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- [00:03]
Brian Dementia
The scam can't run forever. There was something about bitcoin that we felt like we discovered on our own was what kind of flipped the switch for us. We planted the seeds, and maybe someday that they'll. They'll become a bitcoiner. That's actually how it works. Bitcoin being a free market solution, that's why they're. They're willing to tell you that you were right. Because they. They learned that on their own. I think that's maybe what some of the outside world's seen a little bit. It's like, why didn't the Fed shut them down? Like, there's something different about this movement. Problem is people are trying to find the Alpha. Okay, Bitcoin's 75,000. Go. I'm going to buy the XRP. I'm going to buy this. No, the alpha is still in bitcoin. You want to be at the forefront of the bitcoin economy. It kind of behooves us to spend some SATs now. This is the fulfillment of the prophecies that we've been saying. The cypherpunks have been saying since the early days, we get to live through those. And it's pretty. It's pretty rewarding.
- [00:49]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
We're in Vegas.
- [00:50]
Danny Knowles
There's a lot of bitcoiners around right now. And it's really funny. Like, Vegas is the most fiat place in the world. Like, you walk around and it's like everything that's good and everything that's bad about America in one place, it's so overwhelming. And then you see this group of bitcoiners who are kind of just living in a parallel world. And, you know, the criticism of, like, bitcoin is a cult.
- [01:10]
Brian Dementia
Yeah.
- [01:10]
Danny Knowles
Is bitcoin a cult? Because I kind of think it is, 100%.
- [01:13]
Brian Dementia
And I'll agree with that. I think I'm like, qualified to agree with that because actually, the first book, you might not know this, the first book I wrote was called Bitcoin Evangelism. So it was like, literally like, we're a cult, so how do we spread this gospel?
- [01:30]
Danny Knowles
And.
- [01:30]
Brian Dementia
And it's because there is. I mean, I'm a Christian, like, so I'm not. I'm not, you know, knocking religion because I'm a religious guy. But. But there, There is something to be said about movements that shake the world. They have a. You call it whatever you want. They have a cult, like, following. They have raving fans behind it. And so we do. We need to foster an ethos that we. That we shine a little bit differently than the rest of the world. So I think it's, you know, that was the knock on the conferences. Like, why would they come to Vegas? Why would they come to Vegas two years in a row? It's like, what better place to shine a light than in the darkness?
- [02:05]
Danny Knowles
Totally. And I think that gives a. Like, that's the contrast you see of bitcoin Twitter, the world where everyone's angry, fighting about stuff. And then you get here and like, vibes are good. Like, we're in a bear market. There's probably less people here than last year, maybe, but, like, vibes are still very high. Brian, we didn't introduce you. This is the first time you've been on the show. You should tell people who you are.
- [02:22]
Brian Dementia
My name's Brian Dementia. That's my real name. It's not like some altcoin name or anything like that. I get that all the time. It's like, oh, just. Yeah, what are you shilling? No, like, Dement was my last. Is my real last name. I'm the head of marketing for Club Orange. We used to be Orange Pill app. So if anybody has heard of Orange Pill app, we are Club Orange now. We're the world's biggest network social network for bitcoiners in real life. So if you want to find and meet other bitcoiners in your neighborhood when you're at a conference, whatever, we have the app that helps facil facilitate that. We have over 20,000 active members. It's a really thriving, robust community of people who want to find local meetups. They want to find, you know, the afterparty. I think that was like. We thrive at something like this at a. At a conference where there's a huge concentration of bitcoiners. But most guys, they. They don't work in bitcoin. They don't have bitcoin connections, I guess, for lack of a better term. And so Club Orange kind of satisfies that of I know what I'm doing from nine to five, because that's when the conference is. But after five o', clock, I don't want to be the guy who's in Vegas. That's just like strolling up and down the street, just finding whatever bar to go into. Like, most. Most bitcoiners are like, more sane than wanting to try and, like, find out what the night has in store for them in Vegas. And so they connect with other bitcoiners and. And actually foster legitimate friendships. We've had. We've had one Marriage come from. From. From Club Orange, we. We try to stay away from marketing that. So, yeah, when Club Tinder, that's like, that was the biggest concern because it's like most of our. Most of our, you know, our. Our members are. Bitcoiners are typically men or. Or. Or women who are already married. And so it's like these people who are in loving relationships already, it's kind of hard to have your spouse find a. A meetup app on your phone. And so it is like when you tell them, hey, it's just bitcoin nerds that are on the app, then, you know, it kind of satisfies. No, it is. It's. It is. There's. There's an inherent desire for. In real life connection is that. That's just what Matteo founded. That was his dream of founding this app to help bitcoiners make friends with other bitcoiners. And I think if bitcoiners think bitcoin's the future, then bitcoiners are part of that future.
- [04:30]
Danny Knowles
Yeah, it's also. And then the group chat while I've been here has been going off. Clearly there's a lot of people using it. But when, like, one of the interesting things when we talk about, like, bitcoin being a cult is one of the things you got to do in a cult is bring more people into the cult. And I think everyone goes through this journey. And I definitely did, where when I got into bitcoin, I was super excited about it, and I'm still super excited about it, but I wanted to tell everyone. And like, so anytime I went out for drinks with people, it's all I wanted to talk about. And now when I go out with my normie friends, I've kind of given up. I find it tiring, and I wait for people to come to me rather than the other way around. Like, how do you keep the. The energy up to actually do that?
- [05:06]
Brian Dementia
I mean, I think that's. That's probably why people want to go meet other bitcoiners, so they can start out what I would call friendship, second base. So it's just like, well, you know that this guy's gone through the filter of he's already read four bitcoin books or whatever it has. He's already. He already watch what bitcoin did. You know, that kind of thing. Like, there really is this filter that happens for the normie world. I think it gives when. When bitcoiners have a place to go and be around and like, talk shop with and and half the time their conversation isn't necessarily about bitcoin. It's like, bitcoin's the bridge of the friendship. But then they talk about their other passions and those types of things. It's just like, hey, I know you're cool because you're in bitcoin. Like that. That's enough for us to like have a hangout or have a meetup. But then we talk about the other things that we're into now. I think it gives those bitcoiners more patience with their friends. Like, you get to satisfy your bitcoin cravings that you had as a newbie bitcoiner because you have this show, you go to these conferences where people are pulling you in all sorts of different directions and asking you questions. So. So you have no shortage of, like, avenues for that to go into. And so I think it probably makes you more effective though, when the times when your friends do come and finally ask you about bitcoin is probably going to be during the next all time high or whatever, you know, that type of thing. That's when. That's when our, our holdout friends, they wait to start asking questions. But I think it gives you probably as an individual, like Danny Knowles, like, like a little bit more patience with that person of like, I don't have to win this guy over so that I finally have a bitcoin friend, you know, because that's what the stakes were before. It's like I've got to make a. I've got to convert a bitcoiner into the cold or else I have nobody to talk to. And so I think that that's maybe some of like the inertia that we're pulled towards in that. But. But at the end of the day, yeah, we just, I think with my, with my normie friends, I, I just try to ask them questions and just meet them where they're at and just talk about normal things. And then the bitcoin, when not everybody has a book or a bitcoin show or whatever. But if you're, if you're the, if you're into bitcoin, you're like the bitcoin guy in your normie community. And so you're the Michael Saylor to that community and so those questions will flow naturally. And so, yeah, for me, I think it gives me more patience with my uncle. That just is like the last holdout, you know.
- [07:14]
Danny Knowles
Do you know the funny thing though about like, because you do become. You're known as like the bitcoiner amongst your friends, and you say you become, like, the Michael Saylor of those people, but that's not been my experience. It's like, it's that thing where, like, everyone's an idiot in their own village. And, like, all these people know me from when I was, like, 11 years old and. Absolutely. I'm not listening to you.
- [07:32]
Brian Dementia
That's a good point.
- [07:33]
Danny Knowles
But it's funny. At these conferences, I become the normie. Like, by the end of it, after, like, five days of only talking about bitcoin, I'm like, can we talk about football or something?
- [07:41]
Brian Dementia
That's funny. You know what? And I think I'll grant you that amongst my family, you know, the ones that have changed my diapers when I was a little kid or whatever, you know, saw me light the neighbor's palm tree on fire with the bottle rocket, like, those are probably not the ones that are going to listen to me. I think it's the guys. There is something that comes from going to a conference and then speaking on stage, and then they see that on Instagram or whatever. That kind of, like, reinforces like, oh, wait, other people pay attention to you. Yeah, that maybe does make you in that category a little bit more. But, yeah, no, I've definitely got the cult. Like, I had a friend one time, I think it was during COVID he goes, why are you telling me this? He's like, who are you? Like, like, you're not the financial guru. I'm like, but I, like, I'm trying
- [08:21]
Danny Knowles
to be, you know.
- [08:21]
Brian Dementia
And so, yeah, yeah, I've definitely gotten that.
- [08:23]
Danny Knowles
Yeah, I have seen that swing back the other way a little bit as well. And the most interesting thing, this bear market has been in previous bear markets. I don't know if you've experienced the same thing. Like, it's almost people sort of sniggering at you, thinking, like, you fucked up. This is going to zero. And this time it's been totally different. Like, this time I've had people reaching out instead of being, like, trying to buy at the top, they're like, bitcoin looks cheap now. And I do wonder if the world more broadly is starting to wake up to bitcoin. And I think the kind of sailors of the world probably do help that. Like, they've clearly brought a different level of sort of reputation to it and they're bringing a new audience in. But with that, do you think we lose anything in the bitcoin culture, Bitcoin cult?
- [09:03]
Brian Dementia
I think that, yeah, that's. Yeah, Colts. And that's where maybe the cult Analogy breaks down a little bit is like a culture, once it gets to a certain size, like the feds come in and break it up. Right? I mean and like legitimately like the Feds.
- [09:15]
Danny Knowles
Oh, you drink Kool Aid.
- [09:16]
Brian Dementia
That was. Or drink. Yeah, you drink the Kool Aid, you put yourself out of business. And it's because this, the scam can't, can't run forever. And I think that's maybe what some of the, the outside, the outside world seen a little bit is like, why didn't they drink the Kool Aid yet? Or why didn't the Fed shut them down? Like there's something different about this movement. I thought it was a Ponzi scheme, but like the, you know, the, the bitcoin obituaries thing comes up enough to these people where like your normie friends are like, yeah, I read this website where it talks about times that bitcoin died. And I remember because now they remember being part of the crew that, that rubbed it in your face to bear or bull market bear markets ago or three bear markets ago or however many, however long you've been in it. And so they recognize that they've had some egg on their face a little bit too. And so as, as much as they could shame you in this moment, they're like, actually you, you didn't, like, you didn't rub it in my face when it was at 126k. And I've seen this, this kind of cyclical thing happening and you just get enough financial, like mainstream television that's kind of getting your back and that for good or bad or whatever that is, it's branding. I mean all things, all the world is propaganda. And we can use, you know, the word propaganda in this, like really negative word, but it's, it's using information to shift people's perspective. There's good propaganda, there's bad propaganda. And so at the end of the day, I mean people are getting messaging through their television, through their, through their phone. And there's enough financial institutions that have vested interest in bitcoin that are going to legitimize it in their eyes. And so they would rather maybe kind of come back and give you credit because they know that you front ran some of those institutions. It's like, okay, there's certain people, you will get that stamp of validity with those people where others, they're going to run to the financial instruments because they don't trust you. But it is rewarding when you see the people turn the corner. And yes, like not rubbing in your face in this bear market and saying like, wow, you know, 75k seems like a good buy. Dude, that's, that's a while for anybody that's been in bitcoin for a while. The statement that while 75k seems cheap, seems cheap is what we all said would happen. But we, like, I hope that we all said, we, we like, we said it like, I know that's going to happen, but yet we, we hoped it would happen. And just in the same way that we say, oh, when somebody, you know, somebody's going to buy it, you know, three quarters of a million dollars and that's going to feel cheap. We're saying that now, but like we don't know until it happens, right? So this is the fulfillment of the prophecies that we've been saying. The cypherpunks have been saying since the early days. We get to live through those and it's pretty rewarding.
- [11:48]
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- [14:18]
Danny Knowles
yeah, it's funny, when I first got into Bitcoin, like 2016, 2017, people would talk about 100k. Like they talk about a million dollars now. And at the time I was like, yeah, 100k. But I kind of didn't believe it. And now when people, I hear people talk about a million dollars, it's like, yeah, it's inevitable, like it's going to happen. One of the funny things on the bitcoin obituary side, I had a friend who works in renewable energy and he, I remember at the time when the narrative was it was going to consume all the world's energy by 2021 or whatever it was. And I remember having a conversation with him and he was super skeptical about bitcoin and his mind got changed in December last year. So I went out to Africa, did an amazing trip with Eric Herzman. So we flew to Nairobi and then
- [15:01]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
we did a 30 hour road trip
- [15:02]
Danny Knowles
from Nairobi up to the Ethiopian border over like a couple of days, three days I think it was. And I mean the first seven hours were on a road, the rest of it was dirt tracks. We were in the middle of absolutely nowhere and it's like, there's nothing there. It looks like you're on the moon. And we went to this village called Saru, which isn't even on any map that you can find apart from like the very specific one that Eric uses. He Found this town and it's like a transient community there. So they have like four or five thousand people at a time and basically no electricity. The only electricity they have is they've got one solar panel on the roof of a school and one solar panel on the roof of their sort of medicine hut. And so they have no batteries in either of them. And so in the medicine hut they have a rule where at like 4pm no one opens the fridge. They have. It's like one of those like, I don't know. Yeah, waist high fridge freezer things. They have ice blocks and at four medicines they take the ice blocks and put it in the fridge to keep it cold overnight. And then the power comes on when the sun comes up. And in the school, it's quite funny, they can, it's quite a large ish school. They can light eight of the classrooms they've got. I think they had 10, they could light eight, but they only choose to do six because everyone wants to plug in their mobile phones during the day. And so he's gone out to this village and he wants to build a huge solar plant and he's obviously going to monetize that by mining bitcoin. But the knock on effect to them is that if they want to buy electricity, it's going to cost them one or two cents a kilowatt hour more than the cost of mining bitcoin, which is the cheapest energy basically anywhere in the world. They'll be getting it for like 10 cents a kilowatt hour. And I did a show with Eric after that road trip and we kind of broke down the whole thing. We went on and this guy reached out to me like I was wrong. He was like, this is one of the coolest things I've ever seen. And I actually need to put him in touch with Eric. He wanted to speak to him. But. Awesome.
- [16:42]
Brian Dementia
So like it was, it was the, it was the financialization of it. It was like the mechanism of, of power that. That won him over.
- [16:49]
Danny Knowles
The thing that won him over is that there is no way that that project would ever be sustainable unless it was an ngo. Like, okay, but, but out in. The thing that I also didn't understand till I went there is out in Africa, they hate the NGOs because what they do, the way they get paid is they'll get paid to like stand up a solar plant. And as soon as it's done, they get paid. And so there's no incentive for them to go back and like maintain the things that they build. So there's actually a town, it's the closest town to Saru, which has a big solar plant that was built by an ngo. And they built it and then like a storm came through, a load got flipped over and then people started stealing the electricity from the energy lines. And so they were like, we're pulling out. And someone stopped them from pulling out. So instead of completely ripping the whole thing out, they now charge $0.72 a kilowatt hour there.
- [17:37]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
So the poorest people in the world.
- [17:38]
Danny Knowles
That's crazy. So, so like the idea of have. So the thing that got him is the idea of these people going in as capitalists. They're there to make money, but the effect on the local people is awesome.
- [17:47]
Brian Dementia
Right? Free market, free wall. Like he. Without bitcoin, he couldn't have imagined a free market solution that would solve their problem.
- [17:53]
Danny Knowles
There was no way you could do it.
- [17:54]
Brian Dementia
Wow.
- [17:55]
Danny Knowles
No way. That's amazing. Because. Because they can build a solar plant that's big enough for them for decades, but they can monetize it instantly.
- [18:02]
Brian Dementia
Yeah. And I think it's funny because I think that's why people get that story. And it's the humanitarian side and capitalism winning. And so, I mean, you can speak to a few different people groups of you're winning people over to bitcoin because whether you're a capitalist or whether you're somebody that cares about people in Nairobi or whatever it is. I was talking to a dude at the conference today that's talking about how he's working with the wealthiest companies in the world in AI and how they're using and they're throttling AI or they're throttling bitcoin miners to allow for kind of a market dynamic for AI computation. And so it's like whether you're dealing with the wealthiest, the most well capitalized companies in the world, there's a free market solution involving bitcoin mining. And whether you're dealing with the poorest people in the world, the spectrum is massive. And the problems that are being solved by this. And that's, that's like, that's not even Fox News or any of the financial, financial channels have never once mentioned that. Like, that's not something that's part of the narrative, you know, and so that's where I think when people hear this, they feel like they've discovered. I think that's the biggest eye opener for most people. I think that was probably true. That was true for me. Maybe it was true for you. Of there was something about bitcoin that we felt like we discovered on our own that that was what kind of flipped the switch for us. And, and so I think when these people hear a story like that, bitcoin market solution, that's why they're, they're willing to tell you that you were right. Because they, they learned that on their own as opposed to like, well, Danny shoved it down my throat and so I got it. We like, we're just such prideful people that we want to go and we want to, we want to get the last piece of the puzzle on our own. And so like, like planting the seeds for bitcoin, that's why we say like corny stuff like that is like we planted the seeds and maybe someday that they'll, they'll become a bitcoiner. That's actually how it works.
- [19:50]
Danny Knowles
Yeah.
- [19:51]
Brian Dementia
And so, yeah, it's pretty cool to see that. And I think it's like super rewarding when you do get that attaboy from the guy.
- [19:59]
Danny Knowles
Totally. And it's funny though because it feels like the bitcoin industry, I know people don't like the term, but I don't know what else you call it, but like the bitcoin industry has got so mature where we have these like cool things doing frontier energy in Africa. There's like the stuff that Cash, App and Square have done with allowing bitcoin payments. Every merchant in America, like the bitcoin backed loans, like the financial side has got way, way better. The stuff that strategy is doing, like everything feels like it's really grown up now. But bitcoin's still quite small in the grand scheme of things. And how do you think it goes from here to being what we think bitcoin will be?
- [20:32]
Brian Dementia
That's a good question. I wrote. I mean this sounds like, I mean shilling my books, but. So the first book was bitcoin evangelism. The second book is called Parallel. So bitcoin evangelism is about helping people understand bitcoin if they didn't know it. There's plenty of books that you can do that with. Parallel is kind of a unique book in the bitcoin space because it's kind of like the pitch for why we should start to use bitcoin as money as a unit or as a medium of exchange. And so it's the growth roadmap for money. Like anything that becomes the standard in money goes through four distinct stages. I didn't create these stages. These are just the stages of money. It starts as a novelty. So if you take something like Gold. Gold was originally like when the first Egyptian or wasn't Egyptians, but we'll just say Egyptians because that sounds right. When the first Egyptian found a shiny gold rock, he just gave it to his wife because it looked pretty. And you set it on the table and that's why she wanted it. But then enough Egyptians did that and they saw it on other people's entry tables. Like, oh, you have a, you have that gold rock and you have that gold rock. Then that's when it goes from novelty and then it moves into store of value because everybody says, oh, other people want this too. And so I'm actually going to try and collect some more of those gold rocks because I realize that other people want them and now there's this market demand for it. So you go from novelty, the new thing, it's a collectible or whatever it is, to it's a store of value because other people want it. And then the stage after that is medium of exchange. The stage after that is unit of account. So unit of account being like, this is what we do our books in is like the world is on a fiat standard right now. How, what's, what's your net worth? Well, it doesn't matter. You could have, you know, 100 kilos of gold, but we don't say you're worth 100 kilos of gold. You're worth X amount of dollars, you're worth X amount of pounds. Right? And so those are the stages of money. Where we're at right now is pretty undeniable that we're in the store of value phase of bitcoin. It was in the novelty phase when you got the two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoin, when you could go to the bitcoin faucet and you can get five bitcoin a day for solving a captcha. That was the novelty phase. We were playing around with bitcoin at the time. Right now, companies are trying to hoard bitcoin, countries are trying to hoard bitcoin. That's clearly the store of value phase. Well, the medium of exchanges that was the whole pitch of parallel was like, here's a case for why you should spend bitcoin. I'll tell you what, the most pushback I've gotten in the bitcoin space was asking people to spend their bitcoin. Because bitcoiners inherently are savers. We plan for the future. We talk about low time preference. And so there's something that feels like it's in conflict with spending sats to get a haircut or to have my computer fixed and pay in SATs. People feel a conflict in that because we've trained ourselves to think of bitcoin only as a store of value. So to me, the future of bitcoin happens if we don't allow bitcoin to stay in the store of value phase. It's okay to have a savings account and a checking account. I mean, that's how we do fiat right now, I think. And Jack Dorsey said the same thing. He goes, Somebody asked him in an interview, how does bitcoin die? And he goes, bitcoin dies. And maybe this is true, maybe it's not. But he goes, bitcoin dies if we fail to use it as money. Not as. Not as a savings technology, but as a form of money. Yeah, and he's the one that. That's. I mean, he's pushing the. He's pushing the limits as far as, like, merchant adoption and things like that. So he's really putting his. His technology where his mouth is on it. And I think that the. The people who've been the most enriched by bitcoin were the people who saw one of those phases ahead. Like, if you were in the novelty phase, and everybody's, you know, And Laszlo, when He did the two pizzas for 10,000 Bitcoin, he's actually a genius in doing that. That's a great story. For anybody that, like, makes fun of him for that, it's dumb.
- [24:11]
Danny Knowles
Like, the other thing people don't know about that story, which I think this is true, at least, is that Satoshi was trying to encourage him to because he was basically getting too much bitcoin.
- [24:18]
Brian Dementia
He was GPU mining, and he was getting all the bitcoin. And Satoshi said, hey, you got to find ways to get this out. And so, incredible story when you dig into that. And yeah, I think that's true as well. But anybody that was treating bitcoin as a store of value when it was in the novelty phase, you became excessively wealthy because you took those 10,000 bitcoin and held onto them. So you were thinking one stage ahead. I think the same thing is true for any bitcoiners that are trying to find the alpha. And that's part of the problem, I think, is when the knock on conferences is that, oh, there's so many altcoiners there. There's so much noise or whatever. And maybe that's true, but, like, the problem is people are trying to find the Alpha. Okay, Bitcoin's 75,000 or 100,000 or 150,000. So I'm going to buy the XRP. I'm going to buy this. Like, no, the alpha is still in bitcoin, but it's just by treating bitcoin as money, it's by treating it as a medium of exchange. And so I think if that message becomes popular enough, that bitcoin moves a tremendous step forward. And that's probably the biggest step forward that bitcoin could ever take is if people want to transact in commerce with bitcoin, with bitcoin. And I think too many bitcoiners unfortunately think that that would, that would, that would take away from their wealth because it's like, seems, seems obvious if I spend my SATs that I'm going to lose SATs.
- [25:37]
Danny Knowles
But this is just not understanding opportunity cost and the idea of spend and replace.
- [25:40]
Brian Dementia
And that's, that's, that's absolutely right. And I think it even goes a step beyond that because as soon as I spend my SATs with somebody, I've now developed an economic connection with somebody who also transact in sats. So my first experience with this was a few years ago. I found my barber on Club Orange. I went, I traveled further to this barber because, simply because he, he accepted sats for a haircut.
- [26:07]
Danny Knowles
Yeah.
- [26:08]
Brian Dementia
And so one. That's the bitcoin cheat code. That's the, you know, people will come from further away because they want to support a bitcoiner. But I dropped off some of my books with him and I said, here, man, just like sell some of these and you take the money from it. And he, he ended up saying, look, I'm going to sell them, but I'm going to send you the SATs for him. And so I paid whatever. I think by the time I was done with my tip and everything, I think I paid like $40 for the haircut in SATs, the equivalent. And I ended up, he ended up selling like $120 worth of books for me. So I went out intention, with the intention that I'm going to spend some sats into the parallel bitcoin economy. And it turned out that economic connection actually connected me to his other clients who also spend bitcoin, who also bought a book at the same time. And so my $40 expenditure actually netted me, you know, or brought in $120 worth of SATs. So it's not that that happens every single time, but when you develop economic connections within bitcoin, you brought up opportunity costs. Yeah, the opportunity of the cost of not spending your SATs maybe, maybe closes you off to other bitcoiners who spend bitcoin. And so if you want to be at the forefront of the bitcoin economy, it kind of behooves us to spend some stats now. And like you said, spend and replace is like the safest method to go. Just if you're going to spend $40 on a haircut and pay for it in cash, just buy $40 of bitcoin, spend it in sats. But you've now unlocked a relationship that's a pretty antifragile economic connection for you.
- [27:34]
Danny Knowles
That's very cool. So I was, I did a panel yesterday with Jack Malloz and Miles Souter, and we were talking a lot about bitcoin as. And one of the things that Jack pushed back on a little was the idea that holding bitcoin is still using bitcoin. And also the idea of borrowing against bitcoin and spending in a depreciating currency also can be the trait. Why do you think using bitcoin specifically as money? Is it for that reason? Is it that it basically expands your monetary network, your personal monetary network?
- [28:02]
Brian Dementia
That's exactly why I would do it, is because if I spend and those are valid methods, and it's like, man, I think we can race a few different ways to get to the same destination. So I do not knock them. And those guys are pushing the goalpost for bitcoin. So that might be the chief way to do it. The way that the little guy like me can do it is I think by spending bitcoins, by spending some SATs. And yes, every one of those community connections I get, it's a signal of this is a real one. As soon as I've transacted and I've done a lightning transaction with somebody and they've accepted a lightning transaction is like, that's a real one. Yeah, I know that guy's legit. And it's, it's, it acts as a filter for my community. And there's, there's all sorts of tangential benefits to that. I'd say probably the easiest way to orange pill somebody is to send them a thousand sats. Like take. Download a custodial like Lightning Wallet, where like you put in your all your kyc. It can be like whatever can be. It doesn't have to be, you know, protected at all, but just download whatever. The easiest Lightning Wallet is for you to download so that I can send you a thousand sats, because I can try to explain the double spend problem and what Satoshi Solved. Or I can just show you that. Look it like I just sent you this money without permission and we transacted without the traditional financial rails that the rest of the world uses. And so whether it's, it's like orange peeling somebody in that method or it's stimulating an economic connection, I think both are, both are valid and both allow again, the regular little guy to kind of, to kind of push, push bitcoin forward just an inch or two. But if enough of us move it an inch or two, I think we go pretty far.
- [29:40]
Danny Knowles
How do you think the sort of merchant adoption of bitcoin will go from here? Because we've seen for years now bitcoiners will go into places and try and convince their local stores take bitcoin and they're probably the only ones going in there and actually spending in bitcoin. Does this actually need to be flipped on its head where instead of the person trying to buy something demanding they accept bitcoin, the merchant demanding they're paid in bitcoin?
- [30:02]
Brian Dementia
I mean, I think if you've got a cool enough business then, then you could probably do that. It's just, it's going to be a risk because yeah, the, the, the, the bitcoin has a flavor to it and some people don't like it. Right. And so you might have, you might have some of your clients that, that just don't know bitcoin and that, that, that's off putting to them. So I say, I actually speak on this from experience. I have a chain of wellness studios called Salt and Light in Southern California. So if you ever want to come and do cold plunge or salt rooms or any of that kind of stuff. Come on, come on. In Southern California.
- [30:38]
Danny Knowles
Did you give me a hat like three years ago?
- [30:40]
Brian Dementia
Yeah.
- [30:41]
Danny Knowles
I didn't realize that was you. I hadn't put two and two together. Pacific bitcoin, I think it was. Yeah, I still wear that hat sometimes.
- [30:47]
Brian Dementia
It's a good hat there. We got some good hats. I appreciate that. Well, thanks for, thanks for repping the brand. But, but anyway, so, yeah, so we, we've, we've been, we've been doing this and we've accepted bitcoin for eight or nine years now. And I'd say the people that have paid in bitcoin, I mean, I could probably count them on a couple hands. Yeah. And now we've never, we, we've, we've encouraged, we've gone different methods. We've gone the discount method where like, hey, you can, you know, you can get a discount if you pay in bitcoin. We've also gone the. And I've. I've heard this people, you know, encourage. This is like, no, you. You charge a fee to pay in fiat.
- [31:22]
Danny Knowles
Yeah, it's a premium. This is what. Park Parker loves this.
- [31:24]
Brian Dementia
Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, so, like, and I think that there's something to that that might be. The methodology is you still give them the optionality, but you just show the bitcoin price and then the fiat price. If we can lever our businesses in that way, then, then, then perhaps we're onto something.
- [31:42]
Danny Knowles
Yeah. You said bitcoin has a flavor to it. Do you. Do you think that when you say that, are you kind of saying it's associated with, like, Trump, the Republicans? Is that what you mean?
- [31:53]
Brian Dementia
Yeah, well, unfortunately, I think it has a different flavor for different people. People project onto it. They're different biases. The flavors change. I think now you're. You're right. I think the. The majority opinion is that it's. It's tied to Trump or tried to. Tied to Maga or whatever. And so if people don't like that flavor, then. Then they're just not. They're gonna. They're gonna resent bitcoin for it. Back in the day, it was that's, you know, that's, that's. That's online pirates. And, you know, that's. That's. That's the. The cypherpunks. And I don't want to have, you know, I'm a mainstream financial guy, and so I don't want anything to do with that. Actually, there was. I mean, we used to say this all the time because you've been around bitcoin for a long time. And so you remember that the term was reputational risk. Right? All the mainstream guys were worried about reputational risk.
- [32:39]
Danny Knowles
I think a lot of them still are.
- [32:42]
Brian Dementia
And that's true. That's maybe been dampened a little bit because there's. As soon as blackrock gets in the game, you can be like, well, Larry Fink did it. Right. But within your firm, you might have been the black sheep if you did that. And certainly you could have put your career at risk. And so I think the flavor, yeah, the flavor is very, like, Trump flavored, I think at this point, do you
- [33:01]
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- [35:33]
Danny Knowles
One of the cool things on the sort of merchant adoption and just general adoption of bitcoin as a payment method that I think we've seen. Did you see David Marcus's announcement?
- [35:42]
Brian Dementia
No.
- [35:42]
Danny Knowles
So I just did a show with him. He's done a really cool thing which is. I think he calls it Grid Global Accounts. And what he's built is this sort of plumbing infrastructure that will allow wallets to use this. And you can basically have. You'll have a Visa MasterCard that you can spend from. Actually, no, it's just Visa. A Visa you can spend from. You have a bitcoin account, dollars in there, other fiat currencies, stable coins. And you can completely decide how you pay. And the merchant will. Can decide exactly what they receive. And square do a similar thing where if you pay in bitcoin, the merchant can receive dollars or receive, you know, 90% dollars and 10% bitcoin. And these are the things that I think are really going to break through these barriers that we're seeing. So in terms of like, do you want to get into the wellness stuff?
- [36:26]
Brian Dementia
I love it. That's. Yeah.
- [36:27]
Danny Knowles
Because this is one of the really interesting things in bitcoin is that like, we start off as these weird bitcoiners who come together because we're bitcoiners. And then there's so many other things that have come out of that. Like obviously the health and wellness thing has been a hu. Like, was that what you were doing before bitcoin?
- [36:41]
Brian Dementia
Yeah. Yeah. So I started my Wellness Company in 2008. It was just. I just gotten out of college.
- [36:49]
Danny Knowles
Terrible time to start business, dude.
- [36:50]
Brian Dementia
It was a terrible time to start a business. So Club Orange launched the week that FTX crashed at that Pacific Bitcoin. So the only times I've been associated with launching companies are just in the worst conditions.
- [37:03]
Danny Knowles
So what's the opposite of a Midas touch?
- [37:05]
Brian Dementia
That's right. It's. That's a. I've never framed it that way. That. That's pretty good. So if you have any business ideas like do not, do not, do not ask me to launch it with you. But. But anyways, we made it through. And so maybe some of the best companies are born in hard times.
- [37:20]
Danny Knowles
Yeah.
- [37:21]
Brian Dementia
But I grew up in a family where my. My dad died of a drug overdose, prescription drug overdose. And not to make it all like, you know about that, but that I think it painted my view that something in the system is broken because I remember at one point, I think he had 12 doctors, and I thought, like, oh, he's going to 12 doctors. So, like, that's a lot of medical attention. Well, I found out after he died, and we're, like, going through things. It's like this was 12 doctors that were giving 12 prescriptions. He was cycling through doctors, and nobody was trying to fix them. It was, he was, it was his, it was his gravy train of prescriptions and opiates and things like that.
- [37:59]
Danny Knowles
And so can I ask when that was when he died?
- [38:02]
Brian Dementia
So that was 2006 when he died,
- [38:05]
Danny Knowles
because obviously, like, in the last, you know, decade or so, there's been a huge thing about the opioid epidemic in, in America. Was this before that had really kicked off, or was this, this a part of the same problem?
- [38:14]
Brian Dementia
This is when it was happening. And I don't think it was getting the press. Okay, that, because, yeah, doctors weren't being scrutinized for, for, you know, just. There was no standards around. You could come in and say, you have an achy knee and get, get opiates. I mean, I remember, I, so I, I, I, I'm a black belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu. I, I trained, I fought MMA for a long time. Just weird, fun stories that. But, but I, I fractured a rib one time. I remember going in, this is probably 2012 at the time, or 2013. I remember going into the doctor and, and I just said, hey, I just need to know what's wrong with my rib. I don't want anything else. He goes, oh, ribs, ribs are really painful. He goes, what, what are you out on the, on the pain meter? And it was probably like an 8 or a 9, because it was, it was pretty bad. I remember I told him a three. I said, it's a three. I can deal with it. Because I knew he would say. And so he goes, you know what? Let me just give you some Norcos anyways, like, And I, that was me telling him that I'm not in much pain, and I don't, I have a family history of, like, abuse of pain meds. And he was still just, just to be safe. Like, that was, that was the, the decorum that was the standard was, let's just be safe on that side. I mean, it was like the least safe method you could possibly.
- [39:18]
Danny Knowles
I had a similar thing. I did my ACL and I went in for a knee reconstruction, and there they have, like, the thing you can press on the bed to just like, administer as much you want. And at first I was like, this might be fun. So I was pressing it a few times, felt dreadful. And then when I was leaving again, they were like. Because it can be very painful, but it really depends on how the surgery goes. And they're like, how sore is it? I was like, it's actually fine. Like, I'm not in much pain at all. And they gave. They were like, I can't remember exactly which drug it was, but it was an opioid. And they were like, here's some to take home with you. I just put them straight in the bin.
- [39:45]
Brian Dementia
Yeah, man. And you got. When you got a family and you got responsibilities and stuff, it's just like, it's too easy for that. And it's like it was. Especially then it was socially acceptable. I mean, I remember seeing, you know, my dad, I would go to visit him at work and. And he would mention to his secretary, he's like, oh, can you bring me my. Bring me my meds? Like, because it was the afternoon or whatever. It was just like, that was just like the office, how the office functioned. It was dysfunctional to Max. Anyways. So that was probably the first time that I recognized, like, gosh, man. Like systems. You grow up thinking systems are built a certain way because they work. Like we're sitting in this building, we're sitting in like this, you know, like tens of stories up in the air. And we've just kind of trusted that the people that constructed this building did what they were supposed to do. Like, we. We can't operate in life unless we kind of trust in things. Because systems, you have to trust systems. At the same time, those systems could have been built terribly. And so some of the system. I think that's what bitcoiners, that's why there's this cross section between bitcoiners and healthy diet or bitcoiners in activity or whatever it happens to be. Because we started to see the cracks. Covid was a big one for a lot of people. But we have these kind of moments in our lives where, man, the system that I grew up, it was like finding out Santa Claus wasn't real. And I think that's kind of what was the eye opening moment that. Okay, there's maybe other things that I should question. And so that's where I got into the health and wellness movement was just like, I want to help people's bodies heal naturally. I firmly believe that we were created in such a way that we have the ability. We're kind of like Wolverine, but like in slow Motion, you know, like if I get injured, my body, it's kind of crazy. Like I can get cut and it can literally heal back together. Where that sounds like magic, but it's actually the way our body works. I just need to make sure that I'm getting out of the way of, you know, with, with, with toxins and with poisons and things like that. And so that was kind of the, the, the groundwork for why we got into health and wellness.
- [41:36]
Danny Knowles
Can I ask you a bit about this, this like opioid epidemic? Because I'm sure obviously you've been personally affected by it. What do you think is driving this? Because like obviously you hear people talk about big pharma. What are the broken incentives that have led to this?
- [41:51]
Brian Dementia
Good lord, man. I think it's the most heartbreaking part of it because I think it's really easy just to place blame on pharma and that's clearly, that's the top of the. Whether you want to say it's part of the story, it's where all the financial incentive comes from. But the most heartbreaking was the complicitness of the doctors, the doctors willing to participate. And when you start to get into doctor's incentives, it's like wait, if you get, there's, you know, if you're a pediatrician and for, for a very long time, if you had a certain uptake of vaccinations in your practice or as an adult doctor, as a regular general practitioner, if you had a certain uptake of, of pain meds in your practice, you had certain quotas and you would get things like cruises and people, if they want to fact check this, go, go look like, go look it up. Chatgpt Goog. Whatever doctors incentives, they actually had sales incentives. So they were essentially outpost or, or like, like sales agents for pharmaceutical companies. So you go to a doctor thinking they're there to help you heal. But that guy's financial incentives, the things that are actually going to put a little extra money on the end of his paycheck are going to be the add ons that are. It's not the co pay for the visit. It's not what insurance is paying for the visit. It's not the, the cast when you get a broken arm. It's the real incentives and the way that he rises in prominence in that industry is feeding the beast. Which is in that case, for those doctors that my dad was going to, their flash sale was always on opiates. And that was the heartbreaking part.
- [43:24]
Danny Knowles
So do you think these docs because like I've got a young daughter and like during, I really have never really had to go to the doctors very much touch wood, like. But this was a time when I did, like, because during pregnancy you have to go for checkups and all this sort of stuff. And once the baby's born, there's lots of things you have to go and do. And one thing I found is we used multiple GPS through this and obviously there's some amazing ones out there, but we encountered some that were really giving terrible advice. And I don't think that was out of sort of negligent. I don't think they were meaning to. Like, what do you think drove the doctors? Do you think they knew they were doing wrong and wanted to hit the sales quotas? Or do you think they thought they were trying to solve the problem? Problem?
- [44:02]
Brian Dementia
No, I think that their medical school is not about here's how the immune system works. Their medical school is that this drug is the immune system. Like, this is how this works. And that's just for the vertical of immunity, right? This is how. This is a well baby check. This is when you're supposed to take your baby to a six week well baby check in a two month and whatever these different time frames. Well, if you look at it, those are all based around the administration of drugs. Like you come in for your well baby check. Not to see, like we could take its pulse and we can check its blood pressure and all that kind of stuff, but it's to administer a series of drugs. And so I don't think that they think there's anything wrong. I think they've been thoroughly convinced through many, many years of schooling that this is how western medicine works. And this is just. This is the best and latest we have from the scientific data. Because all of that is backed by some form of scientific data. Now, scientific data, there's problems with it, but nonetheless everything has a journal associated with it, a doctor associated with it, a textbook that says that this is the truth. And so when think about it like we're promoting bitcoin and in so doing of the promotion of bitcoin, we kind of enrich ourselves, right? Because as bitcoin grows, the cult grows and we actually bitcoin grows and we become wealthy and we think we're doing something good and it's simultaneously enriching us. And I actually think we're doing something good. There's nothing wrong with being enriched while you do something good. Doctors are just convinced that they're being enriched while they're doing something good. I tweeted this out recently. It was something to the effect of the most. The scariest thing that we could encounter would be to follow the world's most evil man around for 24 hours, only to realize he's kind of likable and we totally get where he's coming from.
- [45:59]
Danny Knowles
Yeah, that's a banger tweet.
- [46:02]
Brian Dementia
Thank you. I'm surprised I remembered it right now.
- [46:05]
Danny Knowles
So how do you change this, then? Does this need full reform of, like, the education system, or is it really a little like bitcoin, people just opting out of that?
- [46:13]
Brian Dementia
Yeah, I think a lot of that's actually changing now under rfk. Is that one of the things that he. And this is by kind of like executive and regulatory compliance. So hopefully when a. When a new administration comes in, they don't overhaul this because it's kind of finicky with each administration, which is shocking. But in medical school, diet and nutrition is not a rigorous part of medical school. That should be the foundation because you might be getting these medications once a year, every six months, every five years, or whatever, but you're putting food in your mouth three times a day. And so if we're. If the doctors aren't studying the thing that's being put in your. In your mouth or in your body constantly, then they really have no foundational understanding of what the biomechanics that are going on in your body. And so I think that that's probably the biggest change that's happening. So I'm very bullish on the way that the medical community is going. I'd be the first one to champion. Go to your doctor. Go see your doctor, because he actually has an understanding of the ins and outs of your body. I think it would be better a world where doctors would give you the best medical advice you could possibly get. I would gladly pay and take the time out of my day to take my kids to the doctor so that I don't have to try and figure out what's right and wrong by my. My. My research online. And I've actually read a lot of medical journals. But even then, there's still a lot. I mean, it's just a lot of time and energy. I would rather pay somebody that legitimately is weighing the pros and cons. And when there's a time to take a medicine that I know that they've done the due diligence on it. I. When I was still taking my kids to pediatricians, I would ask them questions, and I'd say, okay, this drug that you're trying to give my kid right now, I just read the three studies that are associated with it. Can you tell me some of the contrary? I would quiz the doctor, and the doctor's like, I'm gonna be real with you. Like, I have not read those. I just know that this is part of our protocol. We're part of this doctor's network, and so that's why we do this. And they, like, unashamedly, they were honest. Like, they would lay it out and I'd say, okay, thank you for your honesty. So we're going to decline that one today. And so I, I would love a system where I could go in and I think doctors have, you know, they swear a Hippocratic oath that they should have a fiduciary responsibility to be the note the most knowledgeable person that you're going to talk to about the entirety of your health. And I think that actually is changing. I've talked to a few doctors, doctors that have come. I had a spine surgeon the other day talking about. He wants to open up one of our. One of our wellness studios inside of his clinic because he says our continuing education. We're learning about infrared saunas and red light therapy. He's a spine surgeon. He goes, we're learning about. He goes, what you guys are doing is the future of Western medicine. And he said that quote verbatim. And I'm like, oh, that's kind of crazy to think that holistic hippie medicine is the future of Western medicine.
- [48:57]
Danny Knowles
Is that kind of saying the future of Western medicine is like the history of Eastern medicine?
- [49:02]
Brian Dementia
I think it's exactly what he's saying. And to me, that was so refreshing to hear.
- [49:07]
Danny Knowles
Yeah, that's cool. Can we talk about another one of the big scams in. In this sort of space, which is the food pyramid?
- [49:13]
Brian Dementia
Oh, yeah.
- [49:14]
Danny Knowles
So I'm going to let you explain it because I'm going to do a way worse job than you. So why is this a problem?
- [49:19]
Brian Dementia
Well, it goes back to why the food pyramid was built in the first place. And it was. The regulatory agency said that you need to have certain things in your diet. Well, the things that the companies that were that had influence over that criteria were ones that were. This is post World War II. And so most people don't realize that how much of an influence. We know that Bretton woods happened at that time, Jekyll island and all that the New World Order of Finance came about at the end of World War II, but we don't know that there's like this free market dynamic that didn't need to be like, backroom deals and stuff. It's just that all the munitions factories, all the industrialization of the United States economy that we did to produce war materials needed to find something else to produce. Think of like, if you were doing your American duty and you owe, and you were, you were a wealthy capitalist and you opened up a factory that was producing gunpowder, and all of a sudden, after the war, you're like, yeah, I helped us win the war, but now, like, what do I do with this thing? You'd be looking for something else to do. Well, at the same time, we had the baby boom, right? We know about the post war baby boom. And so now there's more mouths to feed. So your. Our capitalist duty would be not only to make sure your factory has something to do, because we don't need to produce war munitions anymore, but now the country has this huge demand of hungry people. So we need to help farmers. And so we need a lot of those munitions factories, started developing fertilizers. And so fertilizers became this huge industry. And the fertilizers, it was a race to the bottom in terms of trying to find the cheapest fertilizers to feed the most people. And actually that was probably a good. A lot of people that even if it wasn't the most. The healthiest way to produce food, at least we were putting food in people's mouths. So it kind of came out of these good incentives. But over time, after a couple generations of that, you're left with these people that are exerting this influence over the food pyramid. The guy that was just this industrialist that was trying to find something to do with his factory, now he's part of Big Ag, and he's part of this process of. Of he has these chemicals that he needs to do something with. Like you look at fluoride in the water, whether we want to go down that hole or not. But it's like, what's a byproduct of producing. Producing fertilizer? It's like this. You have this product of fluoride that all of a sudden, why in the 1960s, does fluoride in the water become something that every government needs to do? Well, it turns out those same guys that had influence over the food pyramid were also producing. They were the ones producing fertilizer for the farmers. Well, they also had this byproduct called fluoride, that now, instead of it being a waste product, they can actually make money off of it because they can sell it to local governments because it's good for your teeth. Right. And so there's this like intertwining of the diet and our like supplements that we need and this idea that the government should be telling us what's in our water. The government should be doing like, because we have a lot of hungry mouths to feed. And if you have have six kids running around your house, well, make sure that you give them this basically matrix of food. And the foundation of it being. Well, one of the things that we produce the best as a country was wheat and bread. And so let's make bread because we can give that to everybody. Let's make that the foundation of the pyramid. Again, probably in pretty good motives. Yes. Farmers can produce a lot of bread so we want to make sure there's market demand for it. But at the same time, at least we can make sure that the American population doesn't starve. And so it goes from there. It's like, clearly we know by today by a 2026 standard that just because we can produce a lot of bread doesn't mean that it should be the foundation of our diet. It actually should be maybe at the top of the pyramid where we're just sprinkling that in as a tasty treat, you know, but. And the foundation of the diet needs to be more nutrient dense foods. Before it was about getting calories in.
- [53:11]
Danny Knowles
Yeah.
- [53:11]
Brian Dementia
Now we're recognizing that nutrients are the most vital role in the food pyramid. And so with like saying it in the most complicated way possible, that was the incentive structure around the food pyramid. So it's easy to say that oh, big food constructed the food pyramid because they were nefarious. I do think there's a lot of nefarious actors and regulatory agencies in government. I try to ascribe the most basic economic motives to it. I think that that's probably the closest approximation I can make as to why we got the food pyramid that we did. It was based in like necessity, market demand. And then, yeah, some guys wanted to get rich off of it too. So at the same time, you know, if I can feed this growing American population, but I can get filthy rich off of it, off of the cheapest parts of my food, then I'm going to do that.
- [54:00]
Danny Knowles
Yeah, it makes sense like in that post world era, because obviously in the UK there was rationing at that time. I don't think you ever had rationing here, did you? Yeah. So it's really just make whatever, as long as people can eat Then that's kind of good. But we're not living in that world now. Everybody, obviously in bitcoin, this sort of carnivore diet, this kind of thing has been big. What do you think the right diet is? Because I love eating steak, but I just don't want to eat every meal. I've never done the carnivore thing. I like fruit and vegetables, but when I'm at home I eat pretty well. I eat really good. Generally just whole foods. We make everything from scratch. When I'm away, that's a different story. I'm drinking an energy drink right now. We're on day three of a con.
- [54:36]
Brian Dementia
I'm with you on that, don't worry.
- [54:37]
Danny Knowles
But what do you think people should be doing? Because I don't want you to tell me that I shouldn't be eating bread because my wife makes amazing sourdough.
- [54:44]
Brian Dementia
The sour. You sound like you got a good one at home. The sourdough. There's nothing intrinsically bad about sourdough. The way it's, it's complex, its carbohydrates are constructed, is completely different than the very synthetic form of bread that we would get. Then there's a nutritious value to sourdough. So I don't think there needs to be any guilt associated with homemade sourdough. My daughter, my 12 year old, she makes, she makes a dynamite sourdough as well. But yeah, I'm a, and I'm, I'm not a, not a scientist, I'm not, I'm not the leading, the leading expert on this other than am a guy that's genuinely spent the last, like almost two decades trying to understand this and reading and understanding and talking to, you know, the genuine experts in the space. Because this is my livelihood. The best approximation I can come to on that is that diets need to be unique. Like, like your body type is very different than somebody else's. Right. If somebody's a, an endomorph. And so, you know, like, like there's these different types of body types that people have. We burn different rates of fuel. And so like I mentioned earlier, I like to train Brazilian jiu jitsu. I have a jiu jitsu school and so I'm constantly training with these young. Please do your ears. Your ears are going to get jacked up.
- [56:00]
Danny Knowles
I'm a big boxer, but I've never done jiu jitsu.
- [56:02]
Brian Dementia
Oh, you're going to love it. Like if you're willing to take a punch to the face. Like it's so easy to do jiu jitsu, it's tiring, just like boxing. But yeah, less head trauma.
- [56:11]
Danny Knowles
I was sparring like twice a week until about a year ago. Not long after my daughter was born. My wife's like, you got to stop this. I was like, fair enough. I probably do.
- [56:19]
Brian Dementia
So when I had done kickboxing, muay Thai and stuff and trained some grappling, but when my daughter was born, was basically the same time when I went full time jiu jitsu and, and I love it. And it scratches the competitive itch. It makes me feel pretty confident that like somebody jumps up from behind me and tries to strangle me to death. Like I can at least try to fight out of a little bit. Now if somebody stabs me in the back, it doesn't do much, doesn't do much for me. But all that to say is like, I can tell that my, my, my nutrient demand when I'm training jiu jitsu is different even in my own body type than when I'm out of training camp. And so to think that different body types wouldn't need types of diets. I know guys that thrive on Carnivore. My wife thrives on carnivore. My mother in law just started Carnivore last year and she stuck to it and transformed herself. I mean, at 65, she looks younger than she did when she was 50. I mean, it's crazy. And I think what people are seeing in these transformation diets, and especially what we see in our business of older people, they've been programmed to think that life is just a slow degrade until you die. So after 50, things are not going to get better. And, and when things get a little bit worse, here's another pill for it. I guess it's the, the pharma tie back into it. But every time some new symptom arises, cool. We can, we can kind of medicate that, but it's certainly not going to reverse it. Like the whole concept of the medication is just to deal with the symptoms as they go and you have to kind of of mentally accept the suck that is life is only going to get worse from here. So seeing people, we have these vitamin D sunbeds where in three treatments of people just if they can't get vitamin D because there's not good sunshine outside or whatever, people are like, I feel like a different human being. I'm like, stay on this stuff and start to eat well. And these people are in their late 50s or early 60s. I said, I guarantee you that you are Going to. The biggest unlock for you will be that life doesn't have to be a slow downward spiral until I die. And I think that bitcoiners have kind of the upper hand on that because we saw that with the money, we started to ask what's in our money. So then we asked what's in our food. And then we start to ask all these other questions. And so there's lots of bitcoiners in their 20s, 30s and 40s that are kind of like capturing that ethos and running with it now. And so, I mean, it's only going to. That's like a compounding effect. By the time that we're 60, hopefully our health and wellness is even, is even better than the generation before. But the fact that people that didn't take that good of care of themselves at 65 can start doing it at 65 and have like life altering changes is really, really encouraging. And yeah, that spans different. I've seen people do that through a vegetarian diet. And I think what it comes down to, and this is the most consistent thread I've seen, is that those people have community, they have purpose, they have a regular activity. And then the food they eat just isn't processed. So whether it's vegetarian, whether it's meat or whatever it is, it comes from some sort of, like you said, whole food, natural source, and there's just not crap pumped into it. And so those are like the four pillars that I see most consistently.
- [59:27]
Danny Knowles
I love it because I feel like bitcoiners are so focused on taking sovereignty of their money, but you also have to take sovereignty of your health.
- [59:32]
Brian Dementia
Yeah, yeah. It like sucks if you don't do the. It's kind of like a, it's like a seeing a personal trainer that's like super fat. When you see a bitcoiner that's just like not taking care of himself, like, like, dude, you got it on the money.
- [59:44]
Danny Knowles
Yeah.
- [59:45]
Brian Dementia
And so why aren't you getting it here? And so, I mean, everybody's got their own path.
- [59:47]
Danny Knowles
But so what happens when I come into one of these places? Like, what do you do?
- [59:50]
Brian Dementia
I'm going to give you a personal massage. No, no, no, no. So, so yeah, Salt night is, is a pretty cool, fun experience. We try to make the, the components of sunlight as easily. I guess it's almost like the components of a day at the beach. And so we have six different wellness services. We have like I mentioned the vitamin D sun beds which incorporate red light therapy. So, so you're getting the healthy elements of the sun without the overexposure risk of it. Because when you're outside, right. You don't make sure you don't avoid getting too much. And so everything's kind of more properly dosed. Infrared light, which is also in the natural sunshine. You can go into the sauna, get a sweat, which pulls some of the toxins out. You move from that room to our cold plunge room, which when you go to the beach and you go in the water, even if you go to Southern California in the summertime, the water's always like, it hits you a little bit. Not in Brisbane, you don't go in the water.
- [60:41]
Danny Knowles
Oh, no, I do, but it's not cold. It's not cold.
- [60:42]
Brian Dementia
It's warm.
- [60:43]
Danny Knowles
Not in the summer at least.
- [60:44]
Brian Dementia
Okay. Yeah, yeah. So. So yeah, you get, you get a brisk. I don't know if you've done cold plunge, but the invigoration of the cold plunge and then that's all inside of a, of a salt room. So you're actually just breathing in salty air, which has incredible effects for your respiratory tract. I think that's one of the things that a lot of people don't. This is probably, I think that if anybody's trying to look for the alpha in the wellness space, I think, I think the thing that most people in wellness, like red light's kind of a fad right now, which. Well, red light's been around for a long time. I don't think it's going anywhere, but it's just kind of cool right now. The salt therapy, breathing in salt. It's crazy how good it feels like if you have a lung condition, if you're sick, if you've got a cold, how fast it clears it up, or we have people that have asthma and the fact it's anti inflammatory and so people are like, oh my gosh, it's the first time in a long time I could breathe naturally. I think that's if you're betting on something or if somebody's got a wellness company out there and just like, like put a salt room in. Dude, these things, these things are incredible.
- [61:39]
Danny Knowles
See, I surf quite a bit and you get the feeling like, I think being in the ocean again, I did. I never really thought of the salt part, but like being in the ocean doing exercise and then coming out, you don't ever feel better. It is the best start of any day.
- [61:52]
Brian Dementia
100.
- [61:53]
Danny Knowles
This has been awesome. I'm gonna come and see you, dude.
- [61:55]
Brian Dementia
Please do.
- [61:56]
Danny Knowles
I want to go and do jiu jitsu.
- [61:57]
Brian Dementia
We're gonna do Jiu Jitsu. You in la? Yeah, yeah, we're la. And the greater LA area.
- [62:01]
Danny Knowles
Okay. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to be in LA in July, so I'm going to hit you up. That'll be fun.
- [62:05]
Brian Dementia
So we. We've been accused of being just like pharma, and the fact that in Jiu Jitsu, we beat people up, but then I also charge them to go do the full punch afterwards. So we caused the problem, man. We pay you for the you make. That's just good business. But I'll take care of you, don't worry.
- [62:18]
Danny Knowles
There you go. And can I pay in bitcoin?
- [62:19]
Brian Dementia
You absolutely can.
- [62:20]
Danny Knowles
Awesome. Let's go. Thank you for this. It's been cool.
- [62:22]
Brian Dementia
Thanks, Danny.