These things have blow-off tops, right?
And it's only after a blow-off top in terms of chaos
and just the table being flipped over.
Are you able to have new lines in the sand
for another 80 years of civilization to grow on top of it?
We're gonna live through it.
We're gonna live through the transition of the dollar,
whatever that means.
We haven't seen the end of this fourth turning.
There's no way.
Bitcoin is like here, it's end of the world tech, right?
These corporates, they don't have the balls, dude.
They don't have the testicular fortitude to ride it out.
The greatest hope for Bitcoin is that it separates money from state.
And if it separates money from state, every state is going to need some Bitcoin.
Nothing can stop an idea whose time has come.
All the pieces just line up together with such a beautiful, simple design that worked.
It will be there when people need it.
And then we'll see the next great wave of adoption when shit hits the fan again.
Rob Wallace, Robert Wallace.
You sound like a Scottish warlord.
I think I come from a line of them, hopefully.
That's what I tell myself, at least, right?
Yeah, there we go.
Well, William Wallace and Robert Bruce, right?
This is why my brain is going there, because you split the difference with both of them.
It's kind of like 50% Scottish in me.
I'm like most Americans. I'm a dirty mutt. My wife is a purebred Balkan, like literally,
uh, like it's amazing. Just, you know, running with thoroughbred. I am like the mangy mutt,
but it has its benefits. I think I'm mainly the product of like generations of, uh, you know,
let's just say non-consensual Viking, uh, extramarital affairs. Like it's like Scandinavian
and then a bunch of British Isles, mostly Scottish. So like, you know, you put the pieces
together, it usually means one thing.
I'm right there with you on the
dad's side. English, Scottish,
Norwegian, mom's
side, heavily Polish.
So, got that Slavic
as well. Won't hold that against you.
Right, dude. We're going to have a greater GDP
per capita than Japan soon.
So, Poland's on the rise.
Poland has actually been crushing it.
Because Poland has remained
very based. And I think this is
what I've told people a lot in terms of Eastern
Europe broadly.
not just Poland specifically, Poland's a really interesting case too. If you just like,
we look at also, you've seen the chart like Venezuela versus Poland. It's like socialism
versus not socialism. Like which one works, you know? But more broadly, I think Eastern Europeans
have this incredible kind of natural immune system against wokeism and just socialist communist
bullshit. Cause it's like, they're like, we've seen this movie before. We literally lived it.
Like we had friends, family who died because of it. We know this. We've seen the movie before,
we're not doing it again we're not falling for this meanwhile western europe and much and much
of just the western world in general is like oh yeah well let's give this a try what's the worst
that could happen like it's not like we've tried this many many many many times before like maybe
this time it'll work great it's tiresome but i think eastern europe is rising i think western
europe is falling and it's going to widen at least that's my opinion absolutely uh from even even
with what's going on in Ukraine, I mean, the devs are still coming out of Ukraine, right? I mean,
like they've got an immense amount of talent and they know how to work hard. And of course,
they've learned from the horrors of the not too distant past. And because of that, they have a
bright future ahead of them. Whereas the Western Europe needs to go through all and learn those
lessons, which they are rather quickly, right? It's happening right now for them. And especially
we'll see as they have decimated their own energy infrastructure, particularly Germany,
how they are going to fare with this situation we got going on now.
Germany is such a painful thing to watch.
Like, let's leave aside them selling how much,
it was like 50,000 Bitcoin that they sold at like 56K of memory,
or maybe it was 58K, maybe they were very good at the prophecy level,
if I remember correctly.
Of course it was, you know, 58K gang remains undefeated.
I still think that's the bottom, this cycle, as a sidebar.
I still think it's 58K.
But, I mean, leaving aside that massive blunder,
which will be looked back on and written about in the history books or by the history AI scholars.
Just like the whole decommission, like let's decommission all our nuclear power plants to, you know, stop boiling the oceans or something.
It's like you're turning off the cleanest form of energy humans have figured out how to use yet in favor of firing up more coal plants and being more dependent on Russian LNG.
Yeah.
Okay.
Like it's insane, man.
We live in an upside down Orwellian world in so many ways.
100%.
And what's also crazy is that North Street pipeline was blown up, right?
And they haven't gone for anybody's head for that.
It wasn't the Russians, because if it was the Russians, we would have heard about it, right?
So you look at this whole entire energy strategy that America possibly has been playing since 2022 when that happened.
I mean, are we making them more dependent on us for our LNG since then?
I mean, that's a really big question.
And do you think that there's 5D chess going on right now with this whole global energy situation and the Strait of Hormuz?
Or is this just a giant boondoggle that we've got ourselves in and we have no way out of?
Oh, it's so hard to know.
You know, what's that old saying?
Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence.
And I usually operate with that heuristic when dealing with anything the government is doing, anything any governments are doing.
But then it's important to remember that while broadly governments may be incredibly inept, incredibly inefficient, incredibly bureaucratically bloated, right, and not able to actually get things done,
there are elements in every government which are incredibly efficient, incredibly effective, and incredibly long-term with their thinking.
like you look like you look at the you know if you compared like the the general let's say the
dmv part of the u.s government versus like the u.s military you know the dmv versus seal team six
right that's maybe that's like take the ends of the spectrum right like seal team six is a fucking
hyper elite group of fighting machines the likes of which the world has never seen the dmv is like
the slop of the slop of the slop of the slop of the slop you know and so it's like you got to
remember my point here being it's like I want to attribute a lot of things just to general
incompetence but then I remind myself hmm they're not all incompetent and incompetence is a great
foil for a great you know a great shield a great excuse a great cover for the hyper competent
getting exactly what they want so I think a lot of this is pretty contrived yeah you know what I
mean, that's that's my take. I don't know what yours is. I mean, Simon Dixon has really been
doing the rounds recently on the Bitcoin podcast, and he attributes all this to the financial
industrial complex. Right. And the fact that they want to take America down from its role as the
hegemon and make it a regional power and sort of create a series of regional powers around the
world in which they can more easily control. Because if you do have a top dog like America,
who is able to self-direct and put its great resources to its own benefit,
that is, I guess, a challenge to transnational power.
So it would make sense.
I mean, it does seem as if we've been on this path for 25 years plus now, right?
I mean, I think we're both around the same age
and had our youth sort of stained by 9-11, right?
Like that happened when we were kids,
and it's been a straight trajectory sort of sloping downwards since then.
in many ways. And it can't be there. There are players, a part of this government who outlasts,
of course, presidents. And it does seem as if they are steering the ship in a certain direction for
at least the last quarter century. Yeah, it's it's hard not to be conspiratorial these days,
Rob, because all of the conspiracy theories have turned out to not be conspiracy theories at all.
Like, you know, yesterday's conspiracy theory is just tomorrow's headline. Right. And I feel like
that really started accelerating with COVID.
And honestly, none of this,
I think none of the uncovering,
let me take a step back.
We're both in, let's call it new media,
independent media, right?
For those who don't know,
you're a founder, you run Bitcoin News,
probably fastest growing or biggest,
you know, we were talking about this before,
like fastest acceleration, arguably,
non-Bitcoin podcast related, of course,
you know, but Bitcoin News related.
You guys have an incredible trajectory.
I want to get into that later,
but we're in new media, right? We're in new media and new media has just completely decimated
legacy media. You look at, you look at viewership numbers, even during, you know, when people were
actually like watching legacy news more still during COVID, just because it's what they were
used to more. Even at that time, it was only a couple of years ago, but there were high,
a lot higher numbers at that time. They've just dropped off a cliff. Like I'm pretty sure 50%
of CNN's viewers are probably just captives in airports, right? It's like they didn't choose to
have that monitor on, but they've completely lost the control of the narrative. And that's allowed
for so many, you know, truthful narratives to actually find their way in. It's no longer a
one-to-many, one-way broadcast. It's a many-to-many, two-way dialogue. And I think that's completely
changed the, let's say the power calculus when it comes to, you know, Hey, look, we are not going to
put up with the bullshit that you're spouting right now. We know it's crap. And I'm just going
to go ahead and record a live stream on my phone where I'm, uh, have, you know, I'm mildly autistic.
I'm going to go through and do a bunch of research that the media didn't bother to do. I'm going to
break this down. Exactly. I'm going to uncover all this stuff. Like citizen journalists have
changed the game. And I don't think the genie goes back in the bottle. I think maybe the only
thing that hurts that is the prevalence of AI slop and just people being tired of wading through it.
But I'd love your opinion on this. My thought is that in the coming years and decades,
as AI slop proliferates more and more and more, it's already like the amount of AI generated
content is larger than the amount of human generated by like quite a lot already. But
as this proliferates more and more, I think reputation, proof of personness, proof of work
becomes exponentially more valuable.
It's already valuable.
I think it becomes even more so.
I'd love your opinion, though, in like a hyper AI world is like,
does the person matter or does it just become irrelevant?
I think the person matters to the people that matter.
You're going to have a lot of a lot of average people.
I'm sorry to say, but they won't be able to tell the difference
between an AI person and an actual person.
and they'll be uncaring as to consuming content from either.
Whereas if you're slightly more educated or intelligent,
I mean, even now, if you read something that's AI written, right,
like something, a flag will go off in your head and you're like,
oh, do I want to read any further?
And sometimes you're like, okay, this is actually has some valuable information and whatnot,
but you can, it has a bit of a stench and you know it from the get-go.
So I completely agree with you that I think everyone right now,
we don't really know what the job market is going to look like
in terms of AI within the next five to 10 years.
But one thing you can do is start a personal brand,
you know, as ridiculous as that sounds,
everybody should have their own Bitcoin podcast.
You know, I think you're a big proponent of that.
But it's because you want to put your voice out there, right?
And you don't want to just pop up in a couple of years
once AIs outnumber us 10 to 1 on all these social platforms.
You want to start getting and making your connections too
because the amount of trust is going to take
in order to make a new online friend
for anybody who's discerning,
the barriers are gonna be so much higher
than they are right now.
Again, we're in a bear market right now.
Bitcoiners are looking for stuff to talk about
and to share.
And so you can go out there
and you can make waves right now.
It's an opportunity.
Try something new.
Look what Julian Figueroa did this last year
with his YouTube channel.
Absolutely insane.
And he is connecting to an audience
that is completely brand new,
that had never been exposed to this type of content,
before and he's making it relatable, enjoyable and easy to consume. So there is an opportunity
right now. And I do think that if you wait, even if you don't want to put yourself out there,
even you can even put yourself out there as a nim right now. And I think you'll be much
further ahead than others who are too scared to in a couple of years.
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I couldn't agree more. Yeah, shout out to Julian.
I just checked his YouTube and the exit manual.
For those that aren't familiar, you should go and subscribe to it.
He's been, Julian has been doing an incredible job with content creation for a long, long time.
Like really, he's been reaching outside of the echo chamber for a long time, even on Instagram.
Like it's mostly shitcoin shills on Instagram, right?
Julian's been bringing Bitcoin only signal there, high production value content for a long time.
That gets hundreds of thousands or millions of views.
Really great.
Started Git based with Adam O'Brien and Isa.
That crushed it.
the exit manual struck some other nerve i think and i don't even know if he could have uh i gotta
have him back on it's been too long since he's been on the show i don't even know if he could
have predicted the trajectory because it's been so impressive and it's like 40 videos he's at 41.4
thousand subs uh let's see what else total views 2.25 million so far in like less than a year yeah
Like with 40 videos, that's super impressive, super impressive.
So like, that's the point.
You can just go out and do things.
You can just go out and start a Bitcoin podcast.
And I think you're exactly right, too, about the opportunity at this particular time.
Because we are in sort of this weird bear market.
The vibes are weird.
It's the best time to build, right?
The best time to build is when the hype is low.
You also, you know, as you know, it's like you want to work out some of the kinks when you have less eyeballs on you.
You know what I mean?
Like it's a, it's better, better to work them out early, but I want to do another little
vibe check with you here just because, okay, again, Bitcoin news, you founder, you're running
the thing.
You're like, you're the man you do.
You put out a ton of content.
You guys do a ton of live streams too.
People should go and follow you.
They're not already.
I'll make sure to link everything in the show notes for later.
I want to talk to you have your finger on the pulse better than most by the nature of
your work.
There's a lot of noise out there right now.
There's presumably a lot of signal in between.
what are you finding right now what is like peaking your interest specifically whether it be
you know specifically about bitcoin maybe it's something larger that dovetails into bitcoin
what are you like what are your ears really perking up on that you think okay like this is
the signal amidst all this slop yeah i think there's a lot of cool stuff going on in the
background of course uh just had odell on to ask him about as we were talking about before spark
the new wallet for Primal and they are the wallet for or the infrastructure for a lot of other
wallets happening right now of course wallet of Satoshi as well and so we have Spark we have this
new platform ARK of course and Lightning is the sort of interconnective tissue for for all of them
so with all these different implementations we are going to see Bitcoin payments become easier
and easier. And I am someone who thinks you should not be afraid to spend some Bitcoin,
you know, go out there, get used to it, right? As people who have never made a Bitcoin transaction
before, and I've had Bitcoin for years, there are a lot of them out there. And it's, it's absolutely
insane to me that it could, could be this way, because you have no freedom if it's just sitting
for ever and ever. And you don't have the skills or the comfort level to go out there and use it
need be right it's like when when stuff hits the fan you want to have the muscle memory to be able
to open up a wallet send some bitcoin send a receiver transaction and be able to get on with
your day and not have to fumble or because you know how scary it is the first time you send bitcoin
right like you're double checking you're reading each letter and you want to make sure that you
don't mess up in any way after a while it becomes like second nature so bitcoin is like here it's
it's sort of it's end of the world tech right it's like your transition to a new world tech
And I mean, that's what first got me into it.
I've been sort of, as I think you can tell from the beginning of this conversation, a bit of a conspiracy theorist.
Happy to admit it.
I have been thinking that America might go into a hyperinflationary tailspin since at least 2010, 2011.
Right. That's when I first got wind of all these things.
And I've been thinking in this way.
It's like how best to prepare, how best to get yourself ready for a world that is rapidly changing and you see it more and more every single day.
So Bitcoin needs to go out there and be used. So any new tech that allows that to happen is very nice.
Other big stories that are interesting. I mean, today just came out Coinbase.
You can now use Bitcoin as collateral for a mortgage through Coinbase. Right.
That's pretty huge deal. We've got Morgan Stanley with launching their own Bitcoin ETF.
and they got six seven trillion dollars assets under management They if they tell their clients to put a 2 allocation they have a Bitcoin ETF that is three times the size of BlackRock the most successful Bitcoin or ETF
launch of all time, right? So there's all these things. It's happening now, right? On the highest
scale, on the lowest scale, if you look over at Africa, the amount of just meetups and organizations
that are just popping up all over there, there's a lot of encouraging things. It's just like the,
it's the Bitcoin Twitter, I think, which is having the atrophy right now, whereas there's just so much
good stuff happening everywhere else. There's plenty of reasons to be bullish and excited for
the future. And we're here for a reason. We want to make the world a better place. We think that
fixing the money fixes the world. And if we're able to get the word out and just have one more
person understand that, it could unlock a whole bunch of positive effects for the planet.
Amen to that. Did you say you were, have you been in Bitcoin since like as long as you said you
started learning about hyperinflation? Oh, I was, I wasn't trying to like dox, you know,
just, just curious, like what can you talk a little bit about that? And then maybe just like
at what point you started the Bitcoin news part of your journey, like how far along into your
Bitcoin journey? Yeah. So, I mean, I was studying at Tufts during the great financial crisis. Um,
I remember coming back to my fraternity during the fall of 2008 and seeing Hank Paulson come on TV and say, if we don't give the banks a trillion dollars, there's going to be tanks on the street.
We're going to have to declare martial law.
And that just hit me as a complete lie.
I knew something was horribly fishy, and it just sank to the bottom of my stomach, knowing that I'm being lied to right now.
We're all being lied to, and we're all being robbed because that's our money they're going to take to pay those bankers.
And of course, that was the time of Ron Paul and the Fed.
And of course, not long after that was Occupy Wall Street.
So there was that there's a general feeling, the Tea Party of we've been sort of going down the wrong path here since 2001 with 9-11 and the global war on terror.
This is an opportunity for us to turn things around, use this crisis to our benefit, learn about hard money, Austrian economics at that time.
I thought I thought gold and silver were the answer, right?
as a college kid. I didn't have like much money to buy gold and silver with, but I got some silver
coins and I thought, oh, I'm preparing for hyperinflation. I thought hyperinflation was
common, dude. In 2010, I thought it was going to be here by 2012. I was reading a lot of like
poor Stansberry, those newsletters and whatnot. And they had me convinced like this, we were about
to hit the fan. But that didn't happen. That didn't happen. Right. So I was studying Chinese
at the time. I thought I wanted to like work for the government to be a diplomat. And then I went
to China and said, wow, this, this is a country on the rise right now. This is on the come up.
Like the there's cranes everywhere you look, there's entrepreneurship on the lowest to highest
levels. You can really do what you want. And so as a college kid studying abroad there, I decided,
oh, I'm going to stay here. I'm going to stay in China. So I lived in China for four years
in Shanghai. And so started teaching English, had a band, wrote for a magazine, started a YouTube
channel doing comedy stuff. I was the shooter, editor, director for a channel called Donnie Does.
He now works at Barstool. He's been a Barstool since 2016, 2017. But it was like the Borat shtick,
right? Like he was a drunken Bostonian who woke up in China and needed to work his way back. So
we would like, he was a kindergarten teacher. That was our first episode. And so I brought my
Cameron to him teaching kindergarten. He's teaching little kindergartners to teach to say,
Yankees suck. Yankees suck. Right. We had these Chinese kindergartners.
So, I mean, that was amazing. Right. And so I lived in China from 21 to 25. And it was really
it was peak vibes. They had the the Olympics before I was there, but then they had the World's
Fair in Shanghai and people were welcome. This was before Xi Jinping. Then by the time 2014,
or so came, I was like, okay, if I stay here for a couple more years, then I'm just going to like
be stuck in China for forever, right? It's gonna be very hard to acclimate back into America and
get my whole life going over there. So I decided to leave. And it was actually pretty good timing,
because when she took over, that was bad news. One example I like to use is foreigners, like
Shanghai is a huge party city. So there's lots of great bars and clubs. When she took over,
they would send cops into some bars or clubs, take out 10 random foreigners, clip their hair,
test it for drugs. And if it was positive, they'd kick them out of the country.
So it became much less friendly to foreigners. Before, we could do whatever we wanted. We were
throwing party buses. We would just jam like 80 college kids onto a double-decker bus and take
them to like three bars across the city in the night and charge like 50 bucks a head and give
them all panda hats. It was a really fun time and like stuff that you can never get away with in
New York City. And I absolutely loved and relished that opportunity. But I still had in the back of
my mind that like, oh, wow, I knew about inflation and the dollars of scam and all this stuff. And so
I was thinking like, what is going on here? How are they able to keep this whole entire system going?
Came back to New York City in the mid 2010s, started working in advertising and marketing,
doing that stuff. And that's when actually I bought my first Bitcoin in 2016. Went to a
Bitcoin ATM at the Southside Seaport in Manhattan, put in $1,000 and got 2.2 Bitcoin.
But I had no idea what I was doing, right? I had no idea about cold storage or how to properly take
care of your Bitcoin. So I was just walking around with a QR code, a printout from the Bitcoin ATM
in my backpack, right?
And so it was worth a thousand bucks at the time.
So, I mean, it's a decent chunk of change,
but it's nothing too crazy.
But a year later, I was traveling.
I had this QR code in my backpack
in the airport in Las Vegas.
I put my backpack down.
I put $5 in a slot machine,
pulled the lever,
lose the $5,
look down and my backpack was stolen.
So that's my donation to the Bitcoin network,
those 2.2 Bitcoin,
never getting those back.
But that was right as like it started to go parabolic.
It went from a thousand grand or one grand a piece to 20, you know, in that fall.
And it was that made me kind of bitter having that Bitcoin stolen from me.
And so I was like, oh, I don't need Bitcoin, whatever.
So turn my back on it for, I guess, two years there.
And then in 2020, we were locked in our homes.
And I got that feeling in the bottom of my stomach that I had when Hank Paulson went on TV and said,
we need to give the banks a trillion dollars.
And so this time they printed six trillion
to keep the system afloat.
And I just, I knew like none of the principles
had changed from what I'd first learned
a decade before that.
But it's just accelerating, right?
So I was able to get back into Bitcoin during COVID,
join Bitcoin Twitter and have it look back.
I haven't looked back.
That's my origin story.
That is a wild origin story.
first of all i didn't realize it was that permissive pre-xi in china i guess i thought
it was you know by degrees i didn't realize it was that much of a kind of about face yeah man uh
especially like beijing and shanghai like they've always been competing cities and beijing of course
is the government capital and they're more locked down and a little bit more stuffy but
shanghai has always been a party city dude shanghai jazz like in the 20s it was ripping and
roaring uh before that of course opium dens uh it's a huge port and you've got people and sailors
from around the world coming and going and so they everybody likes to have a good time and that city
definitely is on top of the list for that especially back then yeah man it's just wild because like now
from what i've seen if you're uh like you should maybe be very cautious about even bringing your
normal phone as a foreigner into china like probably just maybe get a get a burner for that
you know, but also maybe be careful with the burner because they may be like,
why is this a burner phone? Where's your normal phone? Like, you know, I don't know. I don't know.
Have you been back since? I haven't actually. Last time. My best friend, he, we went there
together and he stayed and he's been there ever since. And so he's, any day now, he should be
having a baby there in China, which is kind of crazy. But a story that we just posted today
is that Hong Kong just issued a new law on March 23rd saying that if you do not give over your
passwords or de-encrypt any device that you bring to Hong Kong, even if you're just traveling through
it, you can face a year in jail and a hundred thousand Hong Kong dollar fine. So yeah, we said
be careful to bring any hardware wallets if you're traveling to or through Hong Kong right now.
absolutely wild that is a pretty nuts one and it's also it's funny because it's like
look we for those that don't know um at the border like and just generally governments have
such so much scarier tech than you realize and they can clone your phone very very quickly like
they have so many like boy they i mean all they need is your phone number for a lot of these
different softwares and it's like you're fucked like you know and that's not again not even talking
about what they can do at the border. But boy, yeah, that's a that's a tough one. It's like they
just want explicit permission from you basically to fully, you know, run roughshod over you, it seems.
Yeah. And I mean, I mean, I guess I'll divulge a little bit because it might be past the statute
of limitations. But when I was living there, I was under the age of 25. Right. And in order to get a
work visa to live there, you needed to be over 25, have a college degree and like three years of work
experience, all of which I did not have at the time when I was living there. But I did know a
dude and his dad was a big wig in the Chinese government back like decades ago. And he was an
older guy at the time. But yeah, through him, I was able to get a work visa in China pre Xi,
just through connections. And so, I mean, Xi, the president has cracked down so much on this
corruption and this backroom dealing that you used to be able to get away with in China.
And I guess it's for the better, but it's serious business now. I wouldn't try that again these days.
I guess the for you better or for the better part depends on who you talk to, maybe. It is wild how
fast things can change, though. It's a wild, this is a totally just unrelated anecdote, but just
talking about the pace of change and kind of how bad we are as humans at understanding it.
The wife and I decided she'd never seen Hell's Kitchen before, you know, with Gordon Ramsay. So
we went back to like a season six or something, I don't know, from 2009. And like, it's not that
long ago. But you look at it and it's like, it's a different world. Even like what they say on the
program, just like, it's a completely different world. And we, it's so easy in the moment to forget
how quickly things can change. Like it's, it's kind of wild. And I guess we're,
we're always just kind of bad at that. Nothing wrong with living in the moment too. Like you
should live in the moment. The moment is all we have, right? But like live in the moment while
respecting the future and remembering the past as well, you know, planning for the future,
remembering the past and, and then trying to experience the moment as much as you can.
I'm not saying in like a degenerate way. I just mean like a be present, you know?
and it's wild i did not know you had such a uh a rich and colorful history and what i love look
this is why i love bitcoin podcasting guys and you too can just bitcoin podcast and learn
fascinating stuff about fascinating people while talking about bitcoin it's a beautiful thing i i
want to ask you too because 2020 for me was when i went down the bitcoin rabbit hole i heard about
it the first time in 2014 buddy of mine was uh utilizing a uh website that some may be familiar
with called the silk road and he's like a finance guy i was an engineering guy so i don't know i
guess he thought like i might know more about computery stuff and he was like hey or have you
heard about this bitcoin bitcoins thing i'm going to get these bitcoins to to you know get this
stuff that i want to get on this website internet website and i was like no like i don't know if
that is nerd anyway back to whatever fiat stuff i was doing just like completely blew it off
2017 during the run-up paid attention again because it was in the news right i was like
oh, I remember, you know, my buddy asking me about this back and then, that's funny.
Is this thing still around? You know, that's not gone yet? That's crazy. Thought it was just for
that website or whatever. Nope, still around, running up to, you know, 17, whatever thousand
dollars or 20,000 or whatever it was. And at that time, I was like, I don't have enough to buy a
full Bitcoin. I can't do that. I'll just get a couple of these Litecoins, you know, but that was
a dumb move. So I'll always have empathy for people who are like, don't understand the whole
satoshi thing you know it's like i didn't understand it right away either you know it's
not necessarily self-evident right you know bias bias is real but then it was 2020 where
honestly like so similar you know i think so similar to many bitcoiners out there who maybe
had heard about bitcoin before at least it was somewhere in the back of their mind whether they
you know got some back in the day lost it whatever or like me ignored it multiple times or just
badly informed didn't take the time 2020 i think was a turning point where people
started waking up at, you know, on mass, either that, or I think it was, you went one of two ways,
right? You either flipped a switch and woke up and started going down the Bitcoin rabbit hole,
going down or many other rabbit holes, or you kind of went deeper into the matrix. You went
more asleep. That's it. Obviously there's some people in the middle too. It wasn't a binary thing,
but I saw a lot of both ends of that spectrum. And, you know, thank God for both you and I,
and probably a lot of people listening to this,
it was going on the, you know, taking the red pill, right?
But if you hadn't already,
like you really took the red pill
and you took the orange pill
and there's no looking back, right?
And I think that's like, I wonder,
I sometimes wonder from,
and I love your perspective on this,
from an adoption standpoint,
we were talking just before the call,
how kind of like retail never really made it here
this cycle, you know?
Maybe they made it here
through the Bitcoin treasury company.
I don't know.
There's different theories on this, right?
if maybe a lot of that frothiness came in through other mechanisms and just never touched spot
Bitcoin as much. But regardless, we didn't really see that retail hype on spot Bitcoin. We just
didn't see it on social media either. It felt more dead than it was during the 2022 bear market.
It just felt weird. What do you think it takes to spark the next wave of just individuals? Not
talking institutions. Sailor is going to be buying no matter what. That man is a beast, right? He's
going to be scooping up as many as he can. He gets it. He's gotten it for a long time. He also ignored
it for a long time. Then he got it. He hasn't looked back. What do you think it takes to wake up
another massive wave of just, you know, fellow humble plebs like you and me?
Well, I think you got to look back. Bitcoin was born out of the great financial crisis, right?
the same, I'm sure Satoshi, whoever he, she, they might be, sort of had that same feeling that I did
when they went on TV and said, we're going to print all this money that we're being lied to.
We need to find a fix for this. And it was born out of that. Another huge adoption boom was,
of course, when Cyprus did the bail-ins, right? 2013. And they said, we're going to take your
money. It's in the bank account. And we're going to give you a 25% haircut. And thank you very much.
have a good day. Well, that can't happen with Bitcoin. And that led to another huge
burst of adoption. And then it really took until 2020 to have that next
crate. I mean, of course, 2017 was number go up, does a lot for getting new people on board.
But in terms of 2020, I do think that you need that sort of negative catalyst, right? That thing
that unites Bitcoiners together in finding a solution versus some external threat that really
is a menace to you and your way of life and those you care about.
It's having that external pressure outside, I think, is what drives people to find Bitcoin
and become sort of zealous about it, right?
Because you are able to find a shield, something to protect you and those you care about from
something negative that's at the village gates.
And so whether that be censorship in the future or another massive round of money printing, we've won a lot since 2022 during the FTX crash.
You know, since the Larry Fink came out in 23 and said, I think I want to do a Bitcoin ETF.
And then he got it approved.
And then we got Trump and then we got a strategic Bitcoin reserve.
All these things allow us to pat ourselves on the back and say, hey, look who cares about us now.
Like we're we're on the biggest stages.
But that doesn't drive new people.
Necessity does.
And I think that Bitcoin is going to be there.
Right. It's not missing a block.
It's still running just as perfectly as it has for the last 17 years.
So it will be there when people need it.
and then we'll see the next great wave of adoption when shit hits the fan again.
So you think the next wave of adoption is more likely to be driven by, let's say, a push than a pull,
like more likely to be driven by people running away from pain than running toward pleasure?
It's not that they're even running toward number go up.
It's not that they're running towards, you know, we know that most people don't give a shit about whole, you know,
unconfiscatable, uncensorable, immutable. But let's be honest, most people don't. A lot of us
do. And that's what matters. But most people don't. So you're saying it's going to be pain,
running away from pain, that would be the driver of the next large adoption wave. Am I understanding
correct? 100%, dude. I mean, we're humans, right? We're primates. We lay to coast when we can. And
we really only change when we have to. And Bitcoin is a change. It's a mental framework change that
you need to make. And it's the running away from pain that forces you to do it. Yeah, I mean, I'm
out here every single day talking about Bitcoin. And also, you got to provide that for people so
that when they do wake up, people wake up on their own levels. And I'm sure even today, there's no
major external catalyst, but there could be one around the corner and each person finds it when
they need it. So the masses will when we have that next big catalyst.
And now that's it's fair. I mean, I the other side of that, if I'm to play devil's advocate, I would say NGU is a great like NGU is Bitcoin's best marketing like number go up.
People want Bitcoin. They don't want Bitcoin when it's cheap, right? Nobody wanted Bitcoin at 16K at the bottom.
And for the, I don't know if people remember if people weren't around, but like we were, we bumped around, we went up and down from right around 19K in 2022.
So many times that Carla and I made a song.
Well, I helped write it.
Carla did all the singing and all the editing, but I was there, you know, the sound of silence.
But, you know, starting out like hello, 19, my old friend, like we had hit 19K so many times over and over.
you had so many opportunities to buy at 19k above it below it and then finally it did one last week
down to 16 and then that was it then it went up to 125 like and that and like that was actually a
pretty you know people say this last run was like disappointing i don't know was it like it was a
pretty a pretty hefty run it wasn't a 20x right but it was like what a uh what 8x something like
that 9x something something to that effect it was it was pretty it was pretty decent yeah uh but
nobody wants it at that point when everybody's dancing on bitcoin's grave when peter schiff's
got a hard-on nobody wants bitcoin but they want it once the number's pumping again you know humans
are funny man they are and uh i think the the reason it it pumps is when usually there's there's
something external bad going on right like covid and the money printing and even the debasement
trade of of 2024 25 was the same thesis that like yeah we're even though things might be hunky dory
right now uh we're still getting debased we all are and the the largest money managers understand
that too and with the etfs they can finally allocate towards it so yeah people people run
towards bitcoin when something scary is behind them and uh that that what we seen before and what we see again And number go up is a great advertisement of course and it gets normies on board because usually something bad is causing that
But also it attracts the worst things too, right?
When Bitcoin pumps, all these other scams go up as well.
And it attracts the charlatans
and the steak oil salesmen
that want to strip people from their money
rather than see us all win
by getting our fair share of sass.
It is a very fair point that
okay, Bitcoin NGU tends to coincide with shit hitting the fan.
So it's like those two are not mutually exclusive.
It's not that, you know, it's just one is a function of
or at least correlated with the other,
which I think is a fair assessment.
I think another point that I wanted to dig into a bit
that you mentioned is just having the resources available for people.
Because I'm sure, you know, first time you bought Bitcoin from an ATM
and certainly first time I heard about Bitcoin from my buddy
in, you know, 2014 or whatever,
not that I even bothered to look for resources,
But if I would have, it would have been probably, you know, Andreas Antonopoulos, like a couple others, like pretty meager.
You fast forward to now, even if you go from 2020, when you and I really both went down the rabbit hole, you go from 2020 to now, 2026.
I mean, it's an exponential increase.
Like BDC Sessions alone has been doing it longer than that, obviously, what, 10 years now.
Legend in the game.
But even the amount of content that he's put out since then, the breadth and depth of content alone, just from him, is insane.
And then you tack on all of the other people that came onto the scene, all the other educators from all different walks of life. It's like, it's a night and day difference, man. And I'm curious if you think, is the Bitcoin education media space broadly, is it saturated yet? Do we have enough? You know, do we have enough Bitcoin podcast? Do we have enough Bitcoin news? Do we have enough Bitcoin education out there that, okay, yeah, you know, people that are here, they'll keep producing what they're producing, but like, there's enough for people to chew on.
Or do we still have work to do from an education, adoption, awareness, etc. standpoint?
You always need fresh blood no matter what it is, whether it's a school or a military or a Bitcoin ecosystem.
You need new people to infuse new life ideas, perspectives on it because you never know who you're going to resonate with and who's going to resonate with you.
and even if we have a whole lot of bitcoin podcasts right now i'm sure there are some that
you prefer to listen to than others right and so because of that you got to put your put your voice
out there if you love bitcoin if you can't stop yourself from talking about it you'll soon realize
that the people around you they'll either have understood it or they'll uh i've gotten sick of
you talking about it so the best thing for you to do is try to go find out new people on the internet
to pitch it to. One thing that we're, I think we are missing right now is the meme energy,
right? I mean, HODL and 6.15, all these things have fun staying poor. They were so vital back
in 2020, 2021. And right now, I don't know if it's because the treasury companies or the suits
are here or what it is, but yeah, we're missing some of that vital energy. And I think that comes
from youth. I think that like having 40 year olds try to come up with the memes is very different
than having a 22 year old come up with the meme. Right. So it's we need new people in this space.
And I think I try to you got to be on the platforms where they are, too. Right. Like I have
TikTok on my phone because I'm making Bitcoin videos to put on TikTok. Right. You know,
I don't look I don't scroll TikTok, but I do post there because that's where people are.
And so you got to be there and you got to meet them where they're at in terms of education, platforms and attention span too.
No, that's fair.
TikTok is the one.
I mean, when Carl and I started with, you know, the crypto couple, the Bitcoin couple, we started on TikTok.
And that's where we went like very viral.
It wasn't until later like where they started shadow banning us for various things or outright taking down our videos that we were like, fuck this noise.
and haven't been back there in a while.
I have still never downloaded it.
I still haven't posted any content
from the Bitcoin podcast on there.
If there's a Zoomer out there who wants to,
you know, intern for me and handle TikTok,
I would be very grateful.
I will pay you in SAT.
So if you happen to be anyone listening to this
and wants to do that, hit me up.
Because I don't want to do it.
But it is important to meet people where they are.
And on that demographic piece,
I wanted to talk to you about that too,
because I don't know about you,
but from what I know about my own content,
seeing the demographic info that I see from YouTube,
from other peoples that I, you know, talking to other podcasters, people in the space,
looking at demo info, it's like, it's hard to get into that 18 to 25 demo.
I will often have like 0%, literally zero in my YouTube, it'll be like 0% were 18 to 25.
A lot in the late 20s, 30s, 30s to 40s, 40s to 50s, boomers as well. I've got more boomers than
Gen Zers. Shout out to the Bitcoin boomers out there. You guys are based. You're the good boomers.
but that's a tough demo to break into and it I think my opinion at least I'd like your thoughts
it's like it's because they want to hear from people that are their own demographic like we
we naturally want that right we want to hear from people that are like us or similar to us that we
resonate with and like it or not Rob we're getting old you know we're getting old uh you know we're
not cool anymore maybe we never were you sound like you're probably cooler than me given your
hijinks. But, you know, I'm curious your take on that. I mean, is the other side of this like,
okay, a guy like Jordan Peterson, just as an example, off the top of my head, ends up appealing
to a massive demographic of younger men, right? Or Andrew Tate appeals to a massive demographic
of younger men outside of, you know, outside of their own demographics. Do you think that that's
something that in the Bitcoin space, we should be focusing on trying to find ways to target that
demographic and I don't mean target in like the fiat way I just mean actually like figuring out
ways to get the content in front of them more find things that resonate or is that not our job
is that where the fresh blood comes in where we need young bitcoiners to step up start making that
content and clearly there is an opening there from what I've seen there is and it's a couple things
for one, they're so internet native, right? Like, and I don't like to use the term brain rot, but
a lot of that content that they've consumed from a very early age is, is brain rot, right? Like
with the multiple, multiple things happening on one screen, just to keep your attention for 15
seconds. And in order to understand Bitcoin, you got to study, you got to do the hard work. Like
there's, there's no easy way into becoming a hardcore Bitcoiner. You've got to, you've got to
read, you've got to watch, you've got to listen. You should also be writing and creating things to
get your thoughts out there, see if you truly understand them. Because that's the best way to
understand if you know, if you see if you understand something is to, of course, express it, to teach
it and try to tell other people about it. So when it comes to these kids, yeah, I think it would be
great to have Gen Z content creators getting out there, making their own stuff that appeals to them.
but also I think younger guys want to look up to older guys who they see as successful right
who have been able to to do it so I think there still is a place for us we're we're both Bitcoin
dads now and being able to have a family in the 2020s is a task into of itself right like there's
a lot of people who just say no it costs too much I don't want to have kids well that's crazy I think
by showing that you want that,
you were able to execute it, do it yourself,
and that Bitcoin helped you get there
is a great example for younger people.
And hopefully they will jump on that train
and realize that because more than Bitcoin podcasters,
we probably need more Bitcoin babies.
Bitcoin baby NGU is a powerful thing.
It's like you don't need to orange pill a baby.
You know, if you're raising them right,
they're going to be Bitcoiners.
You've got to shoe in for the next generation.
I think that is one of the incredible things
about Bitcoin that at least I've seen.
I mean, it's certainly been true for me,
for my family, probably for yours,
for a lot of Bitcoiners that I've talked to,
whether it's on the internet or in person.
You know, Bitcoin giving them the confidence
to be able to start a family,
just from a, especially from a man's perspective,
from a provider's perspective,
saying, yep, like, you know, I may not,
I'm going to keep working, I'm going to keep doing it.
I can't sit back and rest on my laurels.
I'm not an OG who's been stacking
or, you know, who bought a bunch of Bitcoin
when it was $2, right?
You know, I've been stacking all the way up
to the recent tops, all the way down
to the recent bottoms, gonna keep doing it.
But you do that for enough years,
you get a lot of breathing room.
Even if your stack's not yet where you want it to be,
you still have that breathing room.
You still have that cushion.
You know you've got this incredible sound money
that you can always fall back on.
And that frees you up to be able to do the things
that are like having Bitcoin itself,
just accumulating Bitcoin's not the goal, right?
The goal is what Bitcoin allows you to do.
money itself is never the end money is the means but the problem is that broken money is a broken
means and you know sound money is a is a sound means right and and so i think that what i've
seen just the microcosm of the bitcoin community and how many babies are being made in this in this
you know small crazy you know niche internet psychopath community it's amazing and you look
at the declining birth rates everywhere you look at the increasing nihilism everywhere you look at
at the people just who are you know not getting married at all not having kids at all like all of
this so much of it i think people give bitcoiners shit for like oh you're oversimplifying you can't
it's not just you know it's not always just fix the money fix the world but but boy a lot of things
get fixed when you fix the money and you know this is true because it's true on the individual level
and it will be true on the societal level the problem is i think it takes a long time to get
there but every new bitcoin accounts right every new bitcoin helps every new person who decides to
start a family, raise their kids the best way they know how, like it moves the needle, even if it's
slowly. And I think it's, it's important for us to remember that, like these little things may not
seem important at the time, but they add up and they do make a huge difference.
100%. Um, a funny thing that Marty Bentz says is that like, yeah, Gen Z is not getting it right now,
but we're having kids. And so we'll just skip a generation and then we'll just be an army of
Bitcoiners, right? And so that's one way to look at it. But it gives you hope too, right? Not just
a financial cushion, but hope. And in my earlier conspiracy theory days, like thinking that you
needed to get some gold and silver and bullets and you'd be able to hunker down and ride out a
Mad Max situation. Well, Bitcoin gives you the belief, the hope that the world might and will
be different in the not too distant future, but there's a way for you to ride that wave that
looks possibly better than, than what we have right now. You know, it's not just a doomer mindset
because once you get into that frame of thinking, um, you don't want to do anything else. Right.
And it's a lot easier just to, to rest back and try to get into the, the hedonistic spiral. Just
like I need to live for today because I don't know what's going to come next. Bitcoin allows
of course, to delay some of that gratification and believe that there's something better on the
horizon. So the hope is just as powerful as the financial. The world does it. We need more hope,
right? We need more bright orange optimism. I'm curious to it because, you know, if we keep going
down this path, we're going to get extremely out into the ether, very esoteric out here. And I love
it. I love it. But I want to bring us back a little bit as well, because otherwise I will be
the one leading us down this very feel-good rabbit hole, but one that perhaps not everyone's
ready for yet. So I want to bring it back a little bit to just the good old-fashioned news side of
things. There's a lot going on right now, to put it mildly, in the Bitcoin world, in the larger
world, but focusing kind of on where we're at right now, again, in the adoption cycle, we clarified
earlier, like, look, retail never really made it here. They're probably not going to come back
in large numbers until there's a big push until and that push being from something negative
happening some sort of a breakdown i'm curious what your kind of general vibe check is on
are we at a point right now where we are about to kind of come out the other side of all the
chaos that we're seeing are we are we closer to a let me put a different way are we closer to
the start of a first turning or are we still in the depths of the fourth if you know what i mean
i mean the bugle guys like to joke that we're we're already in the first turning dude just
open your eyes we're in the first i love those guys maxi madness uh ending right now um but
dude no we haven't seen the end of this fourth turning there's no way i mean of course you got
to go back 80 years world war ii civil war revolutionary war these things have blow-off
tops, right? And it's only after a blow off top in terms of chaos and just the table being flipped
over. Are you able to start a new new rules and have new lines in the sand for a another 80 years
of civilization to to grow on top of it? So I mean, I don't like to say that, of course, but
yeah, this is this fourth turning. It was just getting turned on, right? If you read the book,
Of course, they say it started in 2008, but they said that it should peak around 2030.
You know, that's 22 years later.
These these turnings are around 25 years apiece.
And so, yeah, I don't think we're going to see the first turning till the 2030s.
So four more years left of the 2020s.
It's been quite the decade thus far.
Let's keep going.
But another thing is there's only so much you can control.
Right.
by spending so much time.
I spend too much time on X, right?
I do it for a living.
I'm scrolling all day.
I do think that I've built up some cognitive security, right?
Try not to let things hit me too much.
Sometimes they do.
This weekend, to be completely honest,
I was in the shower and it just sort of hit me like,
wait, so the Strait of Hormuz is closed.
oil could be going to 200 300 dollars a barrel what like what does that mean for for me and
and this baby right like this is the first time i've had to face like a a global crisis with with
a baby in the house and it it changes things for sure but all you can do is is care about those
and yourself and those around you right and you got to be mentally physically and spiritually fit
So meditate, read, take time off of screens and appreciate.
Gratitude is a hell of a drug.
It's a hell of a drug.
And you can turn any situation upside down if you just are able to zoom in on what you can be thankful for.
Because no matter what situation you're in, I mean, of course, Viktor Frankl, whatever, no matter where you are, you can find something that day to be grateful for.
And if you can just put on those glasses, it will make your life a whole lot better than if you're constantly looking for the thing that's wrong.
That is a damn good piece of advice.
I'm curious on taking a slightly different tack here.
What's your read broadly on treasury companies?
This is like a total 180 here, but I follow your guys' feed pretty close.
You guys do a lot of coverage of treasury companies.
Obviously, there's kind of their strategy and there's everyone else, right?
just both from a size and I think from a operational perspective as well.
But I'd love your view on it as somebody who spends a lot of time covering this,
looking at this stuff, analyzing it, talking about it.
What's your overall assessment on them?
Just kind of like just personally, like, you know, good, bad, ugly, indifferent, inevitable, whatever.
And then where do you sit on the, you know, are these a winner take all or winner,
you know, a couple winners take all sort of thing?
Is strategy just going to eclipse everything?
Or is there a lot of room for these other players?
I'd love to hear what you think.
Yeah, it's funny when you are able to look back and realize that you were in the midst of a mania.
The space, it was, you know, May last year, it was just like any mom and pop shop would put a couple of Bitcoin on the balance sheet.
They were able to triple their stock price and you had coffee shops in Spain doing it.
And it was really all gravitated around the conference last year.
Like in Vegas, it was the suit show.
And it was fun.
And everybody thought that like this was going to take Bitcoin to $200,000, $300,000, $400,000
because all these companies were going to do it.
And it was a you couldn't lose.
You couldn't lose as long as you bought Bitcoin.
And now we're a year later.
And I mean, I respect it.
I think it's a natural part of what's going to happen.
You know, Bitcoin, like Bitcoin, sovereign money.
anybody's gonna be able to go out there and purchase it and benefit their balance sheet by
buying it but it's the the motivations of those who do that determines whether it'll be successful
or not because as you know you got to be able to to ride these waves and a lot of these companies
aren't i think a lot of newbies got burned um you know when you first get into bitcoin you realize
everybody thinks they're too late no matter if you got in in 2012 or 2022 you think oh i missed
the boat i need to try to catch up and whether that's getting into shit coins in the beginning
or treasury companies this last go around.
A lot of new people bought treasury companies.
I mean, I remember seeing this dude saying,
I'm going with the better money.
I'm 100% MSTR, 0% Bitcoin.
And it's just like, guys have lost the plot here, right?
There was so much of losing the plot.
And I mean, it was really, I mean, Odell said this,
like going on Twitter last year,
it turned into LinkedIn
because everybody was just congratulating each other
for getting a spot on a treasury company, right?
And yeah, it's, at the end of the day,
they're only gonna be a handful of winners, right?
MSCR is gonna run America.
I do think what MetaPlanet is doing in Japan,
it's a completely different jurisdiction,
different rules and laws over there.
Because of that, I do think that they are
in good position to win.
They've got a fat stack.
They're at number four now, I think,
on the list at 35,000 Bitcoin.
We just saw Marathon today sell 15,000 Bitcoin, right?
They were sitting at number two with over 50,000 Bitcoin, and they just sold 15,000 of them in order to fund their pivot to AI and clear up some of the debt on their balance sheet because they were manic too.
And in the middle of the euphoria, they took out a billion dollars of convertible notes in order to go buy $95,000 Bitcoin.
And then they went and sold it at 65, right?
these corporates really don't, they don't have the balls, dude. They don't have the testicular
fortitude to ride it out. And they do have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders.
But Bitcoin doesn't follow those rules. So yeah, I mean, it's, I'm sort of glad that the whole
entire, like, throth is out of the system. Hopefully some new cooler narratives can come up
because of it. But yeah, I mean, and now we're seeing this whole perpetual preferred stocks,
right? These STRC and SATA getting 11%. But again, the numbers came out today. And I think
Fong Li, the CEO of MSTR said that the purchasers of STRC stretch 80% are retail.
Wow. This is supposed to be an institutional product, right? This is supposed to be the
answer to all these big boys, these insurance companies who need that coupon to go out and get
this Wall Street product that provides a high yield. But it's retail buying it right now. So
yeah, it's an experiment, right? And they're learning in real time. And owning 760,000 Bitcoin
allows you to have a cushion and figure things out on the fly But for a lot of these guys Um no And I glad I just so glad that i was able to get into the space before this whole entire thing so i wasn caught up in it and
was walking around wearing an orange tie 24 7. my uh digression nothing against the guys wearing
the orange ties sailor since i know you listen to every episode of my podcast this is not about you
you look great in the orange tie man um not about you just to clarify here but um hey
uh let's say it's about everyone else who decided to you know be a follower instead of a leader like
sailor was the leader with the orange tie you know what i mean that's cool doing the same thing as
everyone else is doing man that's not cool but my uh my father-in-law he always says like yeah
walker is a escaped communism's badass dude he's like what's the difference between a necktie
and uh and a cow's tail and it's like i don't know what is it well the cow's tail covers the
entire asshole uh and i was like yeah just beautiful beautiful i'm curious i mean do you
think we're gonna because you're spot on about the kind of the conference in vegas last year and that
really being like the yeah baby it's up only forever now look at all the there's these companies
are going to be playing the the fiat system like a fiddle they're going to be buying so much corn
like it's up only forever now, most of those are down aggressively from their highs
and even from the conference time.
You think, you'll be in Vegas, I assume, again this year?
You think we see as many suit corners, or do you think they're a little bit more quiet?
Maybe they're tightening up the travel budgets.
What's your read on that?
I think it's still going to be a big narrative.
I mean, NACA is the ones who are throwing this event,
And I mean, they're the poster child for this, right? I mean, I just saw a clip of David Bailey talking about raising money for NACA to buy Bitcoin. And when they started off with their fundraising initiative, they wanted to raise $100 million. Well, he said that he was on the phone from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. for weeks on end. And they were just they went up to $700 million. They raised $700 million.
dollars. People could not get enough. They're knocking down the doors trying to get a part of
these companies. And now we see that they went from $32 to 26 cents, right? I mean, it's like
insane, insane drawdowns, much worse than anything we've seen in Bitcoin ever, right?
Other than the very early days, you know, drew down to a penny. But yeah, I think it'll still
be a part. I mean, these treasury companies will still exist. They're playing there. I mean,
and again, at the, we just saw the latest numbers this quarter, other treasury companies bought just
2% of, uh, the total treasury company buying a Bitcoin and MSTR bought 98%, right? So they're
not buying right now. Uh, so I don't know if they've got money to send people to Vegas,
but it's uh yeah you know what i'm trying to say yeah yeah no it's uh oh boy yeah that's uh
i mean it's it's wild what sailors and i know sailor gets a lot of grief like a lot of people
may think like oh you know he's like the you know original you know suit coiner progenitor right or
whatever but like from everything that i have seen sailor i've been privileged to interact with him
you know in person a couple of times like first of all he's boy he's one of the smartest people
i've ever interacted with the guy if you okay you don't like him whatever but say what you will
about him the guy is in has in my opinion done more in terms of the you know evangelization of
bitcoin than everyone except maybe a couple other people like the sheer amount of podcast appearances
like Lin Alden, Jeff Booth, they do a lot of podcasts too.
Sailor, I actually, I don't know.
Those three would be in a tough competition
for who does the most podcasts.
But the guy has done an incredible job evangelizing.
And yeah, he explains things, uses analogies
that maybe some people might not like at times
or well, that's not exactly how it works.
It's like, yeah, the point of an analogy
is not to be exact, right?
The point of an analogy is to make somebody
think a little bit differently,
to put something in a way that makes something click for them.
And he's made it click for a lot of people.
And shout out to Eric Weiss
for actually being the one to orange pill sailor
in the first place, right?
Like that, talk about the butterfly effect,
like that action and the ripple effects
that it has created and will create throughout time.
It's fascinating.
But I mean, as we sit here now,
it seems as though strategy is not slowing down.
As you said, they've purchased, what,
98% of all the treasury company buying that's been done.
The other treasury companies have had to sell some strategy.
To my knowledge, have they sold a single sat to date?
I mean, at any point?
Never.
And like amidst all the talk of it's always, you know,
Sailor's about to get liquidated.
He's about to get liquidated.
Always from usually the crypto, you know,
Bitcoin-hating, crypto-loving, moon boy type guys.
You see that from a lot.
Or the Peter Schiff's.
They're like two sides of the same coin, really.
But I mean, I'm curious your thoughts.
Is there any part of you that worries about strategy at all?
that worries about uh you know okay even if sailor has the best intentions like is is he
creating something that may be even too big for him to handle at some point like the guy's going
to be he's already one of the richest people in the world he's already a billionaire i think he's
going to be i mean give it 10 years like it's going to be like him elon musk and a couple other
people will be like the richest people in the world that is my opinion i think as far as people
being richest people in the world goes, he's not a bad one, honestly.
Like, he's pretty darn mission aligned.
I have this idea that he's actually, he plays the suit coiner role very well, but he is more
subversive than you might think.
He has never said anything to make me think that, guys.
If the government's listening, he has no subversive plans.
I'm just, just my read.
Just my read.
I think he's more of a revolutionary than he lets on.
Maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe I'm the cuck here.
I don't know.
I just love you to read on it broadly, because a lot of people are always shrieking about
strategy is this huge risk, this huge risk. What's your take? It's not a risk. They've got
$2 billion in cash to pay these dividends, right? And they've got about $50 billion in Bitcoin.
That means that they can pay the dividends for the next 75 plus years and they'll be fine. There
is no liquidation risk when it comes to strategy. If we look at giant holders of Bitcoin, I mean,
BlackRock, they've got roughly the same amount of Bitcoin right now. I mean, of course, it's not
BlackRock owning it. They own it on behalf of the ETF holders, but they have a fat stack of Bitcoin
themselves. And of course, there's Satoshi's stack, or we think it's Satoshi's stack of 1.1
million Bitcoin. So that's roughly 5% of the entire issuance. So of course, we've seen that
Bitcoin can function just fine if there's large pools of Bitcoin owned by one party here. So I
don't think that's the risk in terms of the long-term plans i mean look at sailor in terms of
his past um he grew up as an air force brat right he spent some time in new zealand because his dad
was in the military uh then he goes to mit there's there's lots of connections between the u.s
government and mit and now we have a sovereign wealth fund right and the sovereign wealth fund
just bought a portion of Intel. And we have talked about building a strategic Bitcoin reserve.
If you look at Google Maps and the location of Tyson Hill, where strategy is headquartered
and the distance to Langley, the headquarters of the CIA, they're not far from each other.
Right. So I do. Honestly, I'm putting on again my tinfoil hat here, but I think he does seem
like a patriot. And Larry Lepard says that he's one of the smartest guys he's ever met and that
he very well could run for president in 2032, something like that. So, yeah, I think there
might be some connections there between Michael Saylor and the United States government. Maybe he
got the nod early on and said, you got a job here, boy, go do it. And he's done a hell of a job doing
it. But I don't know. I mean, of course, I'm just throwing things out there. But there's a lot of
different pieces of evidence to maybe draw some conclusions. But at the end of the day,
Bitcoin doesn't care. Bitcoin is going to exist. And even if the U.S. government does wind up
owning 5 million Bitcoin, Bitcoin will still be able to succeed and provide what the people from
around the world who use it need. I agree with that. And yeah, of course, we're just, Michael,
because again, I know you're a regular listener to the Bitcoin podcast. We're just shooting the
shooting the breeze here, Michael. Am I getting a little too out of bounds here?
No, no, no, not at all. Because this is Bitcoin. There is no out of bounds, right? That's the
beauty. This is an uncensored show. And I know Michael as a regular listener appreciates that.
And I appreciate him buying up so much corn. And that's the other thing. When I hear people,
to your point about like, yeah, okay, Bitcoin doesn't care. The government buys or tries to
buy try would be the operative word tries to buy 5 million bitcoin okay like i think what a lot of
people who are gnashing their teeth about either institutional or state-based adoption of bitcoin
maybe fail to understand is like this is what bitcoin winning looks like if bitcoin was going
to be successful if bitcoin is successful of course every individual every family every company
every country is going to want to own as much of it as they can. This is a symptom of Bitcoin's
success. This is not a sign that Bitcoin is somehow failing or not working. Have the properties of
Bitcoin changed? Have the underlying fundamentals of Bitcoin? Has the 21 million supply cap changed?
Has its unconfiscatable, uncensorable nature changed? No, no, no. So nothing's changed there.
Bitcoin is still Bitcoin. And because of its properties, everyone who is paying attention
wants some. So to me, I look at this and I say, yeah, like you don't have to like it. We don't
have to cheer it, but it's the reality. It's the natural, natural evolution of where this was
always going to go. Luckily, we had, you know, over a decade of time where no corporations and
no governments or very few corporations, non, you know, anyone outside of the Bitcoin space,
let's say, nobody was paying attention to it, or they were paying attention to it, but thought it
was some little thing that was going to fizzle out, die off. Okay, yeah, cute little project for,
you know, magic internet money nerds, but it's not going away. Bitcoin is here to stay. Bitcoin
is winning. There's a growing acknowledgement of Bitcoin winning. So of course, this is what we're
going to see. This is what it looks like when Bitcoin is winning. Now, again, you don't have
to like it, but you should acknowledge that this is what reality looks like and also say, hmm, well,
I guess if this is what reality looks like, where does this go next? You can pretty easily draw,
draw that line, right? To say, okay, well, this is only going to accelerate. Given that it's only
going to accelerate, how should I alter my actions in the present? Has, you know, how should I stack
harder? How should I create more value? How should I do what I can to evangelize more of my fellow
plebs if that's what you're if that's what you wanted you want individuals to hold more bitcoin
no one's stopping you you know what i mean you can just do things you can just go out there and
start a bitcoin podcast start a bitcoin news channel do just talk to talk to people at a
farmer's market i don't be like ben justman and go out there and just put a bitcoin preferred sign
and sell your wine you make with your own bare hands you know like you can be steak and shake
and start giving your employees start giving your employees a bitcoin bonus for every hour they work
that's cool like you can just do things guys so like hey i don't even have a question here rob
just just more just the statement i've got a response this is what bitcoin winning looks like
yeah yeah no i'd love you but like so much gnashing of teeth when it's like guys
we're not going to change reality what you can change is your own behavior focus on what you
can change not what you cannot change and celebrate the fact that look this means bitcoin is winning
the greatest hope for bitcoin is that it separates money from state
And if it separates money from state, every state is going to need some Bitcoin.
That's just how it boils down to, right?
Like these, we want to rip the money printer out of their hands and they're not going to do it willingly.
They're going to do it because their situation that got themselves in has been so horribly destroyed.
I mean, we're at $39 trillion worth of debt, right?
When Trump first got in in 2017, it was $19 trillion.
Now, less than a decade later, it's $39 trillion.
And over the next 30 years, they project that we're going to have to spend $100 trillion just in interest.
$100 trillion in interest, right?
Like insane.
There's no coming back from that.
And we're going to live through it.
We're going to live through the transition of the dollar, whatever that means.
And as we're both Americans, right, we've had this exorbitant privilege of being able to be born into the country that issues the dollar, that uses it.
The whole entire world is forced to use it.
And because of that, we've had cheap energy and food and life is easier in America because we use the dollar.
But as Bitcoiners, we're willing to give that up, right?
Because we believe that we're going to see a better world on the other side of it where this money printer is no longer at the Federal Reserve and that states need to use Bitcoin because Bitcoin separates money from state.
that's actually such an important point here that i'll double tap on for a second because i've heard
that argument not not your argument your argument i believe is absolutely correct i've heard the the
up the opposition to that which is oh i thought bitcoin was about separating money from state but
now the state is you know adopting bitcoin themselves it's like okay let's add a different
let's add one more word in there it's about separating the creation of money from state or
about separating the control of money from state. Holding Bitcoin does not give you control over
Bitcoin. That's one of the whole points, right? Does it make you a significant economic actor to
hold a million Bitcoin? Of course. Do you, if you're cussing that yourself, if you're running
your own node, do you have a very large economic node? Yes, absolutely. Still doesn't give you
unilateral control. And the beautiful thing about Bitcoin is if you do hold that much Bitcoin,
it's not in your best interest the game theory doesn't work out for you to sabotage bitcoin
that is one of the other beautiful things that i i come back to again and again rob just about the
i don't know sometimes i wonder with satoshi and i'd love your opinion on it
what was he she they just that brilliant where they actually gamed through so many of these
different things that we think about now and it's like you know galaxy brain meme or did they just
get a lot of the fundamentals right a lot of the first principles right and that naturally led to
the game theory on second third fourth order effects also being brilliant you know do you
know what i mean because like some of the stuff you think about it's like if you are a large holder
of bitcoin you have an economic incentive not to fuck up bitcoin that fact alone combined with all
the other game theoretical parts of Bitcoin, but that fact alone is so powerful. It's so powerful.
And unless you're willing to put up a lot of money, if you don't hold Bitcoin, but you want
to somehow hurt Bitcoin, the amount of money that it would take you to do that, if we're even just
from 51% attack standpoint, right? You don't have it. You don't have that money. And if you are a
government, you try to print that money, you're going to bankrupt yourself. But I'm curious,
your take was satoshi did satoshi galaxy brain this think about every eventuality or is bitcoin's
simplicity in architecture and game theory from a first principles level such that all of the rest
of this perceived brilliance was really just a natural consequence of getting the basics right
do you know what i mean yeah i think nothing can stop an idea whose time has come and 2008 2009
it was just the perfect, all the ingredients were there,
just like the spark of life on planet Earth, right?
Was it a lightning bolt? Who knows?
But it was an idea that he had.
He was able to put all these pieces together.
I mean, cryptography goes back hundreds and thousands of years, right?
I mean, people have been trying to hide messages from their enemies
for a long time and allow their friends to decrypt them
since the beginning of warfare.
And now we've gotten to a point, whether it's the Internet
and the need for it too, right?
Because back in 2008, what was the national debt?
It was under $10 trillion, that's for sure, right?
But it was still gotten to a point.
It took us from 7076 to 1980 to get the first trillion.
And then we had, what, 10X'd it by then.
And now we have 4X'd since there.
So he stood on the shoulders of giants, of course.
People had been doing lots of different,
trying to figure out how to do digital gold for a long time,
since the birth of the internet almost,
and cryptography has been going on much longer than that.
But yeah, all the pieces just line up together
and it was such a beautiful, simple design that it worked.
And as you mentioned before, the incentives are there.
It's a Mexican standoff
and everybody benefits by not screwing it up.
So let's all win together
just like we should all go on each other's podcasts.
We really should.
And we're getting right up against the edge of our time here.
But I do want to point out to you,
just uh just checked real quick looks like the u.s national debt at the end of 2007 was around
nine trillion which is just like it's laughable now like we've added that in the last few years
you know like it's just it's insane uh shout out to lynn alden i think economic macro meme
of the of the decade dare i say of the century of the millennia perhaps nothing stops this train
you know fiscal dominance like they just got to keep kicking the can down the road
and I could keep kicking the proverbial can down the road with you Rob all day long when it comes
to the conversation though it never feels like kicking the can because it's not I don't know
we're doing something else we're shooting the can with the high-powered rifle or something I don't
know something more American but thank you for your time here today man seriously I could go on
for way longer but I try to be respectful of people's scarce time as much as I can we're at
the end of ours where do you want to send people I want people to go and follow you if they're not
I want you to get a personal account on Noster too.
Do that for me.
I don't usually give homework.
And you got to do it, you know.
And that way I'll blast you out.
Get everybody following you there too.
You guys do great work.
But where can people find out?
Where can they, you know, follow, like, subscribe, newsletter, et cetera.
Send people where you want.
Yeah, we're on Noster, Bitcoin Newscom, on X, same Bitcoin Newscom.
Two things that I would like people to check out if they have the time and energy,
our newsletter, Bitcoin News Weekly, comes out every Monday morning. That's awesome. Full roundup
of the last week's news gets you caught up, ready for the week ahead. And then we go live five days
a week on X, LinkedIn, YouTube. We're the daily stack. So we're covering Bitcoin, markets, AI,
everything, but 1230 Eastern, five days a week. Really fun new initiative that we started this
year. Would be great to have people come check it out. We just did our first live event at PubKey
two weeks ago.
So we're going to be doing that on a monthly basis.
How'd it go, by the way?
I think I was just, I was on your show, I think,
right before you guys were doing the event.
I assume it went swimmingly.
Yeah, yeah, no, it was great.
We had like 120 people sign up.
It was a packed house.
And yeah, we talked about navigating the bear market, right?
And so each month we're going to focus on something new.
And I think we might do a, like,
clodbot type of a workshop next time.
So always something interesting coming out. Nice. I haven't taken the cloud bot plunge yet.
So perhaps that would be enough to, uh, to entice me, but Rob appreciate your time, man.
This was a treat. And also shout out to everybody who joined in on the Noster live stream,
the Bitcoin podcast streams live on Noster. And I appreciate every one of you who zapped me sats
during the stream. Sincerely, thank you for sharing a scarce piece of absolutely
Finite 21 million Bitcoin with me for doing this stream.
It means a lot.
Sincerely.
I know you worked hard for those sets.
So thank you for sharing them.
Thank you for tuning in.
Thanks for the comments in the chat.
There were some good ones there.
I need to start reading those live.
I'm just, I'm not quite as good as, you know,
Odell and Marty at this thing.
I'm working on it, guys.
I'm working on my streaming.
But Rob Wallace from Bitcoin News.
Thank you, brother.
This was a pleasure.
Best to you.
Keep up the great work.
And yeah, we'll do it again soon.
We'll cross pollinate again soon.
Cheers, man.
Thank you.
Anytime.
And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin talk episode of the Bitcoin podcast.
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