This Is the Biggest Scam in Human History — And It’s Happening Right Now | Robert Breedlove

Summary

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Impact Theory Podcast with Tom Bilyeu

Episode: “This Is the Biggest Scam in Human History—And It’s Happening Right Now”

Guest: Robert Breedlove | Aired: December 3, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this compelling episode, Tom Bilyeu welcomes philosopher and Bitcoin thought leader Robert Breedlove for an unfiltered, high-impact discussion on the nature of money, the failings of fiat currency, the revolutionary promise of Bitcoin, and what’s at stake as global economic systems face mounting instability. The conversation covers core economic principles, the philosophical and societal shifts driven by digital assets, and wrestling with what happens to meaning in a post-scarcity world. The tone is urgent, analytical, sometimes confrontational, but always rooted in a quest for deeper understanding.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Properties of Money: Gold vs. Bitcoin

[01:00 – 08:07]

• Tom and Robert dissect why gold’s role as a “risk-off” asset remains unique and why Bitcoin is perceived as fundamentally different—primarily because of its newness and volatility.
• Breedlove’s “Five Properties of Money”:
  • Divisibility
  • Durability
  • Recognizability
  • Portability
  • Scarcity
• Bitcoin is described as the perfection of all five properties:
  • “Bitcoin is basically perfected…divisibility, durability, portability, recognizability, scarcity…a fixed supply asset so that your purchasing power will not be debased at all. Not 2%, not 5%—nothing. Zero.” (Guest, 06:52)
• While people now treat Bitcoin as a speculative “risk-on” asset, its fundamentals, Breedlove insists, make it “the safest, most perfect form of private property available to the human race.” (Guest, 07:45)

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2. Economic Collapse, Fiat Currency, and Government Overreach

[08:07 – 13:12]

• Tom warns of the U.S. approaching a debt-to-GDP “point of no return,” historically leading to internal strife or even revolution.

• Both discuss how the ability to print money “out of thin air”—fiat currency—allows governments to deficit spend and fund wars without explicit taxpayer input, hiding true costs from citizens.

  • “Fiat currency is an oxymoron…You think [a dollar] is an asset, but in fact there’s a liability attached to it.” (Guest, 09:50)
  • “You could stuff all the dollars under your mattress you want. That doesn't stop the Fed from counterfeiting it by the trillion and stealing your purchasing power.” (Guest, 10:25)

• The “Scam” Framed Directly:

  • “The entire thing is a fucking scam. And I’m sorry to put it that way…” (Guest, 10:57)

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3. Deficit Spending, Taxation & The Violence of Statism

[11:09 – 15:15]

• Tom and Robert agree on two core lessons: “Money printing: bad,” and “If [your] government is deficit spending, they are stealing from you.”
• Robert adds, “Taxation is theft. The whole thing—stealing from you, the inflation steals from you, the deficit spending steals from you and the taxation steals from you.” (Guest, 12:13)
• Breedlove argues that the only true solution is abolishing “legalized theft” and constructing systems based on strong private property rights and nonviolence—where Bitcoin, by its properties, plays a keystone role.
  • “It can’t be printed as money, so that defunds the war machine.” (Guest, 13:02)

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4. Bitcoin as a Deterrent to War and Violence

[13:12 – 16:16]

• By eliminating the “money printer,” Bitcoin would eliminate governments’ abilities to wage large-scale war without explicit taxation—making wars visible, directly billed to taxpayers and therefore less likely.
• Bitcoin’s property as “hard to steal” fundamentally reduces the incentives for conquest and violence.
  • “Once [conquering]… if that were magically on a bitcoin standard…and Poland had their bitcoin in a multi key…Germany would have conquered this country and then got no payoff. So, the incentives to violence and coercion, even at scale, go down by virtue of the existence of bitcoin.” (Guest, 14:29)

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5. Bitcoin, Government Regulation & the Limits of State Power

[16:50 – 17:32]

• Tom asks about changing government policies towards crypto. Robert is dismissive of regulatory threats, saying Bitcoin is “ungovernable” at the protocol level:

  • “I, as a bitcoiner, do not give a flying [expletive] about what regulations you’re passing or not passing…You can also ban gravity, but gravity’s not going anywhere. Okay? So, there are things that government cannot do anything about, and bitcoin is one of them.” (Guest, 17:05)

• Tom, while supportive of Bitcoin, cautions against what he sees as an “unrealistic detachment” from political reality: “Violence is the ultimate trump card…I think this is maybe the crusade I’m on—I need people to understand the nature of the government itself.” (Host, 17:32)

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6. Socialism, Tyranny & the Importance of Culture

[17:32 – 23:30]

• Tom expresses grave concern about the rising appeal of socialism, government overreach, and the dangers of centralized “good intentions.” He emphasizes the inevitability of tyranny when too much trust is put in any authority.
  • “Humans that trust themselves too much become a murderous menace to the world.” (Host, 20:37)
• He argues for the vital importance of cultural stories that valorize discipline, saving, and awareness of the “nature of government.”
• Tom describes his personal “Bitcoin rabbit hole awakening”—realizing that many people will never understand complex economic realities, making universal Bitcoin adoption unlikely—“the vast majority of people just are never going to understand it.” (Host, 22:38)

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7. Bitcoin’s Educational Hurdle & Humanity’s Evolutionary Capacity

[23:30 – 29:34]

• Robert frames Bitcoin’s rise as akin to the “invention of the printing press under the reign of the medieval church,” predicting that the nation-state system will be destabilized by such technology.
• Advocates for experimentation—many small, competing “city-states” rather than giant, brittle nation-states.
• Tom insists: Most people own no assets, including gold or Bitcoin—so if the government is abusive, “it’s game over.”
  • “We are in a situation where if the government is abusing you, it’s game over.” (Host, 28:07)
• Breedlove counters with optimism about humanity’s capacity to learn and adapt, citing historical progress.
  • “We’ve developed a lot of things we didn’t have a thousand, five thousand, ten thousand years ago. So I think our capacity to evolve makes me very optimistic about the more distant future.” (Guest, 29:34)

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8. AI, Post-Economics, and the Search for Meaning

[30:48 – 40:03]

• Tom and Robert explore whether artificial intelligence and extreme abundance will make traditional economic systems obsolete, and if so, what becomes of human meaning and purpose.

• Robert believes “space and time will always be scarce,” making economics perpetual.

  • “No matter how much is available…all people will always—what is it—‘a man’s reach always exceeds his grasp.’ We always want more.” (Guest, 31:17)

• Tom suggests four future paths for humanity—including escape to Mars, rejection of technology (New Amish), hedonism (Brave New World), or transcending into virtual worlds (“Neo in the Matrix”).

• Robert is largely optimistic about increasing freedom and opportunity, but acknowledges issues like the “meaning crisis.”

  • “Your entire global economy runs on a scam. How about we just stop that first? Then we can start dealing with the meaning crisis…” (Guest, 39:02)

• Robert suggests looking at the broad sweep of human history for reassurance:

  • “Looking at the progression humanity has made across history, I think, gives me a lot of optimism about our future trajectory.” (Guest, 39:55)

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Notable Quotes

• Robert Breedlove:

  • “Bitcoin is the safest, most perfect form of private property available to the human race.” [07:45]
  • “Fiat currency is an oxymoron…You could stuff all the dollars under your mattress you want. That doesn't stop the Fed from counterfeiting it by the trillion and stealing your purchasing power.” [09:50, 10:25]
  • “Taxation is theft. The whole thing—stealing from you…we need to evolve past the idea of legalized theft as a necessary ingredient of social coherence.” [12:13]
  • “It can’t be printed as money, so that defunds the war machine. It’s also really hard to steal as money.” [13:02]
  • “You can also ban gravity, but gravity’s not going anywhere. There are things governments cannot do anything about, and bitcoin is one of them.” [17:05]
  • “We need more experimentation. I’d like to see us move toward a world with 20,000 free city states…” [24:21]
  • “When the incentives for violence go down, I think people become less violent.” [30:48]
  • “I am not a pessimist about innovation. I think it is what makes us human…the fact that we create things that then, again, reciprocally enhance us.” [39:03]

• Tom Bilyeu:

  • “Humans that trust themselves too much become a murderous menace to the world.” [20:37]
  • “If the government is abusing you, it’s game over…but Bitcoin does not solve the problem I’m trying to solve, which is how do we make sure that the average person is not being just absolutely, economically raped?” [28:07, 29:16]
  • “We are finally living in an age of rapid information…we can finally see things for what they are.” [18:10]
  • “The vast majority of people just are never going to understand [Bitcoin].” [22:38]

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Key Timestamps

• [01:00 – 08:07] — Comparing gold and Bitcoin, defining the “affordances” of money.
• [08:07 – 13:12] — America’s debt spiral, the illusion of fiat wealth, and the inevitability of crisis.
• [11:13 – 16:16] — Taxation, deficit spending, and Bitcoin’s effect on removing incentives for war.
• [16:50 – 17:32] — On state regulation and the resilience of “ungovernable” Bitcoin.
• [17:32 – 23:30] — Socialism, tyranny, and the centrality of culture and education.
• [23:30 – 29:34] — The printing press analogy; society’s learning curve and economic adaptation.
• [30:48 – 40:03] — The implications of AI and post-scarcity; the coming search for meaning.

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Memorable Moments

• Printing Press Analogy: Breedlove likens Bitcoin’s disruption of the nation-state to the printing press’s disruption of the medieval church, hinting at decades of social upheaval.
• "Taxation is Theft": Breedlove openly brands taxation, deficit spending, and inflation as different forms of theft, calling for an evolutionary leap past coercive government.
• AI and Post-Economics: Tom and Breedlove grapple with the looming existential question: if automation and AI do everything, what gives humans meaning?
• Bitcoin’s Limits: Tom pushes hard on the idea that, for the uneducated majority, Bitcoin is not the answer, challenging Breedlove’s optimism about mass adoption.

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Closing

The episode concludes with practical information on where to follow Robert Breedlove, and Tom urges listeners to stay informed and vigilant. The conversation is equal parts alarm bell and rallying cry for economic sovereignty, personal responsibility, and a future where meaning is something to be constructed, not inherited.

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Transcript

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[Host]

Welcome back to part two of this incredible conversation. Without further ado, here we go. There's a reason very open to what that is, but there's a reason that gold functions the way that it does, which is in times of inflation, people are going to flee to gold. In times of government uncertainty whether they'll pay back their debts, people are going to flee to gold. They don't expect a big return, they just expect safety. That's right, Bitcoin does not function like that yet. Maybe it will one day or maybe it's something that people think of in a totally different way and I'm just like, I have a take. I think I know why it is, but I could be wrong. And so I'm just curious what you think the answer is. So far it sounds like you're saying it's just new. And so as it grows, it will probably function more like gold in that its volatility will go down because the it's just raw size will go up, up. But I was just curious if you think that people mentally map it differently now. If they see it as a sexy thing, that is sexy precisely because it's high volatility and so they want in. They're going to ride that volatility, they're going to day trade against it, they're going to do all the fun things that people wouldn't do with gold and then if that's correct, if you think that it's inevitable that that changes but it remains a gold like thing or if it stops being the cool new thing and we move on.

[Guest Expert]

Yeah, well, people buy assets for all kinds of reason. Right. Like how people arrive at their conclusions is often beyond me. But I will. This is where I think it's very important to be a fundamental investor or at least take it a perspective on fundamentals of the asset. One of the most important answers to the question what is money? In my opinion, for me, at least in my journey, was when I arrived at the properties of money. Like what are the actual. To use language. This was language popularized in the 1960s by a guy named Gibson. He wrote a book, An Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. And he talked about affordances, that organisms actually perceive affordances which are opportunities for real action. Right. And he, you know, it's very, it's kind of an interesting thing. He makes the point often that they're neither subjective nor objective. It's about a fitness relationship between the subject and the objective world. And so we could either call these the properties of money or we could call these the affordances of money. Right. Obviously there's a monetary metaphor built into that word of affordance. I and people narrow this down to a different number of categories, but I've always narrowed it down to five. And it's divisibility, durability, recognizability, port, portability, scarcity.

[Host]

Right.

[Guest Expert]

So when we evaluate gold through that lens, it's very divisible, it's very durable, it's not very portable, as we said earlier. That's why we needed currency. Right. It's somewhat recognizable. We have to do tests on it. That's what. So we get the term sound money. You would drop a coin from a certain height and it would make a certain sound. And that was a heuristic for its authenticity. And then importantly, gold is relatively scarce. It has an inflexible supply which lets it hold purchasing power across time. Well, okay, so as a money, it excels in all of the affordances or properties of money, except portability. That's why we needed currency. Right. And then we get into the whole money warehousing thing and the fractional reserve banking scam. Now evaluate Bitcoin through that same lens. It is basically perfected all the properties of money. It's infinitely divisible. It's divisible right now to 100 million subunits called SATs. You can increase that divisibility via a soft fork, which is a backwards compatible software upgrade. So there's like, it's like a non contentious change, basically, so effectively has infinite divisibility. Its durability is also infinite. This is where it's good to think as we Talked earlier about the idea of a concept versus the the thing. The example I often like to cite is the Bible, right? You could go out into the world and go on a Bible burning campaign, but no amount of bible burning would ever destroy the Bible. Like, the concept of the Bible has so thoroughly permeated consciousness that it will exist forever. Bitcoin runs on the same principles, right? It's like it's everywhere and nowhere, as bitcoiners say. So every node has the full history of what bitcoin is. So the durability of it is effectively perfected. Portability, because it's just information, it can move at the speed of light, can't get much faster than that. So portability is perfected. Recognizability, which again is the ability to authenticate or verify the money is what it says it is, right? It's this is a real gold coin, not a lead piece of lead plated with gold, right? Like you have to verify what it is. You can audit the total bitcoin supply. In fact, this is what bitcoin does. Every node on the network is auditing the work of every other node, mining or otherwise, every 10 minutes. So the entire system is like 100% verification and 0% trust, right? You don't need to trust. No trust me, bros, if you will. And then finally, Bitcoin is the only fixed supply asset in the history of the human race. So it's perfected that relatively inflexible supply that gold had that gave it a really good ability to store purchasing power into the future. Bitcoin has perfected. We have a fixed supply asset so that your purchasing power will not be debased at all. Not 2%, not 5%, nothing. Zero, right? When you look at bitcoin on a fully diluted basis, there's only 21 million that can ever possibly exist. The number can only go down from there. That's why I think bitcoin is like, you're asking me what it is today. It trades as a very significant risk on asset, right? Which means people are speculating on it, people are leveraging, whatever, right? It's high volatility, right? So it tends to be in the risk portion of people's portfolio. But it's fundamentals what it is. It's digital gold, Internet and gold had a baby. You mentioned gold is the ultimate risk off asset right now in the current world, right? Bitcoin's better than gold fundamentally on those same properties that make gold a good risk off asset make bitcoin the perfect risk. Off asset. So we are at a unique time in history where the world perceives Bitcoin as the ultimate risk on asset. Speculative, volatile, dangerous, whatever. And the reality is it is the safest, most perfect form of private property available to the human race. And so that recognition will dawn on people through the market process. And it's just up to you to study Bitcoin, do the work and decide for yourself. But that's my view.

[Host]

Okay, so we've got this perfect risk off asset. Plus we have gold, which is withstood the test of time. And we have a currency in the US dollar that is inflating like crazy. We're at 122% debt to GDP and rising. There's a magic line at 130% where essentially you're guaranteed to be an open conflict within your country. Often revolution, often turning the tables over, defaulting on the debt. Just absolute economic catastrophe. We're racing towards that. So given that we have a problem that I'll peg, I'm not trying to put these words in your mouth, but I'll say somewhere between eight to 10 years, you cross that line of 130%. Yep. And you. I hope people can already feel that we're already heading towards the open violence. It's already begun. And so it's not like a binary switch that we get there and then it clicks over. It will just get worse from here. And we have an exit ramp, whether that's gold, whether that is bitcoin. So how do you see this playing out? Do you think I'm crazy and that it's never going to end, party's just going to keep going, we're all going to be fine. Or is it going to be people start taking that off ramp, which then further craters the dollar because there's no appetite for treasuries, which, not to lose anybody new to the conversation, but just know if there's no appetite for treasuries, your country goes broke. Mm. The appetite for the treasuries is entirely based on confidence and.

[Guest Expert]

And money printing.

[Host]

Yes. Money printing is what will drive the lack of confidence.

[Guest Expert]

So I'm saying money printing is used to buy those treasuries too.

[Host]

So that's why it's the confidence.

[Guest Expert]

Exactly. This is why fiat currency is an oxymoron. Okay. Another definition of money, the final extinguisher of debt. What is fiat currency? A debt based money. It doesn't make any sense. It's a can't. Like the dollar you have in your pocket or your bank account. You think is an asset, but in fact there's a liability attached to it. So in accounting we have an equation. Assets equals liabilities plus equity, right? If I own a piece of gold or I own Bitcoin, I have an asset that's 0% liability because it's a bearer asset. And 100% equity, I have 100% equity in the assets. All the value is mine, right? You would think the same thing about a dollar. Oh, if I have a dollar, it's a bearer asset, it's mine. But what you don't see is that invisible liability sewn into it, right? You could stuff all the dollars under your mattress you want. That doesn't stop the Fed from counterfeiting it by the trillion and stealing your purchasing power. So it's. You can't even own it, right? Because it's not property, it's not private and it's not property. Right? Just like they joke about the Federal Reserve. It says Federal Federal Express and it has no reserves. Right? The entire thing is a fucking scam. And I'm sorry like to put it that way, but this. I share your frustration. It's like I've done my best to point to the books. I try to make it as accessible as possible. I know I may have talk tendency to talk a little bit heady sometimes,

[Host]

but do you see us as on a timeline or do you think that this is.

[Guest Expert]

I mean, of course I think statism always degenerates and I just don't. What is the opening line to that Police song says?

[Host]

Don't stand so close.

[Guest Expert]

Have no faith in constitution. There is no bloody revolution. I'm forgetting the words now, but the I. The point is this, like you can't violently, you can't socially organize people with violence and coercion. It's not sustainable. It's not sustainable, right? If you're just going to scare people and steal from them, they're gonna look to get out of that system and betray you and backstab you every chance they get or overthrow you. Right? And if they overthrow you, then they install their new course of government and the process repeats. You know, what did you say earlier? The two things you wanted people to understand something like money printing. Bad, right?

[Host]

So far so good. What was the second one that your government. If it's deficit spending, they are stealing

[Guest Expert]

from you, they're stealing from you, which all deficit spending is funded by money printing. So those go hand in hand. I would hope you would add a third or consider adding a third. And that is taxation is Theft, Taxation is theft. The whole thing stealing from you, the inflation steals from you, the deficit spending steals from you and the taxation steals from you. So what we need to do as a species is evolve past the idea of legalized theft as a necessary ingredient of social coherence, because it introduces the opposite. It's just like fiat currency, the debt based money. The idea that we're going to coerce ourselves into unity doesn't work. What do we need? We need really strong private property, really good incentives, and diminished profitability of coercion and violence. And I think that's where bitcoin, that's probably one of the deepest perspectives to take on it. That idea that, okay, it can't be printed as money, so that defunds the war machine. It's also really hard to steal as money.

[Host]

And you're saying a defense of war machine because we can't possibly tax enough to pay for it.

[Guest Expert]

So you could check my numbers on this. I think it was, I think it was $8 trillion the United States spent on the war on terror. My numbers might be wrong, but the point will stand. Say it was $8 trillion we spent on the quote unquote, war on terror. Giant air quotes here, because it's really just genocide and imperialism. US spent $8 trillion in a 20 year period. The Federal Reserve printed like $8.5 trillion during that same time period. Okay, whatever it worked out to be, it was something like the cost of that was $80,000 per US household. So had the money printer not been available to fund the war on terror, every American household would have been sent a bill for $80,000 saying, hey, here, you know, pay your fair share of us.

[Host]

They were sent a bill for $80,000. They just don't realize it.

[Guest Expert]

That's right, exactly. So the plausible deniability by elimination of the money printer, you're eliminating the plausible deniability of the state where they, they can't print the money to go to war, so they have to send you that bill. And then people resist, right? It's become visible, it's become legible. People see it.

[Host]

All right? So those are the things that we need.

[Guest Expert]

And then finally, because bitcoin's hard to steal, like you go back to the example of like when Germany invaded Poland, right? The first, once they've conquered Poland, what do they do? They go to the central bank and they seize the gold, Right. Why? Because war is expensive and I need the money to go and do more warring. Okay, if that were magically on a bitcoin standard And Poland had their bitcoin in a multi key, well, Germany would have conquered this country and then it got no payoff. So the incentives to violence and coercion, even at scale, go down by virtue of the existence of bitcoin. This is what I think changes and tilts us toward like an evolution in human consciousness, even perhaps like maybe we don't understand how responsive to incentives we really are and that by virtue of changing the incentive landscape so fundamentally.

[Host]

So wait, are you saying that as we move towards bitcoin, we are less likely to go to war?

[Guest Expert]

Yes, I think war is less possible. It has to be paid for with explicit taxation, which people are more likely to resist. I also think that should war ensue, triumphant countries will not be able to seize the assets of losing countries so easily. In a bitcoinized world, bitcoin is very difficult slash impossible to steal if custody properly. So it change. It's like we have changed the fundamental grammar of the entire game of being human. And so now we have to reevaluate all of our social institutions layer by layer and reimagine it in a bitcoinized world. Of course, it's not just bitcoin, right? We also have the Internet. Encrypted communications, decentralized Internet provisioning, energy production, flying car. Like there's a lot of things that are giving more power to the individual and reducing the power of collectives over the individual.

[Host]

Hold tight. We're going to take a quick break.

[Grainger Announcer]

If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need all in one place, from H vac and plumbing supplies to lighting and more. And all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock. So your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.

[Host]

We're back. Let's dive right in. I know you don't pay a lot of attention to politics, but are you watching closely enough to be encouraged or discouraged by the change in policy around crypto?

[Guest Expert]

I don't give a tick tock. Next block. Bitcoiners do not. I mean, sorry, I don't want to generalize I as a bitcoiner, right, do not give a flying about what regulations you're passing or not passing or doing or it doesn't matter. It's like you can also ban gravity, but gravity's not going anywhere. Okay? So there are things that government cannot do anything about, and bitcoin is one of them. That's so interesting.

[Host]

This might be where I start. It's so funny because I'm so pro bitcoin, but I think that that mentality coming off the bitcoin community is so detached from reality that I'm always very confused. So the world has a structure. There's nowhere that you're going to go that you're going to escape the fact that there are governments. I know that Balaji believes strongly in the network state. Hey, Lord knows I. If I'm wrong, I'll. I'll be the first to congratulate Balaji. But the fact is that if Hitler rolled up and you've got bitcoin, Hitler's gonna smash 30,000 of you in the head. And the 30,001 person is going to hand over their keys. If you kill enough people in the country, you just take everything else like you, money, print, you do whatever. And violence is the ultimate trump card. And I've always had a very jarring ring. When people are like, they can't confiscate your bitcoin, it's like, yes, they can. Maybe they can't confiscate yours. Like, maybe you really will take the bullet to the head and just be like, I'd rather be dead than you get my money. But the vast majority of people will not be like that. They'll try to lie and all of that, but the. The real thing, and I think this is maybe the crusade I'm on. I need people to understand the nature of the government itself. And the nature of that government is that it wears a mask. And we are finally living in the age of rapid information. There is such volume and velocity of information that we can finally see things for what they are. And maybe you're helping me map why this moment for me is so bothersome as I see people embrace socialism and vote for a candidate who's very charismatic and very smiley, but at the same time, he represents a sinister ideology. And I need people to understand it's not sinister because I feel some kind of way about it. It's sinister because I believe that starving people to death is evil. I believe that taking the things that are theirs is evil. And it's knowable that it will have to do that because it isn't efficient at coming up with pricing. Right. You already said that at the beginning that, hey, something as mundane is like, how much should this cost is going to be born of decentralizing. That answer that humans that trust themselves too much become a murderous menace to the world. And so when I hear the wef get together and say you're going to own nothing and you're going to be happy, or God bless Bill Gates, even if he has good intentions, just trying to like solve all these problems by himself rather than letting things be more of these bottom up solutions and creating incentive structures for a whole bunch of people to compete to like become that. That's where I'm just like, oh man, this is, this is people that trust themselves too much. They will end up saying something akin to you got to break a few eggs to make an omelette. Which means I've got to kill a couple hundred million a year. Is it really that big of a deal? Like it's so wild and so getting people to understand that the founding fathers really had it right. They were super paranoid about themselves, that they understood that we tend towards tyranny, that whatever system you have has got to plan for the fact that it tend towards tends toward tyranny. There is a reason that Jefferson said that you have to like wash in the blood of tyrants and patriots alike or something like that.

[Guest Expert]

Like basically the tree of liberty must occasionally be reflect refreshed with the blood of tyrants and patriots.

[Host]

Y yes. So it's like, yeah, kids, like they're trying to point out this is the nature of the system. And so living at this part where I've gotten to taste both like, hey, when this is going well and people are disciplined and we're not deficit spending and we actually have a surplus, like those times are pretty rad. And so. But getting people to understand this is all downstream of culture and what you teach your kids matters tremendously. And we are not teaching people a story about hard work, discipline, that you should want to save your money, work in the summer to be ready for the winter. Like there's just like old school fable type morals that we've got to get across to people. Otherwise things get very, very bad very fast. And it is wild. And I do, I really appreciate the people in my community that remind me I'm not screaming into the void. There are some people that are listening, but it is. This all started for me in Covid when I realized, oh, these people that used to work for me, they grew up in the hood, they're all going to get eaten alive, they're all going to lose their jobs, it's going to suck. Let me make some financial content for them about how to save their money and then I Realized I actually don't like, I'm good at making money, I'm not good at investing money. So, oh, damn, I got to kind of learn about this. And then you start pulling all these threads and all of a sudden you're like, wait, the government's stealing all your money? Was. It has been such a wild bitcoin rabbit hole awakening. It's partly bitcoin. And I, whenever somebody throws a flag and is like, well, bitcoin just solves all your problems. I'm like, you understand the vast majority of people just are never going to understand it. So it's like the vast majority of people, they do not want a high volatile asset. It's too scary. It's too confusing. I think governments have a moral obligation to allow people to do that. I think that the current administration's change on crypto and being pro crypto is the right answer. It is, it is good things from an administration that is still stealing your money. And so it's. It's a bit of a mixed bag.

[Guest Expert]

It's a lot, I think. Well, I think you're doing good work and I think I largely agree with you.

[Host]

Zoom in on the part that you don't agree with.

[Guest Expert]

I mean, I view this as the invention of the printing press under the reign of the medieval church type of innovation. Right.

[Host]

Where we go to 30 years of

[Guest Expert]

war, kill millions across Europe, possibly, but it calls into.

[Host]

Do you really think that?

[Guest Expert]

Well, I think that the relevance of the dominant institutional paradigm today, which is the nation state, is going to be seriously called into question by the emergence of Bitcoin. In the same way the dominant institutional paradigm of the medieval church was called into question with the invention of the printing press.

[Host]

And what replaces it? Network states or something else?

[Guest Expert]

Well, a more peaceful, productive and innovative world. Now, what does that actually look like from a political, social organization standpoint? I don't know. Right. I think what we need is more experimentation. So we have 200 nation states today. You know, I'd like to see us move towards a world with like 20,000 free city states, you know, and you could run experiments and you. If you want to be a socialist, great. There's socialist Ville over here. Go live there. Do your own thing. You know, when it fails, then it'll become capitalistville, you know, that type of paradigm. So it's bitcoin. It's easy. There's a saying too, that science advances from funeral to funeral. Right. So it's easy to say, oh, people are scared of the volatility. No one understands it, no one's ever going to adopt it. It's like you're taking a very static view of the human race. What are people actually doing is they're individually pursuing their self interest. They're looking for the best tool for the job. And over time, as money printing, government intervention, coercion, crime creates more of these problems that bitcoin solves. You're going to create more demand for bitcoin. Right. We, like adults today might not understand it, but kids that grow up with bitcoin as part of their, their milieu will understand it. You know, if not intellectually, then by necessity.

[Host]

We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere. All right, thanks for sticking with us. Let's jump right back in. How many people own gold?

[Guest Expert]

I don't know the answer to that question.

[Host]

Basically nobody. It's been around for thousands of years. I'm just telling you, the average person just, they're never going to do it. Like the only punchline is people must become aware of the nature of government and hold their government accountable. And maybe that's also never going to happen.

[Guest Expert]

I think there's a lot of people that own gold. The American culture is not a gold owning culture.

[Host]

But 10% of Americans own 93% of the assets. So I'm just telling you in, In America alone, 90% of people own all for assets. Yeah, that includes gold. So it just, it doesn't happen. Most people are so caught up in their day to day lives trying to make ends meet that they don't think to invest in anything.

[Guest Expert]

That's my key point though is that the trying to make ends meet over time will become more and more of a requirement to have bitcoin to make those ends meet.

[Host]

Well, so if you're trying to hyperinflation

[Guest Expert]

or you're trying to escape capital controls, or you're trying to escape outright seizure. Right. Whether you're broke or you're a billionaire, wealth redistribution or whatever, the thing is like you will need recourse to non state digital cash to do that.

[Host]

Yeah, but it's been available forever and people don't do it.

[Guest Expert]

It's been available for 17 years.

[Host]

No, no, no, you're thinking of bitcoin. It's been.

[Guest Expert]

Gold's not. Gold and bitcoin are not the same. Yes, but you cannot put $100 million of gold up your ass. We already talked about this.

[Host]

Yeah, but nobody cares about that. Like, look, I do care about that. No, they really don't man, they don't really.

[Guest Expert]

People care about fleeing with their purchasing power intact.

[Host]

I don't.

[Guest Expert]

If you have the option, someone's invading you and you're like, oh, we gotta leave.

[Host]

Yes.

[Guest Expert]

Do we want to leave with all of our money or none of our money?

[Host]

In that moment, people would suddenly care. But the vast majority of people just are not thinking about that. It's like literally in. In this interview alone, the number of times that I've thought. Because you're so smart, I don't think you make contact with the people that like, for them, this is just like, what. They have no idea what you're talking about. The. The lack of fear for you is because you know how to navigate the world. So your fear is proportionate to the amount of things that you think will catch you off guard. And you think very few things are going to catch you off guard. And that's probably true because you have an intellect. The bad news is half of people are dumber than the average person. So I'm just saying you just have to look at the numbers. Like, there are a few numbers that are just like, oh, 90 of the 90% of people in America just don't have assets. Like, that's wild. So we are in a situation where if the government is abusing you, it's game over. And I'm just saying the government doesn't have to abuse you, but it is currently because people don't understand how to deal with that. So listen, I'm hardcore bitcoin. I don't want anybody to be confused. I'm just saying bitcoin does not solve the problem I'm trying to solve, which is how do we make sure that the average person is not being just absolutely, economically raped? And then they wonder, like, what the hell is going on? I can't make ends meet. This is crazy. It's like if you say bitcoin is the solution, it's like saying garbledygook, like,

[Guest Expert]

yeah, no, look, I mean, I. I don't know. I feel like I agree and disagree with this. So it's. Bitcoin can prevent people from being economically predated upon. Right. Or economically taken advantage of. Right? For sure it does.

[Host]

You definitely get people to hold bitcoin.

[Guest Expert]

You have to understand it. Right? So this is why, like, a lot of bitcoiners just say, just study bitcoin, like, you have nothing to lose now. But the. I think maybe the deeper point of disagreement is you have. You seem to be having this pessimism on kind of the intellectual capacity of the human race. And I would agree, like you look out in the world today, there's a lot of idiots and there's people voting socialists in office and like, yeah, okay, there's a lot of dumb going, going on. But when I look across human history, like how far we've come, where I really think we're very adaptive and we have developed cultural norms and intellectual norms and mental math and spoken language, like we've developed a lot of things that we didn't have a thousand, five thousand, ten thousand years ago. So I think our capacity to evolve makes me very optimistic about the more distant future. Now the point of transition could be choppy, could be dicey, could be the collapse of the medieval church in the 21st century type of thing, like, who knows? But I'm optimistic about the tech, digital technology enabled future. And I think that we are engaging in like a reciprocal reconstruction with these machines, right? That I. When the incentives to violence go down, I think people will become less violent.

[Host]

What do you think about AI?

[Guest Expert]

Very mysterious, but a massive productivity enhancer. So anything that increases productivity is going to increase the purchasing power of money. And I also think AIs, if they're going to interact and engage in any economic activity between themselves, will have to make use of Bitcoin.

[Host]

Do you think that we become post economic?

[Guest Expert]

No.

[Host]

Say more. You're the first person I've heard say no to that.

[Guest Expert]

Space and time will always be scarce and the wants of the human heart will always be larger than, you know, whatever is available, no matter how much is available, we will, all people will always. What is a man's reach always exceeds his grasp. We always want more. So that is the definition of scarcity. Wherever demand exceeds supply, there is scarcity. Okay, so I don't think demand can ever be fully satiated.

[Host]

But what do you do in a world where there is an entity that's better than you at everything?

[Guest Expert]

Oh, you do it. Well, first of all, if it's better than you at everything and it's solved like a lot of the economics problems, well then you don't have to really work for a living, right? You have all the food and luxuries you could possibly want at the snap of a finger, in theory. What do people do? I don't know, do they, you know, go on busying themselves with the furtherance of the human race? Do they do some artistic things? Do they go explore the stars? Like what? I don't know. We're explorers. Who am I to say what we will do. But I don't think scarcity, understood in the proper economic sense, is even possible to be eliminated. The closest thing we could get to is if we broke thermodynamics and developed free energy, right? Or zero point energy as, as Friston's called it. And then you would really have like anything you wanted at the snap of a finger. Be pretty close to post economic. But you still can't occupy the same space at the same time. You're still immortal. Like there's still scarcity. Even in the, even in that like kind of heaven on earth scenario, you still have scarcity.

[Host]

So you think there'll be some sort of competition for Malibu real estate as an example?

[Guest Expert]

Well, I don't know about that per se. I'm saying demand will always exceed supply in at least some categories. Right. Like not every category. Air is a good example. Right. We don't price air because the supply is so super abundant, even though it's very essential to life, our demand is less than the supply. So it's not scarce. So we don't price it, we don't fight over it.

[Host]

Right.

[Guest Expert]

But other goods, gold, food, water, etc, we do price and fight over those things. So I don't know which specific asset categories would be, you know, possibly become non scarce. But I don't think all could become non scarce because again, space and time. How are you going to make space and time non scarce? I mean, maybe you solve death and make people immortal, it's okay. I don't believe in that either. But how do you solve space?

[Host]

How do you solve space? Meaning that. Yeah. So going back to the Malibu real estate thing. So that is an interesting question. I'll get to that. But let me speed run what I think happens. Given that there's essentially nobody anymore that says that compute will asymptote. So it's just going to go on forever. The gap between a definitional moron and Einstein is only 2.4x.

[Guest Expert]

What does that mean?

[Host]

That Einstein was only 2.4 times smarter than a who's at like a 70 IQ.

[Guest Expert]

Okay.

[Host]

So yeah, has a definition. I think it's 70 IQ roughly. So I ran the math once. Einstein was 2.4x in IQ. That so that's the difference between the US government won't even use you as cannon fodder in the military because you'll cause more problems on the way. Getting shot and being able to intuit the physics of the universe. So that's 2.4x. Now imagine something that's a th000x.

[Guest Expert]

Right.

[Host]

So you get into the point where energy cost will be zero. Once energy costs are zero.

[Guest Expert]

You mean actually zero or near zero?

[Host]

I mean actually zero.

[Guest Expert]

So you think we're going to break thermodynamics?

[Host]

No, I think that robotics and material science will get to the point where you can capture more energy from the sun than everybody, using everything at all times during the day, no matter how much whatever they're doing, like they just will never be able to reach the amount of energy that is being kicked off by the sun.

[Guest Expert]

Okay.

[Host]

And given that we'll be able to get that level of energy and the first wave of robots will cost money. But Optimus is already all ready today as of the recording of this podcast. Coming off the line at 20k there. I am going to be getting a thousand dollar robot for my house. One for each floor. I'm not kidding to run security. Those are all ready for sale at a thousand dollars. So labor is going to drop to nothing when energy drops to nothing. That certainly happens in the next 30 years. Probably a lot faster, but let's just say 30 years. So 30 years from now, energy cost is zero, labor is zero. Now it's, we're post scarcity at that point, except for there'll be occasional things like we can't occupy the same space and people will fight over that for sure.

[Guest Expert]

And bitcoin.

[Host]

So the question becomes like, what are we doing about that? It's just bitcoin becomes a question of is there some small number of things? And we say bitcoin is the thing and whoever has the most, like, that's who gets that. Maybe that could very well be true. But the real thing for me is when that happens, meaning and purpose is gone. And that's where I think this all changes.

[Guest Expert]

Why does meaning and purpose have to be gone when we're in conditions of super abundance and freedom?

[Host]

Because of the way the human mind works.

[Guest Expert]

So evolution, we need to be load bearing or challenged to have meaning.

[Host]

Yes.

[Guest Expert]

Okay, so you fear that with no challenge, no load to bear, we're just going to be aimless?

[Host]

That is correct.

[Guest Expert]

Hedonistic.

[Host]

That's one of the four paths. So I see there's four paths before us. Path number one is you go to Mars and you play a survival crafting open world game on hardcore mode. Option number two is new Amish, so you reject technology. You go live on a field like a Mennonite. Option number three is a brave new world. What you're talking about drugs and sex. And then option number four is Neo in the Matrix. So you live inside of a virtual world, but you're awake. And so you're essentially eternally playing a video game where you can optimize the challenge perfectly, have real relationships inside of it. That's the future. Like that to me, is exciting. But it is a very different world. A very different.

[Guest Expert]

Yeah, it's. I mean, I hear you. I find it to be optimistic though. I mean, when I see productivity optionality, freedom, purchasing power, all these things going up, and the incentives for people to, you know, violently accord themselves with one another going down, these all seem like arrows pointing in the right direction for me now. Loss of meaning. Sure, we're in a meaning crisis. I don't know if you've talked to John Verveck. He's my favorite guy to listen to. So many, so many levels of brilliant articulation of the problem and like tracing it all the way back. It's amazing. I'm not saying bitcoin is just going to fix the meaning crisis, but we definitely have a big issue, like, as far as engineering problems we can solve for immediately. Like, this one's just obvious. It's like you, your entire global economy runs on a scam. How about we just stop that first? Then we can start dealing with the meaning crisis and all these other things. So I am not a pessimist about innovation. I think that it is what makes us human. The fact that we make tools, the fact that we create things that then again, reciprocally enhance us in a way. Like, we're in this. We're kind of like co captains in our own evolutionary process. And so I'm excited about these things. Of course they bring new challenges, But I don't subscribe to a worldview in which man, we've solved scarcity or almost solved scarcity. And now everyone's like, like, man, life sucks, so there's nothing to do. It's like, what are you talking about? Like, we. I don't know, I would think we'd be exploring the stars. Or maybe we invent teleportation, or maybe we're going to other dimensions, or maybe there's a psychedelic revolution or a religious awakening. Like, I think people will find something to do. And the difficulty of all of this is that we are living in the statist paradigm, so that anything we say, any speculation we make about the future, we're sort of interpreting it through that lens, you know, oh, people are dumb today. Oh, have meaning. It's like, that's why it's important to look backwards, right? They say, if you don't know where you come from, then you don't know where you're going. And so looking at the progression humanity has made across history, I think gives me a lot of optimism about our future trajectory.

[Host]

I love it. All right. I would stay in chat forever, but I got to get to the airport. Where can people follow you on your journey to do all that amazing stuff?

[Guest Expert]

Yeah. Thank you for coming to Miami and doing this. Always fun. I'm at breedlove22 on X and then whatismoneypodcast.com I love it.

[Host]

All right, everybody, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace.