Greetings and salutations my fellow Plibs. My name is Walker and this is the
Bitcoin podcast. It's Tuesday August 22nd 2023. The Bitcoin block height is 804397
and the value of one Bitcoin is still one Bitcoin. Today's episode is the first
episode of Bitcoin Talk where I talk about Bitcoin and many other things with
my guest. Today that guest is Jordan Shaktel. Jordan is the publisher of
The dossier and he's a Bitcoiner. You can find all Jordan's social media links
in the show notes. So without further ado let's get into it.
Greetings and salutations my fellow Plibs. My name is Walker and this is the
Bitcoin podcast. I am joined today by Jordan Shaktel. Jordan is the publisher
of The dossier and he is also a Bitcoiner. So Jordan thank you for joining me
today. I'm glad we got a chance to talk. Yeah thanks for having me Walker and I
love the name the Bitcoin podcast because obviously that means it's better
than any other podcast that discusses Bitcoin because this is the official
Bitcoin podcast. So it's an honor to be on the number one Bitcoin podcast.
Absolutely. You know I decided like obviously it's a bit douchey to call it
that right. But I honestly got the idea. I went to University of Wisconsin and
Ohio State at some point started calling themselves the Ohio State and I was
like God that's so annoying. But now I'm like oh it's an annoying in a funny way
to me at this point. So I'm glad you're happy to be on the Bitcoin podcast not
just another fucking Bitcoin podcast but the Bitcoin podcast. No I really like
the name and you know it's interesting because you know Bitcoin is not a
corporation so really anyone can call themselves whatever in reference to
Bitcoin. You call yourself the CEO of Bitcoin. You can say I am the host of the
best you know the number one Bitcoin podcast and it's fine. So I like it.
You know it's up to the audience to determine the truth and I think that
they will agree this is probably the best Bitcoin podcast out there even though
you just started. Yeah we'll leave it up to the consensus of the
clubs you know whatever they decide and shockingly Bitcoinpodcast.net was
available not.com. I'm not sure who's using it but it's idle so anytime you
can squat in a good domain it's like why not right. And speaking of good
domains so you are the publisher at dossier.today URL is correct there.
Yeah dossier.com was like a million dollars so I went with the $2
variation dossier.today and I bought you know the dossier is affiliated with
Substack but you know Twitter is my biggest platform have like 260 something
thousand followers on there so I use that to kind of like send my followers
and readers to the Substack but since you know we moved over to Twitter 2.0
we've had this thing where the Substack links are getting the images don't
populate because something in the code of Twitter now stops them from
populating so what you have to do as a Substacker now is you need to buy new
domain to redirect to so it is a Substack but but the URL is now dossier.today
which I like and you know I have $2 a year so how can you beat that. I mean
that's a that's a great deal I did notice that with the you know Elon's latest
iteration of I guess we have to call it X now I'm just still gonna keep calling it
Twitter like it's just it's so deep in my brain that like I can't get rid of
that like it's Twitter and their tweets like not X and Z or whatever it is but
the amount of suppression that any sort of external link gets is just absurd like
even if it's not a direct Substack link for example like anything that's not
native Twitter content just seems to be like pushed way way down which I guess
he's trying to turn it into the everything platform like on the road to
like a WeChat style type of thing I don't know if that is his end goal it kind of
seems like it but it's kind of a shame because it makes sharing anything on
Twitter like okay you can now like if you have a paid subscription on Twitter
blue or X black or whatever they're gonna call it now like yeah you can upload
really long videos and everything but I feel like in terms of content itself the
platform still has a long ways to go before it like is able to totally get
rid of external links because that's like for a lot of people they want to
direct people elsewhere like there there isn't that that desire to post
everything on there like maybe I know a lot of filmmakers who it's like I want
people to go to my YouTube but I can't post the direct YouTube link in the
first post because it won't get any sort of traction so I have you seen you're
at I think getting close to 50,000 subscribers at this point today right
so I think it's like 45 46 something like that yeah you see like a big down
turn when he when Elon took over in terms of because you started this the
dusting was it 2021 I believe it was July 2020 or 2021 but it's been a couple
of years and you know the growth on the free the free side is up only and it was
growing very fast and because my biggest platform is Twitter and my biggest
platform is Twitter by the way you know it'll give a little bit of credit to Elon
even though most of it was growing during the old regime where I had to be
careful what I said like kind of like being in like a Soviet style organization
where you have to kind of like mock the regime but very carefully and and I
managed not to get banned and old Twitter you know it's locked out a bunch
of times but my audience grew I didn't even bother starting like a Facebook or
like Insta or TikTok page about these issues that I was talking about because
what I was reporting on you know was antithetical to all the corporate press
and you know Western government narratives that were populating the
world and you know nobody wanted to hear it especially in these you know in
Zuckerberg world and elsewhere so Twitter was growing I think Jack Dorsey
kind of like at the end of his tenure basically gave up at some point that's
probably why he departed to work on Bitcoin and other things and you know
supporting Nostra and whatnot but yeah you know the with Substack it was growing
very fast and then the Elon crackdown came and it's interesting you mentioned
that you know he's kind of trying to turn it into this like we chat thing
because I don't know if you notice but even like if you don't have a Twitter
account now you actually can't access like anything that's on Twitter like if
you're just do like a incognito window search for someone's Twitter handle like
it's completely closed off so you know there's definitely some downsides to
that too it kind of reminds me of like the conversations that are going on in
Bitcoin space where a lot of people are talking about you know paying like small
amounts in lightning to access websites and I think that that's a potential for
the future but today you know it's very difficult like basically telling
everyone that like you're only gonna be posting on Nostra now you know there's
disadvantages that too so but I think that you know Twitter is really a mixed
bag right now unfortunately they seem to be clashing heads with Substack I don't
know who's telling the truth but you know Elon says they're basically stealing
whatever sensitive information so and other and on the sub stack side they
said they're not doing any of that so I'm not really sure what's happening but
but you know unfortunately a lot of the sub stackers who really came to sub
stack for the most part to publish free of you know censorship devices of course
you know sub stack isn't free from being pressured you know they had to rely on
stripe to process payments so there's a lot of attack vectors there and of
course is centralized and everything but sub stacks have been really good I
think a hundred percent record and you know promoting at least lawful speech so
I really like sub stack and I hope that you know I could appeal to the
leadership at x.com to at least get along with them because you know if you
claim to support you know you want if you I get that you know Twitter needs to
make money like every other corporation that wants to exist but if you claim that
free speech is so important to your your set of top principles then you should
probably find a way to allow for independent journalists to act to
promote their own work on your platform well that's the thing I mean so Elon is
obviously somebody who is very like publicly facing you know you rah rah
free speech you know even recently he's said they're doing away with the block
button right to go to just like a mute only model but where anyone you have
muted unlike a block that person could still reply to you which is personally
like again just my personal opinion I think that's fine like on noster there is
no such thing as a block you can just mute it so you don't ever see that
person's anything that person posts which is fine like I don't care if you see
what I post my I just don't want to see you in my feed and especially if it's
like spam some sort of bot like okay just mute that I don't need to see it but I
know a lot of people I think especially like a very big account's got a bit
ticked off about the whole no block thing but then I also who's the the woman
that Elon now has in charge yeah Karina Linda right yeah Karina she's like an
advertising executive yeah I saw you had a you had a tweet maybe it was today or
the other day just being like she's basically got some Fauci vibes to her
like yeah and she has that you know as a someone who grew up in the New York City
metro area I identified the accent pretty quickly so she even sounds like him
in a way so it is it is mysterious in that sense well it's it's funny too
because you've got something again like Elon who's the you know the figurehead
of it all but obviously now he's you know he runs a number of companies he's
not trying to handle as much as the day-to-day so he brings in someone like
this and that you've seen some of the things she said what's the one lawful
but awful is how she characterized certain speech which is like okay
interesting again like if it's lawful and you promote free speech you would
think that any speech that is legal like as long as you're not inciting violence
would be something that's okay but again I feel like as much as you know he's
tried to say this will be this bastion for free speech it's gonna end up getting
itself into the category of okay worst like we already know that he was
pressured by what the Turkish government during the the last election cycle there
over the summer we can assume that there have been other governments who have
been able to successfully exert pressure on him and this kind of comes back to
the problem of again like okay he's still running a company in the United
States of America now whether or not he caves to foreign governments okay that's
a different story one could make the argument that hey it's it's his company
like he bought it he owns it he can do whatever he wants with it at the same
time it's like well therein lies the problem right and like that's that's
where protocols like Noster I think are super powerful because there's no
throat to choke you know there's no head to cut off there's nobody to threaten
it's like a like a hydra from Greek mythology you know you can cut off one
head two more grown its place but by the same token those sort of organic
grassroots movements tend to take a little while to get going and Twitter
now X has been established for a long time I very much enjoyed the platform
for a very long time but I'm interested to see where it goes and I don't know
it's it seems to me I've seen a lot of arguments that like okay he's just
implementing all of the the blue checks and then all the different layers of
okay yeah he's gonna pay you out but now you're KYC'd and now soon you'll need to
show a government ID if you want to prove you're a real person he's not doing
the world coin scanning your eyeballs thing but you know he's requiring an
ID at some point I like I've seen some screenshots of that that some people
leaked but like do you think that is his goal to transition X into some sort of
a westernized we chat where it's your everything app like it's your payments
app we already know you know he was you know an investor and founder or co-founder
of PayPal I don't know how much the actual work he did and how much of the
just investment he did I can't speak to that but he clearly has his eye on the
payment side I don't know if he's gonna launch like his own X coin stable coin
like I'd be interested to see as somebody who is an avid user of the
platform with a lot of success but also frustration where do you see him
starting to take this company in this platform which is basically the de facto
town hall like like it or not Twitter is still the virtual town hall that we
have and it's there are other options but still it's probably the best one
available yeah yeah Twitter is still where the conversation happens as much
as like the corporate media is frustrated by that you know they tried to do the
threads launch was Zuckerberg and that basically flamed out within a week
because it was just like it was like NPC you know follow Shaq and you know some
like random celebrities boring hot takes that are very politically correct so
AOS AOS AOC was on there immediately like within a second AOC was just
going going off on there it was great I thought it was funny that you know they
tried mastodon and mastodon's like super complicated and then they just like gave
up on mastodon but it's interesting to see the journey of the NPC and you know
where they end up but but I think with with like Elon and his vision with
Twitter definitely you see with a lot of these great minds undoubtedly he's
invented some amazing products Tesla you know I'm former Tesla owner love the
car at SpaceX amazing company doing a lot of amazing things brilliant mind
undoubtedly but you know just because you're a brilliant person doesn't mean
that you could come up with some bad ideas like I was just for instance like
the movie Oppenheimer just came out so it might be on people's radar and I'm
sure if you saw it you caught in the movie I think there was a brief mention
that you know Oppenheimer after he successfully led the team that built the
bomb he and his colleagues who were very much left-wing in orientation that's
kind of the size of point they wanted they thought that a kind of like one
world government UN entity would be the best you know handler for a nuclear
device and for me that's like the worst possible idea imaginable and these were
of course the probably the most brilliant three theoretical physicists that
have ever come to you know grace our planet and they had this awful awful
geopolitical idea so with Elon I see a very similar circumstance happen
trying to create this everything app and then thinking in his mind that he's
going to be able to make it you know somehow privacy oriented to like there's
just no way unless he plans on you know becoming or ruling some type of very
powerful country with trillions of dollars in his possession I mean he's
he's the most you know successful entrepreneur perhaps of all time but
this would definitely be a level up he does not control the government he's
still you know as you said there's a lot of influences both from the east and the
west onto his brands and there's just to me there's no way you can create a
centralized entity like the whole lesson you know the whole just half the
importance of the discovery of Bitcoin is that you know there's no you know one
distributor and I think what you see with Elon is just like kind of this
naive slash like very drunken idealistic behavior and trying to create
an everything app and I know that you know reading on you know the history of
PayPal and what he's done in the payments processing space is that he's tried to
kind of do this before and this idea was probably like a little ahead of its time
in terms of the technology that was available so now he's trying to do it
again by acquiring X and trying to move everyone onto you know I guess a home
grown payment system but of course you like you know what the deal is if you're
trying to create your own currency God forbid that's gonna compete with the
dollar and you're the man in charge it's just such an easy attack factor you're
gonna create X coin backed by SpaceX reserves or what it nothing it just
doesn't make sense to me I think that I think that he was right to try to chart a
new course for Twitter slash X because Twitter was never a profitable company so
I get that critique but turning it into the everything app is very bold safely
and I you know I definitely have a lot of concerns about that yeah you know it's
funny you because you brought up like the the NPC journey on to let's say other
alternative social media and like leaving masted on a side though the ones
where I saw kind of just interesting things happening like so you know no
stir kind of came onto the scene in like really came into people's consciousness
in probably December like it had been around for Fiat Jaffa been working on
it for a couple of years before that but it was mainly a lot of you know like
hardcore devs like doing the real work tinkering on this thing building it but
it kind of came into the pseudo mainstream in December right and that like
that's when I first started using it I heard about it like six months before
because I'm a slight nerd and was reading Fiat Jaffa's GitHub to find some
lightning implementation he had done I was like oh no stir like interesting
alternative social media okay anyway next like let me find what I was looking
for like disregarded it like I disregarded Bitcoin the first few times I
heard about it but it really like had a quite a explosion there for a while and
still is still is growing but that was also a couple months before Blue Sky
launched like it kind of sucked for Blue Sky right because they did have this
like big team like a lot more coordinated a lot of funding from from
Dorsey on that and like to his credit I think it's great that he funds like a
lot of different development you know he's not like picking a winner he's just
saying you're building this you know decentralized technology okay I've made a
lot of money and I want to put that towards people who are building
freedom tech great but Blue Sky I got it one of those invite codes and I got on
there once it launched and I noticed that again it was like a lot of the like
politicians and sort of more blue-pilled folks were like on there immediately
and the first conversations you'd see on there were like people getting offended
by something and trying to figure out how they could kick the other you know
kick the person who defended them off of this this protocol not a platform off
this protocol and just getting really bent out of shape about it and again like
right away you saw like the AOCs and the kind of like mains or I want anyone
don't even want to call the journalist mainstream I'll call them legacy
journalists because they're not the mainstream anymore they're the legacy
you saw a lot of them get on there and like okay interesting and I saw that
sort of same behavior mirrored in in threads where it was like Blue Sky is
to threads as Noester is to Twitter in a way where on Noester like you had that
early Twitter vibe where it was just kind of like free-for-all but somehow
like nobody's too concerned with you know labeling each other Nazis and kicking
each other off of this thing and it's interesting to like maybe it's because
there wasn't anyone in charge you you have that freedom where you can say
whatever you want and when you have that freedom people often don't take like
they don't take undue advantage of it it's like when they're given the freedom
to act how they want they may surprise you and act a little bit better than you
think but when you impose these arbitrary walls on them whether it be on
threads whether it be on Twitter or X or Facebook I mean Facebook I don't I
haven't used Facebook in years I don't even know what the content moderation is
on there these days but you find that people if there's a wall people want to
push back against it when it's an open field people are just kind of hanging
out and I think that's sort of a beautiful thing I'm interested to see
where it goes we've got to get you back using Noester again I know you had a
remember you joined up you were you were active for a little while but it's you
obviously have like an audience that is almost as large like your Twitter
audience is almost as large as like all the active users on Noester so for you
it's like okay you're gonna go where the people are because that's where your
message is gonna get traction so I'll be interested to see how the kind of
protocol evolves and how the if we see more people running away from the
centralized social media and toward the more decentralized option but it takes
time I don't know yeah there's this thing about like you know everyone in
their head wants to be the hero who's the first person through the door but
it's like in terms of success it's it's generally not a good idea to be the
first guy to the door because that guy gets you know their head taken off so
it's kind of like so for me it's like I'm like sitting back seeing how Noester's
doing and I do want like I do kind of like lurk a little bit and the
conversation I'm still kind of figuring out how to I'm very familiar with Twitter
but I'm still kind of figuring out the features of Noester and it does seem
interesting to me like you know I logged in the other day after being offline
off the app for maybe like a month and it did seem to improve like the speed and
people were posting a lot more photos and stuff so I thought that was interesting
and I know that you know there's a lot of Bitcoiners that are super passionate
about it I just wonder as we're kind of like in this time where you know the I
think the price action of Bitcoin ultimately like recruits more people
into Bitcoin and since we've been moving sideways for such a long time and
that the Bitcoin community seems to be the biggest community at Noester or if
not like the only major it's diversifying out for sure yeah yeah so I
think that like for Noester I think for me the goal is to see like success is
like some like a bunch of randos from some type of like niche community just
show up there and you're like holy shit I think we might be onto something and I
think that's when Noester explodes like I think that like you know Bitcoin I'm
a believer in the number go up technology stuff but I think that like when
people of other interests start to like randomly show up I think that's like a
key indicator that the protocol is really working so it should be interesting
but yeah like I'm definitely you've convinced me to double down and I will
try to spend more time in there and try to engage people after the after our
conversation actually tweet out my my public key and that would get some more
bit pointers or Noester people onto my my hand also maybe I'll engage with them
some more but I appreciate it I'm glad to hear that because I'm also thinking
like for someone like you who is let's say you're often sharing some
inconvenient truths that are definitely going against the legacy narratives and
so far so good on sub-stack right like you haven't had any issues with
censorship on there to this point right no not even mention I think what what
sub-stack my issue with sub-stack is that basically the executives that run the
show there know that most people who kind of like built a decent-sized audience
there came at it from like this dissident framework I don't want to call it
right versus left but like anti-establishment yeah and it seems that
they are they're marketing and advertising they're trying to bring more
establishment voices into the fold which kind of annoys me but as long as they
give me a platform I'm not so happy with the percentage they take because I feel
like they're not doing as much of the legwork on the back end that they used
to but what would I really built up an audience sorry what's what's their cut on
so stripe takes a little less than 10% I think and I want to say sub-stack also
takes around 10 to 12% wasn't up to strike might be lower than that I think
they're like they're like five to I think overall it's around 15% total between
the two it's a decent chunk like yeah they're trying to they're trying to
innovate in all kinds of ways and how to how to boost subscribers but I think
they they kind of like overexposed the website to making trying to get everyone
to build a newsletter and I guess that's good for business but it kind of like
when you go to there they have this thing called notes now which I'm not I don't
really use too much but it seems that they're just like they're finding so
many ways to like cross pollinate the newsletters and I get a lot of requests
from people with other sub-stacks like hey can you repost mine and like for me
I want to kind of like protect like I don't want to offend these people but I
kind of want to like protect my email list like I don't know about you but but I
like hate it when I get a random unsolicited email from some like from
some like political entity or some newsletter that I didn't subscribe to so
I feel like reposting which sub-sec encourages you to do I don't really like
just sending my audience someone else's work because they subscribe to my work
you know they can also just subscribe to their work too so I try to keep it like
more in-house and I think that kind of limits the growth of my newsletter but
I'd rather do that and kind of like stay true with the audience it's kind of part
of the brand so I think they appreciate that I mean absolutely like anytime I
get some sort of unsolicited email where I'm like I didn't sign up for this my
first thought is okay like which one of you fuckers sold my email I know that
somebody sold my email who was it but the reason that I ask about censorship on
sub-stack and I'm glad to hear that that hasn't happened for you yet and
hopefully will not but I say yet just to leave the future open is because you
know things I don't think right now that we're trending in a direction of at
least from the state level we're not trending in a direction of decreased
presence of the state and increased liberty there are a lot of tools that
people are building that are from the bottom up that are helping us hopefully
push back against that top-down state control apparatus but in general it's
like especially we're getting into election season right and things I feel
like the line becomes even more fine from the state's perspective once you're
into that election year of what is it okay to say and what's it not okay to
say and what's you know what's gonna be termed misinformation or disinformation
and so I again to bring it back to Nostar that could be a really interesting
way for you to at least have an alternate distribution mechanism like there's a
number of tools right now like obla.news is one where you can publish and it's
basically like a it's like a blog builder but on Nostar and you can publish
this long-form content all format it how you want but it's gonna be broadcast to
dozens of relays and unless like every single relay decide decides to censor you
which why would they you've at least got something that is outside of the
platform world and in the protocol world so that if they start ripping yourself
off of stubsack let's hope they don't but at least you've got some sort of a
backup there so that that could be a nice avenue for you and again not having
because you mentioned just asked about the fees because I was curious and 15%
is like you're working really hard for this obviously they're providing a
service but that's a big chunk and then you know you think about Bitcoin on
Nostar and it's like okay there's no middlemen there like that's just you
taking directly from your audience or I should say your audience giving directly
to you so I think that's that's an interesting angle for you to explore
and I think that we're gonna see a lot more people who are publishing information
that could be let's say against the state's interests migrate to Nostar at
least I hope we do and I think we're seeing some that already but with that
I'd love to kind of transition to a little bit of just your background kind
of how you got started with the dossier because you're one of these these voices
both myself and Carla have been following you for a couple of years now and I
think it was like during COVID that and kind of lockdown era is that we both
like found you on Twitter like oh this guy's like he's saying some shit I like
and and you started publishing the dossier but you've always at least I've
seen you've been somebody who I don't know what your technical political
affiliation would be but you seem to call things out on both sides of the aisle
pretty well like I've seen you go head-to-head with some diehard Trumpers
and with some diehard Biden fans if there are any that are truly diehard but
you know you're you're kind of pushing back against the legacy narratives in
general so kind of what is your background that brought you to start the
dossier I know you were in DC for a while but can you tell us a little bit
more about that like kind of what brought you to start it and like what in
your background has kind of prepared you for this this role that you found
yourself in now yes so basically when I went to to college at a smaller
liberal arts school in New Jersey called Monmouth I just like didn't know what I
wanted to major in and this is kind of where it started that I was just like
interested in learning about the world always so ended up majoring in
international affairs and went to grad school in DC for that basically same
degree from a masters and base and you know I was kind of like a very I would
say like an establishment Republican oriented politically person and thought
I was very nationalistic patriotic and wanted to serve my country so after
grad school I wanted to become probably a member of a three-letter agency so I
was like I was like way off course here like you know I was I thought I loved
freedom and liberty and stuff and you know totally head in the sand
propagandized by everything by the Uniparty for sure and then kind of like
don't you know at this time I'm working
coincidentally I was writing a few papers in grad school and published them
and you know some media outlets took interest and I kind of just got like
sucked into right-wing media world published basically every outlet you
can imagine there and was on staff at a couple places like a bright part in the
blaze so I'm doing that for a while and still like you know I have this master's
degree in national security and international affairs and I'm like
interviewing with the feds and so like living in these like two kind of two
parallel worlds Donald Trump gets elected and like all this crazy stuff
starts happening and it kind of like forces me to revisit my worldview
because it's the first time in my lifetime you know my early 30s but where
there was actually like an anti-establishment candidate that came to
office and I saw the wrath of the deep state very close up firsthand and I was
like okay I don't really want to be a part of that anymore so my degree is a
waste but it came in handy during COVID times so I'm still kind of like working
for right of center media and you know I've always wanted to establish my own
independent operation because I think that space is very limited and the
contracts are awful there's all kinds of nonsense that I could go into forever
there so I always want to start with a thing you know fast forward to late 2019
or late 2020 and I start reading about this coronavirus stuff and I see that
you know I like to read kind of like the source material and at this time I'm
already like kind of slightly based I am pretty much a bit coiner at this point
like you know gotten away from my shitcoining face so like pretty red
pilled and I an orange pilled at the same time and I'm reading all this stuff
about proper pandemic preparedness from like the WHO from the CDC what's going
on in China you know knowing with my background because I covered international
affairs in media space that you know the structure of the Chinese government to
be pretty suspicious of the press releases coming from the Communist Party
China and like nothing made sense to me nothing they were doing was part of any
of this original pandemic preparedness guidance at all so it was all really
weird to me and I started to question the narrative and then like I was shocked
by the human behavior that came thereafter that was directed towards me
because like as soon as I was saying this stuff they're like how dare you like
you're basically a bio terrorist if you're not adhering to the narrative and
a lot of people were scared at this time and you know for me I was like I was
pretty freaked out for a couple weeks and then like the more I read about it I
was just like this is nonsense like there's there's nothing really to be
fearful of and then I'm sure you can relate to like the similar situation of
kind of feeling I probably started following you in Carla maybe like 2021
and there was like this sense I think among a lot of us where it's like we're
fucked like this is pretty hopeless for a while but hopefully we're gonna
awaken some minds because like I remember you know I'm a big mixed
martial arts fan and you know I jujitsu practitioner and I like love watching
UFC and I remember Dana White was like the first big was leading the first big
sports league to kind of try to get back open and try to have fights and I
remember he tried to host something in California in the early COVID days and
this is when I really knew we were screwed you had American politicians
being like wow that's like really insensitive that you're trying to have
entertainment like this is a this is a somber year and it's like a somber year
and at this time I'm living in DC and you know none of my friends want to do
anything because they're all scared so it was just like a really so I moved to
Florida at the end of 2020 and have been in South Florida ever since and you know
really like it here and so that was kind of my journey into like you know red
slash orange pilling and you know the more and I've written about this issue
extensively and you know I found myself even looking at what I wrote about
coronavirus hysteria and like even then in the early days I was giving way too
much credit to the people in charge like the the amount of scams that they've
been able to run over us has been impressive and even like buying into
these seemingly innocent narratives I think was a mistake in the first place
so I think that a lot of us on the bright side we learned a lot from this
era about human nature and about getting out in front of things and all that but
I hope that answers your question that long-winded answer no it answers it very
well and it is interesting like on the one hand you know well it's easy to be
labeled a conspiracy theorist just for even asking a question that's outside
of the given stated narrative these days but you know sometimes you know it's
it's easy to think well god like these damn bastards like with this master plan
that they're that they're putting in motion but then I'm like you know what
but these fuckers aren't that smart but then like then the other side of things
is like wow but like we can barely you know coordinate a orderly withdrawal of
troops from a foreign land and that's like just the military you're working
with but how did like every global government and like every state
government somehow in the US managed to coordinate this fairly uniform response
to the COVID crisis where like I can't think of a time when the world leaders
those in power really quote came together like that and of course it was
for let's say authoritarian reasons but that was something that was kind of
shocking was like you know you want to think on the one hand there are these
people pulling the strings on the other hand you think god but the puppets that
the that whose strings they're pulling just all seem like completely hapless
idiots but then on the other hand you're like wow this was a pretty coordinated
response and happened pretty quickly and somehow we reached this consensus with a
couple of outliers in terms of you know internationally but wherever all these
countries just kind of we're like yep this is what we have to do like we have
to adopt this totalitarian hand here and that's the only way you'll be safe and
it kind of goes back to like this like COVID was the perfect step in the
permacrisis I think for a lot of for anyone that has authoritarian leanings
like because I feel like that's what we've been living through at least you
know like I'm in my early 30s as well it's just like this constant up this
this permacrisis where you go from I mean what we can go back to like 9-11 if we
want to like a horrific and terrible attack but one which was also used as
an excuse to not only invade many other countries massively expand the military
industrial complex and hugely enriched defense contractors but then also to
institute things like the Patriot Act and then you go into like okay great
financial crisis like and there were probably a couple of crises in between
there but then you go into that and you see a whole lot of other new rules and
regulations come up and then you get into like I don't know if the next part of
the crisis which was was like for a lot of people Trump like oh my god orange
man so bad like I'm no Trump fan I think the guy's a jackass but the response of
so many people on the left like truly becoming hysterical about him as though
he was just this anti-Christ I was like we're blowing some things a little bit
out of proportion here guys and then you go from okay finally Trump is out of
office and like we still heard about I mean we're still he still takes up so
much of the news cycle which is just astounding like I think the media realized
like wow this is just a cash cow we can keep on milking like keep Trump in the
news but then we had the you know the war well COVID the war in Ukraine and
now it's like okay we're starting to shift that permacrisis narrative towards
the climate crisis again which is always kind of an underlying narrative there
and it's like you know first of all the media loves a permacrisis because they
make money like they need to run news to make money right the government loves
a permacrisis because with every new iteration of it they find a new way
that they're able to clamp down a little bit more and then there's this weird
group of people which is shockingly large who also seem to love the permacrisis
because I think people like if there is not a lot of meaning in your life you
search for meaning and in absence of any good source of meaning that you can give
yourself you want somebody else to hand it to you and these types of people make
whatever that particular crisis du jour is into part of their identity and and
it's become so integral to them that like they also become experts on the
subject like all of the you know the armchair doctors who were very very
certain that cloth masks would prevent this respiratory virus and all the
people with you know in the Western world with Ukraine flags in their bio
that are suddenly like military experts and you know people talking about
Ukraine in the Donbas region who literally just found out about it on
Wikipedia yesterday and but like it becomes part of their identity and then
it's so hard to shake and it's also so hard to ask questions about because any
questions you asked are not taken as just questions there are attacks on that
person's identity and like now I just wonder like what is the next permacrisis
like is it a combination of COVID lockdowns with like climate hysteria
turning into climate lockdowns like is that where we go next is that the you
know I guess where do you where do you see the evolution of the permacrisis
going to next and I guess put another way what is the state's next excuse to
try and remove more of our liberties from the individual yeah I think you're
right that the the current permacrisis map is basically flipping the channel
between the climate hoax and COVID and trying to see which one's working better
it's hard to tell in like in Florida but I hear stories from people that live in
like major cities and especially like New York LA Chicago that a lot of people
are remasking which is sad at this point I think that these people should just
be mocked and ridiculed like I don't care if they have some type of you know
thing going on like it's just it's just ridiculous like I have no empathy left
for these people but it's um you know what what I fear is that because I think
that like you know these these crises have an expiration date you see it with
Ukraine now that it's really a hard sell and we talked about like you know the
depravity of the ruling class now you have you know you had this awful
wildfire in Maui and there's barely any federal resources getting over there
you know weeks after the game and they're in Congress now they know that
they're gonna struggle to have votes to pass the Biden administration's 24 billion
additional dollars for Ukraine because it's becoming deeply unpopular so what
they want to do is they want to tie the Maui funding to the Ukraine funding so
that everyone votes for it and it's like it's like an out for the people that
are the fence sitters so they can't like so they're their constituents can't be
mad at them so it's just kind of goes to show it's a good example of like what
goes on in our halls of power like the moral degeneracy but I think what I
fear with the next step of the permanent crisis is you're gonna have like these
type of I don't know if you want to categorize them with like as like false
flag events but you know this whole idea like a cyber pandemic like purposeful
destruction if things go south and you know although I want to see I'm looking
forward to I think in an inevitable era of like hyper Bitcoinization because you
know the you know our inflationary fiat bubble is eventually going to pop but I
think on the way down or on the way when when these people start to you know
retreat from the chaos they will have to impose some type of sabotage to get away
so that's what I think is to look out for like a type of some type of very
weird situation but I think that at the very least this COVID era has made a
lot of people skeptical of government force so I would I would be on the
lookout for something like that to happen this type of you know major
incident throughout the United States unfortunately you know these people
really have no shame at all and a very limited moral compass and they just like
don't really care about their fellow citizens whatsoever you know if you go
back to like the foundations of the Federal Reserve and US Monetary Policy
in the last hundred years it boils down to I don't want to sound like you know
socialist but it is true that our economic system is basically robbing
the vast majority of people through monetary policy to enrich the elites
and you know that's been working for a very long time and I think technology
has you know there's been some amazing innovations over the past few decades
that have helped to kind of like bail out the elites and kind of extend because
extend their their timeline of power because quality of life has definitely
increased especially in the United States but you know there's coming a point
in time when the bills do and you know they don't want to pay the bill they
want us to pay the bill so that's when things get kind of dicey and I think
we're going through that era right now you know they need to they need to pay
off all of these lobbyists all of these industries you know the military
industrial regime there they're hungry again you know one year of Ukraine or
one and a half years of Ukraine this isn't going to do it for them you know
they want another Afghanistan so it should be interesting to see how things
play out you know we already got pharma got paid so I think pharma's taken care
for a while but there's all these industries of the elites that are going
to want to get their chunk of change too so we'll see what happens you know it's
it's so interesting because you said like I don't want to sound like a
socialist but you made a very valid critique it's it's funny because like
we tend to think in these very like binary terms of like okay the general
assumption right now if you listen to actual socialists not because you're
obviously not a socialist but if you listen to actual socialists they will
refer to what we have now as this as capitalism right yes like hyper
capitalism but what we but what we have now is like not capitalist at all like
it's a kleptocracy run by a gerontocratic oligarchy and it's it's just
so funny because it's like you know people always say or the socialists you
know all real socialism's never been tried or real communism's never been
tried it's like fuck man real capitalism hasn't ever been tried like you
because you've always had the state I mean how can you possibly call something
a capitalist system when you have the state doling out massive massive
subsidies and picking the winners and losers and giving contracts to their
friends and freaking I mean not even to get into the insider trading like wow
we've got I'm glad Nancy Pelosi was able to retire as the number one trader like
of congressional history I mean really just hats off to her but it's just so
funny because it's like yes our the parts of our system that are capitalist
have enabled us to as you correctly identified achieve a massive improvement
in the standard of living and the those good parts of capitalism or I should
say the parts that are actually capitalistic of our system have lifted
up the majority of the world out of poverty it's you know it's one of the
safest most or the safest most peaceful time to be alive right like that
being said you have this massive state apparatus at the national level and the
international level which is just sucking actually so much air out of that
system like so much of the productivity of Jeff Booth talks about this in his
book the price of tomorrow like technology is naturally deflationary
everything should be getting more affordable for us and then you'll always
have the fiat economists who say like well but look at the price of flat
screen TVs like they're getting cheaper it's like okay thank you for that you
know that one example you know meanwhile everything else is getting more and more
expensive more and more you know out of reach if we're talking about things like
home ownership you know you used to be able to have one parent working
usually the husband and that parent was able to support his whole household with
two or three or five kids on one salary without working three other side jobs
by just saving being relatively frugal but still having a great standard of
living and being able to own a house and then pay it off and now we're at this
point where I think I think a lot of the kind of black pill energy that's out
there especially in some of these like the the folks younger than us like that
are coming up right now coming into the workforce they're realizing oh shit I
thought I was getting paid a lot like this new you know this job I have out
of college is paying me well but I'm never going to be able to afford to buy a
house like my parents have that's just it's just not possible and so I think
you start to see that's when you start to see like that apathy that hopelessness
I think leads more people towards this hyper leftist mentality of well then I
you know I just want it given to me and I'm not saying that everyone is the case
there are many many hardworking people in every single generation it's not a
generational thing it's just a societal thing where we're at in this cycle of
growth and decline of boom and bust which is just a it's not a bug of the fiat
system it's a feature right and so it's it's interesting because I think you're
right that the bills coming do I mean look at the look at the national debt
look at the interest on the national debt look at how much that is just like
going up exponentially at a certain point like something's got to give
luckily not luckily for everyone else but luckily if you're an american
like the us is still it's still you know number one like the us dollar is
still the world's reserve currency for now and like it or not everything else
will break before the dollar does like it's the prettiest horse at the glue
factory it's not it's still at the glue factory but like so many other currencies
are gonna collapse long before the dollar does so at least we've got a little
extra cushion but that also sucks if you're not in the you know in america
like we've done this for a long time just exporting our debt and our inflation
to the rest of the world to somewhat mask things at home and I have a well I mean
it's a good thing our military is so massive and the military industrial
complex is well-fed because if that wasn't the case we
probably see other countries push back a lot harder and that's why our
military is so big right yeah well I think speaking of that and we're kind
of entering this um for the first time since probably the end of
world war two we're entering this multipolar environment where you have a
lot of where you have other players specifically china but there's others
that seeming that are like seemingly ready to contest
the global hegemony of the united states
um I hear things about like this BRICS currency and whatnot and BRICS just
stands for uh it's just this coalition of
brazil russia india china and south africa but you know I just it seemed that
they all these countries share a very similar mentality so it's just like a
race to become the best fiat um it's like I don't know do you buy into any of
the stuff that they're like they're suddenly gonna create like gold backed
or bitcoin backed national currencies like I just don't see that
panning out especially like in an alliance because you have all kinds of
interests there um you know I hope at least that the future is just is just
bitcoin um and that they're like I just don't see like any
type of like intermediate term fiat that's going to you know
supersede the dollar I don't know what's your take on that
no it's it's an interesting question because like you see a lot of people in
the financial media who are like you know BRICS is what is really going to
destabilize the dollar and dethrone it but then a lot of people you know are
also saying oh and and it's going to be backed by you know a basket of currencies
a basket of their currencies right and then maybe also have gold reserves
backing it but it's like you really think that Russia and China and
India and Brazil and all of them and the plus countries however many of those
are really going to give each other the green light to go in and audit each
other's reserves of gold because that's what's going to be required
if they want to actually back it by gold right like
well it's really could scam people they could always scam people and just say
that they have this amount of gold and trust me brah right well and that that's
what they would have to do because like we know we know that like China and
Russia as you know they're let's say a wary friend with each other right but
obviously they're you know they're still watching their own backs but I just I
find it hard to believe that they would really open up their books essentially
to be like yep we we can promise we have this much gold and you can come here and
audit it every two years to be able to see like that being said I think it's
we have a lot of things that are kind of reaching this confluence at the same
time right like you've got this very obvious changing of the guard happening
in so many countries around the world where the gerontocracy which has I mean
look at a guy like like Joe Biden he's been in politics for
50 over 50 years like in some capacity I mean like conveniently you know entered
politics right around you know in the early 70s like you know what the fuck
happened in 1971 this whole but this whole political class was entering politics
at least in America where they're very old was entering politics in that early
70s or maybe early 80s era they've been in power in moving up that ladder since
then but at a certain point we all die right like and as long as some of these
people seem to live like improbably long I'm like seriously how is it that some of
the worst people like how is you know how is Kissinger like
outside of the whole technical but like how is Kissinger
He's 100 now I know he's 100 years old
like how how are you still alive dude like but
the point being we've got this whole political class
and that has been around for forever decades and decades longer than
most of us in the younger generation have been on this earth they've been in
politics but at a certain point they will die off right and what I'm curious
about is like what fills that vacuum because
like clearly there's a lot of power grabs happening in sort of this
last ditch effort to retain as much power as possible until you you know have
like literally we've got walking zombies like
Diane Feinstein who's like like what what are you doing
like you you are just run by your handlers and a lot of them are right
but who then fills that that power vacuum in terms of actual leadership
like and especially as we go into these next few election years
say you know presidential election next year but then you know
there's always another election that's you can always count on that right
like what happens that power vacuum who fills it is it the
you know the young people that are in office right now
like let's say on the left the AOC type people the you know
Ilhan Omar do we see that class move into those
even more high-powered positions or do we start to see just kind of
a rejection of the incumbent political class regardless of age and start to
see a new wave of people become interested in politics because they say
you know what I'm just I'm sick of this and it's not working and even though
you're a young person in politics you're still more you know you are working
with the old guard you're still just more the same like
where do you see that heading like who fills that vacuum and
and what comes next it's a great question because you know I spent I
think eight years in Washington DC and you don't really realize
when you're in there you don't realize the extent to which
everyone is kind of trapped by the uniparty once they enter Washington
and you know my background is in foreign affairs and
foreign policy US foreign policy and what you find is that like there's not
much of a difference really between these
think tank operations whether you know they support
conservative or liberal candidates the policies
are very similar and it's basically just all about
you know enriching the industry that supports them
so I think that you know if you're a political leader today the best thing
you can do is to get people away from DC
and spend as much time outside of DC as possible
you know there's a lot of interesting institutions
that have kind of like unique ideas that don't have to do with
you know empowering the DC ruling class and almost all of them are based out of
outside of Washington DC and I don't think that's a coincidence
whatever a lot of things happen there that just corrupt
all of these legislators and it's hard to be optimistic for
you know especially people that are trying to change things on the federal
level whether they are the president of the United States running the
administrative state or some of it or you're a congressman or a senator
you're very limited mobility you know as much as we like someone like a
congressman thomas massie there's only so few of them in DC
you know you can basically there maybe maybe you can make a case that out of
the 535 members of congress there's like 15 of them that are kind of cool and
have interesting ideas i think there's like one or two established like
bitcoiners you have synthia lumis who i think is
actually like well read on bitcoin and what maybe considers
of a bit pointer and then you have warren davidson who's um congressman who's
like half crypto have bitcoin but at least it's talking about bitcoin so i
think that like when it comes to uh you know i'm much more optimistic about
um kind of like things like what happened in florida where you just have
um more local power to make change in your community it's very tough on the
federal level but of course as you know the problem is that as much as our
our bill of rights and constitution grants um powers to the states through
the federal system the money printer is controlled by you know these very
centralized federal institutions um you know the power the the states have no
power to you know school up the money
printer so again you know bitcoin fixes this but
there's only so many things we can do in our politics
without breaking the money printer so i think that's
that's uh that's ultimately the goal at the end of the day
no i think that's it's really well said it's like uh you know we we sound very
uh repetitive and cliched oftentimes as bitcoiners you know
fix the money fix the world like but they you know there's
truth to that there's a whole lot of truth because so many things you know
you see people on on both sides of the aisle this is not exclusive to
republicans or to democrats but depending on usually
if the opposition party is in power the other side
likes to complain about the state of things like that's just how it works in
this coca-cola pepsi-cola uh democracy that we have
is okay when you're when your guys in power everything's great and when the
other guys in power everything sucks and the reality is that it's like you
know the uniparty is much more pervasive than people realize
but more so than that it's that because the money is so broken
there's only so many changes that any individual in the executive branch can
make like sure they can sign a whole lot of executive orders
but as we all know those executive orders tend to be things that are more of
those uh i don't want to say superficial issues
but they tend to be the kind of the ones that get their base riled up
right and and supporting them like it's the whatever the hot topic of the day
is that everybody's really fighting about but those hot topics of the day are
typically meant to distract people from the fact that again
our money is broken like you are losing purchasing power
every year um and as much as we you know there are supposed to be checks and
balances in our uh you know in our system the there's
not really any checks and balances on the creation of the money which is
ultimately at the heart of all of it and so i i it's frustrating sometimes when
you see people who are you know on the left complaining that okay it's usually
on the left it's you know uh wealth inequality and uh why
doesn't the rich pay their fair share just to throw it some generic talking
points there and on the right typically more you see uh oh well you know
inflation and prices you see more talk about the federal reserve on the right
i think i think it's safe to say that but it's still it's a little bit
misplaced because people are talking about the the symptoms
and blaming those symptoms on the opposition party versus talking about
the disease itself which they either are ignoring or don't know about
and they also don't know about any potential cures like bitcoin and now
bitcoin doesn't fix everything but it certainly does provide an escape
route for people who are willing to learn about it but i'm curious you know
because you i think have probably uh still a pretty large circle of people
who are very uh deeply ingrained in let's say the political
sphere that's safe to say and i'm curious um how many of them are really you
know uh orange pilled um where do you do hear a lot of talk about bitcoin as it
relates to monetary policy or is bitcoin still kind of seen as
operating in a vacuum from the more uh the people who are more let's say
politically focused versus monetarily focused if that makes sense
bitcoin policy seems to only interest people in the political world
during a bull run so it's like it was so fascinating because i talk about
bitcoin a lot on twitter and i have a politically engaged audience
and i would get you know and bitcoin was making its run to 60
a 16 9 000 and i was inundated with messages about you know how do i buy
bitcoin what exchange should i use you know what wallet should i use you know
all the the starter pack questions but when we're in a bear market compared to
you know the bitcoin's fiat exchange rate it's like silence and when i talk to
influential people about this they're like yeah you know i know that's the
solution but we need like a stop gap measure and i was like all right fine
fine but the the second you know you turn on your you know you you log into your
favorite bitcoin price app and there's you know when eight percent green
candle then suddenly everyone's interested again
i think it has a lot to do with like this like human market psychology that it
makes sense why so many people struggle to
to save and increase their purchasing power because like
everyone wants to buy everyone says they want to buy the bottom and sell the top
but for whatever reason during bitcoin cycles and you know i like i said i
believe that there's no there's no exchange rate at which spending a
dollar to buy bitcoin is a bad price especially
nowadays but it's just for whatever reason
there's always more interest and i'm sure like you've been through bitcoin a few
bitcoin cycles now too but yeah it's it's the same with the
political class like you know when bitcoin is that over 60
thousand us dollars per bitcoin there is so much
interest you know people want to bring me on their podcast let's talk about
bitcoin and when it goes down a little bit and
perhaps they had finally decided to throw some money in
they are not happy with me and you know they think bitcoin is a cia up and
you know a lot of people i think there's this like
there's a lot of laziness not just in i think dc world but just
people don't want to do their own research they want to be told what to do
um you know they for good reason lots of people
don't believe in anything anymore because you know they've been lied to by the
people in charge and they're very skeptical about
everything and of course this also applies bitcoin
but you know to defeat that you could read about bitcoin and come to at
least come to a basic level understanding that like
you know you can't just hack the whole protocol and steal all of
the money it's just i wish but for whatever reason
it's very difficult to educate people on bitcoin but
i think during the next bull market it is a great time to capitalize on that as
much as we can get some like real sound policy
measures in place because like there's just
there's just nothing you can do to get people
like you know you can point them to the rabbit hole but they need to
physically enter it if that makes sense it's just whatever
i'm not some kind of like master at uh convincing people to do stuff anyway so
um perhaps if you have any ideas too uh i mean you've done a great job orange
filling a lot of people with a lot of your you and carlos great bitcoin
content and work but it's just you know and from
from the policy and politics world these people are only interested as you kind
of said it's kind of like when the tv turns on and they're talking about
bitcoin they're interested in bitcoin and i guess i'll leave it at that
no it's it's so true it's uh it is a it's a tricky thing too because like i've
got friends on all sides of the political spectrum like i don't
you know give a shit what your politics are uh if you know if i like you as a
human being uh and i don't want to reduce you to your politics and
and i like that because then i get to actually hear things
from uh my friends that are completely like uh just on either side of the aisle
and you know strangely you hear like uh when it comes to
lack of understanding that's where people on both sides the aisle find common
ground right what like if you when you see you know there are a lot of uh
you know a lot of anti-bitcoin people on both sides the aisle there are a lot of
pro-bitcoin people in both sides the aisle there are a lot of
pro-bitcoin people who find themselves i think the more you
go down that rabbit hole the more you start to realize the extent of the
uniparty to a certain extent you start to realize the prevalence of the state
and the pervasiveness of different means of control that exist within this
state apparatus and you know hearing things it's it is really
funny like you still like we you know that we're
early because you still hear the most cliched possible uh
anti-bitcoin things from people who really like all they know is what they
saw on uh you know 30 second hit on you know the tv
or they read in the new york times or whatever else
and it's you know on the left it's typically oh this is
something that's you know bad for the environment um and of course they
haven't looked into uh you know mining bitcoin with flared
gas or anything like that they haven't looked into
load balancing the grid they they don't know about any of that stuff they just
know what the headline said they probably didn't even read the whole
article uh and on the right maybe you get a little bit more i think you get this
from both sides though of the kind of like well you know uh either like the
the donald trump type view of well i don't like anything that goes against the
us dollar yeah it's used by criminals or just the same
old regurgitated talking points but it's always very clear like with those
types of people on either side whenever i hear those really just
basic and like the same talking points i've heard a
thousand times before it's a great opportunity to turn it back to
the problems that that person has with society in general like you know that
they've got a grievance and it's not that they don't like bitcoin it's just
that they honestly don't understand it and they're trying not to come off as
stupid like they just are so many people are really terrified of
saying you know what i actually don't know that much like can i ask some
questions some people are great i appreciate that because that's how you
learn but a lot of people i think in this day and age it's like no one
wants to appear stupid or uninformed because they have all the resources to
do infinite hours of research onto any given topic
so you know it but it's always easier to regurgitate a couple sound bites
pretend like you kind of know what you're talking about and then go back to
your cozy existence of living in your box and looking at the world through your
red and blue blinders and blaming the other party
when things don't go your way but what gives me you know i think the
orange pill is a bit of a white pill in a lot of ways
because it really does give you some hope because you see
like you go to a bitcoin conference and you see the diversity of people and i'm
not talking about like the the bullshit kind of diversity like i'm not
talking about diversity quotas i'm talking about like actual diversity
of people from all over the world from all different backgrounds
who have been brought together by bitcoin and who are trying to build
tools to maximize our human liberty and
prosperity and that's like something that's really heartening so like
it's easy to get blackpilled and be like you know what god we're just
we're so fucked like so many people are just have their NPC blinders on
they've been programmed they're going through the motions
we're fucked but then you see you know people who are the exact opposite of
that and who are not only like talking the talk but they're walking the walk
and actually building things and i'm i'm so grateful to developers
who especially open source devs who are like you know what
i'm just gonna like fucking i'm just gonna build it like i want to see this
thing and i'm just gonna build what this is and i wish i had those kind of
skills i do not so i use the skills that i do have
but yeah like i i just really hope i so much appreciate especially those with
technical expertise that are there's a there's a lot of them that are working
in bitcoin when they could be working for
google or apple making a ton of money you know being a corporate drone
having a nice you know actually being able to afford a house which is rare but
but and i'm glad they're working on you know they have like a grant and they're
working on an important bitcoin project you know these people
need to be recognized more often um than they are and you know i get that some
of them actually prefer the anonymity which i even appreciate more so it's uh
it's very encouraging like that i agree with you like people i think if they are
on the fence about not even you know if they just want to learn about bitcoin
they should just come to a bitcoin conference to check it out like there's
there's no better vibes than at a you know a real like bitcoin only event or
conference or meetup i mean the best of people
obviously including you and carla and it was a pleasure to get to
meet you in the meet space in miami that was a that was a good time
so i i want to i think like start to wrap things up but one thing before we close
out that i wanted to get your thoughts on was just as we go into this next
election cycle now that we're kind of full on talking about bitcoin here
as we go into this next election cycle like we've seen just speaking of miami
um at the bitcoin conference down there we saw both
the veck and rfk both come out and with some very pro bitcoin
sentiments both of them starting accepting campaign donations
in bitcoin that's like a pretty huge moment
um for us to see this and this is people again
one on the right one on the left that's great i like to see it that's
depoliticizing bitcoin um to a certain extent
where do you see bitcoin fitting into the narrative going into this next
election cycle as somebody who has you know seen a few election cycles
being in the swamp being in dc like you know how these narratives are spun
do you think this is kind of the the cycle where
you know because we're also going into the having next year like we've got a
having we've got the election we've got well probably
um an ongoing crisis or two that'll be spun up between now and then
who knows maybe the same ones we have now who can say what the permacrisis will
bring but where do you see the narrative going as far as
bitcoin as part of the election cycle um you know uh i know disantis also came
out on the twitter space he did uh and was like you know i'm i'm pro bitcoin
like so that's that's three not fringe in any way but
mainstream candidates who are vocally pro bitcoin
that's something that's never happened before how does that start to change the
narrative not just around uh the politics of bitcoin so to speak
but the conversation around money in general like does it give us
maybe a more nuanced discussion in the in the debates
than we usually get which are so many times just superficial
sound by debates that are completely worthless
it's so so i'm torn about this because i i think that
um you know i think you're right to be critical of both sides which you know
during the trump presidency um especially during at the end during the
covid era you know a lot of the inflationary
stuff we're seeing today is due to passing those massive multi trillion
dollar stimulus bills um but realistically right now
uh you know the polls at least if you believe some of them
uh donald trump's a huge frontrunner and he's going to be having a conversation
with tucker carlson um wednesday i think at the same time when the
debates are happening so like it's not even clear i think
well no um because i don't think trump's gonna
trump is very good at staying on message and he probably won't even
entertain the idea that anything you know he'll just say that
the economy was great and biden's causing inflation like i think
that's all we'll get from a guy like trump what would be interesting is if we
see um a real contender emerge on the gop side that is willing to critique
both sides um so we'll see if that happens i think we'll know in the coming
weeks um if these debates can generate some
energy for someone um because right now trump's like 40 points
ahead and you know i think that what the you know the politics black
pill i guess which is you know could be uh turn into a humanity white pill is
that maybe we'll see joe biden and dolan trump
debating and people will just be like oh my god you know they're both the
prava right so right you're gonna see two
the trump's gonna be almost 80 um you know if he gets the nomination is
debating biden biden will be completely senile by then
and imagine those two yelling at each other about who's to blame for america's
economic woes maybe that'll be our route to americans
discovering the fact that the money is broken more americans at least so i think
maybe they'll they'll let us in on the secret without
intending to but but for sure with with these debates
if there's an established contender there's certainly an opening
to target the economic policies that have led to
you know our eggs becoming the next gold so we'll see
do you think uh because i i did see that trump was going to be you know uh
not engaging in the debate uh which you know kind of he and biden are going by
the same playbook here of oh i'm not gonna from biden's side is like well i'm
the president i'm not you know debating rfk or anyone else and
trump's side is just like no like i'm you know he's doing he's doing his own
thing right uh but i would hope because i mean
tucker is somebody who is definitely on the road to being orange
pilled i think he he has a i've just i've heard that in personal
interactions with him like he's very curious about bitcoin he asks a lot of
the right questions not superficial ones but deeper ones
and and he's a guy who i think has become very
uh disillusioned with establishment media and the establishment in
general uh more so recently as he's kind of
completely stepped out of that role uh or was pushed out of that role however it
went down do you think there's any chance that
tucker actually kind of pushes trump on like you know listen
your administration was overseeing uh the treasury in the federal reserve uh
during the time where all of this massive amount of money was printed for
these stimulus packages and you know does that conversation come
around to bitcoin in any sense or do you think it's going to go more
boilerplate and where we're going to see the actual action is okay
in these smaller debates where neither biden nor trump are present
and we've got both republicans and democrats you know debating each other
in their pods is that where we're going to kind of see
uh the real action happening it will be interesting to see i i know that
before tucker was silenced and kicked out of fox news
he had done a couple segments and had mentioned bitcoin i mean he interviewed
buckelle yeah that was huge yeah and he seems very i think you're
right he seemed very open to the idea that like he should further explore
monetary policy and you know he's he had all the right questions um the thing is
with trump he has yet to really grill him on anything so i i think that
will i think we'll see if we watch the interview we'll see immediately if he's
like how he sets the tone because there's also this idea that
i've heard floating around which is just rumors that
um he feels the need to kind of like be on the side with trump because he views
him as the eventual nominee and you know
trump is a very sensitive guy so he doesn't want to
you know lose access but but i think that i i think that hopefully
tucker will be tough with him and do the american people's service and
at least holds him accountable for some stuff but i i think we'll definitely
see early on um because tucker is really his own man so
i you know i i hope that that he goes for it because you know the american
people deserve transparency from both sides
from both people that want to be president um but yeah i think we'll
see it immediately um but yeah i think you're right that it's just
it's inevitable that you know you can only even if people are running on this
you know endless fiat treadmill all day they're
they're going to just start asking more and more basic questions about why they
can't afford anything why they need to take out
um you know a a loan to pay for further new tv over you know
an eight-year payment plan period so i i think that these questions will
inevitably surface and you know then then bitcoin wins but um we can
definitely accelerate adoption if our if people in positions to do so can
can at least help us on this mission a little bit
all right i mean at least we see there's no doubt that the overton window
is shifting like and it's shifting in a a good direction where
bitcoin is not just this fringe thing anymore bitcoin is something that
presidential candidates in the u.s are talking about
and it's something that presidential candidates around the world are talking
about um you know down in argentina uh like this is
this is something that is no longer just uh a small subset of people this is
fully in the mainstream uh dialogue i would hope just back to tucker and
trump i would love to see tucker ask trump about
that fucking godawful nft collection scam that
my god that but i highly doubt as you said he want
tucker probably wants to tow the line have trump back on keep those views
flowing so he probably won't be like you know what the fuck was up with that
nft collection man uh but maybe a guy a guy can dream right
um well before we close up is there uh first of all thank you because this
has been a pleasure talking with you um great to get your insights um and
just uh for the audience to learn more about you as a human being and
also a bit coiner um where should people go to find you so
they can check out your work um feel free to uh to pump anything that you
want in terms of the newsletter or your twitter to uh all the massive
audience of the bitcoin podcast uh growing by the day
um but yeah where should people go to find you now i so much appreciate you
having me on and it's gonna be it's gonna be huge undoubtedly
you'll have uh explosive growth if you don't get
fan from every platform by the end of the year but no no i think it's gonna be
awesome um and i so much appreciate uh it was a great conversation um to
read all my latest work you just go to dossier dot today that's kind of where
um all of my non shitposting goes i'm also on twitter just at
jordan and shacktell no spaces um but yeah appreciate it good
conversation is always absolutely i'll link all of your stuff in the show notes
as well so people can find it if they don't know how to spell dossier
you don't need to be embarrassed out there people it's okay um but thanks so
much um so at this point i'd like to thank everybody for joining us for this
episode of the bitcoin podcast bitcoin podcasts are abundant but bitcoin is
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