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It's weird that all you can know about someone is their moral foundations profile and you can predict their political ideology or vice versa to some, you know, non-zero degree.

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And we wanted to know last year when we asked these questions, like, where are Bitcoiners?

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Are they more like conservatives in the way they their ultimate core values or are they more like liberals?

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And we found last year and this year, the answer was like neither.

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Bitcoiners have their own distinctive moral foundations profile, which I called it moral maximalism, because they just seem to be higher almost everywhere.

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If you are listening to this right now, remember, you are still early.

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and head to bitcoinpodcast.net for everything else.

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Without further ado, let's get into this Bitcoin talk.

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Troy, welcome back.

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It's good to see you again.

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We were just together in DC,

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which was, I got to say, quite an experience.

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I'd never done anything like that

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going to talking to my elected officials.

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It was illuminating.

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let's say. Yeah. Um, it was a great event and I was super pleased that we coordinated a pleb,

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uh, descent on Capitol Hill. What did you, what did you learn in talking to the reps or staffers?

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Well, so I, on the, and I say this in the kindest way possible, um, uh, because we met with some

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like really, uh, really nice people on the staffer side of things. I'll get to the reps in a second,

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but I I'm just I was kind of blown away by like the uh the age of the staffers like it is skews

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except like seems like fresh out of college on and like there's nothing wrong with that right like

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a you know age is just a number right but it's it was kind of interesting because it's like we have

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these decrepit like octogenarian politicians and then all their staffers are like a quarter of their

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age and they're like and I'm just like I just started thinking about that dynamic and like how

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absurd that is that like, this is how stuff gets done in our country. And then I was like, well,

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I guess like, no wonder not that much gets done of like, you know, substance. But okay, I was on,

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let's, let's start with the positives. On the plus side, I was very pleasantly surprised that

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some of the staffers were so open to asking questions, like really wanted to know, like,

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we tried to emphasize, you know, like, we're, this is the Bitcoin policy institute. We're not

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here to talk about crypto. Crypto is this bad thing that's over here and you should ignore these

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scammers. They would then ask like, okay, I really don't understand the difference. Like, can you,

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can you explain that to me? And genuinely asking like, that's wonderful. That was great to see that.

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That was not the case for all of them, but that was the case for some. And to those it's like,

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hats off to you. You at least are willing to learn. You asked great questions.

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On the negative side, I noticed that the totalitarian temptation is very strong.

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Like some of the other staffers would ask things like, well, you know, the classic lines, what about

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money laundering and making sure this isn't used for illicit finance, just like the buzzwords,

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right? And you try to give them a reasonable answer about this. Like, well, actually,

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most money is laundered the vast, vast majority through the US dollar. And Bitcoin's a really bad

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way to do it because it's a transparent public ledger. Anyone can audit at any time. And then

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you just still see them push and push more. So that was a little disappointing, but I suppose

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somewhat not unexpected. The most I would say disappointing. You had some tweet about,

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was it Dick Durbin? Did you talk to Dick Durbin? I talked to Dick Durbin. Yeah. So my-

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That was something. That was something. From the great state of Illinois. And that was supremely

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disappointing because I went in there like, I know his past position on Bitcoin, that he's been very

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negative. I went in there in good faith because that's how I wanted to approach it. And I asked

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him. I said, Senator Durbin, has your position on Bitcoin changed at all since in the depths of the

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bear market 2022, he co-authored a letter with Elizabeth Warren, basically reprimanding Fidelity

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for daring to offer their clients Bitcoin exposure in any way. And the price was like $20,000 at that

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point. So he was protecting his constituents from 5X plus upside. Thank God for him. But I didn't

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say it that way. I just said it actually, I said it, I said it very respectful, respectfully.

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And he just, first of all, goes off and starts talking about crypto ATM scams. And then like

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says a bunch of other random stuff and brings it and brings up FTX. And I'm like, well, first of

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all, you took money from Sam Bankman free, but okay, we won't get into that. Again, didn't say

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this to him. I was being far too nice, very uncharacteristic of me. And then he, he like

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takes his finger and starts raising his voice and he points like points at my face. And he's like,

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you need to clean up your act. You got to clean up your act. I'm like, like it's Sam Bankman freed

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and people running scams are my fault. Like I'm literally just here talking about Bitcoin.

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We had a few other people with us. We all tried very respectfully again to be like,

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respectfully, Senator, this is a totally different from what we're talking about here.

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He wasn't having it. And then he was like, I'm not talking about any more Bitcoin.

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And we're like, okay, okay, sit right back.

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But yeah, long story short, that was illuminating again.

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But he's also like 83 years old.

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So he's going to be out of office pretty soon.

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So, hey.

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He might be out of more than his office.

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But your point at the beginning about staffers, I mean, first of all, my experience with staffers has been,

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pretty positive.

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They are really young.

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They are ambitious.

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They want to do stuff.

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They want to, I mean, they're climbers.

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They're strivers.

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You don't get to be a staffer

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unless you are a promising, ambitious,

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talented young person.

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But of course, they're also very sensitive

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to the political wins and perception.

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and, you know, kind of, they're immature.

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They're immature.

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So it is weird when you realize

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that people like Dick Durbin don't have a clue.

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In part, it's not their fault.

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The brain is just not working very well at 83.

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I mean, it's kind of amazing he can hold a conversation,

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let alone grasp the difference between FTX

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FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried and ATM crypto scams and Bitcoin.

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Like, of course, that distinction is going to be lost on him.

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He can barely, you know, remember and cognize.

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It's doing pretty well.

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Like if he's your grandpa, you're like, grandpa's doing great.

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He's doing really well.

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He's sharp.

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Goes to work every day.

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Yeah, yeah.

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But that's like, you should retire.

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You should be retired at 83 from one of the most important jobs in the world.

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So, yeah, you're right. You got this weird combination of basically super ambitious kids who you wouldn't really want running things, but they are very gifted just because of their maturity level.

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And then people who don't have a clue and the people really, really making the shot, calling the shots are the staffers, I think, more and more.

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You know, it's like they really write. They write things. They do keep track of the details.

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They are the ones who are. And that's a scary moment where you're like, OK, the kids are actually governing, you know, and then they did.

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And then the old the olds, they just bring them out there to to grandstand, basically, and and get reelected.

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And well, in the case of Joe Biden, it was literally weakened at Bernie's.

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Like that was the extreme case of it where the people governing were invisible and unelected and the person there.

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So that's like the extreme case.

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But when you have I can't remember what the average age is in Congress, but as old as it is, I don't know what it is, 75 or something.

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Yeah.

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Something insane like that.

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69, 75.

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That's like average.

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the average is not too far off from lifespan numbers.

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It's really not very, very different from average lifespan.

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There we are with the average rep.

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Like, yeah, yeah, it's not an ideal situation.

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Maybe partly why the Biden thing didn't shock people

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as it should have was because like,

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but look around Congress, like there's a lot of that.

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So now it's, is it relevant to Bitcoin?

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Hell yes, because age is the biggest demographic factor that correlates with Bitcoin attitudes and ownership.

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So you, yeah, Dick Durbin's attitudes are not unusual for an 83 year old.

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I'm just going to very quickly go to it.

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I'm going to share.

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That was a perfect segue, Troy.

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I was like, you really nailed it on that one.

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can I share this

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screen here

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go for it let's dive right in

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I'm going to share this window just really

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quickly before we even get into the thing

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yeah yeah

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okay 83 we've got a little

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blip there but you know that's probably just sampling

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data I mean look at the curve

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you're in that kind of like

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I don't know

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3%

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to

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5%

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ownership max in that age. So, you know, 95, 97% of people in that age range, males and women over

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80, we didn't have any owners. Yeah. That's just...

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Digenarian dudes representing as Bitcoiners, I guess.

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Yeah. But Dick Durbin is in that vast space of white. Our graph there on the right side only goes

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up to 50%, right? So you have to picture that, like, if you want to picture the full

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bar pie chart, they call it, that would go to 100, that even 80 plus males, that is just a tiny,

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tiny percentage of people who own Bitcoin in that age range.

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Man, I mean, it is so just for context for everyone, you put out a fantastic study here.

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And just to back up a little bit, this is the second time you've done a study like this.

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But this one is Understanding Bitcoin Adoption in the United States, Politics, Demographics, and Sentiment.

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You also did this study, it was about a year ago, right?

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Oh, and I think, Troy, I might have lost you.

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Hold on.

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Sorry, I'm back.

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You're good.

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We got you back in.

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Okay, so, yeah, long story short, you put together this great study.

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And I'll just I'll share the just the cover image here, just so folks can see it if they're if they're watching the show. But this is the second time you've done a study like this. And it's understanding Bitcoin adoption in the United States politics, demographic and sentiment, you surveyed like 3300 or something like that different individuals, it was like a very official, like survey survey that was done. This isn't just like picking, you know, a random dude off the street. This is like you guys used Qualtrics. And like this was this is how surveys are done.

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Yes. And, and you guys found you found some very interesting things. Last time we talked, which was a little under a year ago. I think things have shifted a little bit. Some things have stayed the same, but there are some new insights. So like, maybe we can we can just kind of start with like, at a, at a high level, like what's the what we're kind of like the boom, you know, the what were the pull quotes here? What were the you know, the really big key takeaways? And then I want to like, I want to dive into a bunch of these in way

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more detail because some of them are really fascinating. Let's talk about using Bitcoin the

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way it's meant to be used. Self-custodial, lightning fast and ready for the real world.

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That's exactly what BitKit Wallet is all about. BitKit Wallet is a clean, powerful Bitcoin and

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lightning mobile wallet that gives you full control on chain and on lightning. You hold the

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Keys always.

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Whether you're brand new or are a seasoned Bitcoiner,

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and seamless integration between on-chain and Lightning

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means your funds are always where you need them.

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It's your daily driver Bitcoin and Lightning wallet,

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and it actually feels good to use it.

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And with modular widgets, you can personalize your experience to match your style.

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There's even a lightning node running right on your phone.

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Go to bitkit.to or search BitKit wallet in your app store and start using Bitcoin like it's meant to be used.

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That's B-I-T-K-I-T dot T-O.

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Yeah, well, yeah, thanks for the description of the survey. Yeah, it was the largest comprehensive survey of Bitcoin ownership and attitudes that's been done when we did it last year, and then we did it again.

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there have been some more surveys recently

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that we're really looking forward

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to seeing

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or just saw Signal

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the polling company that presented

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with me at the Bitcoin conference

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or the summit in DC

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they did a sample of like

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a thousand people I think their sample wasn't quite as

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good as ours but their questions were great

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there's

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the Reynolds Foundation

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is working together with Cornell

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and Sarah Kreps

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to do a global study of 25 countries.

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On average, they got 1,000 in each country.

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It got like 2,000 in America, in the U.S.,

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but on some other countries, they got like 500.

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That one is going to be a much bigger study than this one

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and global and should show us all kinds of cool things.

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But we wanted to do our study again to see what had changed.

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Basically, like you said, a lot happened in a year.

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Bitcoin's price when we did our first survey was about $41,000.

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It was $85,000 in March when we collected this data over the month of March.

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So more than doubled.

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Of course, we got tons of ETFs.

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We got Bitcoin treasury companies.

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We got the election of Donald Trump.

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We got the announcement of a strategic Bitcoin reserve.

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actually the announcement of a strategic crypto reserve happened at the beginning of our study

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just before our study and then during the study they they came with that really nice executive

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order which clarified the difference between bitcoin and crypto and their role in the reserves

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thank god for that thank god for that but we couldn't really do that because we were already

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collecting data we couldn't really capture that but we wanted to see how all of this stuff

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had changed Bitcoin attitudes and ownership.

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And in terms of top lines,

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we didn't really have a single top line.

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Last year, we had a single one.

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It was just like, hey, last year,

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what we found was Bitcoin isn't political.

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I mean, it's deeply political,

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but not political in the sense of owning Bitcoin

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was not predictive of having a certain political ideology

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and vice versa.

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Having a certain political ideology didn't really tell you whether or not you own Bitcoin. We found the distribution of Bitcoin owners and the American public at large on political ideology was almost indistinguishable last year.

222
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both mostly moderate with little wing tips of conservatives and and liberals but that's what

223
00:17:10,200 --> 00:17:16,440
ownership looked like too and that was hugely shocking given how political the podcaster space

224
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is and the uh twitter space is and dc is and also the new york times is and given given the entire

225
00:17:24,560 --> 00:17:30,540
discourse is is heavily political we were just like scratching our heads like how is it that

226
00:17:30,540 --> 00:17:32,480
Bitcoin ownership just kind of looks like America.

227
00:17:33,840 --> 00:17:36,560
But that was the top line last year.

228
00:17:37,440 --> 00:17:42,000
This year, we didn't know whether that would be shattered or would continue.

229
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That was the real number one curiosity for me.

230
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Also, whether Bitcoin adoption would grow, whether sentiment towards Bitcoin would increase or decrease.

231
00:17:53,700 --> 00:18:00,260
We saw a slight shift to the right in both ownership and in sentiment.

232
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uh maybe i can share a screen for some of these absolutely uh let me do let's start with politics

233
00:18:08,620 --> 00:18:15,040
yeah um one uh one one quick note also just on total number of americans if i'm remembering

234
00:18:15,040 --> 00:18:20,560
correctly in terms of percentages from your last study it was like was it what was it one in seven

235
00:18:20,560 --> 00:18:27,400
something like or was it uh or seven percent which one was it uh for owner exposure to bitcoin in

236
00:18:27,400 --> 00:18:34,580
some way okay what last year this is tricky i wish i had a simple answer for you here last year we

237
00:18:34,580 --> 00:18:42,000
asked us we asked a question which was uh do you own bitcoin really nice simple question we also

238
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asked have you ever owned bitcoin and then for the people who said they had but they don't own

239
00:18:47,120 --> 00:18:54,160
it presently we asked them like why they sold but um last year a lot of people in response to our

240
00:18:54,160 --> 00:19:01,620
survey said uh you know you're missing a lot of kinds of ownership because a lot of people don't

241
00:19:01,620 --> 00:19:06,540
own bitcoin but their spouse does let's say their partner and they jointly own it but they wouldn't

242
00:19:06,540 --> 00:19:13,800
say they own it on a um on a survey it might also be that somebody owns ibit but they're not counting

243
00:19:13,800 --> 00:19:19,620
that or they might own microstrategy that they don't consider that to be owning bitcoin uh

244
00:19:19,620 --> 00:19:24,340
or they're stacking it through a business or something.

245
00:19:25,140 --> 00:19:30,020
So we decided to ask the do you own Bitcoin question again,

246
00:19:30,440 --> 00:19:34,760
but also ask do you own it on an exchange?

247
00:19:34,940 --> 00:19:36,500
Do you own it in self-custody?

248
00:19:36,920 --> 00:19:37,820
Do you own it on an ETF?

249
00:19:37,980 --> 00:19:40,300
Do you own a retirement account jointly with a partner and so on?

250
00:19:40,920 --> 00:19:44,820
And then we added up, non-exclusive, check all that apply.

251
00:19:44,820 --> 00:19:50,260
And then we added up the group that selected at least one kind of ownership.

252
00:19:51,640 --> 00:19:54,720
And so that's a new metric we didn't have last year.

253
00:19:54,760 --> 00:19:55,500
We can't compare it.

254
00:19:56,380 --> 00:20:03,180
Last year, we found one in seven people own Bitcoin, about 13% to the straightforward question, do you own Bitcoin?

255
00:20:03,740 --> 00:20:10,240
This year, we found a statistically indistinguishable number, 12.5% to that same question.

256
00:20:11,020 --> 00:20:14,000
No statistically significant difference between those two numbers.

257
00:20:14,820 --> 00:20:21,020
But on the expanded question of ownership, we got 18.6%, which is between 1 in 5 and 1 in 6.

258
00:20:21,520 --> 00:20:25,260
So we were missing people, basically, who owning through these other methods.

259
00:20:25,940 --> 00:20:27,960
And that might have grown too.

260
00:20:28,060 --> 00:20:30,460
We just don't know because the ETFs grew tremendously.

261
00:20:31,180 --> 00:20:33,860
The treasury companies grew tremendously and so on.

262
00:20:35,780 --> 00:20:41,880
But yeah, as far as we can see, Bitcoin just held steady on the do you own question.

263
00:20:41,880 --> 00:20:49,400
And there's one more complication in that we wanted to clarify Bitcoin from crypto in our survey.

264
00:20:50,860 --> 00:20:57,880
And a lot of people last year said, ah, your one in seven is too high because people are just answering, yes, I own Bitcoin.

265
00:20:58,000 --> 00:20:59,480
It's called Solana. I have it on Phantom.

266
00:21:00,900 --> 00:21:03,900
And so they're probably right, too. Good criticism.

267
00:21:04,320 --> 00:21:10,080
We did say Bitcoin in a preliminary remark at the beginning of the survey.

268
00:21:10,080 --> 00:21:12,660
Like we're not interested in any other cryptocurrencies, just Bitcoin.

269
00:21:13,380 --> 00:21:15,740
But this year, when we said, do you own Bitcoin?

270
00:21:16,160 --> 00:21:20,160
We actually put that disclaimer right into that question.

271
00:21:20,860 --> 00:21:27,960
So bearing in mind that we are not interested in any other cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin, do you own Bitcoin?

272
00:21:28,520 --> 00:21:32,760
And we got 12.5% of people that said yes on that question.

273
00:21:32,760 --> 00:21:45,980
And so who knows how many shit corners we filtered out there that we didn't quite filter out last year because they forgot the instructions from the beginning of the survey.

274
00:21:46,440 --> 00:21:51,640
So it's really impossible for us to make claims about ownership across time.

275
00:21:51,740 --> 00:21:56,640
Unfortunately, yeah, this is a long way of saying we don't have apples to apples.

276
00:21:56,640 --> 00:22:04,440
we have a top line but not a dynamic measure on ownership because we got clearer about ownership

277
00:22:04,440 --> 00:22:10,380
this year and i think the top line is something like uh yeah 12 and a half percent americans say

278
00:22:10,380 --> 00:22:14,800
they own bitcoin but when you consider the various ways of getting exposure to bitcoin

279
00:22:14,800 --> 00:22:23,000
indirectly through a a retirement account or an etf or a treasury company or an on exchange even

280
00:22:23,000 --> 00:22:27,740
we got a much broader number, 18.6.

281
00:22:28,200 --> 00:22:30,780
That's 48 million adults in the U.S.

282
00:22:31,400 --> 00:22:35,020
Like I said in the report, there are 50 million Catholics in the U.S.

283
00:22:35,020 --> 00:22:39,040
That basically puts Bitcoin owners on a par with Catholics

284
00:22:39,040 --> 00:22:41,660
in terms of their political size and constituency.

285
00:22:43,240 --> 00:22:51,440
And of that group, 11 million people claim to hold Bitcoin in self-custody.

286
00:22:51,440 --> 00:23:00,040
uh which is you know elizabeth warren shadowy super coder kind of material and there's 11

287
00:23:00,040 --> 00:23:12,020
million of us that's uh 4.21 of the u.s population or uh also 24 of bitcoiners so roughly a quarter

288
00:23:12,020 --> 00:23:19,080
of bitcoiners claim to hold bitcoin in self-custody uh which is freaking cool and that's awesome

289
00:23:19,080 --> 00:23:24,740
That number we thought can't be true because it just seemed too high to us.

290
00:23:25,660 --> 00:23:29,480
But I did some research on hardware wallet sales.

291
00:23:31,300 --> 00:23:34,100
Ledger claims $8 million cumulative sales.

292
00:23:35,060 --> 00:23:36,100
Trezor, $2 million.

293
00:23:37,200 --> 00:23:40,220
That's not enough even if you throw in all the other hardware wallets.

294
00:23:40,560 --> 00:23:42,580
Probably, like I have a lot of hardware wallets.

295
00:23:42,660 --> 00:23:44,200
I'm guessing a lot of us Bitcoiners do.

296
00:23:44,200 --> 00:23:48,220
You know, probably at like three hardware wallets per Bitcoin owner.

297
00:23:49,080 --> 00:23:50,820
And that's worldwide.

298
00:23:51,140 --> 00:23:54,660
That doesn't add up to 11 million Americans.

299
00:23:55,540 --> 00:24:03,440
But when I looked up the downloads for crypto wallets that can hold Bitcoin with keys, it was more than enough.

300
00:24:04,340 --> 00:24:09,900
Trust Wallet alone has 200 million downloads of their app.

301
00:24:10,720 --> 00:24:13,260
And Trust Wallet has Bitcoin on it.

302
00:24:13,560 --> 00:24:15,480
You can hold Bitcoin on it, of course.

303
00:24:15,480 --> 00:24:24,180
typical crypto wallets can hold Bitcoin. So I don't know what the ratio is of American,

304
00:24:24,600 --> 00:24:31,060
you know, current users to their cumulative downloads, but that's one wallet. We also have

305
00:24:31,060 --> 00:24:37,100
Coinbase wallet, Robinhood wallet, you know, any number of other mycelium wallet I used to use,

306
00:24:37,100 --> 00:24:41,980
like back in the day, whatever. There are all of these phone wallets where people are holding

307
00:24:41,980 --> 00:24:48,440
their own keys i think this is crypto and how it the blessing and the curse that it gave to us over

308
00:24:48,440 --> 00:24:57,580
the last cycle um crypto got a lot of people to download wallets for their phones so they could

309
00:24:57,580 --> 00:25:05,260
do defy and so they could um have nfts and stuff like that and then as those things like die you

310
00:25:05,260 --> 00:25:09,300
People get the biggest cryptocurrency that there is, which is Bitcoin.

311
00:25:10,160 --> 00:25:15,220
And then they have it on self-custody because they already have a wallet.

312
00:25:15,700 --> 00:25:20,600
And they already are familiar with using a wallet themselves and signing their own transactions.

313
00:25:21,600 --> 00:25:28,340
So, I mean, this is one of those cases where we do owe something positive to crypto.

314
00:25:28,820 --> 00:25:32,620
The negative side we'll talk about later in terms of perceptions of Bitcoin.

315
00:25:32,620 --> 00:25:39,140
and well you already ran into it and you know dick durbin's office but yeah that's wild i i

316
00:25:39,140 --> 00:25:43,000
apologize for for derailing a little bit what you were going to go into on like the political

317
00:25:43,000 --> 00:25:47,140
breakdown so like go into that next but i wanted to set the stage with that because i think like

318
00:25:47,140 --> 00:25:54,520
that's just wild to me that it's uh we're still very early but like it there is a big chunk of

319
00:25:54,520 --> 00:25:59,340
people that this is actually a meaningful like they own bitcoin or they're exposed to bitcoin

320
00:25:59,340 --> 00:26:04,960
in some way. The self-custody one alone, I was just like, heck yeah. That's amazing to see. I hope

321
00:26:04,960 --> 00:26:10,920
that number continues to grow, but it's not bad for right now. It's not bad at all.

322
00:26:12,840 --> 00:26:18,840
I think, yeah, are we still early? A lot of the comments on when I posted this on Twitter were

323
00:26:18,840 --> 00:26:26,040
about that. People saying, well, what this shows is that we're not early. I think we are early

324
00:26:26,040 --> 00:26:29,480
in terms of total allocation to Bitcoin.

325
00:26:30,400 --> 00:26:33,660
I think we are early in terms of self-custody,

326
00:26:34,520 --> 00:26:35,680
but we are, I mean,

327
00:26:36,800 --> 00:26:39,460
I mean, on-chain activity is like nothing.

328
00:26:40,340 --> 00:26:44,780
And so, and that's another reason

329
00:26:44,780 --> 00:26:46,980
to question my data on self-custody, really.

330
00:26:47,100 --> 00:26:48,720
This is how many people think they self-custody.

331
00:26:49,280 --> 00:26:51,660
But if you look at wallets

332
00:26:51,660 --> 00:26:54,280
that have a non-trivial amount of Bitcoin on them,

333
00:26:54,280 --> 00:26:55,540
it's not a lot.

334
00:26:56,040 --> 00:27:23,864
So we have a long way to go on self but also what does early mean Yeah it could mean the total value of the asset It could mean incorporation into our lives and economy that we buy things with it That not happening very much If you look at the data right it could it could mean it could mean a lot of things

335
00:27:23,864 --> 00:27:29,944
And I think on one of those dimensions, like having some Bitcoin, you're not early.

336
00:27:30,484 --> 00:27:31,124
Like, you know what I mean?

337
00:27:31,344 --> 00:27:33,404
You have $20 of Bitcoin on Coinbase.

338
00:27:33,604 --> 00:27:35,084
Like, OK, a lot of people do.

339
00:27:36,864 --> 00:27:39,324
Like 48 million American adults do.

340
00:27:39,424 --> 00:27:40,784
You're not that early anymore.

341
00:27:41,644 --> 00:27:43,084
Beyond that, you're still early.

342
00:27:44,684 --> 00:27:49,484
That's, I think, a very important distinction in terms of allocation size, let's say.

343
00:27:49,484 --> 00:27:53,504
You know, percentage of like individual percentage of net worth is another one to look at.

344
00:27:53,864 --> 00:27:56,824
But okay, let's get into the political side of this a little bit.

345
00:27:57,064 --> 00:27:58,584
What can you tell us about that?

346
00:27:58,724 --> 00:28:01,944
What was the same from the last time you looked at this?

347
00:28:02,004 --> 00:28:05,684
And then what has changed over the last year plus or so?

348
00:28:08,064 --> 00:28:10,504
Well, we were still struck here.

349
00:28:10,504 --> 00:28:13,904
Here you're looking at on the left-hand side of this chart,

350
00:28:14,764 --> 00:28:20,104
the breakdown of owners versus non-owners of Bitcoin left to right.

351
00:28:20,104 --> 00:28:24,284
and you see among non-owners, it's mostly moderate,

352
00:28:25,144 --> 00:28:28,964
slightly right-shifted in our sample, barely.

353
00:28:29,544 --> 00:28:33,384
And you look at owners, and it's also mostly moderate

354
00:28:33,384 --> 00:28:34,764
and slightly right-shifted.

355
00:28:36,284 --> 00:28:39,264
If we look at this chart and we didn't have last year,

356
00:28:39,524 --> 00:28:41,864
we'd be like, wow, Bitcoin isn't political.

357
00:28:42,524 --> 00:28:45,724
That would be our lesson.

358
00:28:46,224 --> 00:28:48,684
But when you look at the dynamic from last year

359
00:28:48,684 --> 00:28:51,624
where they were exactly the same to this year,

360
00:28:51,704 --> 00:28:55,244
you do see gains among conservatives,

361
00:28:55,864 --> 00:28:58,404
you know, 4.2% gain among conservatives.

362
00:28:59,124 --> 00:29:02,204
And you have a similar amount of losses among liberals

363
00:29:02,204 --> 00:29:04,384
and somewhat liberals.

364
00:29:04,724 --> 00:29:08,264
So you see the shift in ownership.

365
00:29:08,584 --> 00:29:10,124
It's slight, but it's there.

366
00:29:11,304 --> 00:29:13,344
So yeah, that's a more nuanced message.

367
00:29:13,444 --> 00:29:14,484
It's like, where are we politically?

368
00:29:15,104 --> 00:29:17,264
On the whole, we're like where we were last year.

369
00:29:17,264 --> 00:29:23,584
but liberals own are less percentage of owners this year than they were last year and conservatives

370
00:29:23,584 --> 00:29:30,024
are more a percentage of owners than they were last year and uh we also asked four different

371
00:29:30,024 --> 00:29:36,364
questions on political orientation one was a 10 point scale one was a uh a scale that also

372
00:29:36,364 --> 00:29:43,184
included libertarians and moderates and others um and and another was a different kind of measure

373
00:29:43,184 --> 00:29:45,764
they all showed this rightward shift.

374
00:29:47,144 --> 00:29:50,244
So I think even though this one was sort of like

375
00:29:50,244 --> 00:29:52,264
on the borderline of statistical significance,

376
00:29:52,724 --> 00:29:54,644
some of the others were much more significant.

377
00:29:54,904 --> 00:29:57,384
So I think overall ownership shifted to the right.

378
00:29:57,924 --> 00:30:00,084
Libertarians also own more this year than last year.

379
00:30:01,144 --> 00:30:04,064
And Libertarians are 5% of all Bitcoin owners

380
00:30:04,064 --> 00:30:06,924
and like 2.5% of the general population,

381
00:30:07,064 --> 00:30:07,724
something like that.

382
00:30:07,844 --> 00:30:10,524
It's hard to find the general background percentage

383
00:30:10,524 --> 00:30:12,284
because definitions differ.

384
00:30:12,284 --> 00:30:23,904
But yeah, you're twice as likely to own Bitcoin or to be a libertarian as a Bitcoin owner than as a non-Bitcoin owner.

385
00:30:25,844 --> 00:30:28,744
But it's just a tiny amount of the total population.

386
00:30:29,664 --> 00:30:34,444
But yeah, everything shifted a little bit right, but it's still fairly moderate.

387
00:30:34,444 --> 00:30:42,204
it. And I think that right shift also, you know, in my mind that that makes sense, right? Given,

388
00:30:42,884 --> 00:30:47,444
given the discourse, like that, there are people who like, I know people personally,

389
00:30:47,444 --> 00:30:54,564
like in my like, you know, normie friend world, who like, would not touch Bitcoin until they heard

390
00:30:54,564 --> 00:30:58,504
that Trump was like all about Bitcoin now. And they're like, well, I guess I'll get a little bit.

391
00:30:58,504 --> 00:31:02,504
And I was like, you know, I'm telling you guys for years. And now that and this is what but it's

392
00:31:02,504 --> 00:31:06,164
like, okay, that's what tips the needle for some people. I'm sure it tipped the needle. I don't

393
00:31:06,164 --> 00:31:11,844
know. I'm curious if it, if it, you know, did that actually induce a number of people to be like,

394
00:31:11,904 --> 00:31:17,384
I'm going to get rid of all my Bitcoin because I hate Donald Trump. Or is it just that more

395
00:31:17,384 --> 00:31:21,404
conservative people ended up buying Bitcoin because of Donald Trump? Like people aren't

396
00:31:21,404 --> 00:31:24,784
necessary. I mean, there's, I guess that's tough to know, like exactly, but I mean, do you have any

397
00:31:24,784 --> 00:31:30,904
perception of that? I think they both happened and I don't have solid support from that, from the

398
00:31:30,904 --> 00:31:40,724
data but i do have this dropping among liberals right and where moderates hold steady so it's like

399
00:31:40,724 --> 00:31:45,244
it's not just that the percentage increased on the conservative side and then just dropped

400
00:31:45,244 --> 00:31:51,524
uniformly across the rest of the spectrum it especially dropped for liberals uh somewhat

401
00:31:51,524 --> 00:32:01,904
liberal, very liberal, and liberal. And so I think both happened. Although, when we go to sentiment,

402
00:32:02,364 --> 00:32:07,304
which is how people feel about Bitcoin overall, you get much bigger drops on the left.

403
00:32:08,124 --> 00:32:13,924
And you don't really get a rise on the right, you just get a non falling. And so the left

404
00:32:13,924 --> 00:32:18,804
seriously dislikes Bitcoin now. They didn't used to dislike Bitcoin.

405
00:32:18,804 --> 00:32:27,864
uh you know so so that that uh that changed and i think there's a gap between uh sentiment and

406
00:32:27,864 --> 00:32:34,384
ownership i think your standard liberal that had bitcoin did not sell their bitcoin but they just

407
00:32:34,384 --> 00:32:40,764
dislike it more and you know what i mean like so their attitudes are like it's it's it's been the

408
00:32:40,764 --> 00:32:46,904
best performing asset you know in a generation and when you hold that maybe you don't talk about

409
00:32:46,904 --> 00:32:55,324
it but do you sell it probably not because it's made you uh you know it's made you money so yeah

410
00:32:55,324 --> 00:33:00,324
uh if we go to sentiment here i'll just scoot down this is sentiment there's a composite score

411
00:33:00,324 --> 00:33:05,624
of 16 different questions about how you feel about bitcoin how much you know about it how

412
00:33:05,624 --> 00:33:11,424
much you trust it how useful you find it whether you think it's moral and look at these drops

413
00:33:11,424 --> 00:33:14,164
on the left

414
00:33:14,164 --> 00:33:16,944
this is on a

415
00:33:16,944 --> 00:33:18,824
seven point scale

416
00:33:18,824 --> 00:33:20,904
liberals dropped

417
00:33:20,904 --> 00:33:23,464
.7 last year

418
00:33:23,464 --> 00:33:24,364
very liberals

419
00:33:24,364 --> 00:33:27,604
they were slightly below

420
00:33:27,604 --> 00:33:29,284
neutral on it

421
00:33:29,284 --> 00:33:30,744
just slightly below neutral

422
00:33:30,744 --> 00:33:32,864
they dropped almost a full point

423
00:33:32,864 --> 00:33:35,724
that's on a seven point scale

424
00:33:35,724 --> 00:33:36,984
that's a Likert scale

425
00:33:36,984 --> 00:33:38,764
that's from strongly disagree

426
00:33:38,764 --> 00:33:40,244
to

427
00:33:40,244 --> 00:33:50,624
somewhat disagree, neutral, and all the way to strongly agree on some positive statement about

428
00:33:50,624 --> 00:33:59,164
Bitcoin. And so they're going from basically neutral to slightly disagree with any positive

429
00:33:59,164 --> 00:34:06,664
statement about Bitcoin. And yeah, and you see conservatives and very conservatives kind of

430
00:34:06,664 --> 00:34:14,164
holding steady overall sentiment dropped last year on bitcoin and you know this is i think

431
00:34:14,164 --> 00:34:24,484
kind of shocking um yeah because bitcoin's price doubled and it is an asset because it won on like

432
00:34:24,484 --> 00:34:32,784
it won in in almost every way that the protocol could could win uh the regulatory front um

433
00:34:32,784 --> 00:34:34,584
on the adoption front.

434
00:34:35,904 --> 00:34:39,444
But people feel less positively about it this year

435
00:34:39,444 --> 00:34:42,704
than they did last year, non-owners.

436
00:34:42,884 --> 00:34:45,384
What I show on the right is that owners of Bitcoin

437
00:34:45,384 --> 00:34:47,244
are more positive this year by a half point

438
00:34:47,244 --> 00:34:48,224
than they were last year.

439
00:34:48,704 --> 00:34:51,284
The people who are in are getting even more in.

440
00:34:51,604 --> 00:34:53,864
It's a kind of polarization of attitudes

441
00:34:53,864 --> 00:34:56,044
along gendered lines.

442
00:34:56,244 --> 00:34:57,984
Women dropped much more than men

443
00:34:57,984 --> 00:35:00,744
and along political orientation lines.

444
00:35:00,744 --> 00:35:10,144
And those two things are sort of blending because the Democratic Party is becoming increasingly female and the Republican Party increasingly male.

445
00:35:11,424 --> 00:35:13,184
So Bitcoin is hyper male.

446
00:35:13,704 --> 00:35:18,364
We skipped that slide, but it's, you know, you're twice as likely to own Bitcoin as a man than a woman.

447
00:35:18,364 --> 00:35:30,604
And it's aligning with the male dominated political ideology and females are becoming more critical of it.

448
00:35:30,744 --> 00:35:43,704
Yeah, so I think the kind of orange branding of Bitcoin has taken a toll on the political enemies of Donald Trump.

449
00:35:44,704 --> 00:35:47,144
I think Bitcoin's brand is extremely strong.

450
00:35:47,804 --> 00:35:49,704
It's one of the strongest brands in the world.

451
00:35:50,284 --> 00:35:52,744
That's why we have absorbed all of crypto in our brand.

452
00:35:52,744 --> 00:35:59,244
We are like the Kleenex of Bitcoin or the Kodak, where it just becomes a name for the whole genre.

453
00:35:59,244 --> 00:36:03,444
but Donald Trump's brand is one of the only brands that's stronger.

454
00:36:04,404 --> 00:36:07,564
And we have, the Trump brand is unbelievable.

455
00:36:09,304 --> 00:36:13,524
His negatives are insanely high and his positives.

456
00:36:14,644 --> 00:36:17,244
And we have kind of both from both these brands,

457
00:36:17,364 --> 00:36:19,544
the Bitcoin brand and the Trump brand,

458
00:36:19,604 --> 00:36:21,904
we've had a fusion attempt to make a fusion,

459
00:36:22,344 --> 00:36:27,424
like the David Bailey gambit to invite Trump to the conference,

460
00:36:27,424 --> 00:36:28,724
to raise money for Trump.

461
00:36:28,724 --> 00:36:42,364
which was a brilliant, brilliant play, led to a wildly successful conference and all of the policy stuff that we wanted at least being discussed.

462
00:36:42,584 --> 00:36:48,724
And the worst of the policy that would have been implemented under an Elizabeth Warren presidency avoided.

463
00:36:49,884 --> 00:36:52,864
Yeah, horrible to think about that potential future, right?

464
00:36:52,864 --> 00:37:08,044
But as much of a win as that was, that's him trying to cement. He had to cement the Bitcoin brand to the Trump brand to do it. And Trump also being the crypto president, the Bitcoin president, like he's branding himself with Bitcoin.

465
00:37:08,044 --> 00:37:18,744
And, you know, in the mind of most people, there just isn't room to distinguish these things. And so your feelings about one just kind of fuse over to the other.

466
00:37:18,744 --> 00:37:46,564
And so, you know, while there's a tremendous upside to Bitcoin's price and to its prospects and international game theory and everything that we are experiencing, there is this like thing where people who people are extremely negative on Donald Trump are more wary of Bitcoin than they were a year ago, despite all of its successes.

467
00:37:46,564 --> 00:37:49,084
Maybe because of its successes, they find it suspicious.

468
00:37:50,264 --> 00:37:51,884
And we saw that in the data.

469
00:37:52,244 --> 00:37:54,224
And you wouldn't really see that in price.

470
00:37:54,244 --> 00:37:56,064
And you wouldn't really see that in other metrics.

471
00:37:56,464 --> 00:37:57,904
I mean, maybe you see it on chain.

472
00:37:58,624 --> 00:38:00,444
It's kind of a ghost town in the mempool.

473
00:38:01,384 --> 00:38:02,084
You know what I mean?

474
00:38:02,164 --> 00:38:05,524
There are these little markers like, where's retail?

475
00:38:06,604 --> 00:38:07,324
Where's retail?

476
00:38:08,324 --> 00:38:09,864
Institutional adoption is insane.

477
00:38:10,184 --> 00:38:11,544
But we don't see the FOMO.

478
00:38:11,684 --> 00:38:12,704
We don't see Google searches.

479
00:38:12,964 --> 00:38:15,384
We don't see Bitcoin Twitter going nuts.

480
00:38:15,384 --> 00:38:43,504
Right. And people are kind of like, where where's the wave of adoptees coming in? And I think this data indicates like at least part of the story for where where they are. Some of them are scared off by the politics and association with that that character and Trump coin and all of the self serving grift that they you know what I mean? They make the same mistake Dick Durbin made.

481
00:38:43,504 --> 00:39:09,304
I literally had staffers bring up Trump coin to me, like as one of the first things they'll be like, well, we don't really, you know, you're talking about Bitcoin, they'll be like, well, we, we, you know, I, you know, you're not a supporter of Trump coin, are you? And we're like, no, no, we, everyone who's a Bitcoiner thinks that was a, an absurd grift, and absolutely just ridiculous. And we'll disavow that and say that is shit coining.

482
00:39:09,304 --> 00:39:13,924
and like you know i didn't think i'd be you know talking to staffers about shit coining but like

483
00:39:13,924 --> 00:39:17,964
then there you are but like that was the first thing that came to mind for them when you brought

484
00:39:17,964 --> 00:39:22,744
up bitcoin was well we hate trump and trump launched trump coin and that's crypto which

485
00:39:22,744 --> 00:39:28,164
is bitcoin also right and it's just it's all jumbled together for a lot of people and like

486
00:39:28,164 --> 00:39:34,704
one of my biggest takeaways was like wow the educational work that bpi is doing is so damn

487
00:39:34,704 --> 00:39:39,204
important really important otherwise you have people who think trump coin is the same as bitcoin

488
00:39:39,204 --> 00:39:43,964
who are writing laws. And you can say like, oh, I don't have to do what the government tells me.

489
00:39:44,044 --> 00:39:47,404
That's why I have Bitcoins. Give my middle finger to the government. And it's like,

490
00:39:47,824 --> 00:39:53,284
well, that's true. But they're still the guys with guns who can come and take away your stuff

491
00:39:53,284 --> 00:39:58,484
and incarcerate you. So do you want them to write favorable laws protecting your right

492
00:39:58,484 --> 00:40:03,644
to use Bitcoin? You don't need them to do that. You can still use Bitcoin, but you'd rather have

493
00:40:03,644 --> 00:40:10,564
them like i'd rather have a lot of senator lummases than elizabeth warrens in government for example

494
00:40:10,564 --> 00:40:17,844
absolutely very very simple heuristic there you know yep uh i think two two points there one is

495
00:40:17,844 --> 00:40:25,444
uh for those from those staffers perspective it's like well wasn't wasn't melania coin launched like

496
00:40:25,444 --> 00:40:32,904
during the crypto dinner uh i think i think it was yeah yeah i wasn't at this crypto dinner so i was

497
00:40:32,904 --> 00:40:37,904
watching on online uh as melania coin got launched i'm pretty sure it was like while the dinner was

498
00:40:37,904 --> 00:40:47,204
taking place which is just insane also like what are we doing here this is like it was one of those

499
00:40:47,204 --> 00:40:54,264
things where it was like so surreal that you're like no come like no way i know yes but if you

500
00:40:54,264 --> 00:41:01,324
look at the crypto dinner i mean it's all prominent bitcoiners and it's bit it's bitcoiners who

501
00:41:01,324 --> 00:41:08,464
donate heavily to elect the guy and so it's really hard for a democratic staffer to look at that and

502
00:41:08,464 --> 00:41:13,004
then say oh but you are opposed to that but there you are at the dinner and he just announced it and

503
00:41:13,004 --> 00:41:20,304
you know luckily i wasn't there so you know i was right right luckily right i know uh i do a lot of

504
00:41:20,304 --> 00:41:26,164
people at the dinner i luckily wasn't there too but it's just like that's the danger of

505
00:41:26,164 --> 00:41:35,184
I hate to go political here, but that's the danger of getting in bed with an amoral, self-enriching politician.

506
00:41:36,024 --> 00:41:37,724
You are stuck.

507
00:41:38,064 --> 00:41:41,704
Once you start playing that game of politics, like you start supporting a politician,

508
00:41:42,504 --> 00:41:46,244
then when they do shit that you don't like, it kind of blows back on you.

509
00:41:46,244 --> 00:41:51,724
And you can distance yourself from it, but you're partly responsible for them being in office.

510
00:41:51,964 --> 00:41:53,724
And so you kind of just kind of take that.

511
00:41:53,724 --> 00:42:03,684
And there are brilliant strategists who made that decision and know what they did and live with it.

512
00:42:03,824 --> 00:42:05,044
But man, it sucks.

513
00:42:07,124 --> 00:42:18,504
I want to have a conversation with the Trump family and say, look, you guys, you have a chance at history, like ultimately in life.

514
00:42:19,084 --> 00:42:22,584
I know you have a corporation and you have a family business and your wealth and whatever.

515
00:42:22,584 --> 00:42:28,644
but almost nobody gets a chance to go down as Lincoln,

516
00:42:29,244 --> 00:42:33,304
you know, Washington, like you got that chance.

517
00:42:34,584 --> 00:42:40,184
You can, your legacy can go down for your entire family line.

518
00:42:40,184 --> 00:42:44,864
Like we led America into a period of peace and prosperity and greatness.

519
00:42:44,864 --> 00:42:54,844
and uh and and you would forfeit that for uh a chance to you know enrich yourself

520
00:42:54,844 --> 00:43:02,944
on a on a crypto token like like it it's it's just so it's not it's not even a question of ethics

521
00:43:02,944 --> 00:43:07,664
it's a question of self-interest like do you do you understand what the stakes are here

522
00:43:07,664 --> 00:43:13,224
and how much more important this is even to you and what what you ultimately care about in the long

523
00:43:13,224 --> 00:43:21,564
run, you're jeopardizing it. You're jeopardizing it all. You're jeopardizing your legacy,

524
00:43:22,404 --> 00:43:29,924
the ability of all of your legislation to succeed. Democrats don't want to support

525
00:43:29,924 --> 00:43:37,124
common sense legislation because it has some symbolic association with this grifting.

526
00:43:38,444 --> 00:43:43,124
That came up with even the stablecoin legislation, and it's going to be there with

527
00:43:43,124 --> 00:43:47,484
market structure, the Democrats who are already on board, and I don't even care about that

528
00:43:47,484 --> 00:43:52,044
stablecoin legislation stuff, but these people were already on board.

529
00:43:52,164 --> 00:43:56,144
They were already bought and paid for by the political lobbyists.

530
00:43:57,464 --> 00:44:07,584
Once the Trump grifting got too hard to stomach and he's giving audiences to whatever, shakes

531
00:44:07,584 --> 00:44:09,444
who are lots of Trump coin,

532
00:44:10,664 --> 00:44:12,964
they withdrew their support

533
00:44:12,964 --> 00:44:14,584
and had to be won back.

534
00:44:16,804 --> 00:44:19,184
Yeah, you're jeopardizing your agenda

535
00:44:19,184 --> 00:44:20,404
and your chance to get done

536
00:44:20,404 --> 00:44:21,704
what you need to get done.

537
00:44:21,884 --> 00:44:23,784
So it's hard for me to believe

538
00:44:23,784 --> 00:44:26,524
that it happened for that reason.

539
00:44:26,984 --> 00:44:28,704
Like who in that family,

540
00:44:29,164 --> 00:44:30,044
that power system

541
00:44:30,044 --> 00:44:31,984
is making these kinds of calls?

542
00:44:32,244 --> 00:44:33,564
Like, you know,

543
00:44:33,684 --> 00:44:36,364
the rest of us have to like

544
00:44:36,364 --> 00:44:41,544
scrape for money and do things that are not necessarily, we're not necessarily proud of

545
00:44:41,544 --> 00:44:47,484
to make a buck because we need money to survive. But you don't, buddy. You got like, you got a

546
00:44:47,484 --> 00:44:53,964
golden opportunity here. I don't know. It's a shame. It's incredibly high time preference behavior

547
00:44:53,964 --> 00:44:57,964
is what it ultimately comes down to. That's right. That's it. Like insanely so though,

548
00:44:57,964 --> 00:45:02,824
for the position that you are in when you have the luxury of being low time preference. But then

549
00:45:02,824 --> 00:45:08,944
again, it's like, how low time preference can you be when you're his age? Also, that's like,

550
00:45:08,964 --> 00:45:13,784
that's a function of age. Like you, like realistically you're, I mean, maybe Trump

551
00:45:13,784 --> 00:45:19,024
lives to be 150. I doubt it. Um, like he's probably going to have a slightly above average

552
00:45:19,024 --> 00:45:25,344
lifespan. Good for him. I hope he is healthy long into his, his even later years, but like

553
00:45:25,344 --> 00:45:31,184
as a function of your age, you're necessarily more high time preference. Like, but, but then again,

554
00:45:31,184 --> 00:45:34,884
you're also like very wealthy. So like you have the ability to be low time preference. And if you

555
00:45:34,884 --> 00:45:39,344
care about your kids and your grandkids, which exactly like that, I was going to say you're a

556
00:45:39,344 --> 00:45:45,564
father now, you're a father now. And I feel like that generalization is just not true for people

557
00:45:45,564 --> 00:45:52,404
who, who have kids, especially, I can't speak for the people who don't, but my parents, they've

558
00:45:52,404 --> 00:45:59,764
gotten more, um, more low time preference as they've aged. And I feel the same way. It's like,

559
00:45:59,764 --> 00:46:05,924
I care more about my kids and my legacy now than when I was a teenager. I didn't care about my 30

560
00:46:05,924 --> 00:46:13,164
year old self. Right. I feel like I feel like you're right in theory, but in practice, for me,

561
00:46:13,164 --> 00:46:20,044
it's gone the opposite way. 100% agree. And like, I felt like I didn't entirely like I thought I was

562
00:46:20,044 --> 00:46:26,764
a low time preference person because Bitcoin made me so enlightened prior to having our first child

563
00:46:26,764 --> 00:46:32,764
our son and then he came along and i'm like oh no i was like i mean i was kind of like mid-time

564
00:46:32,764 --> 00:46:37,904
preference but like now i'm like what happens like long after i'm gone because he'll still be here

565
00:46:37,904 --> 00:46:44,664
and his kids will still be here and like it it's real then but maybe that's not as important for

566
00:46:44,664 --> 00:46:51,844
some uh i i don't know i i won't i won't speculate on that but it was just insanely insanely shocking

567
00:46:51,844 --> 00:46:59,604
to see uh and it's like imagine the vibe if that hadn't happened like i you wouldn't you wouldn't

568
00:46:59,604 --> 00:47:04,804
have to have conversations with staffers when you're trying to talk about bitcoin and how great

569
00:47:04,804 --> 00:47:10,124
it is for americans and the people of the world you wouldn't have to first address trump coin and

570
00:47:10,124 --> 00:47:16,224
melania exactly wouldn't that be nice but i guess that's in an alternate reality we're in a different

571
00:47:16,224 --> 00:47:21,804
place but uh for for this time timeline we're not that's right i think this is partly you were

572
00:47:21,804 --> 00:47:26,604
saying how important the bitcoin policy institute is and and and related educational efforts and and

573
00:47:26,604 --> 00:47:33,724
all of us really uh when it comes time to educate our our representatives um you know we live in the

574
00:47:33,724 --> 00:47:41,844
world that we're given like uh uh i didn't vote for trump uh but i shudder to think about what

575
00:47:41,844 --> 00:47:48,184
would have happened under a harris regime uh not just to bitcoin but in many other respects

576
00:47:48,184 --> 00:47:55,524
um you know none of those options really appealed to me you know uh but if if harris had been elected

577
00:47:55,524 --> 00:48:02,284
i would be advocating likewise with trump i've got i've got a different set of problems uh

578
00:48:02,284 --> 00:48:08,604
instead of like how do we keep you from making this illegal we've got how do we keep you from

579
00:48:08,604 --> 00:48:15,644
grifting on top of it. You know, it's just like, pick your poison. But I'm glad you guys came in

580
00:48:15,644 --> 00:48:24,844
and did some of that. I mean, I think it's, you know, it's a reminder when you meet people in DC

581
00:48:24,844 --> 00:48:30,204
that we really do have a representative democracy, despite the fact that, you know, yes, it is

582
00:48:31,924 --> 00:48:37,784
sullied with money. But there are people ultimately who make each decision.

583
00:48:37,784 --> 00:48:49,404
They're just people. There's people behind every decision. And those people are the representatives and the staffers. And you can talk to those people as people. You have that right and that access as a citizen.

584
00:48:49,404 --> 00:48:55,384
um and and once you see that happening and you realize how little they know and that many of us

585
00:48:55,384 --> 00:49:01,424
in bitcoin like actually know a lot more then you realize like okay this is a good system we we can

586
00:49:01,424 --> 00:49:07,144
close this gap and we kind of have the duty to do it as as citizens to let our voices be heard

587
00:49:07,144 --> 00:49:13,924
make our presence felt in dc we are represented by them they serve us it's back to the declaration

588
00:49:13,924 --> 00:49:20,264
and stuff you know it's a government for the people we're the people you know whatever i know

589
00:49:20,264 --> 00:49:25,824
there's a lot of whatever anarchists in bitcoin but it's not a terrible system at least we're not

590
00:49:25,824 --> 00:49:34,924
just outside the castle you know shouting at the walls we can actually talk to people and um yeah

591
00:49:34,924 --> 00:49:42,884
yeah it you know trump whatever you make of him uh he listened he actually heard that voice

592
00:49:42,884 --> 00:49:51,004
uh harris did not and that was a big part of the election it could be sufficient to have swung the

593
00:49:51,004 --> 00:49:59,564
election in his direction it's just listening to bitcoiners and crypto people i you know there's uh

594
00:49:59,564 --> 00:50:06,624
the guy that i co-presented with in dc uh brent duchanan did a poll of about 800 or maybe it was

595
00:50:06,624 --> 00:50:15,124
a thousand people uh and and he his data shows that bitcoin owners uh were more likely to vote

596
00:50:15,124 --> 00:50:19,884
and it was a very important issue for them and they swung hard for trump

597
00:50:19,884 --> 00:50:25,124
uh they were all over the political map but they they swung hard for trump in that election more

598
00:50:25,124 --> 00:50:31,204
so than other republican candidates and you know his his kind of one of his takeaways from that

599
00:50:31,204 --> 00:50:36,604
which i think is very good was that if democrats don't learn to listen to that same constituency

600
00:50:36,604 --> 00:50:41,064
they're going to lose even more center left males.

601
00:50:42,104 --> 00:50:45,844
Younger center left males could cost them the next election.

602
00:50:46,764 --> 00:50:48,604
Kind of advice to Republicans is like,

603
00:50:48,684 --> 00:50:53,324
take more of what you already took from young Hispanic males,

604
00:50:53,584 --> 00:50:54,704
young black males.

605
00:50:55,484 --> 00:51:00,484
Just leave the Democratic Party isolated with just college educated women.

606
00:51:02,844 --> 00:51:03,744
You know what I mean?

607
00:51:04,264 --> 00:51:06,044
So, yeah, anyway.

608
00:51:06,604 --> 00:51:13,004
no it's well and do you want to do you want to uh i want to get back to uh to your study as well

609
00:51:13,004 --> 00:51:17,684
but do you want to go through that the slide you showed me before from sure yeah i can do that

610
00:51:17,684 --> 00:51:24,064
that one's super fascinating i think let me let me share this uh and highly highly recommend anyone

611
00:51:24,064 --> 00:51:31,524
who uh uh did not catch my feverish live tweeting stream of the bitcoin policy summit uh go and

612
00:51:31,524 --> 00:51:36,604
watch some of those live streamed talks that are up there on youtube uh even if you did read my

613
00:51:36,604 --> 00:51:43,764
feverish live tweet stream uh it was just a lot of signal there and remember that like the people

614
00:51:43,764 --> 00:51:49,904
that are up on stage are again addressing a room of people who may think that trump coin is the same

615
00:51:49,904 --> 00:51:59,124
thing as bitcoin and so like their message is is really important yeah okay let's let's yeah okay

616
00:51:59,124 --> 00:52:04,044
here we go. This is the one that I wanted to share. Bitcoin barriers, barriers to Bitcoin

617
00:52:04,044 --> 00:52:08,724
adoption. The question is, what are your main, what is, what are the main reasons you don't own

618
00:52:08,724 --> 00:52:18,504
Bitcoin? Select all that apply. Too risky is number one at 45 and a half percent. Don't trust it is 43%.

619
00:52:18,504 --> 00:52:27,364
Don't understand it. 37%. Not enough money to invest. 27%. Regulatory uncertainty, 25%.

620
00:52:27,364 --> 00:52:36,544
25%. No need. I think this is like, I don't have a need for it. 23.5%. Don't know where or how to

621
00:52:36,544 --> 00:52:45,484
purchase it was 15%. Too political was 14.7%. And that may be showing up in our ownership data.

622
00:52:45,484 --> 00:52:53,084
That might account for some of that shift. Environmental concerns was 6.1% and unsure was 4%.

623
00:52:53,084 --> 00:53:01,044
percent um i i was just really struck like hey we should just tackle these from the big ones you

624
00:53:01,044 --> 00:53:10,384
know like too risky don't trust it don't understand it uh we can't do anything about not enough money

625
00:53:10,384 --> 00:53:16,184
those first three though too risky don't trust it don't understand it those are all similar vibes

626
00:53:16,184 --> 00:53:21,884
really right that's just like because if you do understand it you know it's not too risky if you

627
00:53:21,884 --> 00:53:27,304
don't trust it, you don't understand it. Like that all comes down to a lack of understanding,

628
00:53:27,304 --> 00:53:31,824
right? Because once you do, you're like, oh no, this is not too risky. It's, it's not owning it

629
00:53:31,824 --> 00:53:38,204
that is risky. And like, it is, you know, don't trust verify. Like I don't, I don't have to trust

630
00:53:38,204 --> 00:53:43,044
it in the same way that I have to trust other things, but like I can trust it because I don't

631
00:53:43,044 --> 00:53:48,164
have to trust anyone. So like that, again, that just comes back to education though. And that's

632
00:53:48,164 --> 00:53:56,964
why I say like, okay, that's, that's an earliness sentiment right there, that it's just people still

633
00:53:56,964 --> 00:54:01,524
haven't wrapped their heads around what the heck this thing is. And you also, you know, yeah,

634
00:54:01,524 --> 00:54:06,644
there's more educational resources than ever before. But like, people are busy just trying to,

635
00:54:06,644 --> 00:54:11,744
you know, stay on that fiat hamster wheel and not get thrown off. And like, it's, you know,

636
00:54:11,884 --> 00:54:25,348
you feel for people because like you want more people to understand it but you got to be able to take the time and have the take the initiative to go out there there and actually learn about it So you don say it too risky or I don trust it

637
00:54:26,368 --> 00:54:32,048
Yeah, we actually asked these questions about trust and risk in our survey too and understanding and knowledge.

638
00:54:32,748 --> 00:54:36,188
We asked four questions on knowledge, four questions on trust.

639
00:54:36,188 --> 00:54:44,928
and um and we found them to be super correlated with each other and super correlated with bitcoin

640
00:54:44,928 --> 00:54:50,168
ownership they were much more correlated than anything else like anything in demographics or

641
00:54:50,168 --> 00:54:56,408
politics uh and our conclusion you know last year and it holds true for this year is bitcoiners are

642
00:54:56,408 --> 00:55:01,708
just people who know about bitcoin you know that's what characterizes bitcoin ownership more than

643
00:55:01,708 --> 00:55:07,108
anything else. It's just people who know about Bitcoin. So you're exactly right. And I think

644
00:55:07,108 --> 00:55:13,848
we get caught up in debates, like the environmental concern debate. You know, that's been a major

645
00:55:13,848 --> 00:55:22,328
focus of mine for the last four years. And it's 6.1% of people, only 6.1% of people list that as

646
00:55:22,328 --> 00:55:27,848
one of the main reasons, not even the main reason, but just one of when you can select

647
00:55:27,848 --> 00:55:35,208
all that apply. That means 94% of people didn't consider it to be one of the reasons they're not

648
00:55:35,208 --> 00:55:45,548
buying Bitcoin. And yet that has like dominated the discourse. I don't know, man, we got to focus

649
00:55:45,548 --> 00:55:52,868
on the education side. And it's hard. I mean, you know, it's hard. We have a ton of resources, yes.

650
00:55:52,868 --> 00:56:02,408
but people don't have a lot of time and uh bitcoin is a bloody hard thing to explain

651
00:56:02,408 --> 00:56:09,548
it isn't quite like anything else uh there's a book that i just started reading on anti

652
00:56:09,548 --> 00:56:17,508
anti-memesis or anti-memetic ideas uh you know me memetic ideas are ones that easily catch on

653
00:56:17,508 --> 00:56:22,468
and spread like on social media, like, you know, cat GIFs or memes.

654
00:56:23,808 --> 00:56:30,508
But anti-mimetic ideas are ones that in some ways resist spreading or they're hard to spread

655
00:56:30,508 --> 00:56:35,168
despite being oftentimes like really good ideas.

656
00:56:36,548 --> 00:56:44,768
And I think Bitcoin is an anti-mimetic idea, which is, I know, weird to square with the

657
00:56:44,768 --> 00:56:52,628
fact that our entire community is the most memetic community on the internet we are the kings of memes

658
00:56:52,628 --> 00:56:59,888
but the underlying thing is not a meme and it is not meme it is not directly

659
00:56:59,888 --> 00:57:06,668
capturable in something as simple as a meme we've got like a thousand memes for it but none of them

660
00:57:06,668 --> 00:57:13,868
are quite right none of them are perfect you know and and so you can there's there's something really

661
00:57:13,868 --> 00:57:21,448
hard to grok about the Bitcoin idea. It takes time. And I think what you see there is something like

662
00:57:21,448 --> 00:57:29,868
the lack of time and effort that people are willing to put in to understand it. They're

663
00:57:29,868 --> 00:57:35,448
busy. They don't need it that much. They've got privilege. And where you have to understand it,

664
00:57:35,568 --> 00:57:41,308
you learn it, you get it, you see its value. But if you don't have to, it remains this

665
00:57:41,308 --> 00:57:45,988
abstract idea and you know you know the whole set of questions that we have about it what

666
00:57:45,988 --> 00:57:52,688
what backs it and why can't i just copy it and oh my god you know the whole list of things can't

667
00:57:52,688 --> 00:58:01,728
we use it for crime like uh uh those things just keep coming at us and and people don't have a core

668
00:58:01,728 --> 00:58:10,448
idea of what it is it's an asset it's a network what is that exactly um it yeah who controls it

669
00:58:10,448 --> 00:58:18,188
who made it like those basic things is it digital gold well kind of yes but kind of not

670
00:58:18,188 --> 00:58:29,208
um and and and so yeah yeah i think we have an enormous educational uh task in front of

671
00:58:29,208 --> 00:58:33,188
ourselves and like this this chart is awesome it's like how we cross the chasm of adoption

672
00:58:33,188 --> 00:58:37,988
we got it we got to get people to understand it and when they understand it they'll see that it's

673
00:58:37,988 --> 00:58:43,308
not too risky and they'll come to trust it or as you put it realize you don't even need to trust it

674
00:58:43,308 --> 00:58:50,508
it's trustworthy it's reliable uh yeah we asked one of our questions on trust i've got to say this

675
00:58:50,508 --> 00:58:55,888
uh was just do you trust the bitcoin blockchain to be accurate an accurate record

676
00:58:55,888 --> 00:59:01,928
and we thought like this this is almost like a test of bitcoin literacy like you should say

677
00:59:01,928 --> 00:59:06,508
you know strongly agree like everybody should say strongly agree there shouldn't be any disagreement

678
00:59:06,508 --> 00:59:14,068
about this one actually the answers to this question about trust were right in line with

679
00:59:14,068 --> 00:59:19,308
question the other questions about trust which is like do you trust it to hold value over time

680
00:59:19,308 --> 00:59:25,268
like that kind of you know do you do trust it do you think it's you can trust it with your saving

681
00:59:25,268 --> 00:59:32,888
people had the same answer to that as do you trust the accuracy of the chain which tells me

682
00:59:32,888 --> 00:59:35,548
they do not understand it at all.

683
00:59:36,308 --> 00:59:38,208
It's just all lumped into one for them.

684
00:59:38,588 --> 00:59:39,508
It's all lumped into one.

685
00:59:39,568 --> 00:59:39,748
Yeah.

686
00:59:40,388 --> 00:59:40,748
Trust.

687
00:59:42,508 --> 00:59:44,488
Bitcoin is a volatile asset.

688
00:59:44,948 --> 00:59:46,708
If you need money a year from now

689
00:59:46,708 --> 00:59:49,228
and you know you need it,

690
00:59:49,848 --> 00:59:51,728
Bitcoin, you may not want to park

691
00:59:51,728 --> 00:59:53,728
all that savings in Bitcoin

692
00:59:53,728 --> 00:59:54,968
during that period of time.

693
00:59:55,688 --> 00:59:57,168
You need a house in a year.

694
00:59:57,808 --> 01:00:00,728
And I think Bitcoiners would say that.

695
01:00:01,848 --> 01:00:02,288
But...

696
01:00:02,888 --> 01:00:11,468
None of us Bitcoiners are going to say that the blockchain contains falsehoods about what has transpired on the chain.

697
01:00:12,628 --> 01:00:15,408
It's like the most accurate source of information in the world.

698
01:00:15,908 --> 01:00:17,908
So the most trustworthy in the world.

699
01:00:18,928 --> 01:00:24,108
So, yeah, anyway, that tells you where people are at and what our real challenge is.

700
01:00:24,108 --> 01:00:28,848
I guess you're a Bitcoin educator, so this puts you at the tip of the spear.

701
01:00:28,848 --> 01:00:37,688
Yeah. I mean, at least that means there's plenty more podcasting to do. So that's a good thing.

702
01:00:37,868 --> 01:00:43,708
You know, there's no shortage. We need more Bitcoin podcasts out there to counteract this.

703
01:00:44,568 --> 01:00:49,608
I mean, if you're going to take 40 hours in a week, there has to be a lot of content out there

704
01:00:49,608 --> 01:00:56,108
to provide that 40 hours. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. So another thing I wanted to get into in your

705
01:00:56,108 --> 01:01:01,468
report was this uh this idea that you guys i think i mean i think it's a term basically that

706
01:01:01,468 --> 01:01:07,628
you've coined uh as a result of the what you saw in bitcoiners which is moral maximalism yeah yeah

707
01:01:07,628 --> 01:01:12,088
can you can you talk about that a little bit because i thought that was fascinating let me

708
01:01:12,088 --> 01:01:25,448
share this uh yeah well we uh this is andy perkins uh idea and andy is uh

709
01:01:26,108 --> 01:01:31,548
the head of the marketing department at Washington State University and the co-author of this report,

710
01:01:31,668 --> 01:01:36,388
he designed a survey that we use to collect the data.

711
01:01:37,828 --> 01:01:45,068
And Andy uses this framework of moral foundations in some of his other academic work.

712
01:01:45,068 --> 01:01:52,408
And it's the creation of Jonathan Haidt and some other social theorists about how we can understand

713
01:01:52,408 --> 01:01:59,308
and explain some of our moral disagreements and public policy disagreements

714
01:01:59,308 --> 01:02:05,288
through thinking about what our deepest moral and cultural values are.

715
01:02:06,968 --> 01:02:11,008
So each one of these dimensions of this radar plot here

716
01:02:11,008 --> 01:02:17,568
is a measure of one of the foundations of moral reasoning,

717
01:02:17,568 --> 01:02:25,548
uh care cultural liberty economic liberty purity authoritarianism authoritarianism doesn't mean a

718
01:02:25,548 --> 01:02:30,168
political thing it means like respect for authority how important is it to respect your parents how

719
01:02:30,168 --> 01:02:35,188
important is to respect your political leaders and obey them and stuff like that loyalty

720
01:02:35,188 --> 01:02:40,748
proportionality or kind of fairness is another name for that one equality

721
01:02:40,748 --> 01:02:47,868
uh and each one of these dimensions you get a battery of questions like i don't remember what

722
01:02:47,868 --> 01:02:54,728
it's four four questions i think for each one maybe five or six that ask you a variety of

723
01:02:54,728 --> 01:02:59,468
questions of how important is it to you know pay people equally for the same kind of work

724
01:02:59,468 --> 01:03:06,948
maybe for proportionality and then you would have a seven point scale um you know not not very

725
01:03:06,948 --> 01:03:16,528
important, very important. Or yeah, strongly disagree to strongly agree. And where you rank

726
01:03:16,528 --> 01:03:24,108
on this dimension is an average of those questions on proportionality. And likewise for all of the

727
01:03:24,108 --> 01:03:30,908
others. So what you get here is like a profile of which things you care about most in moral

728
01:03:30,908 --> 01:03:36,388
reasoning. And the reason this framework is interesting is because liberals and conservatives

729
01:03:36,388 --> 01:03:38,408
Democrats and Republicans

730
01:03:38,408 --> 01:03:40,568
differ in their moral

731
01:03:40,568 --> 01:03:43,048
profiles sort of robustly

732
01:03:43,048 --> 01:03:44,968
Republicans

733
01:03:44,968 --> 01:03:46,968
are higher in like respect

734
01:03:46,968 --> 01:03:48,848
for authority and they're higher

735
01:03:48,848 --> 01:03:50,768
in purity and they're higher

736
01:03:50,768 --> 01:03:52,548
in economic and cultural liberty

737
01:03:52,548 --> 01:03:55,188
than liberals

738
01:03:55,188 --> 01:03:56,708
and

739
01:03:56,708 --> 01:03:59,128
similar to liberals

740
01:03:59,128 --> 01:04:00,488
in the other dimensions and some

741
01:04:00,488 --> 01:04:02,508
liberals are slightly higher

742
01:04:02,508 --> 01:04:05,348
but

743
01:04:05,348 --> 01:04:24,048
But that means there's some there there. It's not just statistical noise. But it's weird that all you can know about someone is their moral foundations profile and you can predict their political ideology or vice versa to some non-zero degree.

744
01:04:24,048 --> 01:04:41,528
And we wanted to know last year when we asked these questions, like, where are Bitcoiners? Are they more like conservatives in the way they their ultimate core values? Or are they more like liberals? And we found last year and this year, the answer was like, neither.

745
01:04:41,528 --> 01:04:55,108
Bitcoiners have their own distinctive moral foundations profile, which I called it moral maximalism, because they just seem to be higher almost everywhere.

746
01:04:55,868 --> 01:05:03,108
Like on cultural liberty, cultural and economic liberty were distinguished by economic liberty was like about property.

747
01:05:03,528 --> 01:05:05,788
Basically, I have a right to do what I want with my own property.

748
01:05:05,788 --> 01:05:11,088
cultural liberty is like i kind of have the right to do with my life whatever i want to do unless

749
01:05:11,088 --> 01:05:19,888
somebody else would be harmed by it on cultural liberty bitcoiners were higher than everybody

750
01:05:19,888 --> 01:05:26,428
on economic liberty sort of between liberals and conservatives i was surprised by that actually

751
01:05:26,428 --> 01:05:34,028
we had the same result last year same exact result last year on purity bitcoiners were higher

752
01:05:34,028 --> 01:05:39,288
on care bitcoiners just kind of matched conservatives on equality bitcoins were the

753
01:05:39,288 --> 01:05:48,308
highest proportionality bitcoins were uh matching uh conservatives uh loyalty just barely below

754
01:05:48,308 --> 01:05:55,288
conservatives well well above liberals authority below conservatives but well above liberals so it

755
01:05:55,288 --> 01:06:03,948
just seemed like they were either right next to the maximum or at the maximum across the board

756
01:06:03,948 --> 01:06:09,588
um like they this isn't to say they're more moral than other people some people misunderstood the

757
01:06:09,588 --> 01:06:15,928
phrase moral maxima is like they're really good people it's more like they they just tended to

758
01:06:15,928 --> 01:06:22,148
agree with the importance of some moral value like the importance of equality or the importance

759
01:06:22,148 --> 01:06:27,528
of care the importance of fairness and importance of loyalty when asked you know how important is

760
01:06:27,528 --> 01:06:34,088
this they were like it's more important than other than other people and also this this profile just

761
01:06:34,088 --> 01:06:43,048
matched last year's like almost precisely which is like cool there's a bitcoiner type um that's

762
01:06:43,048 --> 01:06:50,408
there's a bitcoiner type of of a set of values and and ways of thinking deeply about

763
01:06:50,408 --> 01:06:54,488
about morality that correlates with Bitcoin ownership.

764
01:06:56,248 --> 01:07:00,708
This, this, I would say like once, once I saw this, I was like, yeah, yeah, this tracks

765
01:07:00,708 --> 01:07:04,208
like Bitcoin or I forget what exactly you said in DC, but it's basically like Bitcoin,

766
01:07:04,408 --> 01:07:10,788
Bitcoiners care about everything like a lot, like just, there's a lot of it, a lot of passion

767
01:07:10,788 --> 01:07:15,028
there, which is like, you know, that, that makes sense.

768
01:07:15,048 --> 01:07:20,308
But it's also another just good reminder that this is like, yes, money is inherently

769
01:07:20,308 --> 01:07:25,608
political because it's money, but money is not partisan. And Bitcoin is like, of course,

770
01:07:25,668 --> 01:07:32,668
Bitcoin's inherently political because again, it's money, but it's not partisan and neither are its

771
01:07:32,668 --> 01:07:36,708
owners. And like, this is like, that's what I think is so fascinating about these studies that

772
01:07:36,708 --> 01:07:41,808
you guys do. And I'm so glad you, you do them. I hope they continue because it just very clearly

773
01:07:41,808 --> 01:07:46,228
shows that it's like, you can put whatever label you want, whether you're pro or anti or whatever,

774
01:07:46,228 --> 01:07:49,768
and you can slap whatever label you want on Bitcoin, but Bitcoin doesn't care.

775
01:07:50,268 --> 01:07:54,368
And it turns out that the people who own Bitcoin don't fit your label either.

776
01:07:54,808 --> 01:07:58,068
Like they're, you know, often right in the middle of what you expect.

777
01:07:58,268 --> 01:08:01,808
They're, you know, so except when it comes to this moral maximalism

778
01:08:01,808 --> 01:08:06,248
where they care about everything a ton, which is just, yeah, amazing.

779
01:08:06,488 --> 01:08:06,728
Amazing.

780
01:08:06,848 --> 01:08:07,908
It does kind of fit, right?

781
01:08:07,908 --> 01:08:14,208
It's like, yeah, there's a, yeah, I think Bitcoiners,

782
01:08:14,208 --> 01:08:19,688
it's hard to make any you know any generalization generalizations about all of us but

783
01:08:19,688 --> 01:08:27,028
we're doing something new and different right we are early we are early we are the early ones

784
01:08:27,028 --> 01:08:34,148
and and who steps out into this new domain um first you know kind of like asking who comes to

785
01:08:34,148 --> 01:08:40,088
america it's not a random sample of europeans that we end up with in the in the u.s the settlers

786
01:08:40,088 --> 01:08:43,108
Like we end up with adventurers.

787
01:08:43,448 --> 01:08:45,908
We end up with people who are dissatisfied with the system.

788
01:08:45,908 --> 01:08:58,988
We end up with the people who are dreamers and want to build some more ideal, safer, better future for their families, for themselves.

789
01:08:59,808 --> 01:09:06,648
So like that's something like that, I'm guessing, is showing up in this moral foundation profile.

790
01:09:06,648 --> 01:09:14,228
you know it's like people who see the system and say it's not fair and fuck that i'm out

791
01:09:14,228 --> 01:09:23,248
those people gonna rank higher on fairness right um you know or certainly cultural liberty people

792
01:09:23,248 --> 01:09:29,888
are stomping on my liberty i'm gonna opt out those people are you you survey all those people

793
01:09:29,888 --> 01:09:35,788
you're gonna see they rank cultural liberty higher right so i i yeah i feel like something

794
01:09:35,788 --> 01:09:42,668
like the the the earliness of bitcoin owners right now is reflected in this i don't know if

795
01:09:42,668 --> 01:09:49,948
this profile will dissipate and we'll just go to like average over the average population

796
01:09:49,948 --> 01:09:57,108
of moral profile like over over time my my guess is that we do like over time we just

797
01:09:57,108 --> 01:10:05,668
this thing just becomes noise but right now we have we have a type yeah yeah

798
01:10:05,668 --> 01:10:18,428
I mean, it's cool to see, and it is interesting to think, like, as Bitcoin becomes more ubiquitous, what does the profile of a, quote, Bitcoiner look like anymore?

799
01:10:19,008 --> 01:10:19,248
Exactly.

800
01:10:19,608 --> 01:10:25,888
The waters will be muddied, necessarily, because you're just, you know, it just looks like all of us.

801
01:10:26,068 --> 01:10:27,528
But, like, and right, like, that's the interesting thing.

802
01:10:27,568 --> 01:10:30,288
Like, right now, it still kind of looks like all of us.

803
01:10:30,288 --> 01:10:37,268
That's one of the takeaways from this, right? Is it still looks like Bitcoiners look like America? Is it fair to say?

804
01:10:38,048 --> 01:10:47,108
Absolutely. And I think that saddens a lot of people. The waters have already been muddied. They've been very much muddied.

805
01:10:48,188 --> 01:10:55,068
I was part of a lot of Internet communities that went through this period of growth where they were special at first.

806
01:10:55,068 --> 01:10:56,988
and then it just became people like shit posting

807
01:10:56,988 --> 01:10:59,688
and the quality deteriorated

808
01:10:59,688 --> 01:11:02,228
and you couldn't count on members to know anything

809
01:11:02,228 --> 01:11:06,328
or do anything other than just go for cheap laughs.

810
01:11:07,328 --> 01:11:11,148
And every time I mourn the death of that community

811
01:11:11,148 --> 01:11:16,468
and I feel like that's just part of what it is to be adopted.

812
01:11:16,908 --> 01:11:21,028
You can remain niche and you can stay cool,

813
01:11:21,328 --> 01:11:22,948
but then you will always remain niche.

814
01:11:23,368 --> 01:11:24,968
So do you want people to adopt or not?

815
01:11:25,068 --> 01:11:38,148
And yeah, I think going back to ownership where we started, it's going to be impossible to measure exposure to Bitcoin because it's going to be almost 100%.

816
01:11:38,148 --> 01:11:46,448
You know, if MicroStrategy gets into S&P 500, that broadens, like everybody's going to get a little.

817
01:11:46,448 --> 01:11:57,848
Wisconsin has in their retirement fund, every Wisconsin state employee retiree has some exposure to Bitcoin.

818
01:11:58,668 --> 01:12:02,928
And then treasuries keep adding Bitcoin to the balance sheet.

819
01:12:04,148 --> 01:12:05,448
I mean, it's going to be like stocks.

820
01:12:07,688 --> 01:12:11,428
If the country has, I mean, U.S. does have some Bitcoin.

821
01:12:11,428 --> 01:12:18,248
I mean, really, actually, all the U.S. citizens all have exposure to Bitcoin through the holdings of the government in some extended sense.

822
01:12:19,188 --> 01:12:24,428
But if those holdings grow, then that exposure will also grow.

823
01:12:25,688 --> 01:12:31,868
So it's like the point of studying Bitcoiners might over time just disappear.

824
01:12:32,108 --> 01:12:34,748
The questions of how many people own it, what do they like?

825
01:12:35,188 --> 01:12:39,948
I mean, hopefully all this is just like nobody studies cell phone owners now.

826
01:12:39,948 --> 01:12:47,188
like what do they like what's the profile of a mobile phone user like dumb survey nobody would

827
01:12:47,188 --> 01:12:53,608
do it and and and that will be that will be bitcoin and and then people will say ah i remember

828
01:12:53,608 --> 01:12:59,408
when being a bitcoiner was cool uh well it's never cool outside of our circles but it was like cool

829
01:12:59,408 --> 01:13:08,108
within our circles remember when it was uncool uh you know it was just right it'd just be boring um

830
01:13:08,108 --> 01:13:18,048
yeah i wanted to do one last thing um walker uh just we already made this point that trust

831
01:13:18,048 --> 01:13:23,508
in bitcoin knowing about bitcoin belief in its utility belief in its morality

832
01:13:23,508 --> 01:13:30,408
are more predictive of bitcoin ownership than anything else we asked four questions for each

833
01:13:30,408 --> 01:13:35,328
of these they were highly correlated with each other highly correlated with bitcoin ownership

834
01:13:35,328 --> 01:13:43,168
like so far and away above everything else even that age chart like i compared these against age

835
01:13:43,168 --> 01:13:49,588
these against gender and even these against age and gender combined so you have these categories

836
01:13:49,588 --> 01:13:58,348
of like old and female young and male these attitudes are more predictive than being young

837
01:13:58,348 --> 01:13:59,688
in mail, let's say.

838
01:14:00,668 --> 01:14:04,508
So really, this is what Bitcoin adoption is about.

839
01:14:05,708 --> 01:14:07,308
These attitudes towards Bitcoin,

840
01:14:07,668 --> 01:14:09,088
not, as I say in the report,

841
01:14:09,388 --> 01:14:09,968
it's a matter,

842
01:14:10,448 --> 01:14:12,088
it's not a matter of who you are.

843
01:14:12,548 --> 01:14:14,488
It's a matter of what you know

844
01:14:14,488 --> 01:14:16,028
and believe about Bitcoin

845
01:14:16,028 --> 01:14:18,148
that predicts whether you own Bitcoin.

846
01:14:19,548 --> 01:14:20,628
And so, yeah,

847
01:14:20,648 --> 01:14:22,008
that puts the ball in our court

848
01:14:22,008 --> 01:14:25,648
as Bitcoin educators to get it done

849
01:14:25,648 --> 01:14:28,688
and also gives us hope that it can be done.

850
01:14:29,808 --> 01:14:33,208
Since Bitcoin isn't some niche political identity,

851
01:14:33,368 --> 01:14:36,028
it's certainly not young white males or something.

852
01:14:36,588 --> 01:14:39,448
Whites are less likely to own than non-whites in our survey.

853
01:14:41,828 --> 01:14:45,848
It's not like you're fighting identity in order to adopt Bitcoin.

854
01:14:45,848 --> 01:14:47,048
You're fighting ignorance.

855
01:14:49,568 --> 01:14:51,768
And that seems doable.

856
01:14:52,388 --> 01:14:55,408
Whereas you're not going to talk someone out of their religion

857
01:14:55,408 --> 01:15:01,848
or their, you know, their gender, you could talk them out of their ignorance.

858
01:15:03,488 --> 01:15:07,648
I mean, that's a very good thing, right?

859
01:15:07,768 --> 01:15:11,528
Like, it really does just come down to education.

860
01:15:11,708 --> 01:15:16,848
I mean, and it's wild to see that, like, just how similar this is across the board.

861
01:15:17,548 --> 01:15:21,648
Like, that's, I mean, it's pretty darn clear.

862
01:15:21,648 --> 01:15:29,128
like there's really there's no uh i i don't think there's a a good way to like to argue against that

863
01:15:29,128 --> 01:15:35,228
like the more you know the more likely you are to hold it is essentially like what that boils down to

864
01:15:35,228 --> 01:15:43,388
right yeah yeah i mean exactly and we don't know which of these comes first and we don't know like

865
01:15:43,388 --> 01:15:50,768
and i should include yeah ownership is orange there right so it could be and probably is true

866
01:15:50,768 --> 01:15:53,528
that when you give people some Bitcoin or they buy a little,

867
01:15:54,128 --> 01:15:55,668
then they start to trust it.

868
01:15:55,788 --> 01:15:56,928
Then they learn about it.

869
01:15:57,128 --> 01:15:58,328
Then they see its utility.

870
01:15:58,548 --> 01:15:59,568
Then they think it's good.

871
01:16:00,428 --> 01:16:02,048
And it can also go the other way.

872
01:16:02,228 --> 01:16:03,528
You learn about Bitcoin.

873
01:16:04,288 --> 01:16:06,528
You begin to trust it once you know about it.

874
01:16:06,828 --> 01:16:08,628
You begin to see its utility.

875
01:16:08,808 --> 01:16:09,928
You begin to see its morality.

876
01:16:10,428 --> 01:16:11,568
And then you buy it.

877
01:16:13,648 --> 01:16:16,088
We don't know which way those causal errors are going.

878
01:16:16,188 --> 01:16:19,168
We can't measure that with our tools.

879
01:16:19,168 --> 01:16:29,988
i'm pretty sure it goes both ways uh uh those faucets in the early days um created a lot of

880
01:16:29,988 --> 01:16:35,748
bitcoiners and they probably created a lot of fervent bitcoiners and uh we should probably

881
01:16:35,748 --> 01:16:40,828
bear that in mind too when we're educating about bitcoin you know it's great when you

882
01:16:40,828 --> 01:16:48,128
when you are orange pilling someone just to give them some bitcoin like it's a classic move here

883
01:16:48,128 --> 01:16:56,588
here's 20 bucks worth of bitcoin uh play around with it send it to people try different wallets

884
01:16:56,588 --> 01:17:03,348
whatever just have fun with it play with your bitcoin uh it actually is a strategy uh for me

885
01:17:03,348 --> 01:17:09,968
anyway it's a technology play with it um you know watch it watch the price chart honestly you know

886
01:17:09,968 --> 01:17:15,048
for some people that i've just told about bitcoin they just watch the price chart and that was

887
01:17:15,048 --> 01:17:16,288
enough to get them to

888
01:17:16,288 --> 01:17:18,288
begin to trust it because

889
01:17:18,288 --> 01:17:20,148
years pass and

890
01:17:20,148 --> 01:17:23,028
they come

891
01:17:23,028 --> 01:17:24,568
to see that the

892
01:17:24,568 --> 01:17:26,888
pronouncements of its death are

893
01:17:26,888 --> 01:17:28,908
greatly exaggerated.

894
01:17:30,688 --> 01:17:32,408
Just watch it over time.

895
01:17:33,028 --> 01:17:34,588
I think it

896
01:17:34,588 --> 01:17:37,128
goes in all directions, but the correlation

897
01:17:37,128 --> 01:17:39,288
is ridiculous, ridiculously

898
01:17:39,288 --> 01:17:39,708
tight.

899
01:17:40,788 --> 01:17:43,148
That does make me think that if we

900
01:17:43,148 --> 01:17:44,028
educate people

901
01:17:45,048 --> 01:17:47,468
we can achieve broad adoption.

902
01:17:47,748 --> 01:17:50,008
And then I would say the counter signal to this in the report,

903
01:17:50,228 --> 01:17:58,048
the counter signal to this is this trend of a trend in sentiment,

904
01:17:58,248 --> 01:18:04,888
especially where you see the brand identity calcifying as political, right?

905
01:18:05,348 --> 01:18:08,168
And you see people losing people on the left and losing women,

906
01:18:08,548 --> 01:18:10,368
which we already have fewer of.

907
01:18:11,448 --> 01:18:14,368
And so I think there's a kind of bright spot in the report.

908
01:18:14,368 --> 01:18:21,628
which is like hey we're basically americans who know about bitcoin um and then there's a warning

909
01:18:21,628 --> 01:18:27,728
there's a red flag uh canary in the coal mine kind of thing which is like this is a worrisome

910
01:18:27,728 --> 01:18:36,688
trend here we have a technology that is rapidly growing in value and rapidly growing in institutional

911
01:18:36,688 --> 01:18:48,248
integration, government adoption, but it's shifting, it's polarizing in its perception.

912
01:18:48,248 --> 01:18:55,828
And frankly, why is it neutral, negative across the board, except for owners?

913
01:18:57,648 --> 01:18:58,948
Why aren't we positive?

914
01:18:59,608 --> 01:19:01,288
That is in itself not cool.

915
01:19:02,108 --> 01:19:04,228
People are like, how do you feel about Bitcoin?

916
01:19:04,708 --> 01:19:06,148
And this is in the signal poll as well.

917
01:19:06,148 --> 01:19:10,128
They just ask a simple question like, your impressions of Bitcoin, positive, negative, neutral.

918
01:19:10,988 --> 01:19:13,348
It hovers around neutral, but it's slightly negative.

919
01:19:13,928 --> 01:19:14,988
Like, why?

920
01:19:16,328 --> 01:19:23,268
I don't think it was like that for, I don't think it was like that 15 years into mobile phones.

921
01:19:23,488 --> 01:19:28,588
Although, you know, people did hate lots of things about mobile phones or the internet.

922
01:19:28,588 --> 01:19:35,788
But I don't think we just sat there at neutral sentiment and kind of went down while the technology was exploding.

923
01:19:37,048 --> 01:19:39,588
So I think there's also a warning signal here.

924
01:19:40,568 --> 01:19:50,928
Do you think that's perhaps a unique function of Bitcoin as money, given that if you don't own something and you see its value going way up,

925
01:19:51,088 --> 01:19:57,668
like you kind of root for it to fail a little bit because you don't want to have been the guy who sat on the sidelines and kept watching it.

926
01:19:57,668 --> 01:20:00,468
you don't want to be the Peter Schiff, you know, like, so you, it's,

927
01:20:00,528 --> 01:20:03,688
it's like sunk cost bias where you just, you double down, you double down.

928
01:20:03,748 --> 01:20:06,648
You're like, Nope, it's bad. And the higher it goes, you're like,

929
01:20:06,728 --> 01:20:10,408
I hate it even more now. Do you think that's part of it? And like,

930
01:20:10,468 --> 01:20:13,928
and that's something that's different than like mobile phones or the internet

931
01:20:13,928 --> 01:20:16,068
or whatever, because like, they're not money.

932
01:20:17,348 --> 01:20:20,028
Yeah. It's very true. Yeah.

933
01:20:20,108 --> 01:20:24,508
Something I heard in DC that was just really disturbing and I heard it through

934
01:20:24,508 --> 01:20:32,088
other people too um was that some of the democratic opposition to bitcoin was not based in any of the

935
01:20:32,088 --> 01:20:38,708
concerns that we talked about earlier like crime and sanctions evasion but was just because it would

936
01:20:38,708 --> 01:20:45,848
give a win to people who hold it and the trump family has a lot of it and right now one of the

937
01:20:45,848 --> 01:20:53,168
quotes that i heard was just um we can't afford to give them a win right now like we'll get past

938
01:20:53,168 --> 01:20:54,928
this and like eventually we'll be able to

939
01:20:54,928 --> 01:20:57,088
we'll

940
01:20:57,088 --> 01:20:59,048
work something out but right now we just can't give

941
01:20:59,048 --> 01:20:59,488
them a win

942
01:20:59,488 --> 01:21:02,788
and yeah

943
01:21:02,788 --> 01:21:04,728
that's depressing

944
01:21:04,728 --> 01:21:07,268
to think our representatives

945
01:21:07,268 --> 01:21:08,988
are making decisions

946
01:21:08,988 --> 01:21:10,448
on behalf of the American people

947
01:21:10,448 --> 01:21:12,888
that are

948
01:21:12,888 --> 01:21:15,048
suboptimal because they don't want to give

949
01:21:15,048 --> 01:21:16,528
their political opponent a win

950
01:21:16,528 --> 01:21:18,108
the fuck

951
01:21:18,108 --> 01:21:21,148
that's not the job that's not your job

952
01:21:21,148 --> 01:21:22,128
like do your job

953
01:21:22,128 --> 01:21:38,632
your job is to serve the American people Maybe do a little soul searching too Like okay like this could give you a win too nobody has a monopoly on this open protocol you don like you only hurting yourself by being

954
01:21:38,632 --> 01:21:42,472
against it like it's just so frustrating where it's like you're cutting yourself and your

955
01:21:42,472 --> 01:21:49,813
constituents off from this incredibly net beneficial thing and instead treating this like

956
01:21:49,813 --> 01:21:54,592
it's some negative sum political game or zero sum political game like this is bitcoin's a positive

957
01:21:54,592 --> 01:22:00,112
sum game like this rising tide lifts all these boats but you're you're treating it like every

958
01:22:00,112 --> 01:22:04,032
other political football that you've grown accustomed to throwing back and forth i guess

959
01:22:04,032 --> 01:22:07,732
is what it comes down to it's like you know bitcoin's hard to understand that it's something

960
01:22:07,732 --> 01:22:13,472
new and it's right now people are just treating it like it's just one of their other talking points

961
01:22:13,472 --> 01:22:19,333
one of their other red blue coca-cola pepsi cola battles and it's just that's a serious miscalculation

962
01:22:19,333 --> 01:22:24,652
serious miscalculation it will hurt to whoever does this miscalculation is going to be

963
01:22:25,192 --> 01:22:32,273
tremendously hurt by it for a long time uh i think what you're raising is like a bigger problem than

964
01:22:32,273 --> 01:22:36,912
the resistance to bitcoin you know when you realize that political decisions are made that

965
01:22:36,912 --> 01:22:41,712
it's kind of like where we started with the staffers like wait decisions are being made by

966
01:22:41,712 --> 01:22:48,373
octogenarians and 24 year old staffers like that's a little frightening but this is another one like

967
01:22:48,373 --> 01:22:56,412
wait the simple heuristic of like that guy would benefit therefore bad that guy likes it therefore

968
01:22:56,412 --> 01:23:04,172
bad that simple heuristic is decisive i mean i understand it as a heuristic if you got to make

969
01:23:04,172 --> 01:23:08,672
a snap judgment and you don't have any time or any other information on a complex subject

970
01:23:08,672 --> 01:23:15,992
and you know that a guy that you generally dislike likes it then you might say okay that's a bad idea

971
01:23:15,992 --> 01:23:24,052
but that's not you you you have a staff you you you have the ability to investigate things

972
01:23:24,052 --> 01:23:31,152
and you know donald trump likes a lot of great things um you you you don't you know what i mean

973
01:23:31,152 --> 01:23:36,932
that like uh he likes a lot of great things indisputably things that we wouldn't even

974
01:23:36,932 --> 01:23:44,992
consider you know he's in favor of in favor of the internet i'm sure uh it wouldn't make you

975
01:23:44,992 --> 01:23:51,172
not in favor of the internet that he's in favor of it it's such an incredibly lazy way to make up

976
01:23:51,172 --> 01:23:58,552
your mind about something but it's it's even more than laziness it's um it's not just laziness

977
01:23:58,552 --> 01:24:06,292
because there's not lazy people it it's tribal religious warfare and the not wanting to give him

978
01:24:06,292 --> 01:24:14,632
a win is well we're engaged in a battle of good and evil good versus evil and we we must win

979
01:24:14,632 --> 01:24:18,152
it's an existential risk.

980
01:24:18,472 --> 01:24:21,773
If we don't, we need to save democracy, blah, blah, right?

981
01:24:21,813 --> 01:24:24,773
It gets swept into this huge spiritual battle.

982
01:24:25,273 --> 01:24:26,792
And that's dangerous.

983
01:24:27,032 --> 01:24:32,752
Democracy can't work in a winner-take-all,

984
01:24:33,532 --> 01:24:38,333
close-minded way of zero-sum thinking.

985
01:24:38,873 --> 01:24:41,412
Democracy requires compromise.

986
01:24:41,412 --> 01:24:44,412
It requires compromise.

987
01:24:44,632 --> 01:24:50,313
accepting ideas from your greatest enemy when they serve your constituents.

988
01:24:51,212 --> 01:24:55,352
Like if, if, if it's just rotating,

989
01:24:55,632 --> 01:25:03,492
if democracy is just rotating oppression of your enemies by authoritarian

990
01:25:03,492 --> 01:25:08,992
parties, then what's the point? You know, we're Iraq. Like that's, you know,

991
01:25:08,992 --> 01:25:09,292
you just,

992
01:25:09,292 --> 01:25:13,752
you just want to be in the ethnic majority so that you can just oppress the

993
01:25:13,752 --> 01:25:18,072
ethnic minority right and then if you're the ethnic minority it's like we need to have kids

994
01:25:18,072 --> 01:25:25,512
fast enough to overcome the that's not democracy that's not democracy and it feels like this is

995
01:25:25,512 --> 01:25:30,752
just one of those issues where the hyper polarization and tribalism in this issue is an

996
01:25:30,752 --> 01:25:37,813
indicator that our leadership is not functioning uh in a in accordance with the principles on which

997
01:25:37,813 --> 01:25:45,552
democracy can work. And that's like a deeper concern than Bitcoin in the short run.

998
01:25:46,612 --> 01:25:51,632
Well, let me ask you a question off topic of the report. But I mean, generally, what are your

999
01:25:51,632 --> 01:25:59,752
thoughts on like a legitimate third party contender? Like with Elon or with the American

1000
01:25:59,752 --> 01:26:06,452
HODL Eric Kaysen ticket that's been floated around in the orange party? Where are you at with that?

1001
01:26:07,813 --> 01:26:14,632
Um, my political science friends think it's an absolute non-starter.

1002
01:26:15,172 --> 01:26:23,472
And, um, because our system is built to maintain and support two-party rule, and we would have,

1003
01:26:23,572 --> 01:26:27,752
need to have a different system like you do in other countries in order to support a viable

1004
01:26:27,752 --> 01:26:29,172
third party.

1005
01:26:29,172 --> 01:26:35,452
That's their studied judgment, uh, as, as experts in the, in the field.

1006
01:26:35,452 --> 01:26:40,172
my gut and my heart says they're wrong.

1007
01:26:41,692 --> 01:26:47,792
My gut says there does come a point

1008
01:26:47,792 --> 01:26:49,632
where people feel ill-served.

1009
01:26:50,833 --> 01:26:53,512
It's almost like the dollar system.

1010
01:26:54,572 --> 01:26:56,072
You know, Bitcoin is unlikely.

1011
01:26:56,592 --> 01:26:58,072
No expert would have predicted it.

1012
01:26:58,072 --> 01:27:03,552
But we levered up so hard on our ability to print money

1013
01:27:03,552 --> 01:27:08,132
that we just took that as an axiom

1014
01:27:08,132 --> 01:27:11,052
and then we leveraged on it

1015
01:27:11,052 --> 01:27:15,452
to exploit the ability to print money

1016
01:27:15,452 --> 01:27:17,792
to such an extent that we basically

1017
01:27:17,792 --> 01:27:19,773
are taking down the entire system of money.

1018
01:27:20,592 --> 01:27:22,333
Just like we levered up on,

1019
01:27:22,393 --> 01:27:24,712
was it Ben Bernanke's claim

1020
01:27:24,712 --> 01:27:26,472
that the housing market never falls

1021
01:27:26,472 --> 01:27:28,112
over a certain period of time?

1022
01:27:28,273 --> 01:27:30,092
We levered up on that to such an extent

1023
01:27:30,092 --> 01:27:31,012
that we made it fall.

1024
01:27:31,012 --> 01:27:50,412
And we do this with all certainties. And I feel like in America, the two party, the party system, Democrats, Republicans, the two party system is such an axiom that we lever up on it and abuse it to such a degree that we might destabilize that system and open the path for a third party.

1025
01:27:50,412 --> 01:28:02,813
As unlikely as it is statistically and structurally with everything against it, my poli sci friends would say, just look at the number of seats that are up for grabs in the midterms right now that look up for grabs.

1026
01:28:02,912 --> 01:28:04,492
It's just a handful of seats.

1027
01:28:04,992 --> 01:28:07,252
Everything else is like locked and loaded.

1028
01:28:07,393 --> 01:28:08,492
It's decided already.

1029
01:28:08,492 --> 01:28:32,412
So, you know, how do you go from a system where the goods are all divvied up and the electorate is all fully, you know, the districts are already gerrymandered perfectly to maintain, to basically shove all of the contestable regions into a very small number of districts?

1030
01:28:32,412 --> 01:28:37,732
how do you how do you how do you break into that system where incumbents are just a lock i mean

1031
01:28:37,732 --> 01:28:43,773
how do we get these old politicians how is it that the average age is 70 or whatever it's it's

1032
01:28:43,773 --> 01:28:48,612
because people don't leave but why don't people leave well because their constituents re-elect them

1033
01:28:48,612 --> 01:28:52,672
but why are they re-elected because the party system and the gerrymandering is so effective

1034
01:28:52,672 --> 01:29:02,393
so the same reason why congress is old is also why a third party is unlikely um but i yeah my gut my

1035
01:29:02,393 --> 01:29:09,152
The gut is like, yeah, that's the structure, but the structure, everything right now is unstable.

1036
01:29:09,152 --> 01:29:15,833
These big structures that we've taken for granted, it's a risk allocation thing.

1037
01:29:16,632 --> 01:29:20,952
We perceive the structures as not risky, as stable.

1038
01:29:22,792 --> 01:29:28,012
We have a hard time perceiving a risk to the structure, to the system.

1039
01:29:28,012 --> 01:29:35,232
But if Bitcoin teaches you anything, it teaches you to look for those kinds of holistic risks.

1040
01:29:35,992 --> 01:29:41,792
You can see Bitcoin as a hedge on that systemic risk for the dollar system.

1041
01:29:43,652 --> 01:29:45,692
And so you start to see it.

1042
01:29:46,072 --> 01:29:51,252
The third party is kind of like in the same slot as Bitcoin politically.

1043
01:29:53,492 --> 01:29:55,572
I mean, I welcome it.

1044
01:29:55,572 --> 01:30:00,472
First of all, it'd be wonderful to open up the discourse and get some new slate of candidates.

1045
01:30:02,012 --> 01:30:06,852
I mean, Kaysen and Hoddle would be wildly entertaining.

1046
01:30:08,152 --> 01:30:09,313
They've got my vote.

1047
01:30:11,452 --> 01:30:12,572
I'd love to see it.

1048
01:30:13,692 --> 01:30:25,433
So the one thing I don't think we touched on yet, which was another interesting part of the report, and I want to be conscious of your time here, but if we can maybe just touch on it briefly, is the question about if we should.

1049
01:30:25,572 --> 01:30:33,833
let's say divest a little bit of our gold holdings and have Bitcoin instead.

1050
01:30:34,292 --> 01:30:35,712
Can we talk about that one a little bit?

1051
01:30:35,732 --> 01:30:37,712
Because I thought that one was quite interesting.

1052
01:30:39,452 --> 01:30:39,632
Yeah.

1053
01:30:40,632 --> 01:30:43,212
I think the upshot of this really is also,

1054
01:30:43,472 --> 01:30:47,652
it's the same as the main upshot, which is that education is key.

1055
01:30:49,412 --> 01:30:51,172
If you just ask people like,

1056
01:30:51,172 --> 01:30:53,492
hey, should we adopt a strategic crypto reserve?

1057
01:30:54,072 --> 01:30:54,933
This is their answer.

1058
01:30:54,933 --> 01:31:13,072
Most people are like, what? Neutral? Some people are like, hell no. And then there's a few people who are into it. But it's neutral to negative. That sounds like a crazy newfangled idea. People don't like it in general.

1059
01:31:13,072 --> 01:31:21,492
uh we also asked like should we diversify our bitcoin holdings into or our gold holdings into

1060
01:31:21,492 --> 01:31:28,333
bitcoin and people had similar result in the binary question should we do this or not it's

1061
01:31:28,333 --> 01:31:33,152
because it's like a newfangled thing should we develop a strategic bitcoin reserve in which we

1062
01:31:33,152 --> 01:31:41,352
convert some of our gold to bitcoin um people are hesitant about that um but when we we gave

1063
01:31:41,352 --> 01:31:48,773
them a question with a slider which said the united states government is considering uh converting

1064
01:31:48,773 --> 01:31:56,712
some of its gold into bitcoin if you were advising the u.s government uh we didn't say they they were

1065
01:31:56,712 --> 01:32:01,252
going to do it we said they were considering doing it if you were advising them how much

1066
01:32:01,252 --> 01:32:10,333
uh the gold would you advise them to convert to bitcoin and the slider could go in one percent

1067
01:32:10,333 --> 01:32:13,172
increments between 0 and 100.

1068
01:32:13,893 --> 01:32:16,612
And for the record, the slider was set at 50.

1069
01:32:17,313 --> 01:32:20,412
But if you didn't touch the slider at all,

1070
01:32:21,933 --> 01:32:25,933
there was no record placed at all.

1071
01:32:26,072 --> 01:32:27,313
We just discounted you completely.

1072
01:32:27,692 --> 01:32:31,792
And there were like 300 something people who didn't touch it.

1073
01:32:32,672 --> 01:32:34,393
And so we just didn't count them.

1074
01:32:34,393 --> 01:32:38,732
We had 3,538 respondents total,

1075
01:32:38,732 --> 01:32:41,792
and we just went with whatever our 3,200 for this question.

1076
01:32:42,452 --> 01:32:44,773
That meant that you had to grab the slider and put it somewhere.

1077
01:32:45,572 --> 01:32:48,552
And the number of people that put it on a 50% was,

1078
01:32:49,092 --> 01:32:50,333
oh, you can see right here in the chart,

1079
01:32:50,433 --> 01:32:53,232
41 to 50% was not really an outlier.

1080
01:32:53,352 --> 01:32:56,352
And 50% itself wasn't especially high.

1081
01:32:57,212 --> 01:32:59,692
People tended to put it on like 10% increments,

1082
01:32:59,833 --> 01:33:02,813
like just because of the way the mind works, right?

1083
01:33:02,813 --> 01:33:04,652
Oh, 20%, 30%.

1084
01:33:04,652 --> 01:33:23,433
But what was interesting is, having said all that about how we gathered the data, 80% or 79 point something percent of people put that slider off zero and allocated some gold to Bitcoin.

1085
01:33:25,572 --> 01:33:29,692
And the median allocation was 10%.

1086
01:33:29,692 --> 01:33:38,393
the mean allocation was just over 20 percent because you know 10 is towards the low end of

1087
01:33:38,393 --> 01:33:44,372
the spectrum so you had those like maxis out there like 100 you know so um that would throw

1088
01:33:44,372 --> 01:33:52,833
off the mean because there's so much higher than 10 but the median was 10 um which would be like

1089
01:33:52,833 --> 01:33:58,273
we have an 800 billion dollars worth of gold that's 80 billion dollars worth of bitcoin which

1090
01:33:58,273 --> 01:34:04,152
is a uh lot of bitcoin actually yeah that's a tremendous that's a tremendous amount of bitcoin

1091
01:34:04,152 --> 01:34:13,692
um uh so and and then yes we found that i ran this against every other variable in the data

1092
01:34:13,692 --> 01:34:18,952
set basically to look at how you know young people did it how women did it how liberals did it how

1093
01:34:18,952 --> 01:34:24,333
conservatives did it how people who felt well with bitcoin did how people who own bitcoin did it

1094
01:34:24,333 --> 01:34:28,572
And it all went according to how you would expect.

1095
01:34:30,192 --> 01:34:36,952
Old people much less likely to allocate than young people.

1096
01:34:37,092 --> 01:34:40,933
I mean, look at this median conversion rate.

1097
01:34:41,532 --> 01:34:49,552
These are median conversion rates by age for each of these groups.

1098
01:34:49,552 --> 01:34:57,813
between 26 and 30 they're like putting one third of the gold reserves almost into bitcoin whereas

1099
01:34:57,813 --> 01:35:06,092
at 80 you're at like five percent um still not that low but we also looked at men versus women

1100
01:35:06,092 --> 01:35:16,472
and we found uh we found i didn't have this in the report basically uh men allocate a lot more

1101
01:35:16,472 --> 01:35:24,212
than women, except as you get older, men were at like, the older men were at 0% allocation,

1102
01:35:24,712 --> 01:35:26,552
and the older women were off zero.

1103
01:35:28,012 --> 01:35:28,492
Interesting.

1104
01:35:29,232 --> 01:35:29,452
Yeah.

1105
01:35:29,833 --> 01:35:35,552
And it was really, you know, across all the age groups, women were really reluctant to

1106
01:35:35,552 --> 01:35:38,012
go to zero, whereas old men would just go to zero.

1107
01:35:39,352 --> 01:35:42,072
And I think it's because of risk aversion.

1108
01:35:42,072 --> 01:36:03,252
I think with this framing, allocating everything to gold and not even 1% to Bitcoin is risky. And men are less risk averse. And so, you know, the women would be more risk averse and just allocate a few percent to Bitcoin.

1109
01:36:03,252 --> 01:36:04,952
Whereas the men were like, no, fuck it.

1110
01:36:05,192 --> 01:36:06,433
They're like, it's Peter Schiff.

1111
01:36:06,773 --> 01:36:12,232
We had the Peter Schiff group is the old men who want 0% in Bitcoin.

1112
01:36:12,552 --> 01:36:15,132
Old women, they're a little bit more cautious.

1113
01:36:16,012 --> 01:36:20,433
And in this setting, caution pushes you in favor of some allocation.

1114
01:36:21,433 --> 01:36:25,313
And if you think about sort of like, we're thinking about converting some of our Bitcoin

1115
01:36:25,313 --> 01:36:28,292
reserves to gold reserves to Bitcoin, should we do it?

1116
01:36:28,292 --> 01:36:32,933
That binary, people are probably filling in an allocation in their mind.

1117
01:36:33,252 --> 01:36:35,152
Like, how much are they going to put there?

1118
01:36:35,192 --> 01:36:37,652
Is it going to be 25%, 50%?

1119
01:36:38,273 --> 01:36:38,992
Like, I don't know.

1120
01:36:39,052 --> 01:36:40,232
That sounds scary, right?

1121
01:36:40,572 --> 01:36:44,212
But if you give them a slider and say, you get to put the percentage, should it be zero

1122
01:36:44,212 --> 01:36:45,092
or more?

1123
01:36:45,912 --> 01:36:48,833
Suddenly, 80% of people are like, well, it shouldn't be zero.

1124
01:36:49,313 --> 01:36:50,652
Even risk-averse people.

1125
01:36:51,652 --> 01:36:56,472
So I think the big lesson for this is we need to educate people on what we would be doing

1126
01:36:56,472 --> 01:37:02,912
exactly, but also frame the question in a way that answers questions for them.

1127
01:37:02,912 --> 01:37:10,492
frame the question in a way that allows them to see how small the allocation could be.

1128
01:37:11,032 --> 01:37:18,692
I wonder if you just asked the question, should we convert 10% of our gold to Bitcoin?

1129
01:37:20,372 --> 01:37:27,292
What your answer would be, or 5% rather than should we create a Bitcoin reserve that this

1130
01:37:27,292 --> 01:37:28,412
newfangled thing, right?

1131
01:37:29,032 --> 01:37:31,212
It's very, very, very frame dependent.

1132
01:37:31,212 --> 01:37:36,952
uh that's what we say in the report uh we just think this issue is very frame dependent and it's

1133
01:37:36,952 --> 01:37:41,712
early people don't know that much about it they don't understand what it would be so we have to

1134
01:37:41,712 --> 01:37:46,132
educate well framed it's a well-framed question here though like because that does make it make

1135
01:37:46,132 --> 01:37:49,472
sense no it's just like it's you're it's getting your foot in the door right like you're just

1136
01:37:49,472 --> 01:37:54,012
dipping your toes in a little like you know just a little just just maybe just a little bit of

1137
01:37:54,012 --> 01:37:59,352
bitcoin you know just a few billion like what you know it's not a big deal well trey this was

1138
01:37:59,352 --> 01:38:04,773
fascinating. Is there anything we did not get a chance to touch on that you wanted to make sure

1139
01:38:04,773 --> 01:38:09,652
we did? Have we done a pretty good job covering this? I appreciate your time because this was

1140
01:38:09,652 --> 01:38:15,992
amazing to get this deep dive from you. Yeah, I appreciate the chance to talk about it. I really

1141
01:38:15,992 --> 01:38:22,792
had fun with this data set and I'm not done with it. It's a large data set and I'm not a data

1142
01:38:22,792 --> 01:38:24,112
scientist.

1143
01:38:25,212 --> 01:38:27,333
I'm not a statistician. My training is

1144
01:38:27,333 --> 01:38:29,552
in the humanities.

1145
01:38:29,732 --> 01:38:30,372
It's in philosophy.

1146
01:38:32,452 --> 01:38:33,452
But it's really

1147
01:38:33,452 --> 01:38:34,372
fun to have data.

1148
01:38:35,273 --> 01:38:37,372
And I'm also lucky to have Andy as a

1149
01:38:37,372 --> 01:38:39,313
co-author and

1150
01:38:39,313 --> 01:38:41,333
somebody who actually does know how to handle data.

1151
01:38:41,652 --> 01:38:43,433
So I could throw my crazy

1152
01:38:43,433 --> 01:38:45,292
ideas by him and he could tell me why

1153
01:38:45,292 --> 01:38:46,712
I was making statistical

1154
01:38:46,712 --> 01:38:47,712
nonsense.

1155
01:38:48,992 --> 01:38:51,052
Yeah, so I want to give a shout out to Andy.

1156
01:38:51,612 --> 01:38:52,752
Really appreciate his help.

1157
01:38:52,792 --> 01:38:57,992
and to the other people who are doing data collection.

1158
01:38:59,052 --> 01:39:02,532
I think that what this whole thing shows us

1159
01:39:02,532 --> 01:39:06,232
is the hidden parts of Bitcoin ownership.

1160
01:39:07,313 --> 01:39:09,893
We hear from the media.

1161
01:39:10,172 --> 01:39:11,072
We hear from politicians.

1162
01:39:11,393 --> 01:39:12,933
We hear from each other on social media.

1163
01:39:13,273 --> 01:39:14,393
We hear from podcasters.

1164
01:39:14,792 --> 01:39:18,333
But we don't hear from the typical Bitcoin owner

1165
01:39:18,333 --> 01:39:21,092
because they don't feel that strongly about it.

1166
01:39:21,092 --> 01:39:22,333
They don't know that much.

1167
01:39:22,792 --> 01:39:23,933
about it necessarily.

1168
01:39:27,212 --> 01:39:29,012
They don't feel the need to talk.

1169
01:39:29,433 --> 01:39:30,352
They're not as ideological.

1170
01:39:31,092 --> 01:39:32,132
They just stay quiet.

1171
01:39:32,933 --> 01:39:36,112
And that is most Bitcoin owners.

1172
01:39:36,393 --> 01:39:37,692
I was thinking about it.

1173
01:39:37,813 --> 01:39:39,492
Okay, we got 48 million people

1174
01:39:39,492 --> 01:39:41,632
with exposure to Bitcoin in America.

1175
01:39:42,032 --> 01:39:45,652
How many people were at the Bitcoin conference in Vegas?

1176
01:39:46,992 --> 01:39:48,032
What was it?

1177
01:39:48,773 --> 01:39:49,572
Do you know?

1178
01:39:50,192 --> 01:39:52,372
30, maybe a little over 30.

1179
01:39:52,792 --> 01:40:14,372
30,000. Okay. So 30 times that is 1 million. That's one 30th of 1 million. Now we got to multiply that by 50. Right. So that's, what is that? One out of 1,500 Bitcoiners is there? Something like that?

1180
01:40:14,372 --> 01:40:43,292
So just your math on that one. That's just guessing. I'm not good at mental math, but something like one out of every 1500 Bitcoiners is there. So it's like, and that's a very non-random sample. Something that people attacked on this is like, how can you generalize about 48 million people on the basis of 3,538? And I'm like, well, what do you think we do with all of our opinions about Bitcoin? We generalize on the basis of Twitter. How big do you think Bitcoin Twitter is?

1181
01:40:43,292 --> 01:40:55,732
I mean, I don't know. I have 60,000 followers. Big Bitcoin or bigger accounts have a couple hundred thousand. Maybe we have 500,000 Bitcoin on Twitter, Bitcoin Twitter at maximum.

1182
01:40:55,732 --> 01:40:56,152
How many more bots?

1183
01:40:57,152 --> 01:41:08,792
Exactly. How many Bitcoin owners do we have active on Twitter, in Bitcoin Twitter? What does a good post get about Bitcoin? How many likes does it get or views?

1184
01:41:08,792 --> 01:41:16,632
I don't know. I mean, a good, a really good one might be, it might climb to 500,000 views,

1185
01:41:16,712 --> 01:41:27,472
like a really banger post on Bitcoin Twitter. Okay. 500,000 out of 50 million. You're still at

1186
01:41:27,472 --> 01:41:34,792
1% of the population of Bitcoin owners is you're generalizing. You're generalizing on that. And

1187
01:41:34,792 --> 01:41:42,412
those are the people who maybe viewed a tweet. The ones who talk in the comments on that banger

1188
01:41:42,412 --> 01:41:48,152
tweet, you might have 50 people at most would be an amazing, amazing thread of participation.

1189
01:41:48,313 --> 01:41:53,072
So now you're generalizing on those 50 and you're thinking those attitudes represent

1190
01:41:53,072 --> 01:42:01,152
the 50 million. And they don't. So we're all generalizing about the Bitcoin community,

1191
01:42:01,152 --> 01:42:02,333
who's in it

1192
01:42:02,333 --> 01:42:05,452
on the basis of very, very

1193
01:42:05,452 --> 01:42:07,632
small sample sizes. All of us.

1194
01:42:08,252 --> 01:42:09,472
The question is whether they're

1195
01:42:09,472 --> 01:42:11,592
representative or not, whether they're random or not.

1196
01:42:12,472 --> 01:42:12,492
And

1197
01:42:12,492 --> 01:42:15,152
that's the value in this

1198
01:42:15,152 --> 01:42:17,292
stuff, and I'm really looking forward to seeing

1199
01:42:17,292 --> 01:42:18,452
Sarah Kreps

1200
01:42:18,452 --> 01:42:21,512
and Ella Hoff, too, who's also

1201
01:42:21,512 --> 01:42:22,313
working on that.

1202
01:42:23,352 --> 01:42:25,292
Ella and Sarah's project,

1203
01:42:25,852 --> 01:42:27,512
the Signal project, and I know there

1204
01:42:27,512 --> 01:42:28,833
are others underway, too, because

1205
01:42:28,833 --> 01:42:31,052
it's just showing us stuff we don't know.

1206
01:42:31,152 --> 01:42:55,792
I'm really excited to see that as well. I just heard about that just before we got on here. So that looks amazing. That's one of the things I would love to know how America really stacks up versus other countries. We have some guesses. There's some assumptions we can make. But to really get in there with an actual study is going to be fascinating. So I cannot wait to see that.

1207
01:42:55,792 --> 01:43:02,212
And have you talked to, have you had the river people on, like Sam Wilder's recent report on America?

1208
01:43:02,352 --> 01:43:02,773
I have not.

1209
01:43:03,512 --> 01:43:04,933
I've got to have those guys on.

1210
01:43:05,372 --> 01:43:05,492
Yeah.

1211
01:43:05,532 --> 01:43:06,452
It's overdue.

1212
01:43:07,012 --> 01:43:08,813
Because they have an awesome report.

1213
01:43:08,912 --> 01:43:13,292
And they presented right before us, as you know, at the summit, Alex Leishman.

1214
01:43:13,852 --> 01:43:21,273
But their take is like America dominates Bitcoin in many respects.

1215
01:43:21,273 --> 01:43:31,172
And, you know, weirdly, I think that's true, but there are also other respects in which we are kind of at the tail end, you know, in terms of it.

1216
01:43:32,252 --> 01:43:43,592
Yeah. In terms of economic value, number of businesses started incorporating it, treasury balance sheets, whatever, there's retirement funds incorporating it.

1217
01:43:43,592 --> 01:43:51,172
We're at the front end of the financial side of Bitcoin and maybe even also a lot of the technical side, too.

1218
01:43:51,273 --> 01:44:01,792
but in terms of who needs it and who uses it i think we're way behind a lot of other places so

1219
01:44:01,792 --> 01:44:07,433
uh i did we didn't talk about the the race data in my thing but hispanics showed

1220
01:44:07,433 --> 01:44:15,112
were the largest the highest percentage of owners in my in my uh study and people are asking why

1221
01:44:15,112 --> 01:44:22,273
that is and it's like i think a lot of people have family members or know people who use bitcoin

1222
01:44:22,273 --> 01:44:31,852
like use it for real for something other than uh speculation uh but like to avoid inflation or for

1223
01:44:31,852 --> 01:44:38,592
remittance or they've had to use it because their money is crap and and and and so i think that

1224
01:44:38,592 --> 01:44:44,032
informs the ownership in the u.s of that subpopulation right so yeah i i think i think

1225
01:44:44,032 --> 01:44:52,132
if you have uh sam on or someone from river for that that that's an awesome report too that they

1226
01:44:52,132 --> 01:44:55,552
that they wrote on a kind of american dominance in bitcoin and then you have

1227
01:44:55,552 --> 01:45:05,292
sarah uh creps on uh and and ella to to talk about the um the yeah the ways in which bitcoin

1228
01:45:05,292 --> 01:45:11,273
is more advanced in other places that would be an amazing amazing combo you're lying you're lining

1229
01:45:11,273 --> 01:45:16,893
up my schedule for me. I love it. I love it. Well, where can people go to a booker? Yeah,

1230
01:45:16,893 --> 01:45:22,352
no, that works for me. Um, where, where, what's the website? Uh, there's, you also have a, an X

1231
01:45:22,352 --> 01:45:26,273
account too, for the project. I'll make sure to link everything in the show notes. What's a,

1232
01:45:26,352 --> 01:45:31,313
but if you want to just let people know. Yeah. The website is Nakamoto project.org

1233
01:45:31,313 --> 01:45:40,752
and you can follow me on Twitter at, at the Trocro. And I don't have the Twitter handle for our, um,

1234
01:45:41,273 --> 01:45:47,333
our x account offhand but it's like nakamoto project but um i think with no e so if you just

1235
01:45:47,333 --> 01:45:53,032
if you search nakamoto project we'll pop up on on x so far we don't have any imposters we're not that

1236
01:45:53,032 --> 01:46:03,433
big this this org is a we are a 501c3 organization uh if you want more reports um give us money

1237
01:46:03,433 --> 01:46:09,972
we're kind of out of money from from having spent money on these last two reports uh we i didn't take

1238
01:46:09,972 --> 01:46:15,433
any money. I didn't pay myself anything. I did it. I did it all for free. Uh, Andy didn't take any

1239
01:46:15,433 --> 01:46:20,872
money. He did it all for free. We paid our illustrator, our graphics designer. Uh, we paid

1240
01:46:20,872 --> 01:46:27,352
some overhead. We had to pay for the actual survey. Um, we had to pay to, uh, to the professional

1241
01:46:27,352 --> 01:46:31,012
firm to get it done, to get a large sample that's representative of the United States.

1242
01:46:31,372 --> 01:46:37,532
It's not cheap. So yeah, I will, I will plug us too. We're 501 C3 pending.

1243
01:46:37,532 --> 01:46:46,372
Well, I am going to go ahead and send all of the sats received on zap.stream during this to you guys.

1244
01:46:46,792 --> 01:46:51,893
It may not be much, but so far we've got 5,317 sats from the good people of NoSport.

1245
01:46:52,112 --> 01:46:53,232
So that's at least something.

1246
01:46:53,352 --> 01:46:59,972
And I double-checked just so that we could tell people on X, it's Nakamoto and then P-R-O-J-C-T.

1247
01:47:00,492 --> 01:47:00,833
That's it.

1248
01:47:01,872 --> 01:47:04,052
But yeah, well, Troy, really, thank you so much for your time.

1249
01:47:04,152 --> 01:47:06,632
Thank you for putting together this study as well.

1250
01:47:06,632 --> 01:47:08,893
I'm already looking forward to the next one.

1251
01:47:09,292 --> 01:47:14,152
But yeah, in the meantime, I'm looking forward to what other insights you can glean out of this data.

1252
01:47:15,192 --> 01:47:15,972
Thanks so much.

1253
01:47:16,032 --> 01:47:17,012
And thanks for hearing me out.

1254
01:47:17,912 --> 01:47:19,212
You're welcome anytime.

1255
01:47:19,333 --> 01:47:23,612
Always happy to platform a philosophy professor whenever I can.

1256
01:47:24,552 --> 01:47:24,833
Cool.

1257
01:47:25,313 --> 01:47:26,552
There are many of us.

1258
01:47:26,632 --> 01:47:28,172
There are many of us, as you know.

1259
01:47:28,652 --> 01:47:29,893
It's an amazing thing.

1260
01:47:30,072 --> 01:47:30,972
The vibes are high.

1261
01:47:36,632 --> 01:47:43,813
And let's wrap on this Bitcoin Talk episode of The Bitcoin Podcast.

1262
01:47:44,472 --> 01:47:48,433
Remember to subscribe to this podcast whether you're watching or listening

1263
01:47:48,433 --> 01:47:52,813
and share it with your friends, family, and strangers on the internet.

1264
01:47:52,813 --> 01:47:56,032
Find me on Noster at Primal.net slash Walker

1265
01:47:56,032 --> 01:47:59,433
and this podcast at Primal.net slash Ticcoin.

1266
01:47:59,852 --> 01:48:03,292
On X YouTube and Rumble, just search at Walker America.

1267
01:48:03,292 --> 01:48:07,833
and find this podcast on X and Instagram at Titcoin Podcast.

1268
01:48:08,572 --> 01:48:10,833
And in the show notes to grab sponsor links,

1269
01:48:10,933 --> 01:48:15,652
head to substack.com slash at Walker America to get episodes emailed to you

1270
01:48:15,652 --> 01:48:19,452
and head to BitcoinPodcast.net for everything else.

1271
01:48:20,012 --> 01:48:23,552
Bitcoin is scarce, but podcasts are abundant.

1272
01:48:23,552 --> 01:48:28,893
So thank you for spending your scarce time listening to The Bitcoin Podcast.

1273
01:48:29,652 --> 01:48:32,172
Until next time, stay free.

1274
01:48:33,292 --> 01:48:38,512
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