There's only one, you know, challenger to monetary policy and central banking and money
itself, and that's Bitcoin. It's the greatest tool that has ever existed against authoritarian
states. It's not enough to just say, okay, it's 21 million supply cap. You need to understand
why, otherwise it's meaningless. If you could go back in time and ask why was fiat introduced,
it was because of all these deficiencies. But the moment there was trust introduced in the system,
it started being abused but now all those deficiencies have been resolved so you don't
need fiat anymore vj selvin how you doing man great thank you for having me danny um yeah i
followed the show for for years now so really honored to be on speaking to you no i'm really
glad to have you on is one of the things that um is probably getting harder but something i really
want to concentrate on is making sure that I have plenty of new guests in the space. This is
obviously the first time you've been on. You sent me your book, Principles of Bitcoin. I was just
telling you before, I'm most of the way through yet. I've not quite finished it, but it's brilliant.
It's really, really good. It's one of my favorite Bitcoin books I've read in a long time. I get
sent and buy a lot of Bitcoin books and I just don't have the time to read them all. But this is
one that for whatever reason just hooked me. I've really enjoyed it. So I'm glad to have you on.
And what I want to try and do here is kind of go back, not fully to basis.
I think this will be a show that will be valuable to Bitcoiners.
But I also want to make sure it's the kind of show that can be sent to people who might
be curious about Bitcoin, want to find out more, and just let people know the real fundamentals
of Bitcoin, that it's not all just treasury companies and penny stocks.
So I'm excited to get into this.
Yeah, me too.
So let's start.
But I think we should probably start with your background, because you've got a very interesting background.
You were at Harvard Law, Goldman Sachs.
You were like a Tradfire guy.
So tell us about your background.
Sure.
So, yeah, so I'm an attorney in the U.S., also a solicitor in the U.K., originally from India, but I've spent most of my life outside India.
um yeah so most of my career at Goldman Sachs I was in New York and then Hong Kong
and um and also Singapore for many years before moving back to London now I was a lawyer on Wall
Street during the 2008 financial crisis I worked on a couple of bailout packages for you know some
of the big banks um so it was very much in the in the thick of that uh in the early parts of my
part of my career. So that was a huge influence upon the way I think about
the financial services industry, economics, macroeconomics generally. And I became a major
gold bug on the back of that. And I was for many years until I discovered Bitcoin, obviously.
I've also worked sort of on regulatory matters, currently International General Council at Gemini.
um so in terms of in terms of bitcoin i mean so going back i'd say it was i think it was 2013 when
i first came across bitcoin my reaction to it was all the things you would expect from someone with
my background so you know ponzi scheme uh used by criminals no intrinsic value governments will
shut it down all those reactions right and it fascinates me that today 12 years later people
are saying exactly the same things.
It really blows my mind, right?
But those were my reactions back in 2013.
And then it took several,
it was many years of initially, you know, rejecting it
and then reluctantly learning about it
and then really starting to get it.
And I think, yeah, that was kind of my journey.
And along the way, it was something
that I really spent a lot of time thinking about
was why is it that people with my sort of background find it so hard to understand Bitcoin?
And there are many reasons for that.
One is just, I mean, people are just lazy and, you know, people are just reluctant to
do the work and read about it and understand it.
Another reason is just arrogance.
A lot of people are just really like, yeah, you need to tell someone who's made tens of
millions of dollars as a hedge fund manager or, you know, private equity fund manager that you've
missed the biggest investment opportunity of your lifetime. They're not going to react very well to
it. They're just going to be very defensive, right? I think it's also even more than that,
because like, you're definitely right. But it's also, it's kind of like telling them everything
that they've ever done, learned about, and then done in business might be a little bit wrong.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're questioning. I mean, so yeah, the natural knee jerk reaction is,
is to be defensive and, and many will come at it from that, from that perspective,
but, but there's not much, you know, you, you or I can do about that. You've just got to let these
people come around to it eventually, you know, like the meme, um, everyone buys Bitcoin at the
price they deserve. Right. So there's, I think there's a lot of truth to that. Um, so you just
got to let them be, but I thought where I could, you know, people like us can, can add value is
I think in the third bucket where people are missing, you know, the principles, like the core
sort of why are we talking about this? What was the core invention and creating a mental model
for Bitcoin? It's really hard because it's really hard to come up with an appropriate mental model
for Bitcoin simply because there's never been anything like Bitcoin before, right? So it doesn't
fit neatly into any of your molds. So it is so paradigm shifting. So my endeavor was really to
ask those first principled questions. Why are we talking about this? What was that
core fundamental innovation? As you say, let's put aside the Bitcoin treasury companies. Let's put
side, you know, treasury and the sort of Bitcoin reserves and all these things and or, you know,
crypto and Web3 and NFTs and all that. Let's ask that basic question. What was the core innovation
here and start from there? So that was really my kind of objective. I wanted to write the book
that I wish I had access to back in 2013.
That was kind of my objective.
And yeah, that's how it came about.
So maybe we should start there
because I mean, that is where you open the book
is like, why are we talking about this?
And as someone who's come from
a very sort of traditional background
who initially just dismissed Bitcoin,
like what was it that changed your mind on it?
Yeah, so like I said, you know, I was a gold bug.
And so I actually believe that everyone should be a little bit of a gold bug before they become
Bitcoiners, because I think that's the natural path to take. Bitcoin is digital gold. I believe,
I continue to believe, I've always believed that that is the best mental model. That's the best
analogy is digital gold, right? It's not a better MasterCard. It's not a better Venmo visa or
anything like that. It is digital gold, right? Satoshi was trying to destruct central banking,
He was trying to destroy money.
So that's the right kind of path.
So I think, and to be a gold bug, you need to understand monetary history.
You need to understand monetary policy and also a bit of political history and all the
things that led to where we are, right?
So it's a natural path, I think.
It's also an easier pill to swallow for many of the, you know, triad-fi people like myself.
So to answer your question, I was already there, having experienced the 2008 financial crisis,
having experienced the moral hazard and all the systemic manipulation that was taking place.
I witnessed it firsthand. I've been on call with Hank Paltz and, you know, the Federal Reserve and
so on back in 2007, 2008. And I saw it all. So I think I was already there.
For me, the leap was really understanding digital scarcity, just understanding the technology side
of things. And then everything came together. It was understanding why, you know, it's not enough
to just say, okay, it's 21 million supply cap. You need to understand why, otherwise it's
meaningless, right? And that takes hundreds, thousands of hours of reading, of thought,
of introspection, right, before you really get it, because it's not just cold. It's this entire
incentive structure, economic incentives that come together to make it possible, to make it
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mining.blockwaresolutions.com forward slash WBD. So can we go really like back to basics for a
minute here? Assume that I know nothing about Bitcoin, because this is the kind of show that
I want to be able to send to people who are interested in Bitcoin, but have no real understanding
of it yet. And this is probably, from the sounds of it, something you maybe learned in 2007, 2008,
during the financial crisis. Like, what is money? Yeah, so I know that's a hard question, by the way.
No, no, no. What's unfortunate is very few people ask the question.
So if you, and that's why it's because the entire concept has been corrupted. If you, I mean, the last, very few people understand that the money that they use on a day-to-day basis, fiat currency, is a 50-year-old experiment.
It's a 54-year-old experiment.
People just assume that governments have controlled money through history.
But no, it's actually only since 1971 that that's been the case, right?
So to understand, to answer the question, what is money?
You have to really, I think at this point, the best place to start is Austrian economics.
So you look at the father of Austrian economics, who's Karl Menger.
So Carl Menger said that money is not necessarily a creation of the state.
Money is any commodity.
Like, it's the most saleable commodity.
By saleable, it means it's the most marketable commodity.
And there are two aspects to marketability.
One is spatial marketability, and the other one is temporal marketability.
Spatial marketability is something that can be moved and transacted across space.
So portability, divisibility, verifiability, scarcity, like all these things.
Well, scarcity goes on both sides.
But scarcity is actually more temporal marketability.
But primarily you think about portability and divisibility and fungibility and so on.
right? That's one aspect to, you know, what makes a good money. The other aspect is temporal
saleability or marketability, which is ensuring that your money retains its purchasing power
over time. So protecting the fruits of your labor over time, temporal saleability.
So the key ingredient for that or key requirement is scarcity, right? If you have 10 units of a
particular money. And, you know, when your kids get it, there's, oh, let's say you have 10 out of
a million, you know, units. And when your kids get it, it's 10 out of a trillion units, you know,
it's not very good, right? So scarcity is absolutely key there. And then durability as
well in history and all those types of things. So these are the factors that make a good money.
But the key point for, you know, the newbies is money is not necessarily a creation of the state.
And this is the core of the Bitcoin kind of philosophy or movement is the separation of money and state.
And this is the question that people need to ask themselves, you know, should money and the state be separated?
And the best analogy there is the separation of church and state.
Most people, so, you know, many of your listeners, if they are newbies, although I suspect, well, I don't know what proportion of your listeners are newbies.
newbies, but a complete newbie may be shocked by that.
Just the idea of separation of money and state sometimes is like,
oh my God, that's a treasonous notion.
How could you even suggest that?
Right.
But many people probably felt the same way about the separation of church and state during the medieval era in Europe I mean for thousands of years the church and state were you know inseparably intertwined
You know, governmental authority, the state's authority and spiritual authority were intertwined
for thousands of years.
go back in time, you know, Hammurabi in Mesopotamia claimed to derive his powers from the gods,
right?
The pharaohs of ancient Egypt were seen as divine beings with sanction from the gods,
and these were instruments to control people, right?
And then I think it was 1534 that Henry VIII, you know, separated from the Roman church
because he wanted to have a divorce.
Yeah.
And that was, again, strengthening the union of church and state.
And it was only in the...
I think it was during the French Revolution and the U.S. Constitution, really, that the
church and state were formally separated.
I mean, the word separation of church and state is actually...
I think it might be Jefferson talking about creating a wall of separation between church
and state, and that's the First Amendment.
So that was a huge pivotal moment in human history. It took strong men with vision to,
you know, implement and execute that. The separation of money and state is arguably an even
bigger, you know, it would be an even bigger moment in human history because of the importance
of money and, you know, to kind of, for humanity. Humans have never had the ability to do that
until now, right? So, yeah, so that kind of leads into Bitcoin, I guess.
So you've said about eight things that I want to follow up on there. So let's go through it kind
of one at a time. In a good way, by the way, this was great. But when you talk about the spatial
and temporal elements of money, gold is obviously very good at the temporal side of things, but not
so good at the spatial side of things. Can you just, for anyone that's listening, I just want
to make sure that this is a very kind of easily accessible show because I want this to be the kind
of thing I can send to anyone. Like, why does gold fail at the spatial element there? And why
does Bitcoin fix that? So I want to, yeah, let me talk about this, the question about
what is Bitcoin's core innovation and that will lead into gold because there's a perfect analogy.
You know, it's interesting because when you're, I mean, there's thousands of pages and books that have been written about Bitcoin and, you know, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of hours of podcasts and materials that have been recorded.
But all you have to do really is go back to Satoshi's original emails and you will find answers to virtually every question.
Incredible, right?
And so one of my favorite quote of Stoshi's is, you know, the one about the boring gray metal.
He says, as a thought experiment, imagine there's a boring gray metal with nothing unique about it other than the ability.
It's not, you know, malleable.
You can't.
It's not shiny.
It's not attractive.
You know, nothing unique about it except for the fact that you can transfer it over a communication channel.
right so that's kind of essentially digital gold is what he's he was he was talking about there um
so so here's the thing and and i love gg by the way i don't know if you've yeah gg i think he has
been on on the show when when a long time ago yeah a long time ago um but he's been a huge
inspiration for for my book um i i love some of his analogies so so this is this was for me a big
aha moment and light bulb moment. And that's why let me talk about it for a second. So
what is Bitcoin's core innovation? It is the creation of a digital bearer asset.
Now, what does that mean? So we talk about peer-to-peer transfers. A peer-to-peer transaction
is where I give you something, you take it and you walk away. We don't need a third party to
monitor that I don't give that same thing to somebody else. So if I took a gold bar and I
handed it to you, Danny, you took it from me and you turned around and you walked away,
you have absolute assurance that that gold bar, which you're holding in your hand,
is with you. And there is no way that I can give that same gold bar to somebody else.
Why is that? Because the laws of physics prevent that gold bar from existing in more than one place
at the same time, unless you're some kind of magician or I'm some kind of magician. Let's
put that aside. But, you know, it's the laws of physics that prevent that from happening, right?
That's the physical world. And that's why we can have, throughout history,
peer-to-peer transactions were possible. Now, if I sent you a photograph over email or WhatsApp,
app, right? I could turn around and send that same photo to a thousand other people and they would
have identical copies of that. Why? Because the photo is just informational. It is just zeros
and ones. And information by nature is infinitely replicable at virtually no cost. And so the only
way to ensure that I don't send that same photo that I sent you to a thousand other people is by
having a trusted third party monitoring my WhatsApp or my email and confirming to you
that, yes, Vijay has not sent that to anybody else. Right. And that's how it has been for decades,
like whatever, since, you know, we had online, you know, digital information and so on.
What Satoshi solved was that he enabled you and I to transact digitally with you in Australia and
me in London as if we were physically present.
It's as if I gave you a gold bar and you took it and you took it from me and you
turned around and walked away.
You can do the same thing digitally.
Right.
Now, that is a paradigm shifting invention.
It has implications in the realms of economics, politics, you know, philosophy
and everything else.
Right.
And that's really what it is.
So I think your original question was around gold, right?
So why did gold not work out, right?
It's kind of in the end, I mean, it's scarce.
It's worked as money for thousands of years.
How did it get corrupted?
It got corrupted ostensibly because of its deficiencies
around portability and divisibility and verifiability, right?
So, you know, if you and I needed to transact in gold, like 500 years ago, I'd have to put,
you know, slabs of gold in a ship and send it off and, you know, risk pirates, you know,
robbing them along the way. I didn't need to have security. It's not divisible, right? I can't
transact in a small unit. It's not verifiable. There's full pirate everywhere, right? It's not
fungible. It's fungible, but it's not any of these other things, right? And that was what justified
paper money. So people said, okay, put all your gold in a vault and let's issue some paper on the
back of that. Paper is much more, it's better to, easier to transport. It's more verifiable,
assuming, you know, there's trust involved, but it's supposedly verifiable, right?
But, and so those were the justifications for papermen.
But the moment there was trust introduced in the system, it started being abused.
Whenever there's trust, the only reason to build trust is so you can abuse it at some
point, right?
So that was the origins of that.
And then, so if you take the entire history or monetary history, you can summarize it
as, and some people would disagree with it, but I'm just going to, you know, let's just
for simplicity, barter to grains and other things, to precious metals, to paper backed
by precious metals, to paper backed by nothing at all. That's the arc of monetary history,
right? Now, what has Bitcoin done? It has solved portability. It's inconceivable to have
greater portability, you can just literally remember 12 words and walk across the border
with nothing but a shirt on your back, right? It has solved the visibility of quadrillions of
sats and even more potentially if you need it. Perfectly verifiable, right?
So in many ways, Bitcoin has made the original rationale for fiat redundant.
it so if you could go back in time and ask why was fiat introduced it was because of all these
deficiencies but now all those deficiencies have been resolved so you don't need fiat anymore
so i mean that was very well well said um but this is part of the reason why i've never got
fully on board with the digital gold narrative um i know before you were saying you think that's
one of the most powerful narratives in Bitcoin. And I agree in a sense of trying to explain this
thing that from the outside looks very complicated, but then when you compare it to the fiat system,
it's actually very simple. But as a way of explaining it, I think it's great. And I think
it's a very accessible way of explaining it. But I also, this is a terrible analogy, but it's almost
like to me calling an airplane a flying horse. Because Bitcoin solves so many of the properties
that gold couldn't,
I feel like it's underselling it.
And I feel like it maybe keeps Bitcoin
in the store of value phase
instead of foreseeing the future
of it being a real medium exchange
and a real unit of account.
I don't know what you think about that.
So it's maybe because people
don't fully understand the word digital, right?
So within that word digital
is all these other properties
that you just described.
If it's digital, it's basically like an email.
So, built within that word is the assumption that it's as portable as an email, it's as
transactable as an email is, right?
So maybe it's not fully, you know, it's a single word that doesn't, you know, do justice
to all those properties that you get via it being digital.
I agree with you, yeah.
Do you think we need to have better narratives in Bitcoin?
Yeah, for sure.
I mean, in a perfect world, again, I think we would only be talking first and purpose
principles.
I think we would completely separate Bitcoin from crypto.
100%.
Right.
You know, sure, stable coins have come out of crypto.
I'm not dissing anything about crypto, but let them do whatever they do.
That's its own world.
It's a different world, yeah.
It's a different world.
So I would separate the two, but 99.9% of the world do not necessarily see that distinction.
They see it all, you know, it's all part of the same thing, Bitcoin and Dogecoin and so
on are all, you know, interchangeable, right?
I literally 99.9% of the world, I think, sees it that way.
So I think that is that in terms of narratives, I think clarification of that separation and
what we are disrupting.
this is, there's only one, you know, challenger to monetary policy and central banking and money
itself, and that's Bitcoin. You need to understand that. I think that is the better narrative.
And that's why I like digital gold, because, I mean, we're in, particularly now in the last few
months or the last few years, I think we are seeing this crazy move into, you know, gold being
potentially, you know, I mean, we see some of the statistics, right? The dollar is now at 30-year
lows in terms of its share of global reserves. It's just fallen to, what is it, 42%. It was 45,
which was a 30-year low a couple of months ago. Now it's just fallen to 42%. Gold has risen to 25%.
There's some tectonic shifts that are happening. You see all the brick nations that are,
you know, really loading up on gold. So I just, I like that path. It's, again,
to simplify things, it's just easier. It's an easier path to swallow than this magic internet
of money. It's like, it's, it's just a nicer, it's an easier, yeah, path really. Um, understand why
gold and then, Hey, then digital gold, right? I mean, gold, but it has all these deficiencies.
So why not digital gold? And then you ask this question. So I, I just like that path better.
Yeah, I do think that makes sense. And, and like, I've never been a gold bug mainly because
I never had any money before Bitcoin. And Bitcoin was the first thing that I found that was like a
real store of value. And like the thing that I am very bullish on, is it moving to these different,
like the medium exchange and unit of account? And I just worry that the digital gold keeps it kind
of stuck in that same place. But let's move on to the separation of money and state, because I think
this is actually really interesting at the moment, especially with everything that's happening in the
US. Obviously, the Trump admin are kind of, I struggle to say adopting Bitcoin, but they're
at least pretending to kind of be open to Bitcoin.
And this isn't necessarily like the separation of money and state.
It's more Bitcoin being integrated into the state.
I don't know how you kind of look at all of that.
Yeah, I caution against, I mean, it worries me that a lot of people adopt Bitcoin
because they hear what the president of the United States or whatever is saying about it,
because that can change on a dime.
A hundred percent.
When it panics sell, because, okay, like, you know, all the Democrats have come to power.
they're going to reverse everything Trump did.
And that's, you've not really understood the basic, the, you know, the fundamental reason
why you're doing this.
So, so it always concerns me.
I'm very apprehensive of those types of narratives.
But I did, there's a whole chapter in my book about, you know, Bitcoin as a reserve asset.
And this was before the recent, when I, when I wrote the book, you know, this wasn't really
mainstream conversation.
Trump hadn't been elected.
But, but I, I spent some time thinking about it.
So what struck me when I was studying, you know, I guess political history primarily was, you know, the age of enlightenment in Europe was a key period in history.
It was 17th and 18th century.
That was a time when individual liberty started to take precedence over absolute monarchy.
It was a key period.
It was the first time when those kinds of ideologies came to the fore.
And all these ideas of self-sovereignty and libertarian philosophies and so on.
I wouldn say that it was you know that they were born during that era but they really came to the forefront during that period The American forefathers were greatly influenced by those ideologies
And if you think about, I think, you know, Benjamin Franklin says,
it is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.
It's crazy to think about, you know, that kind of a statement, right?
Thomas Jefferson says, it is the natural progression of things for liberty to yield and for governments
to gain ground over time or something. I'm maybe butchering it a bit, but something like that,
right? And if you just think about it, the Constitution was largely to protect people
from the state. Those are incredibly powerful sort of, you know, ideologies. And you think
about where we are today, where we've just subjugated ourselves to, you know, the state
and unquestioningly, unquestioningly, you know, accepted surveillance and, you know,
loss of privacy and corruption of our money, right? So when I was thinking about all that,
I, and, you know, this, I can go on about it, right? You, the separation of powers within
the UK government, separation of powers in the UK as well as the US.
You know, I think, again, Thomas Jefferson or Alexander Hamilton, I think Alexander Hamilton
says you need to have ambition to counteract ambition. So it's like different arms of the state
challenging one another in order to not allow one arm to become, you know, absolutely powerful.
what are all these things? It's decentralization, right? It's decentralized consensus,
decentralized power. I can't help but think, like, I mean, when I read these things about
American history, I can't help, or even English history, you know, history, political history,
these guys would have loved Bitcoin, right? It is, Bitcoin is, in many ways, that it's like
the digital embodiment of these like American values of, you know, self-sovereignty and so on.
So it just made a lot of sense. And I really love that. And there's a chapter where I talk
about that. And I talk about why, I mean, in the current environment where the dollar is
waning in its power, rather than risking another challenging, you know, a hostile nation
to Western values is currency, you know, coming to the fore. Why not adopt Bitcoin, right? I mean,
and it looks like gold actually might turn out to be the one that comes to the, you know, fore.
At least first.
Yeah, at least first. So then again, like, why not digital gold, right? So,
and especially given it aligns so well with Western values and so on. So I think people need to,
well, when you talk about Trump, everything, people, you know, the Bitcoin strategic reserve
and all these things, people should...
It's great that we're having these conversations
and the Overton window.
It's amazing that, you know, I mean, you and I have been around
during a period where it would be inconceivable.
It would have been laughed out of the room for saying these things.
And now it's...
Not even that long ago.
Yeah.
So, I mean, it's great that we're having these conversations,
but I think people need to...
The important thing is that people need to
be pushing this for the right reasons, right?
And that requires asking those basic questions.
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conversation, memes and narratives are very, very powerful. And the narrative that I got into Bitcoin
for was Bitcoin as freedom money. And it's a narrative that I'm unwilling to change. Like that
is what Bitcoin is to me. It's freedom money. And when you look at what's happening at the moment
with, you know, privacy developers going to jail, we have like basically the only way of realistically
buying Bitcoin for the vast majority of people is through these sort of KYC exchange choke points.
There's also like government started to stack Bitcoin or stolen Bitcoin. Like,
are we truly separating money and state? You know, there's so many
attributes of, you know, there's permissionlessness, censorship, resistance,
unconfiscate ability, and absolute scarcity, right? These are the four core properties of
of Bitcoin, right? And they're all very, very valuable. But I think I'm one of those people
that would say that the one property that is a little bit, you know, like everyone's created equal,
but some are more equal than others. There's one property more, you know, a little bit ahead of
everyone else. And that is the absolute scarcity, right? It's more important. It's a little bit
more important than censorship resistance. It's a little more important than, you know,
unconfiscated by permissionless.
It's a little bit more important
because that is at the core of it.
And as long as that cannot be corrupted,
Bitcoin cannot be co-opted.
Like, I don't care.
I mean, Hal Finney was talking about Bitcoin banks, right?
In the first few months of coming across whatever,
for a couple of years or whatever,
coming across Bitcoin.
None of this is new.
He didn't see that.
He was cypherpunk, like as cypherpunk as it gets, right?
And he didn't see a problem with that.
the key piece that needs to be incontorruptible is the 21 million. And I don't think any of this
co-opting and so on and so forth is a threat to that because people can always, I mean, look,
if you're just going to put all your money in a Bitcoin treasury company or something, then
I mean, I'm sorry, that's just, that's on you. Okay. Like, you know, if you understand Bitcoin,
you need to have a significant portion of it in cold storage because you're,
and then maybe, okay, you have a little bit in these other leveraged products,
right?
You get more Bitcoin, but with a view to ultimately,
hopefully selling that and getting more Bitcoin, right?
That is the kind of, you know, idea.
So that's on you.
And as things stand, nothing is stopping you from, you know,
selling your Bitcoin treasury companies or whatever,
and just buying cold storage Bitcoin, right?
So I don't think there's any, at least I don't see a major risk to co-option or corruption of it.
I think the greatest risk to Bitcoin is from within.
I think throughout Bitcoin's history, like the fork wars, you know, the block size wars was
probably the greatest threat that ever existed.
I don't think any government banning it or co-opting and all of that was ever a risk to Bitcoin.
But if there ever is a risk to Bitcoin, I think it comes from within.
So a bit earlier in the conversation, you were talking about the ramifications that Bitcoin has on both politics and philosophy.
I know that you have a large part in the book about both of those things.
Can we go through them one by one?
What are the ramifications this has on politics?
I think the biggest implication of politics is, well, it's the greatest tool that has ever existed against authoritarian states.
And you take, like, what is it?
I think, I mean, Alex Gladstein, who was very kind to write the foreword for my book, I think,
I mean, he's written a lot about this and he has some great stats, but I think it's something like
75% of the world lives under some form of authoritarian regime, you know, kind of system
currently. And these are states where, I mean, it's like, you know, you think about the bankings,
It's the financial banking system that works.
It's kind of the backbone of our day-to-day existence, right?
And when that system is weaponized against you, it's just not only that it doesn't work
for you, and what is it?
One in three people are unbanked, or one in four people of our fellow humans are unbanked.
They don't even have bank accounts.
And a much larger share of those people have the banking system weaponized against them,
right?
parts of the Middle East or, you know, Africa and so on.
For such people, Bitcoin is hope.
You know, it's the only thing they have to fight back.
I mean, it's like, you know, sort of, what's that?
There was, I think Alex Gladstein talked about this new law that was proposed.
I'm not sure if it was passed, but this law that was proposed in Iran
where if any woman who's seen not wearing a hijab or just kind of dressed in, you know,
appropriate attire, it would be fined by an automatic deduction from their bank accounts.
So there's no room for, you know, paying a fine is one thing where you can either ignore it or
challenge it or whatever, but waking up one morning and looking at your bank account and
half of your money has disappeared because you apparently, you know, were seen without your,
your hijab, what recourse do these people have? And people, you know, in the United States and
the UK and so on, sit on their high horses and their, you know, privileged worlds and poke fun
at Bitcoin. What solution do they have for that woman in Iran? And now imagine a digital asset
that is permissionless, censorship resistant, you know, unconfiscatable and absolutely scarce
where, you know, she can just store the fruits of her labor beyond the reach of anyone.
So that's, you know, I think that is the biggest political implication of Bitcoin.
I talk about that.
The other one, I think, in the political realm is, and this is what I think needs a lot more work, and it hasn't been explored sufficiently, is Bitcoin's impact on violence.
And this is actually, Trace Mayer has written a lot about this, or he talked a lot about this back in the day.
But if you think about throughout human history, the majority of violent acts have been committed
in order to acquire or defend physical property, right? These wars for or to defend against
physical property have shaped the maps of nations and the course of human civilization. The vast
majority of human strife through history has been driven by the acquisition or defense of
physical property, right? The resource curse is, you know, this thing where countries that
are resource rich have been the ones that have faced the most conflict, right? I mean,
colonialism, right? You know, Western Europe, the UK went to India and parts of Europe. Why?
because of physical resources that they wanted to take, right?
Yeah.
Now, what happens when you move from physical wealth
to dematerialized wealth?
I think people have just not appreciated the power of that.
You don't need vast armies and, you know,
like, you know, fighter jets and tanks
and naval forces to, you know, defend your physical property.
and you just need cryptography.
So the cost of defense of your property
is just plummeted, right?
And you could use those resources for other purposes
in your respective countries.
So that is really huge and really underappreciated.
Yeah, so that I think, to me,
that is the biggest political implication
of dematerialized wealth, which is Bitcoin.
It's funny you bring up Alex Gladstein.
So I've just got into Bali this morning.
There's a conference happening out here.
And I'm really curious to hear what the conversation
that they're having in a place like this will be.
Because you go to a conference in the US
and everything is just talking about
the financialization of Bitcoin in general.
And Alex will be out here.
He's bringing a whole squad from the Human Rights Foundation.
And again, kind of back to narratives,
I think that is one of the most powerful narratives.
When Alex talks about the things that Human Rights Foundation are doing, and obviously it's not just Alex, he's an amazing leader there, but like Arsh and CK and all the people working there, it's impossible to ignore.
And when you look at the background you've come from, going through Harvard and Goldman Sachs, do you think that is one of the reasons that people from those kind of backgrounds find it so hard to understand Bitcoin?
Because they are coming from a very privileged position.
I mean, so this is why I actually asked Alex to write the foreword for my book, because
yeah, I agree that is one of the most underappreciated and just, and people are, most people would
be shocked when you say Bitcoin and human rights, the same sentence, they probably just go like,
what are you talking about? That, you know, how this is, you know, because it's internet Ponzi
like, what are you talking about? How is that? I have anything to do, you know, with human rights.
And that's why I wanted him, and I'm very glad that he agreed to do it
because it is the most underappreciated aspect.
It's the permissionlessness, the lifeline that it offers
to unbanked people around the world.
You know, what is it?
90% of South Sudan is unbanked.
Can you believe that?
I mean, that's a country where it is unbanked.
You know 200 million people plus in India are unbanked 60 million people in Mexico or something like that are unbanked And all these people have cell phones
And so, yeah, you just connect to the internet,
open a wallet, and you're banked.
That's huge.
But people, it's massively underappreciated because...
But I can only blame the media for that, right?
You just have the media constantly talking
misinformation. The only thing they say about it is volatility. You know, Aaron, what's his name,
Andrew Sorkin, I was just constantly obsessed with volatility. It cannot see beyond volatility.
It's just a complete obsession. Yeah. And I've spoken about this before on the podcast,
but again, with the Human Rights Foundation a couple of years ago now, I was out in Malawi,
which by like many metrics is the poorest country in the world. And a few days before we got there,
their currency was devalued by 40% overnight. And if you want to talk about volatility,
that is volatility. Bitcoin is very stable comparatively. And like, this is the place
where Bitcoin can truly be a lifeline. And don't get me wrong, I think this is coming to the rest
of the world. But right now, they're the places that need it most. The tricky thing is kind of the
education and infrastructure to get Bitcoin to those people. But I mean, that's why it's important
to have people like the Human Rights Foundation doing what they're doing. Yeah, yeah. And the
Volatility argument, honestly, is something that has, you know, again, the obsession with it, it blows my mind because there's such cognitive dissonance over it, right?
Because if volatility is about, like, what is Bitcoin disrupting?
Bitcoin is disrupting money, right?
Of course, it's going to be volatile versus what it is disrupting.
What were you expecting, right?
And I mean, you talk about like, okay, so if volatility versus fiat, volatility versus
the dollar is bad, by extension, then no volatility should be really good.
That's a stable coin.
What are you talking about?
So, you know, if Bitcoin was successful in disrupting money, of course that the path
to achieving that disruption was going, I mean, disruption is always volatile.
The path to disruption is always volatile.
It is not going to be linear or incremental.
It's got to be volatile because, you know, it takes time for Bitcoin to permeate through
the, you know, the psyche of humanity.
People need to understand it.
It takes time for people to understand it.
And human understanding is volatile.
Human, you know, emotions are volatile.
So until a critical mass of humanity understands Bitcoin, of course it's going to be volatile.
And I don't know why that surprises people.
And on the other hand, volatility is falling.
And this is the other thing.
Like, you just need to take the right time horizon.
If you take a four-year time horizon, look at a four-year moving average of Bitcoin,
the 200-week moving average, which Adam Back really loves to talk about,
loves to talk about because that is a smooth up, you know, 45 degree line that has never had a
single down day. It is the most non-volatile sort of line. And if you're a young person,
you should be taking at least a four-year investment horizon on your investment.
Why are you looking at it on a minute-by-minute basis or an hourly basis? You should be taking,
you know, invest in it and come back five years later or 10 years later for that matter, right?
so it's just it's it's really frustrating but but yeah i mean that i do think that's interesting
though because like my time horizon when it comes to bitcoin isn't four years it's 20 years 30 years
like this is something i'm putting away for a long time but on the positive side of that i do think
the time horizon that we're gonna have to push again as like a narrative in this is gonna reduce
like it seems like volatility is reducing i think that's a good thing for the adoption of bitcoin
i i think give it a few more years and we could be talking about just put money away for two years
and then maybe it's won yet.
And then maybe you just put money away.
And I think that's going to be a massive positive.
It's funny, this conversation unintentionally
has been kind of all about narratives.
And one of the things you talk about in the book,
and I know other people have written about this,
is Bitcoin being like a mirror.
Whatever you want to see in Bitcoin, you kind of can.
And I think that is one of the most interesting parts about it.
If you're a very progressive person,
Jason Meyer wrote books on this,
you can see your progressive ideals
reflected back to you in Bitcoin.
If you're very conservative, you can. If you're anarchist, you can. And I think while that is
very important in Bitcoin, it's also one of the things that make it difficult to understand.
And how do you look at Bitcoin in that sense? Yeah, I mean, you see yourself in it in a way,
but it also forces you to ask yourself who you are. It forces you to ask yourself
where you fit on the continuum between left and right. Are you, you know, or libertarian versus
fascist? Where do you fit, right? Because those are ideologies. How important is privacy to you,
right? How important is self-sovereignty to you? So it forces you to ask those questions.
It also says a lot about who you are in the sense that, do you have the intellectual humility? Do you have the open-mindedness to admit that maybe you were wrong about it?
Maybe you haven't seen something, you know, sort of, it takes a lot of intellectual humility and intellectual honesty as well.
So it forces you to do that.
And it reflects back, you know, kind of if you reject it and you're not, it shows you who you are in that respect.
And I mean, yeah, I close with that.
That's my closing chapter in the book because I think, you know, it comes a full circle.
It really kind of, you come back to yourself at the end of the day.
And humans, by nature, they prefer the status quo.
And that's because, you know, it's risk aversion.
And throughout history, and I have this list of, you know,
inventions and what people said about it.
You know, historically, you have, of course,
Paul Krugman talking about the internet being a fad in the 1990s.
You know, every single major invention was completely trashed
by people when it was introduced.
Like even the bicycle, you know, it's sort of it's crazy,
but the bicycle was completed.
People said that, oh, it's, you know,
it leads to all kinds of health disorders.
It's going to destroy
because women were riding bicycles around.
It's going to lead to the degradation of morality in women
and all these types of scam ongoing,
which has eerie parallels sort of with Bitcoin, right?
So, yeah, it shows you all these things about yourself.
Like, I mean, yeah, kind of, are you open-minded enough?
Are you progressive enough to at least explore it?
And then maybe adopt it and advocate for it.
But at least, you know, be open-minded enough to accept that, yeah, maybe you got it wrong.
Maybe there's more to this than what you're hearing on CNBC or reading in the New York Times.
It's the freedom virus.
So when you talk about the ramifications on philosophy, this is one of the most interesting parts to me.
I think we kind of touched on it a little bit there, but do you want to expand on that?
Yeah, I can add some context to that.
Because Bitcoin has definitely changed me as a person.
And I know to people who may not be like deep into Bitcoin, that might sound like a wild statement.
But things like time preference change your life in a huge way.
And if you have money that you can actually put away and trust that it's going to retain value over time and like increase in fiat amount, like it does change the way that you view the world and the way that you interact with the world.
Yeah.
So, yeah, it comes back to the origins of consumerism in the economics.
So the fiat money depends on debt.
It needs debt to keep going because you need to be able to spend, you know, future productivity
today.
You need inflation.
You need all those things to work in order for it to be sustainable.
So it encourages debt.
It encourages overconsumption, which in turn leads to environmental degradation and the
destruction of civilization and culture along the way.
Um, so I talk about that and I talk about, I mean, it's visible everywhere, like architecture,
you know, it's sort of, you just look at the modern architecture, which is built to be,
you know, made redundant in a few years when it's not fashionable anymore.
Um, as opposed to, you know, really a robust, um, beautiful architecture from a few hundred
years ago.
I mean, I feel like you being in London, there's probably no clearer city to see that.
You see like a beautiful 15th century churches and then just horrible glass buildings everywhere.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So these are all byproducts of fiat. They're all byproducts of consumerism. They're all byproducts of debt and just moral degradation in society that has resulted from the system that we live in.
So what Bitcoin offers is a way to go back to a bygone era of hard money.
And if you think about it, I mean, that's why there wouldn't have been a way to do that.
You know, it's so powerful, Bitcoin, because it empowers individuals.
It's this nonviolent, you don't need a war, you don't need to have any kind of conflict,
you don't need to have a revolution.
It's a silent, peaceful revolution that all you need to do is transfer your value into
this new, unconfiscatable, permissionless, censorship resistant asset that just exists
in the ether.
And that's all you need to do.
You don't need to pick up a, you know, whatever, like you don't need to revolt against the state
and pitchforks and all of that.
So that's incredibly powerful.
I think it was really important to do a very sort of fundamental Bitcoin show.
And I know we've only touched on all of these things kind of quite briefly and very sort of high level.
You have an open invite to come back whenever you want, and we can maybe get into more depth on them.
Maybe the one thing I will maybe, you know, sort of mention is, and this was the basis for the book as well,
aside from the first principles aspect of, you know, describing things and asking the basic questions,
was also the holistic aspect.
And that's what the cover is.
It's, you know, technology, economics, politics,
and philosophy as a Venn diagram
and then Bitcoin at the center.
And this was, we talked briefly about it,
but the, you know, the blind men and the elephant parable.
So this is the first page of the book.
And I loved this.
Honestly, I opened the book, read that page.
I was like, right, this is what I'm going to read.
So just for your listeners.
So this is a, it's an ancient Indian parable, actually.
So you've got these blind men and you have an elephant and they're asked to touch different
parts of the elephant and then try to describe what an elephant is.
They don't know what an elephant is.
So one guy goes and touches the elephant's tail and he says, oh, the elephant is like
a rope.
Another guy touches the elephant's leg and says, oh, the elephant is like a tree trunk.
and then another guy touches the elephant's trunk and says,
oh, the elephant is like a snake, right?
So I think that's a, I probably thought that's a good analogy for Bitcoin
because you've got, you know, CNBC that's, for them,
Bitcoin is only about volatility or, you know, the New York Times,
Bitcoin is only about the environment, right?
So you've got to look at things holistically to see the full elephant, right?
Yeah.
It's like the blind men all of a sudden got their sight back and saw the holistic elephant.
And I think that's Bitcoin.
And that's the idea that, you know, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Humans are wired to see things holistically.
So if you look at it in a silo, if you only look at it from its, you know, economic aspects,
you're going to miss its implications for, you know, people living in authoritarian regimes,
its political aspects.
if you only look at that without understanding its technology,
words like censorship resistance and permissionlessness and scarcity
are going to be just words.
You need to understand where they derive their meaning from.
So that was my idea.
And that's why I tried to cover all of them holistically,
bring them all together,
because that's the only way to really see Bitcoin for what it is.
And that's one of the reasons why I think the last chapter being about Bitcoin
as a mirror is such a good callback to that very opening parable because I think when it comes,
I've basically stopped trying to orange pill people, like just random people in my life.
I've spoken to everyone I care about. It's been nearly 10 years of this. And some people have got
it. Some people have chosen to ignore it. And that's fine. But now if anyone comes to me and
asks about Bitcoin, I always try and start with getting them to ask the questions they want to
understand from me rather than trying to explain something to them. Because I think when you try
and explain Bitcoin because it is this huge, like, behemoth of a thing that touches so many
different elements. Like, you can end up just describing the rope or you can end up just
describing the tree trunk. Like, it's very hard to give a full holistic picture, which is, again,
why I think this book is great. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Danny.
But like I say, Vijay, anytime you want to come on, I'm more than happy to do it. We should do
another one and get into a little more depth. We've kept this quite surface level, but it's an
important show. I think for me, like I've been doing a lot of shows on treasury companies and
macro stuff and, and it's nice to get back to kind of fundamentals of Bitcoin. This is one that I'll
share out with, with friends who are like trying to get interested in Bitcoin. Um, but we should
do one where we do more of a deep dive at some point. Yeah, I'd love that. Um, yeah, perfect.
Thank you for having me on. I appreciate the time, Vijay. Any, where do you want to send anyone who,
uh, who doesn't know who you are, doesn't know where to find you? Um, so my Twitter handle is
Vijay Selvam XO.
That's probably the best place to find me.
And by Principles of Bitcoin.
It's a really good book.
But yeah, thank you, Vijay.
I appreciate the time, man.
And we shall speak again at some point.
Next time I'm in England,
we should do one in person.
Yeah, yeah, I'd love that.
All right.
Thank you, mate.
Thank you.