Maybe it's time to kill your heroes again, and Saylor is now the hero to slay in this cycle.
Why did the market react in terms of just emotions, but also price action for 32 Bitcoin sold?
And why didn't anything happen when he sold 700?
It was because, in my opinion, because of the narrative engineering that Saylor was doing.
Somebody like Sailor or anybody who chooses to engineer their narrative in a way can actually control markets.
Bitcoin is so many different things that you can literally have a great argument for Bitcoin to somebody who is on the extreme far right and also the extreme far left.
So the customization of Bitcoin is actually pretty cool.
And that will lead to a lot of people from different walks of life to understand Bitcoin in a very deep way and be completely convinced about it.
So that's great.
That's like bullish.
good to see you man um we're going to talk all about bitcoin narratives across the board breaking
down no one knowing which way is up with it anymore like it's funny just before we started
recording i was scrolling through twitter and like i've seen three posts that like is bitcoin
dead is bitcoin over like i feel like we've lost the narrative but i think there's nothing more
apparent as of right now as to where a narrative has either been broken or lost in everything that's
happened with michael saylor and yesterday you just dropped a big piece on this um and it has
been really interesting to see his messaging change over time so do you want to start i'll
just leave it open for you you pick where you want to jump in like what what you notice when
you kind of dug through all of the data around the things that michael saylor has been saying
well you know first of all i think you know when um when strategy sold 32 bitcoin and uh you know
the reaction that everybody had, not only in like the market and the price action, but just like on Twitter and on socials.
And everybody has kind of like come to this realization that, OK, maybe it's time to kill your heroes again.
And Sailor is now the hero to slay in this cycle.
And I was like, it's interesting that people react like that after the fact, you know.
Obviously, there are people who have been critical of Sailor and strategy.
you know there's like this section or like this cohort of bitcoiners who are like anti-sootcoiner
that that that has always been part of this but then it's like there's a lot of other people as
well that like really were had a problem with what was happening and they were kind of like freaking
out and i was like what's up with that like why do people always react after something has happened
you know and are there any indicators that some signals before anything happened that might have
giving us a clue in terms of whether Saylor has changed his mind or if he had started doing,
saying something that was an indicator of something else. I was like, okay,
I just let my agents run through the Perception MCP. For people who don't know, Perception is my
company. So essentially what we do is like we track thousands of sources when it comes to discourse
in the entire digital asset industry. So tweets, LinkedIn posts, the filings, white papers,
transcripts from conferences, podcasts, everything, you name it. And I was like,
okay, let me just like run my agents through the MCP and just
track, you know, all of Saylor's tweets, interviews, conference
panels, whatever he was talking about and say, hey, were there any
clues before like the 32 Bitcoin
sell or anything else might have been some kind of a
leading indicator of like where things were going to go instead of
like reacting on a, on a, something that's already happened. So I essentially told my agents to just
go back to 2020 up until today. And just like, give me, just give me a whole like analysis on
like everything that Sailor has said and whether there's a word or two words or three words that
keeps repeating or like, has he actually had a narrative that was planned and structured and,
and kind of like on purpose throughout this, these years. And, you know, it was kind of clear when,
when, you know, the analysis came back that, okay, and there's like three phases from 2020 till today
that was like, okay, the first four years after strategy first announced that they were buying
Bitcoin in 2020, up until 2024, there was just like this, I don't know, there's like Bitcoin maxi,
anti-fiat maxi uh type of narrative and kind of like propaganda because and i say propaganda
because the way that sailor was was saying things was in a very kind of like i don't know as a
calculated mode but it was like very it seems very on purpose he kept repeating the same
talking points and also used the same type of words over and over again so i was like that is
pretty interesting. And then
after 2024
entering 2025
things started to change
with the introduction of the term
credit. And
credit in the
first cycle of 2020
to 2024 was
mentioned, but it was mentioned in a very
negative way. It was mentioned as like, okay
this is fiat shit. This is
like not good. Credit is bad. You should
just hold Bitcoin.
So obviously he was
trying to appeal or maybe pander to like the Bitcoin, you know, mentality,
trying to get them on board during these whole four years.
And then started to like slowly switch over a little bit,
like not as hardcore as the first four years,
but it's like in 2025, there was like this little like transitional period
where you started like switching things a little bit, like subtly, but it started.
And then obviously you take a look at like what happened
in terms of like product development or just like the offerings that strategy started to
offer to the market around that time in 2024, 2025. And that's obviously, you know, when Stretch,
when STRC got introduced and all of a sudden the credit language or the credit discourse started to switch into something more positive And then 2026 came and he started talking about derivatives and just like completely went to the other side
And I know that at this time, there was some people that started to question this, but it wasn't really noticeable.
It was some people that was like against this, like, what is this whole credit, you know, paper Bitcoin, anti-suit coiners.
They were speaking up, but the overall market wasn't really paying attention until Sailor or Strategy sold the 32 Bitcoin.
And I was like, this whole upheaval happened, which also had this like market correction, this market reaction as well.
And I'm saying this because in this whole 2020 to 2026 cycle where these three phases happen, there was a time in 2022 where a strategy sold 700 plus Bitcoin and the market didn't react.
Nobody said anything and the price didn't do anything.
It's 700 plus Bitcoin.
I forget exactly how much Bitcoin exactly, but it was definitely way more than 32.
Now, why did the market react in terms of just emotions, but also price action for 32 Bitcoin sold? And why didn't anything happen when he sold 700? It was because, in my opinion, because of the narrative engineering that Saylor was doing.
So 2022, the 700 Bitcoin was just like, okay, he's like tax harvesting.
There's just some other people had like other, not excuses, but like they had a, they were rationalizing it.
Whereas when he, when Saylor or Strategy sold 32, it was already a problem with the narrative that Saylor had done when he started to change a year before.
And that to me is extremely interesting to, to, to me, that's like proof that, you know, narratives.
is one factor that drives markets.
It all has to do with the emotion of people,
how they react to certain actions unfolding.
And somebody like Sailor
or anybody who chooses to engineer their narrative
in a way can actually control markets,
subconsciously or not.
But narratives has a very important part
when it comes to how people react
and how people feel about something.
So I thought that was pretty interesting.
and I think that's kind of the biggest takeaway from the report.
If you own a Bitcoin ETF, especially if it's GBTC,
you need to listen up.
Spot Bitcoin ETFs provide price exposure to Bitcoin,
not direct ownership.
You can't withdraw it, you can't self-custody it,
and they charge you a management fee every year to hold it.
Well, Swan recently announced Swan Real Bitcoin Exchange
and it's ready to use right now.
RBX is a structured in-kind exchange
that converts your Spot Bitcoin ETF shares
into real on-chain Bitcoin.
It does that without selling on the open market and is designed to support a tax efficient outcome.
So for example, if you hold GBTC, you're paying 1.5% a year in management fees for Bitcoin price exposure.
But by swapping GBTC for real Bitcoin with RBX, you can drop that figure as low as 0% by just holding it in self-custody.
This is designed in a way that maintains your cost basis and in a manner that supports the deferral of capital gains tax.
So if you own a Bitcoin ETF, especially if it's GBTC, you need to talk to Swan Private about RBX today.
Head over to swan.com forward slash WBD and book in a call with one of their team.
That's swan.com forward slash WBD.
If you're already self-custody Bitcoin, you know the deal with hardware wallets, complex setups, clumsy interfaces, and a seed phrase that can be lost, stolen, or forgotten.
BitKey fixes that.
BitKey is self-custody built for real life.
It gives you an intuitive, easy to use wallet with no seed phrase to sweat over.
And it has a strong recovery system and built inheritance for long term peace of mind.
And BitKey's just had a massive upgrade.
The new device now has a screen.
So before you approve something, you can check it on the BitKey itself.
The transaction, the address or any account changes.
It's a big difference.
You're not just trusting what's on your phone.
You're seeing it for yourself on the device.
It's simple, secure self-custody without the stress.
Go to bitkey.world today and use the code WBD to get 10% off the new Bitkey.
That's bitkey.world and use the code WBD.
Do you want to pay less in taxes and stack more Bitcoin?
Of course you do.
Well, by mining Bitcoin with Blockware, you can.
Under section 168k of the US tax code,
Bitcoin mining servers qualify for 100% bonus depreciation.
This means every dollar you spend on miners can directly offset your income in a single year.
And it's true for both business owners and W2 earners.
so if you have a hundred thousand dollars in ordinary income you can purchase a hundred
thousand dollars in miners and potentially offset your tax liability entirely blockwares mining as
a service does all the heavy lifting they secure the rigs they source the low-cost power and they
handle all the day-to-day maintenance so you get to stack bitcoin every single day while drastically
shrinking your tax bill get started today at blockwaresolutions.com forward slash wbd and use
code wbd for a hundred dollars off your first miner that's blockwaresolutions.com forward slash wbd
one of the most interesting things about the narratives that Saylor drives,
because they've been incredibly powerful,
is it started, like the first one I remember is the sort of melting ice cube.
The melting ice cube of fiat money he was sat on,
so he turned his treasure into Bitcoin.
And then there was the sort of Manhattan real estate,
there was digital energy.
And it felt like all of the initial narratives
were kind of very positive for Bitcoin.
And then the reason I've never liked the digital credit one
is it's always been like Bitcoin's not enough on its own without me giving this other product.
And so I feel like there's been a bit of a disconnect on the narrative there.
And then the other interesting thing about this is I remember I had Fong Lee on the podcast.
I think it was about October-ish time last year.
And he said on the show, I asked him if they would sell Bitcoin.
And he said, yes, they would.
And when he said that, I thought that was just like a fiduciary duty thing that he had to say he would
because at some point he may have to and he has to say that that is an option.
But the more I think about it, the more I wonder if it was just like it was sowing the seeds of this new narrative.
I don't know.
And it just been interesting to see it go from being in my opinion very very pro to being like pro and sometimes like saying Bitcoin not enough Like we need to add these new layers on top of it for
it to become money-like. And that's kind of, I think, where I've fallen out with this whole thing.
And I think there's a lot of Bitcoiners in the same boat. Yeah. And I think, you know,
I mentioned Fang Li as well in the report, because, you know, when the 32 Bitcoin got sold,
You know, he bought back a lot of shares as well.
And so there was kind of like, and these things are filed publicly as well.
And that is, you know, even though it's not necessarily a verbal message, it is still a message that is publicly filed that should be kind of like a thing that people pick up on.
That kind of like went unnoticed.
It didn't help at all.
like MSTR still crashed and it was like,
nobody cared that this actual CEO bought back a significant amount of shares
while the price was crashing.
So that means that, you know,
when a certain narrative has been solid and has, you know, over time,
and in this case, you know, from 2020 to 2024,
four year cycle of like having a very hard narrative,
kind of like rooting, when that gets uprooted, like nothing helps.
Nothing you say afterwards will help.
And that's like how big narratives actually is.
And, you know, you can speculate.
I mean, obviously there's a lot of like, you can reason your way out of this and say, hey, you know, business is business.
Things change.
Times change.
And you want to adapt.
You want to, you know, try out new things.
And also for Sailor, it's kind of like a learning curve as well, right?
Like even before 2020, he had tweets where he said, okay, Bitcoin is dead or has no future.
And obviously he changed his mind on that as well.
So, I mean, all of those things are allowed, obviously, but it's just interesting to have data on that right now that is quantitative.
And you can actually, you can pinpoint to a place where like, okay, he's changing his narrative right now.
And you can speculate on like, okay, why is this happening right now?
What has happened before he spoke up about it that is changing his mind or is changing his mind in real time?
And obviously, we don't know, but I think it's extremely interesting to just have data on it.
Like that's why I created Perception in the first place,
because I don't feel that we don't have this service
where we can actually catch a narrative changing in real time
if you bother to look.
The kind of like the consensus here is just to check the narrative
after it's already been said and done,
like everybody has with the reaction to the 32 Bitcoin being sold.
So that's the cool part.
It's language.
It's not binary as code, so it's not black and white.
You can only speculate and talk about it on the podcast.
but I think it's just incredibly interesting narratives really move markets sometimes
a hundred percent and and obviously like we've focused there on the strategy side but
on the bitcoin side the narrative has changed a lot as well like when I came into bitcoin
I don't get me wrong like I came for number go up but I stayed for freedom money and and bitcoin was
like it was freedom money like this was a counterculture thing that was cool it was like
end the fed it was punk rock like it was everything that like i wanted to find at the time that i found
it and it's part of the reason that i fell completely in love with it and like never
focused on anything since then essentially but like now i think because bitcoin's won so hard
we and we've got everything that we talked about in 2016 2017 i feel like people aren't sure what
the narrative is anymore because like and and to me like a real turning point is like the etf
approval it's kind of that was something that bitcoin has been fighting for since 2014 when
the wink of us first applied for an etf and it was like the thing that kind of knighted them and
allowed them to come on with the wall street like finance bros and be a real big boy asset like they
it got everything and then it's like now what we've won what what who are we anymore and i feel
like that's something bitcoin's battling with right now 100 man and if there's so much to say
about this uh let me try to just synthesize it and not have too long of a rant because i i i really
really geek out about these things so yes i agree like i'm class of 2017 and the things that
convicted me back then was just not what's being talked about right now definitely and we definitely
have a situation right now like where the punk rock band you know from you know bushwick brooklyn
all of a sudden is now playing at stadiums in in wembley london you know like we totally went
mainstream and a lot of people don't like that you know like me too we've made the really shit third
album exactly like the first album is like everything your whole life experience and it's
amazing and then after that then what you know so we have already gone through that like first
album where everything is fucking beautiful and it's packaged right and so many more people come
along and then are we fizzling out right now because right now there's there's really no
solid narratives to cling on and you know bear markets are for building narratives not only for
building products it's for us to kind of like regroup and be like okay well what do we talk
about now that can you know live on during the next bull i don't see any new narratives happening
right now i don't see any memes happening right now and like the narratives and the meme culture
i mean talk to any like real quote-unquote bitcoiner they will tell you like memes is so
important for us to convince outsiders because it's a memetic culture is visual it cuts through
a lot of the noise and you get it instantly you don't need to read any academic papers or white
papers or any of that bullshit and if we don't have that then what are we what do we hold on to
when we are ready for the next phase of adoption and more outsiders and normies are going to come
into the realm so that's a i don't know if it's a problem but it's definitely different this cycle
than before and i see a lot of other like bitcoiners who've been around for a while during
this cycle kind of like first of all killing your heroes that's always the thing and that is also
always based on narratives because your hero
became a hero because of things that
he said and then since where am i going with this uh the cypherpunk ethos is also kind of like
dwindling out as well and we see like we are kind of like in a in a environment right now where
there is no bitcoin culture or bitcoin community neither there's no and i know we're going to talk
about monoculture but like there used to be a monoculture within bitcoin like a decade ago
perhaps obviously within fighting still prevalent it has always been a thing because we are like
decentralized we are kind of like chaotic in the way we organize so that's kind of part of the dna
but there was like always a thing that made this a movement that a lot of people felt part of
and now i think on a broader sense with just the internet being fragmented and the way we
communicate with each other and taking information and educate ourselves is also fragmented because
of just the internet has created thousands of voices,
thousands of channels,
and the incentives for a thought leader
or an influencer or a podcaster
is pretty much to just stay within one very niche subject
and just double, triple down on that.
So once you get caught in one of these niches,
you kind of like, you get caught because you understand it.
Like, let's say there's a podcast that is only about,
I don't know, self-sovereignty, freedom,
and all of those things.
you're going to tune into that podcast if you share some of those beliefs before and then you're
going to continue listening to that podcast and you know continue to go deeper into that rabbit
hole and be completely convinced about the freedom aspect of bitcoin self-sovereignty self-custody
all that but the same that same phenomenon is also going to happen on a separate like pocket
of the internet where somebody who just wants no number go up all of a sudden is starting to
discover Adam Livingston's of the world, right? The True North podcast, whatever. And they're
going to be convinced because they have some preconceived beliefs about financial stuff.
And they're going to understand Bitcoin from that perspective. And they're going to double and
triple down and kind of go down that rabbit hole. And the way the internet is right now is like,
these two pockets of the internet are not really talking to each other that much.
And extrapolate that with like hundreds of pockets of the internet. So I think
this is interesting right now because to me this is affecting bitcoin adoption this is kind of
setting the stage for the next wave of adoption where there's no like one movement that's going
to bring in a lot of people understanding bitcoin in one way there's going to be a lot of people
coming in but it's going to be fragmented groups understanding bitcoin in very different ways
and a lot of those ways are going to be extremely contradictory and they're going to be like
opposite of each other.
Is that good?
Is that bad?
I don't know.
It is kind of like decentralized and cool, right?
It's kind of like the same chaoticness of Bitcoin,
which is part of our culture.
But at the same time, it's a little bit weird
because we're continuing to kind of go away
from those things that convinced a lot of people
in the very beginning.
So I don't know if a lot of people are going to
rage quit because of that
or if Bitcoin is going to be very different
because of how many different people are going to come in
and not really get the 360 degree view
of all the awesome things that Bitcoin represents.
I don't know if this is good or bad.
I don't know.
What do you think?
I don't like, I find this really hard
because when I came into Bitcoin 2016,
like I was really only ever on Bitcoin Twitter,
a little bit on sort of the Reddit,
but I think really most of the people
who were on the Reddit were also on Bitcoin Twitter.
And it did feel like a monoculture in a lot of ways.
like it felt like this sort of inside group that knew a secret that no one else knew and everyone
just wanted to meme and talk all day and bullshit and during this whole time like don't get me wrong
i was really new so i i i didn't understand the full complexity of like the block size walls
everything that was going on but there was still infighting it's just like but it still happened in
one place it felt like a sort of clubhouse that everyone went to to talk about this thing that we
knew existed and no one else did. And then, like you say, that's fragmented so much. I think
the sort of orange tie suit coin of Bitcoiners are entirely different. They represent like a
different subset of Bitcoiners. They don't really talk to the sort of the freedom maximalist
Bitcoiners who don't really talk to like the Bit.110 people who might not talk to the ordinal
guys. Like it has been totally fragmented. And I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing,
But what I do worry about is like how without a sort of monoculture within Bitcoin, how you push Bitcoin adoption as wide as we need to push it.
That's my big open question.
Yeah, man.
And it's like it's kind of like the way that I I I've been kind of like saying Bitcoin is not for everyone for a while.
And that's that's pretty much my reasoning behind it.
It's just like it's not it's not for everyone.
I mean, it is for anyone.
Like anyone is welcome if you kind of like understand it your way.
But it's just like a lot of people are not going to get it.
And I think another reality like in this internet age that we are living in, like the last 20 years, I would say not only did everything started to fragment 20 years ago and is as fragmented as ever today, but that has also changed our habits a little bit in terms of personalization.
so it's like uh you can now personalize your feed you can now personalize like if you if you buy a
car you can personalize the color the wheels the everything is personalized so that leads to a
change in like consumer behavior where everybody expects things to be customized we're seeing this
now in ai on on the business side of things we're like hey if you are selling a dashboard these days
you're dead like everybody's creating their own dashboards everybody because everybody wants like
a highly customized solution
for whatever they're doing, right?
And it's possible.
So people are just going to expect that.
Now, the cool thing about Bitcoin
is that I've always said that
Bitcoin is so many different things
that you can literally have a great argument
for Bitcoin to somebody
who is on the extreme far right
and also the extreme far left.
There are arguments for both extremes
and everything in between.
So the customization of Bitcoin
is actually pretty cool.
And that will lead to a lot of people
from different walks of life to understanding
stand bitcoin in a very deep way and be completely convinced about it so that's great that's that's
like bullish but that's actually really interesting because like one of the things that i think i've
said before on the podcast is that i think bitcoin covers such a broad array of things that it's very
hard to know how to orange pill someone if you don't know him like if you know that someone cares
deeply about like human rights you tell them the story of like roy and maboo giving women education
in afghanistan by like with using bitcoin like that's gonna always hit but the same story of like
fiat like money like money printing and fiat inflation is not going to necessarily hit that
same person who might be have more those like left-wing biases but maybe that's where the
complete fragmentation of culture actually works in bitcoin's favor like you have people in each of
these camps and and everyone's pushing bitcoin from every different angle it's exactly right and
But that's going to create a reality for a lot of people that will make them think,
ah, nothing is happening in Bitcoin, man.
Like, there's nothing, there's no narratives, there's no movement.
But maybe not to you in your view of the world,
but something here is happening that's really cool that you have absolutely no clue about.
Like, so many times I go to lunch and I talk about something that I care about.
Like, I don't know, I read a book and that book I know sold millions.
and then I talk to somebody like,
hey, do you know about this book
or do you know about this author?
And they're like, nope, never heard about this guy.
I'm like, what the hell?
The guy has sold millions of books.
You have no idea who that is.
And this goes with like, I don't know,
films that you see, bands that you hear.
People are just like,
there's such a disconnect between people.
Like you go to your neighbor
and your neighbor is just going to have
wildly different tastes
and things that they're interested in compared to you.
There's absolutely no,
it doesn't matter anymore
if you live in the same street,
doesn't matter if you live in the same city,
like everything is fragmented
and people just customize their own worldview.
So Bitcoin will win in that way
because it's adaptive enough to create arguments
and be convincing for a lot of different people.
And the thing with the fragmented media is like,
okay, you're going to create these pockets of internet
that are kind of like insulated,
but it's going to be super effective
because these people are going to be super niche.
They're going to cut down to one very specific thing.
And the way that we also like ingest information these days, we don't have the mental capacity to like register everything.
So we need things like packaged in a, you know, bite-sized way.
So adoption is going to be good, but it's not going to feel like, oh my God, we're taking over the world because, you know, this one narrative is like totally dominating.
It's going to be like boring, fragmented.
You're going to not know what the hell is happening.
But it's going to still happen.
But you're going to have a view of like Bitcoin is boring.
And I think that is also what's happening right now.
I think a lot of people are like, like I said, like literally 10 minutes ago, there's no memes.
There's no dominating narrative.
I'm bored.
Bitcoin has no future.
But maybe we shouldn't think like that.
Maybe this is just the way adoption is changing and mutating into something else that we're just not used to.
The thing that keeps me up at night with Bitcoin cold storage isn't Bitcoin failing.
It's my setup failing.
and this is where Anchor Watch comes in.
With Anchor Watch, your Bitcoin's insured
with your own A-plus rated Lloyds of London insurance policy
and all Bitcoins held in their time-locked multi-sig vaults.
So you have the peace of mind knowing your Bitcoin's insured
while not giving up custody.
So whether you're worried about inheritance planning,
wrench attacks, natural disasters,
or just your own silly mistakes,
you're protected by Anchor Watch.
Rates for fully insured custody start as low as 0.55%
and are available for individual
and commercial customers in the US.
You can speak to Anchor Watch for a quote
and for more details about your security options and coverage,
visit anchorwatch.com today.
That's anchorwatch.com.
You wouldn't reuse a Bitcoin address,
so why does your phone broadcast the same identifier for life?
Every SIM has a static ID and carriers, ad networks,
and bad actors all use it to track you.
The big carriers have been caught selling that data over and over again.
CAPE is America's privacy-first mobile carrier.
Their identifier rotation feature changes your ID every 24 hours
so you look like a different subscriber every single day.
And SIM swaps are off the table.
Your number can't move without a 24-word phrase that only you hold.
There's also no name at sign up, no social security number, and there's no profile to build on you.
If you're a Bitcoiner in America, I honestly don't know why you'd use any other network.
You can head over to cape.co forward slash WBD and use the code WBD for 33% off your first six months.
That's C-A-P-E dot co forward slash WBD.
If you hold Bitcoin long enough, there's going to come a time when you need some dollars.
It might be a tax bill, a business expense, life getting in the way,
but whatever it is, it might come at a time when you don't want to sell your Bitcoin.
That's where Ledin comes in.
Ledin lets you borrow against your Bitcoin instead,
with tiered rates that go as low as 9.25%.
So you don't have to sell your stack if you don't want to.
Ledin have operated through every market cycle since 2018
and have originated over $11 billion in loans.
But the important part for me is the way Ledin handles these loans.
Your collateral is held in custody and never lent out to generate interest.
and Ledin's more than just loans.
Tether Gold is now live alongside your Bitcoin
with instant trading across 10 pairs
and later this year, you'll be able to borrow against gold
in the same way that you do with Bitcoin.
Ledin really is an awesome company.
I've used them multiple times.
The applications have taken me less than 15 minutes
and you have the dollars in your account within hours.
If you want to check out Ledin, go to ledn.io
and use the code WBD for 0.25% off your first loan.
That's ledn.io and use the code WBD.
So I do have my ace on my sleeve, which is when I think Bitcoin monoculture comes back. But can we talk more broadly about the death of monoculture in society? Because this is a topic that I find really interesting. And I don't always find people that also find it interesting. And there's a time I brought this up on a show maybe six months ago, and you reached out to me. And so I've been excited to talk to you about this.
because i don't know when the death of monoculture happened but i know that it has happened and and
the problem with it is it to me looks like the shittification of everything like music has got worse film has got worse tv got worse like culture is fragmented and so there there no real shared values amongst people that
you might be in like a local geography with maybe there is in all different like different parts of
the world who you have you're connected to through the internet but like i feel like it's a societal
breakdown that i don't love to see and one of the cool things though about recently is the world cup
has been like a shining light of what monoculture can be.
Like, I feel like it's a very small glimpse of the life in the late 90s,
early 2000s when I was a kid,
when everyone cared about the same thing at the same time.
And I think there's something really special about that.
But I want to start like just a really open question about like,
when do you think the death of monoculture happened?
Oh man, you're saying so many things.
And I'm afraid of going into like crazy around
because I have so many thoughts and opinions about this, but let's do it.
I think the death of monoculture probably happened around late aughts, early 2010s, because of social media and internet.
And I think this is something that everybody intuitively knows.
But it's easy to look back and say that now.
But I think, you know, the World Cup is a great example of why we need monocultures in different geographical locations.
because it's really beautiful to see
you know, all the fans
in the stands representing each
country kind of like dressing up in like the
stereotypical garments, you know, like that
it's totally, yeah, it's totally
stereotypical, but it's really
beautiful because you're really, you're shining
you know, your culture, what you represent
and all the values and the traditions of it
right, like I love to see, you know
I grew up in Norway, my fellow Norwegians
they just post up
with like Viking helmets and then
they do the row thing and
And it's really wonderful because, you know, when I travel, I want to go to a place and feel like I'm in that country.
I don't want to see the same type of coffee shops or the same type of people like being present in every single city.
And I think we see that on, you know, physically.
Like a lot of cities, big cities in Europe, for example, are kind of like starting to look the same.
They're losing their like flair and originality.
and we are also seeing it now on the internet with what i like to call the homogenization
of the internet which ai is really pushing forward because we have all these tools that
are trying to appease everyone because they want to grow fast so they kind of like homogenize the
entire web and giving you results or answers to questions that are like they sound confident but
it gives you like 40 of the actual truth so you we kind of like get like lobotomized slowly over
time thinking that we're really making decisions and we're making opinions based on facts but we're
not and when the monoculture did exist there was at least a feeling even though yes it was super
centralized and your only choice was like five hosts of five different shows in one channel
it still was something that brought people together and there was some sense of like okay
a consensus of culture that at least if you felt identified or not, it was kind of like the thing,
like mainstream was a thing. And I don't know, there was stuff like grunge bands,
like obscure music from Seattle that just managed to kind of like hit the zeitgeist
to the mainstream. And if they did that, it was literally a global thing. I remember like in the
nineties growing up as a kid as well, like basketball was like insane. They hit the
and it became like an all like all sucking thing that everybody could relate to and and embraced
and that was because of yeah there wasn't the customization again of content wasn't there we
were kind of like reduced to the tv the radio and that was like a thing that happened from
i think 1930s when you know more people at their households began began getting radios and tvs
and channels started to appear and content started to create and then that kind of like from the 1930s
it became a growing business a growing industry we saw advertising kind of like get invented
and like more money more money were made so more channels were made and then when the internet came
that kind of like metastasized into the internet and continued to fragment and spread everybody had
their own channels everybody had their own opinions everybody wanted to make money so i think around
that 2010 is is kind of like where things really starting to accelerate and just like we are now
15 years in and this like very crazy period where i honestly think and sorry for the rant again
we're kind of like going back to our like human biology of like dude societies for hundreds and
hundreds of years millennia even were mostly reduced to like your local physical place and
the culture that grew in those places were just like local, high trust, same language,
same way of speaking. Everybody kind of like understood each other because they had evolved
in the same place for hundreds of years. Then the 1930s came, fucked us up. And now we're kind of
like, we are not even like, we're not biologically wired to handle all this information that we're
getting fed every single day. Like you're not-
Oh, that's 100% true.
Right. You're not supposed to know that there's an earthquake in Venezuela. You're not supposed to know that there's a train derailing in Karachi. You're supposed to know what's happening around you with your family, with your friends, and the Dunbar number of 150 persons max, and then that's it.
and we're kind of like we crashed through that and now we're feeding ourselves with so much
information that we have absolutely no clue and i can see now people are kind of slowly going back
to that like the tribal the local only online right so people are like rage quitting x and they
go to nostor or they go to blue sky or you know they they all now make their little tribe their
local tribes online that the only difference that is done online but we kind of like reverting back to that by the human the human kind of like status quo of just like hey i know my people i know what i like i try to find like people that speak the same language
we agree on some fundamentals and then ah my my worldview is like restored and i feel good about
it but that it's it's crazy because you have so much information accessible you literally have the
library of Alexandria at your disposal and you can learn so many great new things. But I think
humans just like default back to that state of like, ah, at least I can, I can feel good about
myself. And I'm like blissfully ignorant about other stuff that is happening because I'm not
really meant to know absolutely everything, if that makes sense. It totally makes sense. And
it gets interesting because, so when I was growing up until I was maybe 10 or 11, we had five TV
channels and then we got sky tv which is essentially like cable tv um and there's there's
two sides of this there's one which is like the information that you're being fed through the news
services and like sure they can be propaganda they can be driving a narrative but everyone was
getting getting given the same information and so people that were close by like in a literal like
geographical sense would be getting the same information to you sure they might be processing
it differently but everyone was like on the same playing field and everyone was kind of dealing
with the same hand of cards whereas now like on that side the information that i'm getting when
i'm scrolling x or whatever is so different to my neighbor that like we can be living next door to
each other but essentially living in an entirely different existence and it's like what i see as
truth they don't see as truth and it makes it very hard to kind of go to the coffee shop and
have a conversation with someone that's not just surface level bullshit like small talk um and and
i don't know what that does to society and then like on a cultural side even more so it's even
more dispersed in that like the stuff that i'm watching for entertainment is totally different
like i'm not watching you know married at first sight or love island or whatever that someone else
might be watching and i just feel like the the sort of medium that you communicate to other humans
that you don't properly know through has changed and i don't know what it is anymore and i just see
that as being a really scary thing for society yeah no it is it is and it's like um an analogy
that i had one more thing in there sorry go ahead i totally interrupt you but because this is
something i've been thinking about a lot as well is i think it's bad for everyone but there's also
a huge age divide which i think is really bad like so when i grew up again like anyone who grew up in
the same era as me like you talk to respect your elders like the these are like i look up to my my
my grandparents fucking amazing people they live in a different world entirely because they still
live in the 90s and so like i don't know what it does to society both in people like my own age
that live in a different world of truth to me and also like different generations that are just i
they may as well be like an alien race at this point they don't have the same context i mean
there is a point to be said about like boomers getting totally sucked into apps and their phones
more than young people, but that's kind of like a different topic.
But like they are like literally getting their brain fried through WhatsApp and Telegram.
It's just that's that's an entirely different discussion.
But yeah, it's crazy.
But I think it's just like I don't I don't think people know the difference between facts
and truth.
Right.
That's that's kind of the biggest issue right now, because we all agree on the facts.
Like, okay, if somebody records on their phone somebody robbing somebody else, right?
That's a fact.
Like, you see the crime happening.
This person killed that person.
End of.
That's the fact.
But the truth around that fact depends a lot on, like, your ideas already.
So if you're, or your ideology, depending on how extreme you are.
But you can say, somebody on both extremes can say, well, the guy who killed that guy comes from the slums and there's majority of a certain race that live in that slum.
So it's a racist thing.
And that's why I hate that race.
Then the other extreme can say, but this guy is poor.
He lives in poverty.
He has to resort to crime because he doesn't have any other opportunity.
So that's two truths for just one very simple fact.
that happen. Now extrapolate that to like literally everything that happens that gets
recorded and shared online. And you have this like insane chaos of nobody agreeing on simple things
that should be simple things to agree around. Right. And, and then you have people who,
who capitalize on these things and, you know, politicians are always the first ones to do,
but this is also for influencers, thought leaders, people who just want to grow their accounts.
they just leverage that as well just to get more followers and like the incentives for
spreading information and building a followership and and creating content that actually educates
and gets gets through is highly highly perverse and that is definitely breaking a lot of people's
brains but and this is an analogy that a lot of bitcoiners like to um compare bitcoin with
is gutenberg's printing press right what we're seeing right now with all this like distribution
mechanics and all distribution channels like completely getting you know disrupted can be
compared to that right and the thing is is like well a lot of people don't know about because
when you look back and do like revisionist history it's very easy to just pinpoint to one point in
history and then another like a result and think this happened in a very small vacuum but if you
really take a look at like the printing press let's say and i and i do want to compare the printing
press with Bitcoin, with AI, and the internet as a whole, because... Let me explain. So the printing
press, now everybody looks back and said, okay, yeah, it dissolved the Catholic church's monopoly
on God There was these institutions that had this information asymmetry and they grew in power they grew in influence and they got a lot of money right and you would think like okay the printing press disrupted that and it was over but if you really take a look at
history uh from the invention of the printing press what really followed was like 300 years of like
complete chaos starting with the reformation but then like the enlightenment the 30 years war
than the collapse of feudalism and the rise of nation states, right?
That was like a crazy, chaotic transitional period
because of this one invention that made it essentially information-free.
Now, nobody who used the early printing press,
they didn't live to see the world that that invention eventually created.
What they did, they just spent their entire lives
in that transition chaos era.
And I think we are in the exact same spot today with both the internet, Bitcoin, and AI.
So if you expect all of these...
We're in the chaos era.
We're in the chaos.
Yeah, I like to call it the chaos gap.
I don't know if I can maybe coin that term and it becomes a thing, but it's the chaos gap.
So if we obviously talk about this right now on this podcast, because we have questions,
we want to know what the fuck is going on.
But if we and other people who share our thoughts expect this to resolve within this decade, I mean, then we don't really understand the scale of the game, you know.
So, yeah, you might get blackpilled because you see regulators banning a wallet or, you know, the authorities arrest the samurai devs or you get blackpilled when, you know, Bitcoin crashes to 70%.
But if you do that, you're kind of like looking at this civilizational transition through a very short lens.
And we're kind of like in the middle of a very crazy transitional era in human history that I don't think we're going to live to see through the actual results.
You know, and this goes for everything.
Yeah, you hope not.
Yeah, yeah.
I want to see the end of this.
But I do think when you bring all this back to Bitcoin, it does make more sense why things like the Bit110 civil war is happening right now.
I think one of the interesting things on the Bit110 side is that most of the people who are supportive of it also don't like the sort of financialization treasury company side of it.
And I think that's people completely understandably wanting to push back against this becoming like a homogenized, boring version of what we thought Bitcoin was.
But my kind of strong take on this is I think Bitcoin might go through this period now where it does fragment a little.
It goes into its niches like Bitcoin adoption happens at the edges rather than like straight through the middle.
It's not the coolest thing in the world.
like ai is here now and that's what everyone wants to talk about but i think it comes back when
we realized that this was a trojan horse like i i think if if bitcoin is the trojan horse
and if we've now been sort of let into the gates and wall street are accepting us the the the
changing point will be when it becomes clear that bitcoin is a threat to the u.s dollar
and what leads to that i don't know whether it's like you know financial crisis huge money printing
and Bitcoin then poses a realistic threat to the US dollar.
But I think there will come a time
when Bitcoin does get its monoculture back.
Yeah, I think so.
I mean, usually when a crisis happens,
that's when humans get together super quickly
in defense of that crisis.
And I don't know what that crisis is going to be,
but definitely a lot of people agree.
And it's kind of like a meme that Bitcoin thrives in crises.
is um so but i it's it's kind of like a black pill uh way of growing adoption right like you
don't want the world to become a worse place just so that bitcoin can win so i i think um
bitcoin will win in a very boring and slowly way i i kind of like i i do think like adoption is
going to just be fragmented and very boring and slow slow grinding and we will like the same way
the price is not really like making crazy moves but just like slowly grinds upwards that's kind
of what's going to happen in the future even more because it's just uh very hard to organize
ourselves and and get a lot of people behind one one movement on one narrative but i'm repeating
myself that's boring on the 110 on the bit 110 guys i think it's just like um i i feel like you
know bitcoin if you really look at it from first principles it's technology man and technology
adapts changes and 99 of things that gets built for one very specific purpose once adoption
happens that purpose kind of like it's not really what what it ends being right like take take my
company for example i was totally i'm not comparing precision with bitcoin but you know any startup
any founder any people working in tech can tell you hey you start off with an idea and you think
you build a product a certain way then people come and like oh shit you got a pivot and the
things that you thought was true is actually not true because the market is telling you a very
different truth so you adapt to that and you build around that and obviously bitcoin is not as flexible
as a startup as a regular SaaS but it's kind of like the same thing like yeah you have a white
paper with like some fundamentals but that was written in a in a time and place where maybe these
these things become less relevant over time just because the type of people who ends up adopting
bitcoin and builders that are building on top of bitcoin changing bitcoin in a way because they just
build different things like ordinals or whatever that you just don't see as like hey this is not
the original Bitcoin idea, but how much does that really matter?
It doesn't really matter what you thought of something in the beginning.
What matters is the outcome.
So I think a lot of these people are like screeching as a result of that because, hey,
this is not what I thought this was, but it's like, that's a very hard pill to swallow because
Because again, it's akin to orange pilling in itself.
In order to understand Bitcoin, it's a highly spiritual individual journey that part of that process is to unlearn a lot of things that you thought was true about the world.
And you got to come to that realization of like, fuck, like, damn, I need to like humble myself here because it's just not the world is not what I thought it was.
And why is Bitcoin very different than that?
I think Bitcoin is exactly the same.
It's like a lot of people, they understand Bitcoin and they get convinced about Bitcoin
and they love Bitcoin because of two, three, four different arguments.
But then more arguments are going to come later in the future as this thing grows and
more different people comes into the ring.
And then you got to be accepting of that.
And then it seems like these people are not.
And then the way that they go about it is also extremely cringe.
I just want to say it like the scare tactics, this kind of like, hey, I'm the sole holder of truth.
And if you don't agree with me, you're an idiot.
It's like that's kind of the same thing we have been criticizing each other about when it comes to like orange peeling norm is like this.
This way, this tactic is just not good.
You're not going to get a lot of people.
And it seems to me like the people that they manage to gather around are people who share the same views.
and so they're not really they're not really being successful in getting other type of different
people to believe that BIP 110 is relevant and important so it's like the same the same type
people are just gathering together here and it's yeah I don't know it's I don't know it's been
interesting to see but like I I totally agree I think there's going to be a lot of people
realize that Bitcoin doesn't care what you think it should be um but I don't know it's a mess I'm
excited for this all to be over like this is such peak bear market things like i i just want i want
to get past this like we need to build a new narrative we need to build more memes um but
fernando before we close out i need you to i need you to give me some light on an argument that i had
with pete for years on the podcast i don't so we recorded a podcast with pete when he first pivoted
I don't think it came up, but he held this opinion very strongly in that he thought that Amy Winehouse's album was the last great album.
And I think he might have been directionally right.
Although I so I always said Kendrick Lamar to Pimper Butterfly was a great album that came out after the Amy Winehouse one.
but i think what he actually spotted was the homogenization of music through things like
spotify algorithms do you think we've lost art forever oh man that's a great question i think
well amy winehouse was not like um was not an artist that really created an original sound for
the time that she was living in she was like all retro like her music was like old soul so her music
was like the 70s wrapped in a modern package so if you strip that away and you only look at
original music maybe the last album is like from the 80s or 90s um and a lot of like new bands that
really that that i like that are new are like kind of like sounding like old school stuff throwbacks
throwbacks and the new sound that i see that kind of is hitting the the mainstream cultures like in
terms of like you know hip music and rap music fucking sucks man and uh messaging is kind of like crazy and i always i been i grew up on rap music to be honest i i love rap music and i always felt like part of the part of the
reason why i love rap music is because it's a reflection of society because there's so much
talking so much lyrics so much verbal communication so if you listen you get like a nice reflection
of like the reality that is being lived and if you listen to the lyrics today of rap it's just
like whoa we are living in a nihilistic world that just like nobody has any hopes and it's all
about drugs and fucking all kind of like demon-like things so if that's a reflection of the society
that we're in yeah we're not going to create good music and maybe we need to look back at like
older older stuff but what was your original question sorry i kind of got derailed i wonder
if the the fact that we've kind of become slaves to the algorithm for finding new music new art
new film like does that how do you break out of that and and will we break out of that because
like it leads to everything being beige because it never the algorithm never wants to offend
so it always gives you stuff that it thinks you're gonna like enough to stay not enough to love and i
just wonder if we can break out of that yeah i don't think the majority of people will break out
of that and I can explain why. So I started my career in the music business, right? And I started,
I was working at Universal Music in Norway, where I grew up between Norway and Argentina. I was in
the Oslo office in Universal Music and in the neighboring country, Sweden, the Pirate Bay guys
were doing their thing, right? And torrenting had like a very, you know, I had a moment in the early
odds, mid odds. So by the time I started my career back in 2007, I was working there. I was, I remember
to this day and i've been tweeting about this a lot like i remember sitting in the in the board
rooms on the phone with with the london office and all the executives were like screeching and
and and like saying like we need to stop the pirate bay uh we need to like confiscate their
servers we need to put those people in jail we need to shut down the website and i was the youngest
guy there and i was like to myself i'm like what the fuck is what is going on right now what are
these people talking about like they obviously don't understand the technology they don't
understand the decentralization of torrenting and that is literally unstoppable you can put them in
jail but you're not gonna you're not gonna make a dent uh they just didn't didn't understand it
and i was like hey why don't we embrace this technology and we try to like uh create like
low bit rate uh versions of singles and and distribute that and get people excited and then
they will buy the real shit later and they were like no absolutely not like i'm like that was a
thing that made me rage quit the uh the industry what happened later though is that the music
business as they got disrupted and they were like trying to scramble to stay relevant and just to
stay solvent is that they did mergers and acquisitions and then they got like those
mergers and acquisitions made them to like a one global entity that was powerful enough to say to
spotify like hey if you want to enter the u.s market if you want to ipo in this market we need
a we need a cut pure mafia shit like if you want to like have a shop here in the street and you
don't want us to like come and destroy your shop give us a give us a piece so i think if i remember
correctly when they ipo'd uh in the us the this conglomerate had like 20 25 of the of the initial
shares during the ipo and that was the way that they allowed spotify to exist and then they
obviously pushed that solution to a lot of other people but the torrenting has always managed to co Torrenting is not dead and you can still go today and you can download any files and movies and media that you want But it is definitely a user experience that is less smooth
than just like paying $10 to Amazon Prime, $25 to Netflix
and just like go there and stream.
So convenience, when they wrapped the MP3s and the MP4 files
that torrenting were just giving to you directly, real MP4s,
Now you get the wrapped MP4 versions on these platforms that people are just like, yeah, these are great businesses.
So things coexist, but the real torrenting is a minority and the normies are just embracing that, right?
And they're a slave to that algorithm.
And you got these self-sovereign people who get their taste buds from other way and they know what to go for.
And they download very specific things because they know that they like it.
Bitcoin, I kind of feel like it's the same.
like we have you have you have we have managed to separate money and state it's definitely the
state the state is not controlling anything it's not not letting you download a wallet and receive
bitcoin you can do that today you don't need any permission still possible and self-custody is still
possible great products are out there and there's a plethora of products and companies fighting for
the customers they're making these products better over time but the wrapped bitcoin the normies are
loving that now if it's etf if it's paper if it's like custodial even that they hold bitcoin but
together with a custodian i think the majority are going in that direction as well the same thing is
going to happen when it comes to taste music design ai is kind of like giving you a wrapped
version of like hey this is what good web design is and now you see a lot of people creating websites
and they all have that like annoying little like border color on the left and just like man this is
AI. And then with language, it's the same. Like AI is giving you the homogenized wrapped version
of like what cool, what good writing is supposed to be. And people are so dumb and they're so bad
at writing and designing that that version is way better than they could produce themselves.
So they're just going to go with that. And now we have AI slopification of the internet through
sloppy design and sloppy language. So are we going to escape it? Yeah, it is still possible. There is
escape hatch, but how many people are actually going to actually be high agency enough to realize
what's happening and actually take action? One, two, three, five percent. That's like Odell said
this to me a couple of times when I've had him on the podcast. He's like, the percentage number is
going to drop, but the real number is going to grow it. And like, maybe that is two, three, four,
five percent, but it's going to be a small number of people that actually do have agency.
And the scary thing on the AI side is like,
I can't see how they break out of the same incentives that the Netflix and Spotify's have
in the world where they want to give you safe beige information. And I think that just means
censorship in a different form. Like they're going to give you such bland takes on everything and
people are going to rely on it so heavily. That's their only take they're going to have.
and i don't know man i just worry about society i mean listen i think there's always been equality
in this world there's always been people that are high agency people that are low agency i think the
majority of people are low agency that's also the reason why bitcoin adoption is maybe not as big as
we wish it to be but that because we are all high agency people who know our shit and we are humbled enough to change our worldview and to be adaptable majority of people aren like that they just passive consumers of content we are on the other side and
i don't want to sound like elitist or anything like that but just there are just differences
in people there are people that will take the opportunity that they have even though they have
to do uber eats all day and they will put on this headphone and listen to a podcast about finance and
Bitcoin as they deliver Uber Eats.
And there's going to be people who are ordering Uber Eats and just sitting on their couch
watching Slop all day.
And I think we can be as altruistic as we want to be and try to help as many people
as possible, but at the same time, lead a horse to the water and all of that stuff, right?
Like we just got to like keep working hard, understand that there's still a lot of things
to grow.
Bitcoin has still a lot of more adoption, more, this cake is going to get bigger.
I don't think the hyper-boliconization of the world,
like us taking over the US dollar
is going to happen anytime soon,
but that's the end game.
Right now, we just got to be content
with where we are right now
and just keep focused and keep building
and just chipping away at it.
And I think even though I'm not
a huge circular economy fan,
I do respect the people who chose that path
and want to deliver that message
while other people are choosing different paths
and they still deliver the Bitcoin message.
everybody wins if Bitcoin just grows
and I don't care how
you can be an ordinal maxi for all I care
if that's the only understanding of Bitcoin that you have
good for you man
at least you're doing something in Bitcoin
I don't care about my personal opinion
I care about freedom
and I want people to be free to do whatever stupid shit
that they want to do
but I think Bitcoin wins no matter what
and we just need more people through the door
so you know that's it
I love it man
Fernando this has been awesome
we've got to do it again at some point
This is a very different show than the type I normally make.
And I really enjoyed it.
But tell people where they can find out about the work you're doing before we close out.
Yeah, so my company is Perception.
The website is perception.to.
What it essentially is, is just I gather all the discourse that happens around the digital
asset industry.
So I include Bitcoin, but I don't want to have that.
I don't want to study Bitcoin in isolation.
It's important to know where Bitcoin stands, where everything else is going on.
So it's compute, AI, mining, payments, you name it, stable coins, all of that.
I gather thousands of sources every single day, thousands of data points about the discourse, about the filings, documentation, everything that happens.
And then I give it to you.
And a lot of people, this is more for businesses that take that and they get a feel of what's happening in the industry and they can, you know, do product strategy and they do marketing and communication strategy for it.
it's delivered through an MCP
and you can go to perception.to for that.
And for me, you know, just Google my name,
you'll find me everywhere.
I love it, man.
I should use this, by the way.
I want to try it out and see what it gives me on Bitcoin.
Yeah, do it.
By the way, the MCP is free for forever
for five requests a day.
So you just like plug it into your agents
and you get five requests a day
and you can take a peek and see how it feels like.
So go ahead and do that.
I'm going to try it out.
Fernando, this has been awesome, man.
Thank you for coming on the show.
I will speak to you soon.
We've got to do it again at some point.
Yeah, thanks for having me on, man.
Good combo.