with one, two or three of them. But I'm concerned that if we get to 10, 20 or 30, that could actually be the next bubble.
- [40:02]
A
You can expect the next bubble. Now it might be at a way higher number.
- [40:05]
B
Yeah, I'm not saying today if your.
- [40:09]
A
Entire business strategy is, is financial engineering to collect more Bitcoin, then what value does that provide in the free market? Right. What goods? Like what is your long term business to be able to provide value? Like long term business provide value. And they, they make money by providing value to somebody else until, and they, and it's competitive force other people then try to beat that business. So if it's just financial engineering that is a centralized, that centralization which, which drives more risk and, and at some point the same thing that works on a way up, unwinds on the way down. And those same people that are hold, holding it will be selling it into a market that's destroying their balance sheet into. And so you get these. Now these numbers might blow people away from where we are today because we haven't even started the bubble yet. Right. We're not close to that. And then, and then in that world there will be some people that really understand this and they'll do extraordinarily well and there will be, there will be a whole bunch of latecomers that get destroyed.
- [41:21]
B
That's, that's exactly my point. So I've been, once again, I'm pretty vocal about this. And so I've taken some criticism from people who are doing it now or who are close to those who are doing it now or deeply believe in it. And I make it pretty clear. I think the people, the entities who are doing it now have edge, at least some. But it's going to be the 50th and 60th and 70th ones who at the very top of a bubble decide that this is their strategy and basically are operating a poorly constructed hedge fund that they ran as a bitcoin treasury company. And so listen, I'm not saying that that's going to be the end of Bitcoin. Or it's going to be the thing that creates the top. My bigger concern is that if Bitcoin draws down 40% at some point, which it generally always does, that becomes 60 or 70% when they puke at the bottom and cause the liquidation cascade because at the end of the day, they're adding leverage to a system that doesn't need it.
- [42:17]
A
Yeah. The same thing happened in mining when you said centralization of mining before. That doesn't happen because free market, because they just lose. It's really costly to be a miner and all of the new equipment favors the new entrant and so does a lower energy cost all around the world. So you can't centralize mining. It's impossible. Right. So it's ridiculous to even think so. But, but as those, as that has happened before and as those people got offside in the, in bubbles before they were puking. I'm on the board of Core Scientific. It went bankrupt. Right. I went on the board after, after the bankruptcy. Yeah. I mean, it's an incredible, incredible company that's now pivoted to HPC out of these assets. Incredible company. But it went bankrupt for the very same reason you're talking about. And just like people went bankrupt in 2006 because they thought real estate never goes down.
- [43:17]
B
Yep. And I mean, those companies, you know, they top ticked the equipment at the top, you know, at the worst possible time, at the worst possible price. I mean, you're buying $20,000 miners that were worth $2,000 18 months later.
- [43:30]
A
Yeah, exactly.
- [43:32]
B
And it takes that long to get them online. So getting them online when they're already.
- [43:35]
A
Worthless and your entire balance sheet is bitcoin and it's drawn down 80% and you're part of the drawdown because you're having to sell it to be able to pay for the miners that you overpaid for. Right. So this is just fear and greed in markets always does this. But you don't have to. You can tune out of the whole nonsense. You can play a different game. We know that this is going to happen. We know that it always happens. And this has always driven bubbles about the irrational exuberance. We know that all of these things are going to happen. We're very, very early in this next cycle, but it's going to happen too. And then as it does everybody, it's different this time. It won't be different this time.
- [44:18]
B
Yeah. The bitcoin treasury companies concern me and the fact that miners are becoming bitcoin treasury companies to some degree or Using the same debt structures and convertible notes to try to get more bitcoin. It also concerns me. I had a long talk actually this morning on Twitter Spaces with Gary Cardone, Marshall Long, who you probably know, and Ryan Condren, bunch of, you know, not Gary as a miner, but he's done, done a lot of work on it. But the others as, as long term miners, I didn't actually realize how bad of a business bitcoin mining was until they were really breaking it down in detail. When you add in all of the expense, what the cost of mine really is right now, it's a horrible business. They're all wildly underwater and now taking on more risk. So to your point, Bitcoin doesn't care. We saw what happened when China went offline, right? Temporary 50% dip in hash rate which is immediately consumed elsewhere. But these companies, also some of the publicly traded miners could become problematic for the market temporarily before that is replaced.
- [45:21]
A
Yeah, and probably in this cycle they'll look like heroes because they were holding a lot. And as more and more people buy nation states try to buy companies, buy everything else, they'll look like heroes. It'll be sometime in the next cycle likely that the hero turns to zero.
- [45:42]
B
Well, that's what happened with core scientific. They were heroes in the last cycle they bought, but the decisions they made at the top of the bull market were the killers for the beginning of.
- [45:52]
A
The next sort of cycle, which is completely normal. And what ends up happening in this, in these cycles is all the strong, the strong hands that know this. All of the weekends, they get flushed out every time, constantly, every time, in every market, in every, in every market. And, and the, and, and the people that have tuned out all of the noise and just realize what is, what's the first principle here? What does this look like over, over time, as they spend more time, they can completely remove themselves from almost the day trading mentality of what this looks like.
- [46:29]
B
It's so interesting looking at how these cycles have repeated over and over again. Do you think we get to a point, and I'm not saying with bitcoin price necessarily, it's going to always have drawdowns because it's denominated in this other system, obviously. But do you think we get to a point where those become extremely shallow and we just march onward as people adopt it and price just sort of steadily goes up without the huge swings up and down?
- [46:56]
A
I don't think so, not for a long time. The people that are listening to your podcast, they would be a tiny, tiny Fraction of the overall number of people in the world that understand this and the people that really understand Bitcoin, like really depth. If you said there's kind of. If you said this funnel of 8 billion people in the world and this new system is imposing this discipline and every single person in the world has to go through the same lessons you went through to understand this and then tries to. They're measuring this protocol from the other system. Then. Then that's going to be a complex, chaotic change to the, to the new system. Because. Because it's. The change isn't the system. The change is usually right. The change is where we put our energy. The change is actually that. And we don't know and most people don't know what this looks like. And going through that path of trying to trade this, trying to trade it for fiat currency, believing there's a hero in some sort of government that's going to save you. All of these things are part of the journey to understand you can save yourself. You don't have to worry about any of it. But because that change is within us, it would appear if you looked at that how few. The number of people in Bitcoin that understand. What I understand is a huge number, like way more than 70 people. And they're early going. You could add yourself as one of them right now. How deep you are on that and more and more voices there. But it will seem like that's a small number of people in the amount of people and the amount of noise that's just starting to understand this. It would seem. It would seem like, oh, there's a risk of centralization because all of those other people are talking about it every day there isn't it just. It would appear that way as this chaotic system had to like, it's a phase change. It's a phase take a long time. It's going to take a long time. It's going to be. It's going to be chaotic. Different countries are going to choose different tactics. There's going to. The country is trying to stop this, though you should get out as fast as you can.
- [49:11]
B
Do you view the United States as a country that's trying to stop this now, or do you view the United States as a country that's on the right path?
- [49:18]
A
I think the United States is because of the Constitution, because of the Declaration of Independence, because of what the.
- [49:24]
B
The.
- [49:25]
A
The. Because of the way the states are formed. I think thank goodness for the United States and bringing in allowing freedom and individual rights and freedoms. Because without that without the way that that was constructed, the world would look in a worse spot because of the way the people in the US think on this and will fight against this to be able to protect their individual rights and freedoms. I think that that is so natural for Bitcoin and it provides a real strong addition.
- [50:00]
B
Such an interesting answer because my question was more specific, I guess, to regime change and the things that have happened over the last few years. But your answer makes a lot more sense, which is that this is one of the few places where that freedom is so deeply ingrained that even if people don't get it yet, the seeds are planted.
- [50:19]
A
That's it. And how does change happen? Change always happens from the outside. And the change from the outside looks crazy to people in the center, into the middle. When people start saying trust the science, you know, you've so lost the plot because science is. Don't trust the science. Science is the constant pushing the boundary to kind of what's, what's new, what, how do we challenge this? So when you, when you hear these things that, that are around all over media that keep on saying the same thing, like the, That's a reason to put your flag up and say, huh, I'm going to look elsewhere.
- [51:05]
B
But just verify. Anytime someone's saying, hey, trust me, bro, best signal that maybe you can't trust that person.
- [51:13]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [51:14]
B
Or whether they even know it or not to be, to be fair. But I think, yeah, that's really true. So obviously you have ego death. We've talked about it a bit. But you made a very conscious decision years ago that not only were you going to denominate your life in bitcoin, opt out, participate in that system strictly as a bitcoiner, but you want it to be deeply invested and on the forefront of what's being built around that economy. Last time we had a conversation, actually, I wish it had been on camera because you and I spent 10 or 15 minutes afterwards with you showing me Fediment. We are deep in the app. Whoa. My camera just did something strange with my hands. I think the app just got us and it was just fascinating. Right. What could be done. And even me, who's on pretty much on top of the trends and understands I wasn't quite aware of just how deep what's being built goes. There's a long winded way of saying, since you're on the edge here of what's being built, what's most exciting to you right now.
- [52:12]
A
Yeah. So some, some of what people believe versus what's actually happening. So people, there's a so broad belief, maybe not in crypto or Bitcoin, but that this can't be used as payment mechanism or there's no privacy or anything else. And it's already been solved and it's scaling around the world. And so it is a payment mechanism that is peer to peer all over the world through, through lightning. Lightning is the common language. So that would be layer two, you have Noster, which is a completely decentralized. It's not just a social media platform, but it's, it's something that you can't be shut off. Your voice cannot be shut off. No, no client on top of that can take your followers and shut you down. I to me that people aren't on it and they're on YouTube and they're on Twitter and they're on these things that they know for sure that the algorithm can change and take them out tomorrow. And they're spending all their time on this. It boggles my mind that they're wasting their time and energy building audiences for somebody else's platform thinking they're going to get paid when this other system is exploding. It's still early, but it's exploding and you cannot be shut off. So you have these layers of decentralization. At the protocol layer, if you just said Bitcoin at the base layer, lightning, which enables things like Nostr, which communication layer, which Fediment, which is another layer that adds complete privacy. It actually may be the, the only thing because signal is a centralized server on, on top of Federman, you have total privacy of communication, complete privacy of communications and complete privacy of money. And these are already built and they're growing really fast on top of, on top of Bitcoin. So you have a protocol stack that looks like the Internet grounded in energy base money that can't be cheated. That's where all of the excitement is. And why would the excitement be there? Because it's solving the problems from our centralized system that nobody knows the problems are originating from. We're investing in companies that are turning profitable pretty quickly. But when I say profitable, profitable in Bitcoin. So they're adding Bitcoin to their balance sheet each month. They're growing extraordinarily fast by providing this type of value. And I can't believe people can't see it. I can't believe you would spend money, be a crypto investor on tokens when there's so much value creation, long term value creation on this protocol.
- [54:59]
B
I found it so interesting of late that when Bitcoin goes up. I can just anecdotally feel anger disillusionment in my Twitter feed. And I've come to realize how few people who are in crypto are exposed to bitcoin now. Because it used to be that when I got in even 2016, I was late to whatever degree. But even if you wanted to trade, your trades were denominated in bitcoin. So you were looking at your bitcoin stack as the benchmark of whether you were successful or not. Once stablecoins came in, that ceased to exist. But I guess it's just taken me this long to realize that most of those people are really just trading memes or they were here for NFTs or they're deeply in some other ecosystem and don't even have exposure. Which is why I've always said they're two different asset classes and I'll die on that hill.
- [55:49]
A
But that really it's more than an asset class. It's a protocol that has just shifted everything. It's repricing. It's not an asset within the existing system, it's outside. That's repricing the entire existing system. Everything in the world will be repriced by Bitcoin as long as it stays decentralized and secure. So when you say an asset, the natural thing is to. Because an asset you would price from within the system.
- [56:17]
B
Right?
- [56:18]
A
This is not an asset, it's a protocol.
- [56:20]
B
I think they are, I think the rest of crypto is.
- [56:23]
A
Yeah, the rest of crypto. And I don't see any value in the rest of crypto because all of the things building protocols come in layers. Like the Internet is the last protocol everybody knows and they come in layers and they add more functionality in layers. That's what's happening in Bitcoin. All of this additional functionality that it offers now. Unlimited payments, unlimited privacy, unlimited communications. They're coming in layers, just like the layers came in the Internet. So what could you possibly put in it? Why would you use a centralized coin on anything? It's not.
- [56:59]
B
I will say that at least some of them provided a good test net for the ideas that are coming to Bitcoin.
- [57:04]
A
Yeah, for sure. Like that's the. And, and I agree with, like, so if you said, if you said 10 years ago or five years ago and you said if Bitcoin didn't have privacy, then the governments at some point would try to co opt it. Right. Or go after the people that were. And that would be a fair thing. And so I could understand the idea of you need privacy. It was the implementation of privacy in some other coin that couldn't have decentralization and security. It was the problem. Privacy has to come on another layer on top of Bitcoin for it to be a protocol. So that's what's happening.
- [57:41]
B
I just want to ask you. People are so obsessed when we talk about the cycles and pricing. They're so obsessed with what price will Bitcoin get to. Those are the biggest headlines that we have. And I know it takes a long time to reprice the entire world, but as you look at these cycles with one system going in one direction and another going backwards, obviously is inflating its way out of existence. How high can Bitcoin really go? Or is it literally no ceiling? Or is that literally a flawed way of even thinking about it?
- [58:14]
A
At this point, I'm going to first give you an anecdote from a conversation I had this weekend. One of the early pioneers, IBM research, building the Internet might be one of the wealthiest hedge funds that ever, ever existed. Because the understanding AI and everything that is happening. We were together this, this weekend and he and his daughter, his daughter said, well, we're late. And, and he, and he, he said if what Jeff is describing, you're never late. This is literally everything. And so now let's ask your specific question or go to your specific question. And I want to be really careful here because I don't measure in the other system, but if you instead measured purchasing power, if the total assets in the world today are 900 trillion and they have this massive debt that is unresolved and every asset is tethered to that debt and that debt has to grow exponentially and those assets compared to the debt will look like they're going up, but it's really the dollar's going down. So everything in that system, but that system, if you add in derivatives and derivative versus exposure and, and unfunded liabilities, that system has about $600 trillion of debt to $900 trillion of asset value. I didn't say the revenue generated from the assets. So think about that for a moment and see. Think about how insolvent that is. Every single thing you're doing from within that system is tethered to the same system and not just globally same system. So you know that system is unresolved, an unresolved pile of everything. It means every single asset that you believe is worth this is only worth that if the debt is solvent, right? Otherwise it collapses completely to zero. And that's not going to happen. Because you won't let it collapse. If it starts to collapse, you'll vote for tons of printing of money, which will debase it, which will debase further everything in that system. Is that so? If you divide, and I'm just doing a proxy, because we spend like we can because of our assets too. But if you divide 900 trillion by 21 million, you get about 43 million per coin. That's the purchasing power today of bitcoin. As long as it stays decentralized and secure, it will reprice that entire thing. As long as it stays decentralized and secure, you can spend as much time that you should spend time. How do I make sure that it stays decentralized and secure? But that is the purchasing power today, in today's dollars of that. But it's way more than that. Because what does the free market do? Free market today? Artificial intelligence, as it moves to robots. As more people contribute to a free market, prices fall faster. So relative to the $43 million in today's purchasing power, it turns into infinite purchasing power.
- [61:40]
B
43 million.
- [61:43]
A
But again, please don't put that in the title because what people do is it just turns into clickbait. I'm talking purchasing power. And that purchasing power of $43 million today for one Bitcoin turns into infinite purchasing power. The only caveat is does it stay decentralized and secure? So all of your work should be does it say decentralized?
- [62:05]
B
Run a node. Run a node. Self custody. People need to start participating. That's the moral of the story.
- [62:10]
A
Exactly. Learn how you by your actions, you ensure that it stays decentralized and secure and nobody can stop you from your actions.
- [62:19]
B
Such a fascinating conversation as usual. I wish we had another two, three, five hours.
- [62:24]
A
We will, in time, my friend, with time.
- [62:26]
B
Well, we're operating on a low time preference, so eventually we'll get there. Jeff, thank you so much for your perspective as always. I'm glad that we still have you on the front lines and that the Bukele's of the world are giving you a call to have a conversation. Because I still think that we're at sub 1% of 1% of people truly understanding what you're saying. Awesome.
- [62:51]
A
Awesome.
- [62:51]
B
We had to give that stare at the camera so they could kind of.
- [62:54]
A
Stare perfect at the end. That's dope.
- [63:10]
B
That's dope.