How Money Printing and Central Banks Harm Society with Robert Breedlove and Tom Bilyeu

Summary

Podcast Summary

Episode Overview

Podcast: Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu
Episode: How Money Printing and Central Banks Harm Society
Guests: Robert Breedlove and Tom Bilyeu
Date: December 2, 2025

This deep-dive episode explores the fundamental problems with central banking, the consequences of money printing, and how these policies erode private property, incentivize coercion, and fuel cycles of societal harm. Robert Breedlove, Bitcoin advocate and philosopher, joins Tom Bilyeu to unpack the economic, philosophical, and historical factors underlying state-driven inflation, the rise of socialism, and the potential of Bitcoin as a lifeboat.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Politics of Money: Socialism, Incentives & History

• Dangerous Political Shifts
  • Tom comments on the recent election of a self-proclaimed socialist mayor in NYC quoting Marx, describing it as "very concerning" given the historical atrocities that stem from such ideology.
    "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need, has such a romantic tone to it. But the reality couldn't be further opposite. Almost like it is an actual murderous ideology." (02:13 – Tom)
• Incentives Drive Human Action
  • People act based on incentives—not utopian ideals.
  • Centralized control of economies (socialism, communism) cuts off price signals and leads to coercion and shortages.

2. Deep State, Central Banks, and Power Structures

• Nation States as "Gangs"
  • Breedlove contends that thinking in terms of "the nation-state" is misleading. Real power lies in hidden financial institutions and their shareholders: "Nation states are front organizations... Reality is composed of individuals that act. We form cohorts and coalitions, and we struggle for power amongst ourselves." (05:08 – Tom)
• Central Banks as the Pinnacle of Power
  • Hostility toward the Federal Reserve and central banks:
    "The shareholders of the Federal Reserve in the United States...have a lot more power than any politician that's ever in office. But you never hear that discussed in media." (06:06 – Tom)

3. Central Banking as Anti-Capitalistic

• How Central Banks Undermine the Free Market
  • Money supply and interest rates—vital economic indicators—are not determined by free markets but by technocrats; this is antithetical to capitalism.
  • "If money’s 1/2 of every transaction and the money is Marxist...how could we even begin to call ourselves free market capitalist? We are at best 50% capitalist and at least 50% Marxist." (07:40 – Tom)
• Cycles of "Bloody Revolutions"
  • Political change without changing incentives just "leads to the endless cycle of bloody revolutions." (09:22 – Tom)

4. Why Do Central Banks & Money Printing Keep Reappearing?

• Human Opportunism
  • Control of money is an irresistible opportunity for power and profit.
  • "Central banking is a great business. We print money and people believe it." (14:35 – Tom, quoting NZ central banker)
  • Gold served as sound money but was hard to move, so financial innovation led to "promises to pay gold"—creating vulnerability for fraud (fractional reserve banking).
• Inflation as Theft
  • Inflation is presented as "healthy," but it's fundamentally a euphemism for wealth extraction from the public. "Inflation is stealing from everyone and only giving back to the rich." (20:36 – Host)

5. The Mechanics of Banking and State Power

• From Gold to Money Warehouses to Central Banking
  • Gold was pooled in warehouses, replaced by paper receipts, which were then "fractionally reserved," paving the way for modern banking and, eventually, central banks.
  • "Once the government intervenes... that's the centralizing tendency that gives rise to the central bank." (25:08 – Tom)
• Profit from Coercion vs. Consent
  • Profits from voluntary exchange increase total productivity; profits from coercion (money-printing, theft) decrease it and demotivate further production. "Violating private property reduces total productivity... That's the whole purpose of civilization, so that people can own things and specialize." (32:18 – Tom)

6. Socialism, Violence, and the Slippery Slope

• Definitions of the Economic Spectrum
  • Capitalism: Universal private property and consensual trade.
  • Communism: Abolition of private property.
  • Socialism: The gradient in between, defined by the share of wealth confiscated and the rate of property violation. "If 100% of the fruits of your labor are being stolen, that's the definition of a slave." (40:27 – Tom)
• Socialism Breeds Violence
  • Violating property rights creates backlash, retribution, and cycles of violence. "Once you're earning profits from coercing someone, stealing from them—that instigates backlash." (43:56 – Tom)
  • Murderous history (Stalin, Mao): Replacement of price signals with decree leads to breakdown and violence.
• Socialism is Born from "I Know Better"
  • Top-down control ignores incentives and market signals, leading inevitably to failure and force. "If you won't work for free, then nobody can get anything for free... every time this is tried, you end up having to kill a lot of people." (48:10 – Host)

7. Solutions: Understanding & Escaping the Trap

• Clear-Sighted Political Engagement
  • To fix society:
    "If your government is deficit spending, they're stealing from you. If the government is inflating the money supply, they're stealing from you." (49:13 – Host)
• Bitcoin as the Lifeboat
  • Bitcoin is presented as perfect private property—resistant to theft and inflation.
  • "Bitcoin is money that cannot be printed, right? It's fixed supply money. So it is invulnerable to the violation of private property through currency expansion." (50:18 – Tom)
  • Highly portable, cannot be seized, highly divisible, and eliminates the warehouse operator/fractional reserve problem.
  • "Money printing bad. Money you cannot print, therefore, good. Really good." (57:41 – Tom, simplifying for accessibility)
• Why Bitcoin Over Gold or Other Crypto
  • Only discovered once, market shelling point, unbeatable network effect and security.
  • “You are free to fork the rules of chess... but chess isn’t going anywhere. Bitcoin is that type of innovation.” (60:36 – Tom)

8. Criticisms & Practical Realities

• Volatility: Why Does Bitcoin Move Like a Tech Stock?
  • As Bitcoin’s market cap grows, its volatility will decrease—analogous to Amazon’s maturation. "Price volatility is inverse to market cap...the smaller an asset, the more volatile the price." (63:54 – Tom)
• Practical Advice
  • The most accessible message:
    "Money printing bad. Money you cannot print, good. Bitcoin good." (57:41 – Tom)
  • Escape the trap by understanding cause and effect; vote and invest accordingly.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need, has such a romantic tone to it. But the reality couldn't be further opposite. Almost like it is an actual murderous ideology.”
  — Tom (02:13)

• “Nation states are front organizations. The world is basically a bunch of gangs, and nation states are the biggest gangs.”
  — Tom (05:08)

• “Central banking is a great business. We print money and people believe it.”
  — Tom (14:35, quoting a New Zealand central banker)

• “If money is 1/2 of every transaction and the money is Marxist... how could we even begin to call ourselves free market capitalist? We are at best 50% capitalist and at least 50% Marxist.”
  — Tom (07:40)

• “Once the government intervenes... that's the centralizing tendency that gives rise to the central bank.”
  — Tom (25:08)

• “Inflation is stealing from everyone and only giving back to the rich.”
  — Host (20:36)

• “If you won't work for free, then nobody can get anything for free... every time this is tried, you end up having to kill a lot of people.”
  — Host (48:10)

• “Money printing bad. Money you cannot print, therefore, good. Really good.”
  — Tom (57:41)

• “Bitcoin is the perfection or optimization at least of private property, which then leads to the optimization of price discovery and, I think, also leads to the optimization of political freedom.”
  — Tom (62:18)

• "Price volatility is inverse to market cap...the smaller an asset, the more volatile the price."
  — Tom (63:54)

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Important Segment Timestamps

| Segment | Content | Timestamps | |-------------------------|------------------------------------------------------|---------------| | Socialist mayor, ideology as dangerous | 01:07–03:52 | | Power structures, central banks as deep state | 05:08–07:40 | | Central banks as anti-market | 07:40–09:36 | | Inflation is theft, and effects on society | 14:35–21:48 | | Gold, warehousing, and the rise of central banks| 25:08–27:51 | | Private property vs. coercive profit | 32:18–38:33 | | Socialism, violence, and history | 40:27–48:50 | | The two ways government steals from you | 49:13–50:14 | | Bitcoin as uninflatable money | 50:14–57:41 | | Bitcoin’s unique properties, shelling point | 60:36–63:51 | | Why bitcoin is volatile | 63:54–65:31 |

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Tone & Language

• Tone is rigorous, direct, and sometimes conspiratorial, but also explanatory and at times conversational or blunt ("money printing bad").
• Both speakers toggle between philosophical abstraction (Mises, Hoppe, theory of private property) and practical, relatable language.
• Host makes an effort to “drag into the light” the tangible, everyday ramifications for listeners.

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Final Thoughts

This episode delivers a thorough, accessible, and at times fierce critique of state money manipulation and the resultant damage to personal sovereignty, innovation, and societal trust. If you want to understand why inflation, central banking, and deficit spending are not technical matters but urgent issues affecting your daily life, and why Bitcoin is posited as the solution, this episode is essential listening.

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Subscribe for part two.

Transcript

[Tom]

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[Host]

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[Tom]

Yeah.

[Host]

And we just had a socialist get elected as the mayor of New York City. So as a sovereignty guy, as somebody who thinks about money and wealth from cause and effect, ground up, how do you feel about that?

[Tom]

Oh, yeah. Well, first of all, I don't follow politics closely. I have heard of this individual being elected. I found it very concerning. People were reposting him, tweeting Marx's infamous line from each according to their ability, to each according to their need. And, like, if you've been a student of history, you will know that those words have, you know, underpinned the murder of millions, hundreds of millions, potentially. This idea that we can just come together in brotherly love and organize an economy. Like, it doesn't work right. People move based on incentives. And so, as Mises proved in his crowning achievement of the Austrian business cycle theory, socialism, Communism does not produce prices. Therefore, there is not data propagating throughout the market space. So you end up with just the government being the arbiter of all goods and services and end up with a lot of shortages, a lot of surpluses, and a lot of coercion and confiscation, basically. So it's d. Like it may sound benign. Oh, this idea of all of us coming together and ignoring money and ignoring market incentives and ignoring economics, and we'll just. From each according to their ability, to each according to their need has such a romantic tone to it. But the reality Couldn't be further opposite. Almost like it is an actual murderous ideology. So to see it coming back I think is very concerning. Now, my deeper conspiracy theorist hat thinks because this guy is. He's Iranian. Is that right? Middle Eastern.

[Host]

He's from Uganda.

[Tom]

Uganda. Okay, my mistake then. I thought he was Middle Eastern by.

[Host]

He might be. I actually don't know his ethnicity. His nationality is. He was born in Uganda.

[Tom]

Right. And he's socialist. He's also been accused of being an anti Semite, at least by his critics online. I don't know if that's accurate or not.

[Host]

Certainly he won't condemn the phrase globalize the Intifada. So I would not say that he is a friend of Israel, to be sure.

[Tom]

Okay. And so yeah, my deeper conspiracy theory hat thinks maybe you let a guy like that get elected so that you can justify more atrocities in the Middle East. You get you foment Americans, you know, associating Middle Eastern with socialists, with anti Israel. And then if he does a bunch of bad things in New York, then that justifies atrocities abroad.

[Host]

Who now I'm curious. All right, I put my conspiracy hat on who. Who would be driving that agenda?

[Tom]

The term that people like to use is the deep state. I have no idea who that is. And again, this is just a speculation. I have nothing to back it up. But I think politics is a complete shit sham, utter complete sham. Javier Malay, for instance, the libertarian candidate, right, that's been elected in Argentina. He's not libertarian at all. Right. They the chainsaw he was going to take to the state, which was a platform he ran on the central bank he was going to abolish. Like they're still expanding the money supply. Sedina Moose has done a lot of good work on this, especially on Twitter, just showing how oxymoronic it is for this guy to even call himself a libertarian. He's just a closet statist, basically. But he's putting all this lipstick on the pig saying he's implementing these libertarian policies and it's just.

[Host]

Do you think he would institute the policies if he was able? Like they're already behind the eight ball. So is it possible that coming in and just being sort of laissez faire, it just there's so much momentum going in a negative direction? Or do you think that. No, no, he's just another guy that wants control, wants to see the state wield power and he's doing what he needs to do to wield that power?

[Tom]

I think he is another puppet. I think all these politicians are puppets for Deeper power structures. I think nation states are front organizations. When we even think in terms of, like, what is the United States doing? What is China doing? Like, you're not. You're not mapping your. Your mental model onto the resolution of reality. Right. Reality is composed of individuals that act. We form cohorts and coalitions, and we struggle for power amongst ourselves. We don't move as one indivisible unit called the United States. Right. There are millions of power structures inside the United States vying for control. And it's not just political, it's often economic as well. So I think the world is basically a bunch of gangs, and nation states are the biggest gangs. But when you get people thinking in those terms, you can distract them from the other games that the terms.

[Host]

What do you mean?

[Tom]

What are they in terms of the nation states themselves? Right. Like U.S. foreign policy, you know, Chinese trade policy. Like, these things do have effects, but it, it obfuscates the reality of who's in actual control. For instance, the shareholders of the Federal Reserve in the United States. Right. This is an undisclosed set of shareholders. They have a lot more power than any politician that's ever in office. But you never hear that discussed in media. You never do.

[Host]

If you listen to my channel, because I talk.

[Tom]

Thank God for decentralized media. Yeah.

[Host]

Okay, that's very interesting. This is not the mental model that I thought you had of the world. Okay, so let's go with Javier Malay. I think a lot of people have been broadsided by Trump and Secretary Bessant doing the, whatever they call it, the currency swap, where they're essentially bailing them out. I think a lot of people were surprised by that. Hey, if these systems are so good and these policies work so well, why do you suddenly need a bailout? So you think that there's something more, and I'm putting a word in your mouth, but nefarious. There is a power structure that people are trying to hide from us. And this is a way for us to see the real movements of that underlying power structure. Now, if you don't know specifically who they are, help me understand how you map what goes on and how you interface with the real world. If, like, that's an unknowable sort of. Again, you're not using the word evil, but I will paint that brush.

[Tom]

Yeah, so it's. I mean, the term that I use is the shareholders of central banks. Right. I've identified, in my opinion, central banking is the most problematic institution in the world. You know, it controls the money supply, controls the interest rate, which is the price of time or the price of money. This is the most important price in the world. That price is being centrally planned rather than discovered like all other market prices. So that itself is very problematic. It's an anti capitalistic institution that underpins all economies worldwide, even the, you know, so called capitalist ones. So as I've said before on your show, if money is one half of every transaction and the money itself is Marxist, and I'm not, this isn't an opinion, this is 1848 Marxist Manifesto to the Communist Party. Measure number five, the state has to have a central monopoly on cash and credit in order to be communist. Right? It's a pillar of communism. So we have a pillar of communism here in the US and in every nation state worldwide that we have central banks. So if money's 1/2 of every transaction and the money is Marxist, then how could we even call or begin to call ourselves free market capitalist, right? We are at best 50% capitalist and at best 50% Marxist. And so this is like when I, you know, that's what I try to focus on. I'm not looking for the who done it, like who are these individuals? Who are the bad guys? Because I don't believe that's very useful. I think it's that people ultimately are incentive responsive creatures and that you have to reform the incentive landscape itself. That's how you change human behavior or human action over time.

[Host]

Fair.

[Tom]

It's not useful to just vote harder or even have a revolution and uninstall this guy and install your new guy. That never works. That just leads to the endless cycle of bloody revolutions. Interesting.

[Host]

I, I will reject the idea that it doesn't work, it isn't stable, it works for a while. I think part of the problem that we have right now is that it worked for so long here in the US that we're forgetting that you have to earn a functioning government, you have to earn a functioning economy, you have to be prepared to be hardcore disciplined, etc. Etc. But I want to get back to this. So, okay, you, world is gangs. The worst gang of all is the central bank. I'm gonna try to find the perfect way to ask this question, but if I don't nail it, I'm gonna keep going until I get there. What I'm trying to figure out is whenever you have a philosophy, take physics. If you put forward a philosophy of physics, you, your philosophy must accurately describe the world that we see. Otherwise I know it's false because I see the world, I'm interacting with it. So when you think about the philosophy of what drives governments, what incentives the gangs or anybody else are following, it's going to have to describe the world that I see nation states that you can create stability in some countries. America's been great. The west has been great for a long time. So if half of the money is at least half of the economic exchange is Marxist. But does it need to be like, why does that rise up? Why does that emerge consistently? Yeah, hold tight. We're going to take a quick break. We'll get back to the show in a moment. But first, let's talk about the most expensive mistake you can make in business. Most business owners waste weeks posting jobs, drowning in unqualified resumes, hoping someone, somewhere decent applies.

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[Tom]

We're back.

[Host]

Let's dive right in.

[Tom]

I think humans are opportunistic. So if there's the possibility of monopolizing and controlling the money supply, if that's available to any set of human beings and they're going to embrace that opportunity. There's this great clip of a. I think it's a New Zealand central banker and he says it very succinctly. He says central banking is a great business. We print money and people believe it. That sums up pretty nicely what this institution does. It's a currency counterfeiting cartel. And the reason it emerges, I think, is because of opportunism. We could go into a bit deeper of a discussion. It's like, okay, gold is actual free market money, right? This is something that emerged on the market. It did not require any government intervention to become money. Unlike fiat currency. Fiat currency requires anti competitive laws, it requires legal tender laws, it requires legal coercion to exist. Basically, that's not true for gold. What's the problem with gold is that it's heavy and it's physical and you can't move it across a telecommunication network very easily. So as the world modernizes from gold standard to telecommunications, our information systems started to outrun our monetary system, right? We're transmitting promises to gold, not actual gold. And in that accumulation of promises, you get a lot of counterparty risk. And when that counterparty risk accumulates at large, you get what's called systemic risk, right? A lot of people owe a lot of people money, but it's all deferred settlement. There hasn't been any final settlement to occur yet. So you get all of this tension, right? And Jeff Booth on the show A long time ago said this, summarized this. Well, he said currency wars lead to trade wars lead to real wars, right? Or as Bastiat said a long time ago, if goods don't cross borders, soldiers will. So the opportunism of individuals to control the money supply and have a business that basically produces perpetual profits, right? It's impossible to be unprofitable when you print money out of thin air, right? So your shareholders are enriched ad infinitum, and you can then use the purchasing power stolen through that money printing to fabricate false academic narratives like Keynesian economics, fake news propaganda, right? To convince the victims that 2% inflation is really good and healthy for you and you need it for a growing economy. Even the term inflation itself is a euphemism. The money is depreciating. That's what's actually happening. Nothing's inflating. The nominal prices of assets denominated in the depreciating money are inflating. So that euphemism of people like, yeah, growth sounds better. I'd rather have inflation than deflation. That term alone, I think, is a purposefully implanted euphemism to get people thinking in terms of inflation being a good, necessary, and healthy thing.

[Host]

Okay, so I want to.

[Tom]

So what we need to do is remove the opportunity. And that gets us into the Bitcoin conversation.

[Host]

Remove the opportunity. Okay, we'll get to that in a second. The mile markers that I'm picking up here in terms of your worldview are there is something in the human psyche that longs for control. If it needs to be coercive control, it will be coercive control.

[Tom]

I don't think it's control. I just think it's pursuit of profits, just pursuit of profits. That.

[Host]

That isn't. That is not my understanding of what.

[Tom]

You just walked through.

[Host]

So if it were just pursuit of profits, then it wouldn't naturally follow that you would get central banks. But we do get central banks. And so when I look at the world and I say whatever philosophy comes up, it's got to describe that. And given that central banks, as far as I can tell, are everywhere, then whatever the philosophy is has to account for the fact that it becomes everywhere. Also, you said that basically even nation states are just gangs. So that tells me that gangs rise up very easy to understand why that is. Weak men need to congregate in order to protect themselves from strong men. I don't think that's bad, though. I'm sure the use of the word weak makes it sound like I Think it's bad? I don't. I can certainly understand how if you're. Your tribe is constantly being raided and the cost is you dead, wife raped, then I get why people real fast go, I'm gonna start banding together with a bunch of people, we're going to come up with ways to protect our stuff. So I understand that. But there is something that's driving people that if they can get more and more control, they will seek it out. Which is why you get the central banks. Because it, it's. You're not entering into a world where people can't profit and you create a central bank. America didn't have a central bank until 1913. In fact, our best years of growth were before the central bank. So there is something else in the human psyche.

[Tom]

That's a good question.

[Host]

Well, I feel like you've already answered it, which is.

[Tom]

But why. Why were, why were the best years prior to the implementation of the Fed?

[Host]

Because you have creative destruction and you don't calcify in terms of creating a caste system where people can't lose. So when you have, like, if you believe, as I believe, that innovation is almost all that matters, that freedom is necessary for innovation, that people will do well for a while, but then they'll burn away, and that the collective cares not at all whether Elon Musk is the greatest thing for 20 years and then falls off the face of the earth and ceases to be interesting at all. And so if people can create regulatory moes or otherwise, or like with central banks where, and this is one of those things, it hides in plain sight. And I don't have simpler words to say it, but inflation is stealing from everyone. And only when you say this. Well, I probably got a lot of the stuff from you. When I first.

[Tom]

Well, when I we first spoke, you thanked me for saying inflation is theft because you said you thought inflation had been like giving you.

[Host]

I thought it was a natural law.

[Tom]

Yeah.

[Host]

I just thought it happened.

[Tom]

And now to hear you, when I see your clips of you saying inflation.

[Host]

Yeah, yeah, Listen, man, you've been. This is why I sit across from you whenever I get the chance. So if inflation is stealing from everybody and only giving back to the rich, then. And you're willing to do it when a bank fails or whatever, what you're doing is creating a permanent caste system. Because once you're at the top, you're building the network, you're building the policy to make sure that you can never fall.

[Tom]

Yeah.

[Host]

Okay. So if I'm right, that that is eventually going to hurt innovation because you're not getting rid of the people that did dumb things, you're propping them up. And so now the true innovator has undue hurdles that they have to overcome in order to actually aggregate, aggregate the capital to innovate. Now the whole world begins to suffer from that. So I get why people that get to the top want to yank the ladder up. But nonetheless, it has all these horrific ramific for a society as a whole, 100%.

[Tom]

It's well said. So there's two things I want to talk about here. One is the genesis of gold. I think this will answer your question. How did we get, how do we get central banks? How do they emerge from otherwise free market activities, Right? So we mentioned that gold is physical, right? It doesn't work in a world running on telecommunications, meaning that you can only transmit promises to gold. It's very slow and expensive to send actual physical gold. So your physical final settlement lags your informational settlement, trade communication, right? That produces a gap that creates systemic risk and whatnot. Now, it might be useful here to define money. One very useful definition of it is that money is a tool for moving purchasing power across space and time. And the purchasing power is simply what the money can buy you the goods and services that that amount of money can acquire in the marketplace. So gold, because it has a relatively inflexible supply, right? No one can counterfeit, does a really good job at holding purchasing power over time. It functions as a really good means of savings for people. However, as we just covered with the gap between gold and telecommunications, it does not move purchasing power across space very easily. It's very expensive, it's slow, it requires a lot of security. There's a lot of risk associated with it. So human beings, being the innovative, ingenious animals that we are, we innovated around this shortcoming of gold, right? Gold as money, really good at transmitting purchasing power across time, but not space. So what do we do? We put all the gold in one vault. And we trust this. Originally these were called money warehouses. We trust this warehouse operator to issue warehouse receipts, right? Paper IOUs saying, hey, I've got this much gold on deposit with the warehouse. And then people could go and trade these paper receipts with one another as if they were as good as gold, because indeed they were for a long time. And then you have solved the space problem, right? All of a sudden. Gold can move really, really easily across space or much more easily when it's in paper form, even more easily when it's abstracted into electronic form, right. Or digital form. These promises can move at the speed of light. And then so long as the warehouse operator is honest, you can always go and redeem the gold from the warehouse operator. Now looking at the incentives of the warehouse operator, what do they face? They face the incentive to run what's called a fractional reserve. Okay. A full reserve warehouse is one in which all of the assets match all of the liabilities. So all of the paper certificates that are in circulation that say someone is old owed gold is matched one to one with the gold actually in the warehouse. Right. That's a full reserve, non fraudulent legitimate money warehousing operation. What is a fractional reserve? A fractional reserve is when you issue more paper, more liabilities than you have assets to back. Once you do that, you're engaged in an insolvent fraudulent practice, Right.

[Host]

Known as modern banking.

[Tom]

Known as all of modern banking. But the thing is, from the warehouse operator's perspective, that's pure profit. As long as everyone doesn't do a run on the bank, right. As long as not more than whatever the percentage of people is. If I've, if I'm running a 50% fractional reserve, then as long as 50% of my clients don't come and redeem at the same time, then we're good. I can loan these other paper certificates into existence as if they were as good as gold. The market will not detect this error unless there is a run on my bank. I can earn interest on this printed money out of thin air. And so goes the scheme right? Now this can sort of work if you have competition among money warehouses, right? So that the bad actors would get exposed and go out of business and good actors would get, with good reputations would be promoted and preserved. However, once the government intervenes in this game and says, you know what, we really like that money printing business you got there, that fractional reserve bank. And you know what? We're going to war. So we need a good spigot of money. I think we're going to take that fractional reserve bank and make that our own. Now that's how you get this. You go from genesis of gold as money to paper certificates, warehouse receipts, augmenting the portability of gold to make it more useful for moving it across space, to creating this opportunity for warehouse operators to run a fractional reserve to creating this source, this limitless profit center for governments to intervene and basically confiscate. Right? And so that's how, that's the centralizing tendency that gives rise to the central bank. And, you know, there's the bank of Antwerp, bank of England. Like this is not an American thing. Right. This has been going on for about 600 years, I think. And the American nation was founded largely in response and in rebellion to not only taxation, which we always hear about, the Boston Tea party. Right. 2% tax was 2%, 4%, something like that. Throw the tea in the harbor and, you know, start killing red coats kind of thing. Well, we were also rebelling and escaping from the bank of England, which had tyrannized people for a really long time. The US Constitution was written in a way so that we would not have a central bank. And indeed, we resisted one implementation of it. We had one for 25 years. The charter expired and then we got the third attempt in 1913. Obviously read the book with the creature from Jekyll island if you want the story on that. But that one was successful. And we've had a central bank now for 113 years or whatever it is. So that I hope answers at least bridges from how we get to gold to central banking. And the other thing I wanted to say, I think the only thing that.

[Host]

I'll say that's left out of that and, and I really am trying to bring my audience along in this, is if it were just profit motive, as you put it forward, you could sort of forgive it. It's a product and hey, isn't that wonderful? But either the people that do it are completely ignorant to the following or they are sinister, and I put them in the sinister camp.

[Tom]

Yeah.

[Host]

Is that when you issue additional paper.

[Tom]

Yeah.

[Host]

That you are robbing the purchasing power of all the people that hold that paper. Yeah. And then in a modern banking sense, you reward anybody who holds assets.

[Tom]

Yeah.

[Host]

Now, while anyone can hold assets, 10 of Americans hold 93 of the assets. And I'm going to guess even that 10 falls on a power scale. So now you're going to have some redeemed, ridiculously small number of people that benefit from the fact that inflation is happening. But if people do not understand that second part, which is that as you inflate the currency that you are enriching asset holders and this is the flywheel that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer, then you have to begin to say, well, hold on a second. Are they completely naive to that effect or is that exactly why they're doing it? And I will put forward that that's exactly why they're doing it.

[Tom]

The shareholders.

[Host]

The shareholders of the bank, asset holders are now incentivized. Like technically, I'm incentivized for inflation to happen because I own a ton of assets. So the more that the money supply is inflated, the wealthier I get. We're hitting pause for a moment. There's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere. Let's talk about the one advantage that beats everything else in business. The market does not reward perfection, it rewards speed. Your competitor with a mediocre product who launches today is going to be your perfect product that launches in six months. Be the one who launches first with Shopify. Start with hundreds of ready to use templates that build a beautiful online store matching your brand style. Shopify's AI tools write product descriptions, page headlines and enhance your product photography instantly. Create email and social media campaigns like you have a market marketing team behind you. Shopify's world class enterprise handles it automatically. No integration headaches, just start selling. Turn your big business idea into reality with Shopify on your side. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com impact go to shopify.com impact again shopify.com/impact I just ordered a Mongolian cashmere sweater from Quint as a Christmas gift. Here's why. Luxury brands marking up Cashmere 8X are sourcing from the same factories as companies like Quint's. Same materials, same craftsmanship, but they do it at a fraction of the price. Quint's cuts out the middlemen and traditional markups. No department stores, no luxury retail overhead, just premium materials delivered direct. Mongolian cashmere sweaters are just 50 bucks. Italian wool coats that look and perform like designer pieces. Down jackets, leather styles and chinos built to last season after season. Get your wardrobe sorted and your gift list handled with quince. Go to quints.comimpactpod for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's quince.com impact pod free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.com impact pod this episode is brought.

[Tom]

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[Host]

All right, thanks for sticking with us. Let's jump right back in.

[Tom]

I would argue that in a zero sum game perspective, yes, as the currency is depreciated, the assets that you own as a larger percentage of your portfolio will be bid up more than the currency will be depreciated, right? So people living on fixed income, paycheck to paycheck, pensioners, they're the ones getting robbed and asset owners are getting rewarded. But here's the tricky thing is this, it all comes back to private property, right? That the, the existence of the central bank is premised on the violation of private property of savers through money printing, right? Savers put purchasing power in money, they expect it to be preserved or ideally grow across time. The central bank intervene. That's where we get gold, right? The market selects gold as money for that very reason. But then through state intervention, opportunism, whatever you want to call this, the profitability of coercion. And this is an important thing to disentangle, right? Because profitability, there's nothing wrong with profit in and of itself, right? That's a signal that we've, we've solved the problem, basically, right? If I'm, if I'm delivering a good or service into the market space, into a market space, I'm solving consumer wants better, faster, cheaper than anyone else, right? That's, that's basically what the profit says. That profit also induces competitors to enter, right? They want to come in and they want to get a piece of that margin, thereby competing prices down and quality up, right? Which all benefits the consumer. Profitability is great. It's a very important signaling mechanism. It's what coordinates economics, right? You know, prices, profits, all these things denominated in money. But when you talk about profiting from coercion, like the violation of private property that you're profiting by stealing from someone else, what you are doing in aggregate is you are reducing total productivity. And this happens in two ways. One, if I steal something from you, that is time, effort and energy I spent in the non productive activity of confiscation, right? I didn't produce any good or service. I actually produced a, I didn't produce a good, I produced a bad, right? A bad for you, namely, right? Like I had a table, you stole my table. What happened? Now I gotta go buy another table, okay? So when you do that, my time, effort and energy that could have otherwise been allocated towards some productive activity, building a business, building an asset, labor, whatever it is, was instead spent extracting from you, right? So that's one way in which the violation of private property reduces productivity. But now look at it from your perspective. If, say I stole 20% of your assets, right, and you acquired all of these assets through consensual work and trade, well then you now have a 20% reduced incentive for any further production. You're like, well, the last time I produced 100% of the fruits of my labor, 20% of them got stolen. So my incentive to work has just gone down 20%. So it's this, this is the problem. This is why the integrity of private property, as Mises said, right? The history of civilization and the history of private property are inexorably linked, I think is how he put it. That's the whole purpose of civilization, is so that people can own things and specialize in things and trust that other people will own and specialize in things. And we can all trade and we can all enjoy the fruits of one another's highly specialized labor in this modern lap of luxury we call 2025. Despite all of the anti market and anti capitalistic forces that we're also dealing with, like nation states, like central banks, like politicians. So it's a matter of do we reward productive, peaceful cooperation, that would be the profitability of consent, consensual activity, or do we reward non productive, coercive and violent activity, which would be. That's how the central bank is profiting. That's how nation states are profiting, right? They engage in these activities for their own profit, but it comes at the expense of others. So this economics game is positive sum, right? It's win, win, right? When you and I trade something consensually, we both do that because we believe that we will leave the trade better off than we were before. So both of us walk away with what's called psychic profit, right? We both at least think we're better off. We could be wrong, of course, but we did it consensually because we both believed it was in our best interest, right? So we've generated value on both sides of the trade. Once you violate that principle of consent, by definition it's one person's gain at someone else's loss, right? Your psychic profit. If I steal your table, your psychic profit's gone down. You've lost one table that you had before, whereas mine has gone up, right? I gained a table. But then we have all those issues related to productivity that I described. So the integrity of private property, this is. And it basically, some people get caught up in that. It maybe is a bit abstract, but it's just a prohibition on killing and stealing and coercing. That's all it is right. This is biblical ethics encoded legally. Right. Encoded as a social institution we call private property. But this is the most important social institution in the world. This is what coheres civilization. This is what allows us. Hoppe makes the point that it's even presupposed when we have a conversation. You are presupposing by listening to me right now that I have freedom of choice, that I control myself, that I have something that you could possibly learn. And then if you didn't do that, you just thought there's nothing you could learn from me and you know everything. Well, then all of a sudden we're not having a conversation. Right. It's something more like. I don't know what it is at that point, but it's not a conversation. So for to have this free exchange, we have to presuppose that each of us individually owns ourselves.

[Host]

Yes, all of that makes sense. The thing that I want to drag into the light for people is that if you let this get philosophical, you're going to miss that. It's nefarious. And the reason that I brought all of this up in the context of Mamdani is that I think that there is a very bad thing that is happening that has very noble cause and effect. And people's failure to accurately understand the cause and effect is what makes them elect the person who is absolutely the worst for them.

[Tom]

Yeah.

[Host]

So once you understand that the government can steal your money, if there's a central bank, the government can steal your money by, as you said, counterfeit money print. It will come under a much nicer name, but it's counterfeiting your money. When the money is counterfeited, then your dollar no longer buys a dollar's worth of stuff. It buys $0.90, $0.80, $0.70, on down to nothing.

[Tom]

Yeah.

[Host]

And then people get into this where I can't make ends meet, they start feeling very anxious. That anxiety needs to get transmuted into something that feels far more powerful. That tends to be anger. You go into a populist moment and great irony of ironies is you end up voting for the guy that is really just trying to get elected. So he promises you free stuff. The second they promise you free stuff, what they are promising you is that they're going to money print. As we just covered. They're going to counterfeit money, take from you, but in a way that you may think you're psychically profiting, but in reality you're being stolen from. And the inability to track that.

[Tom]

Yes.

[Host]

Is how we end up voting for these problems. Now, one, these problems being very clearly socialism. Now, one thing that I want you to explain. Why, why does socialism so consistently so necessarily become murderous?

[Tom]

Well, let's start with some definitions. I think I've, I've shared this with you before, but I really like the spectrum. Again, this is inspired by the libertarian philosopher Ha. And on one end he has capitalism, which is the universal respect for private property and the trade of private property via contract, right? Via consent, basically. So not only can we own things, but we can also trade things consensually, right? The rule of law, legal coercion exists only to preserve that right. That's an ideal capitalistic world. The opposite end of this spectrum would be communism or Marxism, right? Which as Marx himself said could be summed up in one sentence, the abolition of private property. No one owns anything, the state owns everything and tells you what to do, right? That's the opposite of capitalism. Socialism is the gradient between. It's just what you know, you tell me what percentage your effective tax rate is and I tell you what percentage socialist your society is and what percentage of slave you are, right? Again, if 100% of the fruits of your labor are being stolen, that's the definition of a slave, right? You keep nothing of your work. And if you keep 100% of the fruits of your labor, then you are sovereign, right? You're not subject to anyone, right? You are a fully actualized sovereign agent, basically. And so socialism is the spectrum between. There's a lot of different flavors of it, but again, if we're looking at it through the lens of private property, it's just at what rate are we violating private property? And Hoppe takes this further and says that, okay, the percentage, the rate at which you're violating private property is the same rate at which you are incentivizing those non productive, coercive, violent activities, right? If it's profitable to go and get elected to public office and benefit from tax dollars and printed money, no matter what promises you have to make people, there are individuals that will take that opportunity, right? As we're seeing in New York City today. But if those opportunities don't exist and we're just rewarding people profits from consensual activity, right? In this domain of pure capitalism over here, then we're only rewarding prudence and trade and pragmatism and problem solving, right? We're not rewarding problem making, or you almost call coercion problem making, right? Like it is making a problem by definition, for the person being coerced Otherwise it wouldn't be coercion again, if it was consensual. They're at least leaving. They may have real problems to deal with because their psychic evaluation of the situation wasn't right, but at least their psychic profit, their belief is that they are better off after the trade. But once that principle of consent is violated, you start sliding from the world of ideal capitalism into the spectrum of socialism, and then it typically degenerates ultimately into communism or Marxism. So it is this like, chink in the integrity of civilization, I think, where the darker side of human nature can fester. And I think that's why socialism has emerged in that, you know, why does it become murderous?

[Host]

It becomes murder. I think it has, because you're getting very clear mechanism.

[Tom]

Okay? I think it becomes murderous again. The way Booth put it is like you're, you know, currency wars lead to trade, wars lead to real wars. Once you're getting. You're earning profits from coercing someone, stealing from them, right? That instigates backlash. Backlash. The other side of that trade is going to seek retribution of some kind, right? So you, you're just. You're sparking a memetic cycle.

[Host]

So basically people are going to be pissed, taking their stuff and they're going.

[Tom]

To strike back, right? And then that you get into these, like, blood feud situations where like, okay, whether it's social revolution, whether it's basic petty crime, whatever it is, people get desperate and they start to act in more of a zero sum game manner. Right? My win necessarily comes at your loss. Right? That's the only way for me to succeed. And the less so from the positive sum mentality of, hey, let's trade, right? Let's have free trade. Let's act according to the same rules. Let's all play pretend that we each actually have the exclusive rights to the things of value we create. Right? That's kind of the larping that we're doing with private property. But it's very useful LARPing because when we do that, we play that game of pretend. We get a lot of peace and productivity when we start to break the rules of that game or twist the rules of that game or violate the rules of that game, as politicians do, specifically socialist politicians. That's when it starts to degenerate. And I think you start moving along that spectrum straight towards communism and what we know what communism does, right? We'll talk about murderous. What are the numbers? How many people did Stalin murder? 60, 100 million?

[Host]

Stalin is tougher to pin Down. But there is a political scientist, I'm forgetting his name right now, but he clocked the number at over 200 million dead in the 20th century alone due to government policy.

[Tom]

There you go. Democide, I think he called it.

[Host]

Yes. So the thing, we might be saying the exact same thing, but in different ways, where this breaks for me is because it doesn't work. People start raising their hand and saying, it doesn't work.

[Tom]

Yeah.

[Host]

But for me, socialism is born of a very simple idea. I know better than you.

[Tom]

Yeah.

[Host]

And so when you look at the marketplace and you say rents in New York are too high, you never stop to think, too high? By what metric? What do you mean? You just mean that some people can't afford it. That's the nature of things. So when somebody goes, I know better. Then they try to control the market from the top down and things start breaking. Like for instance, if you tell a landlord you can only charge X of amount, amount of rent, but it costs more than that to maintain the building. You're just wrong. You don't understand capitalism. You don't understand incentives, all of that. So that person raises their hand and says, this doesn't make any sense. And then because they are right, you ultimately have to shut them up. And once you understand the only way to shut somebody up is to let them vote. And so you're at risk of being voted out of office or you force them to be quiet. And now the guns have come out and hence the murder. And yeah, it really is that simple. Like, I don't want people to lose sight of. Like, this becomes a problem because the plumbers aren't going to work for free to repair the building when you stain the carpet or get mold. The people that remove that stuff won't work for free. So you either have to force them to work for free, which I think everybody would agree is a terrible idea, but in socialism, you have to, because that's the only way that you can guarantee those outcomes. And so this is why I'm trying to, like, I don't want all this stuff that be super heady. I want people to understand, listen, you won't work for free. And if you won't work for free, then I. Things can be given to you for free because somebody at some point has to work for free for that to happen. And then of course, people are going to say, well, Tom, just tax the rich. You could literally tax not just their income, but their wealth. And nobody understands wealth. Wealth is fiction. But even if you could tax their fictional wealth you would only get, like, two years. Runway.

[Tom]

I don't think it's that much.

[Host]

All gone. It's all gone.

[Tom]

Yeah.

[Host]

And so I'm like, this is so basic. This is really simple. And if people could track that, you won't work for free. No one will work for free. And if people don't work for free, nobody can get anything for free. And that over and over and over, every time this is tried, you end up having to kill a whole lot of people. Because eventually somebody goes, hey, Mao. Planting, yeah. The same crops at the same time across a country the size of America, it doesn't work. They're not going to grow. And then everybody starves to death. And so you got to shoot a bunch of them. It's really that basic.

[Tom]

I think we're in deep agreement, honestly. Like, I may be saying it in a much more heady way, and you're saying it in a much more accessible way, so God bless you for that.

[Host]

But I'm just trying to get, like. I think America is racing towards a problem and they're being stolen from. So, like, they get. Mamdani is right. There is a huge problem.

[Tom]

All the Marxists are right.

[Host]

And the question becomes a why is.

[Tom]

There a huge problem and what to do about it?

[Host]

Correct. And so if you can't map out, oh, the I'm being stolen from, like, if I could just get everybody to understand two things. Thing number one, if your government is deficit spending, they're stealing from you thing, too. If the government is inflating the money supply, they're stealing from you. Like, if I could get them there.

[Tom]

So that's the only way they can deficit spend, right? Yeah.

[Host]

So if I could get people to look at, oh, wait, you want to make this thing free? That means that you're allocating governmental budget towards that. What are you cutting? Because we're already deficit spending. So if you're adding more to the deficit, well, then that's going to create more and more problems. But it's proving very difficult to get people to follow said cause and effect.

[Tom]

I can totally relate to that. As someone who's been beating the what is money drum for, I don't know, close to a decade now. It can feel a little frustrating in that you're trying to liberate victims from their victimage. But so do you just.

[Host]

Are you Bitcoin is life raft guy?

[Tom]

Well, private property is what we're going for, right? The ability to own things that are independent of the opinions of other people. And I think to that END Bitcoin is the strongest form of private property we've ever had. You know, first of all, you know, money by definition can be used to obtain any good or service in the marketplace, right? So in a way, it's kind of like a meta private property, right? It gives you access to obtain anything the marketplace can bear any property that anyone has. Well, it's mostly for sale, not all of it, but, you know, mostly anything. People can create a value. It's available through money. The printing of money is the violation of private property of savers, right? People are holding. And here's a, here's a good way to think about this. When you go to work, for instance, and you trade your time for money, right? You are expending your labor, producing a good or service for someone else. You're solving someone else's problems, and you're paid in money, right? You can then take that money back into the marketplace and you can give it to someone else. So they'll solve your problems, right? They'll sell you a pair of shoes, or they'll fix your sink, or they'll sell you a car, Whatever, whatever. The thing is, this trading of favors, that's another good definition of money, the medium through which we trade favors, basically, when you do that, right? So let's say you just go to work and you provide services, or you render labor to provide goods or services, and then you are paid in money, and then you hold the money, you save it. What's happened in aggregate to the world, you've increased the productive output of the species, right? By rendering your labor to produce goods and services. You've been paid in money, but you haven't spent it yet. You're just holding it, right? It's just potential goods and services in the future. So you've added to the productive output of the planet, but you haven't yet subtracted from it. So this is like when it's extremely moral, it is extremely moral to save. Hoppa would point out here too, this starts the process of lowering time preference, which is the rate at which we prefer present satisfaction to later satisfaction. And he later says that civilization itself is the externalization of our individual time preference. So the lower our total average time preference becomes, the more civilized we become. So money is this meta private property lets you obtain anything the marketplace can bear. Money is this medium through which we trade favors and to earn money is to do something that's very moral and useful. Now, if that money you're saving in is now being counterfeited by the central Bank. Well then the purchasing power, right? The moral act, the reward. Reward for the moral act you did of going to work is now being depreciated. Someone who's benefiting from that money printing is stealing from you. They're stealing your labor, they're stealing your time, your energy, your effort. Bitcoin is money that cannot be printed, right? It's fixed supply money. So it is invulnerable to the violation of private property through currency expansion. And that's very important right now.

[Host]

Is the goal though, just to get people off of government controlled money?

[Tom]

Well, that obviates the need for central banking entirely. So if we go back to our definition of our first definition of money as an instrument for moving purchasing power across space and time, Bitcoin is like the Internet and gold had a baby, right? I've probably said this to you before, but gold was really good at moving purchasing power across time because it has the inflexible supply, but not space because it's physical. So we augmented gold to have gold backed currencies, which are really good for moving purchasing power across space because it's just paper or electronic, but not across time because it introduced the warehouse incentive problem where there's an incentive to run a fractional reserve, which leads to inflation of the currency and ultimately hyperinflation. Bitcoin threads the needle. Bitcoin is a pure digital asset with a fixed supply. It's the only fixed supply asset in the history of the human race. The only one there will ever be, so far as I can tell. So it perfects the preservation or transmission of purchasing power across time. Also because it's purely digital. It's just information. You can move it at the speed of light.

[Host]

Why do you think it's the only one that will ever be though? Like, it's the easiest thing in the.

[Tom]

World to replicate because of game theory. We have 40 million replications of Bitcoin right now, right?

[Host]

You're just saying it's the one that got adopted.

[Tom]

I'm saying that absolute scarcity, a fixed supply money can only be discovered once. I think it's in this way. You have to compare it to something like the number zero. Or people also compare it to like, to the wheel, right? Like, are we going to invent something that disrupts the wheel? Like. No, the wheel is very fundamental.

[Host]

The wheel is a concept. I can make a bitcoin.

[Tom]

Bitcoin is a concept made real.

[Host]

Yes. I don't know if this is where we want to take the conversation, but just because I know People are going to hammer in the comments on that. This is adoption. I'm going to channel Peter Schiff right now. Bitcoin has no intrinsic value whatsoever. At least gold can be turned into a watch.

[Tom]

If we're going to do a show on economics, let's not use the term intrinsic value. Peter Schiff is the worst for that. All value is subjective, right? It does not exist. It does not inherent things to quote Misus.

[Host]

Agreed.

[Tom]

But that means how we respond to.

[Host]

The conditions of our Bitcoin can be replicated, has been replicated a gazillion times. It's just a question of whether people adopt it or not. What I'm. The reason I'm. I'm asking about bitcoin though is I'm trying to make like I, I have two options before me. Path number one, move to Singapore and just be a rich guy.

[Tom]

We were talking about that this morning.

[Host]

Singapore path. Path number two, stay engaged in America and try to get people to understand why they got raked over the coals. For now, it's path number two. I really want people to understand this. I've always had beef with people that are just like, bitcoin's a life raft. The reason I have beef with it is while it's true and it has all these fancy properties, the reality is people just need to get the hell away from anything that can be inflated. And so right now, while I, bitcoin is my single biggest investment. Bitcoin is also moving more like a tech stock than it is like gold. So people need to, I would say, be very honest about the state of bitcoin currently and make sure they understand the cause and effect of all this stuff so they can figure out how to eject out of just the everyday fiat currency that they are currently trapped in. I want them to know where to put their money, how to invest and how to vote. Like, those are my, like just super small bread basket of things. But unfortunately, no matter how much I try to simplify even like the slightest amount of nuance, I know I lose people. So yeah, I'm curious as to like you're going to be fine because you understand the nature of money. But like if you had to make this accessible and understandable to somebody who is going to get lost very fast. Is bitcoin the punchline because it can't be inflated and it's not government controlled or is there something else?

[Tom]

Okay, I'm going to try to make it as accessible as I can. Yeah, I do try to make it accessible. Let me try to speak like a caveman, money printing bad. Okay. Money printing bad. Right? Steal from you. Money printing, steal from you. Okay? Money that cannot be printed, therefore, good. Really good. Right? Really good thing. It protects your purchasing power, which is your ability to survive in the real world. Right. The work that you expend to gain resources to improve your own and your family's survivability. Sorry, I'm getting fancy words again. That improves your chances for survival. That seems reasonable enough. That is depreciated through money printing. Okay? So bitcoin is money that you cannot print. Okay? So money printing bad. Money you cannot print. Good. Bitcoin good. Okay. Further, this. Back to this idea of private property, which is ultimately about the integrity of the relationship between the owner and his assets. Right?

[Host]

You were doing so well, and now we're back. So can't be printed. We got that part.

[Tom]

Okay, let's use this. Let's.

[Host]

Government control is not a part of this marriage.

[Tom]

What is marriage?

[Host]

A union between two people.

[Tom]

Right. And there's exclusivity, right? Most marriages, not always, but consensual. Like, even if there's not exclusivity, you would consent to let someone else sleep with your partner. You wouldn't agree to a marriage. And then she can sleep behind my back whenever she wants. Unless you've consented to, like a don't ask, don't tell, or whatever the thing is. Okay. Private property is pretty similar. It's like you, the creator or buyer of that asset, own it. You own it. You decide what to do with it. You can exclude people from its use. You can include people for its use. You know, renting it out, whatever. You can sell it, you can destroy it, you can eat it, whatever it is. Right? Like, you decide. So it's a exclusive relationship, like marriage between husband and wife, between owner and asset. I hope that helps. The reason bitcoin excels here is because to physically custody or to physically. To have bitcoin in your possession is to just have a private key is to just keep a secret. And so the ability, you know, was once put to me, this was a funny guy sharing a story about a Middle Eastern gentleman that said what he really loved about Bitcoin was that he could put $100 million of Bitcoin on a hard drive and stick it up his butt and get on an airplane and go anywhere in the world if things ever got bad. Someone really needs to tell that guy about a brain wallet, by the way, because you don't have to do that. Sticking up the butt Part you could just memorize 12 words. And then he went on to say, you cannot put $100 million of gold up your ass.

[Host]

It would be tough, right?

[Tom]

So like, okay, I hope this, I'd like to think I can give it a shot. I hope this is accessible for people. It's like if you want to be able to control your means of survival, which is purchasing power and economics parlance with the, with the most assurance that no one else will be able to override you, right? They'll be able to take it or whatever, then Bitcoin is that thing, right? You can own an asset that is technically unseizable. We could get into the multi key custody and whatnot, where like, yes, you're a brain wallet. You can be tortured and someone can force you to give up your 12 words. But if you put your Bitcoin in a multi key and all of a sudden those 12 words are, let's say, chopped into five pieces and you need three or five of those pieces to unlock it. While this is the highest security custody schema we have, this is what we use for nuclear launch codes, right? If you've ever seen a movie where the guys have to like put in the keys at the same time, turn them in the same sequence, and then they can access the nukes or whatever, that's a multi key setup. You can do that with Bitcoin. So in terms of money printing bad money, you cannot print good. And then assets that cannot be stolen easily, also good, because that lets you control your livelihood, your means of survival. Bitcoin excels everything in both of those respects and in term. Now we could go into the bitcoin versus shitcoin thing, like, oh, well, why, if Bitcoin is just open source software, why doesn't everyone just copy it and make a million different copies of it? And you know, and then it, then it's diluted, then it's hyperinflated. Well, first of all, we have 17 years of market test, okay, that's already been happening. We have like 40 million shit coins in existence. Bitcoin's outperformed all of them for 17 years straight, is the fastest growing asset in human history. And to try to make it accessible, the metaphor I've heard use is that you are free to fork the rules of chess, right? Chess is open source software too, right? It says rules the game. We sit down and we play it. You can change those rules all you want, whatever way you want, right? People do it. There's 3D chess, there's all Kinds of stuff. But chess isn't going anywhere, right? Like as a game, it's, it's a shelling point. People have, people have coalesced on it as an existing thing. So even though, as you said earlier, it's a concept like these things really matter. The essay I wrote was the number zero in Bitcoin, right? Like the number zero. If you could imagine something disrupting that or disrupting the wheel, as we said earlier, like, this is how you need to think about Bitcoin. It's that type of innovation. It is something so fundamental, something that is so mind blowing and hard to comprehend. That's why we're all the six blind guys describing the elephant that we struggle with different metaphors. The Internet of money, digital gold, Internet and gold, had a baby, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But if I'm trying to make it, I don't know if this is accessible but elemental. It is the perfection or optimization at least of private property, which then leads to the optimization of price discovery and I think also leads to the optimization of political freedom.

[Host]

Why does it move like a tech stock and not like gold?

[Tom]

Well, it's gone from zero to $2 trillion in its first 17 years of existence, which makes it the fastest growing asset in human history. Price volatility is inverse to market cap. So the smaller an asset is, the more volatile its price will be. Right. You could think of this as like a little boat on big waves versus a big boat on those same waves. Right. There's more volatile. The little boat will experience relatively more volatility as those waves move, whereas the big boat will be more stable.

[Host]

Right, so you're saying it's not big enough yet to.

[Tom]

Well, as it grows, its volatility goes down. This is already also market proven. And it's not just bitcoin. It's provable for number of assets. You could look at Amazon, right? Amazon declined like 94% after the 2001 tech bubble. Amazon went down 94% and then it's grown like 40,000% since. Right, okay, so the year, I think it was like 18 months that the Amazon price declined that much. It was like, you know, its annualized volatility was, let's say 80%, something like that. Right. Okay, what is Amazon? But it was a whatever $5 trillion asset then, not 5 trillion, $5 billion asset then. Now it's a multi trillion dollar asset. What's its volatility today? Right, It's. I guarantee you it's less than whatever it was then. It was 80 Vol then. It's probably a 30 or 40 volume now. Right? The volatility has declined as Amazon stock has grown. Same is true for Bitcoin. Right? So gold is a. What is it now? $20 trillion asset? 22, sure, with the total market cap.

[Host]

But it's soared in the last year.

[Tom]

Soared, yes, soared less than Bitcoin, but still soared.

[Host]

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[Tom]

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[Host]

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