1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:11,880 When I think of like the liquidity in the system starting to contract, it picks up pace and it starts to accelerate, which then requires them to put more magnitude to stop it and then push it back out again. 2 00:00:12,280 --> 00:00:19,540 This might be one of the defining moments in history where that cycle could actually not play out. 3 00:00:19,700 --> 00:00:27,960 And the one that wins in this battle is the one who demonstrates the most intellectual rigor. 4 00:00:28,240 --> 00:00:29,500 I'm a little reserved. 5 00:00:29,680 --> 00:00:31,500 I don't usually open up too much. 6 00:00:31,700 --> 00:00:32,760 Well, you're doing great. 7 00:00:33,200 --> 00:00:34,940 Yeah, well, you're doing great. 8 00:00:35,280 --> 00:00:39,320 This was the moment in time where, like, we called each other and we were like, 9 00:00:39,840 --> 00:00:42,260 what in the hell is going on right now? 10 00:00:42,700 --> 00:00:44,080 But no, I wrote the whole book. 11 00:00:44,080 --> 00:00:49,380 I sent it off to publishers and it was no, no, no, no, and no. 12 00:00:49,800 --> 00:00:53,320 Tony Robbins reached out to us. 13 00:00:53,940 --> 00:00:57,200 If you could sit every world leader for 10 minutes. 14 00:00:57,460 --> 00:00:57,720 Yeah. 15 00:00:57,960 --> 00:00:59,020 what would you say to them? 16 00:00:59,460 --> 00:01:01,540 All views expressed by the host or guests 17 00:01:01,540 --> 00:01:02,820 are solely their own opinions. 18 00:01:03,160 --> 00:01:04,320 Nothing stated in this podcast 19 00:01:04,320 --> 00:01:06,100 should be considered a specific endorsement 20 00:01:06,100 --> 00:01:07,420 to make any particular investment 21 00:01:07,420 --> 00:01:08,980 or follow any specific strategy. 22 00:01:09,240 --> 00:01:12,060 Guys, I've got a quick favor to ask before we begin. 23 00:01:12,540 --> 00:01:13,300 Believe it or not, 24 00:01:13,400 --> 00:01:16,700 around 90% of the people who listen to our show regularly 25 00:01:16,700 --> 00:01:19,000 haven't hit subscribe or follow yet. 26 00:01:19,260 --> 00:01:20,280 If you enjoy the show, 27 00:01:20,280 --> 00:01:22,580 that one click makes sure you don't miss 28 00:01:22,580 --> 00:01:24,720 the episodes and guests that matter to you. 29 00:01:25,020 --> 00:01:26,860 It's free, it takes two seconds, 30 00:01:26,860 --> 00:01:30,260 and it genuinely helps keep improving every single episode. 31 00:01:30,800 --> 00:01:33,700 If we've ever given you value, this is the moment to give it back. 32 00:01:34,140 --> 00:01:36,260 And to everyone already following, thank you. 33 00:01:36,440 --> 00:01:38,820 You are the reason we've been able to raise the bar. 34 00:01:39,140 --> 00:01:42,380 Your support, whether it's a donation, a comment or subscribing, 35 00:01:42,720 --> 00:01:44,580 helps these conversations reach further. 36 00:01:44,580 --> 00:01:48,660 It also gives us the push to keep going, keep traveling, keep preparing 37 00:01:48,660 --> 00:01:51,540 and keep bringing you in-person conversations like this. 38 00:01:52,120 --> 00:01:56,440 If you are listening right now, take a second and hit subscribe and the bell. 39 00:01:56,860 --> 00:02:01,480 if you are on YouTube or follow on your podcast app so you don't miss the next episode. 40 00:02:01,900 --> 00:02:02,480 Let's do this. 41 00:02:13,800 --> 00:02:16,080 Preston, welcome back to All in Bitcoin. 42 00:02:16,520 --> 00:02:17,840 Part one was just the beginning. 43 00:02:18,060 --> 00:02:18,920 So here we are. 44 00:02:19,140 --> 00:02:21,880 Part two, the world according to Preston. 45 00:02:22,220 --> 00:02:22,960 Oh boy. 46 00:02:23,480 --> 00:02:25,100 How good of a student were you? 47 00:02:25,100 --> 00:02:51,700 I was a very late bloomer. My middle school years, I would say, were marginal at best. My last three years in high school, I got straight A's. I was a straight A student. I struggled with language. I had to work very hard extra overtime to get A's when I was in my 10th, 11th, and 12th grade year in language. In math, I didn't really even have to try. I just got A's. 48 00:02:52,340 --> 00:02:53,180 What about history? 49 00:02:53,900 --> 00:02:54,160 History. 50 00:02:54,600 --> 00:02:55,540 You know what? 51 00:02:55,580 --> 00:02:56,160 This is funny. 52 00:02:56,660 --> 00:02:59,740 Most people that go to Surface Academies really like history. 53 00:03:00,020 --> 00:03:01,400 I never liked history. 54 00:03:01,880 --> 00:03:03,080 I still don't like history. 55 00:03:03,080 --> 00:03:09,560 I somewhat like financial history only because it informs me as to now and the projections 56 00:03:09,560 --> 00:03:10,200 that I'm doing. 57 00:03:10,760 --> 00:03:16,540 But I've always found history kind of boring for the most part. 58 00:03:17,240 --> 00:03:17,620 I don't. 59 00:03:17,940 --> 00:03:20,840 You won't find me reading some type of history book. 60 00:03:21,000 --> 00:03:21,480 I really. 61 00:03:21,900 --> 00:03:22,920 It's just not my thing. 62 00:03:23,180 --> 00:03:27,820 And it's interesting because I love trying to understand the future. 63 00:03:28,440 --> 00:03:32,900 So if I was going to read a book and it was like, oh, this is where tech's going to be. 64 00:03:33,000 --> 00:03:35,060 And I mean, that's why I do a tech show, right? 65 00:03:35,060 --> 00:03:37,860 I'm very interested in now and the future. 66 00:03:38,340 --> 00:03:46,080 I think it goes back to just how I like to operate inside of my environment. 67 00:03:46,400 --> 00:03:49,600 I'm looking at like, I can't change the past. 68 00:03:49,760 --> 00:03:50,580 Like why in the world? 69 00:03:50,580 --> 00:03:52,660 like if I can learn something from the past 70 00:03:52,660 --> 00:03:54,240 so that I can take action right now 71 00:03:54,240 --> 00:03:55,740 and create the future 72 00:03:55,740 --> 00:03:57,140 that's where I'm focused 73 00:03:57,140 --> 00:03:58,600 so at West Point 74 00:03:58,600 --> 00:03:59,840 they 75 00:03:59,840 --> 00:04:02,000 I mean they cram 76 00:04:02,000 --> 00:04:04,780 military history down your throat 77 00:04:04,780 --> 00:04:06,060 I hated it 78 00:04:06,060 --> 00:04:07,520 every second of it 79 00:04:07,520 --> 00:04:08,180 when I was there 80 00:04:08,180 --> 00:04:10,820 and I had most of my friends from college 81 00:04:10,820 --> 00:04:11,540 they loved it 82 00:04:11,540 --> 00:04:12,260 and I'm sitting there 83 00:04:12,260 --> 00:04:13,200 this is terrible 84 00:04:13,200 --> 00:04:14,100 like get me out of here 85 00:04:14,100 --> 00:04:15,320 I could care less about all this 86 00:04:15,320 --> 00:04:15,700 yeah 87 00:04:15,700 --> 00:04:16,400 yeah 88 00:04:16,400 --> 00:04:19,500 how did the diary of a West Point cadet 89 00:04:19,500 --> 00:04:20,320 come about? 90 00:04:20,320 --> 00:04:35,500 So my first deployment to combat, you're flying combat missions, you're working 13-hour days every day without a day off for the whole year you're there. 91 00:04:36,100 --> 00:04:42,020 But when you're done, you've got the remaining couple hours in the day to do whatever. 92 00:04:42,700 --> 00:04:48,760 And what I found a lot of people doing was they would just be watching movies on their laptop. 93 00:04:48,760 --> 00:04:55,540 They'd go back to their little shipping container or whatever your little house or little cubicle 94 00:04:55,540 --> 00:04:58,640 where you lived after your day of work was done. 95 00:04:59,140 --> 00:05:02,080 People would go back, they'd open their laptop, and they'd watch movies. 96 00:05:02,660 --> 00:05:07,820 And so I just kind of like the first month I was there, I was just doing this. 97 00:05:08,440 --> 00:05:13,780 And I was just like, oh, my God, I feel like my brain is rotting just sitting here watching 98 00:05:13,780 --> 00:05:14,960 TV. 99 00:05:14,960 --> 00:05:18,200 It was just super brain dead to me. 100 00:05:18,760 --> 00:05:20,500 And I was like, I've got to do something productive. 101 00:05:20,620 --> 00:05:21,660 This is driving me crazy. 102 00:05:22,320 --> 00:05:27,640 I felt like West Point's a super unique experience for college. 103 00:05:28,600 --> 00:05:34,440 And there's these moments that are just really funny, like things that I remembered from my 104 00:05:34,440 --> 00:05:40,960 time at school that were just silly or just weird or something that was nothing like another 105 00:05:40,960 --> 00:05:41,840 college experience. 106 00:05:42,760 --> 00:05:46,940 And I was like, maybe I should just write a book about these funny things that happened 107 00:05:46,940 --> 00:05:47,840 to me when I was there. 108 00:05:47,840 --> 00:05:51,960 The other thing, remember going back to this idea that I was terrible with language. 109 00:05:52,680 --> 00:05:57,680 And so I wanted to improve my, I was a terrible writer. 110 00:05:58,640 --> 00:06:00,340 It's just terrible at language in general. 111 00:06:01,140 --> 00:06:03,420 And so I was like, how could I become better? 112 00:06:04,240 --> 00:06:09,460 And I was like, well, if I write a book, like I'd have to become a better writer if I wrote 113 00:06:09,460 --> 00:06:09,780 a book. 114 00:06:09,800 --> 00:06:13,700 And if nobody reads it, whatever, I'm doing it to improve myself. 115 00:06:14,200 --> 00:06:14,360 Okay. 116 00:06:15,500 --> 00:06:17,000 So I come up with this idea. 117 00:06:17,000 --> 00:06:21,000 I'm going to write a book instead of wasting my time watching these stupid movies. 118 00:06:21,520 --> 00:06:22,660 I'm going to write a book. 119 00:06:22,800 --> 00:06:28,480 So I sat down really simply and I was like, okay, like what's the top 15 funniest things 120 00:06:28,480 --> 00:06:32,820 that happened or unique things, novel things that happened to me that, you know, an outside 121 00:06:32,820 --> 00:06:37,740 person that didn't go to a service academy would find interesting or funny or whatever. 122 00:06:38,020 --> 00:06:43,980 So I just started jotting down like different ideas and I was like, okay, I think I can just 123 00:06:43,980 --> 00:06:49,760 turn each one of these funny stories into a chapter and then I'm just going to turn it into 124 00:06:49,760 --> 00:06:58,040 a book. And so I took the first one that I thought was funny or whatever. And I was like, all right, 125 00:06:58,060 --> 00:07:03,360 well, let me just like try to write a story. So I come up with an outline for that particular story 126 00:07:03,360 --> 00:07:10,300 and then I just start writing it. And for the first time in my life, I actually enjoyed writing. 127 00:07:10,300 --> 00:07:14,520 I'm like writing these stories and I'm like laughing inside, like reliving the moments 128 00:07:14,520 --> 00:07:16,040 as I'm like writing it down. 129 00:07:16,540 --> 00:07:19,240 And so I finished the first story. 130 00:07:19,540 --> 00:07:23,340 I print it and I go to a couple of friends that I was there with. 131 00:07:23,340 --> 00:07:27,000 And I said, can you guys do me like, I've got this crazy idea. 132 00:07:27,180 --> 00:07:28,640 I'm like trying to write a book. 133 00:07:28,820 --> 00:07:32,480 And they were looking at me like, okay, like this is going to be stupid. 134 00:07:33,220 --> 00:07:35,820 And I was like, can you read? 135 00:07:36,000 --> 00:07:37,620 This is the first chapter, right? 136 00:07:37,620 --> 00:07:42,760 could you read this and tell me if this is crap, like seriously, tell me it's crap and I will not 137 00:07:42,760 --> 00:07:47,100 feel bad. Like you won't hurt my feelings. And the one guy came back and he's like, honestly, 138 00:07:47,200 --> 00:07:51,260 this was like pretty entertaining. Like it was pretty funny. And I was like, really? Like, 139 00:07:51,300 --> 00:07:54,120 you're not just saying, he's like, no, seriously, it was, it was pretty funny. Like if you had 140 00:07:54,120 --> 00:07:58,160 another one, I would, I would actually read it. And I was like, that was like, okay, well, 141 00:07:58,160 --> 00:08:03,160 let me write another one. So I write the next story and I hand it to him and he was dying. 142 00:08:03,160 --> 00:08:05,400 He was like, this is hilarious. 143 00:08:05,880 --> 00:08:08,840 And so then as soon as he said that, I was like, I'm going to do this. 144 00:08:08,900 --> 00:08:10,020 I'm like going to complete it. 145 00:08:10,360 --> 00:08:15,760 I don't remember how long it took me, but I just continued to work on it for probably 146 00:08:15,760 --> 00:08:17,900 another like for like six months. 147 00:08:17,900 --> 00:08:20,140 Then I just like knocked it out. 148 00:08:20,760 --> 00:08:28,080 And what was funny, so after I write it, you know, I had no idea like how publishing works 149 00:08:28,080 --> 00:08:29,300 or any of that. 150 00:08:29,300 --> 00:08:54,080 And, you know, lo and behold, it's kind of a small market for a book, like a book about West Point. It's kind of actually a pretty small market. There's only there's 10,000 people, 15,000 people that apply to West Point every year. So it's and then like a thousand get in. So like your market size is pretty small. And then the margins on books like really aren't that good. 151 00:08:54,080 --> 00:08:59,400 so I take it to a publishing you know I send it out to a couple different publishers and I have 152 00:08:59,400 --> 00:09:03,760 no social media account because they care about that nowadays because it's free marketing for 153 00:09:03,760 --> 00:09:10,480 them right but I had no social media or anything so I send this manuscript I write the whole book 154 00:09:10,480 --> 00:09:14,540 I send them in that's another thing I learned about publishing you usually write one chapter 155 00:09:14,540 --> 00:09:19,720 and you say this is what the rest of it'll look like as a teaser and then they say okay that yes 156 00:09:19,720 --> 00:09:24,320 yes or no and whatever. And then you write, then you actually write the book. But no, I wrote the 157 00:09:24,320 --> 00:09:31,720 whole book. I sent it off to publishers and it was no, no, no, no, and no. And I was like, 158 00:09:32,240 --> 00:09:36,240 you know, going back to this idea that no matter what, I'm going to find a way to get it done. 159 00:09:36,920 --> 00:09:42,160 So I was like, okay, well, let me, let me search on, is there any, like, how do I self, 160 00:09:42,240 --> 00:09:47,340 how do I self publish? Right? Like I can't find a publisher to publish this thing. So I guess I'm 161 00:09:47,340 --> 00:09:53,440 to self-publish. How do I do that? So I start reading. And this was at a moment in time where 162 00:09:53,440 --> 00:10:03,020 drop shipping, self-publishing, print on demand was just happening. And this is like, what year 163 00:10:03,020 --> 00:10:09,920 is this? This is probably like 2008, I would guess. It was just a new thing, like a new technology 164 00:10:09,920 --> 00:10:14,680 that you could literally order on Amazon. That order then goes to a fulfillment center. They 165 00:10:14,680 --> 00:10:18,540 literally print the whole book and they drop ship it to the person that order it. And there's no 166 00:10:18,540 --> 00:10:25,040 inventory required. Right. So I read about this and I was like, oh, wow, there's this whole like 167 00:10:25,040 --> 00:10:29,420 print on demand thing that's happening right now. So I go and I buy, there was a couple of books 168 00:10:29,420 --> 00:10:33,560 written on the topic. So I go and I read these books on the topic and I was like, 169 00:10:33,740 --> 00:10:41,900 I can just do this. And I did. And sure enough, the book to my surprise shot is the, like the 170 00:10:41,900 --> 00:10:48,880 number one selling book on West Point for the next few years after I self-published it. 171 00:10:49,120 --> 00:10:56,860 That was my first asset, you could say, that I made. And I did that when I was in Afghanistan 172 00:10:56,860 --> 00:11:01,180 on the side. I would go out and fly missions during the day. I'd come back, and instead of 173 00:11:01,180 --> 00:11:06,680 watching movies, I wrote this book. So when did Bitcoin shift from an interest to a conviction 174 00:11:06,680 --> 00:11:17,000 for you? So my first buy was in 2015. And I had invested in traditional stocks. And if they went 175 00:11:17,000 --> 00:11:26,680 up 20% on the year, that was really incredible performance. And so 2015, the first buy was like 176 00:11:26,680 --> 00:11:37,380 $220 a Bitcoin. And within a week, it was at $300. And I was like, what in the hell is this? 177 00:11:39,080 --> 00:11:41,780 You bought, you didn't know anything about Bitcoin. 178 00:11:41,780 --> 00:11:49,320 I had researched it and my thesis for buying it then is not too far off of the thesis of why I 179 00:11:49,320 --> 00:11:50,420 own it now. Okay. 180 00:11:50,420 --> 00:11:59,900 Like when in 2015, I was going back to this idea that when they were doing quantitative easing and all this stuff from the 2008 crisis, I was like, this is crap. 181 00:11:59,900 --> 00:12:01,640 Like this is not solving anything. 182 00:12:02,420 --> 00:12:07,640 I started studying Ray Dalio, probably 2013, 14 timeframe. 183 00:12:08,440 --> 00:12:13,380 And he was the first person that made me understand the value of gold. 184 00:12:13,380 --> 00:12:20,040 Because up until that, I was very strong opinion of Buffett, which is gold is stupid. 185 00:12:20,040 --> 00:12:21,840 I don't even know why anybody would own it. 186 00:12:22,540 --> 00:12:25,000 And I just mimicked that point of view. 187 00:12:25,320 --> 00:12:30,980 But then I started reading Ray Dalio, and Ray Dalio helped convince me that there's 188 00:12:30,980 --> 00:12:35,360 actually an importance to gold as a form of money, and you have these currency debasement, 189 00:12:35,720 --> 00:12:37,080 that whole piece. 190 00:12:37,300 --> 00:12:38,300 I studied that. 191 00:12:39,020 --> 00:12:43,460 I couldn't say I deeply understood it, but I understood it enough to know that there 192 00:12:43,460 --> 00:12:49,380 needed to be a reset to what was happening in the 2008 crisis was this manifestation 193 00:12:49,380 --> 00:12:53,300 of this long-term credit cycle that Dalio talks about. 194 00:12:53,520 --> 00:12:57,020 Like I understood all of that prior to buying Bitcoin in 2015. 195 00:12:57,720 --> 00:12:59,480 So when I saw Bitcoin, I was like, 196 00:12:59,680 --> 00:13:01,860 whoa, this is gold, but digital 197 00:13:01,860 --> 00:13:04,400 and might actually even be better than gold. 198 00:13:04,800 --> 00:13:08,520 So I buy it and then it goes almost immediately 199 00:13:08,520 --> 00:13:10,460 from like 220 to 300. 200 00:13:10,960 --> 00:13:14,320 And I was like, I need to read way more. 201 00:13:15,100 --> 00:13:16,460 And so I started reading every book 202 00:13:16,460 --> 00:13:17,880 I could get my hands on on Bitcoin. 203 00:13:17,880 --> 00:13:23,200 What did you read in order to come up with that initial idea that this is kind of gold, 204 00:13:23,280 --> 00:13:23,880 but even better? 205 00:13:24,060 --> 00:13:27,120 Tony Robbins wrote a book called Money Master the Game. 206 00:13:27,760 --> 00:13:34,440 That book helped me discover why Ray Dalio was an important figure and just kind of understanding 207 00:13:34,440 --> 00:13:35,280 how he thinks. 208 00:13:35,560 --> 00:13:37,560 I was really convinced with that book. 209 00:13:37,640 --> 00:13:40,740 I was kind of like, whoa, I need to pay maybe more attention to this guy. 210 00:13:40,740 --> 00:13:48,580 And then Ray had these white papers on the Bridgewater website, but his big debt crises 211 00:13:48,580 --> 00:13:54,060 and these books that he's now recently published, these were actually PDFs on the Bridgewater 212 00:13:54,060 --> 00:13:58,680 website back in 2013, 2014 that I downloaded. 213 00:13:59,240 --> 00:14:06,160 And I read them and I was really buying into this idea of these long-term credit cycles, 214 00:14:07,120 --> 00:14:09,120 like these 80-year credit cycles. 215 00:14:09,120 --> 00:14:13,080 And when I was looking at that and I'm looking at what happened in the 2008 crisis, like, 216 00:14:13,240 --> 00:14:18,640 holy, like we're at the end of this long-term like 80-year credit cycle. 217 00:14:19,500 --> 00:14:22,700 And the central banks are doing all of these like crazy things. 218 00:14:22,800 --> 00:14:26,360 And so it was really these pamphlets that Ray Dalio had published on the Bridgewater 219 00:14:26,360 --> 00:14:34,160 website that I was reading in 2013, 2014, that convinced me that there needed to be 220 00:14:34,160 --> 00:14:37,880 some type of new settlement layer that's going to replace the dollar. 221 00:14:37,880 --> 00:14:41,920 and one of the things that I also remember 222 00:14:41,920 --> 00:14:44,360 prior to me buying Bitcoin in 15 223 00:14:44,360 --> 00:14:47,180 was interviewing people like Jim Rickards 224 00:14:47,180 --> 00:14:48,500 who wrote Currency Wars 225 00:14:48,500 --> 00:14:53,320 and Rickards' thesis, and he's a big gold bug 226 00:14:53,320 --> 00:14:56,420 his big thesis was that the IMF 227 00:14:56,420 --> 00:14:58,240 was going to use special drawing rights 228 00:14:58,240 --> 00:15:00,440 and all these other things to basically recap 229 00:15:00,440 --> 00:15:03,100 the global settlement layer 230 00:15:03,100 --> 00:15:07,060 and I always found it to be interesting 231 00:15:07,060 --> 00:15:09,940 because it was talking about World Bank, IMF, 232 00:15:09,980 --> 00:15:11,980 and things that I was really struggling 233 00:15:11,980 --> 00:15:13,100 to kind of wrap my head around. 234 00:15:13,200 --> 00:15:14,480 Like, what are these organizations 235 00:15:14,480 --> 00:15:15,540 and why do they exist? 236 00:15:16,160 --> 00:15:18,960 So I was listening to records and saying, 237 00:15:19,060 --> 00:15:21,840 well, maybe that's what resolves 238 00:15:21,840 --> 00:15:24,380 this whole 2008 long-term credit cycle. 239 00:15:24,380 --> 00:15:26,600 But I wasn't necessarily convinced. 240 00:15:27,500 --> 00:15:30,720 And then I started hearing about Bitcoin 241 00:15:30,720 --> 00:15:33,960 and then I did that first buy in early 2015. 242 00:15:34,660 --> 00:15:36,300 But did you read anything on Bitcoin? 243 00:15:36,300 --> 00:15:41,420 Yeah, there was a book called The Age of Cryptocurrency that came out. 244 00:15:41,500 --> 00:15:46,260 I want to say maybe the end of 2014, that book came out, maybe super early 2015. 245 00:15:47,100 --> 00:15:52,380 When I read that, I got quite a bit of conviction in Bitcoin after reading that book. 246 00:15:52,380 --> 00:15:55,640 There was Real Vision videos that I remember watching. 247 00:15:56,160 --> 00:15:57,740 People are familiar with Real Vision. 248 00:15:57,880 --> 00:16:00,940 It's like a macro YouTube thing. 249 00:16:00,940 --> 00:16:06,620 I watched a lot of Trace Mayer videos on Real Vision and things like that. 250 00:16:06,620 --> 00:16:18,250 But the first book that I read on the topic was The Age of Cryptocurrency Because you were mentioning Ray Dalio but Ray Dalio has only recently spoken about Bitcoin 251 00:16:18,510 --> 00:16:21,010 I've had conversations with Ray personally. 252 00:16:21,530 --> 00:16:26,830 And I remember telling Ray, probably 2018, 253 00:16:27,270 --> 00:16:30,290 I remember telling him, and I was a nobody to Ray, 254 00:16:30,410 --> 00:16:32,990 just so everybody knows, like, who the hell is this guy? 255 00:16:33,430 --> 00:16:35,770 I remember saying, you really need to look 256 00:16:35,770 --> 00:16:39,930 the Bitcoin Ray and like, oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, I was like, get this kid away from 257 00:16:39,930 --> 00:16:47,030 me. I was listening to you at the time. But yeah, only more recently, I would say in the last two 258 00:16:47,030 --> 00:16:51,270 years, you've seen Ray really kind of come around to it. I don't even think he's like that come 259 00:16:51,270 --> 00:16:57,290 around to it. I think he still looks at gold as probably being a better way to navigate this, 260 00:16:57,290 --> 00:17:03,230 which I totally disagree with him on. But I have to, I have to tell you, Ray is probably 261 00:17:03,230 --> 00:17:13,950 the most important person in my life to find Bitcoin because of his long-term credit cycle. 262 00:17:13,950 --> 00:17:18,750 If I didn't understand that, I would have never bought it in 2015. 263 00:17:19,890 --> 00:17:23,610 What drew you into the Bitcoin scene and what made you stay? 264 00:17:24,230 --> 00:17:30,750 Once I understood, once I finally pieced together that this actually solves for fiat 265 00:17:30,750 --> 00:17:35,830 creating the incentive for violence, which took me a while to get there. Like I would say that 266 00:17:35,830 --> 00:17:43,530 didn't even really hit my mindset until probably like 2020 or something. And then I started seeing 267 00:17:43,530 --> 00:17:49,770 that side of it. And it was like, there's nothing more important for me to do in my life than to 268 00:17:49,770 --> 00:17:56,510 educate people on this topic. And then, you know, I start going to conferences here and there, 269 00:17:56,510 --> 00:17:58,870 and I start meeting the community and the people 270 00:17:58,870 --> 00:18:01,190 and like why they're here. 271 00:18:01,470 --> 00:18:03,770 And then I realized like the site picture 272 00:18:03,770 --> 00:18:05,950 and all the different vantage points 273 00:18:05,950 --> 00:18:07,190 of like why people are here 274 00:18:07,190 --> 00:18:10,750 was way more profound than I had ever suspected. 275 00:18:11,350 --> 00:18:13,210 Because people were here for privacy reasons. 276 00:18:13,330 --> 00:18:15,190 People were here for, you know, what, 277 00:18:15,310 --> 00:18:16,990 I mean, it's really robust 278 00:18:16,990 --> 00:18:19,050 why all the different people were here. 279 00:18:19,590 --> 00:18:22,310 And you see a little bit infighting within the community 280 00:18:22,310 --> 00:18:24,770 as to like why this reason is more important 281 00:18:24,770 --> 00:18:25,450 than that reason. 282 00:18:25,450 --> 00:18:31,210 but collectively if you could just net all of that out and kind of look at it it's for people 283 00:18:31,210 --> 00:18:36,010 that are looking at this from the outside in that maybe might not understand that let me tell you 284 00:18:36,010 --> 00:18:42,750 it's a very diverse ecosystem of interest of like why people are in this space and i think that 285 00:18:42,750 --> 00:18:47,690 that's one of the reasons why it's so powerful for me it's what you say it's very profound and 286 00:18:47,690 --> 00:18:53,670 from outside i have a friend asked me the other day is that bitcoin like a sect and it's funny 287 00:18:53,670 --> 00:18:56,750 because I understood where she was coming from. 288 00:18:56,770 --> 00:18:57,050 Yeah. 289 00:18:58,030 --> 00:18:59,390 And for me, it's so profound. 290 00:18:59,550 --> 00:19:01,750 The only difference between this and a sect 291 00:19:01,750 --> 00:19:05,010 is that at the top of that organizational structure 292 00:19:05,010 --> 00:19:06,150 is not a parasite. 293 00:19:07,830 --> 00:19:10,230 For example, yeah, it's an important one. 294 00:19:10,290 --> 00:19:13,770 There's no hierarchy that leads to somebody 295 00:19:13,770 --> 00:19:17,610 that's feasting on the brainwashed participants. 296 00:19:18,170 --> 00:19:19,330 That's the difference. 297 00:19:19,890 --> 00:19:22,050 But you have the vigor and you have the excitement 298 00:19:22,050 --> 00:19:25,190 of a sect kind of in the space, 299 00:19:25,310 --> 00:19:27,210 but they're there for the reasons 300 00:19:27,210 --> 00:19:29,370 that are actually to solve 301 00:19:29,370 --> 00:19:32,690 very corrupted problems in society. 302 00:19:33,010 --> 00:19:35,290 This episode is brought to you by Bitbox, 303 00:19:35,430 --> 00:19:36,770 the Bitcoin hardware wallet 304 00:19:36,770 --> 00:19:38,030 that guards your sovereignty. 305 00:19:38,650 --> 00:19:41,030 The Bitcoin-only Bitbox 02 Nova 306 00:19:41,030 --> 00:19:44,130 is Swiss-built, intuitive, fully open source, 307 00:19:44,290 --> 00:19:45,910 comes with a micro SD card 308 00:19:45,910 --> 00:19:48,370 and is protected by a secure element. 309 00:19:48,690 --> 00:19:50,550 So keep your Bitcoin on your Bitbox 310 00:19:50,550 --> 00:19:52,630 offline and save where it belongs. 311 00:19:53,070 --> 00:19:57,270 Go to bitbox.swiss slash allinbitcoin for 5% off 312 00:19:57,270 --> 00:20:00,670 or use the code allinbitcoin or check the show notes. 313 00:20:01,490 --> 00:20:02,750 It took me a long time, 314 00:20:03,190 --> 00:20:04,610 what you just mentioned before, 315 00:20:04,750 --> 00:20:07,970 to unlearn so many things. 316 00:20:08,910 --> 00:20:10,730 I wasted so much time. 317 00:20:11,070 --> 00:20:14,470 So to explain where you come from. 318 00:20:14,490 --> 00:20:15,450 I would hesitate there. 319 00:20:15,450 --> 00:20:18,590 When I look back at my time in the military, 320 00:20:18,590 --> 00:20:41,730 I could very easily say I wasted all those years. But honestly, when I look at those experiences and I look at what you're saying right there, I wouldn't have the conviction and the inspiration to work in this space without that hardship or feeling like I wasted my time doing those things. 321 00:20:41,730 --> 00:20:56,990 That is actually the fuel or the engine that enabled me to see it, to have the conviction, to pour all of the energy that I got right now into it is actually a seed of that past experience. 322 00:20:57,410 --> 00:20:57,590 Yeah. 323 00:20:57,910 --> 00:20:59,150 That's the positive approach. 324 00:20:59,550 --> 00:21:05,730 For me, I interviewed Abu Bakr and he got it at the age of 17. 325 00:21:06,430 --> 00:21:07,210 Yeah, right. 326 00:21:07,550 --> 00:21:09,530 We're all trying to be like him, by the way. 327 00:21:09,530 --> 00:21:18,410 and at the age of 17 i thought the government was good yeah yeah i was indoctrinated 328 00:21:18,410 --> 00:21:25,850 it took me a long time have you ever felt out of place in the bitcoin space and if so why 329 00:21:25,850 --> 00:21:32,250 interestingly i feel most out of place in the bitcoin space right now 330 00:21:32,250 --> 00:21:40,950 believe it or not yeah uh i think because you have so many institutions now showing up into the space 331 00:21:40,950 --> 00:21:48,990 like uh everything up until i would say this past year was very grassroots like everybody that was 332 00:21:48,990 --> 00:21:57,010 here really kind of had like this this thing in their past that they were impacted by or that 333 00:21:57,010 --> 00:21:59,830 It really kind of polarized them as to why they were here. 334 00:21:59,830 --> 00:22:05,950 And now that you see it kind of like moving to this next phase transition, which I would 335 00:22:05,950 --> 00:22:12,410 argue is Wall Street institutions and big corporations and even governments for that 336 00:22:12,410 --> 00:22:13,550 matter are showing up. 337 00:22:13,850 --> 00:22:25,530 I'm feeling pretty out of place and not feeling like I'm nearly as excited to go to conferences 338 00:22:25,530 --> 00:22:26,690 and things like that. 339 00:22:26,690 --> 00:22:29,950 mostly because it's gotten kind of corporate-y. 340 00:22:30,770 --> 00:22:32,190 And you know what? 341 00:22:32,410 --> 00:22:34,950 This is where it needs to go next 342 00:22:34,950 --> 00:22:38,170 to kind of continue to scale and take more dominance. 343 00:22:38,730 --> 00:22:40,430 It was only a matter of time. 344 00:22:41,330 --> 00:22:43,290 And I'm not upset about it either. 345 00:22:43,290 --> 00:22:48,590 I just feel less like I'm on this in crowd 346 00:22:48,590 --> 00:22:52,670 or like I fit in, to be honest with you. 347 00:22:52,710 --> 00:22:54,610 I interviewed Willie, as you know, 348 00:22:54,770 --> 00:22:56,570 and he was really worried. 349 00:22:56,690 --> 00:23:07,170 about the centralization of all the Bitcoin in the hands of just a few. How do you feel about that? 350 00:23:07,170 --> 00:23:12,970 You know, if I was going to audit where all the Bitcoin are today, I think it's actually still 351 00:23:12,970 --> 00:23:19,130 pretty heavily controlled into the hands of individuals, which I think is actually pretty 352 00:23:19,130 --> 00:23:26,330 healthy, especially when you consider most of these individuals have been very good custodians 353 00:23:26,330 --> 00:23:34,770 of the Bitcoin that brought it to this point. When I see the growth rate of like the ETFs and 354 00:23:34,770 --> 00:23:40,850 like so many of them custodying on Coinbase, which was the, yeah. But when you look at the size of 355 00:23:40,850 --> 00:23:46,070 that versus like all the other coins that have been held by good stewards through the first, 356 00:23:46,230 --> 00:23:53,170 you know, 15 odd years of this experiment, that's Bitcoin. A majority of the coins are still not with 357 00:23:53,170 --> 00:23:59,870 those institutions yet. I think the institutions are going to continue to usurp a lot of those 358 00:23:59,870 --> 00:24:04,550 coins from the individuals, especially as you just kind of look at the price and the growth 359 00:24:04,550 --> 00:24:11,670 rate of all of it. And I'm hopeful that we get more jurisdictions around the world that become 360 00:24:11,670 --> 00:24:17,650 more open and more friendly to it, which will then kind of naturally distribute the custody 361 00:24:17,650 --> 00:24:25,030 and things like that to other locations beyond just like where it seems to be pooling right now. 362 00:24:25,310 --> 00:24:30,950 I wouldn't say that I'm concerned about it. I would say that I think it's worth watching and 363 00:24:30,950 --> 00:24:36,330 the discussion is probably more important around the topic as we continue to look at the trends. 364 00:24:36,770 --> 00:24:43,410 The most important thing is regardless of like how much centralization happens with respect to 365 00:24:43,410 --> 00:24:49,690 where people are custodian their coins. The fact of the matter is, is the protocol still allows for 366 00:24:49,690 --> 00:24:56,470 an individual to still take custody with private keys to have that self-sovereignty. And as long 367 00:24:56,470 --> 00:25:06,270 as that's not penetrated or encumbered, the mission or the value prop of Bitcoin is still 368 00:25:06,270 --> 00:25:12,010 there. And if that starts to become encumbered, then we got some serious issues. 369 00:25:12,010 --> 00:25:17,990 but I know where Willie's where he's coming from is all the paper derivatives and things like that 370 00:25:17,990 --> 00:25:23,690 that can get built on top of that when you have the institutions and then how like those those 371 00:25:23,690 --> 00:25:31,910 kind of like multiply on top of it and for me when I look at that like a paper market on top of it 372 00:25:31,910 --> 00:25:40,810 what it potentially will do is is make a violent correction and there can there could be quite a 373 00:25:40,810 --> 00:25:44,430 bit of pain for people that just don't even understand the implications of what it is that 374 00:25:44,430 --> 00:25:51,790 they own in the first place, which for me, my military can't blame somebody else. I look at 375 00:25:51,790 --> 00:25:55,190 them like, well, they didn't do their homework. They got tore up and I don't know what to tell 376 00:25:55,190 --> 00:25:59,650 you. Maybe next time you should actually know what you're doing before you go and do it. 377 00:26:00,110 --> 00:26:04,990 You want to go buy the ETF because it's easy to do that and you don't have to hold the keys. Well, 378 00:26:05,590 --> 00:26:10,090 for that person, they say, well, I didn't know. Congratulations. You should have done more work. 379 00:26:10,090 --> 00:26:14,630 you should have studied harder and you should like, that's what I'm thinking. I don't say that 380 00:26:14,630 --> 00:26:18,590 to people, but that's what I'm thinking at all times. Even if it's a family member that just got 381 00:26:18,590 --> 00:26:23,210 hurt very badly by it. I was like, oh man, I'm so sorry for you. But like deep down inside, 382 00:26:23,290 --> 00:26:25,430 I'm just like, well, you should have read more. I don't know what to say. 383 00:26:25,430 --> 00:26:25,990 Self-responsibility. 384 00:26:26,150 --> 00:26:31,630 I'm somewhat like very unemotional when it comes to people not taking self-responsibility for 385 00:26:31,630 --> 00:26:31,970 themselves. 386 00:26:32,310 --> 00:26:34,870 How did the Investos podcast come about? 387 00:26:35,810 --> 00:26:37,410 Well, I guess I need to back up. 388 00:26:37,410 --> 00:26:44,090 similar to the book, similar to the book. Okay. You were born to tears. 389 00:26:44,550 --> 00:26:48,990 I wanted to become a better writer. I wanted to be better at whatever. So what do I do? I go and 390 00:26:48,990 --> 00:26:52,250 I write a book, right? That'd be like the last thing most people would probably want to do. 391 00:26:52,890 --> 00:26:58,550 So I wanted to be a better investor. And there's a saying, you want to be good at something, 392 00:26:58,550 --> 00:27:03,650 just start teaching it. I was like, oh, well, I wrote the West Point book. Maybe I should just 393 00:27:03,650 --> 00:27:11,670 write a book about finance and investing. And it'll force me to truly sit down, organize my 394 00:27:11,670 --> 00:27:17,550 thoughts, come out with an outline of how I think Buffett does this or whatever. I had just finished 395 00:27:17,550 --> 00:27:23,470 the West Point book. And I remember I was in Kandahar and I was there talking to a guy that 396 00:27:23,470 --> 00:27:29,710 I was flying with. What it was is we were talking about a stock pick. And I went into all the, 397 00:27:29,710 --> 00:27:34,810 with this guy. He didn't have any experience in finance or investing or whatever. He was a pilot. 398 00:27:35,490 --> 00:27:39,470 And I was talking about all the accounting and the cash flows of the company. And he was like, 399 00:27:39,570 --> 00:27:45,770 dude, you really know a lot about this stuff. I said, I love this stuff. I'm super into it. 400 00:27:45,770 --> 00:27:49,850 And I said, I've even thought about writing a book, but who the hell would ever read that 401 00:27:49,850 --> 00:27:56,270 on the topic? And he goes, dude, that's your advantage. He goes, the fact that you're not 402 00:27:56,270 --> 00:28:01,150 from Wall Street and that you would be like writing the book, like explaining things in a way 403 00:28:01,150 --> 00:28:05,770 that maybe the common person could understand. That's not like all this financial jargon might 404 00:28:05,770 --> 00:28:13,090 be like your advantage. And I was like, I like that. And this is another like interesting moment, 405 00:28:13,170 --> 00:28:17,910 I guess, for me, when I look at like my friends in the military, they were always kind of like, 406 00:28:18,410 --> 00:28:22,810 yeah, you should do that. Don't limit yourself for all intents and purposes. I was a little 407 00:28:22,810 --> 00:28:27,990 insecure to do any of this stuff, but it was good friends that I had surrounded myself with that 408 00:28:27,990 --> 00:28:32,330 were kind of like nudging me like, no, I think you can do it. So I start writing this book and 409 00:28:32,330 --> 00:28:38,710 it's just like a disaster, right? I'm writing this book and very quickly you figure out how little, 410 00:28:38,710 --> 00:28:43,770 you know, when you start organizing your thoughts and like trying to write on a topic that I was 411 00:28:43,770 --> 00:28:51,690 never, I was never officially taught in any type of formal sense, which did end up being a massive 412 00:28:51,690 --> 00:28:57,710 advantage, I will say. You go to grad school and you get an MBA and they start teaching you about 413 00:28:57,710 --> 00:29:04,030 CAPM models and some of this absolute idiotic thinking of how to perform economic calculation. 414 00:29:04,170 --> 00:29:08,890 And I could get into a very technical reason here, but I think it's out of scope of our conversation. 415 00:29:09,790 --> 00:29:17,190 But because I was never formally trained on it, I came with a way different vantage point 416 00:29:17,190 --> 00:29:19,710 of like how to value stocks. 417 00:29:20,330 --> 00:29:23,270 And what I kept going back to is I heard a quote, 418 00:29:23,370 --> 00:29:25,030 I heard an interview with Warren Buffett 419 00:29:25,030 --> 00:29:25,730 and one time he's like, 420 00:29:25,810 --> 00:29:28,270 oh, I just value equities the same way 421 00:29:28,270 --> 00:29:29,550 that I value fixed income. 422 00:29:30,130 --> 00:29:31,770 I value a bond like this. 423 00:29:31,870 --> 00:29:33,430 And so I just kind of do the same thing 424 00:29:33,430 --> 00:29:34,650 when I'm valuing a stock. 425 00:29:34,850 --> 00:29:36,130 I was like, oh, wow. 426 00:29:36,210 --> 00:29:37,570 Okay, I think there's something there 427 00:29:37,570 --> 00:29:38,910 that I could really learn a lot from. 428 00:29:39,010 --> 00:29:41,530 So I immediately say, well, how do you value a bond? 429 00:29:42,170 --> 00:29:43,770 Okay, well, let me figure that all out. 430 00:29:44,270 --> 00:29:46,450 Okay, I think I understand that. 431 00:29:46,450 --> 00:29:52,650 the math isn't too hard. Now, how in the world is he valuing a stock like that? Because they're 432 00:29:52,650 --> 00:29:58,890 very different. This thing goes into perpetuity. This thing's got a 10-year duration. And so it 433 00:29:58,890 --> 00:30:04,090 forced me because I had no teacher. There was no AI. I mean, I could do a Google search, but it 434 00:30:04,090 --> 00:30:08,210 doesn't have the answers to some of these questions. How do you value a stock like a bond? 435 00:30:08,370 --> 00:30:12,830 Those answers didn't exist. Because I was self-taught and because I was going in there 436 00:30:12,830 --> 00:30:19,930 trying to put the puzzle piece together from the most successful investor of all time, 437 00:30:20,530 --> 00:30:26,770 and I'm trying to reconstruct the puzzle, I think it helped me understand things in a way different 438 00:30:26,770 --> 00:30:31,370 way than what was being taught in business school, which I will tell you is totally asinine. 439 00:30:31,650 --> 00:30:37,450 I started writing the book, and I quickly realized I have no marketing to sell the book. 440 00:30:37,450 --> 00:30:41,530 and YouTube was becoming much more popular 441 00:30:41,530 --> 00:30:43,170 at this kind of moment in time. 442 00:30:43,450 --> 00:30:45,810 I'm looking at YouTube and I'm saying, you know what? 443 00:30:45,910 --> 00:30:48,950 Maybe if I make some videos 444 00:30:48,950 --> 00:30:53,010 that illustrate in a graphical way 445 00:30:53,010 --> 00:30:55,710 this idea that I'm talking about in the book, 446 00:30:55,790 --> 00:30:58,750 then I could do this thing where I take the hyperlink 447 00:30:58,750 --> 00:31:01,490 and I put it in like the Kindle version of the book 448 00:31:01,490 --> 00:31:04,270 and the person could like click on a link in the Kindle 449 00:31:04,270 --> 00:31:05,610 and it would pull up this video 450 00:31:05,610 --> 00:31:10,410 and it would be like a graphical video you could watch with the book. 451 00:31:11,650 --> 00:31:16,130 And it would be like this recursive thing where somebody finds the video on YouTube 452 00:31:16,130 --> 00:31:18,990 and they're like, oh, this compliments a book. 453 00:31:19,090 --> 00:31:20,170 Maybe I should go buy the book. 454 00:31:20,530 --> 00:31:23,250 And if the person sees the book, then they might watch the videos 455 00:31:23,250 --> 00:31:25,210 and it would be like this recursion thing. 456 00:31:26,110 --> 00:31:30,150 And so I started a YouTube channel that complimented the finance book. 457 00:31:30,150 --> 00:31:32,410 I taught myself how to program the website. 458 00:31:32,790 --> 00:31:34,110 So I put the website together. 459 00:31:34,290 --> 00:31:35,450 I have the YouTube channel. 460 00:31:35,450 --> 00:31:40,850 I have the book and sure enough, like people were watching the videos. I had studied search 461 00:31:40,850 --> 00:31:47,130 engine optimization a bit to like for the titling of the videos. So they were getting views. And so 462 00:31:47,130 --> 00:31:53,070 I built this course, like this Warren Buffett investing course on YouTube that complimented 463 00:31:53,070 --> 00:32:01,630 the book, 35 videos in the videos were like video one of Warren Buffett investing video two of like 464 00:32:01,630 --> 00:32:06,890 on the screen. The whole 35 videos were free because I knew if I didn't do that, nobody 465 00:32:06,890 --> 00:32:13,630 was ever going to buy the course. They had to be free. The course got a lot of downloads, 466 00:32:13,630 --> 00:32:18,970 like hundreds of thousands of downloads per video of the course. So then that led to the 467 00:32:18,970 --> 00:32:31,900 book sale And then that was really kind of the seed for the whole financial podcast The podcast was nothing It didn even exist at this point And so then Stig Brodersen he the guy that I founded the podcast with 468 00:32:31,960 --> 00:32:33,420 he watched the whole course. 469 00:32:34,440 --> 00:32:35,780 And then there was a forum 470 00:32:35,780 --> 00:32:38,640 and him and I started talking on the forum 471 00:32:38,640 --> 00:32:39,820 about different stock picks. 472 00:32:39,920 --> 00:32:40,760 We became friends. 473 00:32:40,920 --> 00:32:43,080 I saw he went to Harvard and I was like, 474 00:32:43,140 --> 00:32:44,040 wow, this guy's like, 475 00:32:44,100 --> 00:32:46,400 his comments online were like really good. 476 00:32:46,400 --> 00:32:48,460 And we just kind of became friends. 477 00:32:48,460 --> 00:32:53,920 And I then went to a Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting. 478 00:32:54,760 --> 00:32:58,740 I met this guy, Hari Ramachandra, who we used to interview a lot. 479 00:32:59,160 --> 00:33:00,800 He used to come on and have discussions. 480 00:33:00,940 --> 00:33:02,180 He started being on the forum. 481 00:33:02,620 --> 00:33:07,460 Well, I saw Hari at Berkshire and he said, Preston, have you ever listened to a podcast 482 00:33:07,460 --> 00:33:08,080 before? 483 00:33:08,260 --> 00:33:09,600 And I said, no, what in the world's that? 484 00:33:10,140 --> 00:33:13,800 And he's like, oh, it's like people just like out of their house, they're like recording 485 00:33:13,800 --> 00:33:14,620 conversations. 486 00:33:14,900 --> 00:33:17,140 And like, they really, he says, you should do one. 487 00:33:17,140 --> 00:33:21,560 like, cause he had watched the YouTube thing that this course that I made on YouTube. He's like, 488 00:33:21,640 --> 00:33:26,700 listen to this show on your flight home. I think it's right up your alley. So I listened to this 489 00:33:26,700 --> 00:33:33,020 podcast. It was called the guy who did it was Pat Flynn. It was passive investing or something like 490 00:33:33,020 --> 00:33:37,600 it. So I listened to this podcast on the flight back. I downloaded, I listened to it on the flight. 491 00:33:37,860 --> 00:33:43,220 I was like, this is amazing. There's like no video editing. Cause I just built this course. 492 00:33:43,220 --> 00:33:45,940 and it was like all this editing with the videos. 493 00:33:46,080 --> 00:33:49,300 I was like, this is just like me sitting down, 494 00:33:49,400 --> 00:33:50,220 having a conversation. 495 00:33:50,340 --> 00:33:51,700 I don't have to edit anything. 496 00:33:52,180 --> 00:33:53,280 This would be so easy. 497 00:33:53,800 --> 00:33:56,020 I felt like I needed somebody to talk with 498 00:33:56,020 --> 00:33:58,260 because I just didn't want to be like the only guy 499 00:33:58,260 --> 00:33:58,920 on the thing, right? 500 00:33:59,240 --> 00:34:00,660 So I reached out to Stig, 501 00:34:00,700 --> 00:34:03,180 who I was having all these forum conversations with. 502 00:34:03,860 --> 00:34:05,740 And I was like, hey, would you be interested 503 00:34:05,740 --> 00:34:07,520 in like recording a couple of podcasts 504 00:34:07,520 --> 00:34:08,700 and like, let's send them out there. 505 00:34:08,740 --> 00:34:10,540 I can put it on the YouTube channel, blah, blah, blah. 506 00:34:10,540 --> 00:34:13,200 And he's like, I would love to do that, Preston. 507 00:34:13,220 --> 00:34:18,480 but he's like, I'm Danish and I have a really strong like English accent. And I don't think 508 00:34:18,480 --> 00:34:23,660 I'd be the right person for that. I said, stick, there's a lot of people in Europe that also have 509 00:34:23,660 --> 00:34:28,040 accents that would be like, they would maybe like hearing your voice better than my voice. 510 00:34:28,220 --> 00:34:33,240 And he's like, huh, I never thought. And I just wanted them to do the show. I didn't care what it 511 00:34:33,240 --> 00:34:40,220 took. I just wanted somebody to do the show. We started recording these discussions about like 512 00:34:40,220 --> 00:34:47,300 Warren Buffett, like stock picks. Right. And we didn't care if five people listened or, you know, 513 00:34:47,320 --> 00:34:51,320 a thousand people, we didn't care. We were just doing it for our own fun and whatever. 514 00:34:52,160 --> 00:34:57,780 And sure enough, like people were listening to it and we were, we were shocked. We're like, 515 00:34:58,080 --> 00:35:03,620 why is anybody listening to this? Like what, what is, what is happening? One thing led to another. 516 00:35:03,620 --> 00:35:08,220 I remember when we hit like 10,000 downloads on one of the shows and we were like, 517 00:35:08,220 --> 00:35:15,540 dang, who is listening to this? We're pretty boring. Who's listening to this? 518 00:35:16,640 --> 00:35:21,800 And just one thing led to another. And next thing you know, we were getting guests that we would 519 00:35:21,800 --> 00:35:28,160 have never guessed in a million years. In the early days, we were reaching out. In fact, 520 00:35:28,160 --> 00:35:34,900 here in Switzerland, Guy Spear, he wrote this book called The Education of a Value Investor. 521 00:35:34,900 --> 00:35:37,420 and we loved the book. 522 00:35:37,700 --> 00:35:39,800 So we reach out to him on Twitter 523 00:35:39,800 --> 00:35:41,920 and to our surprise, 524 00:35:42,080 --> 00:35:42,420 like we're like, 525 00:35:42,480 --> 00:35:43,820 hey, would you come on our podcast? 526 00:35:43,960 --> 00:35:47,180 Fully expecting he would never even see the request. 527 00:35:47,620 --> 00:35:49,620 And like immediately he was like, 528 00:35:49,720 --> 00:35:50,780 oh, I would love to do that. 529 00:35:50,880 --> 00:35:51,840 And we were like, 530 00:35:51,920 --> 00:35:52,800 we called each other like, 531 00:35:53,280 --> 00:35:54,220 what in the world? 532 00:35:54,300 --> 00:35:55,120 This is crazy. 533 00:35:55,700 --> 00:35:57,000 And what we quickly realized 534 00:35:57,000 --> 00:35:58,260 is people that write books 535 00:35:58,260 --> 00:36:00,300 and people they're looking for media exposure. 536 00:36:00,300 --> 00:36:01,480 They're looking for marketing. 537 00:36:02,240 --> 00:36:03,460 So we interview Guy 538 00:36:03,460 --> 00:36:05,760 and at the end of the interview with Guy, 539 00:36:06,820 --> 00:36:08,780 he was like, that was really fun 540 00:36:08,780 --> 00:36:09,860 because he had never done a podcast. 541 00:36:10,160 --> 00:36:11,920 This is all very early days, right? 542 00:36:11,980 --> 00:36:12,940 He had never done a podcast. 543 00:36:12,940 --> 00:36:15,000 How early are we talking about? 544 00:36:15,500 --> 00:36:17,360 2013, maybe. 545 00:36:17,860 --> 00:36:18,680 He loved it. 546 00:36:18,720 --> 00:36:21,180 And he was just like, hey, I'll introduce you to, 547 00:36:21,640 --> 00:36:22,980 and he started naming these people. 548 00:36:23,080 --> 00:36:24,420 Well, we started looking up these people. 549 00:36:24,520 --> 00:36:26,500 We're like, oh my God, these people are like, 550 00:36:27,180 --> 00:36:28,560 he's really connected. 551 00:36:29,040 --> 00:36:31,380 We were like, oh my gosh, this guy, 552 00:36:31,380 --> 00:36:37,200 the Monish Pabrai had dinner with Warren Buffett. This guy did, you know, he introduced us to Jason 553 00:36:37,200 --> 00:36:43,660 Zweig from Wall Street Journal. And we're like, this is crazy. Like, what is this? And so it just 554 00:36:43,660 --> 00:36:48,080 snowballed. And then like, once you start getting like some of the bigger guests, especially in the 555 00:36:48,080 --> 00:36:52,440 early days, you get some of these guests and like people are like listening to these conversations. 556 00:36:53,140 --> 00:37:01,200 And I distinctly remember Tony Robbins reached out to us. This was the moment in time where, 557 00:37:01,200 --> 00:37:06,960 like we called each other and we were like, what in the hell is going on right now? Like, 558 00:37:07,040 --> 00:37:12,000 what is this? I remember before we dialed in on Zoom, because we're doing this on Zoom 559 00:37:12,000 --> 00:37:19,340 and calling Steve, like what scammer is going to show up on this video feed? And so like we dial 560 00:37:19,340 --> 00:37:26,600 in and sure enough, there's Tony. And we were like, what the heck is going on? Like, how is 561 00:37:26,600 --> 00:37:32,180 is even possible. When it was the two of you, you were having conversations. When you started 562 00:37:32,180 --> 00:37:37,400 reaching out to people and people started reaching out to you, were you preparing the interviews 563 00:37:37,400 --> 00:37:42,720 that did it get more serious, more professional? We would spend a lot of time prepping and making 564 00:37:42,720 --> 00:37:50,440 sure we were prepared. Another hack, I would call it a hack that we did in the early days is we would 565 00:37:50,440 --> 00:37:55,900 reach out to different people that you never hear back. And so we were like, well, let's just, 566 00:37:55,900 --> 00:38:01,900 we loved reading. This is part of that Warren Buffett community is like, you read as much as 567 00:38:01,900 --> 00:38:06,800 you possibly can. So that was kind of like the indoctrination in that space was always be reading 568 00:38:06,800 --> 00:38:12,560 more than the next person. So Sting and I were like hardcore readers and we were like, you know 569 00:38:12,560 --> 00:38:19,520 what? Let's read this book. Let's talk about, let's do a review of the book. Let's talk about 570 00:38:19,520 --> 00:38:24,580 what we learned and we'll reach out to the author if they say yes, great. If they don't, who cares? 571 00:38:24,580 --> 00:38:28,080 Like we'll just still do the review and talk about what we learned. 572 00:38:28,580 --> 00:38:33,680 We wanted to be the AI compression algorithm, right? 573 00:38:33,740 --> 00:38:35,200 Because this is prior to AI. 574 00:38:35,660 --> 00:38:41,040 We wanted to be able to take a book that some people might not want to spend 10 hours going 575 00:38:41,040 --> 00:38:47,840 through and give them a 30 minute to an hour long conversation that kind of summarized it. 576 00:38:48,140 --> 00:38:51,800 And then it could be a precursor that if they liked the conversation, they'd be like, oh, 577 00:38:51,820 --> 00:38:52,760 I want to go read that book. 578 00:38:52,820 --> 00:38:54,140 So it's a win-win for the author. 579 00:38:54,140 --> 00:38:56,920 It was a win-win for us because we're able to create unique content. 580 00:38:57,280 --> 00:39:00,680 And it's a win for the listener because they were able to filter through what they want 581 00:39:00,680 --> 00:39:03,840 to put on their reading list or what they might have learned from the conversation. 582 00:39:04,260 --> 00:39:09,440 And this goes back to this idea of you always want to find a win-win-win with anything that 583 00:39:09,440 --> 00:39:09,960 you're doing. 584 00:39:10,200 --> 00:39:16,100 And for us, that was kind of the early day recipe was we're making ourselves smarter, 585 00:39:16,240 --> 00:39:18,520 we're networking, we're doing all these things. 586 00:39:18,720 --> 00:39:22,020 And this was before like ad revenue too. 587 00:39:22,020 --> 00:39:23,620 We were just doing this for free. 588 00:39:24,140 --> 00:39:32,900 There was no making money in this space for the first, I'm embarrassed to say, probably four to five years. 589 00:39:33,020 --> 00:39:34,000 We never made a penny. 590 00:39:34,720 --> 00:39:36,260 Where was the income coming from? 591 00:39:36,260 --> 00:39:36,940 There was none. 592 00:39:37,160 --> 00:39:38,660 It was all out-of-pocket expense. 593 00:39:38,840 --> 00:39:39,700 But we loved it. 594 00:39:40,060 --> 00:39:40,700 We didn't care. 595 00:39:40,940 --> 00:39:44,400 In the early days, I was still phasing out of military. 596 00:39:44,780 --> 00:39:45,940 So I was doing that. 597 00:39:46,020 --> 00:39:48,280 I was doing this in the side late at night. 598 00:39:48,280 --> 00:39:51,220 And the time frame actually worked because he was in Europe. 599 00:39:51,440 --> 00:39:53,500 I had worked a long day in the family. 600 00:39:53,500 --> 00:39:56,140 And then it was like late at night and we would do recordings. 601 00:39:56,600 --> 00:39:57,620 So, yeah. 602 00:39:58,000 --> 00:40:00,880 You've interviewed around a thousand guests. 603 00:40:01,200 --> 00:40:03,880 Is there a conversation that never left you? 604 00:40:04,820 --> 00:40:09,580 When I interviewed Bill Miller, so Bill was the CIO of Lake Mason. 605 00:40:10,220 --> 00:40:17,340 He was Morningstar's, you know, best hedge fund manager of the decade, like two decades 606 00:40:17,340 --> 00:40:20,600 in a row, just a really super famous investor. 607 00:40:20,600 --> 00:40:28,440 it's funny because as a kid my dad you know he dabbled in stocks he wasn't like nearly as hardcore 608 00:40:28,440 --> 00:40:36,940 as i am he liked business he liked investing right and i distinctly remember as a kid i was 609 00:40:36,940 --> 00:40:42,840 in the office and he came over with a magazine and on the front cover of the magazine was bill 610 00:40:42,840 --> 00:40:49,680 miller and it was saying investor of the decade and it was like this whole write-up on bill miller 611 00:40:49,680 --> 00:40:59,180 And my dad, I remember him handing me the magazine and saying something to the effect of, this man right here is the best investor on the planet. 612 00:40:59,680 --> 00:41:03,400 You want to make some money, this is the guy that you listen to, right? 613 00:41:03,440 --> 00:41:04,660 And he handed me the magazine. 614 00:41:04,900 --> 00:41:10,320 And I remember as a young kid kind of flipping through it and seeing these profile shots of Bill standing there. 615 00:41:10,320 --> 00:41:10,920 How old were you? 616 00:41:11,140 --> 00:41:11,860 Oh, I was young. 617 00:41:12,020 --> 00:41:16,280 I was like 15 or 16 years old or something like that. 618 00:41:16,360 --> 00:41:18,000 Did you care about those things at the time? 619 00:41:18,000 --> 00:41:25,760 not a lot not a lot but i didn't discard it either i wasn't like oh i looked i was like oh 620 00:41:25,760 --> 00:41:31,180 that's pretty impressive like that's pretty neat so the show's kind of like taking off 621 00:41:31,180 --> 00:41:37,820 and we reach out to bill to come on and we were really and interestingly my dad's name is bill as 622 00:41:37,820 --> 00:41:43,500 well but we reached out to his office and we got an answer back like oh yeah he would love to come 623 00:41:43,500 --> 00:41:48,640 on your show, almost kind of like he had listened to the show. And I don't know if that's true or 624 00:41:48,640 --> 00:41:54,260 not, but it kind of seemed like he knew who we were. So he comes on the show and we had just an 625 00:41:54,260 --> 00:42:03,240 awesome conversation. It was really fun. And I remember sending it off to my dad and my dad was 626 00:42:03,240 --> 00:42:11,140 like, this is insane. This is crazy. I cannot believe you just had him on your show. But the 627 00:42:11,140 --> 00:42:18,420 part that was like really funny. My parents are visiting my family for Christmas. We got like all 628 00:42:18,420 --> 00:42:25,320 the Christmas cards, right? And there was a fresh new stack of like Christmas cards from family and 629 00:42:25,320 --> 00:42:30,200 friends that sent us like their, you know, holiday wishes and whatever. And I'm kind of sitting there 630 00:42:30,200 --> 00:42:35,060 in the kitchen and I'm opening like all the ones and I'm going through the cards and I open up one 631 00:42:35,060 --> 00:42:40,780 and it's literally from Bill, you know, happy holidays, Bill, right? Pretty simple. But I got 632 00:42:40,780 --> 00:42:47,380 the Christmas card from Bill and I didn't say anything. I just took it and I flipped it over 633 00:42:47,380 --> 00:42:52,780 the island, like kitchen island to my dad and didn't say anything. And I just kept kind of 634 00:42:52,780 --> 00:43:02,260 going through the other ones. And he looked up at me and he goes, no way. Like, what the hell 635 00:43:02,260 --> 00:43:08,000 are you kidding me? And I just gave my dad a look like, hey, you know, you got to do what you got to 636 00:43:08,000 --> 00:43:13,480 do. It was fun. To the fridge. It was fun. I've told Bill this story and he was laughing. He 637 00:43:13,480 --> 00:43:18,300 thought it was funny. What's a conversation or moment that put you out of your comfort zone? 638 00:43:18,760 --> 00:43:29,540 Oh, this one. And? I'm a little reserved. I don't usually open up too much. I usually kind of stick 639 00:43:29,540 --> 00:43:35,960 to the basics and don't really like give people too much on my personality, I guess. I'm a little 640 00:43:35,960 --> 00:43:43,100 closed off. I like conversations like this because I think that they actually help people 641 00:43:43,100 --> 00:43:47,860 understand somebody way better and you understand where they're coming from a lot more. 642 00:43:48,380 --> 00:43:53,840 But that doesn't mean that it's easier for me to kind of open up. I don't know why. 643 00:43:53,840 --> 00:43:54,860 Well, you're doing great. 644 00:43:55,300 --> 00:44:00,940 Yeah. Well, you're doing great. It's hard for me because I have done just so many interviews 645 00:44:00,940 --> 00:44:07,880 through the years and they just really do mix together to the point where like, I'm going to 646 00:44:07,880 --> 00:44:13,920 tell a side story here. I was literally talking to my dad. This is like last week or the week before. 647 00:44:14,380 --> 00:44:18,920 He goes, hey, Press, did you do any interviews recently? I was like, oh yeah, I did two interviews 648 00:44:18,920 --> 00:44:26,920 this week. He goes, what were they on? And this is Wednesday. I said, I honestly had to go to my 649 00:44:26,920 --> 00:44:32,640 calendar. This is how bad it was. I had to go to my calendar to even remember the interview I did 650 00:44:32,640 --> 00:44:38,780 the day before and the day before that. That's how much the discussions kind of merge together. 651 00:44:39,640 --> 00:44:43,820 And I'm obviously very busy right now. And so that's another whole issue. But 652 00:44:43,820 --> 00:44:49,540 the ones that I struggle with the most is where I have the weakest technical competence and I have 653 00:44:49,540 --> 00:44:55,260 the biggest insecurity. I just recently recorded a show on quantum computing and it's not my 654 00:44:55,260 --> 00:45:01,060 expertise by any shape of the in fact i'm doing a panel uh tomorrow on quantum computing here 655 00:45:01,060 --> 00:45:12,960 and i am not qualified to be leading a conversation like that so i do my best but i'm very timid and 656 00:45:12,960 --> 00:45:18,340 like deep down inside when i walk off the stage i'm like dear god i hope i did it some kind of 657 00:45:18,340 --> 00:45:24,700 justice because clearly like i am a total imposter syndrome which i do definitely get 658 00:45:24,700 --> 00:45:28,540 more than I would like to admit on certain topics. 659 00:45:29,540 --> 00:45:32,760 What's something about the macro landscape right now 660 00:45:32,760 --> 00:45:34,360 that keeps you up at night? 661 00:45:34,520 --> 00:45:37,060 I don't like the phrase, what keeps you up at night? 662 00:45:37,340 --> 00:45:39,160 Because nothing keeps me up at night. 663 00:45:39,560 --> 00:45:40,580 I sleep well. 664 00:45:43,400 --> 00:45:45,640 That's the military in me coming out, right? 665 00:45:45,860 --> 00:45:47,160 Nothing's going to bring me fear. 666 00:45:47,560 --> 00:45:49,860 If I was going to say what I think is probably 667 00:45:49,860 --> 00:45:52,960 the news event kind of happening right now, 668 00:45:52,960 --> 00:46:00,260 It's the liquidity in the system. I think we're getting the reverse repos completely drained. 669 00:46:00,580 --> 00:46:06,440 So there's no cushioning or dampening to the liquidity issue that exists. When you look at 670 00:46:06,440 --> 00:46:12,220 like liquidity is low in the economy. Typically, it's when the reserves inside of the banks are 671 00:46:12,220 --> 00:46:17,620 less than 10% of GDP is what the Fed that some themselves really kind of define as getting into 672 00:46:17,620 --> 00:46:22,720 that zone where it starts getting illiquid. We just started going below that 10% threshold. 673 00:46:22,720 --> 00:46:27,040 and there's no reverse repo. So I would say you're there. And I would say that that's why 674 00:46:27,040 --> 00:46:31,220 you have Jerome Powell saying that they're going to stop doing quantitative tightening and that 675 00:46:31,220 --> 00:46:35,380 they're going to start going into more QE-like activities of adding more fiat liquidity into 676 00:46:35,380 --> 00:46:41,340 the system. And so the question is, is like that credit impairment that's happening right now, 677 00:46:42,020 --> 00:46:46,660 which is why you have liquidity issues, it can cascade really quickly. 678 00:46:46,660 --> 00:46:54,820 and it's somewhat like an avalanche in that when you go and you would try to be like, 679 00:46:55,040 --> 00:46:59,500 oh, that mountain's got a lot of snow on it. It could have an avalanche, but if you're going to 680 00:46:59,500 --> 00:47:05,740 say it's going to happen tomorrow or in three weeks, or if at all, an avalanche expert can't 681 00:47:05,740 --> 00:47:09,900 tell you, right? They have no idea when it's going to happen, but they can look at the mountain. 682 00:47:09,900 --> 00:47:13,560 They could say there's a lot of snow on there and that is a very precarious situation. 683 00:47:13,560 --> 00:47:19,460 And I would say that's where we're at right now with respect to the illiquidity in the system. 684 00:47:20,400 --> 00:47:21,700 It could be next week. 685 00:47:21,760 --> 00:47:33,020 It could be three months or the central bankers, Jerome Powell, could step in and start adding a bunch of liquidity and control and prevent the avalanche from happening altogether. 686 00:47:33,260 --> 00:47:38,220 And you could have markets start ripping because they kind of come in and start seeding it with more liquidity. 687 00:47:38,220 --> 00:47:45,380 And so that's the thing that makes it really hard to ever forecast financial markets is it's 688 00:47:46,160 --> 00:47:52,740 insanely dependent on the few actors that actually control that valve of how much liquidity is 689 00:47:52,740 --> 00:47:57,280 getting turned on or turned off. But I would tell you right now, if they take their hands off and 690 00:47:57,280 --> 00:48:04,080 they do nothing, you'll probably have some pretty intense impairment and sell off and dollar bidding 691 00:48:04,080 --> 00:48:06,740 actually getting more valuable relative to Bitcoin, 692 00:48:07,500 --> 00:48:09,660 if they took their hands off and did nothing 693 00:48:09,660 --> 00:48:11,820 and let that impairment take hold, 694 00:48:12,640 --> 00:48:15,360 you could have something happen within the quarter or two. 695 00:48:16,240 --> 00:48:22,180 What we know is that the Fed and Jerome Powell are quite behind. 696 00:48:22,580 --> 00:48:22,740 Yeah. 697 00:48:23,340 --> 00:48:26,100 But let me give you a caveat to that. 698 00:48:26,180 --> 00:48:27,480 And you're right, they are. 699 00:48:28,080 --> 00:48:32,240 In 2020 with COVID, you had the market sell off. 700 00:48:32,240 --> 00:48:42,890 Literally people were screaming bloody murder Armageddon and that sell happened within a week or two And I can remember the percent that it was down 701 00:48:43,170 --> 00:48:50,170 But within 60 days, the market made a new all-time high from where it was before COVID. 702 00:48:50,170 --> 00:48:53,170 And this is in an environment where not a person was working. 703 00:48:53,710 --> 00:48:56,050 Everybody was at home doing nothing. 704 00:48:56,050 --> 00:49:08,090 And what this tells you is the magnitude and the speed at which they act can create outcomes that I would argue most people would think are unimaginable. 705 00:49:08,750 --> 00:49:15,690 I mean, that's unimaginable to be making market all-time highs when literally nobody's even in around the world. 706 00:49:16,490 --> 00:49:16,970 Around the world. 707 00:49:17,410 --> 00:49:24,010 Like, if you would have told that to me before COVID happened, I'd be like, no way that can happen in 60 days. 708 00:49:24,170 --> 00:49:24,610 Impossible. 709 00:49:24,610 --> 00:49:31,210 but we know that that's not true that we we literally saw it happen that event for me changed 710 00:49:31,210 --> 00:49:39,810 my perception on financial markets like a lot because i'm looking at it like is so dependent 711 00:49:39,810 --> 00:49:44,590 on these couple people sitting in the room completely dependent i mean that's why you 712 00:49:44,590 --> 00:49:49,390 saw everything kind of you know shake out from an inflation standpoint you had so much inflation 713 00:49:49,390 --> 00:49:57,730 that hit. And there's arguments to be made that the next wave could be, despite not even having 714 00:49:57,730 --> 00:50:07,110 a COVID thing, the next wave of printing could be that or more. I'm not ruling that out. I'm not 715 00:50:07,110 --> 00:50:12,010 saying it's the most likely outcome, but I'm not ruling it out. You've talked about liquidity like 716 00:50:12,010 --> 00:50:18,690 an operating system. Please explain. If you just take all the fiat money around the world, 717 00:50:18,690 --> 00:50:25,010 right let's say there's a hundred units just to make the numbers really easy 718 00:50:25,010 --> 00:50:33,270 and you've got those hundred units and then you have like people in there working and they've got 719 00:50:33,270 --> 00:50:38,550 all their products and services that they're doing as long as you can keep those hundred units in that 720 00:50:38,550 --> 00:50:43,370 operating system of these people that are exchanging those hundred units and none of those 721 00:50:43,370 --> 00:50:51,170 100 units get smaller or larger, the fittest are going to have the most of those 100 units, 722 00:50:51,270 --> 00:50:55,870 and the ones that aren't really creating value for that ecosystem of people are going to have 723 00:50:55,870 --> 00:51:01,830 the least number of units, okay? But that's not how the system works. The way that the system 724 00:51:01,830 --> 00:51:08,730 works is those 100 units actually expand and contract, okay? So one day it's 100, the next 725 00:51:08,730 --> 00:51:15,630 day, it's 110. The day after that, it's 130. Then it's 160. And the way that that's happening is 726 00:51:15,630 --> 00:51:21,930 the banks can basically create money by creating debt. And so that's like the expansion of the 727 00:51:21,930 --> 00:51:27,610 credit, expansion of the monetary units. But then what happens is because it's credit-based, 728 00:51:27,710 --> 00:51:33,190 it's borrowing-based, what happens is people get over-levered and then it starts to contract. 729 00:51:33,490 --> 00:51:38,070 It's like a balloon that expands out and then it comes back. The thing is the magnitude at which 730 00:51:38,070 --> 00:51:44,670 it comes back is the same counterforce that's pulling it back into contract. And people 731 00:51:44,670 --> 00:51:50,750 underestimate the power of that contraction that is tethered to the expansion that occurred that 732 00:51:50,750 --> 00:51:56,450 preceded it. And so right now I would argue where we're at is now you're starting into this 733 00:51:56,450 --> 00:52:02,290 contraction phase. And like when it really starts to get going, it's kind of like when you throw a 734 00:52:02,290 --> 00:52:09,810 ball up into the air, as that ball hits its pinnacle, the velocity on the y-axis is zero. 735 00:52:10,770 --> 00:52:17,350 And as it starts to come back down, because of acceleration of gravity, it's starting off slower 736 00:52:17,350 --> 00:52:21,610 and then it gets faster and then it gets faster. And then as it's down here from the peak, 737 00:52:21,690 --> 00:52:27,590 it's going really fast and it's harder to, it takes more magnitude to stop it as it picked up 738 00:52:27,590 --> 00:52:33,750 more speed, assuming there's no terminal velocity impacts of air friction and things like that. 739 00:52:34,430 --> 00:52:40,330 So when I think of like the liquidity in the system starting to contract, it picks up pace 740 00:52:40,330 --> 00:52:46,170 and it starts to accelerate, which then requires them to put more magnitude to stop it and then 741 00:52:46,170 --> 00:52:51,250 push it back out again. Think of it like those hundred units, they expand, they hit maybe 140, 742 00:52:51,470 --> 00:52:55,950 then they start coming back to 130, 120, 100, and then they accelerate and they're going faster. 743 00:52:55,950 --> 00:53:01,710 And then for them to expand that, it takes a lot of monetary energy, a lot of printing 744 00:53:01,710 --> 00:53:03,850 to expand it back out again. 745 00:53:04,250 --> 00:53:08,850 And in the meantime, you have this thing, Bitcoin, that's over here that literally is 746 00:53:08,850 --> 00:53:11,030 those hundred units. 747 00:53:11,910 --> 00:53:16,230 And the other thing that I'm kind of leaving out with this expansion and contraction is 748 00:53:16,230 --> 00:53:20,190 it doesn't go back to a net hundred position. 749 00:53:20,190 --> 00:53:29,190 when they go through this cycling, okay, the next neutral spot is 120. Then the next neutral spot is 750 00:53:29,190 --> 00:53:33,910 140. And then you have the expansion. Meanwhile, this thing is over here that just keeps being 751 00:53:33,910 --> 00:53:40,170 pegged at a hundred. And so with time, this thing's now at a thousand and this thing's over here, 752 00:53:40,270 --> 00:53:45,890 Bitcoin is still a hundred. And so you can see how the value keeps appreciating relative to this 753 00:53:45,890 --> 00:53:53,470 farce of a credit, like we're making up imaginary units as we go system and why this thing is going 754 00:53:53,470 --> 00:53:58,910 to continue to outperform over a long period of time. What are people still missing about how 755 00:53:58,910 --> 00:54:05,050 liquidity is affecting markets? I think most people, like they see a dollar in their pocket 756 00:54:05,050 --> 00:54:12,030 and they think that is what all the money in the system is. And like that literally represents that 757 00:54:12,030 --> 00:54:19,110 dollar in your pocket represents such an infinitesimally small amount of what they think 758 00:54:19,110 --> 00:54:25,630 everything else is. Like that's, that's probably like 1% or less of like what reality is. And the 759 00:54:25,630 --> 00:54:32,130 rest of reality are like promises. It's not like, like if I pull that dollar out of my pocket and I 760 00:54:32,130 --> 00:54:37,890 give it to you, you now hold it. And people understand that. But what they don't understand 761 00:54:37,890 --> 00:54:40,010 is like all the other units in the system, 762 00:54:40,650 --> 00:54:44,210 I will like electronically send you one of those things, 763 00:54:44,590 --> 00:54:46,390 but you actually don't have it. 764 00:54:46,850 --> 00:54:49,590 A perfect example is like the Silicon Valley bank, 765 00:54:49,710 --> 00:54:51,210 you know, failure, right? 766 00:54:51,410 --> 00:54:53,950 If you had $5 million on deposit there, 767 00:54:53,950 --> 00:54:57,630 you thought you received $5 million of paper currency 768 00:54:57,630 --> 00:54:58,590 that's sitting there. 769 00:54:58,850 --> 00:55:00,530 That's what people think or they believe, 770 00:55:01,170 --> 00:55:02,850 but that's not how it works. 771 00:55:03,710 --> 00:55:06,230 People didn't know if they were actually gonna honor 772 00:55:06,230 --> 00:55:12,310 those units in the system until Monday morning when, or I think Sunday night, Janet Yellen said, 773 00:55:12,430 --> 00:55:15,670 yeah, we're going to bail everybody out. What do you mean you're going to bail me out? I have the 774 00:55:15,670 --> 00:55:21,990 units in my account address, right? Right? And the answer is no, no, you actually don't. 775 00:55:23,110 --> 00:55:30,610 And I think most people have no clue that that's how the system actually works. 776 00:55:31,290 --> 00:55:35,550 How do you communicate that to a person that is still indoctrinated? 777 00:55:35,550 --> 00:55:57,170 One of the challenging things, my engineering-ness is going to come out here a little bit. If you transmit a message through radio waves, let's say you're a receiver and I'm a transmitter. I can transmit a message, but if your frequency of picking up is not tuned to the same frequency I'm transmitting on, you'll never get the message. 778 00:55:57,170 --> 00:56:07,130 right? Like 93.3 FM is in this room with us right now. I cannot tune into it because I'm not tuned 779 00:56:07,130 --> 00:56:13,110 to that frequency, but the frequency is in this room literally right now. Okay. And I think when 780 00:56:13,110 --> 00:56:17,850 people are having conversations with other people about something that they deeply understand, 781 00:56:17,850 --> 00:56:22,230 they're deeply passionate about, they're transmitting and they're transmitting in a 782 00:56:22,230 --> 00:56:27,490 frequency that the other person is not tuned to pick up. They get frustrated and it'd be like, 783 00:56:27,590 --> 00:56:31,710 well, why can't I hear 93.3 in this room right now? But I think once you have an appreciation 784 00:56:31,710 --> 00:56:37,650 for the person's just not tuned to the frequency to hear it, then you just get a little bit more 785 00:56:37,650 --> 00:56:42,210 patient. That's why Bitcoiners will say they'll get it when they're supposed to get it. 786 00:56:42,710 --> 00:56:47,370 You've studied empires. Where do you think America sits in the cycle? 787 00:56:47,370 --> 00:57:03,330 According to Ray Dalio, because he has an entire book on this topic, and it's really well done and laid out in a very thoughtful kind of way. And if people are interested in this topic, I would point you to that book is probably one of the best resources on wrapping your head around it. 788 00:57:03,330 --> 00:57:12,150 But I would say that because Bitcoin is so different, this might be one of the defining 789 00:57:12,150 --> 00:57:18,390 moments in history where that cycle could actually not play out for the United States, 790 00:57:18,810 --> 00:57:20,730 which is really interesting. 791 00:57:21,230 --> 00:57:25,590 Because normally what would happen if Bitcoin didn't exist, you would go into a physical 792 00:57:25,590 --> 00:57:27,390 conflict with other countries. 793 00:57:27,390 --> 00:57:33,310 Depending on who annihilates the other, they then get to reset the global monarchy. 794 00:57:33,330 --> 00:57:38,930 order and who's on top and who gets to take all the gold from the other person and recapitalize 795 00:57:38,930 --> 00:57:43,990 their currency on top of that gold. And then the whole system kind of restarts and reflates itself 796 00:57:43,990 --> 00:57:51,270 and the cycle just goes on and on and on. This time, for the first time in human history, 797 00:57:51,750 --> 00:58:00,110 you have a money that can't be confiscated through violence. And that's kind of a big deal. 798 00:58:00,110 --> 00:58:08,170 And that's kind of a game-changing thing. And the one that wins in this battle is the one who 799 00:58:08,170 --> 00:58:14,550 demonstrates the most intellectual rigor. And you know what? That's actually highly dependent 800 00:58:14,550 --> 00:58:21,110 on who's in charge. How much influence do they have to convince others within their country to 801 00:58:21,110 --> 00:58:25,190 be the first mover? I mean, the U.S. is in debt up to their eyeballs, 802 00:58:25,190 --> 00:58:28,250 and dead up to their eyeballs and it's only going faster. 803 00:58:28,550 --> 00:58:31,070 But if the U.S. would adopt Bitcoin 804 00:58:31,070 --> 00:58:34,830 and move in that direction with strategic reserves 805 00:58:34,830 --> 00:58:37,130 and then somehow figure out a way 806 00:58:37,130 --> 00:58:40,770 to not have a victim mindset from a net populist standpoint 807 00:58:40,770 --> 00:58:43,210 to vote themselves more and more money 808 00:58:43,210 --> 00:58:44,630 that they didn't actually work for 809 00:58:44,630 --> 00:58:46,310 because they're so used to the printing press, 810 00:58:46,410 --> 00:58:48,390 they've got to divorce themselves 811 00:58:48,390 --> 00:58:50,150 from that disease of the mind. 812 00:58:50,810 --> 00:58:52,490 If they're able to do those things, 813 00:58:52,710 --> 00:58:54,610 they could come out pretty strong. 814 00:58:55,190 --> 00:59:03,010 in the next 30 to 40 years. And the one thing that I think the U.S. has going for it is everybody 815 00:59:03,010 --> 00:59:10,270 else around the world kind of suffers from this same disease. And so I would argue that success 816 00:59:10,270 --> 00:59:19,630 is for the taking of anybody that can collectively as a sovereign entity apply sound thinking, 817 00:59:19,630 --> 00:59:25,890 critical thinking and action to back it up. It's for the taking. The success of the future 818 00:59:25,890 --> 00:59:31,130 of that country is for the taking. You see the states confiscating Bitcoin? 819 00:59:31,610 --> 00:59:36,530 This is going to sound more pessimistic than my general optimism for any country that wants to 820 00:59:36,530 --> 00:59:42,710 take action. I think that the cognitive debts of not taking self-responsibility, 821 00:59:42,710 --> 00:59:49,990 That is a mind virus, I think, that plagues the US and other developed G7 type countries. 822 00:59:50,230 --> 00:59:54,830 And that's going to be their biggest hurdle in all of this is because as long as the population 823 00:59:54,830 --> 00:59:59,510 wants the handout, because it has been unjust for them, right? 824 00:59:59,590 --> 01:00:00,210 Like, I get it. 825 01:00:00,230 --> 01:00:01,050 It's been very unjust. 826 01:00:01,550 --> 01:00:06,210 But because they want the handout, what that could potentially lead to is the country that 827 01:00:06,210 --> 01:00:11,890 does have a Bitcoin strategy or they start nationalizing assets to get the Bitcoin. 828 01:00:11,890 --> 01:00:24,990 The populace is just going to want to have it paid to them, and they're not wanting to go through a free and open market model because they've been cognitively conditioned to think that that's bad. 829 01:00:25,630 --> 01:00:31,510 And so this is the advantage of the developing nation that's gone through all the hardship already. 830 01:00:32,250 --> 01:00:39,030 They've been a victim of the IMF World Bank dollar dominance arbitrage thing. 831 01:00:39,030 --> 01:00:46,370 they're actually in my opinion sitting in a very advantageous position right now if they're willing 832 01:00:46,370 --> 01:00:52,790 and able to collectively get together and really take advantage of the opportunity that exists in 833 01:00:52,790 --> 01:00:58,890 the world for them a bit because they don't have the mind virus of the handout in the population 834 01:00:58,890 --> 01:01:03,650 like you do in developed nation states right now in the european union christine lagart 835 01:01:03,650 --> 01:01:09,290 mentioned, but maybe already two years ago, that in the moment of a crisis, they will take our 836 01:01:09,290 --> 01:01:14,490 savings. And the scary part is it's becoming a more, the trend is that it's becoming more popular. 837 01:01:14,710 --> 01:01:22,630 Yeah. I can empathize with the pain that they've experienced, but they're flawed in their logic of, 838 01:01:22,630 --> 01:01:29,070 because it's completely incongruent with nature to think like that, because that's not how nature 839 01:01:29,070 --> 01:01:34,930 works. And if you think that we're exempt from nature, you're very naive. 840 01:01:35,650 --> 01:01:42,690 Last one. If you could sit every world leader for 10 minutes, what would you say to them? 841 01:01:42,690 --> 01:01:50,970 I would say pretty simply that the petrodollar system that was kind of the backbone or the 842 01:01:50,970 --> 01:01:56,150 underpinning of all global commerce over the last 40 years is unraveling itself. 843 01:01:56,150 --> 01:02:00,870 and there's going to be a new monetary order that stood up in the coming decade. 844 01:02:01,070 --> 01:02:06,110 And it's going to really kick into high gear between years 10 and 20 from here. 845 01:02:06,110 --> 01:02:15,030 The ones that get off of this idea of being a net consumer by using their strong fiat currency 846 01:02:15,030 --> 01:02:23,170 to go further and further in debt are the ones that are most likely to have the more difficult 847 01:02:23,170 --> 01:02:29,890 transition to the new world. And the ones that are net producers on a net basis providing value 848 01:02:29,890 --> 01:02:34,330 for the world through their exports versus what they're importing are probably going to have the 849 01:02:34,330 --> 01:02:42,610 easier time, assuming that they move to this new monetary standard and go figure it out. 850 01:02:42,730 --> 01:02:49,650 Your ability to navigate this most effectively is completely dependent on your ability to educate 851 01:02:49,650 --> 01:02:57,450 yourself and influence the people around you most effectively. And good luck. Because there's 852 01:02:57,450 --> 01:03:03,070 going to be winners and there's going to be losers. If the world had to go through a controlled 853 01:03:03,070 --> 01:03:08,970 collapse, what's the best case scenario? The best case scenario for me, and we are going through a 854 01:03:08,970 --> 01:03:15,850 controlled collapse of the old monetary order, the best case for me is just no violence. We go 855 01:03:15,850 --> 01:03:21,290 through the system in a somewhat controlled way where there's obviously going to be pain. We're 856 01:03:21,290 --> 01:03:26,430 already seeing the pain around the world. That's already happening. I just don't want it to be 857 01:03:26,430 --> 01:03:32,090 people just losing their lives and senselessness. And we're going to get to the same end state 858 01:03:32,090 --> 01:03:36,770 anyway, which in my opinion is going to be Bitcoin's the new monetary standard. So you can do that in 859 01:03:36,770 --> 01:03:42,190 a peaceful way, or you can do that in a violent way. And for me, the best way is for people just 860 01:03:42,190 --> 01:03:48,690 kind of rally around what the change is and start cooperating with each other, what they're 861 01:03:48,690 --> 01:03:53,830 going to find with time is that Bitcoin incentivizes cooperation as opposed to violence, which is 862 01:03:53,830 --> 01:03:58,450 drastically different than the fiat system. So the faster that you lean into cooperation, 863 01:03:58,830 --> 01:04:02,870 the more peaceful it's going to be for you and anybody that you're interacting with. 864 01:04:03,450 --> 01:04:09,790 Thanks for your time in this super generous conversation, Preston. Where can people find 865 01:04:09,790 --> 01:04:16,370 you and your work. Yeah, I'm active on X, on Noster. You can find me on those if you want to 866 01:04:16,370 --> 01:04:23,350 shoot me a message. I try to reply to most messages that I see. I also have a podcast that goes in the 867 01:04:23,350 --> 01:04:27,450 We Study Billionaires feed. If people enjoy listening to some of the ideas or comments, 868 01:04:27,550 --> 01:04:32,350 you can find me there as well. It's been an honor having you on. Can't wait to have you back. 869 01:04:32,350 --> 01:04:34,950 Until then, stay sovereign. Thank you. 870 01:04:39,790 --> 01:04:46,670 We'll see you next time.