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A failure of a major currency block, a massive campaign of asset seizing can wake people up.

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A lot of the world just kind of trends toward nihilism lately.

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It's like a shark that can't stop swimming unless it ironically drowns.

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For this cycle, I would say, well, anything under $150k would be kind of disappointing.

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As the price goes up, every single cycle, OGs sell.

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If the thesis was true that that was the single biggest thing,

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then in theory you should see that more centralized altcoins that have a clear quantum roadmap,

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they should be getting a very large bid.

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Crazy thing about the dot-com bubble is like even non-tech stocks was trading 50 times earnings.

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The interesting thing about the new chairman proposal is he's dovish on interest rates, but he's historically hawkish on balance sheet.

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There's really no defense for the four-year cycle going forward just because the numbers for the halving are way smaller than other factors.

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The tools are built. The system works.

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Do you think that there are more potential geopolitical catalysts out there that could

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drive that or push that adoption forward?

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I think a broader issue.

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Lynn Alden, welcome back.

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You have been a repeated guest on this show, for which I am very grateful.

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I think between, I don't know if you or Sailor has more total Bitcoin macro podcast hours,

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Somebody should really do an agentic analysis of this to figure it out.

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Yeah, it's hard to say.

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I think he had more of a burst for a while there, but he's been doing a little bit fewer.

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I mean, I've been doing fewer, but he had a bigger trail off.

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So I guess if it goes long enough, I can take the crown.

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I don't know.

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Yeah, yeah.

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Come back up from the rear there.

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Well, I'm excited to be talking with you today, as always.

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Got a number of topics I want to get into with you, both from the Bitcoin side, the macro side.

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also want to talk about your new book which has nothing directly to do with bitcoin but is in the

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sci-fi realm i want to start out though perhaps just on the bitcoin side of things things have

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been weird uh we saw a year's worth a year's plus worth of choppy crab market sideways price action

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we're now down in the 60 time of recording right now uh 67 000 thereabouts and while we all like

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to say you know price is the least interesting thing about bitcoin it is also its greatest

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marketing tool and so just kind of want to get your general vibe check on is this where you expected

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us to be right now from a fiat price federal reserve note conversion perspective is this

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what you expected to see sort of in you know in february 2026 or did this defy some of your

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expectations as well i think we're moderately lower than where i would have guessed um i i

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I usually am on the record of kind of being like a bearish bull, which is I'm generally on the more conservative side of the price spectrum.

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I try not to even give too many predictions when I do.

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It's usually a pretty conservative one.

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And sometimes we undershoot even those.

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I mean, the first time I gave a price prediction was back in 2020.

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Bitcoin was like the 10K range.

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And I said, I think I could think you could hit a trillion market cap, which at the time puts you around 50,000.

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You know, we got to there and I said, well, I think it can go to 100K.

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And then we only got to 69K for that cycle, rolled over.

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And then when kind of pushing a quarter to give a price target, I would generally, for this cycle, I would say, well, anything under 150K would be kind of disappointing.

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And we only got to 126 so far.

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So I would classify this, much like last time, as kind of a semi-disappointing cycle.

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And from what we can tell, I mean, most of it is just there's kind of a lack of top-line demand.

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So a lot of people kind of look for reasons.

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And, you know, we could potentially go over some of those reasons.

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But I think at the end of the day, the core one is this cycle just didn't attract a lot of individual hodlers, basically.

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Obviously, the ETFs unlocked some interest from people that have brokerage accounts and otherwise would like some Bitcoin access and just, you know, kind of had limitations before.

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Obviously, the treasury companies were major buyers this cycle.

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But because we didn't really have sovereigns come in, which I think that expectation was too bullish.

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But also we didn't really have a ton of retail come in.

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There's a ton of other things they can invest in, like AI related things.

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When Bitcoin gets big enough, it's not necessarily the fastest horse anymore.

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And so it relies on its other qualities, like the fact that you can self-custody it, that actually, you know, it's not just a number on a screen, like a stock.

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It is something that, you know, more like physical gold, but in digital form that you can use.

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you can send, you can pay with.

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And if those features go through a cycle

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of just not being of particularly interest to people,

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so we didn't see a lot of Chinese buyers,

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we didn't see a lot of American buyers,

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we didn't, you know, it just kind of,

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I would say it stagnated this cycle.

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And I think a broader issue

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is that one, there were some mislined expectations early on.

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So for example,

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Bitcoin slightly over-performed my expectations in 2024.

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I was actually on a panel in the New York Stock Exchange

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and like Mike Michael Green was hosting it Nick Carter was on the panel I was on the panel

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Eric from Bloomberg was on the panel and they were saying you know could could Bitcoin at 100k

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this year and I said well I mean Bitcoin can do a lot of Bitcoin has you know these moments where

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it does crazy things I was like you know we only had a few months to go so it's like you know it

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wouldn't be my base case I think we're at like 60k at the time or something so I'm not going to call

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for a price move that big that quickly but I wouldn't be shocked and but because of the election

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we did. We kind of pulled forward quite a bit of demand because we had this new information,

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you know, an administration that's going to be supposedly more friendly to the asset.

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But then in early 2025, you know, the biggest question I got on podcasts for a while was,

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what do you think about a sovereign Bitcoin reserve? And my view was, I think they'll ring

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fence the coins they have, maybe buy some, but I wouldn't, you know, all the kind of calls for

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half a million coins or a million coins. I'd rather not price that into my expectations.

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I'd rather be surprised to the upside.

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But I think a lot of people did kind of have that expectation.

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So when you didn't really see the U.S. or other sovereigns come in, you didn't see just influx.

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I think people had kind of over-enthused expectations.

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And for me, even though it undershot the expectation, it's mainly just because retail didn't come in this cycle.

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Yeah, and again, with the old equation, it's like happiness is expectations minus reality, right?

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So just, you know, or perhaps it's the other way around.

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I forget.

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But point being, yeah, people I think saw it.

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It seems I haven't been in Bitcoin that long, right?

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It wasn't after ignoring.

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I think I've ignored Bitcoin for longer than I've been in Bitcoin.

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And but even in my limited time in Bitcoin, I've noticed that it really seems like there

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is that that point where everybody's convinced it's going to keep going higher and nothing's

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going to stop it.

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And that's typically the point where it takes a dump.

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And then there's that other point on the converse side where everybody seems to think

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it's going to keep going lower. You felt this in 2022 when it was bouncing around 19K forever.

104
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Carla sang a song about 19K. That was how often we bounced around 19K. And it's going to 10,

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it's going to 5, or it's going to 0, negative 0 if you're Peter Zeyhan. And we ended up around 16,

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only a little bit lower from that. It feels like we're at a similar point right now,

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not based on any analysis that I've done, just a pure gut check, where it seems that everybody

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both Bitcoin bulls, bears, no coiners alike has basically gotten to a point where they're saying,

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you know, Bitcoin's going significantly lower, 48K, 48K, 28K, whatever it might be.

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Where do you stand with this? Are you still kind of in a wait and see period where you're saying,

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okay, yeah, we could have some significant drawdown from here? Or do you think most of

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the kind of sell pressure has been exhausted at this point? The shortage is still to wait and see

113
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mode. I look for some sort of price confirmation before trying to make a bottom call. We started

114
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to see a limited one like in December, January. So for a while I was like, okay, we had to sell

115
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off in November. We started to kind of hold momentum, started to kind of build again. And I

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was like, you know, there's a good chance this was the bottom. But then of course, January came and

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we had that waterfall lower. So that kind of reset the board for like the next few months.

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and historically bitcoin does not make v-shaped bottoms uh the exception kind of was spring of

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2020 when just hyper stimulus made a lot of things look like a v-shaped bottom uh but usually because

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because bitcoin is not a stock it doesn't have like an earnings announcement where they can like

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come out and surprise you the upside and just every analyst has to update their model and

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wall street buys uh instead it only really bottoms when kind of fast money weekly held coins

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over time rotate enough into strongly held hands.

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And then it just, then it creates that,

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you know, that supply squeeze basically.

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Like there's just, it becomes very tight.

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So it only takes, you know,

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kind of like just selling gets exhausted.

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It only takes a tiny new spark of buyers

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to restart the cycle.

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And then obviously a rising price

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gets new buyers on board.

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It kind of momentum creates its own cycle.

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And that, because of that kind of lack of catalyst,

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unless some, you know,

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mag seven stock or sovereign just decides to ape into it um it usually has that more gradual bottom

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um so the short answer is i don't know if if we have if this is the bottom or if we have like

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another waterfall lower um i would say that this the sentiment is lower than other bear markets i've

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seen uh it was it's i mean in in november 2022 literally when ftx was like collapsing and the

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price was in the teens uh i was at pacific bitcoin um i think you were you there you were there right

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all the conferences kind of merge in my head yeah it was great the energy was high wasn't it

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super high we were i was joking on stage like ftex is collapsing and look how happy people are here

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because if you don't own crypto if you're not kind of levered uh then you're you know everyone

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was quite convinced uh and correctly so this was just a temporary um you know part of the cycle

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what I'm seeing this time is there's more kind of exhaustion I think I think after two kind of

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weak cycles a lot of even longer term holders are a little bit tired you could say I think it kind

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of I think the biggest risk people perceive is that it kind of ran out of like near-term catalysts

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right so it's like before you there's always kind of another big thing to look for like say the ETFs

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coming out the spot ETFs and things like that they're going to unlock new demand and at this

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point that okay we've unlocked all the all the frictions and it just comes down to whether people

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want to buy the asset or not um i think if anything the joke is we need more podcasts but there's i

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think that's actually true in the sense that the tools are built the system works um dads are still

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you know both on the you know on the on the foundational layer but also all the companies

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00:11:01,160 --> 00:11:05,660
and stuff building building out the broader ecosystem a lot of that is in really good place

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and but people got to want to use it they have to know the benefits of it see that it's available

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know how to use it not be turned off by the complexity of it or perceive that the culture

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about it is something that is just other than them that it's you know only like only hardcore

158
00:11:22,800 --> 00:11:26,980
libertarians like it and i otherwise it's not for me like whatever the branding issue is

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or the technical complexity issue i think that's actually the bottleneck if you're hodling bitcoin

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00:11:31,940 --> 00:11:37,240
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163
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I think that's a fair point. And I will always advocate that until we have as many Bitcoin

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00:14:38,580 --> 00:14:43,940
podcasts as TradFi podcasts, we don't have enough. Go out there and start a podcast if you are

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00:14:43,940 --> 00:14:47,620
listening. And also, if you are listening right now live on Noster, thank you for being here.

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00:14:48,100 --> 00:14:52,780
This show does stream live only on Noster. So if you want to check it out live, go check out Noster.

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One of the things that I wanted to kind of bring up is this sentiment mismatch that I definitely

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felt as well. In the last year, I thought it was perhaps the most bullish year on record from a

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medium of exchange adoption and potential adoption standpoint. If we just took in isolation,

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Jack Dorsey's Square, enabling not everybody turned it on, but formerly merchants plus

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have the ability to accept Bitcoin, right? Right through their existing Square terminals,

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nothing else needed. That was an incredible moment in my mind. And you've already seen,

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pop up i just saw as well like a little earlier today that lightning network volume grew by about

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400 percent last year so you have this really interesting sort of divergence between so much

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incredible stuff happening on the medium of exchange side whether that be new merchants

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onboarding the potential for millions more to onboard really easily volume on the lightning

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network increasing drastically maybe some of that as a function of the former and then on the sort

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of store of value side obviously the fiat price of bitcoin if we're talking about us dollars

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obviously if you're talking about iranian rial or a number of other fiat currencies bitcoin did

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very well right as those currencies hyperinflated but do you think that that is just one of those

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things that you know from a medium of exchange standpoint the average person just doesn't care

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like that doesn't actually move the needle for them it seems like if we heard this kind of news

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four million merchants being turned on by uh by square if we heard that in 2020 2021 that would

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have been massive news as it was. I feel like it was kind of just like, oh, well, that's neat anyway.

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Or people just didn't know about it at all. What's your what's your take on that?

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I do think that was a massive announcement. And I do think that in general, I mean,

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Jack's done more for Bitcoin in the past, call it five years than almost anyone when it comes to

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defending devs from legal attacks, when it comes to all sorts of, you know, supporting it with his

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own companies. And I think that was a tremendous one. I think that was huge. And also, I mean,

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River just came out with a report today, kind of updated information on some lightning volumes

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with generally pretty high volumes shown. I think it's a matter of kind of scale, right? So Bitcoin

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as, depending on the price, I mean, a trillion to a two trillion plus asset, depending on where it

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was in its cycle this time. You know, the overall kind of velocity. So when you look at kind of

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how much volume happens, and then compared to the size of the ownership, it's still not super high.

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And the numbers we see in Lightning are, I mean, they're good. They're in the billions

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over any decent period of time, as far as we can tell. I mean, the cool thing is it's so private

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and decentralized. You actually can't just say, okay, here's how much volume is happening in the

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Lightning Network. You can only, a company like River and partners can go out and say, okay,

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the network we can see, you have a pretty good snapshot, and here's kind of our estimated volumes.

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And you kind of go from there.

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But I think overall, like the volumes are healthy, especially for what it is, which is it's still a young volatile asset.

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It still needs upward volatility if it's going to grow to become like a long term store of value.

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Like it's going to become a big asset.

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It needs upward volatility.

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Anytime you get upward volatility, you get leverage euphoria and downside volatility,

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which kind of gives it a pretty long headwind against denominating prices in it,

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getting your paycheck denominated in it, not just paid in it, but denominated in it,

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having any sort of like debts or liabilities in it.

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And so it's this kind of asset that is challenging to use for like near-term working capital

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because you can literally get cut in half like it has recently.

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and it's instead mostly great for long-term savings that you can also pay with and it's

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very hard for anyone to stop you from doing that and so I think that that opportunity set is massive

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and I think the medium exchange aspect is essential for it that's what makes it not just

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a stock on a screen the fact that you could even if you're not doing so like I think that people

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say that because volumes are low that's a bad sign I say well the optionality is a huge deal

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like if i have a gold coin i i'm like 99 sure that you know whenever i die and whoever gets

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that coin nexus i'm not gonna like melt it down for jewelry for decades i'm not gonna use it for

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industrial purposes for decades that coin represents optionality that i don't intend to ever actually

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use that option uh and with bitcoin being able to send it for a lot of people it's just that

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optionality that you have your bitcoin and there might be a bunch of reasons why you don't spend it

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You say, okay, well, it's a taxable event.

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It's, you know, not all merchants accept it.

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All the, you know, accounting complexity because of that tax issue, just multiple reasons like that.

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But the fact that you could is actually a really big deal.

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That optionality that it gives every holder, every self-custodial holder is a massive deal.

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And then those who actually use it on a regular basis, especially, I mean, Nostra is like one of the biggest use cases in terms of the number of kind of small transactions.

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but obviously more broadly than that,

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I think that's a massive deal for the network,

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and I think that shows the network's working.

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Yeah, it almost makes me more bullish

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that there is such a disconnect

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from some of the news that we saw.

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And that was the biggest, I think,

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maybe takeaway for me coming out of this last year

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was it didn't matter what the news was.

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The price wasn't moving as a function of news.

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We've seen River put out a, to give them another shout out,

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they put out another interesting graph recently.

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I don't know if you saw it about the rotation from individuals to sort of institutional buyers.

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I'm thinking a lot of that was probably a function of OG selling.

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We know there were several very public cases.

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The Galaxy whale with like 80,000 Bitcoin.

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Presumably they have some more too I imagine At least a couple of them lying around So there was some massive massive volume that went from OG Oedler hands that have hey I mean it impressive they held it for that long

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That is truly a testament to their fortitude.

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But that's rotating into institutional hands, right?

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So it's almost, you know, it's dumping on Wall Street a little bit.

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So at least the Tom Jelm swings both ways that way.

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But you saw this sort of rotation, and it seemed that that, at least in my mind, was most likely one of the just primary drivers around this.

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I think it's difficult for us to kind of comprehend the actual volume that some of these OGs can move.

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You know, we talk about, yeah, MicroStrategy is buying every week in large size, but you've got one OG whale that disposes of 80,000 Bitcoin,

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and that wipes out months and months and months of their buys from a sell-side perspective.

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Is that kind of how you've looked at this as well? Or do you also think it's just a matter of, look, the excitement wasn't there. You didn't have the retail FOMO there. Maybe the retail FOMO was in treasury stocks. I don't know. How do you think about that?

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I think the OG selling is one of the biggest factors.

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So the two biggest factors are basically top-line demand from all sources, whether it's retail, whether it's retail owning through shares in an ETF or corporation, institutions buying into those shares and stuff.

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So all that kind of institutional retail demand, that top-line demand, that's probably the single biggest factor.

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And then as the price goes up, every single cycle, OGs sell.

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um they they usually you know they got bitcoin it goes up depending on how og they are 10x 20x 100x

292
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more uh it goes from you know like five percent of the net worth to 95 percent of the net worth

293
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in some cases and then some of them have families some of them want to consume more some of them

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want to diversify they say i don't want 95 of my net worth that's now substantial in one asset i

295
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mean now i can diversify a couple other things i can get real estate i can get equities whatever

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And so you do see that selling pressure into bull markets, liquid, high-priced markets.

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And one of the narratives I've seen this time is that there's like an unusual amount of OG selling.

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Statistically, I push back on that because every cycle there's OG selling.

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It happens every single bull cycle.

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For example, and it depends on how you measure it, but like the number of coins that haven't moved on-chain for a year,

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and then that metric,

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that's not been a particularly strong change of hands

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this time compared to past cycles.

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Currently, we're near all-time highs

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for the percentage of coins

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that haven't moved in five years or more.

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And so you do get these individual massive whale sellers

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and just the broader just kind of shark level sellers around,

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but that happens every cycle.

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And then also, because Bitcoin is,

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it's not a five-year-old asset or a 10-year-old asset anymore.

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It's a 17-year-old asset.

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Kind of the spectrum of buyers that even count as OG at this point is bigger.

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There's just more people that have been holding for five-plus years,

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call it a cycle or two at least, that can then sell into that.

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So you can actually have more OG sellers in terms of the number of sellers,

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the number of Bitcoin they're selling,

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And yet as a percentage of older coins, it's actually not really elevated.

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So statistically, I don't really, kind of the bearish narratives were like, OGs are becoming disillusioned in it or something.

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There's actually statistically no evidence of that.

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I mean, there's always an anecdote, like this whale sold for this reason, sure.

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But statistically, this hasn't really been an unusual selling environment for OGs.

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So I think OG selling pressure is kind of what exhausts the cycle every time, which is that there's new demand, there's price euphoria, there's OG sellers, and eventually that gets exhausted on the buy side.

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And then the reverse happens on the bottom in the sell side.

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And so I think that OG selling was a key factor this time.

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But I think the reason we only got to, say, 126 rather than having that kind of peak out at, say, 150 or 200, I think was just because top line demand was on the weaker side.

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So you don't think OG selling is driven by quantum's imminent cracking of Bitcoin?

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I do not.

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I think there's more data we can look into in this.

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So for example, if the thesis was true that that was the single biggest thing, as some

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analysts are saying, like if that was the single biggest factor of the cycle, then in

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theory, you should see that more centralized altcoins that have a clear quantum roadmap

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because they're centralized, they can do that, or ones that are already semi-quantum resilient,

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they should be getting a very large bid, right?

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If that was like the key reason, then you should see pretty big differentiation between

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the most decentralized one that has a pretty tough time getting quantum resilient, which is Bitcoin,

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and tight block space, which of course limits quantum resilient signature sizes. And there's

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all sorts of complexities if we ever want to make this quantum resilient versus ones that are in a

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better position because of their centralization and other factors become more quantum resilient.

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We haven't really seen that performance gap. Now, on the other side, where I give that some credit

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is that I have it on good authority

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from very high-level institutions

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that that was a factor in some buying decisions

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by large pools of capital,

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which is any institution comes in,

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they say, okay, there's a bear case,

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a base case, and a bull case

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for what Bitcoin can do.

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And on the bear case, they have catalysts,

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like what if the US bans it?

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What if quantum breaks it?

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You know, they have all the FUD.

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Then on the bull case,

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they have what if, you know,

355
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sovereign or whatever, base case,

356
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it is what it is.

357
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Now, if they get a little spooked by the quantum side, it kind of fattens their bear case to some extent.

358
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So they would say they might have put in 5%, they put in 3%.

359
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They might have had a price target averaging 200K.

360
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And they say, well, because of this left tail risk that we have total quantifying, we're going to bring that down to 150K.

361
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um and so for example one major major institution said that basically you know people went from like

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five percent of institutions were asking about quantum risk to 30 percent uh and that was given

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to me before the peak uh so i would guess that that number for them probably got to 40 or 50

364
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percent so i do think that that was a non-trivial variable in uh pretty we call it kind of smart

365
00:27:18,138 --> 00:27:23,498
capital that would actually, you know, knows how to ask these things. But I don't think that was

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like the factor. I think it was just a factor among many. Just part of that overall kind of

367
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decision weight, you know, weighting that they're doing and trying to figure out, okay, what is this

368
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actually, what makes sense for us at this moment? Yes. Yeah. Basically, I think whether or not the

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technical risk is real in any sort of timeline that matters, I would say the perception of that

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risk was a non-trivial variable. Yeah. That makes sense. And okay, so smart money aside,

371
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in terms of dumb money, you know, us retail, what do you think that it takes to move the needle in

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terms of really driving up the number of retail investors, participants, whatever you'd like to

373
00:28:01,078 --> 00:28:07,738
call them, into holding Bitcoin? Is this just somewhat of a function of education, time, and

374
00:28:07,738 --> 00:28:11,218
it's kind of a slow and steady grind? Or do you think that there are more, you know, there are

375
00:28:11,218 --> 00:28:17,418
potential geopolitical catalysts out there even that could drive that or push that adoption forward?

376
00:28:17,478 --> 00:28:23,038
Because I think you're exactly right that we didn't really see this massive retail interest

377
00:28:23,038 --> 00:28:27,358
this past, you know, this past couple of years. It just hasn't been there. You can feel that it's

378
00:28:27,358 --> 00:28:34,758
different, right? Yeah. And I think, I think people are very, I think people like, instead of,

379
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they often like they'll be against a government for example when the opposition's in charge but

380
00:28:40,538 --> 00:28:45,958
then in favor of the same government when their party's in charge and rather than just kind of

381
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saying like there's a lot of variables that can happen where i want to self-custody my own money

382
00:28:49,958 --> 00:28:56,198
um and whether it's u.s whether it's multiple places in europe and elsewhere there is actually

383
00:28:56,198 --> 00:29:02,998
like we have in kind of our bitcoin bubble a little bit more natural skepticism toward

384
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kind of structures of authority

385
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and the ways that they go corrupt

386
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and we're kind of in the rabbit hole.

387
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The average person is actually pretty comfortable often,

388
00:29:14,058 --> 00:29:15,258
especially in developed markets,

389
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with their legal standing

390
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and their kind of the security of their assets that they have.

391
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And so I think,

392
00:29:25,578 --> 00:29:27,478
like, analyzing to people

393
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or getting people to understand why,

394
00:29:29,958 --> 00:29:31,558
like, gold bugs face this for decades,

395
00:29:31,558 --> 00:29:41,938
why you might want to hold your own hard monies and not just either put an ETF or not just not own it entirely and just be entirely in stocks and bonds in your house.

396
00:29:42,358 --> 00:29:45,058
That was like always like a marketing issue, essentially.

397
00:29:45,678 --> 00:29:51,318
And now the Bitcoin is, you know, it's got many advantages, but it's still the same kind of fundamental marketing problem,

398
00:29:51,318 --> 00:29:55,158
which is there's like a certain percentage of people that are kind of just naturally

399
00:29:55,158 --> 00:30:02,398
kind of libertarian adjacent or trusting of authority minimized or whatever the the

400
00:30:02,398 --> 00:30:08,318
venn diagrams of people in this field are um there's like a people that are naturally proposed

401
00:30:08,318 --> 00:30:13,958
and it's like how do you expand that uh that pocket because if you're just going on price

402
00:30:13,958 --> 00:30:18,118
you know when bitcoin was a 10 billion dollar asset or 100 billion dollar asset it could go

403
00:30:18,118 --> 00:30:24,138
up dramatically. But when it's a trillion dollar asset, it's rarely going to be the fastest horse.

404
00:30:24,638 --> 00:30:27,818
I mean, we've seen that, you know, it's like something as big as silver can move quite

405
00:30:27,818 --> 00:30:32,158
substantially. But even that in percentage terms didn't move like Nvidia stock did,

406
00:30:32,658 --> 00:30:38,298
for example. I mean, you know, I've been holding silver since 16 and ounce. It was nice to see it

407
00:30:38,298 --> 00:30:43,798
touch, you know, 120. It's a crazy move, but it's still smaller than, say, the percentage move that

408
00:30:43,798 --> 00:30:50,858
Bitcoin did from 2020 to 2021. It's a smaller move than some of these RAM stocks or GPU stocks.

409
00:30:51,858 --> 00:30:57,458
So the bigger an asset gets, it's less likely to be the absolute best returner in percentage terms.

410
00:30:57,918 --> 00:31:02,138
It's more about risk adjusted returns. And then in Bitcoin's case, unlike a stock,

411
00:31:02,198 --> 00:31:07,818
it's more about what its unique attributes can give you. And because we also kind of live in an

412
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era of financial nihilism um fastest horse often means what can i what's the best thing i can dabble

413
00:31:15,118 --> 00:31:19,238
in in six months which is kind of like that temptation of altcoins you know some little

414
00:31:19,238 --> 00:31:25,398
micro thing can move and people think they can out trade the pros and they almost certainly can't

415
00:31:25,398 --> 00:31:30,878
but that's kind of the temptation it's like well i'll just yolo in it's kind of lotto type gambling

416
00:31:30,878 --> 00:31:37,718
rather than having a mindset of i want to own the one with the best security the best network effect

417
00:31:37,718 --> 00:31:45,118
the best liquidity, that has the best shot at 5, 10, 15-year structural growth, that also has

418
00:31:45,118 --> 00:31:50,098
these self-custodial properties, unlike stocks that can also exhibit similar characteristics.

419
00:31:50,858 --> 00:31:56,398
And it's a challenging marketing thing overall. I think I might have lost track of your initial

420
00:31:56,398 --> 00:32:01,278
question, but that's a lot of ramblings about... No, no, no, that's fair. And it actually kind

421
00:32:01,278 --> 00:32:06,418
of brings up another one. Because you mentioned, yeah, okay, people have said for a while that

422
00:32:06,418 --> 00:32:08,478
Bitcoin's going to sort of have these diminishing returns.

423
00:32:08,478 --> 00:32:12,158
It's not going to make those multi-X moves in a short time frame.

424
00:32:12,178 --> 00:32:20,238
But then we saw something like silver, like gold even, making massive, you know, adding trillions and trillions to the market cap in a very short period of time.

425
00:32:20,798 --> 00:32:31,318
Do you, I guess, what's your take on that from the perspective of, okay, Bitcoin's not going to move like something that has a market cap of 10 billion, you know, could potentially move, you know, obviously.

426
00:32:31,318 --> 00:32:36,838
but even with it at you know um you know trying to get back to a two trillion dollar market cap

427
00:32:36,838 --> 00:32:41,658
might i don't know how long it's going to take does it still have that potential to let's say

428
00:32:41,658 --> 00:32:47,598
melt faces to use the uh to use the the degen jargon like is there still just given what we've

429
00:32:47,598 --> 00:32:51,858
seen in silver given what we've seen in gold does it still have that ability to make some of those

430
00:32:51,858 --> 00:32:57,258
outsized moves or do you view it still as more of like will returns like here on out still be

431
00:32:57,258 --> 00:33:00,998
diminishing but you know what's i guess what's your read on that from kind of the longer term

432
00:33:00,998 --> 00:33:07,378
perspective like we look out 20 years i think it can absolutely move like silver has moved um you

433
00:33:07,378 --> 00:33:11,698
know gold gold went from it depends on when you measure it from but in a fairly short period of

434
00:33:11,698 --> 00:33:17,578
time gold went from 2k to 5k right so i mean that's a that's a you know that's a pretty big

435
00:33:17,578 --> 00:33:24,138
gain right but it's not like a you know it's not like a nvidia stock going up 10x or more gain or

436
00:33:24,138 --> 00:33:30,118
20x or 30x more gain it's a sizable gain for such a you know multi multi tens of trillion dollar

437
00:33:30,118 --> 00:33:35,498
asset. Silver had a bigger percent gain because, you know, it's more starting from like a trillion

438
00:33:35,498 --> 00:33:41,738
dollar asset estimated. We'd actually, obviously, we can't really audit silver, but we have estimates

439
00:33:41,738 --> 00:33:47,098
for it. It's obviously quite a big market. That moved pretty substantially, but it wasn't quite

440
00:33:47,098 --> 00:33:53,558
a 10x, at least this particular kind of multi-year period. And I think Bitcoin can move like that.

441
00:33:53,978 --> 00:33:58,078
And I think that if Bitcoin is going to be successful in that kind of 20 plus year period

442
00:33:58,078 --> 00:34:02,498
you mentioned i do think that it'll eventually have a cycle it's bigger than the prior cycle

443
00:34:02,498 --> 00:34:08,718
uh meaning that there will be a time where that diminishing returns would have to kind of be

444
00:34:08,718 --> 00:34:13,138
broken like that's i think bitcoin goes through narratives uh and i think it has to break a

445
00:34:13,138 --> 00:34:17,678
couple things i think one has to break the four-year cycle narrative eventually uh because

446
00:34:17,678 --> 00:34:23,918
as we talked about from og selling that is by far the bigger impact than mining rewards getting cut

447
00:34:23,918 --> 00:34:25,618
in half every roughly four years.

448
00:34:27,338 --> 00:34:31,798
That's just because the, I mean, in the early days, that was obviously a giant factor because

449
00:34:31,798 --> 00:34:34,078
the percent inflation was huge.

450
00:34:34,898 --> 00:34:36,618
And now it's already tiny.

451
00:34:36,738 --> 00:34:39,558
It's already smaller annual supply growth than gold.

452
00:34:41,158 --> 00:34:47,098
And so when OGs can sell five or 10% of all coins in a year, that's a much bigger variable

453
00:34:47,098 --> 00:34:49,338
than what happens with supply.

454
00:34:49,478 --> 00:34:53,438
So the four-year cycle doesn't really have a reason to exist anymore other than some

455
00:34:53,438 --> 00:34:59,398
degree of kind of self-prophecy. And just because it's always been kind of correlated with other

456
00:34:59,398 --> 00:35:04,718
cycles, like liquidity cycles and things like that. And so I think it has to break the four-year

457
00:35:04,718 --> 00:35:11,718
cycle narrative eventually. And I think it has to break the diminishing return narrative. And that

458
00:35:11,718 --> 00:35:16,558
could be, I mean, I think part of the thing you asked before that didn't answer was about catalysts,

459
00:35:16,558 --> 00:35:22,978
like big geopolitical things. You know, a failure of a major currency block, I think,

460
00:35:22,978 --> 00:35:29,558
would be a catalyst or just a massive campaign of asset seizing without charging people with

461
00:35:29,558 --> 00:35:36,918
crimes or things like that can wake people up. You know, I think, or like just a cluster of those

462
00:35:36,918 --> 00:35:42,038
happening over time. I think those are kind of external catalysts that do a lot of marketing

463
00:35:42,038 --> 00:35:46,998
for stuff that, you know, Bitcoiners and gold enthusiasts have been marketing for

464
00:35:46,998 --> 00:35:52,598
years or decades of the kind of the importance of self-custodial assets that are liquid.

465
00:35:52,978 --> 00:36:06,518
Do you think regarding cycles, and I'm glad you brought that up because I specifically wanted to ask about that. Do you think we've already started to break that narrative? Has that four-year cycle narrative already been disproven to a certain extent?

466
00:36:06,518 --> 00:36:13,478
was it you know yeah we it obviously has had less of an impact over time as a function of the block

467
00:36:13,478 --> 00:36:19,898
reward having but did it ever exist in a meaningful way or was it always also just driven by these

468
00:36:19,898 --> 00:36:25,498
larger liquidity cycles these these cycles that are you know like basically super ordinate to the

469
00:36:25,498 --> 00:36:29,618
bitcoin having cycle and it just so happened to kind of line up pretty well with the having cycle

470
00:36:29,618 --> 00:36:34,218
where it sort of tricked us into thinking yes this is the having cycle that matters when in reality

471
00:36:34,218 --> 00:36:39,378
there were these other factors that were really the drivers i think in the first two to three

472
00:36:39,378 --> 00:36:46,198
halvings it was pretty meaningful impact uh just the the number of new coins that uh you know that

473
00:36:46,198 --> 00:36:51,178
that changes so we have far fewer new coins coming to market because when the market gets kind of an

474
00:36:51,178 --> 00:36:55,218
equilibrium there's like buyers coming in there's sellers getting out there's there's new coins

475
00:36:55,218 --> 00:36:59,598
coming in it kind of reaches an equilibrium and then when you just reduce the number of new coins

476
00:36:59,598 --> 00:37:04,218
coming in, and that's still a pretty substantial number, then that kind of shakes it up in the

477
00:37:04,218 --> 00:37:09,318
bowl's favor. And then once you get price momentum, you get others, you know, all the marketing happens,

478
00:37:09,458 --> 00:37:13,578
all the, you know, everybody starts talking about it, a whole marketing wave happens, people get in,

479
00:37:13,638 --> 00:37:18,938
creates people that heard about it for the first time. So I think that was real for the first two

480
00:37:18,938 --> 00:37:24,598
or three cycles. As that halving becomes a much smaller percentage of new supply impact,

481
00:37:24,598 --> 00:37:32,578
I think it's it's there's a little bit of that like a self-fulfilling narrative where people trade around past price action.

482
00:37:33,718 --> 00:37:43,938
And then there's and then I do think that liquidity started taking over as not not the absolute variable that matters, but one of the more important ones that was correlated with.

483
00:37:44,138 --> 00:37:47,658
I mean, liquidity is like why everything went down in March 2020.

484
00:37:48,838 --> 00:37:53,378
And because the unit of account itself was temporarily hardening because of a liquidity shortage.

485
00:37:53,378 --> 00:37:55,738
and that's an extreme event,

486
00:37:55,958 --> 00:37:58,698
but then there's multiple kind of more moderate events.

487
00:38:00,098 --> 00:38:01,818
And I think going forward,

488
00:38:02,058 --> 00:38:03,578
I think just fundamentally,

489
00:38:03,838 --> 00:38:05,018
there's really no defense

490
00:38:05,018 --> 00:38:06,878
for the four-year cycle going forward

491
00:38:06,878 --> 00:38:08,798
just because the numbers for the halving

492
00:38:08,798 --> 00:38:11,838
are way smaller than other factors.

493
00:38:12,498 --> 00:38:15,918
But I would say that the four-year enthusiasts,

494
00:38:16,478 --> 00:38:17,938
they're still winning

495
00:38:17,938 --> 00:38:19,678
as long as the price actually keeps dusting them.

496
00:38:19,818 --> 00:38:22,018
I mean, the balls in their court,

497
00:38:22,018 --> 00:38:25,758
if we peaked in Q4 and it takes us a while to reclaim it.

498
00:38:26,018 --> 00:38:29,798
So price action-wise, they still got it,

499
00:38:29,818 --> 00:38:30,978
even though it doesn't really make sense.

500
00:38:31,998 --> 00:38:34,938
The numbers that I'm really looking at are 58K.

501
00:38:35,138 --> 00:38:37,338
I want that win for the 58K gang.

502
00:38:37,438 --> 00:38:40,698
I want to see the memetic perfection achieved there.

503
00:38:41,658 --> 00:38:43,678
They've gotten pretty darn close right now.

504
00:38:43,718 --> 00:38:45,118
I guess it would be the ultimate bait and switch

505
00:38:45,118 --> 00:38:46,938
if we just didn't quite hit 58K.

506
00:38:46,938 --> 00:38:47,898
But let's see.

507
00:38:48,038 --> 00:38:50,058
They've been pretty right about 58K for a while.

508
00:38:50,058 --> 00:38:50,838
I did a meme about that.

509
00:38:50,838 --> 00:38:57,818
I was like, because that day we hit 60, I was like, that's like actually the perfect pain spot because you got as low as you wanted to make everyone sad.

510
00:38:57,938 --> 00:39:00,178
We didn't quite hit 58K for the memes either.

511
00:39:00,618 --> 00:39:04,358
So, yeah, that 59 or 60K range is actually like the pain point.

512
00:39:05,038 --> 00:39:07,678
It's depriving us of all the memes that could have been.

513
00:39:07,858 --> 00:39:10,098
It's, you know, Schrodinger's meme, I guess.

514
00:39:10,398 --> 00:39:10,618
Yeah.

515
00:39:11,338 --> 00:39:17,178
I want to zoom out a little bit, too, and talk about trains and whether or not they stop.

516
00:39:17,178 --> 00:39:23,898
um there's always a lot going on in the world there's always a lot going on in the u.s

517
00:39:23,898 --> 00:39:29,218
one thing people have been focusing on is whether or not trump will be able to get uh you know

518
00:39:29,218 --> 00:39:36,878
when his new presumably more dovish uh fed chair gets installed what that's going to mean for

519
00:39:36,878 --> 00:39:41,758
markets and i'm just wondering how much you're looking at this paying attention to it if you

520
00:39:41,758 --> 00:39:47,978
think especially going into a midterm year as we are that we're going to see sort of a a push for

521
00:39:47,978 --> 00:39:55,138
more dovish policies for more liquidity getting in there to juice the economy to pump everyone's

522
00:39:55,138 --> 00:40:00,958
bags including trump is is that something that you are kind of uh looking at as a primary factor

523
00:40:00,958 --> 00:40:06,018
or is it just one of those things where it's like hey look we know long term that nothing stops this

524
00:40:06,018 --> 00:40:10,198
train and that you know the fed and the treasury they have certain things that we know that they

525
00:40:10,198 --> 00:40:13,478
need to do. And really, in the short term, there's not going to be that much of a difference,

526
00:40:13,558 --> 00:40:17,298
you know, regardless of who's installed as the head of the banker cabal.

527
00:40:18,878 --> 00:40:22,958
So long term, nothing stops his train near term. The interesting thing about the new chairman

528
00:40:22,958 --> 00:40:27,938
proposal is he's dovish on interest rates, but he's historically hawkish on balance sheet.

529
00:40:28,498 --> 00:40:33,758
So he's less in favor of, say, Chairman Powell's current balance sheet expansion plan,

530
00:40:33,858 --> 00:40:37,258
which is actually fairly mild compared to prior balance sheet expansions.

531
00:40:37,258 --> 00:40:44,118
um i i wrote about this in my february newsletter uh kind of analyzing the levers that the new

532
00:40:44,118 --> 00:40:48,138
chairman could pull there's a couple things to keep in mind one is he's only even though he would

533
00:40:48,138 --> 00:40:54,078
be the chairman he's only one of 12 members that gets to vote on what happens with with policy

534
00:40:54,078 --> 00:41:00,158
uh so the fact that he can organize the discussions that he's got the biggest microphone matters it is

535
00:41:00,158 --> 00:41:06,618
a really big factor but he's not a he's not like the fed dictator uh so um it's not like a wholesale

536
00:41:06,618 --> 00:41:12,178
say I'll snap your fingers change in Fed policy just because we rotate chairmen's is, I think,

537
00:41:12,218 --> 00:41:17,558
the first thing to keep in mind. The second factor, I think that most of his comments about

538
00:41:17,558 --> 00:41:22,058
balance sheet reduction are not going to come to fruition. In that piece I talked about, there's a

539
00:41:22,058 --> 00:41:29,178
couple of levers you can pull that are actually pretty liquidity neutral. So the reason they

540
00:41:29,178 --> 00:41:32,858
switch from quantitative tightening to balance sheet expansion is because they kind of hit the

541
00:41:32,858 --> 00:41:45,016
liquidity floor unless they pull levers that move liquidity around So for example if they change regulation to let banks hold more treasuries without running into a foul of various capital or liquidity requirements

542
00:41:45,276 --> 00:41:49,436
then they basically just offload some of their treasuries to commercial banks.

543
00:41:50,336 --> 00:41:54,276
Likewise, if the Fed, if the treasury were to term out its debt a little longer,

544
00:41:54,636 --> 00:42:00,296
they could reduce the size of their cash balance, which lets the Fed reduce their balance sheet a

545
00:42:00,296 --> 00:42:03,816
little bit without sacrificing liquidity. So there's a couple of levers they could pull.

546
00:42:03,816 --> 00:42:09,816
I don't think they're going to pull them much at all, especially with just the number of people involved in that decision-making process.

547
00:42:10,116 --> 00:42:12,716
And it's kind of like picking pennies up in front of a steamroller.

548
00:42:13,876 --> 00:42:20,756
So I lean toward that because of him, they're going to be a little more dovish on interest rates than they might have otherwise been.

549
00:42:21,196 --> 00:42:32,856
They might be a little bit more hawkish on balance sheet than they otherwise would have been, meaning that they – not that I think that they'll shrink it, especially not materially, but they might grow it a little bit slower than Powell would have.

550
00:42:32,856 --> 00:42:35,116
which I think already is actually kind of slow.

551
00:42:36,196 --> 00:42:38,136
I keep calling it the gradual print,

552
00:42:38,776 --> 00:42:42,276
which is that because banks are already pretty flush with liquidity,

553
00:42:43,376 --> 00:42:46,916
I think that Fed balance sheet expansion going forward

554
00:42:46,916 --> 00:42:50,276
is going to be kind of modest in terms of percent gains.

555
00:42:50,416 --> 00:42:53,976
I mean, the numbers are big just because the nominal system is so huge now.

556
00:42:54,316 --> 00:42:56,716
So it's like, you know, what's a few hundred billion between friends?

557
00:42:57,676 --> 00:43:00,796
But it's not like that kind of multi-trillion giga stimulus

558
00:43:00,796 --> 00:43:03,196
unless something huge happens,

559
00:43:03,356 --> 00:43:05,436
which China wakes up one day

560
00:43:05,436 --> 00:43:06,936
and decides to sell all its treasuries

561
00:43:06,936 --> 00:43:09,816
or Japan starts rapidly selling treasuries

562
00:43:09,816 --> 00:43:10,516
or war breaks,

563
00:43:10,656 --> 00:43:12,036
things like that that are just,

564
00:43:12,276 --> 00:43:12,916
they happen.

565
00:43:14,236 --> 00:43:15,876
But as a base case,

566
00:43:15,916 --> 00:43:18,136
I think we enter gradual balance sheet expansion,

567
00:43:19,056 --> 00:43:21,576
more dovish interest rate policy,

568
00:43:22,036 --> 00:43:23,616
and that lower interest rate

569
00:43:23,616 --> 00:43:25,716
is generally good for other currencies.

570
00:43:25,996 --> 00:43:27,996
It's generally good for kind of neutral assets,

571
00:43:28,116 --> 00:43:29,836
whether it's gold, Bitcoin, and so forth.

572
00:43:29,836 --> 00:43:32,376
and then the question is

573
00:43:32,376 --> 00:43:33,656
can lower interest rates

574
00:43:33,656 --> 00:43:35,396
result in more bank lending

575
00:43:35,396 --> 00:43:36,876
which creates broad money

576
00:43:36,876 --> 00:43:38,996
around the margins

577
00:43:38,996 --> 00:43:39,736
I think it can

578
00:43:39,736 --> 00:43:41,016
but I think it's a

579
00:43:41,016 --> 00:43:42,076
it's a pretty slow effort

580
00:43:42,076 --> 00:43:43,376
overall

581
00:43:43,376 --> 00:43:45,576
so I generally lean

582
00:43:45,576 --> 00:43:46,956
I would say that

583
00:43:46,956 --> 00:43:47,556
I think they're gonna be

584
00:43:47,556 --> 00:43:48,416
mildly dovish

585
00:43:48,416 --> 00:43:50,096
but maybe not hyper dovish

586
00:43:50,096 --> 00:43:50,656
like I don't think

587
00:43:50,656 --> 00:43:51,076
they're just gonna

588
00:43:51,076 --> 00:43:53,376
rapidly cut interest rates

589
00:43:53,376 --> 00:43:55,156
and just turn around

590
00:43:55,156 --> 00:43:56,056
to like rapid balance

591
00:43:56,056 --> 00:43:56,556
expansion

592
00:43:56,556 --> 00:43:58,456
this calendar year

593
00:43:58,456 --> 00:44:05,756
okay okay i mean i think that that's that's fair it's uh it may not be quite as many fireworks as

594
00:44:05,756 --> 00:44:13,656
people are expecting i want to ask too just about how obviously okay got these various cycles that

595
00:44:13,656 --> 00:44:21,196
uh ebb and flow and everything uh does ai how does this general move toward like really

596
00:44:21,196 --> 00:44:26,876
fast advancements now in ai and robotics and the implications of that does that at all you know

597
00:44:26,876 --> 00:44:30,816
how are you factoring that into kind of your core theses as you look at markets, as you look at their

598
00:44:30,816 --> 00:44:36,216
evolution, as you look at the potential for Bitcoin or for gold or for other things to really be,

599
00:44:36,356 --> 00:44:41,736
to move more to the forefront of people's minds? I mean, does, do the advances that we're seeing

600
00:44:41,736 --> 00:44:48,376
in sort of the deflationary or hyper deflationary nature of things like AI and robotics, do those

601
00:44:48,376 --> 00:44:54,836
sort of fundamentally change the calculus in any way in that, okay, does this sort of, does this

602
00:44:54,836 --> 00:45:02,216
basically force them to potentially like print more to deal with this hype what will be like a

603
00:45:02,216 --> 00:45:07,656
from a productivity standpoint extremely deflationary or is this something that also like

604
00:45:07,656 --> 00:45:12,796
how much of an impact does it make i guess in like the five-year horizon versus like the 10-year

605
00:45:12,796 --> 00:45:17,396
20-year horizon if that does that make sense i'm i'm trying to understand how much does this change

606
00:45:17,396 --> 00:45:24,016
the way you look at things from a time before these were really kind of forefront uh forefront

607
00:45:24,016 --> 00:45:30,096
concerns yeah good question overall i think it's a it's a productivity boosting disinflationary

608
00:45:30,096 --> 00:45:36,256
force uh but only on some segments not others um basically and there's kind of multiple parts here

609
00:45:36,256 --> 00:45:43,216
so that the fiat system as as it's structured globally has to nominally grow um it's designed

610
00:45:43,216 --> 00:45:49,696
it's like a shark that can't stop swimming unless it ironically drowns which um uh probably some

611
00:45:49,696 --> 00:45:52,716
comments but like not all sharks have that problem but there are a lot of sharks that have that

612
00:45:52,716 --> 00:45:58,176
problem. And the fiat system is kind of like that. It goes back fundamentally to when they make a loan

613
00:45:58,176 --> 00:46:02,496
that directly increases broad money supply, when they make a loan on fractional reserve, I should

614
00:46:02,496 --> 00:46:08,076
say. And they don't create the interest that ultimately that loan will accrue, which ends up

615
00:46:08,076 --> 00:46:14,056
getting paid with later loans. So it's like it always has to expand because it's so levered.

616
00:46:14,216 --> 00:46:18,736
You know, it can contract for short periods of time, but it can't just keep contracting the way

617
00:46:18,736 --> 00:46:24,256
it's designed. It would totally implode in a disorganized way. So it always nominally grows.

618
00:46:25,296 --> 00:46:29,416
And then there's a long-term calculation you could think of, which is there's money supply growth,

619
00:46:29,656 --> 00:46:34,716
and then there's average productivity growth, which is kind of hard to measure. But for example,

620
00:46:34,796 --> 00:46:41,436
if you have average 7% money supply growth over a multi-decade period, and you have average 4%

621
00:46:41,436 --> 00:46:46,856
productivity growth, meaning we're 4% better at making a lot of things per year, then the average

622
00:46:46,856 --> 00:46:52,416
price gains end up being something like 3% per year because money supply is growing up faster

623
00:46:52,416 --> 00:46:58,256
than we're getting more efficient at making things. And then the added factor is that's not even.

624
00:46:58,656 --> 00:47:04,956
So for example, the harder kind of scarcity of the asset, the less good we are at making more of it.

625
00:47:05,056 --> 00:47:10,736
So kind of over the past 30 years, the spectrum is, you know, Bitcoin, obviously, it's got a set

626
00:47:10,736 --> 00:47:16,256
clock pretty much regardless of what's going on. Fine art, as long as like tastes don't change,

627
00:47:16,256 --> 00:47:17,896
like the really Lindy like art,

628
00:47:18,976 --> 00:47:21,396
like they're not making any more Picassos, for example.

629
00:47:21,476 --> 00:47:22,916
They're not making any more Da Vinci's.

630
00:47:24,076 --> 00:47:27,276
And so that's also benefiting from money supply growth

631
00:47:27,276 --> 00:47:29,096
because we're not more efficient making those.

632
00:47:29,216 --> 00:47:30,016
Money supply grows up.

633
00:47:30,136 --> 00:47:34,216
So the more dollars chasing kind of finite art.

634
00:47:34,656 --> 00:47:36,076
Then you have waterfront property.

635
00:47:36,396 --> 00:47:38,256
You know, we're not radically better at making it.

636
00:47:38,396 --> 00:47:40,556
To the extent that you want to build an island like Dubai,

637
00:47:40,776 --> 00:47:42,216
it's very expensive to do so.

638
00:47:42,476 --> 00:47:44,516
So it actually takes a ton of, you know,

639
00:47:44,516 --> 00:47:47,356
we have limited coastline and it's really expensive to make more coastline.

640
00:47:47,536 --> 00:47:51,376
So waterfront property, fairly scarce, but of course you have maintenance,

641
00:47:51,496 --> 00:47:54,236
you have insurance, you have taxes, all the, all these things, but it's,

642
00:47:54,236 --> 00:47:58,276
it's a, it's a fairly scarce asset class. Um, then you get into gold,

643
00:47:58,476 --> 00:48:01,856
which is, you know, over the course of like a hundred years, uh,

644
00:48:01,856 --> 00:48:05,736
it's averaged about 1.5% estimated supply growth per year.

645
00:48:05,896 --> 00:48:09,336
Even in the seventies, when like gold went up massively, the,

646
00:48:09,336 --> 00:48:12,816
the percent supply growth didn't change a ton. Uh,

647
00:48:12,816 --> 00:48:16,736
it's very hard to just radically get better unless we have like a crazy

648
00:48:16,736 --> 00:48:20,476
breakthrough at getting more gold out of the ground and it just a radically

649
00:48:20,476 --> 00:48:22,856
different way. So again,

650
00:48:22,856 --> 00:48:27,196
more dollars chasing only a slowing like amount of gold stack.

651
00:48:27,296 --> 00:48:30,196
But then when you get into like oil, you know, we do get, you know,

652
00:48:30,196 --> 00:48:32,816
all of our like imaging technologies and all our stuff,

653
00:48:32,856 --> 00:48:35,356
we do get better at finding it not radically better,

654
00:48:35,436 --> 00:48:37,016
but we do get moderately better at finding it.

655
00:48:37,196 --> 00:48:41,516
But then you get like the long tail of like anything in the past 30,

656
00:48:41,516 --> 00:48:46,936
40, 50 years if we could automate. So we already had a big, you know, before AI, it was this

657
00:48:46,936 --> 00:48:51,936
automation, just taking a lot of things that used to be very manual construction things and having

658
00:48:51,936 --> 00:48:58,396
just robots do 80% of it. That was a huge boom for productivity. And then also telecommunications

659
00:48:58,396 --> 00:49:03,436
let us globalize. You know, it's not an accident that that happened around when it did, because

660
00:49:03,436 --> 00:49:08,896
as the world gets to talk to each other more and is not at war more, it's easy to say, okay,

661
00:49:08,896 --> 00:49:13,456
well, we'll put workers in this other cheap country. So between automation and offshoring,

662
00:49:14,016 --> 00:49:20,336
that was a huge kind of deflationary force for manufacturing goods. And of course, Moore's law

663
00:49:20,336 --> 00:49:26,096
is an exponentially deflationary force for electronics, at least until it runs into like

664
00:49:26,096 --> 00:49:30,856
physical limits, which actually is kind of getting close to and you have to kind of scale in other

665
00:49:30,856 --> 00:49:36,256
ways. So those were like the big, that's kind of been the longer term thing. Now what AI does,

666
00:49:36,256 --> 00:49:48,276
AI is kind of like that blue collar automation for a lot of white collar labor, which should be quite a disinflationary productivity boom, at least in the things it impacts.

667
00:49:48,436 --> 00:50:02,796
So it's not like a miracle cure for everything, but it takes a lot of iterative tasks and lets one person oversee a bunch of bots doing it versus just a bunch of people that have to spend all day doing it.

668
00:50:02,796 --> 00:50:10,996
And that, so like one accountant can potentially do the work of five accounts and one editor can potentially do the work of 10 editors and so forth.

669
00:50:11,996 --> 00:50:17,896
We'll see. I mean, it depends how quickly it gets good, you know, how quickly people adapt.

670
00:50:17,976 --> 00:50:26,356
It actually takes time for companies to kind of change their processes around or if they refuse to change their processes, they slowly get outcompeted by ones that have.

671
00:50:27,076 --> 00:50:28,796
So it should be a disinflationary force

672
00:50:28,796 --> 00:50:29,876
on that white collar labor,

673
00:50:30,196 --> 00:50:31,816
but we still have that spectrum

674
00:50:31,816 --> 00:50:36,136
where the more energy intensive things

675
00:50:36,136 --> 00:50:38,856
or just inherently scarce things,

676
00:50:39,696 --> 00:50:41,236
those things kind of accumulate

677
00:50:41,236 --> 00:50:42,156
when you have, you know,

678
00:50:42,336 --> 00:50:44,336
the nominal system keeps growing.

679
00:50:45,016 --> 00:50:46,656
Some things get exponentially cheaper

680
00:50:46,656 --> 00:50:48,076
because they're not inherently scarce.

681
00:50:48,636 --> 00:50:50,436
And then the scarce assets

682
00:50:50,436 --> 00:50:51,776
benefit from that difference.

683
00:50:52,176 --> 00:50:52,936
That's where the kind of

684
00:50:52,936 --> 00:50:54,276
the value accrual shows up.

685
00:50:54,336 --> 00:50:55,256
And another factor is

686
00:50:56,356 --> 00:50:58,836
there are multiple periods in time where there's like a productivity boom.

687
00:50:59,456 --> 00:51:02,296
So what I mentioned before, you have money supply growth, you have productivity,

688
00:51:02,956 --> 00:51:06,916
and there's periods of time where you get like an unusually large amount of productivity.

689
00:51:07,196 --> 00:51:12,816
So for example, the United States in the late 1800s, you know, that was like electrification.

690
00:51:13,136 --> 00:51:14,496
That was like automobiles.

691
00:51:15,396 --> 00:51:17,116
You had unlimited land, basically.

692
00:51:18,196 --> 00:51:22,596
And so that combination of just so much lack of scarcity and so much technological growth,

693
00:51:22,596 --> 00:51:27,956
you know railroads and and you know discovering hydrocarbons and using them at scale for the first

694
00:51:27,956 --> 00:51:33,256
time you know like outside of coal so using oil for the first time at scale those were all massive

695
00:51:33,256 --> 00:51:41,676
productivity booms um or like japan uh after world war ii uh it's just like this crazy amount of

696
00:51:41,676 --> 00:51:48,956
organization happened and they were super productive um or the whole 90s 2000s and 2010s

697
00:51:48,956 --> 00:51:51,356
because that was kind of this age of globalization.

698
00:51:52,216 --> 00:51:54,736
So you have, in those kind of periods of productivity growth,

699
00:51:54,816 --> 00:51:56,796
you have a bigger disconnect than normal

700
00:51:56,796 --> 00:51:59,896
between money supply growth and average prices

701
00:51:59,896 --> 00:52:02,436
because we've got a bigger than normal

702
00:52:02,436 --> 00:52:04,896
kind of window that opened up

703
00:52:04,896 --> 00:52:06,356
that makes us radically better

704
00:52:06,356 --> 00:52:08,516
at making some meaningful percentage of things.

705
00:52:09,776 --> 00:52:11,836
And I think AI is like one of those

706
00:52:11,836 --> 00:52:14,276
and it happens to be for services,

707
00:52:14,496 --> 00:52:15,916
like white collar services, especially.

708
00:52:15,916 --> 00:52:22,196
there's a couple directions i want to take with that too but perhaps before i do i do want to ask

709
00:52:22,196 --> 00:52:26,256
you do you think where we're at right now obviously you look at like the valuations and the funding

710
00:52:26,256 --> 00:52:31,016
rounds they're happening with these companies and it's just like it's mind-boggling amounts of money

711
00:52:31,016 --> 00:52:36,656
is there any danger of a potential short-term bubble like obviously we had the internet had

712
00:52:36,656 --> 00:52:40,096
the dot-com bubble right that didn't mean the internet wasn't valuable or the internet wasn't

713
00:52:40,096 --> 00:52:45,156
done it just meant there was a uh let's say an initial misapplicate or allocation or over

714
00:52:45,156 --> 00:52:49,156
allocation of capital, kind of getting out over the skis a little bit. And then obviously the

715
00:52:49,156 --> 00:52:53,496
internet today has grown probably more than people could have imagined even at that time.

716
00:52:53,936 --> 00:52:57,936
Do you think we see something similar with AI where we do sort of get almost this, you know,

717
00:52:58,016 --> 00:53:02,876
dot-com AI moment, but then, okay, things normalize a little bit. They steady out,

718
00:53:03,276 --> 00:53:07,956
valuations come back to earth a little bit and things proceed from there on a more,

719
00:53:08,296 --> 00:53:13,256
let's say, measured trajectory. Or do you think this is like, these valuations are actually

720
00:53:13,256 --> 00:53:18,216
totally fair. And we're not going to have any sort of dot-com moment in the AI industry specifically.

721
00:53:18,896 --> 00:53:23,076
I mean, I don't know if it'll be as big as the dot-com bubble. The crazy thing about the dot-com

722
00:53:23,076 --> 00:53:28,056
bubble is like even non-tech stocks, like Coca-Cola was trading at 50 times earnings

723
00:53:28,056 --> 00:53:33,476
and Walmart was trading at 50 times earnings. And those stocks went on to like go sideways

724
00:53:33,476 --> 00:53:37,976
the next like 15 years, even because their earnings had to like double just to kind of

725
00:53:37,976 --> 00:53:41,896
catch up with their valuations. So the problem with the dot-com bubble is you would like even

726
00:53:41,896 --> 00:53:44,736
non-tech stocks were trading at high valuations.

727
00:53:44,856 --> 00:53:47,736
Anything that was perceived as benefiting from globalization

728
00:53:47,736 --> 00:53:49,796
or was blue-chip.

729
00:53:53,236 --> 00:53:56,336
You almost never have a major new technology

730
00:53:56,336 --> 00:53:58,776
that doesn't have bubbles associated with it.

731
00:53:58,776 --> 00:54:01,356
The build-out of the railroads had bubbles.

732
00:54:01,896 --> 00:54:03,916
The build-out of radio had bubbles.

733
00:54:04,676 --> 00:54:07,216
The build-out of the internet had bubbles.

734
00:54:07,576 --> 00:54:08,676
Telecom had bubbles.

735
00:54:09,356 --> 00:54:10,736
So the exception would be

736
00:54:10,736 --> 00:54:12,136
if somehow AI doesn't have a bubble.

737
00:54:12,476 --> 00:54:15,316
So I think my base case is we will have local bubbles.

738
00:54:15,696 --> 00:54:17,736
I've been slow to call tops.

739
00:54:18,816 --> 00:54:20,736
I think it bears jump on

740
00:54:20,736 --> 00:54:23,336
and just as soon as something does well,

741
00:54:23,456 --> 00:54:24,036
like it's a bubble.

742
00:54:24,876 --> 00:54:27,316
Usually bubbles go longer than the bears think.

743
00:54:28,876 --> 00:54:29,736
And so my approach,

744
00:54:29,916 --> 00:54:33,076
because I do invest in stocks as well,

745
00:54:34,516 --> 00:54:35,596
like I was NVIDIA,

746
00:54:35,716 --> 00:54:37,116
it got out when it got euphoric,

747
00:54:37,116 --> 00:54:42,156
you know goes down sometimes i get in sometimes i don't get in in time so i have to go to like

748
00:54:42,156 --> 00:54:48,196
amd instead you know but it's like i tend to be buyers of the idea whenever it goes down a ton

749
00:54:48,196 --> 00:54:52,156
they say okay that was the bubble i'm like i don't think that was the bubble yet i think we go further

750
00:54:52,156 --> 00:54:58,876
but i am careful when it's everything's kind of screaming vertical and uh so i'm more in that

751
00:54:58,876 --> 00:55:06,176
moderate phase right now um like i think probably ram stocks go higher um like i think overall ram

752
00:55:06,176 --> 00:55:12,076
demand will certainly go higher and we'll see what happens with the share prices but um i think it

753
00:55:12,076 --> 00:55:17,316
just goes further than people think and then becomes a bubble um and then just like the build

754
00:55:17,316 --> 00:55:22,456
out of the internet then becomes real over time it kind of it catches up with the bubble but

755
00:55:22,456 --> 00:55:25,936
that doesn't mean there's like broken you know there's broken dreams in the in the meantime

756
00:55:25,936 --> 00:55:33,916
um and in in general it's like the build out like the the entities that like laid the fiber

757
00:55:33,916 --> 00:55:40,156
optics cables that like made the internet what it is they went bankrupt um and the you know the

758
00:55:40,156 --> 00:55:46,596
people that like dug the english channel they went bankrupt and like the like these things were super

759
00:55:46,596 --> 00:55:51,556
valuable for like the people that inherited from the bankruptcy and like from the users that like

760
00:55:51,556 --> 00:55:55,816
benefited from that having been done so there'll probably be things like that where like you know

761
00:55:55,816 --> 00:56:03,056
people build a lot of it it's super expensive um but yeah i think it's it's i would be on the

762
00:56:03,056 --> 00:56:08,716
look out for euphoric valuations and the idea that things can't go down, I would fade those.

763
00:56:08,976 --> 00:56:14,256
But then when things do have pullbacks, it's like they're actually interesting. I mean,

764
00:56:14,276 --> 00:56:20,456
I do think that this probably lasts a while. How do you factor in like the propagation of

765
00:56:20,456 --> 00:56:25,256
open sourcing a lot of these models to that equation? Because that's something that didn't,

766
00:56:25,356 --> 00:56:29,316
if we talk about prior bubbles with different industries, there hasn't really been maybe that

767
00:56:29,316 --> 00:56:34,556
same factor of like just the speed at which once the genie is out of the bottle when it comes to

768
00:56:34,556 --> 00:56:38,956
open source it's like it's beautiful like and that's somewhat of china's strategy almost to

769
00:56:38,956 --> 00:56:44,136
destabilize the western side of things right is to open source a lot of this stuff we've seen a lot

770
00:56:44,136 --> 00:56:49,936
of open source uh models i mean there's a huge uh huge interest in you know claude bot right now

771
00:56:49,936 --> 00:56:53,316
open claw all of this but there's there's so many models that have been open sourced right now

772
00:56:53,316 --> 00:56:58,796
does that fundamentally sort of add a different calculus where the the moat that these larger

773
00:56:58,796 --> 00:57:05,016
first entrance would otherwise have is increasingly diminished and becomes that head start that they

774
00:57:05,016 --> 00:57:10,216
had and the capital they're able to raise becomes sort of less effective than it would otherwise be

775
00:57:10,216 --> 00:57:16,896
in absence of open source. I think partially, but I think even more broadly, I think your point on

776
00:57:16,896 --> 00:57:22,996
moats is the main one, which is I think that this is inherently a less moaty space than some other

777
00:57:22,996 --> 00:57:27,956
major investment cycles. I think the 2010s, like the reason the mag seven stocks and previously

778
00:57:27,956 --> 00:57:32,396
they were called the FAANG stocks. The reason they got so big, they had kind of the sweet spot of

779
00:57:32,396 --> 00:57:36,996
a lot of them had network effect products, you know, like social media networks and things like

780
00:57:36,996 --> 00:57:41,596
that. And like ecosystems that people get locked into, like, you know, Microsoft or Apple,

781
00:57:42,136 --> 00:57:47,696
they have these network effects. And so, you know, it doesn't take a ton of capex,

782
00:57:47,796 --> 00:57:52,176
at least relative to revenues, to keep growing. They're insanely profitable. And then they can

783
00:57:52,176 --> 00:57:57,076
plow all their profits back into buybacks, which pumps the stock up. And then the stocks are so

784
00:57:57,076 --> 00:58:02,636
high, they can issue shares to employees and pay them. It's really easy to attract top talent.

785
00:58:03,536 --> 00:58:07,336
And you get this crazy flywheel where a lot of the value, trillions upon trillions,

786
00:58:07,476 --> 00:58:12,796
accumulates at the top. The user does get value. But for example, in social media, it's like,

787
00:58:12,796 --> 00:58:17,956
okay, the corporation gets your data. You get to talk to your friends, but you also get depression

788
00:58:17,956 --> 00:58:23,236
because you're online all the time. And it's the actual biggest winners were really the major

789
00:58:23,236 --> 00:58:31,296
corporations running these things. I think AI does not have that. It's much weaker moats.

790
00:58:31,756 --> 00:58:35,776
They don't really benefit from economies of scale and network effects in the same way

791
00:58:35,776 --> 00:58:41,376
that those kind of internet platforms and ecosystems did. The switching ability,

792
00:58:41,596 --> 00:58:44,856
when one model is just not doing it for you and you want to go to another model,

793
00:58:45,356 --> 00:58:49,036
obviously some stickiness of data can be a factor, but if it's a big enough difference,

794
00:58:49,036 --> 00:58:50,256
people will go over.

795
00:58:51,556 --> 00:58:54,056
And so they're in a big CapEx arms race.

796
00:58:55,016 --> 00:58:56,876
It's, you know, like OpenAI,

797
00:58:57,256 --> 00:58:59,356
they made one of the most popular apps ever

798
00:58:59,356 --> 00:59:02,096
and they don't really see a path to profitability

799
00:59:02,096 --> 00:59:03,956
from now until 2030.

800
00:59:05,596 --> 00:59:07,876
And even the hyperscalers,

801
00:59:08,316 --> 00:59:09,756
like those that are, you know,

802
00:59:09,796 --> 00:59:10,876
the Microsofts of the world

803
00:59:10,876 --> 00:59:11,876
and those that are kind of operating

804
00:59:11,876 --> 00:59:13,096
the infrastructure behind all this thing,

805
00:59:13,476 --> 00:59:14,496
they're the ones benefiting.

806
00:59:14,676 --> 00:59:15,416
But now to keep up,

807
00:59:15,496 --> 00:59:17,176
they have to plow all their free cashflow

808
00:59:17,176 --> 00:59:18,476
or a lot of their free cashflow

809
00:59:18,476 --> 00:59:21,056
into just more and more hardware, basically.

810
00:59:22,576 --> 00:59:25,276
And kind of like how the biggest winners

811
00:59:25,276 --> 00:59:26,876
from the blue-collar automation,

812
00:59:26,976 --> 00:59:28,236
like the manufacturing automation,

813
00:59:28,856 --> 00:59:31,376
obviously the Intels and stuff of the world,

814
00:59:31,556 --> 00:59:32,756
they did well.

815
00:59:33,696 --> 00:59:35,936
But it's really like all these corporations

816
00:59:35,936 --> 00:59:37,076
are the ones that benefited.

817
00:59:37,316 --> 00:59:38,836
The ones like the Nikes of the world

818
00:59:38,836 --> 00:59:41,876
could benefit from automation and offshoring

819
00:59:41,876 --> 00:59:43,896
because they could cut their costs

820
00:59:43,896 --> 00:59:47,416
and still sell expensive branded sneakers.

821
00:59:47,416 --> 00:59:53,776
and I think that the biggest winners actually are individuals and companies that are using AI

822
00:59:53,776 --> 01:00:01,156
to do things more productively so they're finding ways to cut costs or bring things to market they

823
01:00:01,156 --> 01:00:08,736
wouldn't before so I think we have this will have less top level accrual and the good news is I

824
01:00:08,736 --> 01:00:14,336
think there'll be more spread out accrual of the advantages of AI with the really hard part that it's

825
01:00:14,336 --> 01:00:20,576
not even, which is that those that are early to adopt it are disproportionate winners.

826
01:00:20,896 --> 01:00:28,936
And those who get disrupted by it and don't adjust or can't adjust, they're the biggest losers, I think.

827
01:00:30,136 --> 01:00:36,656
Following up on that, just something I've been thinking about and memed about a little bit recently,

828
01:00:36,836 --> 01:00:38,376
because it's the best way to share that information.

829
01:00:38,696 --> 01:00:42,796
This idea that, OK, AI is coming for your computer job, basically.

830
01:00:42,796 --> 01:00:47,576
like hey if you're working in front of a computer you're doing any sort of you know uh thought work

831
01:00:47,576 --> 01:00:53,116
basically like look you're you're getting replaced i can't help but think okay where is there actually

832
01:00:53,116 --> 01:00:57,856
out you know we okay that's the private sector but in the public sector we have actually a much

833
01:00:57,856 --> 01:01:03,236
higher concentration of probably i don't want to say useless bureaucrats but useless bureaucrats

834
01:01:03,236 --> 01:01:08,876
like there is a huge amount of blood the governments have never been bigger more more expansive

835
01:01:08,876 --> 01:01:14,896
and more i mean they're just you know they're not very efficient right there's a lot of bloat there

836
01:01:14,896 --> 01:01:19,856
that could very easily be cut automated away without uh you know with probably a very perceptible

837
01:01:19,856 --> 01:01:23,936
improvement actually also a reduction you know might actually be able to balance a budget call

838
01:01:23,936 --> 01:01:29,196
it crazy you know knock on wood i'll you know won't won't hold my breath but how do you think

839
01:01:29,196 --> 01:01:32,436
about that because there's the other part of it that obviously public sector unions which

840
01:01:32,436 --> 01:01:37,056
collectively bargain against the taxpayer and we can that's a different topic but how do you think

841
01:01:37,056 --> 01:01:42,376
about the potential for AI to actually radically shrink government? Is that something that you think

842
01:01:42,376 --> 01:01:46,896
could happen in the relative near term? Or do you think there's going to be so much pushback on it,

843
01:01:46,916 --> 01:01:51,356
especially from the public sector, from these unions that collectively bargain against the

844
01:01:51,356 --> 01:01:57,536
taxpayer, that it's going to perhaps be a lot slower to be affected than the private sector is

845
01:01:57,536 --> 01:02:00,836
just because the private sector has a profit motive. You know, they have to be productive

846
01:02:00,836 --> 01:02:05,836
or they will die. The government doesn't, or it would have already died. I would answer in two

847
01:02:05,836 --> 01:02:08,236
parts, headcount versus budget.

848
01:02:08,656 --> 01:02:10,076
I think those are two very different answers.

849
01:02:10,096 --> 01:02:14,116
I think in terms of headcount, it can impact things quickly.

850
01:02:15,136 --> 01:02:17,636
Not that I think you'll see mass firings, but I think the combination of what

851
01:02:17,636 --> 01:02:22,036
we've seen will keep happening, which is you give people like incentives to leave.

852
01:02:22,116 --> 01:02:35,734
You know like hey if you leave now you get a more generous than average severance package And that worked in this past year combined with attrition Like you just kind of say well we don really need that many new people unless you like an AI specialist

853
01:02:35,734 --> 01:02:37,714
or like, you know, we can limit our new buying,

854
01:02:37,934 --> 01:02:40,454
our new hiring, and then let people retire

855
01:02:40,454 --> 01:02:42,454
while also offering people to get out.

856
01:02:42,894 --> 01:02:45,434
So I think it can meaningfully impact headcount

857
01:02:45,434 --> 01:02:46,494
already is pretty quickly.

858
01:02:48,294 --> 01:02:50,034
The part, but the, and this is,

859
01:02:50,174 --> 01:02:53,374
it was the analysis that Sam Callahan and I did on Doge

860
01:02:53,374 --> 01:03:00,274
back in like late 2024 we published it in january 2025 we we called ahead of time why doge would be

861
01:03:00,274 --> 01:03:05,654
so uh ineffective at cutting uh spending uh and like literally on the macro chart it's not you

862
01:03:05,654 --> 01:03:09,914
can't even identify where doge started or ended it's just like two it's like straight line that's

863
01:03:09,914 --> 01:03:13,494
like slightly bigger than the straight line of before in terms of like federal government

864
01:03:13,494 --> 01:03:19,654
expenditures and the reason for that is the biggest like dollar amounts flowing around are

865
01:03:19,654 --> 01:03:21,234
not high headcount things.

866
01:03:21,974 --> 01:03:29,474
The biggest, like Social Security and Medicare, they are like the number of people that the

867
01:03:29,474 --> 01:03:33,954
health and human services employees is actually pretty low in the grand scheme of the federal

868
01:03:33,954 --> 01:03:36,954
government, even though the dollar amounts, it's all these transfer payments and things

869
01:03:36,954 --> 01:03:37,394
like that.

870
01:03:37,934 --> 01:03:41,534
So that's, you could cut headcount all you want.

871
01:03:41,614 --> 01:03:42,454
It's a blip.

872
01:03:43,614 --> 01:03:48,534
The other, the only thing that's like both big in terms of headcount and numbers is the

873
01:03:48,534 --> 01:03:49,314
Department of Defense.

874
01:03:49,654 --> 01:03:56,214
which is also the defense against cutting that is all the bureaucrats, all the politicians in all the jurisdiction,

875
01:03:56,354 --> 01:04:03,174
they say, well, sure, I want to cut spending, but I don't want you to stop making tanks of this type because that's in my district.

876
01:04:03,814 --> 01:04:08,274
Right. And you have 10,000 of those. Right. So everyone defends their own little turf.

877
01:04:08,934 --> 01:04:13,414
And then the last part, I don't have the numbers offhand, but it's like, OK, that last 15 percent,

878
01:04:13,834 --> 01:04:17,134
that's like where almost all the non-military federal employees are.

879
01:04:17,134 --> 01:04:21,134
that's all like your department of transportation or department of thing you never heard of or

880
01:04:21,134 --> 01:04:26,694
department of whatever and it's like a 15 of the budget but like most of the headcount is like in

881
01:04:26,694 --> 01:04:33,754
those places and it's like you could you could cut headcount in half and you know especially when you

882
01:04:33,754 --> 01:04:39,354
count their their property the other things they do you might cut you know a quarter or a third of

883
01:04:39,354 --> 01:04:45,514
their spending so you're cutting a quarter or a third of the 15 of the pie chart so i would say

884
01:04:45,514 --> 01:04:52,094
there's two different answers. I think AI can substantially reduce headcount, but I think that

885
01:04:52,094 --> 01:04:58,634
voters and politicians, they like transfer payments and they like defending stuff in their

886
01:04:58,634 --> 01:05:04,114
own districts. And that's the part that AI runs into kind of a political wall. And then of course,

887
01:05:04,154 --> 01:05:09,734
is the other thing of just one of the biggest costs, especially in the US is what we eat and

888
01:05:09,734 --> 01:05:15,614
our health because, you know, like Japan can spend way less on healthcare per capita despite

889
01:05:15,614 --> 01:05:22,134
living older than we can because of one is how our system is constructed and then two because of

890
01:05:22,134 --> 01:05:27,114
what we eat and we have high levels of, you know, the types of things that eat up a lot of the

891
01:05:27,114 --> 01:05:34,534
healthcare costs. Yeah, total digression, but did you see the RFK Jr. Kid Rock video?

892
01:05:34,534 --> 01:05:39,194
where they're in Kid Rock's gym, RFK Jr.

893
01:05:39,354 --> 01:05:41,314
I think RFK Jr., did you ever watch Arrested Development

894
01:05:41,314 --> 01:05:42,514
back in the day?

895
01:05:42,954 --> 01:05:44,294
I see, I saw some episodes, yeah.

896
01:05:44,814 --> 01:05:47,354
Yeah, there's the guy Tobias in there.

897
01:05:47,434 --> 01:05:48,674
He's what they call a never nude.

898
01:05:48,674 --> 01:05:50,774
Like he's never naked even around himself.

899
01:05:50,914 --> 01:05:52,534
Like he always at least is wearing jean shorts

900
01:05:52,534 --> 01:05:55,214
and RFK Jr. like just always wearing his jeans

901
01:05:55,214 --> 01:05:56,474
wherever he goes reminded me of that.

902
01:05:56,754 --> 01:05:58,614
Total digression, has nothing to do with what we're talking about.

903
01:05:58,694 --> 01:06:03,314
But there's just, wow, what a strange memetic zeitgeist exists right now.

904
01:06:03,314 --> 01:06:04,674
I think it's a new food pyramid for a change.

905
01:06:05,114 --> 01:06:05,734
I do.

906
01:06:05,894 --> 01:06:08,274
I mean, they literally did South Park.

907
01:06:08,394 --> 01:06:09,614
They did the meme.

908
01:06:09,694 --> 01:06:11,574
They just inverted the food pyramid, which is beautiful.

909
01:06:11,894 --> 01:06:14,674
But it's also like, it's just common sense, right?

910
01:06:14,694 --> 01:06:16,794
It's kind of crazy that we let it go this long.

911
01:06:17,014 --> 01:06:17,214
Yeah.

912
01:06:17,394 --> 01:06:17,554
I don't know.

913
01:06:17,554 --> 01:06:19,774
It's like whole nutrient-dense food.

914
01:06:20,734 --> 01:06:21,474
Who would have thought?

915
01:06:21,474 --> 01:06:21,874
Who would have thought?

916
01:06:22,054 --> 01:06:23,074
Yeah, it's crazy.

917
01:06:23,634 --> 01:06:28,754
It's not like the sugar lobbies and corn lobbies and all that could have played any part in

918
01:06:28,754 --> 01:06:30,674
influencing that for a very, very long time.

919
01:06:30,834 --> 01:06:31,534
No, certainly not.

920
01:06:31,534 --> 01:06:39,594
um okay so i maybe want to uh like shift gears a little bit slightly here just being conscious of

921
01:06:39,594 --> 01:06:44,314
your time also because uh you just had an announcement that really has nothing to do with

922
01:06:44,314 --> 01:06:50,714
macro or bitcoin uh directly or any of that but you are now going to be a science fiction author

923
01:06:50,714 --> 01:06:55,954
so how much how much do you want to talk about uh sort of the the premise without without giving

924
01:06:55,954 --> 01:07:02,174
anything away. I was honored to have been an early reader of the book. It is fantastic. And I think

925
01:07:02,174 --> 01:07:07,154
it's going to ignite a lot of people's love for sci-fi again. If like me, you took a break from

926
01:07:07,154 --> 01:07:11,834
these things and it just takes one book to kind of get you back into fiction after having so much

927
01:07:11,834 --> 01:07:15,734
time just reading, you know, nonfiction, nonfiction, you can only read so much Austrian economics,

928
01:07:15,874 --> 01:07:21,794
you know, before you need a break. So yeah, I spent, I started writing it in late, well,

929
01:07:21,794 --> 01:07:27,594
kind of autumn 2024. The premise had been in my head for quite a while, but I kind of finally had

930
01:07:27,594 --> 01:07:34,634
time to put, you know, pen to paper, as it were. And it's called The Stolgard Incident. And it's a

931
01:07:34,634 --> 01:07:42,654
near future sci-fi. So cyberpunk, techno thriller, biopunk type of story. Those are the sub-genres

932
01:07:42,654 --> 01:07:48,754
it would be considered as. So it's not a space opera. And it kind of, you know, extrapolates a

933
01:07:48,754 --> 01:07:53,214
lot of things we talked about here you know kind of a future where ai is more prevalent where

934
01:07:53,214 --> 01:08:00,294
robotics are more prevalent uh where uh kind of disinformation is more prevalent you know with

935
01:08:00,294 --> 01:08:06,934
ai generated content it gets harder to differentiate uh outside of your kind of near orbit like what is

936
01:08:06,934 --> 01:08:12,474
real or what is not real so if aliens land in the white house it's easy to be like no that's that's

937
01:08:12,474 --> 01:08:16,454
fake i don't believe that and it's like you know video is not what it used to be in terms of uh

938
01:08:16,454 --> 01:08:19,754
giving us like credible things of what's happening if we didn't see them ourselves.

939
01:08:20,974 --> 01:08:27,534
And so it's in this kind of more detached digital world where it's still in some ways

940
01:08:27,534 --> 01:08:28,214
looks like us.

941
01:08:28,514 --> 01:08:34,934
Like, you know, I tend to be, I tend to fade the most extreme like changes.

942
01:08:35,114 --> 01:08:38,954
Like the world looks a lot different than it did in the seventies, but it still looks

943
01:08:38,954 --> 01:08:42,794
a lot like the seventies, you know, like the same people still often have the same problems.

944
01:08:42,794 --> 01:08:53,294
And even though like the whole internet is like, you know, obviously a new thing, people, the houses and cars and a lot of other factors, actually, they only change slowly.

945
01:08:53,734 --> 01:08:58,934
So I kind of, I use that kind of as I kind of look forward over the next, you know, 50 plus years.

946
01:08:59,294 --> 01:09:00,674
And so a lot of things are different.

947
01:09:00,794 --> 01:09:01,854
A lot of things are the same.

948
01:09:02,654 --> 01:09:11,954
And it kind of explores, let's see, terrorism in a world where it's hard to know what even happened, you know, because things could be fake.

949
01:09:11,954 --> 01:09:13,374
it explores

950
01:09:13,374 --> 01:09:16,494
an area that we're not getting into a lot

951
01:09:16,494 --> 01:09:18,374
now like now the focus is on

952
01:09:18,374 --> 01:09:20,534
AI but one of the focuses is

953
01:09:20,534 --> 01:09:21,614
on gene editing

954
01:09:21,614 --> 01:09:24,734
and kind of the whole rabbit hole

955
01:09:24,734 --> 01:09:26,574
you know that can be opened up

956
01:09:26,574 --> 01:09:28,394
ethics wise and

957
01:09:28,394 --> 01:09:30,574
otherwise from that avenue

958
01:09:30,574 --> 01:09:32,614
so it's

959
01:09:32,614 --> 01:09:34,214
dark it's violent but it's

960
01:09:34,214 --> 01:09:36,534
it's also very human I think

961
01:09:36,534 --> 01:09:38,294
it is

962
01:09:38,294 --> 01:09:40,654
both dark and violent but human I can

963
01:09:40,654 --> 01:09:47,954
attest to that it was it was a really enjoyable read and i think for people like myself i've talked

964
01:09:47,954 --> 01:09:52,854
with you about this before but i got very much into the path of i used to read a ton of fiction

965
01:09:52,854 --> 01:09:58,374
whether it be sci-fi fantasy whatever it was for most of my life kind of stopped doing that especially

966
01:09:58,374 --> 01:10:02,814
you know uh leading up to starting to go down the bitcoin rabbit hole and then going basically

967
01:10:02,814 --> 01:10:06,694
down like i need to read everything i can about you know money and economics and and all these

968
01:10:06,694 --> 01:10:10,954
things and then it was devon erickson's book which we talked about a little bit just off air

969
01:10:10,954 --> 01:10:16,714
theft of fire that kind of reignited that love for sci-fi where i remembered oh wait you can learn

970
01:10:16,714 --> 01:10:22,034
so much from fiction you don't have to read non-fiction to learn something like fiction is

971
01:10:22,034 --> 01:10:27,394
often the best teacher and so i'm wondering how how did you think about this in terms of like

972
01:10:27,394 --> 01:10:33,274
setting the stage for the future or you know is there uh without giving too much away is there

973
01:10:33,274 --> 01:10:37,194
me you want people to come out of this experience of reading the stoll guard instant with like is

974
01:10:37,194 --> 01:10:42,034
there is there a feeling or a an idea and emotion that you hope that people will have after they

975
01:10:42,034 --> 01:10:46,714
read the book yeah it's a good question and i think um for the first part on kind of the importance

976
01:10:46,714 --> 01:10:50,894
of reading or kind of the cycles we can go through in terms of being interested in reading one of the

977
01:10:50,894 --> 01:10:58,154
advantages of the book still has is that anything that that gets made into a show or movie they tend

978
01:10:58,154 --> 01:11:02,494
to be kind of things that they expect to do well in the mainstream right so it's it's it's kind of

979
01:11:02,494 --> 01:11:06,694
inherently like mid-curve in a way that that's kind of over you know it's obviously there's very

980
01:11:06,694 --> 01:11:11,334
sophisticated movies there's but it's like there's a certain expectation there's a lot of people

981
01:11:11,334 --> 01:11:16,454
involved in it and they need to make a decent amount of money for it to make sense um and the

982
01:11:16,454 --> 01:11:23,094
advantage of a book is that uh you can you can make something that is you know like a little bit

983
01:11:23,094 --> 01:11:30,834
more niche or a little bit more you know complex you could say like you know often a book compared

984
01:11:30,834 --> 01:11:35,454
to the adaptation that gets turned into a two-hour movie, it often has to reduce the

985
01:11:35,454 --> 01:11:36,494
complexity of that work.

986
01:11:36,774 --> 01:11:39,594
And especially the inner feelings of the characters, for example.

987
01:11:39,594 --> 01:11:41,494
That's something that a book is kind of uniquely good at.

988
01:11:42,834 --> 01:11:48,694
And so I think that's still, even in the digital world, I still think books are super valuable

989
01:11:48,694 --> 01:11:50,594
in all of their forms.

990
01:11:50,734 --> 01:11:54,574
So physical books, e-books, audio books, I think those are all kind of still very valuable

991
01:11:54,574 --> 01:11:54,994
things.

992
01:11:54,994 --> 01:12:03,154
I think one of the main themes in the book is that as everything changes, individual choices still matter.

993
01:12:03,874 --> 01:12:15,474
So kind of one of the big questions in the book is, you know, in a world of bureaucracy and AI and virtual reality and, you know, technology in general, like, does an individual matter?

994
01:12:15,674 --> 01:12:16,754
Do human decisions matter?

995
01:12:16,754 --> 01:12:21,574
and kind of one of the themes is that human relationships are one of the things that you

996
01:12:21,574 --> 01:12:28,894
can kind of grab onto when everything else feels uncertain or too big or so far removed from

997
01:12:28,894 --> 01:12:35,994
yourself so there's kind of a kind of a virtuous aspect that that comes through i think and i think

998
01:12:35,994 --> 01:12:42,234
that i think you know i a lot of the world just kind of tends trends toward nihilism lately you

999
01:12:42,234 --> 01:12:45,274
People are like, okay, so we've had all these financial crises.

1000
01:12:45,854 --> 01:12:46,694
Our money's broken.

1001
01:12:47,574 --> 01:12:49,234
AI is going to take all of our jobs.

1002
01:12:50,354 --> 01:12:52,794
Our leaders lie to us and go to war.

1003
01:12:54,374 --> 01:12:58,774
Half of them are apparently pedophiles and vampires, whatever's going on there.

1004
01:13:00,514 --> 01:13:04,394
We live in a world where it can be quantified.

1005
01:13:04,394 --> 01:13:08,154
The percentage of people that used to say, I trust Congress.

1006
01:13:08,874 --> 01:13:11,754
If you're international, I trust parliament or whatever.

1007
01:13:11,754 --> 01:13:37,734
I trust, you know, the entities in charge. I trust corporations. I trust the media. That is all, you know, deteriorated for decades. Our institutions have deteriorated. Things that we built, things that like our grandfathers and great grandfathers built, you know, in a prior cycle are just kind of unfit for the modern time. They've kind of had institutional rot. They've been captured by bad incentives. It's kind of the later stages of them.

1008
01:13:37,734 --> 01:13:44,594
um and so and you know then people turn to just like gambling you know in its myriad forms um

1009
01:13:44,594 --> 01:13:51,974
and just kind of like ethical nihilism in a way or machiavellianism and kind of the the book is in

1010
01:13:51,974 --> 01:13:57,594
that kind of setting where it's not dystopian it's not some like horribly dystopian world it's

1011
01:13:57,594 --> 01:14:02,454
kind of just like a a further out version of our world there's there's good and bad in that world

1012
01:14:02,454 --> 01:14:06,054
and and there are people trying to do the right thing and a lot of people doing the wrong thing

1013
01:14:06,054 --> 01:14:18,874
But it kind of says like in that in that world, it's like people kind of pushing back against the tide of nihilism and saying, well, maybe one person, you know, caring can can matter.

1014
01:14:20,694 --> 01:14:24,474
Yeah. And again, I enjoyed the heck out of reading it.

1015
01:14:24,574 --> 01:14:29,414
I can we can also probably disclose on the audio book side is now an appropriate time to do that.

1016
01:14:29,414 --> 01:14:34,554
So Carl and I are very honored to be narrating your audio book for the Stolgardt instant.

1017
01:14:34,554 --> 01:14:36,274
It is in the works right now.

1018
01:14:36,374 --> 01:14:37,714
We're super stoked about it.

1019
01:14:37,814 --> 01:14:43,334
I'm glad that it's not just me doing it or just any single male narrator,

1020
01:14:43,474 --> 01:14:46,154
because there's a huge cast of characters also.

1021
01:14:46,434 --> 01:14:48,294
It's a massive cast of characters.

1022
01:14:48,434 --> 01:14:49,794
There's a lot of complexity to it.

1023
01:14:50,754 --> 01:14:53,834
I very much enjoy also, again, I don't want to give too much away here,

1024
01:14:53,874 --> 01:14:57,794
but I enjoy the way that things hop around, let's just say.

1025
01:14:57,974 --> 01:15:01,834
I know some people may not enjoy that particular style.

1026
01:15:01,834 --> 01:15:08,594
I've always found that's one of the best ways to tell a story, you know, is to sort of give these different perspectives from sort of different times.

1027
01:15:08,734 --> 01:15:10,594
But again, don't want to get too much into that.

1028
01:15:10,634 --> 01:15:14,654
Just want to say I really love that about the book because it makes everything come together really well.

1029
01:15:15,254 --> 01:15:17,014
There are some twists and turns in there.

1030
01:15:17,294 --> 01:15:20,994
When can people actually get their hands on the physical copy of this?

1031
01:15:21,734 --> 01:15:25,554
So we expect publication by the second half of March.

1032
01:15:25,734 --> 01:15:27,494
The exact date is not known yet.

1033
01:15:27,534 --> 01:15:29,074
We're still doing kind of production tests.

1034
01:15:29,074 --> 01:15:32,654
but it looks like late March it'll be available.

1035
01:15:34,034 --> 01:15:35,274
And the cool thing about audiobooks is,

1036
01:15:35,414 --> 01:15:37,614
I mean, that's a rapidly growing market.

1037
01:15:38,954 --> 01:15:41,534
And this goes back to technology and productivity.

1038
01:15:41,714 --> 01:15:44,074
So it used to be that when people bought audiobooks,

1039
01:15:44,714 --> 01:15:46,974
it'd be on like literally like a bunch of CDs

1040
01:15:46,974 --> 01:15:47,994
or a bunch of tape.

1041
01:15:48,114 --> 01:15:49,574
Well, before then it was like a bunch of cassettes.

1042
01:15:49,994 --> 01:15:51,414
So audiobooks were very expensive.

1043
01:15:51,754 --> 01:15:53,614
And so, for example, like libraries would buy them

1044
01:15:53,614 --> 01:15:54,694
and people would rent them out

1045
01:15:54,694 --> 01:15:57,034
because it'd be like only like fairly wealthy people

1046
01:15:57,034 --> 01:16:03,234
could just regularly buy and own multiple audiobooks. And then as, you know, as we all

1047
01:16:03,234 --> 01:16:08,994
got smartphones and as we, you know, it just made the distribution of audiobooks way more efficient.

1048
01:16:09,634 --> 01:16:13,234
And so rather, they used to be kind of like an afterthought that you only, only like super

1049
01:16:13,234 --> 01:16:20,294
popular books could have. And now it's becoming more standard. But then as it becomes a larger

1050
01:16:20,294 --> 01:16:24,154
percentage, I think there's, it's good that there's more quality being focused on them.

1051
01:16:24,154 --> 01:16:28,374
there are some that are doing like full cast productions which have their own pros and cons

1052
01:16:28,374 --> 01:16:33,254
and one of the things i really like about what we're putting together is that you know with both

1053
01:16:33,254 --> 01:16:38,834
you and carla involved uh we've got a bigger range of voices than is normally available

1054
01:16:38,834 --> 01:16:47,134
um and it's kind of full like dual narration uh so you know basically in any given chapter

1055
01:16:47,134 --> 01:16:51,694
and not just one of you reading one chapter one of you reading another chapter it's like actual

1056
01:16:51,694 --> 01:16:54,274
both you were involved in basically every chapter,

1057
01:16:54,854 --> 01:16:57,094
which I think is, it adds something special.

1058
01:16:58,274 --> 01:17:00,294
We're having a lot of fun with it too.

1059
01:17:00,474 --> 01:17:01,994
Very honored to be a part of this.

1060
01:17:02,054 --> 01:17:04,554
And again, it's just a darn good book.

1061
01:17:04,714 --> 01:17:06,094
And one of the things I like, Glenn,

1062
01:17:06,154 --> 01:17:08,434
you talked about this idea of, okay,

1063
01:17:08,474 --> 01:17:10,274
people often maybe overestimate

1064
01:17:10,274 --> 01:17:12,274
how different things will look in the future.

1065
01:17:12,734 --> 01:17:15,214
And that's kind of a recurring theme, right?

1066
01:17:15,234 --> 01:17:17,354
It's like things change, yes, things change drastically,

1067
01:17:17,614 --> 01:17:20,474
but how much does the core of what we recognize

1068
01:17:20,474 --> 01:17:21,254
stay the same?

1069
01:17:21,254 --> 01:17:23,734
Like you'd recognize, you know, you're in America in the 70s.

1070
01:17:23,734 --> 01:17:26,454
You're going to recognize it still as America if you went back in time, right?

1071
01:17:26,954 --> 01:17:31,494
You know, the idea being you go forward a little bit in America, like you're still going to recognize it as America.

1072
01:17:31,554 --> 01:17:32,734
And I think that's a difficult thing.

1073
01:17:32,854 --> 01:17:38,714
Sometimes we want to assume that things are going to change more, either for the better or the worse than they actually do.

1074
01:17:39,214 --> 01:17:50,714
But one of the things I loved was just your incorporation, again, won't give too much weight, at a high level of just things like cryptography, of, you know, encryption services, of, you know, cryptographically signing things,

1075
01:17:50,714 --> 01:17:55,614
becoming more commonplace little things like that that i think add this realism where if you're on

1076
01:17:55,614 --> 01:18:00,094
the cutting edge of those things today you see where they're going and that makes a ton of sense

1077
01:18:00,094 --> 01:18:04,054
but for people that maybe aren't it might give them a little bit more pause to think and actually

1078
01:18:04,054 --> 01:18:09,894
evaluate what is currently available to them right now was that sort of a in any way a goal with it

1079
01:18:09,894 --> 01:18:14,094
or was it just to kind of hey let's let's put these things in there because it makes sense and

1080
01:18:14,094 --> 01:18:19,534
that's where i actually think the future is heading it's a little bit of both uh you know i wanted i

1081
01:18:19,534 --> 01:18:23,234
I mean, I wanted Bitcoin to show up and I wanted Nostra to show up.

1082
01:18:23,814 --> 01:18:27,294
And I had Nostra show up instead of calling it Nostra.

1083
01:18:27,434 --> 01:18:30,434
It's like because that's, you know, we don't really refer to like SMTP.

1084
01:18:31,814 --> 01:18:38,694
But Nostra-like technology shows up, which is that there's people that have continuous identities that are key-based rather than account-based.

1085
01:18:40,374 --> 01:18:47,334
And I also wanted to somewhat explore the idea of kind of edge-level verification, which is in a world that we just talked about.

1086
01:18:47,334 --> 01:18:52,274
if you could just make AI videos that are like super convincing all the time and you want to

1087
01:18:52,274 --> 01:18:59,534
know if something happened, if like the camera that like, you know, took that video, you know,

1088
01:18:59,594 --> 01:19:05,294
cryptographically signs it and then there's a way to verify the supply chain or an organization you

1089
01:19:05,294 --> 01:19:09,774
trust that says, OK, these are our cameras and these are signed by, you know, it's not like 100%

1090
01:19:09,774 --> 01:19:14,414
foolproof, but there are layers of evidence you can put in that kind of verify that, you know,

1091
01:19:14,414 --> 01:19:16,754
at least from the path from there to here,

1092
01:19:16,994 --> 01:19:18,554
it could not have been tampered with.

1093
01:19:19,354 --> 01:19:21,134
It explores that a little bit.

1094
01:19:21,754 --> 01:19:23,894
And for the most part with the technology in the book,

1095
01:19:23,934 --> 01:19:25,714
I would try to be realistic where possible.

1096
01:19:25,854 --> 01:19:27,674
There are a couple of fantastical things I put in

1097
01:19:27,674 --> 01:19:28,574
because they're cool.

1098
01:19:29,854 --> 01:19:32,114
But there are other things that I was, you know,

1099
01:19:32,154 --> 01:19:35,294
I was like, okay, what is a reasonable extrapolation of this?

1100
01:19:35,714 --> 01:19:37,754
What bottlenecks hit first?

1101
01:19:38,434 --> 01:19:40,434
Because, you know, I have an engineering background.

1102
01:19:40,434 --> 01:19:43,134
I want to try to make things that can be realistic.

1103
01:19:43,134 --> 01:19:47,734
I want to make realistic, you know, I'm not committing to like hard science per se, but

1104
01:19:47,734 --> 01:19:49,634
it's like, I want to make things realistic where possible.

1105
01:19:50,114 --> 01:19:52,734
And then there are things it's like, what ifs?

1106
01:19:52,734 --> 01:19:58,014
So like, for example, historically, it's been VR has been very slow to catch on because

1107
01:19:58,014 --> 01:20:01,514
it's actually, it's quite complex, you know, putting all the processing power into something

1108
01:20:01,514 --> 01:20:05,254
that's like lightweight and wearable is way harder than just having it on your desk, for

1109
01:20:05,254 --> 01:20:05,594
example.

1110
01:20:06,634 --> 01:20:11,154
And then also anything that's like affecting your senses, there's all these limitations.

1111
01:20:11,154 --> 01:20:18,794
and it's like i don't know when we're gonna crack that complexity but i'd like the idea of exploring

1112
01:20:18,794 --> 01:20:24,254
how vr would impact people so it's like okay we we assume that some technologies catch on and we

1113
01:20:24,254 --> 01:20:30,674
have a environment where vr is more prevalent and what does that do to a society um so yeah

1114
01:20:30,674 --> 01:20:35,874
some technologies i try to be pretty um like concise with and say okay this is actually what

1115
01:20:35,874 --> 01:20:39,874
i think will happen and other ones it's like well what if this happened and is it reasonable and can

1116
01:20:39,874 --> 01:20:45,654
we can make it a reasonable part of this world it's a good blend of that i mean and elements of

1117
01:20:45,654 --> 01:20:50,354
it are very much like i would say hard sci-fi in a lot of ways you know there's different like

1118
01:20:50,354 --> 01:20:55,214
classifications for how people say like no this is officially hard sci-fi this isn't but ultimately

1119
01:20:55,214 --> 01:21:01,754
like it's a great story i encourage people to go out there and to get a copy of it did you you

1120
01:21:01,754 --> 01:21:09,634
self-published correct uh yes um and basically when you when you kind of already have a

1121
01:21:09,634 --> 01:21:17,294
media arm and you already have like a you know a company entity uh the benefits from traditional

1122
01:21:17,294 --> 01:21:24,934
publishing are just weaker um with broken money i got offers uh to traditionally publish it um

1123
01:21:24,934 --> 01:21:28,974
but i wanted it i mean i wanted to be a 500 page book so i want to complete control over it

1124
01:21:28,974 --> 01:21:36,254
um so we actually just self-published that one uh and this one uh i explored uh potentially doing

1125
01:21:36,254 --> 01:21:40,014
traditional publishing when you have a fairly large audience you generally have a better chance

1126
01:21:40,014 --> 01:21:46,334
of obviously making that come to happen um but i wanted total control over the project um so yeah

1127
01:21:46,334 --> 01:21:53,154
it's it's published by i would say i would describe it as the resources put into it are on par or

1128
01:21:53,154 --> 01:21:58,134
higher than your typical traditionally published book in terms of like the the number and quality

1129
01:21:58,134 --> 01:22:05,694
of editors uh the the quality of the cover artist uh that worked on it uh any amount of time that

1130
01:22:05,694 --> 01:22:10,174
goes into it from all the parties uh involved i mean the the quality for example the audio

1131
01:22:10,174 --> 01:22:17,294
production uh this has all been taken as as though it is kind of as high as as anyone does for a book

1132
01:22:17,854 --> 01:22:23,854
um while it yeah technically being self-published or you know published by uh my business entity

1133
01:22:24,414 --> 01:22:27,854
right and i think it's also it's sort of a different paradigm like you obviously have a

1134
01:22:27,854 --> 01:22:35,214
massive following online just like you you as a as a person business entities aside you can very much

1135
01:22:35,214 --> 01:22:39,214
move the needle like a huge part of why a lot of people end up doing publishing like aside from

1136
01:22:39,214 --> 01:22:44,734
obviously getting it published uh is just hey we want help promoting this thing but like you can

1137
01:22:44,734 --> 01:22:50,014
send out a tweet or a post on noster and you'll drive massive amounts of traffic to it and i think

1138
01:22:50,014 --> 01:22:54,174
that just that sort of it really puts the uh changes the power dynamics a little bit where

1139
01:22:54,174 --> 01:22:58,894
you're able to have more freedom like that this you know this wouldn't have necessarily been

1140
01:22:58,894 --> 01:23:03,454
possible or feasible you know even a couple you know decade or two decades ago and certainly it's

1141
01:23:03,454 --> 01:23:07,794
It gives you an edge, I think, because you've got that audience.

1142
01:23:07,794 --> 01:23:10,494
And especially, I think, coming from, obviously, you have Broken Money.

1143
01:23:10,494 --> 01:23:13,234
It was a huge success in many languages.

1144
01:23:13,234 --> 01:23:15,454
You're a very well-known person.

1145
01:23:15,454 --> 01:23:19,954
And now people get to see sort of this other side, like this sci-fi Lin, which

1146
01:23:19,992 --> 01:23:23,652
I just love, can I ask, when you posted about it on Noster,

1147
01:23:23,812 --> 01:23:25,632
I forget exactly when,

1148
01:23:26,012 --> 01:23:28,092
had you already started writing at that point

1149
01:23:28,092 --> 01:23:30,932
when you basically said, hey, should I take the next year

1150
01:23:30,932 --> 01:23:32,252
and write a sci-fi book?

1151
01:23:32,292 --> 01:23:33,632
Had you already begun writing,

1152
01:23:33,772 --> 01:23:35,612
or were you still just in the ideation phase?

1153
01:23:36,432 --> 01:23:38,492
I had started dabbling in writing,

1154
01:23:38,772 --> 01:23:40,312
but wasn't sure if I was going to be able to stick with it.

1155
01:23:41,092 --> 01:23:46,412
The story itself, I mean, the seeds of it go back 15 years or more.

1156
01:23:46,412 --> 01:23:53,072
and the the the kind of the final story itself goes back probably about a decade or more um

1157
01:23:53,072 --> 01:23:57,292
and so i had most of the story written even like the opening of the first chapter

1158
01:23:57,292 --> 01:24:03,312
uh and parts of the climax like for as a as a writing just kind of experiment i wrote chunks

1159
01:24:03,312 --> 01:24:07,692
of those maybe eight years ago just like literally a couple pages here and there right so technically

1160
01:24:07,692 --> 01:24:13,392
you know first pen to paper was was like a decade ago um but i mean we're talking like one percent

1161
01:24:13,392 --> 01:24:17,932
of the book, right? So it's like a, like sections of the opening and ending just to kind of,

1162
01:24:18,732 --> 01:24:25,372
cause one, for me, the biggest bottleneck was getting good at fiction prose. Um, cause I already

1163
01:24:25,372 --> 01:24:42,884
had kind of an idea for story uh and characters and things like that but actually taking all my nonfiction prose and converting it to fiction prose Uh and I will never up the M despite the AIs coming for it But building my fiction pros took time especially you know

1164
01:24:42,924 --> 01:24:46,384
if you try to do everything, you're not really good at anything, right? So it's like I had,

1165
01:24:46,764 --> 01:24:49,424
there were many times I thought about writing this and I always just figured I wouldn't be

1166
01:24:49,424 --> 01:24:53,744
going to do it until I'm like done with my finance career, right? But in 2024,

1167
01:24:53,744 --> 01:25:01,084
um i had more time on average uh my husband was actually he had to spend longer than we often go

1168
01:25:01,084 --> 01:25:06,044
back and forth between the u.s and egypt he had to spend extra time in egypt due to like a big like

1169
01:25:06,044 --> 01:25:12,884
house construction project um and i had to come back for multiple reasons uh so it's like i'm

1170
01:25:12,884 --> 01:25:17,964
living like a monk for a period of time and i'm like you know i looked actually into i was like

1171
01:25:17,964 --> 01:25:21,784
should i get like should i lose myself in like a video game or something and i was like i'm not

1172
01:25:21,784 --> 01:25:25,104
really feeling it i'm like well you know what maybe it's time to write the book so i started

1173
01:25:25,104 --> 01:25:29,344
dabbling in it and i just kind of posted on nostril like hey would you guys you know

1174
01:25:29,344 --> 01:25:35,364
should i actually prioritize this and so the first draft was written in about two months

1175
01:25:35,364 --> 01:25:40,464
uh but that was that had like i wouldn't be able to do that again because i had the benefit of this

1176
01:25:40,464 --> 01:26:03,396
i had 80 of the story in my head for like a decade uh but then the the actually the hard part was then all of 2025 really was revising it Multiple beta readers multiple editors my own just kind of combing through it over and over again kind of like tackling the parts that I when I wrote them I like that good enough

1177
01:26:03,576 --> 01:26:09,176
And I'm like, no, no, I want to, how do I like really, this is still like a friction point that I want to make sure is better.

1178
01:26:09,176 --> 01:26:14,316
where I still have this hang up and really kind of carving it into at least the best story I can

1179
01:26:14,316 --> 01:26:18,536
make. You know, we'll see how people receive it. But it's, you know, I was like, I don't want to

1180
01:26:18,536 --> 01:26:24,656
put it out until it's the best thing that I feel like I can do at this time. Speaking of video

1181
01:26:24,656 --> 01:26:29,656
games, I've said this to you before, but I think it would make a sweet video game or, you know,

1182
01:26:29,736 --> 01:26:35,616
later perhaps either animated or real people series. And I think it has that kind of potential.

1183
01:26:35,616 --> 01:26:38,516
I think it's a really unique story.

1184
01:26:38,656 --> 01:26:40,696
I haven't read anything quite like it.

1185
01:26:41,556 --> 01:26:44,856
And, yeah, I think you figured out the fiction prose, too, clearly,

1186
01:26:45,056 --> 01:26:46,936
because it reads very well.

1187
01:26:47,296 --> 01:26:50,576
But, yeah, I'm excited for folks to get their hands on it at the end of the day.

1188
01:26:51,076 --> 01:26:53,316
I want to be conscious of your time here because we've run a little over,

1189
01:26:53,416 --> 01:26:54,856
and I may be having connection issues.

1190
01:26:54,956 --> 01:26:56,356
I don't know if it's me or if it's you.

1191
01:26:57,736 --> 01:26:59,016
But let me see here.

1192
01:27:00,496 --> 01:27:11,688
Do you still have me Yep I here I think this is on my side right now Maybe I just say Lynn by way of wrapping up so I get you out of here just a little bit late

1193
01:27:11,848 --> 01:27:15,808
where do you want to send folks to either pre-order, find out more about the book, etc.,

1194
01:27:15,808 --> 01:27:18,148
or just where they can find your other work?

1195
01:27:19,528 --> 01:27:22,068
People can, if they go to lynnaldon.com, I have a free newsletter.

1196
01:27:22,908 --> 01:27:27,088
At or around when the book comes out, I'll have a newsletter also just kind of announcing it.

1197
01:27:27,088 --> 01:27:28,628
people will be able to find it.

1198
01:27:28,928 --> 01:27:31,128
I'll definitely announce it on Noster and X

1199
01:27:31,128 --> 01:27:32,208
when it's available.

1200
01:27:32,328 --> 01:27:33,288
So as long as people follow me

1201
01:27:33,288 --> 01:27:34,308
one of those two places,

1202
01:27:34,528 --> 01:27:36,028
they'll still be making noise about it

1203
01:27:36,028 --> 01:27:37,128
once it's available.

1204
01:27:38,228 --> 01:27:38,728
Love it.

1205
01:27:38,768 --> 01:27:40,708
And I love too that you gave your first

1206
01:27:40,708 --> 01:27:42,768
kind of teaser of this book,

1207
01:27:42,828 --> 01:27:44,208
actually posting the cover and everything.

1208
01:27:44,268 --> 01:27:45,128
You did that on Noster.

1209
01:27:45,328 --> 01:27:47,328
So I thought that was excellent.

1210
01:27:47,508 --> 01:27:48,708
And it's a great reminder

1211
01:27:48,708 --> 01:27:50,928
that if folks want to hear about cool stuff first,

1212
01:27:51,368 --> 01:27:52,588
Noster is a great place to do that,

1213
01:27:52,648 --> 01:27:54,068
at least from the subset of people

1214
01:27:54,068 --> 01:27:56,028
who are using Noster actively right now.

1215
01:27:56,868 --> 01:27:57,008
Yeah.

1216
01:27:57,088 --> 01:27:57,608
Absolutely.

1217
01:27:58,508 --> 01:27:58,748
All right.

1218
01:27:58,788 --> 01:28:00,108
Well, Lynn, thank you so much.

1219
01:28:00,188 --> 01:28:01,848
It is great picking your brain as always.

1220
01:28:02,048 --> 01:28:06,488
Excited for people to read the book and then shortly after listen to the audio book as

1221
01:28:06,488 --> 01:28:06,808
well.

1222
01:28:07,228 --> 01:28:08,128
Really excited for it.

1223
01:28:08,148 --> 01:28:09,148
And thank you for sharing your time.

1224
01:28:09,208 --> 01:28:10,548
This was a pleasure as always.

1225
01:28:11,268 --> 01:28:11,888
Thanks for having me.

1226
01:28:11,968 --> 01:28:12,728
Always happy to be here.

1227
01:28:13,868 --> 01:28:15,948
And thank you to everybody who joined in the Noster livestream.

1228
01:28:16,188 --> 01:28:17,768
I appreciate all of you and all of your zaps.

1229
01:28:17,988 --> 01:28:18,468
Thank you, guys.