Forget K-shaped economy completely because it cannot allow that deflation to hit the market.
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It's a coordinated game. It's a crazy coordinated game.
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so i really want to go into the ai stuff because um i've been spending a bit of time sort of looking
into it because it's so it's unbelievably useful and i'm not sure i'm into like the the doomer take
of it's going to kill us although i did listen to a guy on peter's podcast recently who was like 90
chance this kills us um but what i am a little bit doomerish about is what it does to the economy
And if this is like just a massive accelerant for sort of the K-shaped economy where poor people just get even more left out in the cold.
Let's jump in because I think even what you just described, what it describes for me is even as much as I think you understand my thesis, you don't quite yet.
honestly jeff this is this is one of the things that i battle with so much because i want to think
like you i really really do and i have glimpses of it but changing your entire worldview to fit
your thesis is very hard yeah so so why don't we then then look for you and actually because i found
when this has happened twice lately natalie natalie who did this on um just for her own
knowledge because she couldn't understand it. And I thought she knew totally. And then it happened
on Nico's podcast too, where he was just like, you could see him actually get it, right? You could
actually see him get it in it. And both of those did like well over 200,000 views because it was
helping so many people, other people get it. So I think just be really honest, let's just stay there
in the uncomfortable and keep as for as long as we need to, because I just, I cannot tell you
how many people I just got one, another person that just said it, uh, yesterday, um, or not today
on, on Jeff, he goes, it fine. He said after four years, it finally clicks what Jeff Booth has been
saying this whole time. And it changes just the, um, it's so much more than, than you think. So.
yeah i mean i remember when we were speaking in bedford when we recorded a podcast for the old
what bitcoin did and then afterwards um i don't know if you remember we did a short bit maybe like
20 minutes for the patreon that we used to have yeah and um i we were digging into it then and
when you were explaining it to me in bedford i remember a lot of it clicking and i still have
moments where i i do see the world like jeff but it's not my i'm not always seeing the world like
Yeah, yeah.
So maybe we should just start there and get like, what is the thesis?
Just let's start again.
And I know we've done it a lot.
I think even though people have heard this multiple times, I think you need to hear it a lot.
So let's just start there.
What is the Jeff Booth thesis?
It's not just my thesis.
So I always start with the natural state of the free market is deflation, right?
And most people can nod their head to saying, yep, that's right, without understanding what they've just agreed to.
Because if they agree to that, then it means they've never lived in a free market.
And all their actions in the opposite market, in the opposite zero-sum game, drive every single thing that they're worried about in the world.
right and they stay there right because and they're they try to integrate two two thoughts
that cannot be integrated together they try to put them together and so and you're probably
finding that same same thing so let's natural state of the free market is deflation right
and we'll spend a little bit afterwards and we'll go down why a credit-based system
can't allow deflation. Okay. Those, those two statements are both true and they're both opposite
systems. They're completely opposite systems. One has to kill the other.
That makes sense. That makes total sense. Um, but so why has natural, like if, if deflation is the
natural state of the market, why is that not already killed the other, other truth that in
a credit-based system, you can't have deflation. So the faster technology moves, the faster
monetary easing and the faster manipulation of money. It's just a mirror image, right? It's one
system is supposed to be making you richer through the prices falling, through essentially
why is the natural state of the free market deflation is because every entrepreneur that
creates any value has to compete with what came before, right? And if they don't provide more value
to society, they fail because what was there before, we just use what was there before.
When they do create more value for society, we use the more value, right? So we are part of the
system that has to be deflationary because we always choose more value. That makes sense. So
I kind of ninja launched this show and I didn't do a full context. I don't know where we're going
to cut that in. But so the reason, something I've been thinking a lot about recently is like,
AI is incredible. Like it has, I'm using it a lot. It's probably replaced at least half a person in
terms of what I do for a business. And what I can't figure out is what impact this has on the
economy. Like AI is probably the most deflationary tech we've maybe ever had. I don't know, maybe
alongside Bitcoin, like the two most deflationary technologies we've ever had. And how does that
not lead to a crazy, like it, how does that not exacerbate the K-shaped economy to the
point where you have even fewer very rich and then a lot of very poor?
Forget K-shaped economy completely.
Okay.
Your K-shaped economy would have to look like that through a credit-based system because
it cannot allow that deflation to hit the market.
has to just manipulate money.
And the manipulation of money
goes to the richest first
because of the canceling effect.
And so it creates bigger and bigger monopolies
that coordinate with governments
to create more and more regulation
to protect the monopolies.
And everybody else loses.
You are talking about what happens
inside a credit-based system
when you use words like K-shaped economy.
Right. So, so just keep in mind, and this is why this is so hard to, hard to do. They're different. You, you have to, you have to find out what's true, what it, it's sand at this first principle. So is, and that's why I ask questions so people can see it in themselves and then lead them to that. But is it true? Or I say if a lot.
so if the natural state of the free market is deflation and we can test it all the way through
and say yes that's why prices fall to the marginal cost of production in that what's the marginal
cost of production of ai zero so prices of all ai will fall to zero what is marginal cost of
production short term on robotics there's a marginal cost of production of physical robotics
but then robots will create their own robots, right? They'll explode with the same AI merging,
and prices will fall and fall and fall on those robots, and they'll take more and more jobs,
and most of those will fall to near zero in time. All of the energy going into those,
all of the raw materials going into those, are also experiencing the same
fall in price, right? They're all being the base formation of everything we do is create more value.
and we use more value.
Why you are using more AI
instead of hiring more people?
Because if you don't,
your show will lose out to somebody who is.
Right?
And you won't be able to provide as much value to your users,
so your viewers will go somewhere else.
So for sure you will use more AI.
for sure AI is going to move exponentially
and get better and better and better
and do more things at an alarming rate
and if you're using the AI now
and you're looking at it as helpful now
you're looking backwards
because where it's coming
and at the rate it's coming
looking forward
these things
people haven't
they're reading halfway through the book
looking at the next page
when you can already see
the entire where the sun all unfolds. Because AI today is the worst it will ever be.
Worst it will ever be. And there are very few people using AI today at the front edge of what's
possible. Very few people. And that's today's front edge, not tomorrow's front edge. So as more
and more people understand the power of this and what they'll be able to do, and they're building
their own agents and network of agents that'll do a whole bunch of different complex tasks that
you can't even imagine today. And those complex tasks will get easier and easier and easier.
It's just, it's almost, it is inconceivable that that doesn't destroy labor.
Inconceivable. Because what are you doing? Instead of hiring somebody for 20 hours a week,
you're getting more product productivity so you don't have to and it cost me 20 a month or whatever
and pretty pretty soon that'll be free the part that i struggle with is like if because i totally
agree with what you're saying there um i think it will wipe out the job market in a way that we've
never seen before but if the k-shaped economy is the wrong way of looking at it what's the right
way of looking at it so so now you have to um enter in so so and i'm doing this in in in air in
kind of levels so you can see so two things are true credit based uh system that lends money
into existence so right so when a bank lends you money there was no money
and if all the money was repaid from all the banks all over the world there'd be no money
So when that credit-based system requires exponentially more monetary units,
otherwise it collapses completely. Because if it allows deflation,
it collapses completely. And it gets faster and faster and faster. And your houses fall
in it. Your banks fail in it. Everything fails. Your government fails in it. Everything fails.
So what you could say quite simply from that is, Danny knows you wouldn't let it fail.
So you call yourself a free market person, yourself, and you would not let that fail.
Right?
Because if it did, you'd be, every single person would be begging to manipulate money because the entire system would completely collapse to zero.
every house, every business, everything, because it's built on that credit based money.
Is there a part of that where like, you're right, I wouldn't want to click my fingers and have that
fail because that's just suffering all over the world. But is there an argument that you want that
to fail very slowly as Bitcoin just eats everything else? So that's what it's doing.
Yeah. So that's what I'm getting at. So now, so understand those action. So if those two
systems are opposite, then you can kind of do some deductive reasoning and what does that mean,
right? And say, so what it means is if the natural state of the free market is deflation,
then it means we have never lived in a global free market. Yeah. Like it kind of takes your
breath away. But now what does that mean? You don't, you have no, no understanding of what that
means. You're trying to apply what I'm saying into a different past framework. Because all the books
you've ever read about what free markets look like, what government structures look like, what
capitalism looks like, what every single word you have to describe your previous realities,
were all created by the winners write the history books, and money was always co-opted.
So it would be normal to try to attach this new thing in Bitcoin that's never existed before
to your previous biases and try to make them work together. It'd be totally normal.
But is there kind of a middle step that is missed there in the sense that I agree that
the paradigm we live in now is not the paradigm we'll live in in the future.
But there's going to be a transition period. And what happens in that transition period?
So that transition period is happening right now. So this house, I've said it many times on your
podcast, this house, and every time I say it, right, it's cheaper in Bitcoin terms, right? Now
it was 300 Bitcoin five years ago, and now it's 11 Bitcoin. And every time we're on a podcast
together is cheaper in Bitcoin terms. And so if you measure, what would, what a different question,
an open, anybody could use it, decentralized, secure, you cannot break it, protocol,
which would come in layers, adding more and more functionality, protocol bounded by energy look
like, wouldn't it, if it stayed decentralized and secure, and you couldn't change it, and
it was bounded by energy, wouldn't it describe the first global free market that ever existed?
And wouldn't relative to it, all energy prices be falling, all manufacturing prices be falling,
all house prices be falling, all everything be falling, right?
If you measured from that first global free market, you could say every single person that moved their time to it would compete more for value for all of us.
And you would have faster and faster deflation in it forever.
Yeah.
From that.
And the only caveat, the only caveat would be it stays decentralized and secure.
There isn't another caveat.
So if it stayed decentralized and secure, and so all of the work should be, do you believe
it'll stay decentralized and secure and how can you become a node to ensure it does, right?
And then you start utilizing your time into this new protocol and you are part of the thing that imposing a discipline across the world that is the first global free market that ever existed that and and that and the more you inside
that system everything else from the other system makes perfect sense it makes perfect sense why
it would try to drive you into fear that ai is going to kill you it would make it because that's
that way you could regulate AI. It would try to make you believe that Biden was a hero or Trump
was a hero or name insert any single person from that system. Elon Musk, just name a bunch of
people from inside that system. It would be trying to convince you that it wasn't a structural
problem. Somebody could save you. And it would be doing that with more and more AI tools.
and you if the more you listened inside that system the more you would be convinced
that that's normal i i guess like i again there's nothing that you say that i disagree with but so i
was walking around the supermarket yesterday my daughter was asleep and i was just doing the
shopping and i was thinking about this interview and like if you go if you asked anyone in there
like the people living in fiat world i think they're constantly under this pressure that
housing's getting more expensive, is further and further out of reach. Their groceries are getting
more expensive. And there's like a wistfulness, I think, for the old days. Like they want things to
be like they used to be or like how their parents had it. And then there's me there as a Bitcoiner
who's like, all these things are getting cheaper. That's the world I already live in. But there's
probably only one or two other people in the entire supermarket that even really know what Bitcoin is,
if that. And so what happens to all those people that haven't understood what Bitcoin is in this
transition. I think that's what I'm unsure about. Okay. This, this goes on forever.
And we're very, very early. We're crazy early because I would say the majority of Bitcoiners
are actually Bitcoiners measuring in a U S dollar thinking it's going up.
Absolutely. In other words, the majority of Bitcoiners are still reinforcing an inflationary
monetary system. And the majority of Bitcoiners will sell their Bitcoin back to that system.
In other words, they'll distribute their Bitcoin to other people, right?
As this goes on, it's, we are so crazy early, um, uh, in, insanely early in, in the understanding
that this is imposing a new discipline, but most, most people, so just take three different
buckets of people.
There's Bitcoiners that are, are like you and I who are pricing in Bitcoin and watching
the first global free market advance.
And in that world, AI is wonderful.
It's a productivity tool,
makes everybody richer.
It just moves faster and faster,
broad-based abundance from that world.
There's another group of people
who are Bitcoiners
who are still in fiat, right?
And who are potentially getting co-opted
by a system that it would,
if you couldn't kill Bitcoin, what you'd try to do is co-opt it.
Try to get people not to go into self-custody, not run nodes. You can trust,
you can trust the centralized version of a paper instrument, tether or whatever on, on,
on Bitcoin. You should, that's safer. You would, you'd be convinced in that. And you'd be convinced
because it would appear to you, your Bitcoin was going up and it would match your view of the world.
right? It's always been, prices always rise. And then there'd be a third group of people who
don't understand Bitcoin at all, think it's a scam or it's so early. And what would be happening
in their world? They'd be getting debased at a crazy rate. So it actually says nothing about
Bitcoin. It says nothing about, it says our own version of what we think reality looks like
in this new immovable thing that's imposing a discipline.
And on each side, you could see the,
and I've said this many times before,
so I apologize if people have heard it over and over again,
but imagine being in Venezuela and knowing this,
because a lot of people had access to Bitcoin in Venezuela early,
and some people took it.
Some people took it, not just held it, but some people took it and then also created businesses on top of it.
And most people held their currency and got destroyed by their currency.
So that's what's going to happen.
And everybody looks at Venezuela and says, I can't believe they did that.
When they are doing it themselves right now.
Because everywhere is Venezuela.
It's just relative.
it's just in the west it's much more of a like it's the boiling frog analogy isn't it instead of
it jumping into a boiling pan it's just slowly heating up i actually just did a show with maricho
from leden and he told his venezuela story which was like his family's venezuela story because it's
really about his brother escaping and then one thing he said in the show is like without bitcoin
he his brother could have escaped but he wouldn't have the ability to build a life elsewhere and so
Bitcoin really did allow his brother to escape Venezuela and continue to sort of thrive.
Whereas like so many people just got completely wiped out.
And that's going to happen in a town near you, right?
It's happening everywhere right now.
And people think that they're safe in that.
It's the most unsafe thing you could be.
Like every single currency, it's relative devaluation, not is it devaluing?
So in other words, a relative theft rather than is it theft. And that means no one in the world
today actually lives in a true democracy because you don't have a vote with how much of your money
is being manipulated. So we have an appearance, a charade of a democracy, which is really a control
system where the majority of the money comes from debasing your units, just stealing from you.
And so, of course, from within that system and what that system would have to do to make you think it's okay to do that, it would be filled with all the things people are worried about.
And it will also make people more worried if you were just trying to understand Bitcoin, it would be pulling you into that other system.
So earlier in the show, you said that I wouldn't choose to just turn off the current system like the click of my fingers.
And I wouldn't because of the amount of suffering that would cause other people.
But in some ways, does AI actually enshrine the power of this like control system in the sense that as people lose their jobs, they're going to want things like UBI?
And does that actually make the system stronger in some ways?
So this is a nuanced question.
yes to the people that don't know because they're essentially being mind melded into this is okay.
And they will vote for more of it. And they'll take less and less agency and trust other people
have their best interests while that's being extracted. Wealth and power is being extracted
from them. And they will turn within the system, just like this has always happened before in all
of our previous history, to elect other people to essentially take more of their individual rights
and freedoms in the name of protecting them. It will happen. It might happen. And lots of people
will be stuck there. But while that's happening as well, there's an escape hatch for every single
person who wants to take their own agency and build onto the first global free market
that's ever existed. And nothing can stop them. Nothing. And so they can just move.
I've said many times, it's like they're in a jail cell yelling at their captor.
And the jail cell door is open and they can just walk out and live in freedom. And they're so
convinced with their narrative of the way that the world looks. This, by the way, this is true
for many Bitcoiners too, thinking that there's a solve within that through politics.
While this other system is completely imposing a different reality.
Do you think we are likely to see UBI in the next, I don't know, say like five years?
Will people vote for more UBI and elect people who say that you can have something from nothing
without understanding where that money comes from? Where does it come from?
Where does the money for UBI come from if the natural state of the free market is deflation?
Meaning if you didn't have UBI, if you just held Bitcoin and you were in the new system,
every year prices are falling for you forever.
Yep.
And it would accelerate.
So if you wanted UBI, where does the money come from?
It comes from stopping the prices from falling.
That's where it comes from.
It comes from manipulating the free market to stop prices from falling, to convince you it's somebody else's fault.
And you need money, because you wouldn't need that money or the job if prices kept falling.
Maybe, can you explain that further?
So, so why prices fall?
Because we use the more value is also because, because more value costs less to, to be able to create.
So new competitors, and why does it cost less?
Because we use technology that removes jobs to be able to create more value for people.
So the fall in prices is a part of the jobs being removed.
But if people lose their job to AI, they're still going to need to buy groceries, which
even if the price is full, there is still a price to those groceries.
So how does that work?
So if you're in Bitcoin, you already see it, right? If you were in Bitcoin four years ago or eight years ago, and you just bought $100 a week, you never have to worry about groceries or anything else again right now.
Mm-hmm. Prices are falling forever on those items, and they will continue to fall forever
on all of those items. What you're describing is you're measuring from the system thinking prices
always rise. I don't have enough Bitcoin, and from that system, prices will keep rising,
and then you lose your job, and you wonder how you're going to pay for those groceries,
because you're not living in a Bitcoin system. You're living in a fiat system,
and it is a risk from the fiat system. And there's nothing, by the way, Bitcoin didn't create that
problem. That problem exists in itself, right? It exists, the entire problem is essentially
an economy based on theft. Like if you just ask what money is, it's just the trade between us.
It's just an abstract concept for the trade between us.
So if you insert manipulation into money to the trade between us, what would happen to our trade?
It's just entirely manipulated.
Yeah, everything.
And what would happen to all of your beliefs from that system if that's what it looked like?
It would have to touch absolutely everything.
So it has to touch education.
It has to touch.
The economy is so crazy, simple.
You could explain it to a five-year-old.
We trade with each other.
We trade with more people all over the world to try to gain more value.
And unobstructed from that, prices continue to fall forever as we gain more value.
Everybody wins.
It's an infinite game where everyone wins.
That's how, that's how, that's how, that's everything in an economy.
There is nothing else.
So all of what you've learned, why people are so scared to ask the question I just asked,
because they don't think they're smart enough to know something that a five-year-old could
understand simply, right?
Because they're looking at it through a system that says that you're not smart enough.
You need a PhD to understand how an economy works.
You need to understand all of these different three-letter words and all of this manipulation
so it's harder and more opaque to understand.
And as you chase these things and you're told, oh, no, that's stupid, right?
You're inside this other system designed to make a very, very simple complex system seem hard to understand.
So for anyone that's not owning Bitcoin right now, I assume this gets sort of exponentially
worse as it gets exponentially better for Bitcoiners.
Yes.
And that's why a lot of the Bitcoiners, because it's exponentially better for Bitcoiners,
they're thinking in terms of fiat and they'll just sell their Bitcoin and they'll move right
back to fiat.
And they'll still be retire wealthy and everything else, but they'll distribute their Bitcoin
to everybody else who's just coming to today and this is going to continue to happen forever
how long do you think it takes for us to move out of this old system to the new system
so so when you ask that you're asking you're really asking how to how long does it take everyone
when it doesn't matter yeah but it it honestly doesn't matter it just matters for you
matters for your friends. It matters for, um, but, but you know, and, um, they say in a plane,
put on your own oxygen mask first, might want to put on your own oxygen mask first. And it doesn't
matter what is, so the, when people see that you've already moved and you're living in a higher
energy form, right. And, um, and everything in your life is getting better. As long as you're not
kind of using that and saying you're a dummy
and use it kind of an ego-driven thing.
As long as you still care about that process,
you care about other people,
you can talk about it at a very high energy type of thing
and just allow them to see it in their own time.
And they'll see it in their own time.
Do you know somebody who is in Bitcoin
and the more time they spend in Bitcoin,
the better and better all of these things are?
Not everyone in Bitcoin.
Everyone in Bitcoin. Every single person.
And that's, I think, why it becomes so hard for people,
because we are living in a different world.
We're living on something.
We see the hope, the abundance, the truth.
We see a totally different world.
And so when I'm walking down the street or when I'm paying in Bitcoin,
when I'm doing this, all my relationships, many of my relationships are in it.
I just, it's a mirror that's on a foundation of truth, right? And that mirror, that reflection
back, the more time you spend in it, it just gets better and better and better. And you can leave
the other system behind. But you did, I did, everything else. As we were moving our time
and more and more of it to this new system.
We also had the same questions
that every single person
that is just starting their journey today has.
I know when I first looked at it,
I didn't think this could stay decentralized and secure.
I thought if in 5,000 years of human history
that we've never allowed a global free market,
then it must be something in us
that chooses short term over long term.
And we could always get co-opted again.
And so I had a really high bar on could Bitcoin resolve this paradox.
And I believe now it resolves this paradox.
I guess one of the reasons that I care about this kind of happening
to more than just me and my friends and my family
is because with the degradation of fiat comes like a degradation of society.
And I want my daughter to grow up in a nice place, not somewhere that's just a dystopian hellscape.
Yeah.
It's why I wrote, by the way, this is why I wrote my book, right?
Because you could see what would happen.
And there's going to be a whole bunch of dystopian hellscapes.
There's dystopian hellscapes today in this world where you have the privilege because you were raised in one of essentially the taker countries from the have not countries that we were essentially.
putting in that position from a monetary system. We didn't know it or people in the West didn't
know it but they were part of the haves and other people had to be part of the have in an economic system that it was a zero game And so but there been lots of in your life in my life a whole bunch of regions that are hellscapes
And those regions are hellscapes largely because of the same system that provides your success.
right that's a really hard thing to to know that's true for sure because it wasn't a global free
market and so we're on the winning side of that worried about the hellscapes that are coming to
our countries from the very same thing are you worried about the centralization of control over
these ai systems in the sense that really it's kind of like four or five big tech companies in
Silicon Valley that are driving everything. Yeah. So I think, I don't know if I told you this,
but one of the robotics companies, one of the AGI robotics companies that's one of the leaders
right now was started by a friend of mine. Okay. And his chief scientific officer said to me,
we're going to create the first multi-trillion dollar company because it's not going to have
any humans working in it. And I said, well, where does the money come from? And the money comes from
that sitting on top of that system that aggregates it all to the control companies.
And so that race, that global race for AI from that system, of course, is China, US, NVIDIA,
all of these are all kind of how do we win this game so we control ai and a lot of winning that
game is convincing you through all of your social media channels and everything else that that's okay
that that's the way the system so you're living inside this and most of your most of your channels
everything else and it is a core it's a coordinated game it's a crazy coordinated game and you should
be scared of what AI can do from that system. Is that because controlling AI is just controlling
everyone's data essentially? Yeah. Yeah. You're, you're training the AI every time you're, you're
using these models and error and you've seen an error and you correct the error. You're training
the, uh, you're training the AI. Yeah. So they're now, um, and so they talk about synthetic data.
those would be the worst ai models on the planet because you'd just have garbage in garbage out
we are the ai like literally what we do as humans we are abundance creating machines out of scarcity
nothing that's ever been scarce so far have we not found a way to break through with our minds
and create abundance from it if you look back through history and why would that be normal
is because that centralized or that power or that margin
attracts more entrepreneurs to solve those problems in a different way.
So anything that's stuck has always become unstuck through just our mind.
That's our role in this.
And then we use the things that give us more value.
So it's a really simple concept.
Really simple concept.
The problem is you're trying to marry that concept into something that it cannot connect to because it's never existed.
So when you connect that concept to Bitcoin and then you say, do you have this open decentralized secure protocol bounded by energy that can't be cheated?
Then it will impose the concept I just said.
And that means relative to that concept, all governments will get smaller over time.
It means relative to that, the debt in the world will be repriced and it'll be way smaller
debt on the new system.
It means your house price is falling and will fall forever.
It falls back to its utility value where you raise your family in a house, right?
Because it's a beautiful neighborhood with your friends and family and kids riding their
bikes instead of a store of value against depreciate currencies that are being devalued.
means a whole bunch of other things from the new system that's imposing that. But you have to stay
in the new system. You say, is the natural state of the free market deflation? Yes or no? Yes.
Should we be seeing exponential deflation or exponential productivity gains, which would
drive exponential deflation? Yes or no? Yes. If you had a decentralized secure protocol bounded
by energy that couldn't be cheated, it would be pricing that exactly what I just described
perfectly. Would it also be true at the same time that most people wouldn't get,
be able to hold on to that thought that I just said, and they would go back to their old,
they would be living okay okay I get it I get it prices are falling I get it and then they would
look at the Bitcoin price in US dollars or whatever every day and think it's going up
of course they would right would the would it hang would Bitcoin price going up hang better
off their mental models of previous models would that then say how are governments going to deal
with this? Would that then say, okay, are they going to drive more EUBI? All of these models
that you're describing are actually our own cognitive dissonance trying to take two incompatible
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to learn more at mining.blockwaresolutions.com forward slash WBD. This is one of the funny things
like obviously Bitcoin's been ripping.
And every time like we're in a bull market,
people will ask me like,
what's your price you're going to sell at?
And my answer is always like, sell for what?
Like what am I going to sell it back to fiat?
Absolutely not.
Like there are realistic situations
where I would sell Bitcoin to make my life better
because time is more scarce than anything.
So if I was going to buy a house for the family
or whatever it is, like those things,
I understand why you sell Bitcoin
to get something like a new house,
like improve your life,
but sell it for fiat.
Like it makes no sense to me.
Totally. And just like you probably bought a big flat screen TV 10 years ago, right? And then TV felt more and it didn't stop you from buying that TV, even though you knew that. And then you bought another TV, right? A better one and a bigger one or any computer equipment.
by the way, all of those items are still being debased. So they're way higher than they would be
in a natural free market, but you can see where Moore's law is moving really fast.
You can see that they're outpacing even the debasement of currency and how much they're
falling. But all of those items, just like you'll buy in Bitcoin, I spend Bitcoin every day
knowing full well that the bitcoin i'm spending today will buy more tomorrow yeah because life is
like you life is just life you have to spend something but it's like i remember the first
time my dad bought a flat screen tv it was like four grand and uh that same tv so it cost you
like a hundred dollars and in fact you couldn't get one as bad totally um so when it comes to
like the idea of super intelligence do you have any because because to like to kind of
conceptualize what you're saying here it seems like you're almost saying who cares you know like
this stuff is happening like i live in a system outside of the current system so just let it
happen and and i will be better off at the end of it so i wouldn't i've probably done 1500 podcasts
right? I've probably done. And why would I keep saying yes? I care, right? I care to help more
people understand this. I really do. Because if something grabs them and they can move their time,
their energy into a productive system that is for all of us, then everybody wins. Those people won.
those people might then touch tens of millions of people more. And essentially what's happening is
you're bending reality into a new world that looks nothing like any previous reality.
And all of those people that are starting to understand, even if it's the first day and
they're just starting to understand and then they spend 1% of their energy and they put
a little bit into Bitcoin self-custody, then they'll start to learn more about this and
they'll take time. So I do care. I care a lot. But I can't, when somebody says,
how do you get everybody to move tomorrow? What does it look like for all those people that are
stuck? And I know full well the chaos. I'm not like how terrible it is. It already is bad.
And it's getting worse. And many of those people, they don't know that,
but they're feeding the thing they're most scared of.
And they're fighting with people within that system,
thinking that it's the other person,
and the other person thinks it's them,
and it's neither, right?
Both people could escape,
and they could see how beautiful
both of the people are on the new system.
And so that system is designed for coercion control, right?
It has to look like that,
and if you're feeding it, if you're...
And so what I'm saying is not that I don't care.
I don't let that energy, which is really low frequency energy, touch me.
And so do you think that one of the things that could actually accelerate the decline
of the current system is AI in the sense that if we get these AI agents and super intelligence,
they're going to at some point need a money to transact between each other and they may
end up picking Bitcoin.
Yeah, so not the way that you just described at all, right?
Okay, tell me what you're saying.
So, and I'm not saying that you couldn't create a business on needing transact sats on that,
and you could create a business.
So that is likely to happen as individual companies try to create more value on this system.
But remember, I said before, those prices are going to fall to zero.
The AI won't need something to interact with another AI to pay the other AI.
Why does the AI need the money?
To pay for compute.
But it's not the AI paying for compute.
It's a company paying for compute.
It's somebody paying for compute.
And so they're under the same thing.
So all these things would centralize up.
And so these prices continue to fall in this forever.
They drive falling prices everywhere else forever.
It's easier to say, just Bitcoin imposes a discipline that makes the free market work.
And now you have no place to hide from the free market.
The free market is being imposed, first global free market,
and you have a chance to contribute to it and benefit from it by moving to Bitcoin.
Or you could stay in a centralized market that it has to get more and more centralized
and be stuck there.
So in that, instead of thinking about Bitcoin,
that's where instead of thinking about Bitcoin as the user of a tool that is, is then the,
sorry, an AI using Bitcoin as a user of a tool that then has this super intelligence. That's
a squad like intelligence. That's over all of us because it's using Bitcoin.
it's just like any tool it's a powerful powerful tool like like on any that we have
unlike anything we've ever seen and it will make it will be incredible at finding
drug discovery a whole bunch of other stuff uh things in physics that we haven't like patterns
that we haven't been able to see with our time you'll be able to understand those patterns and
So in other words, it's a massive productivity enhancement. It's like orders of magnitude from
going from a shovel to a steam shovel, right? Massive productivity improvements that allow you
to do way more for less, see more things, solve problems faster. But we are super, we're higher
than it. We're the supercomputer. It's just a tool of productivity, a staggering tool of
productivity. And unless you believe the way that you said, then you would be worried about
the AIs that are controlled by Tesla or Google or DeepSea, which would eventually be controlled
by the government if they're not already. That would have to happen, right? Because they're
only allowed domain to work inside a country that gains its powers from its citizens, from that
system. So those would be taken, right, by the government for sure. They would be centralized.
And so if you think this system is this super intelligence that's over you,
and it looks like that to you instead of in service to you, you'll probably be more and more
afraid of that and you'll probably make it happen more.
So do you think that all the sort of semi-pseudo Bitcoiners out there that are buying things like
MicroStrategy instead of Bitcoin are still just living in Fiatland and don't understand what's
really happening here? I don't want to say that because I still now I'm exiting Canada.
Oh, are you?
Yeah, and more on that. We can talk more about it. But I still have RSPs because there are tax
and those RSPs, and I might not for much longer, but those RSPs are in, nor TFSA.
In Canada there tax rules that I still have I bought MicroStrategy a long time ago Now would never only only do MicroStrategy I convince everybody to or tell everybody have to get into self Bitcoin run a node anything else
But if they wanted to have something in that, to each their own.
I do think if people think that the returns forever will be way higher there,
you'll have a bunch of more companies that will race in and lower their standards.
It'll drive a massive hype cycle.
And then probably the next down on the other side,
all the broken bodies unwinding because they levered too much
is going to be horrific for a bunch of those companies
as they start selling their Bitcoin into the market
at the same time they can't sell their Bitcoin and prices down.
So it's going to be interesting to watch animal spirits on these things. Um, and, and I think,
uh, and so again, it just goes back to that self custody, um, that, that people I would recommend
them do it doing, but I can see a lot of people first and easier way they think to get in is this
way. And then they, um, then they get rug pulled later on. Yeah, that makes, I could do a hundred
100% see that future coming. So you're voting with your feet, voting with your money and
potentially leaving Canada?
Yeah, I'm going through the process right now.
Are you going to say where you're going or are you keeping that a secret?
Yeah, I can't say where I'm going right now, but I'm, let's say 90% right now, I'm doing
the work to make that, to see if that's a viable option or when that's a viable option.
And why is that? Is that because you see this kind of dystopian hellscape that we were talking
about earlier coming to Canada?
Yeah, I just see, if I look at Canada where it's going, I just see that we're
on the wrong path. Some countries are going to do a lot more printing, and convince a
society that freedoms are going to be harder to define. Those countries will face wealth
taxes, those confiscatory taxes, a whole bunch of things that will happen. And unfortunately,
you can see citizens in those countries voting for more of that because they don't know what's
actually happening.
So there's this sort of like constant degradation in most Western countries at
the moment, which areas of the world do you think will benefit most from this transition?
I think the global south, which has been extracted from for hundreds of years,
right? More than that. But I think that many of those countries, maybe not the country,
maybe not the dictator or whoever in the country, but many of the citizens themselves in those
countries. And you see, you see this too, you've been to some of these regions with me and you see
these circular economies popping up and these people are, are on a new system and they're
emerging. They're, they're, they've freed themselves from the same thing. And that's,
that's why this is true for every single human being on the planet. If they knew they can move
time and energy into the new system without, um, um, and they can't be stopped.
And they actually have the most to gain in that, in the sense that, as you say, they're
just constantly extracted from.
We're the beneficiaries of that in the West, but when you're under that rule, you have
so much to gain by moving out of that system and moving to Bitcoin.
Yeah, and I've said this on many podcasts in the past, but if you think about how technology
evolves, it's always the new entrant, and in this case, it's even more powerful because
this as a protocol, but let's just assume it was just a technology. So a difference there just for
protocols are winner take all. Technologies are winner take most. And so, but new technologies,
where did they emerge first, right? What typically happens is a monopoly, the biggest company pre
pre-the technology, never uses the technology. They try to block it, they try to stop it. And why?
Because they're the monopoly, they have all the power. But the further away from the monopoly you
are, who has little power, they always go first and they build and it disrupts from the outside
in. The creative destruction, Joseph Schumpeter talked about it, and that's what's happening.
And now if you just said the monopoly of money, most of the people that watch your podcast are at the top of the monopoly of money game.
So at the bottom of that game, there's people that there's a greater incentive.
They're further away from the monopoly and they go first.
And so that's what's happening.
That's why through that lens, it's really easy to see why El Salvador was the first country that went to Bitcoin standard.
yeah it makes sense i'm glad like every six months or so i need just my fill of jeff booth to kind of
lock back in because when when you explain this to me it does make sense but it's very hard to
carry that through to like the rest of your life like i'll i'll go out and i'll live in fiatland
again at some point and uh i really enjoy getting you just to kind of hold me back in it's uh um
but i think that that's a really good takeaway i think that's a good takeaway for anybody listening
to this because that's the normal thing that people would do right you're you know this is true
and then and then what happens for even for people that aren't in bitcoin at all right now
what they go they'll go to is they'll think okay i need to do this but then have fear about how do
i start where do i start how do i do and then they'll stay in fiat land right if things will
get worse and worse and worse and they'll see another podcast two years later and then they
might do the same thing again right and they'll do and so it just takes um it takes starting with
something if you're spending 100 of your time in fiat land right now spend one percent in bitcoin
just get curious if you're spending one percent and two percent then four percent then eight
percent and you'll notice you'll feel it just like you you feel it danny the every time you
move more time, your time is more valuable. It comes back to you. It's just a mirror. It just
comes straight back to you and that your time is more valuable and you're giving your energy.
Instead of having your energy extracted to feed this other system,
you're truly choosing to give your energy to the system that has to give back to you.
I mean, and that's, so I've taken your time on a Sunday here and I really appreciate you,
doing this. You've been busy taking money from the old system to invest in the new Bitcoin system.
You just raised $100 million. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. First of all, that's insane. Is that
the largest Bitcoin fund ever? It is. Bitcoin only fund ever.
And what's your plan with that? Where are you looking? Where do you think the interesting
things are? So what I would say is, you know, the last one we did, I think it was 26.2 million.
than we did in SPV for seven and a half.
So just over 35 million,
about 35 million in the first fund.
But at that time, Bitcoin was,
at least as a protocol,
lightning, liquid,
Fetamint, a whole bunch of other stuff.
It was just so, so early
that you needed to spend time
and help these companies mature.
And the thesis was,
this would start to evolve
and these second layers
and third layers
would evolve and you'd have this ecosystem that would spread and then the velocity would increase
from there. That's exactly what's happened. What's happened is in that fund, I'm not saying we won't,
but we don't have a company that's failed. That is unreal for start-up venture capital,
seed stage venture capital without a company-
You'd normally be looking at like one in 10 that would succeed.
One in 10 would succeed.
So to not have any companies that fail, one that's already going through an acquisition,
two that are already very, very profitable and growing extraordinarily fast,
and a bunch of others that are kind of chasing those.
It makes sense that Series A fund, bigger funds, would now start seeing what's happening
and this ecosystem would be heating up and there'd be a whole bunch of value being created
and more capital would chase companies that are winning and more of this ecosystem.
So that's all that's happened, right?
But it also describes how painful, how crazy early we are in this
because the majority of capital is still going into crypto and other nonsense.
sense. But this capital is, actually this came from one of our company founders and I loved it.
And he's in, they were in Venezuela. And he said, what would it be like if you just held dollars,
U.S. dollars, if you were in Venezuela? You would escape the currency devaluation and you look,
because then what would it look like if you built a company creating more U.S. dollars in Venezuela?
right now you have something real um you have something that's that your balance sheet is
growing in dollars and you're not just protecting a currency devaluation you're building value in
the free market now every single person today except for bitcoiners live in venezuela they
just don't know it and a lot of those bitcoiners that live in venezuela are just holding
What if they're building companies that are adding more balance to their balance sheet
by extending the free market? That's what's happening in venture capital. That's what's
happening in these companies. And you still have to be right. There's more risk there
than just buying Bitcoin. But there's also potentially incredible return because you're
building. The only way you can create more Bitcoin on your balance sheet is to create
more value in somebody else's eyes and the free market on top of Bitcoin. And by doing so,
you extend both the free market and the things that are building and all the more value that's
coming on top of Bitcoin, but you're also building a balance sheet in Bitcoin.
Are there enough good early stage Bitcoin companies to actually deploy $100 million?
dollars. Yes, simply yes. We've been blown away by how much opportunity there is.
It's wild when you're in here. And this is actually why I would, the same thing
we were talking about before. I wouldn't have known this unless I moved all my time into it.
I would have actually thought the same thing that most people are spending looking at this just from
the sidelines and saying, oh, it's moving too slow, or there's nobody using it as payments.
If you're inside the other world and you're spending all your time there,
you wouldn't see how fast this is developing. But that also provides the opportunity for people too,
because they could go to meetups, they could go to see other people, they could just spend more
time. And by spending more time, they'll be infected because there's so much other opportunity
here. I almost feel embarrassed, Jeff, that I've got the price of Bitcoin in dollars behind me this
entire show. I just need to change that. So it just says one Bitcoin equals one Bitcoin.
But I massively appreciate the time. Thank you for taking an hour out of your Sunday to do this.
I'm going to see you in a month in Bali as well. We'll go for a serve.
That's going to be awesome. So where do people find you, Jeff? You're not really on Twitter
anymore. Are you NOSTA only now? Yeah, I'm NOSTA only. And I'm NOSTA only for the very same reason.
If you know where AI is going, if you know where AI already is, and you're in a centralized system
with AI, and that's where you're getting all your information, you are being farmed.
Are you actually, I've been closing out the show, but I should ask you about NOSTA. Are you going
invest in any NOSTA companies with ego death? So we haven't seen anything yet that, uh, there's,
uh, there's some good, uh, there's some good companies, but we haven't seen anything that,
that, um, right metrics, right valuation, right, uh, um, uh, right company, uh, yet we've looked
at a whole bunch. Um, the new fund is a series a fund, so they'd have to be further along.
I see okay and just remember why that's so hard though in the free market it because because
Noster is at the protocol that means any client on top of it can be another client can be spun up
tomorrow another one the next day that next day the next day so if you created a huge moat
and you were extracting a whole bunch of margin you would have a competitor day two day three day
because you so so but that's how all of things look on bitcoin so you have to really be thoughtful
and how am i going to give enduring value to users and make a little bit over over uh over
time from that and so it's just that you have to be very thoughtful in your in your creation of uh
of what that model looks like and then you're going to have to constantly innovate to deliver
more value. I think there's lots of exciting things coming through Nostr and the integration
of Nostr and Lightning and Fetiment or Cashew. There's lots of different things coming, but it's
just we haven't seen anything yet that we've pulled the trigger on. But obviously, this was
a fund for Bitcoin companies. You'd still be open to doing Nostr investments.
Oh, of course. Yeah. I'm very pro Nostr. Yeah. That's very cool. I mean, I've been spending more
more time there and like it's just getting better and better. Like the UI of everything is improved
so much in the last couple of years. I think we, I do feel like we're waiting for sort of the killer
Noster app though. Yeah. And I think that the killer Noster app isn't, I don't think it, it
won't look like most people are thinking it right now. It won't come from, um, a Twitter clone.
I agree. Totally agree. It won't come, it won't come from a YouTube clone. It'll come from
something that's integrated that does this plus this plus something over here that creates a new
space, new design space that we don't know yet. Yeah. I actually think white noise is really
interesting. You know, they're doing this sort of encrypted chat signal like chat, but with NOSTA
connections. I think that's cool. But I totally agree that I don't think the Twitter clone,
I think it's very hard to beat a centralized system in that way if you're just copying it.
I think you need to do something new. Yeah. And why is that, right? Because the new company has
or the new company or new protocol
or it has to deliver 10 times more value.
Because of network effects.
Because of the network effect.
To overcome that network effect,
everybody, people don't change
for a little bit of value.
And if the new company has to market
to all those people
and you're spending money marketing,
right, you can't pull enough people away
on a marketing budget.
That's why you have to,
it has to provide such compelling value.
That's why I use 10 times more value than anything else to have a massive acceleration.
Because then it's not the marketing that you're telling people you're better.
The product is that much better in somebody's life.
And unless we get like a crazy amount of censorship, I don't see how that wins.
So that's the point.
So most people through all of the, if you think about all of the bots and everything else,
and even with all of that
and the censorship that you know is in X,
that you know your likes and everything else
are being oversubscribed to make it look like,
appear that you're seeing,
being seen by more people,
you know all of these things exist
and it still feels like this other thing
for most people isn't 10X.
It might already be 10X.
It's just they would do people to realize
that it's 10X better
where it needs to be.
Yeah, I totally agree.
Jeff, this has been amazing.
Thank you for this.
I really appreciate it.
And I'm looking forward to hanging out
in a few weeks time.
Yeah, me too.
Cool.
Thank you, Jeff.
You bet.
See you, buddy.