Welcome in to This Week in Bitcoin, episode 67.
My name is Chris, chrislas.com and jupiterbroadcasting.com is where you can find me.
Huge things are happening with Bitcoin this week, just under the surface.
That's the kind of stuff I love to talk about.
So before we dig into all of that, I want to start us up with a little bit of follow-up from last week's episode.
I think that's going to get us going in the right direction this week.
So last episode, I had just reviewed a preview of the White House's digital assets report.
And from that preview, we kind of knew there wasn't much in there for Bitcoin.
But I think you could probably argue some of the details we were looking for actually came from the interviews of White House staff after the report was released.
Well, the president's working group on digital asset markets making recommendations, it says, will usher in the golden age of crypto and follow through on President Trump's campaign promise.
Joining me now, the leader of that charge, executive director of the Presidential Council of Advisors for Digital Assets, Bo Hines.
All right, Bo, so you've got some breaking news for us this morning. Tell us what the plan is.
Unfortunately, Bo doesn't get into any breaking news, especially if you caught last week's episode.
it does get pretty political. So I'm going to cut that and I'm going to go to where Bo is in a
different interview. And the question comes up from the interview. I believe this is from the
CoinDesk podcast. What about the Bitcoin reserve? But talk to me a little bit about the U.S.'s plans.
Are there any plans to purchase Bitcoin? Is there anything new that you have to share here?
Well, look, I've said repeatedly, you know, we want to accumulate as much as we can possibly get.
And these budget neutral ways are outlined in the SBR executive order. We also have the
Digital Assets National Stockpile, which gives credence to other ecosystems and what's being
built elsewhere in the space. As the president likes to say, we have very smart people in the
administration that are working on this. I think that we'll move on ways of accumulation that can
be implemented most expeditiously. And I think that people will be very pleased with what we
come up with. But I also encourage people just to understand that there's an infrastructure piece
of this as well. And Treasury is working diligently on that, making sure everything's
set up properly so that we can move forward in the best way possible.
Okay, so I'm going to translate a little bit of political speak here. I think what Bo is saying is they're not ready to create a reserve. There is, quote, infrastructure work that has to be done there. And he also says they're looking at budget neutral ways to purchase Bitcoin. And he thinks the way they've come up with the US people are really going to like. I'm going to come back to that in a moment.
Yeah, I guess what I would add is.
This is Tyler Williams.
He's like the lawyer or the counsel to the Secretary of Treasury for digital assets.
The executive order that the president issued on January 23rd really tasked the working group to making fulsome recommendations on a legislative and regulatory perspective for creating the best environment for the industry to thrive in the United States.
That's really sort of the core competency and importance of this report.
Separately, there is a different executive order, as Bo just mentioned, relative to the
digital assets stockpile and the strategic Bitcoin reserve.
And the one thing I will add to that as well is, you know, we love Bitcoin.
We understand it's unique.
I think we've said that repeatedly.
Bitcoin is digital gold.
And we're going to continue to beat on that drum over the course of the next few months.
Okay.
Not much there other than some infrastructure is getting put in place.
And they plan to, I guess, beat that drum over the course of the next couple of months.
But the interviewer asked a decent follow-up question.
which is nice to hear.
I know we're talking about this digital asset report,
but Bo, I know that you've mentioned before
that the Bitcoin Reserve report is coming.
Is there any timeline on when we might see one?
So this is a good question
because after that preview came out
and we saw there wasn't much in there about Bitcoin,
some speculation started appearing on the internet
that we might see a separate report.
And I think Bo plays a little bit of word games here.
Well, there's actually nothing in the EO
that mandates we have to produce an SBR report.
I mean, I think we'll flush out exactly the best way to engage with that matter.
There's nothing in the EO, in the executive order,
that says that we have to flush out a separate SBR report.
That's not quite true.
But he's playing words.
So there is nothing in the executive order that says they need to issue a separate report.
But I went back and I looked at the executive order from January,
and it does say that the federal government is supposed to release
the total amount of Bitcoin that they currently hold.
And he knows that, obviously.
He's executive director for the Advisor to Digital Assets.
He knows that that was in the executive order.
But she didn't exactly ask it right.
She didn't use the right language,
so Bo gets to play a little bit of word games here.
I'm going to back it up so you can hear it.
They're intentionally obscuring the truth around this,
and I have a theory why.
I know we're talking about this digital asset report,
but Bo, I know that you've mentioned before
before that the Bitcoin Reserve report is coming?
Is there any timeline on when we might see one?
Well, there's actually nothing in the EO that mandates we have to produce an SBR report.
I mean, I think we'll flesh out exactly the best way to engage with that matter.
But there are all sorts of interests to consider here for our country and the U.S. consumer more broadly.
And we'll continue to work on that.
I think that at the end of the day, the result that we come to, everyone in the industry will be very happy with.
Okay, so from that, it does kind of sound like they have some idea in mind. But here's what I'm thinking happened. Like they have some sort of strategy in mind. But here's what I'm thinking happened. They did do an audit. And the audit came back not so hot. The last administration sold off a bunch of Bitcoin. That was reported in the last few months of the Biden administration, but it was never backed up. It was never really proven. But it was reported that they were doing a last minute sell off of Bitcoin. Maybe they were, maybe they weren't.
But let's go with that rumor for a moment.
If we look at the situation through that lens, it sort of makes sense why they're playing word games.
They don't have the 200,000 Bitcoin they claim to have.
In fact, in a recent press event during the last crypto summit at the White House, I think Trump gave it in a specific number.
The federal government is already among the largest holders of Bitcoin, as you know.
Really one of the largest holders in the world,
with as many as 200,000 Bitcoin obtained via civil law and various other forms of law.
200,000.
So what if they're not one of the largest holders of Bitcoin in the world, as we know?
Really one of the largest holders in the world,
with as many as 200,000 Bitcoin obtained via...
So what if there's not 200,000 Bitcoin?
What if there's 60,000 Bitcoin?
or even, you know, 90,000,
then they're no longer the largest holder in the world.
It totally kills the brand.
It totally kills what the president has been saying
in these public statements.
So when I hear this word game,
I start to think that maybe they're hiding something,
and I look through that lens,
and it kind of makes sense
that this is the thing they might be hiding,
and this is why we haven't seen the report,
and this is why Beau is kind of...
Here's another interview
where he kind of has the same-sy answer,
same details, sort of.
I will say very clearly, we want as much Bitcoin as we can possibly get.
We have to do this in budget neutral ways that don't cost a taxpayer a dime.
But there are countless ways in which we can do it.
You know, there can be hundreds of different ways we do this, if not thousands.
And so we talk about this in different verticals, whether it be like through mining activity,
whether it be through BitBonds.
I mean, there's tons of creative things.
Collect taxes and Bitcoin.
Yeah, I mean, it's endless.
And so people ask me to give clear examples.
And the reason I don't want to tell you what we're going to do first yet is because I really
don't want to poison the well.
We want to do something that's going to be the most effective in the United States.
And so when we're ready to announce that, which I'm sure we will be in short order, I think that this community will be extremely pleased.
Your big Ethereum bull buddy, Tom Lee, was on Natalie Brunel's podcast, Coin Stories.
And he has a theory that I think also sort of fits in with this, you know, hypothesis I've raised so far.
If we assume they're short the coins and if we assume they're not ready to tell the public that, then we also assume that they might actually want to be the world's largest Bitcoin holder.
So that's why they're not saying anything right now. They want that. They want that branding. They want to put that messaging forward. There's some strategy we'll get to in a moment when we get to the deeper things happening under the surface. So there's a lot of reasons why they probably do want that 200,000 stash or more, but they don't have it. So how do you get it quickly? How do you solve that problem quickly? If they go to the spot market, they shoot the price up. If they go to the OTC desk, they drain them.
So how does a mega purchaser get their hands on enough Bitcoin to become the superpower of HODLers?
Well, like I said, your Ethereum bull buddy, Tom Lee, has a theory that kind of does fit into this hypothesis.
I think the day the U.S. says they want to acquire a million Bitcoin, I think Bitcoin's price is going to go up parabolically.
Right.
Because how is the U.S. going to buy it?
I mean, they can't, you know, if you know their wallet, you're going to see every buy, you know, and it's going to become a national pastime for everybody because they're a long buyer.
I think it's going to be easier for them to buy large holders of Bitcoin, maybe even give tax amnesty, right?
That's why they're saying it's tax free.
We won't tax capital gains.
They'll do everything they can to try to acquire Bitcoin.
maybe but micro strategy has a sovereign put they have 600 000 bitcoin that's the easiest way to get
to a million bitcoin well so how would that work though i mean for people watching that
think like property rights hello i mean those are enshrined in our constitution would would a
company have to sell to the government as long as they're willing to pay fair market i mean like
could they essentially nationalize a company how does it work logistically well the u.s has a
history of acquiring and paying for strategically important things.
They just did so with a rare earths.
I mean, the Pentagon deal with MP, I feel like it's not nationalizing it, but it's a
strategic move.
Yeah, I think the US government takes a private sector approach to that.
So if MicroStrategy is at $400 and the clearing price to do that deal is $3,000 or something,
it's probably cheaper to do that than to try to buy a million Bitcoin.
This is an interesting theory. And I don't know what it means for everybody buying the paper stocks of these companies. Maybe they make a good profit. I don't know. If you do, boost in if you have an understanding of that. Also, if you know of any examples of private assets or industries or assets of an industry or a business that the federal government has bought for strategic reasons in the past, boost that in too. Because I have to be honest with you, that is not something I am very familiar with.
Well, in that same clip of Trump that I was playing earlier, where he talks about having 200,000 Bitcoin,
he also said something that I still recall to this day,
and that is that they want to be a long-term hodler and create a foundation of a new reserve.
These existing holdings will form the foundation of the new reserve.
Unfortunately, in recent years, the U.S. government has foolishly sold tens of thousands of additional Bitcoin that were worth billions and billions of dollars had they not sold them.
So there's a little couching in that statement.
You notice that?
I mean, so he says the 200,000 amount and then he couches it with, but, you know, there was some sell off.
They did sell them mostly during the Biden administration.
Not a good thing to have done.
from this day on, America will follow the rule that every Bitcoin knows very well,
never sell your Bitcoin. That's a little phrase that they have. I don't know if that's right or
not. Who the hell knows? Maybe you should do some research. So why is the president talking like
this? You've also, and I've mentioned the rumors that Trump has referred to Bitcoin as the new oil.
By the way, if anybody knows where the audio of that is, I thought I had that clip. Also send a
link to me. Because all I hear is people reporting that Trump has commented that Bitcoin is the new
oil. And I've talked about it a bit. And I want to expand on that idea for a moment. Because I
think it all connects in with stable coins, stable coin companies buying US debt, and using Bitcoin
as that inflation sink that we talked about last week. I want to expand on that idea a little bit.
At first, I thought, okay, well, you know, there's the proof of work, right? It's energy
relationship. I just thought it was sort of Trump sort of simplistically summarizing. But
this is Luke Groman, and he gets into this is, I think maybe he's probably one of the leading
theorists on this. He gets into it. Then we had Paul Ryan write an op-ed in the journal saying we
could use stable coins to, you know, help manage the deficit. Then we had, you know, which again,
he was formerly in government, conservative, whatever. Interesting, but not that. Then we
had the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, or TBAC. In October of last year, in their quarterly
report, they had a supplement around digital assets and how that can create demand for U.S.
Treasury T-bills. That, for me, was like a whoa moment, bringing up stable coins, talking about
it being a $2 trillion market by the end of the decade. Then they brought it up again in another
supplement in their January 2025 quarterly report. And it was then that it really hit me about what
they mean by Trump, what I think Trump meant by Bitcoin's a new oil, which is when the
U.S. had a fiscal problem, they didn't have a debt problem, but they had a fiscal problem
in 71, 73.
And what they ultimately did was Kissinger went and attended a meeting and it was discussed
where, listen, we're going to raise the price of oil 400%.
It was a famous quote in the Shah of Iran.
So, you know, it was asked, like, why are you raising oil 400%?
He's like, I don't know.
Ask Henry Kissinger.
and oil was made big enough to basically back U.S. deficits, do the petrodollar deal.
And that's what I think Trump means by Bitcoin's the new oil, which is this stablecoin initiative,
I think is really about making stablecoins and by extension, Bitcoin sort of the new oil,
which is they're going to be made big enough to sterilize U.S. deficits.
And so from a political standpoint, I think that the Trump administration really wants,
they really want it, they really need it.
They need something to sterilize deficits.
And they want it in a way that is not going to be inflationary, right?
The problem with using oil to sterilize deficits, of course, was that inflation went through the roof.
and it creates real issues
in terms of your industry, right?
You jack up.
Well, if the price of Bitcoin
goes from 120,000 to 1.2 million,
let's say crazy number,
who suffers, right?
What real economy process
is broken down by Bitcoin at 1 million versus 120 It not used for anything Same thing to be said for gold right Ultimately there a few minor industrial applications but if gold went from 3 to 34 so I think this is a fantastic point because we seen the proof play out
Bitcoin's gone from pennies to over $100,000 and it doesn't cause massive inflation in the economy.
It becomes a place where you can absorb liquidity and it doesn't cause direct inflation.
Same can be said mostly for gold, although since gold is used in manufacturing, it's not as clear cut.
Who suffers, right?
What real economy process is broken down by Bitcoin at 1.2 million versus 120,000?
It's not used for anything.
Same thing can be said for gold, right?
Ultimately, there's a few minor industrial applications.
But if gold went from $3,400 to $34,000, so?
And not used for anything is in the context of things like oil and soy, right?
Where everyone in the world touches that stuff and increasing the price of that impacts the entire world.
If oil goes from $65,000 to $650,000, bond market's going to crash.
Real economy's going to crash.
Inflation's going to go through the roof.
Bond market, right?
If you use silver, if you use, you couldn't do it, but if you use soybeans and corn, if
you, you know, if we try to balance our budget with, you know, China on the back of soybeans
and corn, soybeans and corn are going to be $40 a bushel, probably more.
And literally like 6 billion people in the world are going to starve to death in the
next four months.
But if you, you, you have to, when you want to rebalance things that are so imbalanced,
you need a neutral reserve asset to inflate to the moon that isn't used for anything.
And you can use gold, but if you use gold, there's no connection at all to the dollar.
If you inflate that out of Bitcoin and it drags stable coins along, which are trading,
and then you just spin it as, hey, this is maintaining dollar dominance.
And it is.
It's doing something we needed to do anyway, which was move to a neutral reserve asset
because it will weaken the dollar, the price of the dollar.
It will allow us to begin competing again and making stuff.
This is why I've maintained for a while the U.S. government needs Bitcoin more than Bitcoin needs the U.S. government by a long shot.
And I think the Bitcoin reserve might still be on.
I know I have been a little bearish on it recently, but it seems like perhaps the groundwork is being laid, not only in the Treasury from an infrastructure standpoint, but a Fed note, a Fed's note, as they put it, came out on August 1st.
Quote, official reserve revaluations, the international experience.
Now, what does it mean when it says official reserve revaluations?
They're talking about gold.
they're releasing a note that actually talks about repricing the u.s government's gold holdings
this note explores how five countries germany italy lebanon and coraco and and saint martin
and south africa is saint martin a country guys boy i need to i should ask my son dude
got geography on lock i should ask him they reviewed the recent revaluations that these
countries have done with their gold holdings. And they kind of spin it as a political win.
They say that this is not a totally uncommon practice and that central banks have done this
in the past before. And they say that it has typically been a positive experience in these
areas and that it could provide fiscal relief. But then in here, they have a little footnote.
It's the first footnote of the document.
Footnote number one reads, quote,
In the U.S., the idea has come up in the context of helping to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve.
What?
A Federal Reserve note is talking about reevaluating our gold holdings specifically for the use of purchasing Bitcoin?
What?
I'm going to read it for you again.
I read the whole thing. Quote, in the U.S., the idea has come up in the context of helping to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve or a sovereign wealth fund.
And the use of reevaluation proceeds was proposed in recent legislation by Senator Lummis.
And then they link to her bill to reevaluate our gold reserves and buy Bitcoin.
And that's the first footnote of the note from the Federal Reserve Group.
Again, if you want to look it up for yourself, I'll have it linked in the show notes.
This is wild.
This is wild to see this.
And also, it reveals some extremely embarrassing data for the dollar.
Now, we've always talked about how CPI is not a really reliable number.
And also, it tends not to be very reliable to measure the system with the system, i.e. the dollar.
So in this governor's Fed note, when they're talking about reevaluating the holdings of gold, they touch on dollar versus gold.
And they state the value of the U.S. dollar has dropped from being backed by one of the four by.
Oh, this is my math. The value of the U.S. dollar has dropped from being backed by one forty second of an ounce of gold to just one three thousandth three hundredth of an ounce over the last 54 years.
This is based on their numbers in this note.
So it's a kegger of 8.4% on average over the last 54 years that the dollar has lost value.
So if you measure by gold, which should be the appropriate long-term measuring stick,
on average, over the last 54 years, the U.S. dollar has lost 8.4% on every year.
Now, of course, some years were much worse.
Some years were, I suppose, better.
but that's way higher than the official CPI number says it is. So do with that what you will.
But just remember that CPI number is cooked and then it's used for a lot of things like social
security benefits getting calculated. A lot of things are based on that bogus CPI number.
And that's a Federal Reserve note coming out posted on the Federal Reserve's website
measuring the loss of the dollar value in gold at an average of 8.4% over the last 54 years.
Wow. I mean, that is, to me, wow.
Well, we're in the category of follow-up.
Last week I told you that Bitcoin would be facing another big liquidity test.
And, well, guess what? Here we are.
The issue is the U.S. government is sucking liquidity out of the market.
They held back, I think in part to ease the bond market,
and also while they waited for debt negotiations.
So they didn't issue debt.
The Treasury didn't issue debt for a period of time.
And now they're catching up and they're ramming their coffers with cash
by issuing debt that the market needs to buy.
So you might recall, I mentioned last week,
this is going to be a big challenge for Bitcoin
because they were issuing $1 trillion in debt in Q3 alone.
They moved forward like almost $500 billion in debt that they waited to buy.
The issue is the U.S. government is beyond broke.
And like many of us out there, they are living paycheck to paycheck.
What's the nation-state equivalent of living paycheck to paycheck?
This, of course, here is Jack Mahler's.
And I was pleased to say that his show this week touched on this very problem.
And his take was great.
I'll try to put a link to it in the show notes.
And I hope more people spread this around.
because I don't really see many people talking about $1 trillion getting sucked out of the market.
Everybody's trying to speculate why Bitcoin's down, why stocks went down. It's right here in
front of us. The nation state equivalence is we have to borrow about half a trillion dollars a
quarter. The United States has already come out and said we will borrow and we will have a little
over $2 trillion deficit this year. So our run rate is call it a half a trillion dollars a quarter.
and delaying our half a trillion
because we can't get the rate that we want
and because there are not natural lenders to us anymore.
Now, how do we know this, guys?
Because we can look at the market.
So this is the US government 10-year yield.
And this is, now it's choppy, obviously,
but you can see in the beginning of Q2, it was low.
And now it is higher.
So yields rose.
That means bonds fell.
That means demand for debt was shrinking.
And this is despite an artificially scarce supply.
We took debt issuance out of the market.
We did not dump more debt onto the market.
And yields still rose.
Bonds still fell.
So this is a huge problem.
Indeed.
So they've got to kind of be creative in how they're issuing this debt.
And they've been releasing bits of information, including this morning, about how they're going to issue the debt in like 100 billion chunks and things like that.
And they're going to do short-term financing for a lot of it because the rates.
And this is a signal to big funds, the banks, all institutional capital.
They have to essentially shift to gobble up what they consider these safe assets.
And this process sucks liquidity from the rest of the market, especially the tech sector, Bitcoin, crypto. And it's no coincidence that I think it was Thursday or Friday that this news came out, or at least that the market digested it, the market lost a trillion dollars.
So you just think of it like a giant vacuum cleaner.
It's hovering up dollars.
They're taking it from other places.
They're going to go put it in these safe, short-term U.S. debt things.
So that makes the market go risk-off.
Capital gets pulled into treasuries.
Higher yields tighten conditions.
Investors reassess.
Liquidity dries up for a bit.
So I guess the lesson is enjoy the dip while it lasts.
But let's check in on those test results.
So I said this would be a big test.
And how did it do?
Well, as of the recording of this episode, Bitcoin is down around 6% from its all-time high.
It's only down about 1.3% in the last seven days.
That's about six or so days into this news that the investors are aware of it.
So I think it's pretty impressive.
I actually really am shocked that we're not down more, honestly.
especially considering we just also had to digest the largest Bitcoin transaction in history the week prior.
So we had the 80,000 Bitcoin transaction, $9 billion of liquidity that were removed from the market for a moment,
and then it bounced back, and now this.
So for the moment, a lot of the money is flowing into U.S. debt.
And I'd be curious to know if you agree,
I'm anything above $110,000 when you consider what's happening in the wider marketplace right now.
Seems extremely impressive as Bitcoin is an overall liquidity indicator and liquidity is down, but Bitcoin isn't massively suffering, at least not yet.
The thing is, and I don't really know how this process plays out.
Maybe it's different every time.
How long does this debt issuing process last from the Treasury?
I think it's probably a few weeks.
I don't I don't I honestly I could not tell you though but I think I want to distract myself from
price stuff and I want to debunk one of the most go-to bitcoin arguments you'll ever hear out there
that I've actually never brought up before on the show so let's shift gears for a moment
and just get into this clip this is JL Collins he's pretty well known for riding the simple
path to wealth. He seems like a pretty good guy overall, pretty sensible with very traditional
ideas and advice when it comes to investing. And he was on Hassan's podcast. And in this episode,
and I'll link to this in the show notes like I do, Hassan asks, you know, I think I want to invest
in Bitcoin. My buddies are all telling me to invest in Bitcoin. And JL comes back with one
of the most common arguments against Bitcoin. And it sounds so damn rational. Bitcoin has had
a 82% year over year for the past 10 years.
We know what's going on with the U.S.
Federal Reserve and the United States.
Why not start allocating some serious capital into Bitcoin?
So it depends on whether you're a speculator or an investor.
Well, in this case, I want to consider myself to be an investor.
And I'm asking you, is Bitcoin a good investment?
No, it's a speculation.
JL, I don't.
I mean, I love you, man.
but you're going to get lit up on the internet. You need to not say this.
Well, I'm sorry, but you asked me the question. I can only give you the answer I have.
So let me explain to you what I mean, right? So Bitcoin, as I said earlier,
if you bought Bitcoin 10, 15 years ago, you've done magnificently well. I mean,
who wouldn't want that? I wish I'd done that. I didn't and still haven't, right? But that's not
the question. The question is, where does it go from here? It's at 100,000 or somewhere.
Right now we're talking about 100,000. And when I was talking to Du Bois in the group chat,
it was at 13,000. And look at me. Yeah, but that was then. This is now. So where does it go from
now? Where does it go from here? Well, now I'm getting in front of jail, and that's what you're
not understanding. And I live with regret, and they're roasting me. Where does it go from here?
This is a common, I would say not a criticism, but you'll hear the reverse of this too. Like,
I'm too late. This is another version of this. I'm too late. It's already at $112,000,
$115,000. I mean, how much higher could it possibly go? So where does it go from here?
Right. Because they haven't done the research. They don't, they don't truly appreciate it. Or
sometimes, sometimes, and I think in the case of JL, it probably is a bit of research, but it's also
a totally different mindset on investing than the Bitcoiners mindset. And we'll come back to this.
And they have laser eyes and like, you dumbass. Yeah. You're out here podcasting and doing ad
reads when you could have gone all in on Bitcoin and 10x'd it. Yeah, I think you've confused me
with your psychiatrist. I can't help you with the fact you're being made fun of. All I can tell you
is that when you look at Bitcoin, it's a speculation. So it's not a currency. It's way
too volatile to be a currency. A currency requires stability. That's why inflation is such a bad
thing and deflation for that matter if you can't rely on a currency having a fairly consistent
value it doesn't work as a medium exchange for goods and services and maybe crypto will get there
at some point but right now it's not okay all right so it may let me finish the thought sure
so it a speculation in the sense that like buying gold like buying exotic cars collector cars or artwork or anything like that When you buy crypto you are saying I am hoping and expecting that somebody at some point in the future
will pay me more for this than I paid for it.
In the case of Bitcoin, that's been a pretty good bet,
although it's been a very wild ride.
Anybody who's actually tracked it,
you had to endure some pretty dramatic drawdowns at various points.
but nevertheless that has worked out not all speculations work out just like your list of
of companies up there right they don't all work out you don't have a crystal ball you don't know
where it's going that's a speculation and investment something like btsax which is in
all those publicly related companies those companies are all filled with people actively
working to produce and provide products and services for people who want them. And if they
do it well, they will make money doing that. And as part owners of those companies, we benefit from
that. They are creating wealth. The traders love the ball. I think it's kind of funny that he
points to companies on the wall that have failed and then proceeds to say that companies are the
best investment and not risky. So he does this thing too that, you know, oh, Bitcoin, if I wish
Even Peter Schiff does this now.
Oh, I wish I would have bought it 10 years ago.
Well, people say that about all kinds of stock.
They say that about NVIDIA.
You know, there's, I don't know, it's just such a silly mindset.
But he says it's not a currency because it experiences volatility.
So he discounts the fact that all assets in history have gone through a monetization period.
He also dismisses Bitcoin being used as a medium of exchange when it's already happening all the time.
The Lightning Network is doing millions of transactions.
But he also considers gold a speculative investment. So I don't think he's very worried about currency debasement. But the argument that's really baked in that is in so many Bitcoin criticisms is what is considered the greater fool theory. And this is a straw man argument that sounds pretty good. JL implies that Bitcoin only goes up if someone else buys Bitcoin at a higher price.
But we know this logic applies to literally every asset with a market, including stocks and absolutely including real estate.
Stocks only have value because people are willing to buy them.
And most people, you know, they're buying it on speculation.
Index funds also rely on continued inflow.
So you can't just say buy an index fund because that relies on constant economic growth.
And that's not guaranteed either.
Then, you know, he kind of doesn't really see any of the use cases for Bitcoin because the reality is it doesn't rely on a greater fool.
Even if no one buys your Bitcoin tomorrow, you still own an asset that can be moved around globally instantly, 24-7, without permission, without a bank, without a middleman.
You still own a censorship-resistant store of value.
And you still have access to a monetary network with a fixed asset supply and increasing global adoption and expansion of the network.
That is fundamentally different than speculations like tulips.
And it's not just speculation.
It's a network effect.
It's a protocol.
And the irony that JL misses, and this is the framing Bitcoiners come with, is what if fiat currency is the speculative bet?
Because aren't governments the one relying on someone else to absorb the debasement?
Haven't we extensively covered that on this show?
Bitcoin was created as a response to a purely speculative fiat system.
That's why Bitcoin was created.
And then JL says, you know, if you buy this index, you get exposure to like 3,000 companies.
So you diversify.
And you can rely on the humans working in that company to all want to make the company better.
But what JL misses is that Bitcoin is already an index of human incentive.
It's an index of global incentive coordination for miners to complete for block rewards,
developers maintaining the protocol, creating applications and services that compete with each other,
users provide demand and security through ownership, institutions are adopting it.
These are an index of human incentives, and it shows us that they're protecting themselves against fiat debasement.
Every participant makes the network stronger.
It doesn't require faith in corporate management.
It doesn't require faith in Tim Cook because it's a network, an ecosystem that's growing.
And then, of course, there is the volatility.
The traders love the vol.
Bitcoin's volatility is always brought up.
But how do you get to the big gains without the volatility?
That's what allows it to go up in value.
It's the function.
It's a feature, not a bug.
Assets with no volatility, like bonds, get absolutely destroyed by inflation.
Bitcoin's volatility means you can buy in now and you get exposure to asymmetric upside over time.
So there's, I think, I think that's responding to all of his points in there.
Now, I kind of want to, like, zoom out.
Now, I say this with no disrespect.
I call this the privileged boomer fallacy because I simply just didn't have the privilege of growing up in the time frame they did.
And what it really is, is it's not so much of an age thing as it is an era, a time period, a government policy period of time.
And it's a particular type of privileged near retirement age investor who's been in the game for a while.
They're often a value investor and they just can't understand why someone would buy Bitcoin.
They just don't get it. And I say that with respect because they're smart people.
Like JL, he's very intelligent.
It's not about ageism.
It's about the context in which people live.
See, I'm going to call them privileged near-retirement investors, PNIs.
You see, they grew up in a world where you could trust your bank, you could trust the
government, and you could trust major corporations, or at least they did.
You could build wealth slowly over decades of steady employment, compound interest, and
stick into it.
a 5 to 8 percent return was meaningful because they had 40 years left to grow it
but the context today especially in a post-2008 world for investors that are coming in for
millennials i think you know elder millennials and gen x are often they have close exposure to
boomer generation so they're not hit by this as hard but millennials and and gen z and gen alpha
whatever these stupid names are, they statistically are so screwed. The environment is so different
now. Currency debasement is so real, and it's viscerably bad now. The dollar has lost 86% of
its purchasing power since the boomers started, and wealth and equity in the country is just
exploding. So when the boomers were in their 30s, the average wealth was, on average, around 140,346
a year if you do inflation adjustment math. So on average, a well-off boomer was making $140,346
inflation adjusted for today. Now, millennials at the same age are making around $108,000,
25% decline. Now, the other factor that's in here, when you also consider there's a 25% decline in
what they're making and the cost of living is ridiculous, but real estate is really a big
factor here. It's the number one wealth engine for the boomers out there. And the boomers and
Gen X, on average, their home is worth $1.3 million. Millennials, on average, their home is worth
$750,000. And Gen Z, on average, their home is worth $69,000. Younger generations are paying
nearly 100% more for the same homes boomers bought in their youth. 100% more. You have to have way
more income to home. The down payment is way bigger now. Adjusted for today's inflation,
the average down payment that a boomer would make was $30,000. In today's numbers, $30,000.
The average that a millennial or Gen Z is having to put down in today's dollars is $89,000.
Millennials own less than two-thirds the amount of real estate boomers did at the same age.
the reality is these near retirement investors they benefited from a system that pulled the
ladder up behind them the boomers didn't i don't think these investors even knew it was happening
so bitcoin does make sense to younger investors that live in this context
because you building wealth by trusting the system writing the index doesn't work anymore
you'll get eaten alive eaten alive by inflation and if you have no wealth to absorb that
It's literally taking food out of your kitchen.
So an asset like Bitcoin is appealing because there's no third party to screw it up.
And we keep watching these companies screw it up.
Who would have thought Bud Light would be a bad investment two years ago?
There's no central bank to inflate the supply.
And there's no corporation to manage it for their interest and add new features.
And there's no gatekeepers that say how I can use Bitcoin.
Once I have it, I have it.
But you have to understand that some of these near retirement investors,
those are bad things. No third party control is a bad thing. No central bank is a bad thing.
No corporation managing it is a bad thing. And gatekeepers, well, that's Wall Street. That's
brokers, right? Gatekeepers, they're necessary for the system to function properly.
But to younger investors, Bitcoin's the answer to all of it. And it's the point of it.
So they're just on completely different pages because of the context of their lives.
And so J.L. Collins' go-to advice is, you know, buy an index like the VT Sachs, I think he said.
Yeah, get a little slice of 3,000 companies.
It's literally the ultimate don't-do-any-research strategy.
Just buy them all.
Just trust the fund managers.
Let them use your money as they see fit.
Which, again, might have made sense when the market wasn't distorted by central bank investors all the time,
when dividends weren't being outpaced by inflation,
when real estate wasn't gatekept by generational wealth.
those ideas might have made sense.
But today, after fees and slippage and dilution,
you end up with smaller, longer-term returns
playing his strategy.
If you just picked a few big winners
or just asymmetric winners like Bitcoin,
you're phenomenally further ahead.
But he doesn't see it
because all of the things that we love about Bitcoin
are a risk to him.
And all of the things that we're trying to avoid
are benefits to him.
And that's okay.
That's okay.
You let me know.
you think I'm off? Am I, as they say, over the skis here on this one? I mean, if Bitcoin is a
speculation, answer me this. If Bitcoin is a speculation, then what are the index funds that
depend on endless economic growth and constant inflows? That's a pretty big speculation. Am I
wrong? I mean, maybe traditional finance strategies go buy real estate, I don't know,
DCA into an index fund. Maybe that is still viable for a younger generation.
I'm just, the entire thing, when I hear these arguments, I feel like it's because
we're on two different panes of reality, two different worlds that some of us that, you know,
okay, or maybe here's another way to put it. Tell me what you think about this theory.
The further away you were born from 1972, the more you need Bitcoin sooner, right? This is just a
raw thought. But if you were born before 1971 or close to 1971, of course, you've experienced
currency debasement, but you've also been around during a pretty economically great period where
there was a lot of opportunities like real estate, et cetera. But the further from 1972 you're born,
the more you're born into a system that's just been completely ravaged and the completely
different context you have. I don't know. Maybe I'm making it up here, but I just feel like there's
something to this. And I don't mean to make it about ageism so much as I think it's actually
about privilege. And it just happens to be that if you're a certain age, you've grown up during a
time. I don't know. Maybe I'm digging myself into a deeper hole here. But boost in and tell me what
you think. I'll try to link to the full podcast interview because I thought it was pretty good.
And, you know, I think, honestly, on average, I kind of probably agree with a lot of JL's positions.
You know, having looked at some of his positions on housing and things like that.
So JL, I was just looking it up, was born in 1958. So he's 67 years old. January 25th, 1958.
And so, you know, he's pretty far on the other side of that 1971 remove ourselves from the gold standard moment.
I could be off on this.
I'd love, especially if you listen and you have some experience in here and you have an opinion, boost in.
And tell me what you think of the theory or if you have a different one.
All right, well, there's more show coming up.
Plus, I got your boost, some updates I want you to hear, a final clip of the week and more.
So I'll just take a moment to mention you can support the show by doing what you do.
If you want to stack sats here in the States, River is probably the best way to go.
And I have a referral link you can use to help the show.
They also have a savings account where you put your cash in there to do those smash buys.
And while you wait, you earn 3.8% sats interest.
Now, if you're all about self-custody, you're in Canada or the States,
the Bitcoin Well is an amazing automatic self-custody Bitcoin platform
directly to and from your Lightning or on-chain wallet when you do your buys and sells.
If you've got some sats in a Lightning wallet
and you want to convert them to a gift card,
the Bitcoin company, they're Bitcoin only,
hundreds of gift cards.
You can log in with just Lightning,
no special ID required,
and you can transfer those sats to a gift card
in just seconds.
Then, if you want to stack sats by paying your bills,
by using your debit card, by buying gift cards,
those kinds of things,
community loves the Fold card.
I love the Fold card.
Link in the show notes.
And if it's time to get access
to some of your Bitcoin value without selling it,
Salt Lending's been good to me.
I have links to all of those.
You use those and support the show.
Of course, you can also boost.
Or now on Fountain, you can become a member too.
And I have some boosts to get to.
But before I get to the boosts,
I have to just take a moment and do a little bit of a disclaimer.
As you may know, I've recently transitioned to hosting the show on the Fountain FM hosting platform, which it's a secret. Don't tell anybody about yet.
And one of the things Fountain's team is very keenly aware of and working hard to solve is one of the technologies that we use to enable the boost hasn't really seen very wide adoption outside of podcasting 2.0 apps.
standard lightning apps don't support
keysend
and keysend
it's a little
unknown bit mostly
of the lightning spec that allows you to
jam in some extra data and metadata
like the message
and maybe the app you're using
and the episode you're listening to and the full
amount so even though you're sending it to my node
and my split I only get a percentage the metadata tells me what the entire amount was and Keysend allows for a lot of this to get crammed into the Lightning payment And it doesn require an invoice either
With Keysend, you can just send the payment.
If you probably, when you use Lightning,
you've always interacted with the invoice experience
where you've had to generate a QR code
or had to scan a QR code.
Lightning traditionally has been invoice-based.
Well, that's using something called LN address.
An LN address has become a really sort of universally adopted standard for Lightning apps.
And in part, it's because it just makes using Lightning a little bit more approachable.
It gives you an email address-like looking address.
So chrislass at getalby.com or whatever the GetAlby thing is.
That you can put into any Lightning app and just send sats, or I can generate an invoice to that address.
Much more user approachable.
It also is just, the reality is what apps have adopted.
They haven't gone with Keysend.
So, Fountain keenly aware of this
wants to enable LN address support for Boos
because it would open it up to just about any Lightning app in the world.
So we did this for Twib last week to try to test it out.
We enabled LN address support.
And then we discovered that in certain circumstances,
we were losing the metadata.
So I will not have everyone's messages this week.
Now, once we discovered this, it took us about two days just because we weren't sure if they're just low boosts or what, you know, like, this doesn't look good, guys.
You know, they're like, and the next day I'm like, this isn't good where something's wrong.
And then we switched it back to key send.
So then, you know, we started getting the messages again.
So I will not read all the messages this week because I don't have them in my report.
Now, I do believe I would have the ability to retrieve them
if I knew some of the metadata about your message,
like your name or some words from the message.
I believe I would have the ability to go retrieve them
because one of the cool things Fountain does
is it, as a safety and as an ability
to make it universally accessible,
is it stores some of the metadata on their Nostre relay.
So actually using Nostre,
there would be a way I could go pull those boosts
if I knew what to look for.
So I really apologize
because this is not how the value for value exchange should work.
If you send a message into the show above 2,000 sets,
as part of the value returned to you,
I read your message on the show.
I'm not able to do that this week.
And it kills me because I know I've missed some good boosts out there.
At least the message.
As far as I know, the value would still go,
although I'm not 100% positive.
And we're going to continue to figure this out.
We are going to solve this and take another crack at it in the future.
but for this week
I'm going to do the best I can
so I will have the boost that came in while we had
keysend in place
and then I will try to
figure out a way or if you can tell me
about your boost
in like a cheap boost somewhere and I'll
go look it up. I don't know
what we'll do but I will try to figure it out
with you and I apologize if I miss your
boost this week.
And now as the French
say it is time for
le boost.
And Pies is our baller booster this week with 10,100 sats.
Coming in hot with the boost.
Let's hear it, good buddy.
Now, there may have been a larger booster out there, but Pies is the one we captured.
And he comes in and says, thank you, sir.
This is a long overdue boost.
You always put out great content in an unbiased and rational way.
So thank you.
Coming in hot with the boost.
Well, thank you very much.
Thank you for that hot boost, Pies.
I really appreciate that.
You're our baller booster officially this week.
Chance of Dizzy Spells comes in with 3,000 sats.
Well, I'll be dipped.
I love that name.
That's a great name.
Thank you for your time and energy.
I appreciate the show, including the finance and politics.
Oh, we're still calling it politics, huh?
Well, all right.
I'll take it.
I appreciate that value.
And thank you.
It does take a lot of energy, but it's a topic I'm very passionate about.
And this community I'm really passionate about, too.
So I'm happy to do it.
Thank you, Chance.
Appreciate that.
Tech Metal 21 comes in with 5,000 sats.
Oh my God, this drawer is filled with fruit lobes.
TechMeta says, I'm still learning about all of this and I appreciate your help in that journey.
You, sir, are boon to us all.
Well, thank you.
Coming in hot with the boos.
And he also says, coming in hot with the boos.
Yes, you are.
I appreciate that, TechMeta, and it's nice to hear from you.
Gene Bean's here with 3,559 sats.
I don't understand what the heck is going on here.
He says, regarding your feedback on the Dolphin card, I think it's important to also remember that one of the primary target user groups are people without bank accounts outside the U.S.
So, regarding usability in the U.S., they claim Apple Pay and Google Pay are coming when it's actually available here, even though the card isn't yet.
So maybe when it is, they'll have it on Apple Pay.
He says, you may see some random or duplicate boosts from me.
I had a few hiccups on my Umbral node.
Oh, what went wrong, Gene?
I don't think I saw dupe boosts from you.
I just got these two.
But I'm always curious how the Node stuff's going
and how people's Umbrals installs are doing.
I am falling behind on my updates
and I've heard some horror stories.
So I'm just curious how that's working out for you.
If you feel like reporting it.
Also good to hear they're going to support
the built-in pay systems.
I still don't mean, I still don't know if that means
are they just virtual Visa cards
that still have all the restrictions
virtual Visa cards do?
I'll try to dig into that and figure it out.
I appreciate that boost.
Thank you, Gene.
Nice to hear from you.
Hello there is here with a row of ducks.
That's 2,222 sats.
No message, though.
Just sending us some ducks.
Thank you.
Appreciate that.
User 59.
Also sent a row of ducks.
I'm just getting started with Bitcoin, but the learning curve is very steep.
What do you recommend for someone looking into cold storage but has no clue how to get started?
Love the show and the insights.
You know, I'm almost tempted to tell you don't rush into cold storage.
If you don't have a life-changing amount of money,
I don't know if it's particularly worth it
until you've had a little bit of time to learn.
Not that it's not complicated, honestly.
I think the Bitcoin community
does tend to make it sound very scary.
It is scary in the sense that you are taking
dramatic personal responsibility.
You are personally responsible
for ensuring you don't lose your life-changing wealth.
You're also taking your own life into your own hands
every time you get behind the wheel.
and you're taking your entire family's hands
in your lives into your hands
when you all get in the car.
I think you're, you know, these are not,
these are also things that are very,
very radically self-responsibility things.
And I just think when you think of those types of things,
Bitcoin cold storage, it doesn't rank that high.
It's not as risky as driving a car.
You're not taking on that kind of risk.
But I do think it's worth educating yourself
a little bit, spending some time
because you might set up a different setup
if you give yourself a few months.
And if you're using platforms like River
or other ones that we talk about,
I don't think you need to worry a lot
about getting your sats off immediately.
Not until it's something
that you would consider extremely valuable.
If at that point,
you could always send me more questions.
Because my go-to is going to be something
like the Cold Card or the BitBox O2.
Those are going to be my go-tos right now.
I also like, oh, it is the Jade. I like the Jade too. I do like the Jade. Those are sort of my top
three hardware wallets that you could start looking at, but I think it'd be worth holding off
and waiting till, I don't know, probably for me, it's a few million sats. That's where I start going,
I don't really want to leave this on there, but there's, you know, like River just today put out
their proof of custody and they have more Bitcoin on their balance sheet than their customers.
In other words, they have more Bitcoin.
So every customer could withdraw all of their funds
and they have all the Bitcoin to cover it.
I guess that's an easier way to say that.
Thank you, user 59.
You can always change your name in the Fountain app
and then boost back in and let me know who you are.
Great boost.
And congratulations on starting a very fun journey
that I think ends up changing a lot of us.
So do keep in touch.
HGW39's back with 5,000 cents.
It says, thanks for the signal.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the Samurai and Tornado cash developer trials.
These aren't getting anywhere near as much covers as the treasury companies and stablecoin
regulations, but there are some concerning developments in these cases, which could have
effects on the development of all kinds of Bitcoin applications.
I also saw a report on the rage summarizing the privacy measures the White House are asking
FinCEN to deem as money laundering concerns, and they cover lots of general use cases that
all of us do regularly.
Would love to hear your thoughts on these,
considering your background in Bitcoin with the FOSS-based things.
So let's start backwards.
I need to look more into the RAGE report on the FinCEN money laundering stuff
because I too have seen a report, I read a brief on it, and it looked real bad.
So I will try to note down to look more into that.
Answer your question about the Samurai and Tornado Cash developers.
Yeah, I think both of us are concerned here about the precedent that these cases will set,
and I believe the samurai developers at the last moment
just decided to plead guilty, which starts a process.
And it would impact, I think, all free software.
So it goes beyond just Tornado Cash,
which was for Ethereum and the samurai folks,
which was for Bitcoin.
And it affects anybody that creates free software
that might enable what the law at the time
decides to call money laundering
or evading sanctions or whatever.
So it's extremely concerning.
And I've been thinking and meaning to do a dedicated segment on it soon.
I think, you know, there's not a lot for me to cover when we were in the stages that we have been.
Perhaps more information comes out.
I'm looking for good sources.
The Rage is definitely one of them.
I'm looking for other really good sources.
And I'd love to find audio sources as well.
So if you see any of that, HG, please do send them my way.
I'd definitely consider that a valuable contribution to the show because it's something I would like to cover more.
Great boost.
Thank you.
and please feel free asking questions.
I love it.
Everything.
Satoshi comes in with 2,100s ads.
Oh, Primal Web allows you to switch between NPUBs easily.
It does?
That's great.
Okay, that's definitely a route I might take.
Thank you, everything.
Last week, I said I wanted to set up an NPUB for the show,
but because I use the Albi extension
and that's logged into my stuff,
I don't really know how to manage multiple NPUBs
and not mess that up.
But then Johnny Satz also, and thank you.
That's awesome.
I will check out Primal everything.
But then Johnny Satz came in with a row of ducks.
He said, hey, Chris, great episode.
To manage multiple NPUBs, you can use keys.band.
That's K-E-Y-S dot B-A-N-D.
It's a Chromium browser extension, and it works like a charm.
Gosh, I wish they had this for Firefox,
but I am not opposed to using a Chromium browser to manage Noster.
this is neat so keys.band allows you to swap between different nostre identities it's got
multi-key management it allows you to do the permission control you know like when things
want to ask ask different scopes and stuff and it tracks the activities and the interface looks
really good too like you can authorize certain things for five minutes for an hour forever you
know you can all of that you keep track of the relays it uses who's looked at it so this is this
is a great recommendation keys.band and i will put a link to that in the show notes thank you
johnny sats appreciate it ace ackerman's back with a row of ducks says the bitcoin price will
not break below 110 prior to making all-time new highs oh i love it oh i love that that's so
that's so spicy you know what i'm digging this too right because right now as we record what
115,000. So you got
a 5,000th buffer
and I guess
it really just depends on how long this liquidity
vacuum goes. The treasury vacuum.
Ooh, that could be a title.
You know,
as long as the treasury vacuum is running,
I don't know if Bitcoin climbs. But then I
think once the treasury vacuum wraps,
Bitcoin starts climbing again
pretty quick. So
in the longer term,
this is just about a blip on the radar.
Good one, Ace. Thank you.
Uh, Pickle Rick came in with 10,000 sats.
Another baller.
I hoard that which your kind covet.
And Pickle Rick just says value for value.
Thank you, Pickle Rick.
Appreciate that.
Now, I know that wasn't everybody's boost, and I am so sorry if I missed your boost.
Please do let me know somehow if you can.
We clocked 59,125 sats streamed by 30 of you out there, so I got that.
and when I combine that with our boosters,
it's a pretty bad 109,872 sets.
I would hate to break that down to an hourly wage this week,
but I think that's more on me than it is you guys,
so I put the fail on me.
Ugh.
It's rough.
Let's turn this around.
Things are all fixed now.
It's easy to boost with Fountain.
If you go get Fountain FM, they host Lightning Walt.
They make it easy to connect to Strike or another Fiat on-ramp.
But of course, there's lots of great self-hosted options too.
Just check out podcastapps.com to start the journey.
You know it's popular in our audience when almost every week we hear about somebody using AlbiHub.
And I use AlbiHub amongst also my own self-hosted nodes, which I have a couple of.
And I think it's a fantastic project.
So let me know how your node setups are going.
Umbral, whatever it might be, that's something I'd love to hear you boost in about.
And thank you everyone who supported episode 67.
and like an extended thank you if you supported the show this week
and I didn't get your message on the air.
Thank you very much.
Now, something we've talked about recently,
and it's been in the news, is what's going on in El Salvador.
What's going on?
And there was a decent clip of video released by Documenting Bitcoin on their X account this week that accounts for the El Salvadorians perspective, the people on the ground who are noticing that the price is up.
And it's funny. I noticed this when I was down there. You don't think you wouldn't think of it, but I guess it makes sense. Like when the price is down, the El Salvador people are feeling a little little stinky about Bitcoin.
And when the price is up, everybody's really excited about Bitcoin.
And I guess that's just human nature.
But as a result, a funny thing happens along the way.
They learn the volatility, not so bad, and it's okay to ride the lows.
But they also become more curious, and they want to learn.
And for the last two years, a learning center has helped over 200 owners of local businesses
learn how to integrate Bitcoin into their business.
Atop one of El Salvador's coffee-growing mountain ranges, beans and bitcoin are being traded.
Crypto enthusiasts in Berlin, in the eastern part of the Central American country,
are enjoying the profits of the currency's surge to record levels, currently around $115,000.
dollars. Local market vendor Marta Navarro is one of the lucky ones.
I left the money there and let it work. I left it there and then I would suddenly look at it.
Sometimes it would go up, sometimes it would go down. Suddenly I saw I'd earned quite a bit.
So it's very nice because when you have enough money, you see the profit when it goes up.
In September 2021, El Salvador became the first country in the world to make Bitcoin legal tender alongside the US dollar.
However, in January, President Nayib Bukele's government modified the law as part of an agreement with the International Monetary Fund to obtain $1.4 billion in financing.
That made Bitcoin acceptance voluntary for private parties and limited public sector participation in cryptocurrency.
Berlin is one place embracing the whole idea, however.
More than two years ago, the small community of around 20,000 people created a cryptocurrency learning center.
This is Berlin in El Salvador, and it's a small town that has become essentially hyper-Bitcoinized.
They built the town.
Well, they didn't build the town.
They remodernized the town around the idea of making it a center for Bitcoin.
People created a cryptocurrency learning center to provide technical support to owners of about 200 businesses and entrepreneurs.
They say they have educated over 500 students about Bitcoin as an alternative to the financial system
and claim foreign tourists and locals now regularly transect in digital currency.
Gail Weisenberg, a French hostel owner in Berlin, says she has experienced a shift in attitude.
I think whoever lives in Berlin now lives in US dollars and in Bitcoin standard.
But I think more people are on the Bitcoin standard.
But Quentin Ehrenmann, a French citizen working with a non-governmental organization,
My First Bitcoin, is worried about the change in the law.
Since the government entered into this contract with the IMF,
Bitcoin is no longer legal tender and we haven't seen any other effort to educate people.
The government apparently continues to accumulate Bitcoin, which is beneficial for the government.
It's not directly good for the people.
The government says it has continued increasing its reserves to reach a total of 6,246 Bitcoins, worth over $700 million.
And the IMF said Thursday that El Salvador's crypto holdings
remain consistent with commitments the country made earlier this year.
But Berlin's eager adoption of Bitcoin could remain an outlier.
A 2024 survey by the Jesuit Central American University
showed that 80% of Salvadorans believed cryptocurrency
provided little to no help to their family's wealth.
Reuters has to throw that in there at the end.
You know, the thing I learned when I was in El Salvador
is it just depends who you ask.
If you ask the younger generation, they love it.
If you ask new business owners, they love it.
If you ask business owners that have been around for corrupt government after corrupt government, they don't trust it because it came from the top.
It was a government-mandated implementation, and that right there is what disqualifies it from being trusted.
They don't look at it any further than that.
If the government tells them they should use it, then they don't want to use it.
And so I'm not 100% sure if repealing the law that forces it to be used as currency is a bad thing because it's obviously benefiting some of them.
You know, these El Salvadorians didn't have a savings account.
They didn't even really weren't able to hold on to cash at all.
And now they do.
Now they have a savings account and they can see it grow and they can see the benefits and it sort of sells itself.
And that's why people are showing up to take those classes.
It's a mixed story.
I think it's always complicated.
But I think it's nice to see.
Yeah, that's Berlin and El Salvador, which I think would be very nice to visit.
Now, when I was watching the old tubes this weekend, I think it was on Sunday.
It might have actually been Monday because it was a weird week.
I came across the CBS News, and they covered the fire movement.
And I want to see if you notice what I noticed.
You're never too young to retire, as Luke Burbank explains.
On a recent Sunday morning at a Bible camp outside of Gainesville, Florida,
Nick Johnson got up to preach.
And you've decided to take the simple path to wealth.
Not about hellfire and brimstone, but about a very different fire.
Financial independents retire early Ultimately at the end of the day financial independence really ain about us It about the people that we love and the causes that we care about This was Camp Fi and its attendees were retirees and aspiring retirees who looked a little on the
young side. Our first date, he had a coupon. When Johnson met his wife, Adina, some 30 years ago,
she knew right away he was a saver. I did use a coupon. Really? I'm not ashamed about it. So I
knew that if I presented a coupon and she had an issue with it, she was not my soulmate.
I don't know. I mean, it's cute. It is cute. And coupons are great. But I feel a little bit like
here CBS is telling you that if you just clip coupons for 30 years, then you can retire a
couple years early, there's no way you are beating the monster that is debasement by
clipping coupons.
Adina, what went through your mind when you saw that coupon come out?
How many other coupons do you have?
What's the best deal?
Wait a minute, wait a minute.
Let's see what we can do here.
Nick worked in software while Adina was in higher ed, and despite modest starting salaries,
they managed to pay off their home and save $1.6 million by consuming less, saving more,
and putting 300,000 miles on their beloved minivan, Big Red.
Another trope. Just don't buy so many cars.
You know, if you just put 300,000 miles on your car, you know, if you...
By the way, I've got nearly 200,000 miles on one of my cars.
Well, two of my cars.
You know what ends up happening? About once a year, you've got to put a grand into the thing.
So, it's not like they're free.
But what they don't mention is that this couple started 30 years ago.
You know, clipping coupons, being thrifty, and driving your Toyota for 300,000 miles is a good idea,
and all things Bitcoiners should probably consider doing so that way they can optimally stack sets.
But it ain't enough. It's just not enough.
And to sort of present it as this is the formula, it's crazy.
So the idea that these, and no disrespect to the folks that are living and breathing fire out there,
But my friends, this is not enough.
I shared this with Adina.
I always wanted to be to the point that when I got 50, I didn't want to have to work.
And so honestly, I didn't exactly know how to achieve that.
Then one day during the pandemic, Nick was poking around on the Internet and discovered the FIRE movement,
which led him to Camp Fi, a group of hardcore savers and careful spenders who share tips, tricks,
and philosophical discourse with basically one goal, to get out of the rat race.
It's all inspired by this guy, blogger Mr. Money Mustache, also known as Peter Adeny.
American life is so inefficient, but we're all just kind of following each other,
what each other does, and not realizing where all of this time and money is slipping through our hands.
So start doing things that are different from what other people do would probably be the first piece of advice.
Tell me these people are not primed to be Bitcoiners.
I mean, this is wild.
To think that maybe, you know, they got started during the pandemic,
they could have just as likely come across Bitcoin.
Aideny retired at 30 and turned 50 this year.
I often think that because I retired so early,
I've lived a lot longer than a normal 50-year-old.
I feel like I retired 100 years ago because I've had so many experiences.
It's a great antidote to the usual thing where people say
life goes by too fast and you miss it. However, it doesn't solve your happiness problems. You know,
one of my friends who's also a blogger says like he still had to confront some,
some demons and some emotional issues and taking away his job, just exposed them more because he
could no longer distract himself from them. The key to saving for retirement, according to Aideny,
is to figure out what's important to you and trim your spending everywhere else.
You know, as you start to elaborate what's important, you realize, like, I'm going to minimize the amount of money I've spent because that's my life energy.
And there's some formula that arises in your mind of, like, the less I spend, the more life I have.
Oh, my goodness.
They're so close.
They're so, so close.
They're so close to understanding that when you save money, you're saving the future.
You're saving your energy today for the future.
and if you put it
into something like Bitcoin,
it grows in value.
See, these people,
they're all like,
well, put it in an index fund
or put it in a CD
or put it in a savings account.
Like, they're just,
they're missing this piece.
Vicki Robin is a sort of mythical figure in the FIRE movement as the co of the 1992 personal finance book Your Money or Your Life I guess this must be their Sefa Dean their Bitcoin standard author
With Joe Dominguez.
Robin's philosophy is less about early retirement and more about asking what is enough,
which differs for everyone.
But the consensus of the FIRE movement is to retire,
you have to save and invest 25 times your yearly expenses.
and then live off a 4% drawdown each year.
So these folks are trying to get a 25X every year.
And how do they not know about Bitcoin?
What I don't get is I did this little exercise recently.
I was like, okay, what if I had $1,000 and, you know, you could insert any number,
and I wanted to get the best return over a five-year period,
And I looked at everything and nothing was likely to outperform Bitcoin over a five year period.
Nothing. And I mean, you can you can also perform this exercise is you can find ways to plug in the numbers and try to find an asset or a stock or anything that will outperform Bitcoin.
Like there may be a window of time where NVIDIA is ripping harder, but on average, nothing beats Bitcoin.
So how do they not discover this?
For people that are looking for a 25x return,
you'd think these people would be drawn to Bitcoin as the solution to their problems.
But they seem to, for the most part, miss it.
To save and invest 25 times your yearly expenses,
and then live off a 4% drawdown each year.
It's just, okay, how can I have enough for life that's really happy but no excess,
so that I can liberate my time to do what I find I'm called to do, what I care to do.
And you know, that evolves over time.
I have a little phrase that I've said, I buy my freedom with my frugality every day.
A frugality, Nick and Adina Johnson say, they are now reaping the rewards.
I actually want to pause it here because I wanted to go back to what she says here.
I'm called to do what I care to do.
And you know, that evolves over time.
I have a little phrase that I've said, I buy my freedom with my frugality every day.
I kind of, I agree with her here.
Like I, I, I minimize my spending so I can stack sats and I look at any extra money we
do have, you know, besides some buffer, put that towards sats, especially now.
Like it's just, it's, it's not getting cheaper, not over the longterm.
And I view that as a way of like essentially storing future purchasing power, future energy,
converting it back to energy.
And I guess that's sort of her look at it,
but how are they getting this 25X?
A frugality Nick and Adina Johnson say
they are now reaping the rewards from,
along with their three children.
A life less defined by the stuff they possess
and more by the freedom they enjoy.
I guess it feels like their narrative here is
clip coupons, put 300,000 miles on your car,
don't go out to eat, which, okay,
and save harder, and you can retire early, and everybody's smiling.
And it's this example of this near early or close to retirement investor
who, you know, looks back and says, well, this is all you need to do.
Look, just follow this recipe.
It's really simple.
And, you know, buy some index funds and maybe buy some NVIDIA.
You know, make good choices on the stock market at just the right time,
and you'll be fine.
They're going to always remember this trip to Disney,
But they're not going to remember, you know, the extra pair of tennis shoes I bought my son.
My son's not going to look at me like, hey dad, remember that blazer you had on?
Man, it was awesome.
What do y'all have planned for the rest of the day?
What's it look like?
I'm jealous, whatever it is.
What is it, mama?
Well, I have to pick up the kids and then I have to take my son to football practice.
And then whatever grocery shopping I may have needed to do while I was doing this interview,
I need to go ahead and get some of that grocery shopping done.
Doesn't sound like she needs my help for any of that.
I'll probably go play golf.
Seems like one of you is more retired than the other one.
I mean, come on.
They're close.
They're so close to being Bitcoiners.
They're so close.
They just are missing that one key piece, knowing about Bitcoin.
All right.
We've been a little negative about old Michael Saylor recently.
I don't know.
I think people get a little tired.
But I wanted our final clip of the week to have a little energy And we have joked before about Bitcoin being a swarm of cyber hornets It a meme that Michael Saylor started but he never really I think defined it until this week
And so we finally got in Saylor's definition of why Bitcoin is like a swarm of cyber hornets, which I have to be honest, I guess I don't hate the analogy after hearing the explanation.
Let me know what you think.
You know, Bitcoin is a virus.
It's a freedom virus.
It's based on a monetary virus.
that's in turn based on a truth virus.
And we think of it as a swarm creature
because everywhere in the world,
there's someone that's supporting the Bitcoin ecosystem
with their electricity, their computer power,
their political power, their economic power.
And it's about as unstoppable
as a swarm of hornets are unstoppable.
You can't shoot a bullet through it.
It's spreading all throughout the world
and it just keeps getting stronger day by day,
week by week, month by month.
This is something you told us was going to happen
for the last few years.
Let's check in on the state of the network
before I get out of here.
The episode's wrapping up at block height 908,906.
The current USD price for a Bitcoin is $115,120.
That puts our sats per dollar at 869 sats to one US dollar.
We are down right now 6.5% from our all-time high of $123,180, which was 23 days ago on July 14, 2025.
Now, let's take a look.
Let's see our next difficulty retarget date is the 8th, still on target for a 0.2 increase.
There are 23,343 nodes online.
Not bad.
And knots.
Let's check in on knots.
Climbing up to 15.4%.
So I think it had just cracked 15-0 last episode.
So I wonder if next episode we'll see it at 16.
So 15.4% for knots.
It is climbing really fast.
Looking over everything else, the state of the network is, in fact, quite strong.
now links to what i talked about today will be over at thisweekinbitcoin.show that takes you to
our page on our site for all the this week in bitcoin episodes my goal let me know how i did
is to create a show that doesn't get distracted by emotions around what's happening but just keeps
it focused on the signal, gets the information you know, gives you something to say to your
Bitcoin hater friends out there. I can't believe I'd never debunked that particular line of attack,
the greater fool theory. Let me know what you think of that one too. Send a boost in. Also,
if I missed something, love to hear from you that way. And of course, apologies if I missed your
boost this week. That's going to be with me for a while. Big apologies there. I hope we didn't miss
too many. I don't think so. So let me know. Let me know. And of course, please consider boosting
you next episode, see if we can't make next week a little stronger now that we have the situation
all sorted out. I'll leave you right here with just me. No value for value track this week,
but I think that'll be back next week as well. So I'm pretty excited about that.
This will be our last traditional outro. So I hope you enjoy it. This is one of the last times you
hear it. Well, at least unless I do a live show. I think I might use this for live shows one day,
too, which may happen in the near future. Another reason to get a podcast to you.
All right. Thanks for joining me. See you right back here.
next week.
Thank you.