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There's only one, you know, challenger to monetary policy and central banking and money

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itself, and that's Bitcoin. It's the greatest tool that has ever existed against authoritarian

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states. It's not enough to just say, okay, it's 21 million supply cap. You need to understand

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why, otherwise it's meaningless. If you could go back in time and ask why was fiat introduced,

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it was because of all these deficiencies. But the moment there was trust introduced in the system,

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it started being abused but now all those deficiencies have been resolved so you don't

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need fiat anymore vj selvin how you doing man great thank you for having me danny um yeah i

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followed the show for for years now so really honored to be on speaking to you no i'm really

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glad to have you on is one of the things that um is probably getting harder but something i really

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want to concentrate on is making sure that I have plenty of new guests in the space. This is

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obviously the first time you've been on. You sent me your book, Principles of Bitcoin. I was just

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telling you before, I'm most of the way through yet. I've not quite finished it, but it's brilliant.

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It's really, really good. It's one of my favorite Bitcoin books I've read in a long time. I get

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sent and buy a lot of Bitcoin books and I just don't have the time to read them all. But this is

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one that for whatever reason just hooked me. I've really enjoyed it. So I'm glad to have you on.

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And what I want to try and do here is kind of go back, not fully to basis.

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I think this will be a show that will be valuable to Bitcoiners.

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But I also want to make sure it's the kind of show that can be sent to people who might

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be curious about Bitcoin, want to find out more, and just let people know the real fundamentals

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of Bitcoin, that it's not all just treasury companies and penny stocks.

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So I'm excited to get into this.

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Yeah, me too.

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So let's start.

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But I think we should probably start with your background, because you've got a very interesting background.

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You were at Harvard Law, Goldman Sachs.

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You were like a Tradfire guy.

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So tell us about your background.

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Sure.

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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.

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um yeah so most of my career at Goldman Sachs I was in New York and then Hong Kong

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and um and also Singapore for many years before moving back to London now I was a lawyer on Wall

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Street during the 2008 financial crisis I worked on a couple of bailout packages for you know some

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of the big banks um so it was very much in the in the thick of that uh in the early parts of my

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part of my career. So that was a huge influence upon the way I think about

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the financial services industry, economics, macroeconomics generally. And I became a major

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gold bug on the back of that. And I was for many years until I discovered Bitcoin, obviously.

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I've also worked sort of on regulatory matters, currently International General Council at Gemini.

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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

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i first came across bitcoin my reaction to it was all the things you would expect from someone with

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my background so you know ponzi scheme uh used by criminals no intrinsic value governments will

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shut it down all those reactions right and it fascinates me that today 12 years later people

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are saying exactly the same things.

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It really blows my mind, right?

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But those were my reactions back in 2013.

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And then it took several,

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it was many years of initially, you know, rejecting it

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and then reluctantly learning about it

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and then really starting to get it.

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And I think, yeah, that was kind of my journey.

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And along the way, it was something

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that I really spent a lot of time thinking about

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was why is it that people with my sort of background find it so hard to understand Bitcoin?

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And there are many reasons for that.

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One is just, I mean, people are just lazy and, you know, people are just reluctant to

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do the work and read about it and understand it.

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Another reason is just arrogance.

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A lot of people are just really like, yeah, you need to tell someone who's made tens of

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millions of dollars as a hedge fund manager or, you know, private equity fund manager that you've

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missed the biggest investment opportunity of your lifetime. They're not going to react very well to

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it. They're just going to be very defensive, right? I think it's also even more than that,

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because like, you're definitely right. But it's also, it's kind of like telling them everything

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that they've ever done, learned about, and then done in business might be a little bit wrong.

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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're questioning. I mean, so yeah, the natural knee jerk reaction is,

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is to be defensive and, and many will come at it from that, from that perspective,

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but, but there's not much, you know, you, you or I can do about that. You've just got to let these

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people come around to it eventually, you know, like the meme, um, everyone buys Bitcoin at the

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price they deserve. Right. So there's, I think there's a lot of truth to that. Um, so you just

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got to let them be, but I thought where I could, you know, people like us can, can add value is

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I think in the third bucket where people are missing, you know, the principles, like the core

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sort of why are we talking about this? What was the core invention and creating a mental model

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for Bitcoin? It's really hard because it's really hard to come up with an appropriate mental model

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for Bitcoin simply because there's never been anything like Bitcoin before, right? So it doesn't

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fit neatly into any of your molds. So it is so paradigm shifting. So my endeavor was really to

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ask those first principled questions. Why are we talking about this? What was that

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core fundamental innovation? As you say, let's put aside the Bitcoin treasury companies. Let's put

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side, you know, treasury and the sort of Bitcoin reserves and all these things and or, you know,

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crypto and Web3 and NFTs and all that. Let's ask that basic question. What was the core innovation

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here and start from there? So that was really my kind of objective. I wanted to write the book

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that I wish I had access to back in 2013.

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That was kind of my objective.

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And yeah, that's how it came about.

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So maybe we should start there

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because I mean, that is where you open the book

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is like, why are we talking about this?

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And as someone who's come from

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a very sort of traditional background

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who initially just dismissed Bitcoin,

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like what was it that changed your mind on it?

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Yeah, so like I said, you know, I was a gold bug.

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And so I actually believe that everyone should be a little bit of a gold bug before they become

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Bitcoiners, because I think that's the natural path to take. Bitcoin is digital gold. I believe,

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I continue to believe, I've always believed that that is the best mental model. That's the best

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analogy is digital gold, right? It's not a better MasterCard. It's not a better Venmo visa or

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anything like that. It is digital gold, right? Satoshi was trying to destruct central banking,

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He was trying to destroy money.

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So that's the right kind of path.

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So I think, and to be a gold bug, you need to understand monetary history.

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You need to understand monetary policy and also a bit of political history and all the

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things that led to where we are, right?

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So it's a natural path, I think.

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It's also an easier pill to swallow for many of the, you know, triad-fi people like myself.

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So to answer your question, I was already there, having experienced the 2008 financial crisis,

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having experienced the moral hazard and all the systemic manipulation that was taking place.

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I witnessed it firsthand. I've been on call with Hank Paltz and, you know, the Federal Reserve and

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so on back in 2007, 2008. And I saw it all. So I think I was already there.

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For me, the leap was really understanding digital scarcity, just understanding the technology side

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of things. And then everything came together. It was understanding why, you know, it's not enough

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to just say, okay, it's 21 million supply cap. You need to understand why, otherwise it's

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meaningless, right? And that takes hundreds, thousands of hours of reading, of thought,

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of introspection, right, before you really get it, because it's not just cold. It's this entire

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incentive structure, economic incentives that come together to make it possible, to make it

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happen. So yeah, that was the moment for me. Do you wish you could access cash without selling

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mining.blockwaresolutions.com forward slash WBD. So can we go really like back to basics for a

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minute here? Assume that I know nothing about Bitcoin, because this is the kind of show that

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I want to be able to send to people who are interested in Bitcoin, but have no real understanding

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of it yet. And this is probably, from the sounds of it, something you maybe learned in 2007, 2008,

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during the financial crisis. Like, what is money? Yeah, so I know that's a hard question, by the way.

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No, no, no. What's unfortunate is very few people ask the question.

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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.

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It's a 54-year-old experiment.

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People just assume that governments have controlled money through history.

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But no, it's actually only since 1971 that that's been the case, right?

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So to understand, to answer the question, what is money?

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You have to really, I think at this point, the best place to start is Austrian economics.

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So you look at the father of Austrian economics, who's Karl Menger.

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So Carl Menger said that money is not necessarily a creation of the state.

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Money is any commodity.

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Like, it's the most saleable commodity.

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By saleable, it means it's the most marketable commodity.

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And there are two aspects to marketability.

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One is spatial marketability, and the other one is temporal marketability.

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Spatial marketability is something that can be moved and transacted across space.

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So portability, divisibility, verifiability, scarcity, like all these things.

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Well, scarcity goes on both sides.

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But scarcity is actually more temporal marketability.

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But primarily you think about portability and divisibility and fungibility and so on.

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right? That's one aspect to, you know, what makes a good money. The other aspect is temporal

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saleability or marketability, which is ensuring that your money retains its purchasing power

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over time. So protecting the fruits of your labor over time, temporal saleability.

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So the key ingredient for that or key requirement is scarcity, right? If you have 10 units of a

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particular money. And, you know, when your kids get it, there's, oh, let's say you have 10 out of

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a million, you know, units. And when your kids get it, it's 10 out of a trillion units, you know,

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it's not very good, right? So scarcity is absolutely key there. And then durability as

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well in history and all those types of things. So these are the factors that make a good money.

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But the key point for, you know, the newbies is money is not necessarily a creation of the state.

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And this is the core of the Bitcoin kind of philosophy or movement is the separation of money and state.

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And this is the question that people need to ask themselves, you know, should money and the state be separated?

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And the best analogy there is the separation of church and state.

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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.

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newbies, but a complete newbie may be shocked by that.

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Just the idea of separation of money and state sometimes is like,

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oh my God, that's a treasonous notion.

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How could you even suggest that?

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Right.

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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

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You know, governmental authority, the state's authority and spiritual authority were intertwined

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for thousands of years.

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go back in time, you know, Hammurabi in Mesopotamia claimed to derive his powers from the gods,

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right?

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The pharaohs of ancient Egypt were seen as divine beings with sanction from the gods,

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and these were instruments to control people, right?

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And then I think it was 1534 that Henry VIII, you know, separated from the Roman church

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because he wanted to have a divorce.

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Yeah.

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And that was, again, strengthening the union of church and state.

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And it was only in the...

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I think it was during the French Revolution and the U.S. Constitution, really, that the

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church and state were formally separated.

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I mean, the word separation of church and state is actually...

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I think it might be Jefferson talking about creating a wall of separation between church

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and state, and that's the First Amendment.

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So that was a huge pivotal moment in human history. It took strong men with vision to,

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you know, implement and execute that. The separation of money and state is arguably an even

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bigger, you know, it would be an even bigger moment in human history because of the importance

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of money and, you know, to kind of, for humanity. Humans have never had the ability to do that

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until now, right? So, yeah, so that kind of leads into Bitcoin, I guess.

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So you've said about eight things that I want to follow up on there. So let's go through it kind

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of one at a time. In a good way, by the way, this was great. But when you talk about the spatial

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and temporal elements of money, gold is obviously very good at the temporal side of things, but not

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so good at the spatial side of things. Can you just, for anyone that's listening, I just want

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to make sure that this is a very kind of easily accessible show because I want this to be the kind

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of thing I can send to anyone. Like, why does gold fail at the spatial element there? And why

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does Bitcoin fix that? So I want to, yeah, let me talk about this, the question about

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what is Bitcoin's core innovation and that will lead into gold because there's a perfect analogy.

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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.

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But all you have to do really is go back to Satoshi's original emails and you will find answers to virtually every question.

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Incredible, right?

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And so one of my favorite quote of Stoshi's is, you know, the one about the boring gray metal.

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He says, as a thought experiment, imagine there's a boring gray metal with nothing unique about it other than the ability.

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It's not, you know, malleable.

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You can't.

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It's not shiny.

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It's not attractive.

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You know, nothing unique about it except for the fact that you can transfer it over a communication channel.

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right so that's kind of essentially digital gold is what he's he was he was talking about there um

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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

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been on on the show when when a long time ago yeah a long time ago um but he's been a huge

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inspiration for for my book um i i love some of his analogies so so this is this was for me a big

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aha moment and light bulb moment. And that's why let me talk about it for a second. So

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what is Bitcoin's core innovation? It is the creation of a digital bearer asset.

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Now, what does that mean? So we talk about peer-to-peer transfers. A peer-to-peer transaction

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is where I give you something, you take it and you walk away. We don't need a third party to

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monitor that I don't give that same thing to somebody else. So if I took a gold bar and I

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handed it to you, Danny, you took it from me and you turned around and you walked away,

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you have absolute assurance that that gold bar, which you're holding in your hand,

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is with you. And there is no way that I can give that same gold bar to somebody else.

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Why is that? Because the laws of physics prevent that gold bar from existing in more than one place

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at the same time, unless you're some kind of magician or I'm some kind of magician. Let's

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put that aside. But, you know, it's the laws of physics that prevent that from happening, right?

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That's the physical world. And that's why we can have, throughout history,

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peer-to-peer transactions were possible. Now, if I sent you a photograph over email or WhatsApp,

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app, right? I could turn around and send that same photo to a thousand other people and they would

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have identical copies of that. Why? Because the photo is just informational. It is just zeros

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and ones. And information by nature is infinitely replicable at virtually no cost. And so the only

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way to ensure that I don't send that same photo that I sent you to a thousand other people is by

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having a trusted third party monitoring my WhatsApp or my email and confirming to you

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that, yes, Vijay has not sent that to anybody else. Right. And that's how it has been for decades,

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like whatever, since, you know, we had online, you know, digital information and so on.

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What Satoshi solved was that he enabled you and I to transact digitally with you in Australia and

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me in London as if we were physically present.

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It's as if I gave you a gold bar and you took it and you took it from me and you

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turned around and walked away.

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You can do the same thing digitally.

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Right.

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Now, that is a paradigm shifting invention.

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It has implications in the realms of economics, politics, you know, philosophy

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and everything else.

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Right.

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And that's really what it is.

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So I think your original question was around gold, right?

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So why did gold not work out, right?

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It's kind of in the end, I mean, it's scarce.

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It's worked as money for thousands of years.

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How did it get corrupted?

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It got corrupted ostensibly because of its deficiencies

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around portability and divisibility and verifiability, right?

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So, you know, if you and I needed to transact in gold, like 500 years ago, I'd have to put,

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you know, slabs of gold in a ship and send it off and, you know, risk pirates, you know,

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robbing them along the way. I didn't need to have security. It's not divisible, right? I can't

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transact in a small unit. It's not verifiable. There's full pirate everywhere, right? It's not

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fungible. It's fungible, but it's not any of these other things, right? And that was what justified

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paper money. So people said, okay, put all your gold in a vault and let's issue some paper on the

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back of that. Paper is much more, it's better to, easier to transport. It's more verifiable,

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assuming, you know, there's trust involved, but it's supposedly verifiable, right?

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But, and so those were the justifications for papermen.

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But the moment there was trust introduced in the system, it started being abused.

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Whenever there's trust, the only reason to build trust is so you can abuse it at some

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point, right?

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So that was the origins of that.

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And then, so if you take the entire history or monetary history, you can summarize it

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as, and some people would disagree with it, but I'm just going to, you know, let's just

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for simplicity, barter to grains and other things, to precious metals, to paper backed

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by precious metals, to paper backed by nothing at all. That's the arc of monetary history,

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right? Now, what has Bitcoin done? It has solved portability. It's inconceivable to have

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greater portability, you can just literally remember 12 words and walk across the border

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with nothing but a shirt on your back, right? It has solved the visibility of quadrillions of

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sats and even more potentially if you need it. Perfectly verifiable, right?

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So in many ways, Bitcoin has made the original rationale for fiat redundant.

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it so if you could go back in time and ask why was fiat introduced it was because of all these

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deficiencies but now all those deficiencies have been resolved so you don't need fiat anymore

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so i mean that was very well well said um but this is part of the reason why i've never got

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fully on board with the digital gold narrative um i know before you were saying you think that's

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one of the most powerful narratives in Bitcoin. And I agree in a sense of trying to explain this

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thing that from the outside looks very complicated, but then when you compare it to the fiat system,

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it's actually very simple. But as a way of explaining it, I think it's great. And I think

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it's a very accessible way of explaining it. But I also, this is a terrible analogy, but it's almost

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like to me calling an airplane a flying horse. Because Bitcoin solves so many of the properties

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that gold couldn't,

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I feel like it's underselling it.

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And I feel like it maybe keeps Bitcoin

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in the store of value phase

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instead of foreseeing the future

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of it being a real medium exchange

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and a real unit of account.

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I don't know what you think about that.

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So it's maybe because people

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don't fully understand the word digital, right?

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So within that word digital

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is all these other properties

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that you just described.

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If it's digital, it's basically like an email.

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So, built within that word is the assumption that it's as portable as an email, it's as

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transactable as an email is, right?

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So maybe it's not fully, you know, it's a single word that doesn't, you know, do justice

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to all those properties that you get via it being digital.

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I agree with you, yeah.

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Do you think we need to have better narratives in Bitcoin?

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Yeah, for sure.

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I mean, in a perfect world, again, I think we would only be talking first and purpose

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principles.

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I think we would completely separate Bitcoin from crypto.

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100%.

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Right.

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You know, sure, stable coins have come out of crypto.

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I'm not dissing anything about crypto, but let them do whatever they do.

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That's its own world.

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It's a different world, yeah.

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It's a different world.

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So I would separate the two, but 99.9% of the world do not necessarily see that distinction.

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They see it all, you know, it's all part of the same thing, Bitcoin and Dogecoin and so

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on are all, you know, interchangeable, right?

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I literally 99.9% of the world, I think, sees it that way.

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So I think that is that in terms of narratives, I think clarification of that separation and

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what we are disrupting.

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this is, there's only one, you know, challenger to monetary policy and central banking and money

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itself, and that's Bitcoin. You need to understand that. I think that is the better narrative.

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And that's why I like digital gold, because, I mean, we're in, particularly now in the last few

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months or the last few years, I think we are seeing this crazy move into, you know, gold being

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potentially, you know, I mean, we see some of the statistics, right? The dollar is now at 30-year

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lows in terms of its share of global reserves. It's just fallen to, what is it, 42%. It was 45,

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which was a 30-year low a couple of months ago. Now it's just fallen to 42%. Gold has risen to 25%.

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There's some tectonic shifts that are happening. You see all the brick nations that are,

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you know, really loading up on gold. So I just, I like that path. It's, again,

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to simplify things, it's just easier. It's an easier path to swallow than this magic internet

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of money. It's like, it's, it's just a nicer, it's an easier, yeah, path really. Um, understand why

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gold and then, Hey, then digital gold, right? I mean, gold, but it has all these deficiencies.

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So why not digital gold? And then you ask this question. So I, I just like that path better.

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Yeah, I do think that makes sense. And, and like, I've never been a gold bug mainly because

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I never had any money before Bitcoin. And Bitcoin was the first thing that I found that was like a

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real store of value. And like the thing that I am very bullish on, is it moving to these different,

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like the medium exchange and unit of account? And I just worry that the digital gold keeps it kind

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of stuck in that same place. But let's move on to the separation of money and state, because I think

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this is actually really interesting at the moment, especially with everything that's happening in the

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US. Obviously, the Trump admin are kind of, I struggle to say adopting Bitcoin, but they're

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at least pretending to kind of be open to Bitcoin.

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And this isn't necessarily like the separation of money and state.

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It's more Bitcoin being integrated into the state.

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I don't know how you kind of look at all of that.

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Yeah, I caution against, I mean, it worries me that a lot of people adopt Bitcoin

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because they hear what the president of the United States or whatever is saying about it,

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because that can change on a dime.

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A hundred percent.

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When it panics sell, because, okay, like, you know, all the Democrats have come to power.

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they're going to reverse everything Trump did.

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And that's, you've not really understood the basic, the, you know, the fundamental reason

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why you're doing this.

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So, so it always concerns me.

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I'm very apprehensive of those types of narratives.

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But I did, there's a whole chapter in my book about, you know, Bitcoin as a reserve asset.

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And this was before the recent, when I, when I wrote the book, you know, this wasn't really

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mainstream conversation.

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Trump hadn't been elected.

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But, but I, I spent some time thinking about it.

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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.

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It was 17th and 18th century.

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That was a time when individual liberty started to take precedence over absolute monarchy.

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It was a key period.

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It was the first time when those kinds of ideologies came to the fore.

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And all these ideas of self-sovereignty and libertarian philosophies and so on.

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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

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And if you think about, I think, you know, Benjamin Franklin says,

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it is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.

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It's crazy to think about, you know, that kind of a statement, right?

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Thomas Jefferson says, it is the natural progression of things for liberty to yield and for governments

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to gain ground over time or something. I'm maybe butchering it a bit, but something like that,

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right? And if you just think about it, the Constitution was largely to protect people

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from the state. Those are incredibly powerful sort of, you know, ideologies. And you think

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about where we are today, where we've just subjugated ourselves to, you know, the state

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and unquestioningly, unquestioningly, you know, accepted surveillance and, you know,

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loss of privacy and corruption of our money, right? So when I was thinking about all that,

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I, and, you know, this, I can go on about it, right? You, the separation of powers within

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the UK government, separation of powers in the UK as well as the US.

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You know, I think, again, Thomas Jefferson or Alexander Hamilton, I think Alexander Hamilton

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says you need to have ambition to counteract ambition. So it's like different arms of the state

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challenging one another in order to not allow one arm to become, you know, absolutely powerful.

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what are all these things? It's decentralization, right? It's decentralized consensus,

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decentralized power. I can't help but think, like, I mean, when I read these things about

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American history, I can't help, or even English history, you know, history, political history,

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these guys would have loved Bitcoin, right? It is, Bitcoin is, in many ways, that it's like

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the digital embodiment of these like American values of, you know, self-sovereignty and so on.

401
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So it just made a lot of sense. And I really love that. And there's a chapter where I talk

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about that. And I talk about why, I mean, in the current environment where the dollar is

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waning in its power, rather than risking another challenging, you know, a hostile nation

404
00:33:24,340 --> 00:33:30,600
to Western values is currency, you know, coming to the fore. Why not adopt Bitcoin, right? I mean,

405
00:33:30,600 --> 00:33:36,100
and it looks like gold actually might turn out to be the one that comes to the, you know, fore.

406
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At least first.

407
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Yeah, at least first. So then again, like, why not digital gold, right? So,

408
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and especially given it aligns so well with Western values and so on. So I think people need to,

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well, when you talk about Trump, everything, people, you know, the Bitcoin strategic reserve

410
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and all these things, people should...

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It's great that we're having these conversations

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and the Overton window.

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It's amazing that, you know, I mean, you and I have been around

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during a period where it would be inconceivable.

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It would have been laughed out of the room for saying these things.

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And now it's...

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Not even that long ago.

418
00:34:08,860 --> 00:34:09,180
Yeah.

419
00:34:09,180 --> 00:34:12,140
So, I mean, it's great that we're having these conversations,

420
00:34:12,140 --> 00:34:13,740
but I think people need to...

421
00:34:13,740 --> 00:34:15,260
The important thing is that people need to

422
00:34:17,260 --> 00:34:19,740
be pushing this for the right reasons, right?

423
00:34:19,740 --> 00:34:23,740
And that requires asking those basic questions.

424
00:34:49,740 --> 00:34:56,540
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425
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426
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440
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and coverage. Visit anchorwatch.com today. That is anchorwatch.com. Going back a little bit in the

441
00:36:17,500 --> 00:36:24,040
conversation, memes and narratives are very, very powerful. And the narrative that I got into Bitcoin

442
00:36:24,040 --> 00:36:28,140
for was Bitcoin as freedom money. And it's a narrative that I'm unwilling to change. Like that

443
00:36:28,140 --> 00:36:32,200
is what Bitcoin is to me. It's freedom money. And when you look at what's happening at the moment

444
00:36:32,200 --> 00:36:38,680
with, you know, privacy developers going to jail, we have like basically the only way of realistically

445
00:36:38,680 --> 00:36:43,320
buying Bitcoin for the vast majority of people is through these sort of KYC exchange choke points.

446
00:36:44,440 --> 00:36:49,880
There's also like government started to stack Bitcoin or stolen Bitcoin. Like,

447
00:36:49,880 --> 00:36:53,720
are we truly separating money and state? You know, there's so many

448
00:36:53,720 --> 00:36:58,200
attributes of, you know, there's permissionlessness, censorship, resistance,

449
00:36:58,200 --> 00:37:03,880
unconfiscate ability, and absolute scarcity, right? These are the four core properties of

450
00:37:03,880 --> 00:37:09,260
of Bitcoin, right? And they're all very, very valuable. But I think I'm one of those people

451
00:37:09,260 --> 00:37:15,000
that would say that the one property that is a little bit, you know, like everyone's created equal,

452
00:37:15,120 --> 00:37:20,380
but some are more equal than others. There's one property more, you know, a little bit ahead of

453
00:37:20,380 --> 00:37:26,340
everyone else. And that is the absolute scarcity, right? It's more important. It's a little bit

454
00:37:26,340 --> 00:37:30,620
more important than censorship resistance. It's a little more important than, you know,

455
00:37:30,620 --> 00:37:32,120
unconfiscated by permissionless.

456
00:37:32,200 --> 00:37:33,420
It's a little bit more important

457
00:37:33,420 --> 00:37:34,940
because that is at the core of it.

458
00:37:34,960 --> 00:37:37,140
And as long as that cannot be corrupted,

459
00:37:38,320 --> 00:37:39,680
Bitcoin cannot be co-opted.

460
00:37:39,880 --> 00:37:40,460
Like, I don't care.

461
00:37:40,580 --> 00:37:43,680
I mean, Hal Finney was talking about Bitcoin banks, right?

462
00:37:43,760 --> 00:37:46,280
In the first few months of coming across whatever,

463
00:37:46,480 --> 00:37:47,620
for a couple of years or whatever,

464
00:37:47,720 --> 00:37:48,380
coming across Bitcoin.

465
00:37:49,640 --> 00:37:50,900
None of this is new.

466
00:37:50,900 --> 00:37:52,640
He didn't see that.

467
00:37:52,800 --> 00:37:55,100
He was cypherpunk, like as cypherpunk as it gets, right?

468
00:37:55,120 --> 00:37:56,520
And he didn't see a problem with that.

469
00:37:56,520 --> 00:38:04,480
the key piece that needs to be incontorruptible is the 21 million. And I don't think any of this

470
00:38:04,480 --> 00:38:11,540
co-opting and so on and so forth is a threat to that because people can always, I mean, look,

471
00:38:11,540 --> 00:38:15,540
if you're just going to put all your money in a Bitcoin treasury company or something, then

472
00:38:15,540 --> 00:38:22,860
I mean, I'm sorry, that's just, that's on you. Okay. Like, you know, if you understand Bitcoin,

473
00:38:22,860 --> 00:38:27,620
you need to have a significant portion of it in cold storage because you're,

474
00:38:28,420 --> 00:38:32,100
and then maybe, okay, you have a little bit in these other leveraged products,

475
00:38:32,160 --> 00:38:32,360
right?

476
00:38:32,600 --> 00:38:34,480
You get more Bitcoin, but with a view to ultimately,

477
00:38:35,060 --> 00:38:37,180
hopefully selling that and getting more Bitcoin, right?

478
00:38:37,180 --> 00:38:39,120
That is the kind of, you know, idea.

479
00:38:40,820 --> 00:38:41,980
So that's on you.

480
00:38:42,100 --> 00:38:45,000
And as things stand, nothing is stopping you from, you know,

481
00:38:45,000 --> 00:38:47,000
selling your Bitcoin treasury companies or whatever,

482
00:38:47,160 --> 00:38:49,340
and just buying cold storage Bitcoin, right?

483
00:38:49,340 --> 00:38:58,600
So I don't think there's any, at least I don't see a major risk to co-option or corruption of it.

484
00:38:58,820 --> 00:39:01,800
I think the greatest risk to Bitcoin is from within.

485
00:39:02,160 --> 00:39:08,000
I think throughout Bitcoin's history, like the fork wars, you know, the block size wars was

486
00:39:08,000 --> 00:39:10,400
probably the greatest threat that ever existed.

487
00:39:10,760 --> 00:39:15,200
I don't think any government banning it or co-opting and all of that was ever a risk to Bitcoin.

488
00:39:15,200 --> 00:39:18,800
But if there ever is a risk to Bitcoin, I think it comes from within.

489
00:39:19,340 --> 00:39:25,220
So a bit earlier in the conversation, you were talking about the ramifications that Bitcoin has on both politics and philosophy.

490
00:39:25,840 --> 00:39:28,820
I know that you have a large part in the book about both of those things.

491
00:39:28,980 --> 00:39:30,120
Can we go through them one by one?

492
00:39:30,200 --> 00:39:32,200
What are the ramifications this has on politics?

493
00:39:33,200 --> 00:39:43,500
I think the biggest implication of politics is, well, it's the greatest tool that has ever existed against authoritarian states.

494
00:39:45,380 --> 00:39:47,220
And you take, like, what is it?

495
00:39:47,220 --> 00:39:52,540
I think, I mean, Alex Gladstein, who was very kind to write the foreword for my book, I think,

496
00:39:52,840 --> 00:39:56,360
I mean, he's written a lot about this and he has some great stats, but I think it's something like

497
00:39:56,360 --> 00:40:03,020
75% of the world lives under some form of authoritarian regime, you know, kind of system

498
00:40:03,020 --> 00:40:11,420
currently. And these are states where, I mean, it's like, you know, you think about the bankings,

499
00:40:11,420 --> 00:40:13,420
It's the financial banking system that works.

500
00:40:13,420 --> 00:40:17,940
It's kind of the backbone of our day-to-day existence, right?

501
00:40:17,940 --> 00:40:23,540
And when that system is weaponized against you, it's just not only that it doesn't work

502
00:40:23,540 --> 00:40:25,600
for you, and what is it?

503
00:40:25,620 --> 00:40:30,460
One in three people are unbanked, or one in four people of our fellow humans are unbanked.

504
00:40:30,580 --> 00:40:31,820
They don't even have bank accounts.

505
00:40:32,660 --> 00:40:40,000
And a much larger share of those people have the banking system weaponized against them,

506
00:40:40,180 --> 00:40:40,360
right?

507
00:40:40,360 --> 00:40:46,680
parts of the Middle East or, you know, Africa and so on.

508
00:40:47,580 --> 00:40:51,160
For such people, Bitcoin is hope.

509
00:40:51,500 --> 00:40:55,520
You know, it's the only thing they have to fight back.

510
00:40:56,780 --> 00:40:59,940
I mean, it's like, you know, sort of, what's that?

511
00:41:00,260 --> 00:41:03,760
There was, I think Alex Gladstein talked about this new law that was proposed.

512
00:41:03,940 --> 00:41:07,180
I'm not sure if it was passed, but this law that was proposed in Iran

513
00:41:07,180 --> 00:41:16,920
where if any woman who's seen not wearing a hijab or just kind of dressed in, you know,

514
00:41:16,980 --> 00:41:24,280
appropriate attire, it would be fined by an automatic deduction from their bank accounts.

515
00:41:24,600 --> 00:41:29,760
So there's no room for, you know, paying a fine is one thing where you can either ignore it or

516
00:41:29,760 --> 00:41:33,060
challenge it or whatever, but waking up one morning and looking at your bank account and

517
00:41:33,060 --> 00:41:37,040
half of your money has disappeared because you apparently, you know, were seen without your,

518
00:41:37,180 --> 00:41:43,380
your hijab, what recourse do these people have? And people, you know, in the United States and

519
00:41:43,380 --> 00:41:49,840
the UK and so on, sit on their high horses and their, you know, privileged worlds and poke fun

520
00:41:49,840 --> 00:41:59,820
at Bitcoin. What solution do they have for that woman in Iran? And now imagine a digital asset

521
00:41:59,820 --> 00:42:07,120
that is permissionless, censorship resistant, you know, unconfiscatable and absolutely scarce

522
00:42:07,120 --> 00:42:13,400
where, you know, she can just store the fruits of her labor beyond the reach of anyone.

523
00:42:15,220 --> 00:42:22,980
So that's, you know, I think that is the biggest political implication of Bitcoin.

524
00:42:23,700 --> 00:42:24,960
I talk about that.

525
00:42:24,960 --> 00:42:39,000
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.

526
00:42:40,560 --> 00:42:46,560
And this is actually, Trace Mayer has written a lot about this, or he talked a lot about this back in the day.

527
00:42:46,560 --> 00:42:56,840
But if you think about throughout human history, the majority of violent acts have been committed

528
00:42:56,840 --> 00:43:07,700
in order to acquire or defend physical property, right? These wars for or to defend against

529
00:43:07,700 --> 00:43:13,860
physical property have shaped the maps of nations and the course of human civilization. The vast

530
00:43:13,860 --> 00:43:19,360
majority of human strife through history has been driven by the acquisition or defense of

531
00:43:19,360 --> 00:43:26,960
physical property, right? The resource curse is, you know, this thing where countries that

532
00:43:26,960 --> 00:43:33,040
are resource rich have been the ones that have faced the most conflict, right? I mean,

533
00:43:33,100 --> 00:43:38,060
colonialism, right? You know, Western Europe, the UK went to India and parts of Europe. Why?

534
00:43:38,060 --> 00:43:41,800
because of physical resources that they wanted to take, right?

535
00:43:42,180 --> 00:43:42,420
Yeah.

536
00:43:42,600 --> 00:43:46,280
Now, what happens when you move from physical wealth

537
00:43:46,280 --> 00:43:48,880
to dematerialized wealth?

538
00:43:49,540 --> 00:43:52,080
I think people have just not appreciated the power of that.

539
00:43:53,760 --> 00:43:56,980
You don't need vast armies and, you know,

540
00:43:57,400 --> 00:44:00,080
like, you know, fighter jets and tanks

541
00:44:00,080 --> 00:44:04,840
and naval forces to, you know, defend your physical property.

542
00:44:04,840 --> 00:44:08,080
and you just need cryptography.

543
00:44:08,700 --> 00:44:11,900
So the cost of defense of your property

544
00:44:11,900 --> 00:44:14,520
is just plummeted, right?

545
00:44:14,640 --> 00:44:17,800
And you could use those resources for other purposes

546
00:44:17,800 --> 00:44:21,620
in your respective countries.

547
00:44:22,620 --> 00:44:27,380
So that is really huge and really underappreciated.

548
00:44:29,500 --> 00:44:31,580
Yeah, so that I think, to me,

549
00:44:31,580 --> 00:44:34,020
that is the biggest political implication

550
00:44:34,020 --> 00:44:37,320
of dematerialized wealth, which is Bitcoin.

551
00:44:38,420 --> 00:44:39,700
It's funny you bring up Alex Gladstein.

552
00:44:39,820 --> 00:44:41,680
So I've just got into Bali this morning.

553
00:44:41,780 --> 00:44:43,100
There's a conference happening out here.

554
00:44:43,200 --> 00:44:46,000
And I'm really curious to hear what the conversation

555
00:44:46,000 --> 00:44:48,400
that they're having in a place like this will be.

556
00:44:48,460 --> 00:44:50,260
Because you go to a conference in the US

557
00:44:50,260 --> 00:44:52,580
and everything is just talking about

558
00:44:52,580 --> 00:44:54,440
the financialization of Bitcoin in general.

559
00:44:55,140 --> 00:44:56,640
And Alex will be out here.

560
00:44:56,740 --> 00:44:58,580
He's bringing a whole squad from the Human Rights Foundation.

561
00:44:58,580 --> 00:45:00,600
And again, kind of back to narratives,

562
00:45:00,740 --> 00:45:03,620
I think that is one of the most powerful narratives.

563
00:45:03,620 --> 00:45:15,260
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.

564
00:45:15,480 --> 00:45:26,540
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?

565
00:45:26,680 --> 00:45:29,080
Because they are coming from a very privileged position.

566
00:45:29,080 --> 00:45:36,460
I mean, so this is why I actually asked Alex to write the foreword for my book, because

567
00:45:36,460 --> 00:45:43,020
yeah, I agree that is one of the most underappreciated and just, and people are, most people would

568
00:45:43,020 --> 00:45:48,040
be shocked when you say Bitcoin and human rights, the same sentence, they probably just go like,

569
00:45:48,140 --> 00:45:53,760
what are you talking about? That, you know, how this is, you know, because it's internet Ponzi

570
00:45:53,760 --> 00:45:58,220
like, what are you talking about? How is that? I have anything to do, you know, with human rights.

571
00:45:58,220 --> 00:46:01,900
And that's why I wanted him, and I'm very glad that he agreed to do it

572
00:46:03,060 --> 00:46:04,760
because it is the most underappreciated aspect.

573
00:46:04,760 --> 00:46:08,220
It's the permissionlessness, the lifeline that it offers

574
00:46:08,220 --> 00:46:10,140
to unbanked people around the world.

575
00:46:10,140 --> 00:46:11,600
You know, what is it?

576
00:46:11,600 --> 00:46:15,020
90% of South Sudan is unbanked.

577
00:46:15,020 --> 00:46:15,640
Can you believe that?

578
00:46:15,640 --> 00:46:18,640
I mean, that's a country where it is unbanked.

579
00:46:18,640 --> 00:46:29,000
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

580
00:46:31,780 --> 00:46:35,860
And so, yeah, you just connect to the internet,

581
00:46:35,980 --> 00:46:38,340
open a wallet, and you're banked.

582
00:46:38,760 --> 00:46:39,480
That's huge.

583
00:46:39,600 --> 00:46:43,140
But people, it's massively underappreciated because...

584
00:46:44,580 --> 00:46:47,120
But I can only blame the media for that, right?

585
00:46:47,180 --> 00:46:50,900
You just have the media constantly talking

586
00:46:50,900 --> 00:46:55,980
misinformation. The only thing they say about it is volatility. You know, Aaron, what's his name,

587
00:46:56,020 --> 00:47:01,860
Andrew Sorkin, I was just constantly obsessed with volatility. It cannot see beyond volatility.

588
00:47:02,040 --> 00:47:06,800
It's just a complete obsession. Yeah. And I've spoken about this before on the podcast,

589
00:47:06,800 --> 00:47:10,520
but again, with the Human Rights Foundation a couple of years ago now, I was out in Malawi,

590
00:47:10,620 --> 00:47:15,680
which by like many metrics is the poorest country in the world. And a few days before we got there,

591
00:47:16,260 --> 00:47:20,680
their currency was devalued by 40% overnight. And if you want to talk about volatility,

592
00:47:20,900 --> 00:47:26,280
that is volatility. Bitcoin is very stable comparatively. And like, this is the place

593
00:47:26,280 --> 00:47:30,380
where Bitcoin can truly be a lifeline. And don't get me wrong, I think this is coming to the rest

594
00:47:30,380 --> 00:47:35,720
of the world. But right now, they're the places that need it most. The tricky thing is kind of the

595
00:47:35,720 --> 00:47:41,180
education and infrastructure to get Bitcoin to those people. But I mean, that's why it's important

596
00:47:41,180 --> 00:47:45,420
to have people like the Human Rights Foundation doing what they're doing. Yeah, yeah. And the

597
00:47:45,420 --> 00:47:58,220
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?

598
00:47:58,780 --> 00:48:03,680
Because if volatility is about, like, what is Bitcoin disrupting?

599
00:48:03,740 --> 00:48:05,920
Bitcoin is disrupting money, right?

600
00:48:06,620 --> 00:48:10,600
Of course, it's going to be volatile versus what it is disrupting.

601
00:48:10,660 --> 00:48:12,320
What were you expecting, right?

602
00:48:12,320 --> 00:48:18,240
And I mean, you talk about like, okay, so if volatility versus fiat, volatility versus

603
00:48:18,240 --> 00:48:21,920
the dollar is bad, by extension, then no volatility should be really good.

604
00:48:22,620 --> 00:48:23,840
That's a stable coin.

605
00:48:25,260 --> 00:48:26,760
What are you talking about?

606
00:48:26,760 --> 00:48:34,680
So, you know, if Bitcoin was successful in disrupting money, of course that the path

607
00:48:34,680 --> 00:48:38,500
to achieving that disruption was going, I mean, disruption is always volatile.

608
00:48:38,660 --> 00:48:40,300
The path to disruption is always volatile.

609
00:48:40,300 --> 00:48:42,260
It is not going to be linear or incremental.

610
00:48:42,400 --> 00:48:51,220
It's got to be volatile because, you know, it takes time for Bitcoin to permeate through

611
00:48:51,220 --> 00:48:54,700
the, you know, the psyche of humanity.

612
00:48:54,860 --> 00:48:56,040
People need to understand it.

613
00:48:56,100 --> 00:48:58,740
It takes time for people to understand it.

614
00:48:58,960 --> 00:49:00,960
And human understanding is volatile.

615
00:49:01,500 --> 00:49:03,600
Human, you know, emotions are volatile.

616
00:49:04,140 --> 00:49:10,280
So until a critical mass of humanity understands Bitcoin, of course it's going to be volatile.

617
00:49:10,300 --> 00:49:17,300
And I don't know why that surprises people.

618
00:49:17,300 --> 00:49:22,300
And on the other hand, volatility is falling.

619
00:49:22,300 --> 00:49:23,300
And this is the other thing.

620
00:49:23,300 --> 00:49:25,300
Like, you just need to take the right time horizon.

621
00:49:25,300 --> 00:49:30,300
If you take a four-year time horizon, look at a four-year moving average of Bitcoin,

622
00:49:30,300 --> 00:49:34,300
the 200-week moving average, which Adam Back really loves to talk about,

623
00:49:34,300 --> 00:49:40,720
loves to talk about because that is a smooth up, you know, 45 degree line that has never had a

624
00:49:40,720 --> 00:49:47,340
single down day. It is the most non-volatile sort of line. And if you're a young person,

625
00:49:48,060 --> 00:49:53,120
you should be taking at least a four-year investment horizon on your investment.

626
00:49:53,640 --> 00:49:57,840
Why are you looking at it on a minute-by-minute basis or an hourly basis? You should be taking,

627
00:49:58,300 --> 00:50:02,480
you know, invest in it and come back five years later or 10 years later for that matter, right?

628
00:50:02,480 --> 00:50:08,820
so it's just it's it's really frustrating but but yeah i mean that i do think that's interesting

629
00:50:08,820 --> 00:50:13,040
though because like my time horizon when it comes to bitcoin isn't four years it's 20 years 30 years

630
00:50:13,040 --> 00:50:17,640
like this is something i'm putting away for a long time but on the positive side of that i do think

631
00:50:17,640 --> 00:50:22,680
the time horizon that we're gonna have to push again as like a narrative in this is gonna reduce

632
00:50:22,680 --> 00:50:26,240
like it seems like volatility is reducing i think that's a good thing for the adoption of bitcoin

633
00:50:26,240 --> 00:50:30,780
i i think give it a few more years and we could be talking about just put money away for two years

634
00:50:30,780 --> 00:50:31,660
and then maybe it's won yet.

635
00:50:31,740 --> 00:50:33,300
And then maybe you just put money away.

636
00:50:33,600 --> 00:50:35,780
And I think that's going to be a massive positive.

637
00:50:36,660 --> 00:50:39,200
It's funny, this conversation unintentionally

638
00:50:39,200 --> 00:50:40,580
has been kind of all about narratives.

639
00:50:41,320 --> 00:50:43,000
And one of the things you talk about in the book,

640
00:50:43,160 --> 00:50:45,420
and I know other people have written about this,

641
00:50:45,460 --> 00:50:46,920
is Bitcoin being like a mirror.

642
00:50:47,160 --> 00:50:49,660
Whatever you want to see in Bitcoin, you kind of can.

643
00:50:50,040 --> 00:50:52,660
And I think that is one of the most interesting parts about it.

644
00:50:52,680 --> 00:50:54,120
If you're a very progressive person,

645
00:50:54,460 --> 00:50:56,280
Jason Meyer wrote books on this,

646
00:50:57,680 --> 00:50:59,400
you can see your progressive ideals

647
00:50:59,400 --> 00:51:00,640
reflected back to you in Bitcoin.

648
00:51:00,780 --> 00:51:05,180
If you're very conservative, you can. If you're anarchist, you can. And I think while that is

649
00:51:05,180 --> 00:51:10,020
very important in Bitcoin, it's also one of the things that make it difficult to understand.

650
00:51:10,380 --> 00:51:15,920
And how do you look at Bitcoin in that sense? Yeah, I mean, you see yourself in it in a way,

651
00:51:16,040 --> 00:51:24,200
but it also forces you to ask yourself who you are. It forces you to ask yourself

652
00:51:24,200 --> 00:51:33,540
where you fit on the continuum between left and right. Are you, you know, or libertarian versus

653
00:51:33,540 --> 00:51:38,400
fascist? Where do you fit, right? Because those are ideologies. How important is privacy to you,

654
00:51:38,400 --> 00:51:46,660
right? How important is self-sovereignty to you? So it forces you to ask those questions.

655
00:51:46,660 --> 00:52:03,480
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?

656
00:52:03,480 --> 00:52:12,240
Maybe you haven't seen something, you know, sort of, it takes a lot of intellectual humility and intellectual honesty as well.

657
00:52:12,680 --> 00:52:15,220
So it forces you to do that.

658
00:52:15,340 --> 00:52:21,100
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.

659
00:52:22,780 --> 00:52:25,520
And I mean, yeah, I close with that.

660
00:52:25,580 --> 00:52:29,880
That's my closing chapter in the book because I think, you know, it comes a full circle.

661
00:52:30,020 --> 00:52:32,620
It really kind of, you come back to yourself at the end of the day.

662
00:52:32,620 --> 00:52:38,400
And humans, by nature, they prefer the status quo.

663
00:52:40,240 --> 00:52:43,740
And that's because, you know, it's risk aversion.

664
00:52:44,840 --> 00:52:48,000
And throughout history, and I have this list of, you know,

665
00:52:48,060 --> 00:52:49,940
inventions and what people said about it.

666
00:52:50,340 --> 00:52:51,820
You know, historically, you have, of course,

667
00:52:51,880 --> 00:52:56,240
Paul Krugman talking about the internet being a fad in the 1990s.

668
00:52:57,060 --> 00:53:01,680
You know, every single major invention was completely trashed

669
00:53:01,680 --> 00:53:03,720
by people when it was introduced.

670
00:53:03,720 --> 00:53:06,600
Like even the bicycle, you know, it's sort of it's crazy,

671
00:53:06,600 --> 00:53:08,440
but the bicycle was completed.

672
00:53:08,440 --> 00:53:11,440
People said that, oh, it's, you know,

673
00:53:11,440 --> 00:53:13,920
it leads to all kinds of health disorders.

674
00:53:15,020 --> 00:53:17,440
It's going to destroy

675
00:53:17,440 --> 00:53:19,400
because women were riding bicycles around.

676
00:53:19,400 --> 00:53:23,920
It's going to lead to the degradation of morality in women

677
00:53:23,920 --> 00:53:26,880
and all these types of scam ongoing,

678
00:53:26,880 --> 00:53:29,960
which has eerie parallels sort of with Bitcoin, right?

679
00:53:29,960 --> 00:53:38,200
So, yeah, it shows you all these things about yourself.

680
00:53:38,380 --> 00:53:40,920
Like, I mean, yeah, kind of, are you open-minded enough?

681
00:53:41,080 --> 00:53:46,580
Are you progressive enough to at least explore it?

682
00:53:46,760 --> 00:53:50,500
And then maybe adopt it and advocate for it.

683
00:53:50,660 --> 00:53:59,260
But at least, you know, be open-minded enough to accept that, yeah, maybe you got it wrong.

684
00:53:59,260 --> 00:54:04,800
Maybe there's more to this than what you're hearing on CNBC or reading in the New York Times.

685
00:54:05,440 --> 00:54:06,700
It's the freedom virus.

686
00:54:07,460 --> 00:54:13,100
So when you talk about the ramifications on philosophy, this is one of the most interesting parts to me.

687
00:54:13,440 --> 00:54:16,700
I think we kind of touched on it a little bit there, but do you want to expand on that?

688
00:54:20,020 --> 00:54:22,460
Yeah, I can add some context to that.

689
00:54:22,840 --> 00:54:26,440
Because Bitcoin has definitely changed me as a person.

690
00:54:26,440 --> 00:54:30,420
And I know to people who may not be like deep into Bitcoin, that might sound like a wild statement.

691
00:54:30,620 --> 00:54:33,600
But things like time preference change your life in a huge way.

692
00:54:33,680 --> 00:54:43,980
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.

693
00:54:45,020 --> 00:54:45,120
Yeah.

694
00:54:45,620 --> 00:54:51,900
So, yeah, it comes back to the origins of consumerism in the economics.

695
00:54:52,220 --> 00:54:55,180
So the fiat money depends on debt.

696
00:54:55,180 --> 00:55:01,720
It needs debt to keep going because you need to be able to spend, you know, future productivity

697
00:55:01,720 --> 00:55:02,620
today.

698
00:55:03,100 --> 00:55:04,080
You need inflation.

699
00:55:04,340 --> 00:55:08,240
You need all those things to work in order for it to be sustainable.

700
00:55:08,740 --> 00:55:10,400
So it encourages debt.

701
00:55:10,620 --> 00:55:19,320
It encourages overconsumption, which in turn leads to environmental degradation and the

702
00:55:19,320 --> 00:55:24,380
destruction of civilization and culture along the way.

703
00:55:25,180 --> 00:55:30,020
Um, so I talk about that and I talk about, I mean, it's visible everywhere, like architecture,

704
00:55:30,280 --> 00:55:35,020
you know, it's sort of, you just look at the modern architecture, which is built to be,

705
00:55:35,020 --> 00:55:38,140
you know, made redundant in a few years when it's not fashionable anymore.

706
00:55:38,140 --> 00:55:44,460
Um, as opposed to, you know, really a robust, um, beautiful architecture from a few hundred

707
00:55:44,460 --> 00:55:45,020
years ago.

708
00:55:45,380 --> 00:55:49,280
I mean, I feel like you being in London, there's probably no clearer city to see that.

709
00:55:49,360 --> 00:55:53,700
You see like a beautiful 15th century churches and then just horrible glass buildings everywhere.

710
00:55:53,700 --> 00:56:15,900
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.

711
00:56:15,900 --> 00:56:22,920
So what Bitcoin offers is a way to go back to a bygone era of hard money.

712
00:56:24,900 --> 00:56:29,760
And if you think about it, I mean, that's why there wouldn't have been a way to do that.

713
00:56:30,280 --> 00:56:34,900
You know, it's so powerful, Bitcoin, because it empowers individuals.

714
00:56:36,040 --> 00:56:41,140
It's this nonviolent, you don't need a war, you don't need to have any kind of conflict,

715
00:56:41,260 --> 00:56:42,420
you don't need to have a revolution.

716
00:56:42,420 --> 00:56:49,700
It's a silent, peaceful revolution that all you need to do is transfer your value into

717
00:56:49,700 --> 00:56:56,240
this new, unconfiscatable, permissionless, censorship resistant asset that just exists

718
00:56:56,240 --> 00:56:58,980
in the ether.

719
00:56:58,980 --> 00:57:00,060
And that's all you need to do.

720
00:57:00,060 --> 00:57:08,040
You don't need to pick up a, you know, whatever, like you don't need to revolt against the state

721
00:57:08,040 --> 00:57:11,100
and pitchforks and all of that.

722
00:57:11,100 --> 00:57:13,380
So that's incredibly powerful.

723
00:57:14,320 --> 00:57:18,000
I think it was really important to do a very sort of fundamental Bitcoin show.

724
00:57:18,180 --> 00:57:22,280
And I know we've only touched on all of these things kind of quite briefly and very sort of high level.

725
00:57:22,600 --> 00:57:27,400
You have an open invite to come back whenever you want, and we can maybe get into more depth on them.

726
00:57:27,940 --> 00:57:35,040
Maybe the one thing I will maybe, you know, sort of mention is, and this was the basis for the book as well,

727
00:57:35,040 --> 00:57:39,120
aside from the first principles aspect of, you know, describing things and asking the basic questions,

728
00:57:39,120 --> 00:57:41,620
was also the holistic aspect.

729
00:57:41,740 --> 00:57:42,860
And that's what the cover is.

730
00:57:43,000 --> 00:57:45,640
It's, you know, technology, economics, politics,

731
00:57:45,740 --> 00:57:47,060
and philosophy as a Venn diagram

732
00:57:47,060 --> 00:57:48,220
and then Bitcoin at the center.

733
00:57:48,740 --> 00:57:51,080
And this was, we talked briefly about it,

734
00:57:51,120 --> 00:57:54,280
but the, you know, the blind men and the elephant parable.

735
00:57:54,800 --> 00:57:56,580
So this is the first page of the book.

736
00:57:56,620 --> 00:57:57,720
And I loved this.

737
00:57:57,860 --> 00:57:59,880
Honestly, I opened the book, read that page.

738
00:57:59,920 --> 00:58:01,280
I was like, right, this is what I'm going to read.

739
00:58:02,420 --> 00:58:03,540
So just for your listeners.

740
00:58:04,480 --> 00:58:07,220
So this is a, it's an ancient Indian parable, actually.

741
00:58:07,220 --> 00:58:17,120
So you've got these blind men and you have an elephant and they're asked to touch different

742
00:58:17,120 --> 00:58:21,540
parts of the elephant and then try to describe what an elephant is.

743
00:58:21,580 --> 00:58:22,460
They don't know what an elephant is.

744
00:58:22,800 --> 00:58:28,720
So one guy goes and touches the elephant's tail and he says, oh, the elephant is like

745
00:58:28,720 --> 00:58:29,160
a rope.

746
00:58:29,620 --> 00:58:34,160
Another guy touches the elephant's leg and says, oh, the elephant is like a tree trunk.

747
00:58:34,160 --> 00:58:37,020
and then another guy touches the elephant's trunk and says,

748
00:58:37,140 --> 00:58:38,900
oh, the elephant is like a snake, right?

749
00:58:39,400 --> 00:58:43,280
So I think that's a, I probably thought that's a good analogy for Bitcoin

750
00:58:43,280 --> 00:58:47,520
because you've got, you know, CNBC that's, for them,

751
00:58:47,820 --> 00:58:52,940
Bitcoin is only about volatility or, you know, the New York Times,

752
00:58:52,940 --> 00:58:56,520
Bitcoin is only about the environment, right?

753
00:58:57,380 --> 00:59:03,000
So you've got to look at things holistically to see the full elephant, right?

754
00:59:03,200 --> 00:59:03,320
Yeah.

755
00:59:03,320 --> 00:59:07,200
It's like the blind men all of a sudden got their sight back and saw the holistic elephant.

756
00:59:07,200 --> 00:59:08,780
And I think that's Bitcoin.

757
00:59:08,780 --> 00:59:13,440
And that's the idea that, you know, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

758
00:59:13,440 --> 00:59:15,760
Humans are wired to see things holistically.

759
00:59:15,760 --> 00:59:21,940
So if you look at it in a silo, if you only look at it from its, you know, economic aspects,

760
00:59:21,940 --> 00:59:28,700
you're going to miss its implications for, you know, people living in authoritarian regimes,

761
00:59:28,700 --> 00:59:29,660
its political aspects.

762
00:59:29,660 --> 00:59:33,880
if you only look at that without understanding its technology,

763
00:59:34,600 --> 00:59:38,160
words like censorship resistance and permissionlessness and scarcity

764
00:59:38,160 --> 00:59:39,480
are going to be just words.

765
00:59:39,580 --> 00:59:42,600
You need to understand where they derive their meaning from.

766
00:59:43,260 --> 00:59:44,860
So that was my idea.

767
00:59:44,960 --> 00:59:47,640
And that's why I tried to cover all of them holistically,

768
00:59:48,340 --> 00:59:49,460
bring them all together,

769
00:59:49,460 --> 00:59:53,260
because that's the only way to really see Bitcoin for what it is.

770
00:59:54,260 --> 00:59:57,120
And that's one of the reasons why I think the last chapter being about Bitcoin

771
00:59:57,120 --> 01:00:02,180
as a mirror is such a good callback to that very opening parable because I think when it comes,

772
01:00:02,760 --> 01:00:06,040
I've basically stopped trying to orange pill people, like just random people in my life.

773
01:00:06,620 --> 01:00:12,620
I've spoken to everyone I care about. It's been nearly 10 years of this. And some people have got

774
01:00:12,620 --> 01:00:16,480
it. Some people have chosen to ignore it. And that's fine. But now if anyone comes to me and

775
01:00:16,480 --> 01:00:20,540
asks about Bitcoin, I always try and start with getting them to ask the questions they want to

776
01:00:20,540 --> 01:00:24,160
understand from me rather than trying to explain something to them. Because I think when you try

777
01:00:24,160 --> 01:00:29,580
and explain Bitcoin because it is this huge, like, behemoth of a thing that touches so many

778
01:00:29,580 --> 01:00:33,500
different elements. Like, you can end up just describing the rope or you can end up just

779
01:00:33,500 --> 01:00:39,180
describing the tree trunk. Like, it's very hard to give a full holistic picture, which is, again,

780
01:00:39,280 --> 01:00:43,480
why I think this book is great. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Danny.

781
01:00:44,420 --> 01:00:49,280
But like I say, Vijay, anytime you want to come on, I'm more than happy to do it. We should do

782
01:00:49,280 --> 01:00:53,080
another one and get into a little more depth. We've kept this quite surface level, but it's an

783
01:00:53,080 --> 01:00:57,780
important show. I think for me, like I've been doing a lot of shows on treasury companies and

784
01:00:57,780 --> 01:01:01,640
macro stuff and, and it's nice to get back to kind of fundamentals of Bitcoin. This is one that I'll

785
01:01:01,640 --> 01:01:06,020
share out with, with friends who are like trying to get interested in Bitcoin. Um, but we should

786
01:01:06,020 --> 01:01:11,080
do one where we do more of a deep dive at some point. Yeah, I'd love that. Um, yeah, perfect.

787
01:01:11,180 --> 01:01:15,140
Thank you for having me on. I appreciate the time, Vijay. Any, where do you want to send anyone who,

788
01:01:15,220 --> 01:01:19,740
uh, who doesn't know who you are, doesn't know where to find you? Um, so my Twitter handle is

789
01:01:19,740 --> 01:01:21,100
Vijay Selvam XO.

790
01:01:21,680 --> 01:01:23,620
That's probably the best place to find me.

791
01:01:24,480 --> 01:01:26,440
And by Principles of Bitcoin.

792
01:01:26,620 --> 01:01:27,400
It's a really good book.

793
01:01:28,400 --> 01:01:29,720
But yeah, thank you, Vijay.

794
01:01:29,780 --> 01:01:30,660
I appreciate the time, man.

795
01:01:30,700 --> 01:01:32,260
And we shall speak again at some point.

796
01:01:32,320 --> 01:01:33,160
Next time I'm in England,

797
01:01:33,240 --> 01:01:34,060
we should do one in person.

798
01:01:34,700 --> 01:01:35,540
Yeah, yeah, I'd love that.

799
01:01:36,420 --> 01:01:36,820
All right.

800
01:01:36,840 --> 01:01:37,380
Thank you, mate.

801
01:01:49,740 --> 01:02:19,720
Thank you.