Alex welcome to the podcast hey Jake thanks for having me that's my pleasure um okay simple
question to kick us off and it can take us in all sorts of different directions but what is it that
you're working on at the moment that you're most excited about oh so actually um recently I've just
started working with the Bitcoin Collective here in the UK which is kind of like um founded by
jordan walker and they they did the first major uk bitcoin conference and so i recently joined the
team working with jordan and and jez and what we're doing at the moment is is really quite
exciting in terms of pushing businesses into bitcoin or not necessarily pushing businesses
into bitcoin but pushing bitcoin within normal everyday businesses and helping them understand
how Bitcoin can basically benefit their business
and help stabilize their balance sheet
and all sorts of things like that,
which most businesses don't even know
that they can actually hold Bitcoin.
So it's quite exciting.
Absolutely.
And okay.
And so what does the average customer look like
in that sense?
So, and I'm totally with you.
It's like a lot of people don't even realize
that Bitcoin's an option.
And not only is it an option,
it's actually extremely viable option
for lots of different reasons, not just having a store of value
on the balance sheet of a company that's very effective,
but also taking payments and finding extra customers
because there's a whole marketplace of people
that want to use Bitcoin businesses.
Let's pretend I'm someone coming to the Bitcoin Collective.
I'm like, oh, like how can I incorporate Bitcoin?
What do I look like?
What kind of business have I got?
And let's start there because this is fascinating.
yeah so i mean it's all very new at the moment we're doing a conference later this week uh in
derby and um so we've got liz truss the ex prime minister coming yeah and peter mcormack so like
quite quite a few big names in in the uk scene and um but yeah it's not really
in terms of the people we've been speaking to at the moment it's not necessarily
normal businesses that don't know anything about bitcoin it's more bitcoiners who have a business
and they're talking to us i'm like i would never knew that i could own bitcoin with my business
it's conversations like that and yeah so what we're doing now is trying to basically tap into
that and show more businesses that it's something that you can do it's not illegal it's possibly a
good idea and there are ways to use it to your advantage cool i i must say i saw this trend
to some extent i was involved with the bitcoin mentor um when it first launched in australia
shout out to dale who carried that on um didn't work out for me personally but that process was
really interesting working with mike and ben in canada and it's like where your mind goes your
money follows and many people are doing that on a personal level but then it's like well actually
they're already running companies or they're employees in businesses it's like well hang on
and you become what's like the gatekeeper to the bitcoin world for a traditional business and you go
okay well this is working really well on my personal pnl how can i impact it everywhere else
and so Alex that's really cool so is is that now full-time you're working in Bitcoin?
Yes yeah pretty much yeah. Okay cool yeah because I heard you say previously when I was watching
some of your content that you had a day job and that you were doing your content on the side
what was that and this is always a really fun transition to talk through with people it's like
okay you obviously really passionate about Bitcoin but like how do you get involved and how do you
habit as your day job so run me through like where you've been and and how you've managed to go
through those steps yeah i don't know it's all been a bit of a whirlwind i don't know how i've
ended up where i where i have it's it's one of those i have imposter syndrome most of the time
okay but um so i'm i've just turned 30 recently um and i was one of those classic kids that
went to went to school didn't know what to do finished school was kind of put down the route
of going to university again still didn't know what i wanted to do didn't really have any
particular passion or anything like that didn't exactly know what to pursue so ended up doing
something completely with well something that really isn't of any interest to me so i was a
landscape architect um basically yeah completely i think the logic at the time was oh maybe i could
design skate parks that'd be cool yeah nice um but yeah looking back like i should have given
everything a lot more thought before jumping in but here's what it is you can't take anything back
just got to keep pushing forward um yeah so i did that wasn't particularly enamored with it
and just followed it through got a degree and was like okay well i better use the degree it's
probably not going to help me get another job because it's so niche so i did that and um just
basically worked worked a job as a landscape architect for about six years maybe six and a
half years almost exactly at the same time of starting that i was like i need a side hustle
and uh i'd been investing in the stock market uh since i was about 17 when i was still at school
i'm just like my dad showing me things and then just sort of running with it
and um yeah at that point i was like well i know a fair amount about investing so
started a youtube channel talking about really basic investing stuff compound interest and
investing in index funds or maybe not or whatever whatever it is and
yeah so then I was doing that on the sidelines and I was one of those people that heard about
Bitcoin I was like nah this is just a load of rubbish because I had one friend no exactly it's
like I was just so indoctrinated by you need a business that obviously businesses make sense
they make money and then they pay profits to their shareholders makes sense it's like why would
i want something that does nothing or something that i just don't understand because to be fair
i just didn't do the research and i had a friend that was um bugging me to buy some bitcoin um i
eventually did just before uh the it must have been about 2021 before ftx blew up probably about
nice six months on the way down baby oh yeah so that was my first real step into bitcoin
i just bought a very speculative speculative position and then i heard about block fi i was
like okay awesome so i'll put my tiny amount of bitcoin and i bought ethereum as well at the time
and so i put all of it into block fi and then the whole thing collapsed with ftx so i lost
all of that and um so that must have been november 22 i think and then it kind of took me a couple of
months to regather myself it's like what have i done just feeling uh sorry for myself and just
feeling like an idiot and um yeah so it's the start of the new year that i just eventually
started learning about bitcoin i was like i wanted to work out what had gone wrong
and through that learning listening to podcasts i just came to the conclusion that most people do
that bitcoin has value it is money um and it was a long long slow process so it's about
six months to a year of just constant listening to podcasts not really understanding everything
just trying to take on as much information as possible and it kind of opened pandora's box and
made me realize i don't know anything about money i've been playing games in the stock market looking
for percentage gains but like it means nothing because your money's being debased faster than
the rate that you're making returns so yeah it's just a kind of oh shit moment for me and
it kind of changed everything i was like oh i just if you feel like everything you've been taught is
just a lie and yeah from that point onwards it was just sort of keep going down the bitcoin rabbit
hole went to my first conference met jack mallers and all sorts of other huge names in bitcoin and
i was just like this is insane like i'm how am i surrounded by these people just in with a
conference of less than 500 people and you go up and speak to someone and they all have the time to
talk to you and they want to know about what you're doing and it's like these people are just
the nicest people i've ever met genuine super intelligent super switched on and
they just seem to genuinely care and i just felt like that moment was one of the points where i was
like this is like this is where all of the best people are and i just want to be around them
and it's a it's a cool feeling isn't it yeah you go oh what are they doing this feels different
yeah completely and not to hijack your story Alex but just so much of that resonates with me in terms
of suddenly things just start to make sense you're like oh hang on what what do you mean there's
there's an option that says you can just save money and what do you mean saving and investing
aren't the same thing what are you talking about you have to invest it's like no no no there's this
whole school of economics school the Austrian school of economics that happily explains to you
what money is and whoa it's just this massive moment i agree we've got lots in common i'm going
to dig through all of this alex wind the clock back though i'd love to know so dad was like mate
get into the stock market how did he know about the stock market and what were you guys investing
in at the time and what kind of analysis were you doing on on different things yeah so he
i think so when my dad was in probably about my age he basically started investing his own money
when not many people would do that most people were like trusting
financial advisors yeah yeah and he he just started doing it i don't actually know why
um but he eventually i can't exactly remember the story but um he got some payout or something that
went into his pension and it was one of those schemes where you get a big payout and it goes
into a pension scheme and he decided to take it for himself to manage rather than letting it touch
this scheme and he invested all the money himself and i think it was probably one of the best
decisions he made um and yeah so then when i was growing up um when i was still at school he just
sort of thought that i might be interested in it so i started talking to me about it
showed me a few things and it wasn't investing in any individual companies um it was just
um what they called it's been such a long time ago since i've invested in the stock market i'm
kind of forgetting it all but uh i think his main thing like passive passive investing like
investing in indexes and things like that yeah no so it wasn't that it was um investment trusts
so they're actively managed but not um not open-ended funds okay um so yeah and it was
just basically finding winners in the uk mainly so there are a couple uh i mean in a way though
it doesn't really matter what that specific use case was to be honest if you can't remember don't
don't stress it's more just like getting a flavor for things it's like oh okay this is something you
could point your energy and attention at um and then how it evolves because like the idea of a
landscape architect who's investing it's like that's fucking niche but there's probably a lot
of landscape architects out there but how many of them on the side are thinking about these other
areas that you had an interest in and i always love that how we don't really realize but we're
all extremely unique because we all have these different life experiences that blend together
to make us who we are.
And we're all totally different.
What I love doing is learning from them.
And to only be 30 now is great
in that you've already figured all this stuff out.
There'll be people in their 40s and 50s
that haven't asked the simple questions
that you've been able to ask.
And that's why I also always say
that information travels unfairly through markets.
Like we are bloody lucky
to be having this conversation right now
in the knowledge that actually
you don't need to invest in investment trusts any longer.
You don't have to take the counterparty risk.
You don't have to trust a financial advisor.
You don't even need a pension fund.
You just got to just buy some of the stuff called Bitcoin.
100%.
Another thing that you mentioned, Alex,
that I'd love to chime off though is then,
so you mentioned, you had this point where you're like,
oh, I've been lied to.
what what are you referring to when you you reference that and how did it feel
well it's it's one of those things it's it's one small part so i kind of
bit learning about bitcoin taught me about money and i didn't i didn't understand money
i then read um lynn olden's book broken money yeah it's brilliant yeah great book and
it's just going through all of that makes you realize how much you don't know and i've always
been one of those people that i was an infuriating child at school because
i wouldn't get into massive trouble but if i didn't understand the logic behind a rule
i wouldn't i wouldn't follow it so i was just always questioning stuff and if i could understand
how it works then sure that makes sense i'll do that but like i was constantly being told to tuck
my shirt in or something like that it's like but but why what why does it make any difference to you
that doesn't make any sense to me and and then it's kind of the same sort of because i've had
that sort of mentality to things i've always kind of questioned a lot of things and then
learning about money seeing that everything that you've sort of been spoon-fed isn't actually the
case and that actually questioning things is the the best thing to do to understand how things work
and so yeah i'm kind of rambling but that realization with money sort of started breaking
everything else down and it's like okay how does everything else work so the money isn't what we've
been told it was and then that's made me think about everything else so i'm now questioning food
and like most bitcoiners do it's like okay just because the food is sold in the supermarket
on the food shelf that doesn't mean it's actually food it's probably 90 plastic or something like
that i mean obviously that's not the case but i mean it's not too far wrong with all the chemicals
they put in and it's just you just believe that the people in charge have your best interests at
heart and for me learning about bitcoin and then realizing how the world actually works
was that sort of complete breakdown in my trust in all systems yeah hang on a second so
if the money's not true what else do i know that someone wants me to know
yeah or why or the simple question like why do i know what i know like how how how conditioned am i
and you don't we'll probably never have an answer in some ways but um i'd love to hear more about
what like specifically what was it about money that you didn't understand like some of the real
kind of aha moments where you're like oh that actually doesn't make that i'm not tucking my
shirt in here mate that doesn't make sense yeah so i was always um i was always a saver when i was
when I was younger,
I was always really good at saving money.
And I understood interest
and that the banks pay you interest or whatever.
But I never understood any of the intricacies about it.
So understanding that the bank doesn't own your money,
you deposit cash into the bank
and they don't actually have it.
That was a huge moment.
It's like, well, okay.
Because I just assumed that they take your money,
they maybe lend it out.
and then because of that they can generate a return for you.
But that's not the case.
They just create infinite amounts of money whenever they want.
So that was a big one.
Oh, what else?
Understanding that money needs certain properties
to make it have any value.
And I didn't know about the gold standard
until learning about Bitcoin.
so all of that was just a huge rabbit hole as well learning about gold and its scarcity properties
and coming off the gold standard and how that we're all just using paper money that is created
out thinner and it is it is an extraordinary lie in many ways yeah you're being paid in this paper
that's valuable but why and i remember going once i'd sort of become a crazy bitcoiner i would go
into my day job and and obviously talk about your landscape out mate come on yeah i was i was trying
to like tell everyone you heard about this thing called bitcoin everyone's just looking at me like
you are just mental and i'm like but if you just dollar cost average like a tiny bit blah blah blah
blah blah and uh i just remember getting a comment back like i'll stick to my real money thanks and i
just thought yeah well this is exactly it this i was that person and we just need to try and get
more people to realize this the huge ponzi scheme that we're all a part of but somehow that's where
um podcasts you already touched on this like that's where the conferences are just so powerful
as an experience because you you run down this rabbit hole and you're like oh my god there's
other people talking about this stuff and you can find them online in the depths of god knows where
but you can find them and then you go to a physical event and you're like oh my god these are probably
some of the most positive fittest smartest people i've ever seen in one room and there's a very
healthy appetite for risk for let's say not tucking the shirt in and going well what are
you talking about like why would i do that um and i it's taught me so much as well whoa and so as a
yeah landscape architect i think i'd put that into the bracket of an interesting business in
the sense that people are always going to need that service so if you were a landscape architect
and you did get into Bitcoin,
one of the better approaches is often actually continue
with your area of expertise and DCA.
So out of interest, were you just like,
I have to work in this thing full time.
I'm not interested in landscape architecture at all.
Because most people that I meet,
when they fall down the Bitcoin rabbit hole,
there's not a huge amount of disposable capital
sitting around to like reallocate supposedly.
It's just that every month I get paid.
It's like, okay, well, every Monday,
just pump as much into Bitcoin as you can.
And I now know, I can think on the top of my head,
like four or five characters that I met at Bitcoin meetups
now five years ago who were accountants
or engineers of some form, electricians,
and they're now working for themselves,
either traveling or setting up their own things
because they DCA'd in Bitcoin for a cycle and a half.
It works, essentially.
Yeah, you just were fed up as a landscape architect, perhaps?
because I still think that's a very valid strategy.
So continue doing what you're doing,
but incorporate Bitcoin into that
and your options grow essentially.
Yeah, definitely.
If I was passionate about that industry,
I probably would have stayed.
But it was one of those things.
I was just, I never enjoyed it.
Every, I was always just sort of turning up
because I didn't know what else.
Good on you for recognizing that though,
because also like a lot of people don't they'll just continue in autopilot yeah but i mean i was
constantly looking over the years like what is my exit strategy from this and i just couldn't work
it out and yeah bitcoin just sort of it was a bit of an accident really because i just started
making videos about it because obviously i was making videos about investing and then i felt
like a complete fraud to carry on making videos about investing so obviously everything just
turned bitcoin focused and then i met a bunch of really interesting people and made some really
good connections just from doing that and so it it almost seemed like a mistake to not give up my previous job because I was ending up You were wasting your time
Yeah. And I was able to network and meet loads of other people and actually build some really
good connections. And I just thought it was a good opportunity to move at the time that I did.
And yeah, it's one of those things I always think if I was passionate about a nine to five job versus starting a business, you'd probably be better off just sticking at the nine to five job unless you are really certain on your business.
Because if you're just stacking Bitcoin, you're probably going to do very well over a five year period.
but the risk of starting a business in this economy is yeah the odds are pretty against you
especially in the uk um so i kind of agree with what you're saying it's yeah there's nothing wrong
with sticking to a nine-to-five just for me it was it was just uh too much really well and that's
the fun bit right it's it's your life you do whatever the fuck you want and basically anyone
that ever gives you advice is giving you advice based on what worked for them and there's absolutely
no reason that it will work for you it just happened to work for them yeah so as much as i i
sometimes i love a good business book protect in particular like a good biography or whatever
like how did that person and that business become what it is today and you can go and read about it
and you're like oh interesting like a great book i read from an investing perspective recently
was around the founder of SoftBank.
And basically Korean migrant in Japan
builds this massive tech business
and ends up funding some crazy bets
with the $100 billion VC fund that they set up.
And it was full of like Saudi investors
and just mental,
like how do you get into that position?
And people do, right?
they just take different step, different step, different step.
And what they would recommend to you to do isn't necessarily right for your
personal situation.
And so making that call for yourself is always the key.
Yeah, so great.
So getting out of that done, making videos,
and this is something that I'm really passionate about too.
In fact,
we probably wouldn't be talking if we weren't both quote unquote content
creators.
So, and I like to think of it as being your own brand,
that there is literally no reason to stop anyone from putting content out like if you've got a
mobile phone you can make a video and you can post it and there's obviously tons of nuance to like
how you do it and where you do it and what your strategy might be but um what you why did you start
creating content in the first place and when i had a flick through a youtube channel recently
it was so interesting that you had videos that were like five six years old but had nothing to
do with Bitcoin at all and then obviously Bitcoin's become a big part of the journey you've been on
and in some ways it's a really nice um kind of rear view mirror on the proof of work that you've
been through so why did you start making content and um you know what's the fun part of it for you
yeah so I actually made videos when I was at school when I was like 14 15 16 me and my friends
used to make gaming videos and it yeah um it was kind of fun though I kind of felt like a little
entrepreneur because the whole goal was try and get monetized on YouTube and we ended up making
making a video that got like 800,000 views which at the time was wow was huge and um but then I
kind of was like i'm over this i'm going to uni i'm growing up and um just left it all and
i kind of always thought it was a fun thing to do i kind of enjoyed the sort of personal
creativity that you can have and so i kind of just wanted to do it while i was getting older
and then just finally pulled the trigger and was like okay i might make complete garbage content
but it's gonna i'm not gonna enjoy sitting in front of a camera but it'll be good to push
myself out of my comfort zone um it might make me better at public speaking that might be a win
and if all goes well um i might make some money so i kind of thought like yes it's going to be a
lot of effort but even if it all goes horribly wrong i'm still potentially learning some skills
and so that was kind of the rationale for it and just trying to push myself to a point where
i'm not super comfortable and just try and create some things that um that i think will be helpful
and educational but and they clearly have been addicts i mean some of the traction that your
videos have got have been great plus i mean as we started the the the episode well when did you
start working with bitcoin collective have you actually even started or you just signed uh yeah
just the last couple of months yeah so you um do you think that opportunity would have arisen if
you hadn't started creating content no that's the amazing thing like absolutely not and before that
yeah like i've got a whole list of experience now that i would never have had if i didn't decide to
make youtube videos about investing in the stock market or whatever it is and it's just crazy
because that is literally the proof of work if you're just showing you're showing the world that
you're committed to doing something you're putting yourself out there and people do see it eventually
even though it feels like a long slog because I started six years ago but
well and that is I mean six years is a long time but I think what's cool is it's six years ago
what's the right way of saying this sometimes it's the journey not the destination yeah so
so actually you don't necessarily need to know what the outcome has to be but just be comfortable
and the knowledge that you're going somewhere interesting
and you didn't even know that Bitcoin was interesting.
You didn't know that you get a job in a Bitcoin company.
You didn't know you'd be buying Bitcoin.
You didn't know you'd be educating about Bitcoin,
but you started anyway six years ago.
Okay, so what would be some of the highlights that you've had
in terms of experiences because of putting yourself out there
and testing yourself?
oh um so yeah i mean last week with um with the bitcoin collective we were at the
uk's largest business show i think at the excel center and we had to stand there talking to
entrepreneurs and business owners about bitcoin which is just kind of mind-blowing
and a few weeks before that i was invited by bitcoin policy uk to go and help them in in
liverpool at the labor party conference which again just completely bizarre thing for me it's
like why am i being invited to this i'm not really political but this is really important work that
and yeah i'm i'm helping and it's a great thing to be a part of and just jumping into all sorts of
strange pools of and networks interesting so so talk to me about that as an experience then so
the labor party conference is an annual get together of labor party followers or what even
is it and and the big and explain as well what bitcoin policy uk do and i'd be intrigued as to
how they're funded because it's very interesting to have i mean here and here in australia just
give you a brief bit of context of why i'm interested in this is the australian bitcoin
industry body that i know some of the guys that run that it's essentially a uh a spokes
person for the bitcoin industry in australia so there's bitcoin exchanges here there's you know
bitcoin wallets here and there's all sorts of stuff going on um but it's a kind of you know
there's a board, there's a chairman, there's a strategy behind, like, you know,
commenting on different policy that's coming out of the Australian government, etc.
So, yeah, interesting.
Keep talking about the Labour Conference and also what Bitcoin Policy UK do.
Yeah, so I think it's similar.
So it's a think tank, I think is the phrase.
but they're all basically volunteers
and just basically trying to
ensure that the UK government
puts in better policy for Bitcoin
and they write letters to the MPs
and try and just help boost the
what's the word?
I'm kind of losing my train of thought
it would be to
to ensure that the Bitcoin network
has a official and professional voice
when discussing politics
or policy
what laws are you creating
how does that impact the Bitcoin industry
and it's fascinating
Bitcoin doesn't have a marketing department
if we were crypto podcasters
We'll be being paid shit tons to promote whatever token that said crypto business had created and was pumping wherever they're pumping it.
And the incentive is to ignore the design of the crypto token and to just spout whatever nonsense they're asking you to talk about in favor of being paid.
Bitcoin can't do that.
Like there is no way of paying a policy think tank to go to the UK government
and say, guys, go and lobby them and say,
we think that your new rules are a load of bullshit.
And that's why it's so crazy when you see things like Ripple in Washington,
DC doing whatever they're doing.
It's just nuts.
You start peeling away those layers.
But it's really cool to see how it can be like totally free market, right?
It's a think tank.
It's self-funded.
there's volunteers and they're promoting a uh an algorithm slash protocol for money how cool is that
yeah and so at a conference for a political party i mean basically i imagine that's just one massive
donations spin-up they're basically just trying to get funding from people
yeah so it's an annual event i think all of the major political parties do them
um but it's just all the mps and politicians give speeches and a lot that it's like a trade show in
a way so there's lots of stands set up of businesses basically trying to lobby the politicians
in one way or another, trying to get funding for their projects
or trying to change policy and just try and talk to the right people
who they think might be able to make a difference.
And so I guess that's kind of exactly the same as what we were doing,
just hoping and trying to speak to people within the government,
the active government, who might be able to take Bitcoin a bit more seriously
and at least listen, open their ears and hear what we have to say rather than just,
I mean, you mentioned Ripple.
I think last week there was, I think, one of the politicians who's there at the moment
was meeting Ripple last week in Asia somewhere.
And it's just like Bitcoin Policy UK have reached out to that specific person so many times
and got no response and it seems that the ripple just sort of chucks the money at her and she's
like okay cool i'll listen we're now pushing forward innovation and payments it's like no
but i mean talk about like tucking your shirt in it's like that's that's bullshit everyone knows
it's bullshit come on yeah um and so when you're at that stand like interesting so did anyone pay
any attention or was it like this huge conference and like just no one's even talking to the bitcoin
guys yeah no actually it was quite a busy stand there were lots of volunteers there um
and so we had a very busy stand because there were lots of of us there and i think because of
that lots of people coming up and they would see the words bitcoin thing bitcoin and there were
kind of a few scenarios it'd be like i do not like bitcoin so i'm going to go tell them that
i don't like bitcoin and i'm going to go argue with them and tell them that they shouldn't be
here and shouldn't be talking about bitcoin because i know someone that's been scammed
by bitcoin that's usually what they're saying and uh then there are some people that are secretly
curious and like oh yeah can i i'm from one of the other stands and i run a business and can i
secretly talk to you and i'll take off my shirt just so look you can't see it in my logo yeah
yeah exactly and there are quite a few of those and then there were just some people that seemed
interested that just didn't really know much about it and then it's a real mix but overall
the reception was really positive which i personally was quite surprised about
because i thought it was going to be just very very negative yeah you're going to the lion's
den in a sense it's that it's that obvious misalignment of incentive
in that the reason that Keynesianism has been so popular
is because monetary policy makers and political scientists
have been able to jump into bed together
and fund each other's central planning, basically.
It's like, you scratch my back, I'll scratch your back,
and we can sell it to everyone for their greater good,
and we'll socialize the losses on the back end.
and and it's even even that phrase socializing the losses like when i first heard that i was like
what that's like one of those things you touched on i think probably it's like you're listening to
podcasts you're you're feverish in terms of your your your consumption of this information around
this subject what is money and it's like oh inflation is a stealth tax you know the first
time you hear that you're like what what are you talking about no inflation is good inflation is how
the central bank keeps the whole economy going you've got to have about two percent and you find
yourself like literally repeating the shit that you were told and i you know wrote in a macroeconomics
exam at uni but who told you that well the guy that's getting paid by the bloke that prints the
money hello and so i i wonder when going to conferences like that
you know how seriously can they really take bitcoin and it's that process of like on the
one hand they just don't understand it and if it took you and i multiple years of getting a bunch
of things together and realizing oh this is valuable then the average 60 year old labor mp
has got absolutely no idea what bitcoin is in terms of the threat to their funding
that they don't understand that it's going to obsolete central banks
and therefore it's going to drastically reduce how government funds itself.
But also they'll be so skeptical straight away, right?
It's something new.
It's like, this isn't interesting.
Yeah.
Okay.
So was there anyone at that conference then that was of any importance,
do you think?
Or was it just punters just coming and having a chat?
because like how high can bitcoin get in conversations in government do we think like
you know the uk government's as broke as anyone else yeah i think from i mean i wasn't
able to see what everyone was doing all the time but um yeah sure from my experience it seemed like
it was not really people with a lot of say and there were some mps that came and had a picture
with the stand but it seemed like they were being sort of led around by their assistant like right
we need to go get a picture here here and they're sort of just like oh my gosh yeah like politics
wow yeah yeah and so it's more just everyday people really that we were talking to i felt like
um but yeah it's funny because the whole ethos of labor is or was like socialist whereas
Bitcoin is almost the complete opposite.
Everything you get in Bitcoin world,
you have to put in work for and nothing's redistributed.
So it's complete opposite to the sort of ethos.
And yeah, so like it's an uphill battle,
definitely speaking to the Labour Party for sure.
Very cool.
And so Alex, so in the months to come then,
And are you, is the Bitcoin Collective like specifically asking you to go out and create content on their behalf?
Or is it something that you're just going to continue to do off your own bat?
Like what are your plans in terms of that?
No, so content wise, that's all separate.
I'm just sort of joining the team to help try and build out the things that we're working on.
um but yeah content wise i just need to try and get my ass in gear and keep pushing it out because
that's the struggle just trying to manage it and as i'm sure you're aware it's just difficult to
try and keep it all going with content because you put out one thing one week but then you've
got to just keep it keep it all going keep the flywheel going well yeah i mean i must confess
in in my experience lately i've made a big change in how i'm doing it um so when i launched my
latest podcast in january i came kind of flying out the gates hired a guy as a producer hired a
guy as an editor which helped hugely to increase the volume of content i was able to get out
but i made a mistake in that i didn't have a um a revenue plan in place necessarily and so
suddenly 10 months in I was like I'm carrying all this cost each month which is essentially
potential bitcoin um why and when I started looking seriously at like different revenue options
audience wasn't nearly big enough to sell a sponsorship contract of any meaningful amount
and I'm very dubious of sponsorship contracts in general because you're like who are these
companies like what are they actually doing and I I know and I won't mention who any of these people
blah blah I've had conversations with other people who are already podcasting with successful channels
and they're promoting businesses that they don't like but they've got contracts in place with them
and that's how the show works right you've got an advertising contract it's like okay
that doesn't make sense to me and I didn't want to then equally go and create a a big coaching
program because I actually spend most of my day homeschooling my kids I just don't have the time
to commit to 20 grand's worth of coaching for someone
because you've got to fulfill this thing.
I'm like, shit, Jake,
you've really dug yourself a hole here, mate.
How are you going to get out of this?
And so I decided to go very lean
and really home in on what I care about,
which is then another problem in this space,
which is the platform risk.
And so this podcast, for example,
will only go out on RSS feeds and on NOSTA.
And I'm not even bothering with YouTube or X
or Instagram or anything going forwards,
which I'm actually really excited about.
It doesn't make any sense to a traditional content lens,
which would be like just as many eyeballs
as you can possibly get and then sell sponsor contracts.
But I think it'll be more fun for me.
And that's basically just,
I'll be doing a conversation a week
that I produce and publish myself.
And that way it should be easier
to keep the momentum going.
because I always get burnt out.
Like the YouTube algorithm is a hungry bitch.
And it's like, you know, one video is gone.
Next, next, next.
And I guess I personally reached a point.
It's like, why am I doing this?
I want to do it to have fun,
to have interesting and sophisticated conversations.
I don't want to do it so that YouTube wins.
So, yeah, I mean, does any of that resonate at all?
Maybe you should make a long form podcast, Alex.
yeah possibly i've thought about it but i'm i'm always worried about just trying to spin too many
plates at one time absolutely and you wouldn't want to do that i wouldn't suggest that yeah
yeah but i think that's really cool that you're doing it all on nosda because ultimately that
that's feeding into what you believe in and the world that you want to live in i assume and
Absolutely.
Yes.
Yeah.
And it's just,
if you're sticking to the mainstream platforms,
you're just feeding it.
And like,
ultimately we're all losing if we keep these things alive.
Like YouTube is,
yeah.
Like you said,
the algorithm is just ridiculous.
It's,
I think it changed recently because it used to be very different from my experience And now it like it doesn really matter if you have a following or not some videos will just do really well some
videos will do terribly and yeah trying to navigate all of that and it just takes you away
from the reason you were doing it in the first place which is to create something that you think
is important and interesting yeah that was what I think annoyed me the most actually was you you
I found that I'd suddenly got myself to a place where I was I was trying to win the game
the algorithm game I said no Jake that's not why you started this process and I'd also wrapped it
up in this whole like oh you can build a massive business out of this you might be able to on a
long enough time horizon but that wasn't again that wasn't why I started it so um yeah it's it's
funny that isn't it so and just to to ask some more detail on how you create your videos Alex
because I really enjoyed some of the ones that I've watched like are using AI for example like
helping to write scripts and do better hooks and titles and do you do do you just riff about what
you're finding interesting or like how do you structure your episodes and things like that
yeah i don't use ai as much as i should um i'm uh i don't think that's a bad thing by the way
yeah people know or to my experience you can tell right i started getting for example emails
from random addresses which really detail about like content that i've put out in the past
but there's just no way it wasn't written by computer oh yeah yeah i mean it's like no you
didn't go and read that on on my article or listen do you know what I mean so I think in some ways
it's not a bad thing um so do you do script at all though or how do you do it yeah so I'm a massive
victim of my own frugality like I really struggle spending money on anything so I do everything
myself and cool i use a little bit of uh ai for like proofreading scripts and how are you
structuring things and title suggestions but i pretty much pretty much come up with the ideas
and everything myself and spend spend time scripting and everything but just sort of run
it through almost like a spell check and just to save myself time but yeah i mean people are using
it for basically everything like for video editing and all of that but i still use normal editing
software which i've tried to like um test out which is actually faster and i found that going
the traditional method made no difference to my my time um but yeah always that strange fear
though isn't there an extent like okay ai edit this episode for me what's it cut out yeah i don't
know and and equally like and i could be wrong here but i don't listen to podcasts any faster
than 1x generally speaking i don't listen to any content faster than what it's created at
and that's because i believe that i get more from the conversation if i listen to it properly
and you get all the context which gives you then you know if you've gone through like two three
hour long podcasts and you're like at the end they're talking about something that actually
makes the whole thing make sense but ah that's why i've just spent all my time listening to this
which if you overly edit things or you speed it up too much you don't catch that
um now that opens up obviously another conversation like in the future with ai the way it's going
every single problem you face you can within a matter of seconds ask a bespoke question for the
problem that you're in and a solution why will you do all this passive consumption of content
like you've already mentioned you listen to tons of podcasts to kind of upskill like we may not ever
need to do that again so i wonder if that market demand might diminish i don't know but sorry i
cut you off Alex you're going to say something no definitely i'm just thinking about what you're
saying so please i i sometimes get comments on my videos and it's like oh how do i do this
in terms of how do i buy bitcoin through this blah blah blah i'm having issues with this it's
like you don't need me to make a video you can just ask chat gpt and it'll literally give you
the answer and it's kind of exactly that it's but i guess there is the market for it still because
people want trust a human maybe a bit more maybe not i'm not i don't know what it is there may be
something about just watching a video you can just switch off your brain you don't have to read
as much and it feels easier like if i wanted to learn how to buy bitcoin for the first time
i could ask chat gbt but i'm not i'm dyslexic so reading has never been it's never come easy to me
so seeing a whole script of how to do it isn't going to be as easy as watching a youtube video
where i can see someone going through it um it depends on how you learn doesn't it yeah and i'm
very much a visual learner and i'm sure there must be lots of people out there who are similar
yeah it's so true isn't it the the comments yeah how many of those comments could just be pumped
into an ai and therefore you don't need to interact at the same time though i would i said
i think this is where bitcoin's an interesting one because i saw a really good post recently on
that was a guy basically saying look bitcoin podcasts are fucking pointless bitcoin commerce
is a fucking pointless in fact bitcoin is really just not doing very well right now um just look at
how ai has been completely like it just they created a product they made it better they made
it better they made it better it's now everyone's using it all the time it doesn't have a conference
doesn't have a fucking podcast everyone's just doing it that's a fucking amazing product launch
you're like i kind of get your point i'll push back one i get lots of value from podcasts two i
I get people contacting me the whole time saying they've really valued my
podcast. So good for you, mate. You can have that opinion,
but in my opinion, you're wrong.
So yeah, there's obviously two sides to this camp, isn't there?
It's like the people are like, look, mate, just ask chat GPT.
But when it comes to your money,
you need to trust what you're doing and having someone who's already been
through the process you want to go through is key.
And that's why you get all of these interesting consultancy businesses in and
around bitcoin that have popped up because it's like hang on a second i adopted bitcoin myself
these are all the steps i went through this was shit i fucked this one up don't do that do this
pay me a grand for four hours of work and you miss all the bullshit and it makes sense and if you fall
too far down the rabbit hole of using ai for everything when it comes to your money you're
basically falling into the same fiat trap as before where you're just sort of trusting that
it's giving you the right information whereas and there's all that stuff with it hallucinating and
things like that yeah actually this makes me think recently i did some research around
personal finance and i i've had it on my mind for probably two or three years like a book
i really want to write a book and i haven't done it so jake stop fucking talking about writing and
just get on and do it is basically the situation but um amazingly all of the most popular books in
personal finance none of them mentioned bitcoin you look the top 10 bestsellers in personal finance
it's like literally none of them one of which i read recently which is called the psychology of
money and their solution to the wealth problem is passive investing via index trackers and
government bonds and you're just like that's fucking stupid look at this look at the counterparty
risk look at the purchasing power erosion look at the real inflation rate i disagree and that's
kind of what ai is like you know you go to ai and say how do i look after my money and it's more than
likely going to be like okay let me scan the top 10 best sellers in personal finance oh well they're
all talking about the 60 40 stock bond portfolio that's worked incredibly well as interest rates
have gone down and down and down and down and down for 50 years and they printed tons of money
but like bitcoin is still so small that there's not many people out there talking about it and i
think that's possibly where um having not that it's a real connection but like people i i'm
speaking for myself i have podcasts that i like i feel like i'm almost friends with some of these
people because i've listened to hours and hours you mentioned peter mccormack for example i've
got a tracker somewhere for every piece of bitcoin content i've been through and i met pete when he
did the uh cheat code conference in sydney i was the mc and i went and met a bunch of people uh in
person which was cool and in the pub after i was like let me figure it out and i said i've i've
listened to like 82 hours of what bitcoin did which i could tell from my spreadsheet and he was
like that's not flex i was like what do you mean he's like mate i've done like 800 episodes
fair enough and and some people have listened to all of them right and and in that sense you are
kind of like friends with these people um so yeah okay from where i'm sitting i'm very confident
there's a place for content with people in the future yeah no but it's a really interesting one
isn't it that's like and that's really what bitcoin does it questions what you do with your time
like are you pointing your attention in the right direction um and so speaking of which like so what
what's got you most excited then about the next kind of 12 months and the the route you're now
taking um honestly it's just really exciting to be being able to work full-time in bitcoin
yeah cool because the first conference i went to i felt like a fraud i felt really
odd about going to it because it's like i've not been in bitcoin for very long i don't work in
bitcoin i'm just interested and don't really know how everything works i think at that point i didn't
really understand what gdp meant i was like this doesn't make sense like try and make it make sense
in my brain when was that alex that was two years ago that was cheat code yeah cool in the uk that's
that's what's fun though is look how much progress you've made in two years yeah and but speaking to
other bitcoiners they also have similar imposter syndrome i've from my experience and it's like
actually we're all just people we're all just people who are interested in bitcoin it doesn't
matter if you know how every intricate detail works it doesn't matter if you know as much as
this person it's just we're all interested and we all look at things from different angles
and we all have value to offer.
Yeah.
But yeah, I guess it's just, yeah, working on this
with the Bitcoin Collective
and hopefully we'll have a bull market.
Yeah.
I mean, that's a tricky one right now,
the price action, fucking hell.
Yeah.
Which way are we going to go?
Well, that is really a case of time will tell.
We'll have to wait and see.
I'm intrigued a bit more about the Bitcoin Collective because I don't know much about it until today.
So it's essentially a consulting business that helps businesses incorporate Bitcoin.
Yes, it's all very, very new at the moment, but it's basically educational.
So if people want to learn about Bitcoin, it's...
Sorry, let me try that again.
That's all right.
It's early in the morning, so it's struggling a little bit.
But basically, yeah, it's educational.
So just trying to be that point of call for businesses who are interested in Bitcoin,
but don't know how to get it on their balance sheet,
don't know how to how to buy it and don't know how to accept it it's just been that point of call
and we can connect connect you with all the right places and experts nice and and it's there's a
business side involved in here in australia as well called the bitcoin advisor for a bit
and oh yes yeah and like bitcoin mentor in a way the the regularity with which you see a finance
broker or a financial advisor on the high street who are punting fiat loans or one percent
discretionary advisor type setups that is the frequency with which you will see a bitcoin
consultant in the future we're just not even close to being there yet like you're lucky to
find like one company that's doing okay in one country let alone like every single high street
and that that is in a sense of a reflection as to how early we actually are because basically no
one knows what bitcoin is and you know well let's go back to talking about the price right now so
you know dipping down under 100 000 us dollars it's now november of 2025 like the the four-year
cycle thesis is like well maybe that's been and gone right 126k us that was the top there's lots
of people that are now selling into what they think is the bear market coming and that could
be true but when you zoom out and you think about the fact that like every single high street is
going to have some kind of bitcoin advisor sitting on it like you could be very wrong there and
money printer gets switched on the whole cycle is actually pushed back to q1 q2 next year and we
we could easily have like what's a 30 35 drawdown from 126k and it fucking rips to like two three
times where we are today i don't know and that's the fun part of of following it but how wild is
that to think there's there's going to be as many bitcoin consultants in the future as there are
currently financial advisors are there though because i'm not sure i'd agree with that because
will you need as many bitcoin advisors because some people will just it'll just be money so
you're just holding the money you don't need great pushback you won't need if i think about
my experience of kind of managing assets you have an annual get together with your financial advisor
who's being paid 1% a year to allocate you into whatever.
You're right.
With Bitcoin, it's just money.
So it's just savings.
And that human is automated away, essentially.
So the purchasing power retention is done by the algorithm,
not by a discretionary allocator.
But financial services, I still think will be needed.
So people who are figuring out,
okay, well, this is what I want to retire with,
or this is my will,
or you're still going to be buying and selling Bitcoin for real estate perhaps
or for other equities perhaps, or maybe there might be something else you're doing.
So there's that.
Yeah, sure, actually.
There'll be just like slightly different sets of financial services in the future, in my opinion.
But yeah, good question in terms of volume.
I don't know.
One would assume that given Bitcoin, at least thus far in my experience,
has performed better than any discretionary financial advisor could ever dream of,
the heavy lifting will be done by Bitcoin itself for personal finance.
And how you choose to interact with it in and around that will then be
depending on how sophisticated you are or not,
or equally how much Bitcoin you actually have.
Because even within Bitcoin, you could have multi-sig, single-sig.
you could be with a custodian you could be someone like anchor watch and pay a percent per annum and
haven't insured or you know any nut or you could be getting collateral with someone who knows there's
going to be tons of different ways of of allocating your bitcoin or storing your bitcoin and that will
all require specific expertise um yeah that's the amazing thing because all these things are being
built now and yeah i don't know how anyone can be can't be just unbelievably bullish yeah it's so
so amazing seeing the stuff coming out and what what block and square are doing it's just that's
cool isn't it like you can now spend dollars over bitcoin that's just yeah yeah and it's yeah so the
merchant adoption one's a good one so the square payment terminal is used by four million merchants
yeah i can't remember if that's a global stat or a u.s stat it's that's just u.s that's just the u.s
interesting and so the two businesses local to me that i'm friendly with the owners of
um this was interesting actually they both use square one of them is a butcher and one of them
a cafe and the butcher already has a wallet of satoshi bitcoin wallet set up and is very happy to
receive bitcoin for meat which i often do but was concerned because they're already they're
already treading a fine line with the government in terms of rearing regenerative and organic beef
and pushing back on animal vaccinations and things what if they accept bitcoin via square
and their accounting purposes somehow like flags them.
And they were concerned about if I use Square's Bitcoin feature,
will that somehow pop up with the government somewhere
and just gives me unnecessary attention?
So that was a really interesting point in terms of the Square merchant adoption.
So people just were like,
what if I get extra attention that I don't want?
And the other one with the cafe, which is much more straightforward,
I was like, didn't even know it happened.
So yes, the merchant feature that they've put out
is, in my opinion, far more exciting
than any strategic Bitcoin reserve announcement
that a government's making, et cetera,
because it's genuine product development
and access to market that wasn't there.
But I wonder how successful it will actually be
given those two, I admit, very anecdotal examples.
But the Bitcoin newsreel goes wild.
but like what actually changes well basically there's still a huge educational hurdle for
all people involved yeah i think that's what makes the the cash app integration so
so interesting because you can just you don't even have to own bitcoin and you can spend
spend dollars and it gets converted to bitcoin on the merchant side can you get cash app in england
you they they pulled out of the uk okay yeah because it's not in australia not to mind
knowledge anyway yes and that feature is they can now pay a business you can pay a business in
bitcoin using cash app and not having any bitcoin yourself so if your tab is 100 bucks and you've
got 100 bucks in your cash app you can click pay in bitcoin and you send 100 cash app does the
transfer themselves and the exchange yeah wow that's very cool isn't it and so because obviously
jack dorsey owns both cash app have the map of where all square merchants that accept bitcoin
are located yes so in cash app you can see where you can spend bitcoin you can go there and support
them and convince others to get on the on the map wow if you don't have bitcoin the merchant
say you're just a normal cash app user but you're at a bitcoin accepting merchant they could say oh
how do you want to pay um if you pay in bitcoin slightly cheaper for us so we might give you a
discount not sure if that's technically legal depending on where you are but obviously they
are going to be charging it's going to be sent over lightning so it's going to be basically free
rather than paying three five percent for your credit card networks take yeah well yeah so if
you have cash out but you have no bitcoin you'd be like okay i'll pay over cash out then with
bitcoin even though i don't have any bitcoin so you can get normal people spending dollars
and the merchant accepts bitcoin and i don't know i just think like the domino effect of something
like that could be could be huge huge yeah it makes me think actually where from what you've
explained about the bitcoin collective this is exactly the kind of thing that you'd be good
advisors on for people it's like okay well look really easy low-hanging fruit for any business
is say that you accept Bitcoin,
get yourself posted on this particular network
and see if you get people turning up.
Example that happened just today for me,
actually, a shout out to Sam, who's my boxing coach.
He's just setting up his boxing,
physical boxing gym for the first time,
having done it as like a roaming boxing coach
from his car for a couple of years.
And I'm like, you should just say on your website,
I accept Bitcoin and sign up for whichever,
a Bitcoin map is relevant for where we are.
Because people who like spending Bitcoin will come to your business.
It's like a whole marketplace of people out there that are looking to support other businesses
that use it. And when you hear things like what you've just described with Cash App,
that's just now just a ton more people that are looking at this stuff.
Wow, interesting. Alex, just to take a slight change
of direction here, I'm always interested in
like how things feel.
So the process of adopting sound money,
of which Bitcoin is,
it very clear when you start digging into the kind of economics behind why it gives you a better outlook on the future and the ability to lower your time preference and things like delayed gratification you know actually actually living
those things like how different is your life in terms of how you feel and your future now versus
maybe five years ago or pre-bitcoin and like first running down the rabbit hole
yeah um have you seen the video posted by relay i don't know how you actually say it
the swiss exchange relay i i had um had a guy from relay on what the hell was his name
i can't remember that's so bad do you know the video i mean though it's like
no I'm going to look it up quickly
excuse me for a second
I'm normally really good with names
how can I not remember
he had a book called crypto assets
that I started reading
Thomas that's right
okay shout out to Thomas for every
years I still haven't finished
this book there's just too many
to read thomas yeagers yeah he just joined as a cfo relay is probably the most interesting european
bitcoin business i know of um i didn't invest in it or anything but it's something i looked at
um anyway sorry so relay have a video that's what you're referring to yes they they put out a video
in the last couple of weeks it's just a short little video on x um all created in ai i think
but it's just like life with bitcoin and life without and it's kind of got a side by side of
two people well the same person living the same life going to work coming home but one is with
bitcoin one is without and the person without bitcoin is just thinking they're miserable they're
going to work they're tired they're getting home they're thinking about bills they're working late
because they're worried about money and they're worried about getting fired and whatever it is
the person who's living with their sort of world backed by bitcoin just goes to work does what they
need to do goes out goes with goes out with their friends does something fun has a nice dinner goes
home and just i think that sums it up perfectly because it just it's not about you find bitcoin
bitcoin and then you're rich it's just a slow mental shift where you're not constantly worried
and stressed about money and i think that's how it's been for me so obviously my generation find
it it's very difficult to get onto the property ladder i think it's about four and a half times
couple salaries for the average house price in the UK in the UK that's combined couple salary
yeah fuck yeah it's crazy isn't it yeah so it's just insane and then you're you're kind of taught
as you're growing up you need to get onto the property ladder that's what everyone's saying
and again I kind of think that's just another thing that people don't question that they should
it's like why why are we just buying properties why do we all have to
like is property just going up because we're all just buying it like sheep
but anyway that's kind of a side point but it's it's very difficult so i think a lot of my
generation and the younger generation as well they're just quite nihilistic and there isn't
a lot of hope so you're just sort of living day to day it's very hard to try and build something
and progress up any sort of ladder whether that's financial stability whether whether that's a job
um and for me it's just been that that sort of breathing space where i don't need to
panic so much about money i just i'm sit i'm stacking bitcoin everything i save is bitcoin
i don't really hold fiat currency at all and it just makes life so much easier i don't need to
think about the price of bread or anything like that it's just gradually life just gets a little
bit easier if you carry on working and saving and it means i mean for me one of the things that kind
of helped make the decision easier about leaving my previous job was that work seemed to be
encroaching on my personal life and i think that that's becoming more of a thing these days as well
where you're trying to be the company you work for wants to tell you where you need to be
how you should work in the most efficient way when actually in many ways that's a personal
thing that you need to work out how you work in the most efficient way and so it was kind of in
the stage where it's like right people need to start coming back into the office five days a
week that sort of thing and for me I was thinking this isn't gonna this isn't the life I'm gonna be
able to be happy with i don't want to be sat in an office five days a week being less productive
than working say three days a week in an office and two days at home and ultimately i i want to
have a dog which is a really random thing but like it's something i want like but i'm not gonna be
able to do that if both me and my girlfriend are working full-time in offices and so without
bitcoin i would have had to just suck it up and do all those things i feel like but with bitcoin
it's been able to be like it's given me the um confidence to say no to certain things and push
back on things i don't believe in and just have a bit more autonomy which i think is really
important for everyone to be able to have awesome yeah and it's it's we've been recording for an
hour and 14 minutes and that set of statements that you just made were the most powerful of the
conversation so far that's why i love long form podcasts it's like it all makes sense when you
hear that essentially it's helping give you additional options that enable you to be able
to say no i'm not doing that fuck off yeah and that is very very healthy for everyone like not
just from a perspective of self-worth, but also like the life you get to build yourself.
It's like, what do you want to create?
Okay, well, now you might be able to have that chance.
I think it's really important as well, this idea of like Bitcoin's not a get rich quick
scheme.
And that's been pounded down by the price action at the moment as well, which people
are like, oh, we thought we'd like probably twice as high.
That was conservative in some people's eyes.
but it's actually like
if you can show me a way
that I can put my head down
be productive
keep what's mine
and it compounds over time
I'll choose that
I don't need like
crazy crypto gains in two years
to then live in the Bahamas
and sail a yacht around the world
I don't need that
I just need to know there's a way of actually
surviving to then have like essentially focus on thriving which is what this is really all about
um and so Alex so to ask then how many of your friends have been through this journey that you
just described of going from like quite well I don't you didn't say you were nihilist it yourself
I'm not going to put that on you but you described many people of your generation being like that
when you say how you feel do people get encouraged by that or do they get more like triggered by it
but that can't be true yeah it's interesting because i think a lot a lot of my friends they
just don't want to hear about it wow i think what they prefer to be broke and in the pub pissed and
angry well for me when i was before bitcoin i just felt a bit hopeless i kind of thought
like life is going to be what it's going to be and
yeah it's kind of a rigged game against you but and i think some of my friends see it see the world
like that and i don't know exactly what they think but i think they just think every time
they hear bitcoin they just think oh like gambler like i want to stick to my safe investments because
you're actually just irresponsible and i'm annoyed that it's paid off for you
i think that's probably more closer to what they think because
they're like they're now they're now envious of the success and pigeonhole it as your luck
rather than potentially something that they could do.
It's interesting, isn't it?
Because there's two types of people in a way.
There's people that go, huh, success leaves clues.
Hmm.
Maybe I should just ask them how they did that
rather than being like, oh, fuck them.
They're lucky.
You know what I mean?
It's so interesting.
Why are people like that?
I don't know.
But I think the thing about Bitcoin
is that people are just so it's so ingrained in what they think that bitcoin is probably
scam adjacent or there's something off about it and so they just don't want to hear it so they
think you have just been at the casino and you've come out um you've come out um on top but if i do
that i'm probably not going to so like i just need to just ignore what you're doing because
you are lucky like whatever whatever happened it worked for you but it's not going to happen for me
because it's it's something i don't understand and i'm very scared of and the i don't understand
phrase is always interesting because like okay can you explain to me how fiat currency works
yeah how does the debt-based system function what's fractional reserve banking what leave me alone
you fucking weirdo but that does that's this is the most retarded explanation as to why you
wouldn't look at something is i don't understand it but i don't understand an iphone works i don't
understand how an internal combustion engine works i understand how tons of stuff actually works but i
use it every day and even that annoys people when you talk to them about it it's a very very
interesting time because at some stage the more that you learn about bitcoin like what
first of all the more you know the more you buy that's like a clear trend that i see in absolutely
everyone within the space the more you learn the more you buy the more you wish you'd bought earlier
is also like people today at like 95 000 us dollars are gonna absolutely hate themselves for
not buying more in the not too distant future now what is that two years three years i don't know
but suddenly that's going to look really cheap um what's interesting though is at some point
that general angst that you described that's going to be a problem because a population is
going to see this subset who they're going to consider lucky or have been to the casino and
i can't go there become wealthier and wealthier more and more independent happier and happier is a
trend i've also seen more and more kids as well like people having big families again because they
can actually think like oh i can plan for that now i can afford it and they're going to be really
pissed off and democracy functions as a popularity contest so i wonder i wonder like is is it going
to be a case of like all right bitcoin's now part of um you know the u.s in particular is leading
the charge i think in terms of its its policy frankly so you know there's very clear precedent
around code as free speech in the US.
And therefore, like actually censoring Bitcoin
is going to be pretty hard
and they're getting better at ingratiating Bitcoin miners
and all this kind of stuff going on.
But aren't there going to be tons of American voters
that are really pissed off with a subset of Bitcoiners
that have done very well?
And the same would be said in Australia or the UK
or any other place.
How do you think that might play out?
Yeah, I mean, I don't know if you've had the conversations
with non-Bitcoiners about this
because when I've been talking to people
about how eventually Bitcoin could become the world currency,
they're like, oh, but then certain people
will just have all of the Bitcoin
and will the government then take from them
and redistribute it.
It's like, no, that's not how it works.
Wow, so someone actually said that to you?
Yeah.
it was uh yeah and i just think that it's the whole mind shift like people are thinking people
think like okay someone works hard and they create a lot of value and there's money in the system and
it's okay for it to be distributed against the person who created its will people just think
that that's fine and personally i i don't think that's fine i think there's issues with capitalism
that people can get unbelievably wealthy and it's maybe not healthy but it's i believe in property
rights and people having the things that they've worked for and yeah i just think it yeah it will
be a very messy shift because especially in the uk it's people are thinking people are not thinking
about property rights and you've worked hard for this so that's fine or you've decided to buy
bitcoin at the very early days when it was risky you've taken that risk and it's paid off it's
oh that's unfair well i should get some of that now because how am i going to survive
and it's a really hard one this isn't it so alex i am i'm conscious of time do you have another 10
minutes or so yeah yeah cool okay let's we'll wrap it up after this but so i was born in the uk
school uni everything left when i was 24 lived in singapore for a four or five years almost i was
away for back to london for a bit then moved to australia because my wife's ossy so in the last
15 years i haven't really been in the uk very much um but i still have family back there and
I'm involved in a number of bits and pieces that mean that I'm still very
interested and also invested in the UK.
And in something that came up particular recently was the inheritance tax and
managing some stuff between my brother, my sister, my mom, 40%.
So at death, the British government takes 40% of someone's stuff.
What?
Now, interestingly, Australia is zero.
There's no inheritance tax in Australia currently.
that might change of course any of this stuff could change um and and in in the uk you can
you know you can use things like trusts to navigate from a more tax efficient perspective
like assets from generation to generation but it's still like it's it's extraordinary
how much people are taxed and i believe that the uk right now has the highest per capita
quantity of millionaires leaving the country so total volume yeah most are going out of china
you know they're pilfering what they can out of the communist state and getting the hell out
fair enough but in the same sense it's happening in the uk a place of 65 million people 70 million
people whatever it is now um what what keeps you in england at this stage in your life when you're
looking at things like this but like you believe in property rights you believe in being more
productive you've now got a sound money that you know is going to be yours in the future
um are you concerned about how things are going and what is it like there
yeah it's uh so i was in london at the weekend with my girlfriend and
she is definitely more positive has a more positive outlook about things whereas i'm like
this is a bit of a dump and uh but we came home and she's like yeah london's really gone downhill
wow and she she actually works there um in the week but at the weekend it was kind of quite
eye-opening we were sat in a pub in voxel which is not not a terrible area as far as i'm aware i
mean i don't know london that well but we're sat in a nice pub see a biker gang go down the street
with black hockey masks it's just like what is this place it's insane how much it's deteriorating
and yeah the taxes are just going crazy labor are just destroying everything and people do want to
leave personally i i would i'd love to leave i'd love to go live in portugal or somewhere like that
i've always had an issue living in the uk because the sort of um leisure activities don't really
appeal to me i want to be up going up mountains and going skiing and going to the beach and things
like that so it's always been a struggle for me from that point of view um but now that
yeah now that there are other opportunities because of bitcoin and being a sort of
money that you can take with you anywhere and sort of
yeah it gives you that more gives you that flexibility it definitely makes me want to leave
but at the same time i need to uh save some more stack some more sats before i can
fair enough i i have every confidence that if you chose to pick up and go then you could
and the cool thing that you've already taught me in this conversation is like you know you're
willing to take risks you're willing to say i was wrong about something you're willing to actually
like put yourself out there those are all like critical factors to help make a big move if you
were to choose to do that and equally the more content you create the more you work for a bitcoin
business the more bitcoin you stack you are in a sense digitally native like you're not selling
coffees in a coffee shop you're not running a factory somewhere you're not like physically
be tied to an office which has got you on this crazy employment contract it's like actually
you could probably do what you're doing for bitcoin collective from lisbon and fly back to
london when you need to be there um i'm not saying that will happen but yeah interesting
yeah it's very hard to know what's real in some ways you know that the the newspaper headlines
will say oh this is going on and this is so bad and blah blah blah blah and you're like
is it you know and as soon as you put your phone down you walk outside everything's pretty chill
yeah you know what i mean it's like it's it's it's not actually that crazy i mean obviously seeing
um i used to do in brixton actually so i know voxel quite well you wouldn't have had dudes on
fucking mopeds with masks on driving around 10 years ago when i used to live there no fucking way
so that that's definitely a change but but isn't this also you know as part of this bitcoin research
that we've all done.
This is the fourth turning.
This is what happens when you live on a lie
for like 50 plus years
when people are able to print their own money.
There's no more goods and services in the system.
They're just more monetary units
and no one's salary keeps up with the speed
that they print them at.
So everyone's getting poorer.
And as a result, crime rises.
It's really simple.
It doesn't make sense to go to work any longer
because you're going to tax me
on the official income that I make.
That means that my real wages are worse
than what they were a year ago.
or five years ago.
And it's unsurprising that people turn to nihilism,
for example, as a mindset.
Our big challenge, though, in some ways,
as people who've gone down the Bitcoin rabbit hole
is to bring people with us in a way that meets them
where they're at and doesn't alienate them
from the future potential.
So I personally believe that the benefits
that we've seen thus far, like past performance,
It's not guarantee a future performance that we haven't even got going really.
And so if you jumped on the Bitcoin bandwagon now,
what you'll see over the next five years will be even better than what's
happened in the last five years.
But people need to make that step and you can't do that for them.
So yeah, it's a very interesting time, isn't it?
Well, Alex, thank you so much for your time today.
I would love to just open it up to,
is there anything else that we haven't touched on that you would like to
mention or or any anything that resonated that you want to mention uh no i don't think so yeah
awesome well thank you so much for coming on and joining the podcast i really appreciate it and
love learning from people um thanks for having me i'm gonna i'm gonna make a shout out to
is it the big boss bear yes have i remembered that correctly i thought i'd better go and check
my telegram but yeah who contacted me and said jake you should have a chat with alex on on the
podcast so appreciate you getting us in touch thanks mate um final question is where can people
reach out and get in touch if they want to get um if they want to contact you um i'm on x and youtube
uh it's just alex glass i think okay awesome and i'll pop that in the show notes no worries
well alex thanks so much for your time today nice one thanks jake my pleasure thank you