You can't tell me not to believe my lying eyes.
Like, I see this is happening and I'm mad as hell I'm not going to put up with it anymore.
I'm going to let these people dragged into court and tried for treason and appropriately thrown in prison.
I just want rule of law brought back.
I would like to read some passages from the bear market of 2015, 2016.
People literally thought Bitcoin was going to die.
We're off the all-time highs of 123,000 down about 30%.
But we 5X'd in three years.
This is the most healthy consolidation.
Nobody lines up for Bitcoin when it's, you know, 90,000.
They line up for it when it's at 200,000.
You hate it when the price is dumping, but you hate it even more when the price is pumping too.
Because you're like, oh God, I don't have enough Bitcoin.
I am incredibly, incredibly bullish right now.
Greetings and salutations, my fellow plebs.
My name is Walker and this is The Bitcoin Podcast.
Bitcoin continues to make new blocks every 10 minutes
and the value of one Bitcoin is still one Bitcoin.
If you are listening to this right now,
remember, you're still early.
This episode is brought to you by Blockware.
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Head to the show notes for links to find the show on centralized social media platforms and on Noster,
or just go directly to bitcoinpodcast.net. You'll find it all there.
And kind reminder that you can support this show by becoming a paid subscriber on Fountain.
Or don't, Bitcoin doesn't care, but I sure do appreciate it.
Without further ado, let's get into this Bitcoin talk.
Ignoster is fantastic. Zap.stream works great.
I've been playing around with the Primal streaming one too for a while now, and that's working great.
But sometimes it doesn't, and so I like to have a backup, you know.
I'd like to have an alternate option.
And the cool thing about ZapDot stream is you can just raid your own stream.
So that works pretty well.
It's,
uh,
it's incredible how these have progressed.
I'm seeing it now though.
I'm going to,
I'm going to send a message in,
uh,
in Noster.
It's a Noster Noster.
I think that's,
uh,
Oh,
you,
I mean,
I say Noster.
I actually don't know how you,
what do you say?
Oh,
I went to,
uh,
I went to an all boys Catholic high school where we were forced to learn
Latin and the, uh, the, our fathers is in my head, paternoster, domini, Kiley. So I say
Noster. Okay. Okay. Okay. I mean, I'm not gonna hold it against you. You know, you're like,
it's the same. Do you say a hodl or hodl? I'm a hodl guy. Okay. So you have a history of
mispronouncing things. That's fine. This makes a lot more sense than just wanted, just wanted to
be clear what I was dealing with here. That's usually, that's usually how I like to, you know,
like to check that. But no, I mean, again, that's the beauty of open protocols, right? Is you're
free to mispronounce them if you want to.
Like it's, you know, it's really anyone's game.
All right, let's see.
I'm going to blast this out on old centralized social media as well,
just because I like to think that maybe,
and I have had some evidence of this from people telling me,
but that streaming only on Noster does bring at least a couple people over
occasionally that would not have checked out Noster otherwise.
So it's like, you know, I'm doing my part in some small way.
You post, I would take the other side of this.
We do this at RHR where we live stream on X.
I wasn't trying to dig at RHR, by the way.
X, YouTube, and Nostre.
But we belittle the people on X and YouTube and in those chats.
And we haven't been good with it recently,
but we used to ignore the YouTube and X chats
and be like, if you want us to respond, hop in the Nostre chat.
And I think that's a good practice too.
I do actually like that.
I like that strategy.
I was watching the RHR from yesterday,
and you guys were specifically calling out the Nostra chat to hop in there.
But I go back and forth on this because I never wanted this show to be a live stream show.
It's a different vibe to do live streaming.
I wanted it to be a podcast, a real Bitcoin podcast.
And so the live stream was never part of the plan.
But then Nostra enabled live streaming with Zap.stream.
Shout out to Kieran.
And I thought, well, why not?
Why not mess around with this, add a little bit of a different dimension to it?
but yeah i don't know has has rhr always been a live stream too i know you guys were saying
yesterday you're at like what like 7.3 years of rhr like 375 episodes something wild like that
that's insane by the way it uh it's crazy to think and i'm tired boss no i'm kidding i am
invigorated by rabbit hole recap weekend and week out and no it wasn't always a live stream for the
longest time the first three years it's crazy to think we've done now to think i say for the
longest time but literally for most of rhr's history now it has been a live stream but for the
first three years matt and i would just meet in my apartment it was audio only no video and then
covid hit and we decided to we had to do remotes and so we were on a video call anyway and said
why not just record the video post it and then ultimately got to the point i was like all right
let's just go live too.
And so we started doing that during the COVID era.
So it started out audio only,
Matt and I in our apartment looking disheveled because we didn't care what we
looked like.
Often drinking whiskey,
shooting the shit into handheld mics and then a COVID hit.
And that's when we went video and then live stream.
The rest,
as they say is history.
It's,
it's a wild streak though.
Like that's a,
it's a,
like that is commitment right there.
That is true proof of work.
That's honestly like insane.
And all the credit goes to our wives who have put up with this week in, week out, year in, year out.
Because I know they both – I think they're having a good relationship with both of them.
They know, like, okay, when you're recording RHR this week and as long as we give them a day's notice, I think they're fine.
They're accepting of it.
Yes.
I mean, shout out to the wives out there that put up with the Bitcoin podcasters.
None of this is possible without wives that are cool with it.
I think that there's an enjoyment on their side from being, well, one, like, you know, they don't have to talk to you about Bitcoin quite as much, right?
You get some of it out of your system.
Not that they don't like to talk about Bitcoin, but perhaps they don't like to talk about it quite as much.
I don't want to speak for yours or Odell's wife.
Maybe they like talking about it more than you guys.
I don't know.
my wife uh cannot care less as long as the numbers coming up over over a longer period of time she's
happy but uh she's the wife where she's uh we're different conversations at a party and she'll
glance over like is he talking about bitcoin and uh she's a problem she's proud yeah so carla does
this thing where she'll like uh and we go to we go to less parties now that you know we have a
a little one or well now he's starting to get a little bit older so we're you know going going
to more again like with him in tow because he likes a nice you know nice fiesta but she'll she's
the one like you know just don't bring up bitcoin first just like please just please just don't be
the first one to bring it up and then like five minutes in she's somehow brought it up and i'm
like well what what are you doing like this is exactly what you told me not to do it's like
you know a couple glasses of sauvignon blanc and she's like and that's why the fed is a cabal of
central bankers. And I'm like, that's, that's my gal. That's, that's my gal.
They're pretty sure they're lizards and skin suits. Yeah, it's like, yeah,
exactly. You've seen the movie, you've seen the movie, they live. It's basically,
that's a documentary. It's a documentary essentially. Oh man. Well,
shout out to the few people who've already joined us on Noster. I always,
I always appreciate that. Like it's to me the,
because I've done a few live streams as well.
I've started doing like a weekly one with, uh, with Roxham that like, uh,
It's the kind of new network that Shane and Nolan are working on.
And then I've done a couple just like very late night,
random impromptu, you know, emergency broadcasts, quote, quote.
And there's something about the Noster chat that is just more satisfying.
Perhaps to the fact that you're like a pun intended,
like you're receiving sats.
So like, of course, it's more satisfying, right?
But the vibes are just,
the vibes have consistently been wonderful on Noster, I will say,
despite all the weird vibes on X.
Like, have you noticed that the divergence, the vibes divergence has gotten greater and greater, like up until this point?
Or is that just me noticing that?
No, it's, uh, it's very palpable, tangible, noticeable, if you will.
And that's, and that's, uh, another part of the reason why when we live stream to all these platforms is like, we like to focus on the Noster live chat because it's higher quality.
And we have our, our ride or dies are in there.
We have people that have been listening to the show for eight years, and we've developed at RHR this sort of like little community.
So it's like they're not only talking to us, they're talking to each other.
And over the years, they've known to transition to the Nostra live chat.
And I think comparing it to like podcasting 2.0, which is wonderful, it's been great.
And we see this with streamer culture outside of Bitcoin.
The zaps flow much heavier in the live chat than they do.
in the post-recording release in that medium
because I think people feel more social pressure to interact
and you're more likely to call out somebody like JP
who just zapped us 21 sats.
Thank you, JP.
Thank you for the zap.
That is very kind of you.
No, it's true.
I mean, streamer culture to me is really fascinating
because I was, this was not something that was really on,
I mean, it was on my radar in the sense that, like,
I knew that it existed, but didn't know the extent of which people like, like some of these straight, like these Twitch streamers, it's mind blowing.
Like just the audiences, these people pull consistently, like just, just kind of just like chilling, you know?
And I wonder if so much of that, it just goes back to like, maybe there's kind of the darker side where it's like, people are just like a lot lonelier now, you know, to a certain extent.
Like, I'm not saying that's the case for all of it, but like for a lot of it, like that, that rise of streamer culture, I feel like it, like, I don't know if it would be where it is today.
without COVID. You know what I mean?
Because people got so isolated during that
period. And then this was
one outlet where you could feel like somebody else
was in the house with you, especially if you were
living alone, you weren't married or whatever, didn't have
roommates.
I think it was a hugely
therapeutic thing. And very much
a net positive, I think, overall.
Even
with all the communist streamers out there,
still hopefully they're a net
positive. I don't know.
Yeah, because it really, post-COVID,
I think the streaming phenomena pre-COVID was predominantly sort of monopolized by gamers.
Gaming culture specifically.
It may be some political commentary as well, but post-COVID it's like everything.
But that's like one thing.
I look at like Aiden Ross and not that I watch his stream or anything like that, but like people of that type.
and it's just like, oh my gosh, I can't, to your point,
believe people sit here and just watch this guy
just sit in his room for hours on end.
And it's something that blows my mind
because it's like the other thing is the lifestyle
that that streamer, that class of streamer lives
is just completely hedonistic in my mind.
I'm like, ah.
Yeah.
And there's some sort of aspect of the audience
living vicariously through these people,
which is an interesting social phenomenon as well,
at least from my observation.
That's the way I read it.
No, I feel that.
I think that generally we're at this period where it has very,
I think late-stage empire vibes gets overused.
You know what I mean?
Because I don't think that quite captures it,
but it's more like you've got all the hallmarks.
of like a Weimar type situation where, you know, everybody, everybody's a gambler.
Everybody's engaging in like highly hedonistic behavior. There's just, you know,
general debauchery. Cause it's like, well, it may as well just live for today.
And, and all of that comes back to the fact that like a lot of people just don't have that much
hope. And so it's like, you're either living yourself or living vicariously in whatever way
that actually makes you feel alive or like you're part of this present moment in time without
actually having that much thought for the future. And I think that's one of the,
I was doing a little podception a couple days ago.
I was on Cedric Youngman's show, Bitcoin Matrix.
He was asking me, what do you think the biggest difference
between a Bitcoin family and a fiat family is?
We had done a, Carl and I, and George McHale, and Kayla Russian,
and a couple others had done a panel at Bitcoin Vegas
about this general idea.
And I essentially said, I think it comes down to time preference.
I think it comes down to how do you think about how you,
like you as the, you know, the, the father or you as the mother are spending your time,
what's most important to you, but you're looking far into the future in terms of how you're
spending that time. Like you're, you're, it's not just this instant gratification. It's become
much more of a zoomed out, low time preference behavior. And like, I don't know what your
thoughts on that are. I know you, I just ordered that book you posted about, uh, the book about
legacy I got it right next to me No yeah Well you you were you were you were uh you know glowing about this book And so I was like okay this this is this is one I literally just ordered it this morning Like how do you think about that Like would you agree with that characterization of
granted, it's a bit simplistic with fiat family
versus Bitcoin or family, but like, just generally,
do you think that a lot of it does come down to time preference
and like kind of purposefulness in that regard?
Yeah, I think so.
I don't think, I'm happy you said that at the end there,
because I don't think there's a clear demarcation
between like Bitcoin and fiat family.
because I see it in my immediate network,
and most people in my immediate network are not Bitcoiners,
but I came from a strong Irish Catholic family
and we're still strong to this day,
and I think it comes back to,
it does have to deal with low time preference,
but it is really anchored in this idea of family,
specifically nuclear family,
and most importantly, and then extended family.
Beyond that, time preference is sort of just embedded
to the nature of those family dynamics if you care about them
because the nuclear family, my wife, our three boys, it's like, okay,
I want to make sure they're upstanding, they're polite,
they are ambitious and aren't afraid to take risks.
Then we get together, my extended family, my cousins, my aunts, my uncles,
My in-laws, both brother and sister-in-law, mother and father-in-law, and together we're collectively trying to instill these values within our children.
Most importantly, like, hey, family is important.
You've got to spend time with them.
So I think it's not explicit in the sense of like, hey, this is a long-term project.
But I think it's implied like, hey, family is important.
Family is forever.
And you've got to focus on this.
And so I think in our modern times, particularly with the hollowing out of the manufacturing base and the digitization of the world and ease of which you can move, like I got up and left Philadelphia when I was 17 and just moved back 16 years later.
It makes anchoring in family values much harder, particularly extended family values.
Um, and I think that's a product.
I mean, the hollowing out and the manufacturing base sort of forced people in certain localities
to move to big metropolitan cities to, to get tech or finance jobs so that they can actually
try to make money to, to escape and climb the economic ladder.
And so I think that had a corrosive force to family values because you're physically
forced to uproot yourself and move away from, from your family.
But that's what I think it comes back to is really having a focus on family and being intent on wanting to foster a strong family.
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Now, back to the show.
No, I think that's true.
And I think it's such an important point that's often lost about just the geographical realities of like what that hollowing out of the manufacturing base did.
And it's one of those things where like it's really sad because that's a very difficult thing to reverse.
I think there's actually a lot more potential to reverse it now thanks to remote work.
Granted, not everyone's a remote worker, but I think that that's, you know, again, you know, one of the kind of silver linings of COVID is that it normalized much more remote work culture.
Right. And just the tooling around remote work got a lot better, obviously.
You know, I think just a lot of it was making it just a very normal thing that people had.
You had to do it. So, of course, it became very normal, not for everyone, but for a lot of people.
If you work with your hands more physically, you need to be there, right?
But I think that it is a beneficial thing that people are now able to kind of work from wherever.
But then that makes them, they still have to make the conscious decision to say, okay, I can work from wherever.
Do I want to move back to where my family is clustered, like my closest family?
Or do I want to move somewhere that's sunshiny and tropical and work from there?
Do I want to do the digital nomad life?
I think that also depends on what stage in your life you're at.
But like, you know, for for Carla and I, that was something that was super important.
It was like, OK, we can, you know, we're looking at living out in Vegas for a little while.
And then we were kind of like, yeah, OK, Vegas is Vegas is sweet.
It's not the strip side of things like we like the nature around it.
I don't like the lack of trees or the lack of water.
But like that can be that can be forgiven.
You know, anything's possible in Vegas.
But then we just decided like, well, what are we doing?
Like we're, you know, got got got pregnant out in Vegas.
And so then we were like everything became very clear in a second.
And it was like, nope, nope, we're going to be as close to family as we can possibly be.
Because, like, that's ultimately what we want.
We want the grandparents to be around.
We want our sisters, you know, to be around.
Like, that's important to us.
And maybe it's not for everyone, but I think that that's how you kind of get back to, like, that's part of the fabric of America is strong families and being able to build a legacy over generations.
Like, that's why we're all here today.
And I think that's kind of somehow gotten demonized or lost a little bit.
Or, you know, that's a right wing talking point.
You know, having fit, stable families is a, you know, clearly a far right dog whistle.
You know, I don't know.
It's crazy that we've gotten to this place, Marty, where just healthy behaviors and habits are, you know,
and like taking care of people you care about before you take care of anyone else is viewed as like a far right mentality.
It's fucking insane, frankly.
It's literally how human civilization and modern civilization was built slowly but surely over time.
But not to your point.
I mean, we had – we wanted to move back to the Philly area where we're both originally from.
After our first child was born, he was born right before – right in the midst of COVID.
And we planned on moving back.
We actually left Brooklyn and lived at the Jersey Shore for what we thought was going to be two weeks to flatten the curve.
if it turned into 18 months.
And we were pretty dead set on moving back to Philly.
But at the time, the vaccine mandates and the passports were a pretty big thing.
And for both of us, you're like,
we're not going to thrust our young child into that environment.
So we went to Texas and had our second child down there,
and then she became pregnant with our third.
And obviously things are in a much better spot than they were in 2021.
and it was just despite all the incredible things going on in our industry in austin um but for me
and the tft with my tftc hat on and then even with the 1031 hat like austin is a great city to be in
and incredible place to to raise a family but for us that sort of familial draw that gravity was
uh,
inignorable.
It couldn't be ignored.
And we both agreed independently,
like,
okay,
let's move home.
It's time to be with our parents,
brothers and sisters and cousins.
And,
uh,
it's been incredible so far.
It's made our lives much easier.
My mother-in-law,
she lives around the corner.
She'll come watch the baby.
Uh,
my mom,
she'll be coming over tonight,
sleeping over,
watching the kids while we get to dinner.
Um,
makes it a lot easier.
With this one simple trick,
that's literally just been the norm for forever.
Your life gets so much easier.
It's like the people that you want to have
looking after your kids too, right?
There's nothing wrong with babysitters or whatever else.
Everybody has different situations.
But if you can, you'd rather have family members
looking after your kids at any given time.
Those are the people you want them to spend the most time with.
So it's quite a life hack,
but it turns out it's just the way we've always done things.
It's only recent, like, there's this kind of, like, aberration a little bit in the last, you know, 75 years or whatever.
Where that stopped, you know, 50 years, you could probably trace a lot of it to fiat, I'm sure.
And the fact that even just at the most basic level, both parents are working.
So you're paying for somebody else to raise your child while you go out to be a tax slave and spend all the money that one of the parents is making to pay.
Like I have friends who are, you know, live in the city and it's like they both work and that's all good, you know, but like they have to pay like basically college tuition for child care.
And it's like after taxes, like one of you is just like a like you're just breaking even there.
Like, what's the point? Why not just have one stay home?
Like and then you're in a lower tax bracket.
Also, your net income is actually the same.
And you spend more time with your kid.
Like to me, this is just like a no brainer, but it's just people have been conditioned, I think.
Well, not only is it a no brainer, but I think it's a no brainer to stay home.
But the other side of that coin is if you have a two income family, both parents are out and you see in the videos like the moms who are like holding their baby for the last time before before the maternity leave ends and they're crying, like have to go back to work.
Don't want to. I don't want this to end.
It doesn't have to end.
You have to make a hard decision.
But then when it does end, they go back to work.
That has sort of effects on the child-parent relation that matriculate throughout time
and then sort of exacerbate this whole family formation problem that we're describing right now.
And so like, I wouldn't be surprised if that practice, which became more popularized post
1971, um, has led to this fall in family formation because the children of that era are basically
saying like, uh, my childhood wasn't that great.
I'll have a great relationship with my parents or at least not as good as I would hope it
to be.
And why would I try to continue that, that trend with a family of my own?
it's i'm the older i get the more grateful i am to my parents for homeschooling me
like i i become i was not always as grateful as i should have been at the time but like that such
as youth you know but the older i get the more i'm like wow and i tell them this every time i think
of it i'm like thank you guys so much for that that that meant a lot and i think it made a huge
difference i'm like i'm not a total freak you know like you know for it turns out you can homeschool
your kids and all of the misinformation that out there is just that it misinformation about what the effects of homeschooling are Trust me it is very possible to be a well functioning member of society in the good way
not like in the sheep way.
Can I ask if it's not too personal?
Are you guys thinking of homeschooling
or are you looking at other options?
We are not.
I think the idea of it for us is great,
but the implementation I think is, uh, is not, um, is not,
it's not conducive for, um, for us personally. Um, so we,
we decided we both grew up going to Catholic. So like faith is really important to us.
And so I would say that's a huge distinction from public school.
Yeah. So like, like when I'm, I'm contrasting homeschooling with public school,
there's a very big difference there with between a private,
like faith based school in my opinion. Yeah.
No, and that's like – so I went to public school all the way up until high school and then went to a Catholic all-guys school.
My wife went to a Catholic all-girls school.
She went to Catholic school her whole life.
That's something we trust, believe in, and the school is right around the corner.
It's Montessori-based up until first grade.
So I went to Montessori school before grade school, and I think that has had long-lasting impact on the way I approach the world and learning new things.
And that's the school.
Again, moving home to family.
Some of the kids' cousins go to the school.
Family friends that we've known forever.
Like one of my wife's, one of the guys in her friend group who was really close with some of my cousins.
Like his daughters go there.
And so we know the parents.
We know the community.
And it's a good education too at the end of the day.
I think that's huge.
I actually went to public school during high school after being homeschooled until 8th grade
and was worried that I was going to be behind and be stupid.
My parents are English majors.
What if they screw this up?
I ended up graduating number one in high school.
It turns out I wasn't stupid.
It turns out that the public school system, again, totally public,
was not catering towards the highest achievers, it turns out.
But we did a lot of, we did some Montessori schooling earlier as well.
And then co-founded a charter school with a group of other, like, eight, ten other families.
Because you can just do things like that.
Unless you live in Germany where not being in public school is illegal since the Hitler era.
But hey, I never get this about, like, Germany is such a strange beast to me.
Because it's like you get rid of every last vestige of Hitler except for kind of this super fundamental thing, which is mandatory public schooling, which is also just like this neo-Prussian tradition that's been carried.
Like, I don't know.
Germany's a strange beast.
You're trying to get away from the Third Reich indoctrination, but you're keeping the infrastructure that ceded the indoctrination in place.
It doesn't make sense.
It doesn't.
You know, I could talk about family all day,
and I think we may circle back to this,
but I do want to dive into a couple other tangents with you,
if you're game.
Because one of the reasons I like you, Marty,
is I think you always have a very pragmatic approach to things.
Like you are, you know,
you're very principled about the way that you look at things.
And I like that,
because there's a lot of flimflammery out there these days.
And there's a great episode you did.
I forget if it was with Danny or if it was when Peter was still doing what Bitcoin did, but it was a white pill episode.
And I want to kind of generally talk today about black pills and white pills that you see, let's say.
Or, you know, put another way, you know, bearish things that you're bearish on in society, things that you're bullish on in society.
and I guess right now I'd be curious
what do you think is the
what's the biggest non-Bitcoin
topic or
theme that you're kind of tracking
right? Maybe it's Bitcoin tangential but
something outside of just direct
Bitcoin exposure
let's say
No, you're talking
you alluded to it before we hit record but I think that's
what's happening in America right now
politically, socially
economically
I think it's the most important thing going on right now because I think – I mean, if you ask me, I think we've been subjected to an attempted color revolution in this country for many decades now.
And part of that has been the mass migration, mass immigration, illegal immigration under the Biden administration.
administration. So I think this whole Overton window shift that we're experiencing in terms of
just the whole question, like, what is America? What does it mean to be an American?
What do we want this country to look like? What are the criteria by which we sort of determine
who is and is not allowed in this country? It's obviously hyper-polarized, hyper-vitriolic,
But I think it's critically important that we're having a conversation.
So the black pill, I guess, on this theme is that we've gotten to this point.
And for the longest time, it was completely taboo to even approach these discussions.
We're considered a racist, xenophobic bigot to sort of highlight like, hey, maybe we shouldn't just be importing
all these immigrants without some sort of test of whether or not they're going to naturalize or
contribute to society. More importantly, the white pill is that the overtake window has shifted.
The conversation is happening. Again, it's vitriolic and hyper-polarized, but I think
to solve a problem, the cliche phrase is you need to know it exists in the first place. And so I
I think the problem has been sort of dragged out into the spotlight,
and I think that's a good thing.
And it is a hard conversation.
It's not comfortable for a lot of people to approach,
but I think it's critically important if we want to ensure that the United States
and the West more broadly can actually continue to be this beacon of sort of liberal
in the classical sense ideals and principles.
No, I think that, I mean, talk about like Overton window shift, like, I'm assuming you saw that last video that Trump or was posted about Trump where he's going off about Somalis, right?
And this was like, you could just, you could see it in his, it wasn't like the normal, it wasn't Trump, you know, grants, the Trump grandstanding, it wasn't Trump behind the podium.
It was Trump just being like, just like, I'm sick and fucking tired of this.
Like, why, why are we not, why are we not saying this out loud?
And that's the thing. Carla is an immigrant to the U.S.
It took her 13 years to become a citizen.
Her dad was a communist defector. Her mom came over with her after the fall.
And so I am surrounded constantly by immigrants to the United States
who have been here for many, many decades, who have paid ungodly amounts in taxes,
who have built multiple businesses, who very much,
and I think anybody who is either an immigrant of this regard
or knows immigrants like this will know that you talk to them,
and they're like, yeah, I think the current immigration policy is insane.
It's insane that it's so easy for, it was really hard for us to come over.
And even as a communist defector,
Like, you know, you were like polygraphed for days on end to get into the country to make sure you weren't, you know, weren't somehow working for the KGB, the security.
Like, it's just insane.
I think this this is going to be looked back on as this really like like America lost its mind a little bit, period, where it was just an open flood, especially across the southern border.
But not only that, you know, and it's not like everybody always comes back with this like, well, immigrants built this country.
It's like, correct, you know, yes, yes, but that doesn't mean that we should have stupid immigration policies.
You know, that's not like a, and all those immigrants assimilated.
I think that that's the piece that people really, like, really need to wrap their heads around,
is that, like, this isn't about whether you're an immigrant.
It's about whether you assimilate and actually internalize American values
and love America and are grateful for the opportunities that America has provided you to.
We're both lucky enough to have been born here, right?
And that is a huge bit of luck.
Like we just happened to pop down into existence here in America.
I'm so grateful that I did.
But like if you're born somewhere else and you want to come to America, that's fantastic.
I can see why.
America is amazing.
It's the greatest country in the world.
But you should treat it like that.
And I don't think that that should be a controversial thing to say.
like that and but but it's become one and i think that's where like now the kind of the gloves are
off a little bit and i've just seen more and more sentiment that's like no like why why are you
acting like america is somehow this tyrannical place to live like you you came here for a reason
you should remember that i i don't know it's crazy to me that we got this far though marty like
i i don't know the pendulum feels like it's swinging back it definitely is and we got this
far because we were browbeaten
into, again,
these topics becoming
taboo and unapproachable.
And again, you're a xenophobic, racist
bigot if you express
these. But I think the
whatever you want to call it, the woke mind virus
sort of DEI
mentality
of
communist, Marxist
indoctrination got to a point where
it's like, you can't
you can't tell me not to believe my lying eyes. Like I see this is happening and
I'm mad as hell. I'm not going to put up with it anymore. And I think the economic sort of
pressures that have emerged in recent decades have sort of forced the issue. And again, to your
point, like, that's what makes this conversation so hard to have. And it's because it's incredibly
unfortunate that it even needs to be had because this was completely avoidable if you had sensible
or if you, I think we did have sensible immigration laws.
They just weren't being enforced,
particularly under the Biden administration.
A lot of people are browbeating
and yelling at people calling this out and saying,
hey, I don't like this.
I think it needs to change and saying,
oh, you're racist bigot.
Like you're creating this problem.
You're rounding people up in nice vans
and sending them off to El Salvador
and making you seem like the bad guy.
Well, it's like, well, I would prefer not to do this.
And the reason we have to do this is because we had some crazy people in charge, particularly Joe Biden, but more specifically Alexander Mayorkas and his ilk that really forced this issue.
And you can't be mad at people for trying to fix the problem.
And yes, the solutions may be a bit abrasive and aggressive, but it's not the fault of the people trying to fix the problem.
It's the people created it in the first place.
And again, I think people need to – I know it's very hard, but try to approach this in an unemotional way and just look at the numbers.
I mean, I think the fraud that has been laid bare in the last few weeks, particularly from the Somali community in Minnesota, is undeniable.
Can you look at that and say this is okay?
Like these people deserve to be here.
They're a net negative in terms of their overall contribution to the economy and the tax system.
Like they're a literal drain on it at a time when we're $38 trillion in debt.
So you have the sort of law and order aspect of it, of, hey, we're in a country, we're paying taxes, and sort of the explicit contract with the agreement that we have with the state, when we pay taxes, it's like, hey, we're the union of states, you're the federal government, and we're going to pay you these taxes to enforce the rule of law.
And that's not happening anymore. And so like when you get to that point, that's where things get really scary because you can have this sort of cascade into pure chaos if the rule of law isn't being enforced.
If you have this anarcho-tyranny really take hold to a point where there's no turning back.
So you have the rule of law aspect and you have just the economic reality of it is like we literally don't have the capacity to continue subsidizing these people who seem not only unwilling to contribute in a productive way.
A lot of them aren't not only not willing, but unfortunately not able to either.
and then you just exacerbate the problem It like not only are they not willing and many of them not able but they actively just stealing from the system that everybody else is paying into It like this cannot persist
It's really like this Minnesota thing is just insane because I think it's it's so it's so obviously bad.
There's just there's no way that a reasonable person can spin this.
And I mean, I saw Ilhan Omar tried to be like, well, it's it's really just because these systems were not set up properly.
And so that's what it's like. But people but people were the ones who on mass exploited these systems.
Right. Yeah. And it's a certain group of people that were doing so.
Like, you can't try to say, like, OK, yeah, the programs were not good to begin with.
That doesn't that's not an excuse.
No, it's like if the programs weren't set up in the right way to begin with, you would think if you were conscious, morally driven individual, and you notice that instead of exploiting it, you would maybe go like, hey, if you don't fix this, there's a way that people could drain funds from this.
And if you don't have accountability, there's a way that they can get away with it for a while.
that's what I would like. Uh, that's an upstanding American in my mind is somebody who notices,
um, the potential for fraud, waste and abuse and calls it out and says, Hey, we should fix this.
Their, their first impulse isn't, Hey, let's exploit this to the nth degree. Um, and that's
only the tip of the iceberg. I saw, um, man on, or I saw a woman on Tik TOK talking about this
similar situation happening in Columbus, Ohio, um, with another small, and I'm not trying to pick
on Somalis here. It's obviously just the, uh, the topic of the last couple of weeks with what's
been unearthed in, um, in Minnesota specifically. But then I've seen man on the street interviews
where, um, in Minnesota, and these are from years ago of reporters walking up to people on the
street, Somali immigrants on the street and asking them like if they would prefer to live
in the United States or Somalia.
And if they would prefer the rule of law in America or Sharia law.
And I mean, obviously it's an edited video, but there is at least a number, at least five
or six people you interviewed that day said, I would rather live in Somalia and I'd rather
live under Sharia law.
And it's like that Sharia law is not compatible with the, um, the United States and our role of law, the first amendment.
And why'd you come here then?
Then why didn't you just stay?
You know, like, uh, well, that's wild.
I mean, and this goes back to the color revolution and the whole, uh, great replacement, uh, conspiracy theory, which was a conspiracy theory for the longest time.
And now many people are becoming aware of the fact that the UN literally wrote a paper on this and distributed it over three decades ago.
And it's like a documented sort of strategy by UN officials to sort of replace native populations and sort of just import the third world.
And I forget where I was going with it, but it's just it's not tenable.
it can't sustain itself.
I mean,
it certainly can continue to happen,
but if it does,
it's not going to end well for anybody.
Yeah.
I mean,
the,
another white pill out of this,
besides the Overton window shifting to people being able to have these
uncomfortable conversations and feeling empowered to do so is that at least
Tim Waltz is getting called a retard.
I think yesterday,
I think yesterday was a top five meme day on,
on the internet with the Tim,
just amazing our memes oh my god i mean really it's just like you you you love to you love you
love to see it like it's just him saying that they're driving by my house they're yelling the
r word and it's like okay like you know uh i'm i'm not for you know harassing uh people at their
at their homes like generally um like you know that's something that leftists typically do right
so i'm uh i'm not usually a big fan of it but this is uh as far as a good little bit of you
know clean clean fun i mean it's just it's just pretty funny and we should still be able to laugh
at these things like it's hilarious and to your point there like that whole presser was complete
projection it's yeah they're driving by my house calling me the r-word you know what that leads to
it starts with the r-word leads with harm it's like dude your whole and i hate this because i
hate to get seeped in sort of uh partisan politics but it is objectively true at least my observation
is like you're the whole left really driven by the radical left has been calling trump supporters
nazis and fascists for years and in the last 12 months that has manifested in physical harm
multiple attempts on trump's life obviously charlie kirk was assassinated we had ice officers
shot down in dallas a month ago a couple months ago whenever that was and it's like no like
from my perspective, I'm obviously
a more conservative-leaning
individual.
People driving by Tim Moss' house
calling him a retard
I think has way less of a chance of leading to
physical harm of somebody like him
on the left. What I truly believe
and what I personally would like to see
as a conservative is like
I don't want sort of
vigilante justice against these people.
I want these people dragged into court
and tried for treason and
appropriately thrown in prison.
I just want rule of law brought back.
I don't think the right should begin engaging in vigilante justice like Luigi Maggioni
or what has happened to Charlie Kirk or the ICE officers or potentially President Trump
or fortunately not President Trump.
But that's where I think there's a distinct difference.
is this inability to recognize reality,
not only that, to actively project
sort of what you're doing on to the other, if you will,
from this perspective,
the left projecting what they actually do on the right.
Yeah, it is.
I mean, it is just very kind of rich.
But the reason that I think that they're able to project like that
without any semblance of self-reflection
is because they truly believe they have the moral superiority.
And so anything that they do is justified
because it is the moral, good, humane thing to do.
It is the progressive thing to do.
It is the right thing to do.
Anything that somebody else, even actual violence,
not words being violence, but actual violence and murder
against the other side, well, that can be, yes, that's bad.
Of course we'll say it's bad.
But, you know, they kind of had it coming because of how bigoted they were.
And the justification loop that you see over and over again, it's like, it's not great, but at least, you know, maybe they shouldn't have been saying those things.
You know, it's essentially like, it's a form of the argument, like, you know, a woman is assaulted.
It's like, well, what was she wearing?
You know, and it's like, well, no, no.
Somebody, the person who is guilty here is the person who did the assault, not the person who was assaulted.
Like, geez, it's just like the mental gymnastics is truly astounding.
Yeah.
I mean, we saw this BLM riots where like the worst case, like stay home, stay six feet
separated, quarantine for two weeks.
If you come into contact with anybody, not in your immediate circle, then oh, wait, just
for this month of June, you can riot and set things on fire, but it's completely okay.
It's insane.
And it's this weird.
you can tell too because there is like this layer of deception that is really insidious and nefarious
like bring it back to minnesota like you look at the mayor he's like these are americans and like
literally in the same press conference uh two sentences later he starts speaking in somali
and it's like i saw that one this is like you can't like you're obviously lying to our faith
like it's like this whole i'm gonna go back to the color revolution i think that's part of the
tactic. It's just like gaslight, gaslight, gaslight, and you're gaslighting in the front,
in the back. You're like waving everybody in, like, get in here. We're going to fuck this place up.
And again, you see, like, Ilyan Omar, like, she has gone to campaign rallies for her U.S.
representative seat and says that she's a representative of Somalia. Like,
if you want to do that, like, okay, go do that in Somalia. It should not be
controversial or bigoted to say, hey, that's cool and all, but this is America.
You are a U.S. representative.
You are supposed to represent the will and desires of the American people and your constituents,
not some foreign nation that doesn't even have a government.
Amen to that.
I mean, it's again, as bad as all of some of this is, though, like, again, I am optimistic on this because the conversation is more open now and more honest and people feel empowered to speak up.
And then I look at places like I look at Canada, I look at the UK, I look at different places in Europe where like you're very much not like you will get thrown in jail for speaking up or even for heaven forbid, posting a racist meme or retweeting a racist meme.
like this this stuff is insane did you see the stuff that just came out uh today about the
european commission trying to pressure x into engaging in censorship and all i mean like this
like you know god bless america because at least we as we may have problems but at least we can
still speak about them freely without worrying about getting tossed in jail for a wrong thing
like i'm i'm genuinely like i'm i'm trying to you know we need like a bingo card of like which
nation, you know, which either is it Canada, the UK, or like one of the European nations that is
just going to completely, completely fall first because of this. Like it's, it's insane. Like
it's just destructive. It's a destructive ideology to think that you can't allow your people to speak
freely about things that are genuinely harming them, that they're dissatisfied with. It's the
rise of the AFD party in Germany is a great example of this. All the, you know, the leftist
pundits are like, we just, well, I don't know what's making everybody go for this AFD party.
And it's like, really?
Like, you've got no idea?
You can't think of like one reason why?
I don't know.
Again, it's just like complete dislocation from reality, it seems.
Yeah.
Well, to your point about us being fortunate to be able to do this here in the United States,
I would take it a step further and say that it's critically important that we exercise this fortune and really speak out.
Because, again, I think this is America has many flaws, many of which we are discussing right now.
But I think this is literally the last bastion of free speech, freedom, free markets and sort of advancing Western society in the world right now.
And it is of critical importance that people like yourself, myself, others out there who recognize this and maybe self-censored in the past because they're worried about the social and political blowback that may come with it to speak up.
because there's also a short window here where if we don't get loud enough
and take enough ground that we could get the way of the UK, Germany, Canada.
That's also a very – the probability of that timeline is way higher than zero
if people don't speak out and action isn't taken.
And that's why I think – and it's with the Trump administration too.
I think hopefully they're beginning to realize it,
But there's been, if you look at the polls, I had Mark Mitchell on TFTC from Rasmussen polling has been sort of tip of the spear of sort of trying to get the attention of the Trump administration.
Like, hey, Gen Z millennials are not happy.
You're not going hard enough.
Like you really need to do something to solve these immigration issues, specifically H1B issues, particularly because you're not following through on the promises.
and it doesn't look like midterms are going to turn out well for you.
And if that's the case, midterms will turn out well.
2028 doesn't turn out well, and these democratic socialists take over,
you're going to have, we could go the way of the UK and Canada and Germany
quite easily by the end of this decade.
And again, I hate to get into the partisan politics of it.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't be vigilant to what the right is trying to do too.
So like you want to avoid the strongman fascist.
So there is sort of a balancing act as you're trying to do all this.
So my great hope would be this like, okay, you take action.
You kick out all the illegal immigrants, obviously top of the list.
And then it's going to be an even tougher conversation.
But those who refuse to naturalize and would prefer Sharia law in the United States compared to the rule of law that this country was built on.
And then you have the even harder conversation of, Hey, we're 38 point,
whatever trillion dollars in debt.
Uh, we need net producers coming into this country.
If you're an immigrant, like we need you to actually provide value, um, and
economic output, like you can't just be a freeloader on our welfare system.
If that, that is.
my great hope that it would be my ideal scenario.
And then once that's all figured out, it's like, okay, tighten the border,
really focus on sort of this re-industrialization and build out of the United
States for this continued transition into the digital age.
It's something that's interesting.
I was listening to Dave Smith's Part of the Problem with Dave and Robbie
the Fire Bernstein.
For anyone who doesn't check out that podcast,
It's a great non-Bitcoin podcast, but I would say Dave is a Bitcoiner.
I mean, he's been at a lot of Bitcoin conferences.
He's a super-based guy and, again, just operates from a very principled perspective on pretty much everything.
So I enjoy that a lot.
And he was talking about the Great Replacement, quote, conspiracy, which is now people are realizing is not such a conspiracy.
It's like you can you can say that I'm pretty sure probably this will get a flag on YouTube because they'll see that the words great replacement were used in it.
They'll put a flag at the bottom with a Wikipedia source showing great replacement conspiracy theory.
Anytime I have great reset is said in a show.
I don't know if you've noticed this.
If you say great reset, they'll probably put a flag up here now.
It'll put a flag on YouTube that says the great reset is just, you know, it's just a conspiracy theory.
It's like, well, they got that.
It's not.
But OK, fine.
But he was talking about immigration in the U.S. and how traditionally it's like we would have large waves of immigration and then a long period of very little immigration, which was a period of assimilation for the populations that had just come in large numbers.
And like that assimilation was obviously like, if you know, American history was not always pleasant.
Basically, you know, whether you were the Irish or the Italians or any group, it was not easy for you at first.
you were not always treated great at first but you contributed to society you worked very hard
and you you know grew uh through generations here to become like a you know uh founding part of this
country and and this idea that now it's like no we just need to have open borders all the time and
everybody has somehow a right to come to america which is just like like no you don't like nobody
has a right to come to america just like i don't have a right to go to china like good luck you
You know, you want to like overstay your visa in China and just like just see see what happens.
And while you're there, while you're there at the at the, you know, the whim of the Chinese government, feel free to tell them how much you hate China and how China should adopt American systems.
And just like just see how that goes, you know, in the paradise of China.
Just just see how it goes.
Like, it's not going to go the way you think it will.
But I think, unfortunately, we've adopted this very overly permissive attitude about how people should view coming to America.
And it's always been the place that people really had to strive to get to.
And that attracted the best of the best and the biggest risk takers and the people who were a little bit crazy and who didn't like the nanny state that they grew up in and wanted to live somewhere freer.
and now we've gotten away from that a little bit.
So I hope that we get back to that more
because we should be attracting the best
and the brightest from around the world.
We should be attracting the highest quality of people
who want to come here
that will actually make our country a better place
for being in it, not a worse place.
And I don't think that that's a race agnostic statement
for anyone who is confused by that.
That has nothing to do with race whatsoever.
It has to do with the merit of people.
And I think that that's what we need to get back to ultimately.
And again, like I said earlier, it would be great if we were in that position now.
And it sucks that we sort of have to have this hard line, or I would like us to have this hard line.
We've got to freeze everything.
Get the bad people out of here.
Let's take some time off and get back on our feet here.
It would be ideal to have this scenario, which you just described, where we are bringing in the best and the brightest from around the world.
But unfortunately, the actions of the people in charge over the last few decades have put us in a terrible shot where it's like, all right, we need to reset, sort of catch our breath, get our feet under us.
And then, OK, maybe at some point, maybe a decade from now, we can begin to like, OK, we're good.
Let's start bringing the smartest and brightest in a regimented fashion.
Like, I don't think there's any other way.
I think it sucks.
I think we have to rip the band-aid off
and just do
the uncomfortable
things and to your point too
I was illuminated this week
I think that's a great point you brought up
I was completely unaware
if you overstay your visa in Singapore
China, Russia
any of these other countries
you get caned first
then you go to jail
and some of them you do forced labor
and only after that do you get sent back
to where you came from
And like comparatively, the solution that people are talking about here in the United States is more humane, if you will.
Right now it's like we'll buy you a plane ticket home and we'll give you a thousand dollar stipend.
And you have the option to come back here later legally.
That's as nice as you could.
This is under Trump's fascist border police, right?
And we're literally being like, yeah, we'll buy you a plane ticket home.
We'll give you a thousand US dollars and we will allow you to come back later, like in through a legal means and apply for that.
Like that says, boy, that is still quite generous of us.
You know, like that's that's more than most countries would would possibly give you.
Yeah. And it's like we're getting deep down this rabbit hole.
But again, go anchoring back to the first part of discussions, like why?
Why feel? I mean, I tweeted out last night.
this is what I voted for a video of one of the drug cartel boats getting
bombed.
And I knew it was going to be spicy and there's gonna be a lot of vitriol,
but it's like,
I thought it was like the perfect microcosm of like this whole problem.
It's like,
Oh,
we didn't declare war.
And like,
we can't just be bombing people indiscriminately,
which agree.
Like I'm not a war monger,
but like,
this is nuance.
Like there has been,
we didn't declare war,
but I,
I,
I think there's been a silent war declared on us with the smuggling in of
fentanyl.
into our country that has killed hundreds of thousands of people over the last five years.
And again, this is one of those things where the prior administrations allowed this to happen,
to build up, and you have to take radical action to solve it.
And I think a show of force to deter these narco-terrorists from bringing these weapons of mass destruction
just in another form into the country is like, again, it's not ideal.
I hope, I wish it didn't get to this point,
but radical problems call for radical solutions.
And I think that's like a perfect microcosm of,
of this problem that we've been put into.
And I will stand by it. It is what I voted for.
Like we, like there's something radical needs to happen.
And again, it's unfortunate.
that has to be bombing of these traffickers,
but the message needs to be sent to try to deter this.
And why do we do this?
For that specific action there,
stopping the narco movement of fentanyl into the United States,
it's like I have people in my life that have died from fentanyl.
I have young children who are like,
I'm fucking 10 miles away from the Frankford L, which is infamous.
It's like the skid row of Philadelphia,
and we've become very popular as a city for people being tranked out
and on fentanyl under the Frankford L here in Philadelphia I grew up I grew up The house I grew up in for the first 10 years of my life I could ride my bike to the Frank Friedel in five minutes And it wasn the best
area back then, but it's gotten progressively worse over the course of my life. And like,
why do I have this view? It's like, I now have three young children. I'm looking at them like,
what the hell, what kind of world are you going to grow up in? What are you going to be surrounded
by what are the opportunities that are going to exist for you
when you get of an age where you have to leave the house and go do something.
What's the world going to be like?
And I don't want the United States to be in the state that it is now
where you're just letting in whoever you're allowing,
allowing narco-terrorists to flood poison into the country.
And again, it seems radical.
It is radical, but it's only radical because you're trying to push
back against just as radical force that's moving in the other direction.
All right.
It's like, I mean, radical solutions aren't needed unless the problem gets so bad for
so long.
You get to a point where clearly there is no, like, gradual solution to this, right?
This isn't something that, like, you can just be like, okay, we'll just change some
policies here, you know?
Like, I mean, with regard to, like, the narco bombings, right?
Like, this is, I know that people have a lot of problems with this, but it's, and I think neither you nor I are certainly not the people to warmonger.
And I don't think that's, like, putting that aside, it's like, man, what would you do to stop it?
Like, what is your proposal for how to stop this?
Because it is, like, it is a weapon of mass destruction.
It's actually, like, it's such an insidious one, too, because it kills people slowly.
And it destroys entire families.
and it moves like a virus, right?
This is essentially like it's a form of a bioweapon, right?
It's an addictive bioweapon that kills people slowly
after it's infected entire communities.
Like that is, there are few things as destructive as that,
especially over the long run, over generations,
that problem compounds.
And I just don't see any reasonable proposals
for how that should actually be fixed.
Yeah, go read up on the opium wars in China
from over a century ago,
how long that set that country back particularly.
It wasn't the only factor,
but it was a considerable factor in setting China back.
You look at Singapore, people always hold this up
as this amazing example.
Like, wow, look at how fast they were able to progress.
You know why?
Because they would hang anyone who was importing drugs.
If you brought in more than, I think, 10 grams of heroin,
they would hang you.
You would be executed for that.
Like anything more than 10 grams, which like is, you know, I don't know how many people 10 grams gets high, but like I think that's a pretty like low bar.
You know, it wasn't like you had to bring kilos and kilos in.
It was like, no, no, you have anything more than 10 grams, you're getting hung.
And otherwise the punishment was still extremely, extremely, you know, vicious, even for less than that.
But like that's how you're able to develop an incredibly clean, incredibly prosperous society in a short amount of time.
it's by making sure that your citizens aren't being poisoned
and just letting it happen to them
because oh well you wouldn't want to offend anyone
we'd hate to offend anyone here
I had some people in my mentions like they need to be tried in the court of law
it's like brother
they're bringing the drugs in right now
it's been happening
again radical reaction to a radical problem
I don't know I think the libertarian
that exists out there.
It's like, oh, this is...
Number one, like, drugs...
Like, people should be able to do drugs if they want.
Eh.
And then number two, like, you can't just be indiscriminately bombing people.
It's like, hey, if you see somebody bringing a poison,
like, literally en route to bring fentanyl
that is killing the younger generations
at very high rates, comparatively, relatively,
and you're just going to watch, wait for them to get to the border,
maybe they get the drugs in,
and you find them somewhere on their escape back to Venezuela or Colombia
or wherever they're coming from, and then you take them to trial.
What is that actually going to solve?
It's not going to stop the drugs from getting to market.
Right, at that point, they're already here, right?
I'm glad we went down this rabbit hole quite deeply.
I do want to get into a couple of other things, too,
because otherwise I'm going to keep going deeper and deeper and deeper,
and this will never be allowed on YouTube.
No, I'm just kidding.
Fuck YouTube anyway.
That probably doesn't.
You know, I've got, I've say fuck YouTube a lot
and I think that's like,
maybe it's why I'm getting de-boosted.
Who can say?
There's only one way to find out though,
but I'm not going to stop saying it.
So, you know, one of the other things
I wanted to talk to you about was like,
where we're kind of at,
like bring it back to Bitcoin a little bit.
The vibes are weird in Bitcoin right now.
we've had this sideways choppy year.
Everybody seems super bearish right now,
like that we're going to enter this kind of protracted bear market,
and this is just the way it is now.
I don't know about you, Marty, but I am just like,
I'm very bullish right now.
I think some of the, especially on the medium of exchange side,
some of the things that have been happening this year to me have been just like mind-blowingly cool
like what Square has done enabling this Bitcoin for you know four million plus merchants also at
Square but like Cash App the fact that they're using lightning rails for USD payments to Bitcoin
like so many incredible things happening not to mention all the stuff that's happening on the
like the Cashew side of things with eCash not to mention all the cool stuff happening on Noster
with you know White Noise not to mention BitChina like all of these other tangential things like
I'm just really bullish on Bitcoin and also largely FreedomTech right now.
Are you in the same boat or are you suffering from some bear-like syndrome?
No, I mean, anybody who's worried out there, I wish I had it on, but I don't.
But I would like to read some passages from the bear market of 2015, 2016.
People literally thought Bitcoin was going to die back then.
And if you compare it to today, I think perspective is incredibly important.
Like 2015, 2016, people thought Bitcoin was going to die.
Nobody was using it.
Twitter was dead.
Nobody was talking about it.
Fast forward today, a completely different dynamic.
$1.75 trillion market cap, whatever it is.
What is it?
$1.78 trillion market cap.
Just below $90,000 right now.
Obviously, it's not $126,000, but we were at $16,000.
Let's just go back to three years ago exactly.
Today, the fifth.
We were at like $17,000 three years ago.
It's wild.
So we are up about 5x in three years.
Yes, we're off the all-time highs of $123,000 at about 30%.
But if you 5X'd in three years and just pattern recognition,
haven't been in Bitcoin for 12 years now,
this is the most healthy consolidation.
Yes, it may not look great on the chart,
but if you put it on log, it's imperceptible.
And to your point, the infrastructure in all areas
has just been maturing massively this year.
Obviously, Glock with everything they've done from Proto to Cash App really leaning back
in.
Obviously Square point of sale terminals opening up Bitcoin to all their Square sellers and potentially their end users or their clients at the end of the day customers Um that been massive Like arc launched spark is taking off uh cash humans
cash mens, fed humans, cash humans are exploding. Um, the innovation around them is,
is picking up steams and and then if you are just using like uh sort of social
indicators like there hasn't been a retail uh fervor like there was in 2017 2021 2013
like we're nowhere near those levels so like i'm extremely bullish right now i think we're just in
this sort of cool off period after expanding the network by 5x in a very short amount of time
and the fact that we're trading right below $90,000 is extremely impressive to me
as somebody who's been around for 12 years.
If this sort of boring market were to manifest 10 years ago,
the price would have crashed.
It did crash 80%.
So the fact that we're only down 30 is pretty massive.
And then you just think of the fact that there is too much brand awareness of Bitcoin at this point from individuals, companies, institutions.
I mean, you just have Vanguard open up the floodgates for their customers to ETFs.
And then you have Bank of America's investment arms are recommending a 1% to 4% allocation.
And then the cherry on top, which is actually probably the cherry in the core that the governments have not solved their deficit problems.
So they're going to have to print.
I mean, I think the polymarket odds last time I checked were like 91% for the Fed rate cut next week or the week after.
And yeah, just take it easy out there.
It's not the end of the world.
There's a lot of people who expect Bitcoin to have expected Bitcoin to be at like $300,000, $400,000, whatever at this point.
And they're disappointed.
And I think instead of lamenting the state of the market or Bitcoin itself, maybe exhibit some introspection and say, hey, maybe my expectations were a bit out of whack.
and hey, you're talking to somebody who I would not have been surprised
if we were at $250,000, $300,000 at this point
if you were talking to me last year.
Hand up.
I was like, Super Cycle might be in play.
Who knows?
It might still be in play.
Maybe it's all just one big Super Cycle,
but just because it hasn't met your expectations
doesn't mean that good things aren't happening
and very good things are happening,
both on the brand awareness side
and the infrastructure side.
Again, these second-layer advancements
over the last two years, I think,
are woefully underappreciated,
not only by the broader markets,
completely unaware of them,
but even by Bitcoiners.
They don't really appreciate
what's happening behind the scenes.
I think lightning emerging
as this interconnective tissue
between these other interoperable protocols
built on top of Bitcoin is going to be massive.
Yeah, it's huge. And I mean, you listed off a bunch of just kind of incredible like structural
things there that I think I've almost like the fact that any one of these things and I've not
been in Bitcoin as long as you obviously but like even thinking back to like 2020 2021 depths the
bear market 2022 even like not so long ago, any one of these developments would have been like,
just so massive there, like seen as this massive catalyst.
And now it's just kind of like, okay, yeah, like four million merchants.
Like, okay, whatever.
Like, oh, like Vanguard, $11 trillion in assets under management just opened up,
you know, just bent the knee basically.
Oh, okay.
Like the stodgy old Bank of America, one to 4% allocation recommendation.
Like, okay, whatever.
It's like, these are all massive things.
Like, and this is, this is the thing right now.
You mentioned the retail piece, which is fascinating to me because I think you're
absolutely right.
that's like we have not seen this retail wave, right?
Just interest in Bitcoin from the quote retail perspective
is not there right now.
And it's like, man, the bummer is,
and this is why Bitcoin education,
and this is why we need more Bitcoin podcasts out there,
of course, is because like this is the time
when our fellow plebs should be doing
whatever they can to stack.
Like in these doldrums, in these kind of, you know,
crabs, you know, sideways, chop solidation periods,
this is when you should be stacking.
But sadly, it's like the memes are very true.
You know, it's like nobody lines up for Bitcoin when it's, you know, 90,000.
They line up for it when it's at 200,000 or, you know, five.
Like, but it's just like, man, humans, we are victims of our own nature very often, it seems.
Yeah.
And there's like another social aspect that's me.
Sounds spicy to some, but there's too many.
I don't want to say too many people.
but I would caution anybody out there who makes Bitcoin their whole personality.
Like you got to touch grass.
You got to, like we talked about, like focus on family and stuff like that.
Like if you're, I mean, maybe I'm being a bit hypocritical.
Obviously my whole business, my whole professional career revolves around Bitcoin, you too, Walker.
But even so, I try to make it a point like, hey, Bitcoin is one of the biggest things going on in humanity right now.
But there are other important things.
And I'm not going to live and die by the intraday candle of the Bitcoin chart.
and let that sort of dictate how I operate,
even though I am human.
It does affect sometimes.
Obviously, it's funny, too.
It's this paradox because you hate it when the price is dumping,
but you hate it even more when the price is pumping, too,
because you're like, oh, God, I don't have enough Bitcoin.
So I think that's the mentality.
Anybody out there is pissed off is just remember how
try to put yourself in future use shoes
as the price is ripping,
$50,000 weekly candles,
and you're like,
oh shit, I don't have enough Bitcoin.
To your point,
treat this as a blessing
that you're able to accumulate.
But I am incredibly,
incredibly bullish right now.
Does that mean the price
is going to go up next week
or a month from now?
I have no idea.
But I know that the fundamentals
are incredible.
We're streaming.
I'm watching the Noster live chat
come up.
I can see you.
I can see you messaging the audience as we're talking here.
But this is what I think is going to be the Twitch competitor.
You have 28,996 ads that have been zapped to your wallet directly.
And once streaming culture, going back to streaming culture,
once they realize, oh, I don't have to wait for Twitch and Stripe
to pay me out twice a month or whatever it may be.
like I literally have this money now I can go spend it do whatever that is a profound step
function improvement on that particular use case and most of the world just doesn't realize it yet
like it's there it works it's objectively like objectively it is better and that this is just
this one use case you can apply it to to anything I have a lot of contractors at TFTC they're
younger. They like to get paid quickly. Many of them get paid in Bitcoin and they love that they
can send me an invoice I try to be timely with it and pay it immediately instead of waiting for a wire to go through or waiting for payroll to go through They are able to get paid immediately
That is objectively better than the fiat system.
And that's, I think, probably the overarching lesson here is just whenever you get down and you're a little pissed off that the price isn't where it is, just remind yourself.
Like this thing is literally, literally, quite literally, objectively better in every aspect than everything else.
And it is fortunate that you have recognized that before most of the world.
It's literally magic internet money.
Like it really, like every time you use it, you're just like, Bob, this, like this is incredible.
And then every time you need to use the fiat system, it's like, God, this is like, this is just really clunky, isn't it?
Like it's amazing.
But like, you know, it goes back to the old cliche.
The future is here.
It's just not evenly distributed yet.
And I think about that a lot because it's like you even see amongst Bitcoiners, you look at the different development that happens in different parts of the world.
You look at the way that Bitcoin is adopted in Africa or in Latin America versus the way that it's typically adopted most, you know, most in the most like average way in the U.S.
Like those are different.
They're different forms of adoption.
Right.
And they're progressing on different timescales.
I think that's that's beautiful.
But Marty, I want to be conscious of your time here because I know we're running up on the end of the scheduled time.
um maybe last thing i would just ask you is uh any uh actually maybe i won't even make it an
ask we'll just say that i think it's something we should bring up which is uh the samurai devs
and just that people i know you guys made a call for this i've made a couple calls for this as well
but people should go and sign that petition i think it's it's bill and kion.org let me make
sure kion and bill.org i think yeah okay yeah i think yeah there we go but yeah
this is like this is wild to me i mean i i really hope that so you're right it's bill and kian or
let me see let me see if i can pull it up
yep yeah bill and kian.org you're right yeah i'll drop it i'll drop in the chat for folks
uh on noster and i would just ask like go go ahead and go sign this petition like and you know tag
If anybody happens to know any members of the Trump administration, like, man, try to get somebody's ear or at least tag him a bunch on social media.
Because, like, this has set such a destructive precedent for me.
Like, and just, it's like, how can we be the, quote, Bitcoin and, quote, crypto capital of the world if we're prosecuting developers in this way?
Like, with these archaic money transmitter laws?
Like, it's just insane to me.
It really is.
It would be a terrible precedent.
And I think this is very important that you brought it up too because it highlights like, hey, a lot of what we talked about earlier is very right-wing coded, if you will.
But here's an example of an opportunity called Balls and Strikes.
It's like, hey, Trump, you sent out the Blanche memo and then your Department of Justice is ganging up on all these open source software developers, two of which are about to report to prison for five years and live in a cage away from their families.
This is not OK.
This is the type of fascism.
I don't want to see any fascism.
This is like fascist sort of, this is fascist action that should not be taken.
And this is not good.
It's not okay.
It's like holding authority, particularly right-wing conservatives who have power right now to account.
It's like this is, like holding them accountable for this is extremely important.
Like, hey, I may agree with what you guys are doing from an immigration perspective and trying to make sure we're saving the country and making sure that we're not wasting any money and letting in people who are going to be negative on the economy.
However, this thing that you're doing, you're not following up on that.
And it's, to your point, a terrible precedent that will make it so that the United States is not the Bitcoin capital of the world.
If you can't have software developers writing code that makes it easier to use Bitcoin in a non-custodial fashion.
Amen to that.
And again, I would encourage people like go take a couple of minutes and share this out on either centralized or decentralized social media.
Like this is one of the beautiful things about having these incredible tools for communication at our fingertips.
Like you can get a small message out there to a lot of people and it can become a very big message, but it requires people to actually take action.
Yeah.
You can make a difference, though.
So and this is certainly like I don't think any of us want to see two guys who are building, who built awesome privacy tools in Bitcoin going to jail.
And there's a bunch of other cases now that people should pay attention to, whether it's Tornado Cash or Bitcoin Fog or Ian Freeman, like all of these.
Like Bill and Keone is just the one that has some very immediate like time timeline restrictions.
And yeah, it's whatever you can do to spread the message.
I'm looking at it now. The petition only has 3,487 signatures. It's not enough. I thought there would be more. You've got to pump that number. That number needs to go up.
that's that's wild to me like if if you if you give a shit about uh about bitcoin and
the future uh future in which you can use bitcoin in a privacy preserving way this is uh something
you should deeply care about and you should definitely care about these guys not being
thrown in a cage taken away from their families for five years forced to pay massive fines like
when this can be fixed with a simple presidential pardon and like trump's pardoning plenty of people
already like you'd think this should be
top of his list if he really wants to put his
money where his mouth is
Marty
I'll go ahead
I was going to say it's
incredibly important
it is a great shame
that it's gotten to this point
I was going to say and if you look at some of the
people that Trump has pardoned in recent weeks
it's like this should be
an easy layup considering
some of the
objective scammers that he's pardoned
yeah yeah exactly should be one would hope this would be a no-brainer maybe it just hasn't gotten
to his desk yet but i hope somebody puts it in front of him and until then continue making noise
out there uh where do you want to send people uh just find me on x in primal primal.net slash
marty bent uh x at marty bent and you'll find all my stuff there beautiful well dude glad we got a
chance to do this. Appreciate you sharing your time. And yeah, looking forward to doing it again,
perhaps in person at some point. That would be fun. We can do it over a couple of beers. That
would be ideal. That would be great. Thank you, Walker. All right. Cheers, dude. See ya.
And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin Talk episode of The Bitcoin Podcast. Remember to subscribe to
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